City of Bones (35 page)

“He took his family and left the city.” Khat tucked his knife through his belt in back and let his shirt hide it. Someone had even cleaned his clothes. At least he had picked a good place to collapse. He supposed Arad had somehow talked Ecazar out of turning him back over to the Trade Inspectors, though he thought he remembered Ecazar being here at one point… He also remembered why he had been on his way to the Academia in the first place. “Why did you send for me?” he asked.

The scholar’s expression turned grim. He said, “Are you sure you’re well enough to hear it?”

“I’m not well enough to stand the suspense. Just tell me.”

“It’s something in the Survivor text. The most incredible things … Come out here.”

Khat followed Arad down the passage to his sunlit workroom, where the Ancient mural still lay incomplete in the corner. The rest of the floor was covered with stacks of paper and unfolded journals. Arad had been hard at work on something.

The scholar took up the Survivor text, searching through the fanfolded pages, as Khat eased himself down to the floor. Arad said, “After Sagai showed me the translation method he was taught, the work went much faster.”

“You finished it?” Khat asked, surprised. Reading Ancient Script was a painstaking process.

Arad met his eyes, his face serious. “When I began to understand what I was reading, I had no difficulty staying up through the nights.” He found the little copper clip that marked his place, and set it aside. “Listen. ‘The Inhabitants of the West were driven back through the doors, but many were left behind. They are beings of light and silence, but deadly. Their voices are music. Once in our world they ride the winds at night, but their embrace is death.’ The intonation marker for the type of death means to die from cold, if that’s possible. It’s talking about air spirits, don’t you see? And the creatures we call ghosts. ‘Most died in the fire, but some learned to live within it…’ It goes on like that.”

Arad searched for another place in the book, and Khat protested, “Wait. Finish that part.” He wanted to rip the text away from Arad, but he was afraid to tear the delicate pages.

“That’s not important.”

“Not important?”

“Not compared to this.” He removed another copper clip and read, “ ‘The Inhabitants of the West came as friends, speaking soft words to all those who would hear’—or know, something like that, it’s not clear—‘They brought the …’ Oh, it’s complicated, but what it seems to be saying is that the Inhabitants taught the Mages all sorts of new magics, including a type of arcane engine that seems to be what we call a painrod. Doesn’t that make a strange kind of sense? The painrods aren’t like anything else the Ancients left behind.”

“Arad, we’ll discuss it later. Keep reading.”

The scholar turned more pages, then read, “ ‘The Inhabitants swarmed into our air from the Doors to the West. Driving them back caused the skies to turn dark, the sea to steam and empty, and burning rock rose up from the seabed and drained the water. Strange creatures followed in the wake of the Inhabitants, even as the doors closed, plagues of creatures that burrowed in the blasted earth Arad’s voice trailed off. He shook his head and fumbled for another page. ” ’They‘—the Mages—’made the‘—this word might be translated as ’arcane engine,‘ but from the context I’m going to recommend ’transcendental device.‘ I think it’s more exact. ’To close the Western Doors of the sky, to prison the Inhabitants of the West in that dead land between the sky and the stars‘—that’s why I thought it said the Inhabitants of the West came from the land of the dead, but once I applied the alternate method of reading the intonation markers, the meaning became clear.“ Arad seemed torn between excitement and horrified doubt. ”I know it’s hard to believe. What’s been going through my mind since I found these passages …“

“It can’t be true.” For some reason Khat didn’t want it to be true. He felt cold, as if his fever had come back, and it was making the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He had been comfortable with the mystery of the Ancients. Nibbling away at its edges, uncovering pieces of it one tiny bit at a time, had been his life’s work. Having so much of the answer dumped in his lap at once was frightening. It felt as if supposedly solid ground was suddenly shifting under his feet. “Are you sure the book’s not just telling some kind of story?”

“I thought that too,” Arad assured him. “I thought it was a scribe making up some tale to explain the purpose of the Remnants and the other things the Ancients made that most of the Survivors didn’t understand. But that engraving that shows the three relics, so carefully done, the block, the crystal-inlaid plaque, and the one with the winged figure—we know they exist, we’ve seen them!”

“It was wrong about the block. It said it was four feet long, and the one we found was only three.” Khat knew he was being an idiot. Scribes made more errors with numbers than anything else.

“Possibly an error in transcription,” Arad said gently, humoring him. “We know at least two copies of the book were made.”

Khat still wanted to deny it. Ghosts were ghosts, and air spirits were just a mindless product of the Waste, like spidermites and creeping devil. But there was the one that had come to Radu’s house, and stalked them in the Academia… “Did you tell Elen about this?”

“I’ve sent messengers every day, but they were all turned away at the gate. I’ve been going mad!” Arad shook the book in frustration. “She thought the secrets in this book would explain how to construct arcane engines, so the Warders could further their understanding of the Ancients’ magic. It isn’t that at all.”

“Then what is it?”

Arad set the book down, folding the tattered pages back carefully.

“What it seems to say is that the Inhabitants of the West had corrupted some few of the Mages before they were driven back. That the surviving Mages who constructed the Remnants and the ‘transcendental device’ wanted to make it extremely difficult to … to dismantle, or to make the device stop working. From what I can ascertain, the device must still exist somewhere, perhaps hidden deep in the earth or… or even up in the sky, for all I know, but still working, still holding the Inhabitants back in their dead land, wherever it is. The Remnants are the key to it. The Mages raised many of them at a great cost to their power and at a great cost in the lives of the workers who did the building. They built one Remnant for each Western Door, it’s clear on that, at least.”

“So there’s a Door to the West near each Remnant?” Khat asked, thinking,
Hell below, that means there’s one somewhere around the Tersalten Flat Remnant
. That was less than a day’s travel from Charisat.

“I believe so. Or there was, at any rate. The text says that many of the workers were killed by the heat and the foul airs from the living Waste rock during the building, but in the end, they were successful. Only one Remnant could be used to halt the device, and anyone trying to do so would not only have to know which Remnant, but what to do to it once it was found. Oh, there’s some process that has to be gone through, and the three relics seem essential to it. I haven’t had the chance to translate that section yet. It’s most obscure …”

Khat was silent, trying to take it in. He thought of the Tersalten Flat Remnant’s antechamber, with all those shapes cut into the walls, just like all the other Remnants. Such a strange thing for the Ancients to do. So deliberately confusing. But if it was part of an arcane engine unlike anything ever discovered before, unlike even the hideously complicated device that had once lived in the deepest level of the Enclave …

At the time Khat had thought that they might find a plaque to fit every shape in the antechamber wall and still not have all the pieces of the arcane engine, and he had been wrong. You only needed one plaque, to slide into one shape, in one Remnant. Once you looked at it that way, he could see where the block was meant to be placed too. No telling where the little winged relic went, not yet. But it might become apparent once the other two had been put into place, and if one studied the process Arad spoke of. Khat said, “They should have made it impossible to stop; they should have destroyed those three relics, or never made them. But, you know, they were always so careful. You can’t trap yourself inside a Remnant, even if you break the plug that works the door. They must have thought that one day, someone might need to stop the engine. So they left a way to do it.”

“And this book is the guide. It gives the clues that any knowledgeable Mage or Warder, or a fakir for that matter, could use to open the Doors of the West, to let the Inhabitants back into our world.” Arad rubbed his temples. “Perhaps our philosophers have been wrong. Perhaps this place the Ancients called the West is the land of the dead.”

Khat took the book away from him, turning the folded pages thoughtfully but not really seeing the words. Sonet Riathen wasn’t wrong about the book at all. Arad had read that part; he just hadn’t seen the implications the way the Master Warder would. The book said that the Inhabitants of the West had brought new magics to the Ancient Mages. If Riathen let them back into the world, they would do the same for the Warders.

Right before they killed everyone and made the Waste rock rise again.

The house boasted a cistern and a small room with a basin for bathing, and Khat used it to clean up a bit and to get rid of the three-day beard growth, since looking even more like a foreigner wasn’t going to do him any good with anybody. Before he did anything else he wanted to read the key passages in the text for himself, so he took over a corner of the scholar’s workroom while Arad went off to take care of his other commitments at the Academia and to send another messenger to Elen.

Arad had two servants, a pimply boy who was plainly terrified of Khat, even when the krismen was doing nothing more alarming than sitting on the floor reading, and the old woman who had looked in on him earlier. She treated him with the casual contempt of a close relation, coming in to threaten him for not eating the pottage she had brought him earlier, and snarling at him when he asked her suspiciously what was in it. He had a good idea who had been in charge of the messier parts of taking care of him.

About midway through the afternoon, when Khat had read enough to badly want to discuss it with Sagai, or Arad, or even Elen, Ecazar arrived.

Khat had heard him coming down the entrance hall and assumed it was Arad-edelk returning. When he looked up Ecazar was already crossing the room, and it was too late. It might have been too late anyway; the house was still surrounded by Academia vigils.

The text was unfolded across his lap, and Khat didn’t bother to try to stand. He had borrowed Arad’s reading lenses, finding they made the task easier when the light shifted into afternoon, and now pulled them off so he could see Ecazar.

Hard eyes glaring down above a brief veil, the Master Scholar said, “I’ve spoken to Arad. Is it true?”

“It could be,” Khat admitted. “It could also be a collection of mad ramblings.”

Ecazar scratched his chin under the veil, eyes narrowing, and said, “What can be done about it?”

You want my opinion
? Khat thought, startled and suspicious. At least he assumed the question was directed at him; Ecazar was talking to a spot on the wall about three feet above his head. Wary, he answered, “Nothing, until the Master Warder stops refusing Arad’s messengers.”

“It isn’t only Arad’s messengers he refuses; he won’t see mine, either.” Ecazar hesitated. “There may be something wrong on the First Tier. We have only a few students from the highest families, but none have come down to meet with their tutors since the day before yesterday.”

Khat had no reply to that, and felt the conversation lag. He wished Ecazar would go away. To provoke him, he said, “When are you going to call the Trade Inspectors again?”

Ecazar finally met his eyes, angry. “I didn’t send for them the first time.”

It came to Khat suddenly that Ecazar couldn’t have been too suspicious of him, or he would never have allowed Khat and Sagai into Arad’s house the first time, when Elen had asked to speak to the younger scholar. If Ecazar had thought him a thief, he would never have allowed Khat to see that mural, to know it existed at all. Still, Khat asked, “If you didn’t, then who did?”

The Master Scholar snorted. “I assume it was one of your other criminal associates,” he said, turning away. But he hesitated again, and without looking back, added, “I disagreed with Scholar Robelin on any number of points, but handing one of his former assistants over to the Trade Inspectors would be an insult to his memory I do not intend to make.”

Khat said nothing, not sure he wanted to believe him because that meant forgiving him, and he wasn’t ready for that yet. But he remembered something he wanted to ask. “Wait. What were you looking for that night?”

Ecazar stopped in the doorway, grudgingly. “What do you mean?”

“When you took the relic with the winged figure back to the Porta. What were you looking for?”

The scholar raised an eyebrow, but didn’t ask how Khat knew this. He said, “That figure. There was a scholar—I finally discovered it was Ivius-atham—who identified that stylized winged man as a symbol he called the ‘seal of the great death,’ or alternately the ‘seal of the great closing.’ His source was a scrap of Ancient Script he discovered bound in with a Last Sea text. I was looking for my notes on his work.”

“A death symbol?”

“It’s possible he was wrong. I’ve reread his translation of the scrap, and I suspect it’s faulty. I would need the original document to be sure, but that is owned by a collector in Alsea.”

Ecazar had unbent as far as he was going to, maybe as far as it was possible for him. He left, and Khat sat there for some time thinking, before he put the lenses on again and went back to the book.

Arad returned late in the day, looking tired, dust-covered, and footsore. “You went to the First Tier,” Khat said accusingly.

“I did,” Arad admitted, easing himself down onto a stool and putting aside his veil. He accepted a cup of tea from the old servant woman, and said, “The guard at the Master Warder’s gate wouldn’t admit me, or even take a message in, so I loitered in the street for a long time, and saw no one leave or enter. In fact, I saw no one moving in the house at all,” he added.