by Phil Tucker
Pebekkamen spat beer all over the cushions. “Announce - ask Ahktena - what?!”
Annara sighed. “Precisely.”
The regent rose to his feet, swayed, and then hurled his cup into the bushes, beer arcing out in the air. “Is the boy mad? Does he -”
“Pebekkamen, I can assure you I’ve already tried to change his mind. He is as stubborn as he is proud. Your job will be to keep him alive until I can return. Can I trust you to do that much?”
“And you’re going to Kusuj? You and what army? How do you intend -”
“I expect you to keep a tight rein on his activities, keep him moving, and to constantly change direction so as to not give away your true itinerary -”
“- you’re mad, woman, if you think you can -”
“- and see if you can’t keep him apart from Ahktena, whom, lest we forget, is the daughter of the queen who is trying to kill us all -”
“Kusuj? You’re really going there? Alone?”
Annara pressed her fingers into her temples. “Apparently.”
Pebekkamen sank down onto the cushions. “You can’t. Seven days? If you rode like the wind you could be at the border in five, and that’s assuming you avoid the dangers along the way. But even if you then pass the trial and become divine, how would you make it back in time…?”
Tears of frustration filled Annara’s eyes and she wiped them away angrily. “I don’t know, Pebekkamen. I don’t know. But I have to try. What else can I do? Sit here while my son gets himself killed? I’ve been abandoned by Acharsis, am saddled with a son who won’t listen to me and a regent who alternates between yelling and trying to drink the river dry. What else can I do but my best?”
Pebekkamen frowned at her but kept quiet.
Annara took a deep breath. “I’ll be heading out before dawn. I am placing the safety of my son in your hands. Can I trust you to remain sufficiently sober to take care of him?”
Pebekkamen looked at the cups strewn about the cushions and sighed. “And thus are the last dregs of joy sucked out of my life. Yes, yes, though the withdrawal may kill me. I swear by the lammasu that I won’t touch a drop until you return.”
“Good.” Annara rose to her feet. “You’d best start planning the expedition. I want as little left to Senacherib as possible.”
“And you? You intend to ask for a horse and simply ride forth alone?”
“No. I’ll be accompanied by a scribe who will tell me everything he knows about the Kusuji en route.”
“And a couple of soldiers, at least. Enough to protect you from errant monsters or all but the most determined of bandits.”
“Fine.” Annara felt a bone crushing weariness that made her own safety a matter of insignificant interest. “If it helps me get there, whatever you deem fit. As long as they don’t slow me down.”
Pebekkamen’s grin was that of a Golden Plains coyote. “Oh, they’ll keep up. Very well. I know just the men to ask. And - one more thing.”
Annara raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”
“You’re a damn fine woman, Lady Annara. I salute your madness.”
“Madness?”
His grin widened. “That’s what I’ll call it until you return.”
“And then what? You’ll call it wisdom, or genius?”
Pebekkamen’s grin widened. “No. If you pull this off, I’ll bend knee and call you by your proper title. Goddess.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Acharsis stepped forth into a garden. Despite the night that ruled the world outside, within it was twilight, though whether dusk or dawn Acharsis couldn’t tell. A faint mist hung in the air, subtle and softening the contours of the old trees that were bedecked in draperies of faded gold.
Everywhere there grew great fleshy white flowers, five-petalled and with stamens of luminous yellow in their cores. They hung in woven tapestries down the sides of the trees, or bloomed from dark bushes that were almost hidden by their profusion.
The air was heavy with their smell; as Acharsis stepped warily forth, he felt as if he strode into a bank of perfume, subtle and pervasive. He could feel no wind upon his cheek, but the clothes of gold that hung from the wizened trees unfurled and blew as if caught up in bad dreams or gusts of their own imaginings. Strangely, they did so slowly, as if he lay dying and watched them in his final moments, the passage of time nearly arrested moments before it ended altogether.
Suddenly he was sure he was alone, that he’d been separated from his companions, and he spun, certain he’d see the gate closed behind him, his friends disappeared. But there they stood. Obdurate Jarek. Callow Sisu. Fierce Kish. The epiphling flying in circles around their heads. They spoke, but no sound came from their mouths. It was as if they were underwater.
Turning back, Acharsis sought some evidence of a path and found none. The grass beneath his feet was dark and luxurious, the blades like daggers, bending with reluctance beneath his feet. Perfect beads of dew clung to each and every one, and soon his ankles and shins were wet.
No mountaintop garden, this. He was in some other realm entirely.
Throat tight, feeling as if each step took him deeper into a dream, Acharsis pressed into the garden, seeking apple trees. Each specimen he examined might have borne fruit, once, but no globes rotten or otherwise now hung from their branches. They looked more akin to olive trees, twisted and knotted by decades of storms and sun, than the apple trees he’d come to know in Khartis.
The beat of his heart was loud in his ears. The cloths of gold unfurled endlessly about him as the trees grew thicker. The white blooms seemed to yearn for him, stretching their petals in supplication.
Another spasm of fear. Acharsis turned, and this time his friends were gone. He stood alone between the trees. All sense of direction was gone from him. Which way would take him back to the gate? In the misty twilight, he had no idea.
There was no retreating from this place.
He pressed deeper into the grove.
The trees grew so closely together here that he had to reach out and part their boughs, to allow him to slip between their branches and thick leaves. His throat was tight, his mouth dry. The light and mist seemed to blanch the color from the world. All was subtle grays, browns, and faded greens.
The trees parted before him and Acharsis stepped into a small clearing. A young woman sat on a marble bench to one side beneath the spreading branches of an apple tree that bore fruit. The first and only one he’d seen. But the woman’s gaze pulled his own from the apples and down to her face.
She was solemn, her expression remote, her eyes large and soulful and her cheeks as red as the apples he sought. A garland of the white flowers adorned her head like a crown, and her red hair fell in loose braids down each shoulder, hinting at a former complexity now come to dissolution. Her shirt was intricately stitched with patterns unfamiliar to his eye, her sleeves rolled up to reveal her pale arms, her fingers interlaced in her lap.
She was in every way a mortal girl, yet anything but; the air about her was heavy with divinity, and Acharsis found himself unable to move forward. To speak. To break the silence that lay upon the glade like a benediction. Or a curse. He knew not.
Her gaze bored into his own. Her eyes were large, like those of an animal. Her nose was pert. She appeared perhaps just barely twenty. Young, but there was in her visage a doleful sense of weary patience that spoke of a far greater age; she could have sat there since time began, since the sun first broached the far horizon to spill its aureate rays across the world.
She didn’t move, this goddess. What had his father named her?
“Sumala,” said the goddess.
Her voice released him. Acharsis stumbled forward and caught his balance. She watched him with the same cold curiosity with which a child might watch a servant approach bearing a tray of treats she does not want.
“Greetings, goddess,” said Acharsis, licking his dry lips. He was in danger here. Danger that he did not yet understand but could not deny. Come, my wit, don’t fai
l me now. He spread his arms and executed his best courtly bow, favoring her with a smile even though her expression changed not a fraction. “I am Acharsis, son of Ekillos, once ruler of my own proud city but now fallen and as dust blown by the wind.”
Nothing flickered in those eyes, dark like shadowed, forgotten pools.
“I’ve journeyed far to reach you.” Acharsis took another tentative step toward her. “Across the lands of the dead. I’ve trembled in the shadows of Amubastis. I’ve hidden from Nekuul’s own gaze. I’ve conversed with my father, now fallen and greatly reduced. I’ve taken flight with demons to climb this mountain. I’ve swum to the depths of your guardian gate and been pulled back by the love of a true friend. I’ve wandered far, but always my eyes have strayed to your garden. To this glade. To you, Sumala.”
He stopped a half-dozen paces from her and lowered himself to his knees. The grass was wet against his skin. “If it please you, if you allow me, I would take one of your apples from the branches above your head. A rotten apple, so that I may right a wrong that is about to befall the living world.”
His words were swallowed by the shadows. A true wind this time did blow, and the boughs over them shuddered and swayed. Leaves like serrated spearheads fell, their tops waxen green, their underbellies pale like those of snakes, fluttering so that each color alternated in quick succession, making it seem that many more than the score that fell did rain down upon them.
Sumala watched him and was unmoved.
“Goddess,” said Acharsis, fighting to keep his tone confident. “How may I praise you, how may I worship, so that I may benefit of your largesse?”
She moved at long last, tilting her head so that it went from resting on one shoulder to the other, as if she wished to study him from another angle. “Praise me,” she said, and said no more.
Shit, thought Acharsis. He knew nothing of Sumala the goddess. Nothing of her mind or heart, her concerns or provinces. Having never left this garden, she had never been worshipped, had no rituals crafted to her name; never had sacrifices been made to her, sweet smoke rising in generous offerings to placate her ire or arouse her blessings.
How was he to praise her? How was he to know what to say, what to touch upon, what to commend?
A thought occurred to him then, and almost he laughed. If none had praised her before, then who was to judge if he erred? If no patterns were carved in stone, then his was a blank canvas on which to sketch as he saw fit.
Acharsis took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Sought to drink deep of whatever divine spark remained to him. Sought to summon what charm and grace had once been his. To light his words with his own fire, if that he still could do.
“Sumala, pale blossom, goddess of the glade, fell and lovely as the dawn. I praise thee, from your dolorous eye to your full lips. I dream of your hair, I lose myself in your embrace, your lips rouged with blood and your fingers careless with my soul. Sumala, whose feet leave imprints in the dew, I breathe for you as the flowers exhale their golden dust, yearning for life, for another day, another sun to warm my face. I tremble, knowing that I am but a shadow that passes before you, a flickering mortal who cannot help but fail. But here in this garden of sorrow,here in this garden of pain,here where once the gods did dance and laugh, where now rules only silence and memories, I come to you. To kneel in my flesh, my blood hot within my veins, my heart pounding, pounding, pounding. I bring you that divine spark of life that is mine, inimitably so, that precarious, fleeting, futile hope for something more that drives every mortal to test the boundaries of what is permissible in this world.”
Acharsis took a deep breath and smiled at her, gladly, foolishly, her impassivity driving him to despair. “Sumala. How long have you sat here in your own twilight, wondering, dreaming of the waking world? If you are but a dream, if you are cloaked in somber hues and your eyes see through me into the infinite, what can a sorrowful man such as myself do but worship at your altar? If I did have beasts of the field with me, I would sacrifice them to you, cut their flesh from their bones and burn them so that their sweet smoke might please you. If I had stones and the craft, I would build temples to you and fill them with voices raised in song, so that your name might echo from their fastness into eternity. But alas.”
He swallowed. “I have nothing but myself. This mind. This soul. This body. And with these three elements I do give you praise. I do offer myself unto you, oh Sumala of the garden. I lay myself at your feet, and ask for nothing more than your mercy.”
Silence. He might as well have preached to an outcropping of stone. He wanted to laugh, to cry. Had his words pleased her? He couldn’t tell. Offended? No sign of that either. Should he continue? Wait in silence for her judgement? In the dark depths of her eyes he saw no indication, no hint, no sign of favor or disfavor.
Acharsis took a deep breath, went to speak, but then she did move. Sumala bestirred herself, slowly, as though awakening from a deep dream. She inhaled, rising from her stooped seat, chin lifting.
“Did my words please you?” he asked, voice but a croak.
She rose to her feet and extended a hand to him. Blunt fingered, strong, the hand of a laborer, though her flesh was pale.
“I am eternal,” she said, voice hollow with some emotion he couldn’t identify. “Outside time. But each passing moment transfixes me. I choose this guise. If you would, if you could - would you choose a younger seeming with which to be with me?”
Acharsis rose to his feet and took her hand. Her skin was cool. Her fingers intertwined with his own. He was taller than she, but felt as if he stood before a mountain, a sunrise, an oak of surpassing age.
“Always,” he whispered.
He felt vigor steal through him, felt his muscles tighten with potential, felt his breath deepen, the aches fall away.
“Your heart’s greatest desire,” Sumala whispered, “shall always be outside your reach. But I can give you something else. Something you never even knew you wished for.”
“What?” he asked, but oh, he already knew. She inclined her face to his own, lips parting, and her other hand was upon his chest.
“Please me,” she whispered, and there were tears in her eyes. “And I shall please you.” Her lips trembled, and he caught her other hand in his own, held it tightly, and in that moment felt nothing more than sorrow and compassion for her eon-spanning solitude.
“Gladly,” he whispered back, lowering his face to her own, suffused with gentleness, with the first intimations of desire.
Her breath was husky as she lifted her face. Acharsis froze. It wasn’t Sumala who reached up to kiss him, but Irella. Irella as he recalled her, as she had been that night two decades ago, pale skinned and with hair of jet, self-contained and perilous, calculating and knowing.
His breath locked in his throat, and his pulse pounded like the surf on the shores of the Khartis, a booming that made it hard to think, to process. He had to restrain himself from digging his fingers into her white flesh, from casting the goddess from him with a cry. Yet even as he held her, his hand shaking, he felt desire tear through him like flames through an oil-soaked tent.
Annara, he thought desperately to himself as Irella - no, Sumala, Sumala - lifted her lips to brush them against his own. Oh, Annara, forgive me.
Her hands moved to his hair, pulling him down toward her, down toward the grass, and Acharsis followed, kissing her hungrily, losing all track of himself, his quest, his fears and the world beyond the shadowed glade.
* * *
Acharsis woke alone. He lay in the wild grass, his body aching pleasurably, but then a wave of guilt flashed through him and he sat up, putting his hand to his head. Irella - no, Sumala, damn it - was gone. In her place rested two apples - one discolored and badly bruised, the other pristine.
His prize. His payment.
Acharsis stared at the apples and felt his soul recoil. What had happened? What had he done? He’d lost all control. Had devoured Irella with as much hunger as Sumala had devoured him in
turn.
Flashes of memory assailed him, and he groaned, closing his eyes and turning his head as if he could avert his inner eye. In all the years since his father had been slain, never had he felt more akin to his former, godlike self as those hours in Irella’s arms.
No. Sumala’s.
Would he ever feel so empowered, so… immortal, with Annara?
Acharsis shivered and rose to his feet, adjusted his clothing and then scooped up the apples. He brought the spoiled one to his nose, smelt the tang of sweetness and putrescence. How fitting that his prize for such an exchange be rotten. He tucked it into his shirt and wiped his hand across his hip, shuddering.
The second apple, however…
It gleamed with a soft rosy glow. If a rotten apple stole divinity, might a pure apple bestow it?
But I can give you something else. Something you never even knew you wished for.
Or perhaps restore divinity, reverse the ravages of the flesh? A horrifying, hungry desire filled him, ravenous and insensate. For a long while Acharsis stood, staring with glazed eyes at nothing at all, wrestling with himself.
If I consume this apple, and it grants me youth anew - would that be a good thing? Who would I be? What would I desire? Whom would I wish by my side?
With a shudder, he shoved the fresh apple into his tunic, turned away from the bench and the grove and strode with quick strides into the undergrowth.
“There he is!” Sisu’s voice was muffled by the mist, but a moment later his friends emerged from between a bank of trees, wide-eyed and pale with concern. The epiphling flew down to land on his shoulder.
“Acharsis?” Jarek’s hand was on the haft of his Sky Hammer. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” he said, and wondered sincerely if he was. He looked over his shoulder at the now hidden glade. Was Sumala once more perched on her bench beneath the shadowed canopy? Acharsis shivered and drew the rotten apple forth. “Look,” he said. “Look what I have.”