Black Bottle (45 page)

“Sena?” She spoke into her sleeve.

“Just a minute.”

The High King’s witch stood in the extreme limits of her light. Taelin set the candle down and reached into her pocket. She pulled out her little tin and opened it. Inside were some of the beggary seeds Palmer had given her. She rationed five onto a sheet of rice paper along with a little of the fuzz. She quickly licked the paper. It crackled reassuringly between her fingers as she rolled it. Tincture, pill and smoke. Was that bad? She didn’t care.

She picked up the candle. The flame happily shared itself with the bent little package hanging from her lips. She inhaled deeply. It helped with the stink of this place.

A crunch in the stone-strewn dust did not sound like Sena’s graceful footsteps; Taelin lifted her candle again. Light spilled across a second person. A little cry escaped Taelin’s mouth and the cigarette almost fell out.

Rusted metal and rotting leather encased a body encumbered with archaic weapons. Dust filmed her. The woman’s hair was tangled. Despite her eyes, which had calcified into something like white stone, Taelin thought—in that timeless moment while the beggary smoke circled her head—that the woman stepping out of the darkness was even more beautiful than Sena Iilool.

The woman’s eyes were smaller, her body longer and exquisitely thin. All of her, from her triangular face to her slender limbs conferred a horrible but lovely gauntness. She was perfect.

The woman was paying close attention to Sena, who was motioning with her hands as she tried to communicate.

“What is she saying?” asked Taelin.

Sena ignored the question. She and the pale woman seemed to be agreeing, deciding on something—without her.

“What’s going on?” Taelin felt excluded. “I want some answers.”

“Arrian’s taking us to her room,” said Sena.

“Her room? Why? Who’s Arrian?” Taelin looked around at the darkness wondering how they would find their way.

“This is where the Ublisi … made her mistake.”

“Ublisi?” said Taelin.

“The being that called down the Rain of Fire on Soth.”

“Rain of Fire? That’s just a legend. I don’t understand why we’re here.” Taelin’s voice echoed. She reached into her shirt for her necklace and took another drag.

“Don’t—” said Sena. But it was too late. The molten aperture was already out in the open. It did not illuminate the darkness, but it
was
blinding. Its color jumped into Taelin’s eyes without traveling to get there.

Arrian’s face twisted. She sprang at Taelin wildly and brought her weapon down like a hammer. Taelin felt the metal. The pain was exquisite. Only a moment later did she realize that the blade had shattered. It had not cut her, but her arm was certainly fractured.

Arrian straddled her waist and raised the jagged shard. The candle tumbled away but thankfully did not go out. Taelin held her cigarette tightly between her lips and put her hands up as Arrian plunged the rusted shaft toward her.

The only thing that arrested the fatal blow was a trademark grip: cradled head, a razor-edged choker wrapped beneath Arrian’s chin.

Sena saved her. One moment the shard of rust had been her future. The next, Sena was in control, leaning back. Muscles cabled her slender arms as she threw her body into counterpoise. Arrian growled under the subdual, face fractured into discrete regions of bared teeth and white eyes.

Her fingers reached for the knife that was lifting her off the ground.

As Arrian’s weight came up, Taelin propelled herself backward, recovered the candle and scrambled to her feet. She watched Sena pull the blade hard against Arrian’s throat. But there was no cut. No bleeding.

Arrian’s fingers worked their way between the blade and her neck. She roared with a sound that traveled through bone. The candle nearly dropped again from Taelin’s hand.

Sena struck Arrian on the crown of her head with a sudden muscular blow.

Arrian twisted violently and bucked Sena off.

At that moment, Taelin looked away from the two fighting women. She thought she had heard something enormous sidle in the darkness. A sigh. It disturbed the whole sky that encompassed this black empty place. After that, a dull wet impact—as of mucus or falling blood—filled the universe.

For a moment, she imagined inconceivable shapes packed in the dark.

Then Sena burst back into the light and babbled fiercely at Arrian, drawing Taelin’s eyes once more to the battle.

Arrian’s body came fully up off the piles of broken masonry, twisting in midair, wild and impossible, like a rabbit in a snare. She gurgled as her arms and legs thrashed. Boneless it seemed. Her neck was bent back at what should have been an unachievable angle. When she landed, she landed hard, limbs whipping, churning up dust.

Sena spoke again and Arrian stopped.

Taelin coughed on the swirling particles and backed away. She blew out a stream of smoke. The pain in her arm where the sword had hit her was throbbing.

“What are we doing here?” She shrieked.

Sena was too busy to answer.

The sound of Taelin’s yell echoed back to her. Angry at everything, it sounded like there was a copy of herself out there in the darkness, screaming at her for getting herself into this mess.

As the echo faded, Taelin realized the fight was over. Sena spoke in soothing syllables, talking as if to an injured pet. The unruly animal had been pinned to the ground and keened under the stress.

It was awkward and touching at the same time. It deeply disturbed Taelin. She took a long hit of beggary smoke and knelt down. Sena seemed to be asking a question in the horrible language, over and over, insisting on something.

Finally, Arrian pulled herself up slowly against Sena’s firm but gentle embrace and answered. After that—bizarrely, determinedly—Sena notched her sickle-knife into Arrian’s neck like a hot blade against tallow. It went easy at first but quickly turned to work. Arrian struggled occasionally but Sena kept talking, reassuring her. She brought her full weight to bear as she started sawing off the girl’s head.

Arrian didn’t move. Her arms hung by her sides. It took a while. Taelin remembered her cigarette and took another hit. She took several hits. The candle seemed to brighten.

No.

Instead of blood, light seeped from the wound. Taelin felt paralyzed.

Sena’s movements were brutal. She put her back into it. And then, all at once, in a gush of light, Arrian’s body crumpled onto the pile of masonry and Sena stood up, holding the head.

It seemed small.

Taelin felt sick and guilty. As if she had been party to murder. As if she had taken turns with Sena on the blade. Soft gauzy illumination gushed from both stumps. The light poured over the ground from where the body had fallen and likewise splashed from the swinging head. It spattered portions of a dusty black wall that Taelin had just noticed.

What in the world had happened?

“We’re taking her with,” said Sena. She put her sickle away.

“But you killed her—”

“It’ll be okay,” said Sena.

“But you killed her.” Taelin, on the verge of tears began sinking to the floor. She couldn’t look at Sena. “How can it be okay?” She sucked as much beggary smoke into her lungs as she could.

And then, in the light that welled up from the carcass she saw a glitter at the edge of Arrian’s eye. Was the horrible thing crying? It made no sense. Taelin stayed where she was, sitting in the ashes. “You should take me back. I don’t understand any of this. I want to go home.”

“I’ll take you back after we’re done,” said Sena. “And we need to hurry now that you’ve brought that out for
everything
to see.” She gestured toward the demonifuge. “Please get up.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Get up.” Sena’s voice filled with power and a fierceness that shocked Taelin. It shocked her not only by virtue of its force but also because it contained a foil-thin undercurrent of compassion. That was how it felt. The compassion put her in a state where the fierceness was able to propel her.

She got up, staring at the gruesome trophy in Sena’s hands.

“That’s impossible!”

Taelin put a hand to her mouth and jerked the candlelight back from Arrian’s face, whose stone-white eyes had just blinked.

*   *   *

L
IKE
stammering picture shows that had opened on Isca Road and put fear into the owners of the Murkbell Opera House, events started clicking across the lamp of Arrian’s head. Taelin felt them in black and white.
I’m watching a show. That’s all. I’m not really here.

She wanted another hit but her blunt was spent, which meant she could only look on nervously as Sena unslung a small pack. When the designer purse came off the witch’s back, a faint brown halo daubed the air behind her head as if a lantern had been strapped beneath Sena’s jacket.

Interesting,
thought Taelin. She watched Sena undo the buckle. Chic black reptile skin parted and a folded plastic bag came out, stamped with Octul Box’s purple shopping dragon. It had rope handles. Sena snapped it open and put Arrian’s head into it. Then she reslung her purse, and handed the shopping bag to Taelin. “You can carry this.”

Taelin took the bag mutely with her good arm. It jerked her wrist, heavier than expected.

“Come on,” said Sena.

“I can’t. Not with my hurt knee … and now my arm.”

“Where are your crutches, Taelin?”

“I—I don’t know.”

“Forgot them, did you?”

“I—”

“Come here.”

“My knee hurts. Dr. Baufent said—”

“Dr. Baufent let you take the crutches even though she knew you didn’t need them. Your arm is not broken. And your knee isn’t injured. You’re going to be fine.” Then, without another word, Sena shanked into the dark.

CHAPTER

35

The ambit of the Abominations was strong here but not as strong as it had been on the Stairs leading down to the Chamber.

There were noises in the dark. Sena knew she had to be vigilant. The “sky” was a great leaking slab. Epochs drained into a lake below the hill. It stank of the deep ocean. Huge walls of hewn basalt thrust themselves upward, strong enough to support the mile-thick chunk of sky. Despite the moisture, dust and porous husk-like stones muffled the landscape.

Sena could picture this rubble-strewn cyst as a garden where luminous moths fluttered over black pimplota under the moons. For a moment, she saw the fires erupting, the cinders and falling rock. She smelled the dead relatives and friends that had stunk for years before they turned to sludge beneath the piles.

She felt sorry for Arrian whose first question had been asked childlike, with cocked head, “Father? Is it you? Corwin?” Sena had been appalled by the antique weaponry strapped to her body, the rotten corslet cut from some mythic beast whose leather had outlasted the dark.

“I have never been to the Mainland,” Arrian had said stupidly. “It snows there but Father says I belong here, on the island.”

Sena had watched the ancient leather flake away from Arrian’s immortal skin. Nothing could cut that skin unless Arrian gave her permission. And that was why she had to be persuaded, like a child at the dentist. Sena had promised escape. She had soothed and bribed. She had been firm. She had been coddling. She had been vicious with the knife.

Sena looked at Taelin and pondered for a moment trying to explain. Not everything. Just the tiny parts that concerned her.

“Taelin?”

“What?”

“You need to keep your necklace safe. You need to keep it hidden.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s the key to an important door.”

“Oh. Well, I don’t need it anymore. Here. You take it.”

“Actually I need you to carry it. I’m not going to be around when the door is opened.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Your grandfather made it for a reason. With it, there’s a chance to do something good. To save people.” She could talk freely here, without fear of Nathaniel.

“That’s what I’ve always wanted to do,” said Taelin. “Help people. But I always … I always muck it up.” She was tearful again.

“I know,” said Sena. “But this is your chance. So keep the necklace safe.”

Sena watched Taelin’s fingers close over the demonifuge as Something shifted in the immense cavern, Something huge and ponderous slipping over stone.

Taelin gawped toward the sound, trying to see into the netherworld behind them. The shopping bag she lugged drew her fingers down into splotchy white hooks. The bag crinkled and banged against her knees.

Sena knew it was hard for the other woman to breathe here. Even without inhaling, Sena could taste salt and death.

Taelin stumbled.

Sena reached out and steadied her.

“We need to keep moving. They won’t tolerate us here much longer. Are you all right?” Her vocalization was a courtesy, an effort at displaying empathy.

Taelin marveled at the blackness; she was not all right. She pulled away when Sena reached for her. Her face was smeared with horror.

“Taelin?”

With both hands Taelin held up the shopping bag. Offering it to the darkness. A child displaying something she had bought. The bag gushed with light.

“She’s dead,” said Taelin.

Sena grabbed her by the hand. “That’s not true. You saw her blink.”

Taelin started blubbering. Sena was keenly aware of her own guilt in this. This was the cost of advancing her slender margins. Crazy as she was, Taelin managed to glow even here with a kind of radiant innocence. Sena could understand why Caliph found her pretty.

Another shudder squeaked through the cavern, like tons of rubber slipping, slumping somewhere along the far side of the lake. Sena didn’t look. She already knew What was there, What had crawled out of Lewlym’s Navel so many thousand years ago and died here in the dark.

“We need to go,” said Sena. She started walking and Taelin stumbled after. They crossed the flat ash-draped space that had once been a courtyard and entered the fortress.

The vaulted hallways of Jorgill Deep were empty. Whatever tapestries or paintings had decorated them had long turned to ash. Smudges of rust lay here and there, the stains of former objects. Halls of empty night. More dust. Thick gray tendrils choked every room and casement. Taelin’s candle struggled in one hand while the glowing shopping bag cast a soft moving halo in the clouds stirred by her feet.