Scavenger of Souls

by Joshua David Bellin

  Every time I closed my eyes, Wali’s question returned to haunt my thoughts. What had Laman taught me? Lots of things. How to tie a knot, how to hunt for food and shade, how to scout for Skaldi. He’d told me never to give up, always to keep looking toward the future. But at the moment, it felt like the most important thing he’d taught me was this: stick together. If you’re going to fight for something, fight for the colony. Because in this world, nobody makes it on their own.

  I didn’t want just one or two of us to get out of here. And I didn’t want to lose any more lives. I wanted the colony together, and free. Wali might not think I knew how to fight, but I was ready to fight for that.

  I glanced at Nessa as the guards pushed us out of our cell to face their leader. She nodded and discreetly touched her braid. Knowing we were still on the same page definitely helped. Not knowing what lay in wait for us definitely didn’t.

  They led us down the third branch of the tunnels to a short flight of stairs carved into the rock. There Asunder met us, emerging from a recess in the wall that must have led to his sleeping quarters.

  “You stand near the very heart of the Sheltered Lands,” he said, speaking no louder than a whisper but with no loss of clarity or power. “In our tongue we name this place Grava Bracha, the Spring of the Blessed. Here you will learn our ways and partake of the gifts we have to offer. Do not doubt what you see. It has been prepared for those who wander and are lost.”

  With that, he ascended the stairway. At the top, he faced us once more, smiled, and threw aside a curtain of the brown material, letting a flood of brilliant light bathe our upturned faces. When he disappeared inside, the rest of us followed. One of the warriors held the curtain, and I stepped into the light.

  Despite Asunder’s words, I couldn’t help stopping in shock.

  My first thought was that I’d walked through a gateway into another world. As far as I could see, thousands of multicolored lights floated in the air a hundred feet above my head, and I had to stamp on the ground to convince myself I hadn’t drifted off into space. I craned my neck and squinted at the soaring vault to try to make out what these lights were and how they hung at such a dizzying height, but they dazzled me and made it impossible to tell. Gradually I realized the light came from the ceiling and floor and distant walls of a cavern so huge I couldn’t see the end of it. An array of luminescent colors spilled from the rock itself: blues far brighter than any sky I’d seen, pinks that put the healthiest of the little kids’ cheeks to shame, yellows and greens and purples that shimmered like the curved bow the old woman told us used to come after a rainstorm. In the approximate center of the cavern lay a pool, its surface dotted with countless points of light, the water kept in constant motion by a bubbling fountain that seemed to harbor a pure white radiance of its own. Reflections from the water swung lazily across the room, keeping time with the soothing sound of the fountain. So much light poured all around me I half expected to look at my own hands and see them glowing with an inner fire.

  And there were people seated on brown mats throughout the cavern. Lots of people. I’d been hoping the twenty or so warriors we’d seen were the total of Asunder’s forces, but I counted close to a hundred more, scattered in groups of five to ten. Most of them were warriors, but some were women like the ones I’d seen last night, wearing brown wraps around their chests and brown bands around their throats. Like the warriors, they mostly appeared young, possibly no older than Nessa. But while the men lounged on their mats, talking quietly in their own language, the women worked noiselessly on one job or another, heads lowered to their tasks. Some mended mats, others stirred pots over a small fire, others washed brown garments in the fountain, wrung them out, and draped them over another fire to dry. Two women sat with a circle of children, heads lowered as if they were leading them in some sort of prayer. Studying the group more closely, I realized with shock—but also with relief—that some of the children were our own, except they’d been clothed in the cave dwellers’ uniforms. Their bellies showed pale and scrawny next to the bronzed bodies of our captors. But they didn’t seem distressed. In fact they seemed to have found new playmates among the children of the cave dwellers, all of whom, it appeared from their hair and clothing, were boys. Only Zataias kept a wary distance from the cave-children, and when he caught my eye he nodded slightly as if to show me he was still on my team.

  I searched for the adult members of our colony, and in a moment I found Tyris and Nekane, sitting under the guard of a group of warriors. Unlike the children, whose hands had been freed, theirs remained bound. The only people missing were Aleka and the old woman, and my heart dropped at the realization.

  “What have you done with the others?” I asked Asunder.

  “They are well,” he answered in an unconcerned voice. “Their needs are tended by our healer Melampus.”

  “Take us to them,” Nessa demanded.

  I glanced at her, but Asunder didn’t appear to take offense. At a silent signal from him, two warriors broke away from one of the groups and led us to a much smaller cave that branched off from the main cavern. There we found Aleka and the old woman, resting on brown mats while the bearded man hovered over them. I couldn’t tell if my mother’s color looked any better, but her breathing seemed easy and her forehead didn’t feel feverish. Neither she nor the old woman woke up while we were there, and our visit was all too brief, Archangel appearing at the doorway to usher us back to the main cavern. I threw a look back at my mother’s pale face, hoping she’d be okay and realizing how her injury complicated any escape plans I might make.

  Back at the main cavern, we found Asunder standing by the bubbling fountain, the children of his colony and ours arranged around him. A benevolent smile disguised any impatience he might have felt. When we appeared, he strode to a luminescent rock carved in the rough shape of a chair and seated himself on a cushion as red as his cloak. One woman left the fountain and hurriedly laid a circle of mats on the ground, then scampered back to her work by the pool’s side. Asunder nodded, and we followed our guards’ example, seating ourselves on the mats. Wali needed a sharp look from me before he would agree to lower himself in front of what was obviously meant to be a throne.

  “Food is prepared,” Asunder said simply. His rich voice was muted, and a kindly smile played on his lips. As we looked up at him from our seats on the ground, the gushing fountain seemed to frame his head with a halo of light.

  “Thank you,” I said, knowing it was what he expected. Wali glanced at me with distaste, and Asunder’s smile flickered sardonically. But he nodded and turned his gaze to the women at the cooking station, who instantly brought steaming bowls and set them on the ground before us. They kept their heads lowered and didn’t say a word.

  The meal consisted of a thick, sloppy stew and flat, palm-size wafers, which I saw Asunder’s men doubling to form a sort of cup so they could shovel the food into their mouths. The littlest members of our colony mastered the technique quickly, helped by having their hands free. I clumsily tried to do the same, the trickiest part being how to hide the knots we’d tied in our bindings. I managed to spill most of what I scooped, testing what remained with the tip of my tongue. It was hot and surprisingly tasty, unlike so much of the gag-worthy food I’d eaten in Survival Colony 9.

  Asunder didn’t join the feast, but his eyes roamed over us throughout our meal. The warriors chattered the whole time in their own language. At another mute signal from their leader, one of the women appeared, bringing water from the fountain in a clay pitcher. The warriors held out their hands, and when they were clean, some cupped their palms to receive a drink. My stomach felt too full for more than a small sip, but I found the water cool and refreshingly clean. When I was done, I leaned back, letting my stomach expand, and watched as the women hurried the bowls to the fountain for cleansing. Nessa, I saw out of the corner of my eye, was frowning as she watched them fulfill their menial tasks.

  “My children,” Asunder said warmly, snapping me
out of my reverie, “we welcome the strangers to our home, and we invite them to hear the words we have to say.”

  He stood and stepped down from the throne. As the remaining warriors and women drifted over from every corner of the cavern and seated themselves around us, he reached for the bone-white staff at his side, laying it on the ground in the center of the circle. At the sight of it, the warriors and women bowed low, their arms outstretched and their heads touching the ground. The cave-children, I saw, did the same. They stayed like that for a long moment before sitting up again.

  Asunder’s eyes swept the audience, his irises as full of colors as the rock surrounding him. I tried to meet his gaze, but that was hard to do when moment by moment I seemed to be looking into a new pair of eyes.

  “Our guests have traveled from afar,” he began, in the rich tones that seemed to come so naturally to him. “They have crossed the desert waste, they have walked the very rim of the Shattered Lands, and now they come to us, weary in body and sick in soul. They have faced the Merciless Ones, the ones who feed on men’s flesh, and they have suffered losses almost too grievous to bear. Their companions they have watched fall, and their hopes they have seen crumble into dust.”

  I stared at him, and he stared back, the scars on his face once again pulling his lips upward in a weird smile.

  “Oh yes, we know their ways, and their woes, far better than they think,” he said. “Even better, perhaps, than they know them themselves. For long years we have watched the sons of the despoilers vainly struggling for existence within the wasteland their fathers prepared for them. We have seen that they do not learn from the sins of the past, but seek to relive them: to drive their foul machines atop the ashes of their ancestors, to slaughter each other with their weapons of war, to desecrate the ground with their tools of metal. We have walked among them, and sickened at the stench of death that pursues them. And we have seen them wither before the ones sent in judgment of their crimes.”

  He paused, and in the silence it struck me that maybe he had once belonged to a survival colony. He was obviously talking about the Skaldi, and he sounded like someone who had witnessed their attacks. Was that what accounted for the scars across his body, the madness in his mind?

  “Yet we of the Sheltered Lands have ever pursued a different course,” he resumed after a moment. “We have learned to disdain those false idols that have been the despoilers’ undoing. With clean hands and clean hearts, we have renewed the ground, drawing from it the poisons of the despoilers, restoring it to its former health. Working only with that which is given freely by the land—wood and water, sand and stone—we have healed the land of its sickness. And so we live in comfort and ease, delighting in all the needful things of life: food aplenty, and clean water to drink, and clothing for our bodies, and safe homes for our children. We ask for little, for we have far greater gifts than any man of olden days could claim.”

  His audience was nodding, so whether they understood our language or not, they must have been familiar with the theme. But with a sharp look from him, they froze as perfectly as if they’d been turned to stone.

  “And so we might live forever,” Asunder said in a voice quieter yet sharper than before, “enjoying what is ours to enjoy, keeping from all others those gifts our wise acts have merited. But we who are wise bear no ill will toward any other. Though we despise the deeds of the despoilers, we do not ignore their children’s desperate need. And so to these forsaken ones we offer what they most sorely lack: rest from their weary struggles, an end to affliction, the comfort and safety that come only to those who follow the one true way. We offer this freely, and without begrudging any man the gifts we have to give. We ask only that they make a choice: to give up the lives they once lived and come to us as children reborn. That is all we ask. And we say to those who accept this offer, come and live with us, and live in joy abounding! But to those who reject what we have to offer, we say: let them be cast out, let them return to the waste their fathers have laid for such as them, and let them be abandoned there to meet the one who lies in wait in the Shattered Lands beyond. Let them stand upon his altar in nakedness and fear, and let them meet their judgment at his hands. Let them face him, the one we name Nidach bar Tivah: the Scavenger of Souls.”

  At the sound of these words, the cave-people bowed their heads again, murmuring something in their own tongue. Asunder waited for their voices to ebb, then his own voice was raised again.

  “This is what we ask of you, travelers from afar: to choose between the ways of death and the ways of life, the doom of all who doubt and the victory of all who truly believe. We offer this choice freely, and we ask that you make it freely. Which will you choose, my friends? Will you prefer the path of the despoilers, the path that leads to your own and your children’s destruction? Or will you choose the path of salvation, the path that leads to life and joy everlasting?”

  With this final word, he stooped to clutch the staff that lay at his feet. When he rose I tensed, fearing what he might do. But he merely walked through the crowd, lowering the stick to the shoulder of each of his followers, who closed their eyes and smiled as if they’d received a blessing. Men, women, and children submitted to this ritual, all except Archangel, who stood silently outside the circle, arms crossed. When the ten-minute long ceremony concluded, Asunder returned the staff to his side and his followers stood, the women moving off to their stations with the children of our colony and theirs, the warriors remaining in a circle by the throne. Then, to my surprise, one of the warriors entered the circle and began to dance.

  He gyrated in a stiff, awkward way, with bent knees and bobbing torso and stamping feet, his whole body turning in a tight, slow circle. The other warriors hummed wordlessly as their fellow danced, one of them pounding out a rhythm on the cavern floor with his palms. Asunder returned to his throne and watched, a critical look on his face as if he was scrutinizing the performance. The dancer’s body glistened with sweat, his flesh seeming encrusted with tiny jewels as the droplets reflected the cavern’s gem-fire. All at once he stopped, and the drummer stopped too, only the humming continuing at a lowered volume.

  The dancer threw his head back and shouted words in their tongue. The others responded with an unfamiliar sound when he paused for breath. I turned to Nessa. “Are we supposed to watch—?”

  “Shh,” she said. “I’m trying to listen.”

  “You understand what they’re saying?” It seemed I’d never stop being surprised by what was going on behind her sleepy green eyes.

  “Not really,” she said. “I picked up a few words. Like tivah—that’s ‘people,’ but I think it’s also ‘soul.’ As in Nidach bar Tivah, Scavenger of Souls. And they kept saying shashi for the torches, so I assume that’s ‘fire,’ or maybe ‘light.’ Bracha is ‘water’ or ‘drink.’ They said it when they passed around the pitcher. So shashi tivah bracha . . . The fire drank his soul? Or maybe his soul was washed clean by fire? I think that’s what he means.”

  “What are the others saying?”

  “No idea,” she said. “It might just be a sound, not a word. And the rest of it is gibberish to me.” She squeezed her eyes tight in concentration. “Nidach asa minach . . . I have no idea what that means.”

  “He says the Scavenger of Souls awaits,” a voice rumbled by my ear. I jumped and found Archangel hovering over us. “The Scavenger waits to see if any will refuse to cleanse his soul with purifying fire. Nidach asa minach. The Scavenger awaits.”

  “What happens to those who refuse?” I said.

  He shrugged his massive shoulders. “The Scavenger awaits those who resist us. He is tireless and all powerful. Against him there is no resistance.”

  Nessa jumped in. “Who is he?”

  Another shrug. “The Scavenger wards the faithful, and does not suffer the sons of the despoilers to raise their hands against us. He is the one who sits in judgment, the watcher at the world’s end.”

  I tried a new tack. “Have you ever . . . lost a
nyone to the Scavenger of Souls?”

  He didn’t answer at first. For a moment I thought I’d hit a nerve, as I saw a roiling in his almost-black eyes like currents beneath still water. But the stony expression returned to chase any turbulence away.

  “There are those who have resisted us,” he said simply. “Those who have doubted the rightness of our way. The Scavenger is ever mindful of those whose feet stray from the one true path.”

  “He is also a complete crock,” Wali unexpectedly joined the conversation. “But a really convenient way to keep a bunch of ignorant savages in line.”

  Archangel shrugged one final time and moved on.

  The dance lasted a minute more, the dancer collapsing dramatically at the end only to spring up smiling and receive pats on the back from his companions. When it was over, Asunder nodded gravely at the company and stood.

  “Through our faith and acts, we unshackle our souls from the sins of the past,” he said. “Shashi tivah bracha, aya tivah bis. In the holy fires of renewal, our souls drink deeply, and they return wholly other than once they were. Minach, minach tivah. Fill, oh fill our souls! Only those who cling stubbornly to the ways of the despoilers”—and his eyes fell on Wali—“can fail to be touched by this solemn appeal.”

  He clapped his hands together, the sharp sound reverberating through the cavern.