by R. Lee Smith
“The curse of blight,” he said at once, “when the land failed and the skies were filled with storms. The cities of the Ancients fell and famine and disease preyed upon the landless people.”
“For how long?” asked Tsazr, casting a cold eye back at Meoraq.
He looked at Amber, but she was bent over her slate, making human letters. In another moment, Meoraq was reeling from the dream-like painlessness of Master Tsazr’s blow. Amber’s voice drifted up from his side, the dumaqi words made haunting in her human mouth: “It is still among us.”
“Uyane.”
Meoraq straightened up and put his arms to his side, only to find that Master Tsazr had somehow been replaced by the strange exarch with the low hood.
“What was the third act of the Fall of the Ancients?” this figure asked in Tsazr’s voice.
He knew this one, thankfully. “It was the return of Sheul and the hope of His forgiveness. And it is still among us,” he added, anticipating the next question.
The stranger did not reply, but the silence that swept the lessons room proved more disconcerting than his hooded stare. Meoraq looked away and saw the prairie all around him; he looked back and there was Amber before him and they were sitting, face to face, in the dark of the humans’ camp.
“We built a ship,” said Amber. She raised her hand to make a wedged shape and passed it between them. “And it flew through the sky, beyond the clouds that covered our world, into the lights that shine forever.” Her arm arced up, graceful as the neck of a thuoch. Her eyes never left his and they were green, so green. “But the ship was hurt and it fell here, out of the storm. It broke open over Gann. It died and many died with it.” Her hand fell to earth and opened, her fingers flaring out and curling slowly back toward her palm. Her second hand lit upon this imagined carnage, made walking fingers, and stepped out onto the grass. “But some of us survived and now we’re here. We’re here and there’s no way home.” She looked back over her shoulder and let out a shaky breath, then turned back and caught his hand in both of hers. Her hands were soft and warm; her eyes were terrible in their beauty. “I need you.”
Something in him shivered right down to the core of his soul. He tried to say her name, but the magic of the dream ended, it seemed, with his mouth. “Mmbr,” he said, just as he always had, and shook his head with disgust. His next attempt was nothing but a hiss and a choke of meaningless sound.
“Please, Meoraq,” she said. “I need your help. And you need mine.”
He did not remember getting up, but they were standing suddenly, the two of them together before a dark structure he somehow knew was Xi’Matezh. They were standing, yes, and his arms were going around her just as if that were not a perfectly appalling thing to do. He could feel her heat against his body and her horrible face was right before him and her name, ah, her name was like wine in his mouth. “Mmbr,” he said, bending close. “Mm—”
* * *
“…mbr,” he mumbled, and the sound of his own voice jolted him awake.
Meoraq opened his eyes and was, for one disorienting moment, shocked to see that Amber’s own were not before him. He found his lamp and lit it, but saw only the interior of his shelter.
What did he expect? Meoraq clapped a hand to his head and rubbed roughly at his scales, then rolled over and sat up. His cock was out, he noticed, pinched between his belly and his loin-plate and still dully throbbing with Gann’s lusts. He retracted it with great distaste and pressed a hand over his slit to hold it in while he tightened his belt, meditating on the dream. Already, it was so tangled in his mind that he could not say what the message had been.
Dreams. Only fools and priests believed they had messages.
He put on his breeches and opened his tent.
The creatures slept in heaps all around him, cocooned in more of those silvery bedsheets. They looked like fat, metal maggots. A deeply disturbing sight.
And there was Amber.
He could see the twin lump of herself and the other human that clung at her, together in the grass at the very edge of his camp. At the edge of Scott’s camp as well, far from any fire. The sight of her sleeping in the open air like an animal did something unpleasant to his emotions and gave him back disturbing fragments of his dream…particularly there at the end, when he’d been holding her.
Dream-nonsense, he told himself brutally. If he hadn’t awakened when he had, he probably would have bitten her or something.
The image his mind sent out at that thought was not that of a monstrous dumaq devouring Amber neck-first, however, but of a mark of conquest upon her naked shoulder. His cock, safely constrained behind his loin-plate, throbbed with Gann’s senseless need.
Meoraq shuddered, started to retreat within his tent, and then rose resolutely and tromped over to where Amber lay. She roused at the noise, pushing back her damp cover and squinting up at him through sleep-dazed eyes. “Get up,” he said, and beckoned, knowing she would not understand him. “To your feet, soft-skinned creature.”
More humans stirred. “Wzzee wnt?” someone called, and Amber answered, “Elleff’ai’no,” in a puzzled fashion, but she got up.
“I dreamed of you.” Meoraq led her to his firepit and pushed on her shoulder until she sat. He crouched to knuckle through the ash until he found a bit of branch only half-burnt, then woke the embers to a flame bright enough to see by. “And while dreams are largely foolish things, Sheul often hides some shard of insight there. So do I recall one thing I think to be His wisdom. Take this.”
She let him thrust the charred branch into her hands. She frowned at it, and then her brows raised and she gave him a startled sort of look. She dropped to her knees at once before him, intent and eager as she patted her hand across the ash to flatten it.
And she began to draw. Not the strange markings she had made across her lessons slate in his dream, but an image of some rounded shape (we built a ship), amplified by sweeping motions of her arm, which she made fall by drawing a line just beneath it (it broke open over Gann). She started drawing line-men to spill out of it, chattering explanations, and Meoraq leaned back on his heels to listen. He did not try to mimic her words, but he did interrupt now and then with questions of his own, raised with gestures and drawings in the ash.
The story he was able to glean through this crude communication was a confusing one. She seemed to be trying to tell him that the creatures he saw before him now were all there were, not just here, but in all of Gann. He tried many times to get her to tell him where the ship had sailed from and how they had come inland so far without being seen, but kept getting the same baffling response: The ship did not move on water, but through the sky. She seemed to want him to believe they had not come from Gann at all, but from some other world. She illustrated this by drawing two circles in the ash and the rounded shape of the ship between them, sketching the line of their travel over and over and jabbing at the sky above them with her stick.
She must think he was an idiot. That a ship had sailed, Meoraq did not doubt, and perhaps it had even come across the sky if it were some relic from the time of the Ancients or a machine made after that fashion. That it had come to some disaster seemed equally plausible. That they were all there were in the world, as helpless as newborns and meaning no harm to anyone, was patently absurd.
And yet…
And yet, there was Amber, grimacing at him happily as she told her tale. He liked to think that his years in service to Sheul had given him some power to see lies when they were told to his face, and even though hers was a strange one, it could still be read. When he gazed on Amber, when he looked past the cold and hunger and other hardships of travel in the wildlands, he saw no evil. He saw sorrow and he saw loss. He saw anger sometimes and sometimes guilt. He saw strength and determination and so much tenacity that he often questioned his odd certainty that she was female, but he had never seen deceit in her. Not when she looked at him. Not when she looked at anyone. There were things she did not say, perhaps, but what she said was honest
.
We built a ship…and it flew through the sky…
Meoraq took the stick from her hands and swept the ash flat. He looked at her, frowned, then looked past her to the other creatures, all of whom had gathered by now and were watching him with unreadable emotion across their grotesque faces. He thought of the dream, but it was a glancing tap at best; dreams were of no value in the waking world. He was not easy about what he was about to propose, but he felt Sheul’s hand upon his shoulder and, although His ultimate plan was not clear, His immediate will seemed obvious.
Meoraq sketched out a few creatures—round heads atop line-bodies; he was not a great artist—and then, not without a moment’s misgiving, drew himself among them. He tapped the image, saying, “Sheul has put you in my path for a reason. I will stay until I know what it is.”
“Wutz’i sa’en?” Scott asked.
“Do’ispeeklzzrd?” Amber replied, tossing the words crossly over her shoulder before reaching out to try and take the stick from Meoraq.
He wasn’t done with it. He took her wrist with a stern look and moved her hand back to her knee. He captured his drawings within a circle, making it clear they were bound together, and then leaned out to sketch the shrine at Xi’Matezh. He’d never seen it, but he’d seen enough of them to know they all pretty much looked alike: a round, walled courtyard and tall, central tower. “But I see no reason to interrupt my journey,” he went on, tapping first the ash-creatures and then the ash-shrine. “So we will go together.”
“Wutztht?”
“Stldntno, Scott. Stldntspeeklzzrd.” Amber leaned forward, reaching across him to point at the ash-shrine. “Wutzthz Mee’orrak?”
“Meoraq,” he corrected, and then shook that away irritably. She was never going to say his name properly and it didn’t matter at the moment. He touched the ash-shrine and said, “This is Xi’Matezh, the holiest shrine remaining from the age of the Ancients. We will go there—” He emphasized this with several lines between ash-creatures and ash-shrine. “—and I will ask Sheul what is to be done with you.”
“Ithnkeewntz t’tak’uzther.” Frowning, Amber patted her chest with one hand, gesturing at the other creatures as she did so, then pointed at Meoraq and made wiggling, walking movements with her fingers. “Wergo’in t’gthr? Yutu?”
“We all go together,” he told her, pointing at his drawings. “If His will is not made known to me upon the journey, Sheul shall surely tell me what to do in Xi’Matezh when I stand before Him.”
“Wut izthtpls?” Scott asked.
Amber threw up her hands, slapped her thighs, and swung around. “Frfkz’sk Scott i’dntno! I’dntspeek fkknlzzrd!”
Meoraq hissed at the creatures to silence them, then poked Amber irritably with his stick to take back her attention. When he had it, he swiftly made some sketched animals to fill the empty space between the ash-creatures and the ash-shrine. “The journey is long and dangerous. The prairie is filled with wild beasts and godless men and we are very near to winter. I will protect you—” Ash-Meoraq received a few ash-knives and the very badly-drawn ash-tachuqi nearest him was rubbed out. “—at least until I know whether or not I am meant to kill you. That you are to be a test of my faith is clear to me,” he mused, once more gazing into Amber’s unsettling eyes. “But I am Sheulek and my faith is as enduring as the wind. I shall not fail my Father.”
Amber’s pliant little brow-ridges drew together as she listened. Her eyes were green and she had felt warm and soft and disturbingly real in his dream when he held her.
“But if it is His will that I stand with you,” Meoraq said, now speaking just to Amber, “I shall not fail you either.”
“Wutz’i sa’en?” Scott wanted to know.
This time, Amber answered without taking her eyes from Meoraq’s. Her mouthparts curved upwards. She said, softly, “Eezcm’mn wthuz. Eezgnna hlpuz.”
And she held out her empty hand, just held it out, open in the air. After a moment, Meoraq put down his stick and held his out the same way. She huffed and moved to take his hand in hers. Joined.
Behind his loin-plate, some hot urge of Gann flared and throbbed. Meoraq willed it back. He released Amber and stood up. “Enjoy these last hours,” he told her. “When the sun rises, you and all your kind belong to me.”
“Meeor’ak,” she said.
“Just so,” he agreed, and gave her a tap on the top of her freakish, furry head.
8
And just like that, the lizardman apparently considered the matter settled. He rose from the fire, said a few words while pointing sternly at the tents, and then walked away into the tall grass without looking back.
“Grab it!” Scott shouted, backing out of Meoraq’s path.
No one moved.
Meoraq kept walking and was soon swallowed up by darkness.
“You let it get away,” said Scott, and for a change, the accusation wasn’t aimed at Amber.
“We’re not set up to take prisoners,” Eric told him. He pointed back at the lizardman’s teepee. “He’ll be back. He left his stuff.”
There just wasn’t a whole lot to do at that point. Scott hustled the Fleetmen into his tent for an emergency debriefing (all but Mr. Yao, who went back to his bivy in spite of Scott’s threats to consider that insubordinate behavior). Everyone else drew off at first to sit and talk in low worried voices about if and how this changed things, but it was early and not entirely dry, and one by one, people drifted back to bed. Amber sat up until the fire died and even dared to interrupt the debriefing to ask for a flashlight, but Scott said no and it was just too dark to move around without one. She paced around the edge of camp for a while, banging into crates and tripping over bags of concrete while she strained her eyes trying to see shapes in the black. There was nothing, only the endless wind and a few icy pellets of rain, so in the end even she gave up.
Nicci was already sleeping soundly. Amber pulled out her blanket and wrapped up to stay dry. She lay down, but only to huddle close to her sister and share as much warmth as she could. She was way too wired to sleep now, couldn’t even if she’d wanted to. She was only keeping Nicci warm while she waited for the lizardman to come back.
The next thing she heard was a heavy, squishy, thumping sound, like someone falling over in the mud close by. Amber pushed her blanket back and dragged her head up into the light of late morning.
“I fell asleep,” she croaked and dropped back to the ground, slapping both hands to her face.
A low grunt answered her. The lizardman walked around the scaly deer he had just deposited on the ground in front of her and hunkered down to investigate his firepit. His little leather stewing pouch was slung over one shoulder like a ladies purse, bulging and heavy-looking, which had to have some connection to the dead deer, which was slit wide open and was all shiny and pink and empty inside.
‘Gross,’ thought Amber sleepily, trying to rub her face awake. Then she thought, ‘Food,’ but that wasn’t quite right, was it? No, it was Meoraq’s food and that was a very different thing.
She looked back into Scott’s side of the camp and saw dozens of people watching, looking like nothing so much as a horde of hungry prairie dogs, motionless and staring. At their center, Scott slowly stood up, towering over the rest of them for a few seconds before Eric and Dag popped up too.
She started to say something to Meoraq—just what, she didn’t know, especially since he wouldn’t understand it anyway—but then saw that he was making a fire. Amber sat all the way up, trying to pay attention to how he did it, but there wasn’t time. He just cleared the ground, laid out some branches and a few bundles of grass, put something from his pack up next to the kindling and then there was fire.
“Nicci, look at this,” said Amber, reaching out to pat her sister’s hip. “Look what he’s doing.”
Nicci rolled away from her. “Is he building a starship?” she mumbled.
“No, but—”
“Then I don’t care. Leave me alone. I’m sleeping.”<
br />
“Oh come on!” There was now a roaring fire where nothing but ash and mud had been less than a minute ago. Amber found Nicci through the crinkly blanket and shook her. “Look at this!”
Nicci heaved a sigh and raised her head just as the lizardman pulled the long sword off his belt and hacked the head off the deer. It rolled over, tongue lolling and sightless eyes staring. Meoraq picked it up and set it over the fire, carefully balanced on rocks to keep it out of the forming coals. The deer’s scaly lips shrank back, steaming, into a dead, idiot leer.
Nicci looked at this, then at Amber, open-mouthed.
“That’s not what I wanted you to see,” Amber said.
Meoraq grabbed both sides of the dead deer’s ribs and broke them well apart, forming a meaty platter where he upended his stewing pouch. Lots of shiny organs came tumbling out—heart, liver, kidneys…other things—along with a small splash of blood.
Amber slapped her hands over her face again.
“Thanks so much for sharing that!” Nicci punched her blanket into her duffel bag and stormed off through the mud to the other fire, where just about everyone else was already up and sitting together. They let her in, listened to whatever she had to say to accompany those angry arm gestures. A few of them looked at Amber.
Damn it.
Meoraq watched Nicci go without obvious interest as he cut up his assortment of organs and impaled them on sticks. He put these gut-kabobs over the fire, licked his fingers, then started cutting the deer out of its scaly hide.
“Looks like it’s going to be another great day,” she muttered, taking Nicci’s blanket back out and rolling it up neater. “Thanks for coming back, Meoraq.”
He covered his eyes with the back of his least bloody hand and muttered, “Meoraq,” under his breath. His spines twitched up and down as he thought. Then he pointed the tip of his knife at the half-butchered animal and said something.
“Meat,” she said. He hadn’t needed any help to catch it, either. He hadn’t even needed a spear. “And I, on the other hand,” sighed Amber, turning back to watch Nicci at the other fire,” never tried so hard to do something in my whole life as I tried to run that goddamn limping thing down. Take a note, lizardman: That was the best I could do. Amber Bierce’s very best was a miserable fucking failure.”