The poetry was a confusing mess, sometimes overwritten in new colors: epiphanic prophecies of insurrection layered coyly over heart-ripping threnodies to a peerless intimacy. Everything was honey and fire and nails raking flesh, and beneath it all, yawning in the negative space, the depthless ache of abandonment.
I approached the bed at the room’s center and fell onto it, bunching the musty sheets between my fingers and giving in to a wracking paroxysm of sobs. The subtle undercurrent of despair that had haunted me every day since I had left him became a sharp, savage need for nonexistence.
Throw stones, he had said. That had been the point of it all. Once I had made my mark at the Temple I was to reveal myself, sacrifice myself on the altar of change. Instead, I had grown comfortable. I had loved. I had played the Betrayer’s part.
We no longer name the god of law and light. He abandoned his partner Ru, snuffed his honor in the honeyed quicksand of the Whore’s lust, and through their sin the world was born. We were forbidden to even speak our creators’ names, yet we could never be free of them. Again and again we acted out small plays of their betrayal, again and again the weakness of the human body ripped us away from the dignity of divine reason.
I, a Seeress, was meant to be an example for weaker women. But this was proof that I was no kind of woman at all. Worse was the realization that wrapped around my heart like a thorned vine: his spell had been crafted from the very beginning to force my hand. Tuo had predicted my betrayal before I had even made the promise.
~ ~ ~
At the Temple an hour before sunrise I felt Tuo’s spell fade; the bindings beneath my robe loosened and my center of gravity shifted subtly. I was so accustomed to the transition that my stride did not even falter on the way back to my chamber. There in the dim light of my sputtering bedside lamp I stripped naked, then pulled on a rough sleeping gown, slid my feet into slippers. Drying my palms on the hemp fabric of the gown, I left my room and made my way down the hall to the High Seeress’s suite.
High Seeress Tash Neru needed no magic to make her female, but she was as tall as I, and broader through the shoulders. Her silver hair had only a few streaks of black left in its under-layers, and her mouth was creased with radial wrinkles from a bad habit of lip-pursing. Between her brows, set in moonsilver, flesh, and bone, gleamed the magnificent indigo tearstone that served as the badge of her rank. Her expression when she answered my knock was fast on its way toward irritation.
“Jal,” she said in her brittle voice, addressing me by my family name out of respect for my position as Secondary. It was not, of course, my true family name. “What brings you to me at this hour?”
I found that I was rooted to the spot and could not answer her question. High Seeress Tash had not always been kind to me, but she had been fair, and the challenge of pleasing her had been a large factor in my rapid rise through the Temple ranks.
“I—must disclose something,” I faltered.
She blew an annoyed burst of air between her withered lips, then stepped back into her chamber with a curt beckoning gesture.
“I had best do this outside in the hall,” I said, and then pulled my gown off over my head.
“Have you lost your—” She stopped abruptly as I tossed the garment aside onto the stone floor. Her every muscle went rigid with shock. For a moment we two stood in silence, she still in her robes of office, I naked as a babe. I saw something like pain in her eyes before she closed them, inhaling through pinched nostrils.
“I am sorry,” I said, “for my dishonesty.”
At that her eyes flew open, now as flat as onyx tesserae. “You are sorry,” she repeated. “You are sorry, Jal En. Which of course is not your name.”
“It has been for seventeen years.”
“And before?”
“As far as my mother knows, her son drowned at eighteen. I would prefer she continue to think so.”
“Put your damned gown back on, boy. This is a Temple of Ru, not a hob-house.”
I did as she asked, feeling a shiver of hope at the brusqueness of her tone. It was the manner she used with dull initiates and recalcitrant cats, not criminals bound for the gallows. The familiarity of it made my eyes burn.
“My name may be a lie,” I said, “but my skills are not.” I struggled for composure, but the tears slipped past my lashes, hot on my cheeks. “Everyone at the Temple has seen them, including you, High Seeress.”
That look of pain flickered over her face again, and she stepped forward. She laid a soft hand on my cheek. “You really are a boy, aren’t you,” she said in a tender tone I had never heard her use. “And I an old fool for not having guessed. Am I the last to know?”
“The first,” I said. And instantly knew it for a mistake.
Her fingertips, wet with tears, touched my forehead, and she murmured two Kyrethian words that blew out my consciousness like a candle.
~ ~ ~
The Haze Precinct is bordered on the north and west by the city wall, and by canals on the south and east. The jail known as Har Pesh cowers against the northwest corner as though it expects a beating. I use the word “jail” only because there is no more accurate translation. Though this is fiendishly difficult for outsiders to understand, the Empire of Ru has no organized justice system. Har Pesh is simply a holding facility where interrogations are conducted: by private citizens, businesses, or the Temple as often as by the government. Prisoners rarely stay for more than a day or two; by that point they either satisfy their interrogators and are released, or damn themselves and are led to the public gallows next door.
It was in this miserable place that High Seeress Tash released me from the spell she had cast upon me. I returned to consciousness to find myself lying at the bottom of an oubliette, smelling stale urine and staring up through a rectangular grating at two faces peering down from about thrice my height. It was difficult to tell who they were, as the light was scant and largely behind them. I was naked but for the chain harness that had been used to lower me; the aches in my body suggested I had not been lowered particularly gently.
“Good evening,” came Tash’s voice.
“I shall have to take your word for it.”
“I need to know how you’ve managed this deception, and how far the secret has spread. Lam Neiu claims not to have known, which is odd—are not the two of you lovers?”
“She thought I was a woman,” I said firmly. “I was under a spell that turned me female during the night, and I never let her see me during the day.”
“What I don’t understand is how you could have cast an illusion powerful enough to withstand—that level of scrutiny.”
“It was not an illusion. It was a shape change.”
I did not have to see her face to understand her silence. In all of recorded history, only three High Seeresses had ever acquired enough power to cast such a spell, and never for more than an hour. Even young goblins could not change their shape for the entirety of a night, which was why so many humans had mistaken Tuo for one of their own during his nights writing poetry at the Silver Fish.
“High Seeress,” I said. “Let me go. Whatever this brings, let it be. Are change and chaos not sacred?”
“Faith must be balanced with practicality. If you walk about as a man, casting spells, people will go mad. Someone will murder you.”
“But by then the truth will be known, the change set in motion.”
“I have no interest in truth, cast into the dirt for boys and beggars to feed on. Knowledge must be protected by those who know how best to use it.”
“You said you spoke with Neiu.” As the words left me, a cold stone settled into the pit of my stomach. “You interrogated her? Is she alive?”
“She is standing right here.” She gestured to the figure next to her.
“Neiu! Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” came her voice, flat and stiff. “But I don’t believe any of this. You’re a woman, I know you are. You’re sowing chaos, and I can appreciate tha
t. But she’ll kill you, En. Tell her. Let her in on whatever it is you’re doing.”
“I was born male, Neiu. I’m sorry. I ran away from the saltworks when I was eighteen.”
After a moment’s silence, she spoke again, softly. “High Seeress, can I speak with En alone?”
“As you wish. Find out what you can.”
I heard footsteps above me, and the closing of a door. Neiu fell to her knees and wrapped her hands around the bars of the grate. “I don’t care if you were born male,” she hissed. “You’re a woman now, and I love you. Don’t throw your life away. If you can change so completely, again and again, who is to say who you really are?”
I am, I thought, but did not say.
“Tell her you were born a woman, and you lied to test her faith. She would respect that.”
These were the words she spoke, but the words I heard were, I so badly want you to be a woman that I will lie to myself, and to everyone else. Throw away half of yourself, and I will stand by you.
“I made a promise,” I said, lowering my eyes to the darkness inside the pit. “I promised I would throw a stone into the lake.”
“You’re throwing your stone at the gallows! No one will even know why!”
“I made a promise,” I repeated stubbornly.
“To whom?” she asked me. “Who is worth dying for? And where is she now, while I plead for your life?”
I would not say his name, not here in this pit. “I do this for the glory of our Goddess.”
“You ungrateful hob!” she spat, clambering to her feet. “Rot, then! See if I mourn for you! I’ll laugh while you swing from the rope!” She turned and dashed out of view; I heard her footfalls and the slam of a heavy door. And then I was alone with my thoughts in the fetid darkness.
~ ~ ~
“—not possible,” were the next words I heard as the door opened above me. The voice was female, middle-aged, unfamiliar. “The walls can’t be climbed.”
“Tell us how it was done.” This voice was more familiar: High Seeress Tash, teeth gritted with anger. “Tell us or by the Goddess, I will drop you down the hole without the chain.”
A silence, and then the sharp sound of a hand striking flesh. More silence.
“Do it,” said Tash. A pair of hands began to lift the grate aside; there was a great sound of scuffling and struggling but no words.
“Who’s there?” I called. “Neiu?”
The silence that descended from above was suffocating. Then two words were spoken quietly by a third voice, soft but perhaps male: “Jal En.”
“Yes?” I said. “What is happening?”
Tash and the second woman—Har Pesh security staff of some kind—began to talk at once in breathless, rapid tones. Then Tash called down to me, her voice teetering hysterically. “How are you doing this?”
“Doing what?” I called up.
As if in answer, the grate was pulled aside, and a naked man with long unbound hair plummeted down nearly in free-fall, the chain attached to his harness given very little check by the winch above. When he landed face-first and the chain went slack, the hook slipped free, and the chain was wound up again. I moved to him in concern, turning him over and stroking the hair away from his face.
My own face looked back at me, mouth swelling and smeared with blood. Gooseflesh rose on my arms, and I scrambled backward like a crab until I hit the wall. No human alive looked so much like me.
“Tuo?” I whispered.
“No,” the man said. He rolled to his side, leaning on his elbow, and spat blood. “I am Jal En.” Something was wrong with those eyes, something subtle. I had never noticed anything amiss in Tuo’s human forms; I was now less certain that this was he.
“What are you doing here?” I asked the creature.
“Having a bit of fun,” it whispered, and gave me a terrifying, red-toothed smile.
I looked up and found Tash and the other woman gazing down. Tash knelt with the grate in her hands but did not replace it.
“What is happening?” she called down. “Explain this!”
The goblin next to me sat bolt upright, eyes glittering feverishly. “A goblin!” it cried. “There is a goblin down here! It has taken my shape!”
Suppressing a startled laugh, I started to protest but then realized that would be idiotic. Instead, I sat in the same pose as the goblin and said, “There is a goblin down here! It has taken my shape!”
Then both of us began to laugh.
Tash backed away from the grate. “Well,” she said to the other woman. “This is unusual to say the least. But Children of Ru cannot hold a human shape for very long. We will wait. Either the Child will revert to form or it will give up the game near sunrise.”
“I struck a goblin. . .” the other woman said in a quavering voice.
“Perhaps not,” said Tash. “It may be that the first Jal En was the Child, trying to destroy Jal’s reputation. There are stories that Jal angered a powerful Child years ago. This may all be some elaborate revenge.”
“But we know one of them is a goblin! Isn’t it blasphemy to keep it here?”
“Under the circumstances, temporarily detaining one mischievous Child of Ru will certainly be understood.”
~ ~ ~
The trouble was, the Children had only just begun their game. Soon another Jal En was found at the Silver Fish, then a fourth at the Temple. Then three more Jal Ens marched arm-in-arm to Har Pesh, singing, and turned themselves in. By midnight the seven of us were huddled together at the bottom of the oubliette, all appearing equally bewildered.
With each passing hour the voices above my oubliette grew sharper, more tremulous, and once as the door opened I thought I heard the shouts of a crowd outside. Each time the jailor and Tash left, I tried to interrogate the goblins, but none of them would speak to me. Each time the pair returned, I tried to ask what was happening outside, but I was drowned out by the same questions from six other prisoners, and Tash and the jailor ignored all of us.
Not long after the Mayor’s clock tolled a quarter to one, the two burst in arguing feverishly as they lowered an eighth Jal En down the oubliette.
“Nearly a hundred taxi boys are at the Starlight Gate,” Tash was saying, “and they’re threatening to storm the Temple if we don’t free the Children. Word is starting to reach the stations here.”
Jal En number eight was lowered gently, as numbers three through seven had been, and he looked around in well-feigned fear and confusion as the chain with the hook was retracted.
“Let’s just free them all,” said the jailor.
“One of them is guilty of a capital crime. The rest are perfectly capable of escaping on their own. I’ll be back in the morning.”
“You can’t leave me here alone!” said the jailor. “I don’t know the first thing about goblins!”
“As I said, the taxi boys’ revolt is spreading. If I wait much longer to cross the Lunar Canal, I’m afraid I’ll have to swim. Just stay inside the building. Don’t show your face outside; it’s better if the zealots don’t connect you with this.”
“I’m letting them go. I’m letting them all go!”
“Stop it. Listen to me. The Children of Ru can climb walls, walk on ceilings. They are down there because they choose to be. Relax, wait it out, and execute whichever one is left in the morning.”
The grate shuddered back into place, and they left us. Jal En number eight found an unoccupied portion of the floor to cower in. “Please,” he said. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“Why do you keep up the pretense when no one is here?” said the second, the one with the bloody mouth. For a moment I thought they were on the verge of breaking ranks, but then I realized the injured one was playing my part.
“It’s a good question, actually,” said a third, taking up the game. “Why would all of you do this for me? What is the point?”
I looked between the eight of them. “Is one of you Tuo?”
That silenced them. They all turned to
look at me. Tense, still, waiting. For what?
“Tuo,” I said. “Is he here?”
“Do you think he would try to save you?” said the one with the bloody mouth, its tone contemptuous. “Do you think one brief human life matters so much?”
“Mine could have,” I said. “But now they plan to execute me before anyone knows what happened. Years of planning, pinched before it could bloom. Tuo would not want that.”
The one who had just questioned me let out a shuddering exhale, slumping as though exhausted. Its form melted like warm wax, and suddenly an unfamiliar slate-gray goblin sat in the man’s place.
I’m sorry, it said in my mind. Goblins did not have proper speech apparatus, but could touch another’s thoughts as casually as a human might touch a shoulder. The pain made it harder. I can hold no longer.
“It’s all right,” I said. “You should go. I never meant for you to help me, much less get hurt.”
I did it for him, not for you. In my mind, the creature’s contempt was even more palpable, but something in me sang like a skylark.
“For Tuo?” I cried. “Where is he?”
But the goblin wanted no more of me. It moved up the wall like water flowing in reverse, and apparently decided that lifting the heavy grate was more difficult than reshaping its body to ooze between the bars.
I looked at the remaining copies of me, all imperfect in different ways. “You should all go,” I said. “You heard the High Seeress. She’s going to hold out until morning.”
“But I wonder,” one of them mused, “what state the city will be in by then?”
~ ~ ~
By the time the clock tolled three, four more of my cellmates had lost their shapes and fled. One was nearly as dark as Tuo, dark enough to make my heart skip, but its form was stockier, its tail shorter. None of them so much as glanced back at me as they climbed toward the light.
Three remained; they must have all been goblins of considerable age and experience to have held a form for more than four hours. I refused to dismiss the possibility that one of them might be Tuo, and I looked between them, trying to find some sign. But they had all copied me equally inexpertly. I was studying each of them once again when the door above opened loudly, and the jailor’s footsteps thudded toward the grate.
The Best of Beneath Ceaseless Skies Online Magazine, Year Eight Page 17