Starless Page 3

  “Khementaran?” I did not know the word.

  “The point of return.” Brother Saan rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Members of the House of the Ageless live very long lives, if those lives are not cut short by violence or illness, but they do not live forever. Sooner or later, each comes to the point they call khementaran, when they desire to return to the natural rhythms of the mortal world, to allow themselves to age with the passing of the seasons.”

  I eyed him, thinking it seemed unlikely to me.

  He favored me with another wry look in return. “It may be that you will find out for yourself one day, young Khai.”

  I tucked that thought away to ponder later, but I was not quite done yet. “Elder Brother … what became of Vironesh? The broken shadow?”

  “Ah.” His expression changed. “Well you might inquire, for I have been endeavoring to learn that very thing. There are rumors. It may be that he yet lives, for his body was decades younger than my own when he began to age.” He shook his head. “But if it is so, thus far he does not wish to be found.” He raised his brows at me. “Have you other questions for me today, young Khai?”

  I touched my forehead with one thumb, Brother Jawal’s weapons tucked under my other arm. “No, Elder Brother.”

  “Very good.”

  I returned to my chamber to stow my new possessions and began squeezing rocks, but it was later than I’d reckoned. The midday heat was oppressive, and my limbs were weary from my battle with the spinning devil. By the time I reached five hundred, my eyelids were growing heavy. Still, I kept going until I reached a thousand. I would do the rest after a midday nap, when the air would be cooler.

  Thoughts drifted through my mind; drifted, drifted like a hawk’s feather on the wind. Falling stars, rhamanthus seeds. Khementaran, the point of return … who would seek to return to death and decay?

  And yet death and decay were a part of nature and the purview of Pahrkun the Scouring Wind …

  Poison; a broken and bitter shadow, his charge slain by dishonorable means. Who were the enemies of the Sun-Blessed? Who would seek their lives?

  One day I would know.

  Whatever might come, I resolved that I would strive to attain honor beyond honor. Brother Jawal, I thought, would understand.

  THREE

  “Right.” On the floor of the Dancing Bowl, Brother Yarit looked me up and down, a sour expression on his face. “Here’s your first lesson, kid.” With a deft twist, he unwound the tie that bound his hair back. “Catch.”

  Something tumbled through the air; I caught it by reflex. It was a length of tightly braided leather cord with bone pegs at either end.

  “Always keep a garrote handy,” Brother Yarit advised me. “That’s what I damn near used to kill you.”

  Oh, I remembered.

  “Here,” he said. “Let me show you how to do it.”

  Honor beyond honor.

  Those were the words I whispered in my thoughts as I suffered Brother Yarit to lay his hands on me and demonstrate, pulling my hair back into a tail and winding the cord and the pegs around it, releasing it with a twist. Those were the words I whispered to myself as he made me practice it over and over.

  Several of the brothers watched from the mouths of tunnels above the Dancing Floor. It made Brother Yarit uneasy.

  “I agreed to train the kid!” he shouted up at them. “I never agreed to share clan secrets with all of you!”

  None of the brothers responded.

  “You agreed to everything when you undertook the Trial of Pahrkun,” I murmured, twisting and untwisting the garrote around my hair. “You are Pahrkun’s instrument now, brother.”

  Brother Yarit glared at me. “Let me see you jump.”

  “Jump?” I repeated.

  “Jump.” Suiting actions to words, he ran lightly toward the western wall of the Dancing Bowl, launching himself with a prodigious leap; high, higher than I would have thought possible. He caught an outcropping with both hands, hauled himself up, and launched himself again with a standing leap. Wedging fingers and toes into narrow crevices, he scrambled up the face of the bowl to the mouth of an unoccupied tunnel, then sat on the ledge with his feet dangling. “Come on, kid!” he called down to me. “Jump!”

  I took a running start and did my best.

  Brother Yarit snorted in disgust as I slid futilely down the face of the bowl, scraping my hands. “You’ve got the legs of a seven-year-old.” Dropping into a low crouch, he launched himself from the ledge. I heard someone above him make a muttered sound of alarm, but he landed safely, hands and feet braced against the stony ground, flexed limbs absorbing the impact. Shaking out his hands, he straightened. “Right, then. Jumping practice it is.” Glancing around, he led me over to a staircase etched into the wall that led to one of the middle tunnels, this one carved by human hands. “Hop up it.”

  Feeling foolish, I hopped onto the first step.

  “No, no, no.” Brother Yarit shook his head. “You pushed off on your right leg. Hop with both legs, feet together.” I did as he said, finding it considerably more difficult. “All right, keep going.” He clapped his hands together. “Hop like you’re a desert toad with a … what eats toads?”

  “Hawks,” I replied, slightly breathless.

  “Hop like you’re a desert toad with a hawk on its tail,” he said. “Do toads have tails? Never mind. All the way to the top.”

  It was twenty steps to the top, and when I reached it, he ordered me to turn around and hop back down. When I regained the floor of the Dancing Bowl, the muscles of my legs felt wobbly.

  “Good. Do that…” Brother Yarit considered the staircase. “We’ll start with ten times a day. Five in the morning and five in the evening.”

  I pushed down a wave of resentment. “Hop.”

  “Hop,” he said. “You want to learn to run? You start by walking. You want to learn to jump, you start by hopping.” He clapped his hands again. “Go on, kid! Hop to it.”

  I turned back to the staircase.

  “Hold, Khai.” Brother Merik emerged from the mouth of one of the lower tunnels. He folded his arms over his chest. There was a bloodstained white bandage around his left forearm. Sunlight glinted on his kopar and the pommel of his yakhan. “Do you seek to mock us?” he asked Brother Yarit in a grim tone, dropping one hand to his hilt. “Because I would welcome a, shall we say, friendly rematch in the broad light of day, with no trickery between us.”

  Brother Yarit grimaced. “I’m sure you would, brother. I’ve heard the tales.”

  “What tales?” There was a dangerous edge to Brother Merik’s voice.

  “They say the warriors of Pahrkun are as fierce and deadly as the desert. They say the wind itself warns them of a blow before it lands.” Brother Yarit shrugged. “Make no mistake, I am no warrior. And yet I am here. Shall I tell you what defeated you the other day?”

  “I know what defeated me,” Brother Merik said. “And I know what slew Brother Jawal. Trickery.”

  I glanced uneasily from one to the other. Sparring was permitted among the brothers; feuding was not.

  But Brother Yarit was shaking his head. “No, what defeated you was your own expectations. Brother Jawal expected a fat merchant who would be easy prey; he did not expect that merchant to spit out the wads of cotton wedged in his cheeks and use his fine robe as a weapon. You, Brother … Merik, is it? You expected the advantage of darkness, not the glare of an oil-wood knot. Brother Khai…” He glanced at me. “You expected me to be weaponless when I was not.”

  Brother Merik regarded the smaller man with narrowed eyes. “It is not our way.”

  “Shall I apologize for not dying?” Brother Yarit said dryly. “I will not. The Shahalim are thieves and spies, yes, but we take our name from the Dark Moon herself, and we are not without pride. Our weapons are disguise, stealth, distraction, and agility; an agility won through strength. I’m trying to teach the kid the latter.” He made a show of adjusting the sleeves of the loose tunic of the brot
herhood that he had adopted. “Believe me, it wasn’t my idea. If you don’t like it, speak to your Seer.”

  Remembering the throwing knives he had wielded in the Hall of Proving, I had a strong suspicion his hands were no longer empty. I stepped between them, facing Brother Merik. “I like this no better than you do,” I said to him. “But I think it is Pahrkun’s will that I learn from this man.” I made myself smile. “Brother Saan has me squeezing rocks. Shall I balk at hopping?”

  After a long moment, Brother Merik gave me a brief nod. “I will be watching you,” he said to Brother Yarit. “I do not trust you.”

  Brother Yarit shrugged. “I’ll do my best to defy your expectations. Again.”

  I expected Brother Merik to bristle at that, but he merely shook his head and walked away.

  Brother Yarit smoothed his sleeves. “All right. Get hopping, kid.”

  I pointed at his nearest sleeve with my chin. “Would you have thrown on him?”

  “You saw that?” One corner of his mouth curved in a faint smile. “You’re observant. Good. No, not unless he’d drawn on me.”

  “May I see?” I asked.

  He hesitated a moment, then pushed up one sleeve to show me a brace of three throwing knives strapped to his forearm; odd, flat little knives wrought of blackened steel nested in a cunning sheath. “They’re called zims. Hornets, in the traders’ tongue.”

  Honor beyond honor, I told myself.

  “Will you teach me to use them?” I asked. “To throw like you do?”

  Brother Yarit stared at me for a moment. “What happened to all that high-and-mighty palaver about dishonorable ways? When all’s said and done, you’re a violent little bugger.” He nodded at the heshkrat knotted around my waist. “Will you teach me how to use that whatsit?”

  I saw no reason to refuse. “Yes.”

  “Then we’ve a bargain,” he said. “Now get hopping.”

  I hopped; hopped and hopped up the staircase and down until my thighs were burning. After the midday rest, Brother Yarit made me hop the staircase three more times before taking pity on me.

  “Let’s try something else.” He spilled a satchel of loose pebbles and gravel over the floor of the Dancing Bowl, spreading it about judiciously. “Can you walk across it without making a sound?”

  I walked across it as light-footed as I could, but even so, the gravel shifted and crunched under my weight.

  Brother Yarit took a deep breath. “Watch.” Standing at the edge of the gravel patch, he flexed his knees deeply, centering his weight above his left leg. His right foot reached out slowly, little toe descending first, then the outer blade of his foot. The ball of his foot, then the sole and heel descended with a slow, rolling motion. There was not a single crunch as he shifted his weight from his left to his right leg, then repeated the motion on the other side. Again and again, until he’d crossed the entire distance without a sound.

  For the first time, I found myself truly wanting to learn what Brother Yarit could teach me. He was strange to me with his dishonorable ways and his coarse language—and I could not yet bring myself to forgive him for Brother Jawal’s death—but Brother Saan was right. There were things I could learn from him that I could not learn from anyone else.

  Still, I was not quite ready to give him the satisfaction of knowing it. “You wouldn’t want to be in a hurry,” I observed. “Takes a long time to cross a patch of ground that way.”

  Brother Yarit snorted. “Yes, and there are different ways of silent walking for different circumstances, most of them faster. But if you need to move over that kind of turf without making a sound, you’d damn well better take your time.” He nodded at the gravel patch. “Try it again.”

  It took a lot of effort to move in a deep crouch, but it was the only way to truly control the shift of one’s weight from one leg to the other. I began to see the point of Brother Yarit’s hopping exercise. I practiced until the shadows grew long and Brother Drajan blew the horn summoning us to dinner.

  “You did well, kid,” Brother Yarit said to me, genuine sincerity in his voice. “I know it’s hard. But give it a month, and you’ll be amazed at the progress you make. Give it a year, and you’ll be walking like you were born to the clan.”

  I felt a surge of pride that was not wholly welcome; but not unwelcome, either. I touched my thumbs to my brow in respect, reckoning he was owed that much. “Thank you, brother.”

  That night I fell aching onto the carpet in my chamber. It was verging into autumn and the day’s heat gave way to a chill. I pulled a thick wool blanket over my sore body and slept deep and hard.

  I awoke in the small hours before dawn to Brother Saan stooping over me with an oil-wood torch and shaking my shoulder. “Khai,” he murmured. “Brother Yarit is gone.”

  “Gone?” I sat up. “What do you mean gone?”

  In the torchlight, Brother Saan’s pupils were strangely wide and blurred. “He stole a horse and fled when the Bright Moon was yet high. As those who stood the Trial of Pahrkun for him, the duty falls to you and Brother Merik to retrieve him.”

  Stifling a groan, I crawled out from beneath my blanket. My legs were so sore, I feared at first that they would not hold me. “Yes, Elder Brother.”

  Brother Saan lit the wick of the little oil lamp in my alcove with his torch. “We will meet at the horse canyon.”

  My legs wobbled. “Yes, Elder Brother.”

  I dressed as swiftly as I could, donning a loose-fitting tunic that fell to my knees, wrapping my sash and my heshkrat around it and thrusting my dagger into the sash. In the Fortress of the Winds, we were shielded from the worst of the sun’s rays, but it would be different in the open desert. I wound a long scarf around my head and neck, securing it with Brother Yarit’s—curse him!—garrote, and laced my feet into tough camel-hide sandals. Throwing on my plain white woolen robe, I blew out the lamp and hobbled through the fortress in near darkness, making my way outside and down the long carved stone stairways to the horse canyon, where a cluster of men with torches was gathered.

  The crescent of the Bright Moon was visible on the western horizon, and high overhead, the Dark Moon was full, a glowing sphere of ruddy ochre that laid a bloody pall over the landscape.

  The horse canyon was long and narrow. Scrub grass and gorse grew there, and there was a brackish watering hole; enough to sustain the few hardy mounts—anywhere from four to six—that the brotherhood kept on hand for errands. There was a wooden gate across its opening and it had been left ajar, but it seemed the remaining horses had better sense than to flee into the open desert. Two of them were saddled and waiting. Brother Tekel, who tended them, stood at their heads.

  “Khai.” Brother Merik noticed my limping approach and frowned. “Can you ride?”

  I made an effort to straighten my stride. “Yes, brother.”

  Brother Drajan patted a bag lashed behind the cantle of the nearest horse’s saddle. “You’ve two water-skins apiece, dried meat, and a satchel of grain,” he said. “I reckon you won’t want to stop to forage.”

  Brother Merik gave a brusque nod of assent and swung effortlessly astride his mount. I followed suit gracelessly, assisted by a boost from Brother Tekel. To be fair, it was a longer step up for me.

  “He will have gone due west toward the supplicants’ campsite.” Brother Saan hoisted his torch and pointed. “It’s the nearest watering hole, the only one he can be sure of. By the time you reach it, it should be light enough to pick up his trail. I suspect he will bear northwest and attempt to make his way to Merabaht.”

  “I trust you want him brought back alive?” Brother Merik sounded as though he hoped otherwise as he took up the reins.

  “Yes.” Brother Saan turned his strange, blurred gaze on him. “Have a care. The Sacred Twins have left the deep desert and are abroad in the west. I have Seen it.”

  My breath quickened, wisps of frost escaping my parted lips. Brother Merik was less enthralled by the notion. “I mean no disrespect, Elder Brother, but
I would that you’d Seen the villain’s escape before it happened,” he said in a dour tone.

  Brother Saan smiled, and his smile was as uncanny as his gaze. “What makes you think I did not?”

  My skin prickled at his words, and Brother Merik’s expression changed. He touched his brow with the thumb of one hand. “Forgive me, Elder Brother,” he said. “We go forth to do your bidding.”

  Brother Saan returned his salute with both hands. “Ride with my blessing.”

  We set out at a slow, steady trot. I had ridden out from the fortress before, but never farther than a hunting excursion and never at this hour. Everything looked strange and unfamiliar in the bloody light of the Dark Moon. I gazed at the sky overhead, trying to imagine it filled with a thousand upon a thousand sparkling lights, and could not. The air was still, not a hint of breeze, and the sound of the horses’ hooves on the arid, stony ground seemed unnaturally loud to me. Then again, perhaps yesterday’s lesson with Brother Yarit had made me particularly sensitive to the sound.

  I couldn’t believe he’d fled. It felt like a betrayal, especially after I’d worked so hard yesterday.

  I wondered what Brother Saan had meant. If he’d Seen Brother Yarit’s escape, why hadn’t he prevented it? I pondered these matters in silence, hoping that Brother Merik would weigh in on them. When he didn’t, I broke my silence to ask him.

  “There’s no merit in trying to guess at the Seer’s reasoning,” he said. “I doubt he could even explain it to the likes of you and me. But as for the Shahalim…” He shrugged. “Well, he’s a thief, isn’t he? I reckon he thought he’d try to steal his life back from Pahrkun.”

  I frowned. “And cheat the god of his due?”

  Brother Merik’s teeth flashed in a bloody-looking grin. “I didn’t say it could be done, little brother.”

  As Brother Saan had estimated, although the sun had not yet cleared the mountains behind us, the sky was beginning to pale by the time we reached the supplicants’ campsite nearest the fortress. There was a small watering hole in a patch of greenery. It was mostly silted over, but when I dismounted to dig, I saw someone else had done the same not long before me.