Beneath Ceaseless Skies #85 Read online

  I listened to my father and Spider enjoy each other while I waited on hands and knees, shivering from pain and fever. The Sand-Eaters around me had fortified themselves with drugs and meditation against godborne intrusions, and they were strong warriors, but nonetheless I could have overcome them. I could have run. I did not. I remained there.

  In the morning Spider emerged from the chamber, wrapped in a silk robe. She put her shoulder under my armpit. “Come,” she said, “let’s clean your wounds.”

  “No!” I muttered, and tried to push her away, but I was too weak, and I collapsed. She lifted me anyway, deceptively strong. As I lay on a cot, feeling her scour my wounds and scrape away infected flesh, I remember her voice. “He really does believe that you can be great.” She laughed. “He will be furious that I spared you, but he will thank me in the end.”

  I recovered there. Several times Spider came to check on me, fresh from some mission, still wearing a false beard and headscarf to make her look like a man, and each time she simply asked, “Are you well?”

  I was glad she came dressed so. I had never truly spoken to another woman, save for a few servants. My father kept a harem for his human soldiers, but he had forbidden it to me. It had never occurred to me that there would be other Sand-Eaters who were both godborne and female. I knew my gender mattered little to my father. I never realized what he might be saving me for until Spider.

  The last time she came she had kohl-lined eyes and bright, full lips hidden behind a diaphanous veil. Her red curls were piled high, set with a glittering filigree of korastone pearls. She wore a green silk robe, cut to show her pale midsection and a pale thin shoulder. She leaned close. “Your father is taking you home. I am coming with you. It seems he wants me with him.”

  “I should be dead,” I said. “He wanted me dead.”

  “I would be dead many times over if Old Man hadn’t spared me,” she said. She leaned close and whispered in my ear, kissing my earlobe softly. “You will be far greater than him.”

  * * *

  “Was Spider born to the Sand-Eaters, as you were?” the man asks me.

  I stare across the room at the blank wall. I am tired of this. He has brought me more food, fried flatbread stuffed with garlic and quail eggs and spiced sheep’s brains, but it sits untouched. “She told me she had been a child whore in the empires of the East. She murdered some lecherous lord. A secret itansha was in the court that sentenced her, and he smuggled her to us.”

  “Gods. A child.” He shudders.

  I laugh. “I’m quite sure she was lying. The stories about her past would change, you see, depending on what someone needed to hear.” I look down at the food. It turns my stomach. “How long are you going to do this?”

  “Until you have told your entire story.”

  “You will never know it all,” I say.

  He stares at me, eyes narrowed, looking for something. So earnest. So trusting. What sort of man would spare my life? Who would come alone into a room to a Sand-Eater that most men would kill on sight? Who would think that I could be redeemed? To think that the Gods would make such a fool.

  “Why not?” he asks.

  I laugh.

  * * *

  The beginning of my end was simple enough. My father was sitting in repose in his private chamber, lit by floating whitefire lamps, surrounded with the curling haze of hashish smoke. Frog and I both sat on the floor with him.

  “Spider thinks we should shift our attention from the khayifate,” he said. “She thinks that if we take the holy city of Ursalim, all the godborne will capitulate.”

  I spoke as boldly as I dared. “Father, no army has ever taken the holy city. If we fail, the khayifs will easily break what is left of the Sand-Eaters.”

  My father didn’t answer. Coils of smoke escaped his mouth. After ages, he said, “Spider is too rash, and too passionate, but she sees the truth of people.”

  Spider was neither rash nor passionate. I wondered what other lies my father believed of her.

  “Ursalim will kill you,” Frog said, suddenly.

  My father stared at Frog. “Prophecy, Frog?”

  “Prophecy?” I asked.

  “Frog fancies himself clairvoyant,” my father said. “Tell me why I should not go, if the Thousand speak so to you.”

  Frog hesitated. “I—they do not give me reasons, father. But—”

  My father spat. “A Sand-Eater makes his own world. Do not put faith in prophecy and fate.” His tone took on a different meaning. “I have a task for you, Roach.”

  As if I were clairvoyant myself, I heard test rather than task.

  A man approached our manor blindfolded, on a camel that was the only non-assassin who knew the way. The man’s sha was oddly placid, in a way I had only seen in soldiers taught to resist godborne. Unreadable, save for a general contentment in the moment, a calm void.

  He was old, his hands palsied, and he bore more scars than a man should have, stretching across his forehead, skewing down his checks, slashing through what had once been a nostril. I have never seen so many scars on a living warrior. I drew my horse up next to his camel and reached over to remove his blindfold.

  He had godborne eyes.

  “You are hathra,” I said.

  “You use the old word,” he said in obvious delight. “I hate being called a Flare. It’s a polite term, they say, because we are little more than a fire that leaps, still a part of the fire of the godborne. Hathra, though—that has real meaning. A wildfire, just about to be caught by wind, on the verge of consuming the world.”

  Flare. A failed godborne, cursed to begging. I had never seen one before. The soul-branches of his apparently human sha swirled around him, intricate and perfect, yet a hodgepodge of human and animal sha woven together. Every day, he remembered when the curse of the Flare struck. He had stood near humans and, rather than reading them, he had begun to consume them. They fell dead, their thoughts rushing into him like sweet wine. He had been more dangerous than a droc until he was burned out and made human. “You were a Sand-Eater.”

  “Yes. I was Scorpion. When the curse struck, my fellow Sand-Eaters burned me out. It was a great risk. They were not trained. I love them for it.” He pointed to the scars. “This is my mark. None of these were mine. They all belonged to my men. Can you believe it? Other Flares look like trees, or rocks, or water, but I just grabbed every ugly mark I could from those around me. Sha-hunger isn’t discriminating.”

  “Don’t you find it tempting?” I said. Only careful meditation and cultured calm kept a Flare from reigniting. “You could have the power back whenever you want.”

  “I find it tempting,” the man said. “Much like a child, tempted to poke a snake. One must rule the impulse, as much out of fear of foolishness as fear of harm. I wonder if Old Man understands that.”

  For a long moment, silence hung in the air.

  “There is another Scorpion,” I said after the moment of silence. She had been the third female Sand-Eater to ignite, after myself and Spider. “My father is Old Man. He accepted her name-test just a few weeks ago.”

  The man broke into a smile again. “A woman! Heron—sorry, I mean Old Man. Didn’t mean to denigrate your father, but I am too old and still think of him as Heron—Old Man is brave to do so, since Old Man before your father hated women.”

  Had I been more foolish, I would have thought my father had been more rigorous with me because of my gender. But he expected perfection of every Sand-Eater, regardless of what lay between their legs. And this was my chance.

  The Flare that had once been called Scorpion spent a day closeted with my father. When they emerged, he told me, “Your father wishes you to guide me home, to Tal-hedran.”

  He knew I would kill him.

  I saw, in his sha, his conversation with my father. “My brothers pruned my sha after I was burned out,” the man who was once Scorpion had repeated, speaking to my father to the point where he grew annoyed. “I don’t remember the location of this p
lace, or the secrets of your alchemy, or anything other than a few names.”

  “Do you still believe?” my father asked. “Do you serve the Aspect of Justice, and Justice only?”

  “I have not forgotten the itansha dead,” he said.

  It was naked in his sha. He was no longer was a Sand-Eater at heart. I would have said that was the moment my father chose to kill him, but I knew my father. This Flare was simply a thread that had come loose from the tapestry and had to be cut.

  We traveled away, toward Tal-hedran. All day, the Flare once called Scorpion held to his serenity, a feat like a marathon. When we stopped, I offered to find a mountain goat and cook part of it. “This is fine,” he said, withdrawing beans and rice and an ash-crusted pot from his belongings.

  “At least let me scrub your pot clean,” I said.

  He laughed. “I would hate to die with a dirty pot.”

  I wetted some sand and scrubbed until the crust of old char was gone from the pot, then promptly added more char by cooking with it. We ate beans and rice with onions and garlic. “Odd to think that I chose this for my last meal.” He chuckled. “I thought I was tired of beans. I suppose it’s become comforting.”

  “Fine food and practiced courtesans await us at the resorts near Tal-hedran. I will allow you time, as long as no godborne comes close to read your sha.”

  “Whatever I taste or whomever I bed will be pale,” he said. He stared into the fire, now dying to specks of blue flame on the camel dung and juniper branches. The camel nosed his arm, and he fished in his pockets until he came up with a date. He handed it to the camel and it ate, flapping lips leaving a trail of slobber on his hand. “Camels.” He wiped his hand on his pants. “That was my last date.”

  “You won’t even eat a date before death?” I withdrew my knife and began sharpening it. This would be quick. No slitting the throat and letting the blood drain. I would hold open his mouth and stab through the roof of it, right into the brain. He deserved a quick death.

  He ignored my comment. “At its heart, the difference between itansha and orthodox is so small. Thirteen prophets instead of twelve.”

  “That is not all,” I said.

  “Oh, we have the Sand-Eaters,” he said. “But in our hearts, I believe that itansha and orthodox use doctrine as an excuse to see their own fears in the other.”

  “That is not it,” I said. “The itansha have been hunted for their beliefs. Slaughtered. Children died. We give them a voice, a memory, while the orthodox rule in hypocrisy.”

  “You sound like your father.” He paused. His sha said clearly what he thought, but he said it anyway. “You are not quite like him.”

  “I believe,” I said, rising. I stood, still holding the knife ready. “No one, until the Sand-Eaters, avenged the itansha dead. No one gave them voice.” I barely stopped myself from saying, who are you to question my faith?

  “I will not argue the point.” His eyes caught the blue flames of the fire, clear and reflective. “Will you allow me to sing? In the village where I was born, before I joined the Sand-Eaters, we sung at every important occasion in a man’s life.”

  The memory was so clear. It cut through my muddy anger. His itansha village had burned, herded into a mass grave. He had come to the Sand-Eaters full of hatred, reciting the names of those who died in his village.

  And somehow, in the wake of being burned out and losing everything he had a second time, that hatred had faded. He had every reason to hate, and he no longer did.

  “Sing,” I said, lowering the knife.

  He opened his mouth to the night.

  Hear, o man

  Low is your body

  Low are your blood and bones

  Your soul scrabbles in dust.

  Mercy is upon you

  As the very air wraps around the dawn light, and the dawn light embraces the air,

  So does the mercy of the Thousand embrace you, o man

  There is no death for he who revels in mercy

  There is no despair

  The wanderer is given home, solid stone

  The wife is given a husband, the child a parent

  Trust in your Gods, who made standing rocks and shifting sea, and trust mercy.

  My hand trembled on the knife. I could not kill a man like this, no more than I could kill my father. They had faith I would never have.

  * * *

  The man lowers my scroll. “But you did kill him,” he says. “Your father would not have let you live otherwise.”

  “Yes.”

  * * *

  I walked away from the Flare that had once been Scorpion, away from Tal-hedran and toward the deepest parts of the desert. I stumbled in the sand, weeping as much as Frog had when we were children in the manor of stone.

  I had seen myself, and I was empty, no more than a vessel for my father’s belief.

  I did not know where I would go. Thirst finally took over, and I followed signs to a spring. When I reached water, Rat and Badger were there.

  They brought me before my father. The Flare was there as well, kneeling. Spider stood with my father. She wouldn’t meet my eyes. The old Flare, once Scorpion, would. He stared at me, his white eyes and his pure sha gleaming with a peace I could not understand.

  “Mercy is not your way, First!” my father said. Not even the courtesy of a name, not anymore. “Give mercy to the air and fire.” My father held out a korastone knife that gleamed in the white light, sharper than sin.

  They knelt me next to the Flare. Kill me, he mouthed, and live.

  I drove the knife up through the back of his neck, into his brain. It was a merciful death.

  When I was done, my father twisted me around and spat into my eyes. My eyes stung.

  The day had grown hot, drying the spit on my face when my father tied me to the posts in the same pit where I had fought my brother. Bits of slate and old chips from the forge had been woven into the whip’s leather twists, and between them, I saw the white godborne-eye glint of korastone. Put there, no doubt, to increase the bleeding.

  The first fall of the whip was like a slap; a mild, stinging line across my flesh as painful as an open-palmed strike. A moment later, my skin tore open along the line of that slap. The second whip-stroke, and the third, and the fourth, were miles of daggers. My skin shredded and hung in ribbons. A stroke curled around my face and tore my cheek away like goat-hide.

  I begged my father for mercy, a high, torn wail. I knew he thought I was weak, and I did not care. I gurgled on my own blood in my screams.

  The ninth stroke tore my left breast to a ruin. After the tenth stroke left two fingers bare to the bone, I reached out. I pushed and strained through the sha, seeking a faithful human, but they were not near. Sha was a great golden glow beyond the horizon. I couldn’t reach it.

  They cut me down after the thirteenth stroke. I lay in the sand. Something erupted from inside me, a moan, a screech, a wail of my wasted dead life, and I crawled, dragging myself, bleeding a river, through the mansion, uncaring, unseeing, until I reached the threshold of my brother’s room.

  Frog was not there. I thought—I imagined—I prayed—that I heard him weeping inside.

  They dumped my body in the desert.

  Somehow, I retained clarity. I suppose it was the years I had spent with pain. When the creatures came and crawled over me, for a moment I thought they were scorpions. “Forgive me,” I muttered.

  But no, they were roaches. They cleared the sand from my blood and ate the infected tissue. By some god’s fool whim, they kept me alive until I could drag myself to water. Eventually, I cut dead willow and made fires, and ate locusts. And I lived on, in the desert; a scarred madwoman crawling with insects. I imagine I became a rather frightening legend. At least I think that was how Spider found me.

  In my half-mad state, it seemed like there were a dozen chattering voices issuing from her, speaking tongues of air and fire. “Roach.”

  I turned to the opening of my cave. I tried to speak, bu
t all I could manage was a dry croak.

  “Old Man is going to Ursalim. I—” She paused. “I am not going with him, unless he changes his mind.”

  “Why—” I swallowed whatever moisture I could manage. “Why are you here?”

  “I thought Ursalim was the way to victory, but Frog has seen Old Man dead each time. Old Man does not believe him, but I do. Old Man will destroy the Sand-Eaters. Come with me.”

  Somehow I found the strength to push her away. “No!” I said. I laughed and said the only thing that made sense, the only thing that kept me alive. “He is testing me. I won’t fail.”

  She looked on me as if I were a lamb staring at a butcher’s knife, oblivious of its real purpose. “Your father has forgotten you exist.”

  I didn’t reply. I knew her words were part of the test.

  * * *

  “You have not written anything today,” he says, handing me a plate of flatbread and diced lamb with onions.

  I do not take the food. “You know what happened,” I say. “My father died. Frog and I succeeded him. We combined our talents and became one Old Man. We crafted the intrusion of Sand-Eaters into the Wise Khayif’s palace. I killed him.”

  “Yes.” He pauses. “I am looking for something else.”

  I spring to my feet and dart toward him, so fast that I am breathing in his face before he can move. “Why do you come here? You could go down the road and find a caravan, and every man and woman there will have lost children to the flames of this war. And I am not sorry.”

  I catch his sleeve and it tears. “Who have you lost? Who did you know that died in the flames of Kahbadam, or was trampled under war-horse hooves? I am not sorry, man-who-seeks-to-redeem-me. I am not sorry for the Wise Khayif. Judge me now.”

  He won’t meet my eyes.

  I take the plate of food and press it into his hands.

  He looks at me, and looks at the paper on my desk, and turns to leave. At the door, he hesitates. “Write of how Spider convinced you.”

  I curse him silently. I know I will write it. It is the only way to hasten my fate.

  * * *

  Two Sand-Eaters took me. I had never seen either one before.