Dead Testaments
Aislynn trudged slowly up the fitted slate cobblestones of the street, her once beautiful traveling outfit now hopelessly stained and heavy with rainwater. Though it had been only four days since their unceremonious dismissal from Bachas’s ship, it seemed like an eternity. She was weak from hunger, tired and cold, yet she still placed one foot before the other as they moved deeper into the tortured city of the Kyree. Obadon, Valthesh, and Gosrivar all followed behind her. She knew that if she stopped she would fail them; and she would rather die than fail them now. So she lifted her weary eyes and searched for their way into the heart of madness.
The ferocity of the storm over the city continued unabated and, she began to suspect, had done so since before the city’s fall more than twenty years before. It was an eternal tempest, nature railing with fitful sobs against an offending abomination in its midst. The tempest hid behind its misty veil the more terrible aspects of the tortured city, but the horror would not be suppressed, only obscured. So through the sheets of the chill, gray downpour Aislynn and her companions saw glimpses of the towering architecture of the Kyree city.
At first they made their way along the waterfront of the harbor, a long bowl of seething whitecaps nearly two miles in length. There, the towering buildings of the Kyree leaned not so much toward the angry water as away from the center of the city. Each long wharf that they passed was buckled, the wood planks used to fashion it warped and curled. Next to the wharfs, the masts of the ships sunk at their moorings jabbed awkwardly at the sheets of rain from odd angles, their tattered sails and buckled rigging moaning in the storm—but not the gale alone; for the tattered sails prove to be composed of large, stained feathers embedded in the tarpaulin, and the masts were pocked with the shapes of open mouths that screamed in chorus with the howling wind. The fevered waves of the harbor crashed against the rigging, forming watery, panic-driven hands that struggle to grasp the slippery ropes momentarily before descending once more to join the frothing surface. Even Obadon—a fierce warrior of House Argentei—recoiled at the sights and sounds of the harbor.
They quickly crossed two bridges along the waterfront that seemed to lead them toward the towers that appeared occasionally set against the flash of lightning and called to by the crash of thunder. On the other side of the second bridge they were stopped short by the sight of a Kyree woman fused with the street underfoot. She appeared to be emerging from the cobblestones; indeed, she looked as though she were made entirely of the same material as these stones, yet moving with grinding agony. One of her hands held a loose rock with which she had been chipping at the stones in front of her, as though clawing herself free to the harbor just beyond her reach.
The figure stopped and, screeching with the effort, turned to face them with stone, featureless eyes. It reached for them—
Aislynn paled, stepping back suddenly. She turned and focused on the thoroughfare snaking up into the heart of the city and she ran for a distance between the slanting, empty buildings. She stopped when she lost her breath.
In some ways, Aislynn reflected as her teeth chattered, the Kyree architecture was not so different from that of the Fae. The Kyree were winged creatures and, as such, had little use for such Famadorian foolishness as stairs. Roads and streets, apparently, were as much a necessity for the Kyree as for the Fae; both finding their civilizations dependent upon distant commerce and, thus, the necessity of moving bulk goods along the ground. While building entrances were found in open archways high above the street where one might fly up and honor their host—as appeared to be the case with the Kyree structures that towered over her on either side—the roads in and between the cities were the deep veins of a city’s lifeblood.
It was an unfortunate comparison in the current circumstances; the water running in thin sheets down the street beneath her feet was tinged with crimson. Decades of rain, she thought, and the city still bleeds.
She continued to force her feet to step one before the other. All along the street, they saw the partial bodies of the Kyree; some fused into the walls, their faces obscured by door frames, pillars, or windowsills, their arms and legs still twitching, grasping, and clawing for a surcease from an agony that seemed never to end. Other partial faces gazed at them from where they were suffused, their mouths working with terrible sound but without mind or thought to form words.
“We’ve answered one question,” Obadon observed grimly. “We wanted to know where the Kyree had all gone.”
Aislynn agreed wearily. “I wish with all my heart that they had gone; but the terrible truth is that they are all still here.”
She drew in a long, shuddering breath, then looked up. Beyond the tops of the tormented buildings—their walls made into prisons for the very hands that had crafted them—she could see they were drawing closer to the forbidding central towers of the city.
Even from several miles away, the City of the Gods was an impressive and imposing sight. The center of the city was built around a small rock peak situated at the edge of a plateau that dropped precipitously down into a wide valley beyond. Surrounding the entire rock peak were rings of wall rising up from the base in successive tiers. At the top of the peak, in its center, great flying buttresses rose in tall, impossible arches over a great dome to support the central, graceful tower. Though several of the buttresses had fallen and shattered and the top of the tower seemed to have broken off, the walls still shone in the sunlight. Framing it on either side were the towering snowcapped peaks of the Paulis Range shining brightly in the afternoon sun.
“The City of the Gods,” Margrave spoke in the most reverential of practiced tones. “Here the emperors took counsel that they might know the will of Hrea in their judgments and appeal to Ekteia for good fortune and profit.”
“So, you’re saying it is the City of the Gods?” Lucian asked skeptically.
“Well,” Margrave sniffed. “It certainly looks like a city of the gods. I mean, if I were a god, that’s what I’d like my city to look like.”
“You also said that the last ruin we found was the City of the Gods,” Lucian grumbled. “It’s getting so that every pile of stones we see stacked on each other is the City of the Gods.”
Caelith stood at the leading edge of the barge, considering the glorious ruin as it drew closer. “What do you think, Jorgan?” he asked flatly. “Have we found the City of the Gods at last? Is this where both of our questions will be answered?”
“We shall know soon enough,” was all Jorgan would say, his arms folded tightly across his chest.
“It is glory day!” Oguk shouted with religious fervor from atop the outer wall of the city. “Today our promise is full!”
Below him, the ogre warriors stood outside the city walls and shouted back in response. Their deep, booming voices obliterated all other sound and their stomping feet shook the foundations of the battlement. Each was arrayed for battle, strict formation lines in blocks of combatants sixty-four square on a side. They all wore face and body decorations unique to their family and ancestry, carefully and proudly painted onto their skin by their ogre women and directed by the elders of their families. Each carried the ancestral weapons that had been lovingly cared for down the generations—hooked blades with serrated edges or long pikes with strange blades affixed to both ends. The blades and shafts gleamed with their preserving oils. In the rear of each formation were several phalanxes of ogres carrying slings and sacks of glass balls filled with white powder. These ogres wore thick hide vests, but the vast majority of them wore nothing more than a wide wrap of cloth around their waist.
To Thux, standing next to Oguk on the wall, they looked frightening, formidable—and completely doomed. “Emperor Oguk, your army is, well, pretty impressive, but don’t you think they would be better off inside the walls? I mean, you’re supposed to defend the city—not run out and attack.”
“My dear Master Spy,” Oguk said, shaking his head with a patient parent’s smile on his wide face, “you do not understand the way of such things. The prophecies are clear; we are what the Titan-Whitat called kenon-foder, those who charge in defense of the city. Then, in the hour of our most desperate need, the Titan-Whitat will return and bring glory and honor to the fallen. The Titan-Whitat will defend us.”
Defend!
Thux felt a cold rock form in the bottom of his stomach. He could see the symbol in his mind, feel the chill of the bronze globe, and hear the voice of Lunki laughing at him—waiting to kill him in the dream-place. He tried to consider what would happen if he did not do what he feared he must.
“They will all die,” Thux answered himself aloud.
Oguk nodded. “It may be so; then we take glorious rest with the Whitat.”
But Thux was already running down the stairs. His large feet carried him through the cheering throngs of ogre women and children and their proud cries for battle. They carried him past the vendors and merchants who were closing their shops. They carried him farther into the city until they brought him through the now unguarded gates of the Trove itself. And before he quite realized what they were doing, his feet brought him to the closed doors of the Throne of Thux. Tears welled up in his eyes; the House of Books was to his right around the ruined plaza. It was not the thought of his own life or even his dear Phylish that moved him. Even the destruction of the ogres, terrible as that might be, did not move him—but the mere thought of Lithbet tearing apart the ordered ranks of books drove him past reason.
He pulled open the doors, his feet slapping quickly against the cold, polished stones of the entry hall. In moments he stood panting, gazing down at the throne and the bronze globe that he had come to loathe as a gateway to his own death. He made his way over to the throne, standing between it and the globe. A voice seemed to whisper to him, words in his head, and he knew what he needed to do. He reached forward and twisted the handle, rotating the globe until the handle was upright. The symbol he was looking for was turned toward him.
“Defend it is, then,” Thux said to himself as he reached forward, closed his eyes, and pressed his finger to the globe.
“By the gods!” Caelith exclaimed. “What is that?”
“Something is happening in the central tower,” Jorgan said anxiously as much to himself as in response to Caelith, his brow clear with delighted astonishment. “A light—a beacon sign to the dragon-gods!”
“A beacon?” Lucien was incredulous. “In the middle of the day?”
Jorgan turned calmly toward the Enlund mage. “Have you no faith? You sorcerers are always conjuring tricks, selling your souls for false lights and fakery; then when true miracles shine before you, you scoff! You cannot even believe your own eyes. The City of the Gods—your own supposed legend made real in front of you—and you can’t believe it. I don’t know who is blinder, you or the dwarf!”
“Well, someone is making very clear to us where they want us to go,” Caelith observed thoughtfully, “but the question is whether it is an invitation to guidance or a lure to a trap.”
“So now you fear the truth.” Jorgan laughed. “You fear knowing that Vasska reigns supreme over the earth and sky!”
“The Rhamasian gods reigned long before your Vasska began to soak the earth with blood,” Caelith answered back. “If anyone has cause to fear, it is you.”
Jorgan suddenly lunged at Caelith, his hands closing around his brother’s neck in a fury. Caelith reached up, trying to block the Pir Inquisitas, but the priest was strong and his rage white hot. “The Dragonkings are the only lords of this world; the only true hope for mankind! You’ll destroy us all—just as your precious Rhamasians nearly destroyed us four centuries ago!”
Caelith reached across suddenly, thrusting his hand over one arm of his attacker and under the other. In a quick motion, he pried Jorgan’s hands free of his neck, grabbed his far hand and twisted it, driving his opponent quickly downward. “You want to save your people?” Caelith shouted. “Well, I want to save mine! You’ve been killing us for centuries—your own ancestors—and for what?”
“For the peace.” Jorgan grimaced. “For the hope that humanity would have outgrown you!” The priest pushed forward, dragging Caelith off balance down to the deck of the barge with him. In a moment, the two were locked in a fierce struggle.
“Stop it! Both of you!” Eryn shouted. She leaped forward, struggling to pull the two combatants apart. “Lucian! Margrave! Help me!”
The two men joined her, wading into the fray. In a few moments, Caelith and Jorgan stood facing each other, panting and red-faced on the deck.
Nearby, the old dwarf sat, chuckling to himself.
“And what do you find so amusing in all this?” Eryn asked angrily.
“City of the Gods er is.” Cephas laughed loudly. “Knock on the door we be—see who answers er is; then we know who be god er no!”
“Aislynn!” Gosrivar called out. “What is that?”
“I don’t know,” the Princess called back down the lane. “I think we had best hurry—something is changing!”
They had made their way up the hill and now stood between two gigantic statues of Kyree that faced each other from opposite sides of the road. The buildings here were of a grander nature; taller and statelier than those they had encountered thus far.
Waves of deep blue light had begun pulsing out from the dome covering one of the buildings. It washed as a wall across the buildings and down the streets. With each passage, the Kyree horrors screeched with pain and woe, an ear-splitting sound that shook bone and soul. The rain was driven back with each pulse, its power undeniable.
“I believe we are getting closer.” Valthesh spoke in even tones but Aislynn could see uncertainty in her eyes.
“What manner of truth is this?” Obadon muttered nervously.
“Stay with me,” Aislynn shouted over the keening of the Kyree around them. She wished she could fly, but the rain had left their sodden wings useless and their clothing hopelessly heavy. She gathered her strength and ran between the colossi and into the center of Tjugan Mai.
The road before her was buckled and deformed. She could see that it ran up into a great plaza surrounded by massive buildings, yet it was a smaller, unimpressive domed building lying down a side street to her left that immediately drew her attention. Every other building in the area leaned away from the domed structure. Without hesitation, Aislynn turned and made her way past the twisted faces and leaning columns of several stately buildings. She was astonished, in fact, that she could make out the words on the faces of the buildings as she hurried past them, for the inscriptions once more bore an unsettling similarity with Fae shortscript. “Hall of Glory,” she read aloud as she ran, “Hall of Heroes . . . Hall of Destiny . . .”
She stopped before the glowing, domed building. Although large, it was smaller and seemingly of no importance compared to those surrounding it.
But it was the undeniable epicenter of the waves of light.
“Hall of Conquest,” Aislynn read aloud.
“The Kyree were a race who prized conquest above all other things,” Gosrivar spoke up, his voice shaking. “They would keep their most important treasures in such a place.”
“Then perhaps they plundered one treasure they had best not have kept,” Valthesh observed. “What do you recommend now, Aislynn?”
“The dead drove us here,” she replied. “The Kyree seemed to believe we were responsible for both the dead in our own land and the dead of theirs.”
“So we face death?” Obadon asked, flexing his hands.
“We face the truth,” Aislynn replied. “And if we can, make right what was made wrong.”
“Then we had better hurry,” Valthesh said, pointing behind them.
Aislynn turned to follow the other woman’s gaze. Between the buildings, the waves of light had drawn aside the curtain of perpetual rain.
There, in the harbor, the Brethain was dropping anchor.
Caelith scarcely could breathe as he led his companions into the ancient precincts of the City of the Gods. The outer buildings were in utter ruin, the vague outline of their streets barely visible through the grasses that struggled to hide the scars of four centuries before. Caelith paid them little attention, for the grandeur of the walled center of the city itself drew him.
He beckoned his companions through the outer gate and into a different world. Within it looked as though the city were still inhabitable. They followed the road to a circular plaza where a fountain of clear water splashed as though to welcome them. Curving streets ran to the right and left following the contour of the second and much higher inner wall. Shops and homes here all lay quiet and still, their doors closed as though their owners had just stepped out for the afternoon and would be returning soon. In his exuberance, Caelith led them straight forward toward a towering pair of gates but found them barred.
“The gods don’t seem to be at home,” Lucian observed wryly. “Didn’t you let them know we were coming?”
“I believe I did,” Caelith said in reply, “but I think I mentioned you would be with us. You don’t suppose that offended them, do you?”
“Blasphemous unbelievers!” Jorgan scoffed. “You cannot even take your own false gods seriously!”
“Look, is this Calsandria or not!” Eryn demanded. “We’ll need some proof for the Circle of Six and so far I haven’t seen anything that’s convincing.”
“Patience, lass!” Cephas said in a kindly rumble. “Proof enough er is given time. Find proof Caelith will!”
“As my father told me: ‘If you can’t go through, go around,’” Caelith said, stepping back from the massive gate. He walked back down the street and started down the road circling the inner wall. “Let’s try this way!”
Lucian shook his head with doubt, then shrugged and followed with Eryn as Jorgan walked slowly beside the dwarf.
The street curved past numerous houses, each apparently built with a common wall, as there was no space between them. The buildings ended, however, where the curve of the inner wall bent outward into a second, shallower curve. Three colossal statues sat on thrones against the high inner wall, looking out over the lower outer wall.
“What are they, Margrave?” Eryn asked in astonishment.
“I don’t know,” the Loremaster said, shaking his head as he smiled in wonder.
“Awfully glad we have you with us,” Lucian said to Margrave through a pleasant smile, “now that we really need you.”
“Lucian! Can you make this out?” Caelith stood at the base of the tower that rose at the apex of the curved inner walls. An inscription in Rhamasian was cut ornately into the tall, peaked archway that entered the tower base.
Lucian gazed at it for a moment before he spoke. “Pilgrim’s Way.”
“Pilgrims, eh? Is that what we are?” Caelith asked as he entered through the arch.
“What is he looking for?” Eryn asked.
“Knows he Caelith does,” Cephas intoned with a broad smile. “Follow him and answers er is!”
The stone circular steps showed the wear of use now centuries past. Caelith trod them with an increasing sense of reverence for those forgotten souls that had walked this path before. An archway at the top of the stairs opened onto a large courtyard surrounded by high, curved walls. The light of the afternoon sun was lost in the shadows of that deep place. Lucian and the rest of his expedition joined Caelith as he approached a towering stela set atop a diamond-shaped platform.
It was the second set of stairs, however, that captured his attention. Rising higher still between where the two curved walls narrowed, the broad steps led directly to the tower at the apex of the city: the Pillar of the Sky.
They climbed the stairs in awe of the vision before them: a column of light stabbing straight into the evening sky through the shattered peak of the tower. Cresting the steps, Caelith found the tower itself surrounded by a wide garden. Nine flying buttresses rose from the soaring wall that circled the garden to support the central structure. Two of the buttresses had fallen, their stones scattered across the now dead garden, and the top of the tower lay as a ruined pile to one side. Yet despite the damage, the place was magnificent.
“The Pillar of the Sky,” Caelith said in quiet wonder. “This is it. We’ve found it.”
Colossal seated statues faced outward at intervals all around the base of the tower. Each held their arms up, seeming to support the tower itself on their bent backs and wide shoulders. A set of wide, curved stairs led up between two of the colossi. High above it all, the brilliant column of light shone upward from the tower.
Caelith dashed across the overgrown garden, taking the steps into the tower two at a time.
“Wait!” Lucian shouted as his old friend dashed across the garden and up the stairs. “Oh, by the gods! Come on!” he muttered to Eryn and then ran to follow.
Caelith slowed at the top of the stairs, suddenly uncertain about treading on holy ground. He stepped through the arched portal and gazed into the temple of the Mad Emperors.
The center of the tower reminded Caelith of the smoke-outlined rotunda they had seen in Segathlas but far grander. It was a forum of tiered concentric platforms surrounding a central dais and pedestal. There, atop the pedestal, was a strange object that felt familiar to Caelith: a bronze globe of intricate workmanship pierced by a single spindle. It was from this globe that the column of light shone upward and out through the missing ceiling of the tower high above them; its light illuminated the interior of the rotunda.
Jorgan came into the hall, Kenth, Tarin, and Warthin following just behind. The Inquisitas was rapturously gazing at the interior of the enormous tower. “The City of the Gods,” he murmured, his eyes bright with joy and contentment. “Vasska be praised!”
Caelith gawked at everything in awe. Three tremendous statues, thirty feet in height, stood evenly spaced against the walls. One was of a beautiful woman holding three globes together in her joined hands. Another was of an exquisite winged man pondering three globes in his left hand. The third figure was of a monstrously peculiar, big-eared creature with a playful smile that was balancing two globes while keeping a third floating in the air. Each was separated by a fresco adorning the gallery twenty feet up the wall.
“Do you see it?” Jorgan asked with quiet satisfaction.
“What?” Caelith had not even been aware that his brother had joined them.
“The fresco; do you see it?”
“Yes, it’s magnificent. I don’t think I’ve ever—”
“No,” Jorgan said. “Look at it! Over there. What does it show?”
Caelith looked. “That’s . . . that’s a dragon! It looks like Satinka. It’s bowing down before that figure on the right.”
“Yes,” Jorgan said calmly, “and what is that figure holding?”
“Well, he’s holding—” Caelith blinked. “That can’t be right!”
“He’s holding a dragonstaff.” Jorgan nodded. “A staff identical to every one carried by my brother Pir monks throughout the Five Domains.”
Lucian shook his head in disbelief. “The same staves they’ve been using to oppress and control us for four centuries. We never knew where they came from; we all assumed that they were created by the Pir in some ritual power that came from the dragons. But look around us, Caelith; look in the alcoves between the statues.”
“No!” Caelith whispered.
Set carefully in each of the alcoves stood row after row of dragonstaffs, their gemlike eyes gleaming back at him with the light of the pillar.
“Caelith . . . Caelith!”
Eryn’s voice intruded on his tumbling thoughts. He turned toward her. She stood in the center of the circular arena next to the pedestal on the dais. She was looking down at something behind the pedestal, obscured from his sight by the glare of the light.
“Come here,” she said, a deep sadness in her voice.
Caelith and Lucian exchanged a quick glance before they moved toward the dais. Jorgan walked confidently with them as they circled around to get the glare out of their eyes and see what she was looking at.
It was small, looking like a bundle of old clothing carelessly tossed behind the dais. He drew closer, squinting in the bright light next to him. He could see tangled hair and realized suddenly that it was a body. He had seen enough of war to deal dispassionately with the dead, but then a shock ran through him.
The hammer in its hand was unmistakable.
“Cephas!” Caelith stammered. “This is . . . Cephas?”
“Yes,” Eryn said quickly. “And by the looks of him, he’s been dead for a long while. Perhaps a year.”