Queen Demon (The Rising World), page 37
“We would have come sooner if I knew we were expected.” Kai banished the imps and stepped into the room. “Where’s your expositor?”
“Barbarians, dross, coarse, heathen,” the Hierarch said, and laughed, a dry cackle that ended in a cough. “I don’t need an expositor, this close to the holy cistern.”
Kai thought to Ziede, Could that be true?
If there was an expositor here, I think we might know about it by now, she thought back. She said aloud, “How long have you been here?”
“I was born in the north.” The Hierarch peered at her. “I was the last.”
Kai strolled the periphery of the room, past a small open bathing room that smelled as if the water source had dried up days ago. There was a far door that was also blocked, but it looked recent. Very recent. The broken stone and tile might have come from the collapse of the tor’s outer entrance, and was piled haphazardly. There were two trap intentions on the half-buried sill, and Kai unraveled them without effort. He kept one eye on the Hierarch, alert for an attempt at an attack, but the Hierarch had slumped back in the chair as if exhausted. Kai said, “You should have stayed in the north. You wouldn’t have had to wait for death for so long.”
“Perhaps I should have.” The Hierarch glared at the passageway. “Come in where I can see you.”
A watchful Tahren stepped inside, and Ziede leaned in the doorway and eyed the room with contempt. She said, “Did they wall you up in here because they all disliked you, or were you supposed to do something?”
“Ah, I was waiting. I was the last, the one you didn’t kill. I was destined to destroy you all.” They laughed again, with another choking cough. “Yet here we are.”
Tahren’s expression was opaque, but Kai could read the disgust under it. “You were young, then, for such a destiny.”
“The others didn’t live,” the Hierarch told her. “They put them on the altar block one by one and one by one the holy cistern took their death instead. They were not perfect in its sight. Me, it took as its hand and body and the throat of its Voice.”
Ziede tilted her head. “How nice for you.”
The Hierarch laughed again. “I know who you are, Witch. I was shown sketches. And the forsworn Blessed with you. You haven’t changed.” They twisted in the throne to squint at Kai. “A demon. But you’re different. Are you the Witch King? The Arike King’s creature?”
It made a terrible kind of sense, making a Hierarch who was also an expositor. The Hierarchs had created the expositors to serve them, then abandoned or lost control of them as the war raged on and they were pushed out of the north. Kai used Witchspeak to ask Tenes to come over to him and said, “I am. Are you the only one here?”
“The only one,” the Hierarch said. “Everyone else died. When they died, I made them into servants but some didn’t like it.”
Ziede’s expression sharpened. “You made your own dead into constructs.”
Tenes slipped around the room to Kai’s side as the Hierarch peered at her and said, “They serve. That’s all they’re meant for. There was no dross to use. Until lately. The dross came here and I would have bled their pain into the Well and then made their bodies into servants as is right. We are the height of creation, we are destined to rule, it is our burden to shepherd all other races as our cattle.”
Ramad stepped into the room, his gaze moving over the rotted books. His expression was set and grim, his jaw tight. He seemed to have trouble looking directly at the Hierarch. Long ago, Kai had grown used to facing the monsters who had tried to eat the world, but it had to be hard for someone who had never seen one before. Ramad said, “Not all of your people died. Those who lived to the northwest of here moved away, and left you behind.”
Tahren added, “Maybe they were tired of tending to you for all those years.”
Kai thought of the empty earthwork settlement. Sura had said there were signs the inhabitants had packed and departed. He snorted. “And the Well. Hidden under all this rock, useless.” In Witchspeak he told Tenes, Can you tell what’s on the other side of this door? If this place followed the pattern of the Summer Halls, it would be another court, probably attached to a hall for attendants to assemble to worship the Hierarch. They could use it to get through into the Well chamber and make sure the rest of the constructs were dead. It would take time to bring this place down, and having to watch for stray constructs would make it all the more tiresome.
“Not useless,” the Hierarch said, but there was no heat in it. “I used the Voice to drive you away.”
“You collapsed the entrance and killed all but a few of your servants,” Ziede pointed out.
“The ones I didn’t set on fire,” Kai added.
“Forsworn, dross,” the Hierarch said, again as if by rote. Tenes signed, More rooms, possibly a larger space beyond them.
Tahren moved back beside Ziede, as if she couldn’t stand to touch anything in this ruin. “Why did they wall you in?”
“I told them to.” The Hierarch slumped wearily, as if the brief conversation was almost too much. “You found us. Years of waiting, hiding, you found us and it’s over. Are you here to kill me?” When Tahren and Ziede didn’t answer, the Hierarch turned to regard Kai.
Kai met their rheumy gaze. “Yes, we are.”
The Hierarch’s voice dropped to a bare whisper. “Good. Do it, then.”
Ramad turned with a faint frown. “Could we ask them where in the north they were born—”
Stone cracked so loud it took Kai’s hearing. He felt more than heard the rumble that shivered through the tor. Visceral fear shot through him; he had been nearly crushed here once already. It froze him for half a heartbeat.
Fortunately Tenes didn’t freeze. She grabbed Kai’s arm and slammed a hand against the debris blocking the doorway. It exploded outward into a dark room beyond. Kai jolted back into motion and shouted, “Here!”
Tahren grabbed Ziede and charged toward him. She scooped Ramad up along the way and flung him into Kai’s arms. She reached them just as Tenes planted her hands on the doorway’s stone jambs.
Rock and dirt rained down on both sides of the opening. Ramad’s arms wrapped around Kai’s neck and Kai clung to him as the tor slammed down. A huge slab shifted and fell on the center of the room, crushing the Hierarch and extinguishing the light intention, plunging them into total darkness. Icicle claws scrabbled over Kai’s skin as Ziede directed her wind-devil to snatch the remaining air out of the room and form it into a hard shell around them. It deflected the debris and smothering dirt, but the heavy rock pressed in on it.
Kai’s back was against Tenes’ side. Tahren gripped his shoulder, Ziede pinned between them.
After an eon, the rumbling stopped. They were crushed in on all sides by the collapsed weight. Only Tenes’ control over the solid stone frame of the door and Ziede’s air bubble kept them alive.
Kai called an imp. It arrived with a burst of soft light and a tiny squeak of dismay at its surroundings. Ramad gasped in disbelief. “We’re alive.”
“Yes,” Ziede said breathlessly. She squeezed Kai’s arm. “Don’t anyone jostle Tenes.”
Kai bit his cheek against the useless urge to ask Tenes questions she couldn’t answer without the use of her hands. She would either save them or not, there was nothing the rest of them could do now.
“Highsun,” Tahren said, her voice loud in Kai’s ear. “He isn’t here.”
Ramad’s beard scratched Kai’s cheek as he moved his head a little. “He was still in the corridor. He must have been killed—”
“Was he?” Kai’s voice came out a little strangled and Ramad relaxed his grip a bit. “In the corridor?”
Ziede said slowly, “He didn’t come in the room. A scholar—”
“A historical scholar,” Kai said, stronger now that more air was getting through his windpipe. Not that they had air for much longer; it was already starting to warm with their breath. “Who didn’t come into the room. Where a Hierarch was.”
Coldly angry, Tahren said, “A live remnant of the people, the place he had come all this way to study.”
Ziede agreed. “Ramad wanted us to put off killing them so he could ask where they’d been born—”
“I wouldn’t go that far—” Ramad protested, then hesitated as all the implications struck home. “Surely Highsun didn’t do this.”
“He’s the only one who could,” Tahren said damningly. “There are devices of the Well of Thosaren that can cause more violent effects than the one he used to break the slab over the passage. He must have had one with him.”
“But why try to kill us?” Ramad sounded exasperated. “The plan was to collapse the tor after killing the Hierarch. Did he think you were lying, that you wanted to take control of the Well yourselves?”
For an instant Kai wondered if that was the case. Perhaps Highsun had only pretended to trust them, perhaps he had interpreted their resolve to guard the Well as something more sinister. It would be so much easier to deal with than the alternative. Then Kai felt Tenes tremble against his side, a gasping breath. He said, “Brace—”
The wall of debris in front of Tenes exploded outward. Kai fell into a pile of sharp rock and broken tile, Ramad beside him. Dazzled by gray daylight and the relief of cool air, he could do no more than lie there, hoping the pain in his back was a broken rock and not his bones again.
Ziede dragged at his arms to pull him up. Kai managed to stagger upright. It had already dawned on him that daylight this deep in the tor was a very bad thing so the sight that met him was not wholly unexpected.
A full quarter of the tor had turned into huge piles of broken rock, fine dirt choking the air. It had buried the other rooms that must have been part of the Hierarch’s suite; the door frame and the pillars to either side of it, part of the wall attached to them, were all that was still standing in this part of the debris field. The dome over the central Well chamber was laid bare but unbroken. Made of a gray veined stone that must be stronger than everything around it, the curve of it loomed high over them. If there were any entrances on this side, they were buried under debris.
Tenes stumbled as she climbed out of the shattered door frame. Tahren was already standing, helping a dazed Ramad up.
Kai felt Ziede’s alarm just before she cried out a warning. Highsun stood atop the pile of debris that had been the outer wall of the tor. He held a metal device and Kai thought at first it must be whatever he had used to cause the collapse. Then he recognized the shape; it was a Well of Thosaren weapon. And Highsun was aiming it at them.
“Scatter,” Tahren snapped, and charged forward.
She drew her sword so fast Kai only saw a silver flash; then another as she deflected the shot from Highsun’s weapon. The whine of the device resonated in Kai’s bones, the way it had during the war. There goes any chance Highsun had a reasonable explanation for this, Kai thought as he shoved the slower Ramad into the cover of the rocks and dodged sideways. Tenes tucked herself behind the doorway’s still upright pillars. Ziede lifted upward, her hands guiding wind-devils as she prepared a blast of air to flatten Highsun.
Tahren deflected two more shots and lunged up the debris slope toward Highsun.
Kai felt the second whine before he heard it, out of step with Highsun’s weapon. His warning shout died as Tahren fell backward and slid down the slope of the rock pile. Ramad yelled, “Eleni, no!”
Eleni stood on what was left of the outer wall, some twenty paces from Highsun. She held her Thosaren weapon, her expression conflicted and determined at the same time. It had been her shot that hit Tahren.
Ziede cried out in rage. Wind-devils rushed past Kai with the cold force of a gale. He gathered the pain from his bruised back and reached for the intention on his shoulder. But he was too far away to cast it at either Immortal Blessed with any chance of hitting them. Then the air-blast struck Eleni and knocked her backwards down the wall. Highsun hesitated for an instant, then ran away along the ridge of debris.
Ramad scrambled over the rocks toward Tahren as Ziede caught Kai’s arm and lifted them both up into the air. Kai found he no longer cared about any explanation Highsun might have for this. They would puzzle it out over the man’s dead body.
Ziede carried them toward the ridge of collapsed wall as Highsun fled down the slope. He was making for an intact passage into the tor’s interior. Then Ramad shouted, “She’s not breathing!”
Ziede jerked to a halt in mid-air, gripping Kai’s arm tightly. Her eyes were wide. “Go to her!” Kai said immediately, trying to pull his arm free. Ziede was the one best able to coax breath back into someone’s lungs. “Just drop me!”
She dipped down and let him go just above the debris. Kai leapt forward and clawed his way over the rocks and shifting dirt after Highsun as Ziede shot back toward Tahren and Ramad.
He tumbled down the slope and came to his feet in time to see Highsun disappear into the dark passage. Kai raced after him.
He followed Highsun further into the ruin, darker now that so many firepots were out. Walls and columns were dangerously cracked, though there was no telling if it was from the explosion or the earlier use of the Voice. Kai had an awareness of Ziede, moving air in and out of Tahren’s lungs, keeping the blood flowing in and out of her heart as she tried to coax her to breathe on her own.
Footsteps clattered on the broken stone behind him and Kai whirled into a half crouch. But it was Tenes, slipping on the loose tile as she struggled to catch up. Her face was so pale her skin looked paper-fragile, and scrapes and cuts marked the bridge of her nose; she must have fallen into the rocks at some point. You all right? he signed rapidly.
She nodded and urged him to keep going.
Kai started across the court again, then heard the whine of the Blessed weapon. He grabbed Tenes’ arm in warning and they dropped to the floor. The carving in the wall behind them shattered. The whine continued and Kai counted heartbeats in his head; the buried knowledge of how long these weapons could fire and how long they had to rest in between had surfaced at need. Just before the whine faded he leapt up and lunged.
Highsun was on the other side of the court, framed in the doorway. His eyes widened in startled anger at Kai’s rapid approach. Then he slapped something on the doorframe and bolted. The crack echoed through the rock and Kai slid to a halt just as the doorway and wall collapsed in front of him. He stumbled back, coughing at the wave of dust.
Tenes reached him, almost falling on the broken floor, and he caught her to keep her upright. He asked, “Can you get us through that?”
Tenes stretched out a hand to the rubble, then swayed backward, obviously too weak. Kai steadied her. “No, don’t. We’ll go around.”
She followed Kai back through the court to another passage. Tenes had managed to move a lot of rock in a very short time to get them out of that doorway. It drained the will and the body to get spirits to do a Witch’s bidding, especially to force them to do it quickly enough to prevent your companions from suffocating, instead of gently coaxing them to act in their own time. Kai was covered with bruises and cuts but at least his pain aided his power; Tenes’ pain would just eat away at her concentration and stamina. She signed, I pushed too hard, I just need time to recover.
Kai didn’t think they had time. He said, frustrated, “Why is he doing this?”
Tenes tugged his arm, and when he turned toward her again, she signed, Will he make himself a Hierarch?
That seemed impossible, there had to be another reason. “He doesn’t know how,” Kai told her.
The Hierarch told us how, Tenes signed rapidly. They said they were put on an altar block. It must be here somewhere.
It flashed through Kai’s mind that Highsun had been held prisoner in the Well chamber. He had seen the stairs at the edge of the Well’s platform. He said reluctantly, “You might be right.” The block might be up there somewhere, probably near the opening into the Well. Had Highsun suspected that it was also how Hierarchs were consecrated? He stayed back in the corridor wondering if there was a way to get the answers he needed from the Hierarch, and then the Hierarch just told us. And Highsun had gone to use his explosive device to kill them, to leave the way clear for him to consecrate himself to the Well. “I hope you’re not right.”
Tenes’ expression was grim. I hope so too.
As they found their way past fallen debris and through the next two connecting passages, Kai couldn’t stop thinking about it. Could an Immortal Blessed consecrated to the Well of Thosaren actually become a Hierarch? It seemed unlikely, but Kai didn’t know enough about it. But he remembered that the Hierarchs had demanded Blessed to be consecrated as their Priests. Dahin had been selected as one, and preventing that had been the first reason Tahren turned against her own people. If the Well of the Hierarchs had some affinity for Immortal Blessed …
Kai heard movement ahead. Fighting, a clash of metal.
They turned a corner and found Arnsterath dodging around a wrecked court, hacking at a construct with a Blessed sword. Kai was tempted to just leave her, but Tenes stepped forward and touched the wall. A pillar, broken at the top and already unstable, shifted sideways and collapsed onto the construct. Pinned to the floor like a beetle, it waved too many arms, continuing to struggle.
Arnsterath regarded them warily. “What is happening—?” she began.
Kai started down the next passage. They were close now. Tenes hurried to catch up with him.
Unfortunately Arnsterath did too. She said, “I saw Ziede knock that fool of a Blessed Eleni off the tor.” That explained where Arnsterath had gotten the sword. “Why?”
Kai wanted to ignore her, but it was foolish not to explain. “Highsun betrayed us. He blew the side of the tor open.”
Tenes signed impatiently, He’s going to make himself a Hierarch!
Kai fought the impulse to argue. Just because he didn’t want it to be happening didn’t mean it wasn’t.
Arnsterath peered at Tenes uncertainly. “Highsun? Why would—”
Power flowed down the dark hallway in a suffocating wave. It took Kai’s breath, his thoughts. The next instant he realized he was crouched on the floor, Tenes beside him clutching his arm.
