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Sunset had been scarlet, purple and charcoal, violent colors filled with the wrath of the gods, and yet as the storm front passed on into the west, the fury of Hurucan seemed to abate with it. The night was soft, cool, suddenly calm. Faunos was grateful for the respite. In the grudging shelter of the cave above the sea, he stood by the fire till he was dry, wrapped his hips in fresh linen, wrapped on a silk cloak, and swung Galen’s bags over both shoulders.
The old man was exhausted, and though he denied it, Faunos was sure he was sickening. He had been soaked and cold to the bone for too long. One of his years was too frail to shrug off the rigors of such a day without cost. Galen had been old when Faunos was born; he told stories of Faunos’s grandparents as well as his parents -- of Phaia, whose hair was red-gold, whose eyes were green and bright with the witchfires of her Keltoi blood, and of Mykenos, whose hair was raven black, and whose skin was bronze, like the generations of his forefathers.
And Faunos was a true child of them both. They knew the magicks, ancient and strange. Phaia bore eight children, two by two, and only the last twins were daughters. Of the many sons of Mykenos, Faunos was the seventh born, just two hours before the last of his brothers. He knew all their names, but he had never seen them, and he believed he never would.
The eldest had already passed over out of life. They had made the Last Journey, into the west where Elysios had opened her gates to welcome them. They joined so many of the young men of Zeheft who had perished in the storms, and in the vaults below Vayal. All those who had even a spark of the power had been hunted without pause or mercy, until one remained.
The seventh son of Mykenos -- who was the seventh son of Parhys, and so back down the line to Diomedas himself -- gave his arm to Galen to help him up the path that scaled the cliff. The way was better suited to goats than to men, and Galen had not been agile in years. His eyes were dark, lately, with the foreshadow of doom, but when Faunos asked what he knew, what he saw in the flickering embers of the fire, he would not speak.
Instead, he brought out the old books, so ancient and precious that he would have given his life to protect them, and the lessons began again. Everything Faunos knew about the Old Kingdom came from those books, and from Galen’s teaching. For hours they sat by the hearth in the evenings, and Galen would talk -- rambling with an old man’s willful memory -- of the last great days of Zeheft, which he remembered from the very first seasons of his own life.
The fighting was over by then, but the city had not been touched. Battles were kept well away from Great Mother Zeheft, as if the priest-king of Vayal feared the older gods of the Zeheftimen. The hills along the spine of the long, dolphin-shaped island were blood soaked, haunted by the souls of men and women who had died there in the ten generations of struggle.
Vayal had always envied Zeheft, for its wisdom, its wealth and its power. In days gone by, Zehefti lawmakers had wrought the foundations on which the empire stood; Zehefti priests communed with Helios and Bast, Horus and Artemis, in temples that were older than time. And Zehefti kings, imbued with the power of lost ages, sat on the Jaguar Throne, from which the empire had always been ruled.
All gone. Those times lived on only in the memories of people like Galen, who clung tenaciously to life, too stubborn to let it go. Galen had one last charge, before he was free to pass through the great, shimmering gates of Elysios. He would shepherd Faunos to manhood, fetch him to the eve when he came of age, when his education was complete, his body was mature, and the power of his forefathers was fully under his command.
Even now, the power commanded Faunos -- and the boy was the first to admit it. Great fear, pain, dread, shock, and great pleasure, all stirred the power into an inferno beyond his control. He was twenty years old now, and he had just begun to glimpse how the power could be made do do as he desired. Five more years of Galen’s training, and he would have mastered its secrets.
Five years? As they clambered up to the path along the clifftop, Faunos frowned worriedly at the old man. Galen was wheezing as if he would not live another five minutes. He sank down on the sodden grass there to catch his breath, and peered out into the steel-gray twilight. The ocean was still leaden, heaving, like the contents of a cauldron. The wind was cool, but the stars were bright and the air smelt so fresh, sharp, as it never did when the wind was idle.
No more rain would fall. Faunos was in no great hurry to get to the shepherd’s hut on that account, but the sooner he could get Galen settled and fed, the better he would like it. Galen must rest, sleep, get warm and recover. He must recover.
Turn page to The Heritage of Zeheft part two...
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