The Red Sea by Edward W. Robertson Page B

the peaks ahead.
    "A hill under the stars," he said. "Where you join him in the hereafter."
    "This is a reward? What about those who did wrong? Bad people?"
    "They go there, too."
    "That can't be. This must be a trick. A lie."
    Dante ran his forearm across his brow, which had grown grimy during the tree crossings. "To accomplish what?"
    "To deal justice to those who deserve it."
    "Not having visited the place, I couldn't say. But if he's looking to trick us, you'd think he could come up with something more enticing than a hill beneath the stars."
    "I died once," Blays said. "It was nice. Scenic. No fancy hills or stars, though."
    Dante swatted at a fly. "Is that what happens when you die, Winden? You're brought forth to be judged?"
    She nodded, glancing down as a small pink lizard scampered off a rock and into the brush. "Brought to Kaval to tell the story of your life. But there is a problem. Living can only be done by hurting others. So all are guilty."
    Blays made a face. "Some kind of universal exemption seems in order, then."
    "There is a loophole. Kaval lives in his world, not ours. How is he to know what's true about our lives and what isn't? When you face him, you tell him tonen, the Sweet Lie. That you were not so bad. That you deserve mercy. If the lie is convincing enough, he will spare you. Send you to sail through the Worldsea."
    "And what happens if you're judged to be a jerk?"
    "Then you are chained to the Rock. Where your ancestors are gathered to watch your shame as you are torn apart by the birds and the crabs for 180 years. Then you are made whole again, to witness the tearing apart of your descendants."
    "That sounds…extreme."
    "This is why we practice tonen all our lives."
    To match the mood in the air, rain began to sprinkle the canopy. Dante lowered his head and tried to ignore the percussive droplets on his crown. "Your language. Will you teach it to me?"
    "Why?" Winden said. "You leave here in twelve days."
    "Which means that for the next twelve days, you're our only way to communicate. With people who appear to be professional liars. If we're separated, or you get hurt, we could find ourselves in deep trouble."
    "Our language is for ourselves. Outsiders have no claim to it." She was quiet for a moment. "Why are you here?"
    "You know that. To save my father."
    "You barely saw him. You ask no questions about him. It's obvious you care nothing for him."
    "You're right. I came here because I would have regretted it if I didn't. If he had been all I'd found here, I doubt if I'd be hunting flowers with you now."
    "What else did you find?"
    "People who, despite their fondness for scamming strangers, seem peaceful. Who deserve to live free of the threat of constant violence. If I can help give that to them, then I'll leave here happy I came."
    She pressed her lips together. "I'll teach you. But if someone asks, it wasn't me. You will lie."
    She started at once. The language was called Taurish, named for the raiders, who were said to be the island's first inhabitants. Over the years, Dante had tackled several foreign languages, but soon found Taurish to be the easiest he'd encountered. Structurally, its only major difference from Mallish was that it tended to place the subject of the sentence at the very beginning, or even to isolate that subject as a chopped-up sentence of it own, which explained Winden's occasionally curious Mallish grammar.
    Besides that, though, Taurish was very intuitive. Learning a conversational vocabulary was going to take far more time than he had, but by the time they made camp that night, he was already able to form simple sentences.
    In the morning, they resumed the march. A single mountain loomed ahead, abutted by a lower shoulder that Winden confirmed was the Dreaming Peaks. Within an hour, the jungle thinned to a tree-studded veldt. A few hundred yards to their east, the land fell away in a series of sheer cliffs. A mile below, the sea shimmered and tossed. When the wind was