Soleri

by Michael Johnston

  He waited as the smoke drifted through the air, rats scurrying at the edges of his vision, head spinning, and almost without trying, without thinking, he began to hum a few bars. It was the “Eld Song,” a Harkan song he remembered from childhood, one of his few memories of home. He sang quietly, then more loudly, his voice cracking at the lilting melody, the dramatic highs and lows. The song distracted him from the moths, from the rats that scurried in the shadows. He sang his tune as Oren’s pipe smoke rose through the shaft.

  His voice cracked again, his throat was too dry to sing, and he did not know all of the words, but he continued singing anyway. He was a miserable vocalist. The priors had told him as much. No matter how much he tried, he could never carry a tune. He just couldn’t find the notes. But in the shaft, lips dry and throat aching, the song came out beautifully. The song made his throat burn, but he kept up the tune. He sang it without ever pausing or straying from the melody.

  In the gap between notes, Oren coughed, clearing his throat.

  Ren guessed Oren had come to hear him sob, not sing. Do you want me to beg, to cry for mercy or my morning meal? He had considered begging, crying like a child on his first night in the Priory. But no amount of pleading would better his situation—ten years in the Priory had taught him as much. If he wept, the boys would only mock him. So he sang as best he could and for as long he could manage.

  The glow from Oren’s pipe faded; the smoke drifted toward the stars.

  “Sorry to disappoint you,” Ren said, but Oren was already gone.

  The black sky faded to purple.

  The great clock wound its way through the sky. Each day the sun felt brighter, its heat more intense. His skin blistered and peeled off of his shoulders and neck. The days passed and Ren’s body withered. He wished the sun would make up its mind. Damn me or set me free, he thought. Have your justice and be done with me.

  Sandals tapped on the stones again.

  “Alive?” the prior called.

  Ren refused to acknowledge the question.

  “Alive?”

  Ren leaned against the hot stone, his head hanging down as if he were unconscious. The prior’s shadow crossed the shaft. “Alive?” he called again, louder. Ren heard mockery in the prior’s voice. What are you waiting for, Hark-Wadi? Jump, boy. Jump so you can be free of the shaft. Jump so we can tell your family you were a suicide. Do it now and we can be done with you, and you with our questions.

  Ren shook off the imagined voice. He heard the prior ask the question once more, heard sandals drumming on the smooth stones, but he didn’t move. He refused to acknowledge the prior’s question.

  “Is the boy alive?” A rock fell and struck his head. Curses echoed from above. More tapping. More talking. Ren did not move, he couldn’t move. He hadn’t slept in days, his thoughts were chaotic, his limbs ached, his skin burned. He was out of breath, out of everything—he had only his defiance: a primal urge to resist the priors. He held on to that urge, his head hanging low, unwilling to acknowledge their questions. If I must die, let it happen now, while I still have my wits, while I can resist.

  Voices boomed from the rooftop, panic coloring the conversation.

  Do they think I’m dead? If so, why do I hear fear in their voices?

  The bickering continued, closer now, the voices nearly at the rim.

  “If you’ve killed him it’s your ass,” said a voice that could only belong to Oren Thrako, then more softly, “and mine too. The Ray is not a forgiving man.”

  Ren wanted to laugh, but his throat was too dry, his lips too cracked. He coughed, his chest heaving, his body shuttering.

  “He’s alive,” Oren exhaled in relief before the anger returned. “Fucking runt’s alive. Get him up. It’s time to meet the Ray.”

  5

  Following the morning’s tournament, after Merit Hark-Wadi, the first daughter of Harkana, had bestowed laurels on the champions, after Shenn, her husband, had read out the names of the victors and the vanquished, Merit retired to her bedchamber. Her waiting women greeted her there and removed her blue linen dress, stripped the gold from her hair, and brushed out her long black locks. They rubbed moringa oil and lime into her skin, drew green malachite around her eyes, and painted her lips with ochre and her arms with carob. Merit sat still as long as she could, then waved them off with a jingle of her bangled wrist. “Please,” she said, “I just want to lie down for a moment. I want to rest before the gathering. It’s so hot today, and the games were so bloody. I ask not to be disturbed.”

  “What if the king asks for you?” asked Ahti, her servant.

  “My father is away and I ask not to be disturbed. By anyone.”

  Ahti bowed, a gleam in her eye. Merit was sure she and Samia knew her secret, but it did not matter, her ladies were loyal to her alone, she had seen to it. Besides, no one would believe the word of a servant over the king’s daughter.

  When they were gone, Merit placed a green-stemmed flower on the stones outside her chamber door, then returned to her stool and waited. The flower’s rosemary scent clung to her fingers as she rubbed them across her arm.

  There was a time when she’d had more suitors than she could count. Even when she was a stripling, she’d had boys twice her age shadowing her through the corridors, leaving blue-tipped lotuses at her door or poppies on her bed. Despite her age and marriage, little had changed.

  Merit waited, tracing a circle on the floor with her foot. Her servants had scrubbed the stone that day, the girls had worked the weathered rock with brushes made from palm twine—polishing the stone until its amber color shone. Her visitor would notice such things—just as he would notice the way the malachite made her changeable eyes glow green.

  When he came at last, he did not knock. Instead he opened the door with a bang, catching Merit in his long limbs. She embraced him and stepped back, looking behind her as the door banged shut. “You saw the bud?”

  He held up the white flower and nodded, “Good thing too, it would be a shame if I kicked down someone else’s door.”

  “Careful,” she said.

  “Here?” Dagrun laughed.

  “Yes, here. Everywhere in Harkana. You know we cannot be seen together. Not yet.”

  His hand cupped her cheek, his eyes bore into hers, and he smiled when he saw the green malachite on her eyelids, just as she knew he would. She had worn the green powder when they first met, and she had worn it again each time after.

  He had proposed to her more than once, asking her to throw off the marriage the emperor had arranged.

  Merit was impressed by his bravery, even if she understood it to be a foolish, impulsive move. Dagrun was a commoner who now wore a king’s crown on his head and sought validation in the only way possible, through blood and name, and only the Soleri rivaled the Hark-Wadi dynasty in history and prestige. She understood his desire, but if she succumbed to his wishes war would rage through the empire. Tolemy was merciless, no doubt the army of the Protector would march into Harkana for her head. She always turned him down. But his endless proposals inspired her to devise a way for both of them to get what they desired.

  The king of the Ferens rubbed his bearded stubble against her forehead. She worked her fingers through his clean, wet hair and buried her face in his neck. He still smelled faintly of horse and dust, a gorgeous, living smell. Like victory. His victory.

  “You did well today, rescuing her,” she said. “It would not have been much of a celebration if the king’s daughter were hacked to bits.”

  Dagrun shrugged, “It was you who did the rescuing. I was the one holding the blade to her neck, if you recall.”

  “You knew I’d spare her. But I doubt she would do the same for you. If Kepi had had her way, she would have taken your head.”

  “Perhaps,” he allowed. “She’s good with a blade, marvelous actually.”

  Merit waved away the comment. “I knew you’d win the day, and you did.”

  “Not quite yet,” he said, stealing a long ki
ss. His hand wrapped her back, unfastening the dress. Merit stepped back. She could not let him have her this way—not yet. It thrilled her, the way he desired her. She could sense his desire, almost like despair—he was hers, she could do with him as she wished.

  Dagrun pulled her to him. His breathing was slow and even. “How much longer must I wait?”

  “Not long,” she said, running her finger across the skin of his stomach. “Everyone’s waiting in the King’s Hall. When we gather for the Devouring you can make your proposal at last.”

  “And then I’ll have you?” he asked. “A queen for a king? Two kingdoms joined—a way out of this mess?”

  Merit raised her eyes to him. “We’ll both have what we desire.” She had at last found a way to achieve the power and influence she desired.

  He frowned. Pensive, which was unlike him.

  “Come, they are waiting for us in the King’s Hall,” she said, tipping her head to the side, letting her blue-green eyes go wide as a girl’s, though Merit was no child. “You know we must do this now, while my father is absent.”

  “Are you certain we should go through with this?”

  “Yes, darling. With all my heart,” she said with a sweet smile. “I want you to marry my sister.”

  6

  “It’s nearly noontime—I am ready,” said Sarra Amunet, the Mother Priestess, as her servants fitted the last of the golden stalls onto her fingers. She wore a collar of carnelian on her neck, gold on her fingers and toes, and a flowing robe of white linen. Nearing her fourth decade, tall and slender, her hair a rare shade of red, her skin so pale she seemed suffused with an unearthly light, Sarra bore the blood of the southern islands. It was said the men of the south came from a place beyond the Cressel Sea, where the air was cool and the land was rich and green, full of flowery meadows and gentle wooded vales. Women in the capital whispered that the sun had never touched her skin, it was so fair and strange, though Sarra knew for a fact that was not true. There had been a time when she had been very much at the mercy of the sun.

  “Mother, shall we away?” said Ott, her scribe. He was barely older than a boy, and had an underdeveloped arm, which he concealed beneath his robe. The absent limb gave Ott a strange, asymmetrical appearance.

  She nodded. “I said I was ready. Open the doors.”

  The Devouring approached. Soon she would stand on the Shroud Wall of the Soleri and receive Mithra’s blessing. As the great doors of the Temple of Mithra opened, the light washed over her face, the roar of the pilgrims swept the temple, and Sarra strode out into the temple’s columned hall.

  She walked directly into the blood-soaked body of a priest.

  “What’s this?” she gasped. As if I didn’t have enough to worry over today.

  “Mother what’s wrong?” asked Ott, right behind her.

  Sarra struggled to keep her composure as she studied the lifeless body. She knelt and put a hand on his chest. The skin was warm, but the heart was still. Blood caked the priest’s white robe. This just happened. She searched the columned hall, but saw no one. She was alone. The crowds, held back from the high steps of the temple by her priests, could not yet see the body. Only I was meant to see this, she thought. Someone had set the body here, at her door, hidden among the columns for her to find.

  Saad.

  “So this is how Amen Saad welcomes me to Solus,” Sarra said as she stood. This was her first visit to the city of the Soleri since Amen Saad had taken the Protector’s sword and control of the empire’s armies. She came here, to the Ata’Sol, the priesthood’s home in the vast capital of Solus, once a year to observe the Devouring. Her true home was in Desouk, the city of scholars and priests.

  “Are you certain?” Ott asked, his shaved head glowing in the light.

  She glanced once more at the columned hall, at the steps beyond and the crowds that waited in the distance. “Back into the temple.”

  “And the body?”

  “Pull it inside before the damned pilgrims see it,” she said as she retreated into the temple. Ott followed, dragging the corpse, mumbling to himself. As the doors sealed behind them, she checked the sun’s angle. Noontime approached; the moon would soon devour the sun. I should be on the wall, but there is a dead man in my temple.

  “What now?” Ott asked. There was blood on his hands and her priests were staring at him, gathering around Sarra. Their anxious whispers made it difficult to think.

  “I need a moment,” Sarra said, gesturing for her priests to retreat into the sanctuary. I need more than a moment, but I fear that’s all I have. She must respond to this aggression, but at the same time she could not ignore her sacred duty. The Mother Priestess must stand on the wall. I need to be in two places at once.

  Ott tapped a finger on his chest, “The sun will not wait, Mother. Corpse or no corpse, we should away.”

  She knew as much, but she could not go on as if nothing had happened, not today, not with a bloody corpse on the floor of her temple, and not after what she had discovered that morning in the depths of the Ata’Sol.

  “The Mother will stand on the wall at the appointed time,” Sarra announced. She had a contingency, a way to address her duties without actually being present. “You there,” she said, pointing to one of the servant boys, “bring parchment and ink.”

  When the boy returned with what she had requested, Sarra scribbled on the parchment and handed it back to him. “Fetch Garia Asni. Give her this note. The girl has reddish hair, like mine. Look for her in the scribes’ chambers.”

  The boy vanished down a dark stair, descending into the labyrinth of corridors beneath the temple.

  “You’re sending Garia to stand on the wall?” Ott asked, guessing at her intentions.

  Sarra nodded. “The pilgrims will not notice the difference. The girl knows the words and the customs as well as I do—I trained her myself. The wall is high, and the crowds are distant. Only we will know that a surrogate stands in my place.”

  “Let us hope,” said Ott. “For three millennia the Mother has stood on the wall and observed the Devouring. It would be a shame if you were the first to break that tradition.”

  “It would be a more terrible shame if something were to happen to me.” The wall was not a safe place for the Mother Priestess today, and for a moment she thought about Garia, whom she was sending there.

  Ott tapped his fingers as he paced. “Everyone in Solus is in peril, especially us.” He exchanged a meaningful glance with Sarra.

  “Yes, that is clear. And we will still need a way to exit the temple unnoticed. Perhaps Garia should slip out the postern?”

  “The stable entrance—why?” Ott asked.

  “Because that’s what Saad would expect. A dead priest left on our temple steps. The Mother is worried for her safety, so she left through the postern door.”

  “And where will the real Mother go?”

  “Out the front.”

  Ott raised an eyebrow, but Sarra paid him no notice. She was not yet ready to share the plan she had only just conceived.

  “You there,” she called to her priestly servants, “hand over your robes.” The servants exchanged glances, confused at first, but when she glared at them, they doffed their sand-gray caftans. She stripped off her collar and the golden stalls her servants had just fitted to her fingers and toes. She took the gray robe and drew it over her white one. She motioned for Ott to do the same, watching as he wiped the blood from his hands. Her priests wrapped the dead man in linen.

  “If we conceal ourselves,” Sarra said, “we can walk out the front door like a couple of servants fetching date wine for their masters.”

  Ott was tapping his fingers again, screwing his face into odd contortions, his withered arm looking ghostly beneath his robe. Throughout the empire, boys such as Ott were often cast out into the streets, or left to die in the desert, but the priesthood gave shelter to the weak, the unwanted, and the abandoned. Sarra had, many years ago, benefited from the priesthood’s charity. Ott had
done the same, as had many others.

  “If concealment is the goal,” said Ott, “perhaps we should add a third to our party.” It was well known that Sarra always traveled with Ott at her side. The two were inseparable.

  Sarra nodded her agreement. “You there,” she said, motioning to one of her acolytes, the boys who operated the golden doors of the temple. “What’s your name?”

  “Khai Femin.”

  “He has only recently arrived from the Wyrre,” said Ott.

  “He’ll do.”

  “For what, may I ask, Mother?” said Khai as he drew closer to her, his eyes wide, his skin pale in the lamplight.

  “For what I tell you to do. Take a gray robe and come with us,” she said.

  “Where, Mother?” he asked, but Sarra gave no answer. She was thinking about her next move, how to counter Saad’s aggression and use the discovery she’d made in the depths of the Ata’Sol earlier that day, trying to decide which was the greater threat.

  Sarra raised a hand, indicating the doors. “Open one, slowly now,” she said, the roar of the crowd filtering in through the narrow opening. “Just wide enough for us to exit.” This was how the servants of the house came and went from the temple. Sarra bowed her head and drew her cowl down across her face. She slipped between the doors, her priests following close behind.

  “So many people,” Khai said as he stepped out into the streets teeming with pilgrims. Sarra walked around the boy, Ott at her side, scissoring through the crowds of Solus as she made her way past the temple steps, motioning for Khai to follow behind. Sarra had forgotten that Khai was a peasant from the Wyrre, and in the southern islands ten men made a crowd.

  In the streets below, ten thousand thronged the plaza. In the whole of Solus, ten times ten thousand crowded the backstreets and courtyards of the capital, sleeping in dry fountains, on smoldering rooftops, and in winding alleys. Tattered cloaks and barefoot children packed every temple and yard from the Cenotaph to the Statuary Garden of Amen Hen and the Golden Hall. The pilgrims were everywhere, all of them gathered for the Devouring, to watch as the sun dimmed to acknowledge Mithra’s continued support of the empire and its emperor.