TC30

Ophan Sarah and her hashmalim attendant disembarked from the avatar of El in a clearing at Shaula Wood, where the ground still smoked in places from the descent. On the bank of the river Nanki Sarah used the Windgate to fell and shape the ample gopher trees on hand to build a raft. The yen possessed sufficient comestibles to begin their search and a quantity of gold to trade with the locals, that they may replace what supplies they consumed.

From the clearing it was a swift ninety miles downriver to the roar of Blue Veil Falls, a significant obstacle. There Sarah and Imrael abandoned their raft and built a more sleek one from timber below the cataract.

On the next leg they shot rapids the locals long considered unrunnable.

Below the white water Sarah and Imrael drifted through a harsh rocky desert with no water save in the river they floated upon. They saw ponderous beasts and river dwellers of all five sexes who dared not approach.

At length they floated past the place where the Nanki merged with the larger Sabik River. This part of Kemen was much warmer than the country where their home city of Shalem lay, but the yen learned to frame their suffering from the heat in such a way they could sleep without struggle.

They spent a season working out of a rented room in Saharad. By day they roamed the narrow streets but found no man in any quarter of that great city with the elusive qualities of worshipful infidelity El once enumerated to King Raphael when she commissioned this quest.

They rode overland to Murzi Bog where the River Arhena meandered through marshlands and silt islands before merging with the sea. They searched the nearby wartorn Isle of Danya to no avail, and took ship to the city of Shedal on the coast road, where again they found no man suitable to El.

But at the market in green Enkaa where the Linan road forked west they overheard a young man engaged in a loud argument with his father. The princess learned the names of both of these men from the shouts they hurled at one another. Avram lived a semi-nomadic life on the range lands around Enkaa while his father Terah lived in the town itself and ran a little shop selling items associated with the worship of the four gods and multitudinous demigods. Terah sold carved images of dozens of deities and near-deities but Avram complained all these idols were meaningless to him.

Avram said, “Father, you cut down cedars and oaks which El planted. Indra sent rain to grow them. You become cold, so with part of your wood you make a fire to warm yourself and bake bread, and with the other part you make an image of Shemhazai. Then you fall down before this image and say, ‘Rescue me from this weather!’ But it never comes into your mind that this deaf and mute block of wood you carved with your own hands is a complete fraud!”

Sarah and Imrael entered the shop and began to inspect the rack of idols on display. The angry words of father and son dwindled to silence in the presence of Terah’s customers. After they made a complete tour of the idolatry shop, Imrael begin unpacking much gold on the edge of the shop facing the street, as though sha were preparing to buy out Terah’s entire stock.

This drew the attention of five len who approached Terah’s little shop with swords drawn. They demanded Imrael’s gold be handed over to them at once, and if not they would take her life and the gold as well. Sarah calmly removed Windgate from the leather thongs where sha fastened it to har back. The Shahar Haruach drew blood for the first time in Kemen.

The weapon was the size and shape of an ordinary walking staff. But when it was bandied about, and if both Belial and El were willing, a black sphere emerged from it that could grow to any size, accompanied by a howling wind. Whatsoever this dark bubble touched simply ceased to be.