"Skygrave"
by
Margo Lerwill
The hatch froze in place, only half-open. The runes around the locking mechanism faded from angry red to amber to onyx-black again. Aili pressed the bronze ring, the pass-safe, harder against the indentation between the brutal, scythe-like symbols, but all she felt was the barest tug on her own meager energies. The charge on the ring failed by degrees, until it felt empty and dead in her hand.
Why did one challenge always end in another?
Aili let the ring fall from her fingers and dangle from the knotted chain around
her neck. She flailed out for a handhold in the tangled greenery and roots beyond
the hatch. Tremors rippled up and down her legs from the effort of bracing her
back against the opposite side of the narrow stone shaft, from inching her way
upward in the cold, grimy darkness. She cursed her weakness then and now. The
Progenitors who had built the network of stone tunnels beneath the Dome would
have levitated to the top of the shaft and thrown back the hatch without so
much as touching it. No one possessed that kind of magic anymore.
Scrapped and bruised from numerous falls, torn by the sword-sharp legs of man-sized
arachs and their kith of nightmare tunnel crawlers, stinking of fungus and old
blood that was and was not her own, Aili wriggled through the hatchway. The
life of a professional scavenger-proper title: Traveler, mobile subsect of the
Barriers, the Tainted Children, guardians against the very magic that polluted
their veins-had left Aili lean, even scrawny. She felt thankful for it now.
She gladly filled her lungs with the scent of the face-full of chilled grass
and dirt she got when she landed. The earthy musk unsettled her stomach, however,
making her respite too brief. Her back bowed without her consent. A convulsion
dragged her to her hands and knees. She vomited repeatedly, again, hoping this
was the last trace of arach blood fighting its way out of her.
At last, the final ounce of bile in her miserable body lay expelled in the
grass, save for a lingering, acidic aftertaste her tongue was almost too numb
to detect. Though the arach blood was not as poisonous as its venom, she'd need
several days to regain full feeling in her mouth again. Best in future to keep
a better hold on her blade, she thought when the spasms eased, else she'd find
herself again with no defense from a hungry arach but her own teeth. Aili corrected
herself then. She had neared her destination, her goal, her dearest prize. If
she succeeded, she had already seen the end of arachs and bone-littered shafts.
Still, she had gained a story worthy of swapping with other Travelers, if any
more survived: seeing one of the enormous, armored spiders retreating from her
by the tawny glow of a lighting gem recessed into the tunnel ceiling. The light
had brightened and dimmed, brightened and dimmed, feeding on her fading energies.
"That's right," she had said to the scuttling arach. "Don't
want sick meat, do you? I must be mad from disease to try biting an arach."
Of course, the arach surely hadn't been thinking all this, but its instincts
must have told it there was something wrong with the human for her to bite it
when it had cornered her below the shaft. There was plenty of "sick meat"
in the Dome, twisted by tainted magic. Any creature had to be wary, even if
it was the spawn of tainted magic itself.
Laughing, Aili rolled over into her back in the grass, so delighted at the
absurdity of her rescue that tears welled up and trickled from the corners of
her eyes. She looked into the "sky" above, dull and black and starless,
but the only sky the Dome had. Indeed the Dome was so vast, so many leagues
across and connected by tunnels to so many other Domes, that she could forget
that it was man-made, magic-made, unchanging night.
Aili turned her head to look around.
"Wizardwork!" she swore and twisted up onto her knees.
She had emerged beside a stand of ghostwood. Luminescent white cedar, ancient
and gnarled, grasped at the night. Some said they were the skeletal hands of
dead gods. Others said they marked the graves of Progenitors. Aili knew for
certain that in a land without sunlight, luminescence was a warning. She had
seen more than one naïve Traveler crushed in those white "hands."
Aili drew one foot up under her, her movement slow, cautious. The trees creaked
and swayed as she gained a cautious footing, ever mindful that within the Dome
there were no breezes. Listening, watching, she dared not breathe. The snapping
of smaller branches warned her. Aili lurched away as the nearest tree grasped
at her, and she tumbled down the slope below the hatch. She landed on a gravel
path, scuffed and winded but relieved. One challenge after another, she thought
again, and rested there where she sprawled until the temptation to cry herself
to sleep became too great.
Standing and dusting herself off, Aili gazed down the path. Rolling hills of
colored maple unfurled before her. She limped along the trail amidst them knowing
that in the old times, before the Domes, these delicate trees might have been
crimson or teal or shiny copper. Under the Dome sky they were bronze and black.
Their leaves shivered with a sound like silver scales rattling on a battle shield
or a snake's tail. About their trunks lapped knee-high scarlet bloodgrass, named
for the bloodlust it generated in those who walked too long through it. Aili
kept to the center of the path.
The trail had probably been warded for the protection of Travelers. Probably.
Aili kept walking, kept staring ahead, toward the comfort of the light in the
distance. It was a glittering star in the darkness, the light of a city-dome.
It gleamed in the lighthouse atop the broad cupola, marking the location of
the Barrier settlement and providing illumination within its confines. How much
the Dome must have resembled an enormous black crystal ball with black bubbles
of cities inside to anyone beyond, assuming anyone still lived out there. But
how much could have been left after the wars?
The path ended in the shadow of the city-dome, in an archway of barred black
doors hinged and bound in gold. Aili pounded and waited for a response. She
tapped her fingers against the purse knotted to her girdle. The crinkle of the
forged travel papers within reminded her how important her demeanor would be.
Wiping her hands on her canvas pants, she straightened. She glanced at the thin
streaks of blood staining her tunic where she'd been nipped by a sharp pincer
mouth or slashed by a razor-sharp arach leg. Not much hope of looking presentable.
The Barrier who opened the door looked on Aili with more disgust than she'd
seen them show for the food-begging nomads they often turned from the entry.
The sight of the gray-haired woman's braids piled atop her head in a precise
coil made Aili reach up and smooth her own loose, tattered braids. Glaring,
the pale, gaunt woman eyed her head-to-toe, pausing at the Barrier tattoos on
the backs of Aili's smudged hands. The swirling mage marks on the guard's bony
hands looked freshly re-inked.
Without a word, the Barrier admitted Aili, barred the door, and led her the
few steps to the guardhouse. Its construction of black marble shot with red
veins betrayed the former opulence of the Progenitor cities. Its crumbling corners
betrayed their demise. There the guard stared at Aili pointedly, then said,
"Where are your packs?"
Aili shrugged. Too long outside the city-domes, in the tunnels, she squinted
as she tried to meet the guard's eyes. "Nomads ambushed me on the trail,"
she lied. "I had to throw down my packs to distract them." In truth,
she'd lost the packs to an arach in the tunnels, but those passages were a Traveler
secret. Better to let the Barrier think her a poor excuse for a Traveler, meant
to collect scattered, forbidden magical artifacts from the nomads and from Progenitor
ruins.
"Travel papers," the guard said, holding out her long-fingered hand,
almost swallowed by the voluminous sleeve of her plain woolen robe.
Aili pulled the wrinkled parchment from her purse, cogs in her mind spinning
fast. Before the Barrier could unfold the parchment, Aili fished her necklace
from her tunic. "And I have this." She held up the end of the chain.
The bronze ring dangled there.
"You're not allowed to have that," the guard said. Her thin lips
pressed into a stern, flat line. "It's forbidden magic, even to Travelers."
"Don't I know that?"
Aili knew too well the power of Progenitor keys, an essential in every Traveler's
contraband kit. So much of her wanderings as a Traveler had led her to places
where powers far beyond her own were the only passage keys. Ancient receptacles
of the old power, like this ring, were the only pass-safes left in the Dome,
to the pitiful descendant of the Progenitors. There were few artifacts like
this left. Sacrificing this one, even with its power drained, even to pass her
through a guardhouse with a Barrier too distracted to study her travel papers,
made Aili grit her teeth. But she wasn't going to need it anymore, was she?
She wasn't going back out there, not like it was now. Handing over the ring
was a commitment to a course of action, a commitment she didn't want to dwell
on.
She pulled the chain over her head, held the ring out in her palm. When the
guard reached for it, Aili closed her hand. "Give me an escort to the vaults,
and I'll sign it in myself."
Aili got her way, perhaps just so the gate guard could be done with her. Two
tight-lipped Barriers led her through the city streets. The hems of their robes
swished against the cobblestone and stirred up musty, sour dust. Haphazard spires
and towers and courtyards of metal and marble and stained concrete closed in
on them. Many buildings leaned half-collapsed, half-cannibalized against others.
Light from gems inside dwellings darted and sliced from recessed doorways and
cracked shutters, vying with the flat light of the constant lighthouse sun to
throw strange, shifting shadows across their path.
Then they passed out of the tight rings of Barrier quarters and libraries into
the neat, geometric fields that surrounded the high tower in the city-dome center.
The crops were small, grayish, sparse. Livestock pens with sheep and goats and
chickens huddled on odd remnants of land, in shadow.
"The farms don't look to be doing well," Aili said off-hand.
"Do they need to do well?" one Barrier answered, the one with hair
as black as his skin was white.
"We aren't many," the woman with body and coloring like a pear, slightly
greenish, said. "Who would we feed? The nomads?"
The pale man snickered. "We have a hard enough time with the way they
breed. It doesn't matter how many of their children starve to death or fall
in the twistwoods. They make more."
Aili didn't look at either of them. She'd seen derision before. "They
make more of us. If law forbids us from breeding and passing on the taint of
magic, someone has to produce more Barriers to protect the legacy of the Progenitors
and their city-domes. To protect the nomads from what they think they want."
"But if there were no more nomads, there would be no need for Barriers,"
the pear-skinned one said. "No one to use the magic."
Aili couldn't argue with Barrier logic. Annihilation of humanity inside the
Dome, as outside, made perfect sense to them. She suspected that only paranoia
of nomad fertility and resilience, the fear that Barriers would die out but
nomads would go on, prevented wholesale genocide. They would have called Travelers
heretics for believing anything else. They would have accused the Barrier sub-sect
of becoming corrupted by the lure of the magical items the Travelers hunted
down, and they would have been right. Indeed, some Barriers had already made
that connection . . .
When the three Barriers came to the foot of the high tower, a sleek black stalk
supporting the magical false sun in the lighthouse, they veered past the lift
cage. The ring Aili bore might have been forbidden, but it was not so important
that they'd want to seal it inside one of the upper vaults, above the tower
floors served by the stairs. The guards left her once she had given up the ring,
with another twinge of reluctance. She tried to take her time recovering from
her journey. She didn't want to seem as agitated, anxious as she truly was as
she cleaned herself up, bandaged her hurts, ate some stale bread and shriveled
vegetables in the deserted Traveler guest chambers.
Only then did Aili take a deep breath and mount the tower stairs. When no one
watched, she disappeared. She was still there all right, still climbing the
steps. This was one of her small magics. To blend herself away until no detail
interesting enough to catch anyone's attention remained. Most Travelers who
survived long in the tunnels owed it to this power, though the instincts of
nightmare creatures like arachs were harder to fool than the diffused attention
of humans. Barriers with the opposite power might chance to see her, if she
were out in the open or careless, but she wasn't and she wouldn't be.
Thus did Aili slip in and out of the lower three vaults, one after the other.
She padded with care past vaultkeepers milling about the vault doors, entering
new artifacts in their ledgers. She reined in her energies tightly enough that
the lighting gems didn't react to her presence until she was far back in the
maze of vault shelves.
Aili chewed her lip and reminded herself that she was not in the vaults to
pocket magical baubles. Though she fingered polished wands, oil vials, and numerous
charged rings and amulets that could have served her as pass-safes, she took
none of them. She was after something bigger, in every sense of the word. In
truth, there was little chance of finding the chalice in the lower vaults. She
just needed to be thorough. This was her last chance, and she didn't know what
natural misdirection abilities the artifact might have had. If her suspicions
were correct, and the zealot Sarrin and her fanatics were on their way here,
Aili would not have time to come back and look again.
Disappointed but not surprised at having found nothing in the third vault,
Aili sneaked up behind the vaultkeeper. She danced this way a little, that way
a bit, as the keeper moved items from one table to another just as she tried
to pass. With a silent sigh of relief, Aili skirted around the frame of the
vault door to the stairs. In her eagerness she took two steps at once, propelling
herself into the path of a Barrier who descended the murky black steps, head
down and arms laden with books. The collision ripped Aili's illusion away like
a threadbare curtain and left both women planted on their backsides.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I should have been watching where I was going,"
Aili said without looking up at the Barrier she'd hit. She hoped that rushing
to take the responsibility herself would distract the woman from wondering why
she hadn't seen Aili. The vaultkeeper's doughy face, below his thinning tuft
of yellow hair, appeared at the door and peered at them quizzically. Aili put
on a sheepish grin that perked the man's brow but seemed to satisfy curiosity.
"Here, let me help you gather your books," Aili said, turning back
to the fallen Barrier with an armload of them. "Here . . . Kynan?"
The other Barrier, round and sullen, glanced up at the mention of her name.
Her dark eyes, black as her hair, shot wide. "Aili?"
"Kynan, what are you doing here?" she whispered.
"Where would I be but Skygrave?"
"Sky-?" Aili stopped herself and urged Kynan up half a flight of
steps to a balcony. She stared out over the city-dome interior, feeling her
old friend brush against her elbow. "This is Skygrave? I'm . . . home?"
"You don't know where you are?" Concern filled Kynan's eyes, reminding
Aili what a worrier she had been.
"Well . . . I wasn't so much looking for a place by name. I just knew
this was the last city-dome on the spur of the tunn- . . . the last on the path."
Kynan's thick, rosy lips frowned. "I don't understand. I didn't understand
then, either. Aili, why did you run away?"
Aili studied the city again, trying to find something familiar about its shape.
She'd seen so many over the last few . . . months? Had it been years?
"I wish I could explain everything to you, Kynan. I wish you could understand
what it is to need to know, about the Domes, the Progenitors, the legends, the
old world. The Barrier tutors tell us how powerful the Progenitors' magic was,
that they could create false suns and seal themselves and their servants inside
the Domes when wars ravaged the world. There are many Domes, you know, not just
this one with these few city-domes. No one told us that. They warn us about
the corruption of power and how it drove the Progenitors to civil war. But they
don't explain what this magic is inside our veins or why it became so stagnant
and polluted that it spawned the taintwoods and the things that live there.
They don't tell us there are legends about doorways for leaving the Domes."
Kynan stared at Aili. Blinking, she said nothing, and the odd, tense hope rising
in Aili's chest sank. Her friend still didn't comprehend the Traveler wanderlust.
"I didn't tell you I was leaving because you would have talked me out
of it. You were always the levelheaded one of us. I didn't want to be talked
out of Traveling, though. Hearing Chief Steward Lerre deny me my request to
become a Traveler was enough. I didn't want to hear it from anyone else. So
I forged travel papers . . ."
"But now you've come back."
Aili nodded, not understanding the significance of why her path had led her
back here. Exhausted, worn thin to the point of distraction, she rubbed her
bleary eyes. She looked out over Skygrave again, waiting for her vision to clear.
In that one blurry moment, the light gleaming off the angles of metal towers
and marble spires looked like the drawings she had seen of stars. She laughed,
soft and breathy.
"Do you remember our first day here?" Aili's gaze still roamed the
city as she spoke. "Both just children." She touched the back of her
hand, rubbing a long-faded ache. "I remember we were still bandaged from
the tattoos."
"Uh-huh."
"You were still crying."
"Because they'd held me down."
"I was still crying for my family, saying they were going to come back
and get me. Truly, I knew they weren't coming back. They traded me to the Barriers
for food. I watched them negotiate over me. I don't think I ever admitted that
to anyone. Their memory of me probably didn't last much past their full bellies."
"Our teachers wouldn't have told us if our nomad families ever had come
back."
Aili cleared her throat of one small kernel of old emotion. "I know. Didn't
stop us from crying, did it? Do you remember Chief Steward Lerre trying to distract
us? Telling us if we stared at the city-dome ceiling long enough we might see
the stars hidden there?"
"I remember."
Aili nodded through sudden tears at the gleaming city. "I found our stars."
Kynan did not respond. "I wish you understood," Aili whispered again.
"You never asked me."
"What?"
Something bumped Aili's elbow, and she looked at Kynan. The sullen-eyed girl-a
sullen woman now-shifted the books in her arm and tossed back the heavy wooden
cover of the top one. Aili saw the upside down details of ornate, cryptic pass-safes
sketched in her friend's meticulous hand. Kynan flipped several pages, one-by-one,
slowly. Drawings and notes on city-dome specifications, false suns and complex
wards cluttered every yellowing parchment page.
"Kynan, where did you get all this information? I've never known the vaultkeepers
to allow such detailed study."
"I'm not a novice anymore."
"And not as lacking in wonder as I had assumed." Aili was embarrassed
now by the assumption. She was embarrassed by the youthful conviction that had
led her to believe that she knew her place better than Lerre had, that she alone
could discover all the secrets of the Dome and the true will of the Progenitors.
That she could enlighten her fellow Barriers with her grand discoveries and
lead them back out into a world they might reclaim as their own. Still, she
did not regret the bravery and urgency her naivete had lent her. These had led
her far and away, and back again.
Kynan shrugged and closed the book. "You never asked me what I wondered.
Just because I wasn't in a rush to leave Skygrave . . ." There was dull
pain in her voice, resentment.
"I'm sorry, Kynan." And she was. Aili watched her friend put the
pile of books on the balcony floor and lean on the balustrade with her. The
realization of how lonely Skygrave must have been for Kynan made Aili's cheek
burn with shame. "Have you ever heard anyone speak of the chalices?"
Aili asked, offering her dearest secret as an apology.
"Chalices?" Kynan's gaze shifted toward hers with caution. "The
greatest of all artifacts? The receptacles for the very sources of each Progenitor's
power after death? Of course." Kynan finished with a snap to her voice.
"I'm sorry," Aili said again. "I didn't meant to suggest you-"
"There would have been two dozen of them, but the stories say they've
been destroyed by zealot Barriers or depleted in attempts to purge the taint
from the Dome and that only about seven of them remain."
"One," Aili said, not really pausing to ask herself how Kynan would
have known that much about a taboo subject. "Only one remains." Kynan
regarded her with silent, obvious curiosity now. "The chalices have always
been the dearest goal for any Traveler. I learned as much from some of the greatest
Travelers, those who took me under their wings along my paths. You heard me
say there are many Domes besides this one? There are two dozen, one for each
Progenitor, and each the home of a chalice."
Kynan gasped. "You've found them?"
Aili shook her head. "We-Travelers-figured this out too late. We've spent
the last few months always one step behind a group of Barrier zealots using
a hidden network of tunnels to travel from one Dome to the next . . . destroying
the chalices as they find them. Their leader, Sarrin, has even convinced chief
stewards to pump whole vaults full of concrete and entomb artifacts. They've
destroyed libraries in Blackwater and Ashfield." Aili leaned nearer to
Kynan, whispering. "In Evercloud, the zealots convinced the Barriers to
pull down the high tower. The Evercloud sun fell to the city floor and shattered
into a burning heap. Many were killed. Many killed themselves, as a way of purging
their own taint from the Dome. Sarrin blessed them as they died."
"Evercloud?" Kynan said. She clenched her fists against the balustrade.
"Evercloud is only a few days from here."
Aili nodded. "So is Sarrin. She's been a few steps behind me since I escaped
Clayburn, when they seized all the Travelers they could find in the city as
heretics. She's probably almost here."
"Why here?"
"This is the last city I have yet to search in this Dome. The last chalice-if
it still exists at all-is in Skygrave."
Kynan, engrossed one moment by Aili's every word, pressed her lips together
and turned her face back toward the city below them. Aili did not see the surprise
she had been expecting in her friend's expression.
"What aren't you telling me, Kynan?"
The ring of footfalls behind them dispersed the aura of quiet confidences.
Aili glanced over her shoulder at the Barrier who stepped out onto the balcony.
She bit the inside of her cheeks, irritated at the interruption.
The Barrier gave a respectful nod, her heavy red braids teetering above a young,
delicate face. "Chief Steward Kynan, we have a large contingent of non-resident
Barriers at the southern gate."
"Chief Steward Kynan?" Aili said under her breath, feeling a sense
of her own arrogant foolishness wash across her face again. Kynan glanced sidelong
at her, then away. Had Aili betrayed herself to the wrong person?
"They follow a Barrier who gives her name as Sarrin," the girl continued.
"She requests entrance for her people and audience with you."
Aili grabbed Kynan's arm. "Sarrin."
Kynan shifted her gaze from Aili to the messenger. She lifted her chin and
assumed a stately air Aili would not have expected of her. Her voice was level
and sure when she spoke. "Tell this Sarrin you have summoned me down from
the top of the high tower and apologize for the delay. Have water and bread
provided for them outside while they wait. Then bar the doors and have my personal
attendants begin charging the fortification wards on all the gates. Be swift,
Bura."
Without question, the messenger nodded and disappeared back into the tower.
Kynan's gaze shifted by degrees back to Aili, tentative.
Aili nodded, her head low. "Decisive. You wear your title well. How long?"
"Lerre has been dead two years now."
"Two years . . . ? Two years? How long have I been gone?"
"More than five."
Aili's abrupt laughter astonished even her. "Five. That's a wonder. It
seems like months, and it seems like forever."
Kynan squeezed Aili's shoulders. "Just as this is your home yet seems
like a strange place you've never seen before."
Swallowing hard, Aili laughed again, choking, tears surging hard beneath the
surface of her veneer. "And finding now that a chalice might be here. I
lived here so long, and everyday I looked at the lighthouse sun and the gates
and the maze of crumbling buildings and dreamed of all the exciting finds I
would make as a Traveler. I was going to understand so much, see so much, change
things. The thought that a chalice might have been here all along makes . .
." Made her want to weep with the overwhelming sense of wasted time. It
was too much for her to dwell upon, with danger at the gates of . . . her home.
Aili sniffed back her tears. "Well, Chief Steward Kynan, you seem to have
a plan in mind. I'm at your disposal."
"And I at yours," Kynan said and motioned for Aili to follow her.
Down the stairs and out of the high tower they walked together, Aili with her
long strides, Kynan with her short, sure legs pumping beneath her robes. Deep
within the maze of dwellings once more, Kynan leaned close.
"So, Traveler," she said, peering sidelong at Aili as they navigated
deserted alleyways. "Tell me what you've heard of the theory that the chalices
were not what they might seem."
"You mean misdirection magic?"
"Misdirection, yes. Magic, no. I mean, have you encountered the idea that
the chalices were not things but places?"
Aili's step faltered. "Places? No. You mean . . ."
"Chambers. Founts of power where one could recharge artifacts, even people."
"You know of such a place? A place in Skygrave?"
Kynan, not answering, motioned for Aili to turn from the alley through a narrow,
unremarkable passage. Down a short, dark hallway, she followed Kynan to a modest
apartment dwelling. Light from several gems set into the wall of a fireplace
gave the illusion of a dying hearth. The glow of embers cast a burnt orange
light across a makeshift kitchen, a scarred wooden table and benches, two cots
made inviting by neat, tucked blankets. Beside the hearth, sewing, sat an ancient-looking
Barrier woman with hardly hair enough to braid in the traditional style. She
smiled up at Kynan but said nothing, as though she knew the Chief Steward was
there for something other than her conversation. She nodded toward the rug before
the hearth, where a child of five or six sat playing with old coins.
When Kynan said nothing, only stood just inside the door with her, Aili looked
down at the little boy. She had begun to wonder why Kynan had brought her here,
why no one spoke, when she noted something odd about the child. Yes, that was
it. The child's hands.
"Kynan, he has no mage marks. Why . . . ?" Aili trailed off when the
tow-headed boy smiled up at her. Though he was thin and dressed in smudged,
patched clothing, his cheeks were round, his smile bright. Aili could not remember
ever seeing a child so healthy, so happy.
"Hello," he said, and Aili felt something inside her jump as he addressed
her.