City of Bones (41 page)

“I’m sure.” It was the only thing he was sure of.

“Very well.” There was a pause, and Khat waited, aware he had cast the last die and there was nothing he could do to help himself. Then Constans said, “Estorim.”

The young Warder who had remained behind when the Patricians left stepped forward. Khat had forgotten he had stayed in the room.

“Estorim,” Constans said again, “conduct our guest out.”

Elen was dreaming.

In her dream she lay on the floor of the central chamber of a Remnant, her eyes half-open, her limbs so heavy she couldn’t move. It was night, and somewhere a fire was lit. She could hear it and smell it, though it was too far away for her to be bothered by its heat. The stone was gritty with sand, and grated against her cheek, and she could see shadows dance on the walls. Even though her view of the place was limited by her position on the floor, she knew, with the knowledge that comes to one in dreams, that this was the Tersalten Flat Remnant, the one that she had gone to with Khat. But she didn’t seem to be dreaming of the time she had spent there; this was something new.

The Remnant felt different to her Warder’s senses. It was no longer bare, and empty, and waiting. Something had come to occupy it.

The other odd part of the dream was that she could hear, or almost hear, voices. Soft, musical voices, as if flutes and tambrils were speaking to one another. Sometimes one voice, sometimes several, sometimes hundreds. She couldn’t make out the words, because a single deep voice was drowning them out. The single voice sang one low, constant note, and seemed as vast as the Waste and the great sky above it combined. It was preventing her from hearing what the other voices were trying to say. And she knew, with the knowledge that comes to one in dreams, that the single voice was the voice of this Remnant, perhaps of all the Remnants. And that if it ever once faltered and she did hear what the other voices said, something terrible would happen. She knew too, that the voices were coming from that place all power came from, from that place where you sent yourself to see the inner workings of locks, or to see the future, or to soul-read. And that these things were not done inside the mind of a trained Warder, as everyone thought, but in that other place.

Where anything was possible.

How absolutely fascinating
, Elen thought, and as soon as the thought was articulated, she realized,
This is not a dream
.

And the voice faltered.

Elen sat bolt upright, hands clapped over her ears, a scream rising in her throat. The scream came out as a coughing fit; her throat was too dry.

By the time she had her breath back the voices were gone. She looked around the Remnant, dazed, trying to understand why she was here. It was night, and there was a small fire, not in the hole in the pit’s floor as it should have been but close to the doorway into the ramp chamber. Near it were a couple of travel packs and a clay water jar. The slab on the outer door was down, shutting out the Waste.

Elen had no idea how long she had been unconscious; her limbs were heavy, and her throat might have been stuffed with cotton batting. She flattened her hands on the dusty surface of the stone floor.

It was reassuringly warm and solid. She thought,
This is real. Maybe everything else was a dream
. All she could hear was the natural silence of an isolated place.

She closed her eyes, and carefully extended her senses. Far in the distance, as if separated from her by some great chasm, there was one low voice, singing one deep note …

Elen shivered, glancing around the chamber again, making sure she was alone. It was all real, though her dreaming mind could hear it far more clearly than her waking one. Now that she knew where to listen she could hear the resonation of that single voice, just on the edge of her awareness. It meant the other voices were real, too, though she couldn’t sense them at all now. And somehow she was very glad of that.

Elen tried to stand, and it took more effort than it should have. Once on her feet she staggered, as if the solid stone of the Remnant had swayed under her. Her head was pounding in rhythm with her heartbeat. She frowned, and felt the back of her skull for knots or matted blood. No, she hadn’t been struck there, though she certainly felt like it.
Drugged
? she wondered. It was so hard to think.

She staggered toward the fire and managed to reach the supply packs before her knees gave way. She lifted the lid of the water jar first, and sniffed cautiously. Her nose was city-bred, and she couldn’t tell if it was drugged or not, but best not to take chances. Up in the well chamber there was far more water than she would ever need if she had to stay out here for years, and just the thought of it was comforting. When she finished here she would crawl up the ramp and duck her head into the cistern.

She searched the packs slowly and thoroughly, making herself check the inside pockets again when her scattered wits couldn’t remember if she had already done it or not. There was not much here except a few packets of travel food, a bronze sextant and compass, and a coil of rope, but the packs were strained at the seams, as if several heavy things had been removed.

Then in one pocket she really had forgotten to search she found a small knife.
Idiots
, she thought, testing the blade carefully.
They probably knew it was here, and just didn’t trouble to take it
. She could imagine them saying casually to each other, “Oh, don’t bother, she won’t know what to do with it.” She went to tuck it away into her boot and found herself staring uncomprehendingly at her own dirty toes.
Of course
. Elen bit her lip. She had worn sandals when she went to see Rasan, and someone had taken them, small protection that they were. Her memories of her last trip out here were confusing her.

Elen put the knife away in an inner pocket of her kaftan. There went the half-formed plan of putting all the useful articles in one pack, refilling the jar from the cistern, and striking out for the city. She wouldn’t last three steps in the Waste, not dressed like this. Elen frowned, trying to think, wanting to pound her forehead in exasperation but unable to summon the energy.

Aimless, she got to her feet again and stumbled toward the pit.

As she drew near it she could see something was different. Someone had filled in the hole in the floor of it, the cavity that was used as a fire pit. She could see where they had cleaned out the layers of ash and scraped them into a corner.

It had been filled in with a block of dark stone that had a strange metallic sheen, with fine lines in complex circular patterns etched into it.

Her knees trembled, and she sat down hard, muttering to herself, “Oh, I see.”

It was their big ugly block, of course. She supposed the crystal plaque that had brought her out here the first time was safe in its place in the antechamber wall, as well.

The ugly block was resonating with the voice of the Remnant. It was so powerful it made her teeth ache.

Someone was coming down the ramp from the well chamber. She felt his footsteps on the stone as if he was walking down the length of her spine. She knew the taste of his mind, too. It was Riathen.

Elen shook her head, wondering at it. The presence of the block in the place meant for it seemed to make it easier to use her power. The humming stone of the Remnant seemed alive and oddly responsive to her inner sense. Perhaps it was also that she had touched that other country of the mind, where the voices came from. The thought was not reassuring.

She felt Riathen cross the chamber, and stop just behind her.

“What is it doing?” she asked him. In a way it was still as if she was dreaming, and she didn’t think to question his appearance.

“What it was meant to do,” he said. He spoke calmly, as if they were in one of the garden courts of his house, discussing some fine point of power. “There is a tendency to think of arcane engines as engines, as if they resembled steam engines, or clockworks. Oh, some of them did, I imagine. This is rather more sophisticated. It was meant to last a long time, untended, to survive fire and rockfall and other disasters. There is nothing special about the stone in itself, only that it has been imbued with the intent of the most powerful Mages of the Ancients.”

Elen gripped the edge of the pit and slid down to the bench, then to the floor. Riathen said nothing to stop her. On her knees, she ran her hands over the block. Its fit into the square cavity was seamless; she couldn’t wedge her smallest finger between it and the rock, even if it hadn’t been too heavy for her to pry out.

Pry out
? she wondered. Why was she so sure it should have been pried out? Her heart froze. The Remnant itself had indicated it to her, in the subtle message carried in its song.

Perhaps it had been so firmly imbued with the intent of the Mages that it had been imbued with life, as well. She looked over her shoulder at Riathen. “It wants you to take it out. Can’t you hear it?”

He frowned down at her, concern softening his expression. “You’re confused, Elen. Try not to worry.”

She snorted, only partly in amusement. “And why is that, I wonder. What did you drug me with?”

“Asphodel. It won’t harm—”

“I know what asphodel is,” she snapped. It dulled the senses, lulled the victim into a heavy, unnatural sleep. It was also supposed to inhibit arcane power. Trade Inspectors used it on fakirs and ghost-callers when they arrested them, and fortune-tellers were always being accused of slipping it into a rival’s tea. It had no effect on the powers of mad Warders, though it made them as dizzy and sick as it did everyone else. Maybe she had gone mad. Or they thought her as weak as a fakir, that the drug would dull what little power she had.

The Remnant wanted the block pried out now. The configuration the stars were assuming was dangerously propitious. Over vast distances she could feel great masses of air, astral bodies, the lines of force that crossed the world, the draw of the tide in the Last Sea, the smoking heat in the belly of a nameless mountain far out into the Waste, all clicking into place like the works of a clock about to strike its hour bell. Soon it would be too late.
I know
, she thought,
I will. I’ll do it as soon as I can, I promise, but I can’t think if you nag me
.

Elen’s awareness of the world as a vast body that she was an infinitesimally small part of gradually faded, leaving her shivering in wonder. She saw Riathen staring at her, his brows drawn together and his eyes worried. She said, “At least try to hear it, can’t you?”

His frown deepened, and he didn’t reply.

Someone else was coming.

Kythen Seul.

Elen’s eyes narrowed. It was Seul who had caught her in Justice Rasan’s house, who had forced the first drops of the drug down her throat. The memory of it burned.

Seul came up to Riathen, watching Elen intently. He said, “It’s as I thought, then. She’s mad.”

Riathen shook his head, his face bitter. “No, merely confused. I—”

“She killed a High Justice of the Trade Inspectors,” Seul said, as if trying to persuade Riathen to face the sad fact. “You can’t deny that.”

Elen shook her head, disgusted. So that was his game. “I can deny it.” She remembered Rasan clearly, and everything he had said. The Heir was somehow involved in this, in Seul’s treachery. She remembered what had really killed Rasan. “What was that ghost?” she demanded. “Did you send it?”

Typically, both men ignored her. Seul kept his eyes on Riathen. For an instant Elen saw past his facade of worried concern to the man beneath, the greed and the guilt, the irritation with Riathen’s hesitancy, the barely restrained impatience.

“I never believed it could happen,” Riathen was saying, more to himself than to either of them. “Her powers were always so tentative. Certainly I didn’t expect it to happen while I—”

All bitter regret, Seul said, “She pushed herself too far. She wanted to serve you too well.”

“What are you talking about?” Elen interrupted. They were speaking of her as if she were dead. It was hard to think and she felt awful, but she wasn’t dying. Not unless they killed her with asphodel. “Why have you brought me here?”

The Doors of the West
, the surface of Riathen’s soul said. “For your own good,” he replied, gently, aloud. He turned to Seul. “Perhaps when the engine is completed, something can be done for her.”

When the engine is completed
. Elen’s fingers still rested on the Wock, and it throbbed under her light touch, faster than her heartbeat, urgent, compelling. Its message was more vital than anything the two men said, and her attention drifted.

“Perhaps,” Seul admitted.

Elen had a brief glimpse of the Waste from above, as if she looked down on it from some city tower or the top of the Remnant itself. There was a sensation of air rushing past, of an unaccustomed height. The light was the very earliest brush of morning, with stars still visible on the dark horizon.

Something else was there, and its presence was an intrusion, an invasive touch, a disease rotting the body…

“Something’s coming,” she said aloud.

Elen was still looking up at Seul, though her eyes had been temporarily blind. He turned, startled, toward her, then flushed and said, “We should give her more asphodel. If it wears off while we’re performing the awakening…”

Riathen closed his eyes briefly, as if he was in pain. What Elen read on his soul was relief. He said, “Very well.”

Seul pulled a stoppered vial from his mantle, but Riathen didn’t comment on this evidence of preparation. He stepped toward her, but the older man stopped him. Riathen said, “I’ll give it to her.”

Elen gathered her scrambled thoughts, removed her hand from the block to try to shut out its beguiling call. Riathen was kneeling before her, lifting the stopper and holding out the vial. “Please, Elen.”

She could dash it from his hand, but she had a better idea. Seul was facing toward the door slab, frowning. Riathen’s eyes were on her, and his guard was down.

She took the vial, brought it to her lips, and pushed toward the edge of Riathen’s mind an image of her drinking, swallowing. She couldn’t prevent a drop or two from rolling over her lips, but the rest went down her chin.