The Hidden Icon

by Jillian Kuhlmann

  “Even the cruelest story is a balm, not a poison,” I said, holding Imke’s gaze until she looked away. “But I will let you be the judge, for this is the cruelest story that I know.

  “Shran had four sons. They were united only in their hatred of their youngest brother, Salarahan, who was small for his age and tricksome. When he wanted to hide no amount of shouting could draw him out again. The elder brothers were lashed by their tutors for letting Salarahan come to harm through their neglect, and only when the whistle of the beating with whip or switch or palm had stopped would the littlest brother appear, whole and safe and looking quite perplexed about what had passed in his absence.

  “The brothers hated him, though, not because they were beaten but because they had no mother to coddle them after their beating. It was Salarahan’s doing that their mother was dead, for Jemae had given her life for his. This, above all of his crimes, they could not forgive.

  “What the brothers did not know was that their mother’s had not been the first womb to shelter Salarahan. The goddess Theba had lain with Shran in the guise of his wife because she had desired him, but so great had her shame been to carry the child of a mortal that Theba came to Jemae at the time of her blood and thrust into her the bundle of life that was Salarahan. Because Theba was a fearsome goddess and the fiercest, and because these were times where the rule and forecast of the world was not questioned, Jemae accepted what she had been told and said nothing so that her youngest son would not be feared as his true mother was.”

  My attention drifted away from the physical concerns of the moment, reveling as a good storyteller does in the details, in the pleasure of a captive audience. And they were captive. As I spoke the dread goddess’ name I heard not even a breath escape my listeners.

  “As their mother’s death had given the elder brothers cause to hate Salarahan, so their father’s drove their hands at last. Shran would not divide his kingdom, but neither could he will it to one of his sons without first having proof of their love for him. Though it is rarely fair to lay the same task before one’s children, whose strengths often flourish in the shadow of another’s weakness, Shran asked them each to bring him a likeness of their mother. Whoever gave him the finest would be king after him.

  “While his brothers raced to do as their father asked, Salarahan hesitated. He had always suspected that his mother was not the same as his brothers. They shared every feature with their father, but there were many things, little things, that caused Salarahan to doubt. These were troubles he did not wish to lay at the feet of a dying man, however. He was determined to please his father not to have the kingdom for his own, but to ease the passing of a beloved parent.”

  With a polite sweep of my eyes I could look from Morainn to Gannet, wondering if they thought of their mother and father as I did now, as I always did at this part of the story. My father, a diplomat with little to resolve in exile but the careless jealousies of his daughters, would never meet with theirs.

  But how much did they know their own father? Morainn had been sent into the desert to lead a bloody campaign, and Gannet could not even claim her openly as his sibling. His dark expression I took to mean he knew his father as I did, in rumor and whisper.

  I felt sorry for him, and was quick to bury those feelings in the sorrow of the tale.

  “The brothers met again the next morning in Shran’s bed chamber. His middle sons each presented a crude portrait, sketched from the relief that hung in their mother’s untouched bed chamber. They fell to fighting over whose idea it had been first, not looking at their father. Shran only shook his head before inviting his eldest son to step forward. Behind him came a young woman clad in one of Jemae’s shifts, her hair dressed in a fashion that had gone out of style many years ago. Shran’s eldest son opened his arms greedily to her, and if he understood the horror of what he did, he did not show it. Shran looked from his eldest son to his youngest with tears in his eyes.

  “Salarahan had fashioned a bust from the soft clay of the river where he had been told Jemae liked to go most often to wash her feet with her maids. The features of the sculpture were modest, a fair likeness ornamented with flowers taken but moments before from the terrace gardens. Salarahan’s work was not to be rewarded, though, for even in the moment that Shran raised his hands to embrace his youngest son, Salarahan’s true mother exerted her influence over the family one last and devastating time.”

  The fire had wasted without anyone to attend to it, though it didn’t seem that anyone attended much to my story, either. Their eyes were looking everywhere else, and I noted that Morainn was shredding the hem of a fine shawl in her hands. I couldn’t hear or feel what they were thinking. Gannet had stepped nearer to me, revealing in a glance that he was somehow responsible for whatever shielded me now. If he spared me from knowing their true feelings or barred them from me I didn’t know.

  Perhaps this story was not so harmless.

  “Theba didn’t need to appear herself to stir in them the jealousy she felt at Salarahan’s work. It didn’t matter to the dread goddess that she had abandoned the child. She expected his allegiance all the same. The brothers’ rage was her rage, and they tackled him, shattering the bust. Salarahan did not shout or struggle but watched his father as though he knew what was about to happen. Perhaps he did. Shran’s last breaths were spent in an attempt to right what was so obviously wrong in his family, but his gasps were ignored by the elder brothers. Theba drowned their minds with whispers, plots for how they might have the kingdom for themselves, and their father died.

  “Still in the thrall of the dread goddess, the brothers restrained Salarahan and dragged him to the dungeons. But Theba’s plan was a more sinister one even than this. It was not enough for her that Salarahan should suffer his father’s loss and the loss of the kingdom. He had disappointed her, and showed himself now to be the son of the woman she had forced him upon and not her own. For Theba, all faults were mortal ones, and what half of Salarahan was mortal would suffer sorely for his ignorance.

  “Salarahan was shown no more mercy than a slaughtering animal when his brothers lashed him to a rack and carved out his heart. Theba told them that the possessor of Salarahan’s heart would live in health well beyond his own years so long as Salarahan was restrained, for he could neither die nor live a full life without it. His howls fell on ears that were filled already with Theba’s cruel promises.

  “When their work was finished, the brothers told their people that Salarahan was dead. He was buried in a state befitting a king’s son. His tomb was sealed, for the brothers feared mightily what Salarahan might do if freed.

  “But Salarahan would not for many years yet walk again the roads of men. Other, higher roads he sought, plagued all the while by the poisonous tongue of Theba. She came to him in his tomb when he could neither defend himself nor deny her. Though he looked a man gone to his last sleep, Salarahan was tormented by the truths she revealed to him about his own nature and her part in it. Perhaps this is why he was so many generations lost to the living world while his brothers slayed each other in turn so they might possess Salarahan’s heart, extend their lives and their rule.”

  The hour was not so late that I would not have been permitted the remainder of Salarahan’s tale, but there were shouts coming from the edges of the camp, and growing nearer. Gannet, who had not seated himself throughout the telling, stood alert and was joined soon by several of the guard, eyes turned all towards the approaching commotion.

  I could not have been more surprised if it had been the specter of Salarahan descending on us than I was to see my brother, Jurnus, restrained by Antares and fighting still. I got to my feet. I knew as soon as I laid eyes upon him that he had meant to deliver no message and had come instead to rescue me, no doubt against my parent’s wishes and his own limited good sense. His head was ringing with his thoughts, and they sounded like raucous bells to me: his desire to fight, his unexpected terror, the knowledge that more of our people waited outside the cam
p, idiots all.

  Morainn rose and had only to narrow her eyes before he was released. Antares, however, did not stand away from him.

  “What are you doing here?” Morainn bristled so it seemed her curls stood on end, and even Gannet shifted his weight from one booted foot to the other, shoulders thrust forward as though preparing to strike. In that stance he appeared taller, but Jurnus was taller still. Whether bravado or bold stupidity drove my brother’s next words, I did not know.

  “What is she doing here?” Jurnus’ eyes flashed, gesturing at me. His voice was sharp, slashing against the silence as surely as his words created it. “Is she your slave? A trophy? A whore?”

  Antares proved himself a man where my brother remained a boy and stayed his blade at this insult. Before he could do anything else, and before Morainn’s temper commanded he do something else, I crossed quickly to Jurnus.

  “You need to leave here,” I hissed. Everyone could hear but I whispered all the same. “It isn’t safe.”

  “It isn’t safe for you!”

  Jurnus didn’t bother keeping his voice low. He was wounded by the desire to prove himself against a man such as Antares, a desire he had harbored for years and never indulged. He wanted a fight. As for the captain, he responded only to a threat. Jurnus wasn’t one, but he would do his duty if pressed by my reckless brother.

  With every moment now Jurnus’ fevered thoughts crowded out my own, his single-minded impressions of me, his imagined glories of war. I was little more than a stone in his path. It was like being home again. And I realized with the heated hammering of my heart that I was angry, too.

  “Go, Jurnus. You won’t find your pride here, and you know already that I can’t go with you.”

  Even as he opened his mouth to speak again, Morainn silenced him with a look that brought Antares’ spear to his back. She assumed a posture that reduced even the tall guard captain to a mere shadow. I wasn’t sure he needed his weapon, for Morainn’s attention was like a knife point held against my brother’s throat. I saw him before her as a boy, startled in some misdeed by one of our sisters or our mother, blanching in anticipation of his punishment, and I felt for him despite my own hurts.

  “Your sister made a sacrifice for you, and you throw it in her face? Go now, or you’ll leave here in pieces.”

  Her threat was as real as the point of Antares’ spear, but there was a part in it that was outraged on my account, which I could not have anticipated. Jurnus only heard what he wanted to, and responded in kind.

  “I won’t follow your orders as blindly as my sister has.”

  His words stung. But I was not surprised by them. My brother was neither a patient nor a temperate man, and not a fool, either, for all he was acting like one.

  Morainn drew level with him. She did not have to look up to look him in the eyes. She leaned even closer, her mouth hardly a hand span from his ear. What she said she said for Jurnus, and for me, as well. We were the only two that could hear her now.

  “It is not Eiren who follows us, but we who have followed all of our lives the road to her.”

  I did not understand Morainn’s words for all I knew she believed them utterly, and in Gannet’s mind there seemed to be colors whose names I did not yet know, fruits spilling alien seeds in strange furrows. What he believed of me could not be given form, and he was quick to disguise it. There was a tremor on his lips and in his eyes, what looked like anger but was something more dangerous still.

  “Enough, Dresha,” Gannet said lightly, his restraint as obvious as the mask upon his face. He leveled his gaze on Jurnus next, as though dealing with unruly siblings in turn. Morainn seemed to recover herself in the moment it took for him to speak and turn from her, and she removed herself a pace from my brother before continuing in formal, icy tones.

  “You know the way,” she said with stony finality, her tone humming dangerously as she finished, as though in warning. ”Hurry along, child.”

  I did not doubt that Morainn would kill Jurnus herself before ordering him killed by another, and what little comfort I had taken in her company would be all but diminished now. She turned her back on him, and in so doing on Gannet and Antares and I, as well. Imke and Triss were on her heels like a hem as they marched towards the barge and to bed.

  Jurnus gaped, a confusion of fury and intrigue stirred in him and spilled too easily into me. I could not move or think for myself, consumed by the strength of my brother’s feelings, of his spirit. Gannet put a hand on my elbow, but two fingers, even, and urged my return to the fireside. I resisted him. In the touch I felt none of what I had seen a moment ago, and Morainn’s words sang in my blood a mystery. Would she spill it as easily, shared as it was with that of my brother? I did not think so.

  Perhaps Antares and the others sensed that my brother had been undone, or they themselves suffered senselessness at Morainn’s vigor, but they stood away from us, and Jurnus seized the moment to speak hurriedly to me while he could still. His whisper was thin as paper.

  “This is not well at all, Eiren,” he managed, as shaken by Morainn’s fervor as I was. Gannet could hear him as easily as I, but neither man seemed eager to engage the other. “You are a hare among vipers. It is not well.”

  I held his eyes. Flaws or faults, I had been given a chance to see my brother again, and likely never again.

  “It is the course of things, Jurn,” I said softly, laying a hand on his arm. I could feel the charge of his feeling, the heat of his heart, through the thin cloth of his shirt. The blood and breath we shared would divide us now. “Go home.”

  Yet I had never known a home before and nor had Jurnus, not really. We were children of this war, and I was not surprised that he could not give it up. He didn’t know how to be a man, let alone a man of peace.

  More time we were not given. Antares’ spear and those of his command lowered on Jurnus, indicating that he had better be on his way. He squeezed my hand and I felt the weight of his, sturdy and covered in a fine veil of sand. When he let go, it was with a reluctance I had not read in his words or face, and I wanted to cry for the mysteries of my family that I would never know.

  Gannet acknowledged Jurnus’ departure only in removing himself to speak with Morainn, and I burned in renewed frustration with the thought that I knew what he intended to do only because he allowed me to, that he abandoned language so often for a particular suggestion of his choice. I could not speculate or assume, I was not given the privilege. I was maddened further when he returned to my side, when every angle of him convinced me that it was time for me to retire. I allowed myself to be led as a mule might, casting begrudging glances over my shoulder to the path my brother had taken out of the camp.

  “It is fortunate that he interrupted your telling,” Gannet observed, though I had said nothing. If he meant to goad me, I would not give in.

  “And why is that?” My tone was airy, though it was difficult to convince him of my ill concern, cramped as we were on the narrow planks of the barge as we moved toward my compartment. Gannet did not answer until we were within the little chamber, the full dark dominant over all but for a halo of weak light given off by a lamp that had been lit there. If my face was garish in the shadows, Gannet’s was an eyeless haunt.

  “Our kind do not speak so idly of Theba, Han’dra Eiren.”

  He wanted me to ask why, but I resisted. There was no privacy even in the dark, but I did not have to acknowledge him, and I sat down on my cot as though to signal he ought to leave, and I to bed.

  “Salarahan is a symbol to your people, is he not?” Gannet continued, oblivious, a strange inflection in his voice when he spoke the name, as though I had heard it wrong all of my life and now knew better.

  “His stories shape and change us, as do those of his father, Shran,” I replied, as near to an answer as I could offer.

  “Stories have power,” Gannet agreed, which surprised me. With some hesitance overcome, he strode the length of my little chamber and stood beside my cot. I stood
again, too, for the discomfort of having Gannet in my room was doubled by his proximity. That I should be dwarfed by him was unbearable.

  He studied my face, and the direct questions I had wanted to ask, and what few I had managed to, burned up my throat like bile.

  “You appear in our stories, Han’dra Eiren, and our futures, as well. As you have studied Salarahan, we have studied and waited for you.”

  As he spoke I felt as though the moon beyond the canvas and cloud above us became as a great eye and focused upon me. My breath was drawn from my lungs and pinned there, neither exiting nor entering from my lips.

  “You have been alone among your people. No one in Aleyn shares your gifts, and even those like me, who do, do not manifest them in the same way you do. In every life you have been as you are, but this is the last life, for you and for everyone.” His voice hummed with certainty and sadness, and I was afraid then, in the dark, next to this man who was not like any other I had met or would ever meet.

  “Gannet,” I began slowly, as though addressing one of my sisters when we had exhausted discord and sought understanding. I did not want him to know my fear, if he did not already. And I was frightened: by his fervor, by my ignorance, by the little, ugly thrill that had seemed to stir in me when he spoke of my gifts. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  I was surprised by the patience in his voice and his face, his lips softened by the shadows the mask cast upon them.

  “We are made in the guises of our makers and in rare cases, we are their full likenesses, the essence of what they are. These we call icons, and no icon leads a full and ignorant life. We are born to some purpose, and that purpose is the only reason we have been allowed to exist.”

  Our kind. We. I wanted to snatch the words from his mouth, an impulse so violent it seemed an alien thing in my heart. I managed speech instead, my heart crowding my throat against eloquence.

  “Tell me.”

  “I call you Han’dra Eiren, but that is not your true name. You are an icon, as I am. You chose a cruel tale, but what is cruel is your ignorance. It is your tale. You are Theba.”