The man who greeted me at the bridge gave his name as Sala and his profession as the village smith, though Nagara had not seen a new shipment of iron for many months. I feared the great mine of Phyreios had not yet reopened, and that it perhaps never would, but Sala had no way of knowing what occurred on the other side of the rust-red desert, and I would not press him for answers that he would not possess. The less I knew of Phyreios, the better I could focus on the task before me.
Though I had sailed many miles and walked for four long weeks to reach this place, a terrible dread came over me in place of my anticipated relief. Sala’s face was grim, his brows heavy and his mouth a thin line. I had brought this quiet village the news it had feared for two long years, that their favored son would not return.
I intended to bring Khalim back. But how could I explain that to Sala? That Khalim had not died, and yet was not among the living, and that I had dedicated myself to performing feats of bravery and magic that not even the wisest of sages had attempted, would only serve to convince him that I was mad. He might not have trusted my news from Phyreios, then, and I knew not how long he and his fellow villagers would continue to wait before sending out an expedition to search for Khalim. Sala was a stranger, but I did not wish for him to experience seeing another’s eyes looking out from Khalim’s face.
But it was not to Sala that I would have to tell my tale. He brought me to the last house on the muddy path through the village, where a woven tapestry of red vines on a sapphire-blue field hung across the narrow door.
“This is the house of Taherah the weaver-woman,” Sala told me, and I knew what his next words would be before he spoke them. “She is Khalim’s mother.”
He left me there alone beneath the dripping overhang of the roof, staring at the door. I would have no help in this endeavor.
I had climbed the side of the fell worm as it lay waste to Phyreios, I had climbed the mountain to commune with the ancient dragon of the temple, and I had sailed out to hunt the sea-serpent among the floating towers of ice, but this was the harshest test of my courage that I had yet encountered. I stood there for what felt like an hour, willing my arm to lift and my hand to knock upon the lintel, but I could not do it. The rain returned, whispering a soft rhythm against the thatched roof and beating against the surface of the river like a drum.
At length, I decided that being discovered here lurking at the door was far less preferable than announcing my presence. I tapped my knuckles against the side of the door.
A callused brown hand pulled aside the covering, and a face that was at once familiar and strange appeared in its place. She was perhaps forty years old, her long, black hair covered with a loose veil, as tall and elegant as a carving of a goddess or a long-dead queen.
She looked me up and down, the fine lines of her face creased in abject confusion. I must have been quite the sight, dressed in a tunic given me at the temple and boots and trousers by Hamilcar’s crew, a steppe horse in tow and a harpoon on my back. Sala had said that few travelers ever came to Nagara.
I opened my mouth to explain myself, but no words came to me. Bran and I stood outside the door, equally speechless, for one long moment.
Understanding flickered into Taherah’s huge, dark eyes. Tears welled up beneath them as she took in my strange appearance, and she let the curtain fall over the door. I heard her weep as she walked away toward the back of the house.
It was to her that I was obligated to speak. I would wait for her to return. I let Bran wander and graze in the rain, and I sat in the narrow dry space beneath the roof and the outer wall of the house, resting my feet and considering what I might say of Taherah’s son.
The storm moved on, taking its rain and its oppressive darkness with it. Low, slanting sunlight painted the forest in gold and yellow, and the river shone deep and blue. On either side of the village, the rice fields stretched out, rich and ripe for the harvest, the stalks a brighter green than the jewels I still had in my possession.
One by one, the other houses opened into the daylight, and their residents emerged to begin their work. A young woman stared at me, her head tilted to the side, until her husband finished strapping a pair of woven baskets to a humpbacked white ox, and they followed it out to the fields. More oxen went after, their shapes like small clouds floating close to the ground, the people walking unhurried between them. The song they sang drifted across the green to my ears, and it told a story of benevolent gods granting food to the people who worshiped them, giving them all that they needed in exchange for a season’s worth of work. If such were the gods of this land, then it was no wonder that Khalim had placed his trust entirely in the god who had chosen him. How could he do otherwise, when he had received such gifts? If I had spent my youth as he had, in a green country where gentle rains fell, and where neighboring villages did not take up arms every year to take what little each other possessed, I would have grown to become a very different man—perhaps, I thought, a better one. One who might know what to say to Khalim’s mother, who had waited two years and two seasons for news of her son.
The villagers returned from the fields before nightfall, when the sky cast a bloody glow onto the river and stormclouds gathered again on the eastern horizon. All the lush greenery turned dark. It was then that Taherah opened her door once more, and she looked at me again, her eyes dry and circled in red.
“You should come inside,” she said, before she let the curtain drop again and disappeared into the shadows of the house.
I obeyed, glancing behind once to look for Bran and finding him contentedly nibbling at the grass growing beside one of the neighboring houses. A small, round face appeared at the window above him, wide-eyed and staring at the strange creature that had accompanied me into the village. I lifted the curtain and went inside.
A central fire, little more than embers, smoldered in a hollow dug into the floor. A three-legged stand held a small copper pot above it, and something that smelled of sharp spice bubbled within. I had not eaten for most of the day, but my belly ached as an anxious knot tied itself around me; I would not have been able to eat if I had been offered anything.
On one side of the door, Taherah’s loom stood as tall as I, a half-finished cloth of gold and orange threads stretched between its beams. The flickering embers turned the pattern to moving flames, and I watched it for a moment, transfixed and desperately delaying the inevitable conversation I had come so far to have.
Opposite the loom was a narrow bed, a soft woolen blanket tucked in at the corners. Its neat folds suggested it had not been touched in some time. This was Khalim’s bed, and it awaited his return, keeping watch beside the door.
“Tell me your name, stranger,” Taherah said. She sat beside the fire and gave the pot a stir with a scorched wooden spoon, her eyes lowered.
I took another step into the house and knelt on the floor, out of the reach of the fire’s warmth. I did not deserve the hospitality of this house, not with the news I had brought—not after I had failed to keep Khalim safe in Phyreios.
“I am Eske, son of Ivor, of the clan of the bear,” I said. “I met your son in the great city of the desert.”
She nodded, as though the sound of my name was familiar to her. “Then he did reach the city from his dreams.” The spoon tapped against the edge of the pot, ringing a soft, mournful note. She looked up. “Did the disaster come to pass? Did he save them?”
The smell of the small cooking fire became the miasma of smoke and dust that had hung over Phyreios at the end. I closed my eyes. “He saved many,” I said. “Not all. Not enough. But without him, many more would have been lost.”
“He is dead, then.” It was not a question, but a statement of absolute certainty. I wondered how long she had known—a mother’s intuition, or a version of Khalim’s gift of foresight.
Here was the moment I had been dreading. “No,” I began. “He did not die.”
Before I could explain further, Taherah said, “Then why is he not with you?”
“When the task was done, and the survivors looked out over the ruin of Phyreios, the god Khalim carried took it upon himself to lead them. He took Khalim away, to the land of the dead, and he rules the city still.”
She said nothing. The glowing embers cast tiny flames into her eyes—the same soft brown eyes that Khalim had possessed, but the god wearing his face did not.
“I loved your son,” I said. “I love him still. What happened to him was an injustice, and I mean to set it right.”
Taherah looked up and held my gaze. Even with the shadows hollowing her eyes and deepening the creases beneath them, she was younger than I had expected. She would have been younger than I when she had borne Khalim. “You cannot defy the gods,” she said. “I have tried. It always comes to naught.”
“That may be so. Still, I will do everything in my power to bring Khalim back. If I should die in the attempt, then so be it.” I took a shaky breath, my eyes stinging from the tears I held back as much as from the smoke. I’d had two years to mourn and to commit myself to my quest, and I wished to offer comfort, not to receive it.
“He was my husband’s last gift to me,” Taherah said to the fire. It was as though I had disappeared, and all she could see was her empty house and her memories. “The plague took him, as it took so many others, and left me alone. Khalim was born six months later. He almost never cried. I thought he was ill, that I would lose him just as I’d lost his father. But he lived, and he grew strong, and I thought that all was well. I was young, I had suitors, but I had no room in my heart for anyone but my son.”
I listened, keeping still and silent, even as my feet went numb beneath me and the last light of the sun vanished from the doorway. How often had Khalim sat here, learning at his mother’s feet? I tried to picture him there beside me, but the effort only sent a sharp pain through my chest and set my eyes burning.
“He was only five when the star fell,” Taherah continued. “I saw it while he was asleep, red like fire and blood, burning in the northern sky. A bad omen. But I had work to do, and a little mouth to feed, so I forgot it.”
She raised her head and looked at me, startled. She might have forgotten I was there. “I did not think of the star again until Khalim began to dream,” she said.
Back to Chapter XXIV: A Vast, Green Country
Forward to Chapter XXVI: The House of the Weaver-Woman, Part Two
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