by Jay Penner
No one charges us.
There are about fifteen soldiers in a fighting stance, and there is Hannuruk, cowering behind them, comically holding a sword in his hand, and standing unsteadily.
“Kill them! Kill them, what are you waiting for?” he screams.
The men charge at us like idiots. One of them trips on the cracked alabaster and sprawls on the floor. Soon it is another close combat. We outmatch and outnumber them, and we hack them down ruthlessly. I have no patience for the feeble minds that still follow this mad king and are willing to lay down their lives for him. I stab one solider and behead another, letting the white floor turn crimson. The melee subsides quickly.
“They’re all dead, General. Fools,” Itaja says, shaking his head. He is splattered with gore just as I am. I wipe my face and look around.
Hannuruk stands behind a table waving his sword.
I advance at him.
The King’s eyes are open wide like a lunatic. His face and large belly shine with sweat. His flabby chest heaves heavily.
“Stay where you are, Teber. Such betrayal! You bastard,” he shouts.
“You call yourself a King, and yet you have destroyed the very people you swore to protect,” I say.
“I have done no such thing, you young treasonous fool! I will have you hanged. My son will be home soon and put an end to you swine,” he says, swaying from one side to the other.
“Your son is dead, Your Highness,” I say, calmly, “I dragged him into a pit of fire and watched him burn.”
Hannuruk flinches. “You liar! How dare you lie. Rishwa, don’t stand there like a coward, tell this liar to shut his mouth and lay down his weapons,” he screams at the Prime Minister. I turn to Rishwa, who stands with no expression on his face.
“Your son is dead, Your Majesty,” Rishwa finally says.
“You scoundrel!” Hannuruk bellows and lunges at me.
I lean back and swing my blood-drenched sword with great force.
The impact knocks his sword down and severs multiple fingers. Hannuruk howls in terror and pain. It is a deep, beastly, and guttural sound. The King has happily sent a great many to their death and destruction, and now it is time for him to experience what it means to be helpless and in agony. He stumbles to the floor, clutching his injured hand. I advance on him, and he looks up fearfully as he pulls himself back and uses a pillar as a backrest.
“All you had to do was rule wisely and treat your land well,” I say. “And treat your Queen-like who she is.”
He looks at me intently, and something flashes in his eyes.
“That whore. So, the harlot was sleeping with you. No gods will forgive you both you dirty scum,” he says, his hate burning through his dark bloodshot eyes.
“If only you treated her with kindness and as a husband,” I say, refusing to take his bait. “And yet you listened to a manipulative woman, sent your citizens to a fruitless war, murdered those who were loyal to you when they were unarmed and helpless, refused evacuation to the desperate, sent a worthless, incompetent sadistic son to fight a war, and you tell me that I am unworthy!” I shout back.
Hannuruk shakes his head vigorously as he tries to stem the blood from what remains of his fingers. “I am King. King of the Atalanni. Do you know what Atala means?” he splutters, his drool flowing copiously down his livid mouth. “It means the greatest. What I did was for the gods, and my people betrayed me.”
His eyes open wide suddenly. “There you are, you lecherous cunt, what Kingdom had to suffer such a prostitute for a queen?” he harangues. I realize the Apsara is right beside me.
She says nothing. Instead, she kneels in front of him. I put a hand on her shoulder, and she slaps it away. “Let me speak to him, Teber,” she says, softly.
Hannuruk stares at her with hatred. “It is my misfortune that I had a prostitute for a Queen,” he says again.
“Do you even know what it means to treat someone as a wife and Queen?” she says.
“You deserved no such treatment,” he says and spits to his side. “You fucked him and violated your marriage, and here you are to lecture me. I am King. I do not answer to you, you wretched courtesan! The Mitanni kings must rear a harem of trollops. Your father must have been a pimp, and now you—”
In a smooth, almost dancer-like grace, Apsara arcs a glistening obsidian dagger and slices Hannuruk’s neck.
A spurt of dark red drenches his thick, silvery beard.
Hannuruk gasps and clutches his throat with his bleeding stumps and his eyes go wide in shock and surprise. But nothing comes out of his mouth except blood that glistens in the dying light.
Air bubbles from his throat.
He flops around like a fish on the beach. Apsara steps back as the King kicks and flails about and I watch him dispassionately. Rishwa turns away—I cannot blame the man; he has served his ruler for decades.
We all watch as King Hannuruk’s twitches subside and he slides on the slickness of his blood. He eventually stops breathing and dies with his face turned to the side in a grotesque expression. I briefly feel bad for the King—he had ruled the land with relative peace for a long time before he lost control and his mind to the words of a priestess. Apsara buries her face in my chest and cries, and I hold her for a long time until she recovers.
“May I give him a quiet farewell and set up a funeral pyre?” Rishwa asks, looking at me for approval. I realize that I am now in charge of decisions.
“Of course, Prime Minister. And free his family immediately,” I say, referring to the King’s forgotten first wife and their mentally incapacitated son.
Rishwa sighs and looks away as if to search for words in this dark, depressing room that smells of death and misery. “They are long gone, Teber,” he says, without meeting my eyes. “She died a while ago, and they quietly killed the boy on the orders of Prince Nimmuruk. I don’t think the King even knew—he had forgotten their existence.”
“Do you know for certain that it was on the orders of Nimmuruk?” I ask.
Rishwa does not answer.
It is as if we both are guessing the same thing.
“I have to find Khaia,” I say, finally. “This saga ends with her as it began with her. In the meanwhile, Prime Minister, take some of my men, declare that I now control the capital, lift the evacuation embargo, and find means to evacuate all citizens. But wait outside for now as I must speak to the Queen.”
“Yes, General Teber,” he says. I sense pride and affection in his voice. I ask Itaja to gather ten of his best men and wait for me outside the room. The rest clear the room and take Hannuruk’s body away. In a few minutes, the room is empty. It is just the woman I love so deeply and me. I must have this conversation.
“The gods have smiled kindly upon us,” I say.
She smiles, but there is sorrow in those glassy eyes. “We do not yet know if the gods are with us or against us, Teber, for their intentions are unclear. They saved me, brought you back to us, and yet so many have died in the wake of their fury,” she says. I nod. The powers of the divine are beyond my understanding though I try to reconcile their actions with the impact, and it makes little sense.
I hold her gently, carefully avoiding her secured wrist. “You must leave. I must finish what I started.”
She shakes her head. “I will never let you go, Teber. We have been separated for too long,” she says.
“I know, my queen. But you know as well as I that this saga is not over until I find the Oracle. I need answers, and it is my duty to bring peace to our land and appease the gods.”
“I will come with you.”
“Where I am about to go is not a place for my beloved with my unborn child,” I say, as I gently place a palm on her stomach. The baby kicks with a great force sending bolts of delight up my hand.
I laugh loudly, and she does as well.
“I know you seek to find the Oracle, Teber. As your Queen I order you to take me along,” she says, her face stern and her eyes unwilling to let go. I sm
ile at the audacity. She is strong—immensely strong, to withstand a tortuous marriage and to protect me while willing to die of torture. The gods bless me. I know I cannot talk her from leaving me.
“You are stubborn,” I say, admiringly. “Come with me. But if I sense great danger, you will leave with Rishwa.”
She agrees to that, and we leave the chamber.
Rishwa is still outside, waiting. The Prime Minister hugs me, and there is finality in his eyes and tone. “A great boulder never stops until it is faced with a greater obstacle, Teber, and you are the largest boulder I have seen,” he says, cryptically, and turns and walks away.
CHAPTER 59.
KALLISTU
The situation in Atalanni has gotten steadily worse. I look at the churning water below, and the land where I stand juts down to the water like a fist. The air has cleared slightly this morning, driving the haze, but the entire area has a fine layer of yellow and gray ash from the still raging fountain of lava from the central temple complex and the surrounding connected island. I am covered by the fine powder but none of that matters.
Itaja puts a hand on my shoulder. “We must return before it is dark, sir,” he says.
I come back to reality. It has been two days since Hannuruk’s death and quiet funeral, and we had not yet found Khaia. But today there was a sighting on the eastern high point of the inner ring; that she was there with her child and a retinue along with a small protection force. Nothing that would stop us.
It will take me a day to return, for we must loop around the northern edge and turn south again because the inner sea is now impassable.
“Let us go,” I say, and we silently begin to descend.
Time to meet the supreme priestess of the Atalanni Kingdom and seek answers.
We climb steadily up a steep incline that rises behind the palace. We finally reach the eastern cliff edge of the inner ring and walk a narrow pathway that is now barely visible under the layers of ash. All the shrubs, trees, and plants are gray, lifeless, and sorrowful. The air is black and gloomy, and the glorious blue skies are just a memory. The inner sea is visible to our right as we walk North. It is a vast, churning mass of ash and detritus from collapsing cliffs and deposits from the multiple fountains of lava that continue to hit the water and explode with fierce power.
Even hundreds of feet above the water, we can feel the heat and the violence below. The temple complex has all but vanished, burned, and buried under thick layers of black rock that oozes blood from the earth. Rivers of lava flow along the canals and the collapsed causeway.
No man can question that fury of the divine around me, and no one can give the reason for their anger.
We eventually come to a point where the path evens for a short distance and angles up sharply up a steep incline with steps. This was once a back garden to the palace, but no garden exists anymore. I jog up the steps and come up to a platform—a stone platform with wooden railings that looks down the cliff. There are three benches on the platform, and Khaia sits on one of them, holding her child in her lap.
No guards.
Her face is dark and barely recognizable—the strain, dust, ash, and dirt have dimmed the radiance and reduced her to look like an old, haggard woman worn by the weight of life. She is wearing a diaphanous kilt, and her hair is tied in a hasty bun, with some curls still falling down her neck.
Once the most powerful woman in the Kingdom.
I brush away my feeling of sorry for her. I have many questions, many things to tell and ask before I decide what to do with her. She is one said to have a divine connection to the gods.
I approach her slowly, and she looks back and smiles as if expecting me. Dark smoke rises from the abyss in front of her, and while we cannot see, a violent river of lava flows right beneath.
“You are everything I expected you to be,” she says, as she half-heartedly waves her hand to beckon me closer. I do not know what she means, and I care little for her words now. “I am glad you saved her,” she says, her eyes pointing to Apsara who stands behind. I have asked Apsara to allow me the chance to speak to the Oracle first.
“I have questions,” I say, still respectful to her stature. But deep in my belly, anger burns at her actions and treatment of this land, its citizens, and Apsara.
“And I am glad you do, General, for I wanted to say much before you kill me.”
“It depends on what you say.”
Itaja steps forward, and I place a hand on his chest and push him back. “Stay back, Itaja, let me deal with this.”
“She is the bringer of dark magic,” says Itaja, both fearfully and angrily. “Kill her before she brings more misery to our homes.”
“Step back,” I admonish him. “We will decide her fate once I have a chance to speak to her. What greater misery can she bring to us than what she already has?”
He glares at her and steps back unhappily, leaving us alone.
“What do you wish to know?” she asks. There is no fight in her anymore. Her child wriggles in her lap and protests the confinement in her mother’s arms. I walk closer to Khaia and look down at her. She is frail. Her once eyeliner-decorated eyes have little light in them as she looks up at me. But there is no fear in her face.
“Why?” I ask.
“Why what?”
“Why did you push us to war with Egypt?”
“The gods—”
“Enough! The time for lies and deception is over. We have trusted and worshipped your words, but they carry no weight anymore. Tell us the truth and unburden yourself,” I tell her sternly.
Surprisingly, she smiles. “You were always intelligent and inquisitive.”
I dismiss those words. “It does not matter what you think. Please answer me.”
She stands up slowly and with some effort. I notice scrapes and scratches on the side of her bare breast and waist. She kisses her child several times and lets her stand on the ground, while still holding those little palms and not letting the babe run around in this dangerous area.
“You must have realized it by now, Teber. What do you want me to say?”
“I wish to hear it in your words. Tell us why.”
“The Atalanni were a proud nation. A peaceful nation. But peace lives if the rising powers around you respect your strength. We maintained a policy of restraint and trade when the lowly kingdoms around us pursued conquest. What happened to us? We were confined to a few islands as all the great lands of the earth were ruled by the brutes of the East or the uncultured of the North. It was time for us to assert our greatness.”
“The gods told you nothing?” I ask, half-heartedly, knowing the answer.
She scoffs. “Gods? The gods say nothing to men, Teber. Those are fairy tales you hear. The gods gave us the faculty to understand the nature of earth and water and fire, and it is up to us to forge and shape the world as we wish. All the backward kingdoms around us behave as if the divine is at their disposal.”
She strolls towards the barricade and looks down the edge.
“You made up a story to send us to war,” I say.
“The King has always been a coward. Apart from sending you and the others to defend us from the aggressive Mycenaeans he had done little. He blamed the Divine Council for our policy of restraint, and yet we rescinded that policy a long ago. The hints, the discourses… nothing worked. The barbarians from the North would have never stopped. The attrition would wear us out to extinction.”
“And Minos?”
Her eyes flicker. I sense an emotion. “Minos was an out of control brute. He could have done remarkable things for us, but he threatened to go to the King with lies about me.”
“He was not struck by the gods then.”
She laughs but without mirth. “If you believe that the gods guided my hands.”
“Your ambition and greed brought us to this,” I tell her, sweeping my hands.
“I did what was right. It was time for us to shine on the theater of earth. Our ruler was a coward, and
I saw it as my duty to act.”
“You sought the throne! You took us to ruin. Why could you not fulfill your obligations as our chief priestess and maintain peace?”
“I could have made a great ruler. The Divine Council, while it has the greatest minds bestowed upon this world, has never had a member sit on its throne. Think about it, Teber! Would the Atalanni not benefit from our brilliance? We would be the masters of the earth.”
“Your brilliance is what destroyed us, you witch! You would only seek bloodshed if you become a ruler,” I scream at her. The hubris and the delusion are astonishing. I draw my sword and point it to her. “I should be cutting off your head right here.”
Khaia turns and walks to me. There is no fear in her eyes. She places her neck on the edge of my blade and looks at me. She has an imperial face—bright eyes, a sharp nose, and an oval face. The stress of recent days has given her a stern, intimidating look. I waver for a moment; this woman held sway over the King and the Supreme Council for a long time, so I would not underestimate her.
“You would not kill me,” she says, and there is a hint of sparkle in her eyes.
“Why not?”
“You could still support me, and one day become King yourself, my son,” she says.
CHAPTER 60.
KALLISTU
What?
“What—” my mind refuses to believe what my ears just heard.
“You have made me proud, my son,” she says and lifts her palm to caress my face. I recoil as if a scorpion has stung my cheeks. I look around to see if anyone else has heard this, but they are out of earshot. The impact of Khaia’s words suppresses the roars of nature around me.
“Don’t call me your son, I am not your son!” I say under my breath.
She smiles sadly. “The laws of the land took you away from me, but I always watched over you, my child,” she says. Everything in her demeanor suggests that she is telling the truth. I look back and see Apsara watching me intently. Curious. Afraid.
