by David Hair
‘In southern Lakh the widow is sometimes burned on her husband’s pyre – if not, she goes into a widows’ refuge. She may not marry again.’
He blinked, aghast. ‘That’s horrible!’
‘I think so too – but that is in the south, where people are strange. In the north of Lakh, where I am from, mourning is one year, and then the woman must be cleansed and purified by a priest, after which she may remarry.’
‘Your husband died just over a year ago.’ Then he bit his lip. ‘I’m just saying … I’m sorry if I’ve given offence.’
Her face clouded. ‘I know. But I am not ready for another man. I may never be.’
‘Why not?’ he asked, his tongue darting ahead of his brain. ‘I mean, it is right to mourn, of course, but—’
She interrupted. ‘There was a young man to whom I was promised. I loved him all my life, but he followed me north, and he murdered my husband. I loved them both, but one killed the other. Most days I think I will never love again.’
He looked away, remembering memories he’d inadvertently seen of hers, of a younger man holding her. Sweet Kore … did she cuckold Meiros? He couldn’t imagine it of her. It must’ve happened before she was married …
‘I’m sorry,’ he said lamely, at last. He stared into space, trying to think of Cym or Anise, but that did no good at all.
She took his hand and pulled it to her. ‘Hold still,’ she said.
He looked at her curiously as she fished into a pocket and drew out a piece of orange string. She carefully knotted it about his right wrist.
‘What’s this?’ His voice took on a panicky tone. ‘Did you—? Are we—? Are we married now?’
She snorted. ‘Married! Of course not! You really are a barbarian! That might be how things are done in your homeland, but marriages in proper places take days of preparation and ritual, not a piece of string!’ She reached out and tweaked his chin. ‘It means that you are now my brother, Al’Rhon Mercer.’
‘Your brother?’
‘Yes. I just adopted you. This is a rakhi string. It signifies that you are my brother.’
He flushed painfully. ‘Oh … So what does that mean?’
‘Your duties are to protect me and guide me, and to find me a new husband.’
‘Oh.’ How did I get myself into this? ‘Um, what’s in it for me?’
She put on an affronted face, but her voice was amused. ‘It is a great honour, and a serious obligation, Goat! You get the privilege of calling me sister! And I have to give you a new string once a year, at the Raksha Bandan festival in Shaban – your Augeite. And I will cook you sweets.’ She beamed at him, though her eyes were serious. ‘I make very fine sweets.’
‘I see.’ He thought he did, too: Brothers can’t marry sisters. ‘And what do I call my sister?’
‘Didi. And you are my bhaiya.’
‘Didi. Okay, I accept. When do you want me to start looking for a husband for you?’
‘I’ll let you know.’ She waggled her head in a ‘right then’ manner, and dropped her voice. ‘Have you learned all you can here? Is it time for us to go on?’
‘Not yet: there’re still hundreds of scrolls I’ve not got to. And I feel like I’m missing half the clues this place could offer. I wish Ramon and Cym were here.’ Then something struck him and his voice trailed off …
‘You have an idea?’ Ramita asked. ‘Please, tell me.’
He pulled out the Scytale and laid it on the table. He pointed first to the runes, then picked up one of the leather straps. ‘In ancient time, the legions used scytales to encode messages. It had one strap that you wrapped around it in a certain way, like this, to make a link between certain symbols, so if you got an encoded message and you knew the right configuration, you could decrypt the message – so it looks like gibberish, until you work out what the correct symbols are.’ He unwrapped the strap to show her.
‘But the Scytale of Corineus has four straps, see? And there are these domes all along the length where the straps can be attached. That means there are thousands of combinations – and I don’t know even know what all the runes mean yet, just some of them.’
She waggled her head: I think I understand. ‘But you have an idea, bhaiya?’
‘Well, what I think is that there is a specific combination for any given person, based on things like their birthday, their affinities if they are a mage, and other things like that. The runes seem to be a code for unravelling what kind of person should be given what particular mix of the potion. I understand most of the gnostic runes, but the chemical ones are outside my knowledge – and I can’t find them anywhere in the archives here.’
Ramita looked thoughtful. ‘My husband didn’t speak of this.’
‘The Scytale wasn’t devised until well after the first Ritual – I doubt Meiros ever saw it. They say Baramitius tested different drugs on Corineus’ followers for years before the Ascension.’
‘Then he sounds despicable.’ Ramita tapped her fingers on the table. ‘To determine my affinities, Justina tested me: she asked me lots of questions, and made me use gnosis on different elements. Do you think this Scytale might do the same?’
‘Kind of: I think it helps you make a better, safer potion for that particular person.’ Alaron showed her the four elemental runes at the top of the Scytale, and the other four, symbolising the theoretical Studies at the other end. ‘Look, did Lady Justina show you these?’
Ramita cast her mind back. ‘Yes! They were the symbols on her board: Earth is my prime affinity. Well … it was! Do these even apply to us any more?’
‘I don’t know … but let’s just go with it for now. Look, if I twist both ends, like so, new symbols appear in each of the sixty-four holes, see? And if I clip the straps to these domes, these others are concealed … So if I was assessing you … the first layer of symbols include a feminine one, so if I take this strap and clip it to this dome … and these could represent age … you’re still young, so this one … but look, there are still six more things to determine, like this next one, which just seem to be colours, see: blue, brown, green and grey.’
‘Eyes,’ she said instantly. ‘Eyes are those colours.’
He slapped his forehead. ‘Eyes! You’re right …’ He looked at her. ‘Brown eyes. So …’ He felt a little surge of excitement as he went to move the strap and tried to click the next dome, but the brown symbol was too far around and the previous one popped out as he tugged. He let out a another frustrated grunt. ‘Damn! I thought we were onto something there.’
Ramita reached for the Scytale and he found himself about to snatch it out of reach. I didn’t come half way round the world for her to break it … Then he realised how ridiculous that was: the artefact was wrapped in so many spells it was practically indestructible.
He let go and she turned it over in her hard little hands, frowning as she poked and prodded it.
‘See, it won’t go,’ he said. ‘And I don’t know where the other straps go. It makes no sense.’
Ramita looked up. ‘You think that matching the characteristics of a person to these symbols will reveal a recipe, yes? In this recipe is it best to have lots of ingredients, or few?’
He screwed up his nose. ‘Well … it depends. I think it’s more likely that there’s a core recipe that’s got variants, than the other way around …’ He thought about that for a moment, then finished, ‘Yes, I think that’s most probably the case.’
‘Well, in that case I would think you would pin all the straps, yes? Then you will cover more of the red runes on the body of the cylinder and leave fewer variants?’ She clipped the domes down, this time leaving the panels representing Earth, female, young and brown-eyed uncovered. ‘See? That way I can cover them all and leave uncovered just the ones that are important, yes?’
He stared at the Scytale, and then at her. ‘You know, you might actually be onto something.’ Then he stammered, because he’d not meant to sound so condescending, ‘I don’t mean actually, I mean—�
�
‘Al’Rhon. Goat. Shut your mouth, like so.’ She made a closing gesture with her finger.
‘Yeah. Sorry. Thinking before I speak isn’t my strongest point.’
‘Don’t feel bad. All men are brought up to think women are lesser. Then you fail to educate us, just to make sure. That you even know you are doing it makes you one of the most promising men I have met.’
He grinned at that, but instead of smiling in return her eyes suddenly misted over, as if something in his face had triggered a memory too sad to contain, and she began to cry.
He floundered uncertainly, then reached out and enfolded her, half-expecting to be pushed away, but she didn’t. It was an awkward embrace: she was so short she only reached his ribs, but she clung to him and sobbed until her tears had soaked his shirt. He murmured some stream-of-consciousness babble about looking after her, stroking her head, and all the time wishing he was manly enough to tip her head upwards and kiss her.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked eventually, as her weeping subsided.
‘For a moment, I saw my husband,’ she whispered, completely killing his ardour. She stepped away and he let her go.
She looked at me and saw her husband … He had no idea what to make of that.
‘Life’s drum never stops beating,’ she said softly. ‘It is an old Lakh saying: I think I understand it now … bhaiya.’
17
Ardijah
Hermetic: Sylvan-gnosis
Sylvanic Gnosis is a neglected aspect of the Gnostic Arts, in our view. But you are best to respect the Woodcrafter, whose gnosis can wreck a windship or a building, whose potions can restore you or poison you, whose arrows fly true, and whose will can send a tree striding across the battlefield.
ORDO COSTRUO COLLEGIATE, PONTUS
Ardijah, Emirate of Khotriawal, on the continent of Antiopia
Akhira (Junesse) 929
12th month of the Moontide
Ramon helped Severine Tiseme down from her wagon. The Pallacian girl was holding her belly and grimacing in pain. In the past month it had swollen up like the inflated pig-bladders the children kicked about his village in Silacia. She clutched at him as her legs wobbled. She’s not built for suffering and discomfort, he thought guiltily; Sevvie was many things, but not robust. She wasn’t exactly a survivor, and that worried him – one of many things troubling his sleep.
Death in labour was common enough in the masses, but it happened at times to magi too, despite healing-gnosis and the best of care. He tried to put that fear from his mind and smile for her, even though she had become incredibly tetchy of late. The romance between them was souring: most nights she wouldn’t even share a tent with him, let alone anything more – she had conceived this mad idea that he and Jelaska had some kind of affair going on. Jelaska! Apart from anything else, Jelaska was with Sigurd Vaas and Ramon had no desire to fall foul of the big Argundian. And paranoia was far from Severine’s only unattractive quality, he was finding out. But things hadn’t come to a head, and anyway, she was carrying his child.
‘Where are we?’ she asked breathily, clinging to his arm.
He pointed down from the hill-top to the vista below: there were twin islands in the middle of the floodplain, linked to this bank and the far one by giant causeways. Water boiled through arches beneath both roads. ‘Ardijah.’
She squinted diffidently, and wrinkled her nose. ‘It’s not very big, is it?’
‘It is too small for any of the maps we have,’ Ramon agreed. ‘But it’s a key point on a major trading route, linking Khotriawal Emirate to southern Kesh. It’s really just a place where the two ends of a bridge could be anchored and a causeway built.’
‘So what it’s generals call “strategic”, hmm?’
‘Very.’ He studied the water flowing past them, which looked like it was running lower than even a few days ago, well within the normal floodplain boundaries. The freakish conditions caused by the Shaliyah storm were finally fading as nature reasserted itself. But crossing anywhere but here was still out of the question.
Severine looked at the town longingly. ‘Can we go straight in, or do we have to kill someone first? I’d murder for a feather bed.’
‘You might have to.’ He glanced towards the command group. ‘I’ll go and talk to the Lesser Son.’
‘You should be nicer to Seth,’ she said. ‘They’re saying he drove off the Keshi at the crossroads all by himself.’
Ramon pursed his lips. That wasn’t how he’d heard it from Lanna Jureigh: a panicked reaction and a fluky spell after messing up the basics big-time. I should have been there – or left Sigurd with him, or Bondeau, even Kip. Any one of them would have handled it better than Korion had. And they’d lost the chaplain; he might’ve been useless, but he was still a mage. What mage forgets to rukking shield?
‘If you can find us a bed, you can join me in it tonight,’ she said, her voice diffident. ‘If you still want to.’
‘Of course I still want to,’ he replied, unsure if that was entirely the case. He pecked Sevvie’s cheek dutifully and went to see what the plan was. Or rather, to make sure it was his plan.
The magi were gathered about Seth, staring down at the causeway and the two fortress-islands in the middle. Heads turned as he entered the gathering. Kip grinned, and Jelaska and Sigurd nodded a greeting. Bondeau looked at him sourly, the others had neutral expressions on their faces.
Ramon’s ambush for the Keshi had been a mild success: a few dozen of the enemy’s advance guard had been caught in a maelstrom of fire and lightning and burned to a crisp: death en masse, with no losses. As a result, the Keshi had certainly become more cautious. But some of us should have been with Seth … It’d been Ramon’s idea, and so it was his fault. He needed to rebuild credibility.
Seth looked hollow, as if the marrow from his spine had been bled away. He clearly would rather be alone, but generals had to be visible, touchable – and in obvious control of what was happening. There were subtle signs of a kind of grim determination forming as well, though, as if the soft, prevaricating part of Seth Korion was being pared away, revealing something brittle but harder beneath.
Right now, the young general was pointing towards the town across the causeway, where pennants were flying, and armoured men patrolling the walls. ‘There are two halves to this town,’ he started, ‘linked by a bridge – the northern causeway is too long to cross before they can close the gates. So how do we get in?’
‘If we had a couple more days,’ Bondeau said, ‘we could wait for the storm-water to drain away, which would leave us a plain we could cross, apart from the middle channel. Then we could attack the nearer keep on three sides.’
‘It’s no use talking about what we wished we faced,’ Jelaska sniffed.
‘At least it’s only Khotri men. They’ve got no magi,’ Seth commented.
‘We didn’t think they had magi at Shaliyah either,’ Sigurd observed dourly.
‘What did you see when you flew over the bridge-towers, Windmaster Prenton?’ Jelaska asked the Brevian.
Baltus gestured flamboyantly. ‘Just a bridge and a pair of close-packed walled towns at either end. There’re a lot of soldiers in a big camp on the other side of the river too.’
‘So even if we could take Ardijah, there’s an army on the other side?’ Seth asked anxiously.
‘If the Khotri don’t want to just let us march through, yes,’ Ramon replied, trying hard to keep from sounding sarcastic. There’d been an unspoken truce since the incident at the junction: both he and Seth knew they’d not performed well, but attacking each other would see Renn Bondeau pushing for leadership again, and neither wanted that. ‘We should talk to them,’ he said calmly. ‘I’m told that the Khotri don’t like the Keshi much.’
‘The Keshi aren’t “afreets” to them,’ Jelaska remarked, ‘but we are.’
‘What would we say anyway?’ Bondeau sneered. ‘Please may we move our army into your territory?’
‘Why not?’ Ra
mon replied. ‘We’re not invading – we’re just manoeuvring.’
‘It doesn’t work like that,’ Sigurd said. ‘Soldiers rape and pillage and kill people. It’s what they do. No one lets even their own army into their towns in peacetime if they don’t have to.’
‘All right, so let’s bribe them,’ Ramon suggested.
Seth looked exasperated. ‘With what, exactly? We’ve got nothing they’d want. We should attack.’
Wins one fight and thinks he’s his Daddy …
‘That causeway is wide enough for about ten men riding abreast,’ Baltus commented, ‘and it’s open to the entire gate-tower and surrounding walls. I don’t know about you chaps, but I don’t think I could shield a dozen arrows at once, or even one ballista – did I mention they have at least four of those positioned over the gate?’
‘How far behind us are the Keshi?’ Sigurd Vaas asked.
‘A day at most.’
‘Any bright ideas?’ Jelaska asked. ‘Because otherwise it’s a frontal assault down the causeway.’
As if drawn by a magnet, everyone turned to Ramon, even Bondeau, who looked ready to pounce on whatever he said.
Ramon rubbed his chin. ‘Let me talk to them. At least I might get an idea of what we’re up against – anything they say or don’t say will be instructive.’
‘Waste of Kore-bedamned time,’ Renn Bondeau swore.
‘We’ll see. I’ll need Storn; he can speak their language.’ Then he turned to Seth, as an afterthought, ‘Well, great leader?’
‘Very well. There’s nothing to lose, is there?’ Seth sounded tired.
Ramon frowned: the loss of Tyron Frand had clearly hurt Seth badly. He looked in desperate need of a new confidante.
Sevvie? he wondered. She’s a nob too … No, Seth doesn’t really talk to women. Lots of men can’t – we live such different lives.