Cradle: Foundation (Cradle Collected Book 1) Page 34

Yerin stabbed a finger at the pyramid. “You built that?”

  Jai Sen gave a sheepish laugh. “No, naturally not. Those are the Transcendent Ruins, built by masters ancient beyond memory. No living sacred artists could construct something like that these days. But as impressive as it is to the naked eye, the truth will set your minds ablaze.”

  He turned to walk backwards, bending over so that he was on an eye level with Yerin. Lindon had to skip a step so the man's spiked hair didn't take him in the eye, and that close he could see that the hair actually seemed metallic; it must be the physical change that came upon artists as they rose to Gold, like Yerin's extra limb.

  “Seven or eight days ago, a team of Fishers were working the Purelake in the gray light of early morning. As dawn broke, the lake began to tremble like a bowl in unsteady hands. The waves grew until they tossed the Fisher boat about, and it took all the strength of a Lowgold and a Highgold working together to bring the craft ashore.

  “Only, when their feet touched the ground, they learned that their troubles were not over. The earth shook and the land pitched more violently than the water! They ran for help, as Fishers tend to do, when the trees split apart and the Ruins burst into the sky!” He spun and presented the top of the structure as proudly as if he were personally responsible for its appearance. “Last week, the horizon was clear. Now, the power and reputation of the Transcendent Ruins calls sacred artists from all over the Wilds.”

  Now that Lindon looked for it, he could make out chunks of soil clinging to the tiered pyramid. Many of them still had grass attached, and he thought he saw the base of an uprooted tree.

  If he could tell what they were at this distance, those patches must be enormous. Either someone had driven carts full of earth up to deceive gullible newcomers, or Jai Sen might be telling the truth.

  Their guide was still watching Yerin for signs of a reaction, and his smile widened as she skipped a step, her eyes locked on the Ruins. Lindon was impressed by her resistance; he was afraid his own eyes had grown wider than teacups.

  Before he could say something admiring the tale, Yerin spoke. “Seven days before now, did you say?”

  He laughed and turned back around to face forward as he walked, holding his spear casually across his shoulders. “Some say seven, some say eight. I myself only arrived three dawns ago, so I can't stake my honor on the time. But I've heard the story from enough trustworthy sources that it must be true.”

  By this time, they had reached the wall of sharpened wooden logs. This close, Lindon could appreciate how large each trunk really was; it would take two men his size linking hands to wrap arms around one log. And these had been cut, measured, sharpened, and placed in the last week.

  He couldn't help but admire what an army of Golds could accomplish. If Sacred Valley had such a force of workers, what might they have built?

  In the front of the wall was a wide opening with wagon-tracks worn in the dirt. Lindon supposed it must function as the main gate, as the loose group of young sacred artists clustered around it must serve as guards.

  The youngest looked around Lindon's age, about fifteen or sixteen, while the oldest must have been a peer with Jai Sen in his second decade. There were six in total, three men and three women, and they looked like the types of rough brawlers Lindon imagined just might attack complete strangers.

  They each wore a hide cloak with the head still on, and from the diseased-looking skins, Lindon recognized more of those rotting creatures that Jai Sen had called dreadbeasts. Each man and woman had the same disturbing sign of their Gold status: a miniature green snake-insect, like a lesser copy of the ones that had chased Lindon and Yerin here, clung to one arm on each of them.

  The serpents varied in size, but they all gripped their host’s arm with their centipede legs and coiled serpentine tails around the human’s flesh. They were Forged from acid-green madra, and Lindon would have taken them for constructs except for the way their legs and tails sunk into flesh. They were bonded to the bodies of these men and women, but the snake heads were alive and curious, surveying Lindon with alien gazes.

  The guards gripped long and gleaming weapons, and they eyed Lindon and Yerin like hungry dogs.

  Lindon tried to stop his breathing from quickening, because he knew they would hear it. These sacred artists were the same as the ones who had attacked them in the wilderness, the ones whose Remnants had chased them here. If these six knew somehow that he and Yerin had been responsible for the death of their comrades...

  Jai Sen slapped the shortest woman on the shoulder, and Lindon noted that her serpent was the largest, stretching from the back of her right hand halfway to the elbow. “Wei Shi Lindon, Yerin, it is my honor to introduce the best of the young generation among the honored Sandvipers. They have a long history of friendship with our Jai clan, and are our allies in exploration of the Ruins.”

  The young woman looked Lindon up and down as though she couldn't believe her eyes, the Forged insectoid arms of her serpent parasite clacking as its tiny claws opened and closed. “I am Sandviper Resh,” she said. “Are you as weak as you seem?”

  The question pricked him like a needle, but he was the weakest one present by miles. He readied an ingratiating smile, prepared to humble himself as far as needed.

  Yerin drew her sword and slapped the woman across the face with the flat of its blade.

  Among the Wei clan, there would have been a moment of stunned silence before people erupted into action. Here, in the midst of such highly trained sacred artists, everyone but Lindon and the wounded Resh had drawn weapons and shifted into a combat stance in an instant. The parasites on the Sandvipers’ arms raised their heads and let out tiny whistles like teakettles. Spearheads, halberds, and tridents pointed at Yerin. Many of the weapons had venomous green madra rolling around their shafts.

  Yerin was matted with dirt, wearing a tattered robe, and half-wrapped in dirty bandages. But she still managed to look even more dangerous than the Sandvipers, as she stood with back straight and icy mist rolling from her master's sword. “This is a new spot on the map for me, Lindon,” she said, rolling her shoulders. “But I’ve laid eyes on dogs like this a thousand times. They’ll bark and bark, they’ll push us around, and then they’ll make us fight so they can prove they’re above us. Forgive me if I cut ahead a bit.”

  Resh was doubled over on her knees, one hand raised to her head. When she moved it, Lindon saw an angry red welt on her cheek in the shape of Yerin's white blade. It looked as though it had been burned into the skin.

  She gripped a long-hafted axe in the ground and unfolded. “You—” she began, but before she got halfway to her feet, Yerin's sword had already met her on the other cheek. Resh doubled over again.

  “Heard this song before,” Yerin said to the woman on the ground. “There’s eyes all around, so the only way you get out of this is by beating me face to face, but it’s too late for that.” Nearby, the group with the hook-weapons had dropped the dreadbeast they’d been tormenting, looking to the Sandvipers with interest. The young man draped over the wall blinked bleary eyes and focused on them. A lone, distant figure with a black cloud over its head actually rose a few feet in the air to get a better look.

  Yerin rapped her knuckles on one Sandviper man’s forehead, and he actually recoiled. His green serpent, a tiny thing tightly wrapped around his wrist, whistled a warning. “See, now they’ve got a tiger on one side and some rocky cliffs on the other. They could rush me together and beat me bloody, but then they’re the weaklings who joined hands to beat a wounded stranger.”

  Resh rolled to the side, gripping a spear, but Yerin had expected it. She whipped her sword up, leaving an all-but-invisible scar hanging in the air. Lindon had seen one of these before: a razor-sharp blade Forged in midair and left there as a trap. Resh froze, the edge of madra half an inch from her nose.

  “You’re strong, you get respect. You’re weak, and you better know someone strong.” Yerin slowly laid the flat of her blade down, re
sting it on the top of Resh’s head. The Sandviper woman flinched, and frost began to form in her hair.

  Yerin looked down, staring until Resh reluctantly met her eyes.

  “The Copper’s with me,” Yerin said.

  Lindon stood like a statue, too wary to show any sign of pleasure at the humiliation. If the Sandvipers decided to take their embarrassment out on anyone, it wouldn’t be Yerin.

  But Resh only nodded.

  Chapter 5

  From his perch on the pointed wooden logs that served the encampment as a wall, Eithan saw the girl with the steel arm over her shoulder arrive with an over-aged Copper looming over her. Invisible webs of his power filled the field before him, carrying information back to him in delicate strands, so he’d heard every word of their conversation. As such, he’d learned their names.

  “Well, this is a lucky day,” he said, hopping down from the wall. His blond hair flowed behind him like a banner, and a simple Enforcer technique made him drift slowly to the muddy ground. His shoes were cheap and simple, but he couldn’t land and splash mud on his clothes; they were expensive shadesilk imported from the west sewn by a team of artisans in the east with a preservative script stitched into the hem. And they were white, so the stains would never come out.

  People in a million fascinating variations swirled and eddied around him, and even with his mind fixed elsewhere, he felt them all. “Yerin,” he said thoughtfully, trying out the name. To his left, a ladder tilted fractionally; it would tip over in a moment, and the man balanced on it would have to use sacred arts to right himself. Eithan pressed one finger against it, pushing it back into balance.

  “Wei Shi Lindon.” He liked that name better. Yerin was clearly the disciple of a Sage—her spirit was so pure and clean that only someone at the end of a Path could have helped her create it. He couldn’t afford to offend a Sage without losing his position or worse, and if Yerin’s master was still alive, Eithan would never be able to recruit her.

  Fortunately for him, the Sage of the Endless Sword had vanished in this region a few months before. Now here was his disciple, in ragged clothes that had seen a month of wear, her wounds aching, belly tight with hunger, and expression tight with buried grief. His webs of madra brought him all that information and more, and it was a simple deduction from there: her master was dead.

  A sad loss for the world, to be sure, but potentially to Eithan’s gain.

  A girl hurried by, arms full of flowers, and one was about to fall. He plucked it from the air as it did so, catching its long stem between his fingers. He lifted the nest of yellow petals, inhaling the delicate scent, and then pressed it into the hands of a pretty young woman. She hadn’t been sleeping well lately, her training taking up much of her time, and her master was cruel to her. She was on the frayed edge of breaking.

  He read that story in her worn shoes, in the welts on her back, in the slump of her shoulders. When a flower appeared seemingly out of nowhere, she spun around, searching in vain for its source. That easily, her burdens lightened just a fraction.

  Only a hair’s worth of difference, but enough hairs could tip the scale. Or something. He was sure he’d heard an idiom like that, at some point.

  He returned his attention to the pair of newcomers. If Yerin was a prize, Lindon was a puzzle. Two cores, one even weaker than the other, in an otherwise healthy body. The quantity of his madra was severely lacking, but in terms of density and quality, he’d almost caught up with others his age. He must have had a lucky encounter with an elixir or spiritual herb of some kind. His wooden badge was etched with an ancient symbol: ‘empty.’

  That was enough to tell Eithan the story of a boy growing up in an isolated region with no ability in the sacred arts. But there were a thousand stories in the crowd around him, many equally intriguing.

  What piqued his interest were the little things: the way Lindon stared around as though to devour every new detail with his eyes, the way he seemed to subconsciously bow to everyone around him with a Goldsign, the pack full of knickknacks he carried on his back.

  He liked to be prepared, this Lindon. He planned ahead. He was looking for opportunity even here, in what would be—to someone like him—an ocean of sharks.

  And he kept his tools neatly separated, packed efficiently into his pack. He carried very little on his person, just a halfsilver dagger, the badge, a few coins, and a—

  Eithan stumbled over his own feet, catching himself on the edge of a stone building.

  What was that in Lindon’s pocket?

  A transparent bead less than an inch in diameter. Not glass, but a barrier of…Forged madra? If so, it was so stable it wouldn’t dissipate for a thousand years. And seamless enough that even his senses couldn’t penetrate. It had to be a product of someone at least on Eithan’s own level.

  Where had a little Copper gotten something like that?

  Eithan had only come this far west to find Yerin, or at least someone like her. If he returned to his clan with her in tow, he could consider this trip worthwhile.

  But now, it seemed, he may have found a truly unexpected prize.

  ***

  The encampment surrounding the Transcendent Ruins, which Jai Sen called the Five Factions Alliance, remained a marvel even though it looked as though it had been tossed together in an hour. Shacks and shops were cobbled together from fresh planks, many in a half-constructed state. The one road was nothing more than a wide track of hastily packed dirt, carrying wagons pulled by bulls, oxen, or Remnants of a dozen descriptions. Children dashed between ramshackle huts, tossing fistfuls of mud at one another.

  But the mundane details could not hide the impossible, which surrounded Lindon from every angle. Yerin and Jai Sen walked casually along, unimpressed, but he felt as though he couldn't turn his head fast enough.

  A girl that couldn't have been more than twelve years old hauled a boulder as tall as Lindon's shoulders over to the side of the road. When she slammed it down, the ground shook. She paused a moment, glancing over the irregular lump of stone that rose higher than her head, and then drove stiffened fingers straight into the rock. The top of the boulder slid away, crashing into the ground, and leaving the stone smooth and clean on top. A pile of enormous stone blocks waited nearby, and Lindon knew she'd carved those with her fingertips as well. Probably in the same morning.

  A group of older men and women dressed in gray strode by, their outer robes sewn with images of dragons and birds in flight. A small cloud hung inches over each of their heads, and when they passed Lindon and his group, their gazes turned to Jai Sen. The clouds darkened, a few even flashing with lightning, and Lindon stared at the reaction in fascination even though the spearman seemed not to notice. After they'd passed, Lindon craned his neck back to continue looking, and the clouds had faded back to pale gray.

  In front of a newly erected wooden shop front, a man hovered in midair, examining the second floor with a focused frown. He stroked his black beard, then reached for a strange weapon on his back: a hilt with a blade bent into a wide crescent, so that it looked like a sharpened hook. He leveled his weapon at the building as Lindon passed beneath him, seemingly unconcerned that people were flowing underneath his feet.

  And the people. Outside of the Seven-Year Festival, Lindon had never seen so many different people packed into such a tight space. Sacred artists carried swords, spears, whips, hooks, axes, awls, halberds, and weapons for which Lindon had no name. They were dressed in everything from intricate formal robes that burned like a phoenix's flames to shoddy brown castoffs. The crowd came in tides, so that one second they were packed tight as a river, the next scattered like puddles after a rain.

  Above it all, the titanic layers of the Transcendent Ruins loomed like a mountain carved of brown stone.

  It was so strange compared to Sacred Valley that Lindon wasn't quite sure what to make of it. He was surrounded by Golds, which made him feel even more fragile than an autumn leaf in this crowd. One instinct urged him to dash into a cor
ner and hide.

  But another emotion held sway: the dizzying relief of absolute freedom. In the Wei clan, everyone knew him. They knew how useless he was. Here, he would start over from the beginning.

  And reaching Gold was nothing, here. Even a child could do it. Even him. Every time he saw someone younger with a venom-green Remnant wrapped around their wrist or a cloud over their head, he couldn't suppress his smile. Those were Goldsigns, and if these people could raise their children to that level, he could make it too.

  Ahead, Jai Sen's compliments to Yerin had flowed even thicker than the crowd around them. “It's rare that a sacred artist your age has such keen insight. You must surely be close to Highgold, which is worth bragging about. I myself have only reached the threshold of Highgold; when you're my age, you will surely have surpassed me. As for those Sandvipers, they're not even worth mentioning.”

  Yerin had spent the rest of the conversation putting him off with mutters and half-statements, which Lindon was certain had as much to do with her thirst as her disinterest. She'd kept one hand on the hilt of her sword and the other on the blood-red rope she had wrapped around her waist like a belt, as though trying to decide which she should draw. This time, she glanced back and saw Lindon listening.

  “That was nothing special,” Yerin said, as much to Lindon as to Jai Sen. “They wanted to back me into a corner, but they'd caught themselves in the same trap. They could have stepped up one at a time, and they'd have worn me down steady and true. But the first one to step up is the first to get slapped down, and that one would lose face. They could group up, and then they'd have beaten me sure as sunrise, but then what kind of standing would they have? Even dogs can win a fight as a pack.”

  She glanced back at Lindon again, emphasizing her point. “Sacred artists care more about their reputation than about their lives. You cut one, she'll heal and laugh about it. You embarrass her, and then you'd best be willing to draw swords on her, her mother, and her entire clan.”