Kurush: The First City - Chapter 14

A part of Oresh had always wanted to follow in the steps of wise sages, find a cave in the mountains and live a life of simplicity and humility, away from the stress and vice of Kurush. Today he wore his favourite deep blue tunic, which was deteriorating in front of his eyes. Stains were slowly but surely enveloping it, and it was already hard to enough to carry enough drinking water from the well to the flat to worry about washing. And no matter how many times he beat it, a thin crust of dust was growing thicker. He did not feel like a wise sage.

He was about to leave the flat when his mother stopped him.

“Can you get some sage, some onions and some apricots on your way home? Oh, also some pork? Nice pork I mean, not the gristly stuff plebs eat”

Oresh sighed, “What for?”

“For one of Jamesh’s recipes I haven’t tried yet,” she said, tapping a clay tablet on the table, the one piece of furniture they had bought so far since they moved in, “I thought we could have something nice tonight”

“Let’s just have gana steaks tonight. We shouldn’t have Jamesh’s recipes for a while”

“But they’re all the rage in the Rush”

“We’re not in the Rush, are we?”

He slammed the door behind him more forcefully than he’d really intended. As he walked through the narrow, filthy alleys of the Ekuan quarter, he wondered why, after everything that had happened, his mother thought she still lived in the same world as before. Was she refusing to accept reality, or was it just that she couldn’t imagine a reality different to the one she’d lived in all her life? When people are hurt and frightened, their instinct is to shrink back and focus on defending themselves and their loved ones. But if they would only look at the world with as broad a perspective as they can, they’d realise that everyone gets hurt and frightened, that by treating others with respect and kindness we can build a better world to live in. I wonder what Kurush looks like from the sky? Do we look like ants to the Sun? Is Kurush just a glorified ant hill?

“Watch out, mate!”

Oresh snapped back to his senses. To his surprise he was already at the docks, walking along a jetty and one step away from taking an involuntary dip in the canal. A sailor on a nearby ship looked at him in bafflement.

“Everything okay?”

“Oh, yes, thank you,” said Oresh as he spun around and walked back to land, “have a nice day!”

As a scribe for hire, most of Oresh’s clients were foreign merchants needing receipts, contracts and letters written. He would start each day telling himself that he had to be as proactive as Anka and find as much work as he could, but somehow he usually ended up spending the day sitting by the water day-dreaming and would only get work if a client bumped into him. Ever since they’d been evicted, the threat of going hungry had boosted his motivation, but these days only two or three ships would arrive each day, and each ship would be met with a unruly swarm of dockers, scribes and merchants desperate for work. In those scrums, he struggled to get the attention of the sailors, no matter how many times he said ‘excuse me’.

Unlike hurum scribes, Oresh didn’t need a reed stylus, only the claw of his index finger. But he did need clay, so he made his way to a stall selling fresh, wet clumps of it at the tail of the canal. But before he reached it, he heard the sound of cheering coming from the meat market. The thought of getting clay tumbled out of his mind and his legs started taking him towards the sound.

At the meat market, there was a sea of hurums sitting on the ground, all facing the Bloody Gate. Someone was standing underneath the archway addressing the crowd, but he was too far away for Oresh to hear. He edged around the crowd until he found a spot close enough. When he sat down, the hurums on either side of him eyed him quizzically.

The speaker at the gate was a man with bulging biceps, wild flame-red hair and a beard to match. He rested a hefty hammer on his shoulder. Oresh remembered Anka saying that she sometimes worked with a smith with red hair, was it him?

“Each and everyone of us here knows someone who just disappeared into thin air one day. And this morning we’ve all heard rumours about what happened during the festival last night. A dozen hurums have told me this morning about someone who never came home. These are our friends and neighbours, our brothers and sisters, our sons and daughters, our fathers and mothers, our husbands and wives. How much longer must we endure this? How many more need to die? Do we wait until every last hurum in Kurush has been eaten? Enough is enough! Lishas, hear us – we are not your food! I can assure you, if you ever forget that, you will regret it. Do not think for an instant that we will just stand idly by. We are not as patient as you seem to think. Control yourselves, or you will taste our fury!”

This was not the coming together and mutual respect of Kurush’s citizens Oresh had hoped for. The speaker’s inflamed, contorted face scared him, there was no doubt he was ready to maim and kill if he felt he could justify it. He had good reasons to be angry, but Oresh wanted to tell him to calm down and spend some time reflecting on what the best path would be – not that he had the courage to approach him.

On the periphery of the crowd lishas were gathering, but they weren’t listening to the speech. The hurums had effectively shut the meat market down, not only by surrounding the stalls, but also by blocking the gate through which the meat came. The voluptuous woman whose job it was to whet appetites was sat atop her column looking bored. Some lishas were arguing with hurums, even threatening to drag them away. How was antagonising lishas meant to persuade them to treat hurums better? Oresh thought.

The hurum sitting in front of Oresh, a young woman, was distracted by an argument behind them and jumped in her skin when she saw him.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“I-I’m just listening”, said Oresh

“How many hurums have you eaten?”

Oresh was flummoxed, “None, not even with orokosa”

“Yeah right! That is such shit”

Oresh could feel more and more eyes on him. Starting to feel itchy all over his body, he felt compelled to get up and walk away. As he walked into the crowd of onlookers now encircling the protest, he realised some of those shouting at the protesters were hurums trying to go about their business in the market.

“This lot are sure to get eaten”, Oresh heard one Ekuan hurum say to her friend

A golden-scaled lisha wearing a black toga and holding a flaming torch strode through the onlookers and stood before them as though he was their vanguard against the protest.

“These hurums do not understand our plight! They do not understand the suffering we endure day in day out! Why else would they be making our lives harder with this ridiculous display? If they are virtuous as they seem to think they are, the very least they could do is leave us to go about our day without having to deal with their shenanigans”

The onlookers cheered angrily, including the hurums.

“Lishas must not and will not be ignored,” the preacher continued, “our toil is the cornerstone of Kurush. When we listen to hurums moaning about every little thing, fragile creatures that they are, we become weak and poor. This is unforgivable! Lishas are the strongest children of the Sun!”

The righteous fury of the hurum onlookers drained from their faces and they slipped away, but many lishas cheered ever louder. Oresh stood and watched, struggling to understand why anyone was listening to him at all. Surely anyone who thought about it for more than a second would realise that he was either a liar or a madman? Surely it didn’t need to be explained that hurums built Kurush too, that they weren’t the cause of Kurush’s problems, and that it was perfectly justified to complain about being eaten?

The red-haired man marched through the sea of sitting hurums, all their gazes following him. The air began to simmer as the two factions locked eyes and faces on both sides became tense and poised. He marched at speed until he was inches from the preacher’s face.

“Who the hell are you?” he spat

“My name is Kyroz,” said the lisha, “and you are…?”

“Oddyr. Hurums are fragile, eh? Wanna put your money where your mouth is? Wanna find out if I’m fragile?”

“You’re only proving how stupid you are. Even a decrepit old lisha could tear you apart”

Oddyr gripped his hammer with both hands. Kyroz towered over him, sparks from his torch narrowly missing Oddyr’s wiry beard. Even from a distance Oresh could see the fire bursting from their eyes and he instinctively backed away. Everyone jolted when the sound of a horn reverberated across the square – it was the soldiers on top of the Bloody Gate calling for reinforcements from the Rush.

Before the horn had finished echoing around the square, everyone heard a low groan growing louder. Oresh could feel tremors quickly getting stronger as they rose up his legs. Lishas and hurums ran out of and away from buildings, stumbling onto the ground and tripping over each other as they did. The voluptuous woman clambered down her column as quickly as she could. Over the shouts, the screams, the creaking of wood and the cracking of stone, a rumble as though the island was growling through a mouth made of mountains rose and then fell into eerie silence.

As lishas and hurums climbed back to their feet and checked themselves for injuries, they began to drift away from the square. Oddyr and Kyroz, who had managed to stay standing, glared at each other before turning away without a word. Oresh, seeing no-one nearby who needed any help, decided it was time to go too. He started walking up the street that led to the Rush. Kurush was no stranger to earthquakes – the islands were a rambunctious bunch – but that was the strongest one for years that Oresh could remember. The island had made her opinion on the friction between lishas and hurums as clear as she could.

Home- and business-owners were standing in the street surveying the damage or sweeping up fallen roof tiles. A lot of buildings now had large cracks running up their walls. A thin cloud of dust floated along the street, scattering only when a troop of soldiers came thundering down the hill. Oresh jumped out of their way. For a split second, his eyes met with Bukur’s. The uncertainty in his face was unmistakable, even under the bronze helmet. But Oresh knew the trouble for today was over, Bukur would probably spend the morning reassuring the citizenry that calm had returned by looking as stern as he could. Oresh was more interested in preventing the next potential riot, and if there was any hope for Kurush rediscovering its morality, it surely lay in religion.

The bronze-gilded semi-circular façade of the Sun Temple shimmered. If lishas could be reminded why it was necessary to take Shakresh’s vow to never eat, never lick and never ogle, hurums could sleep much easier. But Oresh hesitated to walk in. He knew that if he offered to help Shakresh, he would just end up reciting prayers to the elderly everyday.

While he was still thinking it over, he realised that his legs had turned him around and started walking across the square in front of the gate to the Rush, towards that den of debauchery that called itself the Sapphire Temple. His stomach grew queasy, as though he was approaching a sewage drain. After all, this cult celebrated lishas eating hurums with orokosa, which was mad in an era when lishas clearly needed to learn restraint. But nonetheless…

He walked through a grove of palm trees and was met with the semi-circular façade, directly opposite the Sun Temple’s, with a thousand azure stones embedded in it. Oresh had never seen it up close before, he would never have thought it would be quite so beautiful. There was a young hurum woman wearing a pure white tunic sweeping near the entrance.

“Ah, excuse me, can I ask a question?”

She had sparkling blue eyes and a carefree smile, “I don’t think I’ve seen you around here before”

“No, probably not. I don’t really know much about the cult of Sapesh and Galka, does it have anything to do with bringing lishas and hurums together?”

“Absolutely! Sapesh and Galka were the first lisha-hurum couple. We want to see lishas and hurums not just respect each other, but understand, care, share their lives with each other. Would you like to come inside? I can tell you all about the Temple. And you can tell me all about yourself"

There was a hunger in her eyes, as though she was a predator eager to drag her prey into her lair.

"N-no, thank you. But, can I help?"

“Thanks, but I’ve almost finished,” she said, leaning on her broom, “the Temple’s survived worse earthquakes”

“I mean, with the Temple”

She smiled at him as though he’d told a puzzlingly bad joke, “I’m afraid you have to be a hurum to become an acolyte”

“No, sorry, I just mean,” Oresh collected his thoughts, “I want to help heal Kurush”

She tapped her chin, “Actually there is something you can help with, er…”

“Oresh”

“It’s lovely to meet you Oresh. I’m Askura. Let’s try to heal Kurush”

Next chapter

Constructive criticism welcome

© Paul Bramhall