by Karen Miller
It was a fearsome thought. Hano said, faltering, “I cannot believe that. Does Nagarak say Mijak will stay brown?”
Raklion turned away. “If Nagarak knows, he does not tell me.”
“ If he knows?” said Hano, in the taut silence. “What is this, Raklion? Do you say he doesn’t?”
Aieee, his fears rode his tongue, he should not have said that. He turned back. “No. I mis-spoke myself. Pay no attention.”
“Tcha!” said Hanochek. “And you chide me for platitudes and lies.”
“ Hanochek!”
Hano flinched but did not retreat. “Raklion, I am your warleader and your friend, but how can I help you if you hide your heart? Is there more to your misgivings than you’ve told? Do you know something of Nagarak you haven’t shared?”
Aieee, there was more, but not to do with Nagarak. What terrified him was that voice in his heart whispering louder, ever louder: the only way to save Et-Raklion from the other warlords is to smite them before they ride against me, to tame them utterly into the dust, to make myself Mijak’s only warlord . How else could he save Et-Raklion from death? Beg his brother warlords to leave him alone? Was that the strength of a warlord? Was that how he protected his people, kept his promise to the god?
“Raklion, what is it?” said Hano softly. “You stand there as if a demon turned you to stone. Let me help you, what else am I for?”
Shaking his head, Raklion sat in his warlord’s chair. He could not burden Hano with his heart’s sinful secret. Hano would risk the god’s wrath to see it come true. Raklion warlord, warlord of Mijak . With an effort, he smiled. “You were right, my friend. I let myself become bleak, it is not helpful.”
Hano knew him too well. “Tcha, you do not blind me. Is it Nagarak, Raklion? Does he—”
The chamber door burst open then, and a slave rushed in shouting. “Warlord! Warlord! You must come at once!”
It was the gelding Sabat from the Women’s Chambers. His yellow-brown skin was sickly with horror, his staring eyes awash with tears.
As Hanochek took an angry step towards the slave, Raklion pushed slowly to his feet. All the world was still and silent, the only sound his beating heart.
The gelding Sabat fell face down on the floor, his flabby, half-naked body shuddering like a man filled with fever.
“Speak,” said Raklion, though he knew already what the slave would say.
“Forgive me, warlord,” the gelding choked out. “It is Et-Nogolor’s Daughter.”
Hano had moved to stand again at Raklion’s shoulder, war-calloused palm and fingers gripping tight. It was hard to feel him. Hard to feel anything beyond hell’s cold wind.
“Show me,” he said to the gelding Sabat. The slave heaved to his feet and bowed out backwards, hands pressed in entreaty to his womanish breast.
“Warlord?” said Hano, releasing his grip.
Raklion turned, looked over his shoulder. “Come with me, Hano. I cannot bear this alone.”
“Of course,” said Hano. “Warlord, lead the way.”
The Daughter was dead, and her baby with her. Their blood soaked the bedsheets and pooled on the tiled floor. A snakeblade’s hilt jutted between her ribs. The dead child’s throat was cut to the bone, its lifeless body still yoked to its mother by the flaccid umbilical cord.
It was a boy. It had no eyes.
“ Why?” said Hano beside him, his whisper incredulous. “How could this happen? Did she fuck with a demon when your back was turned?”
Raklion came close to striking Hano, then. Hano knew it, and retreated.
The gelding Sabat bowed his head. “Warlord, we did not know she was in labor. After her supper she dismissed her slaves and retired. She gave no sign that anything was wrong.”
The chamber reeked of blood and death. Raklion nodded, hearing the slave’s words as though they traveled from beyond Mijak’s distant borders. “Fetch her slaves without delay.”
The gelding bowed and withdrew.
As he waited for the Daughter’s attendants, Raklion gazed upon his son. A delicate skull capped in drying black curls. Long limbs. Slender fingers. Beneath the smearing mucus, light skin hinting at a glossy darkness to come. If he’d had eyes, he would have been beautiful.
“Warlord, I grieve with you,” said Hano, weeping.
He nodded, but could not speak. He had no tears, his heart was a desert.
The gelding returned with the Daughter’s slaves. Ten in all, the youngest a girl of six or seven. Raklion ordered them to kneel. He pulled the snakeblade from the Daughter’s flesh and killed them, one by one he watered his heart’s desert with the blood of the sinners who had failed his son. He killed the gelding Sabat last of all, and not as swiftly as he’d killed the others.
Done with that, leaving Hanochek to stand guard over the corpses, he walked alone, daubed with scarlet, up Raklion’s Pinnacle to the godhouse, to Nagarak, who must answer for this terrible thing. The bloodied snakeblade was still in his fist.
It was late but Nagarak was waking, seated cross-legged before the altar in his most private sanctum, whose scented air only he and the warlord were permitted to breathe. Carved jet scorpions climbed the walls, emerald and crimson snakes decorated each flat surface.
“Are you high godspeaker,” Raklion demanded, framed in the doorway of that sacred room, “or some hell-escaped demon tasked to plague me?”
Nagarak wore a loincloth and his scorpion pectoral. Its black highlights gleamed as his thin chest rose and fell. “You bring a knife into this place? You tempt the god to a great smiting, Raklion.”
He threw the blood-clotted blade to the floor. “My son is dead , Nagarak! Slain by the Daughter. He was abominate, he was born without eyes . What else could she do but slit his throat? She is dead too, she killed herself after.” He took one step towards the silent high godspeaker, then collapsed disjointed as his muscles and sinews undid themselves. “How has this happened? If you are high godspeaker you must know! Or are you deaf to the god, Nagarak? Is your power drained into the dirt? Have your eyes been blinded to the omens in the entrails, the clouds, the tracks of scorpions in the dust? How could you let a demon deform him? You said I would have a living son !”
Like a striking snake Nagarak rose to his bare feet. His polished face was raw with anger, he loomed like the god’s wrath with his fist raised high.
“You chastise me , warlord? The god desired you sire a son. If that son is thwarted, look to yourself! What seed of sin is rooted in your heart, that has led to this grim flowering? What have you done, that the god would smite you so?”
Bruised and aching, Raklion stared up at him. “You tell me the god took my son’s eyes?”
“I tell you Et-Nogolor’s Daughter was surrounded by every amulet, every charm, every chanting this godhouse could devise!” said Nagarak. “Every day five pure white lambs given to the altar, their blood drained and fed to her by sanctified hands! No demon insinuated itself in the Women’s Chambers, warlord. You are smitten by the god for an evil in your heart.”
“There is no evil in my heart,” he whispered. “Every day I make offerings to the god, I attend a sacrifice, I open my heart to the god’s desires.”
“Yet Et-Nogolor’s Daughter lies cold and stiffening and your blind son is carrion for the crows.” Leaning down, Nagarak thrust his furious face close. His breath was hot with blood and cloves. “There must be a secret sin. What demon writhes beneath your skin that you can hide such a truth from me?”
Sickened with sudden fear Raklion retreated from Nagarak’s burning glare. “You call your warlord demonstruck ? The god should kill me here and now if this is a true thing!” He tipped back his head to stare at the ceiling’s mosaiced frieze of spitting snakes and stinging scorpions. “Kill me now, god, strike me dead if I nurse a demon!”
The god spared him.
“You see?” he demanded. “I nurse no demon! Raklion warlord is not demonstruck!”
Nagarak straightened. “Not demonstruck,” he a
dmitted, grudging. “So it is a sin. Name it, warlord.”
Raklion smoothed his face with trembling hands. His fingers tangled in his godbraids, his godbells chimed like weeping doves. He knew his sin, he could not speak it.
Raklion warlord, warlord of Mijak.
“I see the shifting in your face, warlord,” said Nagarak harshly. “You sift your thoughts and deeds like a miller sifts his flour, searching for unwanted husks and stones. Open your mouth. Let the words fall from your tongue. I am your miller, warlord, I will sift you.”
Raklion looked dully at the tiled floor. I must tell him, I must tell him. Only he can save me from myself . “Nagarak . . .” He touched a fingertip to the high godspeaker’s foot. “I dream of a Mijak made whole beneath the sky. Not seven warlords but one alone, obedient to the god and warlord to all men. When the stars were young, when the godmoon’s aged wife was a girlish bride, Mijak was a whole land ruled by one warlord, fat and green and known to the world. Mijak—”
“ Silence !” hissed Nagarak. His scorpion pectoral shivered with shadows, it came to life in the chamber’s dim lighting. “You sinning man, you defier of the god! Those days are dead , Raklion. The god killed them in its eye and has forbade the men of Mijak crossing over its borders or kneeling to a single warlord upon a golden throne. Woe to he who would see the sun rise again upon those dark times. This is the secret sin in your heart? That you would be the warlord of Mijak? Aieee, it is a black sin, a sin to smite the god itself!”
From somewhere unknown, in the face of his high godspeaker’s fury, Raklion found the courage to speak. “Nagarak, Nagarak, what else can I do but dream of this? The ravenous warlords stare at my green lands and their high godspeakers urge them to raiding. If I do not stop them they will overrun us and strip the meat from our bleeding bones. Et-Raklion will die if I do not stop them, and I fear Mijak will die not long after that. I cannot sit idle and watch that happen, I must prevent it. Not to prevent it would be the black sin.”
“You are the warlord, you are not the god,” said Nagarak, his voice a smiting. “The god will prevent it in its time, a time of its choosing with an instrument of its desire.”
Beyond Nagarak’s chamber, the tolling of a godhouse bell. On a shuddering breath, Raklion sat up. The Daughter was dead, his son was dead with her. What more in the world did he have to lose? “Nagarak . . . high godspeaker . . . what if I am that instrument?”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Y ou?” The high godspeaker’s hooded eyes stared with disdain. “Raklion, you are nothing if the god does not tell me otherwise. It has not named you an instrument to me. It has killed the field and the seeds you planted there, that is your message from the god.”
Unbidden tears rose in Raklion’s eyes. “Then why am I still warlord, Nagarak? Why did the god not allow Bajadek to kill me? How can I have these thoughts and live if the god does not desire them of me?”
Nagarak said nothing, his fingers caressed his scorpion pectoral and his eyes communed with shadows.
“Perhaps in thinking them I do obey the god,” Raklion whispered. “Perhaps these thoughts are its voice in my heart. Perhaps I am punished because I do not act. Mijak bleeds but I do not staunch its wounds!”
Nagarak stared down at him, his caressing fingers turned to fists. “I am high godspeaker,” he said at last. “Such desires of the god would first be revealed to me.”
“You are high godspeaker but I am warlord. Warriors’ business is my business, Nagarak. In matters of war the god speaks to me in my heart.”
Joint by joint, Nagarak’s fingers unfisted themselves. “It . . . is an explanation.”
“Nagarak, I am not wrong about Et-Raklion’s fate if the other warlords are left unchecked.”
“No,” said Nagarak. “You are not wrong.”
“They will steal my lands if the browning continues. Will it?”
In Nagarak’s face, a riot of thoughts. Then he nodded. “I think it will.”
“You think ?”
“The omens are conflicting!” said Nagarak, goaded. “The truth hides in shadows.”
It was the closest Nagarak had ever come to admitting ignorance. Raklion sat up, slowly. “I cannot stand against six raiding warhosts. And where Et-Raklion falls all of Mijak will follow, I know this, Nagarak. The god tells me so.”
Nagarak frowned fiercely. “It is . . . possible . . . these thoughts come from the god. They could also have been sent by a demon, nourished in your ambitious heart.”
“I am not ambitious. These thoughts frighten me, Nagarak.”
“As well they should!” said Nagarak, and turned to pace his private chamber. “One thing is clear, Raklion: you are a flagrant sinner. You have sinned in thinking these thoughts of one warlord, or you have sinned in not acting upon them as the god desires.”
Raklion nodded, slumping. “And I am punished for it. I have no son, and no warlord bloodline on which to breed one. No warlord will give a daughter to me now. They want to take Et-Raklion for themselves, not help me breed its next fighting warlord.”
“ You will have a son ,” said Nagarak. “I have said so, it will come to pass. But only when your sin is revealed and repented.”
Eagerly Raklion regained his feet. “I do repent it, Nagarak. I will stand on the godhouse roof and shout to the sky, I am Raklion warlord, a sinning sinner! I have sinned, I have said so, I weep tears in my remorse.”
Nagarak looked at him, cold and stern. “The tears you weep are tears of water. For the god’s absolution you must weep tears of blood.”
Shuddering, Raklion bowed his head. Nagarak spoke truly. Without weeping blood his penitence was air, was nothing. Aieee, it was a fearful thought. “You are right, high godspeaker. Water remorse is not sufficient. I am the warlord, a man of deeds.”
“Through me, Raklion, the god will write on your flesh with a heavy hand,” said Nagarak. His tone was a warning. “I will not spare you, though you are the warlord.”
Raklion met his high godspeaker’s obdurate glare. “You must not spare me, Nagarak. The god must know the length and breadth and depth of my sorrow.”
Nagarak nodded. “Warlord, it must.”
“And after I am punished, and the god knows my true regret, you will sink beneath the surface of the godpool and seek an answer to this mystery. Am I to become the warlord of Mijak?”
“That is the question I must ask,” said Nagarak, slowly. “But not in the godpool. In the scorpion pit.”
The scorpion pit? “Nagarak, men die in the scorpion pit.”
Nagarak smiled. “Warlord, if you strive to make yourself warlord of Mijak you will fail without me by your side. Therefore in your striving so do I strive, to be Mijak’s high godspeaker, its voice for the god. That too was forbidden in the dark past. If I support you I support myself. Therefore I must ask the god in the scorpion pit, baring myself to its killing eye.”
Raklion shook his head. “No. I forbid it. This sin is mine, you will not pay the price.”
“It is not for you to forbid a high godspeaker! This is the god’s business, it falls upon me! There can be no gain without risk.”
Gain? “You wish to be Mijak’s one high godspeaker?” he asked, shocked.
Nagarak turned away. “I wish the god’s true voice to be heard in Mijak. I wish for an end to untrue high godspeakers.”
“You think you are true and your brothers are false?”
Still Nagarak would not look at him. “I think there is a reason why Et-Raklion stays green and fat, while the rest of Mijak turns dirt brown and thin.”
He is ambitious. I never knew it . “Nagarak, if you must face the god’s scorpions, then so be it. As I weep for my sin against the god I will pray that it knows you are its true godspeaker.” He swallowed. “When will that be, Nagarak? When do I weep?”
Nagarak turned back to him, a hint of warmth in his merciless face. “Raklion warlord, it is known there is nothing gained by delaying a thing that must come to pass. You have sinned an
d must be punished. Come with me now, and weep your sorrow to the god.”
Raklion nodded. On the slopes of the Pinnacle, in the heart of his warlord palace, his son’s small body spoiled before its time. If ever he was to see the birth of a living son he had no choice but to follow Nagarak.
“You speak the truth. Take me, high godspeaker, and learn how much I love the god.”
In silence Nagarak pulled on a robe, then led him from the quiet room, down stairs and more stairs, past closed chambers echoing with chanted prayer, past novices sweeping the godhouse’s public places, past city supplicants praying before its altars, through open gardens and along cold corridors of stone. Not a witness to his passing spoke a single word but all eyes followed and there was dread in their gaze, as though the truth were a trail of smoke that could be seen by anyone in the god’s eye.
A clutch of chambers apart from the main godhouse was given over to the god’s severe taskmasters. Following Nagarak through the night, across an open courtyard to that terrible place, Raklion heard the stinging slap of leather against bared flesh, the harder crack of birch, the sobbing sighs of men and women in supplication to the god. Through half-open doors he glimpsed private penitence, devout despairing, wholehearted misery in the pursuit of purity. Mijak’s god demanded contrition, and in this place contrition ruled with whip and cane, it hungered for tears, it drank them like nectar. The godmoon and his wife still walked the starred sky, yet nearly every tasking room was full. The godspeakers of Et-Raklion were perfect in their bloodsoaked piety.
Raklion pitied them as he loved them, as he witnessed their suffering while passing them by. He was here to join them, to become their lowly brother, to weep out his own sins as they wept out theirs.
One dark room waited for him. Nagarak led him within it, and closed the door.
No words were needed in this place. Raklion was silent as he shed his fine linen tunic and his sandals trimmed with gold, as his high godspeaker lit a single lamp, as his wrists and ankles were bound with leather to the cold iron scorpion wheel.
