by Caleb Carr
Caliphestros begins haltingly, “I have—persuaded an acquaintance of mine to fetch me a new store of the meadow bells, early each spring, which is its season. I received these, along with the arrow, just before I came here today.”
“Whoever this acquaintance is, my lord,” Heldo-Bah observes, impressed by this tale, “he is loyal and has stones—from here to the Cat’s Paw, and to the Meloderna beyond, would be a deadly journey, for a mere collection of flowers and an almost worthless amount of gold.”
Caliphestros looks up at the treetops in irritation, then murmurs to Keera: “Does one become accustomed to the interruptions—should we truly not rid ourselves of him now?”
“He has his uses, as I say. But I cannot promise that you will ever grow accustomed to his foolish remarks.”
Caliphestros nods in acquiescence. “Very well, then—examine the stems of the flowers. What do the marks of the knife on them tell you?”
“The flowers are too valuable and too fragile to take for mere decoration, or to be cut with scythe or sickle,” Keera answers, puzzled at first; but her consternation is short-lived. “But their main purpose is a healing one—each, in its own way, can play a part in fighting the most serious of fevers.”
“And so …?”
“So—there is fever, along the Meloderna—deadly fever, if they are harvesting such plants in large amounts.” She pauses, drawing a quick breath. “Is the plague, then, at work in Broken, as well as in the Okot?”
“If plague it be,” Caliphestros replies. “Certainly, there is a terrible fever at work somewhere in the kingdom of the God-King—likely in many places, if, as you say, the flowers are being harvested in such quantities that my messenger could readily find them in piles.”
“And the arrow?” Keera asks. “It tells us the man was killed by the priests of Broken, but not why—and his death occurred far from the Meloderna.”
“True. It does not enlighten us as to why he was killed—not completely. But enough for now—we shall discuss all this further, within Stasi’s cave. Help your fellows, there, and then join us as soon as you can.”
The old man begins to hobble away again, the great panther taking up her watchful position, just far enough behind him to have an unobstructed view of the foragers, who observe the pair’s departure with three puzzled faces.
{iii:}
“HIS MIND CERTAINLY SEEMS unaffected by all he has endured,” Veloc judges, watching Caliphestros and the seemingly magical white panther disappear over the next ridge. “Although I’ll wager his talk of not being a sorcerer is a ruse.”
“Do you fault him?” Keera asks. “Look what his punishment for that title was, from the God-King and the priests of Kafra.”
The conversation is interrupted by a sudden flutter of wings: the small, active wings of a speckled bird that descends onto a branch just above the foragers, clicking its beak and clucking from its throat.
“Te-kamp!” the bird blurts, still flapping its wings energetically at the Bane. “Te-kamp! Kaw-ee-fess-tross!”
Keera eyes her disbelieving friends. “I think you have a small hint as to his powers as a sorcerer, Veloc,” she says. Then, to the bird, she calls, “Tell your master not to worry. We shall not be long!”
But the bird makes no move.
“Oh, splendid …,” Heldo-Bah grumbles, as the three foragers set about breaking their camp. “Must I now mind my mouth around every animal in Davon Wood, lest it report back to that old cripple?”
“For now,” Veloc replies, “I’d recommend it. And I’d recommend learning a few new phrases of address for him, Heldo-Bah. It’s plain we don’t know what he actually is, or what power he has over how many and which of these beings.”
“True, brother,” Keera agrees, kicking dirt atop their smoldering fire and still studying the starling admiringly—for she has rightly begun to suspect that the bird’s speech has been the result of long acquaintance, not sorcery. “And did you take note of one thing, particularly? The effortless manner in which he persuades the panther to do his bidding—does it not remind you of someone?”
Veloc claps a hand to his forehead. “That witch of a priestess—she showed precisely the same art!”
“Well,” Heldo-Bah says doubtfully. “Not precisely the same art. I don’t think the old man uses seduction upon—that is … Oh, no …” As so often happens, the gap-toothed grin of confident skepticism instantly becomes an expression of shocked fear. “Does he?”
“No, I don’t believe anything of the sort,” Keera says. “The similarity is only in the silent, practiced manner of communicating; and it is no coincidence, I’ll wager.”
“Exactly so, Keera,” says Veloc. “To find one such being is improbable enough, but two—and both of the royal circle, in which they must have moved for at least a few of the same years? Why, sister, he said it himself: ‘I know only one other like you.’ Yes, he bears watching, our new friend. Clever as a stoat, for all his being legless.”
Keera holds up a hand, considering the matter for a moment, and then finally whispers: “You are right, Veloc—he did not say he knew one other with such a gift. ‘I know only one other …’ Those were indeed his words.”
“You suspect he yet communicates with the Kafran priestess?” Veloc asks.
Keera cocks her head, puzzling with it. “Not as we understand it, certainly. But two mortals who can command the mightiest of forest spirits? One old, one young—is it not likely that the one taught the other? And if the other is indeed not only a priestess, but a Wife of Kafra … I do not like to think it, for I believe he is a good man who truly wants and means to help us. But his soul is as scarred as his legs, and his thoughts have been made obscure by the deceit and treachery of Broken’s rulers. Until we are certain of the pattern of their twists and turns, I think we must keep our encounter with the priestess from him …”
So great does Keera’s preoccupation with these thoughts become that she not only falls behind her brother and Heldo-Bah as they make for Caliphestros’s camp, but nearly stumbles headlong into the old man’s enormous herb garden, with its rich, almost overpowering blend of aromas, before realizing that they have arrived at their destination. Only as her head is sent swimming by those same scents does Keera hear the calls of Veloc and Heldo-Bah, who are already by the mouth of the cave wherein Caliphestros and Stasi have lived for so long; and, taking a few moments to appreciate the other seemingly impossible aspects of the grounds outside the cave (particularly the forge, with its marvelously engineered chimney of stone and mortar, in which the foragers’ host has created, by the look of the area about the thing, many essential tools, as well as fascinating scientific implements, over the years) Keera finally joins the others, her happiness growing, once again, as the panther bounds toward her when she appears at the cave entrance.
Yet no amount of speculation based on what they have seen outside the cave can prepare any of the foragers for what Caliphestros and Stasi have achieved within: for the den’s appointments are almost stupefying.
“You could give our Groba a welcome lesson in the comfortable furnishing of caves, old man,” Heldo-Bah declares, throwing himself upon Caliphestros’s own large sack of goose down, but quickly getting to his feet again when the panther growls low and turns toward him. “But how did you manage it all?” the gap-toothed forager continues, joining Veloc and making no attempt, for a few moments, to dilute his amazement with sarcasm.
“Aye,” Veloc agrees. “It is achievement enough for any man, but you, wounded—nay, mutilated!—as you found yourself upon arriving here, how was it, how has it been possible?”
Caliphestros indicates the panther, and then begins to hobble toward her, feeling a most pointed confusion of heart and mind that is caused by the unprecedented sight and sounds of other humans moving about settings that have ever been his own and hers alone. “I never could have managed it without the assistance—always given ere it was ever asked—of Stasi. I should never have survived, if not for h
er help.”
As he reaches the panther, Caliphestros scratches behind her tall ears, requesting affection and receiving, without doubt, much; but Stasi also maintains her position by Keera.
“You have made a true friend,” Caliphestros muses to the tracker, allowing the slight—and, he knows, somewhat absurd—jealousy that he feels to reveal itself plainly in the tone of his words.
“She honors me, my lord,” Keera says. “But such adversities as the two of you have conquered together must surely have marked you as forever her closest friend.”
“And here are your vaunted books, my lord,” Veloc calls, having reached one of Caliphestros’s rough-hewn shelves in the cave walls, upon which sit many of the former Second Minister of Broken’s volumes. “Even in a cave, so many—yet have they truly aided the creation of this wondrous home?”
“More than you could likely comprehend, Veloc,” the old man answers. “These are but a small part of the collection that I brought with me to Broken, and built upon during my years there. And, with a few exceptions, they were chosen because they had some relevance to my survival in this place, and to the final reckoning with Broken that I first prayed, then later hoped, and finally believed would come: hence, as you see, I have pored time and again over examinations of history and medicine, of science and war, and of the realms in which science and war merge—those of metallurgy and chemistry.”
Heldo-Bah, having detected attractive aromas emerging from a large iron pot that sits on the edge of the cookstove’s surface, has begun to lift its lid; but at these last words, he drops it noisily. “Alchemy!” he cries, glancing from Veloc to Keera quickly. “So—that is why they exiled you from Broken!”
Caliphestros only tilts his head judiciously. “If, by that ridiculous outburst, you mean to say that the rulers of the great city and its kingdom were, in the end, as superstitious, ignorant, and hostile to reason and knowledge as yourself, Heldo-Bah, then you are correct.”
“Oho!” the impertinent forager scoffs. “You call alchemy reason, do you? And attempting to transform base metals into gold is evidence of high scientific wisdom, I suppose? Tell me, then—do you also abuse yourself out in the great Wood, spending your seed into holes in the ground and attempting to grow tiny men like vegetables?”
Caliphestros sighs, heavily. “Only imagine the blessèd silence, Keera, were he gone … He would feel little pain, I promise you: only the brief stab of Stasi’s largest teeth into the great artery of his neck, and his life’s blood would quickly and quietly stream away …”
Keera laughs quietly (for she has ceased to believe, rightly, that the old man intends Heldo-Bah actual harm), and says only, “We seem to have far too many things to pack and carry, my lord, to allow the loss of even one bearer. And, as I have said, he can carry a great deal.”
“Very well. I shall trust your word, and let the matter rest.” Lifting his head to call to the sharp-toothed Bane again, Caliphestros says, “Heldo-Bah, allow me to propose a more practical test of what you ignorantly call ‘alchemy’: the weapons that you and Veloc carry—I believe that I noted two rather well-crafted short-swords of Broken manufacture among them. Is this so?”
“Indeed it is,” Heldo-Bah crows. “Veloc’s was taken, just days ago, from one of our own Outragers, who had stolen it, I suspect, while undertaking one of his errands of murder and imagined justice for the Moon priestess. My own, however, came directly from a member of Lord Baster-kin’s Guard, whom I myself subdued!” And with that, Heldo-Bah unsheathes the sword and brings it out from under his cloak, holding its unarguably fine blade out toward his host.
Caliphestros nods silently, taking one or two steps toward Heldo-Bah and seemingly impressed by both the blade and its origins. But then it becomes plain that he has stepped less toward Heldo-Bah than in the direction of his own bedding, where, in a quick movement not at all encumbered by his crutches, he reaches beneath his sack of goose down and produces a sword of his own. Though not so elegant as either Heldo-Bah’s or Veloc’s, especially in the crafting of its hilt, handle, and pommel, the sword nevertheless has a peculiar and impressive effect on the three Bane, achieved primarily through the ripples of cold blue-grey that seem shot through its carefully honed, single-edged blade of moderate length.
“And suppose I were to tell you,” the old man says amiably, still holding his weapon out and toward Heldo-Bah, who uneasily but quickly moves his own blade into a position of defense, “that I could offer you something better—far better, in fact? Would you still cling so tightly to your prize?”
Further unnerved by Caliphestros’s attitude—which is less one of threat than of confidence—Heldo-Bah says only, “If you think to trick me into some sort of barter for that unadorned slab of steel, old man, I tell you that you would as likely persuade me to put my head in your companion’s maw.”
Once again, Caliphestros nods with seeming indifference; he then moves his own blade up and down casually, gripping its deerskin-wrapped handle with his right hand lightly—
And suddenly, in a pair of movements that seem to the foragers far too quick for a crippled old man to achieve, Caliphestros releases the pressure of his right armpit on the corresponding crutch, letting it clatter to the cave floor as he shifts all of his weight leftward, onto his wooden leg and remaining crutch. Even as he does this, he raises his right arm and his sword swiftly and brings the strangely tinted length of steel down with great force on Heldo-Bah’s blade. When all is still once more, Heldo-Bah stands in precisely the same attitude, save that his eyes have gone wide as they look down to see that the prize he took from the unfortunate young member of Lord Baster-kin’s Guard has been severed by Caliphestros’s seemingly humble blade. The piercing tip of the Bane’s once-proud trophy, along with more than a foot of the best Broken steel, now lie on the cave floor.
{iv:}
CALIPHESTROS EXAMINES the cutting edge of his own sword, and frowns slightly. “Hmm—not so clean as I would have liked,” he says calmly. “I seem to have nicked the edge of my blade, a bit …”
“Truly?” Veloc says in amazed derision. “Nicked it a bit? How unacceptable …”
Heldo-Bah’s head slowly shakes in disbelief, before nodding with envy; and finally, when he regains his complete composure, he casts his diminished sword to the cave floor as thoughtlessly as he stole it. He then fairly leaps to Caliphestros’s side, and anxiously indicates the blade that Keera has also moved closer to examine. “May I—Lord Caliphestros, may I have this one? It’s only fair, after all, now that you’ve rendered mine useless.”
Caliphestros shrugs. “If you wish,” he says. “I have several more like it.”
Heldo-Bah takes Caliphestros’s sword from the old man and gauges its weight. “So light!” he pronounces. “By the Moon, Veloc—we could sweep through the Tall as though they were so much wheat, had we blades like this!”
“Aye, Heldo-Bah,” Veloc replies, “I can already envision the historical epics I shall compose and relate, concerning the swords of the Bane that dealt mighty blows to the Tall and their kingdom.”
Caliphestros’s tone turns momentarily harsh. “You will be tempted to think you can achieve such feats, as would almost any people who have been maligned and subdued for so long, and who suddenly find themselves offered the chance for forceful redress; but the weapons are useless unless one learns the proper ways in which to use them. Repeat that phrase to yourself, Heldo-Bah, from now till we reach Okot; nay, until we find ourselves, one day, before the gates of Broken itself. And if you can believe it, at length, and make your people believe it, then we may, we just may, succeed …”
Turning to the cookstove and lifting the lid of the pot to find that its contents have begun to softly bubble and pop, Caliphestros fetches several earthenware bowls and spoons, as well as a ladle (the utensils all carved from a tightly grained wood), and then sets the collection of objects on his rough-hewn table. “But before this process can begin, much less be mastered, we must work, eat, and t
hen sleep. My admittedly theatrical exhibition was intended only to hearten your spirits about the struggle to come—not to slow our progress.”
“And you have achieved your object, old fellow,” Heldo-Bah declares. “Now, let us finish the packing of your possessions, that we may consume this fare—for if you can cook stew as well as you can steel, Lord of Feathers and Fangs, it shall be satisfying, indeed!”
In this way—by the portentous shattering of a single sword—is formed an odd yet fast friendship between the most infamous person in Broken’s history and the three Bane foragers upon whom the mantle “saviors of their tribe” rests most precariously.
The stew is, even Heldo-Bah must admit, a most excellent concoction, not least because it is flavored with all manner of herbs and heartened by roots and greens, all taken from Caliphestros’s own garden. Of course, the fact that the three foragers have been swiftly running and somewhat madly searching for most of the last three days and nights would make almost any food palatable, at this moment. But so genuinely satisfying is Caliphestros’s stew, and so much do his guests consume, that, by the time all the packed sacks have been set by the cave entrance, the three Bane are more than ready to seek out places among the many large bags filled with the down of various birds that cushion the cave’s hard rock. Exhausted and sated, the foragers fairly collapse onto these welcome spots to sleep away the few idle hours they have been allowed, ere nightfall signals their departure.
For his part, Caliphestros attempts sleep, as does Stasi, the latter lying on her side at the foot of her companion’s bedding, vigilantly lifting her head whenever a sound is captured by her exceptional ears, in order to assure herself that the Bane men are indeed slumbering harmlessly. In time, however, this duty becomes plainly unnecessary, and the great white panther rises, glances once more about the cave, and then walks slowly to its entrance, where three heavy deerskin sacks, as well as two lighter bags, sit waiting for their bearers to rise. Stasi will now sit and stand guard from this spot, and at first, she thinks to do this duty alone; but her wakefulness has brought her companion out of his comparatively light slumber, for they are as alive to each other’s restiveness as any two humans who have lived together for many years. Caliphestros drags himself across the cave, using the arms that have grown powerful in the absence of his legs to swing his half-body forward, and reaches the spot where Stasi now sits, her hind legs tucked beneath her, her forelegs side by side in front of her, and her powerful neck holding her head in an easy but alert position.