Soleri

by Michael Johnston

  What was family when you were taken from them at three years of age?

  Ren had no family.

  He had no one but his fellow ransoms. Adin. Tye. They would never break his confidence or turn on him.

  They were all he had left.

  “It’ll hurt more if you fight me,” Shenn said, lunging with his knife—

  Ren twisted away from the killing blow just as the eld leapt from the outcropping above, its hoof and horn hitting Shenn flat in the chest.

  The creature trampled over him, screaming its outrage as it pounded on Shenn’s chest with its large hooves while the dog snapped at its heels. The eld’s front hoof caught Shenn’s cloak, and dragged him for a few paces before his shoulder hit a large stone, wedging him there while the animal bucked and screamed, shaking its head violently and laying down its horns, aiming them at Shenn’s throat. A lunge, a scrape, and Shenn’s blood poured out—but from his shoulder, Ren saw, not the throat, as the horns had nearly missed him.

  Shenn fought back; he slashed at the eld with his dagger, but Ren could see that his strength was already gone. The dagger severed the hide, but the wounds were only glancing and did little to deter the eld. The creature smashed Shenn against the rock, then retreated, craning its neck, displaying its mighty antlers in all their glory, the white bifurcating tusks glistening in the light.

  Then the creature bent its horns toward Shenn once more.

  Ren hefted a mighty stone and hurled it at the eld, knocking the animal hard on the skull, just above the eyes. The eld roared, doubled back, and paused, its attention turning toward the new distraction.

  Ren froze, his mind spinning. He was shaken by the sudden appearance of the eld, the trampling of Shenn, but most of all his words—the job is done. His own family, his sister wanted him dead. What sense was there in any of this, in trying to win his horns and the throne of Harkana if the family he had suffered for was as ruthless as the men who had kept him locked in the Priory?

  In his anger, he locked eyes with the eld and the creature bellowed, mist rising from its nostrils, the antlers glistening like a crown of thorns. The eld bent its head and charged. The creature swept its many-pointed antlers from side to side, scraping the earth. Ren sidestepped the antlers. He hit the ground rolling and landed in a cloud of sand not far from Shenn. The man was spitting blood, his hands shaking, trying to find the wound, the gash that was leaking blood onto the sand. Shenn’s face was white, lips purple. Ren glanced from his brother to the eld and back. I should help him. Assassin or not, Ren didn’t like the idea of leaving his brother to bleed out while Ren pursued the hunt. So, he hurled a stone at the eld, then another. The creature retreated, then circled, giving Ren time to rip a piece of cloth from Shenn’s tunic and place it on the wound.

  “Hold it here,” he said. Ren took Shenn’s hand and showed him where to apply the pressure, but his brother’s arm fell limply back to his side.

  Just then, the eld charged. Ren grasped Shenn’s dagger and threw it at the creature. The blade struck the eld’s right flank, digging into the muscle. The creature roared its fury, charging past Ren, shaking wildly and trying to dislodge the blade.

  “I’ve bought us some time,” Ren said as he tore more cloth from Shenn’s tunic. He wound the fabric around his brother’s chest, passing it beneath his shoulders. “Here,” Ren said, taking Shenn’s hand again and pressing it once more to the wound. Behind them, hooves clattered on the earth.

  As the eld bore down upon him, Ren managed to throw himself mostly out of its path, but the eld’s horns caught his foot, sending him tumbling to the earth. That’s what I get for helping Shenn. He scolded himself for aiding his brother, even though it was the right thing to do.

  Ren leapt to his feet, his clothes matted with dirt and dashed with Shenn’s blood. He held out his father’s dagger as the eld circled, coming around for another attack. It wasn’t until he saw the slender blade silhouetted against the mighty eld horns that a thought occurred to Ren: Why such a tiny knife? The dagger was simply too short to wield against the eld. Each of the eld horns was about the length of his outstretched arm, while the dagger was not much longer than the width of his hand. I need a bloody two-handed sword. The dagger might as well be a sewing needle for all the good it would do him.

  The eld advanced and so did Ren. He took two great strides forward and ducked when the creature raised its horns. He came up behind the mighty tusks. Instinctively, his hand shot out, and his fingers wrapped the nearest eld horn, holding tightly around the burr as he pulled himself up onto the creature’s back. The eld bucked furiously back and forth as it tried to knock him to the ground where it could trample him with its hooves.

  Ren struggled as best he could, finding strength where he thought he had none. His grip was iron and he held on with everything he had. The creature kicked again and he caught sight of something odd, a section of horn that was shorn off at the base. A flash of inspiration struck him: There was no need to fight the eld, no use in it whatsoever. The dagger Arko had given him was too short, and its serrated edge was not meant for stabbing or cutting flesh.

  He put one hand to the eld’s forelocks and gently caressed the gray tuft of hair. “Easy,” he whispered as he tightened his legs around eld’s flanks. “Easy,” he repeated as he coaxed the creature to sit. The wild beast should have thrown him to the ground, but it didn’t.

  The eld kneeled, folding its legs beneath it, its muzzle coming to rest on the earth. When the eld was at last still, Ren noticed something else. There were narrow slits above the creature’s eyes and when the eld sat they winked open. The creature had four eyes, and all of them were trained on him. This is no deer. What is it? he wondered, unable to breathe, gripped by awe.

  The great eld horns rose up on both sides of him, and among the forked tines of its antlers he saw two or three more places where a section of the horns had been shorn off.

  It was never my task to kill the eld. Ren recalled his father’s words when he handed him the knife: Use this to claim the eld horns. He’d never asked Ren to kill the creature. The knife was made for sawing, so Ren put the blade to the horns.

  The creature shifted beneath him. He feared the eld would resist, that it would throw him to the ground, but it made no effort to dislodge him and Ren worked as quickly as he could. “Be still,” he coaxed the great eld. “Be still, you magnificent creature, and I’ll be done in a flash.”

  The severed horn came loose and Ren took it in his hand. The other sections of horn were cut with the same serrated edge as the one he held in his hand. My father once sat here with this same blade and sawed a horn from this very creature. Arko had sat in Ren’s place and his father’s father and his father before him had done the same. Each man had taken his horns from the great beast—each had discovered how to subdue the eld without killing it.

  This was the gratifying secret behind the king’s hunt, one Ren hoped his own son would one day discover.

  He dismounted, took two steps backward, and faced the eld. The creature stood gracefully, its four eyes winking. It bowed its head as it disappeared into the dark of the wood. Is there only one eld? he wondered, but quickly realized he might never learn the answer. No wonder the peasants still worship it.

  Excitement shivered through his body. It’s done. The hunt is over. He felt not only satisfied but also fulfilled. When the eld bowed its crown of horns, when it at last submitted itself to the king, Ren had felt a connection to something primal, a thing buried deep within all living things, a resonance that now echoed from within him.

  It’s as if I’ve touched Mithra Himself.

  Shenn saw Ren return holding the white horns. “You have the horns; you are king of Harkana. Is the beast dead?”

  Ren shrugged, holding the eld horn in one hand like a cane. The secrets of the hunt belonged to the kings of Harkana.

  “Help me,” Shenn whimpered, his face smeared with blood—his own, the eld’s. “I can’t breathe. Help me … brother … ki
ng…”

  Ren clambered to Shenn’s side. He eased him to the ground, supporting his back as he laid him flat on the earth. Shenn clutched his stomach, still desperately trying to stanch the bleeding.

  Ren bent over Shenn and put a hand on his chest cautiously, and determined that his ribs were probably broken. “You’re lucky it wasn’t worse,” he said, his hands soaked in Shenn’s blood.

  “I’m lucky you’re fast,” he gasped. “That could have been the end of me.”

  “I’ll bandage your wounds,” Ren said. Shenn had a little water in an oilskin and Ren poured it over the bloody spot. The wound was not as bad as he had originally thought, but the man still had a pair of broken ribs. He took a clean piece of Shenn’s robe and wrapped his chest as best he could. I’m not a physician. For all I know I’m hurting the man, but I doubt that’s the case. He thought to tie him up, but he doubted Shenn could move, not yet.

  “What are you going to do with me?” Shenn asked.

  Ren wasn’t certain what to do yet, so he made a fire. He found dried strips of meat tucked in Shenn’s robes and took them. The dog whimpered and Ren tossed the pup a stick. The two men sat in silence, Ren warming his hands against the flame, the older man moaning over his wounds. Every now and then Shenn would speak to him, his voice fading in and out. The bleeding had stopped, and although he looked weak his brother would live.

  “I don’t even know Merit,” Ren said aloud. “And she doesn’t even know me and yet she wants me dead rather than alive.” Ren brooded. He felt numb, cold. “I’ve never even met her,” he said as he stoked the fire.

  “Nor should you.” Shenn coughed blood and winced at the pain. “Few people in Harkana have seen your face. I know I am the last person you trust right now, but listen. Use this to your advantage. Flee. Otherwise, your sister will never stop hunting you. Everywhere she has eyes and ears. The crown Arko wishes to place on your head offers little protection. If you seek the throne of Harkana, you’ll spend your life looking over your shoulder, watching the shadows. You won’t even dare to eat your morning meal without someone tasting it first. She will fight you for her kingdom. The people respect Merit. She has been queen in all but name until now.

  “But if you leave us, if you go peacefully, I’ll return and tell her you’re dead. It will buy you some time. You’ve spent ten years watching over your shoulder in the Priory, why spend another forty doing the same? Run. Go away. Make a new life for yourself. I have provisions. In time I can offer you coin. I can help you.” He tossed a bag toward Ren.

  Ren picked it up. It held salted meat, a few coins.

  “You’ll need this if you want to live.” He threw the bag back to Shenn. “I’m certain the warden will help you return to Harwen.”

  Shenn shook his head, as if that were not a possibility. “What will you do? Where will you go?”

  Ren doused the fire with a handful of sandy earth but gave no reply.

  “I shall tell your sister you are dead,” called Shenn as Ren walked away.

  Ren shuddered inwardly. Without a name, without a home, he was nothing. He would not give up his birthright so easily. “No. I’m done playing dead. Tell my sister I live, and I will take what is mine.” He gripped the eld horns. He was the true heir of Harkana and he would claim the horned throne and rule his father’s kingdom.

  Without looking back once, he left the man, alone, in the dark, with no fire and no food and only the bitter cold of the mountain and the lowing of the eld to keep him company.

  28

  The Repository at Desouk was the largest building in the city of priests, superior in size and importance to any structure within the city, its great hall like the vaulted half of a gigantic barrel full of echoes of sound and dust motes and the smell of time. Sarra Amunet, the Mother Priestess, spotted Noll, waiting for her on the repository steps. Nearby, Ott sat on a low stool, engaged in a game of Coin with another young priest. A crowd of beggar children had gathered around him, watching the match and listening to Ott as he gestured to the various pieces, moving his good arm about in the air. Between turns Ott fed the children with cakes of bread, ensuring that he had an audience.

  Noll waved to Sarra. “I’ve been watching your scribe,” he said.

  “Have you?” she asked as she joined him on the steps.

  “He comes to the plaza every day and feeds the starvelings, teaches them Coin and chats with them about God-knows-what. Sometimes I think he feeds them from his own allotment.”

  “The boy can’t help himself, he’s thinner than a beanpole, but he gives his bread to the blind children and the buskers in the plaza,” she said.

  “He has a kind heart and keen mind, but surely the Mother Priestess could find a more suitable scribe?”

  “Let me know if you find one,” said Sarra. She made her words sound like a jest, but her face held no mirth. “You must know a few things about beggars, Noll. Your accent is Wyrren—isn’t it?”

  “Yes, my humble upbringings betray me.” The boy clutched his oilskin sack.

  “Where in the southern islands are you from?” Sarra asked. It had been years since she had seen her home in the south.

  “Vimur,” Noll murmured, his accent suddenly strong. “I was raised in the northern reaches, but when I became a hierophant I asked to be posted in the southernmost islands.”

  “The Stone Reefs? Scargill or Thurso?”

  “A bit of both.”

  “Why would you go—”

  “There? I had my reasons. In the Stone Reefs, there are temples and towers that no scribe has seen in centuries. In the untamed islands there are many relics a scribe cannot find in Desouk or anywhere else. From my earliest memory, the gods have fascinated me: their sacred language, their golden masks, the way the Soleri shelter behind the Shroud Wall. I wanted to read their language so that I might understand a bit more about our unseen rulers.”

  “And you found that knowledge in the reefs? I was told you found a great number of ancient scrolls, and that you used those scrolls to somehow decipher the Soleri symbols.”

  “The reef folk use the parchment scrolls as bedding. The men sleep on them, the women sew clothes from them. When the locals held up the parchments, they saw only goatskins.”

  “I see. And those scrolls were the keys used to understand the old symbols?” Sarra asked.

  Noll nodded slightly.

  Sarra stood. “Show me what you have found.”

  They walked up the stairs and through the arched doorway into the repository. Inside, the priests and priestesses went about their business, lighting the alabaster lamps, laying out offerings to the statue of Mithra. Acolytes wandered the stepped platforms, arranging scrolls on tables and stands. Priests held amber parchments up to the lamps, straining to read ancient markings while all around them servants rolled carts and brushed dust from the many racks. Priests talked and argued, their voices mingling with the sounds of rumpling scrolls and birds fluttering in the vault.

  As they made their way, Sarra told Noll about the repository, describing the many tunnels beneath the stacks, the organization of the scrolls, and the archives on the upper level. She detailed the repository’s rare collections and treasured artifacts. From the Salt Barrens, there were parchments fashioned from human skin and inked in ochre-stained fingerprints. From the Wyrre, the archive held oracle bones made from the plastrons of great sea turtles, carved in bone script by shamans of the old faith. There were the butterfly manuscripts from Zagre with their long, spindly leaves and elaborately carved symbols. And, from the Riksard, the repository basement held sandstone tablets chiseled in a forgotten tongue, lumps of stone so great they had not been moved in centuries.

  A priest approached Sarra, then another and another. As Sarra walked, as she guided Noll through the hall, priests trailed behind them. Since her return from Solus and her escape from the riots, her priests and acolytes bowed a little more deeply and approached her a bit more often. Each time they were eager to inquire about her t
ime in Solus, to hear how the Mother was touched by Mithra and spirited through the crowds. Always she refused these requests, hoping her reticence would add to her mystique, and it had.

  At the far end of the hall, a white-robed priestess greeted Sarra and Noll and led them down a stair to a closed chamber beneath the great floor of the repository. Inside, a pair of scribes wearing the simple wrap of the acolyte—a robe cinched beneath the arms and wrapped into a tight roll across the breast—was kneeling on the floor, eyes deep in thought.

  Sheets covered in charcoal impressions blanketed the chamber floor. The mountain chamber Sarra had visited with Noll two days prior had proven a difficult worksite. To make the work easier, Noll had ordered the scribes to make rubbings of the marks they found in the old grain silo and to arrange those rubbings on the floor of this chamber. The priests had carefully marked all of the extraneous symbols with an x, making the text legible without the aid of the late-day sun.

  Sarra knelt alongside the scribes.

  “Some symbols defied translation,” Noll said, kneeling as well. “The carvings were either damaged or worn. Perhaps one in eight was illegible. In another week, I can finish. Look at this,” he said, retrieving a drawing from the floor.

  “What is it?” Sarra asked.

  “A map of the empire’s storehouses, dating to the reign of Den.”

  “And?” Sarra asked eagerly.

  “Ott confirmed that most of these were previously discovered and emptied.”

  “Useless.”

  “Wait, there’s more. We found a series of characters labeling a road. When transposed the symbols read ‘Amaran Road.’”

  “A road to connect the storehouses?” Sarra translated.

  “Maybe. This is the character for house.” Noll drew the symbol on a tablet.

  “And this is the character for storehouse.” He drew another.

  “Except for the gap, they’re nearly identical,” Sarra observed.