I knelt in the church to pray. Father, thank you for granting us safe passage to Carthia. Though, if I'm being honest, safe passage to a war, I'm not sure the value of that. I don't want to be ungrateful, so thank you. I'm scared. Only today the things I've seen, I don't know how anyone could survive with your enemies lurking in the trees ten feet from you and you can't see them. I pray that you guide my hand, lead me in the direction you would have me go in, that is all I ask. I pray that you watch over my friends and keep them safe.
I opened my eyes for a brief moment. Cracks broke through mortar leaving trails of green algae to seep down the walls of yellow and gray stones with pools of water scattered about the floor. The four-point-triangle of the Deanma hung on one wall, rusted with two brackets pulling from their place and threatening to fall to the floor. Overhead, a vast open window let in a large, leafy vine with tendrils reaching out in the open air.
Father, I'm sorry. I feel… deep down I know that in my own selfishness… my terror, reaching out for some way to weasel out of my duty cost Dune her life. I should have prayed that her survival was a sign that you wanted me to come here instead of the other way around. And for lust. Stupid, stupid lust, lusting after Oasis, lusting after Anyanna, why am I like this? Why can't I control my thoughts? These stupid urges, and look how I've offended Miyani and I only just got here. I want her to know that I'm sorry. I feel like I want to tell her, but I'm afraid to tell her. I'm afraid that if I try to talk to her that would be even more offensive seeing how I've already put her off.
I lifted my head for a moment and stretched my neck out, fighting back tears. To the side was a wooden shelf, atop which was a book of Scripture with black mold spots creeping up along the pages.
I took a deep breath and let it out. I'll leave her alone. Father, if I see her again, give me the strength to look the other way. I should have never noticed her like that in the first place. That's how I screwed things up with Sarina, isn't it? Will she ever forgive me? God, please look after Sarina. Can you introduce her to a man worthy of her love? Someone who deserves her. Someone… not like me.
"Caleb!" Faren's voice called out. He stood beneath the open archway that sufficed for a door with overgrown trees behind him. He hadn't smoked in several days, yet his face still carried a serenity punctuated by his droopy eyelids and easy smile.
Show me your truth, for thine is the honor, the glory… amen.
"I didn't mean to interrupt."
I stood. "I was done."
He looked around, tracing the small room with his eyes. "So this is the Daenma church?"
"Yeah." A large crack in one corner of the ceiling was still dripping water from the rain earlier, and chips of faded paint littered the floor on one side of the room. I set four kren beside the book on the top of the shelf, itself half rotted out with mold up and down the sides.
"What's that for?"
"Tithe."
He stared at the coins for a moment. "No priest, no nothing, not even a drop box. Who are you tithing to?"
I turned around to glance back as we left. "Well… I suppose God will lure someone in here who needs it."
Faren smirked, then turned back. "I could use it…"
I laughed. "Come on, man!"
He smiled and returned to me. "What if your god found you a sack of fresh mortar to fix that roof for four kren, but then some child came in here and took it to buy some cake?"
I shrugged. "Then… I suppose… a child will have the sweet memory of cake to hold them over in dark times."
Outside, a scraggly tree bearing dozens of small yellow globes had reached its branches out to partially block the path from the road—I almost hadn't seen the place for this tree. Elsewhere in the garden, thick tufts of grass and other bushes with woody stems and long, narrow leaves fought with vines for space enough to thrive.
Faren looked over the tree with interest. Then he picked a few of the globes, enough for a modest handful, and ate one of them.
I raised an eyebrow at him. "How do you know that's not poisonous?"
Faren smiled. "Where's your faith, man? I'm sure your god wouldn't let poisoned guavas grow in His divine courtyard."
"Oh. Are they good?"
He handed me one. It was, in fact, quite sweet. It had a gentle flavor, lacking the sharp tartness of some other fruits, but a rather unassuming deliciousness with hard seeds that I ended up working around to get at the soft flesh. It was the same flavor from those pastries we'd had at the Lake of Doom, in fact.
We walked out onto the street, a narrow line set with broken slats of gray-black slate with tiny gravel between them. Opposite the church was a stone building three stories high with a balcony on the second and third floors, and an open porch on the ground level. At the top floor, sounds of laughing and chatting filled the air, and on the second level three girls stood in a circle. Two of them had exceedingly dark-green skin and long, white hair. The other was Tobori—alabaster-white skin with golden-yellow hair; she also had a number branded into her arm.
The three of them glanced down at us, paused their conversation, then came forward to the stone handrail and leaned over.
Glorious, pendulous breasts, all three. Nearly naked, all three. Each had an embroidered loincloth that hung down from her marvelous hips to the middle of her beautiful thighs, and left smooth skin everywhere else to our viewing pleasure. Faren looked up at them, then faced me with excitement plastered all over his face.
The girl in the middle called down to us in Herali with a thick accent. "Hello, new men!"
I answered back, "hello, new girls!"
The Tobori girl sucked her teeth. The other two dropped their inviting smiles, and all three of them turned, stepped away, and went back to whatever they'd been up to before.
I looked at Faren. He stared up at them, scratching his head for a moment before turning to me. "What was that about?"
"I don't know, but that was quick."
Perplexed, we both shook it off and went about our way. "Anyway," he said, "you have got to see this library, man. It's insane!"
The street followed the curve of the outer wall with stone buildings on both sides. Then on the right was a large canvas awning stretched over several stone columns with a stone framework for a roof. Multiple large vats were suspended over coals tended by women wearing long-sleeve shirts with leather about the wrists, while women working in other areas wore nothing but loincloths. Most had dark-green skin, white hair, and yellow eyes, though others were like Faren and me, olive-green with dark-green hair. Others had pristine white skin, and still others were colored somewhere between. Many of them looked up at us and smiled as we walked past, some of whom let their eyes linger on us quite a bit. At one end was a large wheel connected to a line of giant stone pistons that lifted up and smashed some of those grasses we'd seen out beyond the field. A clear fluid oozed out from the mash, and a woman took up the refuse in a large basket, passed by before Faren and me and gave us a wide smile with a wink before tossing it to a pack of pigs on the opposite side of the street.
At the other end of the business, two women held open a large, burlap sack while two more opened a clay vat and poured a fine, white powder into it. One of them, a thick, older woman with dark-green skin looked up at me and smiled, calling out, "vʌ da'uʃo fufuvisa!"
The others giggled, then she blew me a kiss and kept watching as we walked by.
Next, a giant wooden door in the outer wall, barred shut, was adjacent several empty wooden crates and pallets, and another canvas awning stretched over piles of filled burlap sacks. Two more women carried over filled sacks towards the pile. There was a green-brown snake easily ten feet long with a black diamond pattern all along its back sprawled over the sacks. As the women came up, one of them reached out and gently pushed the snake out of her way. "pʊ ɣaŋo!"
Then she set the sack down and went back.
I turned to Faren. "I'm seeing very few men here."
He nodded and looked up and down one of the ladies who was gazing back at him. "A fact I hope to exploit to the fullest extent possible."
"Faren, why do you think that is?"
He looked at me with a serious expression. "I know why it is, man. All the more reason to take advantage while I still can."
On the left side of the street was another commotion. About a half-dozen children were gathered around something. Most of them had a peculiar color halfway between the dark-green of the natives and the olive-green of a Herali, with hair of all kinds. Faren and I stepped closer to see what they were all so interested in, and they parted for us. Another child, maybe twelve or so, had dark-green skin and dark-green hair, with black eyes. While most of the children wore simple loincloths and nothing more, she sat wearing a rough brown hat and long-sleeve shirt with leather about the wrists, and behind her was another one of those vita'o lizards. This one was a little bigger than Blue and had burnt-orange scales speckled with black spots down its back, and it rested its neck all over the girl's back with its head on her shoulder. She sat before a small, wooden box with three cards face-down side-by-side while another child pointed at the one in the center and flipped it over, revealing a small, gray-brown goblin creature with fangs carrying a sack over its back. The child cheered, the girl pursed her lips and handed over a small stack of coins.
"Do you want to play, mister?" one of them said to me.
"Sure." I crouched down.
The girl spoke fluent Herali without a hint of accent. "You in for twenty-one kren, mister?"
"OK," I said, and pulled out a sixteen and a five from my purse. She then added twenty-one of her own and turned the goblin back down, turned to kiss the lizard on the side of its head, and shuffled the three cards about. The lizard cracked its mouth open, then rubbed its head against her cheek.
I felt bad. She wasn't very skilled, and I was able to follow it easily. I didn't want to take the child's money, so I resolved to keep only my original coin and let her keep hers. But when I flipped over the goblin, it wasn't the goblin. Rather, the card was a lion with a billowing mane breathing fire.
"Bathi's coming!" another child called out from the side, and with that the girl quickly took up all the coins, the wooden crate, and the whole crowd of children along with the lizard scattered down the street.
I stood and looked at Faren. "What just happened?"
He doubled over laughing. I turned back to look again; they'd disappeared. I scratched my head trying to make sense of what I'd just fallen for, only to feel nothing short of embarrassment. Behind me, the women working had all taken a short break to laugh at me.
Finally, I took a deep breath and let it out, and stared at the empty nook where the girl had sat, a narrow alleyway between two stone buildings darkened by shade. A line of small pigs crept out from beneath one building and crossed over to duck down beneath the other. I looked at Faren. He looked back at me, still smirking, and still chuckling with laughter. "I'm sorry, man!"
"Where'd you say this library was?"
He kept laughing. "This way."
We turned down a street on the left and headed towards the city center. Two more dark-green girls stood at the corner, and I could not get over their state of undress.
They were both about average height. The girl on the left had a sleek figure. A soft, red leather strap around her waist held a burnt-orange cloth that hung down about mid-thigh, but from the side, my eyes took in the graceful curvature of her lean legs, pert little arse, flat tummy, and delicate breasts. She allowed a lock of long, white hair to fall over each shoulder and drape the top half of her nipples, and she turned her neck to face me. Her bright yellow eyes had locked onto mine a good while before I was aware she was looking at me. I took a moment to meet her eyes before the urge to survey her body once more overwhelmed me.
I needed to stop noticing such things.
The other girl was a fair bit curvier. Faren and I walked around, directly behind her rotund figure, covered only by a white, cotton loincloth with a black swirl pattern that followed the curve of her glorious arse and hung down from there.
The lean girl's eyes hadn't left mine alone for so much as a second. I smiled at her, then ripped my attention away and turned to Faren, who was still looking over his shoulder behind us. He then looked forward and took a deep breath before speaking, "I'm getting an erection just walking down the street. Gods, how is this place real?"
I shook my head and took in a deep breath, wondering what Sarina would say to me if she saw me looking so hard at all these girls. "Simple. We'll be dead soon."
Up ahead, two more ladies, likely a bit older, carried heavy rolls of something on their shoulders into a nearby building. Nearly naked, as the others, and very nicely built.
Faren shook his head vigorously. "At least we'll die happy!"
He then glanced over his shoulder behind us one more time before facing forward. "They're following us."
"What?" I turned.
The same two girls we'd seen on the corner were directly behind us. My heart set to racing, unsure as to where this would go. Faren swallowed, and together we turned to face them.
The girl on the right stood up straight so as to lift up her chest some, allowing her generous breasts to hang before us. Her bright yellow eyes passed back and forth between me and Faren, occasionally dipping down to pass over our bodies. She smiled and spoke Herali through an accent as thick as her figure. "Helo! Welkum tu Kathya. I is pʌŋi, she is mexuŋi."
Mehuni gave a slight wave, "xelo!" Her eyes grasped onto mine and would not let go. She didn't look at Faren, or my body, or her friend, or the street, or anything else in our world around us. She'd locked her eyes onto mine and that was it.
Faren looked Mehuni up and down, then settled his eyes on Puni, studying her curvaceous frame, pausing at her breasts before bringing his gaze up to her face. "I'm Faren, and this is Caleb."
I nodded, "zawa."
Mehuni smiled and answered me. "ʒɪ fɪðase 'uxuwida"
She was beautiful. She didn't strike me the same way Miyani had, but her intense, unwavering eye contact was beginning to inspire a certain physical reaction in me. "Uh…" I blushed, passing my fingers through my hair. "Tihay bobaday kokano."
They glanced at one another and giggled. Mehuni then returned to me with a wide smile and batted her eyelashes. "ʒɪ tixe bobawe peŋe"
Puni broke out laughing. Her eyes bulged, her mouth gaped open, and she doubled over. I glanced at Faren, who glanced back at me with his eyebrows raised. Mehuni continued her intense stare; her lips cracked open in an expectant smile, and Puni managed to contain herself long enough to ask, "will you answer her?"
"Oh," I said, trying to consider the possibilities. She might have asked if I like to drink worm piss for all I knew, so I just nodded and answered, "uh… yes. Ti. Absolutely ti."
Faren nodded, "ti for me as well. Both of us, ti."
Mehuni grinned wide. Puni grinned wide; her eyes had begun to settle on Faren. "Does you know she ask what to you?"
He smiled back at her. "No, but my answer is still ti."
Puni turned to Mehuni, still smiling wide, and they both giggled.
Faren then asked, "are you girls from here, originally?"
They both frowned. Mehuni's eyes went wide, and she turned to Puni, "ʒɪ ŋæɣʊzeda fedamiθʊ"
Puni shook her head, pursed her lips, and the both of them turned and walked away. Gorgeous, both of them, and utterly done with us before we could blink. I stood in shock, searching Faren's face for some explanation. He looked at me with one eyebrow raised. "OK… that keeps happening."
I shook my head, kicking myself for noticing Mehuni's pert body and digging for a connection with the look on Miyani's face from earlier that day. "At least they didn't have one of those lizards with them to rip our livers out."
Faren bobbed his head back and forth. "There's that. The way that one was looking at you, though. Gods! Also, where'd you get all these words from? I feel like I'm falling behind."
"Well," I assured him, "it's not a race, but I am winning."
"We'll see about that!"
We continued our walk. The street gave way on both sides to a bustling area where women walked about, talking to one another in a cacophony of languages all around us. One stood beside a wooden cart filled with bright green coconuts, holding one out for us. Next to her stood another woman who had several oblong red fruits covered in grooves that ran the length of them, followed by another with a cauldron filled with sand over a fire pit—and that unmistakable scent of kafi. On the opposite side, a woman sat amid a collection of delicate carved wooden animals, next to another surrounded by bright woven rugs clipped to a string that surrounded her area. The next one had several baskets with powders of reds, yellows, and greens that let off a mishmash of aromas in all directions. Goloagi women, Saeni women, Tobori women young and old, many had numbers branded into their arms and intermingled with natives with dark-green skin, and together with children almost all of them walked about wearing nothing but loincloths about their waists.
Faren kept glancing around with his eyes wide. "Man, I am in titty heaven!"
I added, glancing at another with her back turned. "Hindquarters on full display! Legs, arse, hips…"
"Tummies, back, girls, girls everywhere! Every color, any size, any age, how come I never heard of this place?"
"I do not know." I tried to behave myself, but every few steps I found another looking our way. Two girls stood talking, and both gazed at us as we passed by. One whispered in the other's ear, and they shared a giggle before smiling at us.
I saw no men, save for a few elders and a handful of others like us.
Another girl approached in the opposite direction. She had dark skin, but not so dark as the others, with sandy-green hair and bright yellow eyes. She was a little taller than average, with hypnotic curves all up and down her body, and she smiled at me as we came close.
"Zawa," I said to her.
"Zawa!" she echoed back as we passed by.
I glanced over my shoulder only to see her glancing back at me just the same and let out laughing. She sang, "vʌ koðosa" before turning back around.
The library was in the center of town, scarcely ten minutes walk from the church… barring distractions.
Like most of the buildings in the Old City, it was a mix of yellow and gray stones mortared together, three stories high and long, with stained-glass windows. The building stood alone at the center of a circular dais and was surrounded by carefully manicured trees and shrubs, with pristine stone walkways with small nooks where beautiful girls sat down to read. Along the walls, open balconies hosted more reading areas beneath a generous overhang of a tile roof decorated with animal spirits along the edge.
To the right, more stone buildings of a similar style but not quite so grandiose as the library; to the left, clusters of domes covered in grass stacked three high with an opening at the ground where people came in and out; and beyond the library were tall towers reaching into the sky.
The front entrance was graced on both sides by stone columns leading to a high arch filled with a stained-glass flower a multitude of colors, and intricate stone sculptures depicting men, women, children, animals, in all sorts of arrangements as though each told a story. Inside, we were greeted by the music of a water organ. Stone pillars held up meticulously crafted stone floors of smooth slate with rows and rows of wooden shelves stuffed full of books. The foyer was home to several tables where people gathered, Goloagi, Herali, Tobori, Saeni, and an equal number of the natives, along with a multitude of people who boasted features blending all into one. One cluster held women half standing while others sat, engaged in a lively discussion, while another table was home to several women who read quietly. A woman with dark-green skin, as with the others wearing naught but an ornate, woven loincloth and a gold chain around her neck, sat perusing an open book with a stack of other books on each side of her, while a young half-herali looking boy brought her several more.
Faren's eyes were wide with excitement. "Never in all my days have I imagined a library such as this!"
I couldn't stop gaping. "This puts Kyoen Central to shame."
"Borrowing fee is only one kren. You haven't even seen the good part! This way…"
He led me over to a staircase with iron balusters at the side and up as it wrapped around in a curve to the second floor. "Wait until you see this!"
Then, to the far wall he led me down towards a section where wooden bookcases had been arranged to cordon off the area and make a secluded nook surrounded by more books. Above the entrance was a sign written in six different languages, including Herali. Forbidden Books.
I glanced at Faren with one eyebrow raised.
He was giddy with excitement. "In the Empire, these books will get you killed! But not just that, there was a lady here earlier, said those over there," he pointed. "Those books are banned by the Sewu'oni. Those ones are banned by the Southern Kingdoms, and these are illegal in the Northern Alliance. And those…" he pointed to a small section where only a handful of books rested bearing swirly symbols on the cover. "Those are illegal somewhere! Isn't this fucking incredible? Every book in this section holds knowledge that pissed off someone really powerful."
"Oh my God," I gritted my teeth and pulled a small, red tome with black lettering for a title that had been seared into the spine. Goosebumps crawled all over my skin.
"What's that?"
I looked at him with my eyes wide. My heart thundered and my breath grew heavy just holding it in my hand. "Indictment Against the Orthodox Daenma Church. Blood has been spilled over this book. Lots and lots and lots of it. I've never seen it before; just owning it will get you burned at the stake. The Emperor sent out the Invisible Hand to gather up all copies and had them all destroyed."
Faren nodded and took it from me, opening it up to skim through it. "This is a book worth reading! What are you going to check out, though?"
"What?" I protested. "I found it first!"
As I reached, he pulled it away and turned. "Careful, you'll rip it!"
"What?"
He laughed and turned to the front page.
My eyes then found a small, unassuming tome of tanned leather with painted-black lettering written in Goloagi called The Truth of the Great Plague. I pulled it from the shelf, opened it to the introductory page, and read it aloud. "The Great Plague was not an accident. The Emperor planted it in Umaz, deliberately, hoping to wipe out the Umeazi people."
I looked up at Faren with my eyes wide. "I wonder why this was banned."
Faren chuckled.
"That can't be true, though; no one is that evil!"
Faren breathed in through his teeth and let it out. He leaned in close to look, "that'd be pretty fucking crazy if it is."
Footfalls rushed down the hall towards us, and suddenly Geraln appeared, panting heavily. He rested his hand on a nearby wall frame, took a moment to catch his breath, and spoke. "Gods, I've been looking everywhere for you! Ales has been stabbed!"