XV
Unleash Evil
Upon the Earth

Taláni found the winter interminable. The time was useful for preparing troops for battle, but his impatience with the process grew daily. None of the troops progressed fast enough. None had his attention, focus, or stamina. None wanted to drill new methods, armor, and weapons until they dropped from exhaustion. His commanders were incompetent, the priests ignorant, the spearmen lazy, and the archers blind.

The only person in his army with any wits was Uluri, and she wasn’t even a soldier. She spent the winter inventing siege engines, rams, and ladders. Her teams of smiths forged heavy spear points from Rahánala, the star-stone, and constructed large torsion engines to hurl them. Her herdsmen corralled animals from the mountains: great ibex and elk for cavalry, pachyderms and wild asses for burden, and terror birds for battle.

Most importantly, she discovered how to soften the fallen leaves of the great tree by boiling them overnight in vinegar. Once dried, the material became even stiffer than before, which she demonstrated by wearing a breastplate while two soldiers clubbed the fibrous material as hard as they could, knocking her over but doing no lasting damage.

Meanwhile, Melíksi’s workers built her an audience hall with a red jasper throne surrounded by a mosaic depicting the rays of the sun, ring upon ring, emanating from the throne. Her domain was now indoors with her priests, while his was outside with the soldiers or atop the great stump.

They spoke less and less.

In the fourth month, the ice in the Great River began to melt. Taláni went to his mother, finding her seated on her jasper throne, face veiled. As he approached, he inquired whether the numerologists had confirmed the date of their departure, but she cut him short and motioned for everyone in the hall to leave.

When he came close, she removed the beaded veil to reveal her eyes, now fully clouded over by cataracts. “I remain behind, nedóru. So say the spirits.”

Taláni’s posture sagged. “You … hid this from me?”

“I would give anything to see the glory of your ascension.” She replaced the veil and invited him to sit beside her. “It is for the best. Our realm is expanding, and the government cannot run itself. Kwelitánsit will require all your energy, but Kalparaana is the world-heart. I can do much from here, where the spirit-roads align.”

Perturbed, he laid his head on her shoulder.

She ran her long sharp fingernails along his scalp. “You must promise me one thing.”

Did she know what he was thinking? “Anything.”

“Do not ingurgitate hostile blood. Burn it, or trample it underfoot.”

He stiffened. Maybe she did know what he was thinking.

“I sense your thirst, nedóru, your desire for vigor. But you must not allow Kindhir to war with you inside as well as out.”

“I understand.”

“I know you do.” She paused for a moment, cradling him, then finally she added, “The numerologists say to leave before the next new moon.”

For three days Taláni prepared himself for battle, fasting from any food or drink except the blood of wolves and foxes. On the last day, the blood-mages singed off all his hair and dressed him in skirt, boots, and a cape of black wolf pelt. Black dye stained both his arms up to the elbow, and he painted his eyes and nose black, like a skull.

Masked and veiled, his mother rode on a litter behind him to the water’s edge while the invasion force gathered along the banks. As the war drums pounded a steady rhythm, he stood beside her and described everything he saw. Soldiers encased in leaf armor. Pack animals dragging siege engines over log bridges. Carts of supplies and weapons. Boatmen leaning on long poles to steady the barges while they were loaded.

Taláni took his seat in the prow of the last barge, and Melíksi addressed the flotilla from shore, shouting with her arms raised, “Ride into glory! The people will resist, but the land welcomes its children home!” Her priests shouted “Kwelitánsit!” and the assembled forces shouted in reply. At Taláni’s signal, they pushed at the poles.

The army lumbered over the plains toward Kelwath, where the Great River crawled over a wide maze of gravel bars. Taláni rode the largest ibex, surrounded by a hedgerow of his personal bodyguards, all wearing full leaf armor and carrying long-handled glaives of star-stone. The encampment was already set up on their side of the ford, far enough from the river to remain hidden.

After a cursory review of the encampment, Taláni retired to his tent with Uluri to hear her full report.

“Messengers have returned from Skiptéli. They are ready to bridge the river gorge on command. An expeditionary force waits outside Pelnu and will carry out their mission at the appointed time. Here, the full invasion force is encamped and the watch is set. The horn-beasts are corralled and sleeping. The other beasts are caged and restless. At dawn, we enter.”

“First the village,” he said. “Then Kusumnu.”

“It’s a tiny settlement — no garrison, if the Dar’s spies are correct.”

Taláni smiled. He found Uluri exceptionally plain, but intelligent and strong — given his anticipation of the morning’s raid, he felt flush. As she rose to leave, he grabbed her wrist and held it.

“I’ll have someone sent in.”

“I don’t want someone.” He squeezed.

She laughed and put her hand over his. “The snake that leaves its nest will lose its head.” She fondled the handle of the dagger she wore at her hip.

“Don’t tease.”

“I belong to the lady of the moon and her maidens. Alone.”

Relaxing his grip, he leaned back on both his hands, amused.

She bowed curtly and left. Moments later, two young women and a young man entered. She was right; they were much more to his liking.

At dawn, Taláni and ninety of his best warriors forded the river and crept through a field of winter-dried grass and patchy snow.

Kwelitánsit, I put my feet on you. Greet your conqueror.

Everything up until this moment was prelude. Now the song could begin.

His archers carried short bows that Uluri made from laminated layers of horn and Kalparaanan hardwood. The lead archer loosed an arrow, aimed at a lone farmer watering a goat at the river’s edge. Taláni imagined himself as the arrow, swimming through the air, diving deep into the man’s chest, lodging in his lungs.

Taláni whistled through his teeth, three short bursts. His soldiers slaughtered everyone in the encampment, old, young, men, women, children. They left the bodies wherever they fell; burning them would slow them down and leave smoke on the horizon.

His army poured over the river like a carpet of ants. Uluri rode out front on an ibex, leaf armor gleaming in the mid-morning sun, a shock of scarlet yak hair flowing from the peak of her helmet.

It should be his mother riding into victory. She deserved that glory, to ride beside him, black eyes glinting in the sun, not cowering in a hole in a tree, enduring the creeping shame of old age.

They pressed on toward Kusumnu. Time was short.

Selolo’s dreams grew more intense, night after night, until she was worn ragged from lack of sleep.

Many voices speak at once, overlapping, urgent, but I don’t understand the words.

I am in a room so white it hurts. Without shadows, I cannot discern floor or walls. The voices grow louder, like a river.

Nearby, a white tree emerges, spins, grows, or I may be swirling around it.

Listen! Listen!

“I’m trying, but you aren’t speaking any words.”

Suddenly, they speak, “Beyond them. Cease.”

Silence. Heavy.

I scream into the blankness, then awake.

Some nights later, I am in the white room again, with a white figure, neither man nor woman, smooth, featureless. Its jaw unhinges and it screeches like an eagle, like clanging brass.

I awake. The baby is crying.

Listen, Selolo, listen!

A third time, I am with the smooth person, now more woman than man. It speaks, many voices in unison. The white tree appears in her outstretched palm again, shivering.

A red streak, like a vein, traces its way up the trunk, choosing its way, branch by branch, to the top. Crooked. Suspended. Spinning.

I ask about the tree.

“It is the sum of all possible paths.”

“Which paths?”

“Yours.” She points to the bottom end of the red line. “Your birth.” It is lopsided. She points to one of the branches is broken off at the trunk. “Wi’inaxáyo-wa’axána-kirelítsu.” Now the red line. “Selolo.”

I understand: This is my life path, my river of blood. The red line marks the choices I made, the unmarked branches left unchosen. I trace the line from my birth at the trunk upward. It hasn’t ended yet.

The tree falls over and flattens out, becomes the ground. Now the red line is a river, and I fly over it, toward the end. I catch up to where the river is rushing into a dry channel like a flood. Whenever the channel splits, I choose which way to fly and the river follows.

Nokokolë is there, following beside me. No matter which way we go, we fly toward the sun, waning like a crescent moon. The white room grows dark.

The domain of Kindhir stretches before us, all Seven Cities glittering like stars. We fly toward the greatest city, the tallest tower.

Atnan is inside, writing on a scroll. He sees everything I see — the same, but different, not in dreams, but written on a page.

The voices are urgent now. “We are not alone!”

The room goes dark and I am surrounded by a fiery ring. Nokokolë has flown away.

Black smoke swirls around me, now a hand, a tentacle, a tendril, clamped around my throat, squeezing. I’m dying. There is laughter everywhere, like a falling tree, a waterfall, a heavy cart rolling over a stony path. I don’t recognize this laughter, but I know what it means.

The smooth woman whispers in my ear, many voices together at first, fraying apart as she speaks. “Listen! Selolo, listen! Fly, fly! When you get there, you will know! Owl will know!”

Selolo awoke, hands held over the baby’s nose and mouth, squeezing. Horrified, she jerked her hands away.

Kirelítsu coughed and began to fuss. Selolo placed a hand on her tummy and patted her until she relaxed. As she soothed her daughter, her fluids rose within her until she threatened to break in half. With all her will, she held back the sobs. Gwahália was still asleep; the last thing she needed right now was a motherly figure hovering over her.

Two sides yanked at her, one light and one dark. Why did they have to torment her? If the light spirits wanted her to speak for them, why was their message unclear? Why always riddles? Why couldn’t they keep the dark spirits away?

Am I no more than a puppet? A plaything?

The smoke. Was it the smoke of Taláni’s victims? Roaming the earth, fixated, deranged, seeking revenge? Or something worse? The white tree. The smooth woman with many voices wanted her to leave, to go to Kindhir’s domain.

Where Taláni is — or soon will be.

Kirelítsu sipped a few short breaths and let out a long wobbling sigh.

The red path points to Nepsilam, to the tallest tower. I should have gone with Owl — he knows what I know, somehow.

Quietly, she packed for a long trip.

I can’t make it alone.

She snuck up to the little cottage behind the headman’s house where Barlas slept. He should have been there, but he wasn’t. He loved the boats, the sea. If he was anywhere …

She found him walking along the beach. As he skipped toward her, she wondered what she was going to say to him to convince him to go with her. He had brought her here to keep her safe.

He arrived, foggy breath snuffling out. “Selolo, good?” He asked, urgent. “Why here?”

“No dead,” she said.

“Hah! Not yet, eh?”

She began again. “No. Father.” She patted her belly. “Father, no dead.” Sniffling, she told him the entire ugly story, in words and gestures she hoped he could understand, starting with her as wikéria, plotting to overthrow Kindhirak with Taláni, then how she was exiled along with her not-“sisters”. It felt like falling, as though she were a bird whose wings were dropping off, feather by feather, word by word, tumbling from the air.

When she got to telling him about their wanderings in Hapak-Nalak, he stopped her. “Hay-hay,” he said slowly.

Did that mean he knew why she was telling him all this? No, how could he? He still needed to know why she was chasing him down in the middle of the night. “He comes,” she said. “Blood. Battle. Killing, much much. Fire. Evil. He comes, for daughter, for me, for everyone. He goes, to Kindhirak first. I go, to Kindhirak. Stop him.”

“Stop him?”

“Owl and Bear and Selolo — ”

He indicated she didn’t need to say anymore. “What about here? Family. Sisters. Kirelítsu. Only a dream. A bad dream. Stay here, with me.”

The way he said the last two words made her waver. Surely she wasn’t thinking straight. They both had obligations here. She should leave him alone and go back to bed. They should both go back. Going back was the right thing, the only thing to do.

“No,” she said after a long pause. “You come, with me.”

He pointed off in the distance. “Nepsilam,” he said finally. “Maur, then Gwetlak, then Nepsilam. Atnan went to Nepsilam, that way.”

The last feather fell out of her wings. Was he saying she needed to go without him? She would if she had to. She would crawl the whole distance, wingless, broken, rather than see them harmed by the black smoke she imagined was whirling around them even now.

He let out a long, foggy breath. “Tell me on the way, eh?”

They stopped off at his cottage and gathered more supplies, then snuck off toward Maur. Somewhere, she heard Nokokolë screech, felt herself soaring along with her down the red path toward Nepsilam, a half-eaten sun, Atnan, and a thick cloud of mysteries.

At least she didn’t have to go alone.

Atnan dove into working with the two sages on the scrolls. Their project commenced in the Minister’s quarters, halfway up a long, sloping spiral ramp that ran along the outer edge of the tower — an arduous walk that Atnan was happy to undertake each day. The minister arranged for whatever supplies and texts they required, and even their meals were delivered, four times daily, on little wheeled carts.

The Sage Prime — whose name he learned was Mekvat — still called him “Wet-Socks,” but with a less malicious tone. “Such robust fluids you have,” he said when Shemulak relayed the story of finding the tapestry. “Constant ingestion of seawater and its invigorating salts, I suppose! You are like a tree grown into the side of a mountain, starved of good soil, but resilient.”

Day by day they translated. Atnan performed the first pass using the key text he had copied from the tapestry, then Mekvat and Shemulak read his initial translations to “press out the wrinkles.”

“Who taught you to translate, Wet-Socks?” The minister asked one day. He was reading a sheet with copied signs and Atnan’s imperial equivalents written above.

Shemulak blotted his pen and leaned in to follow along as Mekvat read Atnan’s work aloud, “Pa-ra-ke-ta-ma-nu — this is Birek-Dammun, surely — thrown-he from circles-of-blank, said this he: Inside circles, new circle, but small. Inside, newer, but another small, unto blank, great to small, so edge to center.” He sighed. “May as well be the braying of a mule.”

After a moment’s consideration, Shemulak said, “This first blank must be ‘knowledge,’ referring to the Paths of Wisdom.”

“If so, my earlier translation — ” Mekvat shuffled through a pile that had grown disorganized, then gave up looking.

Atnan made a gesture to indicate that he wanted Shemulak to continue.

“It seems to be about geometry,” Shemulak said. “Elementary principles of a circle — centers, edges. I’ll show you.” From a wooden box beneath the table, he produced a spool of yarn wrapped around a sharp spindle. Looping some of the yarn around his pen, he put the spindle down on a sheet, tracing a circle. “Centers and edges. If I am correct, your second blank may mean ‘pole’, which is the old way to refer to the spindle, or by extension, the center of any circle.” He indicated the divot left by the spindle. “Let out more string to inscribe a greater perimeter or reel it in to inscribe a smaller one — all around the same center.”

“Have you no circles in your village, Wet-Socks?” Mekvat teased.

Atnan thought about showing them how Fyreans laid out the stones for their huts with a rope and a pole in the same way, but decided not to get into it. Instead, he signed an affirmative then busied himself with the yarn and spindle, noting how he could make a spiral by unfurling the spindle as he worked it around the edge.

“Less an education than a debate between master and student,” Mekvat said.

Atnan wrote on his slate, “Exile?”

“Birek-Dammun? Kindhir’s father? Surely not! Half the buildings and streets in this city are named in his honor.”

“Besides, we have official histories,” Shemulak added. “Birek-Dammun died just before Kindhir united the Seven Cities. He was not exiled but buried on these very grounds. That part must be about something else.”

Atnan knew his interpretation was correct — of the scroll, if not the history — since he had already translated further down. There was no point in pursuing a correction at this point; they would find out on their own soon enough.

Instead, they set that text aside and began to correct another sheet from a different story. This one was a second pass:

He swarms the cities of Jalit. The beasts break his buildings so he has slept them well by burning seeds from Kusumnu’s blooms and he buries them.

He breaks the ways of blood, tramples their circles and poles, and builds new ones for himself. He burns the writing and inks new ones for himself. He kills the supplicants and ministers and has even given us a new Mek.

Chewing on his lip, Shemulak said. “Some of these texts are quite florid, aren’t they? That first bit sounds like my grandmother’s bedtime stories and the last — ”

Mekvat interrupted. “Every proposition, every phrase, utterly unthinkable. The Unification was famously bloodless, and speaking of, no such discipline as the Way of Blood exists or ever has. And Mek!” He crumpled the sheet. “This is unacceptable, Wet-Socks. You are a foreigner and can be excused for your ignorance, but this is blasphemy.”

Atnan wrote on his slate, “Apologies, Minister. I saw the same story on a tapestry downstairs.”

“I think I know the one,” Shemulak said helpfully. “Slumbering Giants.”

“Tortoise Hill?” Atnan wrote.

Mekvat scoffed. “Foolishness told by fools to entertain fools. Every knoll and hummock is named for one mystical beast or another — here the great snail of Gwetlak, there Pelnu’s river-dragon, or Kusumnu’s ram. Fools see the likeness of spirits in every cloud, every stew and porridge, and in every chamber pot.” He yawned and stretched. “I declare our first session a success, and I will see you tomorrow at sunrise.”

He gathered up their day’s product into a small wooden box and set it aside.

That evening, Atnan mulled over the geometry text and the diagram — the “wisdom walk” if the sages were correct about it — written in circles, each line set inside the other, “inside, newer, but again small.”

What if it was a calendar after all, but instead of stations of the sun or phases of the moon, the signs were stars, and the numbers counted distances or time periods, and … he didn’t sort it out, but instead transitioned into sleep, dreaming that the city itself was marking time, its central tower the gnomon of a giant sundial. Around the base, where the streets should have been, seven stars etched a pathway of light in a spiraling floret.

He awoke with a start. The circles were only an approximation! The one text interpreted the other, and they were both about the movements of the stars. Moreover, the circular scroll must describe a clock, or rather, a list of stellar appearances, spiraling inward toward the pole — a particular celestial event.

But what?

The next morning when they arrived in the Sage Prime’s chambers, they found him standing beside the hearth holding a bundle of sheets and scrolls. “Come, sit,” he said in an obsequious tone.

The minister’s chambers were plain and dark, with a platform bed at one end, some cushions on the floor, the countertop where they had been working, and little else but texts stacked all over. The fire roared and crackled in the hearth, heating the room past comfortable and casting an eerie glow on Mekvat’s face.

Just as Atnan recognized the bundle as the little lost scrolls and all their copies, Mekvat tossed it into the fire where it quickly burst into flame. Atnan jumped out of his seat to retrieve them, but Shemulak pulled him back.

Mekvat feigned sorrow. “I’m sorry, Wet-Socks, but these things do not belong in our world. These writings are without purpose or merit, and we have wasted enough time on them already.”

Trembling, Atnan pulled against Shemulak’s grasp. If he had ever wanted to protest, it was now. With all his energy, he struggled to speak.

How. Dare. You.

The words stood ready in his mind, crisp, clear, but the best he could manage was a desperate stammering, a stumble in his lips and a clutch in his throat that would not yield. He willed his tongue to move, pressing out tears from the effort, but to no avail. Defeated, he slumped into a sitting posture beside Shemulak.

Mekvat seemed undisturbed. Seated next to the fire, he poured himself a glass of wine. “Tell me, Shemulak. Do you remember my riddle?” He drew a triangle in the air. “Text, tradition, experience. Which do you leave, and why?”

“Is text your answer today?”

Atnan wanted to say a dozen or more things but knew he could not. While the last ashes of the scrolls fluttered around the fire, a song came to mind: Holiness, spread your wings, and keep me under your shadow.

He thought of the last time he had heard it, playing his flute with his grandmother standing on the beach, about to paddle out for his ordeal.

O spirits, I hope your purpose is accomplished!

Mekvat said, “In this instance, yes.”

“But … the history?” Shemulak said. “We have little from this period, and yes, it seems to come from a heathen perspective — an especially fevered one at that — but still, was there nothing to preserve?”

Atnan traced an arc in the air, after which Shemulak added, “Not to mention the observations of nature?”

“I am surprised to see your fluids in such turmoil, both of you. Artifacts are lost all the time. You speak of perspectives, Shemulak. I say let the dead lie and liars die. Shall we make a parade of every fool who scratched a stone? What if someone found these? Believed them? Started howling about drinking blood and Kindhir breaking the world?”

“Yes, but the rituals — much meaning is lost, and we could recover — ”

“What? How to learn about the stars by swilling blood? You have it backward, young fellow. What is a ritual at all, but a repetition? A series of specific motions? An exercise. The vitalization of the body and mind in action generates the meaning, not the other way around.”

“For your health? Like eating vegetables or … taking a walk?”

Mekvat swirled his cup. “It’s all just endless scrawling in the dust.”

As the two scholars debated, Atnan grew ever more bitter.

Round and round they go, throwing principles at one another like darts. Nothing will be resolved here; it’s just an opportunity to display skill at argumentation. Shemulak is no different than my father: He may protest, he may be right, but he cannot defy authority in the end. And the Prime Sage of Mek? The parallel of Old Dub, only with more opulent clothes and vocabulary. Dub wanted “them scrolls” burned from the start, and no less than the Minister of Archives has finally obliged!

Meanwhile, Shemulak was saying, “ — to use discernment. One doesn’t traipse after every random thing — we prioritize, sift — what matters, matters, and what doesn’t, doesn’t — it falls to us to know the difference. Kindhir matters. Mek matters.”

“Not that Mek.”

“It is a view of things, which might only have merit by way of counterpoint.”

The old man chuckled. Atnan felt his gaze flow over him, pummeling him, wearing him down like a stone in a riverbed.      

“In the end, all that matters is who is allowed a voice. I imagine young Wet-Socks here understands that better than most! Our world is rid of this ‘view of things’ and is better for it.” He held up his wine cup as if to make a toast. “Heliato-Mek’s voice was silent before, let it now remain so forever.”

Atnan rubbed the rune on his hand, remembering when his father said something very similar.

“What now?” Shemulak asked.

“I don’t care in the slightest.” Mekvat motioned toward the ashes in the fireplace. “Just not that.”

Shemulak stood, and motioned Atnan to do the same. “Minister, if we may?”

Mekvat sipped his drink and waved them away.

Once the minister’s quarters were out of sight, Atnan indicated back up the ramp toward his quarters, put his hands on his heart, then followed with an emphatic negative.

“If you mean that he is very wrong, I agree,” Shemulak said. “He has worked a whole lifetime at it, with great skill and intention.”

Atnan seethed. It was the first time he had ever imagined doing violence on another person, especially an elder. Not even Dub had aroused his anger so completely as Mekvat had.

Silently, they returned to Shemulak’s carrel. There, the Sage Minor produced a cloth that he daubed with some strong-smelling oil from a tiny flask. He motioned for Atnan to bend down so he could wipe the mark off his bald head.

“There,” he said after making another mark with greasy bluish paint, this time a single dot, “you are a student now, not a criminal.”

Atnan made a sign to indicate his confusion.

“Not much will change, I’m afraid, except that you may leave the Academy during days of furlough, or on errands. Well, I should think the meals will be vastly improved. I’ll have someone find you a cot.” Shemulak indicated the mark on Atnan’s head. “Don’t worry. No one will question it.”

Atnan repeated the sign.

“Why? Many reasons. For one thing, you didn’t murder the Sage Prime, even though you clearly wanted to.”

Selolo found renewed energy moving over the roads to Nepsilam — much smoother than the rugged terrain she had passed with the sisters, especially without a pregnant belly. Even Barlas had a hard time keeping up with her sometimes.

They walked all day, hunting with Nokokolë and gathering spring shoots whenever they were hungry. At night they made a fire with a bow and tinder and slept huddled together under their cloaks. With Barlas’s big arms wrapped around her, she felt especially secure.

Still, her sleep was fitful and tinged with black dreams. Whenever she awoke she tried not to disturb Barlas. How could she explain her visions to him? They spoke to her in their own language, scenes and symbols for which she had no lexicon, narrative, or frame of reference: circles, rings, arcs, and paths; fire and smoke; the sun eaten away, dying and being reborn; towers, trees, and poles, always surrounded by circular pavements, sometimes with dancers, sometimes parades; flowers, birds; rivers of blood; voices like rumbling, scratching or scraping; the sea, the sky, and the stars.

The signs beat themselves into her night after night, more urgently as they reached the cities. She tried to share these things with Barlas, wishing they could communicate better. Jargon, pantomime, and disjoint phrases from their opposing languages were only effective up to a point. The deep conversations she desired most to have with him were impossible, so they pressed on, speaking more about the journey than the destination.

Atnan tread these steps alone, months ahead of us. Barlas thinks he might still be in Gwetlak, but I know the riddle, even if I don’t know the answer: Owl is in the Big Tree near the River of Blood, reading the Star Circles so he can kill the sun, or maybe revive it. I don’t know. It’s all such nonsense!

With the towers of Nepsilam looming overhead, they passed through the city gates into a broad market, both their hands stained red.

Marked as a foreigner wherever I go.

“Where find Owl?” she asked.

“Big place,” he said. “Anywhere maybe.”

They passed clothiers and cobblers, butchers and bakers, vegetable stands with mushrooms the size of a duck, and a stall where an old woman was carving flutes from ox horn. Around a corner, she saw the tower at the center of the city.

“Big tree,” she said. “Owl inside.”

Barlas took his hat off and scratched the back of his head, thinking, unsure.

She made a face she hoped would reassure him. “Trust. Come!” she said as she struck off in the direction of the tower.

Down the broad avenue they went, red-stained hands tucked in their cloaks, heads down, trying not to draw attention. The Silgatháltha were not yet openly at war with Kindhirak, but looking at the faces of the men and women they passed, she felt impossibly strange: too short, too thin, too braided, wearing the wrong kind of shoes.

As they went, she noted that the road was paved in ruddy clay bricks. This bolstered her confidence. Finally, she was on the right path, the red ribbon that the smooth white woman wanted her to follow, the red river the owl-spirit expected her to know when she saw it.

At least she thought so, which was good enough for the moment to press ahead.

They passed an inner wall with open portals toward a complex of buildings around the base of the tower, all made of mud sculpted into swooping curves with doorways, windows, porticoes, and balconies in places that seemed to her to be random. The forms of the architecture rose and swelled and folded over onto themselves like a fine robe left crumpled on the floor. From its midst, the twisted trunk-like tower rose toward the sky, surrounded by a spiral ramp where people moved up and down like insects crawling along a twig.

Like spirits moving up and down between the earth and sky.

In the shade of one of the doorways, she saw two men reading, one middle-aged, the other much younger. They were both shaved bald with signs painted on their heads. Both wore long fuzzy blue tunics, like a pair of furry sulúngabuk, or heaps of blue delphinium. One spoke to the other in the language of Kindhirak, wik-wak, chlik-chlak.

Everything seemed wrong, somehow. Had the smooth woman led her astray? This seemed to be the place, but what was the next step?

Why is it always riddles? Always signs and symbols that mean everything and nothing! If the spirits require something of me, why not simply tell me? Are they even spirits at all, or am I trapped in a fever?

Suddenly, Barlas shouted out “Inky-fingers!” and ran toward the men, startling them both, sweeping the younger one up in a huge embrace. Barlas spoke so quickly in Fyrean that she couldn’t follow what he was saying, but it must have been news of their journey.

After a closer look, she recognized the younger man as Atnan and her innards leapt. If he was here, this was the place.

She didn’t want to interrupt but feared they wouldn’t stop if she didn’t. The other man was now standing with his hand on his bald head and an uncomfortable look.

She tugged on Barlas’s sleeve. “Speak.”

“What speak? To Atnan?”

Yes, yes, yes! Do you have any ears under all that hair? I’ve said again and again: Owl will know, Owl will know. He must interpret.

The message was clear in her mind, but the words to deliver it were not. “Blood. War. Death. Coming. Now maybe. Later maybe. Soon maybe.” She paused. “River of blood. White tree. The sun, eaten. A dark circle inside a bright circle.” It was all very clear to her — the picture, not what it meant. Perhaps this was how the many-voiced dream-woman felt when she said, “Beyond them — cease.”

Atnan interrupted, wrote something urgently on a slate and shared it with the older man, then indicated they should move inside. Selolo saw that he had drawn circles inside circles next to the words she couldn’t read.

When you get there, you will know. Owl will know.

* * * * *

Atnan spent the first moments of Selolo’s story trying to remember her name. She spoke in a rough mix of jargon, Fyrean, and words he didn’t know. Her gestures helped, a little. Barlas also helped, a little. He caught the gist of about half of it.

She clearly thinks we are in danger. War?

When she started talking about circles and the death of the sun, a few pebbles in his mind knocked loose and became a landslide.

The ringed scroll documents the motion of the stars. It’s for counting off the ages, marked by astronomical events — like my father’s table of moons, only more complex.

He recalled a passage from the geometry text:

Pa-ra-ke-ta-ma-nu says: I inscribed an age of the sun, birth unto death, not by blood-bowl, nor spirit-song, but by my own arts. Behold, order in all things: the circles and the shadows of their centers.

It records not only the travel of the moon but everything, the full machinery of heaven. Why does Selolo suddenly appear, dreaming about blood and eclipses? Anyone can make a table of the moon to know its eclipses, but the sun? This is impossible! Somehow this heretic scholar figured it out. This is what the spirits sent me to discover — except it isn’t discovered, it’s burned to ash.

“Atnan, who are these people?” Shemulak asked as they passed through the archives headed for his carrel. “Friends of yours? Family? Everyone in the villages is a cousin, I suppose.”

Atnan signed in the affirmative. “Cousins” was close enough for the time being. When they arrived in the carrel, Atnan searched Shemulak’s supplies.

“What are you looking for?” Shemulak grabbed his shoulders to stop him. “I can help.”

Atnan wiped his slate clean and wrote, “Sheets and spindle. To trace the machinery of the heavens.”

Shemulak found him a wide sheet that nearly covered the worktop, a pen and ink, a straight edge, and yarn and spindle.

Atnan took a few deep breaths and closed his eyes, recreating the ring scroll in his mind. Carefully, he drew two circles with the spindle. First, he added the sun symbol in the center, then divided the ring around it into five segments. He had read and drawn and re-drawn this text many times over the past year. Surely he could recreate it.

This is why the spirits chose me. I am a good observer. I am quiet. I listen, I see, and I remember.

The first ring of characters was not difficult for him to reproduce. Another circle on the page, another ring of symbols, this time eight, then the ring of ten. Shemulak must have figured out what he was doing. “The Minister was clear that we should not continue with … this.”

Atnan ignored him and kept drawing.

“This Heliato-Mek was a blood-mage, Atnan, and the ‘Paraktaman’ he describes is a conjurer, a forecaster — you know the decrees!”     

Atnan wrote on the page, “To measure the age of the sun — no forecast, only observation,” and directed Shemulak to read it. By now, he had reproduced all but the outermost ring of signs and numbers.

“No, you must not do this! The death of the sun is a dark omen. No one knows when it will happen but when it does, regimes topple, societies collapse. People die, Atnan. Rulers. Administrators. Scholars. Do you not understand how these pages could get us executed — or worse?”

Calmly, Atnan took the spindle and began drawing a different diagram on the sheet, referring to the signs to determine how big each arc should be. After consulting a table of the moon on the wall, he drew the last few strokes to narrow the zone of convergence.

Now Shemulak loomed over his shoulder. “Atnan, I order you to stop.”

Atnan put the spindle down and indicated to Selolo to tell her story, which he translated into writing. Soon the page was filled with her tale of blood-mages, invading armies, and visions of a cosmic realignment, including the death of the sun.

Shemulak’s open palm slammed down on the diagram and the transcription of her story, smearing some of the newly applied ink. “No, this is … fallacious. So your cousin dreams of an invasion?” He examined the ink on his hand, scoffed. “Last night I dreamed I was a carrot. Does that mean you should put me in the stew?” Turning to Selolo, he demanded to know how she knew these things were true.

She had no answer.

Atnan indicated the spot on her forehead and scribbled, “A prophet’s mark. She dreamed of a fallen star and then it happened. I saw it.”

Shemulak paused. “So did I, with many others. This is no confirmation. How do you know she isn’t lying about the dream — making stories after the fact?”

He may never believe. Maybe he can’t, or doesn’t know how. Kindhir broke their world and it bent their minds, too. There are no guardian beasts roaming their hills, no spirits in their skies, no mysteries calling to them, only counting tables and measuring sticks. But here! I have the measuring stick and I can fill in the tables! O Mystery, I have done your errand but I cannot make him understand! His Mek is an ornamental stone, as mute as I am.

Urgently, Atnan pointed to the point of convergence on his diagram — or rather, a range of possible points. With his yarn and spindle, he had narrowed the window to a period of 29 days, one full cycle of the moon.

“New moon,” Selolo said to him. “Black night, then attack. The sun, he eats.”

“How do you know?” Barlas asked.

“I see this, much. In dreams. In life.”

Atnan traced an arc backward from the point representing the new moon into the swirl of arcs and lines. It fit.

“Three days hence?” Shemulak asked. “No, no, you are wrong. All of this is very wrong.”

Words tumbled out of Selolo again and Atnan transcribed furiously, trying to keep up. “The people, between the river and the mountains — she was in their land, a captive — they are coming, by road and along the river.”

“She is either lying or — ” Before Shemulak could finish, a loud sound stopped him short: the unmistakable wavering of alarm bells off in the distance, up river. Peal after peal, the sound grew closer until finally they felt the clang and swell of the gate-bell facing Pelnu reverberating through the room.

“Spirits help us,” Shemulak breathed.

Atnan rolled the sheet into a tube, folded it, and shoved it into his boot.

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