by Lesley Smith
Nahris looked at the desert and suddenly felt powerless. She would never survive in the desert alone, not without a map and a guide. Varen, the oldest, had an Edoi map covered in scribblings and notations. He kept it to ensure himself the greatest share of their meagre rations, and respect from those who might leave him behind due to age and infirmity; riding in the cart with his possessions that would have been too heavy to carry even if he’d been a man in his prime.
So they turned left and sealed their fate. The River Road sang to them, inviting them to their doom, and they went like baelish calves to the slaughter.
The Forbidden Road
In the beginning there was nothing. Until the end of time there will be something. In the silence of the desolate places, we can imagine both and find peace or fear waiting for us.
The writings of Kaiene the Blessed, first Oracle of Aia.
Saiara was sick. The world spun around her and nothing she could do would stop the dizziness. She ate little and drank only when forced, and lay with eyes clamped shut as the waves of nausea rolled over her; the bumping cart turning the journey into a kind of exquisite torture. She didn’t have the Night Plague, this was something else. Eirian and Senna saw it and recognised the malady for what it was, as did Chelle and every mother in the caravan while she, herself, remained oblivious.
She was pregnant.
“What?” Jeiana asked as they sat around the fire, trying to keep warm in the smallest hours of the night. Saiara was sleeping in the pallet, her snores drifting like the burbling of a forest cat. “How do you know?”
“I serve Uryen.” Senna would have laughed, but this was a dangerous time, especially when pregnancy still took too many lives. “I know.”
Chelle added, “The symptoms only become obvious with the second child, I had no idea I was pregnant with Kei’a until I went to seek a healer’s advice. I walked like a drunkard!”
Taras joined them. “Did you say there was wine?”
“No!” Chelle laughed and socked him playfully, putting down the piece she’d been working on almost meditatively since they’d left Aiaea. Since the two women had joined the caravan, he was the father she had never had and she his adopted daughter. “I was telling Jeiana what it was like when I was pregnant.”
“Why?” He asked, and his jaw dropped as he realised. “Is Her Grace?”
Senna signalled for him to lower his voice lest he wake their sleeping Oracle. “Hush, she doesn’t know, not yet. I’d rather we survive the desert with her unaware, the added burden might well be too much for her.”
“I hated being pregnant, the baelish took advantage and kept walking in circles or trying to return to the last watering hole. I couldn’t focus for nearly a half season,” Taras muttered, pouring himself a mug of hot tea. “Good job Ishran was impatient to join the world. After that, I swore I’d never do it again but…well, see how that worked out.”
Taras stilled and Jeiana knew he was thinking of Jio. He had no closure, no certainty whether his youngest boy still walked on this shore or had passed over the River. She wished she could give him that, but it was beyond her power, at least while tied into this form.
“Taras, I-” she began, and faltered.
He looked up and his glance was friendly. The gruff old man spoke more with his eyes than his words. “You do us a kindness, Lady, and wherever Jio is, I know he’ll be all right. He’s quick on his feet and wise to the world. If it’s the will of the gods, I’ll see him again, and if he’s passed over, I know he is in your tender care.”
“I wish I could offer you the peace you seek. I wish I knew.”
Jeiana scratched at a bite on her arm without thinking. Remembering and being were more of a struggle with each day that passed.
“I dread reaching Abbia. Garrin will need to know, and you of all people, know what telling him Ishran had passed did to both of us.”
Jeiana reached out to pat his hand. “As you say, Jio is a sand mouse. He will hide and live and fight until his last breath. They’re resilient little things.”
Chelle excused herself to snatch a few precious hours of rest. Jeiana watched her go and regret burned. If Saiara’s pregnancy was at risk when the early months could easily see a miscarriage, then Chelle was in even more danger. Jeiana dreaded what would happen if her labours came on early, before they had found safe haven in Sadrish or Abbia. The after-hours of labour and the birth-bed fever, those were the perilous times for a new parent, even an older one who had already had a child.
Her voice was too cool, too devoid of everything which made her Kashinai, even as Jeiana’s heart cried out for those she loved. “I fear for all of you, but death comes, for without it life would be meaningless.”
“That you come at all,” Senna said. “I’ve seen enough of death to know that sometimes it is the better thing.”
Taras raised his cup. “Then to all those who have crossed the River, may our community be worthy of their sacrifices and survive to remember them.”
They met his cup with theirs, and swore an oath to survival. Not just for their own sakes, but for the entire Kashinai species. If Saiara and Chelle’s daughters were to survive, there must be a family to raise them.
In the cities of Benai, Ossoi, Fenoi, and Gehol stories were flying like dennabirds. They’d started when Caerim had been obliterated and had gathered strength with each passing day. Whispers were so often louder than spoken words, and they were a lot harder to ignore. By the time the dennabird arrived ten days after the New Year, with the news of Saiara the Brave and her vision and the command to head north and make for Canhei, the peoples of the coastal cities had practically packed up.
The slow, miniature caravans made for Sadrish, levaan cattle ridden by men, women, and children, slowly walking the unmarked Sea Road and passing the message on as they went; encouraging second and third waves to follow in the footsteps of the first. They crossed the salt flats by day and night. Lake Lurem beckoned to them, and the people of Sadrish looked confused, even when one of the townsfolk showed them a copy of Eirian’s missive.
“What caravan? Nothing has yet come through.”
Where were Saiara and her refugees?
The journey across the desert was worse than Senna or any of the others could have imagined. The nights were cold, the temperature falling enough to turn water to ice, and the days were hot, so hot that not even the cooler layers of sand helped with the lack of water and the fly-infested food.
The heat-sickness began with the young and the old almost as soon as they left the burning ruins of Soik. Even in the heat of the day, the ill shivered as if entombed in ice, unable to control the stream of filth flowing from their knotting bowels as their dry lips cracked and bled. Senna recognised the symptoms all too quickly; the desert flux, known by everyone else as the Night Plague.
Her training and her knowledge made her realise that, if left unchecked, over half their caravan wouldn’t live to see Sadrish, much less the Azure Grasslands. Now, more than ever, they needed numbers, they needed people. A species needed more than just a few to survive, and every person they lost cut down the odds of existence beyond the coming cataclysm.
Normally such a disease was easy to treat. Rest and rehydration saved many lives, but now, in the hostile desert, neither were in large supply. Suddenly the idea of skipping Pesh became not just ludicrous but impossible as Senna watched several of the healthy souls who had joined them at Kuut fall ill and die in their makeshift pallets by the following morning.
Jeiana wandered much in those long hot evenings, going from tent to tent and leaving wailing families in her wake. No one stopped her, no one refused her entry and word rippled that Ishvei’s sister was walking amongst them, offering relief to anyone truly in need. She didn’t need to be summoned, instead the song of the dying soul called to her, and Jeiana, being a psychopomp and indwelt by the Lady of the River, had no choice but to answer.
Senna watched her release a boy, his body wracked with fever, and it
was truly a mercy. His body was done and he passed, gently and quickly, across the River. Jeiana had tears in her eyes, he reminded her of someone, her own son, the one she only half remembered, perhaps.
That night, with the noise of people retching and vomiting around them, Jeiana cried properly and Senna spoke to her gently.
“It was the boy, wasn’t it? Did he remind you of Lukai?”
“No, someone else,” Jeiana grieved, head against Senna’s chest. “My boy, my only born son. I carried him so long ago.”
“This was never going to be easy,” Senna comforted her. “I was taught, during my days in Uryen’s service, to help where I can and to ease the passing of those not long for the world. I will not kill but you don’t either, you release souls and it’s a blessing.”
“We will be remembered,” she spoke her memory of another time and place, a temple in some far-off world, and fell asleep.
“You have the heart of a healer and the soul of a mystic,” Senna murmured and kissed her forehead.
The few hours she snatched in the coldest part of the night were not enough. Someone always roused her with a new case of the sickness. The journey from Kuut to Alarim was the longest on the Oasis Road and took two nights, with Pesh conveniently located in the middle. In ages past, it had been the perfect stop for much-needed respite. Now, however, it was anathema to the Edoi, and none of the city born could quite understand why but then, they had never heard the stories of the Sons of Thaeos, of the truth behind Jashri’s blinding and Ascension.
“We cannot stop there!” Meresia’s voice was an octave higher than it should have been, betraying her fears. Outside their tent, Thaeos blazed and a hot breeze blew, inside they sweated and smelled like baelish calves and the heat seemed only to inflame the Ifunareki Clanmother’s fears. “It’s a death sentence on us. My aunt forbade this road for good reason.”
“They could have died out here by now,” Taras countered. “Their blood is thin enough.”
“And more will die if we don’t,” Saiara argued, pale from her own malady even if hers was a life sentence rather than death. “I understand your fears, Meresia, but we’ve lost nearly a third of our people already. In the coming cataclysm the life of every soul will matter. We need water and rest; Pesh is our only option.”
“Neither I nor my clan will step foot in that place!”
Meresia’s pride might have been satisfied, but Taras winced. “Mere-“
“No, Taras, not after what those sun-worshipping bastards did to my mother!”
“And what of my son? Which life is worth more when lost? Mere, would you condemn thousands more to follow both of them?” Taras asked. “What say you, Oracle?”
“I say: Trust in Aia but tie your baelish to a pana tree,” Saiara said. “We’re a few hours away, we have to try. I don’t want to die out here, and I don’t want anyone else to either.”
The caravan came to a stop just outside Pesh. Lulled to sleep by the gentle rumbling of the cart and glad of a few hours rest, Senna came to with a jolt. It was still dark and yet when she looked out from the cart, all she could see was flaming torches.
She clambered out and saw dozens of men in white, each with a flaming torch in their right hand. Taras was standing next to a strangely defiant-looking Meresia and after a moment, one man stepped forward. He was older than Taras and his face was lined and burned by the sun, more like baelish leather than skin.
His voice echoed across the desert. “Edoi scum! What brings you to Pesh?”
Taras stepped forward. “We seek only to pass you by on our way to Alarim.”
“None may pass.”
“By whose order?” Meresia asked, her voice shaking like a pana tree in a harvest breeze.
“By mine!” The man surveyed the caravan, eyes cold. “I am Asamu, lord of Pesh and servant of Thaeos.”
Taras flinched and then his face went dark.
Meresia saw him and hissed. “Don’t!”
From her vantage point, even in the semi-darkness, Senna saw Vashi frowning and she leaned close enough to question to her mother quietly. “What’s wrong?”
Taras answered, suddenly angrier than Senna had ever seen him. “That’s the man who murdered your greatmother and whose thugs killed my firstborn boy!”
Fallen Son
The gods will exist without our worship or faith. They simply are. As the sun rises and sets without us needing to will it to do so, so they will watch over us whether we curse their names or praise them.
The writings of Kaiene the Blessed, first Oracle of Aia.
Asamu surveyed the crowd of people who had stopped, baelish and all, a stone’s throw from the unmarked boundaries of Pesh. Who were they? What did they want?
Some were Edoi but not all. He saw Seaborn with their tattoos of music and waves dancing across their skins, he saw cityborn and, oddly, women and children. The young, the old, the heatsick…no one who should ever travel across the desert, even by night.
“Who are you and what do you want?”
A woman in sand-dirtied blue robes slipped through the crowd, a plain wooden staff in one hand and the tell-tale red cloth over her sightless eyes. She spoke with a strange mix of desperation and authority, despite her obvious youth and impossible inexperience.
“This is my kishai. We are travelling north and wish only to drink from your spring, to rest and then leave with the dusk.”
“Kishai?” Asamu hadn’t heard the word used outside of his own tribe since he was a boy. It meant community, and included anyone who believed in Thaeos, but there stood Aia’s oracle and he knew she did not believe, not if she and hers traveled by night. The night was the time of Kaiene, of Aia’s whisperings and not Thaeos. It was the reason he and his kept to the day and let Thaeos shine his glory upon them.
Asamu’s white hakashari was sand-stained from days walked through the desert but he’d noticed other stains too, where the pustules on his skin had burst, where the tumour on his stomach had wept blood and fluid. His face was covered and not just to save his sand-clouded eyes, his skin was burned, blistered and chafed from the sun, the heat making the wounds dryer than an empty water-well, and he absent-mindedly picked at one of the larger scabs, the flecks of skin falling into the cold grains of sand.
He did not know he was dying, of course. The cancer was already eating up his insides, tumours springing up like fungi in wet soil and cells turning rogue faster than new ones could be created. Asamu would be dead before the year was out and that worried him; a sacred death was required, his body left to burn, willingly, in Thaeos’ glorious embrace. Death by any other means would leave his soul to the mercy of who knew what and certainly not glorious eternity at Thaeos’ side.
So he stood as dawn cracked the night sky in two, and surveyed this rebel kishai. They were rebel, yes; if this girl was indeed the new Oracle-bitch, word would have come on an official dennabird, its feathers streaked with blue and its parchment tied to its foot inked with that sacred shade reserved solely for use by the heretical seers, that deep blue which glittered with motes of starstone ground into the ink. They had shot one down before now, announcing the Ascension of the last oracle…that little bitch, Kia, who had taken Vakai’s life. She should have died, it was his will, a fitting sacrifice on Thaeos’ altar only to be taken away and elevated to the greatest heights by the followers of the Whispering Harlot. Had that been the act, sullied by the Edoi scum, which had roused the Starchild’s anger and focused his light up on the world?
Asamu couldn’t understand it. That girl, that fledgling oracle, stood in front of him without fear. Kia had never been that self-assured, she had never seemed so…god-touched, as the Sons were after a day’s meditation in his Light. Granted, her numbers were more than his; the Sons had always been small, but the women and children were baelish calves to the slaughter. The men too, seemed anxious, their tongues bone-dry and looking at the water of the oasis’ spring as a man dying of starvation did the remains of a hot meal left to be eat
en by flies.
He grimaced. He could take them. They would be dead before dawn.
Taras’ anger was about to flow unchecked, like a river bursting its banks after a summer flood.
“Taras?” Meresia’s voice was enough to calm him, but it would only work for so long. He’d forgotten how much his heart ached at the loss of Adria, Meresia’s poor mother, and his eldest and seldom mentioned elder son. It made him wonder if the gods hated him; one of them must to take both his sons from him. He wondered if Ishran’s soul still wandered the desert or if he had taken a place on Jaisenthia’s kerash.
For a moment he saw his son’s shade, standing in his bloodied hakashari, no footprints under his bare feet and no trail where his tail dragged in the sand. Ishran looked sad as he stood, his voice stolen with death. It was said, in the legends of old, that only child-shades could speak. The adults who lingered were always mute. And still, Ishran stood and waited, eyes imploring his father for justice or vengeance or to simply walk away, Taras wasn’t sure which, but his son had always been a pacifist.
“Taras!?”
Meresia’s voice was more urgent now and he looked up, sounding more tired than he had expected to be, as if the weight of the years had just caught up with him. “What is it, Mere?”
“Stop,” she pleaded. “Please, I know you’re thinking about him. About avenging Ishran.”
Taras sighed. He had been a much younger man when he and Garrin had pledged their lives and hearts to one another. Taras’ father, Nolam, had not approved; the Feium Asun and the Yulam Eroi wandered opposite ends of Reshka, only meeting for a few days each Harvest as the season ended and Spring began. A long distance relationship like that could never work, and yet the two boyhood loves had defied the odds.