I.
The stillness of the air made the sun ever hotter, as no breeze blew past to take the sweat off the neck of the traveller. She was a young girl, short in stature and red of hair, streaks of yellow inlaid within her locks like veins of gold along a mountainside. Looking upon her, the folk of the Walled City would have branded her a barbarian by the look of her tattered clothes, though she did not have the blackish hair or sunken eyes of such.
In truth, she was a traveller from a distant land, one so far and estranged from ours it bears little need to describe, for this traveller would never return to it, to the knowledge of all who knew her.
The Walled City’s shadow loomed in the distance but welcomed the traveller with its respite from the sun. On her waist, a belt of chain fastened tight around a weathered cotton dress torn short at the knees, where it was met by reptilian leather boots.
A short sword, reforged from a shattered warblade so that its handle was nearly the length of the blade, rested in its sheath on the traveller’s hip as she rode on the back of her zilard strider. Oh, such great beasts, those zilards. Many riders of the desert plains called the feather-headed raptors their friend. And so too did the traveller.
Her strider trampled the sand with stagger steps until they came by a fountain just outside the walled city. There, women drew up water in buckets from its endless basin as their children soaked their tired heads in its gift. The traveller did not think herself so desperate as to drink from this fountain but was soon beside her zilard sucking water through parched lips.
From the corners of her eye the traveller watched as a man in a poor, but well maintained, woven tunic and trousers walked up to her. “Nothing is free here, traveller,” he scolded. “You’re not allowed to drink here.”
“I’m not allowed to drink water?” she asked in return.
“I just said so, didn’t I?” The man retorted, his accent unfamiliar to the traveller but his mockery still clearly heard in his voice.
“Your first act upon meeting a stranger is to be unkind?” The traveller stood up, her lips now whetted, even if she only had drawn a meagre few sips.
“My first act upon meeting anyone is to be unkind,” the man laughed, spreading his arms wide like the wings of a soaring vulture and turning around to gaze at the walls of the city. “This is the great jewel of the desert! The Walled City! No man can live here unless he is unkind.”
“The Walled City? Are there no other cities with walls?”
“There certainly are,” he said, “you would find them if you travelled a year north to meet the Aesir and their frozen palaces, or west to the vast Ituru and her god-kings of stone and slaves, or east to the monkey princess of Lemuria. Oh, but here in the desert, the Walled City is a jewel indeed. Clearly you have travelled, haven’t you seen how the other cities merely imitate these ancient walls?”
The traveller shook her head. “I haven’t seen any city,” she admitted, “only wandering villages and lonely oasis cottages.”
She looked up to the walls again, staring closer at its reddish walls, its bricks cut from the plateaus and pillars that cropped out of the sand like jagged bones.
“You’ve seen no cities?” the man then asked. “Where have you come from? You must have passed by Oruk or Akaad, or anywhere, to have come by here.”
“My land is far from here and has no name, none that anyone would know,” the traveller said, “and its people are much too different from your own. I doubt you would even recognize them as people.”
Upon hearing this the man combed his beard, a curly tuft of black hair on a canvas of sun-dried skin, giving the traveller a thoughtful look. “You must have travelled a strange road then, to have become recognizable to me. And you say you know of no other city? No other people to be loyal to?”
“Loyalty isn’t the problem,” the traveller answered tersely. “I am simply travelling in search of something. Until I have found it, I belong nowhere.”
“Ha-ha!” the man jumped and exclaimed. “Yes! Then you will do, you will do indeed!” He slapped the traveller on her back and produced a wineskin, which had been tied around his neck and hidden beneath his tunic, for her. “I will provide you with food and a drink, and in return, you can make me a very rich man. What is your name then, traveller?”
“Shimmer,” she answered, recoiling from the man’s embrace, for his sun-dried skin was as rough as the sand. “But why would I help a man who rudely tells a traveller she cannot drink after a journey through the desert?”
“You should not. But I will tell you who I am over a bite of bread and then we shall see.” Through the gates of the stone walls, Shimmer followed with her strider behind her, guided by rows of flagstaffs along the noisy streets.
A phoenix on a cross, its wings and legs spread on over a wooden “X” and impaled up the middle, adorned each waving flag. And the traveller thought it best to stalk a little closer to the man.
His name was Khauri, and he guided the traveller Shimmer towards the awful din of a clamouring, cantankerous alehouse. The lurid lights and drunken revelry captured her eyes, while the stench of sweat and ale repulsed her nose. Shimmer learned many things about Khauri as he brought her a meal of spiced meat over hard bread.
First, she learned he was a man of great charm, though not great wealth. He haggled and spoke much to the old barkeep, a man red-faced from years at the heat of a fire. In the end, no coin was exchanged for the meal.
Second, that he had a reputation among the many folks sequestered in the alehouse. They spied him with careful eyes and kept their bodies safely away.
Thirdly, and the only piece of information he shared willingly, he was a former governor of the Walled City.
“I was exiled from the palace,” he said as he placed his hands upon their table. Shimmer saw, under the light of a luminous crystal, that though he was middle-aged his hands looked like they belonged to a man twice his age. “For taking a haul of taxes and provisions for myself, but reporting the full amount to the king.”
“And did you?”
Khauri smiled. “I admit that I did. But, I stole only from the king, a man who eats enough for five men and beds enough wives for ten. I worked half my life away governing the Walled City, saving up enough to leave for the west sea.”
He paused and held up his hands. “I thought I’d be spared punishment for the crime, as most governors are. Alas, most governors do not cross the king. The price for thieving is to flay the offending hands with a red-hot knife, and the king spared no expense to find the cruellest lawmen to make an example of me.”
Khauri’s pained expression broke through the charm that he wore like a second skin. His wide smile faded and his eyes grew sullen as he clutched, trembling, his hands together. Shimmer focused through the turgid cacophony of drinkers and revellers, listening closer to Khauri’s plan.
“The king’s vault is a rushing current that turns the water wheels of labour, protected by a changing patrol of guards. But you carry a blade and have survived the desert alone. Such a barrier should not be a challenge.”
Now fervid with excitement, Khauri bent over and produced a tattered roll of vellum from his pockets. Unfurled, it exposed a crude drawing of the palace grounds, a massive round structure encircling the city’s oasis. The heart of the palace, the vault and the king’s chambers, sat upon what looked to be a small island at the centre of that oasis.
“The soldiers change just before dawn and dusk, so you must enter the palace and make for the vault before they do. The king abhors the look of soldiers, so you will find nought but servants within the palace walls. Take all that you desire, I need only a paltry sack of silver and jewels to be on my way.”
He then handed Shimmer a pouch sewn from eclectic patches of leather. Shimmer wondered at the man’s intentions, why had he come to her?
“Because you have no loyalties,” he answered when she asked. “Any other man or woman in this city would sell knowledge of my plans for as little as a silver piece.”
Satisfied with this answer, the two of them parted after some repeated instructions of where they would meet after Shimmer’s success. There was a stable not too far from the gates they had entered, and it was there Khauri would wait no more than two days for the traveller’s return.
Shortly after Khauri left the alehouse where Shimmer quietly ate and planned her next steps, a procession came along through the streets. Like a storm, they were, the wild crashing and clattering of pottery and other tools drew Shimmer’s attention away from her meal, now nearly finished. Not wanting to be surprised by yet another thing in the Walled City, Shimmer hastily rolled the scheme of the palace up and wedged it tightly under her chain belt before quickly leaving to find her strider.
She took the bridle of her zilard and held it tightly, mounting to leave for the palace at the centre of the city, but had her attention caught by the ruckus of the marching procession. All women, they were, dressed in either thin cotton sheets, dyed in such a variety of colours Shimmer could scarcely name them all, or light flowing silks. Both were so thin as to cling to the body or flutter in the hot desert breeze that trickled through the city, leaving terribly little of their bodies to the imagination.
Shimmer peered and wondered how so many women could be so shaped. Each one was a lithe, fluid, and slender body, with the contours of their hips, backs, and shoulders accentuated by the glistening of oils that had been rubbed across their skin.
Their march flared through the street, the women taking slow but long strides along the paved brick road, passing by stalls and shops only to knock aside anything or anyone even marginally in their way. Thirty women in total, Shimmer counted, walked and carried fifteen banners of the impaled phoenix until they came to a stop just outside the alehouse.
The pair at the front of the process stepped away, placing themselves in the eyes of all the people they had passed. One held the banner high as the other lowered her silk veil to speak. Though she stood easily a hundred feet from the alehouse Shimmer could still hear the woman as if she whispered in her ear.
“Heed and listen well,” the woman spoke firmly, but not any louder than a casual voice, “for the palace has need for new servants to be graced by the presence of the king. Offer your daughters, your sisters, your girls with pure, untouched souls, and we will take them kindly into our arms.”
Just then, a woman cried as a man, most likely her husband, pulled her daughter from her hands and offered the young girl to the speaker. The daughter looked no older than Shimmer. The mother scrambled to her knees in prayer and begging, throwing baskets of cactus fruit at the ground as an offering in place of the girl.
The silk-dressed woman merely inspected the girl, pinching her face and her arms the way one would inspect the health of livestock, before nodding contently. The one who bore the banner beside her then lowered the symbol of the phoenix, waving it in a circle over the ground before pulling it up to suddenly reveal a fist-sized pouch. Opening its contents, the husband pinched a shining gold coin, gazing upon its lustre in the sun.
A throng of girls was brought forward, some in much the same way as the first, though Shimmer even saw skinny young girls throw themselves at the speaker in return for gold which they gave to their parents. They were picked from and selected, though it seemed not for their health or vigour. Half-starved peasant girls numbered among the chosen, while others, healthy and beautiful in all regards, were pushed back into the peering crowd.
The desperation and joy to be chosen and taken away from home and family seemed so terrible and pathetic that a strange burning grew inside Shimmer. These girls were so eager to leave their homes but they did not know how painful the ache of longing would be when they finally wished to return.
Having seen enough, she pulled at her strider’s bridle and rode the other way through the still-growing crowd of onlookers hoping to paw some meagre gold payment in return for fresh bodies.
The streets of the Walled City were long, and within them, Shimmer grew weary by the sounds of silken women, for they had not just travelled to one alehouse to collect the king some new girls, but to every public place and every street. She thought the streets like veins, but as the day waned and as she grew used to the disorder of the passing citizens, she came to see the order in it.
The Walled City was divided by the roads neatly into dozens of even square sections. Below the streets, in some places at least, Shimmer could hear the sound of rushing water beneath her zilard’s feet, though the sound was muffled and distant. In some places, the city’s sections were sullied with the sick and squalid, the richest among them being only the potter and mason, whose skill and craft went on to maintain the structures of the city. In other places, markets of spices and silks passed exotic goods that tickled Shimmer’s nose and pleased her eyes.
Men from every corner of the world seemed to pass their goods through those opulent places. Pale-skinned giants, seven or eight feet tall and with lustrous gold hair, passed shining steel knives to short, dark-haired men with round noses and rounder ears. Shimmer wondered from where these people came from, for they looked nothing like the people who dwelled in the desert, and brought goods that could not have come from the ceaseless sun and heat. And why, if such merchants made trades every day, did Khauri believe the king to be the only man in the city worth stealing from?
At last, she came to a wall that split the road apart like a fork in a river. The streets twisted around and gave way to the presence of the palace and its carved ivory walls. Shimmer gazed bewildered as she came closer, for afar she believed she had spied a palace built of marble and limestone, only to find her grave mistake: a mistaken grave.
The bricks were skulls and bones laid side by side, set into alabaster mortar and stacked higher than three houses. A hundred, no a thousand, no a hundred thousand, Shimmer trembled at the notion of the death one would need to build such a thing. No mass grave, this was. Someone worked on it, spent time with it. They treated it like art. Each arm and leg were precisely locked in place around a skull so that even without the mortar between them, Shimmer imagined the structure would hold itself up just by its sheer weight.
She cursed herself. Khauri was a madman if he believed she would steal from a king who built his palace from bones! His years as a governor must have dulled his senses to it, she thought, but it would not change the truth of the horrid palace. Shimmer pulled her strider to turn at once but she stopped before it could take off down the road and leave the grim wall behind. She could not explain it but there was a sensation, like hot ashes sparking up from a fire and dancing on the nape of her neck. The sensation worsened as her zilard took its first steps so she quickly stopped it and returned to the walls. Some power, she knew not what, was pulling her back. It was a sensation she had never felt before, not in this land nor the one she had come from. And that, despite all her sense and hesitation, was worth an investigation.
II.
By the time the sun extinguished itself below the horizon, Shimmer had scaled the heights of the skeleton wall and clamoured down within the palace grounds. Her hands were slick with the sweat of fear, but the sockets of the skulls along the wall made easy purchases for her small and nimble hands.
She stole in before the soldiers changed their post, when those who had been there throughout the day had become haggard and tired by the heat. Within the palace, just as Khauri had promised, not a single soldier could be found. Servants tended to the gardens that encircled the oasis, drawing up its water into a ring of grassy pastures and red flowers. She crossed the gardens easily for the servants were unattentive to anything but their flowers, and entered the walls of a temple carved from rust-red stone.
Hidden in a corner where none of the passing women would notice, Shimmer reminded herself of the palace’s scheme. Six temples surrounded the oasis, with small rafts for servants to go to and from the king’s chambers in the centre. Between each temple were smaller buildings for the palace’s other needs, including a workshop, a kitchen, kennels for hounds, and even apiaries for desert bees. Only one temple, by the look of the schematic, stood close enough to the king’s chambers to build a short bridge over the oasis, and it was the furthest across from where Shimmer was.
Like a fox stalking mice across a silent desert night, Shimmer crept out of one temple to the next, avoiding servants and gardeners by the shadows of thick bushes and trees.
She was unsurprised that, apart from a few slaves that swept the garden paths, all those who worked in the palace were women, though only the ones within the temples were dressed in thin cotton sheets. There in their red abodes, young girls flocked around older women, following their actions just as mirror images would. They practised walking in gentle strides, speaking with confidence and strength, or reading long vellum scrolls under the light of glowing white crystals. It wasn’t the students and their unwavering loyalty that disturbed Shimmer the most, however. It was the teachers.
Like the women in the streets, the teachers were birds of a feather. They dressed in golden silks that wrapped tightly against their body, holding close the sway of their hips with every motion. Their veils pressed against their faces to show only a hint of their lips while their eyes were red coals, glaring in observation of every mistake and failure made by their charges. Only in hair did they differ. Some were women of jet-black hair, others had locks of brown or auburn.
But in her observation of the women, Shimmer fell into a kind of relaxed stupor until she could hardly notice the tall woman in red silks staring at her through the bushes. The woman’s motion was what set her off, and her eyes fixed back on the slender figure.
Neither spoke, both holding their breath until the woman wheeled around quickly with a panicked gasp and made the first motion to run before recoiling as Shimmer’s blade gleamed in the starlight.
“You’re no assassin,” the woman said with a surprised expression on her face. “You looked more frightening from behind the bushes.”
“I can still cut you open,” Shimmer hissed in a careful whisper.
“You must be new,” the woman looked curiously up and down at her clothes.
Shimmer slunk back by a half-step at the sensation of her inspection. The woman’s eyes were a pair of glowing coals like the others, and she felt as if she was being undressed just by being looked at.
“Well, go on then and tell it,” the woman put a hand on her hip, “what’s your sob story? Orphan? Given away?”
Shimmer put her blade away. This woman thought she was one of the taken girls? A quick look to the right and left showed her gardeners in the distance, trimming red flowers around the temples. She doubted they would notice if she killed the woman, but they were close enough that they might stumble across the signs of blood before she could escape with the king’s treasure.
“Taken,” Shimmer answered slowly. “I don’t remember my parents. But I ran from those who stole me away, and now I am here.”
The woman smiled and then took Shimmer by the hand. By all the gods and heavens above! Her skin was supple beyond imagination. Shimmer swore she could melt into the woman’s tender body, her mind completely enraptured by her warmth. Luckily the woman’s keen voice drew Shimmer from her amazement with quick instructions.
“You’re late enough as it is. We can skip the dress fitting, but you haven’t even washed and groomed. The high priestess will not be pleased.” She whisked Shimmer into the nearby temple, guiding her directly to the bathhouses.
Steam flushed Shimmer’s face with a different kind of heat, one she had never felt on her journey through the arid desert. The heat hung, the steam stung, and her skin felt on fire. Water bubbled up from copper pipes in the middle of a vast basin, filling up as the woman began to pull at Shimmer’s clothes. She protested, but the woman’s hands were unnaturally quick, stripping her and wrapping her in a towel before Shimmer gathered her senses. And then she was nudged into the basin. The hot water continued filling, crawling up her leg until the bubbling finally stopped and the water rested against her thigh.
With the silence, Shimmer’s senses returned to her and she scrambled for the edge of the pool where her sword had been dropped. The water weighed her down, however, and the woman easily snatched the weapon out of her reach.
“Normally I’d dispose of this, but there is no time,” she chided, clicking her tongue disapprovingly. “For now, I won’t tell if you won’t. Clean yourself until I return with proper clothes.” She looked at the weathered dress in her arms. “A fitting size should not be so hard to find.”
The red-silked woman left, and Shimmer had nought but the towel around her waist. She soaked in the water, forced to adjust to the scalding steam, which now did not seem so bad as it opened and cleared the pores of her skin, and wondered what she could do next. Take her weapon and run when the woman returns? Yes, perhaps, but she would be dressed as the other girls were and be expected to act as they did.
Shimmer scrubbed the dust and dirt off from her arms, then her legs, then her neck and body. So many days had she been without water or succour that at once she felt relieved by the bath, and slowly a satisfying exhaustion crept into her body, invading every corner of her muscles and bones until she lifted her legs and simply drifted along the water.
The shrivelling discomfort of her fingers roused Shimmer sometime later, though she knew not exactly when. A quick scan of the bathhouse showed no sign of the woman in red, nor of any new clothes. Had she dosed for only a minute or many? Either way, she decided not to wait for the question to be answered for her. Reluctantly, Shimmer rose from the bath, its water still considerably warm, and grabbed a fresh towel from a shelf nearby, wrapping herself around the chest. She faltered only briefly, feeling her hair now freed from the burden of dust and sand.
The temple outside was shadowy and quiet, emptied of all its women. Perhaps the red-dressed woman left as well. Shimmer moved quickly through the temple halls, searching first for a weapon of some sort before pressing on further. The gloom of the temple was dimmer than she remembered, but across the temple, on the side opposite of the bathhouse, the crack of a door cast a long ray of firelight across the dim hallway. Shimmer followed it, listening carefully as she went.
“Rise!” A voice cried from the room, shrill and fervent like vultures over a freshly fallen carcass. “No longer are you the girls born from mortal loins. Let fire and flame bring you new life! Rise! Rise!”
The screams of agony that followed shook Shimmer’s body with fright, as blood-curdling screams echoed through the halls of the temple. She stood trembling and frightened, but fixated by some morbid curiosity to witness what act the women could have committed. Some desire to survive, to know the dangers surrounding her, compelled Shimmer to look through that crack in the door and to see the fires engulfing a host of young women.
They were not girls, not the ones brought from the streets, but even as their skin blistered and their naked flesh melted into black ashes, Shimmer saw that they were younger than most of the women in fine dresses, the priestesses of the palace. The young sacrifices were lashed to wooden crosses, human-sized “X’s” that held them over a coal pit as fresh oil and wood was thrown in by the other women while the lead priestess chanted.
The rancid smell of charred bone filled Shimmer’s nose and she gagged, clutching her mouth and stomach to avoid disembowelling from disgust. But as she turned to run, to dive into the bath and imagine the waters could wash her of the memory, the shrill voice spoke again one final time.
“Rise, you Phoenixes of the Cross!”
And in the corner of her eye, Shimmer did see an impossible miracle. As the other priestesses, women dressed in red silks, poured barrels of a sweet-smelling red liquid over the coal pits, the formless black corpses began to expand. Ash fell off their skin, exposing new supple flesh beneath them. The young women, some of them admittedly uglier than the others, all emerged from their corpses with fresh faces and burning yellow eyes.
And Shimmer waited no longer, turning and running the opposite way, fleeing and wishing she had heeded the ill-portent of the skull-ridden wall. She made it to the entrance of the temple before crashing head-first into a recognizably taut and cushioned bosom.
The woman in red silks stumbled back but miraculously managed to keep her balance and catch Shimmer by the arm. Her veil concealed half her face but the anger along her brow and gleaming eyes were all too apparent.
“No need to be so eager,” she said, her soft hands grabbing Shimmer’s arm and pulling her back to the bathhouse. “I know I am late but you were to stay put.” The woman sighed. “The ritual had already begun so the only available dresses were in the other temples.”
Fear trapped Shimmer’s voice and ran her blood cold, even though she returned to the humid vapours of the bathhouse. Shaken by her vision of fire and flesh, the clarity of survival flooded her veins and muscles and she stood as tensely as she ever had before the woman in red. She stiffly took the new dress provided to her, a thin cotton outfit cut open at the sides so that even fully clothed, the entirety of her legs was laid bare to the air. The woman assisted with the veil, placing the wispy cotton sheet, scented with sweet lavender and berries, over her nose and mouth.
“You clean up nicely,” the woman said as she inspected Shimmer’s washed body and ran her fingers through her knotted hair. She frowned. “Well, there isn’t time to fix everything. This will have to do. Hurry along now, you cannot be late for introductions to the king.”
“I am to meet the king?” Shimmer asked. Her eyes and head followed the woman as she walked out, but her feet remained planted.
“You won’t if you take any longer.” The woman looked out a small window along the hallway’s side. “Oh, the moonlight is high. The girls will be crossing the bridge now. Go on!”
Dressed now in the white gowns of their ilk, Shimmer sprinted with all her might, carrying her bare feet across the paved garden paths. The way was well kept by the gardeners and slaves, for not a single barb or twig or errant thorn pricked her sole. In the cold dark desert night, she found that it was a cruel irony that only when she was dressed in a nebulous fluttering dress did the empty sky above sap the heat from the earth until a strong chill fell onto her skin.
Passing the next temple, she ran on until the final one came into sight through the oasis palms and bright red flowers, and Shimmer finally began to breathe deeply. The king’s treasure vault, just there on the other side of a narrow bridge, was so full of luxury that she swore she could smell the metallic tang of silver and gold in the air.
A line of young girls her age and older proceeded across the bridge as the last of them entered the temple. So close to her goal, Shimmer swallowed all fear and imagined the heft of treasure she could be saddled with if she pressed forward.
“You there!” the priestess leading the young girls, a remarkably tall woman with dark hair dressed in golden silks called out to Shimmer. She sauntered closer, glaring with her brazen eyes. “Who are you? From whence have you come?”
Shimmer slowed her gait and caught her breath. “A bathhouse. I required a change of dress.”
The woman quickly whisked her hand through the air like a whip, ending with her pointed nails on Shimmer’s lips. “I see you. Wild, untamed, more an animal than a girl fit for this palace, and yet the fires of the Phoenix burn around you as if your skin was pitched in tar. Go, then. And then we will see about breaking this animal spirit.”
Defiant confidence overtook Shimmer now. The invasive eyes of the priestess she could bear, but the golden priestess looked even further. Shimmer felt her eyes on her spirit, not her body, and intrusion she did not take kindly. For but a brief moment, rage engulfed her and she made a clenched fist around her waist, only to realize her sword had not been returned to her. She let the anger go and permitted the tall woman to stare down at her as she crossed the bridge with the other girls towards the king’s chambers.
III.
His name was Zhamzizel the Great, and his inner palace was a great puzzle of interlocking marble bricks, held together by weight and perfect arrangement rather than mortar. But they were not allowed to see them until they were prepared.
Shimmer, standing now among a brood of young girls all dressed in loose whites, spun fast on her heels and cast her eyes about the king’s chambers. He was locked within his innermost confines, the golden priestess informed them, and would not look upon them until they completed their final preparation. They were taken to a room across from the king’s chamber to a short spire just high enough for two levels, though they stood only on one. The ceiling high above bore the sky in the form of painted constellations with glistening jewels for every star. The other girls drew sharp gasping breaths as they looked up, but Shimmer’s senses were focused on the large goblet placed on a pedestal in the centre of the spire.
The priestess closed the door behind the last girl and Shimmer heard an audible clack of a metal bolt locking them within. Suddenly, the girls began to dip their hands in the goblet and drew out red-stained fingertips. Shimmer followed suit, watching carefully as the others stood in pairs and painted streaks of red on the nape of the other’s neck. She twisted her face as her fingers submerged slowly into the fluid. It was thick and viscous, similar in every way to honey save for its hue of blood red.
Without warning, a hand took her shoulder and spun her around, and Shimmer felt the cold touch of a girl’s finger as she traced the tip of her shaped nail along her neck.
“Hold still.” The girl, sounding about Shimmer’s age but slightly taller, giggled as drew. The red liquid stuck and quickly dried against her neck. “You wouldn’t want to be turned away coming this far.”
“Do you know what will happen when we meet the king?” Shimmer asked.
“Only that we will be allowed to finally begin our learning,” the girl asked. “Who are you to ask? Did you not hear the prioress when we entered the palace?”
Shimmer assumed she meant the women who marched at the head of the processions. “I was uncertain of my fate, and so I hid myself away and must have missed that part.”
The girl gave an amused sigh, “Then you are very lucky that you found your way here. I am called Eya. And you?”
“Shimmer,” she answered tersely.
“The prioress said we are to be as a family now, but even among sisters two may be closer than others. I think we should see each other through future trials, one as lucky as you should be good to have around.”
The girl turned, pulling Shimmer around to return the favour and paint her naked neck. Shimmer saw now that she was tan-skinned with coarse black hair that rolled down to the middle of her back. She was almost certainly of the desert-dwelling natives. Parting in the middle, her curtain of hair revealed a thin, body neck, skin stretched tightly over the spine.
Now turned around, the icon the girls had painted was clearly in view. On the neck of the girl beside her, Shimmer saw the very same phoenix which pervaded the Walled City. They were crude approximations of what might be found on a tapestry or canvas, and each painting was unlike the others. The girls, like Shimmer, were untrained recruits, and she imagined great skill was not required for a passable painting.
Shimmer took the red nectar on her finger and traced the beginning of an “X” on Eya’s neck, stopping with amazement as the liquid dried on contact, turning to a dark shade, not unlike a bruise. She continued with care, not wishing to make some permanent error on this innocent girl’s skin. When they were all done, one of the girls knocked on the door thrice, signalling the golden priestess to open.
Across the white palace, they walked again, the younger girls chattering excitedly among themselves. To be invited to see a king, to live in a palace like royalty, that was often the dream of young girls, was it not? But Shimmer had had her fill of palaces and hidden rituals. She looked down an unlit corridor that intersected between the king’s chambers and the room they had left. It was the only other part of the inner palace, it seemed.
“The vault,” Shimmer murmured to herself so quietly it was incomprehensible. But even as she slowed her pace and lulled behind the group of girls, Eya grabbed her hand and pulled her along to the front.
“Even your luck must run dry,” she said, “stay close, or you’ll be left behind for sure this time.”
Shimmer cursed herself for letting that red priestess take her sword as she tried to let the clamour push her aside. If she were armed, she’d let her beat heart take control and rush off to the vault. The horde of treasure was so near now. She nearly wrested herself from Eya’s control when they arrived back at the king’s chamber, where the door had been opened for their arrival. Still gazing back towards the corridor, Shimmer only ceased her attempts to flee when the massive figure of a man, or rather a man-like figure, appeared in the corner of her eyes.
He was truly giant, ten feet in height was Shimmer’s guess, and such a spectacle that none of the girls marvelled at the embroidered silk pillows piled around the chamber, but only at the man and his crucified form.
His marble skin rested tightly against his sculpted muscles, bulging and as shapely as any specimen could be, as his arms were stretched out across a stone cross, bound to it by heavy gold chains thicker than tree branches. He was stripped bare, save for a single loincloth to preserve his modesty, with a jewelled silver crown across his forehead and a rusted collar around his neck. The collar was jagged and bent, and even from across the bedchamber Shimmer could see spikes along the inside, just barely resting on his skin.
The red disheveled hair that dropped down to his shoulders and covered his face could not hide the grimace his lips had contorted into, nor the taut muscles in his neck that stained against the menacing collar.
But most miraculously of all, and the thing which captured Shimmer’s eyes for the longest time, were his wings. Each one thrice the length of his arm, they were covered in ashy-black feathers that shimmered with rippling orange waves that glowed like the embers of a dying campfire.
Another priestess, dressed in a tapestry of black silk, stood by the king and beckoned for Eya, as she was the first among them, to step forward. Eya let go of Shimmer’s hand cautiously, and for the briefest of moments, Shimmer felt the girl’s hand trembling as she walked with long, graceful steps up to the king on the cross. The black-silked priestess took Eya’s hand, and with an imperceptibly fast flick of her wrist, drew a short claw-shaped knife across her palm. Eya winced, but stood firmly, watching the priestess take her hand and place it below the leg of the man.
Then she made a cut inches below the groin, the faintest of gashes which still procured a steaming river of lustrous golden blood. The current streaked and forked down the man’s leg, ending in fine shimmering estuaries along his toes. Shimmer stared at the single drop which pulled itself from the king’s skin and nested in the bloody palm of Eya’s hand. There was silence for a moment, and Eya’s mouth slowly fell open as she touched her palm, wiping the blood away to show no sign of the damage.
“Thou art of the heavens now, child,” the priestess in black said, ushering her away and motioning for Shimmer to take Eya’s place. “You all shall be, with this covenant of the gods.”
But Shimmer stood back. The king was cruel. The king was greedy. Khauri’s scars were proof of that. But this man, this creature above, was not a king but a slave, and the worst kind of all. A pit formed in Shimmer’s chest as she felt her legs take one step closer. Walking under him, she could see the man’s face more clearly.
His high-bridged nose and sharp cheekbones gave him a hard look, but no one could mistake the sunken sockets of his eyes. Exhausted, anguished, but still awake and aware, he looked upon Shimmer as a starving beggar would look upon a happy fat merchant.
When the priestess cut her hand and the golden blood came, the pit in her chest turned to more sorrow than she could stomach. Relinquishing regard for her own safety, she pulled her hand away and held the wound up for the king on the cross to see.
“Is this what you want?” she asked him. “Speak your name, and tell me your wish!”
“Stupid girl!” shrieked the golden-dressed priestess. She stormed across the chamber and pulled Shimmer’s hand away with a surprising vice-like grip despite the buttery softness of her skin. “You are marked for the Phoenix, a blessing from the stars before you were ever born.”
She pinched Shimmer’s face and turned her gaze up to the man. “Look well upon him! Our King bears the fire of the Phoenix, and soon you shall be beholden to him as one of his ilk.”
But above the man, in the darker corners of the bedchamber just beyond the providence of candlelight, lurked a formless shadow that began to seep into the room as a dripping pool. The girls screamed, their white dresses dancing in the air as they frantically ran, followed by the priestesses who were swept away from the king by the lightless flood.
“We speak with confidence now,” whispered the large winged man. His black wings all but vanished into the shadow that now surrounded both him and Shimmer, the only hint of their presence being the slithering slivers of embers along his feathers. “Who are you, to grant a wish to a warden of the stars?”
“I am Shim—” she started, but her voice broke as she considered her words. “My name is Sunset Shimmer of Equestria. And you say you are a warden of the stars?”
The man strained his head, twisting and stretching his neck even as the spikes driven into his skin bled more golden blood across his body just so he could look Shimmer in the eyes.
“Fortunate for us both that you hail from a far world, and that you may understand me. No king or god am I, only a being such as yourself, lost and forgotten. Of the many other worlds beyond this earth and yours, I came from one called Pleroma. On our great wings we carried ourselves across lengths incomprehensible to mortal beasts as we fled our war against another race of star-dwellers. Yet, they harried us to this planet, gave us no peace or rest or mercy, and for aeons our war in the heavens have compelled men to label us as gods and angels.”
His chest heaved as his voice grew gradually drier and raspier as if speaking itself pained him. But his voice did not falter, delivering the same reverberance that echoed through the whole room.
“I am Zhamzizel. I am a warden of the stars. I was tasked with keeping the veil between heaven and earth unpierced, for my kind wish no man or woman would die for what they cannot understand. But in my duty I was felled by a great weapon of the enemy. Thinking I was surely dead, they left my body to fall to earth, where I was found and dragged to this palace in the founding days of this damned city.”
“If you have such power why have you not recovered and escaped? How can the priestesses keep you chained like this?”
He chuckled wistfully at Shimmer’s innocence. “Though no gods are we, my people’s lifetimes are that of mountains and rivers. And the weapon which wounded me was such a terrible device, I can still feel how its barbs sapped my spirit as well as my body. In time I might regain my strength to return to the heavens, but I shall spend many agonizing millennia on this cruel earth before that time comes.”
“Many millennia maybe, but not agonizing, if I can help it.”
“You cannot imagine the longing I have had for those words. But what earthly being would give up their worship for an angel’s peace? If only you had come sooner...” The man shook his head, an act that seemed far more painful than his expression showed, for his golden blood now soaked his skin from neck to pelvis.
“You haven’t the time to save me, not anymore,” his voice began to shake as if he were bearing a massive weight. “The priestesses bring the Nephilim, daughters whose cave-dwelling ancestors once consorted with my kin who explored the earth. More and more of them propagate the earth, and more and more of my blood they have taken.”
He spoke faster with worry and desperation. “My strength fails, I cannot keep us safe for long. I have done so only because you are my sole arbiter of salvation. I have seen the machinations of human civilization. I am branded a divine king so that they may conscript armies and levy taxes, separate mothers from daughters only to prolong their merciless hegemony. I beg of you to take the last of my blood, a treasure beyond measure in this palace, and make me a mortal beast. Leave me to die here, that I may watch their despair as their false god dies and their hegemony crumbles, and know that I at least had a hand in its end.”
Shimmer held up her hand, the blood on her palm now stiff and tenacious. A single flex of her wrist and the skin parted again, renewing the flow of blood.
“But I am not a Nephilim, I cannot be,” she said. “What will happen if I take your blood?”
“I have no theories,” the angel said, “but your spirit is strong. I can see it. Your flesh may not be as the Nephilim are, yet I believe my blood will embolden your mortal spirit more than it ever could for the priestesses. But know that if you kill me, you must take my blood. I fear what the priestesses will do with it when I am gone.”
Nervously, Shimmer nodded and approached the man’s leg. She closed her eyes and tightened her jaws as she thrust a finger into the cut on his thigh. His muscles tensed and the man groaned in pain, but Shimmer stomached it all for his sake and pulled harder, widening the cut further. Blood streamed over her hand, but not like a river. It sought out the wound on her hand, seeping into her skin and burning the mark on the back of her neck.
The man convulsed violently until his marble skin turned snow-pale, and then he did not move at all. Shimmer held her wrist to her face, looking closely at the cut. Her own blood, red and mortal in appearance, continued to trickle and drip as the surge of power dissipated within her. Perhaps he was right, and she was differently affected. But such questions could not find their purchase in Shimmer’s mind, as the shadow surrounding her died alongside the angel that had created it.
She turned now to see Eya standing by the gold and black-dressed women, the only one as the rest of the girls had fled the inner palace. The priestess in black pointed her knife at Shimmer, eyes glowering with a torrent of rage.
“You heathen whore-spawn, you are no child of the heavens! You are of the enemy, a spawn of devils come to shatter our faith and murder our king.” She crouched slowly before suddenly erupting into a wild dash, her black silks whipping like tendrils in the air.
Shimmer dodged the flash of steel as the knife made for her throat, saved only by the great distance the priestess had to cover. Recognizing she was helpless against her speed, she instead picked up one of the pillows decorating the bedchamber and held it up to the priestess as she closed for another cut. The knife caught in the silk, holding fast even as the priestess leaned and pulled with all her might to free it.
Wasting not a second more, Shimmer felt the mark on the nape of her neck flare, pushing foreign thoughts of anger and vengeance into her mind. For a moment her will was not her own, and she forcefully grabbed the priestess by hair. With a thundering roar Shimmer twisted and kicked the woman’s legs from under her, throwing her head onto the marble. The knife clattered across the floor. She dragged her up by the hair again, this time taking her to the edge of the stone cross, and swung with more force than she thought possible. Blood, red and mortal, rushed from the priestess’s head and her arms fell lifelessly to her side.
Shimmer looked up at Zhamzizel, and she swore the dead warden smiled.
The golden priestess held Eya behind her, like a mother protecting her daughter, but they both stood petrified. Shimmer met the eyes of the priestess as she walked across the chamber, and though rage was in her gleaming eyes as well, neither woman nor girl made a move to hinder her departure.
Oh, what could be said of the treasure room now? That it was an ocean of silver and gold and sparkling jewels? That it housed copper and bronze statues so carefully forged they looked as real as Zhamzizel himself?
All true. But Shimmer could no longer covet the sea-green aquamarines and stygian diamonds. She took a fistful of rubies for herself and found a small golden chest, already filled with rings, goblets, necklaces, and all other treasures, to return to Khauri. Let the former governor flee the Walled City, thinking he had escaped a cruel, greedy king.
IV.
The zilard walked lazily towards the stables Khauri had mentioned. This one was not a beast who rose early with the sun, for in the desert the end of the night meant only a torturous day of shade-seeking.
Shimmer rode quietly on her strider’s back, clutching her rubies and resting the chest of treasures in her lap. Khauri emerged from a small tent just beyond the gated fences of the stable, where heavyset zilards bred for work and labour continued to doze.
“Haha! You did it then?” the man cheered. “Oh, my friend, didn’t I say? We are both now,” he paused, turning to see if anyone else was near enough to hear him, “very rich.” The man tittered about in his sandals like a boy whose father had just snuck him his first ale.
“My weapon and my clothes were lost along the way,” Shimmer said, pulling at the cotton fabric of her dress. “And this disguise will not last long in the desert. Which of the markets will have a blacksmith and tailor?”
“Hm,” Khauri held his chin in his scarred hand, pondering over her dress. “I do not even want to know how you came to have a novitiate’s garb. Some questions better left unanswered, yes? But to answer your question, try the streets furthest west, the merchants there might fleece you of your treasures, but the only thing they covet more than wealth is their handiwork. You cannot go wrong there.”
Shimmer nodded, and with a gleeful handshake, Khauri took the chest of treasures from her and strutted towards the stable owner with confidence and a smile. Remembering his charm in the alehouse, she wondered how much he would even have to pay in the end.
The sun turned the purple sky to bright pink, and Shimmer squinted through at the light of a new dawn. She rubbed her faithful strider along the neck, the creature fully unaware of what changes had happened upon her rider.
“Let’s give you a full belly, girl,” Shimmer said softly. “And then get us as far from this city as your legs can go.”
The brazen cries of desert men quieted down as the last one of them that had chased the traveller died on her spear. The lifeless wind kissed the red-stained cliffs and plateaus of rock struck the desert man in the face, pulling him off the spear and falling down a row of natural steps.
His body slumped halfway down, pinned against a barrier of his comrades, now perished by the bronze tip of a spear. The limp corpses, men clad in iron maille and sand-covered turbans, caught the stumbling fellow as if they longed to be united even in death. Had they not waited on the slope, however, plenty others laid strewn along the cliffside path, giving enough blood to pave it red.
Riding atop a great feathered raptor, a zilard strider, the traveller looked down to the valley where tendrils of the Tiphrates fed the desert earth. Here in this distant creek, only wandering crocodiles lurked in the shallow waters. She followed the bending water from the security of the cliffs. Though steep, the stones gave bountiful purchases for her zilard’s hooked claws to latch on with every step.
At the end of the cliffs, where the path dipped to the valley through sparse jagged steps, awaited a final desert savage. His long black hair was knotted up in a fashion common to his race and he was built like a lion. Upon one broad shoulder rested a bow of carved horn with a quiver of arrows, upon the other rested a hammer for stone breakers rather than a warrior. Still, he wielded its heft comfortably as he placed both weapons at his feet.
“Mighty trespasser!” he called out with his arms wide apart. “By what name shall I call you when I tell my tribe of the fool who crossed our lands to see the Tower.”
“Shimmer,” growled the traveller, “but you will not live to tell them.” She dropped from the strider to her feet, sinking in the sand with the added weight of her armour. She wore no mail, but beneath her jerkin, a suit of cotton covered in pockets and filled with clay plates swayed and bounced against her thin frame.
Quickly the man kicked up his bow and drew back an arrow and sneered. “No matter, my kin have passed to the Arali, and if I die, their libations will be shared with stories of how you withered at the Tower.”
“Why do you believe so?”
“All men do,” the desert dweller’s laughter swelled. “See for yourself, how scores of men of paper have died by its very presence.”
“You mean scholars,” Shimmer replied uneasily, eyeing the man’s arrow. It would not pierce her clay plates, though her head remained exposed. “What happened to them, how did they die?”
The desert savage eased his draw, relaxing his arm and smiling with wide eyes at Shimmer. “Such interest! I almost wish to see your face when you are spitting blood in your sleep. Come then, warrior!” He threw his bow aside and picked up his hammer. “My kin are restless for your head!”
He leapt forward in two bounding steps and swung his hammer in a deathly arc. Shimmer moved around him but stumbled as her vision was filled with dust and sand from broken stone. As she closed her eyes she thrust back instinctively and felt the familiar gush of blood trickle down her spear.
When her eyes blinked and cleared her vision, she found the savage clutching his shoulder and grimacing at her. He swung wildly again in a wide circle, chasing her down with a frightening dexterity that should have been impossible for a man with his injuries. One blow found its mark, crushing the clay plates covering her chest and throwing Shimmer to the ground.
She gasped for air, clutching her body as it convulsed from the shock of the blow. The savage laughed again, this time with a snarled, raspy voice, not unlike the cackles of hyenas.
Panic steadied her nerves, just enough that she could pinch her lips and deliver a shrill whistle towards the desert man. Before he could turn and see his fate, her zilard strider was already on his back, pinning him to the earth and tearing apart his neck with serrated jaws.
Shimmer grabbed her spear and leaned on it as she stood upright, a sudden weariness assaulting her. The heat from the glaring sun began to beat on her face now that the rush of battle had subsided. She turned away from the cliff where a trail of dead men awaited the vultures above and trod along the bank of the river, following only what she knew to do. The Tower of Glass could be seen from the end of the shallow river.
Moonlight guided Shimmer’s eyes when she awakened on the back of her zilard, aware of the cold wind nipping at her skin. Her cracked armour pressed against her bruised chest and caused pain with each careful breath. There was an audible crunch of bones, Shimmer did not need to look to recognize the sound, beneath her strider’s feet, and in the distant horizon, a looming grey tower reflected the pale moonlight.
Crossing the expanse was uneventful, the shimmering ground adorned only by occasional bones of men and animals, sun-bleached after countless passing years. The only thing of note in Shimmer’s mind was the ground itself. At times, the sand gave way to long stretches of fractured glass that cracked and crunched under the weight of her strider.
No other features drew her attention until she rode near enough to see the massive door at the base of the Tower. The Tower itself was not made of glass, but rather a whitish-grey stone which she had never seen before. The Tower of Glass stretched up with three tiered levels, the only windows being small circular cutouts, save for the very top where long panels of clear glass reflected the moonlight.
Near the entranceway were stone pillars, erected by some earlier civilization, that bore naked men and women chained by their arms around them. Shimmer recognized the architecture and cuneiform of Oruk. Squinting under the dim moonlight, she read out the words for “thief” or “adulterer” or some other crime. The ones chained down did not look like people from the cities, their skin was too rough and their hair, though some of them were bald, was too dishevelled.
Those still alive enough to move raised their withered heads and stared at Shimmer with empty eyes. She came down from her strider and moved towards them, though remaining far enough that any disease they had would not spread.
“If it’s freedom you want, you need only answer my questions honestly,” she told them. “Have you seen a woman with skin as pale as tonight's moon and golden hair like mine?” Shimmer held out a streak of yellow that ran like gold veins through her red hair.
A bald old man whose withered skin had already peeled away at his joints coughed weakly before speaking. “Yes. I saw a figure, but not the face that belonged to it. They wore a dark hood, you see.”
“I saw,” another woman whose voice sounded like dried paper eagerly answered, “break my chains and I can show you how she opened the door!” The woman was frail, but not so withered as to look like a living skeleton. While she had the look of the desert’s barbarian tribes, she spoke with a clarity that was clearly from the cities. Perhaps Akaad, or Zagrea.
Shimmer raised the back of her spear and struck the chains, and immediately the woman fell to the floor. She waited a moment for her to recover her strength, and turned back to the strider’s pack to retrieve a spare tunic for the woman’s naked skin. When she turned back, however, the woman was in a sprint, if her weakened hobbling could even be called that, and following the stars westward towards the Tiphrates.
A few other men condemned to the stone pillars laughed at Shimmer’s foolishness, but not the old man. “The hooded figure came with a work-zilard. They pulled the Tower’s doors open and shut.”
“And you expect me to believe you?” Shimmer growled. “Until I find this hooded figure, you will stay as you are.”
“No!” the old man cried. “You will not survive the Tower. This woman you seek, if she was the figure, is surely dead as well. I do not ask to be unchained. Simply kill me. The Tower sickens the body, weakens it in agonizing ways. I only wish it would end quickly. Please, I would not give my life just for a lie.”
“Very well. There is sincerity in your words.” Shimmer thrust firmly into the old man’s chest cleanly, his body so reduced that she could scarcely tell if he had died yet or not. Then she walked up to the other men, placing the tip of her spear along a vein just below the groin.
“If the old man was lying,” she grumbled a warning, “next time, you will tell the truth.”
She tied her zilard’s lead to the large bronze handle of the Tower’s door before dressing down and tending to her armour. The shattered plates of clay were taken from their pockets and discarded, replaced with spares from her saddlebag. Finally, Shimmer stood beneath the structure’s moonlit shadow, staring and wondering what she might find inside.
She was aware of the sudden chill pumping through her heart. Mortal foes, the savage men and women of the desert, she did not fear. But things beyond the rim of her knowledge gave her pause to think. After a while, however, curiosity overturned uneasiness, and she signalled her beast to begin pulling. As warm air spewed from within, she retrieved a torch from her saddlebag before entering, ready for whatever may come.
Shadows danced on the edge of her torch, but the Tower within was by no means completely dark. The chamber at the ground was completely circular, with a wide curved stairwell that ascended to the next level. Across the first chamber, a distant hallway was lit by rods of white light in its walls, more brilliant than a glowing crystal, yet it produced no heat as a candle or torch did. Shimmer could approach it, in fact, and place her hand upon its glow and feel nothing.
That corridor, and the many others that stretched from the centre of the Tower like spokes on a wheel, held many small rooms whose thick glass doors continued to protect their contents. Shimmer could look in and see moth-eaten beds and cracked glass tables, or tools that made some rooms look more like a smithy or tailor’s workshop, yet she could not open any of them. Their locks were firm, and the glass was too thick to shatter through with her spear.
Left with no other path, the traveller made her way up the flight of stone steps to the second level. By the light of her torch, she noticed a peculiarity of the Tower’s grey stone. There were no lines where bricks would interlay. In fact, there were nearly no imperfections on the wall whatsoever, almost as if the wall itself had been poured and cast rather than assembled.
“What kind of place is this? And who could have built it?” Shimmer awed. Even the masons of Ituru, who built great pyramids to the heavens, could hardly show such skill and craft.
Without warning, a crackling voice in the walls responded. “A marvel, is it not? I do hope you see why now I had to come here. Perhaps, then, I could convince you not to return me to my home.”
Shimmer spun, clutching her spear in fright at the phantom voice. “What? How?” She held her torch high above her head. “You are the woman I was asked to find? You are Sygrun?”
“I am. And I see that you are not one of the desert tribes. Your red hair interests me. From where have you come?”
“You can see me?” Shimmer said as she collected her nerves, though she remained vigilant as she explored the corridors for the next flight of stairs. “I am not of the Aesir if that is your meaning. Though I have seen plenty of your people as merchants in Zagrea.”
“Is that where my father found you?” asked the voice, which sounded the same no matter where in the Tower she walked.
“He waits for you in Akaad, south of the city-state Oruk.”
A soft laugh came through the walls. “I know the place. But I will not go. I have only just begun to uncover the secrets interred within the Tower. Its architects were people of a great civilization that had mastered natural philosophy in all its aspects.”
“How great could they have been?” Shimmer asked. “They are gone now.”
She left one corridor, returning to the centre and then trying another path. Simple and repeating in its design, the Tower was deceptive and easy to get lost in, if one did not keep note of where they had already searched. Down the final corridor, Shimmer found a short flight of stairs up to the top level of the Tower, where the gold-haired woman stood behind a wall of glass.
If more confirmation was needed that this was the figure the old man had seen, Shimmer noticed the butchered remains of her zilard lying on her size of glass, while scraps of bone from a finished dinner laid pushed to one corner on the woman’s side.
“Ah, and there we have it,” Sygrun said, walking up to the middle of the room where the glass bisected it. “Let me get a closer look at you now. Yes, I see the scars on your hand and your shoulders. A true fighter you must be. Then you should understand this Tower as I do, once I share with you its secrets.”
“Why would you give them to me?” Shimmer asked as she inspected the room behind the glass. Along the wall was an array of levers in various positions, and at the centre stood a long silver table with more tools than tasks that Shimmer could use them for.
Besides that table, three thin golden beams held up a circular glass plate, with a bright white light shining above it. Shimmer stepped back in surprise when she realized the plate was clear, but rather presenting images of the other parts of the tower.
The Aesir woman, Sygrun, smiled at Shimmer’s amazement. “See? I shall give this knowledge freely, for when you understand, you will know why I must stay, regardless of what my father has promised for my return.”
“But this Tower kills those who dwell near it for too long, you must have seen the withering prisoners outside.”
The woman laughed wryly and walked away from the glass, motioning to the levers along the wall as she took up a gold-coated garment. The clothing was unlike anything Shimmer had seen, its bulk far bigger than necessary for any human, though, for the Aesir, her stocky build fit snugly within. It stretched and warped in a way that was not like cotton or silk, and its gold surface was more than mere dye, it had a true luster under the room’s white light.
“When a smith handles a red-hot iron, he does not work bare-skinned by the forge, does he?” Sygrun asked and then quickly answered herself. “No, he covers himself in wool against the flash of embers. This Tower is much the same, and with this protection, I climbed the Tower and silenced it for a time. That is how you have made it, naked as you are against its power.”
“I have never seen its like,” Shimmer said. “Where did you come by it?”
“A place far from here, near my homeland, where a structure similar to this one once stood. Its own power had died out from its destruction, but the artefacts left by its lords were well preserved in sealed lockboxes. Here, you may take one, a spare in case my own ripped.”
Sygrun unfolded another golden garment and held it out, pulling the leftmost lever on the wall to remove the wall of glass. Shimmer stepped back as the wall moved on its own accord, sliding up into the stone ceiling. Not wanting to delay and fall victim to whatever machinations Sygrun had planned, Shimmer quickly pulled the gold suit and stepped into it. It engulfed her entire body, more like a massive bag than actual clothing, and sealed tightly over her head with a series of interlocking steel pins. Only through a narrow window of glass could Shimmer see anything. Immediately, she felt the warmth of her own breath. The only source of air was a small gap between the pins above her head.
Just then, within the circular glass lens, Shimmer saw the chamber at the entrance. And at the door, the woman she had freed stood with a stone in her hand. She and the other prisoners gathered just inside the door, peering around and whispering among themselves. By some power or mechanism that she could not sense, the glass lens began vibrating and the escapees’ voices could be heard.
“We’ll be as dead as she is if we stay,” one man hissed.
The woman snapped back. “We need her spear, unless you plan to fight the tribesmen with your bare hands.”
Sygrun pulled two levers, so focused on her preparations that she did not notice the voices. Shimmer tried to call out, but it was too late for those below. The floor opened to a small chamber below where there stood a wide pedestal, presenting a massive glowing stone. Immediately the woman, who stood furthest in the room, screamed and clutched her face. The glass was small and hard to see through, but Shimmer could just make out the blisters and burns forming on her skin.
The other men turned to flee, one of them making it through the narrow crack in the door, though to make his escape he had kicked the other’s back into the Tower. They fell and covered themselves with their arms in hope of protection, but blisters burst from their skin as quickly as the woman’s. Sygrun turned at the sound of their screams, running to the glass and picking it up to see the stone even closer.
“Curious,” Sygrun awed. “Outside the Tower, men grew sick after days of exposure. For clear reasons, none alive has seen its true power so closely before.”
“What have you done? Shimmer demanded, taking her hand and throwing the glass back to its stand.
“I have shown you a glimpse,” she responded. “You cannot weigh the price of a few barbaric prisoners against the knowledge of the ancients.” Shimmer snarled, but the Aesir’s shrugging and casual stride tacitly conferred her heedless thoughts. “Leave then, if you wish to bury their bones while there are still bones to bury. As I have said, I am simply here to work.”
Afraid of what might happen if she left the Aesir alone, Shimmer followed closely behind Sygrun down the same way she had come. “That stone,” Sygrun explained, “is the heart of this Tower and the source of the power with which the ancients built their civilization. I know not by what means they ended, but that power remains here still.”
“Why do you seek such a thing?” Shimmer asked nervously.
“For the coming battles, traveller,” she answered plainly as if such a fact should have been easily known. “The seats of Valholl spill with great warriors in preparation for the final days. But mortal hands are no more anathema to the tides of fate than an arrow is to a charging rhinoceros.”
“Final days? Is that some kind of prophecy?”
Sygrun laughed. “The one of Ragnarok, traveller. The one that no person of the mortal races need worry about if I can come to know the truth of this ancient stone.”
They came to it just as she spoke, stopping at the edge of the pedestal. Now within arm’s reach, Shimmer felt the heat of the stone through her suit, squinting her eyes through its tinted glass as she took a fragment of the stone. It was hot to the touch, and she dropped it immediately.
“Great weapons were built from this stone,” Sygrun said, amused by Shimmer’s worry. “There are inscriptions in this Tower that speak of all that was built here by the ancients. I’ve yet to decipher their ancient language, but the imagery is enough to tickle the mind. Spears that can flatten a city in hellish fire, chariots that ride the sky as if the clouds were paved roads, all those and more are possible by this sky-stone.”
“You mean a meteor?” Shimmer said, looking at Sygrun with fresh incredulity. She spoke of it like worship, but whatever unnatural powers lay within, it was still but a rock.
“More than a mere meteor,” she said, still gazing. “Even in this raw, unrefined form, just look at its power!”
Shimmer furtively cast her eyes to the dead prisoners, now nothing more than red pools among white bones. Though they entered for her spear, she felt that no thief or bandit deserved their kind of death.
“It is a grim power indeed,” Shimmer said irritably. “The kind no man or woman deserves to wield if even half of what you say can be created.”
Shaking with a mix of bewilderment and rage, Shimmer grasped her spear tightly and raised its point to Sygurn’s chest. Silence hung over the empty chamber, save for the faint echo outside from Shimmer’s zilard pawing at the sand. At the next instant, the Aesir’s hands were on the shaft, twisting and wrenching Shimmer around in a bout to see who would win over the weapon.
Sygrun, like most of her kind, was tall and muscular, hardened by their homeland’s long winters. But while she was strong, Shimmer was nimble, and she managed to trip Sygurn to her back with a deft kick with her heel. The woman lurched and clung onto the spear but her weight was too much.
Shimmer let the spear go to avoid Sygurn’s pull, and the jolting release of tension from her arms sent the spear flying faster than either woman expected. The glass plate covering Sygurn’s face shattered, and at once the Aesir bellowed a blood-curdling shriek. She covered her face with her protected arms, fleeing for the door only to slip on the slick blood left by the prisoners.
Panic enveloped the Aesir almost as fast as the stone’s accursed power, and blinded by her blistering face, she could no longer find the door once she lost her way.
“I will leave with you!” She begged Shimmer. “Save me!”
But the traveller did not speak. She did not reach out and guide Sygurn back through the Tower’s metal doors. For Shimmer had already gone, stepping out to the desert and whistling to her zilard to pull the door shut.
“You would only return once you have healed,” she muttered and then faltered, choking on her words as Sygurn crawled along the floor. Her pock-marked liquid skin was the last sight she saw within the Tower of Glass. The door satisfactorily slammed shut, its tremendous weight locking itself into place once again.
Shimmer gazed about the desert at her strewn belongings, all scattered by the escaped prisoners. She looked to their crudely shattered chains, bent in erratic ways. Though the woman had lied and torn through her saddlebag, the clear desperation of the prisoners to survive only filled her heart with more grief.
Let the Tower terrify trespassers, Shimmer thought as she picked up her belongings and returned them to her saddle. For the secrets of that glowing stone should never belong to the hands of humanity.
I. Shimmer Comes At Dawn
Scratching claws tore down the single pale road cutting through the desert towards the Ashen Wastes. The sands were still cold from a cloudless night, only just turning pink as the sun edged its rim above the horizon. Outside the safety of sheltered wagons, the caravan drivers that whooped and scampered into the sands at the coming sounds had only a fleeting glimpse of a scaled figure on a red zilard with a billowing black hooded cloak flowing out on the wind. Farther down the road, back the way to the great Tiphrates, the ruckus of a great hunt pursued the figure, though it did not turn back. She swept around the rickety carriages, effortlessly weaving the zilard around the carriages and taking shelter from pelting arrows.
“Please leave us!” cried one man wrapped in ragged white cloth and taking shelter behind his wagon. “We know the armour of the God-King’s medjay. Do not bring the manhunters upon us!”
“Then run or hide!” the hunted traveller roared over the clatter of approaching strider claws. She dismounted, roping her zilard to the side of a wagon and producing a bow and quiver from her saddlebag. “But I’m not going to face so many of them on an open road.”
On the road, the riders were shaking their swords and shouting threats to the caravaneers to drag the traveller out before them. But none made a move. The men were dressed in thick robes that flowed and let the breeze through, though their woven linen had been intertwined with overlapping lamellar plates, rectangular scales made of iron, and underneath Shimmer could just barely see their dark skin, darker than many tribes of the desert. Their zilards were savage beasts, not the plough-draggers common along the Tiphrates, or the thin sand-striders like the traveller’s steed. They were taller and heavier, with polished bronze fighting spurs fastened over their claws. Fangs wet with saliva dripped over the sand the way only well-watered and well-fed zilards could.
“You would do well to show yourself, thief. You cannot run forever. Return what you have stolen and I give you my word, you will not die slowly.” The man at the head of the hunt pointed a spear out, gesturing around to the other wagons. “There is a great bounty on this one’s head. Bring her out now, and you will be rewarded twenty silver rings.”
“Ituru rings,” the man hiding beside the traveller gasped as he moved to grab her arm. “Each one is worth double in the cities.”
But the traveller quickly pulled a dagger from a sheath within her boots and threatened the cowering man with it. “ Neither you nor anyone else will hand me over. Think of what treasures I have stolen for them to have come so far for it. Aid me and you will have more than a paltry ten rings. Cross me and I’ll give you an arrow in your face.”
The man swallowed his fear and crept back slowly, to hide under the neighbouring wagon, leaving the traveller to her own fate.
“You! Man in the front!” She called out. “What is your name?”
The man sneered. “My name is Ahmotep Mahoud. But do you really think you will last long enough to use it? My men will surround you if you do not make this easy on us.”
“I have heard of you, Ahmotep. You are the God-King’s head medjay. The people call you the Hammer of Law, a fearsome swordsman and a fast bowman. I have heard no man can best you at fighting.”
Ahmotep planted the butt of his spear in the soft sand and laughed. “Glad that my reputation makes itself known. Now, will you come and do the same? Let us see you, and return the Heart in the meantime as well.”
“Would you accept a wager? A duel! Tell your men to cross the Tiphrates, all but one to stand as your witness.”
“It would not be a duel without two witnesses, thief, and you are but one.”
“Not so. One of these caravaners shall be my witness.” She reached under her cloak and folded out a roll of silk sheets until it unfurled a smattering of jewels and golden trinkets. The cowering man’s eyes coveted the sight even as his body’s instincts demanded he stay hidden. “See me through and all will be yours after.”
“I will witness her!” he quickly shouted from beneath the wagon.
The traveller nodded and returned the treasures to her cloak, but not before rewarding the man with the smallest of trinkets, a golden earring studded with a polished and pure white diamond.
“Then it’s a duel!” The man cheered for himself, raising up his spear and waving it in a circle, signalling the other manhunters to turn around. “How long shall we wait?”
“Long enough for them to reach the Tiphrates and cross it,” the traveller answered back. “A day. By tomorrow’s bright dawn you will have had your duel.”
“Fair enough,” he turned to his men, the traveller counted about twenty of them, not including the witness. “The village we came by, north of Oruk, wait for me there. If we do not return in two days, ride home.” He then took a satchel and tossed it with some heft at the medjay nearest to him. The two nodded over some silent understanding, and then the man turned with the rest of the manhunters and rode back down the way they had come.
“Satisfied now, thief?” Ahmotep called out once the medjay had. “Step out so that we may discuss the terms of the duel.”
“What’s there to discuss?” The traveller stepped out from behind the wagon, an arrow still notched in her bow. She squinted through the dim of the early dawn, for the sky had only just turned to pale orange. “I will face you this time tomorrow.”
Ahmotep clapped his hands together and laughed. “But what weapons shall we use? And when at dawn? Who shall say when we start?”
Though her cloak hid her face, the tilt of her head showed she was just beginning to consider those details. Ahmotep smiled and sauntered forward two steps, stopping as the traveller raised her bow to him again.
“Allow me to make a suggestion,” he offered, “you may use whatever weapons you have with you. For me, I only have my spear, my sword, and my bow. We’ll wait for the first call of the dune birds.”
“And if one does not call?”
As if the world wished to disprove her, a shrill chirp echoed in the distance as the first true light of the sun peeked over the horizon, and the short, round sand-burrowing birds of the Ashen Wastes began to stick their heads out.
“There you have it, thief.” He clasped his hands together and moved to tie his savage zilard to the corners of one of the sheltered wagons, making a firm knot before settling down beneath its shadow.
“I’m no thief,” the traveller said. She slung her bow over her shoulder and tucked the arrow away in her quiver.
“Then what should I say when I tell others I have killed you?”
“You will be saying nothing,” the traveller growled. “But you can die knowing you were killed by a girl named Shimmer.”
II. Thieves in the Palace
The sun hung high in the sky when the caravan man, Shimmer had learned that his name was Ikwa, asked her about the treasure. Specifically, he wished to know when he would be paid. His relatives, nieces and sisters and brothers-in-law, all gathered around Ikwa’s wagon eagerly awaiting the sight of the traveller’s treasure.
“You are caravan folk,” Shimmer replied as she shifted away from them. The sun was hot enough, even with shade. She didn’t need their bodies warming her further. “If I pay you now you’ll begin thinking you can turn me over to the medjay. See me through this duel and you will have the treasure I stole. If I die, you can help yourself anyway.”
“We would never ally with the God-King’s manhunters. Half of our caravan are paupers from Ituru, we know the cruelty the medjay can inflict upon people. I just wonder, why would you give all your treasure? You should pay half now, and then I can be assured of your intentions.”
“I have no use for the gold I stole,” Shimmer growled. “Only the Heart has value to me. I took the other treasure incidentally when I hastily grabbed the Heart from the God-King’s treasure vault.”
“What is this heart?” Ikwa asked, looking at Shimmer very concerningly. “Surely you cannot mean the Heart of the Sky.”
“The very one,” Shimmer nodded.
At once the caravaneers dashed back, tripping over themselves to get away from her. They were all lean people, characteristic of the nomadic caravaning tribes, though their thinner frame gave them no advantage as they tripped over each other’s feet. Only Ikwa remained where he was, seated under the wagon shade beside Shimmer.
“That is the prized gemstone of the God-King,” he muttered. “I am surprised he sent only a few medjay after you, rather than putting an army on your trail.”
“I imagine he will, once I’m done with Ahmotep. But armies move slowly and must move from city to city to stay provisioned. I plan to escape east through the Wastes, perhaps then circle north to Valholl or continue on and find the Harappan cities north of Lemuria.”
“What do you plan to do with it?” Ikwa asked. “That stone is cursed, condemning all men to suffer the God-King’s wrath if they possess it. You will not find a single merchant on this side of the world who would be willing to buy such a thing.”
“It is fortunate that I don’t plan to sell the Heart,” Shimmer told him. “I found legends about it, written in an ancient script on cave walls in the mountains of Zag. I cannot understand it all, but with what I could read, I came to believe the Heart belongs to a larger collection. And as for its curse, I have not seen hair nor hide of magic or mystic powers.”
The old caravaneer leaned back on a rolled-up sleeping back, brought by his nieces along with flasks of cactus wine, which was readily shared between them. Ikwa passed on the golden earring Shimmer had given, inspecting its studded diamond one last time before one of his sisters took it into her robes for safekeeping.
“Well, while we wait for the medjay to cross the Tiphrates, I would very much like to know how a girl as young as you managed to steal the most prized possession of the God-King. That story by itself must be worth two dozen silver rings.”
“I don’t know if it would be a very interesting story,” Shimmer replied. “I did not do it alone, but for my part, I was mostly responsible for watching the guards and carrying an extra bag of gold. I worked with two thieves, a brother and sister, who had rescued me from my prison in Zagrea after I was arrested for trespassing on Har’Zag. Apparently, enduring the lash of Zag’s priests impressed them enough to enlist my help. I was grateful for their rescue, and I desired a way to reach the Heart, so I accepted. We travelled many days to the Ituru capital, where they knew of abandoned water tunnels that lead under the God-King’s palace. That is how we entered.”
“These thieves, what were their names?”
Shimmer eyed Ikwa curiously. “They were just two thieves, I doubt you would know them by name.”
The man laughed in his dry, papery voice. “You would be surprised how much the names of thieves circulate among merchants. They are important to know if you plan to protect your goods or acquire new ones. And if these two were skilled enough to rescue you from Zagrean dungeons, experienced enough to know secret tunnels running under the God-King’s palace, and confident enough to execute their plan, I would guess that they are thieves of some note.”
Shimmer sighed, relaxing her shoulders as she drew another sip of cactus wine. “It matters little now. Rahim and Raxa are dead, killed by some medjay in the midst of our escape.”
“You say they were just two thieves, but their names are well known among caravan folk,” Ikwa said, now sitting hunched over and peering intently at Shimmer as his eyes grew sullen. “Once they called themselves the Night Siblings, back when they were young and eager to make a name for themselves. How much did you learn of them?”
“We spoke little about ourselves, though they moved like desert cats walking prey, moving so smoothly between shadows and light that I am sure they could have abandoned me in the palace at any time if they so desired.”
Ikwa nodded as if Shimmer had just told him the sky was blue and the desert was hot. He motioned for his nieces to come closer and sit beside him as he poured fresh glasses of wine. “Well, wish they had made it here with you, even if only to see if they measure up to even half of the reputation they had created for themselves. I have often heard of how they stage extravagant heists, taking from the strongest and wealthiest from Ituru to Akaad as if it were glory they were seeking rather than gold. They once stole the schematics to the water canals of Oruk, using it to sabotage the flow and ransom the entire city’s water in exchange for a golden statue in their honour.”
“I have been to Oruk,” Shimmer interjected with knitted brows. “I have never seen a statue like that.”
“The king had it melted down as soon as the water returned,” Ikwa said. “Tongues may be cut for mentioning their name with its walls, but the story is still passed among us caravan folk.”
Shimmer sat with a hand on her chin, pondering the story. The sun had risen high enough now that even in the early hours of the morning the sand beneath her began to grow warm. The two medjay, sitting across the gathering of caravan wagons, laughed among themselves as they spent a silver ring on water and bread from the other caravan families.
The adventure from before seemed a distant memory now. Only three nights ago, Shimmer had found herself rappelling up a rope from a sealed waterway into pools where the God-King kept his pet crocodiles. Wading waist-deep into the water without a fire to light the way terrified Shimmer, for crocodiles were known to hunt at night. And yet Rahim led the way, his sister Raxa pushing Shimmer along a narrow path of stone which slowly rose above the water.
The sibling assured Shimmer that the crocodiles had been well-fed, for the God-King frequently threw banquets for his pets to flaunt his wealth. A leathery touch against her leg nearly dragged out a scream from her, though it certainly emptied her bladder, even as Raxa assured that it was simply the roots of the reeds, not a curious tail. Miraculously they crossed as Rahim promised, although her quivering legs could not immediately shake the fear. Perhaps if they had, she would have been able to keep up with the siblings and save them for the spear of the medjay.
“Strange, isn’t it?” Shimmer shook herself clear of her thoughts and returned to her conversation with Ikwa. “To have not known them, but still working so closely with them. Now that they are gone, I feel I have lost something without ever having had it.”
“And you are sure they are dead?” Ikwa asked.
“Certainly so. Two medjay speared them before my very eyes, though I was too far to save them.”
“Be glad you are here now,” Ikwa said, and then looked over to where Ahmotep sat. “For however long that may be.”
“You think I will lose?” She inquired, wondering what a travelling merchant would know of hunting desert savages or fending off zealots.
“I think that the God-King’s Hammer of Law has reasons to be known, just as the Raxa and Rahim.”
A grunt and a shrug from her shoulders were her only response. Shimmer stood and walked to her zilard, inspecting her saddlebags for her other weapons to choose from. It was important to be prepared, but not overcautious. Too many weapons would be impossible to handle, and a fumble may give the medjay an extra weapon with which to win.
Tied to the side of her strider was a thin copper shield and freshly oiled spear, wrapped together in a bundle of cloth to preserve the speartip from sand and pebbles skittering in the wind. She grasped her long dagger, which she kept concealed within her riding boots, and compared it to the clutter of swords she had stolen from the God-King’s guards.
After measuring the length and judging the similar and different blade shapes, she put the knife back to its proper place in her boot and then selected from the many swords a single straight blade made of polished iron. Though not much longer than her dagger, if she had a weapon that could find the gaps between the medjay’s scaled armour, it was this blade.
“Ware! Riders approaching.” Ahmotep’s voice, followed by shouts ringing through the air, caught her attention. She whirled around to face him, but found him armed and looking off into the Ashen Wastes. Coming close over the horizon was a line of black dots, quickly growing to the form of men on zilard backs. These were not of the savage Ituru breed, nor were they slender striders like Simmer’s, rather they were wide and stocky zilards accustomed to hauling and tilling, useless in a chase but enduring to a fault. And there were a great many of them.
The men riding were half-dressed in wrapped cloth, their faces and heads covered in the thin headdresses worn by desert tribes and their weapons were inconsistent between each man. Some rode with long, heavy spears, others aimed bows off their zilards, and others still carried multiple swords and sometimes a shield.
“Thief!” Ahmotep called out. “Our duel will never come if these savages take us. Will you fight at my back?”
Shimmer gawked at his boldness. If they fought together, either one could stab the other in the back and claim their reward. But as the savages neared, their line widened and Shimmer could count their full number. Fifty or so barbarians were riding to them, more than any single fighter, no matter their skill.
“Yes!” Shimmer answered quickly with a shout and then jumped on her strider’s back. She turned over the saddlebag and poured out her claimed weapons in the sand for the caravaneers. “There’s no time to ride off now. Those savages do not travel with the weight of wagons dragging them. You will have to fight.”
One of Ikwa’s nieces glared at her, picking up a curved bronze sword. “We would already be gone from here if you hadn’t come.” Shimmer nodded and made no effort to disagree, but focused on the only problem before her. She pulled on her strider’s reins and proceeded to ride up beside Ahmotep, who had already mounted his zilard and drawn his bow.
“Shall we have a wager?” he asked her. Shimmer stared at him with an incredulous eye but did not answer. He looked back for a response and laughed at her odd look. “Whether we perish or prevail, the day is still young and the battle will be over long before tomorrow’s dawn. We will have time to take bets.”
He gestured to the other medjay. “I have already bet five rings with Temud that I will kill at least five more than him. Five for five.”
Shimmer frowned and focused on the tribe ahead. “I do not sell the lives of anyone so cheaply, not even my enemies.”
“If that is how you fight,” he replied, “then you will die.”
III. The Skirmish on the Road
The three began firing volleys of arrows at the raging savages, taking shelter when they needed to behind the caravaneer’s wagons. As the women and children of the nomads hid their heads under their moving homes, the men grabbed what few weapons they had and joined the fray, launching stones from slings or using spear throwers.
Unwilling to lose the bulk of their vanguard to arrows and spears, the barbarian riders encircled the caravan camp, spreading themselves far enough apart that a directed volley could not be aimed against them. Then, the barbarians began their slow assault, with those armed by bows riding close to the wagons to shoot and then retreating before retaliation. Shimmer injured one man on his zilard by guessing at when he would slow down to turn back, but once he was hit the others learned and quickly changed their approach, changing their speeds randomly so it was harder to pick off approaching archers.
Taking cover behind a wagon, Shimmer took stock of what she had left. She had long run out of her own arrows, resorting to borrowing from Ikwa’s quiver, though he himself was counting down his own shots remaining. The medjay, Ahmotep and Temud, had better luck, protected as they were from arrows by their lamellar armour and robes with confounded and caught arrowheads in their many layers. Unafraid of the barbarian’s shots, they waded closer and fired their arrows with greater success, bringing down five altogether.
Suddenly, more riders began to charge through the camp, pushing their zilards to their fullest speed which, though not as swift as a strider, was still startlingly fast. The riders swung heavy clubs in circles above their heads, punching holes through the wagons with fierce strikes and scaring the families out from their shelter. Shimmer shouted at them that even a broken shelter offered more protection than the open, but panicked mothers listened only to their instincts, and they were snatched up or skewered on spears as they rushed to flee with their children. Shimmer released the remainder of her arrows, injuring two men and bringing down three with well-placed shots to their chests or necks now that they were approaching. Arrows pelted down from the barbarians as well, but many of them stuck harmlessly in the sand, and Shimmer could simply pick them up and launch them back.
One charger swung his club wildly at her, though she ducked and rolled under a cracked wagon, picking up fallen arrows as she went. She clutched one in her hand as she loaded another against her bowstring and pulled. Still determined, the barbarian charged again, and she unloaded both arrows as quickly as she could into his chest. She counted at least a dozen more kills between herself and the medjay, plus a few more from the caravaneers.
With little warning, the head of the tribe’s raid whooped a curdling scream and led the remains of his forces into the camp. Immediately, Shimmer was the centre of a thicket of skewering spears and biting blades. But, being smaller than the rest, she moved as a red blur between the barbarians. Heavy clubs cracked the clay plates in her armour but fell short of her flesh, while her own spear sang whistles through the air as she spun it through the throats of many tribesmen.
A peak of adrenaline raced through her, and with her skin feeling on fire at the sight of another enemy, she cut tendons and joints, broke limbs, danced her rugged footwork through fields of entrails, and wet the sand with a flash flood of bone and blood. All the while, her strider crossed back and forth about the camp, tearing into injured tribesmen and retrieving fallen weapons for Shimmer to pick from. Her own blood spilled onto her cloak and shirt as stray spearheads found lucky purchases on her body, biting and holding tight until she or Ahmotep killed the offending weapon’s wielder.
Slowly, she found herself moving closer to the medjay, her shield and spear offering protection to his back while his light and deft spearwork flowed through blood like a quill through ink. Invulnerable in his armour, the medjay welcomed blows from the savages, grabbing their weapons and pulling them close so that he might open them from groin to chest. The occasional archer took aim at the medjay as he butchered, but Shimmer kept them at bay, throwing spare swords and daggers whenever she could.
Between quick bouts against the last remaining savages, Ahmotep unleashed a tired, but satisfied, sigh. “Fourteen,” he said, his white teeth flashing through a curly, blood-soaked beard. “How many have you slain?”
“Twelve,” Shimmer answered, though truthfully she had lost count past the first few. She wiped the blood off her own face, dropping a dulled sword her zilard had brought her and recovering her own spear which remained lodged in a burly savage’s skull. She shut her eyes as she twisted the spearhead free from his socket, splattering pieces of eye on the sand.
The other medjay, Temud, crawled up from under one of the savages’ dead zilards, hacking his leg free from the beast’s weight with his sword. Ahmotep walked to his friend, picking him up by the arm and giving him a hearty slap on the back. Together they laughed through the blood, shaking off the excess until they were clean, or as clean as a man could be after a fight.
Temud whispered a few words into Ahmotep’s ear that made the Hammer of Law roar with laughter. Unhesitantly, he unclasped a small wallet from his belt and dropped five silver rings into Temud’s hand. He turned around and tossed the same amount to Shimmer.
She caught the rings in her bloody palm, the weight of the silver feeling heavy in her hands. “I took no wager,” she reminded him.
“I bet that I could take five more than Temud, but this man counts twelve for himself as well. It is only fair to give you the same coin for the same glory.” He laughed again. “Twelve! I was a killer by your age, a skilled duellist with few equals, but even so it would have been a miracle for a child to survive against so many warriors. Even if they were simply tribal savages.”
“I’m no child,” Shimmer grunted, putting the rings away and picking up stray arrows from the sand.
“You may not be some soft babe suckling at their thumb and waiting for their mother’s bosom, but my eyes can still see clearly through this haze of blood. Fourteen years, I’d say you have. No more than sixteen, if you just happen to come from shorter kin.”
Quietly climbing back onto her strider was the only answer she gave, pulling at the reins to return to the fast-shrinking shade of the Ikwa’s wagon. The sun had only just hit its peak, but the heat had already begun to expunge the stink of man-flesh from the bodies. Caravaneers, even the children, worked together to take the bodies away, leaving them half-buried for carrion birds and scavenging jackals.
Being scarce in the Ashen Wastes, water was not spent washing the blood from the wagons. Rather, the nomads coated animal leathers with sand and scraped the stains from the wood, or simply covered over the messes with fresh tarps.
“Is your family safe?” She asked Ikwa as soon as she saw him.
The man nodded soberly. “My brother-in-law recovers from a stray arrow in his shoulder, and my niece has not spoken since she wet her hands with a man’s blood for the first time, but they will both carry on. That is how we live.”
Shimmer took the five rings Ahmotep gave her and placed them in Ikwa’s palm. “A small comfort after a raid, I know, but this is the best I can do until I am through with the medjay.”
He took the rings and smiled softly. “I did not think you would live past tomorrow, but seeing your spear take those savages, I now think you may have that chance. I will make an offering to the gods to give you their favour.”
Ahmotep, overhearing them, strutted over and laughed with the hint of confidence and adrenaline from the battle still hanging in his voice. “You would do better to save your offerings for your travels, your gods will not intervene on the matter of the God-King.”
“I would not be so sure,” Shimmer glared at him. “We are far from Ituru, and there are other gods here in the desert. I would tread lightly around their shadows.”
“Remember, you have stolen the Heart of the Sky, the jewel gifted by my gods to their child on the earth, the first of the God-King’s line. My gods have great interest in this matter, and besides,” he pointed up to the sun, “their chiefs are Rahi and Sek, the twins of the sun. What place could hide you from their sight?”
“Why duel for the Heart, then, if it is so important to your gods?” Shimmer asked.
“If I do not return with it, the God-King have me quartered and butchered for my failure and my body will never be buried for the afterlife. I do not think I will lose, but if I do, at least I will die as I lived, mangled by a bronze spear, for Sek is the blistering heat of the sun, and she loves a warrior’s death.”
Before he returned to his comrade, Ahmotep gave a serious look, a very slight disapproving grimace, and gestured to the cuts on Shimmer’s arms. “I would hate for my opponent to be handicapped. You should clean those wounds soon, I doubt these barbarians were considerate enough to clean their weapons for you.”
Shimmer spoke a curse at the medjay under her breath, only just noticing the tight grip on her spear. Her wounds were shallow, stinging to the touch of course, but hardly biting into the muscle and tendons.
“My sisters can tend to you if you like, and cactus wine cleans the flesh as good as anything.” Ikwa offered as he guided her to sit beneath a sun tarp his family had erected against the high noon sun. She accepted, tiredness seeping into her body and robbing her of hesitation as she stripped off her cloak and armour to expose her scarred, bloody back.
IV. The Price of Fear
Ahmotep’s words lingered in her mind. She imagined the man returning without the Heart and being fed to the palace crocodiles as punishment. That seemed the sort of thing the God-King would do. What better meal for his precious pets than his greatest warrior?
Her mind wandered further away as Ikwa’s sisters cleaned her cuts nicely with cotton soaked in strong wine before applying some kind of bitter-smelling paste. It numbed her skin while protecting the wounds from exposure, slowly sending Shimmer mind to a hazy half-sleep.
She felt around for her armour, reaching for the small pocket sewn on the inside that hid the Heart of the Sky, a tiny ruby marble that was barely the width of her pupil. The feel of the God-King’s vault returned to her hands, as if she could reach out and dig her hands into mountains of silver and gold rings. Rahim and Raxa had warned her not to grow bold, for greed was always the undoing of aspiring thieves. She assured them there was only a single gemstone she desired, and left the siblings to take whatever treasures they had come for. The two of them were surprisingly stocky for their profession, both a testament against the image of a lithe, nimble thief slinking along rafters and dashing along roofs.
She was unsure of where they came from, for they spoke little about themselves even when she asked, but they were clearly not natives of the desert cities. Much fairer in skin, she marked them as one of the peoples from north of the Selunium Sea. Their olive skin was still fairer than any desert-dweller, though their dark-brown hair made it easy to be mistaken once they were wrapped up in sneaking blacks.
The Heart of the Sky, safely hidden within its vault, was placed clearly on display as the centrepiece of a crown, placed upon the head of a golden statue that sat in the centre of the room. No doubt only the God-King came to bask in its glory, along with whomever he brought to boast about his wealth to. Seven feet in height, it was not difficult to climb the statue and remove the jewel from its crown.
“We’re done here, Shimmer,” Raxa told her as soon as she stepped back down. The sister held two heavy bags filled with treasure, hefting one over to her to carry. She wanted to ask what exactly they had taken, simply stealing gold and silver from the capital of Ituru seemed a wasted opportunity, but they had little time.
Rahim grabbed her by the arm and pulled her along until she was ready to run alongside them. “The guards will have noticed our wet tracks. They will be swarming around the pool entrance, which gives us a short time to escape through the others.”
Shimmer clutched the bag of treasures close to her chest. “Then which way is our next step?”
“The eastern gates open to the Ituru river. A raft awaits us.”
“The river? There are wild crocodiles in the river, ones who are not fed by banquets.”
“No, there aren’t,” Raxa whispered, tugging her along. “The God-King made sure his are the only ones in the city.” They moved slowly at first, dodging behind pillars whenever the footsteps of medjay guards shuffled nearer. As they swerved onward through sandstone corridors, they picked up their pace quickly, violently rushing guards together and dragging the stifled sounds of struggling away from the main halls of the palace.
The Ituru, the river for which the kingdom was named, trickled slowly along in the distance. The palace itself was built on a hill overlooking the city, so from a small window Shimmer could look out and see candle-lit rowboats patrolling up and down the waters. As she stared, wondering if they would be caught on the water and drowned, clattering armour fast approached them. Patrols rushed in from outside the palace so that at the eastern gates stood a line of medjay, accompanied by two Ituru zilards. Rahim and Raxa pulled Shimmer aside with them, falling into stillness and silence behind heavy curtains and banners. It mattered little, for as soon as the zilards entered the palace, the sound of sniffling air rushed through their nose.
“Can you climb?” Raxa asked Shimmer with a hushed whisper.
Nervously checking through a crack in the curtain, she looked to see if any medjay were near before she answered. “Well enough. Why?”
Raxa pointed to the window Shimmer was looking from. “We would never fit through such a narrow space, but you can. Take the bags and toss them out, then follow them down.” There was a simple problem, however. The window overlooking the river was across the entranceway, and even without heavy sacks of golden treasure, the medjay would see her immediately.
“They will find me immediately.”
“Not if we sow discord among the guards. We have tools for such things.” Rahim reached into his pocket and showed her, producing a fistful of almond-sized pellets, with papyrus fuses twisted up on one end. “We will keep them blind, while you find the raft we placed behind a cluster of reeds not far from the docks. Load it, then give us the signal to run.” He placed one of the papyrus pellets in her hand, a blue-painted one the size of a walnut. “Simply pull the tip off and it will give light.”
“Very well,” Shimmer clutched the pellet tightly, placing it in her pocket. “I’ll get the loot onboard.”
Taking sharp, short breaths, the siblings rushed from the curtains together, tossing their pellets at the medjay and sending smoke pluming across the entrance hall. The orange glow of braziers and torchlight turned smoky grey, and once the siblings leapt at the disoriented guards, she ran for the window.
Each treasure bag landed in the shallow mud with a satisfying slap, though as she looked down, Shimmer realized she would need a more cautious approach. She reached out to a protrusion of stone from the wall as she squeezed her waist through the window, catching it before she fell completely to the ground. She gripped the stones in the wall until her knuckles turned white, taking one step at a time down and splashing into ankle-high water.
A low growl shuddered through her body before she had a moment to congratulate herself. The undulating hiss of a crocodile met her through the reeds, shifting and scratching under a cloak of night. Panic filled her chest as pressing herself up against the wall trying to reach and crawl back up the wall. It neared, stepping into the faint light cast down by the palace torches, revealing stripes of lapis paint across its back.
“Gods protect me,” Shimmer whispered, giving up her hope and fate to those otherworldly powers which surrounded humans and their world. Steadily, she picked up the bags of treasure, holding them in front of herself as she circled around it, never taking her eyes off. She knew the large cats of the desert would spring on a man if he turned his back to them. Whether or not crocodiles did the same, she did not intend to find out that night. She reached the thicket of reeds, finding the raft the siblings had mentioned, and loaded the treasure quickly, lashing rope over the bags to fasten them down.
Behind her, suddenly, the recognizable hiss of the crocodile came again, and she recoiled onto the raft as soon as she turned. The creature stood there on the banks, visible only by faint moonlight, staring at her. The glint of its moist scales was the only feature she could make out in the night.
Her spear she had left behind with her strider, but she reached for the long knife she kept in her riding boot at all times, waiting for the crocodile to turn its curious nose elsewhere. That hope faded as another shuffle waded from the palace, pushing through the reeds. Another crocodile! Had they all escaped from their pools? Amidst her panic, some memory, or perhaps instinct, reminded her of the protecting light of fire. Shimmer reached to her belt, removing the signal pellet from her pouch and holding it high above her head, and pulling the papyrus wick apart.
The pellet flared, throwing smoke and a greenish fire up into the air before quickly sputtering out into a smouldering ball. She looked upon the crumpled thing in her hand, squeezing it and finding a small puddle of river water in her hand.
Damn it all! She cursed herself for her foolishness. Panicking and flailing like a child in the water, she had unwittingly trapped herself and abandoned her allies. As if mocking her with disinterest, the crocodiles nudging at the edge of her raft turned their heads away and drifted off, taking their freedom with levity, dashing into the lightless waters, and exploring the world they had been kept prisoner from.
With their absence, a great feeling swelled inside Shimmer once the danger of devouring was gone. She turned her head to the palace, where the distant ringing of speartips and fading clouds of smoke could still be sensed. She moored the raft hastily and jumped off to the sand, sprinting herself to the towering stone steps of the palace and up to the gate.
The gate where, surrounded by motionless medjay bodies, the siblings laid with spears in their backs. Shimmer turned and looked down the way she had run. Had they seen the signal, even just the meaningless spark of green? Both laid face down as if they had been running before the spears entered their bodies. Shimmer reached for their arms, trying to put them on her back and carry them down, but the stocky thieves were appropriately heavy for their size, and their thieving blacks had been slicked with medjay blood. She stumbled and fell, before reaching once more and trying to save them.
“This way!” Shouts from more reinforcing medjay echoed from below the palace. Shimmer spotted the trails of their torches streaming in from the capital’s streets. Soon she would be blocked unless she left their bodies and fled now with her life and their treasure.
Such rewards seemed a paltry amount when weighed against the price paid, but such was the price of her hesitancy and fear. Shimmer grabbed the weapons she could from the ground, steeling her nerves and pushing the thought of death or medjay or crocodiles from her mind. She had her life and her treasure. That would have to be enough.
V. A Night for Gods
The cuts on her arm stung her as she shifted in her sleep. It was at this point that Shimmer first realized that she had been dreaming. Until that instant she had had no consciousness of the desert, the wastes, her guilt, or the duel that awaited. But as her body groaned to rise and stretch and allow the blood its freedom to roam her veins, she recognized the present and gradually awakened.
A small fire flickered by her feet, a strangely welcomed warmth amidst the chilling desert night. Her cuts, being shallow, hindered her far less than the battle-soreness that had set in her muscles.
“You murmur in your sleep.” Shimmer let the weight of her head turn her gaze to the voice. Ahmotep sat with a cup in his hand, reclined on a pillow and blanket, drinking quietly as she gathered her senses. She reached for her spear, which Ikwa had left by her leg, slowly gripping it as she tried to focus her eyes through a mind-haze of waking.
“Easy, now.” Ahmotep’s smirk spiked her blood with a flash of anger, and even in her half-woken state Shimmer managed to sneer back at him, even if she could not find her words. “I’m not one to execute a mewling lamb. Get your rest. Until our duel, we have nothing to fight over. Not while those savages watch us.” He gestured with a tilt of his cup, and Shimmer felt as if she had to will her whole body just to turn her head. On the black horizon, the faintest flicker of orange burned, casting its light against a small outcropping of stone.
“They may come in the night,” Ahmotep continued, “and not just for treasure this time. Blood must be paid in blood, and we took a great amount of theirs.” He smiled and closed his eyes for a brief moment, breathing deeply as if relishing in the memory of the battle that morning.
“Where is Ikwa?” Shimmer asked, her lips crackling as they formed the words.
“He left to make an offering to his gods for your safety and health. Though his sister is around, and I would guess she’s done more for your health than he has. Ah, here she is now, coming to clean your wounds again.”
Never having paid attention to Ikwa’s sisters, Shimmer now took a good look at the one tending to her. She was fairer than most desert peoples, though her hair was still as dark and wavy as any. And her face was pretty, if not a little gaunt from a life of endless travelling. As she removed the old linens and rubbed that bitter smelling paste on her skin again, Shimmer could feel the rough texture of her hands, the skin well-worn down to the joints from washing and cleaning.
“Tell me,” Ahmotep huffed and stuck his chin out to the sister, “how does a man keep a wife as dutiful as you? I am twenty-eight and the greatest warrior on both sides of the Ituru, yet women never seem to stay with me.”
“You stink of blood, sir,” Ikwa’s sister answered back. “Perhaps it’s because women abhor such smells.”
“Not this one,” he pointed to Shimmer, “though I suppose you are still a girl. Tell me, do you abhor blood?”
She knitted her brow at him. “I would not wish to wake up to it,” she answered conservatively, “although the desert often does not give me the freedom to choose. Still, I prefer the smell of a hot meal and a fresh bed.”
Ahmotep threw his hands up in defeat, shaking his head. “I will never understand. Women bleed every month, you’d think they’d be used to it by now. And what is wrong with the smell of blood anyway, huh? The goddess Sek is a matron of warriors, to bleed in battle is to offer yourself to her.”
“Perhaps if you bled as women do, you’d know why we prefer to stay away from it,” Ikwa’s sister retorted and her hands gripped Shimmer’s arm tighter. “ Besides, we do not live in your lands, medjay. Our gods do not offer us gifts in exchange for blood.”
“No? Then what is Ikwa offering right now in prayer?” Ahmotep gestured again with his cup, waving around towards some senseless direction away from the camp. “Why leave his wagon if not to cut himself for the gods?”
“Because our gods do not live in the homes of men,” she snapped back with quick words even if her tone remained unchanged. Our god Erem is a guardian of travellers and merchants, and he covets gold. Ikwa must build a shrine for Erem to inhabit, away from the profanity of men like yourself, and offer a show of prosperity to prove we have earned a blessing.”
Ahmotep laughed. “Why would a god have need of gold? He does not die and carry his possessions to the afterlife. If he is a strong god, gold should be as meaningless as the sands and stone.”
“And yet past God-Kings have been buried with mountains of fine jewels and golden rings,” Shimmer countered mockingly. “If they’re descended from gods, why should they covet gold but not their divine ancestors?”
The Medjay drank from his cup for a moment longer. “The path to the Underworld is a long one. It mirrors the Ituru, but is a winding causeway of darkness and monsters. The priests say the lustre of gold is bright enough to ward evils away and bribe the covetous serpent at the river’s end. Even the God-King’s body must travel to reach the Underworld to meet the Lordess of the Dead, Nep, before he is returned to his kin. But I have never heard of a god who needed to make such a journey.”
“Is yours the only Underworld where the dead go?”
“Who can say?” Ahmotep shrugged. “Certainly none have returned from that abyss to tell us. But the God-King’s priests and their power are true, I have seen them drag men back from death, so I will believe them when they speak of the gods.”
“Perhaps there are places for other worshippers to go. I’ve travelled far, and I too have seen miracles and powers beyond this world. I would not be so quick to judge a god as you judge a man. Whatever you may think of them, the gods are still beyond our mortal selves.”
When Ikwa’s sister had finished rebinding her wounds, Shimmer stood to stretch her arms and legs. She had slept through most of the day, and she could feel her own blood sluggishly pooling in her limbs. She made the greatest effort to ignore the medjay, who had become so relaxed on his blanket that he reclined with his arms behind his head as if he were sleeping under his own roof. Even his helmet and armour, which had taken every blow from the savages for him, were stripped off and on the sand beside him.
What remained was the simple brown robe he wore beneath his armour, though he had undone the clasps to allow the breeze to blow through and against his skin. He had a warrior’s body. His skin, dry from travelling the desert, clung tightly to the muscles underneath, and the light of the fire gave his chest the sheen of chiselled and polished stone. Shimmer even noticed Ikwa’s nieces peeking around the wagon to stare.
The silence that reigned in the desert remained unbroken. The moon travelled its path among the stars, crafting faint shadows that rushed crept around the edges of the fire. Though the empty skies blew dry, chilling wind, Shimmer sat away from the flame, preferring the numbness of the chill on her cuts. No sound in all the solitude was heard except Ahmotep’s refreshing gasps as he enjoyed his cactus wine. She felt her mouth curl into a snarl at his casual demeanour. Either he was trying to play with her head, flaunting his confidence to diminish hers, or he genuinely underestimated her as a threat. In either case, it infuriated her.
“Do you know what the Heart truly is?” Shimmer finally asked when ignoring the medjay became impossible.
“I don’t think that I even care. The God-King desires it, and so he shall have it. It belongs in Ituru anyways. It was a gift from our gods.”
“In Zagrea they worship different gods, and yet I found descriptions of the Heart carved along cave walls around Har’Zag. They describe the Heart as a key, though I’m not yet sure exactly what it opens. Still, why would a Zagrean key belong to the God-King of Ituru?”
“Eh? Why do you wish to know? Those Zagreans have such bizarre gods. You’re not some Zagrean priestess, are you?”
“No, I’m not. Simply curious.”
“Then what of your gods? Surely they must think something of this. Who do you worship? Ashtra of Akaad? Their fiery goddess suits you, though Ashtra has never been acknowledging of travellers. Wuthinaz, then? But, you are not an Aesir, are you? You are red-headed as they are.”
“I’m not sure I worship any god,” Shimmer cut off the medjay before he made another guess. “Although, if pressed, I might say Zhamzizel.”
“I have not heard of such a god.”
“No, you would not have. He is a dead god.”
“Dead? Your god is deceased?” Ahmotep laughed and shook his head. “Then what use is he? Life, as bad as it is, is made better when worship is answered. But you struggle so far with a dead god? Even the Zagreans aren’t as strange as you!” His laughter grew to a crescendo. “I worry for you. A spirit as strong as yours deserves more than to wander aimlessly after death. Perhaps Sek will take pity on you and guide your soul past the serpent when you arrive at the Underworld.”
Shimmer scoffed at his mockery. “I think men spend too much time waiting for gods and rituals. I have seen many strange powers in this world, but never a man or woman living purely by the grace of the divine. Need as little from the gods as possible is what I say. You can never be certain how long it will take for your wishes to be granted.”
She left their conversation to cross the camp and find her strider. She wanted to take stock of everything she had after the skirmish with the savages. Their weapons were inelegant and crudely sharpened, but many short blades could serve as throwing weapons. She hefted a small hammer from her zilard’s saddlebag and tested it against the blade of a dull but dense sword. The handle held firm as she hammered the bronze into a dramatic bend. Happy with its performance, she cleared some space by tossing out the rest of the more pathetic weapons, leaving them for the caravaneers to pick through.
Hammer, sword, dagger, and spear, that was a good selection of weapons. Her shield would more than cover the limits of her clay armour. She counted her remaining arrows, a mix of savage and caravan shafts. Hopefully enough to outshoot Ahmotep. She had seen how agile he could be when fighting close. As armed as she was with her other weapons, when morning came, she suspected her fate would be decided by the bow.
VI. Duel at Dawn
“The rest of my treasures are inside my strider’s saddlebag,” Shimmer told Ikwa as he aided in fastening her vest around her back. He took the clay plates she had picked out early that night and slid them into the pockets across the armour. “If I am killed, take it quickly. I do not trust the medjay to only leave with the Heart.”
“He has been honest thus far,” Ikwa noted, “but a good merchant doesn’t make a sale on faith alone. What would you have me do with your strider?”
Shimmer paused in thought for a moment. “Care for her, if you can. But she is young and of a wild breed. I doubt she will have difficulty surviving without me.”
“Then she sounds exactly like you,” Ikwa chuckled. “I think my nieces have taken a liking to her. I will care for her as well as I can. A loyal strider can be a strong assurance against the barbarian tribes. Asra, how are her wounds?”
The sister who had been tending to Shimmer all night squeezed out from her sleeping cot in her wagon with a fresh set of linens, but no bitter paste. “You are going to open them up again as soon as you move too quickly, which I don’t think you can avoid. But I will have to spare the medicine, the numbness can make one drowsy.”
“I know that all too well,” Shimmer replied. “Thank you for your help. You are very kind to have helped someone who brought the medjay to your home.”
Asra waved her hand in the air as if brushing away Shimmer’s thanks. “We have no love for the God-King either. Your gratitude is welcome, but unnecessary. The story alone will bring quite a few coins when my daughters sing of it in Akaad.”
Shimmer smiled at the thought of having a song in her honour. She had often heard singers and minstrels passing the time in taverns by telling stories of legends or forgotten heroes. “I hope to hear it one day, after I have found what I seek in Zagrea.”
“One test at a time,” Ikwa interjected between the two women, handing Shimmer her spear and shield. Opposite them, at the furthest end of the wagon camp, the two medjay stood with spears in their hands. Though the sun had not yet risen, the stars had already begun to fade as the sky turned faintly grey. Shimmer breathed in deeply, hardening herself against her fear. Sweat may have run cold on her palms, but she stilled her fearful heart with her memory of Rahim and Raxa. Her fear had gotten the better of her then. But no longer.
“How long must I wait?” called Ahmotep, waving his spear in the air. “I know you are as eager for my blood as I am yours.”
“I recall you saying that we wait for the first call of the birds.” She walked out onto the thin road of cracked stone, placing her spear and shield by her feet as she pulled her bow off her back and put an arrow in her hand. Her actions were mirrored by the medjay.
“Right you are. How are your wounds?” he shouted across the camp.
“You will soon find out,” she spoke back. Ahmotep smiled, and then, to her surprise, he unclasped a piece of his armour, exposing his chest. She watched warily as he pointed the arrow in his hand back on himself and pulled the head across his chest, his muscles splitting like stone being chipped away by a chisel.
“Let it never be said that I do not fight fair.” He clasped his armour on once again, sealing the wound behind a wall of iron plates.
They kept their hands resting at their side, an arrow in one, a bow in the other, a silent agreement between two warriors to see who would be the quickest shot. Shimmer’s fingers quivered on her bow, her instinct to clutch fighting her will to relax, for she knew a smooth and easy draw would be faster than a jerky, panicked one, and she could not afford to miss on her first shot.
Faint hues of purples heralded the coming of the sun and Shimmer could see the medjay more clearly now. His long, curly beard stuck out under his helmet and his sword dangled off his belt. His spear lay on the ground at his feet. Aside from those, she saw no other weapon. A thin streak of pink began to stretch across the horizon.
Shimmer clenched her jaw, willing her eyes to focus on the medjay and not the dawn, for it would not be the sun that started their duel but the screeching tones of birds awaking from their burrows, and such creatures were as fickle as they were routine. A bird would call, but exactly when was left to be seen.
The tip of the sun rose, striking the Shimmer’s red and golden hair with blood-red light. No call awoke with the dawn; yet, suddenly the camp grew tense and caravaneers held their breath. Instinctively Shimmer raised her arrow to her bow, notching it before she could stop herself. The medjay mirrored her immediately, stopping as well at the notch and waiting to draw. In his hand was an Ituru bow, much unlike the desert stingers Shimmer had learned to use. A bundle of arrows rested on his other hand, clutched along with the bow so that he could place the next one on the string quickly.
Something moved in the blackness under the sand, in a bush or a cactus, before it wailed its morning yawn to the desert. Their hands both snapped on their bow like a crocodile on a prey’s neck, one arm pushing as the other pulled, drawing their bows with their whole chest and back.
Made of oasis palms and river reeds, Shimmer’s bow was light with its draw, firing the first shot nearly a half-second before the medjay. They both dropped and rolled over the road, narrowly evading each other’s shots, reloading, and firing again as they stood back up. Shot after shot they moved through the camp, peeking out behind wagons to fire. But as Shimmer dragged out their exchange and used her slimmer figure to press closer against cover, the difference between them grew. Ahmotep began loading faster, easily making up for the difference in the draw, so for every shot Shimmer sent against him, two more were returned.
The caravaneers had run and hid in their wagons—save for Ikwa who curled up behind his wagon—and removed themselves from the crossfire of arrows, leaving Sunset with fewer friendly eyes with which to spot the medjay. He must have circled her as she focused on notching her next arrow, because the next shot that came found its mark from an unexpected angle. The weight of force of the arrow stunned Shimmer as she fell, pushing down into the sand. Though her bow was lighter, Ahmotep’s heavier draw fired heavier arrows and hit with a lot more power.
Yet as panic set in, so did some kind of berserk fury, and she did not miss. The air was filled with feathered destruction as Shimmer fired three quick shots back at Ahmotep, her senses and actions focused by the pain. She spent no time finding the notch on her arrow, instead letting the instinct in her muscles perform the task she had practised hundreds of times against bandits and savages. The arrows deflected against Ahmotep’s armour, but the sudden strike gave him pause to think.
Springing to her feet, Shimmer bent her bow hastily and drove another shaft at his hairy beard that covered his throat. The arrow was a flying spark that gleamed in the half-risen sun but the medjay spun reflexively on the ball of his foot and narrowly avoided the arrowhead. He retreated, ducking behind the cover of wagons and dashing out across the road as Shimmer breathed between her shots. With his left hand, Ahmotep drew his sword as the right caught his spear as he kicked it up off the ground.
Shimmer bolted similarly, retrieving her spear and shield in time to parry the blade whirling through the air. Ahmotep charged behind his sword, both hands clutched his spear, and immediately hounded Shimmer down with a voracious pack of quick jabs. She covered herself well with her shield and struck for his legs where his iron lamellar did not cover. But he was wise to the trick, switching the weight on his feet and twisting around Shimmer in an instant.
She felt one of her clay plates shatter against a thrust and fiercely turned to answer back. Her fiercely driven spear screeched against the stone road, parried by an open hand; then the violet impact of a whirling spear pressed her down. The front plate of her armour shattered as the fragments against her back crinkled and pressed against her spine. She rolled to the side, avoiding Ahmotep’s spear before delivering a rising thrust that trimmed off the edges of his beard and left a shallow line of red across his cheek. Shimmer stood, but she winced as her old wounds opened up and began dampening her robe underneath with blood.
Only her armour had saved her from being skewered a moment ago. In the next, Ahmotep’s spear danced left and right, delivering feints until their weapons were bound in a stiff grapple. His naked right hand locked on her hair and jerked her head down. His left hand, releasing its grip on his spear, caught her arm and whipped her forward. A short yelp, Shimmer’s only cry in their battle, burst from her throat as she tumbled forward and scored her head against the stone road. She unhooked the hammer on her belt and launched it at the medjay, knocking the man back for a precious second as she recovered her lungs and drew her sword and rushed him; the rim of her shield led her charge as she pressed against him.
Repeatedly she thrust at his armour, scoring pockmarks into the iron plates in a wild attempt to find its gaps. Instead of tumbling back as she expected, the medjay grabbed suddenly at Shimmer’s hand. She felt a crackle in her wrist as he clenched his grip, grinding the bones together. Stung to life by the thrill, Ahmotep pulled her arms aside and exposed her torso; his foot shot out with a straight kick, heel connecting to hip, which rocked her balance and sent her collapsing back down to the ground.
Shimmer gasped for air, trying to find her senses. There was no time for conscious consecutive thought. She threw herself toward a fallen sword—his or hers, she could not tell—pulling it to her palm with clawing fingers. Desperately she swung at his legs, and the veins swelled in her neck as she strove to slash open the medjay’s thighs. But the warrior saw the weapon and raised his wooden sandals to it, kicking it from her hands and taking it for herself. Shimmer scrambled to her feet, but the medjay moved quicker, thrusting and twisting deep into her side. Shimmer doubled over, roaring with pain until he knelt down on her chest, his knee driving her ribs deeper against her careworn lungs, and placed the sword’s edge against her throat.
Ahmotep grinned through his beard, but his final strike was stopped by a shout from his witness. “Riders approaching!” Shimmer followed his voice, looking down the road as well. Indeed there were riders, but not the desert savages from before. The two figures were medjay, riding beside one another as they approached the wagon camp. Ahmotep cursed at them, showing more rage and fury from the interruption than he had during their entire fight.
“I told you to wait across the river!” he roared, but the fire of fury faded from his eyes quickly as he saw Temud fall to the ground, an arrow in his neck. The other second medjay fired their bow at Ahmotep, whose reaction was slowed by shock and surprise. He ducked the first shot but found his legs staggering when a second arrow cut its sharpened head through his calf.
Shimmer flashed a quick glance at him, his dark face flushed with pure anger looking back through the gleam in her eyes. He grunted and forced himself up by one leg, picking up a dropped spear and deflecting the sword blow of one rider. He speared the second rider’s zilard, bringing both beast and rider down to the sand. He whirled back to the first rider, threatening with a flurry of thrusts, though his limping leg anchored him down.
The fallen rider fired twice, pinning arrows into his arms and forcing the medjay to drop his weapon. He roared, cursed, and then, he was gone. The first rider’s sword arcing down from the back of their zilards leaving Ahmotep’s neck cleft atwain.
Shimmer closed her eyes to the spray of blood, waiting for her turn in the next instant, but the blow did not come. Instead, the two medjay took her by the arms and pulled her aside to one of the wagons to inspect the gash across her belly.
“Who are you both?” she muttered. “Medjay do not wear wrapping to cover their faces.”
“But thieves do.”
Shimmer paled, and not just from her bleed. The medjay spoke with a far too familiar of a voice, though she did not believe her senses until Rahim’s face was unveiled. His sister Raxa unwrapped herself as well, gasping for air as soon as she uncovered her nose.
“Impossible, I saw you two die,” Shimmer whispered.
“Or, you saw the two medjay we killed and dressed up as ourselves. You did not have time to search their bodies, did you?”
She shook her head. “The guards were nearly upon me, I had no time.”
“And we are glad you chose to run,” Raxa smiled and held out her palm to Shimmer, where the Heart of the Sky rested. Shimmer furrowed her brow and felt around her pocket. Sure enough, the jewel was gone. Pain took root in her sides, robbing any chance of sensible thoughts or questions. And as she clutched the bleeding wound, the shadows of the wagons seemed to warp and grow as her vision faded into blackness.
VII. The Heart of the Sky
Shimmer woke at sunset, her head spinning like a sandstorm enraged. She lay still for a moment, feeling the blanket draped over her and the thin mattress of hay placed beneath her. She could still feel the cold stone below. Where in the world was she?
It felt like ages before she had enough wits about her to recognize the ceiling of the cave above her. Outside, the setting sun and chirping crickets signalled a fast approaching night, and the long shadows against the roof of the cave grew deeper and darker. Still, she managed to recognize the dimmed symbols before her. The images scrawled across the walls, some painted and some carved, triggered memories in her addled mind. Zagrea. How did she get to Zagrea?
An old companion shot through her senses: pain. Her body felt as if it was on fire, alerted to every touch and rough stone. Clenching her teeth, she pulled herself into a stiff sitting position, relying on the wall of the cave to keep her upright. As soon as she was as comfortable as she could be, Shimmer licked her cracked lips and searched around for water. A bowl had been left out for her, but it was empty. Disappointed, she wet her throat by swallowing what little saliva she had and set her head against the wall.
Memories flooded her senses as a simple twitch pulled the stitching in her stomach, bringing the pain of her duel with Ahmotep back in full force. She had lost and nearly died, if not for the siblings, Raxa and Rahim. But had they truly been after the Heart? It seemed like a dream, some delirious hallucination brought on by exhaustion and bleeding. A simple search of her pockets, however, affirmed the truth. The marble-sized ruby was gone.
A shuffling startled her, as a black form emerged seemingly from the stone itself and into the sun’s fading light. But it was only Rahim. The broad-shouldered man snapped his fingers and a spark flew from a flintstone in his palm, bringing life to the smallest campfire Shimmer could imagine. Still, the heat licked her toes and brought a welcomed warmth. She simply stared at the thief, waiting for the answers she believed she was owed.
“How are your wounds?” He asked first. Shimmer said nothing, brushing aside his hand as he reached for her tunic to inspect the stitching beneath.
“Now, now, no need to be like that,” he said, sitting back contently when it was clear the blood had not resumed its flow in her sleep. “You wanted to bring the Heart of the Sky back here to its home, did you not? We brought you safely back here, you can trust us.”
“Why in all the hells should I trust you?” Shimmer hissed at him. “All that matters among thieves is gold.”
“Not true,” he waved away her anger. “We released the God-King’s precious crocodiles without seeing a single coin for it, but only because the man is a murdering oppressive pig who doesn't deserve such animals.”
Shimmer gawked at him. “That was your doing? Those beasts frightened me half to death! Besides, a thief who acts out of hate instead of greed does not earn much praise in my mind.”
“And yet you were there beside us in the God-King’s vault.” Shimmer opened her mouth, but could not fire back an answer.
Rahim shrugged his broad shoulders and turned back into the abyssal cave, whistling out for his sister. Raxa, just as he had, emerged from the walls of the cave as if she was made of the shadows themselves, still clad in the armour of the medjay, except that she had wrapped a black-dyed robe over the shining metal plates so that her brown hair and light skin became visible only as she pulled back the hood. Her lips curved in a tranquil smile. Her gaze was impersonal.
“We know what you must think of us,” she said, placing sticks on the fire to strengthen its light. “We will try to give you the answers you seek, but the Heart stays with us.”
“Then you know what it leads to, then? The Heart is a key of some sort. What kind of treasures does it hide?”
“I do not think you came all this way for treasure,” Rahim said, “and neither did we. How did you come to read what the ancient carvings meant?”
Shimmer pressed her lips tightly as if to trap her words in, but as silence hung in the air it became clear she would get her answers first without sharing some of hers first.
“I have travelled far across the desert, between the cities and within ruins, collecting shreds of secret magics and mysteries. To read these carvings is little better than guesswork on my part, but I have confidence in it.”
Raxa then laughed, a surprisingly high-pitched jingle for a woman of her size, like a copper chime in the wind. “A long journey, then. But still safer than stealing scrolls from Zagrean priests, isn’t it, Rahim?”
“Their gods must give them foresight,” was all he muttered in reply.
“No, it was your fault for not distracting them long enough.”
“Stop wasting the night and give me some answers,” Shimmer cut off the siblings’ banter.
“Why?” Raxa eyed Shimmer’s wounds, “Do you think you can travel as you are now?”
Shimmer ground her teeth and clenched her fist, but eventually relaxed when the pain in her stomach became more than a nagging sting. As the campfire ate its sticks and grew to a suitable size, her gaze slowly fixed itself on a shimmering object. Around Raxa’s neck looped a thin string, blue cotton yarn embroidered with gold thread, threaded through a simple gold ring, where the Heart of the Sky had been affixed.
Raxa followed her gaze down to the ruby hanging over her chest. “You were correct, it is a key,” she said, smiling as she picked up the jewel to look into it. “Months ago we stole scrolls from Zagrea and used it to translate many of these carvings. They tell of when the goddess Ashtra used a passage within this cave to delve into the earth to speak to the Lord of the Dead to bargain for the soul of Amuuz, her mortal lover. Zag refused the goddess, for it was unnatural for the dead to return to the living world. Stricken with grief, the goddess tore out her own heart and left it with Zag so that her love would forever be with her husband.”
She held up the ring by its string, dangling it above the flames and casting rays of blood-red light across the shadowed walls. “But with what we stole, we could not know what the ancient Zagreans used in their worship, only that it had been lost in Ituru.”
Rahim produced a large candle from a satchel around his waist and drew a spark of flame from the campfire, carrying it with him as he walked deeper into the cave where an unused altar waited. He placed the candle on one side, just barely illuminating the divet in the centre of the stone slab.
“When you agreed to steal from the God-King, we knew you had uncovered the secrets as well. It was our hope that you would know what to take, and that we need only help you reach it.” He walked back over and took the necklace from his sister, removing the Heart from the ring and placing it upon the stone altar.
Then, he lit three more candles, placing each in a corner of the altar, before laying out a small plate of bread wafers and cured meat. He whispered a hymn into his palm and then cut it, placing his hand over the Heart until the stone began to glow on its own.
First, Shimmer squinted just to see its faint light. But as it grew brighter and brighter still, she squinted against its blinding presence, shielding her face from its power yet still tempted to gaze upon its power. The light eventually faded, seemingly flowing into Rahim and filling his light skin with a dim red glow.
“What is he doing?” Shimmer gasped, her eyes still burning from the light of the Heart.
“For what will the gates of Zag open?” Raxa asked. “The Lord of the Dead has no business with the living unless a sacrifice is made.” A dagger jerked out from under her robe, the polished copper blade gleaming read in the dark like a streaking comet in the night sky. Despite her injuries, Shimmer jumped to her feet, biting her cheek as her stitchings surely pulled open and warm blood began to spill onto her tunic.
She prepared to defend herself, taking as wide of a stance as she could manage and steadying her breathing. Yet, as suddenly as Raxa had pulled the blade, she turned around and faced her brother. Rahim removed the mask wrapped around his face, unveiling his faint smile as he greeted his sister with closed eyes.
In the next moment, Raxa turned back around to Shimmer, and Rahim lay on the floor, clutching the dagger in his chest. With a detached feeling she watched, as a dog might stare at its master, unaware of human thoughts; enraptured by the overpowering serenity of his death, Shimmer was no longer sure of her reality. She only knew that she was looking upon evidences of the unseen play of divine forces beyond her understanding.
The light lifted from Rahim’s skin, taking the vague form of a man, though it was as wispy and incorporeal as dust in the wind. Behind the altar a crack grew in the stone; soon the crack became a gash, and then a mouth, and finally a gaping maw. Air dashed into the cave, sucking smoke from the fire and moisture from the walls. With it all, the light of Rahim stretched and warped, shrinking and thinning into a misty red stream, eventually completely devoured.
Once Shimmer could think enough to look back at Raxa, the woman had thrown on a large enough pack on her back to burden a camel.
“Seek a small bag of diamonds under a flat stone just outside the cave,” she said to her, though her focus was entirely channelled fast-approaching towards her equipment. All manner of knife and dagger hung from her belt, a pot dangled off the side of her bag, and the heads of many torches out from its top. “Your caravan friends will be in Zagrea now selling the treasures you promised them. They promised to tend to your strider until you returned to them.”
“Wh—wh—” Shimmer stammered, shock and surprise forming a lump in her throat, “what was your plan here? Why did you kill your brother?”
“To do what even a goddess could not,” Raxa answered, “and to accomplish the dreams of every living being on this earth. My brother and I have grown tired of our own stories. We’ve stolen more in this world than anyone else, and even the false stories fall short of the treasures we have kept for ourselves. And it all would become dust after our passing. Our final work, our most meaningful work, will be the only thing in this world that will not pass with death. Because we are going to steal from death.”
She gave a reassuring smile to Shimmer even as she stepped over the motionless body of her brother. “I feel that I must apologize for this shock. But we agreed on the plan long before we met you. My brother had to die so that I can steal his spirit from Zag himself.”
The mountain began to shake and rumble as the maw of the stone shrunk, faster than it had opened. With seconds until she could no longer fit through it, Raxa spoke no more words to Shimmer and passed into that black abyss without so much as a true farewell.
Shimmer wanted to give chase and call it an impossible ambition, but she hesitated, her own brain reeling with the fierce upsurging of fear. The lurid unearthly pit breathed in the shadowy chamber, taunting Shimmer to dive into its bowels. The mouth of the abyss seemed to grin mirthlessly and voraciously at her. A slow second passed with the same feeling as one’s final moments, long and agonizing, stretching out for hours and days. But before Shimmer picked up her feet to move, the second had passed and the maw had closed, leaving nought but the silent crackling and dim light of the campfire at Shimmer’s back.
Out in the arid shrubbery, on the hills among the mountain of the dead, cold winds were howling from the coast of the Selunium Sea. Shimmer blinked as her thoughts returned to her and regarded the pouch in her hand, a heavy leather thing, no larger than her fist. Inside, the white diamonds reflecting the brilliance of the moon above seemed pitiful now as she wondered in whose hands would they sit in five, ten, or even a hundred years. She could not bear to think it, of how lifeless stones would go on, coveted by onlookers as stories were spun over how they had been bought, polished, and placed into fine jewellery, all while she would one day meet the clutches of whichever god could lay claim to her spirit.
No, she could not bear it. Not now. Shimmer tossed the diamonds up and down, feeling their weight. She could only bear to count bags of feed she could buy for her strider. Her wound burned again, forcing her mind back to her burning senses. A shuffle, no, a scuffle, some sound of moving feet startled Shimmer from below the mountain. She reached for a rock, ready to pelt what wild animal may come to take her, only to find Ikwa’s sister, Asra, standing up from behind a large boulder.
“You should not be here,” Shimmer warned her, “Har’Zag is sacred to Zagreans. I bear the whip-scars as proof of their devotion.”
“I wished to know if you were alive,” Asra said. “Ikwa has already sold most of your trinkets. The caravan plans to leave soon if you do not return by tomorrow’s sunset.”
Shimmer made a sound, almost like the beginnings of a word, but it was barely more than a croak or a gasp. “Say that last part again,” she requested.
“Sunset?” Asra hesitantly said. “Yes, you should return to the caravan before nightfall tomorrow.”
“Sunset. I like the way you say it, Asra.” Shimmer smiled, and then tossed the pouch of diamonds to her. “Will that afford a space among your wagons? I have no destination, and I wish to go far away from here. Very far.”
Asra looked inside, her eyes nearly popping from her head at the sight of its contents. “And the thieves? We travelled with them a short while after your duel. They seemed very concerned for your safety.”
“Their ambitions run deeper than mine, I’m afraid.” She looked back up to the distant crack in the mountainside. “Very much afraid, sadly. I don’t think I can follow their dreams. Nor do I want to.”
“So, no more thieving?”
Shimmer shook her head. “I’ll do my best to avoid bringing trouble to your people, Asra. Now please, let’s go. I want to be away from this place and never come back.”
