YASH RUSHED farther down the stairs, past Hana’s rooms to the fourth level where she remembered seeing another doorway. There she slowed, took a breath, and went in quietly, not certain what to expect.
“Deng’jah?” she asked in her little voice.
“No one in here,” Deng’jah said.
The room was a storehouse, packed with boxes, urns, sacks. She took a moment to look for anything that might be useful—weapons, say—but it all seemed to be either food or fuel.
But there was, as she hoped, a window. It was narrow, but not so narrow she couldn’t squeeze through. From here she had a much better view of the Bright Cloud Tower and the eastern half of the fortress.
At the northern range of her vision she could make out of the Earth Center Tower and the wall surrounding it. It was closer than the Bright Cloud Tower, and she now saw what a difficult ascent that would be, although she had some thoughts about how to accomplish it. In none of her plans, however, did she manage to enter without sounding an alarm, not given what Chej and Deng’jah had told her of it. Anyway, it was the Bright Cloud Tower currently raining fiery destruction on her homeland. That had to be stopped immediately, and she might manage it without starting a general call-to-arms against her.
She had to cross the fortress rooftops. Getting there in daylight unseen would have probably been a hopeless cause. But now, in this dimming grey-gold light, she could probably do it. She had to try; there was no time to wait for the full embrace of night.
She leapt from the window, sailing out over the alley separating the tower from the rooftop jutting up below. She landed with almost no sound and rolled to absorb the impact and returned to standing. It was a little like running in the cliffs at night, she thought. The roof was not one flat plane: rather, it was a jumble of smaller roofs at different levels, some made of brick, some of tile, some of slate, some of plaster over lathed wooden beams. She thought that maybe once the fortress had been many smaller buildings that eventually grew so crowded they were now all stuck together with few gaps between them. It was rapidly very nearly as dark as the cliffs at night, too. Lamps and lanterns lit windows in the towers, and scattered courtyards were wells of faint light, but most of the fortress was under her feet, and whatever fires shone there were not in sight. The few that were visible were obvious and easily avoided. She saw a handful of sentries in the distance, but they were all facing outward, watching for enemies approaching the fortress from outside.
Ahead of her one of the courtyards opened up like a canyon. She skirted around it and caught a few muffled lines of conversation as smelled smoke and grilling meat. In her homeland, most people slept when the sun went down or soon after. Would they do the same here? Probably.
If Chej’s map was accurate, she was presently crossing over the xarim quarters. The Bright Cloud Tower loomed closer, northeast of her. To her right, south, the Red Coral Tower stretched starward. In the north, she could make out the Standing Pinion Tower and the Obsidian Spear clustered together like the Blue Needle and Yellow Bone towers: close enough for her to jump between. She wondered why. The other four towers on the spiral arms were more evenly spaced. It might be important. She would ask Chej when she saw him again.
In the north, something blotted out the stars. Yash ducked into the deeper shadow of a wall.
“The bird,” Deng’jah said. “It’s looking for me. And maybe you now. Maybe we should deal with it first.”
“If we kill the bird now, everyone will know,” Yash said. “Better if I kill it later.”
“You have a point there,” Deng’jah said. “But if we’re going to be running around on these rooftops…”
“The bird is one of the naheeyiye,” Yash said. “I cannot liberate it without killing this flesh the tower masters have imprisoned it in. But if I knew its name—”
“I don’t know them all,” Deng’jah said. “But that one is easy. That has to be Tch’etsagh.”
“You could have told me that earlier,” Yash said.
“It didn’t come up.”
Yash glanced back up. Fighting the bird right now would attract unwanted attention and probably rouse the whole fortress. She had to deal with Zu the Bright first. The bird would come later. But there was something else she could do now that she knew its name.
“Quiet,” Yash told Deng’jah. She closed her eyes, feeling the rhythm of her pulse, listening, trying to hear the distant thunder of the bird’s heart.
“Help me, Deng’jah,” she little-voiced.
“You told me to be quiet.”
“I still want you quiet.”
For a moment there was nothing, but then, on her shoulder where Deng’jah sat, she felt the faint tiq tiq of the bird’s pulse.
“That’s it,” she murmured. Then she sang, timing her words between her heartbeat and the bird’s.
Tch’etsagh
Inside there
In the monster they have dressed you in
Listen
I am the mouse too small to see
I am the wind with no fragrance
I am the tall grass that only moves with the wind
I am nothing at all
Less than that even
Why notice me?
I am not even here.
She finished her song. The bird was out of sight now. Had it worked?
Only one way to find out. She stood from the shadow and continued toward the Bright Cloud Tower. Deng’jah went off ahead. The bird continued to circle above.
Two more of the flying stars had come from the tower since she started toward it, but now they seemed to have stopped. They were coming not from the highest window, but from maybe three floors down, still far higher than the roof she was on. She would have to enter through a lower opening and ascend. She studied the few lighted windows, searching for movement to indicate inhabitants, but didn’t see anything.
Deng’jah appeared on her shoulder.
“The bird is resting,” he said. “Your song appears to have worked. And the Bright Cloud Tower seems empty. Other than whoever is sending the flying stars.”
“How can that be? Did you go in?”
“I looked, but I didn’t enter. It stinks of sorcery, and there may be alarms I can’t see from outside. I can go in alone, but if I’m noticed, Bright will be ready for you. If we go in together, he also may notice us, but we’ll also already be inside. It’s up to you.”
“We’ll go in together,” Yash said.
By that time, they were at the base of the tower. As with the Blue Needle Tower, there was a gap between the wall of the xarim compounds and the tower, and a window facing southwest that she thought she could jump to. It was dark inside, but, as she gauged the distance, the opening suddenly flashed with a blinding white light, as if lightning had struck within. Except the light was brighter and whiter than lightning.
“What was that?” she asked.
“Something sharp and quick,” Deng’jah said. “Something that doesn’t belong here. I don’t like the feel of it.”
“Interesting,” she said. Then she jumped.
This time, nothing interfered with her trajectory, and she landed feet-first on the stone ledge of the window, folding into a crouch, catching the walls of the opening to steady herself.
She waited a few breaths for her vision to adjust to the deeper darkness of the room. “Deng’jah,” she said. “I need more light to see by.”
The insect didn’t answer, but he began to glow with a soft, yellow-green light, enough for her night-familiar eyes to find the way.
Then the smell entered her, like the sharp air after a lightning strike, like coal heated to burning in a fire.
“What’s here?” she whispered.
“Nothing,” Deng’jah said. “Nothing alive, anyway.”
As she turned through the entranceway, she saw what he meant.
The floor was littered with bones, mostly of small animals, but a few very large ones. They were piled around four tall crystalline stones that stood floor-to-ceiling. The pillars formed the corners of a square, with a tall person’s arm’s length between them. The bones were thickest just around it, some of them still articulated into skeletons. There were many different sorts of animal: some with sharp teeth, some with dull, flat, grass-chewing teeth, some with beaks. But none of them looked familiar. As she got closer, she saw some of the remains weren’t bones at all, but more like the outside shells of insects. On the top of a pile lay one skeleton that glowed a very faint orange color, fading as she watched. It was the size of a small dog, but it had a long carapace, like a turtle that had been stretched thin.
“Deng’jah, what is this?” she asked.
“It’s a crack,” he said. “A crack in this world that leads to the White Brilliant.”
“And these animals came through it?”
“Yes,” Deng’jah said. “So it appears.”
“And why are they all dead?”
“Because they cannot live here,” Deng’jah said. “In the White Brilliant, everything burns more intensely than here.”
“Don’t speak in riddles, Deng’jah. Be plain. I have some experience with the White Brilliant.”
“You’ve been at the edges of it,” Deng’jah said, “where it meets other worlds. This opening goes to somewhere near the navel of that world. Living things there move faster. They don’t live as long. The fire that gives them life burns hotter than in our world. But so does the air, the water, the earth itself. Everything is brighter, hotter, more alive. When they pass into our cooler world they—I think they just burn up.”
“And if I go through there?”
“I don’t know what would happen to a human being. The White Brilliant is a big place, like a house with many rooms. Some of those rooms are tolerable to your kind and our world tolerable to them, at least for a time. Others—like this one—may be too extreme. You might burn up, or age ten years in a heartbeat, or change into something unrecognizable. I couldn’t say without entering. In your room—in the Blue Needle Tower—you fought something? I smelled something there.”
“Needle had a chuaxhi sewn into his skin.”
“Yes. Often sorcerers choose chuaxhi from the dimmer reaches of the White Brilliant because they can survive in our air without catching fire. But these bones we see? Those creatures were different.”
“This is some sort of trap, then? For creatures from the White Brilliant?”
“For what purpose?”
“Ask your knife,” Deng’jah said.
Suddenly Yash saw the skeletons with new eyes.
“Demon bone,” she said. “To make weapons. And armor.”
“Yes, of course. Where did you think those things came from?”
“Dead demons,” she said. “But I suppose I imagined something more… like a warrior or a hunter, seeking out the demons as foes or prey—you know, defeating them in combat. Not… this.”
“You don’t understand the Hje, then,” Deng’jah said.
“I’m starting to,” Yash replied.
Skirting the bones, Yash made her way to the stairs and started up as Deng’jah flew on ahead.
The next floor was a garden of sorts, full of potted plants. Or at least, that’s what she thought they were, for most of them were… weird. The tallest had thin, light-green stalks that went almost to the ceiling, where the stem divided into four or five thinner, shorter shoots that ended in little spheres. They had no leaves. Others resembled clumps of reeds in colors varying from red to deep brown, and still others were cone-shaped, white and grey, and reminded her of large mushrooms without caps.
She didn’t go in, instead continuing upward.
The next room was the one she was looking for. Four arched windows provided a spectacular view of the fortress, the valley, and the mountains beyond. The floor was polished blue stone, which she was astonished to realize was purest dedłiji. She had never imagined so much of the precious material in one place. But as she tracked her gaze around, she saw that the walls were mosaics of precious minerals: red coral, agate, rose quartz, polished obsidian, jade, bits of copper, silver, and gold. The patterns were abstract but formed around dozens of holes in the wall, each about the size of her head and all filled with darkness.
“Deng’jah?” she asked.
There was no answer. But his light was gone.
Her scalp was tingling. She took a step back.
Light flashed all around her, incredibly bright, and for an instant she couldn’t see. She backed up until she was against the wall, holding her knife in front of her. Another flash, and this time she felt something pressing her down, as if stones had been heaped on her. She couldn’t breathe. She struggled harder then relaxed, hoping whatever it was would think she had passed out.
The next thing she knew, she was in the same room but upside down, turning slowly. She was tied, hands and feet, and suspended by rope from the ceiling. And she was naked.
A few arm’s lengths away, a man stood watching her. He was a big fellow in red robes with a long, oiled braid. She recognized him from the wedding.
Tower Master Zu the Bright.
Master Bright approached her, hands behind his back. He tilted his head.
“Can you understand me?” he asked.
“Yes,” Yash said.
“Then tell me—who are you?”
At first, Yash didn’t understand. Bright had seen her already, several times. Then, glancing up at the length of her exposed body, she understood his confusion.
“My name is Tchiił,” she said.