An empty gaze cannot accuse. But the emptiness was itself an accusation. Wasn’t it?
When Saddic looked upon the city they’d found in the heart of the Glass Desert, he believed he was seeing the structure of his very own mind, a pattern writ on a colossal scale, but in its crystalline form it was nevertheless the same as that which was encased in his own skull. Seeking proof of this notion, he’d left the others behind, even Badalle, and set out to explore, not from street to street, but downward.
He soon discovered that most of the city was below ground. The crystals had settled deep roots, and whatever light was trapped within prismatic walls up above sent down deeper, softer hues that flowed like water. The air was cool, tasteless, neither dry nor damp. He felt as if he walked a world between breaths, moving through that momentary pause that hovered, motionless on all sides, and not even the muted slap of his bare feet could break this sense of eternal hesitation.
Vast caverns waited at the very base, a dozen or more levels down from the surface. Crystal walls and domed ceilings, and as Saddic edged into the first of these, he understood the secret purpose of this city. It wasn’t enough to build a place in which to live, a place with the comforting crowds of one’s own kind. It wasn’t even enough to fashion things of beauty out of mundane necessity-the pretty fountains, the perfect orchards with their perfect rows of ancient trees, the rooms of startling light as the sun’s glow was trapped and given new flavours, the tall statues of tusked demons with their stern yet resolved expressions and the magical way the sun made vertical pupils in those glittering eyes-as if the statues watched still, alive inside the precise angles of translucent stone. None of these were sufficient reason for building this city. The revelation of the true secret was down here, locked away and destined to survive until oblivion itself came to devour the sun.
Above on the surface, the buildings, the domes and spires and tilted towers; the rooms and the plazas and spiral staircases: they each marked the perfect placement of a single, enormous machine. A machine of light and colours. But not just light, not just colours.
Saddic walked into the cavern, breathless with wonder.
Each day, each moment he could manage, Saddic listened to the words of Badalle. He listened and he watched and all that he heard and all that he saw passed through his surface, shifted and bounced, curled and bent until reaching the caverns of his memory, where they re-formed, precise and exact, destined to live on, secure in perfection-for as long as Saddic himself remained alive.
But this city had defeated mortality and, he realized, it had defeated time as well.
Far above, the sun’s light fed the city’s memories-all the life it had once held within its chambers and halls, on its streets and in the squares with their fountains. The chaotic angles of the walls around him flowed with scenes, murky and ghostly-not of Rutt and the children now dwelling above, but of the inhabitants of long, long ago, persisting here for all eternity.
They were tall, with skin the colour of lichen. Their lower jaws bore tusks that rose up to frame the thin-lipped mouths. Men and women both wore long, loose clothing, dyed in deep but vibrant colours. They wore braided belts of grey leather, weaponless, and nowhere could Saddic see armour. This was a city of peace, and everywhere there was water. Flowing down building walls, swirling in pools surrounding fountains. Blossom-filled gardens bled their riotous colours into rooms and down colonnaded hallways.
Saddic walked through cavern after cavern, seeing all that had once been, but nowhere could he find those moments that must have preceded the city’s death-or, rather, the fall of the tusked people and their rich culture. Invaders? Desert savages? He could find nothing but the succession of seemingly endless days of perfection and tranquillity.
The scenes seemed to seep into his mind, as if impressing themselves upon his own crystalline brain, and he began to comprehend details of things he had no way of knowing. He came to discover the city’s name. He saw the likeness in the statues and realized that they all belonged to the same individual, and that variations arose solely from the eyes of the sculptors and their skill as artists. And, as he drew closer to what he knew was the centre of the city, to its most cherished heart, he now saw other creatures. In what seemed peaceful co-existence, huge two-legged reptiles began appearing in scenes.
These were the ones Badalle had spoken about. The ones who had found the city, but Saddic now knew more than she did. They’d found it, yes, but it had not been empty. In finding it, they found the ones who dwelt in it, who called it their home.
They were called Jaghut. Returned to this way of living, in the cities they had abandoned long before. They were drawn to a humble man, a half-blood. They were drawn to his great machine of memories, this place he made by his own hand. What he did not possess within him, he built around him. To trap all that he was.