The Dark City

5

The Wounded City—who can see to the edge of it?

Who can feel the pain of its loss?

Poems of Anjar Kar

GALEN HESITATED.

Raffi waited without breathing, hating him, desperate for him to give up the box, then not to. He was numb, dizzy with fear.

Galen lowered his aim.

With a snicker of triumph, Alberic loosed his grip on Raffi’s hair and held out one small palm. The Relic Master dropped the box into it heavily.

“Thank you.” Alberic smirked. “For a moment I thought you wouldn’t.”

Raffi tugged away across the room, weak with relief. For a moment he had thought the same, and that made him angry. “You should have used it!” he snapped.

“He was too close to you.”

“But just to give it to him!”

“Would you rather be dead?” the keeper asked quietly.

“He wanted me as a hostage. He wouldn’t have killed me.”

“He wanted the box more.” Galen glared at him. “We have other weapons, Raffi. Keep your mind on them.”

Simmering, Raffi watched Alberic. He had climbed back into his chair and was fingering the box avidly, exploring it by touch. When he looked up his eyes were alert. “So what’s wrong with it?”

“Wrong?”

“You wouldn’t have given it to me otherwise.” He lifted it and pointed it straight at them. Raffi went cold.

“Be careful,” Galen said calmly. “It’s dangerous.”

“That’s what I want.”

“And unstable. We have no way of knowing how much life is left in it, but it’s already hundreds of years old. Maybe very little.”

“And maybe a lot.” Alberic swung the box and aimed it at a tall bronze candlestick by the window; Godric and Taran scattered instantly. “Chief!”

“Be quiet.” Then he fired.

Light blinded them. When they could see again, the candle was a bubbling, hissing pool of wax and molten metal on the seared floor. There was a shocked silence, and then the tiny man began to laugh. He wheezed and giggled and cackled; jumping from his chair, he cavorted around the candles, catching Sikka’s hands and kissing them, then dancing away. His own people watched him in amusement; Raffi stared; Galen stood stiff with distaste.

At last, breathless, Alberic slumped over the arm of his chair, clutching his side. “Oh, this is wonderful!” he managed. “Superb. Beyond belief! To rob a Relic Master!” He lifted the box and rubbed it as gently as if it had been a bird; then his head turned, and his eyes were cold and crafty.

“This is the arrangement. I want the Sekoi. You have power, contacts. You’ll find him for me and get him here alive. And then I might, I just might, give you your box of flames back.” He stretched over for the wine and took a long drink, then climbed into his chair and sat.

Galen said nothing. His look was dark.

Alberic shrugged. “Think about it. In the meantime you can try my hospitality.”

Godric came forward and led them to the door, but just as they got there the sly voice behind them said, “It doesn’t sound very inviting, does it? But one thing might interest you, Relic Master. The Sekoi was headed for the city. The city of the Makers. Tasceron.”

Galen stood stock-still, as if the word had frozen him. Then, without turning, he stalked out of the room.

ALBERIC’S HOSPITALITY TURNED out to be a locked room, as filthy as the rest of the building, with one threadbare mattress and a window that let in a drizzle of rain and moonlight. Galen sat moodily in a corner, his knees drawn up and his arms resting on them, staring at nothing.

Raffi left him alone. He swept all the filthy straw and dung into one corner with his foot, tossed the mattress after it, then dragged their pack over, and the two plates of food a hand had just banged in through a grille at the base of the door.

He looked them over anxiously. “There’s some sort of meat. It looks all right. The bread’s stale. Cheese.” He tasted the clear liquid in the wooden cup and scowled. “Water. He’s not stripping the apple tree for us, is he?”

Galen made a meaningless murmur. Raffi began to eat hurriedly. He was hungry—he was always hungry—and even the stale bread could be moistened with water and broken up. With a few withered shar-roots and herbs from the pack it was almost tasty.

Swallowing a mouthful, he muttered, “So what do we do?”

Galen looked up. In the dim cell his face was haggard. “We agree.”

“Just to get out of here? I mean, he’ll never give it back.”

Galen stirred. He reached into the pack and tugged out the stub of candle, clearing a place in the dust for it. Then he fumbled for the tinderbox.

The blue flame crackled, flared up. When it was steady and yellow, Galen lifted a cup of water and drank thirstily. “Maybe. Maybe not. The spirit of the Makers is in the box. It won’t rest with Alberic. It will want to come back to us.”

“Then we needn’t bother about this Sekoi?”

Galen put down the cup and picked at the food. He had a strange, intent look. “I think I want to bother.”

Raffi stopped picking up crumbs with his finger and stared. “You want to run Alberic’s errands?”

“My errands.”

“But you heard him! We’d have to go to Tasceron!”

Galen smiled then, a wolfish, secret smile. “Sometimes, Raffi, the Makers send their messages through the people you’d least expect. I knew I had to come here; now I know why. I can’t hear them any other way, so they speak through Alberic. I knew, as soon as he said it.”

Appalled, Raffi ate the rest of the crumbs without tasting anything. Tasceron! Galen was mad.

All his life Raffi had heard about the burning city, the city of the Makers, far to the west. It was vast, a web of a million streets, alleys, bridges, ruins. No one knew half of Tasceron; no one was sure who had built it or when, or what most of the structures were for, the immense marble halls, the squares with their dry fountains. Under the city were said to be tunnels, buried rooms, untold secrets. It was where the palace of the Emperor had been, and the temples of the great relics, and most secret of all, the House of Trees. All lost now, leaving only stories and rumors. The Emperor was dead, the temples destroyed. And the Watch guarded Tasceron, their tall black towers rising among the smoke and stench.

“Suicide,” he muttered.

Galen was eating calmly. “No,” he said. “I’ve been thinking of it for some time. In Tasceron something may have survived. Maybe even others of the Order.”

Raffi scrambled up and paced about. Then he kicked the wall. “We’d be caught! There must be Watchmen everywhere; how long do you think we’d last? You can’t see there, can’t even breathe . . .”

Galen looked up sharply. “I’m not mad.”

They stared at each other. Slowly, Raffi sat down. “I didn’t say that.”

“You thought it. You’ve been thinking it for months. Since the explosion.”

Raffi was silent.

Galen gripped his strong fingers together and tapped them against his lips. Then he said steadily, “Since I lost all my power.”

There, it was spoken, as it hadn’t been spoken in the long summer, since the relic-tube had blown up as Galen was examining it, breaking his leg and his mind, leaving him lying silent for a week, eyes open, unspeaking. He had never said how it felt; Raffi had never dared ask. Now, picking up the empty cup and rolling it in his hands, Raffi knew it was coming.

“For a moment,” Galen said, “in that room, I thought Alberic had guessed. But you reassured him.” He leaned back against the dim wall, tugging the long hair out of his collar. “I’m empty inside, Raffi. Since the explosion, my mind has been silent. No echoes, no colors, no spirits. I can’t move out of myself. I’ve lost the power and I have to find it again.” His voice was raw with pain, with the pent-up agony of months. “I can’t . . . exist like this! The trees, the stones, I can’t feel them. They speak and I can’t hear. Even the relics, the gifts of the Makers themselves—even when I hold those, Raffi, I feel nothing. Nothing!”

Embarrassed, hot with pity that was almost anger, Raffi rocked the cup. He had known this would come out, all Galen’s torment. For the last few months the keeper had been a tangle of rage and bewilderment: trying trances, starving himself, storming off into the forest for days, punishing them both with prayers and chants and penances. And never talking about it. Until now.

Because the power was gone. Although he’d only gained a little of it, Raffi guessed the horror of that. The Order had the skills to contact all sorts of life. And in the relics, they touched traces of the Makers themselves, who had come down and lived in the world, built and formed it, and then gone, no one knew where.

It would kill Galen, that loss. Or drive him insane.

“You think there’ll be some sort of cure in Tasceron?”

“There must be!” Galen limped around the cell with a pent-up, feverish energy. “There must be some of our people left, someone who could help me! I’ve got to try anything!”

Crouching, he put his hand on the rocking cup. Raffi looked up; the keeper was watching him, eyes dark. In the candlelight his face was edged with pain, gaunt. “I’m sorry to have to take you into more danger. But I’ll need you.”

Raffi shrugged. “I made a promise. To go where you go. Into darkness, into light, remember?” Uneasy, he looked away.

THEY SLEPT ON the floor, cold and unbearably hard after the bracken of the forest. For a while Raffi lay awake, listening to the keeper’s steady breathing. He knew Galen was desperate. But Tasceron! He’d have to go with him, if only to try and keep them both alive, but he didn’t know enough, he was only at the fourth Branch. It wasn’t fair, he thought bitterly. And the fires burned under Tasceron, had burned for years. How could any of the Order have survived?

He must have slept, because a long time later someone was shaking him out of unreachable dreams; he groaned and rolled over stiffly. He was soaked with drizzle, the room cold with an early-morning light.

Alberic stood in the doorway, burly men behind him. He wore a silk tunic trimmed with dark fur and small boots that must have cost the shoemaker an immense amount of trouble.

“Mmm.” He glanced around the cell. “The guest room could do with a little more work. But then, most of our guests don’t leave. What about you?”

Galen stood up, tall and grim. “We’ve decided. We’ll find your Sekoi.”

Alberic grinned slyly. “Oh, excellent,” he murmured. “I knew you would.”