by Kaden, John
“How come mine’s not as good as yours?”
“Because you need more practice.”
“All I do is practice.”
“Are you getting better?”
“Yes.”
“See?”
“When will I be as good as you?”
“Just keep trying and you’ll get it someday. It just takes time.”
“I want to make my own dress when I get bonded, I want to make it all by myself and make it the best dress of any of the girls.”
“Well… you have a lot of time to think about that.”
“It’s going to be so long it goes all the way across the Temple and squirrels and birds can stand on it and ride along behind me.”
“Are you going to put green beans in your hair?”
“Yeah, probably gonna to put a lot of them.”
“I can’t wait to see that.”
The shop door opens and two sentries stride through. The girls look up briefly then return to their work and their song. Elise gets up from her workstation and steps to the entrance to meet them and they speak quietly for a long moment. Jeneth darts her eyes up and catches Elise looking back her way, a worried look on her face. The two men pace through the shop, heading straight toward her, and her palms begin to sweat. Her mind floods with all the accusations and rumors that have swirled through the Temple’s gossip circles and she fears they’ve come to imprison her in the keep. In an instant her mouth seems to dry of all moisture and she watches, mortified, as the sentries come to a halt directly behind her.
“Which is Phoebe?”
“I am.” Phoebe looks up bashfully with her bottom lip tucked under.
“Come with us.”
“Where we going?”
“You’ll find out when we get there.”
“Why?”
“King’s orders.”
All work draws to a standstill and every girl, native and outsider alike, is riveted by the unusual encounter. Phoebe looks around shyly and starts to follow the men out of the shop.
“No,” Jeneth scrapes out with her dry, nerve-wracked voice, and she watches helplessly as Phoebe is led away. They have heard rumors of a little boy taken from the fields in just this manner. He was never returned.
“Where are you taking her?” Elise asks as they move past.
They ignore her and proceed through to the corridor, leaving the shop behind in stunned silence. Phoebe pads softly down the sandstone walkway and looks up curiously at the men who escort her, their rigid faces trained straightforward. They take her through the grand foyer to a secluded offset niche and descend the tight staircase. At the bottom of the landing an old man crouches in the darkness. Phoebe is taken to him.
“Are you Phoebe?” asks Keslin.
“Yes.”
“That’s a very pretty name. Thank you for meeting me.”
“You’re welcome.”
He pulls her close and peers into her frisky little eyes. “You look like a clever young girl. Tell me, Phoebe… do you like to play make believe?”
Tacking northbound on the mountain road, Cirune drives his steeds. He bears down with his heels, gripping the reins like a drowning man, his face a portrait of agony. His stomach is wrapped and clotted with stiff blood, and each time his horse’s hooves rebound off the hard ground it sends a fresh spike of pain into his side. Halis’s injured horse wants to veer off course and run wild, and each time he rides around to shepherd it back he loses valuable time and is contented to let it go forever the next time it strays. Noble Balazir keeps pace brilliantly.
Through the winding pass and over the hills and valleys he rides, hurtling on a straight shot back to the Temple, the lone survivor of the ill-fated search brigade. He fears bleakly the disgrace he will face at having lost the runaways after coming so close, but he hopes the pack lashed to his pommel will keep him from the pit, if he lives long enough to deliver it, for if that scrap of hide contains what he believes it does—nothing less than a map to the lost city of their dreams—then it will be more than enough salvation to see him through.
Chapter Thirteen
The blackness behind Jack’s eyelids begins to redden and he opens them. The sun is rising. They had limped a ways and collapsed behind a viny stone partition, and as he sits up and yawns, disoriented, the dried cake of blood on his face cracks and flakes away like the faces of the old porcelain figurines on the floor of the hollowed-out mansion. Lia sits next to him, hugging her knees to her chest, and looks upon him tranquilly. A single rivulet of dirty crimson trails down the left side of her face.
“Were you watching me sleep?”
She nods warmly. “We need to clean you up.”
She helps him to his feet and they stumble out into the open and look around at the cloudless day. Rainworn concrete walls lay embedded in the earth like the monoliths of some occult formation, leaning over in rough lines and arcs across the meadow, as if the whole arrangement were laid out carefully on ancient ley lines by astrological mystics. They tread through it wordlessly, carrying no bow, no map, no provisions.
As they walk, frames and flickers of motion from the night’s assault flash through their minds in a psychedelic bazaar. Jack tries to push it away, and he conjures in its place a vague replica of the map they lost, trying in vain to reconstruct mentally the lines and symbols. His head throbs and he gives up. Lia swivels about as if every feature of the landscape poses an imminent threat. Past the violent imagery and the ringing in their ears, the only steady thought that pierces the fog of their minds is how sorely they miss Balazir.
They curve west and go toward the beach. Groves of palm trees stretch and tilt toward the sun’s slanted pathway like enormous dandelions straining for the light. Sandpipers play at the water’s edge, and Jack and Lia doff their reeking boots, slog through the sand, and wade out into the brewing froth and immerse themselves in the cold morning swell. Lia bends forward and soaks her ratty hair, working the strands between her fingers to wash out the grime, and she feels daintily around the sore patch where a fistful of it was crudely ratcheted away. Jack flips over and backstrokes away from the coast. He slackens his body and allows the ocean to carry him on its current, and he rolls and tumbles with a passing wave. As the water stills, he bobs up and down and looks back toward the shore where Lia paddles and splashes around, backlit and bathed in solar radiance, her lacerated nightgown sheer and clinging. Jack submerges and pistons his legs through the turbulent water, tendrils of wavering kelp brushing against his body. Back in the shallows he puts his feet down and walks upright through the plush sand.
“Come here,” says Lia.
Jack goes to her and she runs her fingertips across the swelling around his eyes and the fresh cut on his cheek. She unwinds the wrapping around his forearm and takes the bandages off his chest and cleanses them, then scoops up handfuls of saltwater and splashes it onto his wounds. Delicately she traces her fingers over the punctures and cuts and he pulls her close and holds her. She nuzzles against the crook of his neck and they breathe deeply in each other’s arms as the ebbing water laps around their waists.
“Maybe you were right.”
“About what?”
“That they’re wicked,” she says. Jack’s face grows stormy. “You’re not sorry, are you… that you killed him?”
“No. I wish I could kill him every day for the rest of my life, but it wouldn’t bring our parents back.”
“At least he won’t kill anybody ever again.”
“Yeah,” Jack says flatly, thinking on the scores of young warriors ready and eager to take Halis’s place. As he looks at Lia, he thinks again how close he came to losing her and his heart feels heavy and sore. He brushes a wet slither of hair from her forehead and kneads her soft earlobe between his thumb and forefinger. She looks up at him with glistening brown eyes that contain a depth of innocence Jack fears he may never know again, the light and graceful purity of never having killed. He traces his lips across hers and they fall again
st each other urgently, conveying themselves in a silent language more ancient than the perished world that surrounds them.
They tread back to the shore, whispering low to each other though no soul breathes anywhere near that may overhear them. The thin, scalloped beach is strewn with tangles of kelp and driftwood and water-worn bits of shell and they walk across it, hand-in-hand, and climb back to the grassy shelf where their boots lay airing in the breeze. They lie on their backs and let the warm sun dry the saltwater off their skin and soaked clothing, closing their eyes and sinking into the cool earth and feeling the minute scrabbling of tiny insects marching through the grass beneath them. Lia feels something land on her arm, with legs as soft as eyelashes, and she lies perfectly still and lets it explore the inner bend of her elbow for a spell, then it takes wing again and flies off with a buzz that tickles her ears.
By and by, they peel themselves off the ground and leave behind two well-formed impressions of their bodies in the soft grass, with a little bridge between where their hands had clasped. They sit cross-legged, knees touching, and mend each other. Lia smoothes out the stained strip of cloth that serves as a wrapping for Jack’s arm and winds it round and round, tying it off gently at his wrist. He sits quietly and watches her work. She turns around, her back facing Jack, and he pulls the strap of her nightgown off her shoulder and swathes it with a long cloth that he weaves under her armpit and over the soft pronouncement of her clavicle, spreading it out flat so it covers every rank puncture. They work slowly and deliberately, completing each small motion with meditative concentration.
When their ministrations are complete, they stand and face southward. Their feet do not carry them forward. They simply stare off with the same long-range deadpan common to carnivorous hunters. They look past the rippling expanse, beyond the faraway mountain ranges gracing the horizon like brushstrokes, deeper and farther than the human eye can afford to see, and they imagine it there, Alexandria, the place that knows things, and each evokes in their own mind a vision of its beauty, their manifestations rivaled only by the greatest palaces of history gone by, a castle with spires of gold, or perhaps a floating city replete with meandering canals and monuments that bear testimony to the aspirations of highest spirit, and they can feel it breathing out there in the far-flung reaches… and it beckons them forth, and with tender boundless yearning they advance.
The manacles are not needed. Phoebe cowers in the corner like a fearstruck doe in the midst of a lion pride, too frightened to move, and the hammered iron cuffs lay coiled at her side, unfastened. Warriors have been circulating through the keep all morning, but she has grown accustomed to their presence in her years at the Temple and she does not recoil from them. The raving man shackled to the wall, however, terrifies her deeply. His body is more gruesomely broken than anything her lowliest nightmares have manufactured, and she shudders with revulsion each time he addresses her with his manic pleading eyes and dead wretched voice.
“I’m not gonna let them hurt you,” he tells her, and she pulls herself into a tighter ball and buries her face in her folded arms and wheezes out a dry, keening sob. He will break free of his bondage, she is sure of it, and descend upon her like some feral gore-coated monster from one of the vile netherworlds she has been lectured to endlessly about. He is an emissary of the dark spirits of Fire, she believes, sent to reclaim her mortal flesh as punishment for some unknown offense. “I promise you,” Renning says, “I won’t let them kill you.” She blocks out his pleas and hums under her breath a lilting song of refuge meant to bring shelter and safekeeping.
Her tiny serenade feathers lightly through the dismal keep and a few of the craftsmen look up from their work and strain to hear above the wet slap-scrape of mortar being smeared across the courses of the stone barrier, captivated by her fitful rendition. As the song ends, her voice weakens and fades away and they turn their somber faces back to the work at hand. Their construction now follows a discernible layout, rows of stone cells lined up around a central corridor, receding all the way back to the furthest wall of the keep.
A familiar female voice carries from the antechamber and Phoebe rouses herself and looks toward the door.
“Let me in,” Ezbeth demands. “I want to see her.”
“No one is allowed in, I’m sorry.”
“Not allowed? I’ve never been forbidden anywhere in this Temple before. What have you done to her?”
“Nothing.”
“Then let me in to see.”
“You’ll have to wait for Keslin or King Nezra.”
“I’ll get them myself.” Her haughty footsteps rise in pitch as she ascends the staircase.
Renning’s chains jingle as he adjusts his posture, and for a long span the slapping and scraping of the masons are the only other sounds that permeate the keep. Phoebe is worn silent and she twirls a strand of hair vacantly.
Ezbeth returns at last, with Nisaq and Keslin, and the keep door is opened wide for them. She elbows past the sentries and rushes to the scared child in the corner.
“It’s okay, sweetie, Ezbeth’s got you.”
“Get her away from there,” Keslin says.
Two sentries walk heedfully toward Ezbeth and take her by the elbows and try gently to pry her away.
“Get your hands off me.”
“Leave the child be, Ezbeth. You’ve seen her, she’s alive, now leave it be. This isn’t your place.”
“The care of these children is most certainly my place. More mine than yours, and I’m taking her out of here.”
“No. You’ll leave her where she is.”
“What is wrong with you? What is this?”
“We don’t all get to play at games and maid work, Ezbeth, some of us are charged with defending this Temple, and I take that charge very seriously.”
“Defending us from this child? What’s happened to you?”
“They’ve brought their sickness here is what’s happened, and we’re going to dig it out.”
Ezbeth backs away from Phoebe and relents. The sentries release their grip. She rubs her elbows and scowls about the room at Keslin and the sentries. Hard, matronly creases run down the sides of her mouth.
“I have never been treated this way,” she says. Nisaq stands with his arms folded and watches acutely, his placid face betraying nothing. Ezbeth levels on him, pleading for an ally. “What about you?”
“I’m not sure this is any of our business. I’d just as soon not know what goes on down here.”
“How can you say that? After all we’ve done for them, the lengths we’ve gone through to rescue them, to bring them here and shape them into… into good people… only to have them locked down here and… and…”
“Please listen to her,” Renning croaks. The entire assemblage turns and looks at him, his head raised limply from wasted shoulders. “Please take this girl out of here.”
“See now, Ezbeth?” says Keslin. “See what you’ve done? You’re interfering with our work down here and I’ll ask you again to leave.”
“I’ll tell you,” says Renning, “I’ll tell you everything. Just please let her go.”
“There, Keslin, you’ve gotten what you wanted… now let the child go free.”
“He’s lying.”
“Nisaq?” she pleads again. His face remains stony.
The slews of craftsmen work their trowels aimlessly, slopping mortar on the floor and leveling over areas they’ve already covered. Their faces are ruddy orange by the light of the flickering work lanterns and their ghostly visages look on with rapt conviction, absorbing every sight they see, and they shoot each other ominous glances when Arana enters the keep surrounded by his retinue of guards. He stops next to Nisaq and flicks his eyes around at the odd gathering.
“Ezbeth is here to check on the well-being of the girl,” says Keslin, “and she is satisfied and she is now leaving.”
She gives Keslin a dirty glare then strides to the threshold. “King Arana,” she says impertinately. “Is this what
your father would have done? Torture children?”
“My father is not here.”
“She’s not even nine years, Arana.”
“Ezbeth, I think you’d best let this drop,” says Nisaq, his voice deep and comforting.
“Children, Nisaq. How can you let them do this to children?”
“No one likes it, Ezbeth, but I’m afraid the times call for it.”
She lets out an exasperated sigh. Arana places his arm benevolently around her shoulder and leads her to the antechamber.
“I’m sorry, but they can’t be trusted. Their lives are not worth ours and I won’t have them put my family at risk.”
“But—I’ve put my life into making them civilized. I’ve cared for them.”
“They’re calling on dark spirits,” Keslin counters. He looks briefly to Arana, a knowing tell in his eyes. “They must be. It’s why all this has happened. They’ve brought their dirty rituals here with them and set up practice at our Temple.”
Keslin’s volley stuns Ezbeth and she works her stubborn jaw, trying to work out a response. “We’ve… we’ve unlearned them… we’ve scrubbed it all out of them.”
“You haven’t. Not completely.”
“There’s no way to know what they’re hiding.”
“I haven’t the barest hint that they’re hiding anything. I don’t know what more you want, I don’t know what more can be done for them.”
“Nothing more can be done. The matter is settled.”
“Is this your will,” she asks Arana, “or is it Keslin’s?”
She awaits no response and pushes briskly past and mounts the stairs as quickly as her withering legs will carry her. Arana watches her leave, confounded by her outburst. Keslin grins with sportive amusement.
“I’ll talk with her,” says Nisaq.
“Please.”
He nods loyally and ascends the stairs with dignified grace.
“She’ll come around,” says Keslin. “That talk of Fire will get her.”