A Tomb Without Stars
Excerpt from The Testament of Elloreni the Elder
Like the crisp stench of smoke, the shuddering cries of ecstasy that rang through the halls of Amanueth's Well should have been our first warning — the prelude to a conflagration that would change the course of our history. On that night, a new god was born, and the old ones began their slow and torturous descent into darkness.
I confess. It is here where my memory fails me. Pain and grief cloud my recollection. Most names, I cannot put to faces, and most faces, I cannot put to names. One, and only one, is clear in the forefront of my mind. His name was Callae. His eyes were the color of the sky on an overcast day. His hair was white as the driven snow. And his smile, his smile shone like the sun.
I loved him.
From the moment that we met as vivacious youths, we connected on a deep and fundamental level. Throughout life we shared a meaningful bond. The others went so far as to call us trees of the same roots. I could not have been happier, with him.
He loved me, too. As a friend. As a brother. As more. But he wasn't all too interested in bedding me. We went that far, on occasion, but there was a girl, with eyes the color of burnished gold, and hair like fine brushed silver, whom he spoke softly of, for whom his loins stirred. He was far too bashful to ask her if she returned his affections, but I knew she did. Hard as I tried to convince him, he never did believe me.
There are days when I like to imagine that had things not gone so badly, he could have, one day, mustered the courage to approach her. That they could have come together, that they could have fallen in love. That we could have been happy.
Some nights I still hope that this has all been a terrible, terrible nightmare. That any moment now, I would wake up, with him in my arms. That we would be brother-husbands. That she would be our wife. But no matter how hard I close my eyes, or how long I plunge myself into slumber, I awaken to this world, and the terrible truth of my life comes crashing down on me like a mountain of lead.
We were young. We were ignorant. We had no idea the things that were coming for us. When we lost our jobs and could find nothing for us but menial labour, we'd swallowed our prides. The times were hard, but we had each other, and I lived to see him smile. I was fool. He was a fool. We were all fools.
By the time that we realized what was happening, we had been stripped of hearth and home, our coffers bled dry by the unreasonable demands of life, and our bodies were drained and exhausted from hours of back-breaking labour.
After that, they came for us, saying that we would go to prison for our debts. Some, thinking that there would be food for the prisoners, at least, were stupid enough to go willingly. I did. He begged me not to go. He said his family could help me pay my debts. But I could not stomach the thought of being a burden to him, so I left.
They took us by the cartful to the mountains. There, they stripped us of our identities, of the clothes on our backs, the last of our dignity. They forced us into iron shackles so tight they bit into our skin and chafed with every little movement. Before we had even gotten to the mines, our wrists and ankles had been scrubbed raw by the only clothing we were allowed to wear.
The days blur in my mind. But we ate and drank the meagre food and drink they thought to provide in utter darkness. I remember how they crammed us into the old, abandoned mineshafts by the hundreds. Our naked bodies jostled together, bony elbows into bony ribs. Sleep was fitful, if it ever came, as the walls seemed to close in around us.
Those among us who were lucky fell asleep to the cries of the old and the infirm, as they were crushed under the weight of so much beleaguered flesh, and they awakened to the silence of the dead. We were treated as little more than savage beasts, stripped of any personhood, forbidden so much as a single spoken word lest we have our tongues cut out with blades of ice.
We were given a routine, from which any deviation would be punished. Like machines, when the bell first rang, we would rise and march in single file to the mines to chip away at rock, the monotonous banging of our pickaxes making our backs and our shoulders ache from the effort. Hours and hours upon end we would toil until we either died of exhaustion, or the guards felt kind enough to ring the bell a second time.
We lived in our filth. And we slept with our dead. They gave us nothing. And all the riches we unearthed, they took. The only comfort that I had in the early days was that I had not seen Callae. I held out hope that there was still someone out there, someone strong, someone influential, someone powerful fighting on our behalf. Fighting for me.
And then, one day, he was there. Shackled alongside a fresh batch of slaves. My anger threatened to overwhelm my despair. How dare they lay a hand on him. But my fury was impotent. I shook. I clenched my fists. I promised, in my mind, that I would kill every last one them. And yet, I did nothing.
Callae was with the girl, but she looked worse for wear. She was bruised, battered. Her left eye was swollen shut, and her bottom lip was split, dribbling blood onto her chest. Her good eye burned with defiance, and yet when she turned to look at Callae, her gaze grew tender. I wished I had done as he asked. I wished I had stayed behind. I wished I could have had at least a few more weeks with him outside of that cursed place.
The next morning, in the flickering twilight of the torches that blazed to life of their own accord, I watched him. He saw me. He looked at me. He hung his head in shame. I gritted my teeth and swallowed my despair. I would have gone to him. Embraced him. Comforted him. Things I had needed when I was first captured, things I had been denied.
I never got the chance. The guards came for him. They came for her, too. Before I could figure out where they were being taken, the bell rang, and like the rest of the browbeaten herd, I marched to the grinding tune of hefted pickaxes to begin yet another day of meaningless toil.
Shuddering moans that echoed down the cavernous mineshafts told me what I needed to know. On the one hand, Callae had finally gotten what he had always wanted. On the other, whatever joy he might have gotten from the act had probably been crushed under the heel of our slavers.
That night I could hear his sniffling, and I crawled my way through pitch blackness to find him. I held him. He clung to me, like his life depended on it, and he said, in whispered tones, "I don't want to do it. I can't do it. Not again."
I said nothing. I brushed his hair. I kissed his forehead. I held him close. But what I couldn't do was reassure him. I couldn't tell him that everything was going to be alright. Because I didn't know that. And I didn't want to have my tongue cut out.
Every day, before our mining began, the guards would take him and her away. Until one day, they took a different young woman, and left her with the rest. I watched him as he grew withdrawn, gaunt, and hollow. All I could do was hold him at night as he cried himself to sleep.
He didn't understand why he was being made to do this, why he was being forced to lay with so many, for so long. As the days wore on, we figured it out. The girl he liked started showing two lengths after her last day with him. She was with child, and for a time, it was like a little light had returned to Callae's eyes. It didn't last long. The thought that his child would be born into a world like this crushed him.
The second girl started showing soon after. Then the third. Then the fourth. It was clear what was being done. But the greatest toll was taken on Callae. I watched him grow thin and joyless. Every night I prayed to see his smile again, but every day saw him slip further and further into despair.
He refused rations, but the guards would not have it. They forced him to eat and to drink, and each time they did, it was as though a burning arousal consumed him. He would writhe on the floor, gagging for release. In that state, it was all too easy for the guards to make him mount one of the women. They made us all watch.
In his first year, Callae fathered fifty-seven children, none of whom ever saw the love of their mothers' arms. Each wailing babe was taken the moment it was born and given to the elderly to care for. The women were taken to be healed so that they could bear more offspring faster. And through all that time I had to watch, powerless, as the lively exuberant boy I once knew got buried deeper and deeper in darkness.
He stopped fighting after he was forced to impregnate the girl he liked a second time. But he also stopped responding to me. He sat in his corner, quiet, staring off into the distance. I would hold him at night, but he would just lay there, breathing evenly. When the guards came for him, he would follow meekly. I knew then that he wasn't there anymore. Callae had retreated from the world. His body did what it had to. But his mind was elsewhere, clinging to other memories for survival.
He returned to me two times. The first was when the girl he liked died of childbirth. She had given birth to a boy, but died minutes after, her shrieks echoing across the darkened tunnels, dwindling in volume until there was nothing but the confused wails of the child. He snapped back to reality then and let loose an animalistic howl of agony.
I held him. Like I always had. And he told me he couldn't bear it any longer.
The second time was at the end of a long work day. The torches were still lit, and in the flickering fire I realized how old he had gotten. He lay down beside me, placed his head on my lap. He looked up at me, and I realized he was there. I smiled at him. And at long last, he smiled back at me.
He apologized. He apologized for not being stronger. He asked me to remember him not as I saw him then, but how he was long ago, when he could still feel fresh wind on his face, and the warmth of the sun on his skin.
I knew, then, that he was dying. And I thought that I would follow soon after. I could not live. Not without him. But he reached up with trembling hands and caressed the sides of my face with skeletal fingers. He apologized again and asked me to keep on living, to keep on fighting.
I asked him why.
He said that he wanted me to see the stars again.
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