Commandment (31 page)

Lakif instantly warmed to the Fornix’s present atmosphere. For the first time all day, she basked in complete anonymity. She was relieved to be free of the horses. They attracted far too much attention and would certainly label them as the bold thieves who rousted the Arachna. Without the horses, the three blended comfortably with the edgy crowd.

Lakif found Torkoth admiring the growing assembly. The brazier light lanced across his yellow orbs, and a distinctive look of satisfaction stamped his features.

“This is a beautiful place,” he praised the Fornix. Lakif thought the judgment strange. The Fornix was certainly colorful, but beauty was not among its roster of credentials. But on second inspection, Torkoth seemed to be inventorying the prostitutes.

“What are you doing?” Lakif demanded of her companion.

“I’m looking for a woman, of course.” The swordsman seemed to be eyeballing one in particular.

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Lakif snorted. “Ixion awaits us!”

Torkoth shook his head. “It is nearly None—too late for an excursion today. Besides, we are offered a unique opportunity here, to be part and parcel with the festivities.”

Lakif grunted. What an occasion for the Half-man to suddenly be the timepiece! She bid the Torkoth of yesterday to return, the one who was oblivious to the weight of the sun’s engine. Furthermore, the Acaanan had no interest whatsoever in the celebration planned here, no matter how rare it may be.

“We must find the Bard today!” Lakif enjoined her companion.

“In the morning.” Torkoth obviously didn’t share her sense of urgency.

Lakif grumbled under her breath. Logically speaking, she should have been impressed with the progress they had made this day. It was certainly a day to be remembered. It had started with a bungled horse heist and then progressed to a fantastic meeting with Eyre Rasp in Erebus. By all accounts, she should have been satisfied and ready to enjoy a much-needed reprieve.

But the day had been one stroke of luck after another. Although one star had died, she felt that her personal lucky star was on the wax. She wanted to pounce on the moment while its favors were still predisposed. Of course, she and Bael could have left without the guard. The map illustrated that their destination was close enough. In addition, Lakif didn’t feel that they would have to call on the Half-man’s sword in Ixion. But their luck so far had embraced all three. Somehow, she stubbornly felt that breaking up the triad at this crucial juncture would dash their winning streak.

Lakif looked to the Kulthean for support. Bael had been listening to the conversation quietly.

“For once, reason allied with the Acaanan. Rasp warned of the Bard’s fickle nature. He may be in Ixion today, but the morning is another matter.” Bael’s reasoning only thinly veiled his anxiety. Another night fretting over the Bard, alchemists, and the Stones was obviously overwhelming for him as well. Whatever his motivation, Lakif breathed easier knowing her friend was of a like mind.

“What say you Half-man?” Bael importuned the dissenter. Such an empathetic appeal would surely win over the third member.

“Your common judgment wins the day,” Torkoth said. From his smirk Lakif wasn’t sure if by
common
the Half-man meant
mutual
or
base
.

The torrid tempo of the Fornix thinned markedly as they approached the ruins of Ixion. Bael was the designated torchbearer, and those licking flames chased away the darkness. A few hobos lay curled up in isolated corners, nursing bottles of booze.

The ruins themselves were uninspiring. A series of brick supports rose up from the razed earth. Some were thin, shaped like chimneys. Others were rectangular and long, resembling sheets of crumbling walls. A few were simple brick arches. The helter-skelter arrangement was clearly the remains of an ancient community. But the ruins of Ixion were conspicuously incomplete. Whole sections of walls were vacant. If these were the remains of ancient structures slowly disassembling through time, where were the toppled stones? Had they been carried away for another purpose? Lakif suspected that the site was just a crude framework, the initial attempt at a community that never quite materialized. Its location at the periphery of the Fornix suggested that the ruins were the vestige of an earlier attempt to reclaim the Old City. In either event, the Acaanan was at a loss to fathom the presence of the ruins, which stretched on to the limit of her sight.

The line demarcating the border of Ixion wasn’t clear. In fact, they had probably been trudging through the place for some time before they stumbled on the great wheel. The disk was perpendicular to the earth and was supported by a sturdy framework. The wheel itself was about five yards in diameter. Wooden pegs were secured into its circumference at regular intervals. These pegs supported a chain that wound around the wheel. Remains of buckets were fastened to the chain, which dropped into a crevasse at the foot of the construction. Clearly, the device was part of an obsolete mechanism to cart water up from below.

Lakif reflected on why Ixion had been abandoned. Was it because the local water well had dried up? This had doomed many other areas of the Old City. Had the underground sea vanished, leaving the inhabitants to flee in thirst? If so, the device could still be operable. Or had the wheel device broken, preventing them from accessing the life-giving water? There was a third alternative. Had something happened here that cursed the settlement of Ixion? Had the locals fled, delegating the wheel and the seabed to disuse? The only reason she suspected that something untoward had occurred here was the presence of a skeleton chained on the disk. It was shackled spread-eagle to four different pegs along the circumference. The wheel was also scorched in several places as if someone had unsuccessfully tried to light it on fire. She felt that the victim had been strung up to spin on a burning disk.

Lakif paused to peer through a hole in a wall. The defect was nearly circular, and the surrounding brick was sound, suggesting that the spot was intended as a window. As Lakif peered into the area beyond, a figure suddenly appeared. He was wearing a lengthy, tan coat and wore a cap. A salt-and-pepper beard covered his thin chin. A large cello was tucked under his arm and bulged out of the back of his overcoat.

Lakif’s eyes brightened at the sight of the musician. She didn’t call out and she didn’t want to spook the fellow, but turned and signaled to her companions. By the time they found a route into the area, the fellow had disappeared from sight. But Lakif had a sense of which direction the musician was headed, and the three sped off in hot pursuit.

It wasn’t long before Lakif realized that they had lost the musician in the disjointed ruins. Their quarry could have disappeared through any number of broken walls. Lakif couldn’t repress a grumble of dissatisfaction. How could a musician hoisting a cello evade them? Torkoth bent low to examine the ground in hopes of delineating tracks. But there were countless scuffle marks in the dirt, and he shook his head in defeat.

Then, out of the darkness, a shrill note rose up—the tender call of a musical instrument. The note quivered in the air, then disappeared with a snap. Another, more deeply cantankerous moan replaced it. It was the soulful tone of an oboe, wailing like a lonely ghost in the ruins.

The three took to flight in pursuit of the fleeting music. They hadn’t taken a few steps when the first instrument began anew, superimposed on the brassy groan. Other instruments chimed in and together synthesized into a grating dissonance. The discordant music was the scent that led the bloodhounds through the ruins of Ixion, for when darkness robs the eye of function, the ears assume control.

They arrived at the edge of Ixion, in a cavernous area largely cleared of rubble. In the distance, a steep slope rose in a series of small caves at the summit. A rusted trashcan stuffed with all manner of debris was deployed near the center. The can glimmered with a fiery blaze.

Eight men were huddling around the burning container. Each wore a canvas coat checkered with makeshift patches, not unlike the musician seen before. Lakif immediately recognized the cellist sitting on a flat rock. His formidable cello was planted firmly in the earth between his legs. The poor instrument was peppered with nicks, chips, and scratches.

The cellist was but one member of the string quartet. This group sat close together. His partners, the first and second violin and the viola, were warming up with their instruments. Opposite the burning bin, the woodwind section consisted of the flutist and oboist. The treble pitch of the oboe clashed acutely with the shrill whistle of its neighbor. At the farthest flank sat a set of drums. The drummer was busy stretching his wrists into oblique contortions. Lastly, the only brass representative of the ensemble consisted of a trumpeter. He was apparently the latest to arrive, as he was just producing his tarnished wind instrument from a rectangular case.

“I believe we found the Octave,” Torkoth stated the obvious. Lakif wondered what peculiar dispositions encouraged these musicians to play in the ruins. Who was their intended audience? Or was it simply a jam-session, a hootenanny for inspired musicians to practice their art uncluttered by distractions?

The three approached the orchestra cautiously. Lakif for one hesitated to barge in on their busy preparations, suspecting that one of the reasons for the remote location was to be free of interruptions. Besides, musicians were proverbially angst-driven souls fueled by a rude temperament.

“Good evening,” Bael greeted the jam-session. They hardly acknowledged his hail. The trumpeter blew sharply through his horn. The resulting foghorn honk sounded like a dyspeptic burp, clearly a signal of his annoyance.

“Have you seen the Bard?” Lakif shouted over the dissonance. She was answered with a rude thump on the drums.

“I said, have you seen the Bard?” Lakif hallooed. While she suspected the Octave was peevish at being disturbed, she was resolved to harass the group until they gave up their fan.

One of them nodded toward the slope. “He’s in the box seats.”

Other than the one who responded, the other members of the orchestra uniformly ignored them. They mumbled among themselves about specific notes and doled out pointers on how to rev up the music.

The triad left the orchestra embroidered in last-minute details and headed up the slope toward the caves.

The short climb winded the Acaanan. The incline ended at a low ledge that overlooked the area below. An extremely warped stalactite dripped down from the ceiling, narrowly touching the ground. The granite was streaked with white, which the Acaanan had assumed to be a type of impurity from a distance. As they mounted the ledge, she could appreciate the formation in greater detail. The white patches proved to be a slender skeleton impregnating the granite. These were not some ossified amphibian remains as had decorated the riverbed in Erebus. It was definitely Humanoid. The skeleton was only partially visible, as the majority was encased within the formation. But the right patella and tibia were completely visible, protruding from the front. Lakif couldn’t begin to speculate on what queer quirk of nature could cause the odd phenomenon. From the curious fusion, it seemed as if the ceiling had suddenly liquefied and dripped down on an unsuspecting spelunker below, only to resolidify before the victim could extricate himself.

The bony mural proved to be but the first of many immured remains in the cave beyond. The walls encircling the ledge were literally laced with bones. In fact, the cave seemed constructed more of bone than stone in places. At first Lakif suspected that the place was the ancient site of mass burials. But there was another possibility. They could be the victims of the cataclysm at the close of the Renaissance. Maybe the earth had melted under the meteor’s impact and dripped down to encase the troupe.

Not a soul stirred in the ghoulish gloom, and Lakif feared that the Bard had either already left or the musician had been mistaken.

One skeleton had collapsed from the wall in a heap. Lakif realized that they were being presented with an opportunity to acquire another of the ingredients for the ritual. These bones surely had never touched the light of day. The Acaanan pointed this out to her friend, and the two busily began scooping up fragments. Collar bones, ribs, phalanges, all were wrapped in cloth and buried in Lakif’s travel bag.

“The curtain is rising. Please sit down in front…” A crepitated voice drifted up from the darkness. Lakif turned toward the voice but saw no one. She questioned whether the order had hailed from this cave or if it had in fact echoed in from across the ruins.

“Look!” Bael, who bore the torch, pointed a trembling finger toward the rear.

L
AKIF PEERED CLOSELY INTO THE MURKY REACHES OF THE CAVE
. A
T THE EDGE
of their light, a figure lay prostrated against the wall of bones. It was so stiff, in fact, that Lakif took it for another skeleton that had fallen free from the walls of the Human tomb. But she noticed that the figure clutched a bottle. The sight of the article reminded her of the parting advice offered by Eyre Rasp. In unison, the three exchanged astounded glances.

Torkoth was first to approach the form, although with trepidation. He hadn’t freed his sword but nevertheless closed in with caution. Bael moved to follow, but Lakif stopped him short. This sort of reconnoiter was exactly the motive for bringing the Half-man along. As the torch bearer didn’t advance, the figure still lay just beyond the rim of light.

“Are you Cawjul?” Torkoth asked. Lakif had filled him in on the modest information they had concerning the figure.

“Are you an usher?” the voice replied, although Lakif couldn’t be sure it came from the body in question. It hadn’t budged, and its mouth appeared frozen. “Is it my time to go, just before the next act?”

“We seek Cawjul of the law firm,” Torkoth reiterated.

“Then you have succeeded, in a sense,” the voice replied. There was no doubt that it issued from the corpse. The body twitched and lurched to the side as if it had been rolled over by unseen hands. The empty bottle dislodged from its grasp and clattered down the rocks into clear view. Its ruby glass glimmered in the incident torchlight.