Sarkoshia was a city so large, Jallin had lived his entire life in the south-west corner and had never gotten on the other side of the arena or the huge palace sticking up from the middle of the island like a stump.
The city, and its surrounding archipelago was ruled by Lord Emperor Sarkelosh the First, the all-seeing, the all-knowing, the blessed, the wise, the powerful, and on and on. Jallin had mostly heard these titles in sarcasm, when people didn't approve of something the emperor did. Sometimes, it was 'The Great Emperor's raised taxes again,' or 'He's gonna start another war with Morrigar, if he's not careful, the all-seeing lord of the world.'
One of the strangest of all conversations he heard began: 'If Lord Sarkelosh has the eye, why can't he stop the attacks?' This was two dock workers talking once while they loaded boxes of goods from...all over. Jallin had been waiting for smaller boxes he could steal from. 'Well, maybe he ain't got that eye everyone says he does. Maybe he can't see everything. It's jussa title, ain't it? Just cause I call m'self the great big dragon, don't mean I can breathe fire, now does it?' The other seemed to be arguing with himself: either The Lord Emperor was all-seeing and chose not to act against 'the attacks' or he couldn't stop them from happening. Those were, according to one of the workers, the only things that could be, but the other worker didn't agree. 'Just cause the world ain't perfect, it don't mean nothing's being done. It just means the world ain't perfect.'
The attacks they were talking about had happened all over the city, and were, as yet, unexplained, frightening, and completely random. The two workers told stories about people disappearing while walking down certain streets, buildings and warehouses bursting into flames, a pool of lava appearing in the middle of a public park, hurricane winds suddenly sweeping down a market place and pushing a wagon over as if it were an unbalanced old man. Once, the workers said, three ghouls appeared on the docks and it took four narg guards to get them subdued and under control. The doubting worker said he saw them, saw four nargs put the snapping undead into boxes and tie a rope around them. Where the ghouls came from, why they'd arrived there, no one knew. And that troubled everyone in the city, even the two dock workers who only moved boxes.
Lately, every so often, some place in the city would simply explode. That night, while Jallin lay on his matress -- an actual mattress with bedding and a pillow, courtesy of Master Tho-Shiko's slave Shi-Feo -- he heard a noise off to the north, like distant thunder. Only one big 'boom.' He wasn't even sure he really heard it, or maybe it was something random happening at the university, where magicians experimented with magic and sometimes causing havoc of their own.
Unfortunately, it must have awakened Eja.
"What was that Jallin? Did you hear that?"
He couldn't see her in the darkness of the little shed where they now lived. It was their shed, theirs alone. Aunty Hurga was in the next little shed over, not even sleeping with them.
He heard her move.
"Nothing, Eja. Go back to sleep."
"Was it a storm?"
"Uh...no...no....yes...yes it was thunder."
"Do you think it'll rain tonight?"
"I don't know, maybe. We'll see."
He heard Eja moving around on her mattress. Then, the coughing. For what felt like an hour, she coughed. She coughed until the fit left her gasping and panting. It sounded like she'd just come back from running all the way around the island and back without stopping.
"Jallin," she said in the darkness, when she could finally speak. "Do you think...do you think I'll die, like Mama?"
"Mama didn't...," he started to say, but he knew she wasn't stupid. She'd heard him talking to Counselor Yubrin. He thought she was asleep. "No, Eja. I don't think you're gonna die. I think you'll be just fine."
"Mama...Mama's gone, isn't she?" Now, Jallin could hear her sniffling, and he also felt the tears come. He'd not cried for his mother yet. All the changes had taken his mind off it. For a moment, he couldn't talk to his sister and she cried and coughed.
"Mama's gone," he said finally. "But...but she's not gone forever," Jallin said. "She's...in the afterplace, the place where souls go when they die."
"The Undying world?"
"The Undying world?" Jallin asked her. "What are you talking about?"
"Heaven. The Waiting World. The Undying World. Counselor Dursus says there's a world where people go when they die and they wait for the world to become perfect and good, and they'll come back here again when it does."
"I don't see why anyone would come back. I don't think people do. I think people go on, and we go to them," Jallin said. He didn't really know. He'd heard all kinds of stories; he had even made up a story or two to impress other street urchins.
"But Counselor Dursus says Mama will be in the Undying World, and one day she'll get a body that doesn't get sick, and we will too, and when everybody comes back here, we'll all live and never die and never get sick and we won't have to eat or drink. He says we will eat and drink, because it feels good to do, but we won't have to."
"I don't think Counselor Dursus knows. He's a stupid Trochayabite, isn't he? They're idiots."
"But...Mama was a Trochayabite, wasn't she?"
Jallin flinched.
"She just needed help. Aunty Hurga offered to help her, and so she agreed to start going to temple with her. I don't think she believed any of it."
For a while, Eja only breathed. Then, she coughed a little more, and then she moved around some. Jallin thought he'd put her to rest and could go back to sleep.
"You don't believe in Trochaya?" she asked him. "I heard you say you don't pray to him. Is that true?"
"No. I don't believe in Trochaya."
"Why not?" she asked.
"What kind of a god controls sickness and death?" he asked her.
"What kind of a god doesn't?"
"Would you like some water? Maybe it'll help you sleep?"
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