The Master’s Sanctum
Gods’ Seat
Once again she lay on the floor, doubled over, sobbing.
The pain of the transition ached in her joints and muscles, burning as she fought to breathe. Pain made her aware of every part of her body. The core of her emotions bubbled over, and she found the strength to keep the Veil locked away. Anati was there, connected to her. She could feel the warmth of her kaas, fighting to add strength to the shield between two souls.
The crunch of broken glass sounded as Lin rose to her feet. Clear from the air—and the smooth, polished stone floor—they were no longer on the mountain.
“Sarine.” Yuli’s voice. Calm. Full of concern. “You did it; or at least, you got us away.”
She accepted Yuli’s help to lift her from the floor, and only once she was sitting did she notice the ragged cuts in Yuli’s shirt, the cloth stained red with blood.
“Are you hurt?” she said, cut short by dryness in her throat.
“I thought I was dead,” Yuli said. “But somehow here, I am healed.”
“What is this place?” Lin asked.
They were in a broad chamber, low-ceilinged, cut from the same polished stone as the floors, as though the space had been hollowed from a single core. The walls had a concave slope, and though the room was furnished, it was done in no fashion she recognized. Metal benches made a six-sided ring around a gold table at the center, with strange gold instruments standing across the floor, to her eyes no more than twisted hulks of metal and glass. Red markings had been painted on the walls in crude designs, the sort of stick-figure approximations she might have used in her first years of learning to draw anatomy, but clearly depicting people and animals, in what looked like hunting poses, chasing after the beasts with spears.
“Is this where you aimed to bring us?” Yuli asked, offering a hand to pull her up the rest of the way.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Anati?”
This is not the Soul, Anati thought. But it is the place where it is housed.
Lin had moved toward the gold table at the center, climbing over the silvery metal benches. “Death spirits,” Lin said. “This is a map. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Sarine and Yuli joined her, drawing close enough to see. The gold table had appeared flat from afar, but as she drew closer she saw it was textured, a topographical depiction of land and sea cut in miniature, with rises for hills and mountains, patches of green fuzz for forests, even tiny rolling waves so real that the oceans, rivers, and lakes appeared to be made of actual water atop the table.
“This is the Jun Empire,” Lin said, pointing to one of the landmasses on the eastern part of the table. “The Kye peninsula, the Shinsuke islands, Jun proper.”
“And the Natarii lands,” Yuli said, heading around to hover near the top portion of the map. “But what are these?” Yuli pointed toward an archipelago in the south, leading toward another landmass there, almost as large as the rest.
Sarine hardly heard them. It took a second glance to see the outline of familiar coasts and landmasses in the west.
“It isn’t just the Jun lands,” she said. “This is a map of the whole world. Our Old World is here.” She pointed to a landmass on the western side of the center. “This is Sarresant, Gand, Thellan, Skovan, Sardia. Our colonies must be here”—she pointed—“on this side of the ocean. And those are the Bhakal lands, just south of the Old World. I … I don’t recognize the rest.”
There were five continents, but between them they had named only three. The New World, on the far western side of the table, appeared to be two new worlds in fact, one stacked atop the other, and both were massive, either one nearly twice as large as the seat of the Old World powers. The Bhakal continent was the only one to straddle the center of the table, overlapping both east and west, but it, too, was massive, half again as large as either continent of the New World. Lin and Yuli had named the fourth mass the Jun continent, but neither had any knowledge of the fifth, a sprawling land of what appeared to be deserts and lakes far to the south.
“The Emperor’s cartographers would burn their children for five minutes in this room,” Lin said. “Providing it is accurate.”
“We should move on,” Sarine said. “Zi said this place would have answers for what’s coming.”
Lin and Yuli both hesitated, each lingering over different sections of the map. She could have done the same—studying new lands, or recognizing familiar ones. But they had a purpose here, and however curious the relics, they brought her no closer to understanding.
“What are we looking for, Anati?” she said as they left the chamber. The smooth stone and concave walls persisted into the hallway, offering left and right paths that curved out of sight.
My father said it was time for you to visit the Soul, Anati thought. It is here. Close.
She glanced left and right. The pathways seemed identical. The Soul, Anati had said. Which way would it be?
I don’t know. I haven’t been here before, either.
Well, that stood to reason. She led Lin and Yuli down the rightward path, following its curve around the corner, revealing another series of winding turns. Easier to retrace their steps if she followed a consistent rule, so she kept right wherever the opportunity presented itself to change. Wherever they were, it gave every sign of emptiness and cleanliness at once. No sign of dust or dirt, nor even the slightest chip or rough patch in the stone. The hallways should have been dark without torches, lamps, or windows, but they were lit evenly, a soft light seeming to come from all directions. Apart from the three of them the halls were empty, but more than once she stopped to look behind or second-guess a turn and thought she saw movement at the corner of her eye.
They began to pass chambers, each as strangely appointed as the map room. One was covered in animal furs, with woven blankets and what appeared to be freshly shorn pelts piled in place of furniture. Another could have been lifted from New Sarresant, with ornately carved wood chairs and chaises upholstered in the most fashionable patterns, racks of scrolls and books, and a darkwood desk at its center. Still another looked as though it had been recently destroyed, its low couches and tables covered in wood splinters and down from its pillows, though only parts of the chamber were broken, with the rest immaculate, as though they’d interrupted a cleaning partway through.
The passages continued on, and she began to feel a pulsing energy as they walked. A sense of rightness, growing with each turn, some of it mirrored by the Veil’s emotions, but the better part of it seemed to come from her. A sense of familiarity.
The hallway opened into a vast chamber when there were no more turns to take. She stepped inside, and for the first time since coming here, they were no longer alone.
The chamber was wide and empty, an amphitheater without seating or a stage. At its center a torrent of energy burned, the same column of pure white light she’d seen in their passage here. Echoes of memories washed through her, looking at it, and most of those came from the Veil: revulsion, anger, hate, betrayal. Her attention was directed to the two men standing beside the column. One a hulking giant, head and shoulders taller than the largest men she’d ever seen, and the other was Reyne d’Agarre.
D’Agarre turned to notice her before the giant did, and they stared at each other in mutual shock. It was him. The same sand-colored hair and blue eyes. The same red coat. The same smug surety in his face, despite the signs of surprise overwriting his usual veneer of confidence. Even his long knife hung at his belt, the weapon he’d used to kill dozens of innocents. Everything about him was frozen, exactly as it had been on the day of the battle in the city.
“Sarine,” Reyne said, and her name earned the giant’s attention, the massive man whirling to lay eyes on her, Lin and Yuli with even greater shock than showed in Reyne’s face.
“No,” the giant said. “No, it isn’t time.”
“Wait,” she said. “I’m here for answers, not to fight.” She could feel a hundred tethers between the giant and the leylines running beneath the room. So far none had materialized as Entropy, Body, Mind, or Shelter, but she kept Death strands at the ready all the same. Any moment he could erupt into a dozen copies of himself, hurling fire and putting barriers up to halt their advance. The giant stared death at her, as though the slightest word or step could set him in motion.
“Sarine,” Reyne repeated. “It’s you, isn’t it? Not the Veil.” He said it as though he meant to reassure his companion, but the giant had already turned his gaze on Yuli, looking between her and Sarine.
“Erris d’Arrent,” the giant said.
“No,” Sarine said, at the same time Reyne shook his head, laying a hand on the giant’s arm.
“That isn’t d’Arrent,” Reyne said. “The High Commander is shorter. I’d know her on sight. This is … someone else.”
“I am Yuli Twin Fangs Clan Hoskar,” Yuli said.
“Clan Hoskar,” the giant said. “And the other one: a child of the East. Together. With the Veil.”
“I am Lin Qishan,” Lin said. “Captain, and scion of a great house.”
“A great house,” the giant said. “A Great and Noble House, more like.”
With that the giant erupted into deep laughter. It echoed through the chamber, made all the more strange by his laughing alone.
“Fools,” the giant said. “Axerian warned me it was bad, but I never imagined … this.”
Suddenly Axerian’s stories clicked in her mind. This was one of Axerian’s companions: the strategist, the foremost among them, who touched the leylines and led their armies in battle. The central figure in more than half the holy texts, the man who had accepted the Nameless’s surrender after the Grand Betrayal. The Exarch, whom Axerian had called by his mortal name.
“Paendurion,” she said.
Hearing it seemed to sober him. “So, you remember that much at least.”
“I came here to learn,” she said. “I have a part to play in what’s coming, and I need to know what to do, to face the shadows, when they arrive.”
Paendurion stepped back from the column of light, moving toward her cautiously, as a hunter might stalk prey.
“How much do you know, of what lies ahead?” Paendurion asked. “How much do you know of what happened before? And how is it you come to be in the company of two of the Regnant’s magi, here, in the Gods’ Seat?”
He’d switched tongues to a stilted, clipped manner of speech. Anati translated it for her; d’Agarre’s kaas would do the same, though Yuli and Lin wouldn’t understand.
“I journeyed through the Divide,” she said. “I faced the shadows there. I thought, if I could reach his champions, I could end the fight before … the ascensions.”
“You attacked the Regnant?” Paendurion said.
“No,” she said. “Well … yes. He attacked us.”
“And you survived?”
Of course she survived, Anati thought to the room. She’s here, isn’t she?
Paendurion laughed again. “Fairly said, serpent,” he said. “But I gather you didn’t slay the Regnant in your travels?”
“No,” she said quietly. “And not all of us survived the journey. Axerian …”
“I know,” Paendurion said. “He’s dead.”
“I didn’t mean for it to happen,” she said.
“Of course you didn’t,” Paendurion said. “The consequence of poor planning. I warned him. And Ad-Shi. And now I am alone, facing the enemy with untrained fools, with the fate of our world on my back.”
“There is learning to be done, here,” Reyne said. “A great library, a store of all the world’s knowledge. I know we had our differences, before, but we want the same things. I’m certain we can find whatever answers you seek, if Paendurion doesn’t know them already.”
His words grated on her; the very idea of listening to him speak was vile. Part of her wanted to reject even a library full of knowledge, if it came from d’Agarre’s hand. But the better part of her had been taken by fear. Fear of what was coming. Fear of what she had to know how to do.
Lin had separated from them, pacing around the chamber, eyeing the column of light. Go to the Soul, Zi had said. He had to mean this chamber, the light that spanned both the physical world and the strange place she’d found with the blue sparks. She had to use whatever she found here, whether it sickened her or no.
“What is this place?” she asked, forcing herself to speak to Reyne. “You came here … after?”
“Yes,” Reyne said. “Only when I got here, the light was trapped, imprisoned in a crystal.”
“She doesn’t need to dwell on the past,” Paendurion said. “She needs to learn how to turn the Soul, in case we lose. A secret we never learned. A secret we never needed. Perhaps it is here, somewhere, but—”
He cut short in a spasm and a wail of pain, and for a moment Sarine tensed, preparing for an attack. But no—instead glass shards protruded from his back, a spray of icicle-length daggers stuck deep in his skin. Paendurion whirled around, the hundred leyline tethers she’d sensed around him suddenly snapping into place. But instead of fighting, Paendurion wove a mix of every type of leyline energy and vanished, leaving a cloud of gray mist, green motes, and white pearls hovering where he’d been standing, as though the leylines had erupted into the physical world.
Lin let slip a cry of victory, then sprinted toward the center of the chamber.
Red came, and lakiri’in, and Body. Too slow. Lin touched the column at the center of the room, incinerating herself in a dazzling flash of light.