by Evan Winter
It wasn't a question. He nodded.
"Tau, do you have any idea how dangerous that is? If the demons find you they'll attack and won't stop until your soul thinks itself dead."
"I fight them."
"You can't, they're immortal. They—"
"No, I didn't say I could. I do. I go to Isihogo to fight them."
Zuri shot up into a sitting position. "What?"
He sat up as well. "Time is different there—"
"Yes, thank you, I taught you—"
"I needed more time to—"
"To what, Tau? To what?"
"To train, to fight, to become more than the time in my life can make me."
"You fight the demons? Can... can they be killed?"
"No. I don't know if they're immortal or immune to attack or.... I can hold them back but..." he trailed off.
"They get you in the end," she said. "Each time you go?"
He nodded.
"And you keep going?"
He nodded.
"How many times?"
He shook his head.
"You don't know? You've lost count? By the Goddess." She reached out, touching him on the shoulder. "Tau, if you have sense left, you have to stop. It's dangerous."
"I can handle it."
"No, you can't."
"I'm fine," he lied.
"The shaving knife in the tub..."
He said nothing.
"You were remembering Isihogo, weren't you?"
"I'm fine," he said again.
"For how much longer?"
"For as long as it takes!" he said, his tone making her draw back.
She stared at him, her eyes flitting about his face. "The Omehi don't deserve the sacrifices you're making."
"You think too much of me."
"It's for vengeance then? You'd see your soul burn for it? If so, you're adding to the same evil you think your vengeance will lessen."
"It's for justice and for that I'll face any suffering."
"Tau—"
"You think the world we live in is good enough? This same world where we can never be together? They will take you to a Royal-Noble. He'll force himself on..." Tau wrestled for control. "He'll try for a pure blood line, for future Gifted."
"Please—"
"What am I to do when that happens? Should I bring gifts for the children you'll bear?"
She watched him.
"We're worth more than that," he said.
Zuri put her hands on either side of his face. "I'm here with you now, aren't I?" she said.
"Are you allowed to be?"
"I'm here."
"For how long?"
"For these breaths."
Tau shook his head. "They aren't enough! I want more. I want to marry the woman I love, to have children with her, to watch them grow... with my father beside me."
"Tau..."
"If I can be better than them, then any of us can be. The Nobles? They are great because we are on our knees. No more. I choose to stand."
She lowered her head, eyes closed. "And, what if all we're owed, Lesser and Noble, are these breaths? What if the Cull happened for a reason and Xidda isn't a test we're meant to pass?"
"How can you say that?"
Zuri opened her eyes. "Because I've been at the Citadel."
Tau waited, letting silence prompt her.
"Gifted..." she said, "Gifted are born with differences in their ability to shroud themselves in Isihogo. The weakest among us can Enervate, grabbing power and releasing it quickly. The stronger of us can Enrage, taking energy from Ananthi's prison and using it to greatly empower a man, so long as the blood of a Greater-Noble runs through his veins. Others can Edify, delivering messages across distances in the mists of Isihogo that would take days in Uhmlaba.
"But, the most powerful of us can Entreat, calling out to any living creature that can reason. It's why the Xiddeen bring no beasts to war with us and, it is why, in the early days, they burned our valley to ash. They sought to kill as many of us and as many animals as possible."
"The hedeni burned The Rend?"
"Down to the dirt. It's why we have little else but insects, reptiles, and the few horses and other mammals that the Royal-Nobles saved and now breed."
"Can you Entreat a man?" Tau asked. Even speaking the words felt wrong, as if he might give the Citadel a new and twisted thing to try.
"It can be done," Zuri said. "But it is not. Entreating is an opening up of souls. It connects the Entreater and the Entreated. Creatures of high-reasoning, like women and even men, can fight the connection or hold it."
"Fight it? Hold it?"
"If I were to Entreat you, I would be half here and half in Isihogo. I would have to draw power from the underworld for as long as I wished to hold sway over you."
"This is why you have to be powerful? You need to hide from the demons the entire time."
"Yes, but it's more dangerous than that. If I Entreated you, then you could hold me in Isihogo just as I hold you. You could keep me there after I'd exhausted my ability to hide."
"Until the demons found you?"
"Yes," Zuri said. "Yes. And, this is why one of us dies... every time a Dragon is called."
Tau started. "What?"
Zuri licked her lips, never looking away from his face. "The Gifted hold an immature Dragon captive under the Guardian Keep."
"They do what!"
"The Youngling is chained, masked, and kept Enervated by a group of Gifted called a coterie. There are tunnels connecting the Guardian Keep and the Gifted Citadel. The tunnels give us constant access to the Youngling. They allow us to rotate out wearied Gifted and bring in fresh ones. In this way, we keep the Youngling Enervated indefinitely."
"Why?"
"To control the Guardians. They are creatures half of Uhmlaba and half of Isihogo. We think they may originally have come into our world through Isihogo."
"They're demons?" asked Tau.
"Don't we believe they were created by Ananthi?"
"I... I also believed they helped us willingly and not because we held one of their children captive."
Zuri grimaced, unable to argue the point. "An Entreater can enter Isihogo and mimic the cry of a Guardian Youngling. All Entreaters are taught this. When the Guardians hear the cry they come looking for their missing child. Once the Dragons are close, we Entreat them and they, being caught, latch onto us in turn."
"Us?"
"We cannot allow our most powerful to die every time we need the Guardians. Entreaters work with five other Gifted and together they are called a Hex. Each member of the Hex is powerful enough to be an Entreater in their own right and, when a Guardian is called, they entreat one another."
"They link souls?"
"In a way. It's done so that, when the Guardian pierces the shroud of the actual Gifted entreating it, the rest of the Hex can step in."
"To fight?"
"No. Guardians, like demons, cannot be defeated in Isihogo. The Hex steps in to save the Entreater and the Guardian takes one of the five remaining members of the Hex instead. We call it a backlash."
"And the Gifted, the one being backlashed? If she's entreating the other members of the Hex, she'll be holding energy from Isihogo."
"She will."
"Then, when she's killed in Isihogo..." Tau said.
Zuri nodded.
"That's why... that's why the Gifted in Daba died in blood? It was a demon-death."
Zuri nodded.
"How does the Dragon decide which member of the Hex to hold in Isihogo? Why doesn't it kill you all?"
"The five remaining members of the Hex are linked. They look like a single soul to the Guardian and they fight amongst themselves, twisting energy from Isihogo, using it against each other until someone's shroud collapses. When the first shroud fails, the other Gifted force all the energy they hold into the failure's soul."
"You make the defeated Gifted brighter."
"As bright as the sun."
"And the demons attack."
"Every time a Dragon is called, someone dies."
"Goddess wept," Tau said, his voice little more than a whisper. "And we hold one of their young to compel them to come when called?"
"We do."
"That means we've held their child captive for near on two hundred cycles?"
"We have."
"This is a horror story."
"This is the story of our survival," Zuri said. "Tau, the Gifted Citadel sits half-empty. We cannot replace the women we lose to the never-ending fighting and the backlashes. Every cycle we find fewer Gifted at the testings and, every cycle, the Xiddeen attack more frequently and in greater force. These days, even raids can require a Guardian defense."
"Tell me you can't..."
"I'm powerful."
"Tell me—"
"I'm slated to become an Entreater when my education is complete. My training for it has already begun."
"No."
"My first military assignment will be as an Enrager. It is difficult to master Entreating. I have time. "
"Until what? Until they bind you to a Hex? So you can fight the women you trained with to feed a Dragon's wrath?"
"I'm powerful."
"How powerful are the rest?"
Zuri's melancholy smile was her only answer. They sat for a while. They held each other. In time, Zuri slept. Tau did not.
He was awake to see the sun, its shadows creeping across the room's carpeted floor like skulking demons. His sword-brothers would be in the practice yards. They would wonder where he was. He needed to leave and wanted nothing less. He kissed Zuri.
"Already?" she said.
"Already."
"We leave for Kerem after breaking our fast," she told him. "But, I'll be in the Crags for the Melee, along with the rest of the Gifted initiates and Preceptors. Be safe. Find me in the city after."
"I will," he promised. He kissed her, readied himself to leave, and at the door to the bedroom he tried to bind her image to his mind. She was so much more than he deserved. He walked through the door.
"Tau." The worry in her voice stopped him. "Be careful. Something's coming, a reckoning for the things we've done."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
COUNSEL
Zuri had been gone for days but her look, feel, the smell of her skin, they stayed with Tau. He was walking with his sword-brothers to the mess hall after the morning's training and she kept coming to mind, distracting him, making it difficult to pay attention.
Hadith was talking over strategies for the Queen's Melee. He was worrying over their chances, trying to determine the optimal tactics for a contest whose rules were as different from standard skirmishes as those skirmishes were from actual war.
The Melee was the ultimate test for the Omehi's best fighting men and, as such, Gifted did not participate. That should have tilted the competition in favor of the Lessers but it was not the only significant rule change.
Every qualifying team began the Melee with a full Scale. Tau and his sword-brothers would face no Gifted but they would fight fifty-four Lessers against fifty-four Nobles. The last time Lessers had participated in the Melee was twenty-three cycles ago. Jayyed had been that Scale's Inkokeli and they'd been crushed. Seven of Jayyed's men died and thirteen were injured badly enough that they did not serve a single day of active military duty. They placed sixteenth out of sixteen.
Tau had no idea how his Scale would perform. He did not know if men would die, though he imagined some would, and it would be ridiculous to expect them to rank, coming at least third out of twelve. What Tau did know was that he would keep Scale Jayyed in the Melee until he had the opportunity to meet Kellan Okar in battle. After he'd taken care of Kellan, after the Queen's Melee, the initiates of Scale Jayyed would be confirmed as men of the Omehi Military. That was when Tau would challenge Abasi Odili. He was ready.
These were Tau's thoughts, as he walked past the central courtyard in the Southern Ihashe Isikolo. These were his thoughts when the academy's primary gates opened and in marched eighteen full-blooded Indlovu, led by Dejen Olujimi. They were the protectors and escort for the man who accompanied them. They were the protectors and escort for chairman of the Guardian Council, Abasi Odili.
Odili was as Tau remembered, handsome, regal, a man with the discipline to control himself and his surroundings. He had not changed at all. He was perfectly preserved, a golden idol of Noble malevolence.
Tau saw him and, like he was in a dream, he drew his practice swords. They were the only ones he had with him. He drew them and went to kill two of the three men who had been party to his father's death.
"Tau!" Uduak's voice sounded distant.
"What's he doing?" He heard Hadith say.
A thick hand grabbed his wrist. Tau turned, snarling, seeing Uduak and ready to cut his hand away.
"No." Uduak said, his grip tightening.
Tau's jaw clenched, the bones creaking. A hand fell on his shoulder. His head swung. It was Hadith.
"Come away now," Hadith said. "Come."
"Those men..."
"Come away," Hadith said, and perhaps it was the sincerity in his voice, or perhaps Tau was not so far gone that he couldn't see that attacking Odili, then and there, would mean the death of his mother, his half-sisters, his mother's husband and her husband's family. Tau would die too, maybe before killing the target of his pique. There was not much he could do against an Ingonyama and eighteen full-blooded and armored Indlovu.
"Food," Uduak said, pulling Tau along.
Perhaps it was fear. After waiting so long to see this thing done, what would he be without it? What if it was fear?
Tau let his sword-brothers pull him to the mess hall, his mind a jumble, seeing demons everywhere, as if Isihogo and Uhmlaba had become one. They sat him at a long table. They brought him food. They watched him eat.
"What was that, outside?" Hadith asked. "Were you actually going to attack those Indlovu? The ones with the Guardian Councillor?
"You don't understand."
"Then, help me."
"That man, he killed my father."
"Who? Councillor Odili?" asked Hadith.
"He had his Body stab my father through the heart at a Citadel testing."
"Why?" asked Uduak.
"I sparred with and beat a Noble."
Uduak tilted his head, no doubt trying to recall conversations about Tau's old life. "Jabari?"
"No. An incompetent named Kagiso Okafor. He was a terrible swordsman. He tried to injure me and I stopped him."
"The Nobles took offense?" said Hadith.
"Odili put me in a blood-duel against Kellan Okar. He wanted me to die for knocking a useless Cek on his ass."
"Your father took your place," Hadith concluded.
Tau was having trouble breathing. He closed his eyes, drew air in through his nose and let it out through his mouth. "Okar cut away my father's hand. Odili's Body put bronze through his chest."
"What now?" Uduak asked. "Revenge? Everyone else dies then."
"The Melee," Hadith told Uduak. "Then graduation. Then a blood-duel." Hadith had pieced it together. Of course he had.
Uduak threw him a questioning look. He didn't follow.
"Kellan Okar fights in the Melee," said Hadith. "He can die in it. Nobles do every cycle. After the Melee, we become Full-bloods. Full-bloods can blood-duel anyone in the military, even the chairman of the Guardian Council."
Uduak made a strangled sound.
Tau kept his eyes on his plate. "They killed my father."
"They did," Hadith said, tone neutral.
"I'm going to kill them," Tau told him.
"Listen," said Hadith, "this is what we'll do—"
"We?" said Tau.
"Yes, we," said Hadith. "We are brothers. And, we are going to do nothing, for now. Leave the Guardian Councillor to his business. You get caught trying anything and everyone sharing your blood dies. Tau, I'll promise you something. Let us take care of Okar as a Scale. I
f we face him in the Melee, we will punish him for his part in your father's death."
"I don't need your help."
"Really? You've come all this way trusting that the rules the Nobles made up to protect themselves will work to protect you? Their rules? What do you think will actually happen if you gut Okar in the Melee? What do you think will actually happen if, as a Full-blood, you call for Odili's head?"
Hadith's voice had gotten louder, Uduak put a hand on his arm, and Hadith took a breath. "Let us help. I'll think of something. We can punish Kellan, at least."
"At least?" said Tau.
"Be at peace for now. Let me think. Agreed?"
Tau was wound tight as rope, his posture, face, and the set of his mouth as clear and instinctual a warning as any animal or man could give.
Hadith would not be cowed. "Swear it, Tau," he said. "You risk us in this too. Swear it on your father and know that I have my own reasons to hate Nobles."
Hadith of Scale Jayyed, like the rest he was a Cross-Caste, his mother likely taken by force. Hadith would consider it a dark secret, a shameful beginning, thought Tau. It made Hadith think he hated the ones whose blood he shared, but he did not know what hate really was. Tau would show him. Tau would be his shining example. "I will do nothing while Odili is in the Isikolo walls," Tau said.
"On your father," Hadith reminded him.
Tau nodded, stood, and left. A chair scraped behind him and he heard Uduak's heavy footfalls as the big man shadowed him. Avoiding the central courtyard, Tau returned to the training grounds.
Uduak didn't need to play escort. Tau would keep his word. No harm would come to Odili while he was in the Isikolo's walls because Tau knew a Royal-Noble like Odili wouldn't spend a night among Lessers. He'd leave the Isikolo that same day, and Tau would follow.
STONES
Jayyed had not been at practice all day and, in the mess hall that evening, rumors spread, branching like a tree's roots. It was said the chairman of the Guardian Council had spoken with Jayyed. It was said Jayyed was to accompany him when he left the Isikolo.
Many in the Scale were proud of this, glad to see their mentor respected enough to be called upon by their military's leadership. Tau was not pleased. If the rumors were true, Jayyed would be with Odili when he struck.