Chapter 8

  Emmius: two years BK

  Five figures sat around a scarred wooden table, marinating in the rich smoky air of the roadhouse. Greasy cards slapped against sticky wood; dice clattered along chips and grooves worn in the rotting surface; the wind outside rattled the shuttered windows, blasting the doors and windows of the roadhouse as though desperately thirsty, or maybe desperately in need of a game.

  A flickering sodium-vapor light illuminated the players and their game. The eldest player was a local, a comm-relay technician here at Outpost 8. She was an old green, one with few scars.

  The biggest was of the Khara, one of the Far Tribes whose existence necessitated the presence of this and the other outposts. The Khara were relatively friendly to outsiders, and this daimon traveled from his homeland to export dykast and other rare minerals. He was white, had bonded to a sand skate, and was entirely unclothed save for a cloth wrapped around his left hand for decency.

  The cleverest was a co-owner of the Five Seasons performing troupe, a traveling theatrical company known for staging a different genre each season and for varying the tone of their performance based on local weather. His mood was soured by the storm which had kept the troop grounded in this small outpost for five days now and had shifted the tenor of their comedy into the unseasonably grim. He was a purple, which tended to excite comment and bestow upon him an air of mystery wherever he went. He detested this.

  The most dangerous was a small grey who traveled with the Five Seasons as security. She openly wore several pairs of projectile sidearms, and it was widely known in the performing group that her bullets rarely missed, even if they had to curve around intervening objects in order to strike their intended targets. She refused to perform this feat for entertainment. It was a game among the Five Seasons performers to try to make her smile, but no one had yet succeeded.

  The youngest and luckiest of them was Emmius, who had recently joined the traveling performers on a trial basis. His tattoos, his imperturbable carelessness, and his habit of smoking crushed crystals had caused the rest of the troupe, consisting of several dozen, to treat him with cautious curiosity. Not many of them had yet played cards with him.

  “So there truly is a molten rain in the Murn Deep, eh?” said the Khara, his accent thick, his words slurred. “Thought it was a legend.”

  “Yeah well they, like, call it the glass rain though because it’s glass,” said Emmius. “It’s only like melted and hot and stuff on the upper layer though but like down below it hardens and it’s just like regular glass except that it like falls from the sky which is not regular for glass you know? And there’s places where it’s all piled up into these big, like, piles, all these sharp little drops of glass.”

  “Bet it hurts a damn bit,” mused the green as she threw down a tattered card. “Rain of molten glass.”

  “Like probably but I don’t know for sure ‘cause like I never got rained on. I did get caught out in a rainstorm once though but like I had to get through so I just like kept walking.”

  “How in the five hells,” said the co-owner of the troupe, his voice clipped and precise, “can one walk about in a rain without being rained upon?”

  Emmius shrugged and looked closely at his cards. He thought, though he was not sure, that he had a good hand. “Hey five of the same is good right? Like I can put them all down at once?”

  Two of the others at the table stared at him, mouths open. One sighed and put a hand to her head; the other growled and tossed down his cards.

  “Emmius,” said the co-owner as he neatly withdrew the cards he had been on the verge of playing. “We have explained the rules.”

  “Twice,” muttered the grey security officer.

  “I know but I just like forget,” said Emmius.

  “Sounds like you’ve got it to me,” the grey replied. “So stop asking! Every other hand, by the gods…” They all briefly uplifted their left hands in honor of the deceased deities, except Emmius, who forgot.

  “And stop winning, too,” grumbled the Khara, whose spines glowed white for an instant.

  “Where did you pick this one up, Alakim?” The green asked the co-owner.

  The co-owner ignored her and dropped his cards on the table. “Just play it and win, Emmius. We’ll start the next hand.”

  “I saw your show,” the green continued as Alakim dealt the next hand.

  “And?” he replied.

  “Very well done. Inspirational, even. Tell me, why do you do it?”

  “Eh?” Alakim finished dealing and laid out five cards on the table. All of them, by some rare convergence of chance, were blooms. Exactly like last time. Seeing this caused Alakim to pause in surprise.

  “Why perform when the world is at an end?” the green continued.

  Alakim shrugged. “Why the hells not? You have a better suggestion?”

  “Fewer stars shine in the cold wastes beyond these walls,” said the Khara in his gruff voice. “Every year, fewer. Every year, more wind, more dust. Every year it groans louder. Even you can hear it.” He paused for a moment to let them appreciate the wind’s desperate struggle to gain a foothold in this dark and smoky place. The doors and windows seemed to shudder more violently than before. The light flickered over their heads. Each of them thought their own private thoughts about the cold desolation outside, the barren lands of the Khara, the dying stars in the night sky, the dying off one by one of the daimon themselves.

  “We are the last,” continued the Khara as he glared at his cards, then at the lord of blooms that Emmius had just laid on the table. “There will be no more.”

  “We should all do what we can,” said the small grey. “Shine as brightly as we can. For we are the last.”

  “Well said,” muttered Alakim. “The last.”

  “To us, then,” said the green. “The last.” She raised her mug.

  “The last,” they agreed, halfheartedly clinking mugs together, all save the Khara.

  Emmius, keenly aware of his youth even among the last, could not help but laugh, though it was not a laugh of mirth.

  “Is it amusing?” said the Khara.

  “He laughs because he is young,” said the green. “He may outlive us all. He may be one of the very last. Cursed, perhaps, with enduring in a dead world.”

  “I doubt it,” Alakim muttered under his breath.

  Play continued, and Emmius kept winning. With each win, his troopmates became more skeptical, the green became more suspicious, and the Khara became more still and more silent.

  It happened suddenly, when Emmius at last lost a hand. He laid down his cards, whereupon the green observed that he could have won had he noticed that two of his cards were backwards. It was the Khara who won, and Alakim would later reflect that it was the incompetence of the suspected cheater, rather than the suspicion of cheating itself, that proved the last straw. Perhaps the Khara thought it all an act and believed that Emmius took the rest of them for fools.

  The table toppled to one side as the huge white surged to his feet, and he held Emmius’s neck in his grasp before any save the grey could react. Two of her firearms were trained on him before the table hit the floor.

  The murmur of conversation throughout the rest of the roadhouse stilled, leaving only the desperate wind rattling the window shutters.

  “This brown is a cheat,” growled the Khara. Only then did Emmius comprehend what was happening to him. His eyes widened in surprise and he pawed feebly at the powerful hand around his throat.

  “Calm yourself,” said Alakim, the only one of them who had remained in his chair. He kept his hands folded in his lap. “Look at him. He’s too stupid to cheat.”

  “But you aren’t,” said the Khara. He tightened his grip until Emmius made choking sounds.

  Alakim’s eyes narrowed at this. “Be reasonable.” He gestured to the side, where the small grey stood with her weapons ready to fire.

  “Shoot me with bullets?” said the Khara with scorn. “I am a sand skate, outsider.” Thick plates of pale chitin armored most of his body; and he knew as well as the rest of them that the grey’s small-caliber firearms wouldn’t penetrate. He didn’t know that she could easily shoot his eyes out instead.

  “Calm yourself, Joseph!” said the green. “This will make trouble for the Khara. Is he worth it?” These words had an effect. The Khara paused to consider them, and that was when the front door flew open. Aided by the wind, it struck the wall with enough force to make the entire roadhouse shudder. A gust of cold sand flurried into the room, billowing the long robes of the figure who stood in the entrance, outlined by the harsh brightness outside.

  The newcomer stepped in, and shock rippled throughout the room as those within understood that this person was a color priest. It wore a painted mask and saffron robes trimmed with rainbows. It was not a tall or imposing figure, but that did not matter in the least. Not with a color priest.

  The figure paused for a moment, then turned to the door and struggled to shut it against the wind. For a full five seconds, the lone color priest fought the frigid gusts, and at last succeeded in securing the door and returning the room to dim stillness.

  He—for now they all noticed his orange spines—turned to face the interior of the roadhouse. The curious, watchful expression painted on the wooden mask seemed to smite those within with such force that most of them flinched back. The color priest swiveled, scanning them with unseen eyes, and the mask’s intense gaze settled at last upon the upset table in the corner of the room, the Khara with his hand about Emmius’s neck, and the grey ready to shoot.

  His laughter, a wild high cackle of mirth, struck unease into the hearts of those in the roadhouse. An orange-spined hand swept toward the upturned table in a flurry of rainbow cloth. “Dragonmarked,” he said with a young voice, “I am here for you.” He paused. “But I see you’re in the middle of something. I’ll wait.” He giggled and assumed a patient stance.

  “Oh,” said Emmius in a hoarse whisper. “That’s me.” He tapped the Khara on his arm.

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  “You have to let him go now, Joseph,” said the green. “A color priest is here for him.”

  Joseph of the Khara growled in frustration. “Color priests.” He spat onto the dusty planks. His arda flickered with white light; a breeze stirred the air in the roadhouse. His slanted eyes turned to the color priest watching from the door. “They have no authority anymore. Not at the end of the world.” The color priest shrugged slightly and tittered a faint laugh. Joseph of the Khara continued. “I’m not going to do something because an insane relic of an extinct order in a godless world asks me to.”

  “To be exact, he didn’t ask anything of you, much less request it,” said Alakim, still sitting relaxed in his chair.

  “Woah!” said Emmius, his eyes widening as he tried to turn his head to look at the newcomer. “Is that, like, one of those color priests? Woah, crazy.”

  “So they’re dragon marks,” Alakim continued. “Did you bond to a dragon? That would explain the lucky streak, I suppose.”

  “Yeah,” said Emmius. “I’ve been trying to find out wh—ack!”

  Joseph tightened his grip, cutting off Emmius’s words.

  “That’s enough,” said the green. She took a step toward the Khara, but at that moment a new sound arose in the room—a thin, high, reedy note. It quavered in the air, stilling everyone in the roadhouse. It slid down in pitch, slow at first, then faster, its keening clarity such that its descent seemed like a nearly physical sensation to those listening, a cold knife sliding down the spine. Then the tone leapt up. It fluttered, it danced, and only after several moments did the listeners understand that this was some strange kind of music.

  It was, of course, the color priest. He stood by the door just as before, only now he held a long reed instrument in his hands. The top end disappeared under his mask, which caused it to tilt upward, and the effect of its wide-eyed gaze was only amplified and made more unnerving by the music, the way it gazed up at the ceiling and seemingly beyond into the infinite wilds.

  The music entranced every daimon in the roadhouse. The cook came out of the back room to listen. It began to pick up; it became a dance, a slow reel, eerie and strange. The color priest stepped to one side as though pulled off balance, and most of the room swayed with him. He tilted away to the other side as though shoved by the music, and the room tilted with him.

  Smile, said the music. But not because you are happy. Laugh, said the music. But not because something is funny. Dance, said the music. Drink and be merry—or at least, don’t despair. This is not the end.

  The sounds of the zurna swam through the thick smoky air like invisible serpents, coiling their power around all who heard, nudging thoughts, stirring ideas, dredging memories.

  No, thought Alakim. No, not the end, nor my work meaningless. ‘Why the hells not?’ Is that what I said? I should have said, ‘Because to create is to be like the gods, and in a world without gods the duty falls to us. And it is a duty that must be done, end of the world or no.’

  The end, thought Joseph of the Khara. Spoken of in the unrestful wind, awhisper on the air every eve and morn, aglimmer in the stars by frost of night. Yet if this is so, why not laugh? What use to do otherwise? If nothing matters—and surely nothing matters now—what profit in gloom? Why not…smile, and face the end like a man? Like the gods.

  Whoa, thought Emmius. This music is, like, crazy, man.

  Others in the roadhouse joined in with the music according to their talents. A red produced a thin drum from her pack and thrummed a beat upon it. A grey near the door took up his stringed traveling viol and harmonized. Emmius, easily able to slip out of the loosened grip of the distracted Khara, seized his fray-stringed guitar in the corner. Several others rang their arda, spines or crystals aglow in the musty air, joining together in an ethereal chorus like the pure transmutation of souls into sound. Thanks to the strange influence of the color priest’s music, their makeshift ensemble was perfect.

  After an indeterminate amount of time, everyone in the roadhouse was drinking, laughing, perhaps dancing, perhaps ringing their arda. But at length, the music of the color priest dwindled to an end. He lowered the zurna and replaced it inside his robes. He straightened his mask, and orange eyes flashed bright behind that watchful wooden gaze. His spines flared, the power of his arda shaping thought, shaping memory and being, shaping perception and thus shaping whole worlds.

  The music dwindled; the laughter stilled. For a moment their thoughts were a single admixture, two dozen draughts poured into one barrel. For a moment, they all knew the same thing: that the color priest would speak, and that his words would be the words of Truth.

  Silence reigned, except for the white who kept drumming, and the yellow in one corner who thumped a steady rhythm on his creaky table.

  The color priest spoke, and no one noticed or cared that his voice was that of one barely grown. His singsong words fell rhythmically on the smoky air, and he burned orange like a smoky sunset.

  When the streets are still

  And the birdsong fades

  And doors creak on their hinges

  At the close of day

  We will seek ourselves a tale

  As elusive as the story

  Of the glory that you find

  In a dream of finding glory.

  We see the Grim King’s teeth at night

  Through shattering skies

  With open wide kaleidoscope eyes

  And the birds fall like stars

  People changing like clouds

  Raining skycraft aflame

  In a cemetery town.

  All writ on bloody books ablaze:

  Our very songs—our very names

  Nor all our tears wash out a word of it

  Like water that we cannot change

  To either blood or wine

  We need more faith than what I thought,

  But we haven’t got the time.

  The color priest staggered when he had finished, as though he had been holding a great weight that was suddenly removed. He was laughing, laughing. He flicked a hand and a thought at Emmius. Come. He turned back to the door, turned the latch, and was bowled over by the force of the wind, which slammed the door into his mask with a hearty thock of wood against wood.

  Emmius helped the color priest to his feet, and together they staggered out of the roadhouse at Outpost 8.

  Out in the cold bright wind, the color priest introduced himself to Emmius once he overcame his fit of mirth. “I’m Derxis.”

  “Hey. So like what did you want to talk to me about?”

  “Firstly,” said Derxis, “about your tattoos.”

  “Oh!” said Emmius. “Do you know what they say?”

  Derxis had intended to tell Emmius that he should stop asking the dragons about that because he was pissing them off. Instead, he said: “Oh, yes. I can read it clearly. It says…” He made a show of examining the shirtless Emmius. “That you should never be afraid to talk to creatures bigger than you. And that you should only play cards or dice with friends. And that you should only believe half of the things I say, including this, but you should always flip a coin to tell which half. “

  Emmius gaped at Derxis in amazement, then down at the intricate dark tattoos.

  “And also,” said Derxis, walking around Emmius to look at his back, “that nothing is impossible.”

  Emmius’s face resumed its natural gormless expression. “That can’t be right. I do nothing, like, all the time.”

  Now it was Derxis’s turn to have a look of amazement, though his mask ensured that no one saw. Then he laughed, and Emmius laughed with him. They set off together into the cold, bright desert.

  Back in the roadhouse, things gradually returned to a semblance of normalcy. The atmosphere would never again be just as it had been, for the people in the roadhouse had changed. They laughed more. They smiled more. Their knowledge of the end of the world had not changed, but their response to it had shifted.

  Joseph the Khara apologized as he righted the table. It was agreed that the entire day’s worth of games was more or less void thanks to a dragon-blood player, and furthermore it soon became clear that Emmius had wandered off into the desert with the color priest. His winnings were therefore redistributed between the remaining players.

  Alakim leaned over to his grey security officer at one point and said, “Don’t let him back in the troupe.”