Issue #154 • Aug. 21, 2014

“The Angel Azrael Delivers Justice to the People of the Dust,” by Peter Darbyshire

“Seeing,” by Stephen V. Ramey

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THE ANGEL AZRAEL DELIVERS JUSTICE TO THE PEOPLE OF THE DUST

by Peter Darbyshire

        The angel Azrael rode through the dust storm for three days. He figured it to be three days, anyway. It was hard to tell for certain, because the storm turned what little of the world he could see into night, and then into nothing at all. He closed his eyes and let his dead horse take him where it would.

        Sometimes he heard voices crying out in the storm, but he wasn’t sure if they were a trick of the wind or his conscience. He couldn’t understand what they were saying regardless, so he figured it best to pay them no heed. He wrapped himself tighter in his coat, more to protect the guns around his waist from the elements than anything else. That’s what he told himself, anyway.

        He had to stop every now and then to tighten the saddle around what was left of the horse. The storm scoured chunks of its rotting flesh away, and the saddle kept slipping. Soon there’d be nothing left of the horse but bone. Sure, he could raise another horse from the dead that would be more comfortable, just like he’d raised this one. But he had been through a lot with this horse. Too much, when he thought about it. Like the events in the last town, which he’d ridden all the way out here to forget.

        He’d seen the storm coming across the scrubland, but he hadn’t tried to avoid it. Azrael wanted to get lost. He wanted to put the world behind him and come out the other side of the storm somewhere else. He wanted to find a land with no more churches, no more people, no more Fallen. He was weary of it all. He was weary of himself.

        But when he eventually emerged from the dust, into the burning sun of noon, he found the same old world still there.

        The horse was following a worn road Azrael hadn’t seen in the storm. It went past a farmhouse off to one side and disappeared into the horizon. Azrael could make out the spire of a church shimmering at the vanishing point, like a mirage. It wasn’t what he wanted to see, but he didn’t turn around. There wasn’t anything better the way he had come.

        Azrael nudged the horse toward the farmhouse. He’d spied a pump in the yard, and he was thirstier than usual after three days of drinking nothing but dust.

        He studied the place as he rode. It looked to be in danger of falling in on itself, and there were two wooden crosses planted in the ground to one side.

        When he got off the horse by the pump, a woman holding a shotgun stepped out onto the porch. She held it like she knew how to hold all manner of guns.

        The buzzards that followed him everywhere came out of the sun then, circling overhead. He thought maybe they’d lost him in the dust storm, but it appeared they weren’t about to let a provider like him get away.

        “You here to deliver us or damn us even more?” the woman asked.

        Azrael hadn’t thought anybody would have been able to make out what was left of his wings under all the dirt. Hardly anything of them remained now.

        “I’m not that kind of angel,” he said.

        “Well, what kind are you then?” she asked.

        “The thirsty kind,” he said, nodding at the pump.

        She didn’t shoot him, so he took that for an invitation to drink. He pumped for a spell, until a trickle of water came out. He lowered his mouth to it and drank. It was the first time he’d had water in longer than he could remember. After all this time, it was almost as good as whiskey. Almost.

        When he was done, he straightened back up and saw a man standing behind the woman. As old and weather-beaten as she was. He stared at Azrael, but his eyes were glazed white, so Azrael imagined the old man didn’t see him. If he saw anything at all.

        Azrael looked around the farmyard once more. When he settled his eyes on the barn, he caught the woman raising the gun a little more, trying to take aim without alerting him to it.

        “Why don’t you keep on riding,” she said.

        Azrael could have drawn and shot her down before she even thought about pulling the shotgun’s trigger. In the old days, he would have blown the doors to the barn open with a gesture and razed the entire farm with a few words. But he was tired of the old days.

        He got back on the horse. “I don’t have any money,” he said, nodding at the pump.

        “Who does?” she said.

        “I’ll say a prayer for you,” he said.

        She laughed at that. “I ain’t yet seen a soul living or dead that prayer’s helped.”

        Azrael rode on without saying anything else, because there was nothing to say to that.

* * *

        Azrael followed the road toward the church because there was nowhere else to go. Nothing but wasteland to either side of him and damnation behind him. It was the way of the world as usual.

        The church solidified out of the day as he rode, rising up into the sky. Buildings grew out of the ground around it. He couldn’t tell if it was the beginnings of a town or the end of one. There often wasn’t much difference between the two out here.

        He passed a couple of wagons abandoned in the middle of the road. Both had bloody handprints smeared down the sides, as if someone had been dragged away but hadn’t been willing to let go. But then he knew from experience no one ever wanted to let go when it was time.

        He didn’t see another living soul until he rode into the town. The main street was full of dancing people. Like a drunken mob, only they were throwing curtsies and bows to each other instead of punches and kicks. Men and women in their Sunday night finery. Toasting each other with bottles and glasses in their hands, and then toasting him when he reined in the horse at the edge of their party looking for a place to get a drink himself.

        He didn’t understand their words. It was a tongue he’d never heard, and he knew as many tongues as the world had forgotten. It sounded as if they were talking around mouthfuls of dirt. He nodded at them anyway, and they didn’t seem offended by his silence. A man in a black suit pressed a bottle of whiskey into his hands, and a woman in a black dress ran a hand up his leg and patted his belt buckle before spinning away with a wink, into the arms of a man in a high hat and spectacles. Some things didn’t need words.

        Azrael glanced up again at the sun to make sure it was still there and he hadn’t somehow ridden into the night without noticing. The middle of the day wasn’t the usual celebration time for mortals. But they were a long way from anywhere out here, and the farther people got from civilization, the more they tended to make up their own rules.

        He took a long drink from the bottle. It burned in all the ways he desired. He went to hand it back, but the man had already wandered back into the crowd and rejoined the dance.

        The music was supplied by a handful of folks scattered throughout the merriment. A man in clean and pressed pants and shirt played banjo while riding the shoulders of a woman wearing a purple dress. Another man sat on the front step of what looked like the general store and bashed on pots and pans with a wooden spoon. Someone Azrael couldn’t see blew on a harmonica. Together they managed some sort of dancing tune, even though none of them were watching each other as far as Azrael could tell.

        And then there was the singing. At least Azrael thought it was singing. The men and women were all bellowing something that had the makings of a song, but it was just as incomprehensible as the rest of the things they said.

        He took another pull from the bottle and noted that the church in the centre of the town was empty, its doors hanging open. The structure occupied the only hill in sight, which should have made it a natural gathering place, but it looked as if it hadn’t been used in some time.

        When he looked back down, he noticed the children in the crowd. Standing here and there, where they wouldn’t get trampled by the dancers. A couple of girls holding hands behind a watering trough, one of them clutching a doll to her chest. A boy sitting on a hitching rail. Another couple of boys on the roof of a shed beside the store. They all watched the proceedings with expressions that didn’t say anything. That in itself signified something.

        Azrael nudged his horse around the edge of the crowd, trying to steer clear of their celebration. He didn’t know what cause they had for celebrating, and he didn’t care. He just wanted to find a quiet place in the town to kill the rest of the bottle and maybe acquire a few more bottles for the road.

        But the townsfolk wouldn’t let him go. They pressed in around him, grabbing him and trying to pull him down to join their dance. They were packed so tight, the horse couldn’t move through them. Instead, it was pulled deeper into the crowd. They were leading him somewhere, but Azrael wasn’t sure where.

        Before he could ascertain what mischief the townsfolk were up to, the skeletons attacked.

        They came the same way he’d come, rushing out of the wasteland and into the town like some stray memories that had finally caught up to him. They were human in shape, but he knew from his first glance their way that they hadn’t ever been human. The bones of these creatures were thicker and longer than human bones, and they had hooks and spurs that no human had ever sported.

        Moreover, none of them looked alike. Some were the same rough shape and size as regular folk, but others were stunted and hunched over. A couple were lopsided, with one leg longer than the other. Some had full ribcages while others had a jumble of misshapen bones holding them together. It was as if they’d been assembled into the shapes of humans using bones that had never belonged to anything human. But they carried the tools of humans: pitchforks and axes and shovels.

        Azrael turned to watch and put his hands on his guns, one forged from the unnatural metals of Hell, the other ripped from the grasp of a particularly troublesome ghost. But he didn’t interfere. He’d learned too many times about getting involved in the quarrels of others.

        The skeletons went for the children. They rampaged through the crowd, shoving the dancers out of their way, stabbing and hacking at them with their weapons or slashing and snapping at them with their unnatural claws and teeth. A couple of the dancers went down, their blood soaking into the parched ground. But the other townsfolk fought back, punching and kicking and swarming the skeletons, all the while continuing to sing their song and take long pulls from their bottles. The musicians kept on playing, although the banjo player swung his instrument down on the head of one of the skeletons like an axe. Azrael had seen stranger scenes, but not many.

        The people of the town managed to keep the skeletons away from the shed with the boys on the roof, but they couldn’t stop them from grabbing the girls at the watering trough or the boy sitting on the hitching post. The skeletons dragged them free of the crowd, back toward the edge of the town and the way they’d come.

        Azrael went to take another drink but found the bottle empty already. He sighed and tossed the bottle aside, using the same motion to draw the ghost gun. He just couldn’t help his nature.

        He wasn’t sure what manner of entities these skeletons were, but the ghost gun had always served him well against the spectral and the things most people called undead. He fired off a couple of shots, and because he had an angel’s eye, they found their marks through the mayhem of the crowd. The skeletons dragging away the girls blew apart, showering the scene with dust. The bones lay where they fell, finally dead.

        The other skeletons clustered around the boy as they dragged him away. Azrael sighted in on the mass of them but then lowered his gun. It wasn’t for fear of hitting the boy, although that was a cause for concern. The ghost gun’s shells were crafted for the spectral, and they did terrible things indeed to the living. But the real reason he didn’t shoot was because there was something wrong about this scene.

        Before he disappeared into their midst, the boy hadn’t fought the skeletons. Neither had the girls. The adults and the dead seemed to be the only ones inclined toward violence here. But the girls didn’t look too relieved to be snatched from the hands of the dead by the living either. They just watched the skeletons head back out of town with their prize. They lifted their hands like they were thinking about waving, but the townsfolk holding them just slapped their hands down.

        No one made any move to pursue the skeletons, including Azrael. He noted the way those bone creatures clustered around the boy as they spirited him away. Like they were protecting him.

        Now the townsfolk carried the girls past Azrael, in the other direction from the way the skeletons had come. They grabbed the boys off the roof of the shed as well, who looked about as happy at their situation as the girls did at theirs. They all went the way the dancers had been trying to force Azrael.

        They left Azrael alone now. A few of the townsfolk looked at him as they passed, but none of them so much as nodded a thank-you. They just kept on babbling to each other in their strange tongue as they dragged the children down the street. The only one who spoke anything comprehensible was one of the girls he’d rescued, the one holding the doll. She turned her head to look up at him as the woman who’d felt his leg carried her past, holding her under one arm.

        “You should have let them take us,” the girl said.

        And then the townsfolk went down the street and disappeared around the other side of the hill, leaving Azrael alone on his dead horse except for the shattered bones lying in the dust.

        He considered things for a while, then got off the horse and went inside the building that looked like it had the best shot of being a bar. He needed a drink more than ever.

* * *

        The day was falling into night when Azrael finally staggered out of the bar. The street was just as empty as when he’d walked inside. His horse was still there, waiting for him. It didn’t look like it had moved. It probably hadn’t. The buzzards had settled on the church steeple to wait for him.

        He thought about getting back on his horse and riding out of here. It would have been the easy thing to do. But he couldn’t get the little girl’s words out of his head.

        He sighed and made his way up the hill to the church. He reloaded the ghost gun as he went. He wondered what had become of the boy. He knew he’d failed him and the girl, but he didn’t know how he’d failed them.

        Nothing new there.

        The inside of the church was a ruin. There were only shards of wood left where there’d once been pews. He figured they’d been broken up and used for firewood, as there was a burn mark on the wall where a cross would normally hang and the floor underneath it was charred, as if someone had lit a bonfire there. The missing bibles had probably been the kindling.

        It didn’t matter. He hadn’t come up here for solace. He just wanted the high ground.

        He could still hear the townsfolk singing that damned song, although it was as faint as words on the wind now. He went back outside and looked around, but he couldn’t see anyone. He climbed up the side of the church and pulled himself up the spire for a better view. The buzzards took wing and disappeared into the fading sky.

        The road ended around the other side of the hill, at a hole in the ground shored up with timbers and lined with torches. A mine shaft. Azrael couldn’t see anyone in the entrance, but the strange song of the townsfolk drifted up to him, along with the sounds of a girl crying. And the steady noises of pick axes striking rock.

        Then the sounds of the digging stopped, as did the weeping of the girl. But the singing didn’t. It grew even louder. And then there was a sound he’d only heard once before. When he’d fallen from Heaven. The sound of him being ripped from his rightful place and cast down here.

        He felt a wind on his face, originating from inside the mine. A few seconds later, a geyser of dust erupted from its entrance, billowing out into the night. Azrael hung on to the church spire and waited to see what came out next.

        But it was just the residents of the town again. They came up out of the earth singing and dancing some more. Azrael thought maybe they had done something to the children down there, perhaps spilled their blood in the mine, but the little boys and girls were dancing and singing along with the rest of them. Holding the hands of the adults and speaking in that strange tongue.

        None of them looked up at Azrael on the spire. They just danced their way back to the town and continued on with their festivities. Celebrating whatever it was they were celebrating.

        Azrael still didn’t move. He had all of eternity to wait. And after a time, something else came out of the mine.

        More of the skeleton creatures. Four of them. They looked just as misshapen as the others, as if they had been assembled from random bones. They had the same hooks and spurs as did the ones that had attacked the town. But these bone creatures were smaller and moved more tentatively than the others. Like children. They looked at the town for a moment, and then crept out into the night. They headed across the scrub in the direction of the farm where Azrael had stopped for water.

        Then he was falling once again, as the spire snapped under his weight, and darkness claimed him.

* * *

        He woke to find a handful of people from the town carrying him into the mine, including the man wearing the spectacles and hat. The fall from the church would have killed an ordinary man, but Azrael was an angel, so it had only stunned him for a time. Besides, it wasn’t the first time he’d fallen.

        He could have torn himself from their grasp and gone for his guns, but he wanted to see where they were taking him. There was something going on here. He’d encountered many an abomination before in underworlds but not usually right underneath a town. Then again, the people of this particular community weren’t like most townsfolk.

        The tunnel went straight down for a spell, then began to twist and turn. The walls were scored with the marks of pick axes everywhere, and rocks and piles of dirt lined the sides of the tunnel. After a few more minutes of descent, further tunnels began to branch off the main one, disappearing into the darkness. Only the main tunnel was lit by torches, though, and the group carrying Azrael remained on that path.

        Azrael received his answer when they came across the bones. Bits of them scattered across the ground. The men and women carrying him took care to step over them. Then they passed a few larger spiky bones just lying there, as if the skeletons that had emerged from the tunnel had forgotten to include these bones in their unnatural bodies.

        And then the tunnel ended before them in a wall of bone. Skeletons were embedded in the earth in a mess of grand proportions. They were jumbled together, as if they’d all been killed and broken apart and then tossed in a pile and buried. Maybe they had, Azrael mused, but now they were being unburied. The pick axes he’d heard leaned against the wall, amid piles of freshly chipped rock and clods of dirt. A couple of skeletal arms hung out of the wall nearby, as if reaching for the tools to dig themselves out. More of those hooks and spurs on them. And there were more bone pieces scattered everywhere here, covering the ground like ash in a fire. And dust. The dust was everywhere.

        But it hadn’t covered the doll yet. It lay amid the bones, half-buried. Azrael looked at it for a moment, then back at the skeletal wall. He’d seen a lot of the dead in his time, but he didn’t recognize any of these remains. They looked ancient, like they’d been down here for millennia. They looked older than him.

        The townsfolk dropped him to the ground, so he figured that was as good a time as any to stand up and draw his guns.

        “I don’t know what your particular superstition is,” he said, “but the sun has set on it now.”

        They didn’t show any signs of understanding him, which didn’t surprise him any. Instead, they just grinned at him like they were the ones holding the guns, not him. Then the man wearing the spectacles and hat reached out and took hold of one of those arms jutting from the wall. He snapped it free of the wall, like he was breaking a twig from a tree.

        A cloud of dust erupted from the bone, as dark as the night in the unlit tunnels they’d passed. It engulfed Azrael, flowing into his mouth and nose, grinding against his skin. He could feel something residing within it. Not a soul, not exactly what he’d call life. But whatever had once animated these bones wasn’t fully dead yet. And now Azrael understood.

        The townsfolk weren’t the townsfolk anymore. They’d been taken by whatever ancient beings were trapped in these bones buried deep in the earth, forgotten until the miners had dug down here and discovered them.

        But Azrael was no mere mortal to be possessed by spirits lost to time. He was one of the Fallen, who were few in number but made up for it in destruction and despair. He let the form he took these days slip just a little for a second, so the bone spirit could glimpse his true nature. It abandoned its attempts to seize him. The dust swirled away, forming into a whirlwind that howled its way back up the mine shaft and out into the night. It left the others coughing in its wake, stumbling away from Azrael.

        He didn’t let them escape. He delivered wrath and judgment upon them with his guns, and they fell amid the bones. The wind blew away to nothing, and the dust it had disturbed drifted back down to cover the ground once more. He couldn’t see the doll at all now.

        Azrael reloaded his guns and headed back to the surface. He needed another bottle, but that was going to have to wait.

* * *

        Azrael emerged from the mine into the continuing party in the street. He didn’t know why all the townsfolk hadn’t accompanied the others into the mine with him, like they had with the children. Maybe it was because he was an outsider here, or maybe it was because he was an angel. Or maybe it was because they were too busy celebrating the additions to their dance, the children who had come up out of the mine. But Azrael knew these children were children no longer.

        The closest townsfolk turned to welcome him, reaching out their arms for an embrace, but then they paused when they saw it was him and not whoever or whatever it was they’d been expecting.

        He shot them down and opened up a path to his horse. The girl who’d been holding the doll earlier came at him. She didn’t seem to be missing her doll at all now. He shot her down too, plus a few more of the dancers in his way. Then he rode out of town before they could swarm him.

        At the abandoned wagons in the road, he encountered the old woman from the farm. She was running, dragging the man with the white eyes behind her. They appeared to have run the entire distance from the farm to the wagons. Or at least she had run. She was without shoes, and her feet were bloody. But the old man looked to be in worse shape, given he was more or less lying on the ground, with her hauling him along by the collar. His pants and the back of his shirt were torn, and his blood streaked the ground behind them.

        Azrael stopped to warn her, but then saw from the way she looked at him that she wasn’t the same person anymore. Her eyes just moved over him, like he was so much air. She was humming a tune. The song the dancers had started up again, behind him.

        Azrael looked at the empty road behind her. Now he knew where the entity in the whirlwind of dust had gone. He put a bullet from each gun into her, one in the head and one in the heart, and left her for the man to bury if he wished. The buzzards had enough sense to leave her alone as he rode on.

* * *

        The sun was easing into the sky by the time Azrael reached the farm. The door to the farmhouse hung open, but he didn’t bother looking inside. Instead, he went straight to the barn. He pulled the doors open with his hands and looked into the gloom on the other side.

        The barn was full of skeletons. It was the mob of them that had attacked the town. Although he knew now that they had actually been trying to save the children. Fifty, maybe sixty of them. About the same as the number of townsfolk. They turned to look at him as he stood there, and then they grabbed whatever they could off the ground. Pitchforks and axes, a couple of shovels, a few lengths of wood. The ones that didn’t have any weapons hung back, clustering around the children who’d been sleeping on piles of hay in the middle of the room until Azrael had intruded. A couple of boys and three girls. And the smaller tentative skeletons that had crept out of the mine the night before.

        He drew his guns but he didn’t fire.

        “How many more children are there?” he asked.

        For a few seconds, none of them moved. The skeletons didn’t speak, but he didn’t expect them to. Then one of the boys got up and stepped forward. The one these bone creatures had dragged away, when he’d first ridden into the town.

        “There’s just us,” he said. He looked at Azrael in a way that said he didn’t seem to be any happier here than he had been in the town. “The dust people got the rest of them.”

        Azrael nodded at that. He didn’t know what the things buried in the earth were, but “dust people” seemed as good a name as any.

        “These are the people from the town,” Azrael said, looking around at all the skeletons, and the boy nodded back at him.

        “They’ve taken pretty much everyone,” the boy said. “They got the lady in the farmhouse during the night.” He didn’t say anything about the old man, but he didn’t have to.

        “Which one of these are your kin?” Azrael asked, studying the skeletons. They weren’t advancing, but they weren’t letting down their guard either.

        “I ain’t got no kin left,” the boy said. He brushed some straw from his clothing. “You shot them down when everyone came to rescue us the other night.”

        Azrael dropped his guns back in their holsters. He understood what had happened, even if he didn’t quite understand how. The people of the town had unearthed the dust people, and the dust people had repaid them for the favor by possessing their bodies. But they hadn’t just taken them over. They’d switched places with them. So the people of the town now inhabited the bones, and they’d somehow managed to cobble together their skeletal bodies out of those bones. Maybe there was a way to reverse the whole process, but if there was, Azrael didn’t know it.

        “You should keep moving,” he told the boy. “Get as far away from this place as you can, and maybe those dust people will forget you were ever alive.”

        The boy looked past him, at the world outside. “Some of the last people tried that a few days back,” he said. “The dust people sent a storm after them and brought them all back.”

        Azrael thought again about the storm he’d ridden through to find himself in this place. The cries he’d heard. The abandoned wagons on the road.

        “I seen all the bones,” the boy said. “I snuck into the mine one night. There’s too many dust people. There’s not enough of us in the town for all of them.”

        Azrael looked away from the skeletons. The boy was right. There were many more of the dead still waiting down in that mine. Who knew how many? Maybe just a town’s worth. But maybe more. “I can’t help you if you stay here,” Azrael said, turning and walking back to his horse. “But if you come with me I might be able to protect you.” He had an idea. He wasn’t sure if it would work or not, but he had to do something.

        The children and the skeletons followed him out of the barn, looking in all directions for signs of the dust people.

        “Where are you going?” the boy asked, standing in the doorway.

        “Back to the town,” Azrael said, and the buzzards took wing from the roof of the barn.

* * *

        Azrael rode back into the town, followed by the skeletons. They still carried their weapons, and they trailed behind him, but they came. The ones who weren’t holding farm tools or improvised clubs carried the children in their arms. The children didn’t say anything, just clung tight to the racks of bone.

        When they passed the abandoned wagons in the road, there was no sign of the woman he’d shot down or the man with the white eyes. Azrael couldn’t give it any more thought.

        The people in the town didn’t falter in their dancing until Azrael rode into their midst. They reached out to him, as if to welcome him back. But then they stopped when the skeletons came into sight and halted at the edge of town. The two groups eyed each other, and the song died away, replaced by the sound of the wind blowing down the street from the direction of the mine.

        Azrael shot down the man with the banjo and a woman holding a bottle of whiskey in either hand. They had more than enough numbers to take him down if they so desired, but he imagined from everything that had taken place that they desired even more to live. He was right, as they scrambled to get out of his way, leaving the dead man and woman lying in the dirt.

        Azrael rode down the street to the mine, leaving the skeletons and children behind. But not the dust people. They followed him, and now they pulled out knives and guns. They were too late, if his idea worked. If not, well, it wouldn’t be the first time one of his gambles hadn’t paid off.

        He got down from the horse at the mine entrance, but he didn’t go down that tunnel again. Instead, he stopped there and shook his wrists a little, loosening up. It had been a while since he’d done what he was about to try. The dust people nearest him stepped back a little, as if they thought he was getting ready to open up on them again. But he holstered the guns instead. And then he slammed his hands together and said the words in the forbidden tongue that he hadn’t uttered in centuries. He wasn’t sure if they’d still mean anything or not.

        They did. The air itself rent open before him, splitting with the force of the power that flew from his hands to the mine. The walls of the tunnel exploded, earth and rock and wooden support beams erupting and crashing into each other. A giant cloud of dust billowed out, engulfing him and everyone behind him, but it was just dust.

        Azrael uttered a few more words that were damnation to hear and slammed his hands into the ground. He heard the ceiling of the tunnel collapse, and felt the earth tremble under his feet. He stood back up as the dust settled around them all. He surveyed his work. The entrance to the mine was so much rubble now, the tunnel collapsed. The dead were buried again. He bowed his head for a moment, feeling the exhaustion all the way in his bones. He was glad that had worked, that the words still had power, because he didn’t have another plan. He’d been working on faith he didn’t know he still had. Or maybe didn’t want to admit he still had.

        One of the torches outside the mine entrance somehow still burned. He took it and then turned and made his way through the crowd, which was now a mix of the dust people and skeletons. No one tried to stop him. No one touched him now. They’d seen his wrath and wanted none of it.

        He went up the hill to the church. He stood on the front step and surveyed the crowd. The skeletons and the dust people and the children stared up at him. They waited for his words.

        “I could have destroyed you,” he said, pointing the torch at the woman in the purple dress among the dust people. “I could have smote you down,” he said, pointing the torch at the man who’d given him the bottle when he’d first ridden into town. “I could have razed this town and turned even the memories of it and all of you to ash, to be scattered on the winds.”

        No one said anything, because what was there to say to that?

        “That mine, it’s sealed forever now,” he said. “Even I couldn’t dig my way down to those bones now. But I ain’t taking any more sides than that. What’s dust is dust.”

        He went inside the church, his boots echoing in the empty room. He knelt down before that burn mark on the wall. It had been a long time since he’d kneeled, and it didn’t feel as natural as it once had. Nowhere near as natural.

        He said a prayer for the woman from the farm, like he’d promised. There was no sign it was heard, but that was nothing new. Then he said a prayer for the entire town, with the same result. When he was done, he touched the torch to the wall. If there was someone listening to his prayers, he wanted to make sure there weren’t any misunderstandings over the way he still felt about things. When the flames caught he went back outside and pulled himself up on his horse.

        The boy who had spoken to him back at the farmhouse stepped forward. Azrael had figured he would.

        “What are we supposed to do now?” the boy asked, looking at the townsfolk. Azrael wondered which of their bodies had been home to his parents.

        “This is a hard land,” Azrael said, as the church burned behind him. “You can keep on killing each other. Or you can learn to live together.” He saw the man with the white eyes in the crowd. He couldn’t tell if he was still human or one of the dust people now. “That’s up to you to decide,” he added. It was the sort of judgment that he’d been riding away from all these years, but he’d come to realize that sometimes there was no other kind of judgment.

        “What kind of fate is that?” the boy asked.

        “Your fate’s your own now,” Azrael said. “Make it what you will.”

        He rode through them then, the skeletons and the dust people, back down the road and out of the town. He didn’t look back.

        At the farmhouse, he stopped. He found some pieces of bone in the barn and used them to make a couple of crosses. He planted the bone crosses on either side of the wooden crosses. He didn’t have any bodies to bury, but sometimes it was the gestures that mattered.

        Then he got back on the horse and rode out into the wasteland beyond the farm. There was another dust storm growing on the horizon, and he headed toward it.

        As always, the buzzards followed.

Copyright © 2014 Peter Darbyshire

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Peter Darbyshire is the author of the novels The Warhol Gang and Please, which won Canada’s national ReLit award for best novel. He has published short stories in numerous journals and anthologies, including previously in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and his last weird western received On Spec’s Best Story of the Year award. He currently lives in Vancouver, Canada, where he is working on a collection of stories about the end of the world. Visit him at www.peterdarbyshire.com.

Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies

SEEING

by Stephen V. Ramey

        Mist blanketed the Tsoi River. The clink-clack of the towing elephant’s harness became an eerie rattle from both banks, the gurgling chuck of water against the towboat’s hull were lips sucking flesh from chicken bones. A shiver went through Rahami Honra. She rubbed her forearm, careful not to scratch the spider-bite welts that marked her as Web Seer.

        The Mother Oracle’s summons had surprised her, especially at this busy time of year when farmers relied on her prognostications to plan spring crops. It had provided no details beyond ordering her to leave at once.

        An uncomfortable mix of anticipation and dread twisted Rahami’s stomach. Did this summons portend something good; an assignment closer to home, perhaps? It could as easily be bad news. Maybe an elder had complained about having to host a low-caste seer in the village. Her clients were content with her, but who knew how authorities saw the situation? No, it had to be more than that. The Mother Oracle would not summon her simply to change her assignment. But what?

        “...beyond the divide.”

        “Pardon?” Rahami twisted on the bench. The passenger closest to her frowned before resuming his stony gaze. Rahami tugged at her travel cloak’s sodden hood. Hallucinations were not uncommon in seers, but she had not experienced them before this journey. It was discomforting.

        The first of Hatsi’s weathered silk warehouses emerged from the mist. “Pier a’coming,” the boatmaster grunted from his perch. Men carried poles to the rails. On shore, the elephant trainer backed the beast, letting its chains go slack while the pole men prodded the boat into position. Others hopped the narrowing gap to secure ropes. Rahami took her place in the disembarking line. She had hoped to visit her mother before meeting the Oracle at Matsomsa Spider House, but the boat was arriving a day late.

        Young men crowded the landing. “Kashi!! Kashi!! Best deal here.” Some kashi were plain carts with two wheels. Others were festooned with low quality silks. Rahami spied a familiar red banner and a driver whose attention was fixed on the inside of his removed shoe. The tight brown curls of his hair were unmistakable.

        She smiled. “You’ll not find a fare in there.”

        “One mo—” Jonji Ingras looked up. “Rahami?”

        “Tell me you were not expecting me.” Rahami had known Jonji since they were toddlers, his hut a stone’s throw from hers.

        “Sorry to delay you, Madam Seer.” Jonji slipped his shoe on and helped Rahami onto the padded seat. “To your mother’s?”

        “No, the Spider House.”

        He lifted the kashi’s handles and started off at a trot. He remained silent as they passed the Green Leaf Tavern and Wayward Inn and turned inland onto an uneven path. Spring rains had left puddles, but Jonji seemed not to notice.

        “How long have you worked the kashi?” Rahami said.

        “Three years.” Despite his exertion, Jonji spoke firmly.

        “Have you married?”

        “Yes.”

        A pang went through Rahami. She recalled a couple holding hands on the boat. Lower castes married for love, whereas it was a process of social mobility for higher castes. Seers never married at all. Who would want a disturbed soul wrapped within a poisoned body?

        A chipped-stone path carried them through groves of leafless trees and dispirited people. These were spinners traveling to the Spider House to begin their day’s work. Being Ashim, they could not walk on the path, only to its side.

        “What is the gossip about my arrival?” Rahami said.

        Jonji slowed. “Some say the Oracle will have you unmade for indiscretions and you will become Ashim-una again.”

        Rahami nodded. It was possible. She wondered who would be more devastated, herself or her mother.

        “What do you believe?” she said.

        “It is not my place to guess an oracle’s motive.”

        “I suppose not,” Rahami said. She remembered sneaking down to the docks with Jonji to watch men unload crates they imagined to be from all over the world. He had been comfortable with conjecture then. Those were the days, before apprenticeships and social expectations.

        Forest gave way to trimmed gardens surrounding a stacked-stone building large enough to contain most of Hatsi. The Spider House’s roof was pounded copper, green with age.

        Jonji walked the kashi to the main entrance, lowered the handles, and extended his palm. “Please, Madam Seer. Two tenths for the ride, an extra tenth if you found my service satisfactory.”

        Rahami withdrew four tenth-standards from her purse. Her fingertips brushed Jonji’s and a vision bloomed into her—an elderly man presenting a platter of charred lamb chunks atop a bed of carrots and greens. The platter transformed into her father’s face, flesh-white with waterlog, eyes like dark wells. Caste is no excuse to hide from life’s challenges, he said through bloodless lips. The head rolled over, submerged, and was gone.

        Rahami clenched. She missed her father more than she could say.

        “Is something the matter?” Jonji said.

        Rahami caught herself and dropped the coins onto his palm.

        “That is most generous, Madam Seer.” He would not meet her eyes.

        Rahami steadied herself. “Jonji, talk to me. Were we not friends? Did we not watch off-loaders and dream of exotic places? Tell me at least that memory is true. So little of my life is solid.”

        Jonji closed his hand. “That was long ago, a different time.”

        “The future is what we reach for,” Rahami said, “but it is the past that forms us.”

        Jonji’s expression softened. “Come with us, Rahami. After all, you will be one of us if the Oracle unmakes you.”

        “What are you talking about?” Rahami said.

        “We’re going over the mountains.”

        A chill blew through Rahami. She had heard rumors that the Ashim were plotting, but to attempt a crossing of the Spine of the World? It was a desperate, dangerous idea.

        “Think this through,” she said. “You have a stable profession, a family to provide for. I know the prospect of war is frightening, but you cannot let fear lead you to a rash decision.”

        “I’m not afraid,” Jonji said. “This is the opportunity we have waited for all our lives. Have you forgotten what it means to be Ashim?”

        “Of course not,” Rahami said. “But even the most experienced climbers fear the mountain passes.”

        Jonji shook his head. “Forget I said anything, Madam Seer. Forget you ever knew me.” He lifted the kashi handles and trotted away.

        Rahami stared after him, wanting to call out. How could she? The gulf dividing them was as real as the stones beneath her feet. She gazed beyond Jonji to snow-capped peaks turned blue by distance. Surely, it was bluster. No one in their right mind would truly attempt to cross the Spine of the World.

        #

        Bands of black hexagonal plates girded the Spider House door. For a heartbeat, Rahami saw a man within the design: square shoulders, nose sharp and straight, dimpled chin. It was an unfamiliar face, stern and resolute, and yet she felt as if she knew it intimately.

        Another phantom. She shook dew from her travel cloak, wishing she could clear her head so easily. Weaver, she prayed, if you have a care for my spirit, please do not let the Oracle’s purpose be my unmaking. Unmaking would remove her ability to enter trance but not the spider toxins from her body or the welts from her arms. It would not restore her past life.

        She grasped the iron pull ring. “It is an honor to be called, Mother Oracle,” she practiced. Despite the door’s great size, it swung open easily.

        Steps angled down into a cavernous chamber holding thousands of glass webberies in hexagonally arranged rows, each housing a single spider. Light washed down from windows high on the walls, where women balanced on crossbeams shooed leather-winged fliers and opened or closed vents to manage the day’s heat. Too much heat and the webs become flimsy, her mother had explained when Rahami came here to clean webberies at fourteen years. Too much chill and spiders go dormant. When Rahami had continued to stare, her mother added, The job’s not suited to girls. Leave the rafters to young men.

        Rahami smiled at the memory. It had been the boys that interested her, not the job. Now women minded the rafters with so many men in the militia.

        She started down the wooden steps, treads as familiar to her feet as if it had been only yesterday she walked them. Difficult to believe that three years had passed since she left the Spider House, and ten since she started her labors here. So much had happened in that time, her father’s and sister’s deaths, her brother moving to Asoman, her mother’s ongoing problems.

        Sweet liquid smells mixed with a heavier tang of hickory smoke. Rahami savored the scent.

        She paused at the stairway’s base to remove her travel cloak and tuck a curl beneath her headscarf. Ashim-una women wheeled carts loaded with buzzing fly boxes to keep the spiders fed, while Querca-debo workers in blue caftans made their way methodically from web to web, checking strand tensions, removing those to be soaked and spun.

        Rahami navigated the busy chamber and pushed through a tapestry wall into a smaller section housing blue orb spiders. Unlike black orb spiders, bred to spin and spin, blues rarely rebuilt their webs. And unlike black orbs, they were fed Harrow bugs, striped beetles with a potent toxin. Ingesting that poison rendered the spiders deadly to all but seers.

        A few paces within, the Mother Oracle tended a webbery. She was cloaked in alabaster silk robes, veils, and skirts that hid all but her sky-blue eyes. Even so, she was an imposing woman with a tall, sturdy frame.

        Rahami cleared her throat, and the Mother straightened, becoming even taller. Rahami swallowed. Until now, she had been in the Mother Oracle’s presence only during Solstice Celebrations, and always at a distance.

        “It is an honor to be called, Mother Oracle,” Rahami said. Her voice trembled despite her rehearsals.

        “The honor is yet to be woven,” the Mother said. She extended one hand, palm down.

        Rahami touched her forehead to a flesh-colored glove and backed two steps, head bowed.

        “I am intrigued by many things I hear from the villages,” the Mother said.

        “What things?” Rahami nearly bit her tongue trying to take back the impudent question. Your arrogance will do you in someday, Sister Mathe cackled from memory. A common laborer is what you are, and shall always be.

        The Mother sniffed. “It has been reported that you reveal more than the thickest strands to your clients. Is this true? Do you tempt them toward less than likely outcomes?”

        Rahami went cold. “In small ways,” she said. What seer did not allow some speculation? “There is little enough hope in the south without dire predictions.”

        “There are reasons for our rules,” the Mother said. “They protect seer as well as client.”

        “Yes, Mother Oracle.” Rahami knew in a foggy way of the balance between Family leaders, merchant castes, and seers. Politics interested her less than people. “I will restrain myself in the future.”

        “I trust that you will,” the Mother said, “but that is not why I summoned you. I am sending you to Matsomsa Manor.”

        Rahami’s heart skipped. “I do not understand, Mother Oracle. Matsomsa Family employs private seers, specially bred, specially trained. I’m not even a Sister.”

        “Morshimon Matsomsa asked for you by name.”

        “Why would he ask for me?”

        Creases framed the Mother’s eyes. “Do not test my tolerant mood, Rahami.”

        “Apologies, Mother Oracle.” Rahami cast her gaze down.

        The Mother lifted her chin. “The Manor Sisters report that Morshimon does not trust their seeing. He wants more of the future than it is willing to grant.” Ice-blue eyes bore into Rahami’s. “An unfortunate power dynamic has taken root. You are to perform the duty you were taught, without conjecture, without twisting the Weaver’s design. When your reading confirms what the Sisters revealed, it will put an end to this nonsense. Do you understand?”

        “Yes, Mother Oracle.”

        “Good. I will have a room prepared. You leave in the morning.”

        “I would prefer to stay with my mother in Hatsi,” Rahami said. “If that is acceptable.”

        The Mother hesitated. For a heartbeat her presence was anything but intimidating. As if in the throes of some distorted vision, Rahami saw through veils of silk and skin to the woman’s core, a writhing webwork of certainty and doubt warring for dominant pattern.

        The Mother glanced away, then back. “Very well, Rahami. Tonight, you play the dutiful daughter. Tomorrow, you will perform your duty to our people.” She indicated the webbery. “I have chosen a blue for you. If the Sisters are content with your seeing, you will receive double your normal fee.”

        “That is most generous,” Rahami said. Madam Seer, Jonji’s voice echoed in her mind.

        The Mother Oracle’s eyes narrowed. “Do not disappoint me, Rahami Honra. Much depends upon this thread.”

        Rahami cast her eyes down, and backed two steps. “Yes, Mother Oracle.” What is she not telling me?

        #

        Rahami gripped the goat cart’s bench, trying to retain dignity and her seat at the same time. The driver, a boy of fifteen or sixteen years, had not spoken during their bumpy ride through sycamore forest. Just as well. What would they talk about besides the impending war, or the task that lay ahead of her? Her nerves had already worn so raw with worry that she wanted to jump from the cart and run into the forest.

        The lead goat veered. Rahami clung tightly as the cart shuddered into the brush and wedged between saplings. The driver hopped down. “Stubborn animals.” He rocked the cart free.

        Rahami glimpsed movement through the trees. Deeper within the forest, women tended a fire near dun colored tents. She caught a whiff of meat smoke. Her mouth watered. She had eaten very little at morning meal, not wishing to deplete her mother’s limited stores.

        The driver pulled the lead goat back to the road. The others followed grudgingly, and the cart turned. Rahami still smelled meat smoke, but the tangle was too thick to see anything now.

        “Who were those people?” she asked. Another hallucination?

        The driver remounted without acknowledging her question. Perhaps he hadn’t heard.

        The cart gained momentum. Rahami’s thoughts returned to her impending task. She had heard tales of Matsomsa Manor, mortared walls as high as trees, extravagant halls bedecked with silk, that Morshimon Matsomsa was a man of such height he must stoop through even those doorways; his strength so great he might lift an elephant. With a flush, she recalled another story whispered in the privacy of a women’s chamber, never to be mentioned in the presence of children and husbands.

        “Ashim,” the driver muttered.

        “What?”

        “The people in the forest. I bring them supplies sometimes. The goats must have remembered.” A weight lifted from Rahami, a small weight but nonetheless welcome. The people were real. Maybe the delusions had ended.

        “Where are they from?” she said.

        “Runaways from Chindra and Ashoti, a few from the militia camp. They plan to cross the mountains.”

        Rahami thought of Jonji. “Without supplies and proper clothing, they will surely die.”

        The driver shook his head. “The Weaver will watch over them. The Lost City—”

        “That’s a children’s story,” Rahami said.

        “For some people a story is truer than life.”

        Rahami had no reply for that.

        The driver chewed at his lip. “Weren’t you once Ashim, Madam Seer?”

        Rahami nodded.

        “Then you must understand. If you report them—”

        “I will keep your secret,” Rahami said. What would she say in any case, that a handful of Ashim women glimpsed from a road she did not know planned to kill themselves in the mountains? It took no imagination to guess a high-born’s reaction to that. Fewer mouths to feed.

        The driver relaxed. “Thank you, Madam Seer.” The goats settled too, pulling together, their low bleats less plaintive.

        Rahami listened to the cadence of the wheels turning. Spiny berry thickets gave way to a row of whitewashed bee hives. She smelled honey and imagined the Mother Oracle’s lips moving behind her veil. You are to perform the duty you were taught, without conjecture, without twisting the Weaver’s design.

        Why would Morshimon Matsomsa believe me over Sisters bred to the task?

        The road turned along a ridge, and the view opened onto Matsomsa Manor sprawled along a peninsula into a vast lake. Three wings protruded from its central tower. Chimneys rose from blue slate roofs.

        South of the peninsula, a militia camp numbered more gray tents than Rahami could count. Men practiced swords or bows or pikes, the ring of metal upon metal nearly constant.

        As a child, Rahami had believed war would never reach Querc. A rugged coastline with few natural bays protected them from attack by sea. Invasion from the south would mean defeating a tenacious Amaali people and braving the Decid Plain, where ghosts intent upon bodily possession ruled the night. Now she knew better—the Amaali were not the warriors of legend, and it was said that certain magics could mitigate the ghosts of Decid Plain. Still, it was difficult to accept that the local militia, some of them young men she had grown up with, would soon leave for the front.

        The road descended. Dried mud yielded to manicured river stone. The great manor rose before her like a foreign land. Rahami sat forward as the cart traversed a plank bridge. A boy not much older than her driver stepped from a guard shack, pike in hand. Interlinked hexagonal chest plates depicted the Matsomsa spider crest. Bulky shoulder protectors extended from his neck, making his head look too small.

        “Who wishes entrance?” he barked.

        No one, Rahami thought.

        “I bring a seer for Morshimon Matsomsa,” the driver said.

        The boy-guard pointed his pike. “She is to enter through the Elephant Gate. Take care to mind your goats. They may eat rotted apples, but nothing recent fallen.”

        Clicking his tongue, the driver started the team along a row of apple trees. They passed statues of robed men holding scrolls and uniformed men with swords or pikes. These must be Morshimon’s ancestors.

        Wheels clattered on cobblestone as they entered a courtyard featuring a water fountain. Girls spilled from a doorway, followed by a pregnant woman in exquisite blue silks, whose uncovered head marked her as Querca caste.

        “I am Reuda Anch, Mistress of Women,” she said. Up close, she looked younger. “You are Rahami Honra?”

        “Yes,” Rahami said. A girl brought a hand-cart, and helped the others load the webbery and Rahami’s satchel while a mustached guard watched. Not so much to protect my goods as to catch every detail of girls’ bodies moving within loose-fitting garments. Rahami remembered fondly when boys had watched her like this. Few seemed to notice her gender now.

        “I am to show you to the seer residences,” Mistress Anch said. She motioned to an older girl, who scampered inside.

        Rahami followed into a busy kitchen bulging with delightful smells: onions, pressed garlic, vinegar, mustard spice. Pots hung amid ropes of dried herbs. Blazing hearths dominated one wall where women worked dough on a lacquered table.

        Hunger twisted Rahami’s stomach. They crossed a dining room with tables enough to seat fifty, ascended a flight of steps, passed a number of closed doors, and arrived at an arch decorated with river stones and shell and hung with layers of heavy silk. Rahami admired the material. Curtains of this quality, with dense weave and shining surface were rare in the countryside. To live amid such splendor must be wonderful.

        Mistress Anch parted three outer layers: gold, yellow, and white. Colors to blind the spirits.

        “I can escort you no farther,” she said. “The Sisters have been informed of your arrival.” She parted the three inner curtain layers: burgundy, blue and black. Colors to trick spirits into believing they return to their own world.

        “Thank you,” Rahami said. Stomach churning, she stepped through the opening into a small hexagonal chamber with a mosaic floor depicting a blue orb weaver in a geometric web.

        Three ivory-robed women entered from the opposite archway. They moved in unison, blue-eyed faces identically gaunt, blond hair pulled back in braids. Rahami breathed and released. Manor seers were said to breed like spiders. Maybe it was true. She could imagine these three emerging from an egg sac.

        The first Sister extended her hand. “I am Armyni.”

        Rahami touched her forehead to bony flesh. “I am honored, Sister Oracle.” The hand withdrew, and Rahami straightened. Armyni was clearly the eldest of the three, the skin of her brow and temples hinting at creases.

        “It is unfortunate you must leave your village duties,” Armyni said. “I am certain they are pressing.” The corners of her mouth ticked upward. “But take heart. Your stay here will be brief. Have no doubt of that.”

        Rahami forced a polite smile. Her year of training with Sister Mathe’s acid tongue had taught her to tamp emotion down.

        “Thank you, Sister,” she said. “I am indeed needed elsewhere, yet the Mother Oracle has determined my duty is here. Perhaps, when we have solved this problem, she will send you South to aid me in settling a farmer’s dispute.”

        Armyni’s jaw clenched. She turned on her heel and walked from the room.

        “Come,” another Sister said. “I will show you to your quarters.”

        #

        By the end of the third day, Rahami began to question Armyni’s understanding of ‘brief’. She had already endured too much idleness in the seers’ quarters, a collection of alcoves surrounding a common area. With no books to read and no sewing to occupy her hands, she spent her days gazing upon the lake and her nights dreading. She had heard of seers tortured when their reports displeased a powerful client. Of course, there were consequences for such abuse, but fines held little sway over people with vast wealth. That Morshimon had requested a minor seer, one with Ashim roots, was troubling.

        On the fifth night, she woke to peeling thunder. Flood! was her first impulse. Again she saw Father slip from the sandbag wall he had helped erect. Her younger sister, Owabe, reached out and was gone too, lost in a current stronger than her will. Lightning flashed. Rahami sat up, brow slicked with sweat.

        A figure in white hovered by the common room windows. Ghost? Rahami pulled a silk sheet over her head for protection.

        The figure resolved into the youngest Sister, Tifan, and Rahami relaxed. Of the three, she liked Tifan best. Where the others evaluated and dismissed, Tifan showed a spark of curiosity.

        “I did not mean to startle you,” Tifan said. She entered the alcove. “The storm keeps me awake. Armyni says I am foolish to fear the weather.”

        “Fear is a healthy response to powers greater than our own,” Rahami said. She removed her makeshift headscarf.

        Tifan knelt onto the sleeping mat. “Armyni claims we are well protected within the manor, yet I often feel the hair rise from my skin.”

        “I’ve felt that too,” Rahami said. “I believe lightning causes hair to lift as it energizes the air.”

        “You are not afraid?”

        “No,” Rahami said.

        “Then Armyni is right. The Weaver has blessed us with an ability to see beyond his veil. We have no cause to fear nature.”

        “Perceiving a future is not the same as controlling it,” Rahami said. “I may not fear lightning, but I fear other things.”

        Tifan edged closer. “You do?”

        “Floods,” Rahami said. “My father and sister....” She stopped. It was not like her to blurt personal details.

        “I’m sorry,” Tifan said.

        “It was a long time ago.”

        Lightning flashed, and Tifan leaned forward. Rahami’s arm went around the younger woman. She remembered holding Owabe after they were caught sneaking to the slaughterhouse to watch an elderly elephant put down. Rahami remembered Owabe trembling, tears shining in her eyes. No, that direction was not where this conversation needed to go. Diversion was a better antidote for fear.

        “I also fear love,” she said. “A man who pulls at my heart as lodestone draws metal filings.”

        “Oh, yes.” Tifan sat straight. “We all dread that.” She cocked her head. “Have you met such a man? Your travels surely present more opportunities than we have here.”

        “Once,” Rahami said. A thrill ran through her. She had not thought of Jankol in months.

        “What was he like?” Tifan said.

        “It doesn’t matter,” Rahami said. “I forget.” I hoped I had. She had danced with Jankol at Solstice celebration, knowing even as their hands touched—hers shielded behind kid skin gloves—they would never kiss or cuddle or whisper sleeping mat secrets. Only a man with seer blood might mate with her, and even that was risky.

        “Tell me about Morshimon,” she said to deflect the subject. “What does his future hold? What choices did you see?”

        “We should not speak of such things,” Tifan said. Lines creased her brow.

        “I cannot help but wonder what I am expected to report,” Rahami said. “Armyni seems worried I will contradict her.”

        Tifan sighed. “Armyni believes you will not stand up to the Honorable Morshimon. She believes you will tell him what he wishes to hear. It is no secret that you were not born to the craft.” A low rumble sounded. The storm was passing.

        “I will do my duty,” Rahami said. Without conjecture, without twisting the Weaver’s design.

        “I believe you,” Tifan said. She paused. “There is something else you should know, Rahami.”

        “Yes?”

        Tifan looked into her lap. “The Honorable Morshimon went to Chindra, to recruit.”

        “He’s not here?” Irritation surged through Rahami, a storm all its own. Who was this Morshimon, to toss her about like thistle seed? “I cannot remain here forever. People depend on me—farmers, fishermen, town elders.”

        “Armyni understands this,” Tifan said. She pressed a coin pouch into Rahami’s hand. “Ten standards. We do not possess enough for the Mother Oracle’s fee, but Armyni wanted to compensate you at least.”

        “Compensate me for what? I have not undertaken the seeing.”

        Tifan looked up. “You are not the first person the Honorable Morshimon has abandoned. Armyni says he discards people as children discard torn kites.”

        “Surely, he wouldn’t trifle with a seer dispatched by the Mother Oracle,” Rahami said.

        “This is a difficult time,” Tifan said. “War threatens to turn the world upside down.” She lowered her voice. “Armyni knows what she is asking of you. You dare not return to the Mother Oracle, who would as like have you unmade as listen to your side, but.... Perhaps this is an opportunity too?”

        “How so?” Rahami asked.

        “This calling we share, is it not also a burden? When we open our eyes onto the Weaver’s tangle, it is his domain, not ours. We are constrained by forces beyond our control. Would you not wish to be free if you could?”

        Rahami found herself nodding, even though she had never considered gaining her freedom in this manner.

        “Accept this payment and leave Querc,” Tifan said. “In time the poison may fade, and you will have your old life back. Armyni says that you are not bred to be a seer.”

        Rahami thought of Jankol. Rid of the spider poison, she might find love. She might even find a way to use her natural talents for something more meaningful than reading futures for farmers.

        Tifan squeezed Rahami’s hand and stood. “Sleep, Rahami. Perhaps your dreams will convince you. I cannot help but to put myself in your place. For me it would be an easy choice.” She strode to the exit.

        “Wait,” Rahami said. “You haven’t told me why Morshimon doubts his Sisters’ readings. Why was I summoned?”

        “The Honorable Morshimon believes we withhold something. He will not let go of his suspicion.”

        “Is he wrong?” Rahami asked.

        Tifan looked away.

        “What did you see?”

        “His destiny, of course,” Tifan said. “His death.” And then she was gone, another shadow in the darkness of the common room.

        #

        Rahami’s dreams did not help. Again and again, she witnessed her father’s swollen corpse returned to the village for burial, her sister’s face disappearing into angry black water a final time. The grief seemed as fresh as ever. Her Mother had been healthy then, which only made the tears more cutting.

        Each time Rahami woke, she thought of Tifan’s suggestion. Leave Querc. In time the poison may fade. And then she would whisper “no,” close her eyes, and eventually fall asleep only to have the cycle repeat, until, finally, she was too tired for even that to wake her.

        Morning brought sunshine streaming through the windows. A coin pouch lay rumpled beside the mat like the bean bags some children kicked for sport. She should be glad that Tifan’s offer had not been another hallucination, but she could not get past a feeling of impending doom. Had Morshimon truly abandoned her? How would the Mother Oracle react? She gathered up the coin pouch and went in search of Armyni.

        The passage from the common room was lined with tapestries depicting forests and lakes. Dark blue silks trimmed in gray draped from the ceiling.

        A man groaned.

        “Hold him,” Armyni’s muffled voice said from a side passage blocked by silk.

        Rahami moved closer. Why would a man be permitted in the Sisters’ quarters? Even the female servant had been specially purified.

        “He’s spent,” Tifan said.

        “Do you think I will not know when he spends his silver in my inn?” Armyni said.

        Rahami worked her fingers through the curtains. Across the room, Armyni straddled a naked man on a mound of pillows. Tifan held his hand while Orinda, the third Sister, leaned onto his shoulders. His breaths came as shallow grunts.

        “He’s not well,” Tifan said.

        Armyni snorted. “Oh, do not worry, precious Sister. He claims his mother comes from seer stock.”

        The man choked. Spittle erupted from his mouth.

        “You’re killing him,” Tifan said.

        “She may be right,” Orinda said.

        “Imagine that,” Armyni said. “A man who lies about his heritage. Well, I suppose his lesson is that lies return to roost.”

        “But—”

        “What concern is his death to us?” Armyni snapped. “He is Ashim.”

        Rahami swept the curtains open. Rage clouded her thoughts.

        “What are you doing here?” Armyni said. “Do you want a turn?”

        Rahami threw the pouch. Instead of striking Armyni, it landed on the man’s chest and skidded into his chin, drawing a startled grunt.

        Eyes stinging, Rahami fled through a surreal landscape of fake forests, fake mountains, fake lakes. Nothing here was real.

        “Wait,” Tifan called. Rahami ran faster.

        The passage emptied into the hexagonal room where Mistress Anch had abandoned her. She crossed the mosaic spider floor and paused at the curtains.

        “It’s not as it seems,” Tifan said, from the inner corridor’s mouth.

        “It never is.” Rahami pushed through clinging silk into the hallway beyond. Stately paintings punctuated the walls as far as she could see.

        Tifan’s shadow moved behind the curtains. “You are one of us,” she said. “Return with me, and Armyni will not punish you.”

        “No,” Rahami said. “Come with me, Tifan. We’ll report her cruelty.”

        “If Armyni is cruel sometimes,” Tifan said, “it is only because of the pressures of her station.”

        “And the man?” Rahami asked. “Does the Honorable Matsomsa tolerate murder in his manor?”

        The curtains parted. A blue eye peered through. “Murder? He is only Ashim.”

        The words hit like a splash of scalding water. Rahami turned and sprinted through the corridor, listening for sounds of pursuit that did not materialize.

        A stairway led down. She took it.

        Girls in brown shifts replaced sconce candles from a cart. A pair of guards chatted by an archway leading to a room filled with tables set for breakfast. Only the farthest table was occupied.

        Rahami willed her speeding heart to slow. The way outside was through the dining hall.

        “What is your business?” the older guard said. The younger one was the mustached man Rahami had seen in the courtyard.

        “I am needed in the kitchen,” she said.

        “Use the servants’ passage.”

        “Thank you,” Rahami said, pretending to misunderstand. She strode between the men.

        “Are you deaf?” the older guard said.

        Rahami continued walking, though every nerve in her body screamed at her to run. The dining hall was as high as it was wide, with skylights placed along the ceiling. No rafter women here.

        A hand grabbed her. “Don’t touch me.” She spun, lifting a sleeve to expose her spider-bite welts. Her heart thudded.

        The older guard drew back. “Spider-witch.”

        “She’s the woman from the goat cart,” the mustached guard said. “Morshimon sent for her.”

        “I doubt that,” the older guard said.

        “One way to find out,” the mustached guard said. He nodded toward the occupied table.

        “You will take the consequences,” the older guard said. “I want no part of this.”

        The mustached guard grinned and shook his head at the other before leading Rahami toward the table, which hosted six balding men and a soldier in partial armor. The soldier’s face was broad-browed, nose sharp and straight, a dimpled chin. Thick, dark hair topped his head, more than enough to make up for the others’ lack.

        Déjà vu washed through Rahami. She had seen this face before. The Spider House door.

        “What is it, Kapren?” His voice was resonant and deep.

        The mustached guard came to attention. “I found this woman wandering the halls, Honorable Morshimon.”

        Morshimon? Rahami touched her bare head. She felt naked.

        “Ah, the seer from the south,” Morshimon said. “The Mother Oracle promised you days ago.”

        “I have been here nearly a week,” Rahami said. “The Sisters said you were away recruiting soldiers.”

        “Is that so?” Morshimon sighed. “I shall have to educate the Sisters concerning my itinerary. These miscommunications grow tiresome.”

        Rahami swallowed. “I am sorry to interrupt your meal, Honorable Matsomsa, but when I saw that man, I didn’t know what to do.”

        “A man?”

        “An Ashim man in the Sisters’ quarters. They were.... Armyni....”

        Morshimon’s jaw tensed. “Kapren, instruct the Mistress of Women to find a suitable room for our guest. You will stand guard at her door tonight.”

        “Yes, Matsomsa-born.”

        Morshimon started to drop his lap napkin to the table but tossed it to Rahami instead.

        “Thank you.” She positioned the cloth over her hair.

        Morshimon stood, and Rahami suppressed a gasp. He was at least a head taller than the guard. Massive arms strained the seams of his sleeves. Hexagonal plates of silk-bonded armor covered his chest and shoulders.

        A giant if ever one existed.

        “I mean to pay a visit to the Sisters,” Morshimon said to the other men. “Anyone care to come along? They have invited one man into their quarters, what are a few more?”

        “Your father will not like it,” one of the men said.

        “There is much that annoys my father these days,” Morshimon said. “I doubt this will make the first five.” He nodded to Rahami. “Go with Kapren. Tomorrow you will undertake my seeing.”

        Rahami averted her eyes. “Yes, Matsomsa-born.” Tomorrow I will see your death. A shadow passed over her, a chill of deep dread. Maybe she should have accepted Armyni’s payment and run.

        #

        It was nearly noon before Kapren escorted her to Morshimon’s sitting room. Three windows overlooked the lake. To one side, a table was strewn with maps. Across the room, a hearth warmed two stuffed chairs and a floral-patterned sofa. Morshimon drowsed in one of the chairs. The webbery stood by the other.

        Kapren cleared his throat. “The seer is here, Morshimon.”

        Morshimon jerked but recovered smoothly. “Thank you, Kapren. You may leave.” Kapren withdrew.

        Morshimon stood. “Rahami Honra is an interesting name,” he said. “You hail from a Hashin Village near the river?”

        “Yes, Honorable Matsomsa, that is where I am currently assigned.”

        “Trained by the Oracle Mother?”

        “A Sister.”

        Morshimon nodded. “My militia captain recommended you. He is Hashin by blood, and claims that you reveal truths beyond the politically expedient.”

        Rahami cast her gaze down. “I do my duty, Honorable Matsomsa.”

        “As do I,” a new voice said. Armyni bustled into the room, the hem of her ivory robe clutched in one hand. Rahami adjusted her head-covering to hide her surprise. She had not expected to see Armyni again.

        Morshimon snorted. “The Sister arrives at last.”

        “As you requested,” Armyni said.

        “As I ordered,” Morshimon corrected. “My father insists that one of you vermin be present.”

        “He is wise, Matsomsa-born.”

        “He is old fashioned,” Morshimon said. “Now, be silent or I will have you replaced with another spider-witch. I may have to tolerate your presence, but I will not tolerate your tongue.”

        “As you wish, Matsomsa-born.”

        Morshimon returned his attention to Rahami. “Scarred warriors have crossed Alenja River. They will reach the Decid Plains soon and push north. If we do not defeat the Ubi army at Apatsoi River, Querc will fall. This is what my Sisters tell me. All well and good, but it is what they hide that interests me.”

        “We hide noth—”

        “Silence!” Morshimon shouted. Armyni looked away. “We will begin when you are ready,” he said to Rahami.

        “Yes, Matsomsa-born.”

        “I want a full reading,” Morshimon said. “A true seeing, do you understand?”

        “Of course,” Rahami said. She met Armyni’s glare. I will see this man’s futures. I will know what you know, and more if I am able. She removed her head-scarf. “If something has been hidden from you, Honorable Matsomsa, we shall soon know it.”

        #

        Rahami sat on an oval rug, shoes removed, toes touching Morshimon’s naked back.

        “I summon the spider,” she said. She removed the webbery plug and extended wooden tongs through the opening. A blue orb spider, starved for days, pranced across invisible strands of its web. Rahami got it on her first try. Catching a hungry spider was not as difficult as catching flies.

        She withdrew the flailing creature. “And now, the bite.” She pressed the spider to her wrist. This was the most difficult part, much harder than seeing futures.

        When the spider did not immediately bite, she moved it elsewhere, lifting and lowering, pressing its mouthparts to her skin. The spider bites where the Weaver wills.

        She felt a pinch and resisted the instinct to squeeze. A convulsion of her grip and the spider might be damaged, or worse, escape to bite the client.

        “The spider has chosen,” she said. She dropped it into the webbery and re-plugged the glass.

        “We begin,” she said. Morshimon slouched to make his spine more pronounced. She positioned her hands and forehead along his back.

        The poison was already taking hold. Rahami’s heart raced. Heat coursed through her, sweat beaded on her face, breathing became as difficult as pumping air through damaged bellows. Be calm. Be calm. As many times as she had undergone this process, she still feared she would die. It was ironic in a way. Once, she had wanted the poison to take her, and it had not.

        Her consciousness seeped through Morshimon’s skin, into his spine. Breathe, she thought. Breathe with this man. See with this man.

        Heat dissipated in a rush, leaving a warm residue of knowing. A web opened within her, thousands of strands, possible futures, entangled futures, a pattern. Not all strands appeared equal, thicker, brighter ones being most probable.

        A sexual encounter with a dark-haired woman. A river forded by militia. A forest camp. Meetings with war leaders. Angry disagreements. A forced march through mountain passes. Bone-biting cold. A highland meadow. Approaching the enemy from behind. A successful surprise. Invaders repelled. Death from infection.

        A second strand. Marching, camping, a surprise attack. Death.

        A hundred strands. Marching. Fighting. Death.

        A thousand strands. Death.

        I cannot continue, Rahami thought. The Sisters were right. This man has only death in his future.

        A hundred more strands. Death. Death. Death.

        Then, a small thread, barely visible. The militia leaving under seven banners. Morshimon remaining at Manor, hunting fliers in the northern forests. Ubi warriors invading, Ubi adepts controlling the Spider House. Villagers enslaved. Morshimon’s father and brother murdered. He weds a woman of Ubi heritage, has four sons and dies an old man.

        A second thin thread. Morshimon remains at Manor. Ubi warriors invade. Morshimon’s life is spared. He does not marry or father children.

        Others. Morshimon remains and lives.

        Futures faded into the dark gauze of Rahami’s exhaustion. She struggled against it, searched for other threads, other options. She had never seen a clearer pattern. Morshimon’s life meant Querc’s death and vice versa.

        Sadness overwhelmed her. This is what Armyni fears. For a heartbeat she felt sympathy for the Sister. To guide this client to his most promising future would require Querc’s destruction.

        Feeling returned to Rahami’s fingers. She felt Morshimon’s muscles, the interlocked bones of his spine, and recalled her father’s body, so bloated she could only recognize him from the copper necklace embedded in his neck. Would he have chosen to sandbag the river if a seer had warned him he would die?

        She disengaged. The Sisters had revealed that Morshimon would lead the militia to victory. They had clearly not told him he might choose instead to live. What do I say? Life radiates from this man.

        Silk slid down Morshimon’s back. “The seeing is finished,” Armyni said. “Seer? Can you hear me? You are finished.”

        Acid pushed up Rahami’s throat. She swallowed it down, unwilling to grant Armyni the satisfaction of seeing her vomit.

        “Village seers are not bred for this, Matsomsa-born,” Armyni said. “Now you see the toll of it. She probably remembers nothing.”

        I have seen, Rahami thought. Her face throbbed, her skin burned. Something was wrong. The Mother must have chosen an unusually potent blue.

        “Poison clouds her mind,” Armyni said. “She requires time to recover. I will return her to the seers’ quarters.”

        “My father may trust you,” Morshimon said, “but I harbor no such delusion. You are excused, Sister. Rahami will remain.”

        “She requires attention.”

        “I will attend her,” Morshimon said. “Now, get out!”

        “As you wish, Matsomsa-born.”

        Rahami tried to speak but only managed a croak. The spider poison was not dissipating. It was too potent. She clutched at Armyni, and the world tilted sideways.

        Armyni’s breath tickled her ear: “You had your chance to leave.”

        Rahami heard her mother’s voice—The job’s not suited to girls—and the world went dark.

        #

        Water flowing, heart thudding, breath in her ear. Rahami opened her dreaming eyes onto a surreal world, trees fuzzed with glowing green, a blue sky too intense. The river clucked for her attention. It was slick, too wide to cross, clogged with death.

        She remembered the spider and opened her fist. There it was, huddled on her palm, legs kneed up around its pudgy body.

        “Curse you,” she spat. It was supposed to bite. She had taken it from the Spider House, sneaked into the blue orb section and snatched it from the nearest webbery. It was supposed to bite. It was supposed to take her down into the depths with Father and Owabe, down there where her Mother’s grief lived. If she made it to the river, all the better. She would throw herself in and let the toxin take her.

        Well, here she was at the river, and it hadn’t bitten. She squeezed her fist until the spider’s body deformed like clay in her hand. Still, it would not bite. She tried to fling it. It clung to her palm. She prodded with her finger until it turned its bulbous back.

        Rahami considered jumping into the water. She did not trust herself to die. She was too strong a swimmer, and the river had lost its rage. Exhaustion came over her all at once. She sagged to the ground. She closed her eyes and cried.

        A pinch. The spider had bitten at last. A dull heat spread from the wound, soothing her to relax, to calm, to listen. All around her the world went silent. She watched, fascinated, as the creature spun its web from her arm to her shoulder, her chin. She watched it skittle along strands too fine to see, watched it dance upon the air.

        Rahami woke with a start. She was wrapped in blankets on a sofa facing a crackling fire. A cinnamon scent infused the room. She tried to sit, but only managed to lean heavily on the sofa’s arm. A vomit stain marked the rug by her feet.

        Morshimon sat at the table across the room, mug in one hand, a book in the other.

        “The spirits have released you,” he said. “For a time, your skin was so blue I feared you might not return.” He set the book aside. “The herbalist said your life was in the Weaver’s hands. I dismissed him. If a man is not going to help, why keep him around?”

        Rahami rubbed her forehead. “I apologize for my weakness.”

        “The weakness was not yours,” Morshimon said. He came to the couch and tilted the webbery bottom-up. There, etched into the glass, was a flower and three bees. “This is not a Spider House design, but the Manor’s. You were poisoned.”

        Armyni, Rahami knew at once.

        “The Sisters will answer,” Morshimon said. “Now, tell me what is so important that they were willing to kill you?”

        Rahami gazed at the carpet stain.

        “The Weaver spared you for a purpose,” Morshimon said. “Please, Rahami Honra, tell me my truth.” He took her hand between his.

        Don’t touch me, she thought.

        “Why does no one trust me with my destiny?” he said. “It is mine, is it not?

        Rahami stared into the fire.

        Morshimon sighed. “Will you horde the future, or return the power to shape it to we who must live out your visions?” He released her hand and flexed his fingers. It’s the poison, Rahami thought. It’s me.

        “I do not create the strands,” she said. “My duty is to convey your most probable path.”

        “I have heard enough of duty,” Morshimon said.

        “I’m merely a village seer,” Rahami said.

        “What we are born,” Morshimon said, “and what we become are two very different things. I could say ‘I am but the second son’. Does that mean I must live in my brother’s shadow? Can I not love him as he loves me and do the best I can to serve our people too?”

        “That is your choice,” Rahami said.

        “Do you not also have to choose?” he said.

        Rahami frowned. “The Sisters have conveyed your most probable futures.”

        Morshimon shook his head. “The Sisters assure me I am to become a hero if I follow their instructions. I have developed strategies for my captains, but it will not do if I am held responsible for butchering a thousand Matsomsa warriors. I do not trust the Sisters’ motives. I must know that my plan is the best possible approach. Am I leading my men into danger? Is this what the Sisters withhold?”

        Rahami breathed deep. “No,” she said quietly. “Not that.”

        “Then what?”

        Rahami met his gaze. “What the others did not tell you, what I should not tell you, is that the major threads lead inevitably to your death. If you go south, you will die.”

        Morshimon did not look away.

        “Circumstances vary,” Rahami said, “but your death is certain. It’s rare to find such a clear nexus. It is as if the Weaver has woven your destiny into the Web Beneath the World.”

        “And the war?” Morshimon said. “The Ubi threat? What of that? Could you see?”

        “I cannot be certain,” Rahami said, “but they are routed in nearly every thread before you....” She looked away. “It seems unlikely they would return.”

        “My life for the land I love,” Morshimon said. “A fair exchange.”

        “There is more,” Rahami said. She could feel the tension building in her chest, a sense of unwanted revelation. “Remain behind, Matsomsa-born, and you will live a full life.”

        “And Querc?”

        “Querc will be enslaved, our Spider Houses destroyed, families broken apart to serve Ubi overlords.” Rahami could be certain of these outcomes since he would be alive to witness them. “Sons will be born to you in many strands. You will know happiness.”

        “Ah,” Morshimon said. “The stew thickens. But, tell me, little flower, how could I possibly be happy in such a future, with Querc in ruins, all I care about destroyed?”

        “It is possible,” Rahami said, “for I have seen it. The strands are fragile, but there is hope. You have but to remain behind. This is what the Sisters fear.”

        Morshimon erupted in laughter. “Spider-witches. How could I live among them all these years and they not know who I am?”

        Confusion replaced Rahami’s dread. “You will go willingly to your death?”

        “Of course,” Morshimon said. “I know that must be difficult for you to understand.”

        “No,” Rahami said. “I understand what it is like to want to die.”

        “You?”

        Rahami gazed into the fire. “It was a time ago. My father and sister had drowned, my mother was sick with grief. I stole a spider from the Spider House, and it bit me. I thought I would die, hoped I would die.”

        “But you did not.”

        “No,” Rahami said. “Villagers found me. The Sisters could not deny the miracle, much as they would have liked to, and sent me south for training.”

        Morshimon whistled low. “And that is how an Ashim became web seer. The Weaver truly does watch over you.”

        “If so, he must be laughing,” Rahami said. “The Mother Oracle shuffles me between assignments like hand-me-down clothes. I might as well be invisible.”

        Morshimon chuckled. Rahami’s lips turned down. It was not funny to her.

        “I’m surprised you would wish to die,” she said. “It seems to me that a man with your privilege and position should want to live forever.”

        “I am the second son, not the first,” Morshimon said. “My demise does not much matter in the larger scheme. I only hope that our people will recall my sacrifice.”

        “They will,” Rahami said. That was beyond her seeing, but how could the world not remember such a deed?

        Morshimon stood. “You are welcome to stay as long as you wish. I would like nothing more than to personally show you the grounds.”

        “I’ve been here too long,” Rahami said. “I will leave as soon as I can make the arrangements.”

        “As you wish.” Morshimon paced to the table. “It is probably best that we do not let emotion cloud our resolve.”

        “Yes, of course,” Rahami said. She watched him sit, his eyes going blankly to the closest map. For the first time in her presence, he seemed defeated. She longed to comfort him.

        He did not look up as she exited, but she felt his attention on her like a strand of spider silk stretched to its breaking point.

        #

        Rahami mounted the goat cart sent for her return to the Spider House. She was pleased to see the same driver as before.

        “You look well,” she said as he took her satchel. The Mother Oracle’s webbery had already been loaded.

        He hopped onto the bench. “I brought a different team. It should be an easy ride.” He shook the reins, and the cart began a slow turn. Rahami looked to Reuda Anch, who stood alongside several serving girls, hands on her bulging stomach.

        “Uh oh,” the driver said. The cart skidded as a towering man bent through the doorway. Serving girls scattered.

        Rahami’s face warmed. A tingling sensation wriggled in her gut. She hoped it did not show in her expression. This was a time for professionalism, not girlish lust.

        The driver tied off the reins, jumped down, and bowed so low his forehead nearly scraped. He went to tend the goats.

        Rahami nodded. “To what do I owe this honor, Matsomsa-born?”

        “I could not let you go without seeing you off,” Morshimon said. “Will you resume your duties in the south, then?”

        “The Mother will probably assign a new region,” Rahami said. “I am nothing more to her than an uncomfortable itch she must scratch from time to time.”

        “You are not alone,” Morshimon said. “My father sees past me whenever I enter the room. And yet, we will soldier on and do what we can to make the world better, yes?”

        “Of course,” Rahami said.

        Morshimon took her hand.

        “Careful,” Rahami said. She felt the poison leeching from her pores. It would be days before she recovered.

        Morshimon laughed. “It seems to me we should both welcome a little numbness.” He kissed her fingers. “I owe you a debt, I wanted you to know that, before.... You have given me hope.”

        Rahami felt a surge of shame. She wanted to throw her arms around Morshimon and keep him here. She wanted to lie with him and give him the sons he deserved. How could he speak of hope, knowing that he would die in the coming months? And here she was, complaining about petty politics. She diverted her gaze to the goats. The future she longed for would never be, could never be.

        Morshimon released her hand. “Safe journey, Rahami Honra. May the Weaver watch over you.” He started to leave but stopped after two strides. “No, there is more I must say.”

        Rahami held her breath. Had he changed his mind and decided to live?

        His steady eyes met hers. “We have reached an important juncture for Querc, Rahami. Once the militia marches, my father will no longer possess force sufficient to control our Ashim caste. Many of them plan to leave Querc for the Lost City.”

        “The Lost City is a myth,” Rahami said. She thought of the people in the forest, the driver’s worry, Jonji’s offer to take her beyond the divide. She dared not admit these things to a Matsomsa.

        “Perhaps not,” Morshimon said. “One of our ancient texts describes it vividly: ‘A white city built of the bone and sinew and blood of the pilgrims within a green valley so hidden from nature that the snows dare not intrude.’“

        “Is the flying elephant also real?” Rahami said. She forced a smile.

        “The exodus must succeed,” Morshimon said.

        Rahami’s mouth fell open.

        Morshimon chuckled. “What? You never thought a high-born could think in this manner?”

        “Why would you?” Rahami said. “Ashim are to serve the higher castes. That is not a myth.”

        “You do not believe in castes any more than I do,” Morshimon said. “I have argued with my father’s advisors for years. We waste precious resources—talent, intelligence, people like you—by continuing this outdated system. War brings an opportunity to prove it. The exodus must succeed, Rahami.”

        “How can it?” Rahami said. “Without supplies, maps, a knowledgeable guide.”

        “I know the perfect guide for them,” Morshimon said.

        “He will need to be more than perfect to find a city that does not exist,” Rahami said.

        “I was thinking of you,” Morshimon said.

        Rahami stared. “Me? I’m no leader.”

        “Ashim will trust your guidance,” Morshimon said. “Not only were you one of their own, you are truthful, resourceful... passionate.” He smiled gently. “There is more quality in your character than the three Sisters combined.”

        “It’s impossible,” Rahami said. “I’ve never climbed a mountain in my life.” And yet, the idea sparked an ember inside her. “How would I find the Lost City in any case? An obscure reference in an ancient book hardly constitutes a map.”

        “You have your sight,” Morshimon said.

        “A seer cannot know her own futures or the futures of other seers,” Rahami said. “The poison masks us from ourselves.”

        “You are not like the others,” Morshimon said. “You see the hidden things.”

        “I see what the Weaver—”

        “No,” Morshimon said. “If the future is fixed, what need have we for seers? No, we play a part in our destiny, even you, Rahami. This is an opportunity to make a difference. Did you not say yourself that the Mother does not want you?”

        “I say a great many things I may not fully mean,” Rahami said. Still, she felt uncomfortable. Caste is no excuse to hide from life’s challenges, her father said from the depths of her memory.

        “My station entitles me to command you,” Morshimon said, “but I find that I cannot send you unwillingly into hardship. Your safety is as dear to me as the whole of Querc. I have never encountered such a woman as you. Never. In another time and place, I would ask you to come away with me.

        Rahami gaped. She wanted to run. She wanted to stay. A world took form in her imagination, green vegetation and golden skies, the spider poison gone, Morshimon beside her each morning as she woke. An ache pinched the pit of her stomach.

        Morshimon sighed. “Yet, I must ask this of you, or perhaps you must ask it of yourself, Rahami. You offered me a choice, and so I offer one to you. The journey will be dangerous and is uncertain to succeed. You may perish.” He touched her arm, and time seemed to slow, the breeze, the goats, everything.

        Rahami bowed her head, and the ground clarified into bedrock infused with glowing strands. A city bloomed within the glow, buildings with pristine white walls, a courtyard where many people gathered. First portion for our beloved Watcher, an elderly man said. The platter in his hands became her father’s face, no longer bloated-white, but red-cheeked, laughing. Fireworks splashed the sky.

        Morshimon’s voice brought her back. “Will you undertake this quest, Rahami Honra? Will you lead our Ashim to their promised land?” Rahami felt his skin on hers, his hope entwined with hers.

        The Web throbbed once, twice, thrice. What do you think, daughter, do you want to find a city above the world?

        “Yes,” she said. “I will.”

Copyright © 2014 Stephen V. Ramey

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Stephen V. Ramey is an American author of contemporary and speculative fiction. His short stories and flash fictions have appeared in dozens of places, from Microliterature to Daily Science Fiction. His first collection, Glass Animals, is available from Pure Slush Books. Visit him online at stephenvramey.com.

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COVER ART

“Pillars,” by Tomas Honz

Tomas Honz is a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, who believes in the traditional approach to art. To him, painting is a science that is necessary to acquire in order to make an art of it. He has years of experience in the entertainment industry as a concept illustrator, but his desire to create his own work, as well as a serious trauma–one of those things that make you reconsider your whole life–led him to leave that career, to open his eyes and soul to the fascinating world around him and shift his attention to traditional painting. View his work at tomashonz.com.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

ISSN: 1946-1076

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