Chapter 27
Well before dawn I awoke, washed my face, and arrived at the Orbiis offices to find Tauri and his colleagues loading their cart once more.
In the gray, predawn light, they had the look of pilgrims preparing for a mission.
Yet one tool of theirs I recognized, and was greatly worried by: a set of wheellock bombards, loaded into the side of the cart.
I eyed these warily as I approached. These were small handheld cannons that were cumbersome to reload but could easily punch a hole in a destrier, or even an urhosi, I reckoned. They were one of the few armaments I had not taken care to train with yet.
“Why,” I said slowly, “are we taking those?”
“Because we don’t know what’s in there,” said Tauri’s voice.
He emerged from behind the cart, arrayed not in his usual Orbiis cloak but a set of combat leathers of a like I hadn’t seen since the sea walls.
“I would not worry too much, chap. It’s protocol.
We take them when we check the Touched Site, as well as short swords—but hopefully we won’t be going there.
Of course, if your immunis hasn’t succeeded in making a map, we’ll be going nowhere at all! ”
“I’m more worried about one misfiring and taking my head off my shoulders.”
“Well, we are spatiasts. That makes us pretty decent shots. But we likely won’t be using them at all, not if we find Jalin.
Instead, we shall use these.” He pulled out another armament, one I’d never seen before.
It resembled a fire poker, with a handle and long shaft, yet it ended in a very small set of needles.
“It’s called a lypi lance. Very new, mostly nonlethal.
The needle at the end injects a toxin that causes overwhelming, paralyzing pain. ”
“If it’s nonlethal, why isn’t it more used?”
“The axioms did their sums. In about ninety percent of its uses, there are no issues. Some ten percent, however, cause significant heart issues and seizures. These are much harder for the medikkers to swiftly treat—unlike, say, stab wounds and the like, which we are very accustomed to treating.”
“The Empire is so used to treating violence by sword that the blade is actually less lethal than your nonlethal toxin?”
“You have it exactly. Though, again, we might never see any need to use these horrible tools—not if your immunis never tells us how to find Jalin.”
—
When we arrived at the vault, we discovered that Ana had set up something of a display for us, with six select parchments placed in a row before where she sat on the floor.
“I have been waiting,” she said tersely, “for hours.”
“It’s barely dawn, ma’am,” I said.
“And yet I deciphered the nature of Burav’s tomes well before midnight! Were it not for the fact that these histories are exceedingly rare, anyone with a decent attention span and memory could have figured it all out!”
Tauri yawned hugely. “Then let’s hear it, please! I slept poorly, worried you’d send us to our deaths. Might as well confirm it now—it’d wake me up a little, I’m sure.”
Ana set out three stone figures, each one taken from Burav’s shelf, each one depicting a member of the Daljen.
One held a staff; the next, a leaf; the third, a cup.
“Burav’s little library is not actually terribly expansive!
Instead, it focuses most keenly on these three specific Daljen figures.
One is Qul, master of waters. Second comes Kurbanthik, the mistress of earth and soil.
The last…” She touched the one bearing the cup. “…should come as no surprise…”
“Master Gaddar,” I said. “Lord of orchards.”
“Correct! He is undoubtedly the figure Burav was most obsessed with. Not just tall tales of his life but actual, tangible places he labored. And much of his work was here, apparently.” She gestured at the horizon, where the altered forest lay.
“Much like Aimafall is the seat of the Armentas, that site was the seat of Gaddar’s power, some five centuries ago. ”
There was a solemn silence as Tauri and I studied the tiny stone figure before her.
“And what place did Burav seek?” asked Tauri.
“There are two sites that Burav felt had significance,” she said airily.
“The first is remarkably unclear—perhaps purposefully so. It is a grand place that is called a temple in one history. Then a tomb in another. In a third, it is referred to as the cup of heaven. And still in a fourth, it is called Meris Chamhali Ayonias—or, ‘place of the angelic, eternal servants.’ It is all quite a mess! My conclusion here is that these histories, recorded years after the disappearance of the Daljen, could not find any firsthand evidence—because it was gone. The Daavir and the other Khanum tribes had censored it, removed it from all written text. They wished it wiped from the recorded memory of all intelligent peoples—and so it is.”
A cold sweat crawled up my back. “The Touched Site,” I said quietly. “That is what that is.”
“So I presume,” said Ana. “That temple, or tomb, or cup of heaven, whatever the terminology—that is the location that the Khanum sealed up and blockaded with a tremendous, altered forest. It is the site that you, Commander Tauri, have been to many a time.”
“I see…” he said gravely. “And what of the second place?”
“Oh, the second is mentioned much less often,” purred Ana.
“Probably because it is less important! It is known as little blessing in some texts, or Naos-Minra in the old Tala tongue—literally, ‘smaller temple.’ My guess is that its purpose was similar to this mysterious cup of heaven, but it was a very minor version. However!” She raised a triumphant finger.
“Because it was less important, the histories of this smaller temple are much less edited! And one thing these histories include is where the goddamned place is—for that, I suspect, is where Jalin Burav has gone!”
“So—we have a set of directions?” asked Tauri, astonished.
“That we do!” said Ana. “Thank fucking heaven that the rivers and creeks and hills of this place are generally still where they were a few centuries ago, for without them—and the map you made, sir—I’d have never found a thing!
” She reached behind her and, with a flourish, pulled out Tauri’s map of the forest, though now it had been extensively annotated.
She stabbed down a finger and began drawing out a path.
“You must enter here, at this site, where Jalin Burav entered. Though I do not know the paths of the seams, my good sir, you must come close to this site—written as Hand of Gaddar in the old tongues. It is, apparently, literally a big goddamned statue of a hand. You cannot mistake it for another. Then move northwest, toward another shrine, this one known as Loutri di Akantha Apalos, which translates as ‘cauldron of the soft spines’—don’t bother to ask me to explain that one—and then head straight north.
After a little more than two leagues, you shall come to the little temple that Burilis Burav sought so highly.
I believe that is where you’ll likely find Jalin! ”
Tauri stared at the map she’d made, his eyes shimmering and his lips working as he used his cerebral augmentations to embed it in his thoughts.
My own eye lingered on the other sites she had outlined on the map: some two or three or even four dozen ancient places.
Shrines, perhaps, or burial mounds, or statues or cenotaphs of some long-forgotten import.
Our path came worryingly close to many of them.
“Done,” said Tauri, sighing. “I have your map, Dolabra. I hope it is all true—or as true as such ancient texts can offer. We shall depart quickly.”
“Please do so, sir,” said Ana. “Though I do request that Din here tarry a bit with me, yet again.”
—
I stood in the vault, expecting Ana to deliver some other grave suspicion of Commander Tauri. Instead, she fumbled in her skirts, produced a small leather satchel, and opened it and dumped it into her hands.
I recognized the contents immediately. I’d learned very early on in my service to Ana to memorize everything I could on all substances, reagents, tinctures, grafts, and tonics that were banned for use in the Imperial Iyalets—but especially the psychotropic ones, of which she was terribly fond.
“Semilanka mushrooms,” I said. “Basidia. And auricula. Are you…getting yourself mooded before I depart for the forest, ma’am?”
“Quiet, boy,” she snapped.
She produced a knife and began carving very small slices off each mushroom.
A dread arose in me then. There had been a time, once, when Ana had consumed a great deal of psychotropic substances, and that had been when she needed to access some aspect of her faculties I could not comprehend.
It was as if there were parts of her mind that she could only use occasionally, and only by consuming substances that would usually kill any common folk.
This, perhaps, was by design. For Ana had been conditioned—consensually, I knew—so that she could not discuss certain subjects without inflicting pain upon herself. Perhaps now, I thought as I watched her dice away in the vault, she was using these substances as a means to bypass those controls.
But why, I did not know. What subject was so unspeakable that she was forced to resort to this—and now, of all times?
She swallowed the tiny slices of mushrooms and let out a long, slow sigh. “I’ve a confession, boy,” she said. “I have not been honest with you. Or, not entirely honest.”
I waited.
“You did not gasp in surprise, I note,” she said.
“I did not, ma’am. You use the truth like a basket-weaver might a reed.”
“Perhaps so. But I will attempt some honesty with you now, Din—for I know a bit more about the Daljen than I let on. Perhaps…” She grunted as if in pain. “…perhaps more than most other folk in the Empire.”
Her face trembled. Plainly, whatever she wished to say to me was one subject that had been conditioned in her to be unspeakable.
“Ma’am,” I said. “Do you really wish t—”
“Quiet. You deserve to hear this. For I suspect that whatever lies buried in those strange woods…it is not what killed the Daljen. To tell you more would require explaining a little…Well. Ancient history.”
There was a long silence. When Ana spoke again, her voice was queerly deep and resonant, as if echoing in some other space within her.
“In the earliest, most ancient of days,” she began, “there was the valley of the Khanum. At that time, it was no holy site. Rather, it was an accursed spot of creation. A place warped by the bloods of the leviathans—for it was there that the leviathans journeyed each wet season, toiling from the seas and across the Paths of the Plains to rest their bones, and causing endless devastation as they did so. Even today, we do not know why they did this. Nor do we know why they keep attempting to do so. But we do know that to the ancient peoples, the valley of the Khanum was a poisoned place, where none could venture—except the poor, the exiled, and the tribes driven from their lands by the petty kings. For these folk, of course, had nowhere else to go.” She leaned forward.
“This is where the story of the Khanum begins, Din. Not in power—but in misery, in displacement. They were forced to seek shelter in the valley. And when they emerged, they had been changed.”
My eyes fluttered, and the stone visage of the statue in the wood flashed in my mind: a face long and distended, with a high, peaked skull.
“It was in their first victories that the Empire was founded, of course. But what is less known is what happened just after.” She leaned forward, her visage skeletal in the light.
“As I said before, there were the Daavir—the line of our emperor. They were warriors and fought the titans. Then there were the Daljen, who were farmers and tamers of nature. One to fight, and one to feed. Yet then, suddenly, the Daljen simply vanished!”
“I had thought they were the first to succumb to the plague of sterility among that line…”
“No, child! This is not so. They did not dwindle, as all the other tribes of the Khanum did. They completely disappeared, right at the end of the fifth century! And unlike the rest of the peoples of the Khanum, there is almost no remaining record of their last days. We’ve scraps of texts, and a few stone statues standing amid the plains, and nothing more.
” She waved at the books along the shelves.
“The religious pantheon of the Daljen is but an invention, Din. An aristocratic cult, invented over the past five centuries! The people who worship the Daljen here have no concept of who they were or what they did in life. And yet…I’ve long felt that there was a clear explanation for what happened to them.
There is a corollary here, with the Armentas and the Buravs.
” She turned to me. “You have pursued many crimes, Din. You know the shape of this, yes?”
There was a long silence. I felt my pulse flickering in my hands.
“The Daavir and the Daljen,” I said slowly. “Two competing, wealthy houses…”
“Yes.”
“They came to conflict.”
“True.”
“And only one was victorious.”
“Utterly victorious, Din. So much so that they wiped the other from all the history books and replaced their cherished lands with altered forest! After all…why salt the soil when you can fill it up with impassable trees?”
I swallowed. “You…are talking about genocide now, ma’am. A massacre and a conspiracy. And if known it…it would be…”
“An indictment of all the Empire, yes,” she said softly.
“Many consider the Khanum to be a founding myth of who we are, akin to angels who gifted us arts from the very heavens! If any learned they were capable of such acts—especially the tribe of the emperor himself—well…we would begin thinking of them as fallible. As cruel. As human. And that cannot do.” She took in a long, slow breath.
“But we are Iudex, Din. We seek the truth. I tell you this now not to frighten you, but to warn you. You shall be entering the site of a tremendous crime today. There may be many horrors awaiting you within. So—step lightly, boy!”