An Ill-Fated Sky

by Darrell Drake

  “Seems to me it’s the one what the traitor killed,” said the infantryman. “Must have a phylactery.”

  “Aye,” said another. “Take ‘er apart. Legs first. They’ll come right off like that.”

  As they dismembered her, she realized that not only was she speared to the ground, but her legs were paralyzed as well. It was a faraway realization all but drowned by her state, but it did have the effect of amplifying the fight in the parts of her body she did have control over. By time they had finished with her legs, she was gnashing her teeth and flinging drool, struggling with such ferocity that she was tearing her stomach free of the spear. But she was still the same crafty Waray. So when the infantryman slammed his boot into her face in an attempt to calm her down, she let him believe he had succeeded.

  Control, even for a few fleeting seconds, didn’t come easy; he had just given her blood. Hot, wet, tinny blood. Her mind swam in it.

  “Mind ‘er teeth,” he said, coming to dig his knees into her forearm as if that would contain her. When the axe came down to cleave her arm, her heightened senses were free to roam its every familiar notch. Turned out they were chopping her to pieces with her own axe. Waray canted her head. The meaning of it eluded her, but she would pack it away in one of her many nests to revisit at a more suitable time. Then the axe bit almost clean through her arm.

  In doing so, it spurred a spike of adrenaline that sliced through her daze as effortlessly as if it were silk. What followed would have been a blur to onlookers, and the infantrymen may as well have been onlookers.

  Waray flexed her abdomen and shot up like the viper she was, just beneath the next swing. She registered somewhere along the way that it put her directly beneath the bit, but she didn’t care. More than anything, that was what made an Eshm sister’s bloodlust so formidable. Her fangs sunk into his neck, eliciting a muddy cry, while her working hand pulled the axe from his already failing grip. Her attention darted to the remaining soldier, whose second of shocked hesitation would soon mean his end. A grin like a waxing moon soaked in blood reached for one sanguine eye more than the other. Waray’s heartbeat drummed madly in her ears, the soldier’s failed in her fangs, and despite having torn both her torso free of the spear and her right arm from her shoulder, she felt giddy. She could topple the heavens.

  She swung her axe into the infantryman’s brow faster than he could react, leaving it there as if she’d just spent the day splitting firewood by the sweat of her brow. Something else to be stashed in a nest for later.

  Then she closed her eyes and fell back, taking the soldier with her. She lay there basking in the warmth that showered her face. It invigorated her, but without a drive, her bloodlust was sloughing away faster than it could be sated. And where it retreated, the pain it had held at bay was quick to rush in. So much of her cried out that it all blended together.

  Waray emitted a muffled cackle. By the sweat of her brow. Groans were all she had left in her after that, and far be it from the half-div to deny them after they’d queued so patiently. So she groaned and groaned until she bled out.

  Until her soul was shunted again into the starling-black cage. Everything was the same as before, besides the sorry shape of her body, which she sensed as an incompleteness and nothing more.

  She had been torn about this place the first two times she had waited here while her phylactery worked its magic to put her back together. Now that she was growing used to it, Waray decided she found it disconcerting. She figured no self-respecting cage would suffer an existence without bars. Come the annual cage summit the other cages would surely harangue it into finding some. (Held annually only because she was never certain whether biannual was going for once every two years or twice a year, proper usage be damned. Biannual made her itch something fierce.) This is what she told herself when the fear took purchase on her haunches, which was worsened by the fact that she had no haunches there.

  Forgetting isn’t about the everyday—everyday omissions are little more than red herrings. Forgetting sustains a person if done right. To not dwell on the tragedies, but to have the strength to remember at times. Those who dwell end up consumed by it. Those who lock the tragedies away do so with a piece of themselves.

  Waray had forgotten because she couldn’t have lived with the part of her that was responsible. She feared recollection more than any sword or divinity, more than any of her imagined threats. Here, she remembered it all. She was a—

  She couldn’t feel her legs. “Oh,” she said, not bothering to look.

  For a time, she gazed into the deceptively placid heavens. She star-hopped from star to flickering star, a method of navigating the night sky Ashtadukht had taught her before their travels took a turn.

  “If you can find your bearings,” she had said, “the rest will come easier. All you need is that one star you can always rely on. It’ll guide you through the others.”

  Waray pondered those words as she made her way from constellation to constellation—even those with near-forgotten epithets that fought on the fringes of the celestial theatre. Patches in the sky glimpsed a contest of realities: one innocent, the other out for her blood. But she felt oddly reflective, oddly calm. Soon, roving between the insidious patches that prevailed upon the constellations, she began to wonder if the three of them as travelling companions had been her one star.

  “Fuck,” she said, pushing the body off and sitting up. Waray turned pursed lips on her mangled stubs, then the severed legs not far off. She cocked her head. “That šo-wretched phylactery. Legs are right there. Always knew phylacteries were bad news.” She heaved a sigh and tested her reattached right arm. Though sore, it flexed.

  She activated the pits in and around her nose, which bled tones of purple into her vision like the ink wash paintings of the Chini, and put them to work in scanning her surroundings. There were a few distant figures with torches that seeped oranges and whites in the breeze. “Bad news, bad news. Maybe.” She crawled to retrieve her axe, sliding it into the loop on her belt. “They,” she said, flexing her fingers in a claw and swinging it at the diffuse violet around her, “they say you survive with a phylactery. We didn’t—” She blinked and knotted her brow. “Didn’t need a phylactery until now. Then it goes and puts you together like some—” She planted one hand firmly in the dirt, and with a series of grunts, dislodged the spear that had impaled her earlier. “Like some šo-weary craftsman with his head on his workbench.” While she complained, Waray used her trousers to make a bundle of her legs and the spear. “And maybe,” she tilted her head, “maybe things aren’t going so well. Maybe his shop is in shambles. Used to be a trade hub, but the road was diverted because of . . . don’t know. Why’s it matter why?” She slid one arm through the bundle and positioned it on her back, then set to crawling through the corpse-laden battlefield one hand at a time. “But a craftsman’s a craftsman. Shouldn’t forsake the craft. Should put legs on a person.”

  To anyone watching it would seem as if she were talking to herself. While that may be, her thoughts were directed at the phylactery only she could sense, where it lay at the far end of the field. “Anything less is just—” She posted on one hand, angling her head this way and that to check for warmer brushstrokes, then went back to crawling. “Just a šo-shameful insult to the craft.”

  Waray paused again sometime later, tongue giving her blood-stained fangs a series of deliberative prods. “Phylactery guild should intervene,” she said at length. “Cause a row.”

  She pressed on until she reached an overturned litter. It had been stripped of its gold, leaving only a wooden frame under which Ashtadukht’s belongings were strewn—anything that wasn’t of value anyway. Mainly missives and maps. She wasn’t interested in the litter so much as the phylactery hidden nearby.

  Ashtadukht had bestowed upon her a lapis lazuli girdle that had become Waray’s most prized possession. Waray had in turn made the decision to turn the girdle into her first phylactery. The act of vouchsafing a soul in an object or a
nimal came naturally to intelligent divs, but she had never felt inclined to use it. That was until her dear friend had asked for her help, believed in her, and entrusted her with her dream of killing every last star-reckoner—even if it meant starting a war. Waray had wanted dearly to realize that dream because it meant not being alone. Instead, she had betrayed it.

  A div had been slain in the vicinity, beneath which she could sense the girdle. That was likely the only reason it hadn’t been looted. She worked an arm beneath, and after fumbling around for a moment, pulled the phylactery free. Waray held it up, allowing the moonlight to polish its striking blue gemstones scored with streaks of gold. A few were missing here and there, but it still brought a faint smile to the half-div’s face to see those dull crow motifs. Holding it against her chest, she used her one arm to pull herself into the cover of the litter, where the deeper shadows harboured her like they did all of her kind.

  “Better right my bum leg,” she said as she removed her bundle and arranged her thighs to line up with her stubs. “Won’t do to limp. Won’t . . . hmm.” She canted her head. “Maybe.”

  As she lay back, Waray wondered whether limps were the trappings of hardened heroes. Heroes who had accomplished much but whose better years were behind them. She was nothing if not old. “Keep the limp,” she decided. Then the half-div took her axe in both hands and brought it down on her brow as hard as she could.

  For a third time, the starling-black returned. She tried not to think about the bars it had forsaken, and in doing so forsook her distraction. This misstep gave her phylactery leave to fully restore a memory she had fought for so long to forget. It came to her with terrible fervour. She was Shkarag. She was a—

  Shkarag stared at an empty, overturned throne. Tears welled in her eyes, and she tried so desperately to liken that throne to the thread of a tale worth spinning. She dragged trembling fingers curled into claws over the scales and scars of her scalp.

  “Coward,” she finished. She was a coward.

  Beneath that litter, overturned like the nest she’d hidden the memory under for lifetimes, she wept from sunup to sundown. She damned herself for not having been the hero her long-dead sister deserved. The only reason she crawled from out her hole the next night was because she yearned for comfort food.

  Shkarag didn’t bother checking for danger; neither did she bother finding an intact pair of trousers. On her way out, she did take the time to gather the strewn documents into a sheaf, which she shoved between the girdle and her back. Spear over her shoulder, axe by her hip, she made for the hills.

  “Eggs,” she said as she limped along, snorting snot all the while. “Need some šo-scrumptious eggs.”

  Movement at the edge of her vision urged her into a crouch, which shot splintering pain down one leg. A grimace soured her features, but she endured it. The half-div cocked her head and cast a sidelong glance in the direction of the movement. Still and silence. Shkarag waited, scratching at the latest scar in her collection where it bifurcated her forehead. If there were something out there, she should have no trouble seeing it. But all the running ink showed her was the tract of shrub- and body-strewn land between her and Nishabhur. She emitted a nervous hiss and pressed on.

  The movement returned immediately, only this time it was joined by a host of voices. They all murmured, intoned, crooned, and cried.

  “You ran.”

  “SHE RAN.”

  „.ترسو”

  “She wasyoursister.”

  “SHE’S TREMBLING.”

  “you ran!”

  “CENTURIES.

  “. . . To betray such a sacred bond . . .”

  “Shouldbe agoner.”

  “Pathetic.”

  „.ترسو”

  “Coward.”

  „.ترسو”

  “You-abandoned-her.”

  “Trustedyou.”

  “COWARD.”

  “. . . were to look out for one another. Always be . . .”

  “lookither.”

  “You-did-this-to-her!”

  “YOU WERE ONE.”

  “pitiful.”

  “Youshouldn’t exist.”

  „.ترسو”

  “Coward!”

  “SHE’S TREMBLING.”

  And she was. Shkarag had her spear in one hand, her axe in the other, but she couldn’t keep them still. “Stop,” came her brittle plea. “Stop . . . stop . . . stop.”

  Against her better judgment, which was already suspect, she cocked her head to peer into the night. Nothing. Her head fell further into its slant. She tried conventional eyesight.

  Close enough for her heavy breathing to excite the worms and grubs that dangled from its porous flesh, a face vaguely like her own hovered before her. It tilted. The starling-black that trickled from its overlarge sockets disrupted the surface like ink encouraging wet paint to run. It tilted the other way. An exaggerated frown pulled at the corners of a maw that hung slack, broken fangs jutting out at unnatural angles.

  Shkarag trembled. A hiss that bordered on a whine petered through her lips. She turned her head away, but her eyes were glued to it. It tilted yet again, and the voices redoubled their abuse. “I’m,” she stammered, “I’m, I’m sorry. Forgive me.”

  She tried to back away, but tripped and dropped her weapons in doing so. Her cheek to the ground, one eye forced shut by dust, she still could not look away.

  “Forgive you?” the voices said as one. “Sorry?”

  The grime-encrusted semi-keeled scales that lined the top of its mask-like face became a chittering cascade. Where they splashed the earth, they transformed into greasy extensions that conspired to be hair but couldn’t quite pull off the lie. Then, filthy tresses propelling it like a thousand spiteful snakes, it advanced.

  If it were up to Shkarag’s mind, she would have lain there paralyzed by a horror that had her heart in a vice. But her body reacted of its own accord, snatching up her spear and axe and high-tailing it for the hills. She didn’t look back, not once.

  Energized by the same shadows that closed on her, the half-div sprinted, stumbling and falling but never stopping, up the wrinkle of the nearest ridge. She followed crease after crease, maintaining her pace though shifting cobbles threatened to undermine every stride. Oftentimes, they would, but she would scarcely kiss the dirt before she was up again. To Shkarag, her cowardly mistake from so many thousands of moons ago had caught up to her. She had fled. She had betrayed her sister. Now, she fled from her comeuppance. The longer she did, the more the temperature dropped. Every now and then there would arise a lull in the abuse hurled by the voices, but before her exhaustion or the cold could sink in, they would return to grief her once more.

  Cobbles and dirt were eventually smothered by the crunch of snow and the pale bite of the higher reaches. The voices faded to background noise. Her stressors came to a head, and cognizance fell by the wayside. Shkarag just went, unaware of her surroundings. The snow reached her bare knees, sinking its icy teeth in, and Shkarag oblivious all the while. She continued through the night, until the cobbles once again reduced the snow to patches that clung to the shadows thrown by the crest of the ridge. When at last the voices relented, the windows of the sky were blanching at the coming dawn. Drenched in sweat, Shkarag collapsed midway down. She was asleep before she hit the ground.

  • • • • •

  “Nngh,” said Shkarag, waking up to an ache like white-hot needles embedded in her right thigh. “Heroes,” she complained. “Šo-hardened heroes. A wonder they don’t all retire.”

  She was already beginning to regret her eagerness to keep her limp. It seemed to her it’d gotten worse. Starting at the nasty scar where it’d been severed, Shkarag began kneading the scales and flesh of her thigh while soaking in her surroundings.

  “Don’t know any heroes,” she said. She canted her head at an alpine accentor that darted by, taking note of where it landed. There prevailed a common belief that birds are altogether clever, and Shkarag had al
ways wanted to have a word with the person responsible, because she thought birds were plain stupid. More often than not, she would hardly have to search for their clutches before the birds led her to them.

  “Don’t know any šo-hardened heroes. Or šo-this or šo-that heroes. Could use some pointers.” She spied a bearded vulture circling overhead just outside the glare of the sun. Pupils contracting to a sliver, she glared back. “Not dead. Was dead.”

  Shkarag gave an exasperated shake of her head. “Vultures. Makes you wonder. Think they have a heroes guild somewhere? All those legends gathered around circling the fresh meat and showing the ropes. Like how to deal with a bum leg. Is there a root to chew?” She paused, cocked her head, then decided, “Maybe.”

  She stood with an exaggerated groan, though no one was around to hear it. Another glare at the vulture. It had heard. Only with the vulture probably not looking at her did she register that her clothes were in shambles. The infantrymen had cut the legs from her trousers, her tunic had one sleeve missing and a hole in the midriff, and all of it soiled with blood, sweat, dirt, eggs, piss, and shit. She sneered. She hadn’t emptied her bowels until she killed herself. If only the phylactery had done its job the first time around.

  “Eggs,” she said, picking up her spear and setting off for the rock on which the accentor had last alighted. Shkarag poked around in the surrounding tussocks and crevices, eventually conceding what she’d known all along: breeding season was just around the corner. And the vulture would have a range too big to cover. She put her hands on her hips. “That’s just as the crow flies,” she said, confident in her use of the idiom.

  Without the comfort of a fresh egg to sink her fangs into, Shkarag instead sank into a lousy mood. She ambled along, kicking up dust with the toes of her boots, back in the direction of the battlefield. At her pace it would take a few days.

  Here and there, her surroundings tilted, demanding she adjust accordingly or suffer the consequences. That emboldened the nagging thoughts; it always did. But enduring the tilt would have been worse. She’d grown accustomed to this over her protracted lifetime, to always feeling as if she were at war with not only her surroundings but with herself. There had been times when even her sister had seemed to plot against her. It could not be overcome. Shkarag had accepted as much. She would endure it, or ignore it where possible. Mostly.