The Stealers' War (29 page)

Thankfully, the remainder of his claustrophobic voyage through the hidden depths of the rice-eaters’ tomb was made without encountering any other locals. The air grew closer, warmer, the scent of Rodalians on it, and he knew he was getting close to the temple of the monks. He had timed his arrival for long after the last townspeople should have departed the temple complex.
And hopefully, many of the monks will be resting or in prayer
.

Alexamir’s prior visit to the Temple of the Winds – posing as one of hundreds of pilgrims and worshippers – had been more than enough to convince him that an indirect approach through the temple’s ventilation shafts was the best way to gain his prize. Chamber after chamber, echoing and cavernous, filled with the chants of priests and the clack-clack-clack of prayer wheels being turned, dozens of heavy wooden doors and portals that would be locked and guarded after the temple shut to the public. Actually stealing the Rodalians’ holy text, he mused, would have been a far easier task than having to memorize the monks’ holy of holies and escape without the crime being detected. So much easier to take the book by guile and brute force, kill as many as needed, and leave a trail of rice-eaters’ bodies all the way through the passes of Hadra-Hareer.

Luckily for Temmell Longgate, the gods had provided him with Alexamir Arinnbold’s services. His map through the airshafts led him directly to the Chamber of Lights, the temple’s inner sanctum. He removed the iron grille high in the ceiling and secured his climbing line to the pin closest to the opening. One last check before he descended. No monks here. This part of the temple was locked away at the rear of the connected rooms – one way in, one way out. During the day, pilgrims had to queue for hours before they were ushered through this place in near silence in small groups; only the monks muttering prayers and giving thanks as they accompanied the penitent worshippers.
Sadly for the rice-eaters, my prayers are as false as my skin.

The floor of the chamber lay seventy feet below him. There was no light from outside the mountain now, the mirrored chutes lining the wall and ceiling protruding dull and dark. Four wooden wheels studded with glow-stones hung from the ceiling, alternating with yellow and orange stones, one of the wheels near enough to Alexamir for him to touch and swing from – if he had been minded. Instead, he quickly shimmied down the line, coming down fast enough to catch friction burns from the rope. The chamber’s walls had been painted with proud frescoes of scenes from the monks’ teachings. The nearest was a flying wing wrestling with the currents of an unfriendly wind high above a mountain range, a grim look of determination on the pilot’s face below his aviator’s goggles. Friendly spirits hurtled up from the slopes below, encouraged to his aid by a monk with a staff standing small on the ground.
They boast of being able to summon the wind to their aid, but where are their spirits now? Locked outside, while I am the wolf prowling inside their lamb pen. So many monks, yet none of them quite holy enough to be taken into the confidence of their spirits. The winds love to whisper. But they did not whisper warnings of me.

Across the floor lay six brick-walled pools surrounding a seventh, far larger one, in the centre of the chamber. The six round pools were set as petals circling the head of the largest well. Each had a winch-like contraption resting above the water’s surface. And each pool, lapping with laboriously blessed holy water, contained a holy book at the bottom of the well. Precious copper plates etched with their holy teachings. This arrangement, Alexamir had been told, was because the power of the texts was such that should they be left out of the water for more than an hour, the books summoned terrible forces that would melt the pages – claiming the souls of those that minded the texts and dissolving even the sturdy metal-leafed pages. Only cooling inside blessed water preserved their texts from this fate. Alexamir moved towards the central reservoir, halting as he heard a sound. A voice, laughing, had carried along the corridor outside the Chamber of Lights. But it was from far away. And it was the greatest of the seven lights that he had come to filch, here in the centre.
The Deb-rlung’rta.
He strained to hear any rice-eater near enough to realize the winch was in use, but the temple gave him only silence, so he set to his task. A wooden handle on a drum brought up the cable chains bearing the cage from below. The smear of orange that was the copper-plated book came up near-silently. Somebody had taken a lot of trouble to grease the chains this well. Alexamir approved.
I suppose the monks do not want their devotions and holy silence interrupted by squealing iron.
The cage broke the surface of the pool and swayed there, dripping water. There were no locks on the rectangular cage holding the text inside and Alexamir felt a sudden nag of apprehension.
Will I burst into flames when I touch it – is that why it is unlocked? Will their spirits whistle down the air shafts above, pull me away and break my bones inside their dark tunnels?
He said a quick prayer to Atamva and every god of the grass who owed him a favour and turned the cage towards him, lifting off its roof. The tome inside was large and weighty. The book would have easily filled a rider’s main saddlebag all by itself if theft had been the nomad’s intention . . . and given the horse good reason to curse its owner. He hauled the Deb-rlung’rta out – like carrying a hefty boulder – and bore it over to a stone pew overlooking the pool, where its reading was obviously intended. He wasn’t sure what was to happen when he opened the pages. The slippery sorcerer had merely suggested the enchantment of disguise over Alexamir would allow him to gaze at the pages and retain their holy secrets, but when he stared at the first page, he had his doubts. It was just a mess of squiggles, as if someone had taken a dagger’s tip to the copper plate in boredom and scored meaningless shapes there.
Does the sorcerer know I cannot read anything other than maps?
Well, tough on him if he didn’t. Alexamir had broken into the Temple of the Winds in the heart of the enemies’ fastness and capital.
If the foreign fool’s magic doesn’t work as promised, he will still honour the healing of the Golden Fox or be known among all the clans as the greatest oath-breaker to disappoint a hero since Jonovich the Liar sold the Krul’s own sword to a demon.
The next page was the same incomprehensible litter of what were undoubtedly letters. It was when Alexamir reached the third page that someone stabbed a thin dagger of ice into his forehead, the cold shock of the attack almost sending him reeling back from the stone pew. He grasped tightly on to the pew, the vision of the holy book swimming in and out of view. Then things grew clear. Gloriously clear. It was as though someone had lowered an enchanted crystal visor over his eyes, everything glowing with intense diamondsharp clarity. Alexamir swayed there for a few seconds more getting used to the new senses he had been gifted. The Deb-rlung’rta was a child’s toy compared to the thousands of motes of dust dancing in the light of the glow-stone wheels, the frescoes’ stories on every wall vivid and bright even in the gloom. He ran a finger over the stone pew, marble lines like the tributaries of rivers on a map that only he could understand. This was the opposite of being drunk. Not slumbering but fully awake. He had broken into the Chamber of so-called Lights, but
he
was the lantern now, casting the light of his brilliance with every gaze. Contentedly, he turned the heavy pages of the Rodalians’ book of the winds, each curve, curl, arch and bow of the characters a thing of beauty, still unintelligible, but gently so, as pleasing as the stars of the constellations as they crawled through the night sky. Pages clacked over, as though he was playing a game of encircling stones against himself. He again heard the sound of the voice drifting down the corridor outside the chamber. This time he marked it properly: a male’s voice, elderly, speaking loudly to overcome his loss of hearing. Sitting around two hundred feet away, and from the shifts of the echo, inside the outer temple rooms. There was a second voice too, speaking at a correct volume; so younger, an initiate monk being lectured about his tardiness, no doubt. Each page of the Deb-rlung’rta dropped like a felled tree, quickly perused and appreciated before the next metal sheet turned. It didn’t take more than five minutes to reach the end of the text – well before the hour expired that would call evil spirits upon him. He fetched the weighty metal book back to the cage, shut the cage door, and lowered it back to its blessing inside the pool of holy water. As Alexamir gripped the bottom of the climbing line and made to climb back towards the ceiling, he was deeply tempted to wander the walls and examine the images of the temple walls, too.
Why didn’t I notice these the first time I visited?
But the sorcerer was not paying him for all the monks’ tales of wisdom, only their holy of holies, and this he now carried, folded inside him, invisible and unseen, like the knowledge of navigating by the stars, or reading a map. Alexamir scaled the rope, pulled up the climbing line, resealed the grille with the steel tool designed for the task, and then he crawled out towards the surface, the clarity of the universe slowly fading to a dull, throbbing disappointment with each foot he crept.

Duncan watched Helrena arguing furiously with Prince Gyal. Duncan stood sentry silently, brooding, with Paetro beside him. The only other witness to the argument was Apolleon, the chief of the hoodsmen. The master of the Imperium’s secret police had recently arrived from Vandia on a fast cruiser called the
Dark Moon
. His presence further unsettled Duncan.
Nothing good is ever augured by that man’s arrival
. Duncan wasn’t even sure if Apolleon
was
fully human.
I caught a glimpse of your true self, Apolleon.
Back in the Castle of Snakes when their laboratory had been attacked. Another body flickering between the shadows, leaping to the castle’s defence, evil and spider-like. Or perhaps what Duncan had glimpsed was just a side-effect of the chemicals spilled when Circae’s assassins came to kidnap Lady Cassandra. He wiped a tear away from his eye, trying to forget how forlorn and small Cassandra had looked on top of her mare as their helo lifted away.
I failed you, Cassandra. I allowed you to be abducted by Jacob Carnehan. I allowed you to be kept as a prisoner. And when we finally tracked you down, I watched your own people discard you like a broken tool in the grass.
Duncan couldn’t even look at himself in a mirror anymore when he shaved.
What have I become? ‘
A true son of the Imperium,’ whispered a voice that might have been his conscience.

‘You must remain with the expeditionary force,’ commanded Prince Gyal as he stalked up and down the chamber. Princess Helrena bit back an obviously hostile retort. Once the sight of such tension between Helrena and Gyal would have filled Duncan’s heart with satisfaction. Now, it only reminded him how everything he had hoped to pass lay as ashes in his mouth.

‘My daughter is dead to me,’ said Helrena. ‘There is nothing to stay here for.’

Prince Gyal’s face contorted with anger. ‘
Nothing
! I lost a quarter of the expeditionary force to these cursed mountain tribes.’

‘You lost them to bad weather, my prince,’ sneered Helrena. ‘There is a reason why tribes in the north excavate their towns deep within mountains and rocks, why their forests bleed sap and dislocate trunks so trees may regrow after a storm has passed. There is a reason why the barbarians in this part of the world know Rodal as the Walls of the World and only dirt-poor madmen abide there. Nobody wants it. Nobody values it. Why should we?’

Gyal jabbed a finger towards Helrena. ‘Those who led the slave revolt still shelter inside that cursed canyon warren.’

‘A pitiful handful. While recaptured slaves fill our ships’ holds with their natural condition restored, alongside many thousands of their kin as company to help pay for the revolt. You smashed the rebels at Midsburg. You won your victory there. You extracted Vandia’s retribution. You took slaves. It is I who has lost everything. This war has finished for me; this punishment expedition is at an end.’

‘I will have my revenge!’

‘Against what? The rocks and the gales? Who is there left to punish? Rock-dwelling barbarians and their goats and yaks? You can’t sentence them to any worse fate than life in that mountainous storm-lashed freak of a land they consider home. Forget Rodal and set course for Vandia. Do you think our enemies back home are so content as to bide their time? To wait for the punishment fleet to root out every escaped slave and barbarian villager who ever gave a runaway skyminer shelter? You tarry here for too long and you’ll return to find a triumph being hosted in honour of a newly crowned emperor. An emperor jealous of pristine victories not his own; assassins’ blades hired to seek out too-successful field commanders back with the legions.’

‘I shall be emperor,’ snarled Gyal. ‘With you by my side as empress.’

‘Remain distracted in Rodal and I will be kneeling by your side in Execution Square as a fine example of what fate awaits over-ambitious rivals,’ warned Helrena. ‘Victories are like farts. Only your own smells sweet. If you want to stay and pull wings off bugs up in the freezing mountains, do so. You will expend blood and treasure and leave a few sacked rice paddies behind you to show for your wounded pride.’

‘If an emperor is not proud, if a Vandian is not proud, then he is nothing.’ Gyal’s hand angrily cut the air. ‘It is done. Decided. If Hadra-Hareer won’t fall to air-power, it will fall to siege. The legions will seize every wind-harbour the barbarians use as protection from the storms; make them
our
shelters. I shall throw our forces like a noose around their mountains. No food or supplies will enter HadraHareer. The barbarians will send their starving children out from behind their walls and
beg
me to take them as slaves merely so they may live another day.’

‘You do not have the forces to mount such a siege,’ said Helrena. ‘And more to the point, neither of us has the time for a protracted blockade.’