The Wilusiad - Out Soon!

Kassanda’s conscience roiled, quailing at Wilusa’s likely fate should her actions stir Appaliunas’s wrath.  She flicked at a chestnut curl that escaped from under the cylindrical cap every royal lady wore under her veil, then took out Laiku’s ebony writing board and tore at the scrap of linen tying it closed with hands that shook.

Finally the boards fell open, revealing a layer of beeswax onto which the High Priest scratched his greetings. Kassanda barely skimmed it, concentrating instead upon a strip of bark tucked against the wax.

Laiku is a resourceful one.

As Andromache had promised, charcoal scrawls across its surface proved to be a chant of blinding. Kassanda resisted the urge to throw the thing into the brazier coals that glowed as close to the bed as its fleece hangings would permit, then swallowed hard. This incantation may be blasphemy, but it would be vital if she were to proceed, for it promised to turn divine eyes away from the caster and all their works.

She stared at the bark strip, the words upon it searing themselves into her soul. Guilt knotted her insides as she pulled the wooden shutters framing her chamber window closed. She took a breath, then filled the bronze bowl she stowed on a small table underneath with rain water from the nearby pitcher.

Too many ill omens fly about Wilusa to expect her traditions alone to keep her safe.

Kassanda pulled the silver jar gifted her by the High Priest before the Royal Feast from the wooden chest in the corner. She wrinkled her nose at the now familiar stench that clung to it, ice filling her chest. She closed her eyes, then began the spell Laiku had brought her.

What is Wilusa if her traditions are set at naught?

The smell intensified when Kassanda opened her eyes, unstoppered the bottle and emptied the dye within into the bowl. Purple tendrils curled around themselves in the clear water, blooming and spreading until the surface darkened and Kassanda could no longer see the bottom.

It is time.

Laiku’s blinding chant delved so deep into Wilusa’s old tongue that even Kassanda hesitated, but she hadn’t spent her childhood studying the language of the divines for nothing. On the third attempt she completed the incantation and pulled at the pins that secured her hat, veil and hair as the spell demanded. Chestnut curls tumbled down her shoulders and face, surrounding the bowl when she gazed into the darkened waters.

The water in the bowl sat quiet, already stygian to Kassanda’s eyes. She leaned in, fighting against a parched mouth to speak the words that fused the waters to the underworld, inviting the dead to come forth. The surface remained still and smooth as obsidian.

Part of Kassanda longed to turn away, pretend this blasphemous experiment had never taken place, but her memory of sea cleaving ships filled with ahhiyawan warrior drove her to grit her teeth and start the summoning anew.

Ripples formed in the water, banded together, a central bubble bent and elongated into an aquiline nose not dissimilar to Kassanda’s own, whilst on either side of it two thin waves formed into eyes. The face of an old man came together.

“Who? Where?” The voice gusted through Kassanda’s chamber. Her heart froze but she continued her chant to the end. If she lost control now, who knew what spirits may force their way through even this small portal into Wilusa. Another face formed, a woman this time, who shoved the first to one side, crushing its cheek against the rim of the bowl.

“In my wine? Couldn’t marshal the guts to slit his own wife’s throat, he had to resort to poison?” She hissed.

“Where is my son, I saw him but now . . . Where?” The first face pushed back, carving itself half a bowl’s worth of space.

“Please, I need your help.” Kassanda glanced towards the chamber door.

“What can the living need from the dead?” A third face bubbled up between the two.

“I need the truth of what is to come. I must know what dangers face my home and what can be done to turn them . . .”

The laughter of all three chimed from the bowl, then the female face surged, teeth bared. The bowl rocked, threatening to spill its waters into this world.

Kassanda’s breath coming in gasps as she grabbed at a pouch dangling from her belt. She  tipped it into the snarling face, releasing a cascade of salt directly into its eyes. The shade screamed then collapsed into the purple water.

“My own wine!” she moaned before sinking back to the underworld. Another face, round, female pushed its way into her place.

“How could they tell me it would go otherwise? What fool would not fear a tenth childbed in her forty-third summer?”

“Please,” Kassanda all but sobbed in frustration. “I need to know. What of the Ahhiyawans? Will they take Wilusa? Does Pyamaridu’s heir sail with them to reclaim our city?”

“Piyamaridu is gone, I saw to that.” The male face that first answered her summons forced itself to the centre of the bowl. Kassanda made out the imprint of thin curls wisping about a mostly bald pate. She gasped. Wilusa’s royal family revered this man as their founder, but he had gone to the depths when Kassanda was still with her wet nurse.

“But what of his son? Grandfather, how do we defeat him if he has the might of Ahhiyya at his back?” Kassanda pressed, her heart racing.

“He’s gone, the Emperor saw to that. I saw to that.”

“I know of the past but what of the future?”

“What would the dead know of the future? You need the fates for that.” The female shoved back, flattening Kassanda’s grandfather against the side of the bowl like a dough man. “The fates, or their man - the Gulzanziti, only him . . . ..”

The female face dissolved replaced by one that looked less like a spirit than a reflection someone might cast in any pool. That someone was not her however. The face was that of a man with a long face, brown eyes and strange red hat that plastered sweat-covered black hair against his forehead. Kassanda’s heart leapt in triumph.

“Gulzanziti?”

Another surge, the man’s face splintered as Kassanda’s grandfather whooshed upwards, hovering inches from her own. She forced herself not to flinch despite her every nerve screaming in shock.

“Where is my son? Where is Priya-muya?” The dead man demanded.

“He’s in the Palace Grandfather, he’s the King now.”

A slash opened through the face’s eyes. Its mouth gaped but no sound emerged, just a fountain of water dark as curdled blood.

Kassanda staggered back, scattering salt in all directions. Purple water splattered across the painted flowers of the floor tiles. She gasped as golden light permeated the back of her mind, pulsing and waving in confusion. The Sun Lord’s bafflement awakened a rage that threatened to rise like the dawn as the blinding spell grew thin.

Dashing the last of her salt into the roiling waters Kassanda garbled the incantation of closing, sealing off the underworld and all spirits trapped within.