Permanent Problems

It amazed Ashset, not only the quantities that highborn bureaucrats– whose stated duty was to help the kingdom run efficiently– could waste, but the sheer, creative variety of different resources they could squander. For a start, his captor Uzdel had been trained since his adolescence to snare djinn in twisting, subtle contracts in order to command their immense arcane might, then assigned to… collect taxes in a few dusty towns in the eastern province. Said taxes went, among other questionable places, into buying this Zeffar fellow who was hosting them a concubine– the Crown administration finding a loophole in its own laws against slavery that made Ashset’s trick with Yuya look like childsplay. And now the man’s djinn servants brought out a meal of fattened goose liver– a product of grain being forcefed to poultry while much of this city starved.

It had been thirty-six days since he was abducted from Ak-Toum, with over half those spent waiting in this city. They were wasting far more time keeping him captive than they needed, all the while treating him more like a respected political prisoner than a peasant who had interfered in an execution. An enormous waste, even if he was taking just a little guilty pleasure in the unprecedented luxury.

One of the fourth-degree priest Zeffar’s bound djinn, the one that changed forms between a gentle breeze and a girl with feline features, had also been a guilty pleasure of his. She had watched him closely since he and Uzdel arrived, and the same day her master had returned to the city, she had offered to share his bed. Maybe it would have been appropriate to refuse her. He was betrothed, after all. But a marriage arranged was not a wedding vow taken, and his whole intent was to prevent his betrothed from being pushed before her time into doing for him or anyone else what the djinni was freely offering to do for him. If he were an older man, more given to reflection and less beholden to his impulses, he might have at least asked the cause of her sudden interest before their third night together.

Frankly, humorlessly, without the faintest hint of gloating or apology, she had told him, “My task is to watch you, prisoner, and you have concealed nothing from me these past few nights.”

Again, because he was young and possessed of more virility than wisdom, he had let the cold response fade into the darkness, taken her once more that night and again the next. Only then did he notice the dispassion in her movements, the lack of love or even the thrill of seduction in her lovemaking. And when he awoke in the night, he realized she never slept, never took those slit-pupiled, unblinking eyes off him.

He had refused her last night, and cursed himself for a fool now as he took the midday meal with those feline eyes studying him from across the room. No disappointment, no scorn, no yearning, just the same detached vigilance as before their affair. Hers was not a human response. Maybe not hers, but rather its– could a shapeshifter just as comfortable in the form of a ripple in the air as in a woman’s body be said to truly have a sex? Where the nights had been hot and still before, a cool breeze had wafted through his room last night…

And yet, he did still admire that form, even if he now recognized it as mere clothing worn by an inhuman spirit. He shook his head. Perhaps he should instead be looking at the djinni, or it at him, with the same guilty self-disgust a shepherd might feel at the sight of sheep, which had stood behind the wrong rock or tree during his moment of shameful loneliness.

From the head of the table, Zeffar watched, and a smile crept across the old priest's face. “Boy, I did not even command her to do that; I told her to observe and guard over you, and the mode of her obedience was a surprise even to me. If I wanted to shackle you here by your manhood in particular, I would have summoned a fox-spirit, and you would have stood no chance.”

Ashset scowled, hoping it would hide his blush. “And why do you insist on keeping me shackled here, holy one? Not that you have been inhospitable, but not being allowed to leave when I like does chafe, and you have already told Uzdel he must keep silent about the person he and I have met. What purpose do I, then, serve?”

“I did not tell him to be silent, only discreet. You will both be inducted into the mysteries surrounding what you have discovered soon, and understand the need for discretion. That is to say, either you will know to be careful who you tell and how, and therefore be safe to release, or you will not, and you will be… I was about to say killed, but you are impressively lettered for one of your caste, given your trick with the indenture. More likely, you would have your tongue cut out and be chained to a desk as a temple scribe. That is an entirely avoidable fate, if you heed well what you are told.”

“If I swear to secrecy, can I keep my tongue and my freedom, and still get the job as a temple scribe? I think my prospective father-in-law would be impressed.”

“We shall see. You have not been enlightened yet because it requires certain… access to the temple, which has been limited by the ongoing visit. I have made arrangements around this for later today. You will be provided formal attire for the occasion. Display the proper reverence.”

The djinni-girl dressed him that afternoon in a flowing robe of turquoise silk, with a red mantle and a tall felt cap. His hair and such beard as he had were styled using scented oils. A little of the perfume on his face went a long way when he, Uzdel, and Zeffar stepped out for the short walk to the temple, and the smell of squalor and rot from a city wasting away struck him.

They were flanked as the crossed over by four guards, two soldiers under Uzdel and two of Zeffar’s bound flame-djinn, but all four turned aside to wait at the gates to the temple complex. Temple guards met them, garbed in ancient, intricately ornate armor of bronze scales with gorgets and bracers of gold, and led them through a courtyard bustling with priests and scribes to the antechamber of the Great Temple itself.

The ritual that followed spent nearly an hour each in procession through four increasingly cramped rooms, he and Uzdel simply standing in the middle of a cluster of priests led now standing, now walking in circles, all the while chanting in the mystical Antediluvian tongue, by Zeffar. Elements of the ritual seemed familiar to Ashset, mirrored the much simpler rituals of prayer to Heaven and the gods that his clan patriarch– his great-grandfather, when he was a small child, and now his grandfather– had led him and the rest of his family through regularly for as long as he could remember. But while their religion’s key doctrines and moral codes varied little between rungs of Jalabartan society, or even between them and other civilized nations, the ceremonial practices of their faith were every bit as tiered as other aspects of their society, and just as he had been jarred by eating and sleeping under an aristocrat’s roof, he and even Uzdel, from the lower ranks of Jalabarta’s religious elite, were palpably uncomfortable amid rites more esoteric than they could get their worldly, unenlightened minds around.

They ended on a ritual of cleansing. One priest slapped him on his ear, a traditional gesture of admonishment his father had used many times, but this was accompanied by a splash of perfumed water to the face and sharp words in the Antediluvian tongue, elements that jolted him with surprise. Then they were led before double doors plated in gold. Thick ropes of braided silk were tied his, Zeffar's, and Uzdel’s midsections, then passed through a curtain separating this room from the previous. Ashset felt the light tension of someone holding the rope, slack but ready to pull him back at a moment's notice.

“What are these for?” he whispered to Uzdel.

“In case the gods do not look with favor on our coming. In that event, will need to withdraw whatever is left of us.”

Then all the priests except Zeffar vacated the room. “Bow,” he whispered sharply, “prostrate. Forehead on the ground.”

Uzdel laid flat on the marble tile, arms outstretched, and Ashset followed suit. Zeffar knocked sharply on the door once. “Your servants for all our years, though unworthy, seek your countenances, o gods.” He repeated the knock and petition three more times. In the silence between repetitions, Ashset could faintly hear chatter, conversation in a language that was neither the low tongue of Nod nor the Antediluvian speech. It sounded like the singing in some of the music Yuya had played back at the alehouse in Ak-Toum. Had the same faintly tinny distortion to it, as well, he realized.

Abruptly after the fourth knock, the noise was cut off. “You may enter, mortals.” The voice sounded like that of a young man, even cracking faintly. Not what Ashset expected. “You are welcome in the abode of your gods.”

Zeffar pushed the doors open, then fell to his face, joining the others in obeisance. “My great lords, these two have discovered one like unto thee, in origin if not in majesty. We have an artifact that might complement thine power.”

“Rise and present it. You may look upon us; do not fear to be struck down.”

Ashset looked up, and almost thought he saw Yuya standing in front of him, wearing the same baggy pants he had when they first met, and a robe in the Lugo style of white silk and gold thread. But closer inspection of the god revealed a less slim build and a more round face, with the resemblance seeming only to be a matter of similar ages and perhaps similar origins.

Origins. Uzdel had never fully explained to Ashset why he was so interested in Yuya, but he had been interrogated backwards and forwards over every hint of where Yuya came from. He was hard to pin down, beyond his talk of an unknown homeland called Japan, with features even someone as ill-traveled as Ashset noticed as hard to link to any one nation or tribe on Nod.

Uzdel had also asked about a marking on Yuya’s shoulder, though Ashset had never seen it. He had guessed from the questioning it was supposed to be a black or dark brown Antediluvian character. The god had such a mark, though it was on his chest above his heart, the robe partly concealing it, and it glistened gold.

Uzdel’s eyes kept flicking back to that mark as he pulled an object from a pocket and held it out for the god. Yuya’s light-and-sound box, the one he had used to show images and make music in the alehouse.

The god took it, and with a flash of pale light, it sprang back to life in his hand, lighting up and chiming a short string of notes.

“Hey, Conor?”

A second god rose from a couch in the back of the chamber, set in front of a dark pane like an enormous version of Yuya’s light-box. This one revealed a similar golden mark on the palm of his right hand, as he ran it through a shock of bright orange hair. He wore a robe in a more Jalabartan style, similarly easy to slip on and off, with what looked like a Vetanian-style white shift underneath. “Yes, Sangwoo?”

“The mortals found a cellphone. You remember when I explained cellphones? And it isn’t even my old one. Looks like the language is set to Japanese.”

“Is that a language I should’ve heard of?”

“We were just watching a Japanese anime, fool.”

“Oh, that’s what they were speaking? I assumed, with the subtitles, that spoken English had just changed a great deal in the three hundred years since the first time I died. Heh, it’s strange to think of that as only being three hundred years ago.”

Ashset had to assume the god who was being talked down to was Jalabarta’s patron, Khur, Giver of Charity, and the one who somewhat resembled Yuya was Bulan, Giver of Humility, Vizier of the Gods. Why they seemed to know each other as ‘Conor’ and ‘Sangwoo’ respectively was a mystery, as were Conor’s– Khur’s– allusions to having died three hundred years ago, when he had been safely enshrined in Ak-a-Kartam for at least a thousand years. But then, the ways of gods were always mysterious to mortals.

Sangwoo– Bulan– turned back to the three of them, who all still knelt in the entryway. “This discovery does intrigue me, mortals. Tell us how you obtained it, and anything you can of its previous owner.”