The vowing table in the landsaint’s barracks was lopsided as Raam peaked over the lip of Aurenna outside – and not just because one of its legs was worn too short. A saintsworn was absent; Nojjeth never reported in last night. Her silver handprint, shaped to her large Dromag hand, was bare. But the Greshtal Ulashkr and the Aajakiri Fhelleid planted their palms on their silver handprints, connected by a thin silver ring to the golden print that held Imreb’s hand.
A landsaint’s vowing table was where they and their ‘sworn made their vows to their community. The ‘sworn vowed to the saint, who swore them all to Raam himself. He was represented at the center of the table by a magically lit candle upon a raised golden circle, connected by a single gilded line to the landsaint’s handprint.
Ideally, the circle of hands is complete before vows are made. But exceptions are often necessary.
“Before we begin,” whispered Imreb so as not to disturb the candleflame, “do either of you know of Nojjeth?”
“Nay, saint,” boomed Ulashkr, the candleflame vibrating with his heavy voice. “I have not seen her since yesterday’s vowing.”
“Nor have I,” admitted Fhelleid, her brow-plates still. “Perhaps she got lost.”
“No jokes at the vowing table,” chided Imreb. She pushed her hand into the golden handprint and turned to face Fhelleid. “Ser Fhelleid. Your saint requires you patrol the undermarket and keep watch for hooligans and burglars. Do you so vow?”
“So I vow, saint, by witness of Raam.”
Imreb turned to Ulashkr. “Ser UIashkr. Your saint requires you seek out absent Nojjeth and return her here by nightfall. Do you so vow?”
“So I vow, saint, by witness of Raam.”
Closing her eyes, Imreb made her own dedication: “Landsaint Imreb makes her vow to seek out the recent apprentice of jeweler Glaa’ib for interview regarding an ongoing investigation. By witness of Raam.”
“Saint,” interjected Fhelleid, “I should assist you. I am familiar with this matter.”
Imreb opened her eyes to glance at Fhelleid. Was she the one who suspected her? But the central candleflame blew itself out.
“The vowing is complete,” said Imreb sternly. “Keep your vow as promised, Raam your witness.”
Fhelleid’s brow-plates sank, but she said nothing. The three left the barracks and went to pursue their vows.
-
Thus spake Ngashiik:
The world kills emptiness on sight. Empty your mind and allow the world to murder it. Take in the world writ large, and return the favor. At the bottom of that darkness is a light: Raam.
Raam is the zenith of the heavens; Raam is the nadir of the mind.
-
The landsaint’s barracks were on the other side of the river from the bulk of the surface town. A sandstone-brick arch crossed the flowing coppery water to the sandrock formation on the other side which hid the town. Only smoke vents and tall crimson banners revealed its presence to the observant.
Imreb followed the worn road to the north gate: two enormous slabs of engraved sandstone, presently cracked wide enough for single-file trade caravans. Nodding at the guards, who bowed gently at her presence, Imreb slipped between the rear of a grain-bearing wagon and a beast of burden behind to enter the city.
Under rays of morning light slanting through cracks in the west, the huts carved from the sandstone gleamed bright. Smoke from last night’s recently-extinguished braziers filled the air, the perfume of foreign wood and ash leaving behind a thick pale haze. But through the haze one could easily see the brightly-colored murals, frescoes, and graffiti impressed upon nearly every open flat surface of the cavern.
Imreb nearly ran into a Greshtal carrying a crate of produce, but ducked just in time thanks to her saint’s reflexes. The caravan she’d followed in was being unloaded, state supplies being doled out to various warehouses and storerooms, and trade goods being delivered to the nearby elevator to the underground.
Imreb passed a Dromag laborer toting a great pot of spice as big as she was. With each step the overfull pot dashed fine ruddy powder into the air, a fair amount clinging to the Dromag’s beard. It didn’t seem to bother her, but Imreb caught a whiff and wondered how it couldn’t, unmistakable the hot, pungent smell of kezzac root. Imreb quickly zipped away from the puffs of dust and pursued a nearby passage to the right.
Imreb followed the graffiti-scrawled alley along the outer rim of the rock-cliff’s cavern, occasionally passing shafts of light from the left where the alley opened up into one of the major chambers. The rest of the way was darkness – but the eyes of a saint, blessed by Raam, saw light where it was scarce. The alley curved first west, then south, and the dim graffiti grew more and more desperate and more and more profane as Imreb neared the southside.
Finally the passage opened up into the south gate cavity, the old market. Most merchants had fled underground long ago, but a handful still stubbornly remained, like the old jeweler, Glaa’ib. He sat on a stool in front of his small shop, whistling tunelessly and stirring a kettle with a stick – both spoon and pestle. He was close enough to the gate to catch the morning breeze, but just out of the sun’s harsh light to hold onto the cool shade.
He stopped whistling and raised a great red-and-black Dromag hand to wave Imreb over. “Saint, saint!” he cried with his old raspy voice, a pitch higher than Imreb’s ears would have liked. “Come, come! Breakfast is near ready, and a good blessing is needed!”
Imreb crossed the empty old market to the elderly Dromag, his sparse shock of still-red hair glistening with condensed steam from the brass kettle. She took a look inside, but the smell told her long before what he was cooking: mashed and stewed and mashed-again silc beans, the grey flesh of the blue legumes thickening endlessly into a dense, viscous paste, popular among elderly Dromag whose teeth have lost their edge.
Indeed, Glaa’ib grinned at Imreb, his once-pointed teeth now rounded like tombstones. “A pleasure, a pleasure! Moreso when the miisilc is blessed, yes?”
Blessing food was a formality; it was nowadays known that many factors played into the safety of food, and none were spiritual. But the saints and priests allowed the faithful to still believe. Imreb held her hand over the kettle, in the cooler upper reaches of the steam, and mumbled a prayer to Raam, and to Byilo, old Saint Holy of Right Cuisine.
“A pleasure twicefold, saint!” Glaa’ib reached behind for a cracked and chipped bowl. He gave the miisilc a last good pound with the spoon-pestle and used it to tear off a steaming glob of slop into the bowl, and offered it to Imreb. “Here, here, saint! Eat, eat!”
Imreb glanced at the grey mush with barely-hidden fear. “No, thank you, Glaa’ib.”
“No, no, saint!” said Glaa’ib with a shake of his head, his red-and-white beard swaying back and forth. “No harsh spices. You are Aajakiri, I know such flavors do not favor you.” He extended the bowl further.
“Thank you, Glaa’ib, but I’m fine.” Imreb tried to push away the bowl.
“Oh, oh, of course!” Glaa’ib exclaimed, withdrawing the bowl. “The saint likes it sweet!” The Dromag reached to the side for a small pot of white powder. With his large hand he grabbed a mighty pinch of sugar and poured it into the bowl, then offered it again.
“Glaa’ib, no!” said Imreb, nearly losing her patience. “Thank you, but I’ve already eaten.” It was a lie, but she’d rather starve than try to swallow miisilc, no matter how sweet.
Glaa’ib’s smile finally fell a bit, hiding more of his teeth. “Very well, saint,” he said, taking the bowl for himself. He dipped a couple of fingers into the miisilc to scoop up a bit of the bean-paste. “How may I –” he stuck his fingers in his mouth and began chewing, “– helb you?”
Imreb sighed. “Tell me about your recent apprentice.”
Glaa’ib groaned. “Goo’ stuff,” he mumbled through his chewing.
“...Glaa’ib?”
“Sorry, sorry,” mumbled the Dromag after he swallowed. “Mrogem, you mean. Nasty brat. No eye for detail. Couldn’t tell emerald from peridot, sapphire from aquamarine, diamond from quartz – much less cut anything right. Told him so one day and he got so angry, I never saw him again.” He wielded his spoon-stick like a club. “Give the boy his dues, I would, if he dared come back!”
“No weapons,” warned Imreb.
“Oh, it’s just my stir-stick,” said Glaa’ib, returning it to his kettle. “Don’t contort yourself.”
Imreb pulled the flawed thoughtstone from her pocket; she winced at its speech, having forgotten to brace her brow-plates. She showed it to the jeweler. “Did he cut like this?”
With his cleaner hand Glaa’ib took the sapphire and gave it a brief once over. “Hm. Looks similar. Seems he’s still been practicing, but it’s still shit.” He brought the sapphire closer and squinted. “Is this thing filled?” he asked, shaking his head. “Raam above, why’d you use it?”
“I didn’t fill it,” said Imreb. “Someone else did. I’m trying to figure that out.” She held out her hand to take back the sapphire. “Do you testify this is Mrogem’s handiwork, Glaa’ib?”
“I so testify, saint,” said Glaa’ib, handing back the thoughtstone. (She wiped it quickly on her sleeve before putting it away again.)
“Do you know where I might find Mrogem?” Imreb asked.
“Cursed if I know,” Glaa’ib admitted. “Maybe ask some of the young Dromag?” he suggested. “You know the rascals, too big for their feet. Barely grown their beards in, scrawling profanities on the walls. Like, like…”
“Kheloz, perhaps?” offered Imreb, optimistic.
“Yes, yes! He’s one of their lot. He might know where to find blasted Mrogem.”
“Thank you, Glaa’ib. You’ve been very helpful. Blest day.”
“And you, saint, a blest, blest day!” returned Glaa’ib, but Imreb had already turned to leave.
-
This ancient dune overlooking the fields flanking the Heljaar river as it wound its way east to the distant coast was Imreb’s favorite place to meditate. But her eyes were open, scanning the landscape before her, discerning discrepancies. Raam was high in the sky at his apex, his light harsh upon Kolqust, but illuminating the river’s arc like the bent swords of ancient desert tenvo, a wicked streak of bronze, ending in a sharp point on the distant horizon.
Before the farmland disintegrated into sand, the fields of precious crops clung to the precious coppery water. The fingers of grain and stalks of beans danced to the tune of the wind rolling down the river’s course. She listened to that familiar sound, and her mind began to drift towards contemplation…
Wait. Her ears twitched as she focused her hearing. That wasn’t the song of the wind – not entirely. There was a distinct melody hovering over the land, almost haunting it. She slid down the dune to follow the tune.
Tracing the small irrigation rivulets separating the fields, she located the source: a young Dromag in a fallow field plucking at his tellish, a stringed instrument with three courses of two strings each, a seventh drone string, and a wide, deep body. Unnoticed, Imreb listened silently.
It was a deep-desert Kolqusto ballad Imreb didn’t know the words to. The player didn’t, either, or else didn’t want to sing for some other reason. He played soulfully, jostling the tellish on some notes for extra vibrato. His large fingers gracefully danced upon the frets, wringing from this piece of molded wood and wrought metal one of the sacred blessings of the world: music.
“Kheloz.”
The musician missed a note, spoiling the composition. He stopped and craned his neck to see Imreb. “You’re a very sneaky saint,” he observed with a sigh.
“And you’re a wonderful tellish player,” she added.
“I imagine,” Kheloz said, laying down his instrument flat on his lap, “that you’re not here to compliment me. Is it about the thoughtstone from yesterday? I don’t have it on me.”
Imreb’s listening brow-plates said he was lying, but she decided not to pursue it. “Not that,” she said. “I’m looking for someone. A friend of yours.”
Kheloz fiddled with the strings idly. “I’ve got a lot of friends. You’ll have to be more specific.”
“A Dromag,” said Imreb, “by name of Mrogem. Apprenticed under Glaa’ib the jeweler.”
“Not for very long,” Kheloz muttered. “Yeah, I know him. Deep-desert bastard. Bet the ‘prentice job was a grift. He’s always on some grift.”
Imreb squatted next to seated Kheloz. “Where could I find him?”
“And why should I tell you?”
Imreb narrowed her eyes, her brow-plates contorting in what she hoped the young Dromag would recognize as a threat-display. “Because I’m your landsaint.”
He met her eyes for a moment, but didn’t seem to take notice of her brow-plates. He stared back for a moment before relenting, looking down at his tellish. “Yeah, yeah…fine.” He nodded his head towards the main rock of the above-ground city. “Like I said, he’s deep-desert. But he lives away from his tribe, in some ruins a few miles south of town, all by himself. I’ve never been there, so that’s all I know, saint.”
Imreb stood, wiping dirt from her legs. “Do you stand by this testimony?”
Kheloz sighed, and gave his tellish a dissonant strum. “I so testify,” he groaned, as if his mother had just ordered him to bed.
“Good, good. Blest day, Kheloz.”
“Blesdy, saint.”
-
Raam hung low in the east, nearly over the lip of the world, casting the desert into bifurcate shades of bruise: the sky a deep purple, the sand a vibrant orange. The concentric azure flowers of the tall gyec cactus took their cue to bloom under the now-visible swarms of spirits above. To the distant northwest the land began to rise, first as tall dunes, then high foothills, then farthest away, the silvery cliffs and peaks of the Raamo mountains at the center of Aurenna, wherefrom the holiest of priests officiated in their sacred temples.
A sudden evening breeze came down the side of a nearby dune, casting a spray of fine sand in Imreb’s direction. She squinted her eyes, tightened the scarf covering her mouth and nose, and fluttered her brow-plates to keep their crevices clear. Heading out deep-desert was far from ideal, but it was part of her duty as landsaint of Ab’Heljaar and its surrounds.
She knew little of the desert here, save for a handful of landmarks. To the west were the relatively recent ruins of an abandoned fort, from a few centuries ago when Kolqust was first conquered and established as a temple-state. Farther south were a few more-ancient remains, long since mostly-buried by the sand. The deep-desert tenvo say this land was not always desert, and that a great empire, counter to the ancient Dromag to the north and Aajakiri to the west, once spread across the fertile plains and forests. They claim the rising of the central mountains by Raam cut them off from rain somehow, and the deep-desert tenvo descendants of that empire still curse his sacred name.
There were a couple ruins that Imreb could think of that matched Kheloz’s description, so she sought them out, following dune-valleys south.
There was a sudden rumbling of the sand beneath Imreb’s feet, and she panicked for a second. Had she wandered into a sinkhole, or quicksand? But the rumbling moved away, and a few yards to her right she saw a sandfish, larger than she was tall, its sand-dusted scales glistening in the dusklight, emerge from the ground, followed by another, and another. An entire school of them swam past, each breaching briefly in turn, reaching twice Imreb’s height into the air. They kicked up sand upwind, so she had to flutter her brow-plates again.
Imreb had heard stories of deep-desert tenvo taming these strange beasts, and riding them across the sands. But she doubted it was really possible, for more reasons than she could count. But she had also heard of the feats of the skytrout cavalries of the western swamps (difficult to imagine such a wet place, out here), how they sailed the skies from pond to pond. So maybe such things were possible.
As she watched the sandfish school swim away, she caught a glimpse of a pillar of smoke through the clouds of dust they stirred up. She changed direction and strode through the sand towards it.
Mostly buried in the side of a dune was part of an ancient edifice of worn sandstone brick, a sunshade embedded in the sand held up by pillars engraved in an unfamiliar hieroglyphic. There was a bedroll and collection of reed baskets and clay pots tucked in the covered nook, but right outside was the remains of a fire – still smoldering, so not long extinguished. A half-cooked desert rodent (Imreb guessed the long-tailed gweld) was still strung from a spit over the warm embers.
Cautiously Imreb inspected the camp, also scanning the surroundings for signs of life, but found none. But it seemed obvious to her that someone had very recently been here.
She checked out the reed baskets and clay pots, and their contents. One had the flour of the benquc tuber, seemingly for making gruel in the dirty pot nearby, or flatbreads in the filthy pan next to it. Two small pots next to it held white powders – presumably salt from a nearby salt-plain and sugar extracted from cactus sap. Another basket had foul-smelling dried sandfish steaks, a deep-desert delicacy that nearly turned Imreb’s stomach from the stench. Another held nearly spoiled gyec cactus berries – but maybe the owner planned to make gyec wine from them, it wasn’t clear.
In the darkest corner of the recess, Imreb’s saint-eyes caught a glimpse of another basket. As she neared it, her brow-plates reacted harshly, nearly recoiling completely into her head. She took a look inside: gems of every kind and shape, some filled, some not, some flawed and leaking, some not. They spoke in a horrible chorus of pain, the cacophony like listening to the entire night sky all at once, but so much worse.
She reached in to grab a thoughtstone, but her instincts kicked in as she heard a subtle shuffling of sand behind her. She whipped around, calling upon earth spirits to turn her hand to stone.
She caught the rough blade aimed at her head with a hardened palm, wrapping her fingers around it before it glanced off completely. Her attacker was a wiry-bearded Dromag with a shaved head, wielding a bronze “self-defense implement,” and clearly shocked at Imreb catching it so effortlessly.
Still holding the weapon, Imreb ducked low, sweeping a leg under the Dromag’s, knocking him flat on his back, simultaneously wrenching the blade from his hand. She tossed the sword into the air, flipping it to catch it by the hilt. Before the Dromag could catch his breath, the tip of the sword was pointed at his throat.
“Mrogem,” Imreb said, “you’ve just attacked a saint.”
Mrogem looked into her eyes to verify, and fear washed over his face, tightening the lines of his brow. But he returned, “I’ve just attacked a stranger snooping around my belongings. That’s defense of property, saint or no saint.”
“Perhaps try diplomacy next time,” Imreb suggested, “before immediately reaching for a blade.” She pointed back at the thoughtstone-filled basket. “What use does a Dromag have for so many thoughtstones?”
“What?” Mrogem glanced quickly at the basket in the shadowed corner. “Those’re just random gems I found. Honest.”
Imreb sighed and pointed at her brow-plates. “Don’t you recognize an Aajakiri when you see one? I can’t help but hear those leaking ‘stones.”
“Leaking?” Mrogem’s eyes went wide. “What do you mean? They’re cut just fi-” He shut himself up before incriminating himself further.
“‘Just fine,’ hm? You don’t cut as well as you think.” Imreb pulled out the leaking sapphire from her pocket and tossed it down to Mrogem.
He caught it in his hands – albeit clumsily – and looked it over. “Looks fine to me,” he said.
“Glaa’ib was right,” mumbled Imreb just loud enough for Mrogem to hear. “You have no eye for gemcutting.”
“Saint Imreb?”
Imreb planted a foot firmly on Mrogem’s chest before turning toward the speaker, stood at the top of the dune. It was her ‘sworn, the Greshtal Ulashkr. “Ulashkr?” Imreb called back. “What are you doing out here?”
“I was seeking out Nojjeth to honor my vow,” he said solemnly.
“Good,” said Imreb with a nod. “I’ve just honored mine. Help me bind this tenvo and I’ll help you finish honoring yours.”
“I’ve already honored it,” said Ulashkr, his face a grim mask. He pointed east.
Against the black backdrop of the newly fallen night, Imreb saw crimson carrion birds circling in the sky.
“No…”
-
Thus spake Walfa, Saint Holy of Right Burial, as she was buried:
“It is the blessing of the dead to walk no more.”