Yashamin led him, at once mistress and slave, to the couch by the desk.

Morning had gone. Corajidin reclined at his desk, too distracted to work. A headache throbbed at the edge of true pain, due in equal parts to his hangover, Yashamin's narcotic smoke, and the infirmity of the sickness that pooled in him like fetid water in a rusted basin. The gentle breeze from the overhead fan was soporific, the waves of cool air on his skin comforting. Through the open window the cries of gulls, the rattle of carriage wheels, and the din of conversation turned into a pulsing wave of incoherent sound. Amnon was a hot, humid city. He preferred the mild dryness of Erebus Prefecture with its cool winds off the dark waters of the Southron Sea, where it stretched south to the rugged, mountainous islands of Kaasgard and the wide icy wastes of Sarway.

A crystal decanter of honey wine remained untouched on his desk. A small pile of scrolls flexed under the breeze from the fan, edges curled upward in the damp air. One of the scrolls listed the names of those Thufan suggested be incarcerated, the last of Far-ad-din's supporters. On another, Armal's much softer views on the supposed rebellious activities of the Family Bey, whom Corajidin would feel much better about, were they easier to spy upon. Their holdings in the Rmarq were vast, their people clannish and closed to strangers. A report from Farouk outlined the wealth claimed in Corajidin's name. The list was very, very long. Somewhere it would no doubt be accompanied by a list just as long of those who were either the poorer, or who had disappeared, for providing it.

He looked down at the papers on his desk. Before he had left to send Armal away, Farouk had written Corajidin's appointments for the day, including his meeting with the overdue Nehrun.

A knock at the door roused him. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes before granting permission for his visitor to enter, and he was surprised when it was Femensetri and Roshana who came through the doorway. Corajidin tasted something sour in his mouth as the two women approached his desk. Neither of them sat, nor did he offer.

Femensetri dropped a scroll case sealed with the white lotus of the Teshri. There were only two people who had such a seal: himself as Asrahn-Elect and Nazarafine as the Speaker for the People.

Corajidin did his best to smile, though he was sure it came out more as a sneer. Femensetri always managed to bring the worst out in him. He glanced at Roshana and had to admit he could see what Belamandris found alluring in her. Her face was handsome, high-cheeked and square-jawed like her brother's, with dark eyes in their shadowed orbits either side of a slightly long, straight nose. Her hair was tucked behind the slight points of her ears. Roshana wore her light-armored corselet like a robe of state, the hilt of the long-knife strapped to her thigh smooth with use. This one was no peac.o.c.k.

He glanced down at the wax tablet on his desk, though he did not need to. "I have an appointment-"

"Nehrun's not coming, Corajidin." Femensetri's voice was a harsh thing, all corners and edges. She nodded to the scroll on the desk. "That's from the Speaker. I wanted to make sure it arrived safe and sound."

Corajidin eyed the scroll but made no move to touch it.

"It is a writ of abdication, Asrahn-Elect," Roshana said firmly. "For my brother, Nehrun."

"What inspired this?" In the Ancestors' sweet names! Thankfully his voice was calm, though anger tensed in him like a bowstring.

"My brother feels it's in the best interests of Shran, his House, and himself if he abdicates." Roshana bowed her head in humility, while Corajidin inwardly seethed. "He has appointed me rahn-elect in his place. Obviously, once Indris returns my father to us-"

"n.o.body has found Ariskander." Corajidin's words dropped like stones. "n.o.body will find Ariskander. Face facts, Roshana, your father-"

"Lives, Asrahn-Elect," Roshana spat. "Until an heir has been Awakened, we'll continue to search for him. Where Nehrun has failed, or was, perhaps, less motivated to succeed than he otherwise might have been, we suspect Indris will be far more..."

"Effective?" Femensetri drawled.

"Thank you, Scholar Marshal." Roshana beamed at Femensetri, who had served generations of the Great House of Nasarat before she had taken her role as Scholar Marshal.

"Nazarafine has endorsed Roshana as the new rahn-elect, so she'll now represent her House on the Teshri." Femensetri looked down at Corajidin. Her mindstone flared with curls of shadow. "Are there any arrangements, or discussions, you had with Nehrun that Roshana needs to know about?"

"Nothing comes to mind," he lied. Curse Nehrun! Corajidin had counted on the man to keep his own House in order with regards to any search for Ariskander. Knowing Indris was the man who hunted for Ariskander filled Corajidin with new doubt. Thankfully the marshlands were large and days had pa.s.sed since Ariskander had gone missing. "What of Nehrun? Will he return to Narsis or to his estates in the prefecture?"

Femensetri grinned at Corajidin. It was a wild thing, ripe with her contempt for him. "Nehrun took ship early this morning for the Shrine of the Vanities. There he'll meditate upon his life. Have no fear, Corajidin! The Sq Scholars at the shrine will be more than capable of protecting him from harm. After all, who knows what secrets he might yet reveal?"

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

"The challenges in our lives are meant to render us neither immobile nor otherwise helpless, rudderless, or lost. They are meant to help us discover the roots of who we are."-Balimore Swann, leader of the Ondean militia, 564th Year of the Awakened Empire Day 322 of the 495th Year of the Shranese Federation b.u.t.terfly-drakes buzzed past on gossamer wings, scaled hides rainbow hued in the morning haze over the Rmarq. The scent of rotten vegetation clogged Indris's nostrils. Birds swept by, giving chase to the clouds of insects that had taken to the air. Nearby a crocodilian growled, its shape masked by the trunks of tea trees and reeds.

Indris had not slept well. There was an ominous weight to the Rmarq that played on his nerves. A brooding pressure promising harm to the unwary.

During the night Indris had awoken to find Omen gone from his post. He had risen from his uncomfortable bed to find his old friend standing by the banks of a nearby stream. The water had flowed sluggishly, its rippled surface contorted like a warped mirror. When he had asked Omen why he was standing there, the Wraith Knight had replied that he had come to see the drowned people who had been calling out to him.

Indris sorted through their food while Hayden and Ekko crept forward to get a better look at Thufan and his bravos. They were not gone long before the two loped back. Hayden's expression was grim.

"Seems our friends lit out in the night," Hayden offered by way of explanation. "Fire's been out for a while."

"Omen?" Indris asked calmly. "Did you see them leave?"

"'Flee you men strayed too far from redemption, your prints as b.l.o.o.d.y sins upon the earth.' No, Indris, I did not. The drowned ones were talking to me, all burbled and wet in the mud and the weeds like strands of hair all wet and green. The secrets of the deep waters and the ancient stones-"

"How long, do you think?" Shar interrupted. She had already begun to pack her kit. Ekko followed suit. "Are they beyond your ability to track?"

"They've some hours on us, but I conjure I can find them well enough."

"This is less than ideal." Indris chewed his bottom lip. He and Hayden shared a glance, then looked to Omen. The Wraith Knight carried nothing except his relic of a sword and swamp-stained shroud. He stood like a scarecrow, kindling limbed and narrow chested, the damp earth sucking at his boots. There was a time when Omen would not have missed a snake in the gra.s.s, let alone ten men breaking camp.

They followed the trail. Indris knew Ekko could move much more quickly than the rest of them, though Shar would not be far behind. He was more concerned about Hayden. The drover was not a young man anymore. After three hours, Indris could hear the old man's breath rasp as he ran. Indris thought back to their days with the Immortal Companions, when they had been forced to make improbable time between cities. They would defeat an enemy one day, only to face another on the morning of the next. Many new recruits had died, too tired to fight after such exertion. Those who survived were the stronger for it. There had always been soldiers willing to join the Companions for their chance at fame: the young and the foolish, the glorious and vainglorious...the desperate.

After five hours Hayden had started to falter. Indris felt the muscles in his own legs burn. Each breath in his chest felt like sandpaper. They could all use a rest. He increased his pace to catch up with Shar and Ekko, to tell them it was time to stop.

The ground around them was relatively firm. Many large boulders, half-sunk in the mud or the nearby pools, were crusted with small mollusks. Short trees, their roots like thick rope, coiled over each other on the way to the water's edge. The ground was holed here and there, warmed by the sun. The group slowed to a walk for several minutes before they finally sat, drawing in the sticky air in deep breaths. Only Omen remained standing, his mannequin body immune to fatigue.

"How are our prey keeping such a pace, Amonindris?" Ekko asked. The Tau-se breathed easily, his recovery quick. "One might have thought Thufan would be a liability on such a journey."

"One of them's riding," Hayden said between breaths. The old drover lay on his back, his forearm over his eyes. "Do you figure we could eat something, Indris?"

"Of course." They would be useless to anybody if they arrived for a fight too tired to lift a weapon. "Make it quick, though."

"The Lion Guard only traveled some twenty-five kilometers southwest into the Rmarq before we were ambushed," Ekko mused. "We have traveled perhaps twenty kilometers since we crossed the Anqorat yesterday."

"You are concerned we are not moving as quickly as the Tau-se?" Omen asked.

"No." Ekko shook his head. Then nodded. "Yes. But that is not what I am saying. We were being shadowed by the Fenlings all the way."

"And?"

"Where are the Fenlings now?" Ekko frowned. "I have sensed no Fenling spoor, yet we should be surrounded by them. I smell naught but damp and something akin to rotting crab..."

Shar ventured light-footed from their camp, intent on their surrounding. Indris followed her example. He was hesitant to use the ahmsah, even to enhance his senses. Both he and Omen might well prove to be liabilities here in the Rmarq, for they were both strong with disentropy.

"What would drive the Fenlings from this part of the Rmarq?" the Tau-se asked quietly.

Ekko's words left an uneasy silence in their wake. Hayden sat up, his color better. Shar returned to crouch on the jagged stump of a log, hawklike, her eyes never still as she scanned the marsh. Indris fancied her elongated, upswept ears twitched at every sound. She twirled a serill throwing knife between her fingers. Omen waded, ibis-like, in the shallow pools nearby. Shapes writhed around his legs. He reached into the water and pulled out the fragments of a large rainbow-hued sh.e.l.l.

Omen held the sh.e.l.l up to where his ears were not. "I wonder whether we can hear the ocean in these? Or perhaps the screams of those whom the marsh-puppeteers have ridden, hidden away in layers of dying meat?"

"Oh, sweet Nasarat!" Indris breathed. He looked at the long swaying gra.s.ses. He listened for the telltale skittering of chitinous legs amid the rattle of the reeds. "We need to leave."

"Why?" Hayden asked. The man paled with revulsion as he looked past Indris. Hayden raised his storm-rifle to his shoulder. Indris sensed the movement behind him. His hand flew to the hilt of Changeling in the same instant Ekko's khopesh and Shar's serill blade rang from their sheaths.

Indris ignored his most basic instinct, which was to look. He rolled forward, drawing Changeling as he came to his feet.

Ekko launched himself. His sword ripped past. Missed the shape that had sprung forward. A flare of light. A gla.s.s knife hissed through the air. A wet gurgle-hiss. The ratta-tat-tat beat of legs on stone. The chitinous thrash of death throes.

Shar stood over the carca.s.s of the maleganger, what some called a marsh-puppeteer. She stabbed it. Held it up, gaze curious. Dark ichor dribbled down the blade. The beast twitched for a few moments, giving a whistling keen. It resembled two strangler's hands joined along the thumbs, covered in pliant turtle sh.e.l.l. The tail was short, flat, and segmented like a lobster. Its finger-thick limbs were encased in a moist-looking carapace, tipped with hard black points. Its abdomen was pocked with a mult.i.tude of large pores, all of which showed the tips of tendrils like oily barbed hairs.

"What on a is-" Hayden choked out.

"Right now you don't want to know," Indris snapped. "Run!"

The companions raced away. Hayden led them along Thufan's path as best he could. The whistling cry of the malegangers was answered all around them. From the corner of his eye, Indris saw the creatures bounding alongside, spider-quick on powerful legs. All the while came the skittering and the shrill whistle calling others to the hunt.

"We won't make it," Shar snapped as she fell into step beside Indris. He followed her gaze forward, where rocks dotted with large holes rose from now-turbulent waters. More of the creatures appeared on all sides. "You need to do something."

"If I do"-he panted-"I've no idea what might come looking for us."

"Roje faruq cha!" she swore. "There's no point in wondering what if. If you do nothing, we're all dead."

"Like me," Omen said with what might have been wry humor if his voice had allowed for it. Indris shot a withering glance at the Wraith Knight.

Indris tapped into the ahm, feeling it pool around his Disentropic Stain. His mind focused on the structures of the ahmsah. Formulae, the building blocks of the arcane, clicked together in Indris's mind as he ran. Most of the canto of the Fayaadahat-the collected arcane works of the Sq-were highly dangerous. As well as highly indiscriminate. The effects would not discern between friend or foe. Formulae were a tool to achieve an end, the same as a shovel, a broom, or a sword. Many scholars failed because they relied too heavily on the intent of the tool, rather than its quality. If the scholars were lucky, neither their comrades nor innocents paid for their lack of control.

Indris exhorted himself to even greater speed. He pointed to an open area ahead surrounded by slick stones, pocked and bulbous, like malformed wasp nests. The holes in the stones no doubt led to tunnels. The maleganger hive was all around them. Every step they took sent vibrations through the earth. Every step told the malegangers where they were.

When the companions reached the open area, Indris skidded to a halt. The others fell in around him.

"Back to back around me!" he yelled. "We've told them all where we are, and this is where we'll hold!"

Sweat trickled down his forehead. He drew his storm-pistol with his free hand. The malegangers must have sensed him, Omen, and Changeling, for they slowed. Quivered, claw-tipped legs tapping in what Indris took to be excitement. Ekko held his khopesh low, his feet wide. Hayden held his storm-rifle to his shoulder. Shar stood tall and tapped her sword against the split toe of her high boot, her face lit with a wry smile. Omen had a.s.sumed a stylized stance, still as a statue, his antique sword held in a duelist's grip of a style seen only in ancient ma.n.u.scripts.

Indris thrust Changeling's chisel point into the ground. The sentient blade drew disentropy from the earth like a siphon. The Sq Knight felt it flow through him, a coolness in his veins. He began the calculations for the High Accelerator. He looked to his friends. Changed the calculations for force, burn, and diameter. Of where the epicenter would need to be.

The malegangers did not wait long. They whistled to each other. Crept forward on long, hard legs. Tik-tik-tik-tik on the stones. With a deceptive, deliberate slowness, they approached- Then sprang forward. Limbs splayed. Needle claws wet with venom.

Hayden's storm-rifle gave off muted thuds as he fired. For such a small noise, the bolts were devastating. Click went the trigger. A thump as the bolt was spat out on a hard gust of air. Then crack as a bolt split maleganger carapace. The ammunition cylinder revolved. Another maleganger body erupted in a spray of black blood and mottled sh.e.l.l.

Ekko swept his blade in a bright arc. What his blade missed, his armored hands caught midair. Crushed. Discarded. A few of the beasts gained purchase on his armor. Roaring, he swept them away. Where they landed, he crushed them underfoot.

Shar danced. She wove, supple and elegant. She bent like a reed in the wind. Her serill blade whipped through the air. The gla.s.s blade chimed. Malegangers fell, sundered. She sang a song of death. Fought to her own rhythm. Made of death an art, though she was the only one of her people there to witness what she created.

Omen was terrifying for his silence. His limbs were hinged to bend in ways a body could not. They twisted at odd angles. He flung himself with a fearless abandon no living thing could copy. As a being who emanated disentropy, Omen was a target for the malegangers, who sought him out to their peril. They clung to his shroud. Sought to find purchase around his wooden throat. They tried to penetrate where his spine should be with their fine tendrils, to no avail.

Wave after wave of malegangers attacked. Many of them were small, young, and inexperienced. Indris saw the elders farther back, larger, wiser veterans in possession of a cool cunning and intellect stolen from their victims. They moved forward more slowly. Their trills urged the others on, coordinated the attack.

"Indris?" Shar panted. "If you're planning on doing something, today would be nice."

"Busy here," he muttered under his breath. The formulae of the High Accelerator finalized in his mind. The numbers, which roared across his brain, turned to words. To pitch, cadence, resonance, volume, inflection, meaning. Around them the malegangers swarmed. The elders had come closer now. They would have sensed the disentropy emanating from where he knelt. He could feel the vibrations of more of the parasites underground. It felt like the horde of malegangers was trying to burrow upward.

"Indris!" Hayden yelled. He had drawn his broadsword and swung in broad, desperate strokes. Malegangers swarmed forward. The old man's face was streaked with sweat. "Help!"

"To me!" Indris snapped as his friends fought in a circle around him.

The words of the High Accelerator flew from his mouth on motes of light. The air around them began to shimmer. Tiny stars burned in the air, no larger than pinheads. They burned, glorious and warm. They vibrated. Moved in ever-widening orbits.

Shar yelped as she and the others leaped toward Indris. Omen was slower than the others. He capered back, yet was caught as the myriad little stars began to spiral in a luminescent maelstrom. There came a grinding sound as his exposed limbs were struck by the High Accelerator. The edges of his shroud went taut, as if pulled. Its hems frayed, then shredded into smoldering rags. Wood chips and sawdust flew away, vanishing in sparks of flame. The contact left the wood pale and exposed, its lacquer gone, parts of the fingers taken.

The Accelerator hummed at first, then growled with speed. Soon the companions were caught within a blurred sphere made from innumerable streaks of yellow light. All they could hear was the roar of the globe of the High Accelerator traveling ever faster. As its diameter widened. The air quickly heated, turned stale.

Soil and stone were scoured clean where the High Accelerator pa.s.sed. The earth smoked somewhat from the heat, yet seemed to cool rapidly into a gla.s.sy flatness. Indris had calculated enough energy to protect them both above-and belowground and how long they could breathe the trapped, heated air. Yet the disentropy of the Rmarq was uncertain. He needed to be able to shut it down if the Accelerator got out of hand.

When the High Accelerator burned out, the companions looked out on a flattened landscape. Water steamed. Gra.s.s had been burned away. The ground was bright with specks of gla.s.s wherever there had been grains of sand.

Of the malegangers, dead or alive, there was no sign.

They traveled another few kilometers. Of them all only Ekko had never seen what a Sq Knight was capable of. The Tau-se champion had maintained a reverent, if not apprehensive, distance as they had quick-timed to their next rest point.

"Now we know why the Fenlings weren't about," Shar said lightly.

"How did Thufan and his..." Ekko muttered. The sight of the puppeteers had left him unsettled. He sat on the gra.s.s, his khopesh across his knees. He polished the weapon repeatedly, as if to remove blood only he could see. The giant lion-man had taken his khopesh apart to ensure no blood remained either on the blade, hilt, or fittings. He put it back together again with reverence, murmuring benedictions all the while.

"Especially at night," Omen mused. The Wraith Knight had a dead maleganger caught in the folds of his shroud. He poked at it, and its lobsterlike limbs twitched in response. Hayden looked at the thing with disgust. When Omen poked it too hard, the fine tendrils on its abdomen flickered out. The old rancher leaned into the gra.s.s to vomit.

"Have you no such creatures where you are from, Hayden Goode?" Ekko asked when the Human had regained control of his stomach. Hayden shook his head miserably, his storm-rifle clutched to his chest.

"I've never been to Ondea." Shar came to sit beside the man, her arm around his shoulders. Indris could see how much Hayden trembled, though it slowed with Shar's soothing tone. "Tell me what it's like."

"Where is it writ that men should have to live in the same world as..." he began. Hayden shook his head, as if to throw off his discomfiture. "Ondea's beautiful, young miss. Gra.s.sy plains that go on forever. High mountains, with rivers so clear you'd swear you was drinking sky. We ain't got swamps and the like, but our forests are filled with game. Some such will kill you, if you cross their path. But they're natural, healthy, and whole. In Ondea a man with a herd of mountain horses, on the move from pasture to pasture? Well, it's quite a life."

"What drew you away from it?"

"The Angothic Witches came," Hayden said flatly. He looked to Indris, his expression filled with anger and a pain Indris knew all too well. They had both lost people they loved. Had become men other than what they had planned to be. "But what's done is done. I'd rather not think about it, if you don't mind. Still and all, after being here I figure Ondea's a lot better than this place, Angoths or not."

"You can blame the first mahjirahn for what the Rmarq became," Omen said blandly. "One of Indris's Ancestors was the-"

"Thanks for that fascinating mention of my family history, Omen. We've more important things to worry about. Are we still on the trail?" Indris glared at Omen, though he doubted the Wraith Knight would notice. Ekko's question as to how Thufan and the others had safe pa.s.sage through the malegangers bothered him. Contrary to popular belief, the malegangers were not mindless predators. They could be reasoned with, bartered with. What had they traded, Thufan and Belamandris, for safe pa.s.sage through the maleganger hive?

"That we are." Hayden scowled. "Though they're a smaller group now. Six folk, still traveling fast."

They came to an area of ruins where the traces of old roads could still be seen. Some nameless town or city, long lost to memory. Half walls canted, forgotten reminders of inhabitants long gone. The domed roof of a building, filigree ironwork rusted through in many places, was a stark silhouette against the cloudy afternoon sky.

Indris paused for a moment beside the remains of an ornate gazebo. The ahm whirled here, making it slightly harder to breathe. Isolated in a round plaza devoid of anything else, the blue-gray diorite columns stood tall. Curving lines were carved into the stone in a seemingly haphazard way Indris recognized as Rm handiwork. The delicate black metalwork of the domed roof was blackened by old flames, as was the pallid stone of the plaza around it. Bloated translucent spiders seemed to skitter in midair on webs of spun gla.s.s, seen only when one ventured too close. Indris felt the menace radiating from the Weavegate, the creeping sensation of oily thoughts that swam, sluggish and secret, unbidden and unwanted, through his mind.

Holding back a curse, Indris had to have Ekko physically pick Omen up and carry the Wraith Knight from where he had simply stopped to listen to whatever it was that had enraptured him.

As the afternoon darkened to evening, they traversed other ruins, decrepit skeletons of buildings and monuments that stretched feebly from the marshes. They were small, no larger than villages or perhaps the large estates of some wealthy landowner or other. It was Shar who sighted the first Fenlings to the east. The group, about twenty in all, was moving through the gathering gloom of the overcast.