They pressed on, keeping a tighter formation than before. The road dipped, then slowly rose again. At its crest they had a view of the land below, stretching away toward the sea. Thorn, looking outward, thought at first that he had to be mistaken: the darkness seemed much less intense down there, and below them, directly ahead of them on the road, there were what seemed like vivid patches of brightness. As they descended he realized what it was. Up ahead of them—no more than a Ji away now—torches burned in brackets mounted on high poles, lighting the way down to the Myghtern's city.
At the bottom of the hill the wide, deep scar of an ancient riverbed cut across the land. The road ran out onto an old stone bridge, gently arching over the gap. On the far side of the bridge twin torches blazed steadily in the windless air. Beneath them was a barricade, guarded by a dozen lightly armored men.
As they came to the bridge the Myghtern's man turned to Thorn and put his hand on Thorn's chest.
"Before we go inside, you must understand how you are to behave. You belong to the Myghtern now. Whatever he commands, you do. You are his creature now. Here that is not so bad a thing to be. It has its compensations. But if you are difficult, if you try to escape, we will kill you."
"I understand."
"Good." The man nodded, but his expression was unreadable, his face a mask of light and shadow.
Thorn studied him a moment. There was something odd about the man. He seemed half finished, yet in some strange way he was more sophisticated than any of these others. His accent was clear, unrounded, not native to these parts, and he spoke English with a clarity and ease that was as surprising as it had been unexpected. Thorn reassessed him, looking at the thickness of his biceps, the musculature of his chest and thighs. He was somehow too well formed, his bones too firm, too straight, to have come from here. Like the chief, he was an outsider.
The man had been looking away from Thorn, calling orders to his men; now he turned back to face the trader.
"I am Tak, the Myghtern's lieutenant. Whatever you want, you come to me. Understand?"
There was a sudden sharpness to his tone that made Thorn look at the words again. Whatever you want, you come to me. What was really being said here? For a moment Tak held his eyes. Then, abruptly, he looked away, turning to give more instructions. On the far side of the bridge there was movement as the barricade was slowly moved back out of the way.
There was a low parapet overlooking the dried-up river. Thorn went across and rested his elbows on it, looking out away from the brightness of the torches, at the old town.
There, in the center of the darkness, it seemed to glow. The silhouette of the old cathedral stood out against that faint illumination, hard edged and dark, its square central tower thrusting toward the City's floor. Thorn looked up. Yes, it was no trick of the eyes—there was something there, like the faint irradiation of a dying fire reflected in the dark undersurface of the City. Or a lamp, shining beneath the water at the bottom of a deep, dark well. He frowned. Another mystery. Another thing that ought not to be here.
Thorn turned. Tak was watching him, his eyes half lidded, as if trying to fathom what he was, what he wanted here. As if he knows, Thorn thought. Or at least, suspects.
Tak raised a hand, beckoning him. "Come, let's cross the bridge. The Myghtern will see you in the morning."
"The morning?" Thorn laughed uncertainly.
Tak turned away and walked out onto the old stone bridge. "You'll see," he said over his shoulder. "This is the city. The Myghtern's capital. You will see many things that will surprise you here."
Thorn glanced up at the floor of the great City, two hundred and fifty ch'i overhead, seeing once more that faint glow in the dark, reflecting surface, then shook his head. He didn't understand. Here there was no day, no morning. Here there was only night—only shadows and darkness.
He felt a firm hand in the small of his back and began to walk, crossing the slightly arched bridge. The City, he thought, wanting to laugh at the absurd grandeur of that term. What a mockery of words they make down here. If they only knew. . . -
The barricade was drawn back. The guards parted, letting him pass. And so he went through, beneath the torches, into the narrow, cobbled lanes of the Myghtern's city.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Gods of Bone and Dust
SCAF SAT AT the water's edge, staring out across the violently shimmering bay, the booming noises of the great world filling his head, his body anchored to the earth by fear. He dared not stand, lest he fall, for if he fell he was not sure he would ever get up, not the way he felt right now.
Things loomed. He would focus on something and it would grow large in his vision, taking on a brilliant show of colors, while the smells . . .
He dared to take a breath and felt his head swim at the mixture of strange and powerful scents that flooded his senses.
"Scaf . . ."
He slowly turned his head, making the gargantuan effort only by exerting every last shred of his will. Things pulled at him, demanding him to look, smell, hear what they were. Alive ... it had all come suddenly alive!
His head stopped. Kygek's portly features leapt into view, like a landscape seen through an enlarging glass. Scaf groaned. He could smell Kygek's breath, like an old and rotting corpse.
Kygek tried to speak, but couldn't. It was as if the words terrified him. But words had never frightened Scaf, not even at the start, when they had first come to the Domain, that moonlit night nine years ago. That was why he had been the first to be named by the Master. "Scaf he had been called: "Quick."
Scaf lifted his eyes, moving from the great black lake of Kygek's mouth, spiked with jagged, yellow rocks, past the furred caverns of his nostrils to the liquid blackness of his pupils. Kygek tried again to speak and once more failed, but it didn't matter—the fear in his eyes, the torment there, were eloquent enough.
"No," Scaf said clearly, trying to keep Kygek's eyes from dragging him down into their terrifying depths. Kygek thought they had been poisoned, but the Master would hardly keep them for nine years, feed and clothe them, shelter them and teach them his language, only to poison them like vermin. No. Whatever this was, it had a purpose. There was a reason why the world had suddenly changed.
He pulled his eyes away, slowly, agonizingly turning his head. There was a reason why the water shimmered like a pit of silver snakes; a reason why the trees on the far side of the water leapt at him like hungry animals; a reason why the honeybees burned orange and black in the air surrounding him, why their buzzing reverberated like a power saw inside the echoing cavern of his skull. The Master had done something to them. Not poison, no, but something else. Something that had changed their relationship with the world.
He put his hand before his face and stared at it, fascinated, tracing the lines, the patterns of the flesh, and as he did words came to him from nowhere.
"What the hammer? what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread gra"sp Dare its deadly terrors clasp?"
He shuddered, astonished by the sound of his own voice, loud, echoing loud, offering the strange words to the busy air. Those words . . . he'd never heard them before that moment. And yet he knew—knew without asking—that they were not his own.
The Master ... he would have to ask the Master.
Slowly, with an agonizing slowness, he stood. He tried to close his eyes, but it was no good: it was as if his brain refused to let him blank it out. Slowly he turned, his eyes picking their way from object to object like a mountain climber finding handholds in the surface of a cliff. At any moment he might fall.