Lost Gods

by Micah Yongo

  As they neared they could see the gates were still there, but buried, their thick doors crumpled and sodden and slick with ash, and the walls where their hinges had been, folded inwards and half-collapsed. There was a gash through the front wall beside it, disturbing for its neatness, as if a giant shovel had been ploughed through to dig and clear the debris. Josef stared and pointed at it, a clean gaping wound amid the disarray. Salidor went toward it to take a closer look. He came to a stop and just stared, the others with him, and then slowly climbed down from his horse.

  “Salidor.”

  Jasinda’s voice seemed to startle him. He looked around at her and the others as though he’d forgotten they were there.

  “We have been invaded,” he said. “I know not by who or what…” he blinked, as though waking from sleep. “The sharíf must be told. And Gahíd. They must be told immediately. Whatever army did this will be marching south as we speak.” He pointed at Jasinda. “You must go to Parses, find the captain of the guard there, have him marshal a defence and ready the citadel. We must hope what has been done here is recent.” He pointed at Josef and Daneel. “You two. You will go to Hanesda, to the sharíf. Tell him of what has been done. Tell him Geled is fallen.”

  “Gahíd instructed that we stay together. So that–”

  “What he said does not matter now! You must go, each of you. Now. The time is short.”

  “And what of you?” Jasinda said.

  “I’ll search this place out, see what can be learned of the enemy, how long since their departure. Then I’ll return to Hanesda and tell whatever I find. We must know our enemy.”

  They stood there in the rain, watching him, waiting for what else he would say.

  “War is upon us, Brothers. Go. Go now!”

  Josef snapped at the reins of his horse and turned, nodding to Daneel. “Come, brother.”

  Daneel began to follow.

  “And you,” Salidor said, as they turned. Daneel looked back. “Do not think of rest on the way back.”

  Any other day Daneel would have rolled his eyes and answered; instead he glanced once more at the scorched and soaked rubble and just nodded. And with that they were on their way, galloping across the waterlogged earth with their horses’ hooves kicking up grey mucky clumps of mud in their wake.

  Jasinda watched them go, and then turned back to find Salidor already clambering his way through the gap beside the broken gates. She climbed down from her horse to follow him. “Salidor. Wait.”

  He glanced over his shoulder. “You should go too, Jasinda. The sooner you reach Parses, the better.”

  “And I shall. But wait.”

  He paused on the other side of a piled row of bricks, standing within the ruined city wall and gazing at the mess within. The embankments of the half-moat that barred what had once been the way to the tower were gone, submerged in water. The bridge across was still visible, just, lying beneath the surface. A vague boardwalk hovered in the grey murk of the newly risen waters. Salidor couldn’t tell whether it was flooded from the rain or the mess. Probably both. The tower on the other side was mostly missing, no more than a short wall with jagged edges where bricks of stone met with empty space like missing teeth.

  “Have you ever seen anything like this?” Jasinda came and stood beside him.

  Salidor shook his head.

  “Could it be Kivites?”

  Salidor nearly laughed despite himself. “Kivites? They’re naught but scattered tribes and beggars. What armies begin to rise from among them, what leaders lift their heads, I myself have gone and ended. Kivites could not have done this, nor any army I have known or heard of. But that is not my concern right now. Do you see what is?”

  Jasinda looked around at the torn walls and collapsed tower and flattened ashy houses and smoke. “Yes. I think I do.”

  “No bodies. I can see not one. I can see nothing that even…” and then he stopped.

  Jasinda looked up at him. “Nothing that even, what?”

  “Look. Do you see that?”

  “See what? What is it?”

  “There. In the water… Do you see… something is moving… there… by my fathers, what is that?”

  Thirty-Five

  F U G I T I V E S

  In the end they waited three days for the city gates to open again, eating berries mostly, and a fish Arianna managed to spear from the banks of the lake with a pike she’d made by sharpening the end of a bough with her sword. The worst thing had been the cold. It was more than half a day before she or Neythan were able to rid themselves of the lingering bone-deep chill from having remained in the open air and dew of the lakeside wood for two straight nights, huddled together with only fodder and a small fire for warmth.

  When Caleb eventually emerged from the city he came out on a mule-drawn cart he’d traded for, exchanging the sword and cloak Neythan had left behind, and making up the rest of the price with a small golden trinket he’d taken from the tomb of Analatheia in Hanesda. Neythan only looked at him when he explained that part. Caleb, unconcerned, shrugged back. Neythan wondered what else he might have taken but was too grateful for the cart to ask.

  Neythan and Arianna met him where the road turned by the forest, running up from behind and leaping into the trundling cart to cover themselves. They used the waiting blankets in the cartbed to hide and stay warm as Caleb drove along the road out. It wasn’t until they were beyond sight of the city watchtower that Neythan told Caleb to turn them west, toward Ilysia, before going on to explain why the woman they’d been hunting for the last half year was now in the cart with them, along for the ride.

  “So, I have fulfilled my end of the bargain then,” Caleb said.

  “You have.”

  “And you will not forget our covenant.”

  “You know that I cannot, Caleb.”

  All of which Arianna observed with interest, declining to ask for explanation as she lay down beneath the blankets in the cart and finally went to sleep.

  It was late evening when they arrived at the township. A broad sprawl of houses, tents and sheds stretched out along a narrow grassy stream, a city in almost every way save the lack of a wall and watchtower and the untidy make-do way the houses clustered together. They tethered the mule against a mooring post nearby a wadi on the outskirts of the settlement, leaving it to lap at the water whilst they set a shelter by turning the cart on its side and fastening tent sheets between it and a young tree.

  “I’m surprised you believed her so readily,” Caleb said quietly when Arianna had wandered down to the water to bathe.

  “I’m still not sure I do.”

  “Then why is she here?”

  Neythan shrugged wearily. “The things she said… they make sense. They make sense of everything really. Why she killed Yannick. Where she’d been in the time since. Why she was with the sharíf… And then there is what she has said of Elias. It all points the same way.”

  “And what way is that?”

  Neythan looked sidelong at him. “A heretic among the elders.”

  Caleb’s eyebrows climbed.

  Neythan waited. “You’ve nothing to say? I thought you’d be glad to hear me finally say it.”

  “I’m glad for you to heed the truth, however uncomfortable it may be.’

  “Well. Be satisfied then. I’ve heeded.”

  Again Caleb didn’t answer.

  “Did you bring the book?”

  Caleb raised a finger and turned to the sack of provisions to rummage. He pulled out the foot-long scroll and put it down in front of them.

  “Thank you, Caleb.”

  Neythan uncovered the scroll and slowly unrolled the page, bringing it to the last place he’d examined.

  “Thing must stretch thirty feet,” Caleb said.

  “Further, I think. The roll’s an inch either side of the pin. Whatever story it tells is a long one.”

  “You’re obsessed with it.”

  “I’m just interested.”

  “Why? What�
��s so interesting?”

  “You’ve seen the name that marks the cover, Caleb. Qoh’leth was father of the Brotherhood.”

  “What I see is that no matter how many times you look at the thing the words remain unreadable, whatever the name of the book.”

  Neythan just shifted the pin, lengthening the scroll to see more of the strange dots and glyphs. They seemed pressed into the page, lifting from it like scars, and there were patches of fabric and thin shards of bone, wood and metal threaded into parts of the vellum. “There must be a way to read it.”

  “If there is you’ll not find it by ogling the thing every night.”

  “You’ve a better suggestion?”

  Caleb shook his head and turned from sifting through the provisions to squat by the fire with his long palms outstretched. “You and your lust for meaning, Neythan,” he said slowly. “And so now we go to Ilysia.”

  Neythan turned from the page and looked at him. “You’re displeased.”

  Caleb rubbed his hands above the warmth and shrugged.

  “All our aims meet there. You want to know who betrayed you all those years ago. And I want to know the truth of… of all this. Why they decreed for Yannick to kill Ari, if they did. Why the elder met with the sharíf’s chamberlain in the brothel. I must know if she is a betrayer, and to what end. Or if some other truth lies at the heart of all this.”

  Caleb chuckled quietly into the fire, wagging his head.

  “What’s so funny?”

  He straightened, standing over the short flames. “Some other truth, you say… and tell me, Neythan. What is truth?”

  Neythan laid the scroll aside.

  “After all you’ve witnessed. And still you do not consider yourself, Neythan.”

  “Consider myself?”

  “You’ve seen your friends butchered at the hands of one another. You’ve journeyed half the length of the Sovereignty. You’ve even seen the countenance of a Watcher… and yet you’re still seeking for the world to have an order to it.”

  “I’m seeking for answers to what was done.”

  “And what if there are none. Or only some.”

  “Then why do you seek your betrayers?”

  “Vengeance, Neythan. Only vengeance. That is all this world is. There is no order. No great law to it all, no perfect and pleasing way from which things have fallen. There are only men and women, with their greed and their pain and their pleasures, and all they are, all they do, is to seek whatever ends those appetites determine.” He squatted down again and took a stick and began turning the half-cut of log in the flames, watching the cinders spark as it rolled. “You’ll not find answers in the hearts of men, Neythan. Only ever deepening fog, and a continuing desire for those things that are his own, whether kin or riches. Seek your meaning and answers a hundred years or more, whether in Ilysia or in that scroll. But you’ll find none. There is no right. No law. Man is without reason, save for whatever reason serves his belly and that fog, and the desires that lie beneath it. Kin and riches, Neythan. There is nothing else.”

  “Then why are there Watchers? Why did you believe I’d witnessed one?”

  “Why shouldn’t I? I’ve seen a great many strange things I’d have not thought true of the world. But I do not assume their virtue. No. If there is a law that all living things hold to then it is this. Whether man, beast or Watcher, each holds to what is his own, and in this way each is a law unto himself.”

  “And so what then? You’d have me seek nothing?”

  “I’d have you seek what can be found, Neythan. As I do.”

  “As you do what?” Arianna came stalking slowly up the damp grassy slope from the wadi, rubbing at her wetted hair with the ragged towels Caleb had brought from Qadesh. She came to a stop beside him and stood there in front of the fire, her face glowing with its colour. She looked at each of them. “Well, don’t stop on my account.” She prodded the towel into her ears to dry them and then tugged at the tunic she’d changed into, patting herself down. “It’s a little baggy but I think it’ll do. It’s warmer than the dress.” She glanced up at them again and gestured. “I’ve interrupted?”

  “No,” Neythan sighed. “No interruption.” He began to roll up the book again. “It’s getting late. We should get some sleep.”

  “Ah,” Arianna said. “About that… it may be we’ll have to leave a little sooner, or, well… soon.”

  “Why?”

  She continued rubbing at her hair and turned, looking for a blanket. “When I was bathing, you see, a couple of men saw me and, well… I suppose they thought they’d come in and have their way… I don’t think it’ll be long before someone finds them.”

  “Finds them?”

  Arianna turned to Neythan. She saw the look on his face. “Why always so dark-minded, Neythan? They’re just… sleeping. I expect they’ll wake by the morning. It’s just I hadn’t the energy to hide them very well. I’ve eaten no more than half a loaf and a few berries in three days. We need to do something about that, by the way.”

  Caleb shook his head, smiling. He glanced across the fire at Neythan. “You know, she’s growing on me, I think.”

  “That’s because you’ve already had a chance to wash.”

  Arianna shrugged and grimaced in commiseration. “Sorry?”

  Neythan sighed. “Where are they?”

  “Amongst the reeds by the water.”

  “Come, then. It’s too dark for us to journey on anywhere else, and we need the rest besides. We’ll hide the men together. And then set up camp elsewhere along the wadi.”

  “But I’ve only just got dry.”

  “Come, Ari.”

  Arianna sighed and looked at Caleb. “Have you put him in this mood?”

  Caleb, still amused, brandished his palms in disavowal.

  “Arianna.”

  “Fine, fine. I’m coming.”

  Thirty-Six

  D U M E A N

  “Yasmin… maybe… perhaps it is best to let this thing lie, yes?”

  “I’m just asking questions.”

  The old man, Yaram, just smiled and nodded, but there was no humour there. He glanced to the side, beyond the woollen blanket shelter where he and Yasmin were sat eating bean rice with their fingers from a shared dish, and watched two boys squatting by a stall in the sun. Their backs were turned to him, drawing on the ground together as the bazaar hummed around them.

  “Zaqeem was a complicated man,” Yaram said. “More than you know. He had friends, strange ones, in low places and high places… These questions you ask, were you to find those able to answer, you may also find them sharing what they’ve been asked, and who asked them, with others… you understand.”

  Yasmin wasn’t sure she did. She wasn’t sure she understood any of it. She and Hassan had argued again. A mistake to go to Súnam, he’d said, a mistake to involve you in any of it. All the while refusing to tell her what it actually was. Who were this “Fellowship of Truths” Zaqeem had apparently belonged to? Who was this brother she’d never known? And so she’d left Dumea that night by boatman, coming east along the River Crescent and then the Swift, halfway across the Sovereignty to arrive here, in Hanesda, to speak with the uncle who’d fostered Zaqeem as a boy and mentored him as a man.

  Yaram scratched the side of his forehead beneath his turban. “Even now, I can still remember when Zaqeem was that age,” he said, nodding at the boys in the street. “Always with a pen and tablet in his hands, always at study.”

  “My son, Noah, does not share the habit,” Yasmin said.

  “He doesn’t? Well. You should bring him here. It will do him good. It’s hard to set your hand to the plough when you’ve never known harvest. You should show him the city, the school, the sovereign courts, and leave off from these questions of yours. Nothing good will come of them. Not to you or anyone else.”

  “You already know I can’t do that,” Yasmin said. “You know why.”

  Yaram scratched at his beard and made a low displeased sound
in his throat.

  “If you could at least tell me who I might speak to about Zaqeem,” she said. “Who in this city knew him. His habits. His ways.”

  “His habits and his ways… There are a great many habits of his you’d do well to never learn of, child. Your memories of him are few, I know that. Do not sully them.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Yaram’s pale eyes slid once more toward the boys. Apparently they weren’t drawing on the ground, after all. A hawk lay dead between them, piled flesh, beak and bones, battered dusty feathers and wings sticking out at odd angles. The boys were poking at it with sticks. “What if I were to tell you that those who knew him best were gamblers, vagabonds and wastrels? What if I were to say to seek Zaqeem’s ways is to seek the underside of a pretty rock, or the innards of a whitewashed tomb? All goodness and light without, decay and rot within.”

  Yasmin just looked across the table at the old man. Zaqeem was dead. Tobiath had been missing for two months and it was becoming increasingly apparent that Hassan was hiding things from her, and had perhaps been doing so for some time. “I need to know the truth,” she said.

  Yaram sighed and looked back to the bazaar. “Will you not heed a man in his old age, Yasmin?”

  “I can, and I do, uncle. But he was my brother. I need to know.”

  Yaram repeated his unhappy growl. He watched the bazaar, watched the wind ruffling the dead bird’s feathers on the ground whilst the boys continued to prod. He sighed heavily.

  “There are two I know of,” he finally said. “They may provide a beginning… one in the clay street, by the pool near the watergate. His name is Barat. But you will need to be careful of him. Not a wholesome man. I was forced to have dealings with him when making guarantee for Zaqeem’s debts. If you must meet him then do not do so alone.”

  Yasmin nodded.

  Yaram looked at her to see she understood, then back to the bazaar.