The Hidden Icon

by Jillian Kuhlmann

  I laughed. Perhaps I was scared still or perhaps I had been driven mad, but Gannet’s words seemed to me a weak interpretation of what had happened at the wall. I wanted to believe that it had been my imagination, but just as I knew he was telling the truth as he saw it when he told me that I was Theba, I knew that he was just as adamant now.

  “That you can laugh while a man is dying is the reason you are not welcome here,” Imke said, her words snatching the air from my lungs. Being a little less in control of my mind made it easier to pierce hers, like fingers of torchlight in the dark. The howling we had heard had come from a man, one of the guard, and he would be dead soon, if not already.

  “I want to see him.”

  Triss only just caught the cup of tea I discarded as I rose, Gannet and Morainn quick to follow even if their posture told me they meant to dissuade me. They shared a look whose depths I knew, that everything that had happened since we had been forced to camp in the ruins was exactly what Gannet had hoped to avoid.

  “And why shouldn’t you?” Antares stood in the entrance to Morainn’s chamber, sweat and ash a grim veneer on his features. He strode forward, cutting through Gannet’s resistance like a sharpened stone through sand. Antares was a soldier, but not a fool, inclining his head in a gesture that encompassed Gannet and Morainn both. “You should see him, as well.”

  We were not a merry party that descended from the barge. Though steadier than I had been a few moments before, my footing was lost as we approached a low fire where several armed guards stood watch over a prone figure, his own spear driven into the sand out of his reach. Triss had elected to remain on the barge, but Imke had walked with us, and was first into the circle of light to see the howling man. There was a flicker of something familiar in her, and I wondered if someone among her father’s father’s party had suffered a similar fate on their passage through Re’Kether. That would not have been worthy of boasting.

  What thoughts I had for Imke were dismissed in confronting the sickness of the man on the ground. A blanket was tangled in his legs, though I suspected his shivering had nothing to do with the evening’s chill.

  “He stopped screaming less than an hour ago,” Antares explained. It was as though he were giving her some tactical update, an appraisal on how we might proceed forward from such tragedy. “I found this among his things.”

  Antares produced a cloth pouch, but when Morainn lifted it to peer inside, Antares lowered it gently away from her face. “Not too close. It’s poison.”

  The word seemed to have as much power over the man as the substance, and he writhed in the sand, coiling like a snake that had gorged itself. Gannet knelt beside him and eased one of the man’s hands away from his chest. I could tell he did not want to be touched, but whether it was because of his sickness or because it was Gannet, I didn’t know.

  “He administered it to himself,” Gannet observed, a note of grim surprise in his tone as he uncurled the man’s fingers, displaying an ochre stain on his fingertips.

  “It is well known that many lose their minds so near to Re’Kether,” Imke said, shooting me a look which I caught and wanted desperately to crush, as though I were near the wall again and in the thrall of something outside of myself. I had more questions instead of answers, and reason to trust my company even less. The howling man had been a distraction, but I did not know if he had meant to free or condemn me by allowing me to escape into the ruins so near the ancient city.

  “What is his name?” I asked, the question one a child might ask, the gravity of death too much to consider. Before Antares could answer, the man raised his eyes to me, his hand raking from Gannet’s grasp.

  “The dead have many names for you,” he managed, his voice the rasp of a broken instrument. He did not need to say her name for me to feel the shot of it through me: Theba. The man’s head was thrown back in violent convulsions, pounding like a drum. Gannet and Morainn shot each other a look, observed with more than a little interest by Imke and Antares. I thought the man might scream again, his mouth dragging open as though a hook pulled at his lips. But he didn’t. He spoke his last in the same stringy tenor.

  “One war ends. Another begins.”

  I turned away when two of the guard bent to lift his body. I knew I couldn’t watch as they took him to be buried or burned, couldn’t bear to see the tracks his dragging boots would leave in the sand. But it was his words that frightened me more, not his death.

  Without looking at Morainn for fear I would bowl her over with a glance, nor at Gannet for fear of what he would tell me without speaking, I returned to the barge. I was not surprised that Gannet followed, only that no one else did.

  “He knew me,” I observed, making an assumption that Gannet confirmed with a nod. He’d never said as much, but the look he’d shared with Morainn hadn’t been one of surprise over what the man had said, only that it had been him who had said it.

  “Only myself, Dresha Morainn, and the Captain know who you are.”

  “Obviously not.”

  I didn’t have the strength to argue with him over who I wasn’t, not now.

  “The ravings of a dying madman are not my concern,” Gannet said dismissively, watching me. He was lying, and that surprised me almost as much as my being able to read that he was lying. I sat down on my cot with a sigh.

  “There was lightning in Re’Kether.” My words fell flat, the air heavy with things we hadn’t said. I didn’t protest when Gannet sat down beside me, as far removed as the narrow space would allow. “That’s never happened before.”

  We looked at each other in the dark. I was growing more adept in the little alterations of his expressions despite the mask, but his eyes were still shielded, inscrutable. I didn’t need to tell him that I knew the lightning hadn’t come from the sky, that I knew it had come from me.

  “By tomorrow’s end we will be far enough from Re’Kether that it will be safe to explore your talents. More will surface, and stronger, but it’s too dangerous now to test them. You should try and rest,” he said at last. It wasn’t much of an explanation. All nerves and irritation, I rose, tangling my hands together in my skirt. How could I rest? Gannet’s eyes cut to me, narrowing in study.

  “You’re going to argue with me,” he observed. The corners of my mouth quirked without my consent, and I pressed them down again, thinking that a man had died, that I had nearly died.

  “You don’t have to argue back,” I returned. I didn’t want to say that something in me had changed towards him, but as I looked at him now I could see again his features illuminated as they had been in Re’Kether: lit by some inner fire, his or mine, or ours. The moments between when he had rescued me and we had returned to the barge came back to me, more clear even than the last few moments had been. He hadn’t spoken to me as he had half-dragged, half-carried me from the ruins, but dazed though I was I had sensed his warmth, his steadiness, his ferocity.

  “I cannot always give you the answers you want, Han’dra Eiren. Some I do not know. Many are not mine to give.”

  I sat down beside him again. Closer, this time.

  “Even your speculations are more informed than mine,” I pleaded. What had happened in the ruins we had shared, and what had happened after haunted me. I needed answers, and I needed Gannet to give them to me. “You understand the things that I can do, the things that I may do.”

  He looked off, eyes unfocused. I wondered if he saw something in the shadows that I could not, as Jurnus had often claimed he could when feeling particularly put out about my intuition. Monsters he had seen, most often, and here at least that would be true.

  “You are untrained now, which means you will be strongest when your feelings get the better of you. Stronger still when you are in a place Theba has touched.”

  Gannet seemed to regret sharing this information, though I had stories enough for explanation. Theba had divided Shran’s sons and so his kingdom, and it was only after many hundreds of years of war that Salarahan returned and with him,
peace. It was just one of many stories of the destructive force that was the dread goddess.

  I shuddered again at what I had risked in the ruins, at not knowing what had drawn me there. If I was indeed the icon of Theba, I would not be welcome any place. I did not like the thought, either, that if these powers were hers, they had been with me all of my life.

  “What happens when I’m trained?”

  “You will be strong all the time.”

  It was my turn to look away, the two of us staring into distances much greater even than the ruins that stretched beyond the barge. The urge to go into the ruins, the things I had done once there, had not been mine. It seemed to me that the stronger I became the less control I would have, but the desire to test my own boundaries was too great a temptation.

  “Will you train me?”

  At this Gannet shook his head and quickly, as though to ensure that I had no delusions. Or, and I started as I read his thoughts, that he did not.

  “You will be trained by many hands, least of all mine. I have other duties.”

  So I would be again among people I did not know and who did not know me, even in the ways that Morainn and Gannet and the others did. When I spoke next, my voice was shielded, and I extended what cover I could to my mind, as well.

  “I’ll be trained for a purpose. Like you were.”

  It was the first time I had allowed my own tongue to accept that I belonged in some way to whatever it was Gannet was, what I reluctantly accepted myself to be. It felt like I had swallowed something thick, slow to go down and slower to settle in my stomach.

  Gannet nodded, but didn’t speak. The heel of his hand brushed his lips, and in the dark it seemed like a pale stone matched against the muted iron of his mask. In that moment he was more artifice than man. As bullheaded as any of my siblings, I continued.

  “And you can’t tell me why.”

  Gannet rose, his heavy sleeve brushing against my bare shoulder as the cot shifted underneath him. I was reminded again of the sensations in the ruins, the feeling of being brushed past, of people just out of reach.

  “I won’t go far,” Gannet said, ignoring my last. “I know you value the distance you keep from us, and I will let you keep it now.”

  He parted the curtain and crossed into the narrow corridor. They would be rough on the animals tomorrow in their haste to be far from Re’Kether, and though I felt for the beasts, I longed that we should go even faster, even if it meant putting greater distance between me and my home. What would they think of me now, should I ever return? A man had died because of me.

  If I were Theba, he had not been the first, and neither could I hope that he would be the last.

  Chapter 8

  We were twenty-eight days from my home and four out from Re’Kether when I began to dream of mountains, their summits split in the smiles of long dormant volcanoes, rivers and rambling, forested slopes. While I had stories for such things, I had never seen their like. But now I could see the white capped mountains where the Ambarians made their homes, and they were a wonder to me every time I laid eyes upon the horizon.

  In the dreams, though, I ravaged the mountains and rivers and forests. I was a devastating wind made of lightning and stone, the waves of a merciless ocean; I was a fire that tore down from the sky and laid everything to waste. When I woke I swore that I could feel the charred soil on my feet and my hands, as though I walked in the dread places I dreamed, but my body and blankets were damp only with sweat.

  Gannet told me that we would travel by sea, by way of Cascar. The city-state was another conquest, and I couldn’t help but think of how different my life would have been were it not for the war: I would have met these sea-dwelling folk, would have facilitated exchanges of material and culture if we had been at peace. But I couldn’t remember peace. It would take us longer to travel by sea to the north, but Gannet had assured me the shorter road through the mountains was treacherous. I hadn’t fought him, but after Re’Kether, there wasn’t anything that could frighten me more than what I feared I harbored within.

  “You are lucky to be alive.”

  Imke startled me, coming upon me as I sat in the shade of the barge while the animals were rested. If Morainn had sent her to spy on me, or if Imke had intentions of her own, I didn’t know. I certainly didn’t need an additional guard. The three I had grown used to were always nearby.

  “I am,” I said, curling patience under my tongue like the pit of a sweet fruit, sure that she would make some point and leave me be. Since the man had died in Re’Kether, Imke had been colder towards me, warier even than before. I assumed they had been friends, or lovers. Though I blamed myself for his death, it didn’t make me feel any better to have Imke blame me, too.

  My words obviously did not satisfy her, for Imke’s gaze narrowed.

  “Why did you go into the ruins that night?” she hissed, her voice the tell-tale rattle of an adder. She next took on an uncharacteristic harshness, even for her. “You can’t have hoped to have escaped. Only death will give you your freedom now.”

  My own fears having frayed my nerves to shreds, I imagined Imke responsible for some of the ill that had befallen me, the scorpion, the night in the ruins. But Imke was sworn to Morainn’s service, and she wasn’t a fool. But I was, confusing dislike with an intent to harm.

  Still.

  “If you’re going to threaten me, perhaps you could use your little knife. I am not afraid of words.”

  Imke’s cheeks flared, though just as she seemed ready to rebuke me she cooled again. One of the soldiers walked past, and it was enough to send Imke scurrying back onto the barge. I followed once I was sure I wouldn’t run into her. I might not have been afraid of Imke’s words, but I was in no hurry to receive any more of them.

  I was surprised to find Gannet at the entrance to my chamber, alarm rising briefly in wonder whether he were coming or going. But he’d been waiting for me. He gestured that I move within, holding aside the thin curtain, and I did so with a question on my face.

  Once within, Gannet strode several paces across the room and back. I watched him, wondering if perhaps some stranger malady had followed us from Re’Kether than what we suffered here. Had everyone gone mad?

  “Antares told me about the attempt on your life,” he said in hushed tones. Given how dire circumstances had become, I had to consider a moment which attempt he meant.

  “The scorpion? He told me it had likely come aboard from the fruit stores,” I explained. I knew that had been a lie at the time and repeated it only because I didn’t have the patience for Gannet’s conversation, not now. The few sentences I had traded with Imke had exhausted my reserves.

  Gannet’s expression suggested that he knew exactly what Antares had meant when he had said that and that I knew, too, and I would do better not to play games with him. I held my hands out as though I had better answers for him in my palms.

  “I’ve seen him near here at night, and others. I am as well guarded as any prisoner could hope to be.”

  True to what I had observed of him thus far, Gannet did not rise to my attempt to bait him.

  “It’s not enough. I shouldn’t teach you, but things have changed. We don’t have the luxury of waiting.”

  I backed against the edge of the cot, sitting down in a slump of surprise.

  “And that’s all it took to change your mind?” I asked, thrilling at the thought of what secrets he might share, but surprised, too. He’d been so resolute against teaching me. If danger alone was the catalyst, surely he would have taught me something before we reached Re’Kether?

  “The world and my mind change every day,” Gannet replied vaguely, though I could not mistake the hint of a smile on his lips. I knew less of what to make of that than I did his change of heart.

  Gannet stopped pacing. It was ridiculous, really, when one could only take three steps in any direction.

  “You have no control over your thoughts, not in what you share or in what is shared with you,” he ex
plained. This wasn’t news to me, and he knew it. “I would like to help you learn some measure of control.”

  I didn’t attempt to hide my surprise, because, as he said, he’d have known it anyway. He took a seat next to me, and I wondered at the attachment we had forged in the desert. Gannet was more like me than any of the others with whom we traveled, but there was so much that I didn’t know about him, so much that I was sure I would never know. In his company more than anyone else’s did I want for the comfort and closeness of my family, because I had been most intimate with him and it was such a sparse feeling I could hardly call it intimacy. He reminded me of everything I had lost, and even on occasions such as this one, how little I had gained in return.

  I dragged myself out of my thoughts at his words.

  “I want you to imagine that your mind is like a chain of mountains on the horizon,” he said, his voice still and hard. I read his eyes, black as a new moon and just as distant. I could see that he didn’t think that he would be a patient teacher, and I endeavored to do just as he asked.

  “The night and day come and go and are beneath your notice, neither rain nor snow nor wind can change you. On one side of you the sea is churning and crashing, and this is the world. On the other is a deep vale where you dwell, your thoughts, your wants, the things that you fear.”

  I gasped as a feeling like he had his hand on the pumping organ of my heart traveled through me, nothing at all like the little readings of me I knew Gannet had done in the time we had spent together. As invasive as the feeling was, I was keenly aware of just how gentle he was being with me, and this twisted in me, turning discomfort to a pleasure I could not understand. “You don’t possess the ability to keep me from your mind, not yet, anyway. But I do believe you can drive me away.”

  I had the strangest sensation of being in two places at once; I was sitting with Gannet on my cot, but I was also in an internal world, the one that Gannet had described. He was there with me. His presence was not threatening, but I knew that he did not belong there and I should drive him out. Strengthened by the context Gannet had given me, I imagined myself at the foot of a great mountain, but this was one of my own making: cragged and cliffed, a terrible wind stirring the sands into dunes at its base. Behind me there was an oasis with water and shelter enough for only one, and he was not welcome. I willed the wind at his back, my dream come to life, sweeping his feet out from underneath of him and hurling him like a seed on the air back over the mountain.