“Talo,” Yu’ri hissed, shocked, but the bigger Priest waved any further comment away impatiently.
“Until the day comes when He sees fit to end all wars, the Lifegiver is not unaware that violence will exist among His flock. Yes, no life may have greater value than another, Yu’ri, but are you honestly going to sit there and preach that there is not a difference between a life taken and a life given? We will bring down the Arena again, but in the meantime you cannot argue that Arro’s way is a far lesser of two evils.”
Yu’ri seemed to have no immediate answer to that, opening and closing his mouth as though biting back half-formed thoughts.
“Lesser or not,” he finally managed to squeak out, “are we really going to condone this, Talo? I mean”—he dropped his voice to a low whisper—“did you see what he did today?”
“Three hundred and forty-seven.”
Both Priests looked around at Raz, who was frowning.
“What?” Yu’ri asked, perplexed.
“Three hundred and forty-seven,” Raz said again. “That’s how many are left on the list—the bounty hunters who’d come to Azbar for a chance at my head. Before today, it was over five hundred. Exclude the ones lost this afternoon, and nearly a hundred withdrew their names after today’s final match.”
He watched Yu’ri carefully, judging the man’s reaction as he continued.
“I’m not going to ask for your forgiveness for what I did to Lelan val’En. It was cruel and violent—evil, even—and I’m a long way from forgiving myself, much less seeking forgiveness from others. But I know I will. It may not be tonight or tomorrow or anytime in the next ten years, but I will. He would have killed me without a second thought, sure, so I don’t have too much to regret, but it’s more than that.”
He held up a single steel-clawed finger for Yu’ri.
“I will forgive myself because, when it is all said and done, one death—val’En’s one death—saved the wasting of a hundred lives.”
For a long time Yu’ri stared at Raz’s lifted finger. Then he looked at Raz himself.
“I may have misjudged you, Arro.”
Raz snorted, then shrugged, letting his hand drop. “Happens more often than you would think,” he said. He looked around at Talo, who was watching him with an odd sort of attentiveness, as though seeing him for the first time.
“What?” Raz asked.
Talo blinked, then shook his head as though to clear it. “It’s funny…” he replied. “Have you ever heard of the dahgün, Arro?”
“The da-what?” Raz asked.
“Dahgün,” Talo said again, spreading his arms wide. “The great dragons of the North, massive winged beasts crafted by Laor to rule the earth eons before man so much as spoke his first word.”
At that, Raz snorted. “No, can’t say I have,” he said. “I’m not all that familiar with Northern fairy tales as of yet. Why?”
“Because,” Talo told him, “the stories go that the dragons were violent creatures, incapable of peace and love, obsessed only with the destruction of all that surrounded them, particularly their own kind. To a last they waged war against each other, ravaging the world, carving out the valleys and mountains of the North, even scorching the Southern lands so terribly nothing was left but dirt and sand.”
Raz said nothing, listening more intently than he might have admitted.
“It’s thought,” Talo continued, “that when Laor realized that His great creations were capable of nothing but fiery brutality, each one against the others, He razed them from the earth. Disgusted with their actions, He wiped them from existence, pulling them from the infinite circle of rebirth, reshaping the world and its creatures into ones more capable of peace and prosperity.”
Here, some private thought pulled at the corner of Talo’s mouth as he continued to look at Raz.
“Despite that, every few years you hear rumors about a backwoodsman or trapper returning home with tales of a sighting, stories of massive winged creatures in the clouds between the mountains, or circling high above the deepest parts of the Northern forests. There are hundreds of theories, stories and tales and farfetched reasonings as to why the Lifegiver might have spared some of the dahgün, shielding them from His wrath when it came. One theory, in particular, has always struck me, though…”
He smiled in full now.
“He saved the ones who fought only to end the fighting. He saved the ones who killed only in the hopes that they might end the killing. For all their flaws, he valued even those who battled, so long as they battled for peace.”
Raz watched the Priest steadily for some time after he had finished his story. He didn’t know what he was looking for, exactly. Perhaps a hint of sarcasm, or the lingering amusement of a joke made at Raz’s expense. He found nothing, though, and when he looked to the other Priest to judge his reaction, he found Yu’ri watching him thoughtfully.
He wasn’t sure what to make of it all.
“But it’s only a story, after all,” Talo said abruptly, finally ending the silence. “I just found the comparison interesting. And on the subject of stories, there will be one involving my head on a platter if we don’t get back to Carro soon. Yu’ri?”
Behind him, Yu’ri jumped, pulled from whatever internal turmoil he was experiencing.
“Carro? Wha—? Oh! Yes!” He turned to Arrun. “Would you mind fetching our coats, Arrun? I believe your sister took them upstairs somewhere when we arrived.”
“I don’t envy your return home,” Raz muttered as Arrun ran up the stairs. “Your Northern snow is an odd thing, to say the least. I’m not quite sure what to make of it.”
“Well, the North as a whole isn’t quite sure what to make of you, Arro, so I think you can call things even for now,” Talo chuckled, watching Arrun return, weighed down with heavy overcoats and thick mantles made of some dark-brown fur. Taking his from the boy with a thanks, he pulled them over his broad shoulders, clasping the cloth about his neck as Yu’ri did the same beside him.
When he was done, he looked to Raz once more.
“There is much to be discussed, Arro, but it can wait the night, I think. It’s my understanding you have a few days till your next fight, so we will be in touch. Don’t come to the temple. Yu’ri has caused enough trouble for Tern thrice over to earn the Laorin a careful watch, and you visiting would no doubt get back to the Chairman. We will be in touch soon. In the meantime…” He paused, then held out a hand. “Take care of yourself.”
Raz looked down at the offered arm.
Then he reached out his own, took it, and shook.
“And take care of them,” Yu’ri said gruffly, indicating Arrun over his shoulder as Talo took him by the elbow. “They don’t deserve any more trouble in their lives.”
“No,” Raz said quietly, watching Lueski reappear at the top of the stairs, drawn by the Priests’ departure. “No, they don’t.”
“I’ll have to send a bird come morning!” Talo said as the pair started for the door. “It’s high time I sent the Citadel an update, and Syrah will be very happy to hear you’re well. I know you’ve been in her prayers for many years.”
And with that, and a final cordial nod from Yu’ri, the Priest opened the door and vanished into the black and gray of the snowy night outside.
“Mister Yu’ri’s nice, isn’t he?” Lueski called down from upstairs.
“Very nice, yes,” Raz replied automatically, his eyes still on the door, mind awhirl.
The Priests had given him much to consider. If he was honest with himself, Raz hadn’t been sure what his next move was going to be once the Chairman’s Tourney was in place. His priority, when he’d offered himself to the Arena, had been clearing Arrun and Lueski from their debt and ending Azbar’s enslavement to the pit. He’d accomplished that, proving to Quin Tern that there was a way to keep the fights going without harboring the ire of the cityfolk.
There, though, Raz’s plan ended, favoring the hope that opportunity would eventually present itself,
even if he had to cut down every bounty hunter in the North to encourage it.
But now… Now, other options were afforded to him. Now doors were opening he never would have even considered.
Now I’m not alone.
Raz allowed himself a small smile at the thought. His option of allies was limited, and perhaps not to his absolute preference—given the choice he would have preferred swords at his back over prayers—but he was no longer a solitary figure out there on the frozen mud, one against all, him against the world.
He had fought his war alone long enough. It felt good, for once, to know someone was out there doing the same.
“Lueski, put your doll away and help your brother with dinner,” Raz said, moving to grab his ax and gladius from the peg by the door before retrieving Ahna from her place on the wall and making his way up the stairs. “I’ll be down once I’ve cleaned up.”
“Do we get stories about today?” Lueski squealed excitedly, bouncing up and down with anticipation as he passed her at the top of the stairs, heading for the room where he kept the washbasin.
“Of course,” Raz said with a smile.
The girl squeaked in delight and bolted down the steps to help her brother.
“Though we might leave some of the details out, right, Ahna?” Raz added in a quiet mutter to the dviassegai, ducking into Arrun’s old room.
Two hours later, Raz sat bare-chested with his back to the fire, wings half-spread around him so he could watch the dancing red light that washed through their thin membranes against the floor and far wall. One hand was absently stroking Lueski’s hair, fast asleep on her bedroll beside him, belly full of buttered bread and spiced potatoes, her dreams heroically scripted by Raz’s evening tales of the fights. Tales he’d adapted somewhat, crafting the events into something more age appropriate. Dreams were one thing.
Nightmares were another.
To his right, Arrun, too, slept. His bare feet poked out from beneath his layered furs, extended towards the fire. His breath came soft and quiet in slumber, the sort of deep, regular breathing that spoke the difference between someone actually sleeping and someone only pretending.
Knowing the difference had saved Raz’s skin on more than one occasion.
But it was on neither of the Koyt children that Raz’s thoughts revolved around now. Through dinner and most of the evening, Raz’s mind had been preoccupied with Talo Brahnt and Kal Yu’ri, wondering what he might be able to accomplish with their help. Their Lifegiver seemed to have a place in the hearts of many, here in the North.
After today, Raz himself would have a place in the hearts of everyone else.
Can we do it? he had asked himself over their meal, so preoccupied with the question that he barely touched his fish, prompting Arrun to ask him twice if everything was okay.
In the end he had decided only the Sun and Moon could know the future’s absolutes, and the best he could do was pray that he and the Laorin would find a way.
Now, though, Raz’s thoughts had traveled elsewhere. Now they found themselves hooked around a realization he hadn’t really registered until after the children had gone to sleep. Listening to them breathing, Raz could also make out the sounds of the winds beyond the house’s stone walls. The night seemed to have given up its pretense of silence, preferring now to announce with gusto the storm that raged outside. The whining, dipping, and spiking shriek of winter air had made Raz wonder if Talo’s bird would make it to this “Citadel” of his.
It was then that he realized he’d learned something else, that evening.
Again Raz pulled up the face in his mind’s eyes. The pretty girl with snow for hair and pink, deep eyes that had taken him in without a wince of fear or suspicion. He remembered the strength in her form, the fierceness of her belief when she’d asked him to spare the life of a dying man.
He remembered the relief, the genuine solace in them, too, when he’d fatefully agreed.
Raz had rediscovered an old anger today, a fire that had burned low and cool, all but forgotten until he had been confronted by Brahnt and Yu’ri in that narrow little alley. Despite himself, even now he felt that fire leap a little at the thought of the Priests, his rage not totally sated by the events of the day.
When he thought of the girl, though… the fire only cooled.
Was it what he had seen in her? The truth he had witnessed in her convictions, the strength he had noted in her body, the gratitude he had seen in her eyes when he’d bent to her desire? Was it the fact that she was the catalyst for his forgiveness, at least what little of it he’d been able to find so far?
Whatever it was, remembering her face tempered Raz. Whatever it was, remembering her face seemed to calm his soul.
“Syrah…” he muttered quietly to himself, still absently stroking Lueski’s dark hair. “Always wondered what her name was…”
XXIII
“It is often that I remember my late lover with fondness, but never with quite as much vigor as when I recall him calling Petrük ‘a venomous cow.’ Laor forgive me, but there are times—particularly when I take walks along the ramparts of our great Citadel—that I find myself amazed at how simple it would be to put an abrupt end to her unpleasantness, and claim simply that she slipped on the ice that has such a nasty habit of building up there along the battlements.”
—PRIVATE JOURNAL OF CARRO AL’DOR
“YOU CAN’T be serious.”
“Of course I’m serious, girl. We should consider that this is all in the greater plan of the Lifegiver. When I did my pilgrimages to the western towns, it was easy to see that none of their people were ever touched by the light of Laor. This is His cleansing, His purge of the faithless and blasphemers.”
“Just because they haven’t taken the cloth doesn’t make them blasphemers, Petrük! Much less deserving of genocide! They were good people made hard only because it’s the only way of life they know, the only way of life that had ever let them survive the freezes!”
“Well, perhaps if you’d spent more time with your ‘good people’ of the towns rather than gallivanting around with your savages in the mountains, more might have found Laor and escaped His judgment!”
“Now listen here you insufferable bi—!”
“Syrah, that’s enough.”
Syrah turned furiously on Jofrey, who had cut across her outburst. She was on her feet, both hands curled into angry fists on the table before her.
“That’s enough?” she demanded shrilly. “This woman”—she pointed a finger furiously at Valaria Petrük, sitting with a smug sort of smile across the table from them—“is saying that the massacre of two valley towns—the deaths of tens of thousands, and the enslavement of that many again—is all in line with Laor’s will, and you’re telling me ‘that’s enough’?”
“Sister Petrük is entitled to her opinion,” Jofrey said firmly, not taking his eyes off Petrük herself, “however misguided and idiotic it may be.”
That knocked the smugness from the old woman’s face, leaving her looking like she’d run into an invisible wall.
They sat, all ten of the Citadel’s most respected members, along the leftmost table of Cyurgi’ Di’s great dining hall, five on either side of it. Outside a new storm was raging, darkening the clerestory windows above their heads to near black despite the earliness of the afternoon, and rattling loose panes of colored glass in their iron linings. The hall itself, though, was warm and bright, heated by the old copper pipes pumped full of steam by the furnaces far beneath them. Pale candles were scattered along the center of their table—only the ones closest to and between them having been lit by helpful acolytes before the start of their meeting—and iron floor sconces held heavy lanterns that burned cleanly around the room, leaving the place smelling vaguely of fire and oil. It was an old scent, familiar and friendly to all, and for Syrah in particular it was one of the first memories she had of this great temple she now called home. They were alone in the hall, having claimed the chambers until the kitchens said t
hey were ready to serve supper, which wouldn’t be for another hour. It was a good thing, too, because Petrük looked ready to murder as she glared at Jofrey.
“Had He seen fit to spare Metcaf and Harond, Laor would have done so,” the old woman said through gritted teeth. “He did not, so it’s only fair to assume that there is a reason He has abandoned them.”
“The Lifegiver grants His Gift of life, Valaria, but he also grants free will,” Benala Forn, a Priestess only slightly younger than Petrük, said from two spots to her right. “It is neither fair to the people of those towns or Laor Himself to claim He has anything to do with these atrocities.”
“But it is just as foolish to assume that He does not,” yet another Priest spoke up from Jofrey’s right. Behn Argo had a kindly face that hid a deceitfully sharp temper, and he was looking at Benala as though she had stroked it into life with her words. “He may grant free will, but Laor will impact the lives of His flock as He deems fit. It is only human hubris not to say that He would do no such thing.”
“If you think any of us believe the Lifegiver is unable to affect us of this world, then you mistake our argument,” Syrah said impatiently, still on her feet to Jofrey’s left. “No one is claiming otherwise, Argo, but to say that Laor’s will is what butchered those people is only one step short of saying He condones the methods used. Do you know what Baoill did, what the birds have been bringing word of? When Harond didn’t open its gates for him, he had his men slit the throats of two hundred slaves they’d claimed in Metcaf. Then dumped their corpses into every well and river within half a mile of the city, choking them full, and waited.”
Syrah held up a hand, lifting four fingers and showing them to the table.
“Four days. That’s how long it took before Harond’s waters were so fouled no one could draw from the cisterns. By six, thousands of the already sick were dead from tainted drink. On the eighth day Harond opened its gates in a plea for parlay, and Gûlraht Baoill took it as viciously as he did Metcaf. This time, though, he claimed no slaves, allowed the taking of no battle wives. Barely a handful of survivors were recovered. Anyone living was put to the sword, then thrown to the fires. By the time help came from the southern towns, Baoill had had his men pile what was left of the dead under every gate leading in and out of the city. The letters from Stullens and Drangstek say they had to send scouts over the walls to get in, because no one would go near the black mountains of corpses. What they found was nothing but smoke and dying fires, charred frames of what had been the city buried in snow. Most of the remains of the men and women who’d fallen inside the wall had been left where they fell, abandoned to the crows.”
The Warring Son (The Wings of War Book 2) Page 22