by Fiona Patton
Rolling His prophetic dice along the lake bed, the God of Prophecy reached out for Estavia, traveling down through Her earliest memories to Her link with Kaptin Haldin and then out along Her lien to Her latest favorite, Brax. He had to move with great subtlety since Estavia was still very defensive after Her experience on the grasslands and did not take well to what She saw as interference, but Incasa was the God of Subtlety and the God of Battles was not.
Once the link had been established, He wove His prophecy and the image created by Panos together, and nudged them into the strongest of the future streams like a boat pushed out into Gol-Beyaz, and released it. As the current took hold, He tucked His dice away and returned to the depths.
6
The Protector of Anavatan
HE STOOD HIGH ON a rocky promontory watching as, across the strait, the Gods oversaw the vast labor force building the finest metropolis in the world: the shining city of Anavatan. To the northwest, Usara directed the engineers in the erection of the aqueduct that would furnish its people with all the fresh water they would ever need. To the southwest, Ystazia and Her blacksmiths fashioned the double set of intricate sea chains that would protect its vulnerable northern approach. To the west, Estavia and Her ghazi-priests stood guard over the plains while to the north, Her navy stood guard over the strait. And finally to the south, Havo stilled the shining waters of Gol-Beyaz while Oristo oversaw hundreds of stone masons as they drew barge loads of multicolored marble from the depths to fashion Incasa and His seer-priests’ greatest vision: the Wall that would protect Their people against their enemies forever.
And above it all he stood ever vigilant, the Battle God’s favorite, Anavatan’s Protector, Champion of the newly ordained Warriors of Estavia, and First Defender of the Gods’ Wall of Stone and Power.
“The Wall will not stand.”
“He’ll crumble under the weight of it. He’s already starting to fall.”
Brax’s eyes snapped open. Staring into the shadowy darkness, he knew a moment of sickly panic as his mind snapped back into the cavern where Graize had kept him prisoner last year. He tried to rise, but a single, gentle touch on his shoulder held him immobile until he realized he was in the temple infirmary. Beside him, Jaq began to whine and, with some effort, he made himself calm, if only for the sake of the dog.
After weeks of enforced inactivity, Chief Physician Samlin had finally allowed him to return to Estavia-Sarayi under care. At first, under care had meant a healer-warden who’d shadowed him nearly everywhere he went, ensuring that he followed Samlin’s orders and didn’t overdo it, as well as daily check-ins at the infirmary for more orders. Now it meant twice-weekly visits to a quiet and shadowy chamber where he suffered through the unnerving ministrations of Senior Touch-Healer Jazet of Usara-Sarayi.
In the years he’d served at the Battle God’s temple, Brax had undergone more than his fair share of physical rehabilitation. Calling on the power of their God, Usara’s physicians had done what they could to heal his shattered elbow, an injury first taken in the battle at Serin-Koy, and both Brax and Estavia had done what they could to stay calm while another God’s lien had flowed through his body. But ever since Graize had managed to sever their connection on the grasslands, Estavia had been unwilling to allow anyone else that kind of access.
After the fifth unsuccessful attempt, Chief Physician Samlin had shaken his head in frustration.
“Think of the Gods as master class artisans,” he’d explained to Brax. “They work with power, shaping it in such a way as Their individual talents dictate. Usara works with the power that flows within the body. A broken limb can be mended because there’s still power flowing to that limb, but a severed limb cannot be reattached because the connection which allows the power to flow from the body to the limb has been severed.”
Brax’s eyes had flickered down briefly, and Samlin had followed his gaze.
“Your arm’s still in place, yes,” he’d agreed to Brax’s silent comment. “But the elbow, the connection between your upper arm and your forearm, has been badly damaged. That damage is restricting the flow of power, and Estavia is restricting our ability to reach it.”
Pressing his fingertips against the bridge of his nose, he’d thought for a moment.
“I’m going to put you under Jazet’s care. I think that might be the best course of action. She’ll help you strengthen the flow of power without seeking Usara’s direct intervention.”
“But she is going to work on my elbow?”
Samlin pursed his lips impatiently. “Yes and no. It’s better if you experience her treatment firsthand, Ghazi, rather than ask me for an explanation. Jazet’s approach is somewhat less . . . orthodox than you’ve experienced before.”
If Brax had realized just how “less orthodox,” he might not have shown up in the first place. Unlike the brightly lit, bustling infirmary rooms he was used to, Jazet’s treatment chamber was small and quiet and lit by a single oil lamp set in an iron holder on the far wall. A flutist played a simple tune outside the door, and the air was perfumed with a hint of lavender. Jazet herself displayed none of the impatient temper most of the physicians who served at the Battle God’s infirmary used to keep their recalcitrant patients obedient. She merely smiled a greeting, then gestured at the table in the center of the room and waited for Brax to comply.
Used to being either forced into uncomfortable positions or made to lie immobile for hours at a time while the power of two separate Gods burned through his veins, Brax had done as he was told with obvious reluctance. But Jazet’s treatments had consisted of no more than two fingers from each hand pressed into various parts of his body.
From the beginning, these gentle but firm ministrations had hurtled his mind into a world of images, memories, and partial visions that had overwhelmed his very limited prophetic understanding, mixing with an array of physical and emotional sensations that had left him both frightened and exhausted.
And from the beginning, Jaq had abandoned his usual place beside Spar to plant himself next to Brax, whining whenever Jazet’s probing fingers moved to a new location. Once, when Brax had fallen into the throes of a particularly painful memory, Jaq had climbed right up onto the table with him. Unfazed, Jazet had simply turned her intuitive ministrations on the dog until both he and Brax had regained some composure.
Eventually, Jaq had returned to his position on the floor, Jazet had returned to her patient, and Brax had returned unwillingly to the memory, held in place until it had played itself out fully, flowing from his mind like rain pouring down a waterspout. Only then had Jaq truly calmed.
Now, as Jazet placed one fingertip on Brax’s forehead and another under his right shoulder blade, the infirmary fell away and his latest vision rose up once again.
“The Wall will not hold.”
“He’ll crumble under the weight of it. He’s already starting to fall.”
Brax scowled. He was a soldier not a seer. He didn’t go fishing for the fine, intangible symbols of the future the way Spar did. And although Kaptin Liel of Sable Company had insisted that Brax and most of the other senior ghazi took a watered-down version of the training the seers received to become more sensitive to Estavia’s prophetic messages, when the Battle God did send him such messages, She sent them in as clear a manner as possible, knowing his limitations. This hadn’t come from Estavia.
So where had it come from?
“The Wall . . .”
“I heard you the first time.”
“Hm?”
Brax shook his head. “Nothing, Healer. Just a vision being a pain in the arse.”
“Mm.”
As Jazet moved one hand down to press against his left shoulder, the words continued to echo in his head, but muted as if he was hearing them spoken from a great distance.
“The Wall . . .”
The Wall had held for centuries, protecting the Gods’ city until six years ago when a swarm of tiny but deadly spirits had breached its defenses in a wave o
f rage and hunger. They’d been beaten back and destroyed by Estavia but not before they’d wreaked havoc across the city during the spring storms of Havo’s Dance.
Did this mean that the Wall would fall to the attack they all knew was coming? And who would crumble under the weight of it: Spar? Who else would he be having visions about except his kardos?
His right temple began to ache, and he forced himself to relax his jaw before Jazet noticed and extended his treatment. No wonder seers were always so dour, he thought with a grumble, if this was the kind of mental shite they were always forced to deal with.
Jazet shifted position, Jaq began to whine again, and Brax firmly put the vision to one side. He was not a seer; it was not his job to sort this kind of thing out. So he would go and find a seer and drop it in his lap. He would go and find Spar.
As Jazet placed two fingers in the hollows behind his jawline, he made himself breathe deeply, and very, very slowly, he felt the muscles across his back and shoulders relax as a fine trickle of energy began to descend into his injured elbow.
An hour later she released him with the usual advice to rise slowly and not engage in any strenuous activity for the rest of the afternoon. Jaq headed out the door at once, and Brax followed, knowing that this would be the fastest way to locate Spar.
They found him in the armory tower.
One of the oldest structures in Estavia-Sarayi, the armory tower had been built more with an eye to defense than to style, with a series of small, narrow windows that let in a fine trickle of light only. The entire ground floor was made up of a single room, large enough to hold over five hundred warriors if need be and reached by a double set of ironbound doors on one wall and a small wooden door leading to Marshal Brayazi’s private audience chamber on the other. A stone well, covered with an ornate iron grille took up the northeastern corner, and stone steps leading up to several floors of dormitories and storerooms took up the southwest. Within its shadowy recesses were housed centuries of battle trophies displayed on the walls and on daises lit by a series of hanging lamps, their heavy chains disappearing up to the vaulted ceiling above.
Spar stood before one of the marble daises, his hands resting lightly on the large, bejeweled book displayed on a silver base. The side of his mouth quirked up slightly as Jaq pushed past Brax at once, receiving a sour look in response.
As Brax crossed the floor after the dog, he paused by the dais that held the relics of Kaptin Haldin, a hand-and-a-half sword, its hilt wrapped in silver and its pommel encrusted with gemstones, and a long dagger, equally bedecked, lying on a black-and-gold damask cloth. Years before, when he and Spar had first come to the temple, they’d stood in the same positions staring in awe at the riches before them. The sword had tingled under his fingertips then. Now, he resisted the urge to touch it as he filled Spar in on this latest vision-puzzle, cocking his head to one side as Spar frowned suddenly.
“What?” he demanded.
Jaq began to whine again, and Spar’s hand dropped down absently to rest between his ears. “You heard those words?” he asked. “Those exact words? The Wall will not stand?”
Brax nodded.
“Did they actually sound in your head, or did you see them?”
“How can you see words?”
Spar rolled his eyes. “You’re right; this is you. What was I thinking? What did the words sound like, then—loud, soft, angry maybe, or like a warning?”
“Soft, like I was hearing them from far away. And like a warning, I guess. It sounded serious, anyway.”
“In a voice?”
Brax nodded again.
“What kind of voice?”
Brax frowned in concentration. “In a woman’s voice,” he said after a moment. “But not Estavia’s.”
“Accented?”
“I’m not sure. Why?”
Spar turned an intense gaze on his kardos. “Years ago, Illan of Volinsk spoke to me in my head. He said, ‘The Wall will not stand.’ ”
“The same words,” Brax mused. “He made a prophecy to you?”
“At the time I thought he was just trying to rattle me. He probably was, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a prophecy, too.”
“Illan of Volinsk doesn’t have a woman’s voice though, does he?” Brax asked with one eyebrow raised humorously.
“No. But Panos of Amatus does, and she’s a powerful, political oracle.”
“Why would Panos of Amatus send me a prophetic warning? She’s a Skirosian, isn’t she? An enemy?”
“Yes.” Spar shook his head. “I have to think about this.”
“What about the rest of it, me watching the city being built and the bit about someone crumbling under a weight?”
Spar stared into space for a long moment.
“Do you remember when we first came together,” he asked instead.
Brax nodded.
“Tell me about it.”
Used to the youth’s roundabout way of explaining things, Brax cast his mind back. “I was about eight or nine, on a job, trying to get through a second-story window in a spice warehouse. Remember the one on Mimar-Caddesi right up against Ystazia-Cami?”
“I remember.”
“I couldn’t make it. I got stuck.”
“I’m not surprised. At my youngest, I could barely squeeze through the bars on those windows.”
“But you did. It was our first job together.”
“Yeah. Ah.” Spar nodded his understanding. “That’s why Cindar took me on. There was a special shipment, and he wanted a share.”
Brax nodded. “Cinnamon and saffron. He sent me in the night it arrived. I almost got caught. He took you on the next day.”
“I remember it was dark and I was scared. I had to find my way across the whole of the warehouse and down the stairs to the steward’s office to get the key to the side door. It wasn’t where Cindar said it would be.”
“But you found it anyway.”
Spar nodded. “I could see it in my mind. I remember I was hungry an’ Cindar said I couldn’t eat till after I opened the door for him,” he continued, traces of his dockside accent creeping into his voice again from the strength of the memory. “But you gave me a piece of bread when he wasn’t lookin.’ ”
“I remember bein’ scared, too,” Brax said, his own accent thickening in response to Spar’s. “Scared that he was gonna dump me off someplace for good because I couldn’t do the work anymore. He was always sayin’ things like that in the early days, but he was thinkin’ about it for real this time; I could see it in his face.”
Spar studied his kardos for a moment, taking note of the strained expression in his dark eyes before nodded carefully. “Yeah, I saw it in his mind, too,” he answered. “I saw him thinkin’ about it being just him an’ me.”
“But you had a nightmare that night. You screamed so loud, we thought you’d bring the garrison guards down on us. I finally got you calmed down, but Cindar couldn’t even look at you or you’d start up again.”
“You held me all the rest of the night. After that, Cindar never thought about splitting us up again.”
Spar’s voice was triumphant, and Brax gave him a speculative glance.
“You’ve used that as a dodge before,” he noted.
Spar just shrugged. “It was real enough that night. Not so much later. I had a dream about what life was going to be like with just Cindar and me. Some dreams are warnings about what might be,” he continued. “Not what will be.”
“Sent by Incasa?” Brax teased.
Spar shrugged. “I doubt it.” He turned his blue eyes tinged with darkness on Brax’s face. “But who knows,” he added. “Look at everything that’s happened since then. None of it could have happened if Cindar had split us up, yeah? That one moment could have made everything else happen. Sometimes you have to make the future do as you tell it to. That’s what visions are for. We act on new discoveries to change the future to one we desire. Kaptin Liel said that to me once. The alternative is to allow the future
to run about unsupervised like an undisciplined delos, free to do as it pleases to whomever it pleases.”
“You’ve changed,” Brax noted. “Even a few months ago you never would have quoted a seer kaptin or admitted that something else—anything else—might have a say in your destiny.”
“Yeah, well, a few months ago I didn’t have a God as a delinkos,” Spar responded in a sour voice. Pressing his back against the dais, he slid down until he sat on the first step, one arm draped over Jaq’s broad shoulders.
“So what does that have to do with my vision?” Brax asked, leaning against his own dais.
Spar jerked his thumb at the book above him. “Do you know what this book is?”
“Recipes?”
“No, stupid. It’s a history of Anavatan. There’s a picture in it showing the city being built, just as you saw it, only the picture has Kaptin Haldin standing where you were standing in your vision.”
“Ah, right, I remember now.”
Spar glowered at him. “And do you remember what the picture’s called?” he demanded. “It’s called the Protector of the Shining City.”
“I thought he was the Champion of Estavia.”
“He was that too.” Spar stabbed a finger at him. “You see yourself as the Champion of Estavia. Do you see yourself as the Protector of Anavatan too?”
Brax’s brows drew down in thought. “I don’t know.”
“Bollocks. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have seen that exact picture.”
“All right, so maybe I do see myself as the Protector of Anavatan, me and ten thousand other Warriors of Estavia.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Why not?”
Spar gave him a long stare, then shrugged. “Because you’ll crumble under the weight of it.”
“I’ll what?” Brax straightened, a spark of anger darkening his voice.
“Crumble.”
“Says who?”
“Hisar.”
Brax blinked in confusion. “Hisar?” he repeated.