Water was scarce, save the few oasis villages, and small caches among the hidden aquifers of the mesa. The closest he knew of was the small well at the Jut. He'd never been this far into the true desert before, and he was unsure where to find the next source of the life-giving liquid which was more valuable than gold among the various tribes that called this forsaken place home.
Several times, water materialized out of nowhere just ahead of him. His hope for success dried up further each time the mirage vanished. He didn’t know how long he had been trudging through the wadi. His world had shrunk to the young man he hauled to safety, and the all-consuming pain of his extremities.
On the fabricated sledge, Finyaka shouted out, “Sinaya! Will I hear the Song again?” His limbs thrashed wildly.
Matasa dropped his staff onto the uncaring sand of the wadi. He eased his cousin’s torso to the ground and summoned what energy he could to soothe Finyaka’s ailments. This strange malady needed the skills of a wise woman or a mage-priest, not a second-class goat herder.
“Shh, you are safe,” Matasa, said, not knowing what else to say. How safe is anyone in the barrenness of the desert? He pressed his hand against his cousin’s temple. Finyaka burned with a stronger heat than any caused by the Great Sun. How long would the young man be able to last without water? “Your dah and brothers went back to the village. They are bitter men, but they will respect you now that you have the Radiance. You’ll see, cousin. You’ll see.”
Finyaka moaned, forlorn and haunting. His body slumped back into unresponsiveness.
Is Radiance worth this? Matasa could only imagine what dark entities the younger man wrestled with. To be chosen as Finyaka had, by the Great Sun, was something every child of the Seven Peoples yearned for. It meant the path of the mage-priest, and the chance to control the flow of the Great Sun’s Radiance. Matasa always thought it would be amazing to have that power, to be able to control the six elements and be sought out by the village elders and those in need. The tortured face of his dying cousin made him rethink those ideas of childhood folly.
Trembling, Matasa fought his aching muscles, picked up his staff and forced himself to his knees. They had scraped against the rough stone and sand of the mesa valley. He winced aloud and collapsed onto his hands.
The cousins lay sprawled on the coarse sand of the valley, the Great Sun beating down on them relentlessly. It’s like we’re being challenged. What do you have in store for us Great Sun?
Matasa’s head flopped to one side. Weaker than a newborn kid, he had nothing left to give.
An upright shadow formed on the horizon. His vision wavered at the growing silhouette.
Is that someone approaching? Matasa’s lips cracked and bled when he called out to rouse Finyaka. Tsimunuu? Nahrem? He squinted, but his eyelids felt heavier than the weight of dragging a body across the expanse. Is this how it ends?
Blackness took him.
Brother turned enemy, Nahrem carefully brushed sand from his face. He didn’t have much water left after he narrowly escaped the ghost hound attack. What remained would have to last for his return to the village after he sorted out his brother and cousin.
Finyaka’s magic had healed their father’s ribs, ribs that had been broken by Matasa earlier that day, only to be eaten by beasts. Despite himself, Nahrem chuckled at the thought. Radiance or no, Finyaka would answer for that, too.
Neither of the younger men knew what had happened. They were so full of themselves after they’d won their fight at the Jut that they didn't so much as investigate to see if Tsimunuu went back home as Finyaka had told him to.
Intent on fulfilling his father’s wishes, Nahrem continued stalking his prey. Surely Finyaka, doe that he was, wouldn’t last much longer under Anuu’s harsh gaze. Knives and dehydration both killed witches.
Not that Nahrem considered Finyaka a witch. How could he be? He hadn’t taken the pilgrimage to the Golden City where the true mage-priests were chosen by the Great Sun. At sixteen summers, Finyaka was barely a man. Their father didn’t even trust him to look after the flock on his own.
In the distance, he saw Matasa suddenly drop. Nahrem squatted out of sight. Had Anuu taken his cousin to live among the stars? Father had sworn an Oath to the Darkness Behind the Light. Was now the time for Nahrem to be the answer to his father’s plea? He’d spike Matasa’s head on Sinaya’s staff just like his father had wanted, then kill Finyaka for siccing the ghost hound on the most prominent member of their family. A Darkness within him, one that burgeoned with each passing moment, swore that he would cause excruciating pain as he ended their existence. Then, perhaps, his father would finally be proud of him.
Finyaka sat cross-legged. The air tasted bitter and smelled of salt. Beside him stood Sinaya, her colourless translucent form reminded Finyaka of the haze of the midday horizon and how it tricked the eye into seeing a mirage. She was dressed in her official robes as a mage-priest of the order of Resolution, wearing her gold armband and holding her ebony staff. He could feel the same armband secured about his bicep. How can we both be wearing it? She smiled at him and started walking, her clothes wafting around her like an earlier morning mist. The parched ground crunched under her footsteps. Finyaka found that odd. He floated along beside her. Wait, floated?
“Am I dead?” The calm of his Radiance filled him.
“Not exactly,” Sinaya replied, her voice more a thought than a sound.
“What do you mean?” He projected the words toward her as he would his Radiance. Using his mind to communicate in a way he never thought possible.
She nodded approvingly. “Do you feel dead?”
Do I feel dead? What kind of question was that? He touched his face and felt…nothing. He held his hand up to look at it. Golden light glowed within him, making the flesh of his hand the colours of the rising sun. The entirety of his body gave off that same golden luminescence. The effect left him more amazed than frightened. It’s my Radiance!
“Yes, your Radiance. It’s what holds you here on the cusp between the two worlds.” Sinaya’s smile glowed eerily with an inner light, causing her wraithlike features to brighten.
“Where am I?” he projected, puzzling the source of the old wise-woman's illumination.
She gestured with her staff towards the distant horizon on their right, where the white sky and the parched, desolate landscape merged into a shimmering haze of nonexistence. Viewing that blasted monotonous panoramic left Finyaka feeling insignificant.
“Travel too far in the direction of the rising sun, and you will be one with the Light, spending eternity among those who have passed before you, basking in the glow of Great Sun.” She raised her head skyward, closing her eyes. Involuntarily gliding towards the place where she had gestured.
Finyaka watched as she opened her eyes and set her jaw; she conveyed the horizon to the left with a similar gesture. “Travel too far towards the setting sun, and you become part of the Darkness Behind the Light, alone for all eternity haunted by the cruelty you have inflicted upon others.”
The place my family was bound. He shuddered. His forgiveness and compassion should’ve ushered a new beginning for his father and brothers, setting them upon the eastern path. Though, a niggling at the edge of his conscience told him to expect otherwise.
Sinaya began walking again, the sound of her non-corporeal feet perplexing him.
“Why are you here? In the place between worlds. Why haven’t you gone to be with the Great Sun?” She more than deserved it, having been an effective and caring wise woman, always placing the needs of the village before her own. Surely, she was worthy of the Great Sun’s Light.
“I have been asked to help you one last time, though soon, I must go.” Her eyes closed. A small smile lit up her face. “Can you hear that?” She asked with wonderment.
Finyaka detected a steady thrum. A soft wind blew against him with each beat. He touched his face again and still felt nothing.
"How can I feel the wind when I can't feel my fles
h?" This place made no sense.
“The wind is your breath; the thrumming of the ground, your heartbeat.” Her face suddenly softened. She uplifted it to the heavens in appreciation. Finyaka basked in the serenity that emanated from her, even though he didn’t understand it. “Oh Finyaka, listen! The Song of the Great Sun.” She gasped in breathless excitement.
“I don’t hear anything,” he said, almost apologetically.
“Interesting.” Sinaya tapped a finger on her lips, considering his apparent ineptitude. Even then, only the slightest wrinkles graced her becalmed visage. “You’ve been gifted the Radiance by Anuu, and you are here, but you do not hear.” She rocked from side to side, lost in music only she heard.
“But what is this place?” He gestured to the vacant space around them.
“I told you. This is the cusp, the place between the Light and the Darkness.”
“Between?” Finyaka had not known the woman to be so elusive when she was alive. He remembered her as a different woman, direct and stern.
“Between life and death,” she replied without the slightest hint of the stringent woman she had been. Maybe there was something to be said about this Song she spoke of. “First time off the grazing lands and you nearly burned yourself out. You overextended yourself by flaunting your magic, Finyaka, and now you’re paying the price.”
He hardly felt that saving himself and Matasa from his father’s assault was flaunting anything.
“I come, Anuu,” Sinaya said as she began moving towards the distant horizon on his right. To Finyaka she said, “I wish there was more time for me to mentor you in the ways of the chosen.” She examined her fingertips. “Sadly, such is not my fate. The Great Light calls and I answer. But you, you still have a choice.”
“So, I’m still alive?” he asked hesitantly.
“Out there, in the real world, you are dehydrated and close to death. The person healing you has limited skills.”
“Matasa is a goatherd, not a healer,” Finyaka replied with a playful smile.
“I do not speak of your cousin.” Sinaya faced him, her ghostlike hands upon his shoulders. “Pay heed to what I say. Your gift is a precious one Finyaka. The Radiance draws its power from you, from your belief in Anuu. Use the power too quickly, or in flagrant abundance, and the Radiance will consume you.”
"How do I replenish what it takes from me? Can I stop it from happening? How do all mage-priests not die young if their Radiance eats away at them from the inside? Why would Anuu give me a gift that could kill me?” The faster Finyaka asked his questions, the faster Sinaya faded.
Anuu’s Song started as a single note, like the buzzing of flies that came in and out of earshot until it caught his attention, compelling him to find it.
“The Song is hard to resist, Finyaka, isn’t it?” Sinaya, what was left of her, danced apart from him. Much of her upper body had faded into a hazy form. She looked at him with eyes that were impossibly blue in their transparency. “The Great Song is Anuu’s gift to the Seven People. Our strength derives from it, makes us more than a loose confederacy of clans and tribes, it gives us purpose, a reason to strive for a better life. Those of us who hear it want to do nothing else but give ourselves to the Great Sun. To fulfill the vision of a unified people, brought together under the Light. Stronger in our unification, than as individuals scattered across the wadi. Without the Great Song, the Seven Peoples would be nothing more than warring tribes, eking out a miserable existence, waiting to die by blade, starvation or thirst.” She hummed something of the music in her head and her smile widened. “Such beauty. So powerful.”
Her statement dulled the enticing sound to Finyaka’s ears. He knew the teachings of the Seven People, of how Anuu selected the mage-priests from among those deemed worthy during the pilgrimage to the Golden City. Those who witnessed the Dance of Days. It was the dream of every child to make that journey and to be one of the few the Great Sun chose. How I, a mere goat herd beloved only by his mother, could be one of them is beyond me. I have never taken the pilgrimage. I have never witnessed the Dance of Days.
The single note found a partner. Their duet urged him to journey with them to the Light of Anuu.
“I am not ready to die yet,” Finyaka said to Anuu as much as to Sinaya. To be one of Anuu’s chosen was an honor, of that he had no doubt. But he had just become a man, a man with the Radiance no less. How could Anuu possibly want me dead now?
Finyaka wanted to learn the ways of a mage-priest, to prove to the Great Sun that he was worthy of this gift. A corpse couldn’t do that.
“So live,” Sinaya replied with a last, kindly shrug. “Turn your back on the lure of the Great Song, if you can. I cannot; I give myself unto it. Leave this place and live. When and how you die is your choice, as it was mine,” she added of her sacrifice. The landscape showed through her increasingly until she dissolved like a mirage.
“Sinaya!” Finyaka called out to the woman’s lingering memory. “Will I hear the Song again?” He ran to where she last stood as if he could catch a wisp of her in his arms. He found nothing except the echoes of her humming.
Hard-cracked dirt burned hot against Finyaka’s bare feet. When did I stop floating? He shaded his eyes against the brightening sky and squinted at the shimmering haze of the horizon. His body tingled and itched as every drop of perspiration made itself known. He ran coarse fingers along his clammy skin, relieved to see that he was no longer an apparition. However, the flat landscape around had not changed. It remained the foreign desolation of the Between.
Sinaya’s voice drifted to him. “You chose well, young mage-priest. Repair the rift that has been exploited. Defeat the Darkness before the three bands which bind the Golden City are destroyed.”
Shuddering jarred the landscape, as if Anuu dragged the very landscape out from underneath him. The air was dry. His tongue was swollen, and his lips were parched and bleeding.
“By the Light,” Finyaka said as the Great Sun flew past with speeds that rivaled a hunting cat. Day blurred into night and back again. In a panic, he searched in vain for shelter in this desolate land that was not land. The streaking effect in the sky made him dizzy. He succumbed before he realized that he was no longer wearing Sinaya’s gold armband.
Matasa awoke with a start. It was cool and the sun had disappeared. Night? Coarse fiber scratched his skin. Carpet? He willed himself to sit up, but his throbbing muscles refused to function. Labored breathing nearby. Finyaka? Matasa parted parched lips to speak but only broke into a cough. His mouth was dry, and his tongue felt swollen.
Something moved in the darkness. Matasa wasn’t alone. He held still and closed his eyes for fear of giving himself away. Barely audible above his thumping heart, he heard leather creaking, and the swish of fabric, as if someone stood up from a stool or mat. The heavy breather droned on. Soft footfalls, bare feet against the carpet, neared.
Just as he sensed this third presence looming by him, perfume-disguised sweat wafted into his nostrils. A firm hand slipped behind his head and tilted it up. Then came the glorious feel of warm water on his tongue and parched lips. He sputtered unexpectedly.
“Drink you fool.” The voice was hard, but not harsh. Matasa didn’t recognize the accent. He gulped down a few mouthfuls before the man lowered Matasa’s head to the carpet. The stranger moved on, presumably to the person with the labored breathing. More coughing and retching, then the man cursed in a language Matasa didn’t know. His soft footfalls shuffled away.
This wasn’t Nahrem or Tamika. Matasa licked his chapped lips. He tried to speak, producing nothing more than a croak.
“Shush yourself,” the stranger said with an annoyed sigh. Leather creaked again. Matasa imagined that the man sat down. “Sleep. Gain your strength, else you’ll be a vulture’s meal.”
“Where am I?” Matasa managed. He strained for any visual cue.
“What part of shush do you not understand?” A soft grunt at his own joke followed the man’s rumbling voice.
&
nbsp; “I…” Matasa halted, and not because he felt hoarse. He wanted to ask for light, and for some measure of understanding of what was happening. But he was suddenly afraid. In the pitch blackness, he had no idea what lay before him. He was in a tent, that much he was sure. Muffled sounds of men talking came from the other side of the goat-haired fabric. A night bird cried as it hunted prey.
“Who are you running from, boy?” said the strange voice.
Matasa didn’t know if he could trust someone who wouldn’t acknowledge a full-grown man when he saw him. He was eighteen summers old, no longer a boy even though he didn’t have a stake in the village herd. Did he look like a child? How much had Anuu’s Great Light changed him on the mesa?
“Oh, I see how this is. You want to talk and once I ask you a question, you go all quiet-like." Another soft chuckle and more movement in the dark.
Matasa was about to answer when shouts arose outside. Creaking leather announced the man’s actions as he stood up and opened the tent flap. His silhouette filled the doorway against the star-filled sky. The stranger was a big man, tall and solid. Not someone to be trifled with.
“What’s the commotion?” demanded the man of the people outside his tent. What feeble light came from the stars disappeared when the flap slapped shut. Someone answered in an unfamiliar clicking language.
Matasa implored his aching body to seek out the heavy sleeper. If it was his cousin, maybe they could escape this place. He rolled onto his arm, unable to move farther. The carpet, although scratchy, provided infinitely more comfort than the simplest movement.
“I see,” the stranger said from outside. The tent flap partially opened. By the feeble light, Matasa could see a single center pole holding up a small tent barely big enough for a small family, the sides turned down, trapping the heat of the day inside to help against the chill of the night.
Matasa found Finyaka on the floor, still lost in his Radiance-induced coma. He didn’t look any better, but something about his appearance bothered Matasa.
Wayward Magic (Magic Underground Anthologies Book 2) Page 53