by Mike Ashley
She took the boot from me and threw it aside.
Then she leaned down and kissed me on the forehead. The touch of her lips was so cold it burned.
“Now you are marked by the Sybil, sorcerer, son of sorcerer, and by that mark men will know you. Because you are marked, you may call on me three times, and I shall hear you and reply. But beware. If you ask my favor more than that, I shall own you, like all the things in my house. That is the price I ask of you.”
She gave me a water bottle and a leather bag with food in it – cheese, bread, and dried fish – and told me to put the grave coins in the bag too so I wouldn’t lose them. The bag had a long cord. I slipped it over my neck. I hung the bottle from the loose belt I wore outside my robe.
My forehead was numb where she had kissed me. I reached up and felt the spot. It was cold as ice.
“Now go, sorcerer, son of sorcerer, into the very jaws of the Devourer, of your own will. Go, as the Sybil has prophesied, right now—”
She stamped her foot once. I screamed as the floor swung away beneath me like a trapdoor and I was falling endlessly down amid glowing white bones and debris and the Sybil’s tumbling lamps. I saw her face once, far above, streaking away in the darkness like a shooting star.
I hit the water hard and sank deep, but somehow reached the surface again, lungs bursting. I started to swim. The sword cut my legs. The bag choked me. I almost threw them both away, but did not, and slowly, clumsily made my back to where I thought my boat waited. I looked around fearfully for the evatim, which surely haunted this place. Above, the house of the Sybil was silent and dark.
At last my feet touched soft mud and I stood up in the gloom. Faint light filtered among the ten thousand wooden legs of the city. I waded through thick mud, then into open water and fell in over my head and swam a short distance, struggling toward the light. Then my feet found a sand bank, and I climbed out of the water and rested.
A whole night must have passed then, for I slept through terrible dreams of my father in his sorcerer’s robe, stalking back and forth at the water’s edge, his face so twisted with rage that he hardly seemed to be my father at all. He would lean over, raise his hand to strike, then pause, startled, even afraid, as if he had seen something in my face he had never seen there before.
I tried to call out to him.
Suddenly I was awake, in total darkness. A footstep splashed nearby. Far away, the birds of the marshes sang to announce the dawn.
And my father’s voice spoke.
“Sekenre . . . do you still love me?”
I could not answer. I only sat terribly still, shivering in the cold air, my knees drawn up to my chest, hands clasped tight to my wrists.
Daylight came as a gray blur. I saw a boat nearby, beached on the same sandbank. It was not my own, but a funeral boat, made of bound reeds.
For an instant I thought I understood fully what the Sybil had prophesied and I froze in terror, but I had known so much of terror in my life already that I had grown indifferent to it. I couldn’t bring myself to care. I couldn’t think coherently.
Like one bewitched, when the body acts of its own accord without the will of the mind, I pushed the boat out into open water, then climbed in and lay still among the scented corpse-wrappings.
I felt only resignation now. So it had been prophesied.
Almost on a whim, I reached into the leather bag and took out the two grave coins. I placed them over my eyes.
III
For a long time I lay still and listened to the water lapping against the side of the boat. Then even that sound faded, and I felt, very distinctly, the boat reverse direction, and I knew I was drifting with the black current now, out of the world of the living, into the land of the dead. The water was silent, as if the boat were gliding along a river of oil. I could hear the pounding of my own heart.
I lay awake and tried to make sense out of my adventure with the Sybil, reviewing every detail in search of some central thread by which all the parts would be connected, like beads on a necklace, assuming form and meaning. But there was nothing. I had expected as much. It is the way of prophecies: you don’t understand them until they’re about to come true, and then, suddenly, the whole pattern is revealed.
Even the silence of the river and the thunder of my heart were part of the pattern.
Even my sister’s voice.
I thought it was just a ringing in my ears at first, but it formed words, very weak, very far away, at the very threshold of hearing.
“Sekenre,” she said. “Help me. I’m lost.”
I called back to her, either with my voice or my mind.
“I am coming, little one. Wait for me.”
She sobbed hoarsely, sucking in breath as if she had been crying for a long time.
“It’s dark here.”
“It’s dark here, too,” I said gently.
She was too brave to say she was afraid.
“Hamakina – is Father with you?”
Something splashed in the water right next to the boat, and my father’s voice whispered, inches from my ear.
“Sekenre, if you love me, go back. I command you to go back! Do not come here!”
I let out a yell and sat up. The grave coins fell into my lap. I twisted about, looking all around.
The boat slid past huge, black reeds. In the silent darkness, white herons stood in rows along the river’s edge, faintly glowing as the Sybil’s face had glowed. And in the water, the evatim watched me, rank upon rank of them like dead-white, naked men with crocodile heads, lying motionless in the shallows. But there was no sign of Father.
Above me, the sky was dark and clear, and the stars were not the stars of Earth, but fewer, paler, almost gray, arranged in the constellations of the dead, which are described in the Books of the Dead: the Hand, the Harp, the Jar of Forgetting, the Eye of Surat-Kemad.
Very carefully, I picked up the grave coins and put them back in my bag. I was thirsty and drank a sip from the water bottle. I could not drink river water here, for only the dead may drink of the water of the dead, and only the dead may eat the fruits of the land of the dead. That too is written in the Books of the Dead.
And so I gazed with mortal, uncovered eyes into the darkness that never ends. Far behind me, along the way I had come, there was a faint suggestion of light, a mere paling of the sky, as if way back there was an opening through which I had already passed. The living world drew farther and farther away with each passing instant.
The white herons rose as one and for a moment the air was filled with the utterly silent passage of their wings. Then they were gone. They too, like the evatim, were messengers of the God of the Dark River.
But for me there was no message.
I began to see ghosts among the reeds, sitting up in the mud as I passed, beseeching me to take them aboard my funeral boat so they might go properly into the final land. They were no more than wisps of smoke, suggestions of shapes glimpsed from the corner of the eye. When I looked directly at any one of them, I could not see it.
Some called out in languages I had never heard before. Only a few spoke of places and people I had known. I was afraid of these few. I did not want them to recognize me. I lay back down in the bottom of my boat and put the coins back over my eyes. I slept fitfully after a while and dreamed of my father. He paced back and forth on the surface of the black water, his trailing robe sending ripples as he walked, his face contorted with rage. Once he stopped and seemed to shake me furiously, saying, “No, my son, no. This is not what I wanted for you. I command you. I forbid you . . . because I love you still. Go back to Reedland. Go!”
But, in my dream, I only answered, “Father, I will go if you let me take Hamakina back with me.”
He made no answer but continued to rage and pace, too furious even to ask if I loved him.
I awoke from my dream to the faint sound of singing like many voices carried on the wind from far away. I sat up once more, put the coins in my bag, and saw a vast t
rireme bearing down on me, its sail bellied full, its oars thrashing the water into foam.
Yet it was an insubstantial thing like the ghosts in the reeds, a shape of smoke. The voices of the oarsmen were muted, the throbbing of the pace-setter’s drum like the failing thunder of a distant, dying storm. The stars shone through the hull and sail, and the foam of the oars was a phantom thing, the water around me still black and smooth and silent.
This was a wonder, but no mystery, for the Great River coexists with the River of the Dead, for all that they flow in different directions. Sometimes the rivermen fleetingly glimpse the traffic of the dark current, faint shapes in the night. When they do, they reckon it a bad omen and make sacrifices to soothe the anger of whatever god might have been offended.
Now I, on the River of the Dead, saw the living as phantoms. The trireme loomed up, and then my boat passed through it. For a moment I was among the oarsmen and I could smell the reek of their laborings. Then a richly-furnished cabin swam around me. A great lord feasted, surrounded by his followers. I think it was the Satrap of Reedland himself. One lady of his company paused, cup in hand. Our eyes met. She looked more startled than afraid. She poured out a little of her wine, as if to make a libation to me.
Then the trireme was gone, and I lay back again, the coins on my eyes, my father’s sword clutched against my chest.
I slept once more and dreamt once more, but my dream was only a confusion, shapes in the darkness, and sounds I could not make out. I awoke parched and famished, and took another sip from my water bottle, and ate a little of the food in the leather bag.
It was as I ate that I realized that the river was no longer flowing. The boat lay absolutely motionless in the middle of a black, endless, dead marsh beneath the grey stars. Even the evatim and the ghosts were gone.
I was truly afraid. I thought I would be left there forever. No, somehow I was certain of it. Somehow the Devouring God had tricked me, and the Land of the Dead would not accept me while I yet lived.
I forced down one last bite of bread, then closed the bag and called out, half sobbing: “Sybil! Help me! I’ve lost my way!”
And the sky began to lighten. I saw not merely reeds, but huge trees rising out of the marsh, stark and barren like ruined stone pillars.
Some of the stars began to fade. I thought the Moon was rising – how strange that I should be able to see the Moon here! – but instead the face of the Sybil drifted into the sky, pale and round and huge as the full Moon. She gazed down on me for a time in silence and I was afraid to speak to her. Then her face rippled, as a reflection does when a pebble is dropped into a still pool, and she was gone, but her voice came rattling through the reeds.
“Sorcerer, son of sorcerer, you have called on me foolishly and have wasted one summoning. You are near to your goal and could have found your own way. Nevertheless, if you think you need a guide, reach down into the water and draw one up.”
“Into the water?” I said. For an instant I was terrified that I had wasted a second summoning with that question. But the Sybil did not reply.
I reached down into the frigid water, wary of lurking evatim. I groped around, swinging my arm from side to side, my fingers outstretched. For an instant I lay there, half out of the boat, wondering if this were another of the Sybil’s riddles. Then the water suddenly stirred, as if something were rising, and my fingers closed on something stringy and slippery like an underwater weed, and I pulled.
A hand broke the surfacè, then another. I let go of what I had been holding and scrambled back. The hands caught hold of the side of the boat and the boat rocked beneath the weight of that which climbed aboard. There was a sudden, overwhelming stench of decay, or rotted flesh. Long, muddy hair fell across a face that was more bone than anything else.
I screamed then, and kept on screaming when the thing opened its eyes and began to speak and I knew that it was my mother.
“Sekenre—”
I covered my face with my hands and merely sobbed, trying to remember her as she had been once, so very long ago.
“Sekenre –” She took hold of my wrists and gently drew my hands away from my face. Her touch was as cold as the Sybil’s kiss.
I turned from her.
“Mother, I did not expect –” I could not say more, and broke into tears again.
“Son, I did not expect to see you in this place either. Truly, it is a terrible thing.”
She pulled me forward and I did not resist, until I lay with my face in her lap, my cheek against her wet, muddy gown, while she gently stroked my forehead with a bony finger. I told her all that had happened then, of Father’s own death, and his return for Hamakina.
“I am your father’s sin, returning to him at last,” she said.
“Did he—?”
“Murder me? Yes, he did. But that is the least part of his offense. He has sinned more against you, Sekenre, and also against the gods.”
“I don’t think he meant to do wrong,” I said. “He says he loves me still.”
“He probably does. Nevertheless, he has done great wrong.”
“Mother, what shall I do?”
Her cold, sharp finger drew a circle around the mark on my forehead.
“It is time for us to resume our journey. The boat has served its purpose now. You must leave it.”
I looked at the black water with ever-increasing dread.
“I don’t understand. Are we to . . . swim?”
“No, beloved son. We are to walk. Get out of the boat now, and walk.”
I slipped one leg over the side, one foot in the frigid water. I looked back at her uncertainly.
“Go on. Do you doubt this one small miracle, after all you have seen?”
“Mother, I—”
“Go On.”
I obeyed her and stood upon the water. It felt like cold glass beneath my feet. Then she stood next to me, and the boat drifted slowly away. I turned to watch it go, but she took me by the hand and led me in a different direction.
Her touch was like the Sybil’s, a touch of living, frigid iron.
The channel widened, and the evatim were waiting for us. Here the water flowed almost swiftly, making silent waves and eddies and whirlpools behind the dead trees. Many ghosts waded in the shallows, but they did not call out to us. They merely stood there, turning as we passed. One of them was a man in full, gleaming armor, holding his severed head in his hands.
Then there were other boats around us, black and solid and silent, not phantoms of the living, but other funeral boats. We came alongside a long, sleek barge, its pointed ends rising high above the water, a lantern flickering inside its square cabin. The evatim crawled into this cabin and the barge rocked. I could hear them thrashing in there.
At last something huge and dark loomed before us, like a mountain, blotting out the stars. On every side I saw drifting funeral boats following our course, some of them twisting and turning among reeds. One caught on something, or else the evatim tipped it over. A mummy slipped into the water and drifted by, bandages trailing, so close I could have reached out and touched it.
The darkness closed around us very suddenly, shutting out the stars. I heard water rushing, and boats creaking and banging against one another.
“Mother!” I whispered. I reached forward and tugged at her gown. A piece of it came away in my hand. “Is this it? Is this the mouth of Surat-Kemad?”
“No, child,” she said softly. “We have been in the belly of the beast for some time now.”
And that, somehow, was even more terrifying.
IV
Nothing was clear any more, the whole adventure no more than an endless continuity of dream and waking, stark images and featureless mist, pain and terror and dull discomfort.
I had been on the river I knew not how long – hours, days, weeks – and at times it seemed I was inexpressibly weary, and at others that I was back home in my bed, asleep, that all of this was some crazed nightmare. But then I reached out, turning and str
etching as one does when awakening – and I touched my mother’s cold, wet, ruined body.
And the stench of decay was gone from her, and she smelled only of the river mud, like some long-sunken bundle of sticks and rags.
Sometimes there were herons all around us, glowing dimly in the utter darkness like smoldering embers, their faces the faces of men and women, all of them whispering to us, imploring, speaking names – and their voices blended together like a gentle, indistinguishable rustle of wind.
Mostly, we just walked in the darkness, alone. I felt the cold surface of the river beneath my feet, but there was no sense of motion, for all my legs moved endlessly.
Mother spoke. Her voice was soft, coming from the darkness like something remembered in a dream.
I don’t think she was even addressing me. She was merely talking, her memories, her whole life rising into words like sluggish bubbles: scraps of unfinished conversations from her childhood, and, too, much about my father, and me, and Hamakina. For what might have been a very long time or only a few minutes, she sang a lullaby, as if rocking me – or perhaps Hamakina – to sleep.
Then she was silent. I reached out to assure myself that she was still there, and her bony hand found mine and squeezed gently. I asked her what she had learned about the Land of the Dead since she had come here, and she replied softly, “I have learned that I am forever an exile, without a place prepared for me, since I have come unprepared and unannounced into Surat-Kemad’s domain. My place of exile is the river, along which I must wander until the gods die and the worlds are unmade.”
I wept for her then, and asked if this was Father’s doing, and she said that it was.
Then she asked me suddenly, “Sekenre, do you hate him?”
I had been so confident just then that I did, but I could not find an answer.
“I don’t think he meant to do any harm—”
“My son, you must sort out your feelings toward him. That is where you have lost your way, not on the river.”
Again we walked for a long time, still in utter darkness, and all the while I thought of my father and remembered my mother as she had once been. What I wanted, more than anything else, was merely for everything to be restored – Father, Mother, Hamakina, and myself, in our house by the edge of the City of Reeds, as all had been when I was small. Yet, if I had learned any lesson in life thus far, it was that you can’t go back, that our days flow on as relentlessly as the Great River, and what is lost is never restored. I was not wise. I understood very little. But I knew that much.