The Canyon

The prince walked in the desert of no charity. He came humble, and so there was no train of servants or attendants. His only company was his escort, who knew the city he sought. They had walked long and without reward, until as all travelers there must, they entered the canyon that was the hottest of the world.

They descended slowly through paths utterly devoid of life or signs of passage, as in a virgin world, and walked along it with sand-rich wind in their faces. Soon they came to the rock wall that was the landmark they sought, the boundary of the city’s influence.

The prince paused at the base of the rock wall. It was hotter than he could ever have imagined, so close to the sands, and yet at the bottom of a sheer mile of rock there was an opening, some sort of cave. He was no builder or carpenter, but he knew that such a weakness could never stand naturally, and drew closer.

His escort followed. Both dripped sweat immensely in the noon sun, the titanic canyon walls shedding their heat in an endless barrage. He could scarcely see the window after a minute’s time; he scrubbed salt from his eyes and increasingly burned skin to peer into the opening.

It was a barred window hewed from the immense rock, and utter darkness against the glare of day. Reaching almost to his boot was a hand, thrust from between two eroded bars, beside a face. The face was elongated and contorted in the finalities of pain. Every aspect of it was mummified in the airless heat: the flesh scraps of broken leather over yellow bone, the eyes cracked like mud, and nose withered away. It was a face of barren need.

The aspect of it, suddenly seen with the mercy of blurred vision taken away, made his nerves spasm and lungs vent a rasping cry. It had almost touched him. Turning his sight from it as a hand from a hot stove, he whirled upon his escort and gasped for an explanation of this horror.

His escort laughed, as at a misfortune, and spoke of the dawn of the archbishop’s rule. The archbishop announced his rule of the city by seizing his most vocal critic and interring him within the rock. Thus, he declared, would his city know Hell as truth. To see the proof of his sermons they would simply have to trek to the wall and look within the cell. No soul was brave enough to smuggle him food or water, and yet he had lived far beyond the limit of thirst, enough to experience the full impact of the archbishop’s words.

The prince threw sweat from his brow once more and asked how this man had lived so long in this gulch, where even at night candles softened from heat. His escort pointed within the blistering cell, and the prince mustered his will and bent to the bars, shying away from the vertigo of the stone curtain and the shriveled thing beside him.

There was nothing within the claustrophobic rock cell but the occupant. There was nothing else of the occupant. A thin band of emaciated flesh connected the arm to the base of the head, and all else was consumed, even the bones sucked and cracked to powder.

His escort laughed again scornfully as the prince spat bile against the stone, granting it more water than it saw in a century. The archbishop knew the man would seek to claw at himself and drink his blood for a few hours of life, the story continued, and so he ensured that this lesson in greed and selfishness would be carried to the logical maximum.

The prince turned, his raw face spared the searing sunlight and the horror of the thing before him. The meeting with the archbishop he’d traveled so far for seemed more hopeless by the hour. No peace could ever come of this man. He might as well turn back and take his place in the line of battle.

A sound came to him that was not the cutting wind, the only sound in this lifeless and cursed desert. He heard it again, and dreading the source, fought against himself long seconds before he turned.

The face was lean and athirst still. Now it moved. Long and sandblasted teeth clicked together, and the powdery eyes rolled to track him, the lids long shrunken away. The hand that had outstretched in plea now groped for him in hunger, seeking its prize.

A hand clamped on the prince’s quivering shoulder, and a sardonic voice spoke in his ear. Why would such a demonstration of torment ever end for something meek as death? Why ever spare the victim or offer rest? Hell, after all, is eternal.