“Except for the queen herself and Lord Akhenabi, both still under the veil of the yi’indra, all the highest nobles of our race attended Suno’ku’s funeral. Prince-Templar Pratiki of the queen’s own Hamakha clan placed a sacred witchwood crown upon the empty coffin, and the general’s commander and relative, High Marshal Muyare sey-Iyora, honored her with a wreath of yew branches. And as a further tribute to Suno’ku’s bravery and the esteem in which she was held by all, High Magister Yaarike of the Builders brought his family’s greatest heirloom, a jeweled necklace called The Heart of What Was Lost, and placed it beside the other offerings.
“When the ceremony was ended, the coffin and tributes were carried in a slow march through the crowds and then deposited in the Iyora clan vault. In a time of great danger to our race, Suno’ku had become the spirit of the Hikeda’ya. The people would never forget her.”
—Lady Miga seyt-Jinnata, the Order of Chroniclers
“Come, husband, why can I not tempt you? The smoked blindfish is exquisite, the best we have had in an age. Even better, it comes from your lake.”
“It is not my lake,” Viyeki said, but even he thought he sounded unconvincing.
“Of course it is.” Khimabu gestured for one of the new servants to take him the platter. “Who else’s would it be?”
One of the strangest and most fortuitous things that had happened when the stones fell and sealed off the gates was that the great throbbing and shifting of the mountain’s substance had also caused a collapse at the site deep in the mountain where Viyeki’s Builder host had begun digging around the Forbidden Deeps. This great rupture of stone had exposed an entrance into another part of the lower depths, revealing a heretofore unknown lake that had lain hidden in the darkness of Nakkiga’s roots since Time itself began. The new body of water, which a surprised Viyeki named Dark Garden Lake when he was summoned there by his workers the day after the collapse, proved to be rich with eyeless fish and other edible creatures and mosses, easing at a stroke the city’s fears of starvation. Although it seemed certain that public sentiment would rename it Lake Suno’ku, in all other ways Viyeki had received the credit for the momentous discovery. And if he was uncomfortable with his newfound acclaim, his wife was not.
“Why will you not eat?” she asked. “If you will not try the fish, at least have a little porcupine moss. The cook has outdone himself.” Porcupine moss was a bristly sort of lichen, hard to find, but when boiled and spiced it was a favorite of the old noble families.
“I cannot help thinking it all too convenient,” Viyeki said. “Magister Yaarike knows more of the deep places than anyone else in Nakkiga. He must have known there was a chance we would find a lake there.”
“It is of no matter,” said Khimabu in frustration. “Yaarike favors you, as he should. Despite all your worries, he has now announced to the Maze that you will be his successor as high magister! Is it so strange or wrong that he might have hoped you would find such a place?”
Viyeki put down his fork with the untasted fish still on it. “Forgive me, wife,” he said. “I am troubled by many things. I am poor company.”
“You are, it is true,” she said. “But I forgive you.” She brightened. Her features might have been those of a girl just emerged into womanhood. “My cousin Jasiyo says he thinks the Maze will honor you on the queen’s behalf. Think of that!”
He rose, trying not to seem too hasty, but his stomach had suddenly gone sour and the smell of the meal was making him queasy. “Yes, we are honored, of course,” he said. “And I am grateful. Please excuse me, my wife. My head is aching, and I feel the need of some air.”
It was not air he needed, or even freedom of movement. As he paced the streets of the second tier, Viyeki knew that what he really needed was certainty, or at least understanding. What he needed was for all his painful, confused thoughts to give him some peace.
The Hikeda’ya of Nakkiga had always lived with the shaking and crumbling of the earth. Thus, when the great stones had fallen upon the gates, most of the people had thought it only another example of the mountain’s uneasy sleep. But Viyeki had been outside the mountain during the first moments, before the others had dragged him through the sally-gate. He had seen the twilight suddenly turn black and the sky turn to falling stone. He had seen dozens of Rimmersmen obliterated beneath the tumbling rocks in an instant. He had watched General Suno’ku wait calmly for death, then saw her snuffed like a candle. He still awoke several times each night, gasping, trying in vain to shield himself from a thundershower of stone.
But his continuing disquiet was not caused simply by what he had experienced when the mountain fell. What was troubling him far more was Yaarike’s strange gesture at the general’s funeral.
Like the rest of the Hikeda’ya who were present, serfs and nobles, Viyeki had applauded Yaarike’s generous tribute to the fallen warrior, his tomb-gift of Clan Kijada’s treasured relic, The Heart of What Was Lost; unlike the others, though, Viyeki’s approval had not even lasted until the coffin had been slid into its niche. And the more he considered it the less sense it made, until now the question tormented him through all his waking hours.
Why would his master do such a thing? Many of the Hikeda’ya had genuinely loved and admired Suno’ku, but Yaarike had not been one of them. If any other high official had spoken of her so slightingly, then put a magnificent and treasured family heirloom—an heirloom of the Garden itself!—on her coffin, Viyeki would have thought it merely cynical, a political gesture to buy favor with the common herd who had revered the general and almost come to believe that she had fought off the Northmen and saved them single-handedly. But Viyeki’s master was famous for his dismissal of mere gestures, of his refusal to court popularity by appeasing either the masses or the powerful elite. In any case, Yaarike had no need to appease anyone. Even after the great rockfall, the work of the Builders during the siege and Viyeki’s own discovery made the high magister nearly unassailable.
So why should Lord Yaarike do such a strange thing? Why had Viyeki’s unsentimental old master felt moved enough to seal away his family’s greatest prize in someone else’s grave?
At a moment when his own fortunes were at their height, the puzzle of it would not let him be. And so, churning inside, Viyeki walked the dark streets, barely seeing the other nobles when they saluted him or the servants and low-caste workers who scurried out of his path.
“I have been the besieger and also the besieged,” Isgrimnur said as he sipped his bowl of ale. “But I have never seen anything as damnably strange as this.”
He was sitting on a wooden chest in front of his tent while his carls cooked supper over the fire. The skies had cleared, and despite the afternoon shadow of the mountain stretching over the valley, it was not terribly cold. Sludig, still done up in his furs, held out his own bowl to be refilled.
“Rocks fall,” Sludig said. “Even mountains. God has His own plans.”
“It is not that.” Isgrimnur wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “It’s knowing that the White Foxes are still there. It’s as if they went into a house and closed the door and shuttered the windows, leaving us to stand helplessly in the street. The murdering creatures are there, only a few steps from us, but we can do nothing! If I had twice the number of men it still would take me half a year or more to clear all that stone.”