Chapter 7

The expedition made good time for the first few days. A considerable body of men at arms was taken along to act as a bodyguard. Mearch, Royal Armorer, stayed behind to keep the city garrison.

They marched parallel to the river through the midst of the gulf plains for a good distance, and were able to travel with little danger through the fertile lush vegetation.

Eventually, they left behind the last outpost of the Emperor's domain, and it was with a lonely, forbidding feeling that Si'Wren watched the trader urged his camel forward at the head of the long column. From now on, he was to act as their only guide, and they were to put their trust in him, as he lead them into an unfamiliar and hostile world in which all men were to be automatically regarded as enemies until proven otherwise.

The trader had traversed the entire distance himself, and had kept a good record of his travels, which journal was employed now as their only hope of locating the legendary Patriarch Noah. However, chance encounters with various refugees fleeing in the opposite direction later in the day, brought out the news from several independent sources that a terrible war between two kings, rival brothers, had made their chosen route impassable.

Borla finally called a halt and a short conference was held. He looked deeply concerned, and for good reason. Although Si'Wren was called to attendance, she was not asked to make a record of it because it was felt that once they had decided which way to go, there would be no need of further mention of their predicament. Borla was reluctant to see the men caught up in some local squabble, and Emperor Euphrates readily agreed that it was better to keep the troops fresh and in high spirits, for they had a great journey ahead of them.

Hence, Si'Wren was able to learn firsthand of their deep-rooted fear, as the fateful decision was finally made to turn aside. It was something of an eye-opener for Si'Wren to learn that her mighty Emperor could possibly be afraid of anything to the point of actually avoiding a deliberate showdown, and taught her much about the immensity and hostility of the world.

She could not help but share their fear, when they finally concluded their impromptu conference of the leaders of the Captains of Fifty, and with false bravado, announced to the men their intention of striking out across-country into an uncharted domain, in a forced-march across a profligate wilderness in which both men and beasts were so savage that civilized souls did not venture forth unless they went in large, heavily armed groups and then only with good reason.

To Si'Wren, it was readily apparent that they would no longer know for certain how best to direct their path. The trader himself would only have the most vague idea of which meander to take at every fork. What with the unbelievable twisting of the various water courses and almost complete impassibility of various forms of terrain they had encountered so far, their journey had become a maze at which the most intelligent and informed of them could only guess which way to turn. Even with experienced scouts sent ahead on horseback to search out their route, they were in a constant quandary over which way to go next.

After several days, their journey took them up out of the plains into the humid highlands of a continuous jungle in which plants and animals grew in a great profusion such as Si'Wren could not have believed possible had she not seen it with her own eyes.

Each evening, the Captains of Fifty posted their outwatches, and Emperor Euphrates summoned Si'Wren to him, and by the light of a bonfire would question her at length about the Invisible God. Si'Wren tried to instruct him as best she could using her clay tablets, portions of which she sometimes hastily backtracked and obliterated with the heel of her palm, to make way for better explanations. She hardly knew what to write but seemed to make sense enough to please his Majesty, if not herself.

For it was a bewildering contest in which the established deities stood linked rank upon rank against her Invisible God, and the thought of what the Patriarch Noah would have said weighed heavily upon her mind. As a result she was frequently plagued by hesitation and confusion as Emperor Euphrates waited patiently to read each reply from her, and Si'Wren was thankful that scornful Borla was not a participant.

But always, upon retiring to her tent each night after yet another long 'discussion' with her Emperor, Si'Wren was left feeling wrung dry. Then, surrounded by pitch darkness and the strange distant cries of unseen night creatures both great and small, she would pray fervently to Him in private, and finally slip away into sleep wondering yet again what sort of a God could have produced such a far-reaching creation in which man and beast alike so readily displayed such unbridled savagery and madness.

* * *

One night, as they sat encamped on a broad hilltop clearing, Si'Wren watched the thickening night mists roll over the land, swathing the jungles of the hills and valleys in a gauzy white shroud, and she considered at length what the Invisible God would have wanted her to communicate to her Emperor, if she could but guess rightly even one time what that might be.

But she was left, as before, with a wilderness of the soul like unto that surrounding them, in which the elusive refuge of Divine Truth seemed as remote as the tale of the Prophet Noah's mythical ark.

They were resting and warming themselves at fireside, having just finished the evening repast. She had extra clay tablets stacked beside her, with one in her lap, having just finished the dictations of Borla's notes about the day's journey into this strange land.

* * *

A little earlier, right after making camp, one of Emperor Euphrates's Captains of Fifty had approached and thrown himself down before Emperor Euphrates, to complain loudly to the dust under his nose that Si'Wren's beauty was exceeding distracting to the men because of the way they could not help watching her while she consumed her food. He also alleged she was coquettish in her manner and playing the flirt to his men. They could not bear it, he said, and had voiced numerous and bitter complaints to him about such an unconquerable distraction.

Further, he declared that they were justified in their protestations, for behold, were they not all under enforced celibacy because they could not bring along their accustomed camp prostitutes on the long forced march to Noah's land?

Si'Wren, of course, could say nothing in her own defense, but expected that her Emperor might, because he already knew that she was sworn to such higher callings as precluded by their very nature the rottenness of character necessary for her to act in the manner she stood accused of. It was simply beneath her dignity, not to mention her calling. Besides which, her suitably modest behavior did not seem to have displeased Emperor Euphrates or Borla in the past, and this was the first time she had ever heard of such complaints.

But after her Emperor had ordered the Captain to return to his men, to her chagrin, he had commanded Si'Wren that she should retire to her tent whenever eating.

To Si'Wren, it seemed ridiculous, but henceforth she knew that she must comply obediently without question.

* * *

Now, the memory of her indignity was put aside as Si'Wren sat before Emperor Euphrates and inscribed in her tablets her intuitions regarding the Invisible God.

Tonight she was attempting to explain, out of her own ignorance, with but her own trueness of conscience to guide her, that the Invisible God was not the same thing as his creation, the world, and also that, although he was also spirit, or 'wind', he also liked to compare himself in some ways, although not all ways, to water.

For instance, one might venture to 'see' the Invisible God by a most curious trick of the eye, as by the discovered reflection of one's face when looking into the still, motionless surface of any pond or wash basin of water, which was also, after a fashion, invisible. In the same manner that might one 'see' all things by looking obliquely at their reflection in the still water, so also was the Invisible God both 'seen' in his creation, as by reflection upon water, and yet not seen at all, since water was itself invisible.

Emperor Euphrates read this upon her clay tablet, and smiled as he held low before her eyes the mirrored surface of a golden goblet of red wine and suggested, "This also, yes?"

Si'Wren hesitated long and contemplatively, as he held it low before her eyes, so that she might study his grinning reflection in the deep red of the wine. God was spirit. Wine was a spirit drink. This perplexed her deeply, for she wished not to blaspheme. Finally, after thinking it over intently, she bowed low and agreed with a brief hesitant nod. Yes, she wrote, praying she would not offend Him; The Invisible God might be like wine.

Getting back to her basic belief that He was like water, she wrote further, begging the question; Who can make an idol to represent water? Water flows like a living thing, and can bear no set shape, and how shall the finest sculptor thus fashion copies of silver or gold to sell and get gain?

The happenstance mention of the Invisible God's remarkable immunity to the touch of filthy lucre, a truth conclusively established by the impossibility of selling idols of him, seemed to impress her Emperor beyond all measure. For he spent all of his days, dealing with the contests and affairs of men who all wanted it, and who were all, without exception, corrupted by it's touch.

Later, Emperor Euphrates sat staring out into the gathering dusk, and appeared deep in thought, as if much affected by what she had written.

Si'Wren had long since come to learn that even when one conversed with Emperor Euphrates, and seemed to have his entire, undivided attention, part of his mind was ever awander as he considered all things in his great kingdom. He had that look about him now. He had a marvelous mind, that seemed to find clarity where others might perceive only the sheer, blind face of an inner stone wall.

The advancing fog of eventide had already covered and obscured the lowlands, giving one the exalt sensation of looking down as from heaven itself upon all the world, and cloaking symbolically with the gathering darkness it's all-encompassing evils as with some inscrutable divine forbearance. A forbearance, Si'Wren reminded herself, which the foreboding ark of Noah bespoke to be nearly at an end, and which thenceforth would be turned to wroth.

She listened to the unseen cries of creatures in the jungle, while the fire crackled and snapped, warming her. Basking in it's heat, she felt lulled by the flickering flames.

"You are most obedient and dutiful," said Emperor Euphrates.

At this, Si'Wren looked up at him expectantly, waiting respectfully to see if he would say more.

"Must you always wear your hair up in such dreadful braids?" he went on. "You should let it out. You are a beautiful girl. You should display your beauty, for your Emperor's glory and enjoyment."

Si'Wren looked up at him in involuntary surprise, and when he smiled further encouragement, she bowed low, and raised herself again to full upright sitting posture.

After a moment's awkward hesitation, she dropped her eyes shyly as, unsmiling, she reached back with both hands, her countenance downcast in deep modesty, and self-consciously undid the tie that held her long braid secure at the end.

She played her fingers through her hair, unraveling it until it fell loosely across her shoulders and she was able to shake it out in a glossy reflective black that shone with red-orange highlights from the dancing flames.

Tired from the day's riding, she gazed again into the fire pit, feeling infinitely more relaxed by the loosening of her braid and secretly gnawing a corner of her lip in unconscious self-doubt. First she was instructed to eat in her tent so as not to unduly arouse the troops, and now--this. She did not know quite what to make of it.

"The Invisible God who hates idols," said Emperor Euphrates. He paused thoughtfully, before going on. "Is he not like unto this fire before us, a 'living fire', as it were?"

Si'Wren frowned at this new idea. Then, after a long hesitation, she finally wrote on her clay tablet, 'It is possible', and tilted the face of the tablet so the fire itself could illuminate it.

"Then, is not the Invisible God the same thing as our very own Sun God?" asked Emperor Euphrates quickly, as if pouncing on the winning point of a most cleverly-worded argument.

'Not so', wrote Si'Wren, without hesitation.

She showed this to Emperor Euphrates. Then she turned the tablet towards herself, and wrote further upon it. Finally, she turned it towards Emperor Euphrates again.

'The Invisible God,' Si'Wren had now written, 'in Whom, like water, all things are reflected, is the Creator of all things. But if He made all things, then He must be higher than all things or idols.'

"I see," said Emperor Euphrates, when he had read this. "Tell me, then, shall we see this Invisible God, when we die?"

Si'Wren thought at length, and finally, without writing anything more, turned her tablet to him and indicated, using her ivory writing stick as a pointer, her earlier line wherein she had written, 'It is possible'.

Emperor Euphrates regarded the line for a long moment, and finally, he said quietly, "So..."

He nodded thoughtfully to himself, and remained silent.

After a short time, during which interval he said nothing more, he retired to his tent for the night, while an honor guard of four spearmen stood outside of it's four corners in silent, constant vigilance.

Si'Wren was left sitting before the fire, staring down at her assortment of clay tablets as she thought intently about the true nature of the Invisible God.

For, besides the parable of a reflection in water, she did not truly know. There was so little to go on, certainly nothing written, whereas others had such magnificent idols of wood, ivory, noble metals, and fine gemstones crafted by the gifted hands of talented men. They also had their ceremonies, their priests, their temple servants. It was so easy for them to give an answer to any difficult question, and to reassure one-another that they were so right.

But as for Si'Wren and her Invisible God, she could only feel a deep, chiasmic remorse that there was no one to ask, and she knew of no other living true believer in the whole wide world now, besides herself, and the Patriarch Noah, whom she knew not.

* * *

That night the clouds gathered thick and dark, and the very air itself seemed charged, and deathly still. It made the men grumble uneasily, fearing what monsters or insanities their imaginations might conjure.

All of a sudden, there was a blinding flash in the black night as a bolt of lightning struck the ground just outside the camp, it's searing brilliance accompanied by an ear-splitting CRRRRAAACK!!! and an echoing thunder that rumbled across the darkened heavens.

Terrified, the entire camp scrambled for cover.

It was the beginning of a terrible lightning storm. Far into the night, coruscating bolts like living javelins of fire struck the ground again and again with their blinding stabs of jagged light. Si'Wren hid also, wondering as she cowered whether the Invisible God was angry with her for giving such clumsy explanations to the Emperor, or so pleased as to reinforce her mere clay words with divine, jaggedly brilliant writing sticks of his own.

One foot soldier could suddenly stand it no longer, and ran off screaming thin shrill cries into the darkness. He had just reached a little hilltop, a mere rise in the land, when -still shouting madly and hysterically- he was hit and blasted. His body lay in a heap, twisted and blackened, the clothes shredded.

Thunder rolled across the darkened land. The camels, horses, and other pack animals were already thoroughly spooked, and Borla gave orders that the precious, irreplaceable animals be given hands-on guarding throughout the night lest they break their tethers and run away.

But some of the watchmen refused to go out into the lightning-filled darkness of this strange and foreign land at first. Then a new form of thunder could be heard throughout the camp, the crack of whips as the Captains of Fifty drove their fearful watchmen out of their tents to go to their duty posts.

Si'Wren sat in her tent and fought hard not to cower or grovel before the storm, and would have passed the entire night in prayer to the Invisible God, had she not finally collapsed into an exhausted slumber filled with tormented dreams and terrible, awful visions.

* * *

With the coming of the dawn, the world seemed a saner place again. The sun rose, and the sky slowly brightened, and soon, except for a certain sullenness in some faces, the soldiers were about their appointed tasks almost as if nothing had happened. Si'Wren arose, and groomed her horse, and saw to his provender. Only after she had taken care of the glossy black stallion, whom she admired more than any horse in existence, did she think of her own needs.

"Am I not," Emperor Euphrates said over a sumptuous breakfast, as he sat gazing speculatively into the freshly fagoted flames of the morning cooking fire, "Emperor Euphrates, ordained of a God who rules even the lightning and sees fit occasionally to pass men through the burning mantle, even as he struck down one of my subjects this past night? And as Emperor, am I not able to do and command as I please, that I might order a child to be passed through the fire, the better to imitate and please this God?"

Si'Wren's eyes grew large in shock and alarm as she paused in preparing her repast to look up at him suddenly. She was about to retire to her tent, but all thought of nourishment was forgotten as she shook her head vigorously in the negative. Then in response to his words she put aside her breakfast and rose to her feet. Resorting to her tent, she retrieved the clay tablet of the night before and emerged holding it by it's bamboo-backed box frame.

'Not so', she wrote, and showed it to him.

Then, growing bolder, she turned it to herself, and underlined with exaggerated slowness this direct refutation, and turned it again to show him, regarding him eye to eye with a certain sense of somber gravity. She was not talking so much with words now, but with her entire physical posture for added emphasis.

He could have had her executed, for it was dangerously disloyal to contradict him like that, especially with any question having directly to do with the gods.

"Ah, so," said Emperor Euphrates, nodding. "Not to kill unnecessarily, I suppose, eh? But, of a truth, we all know that without shedding of blood, there can be no sacrifice. According to the old legends, was not Adam himself covered with an animal skin when he was banished from the Garden of Eden? Surely, if this Invisible God--"

He paused, looking obliquely past Si'Wren, as if searching for some clue of more than passing significance, the better to pursue his unusual chain of logic.

'To be merciful,' Si'Wren wrote, remaining carefully apropos of his own words. Then she added, 'Kindness is better than cruelty.'

"You think so? But does not even this depend upon the circumstances? Foolish men must be punished, and what the gods declare must be carried out. Do you not agree?"

Si'Wren hesitated, and felt a great upwelling of truth that would no longer be quelled. She paused with marking sticks held poised in stilled fingers above the moist clay, and then made her first markings in its smooth freshness. What she was about to write would be rank blasphemy, but she could no longer contain herself.

'The smith', Si'Wren wrote, 'labors hard in the coals, using tongs. He pounds his many gods with endless hammerings, working by the strength of his arms. He is mortal, for he hungers, and his strength fails, and if he drinks no water he soon grows faint, yet he has created his own gods, which if they truly lived, would be battered witless anyways from the noise of hammer and anvil, even as they are shaped to make them ready to sell.'

That seemed a fitting beginning.

Seeing she had her Emperor's complete and undivided attention, Si'Wren was emboldened to inscribe further, 'The craftsman measures with his eye, and marks with his forearm; he whittles pegs to pound into the holes he has made, and attaches a head and arms onto a graven block of wood, making block-heads to bow down to. He marks eyes, nose, and mouth with the dividers, and showers the ground with the unwanted kindling as he fashions the figure of a monster man, to stand in the nook by the front door and impress his visitors as they come in.'

Then, still dissatisfied, she took a deep breath, poised and motionless with her marking tools in her fingers, and finally set to work as she began to really spell it out, knowing she might not get another chance if she were to be executed for her troubles.

'He plants trees which are watered by the hind leg of his own dogs. Then he hews down the beautiful trees; cypress, oak, and ash.'

Running out of space, she laid the tablet before the Emperor and drew another to her, and as he read and watched in benumbed astonishment, she continued resolutely;

'Then shall his god warm him: for he will take the kindling and wood chips to make his own fire, wearing down his gnashing teeth on coarse stone grit bread baked with the coals made from the self-same trees, and bowing down to the termite nests hidden in the hearts of his gods.'

Si'Wren felt she was on the right track at last, after so many doubts in her own heart. Ever since the death of Nelatha, she'd had such doubts, but no more.

The ivory stick-ends moved to an enchanting, arrhythmic tempo as she marked on swiftly;

'He burns the cedar fleas of his god to begat roasted pig's flesh, and says, Aha!, I am warm, my god is a wood fire. He falls down before such and tearfully worships their acrid, stinking smoke, and licks dust, crying loudly, Spare me oh gods!'

Si'Wren thought of the wrath of Master Rababull, long-dead, and what he had done to poor defenseless Nelatha. Then she thought of the sudden fate of Sorpiala, and how one never knew when one's time might come.

Si'Wren sensed a great consternation in Emperor Euphrates, though she barely glimpsed him out of the corner of her eye as he continued to read her words as fast as she could write them.

Then, she finished her statement as her sticks worked almost in a blur;

'Shall I bow my living face down and eat of the dust that not only covers all things but also collects upon their dumb wooden heads?'

Si'Wren stopped and sighed, waiting, and expecting any moment for an avenging sword to be loudly and vehemently called for, that she be dispatched in no short order with the same gruesome fate such as Nelatha had suffered.

But all she heard was the heavy breathing of her mighty Emperor Euphrates, as he stared long at her clay words. She knew he was especially fond of her personal manner of marking the clay, her especially delicate but incisive 'writing style', which was as rare art to the old monarch, but she knew also, that this former fondness of his toward her would only serve to make him all the more angry, should he finally pass the boiling point in his outraged idolater's heart.

The pale morning fire danced and flickered, the flames hot and virtually invisible in the gathering light of day, and she remembered a delirious dream from that terrible, dark night immediately following her evil punishment by Master Rababull. Then, she had only imagined demons--or had she? Si'Wren considered silently, reflecting upon events in her mind. Were there not real demons round about them in the wilderness, following them by day like an invisible cloud of spirit gargoyles, and hemming them in by night, seeking the death of one such as she by the hand of some mad possessed sword-wielder should her Emperor but once command it?

"Truly, no mere idol-worshiper has ever spoken to me thus," Emperor Euphrates nodded wryly, as she perceived that even as he read her words, he was now thoroughly enjoying himself with the game of foolish girl and divine Emperor. But which would he honor; the 'false truth' of his idols, or the 'truth made foolishness' of her Invisible God? For, far too often, her words did seem foolish, even to herself.

Then he looked up in grudging acknowledgment, a mighty Emperor's honest tribute to a mere girl scribe's simple wisdom, and said;

"Si'Wren, oh my beautiful, literary one, I suppose if the same spiritual laws were applied by this Invisible God to all without exception, would it not be made obvious that God is no respecter of persons, and that even Emperor Euphrates himself is but one more humble subject before him?"

At this, Si'Wren, regarding her now-cooled wooden bowl of porridge, hesitated a long time. She felt deeply overawed, that she should be given such unprecedented favor in her Emperor's eyes as to blaspheme his gods so freely and treat them all as false. Perhaps he was only playing with her to mock her beliefs, before finally putting her out of her misery. Any conversation with the Emperor was a matter deserving of the most serious consideration, regardless of whether it be mere jest, or otherwise.

Si'Wren sipped a little water, and considered what to write next, whether to pursue the argument this way or that way. She did not want to seem to belittle her Emperor, even by his own example. She was no fulcrum of understanding. However, in her heart, she could only believe that mere idols were most difficult to obtain a verbal reply from, notwithstanding the obvious fact that the Invisible God had been equally silent to her throughout her entire short life.

It was hazard enough to agree with the willing self-criticism of the common man; how much more so that of one's own Emperor? But his questions were unusually persistent this time.

"Is it not truly so, little one?" Emperor Euphrates inquired, trying to give her encouragement. "See now; you have thrown down such a gauntlet as no master swordsman has ever dared to hurl, in valiant challenge to my gods and hence my own majesty and empire. Your marking sticks are mightier than their swords, and as Royal Scribe, surely you are not so afraid of what a few 'chicken scratches' in the clay on your part will reap. For if you would share thoughts of majesty worthy of your Emperor, you must consider that if you quit now like a coward, how shall such stillborn beliefs bring any hope of a harvest of reason, instead of the expected whirlwind?"

Si'Wren looked up at the dense, impenetrable foliage of the treetops covering a steep forested hillside nearby, and considered this at length. She finally lifted and poised her marking sticks over the soft clay, her fingers hovering as she prepared to reply further.

But just then Borla approached, and so Si'Wren merely bowed low to her Emperor and waited respectfully for Borla to speak.

Emperor Euphrates looked up at Borla and said to him without the slightest preamble, "Borla, is not even the great Emperor Euphrates a mere humble subject before God?"

Borla, put on the spot so directly, hesitated, and finally stammered fearfully, "My Emperor, you are ordained of the gods."

"If God can ordain," Emperor Euphrates persisted, ignoring the difference in their words, for Borla had said 'gods' whereas Emperor Euphrates had said 'God', "can he not unordain what he has already ordained?"

"God--is God!" said Borla, finally catching on to Emperor Euphrates's unusual, singular form of referring to divinity. He had never heard his Emperor refer to the gods in the singular like this, and seeing Si'Wren present with her tablets, instantly suspected the truth and seemed to shrink back visibly from Si'Wren's openly blasphemous notion of only one God.

"God--is," said Emperor Euphrates, as if ruminating to himself.

An awkward silence ensued.

"Highness," interrupted Borla finally, "if I may speak of important matters pertaining to the camp. I have made my morning rounds. A foraging party was sent out, and has just returned with unfortunate news. Two of the men in their group departed from the main party to go off on their own in search of better fare. They were surprised and set upon by a most fearsome-looking creature with great saber-teeth. Both of them perished. Utterly torn asunder. Unfortunately," Borla concluded, "it seems that the hunters became the hunted, for their lack of vigilance."

He went on, "Nevertheless, they were only seeking provisions for the camp, and I gave permission for an honorable burial to be made."

"Ah, yes. Is not vigilance ever and anon, a most curiously wanting virtue?" pronounced Emperor Euphrates. "Well done, wise Borla."

"The wisdom of your judgements exceeds that of all men, Highness," Borla said in unthinking self-deprecation. "I also ordered a man to be executed, a foot soldier who vowed he had forsaken all other gods, in favor of the Invisible God who hates idols."

Si'Wren jerked to her feet suddenly and stood before them both, her tormented eyes beseeching them disbelievingly that she had heard wrong this accursed man's words.

At this, Borla turned his head toward her as if not realizing quite why she had reacted so violently, whereas Emperor Euphrates merely observed her with inquisitively raised eyebrows and a certain unexpressive watchfulness.

Glancing away from Si'Wren, Borla inclined slightly to Emperor Euphrates with a thin smile of the very finest and most cultured cordiality, and said with an exaggerated mildness, "I only seek ever to do your will, Highness, but it seems another has perhaps--found fault?--"

Borla shifted his slyly conniving eyes innocuously back to Si'Wren's grieving, outraged countenance.

She stared up at him, having just finished a quick inscription, and held it up with no small measure of anger and impotence for him to read.

'Is the thing done?' read the newest line of her clay tablet.

For, above this, many wonderful messages about the Invisible God had been written for the Emperor's benefit.

"Ah!" said Borla, nodding peremptorily.

He held out his hand, and after a moment of confusion, Si'Wren placed the ivory writing sticks into his upturned palm.

Then, Borla insolently took her clay tablet, wrote mockingly upon it, and handed it back with a contemptuous flourish.

'It is finished,' read Borla's new line.

Si'Wren looked down at the tablet, eyes full of anguish, and reached to snatch one stick back from Borla to write quickly and far less perfectly, 'Where have they laid the body?'

Borla looked into her eyes with a serpent's wisdom as he nodded at this remark, and letting her hang onto the tablet, he merely inscribed the even more carelessly written reply, 'In yonder field.'

Then he waited with his arm half-raised, until she had finished reading this and looked up at him to see whence he pointed.

He raised his arm a little further and aimed a bony finger across the camp beyond it's far southern boundary, past which could be glimpsed a vast, sloping stretch of outlying fields, with the higher foothills to the right, and the far lowlands whence they had all come, somewhere beyond and to the left.

These were no level, cultivated fields, but were totally in the wilds, as was most of the world. They were riddled by a network of deep, almost impassable erosion gullies that were choked through their centers by dense clusters of bamboo and great interwoven hoops of enormously spiked, thorny vines, and bordered by dense copses of green trees interspersed by tall grass.

"You may go and do with the body as you please," said Borla, half deprecatingly. "I know it is a difficult place to search, but you will find it in the nearest gully. I oversaw the entire unfortunate business myself."

Borla turned to Emperor Euphrates, and continued, "As with all dishonorable deaths, the body was left exposed, and not buried."

Angry tears in her eyes, Si'Wren stood there with the clay tablet in her right hand and stared up at Borla malevolently for a long, frozen moment.

"Highness," Borla said mildly, "it would appear that the great flood has already arrived, if one would judge by this maid's cheeks. Perhaps the messenger's story was but a clever parable pertaining to such."

Emperor Euphrates said nothing, and Si'Wren reflected that one's Emperor could do as he pleased, with none to dare speak against him. On the other hand, there appeared to be nothing to prevent her from going, either.

Mindful of what her unaccustomed task would entail, Si'Wren turned and gently laid the clay tablet with its marvelous truths, and terrible last inscriptions, just inside the entrance to her tent.

Inside, her fingers trembling with every move, she turned and retrieved a stone oil lamp and a sparking flint from her tent. As she did this, she realized that one thing more was needful, to accomplish what must be done.

She needed a tarp, and a woven blanket would not do. It must be something strong and durable enough to serve it's purpose and not snag on the weeds or rip open, that the burial should be fittingly accomplished.

Looking up, her eyes fixed upon the leather door flap of her tent, suspended across the opening.

Setting down the stone oil lamp, she reached up to one upper end of it and tugged steadily while sawing at the thin strong threads of sinew with a knife, until she popped the corner loose.

Ignoring the disapproving and contemptuous look of Borla as he watched, and oblivious of the stares of the guards, and the Captains of Fifty who had accompanied Borla to received their Orders of the Day, and the Emperor himself, Si'Wren reached up to the lone dangling corner of the tent flap for a fresh grip, and applied the knife to the binding threads of sinew as she pulled steadily at it, until it also came loose and dropped into her arms in a thin swirl of dried dust.

She folded the tent flap over and rolled up various items within it. Then she went out resolutely to her horse, and tied the bundle behind her saddle.

Then without so much as a backwards glance, she led the black stallion to a nearby rock, which she climbed, and mounted, and turned and galloped him across the compound toward the far perimeter of the camp, with many a warrior's lusting eyes looking on as she rode out of camp with the oil lamp in one hand.

Oil lamps were made for darkness. Plainly, seeing it was still but morning, the men watching her ride away were not a little curious as to her destination with a lamp at such an early hour.

* * *

When she found him, it was not yet as she had feared.

She quickly located the body by the sight of a large flock of vultures wheeling and circling overhead. Nearby, a cluster of hyenas was already sniffing around, still trying to find the body.

Hyenas, with their silly laugh and ugly, death's-head faces, could crush ox bones with their powerful jaws. They usually ran in packs, and she considered them -as did any decent folk- to be cowardly, dangerous, and disgusting animals.

But they had not quite succeeded in locating the body yet, and the man's motionless remains lay virtually unscathed, except for the mortal wounds from his execution at the orders of Borla. His lifeless body had been left lying face-down beside a series of downwards sloping, shaded stretches near a gently banked, zig-zag ravine that meandered through the broad field.

A wide ground covering of white-streaked, blue morning glory flowers interlaced throughout with green leaves, adorned the banks of the ravine, trumpeting silent praises to God. Their little green vines, with their countless green stepping-stone leaves were outstretched like a living carpet that extended away from her in an uneven boundary restricted to the shade in a series of wide, irregular patterns, patches, and grassy missed sections.

Farther from the ravine, tall sawtooth grass clumps fountained perpetual white floral sprays into the air from shooting star sticks in their centers. The clumps were surrounded by field grass interspersed with bare sand and gravel patches. The field stretched away from the banks of the crooked watercourse, in which the morning glories kept mostly to the sheltering canopy of overhanging tree boughs.

If his body had slid or rolled just a little farther beyond where it now lay, it would have gone down the side of the more steeply banked inner run of the ravine and continued into the bottom, which ditched down much more sharply into a pronounced drop-off.

The center of the ditch contained a profusion of spiked briars and berry brambles of a size such as to give pause to the most determined invader, and was undoubtedly rife with scorpions, spiders, flying stinging insects, huge venomous vipers, and other unguessable horrors, from which depths it would have been plainly hopeless for her to venture the recovery of the foot soldier's body again.

But to her good fortune, the body had not gone too far, and the impromptu pall-bearers -his former comrades-at-arms- had not bothered to make a better effort of their thankless task.

Si'Wren knelt down beside an exposed rock, placing her little stone lamp upon it. Pouring carefully from a small oilskin pouch, she filled it with oil, taking care not to spill any. Then she took the flint out of a pouch, together with a little bit of punk, or fine, dried grass, and placed it beside the oil lamp, whereupon she contrived with several deft strikes of the flint and a series of expertly aimed sparks to start the punk to glowing with a single precious spark enmeshed deep within its crushed dry bosom, and blow gently upon it, and soon had a flame. With this in turn she lighted the oil lamp's pour spout.

Successful at last in doing this, she paused and somberly studied the lighted lamp with it's pale flame wavering a little in the still morning air.

Abruptly she heard a noise, and looked behind her in alarm to see that the pack of hyenas she had passed while riding in, had already cut off her escape route and was preparing to close in on her. The stallion still stood his ground, but was already becoming spooked and would not be manageable for too much longer. A few of the hyenas were already trying to work up their nerve to make the initial charge.

Protectively, Si'Wren picked up the oil lamp and stepped forward between the pack of hyenas and her nervously neighing horse.

The black continued stamping his hooves and neighing loudly, rearing animatedly several times to show his readiness to defend himself from all comers. It appeared that he might decide either to attack or break and run at any moment if they continued to provoke him much longer. That must not happen, for to Si'Wren the stallion represented survival itself in a land like this.

She stopped and stood motionless, a puny figure of a wayfarer, with her silly little oil lamp in her hand. Lamps were used to dispel darkness, and to carry their blessed light into any place where evil might lurk, but here was evil in the day.

The biggest hyena finally made a run for her. She stood her ground until almost at the last, then with a deft side-step she shifted lightly to one side and swung the lamp out in a quick little semi-circle at the big scavenger.

Fire gouted from the lamp and engulfed the hyena. Immolated in living flames, the surprised beast spun around and ran madly across the field, squealing and howling shrilly as if demon-possessed and leaving a series of burning and smoldering green vegetation patches that smoked and roared and popped as they burned in the aftermath of it's wayward wake. At it's approach, the other hyenas broke and ran, the whites of their eyes rolling in maddened fear and squealing their weird frenzied laughter as they scattered mindlessly in all directions.

Si'Wren wrinkled her nose at the stink of the hyena's burning flesh and singed hoary hairs, watching the smoke from it's still-flaming hide. The unity of the squealing pack had been thoroughly disrupted. After watching a moment longer, Si'Wren set down the little clay lamp on the rock, experiencing a grim sense of momentary relief. She had expected hot oil to come out, not fire. Next, she turned resolutely to the ravine.

It was a daunting task she had chosen, but she set herself to the job with a deep, shuddering sigh and stepped in, her mere presence sufficient to scare off any vulture that might have dared oppose her.

Behind her, the sounds of the scattered hyena pack could still be heard as they screamed for their lives, with the burned one screaming endlessly the loudest. The few visible remaining hyenas stood at a respectful distance and watched in great agitation, but none demonstrated the slightest tendency to challenge her authority a second time.

She stood over the ruined body of the executed foot soldier, eyes set to the task. With the scavengers safely backed off, she had a little more time in which to consider what to do next, and returned to the stallion and took a braided hemp rope from the saddle, and knotted one end through a leather pack strap.

Then she untied the tent flap, and took down her little sewing kit in a leathern bag, which consisted of a single thin bone needle, a collection of fine sinew strands, and a flint cutting stone too small to be called a knife, but more like a crude flaying tool.

Backing away from the blessedly stationary horse, which still neighed and stamped his hooves at the distant hyenas, Si'Wren began to uncoil the rope as she descended the broad, gently sloping shoulder of the ravine again. It was not too steep where the body lay, and she did not need to use the rope to keep her from losing her balance.

Nearing the body, which lay face-down, she waded ankle-deep through the white-streaked blue trumpet flowers and little round green leaves of the morning glories and positioned herself, before spreading out the tent flap with a quick shake and a sudden snapping motion to lay it out close beside the body. Because of the morning glories, the tent flap did not fall immediately flat, but suspended itself just above the ground, in a lumpy sheet that continued to settle gradually but more slowly after the initial crush.

After a brief, distracted visual once-over to make sure the flap was as well-positioned as she could get it, she bent over the man and endeavored to roll him over onto the expanse of the tent flap, so that he should come to rest lying squarely upon it face-up.

This she finally accomplished, although not without considerable difficulty.

Weeping now, she pretended that she could not see what she could not help but see and which only her tears could blur mercifully, which was the terrible ravages of his torment in the final stages before his death. She reached across to gently fold the two exposed edges of the tent flap together full-length, and over the crossed arms of the man's ruined body, covering all with the animal skin, and stopped suddenly to bend low over him, eyes blurred and sobbing quietly and hopelessly.

She remained this way for she knew not how long, unable to go on.

Then, realizing that she dared not delay lest some other fierce creature should happen to pass by and take notice of her activities, she endeavored to continue. Her fingers trembling and shaking with grief, she sewed together the two sides of the tent flap that met over his criss-crossed forearms and waist, creating a crude shroud for the man's body.

Somberly, she regarded the battered face within the shroud with a terrible sense of foreboding. She was no longer able to obtain spices so freely as she once might have done in the spice tent of Master Rababull, in order to properly prepare the body for burial. So in place of spices, she swept up a bunch of morning glories and gently laid them about his head, framing his battered face.

Finally, she sewed up the ends, covering all.

Blinking back her tears, she turned to one side and reached for the flint flaying tool, with which to cut off two short pieces of hemp rope, measuring carefully. Then, one end at a time, she gathered together the two ends of the shroud that extended one beyond the head and one beyond the feet, folding each one over and tying it shut in turn.

Lastly, she passed the loose end of the long tow rope, the other end of which was attached to her horse's saddle, under the folded and knotted end of the shroud, just above where the head of the man's body was. This way, she could draw him, without actually tying onto his body, which would have been too much like dragging a mere dead animal and a thoroughly dishonorable act.

Finished at last, she stood up suddenly, and then swayed giddily, almost physically overcome by everything for just a brief moment. Regaining her composure and sense of balance, she turned to her horse.

Standing beside him, she began backing him up slowly, moving together with him when he moved, his great clopping hooves stamping the earth mightily one at a time like the sound of a giant's hammers, as he backed away slowly until he progressively drew the rope taut. Continuing with him in this manner, Si'Wren encouraged him until he began to drag the shroud containing the lifeless man's body from the gentle slope of the wide, shallow ravine and up onto level turf. The shroud vaguely resembled the color and shape of a boat being dragged up a dried-grass beach from a shadowy blue-white and green sea of morning glories.

Although the land beyond the ravine was fairly smooth, it grieved her in no small measure to have to treat the foot soldier's mortal remains even so disrespectfully as this, but at least the tent flap could afford some small measure of protection.

Spying a steep upjutting hill of fractured rock nearby, the base of which consisted of jaggedly strewn loose shale and myriads of angular rock fragments, she worked her horse like a draft beast and drew the burden the remaining distance directly to it's base, until it came to rest within the split of a rock, the split being just wide enough to admit the shroud, so that it was closely sheltered on both sides by the rock. There, she untied the tow rope from the saddle and shroud, although she left the shroud entirely closed up with it's end-ties intact.

She looked up at the pinnacle of the tall hill, and then down at the field of broken rock around her. Much loose shale had fallen from the slope, affording her with plenty of raw material.

She began lugging the heaviest stones she could possibly move one at a time and building them up in successive layers in a protective barrier around the shrouded body. Finally, she stopped to look around, and realized that she was running out of the right-sized rocks. Dismayed, she realized that she was nearing the limit of her strength, and had not half-covered the body yet. What could she do?

The fact of the matter was, the rocks must not only be large enough to keep the hyenas and other large animals from digging through, but in spite of this, they must at the same time be small enough for her to be able to physically move them. What remained to her now were stones which were all either too large to lift, or too small to be of proper use to her. She was left in a quandary, for much work remained if the burial mound was to be properly constructed. The hyenas had gone, but they were sure to return after her departure. Then, as she looked up at the steep, uneven slope, she thought of a way that she might resolve her dilemma.

First she walked her horse a safe ways off, and stood him there.

She knew he would remain wherever she left him until she returned, and was extremely unlikely to simply run away. He was very loyal to her, because of the way she dealt with him, being consistently sensitive and gentle, but firm. Moreover, he had to be free to defend himself or flee for his life, if necessary. Left to himself temporarily like this, the most he might do would be to graze at successively farther locations, which was only natural.

Then she climbed the slope, and began picking out more of the right-size stones. These she dislodged, to send tumbling down near the body, one by one, where they landed and lay scattered, providing plenty of new material for the unfinished cairn.

Then, with the unintentional dislodging of an especially large boulder, she watched aghast as it rolled with a monumental grinding, banging, and crunching down the slope and quickly picked up speed and momentum.

As she watched it whacking and pounding it's way downhill like a runaway battering ram, suddenly the entire slope below her gave way with a huge roar, sending up the billowing wave of an immense rising dust cloud as the slope below her began to disintegrate and collapse in a great tilting-over cascade of grinding and smashing rock.

Helpless to stop what she had unleashed, Si'Wren watched in fear and dismay as her horse neighed in terror and reared and galloped away. In the distance, thousands of frightened, fleeing pure white birds arose above the treetops to blacken the sky with their furiously beating wings and filled the air with the sounds of their distant squawking cries.

The short-lived avalanche seemed to be over almost as soon as it had begun. When all was still again, the towering, choking dust clouds took some time to clear. When she could finally see again, peering over the swirling dust clouds, she discovered that the collapse had utterly buried the body and all the ground round about it under an immense mass of broken shale and great flat broken slabs of slate, together with myriad smaller rocks.

She managed to climb carefully down without falling and hurting herself, and was even able to retrieve her horse. Loyal to her, he had only tried to run at first, but no more than a little ways off, after which he had stopped and turned, remaining curious enough to linger and watch.

However, he was understandably a bit more skittish and agitated than usual, and although she approached him without much difficulty, she had to resort to calming him by holding and stroking his head and breathing on his nostrils. He tossed his head frequently at first, swaying her bodily on her feet whole arm-lengths this way and that by the power of his head alone as she sought to hold on and calm him down. But she persisted, trusting him not to harm her, and when she had quieted him sufficiently, she finally took hold of his halter and walked him over beside the landslide.

One look had already informed her that no savage beast, no matter how enormous, would ever dig down through that mass of broken rock and great tilted slabs of flat slate to violate it's sanctity.

She knelt there, and prayed to the Invisible God, beseeching him to welcome this lost soul into whatever comfort or rest he might be pleased to grant.

Fitly was she garbed in black, the better to meet this unforseen hour.

She remained kneeling there throughout the entire morning, bowing often, weeping in fits and starts, as she pondered the events that had led her to grieve over this common foot soldier, whom she had never known. This, so soon after losing Habrunt.

This poor man had obviously secretly admired and imitated Si'Wren's beliefs, what little he could learn of her without arousing the suspicion of his comrades-at-arms, without her ever even knowing of it, and for only this, upon being finally discovered or found out somehow in the matter, he had been miserably and wretchedly set upon without her knowing of that either.

Now he lay buried under a monumental cairn of broken slate, the enormous flat slabs of irregularly-shaped rock heaped up over his mortal remains as by the hand of the Invisible God himself, never to know with what grief that she, who had once been his shining example, his supreme inspiration and witness before the Invisible God, or with what intense longing and remorse that she, the one whom he had adored from a distance, would eventually suffer as a result of his decision to follow her in her beliefs.

Never had he attempted to speak to Si'Wren, to impose himself upon her. He had evidently not so much as dreamed of taking it upon himself to actually approach her, she -Si'Wren- the silent, literate female scribe for whom he had no doubt secretly harbored such tender-hearted sentiments of closely shared spiritual beliefs that he must have felt at times as if his own soul were being rent asunder as he trespassed unsuspected upon such starkly forbidden spiritual territory.

She could only guess how he must have felt, seeing how he dared not presume himself upon her, lest any -including herself, for all he knew- should object with a most self-righteous, vainglorious, and presumptuous offendedness such as nearly all of humanity was so fond of imitating and out-doing one-another in feigning. Would that he had intruded, that she might have shown him otherwise!

Perhaps, he might even had ventured to court her as well, to which she would not have objected, but rejoiced. But he -a common foot soldier- had not so much as dared.

Certain others might have objected, if only out of spite, but not she. Moreover, could she not write? Was she not in a position to petition the very Emperor himself, personally, on any affair she deemed fit? Surely Emperor Euphrates would have given her to him, and kept both in his service lest he lose Si'Wren's valuable services as Royal Scribe.

Now, it was too late to tell this slain foot soldier how miserably she felt. Perhaps he, like Habrunt, could have redeemed her vow. Perhaps not. He undoubtedly could not read, and seeing she was sworn never to speak, their love would have been something to marvel at, even to themselves, all their days together.

How awful it now seemed, that now, he would never know that she should come so soon to mourn and lament him, with his body not yet even cold! That she should so soon bury him with her own fingers, and here remain weeping uncontrollably, her face buried in her hands, kneeling over his grave like the beloved wife of many years that she should have been.

Nay, more than a wife, a spiritual sister also.

Reflecting upon such an unfamiliar notion of spiritual kinship, Si'Wren, an orphan from her earliest recollection, bent down low again suddenly, before she could collapse from grief, and wept even more bitterly at her fate.

This man, whom she had never been privileged to meet face-to-face in life, lay now at the center of all her attentions, hopelessly beyond her reach. How she longed that she might but one single time, have revealed to him what his unintentional self-sacrifice meant to her. And now, with what grief she must regard his brave act and cruel fate, all merely for imitating her beliefs!

Who had he been? Would that she had been his wife! Seeing all would have known that she could not speak, and that he could neither read nor write, yet would they have remained but strangers to the world only, but never in each others' eyes.

To think how he had finally found what was, to himself and her alone, in this awful, accursed paradise, the true meaning of spiritual life. That he had found it through the notorious persecutions and back-bitings of others, preying viciously upon her nonidolatrous beliefs.

For others had hated her, she knew, and talked behind her back. It was by means of such spiteful, privily expressed hatred that the details of her God had been so published abroad as to eventually reach his ears. Others in their malice had spoken against Si'Wren for her beliefs, but in their restless evil had only served God's good.

This was how, she was certain, that this lone man, this common foot soldier, hearing of how evil she supposedly was, had dared to question that spirit of unthinking hatred, and eventually believed also, and paid the ultimate price for his beliefs while she had gone on about her own business, blissfully unaware of his peril while she in her lofty station had remained perfectly immune to all reproach.

This thought tore at her as nothing else. Now, she would suffer also, for the sake of his memory and what he had believed and suffered and died for. At least, she had made sure his cairn, that the largest of wild beasts might never violate the grave. That little, she could and had done for he who never knew her.

There was something between them now, spanning the spiritual chasm like a bridge of their two kindred souls. She would mourn him forever in the secret places of her heart. It was like gruel without milk and fruit which, if one consumed nothing else, would eventually lose its slight taste of bitterness and ground husks, and become at least indifferent to the palate. Nay, worse. For the rest of her life, she would mourn this stranger long after she had left behind this desolate far-away place, in which he must forever remain buried.

But henceforth she would feel closer to him in her heart, than to any living person or location. She could not forget the memory of this place, though she might never return.

She rose up finally, looking cautiously about her. It was evening. The thickening mists were rolling over the land, spilling their whiteness across the hills into unseen, hidden valleys. Such beauty--such emptiness. The gentle wind had a lonely, desolate sound.

The last of her tears had already dried, but she wept anew when she finally turned to remount her horse for the journey back to camp.

She rode back to the campfire burning in front of Emperor Euphrates' splendid tent, and near his tent was her own, where she halted and dismounted drearily. Merely going through the motions, she groomed down the stallion and staked him to a long tether rope so that he might graze, roll on his back, or do practically whatever he pleased with some measure of freedom.