Dagrun flung open the carriage door. War cries thundered outside. Spears whistling through the air, the sound of horses.
“You’ll be safe here,” he said as he locked her inside.
I’d be safer if you lent me a sword and some armor, she thought as she peeked through a crack in the shutter. Outside, a band of pale-skinned warriors covered in white ash from head to toe threw themselves at Feren and Harkan both, cutting throats and making guttural cries of pain and pleasure. Like ghosts running through the twilight, their banshee noises raised the hair on the back of her neck.
The San warriors, outlanders from the High Desert, answered to tribal warlords and fought with a terrifying brutality. Her father had twice driven their tribes from Harkana. She had stood with Arko on the field years before and watched as the Harkan Army routed them, sending them screaming back to their lands. Kepi had no wish to meet them here, trapped as she was inside the carriage like a dog in its cage.
The door opened again and Kepi brandished her blade, but instead of Dagrun or a ghostly outlander, she saw Seth in front of her, his face covered with dust and streaked with sweat. He must have accompanied her waiting women; he must have told the Ferens he was her servant. Clever Seth.
She nearly fell on him in relief.
“We should hurry,” he said as he handed her a Feren sword and told her the San were overrunning the Ferens, that it was only a matter of time.
“Run to the stones,” he panted. He meant the monumental rock circle, a well-known place where the stone trunks of the nearby Cragwood parted and a ring of standing stones kept watch for the sunrise. “They’re just across the rope bridge. I’ll join you there.” He embraced her quickly, ran a hand down her hair.
“How?” she asked, but there was no time for explanations.
“Kepi,” he said, his eyes holding hers for an extra moment—two, three, “be safe.”
Kepi took off across the bridge, though behind her she could hear the hollow footsteps and wordless battle cries of the San following. She turned to look for Seth. He was drawing his blade, the cries of the San shattering the air. They were on him. She watched a man smeared in thick tar and hoary ash run his blade across Seth’s belly, drawing a bright spurt of blood. “Help!” he cried. “Someone help!”
Kepi raised her sword and ran toward Seth, but a pack of outlanders blocked her path. With a stolen sword they hacked at the bridge supports, forcing her to retreat to the far side of the rope bridge before it collapsed into the rift, rattling as made its way down the rocky cliff.
With the bridge gone, all she could do was watch as the outlanders, hundreds of them, hurtled their ash-white bodies through the camp, overrunning the Ferens. She lost track of Seth and Dagrun—the haze of battle obscuring everything.
She was cut off from the Ferens and the fight but not safe from the outlanders. Three had crossed the bridge before it fell and they eyed her greedily, their mouths slashes of red in their ash-white faces, their teeth small and brown. One grinned wildly, his tongue rippling across his sharpened teeth. They would bludgeon her and dine on her entrails or tie her to a tree and use her as they pleased.
She ran.
21
Prepared to face the divine, to look into the face of god and perish, to burn or fall to the floor with a stroke that would end his life—Arko Hark-Wadi entered the Empyreal Domain, his breath heavy in his chest. In spite of all his preparations, in spite of how ready he thought he was, it was another thing entirely to walk into the room under his own power and present himself to die. He found himself strangely aware of every muscle, every fiber of nerve, every bit of blood and bone that belonged to him. He felt his heartbeat throbbing in his ribs. He felt the coolness of the floor under his feet, the scratch of his new ceremonial garments, the wet hair curling along his neck, the pain in his muscles from the long journey. He felt how good it was to be alive, and a momentary twinge of regret that it would soon be over. All men die. Only most don’t know the day or the hour. At least I will face the sun before I go. He could not decide if that knowledge made him grateful, or bitter. Either way, he pressed forward, deep into the heart of the empire.
Ready to face the divine and meet his death.
But death did not come.
Instead, there was nothing.
No one.
A single beam of sunlight pierced the gloom from somewhere far overhead, falling off-center, momentarily blinding him, throwing the rest of the hall into darkness. The room was filled with silence, along with the musty scent of old dust, mildew, stale air deep underground, the coppery tang of rust or blood. There was the sound of his breath and his heartbeat in his ears but nothing more.
Arko had the sudden, distinct realization that he was completely alone. Where is the emperor? Where is the eternal light of the Soleri?
Arko listened, but nothing stirred. No one spoke, no one moved or breathed. Not a dog barked or a flame crackled. No sound of beating drums, or the rustle of a scroll, nor the pad of bare feet on stone.
Nothing. It was completely silent, the silence a blanket that smothered him.
A loud and overwhelming quiet.
His eyes adjusting to the dim light, ready for anything now, Arko stumbled upon a scene of a calamity. The golden throne of the emperor, twice the height of a man and covered with intricate carvings, lay crushed by the weight of a fallen beam from the ceiling above. Bits of gold glittered on its surface, showing where it had once been richly overlaid. Had thieves been here? Marauders? The rioters—could they have reached the palace, and if so, where were they now?
Around the throne, the walls were littered with black scars that looked like the remnants of fire perhaps, or the ghastly remains of long-dried blood. Arrowheads and half-rotten spear shafts lay in piles along with broken stone blocks from the ceiling above, an overturned cup, a bit of bright-blue cloth clinging to an ax head—the remains of a battle. But the room was two, three fingers deep in dust and sand, soft and brown and undisturbed by footprints or tracks of any kind. No one had been in this room for generations. Whatever had happened in the emperor’s chamber must have occurred long ago.
“Gods,” he sighed, “what happened here? Where is everyone? Where is the emperor?”
From the shadows, a voice answered him. “This is all there is, all that is left,” it said. “What you are looking at is the great secret at the heart of the empire.”
Arko shaded his eyes and squinted through the gloom. At the periphery of the chamber, he could see the outlines of a man take form, as if from the dust itself—an old man, from the look of him, white-haired and rangy, dressed simply in a robe. But in the middle of his forehead a great yellow jewel gleamed in the single beam of light.