by Myers, Karen
In the evening, after they’d all eaten in the kazr, it was time to see how well Munraz had done his research.
Penrys had heard him quizzing Khizuwi all morning, before he turned off on his own, and he’d asked questions of everyone the rest of the day. She’d answered everything he asked, narrowly, and left it up to him whether or not he probed for more details. Najud did the same.
Haraq, as he’d promised, was sometimes the questioner, and sometimes a man with answers. She’d heard him speculating with Munraz much of the afternoon, before one or the other would return on a quest for more details.
On the whole, she was pleased with the ground covered by the research for a young man new to such things, but she wanted to hear what he’d learned and digested, not just what he’d heard, to get some feel for his mind.
She settled herself on the edge of her bedframe, with Najud on the carpets at her feet.
“It’s time, nal-jarghal,” she said. “Haraq, I’ll hear from you, too—the both of you together.”
“But bikrajti,” Haraq said, “This is the nal-jarghal’s lesson.”
Najud said, “It’s for anyone who wants it.”
He started with Munraz. “So, tell me about bunnas, as if you were a merchant or a trader.”
Munraz looked from one of them to the other, and decided it was more polite to respond to Najud first.
“Bunnas is a plant that grows on the low hills around the southern shore of the Hilj Wandat, to the west.” He paused as if unsure how to continue, and Penrys prompted him.
“Does it grow anywhere else?”
Munraz shook his head. “No, bikrajti.”
Haraq opened his mouth and then shut it.
“Yes, Haraq? You have something to add?”
The man glanced at Munraz in apology. “Not that we know of, bikrajti. It might grow somewhere else.”
She nodded in approval. “And why does it grow there, do you think?”
Haraq volunteered, “It’s like any other plant, surely. There’s something about the soil, maybe, that it favors. It doesn’t get as cold there, with the inland sea to its north, and the hills behind it shelter it from the cold ocean current to the south.”
Munraz nodded in agreement. “And there’s more water in the air around the shore of the sea, I was told. Perhaps it likes that.”
Najud nodded. “All true, and no one that I know of has tried seriously to grow it anywhere else. Perhaps it could be done, and it would no longer be a specialty of Zannib. Perhaps it could grow as well, or better, on the steeper slopes of the northern shore, in the hands of the Rasesni. Are we sure they’ve never tried?”
Munraz looked at Haraq and shrugged.
“And the preparation of the drink from the growing plant?” Penrys asked.
“Farmers take ripe berries from the plants and use the seeds. It’s the seeds that they sell.” Munraz clearly felt on firmer ground here.
“And are those seeds what you carry in your pouch?” Najud asked.
“No, jarghal. The women in my family roast the seeds, and grind them, and that’s what’s in my pouch.” This was said with a note of triumph, of having found his way to the end of the answer.
“Hmm,” Penrys said, noncommittally. “How do the farmers strip the fruit from the seed? Do they dry the seed? Does it rot easily in that form? If you wanted more bunnas, could you induce them to grow and process more of it, if they had a more profitable market? Or would the price drop if they grew more? Is there enough land for that? Are there enough farmers? Could the women of your family roast more of it if you had more of the seed? Do they have enough time, or would professional roasters be needed?”
She glanced at Najud, and he continued. “How would you confirm that no one else was growing the plant? Can it be grown from the seed? Should the seed only be offered after roasting to prevent that? Should the growing conditions be kept secret? If you sell the seed to foreign buyers, should you explain how to prepare it? Or should you only sell them the roasted seed, to make it easier for them? Which keeps longer, the seed before or after roasting? Which weighs less, and which takes up more space?”
Haraq had kept his head under the blizzard of questions. “I can answer that one. It keeps longer before it is roasted, much longer. It should only be roasted just before using. The roasted seed weighs less, of course, but I’m not sure about space…”
Penrys looked at Najud and burst out laughing. “As you can see, we can probably come up with a day’s worth of questions.”
Munraz looked stunned. “I’ve been drinking bunnas all my life and never thought about any of this.”
“I did not expect answers to all of this from one day’s study, nal-jarghal,” Penrys told him. “I don’t know all those answers myself, because I’ve never seriously studied it. I knew, from the questions you asked during the day, that the two of you were trying to find out what we already knew, and that’s a good start. But you also need to discover what we don’t already know, and that means you must use your imagination to envision possibilities.
“For example, I don’t even like bunnas myself, so I can’t personally appreciate the fact that there are different strains with different flavors, like vintages of wine. But I know about that, and so I can learn about it if I need to.”
Najud added, “And I, who do know something on this subject, can intrigue my more sophisticated buyers with the romance and flavor of the different kinds, make them feel like experts who can congratulate themselves on their superior understanding, while I congratulate myself on the superior capacity of their pockets.”
Penrys nodded. “This would be true understanding of the subject of bunnas. And there would be many, many more things an expert could know about it. This one plant—admittedly an important one. This one trade good.”
She leaned forward. “I wanted you to see how there is depth in this subject, as far as you care to go, endless, like an onion. There is depth like this in every subject, and many subjects have no expert. Any farmer can tell you something like this about the plants he grows, to the degree he knows their history and uses. Your own people know your herds this way, the lineage and capacities of the different varieties, if not how they might be useful to others in different lands for different purposes you haven’t imagined.”
‘I can’t learn about the entire world, bikrajti,” Munraz cried. “There aren’t enough years in my life.”
“No, you can’t. Well said.” She beamed at him. “But you can learn how to learn. That is the point of this lesson—to introduce you to this concept.”
“I thought this was a bikraj matter,” Haraq said.
“The work of a bikraj isn’t much about secret things, Haraq.” Najud included them both in the explanation. “What a bikraj can do is born inside, and what’s done with it, well, that’s where skill and technique can help. That’s not exactly secret, it’s just that without the power the rest of it is meaningless, so someone not a bikraj doesn’t care about it. But then, what? What use is a bikraj without understanding?”
He looked at Haraq. “Your clan has no bikraj at the moment, but mine does. When there is an intractable dispute, it is sometimes only a bikraj who can settle it, one who can see clearly how the emotions of the people are involved and what would be the smoothest path to a resolution, the balance between strict justice and acceptance.”
Munraz nodded at this description.
“When a child is lost, it may be the bikraj who has the best chance of finding it, not necessarily because of a mind-scan for any great distance, but because he understands where the child might go and what might have happened. Imagination and understanding, both.”
“When there’s a death,” Penrys said, slowly, thinking of Khizuwi, “A bikraj can help the survivor work past sorrow to a better acceptance. Not just understanding, but sympathy.”
She looked at Munraz. “The qahulajti was a bikrajti without understanding. I will maintain, despite the great harm she caused, that it was not ent
irely her fault, but in the end it doesn’t matter. You must understand people and the limits of your own knowledge, and then learn as much as you can, if you want to be a bikraj.”
“Or a leader of the people,” Haraq added.
Najud nodded. “Yes, indeed.”
Munraz ventured one more question. “What about the forbidden subjects, jarghal? Is there a limit to what we should seek to understand?”
Penrys and Najud exchanged looks.
“This is a subject about which you will have to make up your own mind.” Penrys turned to Haraq. “What he’s asking about is the difference between bikr mar-shimiqa, the magic of thinking, and bikr mar-thulj, the magic of things. In sarq-Zannib, bikr mar-thulj is forbidden. It is not that way in Rasesdad, nor in Ellech where I studied.”
She fingered her chain and told Munraz, “This is a jurkal, a device, something forbidden. So are the wings, I believe. I didn’t make either one, in fact they are far too advanced for me, but I have made devices, many of them. I studied them, at the Collegium in Ellech. It was not forbidden.
“Here, however…” She pursed her lips. “Khizuwi understood this and said it didn’t make me a qahulajti. I doubt many of the bikrajab in Zannib would agree with him.”
“I know my uncle did not,” Munraz muttered.
“So. You see. You have plenty to learn without having to make your own choices in this matter. No one will try to influence you, one way or the other.”
“And you, jarghal?” Munraz asked.
“I’ve watched her at work,” Najud said, soberly. “I have not myself made devices. Not yet.” Then he smiled and his whole face lightened. “But I think it is only a matter of time before I will ask her to teach me. That is my decision, not yours.
Munraz nodded as if filing that away. “Then what about the rest of my assignment, the kassa and the dyes?”
“Can you summarize it in a few sentences so we can get some sleep?” Penrys yawned in illustration, and Haraq chuckled.
Munraz straightened his spine. “I know less about kassa than I did about bunnas, and all I learned about dyes is that it is a very big subject about which no one here knew very much, beyond their names, uses, and trade values.” He cocked his head at Najud, his source for that information.
“But I think I understand what they all have in common, for a trader or a merchant.”
Penrys made him a go-ahead gesture.
“They’re small, lightweight. They have a lot of value in small amounts. They don’t take up much space in packs. They keep well, if you can preserve them from damp and heat. They’re hard to come by, the sources are limited, and you need a lot of knowledge about how to acquire them and who would use them. You need to give instructions with them, when you sell them.”
Haraq added, “And once you have a customer, he’ll want more and more of them.”
“Oh, and that’s why red is so common in our rugs and not blue—too expensive,” Munraz threw in.
“Well done, both of you,” Penrys said. “That’s plenty, for a start.”
CHAPTER 55
Najud was impatient to be done with traveling. Winter’s for catching up on sleep and gossip, not for freezing fingers and toes. Four mornings on the trail, and they still didn’t expect see the end of it tonight.
He was in the lead, at the moment, not that there was any mistaking the path. Haraq and Munraz held the middle position. No cairns along this route, it’s not the way we came. Won’t be any bodies, either, to be trampled heedlessly by the horses.
Penrys rode last, with her pack-string of horses out of Silmat. She was still on the watch behind them for Jiqlaraz, in case he decided to bring trouble north. She must be scanning forward as well, for she suddenly bespoke him. *Visitors ahead, Naj-sha. It’s all three of them! Jirkat, Ilzay, and even Winnajhubr. If no one stops, we should see them in forty minutes.*
Najud twisted in his saddle to tell the others the news. “Looks like our Kurighdunaq guides are coming back to see what’s taking us so long. Can’t say I blame them. They’ll be on us before we’re even thinking about the mid-day stop.”
Both Haraq and Munraz brightened, though Haraq snorted. “As if we can’t find the zudiqazd with this to follow.” His arm took in the twenty-foot wide trail. “Still, it’ll be good to hear about the others.”
They walked forward at a brisker pace, until Jirkat must have spotted them at a distance and dropped his pack rope, for he popped up ahead of them, galloping his horse to meet them. The other two appeared and stopped, prepared to wait for Najud’s party to reach them.
Jirkat circled them, trilling like a madman, waved at Penrys as he passed with a broad smile, and fetched up with Najud in front. “We thought you’d gotten lost, zarawinnaj, since it’s well known you can barely find your way from one kazr to the next.”
He glanced at the other three. “Khizuwi wouldn’t come back with you?”
“He wanted to go home instead,” Najud said. “That was yesterday.”
“Why have you got the young bikraj with you, and not the old one?”
Munraz overheard and looked away. Najud said, “That’s a long tale, Jirkat, and should be told to others first.”
Jirkat nodded, unoffended. “And the qahulajti? Is she behind you?”
“No, she’s no longer a threat.” Jiqlaraz, now, was another story, but not for right now.
By then Najud’s party had reached the others and the greetings were general. Najud broke into their conversations. “How far are we, Jirkat?”
Ilzay answered him. “You’ll get there this evening if you don’t stop. We left from the magham this morning, as all the clans were going. And a sad festival camp it was—like ghosts at the party, we were—better if we’d all gone on to the zudiqazd and stayed there.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do. Save your chit-chat for the trail, everyone,” he called. “We’re going to press on and sleep in the zudiqazd tonight.”
Around mid-day, their trail took them by the site of the magham, with its handful of permanent buildings for the group gatherings. It was deserted—nothing was left but three clusters of kazrab circles, of which the middle, more northerly one, was pitifully small.
Najud shook his head at the sight. What must it have been like when Jirkat led in almost sixty survivors? Joy, at first, surely, but then sorrow, for the tally of the dead and the list of the missing.
The survivors knew who was back in the zudiqazd, waiting for them—they’d had days on the trail already to begin to mourn their dead—but it would have been fresh grief to the others.
And what did the other clans think, in the midst of the winter celebration, about this sharp reminder of death and the fragility of life?
Ilzay rode beside him and noted his silence. “We arrived in the evening, zarawinnaj, and there was a great feast. Shelters were offered on all sides, but they would only sleep in the four large kazrab we’d brought, as they had for a week. Dhalmudhr was their spokesman, and he explained to Umzakhilin…”
He paused and took a deeper breath. “He said no one else could understand, that it would be some time before they could settle in again. Some of those few who had family still living tried to share with them, but no one slept away from the rest of the survivors, that night.”
Najud said, “They’ve made new families, haven’t they, families of necessity. All their lives they’ll remember having been together like this, wherever else they go. Like a band of warriors after a long and hard battle.”
Ilzay nodded. “After a couple days, four of them moved to the kazrab of their relatives. I’ve heard it’s not going very well, that they stop in the middle of conversations and stare at things that only they can see.”
“It’ll get better, Ilzay,” Najud said. “Everyone alive feels guilty about it. It’s not sensible, but we can’t control such thoughts.”
“As you say, zarawinnaj. It was sad, though. They knew how out-of-step they were with the spirit of the magham. They stayed away from t
he weddings, not because they begrudged the joy of others, but because they didn’t want to spoil it for them.”
His shoulders sagged. “This was the first magham I can remember where the Kurighdunaq had no weddings at all, or even betrothals. As if the whole clan were a wounded beast and could spare no time for such things.”
“The clan is wounded,” Najud said, “and no wonder. I’m surprised it stayed for the full magham.”
Ilzay smiled faintly. “Some in the clan wanted to return to the zudiqazd altogether, instead of just doing the periodic check on the herds and the ones who couldn’t travel. Umzakhilin wouldn’t permit it. He said the Kurighdunaq were too proud to let an enemy win while there were still warriors to defend it, that it would not allow itself to give up in defeat just because a blow had been struck.” He sighed.
“He will be a great ujarqa, Umzakhilin—a clan leader to remember. To see him, with his cane, talking to the survivors… That gives me hope.”
“He’s a survivor himself,” Najud said. “If anyone can reconcile the fragments of the clan together, it’s probably him.”
“And Hadishti,” Ilzay said. “She was everywhere, making things easier. No one realized what she was capable of, before.”
“People are strengthened by the work they do,” Najud said. “I’ve seen it before, many times.”
CHAPTER 56
Half a mile before they reached the edge of the zudiqazd, Jirkat took charge of Winnajhubr’s pack-string and sent the young man ahead in the partial moonlight. Then he returned to his quiet conversation with Haraq. Penrys heard the name ‘Luram’ mentioned, Haraq’s sister.
She glanced aside at Munraz, licking his lips nervously. When she raised an eyebrow, he blurted out, “It’s not my clan. They won’t want outsiders here.”
“Not my clan, either,” Penrys said, matter-of-factly. “Umzakhilin adopted Najud in, so I suppose it’s his clan—I’m not sure how these things work in sarq-Zannib.”
An outsider’s perspective on the possibly quaint customs of his own people served its purpose in distracting Munraz from his anxiety.
