The Well of Prayers

by Anne Boles Levy

  Nihil.

  31

  Know only this: you know me not. Seek me and I may find you soon.

  Forget me and I shall find you sooner.

  —from Oblations 1, The Book of Unease

  He had to be Nihil. We didn’t have any portraits or carvings of him, but everyone knew. The ageless face, the milky-white hair braided down his back. The thin, even features. The compact, spare frame. This was the body he’d inhabited for nearly two centuries, the eleventh in a line of human and Feroxi forms he’d invaded and taken for himself. Whatever mind had inhabited the body before Nihil was long gone.

  The music I sensed wasn’t coming from him, though. It emanated from the mirror in back of the altar, and I realized that Nihil must still be in his home in a desolate place called the Abandoned City, clear across the sea and far from here. So who was this seated figure, lord of everything, calmly reading that awful ledger from the warehouse with all its names of the accused, while my sister suffered?

  I held back for a while, becoming aware of the muffled sobs and moans of the people around me. The seated figure wore robes made of intertwining threads of light that seemed to ripple in time with the melody. The same beams meshed together to make the figure’s skin and features. The closer I got, the clearer it became that this wasn’t a flesh-and-blood man but a representation, a simulacrum or avatar that could sit and read a book and be a physical presence among us.

  Without looking up from his reading, the simulacrum Nihil motioned for me to approach. Just a flick of his finger, subtle, but with purpose. No one else was in the aisle, so he must have meant me. I took steady steps forward—one, two, counting them, measuring them, not too fast or too slow, waiting for all of this to vanish like a fever dream.

  Amaniel didn’t look at me but I stared at her a long time, her back against the hard, tiled surface of the altar, her hair fanned out around her, a beatific smile on her glowing face. It wasn’t hard to see why I’d been dressed with such ostentation, or the choice Nihil would have me make. I would make it. The Temple itself had been preparing me for this choice from the first time the schoolmistress had smacked Amaniel’s arm instead of mine.

  The simulacrum Nihil cleared its throat, but although the sound came from his figure, the music shifted from the mirror. The source of the spells must be on the other side of the glass. The Nihil that looked like he was here, but wasn’t, cocked his head toward me.

  “A rag doll in my image.”

  I grew confused. What rag doll? The one taken from our home by the soldiers? Rishi’s little doll? This was what he cared about—and not the prayer well? My heart thumped harder inside me, to the point of chest pains. I had no idea what to say, so I said nothing.

  He continued. “No remorse, then. If you were sorry, you’d be on your knees.”

  His voice sounded preternaturally calm, almost expressionless. I briefly remembered the flawless diction from the night I’d been brought here to what I’d thought was my death, the trilled r’s and silky vowels.

  I wasn’t sorry, but I had Amaniel to think about. I tugged my skirt up enough to get on my knees and bowed my head.

  “Much better,” Nihil said. “Now, the rag doll. Plus all the other useless bits of profane nonsense seized from your people. Shall I spare you?”

  I was being tried on the entire city’s behalf, not merely my sister. I struggled to keep from fuming.

  “Lord of piety, am I on trial for everyone, then?”

  Nihil snapped the ledger shut. “Of course not. That would be barbaric, wouldn’t it?”

  “If it’s your will, Fey One.”

  “My will. Is that what you think separates a civilized people from some tree-dwelling beasts? My will alone?”

  If Nihil had been shouting, I could’ve handled that. I would’ve known how to respond. I’d have glared back or given him a cool, unfazed look or known how to keep my voice steady. But he was the chilly one, calm and droll and with a snide undercurrent to his voice that made me feel like the smallest person in the room.

  Thousands of pairs of eyes were trained on my back, but all my beautiful clothes were melting away in my imagination and I was sure at any moment I’d be stripped, body and soul, before the world. I hated every item on me, down to the last jingling bell. I wanted to throw everything at Nihil’s feet and grab Amaniel’s hand and make a run for it. To where, I don’t know.

  Nihil rose and the music shifted again, with a few shrill notes emanating from the mirror. A small buzz sounded in my ears. I realized that strident note was coming from me, and every time I bristled or tensed, it grew louder and more distinct. My un-magic was working after all. If only I could figure out how to wield it with some degree of precision. What if it failed me, as it had out by the prayer well? For the first time since I’d realized I had this power, though, I had hope. Something deep within me, whatever it was, wasn’t failing me.

  “Tell me this, Hadara of Rimonil of my very own city of Port Sapphire,” Nihil said. “What is it that separates the city from the jungle? A civilized people from savages? Tell me what you think my greatest gift to humanity might be.”

  I went for the answer I thought Amaniel might give. “Your theurgy, Master.”

  “So wrong. Then again, I was apprised of your limited achievement in school.”

  I hung my head, but not in shame. I was too angry for that. I may not have been the best student, but I’d never harmed anyone, ever. In a fair world, that ought to count for something.

  “A little hint?” Nihil said. “Or we’ll be here until my next incarnation.”

  “Yes, please.” That’s all I could manage without spitting.

  “Alright. A hint. Sewers.” Nihil seemed pleased with himself, crossing his arms across his light-clad chest.

  “Master?” How I hated having to call him that. The word felt wrong on my lips.

  “It’s just a hint. Humanity one day stopped excreting in the same waters it drank from. You want to imagine why?” He leaned forward. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

  He waved the back of his hand at me, a gesture I took to mean I should stand. I struggled to my feet, breathing hard, partly from fury, but also confusion and fear. I was being tested, just like in school, and failing again. The shame of it seeped across my face and burned at my ears and cheeks. So much more was at stake than a simple whack of the pointer, and I didn’t know how I was supposed to have prepared for this. I’d never known.

  “A stunning woman,” he said. He glanced me up and down, nodding with approval. “At the first bloom of your beauty. A supple form, yours, with good teeth and radiant skin, the very model of health and vitality. An accident of fate, right?”

  “I thank you for my many blessings, Cryptic Numen,” I said. It seemed like the appropriate thing to say. Nihil nodded again and the corners of his mouth lifted almost imperceptibly. It was a cruel, knowing smile, with his pale brown eyes creasing at the corners. His voice carried a condescending lilt that made my skin prickle.

  “Had I never come to Kuldor, do you know what you might’ve looked like?” Nihil asked. He didn’t wait for my answer. “Starved and sickly, a pygmy, foraging for roots because you had to, not because you could get a few extra coppers for them. Married off at twelve, a mother by thirteen, dead by twenty. Yes, Nature’s grand, isn’t it? Certainly worth putting all your faith in.”

  So that’s where this was going—to point out that my entire life had veered off course. My first instinct was to blame Mami for dragging me into the swamps, but I tamped that down. This had nothing to do with her. Behind me came the sound of sobbing and weeping. The entire city was cringing and mourning before the god who’d lifted us from our own filth and misery. If they’d been disgusted with the Temple yesterday, they were fully back in line today. All it took was a spectre of light floating in front of them to make every piece of self-respect and common sense dissolve.

  I wondered if, somewhere, a new prayer well had formed and was already filling.
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  Nihil took a step forward and the air crackled between us. My un-magic again. I’d have to think of a name for it if I lived through this.

  “Tell me why you unleashed the Gek on your own people,” Nihil said.

  “I didn’t. I swear I didn’t,” I said. My words were so high-pitched and feeble I hated the sound of them. I stood trembling before my god, peeping like a lost crane chick. I had to find the Hadara who could wade into a swamp and climb a tree and paddle a canoe and make six different kinds of medicines from the same plant. That Hadara wasn’t a bad person. That Hadara had done the world a favor by closing the prayer well, even if it hadn’t done all that I’d hoped.

  I had to believe that.

  “Really. The Gek just happened to know where to find their new goddess.” Nihil’s face was impassive, but his eyes, or the simulacrum’s eyes, never left mine.

  I was stammering for a reply when I heard a quiet whisper, accompanied by a short, echoing note of S’ami’s magic. I hadn’t even thought to look for him in the crowd. “Don’t answer him,” the voice said. “Don’t fight on his terms.”

  I shut my mouth. I had no idea what that meant, having never fought anyone.

  Nihil’s eyes narrowed to slits. “What did S’ami just tell you?”

  “Master?”

  “No one spellcasts without my knowing.”

  S’ami coughed from somewhere behind me. “If I may, Fey One.”

  “Later,” Nihil said, his gaze returning to mine.

  I trembled as our eyes connected. S’ami had said I’d be crushed if I faced him alone. But I had to try. I was old enough to marry, to learn a trade, to take my mother’s place and run a household. I could answer for my actions, even if they were being twisted into something I didn’t recognize. I silently thanked S’ami in my head for buying me that brief moment to compose myself and run my whirlwind mind through a few replies.

  After all, I didn’t have a reservoir of desperation and longing to draw from. I had only my upbringing, my sense of self, a faint hope that at least my parents still loved me, and a robust skepticism. All of that would have to do.

  “Well?” Nihil asked. “Don’t keep me waiting.”

  “The Gek are wrong, Master.”

  “About what.”

  “I can’t and don’t wish to take you on.”

  “Is that what they asked?”

  “Not in so many words.”

  “It’s what they want?”

  This would go badly for the Gek, I realized. I couldn’t give them up to save my own hide. I second-guessed myself. “Are they wrong?”

  Nihil paused. “You think I should be taken on, as you put it?”

  An already quiet congregation stopped moving. I felt like they were leaning into me, pressing against me with their silence and their anxious watching. Even the music had softened to a sweet hush.

  “Should I want to?” I asked.

  S’ami’s voice rang in my ear. “Excellent. Turn it back on him.”

  “Stop coaching her.” Nihil’s face broke into a frown for the first time, his thin eyebrows furrowing.

  “My apologies, Master,” S’ami said aloud. “It’s only natural to root for the novice. She meant no harm.”

  “Harm’s been done.” Nihil turned to me again. “Do you think this is about a rag doll? Or the ledger you stole—don’t deny it. The fire, the battle, the wellspring, any of it?”

  I tried to keep my voice to a whisper, but it echoed across the quiet chamber. “Apparently, it’s something to do with sewers.”

  S’ami’s laughter carried across the room, briefly blocking even Nihil’s music. I waited for Nihil to strike S’ami dead, but he only gazed at S’ami without changing expression and raised the ledger above his head. It dropped with a sharp bang against the floor. He stood astride it and paused. I thought S’ami and I had an odd relationship, but to take this kind of liberty with Nihil was beyond imagining.

  Unnerved and trembling, I stooped to pick up the ledger but Nihil kicked it away. In the moment his foot passed near my hand, the space between us sizzled. Part of his foot seemed to dissipate like smoke, with tendrils snaking toward me. I pulled my hand back and stood.

  Nihil had noticed, yet his voice betrayed no emotion. His eyes, the avatar eyes, never left my face. Yet they seemed to look beyond me, like I were standing further back than I was.

  “I believe I have already seen what this undoing does,” he said, his voice smug. “Though pulling together a pile of rocks to plug a volcano struck me as very similar to magic. Wouldn’t you say, S’ami, my Ear, my Azwan, my Defender of Doctrine?”

  “Aye, now that you’ve made me aware of it, it does,” S’ami said. “Which is why I called her a novice. Let her come and study properly, and we’ll see what kind of priestess we can make of her.”

  I didn’t have much confidence in myself, but I was absolutely positive S’ami didn’t want me to follow him to the Temple of Doubt to attend seminary. He wanted my powers for himself, and having me close would be better than having me far. It was such an obvious lie that it made me realize that even with all of the advantages Nihil had over me, he lacked one important thing: the truth. Without it, he was dependent on whatever flattering, fawning nonsense people drooled at him.

  I had the truth, or at least some of it. I had facts and decency and rightness on my side. I’d made a mistake, and I could admit it, at least to myself—something I doubted Nihil could ever do.

  I reached toward Nihil. The buzz in my ears restarted like a swarm of sting flies, angry and excited, an unpleasant sound I wished would go away. I winced and held my hand steady as I continued reaching. If other spells had sparkled and fizzled in my hands, this one threw out electric arcs. Nihil’s form lost its sharpness for a few moments, then refocused, as clear as ever.

  I tried again, with the same result. My hand smarted, and my skin began to crack.

  Nihil didn’t flinch as his figure rewove any parts of himself that had frayed at my touch.

  “Unimpressive,” he said. “Unless you’re not really trying.”

  “I don’t want to be doing this.” Maybe there would still be a peaceful way out, some way for everyone to save face.

  “Perhaps I’ve pressed you too far. My Azwan seems to think so.” His voice held a kinder note to it, but it was only that—one note, and not too convincing. I hoped he was almost done with me, but part of me knew otherwise.

  “Please.” My voice was a hoarse whisper.

  “Alright, why don’t you stand down, then. You’ve been put through much.”

  I bowed my head to him, fearful that this couldn’t have been so easy, but hoping against hope that it was. “Thank you, Cryptic Numen.”

  Nihil crossed to where Amaniel lay on the altar.

  “I trust you’ll agree to offer your sister then in your stead. That seems fair, doesn’t it?”

  32

  They rejected me. They rejected the god of flesh and bone, a god they could see and hear and who lived among them.

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

  I lunged forward. Nihil’s question could not be answered with words. I answered with action, grabbing at the apparition again. Never mind how much it stung, I had to get rid of him. Forget peace, then.

  The simulacrum exploded in my arms and threw me against the altar. I fell backward. The congregation gasped, but quieted again as the music lifted in pitch and volume, which told me I hadn’t gotten rid of Nihil. I’d only a singed dress for my trouble. I waved off a wisp of smoke and choked back a cough.

  I stared up at Amaniel’s feet. Nihil had no reason to do this to her. My family had done so much for the Temple, my sister believed so firmly in it, and this was our thanks—to see my sister shamed and killed. Her, the true believer, who’d find some way to make this about selflessness and virtue instead of Nihil’s bizarre demands and cruel appetites.

  I picked myself up in time to see a cloud of colors eme
rge from the mirror and coalesce as another avatar of Nihil. A few short steps took him back to the altar to face me across my sister’s body. Amaniel trembled at the site of him. She ignored me.

  Nihil smiled his tight, mean smile again.

  “Much better,” he said.

  “Better? I don’t understand.”

  “I want to know what I’m up against,” he began. “If you’re motivated by saving your sister, that’s easily handled. You only have to convince me there’s nothing more.”

  Nothing more? I stared at him in disbelief. I stammered out my reply. “I-isn’t that enough?”

  He laughed. “An excellent reply. Honest. Heartfelt. Alright, your family can go.”

  I almost fell over from relief. The flutes took a laughing, cheerful turn and people all around me began shouting praise for their god. Some applauded. I’d passed whatever test he’d held for me. Or had I?

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see S’ami in the front row. His round face seemed anxious and closed.

  Below me, Amaniel closed her eyes and scrunched up her face as if about to cry. I grabbed her hand to pull her to her feet. She shrieked, shrill and piercing, her back arching, and began writhing in agony. I let go, but her contortions continued. Scream after scream resounded above Nihil’s terrible, happy songs.

  “Stop it,” I said. “You said she could go.”

  “Ah, about that,” he said. “I just wanted to remove one very important doubt you may yet have about my hold over you. Say farewell to your sister.”

  I strode over and slapped the simulacrum. He struck me back, a hard blow that exploded sparks in my face and stung my skin. His fist vanished, then reformed.

  Amaniel kept screaming.

  I yanked away my headscarf. My hair tumbled free around my shoulders and down my back.

  “You’d do that in my presence,” Nihil said.

  I didn’t answer, but took the flimsy fabric and stretched it out as wide as it would go. I laid it gently over Amaniel’s body. She tried to push it away. “Hadara, don’t. It’ll be over soon. I’ll be blessed, too.”