by Melanie Rawn
Over the next few days as he rested and recovered his full strength—it seemed he was always doing that, these days, and it came to him that he would be doing it more and more as the years went on—he formulated and began implementing his plan. The key he possessed, the key to that other door, was useless in this one, of course. But locks could be persuaded, if one knew the right talishann. From his year in the desert tents he recalled some of them, though too imperfectly to be of use. He remembered a few more from watching Haddiyat rework the protections around the palace. He did have a good brain, when not befuddled with liquor. Yet it seemed during those days, and especially during the nights, when he lay restless and frustrated, that all he really remembered with any clarity were symbols for things that were of absolutely no use to him whatsoever. Safety; clean water; the neverfall used on shelving; wash twice sewn into the corners of his clothes when he was a child because, as his father avowed, he was surely the first place dirt went when looking for a new home . . . After thinking this, he spent a whole hour musing on an entirely new means of employing Shagara talents: tapestries. It was another kind of artwork impractical in the desert, for, like the huge folios of drawings on paper, who would wish to lug such bulky things around? His father’s people were ruthlessly practical. The metals they worked all year, for instance, were made only in the winter camp, where the permanent forge was. Thinking of this, he saw in his mind the talishann for touch-not, which neatly discouraged both curious and careless hands and possible thieves. Yes, very practical, his ancestors.
But nothing was coming to him that he could use right now. He tried to recall the symbols for freedom, liberty, unlock, unbind, open, but none of them coalesced in his mind.
He remembered other talishann, though, the ones he had written on the corners of Ab’ya’s letter to Rihana and Ra’amon. He recognized it now as the first time he’d used his Shagara blood. He was the only one who could connect the arrogant cruelty of Allim’s rule, about which he had heard much in the taverns during the autumn and winter whether he wanted to hear it or not, with that letter. Ab’ya had urged them to serve the land, and Qamar himself had added love and fertility and happiness and fidelity to the paper that had known the touch of his blood, however briefly. Binding on Rihana and Ra’amon, it was useless on Allim.
But none of those signs would help him now.
And then one morning when he woke he had it, and he muffled laughter in his pillow.
The key was brass—not the most potent of metals, but at least it wasn’t iron. First he honed the handle of a spoon by scraping it against the stone walls. When the end of it was thin enough, sharp enough, he used it like a pen to scratch the appropriate lines onto the grip of the key. It was flat, undecorated, and the relatively soft metal responded to the abrasion as iron would not have done. Blessing Acuyib for inspiring the Shagara to make this talishann a simple one of straight lines and no curves, he tried to remember how deeply the work ought to be carved into wind chimes or bowls or hazziri for maximum effect, but could not.
At length he told himself he would have to be satisfied. He used the end of the spoon to prick his little finger and smeared the blood on the sign engraved into the key and then all over the key itself. As he passed his finger over and over the brass, he was reminded of the days spent passing the spoon handle over and over the walls, and how the steady, rhythmic motion had formed a framework for his thoughts.
Or, more accurately, for certain words that he knew now truly had been spoken to him while he was awake, not while he was dreaming. He sucked gently on his finger to bring up just a bit more blood, and heard the words again.
You can choose to grow old, and die.
You can refuse to grow old, and choose to die.
Or you can die, but choose not to grow old.
Crossing the room from the white-draped bed to the door, he slid the key into the lock and began laughing softly to himself.
For there was another choice, one Solanna had not considered.
He turned the key in the lock—the key stained with his blood and bearing the talishann marked over the interior of every gate in every al-Ma’aliq palace, in combination with others that warned or made the gate exclusive to merchants or servants or guards, or in extreme cases halted anyone approaching it in their tracks. The lock caught, the door opened, and he strolled down a long hallway lit by brilliant spring sunshine, all the way down six flights of stairs and into a large chamber filled with desks and paper and pens and adolescent boys.
Smiling, he chose a desk at the back and sat down. And when the mouallima—a severe matron with a face like a sour plum—stalked up to demand what he thought he was doing, he replied, “My education is sadly lacking, I fear. Please, return to the lesson. I’m eager to catch up.”
“What’s your name? Who are you?”
“Qamar al-Ma’aliq,” he said amiably. “Sheyqir of Tza’ab Rih.”
And thus he made the choice that for all her talents Solanna had not envisioned.
I choose not to die.
He was an excellent student, diligent in his studies. In later years he said himself, with a smile, that his own mother would not have known him as he sat hour after hour, day after day, learning his craft. His teachers rejoiced in him, his fellow pupils delighted in his company, and he earned the love and respect of all the Shagara in their mountain fortress.
Any recounting of his life that asserts otherwise is a lie.
—HAZZIN AL-JOHARRA, Deeds of Il-Ma’anzuri, 813
21
“White is the color of purity, of chastity, of clarity, of sincerity, of energy, of harmony, of serenity, of spirituality . . .” . . . of truthity and of protectiony and of meditationy and of sheer stark raving lunacy if this old fool doesn’t end the class soon! Qamar didn’t say it out loud, of course. The man had knowledge he wanted—needed—and in the last year, if he had not learned patience, then at least he had discovered endurance.
As the mouallima’s voice droned on about the properties of white, Qamar dutifully made notes to be added to the sheets already plumping the tooled leather folder at his feet. He had six of these folders, bulging with pages on each of six subjects: Color, Flowers and Herbs, Ink, Paper, Talishann, and Al-Fansihirro.
As for the first, had anyone asked him back when he lived in Hazganni, he would have said there were eight colors that looked very good on him, and why should he bother with the rest? In fact, according to these Shagara, there were scores of colors, and all of them had names and influences and powers and meanings, and the slightest variation could mean the difference between health and illness, even life and death.
The lessons about plants he found simply loathsome. This country had tried to kill him with its poisoned thorns. That it had also healed him was neither here nor there. It did not like him. He returned the sentiment.
When it came to the formulation of inks, it transpired that he had a real flair for the work. He got lampblack ink right the first time, for instance—not easy to do, as the mouallima grudgingly admitted. While the rest of the class was busy chasing down smuts of soot (lampblack was lighter than air and gleefully floated anywhere it pleased), Qamar was adding hot water one drop at a time to his little bowl and mixing it with a finger until the lampblack dissolved (again, difficult, as the soot tended to float atop the water). Subsequent formulations with various roots, leaves, flowers, nutshells, and tree barks were equally simple for him to master. And he found that he rather enjoyed it. Satisfying, to be good at something again without having to try much at all.
Paper turned out to be rather more physical than he’d anticipated. It seemed students were required to learn not just its properties but how to make it, and in several different varieties, too. His notes on this subject were scanty technical descriptions of various processes; the width of the folder was due to the samples. His work did not compare favorably to that of the masters who tried to teach him. Perhaps he had difficulty overcoming a Tza’ab’s ingrained horror of cutti
ng down trees instead of planting them.
The masters of the craft were known as Qa’arta, which seemed to be an adaptation of a barbarian word for paper. Their work was as messy as tending dye vats and not nearly as colorful, as smelly as a tannery—almost—and surprisingly demanding physically. The slurry of soaked fibers from wood, cloth, lint, fishing nets, bits of hemp rope, and seemingly anything else they took it into their heads to add must be stirred in vats with great wooden spoons. The screened frames dipped into those vats could weigh so much it took two men to maneuver them. The presses that squeezed all the water from the pages must be screwed down as tightly as possible. And all had to be done with precision.
“Tilt the frame to gather the fibers, Qamar—not when removing it from the vat! You’ll end up with all the slurry at one end and all the water at the other! Do it again.”
“The sheet should peel off smoothly, Qamar, in a single piece—not in shreds! Do it again.”
“The task was to produce paper, Qamar—not a piece of shelving! Do it again.”
He sincerely hated papermaking class.
The memorization of seemingly thousands of talishann had a tendency to make his eyes cross. From the simple to the intricate, the mild to the dangerous, every stroke of the pen that formed the symbols demanded absolute concentration. Qamar’s mother had once accused him of having the attention span of a flitwing drunk on Challa Leyliah’s best stimulant tonic. Whole afternoons of copying and recopying and copying yet again the twists and turns of symbols that, if not perfectly formed, ended up as at best useless and at worst potentially lethal—ayia, more than once he was shocked from a doze by the rap of a willow switch across his shoulders.
It was the class taught by Zario that combined all the other subjects into the craft of the gifted Shagara male. Al-Fansihirro: art and magic.
“The thought you invest in your work will determine its success. The color of the ink is as vital as the paper. What you add to the ink intensifies your intent. The talishann must be perfect. Never think that a hasty sketch on a scrap of paper with whatever ink is to hand will function as you wish simply because you bleed onto it. What we do is an art, as truly as our lost brothers pound out their hazziri in metals.”
This last sentiment occurred often in his lectures, and when it did he invariably looked at Qamar. Qamar looked right back, unblinking. His complete lack of knowledge about anything to do with the making of hazziri—despite the key carved with the talishann for exit he had used to open the locked door of his room—irked Zario. Something, anything, the slightest hint of vague rumors—Qamar was a total disappointment to him regarding the traditional arts of the Shagara and, Zario implied, a total waste of his valuable time. For although they could not refuse education to one of their kind, they all suspected he would take what he had learned back to Tza’ab Rih at the first opportunity and use it in the service of the Empire’s ambitions exactly as his great-grandfather and grandfather had done.
Qamar did not disabuse them of this error. It amused him to see them grind their teeth as they imparted some arcane magical formula, some obscure piece of herbal lore. He knew they were thinking that they were facilitating the very thing their forebears had fled Tza’ab Rih to avoid. He did not tell them that he had no intention of returning home.
He had two reasons for this. First, no one among the Shagara had ever succeeded even in slowing the rapid ageing of a Haddiyat. This told him everything he needed to know about the state of magic and medicine in his country. They could not do what he was determined to do. He could have received much the same education in signs and symbols there as here, but the people inside this fortress had something his kinfolk did not: plants the desert-dwelling Shagara had never seen and did not know how to use. The tools were here. He knew it. Whether it happened in metal and gemstones or ink on paper, he was positive that somewhere in the compendium of tradition and experimentation lay his answers. This land that had tried to kill him would be his salvation. He knew it.
The second reason was just as personal, though it became a reason almost without his being aware of it. Solanna Grijalva had not returned to her own people. If she had her reasons for this, Qamar was unsuccessful in discovering them. Her original purpose—to convince the Shagara to come to the aid of those fighting the Tza’ab—had failed. They would never turn directly against their “lost brothers.” Why she had lingered at the fortress, when she had had the vision that had sent her and Zario to the seaport, and why she stayed now that he had been rescued from himself, Qamar could not have said. Perhaps she found the mountain air beneficial to her health.
She stayed. Rather than work with the other women in the daily chores of the fortress, she became a teacher. Every child between the ages of four and ten was required to sit in a schoolroom five hours of every day, learning to read, write, and cipher, reciting long passages of The Lessons, listening to lectures about the history of all civilized and barbarian countries and especially about the history and beliefs of the Shagara. Solanna’s residence here allowed a new subject to be taught: her language.
Naturally, he attended her classes. He was not the only adult to do so. The men and women who had dealings with the world outside the fortress already knew much about the local tongue, but within a few months Solanna had everyone speaking nothing else in her classroom.
That she used these lessons to disseminate her version of history amused Qamar endlessly. He never actually laughed aloud, but every time he smirked or smiled, she scowled at him and demanded to know his view of whatever event she claimed had taken place or whatever motive she ascribed to the Tza’ab.
And then they would argue.
One early evening in autumn—Solanna’s classes were held after work had finished for the day but before the evening meal—she began the lesson by saying, in her own language, “The invading army that came northward from Tza’ab Rih was a blatant violation of all decency and honor—”
“Or it would have been,” Qamar agreed, “if we hadn’t been invited.”
Solanna gave him a glower, and continued, “Count Garza do’Joharra and King Orturro do’Ferro da’Qaysh—”
“—were each so incredibly furious with the other that they committed the same act of desperation,” Qamar said, “because they knew neither could best the other on the battlefield.”
“—were betrayed by underlings who wished to seize power for themselves—”
“Eiha!” Qamar exclaimed, wide-eyed. “Was that why Orturro had Don Pederro’s throat cut?” To the others in the class, he continued, “I was always told that when it was seen that the Tza’ab had won the battle—”
“By treachery!” Solanna snapped.
“—Orturro ordered his nephew’s death. He’d acted as ambassador to Sheyqir Alessid, you see.” Turning back to Solanna, he said, “But I never learned what happened to Baron do’Gortova, who acted as emissary for Count Garza.”
Solanna did not reply. Another of the students said, “I think he killed himself, didn’t he?”
“No,” an older man corrected, “his wife was unable to live with the disgrace and poisoned him.”
“I thought it was his daughter.”
“I heard he went into exile in Merse.”
“No, it was Ghillas. Or maybe Elleon.”
“Eiha, enough!” Solanna cried. “The fact is that the baron was heard of no more. And the fact is that the Tza’ab took control of both regions. They set up puppet rulers—”
Qamar couldn’t help it. Laughter rendered him breathless for a few moments, while Solanna glared and the other students wondered what was so funny. At last he managed, “I would dearly love to hear you call Ra’abi that to her face!”
“As I was about to say,” she went on, tight-lipped, “all real power rested with the husband of the Empress because the Empress, of course, was incapable of governing. She was, in fact, entirely mad.”
Qamar felt the smile freeze on his face.
“They will tell you, in Tza
’ab Rih, that she withdrew from public life to devote herself to prayer. This is not true. She was of the Shagara tribe, like all of you, and her shame at the uses to which her people’s knowledge had been put by her power-hungry husband was at last too much for her. She agreed with your ancestors, in fact, that Shagara gifts ought not to be used for evil purposes but for healing and protection and all the other things you’re learning how to do. And it serves as a warning, I think, to adhere strictly to these ways and not allow yourselves to be corrupted. Remember always how the Empress, unable to bear the wickedness her husband accomplished with the help of the Shagara, in the end lost her sanity.”
Qamar discovered he was on his feet, and trembling. “You will apologize.”
“I will not. It’s true.” She met his gaze calmly. “I saw it.”
Everyone in the fortress knew what she claimed to be. That she had located Qamar and brought him back proved it. Qamar himself, however, kept recalling their first encounter, when she’d been surprised that he was young and handsome, not old and scarred. He didn’t care for her visions, frankly. It wasn’t so much that he doubted that she had indeed seen his grandmother somehow; it was that she was so wrong about why it had happened.
But it wasn’t something he could tell the truth about. He knew that, even as he drew breath to do so. All around him, staring with astonishment, sat a broad sampling of the population of the fortress, here to learn Solanna’s language. Children, young women and men, older people wanting to keep their minds alert—and mothers. If he corrected Solanna’s interpretation of his grandmother’s . . . difficulty . . . he would have to admit that it was not the shame of seeing her heritage misused but the misery of having birthed Haddiyat sons. There had to be at least one woman in this classroom who would know exactly what that meant, who had felt the unique anguish of knowing a son would die early and in pain. And even if there were no such mothers here tonight, everyone knew everyone else in the fortress, and he would not be thanked for bringing up a subject no one ever discussed. The women had to feel it; of course they felt it, before schooling themselves to feel only pride in having given birth to so valuable a son who would maintain Shagara traditions for one generation more.