A Secret Atlas (62 page)

into the sea—and might have been enough to send the entire horde to the Mountains of

Ice—but they would not employ it that way. Warfare was the province of the Warrior

Caste, and for the
maicana
to usurp their place would mean the utter destruction of the Amentzutl culture.

The warriors had plenty of time to prepare for the attack. The bottoms of the trenches and

the faces of the breastworks were festooned with sharpened stakes. More importantly, the

warriors had studied the battleground and knew the landmarks that would indicate the

Mozoyan had entered spear-casting range. Using weighted sticks to effectively extend the

length of their arms, the Amentzutl warriors launched spears and barbed darts in

concentrated volleys as the grey masses drew closer.

The spears, tipped with obsidian points, sliced through Mozoyan flesh with ease.

Creatures clutched at shafts and flopped on the ground, soon to be crushed beneath the

feet of their advancing fellows. Showers of darts cut whole swaths through the horde.

Bright crimson splashed over grey flesh as the Mozoyan went down.

But the holes in their lines closed and on they came. The Amentzutl warriors impressed

Jorim with their discipline. If the trench line broke, the horde would pour through it

relentlessly. Those northwest of the break might be able to flee into the jungle, but that

sanctuary would only last so long. While the horde had emerged entirely from the jungle to

fill the lowlands, they would certainly dispatch a part of their force to hunt down fresh

meat. The warriors between the breach and the causeway might be able to fight their way

up toward the heights, but it would be as part of a rear guard that would eventually be

worn down.

The line had to hold, and would. Already, companies of Amentzutl warriors were moving

southeast to bolster those soldiers running out of spears and darts. While new missiles

arced above them, brave warriors mounted the breastworks as the first of the Mozoyan

leaped forward. Many fell short, and with wet thuds impaled themselves on two or three

spikes. Others, hit by a dart in midair, fell into the pit to die. Those that made the leap

successfully faced no less dire a fate, for the stone-edged war clubs slashed more keenly

than steel. Tzihua knocked one Mozoyan back into the pit. Other devil frogs sailed past

him to be dismembered by the warriors where they landed.

Despite the heroic Amentzutlian effort, the horde pressed on. Dying Mozoyan filled the

trenches with bloody grey flesh. A carpet of bodies would soon cover the breastworks and

their spikes. Mozoyan would be able to walk over the bodies and crest the breastworks.

While the Amentzutl would be able to beat them back once, perhaps even twice, the war

of attrition would end up in the Mozoyan’s favor.

Jorim looked over at the Naleni signalman stationed below him on the stairs. “Blow the

first signal, please.”

The sailor raised a horn to his mouth and blasted out a low, rumbling tone that echoed

from the buildings and mountains. Below, on the edge of the escarpment, Naleni soldiers

stepped to the edge, nocked arrows, and let fly on command. Hundreds of shafts filled the

air, then fell among the Mozoyan. As had the spears and the darts before, the arrows cut

down throngs of devil frogs. The archers concentrated on the Mozoyan closest to the

escarpment and as the horde flowed to fill the gap, their entire line shifted laterally. They

mindlessly shortened the line along which the Amentzutl needed to defend, buying them

time and allowing them to concentrate their forces.

Jorim nodded. “Well, that is a help. The question is, is it enough?”

Nauana smiled again. “My Lord, you ask a question to which you already know the

answer.”

Jorim nodded. “I wish you were right.” He crouched and set Shimik down, then pointed at

the signalman. “Go tell him.”

The Fenn’s eyes brightened. “Twoooo?”

“Two.”

Shimik scrambled off, taking stairs three at a bound. He howled “Twooo, twooo, twooo!”

with an enthusiasm that sparked a smile on the signalman’s face. He raised the horn

again and let loose with another blast, this one broken and repeated as if matching

Shimik’s chant.

Jorim glanced at her. “Even that might not be enough, but it’s the best we’ve got.”

6th day, Month of the Wolf, Year of the Rat

9th Year of Imperial Prince Cyron’s Court

163rd Year of the Komyr Dynasty

737th year since the Cataclysm

Ixyll

Fear possessed Moraven Tolo, and this surprised him. He could not remember the last

time he had truly been this afraid. But the faint copper taste in his mouth was something

he’d experienced before. He recognized the voracious thirst. He felt very cold, and even

the thought of food made him nauseous.

What compounded the fear was his being unable to remember the last time he’d felt this

sort of terror. He found it too familiar, and he wanted to remember when he’d been this

afraid, but it wouldn’t come. It lurked beyond the veil of his amnesia, tantalizingly close,

but insubstantial.
And if it has no form, no substance, I cannot fight it.

The fear had begun as they set out from Opaslynoti, but the first giddy excitement of

racing up the valley and into Ixyll before the
tavam eyzar
closed again helped him keep it at bay. Still, it chafed his psyche the way the clothes rubbed his flesh raw, and the tingle of magic grew into a torment.

They were not alone in making the trip, and studying the others did distract him

somewhat. Rekarafi was not the most unusual creature in the Ixyll-bound rabble, though

he was the only Viruk Moraven saw. The men they chased had ranged ahead of them, but

Keles had said he didn’t think they had any more of an idea where they were heading than

he did. Veteran thaumstoneers suggested that after such a fierce storm, anything that had

been seen before could have been obliterated, so everyone was moving into virgin

territory.

Dangers abounded, and disaster struck some of the stoneseekers the moment they set

foot in Ixyll. Here and there, small cyclones of dust sprang up and danced playfully, much

as dust devils would in the Nine. One lit a man on fire. Another turned a scrounger into a

mass of beetles that actually managed to function as a man-shaped community for

several hours. It might have survived longer, save for a hearty, congratulatory pat on the

back. Moraven did not doubt that the beetles would eventually reconstitute themselves.

If they are not scattered again by a storm.

Quickly enough, the horde fragmented, as the beetle-man had. Keles pointed his

companions toward the northwest. His choice made sense, as northwest was the direction

of the old Spice Route, but no discernible track lay out that way. Keles’ course took them

into a rumpled blanket of hills with yet higher slopes beyond. Its only virtue was that the

hills had a number of caves large enough to house their entire group, horses included.

Scavengers had recommended seeking shelter underground, because while storms had

been known to shift whole mountains from one place to another, rarely did the wild magic

penetrate the earth.

The land itself bore countless signs of just how powerful the storm could be. Giant

boulders had been rolled down or even
up
hillsides, then polished smoother than an

infant’s cheek. Trees had leaves that bled—not sap, but blood—and branches that curled

around birds to devour them. Other plants grew up, blossomed, sowed seeds, and died on

an hourly basis, sending circular ripples of flowers out—flowers of odd shapes and colors,

with stripes and spots that shifted like oil on water, and would have been beautiful if they

did not stink of swamp gas and decayed meat.

Ixyll’s wild magic clearly did not kill everything it touched. Those things that had grown

seemed to thrive. Places where storms had denuded a swath of land were quickly

colonized by plants, or else insects raised great mounds that pulsed with life. Rekarafi

pointed to one particular mound that rose like a volcano and had streams of yellow ants

running like lava up and down the sides. He said those ants had not been seen in the

world for hundreds of years. They used to be considered a delicacy in Virukadeen, but no

one wanted to stop and sample them.

Those sorts of things did not increase Moraven’s fear because they gave him points of

reality to which he could cling. It didn’t surprise him that insects that had been extinct had

suddenly appeared in the storm’s wake. Not only did he have the overwhelming sense of

being
elsewhere,
but also
elsewhen
. It felt as if they were riding through a land that shifted and took form as their minds imposed order on it. Moraven
had
seen the shape that

Rekarafi had called the mound, but it only took on definition when he named it, and the

insects appeared as the Viruk pointed them out.

Would they have seen what I saw, if I had been able to point it out first?
He shivered. He wasn’t certain what he had seen, but it felt hauntingly recognizable. Memories were

returning, clawing their way into his mind from some abyss. The scrabbling of their talons

resonated through his fear.

Where are we?
His stomach clenched.
When are we
?

For three days they rode through Ixyll in a fruitless search for tombs or traces of the old

Spice Route. While they found caves aplenty—and some with signs of habitation—they

didn’t find so much as a Viruk burial, much less a catacomb full of fallen Imperial warriors.

Granted, Moraven wasn’t really certain what such tombs would look like, but to find no

signs of anything predating the Cataclysm frustrated him.

If I knew what we were looking for, I know we would find it.

Worse yet, they came across no sign of the bandits who had preceded them. Keles’ logic

in heading northwest had been impeccable, based on history as well as tales like those of

Amenis Dukao. The route northwest was well known; the Empire had outposts along it, so

drawing the Turasyndi out that way would give Cyrsa’s troops a better chance. But the

lack of bandits suggested they might have other information. That meant they could be

heading for a tomb complex while Keles and the others blundered around blindly.

The trip and the nature of Ixyll wore on them all. Rekarafi became hypervigilant and

seemed to go without sleep at all. Ciras became more irritable and slept poorly, as did

Tyressa. Keles, who seemed to be fully recovered from whatever had been giving him

headaches, still approached things very cautiously. Borosan became uncharacteristically

taciturn and obsessed with modifying his mousers and his new
thanaton—
Number Five
—

to guard them. Even the machines acted oddly, with the smaller ones riding on the back of

the larger as it trotted along beside the horses.

All of them seemed to be waiting for something—and, in part, Moraven was as well. But

for him, something felt different. They all faced a sense of the unknown and even

unknowable. For him there was something out there that he knew, but just could not

name. That sense of familiarity brought with it foreboding, and the foreboding came

because he knew that thing was waiting for
him
.

But what is it?

Darkness began to fall on the third day, though dusk would linger this far north. They

descended the northwest face of some hills and started across a flat, dusty expanse that

might have once been a lake bed. A mile further on, already shrouded in shadows, a

striated bluff waited. Despite the sun setting beyond it, however, Moraven caught sight of

a flash of light—of the sort made by a signaling mirror. He pointed, but Tyressa and the

Viruk had already seen it.

Is it
my
light they see, or had they already created it?

Keles had not seen, nor had Borosan, but that was because they were both studying the

device the
gyanridin
used to measure the levels of wild magic. While Moraven pointed

northwest, Keles swung around in his saddle and pointed to the northeast.

“There it is, Borosan, you’re right. It’s a storm, and a big one.”

Moraven turned, and could see it even through the gauze veil. Most of the storms they

had seen while in Ixyll had been small and far off, but this one was neither. Already the

purple-grey clouds had screwed down into a serpentine funnel that lashed at the

landscape. Red-and-gold fire shot through it, and black lightning clawed out. Thunder

crackled, and the storm’s roar vibrated in his chest. Ciras groaned, and Moraven reached

out to steady him in his saddle.

Keles caught that. “We need to find shelter.”

Tyressa pointed northwest. “In the bluff there was light. There, again, see? Flashing.”

The cartographer nodded. “It’s not reflecting the lightning, that’s for certain. Let’s ride. I

think we can make it before the storm catches us.”

The riders set spur to horse, but beneath their canvas caparisons the animals felt nothing.

The horses, however, needed no real urging to flee the storm. Luckily the dry lake bed

was flat, so the horses were able to race across it easily.

Moraven pushed past his own fear as best he could to keep Ciras in the saddle, but the