The Hidden Icon

by Jillian Kuhlmann

  I watched as the icons that had walked with us from the hall began to file down the stairs. A glow trickled down the walls where some of them passed, and the faces and hands of others seemed to exude ghostly light. Our gifts were not all the same, but these little manipulations of the natural world were still amazing to me. I allowed them all to pass me, and even shared a light smile with two among them, a young man and woman who proceeded hand-in-hand down the stair, each fairer even than many of the Ambarians I had seen. As I had with the other icons, I didn’t extend my mind to theirs, though I sensed that they were not as guarded, as resistant, as the others, and I couldn’t help but compare the slim mouth and eyes of the woman with those of my sister, Esbat. Without Morainn, without Gannet, I wanted very much for a clever companion.

  Paivi waited with me, and when the others had descended, his hand didn’t need to make the gesture his eyes so strongly suggested. I should go down. I thought about suggesting that I could not conjure light as they had, but I had the power Gannet had taught me, to see the light of moving life even in deepest darkness.

  And what else did Gannet teach you, Eiren?

  I walled myself against him immediately, for hadn’t Gannet warned me it would go this way with me in Ambar? Despite his lessons, I was as free with my thoughts here as I had been as an ignorant girl before he’d met me. I didn’t respond, sorry for having been such a poor student, far more wretched even than my lessons as a child had given me reason to believe. The arts and sciences, diplomacy and history, these things I could master, but discipline I could not. As I descended the stair I thought to reach out for Gannet if he was here, but I could feel Paivi waiting like someone outside of a locked door and I didn’t dare turn the key.

  What I hadn’t seen from above were the details along the spiraled stair that descended deep within the city. Characters like the ones in the book Gannet had given me, like those embroidered in my clothing, fled silvery down the stone walls, given a haunting glow when I employed my dark-sight. Paivi noted my attentions.

  “He didn’t teach you to read,” he presumed, and for a fleeting moment I was grateful that the other icons were well ahead of us and couldn’t hear. If I was to belong here, I wanted them to know me at least for who I was, if prejudice against Theba was something that could be surmounted.

  “I know how to read,” I snapped, not surprised at his ability to raise my ire, but ashamed of it. My next words were more level. “Morainn told me that these weren’t words, anyway, but symbols.”

  Shrugging, Paivi touched a hand against one of the characters, and a little spark formed between his fingers and the symbol.

  “Dresha Morainn isn’t one of us,” he explained, which was no explanation at all. My attentions narrowed with my eyes.

  “And what does it mean, to be one of you?” It was a question I had asked Gannet in many ways, with and without words, though his conspicuous absence showed me that whatever Paivi and the rest were, Gannet was set purposefully apart. Again I wondered what terrors he stirred if even I were welcomed among them.

  Paivi, however, seemed prepared to give a more direct answer. As his lips parted so did a little his mind, so that I could see him even as I guarded so closely my own thoughts.

  “We preserve the future, we plan for it,” he spoke, and as he did so I could see the icons as they were, as living memories of what had been and what would be again. I could see that Paivi was much older than he appeared, or carried with him the lives and experiences of other, older men. I saw births and deaths of icons, saw the flare in them that confirmed who they were, why they had come, and why they must again depart. Men and women and children whose lives were given freely in service of what must be. To live as I had done, in ignorance, was to squander a gift. As I loved stories, they lived them.

  Though I hadn’t intended it, my wonder and greed at what lay within him broadened the perception between us, and he spoke to me again in my mind.

  You cannot know what it means to us, Eiren, to have you with us again.

  Confused but hesitant, I didn’t wall him out again, but stood my ground like a sentry at a gate. Paivi knew something lay beyond, but not what.

  Again?

  You will remember us soon. Theba will remember within you.

  I kept my eyes fixed upon our footing, which had changed from stair to smooth stone, more tunnel than corridor, and unsettlingly like what I remembered from the Rogue’s Ear.

  I don’t know what I’m meant to do.

  My thought was more honest than any tone of voice could have conveyed. I saw Paivi, then, my image of a sentry become me, armored, and he stood with his hands open in a fashion that reminded me of Gannet’s, just before we had held each other. Did Paivi know? My armor flashed and hardened.

  You will change things, Eiren. Our time has come, the old time. Aleyn and Ambar will know again the pleasures of unity, of hands joined in common work.

  I started, thinking of what Gannet had said, that we’d once shared a king, Shran. We’d known peace. Paivi must’ve known how this would appeal to me, which made me think he couldn’t be telling me the whole truth. Ambar didn’t seem to be a kingdom interested in peace, and if the icons had as much power as I suspected they did, they had even more to do with warring than their war-mongering king.

  “If you’ve been as patient as I’ve been lead to believe, then you can stand to be a little longer,” I said aloud, my mind hurriedly closed, all images and metaphoric landscape drenched in black. I didn’t want him to know anymore, and so I couldn’t ask for anymore, either.

  Paivi seemed not in the least disturbed at having been so violently ousted from my mind. No doubt he expected it, or appreciated my display of strength. The tunnel gave way to a floor of bright, mosaic tiles shining under torchlight that allowed for me to drop my dark-sight and revel in the warm, natural glow. The characters on the walls had been replaced by shelves carved at a comfortable height and filled with books, instruments, and curiosities. The corridor widened first into a foyer, and then into a room proper, with low tables and chairs and braziers positioned about that gave off a comfortable heat but no smoke. The icons that had arrived ahead of us had taken seats here, heads together talking or given over to study of some kind. Like a wheel, the room opened on to other corridors on many sides, no doubt leading to other common or private apartments. Paivi gestured that I take a seat at the table where three icons, including the pair who had smiled at me earlier, were seated.

  Though I expected him to join me, he didn’t, and we four were left looking at each other.

  “Hello, Eiren,” said the young man, my name a little strange on his tongue, as though the emphasis were misplaced. “I’m Jaken, icon of Alber. This is my twin sister, Shasa. She’s also the icon of Alber.”

  My surprise prompted Shasa to continue seamlessly where her brother had left off.

  “Alber has a dual nature. We’re not the first twins, but the first in many generations,” she said, smiling at her brother. “It is easier this way, to live as two minds, instead of one at war.”

  Her voice was light, but I sensed she was alluding to darker things. I didn’t know this Alber, at least not by that name. He, or she, could perhaps be a variant on the mad carpenter, a figure who built his house up every day only to tear it down each night, driven by hope while the sun shone and plagued by demons when it set.

  The third icon that sat with the pair filled the awkward silence. She had a few years on each of us, though not many.

  “They think it the most natural thing in the world, though I remember when they were born, and how difficult it was to explain to everybody else what they were,” she observed. Her tone, too, was as sisterly as Shasa’s had been. I was surprised both by their openness and their honesty. Their minds, though lightly guarded, didn’t seem to disguise fear or disgust. “I am Najat, the Dreamer.”

  That she announced no name beyond that of her icon made me shudder, her words planting a spreading chill in my bones. Najat I
knew well, and it occurred to me that if Paivi wasn’t their leader, she must surely be. If they were preservers and protectors of history, as they claimed, of what had passed and what would come, she who could see all of hope and consequence in every moment would fall naturally into that place. Najat rewarded those who were generous and kind with fine dreams, and gave nightmares to those she deemed deserving of them. Unlike Adah, however, her judgment I trusted.

  Najat smiled, oblivious of my considerations.

  “Your birth I didn’t witness, Eiren, though I would not have needed to say a word for all to know you.”

  I wasn’t sure if this was meant as a compliment or not, and so I didn’t reply at first. To delay would have been rude, or perhaps might have driven all three away, so I spoke up when I could formulate a thought I wouldn’t be ashamed to utter aloud.

  “My mother always said I wasn’t an attractive child, so perhaps it’s for the best you neither witnessed my birth nor were forced to herald it,” I said breezily, grateful for ready, if weak, wit. Their laughs were generous, however, and Jaken rose to lift a pot that hung above one of the braziers, and as he brought it closer, I could smell the petal scent of flowery tea roll off with the heat. It smelled like home.

  “We’ve heard that you are a great keeper of stories, Eiren,” Shasa said softly, producing from clever compartments within the table itself palm-sized bowls for tea. I was happy to have a cup to look into when next I spoke.

  “I am, though I’ve been lead to believe they would not be to your liking.”

  It was neither true nor fair, really. Gannet had never said that he didn’t like my stories and had sat through every one. It was only his response sometimes, or his lack of response, that never settled with me as well as the comfortable appreciation of my family, their praise and their little additions of sentiment or embellishment.

  Najat didn’t read me as he might have, but rather as a woman who has seen much and understood the nature of the heart, her next was pure human intuition. Even if she wasn’t entirely human, and neither was I.

  “Perhaps you should reserve your judgment until you know us better.”

  Jaken poured me a little tea, flecks of dried leaf floating and settling.

  “I would like to hear one of your stories, Eiren. I would like to hear your favorite story.”

  I was so used to being asked to tell listeners their favorite story that the request took me by surprise. But I already knew which story I wanted to tell.

  “Before she was the wife of Shran and the mother of Salarahan, Jemae was a girl, and her temper was so fierce that her father and mother feared she would never be married, never mother a child. She stormed from her bed in the mornings and raged through her lessons by day. By evening time she was like a dying ember, smoldering and sulking. Many asked her, ‘What makes you so angry, child?’ Jemae responded the same every time: ‘Everything.’

  “In her eleventh year Jemae struck her riding master on the hand when he attempted to correct her posture, and in fear of what her parents might do to her if they discovered the abuse, she ran away and hid herself in a flowering bush.”

  Like it had been sometimes at the hearths of my youth, and more recently our resting places on the journey to Ambar, there were suddenly in the shadows listeners that hadn’t been there at the start of my tale. I didn’t falter in my telling to count them, though I took a sip of tea before continuing. It was sweet and hot enough to sharpen any lagging sense.

  “Angry over having lost her temper, Jemae grew angrier still as she squatted in the bush, and began furiously to tear at the buds that had not yet flowered. As she reached for a particularly fat and ripe one, it unfurled before her, petals puckering like a mouth before speaking.

  ‘Why do you destroy us?’

  “Jemae was taken by surprise, and did not tear at the plant again.

  ‘I was angry. I didn’t think it would hurt you.’

  “The bush shook, showering Jemae with pollen.

  ‘Any act of anger is like a stone dropped in the sea. The waves it makes touch many shores.’

  “Jemae considered what the bush had said before she gathered the petals she had torn from the ground beneath the bush and buried them. Her tears watered where she had dug, and when she left her hiding place and sought her parents, no scolding could stop her crying.”

  I began to feel as though my listeners were doing more than just sitting idle. Like the times that I had shared my mind with Gannet, I felt images born between Najat and Jaken and Shasa and all of the rest. I had but sketched Jemae crouched beneath the bush, but my telling was buoyed by their imaginings, as well, what they took from me and what they carried within themselves. What happened now was more than a simple telling, and I released an anxious breath before continuing.

  “The rages that had been Jemae’s domain before were replaced with tears that flowed in such volume that often she couldn’t leave the side of the fountain in her family’s courtyard. As quickly as she could drink she could cry out a cupful of water, and many superstitious villagers came to gather her tears to heal the sick or bottle them in charms. The girl Jemae would have been annoyed by such attentions, but the young woman she had become was only sorry she couldn’t do more.

  “In her fourteenth year Jemae’s mother and father began to encourage suitors to visit Jemae, but their affections only caused her tears to flow faster and harder, so undeserving did she feel. They brought her gifts of flowers that reminded her of the bush that had sheltered her; they brought her sweets that tasted bitter on her tongue. One young man brought a great globe of brightly colored fish, but he was so startled by her crying that he dropped the bowl into the fountain and ran right out the way he had come.

  “One fish swam to the top of the water near where Jemae was seated and began to speak in low, bubbling tones.

  ‘Why do you cry?’

  “Though Jemae wiped at her eyes, there was room enough in her sorrow to be surprised at the talking fish.

  ‘Because I’m sorry for the things that I’ve done.’

  “The fish gulped and splashed.

  ‘No apology is as potent as a deed. How you live your life will show that you are sorry.’”

  In the minds of the gathered icons I could see the fish, for one his belly yellow and spotted, for another his whiskers as violet as the sky at twilight. It was as though there was a cauldron in the middle of the room and we were each pouring into it what we saw in the tale. I could hold in my mind the visions shared by everyone and my own besides. When Gannet’s bold, silver fish darted across my notice, I found his dark eyes in the crowd and held them as I finished the story.

  “When Jemae’s last tear fell into the fish’s open mouth, he shed his scales and climbed out of the fountain, a young man who looked quite like her riding instructor once had. He bowed to her before leaving the courtyard, and when he had gone Jemae rose and went to her parents. Her days after were spent reveling in what she could do instead of what she had done. It is said that despite her trials, Jemae died smiling, that there was nothing in the world that did not make her happy.”

  My blood pumped hot and certain as I finished, and I knew in that moment that I wouldn’t need Theba to recommend these people to me. I didn’t need to remember, for I knew now for myself that these were my people. Even if I didn’t belong yet, I would soon. I looked at Gannet and didn’t wonder where he had been or worry how soon he would go. If it was my lot that I should have him only for a little while, then have him I would.

  But more than Gannet’s eyes were upon me. Jaken and Shasa and Najat and Paivi watched me, and all of the others who had introduced themselves to me aloud with hesitant smiles and shining ones. Dsimah, Korse, Daggen, Lira. Tirce, Hamet, and Galen, still others who only nodded, who shined with no light other than one of service. Not all those gathered here were icons; some had made a choice to serve them. I wondered at their welcoming me so readily, but the feeling was fleeting as I felt myself pillowed upon their trus
t and anticipation. I released a breath I felt I had been holding since I’d left home.

  Gannet’s eyes behind the mask were shifting. His thoughts flew like a dart into my mind, hitting a mark I hadn’t realized was there. I imagined my lips a cork, bottling my sense of things before it could be spoiled. In me there was spiced perfume, scented oil, all promises made and kept. He turned to go.

  Paivi’s eyes were leveled on mine, and despite not having the cover of Gannet’s mask, his were equally unreadable. What he saw I wasn’t sure, but I could guess.

  “Eiren hasn’t recovered fully from her test,” he observed, and I felt sure it had been but a projection of him during my test, that he didn’t know what I had suffered. What he offered me now, I realized, was an apology. His words alone were enough to put distance between the other icons and I. The hem of Gannet’s cloak was just visible waving out of the chamber as he exited. Following him seemed like the most natural course, and so I did, hardly aware of the soft eyes of Najat on my back as I moved into shadow.

  It was dark and I didn’t try to see. I ran my hands along the wall, dipping into the little shelves, my fingers lost in the characters that were etched into the stone. I felt like Jemae in a later story, one that I liked nearly as well as the one I had told. After marrying Shran, she had parted the twelve curtains on their marriage bed to find him asleep. Her kiss had caused him to wake, and while I was sure despite what my mother had withheld in her telling that more than kisses followed that night, I could think of nothing but what pleasure there could be had in being near enough the one you loved to share their breath.

  “Would you like me to walk with you?”

  Even without my sight I could sense Gannet in the dark, standing just out of reach. He had waited for me. Before I could respond he held out his hand. I took it. His palm was cool and smooth, the hand of a man who needed neither weapons nor tools, whose mind was both. He didn’t hold my hand as he had in the chapel garden, but placed it upon his arm, against the crook of his elbow. I was very close to him, but it was a formal posture, and I struggled not to betray my hesitation.