Like most of the people of Salmacha, the priest Chanjask was tall and long-limbed, and his age was difficult to tell. His skin lacked the rough, oaken quality of his superior, Ucasta, so I guessed him to have lived forty or fifty years. He possessed bright, dark eyes that darted quickly from face to face in the crowded throne room. He was a clever man, if not a wise one; he knew which way the winds were turning, and he would set the sails of his life and career accordingly.
He finished his recitation of the law as Mara had asked, and he bent to kneel on the floor, touching his brow to the marble tile and raising his hands in supplication—to the princesses, it would appear, though Mara still held the power to decide his fate. She dismissed him with a wave of her hand, and he stood, more quickly than his apparent age might allow. He backed away, holding his empty hands palms-up as though he were offering a gift. He let the gathered mass of noblemen envelop him, and I was certain he intended to disappear.
I stepped down from my place beside Hamilcar. Before I could find Chanjask again, three soldiers and one of Mara’s mail-clad women moved to block the great door. The crowd shifted and parted to allow them to pass, but closed again behind them to bar my way.
The nobles had not aligned against me. I do not believe they even noticed me, a stranger from across the sea who could neither threaten their power nor enhance it. This was the first time I had encountered such men—even in Phyreios, no one could gain power but the Ascended themselves, and political maneuvering could only be fruitless—and it would not be the last.
I placed my shoulder firmly against the shoulder of the first man who stood in my path, a smooth-faced young fellow wearing a silk robe in a yellow so brilliant as to outshine the sun. That was enough to startle him into moving, and the others around him reluctantly cleared a path.
Even my disruption did not halt their inscrutable discussions for long. Though the immediate questions of succession and regency had been answered, each of these men had his own position to argue. I listened only a moment before I could comprehend no more.
I met Chanjask as he made his way to the edge of the room, on the opposite side as the assembled soldiers. At first, he did not acknowledge me, obscured as I was by the bodies of others. I reached out and clapped a hand on his shoulder.
He yelped and jumped into the air as much as the weight of my arm would allow him. Seeing me at last, he collected himself, straightening his brown robe and polished wooden collar.
“I remember you,” he said, just loudly enough for me to hear. “You were the prisoner, the one with the lightning weapon. Are you pleased with your handiwork?”
It might have been an accusation, but he delivered it in such a conversational tone that I took my hand from his shoulder in surprise.
He smiled, a broad, snaggle-toothed grin that was almost friendly. “I’m glad things turned out in your favor, stranger. What can a humble priest do for you?”
I did not like his obsequious manner, nor did I trust his sudden shift of loyalty from Ucasta and his blood-magic to the living princesses, but I had questions that Ucasta himself was no longer available to answer. “I’m on a quest,” I said. “I want to ask you about the magic your high priest had you do.”
Chanjask’s smile disappeared, replaced by a look of exaggerated sorrow. “Ah, yes. Ucasta believed he was doing what was best for the kingdom, you know, as misguided as he might have been. I’m afraid I didn’t have access to his greater mysteries, but I will help you however I can.”
“What exactly did Ucasta and the king do?” I asked. “Sondassan looked like he should have died years ago.”
The priest nodded, but his eyes were furtive. He did not want our conversation overheard, which was all the more reason for me to keep him here, surrounded by people. “Yes, he had been ill for some time, though he kept it concealed. But even if he had been hale and hearty at his ninety years of age, I believe he would have sought Ucasta’s help anyway. King Sondassan wanted to win the age-old battle against death. He wanted to live forever.”
He spoke as though he had not been present for every step of this process: serving the high priest, spilling blood into the pool, and chanting along with his fellows. He was a slippery one, and in many ways, he had already escaped punishment for his crimes.
As I prepared to defy the laws of the gods, I thought myself more righteous than he. “So you and your high priest intended to grant his wish?” I said.
Chanjask shook his head in a mockery of regret. “Alas, such a thing is impossible. Death comes for every man, whether he be a king or a pirate. Despite all his searching, High Priest Ucasta could not find a way to restore a soul to its own body once it has been severed.” He leaned in, gesturing for me to do the same, drawing me in to his talk of conspiracy. “What he did succeed in doing is preventing that break from happening in the first place. King Sondassan remained alive, his body preserved, and thus he could still guide our great kingdom.”
“But you needed blood to maintain him.”
“It was an unfortunate necessity,” he said. “Once the old god under the island had been called up, its sacrifice would have sustained him for a hundred years.”
And after that hundred years was up, I knew, he would need more blood. I had seen the same thing in Phyreios. The Ascended had ruled for a thousand years, or so the people living under their tyranny had said. How many gods had they slain, and how many more human beings?
“I am looking to recover a soul,” I said, “one that did not die, but was removed from his body to make room for a god.”
Chanjask’s eyes caught the climbing sun with a sharp, intelligent gleam. I regretted asking him for his help—he was already shaping my request into a weapon he could use against me. “Fascinating,” he said. “Bodies can be shared, but only for a short time, as the shamans of the far continent do when they perform their rites.”
Khalim had, in his own words, carried the god Torr since he had been a small child, but I would not argue with the priest. I needed whatever information he could give me.
“Retrieval of the soul would be a challenge worthy of High Priest Ucasta,” Chanjask continued, “but in his absence, I will do my best. He acquired a tome some years ago, a record of the work of a Western mystic. It was quite helpful when Sondassan came to him with his requests.”
“A book,” I said. “I have no use for books.”
He put a hand to his chin and looked me up and down. “Hm. I suspected as much. Worry not, stranger. I will help you.”
“What exactly can this book do?” I had begun to suspect that Chanjask knew nothing, that he had followed Ucasta heedlessly and only done as he had been told, hoping that when the carefully arranged facade around the dying king crumbled, his ignorance would save him from retribution. He may have been right; Mara had far more important matters with which to concern herself than one of the high priest’s underlings, especially when she had most of his fellows still imprisoned in the same dungeon in which I had languished for three days.
“The book does nothing,” said Chanjask. “But with the book, Ucasta could preserve the body and soul of the king, and with it, I can retrieve the soul you want and place it in the correct vessel. Its original body seems to be out of the question, so would you prefer a gem? A lamp? Another body? It would be a simple matter to sacrifice one of the prisoners—”
The thought of Khalim being imprisoned in an object, or placed in a stolen body after its occupant was murdered, turned my stomach. I cut him off. “No.” It was nearly a shout, though I had not intended to speak at such a volume, and the room fell quiet. All eyes turned to me.
I cleared my throat and squared my shoulders, and soon the gathered noblemen lost interest in my predicament. Chanjask, for his part, had backed away several paces, and his eyes told me he was trying once again to escape. His face cracked into a smile of feigned innocence as I closed the short distance between us.
“I will not permit you to commit such evil,” I said.
He lifted his arms in a long-limbed shrug. “It’s quite a large tome. I’m sure that whatever you want with the soul in question, you’d find some wisdom in its pages.” With another step backward, he added, “Ucasta kept it in a locked chest in the temple. I can fetch it for you.”
I knew he had no intention of returning with the book. I came up beside him and placed an arm around his bony shoulders, my hand clenching around his upper arm and holding him in place. “We’ll go together,” I said.
His smile faltered, and fear rose up behind his eyes. “If you like,” he said, feigning ease. “It’s only a short walk.”
The press of the crowd had loosened, though the arguing was no quieter for it. I marched Chanjask out the great doors of the palace and onto the grounds. Once, I imagined, it had been beautiful, this walled garden kept for the exclusive use of the royal family. Paths of marble wound between overgrown shrubs and alabaster planters filled with cracked, dry earth. A single scarlet rose, missing most of its petals, stared out like a bloody eye from a climbing vine covered in thorns, clinging to a tall, white pillar. There had been more flowers, when the desiccated stems had been green. I feared the palace gardeners had met their fate in the tunnels below.
The temple stood at the other end of the garden path; an austere structure of flat gray slabs of stone placed at sharp angles. This was the temple of the new gods—Ucasta’s gods, and Chanjask’s, who permitted their followers to slaughter their fellow citizens. I had met such gods before.
Ucasta’s book lay in a locked chest in a small room at the top of the temple, beneath a length of fine white silk and a collar of rubies the color of the setting sun. It wasn’t much to look at, its plain leather cover dyed a uniform, faded black, and the binding stitched with sinews.
Chanjask scowled briefly when I took it from his hands and opened it. The image of a man’s body, flayed and spread out on a bed of cramped, shaky text, greeted me from within its pages. I was no stranger to death, but the illustration disturbed me—the terror in the man’s eyes, the hollow cavities in his body where his heart and stomach would have been, the inscrutable writing surrounding him, and the soft, warm texture of the page, as though I touched the skin of a living person.
I slammed the book shut between my hands, prompting another scowl from Chanjask. “Shall I start reading it to you?” he asked.
I no longer wished to know what secrets lay between these cursed pages, though I feared that I would one day have to find out. That day was not this one, however, and I had no desire to leave those secrets in Chanjask’s slippery hands. “I will be taking this,” I said.
“You can’t even read it!” he argued. “Are you really going to steal an artifact from me, after everything else you’ve done?”
“Where I come from, this would be considered rightful spoils, along with any other treasure you have here,” I said. “But if you disagree, I would happily challenge you for it.” I reached for my harpoon.
Chanjask held up his hands in surrender. “So be it,” he said. “I wish you luck in learning its magic. There are few who can help you, and even fewer who might be willing.”
Back to Chapter XIX: The Palace, Still Standing
Forward to Chapter XXI: Calm Seas
I can’t go too long without writing in a forbidden tome. It’s a problem. Fortunately for Eske, he won’t be able to read it without help, but the temptation to seek out that help remains. Feel free to yell at him in the comments and encourage him not to do any dark magic.
Thanks for reading!
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