Shower of Stones

by Zachary Jernigan

  “I am not your weak-blooded cousin,” he said, hearing his words through a wool sheet, a thin wall. He did not yell, but increased the volume of his voice with each sentence. “I am full-blooded Knosi, son to full-blooded Knosi. I am Vedas Tezul, the man who declared war on Adrash. I am ridden by a god, and still live and speak in my own voice. I will not be talked to as if I were a child. I will not be told what to do, kept in the dark, or moved about like a game piece—by you, by Evurt, by anyone.” He smiled tightly. “You will acknowledge this.”

  For a moment, she looked as though she would reject his assertion. Slowly, however, one corner of her mouth turned up. She nodded, and the daylit mesa snapped back into focus.

  Finally, she said. A reason to hope in you. No cousin of mine comes crawling.

  He leaned into their embrace, and whispered in her ear.

  “Don’t tell me anything more. Show me. Show me everything.”

  ‡

  Shavrim lagged behind them for the two days it took to reach the docktown of Ual. He waved them forward when any member of the party slowed to accommodate his pace. He kept his features carefully composed, though now and then he huffed in annoyance.

  Vedas could not resist making the comparison to himself. On the trip to Danoor, he too had been injured and labored to keep up with Churls and Berun. He too had refused to accept any concession to his condition. Watching Shavrim struggle, Vedas fought to reconcile his distrust with a newfound sympathy. When night came, he stared across the fire at his clearly exhausted companion, trying to piece together what Jojore had revealed to him about the man.

  (No, despite what he had learned, he could not bring himself to think of Shavrim as a god. The world already possessed one too many deities. Vedas denied the label, as though denying it would do a damn thing.)

  The weight of time: this, Vedas could not easily comprehend. How could a being exist in a body so clogged with lives, the identities and recollections of millennia? Thanks to Jojore, he now understood Shavrim had been made, in the much same way Berun had been made—that the man had been designed from the outset to withstand the physical and intellectual rigors of immortality. Whereas Vedas possessed one mind housed in the fragile confines of his skull, Shavrim’s mind branched and divided throughout his body, compartmentalizing his ponderous existence, allowing him to close and open doors to all but forgotten memories.

  And yet, even with this knowledge, Vedas could not conceive of the pressure upon the man’s shoulders. Though aware of the limitations of his own knowledge, as well as the impossibility of any true comparison to mortal men, he could not prevent himself from reading much in Shavrim’s defeated expression.

  What occurred in Marept had broken him in some fundamental way.

  To his surprise, Vedas found himself warming to the man. Shavrim had never acted on Vedas or his companions’ behalf, but he had also never lied. He would see his family returned to him, and this stirred buried recollections within Vedas. Had he not wanted a family, a place to belong? Had he not tried, for most of his life, to achieve some sense of peace and justice?

  He did not hate understanding how he and Shavrim Coranid were alike.

  In truth, since communing with Jojore, he had discovered an untapped reserve of compassion for both Churls and Berun. He felt warmly inclined toward Fyra, protective, affectionate in a way he had never before allowed himself around children. The urge to chastise himself emerged, for it was as though he had forgotten a thing so obvious he should never have been able to forget it.

  Churls. She had lived with a burden far heavier than his own—far heavier than anyone could be expected to endure. As the trainer of recruits for the Thirteenth Order of Black Suits, he had seen children die, knowing himself to be responsible, or at the very least complicit. But Churls? His knees grew weak every time he contemplated the bleak weight, the overwhelming guilt, of losing a child rarely seen and never truly comprehended. Churls had willfully neglected her daughter, choosing wrongly each and every day she spent far from home.

  She had not deceived herself in anything. She had known she was running.

  Not for the first time since leaving Golna, Vedas appreciate the power of experiencing unclouded vision. He had once considered himself a man of insight, aware of what moved those whose lives intersected briefly with his own, but to truly comprehend what another felt, the total acknowledgement of their mistakes, their joys and failures and boredoms …

  Oh, yes, he loved her.

  He would use this word, love. He would mean it for the first time since childhood, when love was an automatic function of living, of being dependent upon someone. Committing to it, as they traveled through the desert toward a seemingly impossible goal, ridden by forces they could not as mortals grasp, struck him as appropriate.

  The mortal mind could be illuminated. Even someone as crippled by doubt, as awkward from self-imposed isolation, as he could experience a communion with others. There was considerable risk, but he now understood the risk must be taken if one were to make it to death a complete man.

  Of course, man could mean so many things. Berun, too, suffered in ways Vedas could sympathize with. Vedas recalled all the ways in which he himself had been manipulated since the death of his parents, first by one and then another abbey master. They continued to exert their pull, even from death and across the continent, telling him that he had lost his way, that he had betrayed his order and the oaths taken there.

  Of course, as with Churls, what he knew of suffering in this regard paled in comparison to Berun, who had never had room enough to call himself his own creature—who had at every step been under another’s thumb.

  Haunted, the three of them. He, Churls, and Berun shared this bond. His friends had known this intuitively and supported him, well before he knew himself.

  Friends. Yes. In addition to love, he would use that word. It brought a smile to his face.

  And Fyra?

  Fyra. To whom they owed their lives. For which she continued to exhaust herself, asking nothing in return. She possessed an unquestionable loyalty to her mother, and, for reasons Vedas could not fathom, a growing sense of attachment to her lover and Berun. She had become invested in their combined fate, to the point of acting as emissary, rousing the dead from their fear, convincing them to risk their own existence to oppose Adrash.

  Ostensibly to oppose Adrash, he reminded himself. Everything beyond helping her mother was secondary. She was still a child, for all her power—a child who did not know the wage of her offer.

  Jojore knew, however.

  We could help you, and stand a chance of surviving, the dead magess had said as they stood and surveyed a blasted, permanently twilit plain—an outcome, one of many, in which Adrash let the Needle fall to earth. The girl, however? She will die a death beyond death. She will pass out of existence. I am not always able to read the wind, but this much is clear. Know the wage of choosing to accept our help. Her expression grew hard. It is a small wage, cousin. She is just one girl. Powerful, yes, but still just one girl.

  He had nodded, but only in confirmation of the conclusion he had already reached. Churls would not lose her daughter a second time.

  ‡

  The nations of Knoori could not easily be linked, one with another. The magic needed to communicate over vast distances existed, but the expenditure was too great for the commoner. As a result, news traveled glacially.

  Having no family to speak of, Vedas had never given this fact of existence much thought, yet traveling to Danoor had altered his perspective slightly: he had often longed to communicate with Abse, seeking counsel over the long journey.

  Of course, had he received such counsel, he might well have delivered the speech the abbey master had written—a document that sought only to cement the power of the Black Suits, altering the dynamic not at all, keeping warring parties in their old positions. Had he listened to Abse, he would never have allowed his doubt to take such firm root, or his desire for Churls to bloom. He
would not have become something other than Vedas Tezul of Golna, a child in a man’s body, a mind bound by the cords of dogma. He would not have a hundred new doubts, or a sense of purpose despite the doubts.

  Certainly, he would not be staring at a statue of himself, at a crossroads far from Danoor.

  He looked away, horrified. The smell of saltwater filled his head, though the ocean could not yet be seen. Over the flat northeastern horizon, he could make out a gleaming arc of reflected light, an incomprehensibly huge bubble stretched over a vast portion of the earth’s belly: Osa, or at least the top of the immense crystal dome that covered their eventual destination.

  He concentrated on it intensely, as if by doing so he could convince the others to turn their gazes away from the embarrassing object before them.

  “Well, this is odd,” Churls said.

  Shavrim grunted. After a moment, Berun began laughing. Heat rose in Vedas’s cheeks.

  The statue stood, propped in the sand two miles west of Ual. It was a crude, half-sized thing with exaggerated musculature and even more exaggerated genitalia, painted black from head to toe. In one hand it held a roll of paper. His victory speech.

  A sign hung from its neck.

  UAL IS LOYAL TO THE PROPHET VEDAS TEZUL

  IF YOUR ALLEGIANCE LIES ELSEWHERE

  LEAVE OR BE DROWNED IN OUR SEA

  Churls resisted laughing, but could not hide the amusement in her voice. “It’s really quite flattering, Vedas. You’re a hero.”

  She frowned exaggeratedly at his expression, and squeezed his hand.

  “Come now. We’ll be welcomed like royals. After Danoor, shouldn’t we thank fate for anyone kindly disposed toward us? We could have walked into a town overrun by Adrashi.”

  He met her stare and she sighed.

  “Fine,” she said, and pressed her palm flat against the statue’s forehead. She walked forward, toppling it easily to the ground. Over her shoulder, she smiled at him. “What? They’re about to meet the real thing, anyway, so what’s the harm in a little sacrilege?”

  He tried to see the humor in it. He did. She raised her eyebrows. He admitted defeat, and smiled at her. It was a forced reaction, but to his astonishment it helped: as he passed the downed statue, the situation suddenly struck him as comical. He experienced the increasingly familiar suspicion that, should he choose to view the world differently, the world would indeed appear differently. Was it necessary to view events through such an uncharitable lens? What, he asked, did it profit him to greet each day with a wary eye? He had always been dying. The world had always been dying. It would all end one day, and what would be left of Vedas Tezul?

  He stopped in his tracks, turned back, and stooped to shoulder his wooden likeness. Shavrim watched him. He nodded, expression unreadable, when Vedas stood.

  Berun looked from one to the other. “What are you doing?” he asked.

  Vedas shook his head, not entirely sure, but suspecting he would know in time.

  ‡

  The residents of Ual had little to spare, but they spared all of it to accommodate their prophet. He balked at their generosity, but in the end relented.

  They slaughtered a ewe within a half hour of his arrival, prepared and set dinner for twelve men between the three of them, and made up he and Churls’s room in the town’s one inn as if hosting (just as she had predicted) a king and queen. Joyful and embarrassed at all the attention, full to the point of bellyache and more than a little drunk, they fell asleep before the thought of making love occurred to either of them.

  At two hours past midnight, he rose and left her. His movements were silent, even to his own ears. He had felt sluggish upon entering the room, but he felt light and strong upon leaving it, filled with a purpose he did not need to question. Following the compulsion, he smiled tightly in anticipation, his jaw clenched and his fingers balled into fists.

  He would go, but he would not be corralled.

  His brother waited for him in the town square, arms crossed, under the broken sky. This word—brother—formed on Vedas’s lips, but he suppressed the urge to speak it. He clamped down upon the sense of familiarity that threatened to dictate the conversation before it had even begun. A door closed in his mind: he locked Evurt as best he could behind it.

  “Shavrim,” he said.

  The man canted his head forward, causing the moonlight to catch oddly on the stubby horns sprouting from his forehead. For a handful of seconds, they appeared larger than they had before, sharpened into vicious points. Stretching, reaching …

  Vedas kept himself, barely, from taking a step back.

  Shavrim’s left eyebrow lifted and he raised his chin, breaking the illusion. He smiled—a touch sadly, Vedas estimated. Vedas had seen the same expression on Abse’s face many times. When the abbey master’s most gifted disciple had not reached the correct conclusion. When events did not turn out as the abbey master planned.

  Abse had been able to recognize immediately, the moment when Vedas’s sympathy shifted away from him.

  “Vedas,” Shavrim said. There was no question in it.

  “Yes. That is my name.”

  Shavrim nodded, eyes bright, intent. “It is. It is. And yet you’re here, where I expected Evurt to be.” He sat, cross-legged on the ground. He gestured that his visitor sit. “I won’t pretend this pleases me, Vedas, but there’s little I can do. You’re surprised that I tell you this? Let me ask—do you think I’ve been honest with you? Have I been forthright?”

  “You have,” Vedas said immediately, and then discovered room to doubt his surety. He considered several responses, and then shrugged before sitting across from Shavrim.

  An odd decisiveness had settled upon him: he would allow the man to lead, to either tell the truth or implicate himself. He would trust himself to tell the difference between the two.

  Behind the closed door in his mind, he felt a force push back against this resolution. Evurt did not want to wait, yet Vedas found it easy to dismiss his impatience. Each inhalation seemed to anchor him more firmly to the earth. Even his newfound affection for Shavrim did not fade. In fact, it was if they stood upon equal ground for the first time.

  They stared at one another, silent.

  Shavrim broke first. He laughed suddenly, as though Vedas had told an amusing joke.

  “You’re an interesting man, Vedas Tezul. When we met upon Fesuy Amendja’s roof, I told you I could show you a way to stop hating yourself, never imagining you might come to terms with yourself alone. Every rumor I’d heard had led me to imagine you as the most inflexible sort.”

  Vedas said nothing.

  “To be clear, mine was a genuine offer. Adrash is not invincible. He can be wounded. He might even die. What I did not share then, but shared soon after, was the way in which you’d be able to make good on your word—not through your own efforts, but through my brother’s.”

  He sighed, and his sad smile returned. “Yes. I had hoped to see Evurt again, to fight alongside him, despite what damage it might do to you. I thought he and Ustert were the world’s best chance. I still worry that they are, that we have missed an opportunity at an entire world’s expense. Their assumption of you and Churls may still happen, of course. I won’t lie and say it wouldn’t please me. Regardless, there’s substantial doubt in my mind. Perhaps they chose vessels less wisely than they could have. Perhaps you are too strong to be taken and used in the manner they intend.”

  Vedas said nothing. He closed his eyes as the pressure behind the closed door intensified.

  After a long pause, Shavrim said, “Perhaps this is a good thing, however.”

  The pressure doubled, tripled. Vedas considered clamping down upon it entirely, grinding Evurt’s influence to a halt before it became overwhelming, but did not. Shavrim would not stop attempting to rouse his brother. He would test Vedas, again and again.

  Might as well have it out now, Vedas thought.

  Evurt did not deign to respond.

  “Perhaps you are what
the world needs,” Shavrim said. “Two mortals. After all, if Evurt’s strength is insufficient to overcome you, what use could he be against our father?”

  The pressure increased until Vedas’s skull creaked with it, bathing him from crown to chin in pain so intense he struggled to loosen his jaw to scream, yet loosen his jaw to scream he did. He opened his eyes, and a golden light poured forth from them, fractionally easing the weight pressed against both temples. The colors of the night bloomed around him suddenly and Evurt’s consciousness, menacingly alien and disdainful, flooded his own. He rocked from side to side dizzyinglly, as though his body, his mind and soul, were being pulled from either direction.

  As though he were scales, measuring shifting weights.

  “Shavrim,” he said in one croak of a voice while another, steadier voice spoke simultaneously, saying the word he had not wanted to say.

  “Brother,” Evurt said.

  In this one word, Vedas heard the god’s satisfaction, the arrogant presumption, and his anger flared in response.

  Losing to Evurt was not an option.

  Thus, he would not lose: it was this simple. His teeth snapped closed and he growled, like a mutt cornered in an alley. His eyes closed, like shutters on the invading sun. His hands rose to his head, and gradually he stopped rocking. Then, after an infinity of fearing his skull would collapse upon itself, of holding back the raging divine tide within him, he found control once more.

  The light slowly faded from his eyes. Evurt howled from behind the closed door.

  “Shavrim” Vedas said. In one voice. His own voice. “You can stop trying.” He shrugged. “Or don’t. I can’t summon the interest to care, either way. I know what you’re doing, and Evurt won’t be coaxed that easily from where I’ve put him.” He stood, pain a forgotten memory, smiling down at Shavrim without an ounce of anger. It was easy to simply choose a mood. He wondered why he had decided, on so many occasions, to be angry or fearful. He questioned why he had let himself be pushed from one period of uncertainty to another for so long.