Eternity's Blade, page 9
Soh’shoro raised the gold-threaded teacup to his lips, savoring the brew’s saline heat. Obajen-mahoe did not understand. Perhaps no one could. The Valley, with all its engineered parasitism and repetitious glory, might endure this murder. But what had been its purpose?
And the Onan’ji’s strange words echoed, sowing wicked doubt:
The Houses are the darkness.
Obajen-mahoe soon returned with a brazier of salt and an unctuous paste for the prince’s wounds.
“Can you walk?” he asked gently, as he massaged Soh’shoro’s injured hand.
Soh’shoro sensed his unease. “Maybe. Is something wrong?”
Obajen-mahoe pulled back a bandage before gently swabbing the prince’s cut. Soh’shoro flinched but did not cry out.
“An epoxy priest arrived, I thought to stitch your wounds. But he requests our presence at the Mausoleum. Immediately,” Obajen-mahoe explained.
“Is this about An-go’yi’ki? What happened to . . .”
“I don’t know.” Obajen-mahoe cut him off. “But I think it best for my son to take this audience by my side.” A pause. “We may need to defend more than mere reputation.”
Soh’shoro nodded, slipping free of his grass blankets with Obajen-mahoe’s help.
“In the upper Mausoleum, you will see things,” he warned, “things that are difficult.” He paused. “I hid these from you as a child. Now you will understand why.”
Soh’shoro nodded. “The Qu’su warned me of—”
Obajen-mahoe winced. “Not this.”
He waited while Soh’shoro struggled into his split-toed sandals. Then together the pair walked in lantern light through the cherrywood corridors of their House.
“We’ll skip the preparatory rituals,” Obajen-mahoe commanded, as courtiers swarmed to attendance. “I want us there immediately, before anything is said.”
“At least take the salinity charms!” a familiar voice shouted.
Soh’shoro turned to see Kenwu, framed in the rainbow light of the House. Tears of joy streamed down both their faces. In that moment, all memory of the Qu’su felt undone: Soh’shoro was still a boy, born to peaceful ritual and nothing more.
“Time enough for remembrances later,” Obajen-mahoe interjected bitterly, pulling him away from his old attendant before shuffling the prince angrily down the corridor.
“Why isn’t Kenwu coming with us?”
“He no longer attends the main House,” Obajen-mahoe replied curtly.
Soh’shoro understood: Kenwu, after all, had lost him as a boy.
In the courtyard, Obajen-mahoe helped Soh’shoro atop their palanquin. He panted heavily now, sweat running down his brow. The bandage at his side lay damp with fresh blood.
“You’re hurting yourself.”
“I can manage,” Soh’shoro replied. “Give me a moment.” But when the bower jerked to life, he gasped.
“This is too much . . .”
“It’s just pain.” Soh’shoro’s jaw set. “I mastered that long ago.”
And the procession set off amid dreadful silence.
“As far as tradition is concerned, you are still of the Quo’dai-ma,” Obajen-mahoe explained as they jostled onward. Placid streams, sculpted boughs, and the bluish glow of the morning lanterns floated outside the palanquin’s windows. “Whatever the courts or the Ang’soon princess has guessed—of your abduction by the Onan’ji, of your time among the Qu’su, even of your return beside An-go’yi’ki’s corpse—your station obscures it. Until the priests bring a formal charge, you will . . .”
“That’s what this is, isn’t it? My judgment.”
“Judgment for what?” Obajen-mahoe’s tone remained calculated. “Why would a prince murder the brother of his bride? Let alone how?” Obajen-mahoe pressed his hand against Soh’shoro’s, squeezing gently. “You are my son. I accepted that long ago. Despite what you are. Or what you become. We will endure it together.”
Ahead, the Mausoleum gates yawned open, their mechanical grinding like snakes slithering to rut. Inside, no festival lanterns or lily strings awaited. The tomb lay bare except for rotting salt vats and the priests’ rainbow lanterns. Only a distant drumming, marking the nobles’ return, recalled that bright festival of the Gi’en.
“We have to bathe. That ritual cannot be broken. It is too dangerous otherwise,” Obajen-mahoe explained. “Can you manage? Like when you were a child?”
Soh’shoro nodded.
They descended the winding stair, into the chill of the waterfall gardens. At those icy banks that had once terrified him, the prince now merely caught his breath. He had not truly appreciated the garden’s beauty before, how the glass ceiling suspended the lily pond reflections overhead, sunlight sparkling between each ghostly petal. Despite the pain of his wound, Soh’shoro found himself wading trancelike into the leaded waters, the flowers congealing about his skin like half-remembered kisses.
As a child he had floated here. But now he was tall enough to stand, and his feet merely slipped against the basin’s smooth glass. He looked down, finally noticing the sequenced pods, honeycombing the depths, like shoots of new bamboo. Qu’en Shards. He waded deeper, eyes narrowing, peering into their fogged ovules. Within the closest he caught a face: hers.
The Ang’soon princess.
The Houses are the darkness.
Soh’shoro splashed to the banks only half bathed, in shock and confusion. Already it became easier to doubt. The waters were clouded with lily scum, the pain of his wounds deliriously sharp. He could not be certain what he had seen. That could not be his princess.
Attendants swarmed him, distracting with finery: first a great robe of amber, each seam tightened to force the rigid, narrow motions found so beautiful by the courts. Then salt for his hair, followed by delicate, chalky tinctures to flush his skin and freeze his eyes from blinking. Through it all, no one commented on the veinless markings of the Qu’su, so plain and hungry on his arm.
“I missed you, Soh’shoro.” Obajen-mahoe stared with pride at the prince’s newfound regality.
And forgetting everything, the prince smiled too. “I wanted this. So much.”
Now the Quo’dai-ma nobles ascended the helixing stair into the upper tomb. Here, the Mausoleum’s forbidden reaches tangled with rotted wood and repatched scaffolding. The air lay heavy with mold and waxy incense. Soh’shoro remembered Kenwu masking his face as a child, and now he did the same with the collar of his robes. But the more he breathed in the tomb, the more it enticed him. The stain clinging here reminded him of a rare scent, one he had only smelled once before: the rot of the Ang’soon princess.
Scaffolding gave way to a metal corridor, polished repeatedly yet still thick with spores. Brocade funerary reliefs hung from sconces brown with mold. Next, the hallway curved upward, funneling into a series of twelve massive lacquer steps.
At each pace, fresh slippers awaited. Soh’shoro and Obajen-mahoe changed shoes a dozen times, slowly and methodically approaching the vast osmium portal beyond. The ache of An-go’yi’ki’s sword wound worsened, until Soh’shoro leaned on Obajen-mahoe for support.
“You’re almost there.”
Soh’shoro kept his gaze fixed on the gateway. “This all protects him, doesn’t it? These rituals of cleanliness and salt?”
“Protects him,” Obajen-mahoe replied, “and us.”
Motion broke out in the fetid corridor behind. The Quo’dai-ma glanced back. And like a firefly winking awake, the Ang’soon princess ascended the lacquered stairs. Grand trains poured behind her in sweeps of indigo and sapphire and cherry, carried by crawling attendants. As always, her great melanized mask waited, sparkling with plum lacquer. When the princess joined them at the highest step, she bowed only to Obajen-mahoe before turning on Soh’shoro.
“I hope you die here,” she spat, saliva flecking the narrow gash in her mask’s mouth. As the honeysuckle-and-wood-shaving scent of her perfume filled his nostrils, Soh’shoro imagined he could also taste her sweat.
But older now, he felt a new awareness awoke in him. He questioned why he was drawn to this rotting beauty, and what about her ethereal weakness aroused him so much.
“He is prince of the Quo’dai-ma,” Obajen-mahoe interjected. “You will respect my son, even if . . .”
“I will do what I want with him,” she sneered. “And you . . .”
But the osmium doors ground wide, obscuring speech beneath their mechanistic whirring. A deeper hum joined from the chamber beyond: an insectoid, wheezing vibration, like waking cicadas. And the Emperor’s chamber revealed itself at last.
The heart of the Mausoleum hung in a metal void, suspended by lancing wooden beams. Its massive dais bristled with ossuary charms fumigated by salt smoke, pouring from venting doors and vaulted terraces. Everywhere epoxy priests scrubbed with pearlescent silks soaked in brine. Only faint, soggy light touched the central catafalque.
It was here that the Emperor waited, hanging amid tangled lines of silver wires. Soh’shoro gasped audibly. For steel grafts bloated the body, needles and glass bristling from milky veins. Multitudinous robes sutured the figure like tourniquets, masking skin glistening with the translucent paleness of great time. Soh’shoro could not tell whether it was a man, a woman, or something more. For the face lay completely hidden beneath a heavy, purpling shroud. But always, rot crept over it. It tunneled down neck and shoulders, pitting the flesh with craggy spores, leaking pustulating masses onto the floor to be swept away speedily by industrious priests.
It’s a Corpse.
The phage lay worst on the Emperor’s back. Here lumpy, fetid flesh widened spine and shoulder blades, swelling into moldering pinions. Their stretch intertwined with the gelid lines pumping through the thing’s body, holding the spans aloft in a twisted network of desiccated bondage. Had the protean wings once been feathered like the birds of the Valley, before the rot? The prince could not guess. Only a swollen structure remained, achingly gutted in its emaciation, impossible to differentiate from the relic above, thrumming constantly.
A Qu’en. Soh’shoro remembered the Onan’ji’s words. The last of his kind.
For the Emperor’s ichor fed ever upward into the mechanical mass of his Throne, suspended overhead like a metal sun. This relic dwarfed the Corpse, a dozen times in size, widening as it rose, vanishing into the shadows of the upper tomb. Seething and boiling hinted at some transmogrifying, alien process within. And from smokestacks at the artifact’s summit, venting into the highest, darkened reaches, burst the first tendrils of Mists.
Made from the Emperor’s flesh.
But something seemed wrong with the device. Cords hung too loose. Rent metal dulled with rust. One upper segment of the sphere seemed entirely missing, torn away as if by sudden impact. The Emperor’s Throne still served its purpose. But barely. Either incomplete or damaged, Soh’shoro could not say.
Now the three nobles drew near the humming horror. All the prince could smell was salt, as if the entire world baked in its sour, acrid stench. Epoxy priests scrubbed before and behind their every motion, obsessively cleaning away the drifting spores of the Qu’en’s sickness. Obajen-mahoe and the Ang’soon princess bowed to the creature, then fell to their knees. Soh’shoro hesitated. But at last he did the same.
“The Houses, before the Gi’en.” An epoxy priest’s voice ululated through the fog, and the fat, stumbling form of the holy man stepped from behind the relic. His eyes roved madly and angrily. His lips sieved spittle through strange, colored ribbons stitched between his gums. Bright medallions marked him as the eldest of his kind, the head of his priestly Order. “Welcome,” he continued. “Our council begins.”
The Ang’soon princess rose instantly, ready with anger.
“We know why we are called. The murder of my brother.” Her steely gaze rounded on Soh’shoro. “Someone must pay for this crime. Someone . . .”
“Yes, Princess,” the eldest soothed, gently raising a swollen hand. “Anger like heat and sunrise. The priests know such tragedies.” Silent shame made Soh’shoro look away. “A Quo’dai-ma stolen and returned. An Ang’soon murdered in our City’s splendor. And more . . .” The eldest’s voice trailed off, like rocks sinking into deep water. His black eyes flashed. “But all this must wait. Must wait, yes. Today is not for judgment.”
The Ang’soon princess tensed with frustration.
“What could be more important than my brother’s death? The ending of an Ang’soon heir?”
The eldest shut his eyes, steadying himself. His ribboned lips tremored with both fear and anticipation. “Perhaps the true source of these miseries,” he began. “Long feared, longer forgotten. A darkness from beyond the Valley.” The strange speech of the priest wove each word into the next, with only awkward pauses for breath. “The Houses are called because the Mists are breached.” Those words flared like a lightning bolt. “Something comes from Outside.”
The eldest raised his hand, signaling, and the doors to a venting terrace slid wide. A caravan of Traders entered the chamber. Each shouldered a litter pole, their free hands swinging great bronze censers of purifying salt. The Voice, frantic and cold, began screaming through Soh’shoro’s mind, and a greater darkness fell over the tomb, sterile and starving.
The Traders laid their litter on the bare cherrywood floor, before the Emperor’s Throne. Carefully, one drew back the plain cloth covering. A body rested within, bound by bandages soaked in brine. Even through the wrappings, Soh’shoro could tell the man had been terribly burned. Black boils charred his exposed skin. His empty eyes gleamed hauntingly, wide and clouded.
“This is foreign,” continued the priest. The salt smoke thickened, and Soh’shoro’s stomach quieted. The Voice remained, though, scratching like claws against glass. Through it, the prince glimpsed something in the dead face he was certain the others could not: familiarity.
Hold the knife to my throat.
It was impossible to be certain beneath the horrific burns. Yet to Soh’shoro, the foreigner looked identical to the courtier he had killed all those seasons ago as a child.
It cannot be the same man.
Carefully an attendant shrouded the corpse’s face, leaving Soh’shoro to wonder what he had truly seen, just as he doubted his glimpse of the Ang’soon princess in the watery darkness of the waterfall gardens.
“Traders found this foreign body at the edge of the world,” the priest explained. “At first, we hoped he was merely a husk. But he carried”—the eldest’s voice caught for a second—“things with him.”
The litter bearers unwrapped brine-cloth packaging beside the foreigner. Inside waited a twisted wooden pole, banded with thick metal worn orange with rust and age. The device was hollow at one end, a trigger mechanism on the other. Cartridges of black powder, bound in wax paper, rested against it, smelling faintly of fireworks despite the salt haze.
“This powder takes flame violently,” the priest explained. “Like firework primer, but far fiercer. The burns are all across the corpse’s skin.”
But Soh’shoro had glimpsed these artifacts before. My mother’s memories . . .
“Do we know the foreigner poses a threat?” he risked interjecting. “Could these objects merely be gifts? As we send Traders, might foreigners try to answer us in kind?”
“Outside is sealed for a reason, Quo’dai-ma.” The eldest paused. “War.” Even enunciating the syllable strained the priest. He reached a fatty hand to the Emperor’s Throne, steadying himself. The Ang’soon princess blanched too, the pale flesh peeking from beneath her mask somehow losing its remaining color.
“Impossible,” Obajen-mahoe whispered.
“Only because you do not remember it,” the princess interjected forcefully. “But Soh’shoro knew such secrets. The Rebirths never eroded her mind. Until now.” She stared at the prince pointedly. My mother. “She often spoke of a fight to forge the Valley. How we stole secrets because others saw them as sins. How some might still seek to smother our home.”
The princess touched her mask, stroking the wood obscuring her lingering rot. “The eldest is right. If one foreigner passed the Mists, more may come. We must make ready.” She seemed about to say more. But a coughing fit seized the princess then, silencing her. Attendants swarmed, cajoling and caressing, wiping spittle, then steadying her.
“Make ready for what?” Obajen-mahoe replied, indifferent to her suffering. “The Mists have never failed before. As long as we protect the Houses . . .”
“You merely protect your son!” the Ang’soon princess countered between spasms. “My brother is dead because of your House! He must be—” But her threats faded into hacking breaths.
“How dare you cast such aspersions!” Obajen-mahoe sneered. “Upon the Quo’dai-ma or its prince! What of yourself? Have you ever joined our rituals? It’s true your kind is only for breeding . . .”
“Enough!” Soh’shoro surprised himself with the force of his words. The chamber fell into shocked silence. “Enough,” he repeated, tone softening. Now he turned to the eldest priest. “I have seen it myself: The Mists are angry. Perhaps that is how the foreigner slipped through? When our walls weakened with roil?”
The fatty figure’s ribboned cheeks tensed with consideration. He nodded.
“But we have rituals to renew our Mists, do we not?” Soh’shoro pressed.
“What does the Quo’dai-ma propose?” The eldest leaned forward with curious thirst. “What exactly?”
“Perform the rites of the Gi’en.” Soh’shoro had no idea what those words meant. He merely guessed at their truth.
The priest smiled. “It’s not spring. The shrines have not returned. There is no festival or . . .”
“All the same.”
The eldest rubbed his flabby jowls. “Recent rites have been”—he selected his next word carefully—“unusual. Perhaps our Emperor is not fed”—again a pause—“sufficiently.” The priest pressed his hand to the Corpse’s metal plating, stroking it hungrily. “But An-go’yi’ki is dead. His sister sweet with sickness. And Obajen-mahoe has never allowed his son to join this ritual before. Without more blood, I fear our Emperor must remain ill-nourished.”
