The Celebration of Pentecost was upon us, and the fiery tongues of the Holy Spirit and Enaka’s Sun were coiling together in burning sin. I can write such irreverent words only now that my faith has been tested, broken and shattered.
Da-Ren had arrived at our Castlemonastery only a few weeks ago, and he was still imprisoned. Baagh went to see the First Elder again, to ask him to remove Da-Ren’s chains. At the last moment, he requested that I join them, and I arrived late and puzzled at the refectory where I found the First Elder and three older monks. They were all standing still like saintly wooden statues except for a gesticulating Baagh, who was raising his voice.
“We are not murderers to put him to death,” said Baagh, hitting the cedar table with both hands to accentuate his point.
“Maybe the blacksmith could—” mumbled one of the monks.
“God is listening, Brother Rufinus. What are you asking? Unspeakable sin?”
“You speak with him every day, Evagus. What does this barbarian want with us? You should order him to sail back to the idolatrous wastelands he came from. What does he expect to find here?” asked the First Elder.
“The same thing he’s wanted from the first day he came. He wants to save his wife and daughter, who are in mortal danger.”
“A mad infidel.”
“He seeks the secret of becoming invincible against death, the magic to resurrect the dead.”
“Blasphemy. Tell me why are we even discussing this, Evagus? If he was your disciple for so long, why have you not sowed the true word of God in his soul?”
“Elders, I beseech you. I know what blasphemy is. Judgment will not be passed by us in this life, said the Prophet. And in the wisdom of our silver years, we shouldn’t judge a barbarian who was raised among monsters. I beg you; I want to help him. I want to make him a man of God. I want his story. I need time.”
“Do you suggest that we release among us an unchained beast who believes that we are magi who can perform miracles at his command? He probably thinks we’re pagan priestesses who serve the snake gods. And when he realizes that you cannot fulfill any of his wishes, who will protect us?”
“Da-Ren is not going to hurt the innocent. I vouch for him.”
“We don’t have adequate supplies. Winter has come early this year.”
“God protects and saves, First Elder. I ask for the Monk Eusebius here, who is young and has the untired eyes of the hawk. I want him to teach Da-Ren the words of God and to read to him daily. We will need time before writing his story.”
“No. Why would we do that?”
“When he completes his story, I will take it to Thalassopolis, to the Emperor and the First Eunuch, the Protospathos himself. I expect that a detailed narration will reveal many secrets about the battle practices, the warrior training, the strategic command, and the life of the barbarians. Da-Ren was a great warlord.”
I saw then for the first time that Baagh may have been a monk, but he was other things as well that I have not deciphered yet. A secret envoy of the palace, as he would reveal to me later through the letters, he gave me.
“We do not concern ourselves with barbarian warlords. Nor with the glory of the Emperor of Thalassopolis and the Great Church of Wisdom. We are ascetic monks,” said Rufinus.
But the name of the Emperor brought sparkles to the eyes of the First Elder, and Baagh was quick to continue with his argument.
“First Elder, do this, and you will save thousands of lives. We must scribe Da-Ren’s story if we want the Empire of the Cross to stop the infidels once and for all. These merciless beasts have devoured the faithful flock of our Savior and soaked our church temples in blood all the way to the eastern outlands. Even a monk cannot stay passive when the gates of hell are open.”
“God sent the scourge of these barbarians to make us pay for our sins.”
Baagh’s brow creased at the sound of those words, and his eyes narrowed as if they were witnessing again the apocalyptic images of Varazam.
“And so it has been done! We have paid dearly. Ancient cities have been decimated. Men of the faith were decapitated. Women and children! God cannot want the destruction of all our churches.”
“I cannot—”
“I came here with an imperial trireme from the Reigning City, carrying the wishes of the Palace marked with the imperial chrysoboule. The gold seal! You can, and you will.”
At the sight of the Emperor’s seal on the papyrus, the First Elder did not speak anymore. He nodded in silent agreement when he realized that Baagh was not really arguing. He would get what he wanted one way or another.
Baagh motioned for me to follow him and turned to the door without waiting for an answer. We took the stairs down to find Da-Ren locked in the dungeons.
And so the duty of transcribing this man’s story fell upon me. It was a heavy burden, a duplicitous task of serving Baagh’s orders while at the same time having to reassure the barbarian that the Cross Sorcerers would give him eternal life and the secrets to defeat death. It took a whole year to ink the first letter on the papyrus. The writing followed the reading, and the storytelling followed Da-Ren’s acceptance that no miracle would be performed in a day.
“How quickly can we finish this?” Da-Ren kept asking during the first weeks after I had started transcribing his story.
“I don’t know how detailed your story is going to be, but, as you can see, I cannot write more than eight hundred words a day on the papyrus. Even doing that at a steady pace would be an incredible feat. Don’t forget that my strength and patience come from ascesis and fasting, and oftentimes I’ll have to abstain from food and water for a whole day. Even more.”
He didn’t mention it again for a few days. Instead, he started mumbling in his barbaric tongue and counting many times over and over again with his fingers. Then he found a razor-sharp rock and scratched slowly, straight lines on the limestone. I was afraid he was losing his wits. When he was certain that he had measured correctly the moons that we would need, he mumbled, “But…this means we won’t be finished until next winter.” His eyes darkened, and he covered them with his left palm. “My Zeria. Aneria. She…was a leader, my sweet…” He hesitated and then lost his words completely.
I was sworn to sin, so I lied to him. “The other Sorcerers won’t be here before next summer, Da-Ren. It is impossible to dwell by the Thousand Island Sea in midwinter.”
“Baagh fooled me. Next summer? I’ll be exiled here two winters away from Zeria.”
“Yes, that is the earliest we could complete our mission. If we have faith and make haste.”
“Why do we have to ink the story, Eusebius?”
“Because it is what the monks dictate and what…our faith demands.” My lies had become slimy green toads leaping out of my mouth. “Only written words can win favor with the wise Sorcerers and God. Spoken words change with every coming day. What the ink stains is a confession worthy for the holy men to consider.”
“Tell me, Eusebius, about those Sorcerers. Do they possess the power of magic? Is it true? The blood of the sea drakons?”
“The what?”
“Have you ever seen the death-defying Sorcerers?”
“No, I have not traveled that far.” I had not traveled anywhere farther than the sacred codices, as he would soon learn. “But I have heard a great deal about them.”
We struggled with the words and the papyri for three years, until he lost all hope. Only his story remained, the writing for its own sake, the only reason to wake up and breathe for one more day. We were in our fourth year already, and there was still no sign of Baagh. A maniacal effort to perfect the script had overcome him—and me as well.
In the fourth year, during the third and last rewrite, there was more work for me than for him, and it required a different kind of attention. He spent more of his time listening to me narrating parts of the story and suggesting corrections rather than repeating his deeds. Sometimes, he would simply refuse to do anything, and weeks would go by when he w
ouldn’t say a word. At the darkest of those days, he would just get up, turn his back on me, face the cell wall, and punch it seven times with his fists. He would then fall to the floor, consumed by a silent rage that reddened his eyes and made his body shiver. Then he would get up again and punch the wall seven more times. Always seven. The blood blackened his hand, and the silent pain consumed him as a poison and a balsam of regret.
It was a wintry morning of the fourth year when Da-Ren had completed the same torturous bloody routine. I begged him to stop hurting himself, and we went for a walk along the battlements of the sea-facing wall. Most of the sky was a stormy black, except for one hole of blinding light that gave the clouds around it a bluish hue.
I had wrapped his hand in a white cloth that quickly turned a deep red as it absorbed the blood from his wounds. Da-Ren looked up as we were walking and pointed to the opening among the clouds.
“See, Enaka awaits there,” he said.
He untied the red cloth from his bloody hand, and the wild north wind swiftly lifted it high above our heads. A bright-red dot against the endless blue and the towering black.
“Look, Eusebius, the Ouna-Ma, the red-veiled, returns to her Goddess in the Sky,” Da-Ren said.
“Yes.” We were next to each other but had to shout our words because of the wind.
I didn’t have much to say at times like this, and he wouldn’t listen anyway. I was holding tightly in my arms a copy of the Book of Sacred Scriptures I had just completed copying, to protect it from the drizzle. It was my favorite and most personal work so far, and it had taken years of waiting and months of work to finish it, as my tasks with the barbarian had slowed my pace. Da-Ren reached and pulled the Book away from me. Before I had time to challenge him or beg him, he held it with one bloodied hand out of the crenel, above the cliff and the crashing waves.
“Nothing to be afraid of, Eusebius. Have faith in the gods, the sorcerers, and all the flying witches of damnation. Now I’ll let it fall, and as you’ll see—”
“Have mercy. I implore you!” I cried. His blood was smearing the edges of the divine codex.
“Faith, Eusebius.” His grasp loosened and let the Book fall. It fell silently and awkwardly, like an unsuspecting baby thrown from the walls of Varazam.
I was the one screaming.
He shrugged and gave a momentary grin.
“Unlike the Ouna-Ma’s veil,” he said.
“Are you mad?” I cried in agony.
“Your holy book didn’t fly very high, Eusebius. I knew it. Your god and your sorcerers are false.”
The wind died instantly as if it were startled by Da-Ren’s irreverent actions. He had managed to enrage me for the first time despite all my training in passive patience. I wished for the strength to throw him over the battlements and be finished with him once and for all. But all I managed was to raise my voice and point a finger at him:
“Those words of God took many months of my life to write. You should have respected them. You should respect the hospitality you have received and be thankful.”
“Forgive me, Eusebius. I thank the monks from the bottom of my heart for the hospitality of the Castlemonastery, and especially you for teaching me your tongue—” he answered.
“It was a tribulation that befell me, Da-Ren, to—” I interrupted him.
“—because now that I have heard and discovered all that your wise men have written, I am sure that I have been chosen by the gods for a very special reason.”
“And what would that be?”
“The gods wanted someone to laugh at.” He fixed his gaze on the kingdom of God above.
“This is the talk of a craven man. If that’s what you believe, why are you still here?” I asked.
He hesitated in answering.
“You see that fisherman down by the harbor. He’s waiting for the wind to die down so he can head out again. If he doesn’t catch anything, his family will die of hunger. So he will stay there with his eyes fixed to the murky depths of the sea with the rain beating down on him. Till his last breath, if that’s what it takes. Monks don’t have families. That is their strength, not their god. The monks wouldn’t wait out at sea all day in the rain because they don’t have daughters. They have made no promises to them. But I will wait for Baagh. Nothing else I can do. Until Judgment Day; isn’t that what you call it?”
“Yes.”
“I will wait for him like that fisherman father.”
“God never forsakes those who endure in piety. He will appear before you one night.”
His silent grin was as bitter as an unripened olive.
The words of God and the prayers for temperance were the only powers I had to lead him down the path of righteousness. But he didn’t pray, he didn’t follow the services, and he had never accepted to be baptized; thus, he did not take communion. Only once, during the fourth year, was I granted permission to lead him for a few moments to the church we had erected in the courtyard. He had carried most of the stones we used to rebuild it, and thus the First Elder allowed it. It was a small structure with a crossed wooden roof and walls covered with painted icons. I expected him to be impressed, to kneel, to feel small and insignificant, and request to be baptized.
“Eusebius, I have told you. I have visited the most magnificent, enormous temple of your Reigning City. A church larger than the whole of your Castlemonastery—I’d say larger than your whole island.”
“Nonsense. Not even the great Cathedral of Wisdom—” I answered sharp and fast.
“Oh yes, I saw it. I was inside of it. In your largest church. So many trees. Oaks.”
“Oaks? In the Cathedral of Wisdom? You’ve been in the Cathedral of the Reigning City? And told me nothing about it all these years?” I was boiling anger.
“You’re right. I haven’t said much the previous times we wrote down my Story about that. I didn’t want you to brag about your magnificent God. But I will, now that we rewrite it.”
“I’ll be overjoyed to hear more.”
“And yet you won’t understand anything. Maybe you will someday if you ever dare to abandon this barren rock. I’ve seen the face of your god in that Cathedral. You have high hopes for him.”
To my surprise, his last words sounded right in my ears.
“But see, I don’t. Because unlike you, I have seen the eyes of the One who sent me to Varazam. Hope nevermore.”
“Blasphemy, Da-Ren.”
He stared at the angels and the saintly figures on the walls, the towering face of our Savior centering the altar, and he said, “I have looked upon the face of your god, Eusebius. He doesn’t look anything like that old man you’ve painted up there. This image is almost identical to the First Elder, and I am certain he asked for it to carry his likeness. Your god is a sight of terror. If you ever saw his face as I did, you’d piss your robes the same instant. He has a forked tongue, soft scarlet shoes, wolfen ears, the dog teeth of the Cyanus Reekaal—and one wooden leg.”
As Da-Ren uttered these words, in the fourth year of his stay, an irreversible realization filled my mind. The sacred words of our Lord would never reach the heart and mind of this barbarian. He had been in hell already. Maybe he had been in heaven even. He had no more need for them.
Forgive me, First Elder. Forgive me, Evagus. Forgive me, God.
I have failed you.
This one will not be saved.
LXV.
Seven Lives
Twenty-Fourth Autumn. Nobody
The Legend of Khun-Amar
Khun-Amar was the Third Leader of the Tribe and the first to pass the great eastern river that separates the steppe from the southern valleys that reach to Sirol and the Blackvein. Legend says that Khun-Amar never set foot on soil. He spent his entire life on the saddle riding west. He slept on the horse; he ate on the horse.
It was on the Flower Moon, the one before summer, that the First Witch Ouna-Ma saw the black-winged storks abandoning their nests east of the river and crossing to the west. This wa
s the Goddess’s sign, because the white-necked birds would never desert their nests unless a grave danger was approaching. The Tribe had to obey the omens of the birds and cross over the river, that terrifying last western frontier of the steppe. The waters had subsided lower than any other summer dawn, signaling a great drought.
The Tribe crafted coras, small boats shaped like empty walnut shell halves. The men made them by weaving bark and wood and covered them with layers of bullock and oxen hide and tar to keep out the water. As the currents dropped, a few of them managed to cross the river with our first waterborne vessels. On the western side, they found fishermen and craftsmen who knew how to make boats and rafts capable of crossing big rivers, but not great seas, and enslaved them. Khun-Amar, the rider, was the first to reach the western valleys.
The Tribe never trusts its fate upon the black sea.
Man cannot walk, fight, or shoot with the water beneath his feet.
The wolf’s paws won’t run on water.
The horse can swim but can neither gallop nor graze there.
The bow warps and rots in the foamy salt slobber of the Demon.
The Sun’s light does not pierce the water. The dark magic of the sea steals the strength and the soul of the brave.
“You will hunt them to the ends of land. To the four corners of the world you will ride and conquer. Never in the cursed sea.”
Thus declared the Ouna-Mas, the Voices of the Unending Sky.
I am the first of my Tribe to have crossed the Great Sea of the Thousand Islands. I dived into her as a free man. I came out of her liberated.
It was a five-day ride from the Gold Gorge to Antia’s port. We found and claimed Agathon, a stout old man, a captain of merchant ships among the prisoners. He was funny-looking despite his deeply wrinkled face. He had a bald head, and dark bushy beard topped by long whiskers and sleepy eyes, as if someone had fitted his head upside down.
Agathon had fought bravely at Apelo and was freed when the othertribers surrendered. Soon he was captured again because he had tried to steal a boat and escape with his wife and two sons. We found him in a fenced open field, sleeping face down in the dirt along with hundreds of others, waiting to join the slave caravans. The recent threat of war in the East and the summer’s heat had halted the slave trade, and Agathon was stranded there. We needed more than just a slave, though. It had to be someone we could trust, so my men found his wife and sons. Baagh, a man of God, promised him that we would release the whole family if Agathon led us to the Blackvein through the Thalassopolis straits.
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