Book of Iron

Three

Prince Salih would have taken the broken-legged horse, out of chivalry or braggadocio, but Riordan’s decision to trust his own twisted foot left the prince and Maledysaunte to the other two dead horses—mares, geldings, or stallions, it was beyond knowing now. When everybody except the bard was mounted—Bijou couldn’t have said settled, not with the dubious look Salamander still wore—she turned to the prince. “Beyzade?”

“Lead on,” he replied. “Try not to drop anybody down the cliff this time.”

“This time,” she snorted, turning the ass away. “As if I did before.”

“This time,” Kaulas answered from his perch high above. His knees dangled even with the prince’s mount’s wind-browned shoulder blade. “And every time after.”

“We’re coming back here?” Hiding her smile, Bijou shook her bunched kaftan over the ass’s bony hips and urged it among the ragged rocks that hid a trailhead she and her partners had braved but once before. She had an electric torch in the pocket of her kaftan, but for now—until they made their way deeper into the canyons—the starlight sufficed. And a torch would give warning to their quarry, if Salamander’s information was correct and she was to be located here. Ambrosias scrambled on ahead, cat-rib feet rattling along the stones and scratching in the sand. It would show her the trail. And she, in turn, would lead the party safely down.

It wasn’t too long a descent. Ancient Erem had been well-defended by the mountains that surrounded it, but it had also been built to guard the pass where they had cached Prince Salih’s roadster. Ancient Erem had also provided a first respite for weary travelers coming from the heart of the Southlands, in the ancient days when the Celadon Highway had flowed from far-away Song across the Steppes and the mountains and the desert, to meet other roads here. This trail had been a trade road then, and while it was no longer maintained, it was still adequately wide for a laden ass or camel.

Even one with starlight shining through the gaps in its ragged hide.

As the adventurers descended, the rock fell away on one side, leaving them wending down a narrow path with a cliff on the right and a sheer drop on the left. Right-handed defenders would have found it an advantage, even fighting uphill, against right-handed attackers whose weapons would have been fouled against that rough sandstone wall. The trail underfoot was sandy, too—it muffled the clopping of hooves and the scuffle of the camel’s skeletal feet, but made uncertain footing for combat. Bijou was relieved that no threat reached them now.

At the bottom, there was no more starlight. She found her way down by following the shadow of pale sand against red rock and the ripple of motion that was Ambrosias. Relief bubbled up in her when the ass’s bony hooves scattered grains across level earth. She paused in the dark, in the shadows of those towering cliffs, to see if her eyes would adjust further.

Kaulas could see in nearly pitch darkness. As Bijou turned back now, she saw the shine of his eyes like a cat’s in the night. Maledysaunte’s echoed the gleam. It was easy to discern which set of flatly shimmering discs belonged to which necromancer because one of her eyes reflected green, the other red.

Necromancers. Bijou wondered for a moment if, given the opportunity to dissect them, she’d find a âyene cheshm—the “mirror of the eye”—and, if so, if it grew there after they attained their Wizardry, or if they were born with shining eyes. It raised interesting questions about the nature of destiny and Wizardry, and how much freedom anyone could expect from the gods’ intentions. What became of someone who was born to be a necromancer, but who felt drawn to some other branch of knowledge?

This is not the time for science, she told herself, knowing it for a lie. As far as she was concerned, thinking about Wizardry was a constant.

“This way,” she called softly. Her voice reverberated back from every side.

She flicked her torch on, making sure the beam was pointed away from her companions and muffling it with a twist of cloth. To her dark-adapted eye, the light was sufficient to reveal the high stone walls all around them, the rough grit of looming sandstone—and the keyhole passage before.

The ass shuffled forward, peeling hooves scattering sand with each lurch. A chill breeze pushed at Bijou’s face—not so cold or so strong as to bring tears to her eyes, but very slightly damp with moisture from the concealed oasis beyond.

“A cave?” Salamander asked, calling down quietly from the height of the camel’s back.

“Just a passage,” Bijou said. “Ancient Erem had excellent natural defenses.” She paused. “Should we be sneaking?”

“Well…” Salamander paused judiciously. “…Dr. Liebelos is unlikely to try to kill me. But did you say something about monsters?”

“Oh, them,” said Kaulas, still riding behind her. “They already know we’re here.”

Bijou ducked instinctively as the ass approached the passage. She would fit through—single-file—and so would those on horseback, though they might have to lie uncomfortably close to their mounts’ bony spines. She’d have to send mounts back through for Salamander and Kaulas.

That was fine: once through the passage, she would be within Erem, and the prohibition that nothing living could enter would have been avoided by allowing the dead to bear them in.

She reached out with both hands to brush sandstone on either side, feeling dust and grit scrape her fingertips. Overhead, the walls did not come to a roof so much as meet in a peak: she could just have touched the highest point if she’d had stirrups to stand in. She still had to hunch her shoulders slightly, though, because of how the almond-shaped passage narrowed. The ass kicked grains of sand before and behind. The hoofbeats echoed faster now, the walls so close there was no sense of the sound bouncing back.

They came out of the tunnel into the great bowl-shaped amphitheatre of Erem. The ass stepped to one side and knelt, and Bijou—grateful to get the gouge of old bones out of her seat and thighs—stood. She was sore and stiffer than she’d realized. Too long out of the saddle. And too little saddle under her, for that matter.

Although a bare sliver of moon had set as they left Messaline, here in Erem three moons burned full and round in a dark mauve sky. One was pale, one red as rust, and the largest a dark shape so sooty it was visible more as a smudge, a shimmer of schiller effect, and a gap in the stars than as a heavenly body in its own right. Beyond the moons, that sky—more twilight than midnight—lay speckled with a few handfuls of brilliant stars like those that showed through the gloaming, in Messaline.

By the time Bijou had shaken the desert-mummified crumbs of leather from her trousers, Prince Salih, Maledysaunte, and Riordan were through the passage. Riordan walked slowly, tilting his head from side to side and then leaning it back to look up at the stars. As he cleared the passage, he glanced over at Bijou, his eyes vast and dark, his expression as placid as any statue’s in the shrouded glow of her torch.

“Different stars,” Riordan said. “Different sky.”

“You thought this was a protectorate of Messaline.” Bijou wondered what the sky of Avalon looked like. She’d read descriptions of its long evenings and skies as cobalt and indigo as the ocean—when the mist that normally shrouded them parted. She wondered what it would be like, a land so water-rich that people looked forward to sunny days rather than the rainy ones.

“Isn’t it?”

“Of course,” said the prince, shaking out his robes and stretching stiffly. “But Erem answers its own gods.”

“And the gods of Messaline do not interfere?” asked Maledysaunte.

“I wonder what those gods of Erem are,” Riordan said, as the two returning horse-corpses emerged from the tunnel again, now bearing Salamander and Kaulas. Just inside the gate, Bijou allowed the desiccated bodies to lie down and be delivered of their burdens.

Maledysaunte’s jaw worked as if she were withholding something. Whatever it had been, she replaced it with, “Pray we don’t find out in person.”

Bijou looked from the light to the sky, and flicked her torch off. It made little difference. She groped for her water-bottle and allowed herself a sparing sip. “The night was darker when we were here last.”

“Perhaps it’s just after sunset,” Prince Salih volunteered.

“Just so long as it’s not just before dawn,” Bijou said.

Riordan looked at her curiously. But it was Maledysaunte who answered, “The midday suns in Erem kill.”

She knew that, and Riordan didn’t.

So what else was the foreign necromancer withholding from her team?

“Not just at midday,” said the prince.

Having regrouped, the party looked to Salamander. Salamander chewed her lip and rocked slightly on her heels, obviously stuck right on the edge of something. Uncomfortably, Bijou tried to find the words to help her, but empathy had never been one of Bijou’s particular gifts.

She was half-surprised and half-not when Kaulas broke the uncomfortable silence to come to Salamander’s rescue. But it was not as if Bijou had ever fooled herself that she loved him. Well, maybe once, long ago. But how many men were there for a woman who was a Wizard and an adventurer both?

“Well,” Kaulas said. “Do you know where to find her?”

“Underground,” said Salamander. “If I am any judge. But that leaves us a lot of options.”

Kaulas laughed, though the joke hadn’t been that funny. The Wizard Salamander regarded him curiously.

“Well,” said Bijou, making a show of turning away. “I guess we start walking. Unless anyone wants to ride? No?”

She took her second long look at the disregarded city of Ancient Erem, cast out like a series of sand castles around the rim of the bowl-shaped valley. Sand castles cast in stone.

Erem had not been built so much as mined. In the moonlight, the starlight (seeming stronger now; that dusty mauve sky was fading to black violet) Bijou saw the empty doorways and windows of houses carved in terraces from the streaked stone. She knew the contrasting bands of dark and light were a red like dry blood and a white like exposed bone, for she had seen them in the first light of Erem’s terrible dawn—before she and the others fled with their captive, the Alchemist Assari.

Now, it all looked gray and faintly blood-tinged in the light cast by the bloated red moon. Depth and distance fooled the eye in the twinned moon-shadows; one object bled into the next, and it was hard to tell what was real and what was illusion.

Beside those carven houses were larger buildings—or ‘minings’—tall pillared faces presenting every appearance of having been constructed until you realized that at their edges, the walls merely blended into the stone behind. Bijou was minded of the blind faces of kittens pushing through the birth membrane, or—with their gaping doors like desperate mouths—perhaps the faces of the Bey’s enemies as they were drowned in bags of silk.

She only thought of that, she told herself, because the scent of water hung so heavy on the air: a musty sharpness that promised life, relief, comfort despite the burning sands.

She knew it was a lie.

“Right,” she called out. “If we should happen to come down by the oasis—don’t drink the water here.”

“Why not?” asked Salamander—genuine scientist’s curiosity, Bijou judged. Not a challenge to her authority. Their eyes met, and the ghost-pale woman smiled at her.

Bijou felt a snap of warmth and camaraderie that erased any faint, lingering jealousy and replaced it with something else. Not a romantic interest—Bijou had ever been cursed by a preference for men—but a sense of welcome belonging. A lonely ache reminded her of just how long it had been since she’d had a friend of the heart, another woman to share secrets and sister-stories with.

“Cursed,” Bijou answered, killing her torch since they had the moonlight now.

Salamander tipped her head from side to side, that strange bone-straight hair moving over her ears. “Good reason,” she said.

She crouched down and dug her fingertips into the sand. Although Bijou was not familiar with the form the white Wizard’s magic took, it was plain to anyone that it was magic she was working.

Something scurried across the sand to her, a pale body like a lump of butter, borne on eight fat legs. “Camel-spider,” Bijou said, when Salamander raised her eyes questioningly.

“Nice and big,” Salamander said. She drew a pin from her collar and pricked her thumb with it: the blood dripped, and Bijou was about to cry out a warning not to let it touch the sand when Salamander caught it neatly and smudged a dab on the spider’s nose. If spiders could be said to have noses.

“She’ll help us,” Salamander said, standing. The spider raced away, vanishing over the rippled sand with a speed Bijou could hardly credit. “Follow her!”

But as she leaped forward, each footstep kicking a divot in the sand, Bijou heard something from the shadows of the cliffs that was not the rising wind or the rustle of sand on stone.

“Stop!” she called, and Salamander listened, skidding to a halt some ten canes ahead.

Prince Salih, beside her, must have heard it too. He lifted his head, turning, sniffing, eyes half-lidded in concentration.

“What was that?” the prince asked.

Bijou lifted her head to the wind in imitation of him, as if that could make her hear or smell better. “Something chittered.”

A chitter—or maybe the rattle of claws or something else hard, one upon another: it was hard to say definitively. But Bijou was pleased to note that Riordan and Maledysaunte fell neatly into the back-to-back circle that she and her own partners established. The prince left his rifle slung across his back, but an automatic pistol appeared in each of his hands. Bijou knew those were not the only weapons concealed in the voluminous drape of his robe.

As they made their defensive circle, Salamander backed slowly towards them, her hands raised and empty. Bijou knew there were Sorcerers in the east who could throw light and fire, manipulating energy directly in a manner that no Wizard of Messaline had ever mastered. It was a different school of magic entirely, though one with its own roots in science. These northern barbarians were supposed to have derived their arts from the writings of medieval Messaline and Uthman Wizards—they even took their craft-names after the Messaline or Uthman fashions—but watching Salamander now, Bijou wondered.

“I see them,” Maledysaunte whispered. “Dog-men. Along the cliff faces.”

“Ghuls,” said Kaulas. “They’re more like jackals, actually.”

“Oh. We don’t have jackals where I come from.”

Bijou risked a glance at the woman, a vanishing shape in the moonlight. “I’m going for Salamander. They’re less likely to come after two.”

Curtly, Maledysaunte nodded. Something gleamed darkly in her hand—a pistol Bijou had not known she was carrying.

“Whatever you do,” Bijou said, in a louder voice, “don’t bleed on the sand.”

“Because it’s cursed?” Riordan asked.

Prince Salih answered matter-of-factly. “Because it draws more monsters.”

Riordan moved right, closing the gap as Bijou called Ambrosias to herself and stepped forward. “I guess it’s a good thing we’re monsters too.”

At least he has a sense of humor about it. The dead horses and the ass were still slumped upon the sand behind them. Bijou reached out with her will and raised them, bringing them forward to flank her. It was harder to maintain the necessary concentration with her every sense straining into the darkness, but she did it. Ambrosias led her forward, its zills shimmering an incongruously cheerful sound within the cage of his jeweled skeleton.

The moons had not moved, but the shadows of the cliffs spread across the earth in inky blackness. Pooling. Reaching.

“Coming up behind you,” Bijou said to Salamander. Prince Salih fanned out to her left, toward the nearer cliff, his scimitar snaking moonlight along the bezel like a bead of mercury. He’d have her flank. He always did.

Bijou said, “Have you a torch?”

Sand whisked in the gloom of the reaching shadows. They seemed to writhe forward. Bijou knew it was ghulish sorcery that made it so.

“Two,” Salamander answered, without turning her head. “Should I use them?”

“If the ghuls come at you,” Bijou answered. “The bright light will dazzle them. That shadow-weaving trick protects them from the suns, somewhat…but it can be pierced. Otherwise, don’t use the torches. Who knows what they would attract?”

“Right,” Salamander agreed, quite reasonably. “One nightmare at a time, then.”

Her calm courage sent a pang of respect through Bijou. If she were to compete, not for Kaulas, but for Salamander’s friendship—

But such a decision would tear the Beyzade’s little party of adventurers apart as surely as a man quartered between horses. And what they did was important. They conquered dangers no one else could even approach.

One of the dead horses stalked up. Bijou was only a few canes distant from Salamander now. “Keep backing up,” Bijou called. Another four steps, five, and they would be side by side.

“They’re almost upon you,” Kaulas called. Ambrosias reared up and rattled itself mightily, sending a warning shiver of sound across the sand.

Salamander gasped with effort, leaning forward in her determination, her open hands thrust wide. Through gritted teeth, she panted, “Too many of them. I can’t…hold the shadows back.”

As if a giant pressed against Salamander’s palms, her elbows folded. She could fall back no further: with every step she gave, the shadows took two. They loomed close enough now that Bijou could see the gaunt shapes within, the yellow eyes gleaming with gathered moonlight. In the shadows, she couldn’t make out individuals: just a black silhouette of pricked ears and clawed hands, yearning.

Bijou made the dead horse whirl and kick, but it was slow and clumsy. In such things, she was a puppeteer at best, and these were not moves she had practiced.

“Let me,” Kaulas called.

Normally, she’d hesitate to encourage him to raise up the shade of something so far decayed, but this was war. She released the wizardry with which she bound the horse-corpse, and felt Kaulas effortlessly pick up the threads before it could fall. Now the undead steed came alive, dry neck arching, hooves thumping the earth in a manner that could only be interpreted as a gesture of war. It threw up its head and shook out the sad, strawtick remnants of its mane. From its motion, Bijou imagined the fierce war-whistle of an angry stallion, but only the rattle of sinew and bone reached her ears.

The arrogant prance and kick of long, clean legs weathered down to brown bone broke her heart as no puppet-mastered corpse ever could.

The ghuls were not afraid of dead things. But even they must respect the flashing hooves of an angry horse—two, when the second corpse joined the first. A mare, Bijou thought, watching this one standing stolid and low-headed, sand blown from the jagged cavities where its nostrils once had flared. The shadows still stretched to encompass the defiant horses, though, and Bijou saw the undead mare twist her bony neck around and snap at a ghul-hand that clawed her shoulder.

Bijou reached out and grasped Salamander’s shoulder, her fingers bunching cloth and sliding over the firm muscle beneath. Bijou saw Ambrosias’s ferret-skulled head snap forward and rattle back, muzzle stained darker now, and wished—not for the last time—that she had thought to give it venom. As if Bijou’s touch gave her strength, Salamander incrementally managed to straighten her arms again. Bijou leaned forward, heart hammering, willing the other woman strength.

The pressure did not push the shadows back. But it pushed Salamander away from them, into Bijou’s arms. With that grip and the rear-guard of the horses and Ambrosias, Bijou managed to pull Salamander in retreat before the rising shadows. Shoes scuffling, sand sifting down over the tops of their boots, the women regained the circle of their allies.

As soon as Bijou and Salamander were clear, Ambrosias turned like a twisted ribbon and came back, legs wearing a rippled track in the sand. As Bijou released her grip on Salamander, Ambrosias swarmed up its mistress’ leg and spine until it hooded her head, knocking her hat on its strings down her back and rearing up like a pharaoh’s cobra crown.

The shadows lapped higher. Salamander, fumbling in her pocket, pulled out the torch. But before her thumb found the switch, Maledysaunte stepped into the gap in the circle, up to the edge of the ringing dark, and with her hands fisted at her sides cried out in a voice and a tongue that curled Bijou’s soul like a dry leaf and made her hot blood as ash in her veins.

The words were ancient and oily, liquid and barbed. Bijou’s stomach tightened against them. She could not get a breath. It was as if all life and light died within her, scraped from her body like nectar from a flower, leaving only the husk behind.

The shadows broke like waves on stone. Then they began to heap, climbing impossibly, as if piled against a wall of glass. They rose quickly as water running into a cistern when the gate is raised. Bijou saw Maledysaunte take a breath and square her shoulders, and more terrible words ripped from her like a torrent of wind.

The shadows before her were torn back, blown aside as if by an explosion. The corpse of the valiant mare, still snorting and kicking savagely as the shadows heaped over her, was blasted to splinters.

Bijou saw the ghuls clearly as their shrouds of darkness were ripped from them. The words did not seem to harm them, creatures of Ancient Erem that they were, only shredded them clean—but they seemed ridiculous in the naked moonlight. Nude, gaunt creatures that walked on a dog’s misshapen paws, long ears cringing over the projecting bones of their shoulders, velvet-fuzzed grey skin mole-soft and defenseless. Their claws and teeth shone terrible, but their faces and bodies were frail. They minded Bijou of the big-eyed, hairless hounds some very rich men kept as evidence of their wealth: pitiful things that could bear neither sun nor cold without protection.

In the aftermath of the power of Maledysaunte’s words, the ghuls straightened slowly, facing her, quiet with fear or surprise. What remained of the shadows they had commanded crazed, cracked, fell to dust and rolled back into the night. The red and ivory moons shone bright as lamps between stars that gleamed like the fires of a distant army, and all that light spilled down over a scene as still and orderly as an army of statues. Even the wind had died, and with it the ceaseless sifting of one sand grain over another.

“That was the language of Erem,” Kaulas whispered. It carried in the silence. “How can you read it and see? How can you speak it and live?”

Maledysaunte turned her head and spat three rotten teeth upon the ground. The strands of her black hair that had blown across her face were bleached white and brittle. When she wiped her mouth, the back of her hand streaked dark and Bijou caught the rust-reek of clotted blood. Her lips, never lush, had withered like an old woman’s, her youthful skin drawn up crêpey and puckered as if she were the toothless hag legend held her.