The Mikulalim stopped their singing. They were staring at him. He knew he had intruded on their private ceremony. He wanted to run back into the tent and hide. But that was the old Daniel. The new one would be a pawn no longer. He got to his feet.
A Mikulal waved Daniel over. The others went to fetch the body.
Daniel’s legs wobbled as he crossed unsteady sands. The Mikulal wore nothing, save for a loincloth and a large gold earring hanging from his right ear. The slowly burning fire made his shadow squirm as if alive.
I am Junal.
The words had been shoved into his mind.
“Hey! Did you just—”
The man held up his palm. The others stared angrily at him.
Now is not the time for crude oral speech. Again, the words were thrust into his mind, loud and unwelcome. Think your thoughts to me, Daniel. Do not speak them aloud.
He’s talking into my head, Daniel thought.
This is the ancient language, the oldest language. Think in images, not words. It will take time to master.
You . . . you can hear my thoughts? he thought.
Not hear, Junal said. I can sense them, if you project them. You have been given Azazel’s Curse of a Thousand Tongues. You are becoming a Mikulal. One of us.
God help me, Daniel thought, and then realized that Junal had heard. What were you doing, just now? he thought. What were those flying things?
Offspring of the great Ziz, Junal said. Daniel received a vision of a mammoth bird, its feet spanning continents, its head touching the stars. The Children of Ziz serve us, and we serve them. You interrupted the obsequies.
The obsequies? The others were removing the dead man’s cloak, and Daniel recognized the corpse’s face. Yig?
Grug’s brother, yes. They found his body on the sands and returned him to us. We would have thanked them with a song. They love our music. But you scared them away. Now we owe them a favor.
I’m sorry. Your sound woke me.
Only Mikulalim can hear it. Will you dine with us?
Dine? He heard a crunch. Now? The other men were cutting off Yig’s ankle with a blade, and Daniel winced. Another was carving Yig’s flesh with his sword, then handing pieces to the others. When they all had the flesh of Yig they collectively thought, May your song rise again through us. They bit into Yig’s flesh together.
Daniel gagged. Oh, God, that’s disgusting!
It’s not disgusting, Junal said. Yig will not be lost. He will remain with the tribe. You are but half a man now, Daniel, and half a Mikulal. Taste him, and complete your quickening.
No! Daniel thought. “No!” he said aloud. The others eyed him again as he retreated toward his tent. “I’m sorry, Junal,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
Inside the tent he fell onto his blanket. Caleb and Marul seemed to still be asleep. Is this what I’ve become? he thought. Eater of the dead? And I’m supposed to be the righteous one who upholds the world?
That night he slept fitfully, if at all. He thought it would have been better to have let Marul have her way with him than to have seen the Mikulalim eating Yig. When light dabbed the horizon with orange-blue light, Junal thrust his head into the tent, and Daniel sat straight up.
“It’ll be dawn soon,” Junal said.
Caleb woke immediately, but Marul needed several hard shoves before she stirred. The Mikulalim packed the camp with impressive speed. They had a light meal, and Caleb told Daniel to conserve food. “It might be days,” he said, “before we reach the Quog Bedu.”
The sun crested the horizon, and a blaze of yellow light spread over the sands. As the desert warmed, it gave off a pleasant stony smell that reminded Daniel of the summers of his childhood, playing games in the paved street. Marul turned her face sunward. Her irises, the pupils tiny pinpricks, were the green of rainforests. How old was she? He’d guessed around sixty, but in the light she looked younger. Forty-five? Less? He thought that, with a bath, some shampoo, she might be quite attractive. But after last night, he didn’t trust his senses around her. This might be more of her magic. She caught him looking, and he turned away.
He felt no pleasure in the rising sun. The light hurt his eyes and skin, and it would only get hotter and brighter as the day wore on. He was trying to reposition his shirt so it better shielded his body, when Junal came over holding a black cloak in his hands.
Wearing his own cloak, Junal looked like the Grim Reaper. “For you,” Junal said. He offered the cloak to Daniel, identical to the one he wore. The finely weaved fabric shimmered in the sun. “Put it on.”
“Thanks, but I’ll be fine,” Daniel said.
“Your Mikulalim nature grows.” A chill rolled down his spine at Junal’s words. “Your skin is milk-white.” And into his mind, Junal said, I have my orders to protect you.
Daniel dreaded the idea of resembling one of these Cursed Men. But the sun hurt, biting his skin as it rose. He couldn’t go another day unprotected. Reluctantly, he took the cloak.
He stripped to his boxers, while Marul watched. At the last moment he remembered the wedding boutonniere and retrieved it from his pocket. The cloak’s material was soft and silken, cool and comfortable against his skin. He slid the boutonniere into his new pocket.
What is that? Junal asked.
A memory, Daniel said.
Junal reached into a pouch at his belt and pulled out a lock of auburn hair. This was my wife’s. She died four hundred and nineteen years ago. It still smells of her.
Daniel thought, Were you married, before . . . ?
Before I was cursed, yes. Her name was Daarni. We lived in a city called Gelecek that does not exist anymore, and no one remembers. There had been talk of forming a system of laws determined not by king’s decree but by popular vote. The king said he was open to the idea, and invited us to a forum in the city square.
Hundreds of us assembled, hoping for a better world for our children. But once we were inside the king locked the gates. We were trapped as the archers picked us off, one by one. I lay near death when the Mikulalim came after dusk to feast on the bodies. They offered me their flesh, so that I might live. And I cared only about seeing my wife again, so I ate. But it was too late for Daarni. An arrow had pierced her heart.
I’m sorry, Daniel said.
You may think our habits vile, Junal said, as I once did. But among the Mikulalim, we have no strife. Our king Havig is just, our laws are fair, our women are equals, and we treat the stranger as a brother, so long as he respects our customs. No city of men on this world can boast that. Junal glanced at the lock of hair before tucking it safely back in his pouch.
“The cloak befits you, Daniel,” Caleb said as he and Marul came over. “Though perhaps a bit too large.” Caleb smiled, and it was beautiful and horrid, like the jaws of a shark. “Listen up,” Caleb said. “There will be strong currents today, my guides tell me. The Bedu use these currents to travel faster than a bird. But their channels run parallel to each other. If we enter the wrong one we could be sucked into an eddy or flung across the continent. Stay alert and follow the Mikulalim closely.”
With this they walked northwest, chasing their shrinking shadows. The sands shifted with every step, scuffing the black leather of Daniel’s shoes into a featureless gray. The ground heaved as if he were on a boat, and it was disconcerting to think that, on a whim, its currents might fling him across the world.
As the sun rose, the day grew hot, and Daniel pulled his cloak more tightly about him. Wind blew over the dunes, whistling high-pitched tunes, like wet fingers run over wine glasses. Dunes rolled across the desert, lifting and dropping them hundreds of feet. Sometimes the sand collided and the desert screeched like metal sheets tearing.
He was always dizzy, ever thirsty.
A row of cumulous clouds appeared in the north, quickly evaporated, and left behind a shower of yellow dust that reeked of sulfur. Hordes of black worms rolled in the sand beneath their feet like tumbling seaweed. “Don’t step on them!” Junal warned. “T
hey’ll eat through the soles of your shoes!” As a dune lifted them up, Daniel and Marul hopped and skipped, trying to avoid stepping on them. When the wave rolled past the worms were gone.
Nothing on Gehinnom seemed to linger for long.
They walked for hours, pausing only to let the Mikulalim correct their course, or to take meal breaks. Twice the hooded men lost their way. They argued with each other, while Caleb defiled the air with ancient curses. As they walked, Caleb looked back the way they’d come, as if expecting Mashit at any moment. Great waves of sand, hundreds of feet high, crossed the desert miles off. They all fell silent, as if the dunes might hear them and turn to swallow them.
“Is the whole planet a desert?” Daniel said to Marul.
“No,” she said, panting. She had been slow all day. “There are salt-water oceans in the south. Far to the north, beyond the mountains, there’s a tiny belt of jungle. Go even further and there’s ice. Most of this planet is desert, though.”
“How do they grow food for everyone?”
“With great difficulty. In rare regions of temperate air and half-dead soil, they use slaves to haul water for hundreds of parasot.”
“Why not build a pipeline?”
“A pipe wouldn’t last a month. The ground is always shifting.”
“I wish there were a way to help them.”
“Get yourself in line.”
“What do you mean?”
“Demons provide the cities with food, technology, and lost knowledge, in exchange for worship, favors, and loyalty.”
“My grandmother said that demons gave the sciences to humankind. I laughed at her.”
“Give,” said Marul. “Present tense. Without demons’ help, Gehinnom would be a dead world.”
“Really?”
“It’s like this across all the Shards. Without demon intervention, the myriad worlds would be barren.”
“So they help the helpless? Like what I do, back on Earth.”
“And what do you do, Daniel?”
“I work for a charity.”
She harrumphed. “Do you ask for favors in return?”
“Never.”
“Then what you call charity I call slavery.”
“There must be a way to help them.”
“I tried, and look where it got me.”
“Just because you failed doesn’t mean others can’t succeed.”
She stared at him. “It’s your nature to want to repair things. That’s what makes you a Lamed Vavnik.” Her green eyes tugged and toyed with him, and he looked away.
“It’s my job,” he said. “To help the suffering. I don’t see why I can’t do it here.”
“I’m not the only one who’s tried, Daniel. In every generation, a few special ones are born. People like Rana. She has no need of demons’ help. She is astounding all on her own. To someone like her, the limits of this world are visible with every breath. She rails against the void with each creative act. But those that rattle the cage too loudly always end up dead, their ideas buried under waves of sand. That’s why I never told Rana that every brick she lays, every bust she molds will be dust before she reaches forty. But I will tell you before you waste your time on a fool’s errand. You can’t change the Shards, Daniel. Suffering and transience are the natural order of things here.”
He thought about what Rana had said to him. “Three days ago, I was just a man,” he said. “And now, I’m a Lamed Vavnik, poisoned with Azazel’s Curse, trying to save the Cosmos. From my point of view, Marul, the natural order of things is pretty malleable.”
“I once thought so too,” she said. “I traveled widely, searching for knowledge. I hungered for power. Instead, I found my own weaknesses.”
“Yes,” he said, suddenly. “You cursed me, Marul. You gave me Azazel’s Curse.” The anger bubbled up from within his belly.
She blinked at him. “Yes.”
“I understand why. You wanted your freedom more than anything. But you condemned me for it. You thought I was ordinary, expendable. If it was necessary to sacrifice one life for your freedom, so be it. That makes you no different from Caleb.”
She stared at him, and there was vulnerability in her gaze, as if Daniel had pierced through her outer, protective shell. “If I could take it back, I would.”
“So,” Daniel said, squeezing his fist into a tight ball, “is this change inevitable? Can I undo this curse?”
“Have you eaten human flesh?”
“Other than Grug’s tongue, no.”
“Then the quickening is not yet complete. If you don’t eat human flesh, you will remain a man, mostly.”
“Mostly?”
“Your craving for human flesh will grow with each passing day.”
“So how do I undo this curse?”
She stared at him. “I don’t know. I’m sorry, but I don’t think you can.”
He wanted to shove this arrogant witch to the sand and choke her. This wasn’t like him, such violent thoughts, but this new Daniel wasn’t the same person who had left Earth. He took a deep breath and said, “Will I fall under Caleb’s thrall? Am I even a Lamed Vavnik anymore?”
She eyed the horizon. “I really don’t know.”
“I’ll never eat human flesh,” he said. “I’ll never be Caleb’s slave.”
“Best to hold onto that,” she said, “for as long as you can.”
He was beginning to hate her. The sun changed course, or maybe it was the sands. The crystalline whine of the dunes grew louder, so that Daniel thought he heard whispers just beyond the ever-moving peaks.
In the noonday heat the party slowed to a languorous crawl. Lulled by the singing dunes, the rolling ground, he slipped into a stupor. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed when he saw a man standing on the crest of a dune, looking down at them.
Daniel rubbed his eyes, but the figure remained. The man leaned on a tall staff, the wind tugging at his long white beard. Bushy white hair sprouted from his large head. His tea-colored skin was a few shades darker than his beige robe.
Caleb raised his arm, and the Mikulalim reached for their swords.
“Name yourselves!” the bearded man shouted. His voice was small, child-like, but they stood in a bowl-shaped valley that greatly amplified the sound.
Caleb stepped forward and said, “I am Caleb, leader of this party.”
The valley had the opposite effect on Caleb’s voice, reducing it to a whimper. The sands had stopped moving too. Something was wrong here.
“From which city do you hail?” the man said.
“Azru,” said Caleb.
“How many days out are you?”
“Less than a day.”
“You flee the destruction?”
Daniel glanced at Marul, in time to notice her flinch.
“Yes, brother,” Caleb said. “What a dreadful sight was the sundering of Azru’s walls. But as they say, One city’s rubble is the next city’s foundation. We left before the worst. My party and I are inexperienced desert walkers, but by the favor of the Goddess, you have found us!” Caleb made a triangle with his fingers, the same gesture the sitting woman made by the blooming tree just outside of Azru. “Will you help us, friend?”
“We have watched you,” the man said.
We? Daniel thought.
“You have followed the tides as a desert roamer would,” he said.
“We have turned with the winds as the constellations of Mazzaroth spin with the seasons,” Caleb said. “The stars must favor us!”
“In Azru, there lies a square where four stone lions surround a basin. What is its name?”
“Such fine stonework! My wife adores those lions. She is a seamstress. I have a great story about—”
“What is the square’s name?”
“Brother, our home has been attacked. We are weary and watersick. Let us break bread in shade together.”
“Demons have ransacked dozens of cities across the world. Marauders scavenge the desert like vultures, preying on
refugees. You claim to be of Azru, yet you cannot name a street that any child there would know. But your greatest sin of all is that you walk across the Tattered Sea with abominations.”
Daniel shivered, because he knew by “abominations” the man meant the Mikulalim.
Caleb said, “Brother, friend, I beg your forgiveness. As the saying goes, There are no friends on the sand, only survivors. We are not from Azru. We come from the Araatz, the mountains beyond the DanBaer. We have hired these hooded men for escort because we feared the demon horde would storm our conclave and fled.”
“You speak falsehoods by the bushel.”
“Do you not welcome the stranger?” Caleb said with a hint of malice. “Do you not water the parched?”
The man considered Caleb, then tapped his staff twice.
Hundreds of people suddenly crested the dune, and Daniel recalled the furtive whispers he had heard. There were young, taut-muscled men in leather garb, wielding swords and daggers and slingshots. They carried shields of leather, wood, and metal. Behind them came older men, with long beards and fluttering robes. And behind these walked a parade of young, beautiful women, bedecked with jewels, twinkling like distant suns. Children clasped the hands of bright-eyed mothers. Babies dangled from slings and suckled on breasts. And behind this throng walked a train of solemn-eyed camels and a tribe of curly-haired goats, all heavily burdened. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of people. Banners on long poles whip-cracked in the wind. But all the people were quiet. Even the animals went still.
The Mikulalim’s swords flashed in the sun as they drew them.
“Sheath your weapons!” Caleb ordered. “Raise no arms against them.”
“My Lord,” Junal said. “They will slaughter us!”
“Sheath your swords,” Caleb said, and the Mikulalim obeyed him. Caleb turned to Marul and said, “Witch, why are you so coy? Speak to them, before we’re all killed!”
Marul glanced at Daniel before she said, “You’d soon have me become a demon too.”
King of Shards Page 20
