The Scarab Path

Nineteen

'What is this place?' Che asked, feeling as though she had stepped into another world. From the fierce, dry heat of the sun outside they were suddenly plunged into a thick, muggy, sticky humidity. The daylight had dimmed to a coloured gloom as it filtered through tight-stretched canvas, silk and linen. Ahead of them the emaciated Khanaphir had stopped again to wait for them.

'The Marsh Alcaia,' Trallo pronounced. 'Even a city as polite as Khanaphes needs somewhere to break the law. At least when the guard come looking, they know exactly where to go. People will always have vices they need to indulge.'

'But this?' Che took a few steps deeper, beneath the cloth ceiling. It was like walking under water. She felt an almost physical resistance to her intrusion.

'Don't worry about that, worry about why our friend seems so fond of you,' the Fly advised her.

'What do you mean? I sought him out.'

'I mean that he could have run while we were bickering in the open house, and he could still run now, and we'd never find him in here. Think about it.'

She tried to, but here, in the stale heat, it was hard to match the pieces. Their guide was drawing ahead again, making them hurry to catch up with him. All around them were Khanaphir and foreigners intent on their purposeful errands. Amid the fragile aisles lined with people crying their wares, the sounds and smells were overwhelming.

He always stayed just in sight, always paused by each new turning he took, and always looking back at them — at her — with that hollow, hungry gaze. Trallo was right: it was not because she was a foreigner, or anything to do with the money she might carry. Instead, something had sparked inside him, as soon as he had taken a proper look at her.

Is this really what I am looking for? The stifling air was making her feel dizzy, while odd thoughts and feelings kept passing through her mind.

'Wastes, but we're going in deep,' Trallo observed. 'Never been this far into the Marsh Alcaia.' He cast a glance backwards, teeth bared, and Che drew back, suddenly feeling trapped. She opened her mouth to suggest turning back, but then something twisted in her mind and she saw it. There, just beside the skeletal, hurrying figure of their guide, she saw the air seethe and darken: something of the night fighting to be seen, to make itself known to her. She imagined she even saw it pointing after him, urging her onwards. After that she had no choice.

Again, the lean man was waiting for them at the turn, leading into yet another alleyway. Roofed with heavier cloth, it was cooler there, and the air was thick with darkness. Che let her Art cut through it, spying a tent at the far end, with four or five figures seated there.

'This must be it,' she told Trallo. He nodded grimly. She saw that he held his hand near his knife-hilt.

The thin man was now kneeling in front of the tent: a low, ragged structure, patched and filthy, its original colour lost beyond recall. The doorway was hung with charms and lockets, little bits of brass and bronze and tin that dangled and jangled on slender chains. Someone inside was speaking slowly in a low voice, as Che paused before the entrance to reach out for one of the swinging fragments of metal. It had been crudely cut with a symbol that reminded her of the stone carvings to be seen everywhere about the city. Again she felt a stab of anticipation.

'Why have you brought these here?' demanded the voice. Only now did Che identify it as a woman's, so deep and rough it sounded.

'She was asking, asking questions, and she found me,' the lean man explained. 'Mother, when she asked … I saw …'

Che saw a bulky form shift within the tent, half hidden by the hanging drapes. 'I see her. She is foreign Beetle-kinden. I know them and they have nothing. They are lost to the old ways. She is wasting her time. You are wasting mine.'

'Only look at her, Mother!' the lean man almost howled.

'May I speak?' Che intruded, trying to keep her voice steady. She saw the figure shift again, still shapeless behind the drapes.

'Come forward at your own risk,' the half-seen woman replied, and Che could hear the soft whisper of daggers and knifes tasting the air.

'I mean you no harm,' Che persisted and, although Trallo was shaking his head fiercely, she crouched to enter the tent on her knees.

There were three Khanaphir inside, two men and one woman who each held a leaf-bladed dagger and stared at her with mute hostility. Another denizen was a halfbreed, Khanaphir mixed with something else to produce skin of a green-black hue. He was hollow-cheeked and thin-shouldered and yet with a gut that bulged over his belt. Che's eyes were now fixed on the woman beside him, the one whom the thin man had called 'Mother'. She was another halfbreed, and a halfbreed of halfbreeds, until it was impossible to tell just which kindens' blood ran through her veins. She was grotesquely fat, her huge frame shuddering with each breath even as she reclined on silken cushions. Her face was round and sagging, a dozen vices writ large there in pocks and blemishes, a true degenerate except for the eyes. Her eyes were blue and clear and piercing and, looking into them, Che felt an almost physical shock, like sudden recognition.

'Well, now …' the woman called Mother rumbled.

Che heard Trallo step in behind her, staying close to the door.

'My name is Cheerwell Maker,' she said. 'I … I come seeking …'

'Enlightenment.' Mother pronounced the word as though she were eating a sweetmeat. 'Oh, yes, you do, don't you.' She leant forward, her shapeless body bulging. 'What are you, little traveller? Do you truly know what we do here? The thing they call the Profanity?'

'Tell me,' said Che, and the woman smiled slyly.

'O Foreigner,' she said, 'you know nothing of the Masters of Khanaphes, and yet here you are. You have been led here — by what, I wonder?'

'I have heard of these Masters, but nobody will tell me anything about them,' Che replied, and some of her frustration must have leaked out, because Mother chuckled indulgently.

'Then listen, O Foreign child,' she said. 'Once, many, many generations ago, the Masters walked the streets of Khanaphes, and exercised their power over the earth as naturally as we ourselves would breathe and eat. They were lordly and beautiful, and they knew no death, nor did age afflict them, or disease or injury. Their thought was law, and the city of Khanaphes knew a greatness that today is only a shadow.'

'Only a shadow of a shadow,' murmured the halfbreed man, and then the three Khanaphir in chorus. Che felt Trallo shift nervously.

'But that was our Golden Age, and all things fade. So it came about that the Masters were seen no more on the streets of Khanaphes, and the decline of our people began. Oh, the Ministers will claim that they hear the voices of the Masters, that the Masters reside still within their sealed palaces, ready to save the city should they be called upon, but we know that the true glory of our city is long passed, and it is many hundreds of years since this soil knew the tread of the Masters.' Her brilliant eyes were fixed on Che and she licked her lips thoughtfully.

'So what is it that you do here?' Che asked her. I am almost there. Just a handful of words and surely I will understand.

'Though the Masters are gone, they have left their legacy. There are those that possess some spark, some trace of their old blood,' Mother said slowly. 'They find the world of today hostile and confusing, perhaps? They are tormented by dreams and visions? They long for something more …?' Her lips split in a smile. 'I thought as much. O Foreigner, I see in you something of their touch, their mark. All who are here with me are your kin. We carry within us the bloodline of the Masters, and were the Ministers just, we would be elevated and praised for it, instead of hunted like criminals.'

Che glanced at the others, and she noticed now that even the Khanaphir had a strange cast to their features, uneven, slightly disfigured, perhaps some distant trace of mingled bloods. A cynical part of her said, It probably does not take too much belief to turn a wart into the blood of the Masters. Another voice was saying, Are they talking about Aptitude? Is it the lack of it they discern in me? Is all this a memory going back to when this city was Inapt, before their revolution? And were the Masters their seers, who were cast out after they discovered their new artifice?

'But …' Mother continued, and let the word hang for a moment in the stuffy air, 'there is a way for those of us that still bear the ancient gift to touch those far-off days. There is a substance that can yet wake memories of the golden days of Khanaphes.'

'Fir,' Che suggested, and the woman nodded ponderously.

'It brings true visions, echoes of the past, a sight of the Masters perhaps. There is nothing else in the world. It is our only link with our birthright and heritage.' She had reached out for the halfbreed man to give her a pot in which something glistened. 'O Foreigner,' said Mother, 'having come so far at the call of your blood, will you not eat Fir with us?'

Che glanced back at Trallo, who was staring wide-eyed. For the first time ever her capable Solarnese guide seemed out of his depth.

Why else have I come so far, if not for this?

'Let me eat of it,' she agreed. 'I need to understand.'

Mother extended her hand and the halfbreed man drew a small blade delicately over one thick finger so that a drop of her blood fell into the pot. Then he lanced his own hand and did likewise, before passing the pot to the three Khanaphir. His dark eyes were fixed on Che all the while.

The pot came to her, and they watched her patiently until she took out her own knife, pricked at her thumb and shook a drop of blood into it. The halfbreed retrieved the vessel jealously, as though she might run off with it, and with his blade stirred the viscous contents, the red droplets streaking and blurring into the clear jelly.

He finally passed the pot to Mother, whose eyes were now closed in naked anticipation. She stuck two fingers into the thick mess and drew them out, gleaming with a gob of slime. With a hedonistic shiver, she licked it from her hand.

The pot was passed around, each of the dingy celebrants taking a share, and now it was back with Che. She stared into it, fighting down bile, having no idea what the Fir consisted of, even before it was tainted with blood. Mother was already shuddering, eyes firmly closed while the others seemed to be falling one by one into a trance.

Che had scooped some up, without even realizing it, her hand responding to no conscious command. Out of some bizarre consideration she put the pot down, lest she spill some.

She raised the hand to her mouth. The Fir was odourless, colourless, sticky and dense. She closed her eyes, already gagging. I came here, so I must do this. I wanted to learn the secrets of Khanaphes.

With a jerky, convulsive movement she put the smeared fingers into her mouth. The slime was so salt and sweet she almost choked, but she swallowed it down, shuddering and retching.

She looked round for Trallo to tell him something, but whatever she had been going to say was already gone from her mind. He was now too far away to hear, anyway, sliding further and further into the gloom of the tent, as the oppressive heat of the Marsh Alcaia lifted from her, and she fell into time.

For a long while she just sat there, still falling but unable to move, feeling the rushing of the world as it left her on all sides at great speed. Eventually she recovered her balance, as though she had discovered some other Art of flight to arrest that endless descent.

As she stepped out of the dingy tent, she could not have said whether it was herself moving, or whether the world had just been diverted sideways. All around her the Marsh Alcaia was disintegrating, stripping itself down to its struts and poles, as though a great host of invisible locusts had descended on it, tearing the fabric away as she watched. Soon even the poles themselves were gone, and she was turning towards the city itself. The great statues of the Estuarine Gate seemed to glow with a white fire as she passed them by, and she was walking on the river itself, and it seemed natural that she should do so.

Khanaphes had begun fading. In sections and pieces, the clutter of low buildings was losing substance, passing away, leaving only broad avenues and arcaded promenades between the great palaces and temples that had been the original Khanaphes. The city now transformed itself, whilst staying intrinsically the same, merely sweeping away all the accumulated detritus of five hundred years.

She sensed a presence, a collective presence, whose mind filled the city completely. The Masters remained invisible to her, but she was touched by their attention — the entire city was blanketed in it — and she knew that, after she woke, its absence would seem as shocking as a broken tooth.

Let me see you, she thought, as the streets and walls of Khanaphes wheeled and darted around her, but they were always around each corner, just out of sight.

The city was hard to focus on, its edges blurred, the light it radiated painfully bright. Perhaps this is the city's memory of itself, before the march of years eroded it all away. She moved close to one wall, trying to discern the carvings embellishing it, and in this half-dream they were words, as clear and comprehensible as a book written only yesterday. She read and read, the histories and learning of ages, and yet nothing stayed with her. The understanding flowed into and out of her head like a stream that barely disturbed the pebbles of her mind.

Is this it? Is this the Profanity? This sad half-life, this feeling of meaningless wonder. Was this what the Fir-eaters craved? She thought of their tent, their faces. It is not real, this, but it is more palatable than their reality.

She found the square before the Scriptora, lying open and bright. The city eddied and turned about her but something kept her here, some nagging feeling, until she realized it was wrong. Where is the pyramid? she asked. Where are the statues? In the centre of the square there was nothing but an old well. Is this not even the real city? Is this all some hallucination? There was now a bitter taste in her mouth.

Is this no more than a common vice? Have I been fooled again?

Yet I am thinking very clearly, for a dream-vision. She looked around the square once more. If I were dreaming this, it would be as I had already seen it. She suddenly had the feeling that this was indeed the reality, that the place she had seen and remembered was the falsehood.

I do not carry their precious blood, how can I? Is this vice wasted on me? But she knew, with the absolute certainty of dreams, that what the Fir-eaters saw as a bloodline was something more tenuous. It was to do with Aptitude. It was some old strain of the Inapt that they laid claim to, some persistent reminder of those old, old days.

Show me! she called out, and the voices of the city said, We have shown you. She drifted towards the Scriptora, and found Khanaphir men and women there, bent over tablets, scribing industriously. She thought she saw Ethmet there, too, or someone that looked very like him. These are the Ministers, back in the days when they were no more than servants of the Masters, but where are the Masters themselves?

Is that really what you are looking for, little one?

Her mind was full of voices and she felt a spurt of panic when she realized she could not tell which was her own. The thoughts flitted in and out of her, free as flies.

What am I looking for? She was catching thoughts with her bare hands, holding them, as they crawled and buzzed. What did the Masters of Khanaphes matter to her, truly? She had become so distracted by the means that she had forgotten the end. She had not come here to meet the Masters, for all that they were just out of sight, forever in the corner of her eye. She had travelled here to come to terms with her own nature — and to reach a detente with her ghost.

Achaeos! she cried. Achaeos, you led me here, so come forth now and speak to me. She did not know for sure whether she could survive regaining him here in this dream-place, only to lose him again. Perhaps this would be the end of it. She would take his hand once more, embrace him one last time, look into those white eyes of his, and then she would die and be with him, wherever the Inapt went after they shed their bodies.

Please, Achaeos, I love you, but I cannot continue living like this. Either come forth and show me what you need, or leave me. I cannot stand in twilight for ever, between what I was and what I am.

But no grey-robed figure came towards her in that flickering, painful light. She shouted out in frustration and anger: You brought me here! You drove me here! Now come forth, I demand it!

The city fell very quiet as the echoes of her unspoken words rolled back and forth across the walls of the Scriptora. The scribing Beetles were gone, even the presence of the Masters seemed to have drawn further back.

Achaeos? she asked, tentatively, because she was now sure that something was approaching.

The earth before her cracked open, the stones of the antique well shifting as something began to claw its way up the shaft. Without transition, Che felt very afraid of what it was that she had awoken. It is not Khanaphes that I have called up: it is something within me. She wanted to flee, but the cracking earth about the well-mouth was hypnotic, and she could not tear herself away. The thing rushing upwards sounded like distant thunder on the edge of hearing.

Achaeos … help me … she thought, and the thunder grew more and more urgent, getting closer without ever becoming louder, and she knew that whatever it was had now reached the very lip and was about to burst forth in all its force and fury.

There was nothing, only silence, but Che was not fooled. She knew that it was waiting at the very lip of the well.

A single tendril reached up from the darkness, quested briefly in the air, then arced downwards to dig into the sundered earth. She saw it was a briar, studded with thorns, and the sight of it instantly turned her stomach. She managed a single step back …

Another followed it, and then another, coiling and twisting as they were liberated into the open air. A darkness clung to them that she well remembered.

Oh no, oh no no no …

Something else came out, unfolding and then unfolding again — a great hinged arm, hooked and barbed, that clutched at the well's edge and tore the stones loose. The ground bucked and buckled, something vast ripping its way free. She saw long antennae spring upwards, another raptorial arm, then a triangular head with immense eyes burning with a green fire. Pierced and re-pierced by those arching thorns, the mantis lurched its way out of its chrysalis of earth, and Che felt a silent wail of horror in her mind.

The Darakyon … he was touching the Darakyon when he died. Have they taken him now? Is that why he needs me?

The mantis's killing arms wept blood, and its monstrous eyes were fixed on her as the thorns continued to penetrate its flesh, riddling it with wounds. This was the true Darakyon, the very personification of all Mantis-kinden fury and pride and futility.

Run, came a voice in her head, and she turned and ran, but the monstrous thing was immediately on her heels, red blood spilling from the myriad wounds the thorns had bored in its carapace, the shadows of its claws raking the ground on either side of her. She had called out first to Achaeos, but in the end she had just called — and she had awoken the ghost of the mad, embittered Darakyon instead.

Che felt something lurch in her stomach, a sudden feeling of disorientation. The bright light was dimming … The monster that had been about to seize her in its jagged arms was suddenly very far away, receding and receding. She felt dizzy, nauseous, impossibly weak. The enclosed, baking air surrounded her again, amid the tatty gloom of the tent. She collapsed on its floor, and heard again the husky voice of the halfbreed woman they called Mother.

'She has the touch of the Masters. She has it as pure as I have ever known,' and then, after a moment's smothering of any conscience, the woman ordered, 'Kill her. Kill her and take her blood.'

Che tried to reach for her sword, but her arm was leaden. She heard a shout and something passed over her, Trallo lunging knife-first and wings a-blur. There was a hoarse cry of pain, and Trallo cried out again, words this time.

'Now!' he was yelling. 'Now! Come on!'

She could barely turn her head, just heard a scuffle and the cursing. Her vision was eclipsed and she saw the halfbreed man loom over her. His teeth were bared into a snarl and his dagger was raised high.

Achaeos! she called, and she would not have cared if the Darakyon had answered her again.

For a second the interior of the tent was lit by unbearable brightness, then a wind seemed to hurl the halfbreed away from her. Che heard the woman known as Mother begin to scream in rage and grief. Trallo staggered away past her, bleeding across the scalp. One of the Khanaphir came after him, but again there was that burst of pure light, and the bald man reeled back, his chest just a blackened hole. Mother kept screaming and screaming.

'Che! Che, get up!' Trallo was shouting at her, pulling at her arm. She made all the effort she could, her limbs like jelly. Someone grabbed hold of her, strong hands digging under her arms to haul her to her feet. She was leaning against someone, as her world swam. Her stomach was squirming with the abomination she had swallowed. She tried desperately to focus, to see who had come for her.

'Achaeos?' she asked.

'Not Achaeos,' said a clipped voice in her ear, and then they were out of the tent — out into the confusing underwater colours of the Marsh Alcaia — and the world was swimming, spinning around her, and she could hold on to it no longer.

Thalric almost fell over as Che's full weight dragged against him, but he got an arm behind her knees and hoisted her off the ground. Cursed Beetle girl could stand to lose some weight, came the thought, but then he had a firm grip on her and was backing out of that horrible tent. He noticed movement and turned awkwardly, seeing someone running towards them. He twisted a hand free, almost losing hold of Che again, and let his sting flash. The man, an emaciated Khanaphir, fell back in a tangle of limbs.

'Let's go,' he grated. 'Come on, Fly-kinden.'

Trallo was already on his way, trying to wind back the string on a pistol crossbow as he went. The denizens of the Marsh Alcaia had begun to show all too much interest in a Wasp lugging a foreign Beetle girl about.

'Stupid, stupid woman,' Thalric was cursing under his breath. 'What did you think you were doing?'

'Lucky you were keeping an eye on her,' said Trallo, having finally got his crossbow cocked. Now that he brandished it so openly, interest from the street people was fast diminishing. The Khanaphir didn't seem to possess such weapons themselves, but everyone here seemed to know what it was capable of. Loosing a crossbow bolt in a confined space bounded entirely by cloth walls would be an interesting exercise, Thalric thought.

Trallo was leading the way confidently, left, left, then right. Merchants and gamblers watched narrowly as they passed, making Thalric keenly aware of just how much Che's unconscious body was hampering his progress. If they jump me I'm dead, he thought, and then, and I bloody well deserve it. He was conscious that dressing this episode up to satisfy his Rekef colleagues would be nigh impossible. But I knew — I knew she would get involved in something like this. Cheerwell Maker, as usual, blundering through a world of sharp edges with her eyes shut.

The uncomfortable truth: I have a problem, here, and then Trallo shouted something, and Thalric tried to turn. Something hit him in the jaw hard enough to snap his head back. He staggered, his legs suddenly weak, and someone tried to wrestle Che from his grasp. There was a moment of fumbling that, to a disinterested observer, must have seemed hilarious, and Che was pulled out of Thalric's hands. The abductor had botched it, though, tripping and falling backwards so that the weight of her drove the breath from his lungs. Abruptly free of her, with palm open and ready, Thalric turned to receive another hammering punch that knocked him flat on his back. A dark-armoured form loomed over him just as he heard the clack of Trallo's crossbow. Impossibly the little bolt just danced off the attacker's mail and those gauntleted hands now came up with something ugly and short-barrelled: a cut-down snapbow!

'Flee!' Thalric shouted, as two of his attackers began hauling him to his feet. He struggled furiously, trying to turn the palms of his hands towards them. 'Trallo, flee!' he yelled again. He saw the armoured assailant sight down the wicked little snapbow, then lower it.

Telling a Fly-kinden to run, it occurred to Thalric, is surely unnecessary.

'Watch his hands!' the man warned, but they were already holding Thalric's arms out straight and back, putting pressure on his elbows to keep them that way. Their dark armour was mostly plated leathers, and only their leader wore steel mail, of a design Thalric had never seen before. It was a moment before he recognized the emblem on their tabards.

'What-?' One of them wrenched his arm and he hissed in pain. 'What do the Iron Glove want with me? I am Imperial ambassador in this city!'

'Are you?' He could see himself reflected dimly in the armoured man's helm. The eye-slit gave no clues. 'And what does the Empire want with abducting Lowlander women?'

'I was …' But he was what? What can I say that will not incriminate me?

'Your name is Thalric, my people tell me,' said the Iron Glove man, and a chill went through him.

Assassins? He had all but forgotten, given the challenge of this new city and its distractions. Are you so weary of your life that you forget such things? But he was far from the Empire, and the attack outside Tyrshaan now seemed like something long ago.

'My name is Thalric,' he admitted.

'It has been a long time,' the armoured man replied slowly. 'I saw you only briefly, on the Sky Without. But she told me what you did to her, in Helleron and in Myna.' There were knives in that tone which mocked the terrors of mere assassins.

'Who are you?' Thalric demanded.

'Me?' The faceless helm came closer. 'Why, I'm no Rekef officer, Master Thalric. I'm no lord of the Empire or grand ambassador. I'm just a poor halfbreed boy who's had to make his own way in the world.'

A name hovered at the very edge of Thalric's memory, but he could not bring it to mind.

'But look at me now,' the man continued. 'I've not done so badly. Look at what I can do.'

Thalric saw him draw back his fist for the blow, amateurish and clumsy if only he himself had been able to dodge. Then the metal-clad fist slammed into his stomach and doubled him over, only the layer of copperweave saving his innards. He sagged against his captors, who instantly jerked him upright. The armoured man was examining his mailed fist speculatively.

'Look what I can do,' he repeated, wonderingly. When the gaze of the helm tilted towards Thalric again, it was as though they were collaborators in this new exercise of power.

'You don't understand what's going on here,' said Thalric, and because he was speaking he was not ready for the next blow, which lashed into his cheek, splitting his lip and throwing him out of the grip of his captors. He hit the ground hard, clawing at the dust, trying to extend a hand out to sting. The boot came from nowhere into his ribs and he cried out at last, curling about the pain, bracing for the next blow.

There was no next one, though, and he forced himself to look up. The snapbow was directed at him, at his face, at his eye. Well, I always knew the mail wouldn't save me every time.

'This is personal, between us two,' the armoured man explained. 'The Iron Glove wouldn't thank me for killing an ambassador. Be grateful that your Fly got away to tell tales. It's enough now that you know you're beaten.'

Two of them still supported Che between them, and the two others that had been holding him now had their crossbows out and ready. The company started moving away through the Marsh Alcaia, only the armoured man pausing a moment, staring down at Thalric.

'If I ever see you again,' he said, 'know that I haven't even begun to avenge what you did to her.'

Thalric tried to sit up, unkinking bruise by bruise, his breath ragged in his throat. No broken ribs, just pain all over and a bloodied lip. He had suffered much worse. The halfbreed had no idea just how much Thalric had endured, before.

There was a flurry of movement nearby, and he instinctively jabbed an arm out towards it, reaching for his sword with the other.

'It's me, it's me!' Trallo shrilled, coming to rest beside him, surveying him critically. 'They did a real job on you, didn't they?'

Thalric groaned, pulling himself fully to his feet, light-headed and breathing through waves of pain.

'I hope you can walk,' Trallo added reproachfully. 'There's no way I'm carrying you.'

'I can walk.' And I can think up some explanation for Marger and the others, as well. He was still ransacking his memory for the name of the armoured halfbreed.