Vironesh relaxed a measure. “It is not only justice the coursers pursue,” he said. “There is a prophecy that when the children of Miasmus sow darkness in the world, the coursers of Obid will stem the tide.”
My pulse quickened. “The children of Miasmus?”
Vironesh inclined his head. “So they say.”
“But what of the prophecy of the Sun-Blessed?” I asked in confusion. “Surely you know—”
“Yes, Khai.” He cut me off. “Believe me when I say I am well aware of it. Understand…” He paused in search of the right words, a complex look of sympathy in his eyes. “Zarkhoum is only one realm. There are a great many pieces of prophecy beneath the starless sky, and no one knows exactly how they fit together. There are some who call it the Scattered Prophecy, for it is broken into a multitude of pieces, and no one can see the whole of it.”
“That’s for damn sure,” Brother Yarit muttered into his tea.
Many prophecies.
It was a staggering thought, something I had never considered. Of course, I knew that Zarkhoum was not the center of the world. Brother Ehudan had taught me in my studies that that was the Nexus, the central point around which the lesser currents and counter-currents swirled. Indeed, according to Vironesh, the Nexus was a place of great consternation to the coursers of Obid, for it was surrounded by a vast archipelago of scattered islands that provided shelter and safe harbor to pirates, rife with backwaters and counter-currents. At the innermost heart of the place, a many-limbed god known as the Oracle of the Nexus held aegis and offered sage advice to those pilgrims who came seeking it. The Nexus was one of the few places where the efforts of the coursers were rendered nigh futile.
But Zarkhoum was the center of my world.
Zarkhoum the easternmost; Zarkhoum that lay beneath the aegis of Anamuht the Purging Fire and Pahrkun the Scouring Wind, the Sacred Twins, the children of heaven best beloved of Zar the Sun.
It was difficult for me to think that the wheel of fate might not revolve around Zarkhoum.
So it was that my notion of the world grew more vast even as my skills became more refined. There were weeks on end where it seemed to me that I did nothing but eat, sleep, and breathe Pahrkun’s wind, until channeling it became almost instinctive. I no longer fought individual sparring matches with the other brothers. In consultation with Brother Merik, Vironesh staged matches for me with multiple opponents; at first two, then three. This I found exhilarating, for there was genuine danger in it and I could feel Pahrkun’s wind vibrating in the marrow of my bones as I whirled like the spinning devil itself, parrying blows and seeing things they did not, my tines and blade flashing into the spaces between, the chinks in my opponents’ attacks.
It did not endear me to my brethren.
Despite Vironesh’s counsel, they envied me, or at least the younger ones did. It was different for the senior brothers, who had known me since I was a babe—training me to be a warrior had been their sole purpose for a long time. But for those such as Brother Hakan, who had come to the Fortress of the Winds when I was already a boy, it was galling.
At first it galled me in turn, for I would have traded places with any one of them if it meant I were not bhazim. But as time passed, I grew less sure. It was the dearest wish of my heart, and yet I could not imagine relinquishing the ability.
If Pahrkun himself appeared to me and offered to make me a boy in exchange for his gift … what would I say?
And what if that very choice was the Trial of Pahrkun I would one day undergo? It was a thought that haunted me until at last I dared to ask Vironesh about it. He fixed me with an incredulous stare. “Whatever gave you that idea?”
“Nothing,” I said. “It just came to me. I know you cannot speak of what the trial is, but…” I considered how to phrase my question. “If this is something that it isn’t, can you tell me?”
Vironesh eyed me. “Have I not told you that the code of Obid the Stern holds that men and women are equal in merit and should be gauged according to their skills?”
I looked down at my bare, dusty feet. “Yes, brother.”
“Have I not told you of the valiant women who fight and sail among the coursers?” he asked.
“You have,” I admitted.
“And yet you persist in this disdain,” Vironesh observed. “How do you suppose that will make the princess feel?”
Stung by indignation, I raised my head. “That is unfair!”
“Is it?” he asked.
Emotions to which I could not give voice roiled within me and I looked away, unwanted tears pricking my eyes. Vironesh knew many things, but he did not know what it was like to discover he’d been lied to for his entire life, to discover that he was the opposite of what he’d believed himself to be. “May I be excused from training this afternoon?”
“Very well,” he said.
I was halfway across the Dancing Bowl when he called me back.
“Khai?”
I turned.
Sunlight glittered on the unnatural slanting scars beneath his eyes. “No,” he said. “That is not the nature of the trial.”
SEVENTEEN
I turned fifteen years of age.
In a year’s time, on the event of our shared day of birth, I would be presented to Princess Zariya; assuming I succeeded in passing my own personal Trial of Pahrkun.
During the course of that year, I thought about what Vironesh had said to me.
Disdain.
It was a harsh word, and yet he was not wholly wrong. If I disdained what I was, how could I respect it in another? Because it was a question I could not answer, I set it aside.
In the summer of that year, Brother Yarit grew impatient with the restlessness of the younger brothers and took to the heights to spend a vigil in contemplation of the matter. He was not gone three full days like Brother Saan, but a single day and night in the full heat of the desert in midsummer was enough to make me nervous for him. Nonetheless, he returned safely, his eyes wide and blurred with the Sight.
“I have made a decision,” he announced after gathering the brotherhood in the Dancing Bowl. “We will hold a lottery.” A low murmur of confusion ran through those assembled. Brother Yarit gestured toward an empty urn and a pile of potsherds. “Any man among you who wishes to be released from your vow, come forward and scratch your name on a shard. I will draw ten names from the urn. At the gathering of the clans, you will return to your kin and your tribes will choose replacements to send to the Fortress of the Winds in your stead.”
“Elder Brother, there is no precedent for this!” Brother Merik said in dismay. “Will you allow them to dishonor Pahrkun’s service?”
With the Sight upon him, Brother Yarit was impervious to protest. “There is no honor in service given unwillingly,” he said. “Others will prove eager to come.” He beckoned. “Well?”
The young rebels hemmed and hawed, reluctant now that their bluff had been called, but at length Brother Hakan strode from their midst. He wrote his name on a shard with the point of his dagger, then dropped it in the urn and saluted Brother Yarit. “Forgive me, Elder Brother,” he said respectfully. “I have no wish to dishonor the brotherhood, but I am twenty-three years of age and not yet a blooded warrior. I see no purpose in my presence here save to serve as one of Khai’s training dummies.”
“It may be that that is purpose enough,” Brother Yarit observed. “But it may also be that Pahrkun has another purpose in mind for you. Who’s next?”
A few more came forward, but many of the most vocal complainers hung back.
“There’s no trick here,” Brother Yarit said irritably. “If I draw your name, you’re free to go home to fight and fuck and herd camels to your heart’s content. I just spent a day and a night baking on a mountaintop, waiting for the Sight to show me how to make you whiny little bastards happy in accordance with Pahrkun’s will. This is it, so come write down your damned names.”
Brother Ramil raised a hand in inquiry. “Elder Brother?”
&nbs
p; “What?”
“I cannot write,” he said simply, and a number of others echoed their agreement.
“Huh.” This, the Seer had not expected. “How many of you?” A dozen hands went up. He tilted his head and contemplated them. “All right. Any who choose to stay will be taught to read and write. There will be another lottery in … ah … three years’ time.”
Brother Merik looked aghast. “You would turn the Fortress of the Winds into an academy of letters?”
Brother Yarit shrugged. “Why not? There aren’t enough supplicants to satisfy their bloodthirsty hearts during peacetime.” He looked at Brother Ehudan. “Are you willing to take on new students?”
“I am.” The most senior member of the brotherhood sounded almost surprised at his own answer. “Khai has learned as much as I have to teach him. I would welcome it.”
“Then it’s decided,” Brother Yarit said. “Right now, those of you who can write assist those who cannot.”
When all was said and done, there were exactly ten names placed into the urn. Brother Yarit drew out each shard and read the name aloud.
The chosen brothers exchanged uneasy glances, no longer certain that they’d done the right thing.
Brother Yarit dusted his hands in satisfaction. “Well, that’s that, then.”
Needless to say, it changed the tenor of life in the Fortress of the Winds, but after the initial awkwardness had passed, even Brother Merik had to agree that it was for the better. Those of the younger brothers who had chosen to stay found a new purpose and challenge in Brother Ehudan’s lessons; those who had chosen to leave no longer had cause for complaint.
As for me, I spent more and more time in the company of Vironesh, and if our relationship grew no warmer, we developed a certain wordless accord born of long training and the silent brotherhood of Pahrkun’s wind.
We sparred in the Dancing Bowl.
We sparred on mountaintops.
We sparred with weapons that were unfamiliar to me, spears and shields, and with things that were not weapons at all, torches and platters and urns, so that I might come to understand in my flesh and bones that anything, anything at all, might become a weapon at need.
We sparred empty-handed.
And then summer gave way to autumn and the gathering of the clans was upon us. Brother Yarit decreed that a farewell feast would be held, assuring those who were leaving that there was no ill will between us. The defectors toasted his generosity and wisdom, promising to sing the praises of the Brotherhood of Pahrkun. The following morning they left, escorted by Brother Merik, and the Fortress of the Winds felt undermanned in their absence. But in two weeks’ time replacements arrived, eager young tribesmen drawn by the promise of literacy as well as the honor of serving Pahrkun—and, too, by tales of Vironesh the purple man, the great living shadow, and his student, Khai, who was learning to channel Pahrkun’s wind.
Although the new brothers were older than me—the youngest was seventeen—it didn’t feel that way. Having known only tents and a nomad’s lifestyle, they marveled at the vast caverns and passageways that honeycombed the fortress.
They marveled at Vironesh.
And they marveled at me, for none of them knew me as the little brother who had grown up training alongside them. Brother Hakan had given me my first real sparring match and my first scar to remember it by; any of the new brothers could reckon himself lucky to land a blow against me.
I suppose it was nice to be respected, but it was isolating, too. The gap between us would never be bridged; and in less time than seemed possible, it would grow even wider.
When Shahal the Dark Moon first swelled to fullness come the spring rains, the trial would take place.
As to the nature of the trial, I knew little more than what Brother Saan had told me many years ago. I was to venture into the deep desert and seek to encounter Pahrkun face-to-face so that the Scouring Wind might determine whether my pledge was worthy of being fulfilled. Oh, there was more to it, of that I was sure; but what, I didn’t know. I toyed with the notion that I would be required to defeat Vironesh in single combat, thus demonstrating that I had surpassed my mentor; but no, that made no sense. There had been no living shadow to train Vironesh or those who had come before him.
Still, there must be a test of some manner, else why call it a trial? What was to be tested? My courage? My honor? My loyalty?
And what would become of me if I failed?
Sometimes when I could find no respite from my own thoughts, I would take to the heights and sit beside Brother Saan’s bier in contemplation. Although he had been desert-born, it had been his wish that his bones remain at the Fortress of the Winds, for he deemed the brotherhood his true clan.
In the years since Brother Saan’s death, his flesh had remained undisturbed by Pahrkun’s scavengers, but it had withered and hardened onto his bones. Even so, there was something peaceful about his presence, and I took comfort in it.
That winter, Brother Yarit spent a number of evenings interviewing me about Vironesh’s training, taking copious notes as I described what it was like to channel Pahrkun’s wind and learn to see the spaces between things, the various methods Vironesh had used to coax forth my ability, and how and why I thought they may have proved effective.
“I don’t think this is the sort of thing that can be learned from a scroll, Elder Brother,” I said one evening, watching him write in his scrawling hand. “I’m not sure what good it will do.”
“Neither am I,” he said without looking up. “But there should at least be a record, don’t you think?” He dipped his quill and finished a sentence. “It never occurred to me that the brotherhood probably had so few written records because so many of our past Seers couldn’t read or write.”
“Brother Saan could,” I said.
“Yes, and his notes have been helpful to me,” Brother Yarit said. “But Brother Saan never had the chance to observe one living shadow passing on a lifetime’s worth of accumulated wisdom to another, and I’d prefer that knowledge not be lost.” He stoppered his inkwell. “It may prove useful to another Seer in the future.”
“Have you Seen it?” I asked.
He gave me a wry, crooked smile. “No, I’m just playing the odds, kid.”
I sighed. “I should have guessed.”
Brother Yarit studied me, his gaze shrewd. “Are you all right, Khai? Everything well with you?”
“Fine, Elder Brother.” The urge to finger the back of my neck surfaced and I resisted it. “I’m lonely,” I admitted. “And I’m scared.”
“I’ll grant you lonely,” he said. “Under the circumstances, lonely is understandable. Why scared? It’s unlike you.”
“The trial,” I murmured. “I just wish I knew what to expect.”
“I’d tell you more if I could, kid.” There was sympathy in Brother Yarit’s tone, but no yielding. “But I can’t.”
“Because it would tip the balance of what might come to pass?” I asked him. “Or just because tradition forbids it?”
He raised his eyebrows at me. “When have you ever known me to be a slave to tradition? But as it happens, it’s both.”
“Fair enough.” I took a deep breath. “Maybe you can tell me this, Elder Brother. What happens if I fail? If Pahrkun finds me unworthy? No one’s ever spoken of the possibility. Where would I go? What would I do? The Fortress of the Winds is the only home I’ve ever known, but there wouldn’t be any point in staying. Brother Jawal’s clan named me honorary kin. Should I throw myself on their mercy and ask them to take me in? Or should I run off with Vironesh to join the coursers of Obid?” I gave a humorless laugh. “I can’t fathom leaving Zarkhoum, but the way he speaks of them—” It struck me that Brother Yarit was gazing at me with grave compassion, and I realized what I should have known all along.
If I failed the Trial of Pahrkun, I would die, just like any ordinary supplicant in the Hall of Proving.
“Oh.” My voice sounded small to my own ears. “That … that
isn’t something I need to worry about, is it?”
“I didn’t think you needed to know until the time was nigh,” Brother Yarit said quietly. “That was my judgment. If I erred, I beg your forgiveness.”
“No.” I shook my head. “No, I understand.” Rising, I saluted him. “Thank you, Elder Brother.”
“Are you angry?” he asked me with rare uncertainty. “I’m sorry, Khai. I was just trying to protect you as long as I could.”
It was a sincere question, and I realized that my answer mattered to him. Gazing at Brother Yarit, I saw the spaces between that existed in him; the space between his unwanted destiny and the life he’d been forced to leave behind; the space between the Sight and his instinctive cunning; the space between his brusque manner and the well-guarded tenderness of his heart.
I saw that he had done the best he could in the spaces between those things, and that he had come to love me there.
And I could not help but love him for it.
“No, Elder Brother,” I said to him. “No, I am not angry.”
EIGHTEEN
My trial was to take place in the Mirror of Heaven.
It was a desolate place a day’s ride east of the mountains that housed the Fortress of the Winds; a flat, empty expanse of plain that glittered with flakes of salt and mica under the hot sun.
Not even the spring rains could coax a single plant to blossom in the Mirror. Animals avoided it.
I might die there.
We made camp in the shadow of an unfamiliar peak, Brother Yarit, Brother Merik, Vironesh, and me. There was no watering hole and the skies were clear, so we were forced to rely on what we carried or could harvest from the morning dew, but there was enough scrubby gorse for two or three days’ worth of grazing.
At dawn, I would walk into the desert on foot. I would carry nothing but a full skin of water, my dagger, and the hawk’s feather I had caught so long ago. I would walk due east across the Mirror until Zar the Sun had vanished over the western horizon. Then while Shahal the Dark Moon rose full and red, I would wait.
That much I knew. After that … nothing.
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