Men in white and red robes welcome the Azkazraj, help them stagger towards the village, hold bowls of water to their thirsty mouths. I didn’t realize how bad off the natives are. Many of them limp. A few have to be carried.
As we walk I hear men reciting their ancestors, both Azkazraj and Bitrib tribesmen, trying to figure out who might be related to who. The social mechanics of the meeting and greeting are bewildering.
Bayaja leads us towards the center of the sharuq, where there’s a village of squat mud houses. In between the houses are small vegetable gardens where unveiled women busy themselves plucking melons and tomatoes from the vines and pulling up turnips and radishes from the well-watered earth.
All around the village, the sharuq cloud swirls, a glowing orange wall that eclipses the setting sun. The sky is much smaller here, cropped on all horizons—like we’re stuck inside of a huge uncorked jug.
I’m so distracted by the sights that I lose track of Kiddu.
“Do not worry about her,” Jaruna says. “My sister will make sure she is taken care of.”
“I hope she also makes sure Kiddu keeps her damn mouth shut.”
“You do worry too much. The females have their own mysterious ways. They will be good for each other, I think.”
Without warning, Chief Bayaja pats me on the back so hard that I almost spit out the water I was drinking.
“My boy!” he yells. “I am sorry for calling you a demon! Why, it has been so long since we have seen the black-faced people, and all we hear in these times are stories, terrible stories. But let me promise you, the Bitrib Tribe knows how to honor our guests! Especially the guests of a chosen one!”
Dronaja sidles up. “I have heard rumors of the Bitrib’s legendary hospitality. Truly I am happy to see the rumors are true.”
“Bah ha ha! Chief Dronaja! You flatter us.”
“Gil,” Jaruna says. “Did you know the Bitrib Tribe revers the lamashu as a holy beast?”
“I did not know that,” I say.
“The lamashu is the greatest of all Miyat’s children!” Bayaja yells. “For you see, it is said that the mount of the great Ramahud was a lamashu. And how strange it is that you have said this! For a lamashu visited our village not a week ago. Out of the blue sky! It stopped for a drink of water and then flew east. Why, it must have been twenty years since the last time we saw one, and never in our oasis!”
“And Chief Bayaja,” Jaruna says, “do you know why Gil is famous in the Lost Oasis?”
“I do not!”
“The sinners were holding that very lamashu in captivity. Gil freed the great beast from the clutches of the Empire.”
Bayaja’s grin melts into a look of awe. “Truly? Why—there are no words! I see now why Lord Jaruna trusts you, my boy!”
I have no idea what to say. I almost have trouble believing that Bayaja’s fawning is genuine, after a week of the Azkazraj Tribe’s constant suspicion and hatred.
“It wasn’t just me,” I say. “My friend Kiddu helped—”
“Such an honor!” Bayaja continues. “Come! Come! You must meet our Brihmam!”
We pass an adobe temple near a big ring of towering cacti—green ones, not blood ones—at the center of the village. Men are spreading out long red blankets and mats on the sand. Bayaja shouts commands as more people walk by.
“Baga! Naruba! Gather sunstones! One of the mujashatriya has graced us with his presence! And by Asham, tonight will be a feast to remember!”
More men begin to balance stones upon the high branching stems of the cacti. A few even climb up the plants to get at higher branches, using the thick spines as footholds.
I get a sense of the oasis’ population. Maybe a few hundred, at most. Hosting nearly a hundred refugees seems to trouble no one.
Dronaja had taken off his outer head covering so his sand-caked bandage wrappings are exposed. He winks at me now and gestures with his head to one of the cacti.
There, sitting crosslegged under the long shadow of the cactus, is the oldest, skinniest man I think I’ve ever seen.
His white beard droops all the way to the ground. He sits straight up, back perpendicular to and just barely touching the cactus spines. His thin white robe is dirty with ages of grime and it fails to cover his stringy bare arms held out to either side.
In each of his outstretched hands is a pale white stone.
Jaruna notices me staring and leans over.
“That is the Brihmam,” he says.
“What is the Brihmam, exactly?”
“The Brihmam is the holy protector of the oasis,” Dronaja says. “He summons the sharuq winds, day and night.”
“And so the Empire is prevented from gaining a foothold in the Danyu, and Harrappa is protected from the west.”
A Bitrib tribesman unrolls a narrow plane of worn rug that ends just at the Brihmam’s feet. The ancient man continues sitting, undisturbed, his eyes closed and a calm expression on his face.
“He makes the sharuq?” I ask. “All by himself?”
“Such is the power of the True Path,” says Jaruna.
The Bitrib bring more long carpets and mats and soon these form a pathcwork cross shape that stretches across the whole cactus grove. At the top of the cross is the immobile Brihmam.
Men from both tribes start seating themselves on either side of the carpets. The Bitrib, one after another, remove their head coverings and the Azkazraj follow suit with theirs. There’s a smell of sweaty hair, everywhere.
I remain standing near Jaruna and the chiefs of the two tribes, feeling absurd, like a lost child. A hundred pairs of eyes pass over me. The tribesmen are whispering. About what, I don’t know, but something tells me that all down the long carpet the Azkazraj are telling their hosts about my claim to mystic prophethood—or more probably, my unspeakable blasphemy.
I decide to just stand there and look down at my feet.
“BROTHERS!” yells Bayaja. “Listen to me.”
This manages to shut everyone up.
“I, Bayaja son of Salub, am honored to welcome the great Azkazraj Tribe to our oasis. I welcome your mighty chief, Dronaja son of Dawaja, whose deeds of valor Anlil himself carries upon the desert winds.”
Dronaja stands now, burnt face swathed in clean new rags. He walks up to Bayaja, so much shorter and thinner than the Bitrib chief that when the two of them embrace he seems to disappear entirely.
After he emerges, he steps up to the Brihmam. He bows deep. Then he kisses the sole of the ancient man’s bare foot.
The Brihmam does not stir.
“The Azkazraj are not our only guests tonight—no! Tonight we also welcome a young man who hails from a tribe far more distant than any in the Great Desert—but a tribe that nonetheless traces its long line of fathers and grandfathers to those first men created from the clay by Asham, just as our tribe does. Tonight, we welcome Gil of Akkad!”
The men down the carpet are completely silent. Some of them stare with open mouths.
I neglect to say here that I’m actually from Libri, a mere satrapy, and that I’ve never been to the city of Akkad.
“Gil’s deeds are also great, my brothers. You may have heard them whispered on the wings of the lamashu who only just visited us days ago—for truly that holy beast owes its freedom to Gil of Akkad, who fought off the Empire’s warriors singlehandedly to unbind its chains! Yis! We will all welcome him to our feast. Bah ha ha!”
Before I know what’s happening Bayaja lifts me off my feet and crushes me in a grotesque and sweaty bear hug. I stagger backwards as he sets me down, laughing crazily.
I’m about to sit down now but Dronaja catches my eye. Then he tilts his head to the figure sitting against the cactus.
I shudder, realizing what I have to do.
I turn, shaking with nervousness, and approach the Brihmam as if the immobile man were a wild beast. I bow low, miming Dronaja from before.
The old man’s white beard droops alongside his feet, like a dividing line between the two white stones in his outstretched hands. I look up at his face, his eyes shut, his vaguely smiling expression. Then I look back down at his leathery skeletal foot.
“Do not worry young man. My feet were just washed this morning!”
I look up again. The Brihmam had opened one eye and now smiles at me with a toothy grin. It lasts only a second and he promptly reverts back to his calm expression.
I kiss the foot. It’s painless.
When I stand up, the men all clap.
Welcome, Gil of Akkad!
“Bah ha ha! Yis! And now, at last, I welcome our most honored guest—mujashatriya Jaruna, chosen of the Gods, master of the divine weapons, son of the King of Kings, and prince of all the desert. Truly! We are blessed by your presence here, mighty one. Asham willing, we beg of you to share your divine light with our oasis.”
Jaruna’s eyes dart around. Dronaja mouths something to him. After a moment the mystic strings his bow, takes an arrow from his quiver, nocks it.
He draws it back to his ear and aims it high. Closes his eyes. Bright yellow white light suffuses his body.
“Suryastra!”
The astra slashes high into the sky with its glowing wake. Then it collides with the sharuq and flares with the light of the sun. The dark encircling cloud flashes from within.
One by one the round stones in the cactus branches and upon the mats and rugs begin to glow with a soft yellow light, absorbing the light from the astra.
Everyone in the line of seated tribesmen cheers and claps, faces all lit up from the panoply of yellow glows.
Bayaja guides me to my seat. It’s next to Jaruna. The mystic, in turn, sits next to the Brihmam.
The chief claps big hands like a burst of thunder.
“Let us hasten to prayer!”
More sweat pours from my face. They expect me to pray along with them? Two seats away from their Brihmam?
Even after my surprisingly warm welcome I can’t shake the feeling that I can still say or do something that’s going to result in a swift stoning. I look around, wishing Kiddu were here—even though she’d probably just increase the likelihood of us dying—but there are no women in sight at all. No children either. I wonder if I’m the youngest person at this feast.
Jaruna leans over and whispers, “Just mouth along. You will do fine.”
The droning begins. The dark still air reverberates as all the men down the rugs hum all in different tones, none of them synchronized.
Then, as if prompted by some silent cue, Bayaja begins chanting and everyone repeats, line by line:
All praise to Asham, the Light of all.
You set the boundaries of the waters and the earth.
You stretched out the raqiya of heaven like a tent,
And emerge from it each morning,
Like a heroic bridegroom from a wedding canopy.
At your rising the Gods all assemble.
At your setting they prepare for rest.
Your gaze reaches Eyenki below the sands,
Adjuring him to visit our crops, to water and enrich them.
Your gaze reaches the Abyss of the Underworld
Warning the aurishas from menacing our women.
You watch over all the people in all the lands,
Judging our thoughts and intentions.
We pray for your swift return—
When your light shall once again nourish our oasis.
The men all bow their heads low and touch them to the sand. I follow suit and the sand cakes my sweaty forehead. I’m actually fairly certain that Jaruna messed up the prayer, which makes me feel better about mouthing it silently.
After everyone says All praise to Asham a few more times, the food is served.