The Key to Creation (11 page)

Above on the deck, Captain Belluc stood at the open hatch, talking with the handful of travelers who had come aboard at various ports as the
Moray
worked its way toward Olabar. The passengers relaxed in comfort under private awnings, played games of chance, or picked out tunes on musical instruments without a thought for the galley slaves below.

The men did not groan or beg for mercy; they had learned to save their words. Despite his exhaustion, Ciarlo talked to them, whispering when he had no other breath. He saw a chance to tell his fellow wretches about better things, about hope. They were Urabans convicted of various crimes, and they had been taught nothing other than Urec’s Log. Ciarlo knew that was why he’d been sent here.

“I met the Traveler in person,” he said to no one in particular. “I spoke with him. He told me a story of the three brothers when they were back in Terravitae—Aiden, Urec, and Joron. He left me a new book of tales, but the people in that last town burned it.”

The men clenched their jaws or squeezed their eyes shut as they pulled the oars against the water, then lifted, pushed forward, and dropped again. Upon hearing Ciarlo’s fantastic claim, several slaves made scornful sounds, but they all listened.

“The Traveler is Aiden. He watches us. He knows all the things his children do.”

“The Traveler is Urec,” someone grumbled.

“That is not what I believe,” Ciarlo said, as if that ended the matter. “He performed a miracle—healed my leg, took away my pain. An amazing demonstration of his powers.”

“If the Traveler is your friend, then ask him to free us,” another man said. “Now that’s a demonstration I’d like to see.”

“We are all here for a reason,” Ciarlo said. “Maybe my reason is to tell you the things I know. And maybe the reason you’re here is to listen. You were taught fanciful stories by the priestesses. Now let me tell you about Aiden’s voyage.” He rowed mechanically, but closed his eyes and traveled in his imagination, seeing the historical events as if he had been there himself. When he described how Aiden’s Arkship was beached on a high hill in Ishalem, he wasn’t surprised to hear grumbles and refutations, since Urabans had always insisted that the wreck was
Urec
’s ship, not Aiden’s.

But Ciarlo continued preaching without pause, talking about Aiden’s grandson Sapier, who had sailed with a crew of disreputable men who cast him overboard with nothing but driftwood and a fishhook. Blessed by Ondun, Sapier had hooked a sea serpent, which towed him all the way back home. During his ordeal, Sapier had received revelations about Aiden’s teachings.

In the midst of his talk, a fiery line stung like acid across his bent back, and Ciarlo heard the crack of a whip. “I’ll have none of that garbage aboard my ship!” Captain Belluc’s wide face was dark as he descended from the hatch into the slave hold. His earring glinted. He lashed his whip again.

Ciarlo braced himself against the pain, wondering how the captain could have heard him from above. The slaves chained next to him tried to squirm out of the way to avoid the lash, but one of them caught the tip nevertheless.

The oarmaster stopped drumming to let the confrontation play out, more interested than intimidated. With a sniff, the captain issued his pronouncement. “Since you have so much extra energy to talk, you won’t need your rations today. You’ll go without your bowl of food.”

Ciarlo didn’t argue, simply endured. Flustered that the Aidenist prisoner did not plead for mercy, the
Moray
’s captain glowered at them all, then climbed back up the wooden ladder to the main deck.

Later, after sunset, Belluc led a perfunctory prayer from Urec’s Log for his passengers as the galley drifted in calm waters. The oarmaster shuffled forward with a heavy kettle, ladling out bowls of watery stew made from fish heads and guts.

Ciarlo went without, per the captain’s orders. His stomach was tight with hunger, but he didn’t complain. One of the nearby slaves looked at him with sad eyes and extended his own bowl so that Ciarlo could take a sip.

The oarmaster hurried back, yelling, and knocked the bowl from the other slave’s hands. “You go without, too! Captain’s orders!”

The kindly slave turned away from Ciarlo with an air of crushing disappointment. Ciarlo closed his eyes, breathed evenly, and recited his own prayers to Aiden.

* * * 

Riding aboard the
Moray
allowed Asaddan to see parts of the land he had not yet visited on the Middlesea coast. He sat back on a wooden crate and watched as the dusk shadows cloaked the shore. Off in the distance, he could see the twinkling lights of lamps and cookfires in a coastal town.

If only Shipkhan Ruad had remained in Ishalem just another week or two, they could have passed through the new canal and voyaged together into the Middlesea, but that was not to be. Since he wanted to see other parts of Uraba, he didn’t mind riding aboard this slave galley as it made slow progress toward Olabar, stopping at village after village.

Though the soldan-shah had given him a wardrobe of silken clothes, Asaddan preferred his traditional buffalo-skin vest that left his arms bare. He kept his thick black hair in an unruly mane, though he could have had it trimmed, oiled, and tied back in a ponytail. His hair and clothing marked him as an interesting foreigner among the Urabans.

He enjoyed being the center of attention. Asaddan liked to let eager bystanders buy him drinks in taverns, in exchange for outrageous stories. He could also charm daring women who were curious to know whether a Nunghal man had the same parts as a Uraban. “Oh, we do.” He would quirk his lips in a grin to show off the mysterious gap in his front teeth. “Maybe more than you expect.”

As he journeyed along the Middlesea coast, however, Asaddan was uneasy to see how poorly the captain treated the men chained to the oars. Captain Belluc insisted that every one of the rowers had committed heinous crimes, and now they were repaying their debt through blood and sweat.

Peering through the open hatches to scrutinize the downtrodden men, the Nunghal began to doubt that all these prisoners were unrepentant murderers or rapists, especially the meek and peaceable Aidenist who spoke Uraban even more clumsily than Asaddan did. He had heard terrible stories about bloodthirsty Aidenists, and had seen their hateful fleet attempt to burn Ishalem, but he began to gain a new perspective as he listened to that man’s mumbled stories.

On deck, Captain Belluc often tried to engage Asaddan in conversation, eager to hear stories about the vast grazing Nunghal lands south of the Great Desert and how he had crossed the dry wastes to Missinia. “What would you say is the strangest thing you’ve seen among us?” Belluc was like a child, eager to hear adventure stories.

Asaddan scratched his shaggy black hair. “Strangest thing?” He gestured toward the open hatch and the slaves below. “I would say this practice.” The echoing drumbeats wafted up, along with the clatter of chains and the groan of oars. “There are many beasts of burden—why treat men as animals?”

Belluc laughed as if he could hardly believe what the Nunghal had said. “But these
are
animals. They die content knowing they have served some use. Without slaves to work the oars, how would our ship get to Olabar on schedule?”

Asaddan shrugged. “Why not wait a few extra days for favorable breezes?”

Belluc laughed again. “You are a strange man, Asaddan.”

As the galley quieted for the night, Asaddan remained awake on deck. Before long, in a low voice, the persistent Tierran slave began to speak again. Though he was chained to his bench, his dedication to his Aidenist beliefs remained undiminished. Asaddan was beginning to admire him.

Arikara

In his hilltop palace in the capital of Missinia soldanate, Xivir spent the afternoon with his abacus and registry rolls. He sat on silk cushions by a low mahogany table, making notations of taxes and goods kept in inventory. He did not hurry his letters and numbers: he could at least keep his penmanship neat, even when the ledgers showed losses instead of profits.

The bandit raid on Desert Harbor had destroyed the sand coracles, which ruined an entire season of trading with the Nunghals. Unable to cross the Great Desert, merchants reported plummeting profits, and the numbers on the soldan’s tax ledgers showed a commensurate drop. Missinia Soldanate, and all of Uraba, had come to depend on the lucrative trade with the nomadic people.

But while Soldan Xivir might have lost tax revenue, the bandits had lost plenty of heads. His master carpenters had built special shelves to hold and display the heads of twenty-three executed bandit leaders, each gruesome trophy preserved in tar—far more impressive showpieces than any enameled vase or glazed pot, he thought.

The voice of his sister interrupted him. “I’m about finished with my letter to dear Imir. Do you have anything you’d like to add?”

Xivir slid his abacus to one side. Lithio often joined him in his afternoon ponderings, and now she lounged with a square of lacquered wood on her lap serving as a desk. She wrote pages of details that could not possibly interest the retired soldan-shah.

Lithio and Imir had been estranged for decades; though they were both proud of their son Omra, the two had little else to show for their union. They were content to live far apart, and Lithio persisted in writing Imir regular letters, although she never received any reply.

“Why do you spend so much time at your correspondence, sister? You know it merely annoys Imir.”

“Precisely the reason.” Lithio smiled teasingly. “And I find it amusing.”

Xivir rearranged the beads on his abacus. “You should find another husband. Imir would certainly sanction it.”

“Why do I need another husband? I’m quite content with my life as it is.”

A servant entered carrying a tray with two glasses and a pot of steaming lemon tea. “Soldan, your son has arrived from Desert Harbor.”

Xivir brightened, closed his ledgers, and set aside the abacus. “Send him in. He needs no permission to see me.”

Lithio placed her wooden writing surface on the tiled floor and raised herself from her cushions with exaggerated grace. She embraced Burilo as soon as he entered, then wrinkled her nose. “You need a bath and some food.”

“I would not disagree.” Burilo pulled up a cushion in front of his father’s low desk. “First, though, you should know the good news from Desert Harbor. After months of hard work, we’ve repaired the damage from the bandit attack—and completed the frameworks for ten new sand coracles. The improved design is even larger than before, so the coracles will be able to carry more cargo next season.”

Xivir tapped a fingertip on the disappointing numbers on his sheet. “They’ll need to make up for this disaster.”

“By now, Khan Jikaris must be worried. Our merchants have come every year, and he will wait for months. I wish we could send him a message.”

“And I wish the bandits would disappear.” Xivir grimaced at the grisly display on his shelves. “But the winds are already changing for the season, and we’ll just have to wait. Maybe next year Khan Jikaris will pay higher prices for trinkets and delicacies from Uraba.”

“You could always walk across the dunes like Asaddan did,” Lithio said. “Take the direct route.”

“No, thank you. Even a trip by sand coracle sounds too rugged for me.” Xivir sipped his lemon tea, then offered the rest of the cup to his son, who gulped it. “I am the soldan, and I enjoy my comforts of civilization.”

As if to punish him for his smugness, a deep rumble shook the ground. The stone walls of the palace thrummed and vibrated, and heavy blocks fell from the top of a wall in the courtyard. Xivir’s abacus fell over with a clatter of beads, and he sprang to his feet, looking in alarm at the cracks that raced along the plastered ceiling. “Outside—get outside, now!”

While Lithio stood openmouthed in confusion, Burilo grabbed her arm, and Xivir herded them both out into the wide corridor. Behind him, just as they rushed out of the chamber, the wooden display case creaked forward and toppled. The grotesque preserved heads tumbled onto the tiled floor like rotten fruit.

Lithio, Xivir, and Burilo rushed into the open courtyard, while portions of the palace began to collapse around them. Walls buckled and clay bricks fell inward; support pillars rocked and swayed drunkenly, and also collapsed. The roof crashed in.

From the rise on which his palace was built, Soldan Xivir gazed across Arikara, the marketplaces, the churches, the watchtowers. Bells clanged in a violent cacophony, and a roaring wave of sound seemed to press the very air itself. Swaths of rickety vendor stalls and tents collapsed; terra-cotta roof tiles became deadly missiles that smashed into the street. He could see the ground itself roll and heave as the earthquake went on and on.

Xivir watched his city fall.

Olabar, Main Urecari Church

At noon, Soldan-Shah Omra reopened the doors of Olabar’s main church with great ceremony. His protocol advisers had staged the event carefully.

The applause of the crowd sounded like a sigh of relief after so much tension. Omra’s father had sealed the entrance on that terrible night when Villiki had fled and Ur-Sikara Erima had taken her own life. For two weeks now, the towering main church had stood empty. Even though Omra directed his anger toward the corrupt priestesses, not the church of Urec itself, the people were unsettled.

After today, their stable course would be set once more and life would return to normal.…

In the past week, behind closed doors, Omra had given the cowed sikaras strict instructions to choose Kuari, former emissary from Inner Wahilir and wife of Soldan Huttan, as their new ur-sikara. He himself would install Kuari in her new office. Those concessions were the price of freedom for the priestesses.

Now, with both of his wives at his side, Omra stepped up to the fern-embossed doors with an air of authority. The people drew a hushed breath. The soldan-shah turned to the blacksmith he had chosen, speaking loudly enough that his words echoed back to the crowd. “Strike these chains away and open the church doors. Only fresh air and sunlight can cleanse the poisonous shadows from these halls.”