Echoes of light, p.3
Echoes of Light, page 3
Olive nodded. He saw the doubt in her eyes. Too many cities lay in ruins around the Encircled Sea, but Epher had to believe—that this could become a place like Gefen, converted into an Aelarian city, most of its people—those who joined the Empire—spared.
My people will lose their freedom, their culture, their identity—but not their lives.
"A gateway," said a warrior, pointing to the shadows.
A man fell to his knees, eyes damp. "The Gate of Tears!"
Epher stepped into the shadows, and he saw it rise there. A crumbly archway, teardrops engraved onto its stones. It led to shadows.
From outside sounded a shattering boom. Sandals thumped and metal chinked, and Claudia's laughter rose.
Epher looked at Olive. She looked back, and he saw her love, her loyalty, her courage in her eyes. Hand in hand, they stepped through the Gate of Tears into a tunnel.
Forgive me. As Epher walked in shadows, he let his own tears fall—tears he would dare not show his warriors. Forgive me, my people. Forgive me, God. I'm sorry.
ABISHAG
Abishag, daughter of Naeem, had always walked upon light.
She had walked across the plains of Zohar, seeking grass and leaves for her flock of sheep. She had walked the hills and mountain paths, a mere child, seeking refuge in Beth Eloh. She had walked the streets of that city, a consecrated sister, seeking the Gate of Tears and a savior. But now, here in the Valley of Ashes, Abishag walked the longest path she had ever taken.
The dirt path coiled downhill between brambles and boulders, only a hundred steps long, longer than all the shores of the Encircled Sea and the stairway down to Ashael. This was a valley Abishag had always feared. The old tales told that once, many generations ago, idolaters had worshipped a hollowed bronze bull in this valley. Every season, they would sacrifice a child to their god, lighting fires beneath the bull and cooking the innocent within. King Elshalom had smashed that bull a thousand years ago, had smote the idolaters, but the legends remained, the fear of this place. Some claimed that from here, the Valley of Ashes, had sprung the stories of Ashael, the underworld of dead sinners and demons.
Smoke still rose from the nearby Mount of Cedars, hiding the sky. A cold wind blew, and ash flurried around Abishag's bare feet. As the smoke wafted above, the thin, leafless trees seemed to tilt in the valley, and the brick houses that rose on the hilltops turned umber, their shadows stretching out like slender men.
In the center of the valley it rose. The cross seemed separate from the rest of the valley, untouched by ash or shadow, and as Abishag walked toward it, it seemed to her that the faintest light shone upon it.
Three days ago, the legions of that foreign empire had hung Maya here to die. For three days, Abishag had wept, prayed for that death to come. Today, on this third day, as fires blazed on the Mount of Cedars and the kingdom of Zohar collapsed around her, Abishag approached the cross to find Maya still upon it.
No longer did the thin chest rise and fall with ragged breath. No longer did the blood flow, the tears stream, the soldiers laugh and pelt the dying flesh with stones. All was silent now. All was still.
Abishag knelt by the cross, lowered her head, and her tears fell.
"I promised to follow you wherever you go," Abishag whispered. "But I don't know how to follow you now. I don't know how to find light without you."
"You have always walked upon light, consecrated sister."
The voice came from behind. Abishag turned to see the consecrated sisters, those she had once worshipped with, approach the cross. Long ago, Maya had spoken to them in Beth Eloh—back when Shefael had still reigned, when the city had languished under the siege of Yohanan. They had been but starving wretches, clad in burlap, diseased, sores on their lips, their genitals inflamed, their eyes sunken, their minds mad. Maya had healed them. Maya had raised Abishag from those shadows.
She shook her head. "I'm no longer a consecrated sister." Abishag stared at these women, the whores who had serviced the priests outside the Temple, only to later donate their earnings to the very men who had known them. "We did not walk upon light. We claimed to worship the light but we sank into shadows. Maya showed us true light. Maya cast back those shadows that we had drowned in. Let us not be consecrated sisters. Let us forever be her children. We will not forget our savior."
They worked in silence, pulling Maya down from the cross, and Abishag sat in the valley, holding the body in her arms like a mother cradling her child. For long days, Maya had shuddered, rasped, and died so slowly on the cross, but in death she seemed peaceful. Abishag caressed the sunburned cheek and stroked back the damp hair. It seemed to her that just a glimmer, maybe just a trick of the light, still clung to Maya's thin fingers, then rose as mist from the valley.
"Rise, Maya," Abishag whispered. "Rise and be with the light."
They were daughters of Eloh. Their books taught that no afterlife awaited the fallen. They had sprung from the earth, and to earth they must return. Maya knew that many in Nur, in Sekadia, in Aelar, in every other land believed that souls rose after death. Not so Zoharites. Theirs was this life alone.
But perhaps, Abishag dared to hope, a piece of Maya's soul would forever be in the kingdom of Luminosity, forever rest in Eloh's grace.
"To the earth we must return," she said. "Help me, sisters."
They fashioned a litter from a cloak and shattered spears, and they carried Maya through the city. The streets were filled with citizens and legionaries, yet nobody paid them any heed. What was one more body in a city of death? They carried Maya toward the city gates, hoping to bury her outside the city, but found them closed and guarded. The legionaries even blocked the fallen Gate of Myrrh, a mere pile of rubble. Abishag turned toward the Temple Mount, but the fires still blazed there. Finally they found a small garden, just large enough for a fig tree and two date palms. The trees shaded a domed library, a bakery, and a shop that sold flutes and rams' horns and lyres. It was a quiet place, a beautiful place. They began to dig in the garden, and men emerged from the city streets to help them. Some already carried shovels, for they had been burying dead soldiers over the past three days.
Abishag had heard that in Aelar, they burned the dead in pyres. In Nur, they were said to mummify their fallen, placing the organs in jars, the body in a stone sarcophagus, preserved for eternity. In Sekadia, travelers said, they buried their dead in ornate coffins, the boxes inlaid with whatever precious metals and gems the deceased's family could afford. All prepared to send their dead to the next world in comfort, in wealth, or in flame.
In Zohar, we bury our dead wrapped in a simple shroud, Abishag thought. No wood or stone or fire. Only a piece of homespun, that is all. From earth we came. To earth we return.
Yet before they lowered Maya into the grave, Abishag placed a tattered prayer shawl upon the body—Maya's shawl, the one she had worn when entering the Gate of Tears.
For a long time afterward, Abishag stood in the garden by the grave. The palm trees shaded her. Smoke still streamed above, fires crackled, and distant screams and weeping rose through the city. But here—here in this garden was a place of peace. Here was a place of beauty.
"You're not buried in a great tomb," Abishag said. "And maybe, in years to come, none will remember the place of your grave. But I promise you, Maya. They will not forget your name. And they will not forget your wisdom."
The wind rustled the palm fronds, and distant cries of mourning rose on the wind, and Abishag thought back to Maya's words.
Every light must cast a shadow, Abishag thought. But every shadow means the presence of light. I will bring healing to this broken world. As others kill, I will nurture life. As others destroy, I will build. Others slew her, and I will spread word of Maya's wisdom through the world. Her words will not die.
She sat by the grave. She pulled her knees up to her chin. As the city burned and crumbled around her, Abishag thought of a young shepherdess racing through the fields, a crook in her hand, leading her sheep through a world of grass and sunlight and a waiting home.
CLAUDIA
She burst into the Temple, and she saw it at once. An archway leading to a tunnel. The chamber was empty. Epher and his heathens were gone.
Several of Claudia's men entered the Holy of Holies behind her, and thousands more filled the courtyard outside. Legatus Constantius stood at her side. The general pointed the prosthetic strapped to his left arm—it was shaped as an eagle's talon—at the tunnel.
"So the rats fled into their hole." He drew his gladius. "We will chase them."
Claudia shook her head. "No."
The general stared at her, frowning. Claudia stared back, chin raised.
Do you dare defy me, legatus? she thought. I came to this place a soft girl. I was tempered in fire. You will obey me.
"So you would have them flee?" said Constantius.
She nodded. "I would. Because I know where they're going." A grin stretched her cheeks. "I know Epher. He will wait for us."
Her grin tugged the burns that crawled up her neck and jawline. Fire flared, racing along the wounds, again grabbing her neck, her left arm, her thigh, searing the flesh, raising the welts. It had been only days since Epher had tossed his torch, burning her siege tower, burning her, and the pain had never subsided.
Good, she thought. Pain kept her alive, alert, hungry for him. It was nothing compared to the pain she would cause him.
She thought back to their childhoods. He had been only a boy, raising castles in the sand, playing with the other children. Behold Tarath El! he had cried. The desert fortress will never fall!
As youths, as they cuddled after a night of sweaty love, he would sometimes speak of that fortress. The silly pride of a Zoharite. In Aelar, there were fortresses to dwarf anything in the desert, but still Epher would recite the old tales, how Tarath El was the fist of his people, how it had never fallen, not even as the Sekadians and Nurians and Kalintians and all the other enemies had swept across this land.
You're going there now, Claudia thought. You're taking the narrow paths down the mountain, across the rocky desert, to the edifice that rises in the south. And there you will wait for me. And I will come to you, Epher. I will come to you as I always did. You will die at my hands, Epher, but I will keep my vow. Among the rats, you will die last.
She looked at Constantius. "Send a party of fifty men after Epheriah. Make sure they track him, but do not engage him in war yet. Our war in Beth Eloh has not yet ended."
The general's eyes narrowed. The Iron Eagle did not like taking orders from her—the spoiled daughter of a rich man, not a soldier. But he would obey. He was a legatus, yes, a commander of many legionaries, and a suit of armor encased his rancid flesh, turning him into an iron bird. But he was still just a soldier. Soldiers weren't worthy of licking her sandals.
"But the city has fallen, domina," he said. "The walls and gates, the Mount, the Temple—all are ours, and every last defender lies dead or has fled into the darkness."
She raised an eyebrow. "But some in this city still live."
Constantius flicked his eyes toward his soldiers, then back to her. He stepped closer and spoke in a low voice. "The fighters are dead or fled. Nothing but cripples, elders, women, and children, domina. That's all that remains in Beth Eloh."
She nodded. "All rats. And rats must be wiped out." She grinned so widely it hurt her cheeks. "Epheriah abandoned them, legatus. He abandoned them to my mercy. I want Epheriah to hear their screams as he flees. I want those screams to haunt him forever. When I kill him, I want him to die knowing that he betrayed his people, that he left his nation to perish while he cowered." She walked back toward the courtyard, leaving the shadows. She swept her arm across the view of the city that rolled below the hill. "Do you see this city, legatus?"
He walked up beside her. He nodded. "I see it."
"Move through the city," she said. "Choose five thousand. The pretty women. Virgins, if you can find any in this nation of whores. Strong men too, if any still live. The women will fuck in the brothels of Aelar, and the men will break their spines in our quarries or die in our arenas. We can fit five thousand on our ships, that is all. Take no more. Kill the others." She curled her hands into fists. "Do it quickly. Do it now. And after they're dead, I want every last fucking building in this city razed to the ground. The Temple. The palace. Every last hovel where a Zoharite wench squatted to spawn. I want them all fallen. If there are any two bricks still clinging together when we're done, I will slice your neck open myself." She gave him her sweetest smile. "We came. We saw. Now we kill."
Constantius stared at her, silent behind his eagle-head helmet. Then he nodded.
It rained the day Beth Eloh fell.
Outside the city, across dunes and barren mountainsides, buried seeds sprouted, sending forth flowers, fields of white blossoms like shrouds, as if the land itself mourned.
The raindrops passed through the veil of smoke above Beth Eloh, falling heavy with ash—gray, thick drops that splattered like globs of mud. Steam rose over flame until all the city was vapor and water, fire and beams of light, the painting of a madman, all in gold and gray and shimmering crimson.
Claudia stood on the Mount of Cedars, watching with a small smile on her lips. She watched as her legionaries, extensions of her fury, moved through the city streets, their rams driving into the walls of houses. She watched, her smile growing, as spear and sword tore into elders, women, and children, as wagons pulled the corpses to public squares, as the dead burned. She watched, the rain in her eyes, as the catapults and rams tore down the towers and domes, the houses of healing, the libraries and markets. She thought of Epher as the streets burned, because it was beautiful, more beautiful than the sea in sunset, and she missed him.
"You did this, Epher," she whispered, her tears mingling with the rain. The flames and steam and smoke spread before her across the city, a sea of color and light. "You abandoned them. You betrayed them. Their deaths are upon you. The fall of this nation is your burden to bear."
The cries rose from below. A beautiful song. A dirge. Her tears kept flowing.
"It's so beautiful." She raised her eyes, marveling at how the rain fell into fire, how the arrows cut through the steam, how golden light blazed through the mist. "The fall of a nation. We witness history. We witness rebirth."
Below the Mount of Cedars, the people were trying to reach the safety of the Temple, as Epher had, but Claudia had left the gates closed. They piled up against the walls, crying out, pleading, calling for their king. A wounded camel, entrails slipping through a slice on its hide, wailed as it raced down the streets. Soldiers pointed and laughed, then turned back to their work, driving their blades into the Zoharites at the walls. Some Zoharites tried to climb, desperately clinging to the bricks, only to fall into the inferno.
"I'm a goddess," Claudia said. As she stood here at the Temple, gazing below at the city, she knew it was true. She commanded death or life. She was the devourer of nations, the bringer of rain. All this was her doing. All this was for her glory.
When the sun set, the city still blazed with light. The fires roared through the streets, the rain unable to douse them. All was red and gold. All was glimmering. All was luminous. Claudia raised the silver horn that hung around her neck, and she gave a long keen. Summoned like a dog to his mistress, Constantius returned to her from the devastation, bloodstained and ashy. Flesh dripped from his iron talon.
"The palace still stands," Claudia said, pointing at the towers and columns on the adjacent hill. "The Temple still stands." She pointed at the soaring wonder behind her, its pale marble walls and crown of gold.
Constantius nodded. "They are buildings of splendor, domina. We will rededicate them to the glory of your family and gods. We will worship Camulus in the Temple, and—"
"We will see them fall," Claudia said. "Our glory will not reside in halls where rats writhed and spawned. Our glory will lie only in their ruin. Come with me. We will empty these halls of whatever trifles we find within them, and we will peel off the gold from their parapets, so that it might raise wondrous arches in Aelar. What remains we will crumble to dust."
Throughout the night, the day, and another night they labored. Claudia did not sleep. She sat on her horse on the Mount of Cedars, watching. As every legionary emerged from the palace, bearing treasures on litters, she smiled. They carried out chests of gold and silver and gemstones. They carried out jewels, vases of precious metal, and rich fabrics embroidered with golden thread. They carried the throne of Zohar, on which they had placed the corpse of a Zoharite mother holding her babe, symbols of a falling nation. They climbed ladders and worked with hammers, peeling the gilt off parapets and the capitals of columns, stripping the Temple and palace bare of their gleaming raiment. Litter by litter, the gold piled up, the greatest treasure Aelar had ever plundered.
"Your treasures will gild statues of me in Aelar, Epher," Claudia said, speaking to him across the distance. "I will bring you back with me. You will see the idols that your gold built, soaring in my likeness. You will kneel at their feet before your death in the arena. And you will know what you did to your people. What you did to me." She clenched her fist and let her rage sear away her tears, her horror. "You betrayed me. You burned me. And so now your world burns." She blew her horn again. "Tear them down!"
The rams drove into walls. The catapults hurled boulders at towers. Fires blazed in barren halls. The palace fell first, a collapse that thundered like dying giants. Clouds of dust blew across Claudia even from the distance. Deafening cracks like shattering mountains sounded to her left, and she turned to see the Temple—this ancient edifice, this soaring monument, this center of heathens who worshipped nothing but air—crumble and fall. The towers and columns shattered against the courtyard. The crown of naked pediments drove down the hillside, crashing through walls, digging deep grooves in the earth, and finally tearing out the tombstones in the cemetery like a knife scaling a fish. Dust billowed, finally settling over ruins.
