Spellslinger 6: Crownbreaker

by Sebastien de Castell

  Me neither.

  I shrugged. ‘As Vizier Ossodif says, “The truth of God needs no author, for the words themselves are recognised in the heart of every believer.”’

  The commander gave that due consideration. ‘There is wisdom in this, but as Vizier Calipho sagely wrote, “Faith lies in deeds, not words.”’

  I’d never heard of a Vizier Calipho before either, but then again, I really didn’t know much about Berabesq theology. When you’ve spent your life growing up in a culture that considers god-worship to be superstitious nonsense, you don’t exactly spend a lot of time studying it. So now I was trying to figure out whether there really was a Vizier Calipho or whether the commander was screwing with me. I decided to put faith in this possibly non-existent vizier.

  ‘My faith is proven in my deeds,’ I said.

  ‘And what deeds are those?’ the commander asked.

  At last the conversation had wound itself to the place I needed it to go: to where I could deliver my joke.

  According to Ferius, arta loquit – the Argosi talent for eloquence – places a rather high value on humour. Of course, she might’ve been kidding. Still, this particular joke was a key part of my plan, and I had my erstwhile urinator to thank for it.

  ‘The deeds of a mighty warrior,’ I replied with a straight face.

  The three soldiers sneered in remarkable unison. ‘Mighty warrior? He fell without landing a single blow!’

  ‘Indeed,’ I said, as if she’d made my case for me.

  The commander, who seemed to be finding this increasingly amusing, gestured to the bruises and cuts on my face, which I’d gotten at the hands of his solders, ‘Explain, oh mighty warrior.’

  ‘It’s simple, noble quadan. Who but a mighty warrior could, by virtue only of his intimidating presence –’ I gestured to the trio of cavalry troopers who’d beaten me to a pulp – ‘cause hardened soldiers to piss themselves?’

  There was silence for a moment as the crowds of onlooking solders waited to see who would be slicing me into pieces first. Then … thunder. Booming laughter that made me feel as if the earth itself was shaking beneath me. ‘Bold!’ he chortled, thumping a hand against my shoulder. I wondered how much of that I could take before I’d end up hammered into the ground like a tent peg.

  The rest of the crowd picked up his mirth, laughing among themselves as the joke spread throughout the columns of soldiers. Even the three who’d given me the beating began to snicker. Guess they’d decided I was ‘cute’.

  Damn. I really thought this time Ferius would turn out to be wrong.

  It was only then that I noticed the commander himself had gradually settled, his gaze threatening to pierce my deceptive manner. His hand settled on my shoulder, fingers gripping as tight as an iron vice. ‘Now, oh mighty warrior,’ he said, leaning in, ‘you have five seconds to tell me your true purpose before I see if you are even funnier on the inside.’

  I nodded. This, too, we’d expected. The point of my latest public humiliation hadn’t been to convince the commander of a lie, but to make him like us enough that he’d accept a piece of the truth. ‘My teacher,’ I said, pointing to Ferius, ‘she has a sickness that no healer among our people can cure. Word came to us that the Berabesq god is real, that he resides in your capital and performs miracles. I hoped …’

  This next part was tricky, because honesty isn’t something that comes naturally to me. I let my gaze linger on Ferius. My mentor. My friend. The person who’d saved my life a hundred times and who’d taken a miserable, self-involved boy who saw no value in anything but magic and opened his eyes to all the things that really mattered in the world. I remembered with perfect clarity the day I’d first met her, the sight of those laughing green eyes, that maddening smirk, and the wild kindness written in every part of her face after she’d forced air back into my lungs and made my heart start again.

  Now she was dying. Slowly, painfully, inexorably.

  ‘If he is God, then I will make him save her.’

  It wasn’t the appropriate way to say it. Nobody likes it when you talk as if you can force their deity to do your bidding. But it was true, and every once in a while something as seemingly futile as the truth can be compelling.

  The commander’s jaw tightened, but then his features softened. ‘I would normally beat a man black and blue for such blasphemy,’ he said. He brought his hand back as if to strike me, but I’ve been hit enough times to know a feint when I see it. I stood there without flinching as he brought his palm to my cheek, gently holding it there. ‘Vizier Calipho writes that courage comes from God.’ He took his hand away and began coiling his whip. ‘Yours has earned you passage to the capital.’

  34

  The Quadan

  The commander’s name was Keliesh, a Berabesq variant, it turned out, of my own name. Somewhere deep in antiquity, some ancient common language had provided the root for both the words Keliesh, which meant ‘bright and eager child’ in the Berabesq tongue, and Kellen, which – according to my sister Shalla’s purported research on the subject when we were kids – meant ‘clumsy, idiotic, stubborn boy who thinks being clever is the same thing as being smart’.

  It’s possible something was lost in her translation.

  ‘You have a fine hand for the board,’ Quadan Keliesh said, grinning as he picked up one of his tiny wooden spearmen and knocked over my vizier with it. ‘But the game of shujan takes a lifetime to master.’

  Shujan was a variant – Keliesh would say the originator – of a type of military strategy game I’d seen played in several countries on the continent, primarily Gitabria and Darome. The most notable Berabesq innovation was to play on a six-sided board rather than four.

  ‘Allows for flanking,’ Keliesh had explained. ‘No two armies ever fought by hurling themselves at each other in a straight line.’

  I’d wondered aloud whether perhaps the six sides were related to the Berabesq six-faced god. This earned me a cuff across the head that, while irritating and somewhat painful, had no doubt saved me from worse, given the way some of the soldiers nearby had glared at me for suggesting something so blasphemous.

  ‘God has one face, which is the one he gave his children,’ Keliesh had said.

  ‘But we all have different faces,’ I argued.

  This might have seemed a stupid thing to do, given their religious fervour, but I’d noticed Keliesh quite enjoyed correcting me, especially if it made me the butt of a joke.

  ‘Have you never seen a picture of God?’ he asked.

  ‘I’d understood that to be frowned upon.’

  His brow furrowed. ‘“Frowned upon”? Why should God fear his own image? The only prohibition is in making false images of him.’ He reached back into his pack. ‘In fact, every soldier keeps a picture of God nearby, lest he forget his true commander.’

  Keliesh handed me a small bronze disc, like a Daroman cameo only flatter and less adorned. I spotted a tiny clasp and prised the two sides apart to reveal the image. When I looked at it, the face I saw was young, lean and weather-tanned from travel, and rather confused. ‘It’s a mirror,’ I said.

  Keliesh cuffed me again. ‘See how foolish these foreigners are?’ he asked his soldiers. ‘They cannot even recognise God when they see His face!’

  There was considerable laughter at that, followed by Keliesh giving me a lengthy explanation that we all shared God’s face, and it was only our vanity that made us believe any one of us looked different from each other.

  ‘Ours is a religion of unity,’ he explained.

  ‘That has six holy books?’

  I really shouldn’t have kept pushing my luck, but I really was curious to understand the nature of their god, especially given there was a decent chance I was going to attempt to murder him. Also, for all their warnings against blasphemy, once you get them talking, Berabesq soldiers love debating religion.

  ‘There is but one true codex, just as there is but one true god,’ Keliesh said sternly, resetting the shujan
board by arranging two sets of six pieces on each of the six sides.

  ‘How do you know your god – the penitent – is the one?’ I asked, already contemplating an opening move with one of my faithful pieces. These were warriors who could attack in any direction when at least two spaces away from a vizier. Next to a vizier they couldn’t attack, but also couldn’t be killed, which was why the usual Berabesq strategy was to keep them close. I, however, used them a little recklessly, possibly because I’d nearly been killed by a squad of Faithful once, and now rather enjoyed watching them die.

  ‘We know ours is the true god because all the signs make it clear,’ Keliesh said, moving one of his spearmen.

  ‘But you’re soldiers. Why not believe that God is a warrior? You personally command thousands of soldiers, carefully deciding their precise movements the way a clockmaker must. Why not believe God is like you?’

  He gestured to himself and then the others sitting nearby, cleaning their armour or sewing patches onto worn clothing. ‘Look at how we live, boy. Far from the comforts of home, here under the hot desert sun, our lives ones of hardship and bloodshed. Who but a penitent would accept such a life?’

  Bloodthirsty killers? I considered suggesting, but Keliesh wasn’t done. He pointed to the south, towards the capital. ‘Three hundred miles from here, God awaits, alone in his great temple, never leaving its spire, though he could claim the entire world as his own. Now what does that sound like?’

  It was getting late, and I was ready to seek out my bed, so I conceded, ‘Like a penitent in a prison of his own making?’

  Keliesh smiled and held his hands palm up to the sky. ‘See, my lord? Even the lowliest among the heathens can be brought into the faith!’

  I was dubious about that one, but not eager to continue the debate. Keliesh, though, reached out a hand and gripped my shoulder before I could rise. ‘You see the truth, Kellen, even if you try to close your eyes to it. Do you know why?’

  ‘Because even the lowliest of heathens can—’

  ‘Because you are a penitent yourself,’ he said, his voice quieter now. He nodded towards the other side of the encampment, where I’d left Ferius sleeping fitfully in a tent they’d granted us. ‘It is your guilt that drives you.’

  ‘I didn’t have anything to do wi—’

  Again he cut me off. ‘The heathen culture from which you come no doubt sees guilt as a flaw. A weakness. But you and I know the truth. Guilt is conscience. Penitence is not merely the coin by which we pay for our sins, but also the means for us to right the world’s wrongs.’

  There was a strange gentleness in this big, brutish warrior who, but for a good joke, might have had us hung for spies. Perhaps these little acts of kindness he showed me – playing shujan with me, allowing me to question his faith – were part of his personal penitence. I wondered how he’d feel when he learned the price of my own redemption might be the death of his god.

  ‘Go to bed, Kellen,’ he said. ‘Even the penitent must rest.’

  Despite my efforts to be silent as I entered our tent, Ferius woke almost immediately. I noticed her fingers trembling as they reached for a pair of the razor-sharp steel cards she kept under her pillow.

  ‘Kid?’ she asked. Her gaze was blurry, her skin so pale it was as if I could see the bones of her skull underneath.

  ‘Go back to sleep,’ I said. ‘Unless … Is there anything you need?’

  She shook her head. ‘Just dozin’ a little. Where’s the squirrel cat?’

  ‘Out hunting, I think.’

  Ferius chuckled. ‘Thievin’s more likely.’

  Actually he was perched in a tree outside our tent, making sure anyone who dared come too close knew that there would be a price to pay for disturbing Ferius’s rest. I didn’t tell her that though. She hates being protected.

  ‘Funny how he’s stuck around this long, don’t you think?’ she asked.

  The question took me by surprise. ‘What do you mean? We’re busine—’

  She waved me off. ‘You’re business partners, I get it. But he’s a squirrel cat. Don’t you think he wants to …’ She looked up at me with bleary eyes. Something she saw in my expression made her hesitate.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Hmm? Nothin’. Just tired is all.’ She reached out a finger to feebly poke the back of my hand. ‘So, you spent the evenin’ with that crazy quadan again?’

  ‘He’s actually a lot kinder than he lets on.’

  ‘He’s a religious nut. Nobody said they can’t be nice folks.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, unwinding my bedroll. ‘Once you see it from his perspective, there’s a kind of logic to his faith. Maybe even something noble about it.’

  Ferius laughed then, catching herself only when she started coughing and had to spit on the ground. A trace of blood in the trail of spittle looked like it was trying to slither back towards her. Ferius reached out and took my chin to stop me staring at it. ‘So this Keliesh ain’t so bad then?’

  I knew she was trying to distract me, but I went along anyway. ‘I think he’s trying to convert me though.’

  ‘Seems like he’s doin’ a fair job of it so far.’

  ‘It’s not like that. I just … There’s more to these people than I first thought, that’s all.’

  Again she laughed. ‘That’s what I love about you, kid. No matter where we go, no matter how strange the people, if I leave you with ’em long enough, you’ll start to see things their way.’

  ‘I guess that makes me gullible then.’

  She shook her head, suddenly serious. ‘No, kid, it’s what makes you Argosi.’

  Ferius rarely complimented me, and when she did, it was usually in a snarky way that made it hard to tell how genuine the sentiment was. But every once in a while she’d say something so simple, so utterly without artifice, that I’d suddenly find myself struggling to keep back the tears.

  Her eyes had closed and her breathing had become so quiet I couldn’t be sure if she was alive. ‘Ferius?’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, kid,’ she wheezed.

  ‘I’m going to get you help. I know you don’t like people looking out for you, and I’m sorry about that, but I’m not letting this stupid malediction take you. Somewhere in Berabesq, whether with their god or some vizier, somebody has a cure. I’m going to make them give it to us. I don’t care about the price or what I have to do, but that’s just how it’s going to be.’

  ‘I know, kid,’ she said, eyes still closed, reaching for my hand but not quite making it this time. ‘That’s what makes you Kellen.’

  35

  The Capital

  One of the virtues of travelling with an army is that it makes it vastly easier to push your way into all kinds of places that might otherwise prove inaccessible, such as, for example, a city so bursting with people that it made the overcrowded capital of Darome look like a ghost town.

  ‘Under God’s loving eye,’ Quadan Keliesh swore as he gazed at the sweating, churning city. The Berabesq language suffers from a notable lack of profanity. ‘I do not know whether to find this magnificent or maddening.’

  ‘Haven’t you been here before?’ I asked.

  He shook his head vigorously. ‘As Vizier Pheybas instructs, the comforts of the hearth are bars that cage the soul of the true penitent.’

  Makhan Mebab was actually two cities, one encircling the other. Makhan, which meant ‘glorious’, was a tiny walled district of gleaming spires overlooking temples and palaces. Surrounding it was Mebab, which can mean either ‘worshipful’ or ‘kneeling’, depending on your translation. Here glittering streets of a white stone that sparkled in the sun were paved in perfect geometric patterns that made you wonder if perhaps the city really had been designed by a god. It certainly wasn’t designed for people.

  ‘This place stinks,’ Reichis sneered, his mouth hanging open so he wouldn’t have to breathe through his nostrils.

  Large as Mebab was, it had been built to hold thirty thousand souls, but now ha
d swollen to accommodate as many as a million. Clerics in white and gold robes led their own armies of lurching, limping men and women in rags in their wake, penitents in search of miracles. Wealthy merchants and artisans had squads of armoured guards holding the line to keep beggars and other undesirables from their establishments. The less well-to-do were forced to stand sentinel in front of their own shops or rely on their families. I saw more than one boy or girl aged barely ten hovering by a small market stall with a club in their hands and a nervous look in their eyes.

  Yet even through the stench of sweat and too many bodies, there was a vivid excitement in the air, almost a glow about these armies of soldiers and pilgrims, fuelled by faith that here, in this place, they would see that which no one before them had ever seen: their god.

  Keliesh shared that joyous anticipation, though I noted he’d balanced hope and optimism with a dozen soldiers at his back. The rest he’d left encamped outside the city with the other armies. Merchants and other wealthier citizens, seeing his red quadan’s cloak, shouted at him as we passed, demanding to know why the city was filling with riff-raff.

  ‘It is as Vizier Calipho warns,’ the commander said to me as we walked. ‘“Some gaze upon God and yet still see only their own face, and so are filled with misery instead of ecstasy.”’

  ‘You ever read Vizier Sipha?’ Ferius asked.

  Keliesh, usually delighted to compare religious theologies, frowned. ‘The rantings of a female vizier, unordained by the great councils, are not considered law within the canons of our faith.’

  ‘Is it only when men say so that words convey wisdom?’

  The quadan nodded with a wry smile as he brought his palms together and turned them out – his way of showing temporary surrender in such debates. ‘I await the wisdom of Sipha then.’

  ‘She wrote, “In all things must moderation be embraced, for should every soul upon the earth in righteous fervour shout God’s name, then would all be rendered deaf.”’

  Despite his apparent biases, Keliesh really did adore a neat axiom, and pondered this one before asking, ‘What is one to glean from this observation?’