The Garden of Stones

chapter THREE





“Hatred is an appetite never satisfied.”—from the Nilvedic Maxims


Day 312 of the 495th Year of the Shrīanese Federation


Not as fanciful as the stylized, bird-shaped Seethe skyjammers, the Avān-built wind-skiff resembled more an oceangoing vessel, sans masts or sails. The hull was a flattened crescent moon of varnished wood with stained-glass windows along the cabins at prow and stern. Poking like a clockwork mushroom from a hole at the center of the keel was a spinning Disentropy Spool, the bottom of which was an ornate flywheel of bronze, brass, and gold, studded about the rim with silver spheres the size of a man’s fist. Milky light swirled about the spokes, where raw disentropy was shaped into a miniature cyclone, lit from within. Fore and aft, the hull was blistered by the coruscating silver cogs of Tempest Wheels. Corajidin likened them to an upside-down stack of dishes: a large round cog atop a series of other rotating cogs, each one smaller than the one above it. Lightning arced from flashing metal. The Tempest Wheels thrummed and snarled as they spun. He felt the rush of power from the wheels as he approached them, powerful enough to lift and propel the wind-skiff at great speed through the air.

Corajidin boarded and found Belamandris seated in the weather-beaten pilot’s chair, the polished brass and wooden controls rising around him like a giant spider on its back. His son’s pique at being asked to forgo his hunting had soon vanished in the obvious enjoyment of piloting the flying ship. Wolfram limped aboard, legs creaking, staff thumping on the deck. The guards gave the ancient witch a wide berth. Shortly after, the vessel rose from the ground with a snarling hum. The air crackled. Corajidin felt the faint prickling along his skin as the fine hairs on his arms stood on end. With ever-mounting speed, the wind-skiff powered away from Amnon, across the swirling width of the silted Anqorat River, and into the Rōmarq.

As the wind-skiff scudded low over the wetlands, where water seeped and pooled between bruise-shadowed flora and stone, Corajidin squinted at the life that teemed in the muck. From the glass-walled cabin he watched cormorants take flight as the skiff passed close by. Nut-brown fishermen and hunters poled flat-bottomed boats, eyes intent on the mirrored waters. Angh-hounds, near skeletal scavengers with ax-blade heads, tore into the sun-baked carcass of a water buffalo, which had no doubt been brought down by something larger: a clouded reed lion, or perhaps Fenlings who had been chased away from their kill. He watched a massive crocodilian surge out of the water to snap at a brown-and-gray-furred marsh devil. The bearlike devil opened its red maw as the crocodilian charged forward, but the struggle slipped from Corajidin’s view as the wind-skiff changed course.

After three hours of flight, he saw stone formations begin to emerge from the marsh. The line of a black stone wall. A roof sagging under the weight of cracked, faded terra-cotta tiles. Hoary cypress trees bowed their aged heads, their thick roots lifting flagstones and toppled walls alike. Corajidin joined his son as the shadows of smooth black towers soared above the foliage, rising straight-backed beside the sandstone and wooden ruins clustered about them.

Belamandris bent to the controls. There came a hollow clunk from beneath his feet as crablike legs emerged from the hull. The wind-skiff bounced a little as the legs took its weight. Light frayed away as the Tempest Wheels slowed their spin to eventually stop. The Disentropy Spool continued to whir for a few moments before it, too, was still. Corajidin desperately wished for a bowl of wine to remove the metallic taste from his tongue.

Brede emerged from an avenue between dark stone columns. She had taken the other wind-skiff shortly after dawn, to help Kasraman prepare for Corajidin’s arrival. She had a courtesan’s body beneath her layered clothing; her features were less beautiful than they might have been for their hollowness. An Angothic kindjal, a straight-backed sword with a curved edge, was sheathed at her hip.

Brede dropped to one knee as Wolfram approached. The Angothic Witch rested his hand on her head possessively, the touch part benediction and part caress. The apprentice looked up at her master with adoration. “Please follow me, my master.”

“What progress?” Corajidin asked. There was something forbidding about the ruins he did not like. The damp air was difficult to breathe. “Do you actually know what this place was?”

“No, great rahn. These ruins have been occupied over many periods of history,” she said. “Some of what we’ve found dates back—”

“What of Sedefke’s library?” Corajidin could not help the eagerness in his voice. “Or a Destiny Engine? Surely there is something here worth the trouble?”

“There’s no guarantee Sedefke’s library was in this city. The Time Masters had many cities in the Rōmarq prior to its flooding. And we’re not the first people to rummage through these ruins. The Time Masters vanished and left little behind we can comprehend. The Avān settlers were more considerate with their castoffs. But there are no signs of Sedefke here. Yet.”

She led them through a complicated maze of stone walls and cobblestone paths overrun with vegetation. Farouk walked ahead, directly behind the apprentice, his hand curled around the hilt of his sword. The other members of Belamandris’s company of Anlūki trod in light-footed formation about Corajidin and Wolfram, startling at every hoot, cry, howl, and scrabble around them. Only Belamandris seemed truly at ease.

“Be wary,” Brede warned as they entered a very long, dimly lit lane between several black stone buildings. The light at the far end was a solid bar of glaring white. “Sometimes our…allies…can be unpredictable.”

“What else lurks here?” Belamandris looked about with interest.

“We’ve an arrangement with the Fenling.” Brede smiled. Corajidin was struck by how attractive the woman could be in motion. “Though they’re unruly and hard to communicate with. Their leaders, the shamans among their people, are quite corrupt. We’ve been feeding them captives from the Battle of Amber Lake. The Fenling, it seems, have quite the taste for flesh.”

“Which reminds me.” Corajidin rubbed his temples in an attempt to master a shooting pain in his head. “Nehrun warned me Ariskander has already given the order for the Tau-se to scour the Rōmarq in search of Far-ad-din. I have the route they will take. It would be advantageous if the Fenlings were to kill them, so no word of Far-ad-din, or what we’re doing here, ever gets back to Ariskander.”

“Easily arranged.” Wolfram’s grin was feral. “Brede?”

“I’m yours to command in all things, my master,” she replied with reverence. “I’ll send the Fenling war-bands out as soon as possible.”

As they moved deeper into the ruins, one of the guards choked down a curse. Corajidin followed the man’s gaze to where several humanoid shapes, sharp-featured women with long, matted tresses, hung upside down from wooden beams by pale, clawed feet. Their arms, attached to leathery wings, were wrapped around them. One of them hung low so low Corajidin could see the bloodred of her irises as her large, dark-lidded eyes slowly opened. She stared as the group walked past, her expression still.

“Reedwives,” Brede offered without being asked. “They’re usually quiescent during the day, but dangerous when roused. I’ll send them out tonight, in case the Fenlings fail in their task.”

They walked the rest of the way in silence. Corajidin uttered a small sigh of relief when they emerged on the other side. The Angothic apprentice led them through wide, white-paved streets, across gray stone bridges, through gardens and parks long left to seed. At the far end of a long narrow strip of garden, near a pond choked by purple-flowered lilies, she took a flight of cracked stairs. The sound of picks, hammers, and voices echoed along the moldering streets. The air was thick with the drone of mosquitoes. The scent of sun-baked mud, damp grass, and wet fur filled Corajidin’s nose.

From the top of the stairs, they could see the extent of the work being done. Bound-caste prisoners—stripped down to mere lengths of cloth covering the torso and upper thighs, tied about the waist with rope—hammered and dug in the fetid water. Leeches clung to their skin like glistening black scars. Women, men, and children. The elderly. Human and Avān. Whoever could be procured, or whoever would not be missed, was being worked to the bone under the watchful eyes of hard-bitten Erebus officers in civilian clothing.

“Where are the Fenling?” Belamandris asked. “Weren’t they supposed to be working for us?”

“They work indoors during the day, Pah-Belamandris,” Brede replied with a nervous smile. “We found early on they’re not at their best in the bright light. So we work them in the underground chambers, the tunnels, or at night. Their warriors are more robust, so we use them whenever we need them.”

“The relics?” Corajidin prompted her. “When can you show me what you have?”

“If you would follow me? Pah-Kasraman waits for us.”

Corajidin gave orders for his guard to remain behind. Belamandris and Wolfram joined him as he followed Brede along a black marble portico dotted with pale orchids. The remains of ancient towers reached into the air, climbing between the dark, claustrophobic canopies of nearby trees. Sound became muffled. It grew difficult to breathe. He felt as if he were trying to walk through molasses as the air closed in about him. Corajidin looked around to see the others equally as discomfited.

Brede led them into a chamber whose lofty ceiling vanished into what appeared to be a dark, roiling murk above. Faint lights blossomed there from moment to moment, like flares of lightning deep within a storm cloud. There was the hint of movement in the high shadows, of old engines still at work being long gone. Hundreds of columns stretched high, each of a dusty white stone that resembled marble, though they glimmered with a gray-white haze. Everything seemed slightly blurred, as if the building itself was somehow ephemeral. On the floor at the center of the room a series of concentric steel rings turned, their surfaces marked with a series of arcs, lines, and circles, forming new patterns on the floor every few minutes.

Pieces of metal, wood, crystal, and stone littered the floor and the various trestle tables around the chamber. Erebus soldiers carefully brushed at dirt that clung to some of the pieces. Some items Corajidin recognized: antique air-powered storm-rifles and pistols; melee weapons of various generations, mostly Avān though there were others, more exotic; armor; crystal sheets crammed with engraved letters; scrolls; books; statues; and other ornaments. Yet there was more he could not place. Giant wheels of blackened metal. Skeletal frames, like bones fused into improbable shapes. Spheres of glowing glass set on ornate metal stands. Polished skulls. A glittering wire frame that held coils of mist in suspension, images almost forming before they broke apart.

Kasraman bowed his head to his father, smiled at Belamandris and the others. “Welcome to…whatever this place was called.”

“This is a great deal to take in,” Corajidin admitted as he craned his neck to look upward. “This is not something our Ancestors made, is it?”

“I doubt it.” Kasraman smiled. “Neither our Ancestors nor the Seethe. We’ve started to identify some of what we’ve found, though nothing we can use yet.”

“Anything you can identify as being Sedefke’s work?” Corajidin asked impatiently.

“Some of what we’ve found is written in High Avān, the court language of the Awakened Empire. It’s what the Sēq arcanum—the Fayaadahat—is written in. Some of it is Seethe, which will take more time to translate. There are other writings here that will take even more time. Languages I don’t even recognize…”

“We think this”—Wolfram pointed to a set of intertwined crystal spirals, dull rainbow colors trapped within the frosted quartz—“may be a Torque Spindle, though there appear to be pieces missing.”

“And I suspect something we’re retrieving at the moment may be a Destiny Engine,” Kasraman said, with something very near to awe in his voice. “Whether it’ll work or not, we’ve no idea yet.”

“So…nothing useful, then?” Corajidin did not bother to mask the sourness of his tone.

“Rahn-Corajidin, there are whole sections of the city hidden behind esoteric wards we suspect may be millennia old,” Brede replied. “They’re very sophisticated and unlike anything we’ve ever seen.”

“Break them down!” Corajidin growled. “You do not hide anything like that unless it is valuable.”

“We lost almost fifty of the Fenlings already, when they accidentally tripped one of the wards. Then another ten or so of the bound-caste menials.”

“What happened to them?”

“They…aged,” Kasraman said hesitantly, as if he was not sure he was using the correct word. “From the sounds they made as they died, it seemed agonizing. We’ve not wasted any more lives on such a certain outcome.”

“Do you have any good news?” Corajidin struggled to keep his tone even. Kasraman and Brede looked away, embarrassed.

With a snarl, Corajidin turned from them and made his way out. The others followed him, halting abruptly as he stopped short. Corajidin raked Kasraman, Wolfram, and Brede with his gaze.

“Keep searching,” he growled through clenched teeth. “I do not care what you need to do, or how many lives it takes, but find me something to make this worthwhile.”

“Father—” Kasraman began, only to be cut short.

“I’m dying!” Corajidin shouted. “I need answers, not excuses!”

“If Sedefke’s works aren’t here, we’ll need to look for other options.” Kasraman prodded at the long grass with his toe.

Corajidin looked at his son. “Such as?”

“If we can’t find Sedefke’s original work.” Wolfram rested his hand on the hilt of his knife. Made of old horn, it was blackened with dried blood that had seeped in each groove and crevice. Corajidin did not care to wonder whose. The witch’s voice was sepulchral. “Then we rip the knowledge from the soul of another Awakened rahn. One who has the unbroken memories of all his Ancestors, all the way back to the first Awakening.”

Corajidin smiled at his witch. “Ariskander it is, then.”