DRY BONES
By Felix Lukhale
Copyright 2014 Felix Lukhale
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Heat scorched his bare back, fierce, biting into gashes red and gaping. Wounds covered his body. Crusts of blood, darkened, painted over torn flesh. Bruised knees dug into the earth, the hard crust of the earth, layered with bone-white dust and pierced by scattered jaws of sharp rocks. He rested his weight on his heels, back hunched, breath cut short by intermittent stabs of pain in the lungs. Fractures. A tattered short, more or less a rag, was the only piece of cloth on him.
Blood dripped down, scarlet pools, onto a bleached earth. His arms were bound in chains. He rested, limbs too tired to stir, body too fatigued, too exhausted, to relieve the overwhelming heat with cool drops of sweat. He rested, dry eyes wide open, staring into the barren earth, waiting, waiting for the heat to cease, the blood to run still and the pain to ebb, waiting for the cold, a bitter cold, to come, to spread and numb it all away into the cold firm grip of death.
He closed his eyes and sought for a prayer. But, his lips, dry and withered and peeling, did not twitch, his tongue lay swollen in a bruised mouth. What for, he thought. It would be a mockery, an insult. He had already been judged. It was hot, the hottest he had ever experienced, so hot as if the flames of hell yearned out to him paving the path of his descent into the fiery inferno. The heavens had judged him. The accursed sun hurled, one after another, ceaselessly, spears of flames, crisping the earth and its inhabitants, saturating the air, so that every gust of wind was a wave of heat, a slow blistering of skin. He longed for the cold.
Still, something troubled him, drifting in the back of his mind. Persistent. He felt it, occasionally, stirring in his chest. It chocked out his emotions and clouded his thoughts. He tried to make sense of it, to seek out its roots, but he couldn't figure out the reason or source of its occurrence.
An outrage of threats shattered the haze of reflected silence clouding his mind. A brutal rattle of chains and curses. Someone still resisted. He opened his eyes and sought the source of the commotion. Darru struggled against his chains, he jerked his arms, wildly, pushing hard until his skin grated. He had been stripped naked. Dust covered his entire body, caking his wounds in filthy grime. It must have been painful, he thought, to rip apart a body exhausted, damaged, dying.
In the midst of Darru's futile efforts, their eyes crossed. He saw in that brief moment, the rage harbored there, burning, the energy driving the limbs, dulling the pain with a threadbare worn out resolve. But, he could still see it even now, behind the piercing gaze of Darru's eyes. He could not explain it, he was not even sure of its authenticity. A veiled shadow of malice always lay behind those eyes; a shadow underneath all of Darru’s actions, in a dark gleam deep in his gaze, in the bent corners of his lips during a spiteful grin. Others had sensed it too. It was, he had summed up, a desire for power, a lust to rule, to bend people to his will, to be infallible. He had always loathed Darru.
He averted his gaze, looking opposite, to his right, towards Unda. Unda sat, arms shackled, cross-legged. An eerie strange sight. His legs lay in a relaxed pose, still and comfortable, palms limp on his lap, head bowed forward slightly. He still retained his clothes which flapped loosely against the wind, stained dirty with uneven blotches of dried blood.
He seemed as one meditating. Calm. Relaxed. Detached. But Unda had always been like this, stoic and impassive, neither gripped by the tempest of passions nor the numbing quagmire of depression. He showed no signs of life beyond his mechanical routine. Majority thought he suffered a mental impairment, that loose cords of insanity gripped his conscious and held back their full capacities. He had never had a row with Unda. It was nothing to astonish over, Unda had always been like this. But, why now, why in this situation does he look so peaceful? As if he holds the leash of his destiny, why does he look so in control?
Overhead a swarm of vultures’ circled, black and large, wings splayed as wind rushed through them. They glided down lazily, feathers ruffling, to the ground. In the distant edge of the horizon, sketched silhouettes of vultures could be seen, mounting the air, late to their feast.
A cold shiver washed over his body; he felt his sluggish senses rekindled, clearer, sharper. A hive of low murmurs filled his ears, close yet distant, distinct yet vague. He raised his head. All around him, Darru and Unda stood a wreath of soldiers. Some sat on the outcropped rocks, shoulders hunched, tired, sweat on the creased brows of weary faces. Others paced in the heat, shifting, their movements slow and stealth-like, eyes clouded with patient malice.
On the soldiers’ façade wounds stood out prevalent, stained bandages were wrapped around parts of their bodies. Despite their postures all of the soldiers’ attention anchored down on the three men at the center of the wreath, their sleep starved eyes, fierce with learned hatred, went over them in bitter contempt. They had a right to this reaction, he thought, they did lose a lot of comrades. He acknowledged their anger, the constructed contempt directed at him, but, he knelt, unsympathetic.
He tore his eyes away from the empire's soldiers and resumed to stare down at the barren bleached earth. Vatu’s soldiers, he thought...Vatu. He closed his eyes, breathing hoarsely through his bruised mouth, nostrils clogged by blood and dust. His thoughts made their familiar drift towards Vatu, protectors of the divine decree on earth, the guardians of mankind, their rulers, their salvation.
Vatu had erected brilliant architecture birthed from the womb of lavish creativity. Abodes that swept through the rolling green built with pale marble that gleamed a paler silver under a porcelain moon. Colossal fountains with florid arabesque sprayed misty waters, interconnected with clear waterways, nourished by artificial rivers that journeyed through the land with in a graceful ebb. Temples had been erected at high grounds; their thick columns seemed to reach up to the heavens, foreboding, majestic, powerful, the earthly dwellings of the divine. Flowers yawned and spread perfume, winds cradled the lush green grass, trees offered shade in sublime vast gardens, and the capitals, the capitals radiated. The empire was the greatest of their time, the harbors of justice.
But, the abodes only housed the rich; the artificial waterways maintained even during drought when man, beast and earth were parched; the temples of the high status and deep pockets; the gardens groomed on the best fertile lands; and the people, the people starved. This he had known, but, the horrors, he would witness later. He loathed Vatu with a malice refined, and now he awaited his fate, death by execution.
Some soldiers parted and stepped aside, all standing straight in somber respect as three people walked through the opening made. He inspected the strangers with a mild curiosity; they neither wore armor nor held any visible weapons. It was over, the Magi had arrived. The group was made up of two males, who walked, hooded heads bowed, behind a bald headed female. Their robes billowed in the hot dry wind. Each carried a faded bronze lamp, held in an outstretched arm, drifting fumes, white and thick, in rolling wisps. He glimpsed eyes in deep contemplation, demeanors austere, composed, reverent. The woman strode stiffly and steadily, balanced, like a statue rolled on wheels. Her grey robe was speckled red as if by pattered drops of blood of rituals macabre. Her head was perfectly spherical, tattoos lined her face, curved on her cheeks, running up across her cold eyes, and down over full lips.
He felt drawn towards her regardless of the
situation, an aura mystifying, overwhelming, captivating him. He knelt awe-struck despite the role they were going to play, the role she was going to play. The Magi were their executors. He stared at them, hard, taking in every inch of detail at the manifestation of his death.
But the vague thought still pestered him and made him feel uneasy. What is it? Its intensity had grown, he could feel an emotion wrapped around it. This emotion he identified. It was fear, a dull paralysis that gripped the body while the heart hammered in its cage. But fear, what for? He didn't fear death. He had made his peace a long time ago.
The Magi stopped a little far off from them. The head knelt down spreading wide her arms. She raised her head to the sky, her lips moving imperceptibly. The two males flanked her, each standing across the other, they knelt down and placed their smoking lamps before them, forming a semi-circle. A low murmur rose from them as they began to recite, a strange prayer, an ethereal chant, quavering, lilting, interspersed with guttural notes.