“I’ve never heard of Beor.”
“You wouldn’t. No monuments remain to testify of his rule.”
“Then how do you know of him?” Rana said.
“It’s wise to ask, Little Plum. An old and dangerous demon showed me him in a vision.”
“Were you scared?”
Marul straightened her neck. “Ha! I do not fear demons.”
Rana’s heart burned with the fire of the stars. One day, she thought, I’ll be as fearless as Marul. I’ll conquer demons and travel to other worlds.
“Was Beor a great king?” she said.
“One of the greatest.”
“Greater than King Umer?”
“Umer is a pebble to Beor’s mountain. Beor was one of the greatest kings ever to rule, and his name was renowned from the frigid empires of the north to the boiling seas in the south.”
Rana’s heart grew troubled. “But if Beor was so great, why doesn’t anyone remember him?”
“Because it was a long time ago.”
“How long?”
“Seventy-four years.”
“But that’s not a very long time.”
“On Gehinnom, it’s an eternity.”
“Did Beor have a big palace?”
“Enormous.”
“Where is it?”
“It’s gone.”
“Gone to where?”
“It’s just—” she waved her hand as if waving away smoke. “Gone.”
“But how can something so big just . . . vanish?”
Marul sighed. “I’m afraid, Rana, that time has its way with us all.”
Rana stopped mid-stride. Hadn’t Papa said the same thing?
“What’s wrong, Little Plum?” said Marul.
“I don’t like how things can just disappear like that.” Could the sculptures, the paintings, the instruments in her studio vanish like King Beor’s palace?
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t tell you such things.”
Rana swallowed her fear. She would be brave like the great Marul Menacha, The Witch Who Gives Demons Pause, the woman who traveled to other worlds in vessels of light and learned secrets from fearsome monsters. “When I am older,” she said, “I will build a monument so big it will last forever.”
“A palace?”
“No, a statue. Of you, Marul.”
Marul’s cheeks blushed. “I’m flattered, Rana. Very flattered. No one wants to be forgotten. No one wants to die. Me especially.” Marul gazed longingly at the stars, as if she had left something behind in the heavens. “Come, it’s late. Your mother will be getting worried.”
The next morning, like King Beor and his enormous palace, Marul vanished. Rana longed for her return, but Marul never came back, and soon Rana’s parents hinted that it was better to assume the witch was dead, that a demon had finally bested her. And Rana had listened to them and had even carved Marul a tombstone. Later, in a fit of anger, she’d smashed it.
And yet here she sits, Rana thought, back from the dead. How did I miss her true form? Like the hucksters on Bedubroadstreet, Marul had won her confidence, only to rob her.
“Don’t judge her too harshly,” Caleb said, holding his belly. He looked even paler than before. “She was as blind to her nature as you were to yours.”
“And what is my nature?”
“You are Gu.”
“I’ve heard as much. What exactly does that mean?”
“Your Priests of Mollai never told you?”
“I didn’t spend much time in the temples.”
“In ancient Bedu-Besk, a ‘Gu’ is an overflowing water jar. As Earth’s energy drips into the Great Deep, some of that energy collects in basins, pools, oases. You are such an oasis, Rana. You overflow with life. Have you ever considered where your creativity comes from?”
When she was young, her neighbor, Yrma, once told Rana her parents had no money to buy her a doll. So Rana made one out of beads, cloth, and string. Yrma loved it so much, she carried the doll everywhere. But Yrma’s parents thought the doll looked too much like their daughter, that its eyes were too keen, it’s shape too human. They said to Rana’s parents, “No human child can sew and stitch with such uncanny skill. Your child is a demon!” They burned the effigy, accused Rana of devilwork, and forbade Yrma ever to see Rana again.
Day after day, whenever Rana passed Yrma on the street, her friend scurried away with a look of terror in her eyes. The next year, Yrma and her parents left for Ektu El. She heard they died in a sandstorm on the way.
When Rana had grown older and girls her age were sneaking off to get drunk and meet boys at the fermentaries, she worked nights in her studio, carving busts out of wood, smelting metal into pins and charms, and painting strange vistas that haunted her dreams.
She had often wondered, Why does this fire burn in me and not others? Am I a demon? But the question soon became irrelevant. I must create, she had thought, and that is enough. Art was her only friend. Art, and Marul.
And now? Rana turned to Marul. “You knew I was a Gu, back then?”
Marul nodded.
Rana felt her belly grow hot. “So was anything between us real? Why did you visit me? Was I just a step on your path to goddess-hood?”
“At first,” Marul said, “your Gu-nature fascinated me. But I came to love you, Rana.” Her voice was small. “I still do.”
“You’ve made clear how much that love means.”
Marul sighed. Her eyes were dark and baggy. Her lips quivered. “Can you forgive an old woman her mistakes?”
“You want my forgiveness? You betrayed all of existence! My forgiveness means nothing.”
“It means everything to me.”
“Then for that alone you won’t have it.”
Marul shuddered. The palanquin shook with the force of her tears. Rana had to look away from the despicable sight.
Caleb gave Rana a pitying look. Was this an affectation, or did he feel genuine pity? A demon could not feel pity, could he?
“What happened to Grug?” Marul said, after a time. “Is he safe in Yarrow?”
“I’m sorry,” Havig said. “Grug is dead.”
“What?” Marul’s voice cracked, and the palanquin heaved. “Dead? Grug? Oh, Grug. How? How did he die?”
“Killed,” Rana said. “By pillagers.”
“You were there?”
“Yes,” Rana said. “And I gave them what they deserved.”
“What do you mean?”
“She sang to them,” Caleb said. “Didn’t you, Rana? You weaved melodies through their minds, as you tried to do with the Bedu.” He was staring at her.
“Yes,” she said. “And while they were entranced, Emod slaughtered them all.”
“Oh, Rana,” Marul said. “You used your powers to kill? The child I knew would never have done that.”
“Then it seems we both have mistaken the other for someone else.”
Daniel had been sitting quietly against the wall, and he abruptly stood. His cheeks were hollow, and dark circles ringed his eyes. “So it was you!” he shouted to Marul. He bared his teeth, a threatening sight, and if it wasn’t for his pale skin, Rana might have thought him a Mikulal. “If not for you, I’d be back on Earth, Rana would be with her parents, and the Bedu would still be alive.” His face grew red with rage. “Say something, Marul! Don’t you have anything at all to say?”
“I thought it wasn’t in a Lamed Vavnik’s nature to judge?” Marul said quietly.
“How can I not judge?” Daniel said. “You’ve ruined it for all.” He scanned the frightened Bedu faces, the hollow-eyed Mikulalim. His eyes swept over Caleb, and when his gaze landed on Rana, he said, “I’ve witnessed so much pain on this world. And I’ve been told the other Shards are even worse. What an utter tragedy. The Cosmos is broken, but I’m going to put it all back together. Not only the Earth, but I’m going to mend all the Shards.”
“Humpty Dumpty,” Marul said. “What you speak is impossible.”
“What do you kn
ow?” said Rana. “You gave up trying to help Gehinnom so you could stay young and keep fucking.”
Marul closed her eyes, and Daniel shook his head. “After we save the other Lamed Vav,” he said. “I’ll devote the rest of my life to helping the Shards. I can’t go back to Earth knowing how many suffer.”
“Daniel,” Caleb said, “you and I share the same goal. We want to make a better world for all.”
“The difference is,” Daniel said, “that I won’t kill in order to do that.”
“Hear, hear,” announced Elyam, who had been sitting quietly in the circle. “I will help the Pillar return to the Kuurku. But I will not stand beside demons, nor aide in their quest, no matter how noble it seems. Demons always betray.” He stared at Caleb.
“Hush, father!” another priest said. Untamed goat-hairs sprouted from his chin. He looked younger than Rana.
“Zimri, you’ll stand beside your father,” Elyam said. “As all the Bedu will.” He scanned the ranks of his brethren, and they returned his gaze with alternating looks of skepticism and agreement. “We will loft the Pillar back to the land of Erte, but without demon help.”
“My dear Elyam,” said Caleb, “I wish there were another way. But the Betrayer is the only one who can help us now. You may choose not to help us. And thus you choose to let Gehinnom die. Think on it. We’ll reach Dudael soon.”
Elyam frowned and said no more, and they flew onward. Through the translucent walls, dunes wrestled beneath them. The sun was a huge cinder on the horizon, and the palanquin’s shadow stretched across the desert, all the way back to Rana’s childhood of naive hopes and unfulfilled dreams. An immense dune rose in the north, and the palanquin ascended its steep bank. And when they crested it, Rana gasped at the immense vista beyond.
A desert dark as coal and smooth as molten glass stretched to the horizon. The ground slanted askew, and the sands seemed to writhe at the corners of her vision. Though the air still held the heat of the day, warmth fled from her body as if she were fevered. She shivered and knew they had crossed into the Jeen, the demented desert, where even the hated demons of Fintas Miel dared not tread.
“This morning I was a high priest of the Quog Bedu,” Elyam said, “and now I cross into the black desert with maneaters and demons. Goddess help us all.”
“Your goddess,” Caleb said, “can’t even help herself.”
The sun set, and the Mikulalim removed their hoods. Rana opened the palanquin doors, and a cool wind whipped through the interior. It reeked of soot, as if a hundred cities had burnt to the ground. She remembered this smell. It had been on Chialdra as she swooped low over her and on the traders who’d come into Azru from the deep desert. The air carried whispers of far-off places. They were tenuous and perhaps imagined. She heard a woman crying over her stillborn child. A boy begging a pet lizard he accidentally crushed to come back to life. An old man cursing the Goddess for giving him a hideous, disfiguring disease.
She sat on the edge and dangled her legs over the dark sands. This place reeked of death. Not just death, but the stillness that lay beyond it.
She shivered as a million stars trembled and awoke in the sky. Collectively they seemed brighter than the sun, yet only a faint flicker reached the sands. The sky was immense, unfathomable. It pressed down upon everything with a tremendous, ineffable weight. She had trouble breathing. Over long minutes the stars wandered in strange courses, stumbling about like drunken men. Bits of ash blew into her eyes, and she hugged herself to keep warm. Her dead skin blew away in the wind. Underneath was something new, different, unrecognizable.
Who would she be now? Who could she be?
Caleb approached her. He grabbed the roof with one hand while his other cradled his bandaged stomach. Blood seeped through the white strips of cloth. His hair fluttered in the breeze. “Stunning, isn’t it?”
“That’s not what I would call it.”
He sat down beside her. “No? What would the Gu call it then?”
“A waste.”
“Yes.” He nodded. “Eternity rests its weary head here. The Jeen is a place of annihilation. The opposite of what you are.”
She shivered as the stars wiggled mindlessly about.
“You’re cold,” he said. “Havig, do we have a coat for her?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t want to be covered. I don’t want to hide anymore.”
Caleb considered her. “Your wounds are healing well. Unlike mine. That was quite a jab.” He smiled, revealing canines stained with blood and greyel potion.
They passed over a gargantuan skeleton of some eight-legged beast, its spine half-buried in the sand. Even its ancient carcass seemed an affront to the emptiness.
“There’s something very wrong about this place,” she said.
“The Abyss tugs more strongly in the Jeen. What you sense is but a taste of the hell we’ll experience when the Earth shatters and we wither for eons in the Great Deep.”
“I left my sister back in Azru.”
“So you’ve said.”
“Her name is Liu. Emod saw a baby outside my house after the attack.”
“And you want to go back for Liu.”
“Yes.”
“Rana, we have to move forward before we can go back. We must save all before we can save one. You do understand, don’t you?”
Rana closed her eyes. All she could see was Liu’s face. Slowly, she nodded.
“Good. I need you. In some ways I need you more than any of them.” He leaned in and whispered, “You have a power, Rana, that could help us all. You’re a font of creation. Like the Creator who fashioned us, you’ve built worlds. And you and I, we can build another.”
“What do you mean, another?” She looked into his eyes, and the feeling arose in her again, the same feeling she’d had in Yarrow, when Caleb had put his hands on her shoulders. A warmth, a comfort in his presence. And now she understood why. Caleb knew her like none other. In his presence she was fully accepted for who she was, without fear.
He smiled. “Another universe.”
The palanquin heaved, and Caleb and Rana nearly tumbled out the door. Caleb grabbed her shoulder, pulled her in, and shouted back to the circle, “What’s happened?”
“We’re exhausted!” Marul said. “We’re losing control.”
Like an unruly bull, the palanquin would not be tamed.
“We need rest!” Marul said.
“There’s no time!” Caleb shouted.
“We can hardly keep this box in the air,” Marul said, “and you want us to loft you to Earth? Caleb, please!”
“My lord,” Havig said. “A rest would do us well. My brothers are exhausted.”
“We go on!”
“If I don’t rest soon,” Marul said. “I’m going to pass out. Who will build your Merkavah if I am unconscious?”
“Are you mad?” Elyam said. “You want to set down here, in the Jeen?” The priests stole glances at each other as if to confirm that this was indeed a real possibility.
Caleb considered and said, “We rest for ten minutes and not an instant more!”
Against the priests’ protests, the palanquin drifted down. Rana moved away from the door, away from the black sands. They settled with a thud that stopped much too quickly, as if eaten by something. The sands were impossibly flat, and there wasn’t a single dune under the sky of deranged stars.
Caleb stepped onto the sands. His footprints seemed to defile the emptiness. Daniel walked after him and looked bewilderingly up at the sky. Starlight turned his face a sickly white. The Mikulalim disembarked one by one and checked each other for wounds. The priests remained inside and huddled in the far corner. The desert seemed to eat their voices, and everyone had to speak up to be heard.
Though the ground was still, she felt as if they were spinning on the rim of a gargantuan whirlpool, the sky a gulf that would digest their souls over eons. She wanted to close the doors and cower in the corner with the priests. But she challenged her fear, because only
by facing it would she find the strength to continue.
She held her breath and stepped onto the sand. The ground shifted beneath her, as if uncomfortable with her presence. The grains were as fine as ash, and in the starlight seemed faintly blue. The sooty odor grew stronger the more she sniffed.
Elyam reached forward and said, “We’ll be in here,” then he yanked the doors closed.
The Jeen was the flattest expanse Rana had ever seen. But up close, millions of undulating lines wiggled across its surface, as if an army of tiny snakes had slithered through here. The air murmured horrid sounds, and it seemed as if the drunken stars were humming in a key high above her range of hearing.
No, not humming, she thought. The stars are screaming.
A shooting star arced across the sky. She gasped as the desert turned green with its light. The star turned sharply and vanished over the horizon.
“That was no meteor,” Caleb said. “It was a scout.”
“Did they see us?” Daniel said.
“Let’s hope not. I knew it was foolish to set down here.”
Marul pushed the black sand into a heap, laid her head upon it, and closed her eyes.
“How can you rest here?” Rana said.
“Perhaps for her,” Caleb said, “annihilation is comfort.”
“Annihilation is the greatest of comforts,” a voice said. It was as insubstantial as air.
Everyone spun toward the voice, but there was nothing to see. The wind whistled as it blew over the palanquin.
“Who said that?” Rana shouted, but her voice had the volume of a whisper.
“No one said that.” The disembodied voice came from a different location, but there was nothing there either.
“Where are you?” Rana shouted. “Who are you?”
“Show your face!” Havig said as the Mikulalim unsheathed their swords.
“We have no face,” the voice said. It came from atop the palanquin. Then from behind Daniel, it said, “And we have no place.”
Rana said, “Only cowards taunt with riddles while they hide.”
King of Shards Page 30