“I hear many interesting ideas in what you say, Viyeki-tza, but not much in the way of proof. And although it caused the tragedy of Suno’ku’s death, the collapse also saved our city—perhaps our entire race. It would be a hard thing to accuse an official of high family of such a strange and userful crime.”
“I know, Master. That is one of many reasons why I brought this.” He patted the blade in his lap. “Because with it I can solve that problem without bringing the official’s family or my own into disrepute.”
“Solve what problem, exactly?”
“The problem of not being able to let it go. I need to know, High Magister. I need to know what happened, and the truth about someone I admired beyond any other.”
His master looked from the knife in Viyeki’s hands to his own hands, graceful and strong, roughened by the handling of innumerable stones. “Let me then hasten you toward your solution.” Abruptly, Yaarike pulled open his heavy robes, exposing the thin tunic he wore beneath. “You are right in your suspicions, Viyeki-tza—all of them. It was my idea to bring the mountain down. And I also caused Suno’ku’s death, although that was not as I wished it. Now strike, then fold my hands around the blade so it will seem I pierced my own heart. Otherwise my clan will hound you, and you should not take the punishment for my mistakes.”
Viyeki shook his head. “No. This blade is not for you, Master—it is for me to end my own life. I cannot live in a world where one who means so much to me, who has shaped my being more than my own parents, could do such a thing.” His hand closed around the hilt and he lifted the needle-sharp dagger to his breast. “Just tell me why first, Master. Why did you kill the general? She seemed brave and honorable to me. Why did you hate her so?”
Yaarike seemed surprised. “I did not hate her. I said what I believed at her tomb—she was the best of us.”
“But you killed her!”
The Lord of Builders sighed. “Not by choice—I for one hoped she would escape to the Northmen’s side of the rockfall, but the collapse took longer to begin than we had guessed. Why do you suppose I tried to take on the role of legate—the role you infuriatingly stole back from me? I did not want to see you killed or made a prisoner of the mortals. If things went awry, I wanted you to replace me as leader of this order.”
But Viyeki was fixed on one word. “What do you mean, ‘we,’ Magister? Did you take Naji into your confidence when you would not trust me?”
Yaarike shook his head. “Ah, Viyeki, how can you be so clever and yet such a fool? Host Foreman Naji is of no importance. He knew nothing of any of this. I gave him the task of supervising the gate only because I wanted no blame to adhere to you if my plan went awry.”
“But you said we, Master. Who else planned this with you?”
“You spoke of the need for secrecy. That is what Lord Akhenabi brought to the conspiracy. Who better to undertake a task like that, to undermine the mountain under the very nose of a hundred Builders, than his Singers? They can walk the between-spaces when they must. They can be all but invisible.”
“But . . . Akhenabi was asleep!” The idea that his master had planned this with the Lord of Song was the most disturbing thing he had heard.
“So it was told to all Nakkiga. It made his work—our work—easier. But he was not the only one who took part in the plan. Again, why do you think I pushed you away, made it clear that you were not privy to my inmost counsels? Because that inner circle was myself, Akhenabi, and Marshal Muyare.”
“The marshal? Sunoku’s own relative conspired against her?” Viyeki let the hand holding the blade fall back into his lap. He had thought himself a cynic, but now was revealed as childishly naive. “Her own clansman wished our greatest general dead?”
“If our people could also be saved, yes,” Yaarike said. “Few reach the highest circles in Nakkiga if they are crippled by too much sentiment, and Muyare knew it was only a matter of time until she supplanted him. But Muyare’s price for joining the conspiracy was that Akhenabi and I had to agree to support Suno’ku’s plan to rebuild our people through interbreeding with slaves. Muyare saw the wisdom in growing a new army, so there will be half-mortals in the houses of our nobles one day soon—half-mortals in the orders themselves.”
“So you all joined together to murder her?”
“I did not want to, but it was Akhenabi’s price, and if he was willing to gamble with the survival of our people, I was not. As I said, I hoped Suno’ku would only be exiled—that she would become a prisoner of the mortals, along with those who accompanied her. I did not lie when I said she was the best of us. It grieves me still that she was the last casualty of the war against the Northmen.”
“This is serpent-talk—truth and lies mixed.” Viyeki felt something like a storm boiling inside him now. How simple it would be to end all the confusion, all the disillusionment, with one swift thrust of the knife into his own breast. “Do you tell me you and all the others admired your victim?”
“I cannot speak for Muyare. As for Akhenabi, no. He saw only a rival for power, one who could best his reign of fear with something more genuine—the belief of the people.”
“And yet you helped him kill her.”
“As I said, I admired her, but I also saw her for what she would become—the end of our race. I did not want her dead, but I did want her gone from Nakkiga.”
The tip of the blade had actually pierced the cloth and pricked the skin of his chest; Viyeki could feel the pain like a tiny star burning a mere hand’s-breadth from his heart. But as much as he wanted an end to the agony of his thoughts, he wanted answers more. “I do not understand you, Yaarike.”
“Suno’ku was the heart of what was lost, but made flesh—one who believed the old truths with all her spirit, and could make them real to others by the force of her own belief. But the old truths, I fear, are no longer true, Viyeki-tza. That is why the next generation will require different minds, different truths. General Suno’ku, in the burning purity of her heart, would never have given up the struggle against the mortals. She would have waited only until we had bred enough new soldiers to be fit for war again, then led our people into first one disastrous fight against the swarming mortals, then another. Again and again, until nothing of our people and our orginal bloodline was left.” Yaarike reached out his hand and gently touched Viyeki’s where it held the dagger. “Do you not understand? I have chosen you because you always look at and consider what the others do not, my young pupil. I said once that you could see around corners. Look ahead now. Let your heart tell you if I am wrong or not. Let your heart tell you if what I did was wrong for our people. If your answer is different than mine, then I was wrong about you—wrong about everything—and you must denounce me.”
Viyeki closed his eyes. How could the deepest wishes of his people be wrong? How could Suno’ku, that bright, brave flame, have been a danger? One might as easily say that the queen herself had betrayed them. “You are far wiser than I am, Master, but you cannot change me with words. I have already made my peace with death before I came here today,” he said. “Like our Sacrifices, I am dead already.”
A sudden movement; the magister, moving more quickly than Viyeki could have supposed, knocked the witchwood knife from his hand and sent it clattering to the floor. “By the Garden and all who escaped it, we do not need more Sacrifices!” Yaarike put a hand on him again, his grip surprisingly strong for his great age, holding Viyeki in the chair when he would have scrambled after the fallen blade. “Listen. We have always had Sacrifices and they have always done their duty without question. But in the days and years ahead, we need something different. We need Builders.”
Yaarike straightened up, then bent and retrieved the knife, placing it on the table before Viyeki with a deliberateness that was almost like ritual. “Here. It is yours. But do not hasten to end yourself. Think first and think carefully. Suno’ku and Akhenabi and Marshal Muyare—all of th
em are what we have always been. Even I am too old to change, though I can see the consequences. No, if you choose to live, it will be left to you and those still to come to find a new way, so that our people can survive in this world and still honor the Garden and those who have gone before.”
Viyeki could only stare at the knife. His master’s voice seemed to come from a long way away.
“I am leaving now,” Yaarike said. “Back to my house and my servants and my family, to return here tomorrow and continue with rebuilding our Nakkiga. If you choose to live, you may also choose to denounce me. So be it. My crime is greater than any punishment the palace could devise, so whatever happens, be assured I am already my own torturer. The loss of a family jewel, however precious, is nothing to that. As for you, Viyeki-tza . . . what you will become is still an unanswered question.” And then, surprisingly, Yaarike bowed with the deep courtesy given from one of high standing to an equal before turning and walking toward the door.
Viyeki sat in the chair, staring at the knife. Enough time passed that it became clear no guards had been summoned, that his master had done just as he had said he would. But Viyeki, his thoughts now weary, dull, and bruised like over-disciplined slaves, did not know what to do next. He had come to the order-house prepared to die. But what if he did not? How could he live each day from now on knowing that all he had thought simple and true was instead as tangled and foul as the roots of a rotting tree?
The lamp burned down until only a flicker lit the room, and still he sat.
When he walked through the front door, his wife and the servants were waiting. When Khimabu saw him she made a gesture of respect that had both fright and anger in it. “Husband! I feared something had happened to you!”
“Nothing has happened to me.” He walked past her and placed the wrapped snow rose dagger back in its box upon the fireplace mantel. “Nothing is different. Nothing will change.” But as he said it, he knew it was not true. Whatever might follow from this moment, everything had changed.
“I thought you might have been hurt or even killed in some accident,” she said, but her tone suggested that she was almost disappointed that nothing had happened to be worth so much worrying.
He shook his head. He had left the house empty, a man who thought himself already dead. Now he was something else—a man who, as his master had said, could see around corners. A man who could think about the days still to come.
“Do not make a few hours of absence sound so dreadful, my wife,” he said, and stood patiently while the servants hurried to remove his robes. “What terrible things could happen to me? I will get up tomorrow like all days, and go to work for my master and my people. After all, I am no Sacrifice, am I? No, I am a Builder.”
Aerling, busy as always with his grisly task, scarcely looked up when Porto asked permission to leave the camp and bid Endri goodbye. Porto could scarcely remember the last time Aerling had put down the giant’s head. He had removed its flesh and cleaned the skull with rock dust and snow until it almost gleamed, even in the dull northern light. It seemed a strange way to honor fallen comrades, but since he had been in the north, Porto had seen the same look Aerling wore on many other faces and had learned not to ask. If he had possessed a mirror, he suspected he would have seen it on his own face as well.
“We won’t have time in the morning,” Aerling said. “Go and do what you must now.” And then he looked up, and there was something else on his face this time beside mere emptiness. “We have to remember. We all have to remember. So go and do your remembering.”
Porto nodded.
Aerling looked from Porto down to the grinning, fanged skull. “I need to remember, too.” He held up the skull with both hands, tilted it, then lowered it to his lap again and began scraping with his knife at a remaining lump of dried flesh where the neck had joined the head. “I’m going to take it home,” he said. “I’m going to put it by the fireplace,” he said. “That way I’ll remember.”
“I’ll remember the men too, Thane,” Porto said after a moment of silence. “Old Dragi and the rest. They died bravely. You can tell their families that.”
Aerling shook his head. “No. I’m going to take this home so that when I wake up in the night sweating cold and my heart beating too fast, remembering that creature staring down at me, I’ll look at this instead and I’ll remember that it’s dead. Dead.” He nodded, as though he had proved a point, and went back to his scraping.
As Porto walked out of camp and back into the mountain’s long shadow he could not help wondering that everything in the valley now looked so ordinary, so harmless. But for the immense tailing of boulders and broken stones that seemed to have been dumped against the mountain’s base, there was no sign anything had happened here for centuries. The gate was buried, the monsters inside now invisible. The trees dripped with melting snow. Even the sounds of his comrades readying for departure seemed to fade away.
He made his way through the abandoned grove, past trees so tall he thought they must have grown before men came to Osten Ard. It was even more quiet here, like an empty church. He hoped the winter would remain at bay until he had at least made his way out of cold Rimmersgard. Porto had a fierce longing for the true southern sun, for the sound of the ocean and the smell of the harbor. He might have been knighted by the duke of Elvritshalla, but he had never felt so Perdruinese as he did now, surrounded by Northmen and the great cold mountains. He could not imagine that, once home, he would ever leave Ansis Pelippé again. Not to fight, that was certain. Not to see friends and comrades die.
Porto saw from the edge of the clearing that something was wrong with Endri’s grave. As he neared it he made out that it had been torn open and his heart dropped—the stone cairn he had built had clearly not been enough to keep the scavengers away. Then another thought crept into his mind and his innards went icy cold. He stood at the edge of the pit and looked at the way the stones had been pushed outward around the mound and the way the earth itself had fallen in.
He had prayed Endri’s grave had been beyond the Norns’ terrible spells, but the marks in the earth of hands digging upward like the claws of a mole told him otherwise. The hole had been emptied, but not from outside. The chances were good that if he had risen, Endri had been burned with the others.
Porto was turning to go when he glanced to the southern side of the clearing. In a knot of young trees, none of them much more than twice the height of a man, leaned an upright, unmoving man-shape, sagging like a scarecrow in a Nabbanai field.
“Oh, dear God,” Porto moaned softly, and made the sign of the Tree on his breast. “Sweet Usires preserve us.”
As he drew closer to the body he saw that the garments did indeed look like Endri’s, stained with earth and blotched with melted snow. But when he was only a yard or so away he saw what had stopped the dead man here, so far from everyone else, so far from both the living and the other spell-raised dead. Endri’s red Harborside scarf was tangled in low branches and had pulled tight around the corpse’s throat like a hangman’s noose. The young man’s head hung down, hiding his face, but the skin Porto could see was mottled and black.
He reached out toward the body, doing his best to ignore the terrible stench, disgust and pity fighting in his trembling hands. Endri was facing south. He had not been moving toward the Norn summons, or even toward his living fellows, Porto realized, and tears sprang into his eyes as he understood. The dead man had been trying to go home.
Then Endri moved.
Porto jumped back in horror, and when he made the Tree this time it was as though he stabbed at his own breast. The dead fingers twitched and the corpse tried to take a stumbling step, but it was held fast. Porto could not move either, though no scarf held him.
The corpse lifted its head, revealing the full horror of weeks in the ground. Something in the ruined eyes seemed to recognize Porto, because the dead hand rose as though trying to touch him.
“God in His mercy, what did they do to you?” Porto whispered.
He could not stand to look at the corrupted, collapsing face a moment longer. He drew his sword and hacked as hard as he could at the thing’s neck, but was unable to swing his blade cleanly among the encroaching trees. After many more clumsy swipes, the head at last parted from the neck and thumped to the ground. The body slipped from the restraining scarf and tumbled down beside it.
“Now you can go home,” he said as he stood over the corpse, though it was hard for him to speak. “Go in peace.”
Porto carried first the body and then the head back to its grave, fighting down the urge to retch at the ripe smell of death, trying to remember that this was Endri his friend, who deserved better than he had been given. Then he went back for the scarf, untangling it carefully from the branches. At the grave, he placed the head atop the body and then carefully wrapped the scarf around Endri’s neck again, the beloved scarf the boy’s mother had woven, to hide the raw and ragged wounds Porto’s sword had made.
When he had filled in the grave, and had again piled the heavy stones atop it, he kneeled to pray, then said farewell to his friend for the second and last time. When he was done, Porto climbed to his feet and walked slowly back to camp.