by Lesley Smith
“You mock me!” Jashri shouted, but it was close to the truth.
“No, I tell you bitter truths that you won’t hear.” Jeiana stood. “You’re dying, you know this. Your days are slipping away like grains in a sandclock. Make your peace, prepare for the inevitable, and your passing will be easier. That’s all the advice I can offer you.”
In the days and nights that followed, Jashri’s nightmares returned and her screams echoed in the halls. It got to the point when not even the strongest sleeping draught could blot out the night terrors, and those who remained began to wonder—aloud, even—if this was some sign that doom was coming; that Aiaea’s days were numbered.
That was when the second Exodus began. Of course, most of these people would not survive. They would either succumb to sun-sickness or the blistering heat. Even the Edoi outposts had been stripped of their customary rations, and many who hoped to walk to River Road drowned or were swallowed by the sinking sands and sucking mud which signalled the death of the plains and the desert.
When the dennabirds began to fly north, even the smartest souls knew they were doomed. Jashri called for calm, but it was too late; even her appearance on the temple steps, too little too late, did nothing to calm the remaining populace, and hundreds died in riots that the guards simply could not control. Still, it was a quicker death than the one which awaited those left in the dying city.
The dancing lights in the skies were the final straw, and panic overrode any sensibilities left in Aiea. Looting and riots swept over the city. On the last morning, Jashri woke to silence. No birds sang, no gentle words from Sarivashi to wake her, and so Jashri rose late. Oddly, she had slept well and woke refreshed, as if the absence of the dream was the last swell before the tide swamped her.
Dressed, she reached for her staff and realised how different and frail she felt. Until Jeiana had taken her days, she had been so brave and untouchable, even in her blindness. Now she felt as if a simple fall might break her bones, and she would shatter into pieces on the unswept stone floor.
She felt her way through to the Hall of Oracles. She touched Kaiene’s statue, her form carefully carved from the best starstone and standing as the oldest sentinel in a sacred sisterhood. Jashri realised there would never be a statue of her in this hall, she would be reviled as the polluter of a sacred wellspring, as the one who refused to listen and broke the chain. Aia showed her what was to come, how only one woman in a generation would be so keen as to listen to her words. Nevermore would there be more than one oracle at a time, instead they would be as transitional as the wind.
Only one soul has the strength to be my Voice. More will listen if there is only a single seer. Aia whispered and her voice was calm, there was no malice, no anger, just an intense sadness. Daughter, I release you from your vow.
The silence in her own mind was deafening. Jashri realised Aia had always been there, gently nudging her to do the right thing, and now she was gone. The inside of her mind was like a cavern and it was too much for the Oracle. She wept in view of her predecessor, who, even from her stone shell, seemed to be looking down in judgment from across the years and beyond time itself, stone eyes boring deeper than a knife in the gut. This hall, once a place of pride, and consolation for those who had shouldered the burden now felt more like a courtroom where her long-dead sisters stood in judgment.
The wave came moments later, screams heralding it as people in the streets outside realised death was coming for them. Jashri heard the surge and felt the change in pressure, her dreams crystallized, and in that moment, she knew. Her nightmares had not been of the past and the city drowned had not been Abbia. Her vision had been of this cataclysm, and it was coming true. The realisation of it all was horrific, but inevitable, and Jashri went to her grave, haunted by the waters.
Jeiana woke late. Thaeos’ light was refracted as the glow turned the blue grass strange mixes of gold, illuminating the makeshift pallet on which the pair were sleeping. Senara’s breath tickled against her ieshiya, making strands of her hair dance against her ear. The healer was still sleeping, her tendrils deep inside Jeiana’s back and each movement the other woman made Jeiana want to whimper with pleasure.
This was not what she had come for, yet she had found love anyway. Was it planned? Was it chance or was it a distraction? Jeiana couldn’t remember and, for once, she didn’t care. She knew this species had a different conception of gender; there were differences between them to be sure but as both could have children and it was possible for each man and woman to impregnate themselves, their ideal of sexuality was all encompassing.
Jeiana vaguely remembered other races on far off worlds who called love between the same or even opposite genders a mortal sin, something a deity would look poorly upon, but she didn’t care and she sincerely thought if there were such beings, they wouldn’t give an ataani either.
She drifted in that glorious place between true dreaming and wakefulness. She could hear birds singing, feel the caress of the wind on her skin and smell something delicious on the breeze. As her eyes opened, her soulmate was standing at the entrance of the cave, leaning against the sun-warmed rock. His long white hair was flowing free and he had an amused expression on his face and a look of tender concern in his eyes; he was worried about her.
“Az-”
Jeiana sat up, her arm aching as if she’d
strained it or lain on it too long. The vision was gone with the memory of the name she had tried to speak and suddenly reality impinged, a harsh and violent intrusion. The birds weren’t singing, they were screaming, the wind was hot and the smell…it was like the ovens of Gehol, the air filled with the stench of smoke and cooking flesh. The noise was the worst, the roar of water as it embraced the parched city and swallowed it whole.
“Senna!” Jeiana shook her hard, using a tiny drop of power to pull the woman’s soul back from its wanderings, the exertion of doing it drained even more of the forgotten memories, like setting a fire and watching the flames creeping across the blackening paper. As she did so more memories faded into oblivion but it was a well-made bargain. “Senara! I call you back. Wake up, now!”
The healer snapped awake, her eyes wide and shocked by the violent return to consciousness. There was a reason why you should never wake a dreamer.
“What the—Oh, sweet Aia, what’s wrong?”
“Something bad.” Jeiana could hear the cries of all the souls who were dying, begging her to release them and she pressed the heel of her palms against her ears. “They’re calling me. Thousands of them.”
“Aiaea’s gone?” Senara asked and Jeiana nodded, the two women lying together and Senna wept for the death of her adopted home and all those lost with it.
Caspa stopped paying attention to the flow of the day and the movements of the night. He slept when he was tired, he ate when his belly rumbled, and he spent the rest of the time reinforcing the sacred cave for the coming solar storm.
The tree was truly old, older than Kaiene certainly, but it was the same as those in the temple gardens only on a massive scale. He wondered what the Underside had been used for, before the Varaiah came. The tree served as a foundation pillar that held up not just this cavern but who knew how many others, entangled in its roots and branches. Without it the air would have run out long ago.
“We don’t know,” Rand said, shrugging. “It was here when we arrived and will doubtless be here when we cease to be. Balus told me once there was a cult in the dawning age which called these caves the womb of Ishvei’s World.”
“Poetic,” Jio said from the corner. “The Edoi stories say the trees were Ishvei’s World trying to recreate the act of our creation, sculpture in natural form.”
Twice each rotation they ate together, these brothers joined by circumstance. Jio was sullen but he soon bonded with Caspa, looking up to him as he had his true-born brother, a calligrapher’s apprentice named Kadian. Caspa was watching Rand, he knew the elder boy was contemplating going down in the caves and never retu
rning. Rand knew more he did about this place and they needed every soul they could keep.
“Think of Shaari, would she want you to do that?”
Rand looked so tired, so weary. “I wonder if she lives. What if she’s waiting for me at the Riverbank?”
“What if she’s not?” He countered. “I’m new to this Order and if you truly want me to lead then I need you to teach me. If we survive beyond this coming cataclysm then you can have your death, if Jaisenthia doesn’t take you sooner.”
She won’t. Aia whispered. His lesson is to survive, to know the loneliness and pass beyond it. Just as yours is to know your soulmate lives and yet you and she will never see each other again, even if a part of you both lives on.
The air had turned cold and the ground grumbled. At first Caspa though it was just one of many aftershocks which had made their sanctuary a little more unsafe. The other men, sitting in groups and quietly talking, fell silent and Jio had gone white, no doubt reliving for the hundredth time the quake which had seen him join their little family.
“Jio?”
“I’ll be all right,” he said, pale, and through gritted teeth. “When it passes.”
Run. Run. Save yourself. RUN!
Instead the vibration only increased and Caspa realised it felt wrong, this wasn’t the earth shaking, this was a different kind of pressure. Then the water was upon them and the world spiralled out of control and Caspa was flung like a rag doll, it would be up to the gods if he ever woke up again.
The City of Wanderers
And in a year to come, there will be sorrow and suffering. The Edoi will flee but they will not be forgotten. Ishvei and Uryen will remember them, and offer them sanctuary and survival against the fears of their fellow clans.
The writings of Kaiene the Blessed, first Oracle of Aia.
The Edoi’s beloved Azure Grasslands stretched out at far as the eye could see; gently moving grass which reminded Sarivashi of the sea, a purple-blue sea of grass pockmarked by flowers where it always seemed to be summer. They were heading for the island city of Abbia that drifted in Mirror Bay, a slowly rumbling collection of caravans, carts and shaggy baelish. That was the last stop before they journeyed deep into the mountains to their destination, the sacred Canhei Basin.
Meresia’s and Taras’ clans, along with the refugees from the cities, were camping by Ishvei’s Mirror, weaving callow leaves into shades to protect them from the heat that persisted long into the darkness. Kaiene had risen, half full, by the time they came to the lakeshore. The baelish grumbled as they saw the lake and ambled down to the water’s edge. Parents nudged their calves closer while the elders, thirst sated, began to feed on the lush grass which grew on the shore.
Jhritian was not an official village and so it wasn’t marked on any maps but those of the Edoi, because it moved around depending on where the Edoi camped. The rest of the Feium Asun and the Ifunareki were waiting for them with fresh skins of water and extra rations as well as news. The Edoi clans were on the move; the Mi'raathi, the Yulam Eroi and the Bashaaki were all heading north to meet them on the outskirts of Baaren.
They stayed in Jhritian for a night, sleeping in the shadow of Ishvei’s Mirror before setting out for Abbia, the isle-city where the Edoi’s Clan Council met. Most of the caravan went north while Saiara and her entourage, including Jeiana and Senara, followed Taras and Meresia to the Edoi city, though none of them quite knew why.
For a nomadic clan to have a city was a concept that had always amused Meresia, yet Abbia was like no other city in Reshka. It had first been created during the Edoi persecutions millennia previously, when the traders had been blamed for spreading a plague from city to city. They had needed somewhere to run, to hide, and to wait until the plague died out and the populace returned to their senses. The Bard and her companion the Healer, had guided them to this seemingly inhospitable isle off Reskha’s western coast, and pronounced it the Edoi’s new city. Once the great rope bridges had been retracted, it was impossible to get onto Abbia as the base of the island was too high to climb, and the natural bowl of the land kept the wanderers safe from floods.
In the Edoi tongue, Abbia translated as the City of Tents. Each home, each building, was made of canvas and wood and must be carried on the backs of those walking the rope bridges. When the Edoi quit the city each spring, Abbia looked like any other isle, barren and lifeless but for the ruins of an old temple, the sole building on the island. The stores were hidden beneath ground, the water spring in the temple covered when they moved on.
Abbia was theirs. No one ever argued over that point and Abbia changed each year, never staying the same for long; a sea of silk and leather that changed with the seasons. As Meresia crossed the bridge, the rope threatening to burn her palm, she realised the city felt like home in the same way that the camping grounds did not.
The moment her foot touched rock, Meresia felt better. Her people were not Seaborn and the bay, while beautiful, with its floating lilies and the smell of salt and flowers, was strange to her.
The small temple to the Bard and the Healer stood in front of her. Around her, tents were being unpacked and the whole city was alive with purpose. On either side of the temple door, ataani trees stood proud and laden with fruit, so heavy that the spiralling branches had to be propped up, lest they snap under the weight.
She bowed her head, stepping over the threshold and into the cool darkness of the simple stone building. The Bard sat, in Edoi style, upon a young baelish, the ones which run like lightning with the passion of youth. The Healer, a tall man with a long tail and eyes the colour of sapphire stood at her side holding the reins. Candles had been laid around them, a dozen flickering flames that the small spring sent reflecting onto the ceiling.
Meresia spoke the prayer her mother had taught her, for protection and wisdom, for inspiration and good health, then she knelt down and drank from the spring.
The water was cold with a slight salt tang and the perfume of the lilies. Without it, Abbia would have made for a poor choice of sanctuary and many believed it was a gift to sustain them in their times of trial.
“Clanmother?”
Meresia looked up. “Taras?”
“We await Garrin,” he said. The Yulam Eroi favoured the eastern coast, helping to transport salt from the flats south. “He sent a dennabird; they should be here by morning. Though knowing him, tonight is more likely.”
“This cannot wait.”
“There is still no sign of Jio,” Taras waited, unwilling to confirm what they already knew. “I will have to tell him, Mere.”
Meresia felt sorrow washing over her. The boy was so young, so stupidly impulsive, and yet he made a fine Edoi. She turned back to the statue and wished they had a place for Jaisenthia in this temple, it seemed so wrong to ignore one who had such an important place in their lives.
She wept quietly and then headed for the council tents.
Vashi realised she didn’t feel truly free until they crossed into the Azure Grasslands, the ancestral corner marked as Edoi on every map since the time of Kaiene, even during the Year of the Night Plague. During that chaotic trinity of seasons, it became their quarantine zone, their bastion of safety from a culture which wanted them extinguished to save more worthy lives.
She remembered the story of the Bard and the Healer, saints whom the Edoi believed were Ishvei and Uryen incarnated. Vashi had loved the stories. Kaiene herself had said every legend has a grain of memory in it. Vashi appreciated the mythology, but now restored to life, it was impossible not to wonder. Had the gods walked the Grasslands? Had they rode their baelish along the River Jhri as Thaeos sunk below the horizon? Were they, as Jeiana said, not even gods at all?
“Vashi?” Kadian asked, walking beside her in the dappled evening light. “What was it like being dead?
She looked surprised. “I didn’t die.”
“But, did you see it? The River?”
“I don’t know,” she shrugged. “But I remember someone. He offe
red to help me, to release my soul and I couldn’t do it, not without saying goodbye to you, to my mother.”
“The Ferryman?”
“Jeiana says he has a name,” Vashi said, thinking of how the indwelt woman was changing. “She just doesn’t remember it.”
“Do you think she’s the Lady of the River?”
Vashi shrugged. “I’m biased, Kadi. I’m alive, remember? Whatever she did for me…I shouldn’t be here, walking home with you.”
“I’m glad you are,” he said to her, gripping her hand gently but firmly. “I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you, Vashi.”
She cupped his face, touching her nose to his. “You’d cope, Kadi, as you have done since my bonding day. Because it’s all you can do.”
“I never forgot you,” he said. “I never wanted another, I hoped we might be reunited.”
“In this life or another?”
“I was hoping sooner rather than later,” he admitted, sheepish. “I look at you and I see eternity in your eyes. I know we’ve met before and will again.”
When you were a seer and he your artisan…Aia whispered. When you will be an explorer seeking ancient knowledge in the waters and he fascinated by the stars and their movements. When you will be priestess and he something undefinable. You orbit each other as Kaiene does Ishvei’s World but even moons can be ripped from orbit, remember that, daughter.
She thoughtfully absorbed Aia’s words before she spoke. “Because I am yours and you are mine, dearest Kadi.”
“Just as you say.” He held her tightly. “And we will be together come the end of this world or the start of a new one.”
The ragged line of people, some walking, others riding in carts or on baelish, had thinned out since the desert. Vashi had a good idea of how many has passed across the River; she had seen Jeiana moving from tents to weeping groups. All let her through; all let them do what she was there to do. She had watched her touch a child, a young girl burning with fever from the Night Plague and seen her body go still. It was a mercy, Vashi truly believed that, but it didn’t save those left behind.