A Day of Fallen Night (The Roots of Chaos)

The creature lay in an old storeroom, where they could keep it out of sight. Blood as dark as tar had seeped into the patterns on the stone table, drying like black inlay. Tunuva took in every detail.

From its head alone, she might have thought it was a bullock – except for its burning eyes, gone cold in death, and its horns, each stretched longer than an arm. Izi Tamuten had sawn one off for study, and concluded that it was bone sheathed in iron. The same metal had strengthened its teeth and hooves, and the teeth had formed keen points, like the horns. Its swollen body, including the hind legs, had tapered into a serpentine tail.

This creature had the taint of the Dreadmount.

It had been in torment when it died. Even though it had hatched like a newborn, instinct told Tunuva that it had once led a different, peaceful life.

She touched the brittle hairs of its neck, not flinching when they cut her fingers. Those hairs had turned to brassy glass, each sharp as a needle, some of them matted with black drops. The stench of the corpse was already unbearable, as if a fumarole had opened in the room.

Hidat had put an arrow in its eye and another where she thought its heart might be. Both arrows had caught fire. Screaming and thrashing, it had pulled itself towards them and hissed with a cloven tongue. Only when Esbar had severed its head did it finally cease to move.

Izi had found its heart, in the end, and scooped it from its body. Left in a balance scale, it was oily black, streaked with red, like the rock of the Dreadmount.

Tunuva could not be alone with the thing any longer. She made her way to the top of the Priory. The indents remained on her palm and fingers, the healing slower than usual.

Esbar worked in her sunroom, shearing a nib into a hollow reed, a lamp beside her. Her seal lay in reach, along with a thin stack of letters. Those would be reports from their sisters across the South. Tunuva sat on the arm of her chair and kissed her head.

‘I’m writing to Apaya,’ Esbar told her. ‘Queen Daraniya must know what we encountered.’

‘What will you say it was?’

Esbar shook her head. ‘Now I see why the world calls him the Nameless One,’ she muttered. ‘What name could be put to such a beast?’ Their whispers made the candles on the table flicker. ‘How many of those rocks did you say you and Hidat counted, Tuva?’

‘Almost fifty in the Vale of Yaud alone. At least twenty more in Efsi; the same for Agārin.’

‘By the Mother.’ Esbar dipped the reed in ink. ‘At least you can remain here, now we know what lies within the rocks. The question is, are they only in the South, or beyond?’

‘It was not so hard to kill.’

‘Neither is a spindle wasp – but kick a nest of them, and you are not long for the world.’

‘We are prepared,’ Tunuva said, with more certainty than she felt. ‘We can open them by touch, as I did. Slay them before they can do any harm.’

Esbar pressed the furrows between her eyebrows. ‘Do they follow the Nameless One?’ she said. ‘Is it hatred or hunger that drives them?’ She tapped the letter with the dry end of her reed. ‘Tuva, tell me. Can you still call the red flame, the flame from the Dreadmount?’

‘Saghul told us not to.’

‘Try.’

Tunuva opened her hand. Without the fumes from the mountain, this would require concentration.

She cleared her mind, as she did when she stretched her body after a fight. Eyes closed, she pictured tapping a tree, to where siden ran like sap in her blood, waiting to be ignited.

For the first time in her life, she kept tapping. She threaded into herself, peeling off layers of bark, hammering past the heartwood, farther. Sensing resistance, she breathed in and pushed, broaching some locked cask of her siden – and there it was, a resin thick and rich with power, deep in her pith. She willed it down her arm, watching her veins swell with it, and took it in hand, where the scarlet flame roared at last, almost too hot to bear.

‘It’s much harder to sustain,’ she said. ‘I think I will burn through it quickly.’

‘I called it yesterday. It drained me.’ Esbar watched, the light haunting each line of her face. ‘We are like the Dreadmount. Like the Nameless One.’

Tunuva smothered the flame. ‘We always knew our magic came from the same cradle.’

‘Perhaps now we must ask why,’ Esbar said. The dark hair on her arms had risen. ‘Why does the Womb of Fire birth ruin and chaos, even as it lights our tree, which offers only life and protection?’

‘I don’t know, but I know the Mother. She gave us this gift. Not her enemy.’ Tunuva framed her cheeks. ‘Esbar, you are holding too much shadow. Keep the faith, my love.’

Esbar nodded, linking their fingers. ‘Forgive me. It weighs on me, to see Saghul so unwell,’ she said. ‘I can’t convince her to eat.’

‘Let me take care of her tonight. You need to sleep.’

Footsteps came down the corridor. They both looked up to see Hidat in the doorway.

‘It’s done,’ she said, her voice as tired as her gaze. ‘Esbar, will you tell the Prioress?’

Esbar rubbed the corner of her eye. ‘Tell her what?’

‘Surely she told you about the Carmenti boy.’

Tunuva could feel her heart through her whole body, down to her fingertips. ‘Anyso,’ she said. ‘What about him?’

‘The Prioress is bedbound.’ Esbar stood. ‘She spoke with you?’

‘She came to me in the armoury. She did seem frail, but—’ Hidat was beginning to look troubled. ‘The Prioress told me she had made a final decision about Anyso of Carmentum: that he had to die, to protect the Priory. She said there was no other choice.’

Tunuva stared at her, her chest tightening. Esbar said slowly, ‘When was this?’

‘Not more than an hour ago.’

‘I was with her an hour ago, Hidat. I was with her from dawn until dusk—’

‘Hush. Siyu will hear.’ Tunuva shut the door. ‘By the Mother, Hidat. Is he really dead?’

‘Tuva, I promise you, the Prioress gave me the order.’ Hidat spoke with the utmost conviction. ‘She asked me to do it at once, and tell no one.’

‘Either you are telling the truth, and I am the liar,’ Esbar bit out, ‘or the other way around, else we have both lost our minds. Saghul was in bed until dusk. Denag took over then.’ She sank back into her seat. ‘This will break Siyu.’

Tunuva swallowed. ‘Hidat, how did you do it?’

‘Poison. It was painless. He is in the same room,’ Hidat said. ‘I swear on the Mother, I only did as the Prioress asked.’ She lowered her head. ‘If I did wrong, sisters, I beg your forgiveness.’

‘Put ice around his body.’ Esbar gave the order in a hollow voice. ‘Lock his door and bring me the key.’

Once Hidat had gone, silence bowered the room.

‘Saghul can’t even sit up without my arms around her,’ Esbar forced out. ‘How could she have reached the armoury?’

Tunuva grasped her elbow. ‘Ez,’ she said, ‘we both knew what Saghul would decide. Perhaps she found a final surge of strength to go to Hidat, thinking you or I would not be able to face it.’

‘It still would not explain how she left without me seeing. I have been weary, but I know I never fell asleep.’

‘Denag could have. Perhaps this happened after she took over,’ Tunuva said gently. ‘Hidat did not give us a precise time, and the line between dusk and night is not clean.’

‘I feel mad.’ Esbar kneaded her forehead. ‘But it’s done.’

‘How long can we keep it from Siyu?’

Esbar looked as if all the light had gone out of her. ‘He escaped into the forest,’ she said at last, ‘and we have no idea what became of him. We’ll tell her after Saghul passes.’

Such a disappearance was believable. After all, it had happened before.

‘She trusts us. She loves us,’ Tunuva said in a whisper. ‘How can we deceive her?’

‘To protect her. The truth stays between the two of us, Hidat, and Imsurin.’

Tunuva breathed in, arms drawn over her heart, fingers pressed into her shoulders. She imagined the terrible weight of that secret; the way its sharp edges would chisel at her. She imagined having to lie to Siyu every day for the rest of her life.

And then she imagined losing her for good, and one moment with that thought was too long.

‘I will speak to Denag,’ she finally said. ‘You should rest, Esbar.’

Esbar let out a low, dark laugh, a sound Tunuva had never heard her make. ‘I will try.’

Tunuva padded into the Bridal Chamber, where she found Saghul in a light drowse, eyes restless beneath their lids. Finding Denag asleep in a chair, Tunuva woke her with a touch and sent her to her own bed. They could speak in the morning.

She sat beside Saghul, whose ichneumon was still awake at the foot of her bed. His fur had long since turned grey, but he would stay with his little sister until the end.

‘Saghul,’ Tunuva said softly. ‘It’s Tunuva. Can you hear me?’

A tiny nod.

‘Anyso is dead. The outsider. Did you ask Hidat to do this?’

With clear difficulty, Saghul reached for her, lips moving. Tunuva leaned close, but even with the sharp hearing of a mage, she could make out no more than a faint sough of breath. She took Saghul by the hand, which felt too fragile to have ever held a blade.

‘I’m here, old friend.’

Saghul looked towards her voice with a deep weariness, yellow in the whites of her eyes. Tunuva stroked her head until she dozed back off.

****

Tunuva stayed in that chair all night, praying for the woman who had led them for so long. At dawn, when Esbar came, she went to where Anyso lay, finding a silent Hidat watching over him.

Anyso was on his bed. The poison had stained his lips, but otherwise he could have been asleep. Tunuva sat beside him and brushed his loose curls away from his brow.

Forgive us. She closed her damp eyes. Forgive us.