His verse completed, the gentle voice beckoned Ba’al and Adnihilo from behind the dune, “So, my furtive friends, what did you think of my rhyme?”
“They’re speechless, it seems,” I replied when no answer came, “And I must say, I’m impressed as well. Never heard someone do so well on a first attempt.”
“The perks of being the perfect man,” japed Jordan. “But enough of our sinful boasting, Kashim, we ought to greet our guests properly” He shouted over the mound like the blast of a trumpet. “Truly friends! Come, it’s safe! We have food and fire enough for everyone!”
Coaxed by the Messiah, and the encouragement of their companions, the unbelievers approached with weapons in hand. We pretended not to see them and hoped they would forgive ours—for in the Tsaazaar, when the sun dips afar, you bare your arms or lose them. Fortunately for us, the skeptics were more concerned with our discrepant appearance than with sticks and knives.
The introductions were Jordan’s, starting with his apostles: a Messah with the light-brown skin of the Nuw Gard peninsulas. He carried no weapons on him but a leather bound book and an iron pen like those of the Brothers Scribes. “This is Zachariah, son of Darin.” He moved on to the two Tsaazaari men, “Maqsood Saif Ullah and Ramses Rahir,” the former dark as night, the other tan as sandstone. Yet their garb was identical: turbans and linens and braided sandals. On their belts hung sword-sized daggers of horn and iron, in their grips, great forks for killing riverwyrms.
It was then he introduced yours truly, the mad dog of the Tsaazaar, the Leviathan’s bard, thy prophet Kashim. And the half-blood stared, enthralled, like he’d seen my murky eyes before, or my gaunt, bronze face, or perhaps it was just my clothes. An odd wardrobe, I admit were my blood red loincloth and shawl and wicker sandals. Though, on second thought, it could have been the great winged sword of King Luther leaned on my shoulder, or the Gautaman long sabre lain across my lap. Whatever it was, he moved on as Jordan addressed himself.
He was a tall man, a head taller than myself, olive skinned and muscled thick as his beard was as long as his hair—a fair mane down to his waist—an immaculate being, his only blemish the scar over his heart pierced by an Iisah spear. At that, the priestess stared with fear.
It was not long after that the red Tsaazaari sun set fast over the horizon where our and the heathen men made motley companions around the fire. We told tales, listened together to the crackle of carapaces, scorpions sizzling on spits to be spread on hard bread with lime juice and curdled milk. A feast for kings in a castle of sand against the cold desert winds. We ate in silence, hollow cheeks and conspiring eyes staring across the fire until the Messah broke the peace.
“You never finished telling us about your village,” he said. There wasn’t much else to tell, but he was curious. “What made you leave? How did you end up in the Tsaazaar?” It was a story he wanted, and the moon overhead shewn pale against the black like an eye of God. I settled closer to the flames, urged them listen closely.
“In Umlomo Village, Hell was born from the sea. It came on black sails on the eastern tide in the evening in the guise of Gautaman slavers from which we knew of no salvation, only to run and hide and to weary our eyes watching the horizon. But all that watching left us blind; so on the night of my twentieth solstice, in the midst our ancestral worship, with the whole village night-blind in torchlight and gathered on the beach, I saw the ships birth themselves from the ocean blackness, and I smashed the conch that was to be their warning.
“My kin scattered like flies as slavers poured onto the beach. Those scarred and squinting faces—they stole the able souls and put the young and the old to the sword, yet somehow I passed to the coast unseen. There an abandoned boat was waiting for me. I dragged it into the ocean and paddled through the dark. God knows what the slavers must have thought when they heard me shouting.
“By morning I was lashed to the oars with the other chattel under the authority of our boarish taskmaster, Slave Driver Yin. Quickly, we learned to fear those fat, yellow cheeks and thin black eyes and his wisps of moustache that whipped when he grunted his native tongue right before flogging us. God bless that man for putting up with our weakness. He was given an impossible task, keeping the oars in time, and I lost count of how many leathers he wore out on our hides.
“Yet we were ungrateful, pained and tired, and laggard worst of all. It could not have more than a month that we were moored to the oars when the man in front of me dared to stop. He could not go on, he cried. I watched Yin flog him until bones showed where there was skin just before. The whole time, the man pleaded for mercy, but never once did he reach for his oar. He died in front of me, and just I kept rowing, wondering why—why didn’t he save himself?
“The next morning, I had my answer; and from then on I toiled hard from wake till slumber. My hands turned to blisters and my muscles so sore I truly thought they might rupture, but never again did I suffer the whip. I learned those wisps of mustache were nothing to fear, nor those beady slits that eyed my labor. Even the grunts became familiar.
“‘Kyoken,’ Yin would chuckle as he passed me by, and every
