Salt, Sand, and Blood

by MarQuese Liddle

  Twenty-Fifth Verse

  There, on the horizon, rose cyclopean blocks of lustrous black stone out of the golden sands of the motherland. Eemah and the Walls of Barzakh. Never before had they felt so close yet just beyond the reach of The Ashen Maid. She was captain Sadaf’s fastest vessel, named for King Solomon’s Hibernis bride, Princess Yuria, who died not a year into her marriage. There was no truer tragedy, according to the crew; in her honour, the ship had been built with a hull of whitewood and outfitted with oars like the slave vessels of the north—for this, Adnihilo was thankful.

  The half-blood’s body had withered since Gautama, and wandering starved through the desert had only made that worse. So when the foul winds started not a day into their voyage, he found himself overjoyed that Ba’al volunteered him and Adam for the oars. Morning until midday, thighs and back and blistered hands burned, but it was worth it to feel the return of his strength. And if it sped along their journey, all the more reason to celebrate come supper: dried beef and salt fish, hard bread and hard cheese, and a cup of lime grog—sometimes two if Adam was fasting. The Messah had taken to the practice every odd day of the voyage. When Adnihilo asked why, he’d replied, “I don’t know it’s true, what we’ve been told about where we’re going. But if it is, this is the least repentance I can do for abandoning my father…and for whatever other sins are lingering in my heart.” When the half-blood pressed on what that meant, the pastor’s son couldn’t tell him.

  Something to do with Magdalynn, he decided, not that it mattered to him—he was happy for the second cup of watery rum. Without it, he’d not the courage to visit Lilum’s room come the hours of the evening. It was one thing to want a woman from afar, and another to be invited into her bed. Their first night aboard The Ashen Maid, she’d taken him aside and whispered of the different ways one can make a man—by blooding or by Moontide. He recognized the former at once, the ritual murder which had stood between him and becoming a sacrifice. Of the latter he knew naught, but the way she rasped the name told him all he needed to know. Then she sent him away to return on the morrow.

  Adnihilo lay awake in his hammock the whole of that night, every nerve excited. Sunrise came before the first wink of sleep, followed by Ba’al informing the pastor’s son and half-blood that they’d been volunteered to man the oars. The first day must have been torture, Adnihilo surmised by the anguish on Adam’s face. He couldn’t feel it himself. Lilum’s offer had numbed his exhaustion and pain, sniped midflight any thought that strayed. Not until supper did he finally feel tired enough to rest. He was sat on the bench, bread and beef in hand, when sleep hit him like a dagger in the back. He slumped dead on the table and woke again in Eemah, a child. Cain stood before him, a giant wielding a strange, bonze blade. Adnihilo tried but failed to mimic his movements, then his mother behind him would bare her disapproval, a glare hard and pale as salt and consuming as fire. Inside, the boy cried—outward, he tried again, failed, and now it was Jezebel scowling at him. “Kill the boy,” she uttered.

  The giant Cain frowned, lifted his sword, and said, “You are yet unblooded.”

  Frightened, Adnihilo turned to Jezebel for help but found that she was Lilum now. “Where is your sword?” asked the priestess, disgusted.

  The boy’s mouth went dry. His father’s sword would not belong to the unblooded, yet without it, how was he to shed blood?

  Cain’s voice boomed in answer. “Kill the boy,” he said, cleaving dream-Adnihilo’s neck down to his navel.

  The half-blood awakened shaking, his face dripping with grog he’d spilled in his sleep. Sadaf’s men were laughing. Adam asked if everything was alright, and Adnihilo shook him off, shoved beef and bread into his mouth, then fled to his hammock. It was there he slept for the next five nights, too afraid to even look in the direction of Lilum’s cabin. He didn’t deserve her, this woman who bore Jezebel’s form. And even if he claimed worth equal to Cain, what did he know of lying with a woman? So for two more nights he hid in fear, but come the third morning, a golden sliver appeared to the naked eye on the horizon. This evening would be their last aboard The Ashen Maid.

  The working hours flew like sweet winds against Adnihilo’s sail. It was his own doing. He’d withdrawn into himself, his practiced reflexes operating by themselves while his mind wandered. It wouldn’t be so bad, he thought, if I could just work for Sadaf and oar forever. But the spirits of Cain and Jezebel haunted him, their faces glowering in this waking dream. He wished he could forget, yet instead, he remembered the song of the Mad Dog and the purpose born from his horrible revenge. Adnihilo’s eyes opened. He saw himself and for the first time became aware of the spirit inside—not the dream images, but that same will that had wrought destruction to Umlomo Village: The Spirit of Vengeance. All at once, his dream made sense—he was berating himself for his cowardice. How could he forget his pain and anger and the life stolen from him—worse, how could he want to forget?

  The brand burned at his neck. It’d been so long, he’d forgotten that too, but now he remembered. Now it all made sense to him, Ba’al’s story, and Lilum’s. He was to become an instrument of his father’s plans, to carry the sword of the Old One, the legate. To this end, he must take the first step. “Kill the boy,” he whispered aloud every stroke of the oars till his hours were done.

  That evening, he stood before the priestess’s door, his brand burning like Hell, his head swimming with grog, fear, and abandon. He knocked, and inside a voice answered. “Come in,” she said, and Adnihilo entered. It was a simple room: a desk, a chair, a mattress, and oil lamps in the corners glowing a soft yellow. She was seated on the bed leaned back on her elbows, her robes laid flush with the contours underneath. Her deep, dark eyes stared bored toward the wall until the door creaked shut behind the half-blood. Her lips curled, and with a sidelong glance she unsettled him. “I knew you’d come tonight. I could feel it under my skin like my blood was on fire.”

  Adnihilo stood, silent.

  “Something wrong?” she hummed then jabbed at him, “You’re not frightened, are you?”

  “No,” he lied, forcing his feet one step at a time till he stood beside her. She rose from the bed, looked him in the eye—the look itself a question that paralyzed. He thought again and felt her presence watching him. Then at last he answered, “I’m terrified.”

  †

  “You’re sure you want Sadaf to leave you here?” asked the Mephistine privateer, looking over the parchment scrolls detailing his payment. “There won’t be another ship to visit this…” he scanned the scuttled remains of what was once Babylon’s dock. “What Sadaf means to say is he’ll be sending you to your deaths. You’re sure you want this?”

  Ba’al climbed into the skiff where the others were waiting and checked over his belongings for his pipe and opium lamp. “You sure are compassionate for a pirate,” he said.

  “Every man has a conscience. You paid more than your fare for such an easy crossing, and I don’t want your ghosts haunting me on the sea.”

  “Just lower the boat.”

  “Thank you,” Adam said, bowing in place of the bishop. Adnihilo felt the same, but his gaze was locked onto the blackened remains and cracked clay husks of his home. His eyes panned left, to the southern ward, and he wondered if anything remained of the ruined palace or the graveyard of swords or the last sacred altar. Childish thoughts—he put them out of mind and turned his focus to the city center. It was as she said; the Walls of Barzakh had fallen. “It doesn’t look the same,” the pastor’s son noted, pausing as the skiff hit the ocean. “Without the Bridge, I mean. Can’t see the steeple either. It truly is gone.”

  “Like Iisah after the Beast,” commented Lilum. “And like Iisah, she will rise again in the glory of her Father.”

  “And wage war against the heathens until it is He who rules over land and sea,” Adnihilo finished for the priestess.

  Ba’al spat into the water. “So she’s finally won you over, huh?”

  The half-blood s
tared into empty air where once the vultures circled the towering black stones. “I know my place,” he answered.

  “Fate is in God’s hands,” Adam added. “Whatever happens now is His will—and us merely instruments.”

  The bishop asked the Tsaazaari oarsman, “What do you think of this religious fervor? Adorable, isn’t it?” The oarsman said nothing, kept his head down and his eyes on the water. The entirety of Sadaf’s crew had done the same come morning when they saw the Walls suddenly gone from the horizon. Sailors’ superstition—fear of that which transcends the understanding of man. It made Ba’al laugh.

  The skiff found soft landing on Eemah’s beach, the last trace softness in the city. For nothing built by Messaii hands was left standing. Every board and beam of timber was burned, and every mortared stone smashed to pieces so that no more were the roads of beaten gold, only gray pebbles and smoldering black cinders lay treaded under feet. Swiftly, silently they waded through this vacant city seeming no larger than a kiln of a shattered potter’s shop. All around them jutted fragments of topless native houses: where once was thatch was rendered ashes; where clay, collapsed; where wood, demolished. No belongings, not even bodies—no hint of bones where there should have been thousands. Then they entered the central ward, the open sand where the Walls once stood.

  It was here the dead slept a sea of skeletons. Adam, Adnihilo, even Lilum gave pause at the desecration. “It wasn’t enough to cut them down?” asked the pastor’s son. “Why drag them here just to leave them for the vultures?”

  Ba’al’s boots clattered a dozen paces ahead. “Because I ordered it.”

  “You what?” Adam started after him, the others close behind. “What do you mean you ordered it? I thought you said you were there to warn us. Why would you have—”

  The bishop quickened his pace, spoke with his head tilted toward the steel-blue sky. “I did warn you, didn’t I? It’s not my fault your father wouldn’t listen. And these bones, what do you think would’ve happened had I not ordered them brought here? The soldiers would have burned them.”

  “That would have been better.”

  “It would have been a waste!” Ba’al stopped and turned at the foot of a black chasm then spoke to Adnihilo. “I made them into an offering.”

  “Sacrifices,” the half-blood said.

  “Exactly,” replied the bishop as the others finally caught up. “It’s what the legate would’ve wanted, to offer their blood to the King.”

  “Before he turned traitor,” Lilum interjected. “That’s why we need you, Adnihilo, to repent for your sire’s sins. You are the Father’s harbinger. Your blood has broken this cursed seal.”

  Adnihilo peered behind Ba’al and into the abyss, watched it churn and ripple viscous and black beyond reflection. “And what were those sins?”

  The bishop answered, “Weakness and cowardice. He’s the one who let the Messaii missionaries into the city. Then, during the First Purge—when they stabbed him in the back for his act of tolerance—he hesitated to join in the fight while thousands of his own men were dying. He’s the reason that Babylon surrendered, because of mortal temptations that distracted him from his duty.”

  “The Red Demon of Babylon,” Adam spoke with a shudder. “Father gave that sermon the day we were attacked.” His body jerked stiff, electrified by realization. “That can’t be coincidence. You planned it, didn’t you? To use the people as a sacrifice to—” The crest began bleeding down the side of the Messah’s neck. He grasped at it, his face twisted in pain. “The King, the Father, he’s—” A surge of burning burst from the brand. It buckled Adam’s body, hung his head toward the edge of the abyssal waters.

  Ba’al knelt down so that their eyes were level. “That’s right,” he said, “Our one true king is the Devil himself. After all this long way, you finally figured it out. Or mayhap you knew and told yourself you didn’t—just like you’ve convinced yourself you’re innocent. Though I suppose all that matters now is what you’ll choose.”

  “Adam,” Adnihilo called out to his friend, but the Messah was transfixed with the churning black water. The half-blood looked to see what the pastor’s son saw. Void. Nothing. Yet Adam spoke like he’d seen a ghost.

  “It’s too late to turn back. Either way, my soul is damned.” He rose, the black pool still holding his gaze. “I made a promise to Magdalynn.”

  Adnihilo looked back and forth from the Messah’s face to the water’s surface. “What is it you saw?”

  “Our fate. Come on,” he straddled the border of land and the abyss, his lead foot sinking. “I can hear her calling us.”

  Twenty-Sixth Verse

  Abel knelt inside his cell, hands clasped together, elbows at rest on the wall-suspended plank that served as his cot. Even through the horsehair mattress, he could feel the hard surface of wood. So worn had the cushion become after decades without ever being replaced, it made the vicar’s bones ache just looking at it. Sleeping on it did worse. His predecessor’s soul must have been weightless of sin to lay there, day after day, and not break himself in body or spirit. To Abel, it was an altar of penance. The pains it brought kept him awake to his cause. They reminded him who he was.

  David, pastor of the parish burned to ashes in Babylon, prayed for his son, for guidance, and for forgiveness. He’d lost his only child, and now he was lost to save another’s all because, in his arrogance, he’d once believed that he’d done enough to pay penance for his sins. He would not make that mistake again. Every evening since the massacre, the pastor knelt and remembered the depths of his crimes.

  He was no older than Adam when he committed to Lucius’s legion, swearing on his soul exchange of coin for blood. One of eager thousands making their way on the Valley Road. The promised pay was good, at least till they got news of the massacre: nine of every ten men dead at Crusader’s Canyon, including most the knights sent by Aestas and the Enclave and all seven paladins of the Saint’s Cross. The third siege against the Mephistine had failed, leaving the capital filled to the brim with poor, young, bloodthirsty men. Attentions turned south to the undeveloped Impii and the gold and bronze in their rivers and mountains. Given the state of the Cross, the Temple Guard took charge headed by their new ruthless captain. Lucius gave the command; the men were shipped out.

  Orders were to take no prisoners. The morning of their attack, two-fifths of the city fell, then another two the following day. The Impii had no walls save for the Bridge of Babylon, they wore no armour, their arms were leather shields, bronze swords and spears—for them to repel the Messaii army was impossible, until the demon woke from his dreams of peace. The third morning it rose, the Red Dragon Light Bringer, breathing fire over their host making ghosts of all it touched. David saw firsthand the dust that was his companions irreversibly melded into dunes of blackened glass. He saw it and ran and would have kept running had their commander Leonhardt not rallied the remaining men.

  The Red Lion contrived a plan from records made by the Babylonian missionaries. It seemed the natives worshiped this demon as a hybrid form of priest and king. And of course that meant the demon kept a queen hidden in his palace in the city’s southmost ward. So Leonhardt sent a detachment of twenty young men east and south into the mountains of Horeb and led the rest of his men as a diversion to the north. David hadn’t been sure if he was blessed or cursed to be among the detached men. There wasn’t much to be sure of that night spent traversing the weather worn rocks, goat hills, and slot canyons till the twenty of them were dead south of their mark. Dawn had yet to break, so they waited shivering in the dark. David considered running then; a few of the others suggested it openly and not a man blamed them. By their every measure, they’d be rushing to their deaths—only they’d be second. The commander and what remained of their fellow men would face the fire first, all for their sakes.

  Fools that they were found themselves duty bound, so at the earliest hint of warmth on the blue-black horizon, all twenty raced the sun under cover of fleeting night fo
r the sandstone vaults and the queen hidden inside. The attack to the north had already begun—too far off to hear the screaming, it was the gasp of white light that stoked them faster into the fight with the palace guards. They were no better equipped than the Impii soldiers and no better discipled. The Messaii men chewed through them like a maw of steel teeth: two lines joined at the back, open at the front as to swallow each Impii and rend the meat from his pagan bones. Looking back now, David couldn’t help but think that he and the other soldiers must have seemed their own kind of demon to the natives they slayed. Impervious in maille shirts and soaked in Impii blood was how they came upon the throne room. And as suspected, there she was, the demon’s pale queen heavy with child.

  Quickly as they could, the twenty Messaii brought the captured queen to the battle field. Word must’ve gotten ahead, for the fighting had ended by the time they arrived. Commander Leonhardt was alive, as were Sir Pyke and perhaps half of the remaining soldiers. The rest lay in glass graves, their murderer nowhere to be found. But in the demon’s place stood an angel of a man: tall and built like polished bronze, dark wavy locks, and eyes that stared right through David’s soul when he approached his commander and told him the task was done. It was no news to Leonhardt. The parlay had already finished; the conditions were set. The demon would give himself over if the commander would swear an oath to never harm his wife and unborn son. Leonhardt agreed and performed the execution himself. The demon’s queen’s screams shook the pastor still.

  He’d never believed that the Impii would truly be spared, not even once the Messaii were back on their ships sailing home for Pareo. He would’ve been willing to kill them himself. He couldn’t understand why the merciless Red Lion would hold to a pagan oath. No, it wasn’t until later that David understood, not until he had a child of his own.