Page 84 of Queen Demon
“That’s the way it’s supposed to work.” Ziede was growing impatient. “But they’ve been up here for decades, trying to survive and not making a good job of it, at least from what the scholars have found. They left themselves hardly anything to come back to.”
More life in his voice now, Dahin said, “The original Hierarchs were dead; whoever returned here couldn’t use their Well. And at that time, the structure over it must have been open. Like the Summer Halls: open at the top, enclosed around the bottom. With all the Hierarchs dead and their best weapon useless, they roofed it over, closed it in, disguised it with dirt and grass. To protect themselves, to keep us from sensing the Well and finding it while they were waiting to make a new Hierarch.”
Ziede said, “Yes, they were waiting. Why are they still waiting?”
Dahin was hesitant. “The tor. They would have to take it apart, or blow the roof off. Somehow.”
Ziede countered, “What if they can’t? What if there’s not enough of them left to dismantle the tor, and not enough victims for their expositors to make constructs to do it for them?”
Kai pulled the blanket off his head. He saw what she was getting at now. “We’ve been overthinking this.”
“We have indeed.” Ziede’s smile was grim. “Kill anyone inside, and seal the entrance. Tenes could collapse the whole structure, bury the Well, if she had enough time.”
Tahren turned, paced back to stand beside Ziede. She didn’t glance at Dahin, but some of the tension had left her. “We would still have to guard it. We can bury it but not destroy it. Someone could return and dig it out.”
“Guard it forever,” Dahin said softly.
Kai propped himself up on his arms. “It is a nice valley.” They would have to consult Tanis and the others in Avagantrum. Some might be willing to come up here to help.
Then another voice said, “Do you mind if I join you?”
Ilhanrun Highsun stood in the tent opening.
The Past: the Conflagration
The borderlands, the Saredi clans, the Erathi sea people have long been at peace, because Witches learned the consequences of war long ago… at odds we were a tragedy, a cataclysm. With one purpose, we were unconquerable.
—Fragment of a transcribed letter, believed to be from a Scholar in the Witchlands, at the Restored Temple of Justice and Antiquity at Ancartre
In darkness like the bottom of a well, Kai walked up the stone-paved road. The sliver of moon was eclipsed by a gently rising haze that had grown over the last hours. Windblown sand brushed against his skirt and coat and gritted under his bare feet. He had left his boots behind in his saddlebags to make his steps as silent as possible, but the endless rush of the waves buried any small sounds of movement. The only sources of light were toward the end of the road: the torches on either side of the bridge gate, the lamps at the top of the short guard tower, and, across the causeway, the fires along the fort’s outer wall. None were enough to make more than small pools of warm brightness.
Dahin walked some distance ahead, carrying the little Immortal Blessed light, a spot of cool illumination that made all the shadows around him darker. He had left his Arike clothes behind, and wore the gray Blessed tunic and pants that had been packed away in his bag since the Kagala. He stumbled occasionally, giving the impression of someone who had walked a long weary way.
The legionaries at the guard tower must have seen him by now,but they let him get almost to within twenty paces of the gate before someone called out to him. Dahin flinched, a full-body motion that staggered him.
Kai stopped; the near-silent susurration behind him said the dustwitches, moving though the grass to either side of the road, halted as well. They had already killed all the legionaries in outer guard positions along the road: silently, with the fine sand off the narrow beach.
Dahin hesitated for too many heartbeats while Kai stood silently. After being caught in the Summer Halls and dragged before a Hierarch and a roomful of expositors and servant-nobles, Dahin had thought walking up to the legionary guard station would be easy. Of course it wasn’t easy, of course he was terrified. Kai’s own terror sat in a cold knot in his stomach, a constant reminder of what would happen if they—if he—failed tonight.
Kai might survive it, but if the others didn’t, there was no point. He would rather lose this stolen body and drift on the wind, his consciousness slowly unraveling, than live alone again.
Then Dahin waved and called back to the guard. He ran the last of the distance to the gate, managing to look like someone who was exhausted and injured, and not having to force themselves onward against a wall of visceral fear.
Kai walked forward again, the grass whispering as the dustwitches moved with him.
He stopped a few paces outside the well of light from the gate’s torches and lamps. The ground sloped away from the road, giving way to sand and rocks, and the sea lapped at the bridge’s stone pillars. From here he could see the salt-rust on the iron gate, the blocky wrongness in the shape of the tower that marked it as legionary work rather than Arike. Would the Hierarchs have buried Dashar under earthworks if it was possible? Would they eventually fill in the sea channel to do it, when they had killed everyone in Descar-arik?
Dahin spoke rapidly to the guards, most of it lost in the rushof the water and the whispers of the grass. He shook his battered bag occasionally to indicate the supposedly important messages inside it. Kai thought he might be name-dropping Immortal Patriarchs who were supporters of the Hierarchs, but it wasn’t until he said the word “Vartasias” that the guards started to move with urgency. Apparently no one asked to speak to Vartasias unless they had absolutely no other choice.
Through the gaps in the ironwork, Kai saw a figure come out of the tower and speak briefly to the scatter of legionaries gathered there. Then a guard moved to the smaller ironbound door to the right of the gate.
That was good. It was important that the fires stay lit, that the gate remained closed, so that any watch from the fort’s walls or tower would see nothing wrong. Kai tensed, closing his fists.
As the small door swung out, Dahin said, “Thank you,” and pretended to stumble against it, pinning it open against the stone jamb. And Kai lifted both hands, palms open.
The dustwitches didn’t hesitate.
A thick wave of sand whipped up off the dunes, as if driven by a strong, sudden gust of sea-wind. Kai walked into it, sand stinging as it struck the exposed skin of his face and hands. The dustwitches rushed past him in a near-silent flurry. The sand cloud rolled over the gate, concealing it, the torches and lamps faintly shining through.
