by Evan Winter
“Can you entreat a man?” Tau asked, focusing on the thing she’d said that worried him most. Even speaking the words felt wrong, as if he might give the citadel a new and twisted thing to try.
“It can be done,” Zuri said. “But it is not. Entreating is an opening up of souls. It connects the Entreater and the entreated. Creatures of high reasoning, like women and even men, can fight the connection or hold it.”
“Fight it? Hold it?”
“If I were to entreat you, I would be half here and half in Isihogo. I would have to draw power from the underworld for as long as I wished to hold sway over you.”
“This is why you have to be powerful? You need to hide from the demons the entire time.”
“Yes, but it’s more dangerous than that. If I entreated you, then you could hold me in Isihogo just as I hold you. You could keep me there after I’d exhausted my ability to hide.”
“Until the demons found you?”
“Yes,” Zuri said. “Yes. And… it’s why one of us dies every time a dragon is called.”
Tau started. “What?”
Zuri licked her lips, never looking away from his face. “The Gifted hold an immature dragon captive under the Guardian Keep.”
“They do what!?”
“The youngling is chained, masked, and kept enervated by a group of Gifted called a coterie. There are tunnels connecting the Guardian Keep and the Gifted Citadel. The tunnels give us constant access to the youngling. They allow us to rotate out wearied Gifted and bring in fresh ones. In this way, we keep the youngling enervated indefinitely.”
Tau could barely speak. “Why?”
“To control the Guardians. We think they may originally have come into our world through Isihogo.”
“They’re demons?” asked Tau.
“Don’t we believe they were created by Ananthi?”
“I… I also believed they helped us willingly and not because we held one of their children captive.”
Zuri grimaced, unable to argue the point. “An Entreater can enter Isihogo and mimic the cry of a Guardian youngling. All Entreaters are taught this. When the Guardians hear the cry they come looking for their missing child. Once the dragons are close, we entreat them and they, being caught, latch onto us in turn.”
“Us?”
“We cannot allow our most powerful to die every time we need the Guardians. Entreaters work with five other Gifted and together they are called a Hex. Each member of the Hex is powerful enough to be an Entreater in their own right, and when a Guardian is called, they entreat one another.”
“They link souls?”
“In a way. It’s done so that, when the Guardian pierces the shroud of the actual Gifted entreating it, the rest of the Hex can step in.”
“To fight?”
“No. Guardians, like demons, cannot be defeated in Isihogo. The Hex steps in to save the Entreater and the Guardian takes one of the five remaining members of the Hex instead. We call it a backlash.”
“And the Gifted, the one being backlashed? If she’s entreating the other members of the Hex, she’ll be holding energy from Isihogo.”
“She will.”
“Then, when she’s killed in Isihogo…,” Tau said.
Zuri nodded.
“That’s why… That’s why the Gifted in Daba died in blood? It was a demon-death.”
Zuri nodded.
“How does the dragon decide which member of the Hex to hold in Isihogo? Why doesn’t it kill you all?”
“The five remaining members of the Hex are linked. They look like a single soul to the Guardian and they fight amongst themselves, twisting energy from Isihogo, using it against each other until someone’s shroud collapses. When the first shroud fails, the other Gifted force all the energy they hold into the failure’s soul.”
“You make the defeated Gifted brighter.”
“As bright as the sun.”
“And the demons attack.”
“Every time a dragon is called, someone dies.”
“Goddess wept,” Tau said, his voice little more than a whisper. “And we hold one of their young to compel them to come when called?”
“We do.”
“That means we’ve held their child captive for near on two hundred cycles?”
“We have.”
“This is a horror story.”
“This is the story of our survival,” Zuri said. “Tau, the Gifted Citadel sits half-empty. We cannot replace the women we lose to the never-ending fighting and the backlashes. Every cycle we find fewer Gifted at the testings, and every cycle the hedeni attack more frequently and in greater force. These days, even raids can require a Guardian defense.”
“Tell me you can’t…”
“I’m powerful.”
“Tell me—”
“I’m slated to become an Entreater when my education is complete. My training for it has already begun.”
“No.”
“My first military assignment will be as an Enrager. It is difficult to master entreating. I have time. ”
“Until what? Until they bind you to a Hex? So you can fight the women you trained with to feed a dragon’s wrath?”
“I’m powerful.”
“How powerful are the rest?”
Zuri’s melancholy smile was her only answer. They sat for a while. They held each other. In time, Zuri slept. Tau did not.
He was awake to see the sun, its shadows creeping across the room’s carpeted floor like skulking demons. His sword brothers would be in the practice yards. They would wonder where he was. He needed to leave and wanted nothing less. He kissed Zuri.
“Already?” she said.
“Already.”
“We leave for Kerem after breaking our fast,” she told him, “but I’ll be in the Crags for the melee, along with the rest of the Gifted initiates and preceptors. Be safe. Find me in the city after.”
“I will,” he promised. He kissed her, readied himself to leave, and at the door to the bedroom, he tried to bind her image to his mind. She was so much more than he deserved. He walked through the door.
“Tau.” The worry in her voice stopped him. “Be careful. Something’s coming, a reckoning for the things we’ve done.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
COUNSEL
Zuri had been gone for days, but her look, her feel, the smell of her skin, they stayed with Tau. He was walking with his sword brothers to the mess hall after the morning’s training and she kept coming to mind, distracting him, making it difficult to pay attention.
Hadith was talking over strategies for the Queen’s Melee. He was worrying over their chances, trying to determine the optimal tactics for a contest whose rules were as different from standard skirmishes as those skirmishes were from actual war.
The melee was the ultimate test for the Omehi’s best fighting men and, as a consequence, Gifted did not participate. That should have tilted the competition in favor of the Lessers, but it was not the only significant rule change.
Every qualifying team began the melee with a full scale. Tau and his sword brothers would face no Gifted, but they would fight fifty-four Lessers against fifty-four Nobles. The last time Lessers had participated in the melee was twenty-three cycles ago. Jayyed had been that scale’s inkokeli and they’d been crushed. Seven of Jayyed’s men died and thirteen were injured badly enough that they did not serve a single day of active military duty. They placed sixteenth out of sixteen.
Tau had no idea how his scale would perform. He did not know if men would die, though he imagined some would, and it would be ridiculous to expect them to rank, coming at least third out of twelve. What Tau did know was that he would keep Scale Jayyed in the melee until he had the opportunity to meet Kellan Okar in battle. After he’d taken care of Kellan, after the Queen’s Melee, the initiates of Scale Jayyed would be confirmed as men of the Omehi military. That was when Tau would challenge Abasi Odili. He was ready.
These were Tau’s thoughts as he walked past the centr
al courtyard in the Southern Ihashe Isikolo. These were his thoughts when the academy’s primary gates opened and in marched eighteen full-blooded Indlovu, led by Dejen Olujimi, protector and escort for the man he accompanied, protector and escort for chairman of the Guardian Council, Abasi Odili.
Odili was as Tau remembered, handsome, regal, a man with the discipline to control himself and his surroundings. He had not changed at all. He was perfectly preserved, a golden idol of Noble malevolence.
Tau saw him and wanted nothing more than to kill him. His hands slipped to the hilts of his practice blades.
“Tau!” Uduak’s voice sounded distant.
“What’s he doing?” he heard Hadith say.
A thick hand grabbed his wrist. Tau turned, barely able to register that it was Uduak beside him.
Uduak’s face changed when he saw the look in Tau’s eyes. “No,” he said, his grip tightening.
Tau’s jaw clenched, the bones creaking. A hand fell on his shoulder. His head swung. It was Hadith.
“Come away now,” Hadith said. “Come.”
“Those… men,” Tau said, seeing demons in Abasi and Dejen’s places.
“Come away,” Hadith said.
“Food,” Uduak said, pulling Tau along.
Tau let his sword brothers pull him to the mess hall, his mind a jumble, seeing demons everywhere, as if Isihogo and Uhmlaba had become one. They sat him at a long table. They brought him food. They watched him eat.
“What was that, outside?” Hadith asked. “You looked like you were about to kill every last one of those Nobles.”
“Just two.”
Hadith fumbled his spoon. “Wait! You were actually thinking of attacking them?”
“Leave it,” Tau said.
“I don’t think I can,” Hadith said. “I think you need to explain.”
“He killed my father.”
“Neh? Who did?” asked Hadith.
“The guardian councillor, Abasi Odili. He had his Body stab my father through the heart at a citadel testing.”
“Why?” asked Uduak.
“I sparred with and beat a Noble.”
Uduak tilted his head, no doubt trying to recall conversations about Tau’s old life. “Jabari?”
“No. Jabari was… Jabari is my friend. It was an incompetent named Kagiso Okafor. He was a terrible swordsman. He tried to injure me and I stopped him.”
“The Nobles took offense?” asked Hadith.
“Odili put me in a blood-duel against Kellan Okar. The councillor wanted me to die for knocking a useless nceku on his ass.”
“Your father took your place,” Hadith concluded.
Tau was having trouble breathing and closed his eyes. “Okar cut away my father’s hand. Odili’s Body put bronze through his chest.”
“And now?” Uduak asked. “Revenge? You’ll be killed. Your family too.”
“The melee,” Hadith told Uduak. “Then graduation. Then a blood-duel.”
Hadith had pieced it together. Uduak, still thinking it through, shot him a questioning look.
“Kellan Okar fights in the melee,” said Hadith. “He can die in it. Nobles do every cycle. After the melee, we become full-bloods. Full-bloods can blood-duel anyone in the military, even the chairman of the Guardian Council.”
Uduak made a strangled sound.
Tau kept his eyes on his plate. “They killed my father.”
“They did,” Hadith said, tone neutral.
“I’m going to kill them.”
“Listen,” said Hadith, “you have to retreat a few paces, but here’s what we can do—”
“We?” said Tau.
“Yes, we,” said Hadith. “We’re brothers. And, we’re going to do nothing, for now. Leave the guardian councillor to his business. You get caught and everyone sharing your blood dies. Tau, I’ll promise you something. Let us take care of Okar as a scale. If we face him in the melee, we’ll punish him for his part in your father’s death.”
“I don’t need your help.”
“Really? ’Cause from where I’m sitting, it looks like you do.” Hadith put a hand on Tau’s shoulder. “You can’t actually think that the rules the Nobles made up to protect themselves will protect you. What do you think happens if you gut Okar in the melee? What do you think will actually happen if, as a full-blood, you challenge the chairman of the Guardian Council to a fight to the death?”
Hadith had gotten louder, Uduak shushed him, and he took a breath. “Let us help. I’ll think of something. We can punish Kellan, at least.”
“At least?” said Tau.
“Be at peace, just for now. Let me think. Agreed?”
Tau was wound tight as rope, his posture and the set of his mouth as clear and instinctual a warning as any man could give.
Hadith would not be cowed. “Swear it, Tau,” he said. “You risk us in this too. Swear it on your father and know that I have my own reasons to hate Nobles.”
Hadith Buhari, specifically chosen to be in Scale Jayyed; Tau could guess his reasons. Like the rest, he was a cross-caste, his mother likely taken by force. Hadith would consider it a dark secret, a shameful beginning, thought Tau. It made Hadith think he hated the ones whose blood he shared, but he did not know what hate really was. Tau would help with that. He’d become Hadith’s shining example.
“I’ll do nothing while Odili is in the isikolo walls,” he said.
“On your father,” Hadith reminded him.
Tau nodded, stood, and left. A chair scraped behind him and he heard Uduak’s heavy footfalls as the big man shadowed him. Avoiding the central courtyard and the Indlovu, Tau returned to the training grounds.
Uduak didn’t need to play escort. Tau would keep his word. No harm would come to Odili while he was in the isikolo’s walls because Tau knew a Royal Noble like him wouldn’t spend a night among Lessers. He’d leave that same day, and Tau would follow.
STONES
Jayyed had not been at practice all day, and in the mess hall that evening, rumors spread, branching like a tree’s roots. It was said the chairman of the Guardian Council had spoken with Jayyed. It was said Jayyed was to accompany him when he left the isikolo.
Many in the scale were proud of this, glad to see their mentor respected enough to be called upon by their military’s leadership. Tau was not pleased. If the rumors were true, Jayyed would be with Odili when Tau followed him.
At dusk, the Indlovu prepared to march. Jayyed was with them. The initiates, their training day over, returned to the barracks. Tau went too, then gathered his swords and left the barracks, as Hadith joked and drank with the men. This was usual. Tau always trained in the evenings.
On his way to the barracks door, Tau noticed Uduak watching him. Uduak had seen Tau sheath his real swords in the scabbards he was wearing. Tau had his father’s razor-edged blade on one hip and his grandfather’s sword on the other. Uduak’s gaze lingered on the weapons and their eyes met. Uduak said nothing, but Tau could feel the big man’s stare on his back as he walked out of the barracks and into the hot night.
Tau waited in the grasslands beyond the practice yards until he heard the convoy of Indlovu. Their armor, gear, and weapons clattered as they marched from the isikolo, and, seeing demons that weren’t there, Tau followed.
The men marched north. Tau gave them a good lead. The grasslands did not offer cover and he could not risk being seen. After a couple of spans, he realized they were closing in on the Crags and Citadel City. The rumors were right. Odili had come to bring Jayyed back to the Guardian Council.
That made things difficult. Tau would have to sneak into the city and was already having trouble keeping his head straight. He itched. It was the first night he’d not gone to Isihogo, and lost in worry over how much he wanted to go and suffer, he was almost seen.
They’d arrived at the base of the Crags and the Indlovu had stopped marching. Tau was too close and one of them turned in his direction. He dropped to a crouch in the tall grass, hiding and praying to the God
dess that he’d not been seen.
A breath passed and Tau feared he was discovered, but the man turned away, peering out in the dark at something else. That was when Tau heard the newcomers, the sounds of their approach resounding off the rocky ground. Tau crawled closer and did not like what he saw.
The Indlovu had been joined by another unit, and this unit was guarding two on horses. Tau peered into the twilight, surprised that he recognized the riders. The horses carried the queen’s champion and the KaEid of the Gifted Citadel. Behind them walked three hooded Gifted and two men wearing the blackened leather armor of the Ingonyama.
Tau considered slipping away. Something far beyond him was taking place and it made him uneasy to think that the Chosen he was stalking, once joined by the Gifted, had enough power to take on four scales of Ihashe.
The champion’s horse made a noise with its nose and Tau almost leapt from his hiding spot. He worried the beast could tell he was there, but none of the others seemed alarmed. Tau calmed his nerves and stayed put, watching the champion for any signs that the animal had alerted him to Tau’s presence.
The champion was as Tau remembered, tall and strong. His shaven scalp was edged with gray stubble that seemed to shimmer in the dim moonlight, and he had his guardian sword at his hip. The KaEid, of an age with Champion Abshir Okar, was graceful and attractive, though stern. He could not see the faces of the hooded Gifted, worried Zuri could be one of them, and rejected the notion. She should still be in Kerem, and these were some of the most important people in the peninsula. The Gifted with the KaEid would be full-blooded, not initiates, not Zuri.
Then, after a brief discussion that Tau could not hear, the eighteen Indlovu were left to guard the horses and gear as Jayyed, Odili, the queen’s champion, and KaEid began to climb the Crags with the three Gifted and three Ingonyama. The group had split, and the horses, whose capabilities Tau did not understand, had been left behind. Tau considered going home but rejected the notion. He had to be careful, exceedingly so, but he’d see the night through.
Odili and his group took the easiest and widest path up the Crags. Tau could not follow that way. The horse-guarding Indlovu would see him. He had to sidle back and around the Crags until he found a section he could climb, unseen. It wasn’t a path, but climbing the Crags was no challenge to a man born and bred in the Southern Mountains.
