Toll of Fortune (eBook)

Nothing Beside Remains

Northern Prut River, Moldova, 3409 BC

Green-Shoot shuddered as the wind raked his spiny back. The sun was near setting already. The twisting and snapping of the dead tree-spires raked his nerves still more. He was supposed to be standing watch at the edge of this dirt-hole settlement, but with this fickle wind scattering bones and debris, he could neither see nor hear. What difference did it make anyway, he consoled himself. Only the beds of dead lakes stretched out beyond him. There hadn’t even been a visitor in three years—let alone anything dangerous.

There had been a time—he’d been told—when those lake beds had been filled with sweet water and fish—whatever a fish was. The Arch-Priest was always droning on about those times. Times filled with plenty. Times filled with farmers and children. Times when travelers came and went. He once even said there were as many as one hundred, hundred Settler Folk who called this wasteland home. He said it was the most prosperous place in the World!

Green-Shoot pulled up his tattered cape against the chill, to little effect. The winds were colder now. The winter came earlier. In two months’ time it would be so cold an ox could freeze if it loitered too long on the plain. He’d seen it happen, back when they’d had oxen. Some of those who had stayed here made peace with the consuming cold and chose the lingering death of the frozen ox. It was said to be a painless path to the Underworld. That’s how his mom left. And his sister after her.

Even now he could hear the Arch-Priest yammering on from the fire in the distance, some ways up-wind. No doubt he preached that the summers would return, the grass would grow green instead of being swallowed by the earth, and the Earth-Mother would bless the women with living babies. But the women, like the land, were now barren. There was nothing for him here. Nothing for anyone. This place was as close to death as one could linger without stepping into the void itself.

When he was very young he saw his uncles leave to find better lands. They never returned. Some said the Wagon People took them as slaves. Wagon People, with their cattle and horses, were spotted frequently nowadays. But at least slaves got fed. The only food he ate was dried millet mixed with chaff—the store of which got smaller and smaller. With no other men around his mother made him lay with his sister, and he would pray for a stillborn each time: there was no food to feed a child. Cruel Gods ruled these lands now as those prayers were always answered. He’d seen old men die where they lay, skin cleaving to their bones. He’d seen pregnant women open their bellies to relieve their suffering. Worse still, he’d seen the ravenous make an unholy feast of the remains. Still, the Arch-Priest carried on performing rituals and beseeching the Gods.

“O Earth-Mother,” he could hear him say, “the Great Egg from which all life hatches and owes its existence, one who gifted birth to our ancestors in the time of the Awakening… O heavenly Bull, Lord of us all, who foists life upon the desolate earth, who fertilizes the Great Egg with his seed and grants abundance: hear the cries of your grateful servants in this our day of last reckoning!”

Bullshit, he thought. But there weren’t even any more bulls.

Amidst the heckling of the wind and its unceremonious disinterment of bones, Green-Shoot thought he saw something. There wasn’t much light left but he was certain he saw a shape on the otherwise featureless landscape. More wind and dust blew up and he swore he saw it again. He achingly stood upright and sure enough there was a figure. A man approached! Green-Shoot nearly forgot his role as guard. He grabbed his spear and stumbled out to meet the stranger.

“Halt!” he cried, but the winds shouted down his voice. Finally when the man was near he threw aside his duties. “Stranger! Welcome!”

The stranger was dressed in sturdy raiment. He stopped an arm’s length away and beheld Green-Shoot feebly guarding the settlement with a crooked spear, tip in the ground.

“Greetings, warden. I come from well-far-away but all here looks far from well.”

“We have had a hard time of it.” Green-Shoot rued, “But no matter! You are come, whoever you are!”

“I am called Snail-Walker. So few of you are still here? When last I was here there were more. Certainly not as many as in the time of my grandfather. But still more.”

“We are only a few now. But come with me now, all will want to greet a visitor!”

“Tell me, son, is there still an Arch-Priest here? One they call Soul-Fire?”

“I do not know his name, but you will meet our Arch-Priest.”

Green-Shoot grabbed him by the arm, his excitement barely containable. He escorted him as far as the fire where the light shone upon his face. The Arch-Priest was mid-incantation:

“O Lords of the Settler People,” his voice rang, holding high a figure of a bird-snake shaped like an expecting woman, “who gave us prosperity in days hitherto; who made the rains fall and sun shine in perfect rhythm; who blessed the seeds in the earth and in the wombs of our women, and produced the greatest prosperity that the World has ever seen.”

Snail-Watcher recognized his old friend through decades of wrinkles: “Arch-Priest! Forgive my blasphemy for disturbing your incantation. I come bearing tidings from beyond the mountains.”

The Arch-Priest stopped. He recognized the visage instantly, it was Snail-Walker, his old friend, a man he’d known since youth. It filled his heart with joy to behold not only the first visitor in a dozen seasons but a friend unseen since youth. Travel had made him thinner and swarthy, and his expression was indelicately troubling.

“Soul-Fire!” roared Snail-Walker, forfeiting all pretense of solemnity. The small audience gasped and cheered at the visitor and welcomed him to the fire. Green-Shoot was relieved as all decorum was eagerly forgotten. Gossip and all manner of inquisitiveness abounded. The Arch-Priest Soul-Fire, no less surprised and overjoyed than the crowd, welcomed the visitor and plied him with what little food and drink they could offer: stringy roast squirrel stew.

Snail-Walker gratefully accepted food, and once the pangs of hunger subsided he began to converse. He told them that he had traveled for two moons over the lands east of the Cutting Mountains, passing a score of abandoned settlements before reaching the fire at what was once the great settlement of Kiki-Kor, where Soul-Fire prayed this very night.

“We must talk alone, friend, and now. For there are dark tidings I must speak about.”

“So you have said! But I say speak before us here. We are too few these days for secrets. We have been ravaged by desert, disease, famine and marauders. There is no tiding you can bring that is worse than that which we have already suffered many times.” Soul-Fire’s lips staggered from hunger but his words refused to invite pity.

Snail-Walker surveyed the crowd apprehensively before beginning, “I come from deep within the Mountain-Plains, my friend—the same plains we played on as children. An endless winter has taken hold. The rivers are frozen through. Nothing has grown in the mountain meadows for a generation, and likewise in the plains farther down. Those with strength to travel have left and those without have sought shelter in caves like the first men.”

“Go on, friend, there must be more to talk of than cold or you would not have made this perilous journey,” Soul-Fire urged.

“This is a cold unlike you have ever witnessed. A cold that brings snows even in midsummer and wherefrom the sun hides in every season.” Snail-Walker went quiet. After another long moment he surveyed the ruined landscape. He’d been here as a child, beheld more inhabitants than any man could count—their industry, their plenty. Now there was only rubble and bones.

The words reached his mouth only with great difficulty. “Our Gods have abandoned us to the Primordial Cold. The chill that our forefathers’ ancestors pushed back upon has returned. Snow settles even in the south and never melts, the mountain vales fill with rivers of ice, higher than the tallest trees.”

“But why? the Earth-Mother would never forsake us.”

“Can you not see all around you, friend, she is gone!” Snail-Walker whispered in exasperation.

“Surely, but why now, after so many centuries of peace?”

“Our people abandoned her. To the west they have overturned her idols and burned her houses. You are the last priest I have found between here and the Great Blue River. We are no longer under her protection.”

“That is indeed sad news, friend,” Soul-Fire lamented, but Snail-Walker continued.

“It is not the forsaking of our Faith that has brought me here, my tidings are far worse. A preternatural malevolence has awoken and cannot be contained even by the mountains: the Ice Giants have returned.”

“Ice Giants?” Shocked, Soul-Fire coughed. “You mean to say that the ancient prophesies—the ones from before the Flood—are true?”

“Just as the tablets promised.”

“The famines… the droughts… the misfortune that has befallen us… our rituals have been in vain,” Soul-Fire muttered in pensive staccato, hemorrhaging his wasted faith with each sputtered word.