Smoke in the Glass Read online

  Dedication

  To Karim and Amanda

  GOLLANCZ

  LONDON

  Contents

  Dedication

  Maps

  Dramatis Personae

  1 Trial by Death

  2 The Temple of Love and Death

  3 Luck of the Gods

  4 The Sanctum on the Hill

  5 The Raid

  6 City of Women

  7 The Race

  8 The Lake of Souls

  9 The Bridge

  10 Monster

  11 Cult

  12 Flight

  13 The Stone Fortress

  14 Smoke in a Cave

  Glossary and Places

  Author’s Note

  Copyright

  Maps

  Dramatis Personae

  Corinthium:

  Ferros

  Ashtan

  Megaloumos

  General Olankios

  Lara

  Aisha – Lara’s younger sister

  Gan, Tutor – Timian monk of the Southern Xan tribe

  Mikon – ship’s captain, Arcrana Isles

  Streone Lascartis – Innovator of the Great Theatre

  Lascartis, Gonarios, Trebans – old families of the city

  Lucan – Leader of Council of Lives

  Roxanna – his daughter

  Graco – Lucan’s servant

  Maltarsus – workers’ leader

  Marya – his wife

  Andropena – whore

  Parkos – general

  Carellia – former whore

  Gandalos – Cuerdocian officer

  Smoke

  Caradocius – legendary leader of the northern (forest) Wattenwollden tribes

  Stephanos – young man at cult ceremony

  Traxia – old woman at cult ceremony

  Ometepe:

  Atisha

  Intitepe

  His daughters:

  Tolacca – priestess, 300 years old

  Sayana – Youngest, 70 years old

  Amerist – Warrior, 150 years old

  Asaya – Atisha’s childhood friend

  Old Gama

  Fant – dog

  Saroc – priest king, immortal

  Nak – mountain guide

  Bok – guide

  Poum – the One

  Muna – governess of the City of Women

  Besema – formerly ‘the One’

  Natara – maiden of the marana

  Yutil – formerly ‘the One’

  Novara – formerly ‘the One’

  One-eared Salpe – warrior

  Ravaya – maiden in city

  Tokat – Intitepe’s commander at City of Women

  Santepe – last defeated son

  Midgarth:

  Luck

  Freya

  Hovard

  Bjorn Swift-Sword

  Einar the Black

  Agnetha

  Stromvar

  Gytta – Luck’s wife

  Ulrich the Smith

  High Priest

  Peki Asarko

  Petr the Red

  Ut the Slayer

  Four Tribes:

  Priests:

  Anazat – High Monk

  Alon – assassin

  Hunters:

  Gistrane (in Ometepe)

  Karima – huntress

  Korshak – Horse Lord

  Serimaz:

  To Horse Lords, he was Wind Rider

  To Seafarers, Shield from Storms

  To Huntresses, Moonlight Hunter

  To Priests, The One before the One

  In the time before what some in their own tongue would call the cataclysm, and others the awakening, the planet was divided into four worlds.

  Separated by unclimbable mountains and by unsailable seas, for many thousands of years the people who lived in each world knew nothing of any other, thought that they ruled the planet alone. Yet eventually in every world there was a story that linked them all: of a visitor who fell from the sky or who came from the ocean, half a millennium before our present days.

  The visitor brought gifts. Gifts that many, in their own tongue, would call curses.

  The one who came appeared differently to the different peoples – as man, woman or child. Was called Gudrun Gift Bearer in the North, Andros the Blind in the South, Tasloc Wave Rider in the West. And the first gift given, but only in three of the worlds, was immortality. A small number amongst them would be born and live for ever. They would discover it only upon their death and their rebirth. It could be neither chosen nor willed. Old men and young, women and babes, it could come to any. It was not inherited, although from time to time immortals did bear immortals. Most would watch in sadness as the one they’d married when young or the baby they’d given birth to grew grey, passed them and died. Thus everywhere was immortality seen as both blessing and curse. And it changed each world utterly, according to their separate ways and customs.

  The second gift the visitor gave to every immortal changed it more. For it was the gift of possession – possession for a time of another’s body and life – and again it was different in each of those three worlds.

  In the Southern lands, that would become Corinthium, immortals could possess another person, a mortal. Dissolve into them for a time, their own flesh gone, their spirit and mind transplanted. Wise men and women over the years believed that the visitor gave this gift so that immortals would themselves grow wise, having lived in another’s skin, in their minds and hearts – felt their pains, learned their longings, discovering how another needed to live, so they could be as shepherds to the flock and help all to live well.

  It is not what happened. For in that land it first became a sport, and then a way not to help but to control.

  And thus the gift was squandered.

  In the land of the North, that came to be known as Midgarth, the gift of possession was different – there the immortals could possess only beasts. All that ran, flew, swam or slid on their bellies across the ground were available to them. It took but sight, a moment of sinking, before their bodies were gone and human became animal. Again, for those who first received it, it appeared to be a gift for learning. To discover, for the brief time of possession, that animals were not lesser because they did not reason as man reasoned. That each – furred, feathered, scaled – deserved their place in their world as man did, with as much respect. Yet here, as in the South, this gift swiftly became a game, a chance to make a tale to be told before the hearth-fire on long winter nights.

  And thus the gift was wasted.

  In the third world, Ometepe, one immortal killed all others before the power of possession – which would be different there – was discovered.

  And thus the gift was lost.

  Yet what of that fourth world, the largest of all worlds, itself divided into four tribes, that would be known as saghaz-a, or Land of Joy? The visitor also came to it, though much later, only a hundred years ago. There she was called azana-kesh or ‘the one who comes before’. She gave each of the scattered, warring peoples of that world a different gift. Not immortality, not possession.

  Hope. Hope in the form of prophecy. Of someone who would come to unite all worlds – but only if the four tribes first united themselves.

  It took near one hundred years, of war and hatred. Until they were ready. When they were, azana – the One – was born. Not in their land. Far away. Yet by
then a united people had found ways to climb unclimbable mountains, and sail unsailable seas.

  Now is the age of prophecy fulfilled. Now is the age of the darkness that gives way to the light. The end of the dominion of the Immortal. The beginning of the dominion of Man.

  The age of azana. The age of the One.

  (From scrolls found in a cave on the mountain of Gorach. Attributed to Smoke, the Hermit)

  1

  Trial by Death

  Of the two men who lay beside each other on the ridge, watching the kidnappers’ camp, one was to take a mortal wound that night, the other a wound that would make him live for ever. Neither could know it, for the gods had not cursed them with the far-seeing eye. Neither would have cared if they had known. ‘Half odds are good odds’ was a law they lived by in the hills of the Sarphardi, where death was so easy to come by. Both would have taken the bet and gone to grave or immortality with a gambler’s accepting smile.

  Neither cared about anything other than what they did next. About that they cared a great deal and because of it the two men, closer than brothers, did what they rarely did: quarrelled, in short, angry whispers.

  ‘Because I claimed it first.’

  ‘Only because I did not think you would be so stupid as to do so.’

  ‘Stupid?’

  ‘As the chicken without a head. As the donkey following its tail. As the—’

  ‘Ashtan!’ Ferros held up his hand to halt his friend’s comparisons before he went round the farmyard. ‘How often must I prove it? I am better at the closework.’

  ‘Better?’ Ashtan reached to make a gap in the grasses before him and spat carefully through it. ‘You base this outrageous boast on one night in Atrau?’

  ‘And that other in Quba, plus the dawn raid on Temir.’

  ‘Pah!’

  Ashtan hawked another impressive amount of phlegm, bent to spit, and Ferros used the brief interlude of silence to deploy his winning argument. ‘Besides, brother, when I run from the camp dragging the girl and the boy with five screaming Sarphardi a pace behind, who is the more likely to make at least three shots in the dark?’ He smiled. ‘For I will reluctantly concede that, at night at least, you are better with a bow than I.’

  Ashtan, about to spit, swallowed instead. ‘By night, by day, in my sleep or drunk, I am better with a bow than you.’ He grunted, then shrugged. ‘Well, brother, if you are so keen to court death in the form of a spear up your arse, so be it.’ He still had the grass parted for the spit and peered through the gap again. ‘This is how it goes. I will be behind that pile of rocks there. You run straight from the fire towards me. When you reach that bush that’s shaped like a crouching leopard, you throw the kidnapped down. I take two of the bastards then, backlit by flame, you a third with your taka.’ He tapped the throwing knife, sheathed on Ferros’s forearm. ‘Drop, draw, throw. If the other two stop there long enough to wonder what is happening, I take them then. If not, see if you truly are good enough at closework to hold them off till I get there to save you. Again. Agreed?’

  Ferros thought of continuing the argument – but they didn’t have time. ‘Agreed.’ He grinned. ‘Though one wonders who is the officer here, and who the mere soldier.’

  ‘This, in your mother’s milk.’ Ashtan spat again, and grinned back. ‘Come! Let’s go kill someone.’

  ‘It doesn’t worry you that they could be your cousins?’ Ferros asked, as they slid down into the gulley and checked their weapons.

  ‘These? Did you not note them by their fire? They are clan gelcha. Renowned fuckers of their own livestock. A disgrace. Besides,’ he inserted an arrow’s notched end into his mouth, pulled it out, its feathers now glistening and smooth, ‘one of them is Tamin the One-Eyed. He once laid his hand upon my sister Sorani’s arm.’ He placed another arrow in his mouth, drew it out. ‘Him I might just wound and make his death a long, slow pleasure later.’

  ‘No.’ Ferros checked that his short sword slid easily from the sheath on his back, that the knives, one on each of his forearms, the cutter and the thrower, were secure. Then he drove three arrows tip first into the soil beneath the lip of the gulley and laid his own bow beside them. ‘Do not take the risk. There are five of them to two of us. They may fuck their own goats but they are still Sarphardi warriors. Besides, the girl and boy will be terrified. We must get them back to the city and their family swiftly. No time for slow pleasures.’ He rose to a crouch. ‘And that, soldier, is an order.’

  ‘Sir!’ Ashtan placed his arrows in the quiver, picked up his bow by its buffalo-horn grip. His lips parted over teeth brightened by the light of Horned Saipha, the hunter’s moon, a crescent in the sky. ‘And again, in your mother’s milk.’ He spat, and rose too. ‘Go well.’

  ‘Give the quail’s call when you are in position. I’ll reply when I am.’

  ‘It had better be soon.’ Ashtan gestured with his head. ‘They have begun on the girl.’

  Ferros turned. His friend’s hearing was superb but even he could now hear the girl’s faint, desperate weeping, the boy’s pleading, cut off by the back of a hand struck hard across a face. His own face went ugly. ‘Go with the gods,’ he muttered, already turning away.

  ‘And you, brother.’

  Sounds came clearer as Ferros emerged from the gulley and, crouching low, ran in a circle around the edge of the Sarphardi camp to its far side. The girl’s pleading, the boy’s weeping, the kidnappers’ mocking laughter … which halted for a moment as one of their horses snickered when Ferros ducked into their lines, and resumed when he’d calmed the beast with his hand and a whispered word. He could see the single tent clearly now over the mount’s shoulders, a dozen paces away. The fire on its far side made silhouettes of those within – two distinct figures crouched on the ground, the five tribesmen one monstrous blob above them. Then one detached, moving to the tent’s entrance, declaring his intention to piss before he got down to anything else, more mocking laughter following him. Ferros could hear the slur in it now – the merchant’s wagon they’d stolen along with the children had carried a large barrel of date brandy. So close to the city, this girl’s father had thought he would only need one bodyguard. But the raiders had been getting bolder of late and the bodyguard would have died first and fast, the merchant swiftly afterwards.

  It had been chance and a jackal’s howl that had led him and Ashtan, out for a morning hunt, to the two bodies poorly concealed in scrub beside the road. They would have buried them well enough to protect them from scavenging animals, then brought a wagon from the port – if it had not been for what the dead merchant was gripping in his right hand: the doll of a soldier in full Corinthium armour. ‘They have a child,’ Ferros had said. There had been no time to do anything for the dead now, only to chase the murderers, and hope to save the living.

  The Sarphardi might have had a night’s head start but they also had the wagon with the profit and the two riders had overtaken them by sunset. Now, by the one moon’s rise and the other’s fall, they would deal with them.

  This one first, Ferros thought, as the man walked a dozen paces off and lowered his breech cloth. He let him get midstream, let the ribald song start in the tent about acts to be performed in the famed brothels of Makat, before he drew his curved slicing dagger. By Saipha’s light he could make the throw with the other knife, but the man might fall noisily and he needed to be sure that Ashtan had reached his position before he startled the other four.

  Slamming his hand around the man’s mouth, Ferros pulled him close, even as the blade bit. Two sprays now, one diminishing, one fountaining. The warrior was large, bigger even than him, and the man bent, braced, stood tall, lifting Ferros from the ground. For a moment Ferros thought he might lose him, pressed his hand tighter against the mouth, wrapped his dagger hand around the huge chest. The man stumbled and Ferros rode him to the ground, lying atop him till life left.

  He rolled o
ff, crouched and turned, dagger before him. But he didn’t think he’d made much noise, and the same reassuringly nasty song and sounds came from the tent. Then, from beyond it, came the quail’s cry – Ashtan, in position.

  There was no point in delaying – especially since his own warrior’s blood was up with his enemy’s sticky on his hand. He tipped back his head, echoed the cry – poorly perhaps, because the men’s voices stopped within the tent, while the girl’s and boy’s sobbed on. It didn’t matter much, not when his signal was immediately followed by his comrade’s voice.

  ‘Attack!’ Ashtan yelled. ‘Soldiers of the Ninth, advance!’

  The shout had the instant and desired effect. The four warriors snatched up weapons and ran out of the tent’s front entrance. There wasn’t an entrance at the back but Ferros swiftly made one – jabbing the tip of his curved dagger into the hide wall and slicing down fast. Pausing only to sheathe one weapon, he drew another, the short sword on his back, then stepped through the slit. The girl and the boy – she maybe fourteen, he perhaps half that – were still crouched on the floor, clutching each other. Their eyes shot wide when they saw him but they didn’t scream. He might not have been wearing the full uniform of an officer of the Ninth, but he had the breast and back-plates, decorated with the unit’s serpent gods, and the green tunic beneath. And though the desert sun had tanned his skin as dark as any tribesman’s, it had also bleached his hair near white. Unlike her black-haired captors, she could tell in an instant that he was a soldier of the empire. ‘Up!’ he commanded, in a whisper. ‘Can you run?’

  The boy just stared at him. It was the girl who answered, ‘Yes! Oh yes!’

  ‘Then on my word, fast as hares. Straight past the fire, straight down the path.’

  He stepped to the front flap and a swift glance showed him the Sarphardi half a dozen paces away staring hard into the night. Only one had a bow, with arrow nocked, the others their curved swords, the swordsmen also holding kite-shaped shields to cover them all. Ashtan began shouting more commands but even with these efforts, it would only be the matter of a moment before the tribesmen realised they faced a few men, if that, and not a squadron. The moment was his.