by Micah Yongo
“I saw a monkey once,” Daneel said. “Yannick too, didn’t we, on my first outing in Qareb.”
Yannick nodded, slurping up another spoonful of Yulaan’s soup.
“Funny little beasts,” Josef murmured.
“Yannick tried to catch it,” Daneel went on. “But couldn’t. Too quick for him, wasn’t it, Yannick?”
Yannick, looking down, took another slurp of his soup without responding.
“Is it true that a monkey can be as clever as a man?” Arianna said.
“Man once told me,” Daneel said, “the souls of damned men are given to dwell in those furry little bodies of theirs, that’s why they’re so cunning.”
“Pass me the melon there, Dan,” Josef said.
“Who told you that, Dan?” Neythan said.
“A man in an inn during my outing last year.”
“He meets everyone in an inn,” Josef quipped.
“They’re educational places, brother, you ought to try them sometime. Shouldn’t he, Neythan?”
Neythan glanced up at the pair across the table: Josef, eating calmly, eyes down on his food whilst his twin brother, Daneel, jabbed a spoon at the air as he talked. It was the kind of thing, years ago, he’d have smirked knowingly at Arianna about. But it wasn’t that way with them anymore. Not since Uncle Sol’s exile. Neythan looked toward her at the other end of the table, thinking about the walks they’d take together in the evenings, after the day’s training was done and the others had gone to their huts, and how they’d sit there, just the two of them, and talk and–
“Neythan?”
Neythan glanced up. Daneel was still waiting for an answer. “Who was he?” Neythan said instead. “The man in the inn?”
“I forget. He looked Haránite. Low Eastern. Like Jaleem, the carpenter, or Yulaan here. That’s how he caught my eye. Anyway. So I was in this inn with Tutor Hamir and the Brother I was shadowing, third sharím I think he was, I forget his name.”
“Is there anything you don’t forget?” Arianna asked.
“The taste of good wine,” Josef answered for him.
“You want to hear this story or not?”
“Go on, Dan,” Neythan prompted.
“So anyway. I’m in this inn and this woman approaches from across the way.”
Yannick rolled his eyes, nudging Neythan, his thumb tapping against downturned fingertips as he nodded at Daneel.
Daneel frowned. “I’m saying it as it was.”
Yannick cocked an eyebrow, unconvinced.
Neythan couldn’t help but smile, which was something Yannick had known how to make him do since they were children, back when Neythan was mute, stunned silent by the deaths of his mother, father and sister, deaths he’d apparently witnessed but remained unable to recall. For almost the entire first year in Ilysia it took for Neythan to regain his speech, Yannick, himself deaf, was his only friend, their silence a familiar shared tongue. Until Arianna taught Neythan to speak again.
“I’m telling the truth, Yannick,” Daneel said, then turned his attention to the rest of the table. “She walks across to me. Good-looking woman. Hefty, you know…” Daneel winked, palms upturned. Arianna sighed heavily. “And she says to me, ‘Where’re you from?’”
“Doubtless she hoped to send you back there,” Arianna answered.
“Funny, Ari, but I don’t remember you being there.”
“I don’t need to have been there to know you can be a–”
“Disciples!”
They turned in unison. Tutor Hamir was standing by the threshing floor at the entry to the yard. His tall, bald scalp glowed in the sun as he cleared his throat.
“The elders have come down the mount.”
Josef stopped chewing.
“Your summons has come,” Hamir confirmed. “You will see the elders at eventide by the Tree.” He turned to leave and then stopped, glancing back. “You ought to make ready. You are to cease your discipleship. You will take the covenant and become Brothers tonight, and be gone tomorrow.” And then he looked at Neythan. “You as well.”
Three
C O V E N A N T
That night they went through the village on their way to the Elders’ Temple whilst the villagers stood at the doors of their houses and huts holding candles and lamps. Ghandry the butcher. Yulaan the cook. Jaleem the carpenter, his long black hair combed back like a raven’s feathers to mark the occasion. Just like the day he’d walked Neythan into the village after he’d been to plant his bloodtree, showing him to the hut that would become his home for the next eleven years. Neythan picked them out from the gloom as he walked, trying to ignore the memories each face conjured – Jaleem teaching him to read, Yulaan teaching him to cook – as somewhere an elderly woman sang a lament.
Eventually he and the other disciples, dressed in ceremonial black cowls, passed beyond the village into the Forest of Silences, the old woman’s dirge sinking into silence behind them as they went up the slope toward the mount’s peak and the Elders’ Temple. It took just over an hour to reach it. The tree of Qoh’leth, the First Brother, loomed overhead and nearly blocked out the moon, a blunt hulking shape several times the height of any other tree. They were shown to a tall obelisk with the image of Sharíf Karel, the founder of the Sovereignty, carved into it, and then sworn in there as they bowed before the pillar and three hooded figures. The disciples touched their foreheads against the stone and then spoke the words of the covenant. Only then did one of the figures remove his hood to reveal himself.
“It’s said our father, Qoh’leth, planted this tree nearly three hundred years ago,” the man said. “After hunting down what remained of the old Orders to end the Priests’ War.”
The man was bearded, with cropped black hair smudged to grey around the temples. His head was heavy-looking and square, faint pockmarks pitting the upper part of his cheeks like dimples on lemonskin. His skin was a deep olive, same as Neythan’s, although the man didn’t share the same soft curled hair. Unlike Neythan he wasn’t of mixed blood. More likely he was a native of Calapaar or Hardeny, darker than the pale-skinned Kivites beyond the Sovereignty’s northernmost borders, yet lighter than the copper-skinned Low Easterners of Harán or Sumeria.
“Many forget that Qoh’leth was himself Magi,” the man went on. “Yet willing to renounce his vows for devotion to his sharíf.”
Neythan knew the story well. They all did. It was Qoh’leth who’d begun the Brotherhood nearly three centuries ago, and in so doing established the means by which every sharíf since Karel had maintained their throne, secretly rooting out the seeds of rebellion and war before they could begin and, having subdued their homeland of Sumeria, going on to conquer the lands of Hardeny, Calapaar, Eram and Harán to establish the Five Land Sovereignty.
“It is no simple thing for a man to shed what he once was,” the elder continued. “To become what is required of him. Yet it is this example our father, Qoh’leth, has left for us. An example marked by the covenant he made here before Karel, the first sharíf, all those years ago, sealed by his blood,” he glanced behind to the towering bloodtree, “to serve the sovereign throne forever. Like him, you too have renounced all this night, and are dead. All that remains of you now is the covenant you have spent your lives preparing to uphold, the covenant you have now become part of. Qoh’leth’s covenant.”
Neythan and the others answered in unison. “My life, my sword, my blood, I swear to this peace, this honour and that blood.”
The man gave a bow of his head. “Then I am Gahíd. I am third elder of the Shedaím, mouth to this Brotherhood. I stand before the sharíf and speak our words to him, and carry his words from him. It is I who hold your decrees now.”
The next figure removed his hood, revealing a slim elderly man with thinning white hair. “And I am Tarrick. I am first elder of the Shedaím. Ear to this Brotherhood. I abide this mount and hear what is and tell what is to be done.”
Then the next, a small greyheaded woman. “And I am Safít,
second elder of the Shedaím and eye to this Brotherhood. I abide the temple and this mount, and am sworn to never leave it. It is I who sees what is yet to come.”
She stepped gingerly forward and bowed again. Neythan saw the cloudy paleness to her gaze as she straightened, and realized she was blind.
“And now, you are Arianna, Daneel, Yannick, Josef and Neythan,” she said, her blank eyes passing from one to the next as though she could see them. “And you are Brothers of the Shedaím, the right arm of this Brotherhood. It is you who shall be and do what there is to be done. Rise now, Brothers. Let us be one.”
In turn, the disciples each took a blade from the belt of their ceremonial cowl and cut along the scar in their palm where they’d first bled onto the seed of their bloodtree. They watched Safít do the same, then held out their hands and bowed as she pressed her own wrinkled bleeding palm against theirs.
“The life is in the blood, and our blood is one,” each said with her as she took their hands.
Afterward Gahíd gave them each a flute of snowcane.
“You must remember, a decree is a sacred thing,” he said. “Not to be spoken of. Not even among yourselves. You must realize everything is different now. Everything. It is important you understand this… Some, they leave this place and fail to understand what it is to be a Brother of the Shedaím and no longer a disciple. They discover themselves in strange lands amongst strange people and close their eyes, hoping to hear the counsel of their tutors telling them what to do, where to turn. But they hear nothing, only the beating of their own heart, the sound of their own breath. And so they fear… But fear can have no place with you or me. Fear is a wicked and deceitful fiend, a taleteller, his whisper as rot that weakens the bones.”
“Gahíd speaks truth you will do well to heed,” Tarrick said. “Especially where you are to be sent.” He nodded at the flutes in their hands. “Your decrees belong to one mission. They are to be fulfilled together, in the city of Dumea: to the south on the Stone Road to the Summerlands of Súnam. It is rare Brothers are sent as one this way, but events have required it. You will go to the city and see that these decrees are fulfilled, each on the same day… Read them now, and then pass them over the flame.”
The disciples opened the flutes.
“Remember,” the blind elder said as Neythan tapped the rolled parchment free from his flute. “A decree is a sacred thing.”
Neythan nodded and opened the roll. He read the instructions carefully, then lingered over the words that footed the page:
…The blood of Bilyana daughter of Yoaz of the house Hophir, wife to Tobiath son of Abner, chief scribe of Dumea. To be fulfilled on the new moon by sovereign decree.
Neythan stared at the page the way he’d been taught, imagining a face and life for the name decreed: Bilyana daughter of Yoaz. He exhaled slowly and held out the parchment to the lamp to light the roll. Then he watched as the page coiled, blackened and shrivelled in the flame before gliding slowly to the ground in ashes.
The next day they all stood at the edge of the village, watching Josef and Daneel ready their provisions for the journey. They were to leave in separate groups – the twins in the morning; Neythan, Yannick and Arianna at noon – the better to dissuade attention. Two or three journeying together would be companions, five a mob. The two groups would take separate roads and come together again once they had arrived at Dumea.
“Almost doesn’t seem real, does it,” Arianna said as she handed Daneel his quiver, gazing at the village behind them.
“What doesn’t?” Josef said.
“That we’re finally leaving.”
“Finally, yes,” Daneel said.
“What do you think it will be like?” Neythan said. “Out there, by ourselves, without the tutors? What do you think we will see?”
“Cities,” Daneel said as he checked his blade. “Markets. Palaces. Towers. Perhaps even the sea. I would like to see the sea.”
“It’s not like you’ll have a say,” Josef said. “Today I go to Tirash. Tomorrow, Qareb.”
“I might,” Daneel said. “The Brother I shadowed said you can go months without a decree. Plenty of time to roam. See things.”
“What do you intend to see, Josef?” Neythan said.
Josef shrugged. “When I was a boy, I wanted to see where Yulaan’s honey was kept. Then I did, and soon tired of its taste.”
“What about you?” Arianna said. Neythan turned to find her regarding him coolly. “What do you look forward to seeing?”
Neythan thought about it. “I don’t know.” He turned to the other disciples, these adopted siblings, the family who’d come to replace the one he’d lost as a child. “It will be enough to return here,” Neythan said. “A year from now, and see all of you again, alive and well.”
“Well, I certainly will be,” Daneel said as he finished packing. “With talk as wet as that, I can’t vouch that you shall.”
He smiled as they took one another’s arm and embraced. The others did the same, hugging as they said their farewells. And then Josef and Daneel were traipsing down the footpath, away from Ilysia, into the thick woodland of the mount and down to the stables waiting near its base.
Neythan, Yannick and Arianna followed suit a few hours later. The next day they were on horseback, loping along a low-hilled plain with Ilysia’s mountain receding behind them.
“We should come to some villages by nightfall of tomorrow,” Arianna said, tossing the words over her shoulder as she rode on ahead. “Tutor Hamir has said there are many beyond the grasslands.”
Neythan nodded, then glanced at Yannick riding beside him. “No. She says by nightfall of tomorrow.”
“What?” Arianna turned in her saddle to find Yannick signing and gesturing with his hands. “Oh. What’s he saying now?”
“You can see for yourself,” Neythan said.
“I don’t understand him as you do, you know that.”
“Only because you won’t learn.”
“No. Because he won’t speak.”
“He can’t.”
“He can’t hear, but he’s a tongue and mouth like the rest of us. If he won’t learn to speak why should I learn his signs?”
Yannick glanced at her and slapped an open knuckle against his palm and flicked his fingers.
“And what does that mean?”
But Neythan just laughed.
“Tell me what he said.”
And now Yannick was smiling too.
“Tell me.”
Neither did.
They came to a village in the Calapaari foothills the following evening. The people called the place Godswell because of the cistern by the small temple ruin on the road in. The rest of the settlement was fairly plain – clay houses, the odd stone one, all scattered like tossed pebbles either side of the road. Along the slope behind, goats watched in silence as they passed. The only building of note was the inn. They went up the narrow rubbly street toward it, flanked by sheds and outhouses. A small old woman with a face like a prune scowled at them as she carried firewood into a nearby barn.
Neythan pushed open the stiff, chewed-looking door to the inn. Inside the space was dark and cramped. Small round tables littered the room, streaked by the sticky shine of dried wine. The smell of sweat and goat dung hung in the air. A handful of men sat hunched over mugs of sourwine. A few lamps were placed in the corners of the room, their dim lights mingling with the waning day through the windows at the back where a pair of guardsmen sat – tribute collectors, most likely. Probably journeying west to the coasts of Calapaar, collecting the sharíf’s due from the port cities along the shores of the Summer Sea.
“Good day,” the innkeeper offered as Neythan approached the bar.
“We’ll be wanting a room for the night,” Neythan said.
The innkeeper’s eyes shuffled from Neythan to Arianna to Yannick, then, after lingering a moment with Arianna, back to Neythan again. “Yes,” he said, having measured the quality of their custom. “Though we’
ve not any too big.”
“Whatever you have will be fine,” Neythan said.
“Ah, a simple man. It is my custom always to regard well a simple man. He says what he wants. I give what he says. He is happy. I am happy.” He smiled.
Neythan didn’t smile back.
“My name is Zubin,” the man said. “Follow me.”
He took them to a stone outhouse near where they’d tied the horses. The ceiling was low; only Yannick didn’t have to bow to enter. There was a chair in one corner and a thick narrow bedmat in the other. Arianna looked the room over, then gave Zubin a silver coin. He grinned and bowed as he left.
“‘Whatever you have will be fine’?” Arianna said.
“It’s not so bad,” Neythan said. “It is dry at least.”
Yannick sat in the chair, put down his bag and patted his chest with a nod.
“I suppose that leaves us the bed then,” Neythan said.
Arianna sighed and dumped her sack by the mattress.
That night Neythan fell asleep quickly, wondering, as he drifted off, whether he too would see the port cities of Tresán and Caphás on the Summer Sea coast, or perhaps he’d even be summoned south, to the coasts of Eram, the land of his birth.
He’d slept no more than a couple of hours before he was awakened by a familiar and squalid smell. His eyes snapped open. The room was silent and black. He fumbled tentatively for Arianna on the other side of the bedmat. The bed was empty. Something moist and sticky lay in her place. Neythan’s gut turned cold. He groped about. More of it.
