Luthar wandered past, his shadow fell across the floor, the lines were broken, the feeling was gone. Glokta shook himself. I am losing my reason in this cursed place. I must think clearly. Just the facts, Glokta, only the facts.
“Where does the light come from?” he asked.
Bayaz waved his hand. “Above.”
“There are windows?”
“Perhaps.”
Glokta’s cane tapped into the light, tapped into the dark, his left boot dragged along behind. “Is there nothing but hallway? What’s the point of it all?”
“Who can know the Maker’s mind?” intoned Bayaz pompously, “or fathom his great design?” He seemed almost to take pride in never giving straight answers.
The whole place was a colossal waste of effort as far as Glokta could see. “How many lived here?”
“Long years ago, in happier times, many hundreds. All manner of people who served Kanedias, and helped him in his works. But the Maker was ever distrustful, and jealous of his secrets. Bit by bit he turned his followers out, into the Agriont, the University. Towards the end, only three lived here. Kanedias himself, his assistant Jaremias,” Bayaz paused for a moment, “and his daughter Tolomei.”
“The Maker’s daughter?”
“What of it?” snapped the old man.
“Nothing, nothing at all.” And yet the veneer slipped then, if only for an instant. It is strange that he knows the ways of this place so well. “When did you live here?”
Bayaz frowned deep. “There is such a thing as too many questions.”
Glokta watched him walk away. Sult was wrong. The Arch Lector, fallible after all. He underestimated this Bayaz, and it cost him. Who is this bald, irritable fool, who can make a sprawling idiot of the most powerful man in the Union? Standing here, deep within the bowels of this unearthly place, the answer did not seem so strange.
The First of the Magi.
“This is it.”
“What?” asked Logen. The hallway stretched out in either direction, curving gently, disappearing into the darkness, walls of huge stone blocks, unbroken on either side.
Bayaz did not answer. He was running his hands gently over the stones, looking for something. “Yes. This is it.” Bayaz pulled the key out from his shirt. “You might want to prepare yourselves.”
“For what?”
The Magus slid the key into an unseen hole. One of the blocks that made up the walls suddenly vanished, flying up into the ceiling with a thunderous crash. Logen reeled, shaking his head. He saw Luthar bent forward, hands clamped over his ears. The whole corridor seemed to hum with crashing echoes, on and on.
“Wait,” said Bayaz, though Logen could barely hear him over the ringing in his head. “Touch nothing. Go nowhere.” He stepped through the opening, leaving the key lodged in the wall.
Logen peered after him. A glimmer of light shone down a narrow passageway, a rushing sound washed through like the trickling of a stream. Logen felt a strange curiosity picking at him. He glanced back at the other two. Perhaps Bayaz had meant only for them to stay? He ducked through the doorway.
And squinted up at a bright, round chamber. Light flooded in from high above, piercing light, almost painful to look at after the gloom of all the rest. The curving walls were perfect, clean white stone, running with trickling water, flowing down all around and collecting in a round pool below. The air was cool, damp on Logen’s skin. A narrow bridge sprang out from the passage, steps leading upwards, ending at a tall white pillar, rising from the water. Bayaz was standing there, on top of it, staring down at something.
Logen crept up behind the Magus, breathing shallow. A block of white stone stood there. Water dripped onto its smooth, hard centre from above. A regular tap, tap, tap, always in the same spot. Two things lay in the thin layer of wet. The first was a square box, simply made from dark metal, big enough to hold a man’s head, maybe. The other was altogether stranger.
A weapon perhaps, like an axe. A long shaft, made from tiny metal tubes, all twisted about each other like the stems of old vines. At one end there was a scored grip, at the other there was a flat piece of metal, pierced with small holes, a long, thin hook curving out from it. The light played over its many dark surfaces, glittering with beads of moisture. Strange, beautiful, fascinating. On the grip one letter glinted, silver in the dark metal. Logen recognised it from his sword. The mark of Kanedias. The work of the Master Maker.
“What is this?” he asked, reaching out for it.
“Don’t touch it!” screamed Bayaz, slapping Logen’s hand away. “Did I not tell you to wait?”
Logen took an uncertain step back. He had never seen the Magus look so worried, but he couldn’t keep his eyes off the strange thing on the slab. “Is it a weapon?”
Bayaz breathed a long, slow breath. “A most terrible one, my friend. A weapon against which no steel, no stone, no magic can protect you. Do not even tread near it, I warn you. There are dangers. The Divider, Kanedias called it, and with it he killed his brother Juvens, my master. He once told me it has two edges. One here, one on the Other Side.”
“What the hell does that mean?” muttered Logen. He couldn’t even see one edge you could cut with.
Bayaz shrugged. “If I knew that I suppose that I’d be the Master Maker, instead of merely the First of the Magi.” He reached forward and lifted the box, wincing as though it was a great weight. “Could you help me with this?”
Logen hooked his hands under it, and gasped. It could hardly have weighed more if it was a block of solid iron. “Heavy,” he grunted.
“Kanedias forged it to be strong. As strong as all his great skill could make it. Not to keep its contents safe from the World.” He leaned close and spoke softly. “To keep the World safe from its contents.”
Logen frowned down. “What’s in it?”
“Nothing,” muttered Bayaz. “Yet.”
Jezal was trying to think of three men in the world he hated more. Brint? He was simply a swollen-headed idiot. Gorst? He had merely done his meagre best to beat Jezal in a fencing match. Varuz? He was just a pompous old ass.
No. These three were at the top of his list. The arrogant old man with his idiotic prattle and his self-important air of mystery. The hulking savage with his ugly scars and his menacing frown. The patronising cripple with his smug little comments and his pretensions of knowing all about life. The three of them, combined with the stagnant air and perpetual gloom of this horrible place, were almost enough to make Jezal puke again. The only thing he could imagine worse than his present company was no company at all. He looked into the shadows all around, and shuddered at the thought.
Still, his spirits rose as they turned a corner. There was a small square of daylight up ahead. He hurried towards it, overtaking Glokta as he shambled along on his cane, mouth watering with anticipation at the thought of being back out under the sky.
Jezal closed his eyes with pleasure as he stepped into the open air. The cold wind stroked his face and he gasped in great lungfulls of it. The relief was terrific, as though he had been trapped down there in the darkness for weeks, as though fingers clamped around his throat had just now been released. He walked forward across a wide, open space, paved with stark, flat stones. Ninefingers and Bayaz stood side by side up ahead, behind a parapet, waist high, and beyond them…
The Agriont came into view below. A patchwork of white walls, grey roofs, glinting windows, green gardens. They were nowhere near the summit of the Maker’s House, only on one of the lowest roofs, above the gate, but still terrifyingly high. Jezal recognised the crumbling University, the shining dome of the Lord’s Round, the squat mass of the House of Questions. He could see the Square of Marshals, a bowl of wooden seating in amongst the buildings, perhaps even the tiny yellow flash of the fencing circle in its centre. Beyond the citadel, surrounded by its white wall and twinkling moat, the city was a sprawling grey mass under the dirty grey sky, stretching all the way to the sea.