by Karen Miller
I am here, god. I am penitent. Drink my tears and swallow my cries. Do what you will, for as long as you must, write on my flesh all the way to the bone. Know I am sorry, answer my prayer. Help me save Mijak.
Grant me a son.
In the last gasp of darkness before newsun, Hekat stood on the warhost field with Et-Raklion’s warriors and watched the pyres of the fallen burn to ash. Raklion did not watch with them, neither did his warleader Hanochek. The pyres were lit by Tajria and Arakun shell-leaders, they had waited and waited for Raklion and Hanochek until they could wait no more. The bodies must be burned by the first newsun after death. A godspeaker gave permission for the pyres’ lighting, death was the god’s business. Ritual must be observed.
In the darkness around her, Hekat heard whispers. Why was the warlord not with them for this burning? Why did the warleader not appear? Like wind through a wheat field the questions rippled, unease mingling with grief in the smoke from the pyres. After the burning, Tajria took her aside.
“You said the warlord said he and Hanochek would come to the barracks. Why did they not come, Hekat? What have you not told me?”
Tajria should know better than to talk in a shrill voice, she should know better than to show her fear. “He told me they would come, shell-leader. That is all he told me, that is all I can say.”
Tajria dismissed her. She did not report to a godspeaker healer as Raklion wanted, she went to the bath-house and sat in hot water until it turned cold. Then she crawled into her barracks bed to sleep for a finger. After three godmoons in the wilderness her mattress felt like a cloud. It was strange, the warlord and the warleader not coming to the barracks. The scorpion amulet round her neck stayed sleeping, she did not permit herself to worry.
The god will tell me if I must fear.
Hanochek warleader appeared at highsun sacrifice, he expressed regret that he was not at the burning. “Raklion warlord was taken with a gripe,” he told the warhost. “He weeps for our lost ones, he sees them in the god’s eye.”
Hekat thought he was lying, there were shadows in his eyes. Raklion warlord was not sick when she had seen him.
After sacrifice Hanochek met with Tajria and Arakun and their knife-dance shells in the meal-barracks, where they talked of Banotaj’s bold, wicked raid. On a bench beside him sat the three bloodied breastplates. As they talked, Hanochek’s face grew grim, his shadowed eyes darkened, his fingers tapped upon his thigh.
“You are proud warriors,” he told them. “I am proud of you, and so is the warlord. You have served him, you have served Et-Raklion. For three highsuns you may take your ease. Guard your tongues on this matter of Et-Banotaj, this is not gossip for the barracks’ camp fires.”
Laughing they left him, ready to play. Obedient to Hanochek they held their tongues, it made no difference. Those three bloodied breastplates had been seen in the stables by slaves, by others, the gossip ran wild. Before lowsun sacrifice every warrior in the barracks knew Banotaj was stirring, knew other warlords stirred trouble with him. Like a simmering cook-pot, the barracks seethed.
Not interested in playing, kept from reading for three godmoons in the wilderness, Hekat looked to amuse herself with stories. Tired of her small tablet collection, she thought to ask Vortka if he could bring her more from the godhouse. But the godspeaker healer she went to as an excuse to find him did not know where he was. She sighed and let the godspeaker heal her knife wounds then bought two clay tablets from her least favorite pedlar. The stories were stupid but they were something to read. She washed and mended her wilderness tunics, trained a little with the slingshot and bow. She ate round the camp fire after lowsun sacrifice, char-roasted sheep she had killed with one arrow, and rolled her eyes at her shell-mates’ boastings and the eager believing of the newest recruits. They were stupid, she was weary, she went to bed. That was her first highsun at ease in the barracks, she thought two more would drive her mad.
She survived them, they were not so bad. She helped Zapotar with some of the new warriors, knife-dancers accepted into the barracks while she trained in the wilderness. She watched their hotas , she shouted at them when they made mistakes. They knew who she was, someone had told them, She is the warrior who slew Bajadek . They strove to please her, they laughed when she praised them, after their training they dawdled to talk.
“How did you kill that Bajadek warlord? Tell us of the battle, Hekat. Tell us what that killing was like!”
She did not want to talk about it. “Knife-dancing is for doing, not for gossip.”
“Please, Hekat,” they begged her. “We want to dance with our snakeblades like you, beautiful and deadly in the god’s eye.”
They were older than she was, every one of them, but they made her feel as old as the god. “I will tell you this much,” she said to them sternly. “If you think to knife-dance for your glory the enemy you dance with will slit your throat. I did not kill Bajadek warlord. The god killed that sinning man, I was its snakeblade. Dance for the god, warriors. Dance in its eye.”
That was not the story they wanted to hear, but she did not care. She was tired of them. Lowsun approached, the warhost attended sacrifice. The warleader stood with them, still Raklion did not come. After sacrifice and the night’s roast goat and chicken, while the others gathered to drink sadsa or sing and dance or disappeared to rut with a vessel, Hekat went to the bath-house to wallow in warm water.
Vortka found her there a long time later, prodding at the bath’s hotbricks. “Hekat! I thought you would be here. I am pleased to see you safe home from the wilderness. How went your training?”
“Training is training.” She shrugged. “Have you heard of our skirmish?”
“Skirmish?” He dropped to the stool beside her tub. His face was still beautiful but now it was haggard, his eyes sunk in hollows. They made him work hard, those godspeakers in the godhouse. “No. I am not long returned from service beyond the city. For two godmoons I traveled Et-Raklion’s villages with the godspeaker treasurers, counting taxes. I am no longer an initiate novice, I have more responsibilities now.” He nodded at her forearm, where it rested on the side of the tub. “I see you were wounded. Are you in pain?”
She looked at the healed knife-cut. “No. It is nothing.”
“It has left a scar.” Vortka smiled, a quick twist of his lips. “Warriors like scars, so the healers tell me.”
The other warriors certainly did, they boasted with their scars as they boasted with their tongues. Scars were unimportant, they did not impress the god. “It is nothing, I told you. Vortka, has something happened?”
He did not answer. The new scorpion shell bound to his brow was brown, and larger than the black one it replaced. There were blue beads in his godbraids, they were not there before, and tiny stone scorpions dangled from his ears. His novice robe looked too large for his bowed shoulders. Something was troubling him.
She said, “Have you heard how Raklion is faring? We were told his belly had a gripe, I do not believe that. He was well when I saw him.”
The look Vortka gave her was almost unfriendly. “The god has not told you? Aieee, perhaps you are not so special after all.”
His fingers held tightly to his knees. He was frightened, he was worried, she could read him like the simplest clay tablet. She sat up straighter, so her breasts came out of the water. That did not matter, she was not a woman to him. “Why would you say that? How have I hurt you, that you would use your tongue as a knife? Do you think I need another scar?”
“I should not have come here,” he said, shaking his head. “I am not supposed to know these things. This is not my business.”
She felt a shiver run through her blood. Her scorpion amulet glowed against her skin. “Vortka? Tell me. What is it you are not supposed to know?”
He rocked a little on the bath-stool. His eyes were bright with unshed tears. “Why did I come here? If it is known I heard words not spoken for my hearing I—”
“ Vortka !” She wrapped her fingers roun
d his wrist. “The god has sent you, that is why you came. You are its messenger. What has happened ?”
They were alone but still he looked in the bath-house’s four empty corners. “Et-Nogolor’s Daughter is dead and the warlord’s son with her. She cut the baby’s throat at birth, then stabbed herself in the heart.”
“Why would she do that? Was she demonstruck?”
“I do not know, Hekat. I do not want to know.”
Beyond the bath-house walls the sounds of warrior carousing filled the ageing night. Hekat felt the air around her turn to syrup. All the muscles on the inside of her body softened, lengthened, a flush of heat rushed across her wet skin. A chiming sounded in her head, it was the god, the god was speaking, telling her Mijak’s future. Her future.
Precious, beautiful, your time is come.
Languid, thrumming, she released Vortka’s wrist. “When did this happen?”
“Three lowsuns ago.”
The night she and the others returned from the wilderness. The night she spoke with Raklion in his palace. “And what of the warlord? Has this made him sick, is the gripe in his godspark instead of his belly?”
Vortka shivered. “Raklion warlord is in the godhouse, Hekat. He prays to the god on the scorpion wheel.”
“ Prays ?” she echoed, and leapt out of her tub. “No-one prays on the scorpion wheel, Vortka.” She snatched a towel and scrubbed away the soap and water. “It is an instrument of punishment, it is for the vilest sinners in the god’s eye! The lowest slave in these barracks knows of the godhouse scorpion wheel! How is Raklion bound upon it? He is the warlord, chosen by the god!”
“I am only a novice, Hekat, I do not know the nature of Raklion’s sin. I am not meant to know this much!” Vortka’s voice was broken, he was nearly undone. “I am wicked to be telling you what I know. But I am afraid. Raklion is tasked by Nagarak himself, I fear for his life.”
Roughly Hekat pulled on her clean loincloth and tunic, and belted her snakeblade round her waist. “Nagarak will not destroy the warlord. I will save him, it is the god’s want.”
Vortka stood and plucked at her arm. “Hekat, you cannot enter the godhouse. You cannot meddle in Nagarak’s business. If you are discovered . . .”
Her godbraids were soaked, and heavy with purpose. “I am the god’s shadow, I dwell in its eye. I glide through the air, hidden from the world. I am safe from your godspeakers, Vortka. Even that Nagarak.”
She left distressed Vortka in the bath-house and ran lightly through the darkness, unseen and obedient to the god. Its truth was in her, it had told her its desires.
I am coming, Raklion warlord. Precious and beautiful, this is my time.
Raklion wept. The god had written so deep in his flesh its words would never vanish. It had written on his bones as though they were clay tablets, and breathed on them like a baking fire. It had read his heart, it knew his remorse.
All I want now is to know your desire. Give me your answer, god, show me the path I must tread with my feet. Am I to be the warlord of Mijak?
“Raklion!” a sweet voice whispered. “No more weeping. You have soaked the god with your tears of blood, you have wept enough. The god needs your strength, warlord, not your tears.”
He forced apart his swollen eyelids. A single torch guttered in the stinking chamber, throwing just enough light to show him who spoke. “Hekat?” he said, his voice a rasp. “Are you here? Or is this a dream born of fever and pain?”
Her scars were golden in the torchlight. “No dream, Raklion. I am sent by the god.”
He sighed then, almost moaning, as her fingertips pressed against his brow. There was healing in her, his pain retreated. Or was that only his fevered mind, brought by Nagarak to the brink of breaking? He longed to touch her but he was bound to the wheel. He smiled instead, though it hurt his bitten, swollen lip. “Thank you, knife-dancer. Now you must go. If Nagarak returns . . .”
She shrugged. “If he returns he will not see me. Warlord, why are you bound to this scorpion wheel? Why are you beaten like a common slave?”
“To the god all men are slaves, little Hekat. I am here to weep for my sins.” Cold air rattled in and out of his chest. “How long has it been, Hekat? How long have I been bound here? Do you know?”
“I am told three highsuns.”
Three highsuns of weeping in this windowless chamber. No food, scant water. Three highsuns of screaming his sorrow to the god. No wonder his throat was raw. No wonder his wrists and ankles felt cut to the bone.
Three highsuns since his son had died.
Something in her words disturbed him. After a moment, he knew what it was. “Told? Who told you?”
“The god told me, Raklion.” Her tone said he should have known that without asking. “It tells me many things. It tells me things it keeps from Nagarak. He is high godspeaker, he is not the god.”
She spoke in riddles, he could not unriddle them. “Please. You must leave me. I do not want you punished for seeking me out.”
When Hekat smiled, her scars were forgotten. “Foolish Raklion. How can I be punished? I live for the god.”
“I live for it too, yet you see me bound here. I have no son . . .” His voice cracked, and though he thought he had wept himself empty his eyes stung with fresh tears. After three days in this terrible place it was easy to believe his sonless state would never change. “Et-Nogolor’s Daughter is dead, she will never bear me one.”
Hekat shrugged. “She was never meant to, warlord.”
If he had been free he would have struck her, beautiful Hekat with her wicked tongue. “What would you know of this, it is warlord’s business! You are nothing, a runaway slave. The Daughter was my future, she was the future of Et-Raklion. Her blood was pure, she was the child of warlords. What do you know, a runaway slave from the savage north?”
Hekat smiled again. His words had not hurt her. “I know all the things the god has told me.”
“The god does not speak to runaway slaves!”
She stood before him, lithe and strong and clothed in pride. “I am not a runaway slave. I am Hekat, knife-dancer of Et-Raklion, slayer of Bajadek, precious to the god.”
“How are you precious?” he demanded, the pain in his heart burning hotter than in his flesh. “Why are you precious? You have a wicked tongue, you do not seem precious to me!”
She leaned so close her breath caressed his skin. Her blue eyes were depthless, he fell into them unresisting. “I will be precious to you, as I am to the god,” she whispered. “The god desires I bear you a son.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Raklion stared at Hekat dumbly, struck beyond words. “I am meant for you. I will be yours. It is my purpose, warlord,” she added, frowning at his disbelief. “It is why I came to Et-Raklion, why you saw me, why the god saved me from Abajai and Yagji. You must know this. The god has told you, if only in dreams. It is why you desire me. Why your eyes eat me whenever we meet. I will be a great warlord’s mother. The god had told me this, so it will be.”
He rolled his head on the iron scorpion wheel. “No, Hekat. You are mistaken. Only a woman of warlord bloodlines is fit to birth a warlord’s son.”
“Tcha!” she said, and bared her teeth. “If that was true your son plowed in the Daughter’s field would be living, and all the sons you plowed before that. I am meant to birth the next warlord. Would you desire me if this was not so?”
She was a temptress, he must not listen. “I never said I desired you.”
She laughed at him. “Do I have eyes? Has the god struck me blind? You desire me, Raklion. It is the god’s want. That is why I am precious and beautiful.”
Snared in the extremities of physical distress, still he felt a throb in his blood. He wanted her naked, he wanted her lush. He wanted her long legs wrapped around him.
“And what of your wants, Hekat knife-dancer?” His voice was thickened, and slurred with many things. “Do you desire me?”
“I desire the god’s desire,” she said, her f
ace a shadow among the shadows. “Whatever the god wants, I want it also.”
His eyelids were heavy, he could not stop them closing. In the fresh darkness he breathed in and breathed out and tried to fathom the god’s true purpose. Tried to imagine what Nagarak would say, the warlord taking a warrior to wife.
His eyes flew open. “The god talks to men with the tongues of its godspeakers. No godspeaker has talked to me of you. How can this be the god’s true desire?”
“Godspeakers are also men,” said Hekat. Her eyes in the torchlight were flat with contempt. “Men are imperfect. Men are swayed from the god’s desires by petty wantings of their own. This is known too, Raklion warlord. We saw the god strike down a lying godspeaker, you and I. Do not doubt what the god does in this place. Could I stand with you in the heart of its godhouse if I was not precious in its eye?”
Could she? He would not have said so. Et-Raklion’s godhouse was teeming with godspeakers, they were everywhere underfoot. How could she stand here with him if not by the god’s want?
The god desires I bear you a son.
She rested her hand on his naked shoulder. If there was pity in her for his sufferings he could not see it in her face. She was still, remote, some sacred thing housed in flawed human flesh.
“Raklion warlord, you are bound to the scorpion wheel. For three hard highsuns you have wept to the god and bled your sins from your heart and bones. You are cleansed now, it is time to rise. Et-Raklion needs you for the dark days ahead.”
Dark days . She sounded so certain. “What do you know of Et-Raklion’s future?” he demanded. “What has the god told you, Hekat?”
Her eyes drifted closed. “It tells me Mijak will be reborn in blood and fire. It will rise to greatness in the world. You must not fear, you are Raklion warlord, seen and chosen by the god. You will be Mijak’s warlord, the god has told me.”
Her words struck him so hard he felt his heart stop beating. Before he could speak again the tasking chamber door pushed open and Nagarak entered. He did not see Hekat or sense her presence. She was blind to him in the god’s hiding eye. She pressed a finger to her lips, desiring silence. Raklion said nothing, he was obedient.
