Two others stood up with Fenin: young men, one in the tattered remnants of an attendant’s white robe, and the other carrying a pitted, splintery staff that might have been enchanted to look like a spear. Had I met either of them before the illusion broke? I could not imagine a connection between their gaunt cheeks, thin hair, and missing teeth and the bright, bronze faces I had seen yesterday. Except for Fenin, everyone here was a stranger.
The elders remained where they were, kneeling on the dusty ground. They bowed their heads, turning their faces away from me. They would not look at me, or their three defecting subjects, again. In a rasping, wavering voice, they sang a hymn to their dead god, and we left the barren garden in search of enough provisions to survive in the desert.
We would not take everything. Though part of me wished to punish them for their treatment of me, and reasoned that if they were going to do nothing, they deserved whatever fate the sun and wind had in store for them, I could not leave them to starve. I found a little dried meat, caked with dust, some handfuls of grain, and another few days’ worth of water, murky and tasting of mud. The rest I left where it was, hoping that the people of Svilsara would recover it before the rats did. I could hear movement in the walls and the scratching of many tiny claws.
We would travel by night, I explained to my young charges, and thus avoid the heat. In the ruin of a house, I found three moth-eaten blankets that could approximate warm clothing. If they belonged to someone, that person remained in the garden, bowed down before the powerless elders.
“Should we go back for them?” Fenin asked.
I wanted to hate this girl, who had sentenced me to die upon the sacrificial stone at the whim of her false god, but I found I could not. Some of it was the exhaustion of the day, but the rest was a begrudging respect. She had been willing to give her life for her people. If the serpent appeared again, she would tie herself to the sacrificial stone to appease him and save the city.
The serpent would never reappear. I had seen to that.
“They will follow if they wish to,” I told Fenin. “If they are unwilling, we cannot force them.”
She frowned at that, but she kept her thoughts to herself and said nothing.
We left that same night. I allowed my sickly charges to ride Bran in shifts, sparing a little of their wavering strength. When the sun rose behind us, casting soft pink light onto a haze of dust that hid the city from view, I set up our shelter and distributed a little food and water. It would be my task to ensure that they ate neither too little nor too much; either would see them die under my care. Looking at their hollow eyes and swollen bellies, I doubted I had the wisdom to ensure their survival.
“I don’t know what happened,” Fenin whispered to the young attendant as they crawled under their blankets. “I was beautiful once, and nothing hurt.”
“You will be again,” he said. “All will be well.”
“Perhaps we will see the serpent out here,” Fenin said the next evening. “Perhaps he will return to Svilsara when he sees our devotion.”
It would be right, I thought, to tell her the truth, that the serpent would never come again. The city was as it had always been, and the only thing that would save it would be years of grueling work—work her citizens were too weak to perform. I could ferry these three to safety, perhaps even to comfort, but someone would have to rescue those who remained behind.
I remained silent. I feared that by devotion she meant her and her companions’ willing sacrifice, and mine and Bran’s unwilling one. If I told her I had slain the serpent, I could not predict what she might do.
She and her companions—Astin the guardsman and Roda the priestly attendant—gave me enough difficulty as it was. If I did not keep careful eye on whomever was not riding Bran at the moment, one or both would wander off in the dark. They complained about pain when walking, when eating, when waking up and going to sleep. I could do nothing to soothe them, these emaciated, overgrown children, and aside from letting them ride in the saddle, I could not ease their burden.
I had done this to them. No, I corrected myself, their wicked god had done this to them, and I was right to have slain him. Still, they suffered, and I had no small hand in it.
I saw the waystation three days before we reached it. A tall building with a single spire stood on the western horizon, black against the violet evening sky. Night fell, and it faded into darkness, only appearing again at morning when the pale sun illuminated its sharp corners. Around it, the desert undulated like a sea. The next evening, a cluster of low buildings could be seen at the spire’s base, like a ring of volcanic islands.
“There,” I told my charges. “That’s where we’ll find help.”
We arrived in the early morning, when the first gray light turned the sand silver and the tall plaster walls a pale blue. A solitary figure, dressed in a green robe that dusted the stone path behind her as she walked, left one of the outbuildings and headed toward the central structure, a basket of clean, white linens slung over one arm. She was of middle age, her hair covered in a shawl of the same vibrant green—a color I had not seen since the illusory garden. She saw us—me leading Bran, Fenin slumped in the saddle, and Astin and Roda lagging a few paces behind—and beckoned us closer with a wave.
Before I could explain, several more women appeared, whisking my charges away to a low building lined with cots at the northern end of the compound. They offered me a bed, as well, and tea with honey and salt to cure my dehydration, but I refused. I was well enough.
“I come from Svilsara,” I explained. “Have you heard of it?”
The first woman shook her head. “You have the appearance of an outlander,” she said.
“I come from the North,” I corrected her. “Svilsara is seven days’ walk east of here, at the edge of the sea of dust. I fear that my three companions are all who yet live from the city, but I hope that the rest can yet be saved. Will you help me?”
She took me into the temple, for that was what the tall edifice was—a shrine to a goddess of wheat sheaves and mothers, whose vague, moonlike face smiled down upon me as I entered the carved double doors. Her green-robed priestess sat me down on a bench beside a tall, white pillar supporting the vaulted ceiling. It looked too much like the temple of Svilsara’s elders, or rather the illusion of it. I wondered if the snake god had ever visited this place, and if this smiling goddess was one of the desert gods who scorned his company. An altar stood beneath her feet, covered in green silk, and an open book lay beneath a beam of sunlight.
I told her a shortened version of the tale. Svilsara, I said, was isolated from the world, surrounded on all sides by an endless expanse of desert. For a time, they lived in prosperity, but as of late their supplies had failed, and the people were weak, sickly, and starving. I was but a traveler, but I agreed to take any who would come with me to find help. We were fortunate enough to come upon this temple before our supplies ran out.
“The young woman you brought with you says otherwise,” said the priestess. “She says your presence angered the gods, and Svilsara has fallen under a curse.”
“I suppose that is also true,” I said. “I slew a great serpent in the desert, and dispelled the magics he had woven. Svilsara had been under an illusion for many years.”
She considered this, taking in my strange appearance and the harpoon I carried on my back. Here, in a place solid and real as anything, with the morning sun streaming in through windows of colored glass, my encounter with Svilsara’s god was like a dream I had once had, nonsensical and impossible to properly tell.
“If there are others, we can send an expedition with supplies,” said the priestess.
I bowed my head. “I would be in your debt.”
She smiled and stood, brushing out the skirts of her robe. “If you are well, then you will labor in our garden in exchange for your keep and that of your friends.”
I could hardly call Fenin a friend, but I did not argue. A few days’ work was an easy price to pay for the fulfillment of my oaths and repayment of my debts—and a roof over my head and a real bed beneath it, besides.
Alas, I would find myself in the desert again before the close of the third day.
Back to Chapter XXXVIII: Svilsara, As It Always Was
Forward to Chapter XL: Isra’s Well
Just a short chapter this week, as we’re concluding the Svilsara arc and moving on to the next one. Thanks for reading!
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