Chapter 28 #2
“Stop!” hissed Tauri. “We will not speak on this now! It’s one thing to discuss the ancients in chambers of our own making, but quite another to do so here!”
With a quick, furtive wave, we continued down the path.
—
It was difficult to tell how much farther we walked, or even for how long, for the sun was nearly eclipsed by the leaves overhead.
Was it midday? Still morning? Or was it now deep into afternoon?
Either way, I did not wish to tarry in this shadowy place for much longer—especially not after the glimpses of the stone figures we had seen.
Then, abruptly, the expedition came to a halt.
I had to move quickly to avoid crashing into Tauri. I glanced around and noticed that all the Orbiis officers had stopped at once, without any order, and all of them had looks of tremendous worry on their faces.
Then I heard Tauri whisper, “What? What is…”
I looked over his shoulder. The thick growth of trees about us lessened ahead. No, that was not it: they thinned out and then vanished. There were almost no trees before us, no white boles or purple leaves. It was as if someone had carved a hole in the forest ahead, some twenty span wide.
Tauri and the Orbiis officers stared in shock. The one with the thurible whispered, “Someone has cleared out a seam?”
Tauri stooped, felt the earth, and said, “It appears so. It’s been defoliated. Treated with reagents so nothing can grow.”
I walked to where the clear path began. The earth was perfectly barren and smooth. I did not need my altered memories to recall the last time I’d seen such a place.
“The same was done to the clearing about Gaddar’s shrine,” I said. “And its path, as well. Nothing grew there, either.”
Tauri gazed out at the clear path, head tilted. “It was Burav who did this,” he said softly. “He made a space for himself, deep in here.”
“Why?” asked the officer with the thurible.
“Because he planned to do significant works, I imagine,” said Tauri. He stood, his face grimly set. “Let’s keep going. But move cautiously now! And dim the burn on that thurible. It seems we won’t need it now.”
We did so, pacing silently through the cleared path, the Orbiis officers sweeping their bombards about to cover the forest. Though we still found the place eerie, the sunlight above was a comfort.
Then, finally, we came to the walls.
It was the ruins of a town, we saw, or perhaps a city of grand mansions, all crumbling and torn to pieces here amid the trees.
The white boles had split stone and cornice and shattered the doorways, ripped walls from roofs and roofs from the walls—but a city it had been.
One full of statues, and shrines, and creations that conquered my mind to look at them: visages of an unearthly sort, and mechanisms or artifices I could make no sense of.
“What is this place?” I whispered.
“The little temple, I think,” Tauri said quietly. “Naos-Minra, and all that was built about it. We are here.” He pulled out a mai-lantern and laughed anxiously. “Though if this is the little temple, I wonder what the grander one looks like!”
We all met one another’s gaze. The jest did not feel at all amusing in the airs of this place.
Though the city was now infested with trees, we could still see where Burilis Burav had made a path, however many years ago, for he had defoliated and killed these as well, carving his way through the ancient lanes.
We followed it, winding through this spectral skeleton of a city, clambering over rubble and creeping through arches of dark stone.
Then Tauri stopped, raised his hand, and pointed. “There!” he said softly. “It ends there!”
We came to stand about him and looked.
It was not a temple that awaited us, we saw, but rather something like a fountain, though it now had no water.
Its four stone walls were recessed into the earth, and there in the corner was a set of steps leading down to its shallow pool—perhaps it was more like a public bath than a fountain.
Its fount was built of stone into its far wall and featured a beautiful, ornamental spout—you could not look at it without imagining a shimmering stream of water pattering into the pool below—but now it was dry, with hardly a drop of water gleaming at its tip.
Yet there, at the edge of the fountain, sat a person.
He was bent and still, legs dangling down the walls of the fountain, as if imagining what it would be like to gaze into its pool were it full.
He was still attired in the robes of the medikker’s ward, I saw, though they were tattered and filthy, as if he’d staggered through leagues of brush and branch, and his skin was still horribly raw and pink from countless burns.
Beside him sat a small thurible, shining and silvery in the dim light. Beside that, a tiny knife, perhaps one stolen from the medikker’s ward.
My memories flooded my muscles, and the green titan bone sword leapt to my hand. “Jalin Burav!” I called to him. “Stand and turn!”
He did not move.
I motioned to the Orbiis officers but didn’t need to: they already had their wheellock bombards raised and ready.
“Jalin Burav!” I shouted. “I’ll not ask again! Stand and turn, kick away that knife, and raise your hands!”
Still, he did nothing.
I watched his shoulders and back. He was not moving at all, in fact.
My eye lingered on the tiny knife. Its edge shone redly.
“Kol…” said Tauri slowly.
“Yes,” I whispered. “I know.”
I took careful steps down to where he sat at the edge of the well. As I did so, I saw the pool within and understood.
The pool directly below him was not dry but was spattered with dark blood, which washed up the walls just below his body.
I followed the trail of blood up to his body until it led to his wrists, which he had cut quite expertly, following the length of the veins rather than slashing across them.
From the dispersal of the bloods about him he had then simply sat there once they were cut, hands in his lap, allowing his life to drain out of him and fill the fountain below.
His eyes stayed open, however, and there was just a hint of life to them still.
The hint was an illusion: when I touched his shoulder ever so slightly, he tumbled back and lay still.