Short Story: The Sickness Of Canritran
The original version of this story, written circa 2019, has been sent to the Teabox Scrapheap. You can read it here. This new version was written in 2026, and I consider it an improvement on the original.
The rainy season had come to little more than a few days of drizzle amidst weeks of blistering heat, and the River Silgra had failed to inundate the grain fields for the second year in a row. What little food remained in the granaries was descended upon first by rats, and then by a black blight that turned it to a foul smelling sludge. Canritran, a nation that had once been renowned for its abundance, was in sharp decline.
Tyrtus the Good, the ninth king of that name, had tried valiantly to hold the kingdom together. He had raided his treasuries to bring in provisions from abroad, and then when that had run dry, leveraged his tight bonds with allies near and far to receive donations. But then they had grown tired of him, and would give nothing more. So, with a heavy heart, he prepared to address his people for the final time.
His two heralds stepped out onto the balcony of the Canritranian palace and played the traditional call to attention with their horns; a long, deep, steady note that carried through the air like an eagle on the wing. Thin and filthy and exhausted, the people stumbled out of their dwellings to listen, stepping over the desiccated bodies of their kinfolk on the street corners.
Tyrtus looked down at his people; at their hollowed cheeks, their glassy eyes. He swallowed. ‘There is nothing more to be done,’ he said. ‘Canritran dies with us, its final children.’
A great weary sigh swept the gathered crowd. A nation’s death rattle.
Then, a strangled call. ‘Wait!’
The King leaned out over the balcony, a hand at his forehead to shield his eyes from the sun. Just who had spoken?
‘Wait!’ The voice came again. ‘Your highness, lend me your ear!’ A wizened hand shot up. The white hot rays of the noonday sun glistened on the top of a balded old pate. The crowd parted, and he stepped forwards. It was Arkila, a grand scholar, and in happier times a favourite of The King’s court.
Tyrtus let out a short, sharp laugh despite himself. ‘I thought you were long gone, Arkila. It is nice to see you one final time, and I am glad that you have come home to die with us like a brother.’
‘We shall not die, sire. I have been in the west, consulting the old texts. There is a solution to our troubles.’
Tyrtus squinted down at the old sage. ‘Oh yes?’
‘Yes.’ Arkila’s voice was firm and confident. ‘We must wake Saklatrênhotra.’
The little old scholar was ushered through the crowd and into the palace amidst a rush of hopeful whispers.
‘A solution! Relief!’ spoke a woman, her voice a dry rasp. She reached out a hand and brushed the leather satchel that hung from Arkila’s shoulder with her fingertips.
‘Pah!’ said a man. ‘What use are the old gods? It’ll come to nothing, woman. You’ll see.’
The heavy wooden door of the palace slammed shut, and Arkila ascended the stairs to The King’s chamber on nervous feet.
The chamber was shabbier than Arkila remembered it, and much plainer. There were spaces marked in dust on the crumbling stone walls where paintings and tapestries once hung, now long since sold. The mosaic of The King’s father on the wall above his bed, which once sported glistening blue sapphires for eyes, sat with dark and empty sockets.
When The King spotted Arkila, he rushed to him and shook him heartily by the hand. ‘My friend,’ he said, ‘how thin you look. How troubled.’
Arkila eyed him sadly. ‘And you too, sire, though you still possess your noble bearing.’
‘Nonsense,’ The King laughed, ‘I am little more than a carcass. Almost dead on my feet. You do not need to flatter me, not when the end draws so near.’
‘It does not have to be the end.’
The King shook his head sadly. ‘No. It is the end. I don’t care what the western pagans say.’
‘Sire…’
‘No, Arkila. I remember your mad hunches. The way you’d get so into these… silly little things. There is no Saklatrênhotra.’
The scholar swung his satchel from his back and produced a scroll from inside. With one smooth motion he placed it down on a table and spread it open. ‘Look! This text tells of a ritual; a great cry out for direct intervention from the god. And it works, too. Look at this bit here. An eyewitness account. And if it does turn out to all be a lie then… well. Canritran can’t be any more doomed, can it?’
Tyrtus inhaled. He folded his arms behind him and looked down at the worn parchment. There was an illustration in scratchy black ink of a creature emerging from a hole in the ground. It was some kind of many-eyed centipede, and the tiny human figures crouched before it betrayed its scale as very large indeed. Too large to be real, surely. It was not a god as he knew it; all light touch and nothing of substance. But, as Arkila had said, it wasn’t as if trying could make the situation any worse. He sighed.
‘Do you want me to explain how the ritual is done?’ Arkila asked.
‘Yes.’
‘It involves a sort of sacred fire, which is set on the end of a staff. A strange staff, made of rolled paper, and the inside is stuffed with a preparation of noxious herbs. The god appears, the staff is ignited, and it is presented in front of Saklatrênhotra’s pit. Then you can ask him to intervene on your behalf.’
‘And he’s a good god?’
‘A god of plenty. I don’t… The old gods didn’t ascribe to our moral standards, I think. But a god of plenty sounds good.’
‘And you know where this pit is, where they say he lives?’
‘Yes. It is about a week away on foot, or a few days on horseback.’
The King made a soft, thoughtful sort of sound. He briefly locked eyes with the empty sockets of his father’s mosaic, shuddered a little, and then made his way back out onto the balcony.
Arkila hurried along behind him. ‘Sire?’
The noonday sun showed no signs of letting up. The flat roofs of the old sandstone dwellings shone bone white. The gathered crowd had dissipated somewhat, and a few of the people returned to the futile effort of arranging the dead. It was far too dry to bury them, and to cremate them would be a terrible waste of fuel, but the average man was too weak with hunger to carry a body very far. But leaving them to rot on the street corners was such an awful thing, and every so often a person or two would be seized by the awful need to just move the weather-beaten mummies around, or sort them into piles.
‘I will put together a team for you, and spare you whatever meagre provisions I can,’ Tyrtus said, quietly. ‘If this works, then…’
‘Thank you, sire.’
The King cleared his throat with a splutter, and then addressed his people once more. ‘Arkila will go to Saklatrênhotra!’
There was a rush of thin, scratchy cheers from the crowd.
The team The King assembled amounted to just two men (the least diseased people left in of the country) and a donkey that was only slightly covered in tick bites. The provisions consisted of a few slightly blackened flatbreads, some dried meat of dubious provenance, several leather bladders filled with murky brown water, and of course the mysterious paper staff made to the scroll’s strange specifications. Arkila and his crew were given a heroes’ departure as they started their quest to Saklatrênhotra, and the people lined the streets like staggering ghouls to wish them well.
They followed the desiccated path of the Silgra, up along the irrigation channels that had dried to cracked black mud between the ruined fields, before crossing into the desert of Kom. The days were bright white and hotter than hell, but the nights were dry and dark and frigid. The sandstorms, which came with alarming regularity, blew deafeningly loud.
Much of their bread was confiscated at a quarantine station on the Canritran border with Kseriti, apparently to prevent the spread of the black blight, and then the donkey had a fatal collapse somewhere around Anhaperka. They did not eat its meat.
They crossed back into Canritran in the west, on the edge of the highlands at the Silgra’s source. That was where they found what they were looking for.
The great pit was a circular hole in the earth many metres in size, with edges so crisp and dimensions so perfect that they could not have been made by human hands. Arkila braced himself as he peered over the edge, looking down into a dark expanse that seemingly had no bottom. He thought momentarily of the planet as a great bead, with the pit stretching clear through it and out of the other side.
‘Is this the place?’ asked one of the pilgrims.
‘Yes,’ Arkila replied. ‘Yes it is.’ He raised the paper staff aloft and called out the god’s mighty name. ‘Saklatrênhotra! I have come bearing an offering!”
There was a rumble. The ground shook, and the sand and loose pebbles on the lip of the pit fell into its depths. Somewhere, otherworldly drums began to beat. A shape, massive and black and oily with an iridescent lustre, rose up from the gloom. The creature’s tube shaped body was lined with hundreds of limbs, and thousands of bright white pinprick eyes that darted back and forth to look in all directions. When it had finally reached its full height, as tall as the tallest church spire in the land and then some, a cavernous mouth opened up at ground level. Its teeth were as long as a man was tall, its breath a putrid wind.
‘Ooh ‘eck,’ Saklatrênhotra said, his voice deep and resonant. His serpentine body flexed as if stretching, producing an audible click. ‘I’ve been down there for bloody ages. Plays havoc with the old back, it does.’
Arkila fell to his knees at the sight of the god, his voice breaking. ‘Oh, mighty one. Our land of Canritran is terribly sick. The people are dying, and the king has given up hope. Saklatrênhotra, I beg you…’
Saklatrênhotra cut him off with a sputter from his vast throat. ‘Ciggy first.’
‘The offering of sacred fire. Of course.’ Arkila gestured to his pilgrims, who presented him with a fire lens. He placed the staff on the ground. With trembling hands he held the lens up to the sun, twisting and adjusting until the beam focused in on the staff’s head.
It sparked, smoked, and then came alight. The smell of it was bitter and earthy. Arkila beheld it for a moment, breathing in its fumes, before lifting it up high above his head for the god to take.
Saklatrênhotra took the staff in a black tendril. He placed the end into his wide mouth and inhaled. ‘That hits the spot,’ he said, and then exhaled grey plumes through a pair of nostrils on the sides of his body. ‘Now what can I do you for?’
‘Our land of Canritran is terribly sick,” Arkila repeated. ‘The people are dying, and the…’
The ancient god snorted. ‘Crops failing? Black mold? That kind of stuff? Simple fix, mate. I Just need to turn it off and on again.’
Arkila blinked. ‘On and… off again?’
It happened with the speed and ferocity of a snake’s jaws snapping shut. Nothingness. Void. The darkness of death. It might’ve lasted a second, or it might’ve lasted a hundred billion years, as there was simply no way of knowing.
The old scholar regained consciousness to the call of distant birds, and the smell of grass. His pilgrims started in surprise and rubbed at their eyes. The barren scrub had transformed into a glorious meadow of vibrant green, and the once-sweltering air now bore a refreshing breeze.
‘An easy fix,’ Saklatrênhotra said, stubbing out the ritual fire against the ground. ‘Current build is just a bit buggy. The random number generator isn’t really that random, so the weather probability table just gets stuck in hot and dry. You call on me again if it keeps happening, y’hear!’
‘We will, Saklatrênhotra. Thank you.’
The vast black creature’s cavernous maw bent into a strange sort of grin. ‘It’s nothing, really.’ With that, his body retracted down into the pit, disappearing so completely into the shadows that if one had not been there to witness him, one would not know he was ever there at all.
The return journey was far easier than the journey there had been. The green grass was a soft cushion beneath the pilgrims’ weary feet, and the cool, mild weather made the travel light and pleasant. The Silgra, which once more ran deep and clean and blue, allowed them to drink to their hearts’ content, and the berries in the newly-sprouted hedgerows provided much to eat.
Arkila returned to the Canritranian palace to find King Tyrtus in high spirits. Though he still bore the scars of all the months of deprivation, his face had grown fuller, and his eyes had regained a precious glimmer of hope.
‘So you met the great god Saklatrênhotra?’ he asked, taking Arkila’s wizened old hands in his own. ‘How was he?’
Arkila looked out over the balcony and across the city. The streets were swept clean and devoid of bodies. The sky was a rich blue, and spotted with bright white clouds. ‘He was… uh. I don’t exactly know how to explain it to you.’
Tyrtus laughed. He patted the scholar on the back. ‘I’m sure you can, Arkila, with all of your words and learning.’
‘He was… He spoke of strange things. Turning the world off and on again. Random number generators. Probability tables. Things that have never once come up in my studies. Things from beyond this world.’
‘But he was a good god, yes?’ The King blinked. ‘He did all this for us. Surely he’s a good god.’
Arkila swallowed. ‘A good god. A good guy.’