Steles of the Sky (26 page)

It had never struck Hsiung before, that in the Song dialect used in the Wretched Mountain Kingdom,
live
and
pray
and
work
were the same word. He had spent too much time in foreign lands and they had made his own language strange to him.

In the winter—even later in autumn—woven mats would be lashed against the insides of the slatted walls. Brother Hsiung’s fingertips still bore a stippling of dark pinpricks, tattooed there by the splinters of rushes that had pierced his novice fingers in the endless, endless, endless weaving of those damned mats. For now, as in the spring and summer, cooling breezes blew through the gaps and made the prayer ribbons strung between the rafters shimmer. A novice slid the door shut behind them as they entered, sealing them in with the scent of aloes-wood incense: rich, stark, subtle.

Hsiung found himself alone in the narrow, sun-slatted room with Master War. He followed silently, two steps behind the master and one to the left, across woven rush-mats until they came to the edge of a little platform covered by a small knotted silk rug on which two coiling shapes he knew were dragons, one black and one golden-yellow, chased each other’s tails.

Master War stepped up onto the dais and turned. Hsiung remained where he had stopped, a step from the edge of it. As Master War settled in the center of the rug, Hsiung remained standing.

Master War clapped his hands. A pre-novitiate—one of the orphans or unsupportable children given to the monastery to raise when no one in their own villages or families could afford to feed them, for he was no more than nine years old and gangly with it—bolted into the room bearing a lacquer tray. He ran with his head ducked, his cap of black hair shining. It would not be cropped until he reached puberty and took his preliminary oath to the temple.

He set the tray down before Master War, and with a nervous bob of his head, turned and ran out again. Hsiung kept his eyes front, though he burned to turn and watch the child go. He wondered if he knew the boy’s name, if he would have recognized him four years ago, or with better eyes. And he knew why Master War had staged this little drama. It was a reminder of where Hsiung had come from, and what he had become.

Hsiung ached with memories. But he would show Master War his discipline. He did not even glance down to see what the tray contained. Instead, he kept his eyes trained over the master’s left shoulder, so he could watch Master War’s expressions without rudely staring at his face.

He heard the master’s voice again. But the master never moved, and certainly did not alter the pattern of his breathing or part his lips to speak.

Was it because you, like that boy, had no choice in coming here that you left us?

Hsiung shook his head.

Master War frowned.
You have not found your voice, to answer me.

Hsiung shook his head.

Then you must retain your vow of silence, even if that is not why you undertook it.

Hsiung inclined his head. In so doing, he saw what Master War had caused to be set before him. Thick, redolent aloes-wood paper, and a brush, and a jar of water. But there was no watercolor cake of ink. He felt it with a shock. What he reported, then, was for Master War’s eyes only, and no record would be made of it except in the master’s mind.

“If you must,” Master War said, “write.”

Hsiung knelt, and readied the writing materials before him. He had no doubt that Master War could read his words, upside down or otherwise … but the previous night, when he had not been shaving his beard and skull-bristles, he had made other preparations. Preparations that stood a chance of seeing his message delivered even if the monks had decided to shoot him down where he stood.

Hsiung slowly reached into the side pocket of his pack and drew out the book of wooden slats, laced together at each end just like the walls that surrounded them, upon which he had written his letter. His plea for assistance, since he was not so arrogant as to expect understanding or forgiveness.

Head bowed, he extended it to Master War. His hands shook at his temerity.

The strong warrior makes himself bigger than he is.

Master War did not reach out his hand to take the book.
We thought you had abandoned us, Student Hsiung.

It did not escape Hsiung that the master called him
student,
though he had been a sworn brother for ten years before his crime and his flight.

We speculated that perhaps, despite your talents, your apparent dedication, it might have dawned on you that the world had a great deal to offer a man of which a monk is forbidden in partaking. We thought you might have regretted the decision of your ancestors, who gave you to us.

Hsiung’s hand wavered. It was just the tiredness of climbing, of holding his hands in view for so long. The exhaustion of hunger and the long journey.

He laid the book down at Master War’s feet and picked up the brush instead. With quick gestures, he wrote with water—

“I went upon my mendicancy.”

And yet you were not sent.

Hsiung kept his gaze down, on the words he was shaping. The first sentence had already dried to illegibility. “Nevertheless,” he wrote. “It seemed necessary. To protect the Brotherhood, and because I was afraid.”

What had you to fear?

Gently, Brother Hsiung set the brush down on its stand, a single drop of water quivering unspent at its tip. Left handed, shaking as he contemplated his own daring, he reached out and nudged the book closer to Master War. Master War did not move.

Hsiung bit his lip. He looked up—he forced himself to look up—and at last he looked very carefully into Master War’s eyes, holding the master’s gaze with his own. Knowing that the master would read in his blue-tinged eyes, his fading vision, the evidence of his crime.

His chest hurt with holding his breath, straining for every sound. Still, he heard nothing as Master War leaned forward and lifted the book from the rug, and then not even the rattle of wooden pages or the rustle of coarse-woven homespun cloth. He breathed out as softly as he could manage, and forced himself to breathe in again.

His knees began to ache while the master read. His spine might have been fused in the humble, head-lowered posture he maintained, it began to hurt so greatly. But he waited, and brought himself more discipline by returning again and again to the emptiness of a calm mind, of a mind in the now, every time he was tempted to remember what he had written or wonder what the master was reading now.

Most Benevolent Masters of the Wretched Mountain Temple, I bring to you this the testament and confession of Brother Hsiung. In the name of all the Bells of Heaven, in the name of the Old Master and of the Woman Who Cannot Lie, what I have written here is as true and accurate as I can make it. I accept your judgment without question or reservation.

Though I broke my vows before I left you, I have lived by them exactly since, and though I sought no leave for my mendicancy, I have struggled to live by its requirements and constraints. I have abided by my practice, though I cannot claim I have always used it as the temple might have wished, as I had no guidance in the world—a failing that, I hasten to add, was entirely the fault of my own flawed decisions.

I have chosen to return to you, expecting no forgiveness, because of the dire news that I bear, which I believe the masters must be made aware of.

My first crime was that of curiosity. As a worker in the temple’s libraries, I came to know that there were books in our keeping more ancient and curious than any I had dreamed of. Although we were cautioned against these books, although I was a sworn brother and obedience was my commandment, I let my willfulness override my humility. I found those books, and more, I opened them.

And I read them, or some of them at least.

They were texts in the language of Erem, and they tainted me.

And that is why I fled. I felt the poison of those venomous old words working in me, and I thought at the time that it would continue to work. That I would not live long, and—in my confusion and despair—that if I stayed here, my poisoned presence would poison the temple, too.

I should have trusted more in the masters.

I went into the world, and found there that the poison was spreading as well. You will have heard of the disease that stalks the cities, that is not the black bloat. You will also have heard of the fall of Qarash, and that the sons and grandsons of the Great Khagan slaughter one another across the steppe with merciless glee. I do not know if you have heard that Kashe was destroyed by blood ghosts and swelters now a tomb, forsaken under a Rahazeen sun, or that Asitaneh burned before falling into Rahazeen hands. You may have heard that a sorcerer who commands the giant demon-bird of the wind rides from the desert, sowing destruction with every pass of its wings. Glass demons ride the air, attacking as they will—they, too, are a beast out of the skies that shelter ancient Erem, if you can say such destructive force shelters anything.

These tales are true in every respect and regard. There is one man responsible for all this destruction. His name is Mukhtar ai-Idoj. He is the al-Sepehr of the Nameless murder-cult, and I believe that it is his intention to claim as many hundreds of thousands of souls as he can.

I report the following, with its attendant conjectures, not to excuse my curiosity but to explain it. Perhaps my folly serves some purpose after all. Perhaps my unwitting and arrogant self-sacrifice will be of use. For as it happens, I am passingly acquainted with the magic and powers of ancient Erem, those powers raised by Sepehr al-Rach
ī
d, the Joy-of-Ravens, and by Danupati the Conqueror in their own times, when they rode in blood from one corner of the world to the other. Al-Sepehr commands these powers. He raises dead things and controls them, and I believe it is he who commands the blood ghosts and probably the demon spawn as well. He has found a way, through the sacrifice of untold numbers of women and I know not who else, to maintain his own physical integrity and health while wielding the powers of corruption that work to blind and poison me even now.

As I carry their taint in me, when he raises those forces I can sense it.

I conjecture that the purpose of this destruction is to elevate his foul cult, to spread his sky over every land, and it is possible that he had some necromancy at his command so powerful that it is not beyond him to raise the Carrion King, the Joy-of-Ravens himself, and set that corrupt demigod over all the lands beneath all the skies once again.

They say that butterflies are souls, and that scarlet butterflies are the souls of priests and witches. I can confirm the first, for in the aftermath of the fall of Qarash, as I worked among the corpses of the dead, I did see those butterflies called from their unshriven lips. I believe now that what I saw was al-Sepehr raising his army of blood ghosts.

I have been in the company of a man, a woman, and a Cho-tse who are working together to oppose al-Sepehr. I believe they are the best hope we have of ending his plan, which has so far been to play one would-be ruler off against another until carnage and massacre ensue.

The man is Re Temur Khagan, grandson of the Khagan of Khagans, best claimant to the Padparadscha Seat.

The woman is the Once-Princess Samarkar, who was heir to Rasa and who was wife to Ryi, then heir to Zhang Shung. She is become a Wizard of Tsarepheth.

The Cho-tse is the warrior Hrahima.

All three are exiles from their people, as I have been. But Re Temur is returning home now, and I believe his birthright will be won.

Al-Sepehr spreads the rumor that Re Temur is the Joy-of-Ravens returned, or that the Carrion King wears Re Temur’s skin. This is a lie.

I have journeyed with them. They have made many allies in their travels, and perhaps might raise an army and an alliance strong enough to thwart the machinations of al-Sepehr.

My life is yours to dispense with. But I beg of you, consider in your heart and will the truth of what I’ve said.

Written this tenth day of the moon of First Frost, year 2375 since the first teaching of the Banner Wyrm, for the eyes of the masters.

Brother Hsiung of the Wretched Mountain Temple

Once-Librarian

Hsiung remained kneeling as Master War read, and read again. And kneeling he remained as Master War stood, without acknowledging or releasing him, and strode out of the room.

14

Though they wore no red coats, no one would mistake the remnants of the Dead Men for other than they were: a half-dozen professional soldiers dressed in secondhand traveling clothes—perhaps elite mercenaries, perhaps Broken Men left after the fall of some sheikh or noble household. Even when they tried not to walk in lockstep, their footfalls naturally fell into a rhythmic pattern. Even when they tried to look relaxed, their spines hove straight, their shoulders squared.

Ato Tesefahun and the man who had been Uthman Caliph Fourteenth had long since come to the conclusion that if there was no way to hide the nature of their escort, the next best thing they could do was play it up. So Tesefahun sat cross-legged atop an open canvas litter carried on the shoulders of four Dead Men. Pillows were heaped about him, and his gray head was bare under the watery Kyivvan sky—blues so blue they seemed enameled, a sun so golden it was almost orange, the colors more like those of a fresco than those of the world. He wore clean white robes, sweeping from the bare brown sticks of his arms, with loose white trousers, Uthman-style, beneath. His feet were bare inside golden sandals never meant for walking.

The man who had been Uthman Caliph—who was choosing to call himself Captain Iskandar, he said, until such time as his own proper name could be reclaimed—walked at Tesefahun’s right hand, wearing a scimitar, a helm pushed down his back, dressed like the captain of the mercenaries. His beard was dyed with indigo, his hair unturbaned and braided with gold and indigo cord into a wild forest of twists. Even Ato Tesefahun, who had known him from a child, had to admit he looked nothing like the deposed priest-king of a fallen empire.