Grey
Dialectical Hermeticist
Pashnan went out into the square where the water-clock lived, sweat marring the paint upon his forehead which had recently been so starkly gold against the warm brown of his skin. He looked beyond the open gates, into the desert, and sighed at its emptiness.
“Nothing?” said Shalti from somewhere at his back, and Pashnan shook his head without turning.
“I’m beginning to think he won’t come back,” he said.
“Must you always be so resigned?”
He turned to find her eyeing him, coolly, hand to her brow to ward off the sun.
“Eventually this had to be my fate. Better to accept it,” he said, shrugging.
“Give it one more day,” she said, going to the well and filling a jug.
He watched her with heavy-lidded eyes, watched a bead of sweat roll down her neck.
“I’m not sure we can afford one more day.”
She smiled, to see his face - but as she watched his gaze fall, following a drop to the brushed stone slabs, so too did her mood.
“Fine. You know better than I would.”
He opened his mouth, closed it again, and looked once more into the desert as her soft footsteps faded at his back. The quivering air made no answer, the shifting sand did not reveal the wayward priest.
Shouts pulled Pashnan from sleep, and he followed the crowd into the square, caught in the tide of panic. Someone at the forefront of the press held back the rest, and it took a moment for Pashnan to become calm enough to understand.
“Stand back, stay back! You will kill her!”
Pashnan craned his neck, stood on toe-tips to try and see, but dutifully the people stepped back, a few breaking away to return indoors. Already the sweat had begun to form on brows and shoulders, and people edged into scant patches of shade as if it would help.
“What happened?” Shalti whispered in his ear. Pashnan shook his head.
“I don’t know. Someone is wounded, from outside the wal-”
“Mother!” she cried, interrupting him, pushing her way through the crowd.
Pashan followed as the bloom of humanity faded back into the rocks, to escape the terrible heat, and when he beheld Shalti’s mother a heavy guilt writhed in his gut.
She knelt upon the stone like a statue in prayer, her flesh blackened and weeping. A sickly little goat, near as burned as she, struggled weakly in her arms. She had made it one step into the square before collapsing, and even as Shalti wailed before her, pulling at her own hair, Pashnan knew her mother had been taken across the moonlight bridge.
He laid a hand upon her shoulder where she sat weeping, then looped his arms around her. She cried against his chest until the heat forced them inside and then she slept, deeply.
Pashnan went out into the square where the water-clock lived and picked up the body of Lona, Shalti’s mother. She weighed as much as ash in his arms, and as lead in his heart. He placed her in the crypt, the cool and hollow tunnels beneath the town, and spoke the rites; marked her brow with the sign of the sun and the name of the moon. He buried the goat with her.
He paused at the door to Shalti’s room, though her brothers watched his back with faces that were streaked with tears, yet pitiless as the desert manticore. Did she dream, he wondered? The touch of the sun could bring visions, terrifying and bewildering.
Do you blame me?
He wanted to ask her brothers, but knew their answer.
You will not lay this at her feet.
“Lona has been interred below, until my supplications are complete,” he said instead, voice like a guttering candle.
The eldest nodded; always sharp featured, eyes ever like flint, now the tears had worn him soft.
“Thank you, Pashnan.”
The rest mumbled agreement, and Pashnan knew he could not turn back. Duty like a wall behind him.
He went to Jinkan’s quarters then, and knelt in contemplation upon the divan.
The priest would not return. He had gone out to punish the invaders, the iron men from beyond the horizon, and the sun had claimed him in glory. This had to be true.
Jinkan had always said the true temple was the desert herself, but here had maintained such traditions as took little effort; the sandstone room was lit by a shaft of sunlight and bronze reflectors, and shaped as the sphere of the sun. The shelves, inscribed with faded wards, bore dozens of scriptural scrolls. All that seemed to remain of the man was his beloved poetry collection, bound at great expense in the manner of western traders and placed beside his bed.
Pashnan’s brow furrowed, as if it could be a blade turned inward, and finally he began preparations for the dawn.
As the darkness began to lift, forced back into the underworld by the morning light, Pashnan knelt in the middle of the square, facing the open front gates. He wore only a loincloth and ceremonial paint, such that the heated stones would surely begin to burn within hours. This was the price.
He fixed his gaze on the horizon and prayed.
As the sun rose into the waters of heaven, he kept his gaze fixed upon it despite the pain that grew within his head.
By the end of that first day, his skin had darkened greatly and he saw whirls of otherworldly colour swirling in the dark before his eyes.
Shalti’s eldest brother came to him then, and without a word succoured him with cool water and the pulp of the pickleaf.
“Does he speak to you?” he asked.
“Not yet,” said Pashnan, through cracked lips.
By the tenth day, Pashnan could feel his body thin and shivering. Villagers came to sooth his skin with pulp of the pickleaf, and to pour water between his lips. He could speak little by then.
By the fiftieth day, Pashnan had forgotten his mother's face. Now there was only The Sun and all else was barely a shadow. He could no longer feel the tender kindnesses of neighbours trying to soothe his cracked and blistering skin. His eyes were black like olive pits, yet still they tracked the motions of god across the skies.
By the ninetieth day, Pashnan knew only The Sun. In the infinite blackness, he saw the light, as it ascended to the skies and fell again into the underworld. Yet even then, he watched. He could feel the arc of its transit around creation. Dimly he knew the wrapping had begun; the medicated bandages being bound around his blackened skin, the prayers spoken. Sometimes he thought he saw Shalti, or felt her hands. Sometimes the moon descended from the sky to heal his skin and sing to him.
On the hundredth day, The Sun descended from on high and stood in golden glory before Pashnan. The crook and the sword. The tome and the torch. Jinkan had indeed fought the invaders. He had fought until his heart burned so brightly it could not remain in the world of flesh, and he took his place among the stars.
“Pashan, son of Myra, who was trained by Jinkan; do you swear your heart to me?”
“O king of the living and guardian of the gates of dawn, who commands the rain and the sands, I swear my heart and my service.”
“You will be a shield to your people, a shepherd and a father, in my stead.”
“I will.”
“Rise, Pashnan, sunborn.”
Shalti watched desultory from the edge of the water-clock. Pashan had spoken a few times during the ritual, but never in words she knew; all strange tongues and unfamiliar poetry, the meanings opaque. Now he seemed dead; a bandage wrapped corpse charred by the sun, still as stone. The water-clock tok’d softly at her back. Soon the sun would rise. She thought that he too should have risen by now, and so prepared herself to weep.
Yet as the sun crossed the horizon, Pashnan stood. His face was covered, and yet he turned his head as if inspecting the square.
Shalti could not move. There was a strength and grace he had not possessed before. As the sun rose behind his head, she saw smoke around his face. Then fire. The bandages burning away with the sweet smells of cactus flower and incense, becoming one with the desert.
Pashnan, reborn; his skin golden-brown and eyes blazing like gentle flames.
As the sun reached its zenith, the people came back into the square. They found the air cooler than when jinkan died, the touch of the sun softened by proper supplication, and went out into the desert to graze the goats on cactus and hardy scrub, and life returned.
“Nothing?” said Shalti from somewhere at his back, and Pashnan shook his head without turning.
“I’m beginning to think he won’t come back,” he said.
“Must you always be so resigned?”
He turned to find her eyeing him, coolly, hand to her brow to ward off the sun.
“Eventually this had to be my fate. Better to accept it,” he said, shrugging.
“Give it one more day,” she said, going to the well and filling a jug.
He watched her with heavy-lidded eyes, watched a bead of sweat roll down her neck.
“I’m not sure we can afford one more day.”
She smiled, to see his face - but as she watched his gaze fall, following a drop to the brushed stone slabs, so too did her mood.
“Fine. You know better than I would.”
He opened his mouth, closed it again, and looked once more into the desert as her soft footsteps faded at his back. The quivering air made no answer, the shifting sand did not reveal the wayward priest.
Shouts pulled Pashnan from sleep, and he followed the crowd into the square, caught in the tide of panic. Someone at the forefront of the press held back the rest, and it took a moment for Pashnan to become calm enough to understand.
“Stand back, stay back! You will kill her!”
Pashnan craned his neck, stood on toe-tips to try and see, but dutifully the people stepped back, a few breaking away to return indoors. Already the sweat had begun to form on brows and shoulders, and people edged into scant patches of shade as if it would help.
“What happened?” Shalti whispered in his ear. Pashnan shook his head.
“I don’t know. Someone is wounded, from outside the wal-”
“Mother!” she cried, interrupting him, pushing her way through the crowd.
Pashan followed as the bloom of humanity faded back into the rocks, to escape the terrible heat, and when he beheld Shalti’s mother a heavy guilt writhed in his gut.
She knelt upon the stone like a statue in prayer, her flesh blackened and weeping. A sickly little goat, near as burned as she, struggled weakly in her arms. She had made it one step into the square before collapsing, and even as Shalti wailed before her, pulling at her own hair, Pashnan knew her mother had been taken across the moonlight bridge.
He laid a hand upon her shoulder where she sat weeping, then looped his arms around her. She cried against his chest until the heat forced them inside and then she slept, deeply.
Pashnan went out into the square where the water-clock lived and picked up the body of Lona, Shalti’s mother. She weighed as much as ash in his arms, and as lead in his heart. He placed her in the crypt, the cool and hollow tunnels beneath the town, and spoke the rites; marked her brow with the sign of the sun and the name of the moon. He buried the goat with her.
He paused at the door to Shalti’s room, though her brothers watched his back with faces that were streaked with tears, yet pitiless as the desert manticore. Did she dream, he wondered? The touch of the sun could bring visions, terrifying and bewildering.
Do you blame me?
He wanted to ask her brothers, but knew their answer.
You will not lay this at her feet.
“Lona has been interred below, until my supplications are complete,” he said instead, voice like a guttering candle.
The eldest nodded; always sharp featured, eyes ever like flint, now the tears had worn him soft.
“Thank you, Pashnan.”
The rest mumbled agreement, and Pashnan knew he could not turn back. Duty like a wall behind him.
He went to Jinkan’s quarters then, and knelt in contemplation upon the divan.
The priest would not return. He had gone out to punish the invaders, the iron men from beyond the horizon, and the sun had claimed him in glory. This had to be true.
Jinkan had always said the true temple was the desert herself, but here had maintained such traditions as took little effort; the sandstone room was lit by a shaft of sunlight and bronze reflectors, and shaped as the sphere of the sun. The shelves, inscribed with faded wards, bore dozens of scriptural scrolls. All that seemed to remain of the man was his beloved poetry collection, bound at great expense in the manner of western traders and placed beside his bed.
Pashnan’s brow furrowed, as if it could be a blade turned inward, and finally he began preparations for the dawn.
As the darkness began to lift, forced back into the underworld by the morning light, Pashnan knelt in the middle of the square, facing the open front gates. He wore only a loincloth and ceremonial paint, such that the heated stones would surely begin to burn within hours. This was the price.
He fixed his gaze on the horizon and prayed.
As the sun rose into the waters of heaven, he kept his gaze fixed upon it despite the pain that grew within his head.
By the end of that first day, his skin had darkened greatly and he saw whirls of otherworldly colour swirling in the dark before his eyes.
Shalti’s eldest brother came to him then, and without a word succoured him with cool water and the pulp of the pickleaf.
“Does he speak to you?” he asked.
“Not yet,” said Pashnan, through cracked lips.
By the tenth day, Pashnan could feel his body thin and shivering. Villagers came to sooth his skin with pulp of the pickleaf, and to pour water between his lips. He could speak little by then.
By the fiftieth day, Pashnan had forgotten his mother's face. Now there was only The Sun and all else was barely a shadow. He could no longer feel the tender kindnesses of neighbours trying to soothe his cracked and blistering skin. His eyes were black like olive pits, yet still they tracked the motions of god across the skies.
By the ninetieth day, Pashnan knew only The Sun. In the infinite blackness, he saw the light, as it ascended to the skies and fell again into the underworld. Yet even then, he watched. He could feel the arc of its transit around creation. Dimly he knew the wrapping had begun; the medicated bandages being bound around his blackened skin, the prayers spoken. Sometimes he thought he saw Shalti, or felt her hands. Sometimes the moon descended from the sky to heal his skin and sing to him.
On the hundredth day, The Sun descended from on high and stood in golden glory before Pashnan. The crook and the sword. The tome and the torch. Jinkan had indeed fought the invaders. He had fought until his heart burned so brightly it could not remain in the world of flesh, and he took his place among the stars.
“Pashan, son of Myra, who was trained by Jinkan; do you swear your heart to me?”
“O king of the living and guardian of the gates of dawn, who commands the rain and the sands, I swear my heart and my service.”
“You will be a shield to your people, a shepherd and a father, in my stead.”
“I will.”
“Rise, Pashnan, sunborn.”
Shalti watched desultory from the edge of the water-clock. Pashan had spoken a few times during the ritual, but never in words she knew; all strange tongues and unfamiliar poetry, the meanings opaque. Now he seemed dead; a bandage wrapped corpse charred by the sun, still as stone. The water-clock tok’d softly at her back. Soon the sun would rise. She thought that he too should have risen by now, and so prepared herself to weep.
Yet as the sun crossed the horizon, Pashnan stood. His face was covered, and yet he turned his head as if inspecting the square.
Shalti could not move. There was a strength and grace he had not possessed before. As the sun rose behind his head, she saw smoke around his face. Then fire. The bandages burning away with the sweet smells of cactus flower and incense, becoming one with the desert.
Pashnan, reborn; his skin golden-brown and eyes blazing like gentle flames.
As the sun reached its zenith, the people came back into the square. They found the air cooler than when jinkan died, the touch of the sun softened by proper supplication, and went out into the desert to graze the goats on cactus and hardy scrub, and life returned.
