Silence of the Soleri

by Michael Johnston

  This was the city Sarra knew, wrought by violence and contradiction. The discards of war were everywhere. Ash and broken arrows blanketed the stones. Tar soiled the plazas. The Statuary Garden of Den smoldered. The statues there, however, were untarnished, which was not entirely surprising. Those golden figures depicted the family of Den, the last true line of the Soleri. Suten Anu had once said they were blessed with the light of the Soleri, and for all she knew it was true. There was something decidedly unnatural about the way they glimmered amid the ashen remains of the garden.

  As she passed beneath them, Sarra came upon a great number of priests. The men and women of the cult had apparently gone looking for her when they heard news of her exit from the domain. They were all whispering about it. She silenced them with a wave of her hand, but she did not send them away. Their arrival was well timed. Sarra was eager to see the city and she wanted all of Solus to see her, the Ray, but she could not walk these streets unaccompanied. Hence, she went with her children, protected on all sides by twenty or so white-robed priests. She was headed to the Antechamber, which was the Ray’s formal office and one of only a handful of places where she could easily access the Empyreal Domain. Amen Saad had set fire to the thing. The floors had likely burned, but the rest was made of stone. She hoped it could be salvaged. She wanted to put the Antechamber back into working condition as soon as was possible. Sarra needed to assume the trappings of the Ray, to show the people that she was the chosen vessel of the gods. A restored Antechamber would offer all that and more, so she set off toward it.

  The walk was short, but the crowds forced her to move at a snail’s pace, which she did not mind. Sarra was here to take the city’s temperature and to be seen. She walked at the considered pace of a leader, of one who held absolute power. She did not hurry, nor did she glance to either side to acknowledge the people who gawked at the red-haired priestess who had gone into the domain of the gods and lived. She was Ray and everyone knew it, or soon would. The whispers were everywhere and her presence—here, on the streets—made them double. She even raised her chin a hair’s width. It’s what Suten had always done. He’d once told her that a Ray should never hurry when he walked, lest the people think some crisis was at hand. The Ray and his concerns were above the rabble, or so he’d claimed.

  Soldiers hurried through the street, their armor clanking, all of them gathering around one of the many gates that led down into the Hollows. Is that where the Harkans fled? Sarra sent one of her priests to make an inquiry. A moment later he returned with his report. “They’re down there,” he said. “The Harkans escaped through that very gate, but they’ll never come out of it. The exits are watched.”

  “Perhaps,” said Sarra. Nothing was ever certain. Mered had contained the Harkans, or they’d gone down there and contained themselves. There was no way to divine the truth of the matter, but it did appear as if Mered had trapped the kingsguard in the Hollows just as he’d tried to confine Sarra within walls of the Empyreal Domain. At least she had stood her ground, but she had not quarreled with the man. Sarra was not yet ready to confront the father of House Saad. For the immediate future, the most powerful gesture she could make was to simply walk through the streets of Solus. If the Ray died without naming a successor, the post fell to the Mother Priestess, and Arko had named no successor. The criers were already singing her song, telling of the priestess who met her god and lived. For no man, save for the First Ray of the Sun, can stand at the foot of the sun god and live. Her presence in the street was all the proof the people needed of her legitimacy. She was Ray and would soon be celebrated as such. The evidence was everywhere.

  Men stood atop ladders, stringing golden bunting between posts. They wrapped the poles with heather and jasmine. It was an odd sight, but not entirely out of place in the city of light. Sarra had once joked that Solus had more festivals than the calendar had days, which was no exaggeration. It was not uncommon to celebrate the blessing of a temple at morning meal, the anniversary of a minor deity at midday, and the rebuilding of some monument at sundown. Half the time, the attendants at such feasts had no idea what they were even celebrating, but Mered’s high holiday would be an entirely different affair. His feast would draw every man, woman, and child in Solus, and when he’d plied them with bread and drink he would boast of his victory over the Harkans. He would claim the ear of every person in Solus, but she didn’t know what he’d say or how he would attempt to expand his enterprise.

  Hence, she walked, contemplating her newfound adversary as the workers in red gathered at the statuary garden, sweeping away the shattered arrows and broken spears. There were servants with clay vessels full of water and others with wide, fanlike brushes made of twigs bound by rope. They’d come to douse the last of the flames or to wipe away the tar and ash. Each man bore the pale red of House Saad. Some were soldiers. They lingered at the gates of the Hollows while others milled about, dispersing the crowds and assisting the city guard in the general labor that was required to prepare the city for the festival.

  We are at war, she thought. A Ray is dead and a Protector too. The Harkan Army fled, but they could not have gone far. Solus was in chaos, but Mered readied the city for its next feast. In a day, or maybe less, his men would wipe away every trace of the fight. They would cover the charred pergolas with wreaths of laurel and drape boughs of heather over the half-burnt arbors. Soon, there would be nothing but bright, golden flowers wound over posts or strung between towers. The people begged for pageantry, they always did, they lusted for their spectacles.

  The city welcomed its fantasies.

  Reality, on the other hand, had never been a welcome guest in the city of the gods.

  Mered knew this all too well. He’s coming for me, Sarra thought. He comes for my head and my robe. He desires the Ray’s seat and the cowl of the Mother too. Amen, his nephew, had failed to take either from Sarra, but none of that mattered. Amen was a tool with a chipped edge, discarded when its usefulness was ended. She guessed Mered had a whole box full of tools: chisels and knives, axes and other pointy things.

  The thought made Sarra anxious, her head filling up with questions and finding few answers. What did Mered truly know of the Soleri? He’d said there were no gods in the Empyreal Domain, but he didn’t elaborate. He did not say the Soleri were dead. He had simply stated that they were absent. In fact, as she recalled his words, she realized Mered had said very little on the matter, which made her think he was testing her knowledge.

  “The Soleri are everywhere. They are with us right now,” she’d said. “They listen to our every word.” That was her response. Mered had not replied. He’d only retreated, claiming that some duty required his attention, that he was personally supervising the campaign against the Harkans and had only come, briefly, to greet his nephew.

  His silence had again revealed much.

  He knew little about the Soleri, and maybe that was all anyone understood. Perhaps he guessed the Soleri had fled the domain, that they’d left the management of the empire to the Ray and her servants. Such an assumption was easy enough to derive. The two-hundred-year absence of the Soleri had raised more than one rumor. Everyone—every peasant or nobleman who’d ever walked these city streets in the last two centuries—had guessed at their gods’ whereabouts. Some thought the Soleri had deemed Solus unworthy of their gods’ attention, that they were a cursed people who must earn back their gods’ love. Others assumed the opposite, that the gods were apathetic. They had no interest in this world. They simply feasted and fucked one another without a care for what happened beyond their garden walls. Others—the peasants and pilgrims—believed the word of Mithra. They imagined noble gods who spoke through their holy vessel, the First Ray of the Sun. They trusted every passage in the Book of the Last Day of the Year. In their hearts, Tolemy’s every utterance was poetry, ripe with meaning and folly for endless interpretation. The Ray carried her subjects’ words and wants to the gods. She was prayer incarnate.

  Heavens, though
t Sarra. Just what in Horu’s eight hells have I gotten myself into? Maybe there is no truth in Solus—maybe too much time has passed since the Soleri perished. She knew that twelve statuelike bodies rested in the Shambles. Sarra had found those stony effigies, but she did not know who had reduced the gods to stone. And she was ignorant of how this truth was kept secret for two centuries. She hoped Ott would piece together the story. Perhaps Suten Anu, the former Ray, had access to some secret knowledge. Surely his predecessors had kept some record of how it all began, how the first Ray was named and the system was devised. Like Mered, she lusted for answers.

  Truth was power.

  Mered’s brief insinuation, his suggestion that she had lied about Amen and what went on in the domain, had all but disarmed Sarra. There are no gods in the Empyreal Domain. That was what he’d said. Maybe it was all he knew, but it was enough. This sliver of truth had emboldened the man. He understood that some bit of the story was false, so he was testing the whole thing, pushing Sarra to see how she would respond. Would the Soleri reduce him to ash if claimed power in their holy city? No. He’d already done it and had suffered no consequence, so she guessed he would advance his agenda. He would test the sun god and His servant, probing for some new morsel of truth.

  Mered was more of a threat than his nephew had ever been. She did not even know his face. She recalled only those dark eyes and his skin—too soft for a desert man. She knew that he was wealthy beyond all reckoning and a menace, one that wore a veil and spoke little of his true intentions. She guessed he was already mulling over her every word and gesture, trying to glean some truth from their conversation. She hoped he’d find none.

  “Stay close,” a priest whispered, interrupting her thoughts. The streets were more crowded near the Antechamber. Men and women hurried past her procession, stealing glances but never stopping.

  Where are they all going? she wondered as they entered the plaza that stood before the Antechamber. She saw no reason for the crowds. In fact, she was a bit confused. She’d thought the site would be abandoned. Arko died here, and they all thought he was a traitor, a rebel king, and a usurper, but the plaza was packed. There were so many people in it that her procession came to an abrupt stop and Sarra stumbled into one of her priests. The people were everywhere, all of them gawking at some inferno. What in Mithra’s name is going on?

  A fire was a simple thing to douse, and this was the office of the most important person in Solus. “What is this?” she asked aloud to her priests. “If it’s just a fire, why haven’t they drowned the thing and gotten it over with?”

  No one replied, but a moment of observation provided an answer.

  The Antechamber fire burned with a life of its own. It was no candle. It could not be smothered with the pinch of a finger or even a bucketful of water. No, this fire was something else entirely. A hundred or more guardsmen toiled at the blaze, but every time they choked some part of it with sand or water, the flames would simply reappear or sprout up at some other location. The guards heaved great barrels of water upon the fire, turning the liquid to steam, sending columns of white soaring into the heavens, but none of it did any good. The flames burned, undeterred and undiminished. They shimmered with an almost golden hue, flickering and dancing, teasing the men who strove to extinguish them.

  Gods, what did Saad do? This is not fire.

  She edged closer to the ruins, her priests clearing the path ahead as best they could.

  Sarra had always counted herself a nonbeliever. She’d seen no miracles in her lifetime. If there were gods, they were either deaf or inept. She was once the Mother Priestess, the mistress of the faith, but she had not once witnessed the gods’ blessings. The priesthood had done its share of good, but all of it had been hard labor, nothing more. They fed the poor and ministered to the weak, ushering the underprivileged into their ranks. Boys like Ott. Women like Sarra. Beggars and cast-outs. All of them were welcomed into the faith. There was no magic in these things.

  Sarra’s thoughts on the matter changed when she saw those statues in the Shambles. Those things were not of this Earth. The Soleri were not people, not like Sarra. Her body would turn to ash if it burned. It would not transform into starry stone. Those statues had glistened as if the heavens themselves were trapped within them. And perhaps they are, she thought. In the Shambles, she saw things that were not of this world. In the great conflagration, she witnessed another of these things, these creatures of the unknown. A miracle, maybe. Or maybe miracle was just a word that described something that was not easily understood. A fire that never guttered out and died. Somewhere beneath that pyre was the Eye of the Sun, the glistening citrine worn by the Ray, a crystal that was said to hold the light of the gods. Was that the source of the fire? Had Amen Saad offended Mithra Himself and was this His response? Sarra shrugged. She held no faith in such things, but she could not deny her eyes. This was no ordinary flame and the people sensed it. They felt their gods’ power. They saw a miracle in those golden flames.

  Sarra saw something different.

  It was not her hand that lit the blaze, but surely it was her will that set it. She had all but commanded Amen Saad to murder the Ray of the Sun. This was her doing. Without her influence, none of this would have come about. The realization hit her like a hammer blow, and a brief panic fell over her.

  Is this a curse? Am I damned for killing the mouthpiece of the gods? And damned again for killing my husband? Does this flame burn for me? Does the sun god rage against the one who threatened Him, who set fire to these holy grounds? Sarra didn’t know. Perhaps Mered could be blamed for the strange fire, but she doubted it. This flame burned for Sarra. The constant churning of the smoke, the clouds of steam, the bright sparks and hungry fires reminded her of what she’d done. And they stirred something among the people.

  Everywhere, all through the gathering crowds, there was strange talk. A woman held aloft a dead baby. “Born with two heads!” she cried. “It died the moment it left my daughter’s womb!” She was indeed holding something dead, but it was blackened and Sarra could not see how many heads the thing had. For all she knew it had three. The woman was frantic, almost hysterical, and she was not alone.

  “I saw the temple of Mithra struck by lightning last night,” cried an old man. No lightning had struck the temple. That claim, at least, was false, but the man went on. “Surely it was an ill omen!” he cried. “We are cursed. That’s why the sun did not dim.”

  The others cheered him on and the woman threw the dead child on the blaze as yet another came forward to speak. A black-robed woman pushed her way through the crowd. “I am a flamine of the cult of Horu,” the woman claimed, though the black bands on her arms had already made that clear. “And this morning, the god took none of our offerings. The ripe fruit lay there rotting, and when it began to stink, spiders and rats came out of nowhere to feed upon it.”

  This last one didn’t seem like much of an omen. Insects were always pecking at the offerings.

  “It’s happening at all the temples,” she cried. “The gods will not accept our offerings!”

  Or the priests forgot to remove them as they did at the end of each day, thought Sarra.

  Clearly this had all gotten out of hand. Each person encouraged the next, and the tales became wilder by the moment. “I saw a goat give birth to a human boy, but he died upon taking his first breath,” said a young girl, one who smelled of manure and no doubt worked the stables. Others echoed her cries. A middle-aged man said he’d seen no stars in the sky the previous night, that the lights had fled, but Sarra guessed it was just the smoke that hid the stars. A woman cried out that all the birds in the city had died that morning and another said that every child would be born deformed. There were rumors everywhere, ill portents, talk of unexplained deaths.

  “Show yourselves!” cried one man, shaking his fist at the great Shroud Wall of the Soleri. This time it was no beggar, but a well-dressed man, his caftan woven from fine muslin, the neckline dotted with studs
of azurite. He was not alone.

  “Come to us,” begged a woman with two babes. She too was wellborn.

  “Let us see your light,” said another and another.

  In some small way, the power of the gods had returned, and the people wanted more of it. They begged for the Soleri to speak.

  Solus would no longer tolerate the silence of the gods.

  7

  Ren hurried through the lightless corridors of the underground city, the darkness of the passages enveloping him, blocking out his senses. In the gloom of the Hollows, the faces of the golden statues flashed in his thoughts. The vision in the garden returned to him, and although it seemed like madness, like pure insanity, he could not stop thinking about it. He’d seen statues come to life, seen them talking and moving about, and they’d seen him too. They’d looked right at Ren, grinned, and gestured to him like some long-lost friend. The whole thing was unnerving and no doubt the product of having his head slammed against a slab of granite. In fact, there was still a faint buzzing in his ear and in the back of his head. As before, he guessed he’d simply given himself a good knock on the head. He knew that vision had been pure nonsense, but he could not get it out of his head. It came to him unbidden, haunting him as he plunged through the darkness and out into what seemed like a great chamber, the biggest he’d seen.

  Ren slowed to catch his breath, to stop and survey the place. “Seems like a good spot to rest,” he said, chest heaving. His skin burned, and the smoke had only just left his lungs. He’d been running for what felt like hours, maybe longer. He could not recall stopping, not even for a moment. He’d wanted to put himself and his men as far from that garden and those flames as was physically possible, but he could only run for so long.