I remember that it was sunset when we reached Iddan’s island. We came from the west, and the sun was behind us, making for a quite picturesque view of the island as we neared it. Sandy beaches and groves of bushes ran along the coast, but rising in the distance was a row of white-peaked mountains. We came to the island, and the darkness followed close behind us.
Some of the Samara sailors accompanied Iddan and me in a boat to the shore. There was a village not far from us, and what seemed to be a public house where we sat on benches around a stone fireplace, but Iddan warned us solemnly not to say anything until we had been offered wine. It is well-known that wine loosens tongues, but this seemed to be an overliteral interpretation of the proverb. Nevertheless I agreed, and so I and the Samara sat in silence while Iddan carried on a long and cheerful conversation with his brethren. They were fishermen, I assumed, since an old man kept insisting that Iddan had to bless his nets or else disaster would fall on the entire village. Finally Iddan went out with the old man to bless the nets.
Here I will mention that the Mimiris̱ of this village resembled Iddan in the shape of their faces and the color of their skin, but their hair was dark like that of the Samara or the Dūrī, not at all like Iddan’s vivid yellow.
I exchanged glances with my Samara companions. A pretty young Mimiris̱ woman approached us and began talking to us in an unmistakably flirtatious manner, seemingly provoking us to reply. I kept my mouth shut, of course, as did most of the Samara. One of them, however, an unfortunate youth who had no doubt sorely missed female company while we were at sea, grinned and said, “Well, hello. I don’t suppose you see many men from Samara here.” It was an inane remark, admittedly, but it was hardly deserving of what happened next.
Immediately there was silence in the room. On the far end, an older woman stood up, wrapping her shawl over her face as she straightened. She approached us, chanting words under her breath that, as she came closer to my Bird, resolved themselves into “we have not forgotten, nor shall we ever, what lay on the stone.”
The youth who had spoken was laughing nervously now, and I can scarcely blame him. The young woman drew away from him, one hand covering her mouth even as her eyes sparkled with amusement. The rest of us were as silent as a particularly empty tomb.
The older woman loomed over us suddenly and placed her hand on the youth’s shoulder. She was still chanting the same words, and she was joined now by a man with an intimidating beard. The youth’s nerve broke and he jumped up to run out the door, but the man and the woman each had him by one shoulder. Thus far I had been alarmed if uncertain, but when the woman produced a knife I decided I couldn’t sit by any longer. I stood up and, remembering Iddan’s warning to remain silent, took a step towards them, hoping my intentions were clear.
It was at that tense moment that Iddan returned, and as soon as he stepped inside he shouted, “Enough of this! What happened?”
“He spoke,” said the man with the intimidating beard.
That was apparently sufficient explanation for Iddan. He nodded, looked from the unfortunate youth to the woman with the knife, and said in a weary voice, “Make a mark on his chin, a small mark, mind you! Then send him back to his ship.”
“More blood than that,” said the woman with the knife.
“I judge otherwise,” said Iddan.
The woman seemed tense. We were all tense, of course. I myself was in grave doubt as to whether she would obey Iddan or do something more horrific with that knife, which seemed sharper and sharper every time I looked back at it. Then she made a swift motion and I admit that I flinched. But she only made a nick on the side of his face and stepped away, muttering to herself.
The youth, understandably shaken, left with a few of his companions. Then the young woman who had lured him to that peculiar sacrifice brought goblets of wine to us who remained. We drank, and as soon as we did the entire environment of the room changed. We were met with smiles instead of frowns, laughter instead of glares. The woman with the knife was still muttering to herself though, and we were not anxious to say anything despite Iddan’s encouragement.
The Mimiris̱ brought us food and we ate, remarkable dishes with spices that I could not identify and which were largely based on fish. Then the remaining Samara sailors returned to their ship. One of them leaned close to my ear before he went, and whispered to me, “You’re welcome to sleep onboard tonight. I wouldn’t want to be here any longer than I have to.”
While I shared his sentiments, I thought it would be rude of me not to accept Iddan’s hospitality, so I declined. All things considered, however, I wasn’t at all sure that I preferred the people of the Holy Island to the priests of Hiltar (apart from the presence of the Crocodile himself, of course). We had, or so it seemed to me, gone from the crocodile’s jaws to the robbers’ den, if I may concoct a proverb (all proverbs had to be concocted at some time or other, surely).
“Well?” Iddan asked me, resting his chin on his hand. “I do hope you weren’t too upset by what just happened. We are an old people, and one does not break a thousand-year taboo without very good reason.”
“I don’t understand it,” I admitted. “What did you need his blood for?”
“It is one of our newer taboos, I must admit, but even still it goes back far before our fathers’ fathers’ fathers. Who can question the starry belt?”
I wasn’t even sure what the starry belt was, let alone who could question it. Anyway, I am fairly confident that Iddan’s question was a rhetorical one, so I turned the conversation to more practical matters. “Where will I sleep tonight?”
I was somewhat worried that Iddan would point me to a bed atop a sacrificial altar, but the truth was not quite so dreadful. He led me up to the roof, where a number of mats were laid out. “I have a journey to make tonight,” he said. “But I will be back before dawn and we can continue on to the city.”
The stars seemed brighter somehow that night than I had ever seen them before or since. I remember that, and also that as I was falling asleep I had a vague notion that they were telling me something in a language that even the Bird could not interpret.
The next morning Iddan had returned as he promised, though he was not asleep when I found him, but sitting on the parapet looking to the west. I cleared my throat and he greeted me without turning, then he said, “I made inquiries into the matter of your friend.”
My heart leaped, over the double-headed bull as Iddan might say. (I hope as I write this that such an expression doesn’t mean anything improper.)
“She is not on the Holy Island, not that I expected her to be. Nor is she among the Samara, or in the southern parts of the Amikni lands. Before I could inquire among the Magharun, I was interrupted.”
I was baffled by this. “What do you mean, you inquired?” Not an intelligently phrased question, I admit, but when one speaks in riddles, one cannot always expect intelligent questions in reply.
“I mean precisely what I said. I made inquiries, and really if you want to know more, you should join the college of Urshut that gathers in Uruki.”
“I can do that?”
“No, you cannot. It is only for the Mimiris̱. But tonight I can assure you that I will journey again. Today we go to Uruki, and we should leave at once. If we keep our feet quick and our hours long, we will reach the city by sunset. If not, we will reach the city by midnight.”
Iddan meant what he said. He barely allowed me to have a quick breakfast (of fish, naturally) and to grab a little provision for the journey. He said that he needed no food himself, which I found doubtful. Then he led the way inland from the village, along the course of a stream that ran down from the mountains.
“Uruki sits at the feet of Orlus̱s̱at and Orlus̱karm, our tutors of old,” he said to me as we walked, the sun shining brightly on our heads. Not my head, of course, thanks to my hat, but Iddan went (foolishly, I thought) without any covering, and his hair gleamed in the light. “When we were born into this island, we came first to the valley where Uruki had been built by hands that were not ours. We were an ignorant people then, but those of us who were half-wise ascended the heights of Orlus̱s̱at and Orlus̱karm to seek answers there. That is what the college of Urshut says, but the priests of the old gods say that we brought teachings with us that have been forgotten elsewhere. Maybe neither are right, or maybe both are right. Who knows? All I can say with any confidence is that my knowledge will die with me.”
I can’t forget to mention the curious animal that we happened across. It was on the bank of the river, using its trunk to pluck leaves from the shrubs that grew there, and didn’t seem to notice us at first. The only thing I can compare it to is the elephant I saw in the imperial menagerie in Tarinzar, but there was one difference that I, as a careful observer, noticed immediately. The elephant in Tarinzar was half again as tall as a man, but this creature only came up to my waist.
Iddan clapped his hands, and the creature paused in its grazing, then looked up. In some alarm it backed away from us, then turned and fled across the river, swimming with remarkable rapidity.
“Where is its mother?” I wondered.
“Oh, it’s quite full-grown. You don’t have elephants where you’re from?”
“They live across the Ṣuyas̱ mountains, a long way to the east, or so I’ve heard. But they’re significantly bigger than that.”
“It’s a good omen for us. My grandfather says there were more of them seen when he was a boy. Maybe they’re disappearing too.”
It was an extremely pace that Iddan set for us, and since it had been some time since I had last gone for a walk among the hills north of Edazzo, I tired quickly. But as I didn’t care for the idea of spending the night in the open air on this island, I forced myself to keep up with him. The land was deserted, or so it seemed, and although I saw no more elephants, I did see a cat that kept pace with us for a short while, mewing contentedly.
“I am curious, Iddan,” I said eventually. Perhaps it was a foolish question to ask, but to walk for long hours without conversation is a grueling experience. “I knew a man who told me that there was a door here on this island he wanted to open. Would you happen to know why? Do you know what’s behind it?”
“There is a door, but that is a secret that we Mimiris̱ must keep,” he said with a wink. So I changed the subject to the bizarre behavior of the priests of Hiltar, and that proved a more fruitful line of conversation.
By the time we came in sight of Uruki, the sun rested on the sea behind us and I longed to rest in a bed, if you will pardon my comparing myself to a celestial body. “Not long now,” said Iddan, as bright as ever. My stomach reminded me that I had only had a hurried breakfast and a hurried lunch, neither of which were sufficient to support a day’s march.
Stolen story; please report.
It would be impossible, I think, for me to describe Uruki to someone who has never seen it. I can only say that it was ancient, obviously ancient, beyond any count of years. But there was no air of decay to it: it was alive, not with the life of the young but a kind of life that was preserved in sleep. My readers will see how I fumbled that last sentence trying to describe Uruki, so I will abstain from further effort. I will only mention that it was built from stone, and in places seemed to be carved out of the foothills themselves.
And how should I describe the people of Uruki? They walked in the silence of the tomb. None spoke to me, and I didn’t dare to speak to any of them, remembering the incident with the Samara youth. Even the place where we slept was carved like a tomb into the side of the mountain, so that I was sincerely afraid that I would never wake again.
It wasn’t until Iddan took me to the college of Urshut the next morning that the silence was broken: not by voice, but by song. It was a song that reminded me irresistibly of my childhood, when I played in the shadow of mountains that were not unlike the mountains rising above Uruki.
“Tell them about your Rosédan,” said Iddan when their song had faded away. “Tell them there’s another like me!”
So I told them as much as I thought prudent, and when I was finished, one of the oldest members of the college rose from her seat of stone and held out her hand to me. “We will make a journey,” she said in a voice that reminded me somehow of rocks grating down the side of a hill. “We will seek out this woman who is one of the last of the Shaddar. Join us, Iddan.” Iddan took an empty seat, completing the circle and making me feel significantly out of place. I looked from side to side as I stood in the middle of them, the only one standing, the only one who had no idea what they were doing. It was a great relief when the old woman told me that I should go outside for a time. “Unless you want to be dragged along with us in our wake.” I did not.
Iddan refuses to answer any of my questions about these journeys, so my readers must simply guess as to the teachings and the practices of the college of Urshut, and their guesses will be as good as mine. I felt the hair on the back of my arms rise, but that was probably my imagination. It was some time before Iddan emerged from within, and he really did seem as if he had gone on a long and tiring journey. “Rosédan is in the east,” he said, pressing his fingers together. “She’s among the Magharun, but I’m afraid she’s not in a place that’s at all easy to find. There’s a lake in the southern part of the Magharun realm, a lake that kills any living thing that touches its water. On the shores of that lake is a gloomy city and an unfriendly people, and that’s where we found her.”
“Then I will go to her,” I said immediately, though of course I had no idea how I was going to do such a thing.
“Oh, you absolutely will, and I’ll be with you. A Samara ship should be due in about a week.”
“A whole week?” I asked, unable to think about anything but Rosédan in the prison where I imagined her to be, perhaps standing at a high window and gazing out at the still black waters of that lake.
“It isn’t such a long time. You must leave Uruki for the duration, of course. It wouldn’t be healthy for you if you stayed here too long. It’s something about the air, I think.”
I was not looking forward to another march across the plain to the coast, but neither was I especially looking forward to a week of laying myself down to sleep in the tombs of Uruki. I was, therefore, greatly relieved when the first face I saw the next morning as I emerged from my cave was not that of Iddan, but rather that of Līwam, his sharp eyes flashing out from under his short dark hair.
“You’re here ahead of us, I see,” he said.
“Is Mimālal here too?” I asked, still somewhat overcome by the fog of sleep.
“Unfortunately, no. He’s still on the ship that took us from Hiltar.”
“He couldn’t keep quiet, could he?”
“On the contrary,” Līwam said with a twinkle in his eye. “Mimālal knows when to keep his mouth shut if he has to. But the Mimiris̱ forbade him from setting foot on the island because of his swearing.”
I rubbed my eyes, hoping that if I did I would bring myself awake. Unfortunately, it only made my eyes sting, which at least was a reminder that I was not a dream. Speaking only of my own experience, my dreams have never brought me pain as vivid as that in my waking life. Yet sad to say, they have brought me greater pleasure: in my dreams I can see again everything that I have lost.
“I’ve spoken with your friend Iddan already. You must be eager to be on your way to the east, but I’m afraid I’m going to ask you for your help before you go. The door I’ve mentioned to you is in these mountains behind us. Will you come with me, so we can open it and see what’s on the other side? You’ve met the Crocodile; I have known and hated the Crocodile all my life. If the legends of the Mimiris̱ have any truth to them, then behind that door is the secret that will set Dūrī free.”
He held out his hand, and I took it. I believe that I was justified in the event, but at that moment my decision was founded in the following considerations. First, I hold myself to be a decent judge of character, and I judged Līwam to be a good man. He had been, at any rate, kinder to me than anyone else in Dūrī. Second, I had been deeply alarmed by my meeting with the Crocodile. I have read that in ancient days the world was haunted by wicked and powerful spirits that claimed the worship of men, and what else could the Crocodile be but one of this genus? Third, I was curious about this door. Despite all the stories where a foolish curiosity leads to disaster, I still think this was a strong consideration.
The door was higher in the mountains, about an hour’s walk east from Uruki on a winding path overgrown with grass and pale flowers. The path ended at the foot of a mound of bare rock, longer than it was wide, that loomed ahead of us as we rounded a corner. We were four: Līwam, Iddan, the old woman from the college, and I. The old woman held up her hand for us to stop when we were still some ways from the mound of rock.
The front surface of the rock was riven by a jagged line running from top to bottom. Its lower half was framed by a sort of crude portal made of three unfinished slabs of stone, a horizontal lintel supported by two posts. “You see the door that none have passed and none have opened in a thousand thousand years.” (I suspect she exaggerated the age a fair amount, and Iddan agrees with me.) “Which one of you thinks he can succeed where all have failed?”
“Well, I certainly don’t,” said Iddan. “You should know me better than that, mother.” (This was a term of respectful address, I believe, not a literal filial relation.)
“I wish I could,” said Līwam. “But I’m not the one to whom the gift was given.”
Both Iddan and Līwam were looking at me in a way that made me wish I was back in Edazzo, if not actually in my old home. “Personally I don’t think I can succeed,” I said with a shrug. “I’m not even entirely sure what I’m supposed to succeeded at. But Līwam has a different opinion, and so I’m willing to give it a try.”
“Then step forward,” said the old woman.
Taking a deep breath, I did. My Bird began to sing to me in a tone I had never heard before, full of rising and falling melodies that made my head hurt if I tried to follow them. I passed under the stone slab, and the moment I did I heard a voice in my head. To this day I cannot describe the voice, whether it was man or woman, adult or child, but I distinctly remember what it said.
“Have you come to set me free, or to torment me?”
“I only want to open the door,” I said after a moment of silence.
“You lie.”
“I’m not lying!” I protested. I don’t know if any of my readers have ever been called a liar by a door, but I can assure you that it rankles.
“You lie!”
I was about to protest again when I realized that there was a sense, after all, in which the door was right. In the depth of my heart I didn’t really care about these rocks or whatever secret was buried under them. Really all I cared about was finding Rosédan again. “I suppose I do,” I said. “But that man there wants to open the door more than anything else, I think.”
There was a longer silence before I heard the voice again. “Now you tell the truth. Have you come to set me free, or to torment me?”
“I don’t know,” I said with a perhaps foolish honesty. “Who are you?”
“I was, and in a different way I am, and I do not know if I will ever be.” If my readers can make sense of this, they are better philosophers than I.
I have read this portion to Iddan, and he seemed to understand, though he suddenly seemed both very sad and very awed. He made some effort to explain it to me, but the only part of his explanation that I could keep in my head was this: “My father is dead, which is to say, he is no longer. But there is a sense in which I could say that he lives on in me, and I’d be right to say that.”
In any case, whatever or whomever that voice belonged to, it approved of Līwam, I think. There was a sound like the sigh of a giant and the rift in the stone mound widened. It was large enough now for a man to enter, or several men if they walked single-file. Several women too, for that matter, or mixed groups, but as it happened the old woman did not go with us into that darkness. Neither did Iddan, explaining that the light was not permitted to enter the tomb, or something obscure to that effect.
So in the end it was Līwam and I who went inside. He was in front and I in back, an order that suited me perfectly. I had no particular desire to be the first into the tunnel and whatever lay inside. Neither of us had torches or lamps or any kind of fire, but there was light nevertheless. I didn’t have an opportunity to confirm it, but I believe there were gaps cunningly carved into the ceiling to allow the sun’s light to enter at certain times of day. When I told Iddan this theory of mine, he failed to see its ingenuity, remarking only that I underestimated the power of the ancients.
Whatever the source of the light, it showed us through the narrow portion of the tunnel, which before long opened up into a larger oblong chamber, which was darker but still light enough that I could see enormous man-shaped figures along the wall. At first I was startled, an irrational part of me insisting that these figures were living giants, but then I understood that they were only carvings of stone.
In the center of the chamber was a plinth. There may have been markings on its sides, but it was too dark for me to see them clearly, either them or the object that rested on the surface of the plinth. I hesitated, feeling as if we had entered a place where we did not belong, children trespassing in a forbidden garden. But Līwam lacked my worries, apparently. He strode forward as if this cave were his by right, and set his hand on the plinth.
“I am Līwam, son of Sitīħū and Ramīpa’,” he said in a voice that shook the still air. “I am here because I want to slay a god.” He raised his hand, and now he was holding in it (like a juggler’s trick) a spear.
I had approximately seventy questions to ask him, more or less, but while I was deciding which one came first, he walked past me to the entrance, still holding the spear, offering me only a smile. Finally I settled on asking him what, exactly, the spear was, but by that time he had already vanished into the tunnel.
My readers are no doubt aware of the curious phenomenon in which one’s mind seizes on and vividly imagines the exact possibility that one would least prefer. Naturally, then, I suddenly envisioned the doorway closing and leaving me trapped in eternal darkness with the stone giants, and I hurried after Līwam.
It was, happily, only after we were both in the open air and the sunlight that I heard the voice again, but it had no words of explanation for me. It only laughed, and the crack in the front of the rock sealed itself again. I turned away and was surprised to see Iddan and the old woman kneeling before Līwam, or possibly before the spear. I wondered if it was the proper protocol for me to kneel as well, but decided that it would be preposterous in either case.
“You are ready to hear the story,” said the old woman. “You are ready to hear the secret. The First Man stood in this place with his brother when all things were young. With this very spear he slew his own brother and used the parts of his body to make the world. This island is his liver, where he read the future and hid the past. Do you understand now?”
“No,” I said.
“Yes,” said Līwam. “To kill one’s family is one of the most grievous of sins. But I intend to do the opposite. I will avenge my family with this spear. I will slay the one who destroyed them, and set all my brethren free.” He was still smiling, but his hands tightened around the spear.
“Then go with our blessing. And you who have spoken with him with whom no one has spoken since this place was carved out of the earth, you accompany him and see what he does. Whether you are blessed or cursed, I cannot say. You walk among the great powers of the world and talk to them unwittingly, unaware of your peril, so you must be cursed. But you live and love, so you must be blessed.” I was baffled by all this, but decided to take it as a long-winded compliment, and I bowed. She chuckled and turned to Iddan. “And you will go with him too, I suppose, before you go to the east,” she added, with a note of disapproval that had definitely not been present in what she said to Līwam and me.
“I really must,” said Iddan.
“May you find what you’re looking for. I hope you will.”
I would like to visit the island of the Mimiris̱ again someday, ideally together with Rosédan. I am convinced that there must be more secrets hidden there than the few that I stumbled upon. And yet I doubt I will ever learn them. A melancholy thought for some, maybe, but I’m content in my ignorance. Awful as the secrets of the Holy Island may be, I am on my way to find Rosédan, and that is all I need.