Eternity's Blade, page 13
“The assassin!” the other shouted. “The Onan’ji’s shadow!”
The acolyte with the blade rushed him, slashing. Soh’shoro blurred with the Voice. And in one swift motion he disarmed the monk, forced his sword arm against the joint, and flipped him against the temple floor. Expertly, Soh’shoro reversed his blade.
“Don’t,” he warned again, pointing the ri’shou’an at the other monk. Neither moved. “I don’t want to kill you,” he continued. “But these floors will wash crimson if I leave unanswered.”
Both acolytes remained silent.
“I have come for the Onan’ji,” Soh’shoro sneered. “And you will tell me where he is.”
“We don’t know!” the disarmed monk protested. “Even if we did, he would . . .”
“What?” Soh’shoro snapped. “What could he do to you that I cannot? I bring Death. Does he?”
Still there was no reply. In calculated fury, Soh’shoro twisted the fallen monk’s arm until he heard splintering bone.
“What do the Qu’su know?” he shouted over the monk’s screaming. “Where is he?”
“We were only left to tend the shrine,” the unwounded acolyte explained. “How would we . . .”
Soh’shoro twisted the arm the other way, and the small bones of the hand popped like heated rice. One broke the skin, flecking the floor with blood.
“I will ask one more time . . .”
“Please . . .” the wounded monk interrupted, choking out the word. “Please . . .”
Soh’shoro kneeled beside him. “Yes?” When he did not reply, Soh’shoro splintered the man’s forearm until it fully broke flesh, the glistening marrow like dark pebbles seen through a stream.
“The priests!” the wounded monk screamed. “He met priests!”
After that the details came freely, though the acolytes knew little more than what they had overheard. The meeting Soh’shoro remembered between the Onan’ji and the Traders had expanded. The monk had even frequented the epoxy priests before shuttering this temple. To Soh’shoro, it made sense: The Traders reached Outside and into the Mausoleum. They would be the perfect ally to the Onan’ji’s schemes.
“I don’t care what you do now,” Soh’shoro spat as he turned to leave. “But if you want to live, wait here until I kill the assassin outside.”
The unwounded monk looked up from tending his fellow. “What are you talking about? What assassin?”
“The Onan’ji didn’t tell you?” Soh’shoro smiled cruelly. “You were bait.” And silently he slipped out into the cold.
In the seasons with his bride, Soh’shoro’s dark talents had atrophied. Now his mother’s ri’shou’an felt rough and unfamiliar against his palm. The thrill of coming violence made his heart beat too fast and his gait too eager. So Soh’shoro had no doubt that the assassin chosen by the Onan’ji to stalk this temple on the chance he returned could best him in the arts of Death.
But Soh’shoro knew too how he had changed. How the Ang’soon princess’s rotted eyes and leaded lips had burned away all but a terrible, hungry sorrow within him. For this reason alone, it would be the assassin’s blood that stained the late snows beneath the waxing moon.
On the temple stairs, there came a thin whistling sound. But the Voice had warned Soh’shoro long before the throwing needle ever left the assassin’s hand. Effortlessly he sidestepped, letting the shurishi bury itself in the arch behind him. Without looking he knew its tip was stained dark with poison. A second came, and Soh’shoro rolled away, five more striking the snow. Even before he finished tumbling, he coiled his legs to spring skyward. As the assassin leaped from frost-bowed branches, moonlight glinting off his open blade, Soh’shoro dashed up the arch, catching two steps against its split timbers before throwing his back behind him and vaulting his knee into the man’s stomach. He felt the assassin’s ribs break, the surging pain letting Soh’shoro lock his sword arm. As the pair smashed into the ice atop the temple stairs, Soh’shoro shifted his weight onto the joint and snapped the limb lifeless, rolling away. He had not even needed to use a blade.
“Is he in the City?” Soh’shoro threatened, looking down on the crippled assassin. “With the Traders? Tell me and I will let you live.”
When the monk nodded in reply, Soh’shoro kicked in his throat and left the man to suffocate in the smothering cold of the night.
He reached the City, crossing the very bridge where the Onan’ji had stolen him all those years ago. Now its icy waters lay bare except for ghost rice cast by travelers seeking fortune. Already the spring’s fresh crop of lilies blossomed, ready to choke the rivers, pure white and glorious. Atop distant hills, the Gi’en shrines descended for the coming festival.
And the Mists followed.
Soh’shoro rented a cheap room in the pleasure quarters for anonymity. That night he gazed across the vibrant colors of this world, tangerine and vermilion and cinnabar, smoldering with stitched silks. Over rice wine alone, he stared into the cracked mask of his princess. Twice he was approached by courtesans. And each time he turned away their leaded lips, he felt both kinship and sympathy. For their sad lives, too, were a part of the Valley.
With afternoon he departed for the Trading District. By now the roads were crowded with the final preparations for the Gi’en. Day laborers pulled overstuffed carts while merchants and craftsman bartered before shop fronts. A few wealthy courtiers, secreted beneath vermilion parasols, meandered in the pale-yellow silks of the Palace. Soh’shoro hid from their gaze beneath his own tattered shawl. Among the laborers and mendicants, at least, he belonged.
Ahead the City’s bustle quieted. Its bright colors dulled to brasses and grays, and its wood and paper walls turned to bronzed brick and reed thatching. Soon the Trading District’s great ceramic salt houses honeycombed the streets with dappled copper. And the massive, alabastrine rectory of the epoxy priests gleamed overhead. It would be here, Soh’shoro guessed, that he would recover the Onan’ji’s trail.
He slipped between the rectory’s beaten-copper gates, left ajar in ceremonial welcome. Dozens of bleached dormitories edged the inner courtyard, capped by bronze domes flaring in the daylight like magnificent, angry suns. Water sang from glass piping, taking on a distorted, sallow hue where it caught the refracted light. Traders bustled constantly, the tops of their sun-bleached robes half open, exposing their fierce circular and straight tattoos like wild eyes.
Soh’shoro strode for the main hall, its sequenced doors worn smooth and mirrorlike by years of passage. From beyond, the insectoid hum of epoxy dirges resonated, accompanied by wiry instruments of bur-reed. A small priest stood at attention, blocking Soh’shoro’s entrance, eyes staring intensely from beneath his inky scars.
“Who? Only Traders here. Who?” he hissed. “Why have you come? Why?”
“I have been sent,” Soh’shoro bluffed.
“Who? Who sent you?”
“You know.”
“No. No.”
“Call an elder if you must,” Soh’shoro insisted.
The priest furrowed his brow, considering.
“Wait inside, yes?” The priest then stepped aside, letting Soh’shoro through the tan doors.
Within sprawled a massive circular chamber, strewn with great ivory columns and colorless hanging beads. Pallid reliefs curled on the walls, and bleached tableaux littered the floor. Other than the bronze dome above, there was no color save alabaster. Traders dotted the chamber, face down against the cold stone, praying silently before a marble likeness of the Emperor’s twisted mechanical catafalque. The smell of incense, sweet and buttery, floated in the air.
Soh’shoro followed the priest to a tiny alcove, filled with dull cloth mats arrayed before a series of burnished copper bowls. Each was heaped with long-cold soups, dyed bright, unusual colors, like weedy crimson or deep ocher, the heavy scents of spice and honey wafting from them. Along the walls water ran in shallow depressions that reminded Soh’shoro of ant tunnels.
“Eat,” his guide suggested. “Be pure. Our food makes pure while waiting. Yes?” He pointed ecstatically at the hospitality ritual, exclaiming, “Blessed, blessed!” Then he wandered out of the room without saying more.
Soh’shoro sipped at the soups in silence as he waited for the priest to return. The food, though frigid, tasted strangely complex. He was still eating when the music of the bur-reeds stopped, and his guide reappeared with an elder.
“Who sent you?” the new priest asked, his phrasing slightly more natural. “Why have you come? Be quick.”
But Soh’shoro already glimpsed recognition in the elder’s eyes. This was his chance. “Must I speak the name aloud?”
Silence.
“The Onan’ji.”
Soh’shoro still hoped to be wrong—that the elder would shake his head in confusion, casting him from the rectory with dismissive courtesies. Instead, the man’s tattooed eyes flashed.
“No message. He sent no . . .”
But Soh’shoro knew his mentor well. Without pausing, he stripped off his sleeve, displaying his veinless scars: the marks of a Qu’su.
“Do you still doubt my purpose?”
The elder shook his head with alarming fervor. “No. No.” Then he quickly added, “We are almost ready. As commanded . . .”
Ready for what?
“You will show me your work, immediately.”
The elder bowed meekly. “Of course.” He turned to his compatriot, eyes narrowing strangely. “Leave us. And make sure none follow, understand?”
Returning to the domed chamber, the elder parted a silken shutter, revealing a narrow stairwell lit by candlelight. A sweetly pungent scent, like earth after rain, rose from below.
“Deep place now. Yes? Very deep,” the elder muttered, leading him into the darkness. “No one comes. Because of the husks.”
Their steps fell away in muted paces. In narrow alcoves lining their descent, hidden by thin curtains, Soh’shoro heard shallow breathing and airy mutterings. Once or twice motion flittered behind the shades, lethargic and broken. This is where the priests keep those whose minds are eaten by the Mists.
The Voice stirred to their catatonic mumblings. Soh’shoro’s steps quickened with fear. He smelled burning flesh.
“Here,” his guide cautioned. “Watch step. Here.”
Ahead the stairs terminated in a towering double door. The priest unlocked it fearfully, spilling alkali-soured air as the portal’s iron hinges grated slowly open.
Beyond loomed a vast natural cave. A peculiar variety of lily, rooted to the ceiling and faintly bioluminescent, created a hanging jungle of cerulean stars. Bathed by their radiance, shrunken shapes toiled mindlessly at inscrutable tasks, weaving strange wires or joining scraps of steel. Their bare hands had been charred black by the heat of blue-burning welding fires, or scraped raw by the endless repetitions of their fugue-like labors.
“These are husks?” Soh’shoro asked.
The priest nodded. “Good for something. Their minds are so swollen by the Mists that, with enough lilies, they slip into the deep past.” He paused. “They remember the machine.”
Soh’shoro flinched at the Old Word, even as he intuited its meaning.
“You mean the Emperor’s Throne? That’s what they’re making, isn’t it?”
For the husks appeared to be building a bulbous ball of steel and silver, suspended by narrow wires amid the distant gloom. Soh’shoro had glimpsed its form before in the Mausoleum: the pulsating dome above the Emperor. The priest’s artifact appeared to be its missing portion, designed to repair the Throne’s damage. Already the orb reflected the hanging lilies’ light with terrible potency, humming deeply and hideously, as if singing to its silent servants.
“He’s rebuilding it, isn’t he?” Soh’shoro asked. “The Onan’ji is fixing the Emperor’s Throne.”
“Of course.” The elder arched an eyebrow at Soh’shoro’s ignorance.
For a brief moment, the prince wondered if his mentor had not lied. If the Onan’ji truly was trying to save the Valley.
But why strike at its Houses? Why cause such Death?
“Where do these fragments come from?” Soh’shoro asked.
Once more the priest looked askance, now deeply skeptical. “Outside. Traders smuggle them in their own flesh.”
Soh’shoro remembered the Traders arriving at the Qu’su temple. Now the horrific harvest he had watched the Onan’ji reap from tattooed flesh made sense. How many years had the broken fragments of this artifact passed into the Valley, sliver by sliver? Safe beneath skin.
But why?
“How long before the Throne is repaired?”
“Soon.” The elder priest beamed. “The Corpse will die at this very Gi’en festival. When its blooding does not come.” He paused. “We must all be ready then. For the Onan’ji’s ascension.”
Soh’shoro barely stifled a gasp. The monk plans to usurp the Valley. To install himself as its new Emperor, atop a reforged Throne. To what end, the prince could not guess.
But it did not matter. He must stop him.
When its blooding does not come. The priest’s words echoed fearfully through Soh’shoro’s mind. For only one ritualist remained to feed the Emperor’s Corpse. My father, Soh’shoro realized. He is in danger. I have to warn him.
Without so much as another word to the priest, Soh’shoro raced to the cavern stair. The elder called after him. But the prince sprinted heedlessly now, bursting through the alabaster hall, the bronzed courtyard, the copper gates; out into the fading sun of the Traders’ stony streets.
He knew only panic and fear.
He was almost out of time.
For the City resounded with fanfare and raucous shouting. Already drums beat out their metered welcome, beckoning the shrines toward the Palace’s salted glory. The Gi’en festival blossomed once more.
And within that beauty lurked the Onan’ji’s long-planned darkness.
Chapter 11
Vengeance
The Qu’su watched.
As soon as Soh’shoro fled the Trading District, he caught their twin shadows following. Did the Onan’ji plan this too? Had the priests’ openness merely been another baited trap, like the acolytes left at the Qu’su temple? Buying time for the Traders to warn the monks?
Soh’shoro made quickly for more crowded streets, trying to vanish amid their costumed chaos. He weaved between ethereal rainbows and tinted awnings, even cutting directly through a parade of half-clothed dancers. Still the ghosts persisted, hunting.
Violence remained his only choice.
Soh’shoro took a lonely detour down a disused alley, pretending to drink from its public font. In moments he caught shadows in the sunset, atop nearby eaves. The Voice sparked.
Two steps up the wall Soh’shoro mantled onto the roof, bringing his legs round in a wide sweep, tripping the first Qu’su. The man was quick, pivoting his weight midair and shoulder rolling away. Soh’shoro caught him as he rose, locking his blade at the hilt with one hand while the other struck him hard in the face. As the assassin staggered back, Soh’shoro drew the man’s ri’shou’an against his flesh, splitting his side wide open. Blood raced off the eaves, pouring into the fading dusk.
The second assassin towered over Soh’shoro, using his greater reach to lunge deceptively. But the prince spun his ri’shou’an to the Voice’s keening, catching the slash and throwing all his weight against it, knocking his opponent’s blade wide. The Qu’su leaped soundlessly away, hurling three shurishi to create space, but Soh’shoro dodged the needles with quick tilts of his head. He hurled his blade in response, its razored edge reflecting the sunset.
Perhaps the Qu’su might have dodged in time. But he seemed to hesitate for a precious instant—as if he wanted to be struck—allowing Soh’shoro’s blade to bury itself into his throat. The assassin tumbled flat to the eaves, gasping.
“I would never lead your kind to my father,” Soh’shoro menaced, as he silenced the assassin’s helpless breaths. “Never.”
And leaving the bodies where they lay, Soh’shoro left to find Obajen-mahoe.
He joined the Gi’en procession with nightfall, just outside the Imperial gates. The deepest crowds choked these streets, furious and seething, casting gifts of ghost rice and folded lilies. Shrines danced atop the Traders as they slithered through the morass, their jangling bells and lacquered finery floating over the revelers like lily petals on a current. Above, a thin moon hung coldly luminous, peeking through the sky’s Mists. The chants and the shouts; the streams of many-hued ribbons; the snap of fireworks being tested for their midnight displays—never before had the City seemed so vibrant, coming alive with impossible alacrity and terrible eagerness.
Soon the Palace gates swung open, revealing the half-remembered world of silks and incense beyond. One by one, the Gi’en shrines began processing inside, toward inner courtyards of silvery brilliance, leaving their swarming celebrants behind. Soh’shoro tried to follow, but an honor guard blocked him, shaking his head coldly.
“No commoners in the Palace. Your festival is outside.”
“You don’t recognize me?” Soh’shoro threw back his shawl. “I am the prince of the Quo’dai-ma. Soh’shoro.”
And the guard laughed heartily, offering a swig of his rice wine in recognition of the joke.
“The lost prince himself! A taste to your honor!”
But Soh’shoro merely turned away, slinking back into the crowds. He no longer belonged to that world.
And it was then he caught the face, veinless and haunting.
The Onan’ji.
Soh’shoro lost the monk a moment later to swarming revelers. His hand fell to his mother’s blade, and every sense lit up as he stalked the crowd, searching. A silver slash flashed by him in a rush of ringing bells. Sharpness flicked his flesh with trailing ribbons. Someone struck him hard in accidental revelry. Everywhere Soh’shoro glimpsed Death as he hunted the Onan’ji.
At last he caught sight of him again, his darkness looming atop the Palace’s massive outer walls, clear and black against the skyline. The figure paused for a second, as if checking the passage of the shrines, hands flaring like polished stones. Then the Onan’ji leaped into the Palace beyond.
