Tomebound

On the day of Orokoda (Returning), all the gods of every pantheon will descend to the earth after the time of a myriad. Let us therefore cultivate the love of all men and the stewardship of the world our lords fashioned. Let us live in such a way that we do not incur their great wrath once more. Let us gain their favor, lest they call down another Yeikon (Cataclysm.)

-Sayings of Mazukai, Scroll 10

Sang Lamdak, Xheng Yu Xi

A long and grueling fortnight at sea brought the Lars family to their new home, the reclusive but bustling nation of Xheng Yu Xi.

Cadas knew all about it from the dozen or so history and geography books he’d memorized to cleanse his palate between dense science texts. Xheng Yu Xi was so named for the three enormous islands of Xheng, Yu, and Xi—more like miniature continents in their own right—that were all loosely connected to each other through small satellite islands and very narrow gaps of sea between them. It was the second most prosperous nation in the known world after Qarda, with international trade in specially sanctioned ports, all of which could be found on small western islands.

Cadas followed his mother, older brother, older sister, and two male cousins down the rickety wooden ramp of the ship to the island-wide city of Sang Lamdak, or Port of Spice, on one such small western island of the same name. According to his mother, their best hope for success was to try to find jobs as cooks in a place where their foreign culinary prowess would be welcome.

For a port city on a tiny island off the coast of the Yu mainland, Sang Lamdak was hectic and crowded as any capital metropolis Cadas had ever seen. Couriers, butchers, booksellers, jewelers, restaurateurs, and merchants of every kind congested every cramped street that the Lars family traveled on foot, not to mention the throngs of pedestrians and gawking customers. The familiar scents of Myrenthian spices mingled with the fatty odors of meats, the tang of various metals, and even the occasional stench of human waste in a thin haze that choked the air.

Cadas clamped his hands over his ears. The city suffocated him.

“Everybody stick together,” said his mother. “Cadas, keep up with me. Now.”

Painted wooden signs and book stands all bore unfamiliar symbols that Cadas couldn't read. It was like their first arrival in Qarda all over again. It had taken Cadas their full stay in the Palace of the Hierophant to master Qardish at a conversational level; there were so many contradictions in the linguistic rules that it was almost impossible to remember them all. He hoped the language here was simpler.

His older brother Ikraos clapped a hand on his back. Cadas flinched; he hated his brother’s habit of aggressive physical contact. “Did you know,” said Ikraos in a loud, obnoxious voice over the surrounding din, “that this country worships 10,000 different gods? You thought twenty-nine was a pain back in Myrenthos.”

“19,683,” Cadas replied matter-of-factly.

“What’s that?”

“Xheng Yu Xi officially recognizes the worship of 19,683 gods. There are nine major gods, some gods that are dead according to mythology that they honor in funeral rituals, nature gods, local patron gods, personified concepts, and hybrid hero-gods from their ancient history. They also have bloodline gods that individual families worship privately generation to generation. But not everybody worships every god. Their religion is highly individualistic and decentralized and they have no official national tome. Also, here you can worship your own gods or no gods at all if you want. I read that in a history book that Drakhman gave me called The History of Xheng Yu Xi to the Present Day by Alabrim Mehreen.”

“Of course you did,” said Ikraos. He walked ahead of Cadas but the little brother picked up his pace to catch up.

“I like the religion here because people do whatever they want,” Cadas went on. “They can do it by themselves, too. Not like back in Myrenthos where the whole family had to see a different shrine every day of the month. Not like in Qarda where we had to go to the temple once every four days. But that was just because Mother said so. Drakhman told me I didn't have to go if I didn’t want to and so I stopped going. Oh, and I read in The History of Xheng Yu Xi to the Present Day by Alabrim Mehreen that Xheng Yu Xi has almost as many books as Qarda, but they have lots of different books. In Qarda they had a lot of the same book, The Testament of Kahlo Hadrizeen, First Prophet of Eloei. That book was boring. All of it was made up and didn’t make any sense. I’m going to tell Mother to buy me ten books when we get to our new house because she promised me on the ship that if I—”

“Shut up!” His older brother spun around and looked at Cadas, whose attention was suddenly occupied looking at the symbols outside of a restaurant. Cadas didn’t care much for looking people in the eye, anyway, even if not doing so was rude like his mother said. “Do you ever stop talking about whatever little thought pops into your head? Do you have the slightest clue how our family is struggling right now?”

Cadas wasn’t sure what his brother was talking about, but their mother interrupted. “This is it!” she announced. “This way.” She led them to the cramped atrium of a narrow building wedged between a bookseller and a jeweler. There was foreign script in large black characters on the sign, but underneath it was the word “Myrenthos” in Myrenthian.

The building was packed with rows and rows of narrow rectangular tables where people ate dishes that Cadas recognized from his homeland. Someone came up to his mother and said something in a language he couldn’t understand. The man was short and fat, a few black hairs combed over an otherwise bald head. He arched an eyebrow at Cadas’s mother.

“Hello,” she said. “Does anyone here speak Myrenthian?” The man didn’t respond. “We’ve come to apply to be cooks. We are native Myrenthians, and we know all the spices by heart. We served several years in the royal kitchen of Hierophant Drak—”

“Ei,” said the man, shaking his head. “Ei, domen, domen, tsumurui. Tazhi, tsumurui.” Cadas couldn’t understand his words, but he had a knack for memorization. The man pointed at the door behind them and kept shaking his head.

“Does anyone here speak Myrenthian?” Cadas’s mother asked again. “Please? If I could just talk—”

“Tazhi, lamdakui. Tazhi nen!” The man stood up, scrunching up his face and making sweeping motions at them. “Ei, lamdakui. Domen.” He pushed at the Lars family, escorting them out of the building.

Cadas looked to his mother, who breathed out heavily and looked down at her shoes. “It would seem we aren’t welcome here,” she said. “No matter. We’ll find another place that will take us.” Her children followed her closely, moving in a tight group, and the people on the street parted for them without fail, but no one looked at them.

***

The sun set and rose again on their exhausting journey through the streets of Sang Lamdak. They stopped to rest sometime around midnight, nodding off with their heads against the cool brick walls. His mother and sister used their bags of belongings as pillows; Cadas stayed wide awake to watch the occasional cockroach scuttle between their feet. There was even a moth that he’d never seen before, which danced around the flame of a nearby lantern, but it burned up before he could get a good look at it.

They awoke at dawn when someone in the adjacent building stepped out into the alley and doused them with a pail of dirty dishwater. “Tazhi nen,” he muttered to them and slammed the side door shut.

They shuffled along in their wet clothes until the midmorning sun had finally baked them dry again.

“I want to go back to the palace,” said Cadas. “When are we going home?”

“For the five hundredth time,” said his mother, gritting her teeth at first, “this is our home now.”

“My feet hurt. I want to stop walking. I want to read my books.”

“Then find us jobs or an inn that doesn't charge anything. Then you can read every godsdamned book you want. How does that sound?”

The late morning sun beat down on them. It was hot in Xheng Yu Xi and with no cool palace walls to keep out the sun. Cadas hated the feel of sweat pooling in his armpits and he tried, on two occasions, to take off his tunic, but his mother forced it back onto him and slapped him in the back of the head both times.

Their stomachs roared hollow roars. It was time for a meal break, but that was easier said than done. The matriarch of the Lars family begged for coins and earned mostly averted gazes and disapproving looks in equal measure; a precious few passersby rewarded her efforts with small copper coins the size of his little fingernail.

Cooking smells teased the air around them. Beef, onions, garlic, something like bread, warm soup steam, and, every so often, an unmistakable whiff of home. Peppers. Herbs. Seasonings. The flavors of Myrenthos. What had overwhelmed Cadas earlier now tortured his empty belly.

Later on, while he occupied himself with memorizing the shapes and brushstrokes that composed the title of a thick beige book, his mother traded the coins for a cut of meat from a butcher and three pouches of spices from a wildly gesticulating spice merchant. She gave away one of her necklaces for an iron pot, a pair of earrings in exchange for some unused broth and the unspoken permission to use an outdoor vendor’s cooking fire.

She combined the raw ingredients into a stew that drew curious glances and had nostrils flaring up and down the street. She served her children one at a time in borrowed wooden bowls—Cadas first, then the rest of his siblings from youngest to oldest—and then she ate from the remainder in the pot.

“Ngei zhaotung,” said a young man who appeared suddenly behind the Lars family. Their mother spun around to look at him. “Ngei zhaotung tadamas. Dekura zhe?”

“I don't understand what you're saying,” she replied.

“Oh, my sincerest apologies,” he said in fluent Myrenthian. “Some soup? I’d like some soup, please. How much?”

“This is for my family. This is the first meal we’ve eaten in a day. We just want some privacy.”

“Oh, my mistake. I thought you were a merchant. You mean you don’t do this professionally?”

She shook her head. “Used to.”

“We used to cook for royalty back in Qarda,” said Ikraos. “This is what my mother can do with scraps on the street. You should have seen what she did with a fully stocked kitchen!”

The young man smirked. “I’m sure my parents would love to meet you. Cooks who know what they’re doing. Maybe you could even teach them a thing or two.”

Cadas saw his mom narrow her eyes to slits as she slurped the last dregs of her stew. “We're not looking to do any charity work. We have no place to live.”

“You’re homeless? With culinary know-how like yours? In a city like this?” The young man shook his head. “Nonsense. You can come and stay in my parents’ wine cellar. They drop in maybe once per day when the barrels upstairs run empty.”

“A cellar is a basement,” said Cadas. “I don’t want to live in a basement. Unless it has cockroaches or spiders.”

“Cadas!” said his mother. Then she turned back to the kindly young stranger and she was all smiles. “Sometimes my son likes to make rude jokes. Ignore him. Let me ask you, what would be the asking price of a room in your wine cellar? Would your parents approve?”

“My mother has been on my back for the past quarter moon because I’ve been slacking on my chores. She just wants the work done. If you helped me, I’m sure she could be persuaded to let you stay out of sight. My father is harder to please, but helping the needy is very important to him. He serves free supper to the homeless twice a moon.”

“We can earn our keep,” said Cadas’s older sister Thyse. “We promise.”

“Please,” said their mother. “We just escaped Qarda. Have you heard what’s happened there? My children—we have no home anymore.”

The Xhengyon boy stroked his chin for a moment in thought. “How about this? Your family can take on my share of the chores—the cleaning, cooking, and shopping for ingredients. Then maybe I can finally broaden my horizons. I can save up for my trip to the mainland. Study for entrance exams into one of Yu’s prestigious universities. Anything to get away from this place.” He shook his head and refocused. “Right. Anyway, in exchange, you can have a place to sleep. I’ll even teach you Xhengyon. You’ll need it to survive in this country, even in the more international cities like this one.” The boy shook his head gravely. “You’d be surprised how some people here treat foreigners.”

“We’ll take it.” The mother surveyed her dirty, travel-weary children and gathered them all into a huddle in her arms, Cadas resisting. “My name is Polymene. What’s yours?”

“Hiricho,” he replied.

“Well, Hiricho, we can’t thank you enough—”

He raised a cautionary finger and evaded her hug. “Ah! Don’t thank me until I check with my parents first.” He grinned. “If nothing else, you have a room until morning.”

That night, the Lars family lay their heads down on pillows made of potato and onion sacks, fending off the cellar’s cold with makeshift rag blankets. It was a step up from sleeping on the bare street.

Cadas threw a vicious tantrum about wanting to read his books despite the darkness of the cellar and the late hour, and his mother finally caved, softly petitioning their young host for some candles and a means to light them. His mother gave the materials to Cadas and then stormed off to bed on the cold, hard floor.

After waiting patiently for what was functionally forever—in his mind, if no one else’s— Cadas could finally sit down with his books. He resolved to read at least one of them in its entirety before sleeping. First, though, he felt compelled to write.

The Compendium was stiff with disuse, like a sleeping limb. He pried open the pages and turned to a blank one. Then, recalling all the Xhengyon words and phrases he’d memorized since their arrival, matched with the many overflowing questions he had for Hiricho about translations and grammar, he started writing his own personal handbook for the language so alien and new to him.

“ei – no”

“domen – sorry”

“tsumuro, tsumurui – foreign beggar(s)”

“tazhikaru – to go”

“tazhi – go (imperative)”

“tazhi nen – go out/leave (imperative)”

“lamdak – spice”

“lamdakui – spices”

“lamdakui – spice merchants”

“lamdakui – Myrenthians (offensive)”

“ngei – some”

“zhaotung – soup”

“tadamaseru – to purchase”

“tadamas – I purchase”

“dekura – price”

“zhe – how much, how many”

“hiricho – sea breeze”

“Xheng – hill”

“Yu – city”

“Xi – fish”

Bobbing his head side to side to stay awake, Cadas wrote down one more fact in the Compendium.

“The mainland of Yu has universities. They must have a lot of books there. A university is a place where people go to learn things, and they can read as many books as they want, whenever they want. Hiricho says that in a university, no one scolds you for reading.”