This Forsaken Earth (28 page)

“The most harmful kind of plundering I can think of,” Rol said. “It wasn’t enough to defeat a nation, they would steal its identity and bring it back here to molder in the dark.”

“They made a storehouse of knowledge that was open to all,” Rowen said crisply. “They preserved.”

“They raped,” Rol said.

“That is a matter of opinion.”

They found a steep set of stairs, and at their base yet another locked door. It opened on a deeper chill, and the dust-smell of dry paper. Rol sneezed. He felt he was descending deeper into the maw of a grave. Rowen’s face was set in white resolve, though she staggered slightly when they reached the foot of the stairs. Rol put his arm about her waist, slipping it under the thick cloak. She seemed lean as whipcord, with no warmth to her flesh. One moment, she leaned into him, then she drew away.

“The Formian Level,” she said. “Once, this was aboveground. Myconn has grown up around it. It was a scriptorium at one point. There are vellum books here older than the empire itself, but no one can read them. Psellos once searched ten years for a key to their alphabet, but in vain.”

Rol said nothing. All about him, the cavernous walls of the chamber echoed up out of the light. They were rougher here, and there was no mortar between their huge blocks. Instead of bookcases, shelved platforms of solid stone ran like lines of sarcophagi along the dust-strewn floor, and on them books and scrolls with rotted wooden spindles were piled up with no discernable rhyme or reason. The thoughts of men long dead committed to crumbling paper and parchment, and now rotting away quietly here in the dark. A tomb of books.

“You must help me with this one,” Rowen said. This time it took a different key, and the door was tiny, solid bronze. The key turned with an unwilling grate of metal, and Rol had to put his shoulder to the door itself and butt it open inch by inch. It opened on a set of narrow, crooked stairs going steeply down.

“What have you brought me here for, Rowen?” he asked, panting.

“There’s something you have to see.”

Phrynius’s words were coming back to him now. He did not want to go down those stairs and see what she meant to show him. He felt it would be turning a corner with the unknown waiting beyond it.

Rowen went ahead, the lantern-light shining off the silver fillet in her hair, the bones stark in the back of her hand as she held the light above her head. Under her feet, the stairs were half a fathom wide, pitted and uneven and untrustworthy in the dark. Rol touched Fleam’s hilt, but the sword was cold and aloof. He followed his sister down into the dark.

The stairs corkscrewed and wound first this way and then that. The passage narrowed further, until it was scraping at Rol’s shoulders, and he had to duck his head to avoid being brained by bristling excrescences of stone, fangs of rough rock. There was no architecture here; this was a natural fissure in the foundations of the Turmian. And this was no longer the Turmian. They had gone below it, every foot taking them back another thousand years. They were in a cave system now, and the air grew damper, the stone slippery underfoot, freezing drips of water falling on their heads and trickling down the back of their necks.

“The Turmian, it’s said, was built on the site of a shrine, a place of worship in times immemorial,” Rowen informed him. “We come to it now. Very few people know of this place. Psellos had read of it, and mentioned it to me one night, a long time ago. Canker knew also, though I don’t know how. It is not a place to visit on some whim.”

The stairs ended, and they shuffled along a level tunnel. There was dirt under their feet, black and muddy. Rol did not look down to watch for footprints. A growing sense of claustrophobia was rising in his throat, and it was all he could do not to turn and bolt back the way they had come.

The light Rowen held suddenly blossomed out. Rol saw stalactites far above his head, and there was the sound of running water. His breathing eased at the sense of space. They were in a large cave, and at the far wall, some ten fathoms away, a small underground stream cackled to itself and glittered in the glow of the lantern. Rowen raised the wick, and the light strengthened about them, sought out shadows and sent them reeling. She held the lantern high above her head, and her voice echoed as the cavern walls threw it back at her.

“This place has been here since God made the world,” she said. “The First Men found it when there was nothing above us but a green hill, and the Elder Race still walked the earth. Other things walked the surface of the world also in that lost time, and men worshipped them. Come.”

She took Rol’s hand and led him over to one wall. “They drew pictures of the things they saw, Rol.”

The wall was covered in images, all bright and brash with astonishing colors. Here was a bison delineated in half a dozen beautifully eloquent strokes. Here a gazelle running from the stick-figures of men with spears. There a huge, tusked beast with a serpentine nose that trampled the stick-figures underfoot and tossed them over its shoulders. And there were other things also.

Man-shapes, but taller than the others, and with what seemed to be flowing robes that plumped out the lines of their limbs. These shapes had bright, green blazing eyes, and they carried what could only be swords and shields. Rays of yellow pigment were spanning out from them like sunbursts, and behind them a great black wall spiked with blade-shaped towers reared up with banners or flags twisting from the battlements.

But the center of the picture was dominated by a single image. This was a huge thing, a shape manlike and yet not a man at all. The thing seemed to be floating in the air, looming over all the others like a cloud. In its head two eyes burned in streaks of yellow and scarlet, like stabs of flame, and the creature had wings, long snaking tendrils of light bursting from its back in feathers of flame. As it hovered in the air, the figures of the men below cowered either in fear or worship.

But it was the face that stole the breath out of Rol’s mouth. Bearded, long-nosed, it was recognizably that of a man. Beneath those terrible eyes, the face smiled, and there was still a glimpse of humanity in the expression.

“Your face,” Rowen said, looking from Rol to the painting and back again.

“It could be anyone,” Rol spat, voice shaking. “A coincidence.”

“And the light in the eyes, the great wings? Is that you, Rol? Has that ever been you?”

Rol glared at her. “What do you know?”

“I heard tell of a beast that slaughtered a crowd of people in Ascari as they were looting Psellos’s Tower. Or an angel, a bright-winged thing that had death in its eyes. And there are tales up and down the seas of a Black Ship whose captain can transform into a murderous demon at will. What are these, Rol, legends?”

“Tall tales.”

“Canker has a friend called Phrynius, a scholar who once worked in the Turmian.”

“I know him.”

Rowen paused. “I see.” She gestured up at the painting on the wall. “He has been down here, before the war. He’s made a study of this picture. Do you know what he believes this image to represent?”

Rol was mute.

“It is a depiction of the Final Judgment, a time when the Creator will return to the world and test mankind once again. And if they fail the test, then they will face His servant, a being that will exact His retribution on the face of the earth.” Rowen stared up at the wall, eyes wide. “This thing here, with your face on it, is the Angel of Death.”

Fifteen

THE DANCE BEFORE DAWN

WEARY BEYOND SLEEP, ROL LAY IN BED THAT NIGHT AND
watched the firelight paint shadowed pictures on the ceiling of his quarters. He had opened his window, and flakes of snow were blowing in over the sill, and faint in the darkness beyond he could hear the unending staccato thunder of the artillery exchanges down on the walls. When morning came—or was it morning already?—he was to be fitted out in armor, something he had never worn before. Then that night there would be a grand ball in the palace, for which feverish preparations were already under way and had been throughout the black hours. And afterward, they would take their places with the waiting regiments by the gates, and march out to meet the enemy. And they would fight valiantly, and Rol would kill Bar Asfal, if he was able, and Rowen would have her empire, what was left of it.

And then he would say good-bye to Bionar, to wars and plotting and dungeons in the dark. He would take Gallico and Creed and Giffon, and together they would return to the coast and make their way back upon the waves of the sea, where they belonged. And Ganesh Ka would be there for them every time they wearied of the waves, a place where they could rest in peace between adventures.

That was the only life Rol wanted now. He loved Rowen—he would always love her. But they would never be together in the way he wanted. And in any case, she was no longer the woman he had known.

He would not stay; he did not want to spin out the rest of his long life here in the mountains, amid these cities of stone, no matter what titles and privileges were piled upon him. He had never wanted a sister, or to be brother to a queen. All he wanted now was his Black Ship, and the fellowship of the men who sailed her. The rest could go to hell.

“Well,” he said aloud to the empty room, “at least I have a plan.”

Abel Harkenn woke him by slamming the window shut on the snow. The stuff had piled up inches deep on the sill, and the air in the room was glacial. A maid was resurrecting the fire from its gray bones.

“The Queen has requested that you breakfast with her, sir,” Harkenn said mildly.

“Tell the Queen—Well, all right. Where are my damned clothes? Lend a hand, there.” Rol dressed in a daze, only half awake. It seemed he was destined never to get a thorough night’s sleep in Myconn, and the toll was beginning to tell. He splashed water on his face from the ewer by the bed, stifling a cry as the freezing stuff struck his eyeballs. There was ice in it. Then he stood like a mannikin as Harkenn helped him on with yet another change of clothes, this time in a blue so deep it was almost black. Rowen must have had a platoon of seamstresses working round the clock to churn out a different outfit every day.

“Lead on,” he told Abel Harkenn, yawning stupidly.

The kitchens again. He might have known. Rol took a seat at the long table, between Gallico and Creed, relishing the close warmth of the place, the fine toothsome smells coming from the spits. The kitchens were unusually crowded, and today there were no flirtations; the staff were preparing for the grand ball that was to take place that evening, and it was as good as a play to watch them busy at their work. The rest of the city might yet be down to skinning cats, as Gallico had said, but here in the palace the last storerooms had been routed out and a feast fit for a queen was being prepared. Rol piled himself a plate of thick-cut cured ham and black bread and tapped the ale-cask in the corner for a foaming tankard-full. Creed, Gallico, and Giffon were already way ahead of him, their plates covered in nothing but crumbs.

Rowen the serving-maid joined them without ceremony, sitting opposite but eating nothing. The four of them stared at her, and Gallico said, “Girl, you don’t look well.”

Creed nudged the halftroll. “She’s the Queen, idiot.”

“I know who she is. She looks like she needs a square meal and a week of sleep.”

Rowen smiled tightly. “I’ll sleep soon enough. Gentlemen, I have had clothing suitable for the ball run up for each one of you, and our armorers have also been setting out some war-harness in case you mean to take the field tomorrow morning. It awaits you in the Guards’ quarters.”

“I’ve never been to a ball,” Elias Creed said. He smiled at Rowen with something approaching shyness. Rol stared his three friends up and down, and realized that each and every one of them was a little besotted with her, and her fragile airs. He scowled into his beer. Jealousy? Surely not; it was a little late in the day for that.

“A word, Rol,” Rowen said, and rose from the table. Creed’s eyes followed her like those of a dog watching its master.

The noise in the kitchens covered them, a clamoring curtain. They spoke in a corner with no fear of eavesdroppers.

“A messenger has come in from Canker,” Rowen said. “He will move his army up in the night, and then go to ground a mile from the Gallitran encampments. As soon as we have pinned the enemy in their trenches, he will assault them from the rear.” Rol nodded impatiently. It was largely the plan Canker had expounded to him a few days before. But there was a strain on Rowen’s face that outdid any he had yet seen.

“What’s happened?” he asked.

“Moerus has gone over to the enemy. Gallitras has fallen, and the Ruthe bridges.”

Rol whistled soundlessly.

“All communications with the coast have been severed. The supply lines have ceased to exist. Canker also is cut off now. If any of us are to survive, we must not only win the field tomorrow, but Bar Asfal
must
die. Do you understand me, Rol?”

“I understand,” he said harshly. It was not even a question of emotional blackmail anymore. His hide also was in the balance, and those of his friends.