And landed on hard, smooth stone, within a sudden and shocking silence.
Tavi jerked his eyes up and looked around, limbs quivering and shaking, his body frantically signaling his mind that he should get up, should keep running. Instead, he sat up, a twinge passing through his chilled muscles, and stared around him, panting and mute.
The beauty of the Princeps’ Memorium would have taken his breath away, if all the running and screaming hadn’t done it already.
Though outside the storm still raged, the lightning still flashed, the sleet and the thunder still hammered the earth, within the Memorium, those sounds came only as something very distant and wholly irrelevant. The earth might shake and the air fairly ignite with fury, but within the Memorium, there was only the slight ripple of water, the crackle of flame, and an almost meditative stillness broken by the sleepy chirp of a bird.
The interior of the dome was made not of marble, but of crystal, the walls of it rising high and smooth to the ceiling twenty feet above. Light, from seven fires that burned without apparent fuel around the outside of the room, rose up through the crystal, bending, refracting, splitting into rainbows that swirled and danced with a slow grace and beauty within the crystal walls. The floor in the center of the dome was covered by a pool of water, perfectly still and as smooth as Amaranth glass. All around the pool grew rich foliage: bushes, grass, flowers, even small trees, arranged as neatly as though kept by a gardener.
Between each of the fires around the walls stood seven silent suits of armor, complete with scarlet capes, the bronze shields and the ivory-handled swords of the Royal Guard. The armor stood mute and empty upon nearly formless figures of dark stone, eternally vigilant, the slits in their helmets focused on their charge.
At the center of the pool rose a block of black basalt. Upon the block lay a pale shape, a statue of the purest white marble in the form of a young man. His eyes were closed, as though sleeping, and he lay with his hands folded upon his breast, the hilt of his sword beneath them. He wore a rich cloak that draped down over one shoulder, and beneath that, the breastplate of a soldier. At his feet lay a pale marble helm, complete with the high crest of the House of Gaius. His hair lay close-cropped to his head. His face was thin-featured, stark, handsome, and his expression peaceful, sleeping. Had the statue been a man of flesh, Tavi would have expected him to rise, don his helmet, and set about his business, but the Princeps Gaius had died long ago, before Tavi was born.
There was a motion at the edge of his vision, but he felt too tired to turn his head. The slave knelt down beside him, dripping and shivering. She touched his shoulder and drew her hand back to consider the soupy mud clinging to it. “Crows and furies. For a moment, I thought that a gargoyle had gotten in here.”
He looked up at her suspiciously, but her eyes were dancing with weary mirth. “I didn’t have time to wash up.”
“I turned back to find you, but I couldn’t see anything — and the windmanes closed on me. I had to run here.”
“That was the idea,” Tavi said, his tone apologetic. “I’m sorry, but it looked like you were about to collapse.”
The slave’s mouth quirked to one side. “Perhaps,” she acknowledged. She scooped more of the mud off of him. “Very clever — and very brave. Are you hurt?”
Tavi shook his head, shivering uncontrollably. “Sore. Tired. And cold.”
She nodded, her expression worried, and smoothed more muck from his forehead. “All the same, thank you.”
He struggled to give her a small smile. “There’s no reason to thank me. I’m Tavi of Bernardholt.”
The girl’s fingers went to the collar at her throat, and she frowned, lowering her eyes. “Amara.”
“Where are you from, Amara?”
“Nowhere,” the girl said. She looked up, sweeping her eyes around the inside of the magnificent chamber. “What is this place?”
“P-princeps’ Memorium,” Tavi stuttered, shivering. “This is the mound on the Field of Tears. The Princeps died here, fighting the Marat, before I was born.”
Amara nodded, still frowning. She rubbed her hands together roughly and then laid her wrist over Tavi’s forehead. “You’re burning up.”
Tavi closed his eyes and found them too heavy to open again. An odd prickling ran over his skin, slowly replacing the bitter, aching chill of the mud. “The First Lord himself made this place, they say. Made it in one day. When they buried everyone. The Crown Legion. The Marat didn’t leave enough of the Princeps’ body for a state funeral. They did it here, instead of taking him back to the capital.”
The slave took his hand and urged him to his feet, though she, too, shook with cold. He let her, struggling to stand through the heavy, sweet lethargy in his limbs. He latched onto the words he was speaking, using them to hold on to consciousness. “Strong furies here. The Crown’s furies. It was said they would have to be strong to keep the shades of all the soldiers at ease. Couldn’t take them home. Too many dead bodies. Strong furies would protect us. Stone mound. Earth against air. Shelter.”
“You were right,” Amara said. She eased him back to the floor again, and he sank gratefully back against a wall. He could feel a distant heat, through the tingling in his body, something wonderful and soothing. She must have taken him over to one of the fires.
“All my fault,” Tavi mumbled. “I didn’t bring Dodger in. My uncle. The Marat are here.”
There was a startled silence. Then she said, “What? Tavi, what are you talking about? What about the Marat?”
He struggled to say more, to answer the slave’s question, to warn her. But the words became a jumble on his tongue and within his mind. He tried to force them out and found himself shaking too hard to get them out clearly. Amara said something to him, but it didn’t make any sense, random sounds jumbled together. He felt her hands on him, then, scooping the half-frozen muck off of him and rubbing roughly at his limbs, but it felt very distant, somehow, very unimportant.
His head fell forward. It became a labor even to draw breath.
Blackness fell over him, dark and silent and complete.
CHAPTER 11
Isana’s heart twisted in her chest, and her throat tightened. “No,” she whispered. “No. My brother isn’t—he’s not gone. He can’t be.”
Old Bitte looked down. “His heart. His breathing. They’ve both stopped. He just lost too much blood, child. He’s gone.”