Oath Keeper

by Jefferson Smith

  “Will they still be at home when you reach them?” he asked. Abeni had been busy making a list of the things he wanted to take with them to the Wasketchin, and another list of things that should be prepared and sent along later. So he had been delighted when Zimu had offered to guide Tayna instead. And since he had questions of his own for the old historian, it only made sense.

  Tayna blinked though, in response to his question. “You mean, do they still live there? I don’t know, but a girl can hope, right?”

  Zimu smiled, but he shook his head. “No, I mean, with all that is happening in the Forest, and to your people, do you think that you will find them at home now?”

  And of course, as soon as he asked, the answer was obvious. “No,” she said. “You’re right. They could be anywhere today, running from the Gnomes, or even captured already. They won’t go home again until all this is over. Probably.”

  Zimu nodded. “So if you wish to find them, the best course for you to follow would be?”

  And now Tayna had to grin at this crafty son of an even craftier father. “Let me guess. I should help bring all the troubles to an end maybe, so they can go home again?” Why did everything always sound so much more logical when a Djin said it? But curiously, now that he had said it, Tayna felt a sense of relief. She wasn’t avoiding her mission at all. She was actually doing it. Just not the way she’d expected. She was still puzzling over this latest wrinkle of thought when Zimu led her up to a large door and stopped.

  “The Hall of Histories, I presume?”

  Beside her, Zimu nodded. According to both him and Abeni, behind that door lay a vast room filled with delicate old scrolls, heaped in scholarly disarray, but rich in the smells and even the artifacts of the stories they told. Tayna could almost see the famous sword, lying chipped and dented next to the scroll that recorded its tale. All waiting for her, just beyond this door. Well, not a sword, maybe. Not in a world that had known thousands of years of Peace. But a famous shoe, perhaps. Or the Grand Gem of Something Awesome. Whatever they were, the room she saw in her head was filled with the trinkets and treasures of a thousand tales, each one a touchstone that would launch the wizened old traveler who now cared for them into another tale of past exploits and lessons learned. It was this very warehouse of adventures, curated by Bosuke himself, that had first ignited the imagination of a young Abeni. And Tayna was about to see both for the very first time. Her skin prickled with anticipation. “I’ll take what’s behind door number one please, Zimu,” she said, waving her hand imperiously at the entrance in front of them.

  What they found, once Zimu had pulled the great door open however, was nothing at all like what she’d expected. Here, the walls were lined with rows upon rows of boxes, each set deeply into the stone, each the same depth, and each holding exactly one curled spool of paper. If there were any trinkets, keepsakes or touchstones, they were not visible. This was not the tantalizing explorastorium that Abeni had described to her. This was a records office. A cold and emotionless storage depot for scraps of paper, each to be filed and counted, and perhaps rolled a quarter turn clockwise, once each half year.

  Tayna could feel Zimu tense up beside her as he too looked around, startled into blinking rigidity. Clearly, the room was not as he remembered it either.

  “Have you made an appointment?” said a voice. Tayna had to look around twice before she saw the middle-aged Djin, stooped over near the back wall, making marks on a board as he counted the cubby-holes. He had not turned to face them.

  “We have questions for the Master of Histories,” Zimu said.

  “Come back later,” the man replied, still counting the holes in the wall in front of him. “I’m busy just now.”

  Tayna caught the unmistakable aura of no-sayer coming from the guy. Like the Goodies and most of the adults she’d ever encountered in connection with them, there were some people who just seemed to live for the chance to say, “No.” As if saying it gave them power. “Hello, dear. How was your day?” “Delightful. I gave out 38 ‘nos’ today, and 17 ‘not until next week at the earliests.’” “Oh, what fun! Let’s celebrate!” “No.” “Ha ha ha ha ha!” Tayna hated no-sayers.

  While Zimu stood there fuming by her side, clenching and unclenching his massive fists in an effort to calm himself, Tayna marched into the Hall, walked up behind the man, and ‘accidentally’ knocked the board from his hand.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, bending over to pick up the board and then holding it out sweetly in front of her. “If you could just tell the Master of Histories that we’re here…”

  The officious Djin straightened himself up and sniffed indignantly as he snatched the board from her hands. “I am the Master of Histories,” he said. “Wijen. Now I told you, I’m busy. Come back later. Tomorrow, perhaps.”

  “You are not,” Zimu said, his tongue finally jolted into action by the insolent tone of the box-ticker in front of them. “Bosuke is Master of Histories. Summon him.”

  “You really have been living in a pit, haven’t you, boy?” Wijen drew himself up to full height, as though he thought to intimidate Zimu, but he quickly abandoned that ploy when he realized just how big Zimu really was. “I tell you again. Bosuke is not the Master of Histories. He was, but now that duty is mine, and I mean to do it properly. Now leave me. As I said, I’m busy.” Then he turned back to his wall of holes.

  “But where is Bosuke?” Zimu demanded.

  “Don’t know. Don’t care,” Wijen responded, waving a hand at them over his shoulder. “The door’s back there somewhere. Use it. And begone.”

  Tayna could sense Zimu’s rising anger, but before he could work himself to a full boil, she put a hand on his arm. She knew how to deal with no-sayers. Stepping past Zimu, she addressed herself to the historian’s back. “Oh, we are sorry to have bothered you, Mr. Wijen. Yes, of course we’ll let you get back to your work.” Then she turned back toward the door and pulled at Zimu’s arm, urging him to follow her lead. “I’m afraid Wijen can’t see us just now, Zimu. We’ll come back tomorrow. I just hope they aren’t all dead by then. I’m sure the King will understand.”

  They had almost reached the entrance when Wijen’s voice called out behind her. “The King?”

  “Oh, it’s nothing,” Tayna called back over her shoulder, as she pushed Zimu ahead of her toward the door. “Just something about wanting to gather the scatterlings. And about getting them out before the attack. Bye, Mr. Wijen.”

  “Wait! That’s absurd!” the historian shouted. Tayna heard his counting board clatter to the floor again, dropped no doubt in his haste to rush after her. A moment later, she felt his hand grab at her arm. She allowed herself to be turned back toward the man, and greeted him with a smile of concern.

  “Mr. Wijen? Is something wrong?”

  “Gather up the scatterlings? It can’t be done!” he said. “And what attack?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know,” she said. “I just know that we were to ask you where those poor people could be found. Before it’s too late. But I don’t know anything more. We’ll come back tomorrow, as you suggested.” Once again, she turned her back on the man, and again he grabbed at her arm.

  “But girl, they can’t be gathered up! Not in a day. It would take weeks. Possibly months. They’re called scatterlings because that’s what they are: scattered. They’re everywhere. Strewn about the flanks of the Anvil, scattered across the Plateau. There are even some living down in the undertowns. But never do they gather in large numbers. There’s only ever two of them together, or four or three. Never more. Here, look,” he said, then he scurried to one of the holes in the wall and came back. At the low table beside her, he rolled it out. “See? Look here at this map. See? Here, and here, and all those over there. And up here. These are all undertowns. The Plateau is infested with them. And there could be scatterlings in every single one of them, not to mention a thousand other places. You’d never gather them in time.”

  “Really?” Tayna said, pursing her
lips and looking down at the map in feigned concentration. Then she lifted the scroll out of the historian’s hands to squint at it more closely. “As many as that, you say?”

  Wijen nodded.

  “Well that will certainly upset Mabundi’s plans,” she said. “Will you come with us to tell him yourself? I’m sure he’ll want to thank you for pointing out his error.” The Djin’s face paled in horror.

  “Oh, no! I mean, I’ve got so much to do here, and it’s all quite plain on the map, really. Just take that and show him. I’m sure he’ll work out an even better plan once he sees it.”

  Tayna pursed her lips, as though frowning in unaccustomed thought. Then she looked up. “Well, I don’t want to take all the credit for correcting him,” she said. “Are you sure you won’t come?” By this point, Tayna could barely keep her laughter contained. The look of horror on the man’s face was just too much fun. But on the outside, she just smiled sweetly when he again refused. “Okay then. Well, thank you so much, Mr. Wijen. You’ve been so helpful. We’ll just take this and let you get back to your important work.”

  She turned away from the flustered Djin, tucking the map neatly under her arm, and headed for the door. Zimu fell into step alongside her, and a moment later, they were in the corridor, with the Hall door closed firmly at their backs.

  “The Little Fish is well named,” Zimu said. “She is very slippery, and darts quickly in unexpected directions.” There was laughter in his voice, and Tayna laughed along with him.

  “No-sayers are all the same,” she said. “Just start talking about secrets and important people, and they all turn into yes-men.

  “But where is Bosuke?” Zimu asked.

  To that, Tayna had no answers.

  * * *

  Most people Shaleen knew liked to seek the quiet heart of the Sinus when they had a question to put, but she herself had never understood how such a dark and isolated little cave could be expected to connect her with any great current of inspiration. How could you foster new ideas by shutting yourself away from all the currents of the world? When Shaleen needed insight, she much preferred the Dowager’s Leap—the proud jut of stone that erupted from the back of the Anvil’s shoulder, just a little ways downslope from the notch of the city. Tradition had it that the Dowager Queen, Xolile, had spent many long days upon that spar of rock, seeking answers to her pressing questions. If any Djin had ever been plagued by doubts and a need for inspiration, it had been Xolile, widowed queen to the king who had forged the Dragon’s Peace—and then died, leaving his widow to forge a nation. If the Leap had been good enough for that fabled queen, who had hammered the rough iron of a hundred power-hungry warlords into a single peaceful and honorable society of artisans and craftsmen… Well then, it was plenty good enough for a heartsick mother too.

  Shaleen had not yet told her husband, had not wanted to pile her troubles atop his own, but she had not been sleeping of late. Not since word had first been brought of Sarqi’s capture by the Gnome King. And it had only worsened since Abeni and the girl had arrived, adding their own stories of Angiron’s malice to what she already knew of him. She had met the First Prince of the Gnomes on a number of occasions, and not once had she come away feeling anything other than itchy. The Gnome prince made her twitch, in her heart. It was a feeling she could not describe, but there was something about the way he spoke, the way he stood, the way he breathed. Everything about him made her… itch. As though his very presence had scratched a wound somewhere inside her, and her mind could not leave alone with its poking and prodding at it. And now, to think that her most sensitive and complicated son was captive to a being such as that. Well, surely it was understandable that a mother could not sleep with her son in such peril.

  The journey from the Wind Forge to the Leap was not a difficult one, but it was not easy either, and when Shaleen finally reached it, she stood there for a moment to gather herself. The long, black finger of dragonstone erupted from a field of loose scree, stabbing into the eye of the sky like an accusation. The field of dusty rubble from which it emerged had flaked from the grayish slopes above, but there wasn’t so much as a single black pebble to be found that might have fallen from the Leap itself. Dragonstone simply did not appear to weather or age. It was an otherness, curious and distinct from everything around it. Shaleen had often wondered why this might be so. What could cause a spear of such different stuff to emerge from out of the mountain like that, with no sign of kinship to any of the stone around it? Not that the question held any great import, one way or the other. It was just a passing curiosity. Part of the litany of thoughts she wandered over whenever she prepared herself here, making herself ready to ascend the tower and throw her question to the winds. Already she could feel them flowing around her, tugging at her vests and shawl, teasing her with a hundred different thought-tastes at once. It was time.

  Quickly, before the feeling could pass, Shaleen clambered up the finger of stone—damp with rocksweat, as dragonstone always was—and stood proudly upon its tip, a flattened area no larger than her bed. From this place, there was only Shaleen and the sky and the wind between them. A wind that had scoured the world, touching upon every being who lived, snatching up their breath, and their sweat, and the particles of their skin, and even their ideas, then flinging it all up into the sky and carrying it here. To where she now stood. Her own mind was an unmoving nexus in the cacophony that swirled around her. A cacophony that she now gave shape, channeling the winds and the sweat and the ideas into threads, and the threads into voices, and the voices into harmony. A symphony out of chaos. A symphony of raw inspirations that washed over her. Around her. Through her.

  And into this symphony, she called out her question. “Hear me, Song of Life! Wind of the World! Hear the plea of a mother, worried for her son. Of a woman, worried for her people. I have need of news, but no place to seek it. The world boils in a kettle with no spout, and soon it will burst. I must know of Sarqi and of the Gnome King, but I have no messengers to send to my son, nor he to me. How can I hear the words that cannot be sent? How can I learn the thoughts that cannot be spoken?”

  Then she stood still. And listened.

  In truth, it was as much meditation as listening, but she liked to think of it as listening. She tried to detach herself from her pressing need for answers, and instead, open herself to the voices of suggestion that flowed past her on the wind. It was as Kijamon had said. “The spirit of invention is not a muscle one can clench, nor even a place one goes in the mind. It is an opening. An emptying. A removal of the self, to be replaced by an awareness of the else. One does not create an idea—one becomes aware of it. Like a mouse nibbling grain in a corner, one cannot see or hear it until one has settled all the noises and commotions and distractions from the world. Leaving only the mouse. And in that stillness, his nibbles will become his roar.”

  So Shaleen stood there, on the fingertip of the Dowager’s Leap, with her eyes closed and her arms stretched out, touching all of the winds she could gather. She emptied her mind of all that she could jettison, save the one question on her mind.

  And she waited.

  Waiting for an idea is not like waiting for a friend, or waiting for soup to boil. One always knows that, in time, the friend will come. If not today, then tomorrow. If not for lunch, then perhaps for supper. So too, the soup will eventually boil. But inspiration carries no certainty. One can stand for an hour, or a day, or even a lifetime, and never be certain whether an idea will occur in the following minute, or never at all.

  So waiting for inspiration, especially regarding a question so entangled by love and fear and need, was an ordeal of its own.

  Shaleen waited patiently, for half a day. It was not a test of endurance. From time to time, she would lower her arms and walk around in a small circle, flapping blood and warmth back into her fingers against her sides, but such respites were always short, and as quickly as she could, Shaleen would resume her posture and let her feelings flow back out into the streamer
s of the wind. How does one send messages over distances? The wind could carry shouted words over many strides—one hundred, two hundred, perhaps even more—but Sarqi was many leagues distant. Much too far for a voice to carry on the wind.

  She wondered too, about Kijamon’s Chorus of Silence. Some special charm he had devised for speaking across great distance, among the more powerful Houses, but she did not know the how of it, and he would say little, only assuring her that it could be of no assistance in her present quest. Was it some charm of mind-touching?

  It was said that, long ago, before the Peace, some creatures who then walked the world had possessed the power to speak mind to mind over great distances. But none of their kinds had been known since the time of Xolile herself, if truly they had ever existed at all.

  Round and round her mind whirled, spun in the currents of wind and cold, and the further she wandered in her thoughts, the more frantic she became, fearing that there was no answer. That Sarqi truly was alone in his misery, and she in hers. Oh, Sarqi, how can I reach you?

  And then he was there.

  “Mother?”

  The surprise of his voice settling upon her mind, with such force and such abruptness, rocked Shaleen backward on her heels, and she stumbled. “Sarqi?” she said, whispering the words into the wind.

  “I am…” But the words faded. For a moment, Shaleen feared that he had somehow come and gone before anything could be said. But as his voice faded, the images began, flooding her in rapid succession as his mind skimmed in chaotic fashion. He had tasted of some Gnomileshi elixir and it flowed through him now. Quickly his story unfurled in her mind. Impossible memory images of a giant white-furred beast, and a battle with Gnomes. The Spinetop. A pile of stone slabs beside a river. Of capture and escape. Tunnels in darkness. Of rescuing the Wasketchin Queen! But all too quickly, the images faded away, and Shaleen opened her eyes to see the sky teetering before her. She reached out to her son again, only to find what she already knew.