The Three Lands Omnibus (2011 Edition) (60 page)

I stood a while in indecision. I was brave, but I would not ordinarily have been foolhardy enough to trespass on the gods' forbidden territory. The figure in the window, though, was a challenge to me, and since I never allowed him to go unprotected into danger, I decided that if the gods were going to strike him down for his deed, they would have to confront me first.
I raced up the mountainside, waiting until the last minute to dodge each tree, simply for the thrill of the danger. Then I stopped at the entrance and cautiously opened the door.
A corridor ran left and right of me, well lit from the summer afternoon sun casting forth its glow through the corridor's windows. Whichever man had restored the entrance door had also taken the trouble to restore the doors to the priests' cells, but several of these were open. As I walked by, I peered in boldly to see what I would find. I was disappointed to discover that the windowless rooms were not much different from those in the present-day priests' house. Oh, small differences existed. A tiny hole was cut in the ceiling of each room, just above a shallow pit for the central fireplace. These cells, I had been told in the past, did not possess the modern hypocausts that Emorian engineers had installed in the priests' house the year before, which had caused half the city pilgrims to cease visiting the house during the installation, lest they be contaminated by contact with our enemy. The only other objects in this cell were a small stone ledge against the wall, which could serve as a table, and a man-sized stone slab on which one could place a pallet. This made the gods' house look luxurious in comparison with the unfurnished cells of the priests' house, lower below on the mountainside.
I had dulled my curiosity concerning the house's appearance – and incidentally sharpened my courage, since this did not seem to be so mysterious a building after all. I swaggered my way down to the left end of the corridor and paused at the open entrance to a large chamber.
This must have been the sanctuary in ancient times, but the altar had long since vanished, and all that was left were warped, wood-lined walls and the windowseat opposite the door. Though not the type of boy who was granted visions from the gods, I could nonetheless imagine vividly the room as it must have looked in the old days: priests in hooded brown robes surrounding the altar where the goat was bound, while over the sacrificial victim was poised a dagger held by the priest who spoke for the god. No – I corrected myself – for I had heard about the fearsome nature of the ancient rites. The priest
was
the god, taking on the god's powers for the length of the ceremony.
Then the vision vanished, and all that I could see was a boy sitting in a windowseat, staring intently at nothing I could see.
John was in his tenth year at this time, two years older than me. Our age difference had caused no breach between us – indeed, I was usually the leader of our expeditions, decreeing with the imperiousness of a king what we would do and how we would do it. John almost always meekly complied with my orders. The "almost" was a qualification I preferred not to think about, for his infrequent refusals invariably came with such composed self-assurance that I was the one who ended up feeling foolish.
He was dressed in the shapeless brown tunic that was worn by all of the orphan boys at the priests' house, which made me grateful for my own single, leaf-green tunic, lovingly woven by my mother, who managed to keep both of us alive by selling her weaves. Clipped at the left side of his belt, nearly hidden in the shadow of his body, was the leather sheath of his dagger. If I had been wearing such a dagger, I would have found it hard to keep my hands off it, but his own hands were loosely wrapped around his knee-bent legs, while his head was tilted back against the post of the window. He was looking at something, but the object of his witness was not in this room.
I felt a pang of loneliness bite into me, as I often did when John departed from me in this way. Without thinking about what I was doing, I reached my left hand toward the slingshot at my belt while my right hand dipped into my belt pouch for one of the smooth stones I stored there. For one glorious second I lined my shot toward John's head; then, at the last moment, I turned the aim of the sling and let the pebble fly.
The stone passed closer than I had intended, missing John's face by a hand's length. His body did not move, but he turned his head, startled out of his vision. Then he saw who sent the shot, and his expression relaxed.
"You'll kill somebody one of these days," he said soberly.
I laughed as I skidded my way up to where he was sitting. He gestured me onto the windowseat, as though this were his own house, and I said, landing with a bounce, "I wanted to see whether you would draw that dagger of yours."
A smile eased its way onto his face then, and he looked at me with open affection. "Not against you," he said.
His smile had a way of lighting up even his eyes, which otherwise looked solemn under his straight eyebrows. Like nearly all Koretians, he had dark hair and brown skin – light brown, since neither of us yet had the dark skin acquired after years of living under the scorching southern sun. But his eyes, rather than being brown or hazel, were completely black, like those of a mountain cat that is staring hard at its prey. Tbe color always made it difficult for me to tell what he was looking at, and they made even more irritating his tendency to withdraw from conversation and stare at visions I could not share.
"John," I said, "why do you bother to carry a free-man's weapon if you're never going to use it?"
"It is dedicated to the Unknowable God, as I am," replied John. "My parents didn't leave any note with me telling the priests which god they wished to dedicate me to, but they did leave the dagger, so that must mean something. It's up to me to discover which god I'm meant to serve. Besides," he added, more to the point, "I might need the dagger for a blood vow."
I stared at the weapon hungrily and felt my palms begin to tingle. "May I hold it?" I asked.
I knew what his answer would be, but as always, he made me wait while he silently assessed my face. Then he carefully slid the blade out of its sheath and offered it to me, hilt first.
I took it tightly into my right hand, feeling the rough leather bands press patterns against my palm. The dagger was made of a single piece of iron; John had wrapped the hilt in blackened leather so that he could hold the dagger more securely. Now he folded his arms on top of his knees and watched as I leapt back onto the floor, thrusting the dagger at an imaginary opponent. For several minutes I practiced the lunges and feints and guards that the boy in the house next to mine had taught me during the previous year. In turn, I had taught those same movements to John as fair payment for the lessons he was giving me in how to perfect the Emorian and Daxion I'd picked up from travellers, as well as learning the older version of the Emorian tongue, used only in the imperial law documents and chronicles. Thus John now knew how to defend himself as well as any city boy, and I knew the languages of the Three Lands as well as any learned priest.
John was still watching me closely, so I reluctantly returned the weapon to its owner, saying, "I wish I had a blade like that."
"Why don't you?" John asked, slipping the dagger back into its sheath. "The priests don't like to see me carrying a dagger, but that's because I'll be an unarmed priest some day. There's no reason a boy your age shouldn't own a free-man's weapon. Can't your mother afford to buy you one?"
I sat down again, curling my legs up against my chest and resting my chin on my knees. "I asked her for a dagger last year. She said she didn't want me to carry a blade because I was too much like my father, unable to control my bloodthirst. She was afraid I would end up like him."
"But that sort of thing happens all the time," said John in a matter-of-fact manner. "Some Emorian soldiers who are escorting an ambassadorial party swagger into a tavern as though they've already conquered this entire land, they boast about how the Chara's armies will defeat the Koretian army, and the next you know there's a fight. Your father isn't the first soldier to lose his life in a sword-duel with the Emorians."
"It's more than that . . . ." I hesitated, my gaze firmly fixed now on a blood-fly that was crawling up John's leg. John would always ignore such attacks, as he would rather allow a small portion of his blood to be drained than to kill a creature without need. I felt my face grow warm, but John said nothing, and I knew that if I spoke of something else, John would never raise this subject again, never probe for my secret. So I said in a low voice, "My mother told me how my father really died. He was killed by an Emorian soldier, like I'd always been told, but not because they had been duelling. The soldier was exacting vengeance. My father had already killed another Emorian, one of the army clerks. The man was unarmed."
A light breeze leapt in through the window, blowing aside the fly that had just found its drinking-spot, and providing the first and last relief that day from the heavy, muggy heat. John said softly, "I'm sure the gods forgave him for that."
"I hope so," I whispered. Unable to bear my feelings, I jumped up and whirled my way into the corner of the room, where some of the ancient wood panelling was beginning to crumble. "Speaking of the gods' forgiveness, what sort of punishment do you suppose the gods will give us for invading their house?"
John shook his head as he unhurriedly rose from the windowseat. "I asked Lovell whether I could come here, and he said that only superstition kept people from visiting. He said that of course I must show reverence here, as I do at the priests' house, but that the gods won't strike down any pious person who comes here seeking their peace."
"Is that why you came here?" I asked, dancing my way around the perimeter of the room like a bird doing a mate-dance. "Just for peace? I would think you'd have enough of that in your monotonous life at the priests' house. Look at what your day's like! Up at dawn, worship, spend the morning with Lovell studying languages and healing and priests' rites, worship again, spend half your afternoon working in the crafts shop, and
then
spend a few hours free here on the mountainside or, if you're very good and study hard, maybe visit me down in the city. And after all that, there's more worship and more time spent reading books before you go to bed at midnight. Is that really how you want to spend the rest of your life?"
John bowed his head and scuffed the floor with his sandal, sending sun-specked bits of dust spiralling upwards like tiny beads of flame. He said softly, "I think I'd be a good priest,"
"You'd be good at anything you did," I replied firmly. "You're skilled with your dagger – why don't you become a soldier like me, so that we can fight the Emorians together? That way, we'd never have to part."
John raised his head slightly, tilting it so that one eye peered up at me. "Actually, I'd been thinking about that today – about how we could find a way to see each other when we came of age. You'd be off travelling with the army most of the time, and I'd be busy offering sacrifices to the gods, so I thought it would be nice if we had a place all to ourselves that we could stay in whenever you visited the city."
"A house, you mean?" I said idly.
"Well, sort of a house." He leaned back against the wall and looked at me steadily with his night-black eyes.
I grasped his meaning in an instant and halted my roaming. "John! We couldn't— I mean, wouldn't the gods be angry?"
"Why should they be angry?" John replied calmly. "It's not as though the priests or other people worship here any more. If I were a god, I'd want my house put to good use rather than have it stand empty year after year. We could fix it up so that this was a chapel where I came to worship. There's a big room at the other end of the house; I think it was both a dormitory and a kitchen at one time, but it would be a perfect place for you to practice your blade-play."
"That's a strange pairing of activities," I said, laughing.
"Well, we're a strange pair. Besides, the gods are like that as well, both fierce and merciful. Look at the Jackal."
I bit my lip but could not keep a smile from creeping onto my face. "What is it?" John asked uneasily.
"Would you like to meet a god?" I replied, battling to keep myself from bursting with the news.
"Of course," he said with the serene confidence of a boy who had grown up amidst the terrifying rites of the priests. "Actually— It's silly, really." He began kicking his foot against the floor again.
"No, tell me," I urged.
He turned his head so that his face was shielded from the burning midsummer sky-blaze. His shadowed face turned nearly as dark as his eyes. "Actually, that's why I came here today. I suppose I'm as superstitious as the city folk, but I thought that if the gods ever visited this land, they'd come here, to their house. I thought maybe
my
god would be waiting for me here."
I was bouncing up and down on my toes now, unable to contain my secret any longer. "
I
know where to meet a god. I saw one today."
John stared at me, his eyes wide, but without the slightest mote of disbelief on his face. After a moment, he said, "The Jackal?"
I nodded, pleased that he had understood so quickly. "It must have been him – he was wearing the god's face, just like the stories say. He was dressed all in black and moved as quietly as a mountain cat. I was scared into stone," I confessed unabashedly.
"Did he speak to you?" John asked with a hushed voice.
I shook my head. "It happened in the entrance to the cave. I was just about to travel through our passage, because I thought you might be waiting for me there, but I heard somebody coming, so I hid in the passage and looked out, and there he was, slipping out of the main tunnel. He didn't look my way, but I suppose he must have known I was there. I mean, he's a god."
John tilted his head back against the wall and stared reflectively at the smoke-hole in the ceiling, located above where the altar had once stood. "Maybe not," he said hesitantly. "I asked Lovell once why the Jackal hasn't been able to drive the Emorians from Koretia. The Jackal has been in this land for twenty years, after all, and he has the god's powers. Lovell said he supposed that the Jackal must be limited in the ways he can use his godly powers, just as the gods limit the ways in which they interfere in men's lives. So perhaps the Jackal acts like an ordinary man most of the time. If that's the case, he may not have known that you were there."