A Time of Ruin
"A cold wind is rising. It smells of water."
There were three standing there, on the ramparts of the citadel of Magha. Two wore bronze masks. The third was a woman.
The Oracle turned to her guards. "Atavik. Malim." They nodded.
No sound carried from the Ark of Citadels to the courtyard below, except for the muffled bump caused by a body falling several hundred feet. A large crowd of onlookers and several Moti soldiers that had entered the city not a day before soon gathered around the remains.
The corpse's throat had been cut, and the neck was completely broken from the fall. The identity was clear, however, by the shards of a shattered obsidian mask.
Ishalia was dead.
---
Nashastim
This place had seen gatherings of outriders since the days of Arastephas. Once it was the domain of the Clotir, but none now lived that remembered those days. It was a Satar place, a desert place.
Arastephas once said to his son, "Men gather in the desert to feel the loneliness of the universe together. They take joy in their insignificance, under the stars."
They bore her corpse out of the city on a palanquin of silver. Acolytes chanted her praises, those that had not killed themselves in anguish. The suicides were many that year, as those of the Redeemer's household, one by one, ended their own lives. Those that did not pay the life-price for their failure in battle were not true Satar. These dogs were hunted down, and the sport of their death added to the air of festivity around the gathering.
Some fifteen thousand Satar came to Nashastim in time. It would have been more, but others were in Magha, or holding down the city of Seis, or already skirmishing against the Moti in the old places of the Sesh the Satar once thought they owned.
There were those that said that it should have been done on the Rath Tephas. But they were shouted down. Rath Tephas was a hallows, a place of legends. Men went there no longer, lest they see Arastephas unmasked, wandering the hills as legend said.
But as it came to be written, the Satar met at Nashastim.
Prince Hashaskor of the Star was lost in the south. Prince Aphas-ta-shaim of the Sword had died in honor protecting his Redeemer. Prince Malanos-ke of the Arrow had vanished into the desert following the loss of his household and the death of his sons.
So it remained that four Princes were left. Isal-averas-ha of the Spear, Tashik of the Scroll, Xetephas of the Shield, and Malanil of the Wheel.
And the great gathering came to a close with the deaths of all four. As one, they shouted a great lament to Taleldil, and plunged cold steel into their stomachs. Their corpses were placed upon the great blazing bonfire that had been made that day, as the laments the doomed Princes began were carried up by the multitudes.
Oh wondrous liege of thunder,
it was in arrogance that we sought triumphs,
accolades and titles of glory we sought.
Now your majesty has fled,
left the unworthy for a host more fitting,
your disgust at our cowardice made manifest.
We seek only the penance of the journey,
to forever cross harsh wastes,
with only the blood of our horses to nourish us.
For every drop of the blood of Taleldil,
every drop that touches the ground,
a generation shall turn upon itself.
We ask that no peace be given to us,
that no green thing appease our sight,
no cool water refresh our lips.
Let us know only the feel of the saddle,
the wind of the mountain,
the wind of the desert.
That you, and at your right and left hands the Two Redeemers,
the High Princes Gold and Silver,
hear and accept our holocausts.
So it was that the Satar were ended. Anthropologists and historians would speculate centuries hence that the death of the Exatai was not so abrupt, so immediate. Rather, it was more of a gradual process of infighting and degeneration.
Those who said such things failed to understand the religious beliefs of that time. The Satar WERE Satar because they could not be defeated. That they WERE defeated meant that they were so manifestly unworthy. They had allowed a spear to be plunged into the side of their god. If he suffered, how much greater should their suffering be?
As the Kaphaiavai wrote, Great and long would their sufferings be.
And so it was that the people who were Satar were scattered, as dust to the wind, as starlight to the advance of dawn.
It was not known to any among them that Hashaskor of the Star still lived.