Scarred Man (34 page)

The city of the Blindfolded Queen lay beneath her in geometrical perfection, following a pattern that Myrrhini was not sure even the inhabitants recognised. From here, she identified the pictogram she had first seen painted on the wall of the ancient hut in the centre of the Place of the Acolytes — the symbol that meant refuge. But refuge from what? And who were these people living here under powerful magical protection in a city designed as an ancient Mertian symbol?

None of these questions would be answered here, alone. She needed to talk to someone, to find some answers.

Ironically, she realised, the old man she had just attacked was probably just the person who might be able to help.

‘Well done, Myrrhini,' she muttered. ‘Oh, well, can't stay here all day.' She looked around at the simple furnishings, the clean floor, the high ceilings, and smelt the clean air. ‘No matter how much I might want to,' she added.

Her own room, almost identical to Maida's, was just along the corridor, but she walked away from it, towards the main stairs that wound their way
from the bottom of this tower to its peak, still several floors above her. Overhead, she had been told, were more guest rooms, presently unoccupied, while below were the offices of those who lived and worked in the palace of Quetzalxoitl, the Blindfolded Queen.

When she and the few Agents who survived the attack of the Revenant had burst through the magical wall into the city, Quetzalxoitl herself had been standing here, as if awaiting them. Myrrhini had had a brief moment to stare at the Queen before armed Agents swept her away, leading her here, where she was ushered into her room. Once there, she had bathed and dressed before falling asleep. On waking, she found food laid out for her and had just finished eating when she heard Maida's voice. It had sounded as if she were talking to someone, but Myrrhini had seen no one else. No one, that is, except the old man whom she later attacked with her bare hands.

What came over me?

When she reached the stairs, Myrrhini could hear voices rising from the floors below. She paused to listen — or was it just to let the dark shape of Tatya get further ahead? Occasional words drifted out of the general hum, words like
Eye
,
mystic
,
disaster
and
Revenant
. She looked down. Twin staircases wound around the inside wall. There was a gap, maybe three paces across, in the very centre of the stairs allowing a clear view from the top all the way down.

There was a scream, quickly cut off. Myrrhini shook her head ruefully. Someone probably just
saw a huge black spurre walking quietly down the main stairs of the palace.
Not what you would normally expect to see.

She started down the winding stairs, keeping close to the wall, passing rooms where people worked busily on the various tasks involved in the running of a country. Not a kingdom, there were only eleven of those. This was a country, very much a secondary consideration in the world's affairs.

How long would that last?
Myrrhini wondered.
If the Blindfolded Queen held the future of the world in her hands, how long would this hidden place remain hidden?

‘Myrrhini.' A low voice called her name. Myrrhini stopped and turned to see the Queen herself standing on the opposite stairway. ‘Myrrhini,' she repeated. ‘Are you rested?'

‘I am,' Myrrhini replied, suddenly aware that she knew nothing of the protocol of this place.

‘Yalotqui told me you have regained your strength.'

‘Yalotqui?'

‘You bit him, I believe.'

‘Oh, him.'

‘He can be irritating and pompous, but no one has ever bitten him before, I don't think.'

‘I am so sorry, I don't know what came over me.'

‘I think I do, and it's why you have to be here.'

‘I don't understand.'

‘That doesn't matter. Come with me.'

The Queen turned and walked swiftly down the stairs. Myrrhini, on the other set of stairs, followed her to a landing with two doors. Queen Quetzalxoitl
pushed open the door that led off her side of the stairs and Myrrhini followed suit on her side. As the door swung open to reveal the room beyond, Myrrhini stopped, gasping in shock and horror.

‘No,' she whispered. ‘Not again.' Her mind spun with the disjointed memories of pain, humiliation and anguish.

The room appeared to occupy the whole floor of the tower. Light from outside trickled in through gaps in heavy drapes that hung from the ceiling, ringing the room. The floor was smooth stone, polished to a shine, inlaid with thousands of the pictographs that made up the ancient Mertian language, but what took Myrrhini's attention was a metal disk set into the curved wall of a dome that rose from the floor.

It was an exact copy of the Chamber of Kalev, the first room of the Ritual of Kantele.

‘Again?' the Queen asked. ‘You have been here before?'

Myrrhini slowly turned to face Quetzalxoitl. ‘What is this place?' she whispered.

‘It is my private chambers,' she said simply. ‘I come here to meditate.'

‘No, it can't be.'

‘What are you talking about? Of course it can be, I have lived here all my life.'

‘And was this room like this when you came here?'

‘It was, yes. So?'

‘Who built this room?' Myrrhini knew her voice was rising with her fear, but could do nothing about it. The memories of what had happened to
her, had been done to her, were swirling around her mind, out of control. It was as much as she could do to focus on one sentence at a time, but she knew that if she stopped, she might lose control entirely, and run screaming from this place. And that, she would not do.

‘I don't know,' the Queen admitted. ‘It was here when I became queen, and as this tower was built when the city was, I guess it has always been here.'

‘Why?'

‘Come with me, and it might tell you.'

‘What?'

The Blindfolded Queen reached out her hand to take Myrrhini's and led her to the dome. She rested her free hand on the metal disk and the door swung noiselessly open. With the grace of a dancer, Quetzalxoitl knelt as if to enter.

Myrrhini snatched her hand back and stepped away.

‘I am not going in there again.'

‘How can you have been here before? No one but the Queen is ever permitted into the Chamber of Kalev.'

‘Not this one, but I have been into
a
Chamber of Kalev many many times.'

‘Where? How?'

Myrrhini's breathing was coming in short, sharp gasps as panic threatened to overwhelm her. She closed her eyes to regain control, but it did not help as visions of the horrors she had Seen and felt for so long when under the influence of the daven flooded her consciousness. Her body quivered with terror. Icy cold and, simultaneously, stinging sweat
coated her skin as her heart raced. If she did not do something quickly, she would pass out.

‘The Place,' she panted. ‘I had Seeings here, so many Seeings. So much horror. I can't …'

‘But you must, Myrrhini. It is your destiny.'

‘Ice and wind!' Myrrhini shouted. ‘I spit on destiny.'

Quetzalxoitl rose quickly and faced Myrrhini. Her face was scarlet with anger, her lips twisted into an ugly sneer. ‘Do you have any idea what is coming to this world?' she hissed. ‘Any clue what the Scarred Man has loosed upon us? My vision is fading, blurred by the power unleashed by his folly, and without it we may all fall into the darkness. I need your vision, your power, to guide my people.'

Myrrhini took another step away. As she moved, her terror started to change, to shift into anger.

‘And who are you to command me, the Eye of Varuun?' she snapped.

Quetzalxoitl's face changed into a mask of rage, her mouth twisted into a feral snarl. She crossed the distance between them in one fluid stride and struck Myrrhini with a stinging, open-handed slap across the face.

‘Do not utter such vile filth here!' she screamed. ‘You are no longer the polluted vessel of that cursed scum!'

Myrrhini pushed the Queen away with all the strength of her anger, sending her staggering backwards to stumble and fall heavily onto the domed chamber. It rang with a dull cry of protest as the Queen's head struck the metal.

‘Do I know?' Myrrhini shouted. ‘Do I know what has been unleashed? Do you? Have you seen it? Have you felt its spite? Tasted its malice?'

Quetzalxoitl pushed herself up off the dome and took an uncertain step forward.

‘No,' she admitted. ‘But you have, and I need to know what you know.' All the anger had gone from her voice as quickly as it had come, leaving her sounding weak and defeated. The colour was draining from her face as she lifted her hands to unfasten the blindfold that covered her eyes. When she removed it, lowering the leather from her face, Myrrhini stared unbelieving at the eyes that had been hidden.

‘Now you see,' Quetzalxoitl said. ‘Now you know why I must have your vision.'

The eyes might once have been human, might once have been as beautiful as the rest of her, but now they were neither. Flames of red danced and flickered within her sockets, the left eye was almost completely covered by a film of silver and the right was showing signs of a similar film growing in from the edges.

‘What …?'

‘The Blindfolded Queen has only the vision of the ancient Mertian seers to guide her and keep her people safe from the evil we summoned into this world. That vision is being taken by what the Scarred Man has unleashed. Only a pureblood Mertian can restore what has been lost. Only you, Myrrhini, can restore our people.'

Before she had finished speaking the last sentence, Quetzalxoitl sprang forward with two fingers hooked like the claws of a spurre and
slammed them into Myrrhini's eyes. They drove in, tearing through the soft tissue.

Myrrhini screamed in torment as the world went black. Before she hit the ground, grasping at her ruined face, she felt a change. The floor stopped advancing towards her. She was grabbed, wrenched back up onto her feet before being shoved bodily through the low door into the domed Chamber of Kalev.

‘Get in there, bitch,' the Queen snarled as the door was slammed behind her.

Myrrhini staggered and fell face down on the stone floor. For a moment, she lay motionless, unable to comprehend what had happened, and then how it was that she could see shapes writhing before her. She blinked. It felt normal, no pain, no strange sense of there being no eyeballs. She looked down at her hands.

They looked different: cleaner, no longer damaged from so long out in the open, not scarred or worn. Myrrhini pushed up onto her knees and looked around her. The whole circular room was bathed in soft blue-white light. Everything looked like a fresh winter's morning, clean and renewed. A sound like a sigh whispered around the Chamber of Kalev.

‘Who is there?' Myrrhini asked.

There was no answer, just a growing awareness. It was not anything specific, just a sense of understanding returning, of knowledge being awakened. She knew.

Myrrhini stood, opened the door and stepped outside the Chamber of Kalev. Quetzalxoitl was still there, although she had replaced her blindfold.

‘What have you done to me?' Myrrhini asked.

The Blindfolded Queen turned her covered eyes to Myrrhini. ‘Nothing,' she said. ‘Look around you,' she continued. ‘If you are what you say you are, if they did to you what I think they did to you, then read. Learn. Know.'

Myrrhini looked around. As had happened before, back in the Place of the Acolytes, the pictograms, the images that covered the floor, writhed into motion. They were not simply words or language, they were a story come to life. Myrrhini, the Eye of Varuun, fullblood Mertian, mystic, watched as the story of her people unfolded before her flame-filled eyes.

The solpon of the Mertians scowled. The battle was going badly. Their riders were being held off by the Scaren archers and the weather was closing in already. From here, atop a small rise, he could see the frozen plain of the Sixth Waste stretching out to the indistinct horizon. Across the white lands the armies of the Scarens and the Mertians surged together as if dancing. But this was not a slow dance of love, it was a frenetic struggle that would end in death. Just beyond the northern edge of the battle, he could make out the massive bulk of the Revenant, the otherworldly thing driving on the Scarens. It had spread its madness through their bitter enemies, turning the battle-hardened Scarens into screaming barbarians who attacked with unheard-of ferocity and inhuman brutality. They fought without sense, without fear, without thought, throwing themselves into battle with one aim: the death of all Mertians.

The Reader limped once more into view, carrying the accursed Bowl of the Quanhtli.

‘The portents are against us, Solpon,' he grated. ‘We must act now, or be lost.'

‘We will not do this thing!' the solpon shouted, surging to his feet in fury.

‘Then by the end of the next Crossing, the Mertians will be no more. You know what they have created. It drives their armies with its bloodlust and insane fury. If we do not act, we will fall before their claws.'

‘I will eat ice before I allow it!'

‘So be it, then.' The Reader raised the bowl above his head and dashed its contents onto the frozen ground. The solpon tried to throw himself back, away from the splash, but the foul red fluid caught him before he could evade it, coating him instantly in ice. The Reader screamed in laughter and dropped to his knees as if in worship.

The solpon shook off the ice and took a step towards the Reader. Three points of light danced within the leader's eyes as he stared down at the battle on the plain.

‘Lead my people to victory,' the solpon boomed in a voice impossibly loud for a human body. He picked up the Reader with one hand and hurled him down the rise to land, broken, on the ice. ‘Now, to deal with this upstart.'

The thing that now inhabited the solpon waded into battle, sending bodies flying indiscriminately as it laid about with its preternaturally strong arms. The fight turned almost immediately as the Scarens started to die. Invigorated, the Mertian horsemen drove deep into the Scaren lines, grinding them underfoot into the cold earth of the Sixth Waste. By the time the short northern day had ended, the Scaren army was dead, not in flight, for they never
fled any more, they just fought, screaming like demented fiends until they died.

 

‘We will not bow the knee to that!' the woman shrieked. The two men held her down, attempting to push her head to the ground, but she fought against them, keeping her head up, holding the gaze of the solpon. Behind him, glowing within the impenetrable black, swirled three points of light.

‘You have no choice,' the solpon snarled. ‘It gave us victory against the Scarens and it will bring the whole world under our rule.'

Now that the Scarens had been beaten back to the farthest corner of the Sixth Waste and the Mertian army was unchallenged north of the two great seas, there was nothing left to fight and the squabbles among them had grown. The original split, between those who had summoned this thing from the netherworld and those who had opposed it, had resulted in almost half the nation fleeing south into the Third Waste.

‘We do not rule others. We live here in the Sixth Waste where life is pure and hard. We serve the Varuun!'

‘Not any more!'

The woman suddenly surged to her feet, throwing off the men who held her down, sending them flying backwards. She stared at the solpon with eyes that were lit from within and screamed an ancient curse. Something in her voice, her passion, her terror at what had been done in the name of survival, awakened the long-dormant Varuun — the Sixth Waste.

From far to the north, a mighty bellow rang out, shaking the earth in its fury. The ground heaved and buckled, driving all but the woman and the solpon to their knees. Something roared up out of the ground, and drove south towards the Scaren encampment. Even now, unchallenged, they still lived in huge mobile encampments of tents, driving their cague flocks with them. When it reached the Scarens, it grew until it towered above them before falling, like an avalanche. Thousands died in that moment, sending the remnants scattering with the winds. Those that stayed fell to their knees in worship.

 

Myrrhini rose from her knees to regard Quetzalxoitl. ‘So the Acolytes of Varuun are Mertian?'

The Blindfolded Queen, her expression unreadable now that her face was hidden once more, raised her chin slightly. ‘What are you talking about?' she demanded.

‘Did you know all this?' Myrrhini asked, gesturing at the images, now stilled, that covered the floor.

‘No. No one has ever been able to decipher it. I had hoped you might.' She fell silent, turning her face to the floor. ‘What does it say?'

‘We summoned something to battle what the Scarens brought to fight us. It took hold and destroyed them. We were scattered when the Varuun rose against both Revenants but you, the people who roam the wildernesses of the north, and the Acolytes, still carry Mertian blood.'

The Queen nodded as if accepting Myrrhini's words without raising her face from its
contemplation of the floor. ‘And the Scarens?' she asked.

‘Gone forever. Utterly destroyed by us and the great purges that followed.'

‘And the darkness that is rising? Is it ours, or theirs?'

‘Both of them.'

Quetzalxoitl sighed and slowly crumpled to the floor where she lay silent and still.

‘What do you want me to do?'

‘Honestly? I want you to die horribly.'

Myrrhini stepped back at the Queen's words.

‘Why?'

‘There's nothing you can do, not now. We are all doomed and it is your fault.'

‘Mine? How dare you lay this at my feet!'

‘You are Mertian: pureblood. Probably the last remaining true blood left alive. We aren't any more, not after so long. We cannot even read our own language. We fled when we had the chance. Our legends tell us that four clans left at the original summoning. Four clans fled rather than fight — rather than die — for what we believed in, and now we have to stand and face the consequence of that act.'

‘No, we don't,' Myrrhini said. ‘I have had a Seeing, a glimpse of a chance.'

Quetzalxoitl, still lying face down, shook her head. ‘There is no chance. I had hoped the story here might hold the key to our redemption, but it didn't, did it?'

‘No. It's not here, but I met the one chance we have.'

The Queen snorted in derision.

‘His name is Slave, and I met him, but your Agents took me away from him and now he is travelling here.'

‘How can you know that?'

‘I have Seen many things.'

‘What do you See now?' Quetzalxoitl said, finally sitting up and facing Myrrhini.

Myrrhini looked at her. Something was wrong. It was as if the room had shifted, changed colour, blurred slightly. Everything looked strangely double as if she were seeing it all through a crystal. Quetzalxoitl herself was shimmering, part human, part … something else. Myrrhini raised her hand to her face. It, too, had changed.

‘It's confusing, isn't it?' Quetzalxoitl said.

‘What?'

‘Your eyes now see what I see. You see both parts of the world at the same time. You are walking in the Seeing world as well as the real one. What your eyes see is both what is, and what could be. But you are different again. Your eyes are not quite like mine, they are more …' she hesitated as if searching for the right word, ‘dangerous.'

‘Is that why you wear the blindfold?'

Quetzalxoitl nodded. ‘It shuts out one view.'

‘The real one,' Myrrhini added.

‘Real? It is not so easy to tell, sometimes.'

Myrrhini shifted her gaze, lifting her eyes to look at the walls around her. They were insubstantial, as though shifting; it was like looking at something moving so fast she could see through it. Beyond the walls, the city of the Blindfolded Queen lay
peacefully in the shape of the symbol for refuge. Only the refuge was less than total. A shadow was extending over the city, growing even as Myrrhini watched.

‘Can you see that?' she asked, pointing outside.

‘No. I can't see anything different any more. My sight is all but gone, like I told you.' She rose and stood beside Myrrhini. ‘What can you see?'

‘A large black shadow is moving across the city.'

‘What does it mean?'

A name flashed across her mind, bright like a sword in the sunlight.

‘What is Tulugma?' she asked.

‘Why do you ask?'

‘I think we need something called Tulugma.'

Quetzalxoitl shuddered. ‘I don't want to know.' She rubbed her head. ‘I am sorry about …' she said, raising two fingers and making stabbing gestures. ‘It was necessary, otherwise you would have had to use daven all the time.'

‘
Xahnatl yatl
,' Myrrhini said.

‘You are generous, Myrrhini.'

Myrrhini watched her leave, wondering at the shift in her image. As she walked, Quetzalxoitl blurred again, becoming darker and less clear. It was almost as if she were fading from existence.