City of Bones (42 page)

She knew from Riathen’s expression he had seen only what she wanted him to see. Elen wiped her sleeve across her mouth to destroy the evidence, making it a little girl’s gesture, and smiled at him like a child.

Satisfied, he took her arm to help her up. “Come back here now, and sleep a little. You’ll feel better.”

She would. She had to rid herself of the last dregs of the intoxicant. Sleeping it off was as good a way as any.

Elen let him lead her to the pallet near the fire. She had tricked the Master Warder with a veiling of sight. She knew she should not have been able to do that. Not ever.

Perhaps they were right. Perhaps she was mad.

She hoped so. It might be the only chance she had.

It was still night when Khat reached the wagon docks, but the sun must be just below the eastern horizon on the far side of the city. The sky was already beginning to gray in that direction.

He made his way out to the end of one of the lesser-used piers, looking back toward the docks for any sign of unusual activity. He had spent the only two copper bits he had to buy a desert robe from a trader in the Seventh Tier market. It smelled of a former owner and itched against his skin, and was probably stolen from a corpse, but he needed some protection in the Waste.

The docks were relatively quiet, the beggars asleep, cargoes piled up for loading onto the early morning wagons, the stokers barely begun warming the engines. But near the center piers were three steamwagons of the light, fast sort used by Imperial couriers and envoys. The cargo space was given over to a larger engine and more room for passengers, and the superstructure was stripped down except for an armored tower with gunports, from which three or four men with air guns could probably hold off a few dozen pirates.

They might be for the Heir; they might also be for Constans. There was no telling. Khat caught hold of a piling and swung down to the loose sand.

The wagons would still be confined to the trade road. He couldn’t beat them, but with a head start and taking the overland route directly across the Waste, he might reach the Remnant at roughly the same time. That was the best he could hope for.

Starting the long trek toward the edge of the Waste rock, Khat thought about the time Riathen had already spent in the Remnant.

If it was too late, he was sure they would all find out soon enough.

The drug was wearing off. Elen sat up against the wall of the Remnant’s central chamber, letting the warm stone support her. Riathen and Seul were nowhere to be seen; she remembered they had seemed to spend a great deal of time last night in the upper level, in the anteroom and the well chamber. She tried to struggle to her feet, and gasped, sinking back against the wall again. Her head was one pounding mass of pain; she couldn’t stand it. Wetting her dry lips, she started a Discipline of Calm and Silence.

Elen had passed an odd night. Most of it was obscured by the drug, though she had far less of a dose than Riathen and Seul thought. She remembered a strange conversation with Seul, when Riathen had temporarily disappeared.

“You sent the pirates,” she had said, wanting to be very clear on that point, for some reason. “You were out there that night, and sent them into the Remnant after us.”

“You were lucky. They should have swarmed up onto the roof and overwhelmed you, but I discovered later that a small group betrayed the others and went after you alone, so they could keep the reward to themselves.” Seul was confident, indulgent. “But even then they wouldn’t have harmed you. I made sure of that.”

“No, just mauled me about a bit, and killed Jaq, but they did that anyway.”

He had not expected her to be lucid enough to argue, and his eyes had hardened. “Tell Riathen if you wish. He won’t believe you.”

“Riathen knows already.” As she said it she knew it for the truth. Riathen had seen through some of Seul’s deceptions, though not all, but he still needed the younger man’s help. And what he did with the Ancient relics had become more important to him than the loyalty of his students, the lives of his lictors. It might have been better not to tell Seul this, but there was nothing she could do about it now. The drug and the song of the Remnant reverberating in her soul had given her some strange insights, but it had also made her like some demented oracle, helpless to stop itself from prophesying.

Seul stood abruptly, regarding her with some suspicion. “Maybe you are mad.”

Suddenly weary, she had not replied, and watched him walk away.

Elen knew she must have slept then. It had still been dark during that conversation. Now there was early afternoon light falling through the sandtraps, illuminating the chamber with a gentle bronze and gold glow. She pressed her palms against her eyes in relief; the Discipline was lessening the pain, turning it into a manageable ache.

She got to her feet with the aid of the wall, and paused when her vision went black. The drug had done her no good at all. She wished she could treat Seul to a substantial dose of it.

The Remnant’s song murmured just beyond her range of hearing, more distant than it had been but still a presence in her thoughts.
I should be terrified of it
, she thought.
What’s wrong with me
? She didn’t know whether to trust the things that voice had told her or not; so much of the past night was dreamlike. Riathen had said the block was imbued with the intentions of Ancient Mages long dead, and she knew forceful souls could leave vibrant impressions of their thoughts and feelings on stone or metal. She might only be imagining that it actively spoke to her; it might only be a kind of mirror, mindlessly reflecting images from centuries past.

Except that it had shown her the Waste as it was now, today, not with the shallow seas of the Ancients or lakes of fire from the Survivor Time. And it had left her with the strong conviction that whatever Riathen was doing here, it was very dangerous indeed.

Elen had been afraid of that before, afraid that the Survivor text told how to build some powerful arcane engine whose power he meant to keep to himself, or at least to confine to the Warders in his household.
The truth is far worse than that
, she thought.
I know that; I just don’t know how I know
.

Her vision gradually cleared, but just as she started to straighten she felt something travel through the stone under her fingers, as if the whole Remnant had trembled. She jerked her hand back, rubbing her uninjured skin, then turned to the empty square of doorway that led to the ramp.

Going for help was impossible.
I have to see what’s happening up there
, Elen thought. Whether they killed her for it or not.

Her steps gained strength as she climbed the ramp, as if the blood moving through her veins was washing away the last traces of the asphodel. Looking up, she could see the dim sunlight reflected through the antechamber from the open well chamber, but she could hear nothing, not even muted conversation. She reached the top and paused in the doorway of the antechamber.

The sun filled the open bowl-shaped well chamber with harsh light, and Elen squinted against it, straining to see until her eyes adjusted. The floor had been swept free of sand, or at least the area of open pavement between the door of the antechamber and the heavy stone rim of the cistern was clear of it. Instead of being filled with dust, the grooves that had been carved into the stone floor now glittered with some silver substance that flowed like water. She could see the pattern the grooves formed clearly now: they crossed back and forth between this end of the cistern and the antechamber’s door, forming a large square outline composed of overlapping triangles. In the center the pavement was smooth, and Riathen knelt there, motionless and silent, facing away from her toward the cistern.

Elen had no sense of his presence at all now; he might have been a statue dressed in robes.

The sun’s sparkle on the water and the myriad reflections of the silvery substance made the air glow.
It must be quicksilver
, Elen realized. Stacked against the corner of the antechamber were several thick-bodied ceramic jugs. She remembered how the seams of the travel packs had been strained and supposed that was what Riathen had carried in them. She didn’t need to speculate on why; quicksilver had long been identified as an essential element to the Ancients’ arcane constructions.

Something else lay near the jugs. Atop Riathen’s folded mantle was the coin-sized relic with the winged figure.

Elen glanced at the door, assuring herself that Riathen was still motionless, then crossed the antechamber in a few silent steps and picked up the little relic. It was warm to her touch, a warmth that seem to flow through her hand, up her arm, and twine right around her consciousness. It was all of a piece with the gradually awakening Remnant; it hardly startled her.

There was power here, contained within the vessel of the well chamber. She shuddered involuntarily with a rush of fear and delight that confused her. Building in the walls, chasing up and down the lines of quicksilver on the floor, humming in the light reflected off the water. The air was thick and heavy with it. A glance at the back wall of the antechamber showed her the crystal plaque was in its place. It was amazing to her that she and Khat and the others had once stood unaffected in this room and examined the text and confronted Aristai Constans.

Elen tucked the little relic away inside her mantle, in the same pocket where she had hidden the knife taken from the packs. What good either object would do her, she had no idea. She moved forward through the waiting silence of the antechamber to the doorway, and stopped there. She sensed Seul’s presence just before he caught her arm. He had been standing to one side of the doorway, out of her line of sight. Annoyed, she freed her arm with a twist, and when he reached for her again she met his eyes and pushed at him with her power.

Something in her knew to gather strength from the growing force in the chamber, and Seul stumbled back, astonished. Riathen twisted around. That surprised Elen almost as much as her resistance had surprised Seul; she had thought Riathen in some deep trance.

Riathen’s expression was stern. For a moment it seemed as if he didn’t recognize her. Elen said, “Don’t do this.” She still wasn’t certain why she had to stop him, but she knew she must.

Riathen tried to assume his old manner, kind and reassuring, but under it she too clearly saw his impatience. “Elen, you are still confused. You don’t know—”

“No more games.” Elen stepped forward.

Seul muttered, “Careful,” but she was cautious of the quicksilver-filled grooves, and her foot came down on firm pavement. She saw Riathen was holding a small mirror, and the experience gained in her recent apprenticeship told her it was well-polished
mythenin
. It must be part of the working, but she had no idea how. The power gathered here was like a wall before her; moving into it was like pushing her way into a bale of cotton.

Elen said, “I may not understand what you’re trying to do here, but I know the consequences will be terrible.”

His eyes hardened. “You child, you know nothing. I am turning this Remnant into a source of arcane power that all Warders will learn to tap. That was its purpose; that was why the Ancients constructed it. I’m doing nothing more than using it the way it was meant to be used.”

His anger wasn’t any easier to face than his condescension. Not pleasant to discover she had been wrong about him all this time, that he treated her like a child not because she was inferior to the other Warders but because that was the way he wanted her. She would save her hurt for later, if there was time. “I know you’re playing with forces you don’t understand. Yes, the Remnant is coming alive, but something very wrong is happening here, and all you can see is an increase in your power.”

“I see an end to madness, I see an end to destroying our own kind. Isn’t that worth the risk?”

In a way he was right, it was working. The things he had done here had certainly increased her power, her soul-reading, her Sight, everything. But the one thing all her new abilities told her was that the danger was as acute as a knife to the throat. “You don’t know enough to increase our power. You’re like a fool playing with a loaded rifle.” She caught herself. This was hardly the way to talk him out of anything. She needed cool reason, and all she had was anger. She tried again, keeping a tighter grip on her temper. “Please wait. Can’t you hear the Remnant’s voice yet? It’s warning us that something else is about to happen, something you don’t intend—”

Seul said, “Yes.” His voice was thick, as if forced out of him against his will. “Yes, Riathen, there’s something you don’t know…”

Elen felt a sense of pressure building, and rubbed her temples, distracted. Concentrating on Riathen and the growing power in the well chamber, she hadn’t been listening to the Remnant, but now… She realized Seul had stopped speaking, and that Riathen was staring past her into the antechamber. She turned.

Standing there, framed in the doorway, was the Heir. She was dressed in desert robes, a full mantle thrown back over her shoulders. Behind her were three Imperial lictors armed with air rifles and another man whose face was completely obscured with heavy veils. Looking at him, Elen felt a tremor travel through the Remnant, felt that sense of invasion, of revulsion.

The Heir smiled. “I see we’re in time.”

The sun was high overhead when Khat paused within a half mile of the Remnant. He had traveled mostly on the top level of the Waste to gain time and had stopped only to make a meal out of the pulpy interior of a young jumtree, knowing he would travel faster when he wasn’t short on water.

He sat on his heels in the shelter of a crag now, and could see nothing different about the Remnant. It rose up out of the empty vista, the sun striking a golden glow off the steeply slanted stone walls. Still, he knew he wasn’t alone out here.

Since Khat had neared the Remnant’s vicinity the wind had been bringing him the stink of unwashed human flesh—pirates. Probably the same band that had attacked them the first time, its loyalty purchased by Kythen Seul with food and painrods and who knew what else. He had also heard a steamwagon. None of which told him the best way to approach the Remnant, which was what he was trying to decide on now.

A distant crack startled him. It was a man-made sound, probably an air gun’s pellet striking stone. A second crack told him the direction. It was towards the west.
Where the trade road runs nearest the Remnant
, Khat thought grimly. He made for the closest sinkhole and scrambled down it to the midlevel, working his way closer to the sound.

After a short time he could hear shouts, sounds of fighting, echoing oddly up the partially enclosed passages of the midlevel. He was under excellent cover here, but damn it, he wanted to see what was happening. He found a chimney he could climb up; there was light but no direct sun falling down it from the top level, a good sign that there was an outcrop near it that would afford some cover.

Khat climbed up the narrow, rocky passage, the sounds of distant battle growing closer with every hand- and foothold. The chimney broke through the top level amid a tumble of weirdly shaped boulders, the remains of some Survivor Time eruption. Khat scrambled up and worked his way around, belly flat to the dusty stone, until he had a view looking down toward the Ancient-made canyon where the trade road split the Waste.

There was a steamwagon on the road, under attack by a band of maybe as many as forty pirates. The tattered figures were swarming like ants; it was hard to get an accurate estimate of their number. White-robed Imperial lictors were firing down into the mass of pirates; some had leapt off the wagon to take them in hand-to-hand combat. The back platform had been overwhelmed and boarded, but as Khat watched, two pirates fell away, shot by the riflemen atop the wagon’s housing. The pirates might not know it yet, but they were all done for. From here Khat could see three more courier wagons rattling up the trade road at full steam.

Khat eased back away from his vantage point and started over the top level toward the Remnant. If the pirates were supposed to be guarding it for Seul they were doing a terrible job. This was really the best distraction he could have hoped for.
Get in, get Elen, and get out
, he reminded himself.
Let Constans deal with Riathen and Seul
.

The rolling waves of rock stretched out to meet the base of the Remnant, and nothing moved anywhere. Still, Khat approached from an angle, out of direct view of the door, making for the south side. He crossed the base quickly and flattened himself up against the wall, then edged to the corner for a quick look. The door slab was up and two Imperial lictors stood before it, arguing, one pointing back toward the trade road.