Elizabeth Bear - Book of Iron

“Lead on,” he replied. “Try not to drop anybody down the cliff this time.”

“This time,” she snorted, turning the ass away. “As if I did before.”

“This time,” Kaulas answered from his perch high above. His knees dangled even with the prince’s mount’s wind-browned shoulder blade. “And every time after.”

“We’re coming back here?” Hiding her smile, Bijou shook her bunched kaftan over the ass’s bony hips and urged it among the ragged rocks that hid a trailhead she and her partners had braved but once before. She had an electric torch in the pocket of her kaftan, but for now—until they made their way deeper into the canyons—the starlight sufficed. And a torch would give warning to their quarry, if Salamander’s information was correct and she was to be located here. Ambrosias scrambled on ahead, cat-rib feet rattling along the stones and scratching in the sand. It would show her the trail. And she, in turn, would lead the party safely down.

It wasn’t too long a descent. Ancient Erem had been well-defended by the mountains that surrounded it, but it had also been built to guard the pass where they had cached Prince Salih’s roadster. Ancient Erem had also provided a first respite for weary travelers coming from the heart of the Southlands, in the ancient days when the Celadon Highway had flowed from far-away Song across the Steppes and the mountains and the desert, to meet other roads here. This trail had been a trade road then, and while it was no longer maintained, it was still adequately wide for a laden ass or camel.

Even one with starlight shining through the gaps in its ragged hide.

As the adventurers descended, the rock fell away on one side, leaving them wending down a narrow path with a cliff on the right and a sheer drop on the left. Right-handed defenders would have found it an advantage, even fighting uphill, against right-handed attackers whose weapons would have been fouled against that rough sandstone wall. The trail underfoot was sandy, too—it muffled the clopping of hooves and the scuffle of the camel’s skeletal feet, but made uncertain footing for combat. Bijou was relieved that no threat reached them now.

At the bottom, there was no more starlight. She found her way down by following the shadow of pale sand against red rock and the ripple of motion that was Ambrosias. Relief bubbled up in her when the ass’s bony hooves scattered grains across level earth. She paused in the dark, in the shadows of those towering cliffs, to see if her eyes would adjust further.

Kaulas could see in nearly pitch darkness. As Bijou turned back now, she saw the shine of his eyes like a cat’s in the night. Maledysaunte’s echoed the gleam. It was easy to discern which set of flatly shimmering discs belonged to which necromancer because one of her eyes reflected green, the other red.

Necromancers. Bijou wondered for a moment if, given the opportunity to dissect them, she’d find a âyene cheshm —the “mirror of the eye”—and, if so, if it grew there after they attained their Wizardry, or if they were born with shining eyes. It raised interesting questions about the nature of destiny and Wizardry, and how much freedom anyone could expect from the gods’ intentions. What became of someone who was born to be a necromancer, but who felt drawn to some other branch of knowledge?

This is not the time for science , she told herself, knowing it for a lie. As far as she was concerned, thinking about Wizardry was a constant.

“This way,” she called softly. Her voice reverberated back from every side.

She flicked her torch on, making sure the beam was pointed away from her companions and muffling it with a twist of cloth. To her dark-adapted eye, the light was sufficient to reveal the high stone walls all around them, the rough grit of looming sandstone—and the keyhole passage before.

The ass shuffled forward, peeling hooves scattering sand with each lurch. A chill breeze pushed at Bijou’s face—not so cold or so strong as to bring tears to her eyes, but very slightly damp with moisture from the concealed oasis beyond.

“A cave?” Salamander asked, calling down quietly from the height of the camel’s back.

“Just a passage,” Bijou said. “Ancient Erem had excellent natural defenses.” She paused. “Should we be sneaking?”

“Well…” Salamander paused judiciously. “…Dr. Liebelos is unlikely to try to kill me. But did you say something about monsters?”

“Oh, them,” said Kaulas, still riding behind her. “They already know we’re here.”

Bijou ducked instinctively as the ass approached the passage. She would fit through—single-file—and so would those on horseback, though they might have to lie uncomfortably close to their mounts’ bony spines. She’d have to send mounts back through for Salamander and Kaulas.

That was fine: once through the passage, she would be within Erem, and the prohibition that nothing living could enter would have been avoided by allowing the dead to bear them in.

She reached out with both hands to brush sandstone on either side, feeling dust and grit scrape her fingertips. Overhead, the walls did not come to a roof so much as meet in a peak: she could just have touched the highest point if she’d had stirrups to stand in. She still had to hunch her shoulders slightly, though, because of how the almond-shaped passage narrowed. The ass kicked grains of sand before and behind. The hoofbeats echoed faster now, the walls so close there was no sense of the sound bouncing back.

They came out of the tunnel into the great bowl-shaped amphitheatre of Erem. The ass stepped to one side and knelt, and Bijou—grateful to get the gouge of old bones out of her seat and thighs—stood. She was sore and stiffer than she’d realized. Too long out of the saddle. And too little saddle under her, for that matter.

Although a bare sliver of moon had set as they left Messaline, here in Erem three moons burned full and round in a dark mauve sky. One was pale, one red as rust, and the largest a dark shape so sooty it was visible more as a smudge, a shimmer of schiller effect, and a gap in the stars than as a heavenly body in its own right. Beyond the moons, that sky—more twilight than midnight—lay speckled with a few handfuls of brilliant stars like those that showed through the gloaming, in Messaline.

By the time Bijou had shaken the desert-mummified crumbs of leather from her trousers, Prince Salih, Maledysaunte, and Riordan were through the passage. Riordan walked slowly, tilting his head from side to side and then leaning it back to look up at the stars. As he cleared the passage, he glanced over at Bijou, his eyes vast and dark, his expression as placid as any statue’s in the shrouded glow of her torch.

“Different stars,” Riordan said. “Different sky.”

“You thought this was a protectorate of Messaline.” Bijou wondered what the sky of Avalon looked like. She’d read descriptions of its long evenings and skies as cobalt and indigo as the ocean—when the mist that normally shrouded them parted. She wondered what it would be like, a land so water-rich that people looked forward to sunny days rather than the rainy ones.

“Isn’t it?”

“Of course,” said the prince, shaking out his robes and stretching stiffly. “But Erem answers its own gods.”

“And the gods of Messaline do not interfere?” asked Maledysaunte.

“I wonder what those gods of Erem are,” Riordan said, as the two returning horse-corpses emerged from the tunnel again, now bearing Salamander and Kaulas. Just inside the gate, Bijou allowed the desiccated bodies to lie down and be delivered of their burdens.

Maledysaunte’s jaw worked as if she were withholding something. Whatever it had been, she replaced it with, “Pray we don’t find out in person.”