Where a boy is brought before the high throne of God to submit to the Red Sun's Baptism, a brutal rite of passage. And yet it was just the beginning of his troubles. . .
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The Red Sun hung like a monstrous mirage low on the northern horizon, bathing the desert in a sweltering crimson light that made the air shimmer. Its heat had transformed vast stretches of black sand into glass that stung the eyes to look at, the glare just adding to the Red Sun's ferocity. It never set, casting its eternal red light over the desert, having long ago burned the forests back to the equator.
That is where it met the Ring.
The Ring, like a verdant ribbon of life, was a network of nourishing oases that thrived just beyond the Red Sun's reach. It was home to the Clan and Kin, a nomadic tribe of herders, foragers, and zealots. They lived their entire lives moving from one oasis to the next.
The Clan and Kin were highly superstitious and heeded the commands of the sun-speakers, who watched the Red Sun for signs and words and interpreted them as good or ill omens. The priests were never wrong. Because that would mean God was wrong.
To the south of the Ring lay a realm of perpetual darkness and frigid cold, a hellish abyss where the Red Sun was completely absent and the Devil was said to sit atop a stormy black peak. The north, devoid of clouds due to the Red Sun's intense heat, offered no respite. Only at the Ring did clouds begin to form, drifting south to merge with the endless tempest that shrouded the southern hemisphere and churned around that distant mountain.
A young boy, huddled in the corner of a cage, his forehead pressed against his knees, turned inward to escape from the suffocating heat. But it was all around him. Slender horns, curved backward, protruded from his head, faintly glowing as they worked to draw out and dissipate the heat from his body. A sudden jolt of the cage startled him, and he looked up to see the other boys in the cage, each horned like he was. He looked around, and though some met his gaze, none spoke. There was little point in exchanging their names, for new ones awaited them atop the White Mesa, where they were to undergo the ritual of the Red Sun's Baptism.
Their cage-wagon, drawn by a team of laboring shulf, lumbered across the sandy hills of the Ring. The vision of the flat mesa was ahead of them. Sun-speakers encircled the wagon, swinging censers that emitted foul white smoke and clanging bells, which sounded low like their throat chanting. The rhythm of the sounds were a solemn counter to the silence inside the cage.
The heat was relentless, the Red Sun's rage searing upon them. The boy thought the entire weight of the sky was weighing on him. The boys' horns, however, offered a measure of relief, their backward curve designed to deflect the heat. The sun-speakers, as a mark of their devotion, had severed their own horns long ago, choosing to embrace the Red Sun's full intensity, believing it enabled them to hear the words of God more clearly.
As they approached the White Mesa, where the high throne of the Red Sun stood, the boy felt that the heat must be intensifying. Only the sun-speakers, the Clan and Kin believed, could safely approach the mesa and tread upon its sacred ground, lest the Red Sun reduce them to ash. So they made camp further beyond the mesa, awaiting the boys' return – if they survived the ordeal.
The dusty road, winding its way up the mesa's slopes, offered glimpses of the surrounding landscape to the boy. The glaring expanse of the black glass desert was endless in the north. Then when they turned to the south, his eyes followed the trail of clouds that led to the roiling light storms that rotated around the devil's black peak.
The Ring, he saw, was so thin compared to the others. He'd never been so high above it. It was where he'd lived his entire life, like all the Clan and Kin. That filled him with a restless energy that made his chest flutter, borne out of the uncertainty of the coming ritual. He knew the Red Sun would take some of them.
It was the price.
Yet those that could endure would be welcomed back into the arms of the Clan and Kin, now adults with voice and stake. He clutched the silver collar around his neck, a symbol of his impending baptism. He found that his bound hands were shaking. All the other boys in the cage were destined for the ritual too and wore the same collar. Some whimpered, with fear written on their faces. He wondered if any of the others knew they wouldn't survive it. The frail ones. Those whimpering ones.
Reaching the summit of the mesa, they were met with a blinding expanse of white, contrasting eerily with the red skies. The wagon came to a halt, the exhausted shulf braying in relief. Moments later, the cage door to the rear was opened, and the boys were pulled out, some resisting, stricken by their fear. The mesa's surface, reflecting the Red Sun's light, was almost unbearable to look at, but the sun-speakers, their eyes accustomed to the brightness, led the group towards the center, where a massive boulder, split in two, stretched outward into the sky. Through this fissure, the Red Sun appeared to rest, enthroned in the sky.
As they passed beneath the shadow of the right arm of this throne, the boy caught a glimpse of their destination – a platform situated at the point where the two split slabs converged, the site of the Red Sun's Baptism. Then, the blinding light returned as they moved past the shadow. He turned his face downward, his horns glowing with an intense white light, struggling to endure the heat. The other boys, their horns radiating similarly, were walking all around him. The sun-speakers were behind them, still chanting.
Stumbling upon a set of stone stairs, camouflaged by the brightness, the boy began to fall, his bound hands unable to steady him. He felt the rough hand of one of the priests at his head and he was being pulled back up by the orange of his hair. It stung his scalp, but everything stung here.
The priests surrounded them, forming a line around them that prevented escape, should any not have the courage to face what was to come. The boy shielded his eyes from the white-hot stone and rose one step at a time, sure of his footing before proceeding. The herd moved along with him, up the steps. Some boys were still crying. The boy looked up towards the top of the stairs. He didn't know what awaited them at the end of those long steps. Would they meet God? The boy wasn't sure he wanted to meet such an angry god.
The steps ended abruptly and the boy lurched forward, his stomach dropping in the instant he thought he may be falling. A few of the sun-speakers were moving ahead of the herd, leading them to a platform high above the mesa's flat top.
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It must be the highest place in the world, the boy thought.
At the platform's edge, facing the throne, a series of metal rods protruded from the ground, each topped with a gleaming silver mask, its gaze fixed on the sun. These masks, crafted from the same metal as their collars, were the instruments of the baptism. The boy were marched towards them, and the sun-speakers forced each to kneel before a mask, their eyes made level with the cold, metallic gaze.
The boy knelt before his mask, observing the cranks on either side that controlled the metal shutters covering the eyeholes. A priest walked down the line, turning the cranks and closing the shutters on each mask, resetting them for the ritual. The boy saw thin slits of red glowing through the shutters, and the interior of the mask appeared to him like a demon. He could hear his own ragged breathing as he stared at it, a mixture of fear and anticipation welling up inside him. Then suddenly, he felt a familiar rough hand at the back of his head again, a sun-speaker now behind him as he knelt. Before he could even realize what was happening, his face was pushed into the mask. Darkness was then around him, a moment of calmness where he could hear and feel his breathing against the mask.
He felt the shadow of the priest fall over him, and the fluttering in his chest was back. It would happen any moment.
Then the mask shook, and he heard the grinding of gears as the shutters covering the mask's eyes flipped open, flooding his vision with the full horrible gaze of the Red Sun's disc. He cried out in agony, his eyes quickly burning, unable to close. But the priest held his head firmly in place, his face pressed against the mask, angled towards the Red Sun, offering no reprieve. He could hear the screams of the other boys, a chorus of pain and terror, but he could see nothing but the Red Sun, its disc shimmering and distorting, its form taking on the semblance of a face. Was it God's face? His horns glowed white-hot, straining to dissipate the heat overflowing into his body through his eyes. He felt the Red Sun burning into his very own soul, and he prayed to it that he be struck dead rather than continue.
Then, as abruptly as a candle snuffed, the Red Sun's light began to dim. He heard gasps and cries of alarm from the Sun-speakers all around him. The world around him returned to his vision, the red sky transforming into a color like the dark skies of the south – the color of the glacial ice that flowed from the devil's black peak.
"The Devil has come to devour the Red Sun!" The boy heard one of the sun-speakers yelling, "Kill them, the baptism has failed–Their eyes are tainted with the southern darkness!"
The boy pulled his face from the mask, at first believing the priest's hand was still there. He saw the sun-speakers were pulling their daggers out from their sash-belts. The other boys were emerging and joining the fray that was brewing up.
A heavy thud beside him drew his attention. It was one of the priests, his red cloth stained with his own black blood. One of the other boys had managed to seize a dagger from one of the priests in the uproar caused by the shadow and broke free from the Sun-speakers' hold. The one on the ground beside him lay dead now, stabbed to death by his own weapon, a savage black shard harvested from the desert glass.
He waited for the priest to get back up, despite the dagger in his chest. But the priest just lay there. A broken, dead man.
Something within the boy snapped. The heat in his head now transmuted into anger. He looked back at the throne, where the shadow was engulfing the red sun completely. Then he looked down at the dead sun-speaker, and yanked the black dagger free of his ribs.
The baptism had been interrupted, the red sun's light unable to completely alter the boy's eyes. Instead of the red vision of their elder kin who survived the trial, he saw that the others' eyes were dark as they were turned from their masks and stood. They were black like the devil's own, the boy thought. But such dark eyes were better suited to the shadows, the boy realized, and then he saw that the sun-speakers were completely blind, unable to see at all in the darkness now cast over the mesa. They were holding their arms out and slashing wildly into the air.
The boy clutched the glass dagger between his hands and sawed the ties around his wrists. His hands split apart and he jumped upward, facing the disoriented priests. The boy charged at them, the stolen dagger raised high. He howled into the hot wind, and the others soon were howling too. The sun-speakers, caught off guard and unable to see, were no match for the boys' sudden ferocity. They fell, slaughtered at the altar, their black blood staining the white stone and dripping down its steps.
The backward, concave faces of the masks, their eyes still open, watched silently over the dead as the boys began to make their way down the platform's steps.The shadow then began to recede, the Red Sun slowly reclaimed its light, and the sky returned to its familiar crimson color. The boys descended the mesa in the abandoned wagon, the shulf eager to escape the oppressive heat. They carried the bodies of their fallen comrades, but left the sun-speakers where they fell.
- - -
The boy was trying to make sense of the shadow and the strange, southern color that had briefly consumed the sky. He knew that shadow, it followed the Clan and Kin throughout the Ring. The Devil's Shadow.
He shook himself away from his thoughts and looked around. The others were standing around a deepening hole that was being dug with the priests' daggers. Some seemed to be in shock, looking dazed as they took their turns digging the grave for their fallen brothers. They stacked the bodies on top of eachother in the hole, and when filled again they built a cairn for memorial. Each of the boys found and placed one of the many scorched stones that were scattered around the foot of the mesa and stacked them over the grave.
The five survivors stood solemnly at the cairn, under which nine bodies were gathered. But what could they say to memorialize them? What did they know of the dead boys taken by the Red Sun? They had no names now, nor did they ever. But now, neither did the boys who survived. The shadow had eaten the Red Sun before it could reveal to them their names.
So they chose new names, each of them. The boy was dubbed by his brothers as the Fawn, called so for his wide, cautious eyes that reminded the others of the weary shulf. The others were given new names too–the Cat, the Wolf, the Hare, and the Bear–Names that reflected their traits in kind.
The Clan and Kin would surely be making their way to the Mesa now, and they would pull out their knives and slaughter them as readily as the priests tried to do. And what did they think they would find up there when they arrived, after witnessing the darkness swallow the Red Sun whole? Only dead priest-men waited, and the cruel, coy faces of the masks, unbothered by the blood spilled before God's throne.
Leaving the wagon at the base of the mesa, they released the shulf from the yoke and set them free. Maybe the beasts would return to the Clan and Kin to be yoked again. But the Fawn and the others knew they could never return. One by one, each of them realized that truth, and turned to face the dark, frozen south.
The devil's road was their only way forward now.
So they walked south, leaving their old selves at the foot of the red sun's throne, dead as the sun-speakers left to mummify in the scorching heat.
But the price was paid, the Fawn thought.
. . .Until the Last Nights Pass.