by J. S. Bangs
“I have him,” a voice shouted. “I have him!” It was Taleg. Praise to Ulaur in the heavens and the earth. Her run thrust her out of the alleys and into the thoroughfare, where a dazed Navran lay sprawled on all fours with Taleg crouched next to him.
“Follow us!” she shouted. “Don’t go running off—”
“You don’t understand,” Navran said. He glanced up the street, then cried out and hid his face in the ground.
The guards were approaching. One of them was holding Sekhan at knife-point, but at the sight of Navran the leader shouted and pointed, and all four of them charged forward.
“Your knife!” Taleg shouted. Mandhi threw it to his feet, and Taleg scooped it up. He changed towards the soldiers, swinging his arms like tree trunks.
The captain swung his sword, but Taleg stepped aside and reached over the man’s thrust, his arm as long and thick as the captain’s leg. The tip of Taleg’s knife tore through the captain’s bicep. He fell screaming to the ground. Taleg grabbed the man’s sword off the ground and ran forward roaring. One of his hands gripped the bloody knife and the other waved the sword.
“Who else wants to get close?” he bellowed. The other soldiers fell back and raised their spears.
Sekhan emerged from a side alley and skidded to the ground next to Mandhi. He was wet with sweat but appeared unharmed. “They let me go,” he said. “Is this him?”
“Take him,” Mandhi said. “Don’t let him out of your sight.”
Navran still lay on the ground, covering his head with his hands. Sekhan seized his hands and pulled him to his feet.
“No,” Navran said, tears running down his face. He tried to shake loose of Sekhan’s grip.
“Shut up,” Mandhi said. “Follow Sekhan and don’t ask questions.” Navran stumbled as Sekhan pulled his hands, and they disappeared into the darkness of the alleys beyond.
Taleg stood in the middle of the street, his arms spread wide, slowly retreating one pace at a time. The spear-armed soldiers stood in a tight formation, their timid attempts to slip by him beaten back by swats of Taleg’s blades.
“Navran’s gone,” Mandhi shouted. “Let’s go.”
Taleg glanced over his shoulder for a moment. His face was locked in a grimace. “Well,” he said to the soldiers. “You gentlemen want to let me and my wife go, or are we gonna stand here playing poke and parry all night?”
A gurgle of cursing sounded from the injured captain on the ground. In the darkness he was just visible as a shifting silhouette a pace behind Taleg. “Kill him,” he said. “Go for the prisoner.”
“I’d rather you didn’t,” Taleg said. He stepped backwards.
“Look out—” Mandhi said. It was too late.
Taleg stepped onto the captain’s prone body. The captain howled in pain, and Taleg tripped. His balance faltered. A spear shot forward. Taleg screamed.
Her gut folded in on itself, and her vision shrank.
The soldiers were rushing past. The captain on the ground swore and shouted, “Leave him. Go after the prisoner.” Someone lifted the captain to his feet, shoved the other body in the street aside, and ran in the vague direction that Navran and Sekhan had fled.
They ignored her. The other body in the street didn’t move. Taleg didn’t move.
She crawled forward in the dirt to her husband. He had collapsed onto his side, his head lying at a crooked angle against his shoulder. The ground beneath him was a puddle of blood. Her hands felt over his chest and belly, looking for the wound, but all she found was hot, blood-soaked cloth. His eyes flickered open.
She put her bloody hand on his cheek. “Taleg! You’re going to be fine. Just like at Old Rajunda.”
He smiled for a moment, but the smile turned instantly into a grimace. He shook his head.
“Why are you shaking your head? I’ll find a doctor. We’re far closer to help than we were last time.” She tore at the fabric of his kurta. There was a gash from his breastbone to his belly button, and blood gushed from it in spurts. She stuffed it with cloth.
With a whimper, he raised his hand and placed it over hers. She felt the patter of his pulse through his palm, feeble and fast. His lips quivered.
“Guess I’m not immune to knives after all,” he said.
She continued stuffing the wound, trying to stop the bleeding. But the blood kept coming, slicking her hands and forearms, soaking instantly through the fabric no matter how much pressure she applied. The street turned black beneath them.
“No, Taleg,” Mandhi said. Her voice began to crack. “You’ll be fine.”
Taleg’s grip grew weak. His breath slowed. With great exertion, he flexed his lips and said, “I love you.”
She stopped her frantic motion. His hand clasped hers one last time then grew limp. His head slowly fell back and rested on the ground.
“Taleg,” she said. “Taleg!”
The shudder of blood from his wound weakened. She bent down and pressed her face against his.
The breath in his nostrils stilled.
She wrapped her arms around his body and sobbed.
Part II: Debtor
11
The sun was on the teeth of the mountain above, and the wind grew cold. The gravel and scree of the path gnawed at Navran’s feet. In an hour or so it would be dark. He had to hurry. With a curse he picked a shard of gravel from his sandal and trudged ahead.
A break in the trees offered a glimpse of Ternas at the foot of the mountain. It already lay in the shade, lamps glittering like flecks of gold on the crevices and pillars of the monastery. For a moment the image of a warm room and a padded bed beckoned him. But would they even let him in? In any case, it was too far to turn back.
Now where was the damned cave? If he didn’t find it quickly he was going to have to sleep outside, and that was going to make him even unhappier.
The path was a filament of trampled grass and scuffed stone that crawled up the side of the mountain. In the dying sunlight he was apt to miss it. The wind howled. He hurried.
A black depression scarred the face of the rock ahead, and he thought he saw a spark of orange flame inside it. “Finally,” he said. He started to jog, bruising his feet on the stony path, until he reached the mouth of the cave. The entrance was low and required him to go on hands and knees, but he was glad to be out of the breeze. From deeper within, the orange light grew and promised heat.
Once beyond the mouth, the cave’s ceiling rose. Navran straightened. The firelight revealed a long, uneven passage with a worn stone floor and soot-blackened ceiling, worming deeper into the heart of the mountain. A small fire of sticks smelling of cedar burned in the middle of the chamber, trickling white smoke into the air and out the narrow hole above. Next to the fire sat a very old man.
His skeletal arms dangled from a ribcage wrapped in shabby brown skin. The man’s legs jutted like sticks from beneath a dirty gray dhoti. A beard dangled off of his face and nearly reached the ground, and his hair was uncombed, blooming behind his ears like a white mane. His face seemed to be constructed of old leather, oiled brown and pitted with scars, but his expression was blank and unreadable. He watched Navran with black bird-like eyes.
A queer, uncanny shiver passed through Navran. He was not used to having someone examine him this closely, with such lack of shame or propriety. And the old man had an air of the holy about him, like the depths of the Ruin in Virnas or the great temple of Am in Majasravi. Navran stood at the entrance of the cave and waited for the man to say something. Nothing happened for an intolerable length of time. Finally Navran cleared his throat and said, “Are you Gocam?”
“I am,” the man said. His voice surprised Navran. It was strong and soft, giving no hint of the man’s frail appearance. “What is your name?”
“Navran.”
“Why are you here?”
“Because Lama Padnir and Mandhi threw me out of Ternas and told me to come to you.”
“You are not a novice thikratta. Lama Padnir sends me novice
thikratta. But why are you here?”
“How do you know I’m not a novice monk?”
He blinked once, as if he couldn’t fathom why Navran asked that question. “You have the mark of the Uluriya on you, and nothing of the thikratta. But do not try to dissemble. Why are you here?”
“Can I sit by the fire? It’s damn cold outside.”
Gocam made a tiny nod towards a place next to him on the stone. Navran took a seat across from Gocam, not too close, but near enough to see the man’s chest rise and fall. Sitting so close to the man made him nervous, but there was no other place to sit.
Gocam studied Navran for a moment then asked again, “Why are you here?”
“We fled Majasravi with the Red Men on our heels and Taleg’s blood still wet in the streets, and Mandhi said that Ternas was the best place for us. The children of the Heir always come to Ternas when their time is near, she said. And her father knows you, or something.”
“That is why Mandhi sent you. You are not Mandhi. Why are you here?”
“Are you going to ask me riddles all night?”
“I’ll keep asking you questions until you give me true answers.”
“These are true answers!” His voice echoed off the walls of the cave, filling the space with a cacophonous roar. He closed his mouth and shrank back from the noise. Silence slowly crept back into the cave.
Gocam did not respond but watched Navran with still black eyes.
“I don’t want to be the Heir of Manjur,” Navran whispered finally. “We traveled for a month attempting to reach this desolate place, and every day I could only think of how little I want to be the Heir. I’ll bring ruin to the Uluriya. Tell me how to avoid it.”
Gocam’s pressed his hands together and leaned forward slightly. “So we finally come close to the truth. You fear being the Heir. But that isn’t all. A shadow entered the cavern with you. Tell me where it came from.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“So quickly you return to telling me lies.” He smiled slightly as he said it.
“Well if you already know, then why the hell am I talking to you?” Navran pushed himself to his feet and stomped to the entrance of the cave. The wind snarled through the low entrance, slashing at his ankles. A few flakes of snow drifted into the light.
“I can see many things, Navran, child of Manjur, but I cannot see everything. And yet, what’s most important is not what I see but what you confess.”
“What am I supposed to confess?”
“How you came to be here, and why.”
“I told you—”
“You told me why Mandhi sent you, and what you fear. You haven’t told me how you came to be here.”
“How? How? I climbed the goat-pissed mountain. How else would I get here?”
“If you wanted to flee Mandhi and the burden of being Heir, you had many chances before you came to Ternas. But you did not flee. And you climbed the long path to my hermitage.”
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“You always have a choice.” Gocam stirred, like bones rustling from a grave, and he stood. He was small and frail, smaller even than Mandhi, and his head seemed too large for his emaciated body. “Your choices right now are to confess and be healed, or to leave.”
“I have nothing to confess.”
Gocam stared at him with a black, unflinching stare.
Navran turned away. “Then I guess I’ll leave.”
He ducked beneath the low stone of the overhang and into the newborn snowstorm. Above him, the last light of the sun was dying in the roil of stone-gray clouds, and the air was choked with whirling flakes. The thin cloak around his shoulders rattled like a leaf. His clothes were meant for the heat of the lowlands, and they were useless against the mountain’s chill. He had to find shelter. No time to go down to the valley, but if he found a sheltered nook somewhere…. He had to start now, before the light faded entirely.
He started back down the path, weaving between frosted cedars. He stumbled once or twice on unseen stones but did not fall. The side of the mountain was exposed to the wind, with hardly a stone big enough to shelter him. He kept going, hoping to reach a fallen tree that might keep him alive through the night. The grim outlines of clouds faded into total darkness.
The path before him was invisible. He crept forward slowly, feeling with his chilled toes, cutting them open against scree and tree stumps, desperate to find any place where the wind was less bitter.
Then he stepped and found no stones, only air. He fell forward and screamed.
His fall was short. He battered his hands and forearms against the edges of stones, rolled some distance down the path, and smashed his face into the icy scales of a pine. There he stopped.
The darkness was absolute. He hadn’t fallen far, but it was far enough. He couldn’t find the path. Snowflakes pricked his face with ice. He tried to rise and got onto his knees, before the pain and the cold knocked him to the earth. He was shivering uncontrollably. Once more, he attempted to stand and made it to his feet, one hand resting against a trunk to keep him upright. One step back up the hill. But the ground was icy and treacherous. He slipped and slid some distance farther. His fingers bled where they had grabbed at stones.
There was no point attempting to rise. He curled into a ball and tucked his fingers into his armpits. He was going to die, freezing to death on the side of the mountain. This was not the worst thing. Mandhi would probably be glad of it. He shivered, and his teeth knocked together like stones in an avalanche. Soon, now.
The blood on his hands started to freeze. Time blurred into a constant shiver. The cold was in his lungs and his bones. Soon his heart would numb, and he would finally be free.
Time passed. He had no way of marking it, and no awareness of its passing except in the gradual loss of feeling in his hands and feet. The sky was only darkness.
A tongue of fire stalked him. Hands too frail to lift him nonetheless picked him up and cradled him like a babe. The cold had frozen his capacity for wonder at his rescue, and he felt only the soft swaying of the man carrying him. He was laid to rest next to a spark of starlight burning in a sheltered darkness.
A voice said, “Sleep.” And he slept.
* * *
A fire burned next to him. A mat of pine branches protected him from the cold stone, and a rough blanket swaddled his shoulders. The skeletal shape of the hermit flickered like a ghost in the firelight.
“You saved me,” Navran said.
Gocam nodded.
“You said I had a choice. What if my choice was to die?”
“You still have that choice. But when you left, you said you were going to leave, not that you were going to fall down the mountain and freeze in the snow. If you still want to die, do it in the day, and go with your eyes open. I won’t stop you again.”
Navran attempted to move his arms. They ached with cold and refused to rise more than an inch. With a groan, he let his arms fall to his chest and closed his eyes.
“You have a large burn scar on your chest,” Gocam said.
Navran pulled the blanket close around him. “How did you see that?”
“When I was putting you by the fire. It’s hard to miss from close up.”
“It’s old. Don’t look at it.”
“When will you start telling me the truth?”
“How do you know I’m lying?” Navran muttered.
“It isn’t hard, child of Manjur. Your spirit is as clear to me as a pool of water.”
Navran touched the scar on his chest. It still burned to the touch, and he jerked his hand away with a groan. The sudden movement provoked his limbs to throb in protest. There was no way he could leave soon. He hissed a curse.
“If you won’t tell me why you came here, will you tell me how you got the scar?” Gocam said.
“Too much to tell.”
Gocam smiled. “Are you in a hurry? I have all the time we need, so long as you tell me the truth.”
<
br /> Navran closed his eyes. Through the needly branches he could feel the cold coming up through the floor of the cave, but the fire warded off the chill. His bones and muscles ached. No, he wasn’t going anywhere. And maybe, perhaps, it would be good to tell someone.
The story came out in fragments and false starts, broken frequently by Navran’s need to rest or give his body reprieve. At first the words were as heavy as stones, weighed down by his unwillingness and shame. But they came, and slowly Navran felt himself unburdened.
12
The vast doors groaned on bronze hinges to admit the Red Men and their prisoner. The maw of the gate arched above Navran like the jaw of a vast beast, and for a long moment the sun hid behind its bulk, and all around was only red stone and red sashes. It was fitting. He had almost forgotten hope on the long march from Jaitha to Majasravi, but passing into the gullet of the imperial garrison he knew true despair.
The Red Men marched him into the drill yard on the other side of the gate, and with quick, barking orders he was passed from his escorts to a new set of guards. They led him across the yard and into what he assumed were the barracks. All of the men around him wore red sashes and humorless expressions, and no one looked at him. Just as well. Any attention was likely to get him a beating. Through the arched windows of the corridors he caught glimpses of an imperial palace adjacent to the fortress: endless colonnades of white marble wrapped with silk banners, little gardens filled with orange trees and palms, a forest of sculpted towers rising from the center, crowned by domes tiled in blue and green.
Their route passed through multiple halls and foyers, all in a rough, martial style, blazoned with red banners, the arches of the windows and doors carved with the emblem of a spear-head. The floor beneath them was rough-hewn granite worn glossy by centuries of feet. They stopped finally at a massive door clad in green copper, with a ram’s skull and horns blazoned on the left and right sides. A man with silver insignia on his breast sat on a cushion with a slate open in front of him.
