Nothing could compare with the inner freedom that was the reward of such willful abstinence. Nothing could replace that lightness, that joy he sometimes felt when he realized the dizzying spiritual heights he had scaled. And yet how far he still had to climb.
A muffled roar intruded on the stillness of his heart. It jarred him. Of course. The execution.
“What a disgusting display the Dar has prepared,” he said aloud. “And he expects me to attend. No, I will not befoul the person of your holy one, Adonais. Better for me to be here, to contemplate the Heights of Aer and the depths of human depravity.”
Better to prepare for the purification.
Yadovír stood in the palace turret only a few paces behind the Dar himself. He could hardly contain his excitement at being selected from among the commoners. Finally, his hard work was paying off. Finally, all the unbearable flattery, all the sneers, all the demeaning service he had to endure in his rise through the Dumar was bearing fruit. The Dar trusted him. By the Heights, he did not know why, but he did not complain.
Unfortunately, such a place of honor meant a very limited view of the execution itself. Princess Sabíana further complicated matters by wearing a gown with such an absurdly high collar that his view was blocked completely. Oh, how he wanted to grab that collar and yank it backward! But no. Civility. Decorum. No doubt he would see plenty more blades cutting through exposed necks in the near future. The thought warmed Yadovír.
His thoughts were interrupted by a harsh, nasal ox-horn. To Yadovír’s relief, Sabíana, face pale with contained emotion, turned aside just enough for him to move forward a step. There they were: ten young third-reachers who dared profane the Temple by doing violence to the Pilgrim. Still dressed in all their gold-fringed finery, those noble born sons of sows! The bright future of Vasyllia. A future soon to be decapitated.
Kalún left the Temple, inspired by an unexpected idea. He would ask Yadovír to dine with him tonight. Yes, the man was very common, no doubt, but his determination to gain power bordered on manic. That could be useful. And they had forged a kind of unspoken accord at the trial of Voran, being the only rational voices in a sea of believers in myths and fairy tales.
As he passed the Temple arch, he was accosted by some of the Nebesti refugees. He hated their tap-tapping manner of speech, so lacking in the proper aesthetic. They touched his robes as they passed. As though his clothes had healing powers! Stupid folk superstitions. Kalún would never understand why the Dumar had not insisted on keeping the refugees in camps outside the city.
Their hands, most of them brown with dirt, reached for him. He tried to smile and walk through them as quickly as possible. Every touch caused a rush of cold sweat from the small of his back to his neck, and he began to feel nauseous. There had been several cases of a fatal disease in the city recently. What if these were the carriers?
The ox-horn stopped, its retort lingering in diminishing waves. Ten swords flashed up, then down in a blur. The crowd roared, some with outrage, most with approbation. Yadovír watched Sabíana with rapt fascination. She closed her eyes in horror, but then forced herself to turn around at the last minute. He was close enough now to see her expression. There was no feminine softness there. Her pursed mouth was no more than a thin red line and there were unhealthy spots on her cheeks, but the fear was gone from her eyes. They were fierce, eagle-like. Yadovír was mesmerized.
She turned and caught his eye, and her left eyebrow rose up ever so slightly. Then she smiled, trying to cover her disgust with him, but it was too late. He saw it and was devastated. At that moment, Sabíana became the face of all that was rotten in Vasyllia.
Yadovír walked home alone, heavy with regret, not even bothering to push through the crowd still seething after the execution. His only comfort was imagining all sorts of fantastic ways in which he would someday be able to torment Sabíana.
“Sudar Yadovír!”
He looked up absently, not recognizing the voice. When he saw Kalún, he hurried to the priest, then bowed before him and kissed his hand in the customary greeting.
“You look as if you were the one condemned today, Yadovír.” The priest chuckled. “Come and dine with me. I think a hearty meal will lift your spirits.”
Inwardly, Yadovír groaned at the thought of a meal with a man who chronically starved himself.
“Oh, Otar Kalún, I am honored, honored!” he said, assuming his habitual subservience. He was surprised to see the priest’s face frost over with scorn.
“Don’t pander to me. It is beneath you. I invite you as an equal. Act as one.”
Yadovír’s heart skipped a beat, as much from exhilaration as from embarrassment. He had never before been acknowledged as an equal by a third-reacher.
Yadovír was amazed at the interior of Kalún’s spacious third-reach house. It was bare. Stone walls, a few wooden tables, some benches, and nothing else, even in the expansive hearth-hall.
“Otar Kalún, you live so simply. I admire that.”
Kalún smiled. “My family is among the oldest in Vasyllia. It does not follow, however, that I should live extravagantly. I have always prized abstemiousness over excess. I do not believe in even moderate enjoyment of physical pleasures. I seek something else. Dare I say, something higher?”
Yadovír felt a sharp thrill at the words. There was an intangible quality to the priest’s tone that Yadovír knew well. This man was a fanatic. Yadovír had uses for such a man.
“How sad that more do not follow such a path,” said Yadovír. “Certainly, the refugees do not.”
“How true. Until I saw these Nebesti, I did not know human beings were capable of swallowing so much food at once.”
“You will be happy to know that the Dumar is considering keeping the refugees restricted to the first reach. What with the pestilence rearing its head.”
“Yes, I am glad to hear it. What is perhaps less encouraging, however, is the Dumar’s continued inability to stop the spread of rumor. Have you heard the latest stories about our mysterious invaders?”
“How they flay their victims alive and brutalize their women? Yes, yes, I have heard. Nothing particularly interesting in that, is there? It is a tactic as old as time itself to intimidate an enemy with propaganda. It would not surprise me if a few of the refugees are in the pay of the invader.”
“Now that is interesting. I had not considered it.”
Kalún’s formality had begun to soften. Yadovír wanted to rush forward with his characteristic enthusiasm, but this fish needed to be boiled slowly, or it would jump out of the pot.
Kalún served Yadovír with his own hands—there was not a servant to be seen anywhere—from a heavy iron pot. The red lentil stew proved to be surprisingly filling and very well-seasoned, even to Yadovír’s pampered tastes. Heartened by the food and the conversation, Yadovír decided on a tentative attack.
“I was pleased, Otar Kalún, that we agreed on so many points during the trial of Voran. How shocking to find so little intelligence among any of the other counselors.”
“Indeed. Now that you mention it, I had intended to speak to you on this matter.”
It took all of Yadovír’s honed self-possession not to jump in excitement.
“I hope that we understand each other,” said Kalún, lowering his voice, though they were the only people in the entire house. “What I say to you must never leave this room. I do not play court games with you. I know that what you are about to hear will be worth a great deal of money if you decide to betray me. I trust you will not do that.”
Kalún’s eyes bored into him, assessing, then the priest visibly relaxed. Yadovír assumed he passed the test.
“You were present at the execution, yes? What would you say if I suggested that such punishment is not sufficient?”
“What do you mean, Otar?”
“I believe that we are all at fault for the profanation of the Temple. I believe we must all pay the price. In fact, I welcome the invasion of Vasyllia.”
/> Something twisted uncomfortably in Yadovír’s gut. This was not how the conversation was supposed to go.
“You cannot mean that.”
“I do, Sudar Yadovír, I assure you. There is more. Vasyllia must be purified by fire. I believe Adonais has provided a refining fire in these invaders.”
“Otar Kalún, we do not yet know how the Dar’s troops fared against them in the open field. Is it not perhaps a bit early to speak of Vasyllia’s fall?”
Kalun smiled knowingly. “I have no doubt the Dar’s armies will be routed by the invader. It would not surprise me if Vasyllia itself would be under siege in a matter of days. And I intend to be the hand that wields the invaders as a tool for the purification of our great city.”
Yadovír’s blood froze. He had been mistaken. Kalún was no mere fanatic; he was a madman.
“Otar, what you suggest is brave, bold. But surely all other measures must be considered before such drastic action?”
Kalún’s manner snapped back to formal. The conversation was at an end.
Yadovír hardly remembered how he managed to walk back to his house in the second reach. He stood before his door with its gilded hinges and couldn’t bring himself to raise a hand to push it open. He shouldn’t be this disappointed. This was just one minor setback amid hundreds in his life. But he couldn’t help himself. He was devastated.
The door opened before him, as though of its own volition. Immediately, the scarlet hangings and golden braziers seemed to leap out of the house at his eyes, laughing at him. You can pretend all you like, they mocked, but you’ll never be a real noble. You can wear silver in your ears, drip lavender oil into your hair, collect painted chests from Negoda and ceramic tiled stoves from beyond the mountains to your heart’s content. Go ahead, hang that ancient Vasylli suit of armor in your bedchamber. Hang ten of them! What does it matter? You’ll always remain just outside the reach of real power.
“Yadovír? Are you ill?”
Yadovír was so lost in self-pity, he had actually thought that the doors opened themselves. He didn’t even see Otar Gleb there.
“What are you doing in my house? I’ve had enough of priests for today.”
“Ah,” whispered Otar Gleb with that crook in his smile that endeared so many. “You need to sit by the hearth with me, my friend. I’ve brought mead.”
“I don’t drink that first-reacher stuff, you know that.”
“Today, you do,” said Gleb, and dragged Yadovír into the house and slammed the door behind him. Gleb led him through the hallways like an invalid, with a hand as strong as a cohort elder’s. He passed all the smaller rooms, making his way to the end of the corridor, into the noble-sized hearth-hall, Yadovír’s pride and joy. It had more wall-sized Nebesti embroideries of High Beings than Otchigen’s famed collection. It had higher-backed oak chairs than the Dar himself. It even had a chimney, possibly the only one in Vasyllia. But today, it all had a sheen of falsity. Like a doll’s house magicked into abnormally large proportions.
But the two cushions on the stone floor, a hearth crackling and sparking, and a low table laden with a tankard of mead? That was perfection.
“How do you always know?” asked Yadovír.
Otar Gleb guffawed into his eagle-beak nose and said nothing, only pushed Yadovír by the shoulders down on the larger of the two velvet-lined cushions. Yadovír wanted to melt into it, to dissolve into nothingness. But there was mead to be had. Gleb knew how much Yadovír missed it. You could only bear so much of the wine of the rich.
“Gleb, what is wrong with your chief priest? Why does he have such a hard time being human?”
“Ahhhh,” Gleb shook his head as he exhaled a long, tired breath. “Poor Otar Kalún. Do you know what’s wrong with him? He never, not once, allowed himself to sit by the hearth on a cushion to sip the best mead in Vasyllia.”
Yadovír laughed, the first unforced laugh of the last month. It was like poison seeping out of a wound. “Is that it? Excessive strictness?”
“No, I’m afraid it’s more than that,” said Otar Gleb. “Our dear chief priest is a very righteous man. Very correct. Perhaps even holy, if we were to judge by externals alone. But he forgot a subtle truth long ago.”
“What’s that?”
Gleb half-closed his eyes at Yadovír, assessing. Yadovír’s mouth tasted bitter.
“The heart is what matters. That’s what Adonais wants. Your heart. If you spend your entire life cleansing yourself of impurity, and yet your heart does not expand in love for those around you… It’s like scouring all the rust off a pot. If you don’t stop, you’ll rub a hole in the iron.”
He shook his head again and clicked his tongue. He always did that when pensive. It was one of the things Yadovír loved most about him.
“But I didn’t come here to gossip about my betters,” said Gleb, smiling again.
“Why did you come?”
Again the slitted eyelids, the fire in the eyes probing behind pale-blond eyelashes.
“Stop it!” The bitterness in Yadovír’s mouth turned sour. “You won’t convert me. You’ve tried for as long as I’ve known you. It hasn’t worked yet.”
“Fifteen years. But it’s never too late, I say.” Gleb smiled again, but without his eyes. “I’m not here to convert you. I only want you to know that there are those who love you. Those who wish you would use your gifts…well, for a better purpose.”
Yadovír groaned aloud.
“You have an incredible talent, my friend. Can you imagine if you redirected your endless energy to the refugee problem? You could stop this plague that’s beginning to ravage the first reach. Not shut them up like rats in a cellar! You could find places for all the Nebesti. Build makeshift homes in the marketplace, for Sirin’s sake! Instead you waste yourself, trying to assimilate power that doesn’t belong to you. Why? Haven’t you forgotten that you’re dying?”
“Dying?” Yadovír almost jumped out of his cushion. “What are you talking about? I’m as healthy as a horse!”
“And yet, you’re going to die. We all are. Have you forgotten?”
“You priests are so morbid.”
“Yadovír, I have a premonition about you.”
“Oh dear, not one of your—”
“I’m not joking with you. I don’t know how or why. But I sense that you are on a cliff, and there are abysses to either side of you. There may even be another abyss ahead of you. Some difficult choice that you have to make, or not make.”
Gleb leaned toward Yadovír and grabbed him by the shoulders.
“Do not doubt, Yadovír, that evil is more than a state of mind. There are dark powers out there willing to use people against their will. Sometimes, all it takes is one compromise.”
“Well, then it’s too late for me,” said Yadovír, brushing it off with a laugh. But the heaviness in his heart was back.
Gleb said nothing, but his eyes filled with tears. “Here,” he said, pouring the last of the mead. “May the morning be wiser than the evening, eh?”
The next morning, the entire city was abuzz with news. The rising sun revealed a fresh onrush of refugees, but these were not Other Landers. These were Vasylli, from outlying villages. Every one of them told the same tale—the invaders had destroyed the Dar’s army to the last man.
Yadovír did not consider himself a superstitious man, but the timing of this news rattled him. It was too neat that he should refuse the priest’s offer on the eve of such a disaster. In any case, this changed everything. If the army was routed, that meant siege. He doubted he would survive such hardships, and he doubted anyone else in Vasyllia would either. They had all grown too fat and content with their lot. Eventually, someone would betray the city to the invaders rather than be reduced to eating horses and rats. Better for everyone if he did it than some half-wit second-reacher. Or an insane high priest.
At that thought, he remembered the cozy pleasure of the evening with Otar Gleb. Maybe the fool was right. What was the point of all this rushing
about after power, anyway?
Down the street from his house stood the large courtyard of Sudar Kupian, one of the richest merchants in Vasyllia. It could hold at least a hundred people, and often the old man set up trestles full of food for passers-by, just to show off how little it meant to him. Yadovír envied him. Today, a royal crier stood in the middle of the courtyard. Yadovír hurried to hear what the man had to say. He missed the beginning, but came just in time to hear:
“Effective immediately, the Dar has declared martial law. The Dumar’s powers are revoked until further notice.”
How dare he? He has no right to deprive the people of their voice!
No. Gleb was wrong. If Yadovír did not take control of things, there would be no more Vasyllia soon.
Yadovír ran up the nearest staircase to the third reach. Absently, he noticed that some of the asters were still hanging on the brown ivy. It made him sad, somehow, but he pushed that thought aside.
The many-gabled house of the high priest glared at Yadovír, and the leafless cherry trees seemed to be reaching out toward him in threat. He banged on the doors of Kalun’s house until his hands were red and painful. Only then did he hear the squeak of bolts being pulled back. The door opened a fraction, and was about to close again, but Yadovír pushed it open.
“Otar Kalún. You were right. I want to help you. I want to be the instrument of Vasyllia’s purging.” Otar Gleb’s smile faded in his mind’s eye. Yadovír felt himself getting sick at his own words.
The door opened. Kalún beamed. Yadovír’s hands trembled at that smile: it was soft and childish, with no trace of guile. This was the face of madness. Yadovír had not seen it before, and for a moment his body clamored at him to flee. Instead, he walked into the tomb-like house, and the door shut behind him.
The Song of the Sirin (Raven Son Book 1) Page 15
