Hourglass
By: Myaru
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Every new day in Khadein is quieter, emptier, and the glare brighter while the heat is more oppressive, as if the sun has decided to compensate for the deficit Ellerean marks each morning. Dates litter the courtyards like bugs and bake, the smell laying heavy over the academy where the trees are lined up in neat rows between buildings. The herders have left their seasonal grounds early, someone tells him, a student with dark skin and her hair in dozens of tiny braids; a blight destroyed the flock roosting in the oasis, Yodel adds with a sour twist to his flat, unpleasant mouth. Don't we have incantations to prevent that sort of thing? their junior asks - but a few beats later without waiting for a reply, she answers her own question: the gods have deserted us.
They're standing outside in the shade of a colonnade. The sun cuts between each column, paints bright yellow rectangles across the sandstone floor. Maybe, Ellerean says, scanning the courtyard, the windows cut deep into the walls. If you believe in gods. He believes in what he sees- and right now that is the slightly stooped silhouette of Archbishop Gharnef at the end of their columned corridor, standing in an arched doorway with some hanger-on and half-obscured in shadow.
Now there is power: a spell to eat at one's flesh and spirit, that also eats lightning, fire, wind. Even Excalibur would not prevail in a contest with Imhullu.
The sight of its midnight binding makes his skin crawl. The lingering of the Archbishop's unseen gaze upon their party does the same. Yodel, still debating with the herder girl, glances aside when he rolls his eyes, a sardonic twist to his mouth, and freezes. The conversation dies.
Silent, they part ways. Ellerean looks back, tries to see who stands in the shadow beside the dark bishop: a face he thinks he knows, but he cannot remember the name.
He stays in the shade as often as possible, passing dry fountains, locked doors, empty study rooms. Of the three bishops he passes, none are trustworthy. Once Merric left they had a discussion, Ellerean and his Master, on the matter of who might defect, who might refuse to serve the new master of Khadein, and what would happen to the rabble in the middle who could not decide, or were simply too afraid. How he'd wanted to say it- he would have, if he respected Wendel a hair less: all this talk of trust, of bravery, and it was Merric who ran first. Ellerean had laughed about it when he first found out.
When he knocks on Master Wendel's door and opens it to find the room empty - of his teacher, of staves, of the most important of his books - Ellerean thinks he, like the city, has been upturned and emptied of everything he knew. Every thought, down to the last grain of sand.