The Fifth Vertex (The Sigilord Chronicles) (2 page)

He was alive.

Somehow, inexplicably, he was alive. Nausea and pain wracked his body, but he was alive. The fact that he didn't know why he was alive bothered him even more than having survived the fall in the first place.

Urus staggered over to the palace's side entrance, clutching his stomach and hoping he wouldn't throw up. Staying close to the luminous stone wall, he avoided the gazes of those wandering in the courtyard still celebrating the Winter's Long Night festival, which had fallen the night before graduation this year.

It wasn't hard to stay unnoticed. He wore the white uniform of an acolyte, and by now everyone knew that he was to be culled. Decent folk didn't look at or speak to the culled.

He waited for a break in the traffic spilling down the glowing stairs, then scurried up through the massive doorway and darted left, hugging the wall, hoping to circle the outskirts of the east foyer without bumping into anyone.

The celebrants, their drinks in hand, their weapons slung from their hips or backs, filled the hall nearly to capacity. No one in Kest attended a party without their finest, most polished weapon, and the more important the person, the fancier the weapon they brandished.

He watched the band in the far corner: a fellow on a lute, two older men with gray beards and thinning hair pounding drums, and a chorus of women singing. He could feel the percussion rhythm through the floor, but had no idea if the rest of the music was any good. The smiles on the faces of people bobbing their heads and swaying their hips told him the tune was at least passable—or they were too drunk to know better.

Having never heard music before, he didn't feel he was missing much, though his best friend Goodwyn's family certainly seemed to enjoy it, playing their instruments nearly every night after supper. Supper at his home was a lonely affair, with Urus usually reading himself to sleep before Uncle Aegaz came home.

Urus had made it nearly halfway along the wall when a shift in the crowd sent people dancing in his direction. He panicked, searching for an escape route, but saw none. Instead, he ducked and swam upstream through the crowd, staying low and whirling through the gaps as dancing partners separated.

By the time he made it to his destination—a narrow and barely noticeable iron spiral staircase—he had only knocked over two people and spilled as many drinks. Finally, after so many failed tests, he had completed a successful mission. He might not be able to fight as well as any other child in Kest, but nobody passed without notice like Urus.
 

A fitting talent for a culled
, he thought.

He breathed a sigh of relief and started up the stairs, his relief turning to fear as he pictured his uncle, waiting upstairs in their apartment, and the talk he couldn't avoid having. As scared as he was of that conversation, it was still better than being stuck in the middle of all these people, dancing and celebrating their amazing lives, lives that were all better than anything that might lay ahead for him.

He slogged up two more levels, then stopped when something in the distance caught his eye. Two men stood at the end of a hallway having a heated conversation. He knew what his uncle had told him about eavesdropping, but one of the men was just about as tall and pale white as Urus had ever seen. There was no way he could resist that temptation.

He hopped off the spiral staircase and sidled along the hallway, keeping to the shadows. Neither man seemed to notice him.

He recognized the shorter of the men as High Shaman Kebetir, the third most powerful man in Kest after the emperor and his uncle. Urus didn't care much for the man, but Aegaz hated him with a passion, ever since the day he brought Urus to live with him after his father died.

The men gestured wildly, but both tried to keep their voices down. Despite the agitation on their faces, they were still whispering.

That just made him even more curious.

"—our arrangement," said the tall man, his skin a ghostly white and hair somehow even whiter. He wore simple brown robes with the cowl pulled back.

Urus had seen white men before, but none as interesting as this one. Thankfully both spoke Adosian, the common language of the continent of Ehmshahr. Of all the spoken languages he knew, Urus found Adosian the easiest for lipreading.

"I am not the one who altered the timeline," said Kebetir.

"It was ours to alter to begin with," said the other.

The two turned just enough so Urus could no longer read their lips. Then Kebetir, pacing, pivoted back toward the stairs.

"—won't let you ruin my chance," the shaman said.

The pale man put his hands on his hips and towered over Kebetir like a father scolding his misbehaved son.
 

Urus had never seen anyone treat the shaman like that. It was as frightening as it was satisfying.

"…planning…blood mages…" was all Urus could read on the High Shaman's lips.

The white-haired stranger took a sudden step toward Kebetir, and Urus tensed for the blow that he thought might come next. But the stranger merely stopped and peered into the dark shadows that enshrouded Urus.

"What?" asked Kebetir.

"We are not alone," replied the stranger.

Still swathed in shadow, Urus leapt over the iron railing and fled up the spiral staircase to the next floor. He couldn't be sure that he had been quiet about it, so he kept on climbing as fast as he was able, treading as lightly as he could on the stairs.

He had made it nearly to the top of the stairs at the fifth floor when he tripped and caught his weight against the wall. His hands burned as the rough stone tore and scraped his skin.

He examined the blood on his palms. At least now he knew he hadn't survived the fall from the roof because he couldn't bleed. He had one answer and a thousand more questions, and he vowed not to give up until he had answers to them all.

He paused at the top of the stairs, checking to see if he had been followed. After a few moments, Urus convinced himself that he hadn't been spotted and stood up.
 

Kebetir was up to something, that much was certain. His uncle should know that Kebetir was scheming, but if he told him, Aegaz would find out he'd been eavesdropping again.
 

The back of the fifth floor was a vast open room filled with a menagerie of dead animals, souvenirs from the epic hunts of past emperors, all stuffed, mounted, and posed to look just as they had in their natural habitats, only dead.

Urus cut diagonally through the displays, slowing to pat a lioness on her head and enjoy the soft feel of her fur. Her name was Leonora; at least that was the name he and Goodwyn had given her when they were younger and used to sneak in and play hunter-and-game. Urus usually ended up as the game, a little cub hiding under his mother surrounded by a roomful of vicious animals and one cunning hunter.

The truth was he had spent more quality time with the dead lioness as a child than with his real parents or his uncle. He wished he could curl up into a ball and hide under the strong, proud lion mother protecting her cubs, but he had to get home and deal with what had happened, face what he had tried to do.

He sighed, gave Leonora and each of her three cubs a farewell pat on the nose, and left the zoo of petrified animals behind, heading for the staircase leading to the level where the emperor's personal staff, including his uncle, had their apartments.

As he rounded the last step at the top of the stairs, he passed beneath a gas lamp whose flame flickered and struggled to stay alight.
 

Urus grinned.
Finally a problem I can fix
, he thought. It didn't hurt that it would give him an excuse not to head straight home. He dashed down the stairs and back into the menagerie, grabbed a stuffed monkey, and carried him back all the way to the fading lamp.

Standing on the monkey's eerily stiff shoulders, Urus unscrewed the brass fitting from the wall and pulled off the glass dome.
 
Hard, black soot covered the tip of the brass pipe, just as he'd suspected.
 

Spitting on his finger the way his uncle had taught him, he flicked off the dark crust and the lamp flared again to its former brilliance. It had taken Urus three straight weeks of begging and annoying his uncle before the man had finally relented and showed him how the gas lamps throughout the city worked and where their fuel came from.

He still hadn't figured out how they stuffed all those animals in the zoo room with no smell of decay and how they kept the lioness' fur so soft after all these years.

He returned the stuffed monkey and slogged home, sucked back into the morass of pain and regret he felt and the looming fear of what his uncle might say. He hoped he might find another broken lamp or out-of-place tile that needed fixing. But there was no delaying the inevitable this time. He soon found himself staring at the door to his home, on the other side of which would be his uncle, no doubt fuming with anger over what he'd done.

He was about to turn the bronze knob when the teak door swung inward, revealing Uncle Aegaz, standing in the shadows on the other side.

Urus stood in silence, gazing at him across the portal. He felt a wave of shame and sadness, his throat tightening and pain welling up in his chest, hot tears escaping down his cheeks. He yearned to hug him, to reach out and squeeze his uncle as hard as he could, squeeze all the pain and suffering out and let Uncle Aegaz make everything better the way he always did, but humiliation locked his arms at his sides.

Urus took a step forward and waited, half expecting to be hit.

Aegaz simply stepped aside and waved Urus to the table.

Urus sat, wrapping himself in the smell of the spiced stew and the red and white embers keeping the kettle warm. It was a good, comforting smell.

The apartment, like all the others in the palace, was small and spartan, with just enough furniture to accommodate the two of them. The only decorations were antique weapons resting on wall brackets and Uncle Aegaz's sword belt on a peg near the door.
 

"We need to talk," signed Uncle Aegaz, sitting on the bench opposite Urus.

Urus gulped, barely managing a nod.

"I failed you," Aegaz signed.

"What? That's crazy," Urus started but Aegaz held up his hand.

"Let me finish."

Again Urus nodded.

"I may not be your sire, but—"
 

"Thank Hol," Urus interjected, shrinking back when Aegaz gave him a look.

"But I am responsible for you. It is my job to give you a home, to raise you properly, to teach you what you need to know. I haven't done my job." Aegaz sighed. Urus wasn't sure if it was the light or the situation, but the wrinkles on his uncle's face looked more pronounced, the fatigue circles under his eyes darker than usual.

"This isn't your fault, Uncle," Urus pleaded while shoveling stew into his mouth, too hungry to wait until they were done signing to eat.

Aegaz leaned back on the bench.

"I've always thought of you as the son I could never have. I have to keep you from harm and see that you grow up strong and right and turn into a great Kestian, even if you aren't a warrior."

"Stop making this your fault, Uncle. It hurts to see you like this."

Aegaz leaned forward and signed, "And it doesn't hurt me to see you try to kill yourself?"

Pain ravaged Urus's heart—pain for what he was putting his uncle through and shame for his own cowardice and despair.

Aegaz swept his hand toward the open window that overlooked the city below.

"This city—I gave everything to it, to keep it safe and the people in it, to keep our enemies at bay." Aegaz shook his head. "All that time I should have been paying attention to you, keeping you safe, keeping you from… from…" Aegaz couldn't finish.

"Uncle, don't," Urus said, reaching across the table to hold his uncle's hands.

"I need to make this right. I will make this right."

Everything Urus had done to get to this point flashed before his eyes: the despair and loneliness of his childhood; the joy when his uncle came to take him from the brute who was his sire; the desolation at his failure to become a warrior. Gazing across the table at his uncle, he realized how little any of it mattered.

"It will be right, Uncle. I don't want to…to…do that…not anymore."

Aegaz nodded firmly. "This isn't going to get better overnight," he said.
 
"We have a lot of work to do, and I have some changes I need to make. But first, there is something else we need to talk about."

Urus cocked his head, eyebrow raised.

"By Ishimani's tears boy, haven't you wondered how you survived that fall?"

"It's all I can think about. It's driving me crazy. Did you—" Urus paused, idly stirred his stew, then looked back at his uncle. "—see what happened?"

"I saw enough."

Urus tried to wait patiently. Tapping his foot and fingers didn't help.

"This is going to be like the gas lamps, isn't it?" Aegaz asked, the faintest hint of a smile struggling to break through the sadness on his face.

Urus nodded as hard as he could. "Worse."

"Your family, our family, on my father's side, we have always had this—I don't know what to call it—ability. Maybe it's magic; maybe it's something else."

"Magic ability? What kind? Like Sorcerer Fal and the Dragons or more like Rahab and the Thousand Ogres?" Urus asked, his mind latching onto some of his favorite stories. The worlds he entered every night in his books offered him an escape from the ugly world in which he spent his days.

"No, not like any of those; at least I've never seen any evidence for it. And besides, Fal and Rahab are just characters from books," Aegaz signed. He stroked his chin with one hand, stirring his stew with the other, deep in thought.

Finally he put the spoon down and signed, "There are symbols, carved into stone in some places in the world, even here below Kest. These symbols are old, older than any city still standing today. When a son from our bloodline touches one of these symbols, the symbols glow."