CITY OF THE GODS: FORGOTTEN (3 page)

“How dare you lie out naked in the streets like this, harlot!” he said in a loud clear voice. His accent was heavy and almost rhythmic.

“N-naked?
 
I - I’m naked?” It was the first time the girl had heard herself speak. She had a soft, gently pitched voice that immediately contrasted the rough sounds of those around her.
 
She quickly looked around and saw that no one was naked except for her.
 

“Take my coat and get back to the pleasure district! This is no place for your whoring!” The offended man removed his outer garment and threw it down to her. She held it over her body as he quickly walked away. A pair of youths began to laugh at her as a different man from the group stepped closer.
 

“What’s your name, girl? Who do you serve?” he asked hoarsely. He cleared his throat and spit once after speaking, as if the words cost him considerable effort.

She looked up at his stony face for a few seconds. “I’m sorry. I don’t know my name,” she replied somewhat ashamedly. She wasn’t sure if she even had one. As for the man’s second question, she had no idea how to answer.

“Did you fall from the sky and strike your head?” Everyone but the girl laughed at his incredulous question.

“Don’t see any wings,” one of the laughing boys pointed out. “Maybe she hit a wall. Look for a dent.”

The older man exhaled a weary sigh and looked up at the surrounding buildings as if he might actually see such evidence. “Well, did you hurt yourself?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” She stiffly turned to get a better view of the man, still getting used to moving her body. “I don’t feel like I hit my head.” She reached up to touch it for the first time. Her fingers met the warmth of soft, thick curls.

“Whether you did or you didn’t, you can’t lie in the streets with no clothes.” The man ignored the smart comment from the other teenaged male demanding to know why not. “Something must have happened to you. I’ll take you to a healer who can help. Can you stand up?” He held out his hand, but she was very slow to respond. For a moment it seemed she didn’t understand the question or his gesture. Then, clutching the heavy coat with one hand, she reached out and took his hand with her other. She held on tightly as he pulled her up. To her, it seemed like an awkward way to do things.

As she rose from the ground she felt a rushing sensation in her head. Unable to balance, she fell forward. The man was quick to move his arms under her own to catch her. The coat she was holding dropped, leaving her completely exposed once again. Her creamy white skin and blonde hair stood out against his darker complexion and brown clothing. Men of all ages around them chuckled again, some making odd hooting and whistling sounds.

“Perhaps it will be easier if I just carry you. You can’t weigh too much.”

“I feel like I weigh a thousand minas. I don’t mean to be so much trouble,” she whispered.
 

He looked her directly in the eye for a few seconds to evaluate the truth of her words. “I think I can bear the trouble of carrying a beautiful woman down the street,” he said at length, casting a glance at the grinning spectators who were nodding as if they already knew his answer. “No, I won’t mind a bit. Hold on!” And with that, he scooped her up in his arms and marched off, leaving the coat behind on the ground. After all, he couldn’t hold her and pick up the coat at the same time. Besides, he was enjoying the view as he carried her away.

Continuing down the street with the light burden in his arms, he realized he had no idea what one ‘mina’ weighed, let alone a thousand of them. The girl probably just imagined she was heavy. In D’Molay’s experience, women, especially maidens like this one, often overestimated their own weight. He had no idea that much more than that vanity was burdening the girl’s mind. In truth, her psyche was on the verge of bursting from all the questions within it.

As she rode along in her benefactor’s arms, the mystery of her current predicament was foremost. Looking up at the confident face of her new friend, however, pushed some of the fear away. Perhaps if she relaxed and observed the world around her she would remember something. She tested this first by examining the man. His dark hair hung straight to his shoulders, uneven edges brushing a thick half cape that hid the mass of his upper arms. Those were encased in a thinner coat that closed in the middle with hard, oblong protrusions that nested into rope loops. His coat was not as soft against her naked side as the one the other man had thrown, and it was plainer and darker in color. She reached up to touch the side of his cheek. Her fingers brushed against hair that grew densely around his mouth and on parts of his chin. Checking her own face, she found nothing at all like that. She wondered if everything in this place felt different from everything else.

At her touch, he smiled very slightly. “It’s been too long since I’ve seen a barber.”

“Is a barber like a healer?” she asked, and his smile broadened into an open laugh.

“They like to think they are, at least when it comes to cutting things off. But I wouldn’t trust them with anything beyond my beard.” He’d known many a barber whose surgical skills were barely a notch above butchery, so he would not entrust this strange girl to just any knife-happy surgeon.
 

The mention of things being cut off caused a small gasp to pop from the girl’s mouth. She wasn’t sure why this was so upsetting. She didn’t feel like she was missing anything, and from what she could see she had the same number of body parts as everyone else here. Since everyone else was clothed, however, she couldn’t be absolutely sure.

Her body shifted in his arms as he began to ascend a new kind of street, one made of smooth stone steps. Up and up they went, and the man exhaled a weary sigh of relief when they finally came to the top. “Why is it that no one ever sets up shop at the bottom of a hill?” he grumbled to himself.

An amused voice from behind them answered. “Because, D’Molay, there is no drama in convenience.”

“Kafele, you appear like an actor from a stage trapdoor. Foolish of me to think I’d find you in the apothecary where you belong,” D’Molay said.

Kafele had the jarring gift of being in the right place at the right time. Many patients would be dead today if not for his effortless ability to arrive with aid at the critical moment. For as long as D’Molay had known the healer, this trait should no longer be surprising; yet he still found it uncanny.

“Your assumption was reasonable, just incorrect.” Kafele took a step closer to D’Molay and looked down at the girl. “She is ill?”

“No,” she bravely responded for herself, comparing Kafele to her friend, who now had a name. While D’Molay was strong and solid, Kafele was taller. His gestures were more fluid, and his face, along with most of his head, lacked hair. The robe he wore was enveloping and it seemed thinner than the fabric of D’Molay’s garments. Her embarrassment was increasing as she learned more about the others around her. She had no clothes, lacked a name, and had no idea what she looked like. “I don’t know who I am,” she admitted nervously.

“Interesting. Let’s go inside.” Kafele shifted a knapsack that was slung over his left shoulder and withdrew a set of keys from it. “Despite D’Molay’s belief that I’m a frustrated street entertainer, I do not normally treat patients in the City square.”
        

“You would if you had an audience,” D’Molay charged.

“And you two are drawing one.” Kafele gestured to a few men grouping around the three of them, hoping to get a better look at the naked girl. “I think we should continue our visit at my new dispensary. Come.” Kafele turned in the very direction from whence they’d just come and started down the great stone steps.

“Don’t tell me I climbed these steps for nothing!” D’Molay balked.

At the sound of his protest, Kafele grinned back over his shoulder. “If you’re tired, I will mix you a vitalizing tonic. Now hurry up before our patient catches a cold.”

As they walked, D’Molay told Kafele how he had found the girl on the street. They went almost all the way back down to the bottom of the steps before Kafele stopped at a sturdy door. It bore no sign, and the window beside it was empty of any display. As the healer thumbed through the many keys on his ring, the girl in D’Molay’s arms began to wiggle. The pressure of the man’s arms against her back and under her legs was starting to hurt.

“I’m sorry you had to carry me so far,” she said, feeling a bit guilty about the unnecessary trip up the steps.

“That’s all right. I feel fine, strong as ever.” D’Molay was determined not to let Kafele force any of his vile potions down his throat. Now was as good a time as any to draw that line in the sand. He shifted impatiently from one foot to another as Kafele continued to fiddle with the door. “Are you keying that lock, or picking it?”

“New shop,” Kafele shrugged as the door finally swung open. “I don’t have the knack of this clever Egyptian padlock yet.” As they stepped inside, the light from the street came with them, illuminating a large room with several counters and shelves lining the walls. Packed baskets and trunks, tightly tied sacks of herbs, and a line-up of exotic potted plants filled most of the empty floor space. Kafele waved them to come deeper into the building as he put down his sack beside a cabinet filled with glass jars of ointments and lidded stone vessels marked with the names of medicines. “You caught me on moving day.”

D’Molay spied a cushioned wicker chair with a tall back shoved into a corner. He helped the girl settle into it. Stretching the kinks out of his arms, he stepped out of Kafele’s way as the healer began to look her over. Then, idly lifting the lid of a small basket to snoop inside, he asked, “Why did you leave the City apothecary?”

Kafele made a non-committal murmur. “There are advantages to working alone. For one, you can treat cases without interference. By now, half my former associates would have your lovely friend covered in leeches, and the rest would be sprinkling her with salt. Now tell me,” he continued, speaking directly to the girl. “Can you remember anything at all before D’Molay found you?”

“N-no, I’m afraid I can’t. I don’t remember anything until I woke up in the street.”

“I’m going to place my hands on you to see if I can feel any damage. All right?”
 

She nodded nervously.

Kafele reached out and carefully put his hands on the top, back, and then the sides of her head. He could sense no physical injuries at all. However, as he looked down her torso between her breasts, he noticed something out of the ordinary. It was something he’d seen long ago and hadn’t expected to ever see again. He quickly composed himself, then leaned over and whispered in her ear.
 

She shook her head as she looked up at him. “Oh, everything about me feels . . . wrong,” the girl said in quiet frustration. She sat rigidly in the chair, unsure how to explain that all the things the others were so comfortable doing seemed so alien to her. Kafele raised a brow as he noticed her hands clutching the arms of the chair as if she feared she would slide off onto the floor.

“D’Molay, there are some spare robes inside that blue trunk behind you. She might be a little warmer and more comfortable if she were wearing something.” As the other man turned away to look in the trunk, Kafele retrieved a smaller box from a nearby pile. “Let’s see if we can spark a memory. I’ll show you things, and you can tell me if any of them look familiar.”

Kafele pulled out small effigies of different gods. Then he showed her bone runes, sacred tokens, and calligraphy stones. She handled small carvings of common animals and fantastic monsters. The girl stared without comprehension at miniature pyramids and domes. Her fingers played gently over an unusual whistle shaped like a bird, but Kafele could sense that her interest in it was that of discovery, not memory. He slipped a leather string through a hole in the little bird’s tail and tied the whistle around her neck. “You should always wear this, it will keep you safe,” he whispered to her with a friendly smile.

“Nothing ringing a bell?” D’Molay ventured, turning back with a yellowish silk garment.
 
D’Molay noticed the girl was twiddling her fingers oddly over her throat, and assumed she was still very frightened and jittery.

“Bell?” the girl questioned.

“Never mind. Let’s get this robe on you,” Kafele said. He had to manipulate her arms, for she didn’t seem to grasp how to slide them into the garment’s long sleeves. As he tied a loose knot in the cloth belt at her waist, he whispered something else to her. Then he looked at D’Molay as if he had come to a decision.