The Garden of Stones - By Mark T. Barnes Page 0,120
Finally, satisfied they had gone, Indris turned to his friends.
“Don’t we need to be following Thufan?” Hayden asked. “We can’t be saving your missing king if we don’t know for certain where he is.” The drover rose, Ekko at his side. The enormous lion-man glared into the night.
“You’ve something to say, Ekko?” Indris asked pointedly.
“Merely relishing the chance to encounter the Fenlings again, Amonindris,” Ekko rumbled. His claws extended from his large hands, then slid back. “Many of my brothers died at their hands. Eaten, no doubt. Their bones lost, spirits unable to return to the earth. A bloody price needs to be paid in the names of those who cannot act for themselves.”
“We don’t need to follow, my friend.” Indris knew where Thufan was going. The black star stones. A city of polished black. Millennia ago it would have boasted tall, elegant spires. Megaliths of stone smoother than anything made since. Domes of spun black steel, fine as lace and filled with panes of tinted diamond that cast intricate patterns on the floor as the sun and moon passed overhead. There were few such places in the world.
“Amonindris?” Ekko asked.
“‘Ticktock the clock might stop,’” Omen quoted, “‘the Masters mastered, the gears gone awry. Yet far and away, ’pon seas of night, furnaces burn so fierce and bright. Alone, they sit and stare and curse, forever asking how and why.’ For they knew, those ancient ones, we are all made of stars. What they did not know was why we burned out so quickly.”
“What in the—” Hayden shook his head in disbelief.
“Indris knows where we are going,” Omen concluded. “Is that not so, my learned friend?”
“Only one place I know of, according to legend, had what was called the Star Clock.” Indris breathed out through clenched teeth. His suspicions as to what the Erebus had found were sadly confirmed. “That’s where they’re keeping Ariskander.”
“Where is that, Amonindris?” Ekko said as he rose to his feet.
“We’re going to Fiandahariat. The last known city of the Time Masters.”
“So we let Thufan go, along with the Spirit Casque?” Shar looked Indris in the eye. “You’re sure?”
“I am sorry, Amonindris.” Ekko’s voice seethed with barely restrained carnage. “But I have serious misgivings about this.”
“I’m curious as to why we’d not destroy anything made by an Angothic Witch,” Hayden demanded.
“What exactly is this Spirit Casque?” Ekko asked.
“A prison for souls,” Omen answered Ekko with his usual flatness. “It is a helmet, or mask, which contains a wraith matrix—”
“Excuse me?”
“A web of witchfire, sometimes smelted with gold if there’s not enough witchfire ore,” Indris finished. “It’s similar to the Wraithjar Omen inhabits, though unlike Wraithjars, Spirit Casques cause terrible pain to the soul and the soul can’t leave of its own volition.”
“Who’d invent such a thing?” Hayden asked with horror.
“The Angothics…hence the name,” Omen said matter-of-factly. “Though they were inspired by the Avān. During the middle period of the Awakened Empire, Sepulchre Mirrors were used to imprison criminals thought too dangerous to allow to die.”
“But if they died…” Hayden trailed off, confused.
“They could be brought back.” Indris’s voice was calm, quiet, as if resigned to an awful fact. “Or, in the case of the most powerful Ilhennim, they could find their own way back to life, or exist as Nomads. Sepulchre Mirrors were a painless punishment reserved for the worst criminals. They would be stopped from passing into the Well of Souls, from ever being reborn, or from ever walking Īa again.”
“That ain’t right,” Hayden growled.
“What Corajidin is preparing to do to Ariskander is worse!” Indris urged. “They’ll kill Ariskander…then imprison his soul for so long as the Spirit Casque lasts. Ariskander will be in agony forever. His heirs would never Awaken. The accumulated knowledge of his Ancestors would be lost, his link in that chain broken. And there are ways of torturing a soul so Ariskander will tell them anything his captors want to know.”
“It sounds like a very personal type of punishment, Amonindris,” Ekko rumbled. “What would drive a person to such malice?”
“In generations past, my Ancestor Anmoqan caught and imprisoned Erebus fa Zaliir in a Sepulchre Mirror for his crimes against the empire. The Great House of Erebus was relegated to the status of a family, from which it took centuries to recover. It’s one in a long line of wrongs, or rights, our Great Houses have done to each other. The animosity just goes on, generation after generation.”
“Retrieving this Spirit Casque should be no complex matter.” Ekko checked his weapons. “Amonindris, Rahn-Ariskander