BeneathCeaselessSkies Issue001

by Unknown

  Shira forced her shining self into the space behind Luca’s back. The rock, cold as the pits of hell, drew the heat and light from her, but she held the pry-bar before her like the spear of the Sun Himself, and she thrust it into the loose gravel around Luca’s leg.

  She channeled the power from herself into the gravel. It trembled, and sand and small stones began to fly in all directions. Luca cried out and pressed his face against the rock, as though seeking protection from the very Earth Mother who imprisoned him.

  Sand and gravel continued to fly, and even Shira was forced to narrow her eyes and duck her head as the wind from farther back in the cave blew the flying stones into her face. She pressed harder on the pry-bar and poured all the Sun’s power into it. The tiny cavern filled with a deafening roar, the groaning, rattling sound of a million tiny particles battering against rock, and the smell was of a sandstorm she had endured as a novice. Luca’s mouth was wide open, his eyes squeezed tight shut, but she could not hear his scream.

  Now Shira too was screaming, her bones afire, pain coursing along every vein and tendon. The cave was a typhoon of sand. But still the rock pressed in from every side, and new gravel poured down from above, immediately replacing every particle the Sun’s power forced away down the tunnel. And more. Shira realized that all her efforts, all the power of the Sun Himself, were only burying Luca still deeper.

  With a shuddering cry of pain and despair, Shira choked back the power within herself. It burned along her nerves and muscles, but the storm of sand quickly subsided, leaving both of them battered and gray with dust.

  Luca’s face was buried in it. He struggled, unable to breathe.

  Abandoning the pry-bar, Shira dug out Luca’s head with her hands. As his mouth came into view, he gasped and coughed and spat out sand and gravel.

  Shira’s light was fading, the God-power flowing out of her and into the all-absorbing rock like a draining bath. She began to sob, and held Luca’s head out of the pile of dust and sand she had brought down upon him. “I’m sorry,” she said, and her words were a dry hacking whisper with no hint of God-voice. “I’m sorry.”

  The two of them cried together in the cooling cavern, listening to the sound of gravel slithering down all around them. Finally Shira wiped her nose with one gritty hand and offered the boy some wine. He turned his head away.

  Despairing, she left the wine skin where he could reach it with his lips, then dragged herself backward out of the tunnel.

  Chulic had to half-push, half-drag her to the surface.

  A great shout of joy came from the throats of the gathered Ucnians as she emerged from the cave, carried by Gvubi and Uhric. But the joy turned to despair, and then to anger, as Uhric explained that the boy was still trapped.

  “Set me down here,” she whispered. “Leave me in the light.” She found herself leaning against a cold rock, surrounded by Gvubi and his men, as Uhric gave her wine and honey. The clouds to the west reddened as the Sun set, invisible.

  All around them surged angry Ucnian voices.

  “I failed,” she said, and dripping tears drew runnels through the caked mud on the backs of her hands. “Even with all the power of the Sun God Himself at my command, I failed.”

  “I have never understood why the Sorceresses of the Sun take such a masculine approach to solving problems,” Uhric replied.

  “I... I don’t understand.”

  “You are a woman. How can you not understand that the Earth Mother must be seduced, not raped?”

  “I am no ordinary woman. I am a Bride of the Sun. And your Earth Mother is just a local superstition.” But even to her own ears, her voice sounded weak and shaky.

  Uhric shook his head with a sad smile. “I know you Sun-Brides are taken from your parents and married to the God as soon as your powers emerge. This life of force and order—this very Novarran life—is all you have ever known. But we Ucnians, who live our lives in mud and dust, come to know and love the Earth Mother in a way you can never know the Sun.”

  “I love the Sun, my husband, with all my heart.”

  “I know you do. But does he love you? He is so distant.” He laid his hand on the rock at Shira’s back, and it warmed from his touch. “Our Mother the Earth is ever present, and every thing both living and unliving feels the pull of her love. Even the birds cannot leave Her forever.”

  Shira sat up, though it cost her dearly, and hardened her words. “How can you love a Mother who would kill her own child?” Then she fell back against the unyielding stone. Surrendering to the very force that Uhric called the love of the Earth. A force whose existence she could not deny.

  “Sometimes a mother shows her love in ways her children cannot understand,” said Uhric. “Perhaps she takes Luca from us because she loves him so.”

  Anger welled up in Shira at his words—anger mixed with fear, and compassion, and determination. “Sometimes a mother makes foolish decisions out of love.” She sat up again. “You said She must be seduced. How does one seduce a Goddess?”

  “With wine, and words of love, and gentle touch.” He offered her an oatcake.

  She took it, and nibbled thoughtfully. “What is the word for ‘love’ in Ucnian?”

  Shira stepped from her palanquin the next morning clad in simple woolens, carrying a wine skin she had filled from the amphora with her own hands. She kept silent as she walked toward the cave, waving Gvubi away as he approached with his men. Chulic stood up as she came near, but she did not give him any command; instead she walked to where he stood, looked him in the eye, and said “Will you come with me one more time?” Then she added “Wylyth”—please.

  The boy nodded.

  The two of them struggled down through the earth together, helping each other through rough patches and tight places. Shira tried to feel the pressure of the surrounding stone as a loving hug, instead of the stranglehold that every fiber of her being insisted it was. It was hard, and she wasn’t sure she had convinced herself, but she kept trying.

  Was she doing the right thing? Would the Ucnians interpret her embrace of some principles of Earth magic as abandonment of the Sun? Or, worse, would the Sun Himself interpret it so?

  No. The life of a Sun Sorceress was a life of service. She must save this boy. Her husband the Sun would understand. As for the Ucnians... she hoped, with Uhric’s help, that they would come to understand as well.

  Finally she reached Luca. The boy was asleep, or perhaps unconscious; his breathing was slow and shallow, and his skin was cold. She gave him a little of the Sun’s warmth, but he did not stir.

  Shira crawled back, opening a small space between her and the boy, and poured out a little wine into a hollow in the rock. Placing her hands on either side of it, she stroked the stone gently and whispered the words Uhric had taught her. It was a prayer, a love poem, a gentle request.

  As she spoke, she let the Sun’s light and warmth flow through her and into the ground. For though the stone here was cold as hell, other parts of the Earth rejoiced in the Sun’s touch—bringing forth crops, sparkling His light from mountaintops, and returning His warmth to people long after He had hidden His face from them.

  The Sun and the Earth together sustained humanity. How could she have failed to understand this?

  Shira heard a groan. She looked up, but even if Luca had groaned he was still unconscious and had not moved. Then, as she looked on Luca’s face, the groan came again and she knew it was not from him.

  It was the stone, the living stone around her, that was groaning.

  Shira’s throat constricted in fear, but she kept chanting, raising her voice a little to be heard above the sound. Slowly, gently, the tunnel opened wider, gravel running down the slope and away as the stone drew back. Luca mumbled and rolled over, and Shira realized the rock that had pinned his foot was drawing back as well. He was free!

  A great darkness opened up beyond the boy as the cavern widened still further. Luca began to slip away from Shira, sliding along with the gravel around him
. Shira put her hands under his shoulders and pulled. With the power of the Sun in her arms, and perhaps with the help of the Earth, he came away easily. Shira backed up the tunnel, trying to hold the boy’s head away from the rough rock as she dragged him to safety.

  The groaning continued, and the darkness spread still wider. Shira felt Luca being pulled away from her—pulled by the Earth’s love. “Huc,” she said, meaning no, but she said it gently, like a mother taking a beloved toy away from a child when it was time for the child to nap. She dragged the boy away from the widening hole and onto the slope where Chulic waited. Chulic’s face lit up with wonder and astonishment when he saw that Luca was with her.

  For a moment Shira was afraid the tunnel would continue to expand and engulf them all, but the groaning stopped when the entrance was only a few handspans wider than it had been before. She blew out a breath of relief and sat down, exhausted.

  Then, deep in the hole, Shira saw the sparkle of stars. Amazed, she brightened her light and peered inside.

  The cave beyond was a huge cavern, larger than any man-made room. It glittered with crystals, white and purple and amber, like a field of flowers all made of ice. They reflected Shira’s light back at her a thousandfold, a sight more beautiful than any she had ever seen.

  She bowed her head and said a prayer of thanks to the Earth Mother.

  Then she rested for a time in the belly of the Earth, gathering her strength for the long climb to the surface—to Luca’s people, to her Empire, and to her husband the Sun.

  As the three of the emerged from the cave, a joyous cry came from the gathered crowd. They surged toward Luca and Shira. Gvubi and his men immediately blocked their path.

  “No,” she told him. “Let them come.”

  The crowd embraced Luca, bearing him away to food and warmth and family. Shira, they circled warily. Bone-weary, she could only smile at them until Uhric managed to push his way to the fore, his face shining with relief and delight.

  “Congratulations, Most Holy Sorceress,” he said. “On behalf of my people, I extend my thanks to you for saving the boy.”

  She took Uhric’s offered hand. “It was not I...” she replied, the beginning of a ritual formula. But then she stopped, and amended the formula somewhat. “It was the Sun, and it was the Earth.”

  When Uhric translated her words, the crowd moved in, to touch and stroke her arms and squeeze her shoulders. Though their hands were rough and filthy, Shira took it as the gesture of respect it was clearly meant to be.

  The next five years might be uncomfortable, but they would not be unbearable.

  Shira closed her eyes and tipped back her head to feel the Sun upon her face. He warmed them all, Ucnian and Novarran alike.

  © Copyright 2008 David D. Levine