Lost Gods Page 7

  “You took longer to come than I’d hoped,” she said.

  Her voice, strange as it was, seemed familiar. Neythan looked up at her and made another attempt at speech. His tongue felt heavy, his lips cumbersome and dry.

  “Who… are you?”

  The woman paused, seemed to frown. “Why do you ask who I am?”

  Neythan had no answer.

  “All that matters of the witness is what she sees. The time is short, Neythan. You must seek what must be known. To seek anything else is meaningless.”

  Neythan nodded hesitantly. The words didn’t make sense, his thoughts still frazzled by the surroundings. He glanced at the strange liquid floor, then back to the woman, who just stood there, still and immense with that unerring golden gaze.

  “What is this place?”

  “A breach.”

  “But… Where are we?”

  “Everywhere.”

  Neythan hesitated. “I don’t understand.”

  “This place is the world you know.”

  Neythan looked at the swaying velvet sky. “It is not.”

  “A part of your world,” the woman clarified.

  “It is no part I have known.”

  The woman’s eyes seemed to shift, as if about to smile. “It is not the way a branch is part of a tree, or an arm part of the man… this place is as the sap that sustains the tree, the blood that sustains you.”

  She raised a hand and, as she did so, seemed to block out the moon, hiding it from view. She looked at the resulting shade on the cool molten ground. Neythan followed her gaze.

  “The realm you know is a shadow cast by the light,” she said. “It does not know the light that made it.” She looked up at Neythan. “Just as you do not know this place.”

  Neythan tried to make sense of it, of where he was.

  “But… I was…” He shook his head. “There was a waterfall.”

  “Yes. I called you there.”

  “Called me?”

  “Yes. You remember… Don’t you?”

  Her voice was familiar. He squinted in thought. The answer unfolded slowly, clearing like stilling water, though what eventually emerged made little sense.

  “My… dreams?”

  In the cavern with Caleb’s incense, he’d dreamt strange things, of memories and shadows and at each turn he’d heard a shallow beckoning, a woman’s voice in a half-whisper. This woman’s voice.

  “You…” He spoke the word slowly, almost accusingly. “How?” He shook his head and looked up again at the woman. “This cannot be.”

  But the woman just tilted her head, as though watching a rare animal or small child. “A thing is as it is,” she said. “It owes nothing to the ways of the one who has learned of it. To think so is deceit and folly, man’s folly, taught by the shadow wherein he abides. You must seek what must be known.”

  Neythan had no answer. He glanced again at the silent stars, then the slow-moving liquid ground, and nodded again, as if willing himself to accept it. Seek what must be known.

  “You called me here,” he managed.

  The woman said nothing.

  “Why?”

  The woman’s gaze, for the first time, seemed to approve. She gave a single slow nod then pointed a finger. “See behind you.”

  Neythan obeyed and turned around. In the distance, at the point from which the pulses seemed to be spreading across the sky and sea-like ground, there was a small dim light sitting on the horizon, each ripple moving outward from it as though from a dropped stone in a lake.

  “What is that?”

  But the woman didn’t answer. The light continued to wink, then seemed, as Neythan stared at it, to fill his thoughts, his vision, encompassing everything until there was only it, its blank white canvas before him. He saw strange shadows moving across it. He heard sounds of war, of horse and rider, as the light continued to blink to the rhythm of his heart.

  “What is this? What’s happening?”

  But again the woman didn’t answer. The images simply continued, their sounds growing louder: the braying of beasts, the screams of men, the howling lament of the wind. Soon the shapes began to merge together, gathering into a hulk of black smoke that seemed to reach toward him.

  Neythan tried to move but couldn’t. He watched as the arm turned to long gaseous tendrils and took hold of him, wrapping around his wrist. The grip burned as the shadowy creature continued to grow and merge with the sky, whispering words Neythan couldn’t understand, louder and louder, until Neythan finally closed his eyes and buried his head in his hands.

  When he opened his eyes again he was standing before the woman. The creature was gone. The woman watched for a moment as Neythan gathered himself.

  “The shadows shown to you tell of what is to come,” she said. “They tell of darkness.”

  Neythan looked down at his wrist where the thing had touched him. The skin had striped red and was stinging. “What darkness?”

  “This too you shall learn. But there are laws between you and me. Things that can be told. Things that cannot. You must know what to ask.”

  “What do you mean? I do not know who you are, or even where I am. How can I know what I am to ask?”

  “A man’s sha knows what he does not, though he seldom listens to what it tells; this too is his folly.”

  “My sha?”

  “You must still it, Neythan. The way you have been taught. It is why you are here.”

  As she spoke her arm stretched out and, though it did not reach him, somehow touched him. Neythan stared into her eyes and saw a calm there that, as he continued to gaze, seemed to pass from her to him. His breathing slowed, deepened, turning heavy and quiet until after a while he closed his eyes to gentle his sha the way Master Johann had taught.

  “This place,” Neythan said, opening his eyes again. “It is not the light of which you spoke, is it?”

  The woman smiled. Neythan watched her. It was as if the words had offered themselves to him from the silence.

  “No,” she said. “It is not. Just as the moon is not the sun.” She raised her hand as she had before, again covering the moon’s pale glow. “And yet…” This time she parted her fingers, allowing some of the moonlight to press through and pierce the shadow on the ground in front of them. “By observing one, the other can be known.”

  Neythan looked at her hand and the parted fingers. “A parting,” he said. His mind suddenly felt clear. “A breach,” he nodded to himself. “That is what this place is, a tear, as in a garment.”

  “Yes, Neythan. But that is not why you are here.”

  “Why am I here?”

  The woman said nothing.

  Neythan thought about it, back to the waterfall, the long journey from Caleb’s cavern. “I was seeking someone… A girl, she was–”

  “Arianna,” the woman answered.

  “Yes… Yes… You know her?”

  The woman didn’t answer.

  “Did she come…” Neythan gestured tentatively at the surroundings. “To this place?”

  “Arianna has chosen her path, Neythan. You must choose yours.”

  “You know where she is.”

  The woman said nothing.

  “Can you tell me where she is?”

  “I can tell you whatever you wish. The heart receives no more than what it desires.”

  “Then tell me, where will I find her?”

  The woman said nothing for a long while, staring at Neythan as if into some revealed secret. “The crown city will lead you to her,” she finally said.

  “The crown city. Hanesda. You mean Hanesda.”

  Something like lightning flickered silently across the sky and shimmered in the clouds. The woman looked up at it.

  “It is time for you to return, Neythan.”

  “Return?”

  “To your place.”

  “But… I have questions. You spoke of darkness.”

  The woman’s face, though still, seemed to grow solemn. “The question y
ou have desired is answered. You can receive nothing more. There are laws between you and me. You must return. The time is short.”

  And then her garment burst into light, shining with increasing intensity until it hurt too much to look at. Neythan turned away, back toward the dim lamp on the horizon. The light from the woman spread out like an unrolling scroll to envelop the sky, until everything – the stars, the lamp, the horizon itself – was eclipsed, swallowed in her burning bright wake. Neythan closed his eyes.

  When he blinked them open again, everything was dark and blurred. A smudgy round shape moved at the top of his vision to muffled sounds.

  He blinked again. The smudge was a face, hanging upside down.

  “Neythan! Neythan, wake up. Come. We don’t have time for this. Get up. Get up!”

  Caleb’s upside down image was standing over him.

  “Caleb?”

  “You speak? Finally you deign to speak?”

  “What are you doing?”

  “What am I doing? You fell from behind the waters as though dead. I had to drag you out of the brook. I’ve been trying to wake you for over an hour. Get up!”

  Neythan rolled his head to look around. “We’re still here?”

  Caleb shot him a murderous look. “Get. Up.”

  Neythan rolled onto one elbow. He shook his head, everything was so fuzzy. “What happened?”

  Caleb stared back wide-eyed before jabbing a finger at Neythan’s chest. “You listen to me, boy. I told you we were to be gone by nightfall. I carefully explained to you my concerns.”

  “You didn’t explain any–”

  “And lo, it is nightfall. And we are still here. Now, we don’t have time for these games. You ought to count yourself fortunate I didn’t leave you here to them.”

  “To who?”

  “Just get up.”

  Neythan climbed groggily to his feet. The forest was dark. The moon was three-quarters full, the same as it had been with the woman in the… where? Where had he been? Had it been no more than a dream?

  “Come, Neythan,” Caleb hissed. “The time is short.”

  The time is short. The words echoed strangely in his head. His wrist was hurting. He looked down and saw the trace of a red mark striping his forearm, like he’d been lashed with an ox goad.

  “Neythan!”

  Caleb was frantically gathering up their provisions from the riverside. Neythan went over to help. A rustle from across the river behind them. They froze and looked beyond the water to the woodland on the other side. Nothing. Caleb eyed Neythan.

  “Time to go,” the little man whispered.

  Neythan decided he was right.

  Ten

  S H A R Ī F

  To be king is to be a slave. That’s what they don’t tell you. The ingratiating bows, the absurd luxuries, the sweaty obsequious smiles of strangers with flabby fingers and ruby rings: all of it is an extravagant pretence. Something Sidon’s father, for all his gnomic sayings and sage looks, had failed to tell his heir and son. Come to think of it he failed to say much of anything those last few months, bedridden most days, half-mad on the others.

  And so when Sidon found himself, a year ago today, standing a quarter-mile beyond the city walls by the sepulchre as they rolled the stone, it was almost a relief to know the old man was finally gone. His mother, Chalise, had stood alone off to the side, her pale face tearless and blank as stone. Sidon, just thirteen, had stood with Uncle Játhon and his father’s chamberlain, Elias, as they sealed the tomb with the palsied body of the old man inside. And afterward Sidon had tried to pretend he wasn’t glad. Glad he’d no longer see the handmaids cleaning his father’s emaciated flesh. Glad he’d no longer have to hold that frail veiny hand as he lay murmuring in his bed. Glad he’d no longer have to pretend it was fine when the old man forgot his name and seemed to scarcely recognize who he was. Glad it was all finally over.

  He stood in the Judgment Hall looking out over Hanesda. From here he could see as far as Pularsi’s amphitheatre and the southern quarter baths, and the pyramid of the city forum beside them prodding from the blockish rows of housing. They’d anointed him there, in the forum, a week after his father’s burial. And although Sidon had trembled with nervousness throughout the ceremony he’d felt strangely exhilarated too. Sidon son of Helgon, sharíf of the Sovereignty, ruler of the Five Lands. No more Father commanding him what to do and when to do it. No more Mother ordering him around and telling him what to wear. He was ruler now. He was a man. He’d be able to do things his own way. Or so he’d thought at the time.

  “There you are.”

  His mother came walking across the Judgment Hall as he stared out the window. He was looking at the way the aqueducts tracked along the eastern wall to meet the Swift on the other side.

  “It would be better if the water’s channels came in by Kaldan’s Tower,” he said. “Or even the circus, don’t you think? It’s strange that they don’t.”

  His mother came to a halt at his shoulder. “The seamstresses have been waiting for you, Sidon.”

  Sidon turned to face her. She was dressed in a long blue robe. The garment draped neatly from her slender shoulders to the floor. Too young to be a queen mother. She’d been a girl of eighteen years when she’d wed his father, Helgon, to become sharífa. His father had been a man of fifty at the time.

  “You are beautiful, Mother. All the council say so. They say you will wed again.”

  “It is your wedding we ready for, my son.”

  “Yes. Some Tresánite you have chosen who is old enough to be my aunt–”

  “She is only eight years older than you.”

  “–and who I’ve seen but once, and never met, and probably won’t much like.”

  “She is a good match. Joining with her house will secure your throne.”

  “You told me last time I’d grow to like her.”

  “Yes, well, perhaps a sharíf ought not require the childishness of pretence to do his duty. Now come… my king.”

  She turned and strode away. Sidon reluctantly, followed, walking out to the adjoining corridor which led toward the throne room and then to his bedchambers on the other side of the palace. The walls were marked with multicoloured ink drawings of Umar of Saliph kneeling to Theron the Great, the third sharíf – the mural was Father’s favourite. The Birth of the Sovereignty, he liked to call it, depicting the moment when the king of Calapaar had ceded his vast territories and throne. The moment when Theron king of Sumeria became Theron the Great, a king of kings and true sharíf – fulfilling the dream of his grandfather, Karel, and beginning the line of sovereigns whose territories would continue to expand from one generation to the next as they conquered the High East, then Harán, Eram, and eventually Hardeny to the west; all the way to Dumea and the borders of Súnam lying south of it.

  Sidon’s gaze passed on from the drawings as they rounded the corner and moved toward his bedchamber. A small audience had gathered. They turned in unison as Sidon and his mother entered. A plump balding man with hairy forearms came forward and bowed.

  “The choices have been prepared, Sharíf.”

  The man clicked his fingers and ushered several young women forward, each holding swathes of satiny fabric draped over either arm in varying colours and patterns.

  “They are from Caphás, Sharíf, the finest that can be found. You see the fabric, how tightly woven it is. It is done by the hands of children, very skilled, their fingers are nimbler than any–”

  “The blue, the red, and this one, the purple with the dyed yarn stitching.”

  The man bowed again. “The sharíf chooses well.” He turned and clapped. Two of the girls hurried to a dressing area that had been set up in the corner. Another servant girl came alongside Sidon with a platter of fruit as he walked toward the screens. Sidon took a grape and, seeing his mother, the hirsute dressmaker and the house servants still standing behind him, paused.

  “Don’t worry, Mother. I think I will manage to dress myself.”


  She smiled thinly and went toward the door. The others followed her out.

  It was a common thing for dressmakers to employ mutes as attendants. Sidon had even known some to cut out a slavegirl’s tongue to better suit her for the role. A dressmaker could seldom expect to be present when a customer was trying on his wares. It seemed sensible to keep those whose company he’d have to leave them in from saying anything foolish. All of which meant it was a surprise when one of the girls actually answered Sidon. He’d been talking to himself as she helped him disrobe and put on an undercoat.

  “What did you say?”

  “I said I think you are right. That one does look better.”

  He looked at her, then to another slavegirl – apparently customarily mute – who looked back blankly, and then hurriedly stepped back behind the screen.

  “It wouldn’t usually do for someone your age but you’ve a man’s shoulders already, my king.”

  Which was enough to keep Sidon from flinging the backswinging knuckle of his hand across her face and calling her master in to flog her.

  “You’ve a bold tongue,” he said.

  The girl gave an apologetic dip of her head. “Forgive me, my king. My mother always says I can be dull-witted that way, given to speaking out of turn.”

  “Yes, well…” Sidon glanced at the cut of her dress, the way the fabric collected tidily between her breasts like a weir. “I suppose some follies, given time and mercy, can be learned from.”

  “Thank you, my king. Sorry, my king.”

  Sidon turned back to the brass dish to examine his reflection. He glanced hesitantly back to the girl. “But you say this one is better?”

  The girl smiled shyly. “Yes, my king. The seam runs wider, here.” Her palm brushed slowly across his shoulder blades as he looked at his reflection. “You have strong shoulders, so the fit is better for you. It is a man’s fit, not a boy’s.”

  Sidon nodded. Perhaps her counsel wasn’t such a bad thing. “What is your name?”

  “Iani, my king.”

  “Your master has taught you in these things?”