XIX
A Shadow Sneaks
Across the Sun

Atnan ran behind his friends, minus Selolo, pursued by wild birds that screeched and squawked as they ran, clawing over rocks and fallen trees.

Barlas had a javelin that he heaved like a harpoon to kill one of the birds, landing his shot down its open mouth as he would against a shark back home. The other birds hopped over their fallen comrade, undeterred.

“Why didn’t we bring more weapons?” Glesimel panted.

“We aren’t real soldiers!” Zakinder said. “Look, the farm!”

They headed toward the farmhouse, now lying in the middle of a burned-out field, corrals torn down, animals gone. Zakinder got to the shed first, tore down a timber, and swung around just in time to knock one of the birds off its feet so Glesimel could hack off its head with an axe. Shemulak gored another with a hayfork as they all tumbled inside the house and barred the doors.

The last bird circled outside, poking its head into every crack and window. Atnan staved it off by bashing its heavy skull repeatedly with a half-burnt log from the cold hearth, finally poking out one of its glassy black eyes. It shook its head wildly and screeched in short bursts, something between a scream and a cough.

Barlas took the axe from Glesimel and headed out the front door. The others watched as he squared off with the creature in the morning light. Head down, it charged him. He wheeled to the side and bashed its body with the back side of the axe, catching its claw along his arm in the process. He grabbed the bird’s foot with one hand and planted the axe in its torso with the other.

He joined them inside, where Atnan and Glesimel tended to his wound. “Bah! Nothing I hate more than birds. Every single feathered one of them, eh?” Barlas said to Atnan, who shrugged.

As the morning wore on, they stayed hidden in the farmhouse, freezing whenever invaders walked near the property. Through the windows they could see the lines re-forming, the machinery being put back up.

Finally able to think, Atnan felt lost at sea. There were no texts here for him to read, no mysteries to delve, not even any sums that needed correcting. His part was done. Shigshag had awoken. He had bent the enemy lines but hadn’t broken them completely. The sun might eclipse or it might not, and the invaders might see this as a sign to retreat, or the opposite.

The only certainty is uncertainty! We need a new plan, but for what? We are stranded without weapons or armor.

Cautiously, he peeked outside, shading his eyes from the sun. No signs of wavering. Yet.

“I’ve been thinking,” Zakinder said. “We should build a barricade, fortify our position so to speak.”

“What about the noise?” Glesimel asked.

“We could get to the cellar,” Zakinder said, “if it’s still there.”

“I don’t want to die in a hole in the ground, husband.”

“If you put it that way, love, I don’t want to die anywhere.”

Meanwhile, Shemulak pulled some small leather parcels from his robe and distributed them around, then opened the one he kept for himself to reveal several spiny leaves. “Be careful not to touch.”

“Gall-thorn?” Glesimel asked.

“Yes. I meant to distribute these earlier, but decided — it’s not important. Chew the leaves and swallow the juices quickly, before your body loses all sensation.” He returned the last parcel to his robe. “Death is preferable to abomination.”

“Do you have any regrets, love?” Zakinder asked his wife.

“More than a few, husband, but not this.”

Atnan took the parcel and tucked it into his robe.

In the end, I always saw myself old and wrinkled, reading, passing into sleep to awake in the Silent Lands.

“I’ve been thinking,” Barlas said, clapping him on the shoulder. “You all should try to sneak off into the hills at dark — or during this … sun thing you’re waiting on, assuming it happens.”

Atnan directed a quizzical gesture toward Barlas.

Barlas retrieved the axe from a corner of the room and slung it over his shoulder. “I came with Selolo, and I’m not leaving without her, eh?”

As he opened the door to leave, the midday light began to dim and the night insects tentatively began to sing. Atnan watched Barlas disappear into the debris-strewn fields, trying to whistle.

Mekvat watched the army gather in front of the city from his balcony. The Silgath invaders had taken captives, who they slaughtered in front of the walls, swilling their blood and smearing themselves with it. Drumming and dancing, they splashed in a river of blood that formed around their leader’s throne.

He wanted to turn away, but couldn’t.

Why did I have to live long enough to see this?

He briefly thought about hurling himself from his balcony to spare himself the abominations to come.

As Atnan’s scrolls told it, these beastly people might be descended from the same tradition that held his devotion, their version a hideous perversion — unless theirs was the older tradition, and his a gentler heresy, concocted by Birek-Dammun, or Paraktaman, or Kindhir, whichever of them was real.

Are these not outrageous lies? Propaganda? Mere polemic? Writing a thing does not make it true!

When the shadow started to cross over the sun, he held his head in his hands and wept.

Selolo awoke on a pile of skins, coughing, surrounded by a sweet-smelling haze and wobbly smears of light. All at once the smoke sharpened some parts of her awareness and made others dull. Sounds and smells felt amplified, but distant: running, shouting, cracking like trees being felled. The cacophony outside coalesced into patterns of rhythm and melody, rising, falling, interfering with one another like ripples in a pond.

She wanted to laugh and scream but could do neither.

Is this death? Will I now stand before the World-Singer and the spirits to sing back my life and be judged? What a short song it will be! I was only getting started, again.

Her will felt disconnected from her limbs and organs. Nearby, she heard the soft wooden tinkle of wind chimes, smelled the sounds, which she understood as words: No shadows here to tickle your nose.

A blurry black figure loomed over her. As it leaned into the light, the figure became Taláni. He spoke to her in musical tones, like the chimes. “A vision, wikéria?”

She flinched back. Where was she? Why was he with her? She stared at him. The same angled shoulders, same curled lip, same crooked stance. His strong scent of herbs, blood, and sweat. Was she dreaming?

“You have been asleep for so long,” he droned softly. His voice sounded like a small, sonorous bell; it smelled like camphor and summer berries. “Tell me, what did you see? It must have been so many things, too wondrous to recount.”

Words escaped her. Every drop of her blood felt like black sludge, stopped up inside her, straining her heart. Her breath came in shallow, trembling gasps.

Lapsala, do not abandon me! If this is a dream, wake me. If I am awake, drag me back to sleep!

“Careful. Don’t try to speak,” he intoned. “I will speak for you. You were dreaming — walking with the spirits along their terrain, floating with the stars of heaven. You are awake now. You are returned, at the proper time, my priestess, my queen.”

“I — I was dreaming?”

“Entranced, for days upon days. I never left your side.”

Memories swirled inside like smoke. She tried to recall something, anything, she could know for certain was real, but the pungent herbs drowned out her thoughts. Wherever her mind tried to latch on to a memory — the sisters, Lolo, Nokokolë, Barlas — the images dissolved into misty, muffled laughter and the bright tang of shimmering bells.

“I carried you here, while you traveled the spirit world. We are in Kindhir’s domain, at the walls. At dawn, we ascend into glory, according to your vision. The banners of a hundred dynasties swirling as one. Springs of blood beneath my feet — all the families of our people, united. The earth heaves. The mountains are flattened. We are there! Soon, dawn will break free, and we will subdue the great horned bird of Kindhir and ride it, together. Do you remember?” He brushed the back of his hand against her cheek, whispering, “It is a good vision.”

As he spoke, everything came into focus. She crouched down into herself in an attempt to become as small as possible, studying every line and contour of his face, reading it as intently as Atnan read his scrolls, searching for any sign of deception or displeasure.

It was all a lie, she knew. An apparition. The semblance of reality, not the substance. Yet, as experiences, how did semblance and substance differ?

“I remember, wekáru. A vision of glory.”

She drifted back to sleep on waves of pungent, musical smoke. The sounds all around her merged into a single song that burbled like steam escaping a pot, clattering around the lid, then melted into a single note, frazzled and attenuated, like a newborn’s cry, like a log whistling on the fire, like a flute when the player has held a note too long.

O Lapsala. What is sung can be un-sung.

The next morning, his attendants woke her. Taláni was already gone. She was washed and dressed in a jasper-studded skirt and vest — they were Taláni’s and didn’t quite fit. They stained her fingers black, draped beaded necklaces around her neck, and sculpted the braids of her hair into a headdress that sprouted long red streamers trailing behind.

Meek, she consented to anything they asked of her.

When no one was looking, she slipped a pair of shears from the attendant’s basket into the fabric of her long sleeve. By her other hand she was led out to be presented to Taláni, who was naked from the waist up except for a black fox pelt slung across his shoulders, same red streamers dangling from his hair, same black fingertips.

They stepped out, hand in hand.

* * * * *

Taláni emerged into the bright sun with Selolo at his side. They climbed atop a boulder that had fallen from the elder beast’s shell and he shouted orders into the stiff wind blowing across the plain.

Machinery crawled forward. The infantry locked shields, pikes bristling like the spines of a giant porcupine. Crews with hooked ladders streamed by, followed by squads of archers. Engineers stacked the hurling contraptions with clay spheres filled with his mother’s fire oil.

By mid-morning they amassed at the walls, ready to breach.

“Are you ready, wikéria?”

He led her to a tall litter constructed from willow poles in the form of a stepped pyramid of scaffolding. The poles were still green and smelled of sap, assembled hastily the previous night.

Seven tiers half a man tall, one for each city of Kindhir.

At the bottom tier, sixteen thick warriors stood ready to hoist the litter to their shoulders. All along the sides, the litter was covered with blood-red cloth.

A short bridge led from the boulder to the apex of the litter. They crossed and seated themselves on twin thrones lashed to the framework. They loomed over the landscape on their portable blood-red mountain. Behind their heads, a large bronze censer cast to look like a laughing sun was filled with oils, resins, and bundles of sweet-smelling herbs all waiting to be alighted.

We are spirits come in the flesh, a bright and terrible sun sent to scorch the land.

The army bristled out ahead of them as the bearers hauled the structure and slowly advanced forward. They would arrive last, in the position of glory.

He rose to commence the attack. She stood beside him on the unsteady platform, shading her eyes with her hand, scanning the horizon.

“The spirits have chosen me to rule from mountains to the sea,” he told her. “The courses have aligned, the meridians are open and flowing, the path is set. All that remains is to arrive.”

He raised his arms and bellowed at his commanders to attack.

The streamers billowed out behind like a river of blood, “Yesterday, the earth heaved and split. Today, there is a great wind, and look — ” He stood and motioned toward the sky, which was starting to dim. “Everything is coming to pass as you envisioned it. Now, we will subdue the beast, Kindhir’s domain, and ride it, together.”

Taláni lit the heavy censer and its contents leapt immediately to flame, burning red and pouring out black and white smoke. A chant broke out all around them:

The sun is a mountain of fire

Which towers over darkness.

His commanders shouted to their seconds, the seconds to thirds, and so on, rippling out from him, expanding rings of action and reaction, like waves of living flame blossoming into a field of fire, himself at the center, the spark.

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