by Ginn Hale
“A Kahlil’im must be teaching you, then?”
“A Kahlil,” the young man corrected him offhandedly. “Kahlil’im means many; Kahlil is only one. There are no Kahlil’im left,” the man went on. “The last was torn to pieces between the worlds. What I learn is from the priests who keep Ushmana’lam, the holiest books. They can read the words, but they... ” he paused, “they cannot do everything the words say.”
“So there are no Kahlil’im left?”
“Issin,” the young man said, then caught himself. “There are none.”
“So there’s no way to open the Holy Gateway?” John continued.
“None.”
John noticed that the man spoke certain words with the same accent he had detected in Kyle. Now that he thought about it, John realized that the man resembled his old roommate physically as well. He wasn’t as muscular or as tall, and he lacked tattoos and scars, but he could have passed for Kyle’s younger brother. He had the same dark eyes and full mouth.
“There isn’t some kind of key that would do it?” John hoped his leading questions didn’t seem as obvious to the man as they did to him.
“A key is given to Kahlil,” the man said, “but only Kahlil can use it.”
So Kyle must have been a Kahlil. That explained the key that had come in the mail. The words ‘ripped to pieces between the worlds’ made John feel suddenly sorry that he hadn’t treated Kyle better. He wondered if being ripped to pieces had been a direct result of his theft of the key, then stopped himself. He already had enough guilt about bringing Laurie and Bill to this wasteland. He didn’t need Kyle’s death on his conscience as well.
He asked, “So, do you have a key yet?”
“No, just a black blood knife.”
“Does the knife open anything?” John knew he was grasping, but he supposed it was better to ask than not.
“Cuts,” the man answered.
He shoved his hands into his coat pockets. For a moment, John thought he would produce the knife, but he didn’t. He just kept his hands tucked into the coat’s protection. John felt a chill across the back of his neck as the wind picked up.
“It’s cold, and I have been gone too long. I must go home, or I will be whipped.” The man started to walk north through the snow.
“Wait!” John followed him. “I need to know how I can return to my own home.”
“Have you been gone too long as well?” He didn’t stop, but he slowed enough for John to catch up with him.
“Yes, I’ve been gone for a long time now.” John decided that he could afford to walk with him for at least an hour before he had to turn back to the shelter.
“You must miss your family.” The man wasn’t looking at John but at the mountains.
“I miss my home.”
The man paused and studied John. He said, “I could bring you with me to Rathal’pesha, but...”
“But what?”
“I think they would burn you.”
A chill sank through John’s guts.
“Why would they burn me?”
“Maybe you aren’t from the other world. Maybe you’re a spy for the Fai’daum. Maybe you’re a witch. They can find reasons as easily as turning over stones.” The man began walking again.
“I speak English. I know where America is. That convinced you that I was telling the truth, didn’t it?” John asked.
“No,” the man said, “I believe you because I want to. You seem honest to me, but Ushman Dayyid and Ushman Nuritam don’t want to believe anyone. They don’t want to believe me, and I have the God’s own bones. They would burn you right away, and then you would never go home.”
“Would you be willing to help me get home?”
“I might.” Again the man looked up at the mountains. “I don’t know what I can do for you.”
“Could you come back here and tell me more about your world? That would at least help me not get myself burned.” John kept doggedly at it. He could not let this resource go without a fight, for all their sakes.
“Will you tell me about yours?” the man countered.
“Of course.”
“Good.” The man smiled at him. For a few minutes they strode along quietly together, side by side. John knew he had to turn back soon, but he didn’t want to. His hope of finding a way home rested entirely with this man about whom he knew next to nothing.
“Can I ask what your name is, or what I should call you?” John asked at last.
“Are you turning back now?” the man asked.
“I was thinking of it. Why?”
“Some traders only exchange names with a new friend just before they part. Then, if their families have bad blood between them, it will not have ruined their time traveling together.”
“I didn’t know that,” John said.
“I hadn’t told you my name so that you would keep walking with me.” The man glanced sideways at him. “It’s good to have some company on such a long walk, but I shouldn’t bring you any further. It won’t be safe once we reach the river.”
“Well, my name is John.” John held out his hand, and the man blinked at it. Then he seemed to remember something and reached out to grip John’s hand firmly.
“I am Ushiri Ravishan’inRathal’pesha.”
“I don’t think I’ll remember all that,” John admitted.
“You only need to call me Ravishan. The rest is title and place. It is not who I am.”
“Ravishan,” John repeated the name. “Will I see you again?”
The man nodded. “I must go now, but I will try to come back in four days.”
“I’ll see you then. Goodbye.” John gave him a brief wave.
“Tumah.” Ravishan briefly lifted his hands to his chest and then turned and continued walking north through the little rises and valleys of snow. John watched until he disappeared into the dark line of the distant trees.
John turned back. He brushed the snow back over both his and Ravishan’s tracks as he went. His body bristled with an excited energy, making him want to go quickly and carelessly. But he forced himself to be thorough, to cover his tracks and slowly wind his way back to the shelter. He couldn’t afford to take chances.
A lot of things could go wrong in four days.
Chapter Nine
“Loshai,” John said in response to Ravishan’s gesture at the pale, blue afternoon sky. Ravishan smiled his cereal box smile.
The spring air was cool but not cold. The last of the snow had melted away, leaving the ground carpeted in pale, mossy leaves and grass shoots. White leaf-buds dotted the black branches of the trees above them.
They had moved their shelter to higher ground when runoff from the mountains flooded the lower lands. Water rolled slowly between the higher stands of trees and washed far out to the east, until it spilled down the steep walls of the chasm in an immense waterfall. West of their camp John had found a deep slow moving river, where the fishing seemed particularly good. As he often did, Ravishan had appeared from the thin air and joined him on the river bank. Today they indulged in an impromptu language lesson.
“Loshai’hir pesha’an sa?” Ravishan asked and John concentrated on his voice. John didn’t want to hear the words as much as see the images they represented. He wanted to understand them, not in the slow manner of matching their meanings to English equivalents, but as words in their own right.
It was a difficult thing to do. The inflections and pauses of Basawar contained such subtlety. Sometimes John found himself listening to the language with the same uncomprehending appreciation that he had for pure music.
“Iss. Loshai’hir holima’an,” John finally answered.
The sky is white?
No, the sky is blue.
It was such a simple exchange. John wanted to be better than this. He needed to be better if he ever hoped to get into the city of Amura’taye, much less reach the massive, walled monastery of Rathal’pesha and the key that would take them home.
If he could just find
work in Amura’taye, he might be able to buy medicine for Bill, or at least food beyond what John hunted and the scraps that Ravishan secreted to them in his coat pockets.
Then there was the matter of the keys and the gateway. He had steadily learned, through his conversations with Ravishan, that the payshmura priests kept the keys somewhere in Rathal’pesha. There were maps to the gateways as well. Ravishan hadn’t seen either, but he had overheard Ushman Nuritam talking to Ushman Dayyid about them.
“One more question?” Ravishan asked.
“One more,” John agreed. They had been talking for hours. Ravishan would have to get home soon. He had already stayed out too late with John on too many previous days.
John pulled up the delicate piece of netting that Ravishan had brought him. Two nearly transparent, white fish flopped against the fine mesh. John pulled them free and dropped them into the reed basket with the others. They were tiny fish. All of them together were hardly enough to feed him alone.
“Yura’hir li’ati pashim’um sa?” Ravishan smiled sleepily and yawned as he asked the question. He loved slurring his words or disguising them to challenge John.
“Yura’ati pashim’um sa?” John asked thoughtfully. He could see the pleased gleam in Ravishan’s lowered eyes at stumping him.
“Sa?” Ravishan prompted.
“Du.” John nodded. “Li’im pashim, pashim’sho.” Yes, we are friends, great friends.
Ravishan broke into a grin at the answer. It pleased him when he could confound John, but it delighted him much more when John succeeded.
“Laman’Jahn’hir, domu’ya,” Ravishan complimented him, not only affirming John’s progress, but adding a scholar’s honorific to his name. It struck John as quite an exaggeration. However, Ravishan seemed to take great pleasure in addressing him as Laman. John guessed it was the same kind of humor that fueled the widespread phenomenon of three-hundred-pound giants nicknamed ‘Tiny.’
“Li’hir renma’ya.” Ravishan leaned back against a tree and closed his eyes.
John knew from Ravishan’s posture as much as his words that Ravishan was tired.
His right arm was wrapped in white bandages, and soft, blue shadows hung beneath his eyes. He breathed slowly and deeply, as if he were falling asleep. His lips parted slightly, and his hands hung limp. When he relaxed completely like this, John became acutely aware of how attractive Ravishan was. And also how very young he seemed.
John knew that he was only five years older than Ravishan, but those five years made a great difference. At seventeen, Ravishan was physically close to adulthood. He stood nearly as tall as John. His body was muscular and graceful from years of training in the monastery. Only a little of the softness of boyhood remained in his face.
Yet his affection was so strong and uninhibited, it seemed very childlike. By nature, Ravishan was friendly and outgoing. So much so that, at times, John had to remind himself that Ravishan probably had no idea of how flirtatious his behavior might seem. More than likely he was like this with any adult who showed him kindness. His long smiles and lingering gaze were simply the affectations of a lonely teenager. And he showed traces of adolescent rebelliousness as well. For one thing, he loved slipping away from his practices to meet with his new, secret friend.
“I don’t want to say I am a milkman.” Ravishan spoke without opening his eyes.
“What?” John didn’t really see the significance of the statement.
“Ushman Dayyid and Ushman Nuritam say that when I cross into the other world, I must say that I deliver milk.” Ravishan scowled. “Why can’t I say that I’m a soldier? Or a wandering scholar? Why should we all say we are milkmen? I’d rather be something different, something interesting, like a—” he paused, thinking, “—like a pope. I might say that I am a powerful pope.”
John struggled to keep from laughing.
“No one would believe you if you said that you were the Pope.”
Ravishan sighed.
“Milkman is so boring,” Ravishan said, but offered no other argument.
“It’s a job that no one will ask you about because it’s boring.” John knew that well enough. He hadn’t asked Kyle about his work.
It was strange to think of Kyle now that John knew he had been one of the Kahlil’im. John remembered the scars on Kyle’s arms and glanced at Ravishan’s bandages. Some of the cuts had been administered by the priests in a bloodletting ceremony that supposedly drained impure desires from the body and allowed the sacred bones within to take greater power. Other wounds came from Ravishan’s attempts to jump between spaces.
When he disappeared from sight, he submerged into a soundless, gray world. It allowed him to move at blinding speeds through solid walls and over rivers. But it came at a cost. There was abrasiveness to the Gray Space. Ravishan had once described it as so cold that it seemed to burn and had said that it was filled with slicing edges that cut in and out. At times, it sliced through his flesh and left tiny blisters on his skin.
Ravishan always proudly pointed out that, because of his great skill, his injuries were far less than those the other boys in training suffered. Three other ushiri had been blinded; another two had died when they materialized inside solid objects.
That was only traveling through the Gray Space within one world. It was nothing compared to passing through the white agony that filled the space between worlds. Ravishan only knew of it through the priests, and they only knew from the writings of the Kahlil’im who had gone before. It blinded and burned and sliced bodies to ribbons. Without the sacred gateways and the keys that opened them, even a Kahlil would be killed crossing between worlds.
As Ravishan had described the dangers, John had thought of the gash across Kyle’s mouth and his constant bandages. And he had wondered what Kyle had done while they lived together. How many times had he crossed between worlds? And what had he done when he realized his key was gone?
John never should have taken that key. Never.
“I don’t want to be boring to them,” Ravishan interrupted John’s thoughts. “I want them to talk with me, like you do.”
“The people of my world?” John asked.
Ravishan nodded.
“I don’t think you’re going to be boring to anyone even if you try,” John assured him. “You’re going to be pretty exotic looking. Once you receive those Prayerscars, you’ll have to try hard just passing for normal in my world, trust me.” Not for the first time, John considered telling Ravishan about Kyle. But he wasn’t sure how Ravishan would take it. John knew that stealing Kyle’s key wouldn’t come across as a good thing, no matter how he worded it.
He and Bill and Laurie all depended upon Ravishan’s good will for their survival in and eventual escape from the world of Basawar. Ravishan brought them clothes and food, and he’d told no one about them. Also, Ravishan would have access to a key someday. So far, that seemed to be their only hope for returning home. For now his friendship was too important, and too new, to burden with unpleasant revelations.
Ravishan sighed again and then said, “I just don’t want to say I’m a milkman.”
“Maybe you just don’t want to obey Ushman Dayyid,” John suggested.
“Maybe,” Ravishan said. “I’m tired of him. He shouts at me when I do what he wants, and if I can’t do what he wants, he shouts louder.”
“Sounds like he’s frustrated.”
“Vun’hir wahbai,” Ravishan murmured.
“He’s an asshole?”
“You understood that?” Ravishan asked.
“Perfectly.” John smiled.
“Domu, Laman’Jahn, domu.” Ravishan grinned. “Soon you will know all of the profane words.”
“It’s the small triumphs that make life worth living.”
A noise from farther back among the trees alerted them to the presence of others. They went silent and peered into the shadows. Even now that Bill and Laurie wore the clothes Ravishan had brought from Rathal’pesha, John instantly recognized them.
They were much more slender than the few shepherds that John had seen. And they moved more cautiously, as if the knowledge that they were trespassers in this world had suffused even their muscles.
“Tumah, Vur’Loshai. Tumah, Vun’Behr.” Ravishan greeted both of them with his hand raised in peace.
Ravishan had given them all Basawar names. He called Laurie, Loshai. Bill, Behr. And John’s name had shifted to Jahn.
Laurie waved. Bill made a little shrugging motion, as if he were too tired to raise his arm, which might have actually been the case.
“Tumah, Ushiri Ravishan.” Laurie mimicked Ravishan’s gesture.
Bill said, “Hey.”
“What’s up, my man?” Ravishan strode to Bill and held out his palm for Bill to slap. Today Bill only batted his fingers weakly.
“I feel like crap.” Bill sat down beside a tree and rested his head on his knees. Laurie knelt down next to him and rubbed his back.
Ravishan frowned and crouched down beside them.
“Behr,” Ravishan said, “your breathing still troubles you?”
“Yeah, same old story.” Bill lifted his head. “So what have you two been up to?”
“Just talking,” John said. “Trying to fish.”
“Any luck with that?” Laurie asked.
“I caught a few.” John tapped the reed basket with his foot. “Nothing compared to the weasels though. Those little guys can really swim.”
“Weasels?” Ravishan looked up at him. It was rare for him to not know a word, but it did happen from time to time.
“Ganal’im,” John supplied.
“Sa? Ganal’im Nayeshi’hir sa?” Ravishan asked.
“Iss. Hel shir’ro ganal’im,” John pointed out over the water where the white weasels splashed and dived after fish. “Weasel shir’ro ganal, iff otter shir’kin ganal.”
“Could we please speak English, today?” Bill broke in before Ravishan could ask more.
“Sorry,” John said. He hadn’t really noticed when he had stopped speaking English.
“Thanks.” Bill leaned his head back down against his knees.
“Do you want me to take you back to the shelter?” He had carried Bill before, when Bill just couldn’t move without beginning to choke. That had been back during the coldest days of winter. John had hoped that the warmer weather would make things easier for Bill.
