by Fiona Patton
Spar glanced over, drawn by the unusually nostalgic tone in the other boy’s voice despite himself.
“Those were good moments,” Brax continued. “When we were warm and fed, and safe for a while, yeah?”
Spar gave a one-shouldered shrug in neutral agreement.
“But soon enough we’d get back to work,” Brax continued. “We’d go up to where the crowds were watching the northern ships unloading, or where the merchants were fighting over customers in the marketplaces, anywhere we might not be noticed, anywhere we might lift an asper or two.”
Spar cocked his head to one side, curious about where this was going. The dark place inside was silent as well, waiting.
Brax absently shifted his left arm a little, his face relaxing as the pressure eased on his injury. “It was exciting sometimes,” he said, “especially when we got away with it, you remember?”
Spar nodded.
“But I was always scared that it wouldn’t last,” Brax added with a frown, “that Cindar or I’d get pinched and you’d end up at Oristo-Cami. We never made enough to put anything by, and we never would have. We just weren’t good enough.”
Spar’s brows drew down. “We made out,” he said defensively.
“No. We made do. That was all. And it wasn’t gonna be for long. If Cindar hadn’t been killed that day, it would have been the next day or the day after that.” He looked away.
“You know, all my life I could never do anything better than anybody else,” he continued after a moment. “I couldn’t run faster or climb better. I wasn’t stronger or meaner or smarter. I wasn’t a great lifter; I was good, but only just good. Now I have all this,” he gestured back toward the temple, “but nothing’s really changed.”
“I thought you were a champion,” Spar said, allowing a slight sneer to color the last word.
Brax shrugged. “That doesn’t make me any better at doing it. I can’t fight or ride half as well as the others. I never will, not now, not with this.” He made a stiff gesture with his left arm. “And one day that’ll probably get me killed.”
“No, your stupid habit of diving headfirst into battle’ ll probably get you killed.”
“Whatever. My point is that I was only a good lifter, I’ll only be a good warrior, but I’ll learn whatever I have to learn to keep from getting pinched or killed. But you’re different. You know things. Even on the streets you were better at knowing things than anyone else I ever knew.”
“That’s ‘cause you never knew any seers.”
“I knew Graize.”
Spar blinked in surprise. In all the time they’d been at the temple, even before the battle where the gray-eyed boy had reappeared like an apparition, Brax had never spoken his name.
“Graize is powerful,” he answered distractedly.
“You told me he was just a cheap trickster.”
“He was.”
“And now?”
Spar shrugged. “Now he’s a powerful trickster.”
“Whatever. You may think he’s better than you, but he’s not. He’s just older, but he’s gonna get better if these rumors about him being trained by the Yuruk wyrdin are true.”
Spar shifted uncomfortably. “What’s your point?” he demanded.
“That he’s dangerous and that he’s not gonna go away. It doesn’t take a seer to know that he’s our enemy; he always was, and he always will be. But he’s never gonna get past my guard with an edged weapon ever again. All I can do about it is to get better with the sword and the bow, but you can get better in your head. And don’t give me that I was too messed up at Serin-Koy to face it crap. Yashar may buy it, but I don’t.”
Spar cast him a glance of mock injury and Brax gave him an exasperated look in return. “I’m not saying you weren’t messed up,” he allowed, “but that vision you had didn’t burn out your abilities any more than this injury took my arm. You know it and I know it. You’re ten years old now; this young and scared routine’s not gonna fly much longer. You gotta make a choice. You wanna protect yourself from them, that’s fine, but just make sure you don’t protect yourself so hard you lose your best weapon against them all, including Graize. That would be playing right into his hands.”
That would be playing right into Illan Volinsk‘s, hands as well, the dark place agreed.
Now it was Spar’s turn to look away. “I know what I’m doing, Brax,” he replied quietly.
“Well, just make sure you do, ‘cause if you let Graize get stronger in his head than you, he’ll take you down.” The older boy caught and held his gaze. “And I won’t be able to stop him.”
Any more than he could stop him before, the dark place supplied bluntly.
And that had been Brax’s unspoken point.
After that day, Spar had allowed Elif to begin drawing him out, playing a cautious game of cat and mouse with her, letting only the faintest bit of his abilities show through the dark place and clamping them back down as soon as he felt her push too hard. He had no illusions about what she would do if she discovered their true scope, but Brax was right. He was ten years old now. He wouldn’t be able to play the young-and-scared routine for much longer. But Brax was wrong about making a choice. He didn’t have to choose anything, not yet. Tanay had said so.
“Age will bring about its share of decisions; you don’t have to make any of them now.”
And he wasn’t going to make them with the limited options Estavia’s warriors were willing to offer him either. He would make his own options.
Opening the inner door which separated the infantry wing from the more public areas of the temple, he peered around it cautiously before slipping through, closing it behind Jaq who still padded along behind him. One finger to his lips to keep the animal quiet, he made his way along a wide, open colonnade, the finely-wrought marble rails along the outside thickly entwined with blooming morning glories, the wall side regularly punctuated by polished wooden doors and delicately arched doorways. One such doorway led to a winding set of white marble stairs streaked with sunlight from a line of thin, latticed windows. He and Jaq took them silently, emerging into a small passageway with a single door at the end. After listening for a few moments, they slipped inside.
The room was a small, rectangular gallery, the floor and two outside walls covered in heavy woolen carpets and two large windows flanked by wooden shutters, easily closed to keep out the weather, but thrown open today to allow the sunlight to pool across the floor. The far wall was open, showing a two-story room beyond, the edge denoted by a black iron railing. On the inner wall, beside the door, a single shelf held twelve small embossed-leather-and-gold-bound books. Running his fingers along the spines, Spar selected the second volume from the left and carried it carefully to a pile of silk cushions by the window.
“Learn, Spar, learn everything you can.”
Chian’s words, his last words, spoken as he drew Spar’s mind up from the brilliant waters of Gol-Beyaz.
“Don’t let them turn you into something you’re not.”
The final image that had followed Chian into death was of flowers strewn across a sunlit floor. Spar had no idea why. But he was going to find out because something was happening.
He frowned. He didn’t know what or when. He had only the vaguest sense of it tickling at the back of his sight like a hair caught in his throat. But he would find out.
“Learn.”
When he was five years old, Cindar had grudgingly paid a drunken, half blind former-scribe to teach Brax and him a few written words, just enough to make out the occasional faded signboards in the Western Trisect dockside markets. (Which was why Spar could easily write out the words Potions to cure boils and weeping sores: three aspers.)
Before they’d left for Anahtar-Hisar, Marshal Brayazi had arranged for a priest of Ystazia to teach them how to read and write properly. It had been slow going, especially since the older boy had managed to avoid each and every lesson, just like he had with the old scribe. But Spar had suffered throu
gh the long lectures on letters and words, held to the task by his memory of the bright, jewel-encrusted book on the central dais in the armory. Ihsan, the priest, had read it—appar—ently he’d even written part of it—and he’d promised that Spar would also read it one day, once he mastered the pile of tattered vellum he laughingly called an apprenticeship book.
So, once they’d returned to the temple, he and the priest had met twice a week in the meditation room below the gallery, struggling through the first, a grubby piece entitled: “A Delon’s Life of the Gods.” It was nothing like the books at Calmak-Koy or even at Anahtar-Hisar, but Ihsan had insisted that this was the only way to gain a proper respect for the knowledge so carefully gathered and handwritten in each and every volume. However, it wasn’t until he’d climbed the thin iron staircase ten days ago and found the dozen beautiful books that made up Estavia-Sarayi’s nearly forgotten library that he’d begun to understand what Ihsan really meant.
“The written word is both the most illuminating and the most terrible of all powers. It gives form to all it touches, but that form is static, so what is written down must be at all times accurate and respectful to that which is being written about.”
“In that pathetic excuse for a library? One thin, little, out-of-date tome on southern growing practices, another outlining Ystazia’s festive rituals, and two journals written by barely literate tower commanders?”
The memory of Illan’s voice sneered at him from the dark place and Spar snapped another memory of Ihsan’s. voice back at it.
“It doesn’t matter how many books a library has, it only matters that they exist in the first place; exist and are available to anyone who wants to discover the knowledge they preserve. ”
Dropping into the cushions, Spar opened the book to the first page, breathing in the heavy scent of linen, leather, and ink with pleasure before peering down at the beautiful, curving letters.
“A tre ... tre ... tise on the stir ... rup.”
“It doesn’t matter what a book contains either, again, it only matters that it exists at all.”
“Learn.”
And he would learn from any quarter he could. Each day he allowed Yashar, Kemal, and Arjion to teach him about weapons and armor and strategy and tactics; he listened while Elif and Battle-Seer Eren spoke about breathing, mind control, and the symbolism thrown up in vision, and Ghazi-Priest Ayse of Bronze Company described the charges she’d led over the years.
But he also listened while Tanay’s assistants argued and bartered with the many potters, farmers, carpet sellers, vintners, masons, carpenters, tilers, painters, spice and perfume merchants, colliers and ratcatchers that passed through the temple’s main gates every day. He hid in a shadowy gallery far above the main audience hall while Marshal Brayazi handed down discipline and reward to the warriors and delinkon under her charge, and Birin-Marshal Ginaz meted it out. He made his way into every room and hall in Estavia-Sarayi, from the tin-smith’s tiny workshop off the kitchens to the huge blacksmith and weaponry forges off the far northern courtyard. He slipped into the herbariums to watch Usara’s delinkon bending over tables cluttered with potions and infusions and tinctures, and peered through the infirmary doors while the Healer God’s physicians spoke words of comfort over the dying and sometimes dealt out death itself in the name of comfort. He saw the launderers wringing the black dye of Estavia’s wards from silk shirts and woolen tunics, and Havo’s cultivators carefully tending the many breathtaking gardens inside the walls; gardens that had no practical purpose other than the strange understanding that Estavia, God of Bloodshed and Killing, loved flowers and scented plants.
But most often he visited Tanay, watching as she supervised and orchestrated every aspect of temple life, from the cooking and baking which began long before dawn, to the complicated lists of supplies and provisions she consulted each night after the kitchens had closed. And afterward, sitting on the windowsill of the small delin-room he shared with Brax off Kemal and Yashar’s bedchamber, he would mull over everything he’d learned that day. Sometimes Brax would sit with him like he used to in the old days, content to talk or keep silent, whichever Spar preferred. Sometimes he would sit by himself, no longer afraid to be alone.
The God-creature often pressed upon his mind during these times, almost as if It, too, were hungry for learning. He would allow it a few seeds of knowledge at a time, much as he might have thrown a few crumbs to a feral cat to tame it. The God-creature would suck them up in greedy desperation, then spin away, back to Its mad prophet on the plains, and Spar would continue his musings alone.
On nights when the God-creature was inexplicably absent he would send his mind flying out across the Deniz-Siyah to hover about a tall, red tower on the edge of the sea: Prince Illan’s Cvet Tower on the southern coast of faraway Volinsk.
Kicking off his sandals, Spar began to rub Jaq’s belly absently with one foot as he remembered his first sight of the northern seer. Illan hadn’t made contact with him since Serin-Koy, but that didn’t mean that Spar hadn’t made contact with Illan; Chian had taught him how to do that. The bulk of his mind safely housed in the dark place, he’d sent the finest tendril of consciousness out across the sea to hover above a strange, single-masted ship anchored off the tower promontory while two men, one old and heavyset, the other young and smooth-faced, took their leave of Illan and a beautiful golden-haired woman whose mind shimmered with ebony power much like the dark place itself. Something about her warned him to keep his distance, but all the same, he’d returned often to hover like a bird just beyond the window of Illan’s scrying room, watching as the two of them planned the conquest of Anavatan.
And as the days grew warmer, and Ystazia handed Her dominion over the summer to Estavia, the God-creature began to join him on these forays especially on the nights when Illan and Panos, her name was, set their plotting aside to join together in Illan’s bedchamber. Spar was not so interested—he’d seen plenty of people having sex before—but it mesmerized the God-creature and Spar often used these times to slip away and touch the lives of the Yuruk spread out across the wild lands.
It was a dangerous game. Their wyrdins could sense a presence far more subtle than his ever could be, and the one they called Danjel’s ever changing power signature was a constant threat. As for Graize, his mind was like an autumn storm, darting this way and that, exploding with the fury of a hurricane one moment, then pattering the clouds with a shower of silver lights like a fresh spring rain the next, but Spar was learning to read his movements the same way he was learning to read the waves on Gol-Beyaz and Brax was wrong if he thought Spar believed Graize to be the more powerful seer. He never had. But that didn’t make Graize any less powerful.
Setting one finger between the pages of his book, Spar closed his eyes, imagining the pale-eyed boy standing before the practice dummy in the training ground.
Always see the enemy.
Something was happening and it had to do with Graize.
“Once upon a time, a very long time ago, there was a shining silver lake of power called Gol-Beyaz.”
Kemal’s voice was so loud in his mind that he started, jerking his eyes from the book with a cough of surprise.
“And deep beneath its surface dwelled six mysterious beings of vitality and potential, for in the beginning the Gods of Gol-Beyaz were spirits.”
He frowned darkly. Gods and Graize?
“So the God Incasa reached into the future to pull forth a mighty vision.”
And Spar’s eyes widened as the faintest glimmer of understanding began to tickle at the back of his mind. Gods and Graize. Incasa and Graize. Incasa and Graize and the God-creature.
“For in the beginning the Gods of Gol-Beyaz were spirits. ”
“You sneaky old bastard,” he breathed.
A scratch on his leg drew his attention back to the room and he glanced down at Jaq who thumped his tail against the floor with an anxious expression.
“Don’t worry, ”he said in a reassur
ing tone. “It’s all just aim, draw, and release.”
Days passed and Estavia’s High Summer slowly gave way to Oristo’s Autumn. In the villages the crops were gathered, the livestock slaughtered and their meat salted or dried, and the heavy red wine and pale green olive oil the Gol-Yearli were famous for, sealed into earthenware jugs and laid up in a hundred cool, brick-lined cellars. Out on the sparkling waters of Gol-Beyaz and the deep, dark waters of the Bogazi-Isik, the gray fishing nets teemed with palamut, lufer, and mercan migrating south to the warmer waters of the Deniz-Hadi. As the dolphins raced the fishing boats back to their wharves, the fishmonger’s white cat played in the surf and watched as the long lines of drying fish sprang up all across the docksides.
With the fighting season also coming to an end, the mounted Warriors of Estavia returned to their temple and their home villages to aid in those preparations while the Yuruk banners disbanded into individual kazakin, and made for their own winter encampments, driving their flocks and herds before them. And at Estavia-Sarayi it was decided that Kemal and Yashar would remain at the temple with their delinkon to continue their training until spring.
Seated in her usual place on her divan, wrapped in heavy woolen shawls, Elif glanced up as Marshal Brayazi crossed the training ground to stand beside her.
“You’ve a frowning aspect, Bray-Delin,” she said, her voice slightly amused. “Hasn’t the chamberlain laid up enough boza and raki for the winter?”
The marshal gave her an unimpressed look, but just shook her head. Crouching, she leaned one elbow against the arm of the divan, her many long braids falling forward over her face. “I have a frowning aspect because I was summoned before one of my own seers as if she were the marshal and not I,” she answered stiffly.
“Is that all?” Elif gave a disdainful sniff. “Injured pride?”
“Abandoned paperwork. I have to find a diplomatic way to tell the doyen of Thasos that we cannot expand our naval presence in the southern strait.”