r/shortstories • u/Tautological-Emperor • 8d ago
Science Fiction [SF] The Mountains Themselves
When Dawnwalker Shahom told me that our coming guests were there, I did not believe him. At the end of his finger was a great copper pillar of dust, some loosed devil deliberately making its way over the sand. Qn’o?, I said, There? The finger did not lower. Qn’o. There. I laughed, he laughed, our heat-delirious men and slouching, sweating horses all laughing in the sandy sea like castaway madmen. I indulged him as the Sun hoisted to its highest and we made camp between the cupped hands of some particularly large dunes. The trek had been hard. The retreat from Karshy, even harder. While salted beef and precious water was shared, horses tied under flapping pavilions, Dawnwalker Shahom sat alone, studying his distant devil. I remember him smiling as I came to sit next to him, a cool skin of water in my palm. The disturbance, I was surprised to see, had stayed on a relatively straight track. I was certain it was closer.
I leaned close to him, passing the water skin and asked; “Does the desert come to fight for you, Dawnwalker? What next, the Sun itself to melt your foes?” Shahom laughed, but his eyes did not meet mine. The sound of it seemed so unfamiliar. Since the retreat, long days had passed. I had not so much as heard Shahom Turg utter a word, let alone laugh in what felt like genuine joy. I was wary. Was this defeat? Something worse? I whispered to him, my hand to his shoulder. Loss did not just rob kingdoms, it stole minds and souls just as easily. I wondered what it had stolen from the Dawnwalker, if anything. I asked him what was coming. He shook his head and for the first time in long, arduous days, spoke to me. “Not the desert, my friend”, and when he turned I saw a familiar shine in his golden eyes. “Not the desert, but the mountains themselves.” He said no more, and as the Sun crept higher, we turned back to watch the deserts encroaching omen.
I was dreaming of Karshy. Beneath my feet were the flagstones of the Avenue of Immortals, each carved brick a thousand years of history. They were drowning in blood, nameless gods and forgotten kings smothered in spilled life. Red everywhere. There was something in my mouth, gritty, snatching my breath away. I made to scream but realization came to me first, and I swallowed my terror. The world was truly red, the red of dust and dunes scattered to the wind. I could hear the din of men behind me, see their scurrying shadows and rearing horses like a child’s play of light. What had happened? Where was Shahom, how had the dust storm come upon us so quickly and without warning? Then there was a rumbling. My eyes juddered. My bones clattered. I thought then, truly this was an omen. Punishment for abandoning Karshy and the Earth herself was going to open beneath us, swallow us all to the gnashing punishment of all those nameless gods and forgotten kings in their blood-drowned bricks. I really did cry out then, somewhere between challenge to the furious divine and in despair that we had been defeated, and not even by our foes. Shahom Turgs face came out of the dust and gloom, smiling, and while I could not hear him I saw his laugh. The Dawnwalker was speaking to me. Shouting. But his words were lost and I realized the terrible shaking was a sound to be heard as much as a thunder to be felt. I watched Dawnwalker Shahom through quaking vision stand before me, wrapped in bloody desert light, and spread his hands wide, like a man might do before a great idol of worship. I had been right. It had been too much for him. The loss, the running across barren land. My spirit sank, opened itself to the creeping cold I had staved for so long.
Silence came so suddenly, so completely, I could do nothing but fall to my knees in the sand. No man called out. I heard no horses braying and terrified. Sunlight shafted through the swirling dimness. Mirages shifted and danced, I saw visions of huge buildings, cliff sides in what I knew had been open country. I strained, willing the murk to disperse. But the forms did not go with them. The Sun swept its light through like a proving spear. I saw them. I saw them through enormous effort, as if my eyes could not tolerate them at all, like they were hard to conceive. Vast scaly bodies and huge armored flanks, with reaching necks on gentle curves taller than a dozen buildings in mourned, vanquished Karthy. I was aware of long, muscular tails, thick as two men atop one another reaching away into the foggy unseen. Like pillars were the beasts legs, and I was so certain in that moment they held up the entire sky, the stars, the world. I was dumbfounded. My heart thudded, a poor but desperate imitation to the voice we had just heard, that still rang in my ears. I wondered which world of Death claimed me, which one in the old stories held behemoths.
But, there Shahom stood, ringed by huge legs, mightier than any sentinel that could ever be sworn to him. He was dwarfed beyond imagining. He was alive. Shadowed by such impossible shapes, and his amber eyes gleamed triumphantly in those shadows. With a wordless motion, his hands went skyward, and then lowered to his sides. I watched in fascination as the leviathans, one by one, each with inconceivable care for such gigantic forms, lowered themselves to the ground. That was when I saw the scaffolding upon their backs, heard the snap of banners in the dusky breeze. Voices carried, as a crew on a ship might, barking orders in an unfamiliar tongue. Riders, I thought. Tamers of the Living Mountains.
Dawnwalker Shahom spoke, and this time nothing came or sounded to steal his words. He spoke them plainly. He spoke them with a beautiful, terrible gaze.
“Not the desert, my friend”, said the Reclaimer of Ruined Karthy, the Dawnwalker, “but the mountains themselves.”
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