The Gods' Own Voice Read online

  ~

  Firelight played shadows on the mud-brick walls of the hut. The roof was arched in unglazed brick, a single smoke hole at the top ringed in crimson glazed blocks. The old woman was olive skinned, with dark eyes and graying hair pulled in a single braid to the small of her back, blue tattoos marking her face with lines and perfect circles, the same tattoos lining the first two fingers of each hand and running up her forearm to disappear behind the sleeve of a loose fitting cerulean robe. A single blue dot marked the old woman's forehead, a finger's width above her eyebrows and centered between the eyes.

  "Bakhi nina," the old woman cooed to the wanderer. She lifted a rag sodden with water from a large shell. The old woman squeezed the rag over the wanderer's mouth and the water disappeared into the cracks and crevices of lip, gum and throat.

  The wanderer did not speak inside the shadow of the fisherman's hut. Over the old woman's shoulder was a middle aged copper skinned man with dark eyes and lank hair, a piece of leather cord holding it away from his eyes. He was sinewy and lean, with callused hands, bared to the waist, crimson and midnight tattoos marking lines and curves from finger to forearm to shoulder to heart. Three lines raced down the man's left eye and merged at the jaw, joining without error to the heart-line.

  The wanderer spoke once, "Where... am I?"

  The old woman shook her head and spoke in return. "Dauch-enou."

  The wanderer grimaced and spoke the question again in Ishtari, in the trade tongues of Ketman and Reduker, but nothing was understandable to the old woman or the man. The fisherman simply mended his nets as the old woman's brows furrowed and her rag dabbed at the wanderer's withered brow.

  After a moment, the wanderer spoke again, gesturing with a half-closed fist to her heart. "Miri... Miri."

  The old woman smiled a moment. "Ilan. Ilan." The woman gestured toward the man. "Bhara. Bhara."

  The man grunted, speaking quickly in their queer tongue. He set his net down on the small table by the wall, raised his head once in Miri's direction before pushing aside a multi-colored drape from the arched doorway and walked into a chill night.

  The old woman spoke to Miri again, and the wanderer focused on the words, listening to them even now, letting them wash over her as a song or a river. "... so that they may judge you pale Miri."

  "Ilan, how long have I been here?" Miri watched the woman's shock.

  "You speak our tongue?" The old woman pulled back the rag and backed up, her eyes wary.

  "I learn tongues quickly. How long?"

  The old woman backed away slowly, uncertainty and suspicion etched on her face. "This is some sorcery. Are you a Dirge Singer or a Seer?"

  "A wanderer grateful for your help. How long?"

  "Two days and three nights. This is the morning of the third day since my Bhara saw you stumble to the shore."

  "And my staff?"

  The old woman gestured towards the covered doorway as she backed up uncertainly, eyes wide and head shaking from side to side to deny the feat performed.

  Miri tried to rise, but could not. She sank back onto the sleeping mat, her head resting on a cylindrical linen pillow stuffed with dried reeds and a faint odor of lilac. Miri searched Ilan's eyes for a moment before speaking in the queer tongue of the Eastern Sea. "I have not eaten for a dozen days. When I recover, I can repay any kindness with labor."

  Ilan was backed against the wall of the hut, the small table with the fishing net to her right. "Bahra, Khipa, bring some soup for Miri." The older woman never let her stare leave the pale skinned wanderer's mismatched eyes. After several moments of silence, the curtain in the doorway moved aside as Bahra returned while a young boy of eight or nine annums carried a wooden bowl laden with dark brown soup. The spoon was large, almost a ladle with a short and curved stem.

  The boy Khipa looked down curiously at the emaciated woman in his grandmother's house as he held the bowl out.

  "Khipa, spoon the broth for Miri," Ilan commanded.

  The broth tasted of salt, spice, chunks of a white root, bits of a carnelian pepper, sprigs of small green leaves and dark curling strips of meat. Miri smiled. Commoners were the best cooks in any land.

  For several days the wanderer stayed with Ilan, her son Bhara, and her grandson Khipa. The trio were some of the furthest fishers for the free city of Ghibai, a mercantile trading hub built on an island off the coast of the Gray Waste which subsisted entirely on the sea. Ghibai was the halfway point between the Necromancer's Port of Morgul-Kha and the grasslands, mountains and rainforests of the Jade Empires, a collection of independent principalities renowned for jade, silk, spices and steel. On the fourth day of Miri's recovery, Bhari and Khipa spotted a yacht with triangular sails approaching from the south flying the scarlet flag of the City Guard.

  "They have come for you." Ilan seemed relieved.

  Miri regarded the old woman with a smile. "You said the Seers were powerful."

  "They must have left the evening you came upon us." Ilan kept her eyes on Miri, seemingly so much younger than the old widow, her husband lost to the tempests of the Straits of the Dead.

  Miri struggled to her feet, using her staff to prop herself up. She was determined to meet the City Guard on her terms. The old woman said nothing as Miri left the hut. The two structures were built in a cleft of rock near the shore with wattle and daub walls, their arched roofs of tarred canvas. She had seen some of it her second day, but had stayed inside Ilan's house during the heat of the day and the cold of the night, letting her strength recover after her trek across the waste.

  The shore was strewn with ancient boulders, golden sand and bits of green reeds ringing tidal pools. Bhara's two boats were thin walled and crafted of a bright wood, painted green and blue. Khipa was still in the shallows using a long wooden pole with equal spaced ridges. Already a dozen flatfish sullenly pulled at the twine they were lashed in the shallows, the toil of a morning's labor. Since Miri's arrival, the fisherman had enjoyed wondrous bounty, the excess meat smoking all day for preservation. Miri smiled at the man and the boy, so eerily similar in manner to her friend Danae's family back in Illyria. At least Danae would be able to pick up the pieces after the slaughter in the Valley of Death and Shadows. The Necromancers' Legions was smashed, but at such a loss. For a moment, Miri's voice hitched in remembrance of the High King falling from his destrier, the beast screaming as its lashed about at the Dead encircling her monarch, sparks flying with every steel shod hoof's strike against helm, shield or breastplate. Ambrosius rose, swinging the great sword Sartorious in blazing arcs of fire, the Dead exploding at its touch. She had been too far away to lend aid, pressed by the Revenant trying to rip out her throat amid a dozen of the Necromancer's Dread Legion. Miri shook her head and forced the black memories down.

  Miri watched from the huts as the Ghibenese yacht approached, its sails red and black, its hull midnight, with a crimson flag flying from its mainmast, long and triangular, with two black ribbons twice as long as the pennant. Miri noted a many headed black hydra as the emblem of Ghibai. A single bank of black oars lined each side of the yacht, the oarsmen rowing under the upper half deck which lined the middle of the yacht and the stern. Beside the tiller stood a woman in black and crimson silk, covered head to toe and bearing a long spear of some dark wood with a bronze head and ornamented with crimson and midnight ribbons. Miri let the Sight ease away.

  While still far from shore, the Ghibenese yacht launched a small skiff and the men who rowed were small but muscled, wearing loose and baggy pants wrapped at the ankle, barefoot, with wrapped wrists and bearing domed straw hats. At the back of the skiff stood a thin man with dark hair and dark eyes, a strip of crimson and midnight cloth wrapped around his forehead and tied at the back, a disc of silver and gold emblazoned upon his brow. He was armed with two curved swords, one longer than the other, both lashed to his waist, and armored with leather and steel scales, although he bore no helm.

  "You will come with us." The man spoke the Ghibenese tongue w
ith authority and pointed callused fingers at Miri.

  "And so I shall." Miri bowed once by inclining her head forward slightly, having learned the custom from Ilan.

  The skiff rowed closer, and Miri leapt nimbly to the skiff's deck before any of the sailors could aid her. She stood in the prow, her sandaled feet on the hull and the bench between two rowers. Without anyone saying a word, the crew shoved away from shore and rowed back to the yacht. Miri looked back once at Bhari and Khipa, but both had gone back to plying their craft along the coast. Only the old woman Ilan stood at the doorway of her house watching with a creased brow.

  Miri climbed a rope ladder lashed to the side of the yacht, using one hand to climb and the other to grasp her staff. The yacht pitched slightly with every wave as Miri clambered onto the deck gracefully and made her way toward the middle deck, then climbed the inclined stairs to the woman in silks with dark almond shaped eyes.

  The silken woman spoke, her long black hair tied with dozens of red ribbons into a single long braid that reached the back of her knees. "I have seen you Miri of the Waste. I know you."

  Miri smiled uncertainly and bowed in deference. "You are a Seer of Ghibai."

  "I am Kaasha of the Nine Spears, Captain of Black Heron, and your Warden."

  "And my crimes?" Miri asked incredulously.

  "Already foreseen and judged." Kaasha proclaimed.

  "May I know what I will do so I may understand my judgment?"

  "You would destroy the Seers of Ghibai, and see all that our ancestors built fall to ruin."

  The warrior with the two swords snatched Miri's staff away while two dark skinned sailors tattooed with vermillion lines along their arms pulled her arms behind her to bind her with cutting fishing twine. The sailors shoved her rudely to her knees in the process, but Miri never once broke her gaze from Kaasha of the Nine Spears.