“Vedas,” she said, the trace of a smile on her lips.
“Laures,” he said, leaning against the wall at her side, affecting her casualness.
“Here again,” she said. “You shouldn’t be. The morning will come sooner than you think, and Osa’s no small trip.” Her eyes traveled up and down his body appraisingly. “You’re not the Vedas Tezul I heard described as the winner of the tournament. You have no fat, and precious little muscle, to burn up. Go to sleep. Recover as much as your body will allow.”
He only just kept from wincing, and shook his head. “I can’t sleep. I have another questions.”
She laughed. “I already told you all I know about Shav last night. What little there is to know, you know. Trust me.”
“No. It’s not him I want to talk about.” He made himself meet her stare, fighting the impulse to keep what secrets he had. If she had any loyalty to Shavrim (and he had no reason to believe she did not), she would tell him everything Vedas said. Perhaps, to Shavrim, the words would mean something. Perhaps he would be able to fill in the holes before Vedas could, using it to his advantage, manipulating them even further. With truth or with lies: it made no difference.
Vedas saw no other option, however. Without an answer to this newest question, sleep would continue to elude him.
“The Mother you spoke of,” he said. “Ustert. There are things I seem to recall about her.”
Her eyebrows rose fractionally, half her mouth moving with them. Regardless, he noted the way her posture stiffened. The fingers of her right hand twitched on her left bicep.
“You knew her then, did you?”
He kept his expression sober. “I remember reading a series of stories about her—stories from before the world was born.”
She dropped all pretense of joviality. “Stories? Lies, you mean.”
“They were not written by your sisters, obviously. They were written by men, trying to understand.” He ignored her chuckle of contempt. “I don’t mean to offend you by talking about them. I’m not insulting you, nor am I trying to get at secrets you don’t want to reveal. All I’m asking for is confirmation that such tales exist.”
She shrugged. “Ask.”
Men are not a thing one talks about with an Usterti, he had been informed.
“I could be wrong, but in one of them …”
Out with it, he told himself.
“In one of them, Ustert had a twin. A man, or maybe a boy.”
After a moment, she nodded.
“Do you know his name?” he asked. “Will you tell me?”
‡
She had an answer for him. It showed on her face, yet for the space of many heartbeats she visibly fought with herself over whether to voice what she knew. Perhaps it would be a breach of her faith to utter the name.
Just as he was about to tell her not to worry, to absent himself and make another attempt at sleep, she spoke.
“Evurt,” she said. “His name was Evurt.”
He shuddered as something within him stirred.
‡
He turned to look back at the city. Only eight miles out, and already it had become a vague spread of dirty, jumbled earth. Behind it, the vertical wall of Usveet Mesa stood, shutting out half the day, cutting off any view to the west. Distance had only served to make it larger: as the mountain’s true scope became apparent, it began to loom even more, to oppress.
He wondered what kind of people would settle at the base of such a monolith. Had his ancestors longed to be humbled, every day—to be reminded how meager their efforts were? They could not hope to outlast the mountain. It would continue to stand, inviolate, exerting no effort while they struggled, generation after generation, to etch their names in shifting sand.
It had outlasted one species, already.
Human beings are fools, he thought. And the ones who came before them were fools.
This thought sat cold within him.
Shielding his eyes, he surveyed the cloudless sky until he located the winged shape of the creature guarding their exit from the city: Shavrim’s pet Sapes, itself an hybrid of wyrm and elder, a living link to that superseded species. He lifted his right hand, spreading his fingers wide, sliding his palm smoothly over the atrophied muscle of his chest. Not even true contact, but feeling transmitted through two layers of cloth composed in part of elder skin.
“And what if you die within it?” Churls had once asked. He recalled the feeling of her fingertips, brushing over the edge of a hole he had caused to open in his suit. Back and forth over his right hipbone, from bare skin to covered skin. It surprised him to realize he could not tell where one ended and the other began.
“I’ll rot,” he replied. “Someone else will use my suit.”
“And if you die alone, at the bottom of a crevice?”
“I’ll rot,” he had repeated, suddenly and profoundly uncomfortable.
Sapes’ form disappeared against the sheer black wall of Usveet Mesa. Vedas dropped his hand and turned back to his companions. Churls had stopped to watch him, concern written on her features. He met her stare for a moment, expressionless, allowing nothing to pass between them, and then shifted his gaze to Berun, Shavrim, and Laures.
To his annoyance, they too now stopped to regard him.
“I’m fine,” he said. “Keep walking.”
He waited for them to move before resuming his own progress. He stared at their backs, lingering on the broad form of Shavrim for several heartbeats, struggling to understand how he had ever allowed the man to convince them to abandon the city. How, despite the madness of the man’s words—the very idea that a means to defeat Adrash existed, that anything other than the entire mass of humanity could stand against Jeroun’s only god!—traveling to Osa had come to seem the right choice. The only choice.
He struggled against this increasing sense of surety, if for no other reason than one among them needed to. Churls and Berun, the two voices who had long argued against Vedas’s own certainty, had agreed to Shavrim’s goal surprisingly quickly. Perhaps they had not required as much time to come to terms with the situation (a situation, he reminded himself, that amounted to sitting and waiting for the world to collapse) and simply accepted Shavrim at his unlikely word, yet this sounded an unpleasant chord within him.
A thing was either true, or it was not. One did not arrive at truth by wishing it were so. From the moment they met Shavrim, they had been pressed against the wall by circumstance. This was not a position from which a wise choice could be made.
Feeling helpless was its own form of tyranny. He knew this. He knew it better than most. He had lived most of his life oppressed by a false truth.
‡
They stopped out of the way of the wind, in a dry stream-bed where the skeletons of cottonwoods arced overhead. He did not attempt to conceal his exhaustion, but waved away their protests when he offered to gather firewood, just as he had when they told him he need not carry any of their supplies. He climbed the sandy bluff and returned with armloads of fuel—first kindling, which he found scattered at the feet of the dead trees, and then larger branches, which snapped like bones in his shaking hands, covering him in dust, making him sneeze.
On his fourth trip, he walked a handful of paces away from the trees and stood motionless in the spare, cold light of the desert, breathing heavily, savoring the brief moment of solitude. Looking into the sky, he counted the scattered spheres of the Needle: seven, eight, nine … and then a tenth rising above the horizon. He resisted the urge to touch his fingertips to the horns of his suit, cursing Adrash with a gesture. A small gesture of defiance, fighting reflex.
His lips moved. Again and again, he formed the name—Evurt— but did not say it aloud. A simple act, giving voice to thought, yet it struck him as more than a mere word. A name was a summons to its owner. He wondered if Churls had felt the same when she realized her daughter had returned from the dead, as if every moment alone were pregnant, existing always on the verge of saying it. Fyra
. Fyra. Fyra. Drawing the girl into reality.
He wondered if Churls knew yet another name, now.
Ustert.
He shook his head, seeking and failing to clear it. There was no reason to assume Churls had experienced anything like his dream. He had never taken a lover before her, and suspected his inexperience was leading him to false conclusions.
As always, logic failed to alleviate his worry.
Upon returning to the camp for the seventh time, he realized he had gathered far more fuel than necessary. He stared at the pile of wood he had created, brow creased. Waiting. Berun, Laures, and Shavrim had left for a perimeter check, leaving Churls alone to set up the tent. He felt her gaze at his back, or he thought he did: when he finally turned, her attention was fixed on her task.
He pretended to concentrate on building the fire, longing to bridge the silence between them but suspecting he should preserve it for as long as possible. She was stronger than him, more practical and persuasive. A lifetime outside an abbey’s walls, making due alone, had made her capable of discerning judgment, while he, he was no judge at all.
If he opened himself up to her, she would sway him away from doubt. For two days, he had restricted himself with her, engaging in only the briefest of exchanges.
He knew himself to be a fool, or perhaps he was a coward: it made no difference. A part of him remained in Danoor, struggling to make sense of what had occurred there. An even greater part of him remained in Golna—would always remain in Golna, unchanging.
His fist tightened around a wrist-thick branch until it cracked. Behind him, Churls paused in her work. She had heard something, in that sound alone.
“It’s how often I wasn’t in control,” he said. He swallowed, cleared his throat. He opened his mouth and then closed it. The quiet stretched.
“What did you say?” she eventually asked.
He shook his head and returned his attention to the fire.
Berun, Shavrim, and Laures returned. The constructed man settled down, his dusty spheres squeaking like damp cloth to brass fixtures. His eyes were dimmer than Vedas recalled seeing in some time. Clearly, he was tired, or as close to tired as his body could become. Vedas had never determined what, if anything, Berun felt. Surely, he was not as mighty as he had once been: an injury suffered during their journey to Danoor (an injury Vedas still did not understand) had resulted in him being unable to alter his form or rotate the spheres that made up his body, severely restricting the amount of sunlight he could receive as nourishment.
They nodded to one another.
Shavrim spoke quietly to Churls. She shook her head and he laughed, clapped her on the back, and put a hand on her shoulder to steer her over to the fire. He met Vedas’s stare with no trace of animosity: in fact, he smiled openly as he sat, as though they had shared a joke.
Vedas felt no anger. This did anger him.
Churls spared no glance at him as she crouched to warm her hands. He stared at her bare head, his desire undeniable and frustrating.
Laures, observant, looked from her to Vedas, and gave him a small, sad smile.
Shavrim cleared his throat.
“Weapons, Vedas. We should talk about weapons. When you lived in the abbey of the Thirteenth Order, I assume you trained with many different kinds?”
The question took him by surprise. It should not have. They had left the city for a reason. A mad reason, of course, but Shavrim had at least been forthcoming about just how mad. They were to retrieve weapons Adrash had left on the domed island of Osa—weapons the white god had hidden for fear their existence would threaten his own.
“Ah,” Vedas said. “Weapons. I’d forgotten for a moment.” He stopped himself, just in time, from allowing sarcasm to creep into his voice. He had agreed to their course of action. No one had put a knife to his throat.
He opened his hands, as if to accept a gift. “Yes, I am familiar with most weapons.”
“Familiar? How familiar?”
“Familiar enough,” Vedas repeated.
Shavrim laughed. “Modesty doesn’t suit you. Would you show me?”
Vedas stood, swaying slightly. His suit hardened subtly along the back of his legs, assisting him without his consciously willing it so.
“I don’t think …” Churls began.
He looked down at her, daring her to finish the thought.
She opened her mouth, and then promptly shut it.
This too made him angry.
‡
Shavrim selected a pair of short swords for the two of them, both similar to Churls’s vazhe yet certainly sharper. Before giving his even an exploratory swing, Vedas weighed it in both hands, examining the scrollwork on the pommel, identifying a northern Tomen hand. He possessed extensive knowledge of blades, though they had never been his favorite sort of tool. He preferred striking surfaces, concussive edges.
He walked a few paces from the fire and turned. Shavrim lifted his shirt over his head, threw it to the dirt, and followed. The sword appeared comically small in his massive fist.
Not for the first time, Vedas appraised the man as an opponent.
Thickly built, he mused, would be an understatement.
Had Vedas been at peak condition, Shavrim would still have out-massed him by a factor of two. They stood at roughly the same height, both rather taller than average, but only one needed to turn sideways to make it through doorways. Typically, this would not have caused Vedas more than a few moments of calculation. He had faced much larger combatants, both suited and unsuited, and knew best how to use their size against them.
But Shavrim did not move like a man weighed down by muscle. Though he hid it rather well by moving slowly, Vedas recognized the grace in his movements for what it was: a deeply ingrained sense of place within the world—a proprioception far beyond what training could produce. It was as if he were a fixture, a center upon which everyone around him spun. With a slight twitch of muscle, he would send an opponent flying. Vedas excelled in fighting because he possessed such a center. He recognized this in Shavrim, and felt sure his was recognized in turn.
As Vedas pulled the hood of his suit over his head, his gaze lingered on the two small horns on Shavrim’s broad forehead. They sprouted seamlessly from his flesh several inches directly above his eyes, darkening slightly as they neared a point.
No casual observer would fail to notice the similarity between the hood of the elder-cloth suit Vedas wore and the head of Shavrim Coranid.
Like all things about the man they had once called The Tamer, this made Vedas suspicious. It seemed too great a coincidence. Beyond this, it caused a small, superstitious part of Vedas to wonder if the man were possessed of some arcane fighting ability. He feared it, and he feared very little when it came to violence.
He had known only one other man who roused the same emotion. Abse, the abbey master of The Thirteenth Order of Black suits—the man who had identified in Vedas the potential to become a great fighter …
Abse would not flinch away from a man because of a coincidence, a vague feeling of unease.
Vedas took a ready stance, arms loose, legs set wide, the tip of his blade wavering slightly, purposefully, the head of a snake. The elder-cloth flowed to cover his face. It constricted around him, wonderfully alive and responsive, hardening to cup his genitals, becoming shields over his kidneys and vulnerable clusters of nerves. All traces of fatigue fled his system. He stood, sheathed completely. By comparison to his opponent, he was only a thin black shade.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Churls and Laures stand.
Shavrim moved, just as quickly as Vedas suspected he would. Sword low, rigid. Vedas waited until the last moment, anticipating the other’s move correctly: as Shavrim’s blade came up toward his wrist, Vedas flicked it aside and turned, stepping laterally, allowing the larger man to step past him. Having confirmed his opponent’s speed, working on instinct, he immediately ducked. Shavrim’s blade severed air as it passed inches above Vedas’s head, creatin
g a sound like tearing paper.
Vedas cut diagonally, aiming for the other’s midsection.
… and stopped at the merest contact.
Shavrim froze. Vedas pressed his blade to the flesh just below the man’s ribs. His right arm was a rod of steel, welded to the weapon in his hand.
“Familiar enough,” he said.
After several heartbeats of silence, Berun burst out laughing, a huge joyous bell of a sound.
The tension fled from Vedas. His arm fell, and he started shaking. To his surprise, he did not have to force a smile at Shavrim, who clapped him on the back hard enough to rattle his teeth. A spell had been broken, he sensed—not a great thing, no, but it was a relief to feel an easing of his animosity. He and Shavrim returned to the others, where he expected to be received with the same lightheartedness.
Churls stared into the fire, unwilling to meet his gaze.
Laures simply looked from one to another, and offered him another sad smile.
“What?” he asked. He waited until Churls peered up. When she did, he could read nothing in her expression. “What?” he asked again, raising his voice. He looked around at his companions. The mood had turned, clearly, in the space of seconds.
“Is there something I don’t know?”
“No,” Churls said. “They’re responding to me. My mother always said no one could be happy when I’m in a bad mood.”
She stood. “Now would be a good time to talk.”
‡
They stood just out of earshot of the others, awkwardly distant from each other. For Vedas, who had made a habit of not touching others beyond training and fighting, the realization of their physical separation came as a shock. To not touch Churls, even simply to take her hand, took a physical effort—an effort he had been making for some time, in truth before their failed attempt to capture Fesuy and hold him accountable for the murder of a stranger.
During his captivity, Vedas had never dreamt. Fesuy’s mage kept him deep, deep below the level of recall. A blackness, a void, was all that remained. Even when they woke him, to allow him to eat and relieve himself, his mind was a smoked lens. And yet, in those blurred moments, he thought of her, regretting his inability to connect, chastising himself for being intimidated by urges that (for all other men, he imagined) came naturally. He had anticipated his own death, knowing he had not lived a single moment of truly forgetting himself, of letting go.
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