undying legion 01 - unbound man (56 page)

Today, my friends, you will add a new voice to your choir. Choose it well.

— Herev Gis
Latter Sermons
Chapter 28, Verses 43–44
(as ordered by the Gislean Provin)

For the fourth night in a row, Eilwen slept badly.

Though misty horses no longer filled her dreams, she found herself waking with a violent start again and again, heart racing and dagger drawn, staring in mindless panic at the shadowy trees above her. Eventually, after half a dozen such wakenings, she gave up, raising herself to a sitting position and listening to the called greetings of magpies, lorikeets, and other birds as the grey light of dawn crept slowly over the forest.

Despite the difficult night, she found the stillness of the morning strangely calming.
How rarely have I done this? Alone under the sky with the sunrise, welcoming the day.
There was a power in it, something great and constant and unyielding.
Dawn is the Dreamer’s time, before the sorrow of the day begins.
She’d heard the words since childhood, even recited them herself on occasion, but she’d never understood them until now.

The sense of calm stayed with her throughout the morning, bringing an ease to her steps which she found both refreshing and confusing. What had changed? Nothing she could think of. Perhaps it was something about getting out of the city, and it had taken this long for it to finally work its way into her system.
Though I’ve been out of Anstice plenty of times before, and it never made me feel like this.

Maybe the difference was that this time she knew she wasn’t going back.

She stopped around midday, sitting on a boulder and chewing some flatbread. The leafy canopy danced above her head, sending shadows scurrying across the forest floor. She smiled, tilting her face skyward to catch the breeze, and felt the egg stir at her side.

It whispered to her like an old lover, crooning to her, murmuring the secret song that only they had ever shared. Her feeling of wellbeing slipped away, replaced in an instant by something cool and dark and intimate. Hunger bloomed in her belly, the kind of hunger that bread did nothing to assuage, and she felt the beast stir. It opened a slitted eye, then stretched, baring its teeth in a savage smile.

He’s coming. The token-bearer returns.

Hurriedly, she crammed the last of the bread into her mouth and stepped into the shadow of a large tree. The trail crested a hill just a few paces ahead, and for a moment she considered peeking over the rise.
No. He’d have as good a chance of seeing me first as the other way around.
She slowed her breaths, pressing her back against the tree trunk. Thick ferns crowded the other side of her tree, making a stealthy approach from that side impossible. Anyone backtracking would have no choice but to come right past her hiding place.

She eased the knife into her hand and listened to the egg.

It began to pulse, the rhythm thin but unmistakable. A token-bearer again, no question. With luck, the same one; if not, she’d have to chance her hand. Either way, the same tactics would likely suffice: a single knife thrust between the back ribs into the heart.
Gods grant he hasn’t found his armour.

The pulse strengthened to a throb. The rustling overhead dimmed in her ears, giving way to a strained silence. Something scraped just ahead: a boot on the ground, or just a branch against its neighbour? She tightened her grip on the dagger and held her breath.

A figure stepped soundlessly into view. Eilwen glimpsed a stooped shoulder and dark hair in Plainsmen’s braids. The head swivelled away from her, searching the scrub on the other side of the trail. Her arm tensed, ready to strike.
Just one more step. One more… and…

Her knife slipped into his back as though of its own accord, as if skin and sinew offered no more resistance than hot wax.

The man cried out once and crumpled to the ground. She stooped to retrieve her dagger, wiped it clean on his shirt. Then she straightened, looking down at the body through the beast’s eyes, drinking in the sight. The peace she’d felt all morning was gone, but there was nothing unpleasant in its place. Just a different kind of calm.

One down,
she thought.
Six to go.

A shouted hello from beyond the hill pulled her attention back to her surroundings. The man’s companions were coming. Eilwen tore her gaze from the body at her feet and started down the hill, away from the approaching voice. If she stuck to the trail, they might think her a better woodsman than she was and not bother trying to find her.

On the other hand, if they decided to split up to search for her, that would be even better.

Once upon a time, she’d have had days of nausea to look forward to after something like this.
Murder always left me feeling ill.
But then, it wasn’t really murder, was it? That was what she’d never understood before.

The Oculus were the enemy. This was a war. And she was a soldier.

She smiled and stroked the hilt of her dagger.

•

The massive boulder seemed impervious to sorcery, but the Quill earthbinders were able to cut a hollow in the ground before it, forming a trough into which it might be rolled. Arandras was assigned a place behind the boulder with a Quill he didn’t know. Two more Quill mirrored their positions on the other side, with the rest of the group divided between three ropes fastened to the mammoth rock. When Ienn called the order, Arandras pushed, those on the ropes pulled, and slowly, grudgingly, the boulder shifted a hand’s breadth away from the cliff.

“Again!” Arandras set his feet against the wall, straining against the rock with his entire body. It shifted a fraction, then abruptly lurched forward. He fell to the ground, wincing as he landed on his side, a knuckle of stone digging into his thigh. Grimacing, he stumbled to his feet and looked around.

A dark opening yawned where the boulder had been. Half again as high as a man and wide enough for four or five, the passage stretched away into impenetrable blackness. A cool draught wafted past Arandras’s face, laced with a dusty, unfamiliar scent, and he sneezed.

Light flared among the Quill, casting flickering shadows into the passage. “If you’ve got a lamp or a sparker, fire it up,” Ienn said. “If not, stay close to someone who does.”

“And nobody touch anything,” Narvi added. “First time in is observation only.”

The Quill began to file in, lamps in hand, some leaving their bags outside the passage. Arandras watched the procession go by.
Anyone feel like sharing a light?
Narvi and Fas walked past, Fas murmuring something about Chogon’s likely reaction to their discovery, and Arandras grimaced.
Maybe that rangy Jervian…

Mara halted beside him, a slender torch in her hand. “Waiting for someone?”

Huh. Look who’s come around.
He gave a quick smile of thanks. “Not any more,” he said, and thought he saw her lips twitch in response.

They entered the passage on the heels of the last Quill, the group spread out before them, each island of light illuminating another small section of stone; and though most of the passage was still shrouded in darkness, Arandras could see enough to get a sense of its shape.

The space was a cavern, at least three times as wide as the entrance and twice as high, and deeper than the light could penetrate. The walls curved into the ceiling in a giant semicircle of pale, grey-brown rock. Footsteps and voices echoed in the hollow space, as though each person was shadowed by a muttering, foot-scuffing twin just beyond the lamplight. Arandras brushed his hand against a rocky spur protruding from the wall. It was hard, its edges smoother than he expected. His fingers came away coated with a fine dust bearing the same dry scent he’d smelled by the entrance, tickling his nose with hints of leather, and spice, and hot desert sand. He sneezed again, and the sound boomed around the cavern like cannon fire.

“Gods,” Mara hissed. “Don’t do that again.”

The cavern sloped down just enough to be noticeable. Doorless portals pierced the walls at irregular intervals, similar in size to what might be found in any building across the Free Cities, though in this place they seemed absurdly small. Some opened to cramped, windowless cells, others on winding stone staircases leading to some lower level. But there seemed an unspoken consensus among the group: onward, to the end of the passage and whatever lay beyond.

They pressed on. In the dark it was impossible to judge distance. A sudden thought made Arandras glance back the way they had come. All was black, save for a faint smudge of what might have been daylight on a pale wall.
The passage must be turning. Steering us back toward the cliff.
He ran his hand along the wall, feeling for the curve in the rough stone, but it was too slight to detect.

Voices called out from the other side of the cavern, drawing Arandras’s attention. Two lamps and a torch had come to a halt before what appeared to be a mound of rocky earth. There was a muted exchange, then a word from Narvi that sounded like either permission or a command; and a moment later, a gout of flame bloomed up from the torch, billowing to the ceiling in a fiery mass of orange and yellow, lighting up the cavern for the space of a heartbeat before winking out and plunging them back into gloom.

Firebinder,
Arandras thought, even as he took in what he’d seen. The loose earth was more than just a mound — it extended all the way to the ceiling, sprawling across half the cavern’s width like an underground hill.
A cave-in. Hells. I thought the Valdori were supposed to be better than that.

“Old, I think,” someone said as Arandras and Mara joined the rest of the group, gathering before the heaped earth.

“How old, Halli?” Fas said.

The woman shrugged. “Years. Centuries. Who knows? It’s not about to come crashing down on our heads, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Good to know,” Arandras muttered.

Mara quirked an eyebrow at him. “Of course, that’s probably what the Valdori said, too.”

Yeah. Probably.

“All right,” Narvi said. “Let’s move on.”

They resumed their course, skirting the edge of the cave-in, Arandras and Mara now at the fore of the group. Arandras peered into the still, inky blackness, straining for any glimmer of reflected light from something solid. The slope seemed to have levelled off now — either that, or he could no longer sense it in the dark.

Mara shifted the torch to her other hand, causing the shadows at their feet to jump and flicker. Her boot scraped against something and she stumbled, cursing. “Weeper’s breath! Why doesn’t Narvi just put a firebinder in the lead and have him light the whole place up?”

“Yeah,” Arandras said. “Because nothing brightens a dark cave like accidentally setting something on fire.”
Or triggering some ancient binding with a grudge against sorcery.

“We survived a moment ago,” Mara muttered. “A little more wouldn’t kill anyone.”

A dark shape loomed before them, tall and wide, blacker even than the surrounding gloom. Arandras blinked, trying to make sense of the murky object. Then Mara moved the torch, and the shadows resolved into pale stone walls about another empty portal, this one of similar dimensions to the entrance now lost to sight behind them.
Aha. The end, at last.
Mara glanced across, brows raised in anticipation; then she raised the torch and they stepped inside.

At first they could see little more than a smooth section of floor. Then, as the Quill entered behind them with sparkers and lamps, the room’s layout became clear. The chamber was roughly square, a stark contrast to the rounded walls and ceiling of the passageway. An uneven bench ran along one wall, apparently carved in place when the chamber was cut from the stone. The other sides of the chamber offered no such amenity — instead, shackles hung from the walls in clusters of four, two just above the ground, two more at about the height of Arandras’s shoulders.

“The gods wept,” Narvi breathed. “What is this?”

Arandras lifted one of the shackles, causing the chain to clink softly. It was lighter than it appeared, the strange, speckled metal cool and smooth, unmarked by rust or verdigris. He held up the fine circlet, running a finger around its circumference. The band was wide enough to fit around both his balled fists with room to spare.

A simple key protruded from the lock, and he gave it an experimental twist. The shackle shut with a smart click. He opened it again, let it fall back against the wall.

“They’re too big,” Fas said. “Too big to be human. They must be…”

“For the golems,” Mara said.

“Weeper’s blessed tears,” Narvi said. “Why?”

Nobody answered.

Another doorless opening stood directly opposite the one they had come in. Mara stepped toward it, Arandras close behind. She reached the threshold, then stopped dead with an audible gasp.

Arandras stepped alongside. “What’s the — oh.”
Oh my.

Where the first, empty cavern had been raw display of might, this was a soaring expression of elegance and grandeur. He stood on a low platform at one side of the tremendous room. Thin streams of light filtered in from windows and other openings high in what Arandras judged to be the rear wall. Vaulted ceilings rose in dizzying arches, their peaks lost in the shadows above. And before him, like giants frozen in time, like strange formations of earth and clay growing from the rock itself, stood rows upon rows of golems.

They were tall and graceful. They were broad and stocky. They were all alike, and each one was different. They held swords and maces and nothing at all. Most stood facing the front of the room, though some seemed caught in the act of glancing to one side or gesturing to their neighbour. A few were kneeling. One, close enough for Arandras to reach out and touch, had its hand raised as though in supplication.

But the eyes in each expressionless face were the same. Two narrow pits of empty, black oblivion which, if they had ever held a semblance of life, possessed it no longer.