The Last Mortal Bond (92 page)

“We'll go,” Kaden said, holding up a hand, as though there were anything he could do to stop the assassin, then turning to Triste. “It's safer than staying here.”

Pyrre chuckled. “Safe,” she said, lingering on the word as though she could taste it. “Such a tricky term. Never seems to mean what people want it to mean.” She shrugged. “But yes, I'd agree that Rassambur is safe.”

Triste narrowed her eyes. “Meaning what?”

“Meaning I might kill you, but I promise not to hurt you first.”

*   *   *

A fortress of dark iron and nightmare. A labyrinth reeking of carrion; long halls echoing with screams. A den of perversion, a home for men and women drinking blood from human skulls, offering their own infants as sacrifice on charred altars, slaughtering one another in twisted, blood-slick orgies. Halls of bones and altars of human flesh. Charnel pits brimming with the festering dead. Blasted caverns devoid of light, of hope, of all human comfort, given over to the veneration of the old and awful God of Death himself: Ananshael, unknitter of souls, savorer of rotting corpses.

Kaden had heard dozens of variations over the years of the tales told of Rassambur. Some, servants' stories whispered in the kitchens of the Dawn Palace; others, historians' accounts inked on expensive parchment and bound into codices for the shivering delectation of the rich. The fortress was a favorite subject of painters, too. Some, like Sianburi in his famous
Stages of Death,
used Rassambur as an excuse to explore human anatomy: a flayed arm here, an eyeball lolling from its socket there, perfectly drafted femurs and skulls stacked rafter-high in the background. The Ghannan ateliers, on the other hand, mostly ignored the corpses in their work, dwelling instead on Rassambur's infinite gradations of shadow and darkness. Kaden had read somewhere that Fiarzin Qaid, the greatest of the Ghannan painters, had labored for eight years, grinding and mixing two hundred different shades of black, before attempting his masterpiece,
The House of Death,
a horse-high canvas depicting Rassambur's most horrid hall.

Qaid never even saw the place,
Kaden realized.

With Triste and Pyrre, he stood at a cliff's lip, staring across a gulf of empty air to a huge, sheer-sided sandstone butte and the fabled fortress of the Skullsworn that perched at its top.
Qaid didn't need
two
shades of black, let alone two hundred.

In fact, the stronghold and the land around it were a study in light, air, and rich color: an azure sky nailed up above brilliant cliffs, dozens of shades of russet and rust and vermillion, and between them, the creamy white of Rassambur's small, graceful buildings. There were no defensive walls, no ramparts or towers, no murder holes or arrow loops. At the top of the sheer-sided butte, there was no need—the land itself was the fortification. The lair of the priests of death was not a lair at all, but a bright, white-walled, sun-drenched place of gardens, cloisters, and humble temples. Splashes of green dotted the grounds where the Skullsworn had cultivated the flowering desert plants. Even the shadows cast by the scattered loggia and trellises looked inviting, cool and quiet. It almost reminded Kaden of Ashk'lan—the clarity of it all, the cleanness—but where the Bone Mountains were viciously cold at least half the year, here, the hot sun warmed the stone even as the mountain breezes cut through the heat's worst bite.

A single bridge—a graceful arc of white stone with no railing or balustrade—spanned the chasm between Rassambur and the cliff where Kaden stood with Pyrre and Triste. It looked too slender to support its own weight, let alone that of anyone crossing. There was nowhere to hide on that bridge, nowhere to shelter. A single archer with enough arrows could hold it against an entire army for days. That was how it looked, at least. Kaden hoped it was true.

“We should get across,” he said, gesturing, forcing his aching, trembling legs into motion once more. “Before il Tornja catches up.”

“He won't,” Pyrre replied.

Kaden shook his head. “You don't understand. He abandoned his post in the north, he risked letting the Urghul destroy Annur, all so that he could come here, after … us.”

He glanced over at Triste as he pronounced that final word. She made no indication she had heard him. Instead, she stared fixedly at Rassambur, face bleak, as though she were peering into the freshly turned earth of her own grave.

Pyrre pursed her lips, studying the girl. “All this way for the two of you and an Urghul warlord. I so look forward to learning why.”

“We can talk about why when we're on the other side,” Kaden said.

He had no idea what he would say when that talk came, no idea what lies he might spin to save himself, save Triste, and the gods hidden inside them both. That could wait, though. First they needed to reach Rassambur's dubious safety.

“What I mean to say,” Pyrre went on, gesturing to the mountains around them, “is that these cliffs are alive with my brothers and sisters, some hunting, some just standing guard. If il Tornja has read his history at all, he will know this, he will know better than to come within a mile of Rassambur.”

Kaden squinted at the rocks through which they'd passed. He had seen nothing, no sign of guards or sentries. On the other hand, it had been all he could do to keep his feet as they stumbled over the rough stone, and he'd barely raised his eyes from the ground. He might have passed straight through the center of an army without noticing it. Still …

“He has a leach.”

“Leaches die just like everyone else,” Pyrre said with a shrug, “when you remember to put a knife in them.”

There was no sign, when they finally stepped off the narrow bridge, that anyone from Rassambur had ever learned to put a knife in anything more dangerous than the cacti that they carved for the evening meal. Pyrre had learned to fight
somewhere,
that was obvious enough, but the devotees of Ananshael weren't training or fighting. All the Skullsworn that Kaden could see—men and women in white desert robes—were going about the quiet tasks of daily life: gardening, paring vegetables, drawing water from a central well, walking between the modest buildings or talking quietly in groups of two or three. The only weapons Kaden could see weren't weapons at all, but small belt knives, the sheathed blades no longer than a finger, less dangerous than what he himself had carried back at Ashk'lan.

The place seemed more like a sanctuary than a den of death and violence, and though the Skullsworn fell silent as he passed, there was no malice mixed with their obvious curiosity. A few nodded to Pyrre, or murmured greetings. No one asked any questions. If they were concerned about the fates of those Skullsworn who had accompanied Pyrre, the men and women who had gone down to the ruined town and not returned, they didn't show it. No one seemed worried that the
kenarang
of the Annurian Empire had come to the Ancaz Mountains with a knot of soldiers—they didn't even seem
aware
of the fact.

“Should we … tell someone?” Kaden asked. “Prepare some sort of defense?”

Pyrre waved away the question. “The defense is there already.”

“The sentries hidden in the rocks?”

“Among other measures. Rassambur has been guarded since before the first stones of the oldest buildings were set in place.”

Kaden glanced at those buildings. Most were small, a single room or two, date trees espaliered against sandstone walls, small patios sheltered from the sun, flower and vegetable gardens in raised beds before or beside them.

Pyrre followed his gaze.

“Each priest keeps her own plot,” she said. “It is a commandment of the god.”

“Gardening?” Kaden asked. “Why?”

The assassin looked amused. “We need to eat. The hot blood of the slaughtered is delicious, obviously, but sometimes the body craves vegetables.”

They passed a series of stone barns and pens filled with goats and sheep. The animals trotted toward the fence, evidently eager for a handout. Dozens of chickens scratched in the dry soil toward the outside of the enclosures. Just beyond one of the barns, a pair of priests, one old, one young, were butchering a goat. The older woman pointed to various ligaments and organs as she worked, pausing often to allow her student to inspect the carcass. It was the first blood Kaden had seen.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“To see Gerra,” Pyrre replied.

“Who is Gerra?” Triste asked warily.

“Gerra is the person,” Pyrre said brightly, “who will decide whether we should help you, or offer you to the god.”

When they finally tracked down Gerra the Bald, leader of the Skullsworn, he was asleep on his back, fingers neatly laced across his chest, lying atop a narrow wooden platform suspended over the cliff's edge, swaying lightly with the breeze above a sheer drop of hundreds of feet. The wooden platform was one of two, both part of a sort of strange scale, the type of apparatus a merchant might use to weigh grain or coin, but much larger, the whole thing built out over the abyss. The counterweight to Ananshael's chief priest, set on the platform across from him, was a sealed wooden barrel. The hole at its base was plugged tight with something that looked like a stone cork.

“What is that?” Triste asked, her voice tight.

“That,” Pyrre replied, “is Ananshael's Scale. Today is Gerra's day.”

“Not my day,” the priest said without bothering to open his eyes or sit up. “It should have been Baird, but he has not yet returned from the west. Others wanted to take his place, but I was selfish.” He smiled. “One of the few joys of leadership—the right to seize a day of peace and quiet when you can.”

Pyrre shook her head in mock regret. “I didn't realize, when I spoke in your favor all those years ago, the true depth of your greed.”

Gerra's smile widened. “The more fool you.” He still hadn't opened his eyes.

“What is the scale for?” Kaden asked.

“It is a way of living close to the god,” Pyrre replied. She gestured. “The barrel is filled with water. It's stoppered with a plug of rock salt. When the plug dissolves, the barrel empties, and the person on the platform goes to meet the god.”

Triste took a step back, as though the apparatus might suddenly, violently snap.

“When?” she asked.

Pyrre shrugged. “It's impossible to predict. Some salt deposits are denser than others. On hot days, the water dissolves the plug faster than on cold days. Usually it takes a year or so, but not always.”

“When I was young,” Gerra mused, “there was a time the plug gave way in three days. Jes the Gray was sitting the scale that day. She must have been a hundred—bent nearly double, but still sharp in the head. We joked that Ananshael just got tired of waiting.”

“And how long,” Kaden asked, studying the barrel, “has this plug been in?”

Pyrre shook her head. “I can never keep track. Thirteen months, maybe?”

“Something like that,” Gerra agreed. They might have been discussing the age of a particularly uninteresting sheep. “It went in last summer, after Torrel went to meet the god.”

Triste was staring at the scale and the man lying upon it, her violet eyes wide, horrified. “That's awful,” she whispered.

“Quite the contrary,” Gerra declared. “It's the most peaceful place on the whole mesa. The only spot people won't bother me.” He paused. “Usually. Who is that you've brought, my sister?”

“Acquaintances,” Pyrre replied. “The almost-Emperor of all Annur and a somewhat threadbare prostitute. A nice enough young man and woman, but very serious.”

“You think everyone is too serious. What about the Urghul, the pain priest?”

Pyrre grimaced. “Gone.”

“To the god?”

“Perhaps. It's hard to say. He went into one of the rivers, but the Urghul are surprisingly durable.”

“And your brothers and sisters?”

“Have made their last offering.”

Even that revelation failed to jolt the priest from his rest. He remained so still for so long, in fact, that Kaden was starting to wonder if the man had fallen asleep. Pyrre seemed in no particular hurry, and so it was Triste, finally, who broke the silence.

“Are we prisoners?”

Gerra pursed his lips. “Most people are prisoners,” he replied. “I can hear the fear in your voice. You live in it as though it were a cage. Did you come here to be free?”

“Free?” Kaden asked carefully.

“Free,” Gerra agreed. “Liberated from the bonds of your fear. Do you wish to join our order?”

“Before you answer—” Pyrre began.

Triste cut her off. “No,” she snarled. “
No
. We came here because we didn't have a
choice
. Not to become
murderers
.”

“If what we've heard is true,” Gerra replied mildly, “you have given more souls to Ananshael than almost any of our priests. I hear whispers that you slaughtered hundreds in the heart of the Annurian palace—truly a great offering.”

Triste's face was frozen between horror and rage, her hands balled into fists at her sides. When she spoke again, her voice was barely louder than the wind. “I didn't want to. Didn't mean to. I'm not a killer.”

“There are words,” Gerra mused, “and there are deeds. Still, I will take you at your word. We all have something to offer to the god. If you do not wish to kill, then you can die.”

“No,” Kaden said, stepping toward the cliff's edge as Meshkent growled and hissed inside his mind. “Please. There is a larger story here.”

“The story always feels large,” Gerra replied without moving, without opening his eyes, “to those trapped inside of it. Ananshael will cut you free. It is not so difficult as you think, dying. We will be at your side.”

Fear flared inside Kaden. He crushed it out, tried to focus through his mind's smoke.