Drawn Blades (7 page)

I glanced over at my sheaths and saw that Faran had indeed managed to lift one of my blades practically out of my lap without my noticing. “That’s not going to be necessary, Faran. Please put the sword back.” I turned my eyes back to Thuroq, desperately glad that Faran hadn’t decided to try anything hasty. “Pardon my apprentice. She’s had bad experiences with the Durkoth in the past.”

That was putting it mildly. In her former role as a spy Faran had stolen the Kothmerk, a signet that held enormous cultural value for the Durkoth and Kodamians both. The incident had nearly started a three-way war and a lot of people had died, both human and Durkoth. Many of the latter had fallen at Faran’s hand.

“It is of no matter,” replied Thuroq. “I am not in any danger, nor have I been while we talked.” The forehead of the stone face parted, exposing only more stone. “I am deep within the rock, too deep even for your divine blade to touch. A good decision, I think.”

“And the face?” I asked.

“Mine, but not. Sister stone acts as both my mirror and my voice.”

Faran stepped out of shadow and returned my sword to me before crossing to look at the stone face from much closer. “That’s an interesting piece of magic.”

Thuroq’s lips thinned ever so slightly. “It is
not
magic. The stone and I are children of the same mother. She shapes herself to my will out of love, nothing more.”

“Of course,” said Faran, her tone broadly sarcastic. “Nothing magic or coercive about it.”

“Faran.” I shot her a quelling look when what I really wanted was to shake her. “Don’t.” She knew as well as I did that the Durkoth absolutely hated having their command over stone compared to human magic—it was tied up with their religion and the Others’ ancient war with the gods.

She winked at me, then slipped back into shadow before I could say anything more, effectively removing herself both from sight and the conversation. I turned back to Thuroq.

“I do apologize again. You were about to tell me why you’re here, I believe. Something about having been directed to speak with me . . .”

“By the King of the North, yes. I am here because of the ring.”

I had a brief nightmarish flashback to the mess with the Kothmerk, but then realized I might have leaped to the wrong conclusion.

“Wait, do you mean this one?” I raised the hand bearing the smoke ring.

Thuroq nodded ever so slightly, his expression going grim.

“What about it?” I asked.

“It is a wedding ring.”

“Yes, I was aware of that. Why does that matter to you?”

“We have felt it calling through the earth each time you sit beside a fire, smoke singing underground, a link to the south and our buried past.”

Triss gave a little shiver in my shadow at that. Though he remained silent, I could sense his concern and shared it. There was something here I was missing. Something important.

“Is there a problem?” I asked.

“Yes. When a mortal such as yourself weds one of the buried gods of our ancestors, there is most definitely a problem.”

T
he
Others called him the Fire That Burns Underground, or Smoke in the Ashes. Humans knew him as the Smoldering Flame.

Whatever you chose to name him, he was one of the buried gods—a thing out of evil legend and twice dead. He’d been put into the ground once at the end of the godwar by the Emperor of Heaven, and then again by Siri Athalos in the year 3209—a feat that earned her the use-name Mythkiller and made her the pride of Namara’s temple.

But while we may
call
a buried god
dead
, they are ultimately beyond the true death, and some part of the fallen god had begun to stir in his slumber once again. According to Thuroq, the Durkoth had felt the first rumbles of his unquiet sleep echoing through the bones of the great mountains some years past, but had paid little enough attention at the time. The buried gods are ever restless in the grave, and their struggles against the bonds of divine magic and enchanted earth surge and fade as endlessly and inevitably as the waves in Tien’s harbor.

“But then something changed,” I said, as Thuroq wound his story toward its end.

“It did,” agreed Thuroq. “The Fire That Burns Underground was one of ours at the beginning, a child of earth and stone. Because of that, he may yet persuade his element to aid him from time to time, despite the deathlike sleep that holds his soul, and the anchors the gods set into the Wall of the Sylvain, which bind the greatest part of his magic.”

“Excuse me,” Faran cut in sharply though she maintained her shroud, “but I’m getting kind of tired of all the blah-blah-blahs. Could you maybe get around to the point of this little lesson in the history of boring? You implied that Smoking Mayhem, or whatever you want to call him, had married himself to a mortal—presumably Aral here. Or, possibly, Siri. You weren’t very clear on the whole thing. . . .”

“It’s not a simple matter,” said the Durkoth. “The ring around Aral’s finger is born of the Fire That Burns Underground. We can hear it singing to its mate through the deep ways. But, as far as we can tell, it is not the god’s waking will that it obeys. He remains entombed, and though he stirs, he is not yet risen. That much is easy to read even over so great a distance as lies between us and the buried lands. To learn more, we must examine one ring or the other. Since we will not pass the Wall willingly, that means this one.” He nodded toward my hand.

“You’re going to have to come out of that rock if you want a really good look at it,” said Faran, and I caught a smug and dangerous note in her tone.

“Not I,” replied Thuroq. “I have not the necessary skill. I merely speak.”

At last,
Triss said into my mind.
I think we finally approach the true point of this whole endeavor.

I flipped my hand palm up. “And . . .”

“And my master, the King of the North, has bid me here to ask you if you would consent to a brief detour on your path south. I can promise you that it will cost you but a little time and not an hour of it drawn from your road.”

“That’s an interesting offer,” I said, and I might be inclined to consider it given a bit more information. I might be willing to offer up my life if Siri needed it, but I would prefer not having to do it blind. “Though I wonder how the one can be managed without the other.”

“Both concerns are addressed easily enough. The king wishes that you see one of his Uthudor and allow her to look at your ring.”

Uthudor?
Triss sent.
I don’t know that word.

Before I could echo his question aloud, Thuroq continued. “Dame Krithak is a . . . scholar? . . . Yes, I think that is the closest word in your tongue, though student or surgeon might also strike near the mark. The Uthudor are scholars of the earth. Though she long ago left court, Dame Krithak remains among the most revered of Uthudor, and she resides not far from here as the tunnelworm bores. If you will agree to go to her, I will open the way for you.”

“And we won’t lose any time out of our travels?” I asked.

“Quite the contrary. Once you are done with the Uthudor and have returned to your companion here, I will speed you along on wings of earth for three nights running.”

I don’t like the sound of that, Aral. We shouldn’t allow them to separate us from Faran.

I’m not thrilled about it either, but taking Faran to visit a Durkoth elder is a bit like taking a mongoose along on a visit with a cobra. Besides, this is the one opportunity we’ve had to get any information independent of Siri about what’s going on.

So, you
don’t
completely trust Siri.

Of course, I don’t. The only person in the whole world that I trust entirely is you. I may owe Siri anything she asks of me, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to give it to her blind if I can avoid it. This is the first real chance we’ve had to get any real information about the ring and what the hell is going on. I think we have to take it.

Aloud, I asked Thuroq, “
Returned
to my companion? I take it that means you want me to leave Faran here?”

“Yes. I’m sorry, but the one we call the
Stonecutter
must remain at your camp. Dame Krithak has only consented to see one.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but Faran touched me on the shoulder before I could speak. Stepping out of shadow, she knelt to put her face on a level with Thuroq’s stone mask, fixing him with the coldest of stares.

“I can’t speak for Aral, but I don’t trust you, nor any of your kind. I have minimum conditions that must be met. If Aral agrees to go to this Uthudor, that’s on him, but you will remain here with me, aboveground where I can reach you. If any harm comes to him while he is with your Uthudor, there will be a reckoning that will
begin
with my killing you on the spot.”

The rock wall parted like a curtain, creating or exposing an arch and stairs that spiraled down into the earth. Faran rolled backward in response, drawing her cane knives and slipping into shadow once again. At the same time, Thuroq rose into view, coming around the curve of the stairs some half dozen steps down. I still couldn’t say whether the Durkoth was male or female, though if pressed I’d have bet on the former.

As I had come to expect with Durkoth, he didn’t actually climb the stairs, but simply stood statue still as they bore him silently up from the depths. Both his flesh and hair seemed to have been carved from a single block of white marble. He was barefoot and wore nothing but a simple black knee-length tunic of onyx.

I didn’t make the mistake of thinking that was some sort of illusion, as I might have before my extended dealings with the Durkoth during the Kothmerk mess. No, despite the fact that the hem fluttered around Thuroq’s knees like fine silk, the tunic was undoubtedly exactly what it looked like—a piece of living rock that weighed several hundred pounds and moved only as its wearer willed it. Past experience suggested that it would also double as excellent armor.

“If you will agree to see the Uthudor,” said Thuroq, “I will abide here as hostage for your safe return. My king anticipated such a request and commanded that I honor it if so asked.” The Durkoth gestured to the stairs. “This will lead you to the way which has been prepared.”

Triss?

I say yes, though it’s reluctantly, and with deep reservations. You’re right that we don’t really know anything about the ring, or what’s happening with Siri yet, or about this Fire That Burns Underground. The Others normally refuse to speak about the buried gods with our kind. We can’t pass this up.

I nodded. I didn’t like it either, but that didn’t change the facts. “One more question, Thuroq. You say that you will speed us along on wings of earth. I have to travel the distance from Tien to the Sylvani Empire in a way that maintains the contact between my ring and Siri’s. . . .”

“The rings sing one to the other through the deep ways. What I propose will not interfere with their song. If anything, it may amplify it.”

“Then I will go.”

I rose and quickly donned the harness that held my swords and other working gear, then headed for the arch in the stone. As I put my foot on the first step, I called over my shoulder, “I won’t be gone long, Faran. I expect to find Thuroq alive and in one leak-free piece when I return.”

Faran didn’t answer me, but Thuroq added, “That would be ideal, yes.”

The stairway spiraled down through earth and rock for about fifty feet, ending abruptly at a rough wall of granite. As I put a hand on the stone, Triss reshaped my shadow into dragon form and slid upward to meet my fingers.

Somehow this isn’t what I expected,
he said into my mind.

Yeah, it makes for a mighty short trip unless we’re supposed to swim through stone the rest of the way, and I wouldn’t do that again, even if I could.

I’d taken such a trip with the Durkoth outcast Qethar once upon a time, and I couldn’t even
imagine
a circumstance where I would agree to do it again. I was about to turn around and head back up the stairs when I felt the bottom step shift beneath me, angling itself downward. That was all the warning I got before the base of the wall opened up in front of me, forming itself into the top of a chute with walls as slick as volcanic glass. Before I could do much more than take a deep breath I slid downward into darkness.

I dropped another fifty or so feet in a matter of instants, then abruptly the chute or tube, or whatever you wanted to call it, angled back upward. I’m not sure how far up I moved before sliding over the top and moving down again at a much shallower angle. Reason dictated it couldn’t be any farther than I’d come downward, but reason didn’t get much say in what the Durkoth could do with stone. A fact that I found further reinforced as the trip lengthened and I had time to think instead of simply reacting.

A dim red magelight pulled from my trick bag allowed me to examine the space around me. Where I had expected to see darkness fading away into the distance both above and below me, I instead found paired stone concavities no more than a yard away in each direction. I wasn’t sliding through an open-ended tube so much as I was riding a tapered cylinder of stone through the depths of the earth. The effect made me think of a particularly fat rabbit passing down the gullet of a snake barely big enough to swallow it.

That’s disconcerting,
I sent to Triss.
What happens if the will that’s moving us decides to stop suddenly? Do I run into the bottom hard? Or does the whole thing collapse?

I’m not sure that’s quite how it works,
Triss replied after a couple of long heartbeats.
You probably can’t see it, but the tips of the cones above and below us are open about a finger’s width. I can extend myself through the hole and a considerable distance into the tiny tube beyond, and there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight in either direction. I suspect the one above reaches all the way back to the stairs we came down, like an impossibly long strand of hollow reed.

And ahead?

There, too, I expect. Thuroq spoke of a way that had been prepared, like it was a thing already done. Perhaps this is sort of a self-operating transport spell, only without the magic.

You realize that doesn’t make a lick of sense, don’t you?

Hmph. We’re dealing with Other ways of doing things here. You need to step outside of the human frame of reference. In the everdark there are currents of shadow, much like ocean currents. If you know how, you can ride these from place to place, traveling great distances without having to exert yourself to do so. Maybe the Durkoth have ways of tapping similar currents in the earth.

I suppose that’s possible . . . though I couldn’t begin to imagine how. I mean, I know the earth can move on its own—we got caught in that quake in Anyang, after all—but that’s a very different sort of motion.

Yes, but . . . wait, I see light ahead. Be ready.

I stowed my little magelight and checked the hilts of my swords—I wanted to make sure that sliding so far on my back hadn’t done anything untoward to the catches that held them in their sheaths. Then I braced myself for a sudden stop. I needn’t have bothered with that last, as I slowed almost to nothing a moment before I broke through into open air. There, I was deposited neatly and gently on a sort of stone chaise. It was surprisingly yielding and comfortable, reminding me of the clothes the Durkoth wore—simultaneously fabric soft and rock hard.

As I got up from the low couch, it pivoted, while the opening above slid down the wall, transforming the chaise visually from the bottom end of a chute into the top of a scoop. Watching it made me feel a bit queasy—stone oughtn’t to flow and shift like that. It especially shouldn’t do it in such a manner that every single step from start to finish looked as permanent and solid as if it had always been that way and always would.

The chaise centered one end of an egg-shaped room perhaps twenty feet across the long way. There were no doors or windows and, with the narrowing of the tube by which I had entered, no apparent way out. But the shape of the room and the pale sourceless light that illuminated it focused my attention on the end opposite the one by which I had entered, so I headed in that direction.