XIII
All Errors are
by Epicycle Emended

Taláni climbed over the rocky foothills with a small party. By dawn, the effects of the fireball were evident. Small fires burned at the margins where rocky foothills gave way to sparse forests. Everywhere, the earth showed signs of disturbance: boulders overturned, cliff-sides newly cracked, trees half-uprooted and canted away from the blast, branches shorn away, always on one side. All the lines scraped into the landscape converged on the point of impact.

“The land is not smoldering,” Uluri said. “If it was a ball of fire, it must be cold fire.”

“Is there such a thing as cold fire?” Taláni asked.

“Everything is no such thing until someone sees it. We may get to be first to see cold fire — unless there’s no such thing.”

I like this one. Her thoughts are weighty, but she is never weighed down by them.

Climbing over rubble, they crested the lip of a bowl-shaped crater. The sides were shallow but loose, so they skidded down into the center.

“Is this all? Is this my gift from the spirits? A hole? A void? Nothing but chunks of blasted earth?”

“Chunks of blasted metal.” Uluri held up a small black rock and tapped it with a bronze blade. “Hard, too.” She found a crack and wedged the knifepoint in to flake off some loose material. “Brittle. It’s all around. Look, there’s a chunk the size of a house in the center and countless smaller bits all around.”

Uluri cast the rock aside and they walked toward the boulder. “These hills are feldspar and granite.” She gestured to the surrounding hills. “This dark stuff doesn’t belong. Had to come in on the fireball.” When they reached the boulder, she hitched up her skirts and climbed on. “Look at the lumpiness, here. See how it flowed, like cast bronze?”

Taláni nodded. The stone was smooth and bulbous on one side like a candle that had melted and cooled again.

“Might be copper or tin? Not the right color, though. Harder than flint.” She leaned in and sniffed the boulder, sucking in deeply. “Smells like soot. Tar maybe.” She hopped back down. “Probably doesn’t mean anything.”

For a moment Taláni wondered if this eccentric woman might pull off a hunk of charred rock and swirl it in her mouth like wine. She didn’t. Instead, she kept speaking to no one in particular.

“Is it possible to forge this material? Into weapons?” he asked.

Uluri paused, looked sideways at the stone, moved her jaw forward, and inhaled loudly through her nose. The intensity of thought wrinkled her brow. “If it melted once, it’ll melt again. Question is: Do I bring it to the fire, or do I bring the fire here? Either way, I only have hot fire.”

Taláni put a hand on the stone. Could he feel it vibrating, humming with energy? Or was that his excitement? “This is the gift from the spirits. I will call it Rahánala-shabrákalu.” The Rider-in-the-Fire.

Over the next few weeks, Uluri made multiple trips back and forth to the site of the crater to study the material, the site, and the landscape. In the end, she decided to bring the forge to the metal. “Rahánala is lonely in her new home.” No matter how hot she made her fires, or long she roasted it, the metal would not yield. Nevertheless, she clearly enjoyed the challenge.

Confident she would eventually succeed, Taláni gave her permission to commandeer as many of the workers as she desired. He was not about to squander the gift.

Not long after, he decided to contact the dark spirit again to thank him for the gift of new metal.

I can ask for guidance — how best to use this star-stone.

With this aim in mind, he sat by the fire and drank the strongest preparation of spirit root that his mother would allow.

The world collapses. Taláni is in the red desert, alone. “Lord of Dying Things, I have received your gift. What must I do now?”

A voice comes from all around, grinding like stone on stone. “Have you no advisors? Listen to them!”

“I will, I will!” Taláni’s heart races. “But we need your assistance. Please, reveal yourself to me!”

“I do not open to you, but you to me. You see me as a reflection of yourself, but to me, you are as a bead of glass.”

Taláni falls to his knees. Breathing slowly. Deep in. Long out. Thinks of nothing. Black. Void. Abyss. The barrier of mentality slips. Awareness fades like a mist, leaving only sensation behind. Space before him wobbles like a mirage. The dark spirit materializes, face shrouded in smoke.

Above him, a field of glass spheres appears, arranged in rings, circles within circles, stretching in all directions. Endless. Taláni marvels.

It is like the night sky, but the stars are close enough to touch!

He stands, taps the sphere directly overhead. Flinches.

I felt that!

“These are the children of flesh as I see them,” the spirit booms. “Fixed in their courses, always moving toward the end.”

“What end? Do you direct them?”

The spirit inflates, now twice its size, glowing through its robes. “I am the Archon of the Ages and I see down the corridors of time. I am the spirit of the present age and of ages not yet come. I am change! I am transformation! Do I direct them? Does the earth direct the stone that falls from the hand? No, I am the destination toward which all things trend. Without me, all things would continue, living, suffering, sorrow upon never-ending sorrow.”

The spirit shrinks. “But the courses are difficult to alter. We bash the spheres, tug at them, freeze them, blast them with fire. We can only bend the arcs.” The spirit seems forlorn somehow. “So stubborn, these creatures, yet so fragile. They do not yield, but sometimes they shatter.” Now close to Taláni, behind, leaning into his ear, whispering. “Do you not understand? Your mind is my enemy, to your detriment.”

The sphere above Taláni blooms like a flower. Petals of flesh and bone. Inside, a quivering bubble of blood.

My flesh. My blood.

“The spirit root does this?”

“There are other means to this end, unguents and smokes you do not yet know. Some open while they sleep or during certain ecstasies that I can teach you.”

Taláni thinks of Selolo, sleeping. Open. He hasn’t thought of her in a long time. He feels nothing. The sphere folds back in on itself, petals relaxing into position, a sphere again. “Tell me, are there rites or ceremonies by which you may be invoked?”

Laughter, like an earthquake. The spirit has stepped away now. “I already told you! You do not possess me, I possess you. Ceremonies and treatments bring you to me not the other way around. Your order is a mirror of mine, but the meridians are not the same and they cross at different junctions. This is more than you can understand. Sometimes you are far from us, sometimes already near. You may be near to a thing in your order but inaccessibly far away in ours.”

“Am I near to you? Will you protect me?”

“You are one of my circle of five, the innermost part of my machinery.”

A ring of five spheres throb, yellow and dim, Taláni’s among them.

“These are near to one another in our order but far apart in yours. We are nudging you closer. It is an expensive project, spanning many ages.”

“Do I know them?” No answer. He dares not ask again. “Your purpose. Is it to overthrow the spawn of Kindhir?”

More laughter. “Oh, how narrow you are! It is your best quality. This machine is realigning the orders. Kindhir is a part of it and so are you. You are a tiny bead of glass with a critical function, and you will be rewarded accordingly.”

Rumbling. A stone pillar erupts beneath Taláni’s feet. Rising. He sees all around. No red desert. A great river running from mountains to sea. Kalparaana in the distance. He looks down, sees the city of Nepsilam beneath him.

This is Kindhir’s Tower!

Kusumnu is attacked. Swarming like locusts. Armies pour out of nearby Cheshak and Shiriwak. Like hornets, angry, converging on Kusumnu.

Rushing wind. The spire disappears, and he is back in the desert, before the Spirit.

“Seven spiders sit on a web. Attack one and two more bite. Look to the edges, down-river, down-coast. The enemy of your enemy is your ally.”

“Tell me more!” Taláni pleads.

Puffing. Smoke billows from its garments. “I am the Archon of the Ages. I see down the corridors of time. I reveal only what I wish to reveal, in the time that seems best to me.” Smoldering. “The courses resist, but I have leaned at the helm for a full age of the sun.” A flash. More smoke. “I will speak no more of this.”

Taláni’s eyes fill with smoke, his ears rattle and clang. Everything fades away, last of all himself.

The noise subsided and became the sound of his mother, shaking a rattle. Limbs numb, ears ringing, he regained his senses a little at a time. He began to ache all over, trembling, feverish. Puzzled, he wondered how anything he learned could possibly help him.

Look down-river. That, I can do.

Selolo settled into village life as best she could. Barlas built a cot to her specifications, and her new auntie, Hennamis, dressed the place and made it a functioning home. The older woman visited more frequently as the pregnancy progressed.

“Rain or sunshine today?” She asked in the local language.

By now, Selolo understood this expression. If she was feeling well, she was meant to say “sunshine,” and “rain” if she was feeling poorly. Today, all she could do was grab her belly and groan as a bulge worked its way from one side to the other.

“Ah, rain.” Hennamis performed her best pantomime of a baby stretching out. “Turning, turning. Rain where?”

Selolo waved her hands over her entire torso.

Hennamis sent Gwahália out to get some of the bush bark they chewed to dull pain while she held Selolo’s hand. “Soon now.”

Hennamis sang songs and mopped her brow for most of the day as waves of pain battered her like an unrelenting ocean. At one point, the old woman disappeared and then returned with a whole flock of aunties and all the rest of the sisters.

Terror gripped Selolo. She knew what this meant, and she hated it. Not now! She wasn’t ready. She would never be ready.

Oh, spirits! Which one of you said this child could grow inside me? Which one says it can split me in half from the inside and walk out of me now? Why do I deserve this punishment? The child, also. Doesn’t every child deserve a mother that wants it?

Seeing her distress, Hennamis signaled for Barlas’s mother, who was more fluent in jargon than any of the other aunties, to join her. Hennamis spoke in Fyrean, and the head-woman repeated in jargon.

Selolo may not have understood every word, but she got the gist of it: Auntie Hennamis knew how Selolo felt. She had every ache and pain before her daughter was born. She felt like she was dying. And when her grandson, Atnan, was born, his mother did die.

Why tell me this? Maybe they think I will die, too, like Atnan’s mother. If I knew it would kill me, I would have killed it first! I should have thrown myself down in the wilderness to pummel it inside my womb, or chewed on bloodwort and silkworms to vomit it loose. Oh, I should have thrown myself in the river as soon I knew, nice cold river, nice soft water —

The story continued: Atnan had no mother to suckle him. They fed him on seal’s milk and other soft foods diluted with broth and soaked on a rag. He cried. They cried. Everyone cried and prayed to the spirits to spare his life. Every woman in the village tried to feed him. The old women told them to chew milk thistle and pinch their nipples. Hennamis let him suckle until blood came out, but she didn’t care so long as he survived.

“Auntie, why tell this?” If they meant to assuage her fears, it wasn’t working.

All the women gathered around and put their hands on her belly. The head-woman said, “You are in our care. If you live, we will sustain you. If you die, we will sing of you to our ancestors in the stars.”

The pain and screaming stretched through the night. She felt like she was being cut open with a knife from the inside, as in some of her dreams, but eventually her daughter came, shivering and wailing, covered in blood and fluid, but healthy, and alive.

They were both alive.

Seeing her daughter’s face for the first time, she knew exactly what she would be called. “Kirelítsu,” she said to the baby, loud enough for everyone to hear. To herself, she said, Wi’inaxáyo-wa’axána-kirelítsu.

Throughout the rest of the day well-wishers from the village arrived to proclaim her daughter the strongest and most beautiful baby they had ever seen. Look at her tiny fingers and toes! And her precious little head! Such a big name for such a small person!

Yes, her face was pudgy and sweet, in the way all baby faces are, but the sight of Taláni’s features commingled with her own repulsed her.

It’s not your fault, little one. I will try not to hate him when I look at you. It may be impossible, but I will try.

One of the old women showed her how to feed the baby, a curious sensation.

Many times as she had carried the child, she dreamed of expelling it in a gush of blood, wished for it to happen — one more trauma to be put behind her, to propel her forward. Now, with the tiny mouth latched on, a shudder passed over her. As she watched Kirelítsu’s head rise and fall with each breath, Selolo repented, resolving to give her daughter the life that was stolen from her.

Once I was a not-wife, an almost-queen. Once I was a daughter, too, stolen from my parents, and forced to grow up, too soon, a not-daughter, an almost-wife. Your birth, helpless little one, is a rebirth for me.

Yet if this was Kirelítsu, who was she?

Selolo. Selolo. Behold, the Lolo.

This was a dead name to her, but she could think of no other.

It’s good to be alive, not every day, but sometimes.

The next morning, Atnan decided to visit the Academy.

“Can you find your way?” Zakinder asked.

Atnan gestured toward Kindhir’s Tower. Since getting lost on his first day in the city, he had made it a point to learn its general layout.

Zakinder explained anyway. “Yes, the avenues are spokes of a wheel and the tower is the axle. The Academy is the hub, not in the tower but around the base, and the ministerial district is in a ring around that. It’s like a little city within the city.”

After a long walk up the avenue, Atnan arrived at the wall of the ministerial district, about half as tall and thick as the outer walls of the city. There, the avenue ended and continued as a footpath through an ungated portal. Underfoot, a circular mosaic depicted the white snail of Gwetlak on an orange field. Overhead, the arched entrance bore the motto, Seven are One. The city and the district had eight such gates in the eight cardinal directions: Six roughly facing the sister cities, the seventh main gate for Nepsilam itself, and an eighth facing nothing — perhaps this was meant for expansion.

He passed through the portal onto a path of orange-ish stones that spiraled around ministerial buildings and courtyards until it merged with the different-colored stones of the other portals into the multicolored band of stones: Kindhir’s Pavement.

Standing on the Pavement, he looked for the nearest entrance into the Academy proper, a ring of eight complexes surrounding the base of the tower, each one devoted to a different discipline. The agricultural complex was nearest, and in front of it, a man sat on a folding stool, reading a scroll, his blue dress and shaved head declaring him to be a scholar.

Atnan approached and bowed.

“Don’t bow to me,” the man said without looking up.

Atnan stood silently for a moment, then tapped the man on the shoulder and began to sign his name and business, but the man stared at him blankly.

“I don’t know any of that. Do you not speak Kindhir’s tongue?”

Atnan tapped his larynx and signed in the negative. He pulled out a slate, on which he had already written, “I am Atnan of Del, a mute. I have a package for the archives.”

Upon reading the message, the man stood, rolled up the scroll he was reading, tucked it into a pocket in his robe, and folded his seat against the wall. “Del you say? Follow me.”

Atnan hesitated, but the man insisted.

They stepped into a hallway that curved around the base of the tower. Stairways lead up or down, doors lead further inside, other hallways branched off or merged in. The man plunged down a narrow staircase short enough they both had to duck their heads, unlit except by light streaming through shafts bored in the archway overhead.

Atnan touched the smooth plaster walls on either side as they descended. He counted thirteen steps before the stair opened on a ringed platform overlooking a room filled with shelves all around, punctuated by tall stone pillars.

The Grand Archive!

Atnan remained fixed, scanning the room. He had never seen so many texts in one place, ring upon ring, row upon row, shelf after shelf, baskets, boxes, chests, stacked floor to ceiling, three times his height or more.

The man tugged at his sleeve. “No gawping. This way.”

They walked along the platform to a small room, where the man directed Atnan to sit on a wooden bench then ducked outside. After a short time, he poked his head back through the doorway. “This room is guarded. If you attempt to leave, they are instructed to kill you.”

Overwhelmed, Atnan let his satchel slide to the floor as he sat waiting on the hard bench for what seemed like a long time, retracing every poor decision that had brought him to this point — possibly his end.

The man reappeared with a wicker tube, upended it, and handed him the rolled sheet that slid out. “Atnan of Del. Is this your work?”

Atnan recognized the ledger, which he had prepared for Zakinder and Glesimel. His heart pounded and his mouth went dry. He considered a lie, but decided against it and signed in the affirmative.

“I take it that means ‘yes’. I have seen you at the market, marking and tallying. You’re not a farmer, are you?”

Atnan signed a negative then mimed writing on his hand.

“A scribe? Ha! Where you come from, perhaps. Not here.”

Atnan wore a confused expression.

“What are your intentions in Nepsilam? A little freelancing? Defraud a vendor or two before you move on to the next town?”

Urgently, Atnan wiped the slate clean with his hands and wrote that he had met the farmers and needed a place to stay, so he did their accounts. Nothing more.

“Ah! So you admit to willfully violating the law?”

“I followed the law,” Atnan wrote. Kindhir’s decrees were among the complete texts his father owned, and he had read every word and clause of the founding decrees many times over. He began to write the law from memory on the slate.

The man interrupted him. “You may know the law as written, but not as implemented. It falls to the Academy of Mek ‘to establish a standard language, writing, and system of measures and counting’. Those standards incur costs, which are covered by collecting certain revenues — which you dodged, and for that there are consequences. Fortunately, two things stand in your favor: First, you are obviously not a professional criminal, and second, you do competent work.”

Atnan sat up straight.

“Don’t puff up. Your ligatures are all but nonexistent and your terminal strokes are in a style my grandfather would have thought old-fashioned — the mark of a grotesquely Fyrean affect, which by the way, is how your offense came to my attention at all, and how I knew to question you. I assume you represented to your clients that you could write in the imperial style when you clearly cannot. You should hope they don’t press you for defrauding them as well.” He rolled the ledger and returned it to the tube. “Still, your hand is legible and all the sums are correct. As such, your labor will suffice as currency for your fines. As of this moment, you work for me — that is, for the Academy of Mek.”

Before Atnan could protest, the man led him out of the room, where two strong scholars waited. “I am Shemulak of Nepsilam, but you must call me Sage Minor — no, I suppose you won’t call me anything at all.” With an ink-dipped brush, he daubed a mark on Atnan’s forehead.

Startled, Atnan flinched away from the brush, but the scholars held him arm by arm.

“This mark of attachment will suffice until your head is shorn. It means you are not allowed outside the confinement areas of the Academy. I will inform your hosts that they are also attached, not bodily, provided they pay the appointed percentage to this institution and to the heptarchy — the back amounts and seven times restitution. They may appeal to the courts, but I advise against it. That will only make it worse on them in the end.”

Darkness crept at the edges of Atnan’s vision. His stomach whirled.

Prison? Seven times? Is this all I am able to do? Ensnare myself and others? My place in society must be the edge of a cliff, never a moment away from tipping over the edge!

“Kindhir says: Whoever steals from one city must repay all seven.” Shemulak’s expression softened. “Look here, I am a friend to the farmers of this city, and I believe you meant no harm. Prison is not my desire for anyone, but there are principles to uphold.”

The sage attached a cord to the horns of Atnan’s slate and hung it around his neck like a yoke. “Normally I would instruct inmates to remain silent unless addressed. In your case, that seems redundant.”

Atnan took a deep breath. He was already tipped over the edge. There was no reason for his friends to tumble after him. He wrote on the slate, awkwardly, because it was upside down, “My mistake alone. The city gains nothing prosecuting them.”

“I am willing to presume their ignorance, and levy their fines against you alone.” Shemulak patted him down, took his bag of coins, counted it, scoffed, then handed it to the guards. “This will do for a start, and the rest you may work off. The fines you owe to the city, but this favor, you owe to me.”

Atnan scribbled, “How long?”

“Until I deem your debt repaid.” He waved them away.

The guards took him to a small room where they shaved his head with a long bronze blade and painted a stripe of soot-black from the bridge of his nose to the nape of his neck. Then they tossed him into a dimly lit chamber with nowhere to sit but the cold stone floor. Back pressed against the wall, he tucked his legs up inside his tunic.

Stupid! Stubborn! Dub was right: These scrolls have brought me nothing but misfortune.

At that moment he realized he had left the satchel behind.

“You, boy,” a voice rasped. An elderly man with long arms shuffled out of the shadows to examine the mark on Atnan’s head. “No time limit — what’d you do, sleep with a minister’s wife?”

As Atnan pulled away the man saw his slate. “Ah, dumb-stump! No wonder — the spirits judged you long before the magistrates.” He retreated to the other side of the room.

Some whispering followed. Atnan couldn’t see how many people he shared the detention room with, but he could hear them debating if he had anything worth taking.

Finally, someone said, “He’s cursed, that one, and we’ll all go mute if he touches us!”

Atnan curled up and quietly sobbed. His desire had stretched toward the Grand Archive of Kindhirak for as long as he could remember. Now he wished he had never heard of it. He wanted nothing more than to sit by the fire in Del, embrace his grandmother and listen to her fight with his father, then in the morning, to throw his nets onto Shen’s Inlet. Why hadn’t that been enough? Why had he pursued this mystery? Why had it pursued him, and when, at long last, would it relent?

Mekvat had only been back a few days before he was intercepted by Pabirak and shuffled off to a small meeting room off the archives.

“Minister, this is a surprise. I didn’t expect to see you until the solstice.”

Mekvat explained, at great length, how Luto had “absconded” with the building funds and the heptarch of Shiriwak had, “from caprice and a generally unsettled temperament,” terminated the monument project and expelled the academy of Mek. “Afflicted by an excess of feminine volatility, I fear — no such woman should be a heptarch — not at her age, anyhow — she should have children, settle the fluids — I tell you, in a year or so, her womb will shrivel and all will be as it was.” He untucked an errant cuff. “A few personnel re-assigned. Nothing of lasting value lost.”

“You make too little of it, Minister! By Mek, I am mystified. The monument was always a fool’s gamble. I abhor the loss to the treasury, but I never saw a less expensive way to rid us of your complication.”

Mekvat feigned offense. “The elder sages of my day were far more complicated, but we made do.”

Pabirak bristled. “Your day has been over for a long time. Surely you realize that the presence of Mek in every city is the only thing of ‘real value’ we have!” His voice began to rise in both pitch and volume. “You should be publicly defrocked and your thumbs removed so you may never hold a pen again — but no, the academy cannot afford further humiliation, to say nothing of arousing Shenefret to intervene! What can I do but ‘make do’ and tuck you away? I must put these issues to the council of administrators, but in the meantime, I strongly urge you to begin your retirement as we agreed, and take up a quiet life of educating the youth.”

“When my organs have settled, perhaps. I am discombobulated by this entire business, as you can imagine.”

“I’m sure I cannot, but I have no desire to excite your fluids any further. Who knows what might come of that?” Pabirak paused. “With respect, Minister, we have been getting on quite well.”

“Without me, you meant to say.”

Pabirak turned to leave. “All that is required of you now is to turn up for certain rites and to receive certain visitors. Otherwise, I beg you, no more  complication.”

Mekvat flashed an obsequious smile, hands resting in his lap, fingers laced. “Yes, yes. I promise to behave.”

Mekvat rose to leave, still unsettled by the conversation with Pabirak. At least it was done with.

Kindhir says: Wrath is a fire in a pot of oil. Fight it, and it will spread. Leave it, and it will burn itself out.

As he stood, his foot caught the strap of a satchel lying underneath the bench. He was able to steady himself against the wall with both hands, but not without dragging the satchel behind and splaying out its contents. He cursed under his breath.

Scrolls and pages littered the floor, written in an unfamiliar script. Kneeling, he rifled through them, looking for any clue to their origin.

A cipher of some kind? A bored scribe’s experiment?

Ink on the pages was barely dry, but the scrolls were brittle and faded from age. One consisted of rings of characters enclosed by blocks.

It couldn’t be! These were all destroyed, and yet, here it stares me in the face. Oh, if there were a way to worm my way back into the heart of this institution, it would be — but no, no. No sense moving into a house that isn’t built yet. First I must be sure.

Satchel repacked, he learned from a passing archivist that Shemulak had last used the room, and was likely as not to be found in a carrel in the agricultural wing.

Not long back and already playing the hermit.

Indeed, he found the younger sage sketching the roots of a plant splayed on his worktop.

“Don’t touch!” Shemulak said when Mekvat idly went to fondle one of the leaves. “Forgive me, Minister. Gall-thorn, a potent paralytic.”

Flinching as though he had touched the poison, he unshouldered the satchel. “I found this — I should say, it found me — in a room most lately occupied by yourself.”

“It must belong to the Fyrean boy — I attached him for doing unsanctioned scribal work at the markets.”

“A criminal? How exciting!”

“Quite the opposite. A minor administrative infraction. I have him in the sorting chamber now, working off the fines I levied against him. I can return this if you wish. It’s no trouble.”

Mekvat stroked the strap of the satchel. “No, no! I want to talk to him, and I think you will, too.” He spread out one of the scrolls. “Look, there are some unusual texts here. Some old, some new, but all very  interesting. You may have pinched yourself a thief.”

Shemulak’s eyes widened. “By all seven cities! It never occurred to me to search his person. I’ll fetch him here right away.”

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