Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades(92)

Tan stood when the work was complete, walked to the edge of the small pit, nodded once, and gestured toward the hole. “Get in.”

Kaden hesitated.

“Get in,” the older monk said again.

Kaden lowered himself gingerly into the hole. Once he’d found his footing on the uneven bottom, he could just peer over the lip. The faces of a few of the younger monks peered out the open windows of the refectory. Penance was a commonplace at Ashk’lan, but Tan had never had a pupil before, and evidently they took some sort of interest in Kaden’s fate. They didn’t have to wait long to satisfy their curiosity. The monk hefted the shovel and, without regard for Kaden’s eyes or ears, started tossing earth back into the hole.

It took him a tenth of the time to fill the hole that it had taken Kaden to dig it. When Kaden lifted a hand to brush the dirt from his eyes Tan shook his head.

“Keep your arms at your sides,” he said without breaking the steady rhythm of pitching and shoveling.

As the dirt inched above Kaden’s chin, he started to object. A fresh shovelful caught him square in the open mouth, and before he could finish coughing or spitting, Tan had packed the earth up to just below his nose. Jagged stones gouged into his flesh in a dozen places. The heavy dirt might have been lead, and he felt the panic rise inside him. He couldn’t move his arms or legs, couldn’t even take a full breath. He might die here, he realized. If his umial threw just a few more shovels of earth over his head, he would suffocate beneath the gravelly soil, unable to breathe, to move, to scream.

He closed his eyes and let his mind float. Fear is a dream, he told himself. Pain is a dream. The rising flood of panic inside him subsided. He took a shallow breath through his nose, concentrating on the feel of the air in his lungs. With his eyes still closed, he held the breath for seven heartbeats, then exhaled slowly, relaxing his body as the air escaped. The fear drained out through his feet, through his fingertips, leaching into the soil around him until he was calm once more. The mind learned from the body, and if he kept his body still, if he refused to struggle, he could keep his mind still as well.

He opened his eyes to find Tan regarding him with a steady, low-lidded gaze. Kaden thought his umial might speak, if only to taunt him or make some final, gnomic command. Instead, the monk hefted the shovel over his shoulder and turned away without a word, leaving his pupil buried to his upper lip in the hard and unyielding soil.

For a while Kaden was alone. The sounds of the refectory rose, then fell as the monks departed from the evening meal, bound for the meditation hall or the solitude of their own cells. The large stone building blocked any view of the setting sun, but gradually the sky darkened from blue to bruised, and the night wind came, cold and biting, down off the mountains to blow grit and dirt in his face.

For a long time, all Kaden could think about was the pressure, the constant, enveloping sense of weight against his flesh, constricting his chest whenever he tried to take a breath. It was impossible to move, even to shift, and the muscles of his legs and lower back soon began to spasm, protesting against the confinement. As the air and the earth chilled, he found himself shivering uncontrollably.

Calm, he told himself, taking a shallow breath. This is not a knife in the gut or a noose around the neck. It is not torture. It is only earth. Valyn probably endures far worse every day of his training.

When he finally managed to still the quivering of his body, the fear came. He had not really thought about the mangled goat for some time. Whatever was killing the flock had yet to venture within miles of the monastery, and yet … the saama’an of the shattered skull grew unbidden in his mind. Here, immobile, buried to the lip in earth, Kaden would make easier prey than the most decrepit goat. The thing had not attacked a man, but Tan and Scial Nin had insisted it might be dangerous, insisted the acolytes and novices travel in pairs.

It was almost full dark when Kaden heard the quiet crunch of gravel behind him. It was impossible to turn. He could barely shift his head at all, and the effort sent a stabbing pain down his neck and into his back. It could be Tan, he told himself, trying to believe that his umial had returned to dig him out, and yet, it seemed unlikely that the older monk would release him before the night bell. Kaden opened his mouth to shout, to demand to know who was approaching, but dirt poured in, thick on his tongue, threatening to gag him. His heart strained against the weight of the earth, heedless of his attempts to slow it.

The steps drew closer, then halted behind him. Kaden managed to cough, clearing the grit from his throat, but he still couldn’t speak. A hand came down on his scalp, pulling his head back, back, until he was staring at the night sky. Someone was crouching over him, a shock of curling hair—