by James Derry
***
Another dream.
Jamal and Nemeah tiptoed through a dense grove of fruited palms. They hopped over burbling canals, padded under the shade of tall aqueducts. Through breaks in the trees, Sygne saw a towering ziggurat made of glossy black granite. She had been to Az-Bikkur, and she recognized the temple that the Bikkurites called the Onyx Altar.
Lady Nemeah carefully buried her satchel of coins and jewelry in a shallow hole at the base of a palm tree. She covered it with mulch. Jamal was keeping a sharp eye for witnesses; he nodded at her. Nemeah was thinner than Sygne remembered—with dark rimmed, haunted eyes. It looked as if she had suffered through a brutal case of dysentery (just as Bliss had foreshadowed). Now it seemed that the young lady would survive her illness, but Sygne doubted that she was over it. It was an awful thing to suffer from such a debasing illness in front of a loved one. The parasites were gone, but now shame and resentment gnawed away at Nemeah’s insides. It was yet to be seen if Nemeah would have the strength to flush out those maladies.
They put on hooded nomad’s robes before they entered the city, and Nemeah pulled a veil over her face as they ducked into the office of a Bikkurite land baron. Nemeah knew what to say, but Jamal had to do all the talking. In a city like Az-Bikkur, doing business with a Ardhian was slightly preferable to doing business with a woman.
Jamal placed seven silver pieces on the table. “We want to purchase a plot of land on the outskirts of town. We will grow dates and pistachios.”
Nemeah couldn’t help but interject, “No figs.”
The nobleman eyed the money without moving his head. Sygne could tell that he had noticed Nemeah’s violet eyes under her thick veil. He asked Jamal, “Where did a young man such as yourself get so much money?”
“This isn’t that much money,” Jamal protested. Nemeah winced, and the land baron snickered. It had been the wrong thing to say.
“I won’t sell to you,” The nobleman said. “I can’t, in good conscience. Not unless you agree to invest in my protection services.”
They both understood what the nobleman meant. They didn’t want to live under the thumb of an extortionist.
They left the land baron’s office and merged into the crowds on the street. Within a minute, Jamal whispered a warning to Nemeah. “We’re being followed.”
Jamal turned through an alleyway and onto a busy avenue through the city’s souk district. Nemeah followed him, and Sygne floated behind them both. Invisible and intangible, it was easy for her to slip through the crowd (literally) and keep up with the young couple as they cut through a procession of nuns, all wearing red robes and face paint that made it look like they had been crying blood. A mob of thickset mercenaries crowded the street. Jamal tossed a coin to a pair of begging children. He pushed aside more than one aggressively loud trinket seller.
“Keep moving,” Jamal said. “I think it’s the baron’s thugs. We can lose them…”
“I’m tired,” Nemeah murmured to herself. “Tired of moving.”
Sygne caught sight of a familiar face among the crowd. A quick peal of recognition and then the face was gone, but Sygne was left with a sense of dread reverberating in her chest.
It was Bliss.
Jamal and Nemeah darted between throngs of people. All the while, Sygne scanned faces. She saw Bikkurite women done up to look their best. Makeup that had been processed from berries and beetle shells. Gilded headdresses. She saw prostitutes with their hair flowing loose. Bold swashes of kohl and lip stain stood out like profane punctuation marks on their faces. They hung to drunken men and laughed loudly, hawking as obviously as the street merchants that Jamal had pushed away.
A prostitute leaned into Sygne’s way and said, “I will tell you about mine hate.”
‘Bliss?’ Sygne could see the goddess there, coiled up like a night viper in the woman’s dark black eyes. Sygne was so flustered that she dodged the woman and kept gliding after Jamal.
Jamal glanced over his shoulder. Who exactly had he seen following them?
A red-robed nun stepped in front of Sygne. The crowd moved around her as if she was doing nothing unusual. “I will not be ignored. I will tell you about mine hate.”
“Tell me then.”
“I hate your arrogance. And your ignorance. From your puny perspective, you think you are winning. A mortal can never win. A mortal can only die.”
“I’m not winning. I’m not even competing with you. We offered up terms of surrender, and you broke the bargain.”
Sygne glided past the nun. In the current circumstance, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to glide through her.
Within a few seconds, a small urchin girl stepped in her way. “I can not be ignored.”
“Please, we just want to leave you alone.”
“I will not leave. Everywhere and everlasting. I remind you.” The little girl snarled her smudged face. “When a young bride pleads for conception. I am there. When a woman cries out in childbirth, I am there. Greed. Envy. Anger. Shame. All of those emotions are inversions of passion. Facets of my power.”
Over the girl’s head, Sygne saw that Nemeah had stopped at a clearing in the crowd. Jamal tugged at her arm. “Nemeah?”
The urchin stamped her filthy foot. Bliss’ words hissed through her lips. “You think you cure women, help children. Touch lives. Again, your arrogance is loathsome. Your efforts are nothing. A ripple in an ocean. I am that ocean.”
“I am sorry. Please… I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.” Sygne swept past the girl.
She glided right to Nemeah, and this time it was the Gjuiran lady who stared straight at Sygne with Bliss’ hate flashing in her eyes.
Nemeah seethed, “I do not acknowledge your apology.”
Bliss had chosen the wrong face to confront Sygne with. Anger surged up in Sygne, and she roared at the lady. “Then why do you keep following us? Why can’t you stop thinking about us?”
Nemeah snarled, “Because the idea of you has become vexing. Your stupidity is spreading.”
Sygne thought of the Djungans, and she understood. “The story of what we did… Our ideas… Killing us won’t stop them.”
Bliss laughed through Nemeah’s lips. “See? You are too stupid to understand. For you, death will stop everything.”
The goddess’s bright eyes focused on a new trio of men emerging into the gap in the crowd. They wore striped Bikkurite sashes and turbans. They were the land-baron’s enforcers.
They came straight for Jamal. Jamal pulled his sword, but another blade flashed among the onlookers. Fast and close to the thugs. It slit the air, lightning quick, and then was gone. People didn’t start to scream until the first thug fell to his knees. He grabbed at his throat; his fingers were coated in red.
The other two enforcers turned and scattered. The crowd parted and only one robed Ardhian remained, standing tall over the dying thug.
Sygne recognized the man. Jamal said his name.
“Kalil?”
Sygne turned back to Nemeah. Even in a dream, even with men dying nearby, she didn’t think it was a good idea to take her eyes off of the goddess. But Bliss had departed from the lady’s body; there was no divinely righteous anger left burning in Nemeah’s violet eyes. What Sygne saw instead was only slightly less disturbing.
Nemeah seemed to wilt a bit at the sight of the Elite Guardsman. Her eyes shimmered with tears, and Sygne saw an intense swell of gratitude pass over her face.
Kalil said, “Lady Nemeah. I’m here to bring you home.”
“Yes,” she said. “Please.”
17 – Death is the Only Escape
Early in the morning of the next day, the shifting sands receded to reveal a terrain of rugged sandstone, with trees sprinkled like wilted garnish among the rocks. Jamal, Sygne, and Ohbo continued riding east. The coagulation of darkness in the sky was much closer now. It loomed over the rocky landscape, just a few miles away on their right side. A constant h
aze of windblown dust hung in the air, and Jamal kept his headscarf tightly wrapped around his mouth and nose.
Ohbo cried out in despair as his camel Phoebe climbed the next rise. “The Slash!” The cameleer pointed to a misty swath of grayness in the distance.
They rode another mile, across a gently dipping landscape, and the Slash began to take shape through the haze. It was an immense canyon, so wide that Jamal could not see its other side in the storm-addled air.
“It’s just as I feared,” Ohbo said. “It will take a day to ride around the Slash’s southern end. If not longer.”
Sygne glanced to the south. “We can’t go that way. Let’s head toward the canyon. Maybe we can find some shelter from the storm?”
But as they continued eastward the camels slowed to a crawl.
Ohbo clucked at the groaning beasts. “My ladies can sense we’re headed to the Slash. They know it’s a forbidden place.”
The sound of the approaching storm grew louder, the gusts screaming past Jamal’s ears. Daphne stopped in her tracks, which were quickly hidden by a scrim of windblown sand. Jamal shouted to Ohbo, “Tell this thing to kneel! I want to get off!”
Ohbo shouted the command over the wind, and Jamal dismounted. Sygne did the same.
Without waiting for her, Jamal began walking to the Slash. Cursed or not, the deep chasm seemed like the best possible shelter to wait out the storm. He thought he saw bits of debris swirling in the air in front of the storm front. He’d heard of funnel-shaped storms so powerful that they could suck up rocks and trees and make them float like scraps of papyrus. Had Bliss weaponized one of those storms and sent it after them?
Sygne raced to catch up, her pocketbook slapping heavily against her side. She cried, “What are you doing?”
“Walking. And I’m doing it faster than those damn camels.”
“What about Ohbo?”
Jamal pointed to the storm. “That could be Bliss’ latest attempt to kill us. If it is, don’t you think Ohbo would be safer if we separated from him?”
“I do think that,” Sygne said. “But that doesn’t mean we should just walk away without explaining—”
Jamal snapped, “Quit fixating on Ohbo and use that huge brain of yours to think of a way to get us out of this!”
“I am! I am!”
Sygne trotted back to Ohbo.
Jamal wanted to quicken his pace and run to the canyon, but he restrained himself. Thankfully she trotted back to him within fifteen minutes. Wet grit clung to her cheeks; she had been crying. She was bent crooked with the weight of Ohbo’s ensorcelled silk tent liner on her shoulder. She still had her pocketbook.
“He gave you his last bit of housing? Do you think we’ll live long enough to use it?”
“I hope so.” Sygne sniffed.
“What did you say to him?”
“I told him this may be goodbye.”
Jamal asked, “What did he say?”
“He said, ‘Hell hath no furies.’”
“Ouch. He took it hard?”
“No…” Sygne glanced to the skies. A lightning bolt sliced through the clouds, igniting a flurry of airborne flotsam. They both watched the flaming shreds swirl in the wind. “He was being literal. ‘Hell hath no furies.’ Bliss is a goddess scorned. And she unleashed the furies.”
“Furies? You mean…”
Sygne nodded. “The mythical embodiments of rage and retribution. Bliss sent all of them this way.”
Jamal studied the skies as Sygne trudged past him. The storm was still a few miles away, but the black objects swirling through the cyclone seemed to be taking on a more definitive shape. They looked less like palm leaves and more like large, bat-winged creatures.
There must have been thousands of them.
“Oh no.” He hurried to catch up. He lifted the tent liner from Sygne’s shoulders and carried it himself. “Is this part of your idea? You have a plan to get us out of this?”
The great chasm yawned out before them. Even as Jamal stood right against its edge, the other side of it was far enough away to be partly obscured by haze. Just beyond his toes, the ground dropped away precipitously. Twenty feet down to a ledge that was barely more than a foot wide—then another forty feet to the next ledge. On and on the sandstone descended—to a depth that Jamal didn’t even want to guess at. Its bottom—again blurred by distance—was far flatter than Jamal would have guessed. And green, although Jamal couldn’t tell what kind of vegetation grew there. The untamed coils of the Bedotan River wound through the Slash’s center. Its waters were dark and narrow—the spring floods were still several months away.
Sygne unfurled Ohbo’s silken tent liner along the ground. It kept flapping up at the edges. “Help me,” she said.
“What’s your plan?”
Sygne shrugged to a shallow trough in the sandstone. A good deal of loose sand had settled there. She said, “Bliss wants us dead. I think we should bury ourselves. We’ll dig a bed of sand for each of us, and then lay the tent liner over our bodies.” She stood on one corner of the billowing fabric to hold it in place. “We can bury a section of the silk in the sand, so that it won’t blow away…”
Jamal glanced to her; then back to the deadly series of ledges that waited down in the Slash.
“What do you think?” Sygne asked.
“I’m…” He didn’t know what to say. There was such a mix of eagerness and terror in Sygne’s big blue eyes; it would have been a shame to dash her hopes right before their imminent death.
The Northerner sighed, and her upper body seemed to deflate with the force of it. Her head and her shoulders sagged. “I know. It’s pretty lame. I had nothing else.”
Jamal rushed to the tent cables, which Sygne had brought with her. He began tying the end of one around his waist. “We can use these ropes to climb down into the canyon.” He swiped up a tent stake. “And these can be our climbing picks.”
Sygne nodded slowly. “We can try that…” She took a few steps toward the center of the flattened tent liner, and the fabric immediately flapped into the air and stuck to the back of her legs. The push of it was strong, and she had to lean back to keep her balance. “I… Wait…”
“That look in your eye,” Jamal said. “You’re coming up with something crazy, aren’t you?”
She beamed at him. “Crazier than any other idea I’ve had. It will probably kill us.”
“Everything will probably kill us. That’s where we are now. Between a flock and a hard place. Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“It’s another idea I’m taking from your memories. Remember the luminary you lighted with Nemeah in the aviary?”
“On the Tribute Celebration…”
Jamal’s eyes dropped to the wide piece of cloth fluttering like wings around Sygne’s legs. He could feel his face go tight, and Sygne quickly added. “For decades, the Mentors have played around with inventions that might allow a human to fly. Well… ‘glide’ might be a better word for it. They usually involved some mix of sails, wings, and a catapult.”
“And a volunteer who dies at the end?”
Sygne shrugged. “Actually they used cadavers. But the results were—”
“Okay,” Jamal blurted. “Don’t tell me. Let’s do it.”
Sygne frantically gathered in folds of cloth. “If it works, then we might be able to escape and trick the furies into thinking we committed suicide.”
“And if we do kill ourselves, then we deny Bliss the satisfaction of doing it to us.”
“Keep that cable tied around your waist,” Sygne instructed. “But help me string these other lines through the holes on the liner’s edge.”
Jamal did as Sygne said. It was difficult because the wind was gaining strength. The shadow of the fury-storm had passed over them, and they were running out of time. There was a pattering of raindrops, and red circlets appeared on the fabric and in the sand.
“It’s raining blood,” Sygne obs
erved.
“I see that. We should work faster.”
“I agree.”
Sygne continued weaving cables through the silk, as Jamal fastened the other ends of those cables to the rope around his waist.
A dead fury struck the ground nearby. It was the foulest looking creature Jamal had ever seen—as long as his arm and twisted around itself like Sygne’s water screw. It looked like the fury had at least seven wings, but Jamal didn’t have time to count. The wings spiraled out at weird angles from its body; each was shaped like the jawbone of a crocodile, with a webbing of veined skin stretched over it and teeth protruding from both sides. There was no way the fury could fly without flapping its wings into each other—and thereby flagellating itself with its own teeth. Throughout their entire flight, every fury must have been extremely agitated and bleeding profusely. That’s why the storm was raining blood.
The creature’s head was just as malformed as the rest of it. It was split around three mandibles, each as long and sharp as a dagger. An outbreak of eyes grew like a pox infection all along its skull.
Sygne tugged at a line around Jamal’s midsection. “I think we’re ready.” She lifted the ensorcelled silk, which she had folded into a bundle under her arm. “We’ll release it before we jump. Hopefully it will catch the wind and spread open.”
“Like a sail.” Jamal stood a few paces from the cliff’s edge. He puffed out his chest and balled his fists, trying to look as heroic as possible, in spite of the strange apparatus bound to his torso. The fury-storm was beginning to descend. The air moved to a frenzy. A drizzle of clear moisture settled on Jamal’s forehead. The spittle of a thousand swarming monsters? Jamal could hear the furies shrieking in rage and agony as they flapped their wings and chewed themselves. Sygne stood in front of him and wrapped her arms around his chest.
“Please don’t let go of me,” she said.
“Here, put the strap of your pocketbook around my waist.”
“Okay.”
He hugged her tightly. And she said, “I think we should take a running start.”
