by Martin Davey
Today. Today is the day when the god will be woken.
A roar, thick and loud enough to hurt her ears, sweeps across the plaza, her own voice joining the noise as she sees the Awakener step out into the archway of the tower. He is wearing his ceremonial dress, a crimson robe edged with black trim, and a mask to match the face of the god watching him from the plaza below. In his hand he holds the golden dagger of light, curved and gleaming and blinding in the sun.
He steps to the very edge of the archway, his blood red robe swaying with each step, his mask smiling down on them all, moving side to side to take in the enormity of the crowd. The roars swell like the rushing of the waves of the sea her mother had always told her about in her bedtime stories, in the lullabies she sang. The sea where the god will take them all once he wakens.
She almost tears her own throat joining the screaming as the Awakener suddenly thrusts both arms into the air, still looking side to side at the crowd, the sun shines on the dagger still in his hand, bright enough to make her squint as she looks at the gloried Awakener. Her screams grow louder and louder, no words, more an exultation, a joining with the people screaming all around her, a celebration of the glory of the god who will save them all.
The noise of the screams grows and grows, enough to make the noise of the musicians seem hushed and quiet. Only when the screaming reaches a point where she feels her ears must burst from the pressure, does the Awakener beckon behind him for his two acolytes to bring the first prisoner.
When she was younger, she had always pitied the first prisoner, thinking it must be terrifying being brought to the summit of the tower and looking down at the crowds below. Now she realizes that the first was the most blessed of all, his would be the first blood of the new year to feed the god.
He doesn’t look very blessed. He has been dressed in the kiyoti but it is ripped and torn, coloured red like the blood that will soon be staining it. So high up, it is difficult to see, she has to squint against the cruel glare of the sun. She sees thrashing, struggling, the Awakener’s two servants hold the man fast as the priest raises his dagger high, holds the pose for a long moment and then smoothly slits the man’s throat in one fluid motion. The prisoner’s head falls forward as though he has suddenly found something of interest on the floor. Those eyes will be as sightless and empty as the god’s own eyes, but if the prisoner could see, he would be watching his blood flowing from his throat and down to the floor to be caught by the canals carved into the stone, all running to the bowl of the highest stone supplicant winding around the tower, and from there down and down through every single bowl until it reaches the bottom.
Before the day is done, all the stone bowls about the tower will be full of blood.
She screams louder, as does every single person in the plaza. It has begun, surely this will be the day when the god awakes. Surely the blood will be enough to bring life back to him. The Awakener raises the dagger once more, now thick blood oozes down his arm. Soon there will be no raising of the dagger, long before afternoon comes, his arm will be tired, the blood will be thick and treacherous beneath his feet, the throats of the crowd will be raw and hoarse.
And still the killing would continue until every bowl of the stone supplicants is full. The next prisoner is a woman, dragged out onto the tower, her long brown hair flying as she fights against the acolytes. Nowhere to run, before her lies a drop of more than a thousand hands, and behind her lies the rest of the prisoners from her town shackled and waiting to be slaughtered like the sheep they are.
She screams enough to tear her throat as the woman’s throat is slit. It takes the silly woman a few moments to realize she is dead as she touches her torn throat and lifts her bloody hand before her eyes.
Yes, she wants to leap and step and spin and stoop and twirl.
Today is the day the Paramin will wake from his sleep of death.
#
It was mid-afternoon before Ysora finally surrendered to the shakings and the sweats, her cheeks and tongue bloodied from her thrashings against the cravings, and she had crept away from the inn and found the twigs and branches and moss and earth to craft the twisted tower and its supplicants kneeling on the steps spiralling about its walls.
The only red she had to paint its walls was her own blood from her mouth and the cuts gouged into her palms and knuckles.
Her body shook as she worked, wracked with sobs. Not for the pain in her hands and her mouth, but from her betrayal of the Keepers
CHAPTER 14
“Who are you?”
A simple enough question and one that was simple enough to answer, but surely she of all people shouldn’t need to ask? This was a woman he felt he knew better than he knew himself, a woman he saw in his dreams, the remembering of those dreams making his heart ache with need. A woman whose memory he clung to as he was tortured night after night by Keeper Martuk.
A woman whose name he didn’t know.
“I am Marin,” he said. The riverbank was green, still wet with dew and if he looked behind he could see their dark footprints behind them. He wanted to go back and see where those footprints began; he couldn’t remember coming to this place, but the woman had an arm through his, a touch that he didn’t want to release.
The woman laughed, a sound as light and natural as that of the glimmering blue river running by their side. Marin couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a river that wasn’t brown with browner things twisting and coiling in the current. This river was fringed by purple and white and red flowers; the other rivers fringed by hasty graves made of rocks and rubble and mud.
She laughed again and Marin blinked. How long had she been quiet? It seemed a very long time. And how could he look at the river when she was by his side? The woman who had haunted his dreams for as long as he could remember, the woman who he knew better than his own heart even though he didn’t know her name. Looking at her, his heart ached, not for her beauty, though she was beautiful, but for her familiarity, for the feeling of a place he couldn’t remember.
She looked at him, her short brown hair ruffling in the breeze, her loose purple shirt billowing about her thin shoulders. Marin had the feeling she’d been quiet for a very long time again. “No,” she said. Her eyes were always smiling, round and dark and clear. She smelled of a place he couldn’t remember. “Marin is a murderer. A liar and a thief and a cheat. Marin has no place here. Who are you? What is it you want?”
She emphasized the ‘who’ as though by doing so she could change the meaning of the word. Now it was Marin’s turn to fall silent for long moments, looking at the grass beneath his feet as he walked by her side. The grass had been trodden enough to form a path on the bank, though not so much that he could see the soil beneath. Before them the bank followed the river winding to the west, flowers with heads shaped like red bells dancing in the breeze. Behind them the river wound east, glinting and glimmering under the yellow sun. No way of knowing where he was. Was any river really so pure?
But he was distracting himself from her question, shying from the meaning behind her words. Who was he? He was Marin. Betrayer of the gods. A farmer who had taken to the sword and the road rather than obey his god. A man who had slain...how many people? He had once thought it his glory that he had lost count of the bodies left on the road behind him. Now it filled him with shame. Would the woman beside him still love him if she knew the things he had done? Had she ever loved him at all? Did she even know who he was?
Who are you?
I am Marin, he thought.
But can a name define a person? A name given by somebody he couldn’t remember. His earliest memory was of playing on a farm, his knees damp with mud and a farmer asking him who he was.
I am Marin, he remembered saying.
His head hurt, too many thoughts cascading through his mind like brown leaves in an autumnal wind.
“He’s not a thinking man,” Retaj had said not too long ago when Marin had woken on a cold stone floor.
Retaj.<
br />
Thoughts of his red-headed friend reminded him of Keeper Martuk and his haunted wood and his cruel blades, reminded him of dusty roads and swollen fat fleas in his bedding, reminded him of whores with yellow teeth and skinny thighs, of blood and muck and sweat.
The woman was looking at him. What did she see? Who did she see? She was clean, her teeth white, her eyes clear. A face that Marin could imagine watching sleep for hours.
In the memory-dream of this woman, Marin had always imagined himself a young man with a full head of hair and a neck that wasn’t striped by tendons and veins, but when he looked at the backs of his hands, he saw that they were an old man’s hands, the knuckles swollen and the veins stark. He snapped his hands closed and held them behind his back. He couldn’t hide his old man’s face though, his wispy grey hair.
She walked with delicate grace, her black skirt swishing about her legs, her loose blouse barely brushing her small breasts. Her short hair curled slightly under her ears, how many years was it since Marin had seen a woman with hair like that? This side of the Winding River the fashion seemed to be to let it grow and never wash it so it hung in thick strands like wet rope. She looked young enough to be his daughter, but she looked at him like some expectant parent.
How long since anybody had spoken? The sun was high in the sky now, warm on the back of his neck, but the woman smiled at him and still they appeared no closer to their destination. The river still wound on before and behind them, though the grass was dry now beneath their feet and Marin left no sign of his passing.
As he hadn’t in life.
Who are you?
“I am an old man,” he said. “Old and tired. A man who betrayed his gods.” And who are you? He wanted to ask the woman he had dreamed of all his life.
Who are you?
The woman fell silent once more and they walked on, her eyes fixed straight ahead, Marin’s fixed on the smooth profile of her cheek.
The sky was a darker blue when she spoke again, “Age doesn’t define a person, doesn’t tell me who you are. People can lie about their ages, look older or younger on a whim, and still we know them no better. Who are you, why do you come to me?”
Finally, a question he could answer. The river was swifter now, racing around the bends, a stick thrashing in the white bubbling water like a stranded child. Oranges and reds leaked across the darkening sky like blood on paper. “I come to you because I love you,” he said, feeling ashamed. He was old and dirty, a life defined by his very first betrayal, but there had been so many more after he fled the gods. What right did he have to love a woman of such beauty? But then, he hadn’t always been so old, so wracked by the tortures of the gods and the desperation of his flight. Wasn’t there a time when he had lain on a grassy riverbank by the side of a woman with short dark hair, her hand soft and light in his own?
Rain falling from a cloudless sky, warm and wet on his neck and chest. His hair and the ground about him dry. If only it could wash his sins away, make him clean in the eyes of this woman he loved. Oranges and reds in the sky had now mixed and merged and become a night more blue than black, the stars not yet wakened from their slumber.
Rain spattered against his chest, thick and warm.
The woman looked at him and he looked back, trying not to blink. He wanted to reach out and touch her face, to memorize every line, the way her mouth quirked at the corners when she smiled, the way her pale skin flushed at the cheekbones, the way her eyebrows arched when she looked up at him.
Rain still pouring, soaking the front of his shirt. He scratched at his neck.
He couldn’t stay here, he knew that much. He also knew now what he should ask her. “Who are you?” he said. He moved a strand of grey hair away from his eyes, something warm and wet leaving a trail in the wake of his hand.
Blood.
He looked at his hand; his fingernails, his fingertips soaked red with blood. Both his mouths gaped open in shock as he held his bloodied hand before his eyes. His shirt, his breeches, were warm and sticky, clinging to his skin as he staggered forward.
He tried to breathe, but the cool air stung the lips of his lower mouth, no, not mouth, his throat was gaping open, he remembered now. He tried to close the wound with his free hand, his other still held before him, but still more blood gushed through his fingers as he fell to his knees in a sopping puddle of blood.
A shadow flitted in the greyness before him.
Who are you, he tried to ask, but only a squelching gasp spewed from the weeping hole in his neck.
Who are you? She had asked him, and now, as he fell face first into a warm pool of his own blood, he remembered the answer.
I am a dead man.
CHAPTER 15
Clerk Lovelin said nothing until the servant had closed the door on his way out. He was standing before the fireplace looking at the crests of the gods, the same place he had found Landros on their first meeting. It seemed strange to find the Clerk of all Katrinamal waiting for him. The fire blazed tonight and more candles had been brought into the solar, burning on tables and shelves, even on chairs, almost as though the Clerk himself had demons he wanted to keep out of shadowy corners.
“Captain.” The Clerk didn’t turn from the crests as he spoke. “I hear my condolences are needed.”
The fire crackled and the candles shifted in some unfelt breeze. The room was stiflingly hot, how could the Clerk bear to stand so close to the fire? Landros coughed, unsure what to say, a familiar enough occurrence when with the Clerk. “Thank you, Master.” He remained where he was, watching the Clerk watching the crests. He wanted to be away from this place, he had left the young guard Tiernan with the boy who had spoken to his mother before her death. She was asking for you, calling your name the boy had said. Landros swallowed away the distaste in his mouth.
“It would seem that death has taken a liking to you, my young Captain, to following you about like some obedient hound.”
Landros’s breath caught in his throat. Did the Clerk know about Feren? About the thing that possessed Feren? Should Landros confess? If there was anything to confess to. Or did the Clerk only mean the two deaths of his loved ones? He tried to keep his voice level, “It has been a difficult week, Master.”
And now the Clerk did turn, his black eyes shimmering in the light of the candles and the fire. “Difficult yes, I’m sure.” He looked Landros up and down. “But I’m glad to see you also found the time to visit the tailor and the barber.”
Landros glanced down at his polished boots and his new breeches, black and close fitting. “As you ordered, Master. All the men have new uniforms now. And I have them training every day with the sword.” And how they complained about that. He remembered Torra’s face smiling as always, “Why do we need to train with the sword to fight nothing but the wind and the berragulls?” Torra would be at the inn now, smiling at Elian in that over familiar way of his. Or would Elian be with her aged benefactor who couldn’t walk across a room? And did it even matter who Elian was with when his mother was dead and his dead friends talked to him from darkened corners?
“As I ordered.” The Clerk savoured the words like a delicate wine. “And would you do everything I ordered, I wonder?” Now the black eyes had finally turned to him, they fixed on him like a hawk’s on a suspicious skittering in the grass.
A test. Landros was beginning to think that near everything the Clerk said to him was a test of some sort, as though the Clerk was learning things about him that even Landros himself was unaware of. When the Clerk found the truths of his soul, would the gods discard him as readily as they had Dorian? Should the thought of being cast aside by the gods fill him with such fear? He knew the answer to the Clerk’s question then. “Of course, I’m here to serve you and the gods, Master.”
The Clerk smiled, the skin about his eyes of black clear and smooth. “Don’t be so hasty with your answers, Captain. Remember words are easy and quickly spoken. Orders followed,” another smile, a wave of a long-fingered hand through the
air, “or not followed, then the consequences can last the rest of our lives.” The Clerk picked up a candle from the mantelpiece and took it to the table stacked with books and papers and scrolls, pushed some papers aside to create room for the brass candle holder. “Or sometimes beyond that, Captain.” He took a seat and pulled a battered leather book to him, its yellowed pages curling with age. It sat unopened before him as the Clerk looked up at Landros. “Take your mother, Captain.” A white hand smoothed the cover of the book, the worn leather at odds with the Clerk’s own neat appearance. “And this boy you have with Tiernan waiting in my kitchens. I understand he was the last person to see her alive. Now, what if I were to order you not to speak to him, would you so quickly follow my orders then?”
Landros fought against every instinct in his body to meet the Clerk’s black eyes. Did the man have any emotions, any pity? “Ours is not to think, ours is to do,” the Clerk had said on their first meeting, but every time he spoke, every sentence the Clerk uttered almost seemed to be a challenge, a test to make Landros think. Landros clasped his hands behind his back, tried to keep the anger from his voice, “Ours is not to think, ours is to do, Clerk Lovelin.”
The Clerk smiled, his eyes fathomless wells of emptiness. “Indeed, ours is to do, Landros. I’m glad that you have been bearing my words in mind.” Clerk Lovelin rested his elbow on the arm of his chair and inspected a fingernail. “But this boy...Rion, I think his name is, after the fabled hunter of the Steppes?”
“I never caught his name, Master.” Landros was beginning to wonder if the Clerk was detaining him from some strange cruel delight in his grief. When he had been summoned it was because of some urgent need that couldn’t wait and now the Clerk sat in his chair and inspected fingernails as though they had all the time in the world.
“Yes, Rion,” Ricon Lovelin said as though Landros hadn’t said a word. “He bothers me. He was the last person to see your mother alive?” He looked at Landros from under arched eyebrows, and not receiving an answer, continued on, “Are we so sure that he didn’t kill your mother?”