by Laura Gill
Everyone worked hard to excavate the debris, even though it was apparent the victim was dead. Some were visibly distressed, particularly the youngest boy, who not an hour before had cussed so vehemently at Aranaru, and the mother with her two daughters, but to their credit no one abandoned the effort. Where one person had survived, surely there must be others.
“We need to cover him.” One of the men recognized the deceased as a temple servant; he was not, however, the woman’s husband. “It’s not decent to have people see.”
“We’ve no more blankets,” a woman pointed out.
“There are some in the west stores, which are still standing.” Aranaru volunteered to go, because he alone in the group had the authority to enter and commandeer supplies.
Getting from the south quarter to the west was no easy feat. More people had gathered in the central court. Rescue and firefighting efforts had intensified. Aranaru spied several junior priests shifting and scratching around fallen timbers to try to recover whoever was pinned underneath—or rather, whatever, to judge by the way Head Priest Samushulu moaned about the imperiled xoanon of Velchanos.
Aranaru wondered where his colleagues were, and whether they were all right. They belonged to a special class of architects established almost two centuries ago by High Priest Yishharu and Iapyx, son of Daidalos. Commonly known as priests of Daidalos, the priest-architects tended his tomb, maintained and added onto the Knossos temple, now known as the Labyrinth, the Place of the Double Axe. Serving no particular god, they answered only to their patron, High Priest Urtanos.
Aranaru did not want to contemplate the overwhelming task of rebuilding the temple shorthanded. As he navigated the narrow stairs of the pillar crypt which controlled access to the western storehouses, he murmured a prayer to Poteidan not to send the floors above crashing onto his head, and another to the ghost of Daidalos to preserve his colleagues. Every one of them would be needed to restore the Knossos temple.
“Has some demon possessed you?”
A familiar voice and torchlight ahead brought Aranaru up short. Intrigued, he overlooked the passage leading into the pillar crypt and storerooms beyond, and approached the precinct of the goddess Ashera.
Urtanos, high priest of Poteidan, was a tall, elegant, and powerfully built man who always cut an impressive figure, even with his threadbare tunic and mussed shoulder-length hair. He had his back to Aranaru as he confronted a group of women trying to penetrate the tangle of ruined plaster and fallen beams to enter the goddess’s domain.
“Get out!” Urtanos bellowed.
A dark woman with hard features stood her ground. “The sacred serpents must be—”
“Leave them. You won’t find anything in this mess.” Urtanos gestured to the shattered entryway where a girl had been about to shimmy through the network of collapsed timbers. “There’s no fire. The goddess’s messengers are in no danger. They’re probably safer in there than they would be outside in all the chaos, but you, however...”
Aranaru saw a stout, younger woman clutching a bundle sidle away from the ruined doorway with a look of relief.
As the dark woman stubbornly rolled her eyes, an aftershock hit the building. Plaster dust rained down. The rumbling of the Great Bull was a sickening enough experience from outside; inside the bowels of the temple, it felt like the earth was preparing to swallow the occupants whole. Urtanos crouched down and covered his head. Aranaru scrambled for the relative safety of the doorway behind him. He was joined there by the stout woman, who got down on her knees beside him and, whimpering, buried her face in her bundle.
As the shaking subsided, Aranaru exhaled the breath he had been holding. The roof was not going to collapse on his head. He was going to live. He touched the woman’s arm to reassure her, and said, “Get outside.”
Rising, Urtanos did likewise. “Out, out, all of you. Poteidan objects to this intrusion.” He herded the women from the antechamber with shooing motions. When the dark woman resisted, spouting some nonsense about the Earth-Shaker having no authority over the Mistress of Messengers, he seized her by the arm and dragged her toward the doorway, releasing her with a resolute shove. Catching Aranaru’s eye, he winked. “You too, Architect.”
“We need blankets from the storeroom,” Aranaru replied. “There are dead and wounded being recovered from the south quarter.”
Urtanos clamped a huge hand on his shoulder. “Go around to the Melissa sanctuary. Larsa’s got supplies of clothes, shoes, and blankets for those who need them. Tell him I authorized ten blankets for you.” The high priest turned and retrieved the lamp lying on the floor. “When you’re done, come find me with High Priestess Ereka at the infirmary by the Payawon sanctuary. We’ll be tending the wounded.”
Aranaru gratefully followed Urtanos upstairs into the daylight, for he had not been looking forward to navigating the pillar crypt and storerooms by touch in semi-darkness. “Have you heard from any of the other architects?” He realized that the appropriate thing to do upon escaping his cubicle would have been to report to the high priest. Someone else could have led the rescue effort. “Are they all right? I haven’t seen any of them.”
“Eshmal and Tabna reported in immediately.” Urtanos did not comment on Aranaru’s absence, nor did he seem perturbed. “We haven’t heard from Labasha or Piyanalas. If the gods are merciful, then they’re assisting the injured and trapped as you’ve been.”
Aranaru hesitated. Should he continue on with the high priest, or fulfill his obligations to the others waiting on him? “I should have found you right away like Eshmal and Tabna, but—”
“Never mind that.” As they emerged from the passage onto a broad portico, Aranaru noticed fallen bricks littering the ground where they had not been before. At least no one had been caught under them. “Get your supplies to the south quarter and join me.”
Larsa, one of the high priest’s scribes, issued Aranaru the blankets with no questions asked. Aranaru headed back to the south quarter, where the rescue effort continued without him. The dead temple servant had been freed from the rubble and carried away, but thus far no one else had been found. Aranaru surrendered the blankets over to a man he knew, and made his excuses.
Before he rejoined the high priest, however, he carried out some preliminary surveillance, because he knew that Urtanos would ask questions and expect quick answers. Surveying the Labyrinth from the central courtyard, he saw that some buildings had weathered the shaking but were succumbing to the fire. Most were sanctuaries that—thank the Great Bull for taking pity in striking when he had—had been deserted. The south quarter with its dormitories, though, had been hit hard.
Aranaru negotiated his way down a debris-littered ramp to a terrace where he could view the damage, only to encounter Ankal, Eshmal’s assistant, cordoning off the area. “It’s unstable,” the younger man explained. “You’ll have to make your observations from here.”
From the head of the path, Aranaru saw that the high priestess’s house, which stood where Pasiphae’s mansion had been two centuries earlier, had lost its north and west facades, and had burned a while before the fires were smothered. The house of the maidens had fared far worse. When the terrace above failed, the force of the earthquake had hurled ashlar blocks into the house. Aranaru watched two men carrying out the blanketed corpse of one of the girls who had lived there. Suddenly, he felt lost, insignificant against the immense primeval power of the earthquake god. Only his sense of duty kept him from falling onto his knees and pressing his face into the dust to beg forgiveness for his sins, whatever they were. Succumbing would not serve when there was a ruined Labyrinth to salvage.
The failure of the terrace was particularly disturbing, because it was common knowledge that great Daidalos had reinforced the ancient walls to double thickness to support the weight of the Labyrinth above. Aranaru reasoned that if the terraces elsewhere had held—and they had all been maintained, and even strengthened every twenty years—then those in the south quarter should have survi
ved the earthquake, as well.
Aranaru retraced his steps back to the central courtyard and the sanctuary of Payawon, where he found Urtanos conferring with High Priestess Ereka. The injured were laid out on the pavement while a handful of overworked priests and priestesses, some hurt themselves, worked among them. Some of the high priestess’s women assisted, but not, he noticed, the maiden who was his betrothed. Gula remained near Ereka as befit her handmaiden status. Aranaru could not help noticing the linen bandaging her wrist. Had she broken it? Did she have any other injuries? Etiquette forbade him from approaching her without a suitable chaperone, even at this troubled hour.
Urtanos waved him over. “We have just been telling the high priestess that we need to move everyone from the hill before we can clear the rubble and start rebuilding. Townspeople have evacuated to the south meadow. The Minos is sending officials and guards to keep order, so we’ve promised him men to organize the camp. Eshmal and Tabna are headed down there now with their crews. Catch up with them. I have Rasaptu assisting the Minos’s stewards. Whatever men or supplies you require, he’s authorized to give you.”
Aranaru did some quick mental calculations. Eighteen hundred people lived within the Labyrinth’s walls, while ten thousand more dwelt in the town and surrounding countryside. Farmers and herdsmen were the most self-sufficient, able to provide temporary shelters for their families and feed themselves even if their homes were devastated, but that still left too many people—perhaps as many as eight or nine thousand—who were potentially homeless. “Are Labasha and Piyanalas still unaccounted for?”
“Priest-Architect Labasha was brought in with a broken arm,” High Priestess Ereka informed him. A large bruise discolored her right cheek. “Priest-Architect Piyanalas remains missing.”
Aranaru nodded gravely, while trying not to think about having to tackle the double challenges of erecting a camp and rebuilding the temple without the full complement of architects.
“Piyanalas may yet turn up.” Urtanos tried to sound hopeful, while reflexively twisting the silver and iron ring on his left forefinger. “Have you eaten? Head Cook Aratta has set up a kitchen below the east entrance. I’m told there’s quite a line, but I will have Larna bring you something.”
Aranaru had not given much thought to his empty stomach; he was running on sheer nerve. “Thank you, sir.” He bowed first to Urtanos, then to Ereka. “High Priestess, before I go, may I inquire after the lady Gula?” He nodded toward his betrothed. “She appears injured.”
When Ereka granted permission, Aranaru drew Gula aside for a moment of relative privacy. Gula said nothing unless addressed, but that was typical of their interactions. She was sixteen to his twenty-nine, very shy, and obviously less than thrilled to have been promised to a junior-ranking priest-architect who was neither handsome nor wealthy. Her scribe father, on the other hand, appreciated the distinguished ancestry and ancient connections to the priesthood of Poteidan that had secured his daughter a place in the high priestess’s household, and he was providing a handsome dowry.
“Are you all right?” Aranaru gestured to her bandaged wrist. During their infrequent meetings, he never touched her even when etiquette allowed because he sensed she did not want him to. Would she shrink from him on the wedding night? Would she make a good wife and mother, or would she, being empty-headed and indifferent, stray from the marriage bed in favor of a handsome young lover? Aranaru increasingly regretted letting his brother talk him into asking for Gula’s hand.
Soot stained the maiden’s torn blue and yellow skirts. Though she nodded, Gula’s gaze was troubled, even unfocused. Aranaru was coming to recognize that thousand-league stare. “Remember,” he said, “you have escaped the shaking and the fires. The worst has passed.” He managed a smile. “I will rebuild the temple stronger and better than before.”
The ghost of a smile flitted across Gula’s lips, and, nodding, she made an assenting sound. A familiar response, the result of good breeding rather than genuine interest. Whatever topics his bride-to-be liked to talk about—Aranaru had no clue because she never communicated her interests to him—architecture was obviously not among them. Not that Aranaru expected to have anything in common with a sixteen-year-old girl, but, gods, he wished she would speak up.
Taking his leave, he met Tabna in the western court, where the hirsute older architect and half a dozen men were preparing to transport blankets, vessels, and tools down to the meadow. “Aranaru, thank the Great Bull you’re here!” Tabna waved a swarthy arm. “Where are your men?”
“None of them have reported.”
“Have they found Piyanalas?”
Aranaru shook his head. “Not yet.”
A makeshift camp had already begun rising in the south meadow as frazzled townspeople gathered with whatever they had been able to salvage from their houses. The Minos’s officials maintained order, as did temple guards in their distinctive white and yellow kilts. A quick word with the short but imperious Steward Rasaptu saw the architects unloading their supplies on a patch of ground where the moist meadow grass had yet to be trampled Aranaru helped Tabna’s crew prepare the ground, then erect simple lean-tos from stakes, cords, and blankets. Each shelter was equipped with a mat of woven reeds and a vessel for drawing water.
Just as they finished raising the last shelter, the senior-most priest-architect Eshmal appeared with his men and a cart drawn by a skittish mule. White-haired, weathered, but still lithe despite his fifty-eight years, the direct descendant of Iapyx commanded instant obedience. Tabna, Aranaru and the workers hastened to unload salvaged wood from the temple, goatskin tents still coated with plaster dust from whatever storeroom they had been rescued from, and much-needed shovels, hammers and picks. “I don’t see any latrine trenches. Aranaru, take Tabna’s men and start digging. Take the ground behind the last row of shelters.”
As usual, and befitting his status as the junior-most architect, Aranaru found himself doing the most menial work. While he and his crew broke ground, temple refugees began a gradual exodus from the hill. Some sported minor injuries. Officials assigned shelters. Able-bodied men and even women were asked to assist in the construction of others. Aranaru gained eleven more hands this way, including one woman he had not thought to encounter.
“Should you be here?” he asked.
Humusi attacked the soil with her shovel. With her muscular arms, Eshmal’s twenty-three-year-old daughter possessed a man’s strength, but was woefully plain and flat-bosomed, and cursed with the unfortunate habit of expressing her opinions when and wherever she pleased. “My father has no objection.” She quirked a heavy eyebrow, suggesting that Eshmal did not even know where his daughter was. “Do you?”
Aranaru muttered something under breath.
“What was that?” Humusi laughed aloud. “You’re delighted to have me?”
Quite the opposite, Aranaru wished she would take her shovel elsewhere and leave him alone. “You’re digging too deep,” he grumbled.
“Gods forbid that that twig you’re marrying should tumble into this ditch!” Humusi replaced some of the dirt she had excavated.
“Stop talking and go over there.” Aranaru pointed to a new excavation some fifteen feet away where she would not bother him. Several latrine ditches would be easier to manage, smell less, and be simpler to close than a single large trench. “Gula was injured this morning.”
“Oh, yes, I heard how that poor darling sprained her wrist running across the central court, while others lost limbs or loved ones, or were crushed in their beds.” Humusi rolled her eyes. “She’s bleating about it to anyone who will listen.”
Her dart hit home. Aranaru started to frame an angry retort when she added, “I saw you before, helping dig people out. The south quarter...” She shook her head somberly. “We managed to rescue quite a few from the north quarter. That wasn’t damaged quite as badly.”
He noticed the cuts and bruises on her arms, and the dirt caked under her fingernails. Humusi was always dishevele
d in one way or another. Eshmal often complained that the gods had twisted his prayers for a son by answering with a tomboyish daughter. “That’s good.”
“You’ve dug deep enough.” Humusi indicated the trench. “We should move onto the next site.” Some of the workers were already moving on to the place where he had tried to banish her.
Larna, Urtanos’s scribe, appeared with a heel of bread and jug of water. Aranaru paused long enough to eat before returning to work. No one paused for the usual afternoon rest, as there was simply too much to do. Two of his men arrived, bearing news about a third. “His house just fell in on him. They pulled out his mother and youngest child, but...”
When finished, each latrine trench was three yards long and four feet deep. Aranaru was not certain that it was sufficient to accommodate eight thousand people for very long. “We need to get them back into their houses as soon as possible.”
“People are afraid to go back indoors,” Humusi pointed out. She had labored alongside him all afternoon, never once complaining. But then, she relished physical tasks, and scorned the disapproving looks and comments of the older men who judged that an unmarried woman had no place working outdoors unless it was to sow crops or gather in the harvest. “Are you not anxious?”
He had not given it much thought, except on those rare occasions when he glanced back toward the hill. The extent of the damage, viewed from a distance, astonished him. Entire sections of the Labyrinth had collapsed. Smoke still clouded the ruins, and all that from less than a minute of shaking. “Sleeping outside doesn’t bother me so much.”
“That’s because you don’t have women or children to comfort.” Leaning on her shovel, she stretched her spine with an audible pop. Humusi was the only woman Aranaru knew who enjoyed cracking her knuckles. “Ah, look there. The priests of Poteidan have found their vestments.”
A trio of priests in torn, dusty, fringed garments were conducting rites from a mound on which they had mounted sacral horns rescued from the debris. People were offering daisy chains and bits of colorful rags—the best they could manage under the circumstances—and prostrating themselves on the ground. Aranaru recognized all three priests, but did not see his eldest brother, Bull Priest Banabiru, among them. Was his family safe? Because he rented a cubicle in the Labyrinth rather than live at home, he saw his family but once a week. Had their house survived the shaking and fires? It embarrassed him to have forgotten about them until now.