The Splintered Gods (32 page)

‘It’s beautiful up here,’ she said. She didn’t expect a reply – an Elemental Man sat quietly in the corner and the Arbiter had her mask firmly back in place – but to her surprise Lin Feyn came and stood at the window beside her. Together they watched the sun go down.

‘I am, through some arcane path, a descendant of Feyn Charin himself,’ said Lin Feyn. ‘The Dralamut keeps careful track of these things. It’s one of the duties of the Arbiter to maintain the records
of her bloodline, although of course we have many slaves to keep them for us. A long time ago someone decided it might matter – that perhaps the sons and daughters of Feyn Charin carried something in their blood which made them special.’ She raised an eyebrow slightly. ‘There
is
a little truth to it. The sons and daughters of the first navigator make fine enchanters. But so do many others.’ She didn’t move from the window but the tone of her voice changed and grew subtly wistful. ‘You’ve read some of his journals now. In the Dralamut I have them all, written at the time of the Crimson Sunburst. He was in love with her, that much is clear. Now and then people whisper she was his mother or his half-sister or his lover or perhaps all of those things. Some people nurse a prurient hunger to read his journals to find the answer, but it’s not there. What always strikes me most is the power in his words. The joy of them. I think perhaps he was in love with everything, with the world and all its beauty. He would have liked this sunset, Chay-Liang.’ She turned away. ‘The journals of which I speak were written when he was young. Before everything changed.’

Liang opened her mouth to speak and then closed it again. What did you say to that? ‘He was a very great man.’ There. As trite and bland and meaningless a thing as anyone could possibly imagine.

‘He was. He spent a great deal of time at the Godspike. He was there when the killers came for the Sunburst. History would have us believe he stayed there while she hid in the Empty Sands and that the two had no further dealings with one another. History says he was absent when her golem army made its unexpected appearance at Mount Solence and attacked the Elemental Men in their own home, just as they had done to her. I have read his journals and there must be something else, something that was erased or lost. For a long time he kept no records or else destroyed them. The stories would have us believe he remained at the Godspike all through the insurrection and its aftermath and that the Elemental Men left him entirely alone. Years he spent there, and in that time what do we have of him? Almost nothing until he finally entered the storm-dark and returned, and then everyone knows his story after that.

‘I’ve seen the journals from start to finish. The man who wrote in those later years was different. Changed. He was troubled and
paranoid and always looking over his shoulder. He hints at things he saw when he crossed the storm-dark and it seems they affected him deeply. A realm made of liquid silver. A different time when a black moon rose into the sky to blot out the sun. All that love he’d once had for the world, somewhere he lost it.

‘He spent most of his later years refusing to leave the Dralamut, constantly building and improving it. He showed a few of the other enchanters how to cross the curtains that lie out to sea, a handful of men and women he knew and who’d learned their powers from the Crimson Sunburst as he had. Then he left them to it. When the Elemental Men all but forced him back to the Godspike, he refused to enter the maelstrom or to teach any others. In his last years he drifted into madness, filling book after book with bizarre rantings that make no sense. Most of it’s illegible. Some is in code. When he was lucid, he was bitter and dark. For years they shut him away, left a few slaves to take care of him and quietly wished he’d die. Eventually he did.’

She turned and put a hand on Liang’s shoulder.

‘He saw something in the storm-dark that left him desperately afraid, and now and then, in his later notes, he speaks of what can only be dragons. I believe, in part, we are following his path. Do not end your days like him. Keep your love of the world, Chay-Liang.’ Her eyes glistened.

‘And you, lady.’

The Arbiter turned slowly back to the window and stared at the distant darkening sky. ‘For me it may already be too late. I have begun to look over my shoulder more than I look to where I’m going.’ She watched until the sun had gone and the first stars began to shine, then quietly went to her bed.

36

The Azahl Pillar

Liang woke the next morning to find the gondola filled with golden light. The rising sun burst over the eastern mountains and blazed through the windows. When she crawled down from the tiny space that was hers, food was on the table. Honey and fresh bread and fruit, and the bread was still warm inside. When she wondered how this could be, Lin Feyn actually laughed. ‘A perk of being the Arbiter. I sent the killer to bring us food. He might as well. He has his uses.’

‘Is he here, lady?’

‘Not now.’ They were sinking back towards the city. ‘There are places in Vespinarr I wish to visit. Tomorrow we leave for the Konsidar. He’s making the arrangements.’

‘Surely you have a t’varr?’

Red Lin Feyn shook her head. ‘The Arbiter does not need a t’varr, nor a hsian nor a kwen. The Dralamut has all these things. When the Arbiter ventures elsewhere, it’s always to the Crown of the Sea Lords to hold her court, and Khalishtor is filled to the brim with more t’varrs that you could count. Should it be that the Arbiter travels elsewhere then she sends a killer to warn of her approach. Wherever she goes, all men lose their masters and become hers. That is the way of things, and the threat of the killers sees to it that the way is obeyed.’

‘Lady, why did you tell me about Feyn Charin last night?’

Lin Feyn drizzled honey over a torn piece of bread. The look she gave Liang was full of sadness. ‘To have told someone at all. We all grow up to see him as such a hero, such a great man, the maker of Takei’Tarr as we know it. Without him, we couldn’t cross the storm-dark. Perhaps the secret would have been found in another realm instead. Perhaps in the Dominion with their priests, or in Aria with their sorcerers. Perhaps their ships would have come to
our shores as we go to theirs, taking what amused them. Perhaps we would be their slaves and not they ours. And all these things are true, and yet among them other truths become lost. He was a sorcerer, apprenticed to the worst of them all – when I say worst, perhaps I should say most threatening – after all, the Sunburst never did anything particularly wicked. She was no Abraxi. In fact, as a sea lord, she was good to her people. By far her greatest crime was to make the killers afraid of her.’

Lin Feyn bit into a ripe dragonfruit with a touch of savagery. Its juices dripped down her chin.

‘Our great hero was everything the killers swear they exist to destroy and yet they exalted him. They gave him the Dralamut and made him a teacher.’ She shrugged. ‘Much good came of it: our world is what it is because they made that choice. But why him, when he was against everything they exist to do? Do you see, Liang, why I don’t trust them? They are founded on sand.’ She shook her head. ‘And then the great hero of Takei’Tarr becomes an old man with a terrible darkness. We don’t talk of that. You see him sitting in a room, old and grey, poring over his notes, writing the secrets of the universe, but I’ve seen the actual words he wrote with my own eyes and I know better. He was afraid to his very core of what he knew.’ She wiped her mouth. ‘I do not wish to become like that, Chay-Liang. The Sunburst –
her
journals are those of a visionary. How different things might have been had their positions been reversed.’

For a few seconds she stared past Liang out into the empty space beyond the gondola as if trying to see into some other far-off world. Then she wiped her mouth again and rose. ‘I should not burden you, enchantress. These things do not matter. I am what I am, and they have no relevance. Leave now, please. I must dress myself. The world will expect the Arbiter of the Dralamut, not a tired old woman.’

Liang smiled. ‘Old, lady? You’re younger than I am.’

Lin Feyn snorted. ‘Old enough, Liang. Now go and make the storm-dark in that globe bow to you.’

The glasship drifted over the Vespinarr basin to the flanks of the Silver Mountain and sank lazily to the landing fields of the Visonda once more. Red Lin Feyn had become the Arbiter again,
although this time without the headdress. She handed Liang two wands – the lightning wand and the black rod she had confiscated back on the eyrie.

‘I believe we may still be in danger. Nevertheless, there is something here I wish to see.’ She opened the ramp, walked out with the Elemental Man at her heels and found the two golems standing exactly where they’d been two days before. People stopped to stare at them, though Lin Feyn seemed not to notice. Perhaps she was used to it. She walked with Liang beside her, her golems behind and the Elemental Man ahead, across the landing field into Visonda Square where the huge walls of the old palace towered over them. Knots of brightly-dressed people stood about in idle conversation and dozens of slaves in their white tunics hurried to and fro on their errands, but the square was so vast that it felt empty. It was a pale stone wilderness, Liang thought, touched with a faint morning mist that dimmed the far-off jubilant chaos of the Harub on the opposite side to a lurking silhouette and leached the many colourful robes to dull dark grey. A space like this would swallow the eyrie’s dragon yard whole. Even the dragon itself would look small.

The morning mountain air felt cold and damp and unnaturally still.

Red Lin Feyn stopped and pointed at her feet. Patterned lines of a darker polished stone ran from the corners and the sides of the square, converging on the middle where the Azahl Pillar rose, its white stone almost invisible in the haze until they neared it. The pillar had come out of the Konsidar hundreds of years ago. Its exact dimensions had been measured and recorded by the enchanters of Hingwal Taktse, who’d meticulously copied and studied the unknown runes that covered its surface, but that was about as much as Liang knew. Now she saw it with her own eyes, one thing struck her above all else. It was the same white stone as the insides of Baros Tsen’s eyrie. The same white stone as the . . .

‘The Godspike!’ She couldn’t help herself. Her hand flew to her mouth. It was exactly like the Godspike except several thousand times smaller and covered in sigils.

‘Very good.’ Liang heard the smile in Lin Feyn’s voice. The Arbiter walked up to the pillar. ‘Touch it,’ she said.

Liang did. The stone under her fingers was smooth and hard and cold, the edges and corners still sharp, the surface unweathered. It felt fresh from the stone cutter, polished only yesterday, exactly, again, like the white stone of the eyrie. ‘How old is this?’

‘At least a thousand years. Perhaps many more. Vespin brought it out of the Konsidar, but it was made before the cataclysm that spawned the storm-dark. Charin knew it as soon as he saw it.’ Red Lin Feyn ran her fingers over the carvings and smiled. There was an edge to her now. ‘No one can read these words, but I can tell you that they are dedications to a general whose name is lost. They give an account of his services to the long-forgotten king of a realm no one remembers. Or so my ancestor claims in his journals. In the Konsidar you will see many more of these.’

‘It feels so new.’ Liang stared at the pillar and an icicle ran up her spine. ‘I’ve seen words like these before. Tattooed across the skin of the killer who nearly slit my alchemist’s throat.’

‘Yes.’ Lin Feyn was nodding. ‘I saw the skin of that man your alchemist kept so carefully preserved. I think they were not as strange to him as they are to you and me. Quai’Shu’s Elemental Man had an interest in them before he died too. Did he speak to you of this?’

Liang shook her head.

‘Nor to anyone else I’ve found. But I’m convinced he had, nonetheless. He was pursuing some . . . other purpose. It’s a shame we can’t speak to him and ask.’ She turned slightly and fixed Liang with a steely look. ‘Enchantress, I know you have your views, but the duty of the Arbiter is to determine where responsibility truly lies. I must consider the possibility that even Shonda of Vespinarr is a paw—’

A flash of light caught Liang’s eye from the narrow busy streets of the Harub’s morning gloom. A huge golem hand grabbed her and a massive glass shield slammed down in front of her as a bright streak hurtled towards them. Another erupted from a doorway and a third from a window. Rockets. The first hit the pillar and exploded into a ball of flame that washed over the glass in front of her. The second fizzed past and struck the ground behind her. Fire billowed everywhere but the golem had stepped close and placed its shield around her, caging her in a gold-glass shell. She heard
the third rocket detonate, so loud it must have exploded in front of her face, but by then she was huddled down into a ball. A terrible thunderclap made her ears ring. As she tried to blink away the flashes, a second thunderbolt erupted, this time from the golem wrapped around her. It struck the window in the Harub from where one of the rockets had come and the entire house blew apart.

The Elemental Man had vanished. Behind and beside her the other golem had Red Lin Feyn protected in its embrace. They stood as still as statues by the Azahl Pillar while the square erupted into screams and people ran helter-skelter away.

‘For your safety, Chay-Liang of Hingwal Taktse, step into the shield.’ The golem sounded so distant over the ringing in her ears. The one wrapped around Red Lin Feyn started moving, fast. Liang fumbled with her feet. Yes, on the inside of the shield was the step. She climbed onto it and the golem started to run.

Another explosion erupted out of the Harub, this time with a cloud of pale smoke. The shoulder of the golem carrying Red Lin Feyn exploded, spinning it around and almost knocking it down. Gold-glass shattered and shards of it pinged off the shield in front of Liang’s face. The Arbiter’s golem had lost both the arms on its right side. It staggered, righted itself and kept running. A rocket streaked past and exploded in the distance against the walls of the Visonda and then another hit the Arbiter’s golem yet again. For a moment the flash was blinding. The air swirled with smoke and Liang could smell the reek of sulphur, of burned black powder. Her eyes stung. Another thunderclap seared her ears. She hunched forward and cringed inside the golem’s shield as it pounded towards the Harub. She didn’t understand why they were running towards their attackers instead of away, didn’t understand why someone was firing rockets at her. Not lightning or arrows but rockets! Xibaiya!

A cluster of explosions erupted around the golems and the air filled with sulphurous smoke. Her own golem staggered and shuddered as something hit it hard, then spun. It tipped and fell on top of her, slamming her face first into the ground as it rolled inert onto its back. Its arms dropped, limp. Liang was sprawled behind the shield across the hard smooth flagstones of the square. She started crawling and then stopped. She had no idea which way
she was facing. Look for Lin Feyn, that had been her first thought, protect the Arbiter, but the golems had taken them to the edge of the Harub, to the closest shelter but also towards their attackers, and the air was so thick with stinging smoke that she could barely see a thing. Her eyes filled with tears. She coughed and the smoke burned her lungs, hot and acrid. She still had her lightning wand at her waist and three unmoulded glass spheres in her pockets. She pulled one out now, hastily moulded it into a shield that wrapped almost all around her, and ran with no idea where she was going. She saw the shapes of men. Soldiers. She turned and ran the other way instead. More thunderclaps and lightning bolts split the air. One of them hit her shield. Sparks scattered in front of her eyes.

The shape of a narrow street loomed from the smoke, empty except for three bodies and the metal tubes of a rocket launcher. In the distance she heard screams. Her heart was racing. The air here was thick with the same sulphurous smoke again. She darted to the side of the street and looked for a door, any door, kicked it open and ran into a dark little shop filled from floor to ceiling with shelves of pottery jugs. The air was a little better, at least. She ran through, looking for steps to take her up, but only found an alley no wider than she was and too narrow for her shield. She changed its shape and made it smaller and ran on. The Harub was usually packed with crowds. Find them and she’d be safe.

‘Arbiter!’

The voice came from behind. She froze, but before she could turn, a hammer blow struck her shield and shattered it and then she felt something sharp and deadly hit her back. Pain shot through to her heart. She turned but all she could see was the shape of a man, a miniature black-powder hand cannon at his feet, his arm raised to throw another knife. She ducked, tripped over her own feet, stumbled to her knees as she whipped the remains of her shield over her face. The second blade struck the glass and skittered away, and then the man was gone even as she snapped her wand towards him. The pain in her back was like fire. When she tried to stand, she found she barely could. There was no way to tell how bad the wound was.

The second knife was on the ground in front of her. She bent to pick it up and saw the blade was wet. Poison. She staggered
back the way she’d come, looking for the man who’d killed her, lightning wand ready to kill him in return, but she never saw him. Her legs started to wobble. She stumbled back into the little shop and its shadowy darkness and clutched at the shelves. They crashed in a shower of shattering clay around her. She fell to her hands and knees, coughed and tasted salt and iron in her mouth. Her breathing was too fast. Her eyes were swimming. And now there was the man again, standing over her, and she was too weak to even lift up her head.