One hundred golden oars rose and fell in perfect unison, driving the blindingly gilt imperial galley up the Great River. The freshly risen sun was almost directly behind the galley, making the eyes of any who were so impertinent as to try and sneak a glance at their ruler water at the brightness, the glory of flashing gold and water’s sparkle. Irobus, Emperor of Subori, sat in a golden chair at the square-ended prow of the galley, so that his eyes might be the first to behold the tomb.

The eyes of the slaves who had toiled to build it did not signify, of course.

The galley approached the tomb in silence, save for the muted plash of oars biting into the river’s back. The Chorus of Adoration stood behind the emperor, silent, gagged with black silk ribbons as they had been since his concubine’s death. For a decade the greatest voices in the empire had been silenced, and would remain so until the concubine was laid to her final rest.

Irobus sat utterly still on his golden throne, the nearly featureless golden mask hiding his face from the world. Nearly featureless – save for the single diamond tear at the corner of the left eye. He had worn the mask for as long as the Chorus had worn their gags. Just as no mortal ear should hear the Chorus’s nearly inhuman beauty while the Concubine Hesia lay in state, so no mortal eye could be allowed to behold the emperor’s face in its grief.

It was a heavy mask, to suit the dead weight of his heavy soul, and even after a decade he had not grown accustomed to its weight.

As he approached the Tomb, his eyes roamed hungrily over the slowly revealed façade. Irobus was an intelligent man, a crafty man, a learned man, but he had no taste or talent for poetics. He had never regretted the lack – had never considered it a lack at all, not even when he found himself unable to articulate what the death of Hesia had done to him. What need to articulate, to speak of what was already so bitterly felt? But when he saw what his will had wrought there in the Targus Cliffs, he wished that he had some way to express the feeling it engendered in him. It spoke immediately and directly to his soul – how the blank stone had been transformed into an ethereal representation of his love’s beauty, and at the same time a stark, grim testament to the horrific loss of her.

As the galley neared the tomb’s quay, Irobus reached up and removed his mask of mourning, and let it slip heedlessly into the river’s green waters. The Chorus at once removed their gags, wetted their throats with honeyed water from stoppered crystal vials, and began to sing.

~ ~ ~

When the emperor arrived on his golden, square-ended galley, the ten thousand workers were already face-down in the dust in long rows across the river from the tomb. A thousand silent killers knelt beside their charges, eyes on the dust at their knees, and hands on the grips of their swords. The retractable bridge that Anomus had designed to connect the worksite to the worker’s camp was drawn back so as not to impede the emperor’s debarkation.

Anomus lay prostrate on the stone quay that thrust out into the river, the sole entrance to the Concubine’s Tomb standing open behind him, waiting to welcome the emperor and his entourage. Anomus knew the tomb was a thing of beauty, unlike anything that had ever existed in the empire or beyond. He only hoped that its stark difference from all that had gone before did not make the emperor recoil. Carved from the living stone of the cliff, he had made the façade into a tapestry of soaring arches and delicate lacework – beautiful, graceful, sorrowful. A beautiful dream that dies does not lose its beauty, after all. In fact, it becomes incorruptible, beyond the reach of time itself to tarnish. The soaring passion that dies in the fire of a fever soars on in memory, inviolate if unattainable. It soars on in memory. Such had been the emperor’s love for his concubine, and so Anomus had let it soar in stone.

And, because it would be a lie to ignore what had happened to that passion, Anomus had not neglected to show the brutal termination of that beauty in calculated features of the façade. If one looked carefully and long, the lace and filigree both hid and spelled out the first line of the Subori hymn for the dead:

SILENT EVERMORE

Anomus had done what was humanly possible to translate the emperor’s love and loss into stone. No living man or woman could have done a better job of it, that much he was convinced of. But men were fickle, and none more so than the first among them, the emperor. Irobus might well disagree, and emperors are never wrong, even when they are not right.

When Anomus heard the approaching Chorus give voice, he knew that he had succeeded. That he would not be executed this day for failure. That his labors were truly at an end. Relief flooded through him, making his limbs tremble as he lay on the stone.

Eventually he heard footsteps approach, and stop before him.

“Rise, Architect,” said the emperor, and Anomus rose to his knees.

“Stand,” said the emperor, and fearfully, Anomus complied, though he kept his eyes cast towards Irobus’s golden sandals. Perhaps half a dozen men were allowed to stand erect so near the emperor’s self.

“Look us in the eye,” the emperor commanded, and inwardly quailing, Anomus did so. He saw the emperor’s haggard face, his deep-furrowed cheeks, the black kohl that circled his piercing yellow eyes.

Emperor Irobus took him in a delicate embrace, quick and shockingly unexpected. And then he made a motion and the Chorus silenced itself.

“You have done well,” the emperor said quietly. “Now, show us the interior.”

Anomus bowed low, and then led his emperor inside. The emperor’s vizier, his general of the left, and a dozen Eternal Guard trailed behind.

~ ~ ~

They explored the grand entrance with its solemn tomb guardians carved into massive yet graceful supporting columns. From there, Anomus led them to the Well, the soaring cylindrical space that was the heart of the concubine’s tomb. Twenty yards in diameter and sixty high, at first glance it seemed to be open to the sky. Such was another of the emperor’s stipulations. He wanted the gods themselves to look down on his love, to see what they had taken from the world, and weep for the loss. Anomus had complied to the best of his ability. Sheets of ironglass capped the Well – a sorcerous invention, and extremely rare and costly, ironglass was perfectly transparent and virtually indestructible. Anomus had created a lattice, a bed of steel, itself costly, and had set the ironglass within it. Only a small round space in the center of the Well’s opening was it truly open to the sky, for Anomus knew that desert storms would, over time, bury the Well in blown sand. Anomus had asked for, and received, the aid of an imperial sorcerer to cast spells of strength and purity on the Well’s ironglass lid – spells that would keep it clear of drifting sand and mundane dust, and rebuff any of either that would otherwise enter through the small opening, along with any living creature larger than a bird. Those spells would only fade upon the death of the sorcerer himself.

Anomus then led them to the upper chambers, where he had carved out what amounted to a palace for the love of the emperor’s life. Each chamber was near enough to the top of the cliffs that Anomus had been able to provide natural light to them, through the creation of light wells bored down from the surface. The wells were far too small for a man to gain entrance to the tomb; grave robbers would inevitably try their luck, of course, and Anomus wasn’t such a fool as to make their depredations any easier. But by cunning use of polished silver and bronze mirrors, he had been able to ensure each chamber of the upper tomb would have at least some natural light, for most of the day. To prevent the terrible dust and sandstorms from clogging the light wells, and eventually the tomb itself, he had covered each well with clear, thick sheets of quartz, stronger and much costlier than any mundane glasswork that was available.

They explored the upper tomb, and while the emperor was silent the whole while, Anomus believed he was pleased by what he found. From bed chamber to kitchen, to dining hall to bath, Anomus had labored to build what amounted to a lover’s nest for the emperor and his concubine in the afterlife. The Emperor exclaimed aloud when Anomus led them to the clockwork aviary, where a dozen birds in bronze and copper, gold and silver perched on trees fashioned from agate and jade, ivory and pearl. Each bird could be wound, and their internal machinery would run for hours.

Anomus was most nervous when he introduced the emperor to the garden. Within, he had cultivated a small, self-sustaining ecosystem, choosing plants and insects with care. While it was the brightest of all the chambers of the tomb, the light was still much less than most plants could accept, and so he had chosen with care mosses and ferns and other hardy dark-dwellers to populate the garden with. Then he had selected a few insects of the most beautiful and least harmful type, and over the course of years had built up a stable ecosystem. The greatest predator in the garden was a jeweled gecko that grew to the length of a little finger.

The garden even had an ornamental pool, fed by a concealed waterwheel and screw pump that transported the barest trickle up from the Great River below. It had taken Anomus ages to complete, and it was a feat of engineering that could be seen nowhere else in the empire – and it was all for a trifle in a tomb, that no one save they dead would ever see after that day.

The emperor sat on the ironwood bench that Anomus had installed beside the pool and stared into the shallow water, where tiny fish of red and gold swam endless circles.

“Anomus ip Garma, you are a worker of wonders,” said the emperor eventually, and Anomus bowed to the ground.

After the wonders of the upper tomb, the funerary chambers were somewhat anticlimactic. Their functions and religious natures dictated much, and Anomus had little say in how they were constructed or what they housed. The funerary chambers radiated outward into the bedrock from the Well in a half-moon, and were lightless. Two of the Eternal Guard walked before them, carrying lanterns.

As the emperor had stipulated, Anomus had eschewed the customary painted funerary murals for frieze work and delicate mosaics of all those things the Concubine had treasured most, or was known for. Depictions of the delicate morning blossom known as dawn’s breath replaced the traditional river lotus; where Hirag’s desert falcons would normally be found on a tomb’s walls, instead flew the nearly ephemeral, speedy-winged honey sippers. Cats replaced jackals as silent guardians. If anyone other than the emperor had ordered such substitutions, they would have faced the wrath of the imperial priesthoods. Anomus himself could have been put to death for creating them.

But this was the tomb of the emperor’s concubine, and in time he would join her in it. None dared gainsay him.

Eventually every corner of the tomb had been inspected, save the undertomb. Anomus hoped pointlessly that the emperor would forget about it, but such was not to be. Once everything had been seen at the river level and above, Irobus said a single word – ‘continue’ – and so Anomus led the party to the concealed door in the well. He opened it and the Eternal guard went before them with lanterns down the steps.

Soon enough they stood in the echoing depths of the dark vastness below the tomb, a space twelve feet tall, a hundred yards wide and three hundred deep, punctuated by regularly spaced pillars to keep what was above from collapsing below. The two lanterns had no chance of illuminating the vast, silent space.

Emperor Irobus stood tall and silent, surveying the space for interminable minutes, his face as much a mask as the one he had let the river take. Anomus stood nervously. A chill took him. Something was amiss. Perhaps he had somehow done something to displease Irobus? He had been given no instructions regarding the undertomb except that it should exist.

Was it possible they knew of the secret chamber, or worse, his offerings to the Old God within it?

Eventually the emperor raised one thin finger, and suddenly Anomus was seized by two of the Eternal Guards, faster than thought. Even then, Anomus did not struggle. What would be the use?

“Your majesty, what have I done to offend?” he cried out.

“Nothing, Anomus ip Garma. Nothing. You have done all that I have asked of you, and so much more.” A third Eternal Guard unsheathed his sword, but the emperor raised a finger once again, and the stone-faced man froze.

Irobus knelt before Anomus, and eyes searched eyes. Anomus did not know what his emperor looked for, or what he found. But when Anomus looked into the emperor’s eyes, he saw a deep, cold, sparkling madness. In that moment, Anomus knew he was a dead man. That he had been a dead man from the moment the emperor had tasked him to build his consort’s tomb.

“You have been a good and faithful servant,” said the emperor. “You have built a final resting place for my beloved that is without precedent, and when the priests inter her here in three months’ time, my heart will finally know a peace that has been impossible for me to attain for the last decade.” The emperor placed a cool hand on Anomus’s cheek. “You are without peer, a genius of the age. Which is why I cannot allow you to live. You must never be allowed to build anything that might rival what you have done here. I will not – I cannot - have Hesia’s final resting place eclipsed by some future creation of yours.”

“My emperor, I beg you, do not do this! Let your humble servant live. I will do anything. I will retire to the country, become a farmer, anything. I will never set one stone atop another again, I swear it!”

“You are correct. You will never again set one stone atop another. But this tomb will be nearly as much yours as it is hers, and eventually, mine. And all those who labored for you in its creation during their lives will continue to serve you after your death. No one as low-born as you has ever, or ever will, have such a tomb as this. That much your emperor gives you, in gratitude.”

“Merciful Irobus, pl-”

The small blade was as golden as everything else about the emperor’s person. Irobus’s hand was so much quicker than Anomus ever would have guessed. The cut across his neck was a small thing, no longer than a thumb. And yet it was enough to let his life’s blood come pouring out from the severed jugular.

The emperor stood, and placed his hand briefly atop Anomus’s head. Then he and his entourage walked away without a backward glance. When they were on the stairs, the two Eternal Guard who held his arms released him and followed. He fell to the floor. Futilely he put his hand to the slit jugular, but still the blood oozed out. Within moments the lanterns were gone, and he was alone and dying in the dark. A terrible coldness began to creep into his limbs, though his heart was filled with a burning, swift-winged rage.

I warned you, came the voice of the Faceless One, and Anomus’s spirit howled.

I am the god of vengeance. You have much to avenge, Architect. Even now all those thousands who slaved to build this tomb are being rewarded with the blade. So I offer you a choice between the peace of death, or vengeance. Be warned: if you choose My way, you must hew to My path, else I will withdraw My favor.

Anomus chose. As his life blood slowly leaked from him, and the world grew ever darker and colder, he chose.

“I do not choose peace,” he mouthed, for he had not the breath to speak. The Old God seemed to hear him nonetheless.

If you can reach my sanctum, then, you shall have what you desire.

Anomus found that he could not stand, and so he crawled. He crawled to the secret door that concealed the stairs down to the old god’s sanctuary. It was a pitiful, one-handed scrabble; he dared not use the hand that held back the tide of his heart’s blood. Behind him and above in the dark, he faintly heard the echoes of screams. The slaughter of the workers had begun.

In the darkness, he could not tell when his vision began to turn black, but he could and did feel the horrid dizziness that stole over him. Tears of rage and terror started from his eyes. It was with an inexpressible relief that he reached the undertomb’s wall. With a nearly superhuman effort he stilled the violent trembling in his fingers so that he could search the wall for the hidden catch that would open the door. A horrible rushing tide was building in his ears, and he knew it was his heart about to stop for lack of anything to pump.

He cried out in desperate relief when he found the catch. He forced the door open, but spent the last of his strength in doing so. He collapsed at the head of the stairs, his body numb and his thoughts slowing, slowing, along with his heart.

You must make it to the foot of the stairs, mortal, or all is for naught.

Anomus knew without a shadow of a doubt that he could never crawl so far. So, with the utter last of his strength, he dragged himself forward and let himself tumble headlong down the stairs.

His final, fading thought was the hope that it would be enough.