The Warrior Prophet (73 page)

Read The Warrior Prophet Online

Authors: R. Scott Bakker

When the three men reached the interior of the stables, Xinemus clutched at the Trinket about his neck as though it were holier than the small golden Tusk that clicked at its side. The Tears of God. Their only hope against sorcerers. Xinemus had inherited three Trinkets when his father had died, and this was the reason he attempted this with only Dinchases and Zenkappa. Three Trinkets for three men about to wander into a den of abominations. But Xinemus prayed they wouldn’t need them. Whatever their sins, sorcerers were men, and men slept.
“Hold them in your bare fists,” Xinemus commanded. “Remember, they must be touching your skin to afford you any protection. Whatever you do,
don’t
let it go … This place is sure to be protected by Wards, and if the Trinket leaves your skin, even for a moment, we’ll be undone …” He ripped his own Trinket from about his neck, and felt comforted by the cold weight of its iron, the imprint of its deep runes against his palm.
The stalls hadn’t been mucked, and the stable smelled of dried horse-shit and straw. After several moments of fumbling they found a passageway that led them into the abandoned barracks.
Then their nightmarish journey through the maze began. The complex was as huge as Xinemus had both hoped and feared, and as much as he was relieved by the endless series of
empty
rooms and corridors, he despaired of ever finding Achamian. Once or twice they heard distant voices speaking Ainoni, and they would crouch in pitch shadows or behind exotic Kianene furniture. They passed through dusty audience halls, filled with enough moonlight that they might wonder at the grand, geometric frescoes across the vaulted ceilings. They skulked by sculleries and kitchens, and heard slaves snoring in the humid dark. They crept up stairs and down halls lined by apartments. Each door they opened seemed hinged upon a precipice: either Achamian or certain death lay on the far side. Every instant, every breath seemed an impossible gamble.
And everywhere they imagined the ghosts of the Scarlet Magi, holding arcane conferences, summoning demons, or studying blasphemous tomes in the very rooms they glided past.
Where were they holding him?
After some time, Xinemus began to feel bold. Was this how a thief or a rat felt, prowling at the edges of what others could see or know? There was exhilaration, and strangely enough,
comfort
in lurking unseen in the marrow of your enemy’s bones. Xinemus was overcome by a sudden certainty:
We’re going to do this! We’re going to save him!
“We should check the cellars …” Dinch hissed. A sheen of sweat covered his grizzled face and his grey square-cut beard was matted. “They’d put him someplace where his screams couldn’t be heard by visitors, wouldn’t they?”
Xinemus grimaced, both at the loudness of the old majordomo’s voice and at the truth of what he said. Achamian had been tortured and tortured long … It was an unbearable thought.
Akka …
They returned to a stone stairwell they’d passed, descended down into pitch blackness.
“We need some light!” Zenkappa exclaimed. “We won’t be able to find our hands down here!”
They stumbled blindly into a carpeted corridor, packed close enough together to smell the sweat of one another’s fear. Xinemus despaired. This was hopeless!
But then they saw a light, and a small sphere of illuminated hallway,
moving
…
The corridor where they found themselves was narrow with a low rounded ceiling—they could see this now—and exceedingly long, as though it ran the greater length of the compound.
A sorcerer walked through it.
The figure was thin, but dressed in voluminous scarlet silk robes, with deep sleeves embroidered with golden herons. His face was the clearest, because it was bathed in impossible light. Rutted cheeks lost in the slick curls of a lavishly braided beard, bulbous eyes, bored by the tedium of walking from place to place, all illuminated by a teardrop of candlelight suspended a cubit before his forehead,
without any candle
.
Xinemus could hear Dinch’s breath hiss through clenched teeth.
The figure and the ghostly light paused at a juncture in the corridor, as if he had stumbled across a peculiar smell. The old face scowled for a moment, and the sorcerer seemed to peer into the darkness
at
them. They stood as still as three pillars of salt. Three heartbeats … It was as though the eyes of Death itself sought them.
The man’s scowl lapsed back into boredom, and he turned down the juncture, trailing a momentary skirt of illuminated stonework and scrolled carpet in his wake. And then blackness. Sanctuary.
“Dear, sweet Sejenus …” Dinch gasped.
“We must follow him,” Xinemus whispered, feeling his nerves gradually calm.
Witnessing the face, the sorcerous light, now made their every step sing with peril. The only thing keeping Dinchases and Zenkappa behind him, Xinemus knew, was a loyalty that transcended fear of death. But here, in this place, in the bowels of a Scarlet Spires stronghold, that loyalty was being tested as it had never been tested before, even in the heart of their most desperate battles. Not only did they gamble with the obscenely unholy, there were no
rules
here, and this, added to mortal fear, was enough to break any man.
They found the juncture but could see no light down the other corridor, so they inched blindly forward as they had before, following the limestone walls with their fingers.
They came to a heavy door. Xinemus could see no light seep around it. He grasped the iron latch, hesitated.
He’s close! I’m sure of it!
Xinemus pulled open the door.
From the drafts across their humid skin they could tell the door opened upon a large chamber, but the darkness was still impenetrable. They felt as though they were entombed in dread night.
Holding a hand before him, Xinemus stepped into open blackness, hissed at the others to follow.
A voice cracked the silence, stilled their hearts.
“But this will not do.”
Then lights, blinding, stinging bright and bewildering. Xinemus yanked free his sword.
Blinked, and squinting, focused on the figures congregated about them. A half-circle of a dozen Javreh, fully geared for war beneath blue and red coats. Six of them with levelled crossbows.
Stunned, his thoughts reeling in panic, Xinemus lowered his father’s great sword.
We’re undone …
Behind stood three of the Scarlet Magi. The one they’d seen earlier, another much like him but with a beard dyed in yellow henna, and a third, who from his very bearing Xinemus knew had to be the senior.
Against his crimson gown the man was more than pale; he was devoid of pigment. A chanv addict, no doubt. One small obscenity to heap upon all the others. About his waist he wore a broad blue sash, and over it, a golden belt pulled low to his groin by a heavy pendant that hung between his thighs—serpents coiled about a crow.
The red-irised eyes studied them, pained by amusement.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk …” From lips as translucent as drowned worms.
Do something! I must do something!
But for the first time in his life, Xinemus was paralyzed by terror.
“Those things,” the sorcerer-addict continued, “that you clutch to protect yourselves against us … Those Trinkets. We
can
feel them, you know … Especially when they grow near. Hard sensation to describe, really … Kind of like a stone marble, pitting a thin sheet of cloth. The more marbles, the deeper the pit …”
The flicker of translucent eyelids. “It was almost as though we could
smell
you.”
Xinemus managed to sound defiant. “Where’s Drusas Achamian?”
“Wrong question, my friend. If I were you, I should rather ask, ‘What have I done?’”
Xinemus felt the flare of righteous anger. “I’m warning you, sorcerer. Surrender Achamian.”
“Warn
me?
” Droll laughter. The man’s cheeks fluted like fish gills. “Unless you’re speaking of inclement weather, Lord Marshal, I think there’s very little you could warn me about. Your Prince has marched into the wastes of Khemema. I assure you, you’re quite alone here.”
“But I still bear his writ.”
“No, you don’t. You were stripped of your rank and station. But either way, the fact is you
trespass,
my friend. We Schoolmen look very seriously upon trespass, and care nothing for the writ of Princes.”
Humid dread. Xinemus felt his hackles rise. This had been a fool’s errand …
But my path is righteous …
The sorcerer smiled thinly. “Tell your clients to drop their Trinkets. Of course, you may drop yours as well, Lord Marshal … Carefully.”
Xinemus glanced apprehensively at the levelled bolts, at the stonefaced Javreh who aimed them, and felt as though his life was held from a string.
“Immediately!” the mage snapped.
All three Trinkets thudded like plums against the carpets.
“Good … We’re fond of collecting Chorae. It’s a good thing to know where they are …”
Then the man uttered something that turned his crimson irises into twin suns.
Xinemus was thrown to his knees by a blast of heat from behind him. He could hear shrieking …
Dinch and Zenkappa shrieking.
By the time he turned, Dinch had already fallen, a heap of writhing char and incandescent flame. Zenkappa flailed and continued to shriek, immolated in a column of blowing fire. He stumbled two steps into the dark corridor and collapsed onto the floor. The shrieks trailed into the sound of sizzling grease.
On his knees, Xinemus stared at the two fires. Without knowing, he’d brought his hands up to cover his ears.
My path …
He felt gauntleted hands clench him, powerful limbs pin him to his knees. He was wrenched around to face the chanv addict. The sorcerer was very near now, near enough that the Marshal could smell his Ainoni perfumes.
“Our people tell us,” the addict said, in a tone which suggested that untoward things were best not mentioned in polite company, “that you’re Achamian’s closest friend—from the days when you both tutored Proyas.”
Like a man unable to fully rouse himself from a nightmare, Xinemus simply stared, slack-faced. Tears streamed down his broad cheeks.
I’ve failed you again, Akka.
“You see, Lord Marshal, we worry that Drusas Achamian tells us lies. First we’ll see if what he’s told you corresponds with what he’s been telling us. And then we shall see if he values the Gnosis over his closest friend. If he values knowledge over life
and
love …”
The translucent face paused, as though happening across a delicious thought.
“You’re a pious man, Marshal. You already know what it means to be an instrument of the truth, no?”
Yes. He knew.
To suffer.
 
Heaps of masonry nested in ashes.
Truncated walls, hedged by rubble, sketching random lines against night sky.
Cracks forked like blind branches chasing elusive sun.
Spilled columns, halved by moonlight.
Scorched stone.
The Library of the long-dead Sareots, ruined by the avarice of the Scarlet Schoolmen.
Silent, save for the small sound of scraping, like a bored child playing with a spoon.
How long had it scuttled like a rat through the hollows, crawled through the labyrinthine galleries hewn by the random plunge of cement and stone? Past entombed texts, wood-blackened and crocodile-scaled by fire, and once a lifeless human hand. Through a tiny mine, whose only ore was the debris of knowledge. Upward, always upward, digging, burrowing, crawling. How long? Days? Weeks?
It knew very little of time.
It shrugged its way through torn, animal-skin pages pinched by massive surfaces of stone. It heaved aside a palm-sized brick, raised a silky face to the clouds of stars. Then it climbed and climbed, and at last lifted its small, puppet body upon the summit of the ruin.

Other books

Wrong About the Guy by Claire LaZebnik
The Birth of Super Crip by Rob J. Quinn
Beautiful Intelligence by Stephen Palmer
Above the Bridge by Deborah Garner
His Eyes by Renee Carter
Daddy Warlock by Jacqueline Diamond