by Micah Yongo
“Arianna. Yannick?” he whispered loudly, but they didn’t answer.
He sat up, rolled from the bedmat and stood. He was about to reach for where they’d stowed the lamp when the door burst open. The room flooded with light. Two men stood in the doorway holding torches, the tribute collectors from earlier. Behind them stood Zubin, wild-eyed and shouting.
“That’s him! That’s the one! Murderer!”
Neythan turned, squinting, to look at the space where moments ago he’d been soundly asleep. A dark puddle of blood stained the bedmat beside where he’d slept. In the corner Yannick lay slumped on the chair, his head hanging back, his lips ajar and his throat open, gaping wet deep red. Blood was everywhere. Splattered against the wall, pooling by the foot of the chair and mingled with urine. There was another streak of blood on the floor between the chair and bedmat. Arianna was gone.
Neythan’s mind lurched. A heavy calloused hand gripped his shoulder.
“You’ll be coming with us, boy.”
Neythan slackened instinctively, letting his shoulder give as the man’s hand pressed to grasp it. He spun violently back and pushed his shoulder free, grabbed a wrist and twisted, turning the elbow before thrusting his open palm against the upturned joint.
The man screamed as his arm snapped. Zubin froze, slack-jawed by the door, as Neythan shoved the man aside.
The other one came rushing in. Neythan ducked and jabbed his throat, watched him choke and gag, then grabbed his head and shoved it against the wall to make sure. Zubin now stood alone in the doorway, mouth open.
Neythan took him by the throat, pulled him in, and slammed him against the wall.
“Who sent you?”
Zubin just stared, panting, head wagging frantically side to side.
“Who sent you?” Neythan repeated. “Who killed Yannick?”
Zubin whimpered.
“Who. Killed. Him?”
“She said… you did.”
“She? Who is she?”
“The girl who was with you… light eyes, black hair. Said you’d tried to kill her too.”
“What? Where is she?”
But Neythan heard the answer before Zubin had a chance to speak, the noise of horses beyond the outhouse door. He ran outside and saw Arianna across the yard by the stables, clambering onto her horse in the rain. She stared back at him from beneath the hood of her cowl, held his gaze, then galloped up onto the road, away into the night.
Neythan stared after her, his mind awash, his thoughts groping like flailing limbs. He started back toward Zubin, still frozen at the door. Neythan stepped past him and the other men slumped against the wall and retrieved his sword and crossbow. Then he grabbed some provisions before looking a final time at Yannick’s body hanging off the chair, eyes half-open, splattered in blood.
What had Arianna done? Why?
Neythan saw a window light up from across the street. Others were waking, voices stirring from the innhouse. He took what he had out into the rain and ran for his horse. In the blackness it was hard to see how far Arianna had gone, but in the quiet of the still sleepy village he could hear the hooves of her mare pounding the earth. Neythan swung into the saddle, rode up onto the road and sped off in pursuit.
Four
R O G U E
It took Neythan nearly a week but he managed to track Arianna to a ravine deep in the forests. He’d lost track of her a few days after the inn when she’d crossed a bridge over a brook ahead of him and then hacked away its bindings, letting the wooden planks disassemble into the rushing water beneath. He’d tracked along the embankment for close to half a mile before finally finding a place narrow and shallow enough to cross. It was only by the remembered teachings of Tutor Hamir that he managed to find her trail again.
Hamir, a man Neythan never thought he’d be grateful for. The tutor was Haránite, from Hikramesh to be exact, a city thirty miles inland from the South Sea Gulf, built amid the arid dust of the Low Eastern foothills back when the first crop farmers were still learning to reap their yields. Back then the worth of any dwelling place could be weighed by its closeness to water – a river, a coastline. But Hikramesh was built in a desert. Hamir liked to say the complex network of wells, irrigation channels and canals that coursed along the streets of his home city was exactly the kind of innovation only a Haránite could have come up with – a diligent and inventive people, given to curiosity. Which, Neythan thought, was the kind of thing only a Haránite would say. But perhaps Hamir was right. It was certainly one way of looking at it. The other was that Haránites – judging by Neythan’s experiences with the tutor and Yulaan – were clever, yes, but also habitually busy and meddlesome, albeit in a more or less well-meaning way. Most of the time.
Perhaps it was because of this Neythan had learned to forgive Hamir for how he’d tell him and the other disciples to “think more like a Haránite” when they were children, and then have them spend weeks in the forests lower down the mount of Ilysia, leaving them to survive by their own means in order to teach them the skill.
“To hunt well, a man must know the country,” Hamir would say. “He must be filled by it, breathe it, until every bough of a tree, every stone and blade of grass becomes a part of him, part of his soul, his sha. It’s only then, when you know what ought to be, that you’ll feel when something’s wrong. And that’s the secret… feeling. Only by feeling will you be able to see what isn’t there as much as what is. The absence of a thing is as telling as the presence of another.”
Like the absence of naturally arranged branches on the low boughs of a cedar Neythan found three mornings ago – branches Arianna had likely stripped as fodder and bedding for herself and her horse. Or the absence of disorder in the undergrowth of a clearing Neythan happened upon the day after – somehow too neat, too contrived, as if to distract from what had been a night’s resting place. Then there was the absence of bark on a sycamore tree Neythan had spotted only yesterday – bark that had been removed by some recent passerby to access the nourishing sap beneath. Hamir always said they’d one day thank him for what he’d made them endure. Neythan had never expected that day would come so soon.
He let the memory fade, allowed another thought to rise in its place – Yannick, throat open and bloody, head hanging back on the chair with mouth agape and eyes staring.
Arianna had murdered their friend, a fellow Brother, breaking the first law of the Shedaím and transgressing the blood covenant she’d sworn only the night before. Neythan still couldn’t make sense of it. That Arianna could have done what she did. That Yannick was now no more. That Neythan himself had been spared. Sorrow. Grief. Guilt. Each had taken their turn but more than these and overwhelming them all was the simple, inescapable question. Why? Neythan searched his memories, seeking clues to which he’d been blind, anything that would begin to make sense of what Arianna had done. Why she had done it. And why she had spared him. For spare him she had. He was sure of that much. She could have easily killed him, just as she had Yannick. In fact, Neythan was sure she’d taken deliberate steps to avoid doing just that, keeping him asleep. There were ways after all – incense, powders, certain elixirs. And what else could explain how he’d slept through his friend’s murder? And if that was true, it meant she’d planned it this way. She’d chosen to slay Yannick. Which meant this was not some act born of whim or fear or anger. It was planned. Determined. It was her design to kill Yannick, and not him. A decision she’d made. But to what end? Why?
Only you have the answers, Ari.
Neythan peered through the rain, lying belly down in the undergrowth. He could feel the chilly downpour seeping into his spine and neck as he stared down into the ravine at Arianna.
The ravine was deep. A thin river flowed along its crag. A waterfall tipped in from the rocks above. By its foot Arianna sat on her horse, staring through the curtain of water as Neythan sighted her with the crossbow. It would be hard to be accurate from this distance but at least the downpour would slow the arrow, w
eighting its flight. He wanted only to wound her. Then talk to her. And then maybe kill her.
He watched her climb down from her horse. Then watched her move to the edge of the river and lean over, gazing at the waterfall. What are you doing, Ari? But as he lifted his gaze from the sights to try to get a better look, she ran forward and leapt through the waterfall, vanishing into the wet rushing drape.
Neythan blinked. “Gods…”
For a moment, he remained still, waiting to see if she’d come out again. When she didn’t, he rose to his feet and glanced about for a way down the ridge. He went along the clifftop and eventually found a tree rooted in the wall of the ravine. He took hold of the trunk and deftly lowered himself onto a foothold below.
It took half an hour for him to finally reach the bottom. Every foothold was slick from the rain and he had to keep stopping to make sure Arianna hadn’t re-emerged. When he reached the ground he stood and watched the waterfall again. From here the crash of water was even louder than the rain. He could barely hear his own steps crunching on the loose flint and shale.
He walked slowly beside the river toward the fall and stepped up onto the broad stony ridge that banked it. Arianna’s horse stood on the other side, ears twitching to the noise of the downpour. There was something behind the waterfall. Something bright or shiny, like brass, or some sort of jewel, shining out from the torrent as though caught in the sun. But there was no sun.
Neythan pulled his crossbow from his back and loaded the cord. He waited again, watching. Then went forward with the bow held low. He’d barely slept in three days. Possibly his eyes were playing tricks. More likely Arianna was. Some sort of trap. He moved closer. Carefully. Slowly. He was feet away when he saw the shadow moving over the fall, refracted by the rush of the water. He stared for a moment, trying to make sense of it, and then realized it wasn’t a shadow at all. It was a reflection, of something behind him, in the sky, heading his way.
Neythan dived as the long shaft of a spear went flying past his shoulder and smashed into the rock behind him. He rolled, wheeled around with his crossbow.
No one. Nothing.
He heard the hollow sigh of something else fast approaching and dived again as an arrow whistled past and thudded against an oak. He scrambled into a crouch by a tree, saw movement in the woodland opposite, and took off sprinting toward it. He skidded to a stop as he neared the river, aimed and fired two arrows at the half-seen motion on the other side, then dropped his crossbow and continued running.
The river’s water rushed beneath his feet as he leapt across and drew his sword. He could see a hooded figure on the other side now, groping in the mud for whatever had been dropped when they scrambled to avoid Neythan’s volley.
The hooded person looked up and saw Neythan coming, grabbed an arrow and fumbled it to a bow. Neythan yanked his scabbard free and tossed it to gain time. The other ducked as Neythan closed in and swung his sword. Metal clanged in the rain. The hooded figure parried with a shield. Neythan swung from overhead, knocking the figure on their seat as they blocked again.
The impact dislodged the hood.
When the man sat up, Neythan’s sword was poised at his neck.
“Who are you?” Neythan said.
The man was old and small. Smooth pale scars covered his arms, neck and head. Neythan watched as he wiped back long greasy strands of hair from his wind-chafed scalp.
“Now that is quite a thing,” the man said. “A question like that? When you are the trespasser?” He ignored Neythan’s sword and climbed to his feet, wiping mud from his sticky palms and thick shawl. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. That’s the thing with you people, isn’t it. You’re all the same. Enter another’s home and behave like the victim when he decides to defend it.”
“Home? What home?”
“And then add insults, if that wasn’t enough.”
“You’re calling this place home?”
“A home is wherever you make it. I thought they’d have taught you that by now.”
“They? Who’s ‘they?’”
“You know. Them. Your kind. Faceless ones. Shedaím. No discipline these days, any of you. Not like before.”
Neythan stepped in, his blade touching the man’s throat. “What do you know of the Shedaím? How do you know what I am?”
Still wiping mud from his fingers, the man looked up at him. “Not the smartest, are you? Say I’d only guessed. I’d know now by your words.”
“You will tell me how you know.”
“And pushy too. Still, I’m the forgiving kind. So how about this? You tell me of your home, I shall tell you of mine, and how I know what you are.”
Neythan didn’t answer, blade still poised.
“Oh, come now. Me, I’ll not be bothered by a little rain but I can see you would like some rest and shelter, no? Look. You’re shivering. How long have you been out in this?”
“Long enough not to feel it.”
The man laughed. “And would your lady friend say the same…? Yes. That’s right. I saw her go on through the fall there.”
Neythan’s sword prodded the man’s throat.
The man raised his hands. “Be calm, boy. You cannot follow her now anyway,” he said, nodding at the fall. “That way is closed.”
Neythan glanced back at the water and was about to ask what the man meant when he felt a sharp prick in the side of his neck. The sting quickly turned numb, then the numbness spread, over his shoulders, then his arms. Finally, Neythan dropped to his knees. When he looked up, the old man was standing over him, smiling, and then he was gone, along with everything else, blurry, then black.
Five
O A T H
“Neythan. What are you doing?”
Neythan didn’t think anyone knew this place. He’d spent the last three weeks, after he made the decision, trying to find the spot that would be just right. A quiet place. Where he’d be left alone, allowed his silence, somewhere still. He’d snuck out after the evening gathering, when the day’s training was ended and the evening meal shared; when they were left to their chambers for the night, that sweet closeted nook where all the voices stopped and the demands and the disciplines and everything else finally ceased.
“What are you doing, Neythan?”
Like sleeping. He’d asked Jaleem about it once, and that’s what he told him, though it could only be supposed. But Neythan liked to think perhaps that’s the way it would be. Like sleeping.
“Put it down, Neythan.”
And the blade seemed so right in his hand. And the night seemed so right, the stars above so clean and bright as if waiting to welcome him.
“Why?”
“You mustn’t.”
“Why not?”
But he knew he couldn’t. Not while Yannick was there, and so he decided to hand the dagger, handle first, to his fellow disciple. But when he turned around Yannick wasn’t there. A woman stood in his place. Her eyes were golden, glowing. She began to reach toward him, calling his name.
“Neythan.”
Neythan woke up.
It was dark. The air was chilly. Overhead leaned craggy angles of rock, sharp-edged and glossy. The dream lingered in Neythan’s thoughts as he stared up at them. Strange to have dreamt about that night. Nearly three years ago now. But then again perhaps not so strange. It was Yannick who’d found him after all, and if he hadn’t…
It was the first time he’d heard Yannick speak – his voice slightly mangled, the syllables blunted around the edges but apart from that surprisingly good. Not that anyone else would ever know. No matter how much Neythan tried to assure him, Yannick still refused to try his words with others, even Master Johann. Neythan thought about that often: how seeing him that night, alone with the blade, one year on since Uncle Sol’s exile from the Brotherhood, had been the only thing to push Yannick beyond his fear and make him speak. But the woman in the dream. Who was she?
Neythan tried to rise but he couldn’t. His head felt heavy and strange,
as though filled with water.
He was lying on a raised flatbed of stone. To his left, a stool stood against the wall. In the corner there was a pot of incense, likely the reason for his sluggishness.
“You’re awake.”
Neythan craned his neck to see. The small man from the ravine came in carrying a lamp. In the light from the flame he looked even stranger than before. His head was tall and scabby. His jaw was narrow and misshapen. Pouches of crinkly skin hung about his neck like a turkey’s wattle.
He sat down opposite the broad stone slab where Neythan lay and put the lamp on the ground beside him. He regarded Neythan silently, his eyes moving over his body like a merchant eyeing merchandise. After a while, satisfied, bored, or both, the man sighed and then folded one leg over the other, resting its weight on the other’s thigh like some king’s courtier.
“I know what you’re thinking,” the man said, head tilting to one side. “How did this happen, hmm? Why am I here? Who is this strange little tyrant sat before me?”
A wineskin of blond goat hide appeared in the man’s hand. He looked at Neythan again, as if weighing a decision, then loosened the cap of the skin and swigged.
“Yes, I’m sure one like you, with your… breeding, your learned distaste for acquiescence, would have many questions, yes? You will be unlike most and so you must forgive me if I savour somewhat your being here. It’s not often I happen upon prey so rare.”
“I am not prey.”
“Ah, but you are, young one, you are. Come. See around you. You are captured prey. A man mustn’t be too proud to accept what he is.”
Neythan looked around, his eyes adjusting to the gloom. Fronds of light and shadow shimmied along the wall like watery ghosts. Perhaps there was an underground pond nearby. “What is this place?”
The man took another mouthful from the wineskin. “My home, as promised in the ravine. A man of my word, you see. And, as I told you, dry. Though I admit, perhaps not so warm. But,” he shrugged, “one can’t have everything.”
