“I cannot swim, but I went into that icy river anyway, didn’t I? You and Ghalen and Okta, I knew you would not let me drown. I trusted you. Now, trust me.” She motioned to Ezra. “To us, these mountains are like water and climbing comes as naturally as swimming.”
She lowered her voice, and for a moment, Sarah had some of Ezra’s iron in her voice. “If you don’t do this, Atamoda and your children will die. Our people will die. Hope is in there, death is out here. If you are ready to accept that, then forget they once called you Uros and throw yourself off the cliff now.”
Aizarg took a deep breath. Fear gave way to shame, and courage found a toe hold in Aizarg’s spirit.
“I will try.”
“Good.” Sarah patted his chest. “Ezra will go first. I will go last. He will tell you exactly where to place your feet and hands, just do what he does. Whatever you do, do not look down.”
Don’t look down...I think I can do that.
Ezra grabbed Aizarg’s staff. Aizarg started to pull it back, fearing it would burn Ezra, but the boy continued to grasp the shaft. “Give me your staff. I will carry it on my back. I promise, I will not drop it.”
Aizarg opened his mouth, but thought better of it. He began to think the staff had a mind of its own.
The boy reached into his ragged loincloth, and from some hidden pouch, pulled out a length of leather string. Ezra secured one end around the base of the orb. He then created a wide loop and placed it over his neck so the staff would dangle over his back.
“Are we ready?” Ezra asked.
“Father?”
Aizarg nodded and swallowed hard, but didn’t have any spit.
Ezra gracefully pivoted and stepped off the ledge. His hands found niches and bumps Aizarg didn’t notice before. Without hesitation, the boy hugged the cliff and slid to the right.
He makes it look so easy.
“You are much taller than me. You will have no problem reaching the handholds.” Ezra nodded enthusiastically. “It will be easier for you.”
Sarah gently nudged him to the edge. “Remember, don’t look down,” she whispered.
“Put your hand right here, where mine is,” Ezra said encouragingly. “Same with my foot.”
Aizarg felt weak and his legs shook uncontrollably.
“Look at me, Aizarg. Look at my eyes.” Ezra’s tone reminded Aizarg of a father teaching his children to swim. A sudden calmness swept over him.
“Good. Look at my hand, reach out and touch it.”
Aizarg reached out, placed his hand next to Ezra’s and felt for the grip.
“Now, your right foot, place it where my left foot is now. Don’t look beyond my foot and don’t worry. I’ll move it in time.”
Aizarg obeyed, pressing himself as close to the rock face as he could.
“Relax,” Ezra said. “If you squeeze against the cliff any tighter you’re going to crush your shadow.”
The setting sun warmed the stone and it felt good. The trembling in Aizarg’s legs lessened.
“Good. Now put your left foot in the same footing. Don’t worry, its large enough even for your big feet.” Aizarg gave Ezra a sharp look and the man-child grinned back.
Aizarg shifted his left foot away from the ledge and placed it in the narrow crack. With a death grip on an inch of rock and a mile of faith, Aizarg clung to the mountainside. His panic fell away as Ezra’s soothing, calm voice guided him from cranny to nook, crack to bump.
“Look at me,” Ezra commanded. He had Sarah’s mischievous grin and Aizarg couldn’t help smiling back. “What?”
“What am I supposed to call you? Aizarg or Uros or sco-yo...sco-po-tee?”
Aizarg smiled with his forehead against the rock. “Ezra, you can call me whatever you want if it will get me safely off this cliff.”
“That’s reasonable.” Ezra giggled. “Let go.”
Aizarg’s fear suddenly returned.
“Trust me.” Ezra winked at the Uros of the Lo Nation.
Is this kind, sympathetic soul the same person who slit Gilga’s throat ear to ear?
Aizarg closed his eyes, held his breath and let go.
Nothing happened.
Sarah’s voice came from his left, “Open your eyes and look at your feet.”
Aizarg stood on a narrow ledge, just big enough for his feet to fully fit lengthwise. He looked back at Sarah beaming at him. Behind her, he no longer saw the Black Fortress. They had slid completely around the corner.
“You did it!” Sarah beamed.
“Yes...yes I did!” Aizarg clasped Ezra’s hand. “Thank you, friend.”
Ezra grasped his hand tightly, as a man would. “This place you come from, the sea. Will you take me?”
Aizarg nodded, overcome with a wave of joy. “You will be welcome among my people.”
“The sun is almost down,” Sarah said. “We must hurry.” She carefully knelt down, holding onto the rock face. “Is this it?” She pointed to a vertical crack in the cliff, perhaps three feet high and two feet wide.
“Yes,” Ezra said. “It’s well hidden from the city below and the Black Gate. We might be the only ones who know of its existence.”
Aizarg watched the last of the sun slip behind the western side of the valley. On top of the far western hills he thought he saw a flicker, like a bonfire on the shore seen from far out to sea. His courage returned, greater than before.
Aizarg carefully knelt down and reached into the crack.
“Will I fit, Ezra?”
“Easily. It’s not very far.”
“Good. Thank you, Ezra, but I ask you to go no farther. Should I meet my doom in there, I do not want you to share it.”
Ezra nodded and gave Aizarg his staff. “I will wait here.”
“Ezra.” Sarah touched his hand. “Wait as long as you can. If we do not emerge, leave the city and travel beyond the bridge. Our party is camped there. Find a man named Okta and tell him what happened.”
Aizarg put his hand on Sarah’s shoulder. “You don’t have to come with me. I think this part of the journey is mine to make alone.”
“It is my journey, too. The only way home is forward.”
Aizarg kissed her on the forehead and then slid into the crack and passed into the Kingdom of the Narim.
24. The Great Hall Of The Narim
Truth brings liberation, but seldom happiness. For both the Lo and the Narim, the truth was terrifying.
The Chronicle of Fu Xi
***
The passage narrowed, but Aizarg had no trouble wriggling through. He spotted a dim light ahead.
Ezra was right, it isn’t very far.
“I am right behind you,” Sarah whispered.
They emerged into cool twilight at the base of a narrow and steep defile, which widened a few yards ahead.
“Are you ready, daughter?”
“Hold my hand and I will not be afraid.”
Hand-in-hand, they climbed the defile, careful not to slip on the loose shale. They came to the base of a huge pile of scrap wood that completely blocked the mouth of the defile.
Aizarg picked up one of the chunks of wood. It had been hacked with an axe and looked very old.
“It’s kupar,” Sarah said.
Aizarg dropped it and examined the pile. “We’ll go left, against the cliff, where the pile is the lowest. We must be careful not to twist an ankle or break a leg.”
Using his staff to steady himself, Aizarg started up first. He almost reached the top when something caught his eye, the last thing he expected to find here. He picked it up and examined it.
“What is it?” Sarah asked.
He held up the half-rotted reed bag for her to see. “It’s a Lo sack. Ba-lok’s clan trade with the Hur-po.”
Sarah shrugged. “The king’s traders likely use them to pack the goods they send through the Black Gate.”
Aizarg dropped the sack and resumed climbing, but stopped again at the sound of approaching footsteps from the other side of the wood pi
le.
“Do you hear that?” he whispered. “Something is coming!” A moment later a head materialized over the crest, silhouetted in the dusky twilight.
Aizarg almost laughed as the goat bleated and proceeded to munch on the discarded sack.
Aizarg’s smile faded. “This is the first animal I’ve seen since the Valley of the Beasts.”
As they rounded the top of the wood pile, any doubts Aizarg had about the divinity of the Narim melted away as they gazed into the heart of the Black Fortress. Tears of awe streamed down his face.
A mountain within a mountain.
“The Great Hall of the Narim!” Sarah whispered.
The enormous structure overwhelmed his senses. Blacker than the pit of the sea, the titanic Great Hall rivaled the mountains. The rectangular hall almost reached the other side of the box-like compound, over 500 feet away and easily exceeded 150 feet wide. Taller than ten men it vaulted as high as the surrounding cliffs. It defied the dominion of heaven, as if daring the gods to strike it down.
It’s larger than my Arun-ki! It would hold the entire Lo nation.
Aizarg and Sarah climbed down the wood pile to the southern corner of the compound, next to the black wall. The goat followed.
Sarah pointed to the center of the Great Hall, opposite the Black Gate, and whispered, “The way into the Great Hall.” A wide walkway led from the ground to a giant doorway halfway up the wall. The entrance stood easily twenty feet across and thirty feet high. Blackness waited beyond. “It must be as the legends say, they are giants.”
Sarah shivered and drew close to Aizarg. Her voice cracked. “I don’t see anyone. Should we call out to them?”
“Not yet. I want to look around for a moment.”
The inside of the black wall was strikingly different from the outside. Thousands of stuffed reed bags formed a giant ramp. A man could easily scale it and look down on the cliff and Hur-ar. The ramp filled most of the gap between the wall and the Great Hall. The solitary break in the ramp opened near the wall’s center, about two hundred feet away. The ramp parted, forming an enclave to the outer gate. An inner gate, half the size of the outer wall, enclosed the enclave. Cabled ropes, like those on the Kupar Bridge, were strung through a series of blocks and pulleys. The rigging ran to wooden towers on either side of the enclave.
Aizarg knew the enclave must be where the kings’ traders rolled in their wagons. Using the ropes and pulleys, the Narim manipulated the inner and outer gates.
It’s not unlike the rigging on a sail, only on a god’s scale.
Sarah knelt down next to the ramp and examined one of the sacks. She fingered a tear in the material. “These are your people’s sacks. They are full of dirt.” She shook her head. “Why would they build this?”
Aizarg put his hands on his hips, took a deep breath and slowly released it. “One can quickly run up this ramp and defend any portion of the wall. From up there, a defender could pour arrows, spears or rocks down on any enemy.”
“The Narim have no enemies,” Sarah said.
“They must think they do.” Aizarg craned his head back and examined the wall and followed it until it met the cliff. There, high above their heads, a large cave opened into the cliff. A narrow walkway spanned the distance from the cave to the top of the hall.
Is that where they enter the earth to battle the giants?
“I want to examine the hall closer.” Aizarg took her hand and led her away from the wall. “After that, we will approach the entrance and summon the Narim and hope they will be merciful.”
The goat followed.
A thin veil of fog hung near the top of the giant hall. The silence unnerved Aizarg. Sarah felt it, too. “I don’t know why, but it feels like this place is waiting for something.”
Aizarg sniffed the air and realized the fog was actually wood smoke. His stomach suddenly growled at the smell of roasting meat. He looked around for the source and spotted something he’d missed before.
“Look!” He pointed to the far end of the hall, where a small stone cottage nestled against the opposite cliff. A warm, dim light glowed through a window and a tendril of smoke rose from chimney.
“Someone lives there!” Sarah exclaimed. “Maybe they serve the Narim. Should we approach them and ask for help?”
“Yes, but first I want to see the hall up close, before it’s too dark.”
With a trembling hand, Aizarg reached out and touched the hall. The individual boards, running left to right, were expertly joined with what looked like small circles of metal. The same black resin that coated the outer wall also covered the hall. This close the piney odor overpowered the smell of food.
He held his palm out to Sarah. “I dreamt this! The night before the ice mist, I dreamt this!” Aizarg rubbed the thick, black substance in his hand and looked at the ramp leading into the hall.
Sarah searched his face. “What is it, Father?”
“Something eludes me. It stands naked before me, but I cannot see it.” The goat brushed by Aizarg and disappeared under the hall. Aizarg knelt down, put his staff on the ground, and followed the goat.
“Father?”
The narrow crawl space underneath the hall forced Aizarg to stoop. Massive wooden support beams, cut square and spaced about every twenty feet, ran the width of the floor. The ground sloped uphill from the black wall, so the supports were shimmed on his side to level the structure. Globs of sticky resin caked the ground. The goat made its way farther into the dark shadows beneath the floor, heading for the gray light on the other side. Halfway across, the goat crawled under an enormous cross beam, perpendicular to the square supports, and running the entire length of the hall.
It cannot be.
Aizarg blinked and rubbed his eyes. When he opened them he saw everything differently. A line here, a curve there, a board, a smell, a shape...all of it instantly gelled into place. Aizarg, Fisherman of the Lo, saw the truth.
He scurried from underneath the hall as if he were afraid it would suddenly crush him. He gasped for breath, trying to grapple with the reality suddenly forced upon him. Aizarg flattened his back against the hall, like he had against the cliff with Ezra. But it was too late.
Aizarg knew he’d already fallen.
Sarah grabbed his arms, trying to get him to look at her. “What did you see under there? What is wrong? Tell me!”
“I see what Setenay saw,” he whispered.
Aizarg barely registered a dull twang the instant before something slammed him against the wall.
Sarah screamed as excruciating pain ripped through his right shoulder. He slumped, but could not fall. Aizarg turned his head and saw an arrow protruding from his shoulder, pinning him against the Hall of the Narim.
A voice drifted out of the dusk, “I think I hit one of them!”
***
Panic overwhelmed Sarah. She turned and placed her body between the voice and her father, trying to shield him.
“Please!” She shouted in the direction of the voice. “Do not hurt us! We come for help! Please!”
“Stay where you are!” the deep male voice commanded. “Take a step and I will loose another volley.”
“One of them is a woman.” A young female voice drifted out of the darkness.
Two forms materialized from the twilight, a tall and powerfully built man and a woman. He had a sturdy bow trained on Sarah, an arrow notched and ready to fly. The woman lingered behind him, timidly poking her head around to look.
“Who are you? How did you get in?” the man, perhaps in his late twenties, demanded. With a short beard and thick black hair, he wore a simple, motley wool robe that fell to his sandaled feet and covered wide shoulders. His powerful arms effortlessly kept the bow pulled back.
The slightly younger woman wore a similar robe, except with a long shawl partially covering her hair. Her large, doe eyes fit her timid movements.
Sarah shielded Aizarg, ready to take the next arrow. He groaned behind her.
“We seek the
Narim!” Sarah begged. “Help us, please!”
He ignored her plea. “How did you get in?”
Sarah pointed to the woodpile. “There is a passageway through the cliff.”
The man gritted his teeth and shook his head.
Aizarg slipped and groaned. “Aghh!” he shouted and straightened up again.
“I beg you!” Sarah didn’t know what to say; only that she had to protect Aizarg.
“Look at her hair!” The woman pointed at Sarah.
The man peered at Sarah and then his eyes widened. “Get the rest,” the man told the doe-eyed woman.
“But Father and your brothers are in the mine,” she said.
“Then go into the mine, Zedkat!” Frustration cut through his voice. “And bring back torches.”
“You know the rule on torches! Father will not allow it.”
“I know Father’s rules, but we need to see. I will be careful. Now hurry!”
She frowned and slipped back into the darkness.
He returned his attention to Sarah. “Are there any more of you?”
“No.” She briefly thought of Ezra waiting on the ledge. “We mean no harm.” Sarah examined Aizarg’s wound. His eyes fluttered as he slipped in and out of consciousness. Blood soaked his clothes and dripped down his leg. “He needs help!”
The man tightened the bowstring. “He will stay exactly where he is until I say otherwise!”
Sarah’s frustration grew. Aizarg is going to die.
Torchlights materialized from the cottage and bobbed toward them.
“Son?” a new voice called from the torches.
“Over here.”
Two different women approached, one older with strong features and wispy gray hair poking from underneath her shawl, the other a young woman, tall and slender with almond eyes.
The older woman took one look at Aizarg and inhaled sharply. The crow’s feet and lines around her mouth spoke of a woman just entering old age. She shot the man with the bow a stern look. “Shem, what have you done? Put that bow down this instant!” the old woman scolded. The man sighed, slowly released the tension, and pointed the bow at the ground.
“Mother!” Shem looked to the other woman, as if wanting her support. “I was protecting our home. I was enforcing the law!”
Black Sea Gods: Chronicles of Fu Xi Page 31
