Exploring Fantastic Worlds of Wonder
Sanctuary of the Mind - A novelette by Michael Southard
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The Gender Divide by David Boultbee - Offical Website
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Goddess of Ashes by Therese Arkenberg The patron goddess of Adsadbara, Cleitan, was said to live in fire and draw nourishment from ashes. If so, she feasted in Doremal. It was the first thought Kiyu had for a long time. He had it while lying in itchy straw in the bed of a cart jerking wildly down a road that cut through a summer landscape covered in snow. The snow was white ashes—that was Kiyu’s second thought. As he lay in the cart, he remembered broad-shouldered, stern-faced men lifting him into it. With that build, they weren’t Doreman; their skin was too pale and their eyes an ugly, muddy brown. Kiyu didn’t remember ever seeing Adsadbarans before, but he suspected he had now. He remembered when they had found him, curled in one of the irrigation ditches of his village fields, hemp robe streaked with ash and blood. Before that, he remembered only vivid snatches—the door bursting in, a throaty woman’s voice screaming, his mother’s voice, blood and intestines hanging from a hole in someone’s torso—his uncle, his brother? Terror he remembered, and running … and a sharp pain in his forehead that ended the memories. He relived the sights, the sounds, the feelings, but he did not understand them. Someone sponged at the dried blood and mud caking his forehead. He opened his eyes and turned to see a tanned Doreman girl, with a long braid of dark-brown hair, wide green eyes, and a broad, plain face. Barely held together by a wide sash, her white robe hung in stained tatters, and the ragged hem told where the scrap of cloth she used to clean his forehead came from. “How are you?” she said. “All right. My head hurts. I must have knocked it against something.” “Do you think you might die?” “No.” To be honest, he hadn’t thought of it, but he didn’t feel ready to fall into Girium’s arms just yet. She sighed. “I have a knife with me, if you want it. We can die before they do anything to us.” “I don’t want it. Yet,” he added, because in a strange way he wanted to spare her feelings. Of course, she was a healthy and mature young woman; she might have her reasons for wanting to die. “We’re prisoners, aren’t we?” She nodded. “I’m Utriu. Who are you?” “Kiyu. I’m a fourth son.” “Third daughter. But my eldest sister is insane, so she isn’t really numbered in the counting.” He nodded in tacit acknowledgement of her higher rank, though it didn’t seem to matter now. “I also have two sisters. One is pregnant. My second-oldest brother has a son in the Pryut village.” “None of my sisters are fertile.” She fidgeted. “They’re not, anyway … they’re dead.” “I’m sorry. I guess my siblings are all dead, too.” He said it woodenly, as a simple statement of a fact that might not be important any longer. “He’s awake?” An ugly, narrow face peered over the side of the cart. It belonged to a bulky, gray-haired man, shining in a mail tunic, a sword hilt rising over his left shoulder. Utriu nodded. The man seemed neither pleased nor unhappy, and he spurred his horse ahead of the cart without another word. “Have you ever heard of Cleitan?” Kiyu asked her. She shivered, fingers twisting the bloodstained rage. “I know her,” she said. “I don’t want to talk about it.” “Do you think she’s happy here?” he said, looking around at the burned countryside. “I think she’s hungry. And all the feeding she’s getting—I think it only makes her hungrier.” Utriu leaned against the side of the cart. “Adsadbaran gods are like spoiled children. They run their people’s lives, always wanting more, more land, more worship … more sacrifices. I think … offering them more only makes it worse.” He said nothing in reply. Utriu shivered. “I said I didn’t want to talk about it.” ~*~ They stopped for the night in an empty village. The inhabitants had fled long ago, from the looks of it. Utriu and Kiyu were the only prisoners, and there were five Adsadbarans and ten horses, two to pull the cart and three remounts. One of the men glanced at a stable speculatively. Seems as empty as the rest of the village. At least the horses might be getting some rest tonight. He wondered why he wanted the same so badly, when he had done nothing more tiring than sitting in the cart and thinking—sometimes trying not to think. He lay back in the cart. Sitting up for long made him dizzy. “What are they doing?” he asked Utriu. “Some of them are in the meetinghouse,” she said. “I think they’re getting ready to sleep there. Another one is starting a fire. He’s taking out a kettle—supper, I suppose. And a man is in that stable.” She pointed and, though he couldn’t see where, he figured he knew the one. “Do you think they’ll feed us?” he said. The thought of the kettle and supper made him only curious, not eager or hopeful or hungry. A strange weight had settled on his stomach. “Maybe. Maybe they’ll keep us for work, then they’ll have to give us food—” She rose to her knees and peered over the side of the cart. “The man in the stable is coming out now. There’s something white on his hands.” A man called something in a rolling, whistling accent—Adsadbaran, Kiyu supposed. One approached the cart, rubbing white dust from his hands. Others appeared beside him. “Come on down, you two,” the man with the narrow face said. They did, Utriu offering Kiyu her arm to steady him. The man pointed them into the stable. Light from the setting sun slipped through gaps in the weathered walls. Kiyu realized the place was not a stable, but a storehouse. He could barely make out the contents: empty shelves, chipped jars and a dairy churn in one corner, sacks of grain too bulky to carry away in another. A white scrawl covered the walls. “Can you read?” he whispered to Utriu. “Not this. It isn’t in Doreman.” “Go inside,” the man barked behind them. They stumbled in. “What do you want us—” Kiyu turned to ask the question and, before the door slammed shut, he was an Adsadbaran taking up a burning brand from the fire. For a moment there was strangled silence, then Utriu began to weep as the roof thatch crackled with the first flare of flame. “It’s—” he began. “They’re burning us alive! We’re a sacrifice t—to Cleitan!” “Come on.” He looked around, ran for a ceramic crock, tried to take it up to knock down the door or part of the walls with, but it was too heavy for him to lift. “Help me!” Something flashed in the ruddy light. Utriu’s knife. “Work at the wall over here!” he yelled. He hammered at the wood with his fists. Dampish chunks fell away. “It’s rotten!” She raised the knife to her throat. Kiyu ran across the storehouse and jerked her arm down. He swayed, suddenly dizzy; the rapid dash made his head spin. “You idiot! We can get out! You just need to help me!” Utriu sobbed. “No, we can’t! The goddess herself has taken us—there’s no escape!” Light settled across her face in odd patterns, where fire danced in the thatch. Kiyu pulled her back, towards the rotting wall, away from the fire—for now. “Help me lift this crock.” He panted from the effort of turning it over. Something sloshed inside; bending his head to the cover, he smelled brine. “Come on. Please.” She dropped the knife and took up one end of the crock, and they were slowly lifting it when the roof collapsed. He thought the cry was Utriu’s, but he felt his throat go raw and realized he was screaming, too. They had dropped the crock, but the thick ceramic hadn’t broken: the whole heavy thing was pinning Utriu’s leg down at an unnatural angle. He bent to roll it off, coughing on smoke, trying to ignore the blistering heat all around him. The white symbols on the walls danced in and out of his vision as he fell back, panting. The crock was rolling away. Utriu lay whimpering, but her sobs became quieter and, when he looked down, he saw blood bubbling over her lips. She had fallen on her knife. “Damn it! Damn you, you idiot! Clumsy … damn it, damn it, damn it.” He fell to his knees, sobbing, throat blistered from the hot air. The fire grew closer, he kicked at the wall but it wouldn’t fall down, and at last, sobbing in a blistering, exhausted rage, he lay down and burned. ~*~ She came to him through the flames. A tall, narrow woman with a curtain of black hair. Her marigold-orange eyes burned, and each of her strides stirred the skirt of a robe white as ashes. She had wings, great arching pinions with feather tips the dull gray of char, and that especially marked her to him as Cleitan of Adsadbara. “I’m … not yours,” he rasped. “Damn it, I may be a sacrifice, but I’m not yours!” She came to him with a small smile. “Go away,” he said. “Feast elsewhere. I’m not yours.” She opened her mouth just enough to laugh, revealing sharp, charcoal-black teeth. When she came close enough, he spat in her face. She fell back, orange eyes wide. “You—” Her voice was brass-bell loud and strong, but he was too angry and hurt to be afraid. He had nothing left to fear. “You!” she repeated. “No, you’re right. You’re not mine … I will not take your life … but everything else—everything you hold dear, your entire grubby nation—it is mine! Everything!” Her hand shot out, struck at him, her wings buffeted him with flame, white fire sparked behind his eyes and, when he could see again, she was gone. He lay in the charred ruins of the storehouse. The rest of the village still stood, but was empty; the Adsadbarans were gone. Shards of crockery were all the remained of the jars, burst in the heat, and a charred, withered husk of—
Kiyu pushed himself up. At first he didn’t recognize the seared, blistered things below him as his hands, but when he wiggled his fingers the stumps twitched. His stomach felt too heavy to be sick. Eyes burned dry prevented him from crying. “Hey.” He tried to turn his head to the voice, but it was too stiff. Twisting his waist instead was better. A hard-faced young woman crouched there. Dressed in a plain but clean robe, she carried a baby in the crook of one arm and held a sword hilt in the other hand. He saw her expression when he turned and, beneath the burned muscles of his face, winced. “How bad is it?” he said. “Very.” She frowned. “But you seem to have healed all right … and, since you didn’t seem to know, I take it was very quick?” He nodded. She looked around. “What happened here?” “Utriu and I were burned. Sacrifices.” “Utriu?” She followed his gaze to the burned thing. “Oh, I’m sorry.” “I’m Kiyu,” he said. “Fourth son, fifth child. Who’re you?” “Mitri. Eldest daughter and third child. This is my son, Beku. And this is my uncle’s sword.” She hefted it. “I was the only one who survived. And Beku, of course. We’re from Amyeru. It was about ten miles from here.” “It burned, too?” Mitri nodded. “Everything.” She looked back at Utriu’s corpse. “I … look, would you like me to make a milk offering to Girium for her peaceful rest? It’s all I can do for her….” “Thank you. But where—oh.” He looked away as she opened the top of her robe. He felt he should be blushing, but the stiff skin of his face didn’t heat. “You can turn around now.” Mitri folded her clothing back and bowed solemnly to Utriu’s remains. Before them, a small pool of white fluid sank into the ash. “Thank you,” he repeated. “That was kind.” “All I could do.” They stood, not quite meeting each other’s eyes. “What now?” she said finally. “I don’t know … could I travel with you?” Kiyu said, rising slowly to his feet and twitching from the pain in his burned limbs. “I know I don’t look…” “You can’t help how you look,” said Mitri. “Anyway, you’re not much worse than Beku’s father.” She giggled, and Kiyu remembered how his elder sister had bragged of taking her child’s father for his good mind, not his looks. Mitri didn’t seem the kind to laugh about her romance, though, and Kiyu supposed she meant to cheer him up. He laughed with her, but didn’t like the sound that came from his throat. “I can help you take care of him,” he said. “My older sister was pregnant, and Mother was teaching us how to handle babies….” “I’d appreciate it.” “There’s just one thing. The Adsadbarans who brought Utriu and me here are gone. I don’t know where they went … we have to be careful not to run into them.” Her hand went to the sword. “Do we?” “They’ll kill you if they find you. No matter how many of them you take with you, you’ll still be dead, and then what will happen to your baby?” Mitri clutched Beku closer and her grip on the sword loosened. “You’re right.” She sighed. “It’s too bad, but you’re right.” They looked at each other in a long silence. Thatch blew loose from a cottage roof and swirled with dust and ash in small whirlwinds on the ground. “What do we do now?” she said. “I suppose we should go,” he said. “But before we leave … I don’t want to leave this place standing.” She followed his gaze to the burned storehouse. “I understand. How would you like to do it?” “Pull everything down.” They tried. They went to the bases of walls and dug at them, they pushed against walls and tried to rip pegs from the eaves with their fingernails. The houses didn’t budge. Built too well. Kiyu turned bitter when he thought of how he tried to escape the storehouse—was it only the night before? He remembered Cleitan’s wings, and wasn’t sure. “This isn’t working,” Mitri panted. She went and knelt beside Beku, who she’d cushioned on a patch of grass beside her sword. “I’m sorry.” “It’s all right,” Kiyu said. “We’ll try something else.” “What?” He looked at the pit where the Adsadbarans had built their fire. “Are you sure?” “I think so.” He crouched beside the pit and stirred at the cooling ashes with a stick. He thought the embers were dead, but they flared beneath his hands. Kiyu quickly fed them with sticks and fallen leaves. They had been dead, he knew. A fire shouldn’t have been able to start. He remembered Cleitan again … and again he wasn’t sure. But one thing he was certain of. He wasn’t hers. He had spat on her and refused her. Some things she couldn’t take. Kiyu stuck a thick branch into the pit until the end caught fire. He went to the first house and thrust the torch into the thatch. It flared, and when it burned well, he moved to the next house. And the next. After going around the village in a ring, the last building he torched was beside the remains of the storehouse. They would need to bury Utriu, too. Mitri’s milk offering! Did Utriu’s death by a blade instead of fire keep her from becoming Cleitan’s? Since she probably would not have had the strength to spit at the goddess, he hoped so. “This is not yours, Cleitan,” he said as he tossed the torch through the final doorway. He turned and felt heat flare through the tattered hemp on his back. Even after the fire, his robe was unburned. He shivered and pushed thoughts of Cleitan from his mind as he joined Mitri at the center of the burning village. Clutching Beku closer, she said, “This won’t … make their goddess stronger?” “I don’t think so.” “You told me not to fight the Adsadbarans.” She shifted from one foot to the other, gently rocking Beku in her arms. “But you’re trying to fight her, aren’t you?” “I suppose so.” “How are you going to win? How can you defeat a goddess?” He didn’t answer while the village burned. Instead, he stared into the flames, thinking. Utriu thought all the sacrifices only made her hungrier. It made sense. Why else were the Adsadbarans always moving, always conquering … always killing and burning? But this was another sanctuary for the invaders gone. When he came upon others, as he was sure he would, he would destroy them, too. He would burn them, which would either feed her to increase her hunger or take from her another sacrifice. The roof of the meetinghouse collapsed. It was the last building standing. Soon there was nothing left to burn. Finally, he turned to Mitri and answered. “You starve her.” The End Story copyright © by Therese Arkenberg. All rights reserved. Next: Kick a Little Butt by Billy Wong
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