City of Stairs (The Divine Cities, #1)(92)

“Are you all right?” he asks. He touches the side of her head. “You have lost some hair. …”

“What damned miracle,” she pants, “was that?”

“No miracle,” he says. He looks back at the spreading fire. “A mine. Incendiary, I think, or it did not ignite properly.”

“What the hells is going on over there?” shouts Mulaghesh’s voice.

Somewhere in the darkness, many tiny voices chitter.

Flames rush across the dust on the floor, hop onto one shelf, burrow into the blanket-wrapped corpse.

“We need to leave,” says Sigrud. “This place, so dry and old—it will burn down in moments.”

Shara looks out at the growing flames. The top of the shelf on her right is almost completely ablaze. “There was a blank space,” she murmurs, “on that shelf ahead. Something has been stolen.” She tries to point; her finger drunkenly wanders to the ground.

“We need to leave,” says Sigrud again.

There are pops out in the darkness. Something screeches in the fire.

“What in shitting hells is going on over there?” bellows Mulaghesh.

Shara looks at Sigrud. She nods.

He effortlessly hauls her up onto one of his shoulders. “We are leaving!” he shouts to Mulaghesh.

Sigrud sprints down the aisle, turns right, and makes a beeline for the stone door frame.

A ruby red glow filters through the forest of towering shelves.

Decades, thinks Shara. Centuries. More.

Gone. All gone.

*

Sigrud sets Shara down when they’re back in the Seat of the World.

She coughs, then weakly asks, “How bad am I?”

He asks her to wiggle her fingers and toes. She does so. “Good,” he says. “Mostly. Lost a lot of an eyebrow. Some hair. And your face is red. But not burned—not seriously. You are lucky.” He looks up at the inferno raging on the other side of the stone door frame. “I do not think whoever set that trap knew what they were doing. But when I heard it …” He shakes his head. “Only one thing in the world sounds like that.”

Mulaghesh leans on one of her soldiers and, in between hacks, attempts to light another cigarillo. “So the sons of bitches mined the Warehouse? Just in case we followed?”

A broiling heat comes pouring through the stone door frame.

At every moment, thinks Shara, they’ve been one step ahead of me.

“Let’s cave that damn tunnel in,” says Shara, “and be done with this damned place.”

*

In the darkness of the Warehouse, legends and treasures wither and die in the flames. Thousands of books turn to curling ash. Paintings are eaten by flame from the inside out. Wax pools on the floor, running down from the many candles stacked across the shelves, and makes a twisted rainbow across the wooden slats. In some of the deeper shadows, invisible voices sob in grief.

Yet not all the items meet destruction.

A large clay jug sits on a shelf, bathing in heat. Upon its glazed surface are many delicate black brushstrokes: sigils of power, of containment, of tethering.

In the raging heat, the ink bubbles, cracks, and fades. The wax seal around its cork runs and drips down its side.

Something within the bottle begins growling, slowly realizing its prison is fading away.

The jug begins to tip back and forth. It plummets off its shelf to shatter on the ground.

The jug erupts in darkness. Its contents expand rapidly, sending shelves toppling like dominos. The jug’s prisoner keeps growing until its top nearly touches the ceiling of the Warehouse.

One yellow eye takes in the flames, the smoke, the burning shelves.

A high-pitched voice shrieks in victorious rage: Free! Free at last! Free at last!





I am gentle with you, my children, for I love you.

But love and gentleness do not breed purity: purity is earned through hardship and punishment and edification. So I have made these holy beings to help you find your way, and teach you the lessons I cannot bear to:

Ukma, sky-strider and wall-walker, watcher and whisperer. He will see the weaknesses in you that you cannot, and he will make you fight them until you rise above yourself.

Usina, traveler and wanderer, window-creeper and ash-woman. Beware the poor wretch you mistreat, for it may be Usina, and her vengeance is long and painful.

And for those who cannot be purified, who will not repent, who will not know the shame that lives in all our hearts, there is Urav, sea-beast and river-swimmer, he of many teeth and the one bright eye, dweller of dark places. For those sinners who are blind to light, they will spend eternity within his belly, burning under his scornful gaze, until they understand and know my righteousness, my forgiveness, and my love.

—The Kolkashtava, Book Three





You Will Know Pain


Vod Drinsky sits on the banks of the Solda and tries to convince himself he is not as drunk as he feels. He has had most of a jug of plum wine, and he tells himself that if he was quite drunk then the wine would start to taste thick and sour, but so far the wine continues to taste quite terribly beautiful and sweet to his tongue. And he needs the wine to survive in the cold—why, look at how his breath frosts! Look at the huge ice floes in the Solda, the way the black water bubbles against the spots as thin and clear as glass! A cold night this is, so he thinks he should be forgiven his indulgence, yes?