by Jane Kindred
“I won’t close up Mound Ahr,” said Jak. “Ahr’s absence is provisional. It must be here for him when he returns.” But what about when Ra returned? What if she got better and decided to come home? Jak retreated once more beneath the blankets. “Soon, Ta. But not yet. I think I’ll stay a little longer.”
Sixteen: Annihilation
Where Temple Shiva had once stood was a field of powder. Ra circled the vast perimeter of this waste, her feet soled with what had once been great columns of jade. In the center was a wide circle of white, and within it, a rectangular depression of black, as though a massive square tree had burned there with nothing but itself for fuel, until all of it was carbon.
Ra walked toward this nucleus. The white was the pearl that had covered every surface in Shiva’s altar room, and the black, Ra recalled as she reached its edge, was the altar itself, burned in an inferno of fury. Ra dropped down and balanced on the balls of her feet, her hands pressed into the barren spot. It radiated something, an emanation of the long-absent power of Shiva.
The favor of the templars of Soth AhlZel had begun to shift in Ra’s direction by the time Ra reached the tender age of eighteen. They showered him with an absurdity of offerings that could never have compared to what Ra himself could conjure. They sprinkled his paths with rose and violet water. They anointed his feet with the petals of mountain wildflowers when he sat for their benedictions.
Certainly, they didn’t neglect Shiva; none would have dared. But there was a less than subtle increase in their attentions upon the younger Meer now that he was the approximation of a man. They believed any offspring of the fearsome MeerShiva must equal her power, and a male, they assumed, would surpass even the most awe-invoking Meer of the “lesser” sex. They hadn’t counted on the simple fact that MeerShiva was MeerShiva, and neither her progeny nor his gender could contend with that greatness.
Shiva openly despised him. She had built Soth AhlZel for the pleasure of the templars. She had raised the seat of civilization from the heights of Munt Zelfaal. It was Shiva who had put an end to the tradition of Meeric cannibalism by wielding her influence. She was the first entempled Meer. And now Ra—not in his own right, but in what he represented to Soth AhlZel—threatened her.
She gave him no obeisance when she passed him in the corridors of Ludtaht Shiva, insulting him with a refusal to acknowledge his to her. Spitefully, she displaced his altar to a distant alcove, no longer willing to tolerate his presence in the place of her holiness. This only served to increase her ire by drawing petitioners toward the new altar room in greater numbers, making plain that they sought Ra’s blessings and not her own.
Ra, in the self-absorption of youth, failed to recognize what ignited this animosity, and believed only that he’d displeased Shiva by some lack. He strove to serve the people with more earnestness, to answer more vetmas and choose them more wisely. He retreated into a semipermanent state of trance, seeking the knowledge that must have eluded him, so that he wandered through the arches of Temple Shiva almost somnambulant.
Only Shiva’s continual slights and curious pranks—such as the snuffing of his warming fires while he slept so that he woke cold and stiff, the precipitous spoilage of his tables of offered food, the unraveling of his conjured possessions—penetrated his reverie, and each further “lesson” he didn’t understand left him hot and itching with humiliation. It was a constant reminder that he was, more than just physically, a pale, poor copy of the true Meer.
The People’s Blessing in that year began as any other. Ra was borne among the commoners in his magnificent litter of gold following Shiva’s exquisite canopy of pearl and jade. The curtains in those days were made of finest silk, translucent, that the people might look on their Meer while they remained untouchable.
Ra held this rite as a solemn duty, and he meditated in deepest trance, out-of-body and beyond the realm of substance. The chanting and the singing rose up to him like a tangible fragrance, a taste, of adulation. There were delicate cymbals that tasted of honey, and deep monotonous repetitions of vetmaaimeerra that smelled of molasses. The old women’s antiquated, simple song was bread of warm, sweetened ginger, and the young women’s provocative dance to the wilder cries of fervor were a rich and heavy cream.
He was so engrossed in this panoply of invocation that he didn’t notice he’d been borne ahead of MeerShiva to the temple. Ra stepped down on the backs of his bearers onto the cool summer tile above the receiving courtyard and found a tremendous swell of AhlZelai waiting for him in a religious frenzy. They tried to reach him, to touch the hem of his gold-embroidered kaftan. They were drunk on worship. A woman from the crowd flung herself at his feet and grabbed hold of his vest, weeping and moaning in ecstasy. She was gored through the stomach by the sword of a temple guard and fell unheeded beneath the feet of the mob.
“Ludtaht Ra! Ludtaht Ra!” The chant began as Ra was surrounded in a protective circle of templars. The people were dubbing Shiva’s temple “Temple Ra”.
MeerShiva’s litter had stopped at the edge of the courtyard, unable to get through the masses of adorers. She leapt into the crowd. Only those closest to her saw she was among them, and they fell to the ground in terror. She cut a path through the throng with fallen bodies; those who didn’t fall of their own accord, she struck with an arrested heart. Before Ra’s protectors, she stopped, and the crowd grew instantly silent at the sight of her. The templars stood before Ra, terrified but believing he would protect them.
Shiva sneered at them. “You want him so badly. You are ready at last.” Her laughter tore through the courtyard, a horrifying sound that made several in the crowd lose control of their bowels, and others their sanity. It shattered porcelain, twisted iron and fractured bone. Moaning in fear, the people of AhlZel threw themselves on the ground, supplicant, waiting for their Meer—MeerRa—to save them.
“What will you do, MeerRa?” Shiva’s challenge echoed with a deadly tenor from wall to wall. “Will you protect Soth AhlZel? Do you want it as it wants you?”
Ra didn’t know how to answer. He was stunned by the events that were transpiring, sluggish from his return to body after such abstracted concentration. What did she mean? Was he not already Meer of Soth AhlZel beside her? Ra moved the templars aside with a distracted brush of his hand, and the two Meer stood face-to-face.
“Faísch,” snarled Shiva. “You are a clot of blood that my body rejected.” She slapped him with untempered strength, unleashing the full force of her eminence, but Ra didn’t falter. He stood strong and straight, believing Shiva must be testing him. Dark Meersblood streamed from an already-blackening welt. But his steadiness, it seemed, was the last sharp, twisted nail in the coffin of their concomitant reign.
Shiva’s body radiated menace as she stepped closer to him, and the ground shifted beneath their feet. “You want Soth AhlZel?” she asked in a voice so low and terrifying it recalled the shaming of his first encounter with her. “There is no Soth AhlZel.” She stretched out her hand over the panorama of the city below them. “Here is Soth Zelman. Take it.”
A great rumbling filled the courtyard, and a high sound at the limit of hearing joined it. Bricks tumbled from the walls, and people began to shove one another, screaming, in a rush for exodus. Soth AhlZel fell in a chaos of destruction, a ripple that began with the temple courtyard and moved outward like rings on disturbed water. People trampled one another in an attempt to escape. They screamed and wailed and begged Shiva for forgiveness. But there was no escape. Shiva had spoken.
She didn’t need to move. Her words existed now outside herself. She stood before Ra and stared into his eyes while Soth AhlZel crumbled upon itself. Ra was paralyzed by her, unable to act, and the temple fell last about them, great columns of jade disintegrating into the powder that would mark this place, unmoved after centuries despite bitter mountain winds. Behind them stood only Shiva’s altar, untouched, and before them lay the dead bodies of AhlZel.
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“Here is your Ludtaht Ra,” said Shiva. “Rule well.” She released him from his paralysis and brushed him aside, crossing the flat expanse of white through the whirling dust to ascend her altar and stare out across the mountain. Ra watched her, impotent, blood scoring his cheeks until he could weep no longer. She gave him no notice, and he turned and stepped down into the grave that was the courtyard, and away from MeerShiva.
Seventeen: Discovery
The Stórströnd Township marina was a welcome site. The crew cheered, men slapping each other on the back, as it came into view. The trip had lasted far longer than Cree had expected, putting her in the awkward position of having to confess that she was a woman. There were only so many excuses one could make for using the head in private.
To Cree’s surprise, no one had really cared. She’d already proved herself a hard worker and a physical match for any of them. Doing the job was all that mattered. One of her fellow crewmen had taken exception briefly, making crude remarks and generally behaving like an ass whenever he had to work alongside her, but soon found himself alone in it and gave it up after a brawl between them ended in a draw. It was a relief after that to simply be herself—which wasn’t much different than she’d been up until now.
With her bag slung over her shoulder and her pay bulging in her pocket, Cree headed down the gangplank, scanning the faces on the pier for Ume’s catlike eyes. Women teemed the dock, greeting their men enthusiastically, but Ume wasn’t among them. Perhaps she hadn’t heard the news that the boat was expected. No matter. Cree would surprise her at home. After some long-overdue private time with her girl, she’d take a soak in a hot bath. Or maybe before their private time, on second thought. Cree was a bit ripe.
She bounded up the stairs to their room over the dress shop, throwing the door open with a wide grin after quietly turning the key in the lock. But the room was empty. With a scowl, Cree dropped her bag on the pristinely made bed, not caring if she got the shell-pink down coverlet fishy. A note with her name on it was propped against the mirror. Ume had clearly been expecting her but couldn’t be bothered to meet her at the dock or even be here to welcome her home. Was she actually still pouting over Cree’s decision to make some decent money for them? She could be such a godsdamned princess sometimes.
A heavy weight settled in Cree’s stomach as she opened the note and scanned the contents. The thing she’d tried not to think about out there on the lake, the thing she’d fled as she’d fled the worry in Ume’s lovely eyes, had come home to roost while she was away. Ume had gone after the child.
The Meerhunter’s prediction had been correct. Pearl’s gift had proved extremely popular among those who frequented the taverns along the wharf. Pearl’s drawings might not conjure the genuine article, but the gold embossment on the pages could be extracted and melted down. The drawings sold for good money, but even his drawings that didn’t conjure attracted crowds when people saw them move. It was nothing his drawings had ever done before, but Pearl put it down to the magic of the place.
Except for specific images he conjured with the written word, he could only draw what he saw, and cut off from the flow as he was used to it, Pearl had to dip into the Meeric influence that lingered from Szofl’s past. He sketched the history of the city, the tall spires and cast-ironwork embellishments of its former glory forming beneath his sticks of charcoal and pastels, its golden-haired god riding freely through his soth on horseback with an entourage of brightly dressed courtiers instead of dour templars.
It was an image Pearl had never seen of any Meer in the Delta. Soth Szofl’s Meer had been a far more accessible sort, granting boons to those he met on the road, his expeditions from his grand temple to interact with his people not limited to the tradition of an annual procession. And his temple, as well, was of a very different sort. Noblemen and noblewomen came to consult with him rather than kneeling before him with offerings of their personal bounty in exchange for his blessings. He seemed beloved of his people. At least at first.
Later drawings dripped with Meeric madness. A pall had fallen over the city, buildings decaying from neglect, the Meer’s courtiers riding out in dark, severe uniforms to round up citizens suspected of sedition. The Meer no longer went out among the people, but instead walked the parapets of his temple mad with fever. Below him, a sickness seemed to sweep the soth, taking with it every man, woman and child of Szofl while the Meer locked himself in his tower, at last leaping from the great height to his death as the city burned around him.
MeerHraethe had destroyed his own soth.
The modern-day inhabitants of Soth Szofl didn’t seem to recall this history, finding it only a riveting story they watched unfold through Pearl’s moving pictures. By this time, Pike had established Pearl’s ability as a public performance, securing an engagement for him in Szofl’s grand theater—a remnant of the Meeric temple itself, though no one recalled its former purpose as entertainment for the Meer.
Audiences paid handsomely to watch Pearl’s drawings come to life upon the stage, which meant he had to draw on a far grander scale than he’d ever done before. Pike acquired a new medium for him, and Pearl rendered his images with oil paints on massive canvases he had to use a ladder to reach. While he enjoyed the density and dimension this medium gave his images, the paintings made him increasingly morose. How could no one remember this? How could they not remember MeerHraethe? Were all Meer destined to succumb to madness and weakness and be forever lost, not even a memory?
When he came to the painting that depicted the death of MeerHraethe, Pearl was overcome with melancholy, every stroke of his brush like a march to his own death. The crowd was rapt, waiting for the ending of the “tale” to play out before them, watching the once colorful, glorious soth decay into darkness and misery, watching the Meer descend into madness.
So riveted were they upon the stage and on the magical artist weaving this visual performance upon it that it was impossible to miss when, like his subject, Pearl began to weep tears of blood.
Ume didn’t say so, but it was perfectly clear from the note that it was the Hidden Folk who had lured her once more to the Delta. Cree was sick of their interference.
The Caretaker had claimed the Hidden Folk couldn’t travel beyond the hill, that they’d only been able to interact with Cree because she’d gone under the hill herself by nearly dying. Perhaps more than just nearly, but the reason was irrelevant. It was a lie. Ume had never come close to death, and yet the Hidden Folk had obviously found a way to come to her, just as the Caretaker had when she’d met Ume and Cree together here in the north.
Cree took up her bag once more. The hot bath would have to wait. She’d be damned if she was going to let them get away with this. Though she couldn’t be sure it would work, she and Ume had found the Caretaker once before by heading out into woods, which the Hidden Folk seemed to favor. There were plenty of woodlands between Stórströnd Township and Rhyman.
She’d gone barely half a day south, keeping to the river, when the Caretaker, predictably, found her. Cree had made camp for the night in a grassy hollow among the trees and was just drifting off to sleep when the glow from her fire seemed to brighten through her closed eyelids. As she opened her eyes, the color of the flame took on a bluish cast, and on the other side of it stood the Caretaker, observing her without expression.
Cree rose on one elbow. “So there you are. You people have some damn nerve.”
The Caretaker blinked at her. “Nerve. I do not follow you, Cree Silva.”
“If you don’t follow me, then why in the name of truth are you always popping up like some kind of recurring nightmare and interfering in my life?”
The spectral-looking Caretaker was unflappable. “To put it in the terms of your colloquial speech, it is not the Hidden Folk who have ‘popped up’. You came with the intent of seeking us here. And it was you who came to us at our first encounter.”
“Yes, s
o you’ve said repeatedly. I came under the hill by nearly dying, and you saved my life. Which you’re apparently never going to let me forget. You claim to be unable to travel beyond the hill, yet you have no problem doing so to manipulate my wife. Ume never came under the hill on her own. I’m beginning to think you saved me—if you saved me at all—just so you could pull Ume’s strings.”
The Caretaker observed her thoughtfully as though considering Cree’s words, but when she spoke it was obvious she’d merely been considering her own. “Your coming under was indeed fortuitous. Ume Sky is one of very few who have been touched by the Meer. This creates a bond that cannot be broken, even in death. It changes the course of history, both human and Meeric. If not through you, she would have found her way to us on her own in time.”
Cree’s cheeks were warm with resentment. She knew exactly how Ume had been touched by a Meer. A single night spent with Alya, and yet she mourned him daily after all these years. She thought Cree didn’t know. A little part of Cree—a hateful little part she wished she didn’t have but couldn’t deny—was relieved that Alya was no longer in this world. Would Ume be hers if Alya had lived? She was certain she knew the answer to that selfish question.
“I’m well aware of Ume’s bond with MeerAlya. It doesn’t make you any less manipulative.”
A small sigh of annoyance escaped the Caretaker’s slightly parted lips. “Your comprehension of simple facts is continually hampered by your spleen, to use a colloquialism you’ll understand. Your quixotic nature is a perfect example of the limitations of human emotion.”
“What exactly is your point?”
“My ‘point’, Cree Silva, is that you also have been touched by MeerAlya. It was not of your knowing or of his, but nonetheless, his seed took hold inside you. That is why your journey under the hill came to our notice.” A fleeting expression that, on anyone else, Cree would have called condescension crossed her face like a shadow. “To put it in simple terms even you might comprehend, you smell of Meer. We could no more have ignored your essence than we could a rotting carcass.”