Eternitys blade, p.18
Eternity's Blade, page 18
Toward Obajen-mahoe.
Soh’shoro raised the rifle. “Give my father back!”
“Soon.” The lump laughed, the sound blending into guttural coughing.
Then it was as if Obajen-mahoe melted away, his skin and bone pouring toward Soh’shoro and threatening to drown him. The prince kicked away from the leaking mass, rolling across the wooden scaffolding. Boils of skin lurched from the stump of what was once Obajen-mahoe’s face, seeping after him. Another shiver, and suddenly the lump’s entire rib cage ruptured, propelled outward in an explosive tendril of thumping fat and marrow. Without the Voice, Soh’shoro moved far too slowly. The swelling mass speared him against the solarium’s wall. His head dashed against stone. Air rocketed from his lungs.
Soh’shoro tried to shout for help, but podding flesh swam over his neck and throat, suffocating him. He wedged his elbow against the stone wall, wriggling one arm loose, clutching the rifle. In moments pseudopods swelled around it, swallowing it whole.
One shot. The weapon is loaded.
He pushed with all his might, setting the gunstock against the chamber’s wall, then levering its barrel against the swelling flesh. His other arm lay completely buried now, so he could not pull the trigger. But he did not have to. Instead he kept the weapon braced, aiming where the lump of Obajen-mahoe’s face had vanished. Then came another swell, crawling over his fingers, depressing steel. The muzzle flashed.
Black smoke swallowed the chamber. The bullet burrowed into the hulking growth with a moist, muted thud. A small trickle of dark gore rocketed free. Next came a sound like bird wings beating against their cage. The fleshy mound strained, then distorted. And in one sudden burst the creature that had been Obajen-mahoe fountained open, deflating like a paper lantern. It spasmed a final time, angry and malevolent and unthinking. Then only a pool of silent skin remained, riven wide in a jarring puncture of wing-speared rot.
Chapter 16
Burial
“What is Outside?”
Dusk stained the silver-tinted windows of the refectory an angry red. Beside its raging hearth fires, chirurgeons stroked their bearded masks, and Black Cloaks fingered distinguished necklaces of heavy gold. Servants offered orange liquors from smelted cups. The room smelled of sweat and anticipation.
And the beautiful chirurgeon rose from her seat of honor: a grand chair of stuffed animal skins that smothered her like a deep snow.
“Broken.” She took a sharp drink from her amber glass. “We Salt-born lost touch long ago with the lands beyond the sea. Whether because they abandoned us to our task, or for some darker purpose. So for centuries we contained the Valley alone, holding back its seepages. But at last it escapes. Now we too must fail, or finish our work.”
“And what is your work?” Soh’shoro asked.
“The same thing you want, I think.” An’na took another deep drink, grimacing at the liquor’s burn. A servant immediately approached, refilling her glass with fearful diligence. “To destroy the Valley.”
In the silence that followed, Soh’shoro tried again and again to reply. For he hated much of what lay behind the Mists: from the Onan’ji to the Corpse’s bloody stasis. But another part of him loved his home. Found beauty in its Eternity. Treasured its composure and constancy, despite its rituals and repetitions. Must it all burn away, because of its dark heart? What did it mean to obliterate an entire way of life and its infinite lifetimes?
“But now we are out of time,” An’na continued. “We must act, before the Mists claim us all.” She gestured through the refectory’s windows, at the coming roils of oblivion, swarming ever closer across Outside’s sands. “So tell us, prince of the Quo’dai-ma. What happened in the Valley? Why does our world drown?”
Soh’shoro rose slowly from his upholstered seat.
“The Onan’ji,” he began hesitantly. “He causes this catastrophe.”
“Yei’an warned of this Qu’su,” the chirurgeon confirmed. “You can assume we know all about him and his Order. As we know much of the Valley from centuries of study. What we do not understand is how this monk gained the power to free the Mists.”
“He didn’t,” Soh’shoro replied coldly. “He had help. He used me to break the Valley’s bonds.”
At those words, the chamber erupted with terrible anger and chaotic shouts. One Black Cloak lifted a chalice, as if to hurl it at Soh’shoro. But An’na merely raised her hand, like sunlight splitting storm clouds. Stilling all into silence.
“There will be no judgment here,” she pronounced, after the room had settled. “And I doubt you would be helping us now if the monk’s aims were your own.” Her gaze swept the assemblage imperiously, an animal pacing its den. “Speak freely. Tell us what has been done.”
And Soh’shoro felt the princess’s mask tug against his chest, as if begging to be put down.
“I was born unlike others in the Valley. An anathema. A child who could kill.”
More whispers coursed through the assemblage.
“But instead of purging me, the Onan’ji stole me from my father. Trained me as his assassin. Tricked me into killing my family. Noble by noble, House by House. Ever against my will. And when it was done”—his voice cracked at the remembered terror of the blade opening his throat—“he murdered me too. All so the Emperor would starve without blood. So the Onan’ji could claim his Throne.”
“You mean the Valley’s machine?” An’na pressed. “The device that makes the Mists?”
“Whatever you call it, he repairs it. He has for decades, I think. Smuggling shards of it into the Valley, hidden inside the Traders’ flesh.”
Another murmur passed through the room. One man spat openly in disgust.
“The Cult of the Lily.” An’na frowned. “We’ve known for centuries they scavenged artifacts from the sea. Fragments from when your Mausoleum first fell to earth.” She swallowed. “But we thought these mere objects of worship. Broken idols.”
“They are not idols,” Soh’shoro pressed. “They are parts.”
“But why?” An’na stroked her full lips curiously, as if caressing a beloved pet. “What purpose does repairing the Emperor’s Throne serve? And why would he then seek to sit upon it, when the machine consumes its scion so? The Onan’ji already has immortality.” She paused. “What more could he want, Soh’shoro?”
The prince’s mind swam, as he remembered the monk’s dark tutelage. The endless riddles and inscrutable promises. The mysterious Mist walks and their inexplicable sorrows. And then at last, the Onan’ji’s mysterious admission: True paradise must be shared.
“I can only guess,” Soh’shoro began.
“Then do so.”
“The Onan’ji once told me the Valley was incomplete. That its paradise was imperfect because it preserved so few. Perhaps that is why he spreads the Mists. To share the Valley.” And suddenly the full depths of the monk’s darkness yawned before him. “To gift Eternity to the entire world.”
“And kill us all in the process?!” a Black Cloak blurted out. “The Mists blot out everything they touch!”
“The Onan’ji will not see it that way.” Soh’shoro’s voice grew firm. “To him, your lives—the lives of everyone Outside—mean nothing. Because they are impermanent. Your deaths can’t matter against Eternity’s stretch. Not when you would die anyway.”
Once more the room shivered into whispers. But again the lead chirurgeon held her hand up for silence.
“Then to survive, our path is clear. There will be no barter or reasoning with this monk. Nor does his kind yield to mercy or regret.” An’na smiled viciously. “We must either kill the Onan’ji or destroy his machine. There is no other way to stop the Mists.”
“But both are inside the Valley,” Soh’shoro replied. “We would need some way to cross.”
Now the room exploded in riotous terror:
“Impossible!”
“No one survives the Mists!”
“All who tried have failed!”
But somehow the certainty of those shouts set Soh’shoro’s mind churning. His thoughts returned once again to those terrible seasons of tutelage beneath the Onan’ji. Because he remembered more than mere cruelty. The monk’s touch had been strangely loving, his violence often delivered with alien affection. Even now, Soh’shoro believed the monk cared for him, in his horrid way. So why let him wake Outside at all, if only to drown?
And the monk’s final riddle resounded: We’ll meet again soon.
“Silence!” Anarchy swallowed Soh’shoro’s calls. “Silence!”
“The prince needs silence!” An’na commanded. At her words, the hall hushed almost instantly. Still the chirurgeon waited for even its smallest whispers to die away before continuing. “What do you know, Soh’shoro? What have you realized?”
“First tell me: Why send Yei’an to rescue me?”
“What does that have to do with this?”
“Why?” Soh’shoro insisted.
An’na frowned at his impudence. “Because the Cult reveres the Valley’s dead. They sought to steal you to the Haven for worship.”
“The city that floats atop the Ocean? The one the Lily-Eaters captured?”
“Yes,” An’na replied. “But why does this matter, prince?”
“Because the Onan’ji could have kept my corpse in the Valley. But he let me wake Outside for a reason.”
The chirurgeon’s glass eye sparkled curiously. “And why would he do that?”
“Because he cares for me,” Soh’shoro replied. “Like a son, I think. He wouldn’t send me Outside to merely die again. If he thought the Cult would take me to the Haven, then that city must be special. There must be something there that might protect it from the Mists.”
An’na considered this carefully. “The Haven is built atop ruins. Ancient things, sunk deep beneath the waves. The Black Ships used them as a foundation when they first raised its pillars.”
Soh’shoro remembered his mother’s memory, from the night he drank the lily poison, of a great Shard sparkling beneath whitecapped waves.
“In the Valley, there are artifacts that keep back the Mists. Qu’en Shards.”
The chirurgeon nodded. “We know.”
“What if one of them is buried there? Underneath the Haven.” And Soh’shoro’s voice rose, as he realized the magnitude of what must come next. “That relic would ward the city, like a bubble in a pond. Keep it safe while the Mists passed over it.”
An’na smiled curiously. “It is possible.”
“No, I think it is certain. I’ve seen such a Shard. In memories gifted me by the Valley’s Voice.” Soh’shoro tightened with conviction. “We must return to the Haven. Recapture it from the Cult. It’s the only place Outside that will survive.”
But the grin faded from An’na’s slender face, replaced by freshly settling fear. “A bold plan, prince. But with one flaw.” She licked her lips cautiously. “We have yet to retake the Haven for a reason. We need rifles and guns to do so, of which we have precious few. Our Vault was in that city, Soh’shoro. Our great steel storehouse of powder and rifles. We might reforge those weapons, yes, but that takes seasons. If we attack the Haven poorly armed, we will be slaughtered.”
“Is there another choice?” Soh’shoro demanded, voice trembling. “Or would you merely wait for Death in the Mists? When we might do more than survive, but snatch victory from ruin?” He gripped the gilded fabric of his chair. “Think of it. The Onan’ji’s mercy is his weakness. After the Mists pass, the whole Valley will lie exposed. Unprotected and unknown to violence, with only the Qu’su to defend the Emperor’s Throne.” Soh’shoro leaned forward eagerly, imagining his conquest as a hunter stalking his quarry. “Beneath the fury of Outside’s powder, even the Mausoleum might fall. We could destroy the Valley’s darkness once and for all.”
War. But Soh’shoro felt no revulsion at his woken horror, merely certainty. War will save my home. And if there was any contradiction in such triumph, he could not see it.
More shouts erupted, both nervous and eager for the coming violence. Black Cloaks shoved and cajoled. And the beautiful chirurgeon merely stared at Soh’shoro, considering. Their gazes met once more.
Then An’na tapped her glass eye curiously, as if signaling approval.
After midnight, Soh’shoro returned to the tower’s courtyard. Amid the rows of metallic markers lining its close-cut grasses, a new relic speared the soft earth. The idol’s freshly painted gold glittered in the starlight, like tears reflecting a candle’s flame.
“I knew I’d find you here.” An’na glided beside him.
“This is where you buried him?” Soh’shoro asked. “My father?”
“Symbolically.” The chirurgeon frowned. “We burned the rot. But still made the grave.”
Night blanketed the pair, cool but pleasant. Winds howled.
“Do you think they wake up somewhere else?” Soh’shoro asked. “Like I woke from the Valley?”
“Who knows?” the chirurgeon answered cryptically. “But there is little magic Outside. No Mists and no Voice.” She swallowed. “I don’t think so.”
Kneeling, the chirurgeon cast a handful of dirt across the grave. Soh’shoro hesitated, then bent to do the same. The clump made a heavy, pleasant thud as it struck the burial marker. He wanted to cry. But he had no more tears.
“You said you tried to treat my father’s rot.”
“Yes.”
“Does that mean there’s a cure?”
The surgeon licked her lips thoughtfully. “Not a cure. But our drugs and tinctures are powerful. If such sickness were caught early enough, before its growths advanced as far as Obajen-mahoe’s, we could keep it in stasis, I think. With surgeries, cutting out the mutations as they formed. It would be a lifetime of suffering. But a lifetime nonetheless.” She reached out, taking Soh’shoro’s hand. The gesture was not romantic, merely compassionate. “But your father is dead, prince. What do you care now for a cure?”
“Because there is another. One who is sick like him.”
The chirurgeon’s glass eye sparkled. “The Ang’soon princess.”
“You know of her? Where is she?”
“We know of all the Houses. But the Ang’soon brother and sister are beyond us. Stolen to the Haven.”
Soh’shoro let the chirurgeon’s hand fall away. “Yei’an told me she didn’t know for certain . . .”
“Are you blind?” The chirurgeon laughed. “Even I can see that woman loves you. I knew as soon as she volunteered for your rescue from the Mists.” Her voice softened with understanding. “Do you really think Yei’an would have told the truth, given what you might have done?”
Soh’shoro’s heart thundered. He kept glimpsing the princess choking on the lily-sweet breath of Cultists or drowning beneath the Haven’s waves. Then he took up another handful of earth to cast over Obajen-mahoe’s grave.
Never again. His lips twisted into a ferocious grin. I must save her.
“What are you planning?” the chirurgeon asked. “I glimpsed it earlier. After I spoke of the Vault.”
“Promise me first.” Soh’shoro’s gaze met her good eye, holding it steadily. “Promise that if I somehow rescue her, you will treat the princess. No matter how cruel or desperate the surgeries, you will fight her rot. You will protect her from my father’s fate.”
An’na did not reply. Instead she reached into her pouch, withdrawing a narrow pipe of smooth lead. Carefully she sparked its end, puffing deeply. Spiced smoke filled the air. “She is dangerous, Soh’shoro. She too might change.”
“Not if your arts intervene early enough. You said as much yourself,” he insisted. “Please.”
An’na inhaled again, long and slow, her good eye glassing. A lazy smoke ring rose heavenward, vanishing into the night’s clouds.
“The risk is too great.”
“I am not asking you, then.” Soh’shoro’s voice hardened. “I am warning you. When we defeat the Onan’ji, the Valley will look for leadership. And I will be its rightful ruler. So if you seek peace with my people—instead of endless revenge—you will save their princess. Do you understand?”
An’na took another deep taste of the pipe, her lone eye watering. “I see.” She tapped away the loose ash curiously. “Then I promise to use all my arts to keep your bride safe. I can’t guarantee success. But I will try.”
“Thank you.”
“Your plan, then.”
Soh’shoro stood, turning away from Obajen-mahoe’s grave.
“The Vault full of guns and powder you spoke of. I will steal into the Haven and detonate it myself. Then it will be an even fight between Cultist and Black Cloak.”
“You can’t possibly,” An’na sneered. “You are one man.”
“You don’t know what I truly am. What the Qu’su made me. What I made myself.”
As a prince and a son. As a husband and an assassin. He was ready.
“And what are you?” the chirurgeon hissed. “I first asked when you arrived at my surgery. Do you have a better answer now?”
Inside the tower, he visited Yei’an’s sallow figure one last time. She lay wrapped warmly in thick cloth blankets, her brow bruising a brilliant purple above one eye, almost like rot. The orb beneath had shriveled. But her breathing came steadily.
He wished he wanted to stay with her. That he might live a life beside her, loving and happy despite its finality. That her brightness might be shared, and one day blend completely with his own.
But instead he craved the princess. Not because of her pain, but because even now he believed only he could save her from it. That only he understood her suffering, and what it meant to live apart from and against the world.
So he kissed Yei’an goodbye, drinking her warm lips one last time.
