Author's Preface
For most of its history, the Alamar Isles operated independently from the rest of the world—and its people would have it no other way. Located deep in the eastern Belcean Sea, surrounded on all sides by hundreds of miles of water, its own civilization was allowed to grow within a sociological, technological vacuum. Results vary, depending on who you ask.
The Saelic heads of state will say that, having been divorced from “civilized society” for so long, the Alamar Isles and its people mutated from a harmless tribe of islanders to a depraved, violent cult of savages. They will say that its people lived out of holes dug in the ground and ordered their lives around ritual human sacrifice to heathen gods. They will also say that, before the first exploring ships landed upon their shores, the Alamarics were perpetual victims to their own oppressive, unjust system of radical social stratification, where elders, men, and babies were systematically enslaved and killed, and female priestesses lorded over them with an iron fist.
But all of that is in the past, because Saol Eile extended its righteous, generous hand to help them. The kingdom invited the savages to trade, to learn, and to grow out of their own depravity. The Alamarics responded with senseless violence. That is why, today, the Alamar Theocracy no longer exists. Its people are scattered across the globe, and the islands themselves are now home only to farming colonies staffed with Alamaric slaves, vacation homes for retired Saelic politicians, and tourist trap resort towns. They are prime real estate, and in my past life, I even owned several properties on the mainland isle—I sold them at a premium to a developer for rubber farming. I never thought twice about the Alamaric blood that was shed to leave that land up for grabs. It is a tragedy that a whole culture needed to be wiped out…but a necessary evil, and the only option.
Amira Al’Kilic remembers the Alamar Isles quite differently.
When the huge wooden ships first appeared in the isles, the Alamarics were wary, but not hostile. They welcomed the foreigners with cautious optimism. Trade agreements were drawn up. The foreigners built flimsy wooden structures (which always blew over when monsoon season came). Some foreigners even stayed on the islands, marrying and starting families there. Naturally, as with any cultural collision, there were some casualties at first. A Saelic man offending an Alamaric woman; an Alamaric child throwing a rock at a Saelic sailor. Some squabbles. Some threats. Nothing serious.
Then the Alamarics began to die.
The big cities, where the Saelics had docked most of their ships, saw the plague spreading first. Incurable fevers, incessant coughing, indescribable pain enough to drive a victim to madness. Most Alamaric cities were built within the natural mountain caverns and cave systems, immune to the destructive winds and waves of monsoon season—but not immune to airborne disease within the close, confined walls. Years passed before the Alamarics noticed one consistent and damning pattern. Although the disease afflicted Alamaric natives and Saelic settlers alike, only Alamarics died. The Saelics suffered, but always recovered. It could only be an act of war, the Alamarics realized. Genocide by disease. The only hope of surviving was to push the Saelics out. Push came to shove. The Saelics fled aboard their ships. And then they came back with more ships, more soldiers, and worst of all, more disease. The Alamarics did not stand a chance.
Though she did not know it at the time, Amira was one of the last survivors of her country. She was born in a cliffside fishing village, which once had a name, but she cannot recall it; on the northernmost tip of the most remote island. In her village lived about one hundred people at most. A modest population, just few enough to live comfortably within a small chain of cliffside limestone caves. It was a quiet, peaceful place. They had heard rumors of the apocalyptic fate which befell the large cities, of course, but with their insular lifestyle and remote location, most villagers assumed that such reports must be exaggerated. Surely the situation could not be that dire. After all, the Saelics they knew were good people. Merchants occasionally visited to trade for the village’s fish, and they were always fair and courteous. The Saelics had a small military installation nearby, but it housed only ten soldiers, who so often came into the village to drink and socialize that the villagers welcomed them as dear friends.
Amira’s mother was Pashara, the village saintess. Even as young as five years old, Amira understood her mother’s job like it was her own. Pashara spoke as the voice of the gods. She led the people of her village with a kindness, wisdom, and fairness that could only be divine. One of Amira’s most vivid memories of Pashara was preparing for a funeral—a child barely eight years of age, who slipped off the edge of his father’s fishing boat, only to become caught and strangled in a fishing net. Pashara, as the saintess, prepared the boy for his final journey.
Death was nothing new to Amira. Despite being so remote from the other isles, the little village could not fully escape the fate which had befallen their neighbors. The past two monsoon seasons, when the villagers stayed inside the caves nearly all day, had each heralded a surge of the plague. Each time, a dozen or so died. So Amira knew well the cave grotto where Pashara prepared the dead. A natural opening allowed in plenty of sunlight, by which Pashara worked tirelessly from the moment she received the body until the next nightfall.
“The gods teach us that life is a balance,” Pashara told her daughter. “Happiness and sadness. Warmth and cold. Comfort and pain. Life contains all of them in equal measure. Only when death comes is that balance upset—happiness, warmth, and comfort leave with the soul; only sadness, cold, and pain remain within the lifeless body.”
The first step to prepare the body was to wash it. The softest silk cloths were reserved for this task. Pashara would clean the body slowly and gently as if they could feel every touch. With the boy, she took extra care around the neck, bruised and swollen from the net; a drop of precious laudanum was added to the washing-water to soothe the child’s pain.
“The pain does not leave when life ends. It only stales and festers, like runoff water pooling in a ditch. We know this because we can see it in a body that is left to decay. The skin rots and sours, forming blisters and sores, like the ones you get on your hands from too much climbing. The eyes sink in and the nose sloughs off. The body is in so much pain that such injuries manifest by themselves, without any other apparent cause. And we know this because we feel it, too. So concentrated is the pain of the deceased that it radiates and spreads to everything around it.”
“Is that,” young Amira asked, “why you are crying?”
Pashara froze. She must not have realized she was crying until her daughter asked, as she reached up to her own face in disbelief. Then, with a humorless little laugh, she wiped her tears and bowed her head.
“Yes,” she replied. “Yes, that is why. If not for this child’s final journey, the journey of the funeral pyre, the pain will persist for as long as his body. That is why I must work quickly, Amira—as will you, when you take this mantle from me. Please, would you fetch the linen?”
After the body was washed, Pashara lay it upon a canvas stretcher, then wrapped the body in special linen cloth. Each strip of the cloth was soaked in oil, often making it slippery and difficult to secure, but this step was critical. A quick burn meant less pain. The face was left uncovered so that, as the body burned, any last remnants of soul could see the sky and know where to go. As soon as the wrapping was finished, Pashara sent Amira to run and grab two young men from the village, who would carry the body on its stretcher to the beach. The whole time, Pashara stayed at the body’s side, praying. On the way to the beach, as more of the village joined the somber funeral procession, Pashara never ceased to pray. It was in a language only she knew—the language that the Alamarics once spoke in an age before the Saelics, but which became too impractical for most people to practice after so many decades of trade and integration. Only the oldest Alamarics and saintesses spoke the language nowadays. It was a language which, Pashara promised, Amira would also learn in time. Just not yet. Not until she was older, ready to become a saintess in her mother’s footsteps.
As the moon rose over the horizon, casting the sandy white beaches in an unearthly glow, the village elders joined Pashara in crafting the funeral pyre. Not a single soul from the village was absent. In such a small community, children were rare. They were known by all, beloved by all, and today, mourned by all. The child’s mother wept over the body; the father tore his clothes and wailed in agony. As the elders and Pashara stacked driftwood and laid the stretcher on top of it, the father collapsed over the boy and kissed his forehead.
“No!” he begged. “Hakan. My baby boy. Please, please, forgive me!”
“He cannot forgive you,” Pashara snapped. “Not while he is in pain. Get up! Be a good father to your son, and do not prolong his suffering any longer!”
Little known to the mourners was that they had an audience. Behind the beach rose the sharp white cliff face, its uneven surface dotted with natural inlets and human-chiseled entrances to the caves that the villagers called home. From one of these openings, a cluster of men watched.
At the end of a long day, all the Saelics wanted was a warm mug of the spiced wine that the villagers made, which was always offered in their dining hall. But never before had they arrived to find the entire cave system empty, as if all its inhabitants spontaneously vanished. Looking onto the beach, they could now see why. A child’s body lay upon the pyre, surrounded by a hundred villagers. They knew Alamarics burned their dead, and they had seen similar funeral processions like this before, but never one that turned the whole village out onto the beach. And never before had they seen the village elders drag a wailing man away from the pyre, as if pleading to postpone the burning for just a minute longer.
Just as Pashara was about to strike the flint, footsteps crunched down the beach towards them. The villagers turned and parted respectfully to let four of the Saelic soldiers approach the funeral pyre. Quickly, each of the villagers reached for their scarves and handkerchiefs to cover their mouths and noses. It was well known that plague spread by breathing the air of a carrier, so Pashara had instructed her villagers to always keep a clean cloth on hand whenever the Saelics might show up. The soldiers generally tolerated this habit; now, it just seemed to annoy them.
“What’s going on?” asked the captain, one hand resting on his sword.
Pashara stepped forward, moving her ceremonial veil to cover the lower half of her face. Automatically, Amira started to follow her mother, but a quick and furtive glance warned her to stay back.
“A funeral,” said Pashara. “What brings you here?”
The captain frowned. He began to circle Pashara, looking her up and down, then examining the funeral pyre. He barely regarded the parents of the boy, knelt at the pyre’s base, the sheath of his sword bumping the mother’s arm as he passed.
“Inconvenience,” he finally said. “My men and I were hoping to enjoy a fine drink with your people. But then we find your lot all the way out here, in the dead of night, faces covered and crowded about a sleeping boy…one would think that strange, no?”
“Sleeping?” the boy’s father echoed.
Pashara held up a hand, motioning him to stay silent. “He is not sleeping,” she explained. “He passed away this morning, a tragic accident. We are only trying to release him peacefully to the afterlife.”
One of the soldiers scoffed. Pashara’s eye twitched, and she inhaled before continuing.
“I am sorry for the inconvenience, sirs, but this ceremony is of the utmost importance,” she told the soldiers. “If you do not intend to respect the dead, I must ask you to leave.”
Her voice was one that usually never failed to instill calm in its listener. But this time, it seemed only to inflame their tempers. “Look, lady,” the captain snapped, jabbing his finger towards Pashara, “we’re just trying to do our jobs. What are you doing with that boy?”
She opened her mouth, as if about to explain, but all of a sudden, the child’s mother cried out. “You heartless bastards!” she wailed. “My son is suffering—just leave us be!”
“Suffering?” the captain echoed. His gaze flicked to the funeral pyre, where the boy lay, his face bare and peaceful as if in sleep. “So he is alive?”
Again, Pashara tried to explain. The child was not alive—but he was suffering nonetheless. No one heard her. The villagers were beginning to shout. They started to advance on the soldiers. “Get out!” one elder shouted. “You’ve overstayed your welcome!”
“How dare you!” The captain drew his sword.
But the crowd kept advancing. Slowly the Saelic soldiers were pushed back, down the beach, until they were practically scrambling backwards up the rocks. “You entitled pigs!” a woman hollered. “Asking for drinks during a damn funeral!” an old man spat. “Just leave us in peace!” a teenager screamed. “ You’re not wanted here!”
The soldiers scattered. Pashara rushed forward, calling out to them, but it was too late. They were already gone. By the time the villagers returned to the funeral pyre and set it alight, sending their beloved child to an afterlife without pain, Pashara looked to the horizon and saw that a Saelic ship was already approaching the coastline. It was too small for war, just large enough to pick up ten scaredy-cat soldiers who had gotten spooked by a small village and wanted to run home. As the smoke spiraled into the sky, the villagers wept and sang and, finally—as the last of the embers burned out, leaving only charred white bone—cheered.
The funeral turned into a celebration. Two victories had been won tonight. The first was a bittersweet victory, fought to free their beloved child from eternal pain. His soul could rest easy with the gods, and those who loved him could begin to heal. The second victory was one of vindication. All were in accord now, agreeing that while the Saelics had been pleasant enough, they were no longer friends. This village had suffered enough deaths by plague, each pyre built for a plague victim a constant omen of the Saelics’ presence; but even now, at a funeral for a death which had nothing at all to do with the Saelics, they managed to find a way to make it all about them. No, the village agreed, this was for the best. They had to go.
Yet, deep in her heart, Pashara knew that they would be back.