Màla paused and tried to catch her breath. Couldn’t.
“I’m sorry, son, that we kept all this from you, that our attempt to keep you safe has left you unprepared! Forgive us, please! And know this: despite our failure, we love you—we will forever love you!—more than you will ever understand, more than I could ever tell you had I all the time in the world!
“Kalas, pïn sashin zhi dàbirafime ar shir zhenda, zhi uskathin ëth nir—of all the blessings we have received, you are the greatest!”
With her free, trembling hand, Màla reached for Kalas’ face, caressed its familiar contours. She smiled, and Kalas, amazed, saw resplendent joy in her dying features. One final exhalation wrest itself from her lungs, seemed to hover for a moment before it resumed its ultimate ascent. Kalas caught her hand as it fell.
“Forgive? You don’t—of course I forgive you! Mother?! Mother! No, please! Please, no…” he whispered as he pressed her lifeless palm against his cheek.
Zhalera said nothing; instead, she leaned into Kalas, wrapped her free and shaking arm around his shoulder. He did the same, and for as long as they could, they held each other while they cried, ignored the world outside and let it fall apart around them.
Chapter VII.
In Rooms Below the Ancient Temple
K
alas, what do we do?” said Zhalera, after a long, shared silence, only interrupted here and there with grief-stricken tears.
“I…I don’t know,” he responded, numb, his mother’s already-cold hand still in his.
As if to punctuate their lonely isolation, a gust of night wind blew through the open door, swirled around the room and mingled the smells of putrescence and blood before whipping away through a huge, sparking hole in the roof Kalas hadn’t noticed until now. He shivered, and as he looked away from the patch of stars framed within what remained of the ceiling, he saw Gandhan again, just as motionless as his own mother.
“Zhalera, I’m sorry,” offered Kalas, and squeezed her again. More tears from both of them.
He released his mother’s hand, stifled fresh sobs as he realized he would never hold nor be held by it again.
“Good-bye, Mother,” he whispered as he ran his fingers over her eyelids, caressed them as he helped them close for the last time.
Together, he and Zhalera helped each other stand: together, in the thready torchlight, they helped each other to the same well-worn couch they’d shared not too long ago. It had been overturned in the attack; after righting it, they sat, surrounded by semidarkness and the sound of the wind.
“Your father,” Kalas began. “If we hadn’t gone to the Empty Sea, maybe—”
“Just stop it,” said Zhalera, her tone a blend of sorrow and anger, and Kalas understood.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated.
“At least when Mother died, we had a chance to come to terms with it: her illness gave us that, at least. But Father…”
“Something we have in common, I guess,” said Kalas, unsure if he should have said anything.
“Tàran?! Oh, Kalas! On the same day!”
“Dzharëth,” he nodded. “It was fast—too fast—but after…this, maybe it’s better. Zhalera, what happened here? I mean, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
“No, it’s all right: I feel like if I don’t talk about it now, I never will: When you left for the Crescent, Father came straight here, but he told me to go home and get the sword—right, the one above the mantel, so I did.
“There was a rush of wind, of fire—by the time I got back, Father was fighting one of those things—it looked just like the one that attacked us, maybe bigger. Màla was already on the ground, bleeding. I thought Father was putting up a good fight—I even thought he would win!—but then it grabbed at his arm and just…Kalas, it was like skinning a rabbit!
“That’s when the wolf-thing went for his face. I tried to get there, but I was too slow: I swung Father’s sword at it, but it just slapped it away, laughed, and backhanded me. I went flying and dropped the sword. It came at me, and I thought I was dead, but then the strangest thing happened! I’ve never seen anything like it, but there was thunder, and a bolt of lightning came through the roof, right where that monster was standing! It was so bright I couldn’t see what happened next, but after maybe a second, the wolf thing was gone—nothing but a pile of skin!
“It wasn’t like regular lightning: no, this had a thickness about it, about as wide as a barrel, and it had a green glow around it, and the only thing it seemed to touch was that wolf. I’d probably be dead, too, if it hadn’t hit when it did.
“I ran to check on Màla, but I could tell it was bad. Really bad. I didn’t know what to do, but that’s when you came in. Kalas…”
“The Ïsribarinme are dead—all but one, I think,” Kalas said after wiping away the latest spate of tears. “Commander Valderïk, for all his bluster, actually put up a good fight, but Dzharëth got him, too. Would’ve gotten me first, if Tzharak hadn’t stopped me from doing something stupid.”
“Tzharak?”
“Yeah, he just showed up out of nowhere, after Father…I was going to, I don’t know, stab Dzharëth, like before, with your birthday present. I hadn’t really thought it through. But Tzharak grabbed me, held me—he’s surprisingly strong!
“Then Shosafin showed up. He’d been following us, I think. Even into the canyon, maybe. He cut off Dzharëth’s arm. There was some of that green lightning in the Crescent, too, but that’s when I ran for here.”
“Your mother said something about a prophecy,” Zhalera reminded him.
“So did Dzharëth,” added Kalas.
“Really? I wonder who else knows about it,” she mused.
“I think I know who might.”
2.
Having covered their parents’ remains, Kalas and Zhalera gathered a few items into a pack and prepared to venture outside. Neither had heard much since the thunder and lightning had ceased: just the wind, bearing the occasional lamentation from some other hapless Lohwàlarrin.
“I guess it’s safe?” said Kalas, unconvinced but unwilling to remain indoors.
“I guess we’ll find out soon enough,” Zhalera whispered, her father’s sword and scabbard slung across her back.
Though neither had a history of timidity, they waited another moment; then, Zhalera’s hand in one of his and his knife in the other, Kalas held his breath and stepped into the darkness.
The wind blew colder here, striking Kalas’ face with an occasional grain of sand. The first few times, he flinched.
“Just dust,” he muttered when he felt Zhalera tense.
At first, Lohwàlar looked much the same, but it felt wholly different. Soon, they crossed paths with other townsfolk tending to their injuries, their murdered loved ones. As their path brought them toward more populous regions, however, they realized the zhàrudzhme had wrought substantial destruction on their town. Its few clerics were making the rounds, helping where they could, consoling where they must. Kalas thought he recognized one of them in particular.
“Kalas? Di zhi halum erume, pesh dàbirafime, you’re alive!” marveled Vàyana as she turned and rushed toward him. Without reserve, she embraced him and wept as though he was—and always had been—more than a former patient: a close friend; a nephew, perhaps.
“We thought the zhàrudzhme had found you, put an end to the—to your life! I’m so thankful we were wrong!”
“Vàyana, my mother, my father—Zhalera’s father: they’re—”
“I can tend to them right away! Just—”
“They’re dead, Vàyana.”
“Oh!” she gasped at last as her bronze features cycled through confusion, shock, and sympathy. “Master Kalas, I’m…You’ve been through so much already, and yet there’s so much…Here, come with me.” She beckoned for him to follow as she retrieved her lantern.
Kalas looked to Zhalera, who regarded the lady cleric with curious surprise. She squeezed his hand, and toget
her, they allowed Vàyana to lead them through the bereaved and wounded masses, pausing now and again to speak with and offer sympathy and suggestions to the survivors.
She’s leading us toward the Crescent, Kalas realized, and his steps faltered. Vàyana sensed his hesitation.
“Master Kalas?”
“The Crescent is where Dzharëth—no, the rudzhegu—killed my father. I don’t…Right now I can’t…”
“I didn’t know, I’m sorry. It’s all right: we can go around,” she said as she gripped his free hand in both of hers, gave a gentle squeeze, and let it go. Some quality in her touch reminded him most cruelly of his mother’s. He blinked away would-be tears and he and Zhalera continued following the cleric through more naked misery than Kalas had ever seen.
“We’re not hurt: we don’t need anything from the Sanctuary,” said Kalas once he realized where Vàyana was leading them. “Look, thank you for your concern, but I think Zhalera and I need to figure out what’s next for us on our own.”
“But we’re not going to the Sanctuary,” Vàyana countered. “Not…exactly.”
“No?”
The cleric seemed to wrestle with some thought, some further explanation that hesitated on the tip of her tongue, but suppressed it and said, “You’ll see.”
“See what?” said a familiar voice.
“Tzharak! Shosafin!” said Kalas as the wearied pair stepped into view, no longer hidden in the lantern’s shadows. He threw himself at the old man and wrapped his arms around his neck.
“Then the rudzh didn’t get you?”
“Not because it didn’t try,” Shosafin said with a rueful smile.
“What happened? Please tell me that nëshras egu is dead!”
“Not dead, just runshethas—unskinned.” interrupted Tzharak. “In all my Sevens, I’ve never known a mortal to kill an egu in such a way that it remained thus; rather, on occasion—like tonight—someone might be fortunate enough to separate an egu from its material form. That ends the immediate threat, but in time—sometimes moments, sometimes millennia—that same egu will acquire a new tether, eat away at its kelâ like acid until nothing remains, and achieve our plane once again.”
Shosafin laughed, and something in his skeptical mien elicited an impatient sigh from the old man, who ignored him.
“Tell me, Kalas: Màla? Is she all right?”
Zhalera stepped forward and told her part of the story, omitting the details of Màla’s last words with her son; Kalas, however, in hushed tones, explained as best he could his mother’s inchoate revelation.
“Dzharëth mentioned a prophecy, too, and the only person in Lohwàlar I can think of who might have any idea what she was talking about is you. I mean, Father is—was—always telling me stories that he learned from you, that as strange as they were, he always believed there was something honest about you.”
“You could learn a lot from this young man,” Tzharak said to Shosafin. To the boy, he continued: “Your intuition serves you well, Master Kalas—”
“u Tzharak, is this the best place for this?” said Vàyana with a hint of nervousness in her voice.
“Not at all, of course. Continue on your way, cleric: Ilbardhën and I will join you. In fact, I believe we’re headed for the same destination—and for the same reasons.”
3.
The crowd thickened, the townsfolks’ wretched cries intensified as Vàyana led them all toward the Sanctuary. Kalas couldn’t believe how much hurt and damage the skydogs had caused in such a short time. He saw his friend Halbën with one arm wrapped around his mother’s neck, the other bent at an anatomically impossible angle. Several other friends and friends’ family members mobbed the streets in search of help, of an explanation: what did Lohwàlar do to deserve this?!
“I thought you said we weren’t going to the Sanctuary,” said Zhalera, giving voice to Kalas’ unspoken thoughts, as the five of them approached its ancient stone façade.
Uncounted centuries had so weathered its exterior that a casual observer might have overlooked its eclectic architecture, employing design choices that spanned generations: wind-driven sands had ground sharper features into rounded vestiges of former detail. Still, even in the darkness the structure’s presence weighed on Kalas’ thoughts. The Sanctuary’s carved and columned entrance, especially when contrasted with the utilitarian buildings on either side, evoked thoughts of a more resplendent era, a time when Lohwàlar might have been rich and green rather than sparse and beige. Veins of crystalline mineraloids sparkled in Vàyana’s light as an orderly saw her, created an opening in the sea of people for her party to cross.
“We’re not,” said Tzharak.
“No? Uh, all right then…”
Inside the Sanctuary’s walls, the din seemed less raucous, though the press of bodies remained ever present. Somehow, though, people seemed to move out of their way at just the right moment, providing an unimpeded path toward…wherever Vàyana was leading them.
“Not the Sanctuary?” Kalas whispered to Zhalera, who giggled in spite of—or because of—her nerves.
“This way,” said the cleric as she led them through an unfamiliar section of the structure, little-used, Kalas guessed, since its service as a temple long ago. Here, the voices had disappeared, and in silence they approached an ancient stone staircase, a cantilevered spiral polished smooth from millennia of footsteps, now mostly blanketed with dust.
“A moment,” she whispered, then bowed her head.
Like she did the night we found Ëlbodh, Kalas noted.
Tzharak bowed his head as well, and though neither spoke, the boy thought he somehow sensed something, an ephemeral impression that disappeared when both raised their heads. Vàyana looked at Tzharak, nodded, and started down the stairs, the muffled brush of her leather-soled shoes almost imperceptible in the stillness.
Kalas counted every narrow, reverberating step—one, two…forty-eight, forty-nine—
“We’re here,” said the cleric as she lit several torches, which guttered for a moment before spilling soft yellow-orange light across the small chamber in which they found themselves, each casting a star-like shadow.
More polyhedral than round, the torchlight revealed myriad friezes carved into each face of the stone walls surrounding them. Opposite the last stair, a vast door, wood banded with iron, blocked their way. At least twice as tall as a man, it had no hinges, no visible lock, and Kalas wondered if perhaps it wasn’t really a door at all. Shosafin must have had the same thought: he freed one of the torches from its sconce, approached the door and played the light over its surface.
“Looks like this door hasn’t been used in hundreds—maybe thousands—of Sevens,” he remarked.
“What do these symbols say?” Kalas asked Tzharak.
“What makes you think I would know?”
“I…well, you’re the…everyone says there’s no one…who knows Lohwàlar’s history as well as you do.” Kalas answered, doing his best not to make an issue of the old—the ancient—man’s unknown Sevens.
“And everyone says you’re the oldest person in Lohwàlar,” added Zhalera with a bemused glance at Kalas.
“Ha!” he laughed, and even in the torches’ faint illumination, they saw the crinkles around his now-glittering eyes deepen. “I like you, miss! Kalas, you could learn a lot from this young woman! “I’m sure you’ve heard the stories; now, let me tell you the truth.”
4.
He gestured at the imagery etched into the walls, beginning with the facet to the immediate right of the door.
“Nearly one hundred twenty-eight Sevens ago, in the port city of Kësharan—”
“Kësharan? I thought we were talking about Lohwàlar?” interrupted Kalas.
“Perhaps you’d prefer to tell the tale?”
“Uh, no, I…I’m sorry. Please, go on.”
“Kësharan was a beautiful place. Still is, in some ways, and from a distance, but no matter. As I was saying, many Sevens ago, zhàrudzhme fell like fiery st
ones from heaven upon the city in the same way they fell upon Lohwàlar tonight. With similar results. ‘The Night of Falling Skies,’ we called it. No one knows why, what they were looking for, but my mother had her suspicions, and—”
“Wait! I’m sorry, but your mother? Almost nine hundred years ago?” Kalas blurted. Zhalera elbowed him in the ribs. Tzharak smiled, shook his head, and continued.
“—and hid me underneath the city in an abandoned cistern while up above, everything burned. I heard thunder even from my hiding place, but not much else. It was just after my first Seven, and I didn’t know what to do.
“I don’t know how long I was down there: days, I think. Scared to move, to breathe, until I heard someone coming down. By then I was so hungry, so weak, that I didn’t care who—or what—it was, so I called out, and a man appeared.
“At first I thought I was hallucinating, that I was so out of it I thought I saw a wreath of green-white light shimmering all around him. I learned later—much later—that no, I saw what I saw. He knelt, helped me to my feet, and placed his hands on my shoulders. I’ll never forget those piercing eyes, or the way he looked into mine, like he was searching for something. He smiled—there was sadness in it—and said something: I don’t remember the exact words, but I felt a kind of energy leave his fingertips, just a light vibration; then, I felt something welling up from inside myself, triggered by his touch…
“I blacked out, fell asleep, I don’t know, but when I woke, I—we—were in one of the intact buildings. Alone in Kësharan: there were no other survivors. He’d made a small fire and prepared some kind of food. I didn’t ask what it was—didn’t care, I was so hungry! I ate, and when I’d finished, he told me what I was afraid of had happened: the city was dead. Except for me, all its inhabitants—my mother, my father—were gone.
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