Buried in the Sky

by Jack Geurts

  ​ He seemed to almost shudder at the thought, then turned back to Kurosh.

  ​ “What would possess your people to treat their dead in such a way?” he said. “Why not bury the body, or even burn it? The latter is forbidden in my own country, it’s true, but surely even that would be better than leaving people to rot and be picked apart by vultures?”

  ​ Before Kurosh could respond, the captain saw something off to the side and pointed to his riders returning from the neighbouring hill, each dragging a body behind them. It was hard to see from where he stood, but Kurosh could swear the corpses of Daryush and Arshad were just as charred and blackened as Babar had been.

  ​ It seemed the captain was not the only demon among them. Indeed, they might all have been demons. Did that make every Kemite a demon, he wondered, or just these forsaken few? He hadn’t known the merchants and travellers from Kemet to be possessed of such vile sorcery, or any sorcery at all. In fact, he had never before seen magic with his own two eyes. He had only heard about it in stories, and assumed it fell into the same fabled class as gods and dragons.

  ​ “See those men?” said the captain, through gritted teeth. “Count yourself lucky that you still draw breath after the barbarity displayed here. Enjoy it while it lasts, for your days are numbered. And if, by chance, you survive what is coming, what air you are permitted to breathe will be choked by chains and shackles. For you see, our group is but a scouting party, and behind us is a force that you cannot not even imagine. An unstoppable wave that floods the land, a wind that rips the houses from the ground. A fire that burns the forests and the cities of men. And when it has passed over you, a new order will rise, and your old ways will be forgotten.”

  ​ He spat on the ground beside Kurosh, then mounted up and rode back down the hill with his interpreter in tow.

  ​ The corpse-bearer watched as they reunited with the main party down below, and with the other riders as they returned from their own nightmarish detour. He watched as the others learned what the towers were for and what they contained. Then they began to move, wheeling around, heading for Samazd. They rode at a gallop, with the corpse-bearers hitched to the rearmost riders, bouncing around like rag dolls at the end of their lines.

  ​ At least Babar was spared that.

  ​ And still, Kurosh couldn’t shake the feeling that it should have been him. He should have died and Babar should have lived. Long enough at least to see the trees, the ocean. To see towers so tall and cities so large it would cause his mind to reel, and his heart to ache. To fall in love. To see a child crawl, then walk, then run. To be an old man at peace in his bed.

  ​ Kurosh watched the riders getting smaller and smaller as they advanced on the city, and something suddenly occurred to him.

  ​ If Babar couldn’t do it, then he would.

  ​ He would live the life they both should have lived. He would leave this place forever, and he wouldn’t look back. The Kem would soon descend upon this city, and Kurosh had no intention of being around when they got here if the scouting party was any indication of things to come. If they possessed the same devilry that the captain and his men had here displayed.

  ​ He would leave now and tell no one. He would vanish, and to the people of Samazd, it would be as though he were dead.

  ​ He wondered who would replace him, who would replace Babar, Daryush and Arshad. The city would have greater need for them now than ever before, of that Kurosh was certain.

  ​ And still, he was going. His mind was made up. He was ashamed it took something like this to make him see so clearly, but now that he was, he couldn’t go back to being blind. He had always thought it was him keeping Babar here, when instead the reverse might also have been true.

  ​ Kurosh hadn’t left, but maybe that was only because his friend hadn’t either. Now, without him here, Kurosh found himself strangely and suddenly detached from this place. He had always thought it was his father keeping him here, but maybe instead it was the brother that he never had. Maybe they had kept each other tied down and one of them had to die so the other could be free.

  ​ It was a grim thought, to be sure. And though he wished it had gone the other way, he found himself feeling excited for the first time in a long time.

  ​ No more would he carry people to bury them in the sky. No more would he wash himself with urine. No more would he spend his nights alone, wishing for someone to hold. He was going now with nothing more than the clothes on his back, and nothing less than the entire world before him.

  ​ But first, he would retrieve Babar’s body from the pit. He would wash his friend and say the prayers. He would lay him down atop the tower so that on the fourth day, he could meet the maiden on the bridge. She would smile at him and hold out her hand, and guide his way into paradise.

  ​ Setting off back up the stairs, Kurosh hoped to meet her himself one day, and see his friend waiting for him at the other end of the bridge. And when it did come time for them to meet again, he would have many a tale to tell.

  First five chapters of THE FIRE AND THE FORGE

  PROLOGUE

  An Offering

  It was a beautiful night when they sacrificed the child.

  All of them gathered around a bronze dish heaped with flames. Their faces caught briefly in the dancing light and lost again to the shadows.

  A priest brought the child forward and laid him screaming on the outstretched hands of a goddess, but no one heard him screaming. They only heard the beating of drums, and the shaking of tambourines as the heat rose gently at the child’s back.

  No one mistook this for a small thing.

  The child was not sick, small or otherwise deformed. This child was the most loved. And that was why he had to die.

  The mother watched with a face of stone. She was the most powerful person in all the land. More or less a queen, but for the fact that she shared her rule with another. Her counterpart in the north. Her counterpart whose city had just fallen and whose body had been hanged from its walls.

  Now, she was alone in her sovereignty. But it would take an act of divine intervention to save her from her sister’s fate. One hundred and forty-seven babies had been sacrificed already this month, and still, the armies advanced south, taking town after town. Burning, butchering, raping, pillaging.

  Once the ritual was complete, she would vow to kill her next child if the invading armies were halted and driven back. That was the deal she made tonight with the Goddess of the Moon.

  And it was not the first time.

  In years past, high-born women such as herself did not sacrifice their own children. Rather, they gave money for those of the poor. And they did not burn the child right away. They raised it. They nurtured it. They loved it.

  But the last time she had done that, the northern capital had been taken, and she blamed herself for trying to fool the gods.

  She would not make the same mistake again.

  She had borne this child inside her for nine months. She had lain in agony while he left her. She had held the child in her arms and kissed him, sang to him. Now he lay writhing above a pit of flames, and she had to stand there and watch.

  The priests were feeding wood into the dish now, and tongues of fire were licking at the child’s back. The drums grew louder to mask the growing screams and the waves crashing against the outer wall of the harbour down below.

  From where she stood atop the high walls of the citadel, the mother was not allowed to shed a single tear or let a moan escape her lips, lest she lose the favour that would soon be owed to her by the gods. She was to remain utterly unaffected while her child was burned alive in front of her.

  So she stood there, sick to her stomach. Drops of sweat like ice beading on her ghost-white face and the back of her neck. The percussive force of the drum reverberating through her, and she felt like she was floating above the ground, trapped in some horrible dream of her own making.

  A part of her that was beyond reason wanted to grab the c
hild and run. It wasn’t too late, she told herself. She could take the child away, far away. Leave Gebal forever and let the child live, grow old.

  The music stopped.

  The bronze arms of the goddess lowered, and her child slipped silently off into the flames.

  PART I

  Oblīviō

  CHAPTER 1

  Where The Ghosts Sow Their Crops

  The boy couldn’t remember.

  He knew his name and where he was. He had a vague recollection of things past, but beyond a certain point, it was all smoke. Through the smoke were names and dates and facts that he knew and had memorised. But nothing he could remember from experience. Nothing he had seen with his own two eyes. Nothing he could say for sure had actually happened.

  The wolfhound was out ahead of him, galloping like a steed through the bush and gaining on the rabbit. The boy ran to keep up. He was no match for Merlin and not trying to outpace him, just trying to keep him in sight. It wasn’t that he doubted the dog’s ability to find his way home, but they were in unfamiliar territory, and the dog didn’t belong to him. He belonged to Gaius.

  The boy didn’t call out to Merlin, didn’t want to break his focus. And even though the dog was loyal to him as he was to Gaius, he didn’t think it would do any good. After all, there were rabbits to hunt.

  It was only just now occurring to him that this was further than he’d ever been from home and that he ought to turn back before he went and got himself lost. No search parties would be sent out for him, that much was certain. Were he a betting man or possessed of any wealth beyond a trade – and if anyone were inclined to take odds on the matter – he’d wager a healthy sum and not lose a wink of sleep over it.

  In fact, most people would probably be glad to be rid of him. Most people not meaning Gaius or, of course, the dog.

  The sun came strobing in through the eucalypts to the sound of warbled laughter. Not human laughter, but a bird call made to imitate it.

  Kookaburras. The boy hated kookaburras. Their incessant laughing often forced him to rise before the day demanded it, and kept him awake long after he should otherwise have been asleep. Given a spare moment, he might have found a nice big rock and hurled it at their perch. Not intending to cause them any bodily harm, of course – just to send them cackling elsewhere.

  He came to a rise where the land fell away into lower ground that had been cleared long ago. He stopped dead. Merlin kept going, but the boy stopped. He stood there, panting. Eyes wide. What he saw before him was not only something he had never seen but something he could not imagine.

  An entire town in ruins.

  The boy picked his way down the earthen slope to the level of the town. It had been built in a large clearing. Or, rather, the forest had been cleared so the town could be built. But whoever had built the town was long gone. Whoever lived there was long gone. All that remained was the sound of birds and the thrum of insects keeping the pulse of the world.

  He could see where the ghosts had sown their crops because the trees there were smaller. Not much smaller, but to a keen eye, the difference was noticeable. In time, it would be less noticeable. Then invisible.

  He wondered how long it would take the bush to swallow up the entire town – how long before it was as if the town had never existed at all.

  He walked among the broken mudbrick homes overgrown with weeds and grasses where the roofs had fallen in, where the walls had crumbled. He saw pots smashed, cushions torn and faded, scorch marks on the stone.

  Looking closer at one particular house, he saw deep cuts in the grain of a low table where a family might have sat, cross-legged, to eat. Dark stains soaked into the wood.

  And all over everything, a film of dust as if to hide what had happened there, or preserve it.

  The boy kept moving towards the centre of town, where a large building rose above the rest. A temple, as it turned out, with a gabled roof and thick stone columns out the front. He looked around as if to see if anyone was watching. As if he felt eyes on him.

  He had seen the dog with his muzzle buried in the open carcass of the rabbit not far back, so he wasn’t worried about Merlin. He wasn’t sure what he was worried about. Clearly, no one had been here in years.

  He climbed the stone steps to the doorway of the temple, seemingly built to accommodate giants. Beyond was just one vast, rectangular room, hatched with spears of light coming in through holes in the roof and walls. In the centre, a brazier had been toppled from its stand, ancient coals scattered to blacken the floor.

  But what was not here, what was not anywhere it seemed, was any trace of the dead. No body, no bone. Surely, there had been many killed in whatever transpired here. So where, the boy wondered, were the bodies?

  As he neared the focal point of the sanctum, something caught his eye among the coals. It was not shaped like the other coals, or like any coal he had seen, but perfectly round and flat, covered in dust.

  Almost reluctant to disturb something frozen in time, the boy reached out and plucked the thing from its charcoal bed – pulling it out of the past and into the present. It was heavier than he expected, some kind of metal. He cleared the dust away with the pad of his thumb to see a bronze surface stamped with a human face.

  The face was in profile and appeared to be a woman. A queen, maybe. Regal and fierce. His own people used shekels imprinted with the faces of judges, the ruling tribal chieftains in this land. But this was larger than a shekel – about the size of his palm, and there was a hole punched near the top, through which, a necklace might have been thread.

  An amulet, then.

  Being made of bronze, it had developed a green patina of rust that made it look even older than it probably was. The boy turned it over. Nothing on the tail side. He looked around again before pocketing it.

  The sun would be setting soon. He knew he ought to get back lest he find himself lost in the bush at night. At any rate, Gaius might have some answers for him about this place.

  Retreating from the temple, the boy called to Merlin and the dog came running up with a triumphant grin on his bloodied face. They left together the same way they had come, and as the boy crested the rise where he had first seen the ruins, he turned around and looked upon them once more.

  Then he was gone, heading back into the bush with Merlin close by his side.

  On the way home, the boy found himself wondering about the kind of people who built that place, the people who lived there. He supposed that they were much like the people of Alba, the nearby town where he and Gaius lived. Maybe when they were attacked, they fled to Alba and built a new settlement, or took refuge with the people who already lived there. Maybe it was the people of Alba who attacked it in the first place.

  He removed the amulet and appraised it in the dying light. Had it been some sort of ritual that saw it cast into the fire, or was it just a desperate attempt to hide it from the oncoming hordes?

  He wondered why he hadn’t heard of the town before, seen it before. He wondered why Gaius hadn’t told him about it. Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe no one knew. Maybe the boy was the first person to set foot there since whatever calamity befell its inhabitants took place.

  Could it be that the town’s name and history had simply passed out of existence?

  The boy shook his head, knowing it was pointless to ponder such things. He would ask Gaius about it when he got home.

  Perhaps it was not fair to call the boy a boy when he was so near a man. He had the look of a man, the build. Twenty years and change he had drawn breath, yet inside, he still felt like a boy. It was not so long ago, he remembered the reverse had been true – looking to all like a child, but feeling he knew everything there was to know, and there was nothing that poor old Gaius could teach him.

  He didn’t remember much, but he remembered that.

  He strode tall under the heavy cloak and tunic of his people, or who he called his people – it was doubtful they would extend the same courtesy to him. He was not large,
but lean, well-built. Big, calloused hands, the hands of a worker. Brown skin, black hair. Dry, matted hair that fell in ropelike strands to the base of his neck, held from his eyes with a red linen band.

  The sun had gone down beyond the edge of the world now, and its light remained like a memory, fading with age. Steadily draining from the sky to expose the lesser beacons of night.

  It grew cold. Not long before the boy started to see his breath fogging in the air before him. He pulled the cloak tighter around his shoulders and was glad to have brought it. In the heat of the day, it didn’t seem necessary, but he knew it was better to have something and not need it than the reverse.

  It was long after dark when the boy returned, and he swallowed when he saw the lamp still aflame on the blacksmith’s ledge. He’d hoped he could sneak in unnoticed, but there was no precedent for that. Gaius couldn’t sleep if the boy wasn’t home.

  A large clearing surrounded the town of Alba. Tilled fields ran out to the edge of the bush, and they were bare following the harvest, ready to be sown again. A cluster of buildings formed the town proper, and they were made of rough stone or mudbrick or some combination of the two. Not at all dissimilar to the ones he had just seen in ruins.

  They called it the Tall Timber, where they lived, for the trees there were said to grow bigger and straighter than anywhere else in the land. Almost eerily so. The trunks were pale,and wrinkled like skin around the joints of branches. Thin, faceless giants with arms outstretched, forming a barrier around the town, watching over them.

  The blacksmith was sitting in the dark when the boy came in, sheepish and slow. The dim light from the oil lamp cast half his face in shadow and gave him an air of menace, even though he was quite clearly drunk and had been for some time. His unblinking eyes had a distant, glazed-over look and the boy thought he might have been staring at something on the far wall. He didn’t turn to find out.