Tears of the Dead

by Brian Braden

  My doubts melted away, or perhaps I merely suppressed them. For the first time in my immortal life, I wasn’t alone.

  I belonged.

  The Chronicle of Fu Xi

  ***

  A moment of crystal lucidity washed over Fu Xi’s famished mind.

  I’m going mad.

  He stepped away from the cliff, sword outstretched.

  “What does the mighty Fu Xi have to fear?” A voice danced beyond fog.

  “What do you want?” Fu Xi shouted, stumbling once again into the deep snow.

  A shadow darted to his left. Fu Xu ducked and slashed, but slew only a few unfortunate snowflakes.

  “Does the God of Names fear death?” the voice spoke from his left.

  Fu Xi whirled about, but saw nothing.

  A black-clad figure gelled from the fog and passed to his left, hands casually behind his back. High, proud cheekbones framed obsidian eyes. The man’s features reminded Fu Xi of the tall tribes who dwelt east of Nushen.

  Fu Xi whirled about, but the stranger vanished. The snow stretched unbroken

  “Show yourself!”

  “Here I am,” a breathy, frigid voice whispered in his ear.

  Fu Xi spun to face the little woman who died in the courtyard of stone. She stood motionless several yards away, clad only in her rusty iron collar. Her bare feet hovered just above the snow.

  “Your mother betrayed you,” she said, face slack and pale as the drifts.

  Fu Xi turned and fled the way he came, following his own footprints away from the cliff. He glanced back, but the figure had vanished. Fu Xi turned about and came face to face with a Donkey Man.

  The grubby creature considered him with the same dark eyes as the woman had. “How many quests did Nuwa send you on, all the while denying you the pleasures your flesh so desired?” he hissed.

  Fu Xi fled in the other direction, terror routing his pride. He lunged into the gray, slogging through the snow, leaving a jagged, white trail in his wake.

  Laughter followed him.

  Thick pines materialized ahead. Without realizing, Fu Xi had plunged headlong into a forest, but the arboreal sentinels offered no sanctuary.

  A child’s voice drifted among the trees, “She dragged one mortal husband after another into her lair, afraid of being alone, feeding her carnal desires one victim at a time.”

  Fu Xi glanced right and saw Lian. Nuwa’s final earthly shell appeared just as he remembered her on that final Offering Ceremony, her white silk acolyte gown melting into the snow.

  “How many did you watch her slaughter, Fu Xi? She sent you to save them, yet she used their bodies as playthings.”

  “Lies!” Tears of rage streaming down his face, Fu Xi lunged toward the child but fell headfirst into a snowdrift.

  “She failed, and so did you.”

  Fu Xi looked up and came face to face with Quexil. The Olmec’s red skin and jagged war paint clashed violently against the snow.

  “I’ve watched you for quite some time, as you scurried back and forth from Tortoise Mountain on her little errands. You’ve crossed Cin again and again, dragging the Tall Men from caves, teaching them fire and how to sprinkle a few seeds in the mud. Was it all worth it?”

  Like a daggertooth, Quexil circled in a wide arc, brandishing a steel sword and poison words, each syllable slashing open a new wound. Doubt sawed its way into his spirit.

  “I wonder how you felt when you spied our ship that morning, or what thoughts raced through your mind as you beheld Wu for the first time. I think you felt inadequate when you learned how grand the world truly was...and how small a part you played.”

  “Depart, demon.”

  Quexil stepped closer. “It is you who tread in my realm.”

  He took a step closer. Fu Xi heard the snow crunch beneath his feet, saw misty breath emerge from Quexil’s mouth. “You could have joined us.”

  A step closer.

  “Leviathan laid a banquet before you. He embraced you.”

  A step closer.

  “He called you ‘Brother’.”

  “Silence,” Fu Xi whispered.

  “In gratitude, you conspired with a mortal, a slave.”

  Fu Xi tightened his grip on the Red Sword.

  “You repaid your host with betrayal, but one could only expect as much from the Son of Nuwa.” Quexil hissed.

  “No!” Fu Xi shouted and thrust the Red Sword at Quexil’s heart.

  Red and white metal clashed in a blue flash.

  20. Downstream

  Surrender the thief to the marsh. Banish the murderer to the g’an. Pity the fool and madman, but lodge them well downstream. – Lo Proverb

  The Chronicle of Fu Xi

  ***

  In what seemed like only a blink, Virag awoke to the reek of excrement. He craned his neck, thinking Spako had shat himself.

  His bodyguard hadn’t moved. The slaver had no idea how much time had passed, but the gray light peaking under the tarp looked a little brighter.

  Above the rain he heard women’s voices and then a clumpy splash beyond the hull very close to his head. The reek suddenly intensified.

  Virag untangled his legs from Spako’s and tumbled from under the canopy, struggling to make sure he didn’t slip into the gap between the raft and the boat.

  He quickly noticed that someone had erected makeshift poles and canopies almost up to his boat, providing much welcomed shelter from the rain on the adjacent rafts.

  When he finally found his feet, he faced four women bearing heavy clay pots with brown-stained rims. They wore the haggard expressions of those who hadn’t slept in days.

  “What are you doing?” Virag demanded.

  “What do you think we’re doing, a’gan?” A young woman with thick curly hair and sharp, olive features replied incredulously. “We’re dumping our families’ night soil.”

  “Not next to my boat you don’t! Dump it somewhere else.”

  “This is downstream. If you don’t like it, move your boat.”

  “Toss it over there,” Virag pointed to the raft behind her where a man and two small children huddled in the shadows.

  She looked over her shoulder, and then considered Virag as a patient adult speaking to an ignorant child.

  “That is my cousin’s raft. I couldn’t even think of dumping our refuse there.”

  “Then dump it over there!” Virag pointed to the opposite side of his boat, where a cluster of lashed boats bobbed between two rafts.

  The woman’s jaw dropped, as if Virag just asked her to kill her first born. “Those boats are Minnow Clan; to dump our refuse there would be a grave insult.”

  The other women covered their mouths and snickered.

  Virag’s rage intensified. A few weeks ago this woman would quake in fear in his presence. She would be perhaps only suitable to service his bodyguards.

  “Do not throw your shit next to my boat.” Virag inched closer, moments from cuffing the insolent bitch across the face.

  “Move your boat.” She stepped toward him, unfazed by his aggressive posture.

  The other women backed off.

  “Do you know who I am?” Virag seethed.

  “Yes, you are an a’gan fool who lashed his boat downstream.”

  Virag slowly slid his right hand down to the small of his back, where he kept a hidden dagger.

  As if sensing the growing danger, the other women stepped farther back.

  “Alaya,” one of them said. “Let’s get Ghalen.”

  The woman called Alaya locked eyes with Virag and stepped to his left. She lifted her pot next to the bow of his boat and slowly began to tip it.

  “Spill it and I’ll gut you from ass to mouth.”

  Virag grinned as he saw a spark of doubt cross Alaya’s face, but the woman kept tipping.

  His hand crept toward the hidden hilt.

  “Is everything in order, Alaya?” Ghalen’s voice rose above the rain from behind Virag. The slaver slowly moved his hand back dow
n to his side.

  “Yes, Ghalen.” A wry smile crossed Alaya’s face. “I was just dumping the night soil when this a’gan came along. He speaks in gibberish. I think he still suffers from wave sickness.”

  The women, obviously infused with fresh courage, giggled again.

  “I will not be made sport of. Stop these hags from dumping their shit next to my boat!”

  Ghalen laughed. “You are downstream, what do you expect? That is where we rid ourselves of night soil. Do not fret; the current will carry it away soon enough.”

  Virag grabbed onto the mast to avoid falling over. “Okta planned this! I will not stand for it. Where is Aizarg? Bring him here, let him decide.”

  The tall, fair-haired marshman crossed his arms and laughed. “Judging by the way you grip that mast, you do not stand very well at all. By the Uros’s own decree, the Master of the Boats decides who goes where in this arun-ki. If this is where he wanted you, this is where you’ll stay.”

  “Put me on the wedding barges, my rafts. You would not have them if it were not for me.”

  “They are not your rafts, or did we not make that clear?”

  “Then put me on the other side of the arun-ki, away from this offal.”

  “Very well!” Ghalen grinned broadly, and Virag knew instantly he’d made a mistake.

  He snatched Virag by the arm and dragged him through the heart of the arun-ki, from raft to raft, past masses of Lo huddled around glowing braziers, until they arrived at the storm wall.

  Virag shielded his face from the blinding rain and stinging spray as Ghalen pushed him ahead through the wall’s opening onto the bow raft, naked before the sea and storm.

  “I do not want to go out there!”

  “Come on, slaver,” Ghalen shouted over the howling wind. “Let me show you where we will move your boat. The air is very fresh here, you will like it. I know the Master of Boats would approve.”

  Exposed to the roaring elements, the terror of the first day returned with a vengeance. Virag clung to Ghalen like a child, shame and rage forgotten, as waves sloshed over his calves and threatened to pull him into the water.

  Ghalen steadied himself against the stout pylon and pointed to the rope. “That is our new sea anchor. Without it, we would eventually flounder and die. It keeps your boat sheltered in the arun-ki’s wake.

  “No one can live here, on this side of the wall. If you continue to make trouble, you and that Sammujad beast of yours will find yourselves camped here. Do we understand each other?”

  Only wanting to escape this place, Virag nodded vigorously.

  “Good.” Ghalen shoved him to the other side of the storm wall under the sheltering tarps.

  Virag stumbled back to his boat, the Lo snickering as he passed.

  Let them laugh. Okta will pay. Ghalen will pay. They will all pay.

  Virag slid into his boat, kicking Spako as he settled in. The sleeping Sammujad didn’t even stir, making Virag even more furious.

  Outside the tarp, slop splattered against the hull as the stink of shit and women’s laughter invaded his boat.

  21. The Dragon’s Shadow

  Naturally, Leviathan asked me about Cin. Perhaps I should not have been so forthcoming, but my host openly discussed his home.

  He told me of his father, the god Poseidon, who came to earth and took mortal lovers, just as Nuwa had. At first, Leviathan took me as a long lost brother, a bastard from one of his father’s trysts. He was genuinely shocked when I told him of Nuwa, as Poseidon had made no mention of other gods. He also took interest when I described the Offering Festival.

  “How does Poseidon choose an Offering?” I asked.

  “My father does not share the affairs of his inner temple with his sons.”

  Unlike Nuwa, Poseidon begot not one child, but six pairs of twins. Ten males were born of Poseidon’s first mortal queen, Cleito. Leviathan and his sister, whom he refused to speak of, were born to a beloved mistress.

  Poseidon established an earthly kingdom in his mortal queen’s native land, an island continent between four greater continents. He divided this dominion among the first ten princes and anointed his firstborn son, Atlas, king over all. To the eleventh prince, Poseidon gave dominion over the seas. Much as Nuwa had done, Poseidon tasked his offspring with earthly affairs and retreated into his temple.

  Everything I had accomplished in Cin paled in the light of their greatness. In the Children of Poseidon I thought I had found my answer, my true purpose. In them, I saw all I tried to build in the Tall Men.

  Perhaps my centuries of wandering were over.

  And yet occasionally, when the wind blew just right from the harbor, the faint clink of hammers and stench of blood briefly stirred me from a waking dream. In those times Leviathan appeared as if magically summoned by my stirring doubt, to distracted me with every possible pleasure.

  And I relished Leviathan’s company like a boy seeks out his older brother. Perhaps I sensed Leviathan seducing me, co-opting me, corrupting me...but in the end, I permitted it.

  Only I am to blame.

  The Chronicle of Fu Xi

  ***

  Steel and orichalcum danced amongst the trees, breaking the silence with sharp clangs. The demigod summoned all his remaining strength, pitting his rage against the Olmec. The Red Sword should have immediately sliced through the steel, but somehow Quexil fought on.

  The warrior effortlessly dodged Fu Xi’s best attacks, countering with mighty blows. Soon, Quexil transformed into a blur darting from tree to tree. Trunks splintered and limbs fell as Fu Xi pursued his foe.

  His enemy slipped behind a tree and vanished. Fu Xi halted, wheezing for breath.

  “Fu Xi the Betrayer,” a deeper voice rumbled. “Fu Xi the Failure. Were I merciful, I would slay you and end your suffering.”

  The voice reverberated as an enormous shadow expanded and stretched beyond the trees.

  Fu Xi took a step backward.

  “Merciful.”

  The word echoed, transforming to a rumbling purr.

  “Merciful!”

  The purr swelled into a growl.

  “MERCIFUL!”

  The growl thundered into a mountain shaking roar as the forest erupted into sizzling flames.

  An eternity of courage drained away. What he faced terrified Fu Xi far more than a dragon, more than death. Damnation incarnate pursued the demigod.

  Fu Xi fled downhill, unable to see more than a few yards. Flames licked his back as he burst from the tree line, chased from the snowy heights by the stink of charred wood and crackle of burning green wood.

  He crashed through saplings and brush, as snow became rain. The beast’s words burrowed into Fu Xi’s soul, like worms seeking a soft spot in the apple’s skin.

  Another brilliant, exploding flash of light erupted behind him, this time seemingly farther away. The flames cast long shadows through the trees, flickering fingers pointing the way for Fu Xi’s escape.

  Another boom echoed, this time fainter and from ahead.

  The demigod did not slow as the slope steepened, and the trees fell away on both sides.

  Fu Xi recognized the deadly drop off ahead barely in time. He skidded, but the slick mud gave way and he fell on his bottom. Sliding downhill even faster, he snatched at branches and saplings, but they either snapped or pulled free from the mud. He spun about on his stomach, clawing for any handhold as the Red Sword slipped from his grip. His feet met air as he found himself dangling from the cliff, gripping a nub of icy rock. Fu Xi looked over his shoulder in time to see the Red Sword vanish amongst jagged boulders and pounding surf far below.

  ***

  Seasons were difficult to reckon in Wu’s evergreen eternity. My unease following the dark feast melted away as the days passed, and I sank deeper under Leviathan’s spell.

  One day Leviathan found me wandering hedgerow mazes overlooking the sea, a slave girl on my arm, and a goblet in my hand.

  “Come, I want to show you something.”
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  I abandoned the pouting woman and my wine and followed him into the gentle valley stretching north behind the palace.

  We strolled down a winding, narrow lane into a place that reminded me of home. Misty forests and lush green meadows blanketed one rolling hill after another. The smell of fresh grass filled my nostrils and made my heart glad.

  From time to time, strange tracks made by an unknown hooved animal crisscrossed our path. When I queried Leviathan, he only smiled and said I would soon see. We crested a hill overlooking a large meadow enclosed by an extensive split-log fence. That’s when I saw the creatures from Poseidon’s statue.

  I abandoned Leviathan’s side and ran to the fence like a child abandons his father’s hand at the first glimpse of a new wonder. Timber rails shook beneath my hands as they galloped by with speed only surpassed by the winged dragons of my youth. Grace inspired these creatures. Grace captured in flesh, the sacred imprint of the Emperor of Heaven’s hand.

  “What are they called?” I asked Leviathan.

  “Father dubbed them ‘horse’ when he named all things at the dawn of time.”

  “Whore-ssaha.” The word’s crudity left my mouth sour. Once again, the language of Poseidon disappointed me. And I knew there were many things in the world Poseidon did not name.

  Leviathan put his hand on my shoulder. “When I watch you, I see myself when Father first sent his sons forth to tame the world.”

  “My people call them ‘so-qui-li’.” A red man approached from my right, taller than any Olmec I’d yet seen. He wore deerskin trousers and nothing else. A long, jet black braid fell down his back. Exuding quiet power, he struck me as being apart from the other Olmecs.

  “Great Lord Leviathan, the stables are ready.” He bowed deeply.

  “Sunalei Ostu is my master of horses. I call him Sunnah.”

  Sun-nah-lay-i Ohs-tuh. So many strange languages! Leviathan opened an entire universe I ached to explore.

  The Chronicle of Fu Xi

  ***

  He didn’t remember pulling himself up, but somehow found himself lying along the edge, panting for air. Two muddy sandals stood before him. He looked up to see the acolyte he’d bedded in the haystack those years earlier, the gown she wore that night plastered to soaking skin. She rubbed a grotesquely swollen pregnant belly. The silk gown had split open, exposing sickly purple and varicose skin stretched to the breaking point. The rain slackened as the apparition loomed closer, long, wet hair plastered against her pale face. Hatred replaced the gentle warmth he once saw in her eyes.