The Scarab Path (83 page)

She
heard steps behind her, quiet but slow, and the apparition she saw, when she
turned, sent her two stumbling steps away from it, almost falling over Thalric.
His name surfaced in her mind irresistibly: Garmoth Atennar, Lord of the Fourth
House, whose Bounty Exceeds all Expectations, Greatest of Warriors, had woken.
He had donned the mail that had sat waiting on his throne through the ages.
Armour plates of gleaming green-black and gold slid one over the other,
boasting the meticulous craftsmanship of decades. The dark clasp of the open
helm framed the pale features of a dead king. He stared down at her with a
distant amusement, as she herself might have looked at some small animal
meandering lost through the rooms of her home.

She
tried to speak, but her voice betrayed her, cracking to a mere whisper in the
face of them. She finally forced it out, hearing her words tremble. ‘You are
the Masters of Khanaphes.’

‘We are
some,’ said Elysiath. ‘Those that have awoken.’ The man’s hand rested on her
shoulder, while the other woman continued to comb her hair, oblivious. ‘You are
not one of our slaves, though.’ Her eyes regarded Che with arch humour. ‘Some
few are summoned to us, through some trace of old blood that they carry, or
else through their own misplaced curiosity, but you have been called from far
places.’

‘I … did
not come because I was called,’ Che got out.

‘That is
what many believe.’

There
was a sudden gasp from Thalric, lying at her feet, in reaction to some
particular stab of torment in his mind. ‘What is happening to them?’ Che asked.
‘What are you doing to them?’

‘Testing
them.’ Garmoth Atennar’s voice rang deep and hollow as the halls they stood in.
‘A test which they shall doubtless fail, as so many do. A test which you have
passed, for which you may give thanks and rejoice.’

Che
glanced back towards him. In his colossal mail, he was even more frightening
and less approachable than the others. There was a sword girded at his belt
that must have stood eight feet from point to pommel. ‘Please,’ she said,
crouching by Thalric, ‘he will go mad.’

‘It is
likely,’ said Elysiath indifferently. ‘Soon it will be certain. That is what
awaits those who fail.’

‘Will
you not …?’ Che’s voice trailed off.
Of course they will
not. Why should they? We are as the smallest insects to them
.

‘We will
not stir ourselves to release them from their bonds,’ Elysiath told her. ‘We
will not prevent you from doing so, if you can.’

‘Me?’
Che demanded, astonishment lending her courage. ‘What can I do?’

The huge
woman made a face. ‘Well, then, perhaps you can do nothing.’

‘This is
… magic.’ Despite everything it was still hard to say it. ‘This is something I
know nothing about. There’s nothing I can do for them!’

Elysiath
glanced at the man by her shoulder, who was looking bored. ‘No doubt it is as
you say,’ she said dismissively.

‘But …’
Che looked down at Thalric, locked into his own bespoke nightmare. ‘I can’t …’
Something inside her was telling her to look, though.
Achaeos,
help me now
, she thought, reaching out. And then:
You’ve
ridden me all the way here from Khanaphes. I went up the pyramid because you
were there. I’ve taken you everywhere you wanted, until I looked like a
madwoman. Come on, now!

She felt
the presence then, the ghostly half-sense of another being that had plagued her
since the war.
What do you want?
she asked it.
Just to torment me? Did I escape the nightmare only because I
carry my own around with me?

You torture yourself with me
. Not her words, but his,
remembered from her dream. She twisted uncomfortably.

Help me now
, she told him.
If you
could ever help me, help me now
.

She
sensed his reaction, his violent disagreement.
This man is
an enemy!

He is a Wasp, not an enemy
, she insisted, but she knew he
must surely resent Thalric for the feelings she had discovered towards the man.
All at once, and spurred by that thought, her patience vanished.

To the pits with you, then
. In her mind she did not now
see the grey-skinned man that she had loved, just the brooding, bitter,
shouting stain on the air that seemed to be all that was left of him. The
better parts, the parts that had held her affection, were clearly gone to his
grave.

There
was a net about Thalric, and she caught hold of it and tore it asunder.
Afterwards she could find no words, no language, to account for what she had
done. She had simply done it, taken the magic and tugged until it snapped.

It must have been very weak
, she thought,
But then these victims are Apt, and the weakest of magics can
bind the mind that does not credit it. It was weak enough that I could claw my
way out from the inside
.

Thalric
gasped, kicked out, hands flailing at the sticky ground.

‘Calm,’
she told him. ‘It’s Che, Thalric. I’m with you.’

He
recoiled from her a moment, and she thought that he had gone mad indeed. Then
he clutched at her arm and something of his own character returned to his face.

‘Che …’
he began, seeking out her face.

‘Thalric!’
a voice cried out in utter fury. Che looked to see the other Wasp, Marger, up
on his knees, his face twisted in fear and rage. ‘Thalric!’ he screamed again,
throwing one arm towards the two of them, palm outwards. He was too far to
restrain, and Thalric just stared at him, still half-numb.

There
was a flash of metal, swift enough for Che to think it must be some new form of
magic, and Marger’s hand was gone, the wrist a moment late in spraying them
with his blood. Marger let out a hoarse, horrified yell, eyes bulging as he
brought the stump close to them, unable to accept what he was seeing. Then
Accius struck a second time, running him cleanly through the throat and then
whipping the blade free.

All three of them
, Che thought hollowly.
I woke up all three
.

She
reached for her sword, forgetting that the last blade she had held had been the
Vekken’s own, which he must have reclaimed by long habit the moment he awoke.
The Antkinden was not focused on either her or Thalric, but staring past them,
at the Masters – the towering shapes of Elysiath and her two companions.
Following his gaze, Thalric looked back also, and Che found it incredible that
neither man had even noticed the metal bulk of Garmoth Atennar, who had been
right before their eyes, the body of Marger almost at his feet.
They stand so still, like statues indeed
, she thought.
And I see better in these dark places and …

And I am Inapt now, and so I am of their world
.

Thalric
swore softly, so she knew that he could see them, the risen Masters. ‘What …?’
he got out hoarsely.

‘Words
spoken in these halls leave long echoes,’ said Elysiath. ‘You do not believe in
us, O savage. We are long dead, so you say, if we ever existed.’

‘You
can’t be the Masters,’ Thalric sounded dazed.

‘Who
else are they going to be?’ Che demanded.

‘But
it’s impossible, not without half the city knowing that you have – what? – some
underground colony here, where you eat what? And drink what? And keep your
numbers up over – how long has it been since the Masters were supposed to have
ruled Khanaphes?’ He was shaking his head wildly in disbelief.

‘We
still rule,’ boomed Garmoth Atennar, and Thalric and the Ant whirled round,
separating him from the gloom for the first time as more than just statuary.

‘Dead,’
stammered Thalric. ‘The Masters are dead.’ Che put her arms around him, but he
continued, ‘How long since the Masters were supposed to have walked the streets
above?’

‘This
shall be nine years,’ said the man beside Elysiath, ‘and forty years. And nine
hundred years.’

Che felt
Thalric twist in her arms, struggling to his knees. ‘Then it cannot be. To have
a colony, unseen, unknown, for generation after generation beneath their feet,
not even if just the Ministers knew.’

They
were smiling now, all of them. Elysiath Neptellian even laughed. It was a
resonant, inhuman sound that reminded Che of the stone bells the Moth-kinden
sometimes used in their rituals.

‘Speak
not to us, O savage, of your generations. We are the Masters of Khanaphes, and
we have always been so. When we turned away from the sun to seek our rest down
here, it was these eyes that looked back one last time, and no other’s.’

Thalric
stared at her dumbly, plainly not prepared to take up the argument against such
invincible assurance, but Che spoke up, as politely as a young student
petitioning some great College scholar. ‘You can’t be nine hundred years old?’

‘I am
older, and I am not so old, by my kinden’s reckoning.’ The perfect mouth curved
more sharply. ‘There is none left living now who raised the first stones of
Khanaphes and taught the Beetle-kinden to think, but those were active times,
so we could not sleep then so long as we have since. Still, I remember when I
walked our dominion as a queen, and they cast flowers before my feet and turned
their faces from me, lest their gaze sully my beauty.’

‘Madness,’
whispered Thalric, but tears had sprung into Che’s eyes at the mere tone of the
woman’s voice, the ancient longings and memories it contained.

‘Still
he does not believe. Like all savages, they have minds able to clutch only
small pieces of the world held close, blind to the greater whole,’ said the man
at Elysiath’s shoulder. ‘But she believes. She has comprehended our glorious
city, and seen how there is a missing piece at its heart. She knows now that
the missing piece is before her.’

‘Yes,’
Che breathed. Despite the magnitude of what had been said, she found no doubt
remaining within herself at all. Khanaphes had been a city that did not make
sense. Only by the addition of some such presence as this could it be made
whole. ‘But how?’ she asked. ‘How has it come to this end?’

‘This is
no end,’ Garmoth Atennar rumbled from behind her. ‘We merely wait and sleep. We
shall arise once more, when our city is ready.’

The
absolute certainty in his voice struck a false chord in Che. For the first time
she doubted them: not their belief in themselves, but the extent of what they
knew. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘Help me understand.’

She
thought they would not respond, but the woman who had been combing her hair
stood up, stretching luxuriously. ‘We shall tell her.’

‘Must
we?’ queried the man. ‘I tire of it all.’

‘We
shall tell her,’ said the woman with the comb, firmly. ‘Child, I am Lirielle
Denethetra, Lady of the Amber Moon, Speaker of Peace, Whose Word Brings Low the
Great.’ She intoned the litany of her titles with profound meaning, shrouding
each with the shadows of a history that Che could never know of. ‘Open your
mind, little one.’

‘I …
don’t know how.’ Che said awkwardly. ‘I am no magician.’ She was aware of
Thalric close by her, Accius further away, sword still in hand. When she
thought of them, she felt embarrassed by their disbelief, but in the presence
of the Masters she found she thought of them less and less.

‘It is
open as a window,’ said the man.

‘Then we
shall tell you of the cataclysm and doom that came to Khanaphes, and that lies
over her still,’ said Lirielle Denethetra. ‘The tale begins before even we
ourselves remember, many thousands of years before the founding of our city, or
any city.’

Colours
began to rise in Che’s mind, swirling and dancing, accumulating into hazy
images, viewed as through warped glass. She saw a landscape unrecognizable,
green and forested. She saw great plains where beetles grazed between the
spires of soaring anthills. She saw no walls, no evidence of the hand of man.
She saw other beasts, monstrous things with hair, horrible to behold, that she
had never seen the like of in all her waking life.

The
voice of Elysiath continued in her mind, saying: ‘Such was the world before
even we had arisen to walk in it. So stood the world when the Pact was made and
the Art was born, but the world was new formed, and not set in its ways.’

‘There
was a great catastrophe, in the spring of time,’ Lirielle’s voice now took
over. ‘We have peered back, and divined as best we could, yet know not the
cause. Perhaps there was no other cause, save for the mysterious slow workings
of the earth, which moved and fell, and made the lands we know today.’ The
images in Che’s mind blurred and shifted. She had a sense of a great sliding
and slumping, a shuddering that seemed to rend apart the entire world. She saw
whole lands fall into the sea, then the sea roll back to steal even more of the
earth. She saw plains riven in two, the higher broken from the lower by a great
sheer cliff.
Is that the Lowlands I see? The Commonweal and
the Barrier Ridge?

‘And the
people were sore afraid,’ Elysiath told her. ‘Small wonder that only those
tribes who might truly influence the world must step forth to take mastery of
it. Mere crafting and making would not suffice, in order to live through those
terrible times. So we would come into our estate, and so, later, would come the
others in their distant lands. Still, none were so great as we.’

‘All
long ago and before even our time, and it was long before we came to understand
it,’ added the unnamed man. ‘But it was to dominate our world nonetheless. This
is later, though, much later.’ There was a city now being built, Che saw in her
mind. The people were stocky and brown, like her. At first there was merely a
small town on the banks of a river, the dense forest surrounding it being cut
back for farmland. Then she saw stone walls raised. There were suggestions of
battles with the denizens of the forest, and those of the plains beyond. She
saw her kinfolk victorious, and saw great figures standing at their head, pale
and slow but mighty in their sorcery. ‘These come from my great-grandfather, these
scenes – before my own time. Your people had not yet gone east to serve the
Moths. There is no Pathis, no Solarno. The Spider-kinden live in caves and
fight each other for scraps.’