Salt, Sand, and Blood

by MarQuese Liddle

  “I don’t believe that will be necessary,” a new voice sprung from the dark.

  “Alphonse,” the stout elder started, “I thought you said you were keeping watch over Angelo. How did you find us? I swore I closed the door—and where is your light?”

  “Oh, there was no need for that,” he said, cloaked in the curve of the fork leading from the trapdoor in the storeroom. Then he entered the cove, the speed and surefootedness of his approach causing Ogdon to notice that Thomas’s weapon hung harmlessly from his waist—that Alphonse’s mace was already engaged, its velvet head breaking bloodless the stout elder’s crown, his body crumbling suddenly, his brow and mouth gone flaccid. It was a soft sound, drown out by the cracking glass as the lantern struck the ground. Yet its yellow flame lingered, flickering as Elder Alphonse loomed over his brother to ensure that he was dead. His head twisted to face the squires. He said to them, pale and smiling, “That’s one problem solved. I hope that I don’t have many more. Such is hard labor for a man so old. Why don’t you two help me clean up this mess?”

  His voice echoed, as did the lapping of black waves and Jael’s sharp, shallow breaths. Neither squire answered. The elder pouted, said, “Must I spell it out? Strange. When Thomas came blubbering about you, I assumed you must be at least half-clever. Did you discover this all by luck? Or perhaps you’re only playing the dunce—yes, that’s it. I knew I was right about you.” He passed over his brother’s corpse so that the broken lantern burned gold behind him, casting him in shadow the length of the cove. “What say you, squire? May we come to an accord?”

  “No chance in Hell,” Jael spat. “The Cross is going to purge men like you from the church. You’ll be the second caught.”

  “What did you have in mind?” asked Ogdon, watching Leonhardt tense out of the corner of his eye.

  The elder smiled. “Oh, it’s your desire, truly. You could both die here, and of course your companions would have to follow, though it wouldn’t do for a whole house of honoured guests to disappear under the Father’s hospitality. But if it’s just one girl, why I dare say that Thomas could play our scapegoat. We’ll send the city out looking for him and an abducted squire. We even have a witness. You saw him run off with the girl gagged and bound.”

  I was right. Angelo must be involved…and who else?

  “You’ll have to kill us,” Jael replied. “Ogdon wouldn’t betray me. And besides, I already told—”

  “What do I get out of it?” Ogdon cut in. That sent Leonhardt shivering. With her injuries, Sylvertre doubted she could run, yet still he had to swallow his nerves. “What do I get if I agree to your scheme?”

  “Aside from living? Avarice is a sin, you know,” Alphonse chuckled at his own joke. “What is it that you want?”

  I want to know who you’re selling to, who’s pulling your strings. But the squire couldn’t think of a phrasing of his questions that wouldn’t soon as spoken give him away. He blamed Jael for this; every few seconds she would shift, her breathing would change, and her limbs would stiffen so that, without conscious attention, Ogdon’s eyes would pull sideways, and he’d jerk them back onto the threat ahead of him.

  The elder noticed, and at the same time, so did Jael notice the elder’s distraction. In that moment, she ducked low and burst forward faster than Sylvertre suspected she could—but slower than Alphonse’s arm. The velvet mace caught her abdomen, and she plunged to her knees, one sharp scream and a thousand shallow, agonized breaths.

  “Chain her,” Ogdon said, yet the elder only observed, his face a curious shadow. So the squire repeated himself, “Put her in the manacles before she tries to run again.” Still, the man ignored his command. Sylvertre stepped closer, deep into the murder’s shadow. “You asked me what I want, and I want her. It’s not like you’re planning to sell her, are you?”

  A great, bright grin shone amidst the pitch. “Sell her? Oh, no, the bishop would be against it. Wouldn’t be worth the return; she’s too old, and just looking at her, I think a boy would do better.” He reached down and filled his fist with her hair, faced away from Ogdon as he hauled Jael to her feet and toward the manacles. “She’s all yours, squire, though I beseech you, make it quick. Take too long and you’ll be missed by your captain. We don’t want to arm him with too many questions—and you, hold still!” he grunted, shoving Jael’s face against the rock wall while he hung his mace from his belt. He’d needed both hands to restrain a snapping, clawing Leonhardt.

  “She’s a fighter, isn’t she?” Ogdon asked, the soft din of drawing his sword from its scabbard drowned out by the lapping waves. He thrust the point into the elder’s back, heard the blood spatter from his lips, then the body collapsed and would’ve taken Sylvertre with it had he not let his sword fall with the corpse. He stood, dumb, and numb to the stabbing in his ankle while Jael clambered, desperate to put space between her and her dead assailant. In the flickering lantern light, her cheek gleamed scuffed and bloody.

  She was staring at him when he remembered it is his hand. He brought out Jael’s sword from beneath his cloak, held it out to her, spoke, “I suppose we’ll have to tell the captain about this.”

  Twenty-First Verse

  Adnihilo squinted over the red, dead earth so unlike Eemah’s golden sands, writhing and undulating. Mirages, he realized—tricks of the heat, of the light—yet still he struggled discerning truth from lies. He was the Traitor’s son, the harbinger, the fall of the Walls of Barzakh—the beginning and the end; though it never ended, the whispers in his ears: Ba’al then Lilum then Lilum and Ba’al again, so many times that Adnihilo decided it better to believe the apparitions of the malignant sun. Adam, however, had been taken in—chiefly by she who wore Jezebel’s skin. They road double on their camel, her body flush with his, his head resting against her breasts. Adnihilo—stuck with the bishop—sat envious as Lilum enveloped his friend in her arms.

  It began in the heart of ruined Iisah. The Temple of the Father: a part of the river set apart from the world; sandstone brick polished bright as amber; limestone columns, some cut in human form, others smooth with glyphs painted over painstaking reliefs. Five thousand years of tribal history chiseled into pillars, walls, and cyclopean arches. Adam and Adnihilo were to learn them all under the guidance of Lilum, beginning with the exodus and the Traitor’s raising of the Father’s prison—or was it the legate building the Walls of Barzakh, a bulwark against false gods and prophets? From the outset, the bishop and priestess told it differently, and the half-blood struggled making sense of out of their conflicting stories.

  Adnihilo’s father, who in Eemah they called the Old One, was once the great legate of the King’s deep legion—at least, he was before mixing his blood with a human witch. Perhaps it was this which turned him against his sovereign, if truly his coat had turned. Ba’al was not so sure, but it didn’t matter to Adnihilo. His father was dead, just as he’d always been—less than a memory—but to Adam the tale was a revelation. To him, the Father was the King that was his Lord God in Heaven, and his friend an unexpected saviour born of the demon during the first Purge of Babylon. Lilum had seen it all in prophecy, so she said, the messiah and his Messah companion—the lion and the lamb. That’s what she called the pastor’s son when she promised him the resurrection of David and Magdalynn and every faithful soul. “After we bring down the walls,” she never failed to mention.

  Her tongue was slippery as Ba’al’s. That’s how the witch’s son decided what not to trust—whenever her words matched the bishop’s. Since their departure from the temple in Iisah, such agreement occurred more often than not, save for talk of the Black Beast of Tsaazaar.

  “This too, I have seen,” promised the priestess those days spent learning Iisah’s history, “that the son must be blooded with the ichor of the Beast. Do not doubt this. We will not pass through the Tsaazaari wastes without meeting the Traitor’s hound.” It set them all on edge, her forewarning, resounding with the strength of religious certainty; yet even she seemed worri
ed when the first evening came and they were far away from the safety of her Father’s house. Then the second day came and went, and they—a little less afraid—passed through the night and into next morning without an attack. By the third eve of their journey, they felt as though they could finally relax. That’s when it appeared on the horizon to the west, a thin column of smoke from behind a dune in the distance.

  “Hold up,” the bishop hissed, and their camels trod to a halt. “Everyone, quiet. Looks like we’re not alone.”

  The priestess smirked. “Fire and fresh manna. Our oasis, no doubt.”

  “Maybe they’ll share their camp?” Adam added.

  Ba’al spat, “Or maybe they’ll slit our throats, or turn us in at Najmah Janoob. For all we know, there’s bounty on our heads. We’ll turn north until sundown and cut west at dawn. Hopefully they won’t spot our tracks in the morning—What are you doing?”

  Lilum spurred her camel toward the signs of civilization. “I’m going to our oasis. It is as I said. Our fates are foretold; there is nothing to fear.”

  The bishop did not agree, muttering curses as he and Adnihilo watched her and Adam climb the high dune, disappear behind it.

  “We better catch up,” said the half-blood.

  Interlude

  It was at the opposite base of the towering Tsaazaari mound that our audience first heard the profound voice of the Messianic orator. They listened tentatively, rapturously—split between marvel and disbelief as he, the Messiah truly—one Jordan, son of Joseph—spoke in bardic verse the first parable of his story to me and his three apostles. With a prayer to his Holy Patron, he began:

  “Lord of Lord and King of Kings, I beg your blessing of the Jasper Throne—Mine own—For I am Thine and You are We—made flesh—despite my humble beginnings. For whom could guess God of a whore-born bastard risen from within the Valley of Darkness? Yet one man did foolishly hearken his wife’s pleas—surely dishonesty—she promised he was God’s seed. He couldn’t be. Could I? One so distant from the high seat of Messai be anything more than salt of the earth? Awfully blessed, divinely cursed. To be birthed and forsaken at the stake for three days, waiting in torture and pain, begging eternal sleep, that the pagan river ‘d take me. And so seems it had. For I awoke on the bank of my watery tomb to mortal wounds, a buzzard’s feast, yet walking and breathing. Least was I to believe such a feat till the complete faith of others bore witness and testimony. So see them now, the apostles of He most high and I, His son, in the maw of the beast.”

  His verse completed, the gentle voice beckoned Ba’al and Adnihilo from behind the dune, “So, my furtive friends, what did you think of my rhyme?”

  “They’re speechless, it seems,” I replied when no answer came, “And I must say, I’m impressed as well. Never heard someone do so well on a first attempt.”

  “The perks of being the perfect man,” japed Jordan. “But enough of our sinful boasting, Kashim, we ought to greet our guests properly” He shouted over the mound like the blast of a trumpet. “Truly friends! Come, it’s safe! We have food and fire enough for everyone!”

  Coaxed by the Messiah, and the encouragement of their companions, the unbelievers approached with weapons in hand. We pretended not to see them and hoped they would forgive ours—for in the Tsaazaar, when the sun dips afar, you bare your arms or lose them. Fortunately for us, the skeptics were more concerned with our discrepant appearance than with sticks and knives.

  The introductions were Jordan’s, starting with his apostles: a Messah with the light-brown skin of the Nuw Gard peninsulas. He carried no weapons on him but a leather bound book and an iron pen like those of the Brothers Scribes. “This is Zachariah, son of Darin.” He moved on to the two Tsaazaari men, “Maqsood Saif Ullah and Ramses Rahir,” the former dark as night, the other tan as sandstone. Yet their garb was identical: turbans and linens and braided sandals. On their belts hung sword-sized daggers of horn and iron, in their grips, great forks for killing riverwyrms.

  It was then he introduced yours truly, the mad dog of the Tsaazaar, the Leviathan’s bard, thy prophet Kashim. And the half-blood stared, enthralled, like he’d seen my murky eyes before, or my gaunt, bronze face, or perhaps it was just my clothes. An odd wardrobe, I admit were my blood red loincloth and shawl and wicker sandals. Though, on second thought, it could have been the great winged sword of King Luther leaned on my shoulder, or the Gautaman long sabre lain across my lap. Whatever it was, he moved on as Jordan addressed himself.

  He was a tall man, a head taller than myself, olive skinned and muscled thick as his beard was as long as his hair—a fair mane down to his waist—an immaculate being, his only blemish the scar over his heart pierced by an Iisah spear. At that, the priestess stared with fear.

  It was not long after that the red Tsaazaari sun set fast over the horizon where our and the heathen men made motley companions around the fire. We told tales, listened together to the crackle of carapaces, scorpions sizzling on spits to be spread on hard bread with lime juice and curdled milk. A feast for kings in a castle of sand against the cold desert winds. We ate in silence, hollow cheeks and conspiring eyes staring across the fire until the Messah broke the peace.

  “You never finished telling us about your village,” he said. There wasn’t much else to tell, but he was curious. “What made you leave? How did you end up in the Tsaazaar?” It was a story he wanted, and the moon overhead shewn pale against the black like an eye of God. I settled closer to the flames, urged them listen closely.

  “In Umlomo Village, Hell was born from the sea. It came on black sails on the eastern tide in the evening in the guise of Gautaman slavers from which we knew of no salvation, only to run and hide and to weary our eyes watching the horizon. But all that watching left us blind; so on the night of my twentieth solstice, in the midst our ancestral worship, with the whole village night-blind in torchlight and gathered on the beach, I saw the ships birth themselves from the ocean blackness, and I smashed the conch that was to be their warning.

  “My kin scattered like flies as slavers poured onto the beach. Those scarred and squinting faces—they stole the able souls and put the young and the old to the sword, yet somehow I passed to the coast unseen. There an abandoned boat was waiting for me. I dragged it into the ocean and paddled through the dark. God knows what the slavers must have thought when they heard me shouting.

  “By morning I was lashed to the oars with the other chattel under the authority of our boarish taskmaster, Slave Driver Yin. Quickly, we learned to fear those fat, yellow cheeks and thin black eyes and his wisps of moustache that whipped when he grunted his native tongue right before flogging us. God bless that man for putting up with our weakness. He was given an impossible task, keeping the oars in time, and I lost count of how many leathers he wore out on our hides.

  “Yet we were ungrateful, pained and tired, and laggard worst of all. It could not have more than a month that we were moored to the oars when the man in front of me dared to stop. He could not go on, he cried. I watched Yin flog him until bones showed where there was skin just before. The whole time, the man pleaded for mercy, but never once did he reach for his oar. He died in front of me, and just I kept rowing, wondering why—why didn’t he save himself?

  “The next morning, I had my answer; and from then on I toiled hard from wake till slumber. My hands turned to blisters and my muscles so sore I truly thought they might rupture, but never again did I suffer the whip. I learned those wisps of mustache were nothing to fear, nor those beady slits that eyed my labor. Even the grunts became familiar.

  “‘Kyoken,’ Yin would chuckle as he passed me by, and every few days he would drop a piece of fruit or fish in my lap. That made the others bitter, of course, but their abuse held nothing to the sweet taste of food after months of gruel, and they would be sold or dead soon enough. The ship would anchor, and the crew would come down with chains and take the liveliest away; then we’d sail again, and after a while the hull was filled, and the cycle repeated�
��Only Yin and I always remained.

  “Then one day we anchored, and the crew came down and Yin with them and another man I had not seen before. His beard and eyebrows were a sliver-gray, the trim of his clothes gold, his hat and coat layers of orange and red, and he wore shiny new boots of burgundy leather with bright brass buckles. Their raised heels clacked on the floor as he and Yin approached me and unclasped my fetters. Even the stranger’s fingers were covered in colored jewels. Only his eyes were dark—hard as stone—he stared into my very bones and smiled.

  “That day I saw the sun for the first time in months as it set over the mountains of Gautama. I cried, and the crew laughed and led me ashore where a feast had been prepared in a tavern on the docks. I didn’t know what a damn of it was, but I cried again when they sat me at table and gave me a knife. That night, we ate and drank until we were sick as dogs.

  “When morning came, Yin brought me back to the oars, yet when I tried to take my place, I felt the flog on my back for the first time in ages. ‘Kyoken!’ the taskmaster grunted. I turned in shock to see him shaking his head. His eyes were crescents and his jowls grinning. He handed me the leather and left for the upper deck. I had become Slave Driver Kyoken, the mad dog. The flog was my badge of office. The oars, my domain. The slaves, my charge.

  “But things changed under the mad dog’s law. I had watched too many strong and defiant men bled to ribbons because of reliance on the flog. It was a waste, and besides, the leather was a precious gift I’d earned with my blood. They did not deserve it. No—my method was song and spirit. The chattel and I shared a common enough tongue that it did not take long before the oars plunged to the rhythm of songs promising freedom and bliss. Our speeds measured half again what they were under Yin.

  “Months more passed. It had been at least a year since the raid on Umlomo, and we were plundering the western coasts once more. Everyone I’d ever known had been killed or sold by then, and their ghosts visited me one night a storm had tossed us off course. They were vague and angry shades, their remains lost to the sea or buried in foreign lands. ‘Your soul will be forgotten,’ they sang, ‘a story never told. The traitor’s bones are forever cold in sands beneath the ocean.’