Prologue: The Citadel
Here stood the white city, its columns of pale marble bathed fiery red in perpetual twilight and its flagstone streets bare of dust, silent as a grave. He had been here for an age, he thought, because he could not remember where he had come from, and the sun did not move from the scarlet horizon, nor did the small, twisted trees confined to marble stands grow taller or shed their leaves. He needed neither to eat nor sleep, so he wandered alone in the endless, unchanging evening, waiting for the last of his memories to leave him at last.
He had already forgotten how he had come to be here, where he might have been before, and why his heart ached as he turned each corner to find it empty, the windows of the houses shuttered and the doors shut. If he could forget the ache, too, he might have been content here.
The streets lay on an orderly grid, north to south and east to the setting sun that never set. At the center, the temple stood watch over the city, its windows of many-colored glass glittering. He had tried the door a hundred or a thousand times, but it was far too heavy for him to move. Standing under the arch, one brown hand against the white stone, he thought he could sense watchful eyes gazing down at him. There had been another temple like this one, with its doors open to the desert air, and within had stood towering effigies of inhuman beauty whose stone eyes looked upon the people below without seeing. A shiver of fear and awe traveled down his back, and he took his hand from the door and placed it flat against his chest, a gesture that might have once held meaning, but no longer did.
He turned away from the temple. A gentle wind stirred the confined gardens of the central square, setting the trees to whispering. Under his bare feet, the steps were cold, untouched by the distant sun. They should be warm, he thought. The wind should smell of dust and iron, and I shouldn’t be alone.
This was another memory, however brief and unclear, that he was certain to lose. No sand troubled the streets here, and no colored banners flew aloft, and the city was empty of everyone except for him.
He crossed the square and walked west into the faded light between the flat, rectangular faces of shuttered shop fronts and unoccupied houses. Between them, rows of tiny flowers, blue as a forgotten summer sky, curled their petals half-closed in readiness for a night that never came.
These flowers were the first to disappear as he went farther from the temple, followed by the doors and windows, and then the blank faces of the buildings themselves. The flagstones underfoot grew smooth and indistinct. Another step, and all was white fog, cold and intangible.
He held out one hand, curling his fingers around nothing. This had happened last time, and the time before—he had kept walking, then, chasing the indistinct memory of clouds of mist rolling over vast, green fields flooded with clear water. Surely, he had thought, that place was on the other side of the wall of fog.
He had walked and walked, and found himself some time later back in the citadel, standing before the temple’s indifferent doors. Still, he pressed forward again, clinging to the small, forlorn hope that this time might be different, that there would be people on the other side, and a sky that changed with the hours and gave sun and rain to the earth below; that there was an end to this sterile, dead place and its cold marble walls.
If only he could remember where he had come from, or by which way he had entered the citadel. Fear rose like bile in his throat, and he swallowed it down, closing his eyes and reaching out his hands as he pushed forward through the expanse of white.
The edge of a marble flagstone caught his foot, and he stumbled and fell. Pain lanced through the palms of his hands. He raised his head, and the temple towered above, its columns like faceless sentries beneath their red-stained arches. He was back in the center square, just as he had expected.
He pushed himself to his knees and buried his face in both hands. Despair would not lead him to freedom, nor would it devour the last shreds of memory that spurred him to seek a way out, but it was unrelenting. If he allowed it, it would carry him by tiny crack and finger-hold, of which there were very few but just enough, to the top of the temple and off its domed roof to the steps beneath, but he would refuse it as long as he was able. Though he could not remember, he had the firm conviction that someone, somewhere, would mourn for him.
Lifting his head, he took a breath, the first in some time. A fall from the top of the temple might not end his thin, lonely imitation of life, then. The relief was fleeting, replaced as soon as it had come by a cold, creeping horror. Not even death would remove him from this place.
A flutter of movement caught his eye, and he looked up to the lowest archway over the temple stairs. An owl, its feathers shimmering in the low sunlight, alighted on the marble peak, shaking out its wings. Its face was round and white as a full moon.
It was the first living thing that he had seen since he came to the citadel an hour or an eternity ago. He stood, one foot at a time so as not to startle it, and crossed the square to stand beneath the arch. The owl bent its head to preen beneath its wing.
“Hello there,” he said, and his voice was that of a stranger, and hoarse from lack of use. He had not spoken to anyone for as long as his troubled memory could recall.
The owl turned its moon face to him, tilting its head to one side and then the other. He stood still, not daring even to breathe, lest he frighten it away.
He had always been good with animals, hadn’t he? He remembered an ox’s soft muzzle under his hand, the weight of its huge head pushing against him. Despite its size, he recalled no fear.
The owl opened its hooked beak and spoke.
“Hello,” it said. “Is that your face that you’re wearing?”
Startled, he retreated by a step. It was an unusual thing, surely, for an owl to speak with the voice of a man. Bringing a hand to his face, he said, “I think so. Whose would it be?”
The owl ruffled its feathers in the avian imitation of a shrug. “I seem to recall seeing it before, that’s all. It’s rather impolite to steal another’s face, you know, though you don’t look like you’re strong enough for that. Who are you?”
“I—” He opened his mouth to speak, but no name came forth, neither his nor that of some other man. He could not have told the difference had one come to mind. “I don’t remember,” he confessed, and the speaking of it summoned back the fear and despair he had tried so hard to banish. Again he placed his hand against his chest, and again it brought him no comfort.
“A pity,” said the owl, “but perhaps it’s for the best. Rest well, little one.” It spread its obsidian wings, blotting out the dim red sun and reaching the full span of the arch, and moved to take flight.
“Wait!” he cried. “Who are you? By which way did you come? I must get out. I’ll go mad.”
The owl folded its wings again, blinking its jeweled eyes in annoyance. “So many questions. You’d be wiser to stay here, little one, where you’re safe.”
It must have come from somewhere outside the citadel. Despite the poor state of his memory, he was certain he had never seen the owl before. “I cannot stay,” he said again. “Only show me the way out, and I’ll not trouble you again.”
“You don’t even know your own name,” the owl scoffed. “How do you expect to go anywhere if you don’t know who you are?”
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“What is your name, little one?”
He closed his eyes, blotting out the shadow of the owl against the red sun. Images, as indistinct as a dream upon waking, flitted through his unsteady mind: a mountain the color of rust towering over a city not unlike this one, crowned in a wreath of clouds, and the same mountain lying low and hollow as smoke rose from the ruins.
“I can’t remember,” he said.
The owl leaned down, stretching its feathered neck, and fixed him with an unblinking, onyx stare. “Your name.”
A name—surely he’d had one, once, and he could hear it now, called out across the field at sunset, summoning him home, or rising above the shouts of a crowd amidst a cloud of disturbed dust, obscuring all their faces, or whispered in the dark, soft and fervent as a prayer.
“Khalim,” he said, and this time he recognized the voice in which he spoke. “My name is Khalim.”
“Ah,” said the owl. “Someone remembers you.”
Journey to the Water releases December 20!
