Trial of Stone

by Andy Peloquin

  I need to get away from here! Her gut clenched, her appetite fled. She almost ran out of the inn and leapt onto her horse. She’d rather sleep under the stars far away from the graveyard if it meant she didn’t have to hear or see the spirits.

  But that would mean explaining things to Kodyn and Briana. Right now, she had no desire to share her deepest fear with anyone.

  She pushed her bowl back and stood. Kodyn and Briana looked up at her with curious expressions.

  “You okay?” Kodyn asked. His brow furrowed and genuine concern shone in his eyes. “Feeling sick?”

  “Sure,” Aisha told him. “I need some fresh air. I’ll be back soon.”

  She didn’t wait to hear their answers but strode out of the inn’s common room to where her horse stood. Gathering up her reins, she climbed into the saddle and dug her heels into the horse’s ribs. The stubborn mount resisted for a few moments, then finally caved to the insistent pounding of her sharp boot heels and set off at a run away from the inn. Away from the graveyard.

  Aisha turned the horse’s head east, toward the path that climbed to the clifftop. She gave the horse its head, let it set the pace. She just wanted to get away from the waiting spirits.

  Why me? Her mind whirled as she rode. Sorrow welled up in her chest at the memory of her father’s vacant stare and blank expression. She didn’t want to be like that. What have I done to deserve this curse?

  At the top of the cliff, she threw herself from her saddle and dropped to her knees a pace from the edge. She closed her eyes and leaned on her hands, gasping for breath. Tears streamed from her eyes with the realization of what lay in her future.

  She could see the Kish’aa, the spirits of the dead. A gift, or a curse, given to only a few Ghandians. She was Umoyahlebe, a Spirit Whisperer. Just like her father.

  She’d seen her first spirit during her captivity. Another young girl, barely thirteen, had died chained a few paces away from her. Aisha had seen the moment the girl died, watched the spirit rise from her body. It didn’t matter that the southerners believed in the thirteen false gods—the spirits of the dead cared not about religion or creed.

  She had desperately tried to write it off as the hallucinations brought on by Bonedust, the mind-altering narcotic their slavers had used to keep them docile. Yet just two weeks earlier, she had seen the spirit of one of the children murdered by the Gatherers. On her seventeenth birthday, the same day as her father.

  The memory of the last time she’d seen her father brought a sick sorrow to her gut. Wandering their village at night speaking to the dead, with nary a word for the living. Not for his wife, his son, or his two young daughters.

  Ghandians considered Umoyahlebe sacred, wise elders. Their ability to speak with those that had gone to Pharadesi, the afterlife, made them special. But Aisha knew better. The spirits had driven her father mad.

  And now that’s to be my fate, as well. It had taken years for her father’s mind to fray, yet to Aisha, that madness seemed as inevitable as the sun rising in the morning. Is there no way to escape?

  Perhaps there was. Ria had sent her to Shalandra in the hope of helping her cope with the gift. Somehow, Ria had known what her father—and perhaps all Spirit Whisperers—knew.

  “In the City of the Dead,” her father had told her years ago, before the spirits had broken his mind, “you will find the Kish’aa speak clearest. The reverence of the people of the dead draw the spirits, bring them into closer contact with the living. And the city on the mountain is nearer to the ancestors. There, you will hear their whispers. There, you will find your destiny.”

  “I know my destiny,” she said aloud. Anger simmered in her gut. “It is to be driven mad by the whispers only I can hear.”

  Though despair echoed in her thoughts, she forced herself to stand. She was Ghandian, daughter of a chieftainess, and now apprentice in the Night Guild. She was no coward to run and hide. She hunted the enemy and faced them with bared teeth and drawn steel.

  The anger burned away at her despondency until only cold, hard resolve remained. She straightened, her fists clenched tight, and turned to stare straight at the graveyard beside Rosecliff. Even from this vast distance, she could see the wispy, ethereal figures hovering in the fading daylight. They turned pleading eyes and begging voices toward her.

  Yet Aisha did not flee, did not look away. She stood her ground, unyielding and unbroken by dread of the future.

  “I do not fear you!” she shouted as loud as she could. “I am not afraid, Kish’aa!”

  If she was to find her destiny in the city where the dead gathered, so be it. She would face it, come what may.

  Jaw set, spine straight, Aisha strode toward her horse, mounted, and rode back toward Rosecliff. Toward the graves with the spirits that cried in her ears.

  And she did not block them out. She embraced their cries.

  She was Umoyahlebe. The spirits spoke to her, and she listened.

  Chapter Five

  Issa felt the eyes of everyone on the Cultivator’s Tier fixed on her. Or, perhaps, on the four towering, armored soldiers escorting her along Commoner’s Row, the broad avenue that ran east and west along the second-lowest tier in Shalandra.

  The Indomitables were silent and stern, their faces as hard as their black-burnished half-plate armor and flat-topped, spike-rimmed helmets. Though they made no move to draw their long sickle-shaped khopesh swords, people gave way before their glares and deep blue headbands. All Earaqi, Mahjuri, and Kabili had long ago learned to fear the wrath of the Alqati warrior caste.

  The soldiers hadn’t given her time to wash the blood off her hands, face, and clothing. Immediately upon the completion of the Crucible, she had been escorted out of the Hall of the Beyond, through the streets of the Artisan’s Tier, and down Death Row, the broad avenue that ran along the eastern side of Shalandra from the Keeper’s Tier at the top to the East Gate on the lowest level, the Slave’s Tier.

  Anger and hostility showed in many of the eyes watching their progress. Higher-caste Dhukari and Alqati welcomed the presence of the Indomitables—the black-armored solders kept the lower-caste “rabble” away from their clean streets and fancy homes. But down here, in the lower tiers, the people had grown weary of the hard-fisted treatment by the soldiers. Though Issa had done her best to avoid the clandestine gatherings of dissenting youths and the protests that occasionally sparked up around the Cultivator’s Tier, she knew of the unrest simmering in the hearts and minds of far too many Mahjuri, Kabili, and Earaqi.

  Issa walked tall, her head held high, eyes fixed forward, but tight knots had formed in her stomach the moment she stepped foot outside of the Hall of the Beyond. Until then, she’d been so focused on winning the battle in the Crucible that she hadn’t given thought to what came next. What it meant to be one of the Keeper’s Blades.

  All in Shalandra knew that the Keeper’s Blades served as Shalandra’s elite fighters, leading the Indomitables when Shalandra went to war. Yet listening to her Savta and Saba speak of them, or the way Killian’s eyes grew shadowed whenever she mentioned becoming a Blade, Issa knew there had to be more to it.

  And she was about to find out. The thought of her future both excited her and sent a nervous fluttering through her stomach.

  This could be my last time on the Cultivator’s Tier as an Earaqi.

  The members of her caste farmed the fields south of Shalandra, provided muscle as hired laborers for the Zadii and Intaji, and served in the homes of the Dhukari and Alqati. Their education in the Institute of the Seven Faces included only the basics of letters and numbers, but they were considered the unskilled labor of Shalandra.

  The buildings of the Cultivator’s Tier were as neat and orderly as the Earaqi that lived there. They were squat structures carved from the golden sandstone of the mountain, though a handful had earned enough over their years of labor to add a second floor using bricks of sun-baked red clay and prairie grasses. The streets that intersected with Commoner’s Row were clean
and free of debris, and even the back alleys running parallel to the highway bore none of the refuse and filth common on the Slave’s Tier, the city’s lowest level. Earaqi might not have much, but they took pride in the knowledge that they weren’t Kabili slaves or outcast Mahjuri.

  In addition to red headbands of woven cloth, Earaqi men wore no shirts, only shendyts of rough wool and canvas. Earaqi women wore kalasiris, knee-length sheath dresses of linen held up by twin straps. Simple, rough clothing for simple, rough people. They wore no eyeliner, and their faces bore only one or two black beauty marks—few could afford the high-priced kohl, and the charcoal-and-oil paste favored among the less affluent Earaqi wore off after a day of hard labor.

  Issa caught sight of Serias, one of Killian’s Mumblers, race off toward her home, doubtless carrying word to her Savta and Saba.

  Issa’s gut clenched when she caught sight of the squat stone building that she called home. The door flew open and out strode Nytano, her grandfather. Well into his seventh decade of life, his beard had gone from dusky grey to silvery-white, but he had the same broad, strong shoulders Issa had loved to ride as a young girl. A familiar fire burned in the dark eyes he fixed on her.

  “Issa, nechda, what is the meaning of this?” Worry deepened the lines around his eyes and mouth.

  “You are the grandfather of the one called Issa?” The man who spoke had a ring of Alqati blue with a single line of silver etched into the forehead of his helmet—the mark of a Protector, a mid-ranked officer in the Indomitables.

  “I do not know what crime you believe my grandchild has committed,” Nytano began, “but it must be some mis—”

  The Protector cut him off with a sharp gesture. “No crime has been committed. Your granddaughter proved herself in the Crucible this day and she has been chosen by the Long Keeper for the highest honor that can be bestowed upon any Shalandran. She is to become a member of the Keeper’s Blades.”

  Nytano’s face went pale, his eyes wide. “Th-The Keeper’s Blades?”

  The Indomitable officer ignored the question. “Say your final farewells before your training with the Blades begins.” His voice held an impatient edge. “Five minutes, no more. The Trial of Stone begins in one hour.”

  With a nod, Issa hurried inside her house, her mouth suddenly dry. She’d been dreading the inevitable conversation more than the threat of death in the Crucible.

  The home was simple, little more than four stone walls and a thatched roof, with a double-sized cot for her grandparents and a small rush mattress in the corner for her. Their one luxury was the wooden table and chairs Nytano had built before Issa was born.

  Her grandfather followed a step behind her and closed the door.

  “Issa!” His voice was hard, edged with anger and hurt, and it stopped Issa in her tracks. “What have you done, nechda?”

  Issa heard the concern in his voice. She’d stolen into to the Hall of the Beyond knowing how he and Aleema, her grandmother, felt, and now came the inevitable confrontation.

  “I did what I had to, Saba.” Issa didn’t back down from her grandfather’s anger. Perhaps the fact that she’d just defeated some of the best-trained fighters in the city bolstered her confidence, or perhaps she knew she’d made the right choice to enter the Crucible despite her grandparents’ wishes. “You and Savta have worked so hard all your lives, and the only way I could improve our station was to—”

  “You think either your Savta or I care about living the life of an Alqati or Intaji?” Her grandfather strode toward her, eyes blazing. “All that matters, all that’s ever mattered, is keeping you safe, nechda. We would be content as Mahjuri if it meant you were with us. In the Blades, you are beyond our reach, our ability to protect.”

  “As a Blade, I won’t need you to protect me!” Issa’s voice rose to match her Saba’s anger. She didn’t back down but raised her head, defiance burning within her like the glowing furnace in Killian’s forge. “I’ll be able to protect you and all of Shalandra. I have been chosen by the Long Keeper himself, an immense honor. I’d think you’d be proud of me.”

  “Proud of you for what?” The voice of Aleema, her Savta, drifted through the back door, followed a moment later by the woman herself. Age hadn’t dimmed her beauty, and she still wore her long, silver hair pulled up in an ornate bun that would have belonged in any Dhukari home. Somehow, she made even the red linen headband and the woven rush laundry basket balanced on her hip appear elegant.

  “I have been called by the Long Keeper to become a member of the Blades.” Issa stood tall, proud. “I was one of the few in the Crucible to claim a blade.”

  Aleema paled, the basket falling from her grip, and her hands went to cover her mouth. “No, nechda! How could you?”

  Issa felt the anger boiling up within her. “I did it for you! Look at this.” She gestured at their sparse home. “You and Saba deserve better than to serve the Alqati and Dhukari that lord their wealth and caste status over you. It is not your fault that you were unfortunate enough to be born to the wrong caste. I simply refused to accept it, so I found a way to do what you could not. I found a way out of poverty, a way that I can make a difference in Shalandra by serving the Long Keeper and the Elders of the Blades.”

  “But nechda,” Aleema protested, “the life of a Keeper’s Blade is dangerous.”

  “Walking down Commoner’s Row is dangerous!” Issa threw up her hands. “Life is full of dangers, but as a Blade, I will be trained to defend myself and others.”

  “And who trained you to fight in the Crucible?” asked her Saba from where he stood beside the door, arms folded, a scowl on his face. “Tell me it was not that accused blacksmith!” He spoke the last word like a curse.

  Issa whirled on him. “At least Killian believed I could be more than just an Earaqi servant or farmer.”

  Nytano slammed his palm on the table. “I told you to stay away from him! He is the one to blame for this nonsense.”

  “It is not nonsense.” Issa’s voice rose to a shout. “I have been chosen by the Long Keeper. I claimed a blade, and I am worthy of service to Shalandra. I am sorry you are too fearful and blind to see the truth.”

  Both her grandparents looked as if she’d slapped them. Issa regretted her words, but right now, she was too angry to apologize.

  “I came to bid you farewell before my training, but it seems we have said all that needs saying.” Stiff-backed, Issa strode toward the small space she called her room and seized her bag. She’d packed it that morning before sneaking out toward the Hall of the Beyond. When she turned back, she found her Savta and Saba staring at her with pain etched into their expressions.

  “I will see you again,” she told them in a quiet voice. “I am sorry you are angry with me, but I have to do this. For me and for you.”

  Silence hung thick in the hovel for a moment, then Aleema came over and embraced her. “Be careful, nechda,” she whispered in Issa’s ear. “The greatest threats are rarely those you can see. Beware the blades in shadow.”

  Issa wrapped her arms around her Savta’s broad shoulders and pulled her tight. When she broke off the embrace, tears filled Aleema’s eyes. Issa hesitated when she turned to her grandfather. Hurt and anger sparkled in Nytano’s eyes, but after a moment, he spread his arms to hug her.

  “Strike first, strike true,” her Saba said. Once, he would have bent to kiss the top of her head. Now, they were of a height, so he pressed a kiss to her cheek. “A strong heart is worth more than the strongest arms.”

  A lump rose in Issa’s throat as she nodded and held her grandfather tight. She blinked away tears and hurried out the door, to where the four Indomitables stood waiting. When she glanced back, she found her Savta and Saba at the door to their small house, fingers interlaced, worry etched into every line on their aged faces.

  Issa drew in a deep breath and forced the worry down. She’d known they wouldn’t approve—since her twelfth nameday, the day she was old enough to enter the Crucible, they had done everythi
ng to dissuade her from attempting the impossible. Yet somehow, Issa had always known she was destined for more than the life of an Earaqi. The Crucible had been the most direct path, so she had been determined to take it.

  She’d made her choice, but now she had to live with how it affected her grandparents. They had raised her from a young age—Saba had rarely spoken of her parents, saying only they had died shortly after her birth. She would miss them fiercely.

  My duty is to Shalandra now.

  She had been chosen by the Long Keeper. Being one of the Keeper’s Blades meant a life of service, a higher calling than scratching out an existence by the sweat of her brow. She would be worth so much more than just one more laborer and farmer.

  News of Issa’s acceptance into the Blades traveled fast on the Cultivator’s Tier. By the time she and her Indomitables escort covered half the distance to Death Row, she found the streets lined with Earaqi onlookers. Some glowered and muttered under their breath, but most cheered and waved, even pressed little gifts of food, clothing, and flowers toward her. She had done what most of her caste could only dream of. She had found a way out.

  More people lined Death Row as they ascended, but Issa’s eyes sought out the one person she’d hoped to see above all. Killian, a strong-featured man with dark eyes, a thick black beard, and the barrel chest and sloped shoulders of his profession, stood among the throng. His gaze locked with hers for a single moment and a small smile played on his lips. He said nothing, but that little smile spoke volumes. In that instant, she read the pride she’d hoped to see in her grandparents’ eyes.

  The lump returned to Issa’s throat and it proved much harder to banish now. Killian, a member of the higher Intaji caste, had seen something in her. She wanted to thank him for the years of training—he’d drilled her in the fighting forms of every Academy in Shalandra, along with street fighting techniques and some he claimed were taught to the Keeper’s Blades—and for never pressuring her to become one of his Mumblers.