The Well of Prayers

by Anne Boles Levy

  As close as eyelash to eye

  As near as teeth to tongue

  I’d always assumed it referred to a married couple’s bodies joining, but Valeo’s nearness let my imagination open to other possibilities. This closeness—was it something he had also felt before he closed his eyes to sleep? Had the same thrill run through his skin as it did mine?

  Was this what it was like to be married? I wondered if Mami lay against Babba every night with the same mix of curiosity and wonder, the same longing to touch and keep touching, dreading the morning and its glaring light. Maybe what Mami felt was so much more intense, after a lifetime of sleeping beside Babba, or maybe the feeling wore off after a few years. A man was a wondrous thing when there were no spears or swords at hand, no unkind words or brutish manners. I even loved the sweaty, musky smell of Valeo, and the way his arm lay over me, protecting me even in sleep.

  Beneath his blanket, he was stripped to his waist. I could make out the tufts of black fuzz curling up his rippling stomach and across his chest. Since becoming a healer’s apprentice, I’d seen any number of men’s bodies, most of them old or sickly. I’d seen Valeo once before, sick in a cot, but this was different. I wanted to run my fingers through all that fuzz to see what it felt like. If I awakened Valeo with my fingers on his chest, however, I didn’t think I could come up with an explanation that sounded even slightly chaste. And that mattered to me, even in the wild with the Gek thinking us already married. I wasn’t married, and I knew that, and I would have to watch myself. I was in the wild, but I was a civilized woman.

  Valeo’s snore turned into a snort and he gave a start. Without opening his eyes, he pulled himself closer to me and nestled his face in my hair. Then he was asleep again, and I had my wish. There was no place to put my hands except on his chest, and I let them lay there, soaking in the warmth of his tawny skin. I wanted this moment to last forever, with all the pain and threats and heartache banished into the sheltering night.

  I woke again just before the first rays of daylight, the spot beside me empty, Valeo’s blanket neatly folded and set aside. Disappointment welled up within me, but what had I expected? He was a soldier, and he was likely back to standing guard and mentally reviewing the conditions under which he might let me live and safely return home, I decided bitterly. Any sort of comfort from the night vanished with the pale streaks of light streaming through the doorway, and my loneliness settled into a dull ache. Whatever I decided to do for the Gek, I was in it alone. Even with him standing right beside me.

  I sat up and rubbed my eyes. I had a sour taste in my mouth and I felt stale all over, as though I’d been left out too long and had begun to ferment. My rope burns were scabbing over and itched, and my skin smarted from sunburn and seawater. My wrist felt less acutely painful and had settled into a dull throb. It was just as well I didn’t have a man around to see me looking like some flotsam the tides had tossed ashore. Time to improvise: I’d been raised to be resourceful, right?

  I found a jug of fresh water the Gek had left for me and scrubbed my face. I tamed my hair into a knot at the nape of my neck and wrapped my blanket around my middle for a skirt. What was left of my shift served as a blouse. My slippers had dried out and were wearable, if a bit stiff.

  Satisfied I’d made myself as presentable as I could, I stepped out of the hut into twilight, only to be struck by the soft glow of a thousand softly luminescent flowers. I’d noticed the lush flora only vaguely the previous day, but most flowers shut their blooms tightly each night.

  Except for one.

  At my feet and strewn all around me in the clearing lay hundreds of moonblooms, petals fanning from cactus branches, still reaching for the moons’ last rays before the sun would send the petals into their daily hibernation. It was an odd time of year for moonblooms to blossom, but perhaps the volcano’s unrelenting heat gave these delicate flowers a year-round chance at life. At one time, they’d been Mami’s cash crop, with a pungency and purity greatly prized by people who knew something about nature and its ability to heal and restore.

  But now, to me, they could be no more than flowers. Nothing in my life admitted to any more medicines or natural cures.

  Still, Moonblooms had saved Valeo’s life. I was momentarily back at Mami’s old hearth, separating petals and dehydrating them, hoping we’d make a tincture or a tea in time to cure a Gek poison. Scores of Feroxi warriors had been stricken. And that was also the night I’d been taken away to the altar for the encounter with a demon that had eventually led me here, to this sheltered space with its mist and its moonblooms and its sweetly incandescent beauty.

  Otherwise, my surroundings were as they had been the day before: the Gek were everywhere I looked, barely bothering to camouflage themselves, though many turned an instinctive green around me. I suppose I’d hide from myself, too, if I could. I was some sort of Undoer and I had to battle against feeling undone.

  “You look nice, for someone in the middle of nowhere,” Valeo’s voice boomed from behind me. He must’ve been standing watch outside the hut’s doorway. He had put his togs back on and had wrapped his feet in the sturdy blankets the Gek had provided us, held together with what looked like vines. I wasn’t the only resourceful person here.

  “Thank you, I guess. And, um, so do you.” What passed for pleasantries on such an occasion? Nice day for some really vigorous blasphemy, you don’t say. Why don’t we return to my ravaged city so you can lead me off to jail?

  “You’re missing something, though.”

  What, a hot bath? Breakfast? Real clothes? I was missing a lot of things.

  He held up a garland he’d made from tropical flowers, with more than a few moonblooms mixed in, and gently placed it on my head, tucking the strand under a few curls so it sat straight. I didn’t know what to say, so I just stood there, a rock-sized lump in my throat.

  “There. Now you look like you could be a Gek priestess. Just don’t bite me.”

  “I can’t change color like they do.” What a stupid thing to say. I forced a smile anyway.

  “Nonsense, you’re turning bright red.”

  He didn’t miss a thing. Curse him and all observant soldier types. “I think that’s sunburn.”

  “Ah. Well. Before Spike gets back here, we have to talk.”

  “Spike?”

  “The snakeman with the dozen scaly horns on his head. Spike. But we need to talk about you.”

  “You mean, you should talk. I can’t tell you about my secret undoing powers because they’re so secret, even I don’t know about them.”

  He seemed cross, and I guessed that wasn’t the answer he wanted.

  “Don’t interrupt, please. As soon as ol’ Spike comes around, all these Gek run around like they’re still on fire, so moments are wasting here. Look, I know you don’t trust S’ami. But he’s got a grudge against Nihil he’s nursed for a long time.”

  “I know about his daughter.” I wasn’t going to sit through an apology for the man. He was lost in his own hatred, and better left there.

  “Everyone knows about S’ami’s daughter,” Valeo continued. “It was pretty damn public. But that’s not it. S’ami has known for a long time how to battle Nihil, but didn’t have the power. You’ve got the power, but not the knowledge of how to use it, right?”

  If I had been a Gek, I would’ve been a battle-ready red or a mortified gray, flower garland notwithstanding. “Where is this going, exactly?”

  “I’ve been thinking—”

  “That sounds dangerous.”

  “Stop it. I mean it. I told you the other night that everyone’s tried to defy Nihil in one way or another. Everyone leads a double life around Nihil, and the closer you are, the more you need to be two people—the one who believes, and the one who wishes you didn’t have to.”

  “That’s not how I’ve lived my life, thank you,” I lied. Valeo was speaking straight from my own soul, if there was such a thing. He was speaking the truth of my own life—what kind of life is it to w
orship a god you resented?

  “Well, you’re lucky you’re still alive, then. And I’m hoping you stay that way.”

  “What about your plans to kill me?”

  “I need proof you’re the Undoer.”

  “So if I help the Gek, you’ll kill me, even after saying yesterday you wanted me to do so in time for supper?”

  He shook his head. “I’m lousy with explanations. Look, we have zero time. With proof you’re this Undoer, I might have something to hope for. Everyone would, from the Crystal Desert to the Sunless Sea. Even if you can’t defeat him, you could keep him in check, balance him out with your Unmagic. But it has to be our way, not yours.”

  “And just why is that?”

  “Before I escorted you off and we went for that little swim yesterday, I got two separate orders: from one Azwan to kill you if you ran over to the Gek, and from the other Azwan to keep you alive no matter what. And you wouldn’t believe which one wants you dead.”

  “S’ami.”

  His look of surprise told me I was right.

  “Valeo, he has you duped. If you kill me, whatever power I have jumps to you, and then you bring it back to S’ami, who kills you and takes that power for himself.”

  “S’ami would never kill me.”

  “And Reyhim is my grandfather.”

  “I’m not joking.”

  “Neither am I. That’s why he’s the one who wants me alive.”

  I had only a moment’s satisfaction seeing those bushy eyebrows rise in shock before the chieftain showed up again with a swarm of other lizards and my stomach grumbled at the sight of platters of food. The Gek, so far as I could tell, had no customs for hospitality and sharing a meal hadn’t the same significance as it did among humans. So they gathered around to watch us eat as if what we were doing was strange and exotic, while the chieftain explained more of what they wanted from me.

  As I translated, however, Valeo’s face contorted, his overbrow furrowing as he picked at his food.

  “This isn’t good,” he said.

  “Shall I tell the chieftain the salad isn’t to your liking?” I wondered if the Gek would feel insulted or just shrug it off as finicky drabskin appetites.

  “No, what you’re telling me. About this crack at the center of the world, or whatever bunghole on Nihil’s ass this place is supposed to be.”

  I put down a succulent fruit I’d been peeling. “If you don’t watch your language—”

  “I’ll watch my language when you have proper clothes to put on.”

  “I, at least, am trying to be civilized.”

  “I’m trying to keep us alive. And I’ll say what I need to say if it helps me think.”

  I kept my voice as singsong sweet as I could make it. “Maybe you shouldn’t attempt things that are clearly too difficult for you.”

  Instead of a verbal assault, he sighed. “Nihil love a fishwife’s tongue, as the saying goes. The crack. What’s wrong with it and why on all Kuldor would it be Nihil’s fault?”

  I turned to the chieftain and asked him to repeat the part about some sort of impurity, or violation—the Gek chatter had multiple meanings, and it was hard, even with my quirky ability to understand them, to get the exact meaning down. What I did understand is that I had to see it, to feel it, he insisted. And the Gek felt they had already waited too long for me to experience this waterfall shrine of theirs and whatever was wrong with it.

  All this I tried to convey to Valeo. I didn’t actually consider him stupid, but his looks of confusion and anxiety only added to my own.

  “You have to do this thing, and I have to make a decision about it,” he said at last, not looking at me.

  “Which Azwan to obey?” I asked. “Which one would you rather obey?”

  He looked away. “Normally, I’d say whichever gets me in the least trouble.”

  “How brave of you.” I nearly snorted in disgust.

  Without looking at me, he continued. “Nihil took my father from me. He’s taken any sense of home I ever had. I have no inheritance from that side, nothing but an empty title from my mother’s people, who’d rather I’d never have been born.”

  He fixed a rock-hard stare at me, his deep brown eyes flashing with sudden fire. “So, yes, I try to stay out of trouble.”

  I clamped my mouth shut. How could I have known any of this? An empty title? Prince? How could he believe that with the way his men looked at him? His glower told me not to ask what he meant by his father, but I might get away with one question, if I put it delicately. I did my best to ask without any hint of sarcasm.

  “Then why become a soldier?” I asked. “Isn’t that the worst kind of trouble?”

  “My life isn’t worth much, but I’d rather not throw it away idly, if that’s what you mean.”

  The hideous lump returned to my throat again, forcing my voice to a whisper. “Don’t ever say that. Your life is valuable, of course it is. Very.”

  “You thought I was dead and your life went on just fine.”

  “No, it didn’t. Nothing about my life will ever be fine again without you.”

  Valeo hesitated a moment, then leaned over and kissed my cheek. A few Gek chittered their approval, not understanding anything but that they’d witnessed a human mating custom, as best they understood it.

  “Reyhim’s the higher rank,” he said. “And my life would be worth something to him if I brought you back to him.”

  He pushed away from the table and stood, towering over the Gek, who scampered away from the big man and his growly voice. Valeo ignored them and gave me a curt nod. “Let’s do this, then.”

  He had included himself in that statement, which sent my heart cartwheeling. I reached up and touched the garland on my head. Some change had occurred in him and he’d decided I needed to live, and even the most stubborn, jaded part of my brain told me it wasn’t just because he was avoiding trouble. No, I didn’t believe that at all.

  I was plenty of trouble for him, and he was looking for ways to keep it coming.

  I almost dared a smile. Almost.

  26

  But their cries, pitted against words of evil, fell as uselessly as raindrops at sea. Heretics slit the priests’ throats, shamed their wives, and sold their children into slavery. They defiled their Wards with statues of their dead gods, who should’ve been long forgotten, and again worshipped beings that do not exist.

  —from “The Fall of B’Nai,” Verisimilitudes 13, The Book of Unease

  The un-rightness of Mount Meridiana hit me as a queasy feeling almost the moment we set foot on the path to its peak. I followed the chieftain and Valeo followed me, and behind us came a procession of several dozen Gek. By the time we’d clambered halfway up, the uneasy feeling became more like vertigo. It wasn’t from the height. Meridiana angled up sharply, but the Gek had long ago molded a wide, grass-covered series of switchbacks that should’ve made for gentle hiking.

  I stopped every so often to figure out if I was truly lightheaded. I didn’t feel or hear any buzzing or strange music or any fizzy static against my skin. That’s how magic usually affected me. But this was deeper, as if something in my head and my lungs and stomach were all upside-down at once, and I couldn’t quite right it or even catch my breath.

  Near the peak, the chieftain stopped us. I realized I’d been watching his skin change hues in rapid procession, and he had taken on seven or eight overlapping shades at once, all in brilliant, tropical hues, as lovely as anything I might’ve embroidered, but in rings and spots that radiated in the sun. Around him, the rest of the Gek had done the same, so that a shimmering sea of colors swelled in waves around me.

  “This is the sacred place,” the chieftain said. He pointed a bony finger through a natural archway beneath a bower of trees. “See and feel, Undoer. See and know.”

  This was it, then—what I’d come to learn. I drew a shaky breath and ducked under the branches. I found myself in a wide, rocky clearing, where steam vented from several burbling pools of
yellowish mud. The sulfur stung my nostrils, but fresh air wafted from the mountain top, too. After a few moments, I found the stench more bearable. Valeo followed me as I clambered over and around outcroppings of rocks. Nothing grew here, but the loss of vegetation was sudden, as if nothing had ever grown in this spot.

  The baldness stretched a few dozen body lengths or so up to the jagged peak, but all the steam I’d associated with the volcano poured from the pools around me. The wooziness felt no worse than it had—at first. The air over the pools rippled as though super-heated, but it was a typical fair autumn day. Something burned and I cringed at the stench. Valeo placed a hand against my shoulder blade.

  His unspoken support helped to steel me a little. My knees wobbled, and it wasn’t from the vertigo. It was just plain fright. It didn’t matter how much I thought I’d prepared myself for some sort of defining moment—I couldn’t remember what I’d resolved or why or what I thought I was doing here. Something about a peace broker, something about there being three sides in this, about having my own side, carving my own role. Peace broker, peace broker. Think peace.

  But there was only the wooziness and the wavering air.

  Valeo leaned in and whispered. “Listen. They’re praying.”

  I turned to see if the Gek were indeed praying as they had been on the wharf, but it was human and Feroxi voices that sifted across the breeze to us. I couldn’t see anyone. The muted hymns kept coming, and I caught dawn prayers and evening ones jumbled together. A snatch of a Sabbath prayer wafted from one pool; a mourner’s meditation from another.

  Valeo strode to the largest of the pools and held a hand into the steam.

  “They’re safe enough,” he said. “Probably could heat a nice bath.”

  Did he never stop being crude? “Valeo, this place is sacred to the Gek.”

  “Can they understand me?”

  “Well, no, but—”

  “Then I’ve committed no sacrilege.”

  I wondered if I would end up venting steam of my own. Instead, I joined him with a sigh. “There is something wrong here. You can hear voices. I can hear them. It’s not something magical, then.”