Red World Trilogy

by V. A. Jeffrey

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I have allowed you to come here to outwork my Purpose. Take courage for I have not left you. I am with you. You must eat nothing from the palace kitchens but locusts and honey or beetle cakes and honey. Only take food from the woman who cannot speak and here I am now sending you a messenger to minister to you and strengthen you for the trials ahead.

  - Ilim 22:31, Translations of The Holy Aishanna

  These were the words of God to Ilim in his dream and in that night in his cell appearing like a vision of brightness came one of the sons of God to strengthen him. Ilim's spirit was uplifted. He needed it after the indignities he had endured under and the things he heard in the temple only days before. The temple had just been completed and after his humiliation at the grand banquet he was brought back down to the temple. While being brought back to his cell he saw the temple workers drinking poison, under the watchful eye of heavily armed warriors, hundreds of them in one of the great burial rooms beside his cell. It horrified him. Lost lives put out like candle flames into the darkness. He did not believe they would join her anywhere and he was convinced that she was not going to kill herself or die at all. It had become a grisly tomb for them and for the children sacrificed there and the great day was approaching fast.

  "Oh God let it not happen!" He'd cried then.

  He received an answer.

  "You have answered me and I have no reason to doubt you at all." Ilim said, full of happiness and peace.

  "You are his servant. Do not think he has forgotten his servants. There is war here and in the heavens." Said the messenger. His wings, red like coals of fire were spread wide like the great eagles of the high north and his countenance was like that of glowing copper but his face was gentle and he revealed to Ilim what would happen in the near future.

  After this for three days Ilim would take no food or drink and this puzzled the guards but Ilim knew that the queen had taken to trying to drug him, to bend his mind to her will for her own dark purpose. She had even sent Bakku to his cell to convince him to eat and to renounce his religion and join the cult of Nimnet and the queen would change her mind and spare his life. Not only that but he could rise up great as a priest in the temple of Hec or Nisrok. Ilim did not say a word to him. Bakku beat him savagely for not speaking. But because Ilim had been strengthened by the messenger he bore up under the beating without complaint or much pain, in serenity, which inflamed Bakku's rage and fear of him even more. He tried to convince Bakku to turn back from the queen. To go back to serving Airend-Ur. Bakku spit upon him.

  "Your god is dead."

  "He is also your god, or was, once. What happened?"

  "I found others that serve me better. Do not think to preach at me or instruct me you fool. You will pay the price for your stupidity and do not pity me, for you will be the one who will need it before the end comes." Ilim merely shook his head sadly at this and said nothing. Once, Ilim had nothing but contempt for the man before him but now, after his own humbling experiences, he pitied Bakku, no matter what he said. Nothing could stop that. He knew what would happen, in the end, to Jhis and all those who supported the darkness and corruption in it.

  Now when the fourth day came a dish of honeyed locusts and honey water with lemon was brought to him and a woman came who set the dish and the cup by the door and she peered in at him.

  "Are you the mute woman?" He asked. She nodded.

  "Thank you, my daughter." She made a sign that he could not understand and he merely shrugged. She seemed distressed at his bruises but he waved them off, assuring her he was not in danger. After that, she arrived to give him his food every day, his morning meal and the evening one and she seemed warm and friendly and concerned about his cuts and bruises. Along with the food she would bring him unguents for his wounds and they formed a bond. Ilim had long since gathered that he had acquired the ability to feel what others were feeling when he tried to concentrate on any given individual. He could feel that she cared for him and worried for his safety. He also ascertained what she wanted to say in very rough, blasts of emotion from her when she tried to show him her crudely drawn maps. This gift no longer frightened him but emboldened him now as he saw that his prayers were being answered through this woman and that God was preparing him for one of the hardest things he would have to do.

  Sometimes she would bring him bread or a bit of meat but Ilim only accepted the locusts or beetle cakes and the honey water and lemon as instructed. It was then that she revealed to him by primitive scribblings on stolen snatches of paper that she knew of secret tunnels in the temple and in the palace which might make a way for an escape.

  . . .

  Yadua went through her duties as she always did, in workman-like, regimented style. No one bothered her since she had nothing to say and was not considered ambitious. She was known only as obedient, dull and dumb. But nothing escaped her ears or eyes. Being demoted from the queen's private chambers to other duties she had been chosen to see to it that Ilim was fed twice a day. She wasn't sure whether this was a good development or a bad one but she was elated that she was no longer under the cruel eyes of the queen and her lapdogs, Bakku and Setimet. And perhaps she would not lose any more fingers. Bakku never paid her any heed as she was too plain in looks and form but Setimet, on the other hand, tormented her after Taliat had become queen. Setimet was nearly as mad as the queen herself and thus became her favorite maidservant. She had more peace now that life had calmed down around her but she felt drawn to the strange and charismatic old man. He did not seem to be afraid of his fate which Yadua knew would be a horrific one. It pained her as the days drew nearer for high summer and she did not want to think on it. So she set about making sure that she could give him the best drink and bits of food she could manage to steal from the kitchens. Another thing that fascinated her about the prophet was that he seemed to sense or understand her thoughts. He was an adept. This pleased her, to have someone who could understand her. Someone who saw her as a real woman and not a mule.

  She had learned over the years how to draw crude maps. They made no sense to anyone but her but she knew there were secret rooms and tunnels in the temple, in the palace and in the city. Sometimes her phantom finger, the little finger on her left hand that the queen had sawed off in a sudden fit of spite, hurt so badly that she could not draw. Fortunately this did not happen often. She often closely watched Vala's comings and goings and a few times she saw the snake slithering along into secret places as well. She herself had become the very essence of quietness and silence. She'd made it her vocation. This suited her purposes now that she had a purpose.

  There was Vala to worry about. She turned this over in her mind for days until she came to a solution. Vala loved sweet, dark meats best. And she knew from living in Egium, where cats were honored, that certain foods made them ill. It was unlawful to give a cat these foods. Such as chocolate. Yadua managed to get cacao pods from the kitchen one day - chocolate, a new delicacy was just becoming popular among the Hybronian elite - and she ground these into a fine powder. She caught mice or rats and killed and skinned them and ground the cacao powder with lots of honey into the meat, cooking them together into a delectable meal for the cat and this she would set into a small coral plate on occasion near one of Vala's secret tunnel doorways. Tiny morsels here and there. It eventually had the intended effect for a little while. She could go hunting through the palace on her own without wondering if Vala was spying upon her. After a little over a week Vala no longer fell for the trick. But by then Yadua had the information she needed and saw what she needed to see.

  She would always follow after to see where palace guards and priestesses left through and she began to see the hidden places, the hidden doors built into the place since ancient times. Once she had found one that led straight into Nimnet's temple. She tried to copy what she saw but it was extremely difficult work and memory played tricks. Maybe the prophet would be able to read it? Maybe his god will help him. She hoped so and prayed
to any and all gods, except the queen's gods, that help would come his way.

  One day she came bringing his usual fare and underneath the plate she hid one of her better drawn maps of a tunnel. Only one place showed where the palace and the temple were connected, by an isthmus of rock and on either side were dark, deep pools of water, beginning in the vast palace kitchen in its hearth which lead to the grand altar. It was a rumor but one which she trusted to be true as the sun. A slave, one of the temple workers, had managed to run away but not before revealing to a kitchen servant this one secret. Whether he was later caught Yadua did not know but the secret was not common knowledge. The kitchen staff were careful to keep quiet lest they receive the same fate. All the builders on the project including the architect had been put to death in a ritual killing. To be there for the queen when she finally joined her gods. Yadua shivered. She was becoming increasingly bloodthirsty and capricious, a quality that many had accused the king of, but the king was not mad. Something had to be done and perhaps it would take a lowly maidservant to do it.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Roast pork with sumac seasoned potatoes, bitter greens stew and chutney was prepared instead of Kaisha's request for a fish supper. They ate lamb and pork all of the time. Why could they not have something else? Besides, pork was for poor and working people. And often times unclean. The scions rarely ate it at the citadel. But she ate it in dull silence. She was so far away from any familial or spiritual root she knew or recognized that it did not seem to matter anymore. It was her mother-in-law, who as always, over-rode her requests to the servants. She had enjoyed a short respite of peace when Lady Ketmal and her daughters had received the invitation to the queen's royal banquet at the capital. Even Hasor had been in a better mood, walking with her in the gardens in the evenings. Peace had ended, now that Lady Ketmal had arrived back.

  The burning of the great temple was the talk of the city. Some blamed it on the barbarians of the Habad but most people blamed the witch of Shima. Kaisha knew it. Even in this house when she thought of it, it warmed her heart to see her mother-in-law and sister-in-law in anguish over it. They feared it as an evil sign, that plagues would overtake the city again but it was also a curse for her. They looked upon her even more darkly than before. Her husband had fallen gravely ill again. Pestilences had broken out again in one of the neighborhoods, the bloody flux and the plague, or Red Death. The city guard had quarantined everyone in that quarter which had worsened the problem among them and sped up the death toll. Corpses of the diseased were being thrown outside the city and burned at an alarming rate.

  "The faster it burns out the faster we are all rid of it. A curse. Everywhere you look there is evil against the kingdom. Plagues that we thought were long gone are here again! Red Death and the bloody flux stalk the land again." Complained Lady Ketmal. "Oh Hasor! My son, my son!" She cast an anxious glance at him. He ignored her.

  "It seems that it is only in Galieh. I have not heard it spreading elsewhere." Said Betal. "Maybe it will not spread. Let us pray it does not."

  "And would you really know, Betal? Is it because you hang around like a prostitute in the marketplace that you know this?" Sniped her sister. Hasor gave her a sharp warning look and then fell into a long coughing fit before he recovered. He folded and put away a piece of bloodied cloth. Hasor now carried a piece of cloth with him at all times.

  "That is enough." He finally mustered. Betal reached for the amphora to pour more wine for herself and Lady Ketmal slapped her hand away.

  "Is it that you want to become as fat as a pregnant sow that you keep eating and tasting and drinking to excess? You will not keep a husband at this rate. Do you want to become fat like Kaisha?"

  "Can we have a meal without everyone feeling as if the goddess of sniping and griping has sat herself down at my table?" Hasor complained.

  "What do you mean?" Asked Lady Ketmal irritably.

  "You know what I mean. I want peace and quiet while I eat!" He shouted and his mother fell silent, for the time being. He began coughing again. Kaisha called for his coughing draught to be brought and a servant brought it in a small silver goblet. He drank it down and the coughing slowly ceased. If Kaisha had her way she would have brought in the best herbalists and healers from the citadel but that was out of the question and he did not trust them anymore than his mother and elder sister did. So, a witch doctor had been brought in to heal him and it was told to the family that since he had flux, green was a magical color that would destroy the demons of the flux who feared it and so his clothes he now wore were green, his dishes he ate and drank from were green jadite, and of the food he ate some of it was greenish - the stew - and the chutney was made of green colored foods and he wore a green band around his arm. None of this helped and Kaisha could only watch in distress as he suffered. He suddenly looked at her.

  "Kaisha, though I missed the royal banquet I want to take you on a leisure trip. Perhaps to Egium. How like you that?"

  "It sounds wonderful!" Kaisha's voice lit up. Perhaps he was warming to her again. His mother looked from him to her in acid suspicion.

  "I am sure they would have excellent doctors there to help you." Said Kaisha.

  "I will not travel until I can get better but you may be right about their doctors. Galieh is a rich city and full of good business but bad medicine. Still, to get out of this cursed house would be a blessing from the gods. It is so hot and the house has run out of ice and the unrest, the pestilence and violence. And the temple burning. It would be good to get out of the house and out of the city."

  "You are so frail at this moment, Hasor. I worry so. Besides, with that witch running about attacking the city and whipping up the luti in the desert against good, respectable people you could be savagely killed. Your wife knows of it, how savage they are. They stop at nothing to attack and steal from what is ours, what we in the cities work so hard to build. What we build they burn down, what we create with our hands they tear down and squat upon. Those scions help them and I know that witch is a scion of the fortress in Gamina. It is not safe to leave the protective walls of Galieh, my son."

  "That is not true! How long will you speak lies against my sisters at the fortress? I come from there and yes! I would know if they were evil and did all the black things you are always accusing them of!"

  "You dare to abuse me in this way? Call me a liar? I will not stand for it! I will not!" Lady Ketmal cried. Kaisha's temper flared.

  "You will! You lie! You lie on me constantly, you lie on my sisters. If they were allowed in the city the Red Death and the flux would have left long ago. You and your backwards superstitions and mummeries and the witch doctors you employ have not made my husband better!" Kaisha shouted, her voice growing steeled with anger. She new immediately she'd made a grievous mistake and that Lady Ketmal had goaded her into a fight and won again. Lady Ketmal's pinched, papery wrinkled face broke into that familiar sneer. Kaisha felt as if she were drowning, desperate.

  "Do you call my mother a liar? I bring you into this house and for what? So you may disrespect my family?" He shouted suddenly.

  "But I was only-" too late, he was up out of his chair and he shoved her out of hers and on to the ground. She went rolling backwards and he grabbed her and slapped her. Blood streamed from her nose.

  "You miserable, low-born desert mouse! My mother is a great lady of the city! You will not speak to her in that fashion ever again!" He snatched her plate of food and threw it across the room then got up and stormed off. Betal looked miserable.

  "Go. Get out of here before I have you whipped." Said Lady Ketmal. Yisal leaned across the table.

  "Soon the toocha will be expelled from our house. Soon enough." Her smile was full of malice. Kaisha jumped up and ran to her own bedroom. Even with all the comforts of an ivory bed and all the luxuries that surrounded her she felt as if she were in a desert. She did not cry very long this time but wiped her face with her hands. She could feel it swelling and the left side of her face stung badly
. She wiped it again with water from the washing bowl and dried it. Her husband's mood was always changeable but when he was ill he was more mercurial than usual. If Lady Ketmal and her daughter were not around to influence him perhaps she could sway him, manage him. It was worth another attempt. Quietly leaving her own room she went silently through the paneled hall, past the stair and the dining hall where her mother-in-law and sisters-in-law were still at the table eating. She wanted no interference from them. Tiptoing around in my own husband's home. she thought in disgust. She went back to her own room and went to a large chest where she kept her private things. She took a colored glass vial from it, then she opened the doors that led to the courtyard. From there she could go to his window and watch him. She quietly went out to the courtyard. The scent of thyme and lemons from the lemon trees and the brilliant array of fragrant moonflowers was heavy. The fire flowers brimmed with heat and shimmered with faint color which brightened at high night. The small flock of purple and orange peacocks strutted under the lemon trees like lords and ladies on progress through a realm. She could see the iridescent shimmer of colors of the beetles skittering about among the flowerbeds but she had no eye for the beauty of the garden this day. She would have to put on a good crying act, which wouldn't be hard. She came to his window and rapped it gently. After a long moment the window shutters opened and he leaned out and stared at her. The dark circles under his eyes were more pronounced.

  "What are you doing?" He snapped.

  "I came to speak with you."

  "Why did you not just come in through the door?"

  "Are you still angry with me?" She said, crying again.