Author: theredsheep

Chapter 16.5 – Pyrebound

The long, cold journey through the ruins of Atellu put a swift end to Ram’s good mood. If he were a normal human, he could never have done it; there was no hope of making out any clear landmark through the unnatural mist and rain. Most of the area’s buildings had been wrecked, leaving only short lengths of ruined wall just high enough to impede without being visible from any real distance. Again and again, he stumbled up against a neck-high barrier, and could only follow it in the least inconvenient direction until it ended.

Even the great fire was too dim and diffuse to make a useful point of reference; its light took up a quarter of the sky. Fortunately, he could sense its true location with his eyes shut, just as he could sense the handmaidens continuing to bustle around. He hadn’t the slightest idea what they were running from or towards—it didn’t seem to be Ram—until his feet splashed suddenly into knee-deep water. Then he looked down, and cursed.

The Matriarch could not see the spot where she created her second wellspring, atop the cliff. She had chosen the point essentially at random. Ram had expected as much, and assumed (though even the Matriarch was not certain how it would work out) that the two pseudo-wellsprings, created within hours of each other, would suspend the water in the air between them. And so it had seemed to work, at first. But the newer spell was the stronger of the two, and gravity, perhaps, had a way of tipping the scales. However and whyever it had happened, the long and short of it was, High Atellu had become a lakeside community in the space of half an hour.

He squinted morosely at the water, struggling in vain to discern a far side. It was, at least, far enough from Mannagiri’s temple that he did not think he would have to actually swim to the stairs. But he would have to go around a substantial body of water to get there. He could get a feel for how large by observing how far the handmaidens’ haranuu were shifting themselves—presumably they had just been flooded out of their shelter. He suddenly felt extremely cold, and tired. But there was nothing for it but to keep going. Or around, rather.

Where he could find them, he cut across open spaces, where there had once been parks or gardens. At times he was forced to splash through knee-deep water, or tread softly over makeshift bridges—old doors and broken tables laid down end-to-end over expanses of treacherous, muddy footing that shifted like a restless beast with every step. Somebody had made those bridges before he got there, but he never saw who. Ram, it seemed was the only person mad enough to still be out in this mess. Nobody even tried to attack or hinder him. Mannagiri would not risk his wives to no purpose, would he?

Here and there he passed great piles of refuse, a hodgepodge of rubble, broken household goods, rotting food scraps, human and animal waste, all oozing their filth into the rising waters. Standing walls were scratched with snatches of graffiti, most of it in scripts he didn’t recognize. Special monuments to the beneficence of the new regime. Once he nearly tripped over a man’s body, lying facedown in the ooze of a trampled lawn. A visiting craftsman, he wondered, or a prisoner trying to escape? He might even have been a moonchild, anonymous in the muck of his open grave. Whoever he was, Ram hoped he hadn’t drowned.

The Temple drew near, and a fresh startling shape appeared out of the eternal gloom: the great black shadow of a tower, intact, backlit by the diffused glory of the God’s fire. He was sure there had been nothing so tall standing on his last visit. But his last visit had been right after Mannagiri’s coup; on closer inspection, he saw it was a narrow, octagonal structure, the top uneven, its sides decorated with incomplete mosaics. Work in progress. The style seemed to be aping Naimenka’s Garden, but it put Ram more in mind of a toddler’s stack of blocks. He moved on.

Suddenly heard a distant rumble, like thunder—if it was, it would be the first he’d heard. He only paused a moment before pressing on; lightning was unlikely to choose him for a target over the enormous building he was headed for. He wasn’t even sure lightning could hurt him. The sodden air was delightfully warm here, suffused with holy fire, and it cheered him. The last five hundred yards of his journey was lit up in gorgeous amber hues.

Atellu’s temple was set, like Ram’s own, at the end of a long, narrow street, though any statues of dead ensis had long since been cleared away. At the end, flanking the foot of the stairs, was a fresh pair of monuments Ram had commissioned himself: two square-sided pillars, immensely tall, made from sections of tough old Karagene oaks. Exaggerated scenes of Mannagiri’s life and recent triumph were burned into the grain. It had taken a whole woodshop four tetrads just to make them, at obscene expense, and another fortune spent to get them up the river.

The final effect was somewhat ruined now, because the grand stairway bridge between them had a huge gap in it. Quite recently made, Ram guessed, and not neatly; the lowest of the three supporting archways had collapsed, leaving a jagged hole. Mannagiri’s guardian murrush was stationed on the far side of it, ready to destroy any makeshift attempt to cross, or simply kill Ram in the unlikely event he made it over.

It was an obvious, if desperate, tactic to employ, and it might have spelled the doom of Ram’s entire plan if he hadn’t had a month to anticipate it. More or less counted on it, in fact. Under his helmet, he smiled, and reached out to check—yes. Another of his haranuu was approaching the pyre, right on schedule. He gave the murrush a jaunty wave as he stepped forward, fishing a pair of specially treated strings out of his pocket. Each went into a small and inconspicuous hole at the base of one of the pillars. Ram touched Beshi to their ends in turn, giving them a burst of heat, then stood back as they burned down.

The packed cores of Tegnem’s Earth went off with two roars, scarcely a second apart, and the pillars fell down one after the other. He’d only tested this on models—if very good models—but the real thing worked out well enough. The “decorative” fringe of steel spikes at the top came slamming down at precisely the right place, digging in deep. If they weren’t nearly so secure as the original bridge, they’d still be safer than braving the gap.

Ram jumped on top of the left pillar as soon as it settled, climbing the wet, sloping surface as quickly as he dared. Which was not terribly quick, even with the heavily textured surface and new boots on; he eventually got down on hands and knees for a fast crawl, gripping the edges with both hands.

The murrush simply stood and stared for some time, as if it—or Mannagiri, controlling it—could not comprehend what had just happened. Ram could hardly believe it himself, but he’d hired a very good team of craftsmen and architects and was prepared to take it on faith. He was nearly level with the beast before it stirred itself into action, turning to face Ram’s makeshift bridge. The gap was only five feet or so, just slightly too far to strike effectively with its claws. Would it try to jump? The odds of it actually smashing or dislodging the pillar before slipping and falling to its death were not especially high, but that was little comfort at the moment …

It shook its head, and turned to climb up the stairs as fast as it was able. Ram let out a sigh of relief, and set out after it. The water below him was lit up like a misted sunrise, the depth and distance impossible to gauge beneath luminous clouds—a beautiful promise of a cold, drowning death. He shivered, and set one hand firmly after another, digging his fingers into the wet wood for traction. Up close, the pictures burnt into the decorations seemed crudely and hastily done, a child’s job. Fitting enough for a pack of lies.

He had no time to stop and look; the murrush was pulling ahead. Sluggish though the beast was, it had a broad, prepared staircase to climb, not a beam of waterlogged wood barely three feet across. If it got to the top ahead of Ram, it could tear clean through the other end of his bridge, and send him plummeting to his death. And, by the looks of things, it would.

Best not to try, then. Once the beast had got a full five lengths of its body on him, Ram stood cautiously up on his beam. The murrush kept lumbering on. He looked over at the stairs. Not quite five feet, just as he’d requested. Even a normal human could have done it. Whether he would have dared to was another matter, over such a gap.

Ram dared, because he had to. The murrush couldn’t feel the thump, or hear him land. Totally focused on climbing as quickly as its cumbersome armored body would allow, it didn’t look back to check on Ram. It was nearly to the top when it paused—perhaps because it heard Ram’s footsteps drumming up the stairs behind it. Too late. He leaped into the air before it could even begin to turn around.

He landed on his sword-point, driving it deep into the gatekeeper’s back through the metal plates. Not because he wanted to hurt it—the poor creature was as much under compulsion as any of the women inside—but to give himself a sure grip. Sure enough, his feet slipped under him, but the hot scales were perfectly dry, and Beshi bit deep. The murrush screamed, and reared up; Ram held on as it twisted around on its hind legs, flailing uselessly in a panic to shake him off.

When he was facing the right direction, he kicked hard at the small of its back, and fell onto the landing at the top of the stairs with his sword smoking hot in his hands. The wound sealed in a flash of fire and ichor, and it turned back to murder him just as he bolted through the front door.

Now at last it was dry, and quiet, with just a faint mist creeping in through the front gate. He raced on; he could feel Mannagiri in his throne room, not so far away. But closer still was—

Lightning flashed, and Ram was thrown backwards. He rose to his knees, and a second blast tumbled him back out into the rain and the cold. Then the murrush was on him, slamming one heavy claw down on his chest. It stuck its face right up to Ram’s and roared, rupturing both his eardrums. He blacked out from the pain and the pressure, and came to just in time to see a handmaiden step around him, in the far corner of his helmet’s vision, and throw Beshi over the precipice. He followed the bright speck of its spirit as it went clattering down into the deep.

The woman came back to lean over him, her hands on her hips. “Your hearing should be back by now,” she said after a moment. “Is there a reason I shouldn’t have this animal eat you one bit at a time? If you kept regrowing, and I kept heating you up, the meal could last forever.”

“Hello to you too, Mannagiri.”

“Answer my question,” growled the murrush.

“We don’t have forever, only two and a half blooms. And you’d get bored with it in less than a day anyhow.”

“You want to test that?” The murrush leaned a little harder; Ram’s breastplate groaned, but held.

“No. You’re not even going to try. You’re going to let me go now.”

“No, I won’t!”

Ram sighed. A more sensible, or even remotely curious, man would have asked why. Mannagiri was too stubborn and petulant to even know his damned lines. “Yes, you will,” he gritted back, “because I left a contingency plan. I’m not the kind of idiot who risks everything so he can run in waving a sword. Take a look south; I’ve got help on the way.”

The murrush paused, then scoffed, “One spirit, on the ground?”

“One spirit,” Ram agreed. “His name is Nusun, and he’s a murrush just like this fella here. He’s got three of his friends with him, from my Tegnembassaga. They were under orders to wait for the rain, then come in at full speed. It won’t be pleasant going, but your moonchildren are scattered or dead, your women outside can’t touch them in this, and your only other hope is trapped in here with you, because you’re a dumbass who knocked out his only exit to block a single attacker. There’s nothing out there that can stop them.”

“They can’t get in here either!”

“They don’t have to. The first thing they’re going to do is free your hostages. Then they’ll destroy every skybarque, anything that looks like you could use it to fix your bridge, and my two beams if I don’t let them know I’m still alive in here.”

“You really think I can’t stop them?”

“I know you can’t. I’ve made a deal with the Matriarch, and she’ll keep the rain going as long as it takes. Once the water’s in place here, she can keep it running in circles for days if she has to.”

“You’re lying,” the murrush blurted out.

“The only limit is food. I’ve given them permission to loot your grain, but I don’t expect they’ll find much worth eating. Every granary’s got be a cistern by now. Give it a couple days and it’ll all be inedible rotten mush. My boys will take care of the rest. Meanwhile, you’ll be stuck in here with scores of women and only whatever food you have on hand. We still need to eat.”

The great armored hand lifted slightly, exerting just enough force to hold Ram down. “So you want me to let you go, then you’ll call it all off?”

“Hell no. That’s not the point. We’re not negotiating here. I’m not stupid enough to turn my back on you, and you have nothing to offer. One way or another, you are going to die, and your dreams with you. That much I promise you. But I made another promise before, that Dul Atellu would live, and that matters to me. You can save it. Set me free, and you die fast, and I’ll do what I can to salvage the mess you’ve made of the pyre that depended on you. Your women won’t starve.

“So, are you going to let me up to finish this right? Are you going to face your fate like a man? Or are you going to go out like the miserable, spoiled, broken, cowardly, demented sack of shit you’ve been your whole life?”

The murrush peered down at him, perfectly expressionless. If Mannagiri were pure human, this would never work; Ram was banking on the slim hope that his haranu dominated him thoroughly enough to rationalize self-destruction for the sake of the women he abused. The phrase “like a man” would have to do a lot of the work …

At last the murrush shook its head, then bent down and bit clean through Ram’s wrist. Ram clenched his teeth, so that only the gurgling leftovers of a scream could escape him. He could sense more haranuu tiptoeing closer as the murrush lifted its head to swallow his right hand. Slowly, very slowly, his hand began to grow back, while he panted and gasped under the weight of the beast.

“Do you want me to do that again?” it said. Ram said nothing, and laid still. “I can. Many times. I can even tell the murrush to keep this up while I sleep. I won’t stop until you stop the rain. Then I’ll bite off your head, and finish it.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Ram wheezed. “Your food’s already ruined. You’ll never save it. You’ll all starve without help.”

“I’ll risk it,” the murrush said, before turning to Ram’s left arm. It didn’t bite the hand off neatly this time; it worried and gnawed instead, rasping away skin and muscle to grind down the bones between its back teeth. When there was little left to chew, it stopped, and waited for Ram to stop crying before it went on, “If it doesn’t matter, why don’t you stop the rain now?”

Ram shook his head.

“You think you’ll outlast me. But I’ve done this a lot. Nobody’s as strong as they think they are. I’ll still be here in two tetrads, biting off parts of you. In a month, everyone else will be too weak to move, and some of them will be dead already, but we’ll still be here. You think you can handle that?”

Ram honestly didn’t think so, but kept his mouth shut.

The murrush laughed. It sounded unnatural; their kind had very little humor. “Why would we starve, anyway? I can just bite off pieces of you, and pass them around. Free meat for everybody. Funny how that works, isn’t it? Maybe we’ll just eat you for the next—ahhhh!”

Abruptly, the murrush lifted its arm and backed away down the stairs, snorting and shaking its head. Ram lost no time in rolling away out of its reach. He heard shouts and wails from inside as he pushed himself unsteadily to his feet. He was unarmed, and his left hand still half-formed, and he had no notion what was going on, but he would never get a better chance.

The corridors were cluttered with frightened with women and girls, wan specters with stained robes and unkempt hair. All of them stepped aside to let Ram pass, and slid by in a blur as he raced for the heart of the Temple, following the screams. A man lunged at him from the shadows as he passed a side passage, swinging a sword, but the blade clanged off his helmet, and Ram didn’t even bother to hit back; he recovered his balance after two steps, and rushed on.

Mannagiri’s throne room was a mess of stinking black smoke and coughing, crying women. Ram tripped over something hot as he ran into the room, then ran into a young girl who was stumbling about with her hands over her face. The air was sooty and foul; he dropped to hands and knees to crawl, eyes clenched shut, to the place where Mannagiri’s spirit lay on the floor, bright as the morning star. He cut his hand on something sharp, paused, patted around blindly until he got something to grip it by. A knife?

Hands reached out to grab him, but they did not have the strength to stop him. He shrugged them off, then drove the knife down at the place where his enemy must be. He might have heard something like a moan through the murk. Again he stabbed, and again, feeling flesh yield to the blade. With his other hand—still regrowing—he felt around, pawing coarsely and wishing he had proper fingers. Cursing and coughing, he left the knife stuck in, he didn’t know in what, and used his right hand to feel over the faintly struggling body. He found a throat, and squeezed. Cartilage and bone cracked under his fingers. He dug in tighter, shook it back and forth to bang the flopping head against the floor.

Slowly, the dazzling light in his spirit’s sense faded. When he was sure it was gone, he let go, and turned around to crawl out the way he came. He was dizzy; even an ensi needed to breathe. The women had left already. He met several of them, gasping and hacking, leaning against the walls in the hall outside. They glanced at him, then looked away. Their robes were all burnt tatters now, leaving them half-naked. But that wasn’t why they were looking away.

A long time later, someone thought to heat the air down the way, starting a draft to clear the foul air. Ram sat at the base of a wall and covered his face while the smoke and soot passed by. While he was waiting, he checked—good. Pimna and Shennai were still alive, down in their little tomb. Still trying to raise hell, perhaps, but he couldn’t even see the fruits of their efforts where he was. Soon he would get them out. But there were things he had to know first.

The room still stank, but now the air was clear enough to show him why: the remains of five people lay on the floor, all badly burnt. He couldn’t tell, but he thought they might have been young men. Mannagiri’s ornate wooden throne was now a burnt and shattered mess as well. The man himself—if you could call him that—lay at its foot, the knife still buried deep in his stomach. It was about the same size as the kitchen tool Shimrun had pocketed for his failed assassination. In fact, it might have been the same knife.

A young woman’s head poked timidly into the room. “His brothers attacked him?” She nodded, not smiling. “And he fought back.” Sloppily, in a hurry, and with no thought for the consequences. Somehow he’d set his own throne on fire in the process. It sounded about right.

Suddenly Ram became aware of a moaning noise in the distance. Was someone actually mourning Mannagiri, or was it simply shock and grief for their situation? He made to go check, and the girl spoke up abruptly: “We told them to.”

He turned back. She was looking at the bodies. “You told them to try and kill him?”

“Ages ago. We gave the smartest one a weapon, and told him to keep it a secret. But they all hated him, just like we did. We were only waiting for a moment. You were a good distraction, but if you hadn’t come along, we’d have found another. We didn’t need you.”

Ram looked at the dead tyrant. “Maybe you didn’t.” Then he left.

Some ways away, a man was lying on the floor and crying. He was quite pale, with messy hair and soiled clothes. Ram could look past that to the light inside him, which was steadily growing brighter. It seemed the man didn’t care for the experience; he was biting savagely at his own forearm, drawing blood with every bite. Ram could barely hear the man’s moans and cries for the blood bubbling out onto his face. He knelt down—kicking away an indwelt sword from the floor next to him—to rescue the arm.

“Don’t bother,” came a voice from behind him. He started, but it was only the girl from the throne room. “He’s always like that. Or almost always, anyway. He can’t even talk, the whole world just overwhelms him, so he hurts himself whenever he gets upset. Sleep drugs don’t work since he indwelt. We used to try and calm him down, but we’ve been too busy lately. The bites heal right up,” she added, as Ram tugged at the arm. “It doesn’t seem to matter if you stop him or not. He’s quieter this way.”

“I don’t care.” He strained every way he could, but he couldn’t budge the arm. The man was closer to his pyre than Ram was to his. Finally he gave up, and got back to his feet. If ordinary living was unbearable, he couldn’t imagine what inheriting from the likes of Mannagiri would do to this poor bastard.

“Hail,” he intoned down at him, his voice soft but bitter. “Hail, heir of Atellu.”