Cordimancy

by Hardman, Daniel

  How did Toril feel about being a lip? That was what the blisters meant, wasn’t it?

  “Step forward,” said the priest who was his guide.

  Toril complied.

  “Your mother gave you a name to share with friend and foe on the day you were born. Will you learn what was in her heart, and test whether you have carried that name well?”

  “Yes.”

  The priest nodded.

  Toril’s mother, eyes still wet, stepped behind Toril’s shoulder and whispered in his ear. “Ta- for father, or- for son, -il for joy. A son who is his father’s joy.” She squeezed his shoulders, and Toril could hear the smile. “To- for from, -eril for heart. A treasure from my heart.” She squeezed again. “Tora-il, ninth great grandson of Kelun and founder of the parijan to which I was born.” She squeezed a final time.

  Toril felt a warm glow. He’d guessed the first meaning, and the third, but not the second. It pleased him to feel the connection to his mam. That, at least, was happy today.

  “Have you heard?” asked the priest.

  “Yes.”

  “Now you must take a name of your own choosing.” The priest nodded to Toril’s mother, who lifted a blindfold and tied it around her son’s eyes.

  He felt the scratch of burlap as a sack was thrust into his hand.

  “Lead him,” said the priest.

  Toril heard his tat walk across the gravel, then felt strong hands on his shoulders. The drummers started again. Even though they chose a slow rhythm, Toril struggled to keep pace; his feet slipped and flinched on sharp stone. After a couple dozen steps, he felt Tat turn him. He was behind the curtain that the witnesses held to give him privacy. He stood on bare sand now.

  “Dump it,” whispered Tat.

  Toril allowed rocks to drop onto the sand in front of him. Then he handed the empty bag to his father and received the handle of a broom in return. He swept lightly; the goal was to brush away pebbles, leaving only a pattern of larger stones that would form the quattroglyphs suggesting a name.

  What would he see when he pulled off the blindfold? Could he salvage any of the dream that he’d taken into the water, by finding a name that suggested learning, prestige, or power? Would any of The Five Who Speak manifest their interest in him?

  One of his friends had confided that he’d ignored the rocks entirely, just picking a name that he liked. Toril had been horrified—both because this disrespected the gods’ guidance on the course of one’s life, and because his friend had broken the taboo of never speaking about one’s self-name after the ceremony.

  He would never share his name so casually.

  And he would study the rocks to see what possibilities The Five had written there.

  Toril stopped sweeping. He held the broom out, waited till it was pulled from his hand, and stood until his father dropped the blindfold.

  He saw nothing but a jumble of rocks.

  He felt a new wave of resignation, to match the moment when he’d admitted defeat in the river. He jerked his head and blinked angrily.

  Tat sensed his mood and squatted to Toril’s left. He reached out and touched a fist-sized egg of a stone, worn smooth by eons in the river bed.

  “See the narrow side?” he whispered. “Narrow or light for the pointing end; wide or dark for the other.” He touched two other stones near the first. “Here is the center of the glyph. The first and the third point out; the second points in; the fourth is missing. This is ‘fire.’ You see?”

  He looked up at his son, eyes crinkling.

  Toril hesitated, then nodded. A dozen pebbles cluttered in and around the pattern that his father had identified, but if he squinted to suppress what was irrelevant, the shape was obvious. Sort of.

  A month ago he’d rolled his eyes at his father’s quizzing. He knew all the glyphs by heart—had known them for years.

  But what he saw now was not so clear. Was that implying that his future was murky, or was he just too dense to read? Or had he simply relinquished the broom too soon?

  Tat gestured a pace to his left. “Here is ‘home,’” he said, voice low enough to be inaudible to those waiting beyond the curtain. “And over there I see “heart.”

  He raised his eyebrows to be sure Toril agreed.

  “Now find your name, son. Take your time.” He stood up and walked around the curtain.

  Toril started to lick his lips, then flinched as the burning intensified. He pushed the pain aside and studied the stones, taking a step or two in each direction, careful not to disturb any of the patterns near his feet.

  For a dozen heartbeats, he stood motionless, scanning. Another dozen heartbeats passed. And another. He saw a heap that might be a skewed version of ‘flower’, if he approached it from a certain angle. Or ‘dove’, if he came at it from the opposite side. Those words belonged to Akeet’s twin sister—Jurivna, goddess of spring. He’d never felt much affinity for her, though, and the arrangement lacked symmetry anyway…

  He picked his way around the stones and looked again.

  Nothing.

  He squatted, hoping that patterns might emerge.

  Should he use the quattroglyphs his father had already identified? 'Fire' and 'heart' and 'home' were each powerful words, but there was something repellent in the connotation that came as he savored them together. Besides, his hair was still wet from the river portion of the ordeal, where he'd disavowed the fire streaming out of his heart; claiming those words now felt incongruous, disingenuous. Dashnal would be offended.

  Perhaps his friend had not been crazy to simply choose a name that he liked. In the end, the self name had to be a personal choice; that was why he was on this side of the curtain alone. There was no requirement that the name come from rock—it was just a way for The Five to suggest possibilities.

  Were they telling him to stop looking for a glorious pattern to his life?

  As Toril shifted to another vantage point, his eyes followed the tracks the broom had made, and his forehead wrinkled. Quattroglyphs weren't always formed with stones... In one story he'd read with his mother, a lover had left quattroglyphs for his sweetheart on a muddy road using prints from a boot with a distinctive heel. He'd passed the messages in broad daylight, right under the nose of parents and a matchmaker with other ideas, and won her heart so that in the end the arranged marriage had to be abandoned.

  What did his brush strokes say?

  "Seek."

  It was clear as ink on parchment, once he focused on the negative space he'd unwittingly created. Taking a step forward, he saw a mound of pebbles at the nexus of the glyph. The augment mark converted verbs into people. Not "seek" then — "seeker."

  Yes.

  This resonated. Toril could see himself as a seeker. It bound him to Karkita. He longed to bring glory to his clan. He craved knowledge. He wanted to see the world. He wanted—he sought—something besides the everyday.

  Maybe he could not walk in ice. Maybe he would only have a human lifetime, but he could spend it seeking for what others had never dreamed. He would be the pride of his parents.

  Toril squatted at the center of the glyph, heart warming. "I am Seeker," he thought. "Seeker of …" What word could he add that would complete the thought—and the name—in just the right way? The Five had guided him to the first part, and he would fill in the second.

  "Seeker of Glory," sounded selfish and shallow. "Seeker of Honor?" Better, but not worth embracing. "Seeker of … Knowledge? Goodness?”

  He looked down at the dirt. Right between his toes was the mound that had converted the glyph into a noun. Now he saw that it, too, was a pattern—a perfectly executed arrangement of tiny pebbles.

  His answer. He felt his lips tingle as the magic rose in confirmation.

  First and third stones wider at the center, fourth narrow, second missing: "Help."

  Wait...

  As with the nexus of the broom's glyph, there was a tiny mark at the center. Another noun.

  "Helper…" Sometimes he'd seen thi
s quattroglyph used for "friend" as well.

  Except that the first mark was conflicted. It was wide at the center, but also lighter in color. A conflicted first mark was a way to diminish or subtract…

  "Helpless Seeker?"

  "Seeker of the Helpless?"

  That was a name from the fifth god—the smallest finger on the hand, the Unpaired One who wandered mountaintops and adopted anyone the other Speakers didn’t want. How did he feel about being named by Gitám, god of dregs, lost causes, broken pottery, and orphans?

  2

  the antechild ~ Malena, a decade later

  "You're making a mistake."

  Malena sighed. "You've made your opinion clear. Can we agree to differ?" She saw her father draw breath for a retort, and cut him off by gesturing at the servants who had appeared in the doorway, shoulders straining at the trunk they carried. "You can leave that here," she said, nodding toward the foot of the nearest bed. "Set it down gently, please. Its contents are fragile."

  Her younger sister, oblivious to the conversational tension, flopped on the bed next to the one she'd chosen, bare heels flashing. "Will you show me the heartstone before we leave, Malena?"

  Malena felt her ears and throat flush. Tupa was old enough not to ask such embarrassing questions, especially in a loud voice that anyone could overhear. Hanging the heartstone happened when a marriage was consummated, and disclosing anything about the stone or the circumstances of its bestowal flouted taboo. So much for help changing the subject.

  Her mother turned from the shutters she'd just pushed open at the window and glared. “Tulespa! Have you ever seen any woman’s heartstone? Have you seen mine?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then.”

  “But she’s my sister.”

  “She’s the semanya of Noemi,” Malena’s mam said. “In a few years, she might be our clan mother. The time for you two to trade girl talk is long past. Show some respect for Malena's new station.”

  Malena winced. She eyed the serving woman filling the washbasin in the corner. Was Mam’s smugness obvious to others? She wasn’t eager to begin her married life with a reputation as a self-interested social climber. “The wedding’s not till tomorrow,” she said. "For now we’re still guests. And regardless of what happens, I hope Tupa always talks to me like a sister.”

  She crossed to Tupa’s bed, bent, and reached out to brush crumbs off the younger girl’s cheeks. “But no, I’m not going to violate my husband’s confidence just to satisfy your curiosity.”

  Tupa sat up and pushed at her cheek herself. “I liked Hasha,” she said. “He seems nice.”

  “Yes,” said Malena, relaxing slightly.

  The clan chief had provided a ceremonial but cordial greeting when they rode into his durga an hour earlier. Normally such duties would have fallen to his wife, but the former clan mother had passed away the year before. Toril, in his early twenties, might have helped—except that tradition called for bridegrooms to remain in seclusion until the wedding proper. And everybody knew how traditional—some said “hidebound—Hasha was. So after a meal and some friendly conversation, Hasha had conducted them to the guest chambers himself. By then Malena thought he looked tired; he'd seemed relieved when he turned away at the door, leaving them in the care of staff.

  "Will I get to come back for a visit when you have a child?" Tupa asked.

  Malena snorted. Heaven’s Fist! How many conversational firecrackers would her sister lob? Had Malena been this clueless about proper conversation when she was eleven?

  "You're assuming there'll be a baby," she said, pulling out the pin that bound her hair into a clasp at her neck. "That sort of thing isn't something you schedule. Anyway, you'll be in fosterage in a few months. Decisions about travel will be up to your near parents."

  "Don't start with the 'it happens when it happens' bit," said Malena's father, grunting as he pulled at his boots from the far side of the chamber. "The timing's not that mysterious, and it's under your control."

  Malena's face reddened again.

  "The timing is mysterious," said Malena's mother. "Look how widely spaced your own daughters are. Five my witness, you and I tried hard enough for more."

  "Can we please change the subject?" Malena said. "Something besides the details of childbearing?"

  "The line of Shavir is dying out," Malena's father pressed on. "I was the last male descendant. I need a grandson. And so does Hasha. Toril’s his one remaining son, and there are no cousins in the parijan. No secret about any of it, and no reason to be shy that you want to produce a child.”

  Malena slapped the bed in exasperation. "I don't need this lecture again."

  "No?" said her father. "When I hear you tell Tupa that having a baby is only an assumption, it makes me wonder."

  Malena found herself gritting her teeth. Did every bride run a gauntlet of mortification before her wedding? Did her parents have no sense for the privacy they were abusing, by discussing such matters in front of strangers? She followed the serving woman who was exiting the room with an empty water pitcher, and shut the door with a thump.

  "Women in our line have not had an easy time with pregnancies," said her mother, aiming to placate. “I put my mam in her grave, and my sister died in childbirth as well. Veshumi is still trying."

  "So I'm supposed to prepare myself to be patient?" shot back Malena's father. "Our oldest has had six years to produce issue to cement our ties to Rovin. And nothing to show for it. Now our second is marrying into the line of the clan chief himself. We can’t squander our opportunity to give Hasha an heir. Dally too long, and Toril’s affections could wander."

  Malena’s mam looked at her lap.

  Malena swallowed. “I know my duty.”

  Her father crossed the room and put his hands on Malena’s shoulders. “Good,” he said softly. “I’ve worked all my life to get us here. We’re not flirting with poverty anymore. We’re a respected family. It’s been twelve generations since the line of Shavir held the staff of clan chief; you can restore us to the status we deserve. I’m proud of you, and of the match you’ve made.”

  “I understand.”

  He straightened, thrust a hand into the gap at the split of his kurta, and pulled out a pouch that hung beside his heart. When he upended it, an ornate ring dropped into the palm of his hand. He held it out to Malena.

  She stared at the gold band. It was a man’s ring, bulky rather than delicate—meant for fingers thicker and longer than her own. A square emerald the size of a thumbnail was bracketed in the metal, diamonds studding either side. The band itself had a serpentine inlay of lighter gold alloy that circled the ring. It was a striking and precious heirloom.

  She did not move.

  “Take it!”

  Still Malena stared straight ahead.

  Her father stepped to the chest that servants had carried in and laid at the foot of Malena’s bed. He threw back the lid, tossed some clothing aside, and puffed as he dragged the chest into Malena’s field of view. A shaft of green porcelain lay on velvet, protruding from a burst of white petal shapes and a disc that been painted daisy yellow. Beside the flower sat an ocarina. The instrument—also ceramic—sparkled with the fire of mica-enhanced glaze, but it had obviously been repaired. Its body was cracked and worn.

  "This is what you propose to offer as an antechild?” her father demanded. “Instead of Shavir’s signet? What can you be thinking?”

  Malena sighed.

  “The antechild is the symbolic down payment a wife brings to her marriage. Bride price has been flowing our direction all summer, and Hasha’s been most generous. That team of marwaris was magnificent; their saddles alone are worth half our household goods. He’s sent precious spices, bolts of wool and linen, silver wristbands studded with topaz…” He lifted his hands in frustration. “And you want to respond to such a gesture with some… amateur pottery? How does that reflect on your family? People will think we’re paupers, or arrogant fools, or both.”

 
; Malena closed the lid of the chest. “First of all, the bride price came from Toril, not Hasha. He raised and trained the horses himself, or so I’m told. He selected the jewelry, and the harp, and the books. And he’s the one I’m marrying, remember—not his famous father. Second, people won’t think anything at all about my choice of antechild, since the gift is given wife-to-husband, at a time of my choosing. It may not be a taboo subject, like the heartstone, but it’s still nobody’s business.”

  “You’re foolish if you think nobody will learn what you give,” said Malena’s mother. “Tongues will wag. Hasha will know.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “I don’t understand this vanity about your handiwork,” her mother said. “Must you offer something that you’ve made yourself, just to showcase your flair? I gave your father a tapestry, but it was one I commissioned, not one I wove.”

  Malena flushed but did not respond.

  “Far more valuable that way,” her father said, nodding. “And it made a worthy antechild. It hangs where all can appreciate your mother’s judgment and virtue.”

  “The signet would have symbolic value,” Mam said. “If Toril were seen to wear it, it would bind him to us in a way that all would recognize.”

  Malena stood.

  “I will give the gift I’ve chosen,” she said, stepping toward the sunset streaming through the window. “It suits my purpose.”

  3

  interruptions ~ Toril

  When a hollow clap from the Voice interrupted the wedding ceremony, Toril bit his lip.

  Emotion flickered on his bride’s face, he noticed. Was it impatience? Annoyance? He had no chance to analyze; the decorum that Malena exuded with her beaded sari, lapis lazuli, and silk ribbons slipped back into place almost instantly.

  Toril’s own reaction was worry. The Sisterhood had assigned this Voice to his home when he was young, and he knew her to be polite. Out of the corner of his eye he had seen her stiffen and reach for parchment, but her quill had scratched just a few lines. If the magical message she’d received was both brief and urgent, it wasn’t good news—and only a sender who outranked Toril’s father would demand immediate action.