by Micah Yongo
“Again, we agree.”
“The pearl, it will be somewhere in the tomb? Does he know of its place?”
“It sits in a pendant, joined to a necklace the queen wore. He says it will be with her.”
“What do you mean, with her?”
“With her… She… well, her corpse will be wearing it.”
Caleb snorted. “No wonder he’ll stay and keep the watch.”
Neither spoke for a while; Caleb puzzled, lifting and turning the sandal before putting it to the ground, pinning the sole there with his toes and yanking on the thin threaded leather of the thongs.
“I keep thinking there ought to be another way,” Neythan said. “To find Arianna, seek her out.”
“Like?”
“I don’t know. You know people in the city, people we could speak to… find a beginning.”
“I know the same people as Nouredín, except he knows more, and knows each one better than I. Were you to remember more of the Watcher’s words, that would be a good beginning.”
“What’s your advice then? That I do it?”
Caleb shrugged, then tutted, dropping the sandal as he yanked again on a thong. He picked it up. “Strange he doesn’t do it himself. He has the courtier, he has the day for the deed, why should he need you?”
“He fears the Shedaím, fears one of them may remain within the palace.”
“Why would they?”
“I know. But he doesn’t want to take chances. Thinks my being there will help, should anything go awry.”
Caleb frowned again.
“So, what is your advice?”
Caleb tossed the sandal to the ground grumpily. “I’ll have to buy another or pay for it to be mended, not that we have the silver.” He looked up from the battered and soggy leather sole. “My advice…” he looked around at the tents, at the market across from them, then, finally, back to Neythan again. “We cannot know whether the ranger speaks the truth or no… But what other means have we? Perhaps he does speak the truth. In which case how else, other than doing as he’s asked, might we come to learn what secrets he knows, where to find your heretic?”
He sat and stared for a while. Neythan waited.
“I do not trust him,” Caleb said evenly.
“That makes two of us.”
“It is a hard thing.”
“Perhaps we agree to do his bidding, but then find a corner somewhere, on the way to the deed, and take hold of him. Gain what he knows by force.”
Caleb shook his head. “But how then would we flee the city? And what if what he knows requires us to stay? We would have to kill him just to make sure whatever friends he has didn’t hear of it. And besides, he could as easily choose to lie.”
“I would bring the truth from him, Caleb. You can be certain of that.”
“Be that as it may, it would be less than wise… It would be better to do the task he has asked.”
“Rob from the sharíf?”
“That or bleed the ranger, each are as hopeful as the other.”
It was Neythan’s turn to sit and think.
“Perhaps our choice is this,” Caleb said. “Let us rob the tomb and hope the ranger’s words true, and if his steps prove false we simply put a blade in his back first, and then leave the city second, and seek some other way to find your heretic.”
Neythan thought about it for a moment. “No.”
“No?”
He picked up Caleb’s sandal, dusted it off. “A blade in the courtier, second,” he said distractedly as he tugged at the thongs. “Leave, third.”
Twenty-One
G A T H E R I N G
Dawn. Honey-glazed light leaked sleepily through the leafy canopy overhead like water through fingers, beaming down in thin, pale shafts that dappled the ground light, dark. The Forest of Silences was more a garden than a forest, Gahíd had always thought; the sloping gaps between each tree were too big and airy, too neat, though he’d always liked it that way. He gazed up at Neythan’s bloodtree.
“It’s strange that it would finally leaf now, don’t you think?”
Master Johann glanced sideways to the elder and scratched his chin. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. I always wondered about when it would… Maresh used to say teaching this sharím was like teaching the elements. You had Josef, who was like stone. Strong. Determined. He was a slow learner as a child but once he’d learned a thing, come to understand it, you could not easily dissuade him. You cannot shape or carve stone quickly. So it was with him. His brother, Daneel, was the same, though for other reasons. More like fire; unruly, wild. With him the thing was not so much to teach as tame. And then there was Arianna, who was always changing, always seeking, like wind, unable to dwell long with one thing. Easily distracted. With her, many things came easily – the way to handle a blade, wield a bow – but other disciplines, less so… and then…” He sighed and looked at the tree.
“And then what?”
“Then there was Neythan… He was always quick to learn. Easy to mould. Like clay. But like clay, also easily weathered. Yielding. Sometimes fragile… but then that’s the trouble with clay. It can become anything a man may choose, which is often the very thing that keeps it from taking a shape of its own. It’s why his bloodtree was always slower than the others. Just like his father’s. I always knew it would pass in time, that he’d become very able, perhaps the most able of them all… Perhaps it is beginning with him now. Perhaps that is why his tree now leafs.”
Gahíd nodded and looked around, surveying the slope, glancing at other trees for comparison. It had been a while since he’d come here. He’d forgotten how dense and strange the quiet was – no breeze, no birdsong, nothing. Like death. Peaceful somehow, and yet eerie too.
“How long has his tree been like this?” he said.
“The first leaf sprouted weeks ago. The others followed thereafter. It has been growing quickly since.”
“And you don’t know what it means?”
“I have told you, Gahíd, each disciple is different. To say would be a hard thing.”
“But if you were to guess.”
“If I were to guess I would say only what I have already. His sha is discovering and choosing its shape. He is becoming what he will be.”
Gahíd approached the tree. The girth of the trunk had widened. Thick boughs were spreading from it in every direction, each branch clothed with small leaves. He was reaching out to touch the bark when he noticed Safít standing beyond it, facing them, a stone’s throw away, waiting. Gahíd stepped out from around the tree and walked across the short distance toward her.
She was standing in a plain ankle-length smock and headscarf, hands clasped loosely behind her back, her pale sightless gaze staring into a vague middle distance somewhere between Gahíd’s chest and navel.
“How was the sharífa?” she said as Gahíd approached.
Gahíd glanced up at the bloodtree behind her. One he recognized. The tree of the exiled Master Sol, a tall spare cypress with naked boughs and thick clusters of foliage resting on its high branches like giant nests. “As you might expect,” he said. “She asked after you.”
“Kindly, no doubt.”
Gahíd smiled, his gaze lowered to her. “Do you know how many Brothers remain?”
Safít’s head turned a fraction, indicating the space around them. “Roam the Forest. You will see for yourself.”
“I don’t like to stay here long, Safít. You know this.”
Safít said nothing. A frequent habit. A woman prone to silences.
“What does Tarrick say?” Gahíd said.
“He says little.”
He was about to ask further when the dull blast of the village horn bumped the silence. Birdsong abruptly resumed with the sound.
Safít stepped back and turned toward the Forest’s incline, ready to return to the temple. “The last of them has arrived,” she said. “You should go. They will be waiting for you.”
Gahíd lingered for a moment, and then nodd
ed and turned away, leaving her by the bloodtree as he began to make his way down the lush grassy slope. By the time he cleared the cover of the Forest, clouds were gathering overhead and to the west, drifting in on the wind in a thick grey pall. The signs of rain seemed to weigh on the villagers as he passed along the narrow walkways of the settlement, the solemn way they stared after him, or perhaps it was just his being here. They knew why he’d come.
He reached the village’s fringe on the other side to find Tutor Hamir waiting for him by the brakes of sycamore shrubs and wildflowers near the path in.
“Are they all here?” Gahíd said.
Hamir nodded and turned to lead the way.
They went through the woodland to the slab of naked rockface that framed the door to the catacombs of the Shedaím. Hamir made a show of lighting the oil lamp when they reached the opening, conjuring flints from his sleeve and blowing reverently as he kindled the wick. Gahíd followed him in, stooping into the passage. The tawny crown of Hamir’s bald head glowed in the lamplight as they moved further in. They continued along the narrow tunnel one by one until it broadened, leading into a small low-ceilinged lobby with a door at the end. Hamir leaned in to push it open and then stepped aside for Gahíd to pass through.
The dull stench of trapped air and incense was familiar. Gahíd saw the dim bulk of the Creedstone in the middle of the room and the stony bench that ringed it, sitting there like a gigantic toadstool. A lampstand of carved ivory stood on top of it like a waiting visitor. The engravings of the Shedaím doctrines were spread across the Creedstone’s table, illumined by the dim light. Gahíd could see the others standing by the wall opposite, just beyond the glow.
“Sit,” he said.
They obeyed, stepping into the shallow hue of the lamp’s light and lowering to the bench.
Gahíd looked at them. So few. It was worse than he’d thought.
Josef and Daneel sat together on one side. They’d arrived only an hour before, passing the Empty Fountain on the way into the village and gazing at the familiar puddle of water within the raised sink of stone carved in the shape of an upturned palm. Daneel had seen the chipped middle finger where he’d once thrown a pebble to try to splash the water when Neythan and Yannick were bowing to drink. He could still remember the hiding he’d caught that day from Master Johann for his mischief, and the balms and ointments Neythan and Yannick had later sneaked to his bedchamber to take the sting from the wounds. Neythan still taller than him then. Fond memory. Ilysia had many of them. Which was why it was strange, after having journeyed all the way from Dumea, to be greeted so sombrely by Tutor Hamir on their arrival and ushered in silence to the cave’s entry, passing along its tunnels to this chamber to wait and stand with two other Shedaím – a man and a woman. Third or fourth sharím. Silently awaiting Gahíd’s arrival and the explanation he would bring.
The elder ran his fingers through his beard. “You four are the only swords remaining to the Brotherhood,” he said simply. Then waited.
Daneel looked at his brother to see if he’d heard and understood any better than he had. He looked at the two older Shedaím sitting blank-faced on his other side.
“Yes,” Elder Gahíd said. “You heard correctly. This is all of you. The question you will ask next, of course, is why.”
But no one asked anything, so Daneel glanced again to the other Shedaím. The man had cropped grey hair and bland flat features as though his face had been bashed in with a rock. The woman beside him was a Haránite, High Eastern by the look; the light honey-skinned complexion, the snub nose, the slight compact shoulders and narrow eyes. Both of them were staring intently at the elder as though they fully understood his words. Like they were all playing a game Daneel just didn’t know the rules to.
“Let me explain why you are here,” Gahíd said. “Before you were each last sent out there were eighteen of you. Eighteen Brothers. Now there remain only eight – you four seated here, two others guarding the sharíf, and two others retrieving the next sharím.”
“I don’t understand,” Daneel said.
“Well, of course you don’t. Where are the other ten, hm? Well, I shall tell you simply… Eight of the ten you do not see here are dead. The other two are their killers.”
Silence.
“Betrayers?” whispered the Haránite.
Gahíd nodded.
More silence.
“Who?” asked the greyhead.
Gahíd looked at Josef and Daneel. “Their names are Neythan and Arianna.”
“What?”
“They have murdered eight of our kin, eight of their own Brothers.”
Daneel was about to answer again when the Haránite cut in. “Who are the fallen?”
Gahíd nodded. It was a question he’d expected. “Qerat. Tanith. Eliab. Vanya.”
The Haránite’s eyes seemed to drop further with the mention of each name.
The elder looked at the greyhead. “So too Sha’id, Majad and Nassím.” And then he looked at Josef and Daneel again. “…and so too, Yannick.”
Daneel half-smiled, half-frowned, disbelieving. “Yannick is dead?” The words seemed absurd. “You’re saying Neythan and Arianna have killed Yannick?”
“Yes. I am. Because that is what they have done. They murdered Yannick in a village on the way to Dumea. It is the reason they failed to meet with you in the city. From there they went east, and then north, and have since gone on to kill seven more Shedaím: Qerat, in a fishing village not far from Godswell, the village where Yannick was killed. Sha’id, in Parses a few days after that. Nassím, two weeks later, in Çyriath…”
“But that makes no sense,” Daneel said. “Why would they do that? To what end?”
“Ah, now that is the question, and, as it happens, the reason for our being gathered here. That we may know. More important shall be how, but I do not expect to discover that here. Only when we find the betrayers themselves shall we know by what means they learned the whereabouts of those who’ve been their prey. But as to why, this we expect to be enlightened of by those who know them best.”
Gahíd looked pointedly at Josef and Daneel. They felt the gazes of the other two Brothers at the table turn toward them too.
“Of all of us,” Josef said, “none could be more devoted to the doctrines of the Brotherhood than Neythan. I hardly find how to believe what he has done, how should I be able to understand it?”
“Then you say Arianna will have led him to it?”
“No. She too wouldn’t–”
“But you spoke only of Neythan’s devotion.”
“I meant only that–”
“Josef. Is that your name?”
Josef glanced at the greyhead.
“I understand,” the man said. “I do. It is difficult to think how any would betray the creed, much less spill the blood of his brethren. Even harder for that betrayer to be of your own sharím. I’d struggle to accept that too. I am yet struggling. But eight lie dead, one from your own sharím, and one who was my own flesh and blood. None of them less devoted than any of us. Eight, Josef. Think on that. An uncommon enough thing for one to fall at the hand of a troop. But eight? It can only be the work of one belonging to this order, or, more likely, two. If it is not by their hand, how else could it be so?”
“Salidor speaks truth, Josef,” Gahíd said. “I went to Godswell. I saw what was done to Yannick. I spoke with those who’d witnessed it. They described the betrayers’ likenesses well. With my own ears I heard their witness, and with my own eyes saw Yannick’s butchered body. Do you think I was not as you are now? I too would sooner believe it not so, but each week word comes to me of another slain. In the end, a man must accept the truth is the truth. We cannot allow what we’d hope or prefer to blind us from what is. We cannot afford to.”
Daneel was still shaking his head. “But where is the reason?”
Gahíd looked at them and sighed. “Not with you, it would seem. But perhaps that doesn’t matter for now. Most important is that they
are found. Until they are, they remain a threat to the order.”
“But surely you cannot believe they would–”
Daneel barely saw it. Metallic glint in shadow and his chin lifted, suddenly bracing away from the blade at his neck. The Haránite was on the table, squatting over him, face inches from his and eyes hungrily looking him over like some strange unfamiliar prey.
“Who is this one?” she said. “With words so many and sense so small?” She’d somehow swung from her seat and mounted the table so quickly that Daneel had barely time to blink. “He calls himself a Brother,” she said, peering at him. “Yet despises the words of an elder and defends betrayers. Perhaps we should cut him, and see if he will defend us also.”
Josef’s voice was firm. “Let’s not.”
Daneel, blade still at his neck, smiled at the woman as she looked down to find his brother’s shortsword pressed against her ribs.
“Put it away, Jasinda,” Gahíd said. “You too, Josef. Our enemy is elsewhere. And you will not defile this table with the blood of more of our kin.”
Jasinda lingered. Her eyes passed from the still smiling Daneel to the cold staring Josef before she slowly withdrew the shortsword and climbed back down to her seat.
“You may find this difficult, Daneel,” Gahíd said, “but you are a child no longer, and neither are they. For whatever reason they have chosen to become betrayers, and they will soon be named heretics. Whether you would wish it some other way or not, they have no part with us now. They are not of this order. They are not Shedaím. They are rot, and are trying to eat away what remains of the tree that bore them. This rot must be found, swiftly, and cut out. The matter is simple.”
“So we are to hunt them, then.”
Gahíd turned to the greyhead. “Yes, Salidor. We are to hunt them.”
“Where?”
“Where the last of our fallen was found. The Calapaari foothills to the north. The four of you will go as far as Geled and track them from there.”
“You’re sending us together?”
“Yes. I am. It will be unfamiliar to you, I know. But I have already sent Casimir and Abda to guard the sharíf. And Johann had already sent Zora and Shimeer to gather the new sharím before any of this began. After them, you are the last swords left. And after you, there are only the tutors. And so, as you can see, we cannot afford for any others to be lost. If you go together the betrayers will not be able to do as they did with those who are fallen.”