Twenty-Three

A F T E R L I F E

 

It had been near to three hundred years since the Priests’ War, and just as long since Karel, the first sharíf, did away with the old faiths. He’d killed the last priests, outlawed their practices – the observance of the moon, the speaking of ancient tongues, the strifes about special books and sacrifices and all the wars these and a thousand other superstitions had led to. By the end, Karel allowed only the ancestral prayers to remain and replaced the rest with worship by way of fealty to a new and singular god – the sharíf’s throne.

It was said he burned the priests’ bodies on a giant pyre heaped to the height of a hill, and that its summit was crowned by the collected scrolls of every order and tradition from Hanesda to Hikramesh. It had disappointed Neythan as a child, to learn that. To think that all that could be done without a whisper from any of the gods Uncle Sol’s stories always talked about. When he’d asked those at Ilysia why, everyone would offer a different tale. Some said there were never gods to begin with. Others said there used to be gods but then they were no more, like isles subsumed by the rise of the sea, ushered to extinction by the inexorable roll of time. Master Johann would say gods are a dream you count true in sleep and forget when you wake, and that you can tell which a man is by what he believes. Which troubled Neythan, but when he told Uncle Sol, he said Johann’s words were true, but that a man doesn’t truly wake until he gives himself to slumber anyway, and thereby surrenders all he thinks he knows to discover the truth. In the end, it was only Jaleem’s counsel that made any sense; there wasn’t much use thinking about it either way, the Haránite had told him.

“As many stories about that as there are about death, and besides, Sharíf Karel may have said there are no gods, but when he died he still filled his tomb with treasures ready for them just in case.”

Neythan wondered if they’d find Karel’s tomb here as they went along the crypt’s slim passages. The walls were craggy and tight enough to bump shoulders. The ceiling, wherever it was, vaulted high overhead like a canyon, sucking the torch’s glow into its narrow black maw. The stairway they’d descended was probably as deep as the palace was high. Like the whole thing had been built atop a huge enclosed ravine, or cave.

“Joram, of the line of Karel…” Neythan read as they passed another door. He lifted the torch for a better look. The flame crackled and breathed at his ear like a slow, crumpled storm as he squinted at the inscription. It had been the same with every doorway, a slim arched opening with a name ornately etched in the stone above. Except with this one he didn’t recognize the name. He turned to Caleb. “An uncle perhaps? I’d thought they housed only those belonging to the sovereign line here.”

“Joram is of the sovereign line. He was heir to the throne, before Sidon. The boy was to be sharíf… you didn’t know?”

“I’m not a scribe.”

“And needn’t be to know histories barely set. Joram was Sidon’s brother.”

“Sharíf Sidon? He has a brother?”

“Had. An elder brother. He was to rule. Sidon was to be his regent.”

Neythan turned back to the doorway, glancing in at the edges and corners of vague shapes as the light from the fire grazed the obscure contents within. “So what happened to him?”

“Sickness. Both were still children. Each fell ill with fever. Sidon recovered. Joram did not.”

Neythan grunted.

“It doesn’t matter. Let’s just find what we’ve come for and leave. I’ve no mind to tarry among the dead.”

They continued on and came shortly after to the door the courtier had told them of. Its narrow shape broadened with the angle as they neared. They stood and examined the tall arched opening and read the inscription to be sure it was the right one – Sharífa Analatheia, of the line of Harumai – and then stood there as though waiting for something, an instruction, perhaps.

Caleb looked at the tomb’s doorway, then up at Neythan. “Well… you’re the one with the torch.”

Neythan grimaced, glanced once more back along the passage, and stepped inside.

The inner wall, illumined by the fire, hovered dimly into view as they entered. It was marked by elaborate drawings that seemed to narrate some event. Neythan mostly ignored them and stared instead into the room’s dark void, sweeping the torch back and forth as he slowly crab-stepped his way deeper into the chamber. He flinched as the light snagged on the shape of a man. Tall. Upright. Still. And then a second. And then, as he neared, several more, emerging from the dark into the torch’s glow. Statues. Heads bowed like supplicants and circled around a long stone chest. Neythan stepped carefully between the rock-carved figures – two men, three women, all crowned, and each half a foot taller than him.

“The ranger wasn’t lying after all,” Caleb said.

Neythan turned around to find Caleb standing on the other side of the chest, looking out to the opposing wall. Long shelves had been dug into the stone and each hollowed sill glinted dully, filled with metallic items. The little man was smiling. He saw the look on Neythan’s face and sighed.

“Fine, fine, I know. We are not graverobbers. But there’s little harm in at least taking a look.”

Neythan stared flatly back.

Caleb turned and wandered over to the wall anyway. “And bring the torch, I can hardly see what I’m looking at.”

“We’ve no time for this.”

“Better to come over quickly then. I’ll not be visiting queens’ tombs again any time soon. If my penance is to be here, I’m going to see all I can.”

Neythan sighed and followed him to the wall.

The shelves were filled with vessels of all sizes, mostly silver, some brass. A pair of seamless garments and a long woollen overcoat lay neatly folded further along the shelf, both covered in dust. Neythan stood impatiently by as Caleb ogled the contents. The wall’s entire length seemed packed with costly keepsakes of one kind or another – gold, silver, bronze.

“They’d have counted much of this cursed, you know,” Caleb said. “That’s why it is all here. Some pretty pieces, no?”

Neythan walked along at Caleb’s shoulder. He saw a fold of parchments on one of the higher shelves, stacked vellum overlaid with a cover of hardened leather and piled into the short space. It was the only messily placed thing they’d come across. He left Caleb softly rubbing dust from a golden lamp and wandered over to examine the stack more closely. He tugged it out from the shelf. There were several scrolls placed together. The pages had begun to fall loose. Neythan decided to take one out to reroll the page and place it properly. He lifted it carefully from the shelf with one hand.

“Here, take this,” he said, and held out the torch.

Caleb came across. “What have you there?”

Neythan shrugged. “Scroll.”

Caleb took the torch. “What does it say?”

Neythan turned its coat, eyeing the coiled barrel of leather that encased it. A strange emblem marked the covering – what looked like a jaguar, its body elongated and set in a circle as though prowling after its own tail, except the tail was the head of an eagle. Elaborate patterns ringed the emblem and words were stitched at the corner.

“Magi Harumai?” Neythan read.

He lengthened the page, unrolling it from the pin. It was filled with glyphs and markings like nothing Neythan had ever seen. He turned it to Caleb.

Caleb squinted. “Some sort of writing?”

“A strange sort.”

Neythan shook his head and rolled the page again. He put it back on the shelf next to another leather-coated scroll. He craned his head, curious to read the words stitched at the corner of that one too, and then, reading them, frowned.

“What is it?”

Neythan tugged the hem of the coat an inch from the shelf to show him.

“Magi Qoh’leth… now that is interesting.”

Neythan tugged it free and opened it. The markings inside were as the first, unfamiliar, indecipherable.

“A puzzle for another day, though,” Caleb said. “As you’ve said, we cannot tarry long.”

“No…” Neythan said quietly, lingering over the scroll, looking at the stitched name of the father of the Shedaím. “We cannot.”

He slowly rerolled the page and put it back on the shelf and looked at it. He then turned and took the torch from Caleb and went back over to the chest and statues. Caleb remained by the shelves, stroking a jewelled silver pot.

“Are you going to help me with this or not?” Neythan said.

The chest was twice the length of a man. Caleb walked along its length and swiped at the cobwebs tangling between the lip of the ledge and the chest wall.

“Be sure to put that down somewhere safe,” Caleb said, nodding at the torch. “Somewhere it won’t go out. Lose its light and we’ll be stuck in here a while longer than either of us would like.”

Neythan carefully propped the torch against the foot of the statue behind him, letting the flame lick against the stone. He went to the chest and braced against the ledge. Caleb came around to the same side.

“Together. Now.”

They pushed hard. The ledge shifted, snagged, then scraped loose, opening a narrow triangle of space into the cavity beneath. Neythan collected the torch and lifted it over the opening. A glitter of brass and gold winked up at them from the gap as a waft of warm spongy air gasped free. Caleb, on tiptoe, saw and giggled.

“Perhaps we ought to reconsider this no graverobbing thing. I mean, that’s more gold than either of us will ever see again.”

“Do you see her?”

“I see many things, darkly, but the corpse, no, I do not. She may be underneath. Perhaps you ought to… I don’t know… rummage a little.”

Neythan looked at him.

“I would myself but my arms are too short.”

Neythan gave a wan smile. He looked again at the disordered trinkets of gold and copper – goblets, necklaces, rings, a diadem, a moth-eaten garment of purple slovenly spread beneath and through it all, tangled and silken despite the dust. There was even cutlery, and a strange rod of silver, like a sceptre, long and jewelled. Neythan leaned down and grabbed it, and then used it to feel around, searching for the queen’s corpse.

“I think I have her,” he said.

“Can you bring her up?”

“Perhaps.”

“Be careful, she’ll be little more than bones. If you catch on an eye socket and yank too hard you’ll bring only the skull and not the rest.”

Neythan grimaced.

Caleb smiled.

“You’re joking.”

“Of course I am. She will be bandaged, likely.”

Neythan shook his head and slowly lifted the snagged sceptre. The trinkets and ornaments spilled away around it. The sceptre emerged clinging to the hole of a woollen mantle. Caleb reached in and helped. They pulled out a bandaged stiff mass of head and shoulder and propped it against the inner wall of the chest on top of the gold. The lower body, wrapped in starchy bindings, looked hollow and caved in.

“Didn’t think she’d be so heavy,” Neythan said.

“It’s not her, it’s her dress, her jewellery. Of all you see in here the best of it will be worn on the body itself, wrapped in with the bandages.”

Neythan shook his head. “Sovereigns have so much they must be buried in it?”

“Likely they just can’t abide the thought of it falling to others. Now, hold her still.” Caleb brought out a small dagger. “The bandaging will be hard, difficult to cut, so do not drop her.”

He put the blade to the rot-dried cloth swaddling the neck and jabbed it in and began to carve – hacking and sawing and tugging – upwards along the neck’s flank to its nape.

Neythan pulled a face at the smell.

“What did you expect? Myrrh and spikenard?”

“I expected bones. Dry ones.”

“The way they treat the body at burial preserves the flesh, at least partly. She’ll be bones, yes, but not dry ones. Not yet.”

He cut a square and pulled it away; sticky membranous strings clung after it to reveal a mess of black putrified grime at the collar and neck on one side.

Neythan coughed.

“You see why the ranger chose to stay by the door,” Caleb said.

He cut another square, this time around the front beneath the jaw. A gob of rotted tissue pulled away, clinging to the cloth. Caleb held it up, looking for the glint of metal – the pendant – then, not seeing anything, tossed it back into the chest.

“You seem to have a talent for this.”

“I’ve seen and done many a thing, Neythan. But graverobbing? I’ll confess this is my first.”

Neythan watched as Caleb cut and tugged and dug, ploughing through the bandaging and the clammy moist fabric of the queen’s graveclothes beneath as the putrescent stench of decay wafted up with every new ribbon of rot and rag he sliced off. Neythan’s grip of the corpse was starting to cramp. He was beginning to doubt the stone was even there when Caleb allowed himself a half-happy sigh.

“Look.”

“Do you have it?”

“Perhaps.”

Caleb held a pendant and thin chain. He took a rag from his pocket and cleaned them and then held them to the torch.

“Yes, I think this is it. Let go of her. Take a look.”

Neythan let the bandaged corpse slide back into the chest.

“See the jewel? Have you ever seen anything like that?”

The pendant was a half-globe of misty black stone prodding from a large pebble-shaped seat of gold, like the burr of a chestnut cracked open.

“Finally,” Neythan said. “Keep it in your pocket and give me a hand closing the lid.”

They shut the chest, pushing the ledge back across the opening. Neythan looked around the chamber to be sure they’d left nothing behind and, taking the torch, went toward the doorway, Caleb following, and then stopped.

“What is it?”

Neythan went back in, around the chest and statues to the shelved wall opposite. He examined the scrolls and tugged free the one named Magi Qoh’leth.

“Oh? And what happened to ‘we are not graverobbers’?”

Neythan put the scroll under his arm and came back toward the doorway.

“If you are to take something you could at least let it be something of worth, like all this gold.”

“Come on,” Neythan said, walking quickly past and back out into the dank tunnel with the torch so Caleb had to follow. “Let’s get out of here.”