by Ann Chatham
“We are fire and earth,” he said. “Blood and bone. We are forever victorious.”
I nodded. “Man, woman, child—we fight to the death. We are Dumrikhat.”
“No.” His voice fluttered as he gripped my face. “Our pride is less than our people. Our people must live, for we are fire and earth, blood and bone. To the Great Mountains,” he told me. “Lead them. Take our people away from this end.”
“They are impassable,” I argued, angry. “Haunted by Chaos, by never-ending ice.”
“Yes,” he told me, “and our people are Dumrikhat.”
From his lips the name meant something, stirred my spirit deep. It was all I needed to hear.
But names, first among words, were first among lies, and that one most of all.
The Empire hounded us, yet we remained ahead. Whenever I looked over my shoulder I would stare for a timeless moment, because in each gaze I saw the glint of endless marching pikes; the curling of black smoke greasing the horizon above our burning halls; the faces of Empire’s Men butchering, raping, laughing.
I never saw us setting them staked in front of starved Khatri; dragging them naked and tied to our saddles; bouncing their heads upon our galloping war parties’ spears. I never saw that we were all the same, and ever would be.
And after staring but not seeing, I would turn back and urge my people along because the Empire was right behind, but I could not stop to face them; my people were full of tears, but I would not let them fall.
I retraced that path, reliving it.
Trees died, then grasses. The land grew high and stony. Our steeds, our proud sure-footed friends, slipped, broke legs, screamed in pain and fear when our regretful blades descended. It chilled us to pack the meat upon the shoulders of the survivors, but we needed the food. We traded our last valuables to the final fur-villages and mountain-men, traded until we had nothing left except our Dumrikhat blades, our souls.
I woke one night to a sting upon my nose; the snow had left my memory to fill the sky, silent as the mountain I climbed.
And so I rose and went forward into the cold.
Dead-sun days, silent wind-blasted nights; I was unaware of the passing of either. Neither did I remember my exodus from the soul-stealing mountains. I held onto a desire only: to search back, to check for stragglers, for surely there were others. I was certain they had not left me; I was certain I had not left them.
There was a hut, a face with a fire, but I was gone again, searching.
Many moons passed outside of memory, but pass they did, and I found myself in the old woods, crossing our sacred plains. The Khatri were gone. There were buildings, towns of straight-cut stone and timber. I stumbled into their dream.
When the people came out to look, I could only shake my head; theirs were not faces I knew. Where were my people? I had gone into the mountains with them; they had followed me into the ice, the cold. Where were they now?
Dumrikhat, Dumrikhat, the strange faces whispered around me, and the Empire’s Men had come and I gave myself and my blade and my denial into their dream, gave the faded echoes of hammers in the forge-caves, the wind’s memory of roaring Khatri on moonlit hunts, the Spring Sun’s laughter above singing children. Then all I had left was the cold and snow.
Until, inevitably, I even gave them that, but the shaman gave it back.
I stopped, suddenly lost in the midst of the frozen lake.
The wind pushed the drifts off into infinite white, baring ice like shattered steel and covering it again in belying softness. There was nothing else. Dumrikhat, came the call. Its syllables were not the rallying horns of warriors or rend of silvered steel through armor; it was winter’s wail, unthawing silence, the name of my people.
I breathed.
As I walked my last walk, I did not feel the cold; instead I felt the gaze of our steeds, the Khatri, of soaring Adhai, of my people, my chieftain—and the shaman, my briefest but greatest friend.
“Our power was once great,” he said, kneeling and naked before me, bodies of his brethren and Empire’s Men scattered through that Karthian mud pit. Shame collected in his face. “And look now.”
When I came across the first forgotten forms, frozen in the eternity of their unending march, I lost my breath to the wind.
“But now we return,” he continued, “to the earth, the water, the sky...”
My people, found again at last. As I passed them, one by one, they stared at me. Stooped as I was, salted ice scratching from my eyes, I did not avert my gaze; I owed them that.
“We wished once more to live,” the shaman said, and looked up. I did not know then if he included me in his ‘we’, but I knew now. “And we are the last.”
They stretched on, the snow covering and then revealing, until like ghosts they danced around this shadow’s staggered march. The wind and ice pulled my furs away from my scarred skin, baring it to the white, and I knew I was old, older than I ever should have been.
I told the shaman nothing for a time, searching those eyes for the line of people I had seen there struggling through the snow. All that showed now was me, reflected, alone.
The shaman smiled up at me, a smile that said in different lives we would have been lovers, or brothers, and I brought my blade—my Dumrikhat blade—down through his heart.
Copyright © 2016 Luke Nolby
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“The Nature of Ghosts and the Fate of Shadows” is Luke Nolby’s first fantasy publication. He is currently working on a novel set in the same world but in a different place and a very different time. He studied ecology, which he has primarily used to go fishing and to travel rugged parts of East Africa gaining inspiration for stories–and doing handstands. A hyena once kissed him.
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COVER ART
“High Above the Savannah,” by Martin Ende
Martin Ende is a self-taught artist from Germany who began in pencil drawings and moved to digital mediums in 2011. He worked as a concept artist in small game projects such as Liberico from Enraged Entertainment, as well as doing illustrations for some tank restoration projects. View more of his art at maddendd.deviantart.com and www.mad-and-nice.de.
Beneath Ceaseless Skies
ISSN: 1946-1076
Published by Firkin Press,
a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization
Compilation Copyright © 2016 Firkin Press
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