II
Observing the End
of an Empty Age

Atnan skipped down the slope toward the beach ahead of his father and grandmother. He was ready. For what? He didn’t know. Manhood? Citizenship? He waited at the top of a steep staircase leading to the beach.

Further down, Barlas bounded up the stairs two at a time, whooping and waving his hands. Once at the top, he pelted Atnan with questions. “Which trial, eh? Rish’ll mean fire. I don’t think so. Nan’s a high hill, Lom’s the wilderness. Might work. Mem’d be a heavy stone.” He squeezed Atnan’s forearm. “Not with these kelpy little arms! How ‘bout Llyr?” Barlas wagged his thumb, the only digit left.

Atnan made a sour face.

“Nah! You’d get your socks wet.” Barlas shrugged, turned back up the hill. “Better luck next year, eh?”

“Oh, leave him be,” Hennamis said.

Barlas side-stepped and offered her his arm. She slapped his hands away, but he insisted, and the four of them descended.

Near the tide line, the entire village was already assembled on a circular patio. Knots of adults milled about, deep in conversation, dressed for a party, men and boys in their best knee pants and moccasins, woman and girls in their best skirts. Vests and cloaks displayed bright zig-zags, diamonds, stripes, animals, and flowers. Children darted between their legs, ran circles around the patio.

Atnan, dressed in a plain tunic for his trial, made a funny face at a little girl as she ran past. She giggled, returned the favor, and continued on her frolic.

The men of the village made a particular show of cradling their oars, hands curled around the knob-ends, shafts rested against elbow and shoulder, blades aloft overhead. Atnan glanced over at his grandmother to make sure she was still carrying his.

Once they arrived, the elders cast sweet grass and blessed the assembly. The drummers started up a slow rhythm as everyone sang and Atnan played on his flute:

O Mem, as strong as stone;

O Nan, sweet like the wind;

O Lom, a well-worn path;

O Rish, cloaked with fire;

O Llyr, as deep as the sea.

Layram, the oldest of the village elders, stood in the patio’s center, long sweet-grass pipe bobbing from the corner of his mouth and leaning on his oar as though it were his only good leg.

“Eya-Atnan son of Eya-Omrik, approach!” The long white forks of his beard waggled when he talked. He tapped the butt of his oar on the stone and the villagers joined in.

Atnan sucked in a deep breath of the salty sea air and stepped forward.

“Which of the Five chooses you?” The old man shook a small bag at him.

Eyes clenched, Atnan selected a stone and handed it to Layram.

The old man read out the rune painted on it. “Llyr.”

Barlas was grinning like a porpoise; Atnan glared back.

Layram intoned, “Eya-Atnan, son of Eya-Omrik. You will take nothing but your oar.” Every trial began that way. “You will choose an island and there you will offer the prayers of Llyr, meditating for a day and a night without ceasing.” The old man’s eyes widened as round as they would go, piling wrinkles on his forehead like the waves of a stormy sea. “You will be guided to a token. On the morning of the next day, you will return and present it to the elders along with your oaths, then — the Dark Day Feast!”

Everyone cheered and Layram called, “He who survives is called a man.”

The villagers responded, “The names of the dead are soon forgotten.”

These were sacred words, from the oldest of the Fyrean clan-songs. Atnan had read and copied them many times, always with due reverence, but they had never been quite so forceful to him.

Atnan’s father clapped him on the shoulders with both hands. “Llyr! Highly favored, didn’t I say?”

Atnan exchanged a worried look with his grandmother. She started to say something but was interrupted by drums and chanting. Ready or not, the trial had commenced. She escorted him to the waterline. No mother, no sister, not even a betrothed — as his closest female relative, the honor of sending him off on his trial fell to her.

Turtle-shell boat at his feet, he stared off over the water. He couldn’t see the islands.

“Fog’ll burn off in a couple of hours,” Hennamis said.

There should have been more important things for her to say to him than discussing the weather. But what?

Behind him, the village, security. Ahead, the sea, the fog. The future, a threshold — no, a precipice.

“This’d be better on the both of us if your mother was here instead. She was right handy with words.”

Regarding his mother, Atnan had to trust those who knew her. He felt her absence, but not her loss.

“My heart knows I’m not a mother to you.” She sniffled. “But what my heart knows, my bones forgot long ago.”

She wiped a tear away with her sleeve as Atnan stepped toward her. He traced her arms from shoulder to wrist, then pointed both hands at her heart, then away, fluttering off like birds; then he touched his arms and waved them negatively.

“I know,” she said, “I know.”

He wasn’t sure she did.

What your bones forgot, mine never knew.

She handed him a strand of cowrie shells. “I made this, for your mother.”

He brushed the shells with his fingertips. They were inscribed, loose, crooked. Definitely his grandmother’s scratching. “MYNA LLW RYLA.” Always love together.

“A motto-of-five,” she said, sniffling. “Nobody does it anymore, not for a long time.” She helped him tie it around his neck. “Let the Five guide you, and my love — and your mother’s — warm you, always.”

She swept a lock of hair behind his ear and he shuddered from the lightness of her touch. He pointed at the chalky white blanket hanging over the water.

“You’re right. It’s time you got going.” She sniffled again. “A song will make us both feel better, don’t you think?”

She sang in her low, gravely voice while he played high harmony, pure open intervals that gave the music an appropriate melancholy:

Mystery, spread your wings,

And keep me under your shadow;

Guide my feet, from dry to dry,

Away and yon and home again.

The sea is dark and full of eyes,

I am a wandering stranger there;

Mystery, spread your wings,

And keep me under your shadow.

She traded him his oar for the flute then helped him cast off while the villagers stopped drumming and let out a long whoop, waving hands and shocks of sea-reeds.

Atnan looked back one last time then paddled into the fog, hugging the shore as long as possible. Once around the point, he put land at his back and headed for the snaggled jawline of islands just offshore: Shen’s Teeth. He had been that way plenty of times before — in clear weather.

Up. Down. Paddle. Splash. Up. Down. Paddle. Splash.

Unease welled up in his belly. The sea was alive but devoid of reason. Not malevolent but insensible. “Sea don’t know you, sea don’t care,” as Eya-Natan, his father’s father, always put it.

His sense of foreboding grew with every stroke.

Have I gone far enough? Or too far? Curse this fog! I can’t even tell where the sun is, let alone myself.

After a while, he stopped paddling, let the boat bob in the waves. Maybe it was malevolent.

If he was short and kept the same heading, he might still strike land. If wide, he should turn — but not out into the channel where the current would carry him further out to sea. If he had already turned, he should turn back to his original heading, which he still didn’t know. Round and round the circle went.

Just then, something splashed, rocking the boat, followed by a loud snuffle. He yelped, twisted around.

Shen!

Trilling, the giant otter-bear dove under the boat and surfaced on the other side. She paddled a lazy circuit around him, cradling a shock of oysters. With a single bite, she cracked one open, slurped down the contents, and flipped the shell away with her tongue.

Atnan dragged his fingertips in the water.

Shen huffed and glided under his touch.

His face contorted into a shape that meant I’m utterly lost.

At this she somersaulted and swam away on a tangent.

Paddling as hard as he could, he followed, falling ever further behind until she finally disappeared. Alone again! Nevertheless, she had given him a heading, and that was something.

After a while, the fog broke and with it, his spirits. A quick scan of the horizon revealed nothing but gray sky and gray water. Once, twice, three times around. Near panic, he spotted a tiny speck off in the distance: stable, not a whale, or a log, or a flotilla of kelp.

As he approached the speck, it grew into a tiny island in the form of an enormous petrified stump. It was barely large enough for a few stunted trees to cling to one side. With some difficulty, he was able to land between two root-like reefs. Heaving the boat ashore, he clambered up to a flat shelf just above the waterline.

To the left, there was only sheer rock and pounding surf. To the right, the shelf continued up around the trunk-like central spire until it became a set of stairs hewn from the rock. Above them, the cliffside bore a faded symbol: the sun, or perhaps an octopus.

Concerned the island might be occupied, he banged two rocks together as loud as he could. The only answer was the echo glinting off the rocks.      

He ascended the narrow staircase, sea roiling below, nothing to catch him if he fell. Forty-nine steps later, he arrived at a split in the rock about halfway to the peak.

He squeezed through the crack into a domed cave almost tall enough to stand in. Rays of sunlight shone through the entrance, illuminating more ruddy symbols daubed on the walls. Kneeling in the sand of the cave floor, he tried to read them but couldn’t. He pushed some sand away to reveal a line of hash marks scratched into the wall.

Whoever was here last was marking time — a long time.

The light from the entrance began to fade. After a quick survey, he found the cave clean, dry, and long enough to stretch out in. Scattered about he found a few shards of pottery, scraps of cloth, and a small pile of bat bones. Any of these could be a token. All he had to do was explain why it was meaningful.

At the far end of the cave, he bumped something hard. Plowing sand away, he uncovered a small clay urn stoppered with wax and blackened with age. After more digging, he uncovered three more. They were smooth and unmarked.

What’s inside? Some old wine? Fragrant oils? A treasure?

Regardless, it would make a better token than bat bones! He found a stone and bashed the neck off one of the urns. The thought that whatever was inside might be spoiled or dangerous occurred to him too late. If it was a mistake, it was now made.

Scrolls packed the interior of the urn, most no bigger around than his thumb. He extracted one, unrolled it to reveal tight hedgerows of pictograms.

Maybe I am highly favored after all!

Ashamed, he slumped back on his heels, put the scroll away, and set the urns aside. Non-stop meditation? He hadn’t even imagined a single blessing!

Losing himself in thought was one of his favorite activities, but meditation required him to relax and focus on a single subject. His father said his innards were never calm but always like the sea about to squall. That seemed about right.

Profound loneliness crept into his bones and chilled his insides. He had always been content to be let alone, but there was always someone around to do the letting! The thought of some ancient hermit living on this island for months at a time — on purpose! — gave him a shiver.

He traced the rune for Llyr in the sand and recited a few blessings in his mind, thanking Mystery especially for guiding him there, keeping him safe, and sending Shen right when he needed her.

Exhausted, he pulled his legs up into his tunic and fell right to sleep.

Taláni led the small delegation with Selolo at his side, followed by military advisors, counselors, and eunuchs of the blood cult. Their destination, the tall-house of the Skiptéli community, stood a half-day’s journey along the snowy ridgelines. They were running late.

Taláni tugged at the long curved horns of the ibex buck he was riding. The old ram champed and snorted. Its horns were long and swept back enough so that it could rake him off its back with small effort.

It wouldn’t dare. I’ve broken it, just as I’ve broken Skiptéli.

Nine puffs of smoke rose on the horizon beyond the river, each one a Scraper village.

Plows and roads, scarring the land! Befouled with cattle-stench. Fathers stole the land but the sons and sons-of-sons inherit. The same crime — and I am the punishment!

“Kindhirak.” Selolo spat.

“No, Kwelitánsit,” The Good Land. “Curse the people, not the land.”

They rode on in silence.

Every night since her vision she had remained his consort, narrating her dreams to him, each more favorable than the last. He had grown accustomed to her presence and all the things she did for him. She was admirable. Thoughtful. Comforting. His emotions toward her trended toward need in ways he hadn’t anticipated. But love? He believed in no such thing.

That day, she would appear for the first time as an official part of his government. He wondered if she felt an appropriate level of honor in this.

Most of all, he wondered how his mother would react. She had made her thoughts clear on multiple occasions: Marriage was inimical to his personal discipline and the execution of their plans. Yes, his appetites could be satisfied as necessary, “but you must not bind yourself.”

Away for weeks at a time with no word; now, an urgent request for my presence.

He settled himself, listening to the rhythmic patter of the ram’s hooves on the stony trail, breathing deep, relaxing his muscles, clearing his mind until he was hollow inside. His mother explained it to him once. “You are the receptacle for the hopes of the people and the ambitions of the spirits, to be filled by whatever the moment requires.”

Today’s moment required a sacrifice.

* * * * *

Selolo rode beside her wekáru, bedecked in splendor: beaded skirt and boots; a long cloak of rabbit fur; breastplate swirling with jasper and carnelian; silver dangling from ears and nose.

All for display not comfort — and heavy!

Overhead, red banners with his mother’s device, a golden sun, furled and shivered like the plumage of a terrible bird. Such an appropriate representation of the woman herself! Unwavering. Penetrating. Unnerving. At once both like and unlike her son.

“We should have entered Kindhir’s domain by now,” she would say. “We should have overtaken Kalparaana, or at least begun to absorb the midland communities. Unprepared! Unfocused! Lazy!” No one spoke to Taláni the way she did — who else would dare?

As they crested the last ridge before the Skiptéli tall-house, they found her pacing around a small gazebo. They had been expected at noon, but the back half of the day was already dragging on.

She will be in a foul mood.

“Ah, nedóru!” The old woman greeted him as her dear child, a false smile stretched across her face, arms held out for an embrace. “Always late! Born last, eleven days later than the numerologist’s forecast.” She swatted at one of the eunuchs trying to brush her coat and adjust her complicated red and gold headdress, which had gone lopsided.

He slid off his mount and embraced her, knocking her headdress off in the process, without apology. Meanwhile, Selolo dismounted and kneeled, trying to seem inconspicuous, which her jangling costume made impossible.

The old woman swiveled toward her, squinting. Her eyes grew milkier by the day, white with cataracts. “Who is your … friend?”

“Selolo, mother. You know her.”

Melíksi sniffed. “The dreamer?”

“A real prophetess — and now your kinsman-daughter.”

The last word hit Selolo like a blow. He had never called her wife to this point; she had simply never left his cabin, assuming the role without presuming title or position. Was she now a wikéria? What did that mean?

The old woman guided her to her feet and swooped in close, looking at Selolo but speaking to her son as though she wasn’t there. “Oh? What about her physiognomy? Let’s see. Short body, long limbs. Her mother was a frog-eater. As flat in the face as she is in the chest. A miscreant, slapped by the spirits in the womb!”

Selolo held her place, silently. The Matron had pronounced many shameful things over her; it had become her expectation.

The old woman grasped Selolo’s chin and turned her head. “Her ears are too small, and just look at the angle of those eyes! This one will steal the hair right off your head, one wisp at a time.”

Only half-listening, Selolo let her awareness retreat and her body relax, ready to be repositioned like a wax figure for the old woman to shape however she wished. The pronouncements echoed inside, as though her own.

Chin too small, cheeks too pointed: Sexual deviancy, I should have known. That’s no prophet’s mark, it’s a liar’s spot: Surely it grows a shade darker every time she speaks.

Generations of blood-mages in his family, but this dreamer, she’s a “real prophetess”? How is she suitable as a wife? This round-shouldered, crane-necked, boar-browed, swag-legged, spider-fingered, moss-haired, chap-cheeked stripling? Unfit for a third-rank soldier — much less the world-emperor-in-coming!

All the while, Taláni waited silently with arms crossed. She expected no defense but thought he ought to make the case for her selection, if only for his own sake.

Finally, the old woman said to her son, “What place is there for her? In the order of procession?” Noticing that Selolo’s shadow was touching the tips of her shoes, she took a step back. The eunuchs swarmed over her, fussing, re-aligning brooches and braids, re-affixing her fallen headdress.

The silence demanded an answer.

Why does he wait? Is he leaving space for me to show honor to his mother?

A sideward glance toward his expression uncovered nothing. Right or wrong, she decided to speak. “Wikéria, you must have the honor of arriving last — of course!” Selolo held her breath.

Who am I to tell her what honors she must have? Do any words exist to convince her I am not the image she has conjured? If not, why leave me to speak? If so, why not speak them himself. He knows her!

To judge by the old woman’s expression, she might have been thinking the same.

Finally, Taláni laughed. “Don’t be upset, mother. Selolo will go first, a foretaste of my glory, then me, a foretaste of yours. We may be the wind and the fire, but you will always be the sun.”

Mekvat stood on a platform beneath the shadow of a basalt image of Mek, Lord of Wisdom. The statue depicted the god in standard repose, legs crossed, desk-board across his lap, staring thoughtfully into the distance. Attendants hauled up offerings from a steady stream of admirers, piling them into the idol’s lap: baskets of winter vegetables, barrels of honey beer, coins, strands of yarn, shocks of dried flowers.

In the open courtyard in front of the platform, clay effigies of the seven heptarchs sat atop liveries, flanked by concentric rings of courtiers and nobles. Pilgrims streamed through the academy, orbiting one heptarch and then another, passing gifts inward until each ruler was buried in a mountain of loot. Over it all, Kindhir’s tower loomed, its shadow stretching over the city like the gnomon of a giant sundial.

Drums, bells, rattles, horns. The rhythm kept the crowds swirling, crawling, as they hummed a throaty tone. The entire complex was now a set of interlocking human rings, steadily sucking up bits of treasure like a colony of barnacles fanning debris into greedy gullets.

Holding a long scroll aloft, Mekvat droned in time to the beat, word by aching word. He stared directly into the painted-pottery face of the tallest effigy, which represented Shenefret, heptarch of Nepsilam and heir of Kindhir himself. The clay figure’s expression was meant to resemble placid contemplation but appeared more drowsy than meditative.

The thought amused him.

A stately woman in brightly-colored robes moved through the crowd, her towering hair intertwined with jangly cords of jewelry glinting in the sun. All morning he tracked her as she wound her way around each ruler in turn, pressing as close as she dared, shedding her gifts until the end of her circuit at Mekvat’s feet.

Her last gift was for the followers of Mek, a little writing book and a cask of beet liquor handed up the stairs. Had she stretched out on purpose, leaning over at just the right angle, to tease him?

Were I ten years younger, what things I would do!

Who was he kidding? More like twenty years — twenty-five — or he’d still have a floppy worm-in-the-pants that might as well dry up and fall off for all the use it was to him. Every part of him sagged and dangled like the bits of wool on his garment.

I might have become a clerk or a lawyer. I might have taken a dozen wives. I might have been a painter or a stonemason. I might have been a farmer — fat, dumb, and happy! Nevertheless, I would arrive at this moment ancient and decayed. Sun follows moon follows sun follows moon, and the grand machine unwinds for us all, noble to dead noble, beggar to dead beggar. From nothing to nothing, through nothing, in an endless, empty gyre.

It was not that he wanted to die, but to halt his life in its course. Better put, to dial back the machine, to devolve into a younger self, all crooked smiles and erections that stood like Kindhir’s tower. Ignorant of so many things: Never disappointed, never by man or woman rebuffed, reviled, or despised.

Never lonely.

This daydream evolved. The horns slurped back their blasts. Words hopped back down his throat. The crowds stopped and reversed course, un-walked, un-sang, un-heaped their gifts. Each step back erased a day from the table of months, each circuit a year, until his whole life was un-lived and he was brand new, ready to do it all again.

Or skip it altogether! What a crime it is that the world continues age upon age but a single life is lived only once, a feeble spark that begins to die as soon as it alights. Better not to be born at all than taunted!

Hours came and went. He banged the same tired cymbals and said the same tired blessings. So it went until he reached the end of his text. The attendants cried out, “Mek!” and he responded, “Learned One.” They shouted again. “Jewel of Peace.” Mek, Gentle Wind of Plenty. Mek, Laughter of Many Waters. They went through the litany of all forty of his glorious names, ending with the greatest: Mek, Wisdom of Wisdoms.

By coincidence, this was his fortieth performance of the Winter Homage, once for each year of his term as Sage Prime. When he was young, such things stirred him; but now no mystery remained, only empty ritual. Citizens who gave more were no more blessed. Those who gave less were no more cursed. Life continued on its course, unabated.

At sunset, the crowds dispersed. Liverymen loaded gifts into baskets as servants hoisted the effigies on meaty shoulders to be hauled away and stored, waiting to be trotted out again next year.

He had never seen any of the heptarchs in person, even though he lived in the same tower as Shenefret, only lower down. He indulged the idea they might not be living persons at all but these effigies, hollow, clay-faced, mute, a doll-maker’s jape, an elitist farce meant to cow the multitudes into servility. For what? Another year, another round of perseveration, another turn of the millstone, until all that remained was dust.

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