The Silver Lake

by Fiona Patton

  Different but similar.

  He closed his eyes and the images faded away leaving nothing but the faintest memory of a boy lying dead on the cobblestones of Liman-Caddesi and another snatched into the air by a host of lights and spirits. He pushed the thought away.

  It’s over, he told himself firmly. We’re safe. It doesn’t matter what anyone says or does now. We made it.

  At Oristo-Sarayi, Tanay was discussing the boys’ sudden arrival with Chamberlain Rakeed of Usara’s temple as they entered the smallest of the five council rooms. Old friends, the two of them had walked over together, grumbling about the disruption to their schedules and speculating on what the other chamberlains were going to bring to eat. Together, they set down their individual platters of seed cakes beside a huge silver tea service, and Tanay gave a deep, drawn-out sigh as she glanced along the length of the long, linen-draped side table.

  “And yet, if I’d decided to make halva, everyone else would have made that, too,” she muttered huffily.

  “Hm?” Rakeed glanced over as he lifted two cakes from each platter with an air of greedy anticipation.

  “I was just saying that sometimes the Hearth God is a little too close to us all,” she explained. “Next time I’m going to bring a bucket of asure.”

  “It won’t help. But look, Farok’s brought lokum and Kadar’s made simit rings. I love simit rings.” He added three to his plate with a flourish.

  “Kadar made simit rings because the Senior Abayos-Priest made.... ?” Tanay lifted one, sarcastic hand to her ear. “Seed cakes,” she finished for him. “And Farok probably made lokum because someone at Incasa-Sarayi saw too many seed cakes in a vision this morning.”

  “Well, pardon me for seeing the best of the situation,” he said in an injured tone belied by the twinkle in his eye. “We could sample them all and see who made the best. Do we dare?”

  Tanay laughed in spite of herself. “No, Rakeedin-Delin, everyone knows your seed cakes are the best.”

  “Why, thank you, ravishing one, it’s too true.” He leaned toward her with a conspiratorial air. “Speaking of visions, do you suppose that this all too inconveniently called last minute consultation is due to Bey Freyiz and her cryptic little vision?”

  “Likely.” Tanay glanced over as Senior Abayos-Priest Neclan entered the room, Chamberlain Kadar in tow. “I imagine we’ll find out.”

  As one, the gathered joined them at the low council table, sinking quickly into its accompanying nest of silken cushions and Neclan glanced about until she was sure she had everyone’s attention.

  “Before we get to the meat of today’s discussion, Chamberlain Farok has a piece of very pertinent information to share with us. Farok?”

  The chamberlain of Incasa’s temple finished off a piece of lokum before clearing his throat. “First Oracle Freyiz has stepped down, naming Seer-Priest Bessic as her successor. She’s leaving for Adasi-Koy within the week.”

  Talk broke out around the table immediately, but eventually Chamberlain Isabet of Ystazia’s temple gave her superior a shrewd glance.

  “The timing is suspicious,” she noted loudly enough to silence the rest of the gathered.

  “Yes, it is,” Neclan agreed.

  “Is there any speculation as to why?”

  All eyes turned to Farok again, who gave an elegant shrug. “The official story is simply retirement—after all, she is very old—but word in the halls is that Incasa has sent her a powerful and complex vision which requires the added clarity of her home village to sort out.”

  “A vision beyond the one she made public at Assembly?” Tanay asked.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted with an apologetic smile. “Seed cake?”

  “I have one, thank you.”

  “So what do you know about the new First Oracle?” Chamberlain Penir of Havo’s temple asked.

  Farok gave another elegant shrug. “Nothing unseemly or secret, I’m afraid. He’s is in his late thirties. He comes from a wealthy Anavatanon family who’ve served Incasa’s temple for at least five generations. He’s intelligent, handsome, privileged, and very, very ambitious. He’s well-liked and well-respected within the temple hierarchy; however, he’s neither as powerful nor as beloved by the God as Freyiz and since he served under her as delinkos, he’s naturally a bit intimidated by the position.”

  “Who wouldn’t be?” Tanay observed dryly.

  The gathered snickered, but a swift, disapproving glance from their Senior Abayos-Priest stilled them at once.

  “Will this cause disquiet in Incasa’s temple?” she asked bluntly.

  “I shouldn’t think so, Sayin, not with Bey-Freyiz leaving so soon.”

  Neclan leaned back, turning her teacup peevishly between finger and thumb. “So,” she said after a moment. “Momentous changes at Incasa-Sarayi and disturbance at Oristo-Sarayi. Does anyone else have something to add to this list of woes?”

  The gathered glanced about at each other before Rakeed kicked Tanay under the table. With a yelp, she turned and swatted him in the back of the head before acknowledging his point with a glare.

  “I don’t know that this adds to any tale of woe,” she said, daring Rakeed to gainsay her. “But there has been an unusual event at Estavia-Sarayi.”

  “Kick me again and I’ll see to it that every hospital bed at Usara-Sarayi is short-sheeted,” she threatened as she and Rakeed made their way back along the opulent, tree-lined merchant street that linked the six main temples together.

  Pausing before a line of carpets hanging outside a nearby stall, her fellow chamberlain just shrugged. “Are you saying that you weren’t going to tell her?” he asked, studying the elaborate designs with an appreciative air.

  Tanay gave no answer for a moment. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “But I do know that delon have no place in temple politics.”

  “And yet the timing is just as suspicious as Bey-Freyiz’s retirement.”

  “Possibly, but I won’t have Brax and Spar dragged into any nonsense about visions or prophecies regardless,” she replied. “And I will not have them spied upon. Will you be long?”

  “Not at all. In all fairness,” he noted, feeling the texture of a small lap rug between finger and thumb, “I don’t think that’s what Neclan had in mind. She asked that you keep an eye on the situation, not spy on the delon. Yes, they are beautiful,” he told the merchant hovering unobtrusively by the door. “I’ll take twelve of the blue ones. You were saying?” he asked as they continued along the street, moving from linen and silk shops to incense and perfume stalls as Oristo’s sphere of influence waned and Incasa’s waxed.

  “That I don’t like it.”

  “Well, just think how impossible Farok’s job is, then. He has to keep an eye on an entire temple of politically savvy, subtle, and dissembling seer-priests, arse-deep in these latest disturbances.”

  “I suppose. Now where are you going?” she demanded as he suddenly veered off toward a glass-maker’s shop.

  “I need blue bottles.”

  “I’m never going to get back in time to receive the day’s supplies,” she sighed. “Ah well, I suppose Monee can handle it.” With a resigned expression, she followed the other chamberlain inside.

  “You know the delon might be pertinent,” Rakeed continued a few moments later as they passed a row of incense sellers. “You said they were brought to Estavia-Sarayi by the Battle God Herself. That alone warrants attention. I’m surprised someone from Incasa’s temple hasn’t been over to interview them already.”

  “Well, they’d best not make the attempt,” Tanay growled. “They haven’t given us the whole story by any stretch of the imagination; I can feel it. And until they do, the delon are off limits. Kemal of Serin-Koy and Yashar of Caliskan-Koy are their abayon now and I want the whole family left in peace.”

  She glared at him and he raised both hands in surrender. “You don’t have to convince me,” he protested. “I’m sure they’ll be fine abayon, and if you say Incasa’s pe
ople are hiding things, I believe you. You’re the one with a modicum of prophetic sight, after all.”

  “Don’t let it get around,” she sniffed in a mollified tone. “Most priests of Oristo think it’s a pile of sheep manure.”

  “Don’t you?”

  Striding purposely through a mud puddle, Tanay gave a faint snort. “Perhaps,” she replied, glancing darkly at the tall, wrought iron gates of Incasa-Sarayi before them. “But usually it’s the seer that makes it so, not the sight.”

  In her bedchamber, Freyiz paused in the supervision of her packing as a thread of sarcastic power trickled through her mind. She chuckled.

  “You always were a swift one,” she murmured in the direction of Estavia-Sarayi’s chamberlain. “Too swift to be scooped up by Incasa and confined to the life of a minor seer.” Turning, she stared out the window at the flickering red power signature of the Battle God’s temple to the north. “So, Tanayin-Delin,” she continued. “I leave the delon in your capable hands for now. But only for now, mind you. The time will come when they’ll pull away from your protection as well as from mine.”

  With a sigh, she turned back into the room. “But then, delon always do, no matter how vital it might be for them to stay,” she added sadly.

  Across the city, dusk came slowly to the first clear night of High Spring, gifting the sky with a hint of pink and orange before settling into darkness. At Estavia-Sarayi, the new abayon saw Brax and Spar safely tucked into bed in the delon alcove off their own rooms, then withdrew as Jaq clambered up at once and stretched out .across their feet.

  In their own bedchamber Yashar lit the lamp and closed the shutters while Kemal unrolled the pallet. Glancing over, the older man noted the pensive expression on his arkados’ face. With an evil grin, he checked to ensure the door was locked, then suddenly tackled the younger man and tossed him onto the pallet. After a short wrestling match which Kemal won by jabbing the older man in the ribs, he glared down at him while Yashar just laughed.

  “You had your serious face on,” he explained. “I hate your serious face; it interferes with lovemaking.”

  He made a grab for him, but Kemal caught his hand. “You don’t think that suddenly being given the responsibility of two delon is a reason to be serious?” he demanded.

  “I do not. It’s a reason for celebration. We finally have the bed to ourselves without your great, mangy dog stealing all the covers.”

  “So you’re not worried?”

  Pulling free, Yashar stripped off his tunic, flexing the muscles of his arms and chest with a lewd expression. “I was never worried. I knew my seed was potent; you just never had the natural field to sow it in. If you’d gone to Oristo’s temple and petitioned the Hearth God, we might have had delon long before now.”

  This set off another wrestling match, but finally both men caught each other up in a more passionate embrace.

  Afterward, while Yashar poured them each a glass of dark red wine, Kemal raised himself up on one elbow.

  “You could have petitioned Oristo yourself,” he noted wryly.

  “I’m too hairy. I’d make a terribly ugly woman.” Handing him a glass, Yashar held his up in salute. “To our delon, sensibly grown past the age of birthing and breast feeding.”

  “Yes, to the age of sulking and arguing.”

  “I’ll handle the arguing, you handle the sulking.”

  “No, thank you.”

  Draining his glass, Yashar threw himself down beside the other man. “We’ll do fine,” he said, attempting a more serious tone. “So stop fretting. It’s not like we’ll be alone in it. We have all of Cyan Company to help us.”

  “We’ll need them.”

  “There you are. Besides, if they do too much sulking and arguing, we can always pack them off to Bayard. After all, he survived yours.”

  “There is that.” Draining his own glass, Kemal set it down carefully beside the pallet. “Estavia knows what She’s doing,” he allowed finally. “She wouldn’t have given them to us if She hadn’t thought we could handle it.”

  “It’s settled, then.” Stretching out on the rumpled blankets, Yashar placed his clasped hands behind his head. “Blow out the lamp, will you? I’m exhausted.”

  Shaking his head, Kemal rose. “Old man,” he admonished over his shoulder. “You better start pacing yourself. Fade on me now and I’ll find myself a younger arkados to fill my bed and raise my delon.”

  “I’d best get myself ready for your return, then.”

  “I guess you had.”

  Extinguishing the light, Kemal padded back to bed, finding the older man in the darkness with the ease of long familiarity. As the night breezes whispered through the shutters, they made love more slowly now, each taking comfort and gaining strength from the other.

  7

  Kardon

  ON THE EDGE of the Berbat-Dunya, Graize rode seated before Kursk in the middle of the Rus-Yuruk’s kazakin-host. Eyes half closed and focused on a point somewhere between his pony’s ears and half a mile away, he floated in a heavy trance—made that much easier by the hypnotic swish, swish of the kazakin’s slow gait through the grasses. It seemed to calm his thoughts. Above his head, the lights merged and flowed like an ever-changing flock of silvery birds and, reaching out, he ran his mind through their midst almost instinctively. Touching each tiny spark of consciousness, he began to idly gather them up, weaving and binding them together under the pressure of their guidance until a crude human-seeming began to emerge.

  The lights bonded swiftly with this new form, moving faster and faster with each passing hour and, as their singular awareness and sense of purpose grew in strength so did his own sense of self. When the kazakin crested a low rise in a jingle of tiny bells, and the shimmer that represented their spring encampment stretched out before him, he remembered his life on the streets of Anavatan.

  His gray eyes narrowed as he glared at the lights, realizing that they were responsible for this sudden return to memory.

  “The past is gone,” he told them sharply with more clarity than he’d felt since the attack on Liman-Caddesi. “If you want to make yourselves useful then show me the future, the near future.”

  With an icy breath, a hundred visions rose up around him like a cloud of crystalline butterflies; places and events yet to be, both near and far. He flipped through them impatiently, discarding each one like a gem merchant sorting through inferior goods until he sensed that he’d found the one with the appropriate amount of power and riches won quickly, the power and riches he had always dreamed he would have.

  “That one,” he demanded, pointing at the wavering image of a child of unformed potential hovering behind a dark-haired man surrounded by a host of silver swords. “Give me that one.”

  The lights complied eagerly, throwing up the names and faces of the allies he’d need to make the vision a reality. The few he knew stayed still just long enough to be recognized: Kursk, Rayne, and Ozan of the kazakin; while the names of others he was yet to meet trailed faintly across his mind like spiderwebbing made of ice crystals: Timur, their oldest wyrdin, Ayami, Rayne’s abia, Caleb, her youngest kardos, Ozan’s delon—Rayne’s kuzon—Briz, Gabrie, and Tahnan, and her oldest kardos Danjel hovering in a cloud of mist. His people, his ... he strained to understand the sudden wash of icy possessiveness that came over him—his ... generals, the ones who would lead his army against the shining city and crack open the walls of Gol-Beyaz as he’d envisioned earlier in Kursk’s tent.

  But there was something subtly different about this latest vision. He frowned.

  His army?

  The lights dimmed for just an instant and he knew then: not his army but their army, built to give them power and form. Folding his arms, he fixed them with a cold, unimpressed stare and the lights fluttered nervously about him, tempting and cajoling, promising him his power and riches and whatever else they could glean from his thoughts. After a long moment, he unbent enough to send them a morsel of reassurance. He didn’t need bribes
to attack Anavatan, he only needed ...

  The flicker of an image came and went almost before he could register it, but he knew whose face it was just the same: the dark-haired man, the one person who might upset all his plans; the one person who, in some far distant future, he might allow to upset his all plans for reasons he could sense but couldn’t yet understand. The one person who was ... key.

  The lights gyrated in agitation, thrown into a panic by his train of thought and, almost absently, he sucked in a mouthful of tiny spirits and, holding the image of his beetle—cracked carapace and all—in his thoughts to focus him, he breathed a line of icy power through their midst, knowing instinctively that the spirits’ life force would feed the lights as well as they’d fed him. He would build them their army, he assured them, and unleash it upon the shining city like an avenging storm because it pleased him to do so, but after that he had other plans for his future and for theirs. The game was all that mattered, and Graize had always been very good at the game.

  “And you’ll help me win it, won’t you,” he whispered. “Because I know what you want now and you’ll need my help to get it.”

  Reluctantly, the lights agreed.

  A few moments later a pause in the steady gait of the kazakin interrupted his thoughts, and he looked up to see that the shimmer had become a sea of sheep and goats flanked by half a dozen mounted Yuruk. The same high-pitched whistle he’d heard before the kazakin had approached him sounded across the plains and, as the other riders stirred, Kursk glanced down at him with a smile.

  “Almost home now.”

  He turned. “Standard-bearer, answer the call.”

  With a huge smile, Rayne raised herself up in the saddle, and putting two fingers into her mouth, gave a long, ululating whistle in return.

  There was a moment’s silence, then a series of short whistles, and Kursk nodded.