Orb Sceptre Throne

‘No. Not at all, dear friend. What you must consider, my dear Rallick, was that perhaps it was never full to begin with!’

Rallick just signalled all the more impatiently for Jess.

*

In the slums west of Maiten the old woman sat slouched in the dirt before her shack and inhaled savagely on a clay pipe. The embers blazed, threatening to ignite the tangled nest of hair that hung down over her face. She sucked again, gasping, her face reddening, and held the smoke far down in her lungs, her eyes watering, before releasing the cloud in a fit of coughing. She wiped her wet lips with a dirty sleeve and staggered uncertainly to her feet.

‘Now is the time,’ she murmured to no one. ‘Now it is.’ She reached for the open doorway to her shack, tottering. She managed to hook a hand on either side of the ramshackle wattle-and-daub edge to heave herself inside, then fell, fighting down vomit.

She felt about in the dirt until one hand found a bag, which she clutched to herself and curled around, sometimes giggling and sometimes weeping. The weeping became a sad song crooned hoarsely in a language none around her understood. She lay cradling the bag for some time.

*

Atop Despot’s Barbican, Aman, Taya and the shade of Hinter made their way through the maze of ruined foundations to return to their master’s side. Aman fell to his knees in obeisance, saying, ‘Yes, Father?’

Hinter bowed, as did Taya. Her eyes shone with wild exhilaration as she peered up at the masked figure. She noted the body of the scholar lying nearby and kicked it. The man grunted, stirring. ‘This one lives?’ she asked aloud.

The masked creature gestured. Aman grunted his understanding. ‘He will speak the Father’s will.’

The girl sneered. ‘This one? Him? He is nothing.’

‘Exactly,’ Hinter said. ‘A slave. He will never be a threat.’

‘And speaking of slaves!’ Aman suddenly crowed, peering down the hill.

Among the ruins some thing was clawing its way to them. Blackened, smoking, it made its agonized crippled slither all the way up to the mud-smeared edge of the masked creature’s cloak. There it lay, face pressed to the dirt. Aman cackled his enjoyment of the sight. Hinter merely shook his head. Taya’s face lit up with avid glee. She knelt to prod the sizzling body, raw and crimson where cracks revealed deeper flesh. ‘Is this … her?’

‘No,’ said Hinter. ‘It is Barukanal.’

The grin inverted to a pout. She searched the hillside. ‘No others?’

‘They appear to have eluded the Call,’ Hinter mused, thoughtful. ‘For the moment.’

Taya straightened from the smoking body. ‘What is to become of him then?’

‘He is to be punished,’ came a new voice and the three turned to regard Scholar Ebbin, who was now sitting up, a hand over his stomach, the other over his mouth, horrified shock on his face.

After a moment of silence, the city eerily still beneath them, Taya cleared her throat. ‘So,’ she asked Aman, ‘is that it? Is it done?’

‘It has merely begun,’ Hinter said. And he pointed an ethereal arm to the sky.

Taya looked up and her face lit with child-like pleasure. ‘Ohhh … Beautiful!’

*

At first Jan thought he dreamt. A voice was calling him. Distant at first, it seemed faint, gentle even. He saw his old master, the last First, sitting cross-legged before him. On his face was not the pale oval mask of all other Seguleh, painted or not. Instead he wore coarse wood, unpolished and gouged, worn to remind its bearer of the imperfection and shame of his people.

As always, the dark sharp eyes behind the mask studied and weighed him. Then, alarmingly, the mask tilted downwards as if in apology. I am so sorry, the wiry old man seemed to say.

Then the image exploded into smoke and a far more distant figure now stood in the darkness, cloaked, tall and commanding. Upon his face was not the child’s crude wooden mask, but a beaten golden oval that shone cold and bright, like the moon. And in his dream Jan bowed to the mask.

Yet it was not the bended knee and lowered head of devotion freely given to his old master. In his dream Jan was sickened to find that he had no choice.

He awoke, his body shivering in a cold sweat. A light tap at his door sounded again. He reached out and drew on his mask. Rising, he picked up the sword that lay next to his bedding and crossed to the door. A servant was waiting, head lowered.

‘Yes?’

‘The Third and Fourth await without, sir. And … others.’

‘Thank you.’

Jan slid the door shut and threw on a shirt, trousers and sash. He went to the front. There in the night, their servants holding torches aloft, waited his fellows of the Ten, the ruling Eldrii. They bowed.

‘You felt it?’ Jan asked.

Six masks inclined their assent.

Jan answered their bow. ‘We are called, my friends. As was promised us so long ago. Ready the ships.’

And they bowed once more.

CHAPTER IV

And he who knew many conflicts

spoke these words:

Where have the swordsmen gone?

Where is the gold giver?

Where are the feasts of the hall?

Alas for the bright dome!

Alas for the fallen splendour!

Now that time has passed away,

dark buried in night,

as if it had never been!

Where lay the servants,

wound round with wards?

Brought low by warriors

and their cruel spears.

Now storms beat

at rocky cliffs,

the bones of the earth

harbingers of storm.

All is strife and trouble

in earthly kingdoms.

Here men are fleeting.

Here honour is fleeting.

All the foundation of the world

turns to waste!

Song of the Exiles, Cant

Antsy spent the night on the common room dirt floor. Malakai paid for that and a room for Orchid. Money, it seemed, wasn’t an issue for the man. She woke him up in the morning bleary-eyed and hung over; he’d brooded far