XXI
Everything Old
is New Again

Barlas strained to see the tower through the fence. Was the woman Selolo? And the man the husband she left behind? He hoped so, and not so, all at once. Either way, he saw them struggle as Nokokolë swooped. Then a body fell. Selolo?

Frustrated, he put his shoulder down and charged into the fence, bellowing as he ran. The willow posts gave a little when he struck them, but the only thing he accomplished was to injure his shoulder. Still, nobody came to stop him. “They’re all off running every which way,” he said, suddenly hopeful. “Help me out here, eh?”

Signaling for everyone to join him, he laced his fingers together around the smallest pole and pulled as hard as he could. The others watched and Zakinder said something encouraging.

“No, idiots! You pull too, right?”

Atnan tucked himself underneath Barlas and started to pull as well. The others piled in, placing hands next to hands along the pole, heaving. They got it to bend, a little.

Panting and discouraged, they fell back.

After a moment’s thought, Shemulak held one arm up in front of himself and pulled at his hand at the top. He repeated a word in imperial that Barlas didn’t know.

I really hate being the one person in this group who can’t tell what anyone else is saying!

Still, what Shemulak was getting at was clear enough. They needed better leverage. He leaned down and stretched out his arms as high as he could get them, then slapped his back and indicated for Atnan to hop on top of him. Shemulak did the same, and Zakinder and Glesimel both clambered up, Atnan on Barlas’s shoulders, Zakinder on Shemulak’s, and Glesimel with one foot on each. They all reached as high as they could and pulled.

It moved a little more.

Shemulak started counting in time, plik, plak — or whatever their words for one and two must be — pulling on one and relaxing on two. The others counted as well and finally their little machine managed to coax a small cracking noise from the pole. Pull, crack, relax. Pull, crack, relax. Finally, it snapped off just above the ground and they all tumbled back.

First through the opening, Barlas ran straight for the tower. The soldiers who had been holding it were crowded around the far side, so he leaped up onto the structure and scaled it like a ladder, threatening to tip it with each step.

At the top, the woman leaned over. He didn’t recognize her at first, in all her strange garb, but as the light was starting to come back he saw her face and he knew. It was her, and she was alive. Not sure if she would fight him or help him up, he reached up for her.

As she leaned toward him, the structure tipped. Quickly, he scrambled up to the platform, knocking over a heavy bronze bowl of fire in the process. Together they looked down to see it land on top of the man’s fallen body, scattering coals on top of him and covering him like a dome. They looked away.

“Not dead,” she said, finally.

“Nah, he looks pretty dead, eh?”

“No. Me, you. Not dead.” She threw her arms around him.

“Oh. Not yet, eh?” He held her close.

The invasion continued ahead of them, slowly grinding toward the city.

“Wait. The leader’s dead. Shouldn’t they stop?” Barlas heaved.

The structure began to pitch and sway as the litter carriers below turned their attention away from their fallen ruler and started scaling toward them.

Darkness swallows Taláni.

His pain subsides. His throne, gone. Heat. Sun. Wind. Dust. The red desert stretches in all directions. Laughter, like an army marching, a torsion engine groaning, a boulder crumbling.

The familiar voice rumbles. “Oh, my precious little dying ember! Be glad! You have shaken the world today.”

The voice is all around him, ringing, scraping. A throne appears, like a mirage. The Spirit sits, face veiled in smoke.

Taláni shouts. His voice is somehow hollow. “If I am here, I have failed, and the dominion of Kindhir stands.” Taláni weeps. “Is this the end?”

“It is a small step in a long process. This is all we could have hoped for.”

The desert dissolves. Taláni floats over the battlefield, watching. The sun is black. His body, broken. His army, marching on.

Time accelerates. He doesn’t see the outcome. Everything is moving too fast.

Cities decay. New cities arise. Bigger cities, bigger armies. The cycle repeats, again and again, age into age. Empires rise, grow strong, fat, weak, old. New empires replace them, age into age.

The sun ticks closer with every revolution, redder and redder. The world dies: people first, then animals, and finally plants. The Spirit dissolves into dust and wind. Sun and earth merge into a single ball of flame.

The sun retreats. A new world emerges. Young. Beautiful. Filled with new plants and new animals. Trees burst out of the ground, unfurling like hands that grasp the sky. Spirits walk down and people walk up.

This is where I belong. In a new world, where everything is as it should be and violence is no longer required of me.

Laughter, like roaring wind, a roaring fire, a roaring lion. The spirit appears again, wearing Taláni’s face, shredded, scarred, one eye deflated, dislodged, hanging loose. “Will you walk on the sun and yet have feet? Will you breathe flame and yet have lungs?”

Wings sprout from its shoulders. It flies away with him and drops him into the sun, red like fire, like blood. Taláni crackles, melts, drips, for a moment, forever, he does not know. The pain is exhilarating. It becomes all he knows.

Reverberating in his awareness, he hears a malevolent whisper. “I am gathering the wax to make something new.”

Selolo had always been quiet so long as Taláni was alive, as though his hands were clutched around her throat, threatening to squeeze any time she spoke out of turn. Even in Del, she made herself small, silent, unthreatening.

No longer.

“Stop, I command you!” she shouted to the soldiers scaling the platform. “I have challenged the wekáru, who now lies dead. I am both wikéria and wekáru now.” The soldiers paused and she continued. “The sun returns, to shine on our defeat. Retreat! Go back, go home, all of you. Flee for your lives!”

“Taláni commands us,” a nearby commander shouted to her. “He is the instrument of the spirits.”

“Taláni is bones and meat,” she said. “Soon you will join him. All is lost. I command now, and I say: Flee, flee!”

Just then a shout arose from the city, the gates opened, and defenders poured out like a swarm of angry wasps.

The soldiers and commanders nearby shouted to their seconds and thirds to sound retreat. Soon, waves of horn blasts echoed and bounced through the invasion force ahead of them. Soldiers peeled away from machines and ran back toward them, shouting to retreat, that Taláni was dead, that all was lost, that the sunshine would burn them alive, that the end of the world was near.

Some of the invaders at the front lines held their ground but were quickly overrun by the city defenders.

“What now?” Barlas asked her.

She didn’t reply right away.

He won’t understand. I have the right words and so does he. But the words we share will never work. We may still die today, and I want him to know.

“Forgive,” she said.

At the same time he said, “I love you.”

She indicated the overturned censer with Taláni lying underneath. “My child, from him.” She made a sign, clapping one hand into the other, and then miming throwing something away. “My dreams, his dreams. My child, his child. Always this, always. Love me? How?”

Barlas looked down where Taláni lay and back at her. “Yesterday, for him.” He wiped his eye on his sleeve. “Today, for you and me.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Hay-hay, and the next day, and the day after that — ”

He wiped a tear from her cheek and then leaned in to kiss her, but the platform lurched before their lips could meet. Quickly, they descended the structure and he took her hand to lead her away. Almost immediately, they were met by the rest of their group coming toward them.

Her heart leaped. As she shed her headdress and jewelry, they found a place to hide. The armies rushed by, first a trickle of frightened woodlanders, then a steady stream, then a whole stampede, followed by a pause, then a rush of city defenders not far behind, shouting as they ran.

As the sun grew to full face, Selolo and her friends emerged to limp toward a broken-down farmhouse. The two armies had fled down the road away from the city. She wondered how far her people would run and how far the children of Kindhir would chase them. As far as the river? Beyond? Surely they would turn back at the roots of the mountains. If any of Taláni’s army survived that far, that is. The city-folk would want revenge if there were any opportunity.

She remembered the dream about the stream, with its ribbons of blood running from the ancestors at the headwaters all the way to her. These tumultuous times were like rapids, breaking on the rocks. The lines of continuity that bound her to the valleys of the Lolo stretched and finally snapped.

When he fell, that part of me fell with him. I am reborn along with this sun, without lineage, without history. A new rivulet, all my own. Alone.

Mekvat found himself in a desultory mood. Too old to chase after invaders, and too unsettled to take part in any celebrations, he wandered the streets aimlessly. He thought about shopping the market, but it hadn’t reopened yet. By sunset he left the city entirely, wandering toward the docks at the riverside, standing by the docks, staring downriver in the general direction of the sea.

Thoughts of home tugged at him. Perhaps Pabirak was right: He could return there to spend his final days. He could disappear.

A man approached, middle-aged, short, with a kindly face and casual demeanor. “You’re Mekvat aren’t you? Sage Prime?”

Mekvat replied that he was as the man continued toward him. In his last step, the man lunged forward and tapped him on the neck.

“Kindhir’s beard!” Mekvat’s extremities went numb and his knees buckled.

The man guided him to the ground and propped him against a low stone wall. “No, no, stay awake.” He revealed a small flower in his hand. “Gall-thorn.”

Mekvat tried to speak, to talk his way out of whatever this man was planning, but his diaphragm refused.

He sipped several shallow breaths, managed a hoarse whisper. “Who?”

“Me? I am a debt collector, of sorts. Your accounts are long overdue, old fellow. If you meant to ask who sent me, you may as well ask who hasn’t.”

Mekvat’s throat rasped as though full of sticks and gravel. “Luto?”

“He is part of the story, yes. A rich man, who could afford to lose money by the basketful, but you cheated him out of his reputation — not to mention Kusumnu, his home, and there, his life.”

Mekvat gurgled in protest.

“Now, before you say you’re not to blame for that, ask yourself why Shiriwak failed to render aid. Limiya could afford the loss of a little reputation, but not the goodwill of her people.”

Yes, yes, they always blame the last drop when the dam breaks!

“Which brings us to the Academy of Mek, your inner circle. They are only barely concerned about goodwill, but they do crave the favor of the heptarchy.” The man smiled and patted Mekvat on the shoulder. “You lost them an entire city, old fellow! I admit, I’m impressed.”

The man’s tone wore on Mekvat, but he had no way to express his displeasure.

“But here’s what puzzles me. Somehow, you thought no one would  … notice? Well, your fellows at the academy did. And Limiya, from exile. When her narrative of your exploits in Shiriwak was read before Shenefret, well, there you made your final enemy: the heir of Kindhir. Why, he can afford to lose all these things and more! Yet, what is the one loss he can never tolerate? That’s right: Kindhir’s legacy. Shiriwak in chaos, Kusumnu burned, Pelnu ringing its bell, Cheshak and Suppurak silent for weeks, and a horde of barbarians knocking on his front door?”

Mekvat tried desperately to speak.

I was trying to do right. I, too, was securing the legacy handed to me. I, too, was only trying to — oh! It doesn’t matter now. I held on too long, that’s my crime. They’ve all been waiting for me to die and someone got tired of waiting.

“Oh, it wasn’t all your fault, but enough of it is.”

Mekvat struggled, managed to cough out a word. “Murder!”

The man laughed. “Oh, it’s not called that when it’s justified.” He hoisted Mekvat over his shoulder, grunting as he shifted him around like a sack of barley.“You are about to take an unfortunate slip down a steep embankment into the river. If you ask me, that’s where you’ve always belonged. Kindhir says: The faithless, like water, fit wherever poured.”

They reached a bluff downriver from the docks. “Last stop.” He unloaded Mekvat unceremoniously and yanked the beaded blue necklace from around his neck.

They’ll want some evidence of my demise.

By now the gall-thorn had saturated his body. There was no pain, only pressure. He tried to speak, to shout, to scream. His body disobeyed.

“No last words, I’m afraid.” He peered over the ledge. “I’ll just go with the usual: My account has come due.”

Mekvat tumbled down the embankment; rather, he remained still as the world turned somersaults around him. Dirt, sky, water, dirt, sky, water. The river rushed toward him at each revolution, promising to collide with him, to swallow him in a single splashy gulp.

Sensation slowly faded as his lungs filled with water. He expected to descend into the earth but instead remained tethered to his still-floating body, four pale thin appendages and a head drooping absurdly from a raft of blue fabric.

He was aware of water all around him. Of the night sky. Of delicate tendrils of moonlight dancing along the waves, a wispy white octopus caressing the dark silhouette of his body.

Why am I still here? Why have I not crossed over? Is it the water? Or is it my — what did he say? — faithlessness?

Bodily sensations dissolved, and with them, bodily concerns. All that was left was awareness. Water. Blacker, deeper. It must be colder as well.

His consciousness floated. Time reversed course, like a river flowing uphill, and he grew younger, stronger, more confident, less dead. The years melted until he was a middle-aged administrator, like Pabirak, then an ambitious sage, like Shemulak, and a young, raw scribe, like Atnan. Then he was a boy named Farrut, living on a farm outside Nepsilam, poking a twig at slugs on the side of a decaying log.

This is where I belong.

Still younger he regressed, now a small child, now a baby, a tiny lump of tissue, and finally, nothing. He floated in this darkness for what might have been a moment or might have been seven ages of the sun. Time stretched out before his birth without him, without need of him, as it would continue forward.

From the center of his awareness, an unanswered riddle arose: Text, tradition, personal experience. Which do you leave, and why? It was a trick! All were necessary, and all were abandoned in the end. He might have laughed bitterly, were he able.

He continued, a diaphanous consciousness floating in a formless void, neither in any way contingent upon the other.

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