by Russ Linton
"A Jadugar who could use an apprentice."
"This was nearly an honorary title before you came along. Now I see you've used your trickery to make it only appear to have meaning. Why would I accept such a title?" She shook the emberseed cylinder at him. "Why did you?"
He smiled, a portion of his normal swagger touching his lips. "My cousin and I were the youngest, born to comfort and wealth but we were at the back of a long line of heads of house."
"Gohala?"
Chakor nodded and continued. "We could either wait patiently under our brothers' heels or make a name for ourselves. Our parents decided the temple would be our calling."
Kaaliya choked on a laugh.
"Exactly what I thought. Me? A Cloud Born?" Chakor allowed his smile to spread revealing straight white teeth that glowed against his dark, stubble. "I had to do something. So I approached Jadugar Taj and demanded his secrets."
She could see him, more impetuous in his youth, striding up to the elder. A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. "I imagine that went well."
"Truth be told, no, it did not. Not at first. Did you ever know him?"
She shook her head. At the time, she'd still been in the Pit or wandering the countryside.
The lord placed his hands behind his back and walked away. "Taj was a stubborn old goat. They used to say he'd be the last of the Jadugar. No family. No friends. He was getting old, deaf, losing his sight. Shriveling away and taking the prestige of the position with him. I think he'd lost a bit of his mind. Spent most of the time in his chambers staring out to the eastern sea."
"Gohala found out and began petitioning as well. We both saw it as a way to build our own legacy. He was a much better student than I could ever be. Attentive. Listened to the old man's rambling stories and had the patience to shout endless questions."
"Why wasn't he chosen?"
Chakor stopped and lowered his head, reaching over his shoulder to scratch at the back of his neck. "I cheated."
This came as no surprise.
"We were in the palace garden one day, Taj strolling at his insufferable pace and I carrying an armful of emberseed cylinders wrapped in a sheepskin. He was going on and on about a school on Pama, which he one day hoped to see when suddenly, he fell."
"Tripped?"
"Dying. He lay dying at my feet."
She was speechless.
"Clutching his chest, his face flushed."
"Did you call the guard? Run for the physician?"
He shrugged. "He begged me to bring him back here."
"And you just left him to die?"
"I did no such thing." Chakor hung his head lower. "That's the one reason I knew of this place." He wandered to a nearby shelf and removed a decanter which shined among the dusty objects. He put it to his lips and twitched back a drink. "He was rambling. Talking about how his new apprentices had renewed his faith. How he finally had the nerve to try."
"Try what?"
"He brought me here that first time and I watched closely. There was a hidden key to this room." He turned his palm over. On his right index finger, he wore a simple gold band. The underside held a ruby-encrusted signet with a rune which matched those on the emberseed cylinders.
"And you memorized the chanting as well?"
"I made that up. Appearances and all."
Exasperated, she sighed. "What of Taj?"
He took another swig of his drink. "He handed me this." Chakor seized a curved dagger from the shelf. "Stood there." He walked to the table and took up a position where the apparatus extended up and at an angle, ending right at chin-level. From this different perspective, she could see how one might lean forward letting the rigid arm hold their weight and support their chin, and how the rods on the table formed a familiar outline. "And then he asked me to 'spill his essence'"
"You killed him?"
"Of course not," Chakor said as if the question offended him and he walked past her. "He collapsed." He pointed to a spot on the floor just short of the table. "And he died." He flipped the dagger in his hand and tossed it recklessly amid the debris. "I figured I'd earned this ring. I practically had to carry him from the gardens." Another swallow and his swagger returned. "I was a scrawny youth," he added, as though put out.
The urge to punch him in his smug face was surfacing once again. However, despite his attempts to maintain the facade, he looked vulnerable. The secrets he'd held all these years weren't mighty rituals of power. They were his own failings. His own miserable lie. She wanted to punch him and hold him at the same time.
"And you're telling me all this so you can clear your conscience? Have someone else live your lie for you?"
"Kaaliya, I'm telling you this because I would give everything if it meant you would stay. With me."
There. He'd finally reminded her. She punched him.
CHAPTER XV
Kaaliya sat with Chakor on the floor of the Kolime. They talked more, he through a pinched nose and head balanced between his knees. She didn't regret hitting him at all.
Taj, Chakor's ill-fated teacher, had seen the death of his position as imminent. It was why he'd never sought an apprentice. In his last years, according to Chakor, the elder Jadugar had equated the decline of his prestige with the return of Kurath and the coming end of the world. He wasn't sure why Taj had given in and entertained the boys' petitions. Chakor had wanted an escape. Gohala saw it as a shortcut to sit beside the Attarah, a goal he'd gone on to fulfill through the Stormblade Temple.
By Chakor's telling, the entire office of the Jadugar was a farce. He'd removed the ring from Taj's dead hand and assumed control of the old man's estate. There were no guards then to stop him.
The ring was a symbol only the Living Attarah and the seated Jadugar knew existed. It was proof enough for a disinterested ruler to allow Chakor's claim that Taj had bequeathed the office to him. Chakor then went about fulfilling the duties under his cousin's baleful glare.
When Chakor entered the Kolime for the first time, he was shocked at what he saw. He'd done his best to replicate the more public duties of the office such as the lighting of the lamps, but the rest was a mystery he thought better lost to the ages.
As Jadugar, one could expect offerings, even from the Attarah himself, but those had dwindled as the office declined. Yet here Chakor had uncovered a secret workshop filled with bronze, silver, and gold artifacts, some studded with gems. He'd taken to using the sacred place as his treasury—her first reason for not regretting the well-placed strike.
Blood no longer dripped onto the floor. Blackness ate at the edges of the stain. Finished with his tale, Chakor released his nose and looked up at her.
"Did it have to be so hard?"
She nodded.
He felt his upper lip for any more blood. "I did this for–"
"You're close to getting another," she warned. "Don't tell me you did this for love. You don't love a whore."
He shrugged. "Maybe I do. Either way, if you want my glorious secrets," he swept an arm around the Kolime, "they're yours."
"Why couldn't you have just asked me to be your wife," she said, reflecting on her earlier concerns.
"How many suitors have you turned away?" When she declined to answer, he continued. "You need something more to keep you in one place. If the wealth isn't enough, maybe the power. Or maybe ancient mysteries. Whatever it may be, I can provide it."
Yes, she'd turned away confused clients countless times. She charmed them because it was her part to play. Why couldn't they all understand that? She offered a transaction, nothing more. Still, some either professed their undying love or sought to treat her as livestock, bought to fulfill their every demand. But Lord Chakor, Jadugar to the Attarah, lovesick?
"You offer me an empty title." She rose, and he followed her lead.
"I offer you freedom to do as you please like I always have."
What had Hedgedweller said? They hadn't freed her, they'd began her.
Men couldn't offer her freedom,
nobody could. The trolls had understood. Free was being able to see the world right up to the very edges and beyond. Everything she'd ever done, from her climbing to the whoring, had all been about freedom. Hadn't it? How could being bound to one man, one estate, one title, be free?
The wily noble seemed to sense her indecision. "Take a look around before you decide." He gestured to the closest archway with a flourish. The sparkle in his eyes appeared predatory above his blood-crusted lip and chin, dangerous but alluring, like Firetongue's bahadur.
He circuited the chamber stopping at every archway and Kaaliya followed. Each new space yielded more secrets. In the first, he pointed out delicate tools arranged neatly on shelves. Empty spaces marred their orderly rows and Chakor admitted to having melted down and sold several pieces after giving up trying to ascertain their use.
She resisted the urge to strike him again. Usually such arts of persuasion she saved for those clients who felt her paid time meant her to be their plaything. While destroying ancient relics wasn't a crime against her person, she found herself furious that she'd never be able to set eyes on them.
In another room, he showed her the trick he used to make Sidge appear to channel the "Fire". A few pinches of soot from the smelter and a crushed stone of unknown origins created an electric snap when tossed together. Clever Chakor. He'd made a drunken grab for Sidge's pendant that night and fooled even her with his intentions. With the soot or powder in place on the corestone, he only needed to sprinkle the other element in the air while all attentions were on Sidge.
The next room brought back her sympathy for the brash Chakor of his youth. Shelves had been emptied. Most of the objects stored here, Chakor indicated, had been spread on the central chamber's table. Failed castings and broken molds littered the floor. Many appeared to have been hurled against the wall.
She was reminded again of the Mutri temple. Her taboo-breaking exploration had led her into the more common rooms where stone beds jutted from the walls and pits for refuse occupied the corners. The Mutri didn't throw their trash into the void like everyone else.
One such pit had been a rough cut hole, deep and encrusted with dust and soil. Later in life, she'd grown to understand this had been a midden. Digging through those layers revealed bones and shells and shards of broken pottery which had last felt hands in a lost epoch.
Like the layers of the midden, she could trace back Chakor's struggle. Empty bottles of sura and stronger drink littered the top of a pile in this corner of the Kolime. Underneath, solid attempts to recreate the interesting shapes in the molds gave way to dull and cracked castings.
At some point at least, he'd tried.
"I could never understand," Chakor said, watching her from the door. "A lifetime couldn't teach me. These trinkets, these processes, they may mean something. Or they may be the invention of a maddened smithy. Taj may have had secrets he took with him to his pyre or he could have been just as lost I was."
"If that's true, then no mystery remains to keep me."
Chakor's face fell. "It's all I have to offer."
Stupid man. Stupid men. The room suddenly felt cramped and uninteresting. Other chambers begged to be explored, but she needed to return to the world above. She exited the chamber and headed for the stairs, brushing past Chakor. She stopped as she saw the reflective light swimming up the stairwell.
"The faces in the water. What are they?"
Chakor gave a tired laugh. "I don't know. Guardians? Illusions of the mind? Urujaav, if you believe commoner's tales."
"You knew they'd be waiting but you said nothing."
"I had second thoughts. I was worried they might not allow you in. For a long time, I thought they let me pass because of the ring."
"Ahh, you love me so much, you let me go in without it?"
He shook his head and walked past her. "I knew the ring wasn't needed to buy their passage. A bit too much to drink one night and I left it on the top step. I also knew nothing I said would keep you from exploring."
They entered the stairwell and around the first curve of the spiral, Chakor raised his hand. His fingers broke a near-invisible surface spanning the first curve. He took her hand and this time, she didn't pull away. They walked up and into the water together.
***
A silky black enveloped her. How she got here didn't matter. Being one with nothing, that's what mattered. Truth and lies were opposites and the same. Lost secrets stayed lost.
"Kaaliya?"
Things didn't speak here. People weren't…people. It was all so confusing, but she knew for certain, there were no names.
"Kaaliya?"
The voice again. She dove deeper into the black trying to forget. Names stripped themselves from her memory. Worn skins. Too many, pulling at her, like a pack of hungry dogs.
"Is that you, Spider?"
Her eyes shot open. She was gagging, vomiting water at the top of the stairwell. Chakor held her tightly.
***
They didn't speak after emerging from the Kolime. The sun had descended, and Ramos still maintained watch at the entrance. His men had given up on the prospect of sleeping in their bunks and those not on duty stretched out on the sand of the courtyard.
Knowing she meant to be alone, Chakor bowed and kissed her hand before ordering Ramos to see to her needs. He'd said it without his characteristic bald humor and clearly intended for Kaaliya to know her will would be respected. She could've asked the guard captain to pack her things and escort her to the city gate right then.
She didn't. She needed time to think. A different perspective.
She dismissed Ramos at her chamber door and entered to change into her leathers and a baggy shirt, the sari too restrictive for her plans. Next, she strapped her dagger to her wrist and slung her pack over her shoulder. Then she headed for the gardens. She kept to the path, moving briskly. The last thing she wanted now was a talk with a troll.
Kaaliya entered the city proper and crossed the same arterial bridge where Firetongue had repaired the emberseed lamp. Knots of people gathered here and there, mostly closing up shops or cleaning evidence of the waning festivities from the streets in front of their stores and homes. She pulled her hat low and headed north away from the lit thoroughfare.
Leaving the warm glow and effusive cheer of tea houses and inns behind, she entered narrow alleys. These were places festivals never graced. Closer to the outer wall, people had packed the platform city with drafty and crooked houses. Anything too poorly built would be torn down by the guards and its occupants relocated.
Her eyes on the many dark corners, she brushed a hand against her dagger, never slowing to investigate movement. In the Pit, she'd learned to distrust such dark places. Often, they were already occupied with the very violence one feared.
Stronghold wasn't that way. It was maintained under the Rule which gave everyone their place—a rule created long before the city had been bursting at the seams.
"No, I beg you!" A woman's plea came from ahead, and Kaaliya faltered in her steps. She was so close to her destination; she didn't want to turn around. Another cry and she could tell the alley where it had come from. Orange torchlight bloomed out from the corners. She crept forward across the boarded street.
Two men had roused an old woman who lay atop a pile of linen scraps, partially covered as though she'd been hiding.
"On your feet!" shouted a man clad in boiled leather with a machete at his side.
These weren't palace guards. Outside the walled compound were patrols of a different kind. Volunteers. The Stronghold Militia kept the peace and the streets clean. It was why the darkened corners held little danger and also why the same places in the Pit brimmed with it.
"Please, I just wanted to rest. I'll be going. My…my sister is expecting me."
The other, a plump man who creaked in his armor, seized the old woman and dragged her to her feet. Her faded sari held the stains of more than a single evening's rest in the grime of the alleyway. "Your husband? So
n? Where are they?"
Before she could answer, the other leaned in. "I know this one. Her husband was the farrier. You know, the one who got his skull cracked open by a stray hoof." He hooked her under her other arm. "You have no sister. No sons."
"A shame you didn't follow your husband," said the plump one moving the torch closer to the woman's face. Kaaliya decided she'd been too kind. He wasn't plump, he was fat.
"Please…"
They were already dragging the woman her way, and Kaaliya ducked around the corner and pressed herself to the wall.
"Calm down," said one of the men. "You'll have a place to sleep soon enough."
They'd hold her in the prison, Kaaliya knew that much. If the militia were right, no family, no head of household to claim her, they'd send her away where they tossed all their troubles.
She had no reason to get involved. Keeping her past a secret and her head down had gotten her far enough to see the inside of the palace and even sit at the Attarah's table.
Though hadn't she found it empty? As empty as the Pit, all the mysteries lost and the wealth tainted.
"Perhaps I'll take you myself, crone. I could use a visit to that hole for some entertainment."
Kaaliya's dagger found her palm. She kept it upturned, blade pressed behind her forearm, and she moved into plain sight.
The fat one didn't even notice her until he found the wailing woman's forward momentum stopped by his more alert comrade. His companion's hand slipped to the machete.
"There you are," Kaaliya said. "I've been looking all over for you."
Both of the men craned their heads forward in the dim light.
"Who are you?" demanded the machete-wielding militiaman and the other burned away the shadows around her with his torch.
"I am her sister," replied Kaaliya, wishing either of the men had bothered to say the woman's name.
"Oh?" The fat one shook his prisoner. "Is that right?"
With the torch extended toward Kaaliya, the old woman's shadowed face held an expression of desperate hope and indecision. She'd been just as surprised by Kaaliya's sudden appearance and wasn't responding to the ploy as fast as she needed to.
