by Rain Oxford
“No. The one who brought you here is our enemy. He is called the Painter.”
“That doesn’t sound particularly threatening.”
“He had enough power to bring the two of you to this world.”
“Why did he bring us here?”
“He likes to manipulate mortals into doing his bidding.”
“Well, thanks for the warning. We’ll be sure not to do his bidding. Please send us home now.”
“Nathan, use your respectful voice,” Luca warned. “Goddesses don’t like to be disrespected.”
“I meant no offense, I just want to get home alive,” I said.
“I understand, Nathanial, but I cannot send you back at this time.”
I didn’t speak. I heard the ultimatum in her voice.
“The Painter has stolen something from my temple. It puts every god and our world itself at risk. If he sent you here, it can only be because he has detected your power, as we have.”
“We?”
“The gods, dude,” Luca said, like it was obvious.
“You can defeat the Painter,” Isis continued.
“How?”
“The object that was stolen was a book of names.”
“That sounds completely useless.”
“Shut up, bro,” Luca warned. “Names are power in Egyptian magic. If you have someone’s true name, you can control them.”
“That is correct,” Isis confirmed. “The book contains the true names of every priest on Syndrial as well as the names of the gods.”
“That explains why the priests can’t do your bidding. Did you create that book?” I asked.
She smiled kindly. “You are more intelligent than I had hoped. Yes. I am the one who wrote the names in a book and chose a guardian to protect it. The Painter stole it. Since your name is not written in the book, he cannot use it against you.”
“But I don’t know anything about magic.”
“The priests can teach you. Hopefully, you will learn in time to stop the Painter from destroying us all.”
“Then you’ll send us home?”
“Yes.”
“The priests want to kill my brother and me.”
“They will be warned not to harm you.”
“Or my brother.”
“If that is your wish.”
“He stays with me.”
She studied him for a moment before addressing me again. “If that is your wish.” She turned to the priests who were still pressed to the ground. “Nathanial is a steward of the gods now. You are to assist him in his training and carry out his commands to the best of your abilities.”
The priests didn’t move or acknowledge her command. With another blinding flash of light, she was gone. “Steward of the gods?” I asked.
“I think it means that you’re acting on their behalf.”
As he explained, the priest got to their feet and removed their masks. None of them would look me in the eyes.
“It means that you are on a mission from them and to disobey you is to displease them,” one of the priests said. He had braided blond hair and dark green eyes. He was in his early thirties and about my height.
“I can understand you now!” Luca said excitedly.
The priest risked a glance at him before his eyes landed on my chest again. “How would you like to start your mission?”
“What’s your name?”
“I am the Reader. These are some of my brethren; Whisperer, Caretaker, Listener, and Healer.”
“Those aren’t names; those are titles.”
“Yes, Nathanial. Every priest has taken the trials and lost their names.”
“Call me Nathan and walk me through that as if I’m an alien who has never been to this world before.”
“When a commoner child is found to have magic, we take them into the temple and train them. They are the apprentices.”
“They’re the ones in red robes?”
“Yes. When they are ready, they take the trials. Their souls and powers are tested by the gods. If they’re worthy, they are chosen by one of the gods. Their name is taken and they are given a special ability, which becomes their title. I am the Reader. I can read anything that is written, of any language.” He gestured to the man on his right with dark red hair and violet eyes. “Whisperer can whisper thoughts and commands into a person’s head while they sleep. Caretaker can make any child obedient. Listener can hear people’s minds, but cannot speak or write. Healer can heal any wound for as long as the soul remains in the body, but he cannot revive the dead.”
“And the Painter?”
“Anything he paints becomes real. We’re not sure if there are limitations to his powers.”
“He can paint a black hole in space and it’ll swallow the planet?” I asked.
Caretaker paled slightly. “Yes.”
Luca’s stomach rumbled. “Is it too late for dinner?” I asked.
“You can eat whenever you wish.”
Reader and Whisperer took us to the dining hall. The apprentices were clearly nervous, but they weren’t running in fear since we were accompanied by priests. The dining hall was mostly empty. There were a dozen boys in their late teens eating. Even here, the walls and ceilings were decorated with art. The room consisted of three ten-foot-long, polished concrete tables and chairs made of metal. It was not a place to relax. It was also clear that despite the small forest around the temple, wood was a rarity.
On the south wall was a metal door, while the north wall had an open doorway into what I assumed was the kitchen, judging by the massive wood-burning stove. I suspected the stove didn’t burn wood but some kind of reeds.
“I thought we were supposed to be able to read Syndrial’s written language as well,” I said, gesturing to the walls.
“You can understand and read the common tongue– the language we are speaking now. The sacred language is used in magic. It is forbidden for anyone but a priest to read or write it. Apprentices learn to speak it for their castings, but they aren’t allowed to write it.”
“Castings? Like arts and crafts?”
“Casters are people who do magic. When they do magic, they are casting it.”
“Oh. Wizards and spells. Got it. Native or not, we’re going to have some language berries.”
“Nathan, don’t confuse them,” Luca said.
I sighed. “Language barriers. That was hilarious in English.”
“It really wasn’t,” Luca said regretfully. “Do the kids learn anything besides magic?”
“Of course. We are civilized people. Apprentices learn mathematics, science, and history, just like the commoner children do.”
“What would you like to eat?” Reader asked.
“Is there a choice?”
“For you, of course. Gods and their stewards are given anything they want.”
“I thought Egyptians mostly lived on barley beer.”
Luca rolled his eyes. “This isn’t ancient Egypt. This is an alien world.”
“We want what everyone else ate, unless it’s alive,” I said.
“We eat meat, but only after the animal is dead,” Reader assured me.
“That’ll work then. For Luca, too.”
He gave me a slight bow and walked away. Whisperer continued standing over me. “Give me two days with them and I’ll lighten them up,” Luca vowed.
“Until we figure out what to do, don’t exacerbate the situation.”
“What? You don’t think they like being your bitches? I’ll tell you, though, I don’t want this one sneaking into my bed at night,” he said, pointing to Whisperer rudely. Whisperer ignored him. “Speaking of which, where are all the women?”
“You’re the Egyptologist.”
“Egypt has chicks. There were women outside, but I haven’t seen a single one in the temple except for Isis.”
“Maybe women go to a different temple. How is it that this other world has a pyramid and Egyptian gods?”
“Osiris and Isis spread the
culture and knowledge of our world to others thousands of years ago,” Whisperer said. Contrary to his name, his voice was loud enough to be heard over the commotion of apprentices.
“Are you saying that aliens gave us Egypt?”
“Damn it,” I said, pulling out a five and handing it to Luca.
“I was joking about the history channel being right,” he said incredulously. He took the five anyway and slipped it into his pocket. “Hang on… that makes you an alien.”
I pulled out another five. “I need coffee. That’s more unbelievable than magic and gods.”
“That’s because you watch too much Supernatural and not enough Doctor Who. I’m totally cool with aliens. Besides, this is more Alistair Crowley than Star Trek.”
I nodded, seeing his point and finding a degree of comfort in it. Magic was easier to conceive than space ships.
“And we have to get a car so that we can get a bumper sticker that says ‘Alien on board.’ I wonder if you have two hearts.”
I groaned.
“If you don’t mind my asking, how are you two brothers if you were born on Syndrial and Luca was not? Am I misinterpreting the word?”
“We were both adopted by the same couple,” I explained.
Whisperer frowned. “What do you mean?”
“What are you stuck on?”
“I don’t know what you mean by adopted,” he reiterated.
Luca frowned when I looked at him, so I explained. “I was found in the woods, in January, with nothing but a thin blanket. The doctors figured I was a couple of days old. When I recovered from dehydration and hypothermia, I was fostered and adopted by my parents, Julia and Marco Jones.”
“But they were not your birth parents?”
“Of course not. My birth parents abandoned me.”
“Then why did the other people take care of you?” He was clearly not getting it.
“Because they couldn’t have children of their own and they wanted one. They needed a child, I needed parents. You really don’t understand how that works?”
“If people want children, they ask the gods for them. If they are not given children, it’s because the gods don’t want them to have children.”
“What about people who accidentally get pregnant?” Luca asked.
“There are no accidental pregnancies. People have children because the gods decree it; it is not their place to argue.”
“That’s weird,” Luca said.
We both took a few minutes to try to digest that. On the one hand, it was great that babies weren’t abandoned, but the lack of free will sucked.
At that point, Reader returned with two ceramic plates of meat, bread, sliced potatoes, and broccoli. “They have broccoli on other worlds?” Luca asked. “Those poor apprentices.”
“I’d rather have broccoli than something I can’t identify. Speaking of which… what kind of meat is this?” It had a lean beefsteak texture.
“Croka.”
“Please remind me not to ask for any more details about food.”
“As you wish. Is this unsuitable for you?”
“It’s good. Better than I was expecting even.”
“Can we get something to drink, though?” Luca asked. Reader left again and returned with two ceramic mugs of water. It looked clean. “Are you sure it’s safe for people from other worlds?”
“It has been filtered and boiled.”
Luca and I ate quickly, trying not to let the priests intimidate us. “You’re not going to follow us everywhere and stand there every day, are you?”
“You’re not dressed. If we left you alone, someone might mistake you for commoners.”
“In what way are we not dressed?”
“You’re not wearing robes.”
“I knew I should have worn my bathrobe to class,” Luca said.
Luca actually had worn his bathrobe to his first class in his first semester because the class was at eight in the morning. Fortunately, he wore clothes under it… of course, that was only because I told him to.
After we finished eating, we were given a quick tour of the place. It turned out that the temple wrapped around the pyramid. Considering how few priests and apprentices there were, that was a lot of space. On the main floor were numerous ceremonial rooms, practice rooms, and classrooms, along with the dining hall. Apprentices were only allowed in two hallways, and when we got to the end of the second hallway, there was a wall of metal bars like in a prison cell. Had Luca taken the left door instead of the right one when we made a run for it, we would have ended up in one of the forbidden halls.
“What’s in there?” I asked.
“Quieter chambers for priests to practice our magic, where the apprentices cannot spy or be hurt. There is also a restricted study.”
“Oh, so your porn collection is shared. That’s interesting,” Luca said.
“I don’t know what porn is,” Whisperer said.
Luca smirked. “I made a priest say porn.”
There was also an underground level, which was the other door out of the dining hall. It opened to a set of stone steps. The underground level was creepy in the way that I felt like I was in some mummy-infested tomb. The walls, lined with torches and doors, were made of sand-colored bricks and the ground was dirt.
Luca was shaking with glee, ready to start digging up artifacts and uncovering the treasures of long-dead kings.
Whisperer pointed to a doorway. “That is the common chamber, where the apprentices sleep.” There was nothing in it except for row after row of cheap cots. Even the walls were devoid of décor. Three older boys were huddled together, trying to comfort a crying five-year-old. Two more teens were on the other side of the room, covering their heads with the flimsiest pillows I had ever seen. They couldn’t sleep with a crying kid in the room and they had nowhere else to go.
“You have all this space and the apprentices sleep in the same room?” Luca asked, disgusted. There were few things Luca hated more than the mistreatment of children or defenseless animals.
“They don’t need privacy and they have no personal affects to store in private chambers.”
“They don’t even have a door!”
“They don’t need privacy. Privacy breeds mischief. Mischief is not allowed.”
“Welcome to Saint Dreamcrusher’s Academy of Magically-Inclined, Imagination-Repressed Kids. Did you bring a straw to suck the fun out of them or do you just bite them in their sleep and lap it up?”
Whisperer and Reader gawked at him as if he’d accused them of slaughtering puppies. He was just getting warmed up.
“I doubt any ancient civilization treated their children like royalty,” I said, trying to get him back on the topic of exploration. There was no humor left in him and that was worrisome.
“I don’t care what dead civilizations did. I care what these people are doing now.”
“We can add fixing Syndrial’s societal issues to our to-do list.”
When it became clear to Whisperer that Luca was going to shelve the subject for now, we continued the tour. That was until we were shown to the apprentice’s bathroom, which consisted of open showers, bench-style toilets, and no door, I had to hold Luca back. He insisted they couldn’t do that to children, and they especially couldn’t make five-year-old boys share the same facilities with those who were nearly adults. I said it was likely a cultural thing and we needed to find out what the apprentices thought about it before strangling the priests.
Then we saw how each priest had a private, extravagant bedroom and shared a secluded, luxurious bathroom and he went quiet, seething with anger. Luca believed that children needed privacy and creative breathing room to develop their personalities and ambitions. They needed to make choices, even if they were the wrong choices.
Whisperer, making a guess as to why Luca was pissed, said that the apprentices would get private rooms if they survived to become priests. Needless to say, it did not help. “We can put you in a private chamber, but as we were not exp
ecting you, it is not up to par.”
“As long as we aren’t putting a priest out, I’m fine with it,” I said dismissively, worried that Luca hadn’t said a word in ten minutes.
“I… am not quite sure of your meaning.”
“He means that if you don’t have a spare room, don’t make a priest stay in the common room for our account,” Luca explained bitterly. I was surprised he didn’t suggest that all of the priests sleep outside.
“No, we wouldn’t do that. Keeper is our High Priest and has the nicest chamber in the temple. The common chamber is not suitable for him, so he will stay in storage.”
I groaned and Luca laughed. “That is putting the priest out,” I said. “We’ll take the storage room. I have no interest in sleeping in the minimum security orphanarium, but I don’t mind cuddling up to some Drano and a mop for the night.”
Reader was clearly confused.
“Put the poor old man back in his room and let us drag a couple of mattresses into the storage room,” Luca said. “Or rather yet, the courtyard. We’re good with camping. Unless it’s going to rain.”
“It has not rained here in a thousand years.” Luca and I both stopped, making him frown with confusion. “What’s wrong?”
“I can’t answer that without something in my mouth to spew everywhere,” Luca said.
We were intercepted by Caretaker and Listener, who were still trying to prepare Keeper’s room for us. Reader explained that we’d rather stay in the storage room. It was apparently a very difficult concept for them.
“Gods and their stewards do not stay in storage rooms.”
“Luca and I have slept in our friend’s car before. Anything is fine,” I argued. I didn’t feel the need to mention that it was because our apartment complex had caught fire after I got pissed at a professor who had tried to flunk me when I refused her advances. It turned out that she lived on the floor below me.
“I think it’s a big deal to them,” Luca said to me. “It’s like when Grandma came to stay with us, Mom wouldn’t make her sleep on the couch. We gave up our room and that was that.”
That was when Keeper rounded the corner. “What’s the holdup here?” he asked.
“We’re trying to find a chamber suitable for Nathan and Luca and they don’t want to take yours from you.”
