The Woman Who Buried Nations Page 5

  “You should each be able to complete a book a month,” he would say, his mouth then in a permanent state of bruxism and his albino fists clenched tight. “I have empty libraries, wonderous beautiful barren libraries. Do you have any idea how foolish this makes me appear?” And other times he might grip our scriptorium table and shake it, rattle it like an ensnared wolf. “I will enlist all of your ‘men’ in my army, and your women will be conscripted to hard labor, do you understand?” Then he would shake his head and sulk as a child denied a sweet. “You Mellites,” he would say, “it’s time you entered the real world. How hard can it be to copy books?” He told us to write faster, he no longer supplied the gems and the gold foil, and he commanded that we no longer draw borders or paint illustrations on the pages.

  “I want books,” he said. “I don’t care how ornate they look, just that they are complete!”

  The others didn’t see it, or if they did, they were in denial of the fact. We were becoming prisoners in that castle. Indentured servants. At night I would beg Daphna to murder my old friend; I would whisper horrible things to her, and she would shake and cry under the sheets.

  Our black ink was sourced from materials found in wasp nests, and was rather innocuous if consumed. The red ink, however, was made from cinnabar crystals, the mercury naturally occurring in our many dormant volcanoes. It is perhaps for that reason that the cinnabar moth, which is also poisonous, is so named. I read as much in the Mythos Apocalypse, the book of natural magic and history I was assigned to transcribe. Never let anyone tell you that books have no value. But knowledge alone is an island adrift, unless paired with action.

  “Take the red ink,” I would tell Daphna. “And when he’s not looking, inject it into his red wine.”

  “No,” she would plead. “You don’t know him, that’s all. Deep down he is noble, and loving, and good. Look at how he wishes to share wisdom with his people.”

  “You’re misinformed,” I said. “You forget that I know him better than anyone.”

  “You know him longer than anyone.”

  “He’s a tyrant.”

  “I love him.”

  “Fine, then he’s your tyrant, but he’s still a tyrant all the same.”

  “After we marry I’m sure he’ll move you and father out of the scriptorium. I do this as much for me as for our people. Don’t you see? we will finally be accepted. And he speaks so highly of you, Loreena.”

  “You’re missing the point, sister.”

  A Reunion

  One morning, after perhaps four months of labor, Lord Dober demanded my presence in the courtyard. It was nearing winter, and he was dressed in a thick cloak, one custom fit to expand at his right shoulder to allow a hole from which his ludicrous prop grub axe could protrude.

  “I’m sorry it took me until now to seek you out,” he said as we strolled the gardens. “I’m sure you know of my feelings for your sister.”

  “Yes, of course,” I countered. “But if you truly love Daphna, then why do you treat her people so?”

  Halting, he stared into my eyes for a good, long while. Searching. “You know, you’re almost as pretty as she,” he said at last. “Or would be, if only you’d been more careful.” The irony that I was the one with permanent scars had never before felt so raw.

  I responded, “With all due deference my liege, you’re the one with an axe protruding from your chest.”

  “Shoulder,” he said with a smile and a grimace, ignoring my theatrics. “So your sister is the beauty and you’re the reckless one…if only the two could be combined,” he said. (For nothing was ever enough for a man such as he.)

  “Those two qualities cannot combine so readily, not for a Mellite,” I answered.

  “But you’re not a Mellite,” he responded while looking for a way. “I do not forget the past so easily. You consider Daphna your sister, but I consider you my sister as well. Don’t think I have forgotten our journey, though we haven’t spoken of it in many moons.”

  “Ryne,” I said, but he silenced me a flash of his eyes.

  “Lord Dober,” he hissed.

  “If only you could see how the people suffer, I said.” But he didn’t respond, and so I took his hand in mine. “Your uncle was a tyrant, but let us not forget that your real father tried to do what was right.”

  He smiled meanly and gripped my hand firmly before releasing it.

  “These books,” he said, with his eyes turning into narrow slits, distant, distant. “They are so greatly important to me.”

  “I never knew you enjoyed reading.”

  “That’s not the point. I am—"

  “What is your favorite book?” I ventured.

  “Oh,” he said, shaking his head dimly. “I don’t know, Loreena,” and then he softened. “In truth, I can’t read.”

  “If you truly love Daphna then you need to rule her people with a lighter hand,” I said. “They are not tough like the Kimall’s. They’re not even like the Tangolorians.”

  Lord Dober grabbed my wrist and growled, “I am in charge here. I demand from others what I need from them, not the other way around! Do you understand? Do not think yourself somehow immune from the rule of law.”

  I shook my head in agreement, more scared of that man than I had ever been of the banchecki.

  “I understand.”

  “Please don’t let our shared past ruin your individual future, sister.” He gripped me so hard that he left this bruise here on my right wrist.

  Do you see it? As fresh as on its first day. I tell you, sometimes I feel that I am the true Mellite. Perhaps it’s a good thing when your wounds can’t fade. It makes it impossible to forget those who have wronged you. All the same, Lord Dober recoiled at the suddenness of his action, and then he kissed me on the cheek. He repented and called me “sister,” in a gentle tone. I realized then that he was broken too, in so many ways that would never heal. It’s not an excuse, for I wish not to excuse a demon. But nonetheless, many demons have their excuses all the same.

  “Take me instead,” I said. “I will be your queen.”

  “It’s a lovely gesture,” he said in a quiet voice. “But there’s no room for lovely gestures in this world, is there?”

  “I suppose not.”

  And we stood awhile, hand-in-hand, letting the wind whip our skin.

  A few months later Daphna became a queen. He married her despite, or perhaps because of, the permanent handprint freshly marked on her right cheek. No amount of makeup could soften that first blight. A perfect butterfly and an ill-tempered man – everyone knew it was a tragedy in the making. If you are unable to conceive why she went through with the marriage then I am grateful you have never found yourself in an impossible situation.

  The Queen’s Sister

  Daphna moved to the main chamber of the castle, and the rest of us were kept locked in pens as though we were so many cattle. Father and I could come and go as we pleased, but we mostly chose to remain with our people.

  Marriage did nothing to soften Lord Dober’s obsession, his desperate need for books. The empty libraries haunted his dreams and our realities. He was insatiable for them, for the little printed symbols he was never taught to understand. And perhaps insatiable for my sister too, for within weeks of their marriage the royal couple announced her pregnancy.

  Throughout those nine months Daphna was ill, her heart beating as it was for three. Pregnancies are notoriously difficult for Mellites, especially when the fathers are of a separate blood. She was brave as she neared the end, smiling and joyful whenever she talked of motherhood. My brother-in-law, could handle the stress of battle, but not that of a sickly pregnant wife. He brooded during those months, punishing any Mellite who did not transcribe one hundred pages per week. The quality of our work suffered, the pages running together in watery print, red and black and as smeared as a life poorly lived. “Please,” I told my people. “We must revolt. We must do something.”

  “We’re not fighters,” my father would rejo
in. “We simply bruise too easily. Think of your sister. Think of our queen.”

  Daphna insisted on using a Mellite mid-wife rather than the royal doctor, as was our custom. Being a scholar of that age, you already know that one of her two babies survived, and the other joined his mother in heaven. She was resigned to her own fate, but for the child to go first…Oh, please don’t ask me to say anything more about it.

  We were a small community, and it was our long-held belief that no one worked after a death until the body was committed to the ground. Yet the very day after Daphna left us Lord Dober appeared in our chambers, shouting and threatening us.

  “Why don’t I hear that lovely scratchy sound of quill on parchment?” he ranted.

  My father tried to explain our rituals, but Lord Dober didn’t care to listen.

  “Daphna was no longer a Mellite,” Lord Dober said. “The moment we married she relinquished all traces of your cursed little community. You killed her with your pride and your ridiculous superstition!”

  When we refused to resume our work he became increasingly agitated, until finally he had the midwife arrested for treason.

  “If you’re not back to work tomorrow, then you too will be considered traitors to my realm,” he screamed.

  Later that night he asked to meet with me on a terrace overlooking his kingdom. I had a vial of red ink in my pocket, but the opportunity to administer it never presented itself as he held his chalice tightly to his left breast throughout our encounter. If only I could go back in time and pour it straight into his gullet. If only I had; perhaps I would not now be the “last Mellite.”

  “You will move into the main castle and help raise my daughter,” he said. “If something more develops between us then I am open to the possibility. It’s indecent to say anything more on the subject for now.”

  “Have you given her a name?”

  “Not yet.” He looked so vulnerable then, so lost that I almost forgave him.

  “It’s not too late to do the right thing,” I offered.

  “Do you see how everything is conspiring against me,” he said. “Everything, everything. I never asked for any of this.” He hung his head in evident shame. “Sometimes I wish I remained a simple smithy’s apprentice. Perhaps that’s my problem, I must forever burn, hot as a forge. First I lose my parents and my people, and now Daphna…”

  “We have each known much loss,” I said. “We are of two worlds, so of course we have suffered twice the heartache.”

  “Have you always spoken in riddles?” he said. “It’s unbecoming of a lady.”

  “Then let me provide clarity,” I said. “I may help you raise your and Daphna’s child, for she is my niece in soil if not in blood. But you must honor Daphna’s memory by releasing her people of their obligation.”

  “No,” he said with a bitter huff. “Daphna was the only good thing to come from those cursed Mellites, and they ruined even that with their superstition, and their frailty, and that…that treasonous midwife. You forget where you come from, Loreena.”

  “As do you, Lord Dober.”

  He dismissed me with a simple wave of his hand.

  That evening I spoke to the general assembly of Mellites. I looked out into that huddled mass of familiar scarred faces, and I wanted to weep. Weary they were, weary beyond all recognition. Warwick looked as though he had aged one hundred years in the last six months. Sad, sad, sad.

  “We can no longer expect peace, and we can no longer fear conflict,” is what I said. “My attempts at diplomacy have failed. It is time to prepare for war.”

  A few scattered responses: “But we’re simply not fighters,” “He’ll have us all hanged,” “Better to work and remain alive.” Old Mellite proverbs, such as “Patience is protective fleece,” and “Bravery is next to knavery.”

  My disappointment was immense; did I truly lack the words to give them courage? Had they not experienced enough, lost enough, to fight for freedom?

  “The captured wolf struggles the hardest,” I said, dusting off another old saw. “Do not your fingers bleed? Do not your eyes blur? His madness about the books will never end, and you’re willing to simply go along?”

  My father spoke next, earning at last his birthright: Warwick.

  “My daughter’s right,” he said. “If you believe you’re still free, then make your attempt to vacate this cursèd place. If you know you can’t, then you must admit your bondage. And as my Wild Strawberry solemnly reminds us, ‘The captured wolf must struggle the hardest.’ Nobody wants to gnaw off their own leg for a chance to survive, but what choice do we have?”

  And so they rose, one by one, their eyes tired, their faces battered, and yet they now breathed with fire and pride, for they were of one mind, and they knew what they must do.

  We worked through the night, whittling quills and animal bones into shivs, whispering ancient spells over Mellitian dust even though we knew it was bald superstition, burning our ink supply hot with tiny candles. I tell you, there is nothing so brave in this world as an army moving forward into certain death. Nothing as powerful. All through the evening they burned pages and I wrote and wrote, sometimes asking for their assistance. I wrote on the buttery hide of the finest parchment paper until my fingers bled and then I kept writing, revising the chosen book should a ‘Plan B’ be necessary.

  It’s not that I was more clever than the others – quite the opposite, really – but my great weapon was that I understood Lord Dober. I knew that he was torn asunder in the same places as I, that his wounds bled with the same dark consistency as my own. We were forever orphans adrift, and no amount of love or acceptance could make us feel truly at home. He was always searching in vain for the next place, and I for the right person, but we ultimately both wanted the same thing. To belong.

  I see you perking up now, my dear. Yes, we have arrived: the eve of the Scriptorium Massacre. Isn’t it funny how we are drawn to tales of bloodshed? What flaw is there inside us all, to be so bound? It’s okay that you are excited to hear of the massacre. I do not judge you anymore than I would the sparrow fondling the worm. But it’s interesting to ask why, isn’t it? Why is the machinery of our kind so flawed, so hallow and bloodthirsty?

  The Scriptorium Massacre

  The next morning, with the sun itself barely awake, Lord Dober entered our partition of the castle, his face glowering, as gray as the fog that enveloped his estate. He was the ruler of a vast empire, and yet he desired nothing more that day than to subdue the humble Mellitians.

  “Have you decided to work?” he asked.

  “I have a book I you need to see,” I shouted, but Lord Dober dismissed me, placing all of his attention squarely on the diminutive shoulders of my father.

  “I asked my father-in-law a question,” Lord Dober seethed. “Will your people work?”

  “No,” my father said, and with that Lord Dober gave a sign and he and his small battalion of silvery guards came after us. We threw lit books, we poured liquid mercury ink, and we stabbed with our quills as though they were proper daggers. We were, of course, slaughtered. I watched my people be destroyed – my weary eyes watched my own father die by decapitation. If only there was a limit on how much misery a single person can handle in a lifetime. If only the gods were uniformly just. I hope you never have to experience such pain and sorrow. Why, look as my hands shake even now, just thinking of that day.

  It’s a terrible thing to lose a battle, even more so if you’re incapable of healing. That is why it’s called ‘The Scriptorium Massacre,’ and why you no longer encounter Mellitians. And yet, I played my little part in Lord Dober’s downfall. All I could do was plant a bitter seed, yet sometimes that is enough.

  As he huddled over me that dawn, the glint of the sun’s first rays upon his sword, I realized I could perhaps kill his power, if only I could dislodge the axe from his shoulder. Somehow, I knew. It was as though an enchantment, a unique magic hung about his clavicle with its rusty accoutrement. But it was an impossibility, and
so I did the next best thing. That which I planned for.

  He hovered over me, sick with rage. “Wait, before you kill me,” I gasped. “I must show you something.”

  I brought forth the book I had worked on the night before, and he dropped his sword to his side.

  “What’s that?” his face stern, unyielding.

  “I found this passage in the Second Book of Malodrox,” I said. “Look.” I handed him the book, open to page thirty-two.

  “You know I can’t read,” he said.

  I spoke quickly. “It says there is ‘a land beyond the flatlands. A vast empire of gold and jewels. It says there is a great emperor there named Sartino, who has many wives and servants.’ It says that ‘the weather is warm, and the oceans blue. That they trade there with the indigenous peoples from the continents beyond…’ Lord Dober,” I said. “I believe it’s the keyhole to the second realm.”

  He leaned his heavy frame down and for a second his shoulder was within grasp. I missed my opportunity, and a moment later he was studying the pages of the book, and then passing it to his second to verify the information.

  “That’s what it says,” his second confirmed. “But it’s assuredly a forgery or a fake.”

  “Is that so?” he asked.

  “No,” I lied. “That’s the language in the book verbatim, only they’ve now burned the original. This copy is all that remains, but I swear upon the veracity of its words.”

  Lord Dober likely had his suspicions regarding the authenticity of the screed I created. But when I looked in his eyes, I saw a storm cloud receding in them.

  “Yes of course,” he said. “We gave up too early. You fools asked me to turn around, when we were just a few hundred miles away from adventures beyond our imaginations.” He smiled.