The rest of the tale of the falling star I knew already. It had landed near Phyreios, in the form of a lump of enchanted iron, and the Ascended had forged it into the Sword of Heaven, the tool of their own destruction. They could no more resist the will of Khalim’s god than he could, as much as they tried. It was only by Torr’s volition that the sword now lay safely among the other treasures beneath the mountain where the dragon made its home.
What could I do in the face of a destiny already preordained? Seven gods had failed even to prevent the creation of the Sword of Heaven and the arrival of their former master to the city they ruled, even carried as he was by one man crossing the wastes on foot. A sandstorm, a single arrow, a knife in the dark, or some slight injury to their forge could have sent Torr back to the nether world for another thousand years. Instead, he walked the new streets of Phyreios with an iron crown on his head, and Khalim was gone.
Taherah stared into the fire, and two burning points reflected in her eyes, but she saw nothing. It was as though she gone far away, and left her body behind to stir her copper pot and keep my sad company.
I thought to leave her alone with her grief. It was an enormous, living thing, filling the two-room house and smothering the light, stealing the air from between her walls. I struggled to breathe, my chest aching like a heavy stone had been placed on it.
But I could not continue my quest without her help. I could abandon it, and leave Khalim to the strange, hostile landscape of the world beyond, or I could remain here and shoulder some of the weight.
One person had defied the will of the god of Phyreios. Khalim had left the cold, empty city where Torr had placed him, and how much greater would the power of a god be in the realm of the spirits, in his own sanctum, than it was here under the sky?
“I am sorry to have been the one to bring this news to you,” I said into the crushing silence. “I would have liked for Khalim to introduce me to you. I would have liked to show him the land that I came from.”
The ghost of a smile briefly passed across Taherah’s face. “I’m glad he found you. I’m glad he wasn’t alone.”
If I had been more worthy, if I had acted instead of waiting—I would not burden her with these thoughts, but they chanted their terrible rhythm in my body nonetheless. “I hope that I may still bring him back, and that when my long journey is done, you and I will both see him again.”
I waited for her to tell me my quest was mere vanity, as so many others had done before, but she was silent.
“When I left Phyreios, I went to the far eastern mountains,” I said, “where warriors train under the guidance of a serpentine dragon. The dragon sent me to the islands of the south, where I underwent the ceremony of the Dreaming Eye, and looked into the other world.”
At last, her eyes lifted from the fire, and she studied me with a look that reminded me of my own mother, who could tell whether I was lying without fail. “What did you see?”
I shivered, as though I had again been plunged into the icy black water where the goddess of the deep swam beside the gate of bone. “I saw the empty city, the place where Khalim was meant to stay. He was gone. Then I saw him wandering.” I took a breath, mostly to assure myself that I still could, and I had not fallen into another dream of drowning. “I came here to ask your help. One day, I will find a way to cross over, whether by magic or might. I will find Khalim. But our time together was so short, and I had not the foresight to ask him where he might go if he had all the realms of the gods to choose from.”
Taherah smiled, and this time it lingered and almost touched the dark pools of her eyes. “That is where you’re wrong,” she said. “He would not choose a place. He would find where he was most needed, and he would stay there as long as he could help.”
I bowed my head. “Of course he would.” The god Torr had chosen Khalim for a reason, and it was for the same reason that I loved him and his mother mourned his absence with a silent, crushing sorrow. Where Taherah and I saw the young man, however, Torr had seen a tool, worth no more consideration than an axe or a hammer, to be discarded when another tool would be more fitting for the task at hand. What thought did a god have for the value of one life?
“As for the rest,” she continued, “you likely already know. He would want to be near other people. He liked the rain. For his god to place him in an empty city would be cruelty. I’m not surprised he left.”
She placed her wooden spoon through the handle of the pot and removed it from the fire. Getting to her feet, she added, “I don’t believe you will succeed, Eske son of Ivor. But if you see my son again, promise me that you’ll tell him I love him. And I know he did the best he could.”
“The gods are treacherous,” I said, “so I will not swear in any of their names, but I do swear it.”
“And tell him I’m sorry,” she said to the darkening room. “I would have spared him all of it if I could.”
As would I, I thought, but I could no longer speak. Sorrow and rage constricted around my throat, each a great hand with fingers strong as iron. I wanted to slay the god who took Khalim from me, with my teeth if I could not bring my harpoon to bear, but at the same moment I was too weak to lift my arms.
I would not let Taherah see me weep. I’d had two years to tend to my own grief, and hers was newborn and ravenous. I was thankful for the encroaching dark.
“Do you eat meat?” she asked, as though I was an ordinary guest, though her voice was soft. “Khalim never did. Once he learned to heal, any flesh made him ill. He explained it to me once, how he could feel it wanting to be whole again, but I never quite understood it.”
I managed to find my voice again, swallowing the obstruction in my throat, and told her I would eat whatever she offered. We dined in silence, as night drew the shadows into her home and gathered them around her small fire. If I looked away from the light, the smell of spices and dried meat placed me back at the small house in the shadow of Phyreios’s forge. All that was missing was the smoke of the ironworks and the presence of my companions.
“You came all this way to find me,” Taherah said when we were finished. “I’m not sure I can thank you.”
I shook my head. “I should thank you—for your hospitality and for telling me about Khalim.”
“Where will you go now?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” I would have liked to give her a definite answer, to promise her that I had a plan to carry out and a path to follow. Instead, I had a book I could not read and its looming threat of blasphemous magic, and a tale of a wise but evil man who had created it. “West, I suppose. I fear I will have to speak to all the learned men in all the world before I can cross over into the realm of the spirits, but I will do it.”
She was quiet for a long moment, and the fire only showed the soft outline of her face and her folded hands, the rest all covered with night. “You may stay here,” she said at last, “as long as you require it.”
“I am a stranger to you. I do not wish to burden you any more than I must.”
The warm outline of her face moved as she bowed her head. “You are no more a burden than Khalim was, and for all the pain that the gods visited upon me for him, he brought me only joy. Any help I give you is only what I would give him.”
It was not the green land and the gentle rain that had made Khalim who he was, but this house and this woman. All this was not meant for me, thought Taherah willingly shared it, and despite the warmth of the embers the distance between us was cold. “Then I will stay a short while,” I said. “And I will hear anything you wish to tell me of your son.”
The hour had grown late. I went out to secure Bran beneath the overhanging roof of the house, to keep him away from the frequent rain. For the time being, he was well, but if I meant to continue traveling with him, I would need to seek drier climes soon, or he would fall ill again. I dreaded any road that would take me closer to Phyreios, but a vast stretch of desert still lay between me and the city. If I kept my head down and did not give my name to anyone, I could avoid word of my exploits reaching the ears of Torr’s council.
I would have liked to see Reva again, and Roshani of House Darela, who now represented the common folk and the nobility in the new government of Phyreios. But they had cared more for the city and its people than for Khalim, and in their selflessness they would support the god who saved their home over one grieving lover, and I would not fault them for it. Some small part of me envied them. I could not look upon the city and see its glory rebuilt, instead of what I had lost.
Taherah gave me Khalim’s bed by the door. A rice-straw mattress still held the indentation of his body down its center. How fitting, I thought as I lay down, that this hollow space in his shape remains here, waiting. Years of washing had worn the blanket smooth and threadbare, the green and gold threads faded to soft uniformity. Too much time had passed for it to smell of anything but rain.
It had been many weeks since I’d had the luxury of a proper bed, and I slept easily, neither the sound of distant thunder and night-birds calling to each other across the rice fields disturbing my rest. There, in the narrow bed beside the door of the weaver-woman’s house, I dreamt again of the gray coastline under the strange green sky, and the stag with antlers like a tree.
It stood, as it always did, before the path into the winter forest, and it stared at me with its human eyes. This time, however, it spoke: its muzzle did not move, but a voice like a man’s filled the air around me.
“The eye is open, Eske of the Bear Clan,” it said, “and it cannot be closed again. You cannot turn back.”
“I will not,” I answered.
“Then follow me,” said the stag, and it turned and walked into the woods.
Back to Chapter XXV: The House of the Weaver-Woman
Forward to Chapter XXVII: Nagara in Sunlight
I look forward to continuing, and eventually finishing, Eske’s quest this year. Thanks for coming along for the ride.
Space Whales Press 
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