Dreams of the Compass Rose

by Vera Nazarian

  Besides the surety of death. . . . She could almost hear his thought. She watched him, unblinking, with her uncanny blue eyes. “Why was the House of Ris made into a Temple?” she asked softly then. “I must know.”

  “Why?” he retorted, stroking an arm-band of liquid gold. “Are you drawn to the idea of deity?”

  At which the old woman laughed, a true cackle.

  She is merely insane, it occurred to him then. A crazy old lizard who would sun herself on my gold. Well, let her hiss all she would, no one would believe her. But then Ris spoke words that stilled him. “Why was the House of my father turned into a Temple of Gold? You keep it there, don’t you, turning to your advantage an abandoned house with no master? All the bulk of it that you’ve made off the very life juices of these sad people!

  Gold, guarded by your minion in the guise of a priest. Gold, made by denying them water periodically. And, only after they pay you their last, you pretend to call upon my name, the true name of Ris, to end the charade of water shortage!”

  “What madness do you croak, old hag?” Lord Rigaeh exclaimed. “Have you any proof?

  Who would take the word of a vagrant over the Lord of Livais?”

  “Oh, I have proof enough,” she replied, her own eyes sparkling angry blue. “Proof of an outlet chamber dug alongside the well, that siphons off the water by means of a clever contrivance of machinery and piping. Whenever you choose to strike fear into these simple people by threatening their water, their very life, you lower the water level.”

  “Enough!” the Lord cried, his face gone livid. “I will have you thrown into the darkest prison—”

  “Is it not too late?” she pointed out. “Most people of Livais know about me, and would expect me to be well and sound when I leave this house.”

  “True,” he spoke then, changing his manner like a serpent. “I cannot have you killed outright. But there are ways to reveal you for what you really are. They will expect certain things of you, I will make sure of that. And when you are unable to satisfy them with the miracles of Ris, they will turn on you. Reverence will become rage. They will tear you apart. . . .”

  “We’ll see,” she replied quietly, this old woman. “But now, I leave you to yourself, Lord Rigaeh who does not believe in Ris. Remember only that in the end truth breaks forth upon the shore.”

  Outside, Nadir caught up with Grandmother as she left the house. He had waited all this time, hidden in the shadow of the alley, and knew nothing except that this expensive house had a heavy spirit about it despite the outward semblance of opulence, a dark heavy thing of sadness, like stone, like the weight of heartless gold.

  “Are you hurt, Grandmother?” he said, walking beside her, easily matching her suddenly old gait. “What did they do to you? What did they say?”

  The old woman chuckled, then reached out to touch Nadir gently on the cheek (she never did more than that, knowing his need for dignity). “Let’s go and eat, my Nadir. I wonder what Caelqua has in store for us today?”

  And thus they returned to the house that was now a Temple, through winding streets, past townspeople who lowered their heads in respect before the old woman, and whispered words of benevolent greeting to Ris.

  Inside, the minion of Lord Rigaeh stepped aside, bowing superstitiously, and Nadir followed Grandmother into the kitchen. Here, in the heat of the stone hearth, Caelqua was checking the flatbread and stirring the popping stew. In her zeal to serve Grandmother, she had usurped the place, found stores of onions and potatoes, and had driven the priest to the marketplace, bidding him to return with fresh produce for the table of Ris. After finishing their meal, Grandmother and her charges cleared the eating area. And then, because the sun was still near zenith, a laziness was upon all.

  The old woman sat down in an old chair in the front hall, saying that it had once belonged to her father. Her eyes closed, and she appeared to be sleeping. Caelqua stretched, yawned, and then found herself a place on the fresh pallet upstairs.

  Nadir meanwhile, wandered the old house, his spirit wanting to dance for some reason. There was something hauntingly nostalgic in the very walls of this place, a sense of many layers, many worlds. . . . Something intimate.

  It was drawing him, until the tips of his fingers tingled, and blood raced through the subterranean caverns of his veins like bubbling spring water. Soon, he would draw near enough to find it.

  After several quiet days of sun-washed silence, townspeople came to knock at the doors of the Temple of Ris. They were asking for the old woman. Because in the span of those days the waters of the well had receded like never before.

  For the first time ever, the surface of the well-water was too distant to see without the help of a torch lowered down into the stone well abyss. A townsman discovered the atrocity when he was unable to lower a bucket deep enough to reach the water, and had to call the well-digger. The old well-digger came and tied several additional lengths of rope to extend the bucket’s reach. When the water bucket came up full at last, it held a mixture of fine gravel and water, for it had scraped the bottom.

  At this, both the well-digger and the townsman let out a keening wail, until more people gathered and picked up the cry. The whole thing might have been humorous except that, as surely as the sun burned overhead, these people were indeed doomed to death without water. Lord Rigaeh was notified. Upon hearing the news—not to mention the wailing outside—his dark eyes took on an appropriately stricken and sympathetic slant. He responded to the terrified messengers with a pious suggestion that they go find Ris. For, after all, now that she was here in the flesh within Livais, all of their salvations lay with her.

  The Lord did not bother telling them of the good store of water that had been hidden in his own house cellar, and that would last him and his household at least two moons—more than enough time to leave the town and scramble across the desert to the closest great city to the West of here.

  And thus the townspeople flocked to the Temple and called for her loudly, while the sun beat down with cruelty, and bleached to bone-whiteness the limestone of the streets. Ris came out, dressed in her usual white cotton. She stood facing them all, then said, “Let us go to the well, friends, for I have something to show you.”

  She led the procession to the center of town, stopping before the stone well. Here, they surrounded her—women, men, old and young, with one common thing written in their eyes: hope, overlying fear.

  “Give us back the water, Ris!” someone cried out. And with that other voices picked up the keening. Some came down on their knees, beating their foreheads against the ground, kissing the sand at her feet.

  “Enough!” rang out the voice of the old woman, carrying farther than imaginable out of such a wizened frame. “There is only one here who can return your water to you. It is Lord Rigaeh.”

  At that point the Lord himself was seen approaching, and the crowd parted for him and his armed retainers. Lord Rigaeh wore a coat of the palest sun-satin and a head-wrap of silk and gold braid.

  “I am here, good people of Livais,” he said with a look of pasted-on surprise. “Has this old woman who claims to be Ris performed her miracles for you and raised the waters yet?”

  “Nonsense. Where is the well-digger?” Ris said. “I ask you all to witness. Have him climb down into the well, and look for any sign of an opening or outlet in the walls of stone.”

  “What then, old woman?” Lord Rigaeh said. “What would you do even if you find such an outlet? What would that prove?”

  Nadir and Caelqua, standing in the front of the crowd, looked with concern at Grandmother. For a moment, Ris said nothing. And then she motioned for the old well-digger to proceed. The well-digger dropped in the water bucket filled with stone-mason’s tools, climbed over the stone rim of the well, and started to lower himself down along the length of rope. After about five minutes of silent anticipation, high desert wind, and the beating sun, they heard his muffled yell to bring down another person who would serve to verify what
they saw, and to bring down a torch.

  Someone pushed forward a spindly teenage boy, and someone else came running with a lit torch. Holding the torch in his teeth, the youth climbed into the well like a monkey, and disappeared. Several minutes later, they heard the noise of hammer against stone, and then the sound of released gushing water.

  Then the youth’s head popped out from the well’s opening, followed by the rest of him, while the well-digger still grunted behind him. The boy was wet from the waist down. He began to chatter immediately that yes, indeed, there had been a plugged pipe of some sort, but that, when they opened it, there was only so much water. The inflow did raise the water level, but only so far, to his waist. The rest of the water was nowhere.

  “You see,” said Lord Rigaeh smoothly. “What do you say now, old woman? It is no secret that there is a reserve chamber, built at the beginning for dire circumstances such as this, to give us just enough water to survive. If you were indeed Ris, as you claim, you would have known that.”

  The old woman looked at him intently, while voices of displeasure sounded from the crowd.

  “We have gold and coins for you, Ris!” someone cried. “We give it all to you if you give us back the well!”

  “Fill the well, Ris!”

  The old woman turned to the crowd, her eyes quickening with a passion, and she pointed a finger at the Lord. “He has your water, what is left of it!” she said. “And he has the rest of your useless gold! Search his house, and you’ll find the water!”

  “Halt!” exclaimed Lord Rigaeh. “If you are Ris, then fill the well anew! Show us indeed who you really are. And if you’re an impostor, we will punish you as you deserve.”

  A pause of silence.

  Then the old woman said softly, “I cannot fill the well.”

  At which the crowd wailed.

  “But,” she continued, “although your well is indeed drying inevitably, there is far more water left than you are led to believe. He truly has your water! And his deceit has been robbing you of your livelihood for all these years. The gold that you bring to the Temple of Ris he puts in his pockets! Ris needs no gold, no worshippers! Open your eyes to the simple truth!”

  But they no longer heard.

  “The hag is obviously a nothing and a nobody, people of Livais,” Lord Rigaeh said. “And she can do nothing for you.” And he directed his retainers to take the old woman.

  “Come with me,” the Lord said to the people. “And we shall go together to the Temple of the true Ris in supplication. We shall offer gifts to Ris, and once again our prayers will be heard.”

  The crowd surged around him.

  “No!” the old woman cried. “Do not listen, people! How many times must you offer gifts and still lose water? Think! Your water has been fading gradually, even after your so-called prayers are answered. Every time there is less and less of it—”

  But her final words were muffled, for she was struck on the face.

  A few steps away, Nadir wrestled like an afreet in the grasp of an angry townsman, while Caelqua whimpered, seeing Grandmother’s face bleed.

  “Bring them also,” Lord Rigaeh said, pointing at the children. “They are hers, and all will be punished together for blasphemy.”

  And with that, the three were taken, and the townspeople followed Lord Rigaeh like sheep to the Temple of Ris.

  The sun shone angrily from above upon them all.

  “I don’t want to die, Grandmother . . .” Caelqua sobbed quietly in the darkness of the place where they had been thrown. Despite the unmarked passage of time, it must surely be evening by now, thought Nadir. His eyes had been keened to the dark, and he could just barely make out Grandmother and the girl.

  “You will not die, child, hush . . . I promise you . . .” sounded the voice of the old woman, stubborn and strong as always, while soft echoes came to dance all around. Eventually there was only coagulating silence. Nadir felt the slick mildew of the cold stones around them, smelled the rank vapors of this prison.

  “I only regret one thing,” Grandmother said suddenly. “And that is that I’ve brought you two here, to this accursed town of my birth. I’d forgotten how it was, forgotten the lies and the fools willing to live with them.”

  “Are you—are you truly Ris, Grandmother?” The voice of Caelqua trembled. “I believe you are! You can save us then!”

  “Oh, my girl,” the woman said tiredly, sounding ancient for the first time. “It’s true that I was once called Ris. But it was such a very long time ago. . . .”

  “Tell us, Grandmother,” Nadir said.

  “Very well,” the old voice responded.

  And Grandmother told them of a slave child of the house of Kharaan—a kind man, who, after her mother died bearing her, had brought her up as his own. It was Kharaan who had named her “Ris” in honor of the One who was known to appear to those in dire need, and it was he who had taught her the nature of justice. And as he lay dying, the old man had spoken words that remained when he was long gone: “If truth is ever obscured or distorted, give of yourself in whatever way necessary, to end the injustice.” Inspired by these words, Ris had assumed the identity of her legendary namesake.

  “But, if you are not divine, how did you know of the injustice of Lord Rigaeh?” Nadir persisted stubbornly.

  “That, I did not.” The old voice chuckled in the darkness. “It was merely easy to guess. For, anywhere one goes, children, there is injustice. Assume thus, and you will know what to look for, and how to recognize it.”

  “Then I will fight injustice too, Grandmother,” Nadir said. “When we get out of here, I will grow up to be strong and wise like you.”

  “But I am scared, Grandmother,” said Caelqua. “Unlike you, I am not strong, I am not Ris. I am good for nothing. . . .”

  “Who or what is Ris indeed, children?” the old one said suddenly. “What do you think?”

  “I think,” Caelqua said softly, “Ris is either a god, or has the blessing of the gods, and thus a power over waters. You tell us this story, Grandmother, but I know there’s more to it that you do not say. You say you are not the same Ris, and that you only pretend to be. But this is what I think. You, who are divine, are locked into this human shape, so that you can be here and love us, for we have none but yourself. . . .”

  And with that, Caelqua buried her face in the darkness against the breast of the old woman, and wept with loud rasping sobs.

  “My poor child, I wish I were,” Ris said, stroking in the dark what she knew to be the radiant hair of the girl.

  “Why did you take us in, Grandmother, if it were not for that reason?” Nadir said suddenly.

  “I told you already, little demon,” the old woman replied. “You stirred my curiosity. Besides, you were filthy as soot, your sweet dark brown skin all covered up by the stain of the gutter, your head full of lice, and I had a great urge to scrub you clean.”

  “And I?” Caelqua said, quieting her sobs. “Why did you take me?”

  The old woman began to laugh. Her chuckles echoed back and forth among stone, and in the dark Nadir felt a tremor, a vibration against the palm of his that was resting on the cold floor.

  “Silly, silly questions, my dears,” she finally managed to speak through her laughter. “Must there be a reason? Well then, I will tell you. I took you both because I was lonely.”

  “But Ris is a god!” Nadir marveled. “Can even gods be lonely?”

  “Pah! Did I ever say I was divine? Ask the same silly questions and receive silly answers,”

  the old woman said. “Now, enough maudlin nonsense. Go to sleep, both of you, for tomorrow, Ris or no Ris, one way or another we shall be free of this place. And I promise you, no one here shall die.”

  “I believe you, Grandmother—Ris . . .” Caelqua whispered. “Whoever you are. . . .”

  In the darkness, Nadir thought he heard faraway sounds of subterranean waters. And as he rested his head in Grandmother’s lap, they seemed to be rushing nearer and nea
rer, like blood coursing through his temples, into his very mind.

  The morning sun poured its scalding essence down upon Livais. In the center of town, near the well, stocks were erected. The old woman was made to kneel, face down, her neck restrained, her feet bound together, and her hands placed into the wooden contraption. Next to her, the children were tied upright to a wooden post. All three were bare-headed, without protection against the raging sun. And, by the will of Lord Rigaeh, they were to remain thus. They were to have no water.

  Townspeople passed by and spat at the old woman, spat at her gray hair dragging in the dust. They struck and pinched the dark boy, and pulled the radiant hair of the girl, ripping her poor tunic. Urchins kicked and taunted them, bringing cups full of liquid just to their lips, and then drawing away, laughing. Eventually, another old woman hobbled by and shooed the urchins away, shaming them that they were wasting the precious dwindling water in this town with their games. The hag then used her stick to strike another blow at Ris, who remained silent and motionless.

  “Damn you,” the hag hissed. “They pray even now in the Temple of Ris for forgiveness of your blasphemy, so that Ris will return to us the well, in exchange for all of our gold! Even now, I go to carry the last of my coins to the Temple.”

  Ris did not argue the illogic of the statement. But Caelqua, sweat pouring down her face, whispered, “Grandmother didn’t do anything except point out the truth . . .” only to receive a jab of the hag’s stick.

  Nadir remained silent, while sweat also beaded his date-brown skin and glistened in the tight black curls of his wiry hair.

  At high noon Lord Rigaeh’s men appeared, and, grinning, began to untie the children.

  “Lord Rigaeh spares your lives. He’d rather you walk through the desert,” one of the men sneered, pulling Nadir by the ear.

  The old woman was made to rise, her feet unbound, her neck and wrists freed of the wooden stocks. With Nadir barely supporting both his sister and Grandmother, Rigaeh’s men drove them past the well, and outside the gates of Livais, unto the burning sand. . . . It is said that the desert sun brings delirium. And that sand, mixed with wind, tastes like blood. . . .