Oath Keeper

by Jefferson Smith

  Tayna looked up. “Excuse me? Climb? How does climbing help us? We have to get down, not up.”

  Abeni sucked another strand of grimpi from between his fingers and Tayna watched it waggle, like a stiffened worm. Her stomach flopped and she was beginning to regret having eaten any herself. She swallowed hard, trying to settle things back down.

  “The Gnomes will search for you,” Abeni said, quietly. “We must hide, for a time. When the search has ended, then we can go to help your people.”

  “Oh sure,” she said. “Because the one thing they have plenty of is time to wait. That’s seriously your plan? Climb higher? Up there somewhere?” She gestured upward with her chin. “And just hide until the Gnomes stop looking?”

  Abeni shrugged, but would not meet her eye.

  Tayna growled in frustration and looked around quickly for something to hit him with, but there was nothing. “I mean, what is wrong with you today, Abeni?” She gave him a shove on the arm, to emphasize her question. “What happened to all that Djinnish ‘death before dishonor’ stuff, huh?” But it was clear he had no answer for her.

  Tayna stood up.

  “Okay, there’s no point in yammering about it more now. Don’t we need to find somewhere to make camp for the night?” The sun was indeed beginning to sink toward the horizon. They still had at least an hour, but now that she knew how quickly light became dark on the Anvil, she did not want to risk getting stuck out in the open in mid-climb when that happened.

  Abeni stood beside her. “Yes. Camp,” he said, somewhat distractedly. Then he seemed to remember where they were, and he said it again, with more confidence. “Yes. We must find a camp. There is a place, only a short climb from here.”

  Tayna rolled her eyes. “A short climb? Meaning up?”

  Abeni smiled sheepishly. “Yes, it is up. But from that place, Abeni can show you other places, where we can climb down, if that is what we decide to do.” Tayna flicked another glance at the sun.

  “Okay,” she said. “We go up. But once we’re there, we are so going to have a talk about tomorrow.”

  Rather than respond to that, Abeni turned to face the rock, and began to climb. Tayna watched him closely, paying attention to where he was placing his hands and feet. But while her eyes were focused on the business at hand, her mind was still trapped in its circular hamster wheel. What was wrong with him? Why was he being so un-Abeni-like? Then the way ahead was clear, and she pushed the hamster wheel into a mental closet and began to climb after him.

  This was no time to be doubting her guide.

  Chapter 30

  “Shaleen makes a poor joke,” Abeni said. “The Little Fish would not leave without telling Abeni.” The entire family—what remained of it—had jumped at Shaleen’s call, and now stood pressed together outside the door, trying to peer past her into the tiny bedroom.

  Shaleen shrugged. “It is no joke, my son. Her bed has been slept in, but she is not in it. I found only this.” She held up the small black toy that had been in his room since before Abeni could remember, but now it crackled and spit with harmless arcs of light that danced around his mother’s fingers. “I don’t remember it doing this before,” she said, her eyes flickering with the reflected display.

  “Here wife. Let me see that,” Kijamon said, pushing past Abeni and moving to take the stone from his wife’s hand. But Abeni ignored the trinket, and looked closely at his mother’s face. Among the family, she was the one most noted for her attempts to tease with wild stories. She would say, of course, that she did it only to teach her boys to question the world—to accept nothing without examination. But over the years, Abeni had reached a different conclusion.

  Shaleen just liked to play jokes.

  But there was no twinkle of delight in her eyes now as she handed the stone toy to his father, and that was wrong. Abeni had noticed that his mother always seemed a trifle more vibrant when she was in the midst of one of her teases. Yet at this moment, she seemed puzzled, more than anything. Confused, even.

  Still unconvinced that this was not just an elaborate prank being played upon him, Abeni stepped past his parents to investigate the scene for himself. Could the Little Fish herself be playing a game?

  The room was much unchanged from the way he remembered it. Mostly bare, with just a few very childish diversions set off to the sides. There was nowhere in the room for a girl of her size to be hiding, yet he swept every nook and corner with the keen eye of an experienced Way Finder. Clearly, the bed was still rumpled from having been slept in. Actually slept in. The blankets had not just been pushed around to give the seeming of it. Without question, the Little Fish had spent some goodly portion of the night rolling and turning within them. But the only other sign he could find of her was a small smudge of soil—Forest soil—on the ledge of the window. She had likely gone out that way, scraping her boot against the stone as she did. But that did not answer, why?

  Abeni turned and left his long-ago bedroom, still confused, and not much wiser than when he had gone in. His parents had moved back to the forge, and when he rejoined them, Shaleen was pacing around it, her face pinched with concern. “She was safe here,” his mother said. “She knew it. I could see it in her eyes. Why would she—?” Shaleen looked up anxiously as Abeni came in, but a quick shrug told her that he’d found nothing more, so she went back to her fretting.

  Beyond her, Kijamon now held the black stone, turning it back and forth before his face, examining it closely. The crackle of energy that twitched around its surface lit his features with its flickering blue-white light.

  “Abeni has never seen such a thing,” he said, taking his place next to his father.

  “Of course you have, Abeni,” Shaleen snapped. “That toy has been in your room for years.” It was a tone Abeni could rarely remember hearing from his mother, and his eyes sought hers.

  “But never has it sparkled,” Abeni countered. Shaleen sighed.

  “I’m sorry, dear. I’m just worried for your friend. With Mabundi about to rule on the Ambassador’s request, it does not look good that she has run away.”

  “It is no toy,” Kijamon said. Shaleen looked at her husband in surprise, but just then the outside door opened.

  “She is not with the Wagon,” Zimu announced, as he came in and slumped into a chair. “Nor in the workshops, nor anywhere else within the Wind Forge. And she has not been seen upon the Trail of Sky either. It is as though she has fled the city itself.”

  “Where else can we look?” Shaleen asked. But nobody wanted to say what they were all thinking. Knowing nothing of this place, nor of the Djin ways, there was really only one place left to look. Running away in the middle of the night, with no guide, alone on the buttresses and ramparts of the mountain city, the Little Fish was not likely to have reached the road.

  She was more likely to have reached her death. But none were ready to give that thought any time to breathe just yet.

  “If not a toy, my husband, then what?”

  Kijamon flicked a glance at his wife, and then leaned over, holding the rod up between them where she could see it. “See here? And here? These grooves are quite precise. Purpose built, or I’m a Gnomileshi muck sucker. It is a tool.”

  “A solid length of polished stone, with no moving parts, nor any features, save two small grooves?” Zimu asked. “To what purpose could such a tool be put?”

  “Its intended one, to be sure, boy,” Kijamon replied. “But I have a much better puzzle for you. After fists of years in this House, inert enough to have been mistaken for a common child’s toy, why, after just one night in our strange girl’s hand, has it suddenly revealed itself?”

  All eyes around the forge looked at the old man, and his eyes twinkled as the sense of mysterious adventure swelled between them.

  “Well? Don’t you think we’d best find out?”

  As one, the family’s heads began to nod.

  * * *

  “So what is it?” Shaleen stood at her husband’s work bench a
nd poked at the crackling stone rod with a finger, rolling it across the rough stone surface. Arcs of blue fire danced as it rolled, flicking out to touch the tools and papers around it as it passed. Meanwhile, Kijamon rummaged about in a cupboard underneath. He’d called her into his studio moments ago—to tell her something, he’d said—but so far, he hadn’t said much of anything.

  “Hm? What’s what?” Kijamon glanced up at her distractedly. “Oh, that. Well that’s the question, isn’t it. What is it?”

  “Yes dear. I know. That’s what I asked you. What is it?”

  “Don’t know. Don’t know,” he said. “I can only tell you some of the things it is not.” But as he spoke, he turned back to his distracted searching and his voice wandered off with his attention.

  In all the long years they had been together, Shaleen had learned many things about her eccentric husband, two of which were very important, yet entirely contradictory. On the outer side, she had learned that Kijamon did his best thinking when he chattered aloud about what he was thinking, but paradoxically, on the inner side, she had learned that the more deeply he thought about something, the more he tended toward silence, as he had done just now. So while it had always been his job to be the wise and brilliant Djin artisan, renowned throughout the Anvil and the Forest beyond, some days, she believed it was she who had the harder task: keeping the great man talking. But she would have it no other way, since it allowed them to spend so much time together. Hers was a job she loved, almost as deeply as she loved her husband. And she was good at it too.

  “Okay then, Keej. Tell me, what is it not?” That earned her a quick smile, and her husband paused to glance at the cold polished rod on the bench, before returning to his search as he explained.

  “Well, aside from a great many obvious things—a humming bird, an oak tree, and so forth—there are several very specific things it is not. It is not unliving. It is not dead. And it is not alive. Oho! Here it is!” Kijamon pulled an old scroll from the cupboard, then he closed the door with a hip as he straightened up.

  “Really?” Shaleen said, as her husband unrolled his new prize. “I thought all things were in one of the three Natural Houses.”

  “So did I,” Kijamon admitted. “Which makes it such a puzzle. Look here.” He pointed to the silver tracings of old writing that skittered across the heavy paper. “Hakkar himself put it—”

  Shaleen rolled her eyes. “Tell me that this is not the original Hakkar scroll,” she said, shaking her head in disbelief. She already knew the answer.

  Kijamon looked up from the words trailing under his fingertips and blinked at her in surprise. “What? Of course it is.”

  “And you’ve kept it here? Lost in your cupboard like a list of tasks for the cleaning boy?”

  “Not lost, dear. Just… handy.” Kijamon smiled mischievously at her. It was an old quibble. Yes, such documents were priceless treasures of Djin heritage, and as such should be carefully preserved and protected, she would say. But knowledge is meant to be used, he would reply. By doers. Not horded in disuse today so that its mouldering shell might one day settle a dispute between palsied old tongue waggers. Was the ink silvered or gilded? Was the paper woven or pressed? That was not knowledge worth knowing, but it is what the Keepers of History would have all knowledge reduced to. Yes. It was an old quibble, and one Shaleen knew better than to reopen now.

  “So what does Bosuke have in his Hall, if you have the Hakkar here?”

  “Um, a clever duplication,” Kijamon said, but he could already see the rebuke rising in her eyes. “Stay your glare, my wife. It is a wondrous accommodation. I keep the Hakkar here, in its original form, where I can examine the faded scratchings, see the tremble of his hand—all as it should be, vibrant and alive. And old Bosuke has a much cleaner, tidier copy. Well, Wijen now. But all the better. What he has is much better suited to his failing eyes, and much more likely to survive the next eon than this old thing.” He patted the scroll laid open in front of him with affection. “Joy for everyone.”

  Shaleen looked levelly at her husband, then she sighed. It was useless to argue, and worse, it might distract him from his progress. “You were saying about the Hakkar?” She nodded toward the scroll where his finger was still poised, waiting to make his point.

  “Yes, here,” he said, tapping the spider-scrawl of ink in a place where it had faded. “Here, where he talks of the nature of things… And these shall be the Houses, each thing unto one House and each House unto itself: The House of Shezem, the House of Nazem, the House of Mern.”

  “What of it?” Shaleen said. “Every child learns the three Houses in the nursery.”

  “Well, that’s just my point,” Kijamon said, tapping the page in agitation. “He does not say ‘three’ and he does not say ‘and.’”

  Shaleen squinted at the page under her husband’s tapping finger, but if there was any significance hiding in the traces of ink below, she couldn’t see it. She looked at him curiously.

  “Tell me the three Houses,” he said.

  “You just said them yourself,” she replied. “The House of Shezem, the House of Nazem, and the House of Mern.”

  “Exactly!” Kijamon said, bouncing on his toes like an excited apprentice. “You said ‘and,’ — ‘and the House of Mern’ — but Hakkar does not. He most definitely does not! And look, see here?” He moved his finger and pointed at the period ending the line. “Look at the stop. I think it once had a tail, but it has fallen off, or been scratched away. And why leave such a long gap before continuing? There is room there easily for more words.”

  “More words? Keej, I don’t understand. What are you talking about?”

  Kijamon snatched up the black rod as it began to roll back across the scroll, and the dance of its light played around his fingers. “The Three Houses of Things are a lie,” he said. “Hakkar did not give us three Houses—he gave us four—but the scroll has been altered! And this,” he said, using the rod to point at the gap in the writing, “is of the fourth House.”

  “The fourth house? But what is left, my husband? What is there after Shezem, Nazem and Mern? There is unliving, there is living, and there is dead. What else remains?”

  Kijamon’s eyes glittered like a sweep of midnight stars. “Not what remains,” he said. “Ask instead what came before.”

  Shaleen swatted at her husband’s arm. “Don’t play a drama for me, Keej. Tell me. What is it?”

  “The House of Stegma,” he said. “The House of Music.”

  “Music?” Shaleen stared at her husband in confusion. “How can it be made from music? Music is a sound. It is insubstantial, but your relic is not. I have held its weight in my own hand. It was cold and heavy. Solid. Surely it is some type of stone. Perhaps a type you do not know?”

  Kijamon pushed himself back from the bench and began to pace around the room. “Even if there were such a rock—unknown to me or to any other Djin master—still that rock would be known to the test of Shezem. Hakkar doesn’t just give us the Houses, you know. He also gives us a way to test each thing, to determine its affinity. They are in fact the last thing told upon the scroll, but curiously, the scroll ends after the test for House Mern, as if the stink of rot wasn’t proof enough of death. Whatever followed has been torn away, and the spindle rebound to the raw end.”

  “The scroll has been altered in its length, as well?”

  “It has,” Kijamon said. Having crossed the room, he reached out to touch the comforting firmness of his forge and then turned to pace back the way he had come. It was an old habit, pacing from forge to wall and back again, touching each at every turn. “But whoever has removed this knowledge from us could not hide it completely. Even without a test for Music, it is but an exercise of logic to confirm it. There are four Houses and three tests. Since the relic does not answer any of them, it must be of the last remaining category. House Stegma.”

  “Unless there are five Houses,” Shaleen said. Kijamon shook his head, reaching out to tap the bench with a
finger and then turned back toward the wall.

  “I have thought this as well,” he said. “But the space in the scroll where mention of the Stegma has been removed… The gap is too short. There is no space for mention of yet another House. If there is a fifth, Hakkar did not know of it.”

  “But still, Kijamon, music? As a solid thing? A thing that can be held in the hand? How is that—” Kijamon turned to look his wife in the eye, and then he spoke the words that had ever preceded the greatest of his investigations.

  “I do not know,” he said. “But I mean to.”

  * * *

  He’s getting old. The thought struck her like an unexpected storm, buffeting her where she stood. The bowl trembled in her hand. Thankfully, Kijamon was too tired to have even noticed. Shaleen took only a moment to steady herself before she set the food on the table. Then, on a sudden whim, she moved to take a seat at his side. Not across from him, as was their habit, but beside him. Had those creases always been there, under his eyes and around his mouth? Or had they appeared only lately? The work was wearing on him. No, the work delighted him. It was the frustration that weighed so heavily on the flesh of his face. Her husband was lost somewhere, deep in the tangled path of his thoughts, so she took his hand in hers and simply held it.

  “You’ll figure it out, Keej. You always do.” Tired, sunken eyes turned to her slowly, but for a time, she saw no recognition in them. After a long, quiet moment, gazing into the empty house of her husband’s face, suddenly he returned home, and the smile that lit him was bright and genuine.

  “Shaleen,” he said, squeezing her hand. “What’s that? Oh. Yes, yes, I’ll unlock it. I’m sure of it. Any luck today?”

  How like him to set his own troubles aside and ask after her own, but even there, she could not give him any peace. Every hour, it seemed, since that brief contact on the Leap, she had returned to that place of stillness within herself and quested outward, hoping each time to touch the mind of her distant son once more. But still there was nothing. She shook her head, and Kijamon nodded in silent understanding. They were both worried. Not just about Sarqi, but about all their children. And Tayna as well. They could see how her sudden disappearance drained the humor from their youngest, and even Zimu had seemed more somber lately. How had one young Wasketchin girl woven herself so deeply into the threads of the family, and so quickly?