Salt, Sand, and Blood

by MarQuese Liddle

  The Crest, Adam noted as it expanded and contracted on Adnihilo’s neck, a white scar on bronze skin—three divine symbols: the serpent, the crown, and the holy throne. Ba’al had explained their meaning on the morning of his and Adnihilo’s fight. They were Rebirth, Dominion, and the Right to all Land touched by the light. They were older than Messaii cross, older even than the patriarchs of the Tsaazaar. And together, they were an omen of Armageddon.

  “‘It was God’s mark in the very beginning,’” the bishop told him, “‘and it shalt be his mark at the very end, when the Messiah comes to redeem his church which hath fallen under the spell of the false prophet.’”

  “The trumpets shalt blast and call up the dead, then every faithful soul will be like him. Resurrected, reborn in the image of God.” Adam remembered the verse as his father had taught him. He thought to himself, Resurrected… we’ll be together again.

  Then another voice spoke up from a reverie, not in words, but in grunts and heaves. Venicci’s voice. The fear of falling asleep tore through Adam’s body. He became suddenly aware of the weight of his eyelids—the ebb of his consciousness. With all his might, he fought back the nightmare which haunted him across the ocean and atop the mountain peak. He had killed the smuggler believing he could be free, but now it seemed to him that the demon was not a man. It was part of him, something within, Who I am, he feared becoming the very predator that had predated him. He thought of what he’d done to Magdalynn in that night terror and questioned, Which self is real, and which is the dream?

  Quietly, he set Magdalynn aside, beside Adnihilo as close as he could without risk of waking him. Whatever cold had come between him and his friend was not near enough that the half-blood would allow the pastor’s son to venture out into the squall alone, but he had no choice. There was no other place for him to go to keep her safe from him but to brave the snow and frost-fang winds. Except, maybe Ba’al can help, Adam concluded, crawling from beneath his canvas barrier to be bitten by the chill.

  He groped, blind in the white, unable to recall where he pitched the bishop’s tent. And it wasn’t long before his other senses left him. His touch went first from his hands and feet, then the smell and feeling from his nose; then finally it was his will which abandoned him, taking with it his memory and his reason, leaving only his guilt and fear. Tears froze on his cheeks. He tried to scream, but when he breathed the air, it numbed his lungs, and he choked and coughed till he was on his knees praying for mercy.

  “You are forgiven,” Ba’al voice sounded. Adam could just make out the bishop’s shape not far in front of him. “You carry many sins, yet the King shall always show mercy to those who come to him. But you must confess, and you must offer yourself willingly.”

  The pastor’s son struggled to his feet, the whole of him numb. “Murder. I killed a man out of revenge. I was convinced it was just. It was, but that’s not why I did it.”

  “Very good, Adam, but isn’t there something else you want to say? There is no shame—He is already aware. It is only for your sake.”

  “Lust,” he answered after a long pause. His teeth were chattering. He had to bite his tongue to hold them still. “I used to look at the whores with Adnihilo after we finished fighting behind Amsah’s in Babylon.”

  The bishop stepped closer, his figure distorted in the snow. “Is that all you wish to confess? Coveting women and killing a rapist slaver? Are you truly so clean?” He took another step and became a shadow in the snow, his amber eyes glowing, phosphorescent. “There is no hiding from Him, you know it. Confess your sins. Make the offering.”

  “I, I can’t.”

  “So you’re going to let yourself die out here instead? That was your plan, wasn’t it, if not to confess? Are you truly so selfish? What will happen to Magdalynn without you? What will become of Adnihilo? They need you, Adam. He needs you.”

  “But the dreams—”

  “Yes, yes. What of your dreams, Adam? This is your chance to ask for absolution.”

  And so the pastor’s son begged on his bloodless knees to be forgiven for the fantasies he harbored, for the demons he invited to reside in his heart. He had not realized it until he spoke the words aloud that his sins belonged to him, that he alone had power over them, and that they were his to offer to the Lord if he so wished to exchange them for merciful judgement come the end of days. “I am his lamb,” Adam said according to the bishop’s instructions, “My blood is his for the day of final judgement. It shalt fill the baptismal font. It shalt usher forth the one whom will stand for us at the end.”

  “Rise,” commanded Ba’al, and when the Messah rose, the veil of winter vanished. What he saw behind it belonged to no human; not his compound, amber eyes; nor his green, almost black, iridescent skin—like the carapace of a fly—nor his fingers like stingers, his hair like spines, the pungent odor which clung to him like death and fire and brimstone. Adam shuddered, he stumbled, but the demon bishop had him by the neck, the tips of its fingers pricking the Crest. And he could feel it bleeding, the heat leaving him in streams of opaque cloud.

  Then the pastor’s son woke inside his tent with Magdalynn cradled in his arms, flushed sick but breathing. He glanced to where Adnihilo was sitting cross-legged. His legs were still crossed, but the rest of him lay sideways, snoring softly into the morning. Adam couldn’t help but laugh. Amusement was all that was left to him now that the cold had gone along with his nightmares, his memories. He couldn’t recall when he’d fallen asleep nor what had led him to be afraid. And he didn’t care; they were only dreams.

  †††

  They broke camp at dawn with hope-weathered hearts. The storm had gone, and they could see the walls of Qi Shi Monastery a stone’s throw from where they departed. Adnihilo was the first to arrive. He’d known about the ancient abbey from tapestries in Eyebrows’s fighting school. It was older than the city below if the images were true. If they weren’t, at least the half-blood might get to see some new Gautaman boxing.

  Gazing upon the twin great gates, their chipped red paint and tarnished brass knobs, he waited for his companions to catch up with him, wishing Cain were still alive to see how far he’d come. He stood poised before a set of doors even larger than Eemah’s parish portal. And like the sacrifice, he stood fearless, eager to face whatever foe was to come. But none did. The walls were unmanned as far as the half-blood could tell. Even when he shouted and pounded on the monastery doors, no servant came, nor monk, nor sentry. Only his companions appeared from around the winding path.

  “They won’t open up,” Adnihilo told them as they put aside their packs.

  Ba’al ignored him, strangely vexed, and began hammering his clenched fist against the gate, screaming, “Open up! I know you know we’re out here!…fucking Gauts,” he murmured, pausing then pounding again. Still, no one answered, so louder the bishop cursed and battered the door till his white knuckles burst with blood. Then he turned away, red faced, and burrowed through his pack to retrieve the weapon he’d wielded against the golden-vested pirate. He knelt and ignited a stick of incense, rammed a paper cartridge into the muzzle, and held its wooden stock tight against his shoulder as he stuffed the incense deep into the breach. There was a quiet, searing sound, then fire and an explosion.

  The whole mountain seemed to shake in the echo and smoke. Adnihilo had heard the weapon twice before, but it was the first time he’d seen it deployed, and it terrified him. It was something like the wrath of God, like calling forth a bolt of lightning. There was only the noise and the instant destruction: a hole blown into the monastery door. He looked at the painted wooden splinters and envisioned what would’ve happened to a man. He remembered the pirate’s head—mist and fragments.

  Just then, an intact head poked over the wall, yellow and bald and wider eyed than any Gautaman the half-blood had seen thus far. A monk. He examined the strangers and the damage they’d done, then spoke a few words in his own tongue, looking as if they’d fed him a lemon. Someone on his side answered, t
hen his head disappeared. Adnihilo could hear their chatter and footsteps, yet the gates remained closed. The bishop started loading another cartridge.

  “God damn it, let us in, or I swear I’ll blow every last one of your Gaut heads into—”

  “A Messah priest, here?” came a stranger’s voice. The gate creaked open, and a man slipped out from between the doors. He wore the plain gray cottons of a Gautaman monk, but his was purely western blood—that of Nuw Gard. He reminded the half-blood of the Messaii people who lived in Eemah, at once out of place yet touched by the culture. Adnihilo wondered how long this man lived here, if his hair had grayed and his face wrinkled all on foreign soil, under a foreign sky. He continued with a tone of familiar authority, “No, you’re not a priest, you’re a bishop, aren’t you? What is it that could have brought His Grace all the way up here? You’re not looking for me, surely.”

  Ba’al spat, “Surely not. We’re here on private business, to see the master of the temple. But that’s not a question a layman would ask. You must be the missing pastor. The church assumed the pagans had killed you years ago.”

  “Mercy, Your Grace. I left of my own accord. My covenant is with the inner spirit now—I am a pupil of Gautama. I won’t ask for your forgiveness, just that you keep my presence secret.”

  “That depends. Will you let us in?” The bishop smiled.

  The apostate glowered, sullen. “That is not my decision, I’m afraid. We don’t typically allow travelers inside, and after the damages you’ve caused—”

  “Please,” begged Adam, lurching toward the man with Magdalynn in his arms, “she’s sick, and we’re out of food. We barely survived the storm last night. If you turn us away, we won’t even make it back down the mountain. She’ll die. Please.”

  Ba’al’s smile widened. “Well?” he asked.

  The apostate monk scrunched up his face, waging some internal war. It seemed to pain him, but eventually he gave in and agreed to vouch for them under the promise that no more damage would be done. “I’ll take you to the abbot. He must approve all arrivals. If he approves, you can shelter here a day or so. I can make no further promise than that. Now, if you would be so good as to relinquish your arms. There are no weapons allowed in the monastery outside the training grounds.”

  Reluctantly they agreed, though Adnihilo was happy to see the bishop separated from his infernal engine of thunder and death. Unarmed, they were equals, and the half-blood suspected that his strength might be greater—his only withholding being that solemn scene upon the ship, the piles of dead Gautamans unexplained. But he’d have to ponder that another day. The gates were opening, and waiting for them were eight gray-robed monks and a tarnished bronze statue of their founder after whom the city and country were both named—Gautama—only the monastery’s rendering was different than the fat, happy statues Adnihilo had seen. It was almost inhuman, its four arms and belly so thin its spine could be seen at the front of its abdomen. It sat cross-legged, elevated on a pedestal of glossy black stone, each hand in a different pose. One of them was an open palm. It had a leaden slug embedded at its center.

  “Now then,” said the Messah monk, “we welcome you to Qi Shi Monastery. I am Brother William, and these are my fellow junior monks. They will accompany us to the Sutra Chamber to ensure no one strays. So please, follow closely. While we wish you no harm, my brothers have been trained not to hesitate.” Indeed, the eight monks eyed every step they made, waiting, watching for a mistake, a misstep, a justification to hurl the strangers out the ancient red gates. But Adnihilo was not afraid. He eyed them right back, figuring which in a fight he thought he could best. None of them looked half as tough as Eyebrows, and he was tempted to start a bout with one just to test his strength. He wanted to know for certain how much farther he’d come since his final lesson with Cain outside Amsah’s place. The notion put a grin on his face, a grin Brother William must have seen. He spoke directly to half-blood, saying. “If, however, it is a fight you want, you’d be best off waiting until we’ve reached the Sutra Chamber. It is the abbot’s habit to accept outside challenges, and he’ll provide a more worthy opponent than anyone else here.”

  “What about Mags?” asked Adam as they entered the ruinous maze, like a shard of city from another age: open sky between sweeping tile overhangs, walls of wood-rot with rammed earth behind, and ground stones taken from the bed of a river, perfectly fitted together and worn over time by a thousand-thousand footfalls and rains and snows. Yet, as they walked, they saw not a trace of dirt nor overgrowth—only footprints in the rime on the stones.

  Brother William answered without slowing, “You mean the girl? That, too, is to be determined by the abbot, though I think it likely he’ll let you stay. He was delighted when last we boarded a visitor.”

  “Who was he? The last visitor, I mean?” inquired Adnihilo.

  They took several sharp turns as their guide considered his answer, passing near three dozen chambers filled with oddities beyond imagining. The half-blood glanced a few like the room with great craters in its floor from the ritual stomping of monks or the chamber where they rang gongs with absurdly long hammers. And there were more: a long hall with blood speckled bags suspended at head height, and what looked like a torture chambers—two huge incense sticks set to fit a man’s head between, a series of mirrors placed to confuse and disorient, and worst was the room which opened to the well. There, men carried buckets with daggers strapped under their arms so that the slightest shrug of weakness would be punished.

  Then suddenly, their guide stopped and turned. They stood on the threshold of the inner most chamber. Brother William spoke, his voice tempered, “The last visitor? That depends of when you ask. I myself was a very different man when I arrived here, blind and arrogant. The man you ask of…he came to us a wild dog, but under the abbot he became his own man. That was almost two years ago. He left us last winter thaw. He never gave a reason for leaving, and the abbot has forbidden us to ask. It’s led to rumors, naturally. Some of the juniors believe the stranger had reached enlightenment.”

  “Enlightenment?” Adam began, but the monk waved away his question.

  “I have given you all the answers I can give,” he said, “We have reached the Sutra Chamber.” He fell to both knees and bowed before the door—ancient bronze as green as jade. “The abbot is within, but we cannot interrupt him. Please, bow with me until the way is—”

  Adnihilo marched aside the monk and grabbed for the door handle. It was a ring bigger than his head, ill fit for human hands, ribbed and spined, and hanging from the cast-bronze face of a demon. Around such a thing, his fingers closed and squeezed ever tighter, never letting go even as he recoiled in pain. The door swung open. Adam and William and Ba’al all called his name, but Adnihilo rushed forward. He had to move before his courage waned—before his conscience became aware of the danger.

  And so he entered the dark and ancient hall. Inside was long and tall and narrow; the only lights were candles, one in front of each of the twenty elder monks. They lined either end of the stale, empty chamber, taking turns repeating their sutras. The very air quivered as each member spoke—like a mirage in the desert, only Adnihilo could feel it shake the courage from his bones. Yet he could not stop watching those parchment-thin monks in their ragged clothes chant and hum their mysterious tongue—until he noticed one man seated alone at the end of the hall—a Gautaman, bald and in gray like all the others, yet younger and stronger. He wore his robe tied off at the waist, exposing a body stripped of excess. Every inch of skin was striated by the fibers underneath—every blood vessel visible.

  The abbot’s eyes flashed open, and at once the sutras ceased. He said something in Gautaman, smiling and staring at the half-blood. Brother William answered. Adnihilo understood none of it, annoyed that they might be mocking him right in front of his face. “What did he say?” spat the half-blood. But no one listened. No one cared to reply, they just carried on their conversation, the monk and the abbot, until Adnihilo
cried out again, louder this time, glaring into the abbot’s mocking, taunting eyes. “Stop talking and fight me!” he said, taking the stance that Eyebrows had taught him. “I’ll break that smile on your face.”

  The abbot kept on grinning, yet now Adnihilo could see that there was no insult in it—only excitement—inciting fear in the witch’s son as the young master of Qi Shi Monastery dismissed twenty elders with a flick of his wrist. They scattered like mice while he sat alone, monumental at the end of the thirty-fifth chamber. When he spoke again, Brother William translated, “You have come wanting much of me. You ask for refuge, for treatment of the girl, to see the master. You foreigners are greedy, and arrogant, and ambitious. I should send you back down the mountain from where you came. Instead, I am going to return your weapons, because I have something I want from you.” The abbot bounded effortlessly to his feet, then he reached with his toes and tossed a pole from the floor into the palm of his hand. A staff, the half-blood recognized—reddened iron, the ends capped in brass.

  “What do you want?” asked Adnihilo, his voice wavering. Brother William translated, and the young master leapt twenty paces to the center of the chamber. He landed weightlessly, a smirk on his face.

  “I want to see if you can put a single scratch on my body.”

  One of the junior monks delivered Adnihilo’s sabre. He took it, never diverting his eyes from the opponent before him. A lesson from Eyebrows. From Cain, he recalled the serpentine steps: slithering, swift, and low. Covering high, he closed the distance in an instant and slashed tight for the abbot’s side. But before his eyes, his opponent vanished. The cut struck an upright iron staff as the abbot hung parallel, kicking sideways for the half-blood’s face. Contact. Adnihilo never saw the attack, only felt it crash like a hammer on a lantern. The lights went out, then he woke a moment later on a bed of stone. His head still hammering, his vision obscure, he struggled to stand as he heard his sabre clatter before his feet—then Gautaman words.