by J L Forrest
“Not enough studying these last few days,” yw Sabi said, her voice calm. “We need some normalcy. Give me the planets in Englisce, and the moons and major Stations out to Jupiter.”
With some difficulty, Nyahri recited them, several dozen names in all. As she did, yw Sabi opened a wide book of maps, pressing its cover flat. She caressed a page and brushed dust from its corner.
“This map,” yw Sabi said, drawing Nyahri’s attention to the book, “shows North America as best as the Templarii have figured it. There’s an inland sea now which didn’t exist in my time. The coastlines changed radically from what was Baja to British Columbia. Ocean levels are higher, that is clear, but the land along the western coasts also fell drastically. Ash covered those ranges. Species and climates shifted with crustal displacement and other factors.”
“These are big changes?”
Yw Sabi laughed softly. “Vast. The world literally cracked, like a marble thrown against a brick wall. I didn’t fully understand till a few days ago, but there was a tectonic shift. North America may have slipped as much as two hundred kilometers west. Must’ve been one shitty ride.”
“The entire world moved?”
“Its surface, yes.”
“Gods.”
“The North American continental shelf buckled. A good portion of California gone, and three quadrillion tonnes of rock and magma folded like cardboard from the Gallatin Range to the Oregon coast. Part of the tectonic plate actually collapsed into the mantle.”
Nyahri nodded like she understood.
“During the initial expansion,” yw Sabi continued, “Yellowstone and most of Idaho, Oregon, and part of Wyoming dropped hundreds of meters.” She indicated the mountains, waters, and shorelines.
“How far is hundreds of meters?”
“A hundred meters is three thousand or so of your hands. Imagine standing atop a hillside, then being at the bottom the next second, only the hill went down with you.”
“Gods!” Nyahri repeated, passing horrified.
Yw Sabi pointed to the center of the map, obscuring a dot beneath her fingertip. “We’re here.”
“That is Cohltos?” Nyahri pointed too, beginning to grasp the enormity of her world.
“There’s Abswyn, less than a fingernail’s width away at this scale, though it took us twenty-three days to travel this. The Sojourn Templarii know the precise locations of several dozen Citadels around the world, but only a few are in the western half of this continent. One or two would’ve been destroyed with the Eventide cataclysm, but who knows the fate of the rest? This map indicates cultural and political boundaries, all relatively recent, along with peculiar locales described by travelers over the centuries. Two are of particular interest.”
“Which?”
Yw Sabi first indicated the massive inland sea which dominated the landmass in the northwest. “Can you read the words?”
“The Yellow Sea.”
“You ever seen it?”
“I have never been so far north, but other E’cwnii have. We call it the Amahriya.”
Yw Sabi’s finger traced a line to the sea’s east. “Before it even existed, there were Citadels here. From what I can tell of legends, trade records, and travelers’ accounts, there still are.”
She pointed even farther east, representing a distance difficult for Nyahri to comprehend, until yw Sabi stopped at another odd, oblong body of water, this one stretching north-south and connecting with an extensive system of lakes or seas. Off-center, at the water’s tip, extended a perfectly delineated square, wider across than the distance they had journeyed from Abswyn to the gates of Sojourn.
“I have no idea what this region is,” said the Atreiani, “and neither does anyone else, it seems. It is a black hole—or square—if you will.”
Nyahri shook her head. “I do not understand?”
“This is unholy land to several peoples east, and I get why. No reports of visitors to it in centuries. What little I can glean, before that, tells me whoever goes here—” She tapped the square. “—never comes out again. There is not one report, rumor, or description of what lies within this boundary.”
“You have no idea, mistress?”
“Something inhuman controls it, that’s clear enough.” She gave a quick shake of her head. “There were the machine intelligences called the Numenii—”
“Yea, we read of them, the day we arrived here. The banishing of the Numenii. Is that right?”
“Good, you remember. A Numeni would be powerful enough to dominate an area large as shown here, but—” Yw Sabi tapped her chin, considering. “—whatever is there is not a Numeni. It’s something else.”
“Something which worries you?”
Yw Sabi exhaled. “There was once a city within that boundary—Chicago—but not much was left of it, even five hundred years before my internment at Abswyn. We destroyed Chicago.”
The Atreiani tore the map from the book, folded it, and slipped it into her pocket. She drew another book toward her, wiped its cover, and opened it to a dog-eared page.
“It was a human,” she said, “who founded Cohltos and rebooted Sojourn’s Templarii. He was a philosopher, the son of an Exemplari who served his master faithfully in advance of the Eventide. The son’s name was Peter, and this is a copy of the histories he wrote. Listen—”
She read, translating when Nyahri misunderstood, slowing her pronunciation so Nyahri caught every word, and yw Sabi explained Greeks, Vikings, and Egyptians. After she read through once, Nyahri recited with her:
What were the Atreianii if not gods? Were the Greeks not driven by the goddess of philosophers to lay reason’s foundations? The Vikings, by their pantheon to pillage? The Egyptians, to reach for eternity? Our gods set us at a yoke of greatness. They kept us from cancer, pestilence, and hunger. They dispelled war when they dissolved the bickering nations and crushed the faiths. They slew poverty, salving the plague of human greed. The Atreianii were our shepherds; we, their sheep. They collared us so we might know our limits, caring for us better than for any beast. In return they demanded only our absolute servitude.
What now that they are gone?
We rebuild. We relearn. This was the charter of Sojourn Temple, where our Atreianii sleep. We await them, and they will know our dedication and reward our faithfulness. We must all serve the Atreianii; there is no escape, and best for those who serve amenably, for we oath-sworn who recognize our place at our mistresses’ and masters’ feet. Let other men and women profit or suffer at Atreian whim and under Atreian wisdom, so all can live in peace. We groomsmen and handmaidens will be lifted up. Yes! Our gods will return. Let us keep a full accounting for them.
“It’s interesting,” yw Sabi said, “Peter’s use of oath-sworn here, because strictly speaking he couldn’t have been—it was a term we reserved for the Exemplarii alone. By the time Peter wrote those words, all the Exemplarii were dead.”
“All?”
“They were put down by the Atreian Congress.”
“Why?”
“Conservation of resources, they decided. That’s what it came down to.”
Among the E’cwnii, if a man killed a tribesman to conserve his own food, shelter, or horses, that man faced exile or death. Nyahri glowered at the idea the Atreianii would slaughter their own helpmates.
“The Sojourn Templarii perform, to this day, the tasks Peter set for them,” yw Sabi said, “though he and the human survivors of the Eventide are long dead. Peter was last to go, in the one hundred fourteenth year after the cataclysm.”
Nyahri shook her head. “A man lived to one hundred fourteen years?”
“Longer. He’d been alive before the fall.”
“Truly?”
“It wasn’t unusual for humans, with a little help, to live past one-fifty.”
“We do not live so long now,” Nyahri said.
“Astounding how well human bodies do when you have nanites scrubbing their teeth, routing their arteries, reinforcing their immun
e systems.” Yw Sabi’s brows arched. “You realize the Exemplarii lived much longer?”
Nyahri shook her head. She scooted to the front of her chair and scanned the page one more time.
“At the time the Atreianii betrayed the Exemplarii,” said yw Sabi, “the oldest was more than four hundred years old. Ekaterina was in her nineties.”
“A few of the elders across our tribes, they live to ninety.”
The Atreiani laughed. “Kat’s ninety came with fewer wrinkles.”
Nyahri scratched her head, puzzled all the more for having learned so much. Yw Sabi closed all the books and shoved them aside.
“It’s the beginning of the end,” yw Sabi said, “for Sojourn and for Cohltos.”
A knock sounded at the library door.
“Enter,” said yw Sabi.
A Templari shuffled in, one of the same which had fled yw Sabi’s earlier impatience. “Dhaos Shwn Oudwn is arrived,” he said, “to escort you up to the orchards.”
“Excellent. Tell the young archer we’ll be out shortly.”
{28}
Yw Sabi and Nyahri sat in their saddles, squinting into the growing daylight as the Templarii opened the gates. A breeze blew through the passage and Nyahri shivered, cinching her cloak. She balanced her spear in front of her, and the Oudwn longbow rested behind the cantle. As she and the Atreiani rode forward, yw Sabi scowled.
“Damn it,” she said.
The crowds had grown. Hundreds upon hundreds huddled beyond the barriers. Many who stood exhausted now shouted at their first glimpse of the Atreiani in the daylight. The streets had become a makeshift camp, complete with cooking fires and tents. The heart of Cohltos now stank of sweat, rotten food, and shit.
Dhaos waited beside the massive doors, a half dozen of his men with him.
“Dhaos,” yw Sabi said, and she waved her arm toward the crowds, as if in question.
“Goddess,” he said, nodding. “Word of you has spread far and wide—people have been streaming from the valleys. They fill every inn in Cohltos, jam our avenues, and are too much a challenge for our sewers, I am afraid.”
The Atreiani looked at Nyahri, who nodded her understanding.
Our task worsens, the E’cwni thought.
“Ready for our outing?” yw Sabi asked Dhaos.
“When I made the invitation, I thought to enjoy Nyahri’s company all to myself. Alas, all together are happier, as they say.”
Nyahri smiled at him. He raised his eyebrows, grinned, and winked.
She rolled her eyes. Yea, why must you be so likable?
The Atreiani directed Turo toward the wider streets, and he jumped forward, chomping his bit. Nyahri followed, keeping one eye on the mob, while Dhaos paced her afoot. His men surrounded them.
As yw Sabi’s hair fluttered from beneath her hood, the crowd gasped or murmured or cheered. No one could mistake its witchery in the light, and the calls for her attention redoubled. The Oudwn poor, townspeople and farmers alongside foreign grangers, all gathered for the Atreiani. The crowd pressed, threatening to break the fences.
The people called out, “Atreiani!”
Under the brightening sunlight, Nyahri perceived how much sickness spread through the makeshift camps, at least as much as at Aukensis. Blotched faces and bloodied noses appeared among the onlookers, phlegm on the lips of men with pneumonia, children with blood on their shirts. An Oudwn man at the front coughed, on his feet only to catch a glimpse of the goddess whose presence, he thought, promised him a cure.
They all ought to be in bed, Nyahri thought, saving their strength. She wondered how many had beds, and how many beds had fleas.
As yw Sabi veered toward an outbound road, supplicants surrounded her, and Nyahri bolted ahead, driving the crowd back. Though her focus remained upon the press of men and women, her peripheral vision caught a flutter of unreal gray.
A black-lipped, pale-skinned crone stood beside a covered well, beyond the supplicants, thirty paces distant. She remained still, a locus around whom the crowd flowed like water around a stone, and she watched yw Sabi, her eyes deep-set beneath her brows, her jowls in a frown. A dusty, charcoal-gray cloak wrapped her, brocaded with velvet symbols too indistinct to read.
Nyahri drew yw Sabi’s attention to the hag. The Atreiani turned Turo’s head and pushed through the crowd. Yet, in the panic yw Sabi created, she and Nyahri lost sight of the old woman. By the time they reached the well, no hint of the crone remained.
Yw Sabi heeled Kwlko several steps down one alley, then back, craning in each direction. “Can you spot her?”
“Nay, mistress.” Nyahri searched, as well.
Dhaos and his men caught up, taking surrounding positions, pushing back the crowds once more. He whistled, signaling the archers to reroute.
“Goddess,” he said, “if you would please not do that. Hard for my men to do their job if you race ahead of us like that—”
“Did you see her?” yw Sabi asked him.
“Who?”
Yw Sabi described the crone. The archers made a cursory search.
“Nothing,” Dhaos said.
The Atreiani growled. “Never mind.”
“What was that?” Nyahri asked her.
Yw Sabi’s jaw clenched. “I don’t know.” Though the company again moved outward along the city streets, yw Sabi remained distracted, hunting for any sign of what they’d glimpsed. “She was not Oudwn, that’s for certain, and her countenance remind me of—” Yw Sabi’s voice trailed off, as if she second-guessed herself.
“Of what?”
“Something Ekaterina once told me.”
A specter of the ancient world, Nyahri thought, but faced with the crush of the mob, she could give it no further thought. She and yw Sabi would, no doubt, speak of it later.
The company pushed through the streets, and Dhaos’s lieutenant met them at a junction. Before they covered another hundred steps, the whole of Dhaos’s unit had joined them, two dozen men, and they broke free onto a frosty rural road. At the city gates, a detachment of archers turned back the trailing masses.
Dhaos gave Nyahri a proud puppy-dog smile, but she looked away. He gazed after her, for a moment, before catching the attention of the Atreiani.
“You look unhappy,” yw Sabi said to him.
“Never,” he said, allowing his frown to open into a yawn.
Five hundred paces from the city, they rested beside a cornfield, the stalks tall and the corn late for harvest. The archers still formed a casual perimeter, but the crowds had obeyed the commands to remain at the gates. No one followed.
“No need for a full company out in the hills,” yw Sabi said to Dhaos. “Why don’t we ride farther, and your men can meet us on our return?”
“We? Our? You mean you and Nyahri, or are you inviting me with you?”
“You promised to show us the best view of Cohltos, isn’t that right?”
Dhaos’s lieutenant whispered in his commander’s ear. In reply, Dhaos shook his head.
“They shouldn’t be so afraid for you,” the Atreiani said, smiling broadly, her teeth white in the sunlight. “I promise I won’t bite.”
“Afraid?” Dhaos smiled. “He was only saying he thought two fine ladies ought to have a better escort than I.”
She smirked. “No, he wasn’t.”
Dhaos grinned, and he ordered his men back to the city. He slung his bow and stood beside Nyahri’s knee. She looked down at him from her saddle.
“Shall I run to keep up with you?” he asked.
Yw Sabi nodded toward the stallion. “Why don’t you ride with Nyahri, boy? You seem inclined.”
“Mistress?” Nyahri glanced back the Atreiani, an edge of panic in her voice.
What is she doing? Nyahri thought. Gods!
The Atreiani half smiled. “You can make him go on foot, Nyahri. It makes no difference to me.”
Nyahri slid forward against the pommel, and Dhaos climbed behind her, pressing to the cantle, his knees against her thighs.
He leaned back, his hands at the saddle’s edge, near the unstrung longbow. Dhaos dragged his fingers across a length of it.
“Glad you kept this,” he said. “A wonder your mistress did not toss it into the campfire.”
Kwlko sidestepped under the archer’s added weight, and that alone almost threw him. He recovered with a laugh. Nyahri warmed, excited and unsettled with the Oudwni so close. She rubbed the stallion’s neck and clicked her tongue to calm him, then pulled her hair aside beneath her coronal, glancing over her shoulder.
“Try anything,” she said to Dhaos, “and I will throw you from his back—”
“I will behave!” he said, still laughing.
“—and turn back to trample you.”
“No doubt you will,” he said gravely, though his bright smile remained.
No doubt I will not, she thought, and you know it.
They rode north from Cohltos, following paths between potato and squash fields. The farms yielded to wild grasses and thickets, climbing distant ranges into tougher terrain. Boulders squeezed the trail, Nyahri coaxed the horses between them onto a higher plateau, a mesa covered by overgrown plum and apple trees, an old grove long abandoned. Lush ferns defied the autumn breezes.
As they rode, the day grew hot, and Nyahri stripped off her heavier clothes. She wore her serape bare-shouldered, her skin exposed to the sunlight.
On the mesa top, the three of them dismounted and set the horses loose to graze. Yw Sabi sat on a soft patch of grass, Nyahri kept close to her, and Dhaos rested with his back against a fallen log. Gusts sometimes shook the tree limbs, but the sun remained warm and alluring.
Again and again, Nyahri found her gaze drawn to Dhaos, though yw Sabi’s presence anchored her. Rather than torn between two poles, Nyahri felt a sense of being fed by two rivers—as Cohltos was—one perennial and strong and unyielding, the other sweet and fleeting. These emotions Dhaos spurred in her, they annoyed her, equal parts arousal, worry, and guilt.
Gods, stupid Oudwn boy! Must all the gods love sex? Must they play so much with human hearts?
Dhaos laid down his cloak, and on it his bow and quiver. He picked a ripe plum, cleaned it on his sleeve, and ate.
