by Ginn Hale
“I can’t think of anything to say,” Ravishan whispered. “I can’t stop seeing the fire.”
“You did what you had to.”
“I know,” Ravishan replied far more easily than John expected. “She murdered her husband’s first wife. She misused the power that Parfir had entrusted to her. But...”
John frowned. The revelation that the girl was a murderer herself shouldn’t have mattered. It didn’t justify her brutal treatment. But it seemed to make it easier for Ravishan to accept.
“I don’t know why, but this entire day I’ve felt like I was eight again. I felt like I did when my mother burned, like a stupid little child who couldn’t do anything.” Ravishan’s voice choked. He lowered his head so that his loose hair hid his face. “I haven’t thought about her or my father in years. I don’t know why now...” Ravishan wiped the back of his hand across his face. He kept his head lowered. “I think I always knew they were criminals, but they weren’t bad. They never hurt anyone. There was even a big, golden dog. Nobody tried to kill her or cook her. They were people who never hurt anyone...god, I’m babbling like a baby.”
Again Ravishan wiped his face. He drew in a deep breath. “How am I going to be Kahlil when I can’t even burn a witch?”
“You did burn her.” The words came out with a flatness that John wasn’t used to hearing in his own voice. Ravishan didn’t seem to notice it.
“But I didn’t want to,” Ravishan said quietly as if it were the worst confession. “It made me feel sick, like they were making me burn my mother again.”
“They made you burn your own mother?” It seemed too horrible to be true. Even as he asked, John knew it had to be. It would have been the only act that could have proven Ravishan’s loyalty to the Payshmura. It would have been the only way he could have saved himself and his sister.
“She was a traitor, a holy sister who turned to witchcraft. She aided the Fai’daum. The punishment had to be burning.”
“And your father?”
“They shot him. I didn’t see it, but Rousma did. She still has nightmares about it.”
“I’m sorry,” John said. He wished he could say something else, something that would make it all less terrible.
“It could have been worse.” Ravishan shrugged and leaned back against the wall. It was an act of boyish bravado, an attempt to regain his composure. John could see that Ravishan’s face was streaked with tears but he didn’t say anything. Anyone else sitting in the darkness with him wouldn’t have known.
“They were going to shoot me as well.” Ravishan gazed up at the ceiling. “They had me on the ground with a gun right up to my head. But I moved.”
“Through the Gray Space?” John asked.
Ravishan nodded. “Then Dayyid wanted to keep me alive to train me.”
John leaned back beside Ravishan. “You’ve had a crappy life.”
Ravishan looked startled for a moment and then laughed.
“Yeah, I have.” He leaned his head against John’s shoulder. John slid his arm around Ravishan and held him. “But it doesn’t seem so bad right now.” Ravishan closed his eyes.
John held him until he fell asleep.
Chapter Forty
John awoke early. Thin predawn light seeped in through cracks between the planks of the walls. Ravishan’s warm skin pressed against his own. Their legs and arms had curled around each other as they slept. John pressed his lips lightly against Ravishan’s.
Slowly, Ravishan responded. He opened his eyes and smiled, still half-asleep. Lazily, he brushed a hand across John’s chest. John leaned in to kiss Ravishan a second time, but then John’s stomach let out a growl of hunger. John felt a small flush of embarrassment spread over his cheeks. “I haven’t eaten since yesterday afternoon.”
“And I smelled too delicious?”
“You are delicious,” John replied.
“Am I?”
“Yes.” He kissed Ravishan again, much more deeply this time. Ravishan leaned into him. John slid his hand over the edge of blanket that lay across Ravishan’s waist. His fingers curled around it and he forced himself to uncurl them. Anyone could be outside that door. Listening. Maybe it was just paranoia, but he had a strange sense of being watched.
John drew back from Ravishan and forced himself to sit up. “We have to get to the church hostel before Dayyid notices that we’re missing.”
Ravishan groaned but sat up as well. “What will we tell him if he’s already noticed?”
“The truth, I suppose,” John said. “We picked the closest hostel we could find and got out of the rain.”
John picked up his pants. They were cold and still damp from the night before. His undershirt and cassock lay crumpled together on top of his sodden wool socks and filthy boots. Ravishan’s wet clothes were flopped beside his own in a second, unappealing mound. Not for the first time, John wished he had access to a washing machine and dryer.
He sighed and pulled the pants on. A clammy chill slid up his legs.
“Dayyid probably spent all last night sharpening his razors for what little hair I’ve managed to grow out,” Ravishan muttered.
“Who knows? He wasn’t paying much attention to you when we left.”
“He hates to get wet.” Ravishan scowled at his soaking clothes. “Right now I’m not relishing the idea myself.”
“I’d tell you that it’s not so bad, but I’d be lying,” John replied.
Ravishan took his own clothes and dressed quickly. John did the same. It did no good to draw out the unpleasant sensation of the damp cloth folding over dry warm skin. And after a few minutes, John found that the heat of his body had at least warmed the wet clothes.
They left the hostel without even a nod from the man who had rented the room. Now the man lounged in a chair beside the door, sleeping. John imagined he’d been up most of the night allowing drenched strangers in. John left the room key in his lap.
Outside, the sky was still dull and the streets were muddy. Little white seabirds clustered together under eaves of many of the buildings. No one else seemed to be up yet.
“If we cut through the Smiths’ Rows—” Ravishan began then stopped and scowled at the countless rows of stone buildings before them.
“We cut through and…” John prompted.
“We’ll run straight into one of the inner city walls.” Ravishan shook his head. “I’m not used to traveling with someone who can’t cross the Gray Space.”
“Would it be better if you arrived alone?”
“No. If I was out with an ushvun, Dayyid might suspect I was up to some mischief, but if he thought I was alone, then he’d be sure,” Ravishan said. “We’ll just have to take the main road.”
“He doesn’t trust you much, does he?” John asked as they walked.
“Dayyid? Not even as far as he can throw me. But I’m his best chance for a Kahlil so he can’t afford to be rid of me.” Ravishan glanced up at John and smiled. “Your braid is a mess.”
“You’re on the scruffy side yourself.”
They walked up the slow incline of the main road. As they traveled, the gold edge of the sun began to rise. People awoke and began the first activities of the morning. The scents of cook fires drifted through the air. Wisps of smoke curled up from chimneys. The strong aromas of cooking meat floated out from the buildings.
It was normally a smell that John would have welcomed—the promise of a warm meal wafting on the cold air. But this morning the fresh memory of the girl burning on the pyre choked his appetite.
“Rousma says that the Issusha’im Oracles have almost found the Rifter,” Ravishan said casually.
“Here?” John’s thoughts jumped immediately to Laurie.
“Of course not. In Nayeshi. You think I’d be this calm if the Rifter were here?” Ravishan shot him a disbelieving look. “They could find him in a year or so. Then they’ll have to send out the Kahlil.”
“That’s not too long,” John said absently. A sweet, fruity scent rolled
over him. Someone was baking apples.
Ravishan dropped his voice to a whisper. “It means we could be leaving for Nayeshi in a year.”
“We might miss the next Harvest Fair.”
“I wouldn’t mind that a bit,” Ravishan replied and he looked suddenly hurt and haunted. Ravishan needed the escape Nayeshi offered. Perhaps he needed it as much as John did.
As they walked on, the buildings they passed appeared better kept. John picked out shop signs hanging over freshly painted doors. A few blocks away, a street vendor called out that daru’sira and taye cakes were for sale. If they hadn’t needed to reach the church hostel as soon as possible, John thought he might have hunted the vendor down. A taye cake would have settled his stomach. As was, they kept walking. John caught the voices of other street vendors offering more dishes and passed them by.
John could see the gilded silver dome and golden filigree of the church hostel a few blocks ahead of them. It was the only building in Amura’taye adorned with such extravagance. While the last few decades of crops and grazing lands had been stunted and sickly, the tithes the Payshmura church demanded remained high. With their massive holdings and wealth the gaun’im could afford it, but most common men and women barely managed subsistence. With such blatant inequity, it was no wonder that the Fai’daum had come into being.
He wondered what Ravishan made of the Fai’daum. Before John could ask, Ravishan suddenly waved to someone ahead of them. Hann’yu rushed down the block towards them. As he came closer John saw that he was carrying a bundle of blue leaf cakes. The smell reminded John of sage.
“I’ve been looking for you,” Hann’yu said. He smiled with obvious relief.
“Dayyid isn’t already sending people out to find me, is he?” Ravishan glanced up and down the street with a hunted expression.
“I don’t think so,” Hann’yu said. “Are either of you hungry?”
“Starving,” John admitted.
“Have some. They’re best when they’re still hot. A very kind woman made them for me, though I think she over-estimated my appetite.” Hann’yu offered them the bundle of blue leaf cakes.
Both John and Ravishan helped themselves to the steaming, fragrant loaves. John ate his with a famished intensity. Once he had something in his stomach, he seemed to realize how hungry he really was. Ravishan smiled at him as he eyed the last cake in Hann’yu’s bundle. Hann’yu, too, noticed John’s attention.
“Have it,” Hann’yu told him. “I’ve already stuffed myself on them.”
“Thank you.” John picked up the warm cake but years of Nayeshi etiquette stopped him from just devouring it. “Would you like half?” he asked Ravishan.
“Yes, thank you,” Ravishan replied.
John handed him half the cake and they both ate quickly.
“I’ve found myself in something of a bind,” Hann’yu said while John and Ravishan chewed. “I was thinking that the two of you might be able to help me out.”
John simply nodded and took a last bite. Ravishan made an affirmative noise around his food.
“Last night the rain woke me up and I saw the two of you leaving so I followed. I had thought we three could share accommodations but I lost my bearings before I even got out of the fairgrounds. I wasn’t in the best state.” Hann’yu gave John a slightly embarrassed smile. “In any case, a widow happened to notice me and took pity on me. She invited me back to her house since it was close.”
“That was nice of her,” Ravishan said. He took the last bite of his cake.
“She’s a kind woman,” Hann’yu replied. “But you can see my predicament. It looks bad if I return saying I spent the night alone with a woman. Dayyid might make a fuss over it. It would be a terrible way to repay the woman for her goodness.”
Knowing so little of women, Ravishan seemed to accept Hann’yu’s story with no apparent suspicion. But John suspected that Hann’yu might actually have something to hide. It wasn’t just any woman who invited a strange man into her house and then who got up and baked him breakfast. Especially not in Basawar, where most women wouldn’t have gone near a Payshmura priest for fear of offending him in some manner. Hann’yu plainly needed a cover story even more badly than Ravishan and he did. Their mutual corroboration could shield all three of them.
“Why don’t we tell Dayyid that all three of us spent the night at the same hostel,” John suggested.
“That would be an excellent idea,” Hann’yu replied.
“It’s nothing.” Ravishan shrugged. “If the weather hadn’t been so bad, you probably would have been with us.”
“Yes, absolutely,” Hann’yu agreed. “The rain certainly came on suddenly.”
John didn’t know why, but a slightly guilty feeling crept through him at the comment, as if he were somehow responsible. Perhaps it was just that he had been so relieved that the storm had broken. If only it had come earlier.
They reached the hostel and found Dayyid. He seemed angry until he heard that Ravishan had not been alone. After that, he sent the three of them down to breakfast with a warning not to wander away before prayers. It went much more easily than John had expected.
He supposed that was because he wasn’t used to having alliances. He was accustomed to thinking of himself as a lone foreign man set against the world around him. But he had friends now and soon he discovered that he’d also gained a kind of respect.
He noticed it throughout the next two days at the fair when his fellow ushvun’im as well as several of the ushiri’im paid him passing compliments on his battle prowess. Samsango pronounced him Parfir’s protector of all men’s sisters. Ravishan grilled him about which holds he’d used to defeat a rasho so quickly. John noticed two other ushiri’im listening intently to his response, though Hann’yu looked immensely bored by the entire exchange.
After they returned to Rathal’pesha, the ushiri’im’s interest in him only seemed to grow. Most of them already recognized him from the times that he treated them in the infirmary. But after the Harvest Fair, they seemed overtly friendly towards him. In the halls of Rathal’pesha, they greeted him casually and struck up conversations with him as they would never have conversed with the other ushvun’im.
Soon it became obvious that they wanted to test their own battle prowess with him. John agreed to it, so long as they fought without blades. It was a good excuse to see more of Ravishan. Dayyid couldn’t criticize them for practicing battle forms together.
Familiarity with the ushiri’im gave John another advantage. They often allowed him into forbidden chambers, if he was walking with them. Slowly, over the course of several months, he gained access to room after room of Rathal’pesha’s greatest heights.
Soon he was familiar with the barrack-like chambers where the ushiri’im slept as well as the small treasuries where relics from Nayeshi were housed. Locked cabinets held tattered white T-shirts, work pants, a baseball and a wide variety of postage stamps. One glass case contained bills and coins from a scattering of years. The earliest John could find seemed to be 1940, but he didn’t look too long or too intently. He wasn’t supposed to be capable of reading any of it.
An ushiri named Ashan’ahma even pointed out that John’s ignorance rendered his presence in the sacred rooms harmless. “It isn’t as though he could carry our secrets to the Fai’daum. He can’t read a word of the holy script.” Ravishan had added his agreement to Ashan’amha’s and the matter had been settled among the ushiri’im. None of them mentioned it to Dayyid. They simply allowed John to go where he pleased.
The highest chamber both drew and repulsed him. It was like a scabbed injury that he wanted to forget about but always found himself scratching. When he stepped onto the stairs leading up he felt a change, as if the stones themselves had become infused with something terrible. As he ascended, John heard voices. They were not the clear human sounds of the ushiri’im speaking through the Gray Space. These were quiet and strangely distorted, almost indiscernible. But they piled over each other. They bu
mped and muttered through each other, building hundreds of tones, thousands of words. As John came closer, the voices grew louder but not more distinct. He only became more aware of the chaos of them. Their disjointed sentences crashed and jarred, hissed and murmured, like the ramblings of a hundred paranoid schizophrenics.
At the top of the stairs, the gray stones of the floor and walls seemed to have been infected with the same disorder. They were pitted and yellowed, like diseased teeth. The grain of the stones jutted in one direction and then abruptly broke into a different formation. Wisps of bluish smoke curled out from the edges of the single iron door in front of him. The smell of seared ozone mixed with an odor of taxidermy.
John stepped closer and placed his hand against the cold iron of the door. A feeling of utter revulsion swept over him. He pulled his hand back. The same feeling had come to him from the yasi’halaun and from the broken stones of the Great Gate.
“The men in red ride south. We holds them back. Then men in red ride north. We cannot sees them. We cannot sees...”
John picked out one murmuring voice only to lose it in the hisses of another. “We sees the tower. Falling. The tower is falling. The tower falls. The tower burns...”
“It is near water. The water knows it, loves its flesh...”
“Blue eyes. We sees it. Yellow hair. Running. Dirty feet...”
“The convent burns. We smells our bones blackening. We smells us...”
“Traitors in the palaces. Gold and guns to the men in red. Traitors...”
Then a shriek suddenly broke through all of the soft whispers. “NO! IT HURTS! I HATES YOU! It hurts! It hurts, it hurts, it hurts...” Slowly the cry died to a whimper and then was lost in the depths of thousands of other murmuring voices.
“Quiet her, can’t you?” This time the voice was distinct and familiar. It was Ushman Nuritam.
“Forgive us, Ushman.” The response came from a strong, female voice. “Rousma is young and still not broken into the collective of the issusha’im. But her potential is great. She has given us our first glimpses of the Rifter.”