3: Black Blades

by Ginn Hale

  His mud-caked opponent charged, throwing himself ahead with brutal force. John crouched and, as the priest sprang at him, John lunged into him. The smaller priest was jarred with the force of the impact. John caught him by the hips, then heaved him upward with all his strength. The priest’s legs flew out from beneath him as he flipped across John’s back and went down into the mud again. John pivoted to face the priest.

  Still sprawled in the mud, he shook his head at John. His expression didn’t seem so much angry as concerned. John helped him back up to his feet.

  “You’re too good for your own well-being, Jahn,” the priest whispered to him. Then, he glanced up to the walkway above them. John followed his gaze to Ushman Nuritam’s thin figure.

  John frowned. Ushman Dayyid was no longer there.

  The prior lifted his left arm, again pronouncing the test in John’s favor. John’s opponent wiped the mud from his body. Then he climbed up the stairs and back out of the filthy grounds. John watched him go.

  Then, John saw the tall black column of Dayyid’s figure advancing down the steps. The soft murmurs and quiet conversations that had hummed across the steps went silent. As John looked out over the steps, he took in row upon row of black braids as all the assembled ushvun bowed their heads.

  Dayyid spared none of the priests a glance. He stopped beside the prior. The prior bent in half before Dayyid. Dayyid spoke softly over the other man’s bowed head. John couldn’t hear any of what he said. He only caught murmurs and pauses. The prior bowed slightly lower, his glistening braids spilling down over his face and sweeping against the stone floor. Dayyid turned with mechanical precision and strode back up the stairs.

  The prior straightened. His round face was dark red from being bent over for so long. He scowled, seeing John looking at him. John quickly lowered his eyes.

  “Practice is done for the day,” the prior shouted. “Those of you who have been on the grounds, bathe and then attend your duties. Those who have not been on the grounds, go directly to your duties.”

  John trudged through the mud and started to pull himself up onto the stairs. His dormitory was in charge of the pine garden this month. With the weather turning warm, the soil would need to be turned and prepared for seeding. It was work that John enjoyed.

  The prior held up his hand for John to remain where he was. John waited as the other priests filed out of the arena. Samsango milled on the steps for several minutes after all the rest had gone. The prior gave him a sharp, warning glare. With an apologetic shrug to John, Samsango left too.

  Once they were alone, the prior said, “Ushman Dayyid has done you the honor of accepting you for his ushiri’im to practice their battle forms against.”

  A slightly sick chill slithered through John’s stomach. He didn’t want Ushman Dayyid practicing anything on him, particularly not battle forms.

  “You will wash and then go directly to the golden chamber on the second floor. If Ushman Dayyid finishes with you today, you are to come back to me directly. I won’t allow for any distractions or laziness.”

  John nodded.

  The prior scowled. “Well, go! You don’t want to keep Ushman Dayyid waiting.”

  “Of course not.” John couldn’t manage to force any enthusiastic inflection into his voice. His words came out flat and dull.

  He climbed up from the grounds and took the long way around the armory. The baths were a series natural springs, which the priests had sheltered with tall, latticed stone walls. There were carved stone seats where towels and clothes could be left but no roof. Moss and lichen covered the rough stone floor.

  John wasn’t surprised to find Samsango waiting for him. The old man looked worried.

  “You haven’t been called up to serve the ushiri, have you?” Samsango asked.

  John just nodded and stripped off his mud-caked pants.

  “But you haven’t even been initiated!” Samsango protested. “How can Ushman Dayyid even ask you to walk through the golden doors, much less fight with his ushiri’im?”

  “I don’t know.” John had the feeling that Ushman Dayyid could do just about anything he liked, but he didn’t want to say that out loud.

  Other priests were in the bath as well, some of them barely bobbing above the water.

  A few of them glanced up at John, but then looked away. Their expressions were too sober and their voices too low. Normally, one of them would have teased John, or smacked his bare shoulders with a towel. Instead, he received only a few pitying glances.

  “The prior should tell him he’s made a mistake,” Samsango announced from where he sat cross-legged at the edge of the bath.

  “If the prior was going to say anything to Ushman Dayyid, he would have already done it,” John replied.

  John scrubbed at the dried mud on his legs. Then he dunked beneath the water, washing his face and hair. When he came back up, Samsango continued talking.

  “It’s not just wrong to do this to you, but it does the ushiri’im no good to practice against a novice. Ushman Dayyid should reconsider.”

  John squeezed the water out of his hair and tied it back away from his face.

  “You think that’s likely?” John asked.

  Samsango didn’t answer. His frown deepened.

  “I wouldn’t have encouraged you so much if I had known.” Samsango’s gaze dropped to his lap. “I would never have thought that you would be chosen. Who would have?”

  “It’s not your fault,” John told him.

  “But I feel bad for winning bets on you now,” Samsango admitted.

  “It’s all right,” John assured him. “Just tell me what it is exactly that I’m going to be doing.”

  “You will fight the ushiri’im.” The wrinkles lining Samsango’s mouth pulled into deep fissures as he scowled. “They use criminals while they’re perfecting their open-handed blade work. But after that, they need opponents who are trained in the battle forms, so that they can hone their skills. It’s an honor to serve them, but you...”

  “I’m going to get my ass kicked?” John supplied for Samsango and the old man offered him a grim smile.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  John closed his eyes. Before Dayyid had made it his mission to subdue his insolent spirit, John hadn’t known how it felt to truly be beaten. He had thought that he would have to be dying to hurt so much. Black bruises had decorated his flesh like tattoos. His ribs had ached each time he took a breath, his muscles trembled with each motion, and his split lips had cracked and bled when he spoke.

  Each day had added injuries and pain. To be hurt that much that often changed a man, he had realized. It made pain the center of his existence, the one constant that he could not escape. Even when Dayyid finished for the day, the pain remained. It became all he felt and all each new day promised. It devoured any pleasure he might have found in his surroundings, leaving him with only dread.

  But he had endured it, and it had ended.

  His muscles throbbed with the physical memories of those days. He didn’t want to go through that again. But his only other choice was to flee.

  If he got up right at this moment and abandoned Rathal’pesha, he could avoid it. No one was going to chase a braid-less novice down the steps. But it would mean abandoning his hope of finding a way home. It would mean facing Laurie and Bill and telling them that this world would be where they lived from now on. Sickness would dominate the rest of Bill’s life; servitude and repression, the rest of Laurie’s.

  He had brought them here. It had been his foolish mistake. He owed it to them to try and get them home.

  “Well,” John said, “it can’t be much worse than last time.”

  “It will be much worse,” Samsango protested. “This will be blade fighting. The Unseen Edge, the God’s Razor, the Silence Knife. You don’t even know what these things are! How can you hope to defend yourself against them?”

  “With my battle strategy of running, hiding, and crying?” John suggested.

 
“No,” Samsango said suddenly. “I will have to go and tell Ushman Dayyid that this is wrong.”

  This statement drew a startled gasp from the ushvun sitting close enough to overhear.

  John said, “Ushman Dayyid has never struck me as a man who is open to criticism.”

  “No,” Samsango admitted. “But someone should...”

  John could tell that Samsango was frightened. He was old, frail, and of lowly rank. Ushman Dayyid could snap him apart like pieces of kindling. Or worse yet, Ushman Dayyid could pronounce Samsango’s criticism a transgression of his holy authority. The two rough braids sewn to Samsango’s robe would be stripped away. Then it would be the duty of every ushvun to punish the old man.

  Samsango was too old to do much work. Other priests often took his share. They respected the lifetime he had given to the monastery and went out of their way to look after him. He depended on the kindness and generosity of his fellow priests. A year of castigation, abuse, and deprivation would kill him.

  “It’s all right,” John said. “I can do this.”

  “But—”

  “I’m a tough young man.” John pulled himself up out of the water. “I’m sure the first sight of me bawling and hiding behind furniture will disgust the ushiri’im so much that they’ll just send me away.”

  Samsango laughed, but then shook his head. “Don’t offend them. They carry the god’s own bones.”

  “I won’t.” John took the clothes that Samsango offered him.

  John forced himself to dress quickly. His body seemed to resist him. His legs felt heavy and slow. His hands wanted to become clumsy. He almost dropped his clean pants twice. Finally, with the slow, premeditated gait of a reanimated corpse, John started up the stairs toward the golden chamber.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  John had been to the second floor before, but only to scrub the halls. He had never been through one of the ivory inlaid doors that ran along the left wall of the hall. He recognized a few written Basawar words now, but not many more than those that allowed him to distinguish a cask of wine from a cask of fermenting taye blossoms. Nothing so complex as this writing.

  The ivory inlaid words that arched and curled over the black door panels fascinated him, in part because he couldn’t read them. John traced the curving sweep of polished letters with his finger. Beneath them, gleamed the emblem of a book. John wondered if the symbols spelled out the word for library.

  He knew better than to try to open the door. It would be locked. All of the doors on the upper three floors were always kept locked. There was just one door that he would be allowed through, the door to the golden chamber.

  As John continued down the wide gray stone hall, gentle spring breezes drifted in through the windows that ran along the opposite wall. The deep quiet of these upper floors always reminded him of the ruins of an aging, abandoned palace in some forgotten empire.

  With its locked towers and inner sanctums that slowly spiraled down and out into nothing but latticed, roofless halls, and moss-covered stone paths, the monastery seemed as if it were ever so slowly eroding back into the earth.

  Only the scent of incense hinted at the presence of the men who inhabited this level.

  John followed the hall as it opened into a raised walkway that arched out to another building. At the end of the walkway stood a heavy black iron door that looked like it had been made to withstand gun blasts and battering rams.

  Two silver Payshmura eyes stared down at John from above the doorway. Beneath them, beaten into the door itself, a tight gold script arched over a gold sun and a silver moon. The letters were unusually clipped and square. John didn’t think he had seen that style of Basawar script before. Then, as he reached out to the heavy knob, he realized that the gold letters weren’t Basawar at all. They were English. A little disfigured, but clearly English.

  Through this door to a thousand more.

  John read it and frowned. A thousand doors. He remembered the words from a Basawar prayer. Samsango had taught it to him while they had been hiking down the Thousand Steps to Amura’taye to pick up supplies. At the time John had hardly been paying attention. His thoughts had been more focused on his plans to visit Laurie and Bill in the Bousim house. Now he frowned, attempting to recall the words.

  Parfir sleeps behind a golden door

  His blessing opens a thousand more

  His blood and bone, my sea and stone—

  John’s thoughts were broken by a sudden shriek.

  At first he thought it was human scream, but it didn’t sound right for that. It sounded more metallic and inanimate, like sheet metal rending apart. Then, a faint but familiar smell drifted over him.

  It was the same smell his old computer used to produce when it began to overheat: burning ozone. But that couldn’t be possible, not here. It had to be something else.

  A moment later, the scent was lost in the breeze rolling across the walkways. John supposed he would find out what the smell was soon enough. Or he might find himself in such pain that he wouldn’t care. Either way, he had wasted too much time already.

  He pulled the heavy latch and swung the door open. A stronger wave of the ozone smell wafted over him. As John stepped from the outdoor glow back into a darker interior, he found himself momentarily blinded. The door fell shut behind him while he waited for his eyes to adjust. When they did, John realized that he stood in a dark hallway only a few feet from two black-coated ushiri’im.

  Payshmura emblems of silver suns glinted on their high, straight collars. Both men were older than John. Their faces showed that strange, worn texture that John had noticed in many ushiri’im. They weren’t tanned, wrinkled or chaffed like the ushvun. These men’s skins were pale and too fine, almost as if their features had been eroded to an unnatural smoothness. Eight black honor braids cascaded down their backs. They were each only one braid short of being first rank ushman’im.

  John immediately bowed before them. “Ushman Dayyid sent for me.”

  “So he said,” one of the ushiri’im replied. “It certainly took you long enough to get here.”

  “I’m sorry.” John bowed again. “I was instructed to bathe.”

  “You’ll be dirty again soon enough.” The other ushiri smiled, but not kindly. “Come along. You’ve already kept the ushman waiting longer than he likes.”

  The first ushiri gestured for John to precede him down the hall.

  The oil lamps gave a yellow glow to the inlaid writing on the doors they passed. John lowered his eyes. More and more of the words were in English. He had never realized just how difficult it was not to read words written in his native language. Just glancing at a few letters sent the words ringing through his mind instantly.

  Holy...Forbidden...Sacred...Eternal...Divine.

  He read the words with the same reflexive quickness that his lungs drew in breath. Only keeping his eyes squarely lowered to the floor allowed him to maintain the appearance of ignorant awe that any other ushvun would have possessed. Maybe later, under better circumstances, he would dare to read the doors, but for now, he couldn’t afford to act out of his place.

  The ushiri ahead of John stopped in front of a door. John pulled to a halt behind him. Despite himself, John stole a glance to the letters on the door.

  Golden Chamber, Burn and Shine.

  The ushiri lifted his finger to his lips and John heard the hiss of a Gray Space tearing open. A chill seeped through the air.

  The ushiri’s mouth moved, his lips pressing words against his raised fingers. John couldn’t hear anything, not even a faint whisper of breath. It was like watching television with the mute on. The ushiri’s voice slipped into the Gray Space to be heard by someone else.

  Then Dayyid’s low voice split the air above them. “Bring him to me, and we will see.”

  Again, John thought he smelled searing ozone, but this time he was more disturbed to note a tiny flash of flame shudder through the air. It died in an instant, and John might have thought he hadn�
�t seen it at all, if that burning scent hadn’t lingered after it.

  The door opened and the ushiri led John through.

  The golden chamber was neither gold nor a chamber. It was a long, white training hall. The polished stone floor was covered with heavy, stuffed mats. Intense light poured in from windows cut in the upper third of the high walls. Lower on the walls there were iron racks holding spears, swords, axes, and other weapons John didn’t even know the names for. There was even a locked cage of rifles and pistols.

  Directly ahead of John on a raised dais rose a huge iron statue of Parfir. John didn’t think he had ever seen the god’s face carved into such a proud expression. The only hint of his usual smile was a cruel upturn at the corners of his mouth. Two rows of ten ushiri’im, dressed only in their gray pants, stood with their backs to John. They had the builds of young men in their late teens and twenties. None of them wore more than seven braids. Most only had six.

  Only Dayyid, standing at Parfir’s feet, faced him.

  The room was weirdly cold and the smell of ozone caught in John’s throat.

  “And, at last, here he is.” Dayyid gestured to John.

  At once the gathered ushiri’im turned to face John. They moved with a tight militaristic precision that unnerved him. He almost stepped back from them, but he forced himself to hold his ground. He didn’t want their first impression of him to be that of a cowering giant.

  He straightened slightly and returned the uniformly cold stare the group gave him. For an instant, his eyes caught on Ravishan’s face. His hair had grown out some, but not enough yet to braid. It hung around his face in silky strands. He’d grown since John had last seen him. The boyish softness had gone from his cheeks, and now even a hint of dark stubble shadowed his jaw.

  Ravishan’s dark eyes widened at the sight of him and John looked quickly past. As far as anyone here could know, this was the first time they had met. It was safer for him to meet Fikiri’s surprised eyes.

  Fikiri too had grown, but not so markedly. There was certainly a lot more meat on him now, but his proportions remained those of a boy, his feet and hands a size too large for his body. His dark blonde hair was pulled back into five braids, and his right arm was swathed in white bandages. John gave Fikiri a brief smile and the young boy returned it, only for an instant, before schooling his expression back into the hard stare of an ushiri.