With the terrible book in my hands, I retraced my steps through the neglected garden and returned to the palace. A cold wind had come in from the sea as the sun set, and the strange warmth of the book’s leather binding cooled until it felt like the skin of a dead man. I considered throwing it from the ship as soon as I reached open water. I could only guess at its contents, but I was filled with the grim certainty that it was an evil book, and I would find no help in its pages that did not cost me my very soul.
For now, I would keep it in my possession. Chanjask or one of his fellow priests might seek it out if I left it unattended, and with it imperil the island once more. If all I could do was prevent a second attempt at sinking Salmacha, then that was what I would do.
Much of the crowd had dispersed by the time I entered the throne room. Two clusters of young men in brilliant silk robes remained, speaking to each other with wide gestures and pointed frowns, performing as much for a casual observer such as myself as they did for one another. No deity would oversee the rebuilding of Salmacha—the god beneath the island had returned to its endless sleep, leaving the mortals who walked under the sun to fend for themselves. There would be chaos here in the days to come, despite Mara’s best efforts and the crowning of the twin princesses.
Selfishly, I wished that Phyreios had been left to the same fate. Great men and women had survived the calamity there: Lord Ihsad and his daughter Roshani, Lord Janek and his son Artyom, and Reva the leader of the miners’ guild, all equals to the same task that had been set before Mara and her allies. If the god Torr had left the city, and left Khalim to live his life as it should have been, what would have become of them?
I could not answer that question. The gods had never granted me the power to see into the future, or to see what might have been had fate taken a different turn. What insight I had been given came to me in the vision I’d had in the deep, of a peaceful Phyreios rebuilding from its very foundations.
It was of no matter. I could wish for fate to have smiled upon me in the past, or pray to whatever god might listen to one such as I, but neither would help me on my quest.
I found Hamilcar and his shore party in negotiations with Mara, with the princesses looking on. By standing on the dais, Hamilcar was nearly tall enough to look Mara in the eye, and he favored her with a winsome smile, leaning toward her with one hand resting on his sword.
For her part, Mara’s look was flat, and the long day without any sleep had made itself apparent. If she noticed Hamilcar’s flirtations, she did not acknowledge them. In one hand, she held a small, rectangular piece of wood, and in the other an iron stylus with which she pressed a row of figures into the soft surface. She turned the stick to show it to the princesses for approval, and first one and then the other nodded.
That done, she handed the stick to Hamilcar and sent him on his way. He hopped down from the dais and led the party into the eastern wing of the palace. I fell into line behind them. Halvor spotted the book under my arm and raised one brow in an unspoken question, but he did not press me for an answer. We were about to be paid for our labors, and that was what concerned him.
Hamilcar approached the soldier standing in front of a heavy iron door and gave him the carved line of figures. In exchange, he was given a heavy leather sack, as large as two hands. When he opened it, a hoard of gold and jewels caught the light and reflected a spectrum of colors, falling in shards onto the walls and the tiled floor.
Pleased with this trade, Hamilcar closed up the sack and gave it to Kelebek with a slow, underhand toss. She was both surprised and pleased when its weight fell into her hands.
And so, as the sun sank over the quiet western sea, I returned to the Lady of Osona a free man, having escaped death at the hands of High Priest Ucasta and helped prevent the sinking of Salmacha. From the deck, I turned one last time to the island, where a procession of lights wound from the city down to the abandoned temple where the pirate had hidden his treasure. I had my harpoon, and the book of dark sorcery, and—upon Hamilcar’s insistence—a small pouch with my share of the treasure. I had no way of knowing how much value it contained, but it seemed to me that I had come into great wealth.
“Keep this safe,” he said. “If you don’t, you’ll wish you had sooner or later.”
I promised him I would. That night, I slept at last, and in the morning I took my place at the oars as we followed a rumor that had spread through the palace to an island where the villagers, who had fled Salmacha as the earthquakes began, might have landed.
We arrived upon that island in two days’ time—or rather, those islands, as the villagers of Salmacha had spread out upon a chain of sandy beaches and tiny freshwater springs beneath a canopy of tall trees. There were certainly worse places to wait out the impending doom of their home.
A group of five village leaders greeted us as we brought the rowboat into the shallows. Among them was Kannura, the tall lady of which Hamilcar had spoken at length. Based on his description, I had expected a giant, but she was a slender, strong woman as tall as I. She welcomed us and our news that Salmacha was whole and once again free, and invited us to feast upon fish and fruit liquor with her people before they returned home and we went on our way north to the continent.
I went to my bed that first night with my belly full and my head pleasantly light. I had strung my hammock between two trees, leaving the evil book behind on the ship, and a gentle breeze from the water rocked me to sleep.
No sooner had I drifted off than I found myself underwater again, submerged in an icy sea. Darkness crept up from below my feet, and only a thin green band of sunlight gave me any indication of where the surface lay. I knew at once that this was no ordinary ocean, and I curled my body and dove down, looking for the huge presence of the goddess of the deep and the gate of bone by which she patrolled.
I saw nothing. I did not float in Nashurru’s abyss, nor was there a priestess looking after my body where it slept, to ensure I did not drown. My body was underwater, not safe within the temple under the volcano. The cold sapped the strength from my limbs, and I kicked once toward the surface. My chest ached for want of breath.
The sun’s greenish light faded, and I understood that it was my vision failing, rather than the onset of night. Pain like hot knives shot through my ribs. At any moment, I would be forced to take a breath, and I would inhale water and drown.
Was this, then, how my quest would end? I had never maintained any illusions as to my own mortality, but I had not expected such an ignominious death, drowning alone in strange waters with nothing to mark my passing, not even a bloodstain or a broken spear.
How did I come to be here? The last I remembered, I was on a beach upon one of the southern isles, bathed in sunlight and drunk on sweet liquor, as safe from harm as I had ever been.
I was dreaming. Now that I’d realized it, the fact was obvious. I’d had this dream before.
The pain drifted away as though it had never been, and the cold subsided. I stretched my arms toward the thin ray of light and kicked away from the encroaching blackness below.
I broke the surface with a gasp. Though I did not need to breathe, the instinct overpowered me. I looked up into a flat, blank sky colored a sickly green, with neither a sun to provide light nor clouds to obscure it. The sea around me was iron-gray and stirred by wind, the waves lifting me up and breaking upon my shoulders.
I did not come here on a ship, I thought, so there must be land nearby. At the same time, I understood that this was a dream, and there could be land if I willed it so. As to why I did not simply will myself awake, I cannot answer; despite my newfound awareness, I was still bound by the strange logic of dreaming.
The next wave rolled underneath me, carrying me skyward and toward one distant horizon. A rocky spar surrounded by spindly evergreen trees emerged from the water, and at its feet lay a beach of slate shards worn smooth by eons of rising tides. I kicked my legs and swam toward that beach as the waves carried me onward and a sense that I was being observed by hidden eyes overtook me.
I washed up upon the beach and staggered to my feet. I was dressed in scraps of mail and waterlogged leather, as I had been when I landed on a different rocky beach, so long ago. The last time I dreamt of drowning—and that had not been so many days past—I dreamt of Fearghus. I both hoped that I would find him on this island beneath the strange green sky and dreaded the questions he might ask me if I were to see him.
“The eye is open,” his dream-self had told me. His words carried weight, as they often had in life. Fearghus had always been a better leader than I ever dreamed of being, and certainly a better fit for the head of our tribe than I, but an accident of fate had made me the son of the chieftain and not he.
On both sides, the beach stretched out gray and empty. If human feet had tread it before me, they left nothing to mark their passing, not even the wreck of a boat or a forgotten scrap of fishing net. Before me rose a palisade of sharp rock, each pointed like the head of a spear. It was these that the ocean had battered into the gravel that lay on the shore.
I approached the rocks and found a gap between them, like a missing tooth, and squeezed my way through. A short stretch of flat stone gave way to a sickly, stunted forest. Naked boughs clawed the strange sky, and the trees rattled like dry bones as the wind swept through them.
Standing at the edge of the trees was a stag with antlers like an oak tree, gnarled and rough and hung with vivid green moss. A heavy brown coat, shaggy as a steppe pony in winter, covered it from the base of its antlers to its tail. It lifted its head and stared at me.
It had a human’s eyes, a mottled green-brown surrounded by white sclera, sharp and intelligent. With a shake of its enormous antlers, it turned and walked into the wood.
Then I awoke, the morning sun streaming through the tall, healthy palm trees above my hammock, the sky a soft, reassuring blue. Hamilcar’s crew and the villagers of Salmacha sang the same song, calling back and forth across the sandbars, as they gathered their belongings and readied their boats.
Despite the clear morning, a storm was gathering strength just out of sight. We would be far from land by the time it found us.
Back to Chapter XX: The Temple of the New Gods
Forward to Chapter XXII: The Tempest
Thanks for reading! What do you think the dream means?
Also, don’t forget, Bitchcraft Fair Milwaukee is THIS SUNDAY, October 2nd, at the Wisconsin Center! I’ll be there signing books, and you can see my wonderful friend Brooke’s wonderful Tarot art, at booth #116!
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