The Garden Of Stones Part 32

"Give me fifteen minutes." Wolfram was bent over his staff, an apparition of ruin. "I'll recover what I can."

"Belamandris, give the witch five of your Anlki. It will speed things." Corajidin paused, bent over with pain. Belamandris looked at his father in silence.

"My thanks." Wolfram limped away with the Anlki in train.

"Father, can you make it to the wind-skiff, or should we arrange-"

"I will not be carried!" Corajidin bristled.

Corajidin heaved himself forward, though his limbs refused to obey as they should. It was strange, the silence, as if the city held its breath. He distrusted quiet. It was where half truths lurked in the gaps between honesty and outright lies.

"Belamandris?" The son looked to the father. "Have your soldiers start the fires. Keep it simple. Keep it quiet. But make sure this place burns to the ground. Where is Thufan?"

"I gave orders for him to be taken to the skiff." Belamandris looked to his father where he leaned, wheezing, against the wall. All Corajidin saw was a gold-and-ruby-tinted blur in the darkness as his son came closer.

"Lean on me. I'll see you to where you need to go."

"What's that?" Hayden asked as they broke into the locked chamber.

The room was broad, with stairs leading up into the rooms above. There were a score more crates, differently sized, many of which had been opened. Books, tablets, sheets of parchment, and vellum were neatly stacked or shelved. The air was dry, though it smelled of old damp and rotten vegetation.

In the middle of the chamber there was a large armillary sphere, taller than a tall man. Wheels within wheels within wheels within wheels of tarnished bronze, bra.s.s, and different colors of gold. It reminded Indris somewhat of the Star Clock, though there was a metal chair suspended in the center, studded with gears and flywheels, cranks and levers. The device was smeared with a crust of old soil. Glyphs marked the interior of each of the wheels at regular intervals. Many of those, too, were caked with dirt and clay. Indris felt the tidal push of disentropy emanating from the artifact. The wheels moved almost imperceptibly of their own accord.

Shar glided ahead, hand extended to touch it. Indris leaned forward to grab her wrist. Shar's yellow eyes widened in surprise, and she scratched the tip of one of her long ears. "Dangerous, then?"

"I think this may be the Destiny Engine," Indris warned. "Or at least most of one. There seem to be parts missing. We need to take this with us."

"I got no cause to doubt what you say, and I ain't filled with such a curiosity to know more." Hayden cast a glance around the chamber. "But we're here for Omen. Besides, I can't fathom how we'd liberate said engine from here even if we wanted to. It's got some size to it."

"We have to take it with us, secure it, or destroy it," Indris said firmly. "There are no other choices! It can't be allowed to fall into the wrong hands."

"And by wrong you mean-"

"Almost anybody's," he replied quietly. Destiny Engines were thankfully rare. The only ones he knew of were locked away by the Sq in their vaults in Amarqa, though there was one rumored to exist in the Forbidden City of Qahavel. "Whoever manages to make the cursed thing work can mine through infinite futures, infinite destinies. To them, anything could be possible."

"Can we destroy it?" Shar asked.

"Probably, though we'd need to get rid of the Entropic Sumps first and-"

"The second you did that, the witch would be bound to notice and make a fuss," Hayden finished for him. "And that would still leave Omen prisoner somewhere."

"We can come back for this, Indris," Shar suggested.

The door at the top of the stairs opened suddenly. They looked upward in surprise to see the equally shocked expression on Wolfram's face. A squad of Anlki stood behind the Angothic Witch. Hands flashed to the hilts of weapons.

Indris drew Changeling. Shar drew her serill blade. Hayden raised his rifle. Indris's voice almost broke around the Great Shout- Wolfram's staff struck the ground with a peal of thunder. Fragments of wood rose from the boards. Formed darts. Flew forward- Disentropy fragmented, pulled in different directions by the Entropic Sumps. Indris's shout rumbled into nothing. Wolfram's Thorns of the Ancient Tree fell apart. The two Ilhennim stared at each other for a moment, then Indris bolted up the stairs, Shar by his side.

Wolfram scrabbled backward as he snarled, "Kill them!"

Hayden's storm-rifle coughed behind them. A bolt struck Wolfram in the shoulder. The witch bellowed in pain. He fell backward, eyes wide with disbelief. The Anlki charged forward, two by two.

Indris swept Changeling low. A savage cut. An Anlki parried. Metal shrieked. The enemy lashed out with his foot. Indris slid sideways. Grabbed the man's ankle. Pulled. The Anlki, overbalanced, fell forward. The storm-rifle fired and his opponent rattled down the stairs, dead. Another took his place.

Shar and Indris wove a glittering web of gla.s.s and steel. A symphony of clas.h.i.+ng weapons filled the chamber. Swords flew. High. Low. Circled. Darted. Were denied. Cuts appeared on arms. Legs. A sword point flicked past to lick Shar's cheek. Indris felt another open the back of his hand.

Another Anlki fell at Indris's feet, throat cut and gus.h.i.+ng. A huge warrior barreled forward. Flesh and steel hammered into Indris like a breaker, lifting him from his feet. Indris part leaped, part fell backward. His heels slipped on one stair. Another. He started to overbalance. The sword of the last Anlki speared toward his abdomen- To be blocked by Shar's slender blade of blue-white gla.s.s. The weapon chimed. Light rippled down its length. Indris fell backward. His back struck the stairs as he rolled painfully downward. He saw the Anlki knock Shar off the top stair with a sweep of his arm. She teetered on the edge, then fell backward onto the hard edges of wood and metal crates.

The Anlki hurtled down the stairs- A blossom of red opened on the Anlki's brow. His body continued to fall forward. Indris scrambled out of the way. The warrior fell to the ground with a crash.

"Big men." Hayden snorted. He stepped over Indris to where Shar was swearing amid the splinters of broken crates. "Think they're d.a.m.ned unkillable. Remember Morne Hawkwood at that melee in Somanjara? I always wondered how the man managed to walk away, actual and whole, often as he did."

"He's b.l.o.o.d.y good at what he does." Indris groaned as he stood. "Shar?"

"I'm well enough," she said as Hayden helped her to her feet. "Though something softer to land on would've been nice."

The three companions ran up the stairs to a large room that had been converted to private chambers. A wide bed with yellowed linen dominated one wall; the others were crowded with half-filled bookshelves and scroll nooks. By the looks of it, the room had been partially cleared in a hurry. A trail of blood led across well-worn rugs and out of the room.

"I'm surprised Wolfram fled," Shar observed.

"Salt-forged steel," Hayden muttered. "My last. It were made from one of them Corajidin used to shoot Indris."

"We've talked about that, haven't we?" Indris said.

Hayden shrugged. "You're alive, ain't you? The witch is gone. I'd be happy with the outcome, were I you."

A large canvas sheet obscured several shapes. Hayden ripped the sheet away. Timeworn storm-pistols and storm-rifles, serill armor and weapons, gla.s.s tablets inscribed with delicate Seethe glyphs. There were arabesqued bronze and bra.s.s devices, also the polished kirion and silver clockwork of Avn crafters from the Bright Age of the height of the Awakened Empire.

"Indris!" Shar stood beside the glimmering heart of the Wraithjar. It was clouded jade and emerald green and gold. Tendrils of color and shape undulated across it like an octopus made of light.

"Omen?" Indris asked as he leaned closer. "Are you there?"

"The witch would try to question me, of this and that and here and then, to find the things he could not be, a shallow shadow of better men." Omen's voice was sepulchral. "Of course I am here, Indris. Where else would I be?"

Hayden laughed as he wiped a tear from his eyes. Shar looked askance at the man, lips curved in a smile. "We'll need to carry him out," she observed.

"Would you and Hayden please get him out of here?" Indris's voice was bleak. Corajidin must be close. Indris felt the power of the Jahirojin in his bones. Winced at the way it made his hearts beat harder. Though his mind knew he was being manipulated, his soul seemed to not care. Worse, it welcomed the compulsion to do harm. Indris tried to master himself, yet control was elusive. "There's more I need to do. Corajidin needs to be stopped."

"Not this time, Indris," Shar shook her head. She rested a blue-nailed hand on his arm.

"Corajidin and Wolfram can be stopped here. Now. You don't understand what Rosha's Jahirojin compels me to do!"

"Then fight it!" Shar snapped. "I know you can. We've done what we came to do, which was to save a friend. If that thing in the cellar is what you suspect, it's too dangerous to leave behind, and we can't move it without you. Let the Erebus go! There're many of them and one of you."

"I am Sq," Indris stated, as if it was all the explanation necessary.

"You were Sq." Shar's skin shone like the sun through mist. Her eyes were such a bright citrine they were almost hypnotic. "A great one. But a better man. And there's no power in the world can make you do other than what you want."

"The young miss is right, Indris," Hayden said quietly.

"I've never asked anything of you, Indris," Shar urged. "But do this one thing for me? Not for duty, not for honor, not to sell your life to save hundreds. Certainly not to satisfy your cousin's needs. Just do this for me, because your death is more than I could stand."

Mari plucked the arrow from her shoulder, then hurled it down the stairs. The smell of spilled blood, her own, the wounded, the dead, clogged her nostrils. She ached from knees to wrists. The repeated concussive blows from her sword, the pounding on her s.h.i.+eld, the constant movement, the rasp of breath in her lungs, the throb of her pulse in her head. The heartache as comrades fell, one by one by one, until she was all but alone.

What choice did she have though? Her father's way? The Teshri needed the chance to remove her father from his place of influence. They needed the time she could give, lest her father open the doors of government to the witches, banished centuries ago.

Death by violence was what she had always known awaited her. Such was the way with warrior-poets, and to have more was an ongoing blessing. The stairs that wound to the floor of the Tyr-Jahavn had become a charnel house, made almost surreal with the brightness of the sun and the freshness of the breeze. She had few regrets. To have loved more, to have been loved more. To have enjoyed another gla.s.s of honeyed whiskey, or perhaps to have savored one last woody inhalation of pipe smoke. To have told Indris her nights of pa.s.sion were never supposed to have been anything more, but she had come to feel for him despite herself.

She wanted to sit down, to rest her weary body. If she did, Mari doubted she would ever stand again. If she was not going to die in the arms of a lover, then by all the Ancestors she was going to die on her feet, a smile on her lips, a sword in her hand.

"It's over, you know," a fresh-faced young Feya.s.sin observed. Mari did not even know his name. He was one of the new recruits Qamran had enlisted. The warrior-poet rested with his back to the wall. His white robe was soaked through with blood in places. His s.h.i.+eld was a crumpled wreck, his blade notched. "The Iphyri will be here soon, and there's n.o.body to hold them back."

"You and I should be more than enough." Mari chuckled painfully.

The young warrior choked on his laugh. Fresh blood speckled his lips. He looked at Mari calmly. "I'm glad I finally met you. You're not like what they say."

Mari shrugged. "I am and I'm not. People often aren't entirely what they're made out to be. What's your name?"

"Dayr, of the Family Qanakkale."

"From Sela.s.sin Prefecture? Near the border of the Taumarq?"

"You know us?" He sounded as much pleased as surprised.

"I know of you. Your father defied mine vehemently on almost every issue in the Teshri. Pa.s.s on my regards when you speak with him next."

"I will." Dayr smiled. The sounds of armored bodies being moved out of the way came from down the stairs, along with the whickering of the Iphyri. The enemy were coming, again. "Though your regards may need to wait until I see him in the Well of Souls."

She stretched to work the kinks from her muscles. There was no reason for this boy to die, not when he had the chance for a life beyond the ruination inherent in her father's schemes.

"Nonsense, Dayr." She looked over her shoulder. The Iphyri would be there within minutes. "Why don't you report to Knight-Colonel Qamran and tell him how we fared? With luck the Teshri have made their decision."

"But-"

Mari stopped him with a smile. Soon her fate would catch up with her. She was done waiting. "Go. I'll be fine."

She turned back to the stairs. The Iphyri might be large and strong, yet she was a razor compared to clumsy hammers. One against many, on behalf of many, she would die as a warrior-poet was supposed to die.

Mari straightened, cleared her mind of anger, fear, and doubt. Face to the sun, she composed her own lament, for there was none there to witness the manner of her death.

Understand what I've become, and let the people know and sing.

One name among the many, flowers fallen ere winter came.

Miss me not I'm well content, for death is but a little thing.

With a critical eye she sorted through the weapons of the fallen. The s.h.i.+elds had been sundered, the armor rent, some of the swords broken. From the few that were serviceable, she chose a second amenesqa, then made ready.

The first Iphyri showed its armored nose.

Mari drew in a deep breath. Her war cry was a deafening shout that came from the depths of her soul. The Iphyri stopped, stunned, as she hurtled toward them.

In the few moments she had, all she could think was they would regret their hesitation. Though not for long.

Corajidin watched as orange-yellow flames lapped at the plaster walls of the apartments. From the deck of the wind-skiff, he could feel the heat of the fires set on the ground floor of each block. The three floors of the apartments would soon be an unstoppable conflagration. The smell of wood smoke was oddly domestic. It reminded him of deep winter in Erebesq, where hearths so large he could stand in them roared with fire for months on end during the southern winters.

Thufan sat on a coil of rope. He gazed at Belamandris, his metallic eye a spiteful gleam from under the shadow of his brow. He had his pistol-crossbow cradled in his lap, while he carved curled splinters of wood from the deck with his hook. The ruined kherife caught Corajidin's stare and returned it blankly.

Gla.s.s exploded from the windows of the second story, followed by billowing smoke, a streaming banner that frayed as it rose into the afternoon sky. A door burst open on the ground floor. Wolfram teetered as fast as he could on his ruined legs. Smoke rolled about the man. The witch was covered in blood, his face pale beneath its mat of hair and beard. He coughed as he made what time he could toward the wind-skiff.

At a gesture from Belamandris, two of the Anlki raced forward to help the witch along. The two warriors virtually dragged the ancient mystic aboard.

"Where are our treasures, Wolfram?" Corajidin's voice was tremulous.

Wolfram rolled on the deck, his teeth clenched in pain. The witch tore away the fabric of his robe around where a bloodied hole had been driven into his wrinkled flesh. His other hand clawed at the deck spasmodically.

Belamandris walked to the rail. Corajidin barely made out the resigned expression on his son's face.

"So it comes to this at the last," Belamandris said.

"What do you see, my son?"

"Indris."

Indris heard the building groan, the detonation of gla.s.s windows. From the corner of his eye, he saw the smoke pouring in beautiful pools and serpentine coils in the corridor outside. Shar found a satchel amid the belongings Wolfram had left behind and put the Wraithjar inside.

"Can't you stop the fire?" Hayden asked. "Protect this part of the building?"

"Not with the Entropic Sumps so close by, no," Indris replied.

"I can get them far enough away," Shar said confidently.

"Do it, please. Take Hayden with you."

His two friends disappeared down the stairs with Omen. Indris waited for the sound of their footfalls to vanish, then ran out the door in the direction Wolfram had taken. Avaricious tongues of flame licked at wooden beams. Curled their supple lengths around blackening stone. There was smoke everywhere. The heat was oppressive. But since his time on the Spines, he feared neither heat nor flame. His left eye grew warm. It remained dry, though his right eye watered from the smoke. Color and definition changed. Everything became sharper; distances seemed not to matter. He could see differences in heat, as well as the most subtle play of smoke on the turbulent air currents.

Already he could feel the pull of the Entropic Sumps lessen. Shar and Hayden had no doubt cut the sumps free and found a way out of the cellars to put distance between themselves and Indris. Without the sumps, and so close to the man, the urge to go after Corajidin was overwhelming. Indris felt the compulsion of the Jahirojin, the need to execute Rosha's vengeance. Even with his scholar's training, with all his will, the call was difficult to ignore. It was an itch he could not scratch, the annoying melody in his head, the ache of old wounds in winter. It was present and real and flexed itself in his blood.

Voices whispered in his head, demanded his compliance, his capitulation to their immortal will. He drew Changeling. She sang to him, soothed his mind, wrapped it in a choral symphony that drowned out the voices of the Jahirojin.

Indris looked about, surprised to find he stood in the open doorway of the courtyard, where he had walked on unwilling feet. He looked up to see the wind-skiff where it hovered uncertainly, the Tempest Wheels growling angrily in protest.

Belamandris jumped lithely over the rail. He walked toward Indris, his hand on the hilt of his amenesqa. Indris circled to the side, and the two men spiraled toward each other, inexorably drawn.

It was not Belamandris Indris wanted to face. Corajidin was the one the Jahirojin demanded. Yet how could he face either, then Mari? The two warriors stopped meters from each other, feet set shoulder width apart, bodies oblique.

"I underestimated you last time," Belamandris said with an easy smile. "I tend not to make the same mistake twice."

"You already have, by coming out to meet me." Indris nodded to the wind-skiff. He spared a glance to where Corajidin had dragged himself to the rail. The old man looked wretched, his expression slack. "You should've run the moment you set eyes on me."