‘Thought you didn’t believe in all that, Captain.’
‘I don’t. But it never hurts to make sure.’
‘One day their names will rise from the water, Captain,’ Skorgen Kaban said, making a complicated warding gesture with his one remaining hand. ‘And with them the seas will lift high, to claim the sky itself. And the world will vanish beneath the waves.’
‘You and your damned prophecies.’
‘Not mine. Fent. Ever see their early maps? They show a coast leagues out from what it is now. All their founding villages are under hundreds of spans of water.’
‘So they believe their prophecy is coming true. Only it’s going to take ten thousand years.’
His shrug was lopsided. ‘Could be, Captain. Even the Edur claim that the ice far to the north is breaking up. Ten thousand years, or a hundred. Either way, we’ll be long dead by then.’
Speak for yourself, Pretty. Then again, what a thought. Me wandering round on the sea bottom for eternity. ‘Skorgen, get young Burdenar down from the crow’s nest and into my cabin.’
The first mate made a face. ‘Captain, you’re wearing him out.’
‘I ain’t heard him complain.’
‘Of course not. We’d all like to be as lucky-your pardon, Captain, for me being too forward, but it’s true. I was serious, though. You’re wearing him out, and he’s the youngest sailor we got.’
‘Right, meaning I’d probably kill the rest of you. Call him down, Pretty.’
‘Aye, Captain.’
She stared back at the distant ships. The long search was over, it seemed. What would they be bringing back to fair Letheras, apart from casks of blood? Champions. Each one convinced they can do what no other has ever managed. Kill the Emperor. Kill him dead, deader than me, so dead he never gets back up.
Too bad that would never happen.
On his way out of Letheras, Venitt Sathad, Indebted servant to Rautos Hivanar, halted the modest train outside the latest addition to the Hivanar holdings. The inn’s refurbishment was well under way, he saw, as, accompanied by the owner of the construction company under hire, he made his way past the work crews crowding the main building, then out back to where the stables and other outbuildings stood.
Then stopped.
The structure that had been raised round the unknown ancient mechanism had been taken down. Venitt stared at the huge monolith of unknown metal, wondering why, now that it had been exposed, it looked so familiar. The edifice bent without a visible seam, three-quarters of the way up-at about one and a half times his own height-a seemingly perfect ninety degrees. The apex looked as if it awaited some kind of attachment, if the intricate loops of metal were anything more than decorative. The object stood on a platform of the same peculiar, dull metal, and again there was no obvious separation between it and the platform itself.
‘Have you managed to identify its purpose?’ Venitt asked the old, mostly bald man at his side.
‘Well,’ Bugg conceded, ‘I have some theories.’
‘I would be interested in hearing them.’
‘You will find others in the city,’ Bugg said. ‘No two alike, but the same nonetheless, if you know what I mean.’
‘No, I don’t, Bugg.’
‘Same manufacture, same mystery as to function. I’ve never bothered actually mapping them, but it may be that there is some kind of pattern, and from that pattern, the purpose of their existence might be comprehended. Possibly.’
‘But who built them?’
‘No idea, Venitt. Long ago, I suspect-the few others I’ve seen myself are mostly underground, and further out towards the river bank. Buried in silts.’
‘In silts…’ Venitt continued staring, then his eyes slowly widened. He turned to the old man. ‘Bugg, I have a most important favour to ask of you. I must continue on my way, out of Letheras. I need a message delivered, however, back to my master. To Rautos Hivanar.’
Bugg shrugged. ‘I see no difficulty managing that, Venitt.’
‘Good. Thank you. The message is this: he must come here, to see this for himself. And-and this is most important-he must bring his collection of artifacts.’
‘Artifacts?’
‘He will understand, Bugg.’
‘All right,’ the old man said. ‘I can get over there in a couple of days… or I can send a runner if you like.’
‘Best in person, Bugg, if you would. If the runner garbles the message, my master might end up ignoring it.’
As you like, Venitt. Where, may I ask, are you going?’