by J L Forrest
E’cwn burial ground and House of Hell
(Now lost)
{06}
Where am I? Nyahri thought. Waiting for Suhto? Nay, Suhto—
She woke on soft bedding, on her back, her own blanket warming her, tucked beneath her chin. Broad-leafed oaks spread sheltering foliage over her, dappling the sky. Somewhere nearby a campfire crackled, and its smoke sweetened the air. Nyahri tried turning her head, but a pain stabbed her skull and, hissing through her teeth, she lay still again. Her thoughts flowed like syrup, the drying sap of her confused memories: her father’s judgment, injured Uhlo, and vanished Suhto, then the horses’ screams, the hellfire, the devilry.
Footsteps approached and the Atreiani knelt beside her. Nyahri met the devil’s gaze, black eyes, evoking her every inborn reverence and her every childhood nightmare.
A dweller of the House of Hell.
“Stay still,” the devil said, her voice feminine but deep, “stay silent.”
At the devil’s touch, Nyahri repressed a scream, not because it hurt but because Nyahri thought it should, like the lick of fire or the bite of a rattlesnake. Yet that touch conveyed warmth, a surety like any healer’s, and a tingle slithered along Nyahri’s spine.
The devil examined Nyahri’s wounds with neither malice nor any marked concern, tapping Nyahri’s head left and right. She moved Nyahri’s shoulder and arm. She prodded tender ribs.
The devil’s long hair brushed Nyahri’s cheek, hanging in her eyes. Its strands distinct only at their ends, locks dark as void, they reflected no sunlight.
Like the feathers of night-falcons, Nyahri thought, mayhap even darker.
The Atreiani’s complexion softened whatever light fell upon it, its translucence like milky quartz. A cloth suit fit her like a second skin, covering her from her neck to her wrists and ankles.
Her palm rested against Nyahri’s forehead. “No fever.”
“Horses?” Nyahri said, speech bringing pain.
“I said stay silent.” For a moment, the devil’s eyes narrowed. “Your big russet is fine. The other broke two legs and I finished it.”
The Atreiani sat cross-legged. She swept Nyahri’s hair from behind her head, reaching beneath Nyahri’s neck, testing vertebrae, no expression other than a casual focus. When she seemed satisfied, the devil fetched a dark metallic cup from beside the fire. She tipped it to Nyahri’s lips, a bitter fluid pouring from it. Nyahri swallowed, warmth infused her, and her discomfort lessened. She calmed and her head cleared.
“You mustn’t move awhile,” the Atreiani said. “There’s inflammation, and you’ve a concussion.”
“You come from Abswyn?”
“Abswyn? You mean Absolution? The Citadel?”
Nyahri realized the Atreiani might use words other than those she knew, even names unfamiliar. “Yea.”
“No, I don’t come from Abswyn, as you call it. Abswyn was my jail cell, nothing more. What about you, girl, where’re you from?”
“The grasslands.”
“Any particular grasslands?”
“E’cwn lands, the plains of my fathers.”
The devil tested Nyahri’s pulse. “Strong.”
Once more, Nyahri cringed at the devil’s touch. The devil had stripped her of clothes and weapons, of every defense, leaving her naked beneath the blanket. Despite that, the drugs unraveled her anxiety, leaving behind only a supernatural uneasiness.
Nearby, at the banks of a murmuring brook, birds sang in the trees.
Nyahri turned her head enough to see her stallion, still wearing his saddle. She furrowed her brow. Following Nyahri’s gaze, the Atreiani looked back at the horse.
“I’ll not care for him,” the devil said. “Never handled animals much. I thought he might’ve run by now, but it seems he knows his owner.”
“His name is Kwlko.”
“He’ll do without care till you can tend him yourself.”
“Why save me?” Nyahri asked.
“You saved me, didn’t you?”
“Why have you come?”
The devil gave a noncommittal shrug. She stood, turned away, and tended other things. Nyahri glanced around timorously, guessing the danger of her injuries, though now her neck and skull pained her less.
Nearby, her shortbow hung on a branch, her arrows and spear beside it, piled with the longknife and serape and necklace. Bloodstains darkened the right leg of her breeches. In reflex she moved her aching legs, relieved she could move them at all.
She studied the terrain—a depression nestled between a cluster of low hills, ash trees, and aspens. The brook, Nyahri figured, flowed from the larger Bhar. The Atreiani’s bag lay emptied, its wondrous contents strewn across the grass, bundles marked with fay symbols like those of the Abswyn door. Utensils of glassy metal sat in a row, some in recognizable shapes, some not. Among these a few tiny lights glowed, red or blue or green ghost-fires. Several dozen sharp black pins rested in dark cloth, tied together, separated from the other gear, along with cylindrical stacks of silver-gray discs.
Devil things, Nyahri thought, sensing danger in them.
The Atreiani lingered over two items. A golden-hued strip of fabric, two fingers wide and four handspans long, glittered like gemstones. The devil caressed it as if recalling a precious memory, then folded the strip into a pocket of her suit. The second item, a rod of dark metallic glass, measured longer than the Atreiani’s forearm. She clipped it to her belt, and it weighed against her leg. Then she inventoried the rest of the gear, repacked it, and set the full bag near the stallion.
“How far to the road?” Nyahri asked.
“Enough to keep us hidden. You carry a bow, a spear, a knife. Are they for food or protection?”
“Both.”
The Atreiani caught Nyahri’s gaze, and Nyahri’s pounding heartbeat quickened. Shade and light played in the devil’s muted, black irises.
In the legends the Atreianii gave glorious gifts but exercised horrific power. That the devils killed, no one disputed; that human life availed them little, no one doubted.
Does she let me keep my life out of goodness, Nyahri wondered, or for another reason?
The Atreianii gazed into the forest. “Is there something you fear in this region? Something besides devils like me?”
“This is the Oudwn border. We and the Oudwnii are not so friendly with each other.”
The devil sat again beside Nyhari, rolling back the blankets, prodding Nyahri’s ribs and legs. The plainswoman studied her caretaker’s skin, its surface like softened, living opal.
Not a wound of any kind on it, Nyahri marveled, only the faintest scratches. Yet we suffered the same blast!
“You called Abswyn a House of Hell,” the Atreiani said. “That’s what you believe it was?”
“Is it not a house of devils?”
“Was not is—Abswyn is gone.”
Gone? Nyahri gasped.
“It was just a Citadel,” the devil said, “one among many houses for devils.”
“Atreianii are devils,” Nyahri said, “You are a devil.”
“Your stories tell you this?”
“For many ages the true gods and goddesses abandoned the world, giving their thrones to you. You ruled men. You set the moons in the sky and remade all life to your liking. And you were cruel.”
“Clinical, I’d say, for most. Some cruel.” She rested back on her heels. “I don’t recall any gods or goddesses. What else do you believe, hmm?”
“When you came, you found free men and women, and you enslaved them.”
“That we did. Do I seem cruel to you?”
“I—” Nyahri held her lip in her teeth. “My mother worshipped your kind. Her mother too. They thought you something more than cruel, and I learned the rituals when I was young. My mother believed there could be a truce between devils and men, that there had been such truces before.”
“You evaded my question.” The Atreiani unwrapped venison from Nyahri’s bags and added sticks to the fire. �
��Eat,” she said, giving Nyahri the food. “You’ve a name?”
“Nyahri.”
“Where is it you think I come from, Nyahri?”
“Hell.”
The devil let slip a smile, either in annoyance or amusement. “When I was a child, I came from this very region, a short way north. For most of my life I traveled the world, even going beyond it, far from here.” She looked around her at the land. “Why and how am I here? In Abswyn the alarm sounded and I woke before the others—the how is simple. The why might be harder.” The Atreiani stared into the fire, appearing then passing lonely, until she blinked and shook her head.
“Will the others awaken from Abswyn?” Nyahri asked, guessing the answer.
The Atreiani started. “Other Atreianii? As I said, Abswyn is destroyed, along with everyone in it.”
“All the other devils are dead?”
“Everyone who was in stasis, everyone sleeping in Abswyn, yes.”
“And Suhto?”
“The man who entered the Citadel? The one you thought to save? I told you, he died before the explosion.”
“Did you kill him?”
“I didn’t.”
Nyahri’s gut doubted.
“Consider,” the Atreiani said, “why kill him and heal you? Think on that. How’re you feeling?”
Unsatisfied by the answer, Nyahri stared a moment. “Less pain. Perhaps I could ride.”
“Good, but not quite yet.”
“I feel well enough.”
“You feel drugged. I thought I’d find your brains on the ground, so much of your blood was on it. Rest, and we’ll have more questions later. I’m lucky you lived—I need to know things, what kind of time I’m in, the state of the world.”
The devil poured tea from a small vessel into a clean cup, sipping, cradling the drink in her long-fingered hands. Nyahri smelled the infusion: her own, taken from her saddlebags. She stared at the devil, hoping to bait conversation, but the Atreiani focused through the golden aspens, her cup raised every so often to her lips.
“What is your name?” Nyahri finally asked.
“Sleep, girl.”
“Please?”
“Sultah yw Sabi et—” the devil said, stopping on some uncomfortable word. “My name is Sultah yw Sabi.”
Nyahri lowered her gaze. “I know your name.”
“Unsurprising, I suppose. There must still be some records of me in your world, even if only tales. Interesting.” Sultah yw Sabi licked her teeth, a peculiar gesture, rounding canines which at a glance seemed too many and too large. “Now, we won’t speak again until you rest, Nyahri, so go back to sleep.”
The Atreiani walked the camp perimeter, checking vantages. Nyahri sighed, a girlish expression she once used to annoy her parents into speaking, but the devil gave her no notice. At last, with the leaf-filtered sunlight on her face, the E’cwni closed her eyes, the drug-warmth soon overwhelming her.
◆◆◆
When Nyahri stirred again, night reigned and the White River glittered across the sky. The campfire danced in a soft breeze. Nyahri ventured to turn her head, and a dull ache lumbered from her skull to her toes. Behind her neck and at her side, her skin itched.
The Atreiani sat against a nearby log, hands in her lap, staring into the fire. Save for some hollowness in her cheeks, she appeared stronger even than she had that afternoon.
Was it this afternoon? Nyahri wondered. How long have I slept?
Sultah yw Sabi looked at her and Nyahri froze.
Gods, she is as a viper, the moment before it strikes.
Then the devil blinked, breaking the impression. “How do you feel?” she asked.
“Better,” Nyahri said.
“Hungry, thirsty?” Yw Sabi retrieved meat and flatbread, as well as unfamiliar round wafers. Nyahri flinched from these.
“What’s the matter?”
“Tainted food,” Nyahri said, glancing at the wafers.
“Tainted?” Yw Sabi turned one in her fingers, sniffing it. “It’s perfectly preserved.”
“It is devil’s food.”
Yw Sabi rolled her eyes. “Eat it.”
Nyahri took it reluctantly.
The Atreiani scoffed. “Eat! Before I lose my temper.” She leaned forward. “First, girl, I’m not a devil and you’ll stop referring to me or anything about me that way. Second, when I was young, devil’s food was a good thing. Spongy chocolate. Delicious. This is neither devil’s food nor spongy chocolate, but it’ll give you some strength.”
Devils can deceive with such talk, Nyahri thought, trying to convince others they are not devils.
She nibbled the flavorless ration, knowing nothing of spongy chocolate. The venison and flatbread sang better on her tongue.
“Try to sit up,” yw Sabi said.
Nyahri did. A throbbing flared behind her eyes.
The Atreiani brought water, offering it in a translucent bowl which felt like the smoothest iron, looked like lightning glass, and weighed as much as a child’s laughter.
“Water’s from the stream,” the devil said, “but I ran it through a filter.”
Filter, a word which did not quite translate, which sounded to Nyahri something like withholding. She wrinkled her nose, scenting the water before sipping.
“I kept you under while working on you,” yw Sabi said, though Nyahri didn’t understand this either. “You might feel groggy. Let’s continue our questions and answers, hmm?”
“Yea, Atreiani, I do feel stronger. I am much more myself tonight.”
“Quaint way of putting it. You ever encounter another like me?”
“An Atreiani? Nay.”
“Heard of one near or far?”
“In dreams and visions.”
“Never in the flesh, never walking the world?”
Evening birds flittered on the tree limbs, their chatter an angry din of diminutive feathered creatures fighting for food and mates and territory. An old, old dance. Then the birds scattered to other boughs.
Nyahri shook her head at the Atreiani’s question.
Yw Sabi continued, “You’ve family, a people. Tell me of them.”
Nyahri hesitated. “Yea, Atreiani.”
“You know their number?”
“To the person, one hundred eighty-seven.” Nyahri glanced away. “Nay, one hundred eighty-six.”
“A tribe,” yw Sabi said. “Large compared to others?”
“There are larger. Thousands of E’cwnii live on the southern plains, in many tribes, all part of the Great Tribe. Thousands more of our Inwn cousins live in the north.”
“Thousands live?” Yw Sabi caught a falling leaf, turned it, and studied its pinnate ridges. A momentary smile touched her lips. “Amazing anything survived at all. All this life, as beautiful as I remember. You too, Nyahri, are wondrously beautiful. I thought none of you would still exist when I finally woke.”
Wondrously beautiful? Nyahri thought. She speaks like I am a sunset or a good horse.
“None of us?”
“Humans,” said the Atreiani.
Nyahri finished the water. Nearby, Kwlko snorted, shaking his mane.
His saddle yet on him! The plainswoman startled. Far too long now.
She looked back to the Atreiani, who brought Nyahri’s clothes from where they hung on a willow branch.
“I washed these,” yw Sabi said. “They’re stained, but clean. Tend the horse.”
Nyahri climbed from the blankets, stretched, and examined her naked legs.
“Atreiani, how long have we been here?”
“This is our third night.”
I slept days, and how I have healed! Nyahri made a sign against evil. Atreian witchery.
Deep cuts had opened Nyahri’s leg, that much remained clear, but now only faded reddish scars crossed her skin. Hard as chitin, a film clung to the injuries on her side and neck, these too almost mended. As Nyahri examined herself, the Atreiani’s gaze lingered on her.
The way Suhto looks at me, Nya
hri thought. The way he used to look at me. The way the other men sometimes look at me.
Nyahri slipped her serape over her shoulders and placed her sandals on her feet. She walked, with only the slightest limp, to Kwlko. The horse nuzzled her and kicked, a spry and impatient shake. Nyahri loosened his girth before pulling the saddle and blanket free. Mats tangled his hair. She prodded him, checking ribs, face, legs, and hooves.
A few nicks. No real harm.
She set a brush to his hide, stroke after stroke. The stallion raised his head joyfully while Nyahri peered over his back. At the other side of the camp, the devil washed the cups, packed them, then walked to the camp edge, folding her arms and stargazing.
I could jump to Kwlko’s back this instant, Nyahri considered, and flee the devil, leave her behind.
Little would stop her.
But why? Have I not worshipped the Atreian spirits? Here stands an Atreiani, an ancient myth in skin and bone! Have I not denied my people, turned aside motherhood and tent wivery to outdo my mother, to outdo every Ahtras who ever lived? Ay! Would I learn whether this devil is worthy of worship? Whether she is a goddess or a horror? Whether she is a friend or enemy? Whether her heart beats?
An obvious answer.
Nyahri sighed and, after she completed her work, she returned to sit by the fire.
{07}
Nyahri propped her feet against the stones of the fire pit, rubbing her hands together. The moment for fleeing came and went, and it would not come again.
“Do you know of other Citadels?” yw Sabi asked, still standing at the camp edge.
“Yea.”
The Atreiani gained her bearings, pointing northwest, deep into the forested mountains. “That way there would be one. You know it?”
“I have never been to it. Too far into Oudwn lands.”
“What do you call it?”
“Swyn Templr.”
“Swyn? Its proper name was Sojourn Temple. Do you know of the Templarii?”
Nyahri nodded. “The keepers of records. They live among the Oudwnii. We call them flesh walkers.” She curled her lip, recalling stories. “Thank the gods for it, it is said there are not many of them.”
“There wouldn’t be. Flesh walkers? Something to that.”
