The Stars Askew (43 page)

What do you want?
the crone seemed to say, and yet she did not speak.
Ah yes, I see. You are changing already.
The eyes seemed to laugh.

Though Armand tried to lift his head, his face came closer and closer to the water. Panic gripped him. The Augurer became his whole world, her face giant and leering. Her eyes drifted toward each other as he lost focus, so that both somehow became black
and
green.

The middle door. We'll be waiting.

Armand's face broke the surface, the crone vanished, and he jolted back up.

Unaware of his vision, Irik and Giselle were now examining the doors. The one on the left was decorated with a painting of the Long March of the Mountain Giants in which they traveled along the Etolian range, away from the disasters after the cataclysm, when the insect men descended on them like vicious ants. The middle door showed the ancient hero Kae-Marka sitting hand in hand with an Augurer, seeing his future death in the space between them. The right-hand door pictured Rian and his dog, Torro, on the seas, reaching the island of Aya. In the background, minotaurs were being born from the rock.

“The middle one.” Armand reached for the door, though it had no handle.

“How do you know?” asked Irik.

Armand touched the door, and it swung eerily open of its own accord. In front of them lay a wide atrium, again with crumbling pillars running around it. He could see no other exit. Natural light shone through a shaft running high above, though there were many more levels to the Augurer's Eyrie.

An atmosphere of moody and decaying grandeur overwhelmed the Eyrie, and after the vision at the fount, Armand was tense and jittery. Though the journey had been physically dangerous, he felt the Eyrie threatened some deeper part of him. Perhaps Irik and Giselle were right: it was a mistake to try to see the future. And yet he would brook no opposition. He would continue on to the end, facing these sinister Augurers and whatever other ordeals stood in his way.

A mosaic of thousands of silver and blue tiles depicted a fierce chimera in the center of the floor. Where it breathed fire, the tiles were golden and red. The image did little to settle Armand's nerves.

Something flittered behind one of the columns.

“Who's there?” Irik's voice echoed oddly.

Armand took several steps to one side, but there was nothing behind the pillar.

“When the birds fly, do they think of the wind?” whispered a voice.

Armand spun around to see an old woman emerge from behind another of the columns. Her wild and matted hair sprang from her head like a white bush. Her left eye seemed blue this time; a raggedy white dress hung loosely from her thin frame. Was this the same Augurer? Armand could not tell.

The woman gazed at them with a piteous, imperious stare. She seemed about to break into cruel laughter. “I see the three of you—a strange bunch, no doubt. Don't think you can hide from us. No, no, when the future is sought, it is always found.”

“Only I seek to see into my fate,” said Armand. “The others are simply my companions.”

“Five come and three cry their lives away. You will see past and future and they will be as one,” said the woman. “And what have you to offer, Armand Lecroisier?”

Involuntarily, Armand took a step backward after she said his name, though he had not introduced himself. Chills ran over his skin and under his hairline. Fumbling, he reached into his bag, pulled out his little pouch. “Bloodstone.”

The woman came to him impossibly fast, though she didn't seem to run. She snatched the bag from his quivering hand, poured a tiny portion of the stone onto her palm. She pierced Armand with a stare and then, ever so slowly, licked her palm with her long tongue. Suddenly she broke into a grin, her teeth a deep, bloodstone red. She looked like she'd been drinking blood. She ran her tongue over her teeth and grinned again.

“There is no good time to step from the nest.” She turned and rushed away. They hurried after her, to a narrow walkway behind the pillars. For the first time, Armand noticed several cleverly hidden openings in the walls. The tunnels leading away were curved and smooth, as if washed by a thousand years of water.

Up and around they went, for the Eyrie was like an anthill, the passages curving and twisting without obvious design. Occasional windows allowed them to glimpse the majestic landscape outside. At other times they passed through chambers decorated with glorious mosaics and delicate hangings. Sometimes the Augurer pulled aside a hanging to reveal a hidden tunnel. Sibilant sounds echoed through the corridors; sometimes Armand fancied they were voices, and at other times they sounded like the groaning of machines or dying creatures. Armand felt increasingly nervous, increasingly out of control of the situation.

The Augurer instructed Irik and Giselle to wait in a room filled with soft crimson cushions. Meats, berries, and drink were already laid out on small tables. Armand's companions fell on them without a word, stuffing their mouths.

The Augurer took Armand by the hand, and her skin felt leathery and alien. Up and up she led him, until the tiny staircase opened to a high room, perhaps the highest in the Eyrie. Windows opened out onto the vast panorama around: a wall of snowcapped mountains to one side, other lone peaks here and there, the valley a vast plain before the mountains rose again to the east. The sun was gone now, and twilight had softened the light outside. A great mosaic spiraled in toward the center of the room, like water plunging down a drain. Each spiral arm was composed of black and white tiles, like a zebra's stripes. As he looked at the great fractal shape, Armand felt he was falling toward the core of the pattern. He lost all sense of perspective and looked away.

The Augurer led him to the central point. “Sit.”

*   *   *

The Augurer faced Armand and took his hands in her own. His heart danced madly, and he felt intense burning in his left arm as she stared into his eyes, like some witch from the Teeming Cities. He was overrun with a sense of her atavistic wild power and realized now the rashness of his course. He was about to make a terrible error, one which he would not be able to turn from, one that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

Already the floor had drawn him into some uncanny trance. The walls loomed in and stretched out. Between the pillars flittered a young girl, perhaps eight or nine years old. She moved like a shadow, and Armand sensed that her eyes were both blue. When she reached the cusp of adulthood, one eye would fill suddenly with black blood, as some blood vessel burst deep inside and engulfed the entire thing—then she would gain the Augurer's gift.

A moment later everything dropped away except the Augurer's two eyes. Armand lost focus, and the two eyes drifted toward each other, as if he were seeing them from too close.

Quickly, they were superimposed, black and green on top of each other. Armand lost a sense of himself, and he and the Augurer became one, staring not into each other, but through that bloody eye into the future, into the world as it would come to be.

An image appears, like something rising from a depth. Armand sees himself, alone in a vast dark space, a strange book in his hands. The book gleams with the unhealthy light of thaumaturgy. Three circular sections of the floor are blacker than the rest, and Armand realizes they are pools of water. One of the black circles shimmers. Then another of the pools shimmers, then the third. Things are moving beneath the black waters. A snake-covered head bursts forth, then another, until there are three Gorgons dancing around him.

The image fades, and Armand is floating in a sea of indeterminate shapes. Now Armand sees himself, but with white streaks through his hair. From a cold stone throne, he looks out onto strange faces. There is something ruined in his visage: his eyes droop, one arm shifts restlessly. Armand wonders who all these subjects are, facing his future self. Yet they respect him, they fear him. He is victorious, he senses: all his dreams fulfilled, his ancestors avenged, his place in the world assured. He is a king! A surge of triumph rushes through him, a sweet ecstatic joy. Yet all these strangers stand so far from him, and he looks so alone.

Many more images rise and fall. He is sleeping; he is eating; he is crying. He is old. He is young. The images drop away again into shapes and colors.

But now he is younger again. Lines have only begun to etch his face. He is striding down long corridors; through the open windows he sees great flames leaping into the air. Caeli-Amur is burning. He carries a body as one would carry a child. He cries, falling to his knees, for he cannot carry the man any longer. His knees strike the stone floor, and he throws his head back, lets out a wail filled with emptiness and despair. He lays the body gently on the ground, pulls his arms away—one just a stump cut at the elbow—and, using his only hand, covers his face in Irik's blood.

I cannot,
he tries to say.
I cannot continue with this.

His own voice comes back to him, though it is the voice of the crone, also.

The process has begun; it must run its course.

They have leaped again in time; backward or forward, he cannot tell. Crowds of dejected prisoners are rounded up in Market Square. Twenty or more are strapped into cruel machines: complex constructions of scaffolding and harnesses. They hang there like spiders in the center of webs. Engineers and mechanics wander around the machines, adjusting. Thaumaturgists in their sharp suits look on, their faces cold and cruel, like the sciences they control. Armand strides past these seditionists: the glacial Ejan, who stares from his entrapment with cold hatred; other faces filled with desolation. He passes a great minotaur. The legionaries have cut his horns off, stabbed him several times—fatally, it seems. Beside him hangs the assassin Kata, her black hair covered with blood. Armand points at her with his stump. “This one, free her.” She is unstrapped from her machine, looks back at the others, collapses to the ground, her face in her hands. She is broken; she slinks away and is gone. Levers are turned; the machines hoist the seditionists high into the air, and thaumaturgists move their levers. Light from the Other Side engulfs the seditionists, who scream pitiably. They shimmer. Their limbs disappear into the uncanny light, reappear. It seems like their bodies are beneath water, wobbling unnaturally: their heads bulging out, their hips shrinking to almost nothing. Armand turns away, tears in his eyes, and watches as the majestic Caeli-Amur burns around him.

Armand feels hands grasping his, sees black and blue eyes, separating as they come into focus, craggy lines down the Augurer's face, her hair waving and wild. In the Augurer's eyes, Armand sees something else now.

You will be a king,
they seem to say.

*   *   *

After the Embrace, the Augurer took Armand onto a platform at the very tip of the citadel. They looked out over the vast landscape. To one side, the mountains were shadowy forms. To the other, dawn was breaking, a cold yellowy light, stratus clouds stretched high like watercolors on a canvas. The Embrace had taken the entire night.

“You have a great future,” said the Augurer. “You also have a painful path.”

“Things will be different to the visions. I can change the future now that I have foreseen it.”

The Augurer smiled, brushed her matted hair back with one hand. “The more you change your path, the less likely those triumphs will be. The triumph and defeat rest upon each other.”

“I'll make it all a triumph. I'll have everything I want. Help me, and I will reward you.”

“We will help you return to Varenis, but if we do, we will call on your favor again,” she said. “Choose carefully, Armand, for the favor will not be a light one.”

Armand did not hesitate. “I must return in haste. When the time comes, ask for what you need.”

And so the Augurer led Armand back to where Irik and Giselle sat on cushions. They had spent the night eating and sleeping, it seemed. Outside, dawn broke. Armand collapsed into the cushions.

“What did you see?” asked Giselle as Irik looked on thoughtfully.

“Nothing. Everything.” Armand looked away, picturing himself holding the dead oppositionist. When he looked back at Irik, the oppositionist shook his head as if he knew.

The heavy silence was broken by the sound of a large beast scrabbling on rock and the flapping of huge wings.

“The Augurers are helping us return to Varenis,” said Armand. “Those are our mounts.”

Giselle was on her feet, ducking down the passageway toward the sound. “Armand, by the gods. Armand!”

Irik grasped Armand's hand. “I'm not returning. I'm going to Caeli-Amur.”

“Please, come with me,” said Armand. He struggled to think of words that would express his feelings. None seemed adequate. “Please.”

“Armand, I ask you,” said Irik. “Forget this obsession of yours and come with me to Caeli-Amur.”

From the passageway, Giselle called out. “They are saddled, too. And furs! Impossible.”

Armand clenched his hands, unclenched them. “And you? Would you reject your oppositionism? Are we to live outside of history in Caeli-Amur, a quiet life together?” When Irik didn't respond, Armand added, “I will come with you, if you say yes.”

Irik shook his head and turned away. Then he turned back. “Not Caeli-Amur, then. The Dyrian coast. It's far from events.”

Now Armand closed his eyes. “You aren't supposed to say yes. You're supposed to say no.”

Irik drew a sharp breath. “So it is, then.”

The images of the future sprang to Armand's mind, of the dead Irik in Armand's arms. “Irik, I beg you: don't return to Caeli-Amur.”

Giselle rushed back along the corridor. “What did you do, Armand, for them to treat us like this?”

Irik walked past Armand, a final gesture of rejection. Armand followed the oppositionist to a large open landing platform on which three griffins stood restlessly. He wasn't prepared for the size of the things, the powerful wings, the heads that cocked from one side to the other as they examined them. The large beady eyes were watchful and intelligent. To one side of the platform stood the Augurer. In the morning light, her left eye seemed again to be green.