Names
The sound of a horse’s hoof striking stone woke its rider sharply from her stupor. She had felt the wind break, after a fashion, and had felt the heat cool, although she must have passed it off as a cloud moving across the sun. Now, though, she saw the truth: the massive towers of stone and wood and metal had risen up around her. More accurately, her horse had walked them into a city, and she had failed to notice. She looked upward and around, trying to determine if the crumbling architecture or the dead city’s layout could perhaps remind her of its name. They couldn’t.
She wasn’t very good with names.
At least, not anymore. Once, perhaps, she might have been. She didn’t remember, and it hardly mattered. She had, she suspected, been in this city before, at some point. In all likelihood, she had ridden these same stone streets, streets with carved symbols, long ago. A few years, perhaps. Maybe a decade. Maybe it was a lifetime ago, or a bit more. Her migrations had no pattern to them; these days she let her horse pick a direction and she simply rode along. It was so much easier that way.
Her horse made a small, whining whinny. She patted the back of the horse’s neck in response. The horse was nervous. Unfamiliar territory, perhaps? So, the rider thought, it was more than a lifetime ago. The last time she had ridden these streets, assuming she ever had, it must have been with a different horse. She looked intently at her horse’s ears for a long time then as they moved through the wide, empty streets, and tried to remember its name. She couldn’t remember if she had given it one. She probably had, especially when breaking it, but she couldn’t remember it now.
She wasn’t very good with names.
They were nearing what must have once been a market square when the rider first started to truly look around. There was rubble everywhere, of course, though much less than she expected. Glancing upward again, she noted that most of the towers still stood, and many of the upper floors, which were often the first to go, were still enclosed. Interesting, she supposed, though hardly noteworthy on the grand scale of things. There were other cities that were as lucky, if indeed a city could be “lucky” without any of its people.
What was noteworthy to her was the gutters. There were still the faintest signs of moisture from where water had pooled. It must have rained recently, and given the feel of the air and its relative heat, perhaps very recently. That meant fresh water. She would be fine without it, of course, but her horse needed to drink. She wasn’t sure how long it had been since it had last done so. It was likely that morning, or the night before, but she couldn’t be sure. Better to find something now.
As they entered the market square, the rider sighed. From the look and location of the square, and the comparative size of the city, this must once have been an impossibly busy locale. Once, she presumed, horses and carts and stalls of all kinds would have lined the wide, stone plaza. People of all sorts, from the frantic humans to the tall elves to the scurrying goblins to the lordly ratfolk and even to the slow, contemplative turtlefolk, everyone would have been here looking to buy and to sell, to speak and to steal. Each of the races, and countless others, would have mingled in a city like this, each with their own culture, their own language, and their own names.
But of course, she wasn’t very good with names.
The Turtlefolk from the lakes had a different name than those from the coast, she remembered, although she could not recall what either name was. The rats had different names for their people based on their castes, she thought, though she could name neither those names nor the words for the castes themselves. She couldn’t even remember the last time she had seen a goblin, let alone spoken to one, and the elves, though generally difficult to forget, had somehow managed to slip her mind in all but name and appearance. The only reason she remembered what a human looked like was because she occasionally caught her own reflection in water or glass. Otherwise, she thought, they would have been the most forgettable.
The rider realized suddenly that they had stopped, and that the silence of the dead city was being broken by a sound that took her a moment to place. As she looked downward, she saw that the horse had located a long, stone trough, partially filled with rain water, which the horse was now drinking from. May as well get down, she supposed. It had likely been quite a while. She had probably been riding since that morning. Or had she ridden through the night? It was possible. There hadn’t been much reason to pay attention, apparently.
Slowly, she slid down off the horse’s back. She remembered, in a fragmented flash of broken images, that once she had sat on something while riding, a seat of hardened leather and wood. It had a name in her language, and she could just about conjure what it had been, but it hardly mattered now. Hers had fallen into disrepair many horses ago, and it had not been worth the effort to find or figure out how to build a replacement. She rode bareback now. Her horse seemed indifferent. Of course, it had no point of comparison.
A sudden thought occurred to her as she slid down, though she had no sense of where it might have come from. It was briefly odd to her that, despite riding since at least that morning, and possibly a great deal longer, she should have been stiff or sore or at the very least uncomfortable. She tried to remember the last time she had felt any of those things, but nothing seemed to come. Perhaps I am blessed by the god of horses, she thought, by… Her brow furrowed for a long moment. She could not remember the god of horses’ name.
She wasn’t very good with names.
As her horse sated its thirst, the rider began looking at the walls of the towers around them. It was usually on the building walls, she knew. It took her a moment to remember what was usually on the walls, but it was a bit closer to the surface of her memory. She was looking for the markings. She could not remember how long she had been looking, nor could she remember how her search had begun, but she knew they were the reason for it.
The walls of the countless towers looked pretty much bare. She could not see any markings, anything out of the ordinary. How she knew what was ordinary was beyond her. This was not the city of her birth, she didn’t think. She cocked her head to one side. Or was it? She really couldn’t remember anything about where she had been born. It was far too long ago, and she had ridden to far too many places since then. But she felt like she had a solid idea of what walls and towers should look like, and these looked like that idea to her.
In her weakest moments, she worried about how little she seemed to remember. So much of her life was a fog in her mind, there but not there, sometimes hazy, sometimes broken, sometimes merely absent. She knew she had had a childhood, and could surmise that she had childhood friends, parents, perhaps siblings. But if she did, she did not remember them, merely that she likely had them. She remembered that there were wolves in the forests and great cats in the plains. She remembered that massive herds of horses moved across the prairies, from which she could replace hers when it died of old age, or thirst, or hunger, or exhaustion.
Those were the things which were relevant to her life, such as it was. She had little to fear from the wolves or the cats, or any of the various creatures or monsters that had moved into the spaces where people once were. But her horse did, and her horse was her constant companion. Perhaps she had a certain empathy for the thing and its fragility. Perhaps, just perhaps, she had just a bit of jealousy for it. But ultimately, it was a practical concern. If her horse were killed, she would need to catch and tame another one. It took time, which didn’t matter. But it took effort, and it demanded that she remember how to do it.
Other than that, though, there wasn’t much left worth remembering anymore. There was nobody to share those memories with. No matter where she rode, no matter how long she pressed onward, she never saw another person. No turtlefolk, no ratfolk, no goblins, elves, or humans. They were all gone now, all but her. And the reason they were gone, that was something that even she had never forgotten. No, the plague was the reason they were gone, and the reason she was still here. She remembered the plague well, although she had long forgotten what they had called it.
She wasn’t, ultimately, very good with names.
Her horse had finished drinking, and seemed anxious to move on. Or perhaps it simply expected her to want to. She rarely stayed in one place for long. Even when she found the markings, she merely copied them down and moved on, because there were always more to find. The sun was sinking, but had not yet reached the horizon, and there were more places in the city she knew she had to check, places where the markings usually appeared. Without a word – she rarely spoke unless she was breaking in a new horse – she climbed onto the horse’s back and moved deeper into the city.
The spires around her reminded her of the giants. They had been the last to die. A solitary people, the giants didn’t start to catch the plague until many of the smaller people had died, long after she had made her deal. Many of the giants’ bones still littered the wilderness, far from anything, far from one another. She rode beside them, near them, even through them at times. It made them easier to remember. She forgot whether or not she had known a giant when they were alive, but she felt the loneliness of their deaths like a leaden weight.
The horse and the rider found themselves in what must once have been the temple district. The temples were hit hardest by the plague, she assumed. She didn’t remember, but it would make sense. People would have gone to pray, to beg, and in the hopes of healing. In doing so, they would have spread their sickness. She couldn’t remember if she had avoided the temples or gone to them. She may have even tried to help in one, though she doubted it. She wouldn’t bother now. But she suspected she had been a very different person then.
For example, she wouldn’t make her deal now no matter what the terms, but then, she had jumped at it. She had initiated it. She sought it out of her own accord and had nobody to blame but herself. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. She could blame him, too, but mostly, it had been her doing. She had never forgotten her deal, and what had driven her to it. The plague had frightened her, on a level and to a degree that she had never felt before, and certainly not since. Nothing had frightened her since.
As the sun set, the temple district of the dead city was bathed in dull moonlight, and in that moonlight, she saw the markings. She saw them everywhere, up and down the walls of the temples, along the tall towers, and even in the streets, where she vaguely remembered the people had usually carved names of those who died. She slid off her horse’s back and walked slowly in lazy, swooping circles, staring at the markings. She knew what they were, but as always, could not decipher what they meant. What she did know was that they were exactly like those she copied down in her book. They were exactly like the markings in every other city where she found them. And she knew they were in his handwriting.
She didn’t know what the markings said, but she knew they were words. She didn’t remember what it was like to read, but she remembered that once, she could. She remembered that because it was the price she had paid. It was what he had made her give up to guarantee her survival, her immortality. Her memory, after so many centuries, had never let go its grasp on his face. She still remembered him, every detail, from how he looked at her, to how he spoke, to the promises he made, the promises he kept, and then some. But she had long ago forgotten that vile man’s name.
She was never very good with names.
for comparison, the first time the deal is mentioned I reread the sentence four times to be sure i didn't miss anything, so big was my brain starvation.