Starless

by Jacqueline Carey

  Still, I had to be prepared. “Pahrkun, I am your instrument today,” I whispered, drawing my dagger. My hand was sweating and slippery on the hilt. “If it is your will, use me.”

  Silence.

  Hands, the fat man’s hands.

  Maybe it was another odd custom of city folk. My mind drifted, drifted like the hawk’s feather.

  Zariya.

  I closed my eyes, letting my gaze adjust to the darkness before me. When I opened them, I could make out the crooked stalagmite at the bend that marked the threshold between the second and third posts.

  The sounding-bowl rang again, its chiming note muted by the stone walls around me. I heard Brother Saan’s voice announcing that the Trial of Pahrkun had begun.

  I heard Brother Jawal begin to utter his tribal war-cry, high and fierce—but then the cry was abruptly muffled. I listened for the sound of clashing blades and heard nothing. My palms began to itch and I had a taste like metal in my mouth. Brother Jawal … no. It was not possible.

  I waited.

  In the darkness ahead of me, there was a faint, familiar sound, followed by an unexpected flare of light that nearly made me cry out in alarm. Blinking ferociously against the dazzle behind my eyes, I heard a thump and a grunt of pain, then the sound of Brother Merik’s voice uttering low curses and the clatter of a blade against … what? Not metal, but stone, I thought.

  The air around me eddied.

  He was coming.

  The fat man was coming, and now, at last I was afraid. My knees shook and every fiber of my being urged me to hide, hide and conceal myself in the shadows, and let the fat man pass.

  No.

  There was no honor in hiding. And yet here at the third and final post, how was I to prevail against a man with the skill and cunning to make it past Brother Jawal and Brother Merik? The dagger in my hand felt puny and inadequate; I felt puny and inadequate.

  I recalled Brother Saan’s words again: What is a warrior’s first and greatest weapon?

  I shoved my dagger into my sash and unwound the heshkrat that was tied around my waist; three lengths of thin rope, the strands joined at one end, stones knotted at the other. It was a hunting weapon, not a combat weapon; one used by tribesmen to bring down antelope in the desert.

  Brother Jawal had taught me to use it. I prayed to Pahrkun to guide my hand.

  The flare of light around the bend in the cavern had died and something was moving in the shadows. A man; not a fat man in robes, but a slender one clad in close-fitting black attire, staying close to the walls and walking as soft-footed as a desert cat, with throwing daggers in both his hands.

  I saw him see me and throw with one hand and then the other, flicking his daggers in my direction as quick as the blink of an eye, but the wind of his motion warned me and I was already moving, the ropes of my heshkrat whirling overhead; one turn before I loosed it, aiming low.

  The man was moving too, but the heshkrat was designed to bring down prey on the run. It tangled his legs and he fell hard.

  A gust of wind blew through the Hall of Proving and a hard, fierce joy suffused me. Drawing my dagger, I fell on the man, thinking to stab him in the jugular. Agile as a snake, he twisted beneath me and the point of my dagger struck the stone floor of the cavern, jarring my arm.

  I swore.

  Still, he was unarmed, and if I could only stab him before his greater strength prevailed … but no, as we grappled, somehow his hands were no longer empty, somehow there was a cord wrapped around my throat, and his hands were drawing the ends tight. His hands; his strong, slender hands. That was why he’d hidden them. They were not the hands of a fat man. It had been a disguise.

  Interesting.

  It was a pity that my throat was burning, my chest was heaving for lack of air, and my vision was blurring.

  “Watery hell!” The not-fat man’s eyes widened. “You’re just a kid!” He let go the cord, kicked free of the ropes of the heshkrat, and backed away from me; backed away toward sunlight and salvation. “I’m not killing a fucking kid!” he called out.

  I got to my hands and knees, wheezing.

  Brother Saan entered the Hall of Proving, his features as calm and grave as ever. He regarded the not-fat man who now stood beyond the threshold of the cavern in broad daylight, wind ruffling his hair. “I am pleased to hear it,” he said in his mild voice. “Whatever sins you have committed, Pahrkun the Scouring Wind has cleansed you of them. Welcome to the brotherhood.”

  TWO

  Brother Merik was merely injured, having taken a throwing dagger to the forearm he raised against the unexpected brightness; a dagger expertly placed between the steel prongs of the kopar. After that, the supplicant had slipped past him while he blundered blindly in the darkness, his sword clattering against the stone walls.

  Brother Jawal was dead, his neck broken. The supplicant had flung his robe over him and taken him by surprise.

  The impossible had come to pass.

  We laid his body, stripped bare save for a loincloth, on a bier atop a high plateau. Once the hawks and vultures and carrion beetles, all creatures of Pahrkun, had picked the flesh from his bones, they would be returned to his clan.

  Although I had no right to be angry, I was; angry at the supplicant for his trickery, angry at Brother Jawal for letting himself get killed. I was angry at myself for seeing too late through the supplicant’s disguise, angry at myself for failing to kill him, angry that I owed him my life.

  That night the king’s guardsmen dined with us. I saw them glance at me with open curiosity, but the mood was a mixture of somber mourning and quiet acceptance, and they did nothing to disturb it.

  The supplicant—whatever his name had been, he was a man with no name now, and would remain thus until Brother Saan gave him a new one—kept his head low and ate quickly and deftly. Out of his disguise, he looked younger than I had first thought. Otherwise there was nothing remarkable to the eye about the nameless man, and it seemed wrong that such an ordinary-looking fellow should be responsible for killing Brother Jawal.

  When our meal of stewed goat and calabash squash had been consumed, Brother Saan poured cups of mint tea. “By your skills at deception and subterfuge, I take it you are a member of the Shahalim Clan from the city of Merabaht,” he said, passing a cup to the nameless man. “It is said that they are thieves and spies without peer.”

  “I was,” he said in a curt tone.

  Brother Saan blew on his tea. “I thought the Shahalim never got caught.”

  The nameless man grimaced. “Never spite a Shahalim woman, Elder Brother. I was betrayed.” He lifted his cup, then set it down. “That’s the princess’s shadow, isn’t it?” He pointed at me. “I can’t believe you damned near let me kill a Sun-Blessed’s shadow.”

  There were a few murmurs of agreement, and I flushed with embarrassment and anger.

  “Yet you did not,” Brother Saan said calmly. “It seems Pahrkun wishes you to teach Khai your ways.”

  The nameless man stared at him. “Teach clan secrets to an outsider? Never. It is forbidden.”

  Brother Saan took a sip of his tea. “Your former clan betrayed you. The Brotherhood of Pahrkun is your clan now.”

  The nameless man got to his feet. “I won’t—”

  The six guards and several of the brothers rose, hands reaching for sword hilts. The nameless man sat back down.

  “I don’t want to learn his ways!” The words burst from me. “They’re nothing but trickery! It’s dishonorable!”

  Brother Saan eyed me. “Khai, it is your grief that speaks. Go, retire for the night. We will speak more of this on the morrow.”

  I hesitated.

  “It is an order, young one,” he said.

  I went reluctantly. Behind me, I could hear the tenor of the conversation change. There was a part of me that was tempted to creep back and listen, but that seemed the sort of unworthy thing the nameless man would do, and so I obeyed Brother Saan and retired to my chamber.

  I
n the morning, Brother Jawal was still dead and my anger was still with me. Brother Ehudan dismissed me within mere minutes. “You’re not fit to study today,” he said irritably. “Take your foul temper elsewhere. Take it out on the spinning devil.”

  Since it was as good a suggestion as any, I went.

  The spinning devil was a contraption of the nomadic tribesfolk, designed to train young men in the art of weaponless combat they called “thunder and lightning.” It consisted of a tall, sturdy central shaft planted firmly in the earth—or in this instance, wedged firmly in a deep crevice in the floor of a cavern—and four leather-bound paddles of varying length that spun around it like wheels around the axle of a cart. It was a cunning device, and one that Brother Jawal said could be easily disassembled and transported. He was the one who taught me to use it, as he taught me to throw the heshkrat.

  A grown man could set all four paddles in motion so that the device resembled the spinning dust devils from which it took its name. I could only strike the lower two with any force, but it was enough for now. Boom, I threw a punch with my fist that was thunder, and the paddle spun; flash, I struck an angled blow with the side of my hand that was lightning, and the paddle spun the other way. Boom, a direct forward kick to the lowest paddle, and flash, a side kick with the blade of my foot.

  Boom, flash flash, boom boom flash, flash boom boom, flash flash. The spinning devil spun and spun and creaked, the paddles a blur. Brother Jawal had told me that the nomads invented thunder and lightning many, many years ago as a way for hot-blooded young men to fight without killing one another.

  Once they got very, very good at it, that didn’t always hold true.

  Brother Jawal said that there was a ritual to challenging a tribesman to fight with thunder and lightning, a ritual that involved clapping your hands and stamping your feet. Clap-clap-stamp on the right, clap-clap-stamp on the left. If you wanted to insult your opponent and imply that he was unworthy, you clap-clap-stamped twice on the left instead. He had laughed when he told me that, and although he did not say it, I knew that he had done it, and won his challenge.

  And now Brother Jawal was dead at the hands of a nameless man who knew nothing of ritual or honor.

  Flash flash flash boom boom.

  I fought the spinning devil with grim determination, sweat stinging my eyes and dampening my hair. I was still battling it when Brother Saan entered the training chamber, a rolled wool carpet under one arm. When I paused, he gestured for me to continue and set about unrolling the carpet. I launched a final flurry of blows at the spinning devil, then stepped back, panting hard. The paddles continued to drift in circles, creaking slowly to a halt.

  Brother Saan sat cross-legged on the carpet awaiting me, a leather-wrapped bundle before him. I folded my legs to sit opposite him, pressing my palms together and touching my brow. My breathing sounded loud in the quiet cavern. Brother Saan waited for me to find stillness. Except for the slight rise and fall of his chest, he might have been carved out of stone. Even though time had touched his flesh with the slackness of age, the muscles beneath were lean and ropy.

  At last my breathing slowed, and I found stillness. A shaft of sunlight angled through the cavern from an aperture above us and dust motes sparkled within it. All was quiet.

  “Once upon a time, there were stars in the night sky,” Brother Saan began, then paused when an involuntary sound escaped me. I was in no mood for tales of wonder from days of yore.

  “Forgive me, Elder Brother,” I murmured. “I meant no disrespect.”

  He waited another long moment. “Once upon a time, there were stars in the night sky,” he began again. “Thousands and thousands of them, shining as bright as diamonds. And those stars were the flashing eyes and teeth and the fierce beating hearts of the thousand children of Zar the Sun, Nim the Bright Moon, Shahal the Dark Moon, and fickle Eshen the Wandering Moon, and we revered them all. The stars in the night sky let us guide our steps on land, and allowed mariners at sea to find their way on the four great currents.” He lifted one finger. “But the children of heaven were not content to keep their places while the Sun and the Moons traveled freely, and so they rose up and sought to overthrow their parents. Chaos reigned in heaven; fiery stones fell to earth in the battle, and the great currents and tides ran wild in the seas.”

  I nodded; all this I knew.

  “Until Zar the Sun said enough.” Brother Saan made a sweeping gesture. “In anger, he cast down his thousand rebellious children and they fell from the heavens to earth. Here they are bound and here they remain, and the night sky is empty of stars.” He regarded me. “Do you suppose that all the fallen children of the heavens shall remain content that it should ever be thus?”

  “I…” I blinked; I had not anticipated the question. “I beg your pardon, Elder Brother. What?”

  Brother Saan rested his hands on his knees. “Here in Zarkhoum, we are fortunate. Even though they raised their hands against him, Anamuht the Purging Fire and Pahrkun the Scouring Wind are two of Zar’s best-beloved children; his brother and sister twins born to different mothers,” he said. “Zar the Sun saw to it that they fell to the land where they might be the first of his children he gazes upon when he begins his journey across the sky, and the Sacred Twins have pledged to protect the land to which they are bound, and never again defy their father.”

  All this, too, I knew. “Do you say this is untrue elsewhere?” It was a difficult idea for my mind to encompass; although I had been taught that there were other realms and other gods beneath the starless skies, the desert and the Sacred Twins were all that I had ever known. I could not imagine other gods.

  His gaze was troubled. “I fear it may be so. The priestesses of Anamuht claim that there is a prophecy that when darkness rises in the west, one of the Sun-Blessed will stand against it.”

  My breath caught in my throat. “Zariya?”

  “It is highly unlikely.” Brother Saan’s voice took on a rare acerbic note, and his gaze cleared. “The daughters of the House of the Ageless are cherished and sheltered. Still, when one of the Sun-Blessed is born with a shadow, we must avail ourselves of every form of training that presents itself.”

  My sullen anger, forgotten in my battle with the spinning devil, stirred. “You speak of these Shahalim.”

  “I do.” Brother Saan gave me a sharp look. “Do you know what happened the last time a shadow was born?”

  I shook my head. “Only that it happened a hundred and fifty years before my birth, Elder Brother.”

  “Yes, and some forty years ago, his Sun-Blessed charge died in his care,” he said simply.

  I tallied the figures in my head and frowned. “But how could that be? He would have been a hundred and twenty.”

  “The shadow of one of the Sun-Blessed is allowed to partake of the rhamanthus seeds,” Brother Saan said. “He did not begin to age until his charge died.”

  My head was spinning like the spinning devil. “Forgive me, Elder Brother, but what has that to do with the Shahalim?”

  He did not answer my question directly. “I myself was not yet born when that shadow’s training took place,” he said. “But I was newly appointed as Seer when his charge died, and it fell to me to question him about what happened. The shadow was a broken man, filled with bitterness and fury.”

  “Why?” I whispered.

  “Because he failed to prevent it.” Brother Saan gazed into the distance. “His charge was poisoned.”

  I let out my breath in a hiss.

  “Yes.” Brother Saan nodded. “A most dishonorable means of attack; and yet, it proved effective. Brother Vironesh—for that was the shadow’s name—had no means by which to anticipate it. He spoke passionately to me about the need for honor beyond honor.”

  “Honor beyond honor,” I echoed.

  He nodded again. “That is what it meant to him to keep his charge alive at any cost. Honor beyond honor. We failed to prepare him for it. And so I do not think it is any accident that Pahrkun has ac
cepted one of the Shahalim into our brotherhood; one from whom you might learn a great many things we cannot teach you. They are sneaks and thieves, but they are highly skilled in their arts. These are things that you might reckon dishonorable; only know, they are in the service of honor beyond honor. As a shadow, nothing else must matter to you.”

  I was silent.

  “Do you understand?” Brother Saan asked me.

  Bowing my head, I touched my brow with the thumbs of my folded hands. “Yes, Elder Brother. I do.”

  “Good.” He unfolded the bundle before him to reveal Brother Jawal’s fighting weapons; his sharp-whetted yakhan with its worn leather-wrapped hilt and curved blade, and the three-pronged kopar. “You have stood a post in the Trial of Pahrkun. It is only fitting that these are yours now.”

  I took them up with reverence, feeling the weight of them. I could not resist a few trial passes, weaving the yakhan in the complicated figure-eight pattern favored by the desert tribesfolk, spinning and reversing the kopar so its prongs lay flat along my forearm. It made my wrists ache.

  Brother Saan smiled, his eyelids crinkling. “Here,” he said, plucking two more items from his bundle. They were fist-sized rocks.

  I eyed him. “Elder Brother?”

  “Squeeze them,” he said, fitting actions to words to demonstrate. Beneath his wrinkled skin, the muscles in his wrists and forearms stood out like cords. “Three thousand times a day.”

  I inclined my head. “Yes, Elder Brother.”

  He folded his empty bundle, rolled his carpet, and rose. “On the morrow, after your lesson with Brother Ehudan, you will begin training with Brother Yarit, and obey him in every particular whether it seems honorable or not.”

  I glanced up at him. “Brother Yarit?”

  “The Shahalim.” He smiled again, this time wryly. “We held a naming ceremony for him today. Whether he likes it or not, and at the moment, he likes it no more than you do, he is one of us now.”

  A thought came to me as I rose. “Elder Brother … are there other shadows yet among the living?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “The last born before Vironesh was some seven hundred years ago. His charge came into khementaran centuries ago.”