Chapter Ten #2
“The Bridge of the Eye. It’s on the northeast side of the island.”
Donan thanked her and set off in that direction, crossing Temis in a meandering orbit beneath the palace, keeping to the base of the mountains.
The journey took the better part of that day and carried him through silent and empty quarters of the city.
Though the dust of crumbled limewash gathered in unswept corners and house upon house stood vacant, it was easy to imagine a fuller time, when children splashed in the fountains, neighbors called to passersby from their windows, and hawkers trundled along the streets with their carts of fresh fish or garden produce.
Then Donan came to an open field that confounded and halted him.
A wall surrounded it, with arched entrances at its four corners.
Neighboring buildings shoved right up against it, but no crops grew there, not even grass.
He saw no tools, no marks in the dirt, no signs of planned construction.
No indications of any purpose at all. An unused field in the middle of a city made little sense, especially considering the apparent paucity of food.
The enclosure lay before Donan like a riddle, demanding he divert from his path to solve it.
When he stepped into the field, he noticed its utter stillness.
Not even insects chirped or buzzed. The silence almost had a presence, the potent inverse of something deafening, a void that seemed to swallow all noise.
Though unsettled, he took a few steps inward, looking around, and saw a woman kneeling in the shadow of the field’s wall. Her dark clothing and veil had prevented him from noticing her until then. It took him a few moments to decide whether to approach her, but his curiosity won out.
“Pardon me,” he said, keeping his voice hushed, without knowing why. “Can you tell me, what is this place?”
She looked up at him. The veil obscured her features, but through its gauze he could see smooth cheeks, bronze hair, and wet eyes. “You are a mainlander.”
“Yes,” he said, “I am. I hope I haven’t caused offense with my question.”
She lowered her face. “You do not offend me. I wish more people knew and understood, but few come here anymore. Few want to remember.”
“Remember what?”
“The night the reapers came. They swept through the city without mercy, without regard for age or station. They took my children. They took my husband. I wish they had taken me.” She spoke wearily and without emotion, without any vitality at all behind her words.
Donan swallowed, almost choking on the dry air as the sun drew sweat from his brow. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, which sounded pathetic and inadequate as soon as he said it.
“There were so many to bury,” she said. “So many corpses. The city reeked of death. Something had to be done.” Her head swiveled from side to side. “This was once a market square. They tore up the paving and dug a hole, deep, down to the waterline. All the dead went into it.”
Donan looked again at the field, which was large enough to contain thousands and thousands of bodies. “A mass grave.”
“They call it the Field of Sorrow.” She made a choking sound between a sob and a laugh. “I call it the Field of Shame.”
“Why?” he risked asking.
“Because they never speak of it. It reminds them of their failure. They want to forget it even exists.”
“Who?”
She looked upward, toward the royal palace that loomed over the island.
“The queens. The Oracle didn’t warn us. Captain Myrina and her Amazons did nothing to protect us.
We had to defend ourselves, but my husband was a potter.
An artist. He had never—” Her head fell, and she said nothing for several long moments.
“The reaper struck him down in an instant.”
Her account threatened to dredge up memories Donan could not afford to indulge. He also found it difficult to believe that Etara and Myrina had done nothing to defend Temis during Malthael’s assault, but he knew enough about grief to keep those doubts to himself.
“I am glad that you remember him,” Donan said. “And your children.”
“I remember because I can’t forget. There is a difference.”
Donan bowed his head. “So there is.”
She labored to her feet like a woman much older than she appeared beneath her veil. “I must go now.”
“I appreciate you speaking with me,” Donan said. He felt a desperate desire to help her somehow, and on an impulse, he reached into his purse for a few coins, which he extended toward her. It was a clumsy gesture.
“What am I to do with that?” she asked, looking down at the money in his palm.
Then she turned and drifted across the field to depart through an archway on the far side.
It was some distance, and she was unhurried, but Donan waited where he stood until she had gone—it felt disrespectful to leave before her, though she never looked back at him.
Then he exited the Field of Sorrow by the nearer archway through which he had entered and resumed his course.
The island of Philios ascended from the sea as a mountainous plateau many times the size of Temis, with soaring cliffs above a rocky, battered shore.
Over eons, the endless crashing of the waves had steadily carved deep caves into the island’s foundations, and according to a legend Donan had read, it was in one of those caves where the first seer discovered the Sightless Eye.
Atop the plateau rose Mount Karcheus, an extinguished volcano named for a mythic companion of Philios, the summit of which reached high enough to breach the clouds and wear a crown of ice throughout the seasons.
The sun had fallen well into its afternoon decline when Donan reached the bridge that connected the island of Temis to neighboring Philios.
He had beheld few constructions to rival it in size and engineering achievement; it was plainly of Firstborn origin.
The sharp arches of its double arcade threw swords of light onto the water below, and its massive stone columns stood at wide enough intervals to admit the largest ships between them.
It spanned a wide sea channel, and towered high above the churning water.
Donan could see light traffic on the upper tier of the bridge but none on the lower tier, which he assumed to be an aqueduct bringing meltwater from Karcheus into the capital city.
He made his way up through the winding streets until he attained the same level as the lower bridge, and from there it was a simple matter of asking directions.
Askarra Guard stood watch over the entrance to the Eye, collecting tolls and turning away those who could not pay them. They seemed to apply more scrutiny to Donan than they did anyone else nearby, but they ultimately accepted his coin and let him pass.
The bridge was as wide as a market thoroughfare, with enough space to allow horse-drawn wagons to pass one another going different directions without risk to the pedestrians on either side.
From a distance, he had wondered about the stability of the construction, given its age, but now that he stood upon it, the masonry felt as secure as solid rock.
Even so, he avoided looking down to the sea below.
He shared the bridge with only a few other travelers, but he joined their flow and left the city-island of Temis behind him.