Chapter 9 Mullayne
Mullayne
Langzu – the sinkhole mines west of Ruzhi
While the dead are burned and their ashes scattered to the winds in Langzu, entombing the dead is traditional practice in Albanore.
Bodies are burned and the ashes placed into urns that are collected in underground structures.
According to old religious practices, these tombs are closer to Unterra and thus closer to the gods.
Even though all realms turned to worshiping Kluehnn after the Shattering, the practice of entombing the dead remained the same in Albanore.
His head was a breakwater and the waves were crashing through to the shore. If Mull could have, he would have crawled away from the pain, left the nausea to swim in his stomach, separating from the sordid aches and pains of his fragile body.
But he was still bound to this mortal realm, the shapes looming above him rocking gently from side to side in a way that made him close his eyes and lick his lips.
He tasted the bitter remains of herbs and the faint astringent aroma of alcohol.
He couldn’t remember if a rock had knocked him unconscious or if the aether had gotten to him and wiped clean his memories of the collapse.
His vision cleared until he could make out silhouettes. People. The one nearest to him was talking. He had the vague feeling he’d been saying something, his tongue thick but his mouth dry.
She spoke again. “What were you doing down in that hole?”
He lifted a hand feebly, and then she was gesturing, and someone was tipping a water skin to his mouth. He drank desperately, relieved to clear the taste from his mouth. “An expedition.” His voice was the rasp of sandpaper against wood. “How long?”
“Less than a day,” the woman above him said.
“You’ve been tossing like a boat in a storm.
Altani has taken care of others with aether sickness before.
You were in good hands.” He glanced over at the big woman standing at her shoulder.
She didn’t look like a doctor. Straw jutted between gaps in the thin cloth of the mattress, which sank and crackled as he moved.
The blanket strewn over his chest smelled like it had come fresh from a year’s use on a horse.
Mull was used to poor conditions. But these… these were poor conditions.
He was in a tent. And by the rough look of his captors – or saviors – the blackened fingers and sinewy strength, it was a mining tent. The cavern had collapsed into a sinkhole.
Fortunate, that the cave system had stood so long, since Tolemne’s time.
Unfortunate, that it had lost structural integrity at that moment.
Or fortunate? He wasn’t sure if he’d have made it back to the surface alive otherwise.
The paper with Tolemne’s message. His gaze fell on his belongings, gathered into a messy pile.
His leather identification folio sat on top.
He’d tucked the message behind his papers. Had they pulled those loose?
The carving. The one he’d seen before the collapse. Was it real? And if someone was altering the records, how were they doing it?
“I need to get back to Bian.” If he went now, how long would it take him to get there?
He needed to talk to his parents, to Sheuan.
He needed to look at all his books that said there were only two aeroclines.
Tolemne hadn’t lived out his days in Unterra, he’d traversed the caves back up.
He’d wanted to see his family’s tomb again.
What had he done after that? There were so many mysteries Mull needed to solve. To understand.
The woman above him exchanged glances with another, russet-haired woman at the other end of the tent. “Not quite yet.”
“Why not?”
She focused on him, sticking out her hand. “I’m Hakara. And by the looks of your papers, you’re Mullayne Reisun.”
He stared at the dirt caked beneath her nails, his head still swimming. “You can’t mean to hold me for ransom.”
Hakara barked out a laugh. “This is a legal operation, funded by the Risho clan. We may not be pretty, but we’re here under the auspices of the Sovereign.
We’re not brigands.” She withdrew the proffered hand, tapping a finger to her chin.
“You were saying something in your sleep. Do not trust what is written.”
It sent a fresh shudder through him; all his hairs seemed to prickle.
He was going to vomit. Hakara, as if sensing his unease, cast her gaze about and then reached for an empty bowl.
He swallowed the bile down and pushed himself up from the mattress.
“Tolemne brought the ashes of his family with him to Langzu. He built a life for himself here, he gathered support for an expedition. He built a tomb for them in a cave in the mountains.” The light from above pierced his eyes, lancing the back of his head with pain.
It helped to speak his thoughts aloud, to bring them out from the clutter of his mind.
The woman gave him an odd look. “He’s raving. He was down too long.”
He held up a hand in her direction, his glance a warning.
He needed to keep talking, to keep these thoughts moving before he lost them.
Before he doubted what he’d seen, before it all started feeling like some strange, dark nightmare.
“He was on his way back up. He didn’t stay down.
He didn’t stay down there after he asked for his boon.
I followed his path, but his path led back to the surface.
He said he wanted to be with his family. ” Before the end.
His things. They were scattered on top of his bag.
Clearly, someone had been rifling through it.
They might not have been brigands, but they certainly behaved as though they were.
He pulled his journal free, flipping through the pages.
“I was always focused more on the path than on the tomb. Why would I need to know about the tomb? I thought it was interesting that the Langzuan people always burned their dead while Albanorans entombed theirs – but it wasn’t relevant.
” He found the pages where he’d made notes on the tomb.
A sketch of a woodcut print he’d seen of the entrance.
Copied phrases that indicated where it was located.
Northeast of Bian. In the mountains. Off an established road.
A map. He needed a map.
There. Swept nearly off the table on the other side of the tent.
He stumbled toward it, the ground tilting beneath him.
A man with sinewy bronze arms stepped to the side to let him pass.
Mull only registered a confused expression before he had his hands on the map.
He took it with him to the ground, struggling to focus.
Slowly, the words settled into one place.
“It’s near Sleeping Crane Mountain. The texts all say that.” There was a note of uncertainty in his voice; he observed it as though from a great distance. Books had always been his foundation, and now that foundation was crumbling as surely as that tunnel had.
No. He had to believe in something. He could be wary, but if he started throwing out all knowledge wholesale, he’d get nowhere.
He traced the road, referred back to his notes.
One text had mentioned that the entrance to the tomb lay in the shadow of Sleeping Crane Mountain by mid-morning light.
That meant it was west of the peak, just off the road, and the old coordinates weren’t the same as the new ones, which put it somewhere around…
His finger stopped. “I need to go there. I need to know what Tolemne did next. Because everything we know of him is wrong. It’s a lie.
If he came back to the surface, when did he encounter Kluehnn?
Was it when he was in Unterra? We are told Kluehnn and Tolemne made a pact, and that pact led to the Shattering and restoration.
What exactly did Kluehnn promise him? When?
There are answers buried there, I know it.
” Answers to why there were three aeroclines, answers to what had happened to Tolemne in Unterra, what was happening to Imeah.
The man he’d brushed past loomed over him, casting a shadow across the map.
“That would put the tomb right by Kluehnn’s den.”
Another shuffle of footsteps. Hakara’s voice, swimming into his ear. “Nah, that’s not by Kluehnn’s den. It’s buried? It’s in a cave? That tomb is in Kluehnn’s den. It’s in his goddam den.”
For a moment, all he could hear was a dull ringing sound, his mouth gone dry as day-old bread.
But then certainty came crashing back down on him.
He was turning to his pile of things, he was fumbling, packing everything into his bag once more.
“I have to go back to my workshop in Bian and prepare. And then I need to set out for the tomb.”
The russet-haired woman spoke again, one eyebrow arched in clear skepticism. “With who? All I see is you, and you don’t look fit to be doing anything.”
A heavy hand on his shoulder, surprisingly gentle, guiding him away from the bag. The rustle of feathers. “Sit down,” a deep voice said.
He obeyed, though he didn’t have much choice.
The pain in his head was so sharp he could almost taste it – like rust and wet earth.
He was back on the mattress again, feeling like he’d just climbed out of that hole himself.
The man who’d guided him to the bed was an enormous altered, black wings framing a stern countenance.
What in all the gods had he wandered into? He took in the blackened claws of the altered, the curved sword at the belt of the bronze-skinned man, the crossbow strapped to the side of the russet-haired woman. This wasn’t some regular mining crew.
It didn’t matter. “I have to go.”