The Valley of the Gods

by Phil Tucker

  Kish gave a relieved laugh. “This is the happiest I’ve seen you since we visited the netherworld, Sisu. Now I know how to advise your future wife on what makes you happy: allow you to spend time in her netherworld or welcome you to her valley filled with gold. You’ll be easy to please.”

  Sisu gave a mocking bow, spun on his heel and began marching up the steep valley toward the distant top. “I refuse to be drawn in by your crude approximations of humor. Come on. Let’s find some gold pebbles as souvenirs.”

  Acharsis fell in with Jarek as they followed after. His friend kept looking about them with pursed lips, brow furrowed. “A thousand demons gone. And within the last two decades.”

  “If your demon’s telling the truth,” said Jarek.

  “I think she is. Though whether she’s telling us everything she knows is another matter. Let’s try rephrasing my question. Anscythia! Where are the other demons right now?”

  The demon gave him a dour look. “I have already answered your question once.”

  “I’m demanding you answer it anew. Where are they?”

  “I have spent these past nineteen years following in your steps, sweet master. How should I know?”

  “She’s as good if not better than you are at not answering questions,” said Jarek.

  “For a third time, I command you: tell me where the other demons are.”

  Anscythia grimaced, then reached up with both hands and took hold of her lower jaw, long fingers curling over her teeth and sliding under her tongue. With a shriek she tore her jaw free, pulling it out by the roots, tearing muscle and skin with a frightful jerk. Blood sprayed down her front and then thickened and stopped. Her tongue lolled down the front of her throat, and she tossed her jawbone at Acharsis.

  Jarek stepped away, recoiling from the bloody bone, but Acharsis snatched it out of the air. “You think to evade my question so easily?”

  “Easily?” asked Jarek. “She tore her damn jaw out. I don’t think that’s easy.”

  “For her it might be.” Acharsis held up her lower jaw. Her teeth gleamed in the high mountain light. “I’ll keep this. You’ll regret the day you gave me a part of yourself.”

  Anscythia laughed, the sound clotted and part scream, bloody chunks bursting out of her gullet as her tongue flapped in place.

  Jarek patted Acharsis on the shoulder. “You did your best. Nobody could have guessed that you should have ordered her not to tear out her jaw first.”

  “Yes,” said Acharsis glumly. “Not an obvious first move. We’ll have to keep our eyes open and see if we can figure this one out ourselves.”

  They followed Kish and Sisu up the valley. A lonesome wind blew down its length, howling between the golden cliffs. Sisu kept swapping the gold stones in his pockets, opting for ever larger ones till he was staggering beneath their weight. Jarek ignored his entreaties for help, and with a glum sigh Sisu dropped a number of his rocks back to the ground and caught back up to them, promising that he’d roll a large boulder down the God’s Mountain on their way out.

  It was eerie. Despite the uniformity of the gold-covered landscape around them, the lack of enemies, and the constant howl of the wind throwing itself down the mountain, Jarek didn’t relax. Instead, he felt himself growing more tense, turning to glance behind them every few steps, sure that something here was completely off. That they were missing a fundamental clue as to the nature of this place. That at any moment they’d discover what it was, but by then it would be too late.

  On they trekked, hugging themselves against the cold, the air painfully dry and thin. Higher and higher beneath the brilliant sun, till at last, shielding his eyes with his hand, Jarek saw a second gate up ahead.

  It was humble in comparison to the first, perhaps two yards tall and set in the valley’s terminus where the cliff faces met. Made of silver and ivory, it was almost delicate in appearance, wrought with impossible skill, and set flush with the golden walls.

  “No guards,” called out Sisu, dropping back to their group. “Nobody at all.”

  “That’s got to be it,” said Kish. She bit her lower lip as she looked around, almost as if expecting a third gate to appear hidden high up in a fold of gold. “Right?”

  “Guess so,” said Acharsis. He led them all the way up to the gate, and there they stopped, a handful of yards from its surface, and examined its beauty.

  Jarek knew it was an object, stationary and immobile, but the moment his eyes fell upon any one part, that segment began to twist and move like animated vines, drawing his gaze further into its depths. What appeared from a distance as a smooth metallic surface was instead a complex depth, and the longer he studied any section the larger and more involved it appeared to become, as if he were sinking into a tunnel that grew ever larger as he fell into it.

  “Aargh,” said Sisu, tearing his eyes away. “It’s just like that scroll of Ekillos’. How are we supposed to open it if we can’t look at it?”

  Jarek couldn’t look away. The serpentine silver shapes that intertwined and parted before his gaze were utterly captivating. With effort, he turned his head, eyes trying to remain locked on the gate, until at last he wrenched his gaze free with a shudder. He dug his thumbs into his eyes, rubbed them vigorously, and then took Kish by the shoulders and turned her about too.

  “Acharsis?” Sisu stepped up to him. “You probably shouldn’t go too deep into it.”

  “Are you so sure?” asked Acharsis, voice distracted.

  “Ah, no.” Sisu looked at Jarek for help. “Are we?”

  “We’ve got to get through,” said Jarek. “But I don’t see any handles. Something tells me brute force won’t work.”

  “Should we ask for permission to enter?” asked Kish. “Call out to the goddess within?”

  “Can’t hurt,” said Jarek. He cupped his hands about his mouth. “Hello! I’m Jarek of Rekkidu, son of Alok. We seek entrance to the garden of paradise. Please open!”

  His voice echoed thinly from the valley walls, but nothing happened.

  “Acharsis?” Sisu hesitated, then tapped his shoulder. “Acharsis?”

  Jarek waved his hand before Acharsis’ face. There was no reaction. His friend was frozen, eyes wide, body tensed as if leaning into a strong headwind.

  “Acharsis?” He took hold of his friend’s arm and pulled it, softly at first and then more insistently. Acharsis didn’t so much fight him as simply stand rigid. Jarek picked him up and bodily turned him around, breaking his line of sight with the gate.

  Nothing happened. Acharsis remained frozen, staring out into the empty valley.

  “That’s not good,” said Sisu. “And where’d the fire bird go?”

  “What do you think, Jarek?” Kish waved her hand before Acharsis’ face and then peered into his eyes. “What can we do?”

  Jarek frowned. Acharsis was definitely alive, not frozen like a statue. He still breathed. Sweat ran down his temple as if he were under incredible strain. His eyes made minute side-to-side movements, as if he were watching something in the far distance.

  “Let’s give him a moment,” said Jarek. “See if this effect doesn’t fade.”

  It didn’t. A good while later Acharsis still stood there, trapped in the same pose.

  Jarek, Sisu and Kish sat close by, arms looped around their knees, watching and waiting in silence. It was hard to judge the passage of time, but the sun had already shifted two finger-widths toward the horizon.

  “What if the demons only emerge in this valley at night?” asked Sisu.

  Neither Jarek nor Kish responded.

  “Or what if the demons are all contained within that gate?” Sisu shifted his weight uneasily. “What if they stole Acharsis’ soul?”

  “Sisu,” said Kish angrily. “You’re not helping.”

  “It’s better than just sitting here. We’ve given him a decent amount of time. He’s still just standing there trembling and covered in sweat. It doesn’t look like he’s getting any better.”

  “Sisu�
�s right,” said Jarek, climbing to his feet. His hips and ankles hurt from having sat on gold for so long. “We’re going to have to help him more directly.” So saying, he stepped up to Acharsis and slapped him hard across the face.

  His friend didn’t even flinch. His cheek burned a bright red, his eyes filled with tears, but he didn’t otherwise react.

  “Damn,” muttered Jarek. Hands on his hips, he looked down the length of the valley, up at the sky, then back toward the edge of the gate. Nothing had changed. “I’d pull him away, but I don’t know if that’d hurt him.”

  “So?” asked Sisu, his voice tense with fear. “What do we do?”

  “I’m going in after him,” said Jarek, squaring his shoulders.

  “Wait,” said Kish.

  “No, no, no,” said Sisu at the same time. “That’s a bad idea.”

  But Jarek ignored them and stared at the gate, at those serpentine lines that immediately began to writhe and slide over each other. The longer he looked, the more depth he noticed, as if the gate were but the uppermost layer of a latticework that extended down the throat of a deep well. Shadowed bands coiled beneath the exterior, with more beneath those; Jarek felt himself falling into that well, his very mind sucked into the gate’s depths.

  Stay focused, he growled at himself as he penetrated deeper into the well’s mysteries. This is just a damn gate, by Alok’s stones. Don’t let it fool you. Yet the patterns were so mesmerizing. In their very complexity there seemed to be a hint of some greater truth, some geometric revelation that spoke the same language as the stars and the leaping of a flame. Jarek felt his mind stretching to encompass it, to peel back the layers so that he could gaze upon the raw knowledge that existed at its very center.

  He gave himself a mental shake. Leave the great truths to the sages. He felt himself grow surly and defensive. The patterns frustrated him as much as they beguiled. Down he dove, deeper into shadow, till all was night about him. Now he sensed the sinuous passage of the bars and bands about him as one might the passage of eels swimming past in the depths of a river at night; intimations, hunches, half-glimpsed shadows.

  Where to? He felt lost, unable to navigate this void - until a flaming speck of wings flew up to him and circled him once before diving back down.

  The epiphling. Jarek followed after, until he sighted an end to the depths. There. The bottom, across which a scroll of sorts lay unfurled, glimmering with its own starlight, covered with such complex detail and imagery that even a glance threatened to suck him down even deeper into its pictograms.

  Before it hovered Acharsis and a dozen other souls, all of them staring vacuously at the scroll’s complexity. Jarek tore his eyes from the scroll. He knew down to his very bones that contained within it was a fragment of true divinity, a hint at the true nature of how their very world operated and how to gain power over it - but he eschewed that knowledge. He felt himself growling as he pushed it away. Instead, he focused on Acharsis, who floated before him like a ghost, the epiphling flapping around him face ineffectively.

  Speaking to him wouldn’t help. Instead, Jarek raised his Sky Hammer. When had he drawn it? How had it accompanied his spirit? No matter. He raised it, and found that in these dark depths it glowed with its own deific light. Gold shimmers rose from its meteoric head, and when he held it before Acharsis’ face, blocking his vision of the scroll, his friend blinked and cried out.

  That was enough. Jarek gripped him by the neck and hauled him back to the surface, his friend kicking and fighting him, protesting and struggling to get back to the scroll. Up they flew, faster and faster, the bars and bands of silver blurring past them with ever greater speed until with a cry they staggered and fell from where they’d been standing before the gate.

  “Jarek!” Kish’s cry broke the night and she was by his side, taking him by the arm and helping him rise as he struggled to gain his feet. Tears glimmered on her cheeks, he saw, reflecting the light of the moon which had risen raw and full to the side of the peak.

  “My head,” groaned Acharsis. “What did I drink?”

  Jarek inhaled deeply of the raw cold and then pulled Kish into his arms. She hugged him fiercely and then stepped back to punch him square in the chest.

  “You had me terrified!” She punched him again. “You know how long I had to watch you stand there, thinking you lost? Sisu and I tried to wrestle you away but you fought us. We thought - we thought—”

  He hugged her again and she rested her head on his shoulder. “It’s all right,” he said, voice a low rumble. “Had to fetch my idiot friend, is all.”

  “Idiot friend?” Acharsis stepped up alongside them. “After all I’ve done, that’s how you describe me? I engineered a new dynasty in Magan, I conceived of our voyage across the underworld, I’ve parleyed with lamassu and found a way into my dead father’s head, and that’s all I get? Idiot friend?”

  “Yeah,” said Jarek with a grin. “Standing like a fool before such an obvious trap. If it wasn’t for your fire chickadee -”.”

  “Epiphling,” said Acharsis. “Though I think he deserves a better name. And I’ll have you know that first, I am unwilling to debate my mental merits with someone unable to even glimpse the heights from which I operate, and second, that without copious quantities of beer I’d run—”

  “Hey,” said Sisu. “The gate! It’s open!”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Great Library was a wondrous building, a vast hallway filled with honeyed light that filtered down from the broad second floor galleries past the many support pillars to bathe the long tables of white stone that ran down the length of the great hall. Annara couldn’t help but stop at the building’s threshold and marvel; massive wooden bookcases ran down the length of the hall, each filled with ‘X’ shaped cubbies in which countless scrolls of papyri were stored, and which scented the very air with a delicate, fragrant musk that hinted at the ancient secrets and wealth of knowledge that they contained.

  Pebekkamen, less impressed, nudged her elbow, and with a start Annara recollected her mission and moved forward, her entrance preceded by the ten guards her regent had deemed appropriate given their perilous situation. Scholars and scribes looked up from their seats down the length of the tables, turned from the stands on which they were studying scrolls, and even drifted to the balconies of the second floor to gaze down at her in curiosity as she walked down the length of the hall.

  Such beauty! The floor was inlaid with polished white river stones, while bold geometric patterns were laid out in black and white along the base of the bookcases. The ceiling was arched and honeycombed with wondrous artistry, and every column was footed and topped with chalcedony that gleamed as if damp. At the far end of the library rose a steep flight of stairs that ended at a great statue of the lamassu, its mane plated in bronze and gold, its eyes covered in mirror shards so that they seemed to gleam with their own inner light.

  “My Lady Annara,” said an ascetic looking old man as he hurried up to her. “Regent Pebekkamen. You do my poor library far too much honor with your presence.” And he bowed so low he nearly pressed his brow to the floor.

  “It is I that am honored to stand amidst such riches, Master Neferhotep,” said Annara, and she meant it. “How many scrolls are there here?”

  He beamed. “Over five thousand, my lady. Some date back to the earliest dawn of time, and are accompanied by translations that are in turn translated into our modern language. We boast a wealth of knowledge, and can find authoritative tracts on every subject imaginable; geography, history, philosophy, religion, mathematics, medicine…”

  “Truly wondrous,” said Annara. “I must admit that I am but a poor reader, but you, I imagine you are so steeped in knowledge that your wealth must be incalculable.”

  Neferhotep did all but preen. “Well, I am not one to boast, but I have spent my entire life perusing, reading, and caring for the rarest texts in the world. Under my vigil, we have added over four hundred unique texts to our archives, ranging f
rom Khartisian skins to Dilmanian jade tablets. We have of course many River City clay tablets, which I imagine you might be interested in reading…?”

  Annara began to walk, the royal librarian falling in step with her as they passed one book case after another. “Actually, my interests are more to the future and safety of Magan….”

  “Most wise, most wise,” said Neferhotep.

  “…With a focus on the Kusuji, our neighbors to the south.”

  “Ah! Yes. Yes yes yes. The Kusuji. Fascinating. A terrible chapter in our history, and one that should stand as a lesson to us all! It heartens me to think that your mind bends toward such matters. Where can I be of assistance? Do you want to learn of their history, how they splintered away from Magan, or their conquest, when they came roaring back with flame and spear? Their politics, their military tactics, their geography…?”

  Annara fought to keep her excitement from showing on her face. “All very important, but my thoughts are focused rather on their own religion. Do they venerate the lamassu as we do? By what standard do they elevate their leaders and consider them divine?”

  “Ah yes! Now that is fascinating. The one silver lining when it comes to that century of being ruled by their pharaohs was how open their scribes and priests were with such secrets. We learned quite a lot, though some would say we are still missing core mysteries of the process. This way, please.”

  Annara cast a victorious glance at Pebekkamen, who all but rolled his eyes as he followed them up the stairs, pausing only to bow to the statue of the lamassu, then up to a second floor gallery where Neferhotep hurried to a bookcase and there drew down a series of scrolls which he laid upon a large desk.

  “Here, here. Look at this! My apologies for the decay of this papyrus, I’ll order it copied afresh immediately. Now. Let us see. Lovely, clear, crisp markings. One of my favorite scribes from that era, Perneb, such a lovely hand he had. Each hieroglyph a work of art.”

  Annara peered down at the incomprehensible columns of drawings, each of which depicted some abstraction of a bird, a face, a hand, perhaps a flowing stream or the like. Completely unlike the cuneiform writing of her own people. Yet even without being able to read the language she could divine something from the text; a great crimson slash wavered its way down the center of the page, rays of faded gold extending out from it in all directions through the rest of the scroll.