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 abl
e 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."
"Then I'm sure he didn't know I was there," I said confidently. "I've taught myself to be quiet and stealthy – you need to know how to act that way when you're a soldier, so that you can creep up on the enemy. But don't you see? The Jackal has made his lair in the cave! If we went there, we could ask the Jackal to make us his thieves, and we could begin fighting the Emorians now, before we became men."
"But the Jackal has been up north, harassing the Emorians who have settled in the conquered portions of Koretia," John said, a frown creasing his forehead. "Why would he be here?"
"Perhaps the Emorians are going to attack the capital next," I said in a matter-of-fact manner.
John stood very still, his empty dagger-hand hanging next to his free-man's blade. Seeing his face, I said hastily, "Don't worry – if that happened, I'd protect you. I wouldn't let the Emorians kill you."
"They'd kill other people," said John in a strained voice. "They'd kill lots of people, and if the city was captured, the Emorians would win the war. People are saying that our army can't hold out any longer in central Koretia – that the only reason our subcommander is still fighting is to keep the Emorians from reaching the capital."
"Well, they won't," I said, hastily grasping for words that would reassure John and prevent him from worrying about the merciless Emorian soldiers. "I heard a trader talking last night who had just come back from the north. He said that our army is continuing to hold the Emorians back and that the Chara is furious, because he has been fighting this war for twelve years now, and his army still can't reach the capital. The Chara thought he had won the war when he killed our King last autumn, but even with no one on the throne, the King's Council has been able to keep the war going. So there's no way that the Emorians will be able to attack the city any time soon."
John's expression eased somewhat, but he said, "The Emorians could cut across the border from Daxis. There are gaps in the mountain range not far from here."
"Daxis won't allow Emor to do that," I said patiently, drawing closer to John to place a reassuring hand on his. John had been standing in the sun all this while, and his skin was moist with the sweat that clothed all of us in the south from spring to autumn. I closed my palm hard over his loose hand, as though I were wrapping my hand around a dagger hilt, and said, "Koretia has an alliance with Daxis that forbids the Daxions from allowing passage to the Emorian army. And anyway, we have border guards at the mountain gaps who would raise the alarm if the Emorians came near. So the Emorians can't attack through Daxis from the south or the west, and unless the Chara has suddenly acquired a navy, his soldiers can't attack from the eastern sea-coast. And our army is holding the Emorians back in the north. So you see, we're quite safe from being conquered by that godless ruler."
John still had misery scribed upon his face, so I added, "I heard a new joke about the Chara."
John smiled tentatively. "Tell me."
"The joke asks: Which god does the Chara worship? The answer is: Only himself."
John laughed then, a laugh I heard so rarely that I had come to welcome it like a cool breeze on a heat-snared day. He said, "I learned something about the Chara today too, during my lessons. I learned all of his titles."
"What kind of lesson is that?" I asked, moving to where I could stare through the window to the city below. From this vantage point I could see the haphazard cluster of timber houses jammed into the tight noose of the block-and-mortar city wall. Toward the south end of the city, nearest to me, was the glowing face of the Council Hall, with its cavestone-paved courtyard shining like a gold piece under the sky's fire. Tiny figures moved back and forth over it like dust specks: lords or free-servants or slave-servants, going about their appointed tasks.
"It was a lesson in memorization. Listen to this . . ." John drew a deep breath and said, "Nicholas, the Great Chara of Emor and Its Dominions, Judge of the People, Commander of the Armies, Lord of the Marcadian Mountains, Ruler of the Arpeshian Nation, Master of the Koretian Land."
"Master of the Koretian Land!" This infuriated me so much that I jerked out my slingshot and flung a missile wildly through the window at nothing in particular. A bird squawked in protest, but I could see, as it flew past the window, that it had only lost a few of its tail-feathers, so I was not disturbed.
"Master of the Koretian Land." I snorted. "The Chara will never be master to me or any other loyal Koretian, not even if he wins this war. Now that the King is dead, our land belongs only to the gods. I can't see why Lovell made you memorize such a ridiculous set of titles."
"I was asking him about the Chara," John said, staring so pointedly at my slingshot that I thrust it back under my belt. "Lovell says that the Emorian council gave the Chara that last title this spring in anticipation of the end of this war. Lovell thinks Koretia should become a dominion of the Emorian Empire – I wanted to know why."
"May the Jackal eat his dead!" I said, losing hold of my temper entirely. "How could Lovell say such a thing?"
John's breath whistled in. "You shouldn't swear such words," he said softly. "It's not wise to call down the god's vengeance without reason."
"I'm sorry," I said, instantly chastened, as I always was when John scolded me. Then, wishing to make reparation, I said, "Well, tell me – what did Lovell say?"
"He said that the Emorians would end the blood feuds – that in the conquered areas of Koretia, the Emorians have forbidden men from making blood vows to murder, and because of this, whole families aren't wiped out while fighting each other in feuds."
I creased my brow in puzzlement. "But what about when somebody breaks the gods' law and refuses to submit himself to his god's judgment? How can people avenge crimes without taking blood vows to kill the law-breaker?"
John leaned against the window jamb, folding his arms and cocking his head to one side. The long hair of his boyhood brushed against his shoulder. Already he was talking of having it cut and going through the coming-of-age ceremony several years early. Somehow I had not been surprised to learn that John was eager to become a man.
"That's what I don't understand entirely," he said. "It has to do with one of the Chara's titles: 'Judge of the People.' Apparently, in Emor, the Chara and a few other men working under him are given the right to decide whether men have broken the law and what punishment they should undergo."
"But that's awful!" I exploded. "The Chara isn't a priest – the gods don't tell him whether their laws are broken. When we take a blood vow to murder, we know that the gods will punish us if we break our vows or fulfill our vows against the wrong people, but what's to prevent the Chara from punishing the innocent or giving law-breakers harsh punishments just because he doesn't like them?"
"That's what puzzled me," John replied. "Lovell said it had to do with the law – not the gods' law, but Emorian law. But he couldn't explain to me how the Emorians have laws when they have no gods. Some day I'd like to learn more about the Emorians. Maybe they're not as evil as everyone says. Maybe our lands don't have to be fighting each other."
"That's—!" I stopped. A look of quiet stubbornness had entered into John's eyes that I recognized well. Knowing that I would not win any battle I now waged, I graciously admitted defeat. "I suppose there must be something good about the Chara and his people, or they wouldn't have conquered most of the Great Peninsula. But Daxis is still free, and so is Koretia, and we'll never let the Chara be our ruler. We don't need his law. We have our gods, and they watch over us. Like the Jackal," I added, impatiently prodding the conversation back to where it belonged.
"The Jackal," John murmured. I could see the glint of interest in his eye
s.
"He'd make us his thieves, I'm sure he would," I said. "Wouldn't that be a treasuresome experience, speaking to the god and pledging ourselves to his service?"
"I wouldn't want to kill anyone," John demurred. "I'm not sure it's right to kill a man."
"I don't suppose all of his thieves kill Emorians," I said. "Armies have men who don't fight, and I imagine that the Jackal does as well. Maybe he needs doctors to tend his thieves' wounds – you're good at that, thanks to your training."
I could see enthusiasm fighting across John's face in an attempt to defeat uncertainty, so I said, "We could just ask him. If he didn't want us, we'd go away, but at least we would have the chance to talk to a god."
"Well . . ."
In that single word I read a slip into assent. I leapt toward the door, shouting, "I'll race you to the cave!" Without looking back, I darted from the sanctuary, charged out of the gods' house, and began running down the northern slope of Capital Mountain, toward the cave entrance.
o—o—o
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