I started again.
They anointed each other
knew the ferryman would not take them across the river
knew they would swim
knew the waters of the eternal river would wash the oil
away
Brought the bottle to anoint themselves
and to anoint themselves again
anoint themselves and others in the world
make all invisible to the Devourer
So that none must go to the gated lands without leaving
all shall come and go as they choose
said Immakuk
Before they could pass the gates
the ferryman spoke to the gray people
told them Immakuk had that bottle
that contained the oil of immortality
Kununigadak was blind could not see them
only Kununigadak could not see
the gray people not so blind
They pursued the heroes
faster went Immakuk
the gray people followed
grappled trapped seized
Ennikar Strong Ennikar
Trapped him the gray people
as the great are brought down by the weak
when they are many
As the hawk is mobbed by the roller birds
as the great sea eagle is brought down by gulls
Immakuk saw Strong Ennikar held
slowed his steps
noble Immakuk turned back
Give us the bottle of oil said the gray people in the
wind-filled whispers
the bottle give it give it to us and we will let you leave
the gated lands
all will leave the gated lands
never to return
Immakuk remembered his promise to Death
threw the bottle far away
deep into the gated lands
As the gray people weakened their hold
seized Ennikar and drew him through the gates
as they receded wailing
seeking the bottle lost that made a
man invisible to the Devourer
Wailed as the Queen of the Night
affrighted the gray people
seized with her claws
lifted the bottle
flew back to the palace
of Death her brother
Together Immakuk and Ennikar passed through the
gates
as no man has before or since
Immakuk and Ennikar
swam the eternal river
came into our world together
climbed the stepwell of Ne Malia
Because Immakuk had saved his friend but lost the
bottle of oil
no man has escaped Death since
“That Ennikar,” said the Attolian. “Always with a maid.”
“Sometimes it’s Immakuk who gives the Queen of the Night a child. It depends on the tablet and who is translating it.”
“Translating it from the old language?”
“Yes, from old Ensur, from before the Mede, then into Attolian.”
“Who translated what you have told me, then?”
I rocked a little, embarrassed and proud at the same time. “It’s my translation.”
His eyebrows went up. “All the translations—yours?”
I nodded again. I tried on a few feelings of superiority, telling myself that the Attolian was an uneducated audience who couldn’t really appreciate the work involved, but I couldn’t push that to a sticking point. I fell back on the embarrassment and pride. “I’m glad you like it,” I said.
“Are you translating it just now, as you tell it?”
“No, I translated it from the Ensur into the Mede a long time ago. I was in Attolia when I translated it into your language. I used to sit sometimes in the kitchens, and the workers there liked to ask me about where I came from. Once when they were telling stories of the Attolian afterlife, they asked me if there were stories of the Mede afterlife. One of them kept asking until I translated Ennikar and Immakuk and the Queen of the Night for him. I liked doing it, so I kept at it.”
The Attolian poked at the remains of the caggi in front of him. “In our stories of the underworld, it’s important not to eat anything, or you will be trapped there forever.”
“You’d be doomed,” I said.
“I would. I think I’d trade immortality right now for a jug of wine and a plate full of nutcakes.”
I remembered those cakes. I had been wrong to say that the only beautiful thing in Attolia was the queen. She was as beautiful as the Queen of the Night, but the Attolian nutcakes, with their tops decorated in loops and swirls of sticky honey, were even more beautiful—and they wouldn’t kill you.
I sighed. “I’d trade the plate of nutcakes for a bath,” I said. He nodded. We’d washed as well as we could in the springwater we’d found, but I think our pursuers, if they were out there in the wasteland, could have found us by smell and without needing a dog.
“When we get to Traba, if we transform that chain into coin, the first thing we will do is have a wash and a shave,” the Attolian promised. “May you dream of it tonight,” he said, and I lay down hoping for just that but instead was haunted through the night by visions of the Namreen.
I was still asleep in the morning when the Attolian sat up suddenly, waking me. Before I could speak, he held up a hand. There was a sound. Very faint. A clinking noise, a sort of tapping, not the jingle of a harness, but almost musical in the same way. I couldn’t identify it, but it was tantalizingly familiar.
The Attolian scrambled to his feet, pulling the strap of a waterskin over his shoulder. He leaned down briefly to ask, “Can you whistle?”
I said yes, not sure why he wanted to know.
“If I cannot find you again, I will whistle. You should whistle back. Two notes, one higher, then one lower. I will find you more easily than if you shout, and we won’t announce ourselves quite so obviously to anybody else nearby.” Then he scrambled out of the gully and was gone.
It was several hours before he came back. As time passed, I listened more and more intently for a whistle, wondering if I’d missed one while dozing or distracted by my thoughts. I considered how easy it would be for the Attolian to just go home to his king, leaving me—slow, annoying, and insufficiently appreciative of his caggi dinners—behind in the wilderness. I concentrated on his earlier refusal to leave my dead body by the side of the road to Perf and strained my ears for a sound floating through the air.
Finally, not far away, I heard a whistle and answered with one of my own. The Attolian appeared at the lip above me with one of the waterskins full again.
“I found a water seller,” he said.
The road was north of us, and we could have walked parallel to it for some time before it curved south to cross our path. As it was, the Attolian led me to it fairly quickly, and we followed it all day. There were a number of towns between Perf and Traba, and the road had more travelers and conversely fewer caravans than the one between Sherguz and Perf. The need to travel in groups for safety was less pressing.
In the evening we reached a small community with campsites all around it. Quietly we joined other travelers at the shared fire and listened for gossip. There was no talk of the Namreen hunting an Attolian and a runaway slave—or of a murderous slave escaped from the capital either. I had a story prepared, ready to dismiss the second version as the inevitable exaggeration of rumormongering, but I didn’t need it.
The Attolian thought it safe enough to stay at the campsite and continue on the road the next day. Mixed with the other traffic on the road, our presence would be unremarkable.