by Micah Yongo
“Same as yesterday,” Josef said. “He will be in there for an hour at least, alone, then he will go to sit with the old men by the city gates.”
“What do you think he is doing in there?”
Josef shrugged. “Whatever it is, he offers us now as good a chance as any.”
“As good a chance for what?”
Josef paused. He looked at Daneel a long time and then exhaled. “To do what I have been bid, brother… He is my decree.” He went back to looking at the house.
Daneel kept watching him.
“What?” Josef said.
Daneel was smiling. “You told me your decree.”
Josef shrugged. “Yes. Well. Like you said, you are my brother after all… and besides, I will need your help if I am to fulfil it here.” He looked at him again. “There can be no blood.”
“I thought all was to be done the same day, when the others get here.”
“All but this one.”
“Nothing was said of that.”
“Will you help, brother?”
Daneel looked from his brother back to the street. He shrugged. “I suppose there will be little else to do until the others arrive anyway.”
“Good. Come then.”
They crept along the road toward the cornerhouse. It was about the size of a stable-booth and joined to an overlapping terrace behind it. There was one window, a tiny muslin-draped portal without shutters.
Daneel slowed as he came to the door, back against the wall. He crab-stepped along its length as he glanced up to the flat-roofed porch above to make sure no one else was looking out. He could hear the scrape and shuffle of Tobiath’s movements within the cornerhouse as he approached the window and peered through the muslin. He could just make out Tobiath’s shape kneeling by the far wall in the gloom, his elbows propped on a ledge, head bowed, facing the wall. The man seemed to be writing.
Daneel dipped his head and climbed into the window, carefully squeezing through the tight fit. He rolled in shoulder first and slowly lowered his weight onto the dusty floor.
The chamber was dim. Two clay cups and a dish on the ledge by a tumble of scrolls. A lamp on a sill in the corner opposite with another pile of scrolls beside it. Tobiath remained oblivious, on his knees facing the wall, scribbling frantically.
Daneel rose and crept across the room. He could feel Josef beginning to scrape his way into the window at his back. Tobiath was murmuring to himself as he wrote. He stopped abruptly as Daneel approached and stood over him.
“I knew you would come eventually,” Tobiath said.
Daneel had been reaching toward the man’s throat but now froze.
“Yes,” Tobiath said. “Just as you did for Zaqeem… She will rest easy then, her secret safe.”
Daneel was about to ask what he meant when the man moved suddenly, leaping back, pushing with his feet from the wall to thrust back and try to shove Daneel over. Daneel saw it coming, rode the impact and let the man’s weight carry them to the ground. He got on top quickly, grabbed an arm by the wrist as the man scrambled, then wrenched it back, twisting hard. The man screamed as the bone crunched, then shot out his other arm. Only afterward would Daneel realize he’d thrown something. The wall beside them crackled like cooking fat, then erupted with hot wind and jagged rock as sparks flashed, knocking Daneel sideways off Tobiath.
He blacked out for a moment and when he came to, Tobiath was on top of him, trying to strangle him with his remaining healthy hand. Daneel reached up and fended off the grip easily as Josef came in and hauled the man up from behind and tossed him against the wall.
Josef struck Tobiath once, hammering into the side of Tobiath’s neck with the blade of his hand. The man sagged, dazed and choking, and slumped to the ground beside Daneel.
Daneel got on top and clasped him by the throat, then proceeded to do to Tobiath what Tobiath had tried to do to him just a moment before.
By the time Daneel loosened his grip he was breathing hard and sweating. Tobiath wasn’t breathing at all, his spittle-frothed lips open and still, his gaze frozen. Almost peaceful, Daneel thought. He passed his fingers over the man’s eyes and pressed the eyelids shut as Josef got up behind him.
“What was that?” Daneel said.
Josef had gone across the room and was examining the wall on the far side. There was a scorched patch of stone, and a small shallow pock where the fragments of rock had erupted from the wall.
Josef just shook his head, unable to answer, trying to rehearse it in his thoughts – the sound, the heat, the curious way the stone had come apart.
“I don’t know.”
Daneel climbed to his feet.
Josef turned to examine the scrolls on the sill.
“Whatever it was, it was loud,” Josef said. “We shouldn’t linger here.” He pulled a sack from his sleeve and tugged it open. He put the scrolls inside then turned to the ledge where Tobiath had been writing when they came in.
“What are you doing?” Daneel said.
Josef swept his hand across the ledge, pushing the contents – letters, scraps of vellum, scribbled parchment, etched shards of clay – into the sack. “We must move quickly.” He nodded at Tobiath’s body on the ground. “We are to bury him. He is not to be found.”
“Bury him? Where?”
“You will need to fetch the horse and cart. It will be easier to get him out of the city that way.”
“Out of the city? And you couldn’t have mentioned this before?”
“I hadn’t expected for there to be…” Josef gestured loosely at the small scorched crater on the wall. “Whatever that was. I thought we’d have time. The noise will have drawn others. The sooner you go and get the horse and cart…”
“Fine, fine, I’m going. But you should mark this, brother. The list of favours I’m owed…”
Josef nodded and waved him off.
Daneel unlatched the door and peered through the crack, then went out.
He didn’t see Josef go to the window and push the flimsy drape of muslin aside to watch him hurry across the street in the dark. Nor did he see him wait until Daneel had rounded the corner of the alley opposite, and then wait a while longer to be sure his brother hadn’t forgotten something or found some other reason to return.
Once he was sure, Josef turned back to the room and went straight to the second pile of scrolls on the sill in the corner. He rifled through them carefully, checking the names and titles stitched into the leather and goat hide coats of each. He found the one he was looking for and lifted it from the others. He held it to the lamplight by the sill to be sure as he read the name stitched along the cover.
“Magi Qoh’leth.”
Just as his decree required.
Josef carefully unrolled the scroll, then tightly rerolled it and tucked it into the sleeve inside his cloak, out of sight. Then he waited for his brother.
Eight
F A L L
Neythan felt like he was climbing from the belly of some vast beast as he looked up to the small circle of daylight above him. He could see sharp outcrops of pumice and flint overhead where the passage twisted up toward the exit.
“How’d you ever bring me down here?”
Caleb turned and looked down on him. “Your horse was very strong,” he said. “Amazing what can be done with a good horse and a length of rope.”
“And where is the horse now?”
“Well, a man must eat.”
Neythan grimaced as he watched the little man skip deftly from one foothold to the next. It turned out the stony hollow where Caleb had kept him all this time was joined to a series of underground caverns that led to the outside through a lengthy and convoluted tunnel. Caleb had warned he would need a week to regain his strength in readiness of it. After so long stuck in that hole, Neythan had had no intention of waiting. Now he was beginning to regret how quickly he’d spurned the other man’s advice. His joints ached. His muscles were stiff and burning.
“How much further?”
>
“Not long.”
Neythan sighed with the effort as he reached for another handhold. “You said that last time I asked.”
“Then it is truer now than it was then.”
The man wasn’t even out of breath.
The daylight thickened as they neared the top. Neythan could feel the freshness of the air on his skin. He squinted as he reached the surface and poked his head into the dawn. The sky was cold and pale. Rain stung icily on his head. He lifted his face to it, mouth open, and let the drops tingle coolly on his tongue.
The tunnel had led out onto a smooth flat of stone edged by woodland.
Caleb clambered out quickly and stood as Neythan swung his knee up onto the rim of the opening, before rolling himself clear and onto his back. He lay there like that for a few moments, exhausted and face up in the light rain and thin, frigid air, watching his breath plume out above him like steam. Caleb looked down on him chirpily.
“Here, let me give you a hand up,” he said, smiling.
Neythan waved him off and rolled onto one knee before forcing himself to his feet. He looked around at the skinny trees surrounding the plateau as the morning sun winked through their branches. And then turned again to the little man and waited for the explanation of how to find Arianna he’d promised before they began the climb.
“So.” Neythan jutted his chin out impatiently. “How?”
“It’s simple,” Caleb answered. “The waterfall.”
“The waterfall… where I last saw her?”
Caleb nodded.
Neythan just looked at him.
Caleb raised a palm to explain. “You see, I often hunt by the fall, Neythan, for rats and voles. It’s what I was doing when you and I met. You’d disturbed me as I was about to catch the fattest beaver a man ever saw. There’d have been meat enough for five men, he was so fat. You can imagine my annoyance.”
“Inconsiderate of me.”
“Well, I thought so. But let’s not dwell.”
“What has this to do with Arianna?”
“I was hunting there, three years ago perhaps. Again, it was winter. The rabbits grow scarce with the cold and so I go again to the fall for the rats. One night I see a man come that way.”
“What man?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. The point is not who he was but what he did.”
“And what was that?”
“The very thing this Arianna of yours did. He came to the waterfall, peered at it, then jumped through to the other side, and didn’t come out.”
Neythan thought about it. “You’re certain he didn’t come out.”
“I am.”
“How long did you wait?”
“I did better than wait. I followed. But when I went through I found nothing, just a sort of small empty space, a hollow behind the water.”
“He’d gone?”
“Just so.”
“Where?”
Caleb grinned. “I don’t know.”
Neythan was expecting him to say more. Caleb didn’t.
“You said you knew how to find her.”
“I said I could help.”
“What you’ve said is neither.”
“Neither? There is a door behind the waterfall, Neythan. Some sort of hidden opening.”
“And you saw this door?”
“I couldn’t find it then but there must be one. It’s the only explanation.”
“Even if there is, it was days ago. Am I to expect for her to be there now?”
“Of course not. But it’s a curious thing, is it not, a door behind a waterfall? Finding it will likely tell you how to find her, where to look. That’s more than a good Brother ought to hope for considering the time that has passed.”
In truth Caleb was right and Neythan knew it. This was the best he could have expected, and yet he’d hoped for more. He swallowed his annoyance and looked at the barren trees. He sighed.
“This fall, then…”
Caleb smiled. “Follow me.”
It took them most of the day to reach it. They traipsed down the soggy hill beyond the plateau, and into the grassless vale beneath. Neythan’s thighs, still thawing to life from the incense, burned with every pace. Noon came and passed, the occasional faraway caw of a crow the only sound.
Caleb grew tired of the quiet and began to talk, about everything, about nothing. He spoke about the five realms of the Sovereignty, the forested mountain lands of Calapaar to the west and north, the dry plains of Harán to the east, the fertile riverlands of Sumeria and Hardeny to the south, and the coastlands of Eram that lay beyond. He continued on like a scribe, telling Neythan about their customs and histories. Which Neythan didn’t mind. It passed the time.
The land turned greener as they neared the stream. They followed it through more scrubland until they stepped beyond the sparse shrubbery into a ravine lined by batches of tall thick oaks. The rocky basin was familiar, split by a gurgling brook flowing from a tall waterfall on the other side.
This was the place.
Neythan could see the spot where Arianna had clambered from her horse on the outcrop beside the river.
He walked slowly toward the brook and stepped up the ledges of slate and lichen to the top of the bank. The waterfall and brook were quieter than they’d been when he was last here.
“Do you see anything?” Caleb said as he struggled up behind him.
Neythan looked up at the sky. It was getting dark. He looked again at the shallow brook, and then back to the fall. There was a ledge of stone protruding from behind the cascade. The brook was a three-foot drop from where he stood on the outcrop. Caleb finally made it to the top and came alongside him.
“What is it?” the older man wondered.
“I don’t know.”
The ledge must have been hidden by the heavy rain last time. Arianna would have had to have known exactly where it was. Neythan looked around and measured his options.
“I suppose there’s only one way to find out.”
He jumped in.
Neythan gasped as he hit the water. It came to his thighs and quickly numbed his legs. He waded through stiffly, arms high and wide, until he reached the waterfall. He felt for the stone sill he’d seen from the outcrop, and then bounced up from the water to pull himself through the fall onto the ledge.
“What can you see?” Caleb shouted.
To which the answer would have been not much. The ledge was short, no more than a few feet. Water spat at Neythan’s head and nape as he stood up in the space behind the fall.
“Anything?” Caleb said.
“Why don’t you come down and tell me?”
The older man grumbled and proceeded to scramble down the outcrop. He got halfway down and then slipped, tumbling into the brook back first. Neythan turned, smiling as Caleb struggled to right himself in the water and slowly waded toward him.
“Here,” Neythan said. “Let me give you a hand.”
Caleb took his hand grumpily and let Neythan yank him up.
“How did you manage to get up here last time?”
Caleb ignored him and began to feel along the wall. “It must be here somewhere.”
“So you say, but I’ve been looking. I can find nothing.”
“There will be something.”
“As I said, the–”
“Ah.” Caleb pointed.
“What?”
“There… do you see?”
“Where?”
“There.”
Neythan crouched a little to bring his line of sight level with Caleb’s. “I don’t see anything.”
“Just… there.”
Neythan followed the other man’s gaze. Then, seeing, he cursed. “What is that?”
Nine
W A T C H E R
Neythan stared, dumbfounded, at the glowing fissure in the rock. Soft blue light seemed to be leaking out of a narrow cleft in the wall like dawn through a morning drape. He’d never seen anything like it.
“What by the gods is–”
He was leaning forward to touch it when the faint light blinked and then suddenly exploded. It was like lightning, a sustained surge of blue-white radiance that seemed to widen the cleft into a breach, peeling at the wall to part the rockface. The noise was deafening. Neythan felt the ground quaking as the light began to suck at the surroundings like a gale. Chunks of rock ripped away from the opening, yanked back into its shining vortex. Then everything began to collapse. Neythan watched in awe as trees, boulders, and even the water itself lifted from their places, snatched into the vortex whilst he stood there, somehow cocooned in stillness. He tried to catch sight of Caleb in the blur of flying dirt but the light was too bright, and growing brighter. Behind him the waterfall had disappeared and he could see the tall black oaks from the ravine’s edge being ripped from their roots. They popped free in the gale and hurled toward the gleaming breach, toward him.
Neythan dropped to one knee, lifting an arm to shield himself, eyes clamped shut.
Then everything stopped. The noise, the wind, the shuddering earth beneath him, all of it fell into abrupt silence, like speech stilled mid-sentence.
When Neythan opened his eyes he found himself standing alone, surrounded by an endless cloudless sky. Or at least that’s what it seemed to be. He couldn’t be sure. Stars spangled the expanse overhead but seemed to be swaying. The sight was so captivating it took a moment for him to realize the ground had become a metallic and silky plane, undulating slowly like a half-frozen sea. The ripples seemed to move across both it and the strange sky as one, as though they were somehow joined, their pulses spreading from some hidden point on the horizon. Neythan stood there, frozen, staring at the bizarre luminous vista all around him, trying to make sense of it.
“Your presence is welcome, Neythan.”
The woman’s half-whispered words echoed against each other, her voice like a chorus. Neythan turned around and when he saw her, almost forgot to breathe. She stood more than a full head and shoulders above him, dressed in white sheet-thin garment that began at her shoulders and swathed her body like bandages, spreading at her ankles to rest on the slowly moving floor. Her arms were poised slightly away from her body, sheathed in the same thin white fabric. Her eyes were golden and fluorescent, like jewels. Her hair, white and straight, swayed gently in the breeze. Neythan tried to speak but no words would come.