Beneath Ceaseless Skies #183

by Richard Parks

  “They’re gone forever when they die. Forever forever.”

  “Forever forever. Provokers stalk their prey and break them from the wheel of rebirth. They can never come back.”

  Jameel sat back in his chair, silent. He shook his head, slow at first and then insistent. “Why? Why would anyone ever do that?”

  “Being murdered offers certain advantages in the next life. Immunity to diseases. Enhanced resilience. Better than the usual luck.” Arzey stopped and pondered. “These are the clearest motives I can imagine.”

  Jameel began to cry. “I took people away forever just for luck?”

  “You didn’t do anything—”

  “Not me, my soul!” he cried, “Why would I do that? Why would I be like that?” Laran got up to sit with him, and his sobs came muffled through her shoulder. After a time he sniffed and wiped his eyes.

  “So what’s going to happen? Do I have to go to jail?”

  “No. Any jail requires jailors, and they can be provoked.”

  “Then...?”

  Arzey uncapped the flask on the table. “You drink this.” He slid it over to the boy. “It’ll kill you in minutes.”

  Laran turned away and Jameel recoiled from the table, knocking away his seat. Arzey sat quietly.

  “I don’t understand.” Laran spoke for the first time since they had all entered the house together. “Why can’t he just kill you instead?” Her voice was shaking and her eyes were like hot coals. “Then Garza will be gone and nobody will ever have to go through this again.”

  “I don’t presume to know everything there is about a soul.” Arzey’s voice was like a wall of solid rock: impassive and implacable. “Perhaps one day Garza will make it to his remembering and realize the error of his ways. Or maybe, given enough time, even a soul can forget what once drove it.” He stroked his chin. “If even a tiny possibility of that exists, I cannot abide erasing someone forever.”

  The flask shone on the table.

  Jameel looked at his mom, and back at the flask. His mother nodded sadly.

  * * *

  They buried him in the soft soil of the garden.

  “I’m sorry it had to be this way,” said Arzey. Laran remained silent.

  The monk aimed his gaze skywards. The stars were very bright in this part of the highlands, and the Moon was nowhere to be seen. A river of milky white spilled from one end of the sky to the other, shedding sparks that twinkled shyly. Arzey regarded them as Laran stood quietly over the mound of fresh-dug dirt.

  She noticed after a few minutes. “Budh is out tonight.”

  “Oh?”

  She pointed to a red dot much brighter than the others, just a few fingers above the horizon. Arzey saw it and smiled. Red was a very pretty color, he thought.

  “Are you a sky-mapper?”

  She shook her head no. “I’m an astronomer.”

  Arzey didn’t know what that meant, and Laran could tell. She went inside and brought out a brass cylinder. Arzey’s eyes widened when she extended a curious series of smaller cylinders from the end.

  She looked through the smallest cylinder and passed the tool to Arzey so he could do the same. He looked through and gasped as the stars jumped to ten times their size in his vision. Laran gently pushed the end of the thing until Arzey could see red Budh glowering at him from the night sky.

  “It has seas like the Moon!” He took his eyes away from the sky and she nodded to him. He hefted the brass device. “What is this?”

  “It’s a telescope.”

  He rested it in his hands as if it were worth a thousand lives of hard labor. “Where did you find it?”

  “I invented it.”

  * * *

  Laran was one of the lesser-known minds in the Field because of the subtlety of her work. Arzey had only studied the greatest masters: Arda who devised how to cut Nai Zama from the mountains, Nargis who first melted iron, Jon who drew plans for the Grand Harbor of Theid.

  “Actually, it was a team of us,” Laran corrected. “Using streams over many lives to cut out the pier was actually my idea.”

  Arzey paused with the cup of clove tea mid-way between the table and his mouth, stunned. This was just the most recent of a series of similar revelations: she’d tested the rusting of several metals and alloys across seven lives, taken Svadt’s method of blowing glass and used it to create ‘focii’ for her telescope, and her latest project: co-opting Avara’s entire body of sky-maps to make a model of the heavens themselves.

  Arzey spent most of that night simply listening with rapt attention. At times he just imagined what it would’ve been like to be there himself, consulting with these legends and creating wonders out of thin air.

  Three kettles later and Arzey moved to leave. Garza had doubtlessly been thrust back from the wheel, and the Task was waiting. Another decade of searching and observing lay ahead of him.

  “You look sad,” she said. “I’m the one with the buried son, but you’re the one who’s sad.”

  Arzey stopped.

  After a moment he simply said, “It never ends.”

  She stood up with the glint of a good idea in her eye. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in all my time here, it’s that an idea must be tested to see if it’s of any worth.” Arzey didn’t respond. “You said it yourself: you don’t know. Maybe Garza can reform. Perhaps even a soul can forget.” She shook her head. “How will you ever know unless you test?”

  Arzey didn’t know.

  “You have a very natural curiosity, monk. I think together we might make a great many things.” His eyes widened and he allowed his heart to beat a little faster. “We can draw out the cosmos and learn the nature of souls in one fell swoop. How does that sound?”

  There was silence.

  And then a creak of the divan as Arzey sat down.

  * * *

  Arzey sent back letters at the end of every month. This was the first time in fifteen lives that he didn’t spend Garza’s childhood with his brothers and sisters of the Task. Pilae, Mosa, Turan—he missed them all dearly, but this new life on the edge of the world was well worth the hurt.

  Here he found that the planets in the sky orbited the Field in vast circles and epicircles. He could see that some were perfect and smooth and others were pitted like the Moon. With Laran, he studied the world and the beyond, and he loved it.

  And he loved being with Laran.

  “Well we’re a special pair, aren’t we?” She asked the question with some small amusement. They were lying on the scaffolding for their half-built stargazing tower, at the crest of a hill not far from the cabin.

  Arzey shifted and turned to her. “What do you mean?”

  She laughed. “I’ve been a seeker and inventor almost since the Field. And you’ve been a monk.” She turned to face him. “When was the last time you stayed with your parents? Or even in the city you were born?”

  He rolled onto his back and looked at the sky, thinking.

  “Perhaps my sixth life. After, there was always the Task.”

  “Exactly.” She shook her head. “People aren’t like that. They don’t just leave to finish something they started in the past.”

  He sat up on an elbow. “But why? Why would we have so many lives unless it’s to do something great? Whether it’s creating, like you, or...”

  “Preserving, like you?” Her voice was warm.

  “Yes, preserving.” Not just destroying. “Without that, what’s the purpose?”

  “Some would say enjoyment.” She reached over and pulled Arzey towards her. “And some would say pleasure.” He felt himself blush as only a celibate monk can. “Some would say that we live infinite lives so that one day, long into the future, everyone in the Field has fallen in love with everyone else.”

  “Hm. I’d rather just love one person,” he said. “For this life and seven more.”

  “Oh? How greedy,” she said, hugging him close.

  “I don’t mind being greedy.”

  “Th
at’s not very monkly of you.”

  “Perhaps not.”

  * * *

  Pilae wrote that Arzey was a monkey’s ass for staying away for so long. Wasn’t death enough of a break from the family? Why die twice in one life?

  Arzey chuckled to himself and placed the letter in the mulch pile. He’d post his reply when the courier returned next month.

  For the moment he picked an orange from the garden and peeled it on the walk to the observatory. He climbed a switchback set of steps and saw Laran at a work-desk, her eyes flitting between her books and the viewer of her new, tree-sized telescope. She was very busy.

  He took a bite from the orange, and, with the citrus still on his lips, he snuck up from behind and stole himself a kiss.

  * * *

  IV.

  Arzey scraped at her scalp with a razor and peered through the tarnished telescope. Laran had told her it would never rust a lifetime ago, but she never mentioned that the brass would slowly turn black.

  It didn’t matter. The tool fulfilled its function in service of the Task.

  She saw the boy playing in the sand next to his house, strategically applying water from a bucket to build a sculpture. His birthname was Esa, and he was seven years old.

  Arzey sprinted through the tree-line to get a better angle and put the scope back to her eye. Esa’s sculpture was a miniature of Nai Zama—a city of terraces cut into a mountain and fringed by a forest of giant trees.

  Esa and his family lived in the lowest tier, a golden ring of pulverized stone and sand that moated the mountain. Above them were the green gardens and granaries, and above those were the white blocks and alleys that made up the city’s center. At the pinnacle of Nai Zama were the Forum and the Council House, where citizens could congregate and govern from their roosts on high.

  She put down the blackening telescope. These past hunts had been the hardest she’d ever had. Garza did not reform. Garza did not forget. All those years ago, while Arzey had eaten fruit and loved under the stars, Garza had silently remembered and plotted. The Provoker did what he knew best, and a life evaporated from the wheel as Garza died laughing.

  The murder had gifted him a kind of mental sharpness that made subduing him difficult. But if there was ever a lesson learned from Arzey’s mistake with Laran, it was all the strengths and weaknesses of the clever.

  Chief of both was curiosity.

  “Hey, what’s that?” Arzey had emerged from the shadows of the stories-tall trees with the telescope swinging freely from her neck. Esa caught sight of it and asked after it excitedly.

  “It’s something very interesting,” said Arzey. The boy bounced in anticipation. She looked around the sandy flatland. “Are your parents nearby?” Her brow was kept neutral. For years, Arzey trained herself to have perfect control of her face.

  On their last encounter, Garza had taken one look at her and started to run as fast as he could. There was a certain involuntary menace that wrote itself out in her eyes and wrinkles when she didn’t retain full discipline—and he could see it. She’d never show that face again.

  “Abba is with a caravan, and Ammi went to the market.” He looked back at the telescope. “But what is that? Tell me, tell me!”

  She flipped the scope in the air and let it fully extend, snapping it out of free fall and putting it to her eye. “I call it the Farseer.” She flared her fingers for effect, “It lets you see far!”

  Esa’s mouth shrunk to an amazed O. “Woah!”

  “You can use it if you like,” she said, casually dropping the scope and letting it swing free on its chain. “But you have to use it from the right spot to see all the best things, you know!”

  One step further along the School of Calamity: set the lure. The school was as ruthless as it was foolproof, and compared even to a seven-year old Garza, she may have very well been a fool.

  “Where do we do it?” Esa brushed the dirt off his hands and looked every which way. “What’re we going to see?”

  “Have you ever seen the skin of a planet?”

  “No! The Farseer can see that far?”

  “Easily.”

  Esa pushed at Arzey’s knee. “Are we going up the mountain? We should go higher to be closer to the sky.”

  “No, there are too many lights on Nai Zama. We’re going to walk a little further, through the trees. There’s another mountain there.”

  “But doesn’t it have to be dark for us to see anything?”

  “It’ll be dark when we get there.”

  * * *

  It was only midday by the time they reached the nameless mountain. It didn’t have the rough-hewn angles of Nai Zama—instead there were smooth curves and soft lines in the same shade of light brown.

  “Are you ready?” Arzey tied a silk sash around her mouth to protect from the dust being blown from the slopes. “The climb can become very difficult when we get to the midsection there,” she said, pointing out where the mountain suddenly became a sheer column that thrust up into the sky. It towered head and shoulders above the gargantuan trees that surrounded them.

  Esa was tired but he wasn’t fazed. He balled his hands up into fists and yelled, “Yeah! Let’s go!”

  The surface was forgiving, a substance like clay or wet sand that gave way to form handholds and footholds as they crawled up the slope. It became more like packed dirt the further they went, softly crumbling between their fingertips.

  Soon they reached the base of the sudden upthrust, and they stopped.

  “You seem very capable,” said Arzey. “How about we make a deal?”

  Esa hugged the wall and glanced down, shaking. “Yeah,” he said, breathing heavy. “I can do anything!” Dust poured beneath his feet and he pushed himself further into the mountain wall.

  “I am going to move as fast as I can up this slope. The trick is to go sideways in a spiral, you understand?” Esa nodded. “If you can keep up with me, you can keep the Farseer forever.”

  For a moment Esa stopped shaking and he smiled. “Let’s do it!”

  The final step in the School of Calamity: spring the trap.

  “Go.”

  The small boy was no match for a monk. Arzey had trained her body daily for years, and she gripped soft and leaped far, gracefully bounding from handhold to handhold. Dust crumbled in all the places she’d gone and poured like little brown waterfalls. And there was something else: glistening things that shone in the falling dirt.

  Esa tried all he could, but he couldn’t keep up. But his mind was working fast. He stopped in his tracks and just observed for a moment, thinking. Then he screamed.

  “Hey!”

  Arzey continued her climb. She couldn’t stop now—not until she curved down and back off towards the trees. It was too dangerous.

  “Hey, this isn’t a mountain!”

  She didn’t look back. She kept focused and saw only the terrain directly in front of her.

  “It’s a mound! It’s a termite mound!”

  The angry insects swarmed in the falling dirt and crawled along the surface of the mountainous mound, worming between the handholds dug by Arzey and the boy.

  “Help me! Don’t leave me!”

  The blind creatures glistened white and wet in the sun, skittering on six legs towards the smell of the offender. The intruder. They found a hand here and a foot there and they did what they did best: bite, chew, bite, chew.

  “Why won’t you help me?!”

  The pleas dissolved into a wordless scream and Arzey began her descent, bleaching her mind of the eyeless swarm and their jaws and stings as she swung from ledge to ledge. Behind her, the tiny figure vanished through the wall of the mound and into the chittering nest inside.

  If the School of Despair could blacken the soul, the School of Calamity would char it to a crisp. She doubted she could do enough kindness in a thousand lives to make her feel clean again.

  * * *

  V.

  Pilae followed him to the southern port with her arms out
stretched.

  “Arzey, you know what happened the last time you experimented.” Even born into the body of a slim woman, Pilae managed to own a voice that could put the hooks in you. She spoke like the crack of a whip: “Find him and end him quickly. There’s no other way.”

  “It never ends,” he said. “It never ends, but at least I can do better. I can be painless.”

  “He’s cunning. Even as a blank child. He’s been getting close to the remembering every time you go slow,” said Pilae. “This isn’t a risk you can keep taking. He’s going to wake up, and you need to stop him before he does. Quickly.”

  Arzey leapt onto the boat before it could lower its gangway. He turned to his friend and said, “I will do it as quickly as kindness allows.”

  * * *

  North Theid was a place of grassy steppes and deep black soil.

  Out in the middle of that green expanse were two bodies sitting cross-legged, empty vessels blown by the wind.

  One suddenly woke.

  “What is the point of all this?”

  Arzey opened his eyes as well.

  “This is how you elevate your mind above your body. Your soul above the flesh. It’s important.”

  “Maybe for a monk.” The boy’s name was Jhor, and his voice had already deepened. “I don’t see why you’re teaching me all this. I’d rather go back to metallurgy, really.”

  “What’s the purpose of metallurgy?” asked Arzey, standing and crossing his arms.

  Jhor followed, “To make brilliant things...?”

  “The true, true purpose?”

  “To have a lot of fun making brilliant things?”

  Arzey looked at him sternly.

  Jhor sighed and rolled his eyes. He recited, “To make lives better for the people of the Field, to advance our understanding of the Field, and to nurture the spirit of creation.”

  Arzey smiled and put a hand on Jhor’s shoulder. “Good. To make lives better, to advance understanding, and to nurture creation—all of these require a mind above the body. For the good of the many, a soul must make sacrifices. Learning to elevate your mind will help you cope with this.”