Eli Evans

Read the first chapter of my bronze-age historical fantasy novel, Inside Every Circle, for free. Or listen to the audiobook test on Soundcloud.

---

I. All is At Rest

In the gorge of the Greater River, the frontier of Kindhirak.

THE ARROW PROTRUDED FROM THE TRADER’S THIGH like a flag, its feathers twitching in the wind. Lying prone on the rocky banks of the ice-mottled river, he mouthed a prayer to his ancestors. With one hand, he clutched an idol carved from his dead father’s rib and with the other, the wound. 

The shot came from somewhere, but where? The lines of birch and aspen spilling into the black gorge like discarded bones revealed nothing.

All at once, a gang of warriors emerged from a nearby alder copse and encircled him, chirruping and taunting. Forest-folk. The Greater River was safe enough as long as you kept to the villages on the low side. The high side belonged to them.

Earlier, he had spotted a buck caught in the brush. It was stringy and ragged, but an easy kill. When he landed, the shore was empty. He checked, twice. The arrow was a surprise, and now he was the easy kill.

The water burbled. Chunks of ice collided, tinkling. Somewhere, a fox yelped. His innards churned, fluids rising in his neck and pressing against his eyes. Would they really make porridge from his ashes, as the old women said?

A warrior advanced, small, muscular, wearing a skirt and boots, shirtless with a blanket draped over his shoulders and secured with a belt. Strings of red stones adorned his neck and chattered as he moved. He was ugly — they all were — but striking, as though no other jaw could bear such a mouth, no other face such a nose or such eyes, deep brown to black, like a hawk’s.

A knob-ended club swung from the warrior’s belt as he walked, then twirled into his hand as he stopped, practiced, fluid, like a dancing flame.

Clambering backward toward his boat, the trader hollered for help. No one would hear him; wouldn’t come if they did. As he struggled to pull himself aright, the warrior stomped him back to the ground. Were the others jeering? How could he tell? Their language sounded like hideous laughter in the first place.

The blow fell hard; dazed him. Blood dribbled into his eyes and mouth. He sputtered, begged for mercy, and called for his wife and ancestors. His voice floated back to him from a distance as his vision dissolved into a bleary smudge of grotesque faces.

He fell but never stopped, melting through his body into the earth like water flowing through solid rock. Sensation evaporated, leaving only the vague awareness of soil, rocks, and roots — and himself passing among them.

Silence. Darkness. Desire ceased. There was nothing left to be done, or done about it. How long did he continue like this? It may have been an instant or forever. The passage of time made no more impression on him than anything else. 

Finally, he crossed over.

* * *

TALÁNI LEANDED OVER THE CORPSE. He had been on his way to visit a minor community in his dominion when someone started crashing through the underbrush, a trader from across the gorge. Scrapers, he called them.

Swarmers, spreaders, cutters-of-the-land! Are they not satisfied to fill up space between the mountains and the sea? Must their feet also defile our land?

Now the trespasser was dead, but not dead enough. Taláni drew his knife and cut away cloak and coverlet, revealing a carved shard of bone. Careful to touch only the strap, he threw it in the river. Whatever the talisman signified, it didn’t belong in his land.

Next, he sheared off the vest and shirt, baring the body. Wedging his axe deep into the breastbone, he leaned until it cracked and he could pry the ribs apart, then with his knife he cut until he found the heart and sliced it out.

Power in the life, life in the blood.

A warrior offered a leather bag, and Taláni deposited the heart inside. After a little more cutting, he took the floppy brown liver as well. These would suffice to allow his mother to bind the man’s spirit with fire. The fatty pancreas he left. No blood, no life.

Blood pooled in the cavity. Without means to transport it, he pinched bile out of the gallbladder, ruining the good blood with bad.

With one accusatory finger dipped into the inky black liquid, he daubed a circle of seven dots on the man’s forehead: seven stars for seven cities of Kindhir, their forebear. All their banners bore this insignia; it amused him to make it into a curse.

The warriors flopped the trader’s body into the boat, which was beached nearby. Foot planted on the bow, he said, “No more Scrapers. I, Les-trelátha-las-taláni, declare it.”

He kicked the boat into the water and watched it drift downstream, a hollow shell of wood carrying a hollow shell of flesh. He spat on the ground.

Justice burns like fire, and I am the spark. Take back your filth and with it, a warning.

The trader’s countrymen would surely misinterpret this message. They would regard this man’s death as no more than an injunction against trespass. They would be afraid, yes, but not afraid enough. He longed for the time when he might reveal himself, when they might know him and fear his coming. But not yet. Not until he was ready, until it was too late.

The village Del, on the evenside coast, outside Kindhirak.

ATNAN MADE NO SOUND as he slurped down a bowl of fish stew, slithered his way into sealskin trousers and boots, and slipped a grass poncho over his vest, careful not to wake his father and grandmother sleeping by the fire.

“Grandson? Is that you?”

Atnan clapped his chest five times in a rhythm they both knew, two beats and then three, A-T, N-A-N. His grandmother rolled over on her mat. 

What a wretched curiosity I am! Whoever heard of a scribe and a mute in one body — whose life is words and letters, never uttered?

At times, he could produce a faint sound, a sigh, a grunt — even a rumbling growl, when in distress — but somewhere between his innards and his lips, words always lost their way. Sometimes he imagined them wandering around inside him, hopelessly lost, as though he were a skin bag filled with unspeakable things.

Taking his floppy sealskin hat on the way out, he tapped each arm of a dried starfish affixed to the side, reciting to himself the names of the Five Great Spirits.

Mem, Nan, Lom, Rish, Llyr. Verity, Harmony, Dignity, Equity, Mystery.

He ought to have said the names aloud; instead, he pictured each spirit’s associated rune. The Five would still bring him a good catch, even so.

Outside, the frosty ground twinkled. He tipped his grandfather’s little round boat away from the stone house, then tossed his nets and a paddle inside. It was small for a boat but enormous for a turtle shell. He imagined the beast roiling the waters of the inlet, sucking down fish by the basketful. That was long before he was born. All that remained of them now were a few claw knives and shell boats like this one — and the sentimental stories of the elders.

His father Omrik waxed eloquent about the elder days whenever anyone would listen, but Atnan could muster no emotion for the loss of things he had never known. He loved the old stories — memorized more than a few — but his appreciation rested on the words and forms themselves, not what they referred to.

Stories are meant for the tellers and the listeners, not the ones in the text. 

Boat slung over his back, he picked down the rocky path toward the shore. Arthritic flames now smoldered in his father’s bones, so the responsibility of the household catch fell to Atnan alone. Uncles and cousins might have helped him shoulder the burden, but he and his father were the only two men of the Owl clan left in the village of Del.

Through the mist, he identified the outline of a huge otter bear loitering near the water.

Ma-Huthra-Shen? She ought to be off swimming in the River-in-the-Sky by now — but then winter has been mild.

Bearing no offering, he approached with caution. Shen was benevolent but no more predictable than the sea.

“Always been here, always will,” the fishermen said. They called the nearby waters Shen’s Inlet and thanked her daily for allowing them to stay. His grandmother told how every winter, Shen joined the animal stewards of other locales to procure the blessings of the ancestors in exchange for news of the village.

Facing Shen, his friend Barlas leaned on an ornate wooden boat. Despite the cold, he was bare-footed and wore a vest with no sleeves. The otter-bear towered over him with her head tilted, her bushy white brows curtaining her blunt, whiskered face. He tossed a fish in the air and she snagged it mid-flight.

His friend’s posture and gesticulations reminded Atnan of the first rune in his name, ban. Everything appeared this way to him, as signs and symbols. 

How else should a scribe see the world? If something can’t be put into signs, is it even real?

Barlas inquired about good fishing and the speed of the current while Shen ululated in reply. The lanky fisherman pivoted toward Atnan as he arrived. “Ho there, Inky-fingers! Thought you gave up fishing, eh?”

Atnan shrugged.

Shen flopped on her side, bulk supported on one massive oar-shaped paw while scratching her throat with the other. With a snort and a foggy snuffle, she rolled over, shook herself, and loped into the surf, ottering out of view.

“Trials tomorrow, innit? You ready?”

Atnan touched fingertips to lips then moved the same hand as though throwing something away, meaning there was nothing to say. His readiness hardly mattered.

Barlas threw some crumbs to a congregation of gulls nattering around the beach. “Filthy beggars! Sea rats!” 

Atnan gestured toward the sun, already high in the sky, then toward Barlas.

“Nah, you’re the late one. I’ve been out and back twice already, eh?” Barlas attached a weight to one of his nets. “You hear young Dub’s gone up-coast? Few days back. Old Dub’s not happy about it, either. Two-man rig, eh?”

Were he able, Atnan would proclaim that Old Dub and happiness were mortal enemies. The news about Young Dub? Hardly surprising. Most young men in those parts left if they could, up-coast to the trading villages or down-coast to better fishing — and a better supply of marriageable women.

Atnan made a quizzical gesture toward Barlas then swept his hands up-coast.

“Me?” He fumbled one of his weights. “Oh, I’ve thought about it, once and again. Foundlings always get sold up somewhere, I reckon — and here’s better’n most, eh?”

The fact that Barlas was not a son of Del often escaped Atnan’s memory. To be fair, it all happened the winter before Atnan was born: Traders arrived from upcoast with a wavy-haired boy already six or seven winters old — they didn’t know exactly. Layram, the village headman, and his wife Betalia took him in, not quite parents, not quite masters. He grew taller and broader than anyone in the village and much to everyone’s disappointment — not least his own — no beard sprouted from his chin.

Barlas stared out to where gray water met gray sky. The surf rolled and sea birds yammered in the distance. “No place for me but here anyhow.” He kicked the boat. “Had my way this’d be my boat — I’m the only one as ever uses it. I’d go home to my own house, cook my own dinner, and sleep in my own bed, by my own self.” After a moment he burst out, “Nah! There’d be a wife, too, and as many little Barlas-es as we can manage. Let ‘em run wild, like animals.” He resumed his work. “I’d go cry in the ocean if it weren’t already full, eh?”

Small-talk was something Atnan avoided in general but fishing patter chafed the most. In his professional opinion, words were tools to be treated with respect, their proper functions preserved, their syntax left unmolested. Nor could he participate, which only deepened his umbrage.

“How about you — gonna up and leave me, too?”

Atnan waved his hands dismissively. Someday perhaps, when father and old-mother are secure in the Silent Lands.

Barlas tossed his last net into the boat. “Hey, let’s get fishing. Tomorrow don’t come till tomorrow, eh?”

They cast off, each the pilot of an older man’s boat, faithfully following in the paths of their ancestors.

Yet no matter how many times you paddle the same course, it never makes a path. Lines inscribed on water are always washed away. 

Soon Atnan forgot about everything but the work itself, spinning nets over gray-green water, rhythmic, dance-like. Again and again, the nets emerged, sometimes empty, sometimes flashing silver with fish. He made an honest effort and ended the day with some to eat, some to share with the village, and maybe a little to salt away for trade.

His father would be happy about that.

#

That evening, Atnan sat cross-legged beside the fire with a beeswax slate askew on his lap. Across the single room, his grandmother Hennamis pulled nits from a bearskin with a stingray barb, humming to herself. His father huddled by the fire, a rough blanket clutched around his shoulders with one hand, poking at the fire with the other. Sparks shimmied up through the smoke hole in the roof.

“Making fireflies?” Hennamis asked.

A drop of mist coalesced and fell hissing into the fire. “Not tonight.”

Atnan tried to ignore them, concentrating instead on the preparation of his ceremonial oar. That summer, his father had stripped a branch of driftwood and tapered it into a long flare. He rubbed it smooth with sand and powdered shells, then carved an owl into the handle to honor their family name, Eya. In truth, his father was more a woodcarver than a proper scribe, there being so little sheet-work required in their tiny village.

All that remained to finish the oar was to carve his name into the handle along with a short dedication of his own composition. This was the difficulty. Over many months he had shaped the text, first only a vapor, then something like a liquid, now impressed into the slate, solid but still malleable. Soon it would be in the wood, permanent, affixed, every word both a commitment and an admission that none better could be found.

“Enough dithering,” his father said. “You must finish, tonight. No text, no oar. No oar, no ceremony — no anything.”

Atnan doubled over his work.

“Your arm is as long as a river,” Hennamis sang, “but your desires remain out of reach.”

“Listen to your Old-mother.” Omrik gestured to the slate. “This is good enough.”

Oh? I’m the best listener in this house — the whole village, even. But you, dear father, might be the worst. 

Taking a flint-tipped gouge, Atnan hunched over the oar and began transferring his text from wax to wood. The blade plowed straight furrows of Fyrean runes, starting at the owl’s head and spiraling down the handle.

His focus narrowed to the tiny point where the tip met wood. The lighter grain was softer than the dark; the force of his hand on the gouge adjusted instinctually to keep the lines straight.

He had first learned to write thirteen winters before when his father named each rune and scraped its image into the dirt with a stick. An errand took his father away, but Atnan remained, tracing each outline with a chubby finger as though digging a tiny canal.

Each letter had a personality. Replicating it meant honoring its spirit, each line a limb that must be straight, each crook an organ that must be bent just so, or else he would leave the spirit’s avatar deformed, desecrated.

This was a peculiar way to look at the world, he knew. Then again, most people made no sense to him, why should he make any sense to them? The symmetry satisfied him.

Finished, Atnan handed the oar to his father for inspection. 

Omrik ran his fingers over the writing. “Cuts deep and straight, runes small but clear.” He set it on the floor beside Atnan’s bed mat. “Done, and cut in a finer hand than any I’ve seen, including my own.”

Atnan looked away.

“So it is! You’ll make a fine scribe, Atnan. You already are a fine scribe. Better than I was at your age, better than I am now by most measures — barring good sense!”

Hennamis scoffed.

It was about time for the nightly argument, Atnan figured. He had become inured to their sniping, always circling the same issues. No one dared say aloud that Atnan’s existence had killed his mother. “He can’t speak of it, or because of it,” his grandmother would often say, “and neither should we.”

Omrik ignored her, turning to Atnan. “Son, you are the sort who cures their thirst a drop at a time.” He unrolled his bed mat on the floor. “Drain the sea and you’ll still be thirsty. You expect too much of yourself — and others.”

Ah, a lecture. Only a half-stroke less obnoxious than an argument, especially at bedtime.

Atnan’s attention wandered to a beetle crawling across the floor. Before his father could flick it into the fire, Atnan intervened by guiding it onto his finger.

As he set the little creature behind a stone outside, he envisioned it as the word zagh, beetle, as though the word itself were also an awkward, many-legged body. 

Returning through the heavy door flap, he was regaled by his father’s cheerful voice. “You’ll be the only one this year.”

Atnan frowned.

“At the ceremony! I’d say that makes you highly favored. This is a long year, you know. Thirteen moons, not twelve. Dark Day falls on the thirteenth day, at the full moon’s widest face.” Omrik paused. “It’s the thirteenth year of Shenefret’s reign in Nepsilam as well.” He turned his head and spat into the fire. “Not as that matters, the swine!”

Atnan did not share his father’s political discontents, which arose mostly from familial shame that Omrik bore heavily, and Atnan not at all: One of Omrik’s forebears was a soldier from the Seven Cities of Kindhirak who impregnated a local woman before disappearing. Back then, a garrison was stationed in Del to ensure the tributes and to keep the locals in line but these days, the only imperial official in the village was Omrik, his only duty to take a census every other year and deliver the head tax to the city of Gwetlak. This duty had been neglected for as long as Atnan could remember.

“Thirteenth day of the thirteenth month, on a full moon. I’ve seen this day coming for quite some time.”

Atnan stiffened, eyes wide. His father knew full well that forecasting was forbidden!

“Ho, yes!” Omrik’s voice rose. “The decrees of Kindhir may keep a man from speaking to the dead. They can block the altars, and let no one cast stones or pull the guts of a whale — but let them try to keep me from looking to the sky. I make the tables of months and I count the days — and I’ve counted your days from the very first.” His voice returned to normal volume. “That’s all I meant.”

Atnan moved his oar aside, scrutinized its position, moved it again, and finally unrolled his bed mat.

Omrik untied his beard and began a vigorous scratching from ear to throat. Traditional Fyrean beards had gone out of fashion, but his father took great pride in wearing “the ancestral whiskers,” two long forks larded and tied at the ends with no mustache.

Atnan’s chin sported a few stray hairs. Tomorrow might make him an adult in the eyes of the village, but not to look at him.

“You don’t appreciate the old ways, son. Things are as they are, and there are reasons for it. Some reasons may be difficult to understand, but none of us is born into an empty world. The ancestors laid the path for us to walk.”

Atnan folded down his blankets and positioned a bundle of canes to rest his neck. 

Omrik pointed to the oar. “This, this is a sacred thing.”

Setting her work aside, Hennamis sang, “In a noisy world, a quiet man stands apart.”

Oblivious, Omrik continued. “You know what they call us, up-country? ‘Scratchers’, on account of these runes — more admission than insult, I’d say. Imperial letters are intentionally over-complicated. Want to write your own name? You’ll need to hire a scribe. Bah! I tell you, the simple way is the best way: the Fyrean way.”

Hennamis yawned, louder than was strictly necessary.

Finally taking the hint, Omrik took a handful of dried herbs from a box near his feet and threw them sparkling into the fire.

Atnan pulled a round clay flute from behind his bed mat. He might not be able to sing the night songs, but it comforted him to be able to play along.

“Let the sun-dear leap,” Omrik sang.

“From the mountains to the bay,” Hennamis sang back.

“Let the moon-wolf chase behind.”

“And never catch her prey.”

Together they finished, “Let us follow the Five, as night follows day.”

Atnan tucked the flute back into place and slipped beneath the blankets, catching a glimpse of his father and grandmother for a brief moment before closing his eyes. 

In a noisy world, a quiet man stands apart.

Taláni’s encampment, in the forest beyond the Greater River.

SELOLO SENSED HERSELF FALLING. She tried to find her voice but found herself startled upright in her cot instead.

The other women in the consort-house stirred. “Another dream,” one of them mumbled and flopped back to sleep.

The Matron rolled out of her cot and shuffled over to Selolo. “A regular prophetess, this one!” She grabbed the young woman by the chin and swooped her baggy face in to investigate, as though she might discover some cause for the trouble in the young woman’s eyes.

Selolo recoiled from the Matron’s milk-rot breath. “It was  … only a dream.”

The trouble wasn’t her eyes but the birthmark on her forehead: a spirit-eye, a prophet’s mark. A stupid speck that wouldn’t wash off. Her dreams were no different than anyone’s, except they sometimes came true — not immediately or in obvious ways but as true as the sun and the mountains. So they told her.

The Matron tugged her outside by the sleeve. “He decides what’s nothing. Turns out it’s important and I hold back, ha!” The Matron scoffed at the very idea. They stopped on the porch long enough that the Matron could light a lantern. “Dark as death! Why’s he have us all the way out here against the wall?”

The reason was plain enough: The more important you were the closer you slept to the center — to him. She was only important when he wanted something from her.

From edge to center. From center to edge. Back and forth. Up and down. Always moving, never arriving.

“Come along, now! If you waste his time, it’s not me he’ll beat!”

Selolo had never felt Taláni’s hand. He had others for that — the Matron, for one. He barked her name in the consort-house, the courtyards, or the gardens, but was always tender with her when he brought her back to his cabin. They never joined as a mother and father would — he wanted no heirs, no entanglements — but whatever else he could imagine, they did.

Not that he was ever safe. One moment, he might be calm, almost meek, and the next, consumed by fiery rage. So she learned how to read him, to anticipate his every whim and mood, making herself a blank tablet to write on as he chose. Day after day, she did whatever was necessary until it became what she wanted all along. 

A dozen summers, or a little less than half her life, she had spent in the consort-house. They were privileged, pampered, or imprisoned, depending on how one chose to look at it. Selolo chose not to.

I had a people, once, not this people. A home, not this home. I was myself but someone else, someone who blew away on the wind. I can forget or I can pretend — I have many talents.

She followed one step behind the Matron, past rings of cabins, down cedar-plank pathways, through terraced gardens of ornamental grasses with fish ponds that reflected the image of the full moon. The wind rustled the cabin eaves, arousing the soft tinkle of wooden chimes.

They don’t work. Shadows come anyway.

They reached Taláni’s cabin in the center of the complex. Its steeply-sloped roof was shingled into wings like a giant bird of prey, its sharp-beaked head jutting from the peak of the high porch. She found the roof-eagle’s gaze intimidating, which was the point.

“Stop slouching, girl!”

They waited on Taláni’s porch. Inside, he would be arranging himself into some dramatic scene. Was he vain? In a manner of speaking, yes. An ambitious warlord prefers to be not only seen but beheld. Who was she to pass judgment?

Everything he has is for show, myself included.

When one of the guards glanced at Selolo, the Matron poked his shoulder. “Not for you, stump-rot! Stop leering and fetch your wekáru!”

A military advisor named Kaléntar emerged from inside, a middle-aged wild boar of a man, squat, with loose watery eyes and a patchy mane. “He’s ready.”

“Your men are lax.” Grumbling, the Matron limped back toward her cot.

Curtain pulled aside, Kaléntar signaled for her to enter.

Inside, Taláni lounged in his bedclothes on a wicker stool, half-lit by an oil lamp, scarf draped over bare shoulders, ivory combs in his hair, brass ringlets on each arm — as though he had been asleep, wearing jewelry. He leaned forward into the light. “A vision?”

Gathering her long skirts, she sat on the plank floor in front of him, looking up at him: the sharp lines of his shoulders; the curl of his lip, neither sneer nor smile; the way he propped his right hand on his knee, a slight spinal deformity that he never acknowledged, as though he were straight and the world crooked.

She made herself as small as possible, letting her loose black hair fall across her cheek. “Yes, wekáru, a dream.”

I am on a high summit facing his throne with the banners of a hundred dynasties swirling around. Beneath his feet, thirteen springs of blood erupt and spiral out. They merge and encircle the land. Then comes a thunderclap, followed by a ball of fire in the sky. We are engulfed in flame, not burned, but left in a scorched plain. The earth opens under me and — oh, I can’t tell him that!

She had to tell him something. “Wekáru, I have seen a vision of  … glory.”

He stood, fast then slow. His hand lunged at her like a serpent, slowing just before the strike. Clasping gingerly around her wrist, he guided her up to sit in his place. Fast, slow, fast. Ragged. Syncopated. This was his way, distorting time as he moved through it. This left everyone else off-balance, constantly reacting to his every tiny gesture.

Is he excited, or angry?

“Tell me.”

Not angry.

She recounted the first half of the dream, eyes wide, pausing to let her images sink in. The birthmark was a burden, but the attention it brought was not always unwelcome.

Before she came to the fireball, she hesitated, pulling a lock of hair behind her ear. “The rest of the vision is … unclear.” If she continued, she would have to lie. Could he tell?

He stared at her, expectant.

It is my vision to tell as best I can. The spirits had to know this when they chose me.

She closed her eyes and continued, imagining the scene as she told it. “The earth heaves and splits and everything is flattened: trees, hills, even the mountains. The wind blows, harder than hard, and a shadow blocks the sun, darker than dark. The wind comes from the wings of a monstrous bird, a hawk  — no, an eagle!” She grew more confident as her fiction unfolded. “Its eyes are yellow flames, and it has curved horns like an ox.” She pointed her fingers beside her temples to signify the horns.

His bemused expression set her at ease. “Then what?”

“I cowered beneath your skirts and clutched your legs. No one would confront it. It swooped with its claws to snatch you from your throne.” She held her hands like talons. “You commanded it to kneel, so it obeyed. You took it by the neck, and we flew off together on its back.” She noticed herself fidgeting, laid her hands in her lap. “That’s when I woke up.”

He stared off into the distance, silent. After a while, he stood and took both her hands. “A vision of glory!” He traced a spiral in the air. “The bloodlines are broken. I have already consolidated the woodland dynasties, Narála, Lolo, Skiptéli, and all the minor families. Thirteen streams? That can only mean the families of our people will be united.”

“Under your feet, wekáru.” That much was from the true vision. Had she been wrong to protect him? It was too late now.

“The eagle — or was it a hawk?”

She couldn’t say what either story meant, the vision or the fabrication. The interpretation of signs belonged to him, or his mother. Her readings were wise, subtle. His were dull and always reinforced his prior plans.

Why not? He thinks earth, sky, sea, and all the spirits agree with him on every point! 

“Could be the domain of Kindhir.” He rolled his tongue around in his cheek in thought. “Unless it is our wayward cousins.” Thus he referred to the communities of Silgatháltha not yet consolidated under his rule.

She turned away from his stare, angling her head to display her cheek, her ear, the corner of her jaw.

He brushed the back of his hand against her neck, whispering, “It is a good vision.” He moved his hand down to her shoulder and unknotted her sash. “You are a priestess, and I am your god. Tonight is a night of worship.”

Its meaning now clear, his gaze was no longer uncomfortable. That night they joined as they never had before: As man and wife, father and mother.

She believed the lie.

The Academy of Mek, in Nepsilam, the capital of Kindhirak.

MEKVAT SMOOTHED HIS VESTMENTS, taming the many woolen tufts that hung from the bell-shaped garment like wisteria blossoms. It would be unthinkable for the Sage Prime of Mek to appear disheveled in public. He was old and paunchy around the middle, but spry. Five azure circles crowned his shaved head, a layer of chalk coated his brown face, and an unbroken black brow-line framed the Unblinking eyes of Wisdom painted over his eyelids.

Forty students sat cross-legged around him inside the scroll-room, each with a desk board balanced on their lap and a blue novice dot adorning their shaven head. Mostly ten or eleven years old, this crop barely knew how to mix ink and cut a pen.

There were lower-ranking scholars who might have attended this duty, of course, but he rather enjoyed it. They called him pompous and insufferable behind his back and he rather enjoyed that, too. 

Today’s lesson: dictation and copying.

I, Kindhir son of Birek-Dammun; who raised towers in the seven cities and affixed their bells; who laid the foundations of Nepsilam, seventh city of seven; who laid the roads between them and beyond; do now decree: 

First, that the taciturnity of the gods breeds ignorance; therefore shall all principle be established by learning and not divination, prognostication, or consultation of spirits.

Second, that the ambition of unrestrained peerage breeds violence; therefore shall a heptarch be installed over every city, whose dominion shall encompass wisdom, peace, and good order; but above all, unity.

Third, that shadows lie beyond the circle of our light; therefore shall an Academy of Mek be established in every city; that by the illumination of their counsel the circle may expand, to the benefit of all.

Beyond these, let each city be their own guide; and Nepsilam shall lead them.

He waited until everyone caught up. “Sheath your pens.”

How delicious, the sound of unanimous compliance!

“What is your purpose here?” he asked them. “Why do you befoul my parchments, break my pens, and spill my ink? Why do you flatten the stones of my court with your cheeks?” He adopted an extemporaneous tone, as though he hadn’t taught this lesson hundreds of times before.

One boy ventured it was because their parents had brought them. A portly boy suggested they would have a good career and make a lot of money. The precocious girl who imagined herself his favorite said, “To obtain skill in writing!”

He dismissed their answers with an idle swat of his hand. “Oh, you desolate hollows, you empty, empty pots! You are here to be filled.”

None of the students dared speak further.

“Indeed, Mek the Most Wise is a vast reservoir of wisdom and I am his canal. You, my little mud-cracked ditches, will one day irrigate the land so that all the flowers of wisdom may bloom. Your parents who brought you here are bricklayers, dung-haulers, diggers of dirt, illiterate merchants who keep inventories with jars of colored pebbles and knotted twine.” He stepped outside the circle and now pretended to survey a shelf of scrolls. “To you, words are a mystery; to them, a cruel master. The ruler’s decree subjugates his people; the mystic’s writ fascinates the supplicants; the lawyer’s complaint sways the judges — but not without someone to write it down!”

As he spoke the last clause, he swept his hand over them. Some of the students laughed with approval. They were the someones!

“Ah, you see! A warlord may rule by his lips alone, and a village may govern itself by the half-remembered traditions of the elders — but a great nation? For that, there must be written records. Rulers live and die and their decrees go with them to the Silent Lands, unless — unless! — they are fixed in writing and thus removed from the whim of those who happen to be alive and walking about.”

He unfurled the scroll he had been dictating to them with a practiced flick of his wrist.

“Kindhir the Wise, hm? Your grandmother knows the tales — retold in the telling until they are no less than half a lie! But what if the man himself might speak to us in this very room, four hundred and thirty-six years later? He may never escape the Silent Lands, but his words have — by writing! And simply by reading, you may conjure him to speak the living word anew.”

He paused for effect, finger held aloft.

“That, my darling little voids, is civilization. That is power. And that is why you are all here.”

Hands clasped behind his back, he exited, his signal to the students to clean up their things and return to their quarters.

And before long, the greater portion of you will crawl mewling back to the inbred mud-humpers who dropped you here.

#

Mekvat made a habit of holding court with the young adults of the Academy after the evening meal. While he considered it proper to dine alone, he made a small commotion putting away his bowl as a sort of signal.

Anyone interested would follow him down the arched corridors while he regaled them with anecdotes and reminiscences. The parade stopped at a new atrium or nook every evening, “to keep the mystery alive,” as he put it. There he made a performance out of lowering himself onto a couch, taking unnecessary pains to swaddle the indigo fabric of his robes around his feet. Once situated, he waved a solicitous hand where some wine should be, finding either a full cup or someone eager to fetch one. 

The evening’s topic came next — a story, a few lines of verse, an ethical problem, a riddle of his own devising — anything, so long as he was sure his listeners hadn’t heard it before. Of all possible modes of intercourse, debate was his least favorite to engage and most favorite to watch.

As the evening progressed, he nudged the discussion in circles until it was time to propose a solution, or just as often, to declare there never was one. The regulars were on to the game, while newcomers were on the defensive. Not that he kept track. Sorting names and faces had always been a weakness, more so as he got older, but he didn’t let it trouble him. Conversation amused him no matter who brought it.

On one such occasion, he inscribed a triangle in the air. “Text, tradition, personal experience.” He sipped his wine. “Pick any two and leave the third behind. Which, and why?” 

One young man said, “Personal experience is the least reliable of the three.” 

“We should judge by accuracy?”

“I disagree,” a young woman interjected.

“About accuracy?”

“No, that personal experience is least. I say tradition is least because it is derivative, that is, the sum of personal experiences over time.” 

“And a text? Are they never second-hand?”

The first young man said, “Of course, a text can be reported second or third hand but we take it to mean whatever the writer wishes it to say — therefore, first hand.”

The young woman sat up straighter. “Consider this illustration: The ancestors scooped water from the sea into little clay pots. Each, in turn, filled the pot of their descendants, and they theirs, elder to younger down the line, until the youngest descendants poured theirs into the soup.”

Mekvat pretended to pour his cup, to a smattering of laughter.

She continued, “Some found that their ancestors had spilled along the way and left them a dry pot. Others found the water tainted, so they poured it on the ground. Still others found their ancestors had scooped up mud — ”

Several scholars approached, led by a tall, dour man.

Mekvat saluted them with his cup. “Ah, Pabirak! Join us! This young woman is on the cusp of an important discovery — ”

“With respect, minister. Certain matters require your immediate attention.”

Mekvat feigned shock. “Matters, you say?”

A few of the young adherents stifled laughter.

Mekvat folded his hands in his lap and stared at the tall man, waiting. He considered it impossible for a serious person to be very wise and judged the elder scholars, with their furrowed brows and clouded expressions, to hold the opposite opinion.

Pabirak shifted his gaze around the assembly, finally alighting on Mekvat. “Minister, as we discussed — yesterday?”

“Ah, that.” Mekvat scowled for his audience. “A very urgent … matter.”

Pabirak said nothing but his expression was clear enough, as though he genuinely wondered why the old man delighted in tormenting him.

Insufferable men ought not to be suffered; is that not reason enough?

Mekvat paused to clasp the young woman’s hands. “I’m sorry, dear. We’ll take this up some other time.”

Questions assaulted him from all sides as they rushed down the corridors toward Pabirak’s office. The orchards. The yards. The coming ceremonies. Costumes, texts, songs. He stamped his seal on several parchments, signed his mark on others. He had ready answers for everything, no matter how trivial or obscure.

You’re all just waiting for me to die, aren’t you? To see who replaces me. Too bad I’m still in my wits.

There were always murmurings and resentments. Perhaps he meant to skip over them, grooming some young upstart in their place. He hadn’t acknowledged them enough, or for the right things. His priorities were upturned, his goals inarticulate.

The elder scholars exhausted him with their constant worry over minutiae.

Is their Mek no more than a lord of sums and ciphers? Whatever happened to imagination? Creativity?

By the time they left him, it was too late to re-adjourn his interlocutors, which he resented. Given the choice, he would always favor an evening spent with his little pools of blue fabric gathered in an adoring circle at his feet. At least they appreciated him.

His quarters were halfway up the main tower, an honor due to his office — and an inconvenience due to his age. A chamber in the archives might have suited him better. There was some consolation to be found in the view from his balcony, facing the moon as it rose, but this particular evening he was in no mood for celestial wonders.

He tried to do a little reading but found his internal fluids too agitated, so he mopped the grease and chalk from his face with a damp cloth and dressed for bed. Settled at last, he snuffed out his lamp.

Ah well, there’s always tomorrow — until there isn’t.

---

Read the rest! Get the book now on Amazon in Kindle or paperback format.

---

Copyright 2023 Eli Evans. All rights reserved. You may link to this page and quote this text in reviews or for other fair use purposes, but you may not reproduce this text in its entirety without permission.

---

The author is available for interviews or appearances.