Tome of the Undergates - Sam Sykes

‘I chopped one exquisitely,’ the rogue corrected. ‘If I wanted to beat you in a contest, I could hack circles around you, throwing off so many lacklustre splinters like you did.’ He plucked up his product and one of Lenk’s, holding his up. ‘Look at this: a nice, delicate blow, revealing every tender secret of the wood. Now look at yours. Where’s the heart?’

Lenk mopped his brow, looked down at the piles, then looked back up at his companion.

‘It’s wood.’

‘A true artist never makes excuses.’ The rogue added an insulting sashay to his walk as he turned away from Lenk. ‘Anyway, you’re the one who wanted work ethic and talk. It’s only fair that I get laziness and listening.’ He pulled himself up onto a low-hanging tree branch and lay down. ‘So, go ahead.’

‘Fine,’ the young man said, grunting as he hefted the hatchet and placed a fresh block of wood onto the stump. ‘I’m having some trouble with-’

‘Oh, wait, we’re going to talk about you?’

‘Well. . yeah.’

‘Why can’t we ever talk about me for once?’ the rogue muttered, settling himself further into his boughy sling. ‘Everyone comes to me with their problems. Why can’t I ever get the same treatment?’

‘Because all I know about you is that you’re a coward, a lech, a lush, a brigand, a bigot and a piece of offal masquerading as a man,’ Lenk snarled, bringing the hatchet down in a vicious chop. ‘Did I miss anything?’

‘Yes,’ the rogue replied, ‘I also play the lute.’

‘Fine, then. We’ll talk about you.’ Lenk set a new piece of wood up, glancing at his companion. ‘You never told me what you did before becoming an adventurer. Are you married?’

Denaos sat up at that, lips pursing, regarding Lenk through narrowed eyes.

‘Any children?’ Lenk asked.

‘You know, I think I am in the mood to talk about you.’ With noticeable stiffness, the rogue settled back into his tree branch. ‘So, do go on.’

‘Um. . all right, then.’ Lenk brought the axe down again. ‘I’m having some difficulty understanding women.’

‘Ah, yes.’ Denaos scratched his chin. ‘The eternal question on two legs that only gets more annoying with every passing thought.’ His hand drifted lower, scratched something else. ‘Fortunately for you, I’m something of an expert on the subject.’

‘Yeah?’

‘No doubt,’ the rogue replied. ‘What do you want to know?’

‘I suppose. .’ Lenk’s hum hovered in the air as he leaned on the hatchet’s handle, staring contemplatively out at the forest’s greenery. ‘Why?’

‘The best place to start,’ Denaos said, nodding. ‘Well, to understand women, you must first understand their place in the world. And to that end, you must first know how they came to occupy this world alongside us.’

‘How?’

‘The theories vary from faith to faith, but here’s how it was explained to me.’ He cleared his throat, sitting upright as though he were some scholar. ‘The Gods first created man and gave to him their gifts. From Daeon and Galataur, we received the art of war. From Silf, we received the talent of deception. And from Khetashe, as you know, we received the urge to explore.’

‘Go on.’

‘But there was a difficulty. Mankind lacked purpose. There was no reason to go to war, no reason to lie, no reason to wander far and wide.’

‘And?’

Denaos shrugged and lay back. ‘And then the Gods created women and suddenly everything made sense.’

‘Oh. .’ Lenk scratched his head. ‘Well, how does that help me?’

‘If you haven’t reached that conclusion from that particular story, there’s really nothing I can do to help you.’ The rogue waved a hand dismissively. ‘What do you even care? When we return the tome, you’ll have enough money to buy several whores, make one of them your wife and die a slow, lingering death at the bottom of a tankard like any decent man.’

‘What if I don’t want any of that?’

‘Then give me your share.’

‘I mean,’ Lenk said, setting down another log, ‘well … let me ask you this. Have you ever wanted something desperately, but you knew it just wasn’t meant to be?’

The rogue fell silent, absently scratching his chest. The wind shifted overhead, parting branches that sent shadows dancing over his face, chased by eager fingers of sunlight upon the giggles of a playful breeze. Quietly, he reached up, fingers outstretched as though he sought to grab them.

‘Yeah,’ he replied, ‘I’ve wanted that.’

‘So, what do you do?’

Lenk brought the hatchet down, splitting the log and sending its halves flying off. The echo of the chop lasted an eternity throughout the forest, silencing the laughter of the wind.

‘I suppose,’ Denaos whispered, ‘you ask “why”?’

Taire was her name.

Asper remembered that about her, remembered it the first day she had heard it.

‘Like. . a paper tear?’ she had asked the girl, scrunching up her nose. ‘What kind of name is that?’

‘What kind of name is Asper?’ she had replied with a smile, sticking her tongue out. ‘The name of a slow-witted tree or a snake with a lisp?’

Her tongue was long and pink, never coated. Her eyes were big and blue, not cold like Lenk’s, but vast like the sky. Her hair was long and golden, not dirty like Kataria’s, but glistening like the precious metal.

She was always smiling.

Temple life was hard. Asper had been told that before she ever felt called to join. She learned it in the days that followed, during the dissections of the dead to discover what they had died from, ferrying salves and medicines from the apothecary to the common floor where the elder priests tended to the sick and the dying, forced to look upon men, women and children as they coughed out their last breath so that she might know why she served the Healer.

Taire was never shy, never afraid, life never seemed hard for her. She was always the first to peer curiously into the open corpse, the fastest to get the medicine to the common floor while greeting every patient that walked in, the only one who would hold someone’s hand as they left the world on Talanas’s wings.

Taire had taken Asper’s hand and placed it on the dying. Taire had helped her fumble with the medicine. Taire had stayed up reading the tomes on the human body, late into the night, with Asper. Taire was not the reason Asper had entered the temple. Taire was the reason she served the Healer.

Taire had begged.

Her disappearance was officially marked down as ‘lamentable’, never pursued with any particular interest. Children fled from the temple all the time, even the brightest and most enthusiastic students occasionally finding it too stressful to continue with the training. The gravedigger had looked half-heartedly about the temple grounds. The high priest sighed, gave a prayer and made a note in the doomsday book. Taire’s belongings were folded into a bundle and put into storage in the bin marked ‘unclaimed’.

There was no corpse, no suicide note, nothing to indicate she had ever existed besides the sooty mark on the floor of the dormitories.

And Asper.

No one had asked the shy little brown-haired girl who was always rubbing her left arm where Taire had gone. No one had paid attention to the shy little brown-haired girl who cried in the night until long after Taire was forgotten by all.

All except the one who knew that she had begged, like the longface, like the frogman.

She hadn’t forgotten any of them. She hadn’t forgotten the pain she felt, that they shared, as her arm robbed them of all. She could still feel it, would feel it long after whoever kept track of such things forgot that the longface in Irontide had ever existed. She would hear them scream, hear their bones snap, hear their bodies pop, hear them beg.

Her arm was one part of the curse. That Asper would never forget was another.

And she hadn’t forgotten that, for as many times as she looked up to the sun and asked, ‘why?’ no one had answered her.

‘It happened again,’ she whispered, choked through tears brimming behind her eyes.

Asper turned. The pendant did not look particularly interested in what she was saying as it lay upon the rock. The forest danced, shifted overhead, casting a shadow over the silver-wrought phoenix. Its carved eyes turned downcast, its gaping beak resembled something of a yawn, as though it wondered how long her weeping confession would last.

‘It happened again,’ she repeated, taking a step closer. ‘It happened again, it happened again, it happened again.’ She took another step with every fevered repetition until she collapsed upon her knees before the rock, an impromptu altar, and let her tears slide down to strike upon the pendant. ‘It happened again.

‘Why?’

The pendant did not answer her.

‘Why?’ she said, louder.

‘Why, why, why, why?’ Her knuckles bled as she hammered the symbol, straining to beat an answer out of it. ‘Why does this keep happening to me? Why did you do this to me?’

She raised her hand to strike it again. The phoenix looked out from behind the red staining its silver, uninterested in her threat. Like a parent waiting for a child to burn itself out on its tantrum, it waited, stared. Her hand quivered in the air, impotent in its fury, before she crumpled beside the rock.

‘What did I do to deserve this?’

Asper had asked that question before, of the same God, on her first night in the temple. She had knelt before his image, carved in stone instead of silver, far from the loving embrace of her father and mother, far from the place she had once called home. She had knelt, alone, and asked the God she was supposed to worship.

‘Why?’

And Talanas had sent Taire.

‘Because,’ the young girl who was always smiling had spoken from the back of the chapel, ‘someone has to.’

And Taire had knelt beside her, before the God that seemed, in that instant, better than any parent. Talanas was loving, cared for all things, sacrificed Himself so that humans might know what death was, what sickness was, and how to avert them. Talanas cared for His priests as much as He did His followers, and in the instant Taire had smiled at her, Asper knew that Talanas cared for them both, as well.

‘Has to what?’ she had asked the girl then.

‘Has to do it,’ Taire had replied.

‘Do what?’

‘That’s why we’re here,’ the girl had replied, reaching out to tap the brown-haired girl on the nose before they both broke down into laughter.

‘I don’t deserve this,’ Asper whispered, broken upon the forest floor. ‘I didn’t do anything to deserve this.’ She raised her left arm, stared at it as it grinned beneath its pinkness, knowing it would be unleashed again. ‘You gave this to me.’

She rose to her knees, thrust her left hand at the pendant as though it were proof.