скачать книгу бесплатно
Deep in the bowels of Sharik Hora, Jardir could not tell night from day. He slept when the dama told him to sleep, ate when they gave him food, and followed their commands in between. There were a handful of dal’Sharum in the temple as well, training to be kai’Sharum, but no nie’Sharum save him. He was the least of the least, and when he thought of how those who had once leapt to his commands, Shanjat and Jurim and the others, might be losing their bidos even now, the shame threatened to overwhelm him.
For the first year, he was Ashan’s shadow. Without uttering a sound, the nie’dama taught Jardir what he needed to survive among the clerics. When to pray, when to kneel, how to bow, and how to fight.
Jardir had severely underestimated the fighting skills of the dama. They might be denied the spear, but the least of them was a match for any two dal’Sharum in the art of the empty hand.
But combat was something Jardir understood. He threw himself into the training, losing his shame in the endlessly flowing forms. Even after the lamps were extinguished each night, Jardir practiced the sharukin for hours in the darkness of his tiny cell.
After the tanners had taken Moshkama’s skin, Jardir and Ashan took the body and boiled it in oil, fishing out the bones and bleaching them in the sun atop the bone minarets that climbed into the desert sky. The jiwah’Sharum had filled three tear bottles over his body, and these were mixed with the lacquer they used to paint the bones before laying them out for the artisans. Moshkama’s bones and the tears of his mourners would add to the glory of Sharik Hora, and Jardir dreamed of the day he, too, would become one with the holy temple.
There were other tasks, less satisfying, less honorable. He spent hours each day learning to speak on paper, using a stick to copy the words of the Evejah into a box of sand as he recited them aloud. It seemed a useless art, unfit for a warrior, but Jardir heeded the dama’ting’s words and worked hard, mastering the letters quickly. From there he learned mathematics, history, philosophy, and finally warding. This, he devoured hungrily. Anything that might hurt or hinder the alagai received his utter devotion.
Drillmaster Qeran came several times a week, spending hours honing Jardir’s spearwork, while the dama loremasters taught him tactics and the history of war dating back to the time of the Deliverer.
“War is more than prowess on the field,” Dama Khevat said. “The Evejah tells us that war is, at its crux, deception.”
“Deception?” Jardir asked.
Khevat nodded. “As you might feint with your spear, so too must the wise leader misdirect his foe before battle is ever joined. When strong, he must appear weak. When weak, he must seem ready to fight. When near enough to strike, he must seem too far to threaten. When regrouping, he must make his enemies believe attack is imminent. It is thus he makes the enemy waste their strength while husbanding his own.”
Jardir cocked his head. “Is it not more honorable to meet the enemy head-on?”
“We did not build the Great Maze so that we could sally forth and meet the alagai head-on,” Khevat said. “There is no greater honor than victory, and to achieve victory, you must seize every advantage, great and small. This is the essence of war, and war is the essence of all things, from the lowest khaffit haggling in the bazaar to the Andrah hearing petitions in his palace.”
“I understand,” Jardir said.
“Deceit depends on secrecy,” Khevat went on. “If spies can learn of your deceptions, they take away all your strength. A great leader must hold his deceit so close that even his inner circle and sometimes even he himself does not think on it until the time to strike.”
“But why make war at all, Dama?” Jardir dared to ask.
“Eh?” Khevat replied.
“We are all Everam’s children,” Jardir said. “The enemy is the alagai. We need every man to stand against him, yet we kill one another under the sun every day.” Khevat looked at him, and Jardir was not sure if the dama was annoyed or pleased with the question.
“Unity,” the dama replied at last. “In war men stand together, and it is that collective power that makes them strong. In the words of Kaji himself during his conquest of the green lands, Unity is worth any price of blood. Against the night and Nie’s untold legions, better a hundred thousand men standing together than a hundred million cowering by themselves. Remember that always, Ahmann.”
Jardir bowed. “I will, Dama.”
CHAPTER 5 JIWAH KA (#ulink_ecd686d6-845b-5cbf-bb0e-5ecd33ce1817)
313–316 AR
THREE NIE’DAMA APPROACHED HIM from all sides, and though he could not see her, Jardir sensed that the dama’ting was watching. She was always watching.
He embraced the moment as he did pain, letting all worldly concern fall away. After more than five years in Sharik Hora, the peace came effortlessly when he called it now. There was no him. There was no them. There was no her. There was only the dance.
Ashan came at him first, but Jardir feinted a block, then pivoted and leapt aside to punch Halvan in the chest, Ashan’s kick meeting only air. He caught Halvan’s arm and twisted him to the ground easily. He could have torn the arm from its socket, but it was a greater test of skill to leave his opponents unharmed.
Shevali waited for Ashan to recover before coming at him, the two attacking with a unity that would do any dal’Sharum unit proud.
It mattered little. Jardir’s arms and thighs were a blur, their blocked blows a drumbeat as he followed the rhythm to its inevitable conclusion. On his fifth blow, Shevali left his throat exposed for an instant, and then, as it always was in the end, Jardir and Ashan faced off.
Knowing Jardir’s speed, Ashan attempted to grapple, but the years had put meat on Jardir’s bones. At seventeen, he was taller than most men, and constant training had turned his wiry sinews into lean, packed muscle. No sooner had they closed than Ashan was pinned.
Ashan laughed, his year of silence long past. “One day we will have you, nie’Sharum!”
Jardir gave him a hand up. “You will never find that day.”
“That is true,” Dama Khevat said. Jardir turned as the ring of boys and instructors broke and the cleric strode in, the dama’ting at his side. Jardir felt his face grow cold.
The dama’ting carried black robes.
The dama’ting led him to a private chamber and with her own hands unwrapped his bido, pulling it away. Jardir tried to embrace the feeling of her hands on his bare skin, but she was the only woman who had ever touched him so intimately, and for the first time in years, he could not find peace. His body responded to her touch, and he feared she might kill him for his disrespect.
But the dama’ting made no mention of his arousal as she wrapped a black loincloth in place of his bido, then dressed him in the loose pantaloons, heavy sandals, and robe of a dal’Sharum.
After eight years in a bido, Jardir expected any clothing to feel odd, but he was unprepared for the weight of a dal’Sharum’s armored blacks. Plates and strips of fired clay were held tight in sewn pockets throughout the garb. The plates could absorb a great blow, Jardir knew, but they shattered on impact, and needed to be replaced after every hit.
So distracted was he that he did not notice at first that the veil she tied about his throat was white. When he did, he gasped aloud.
“Did you think your time among the dama meaningless, son of Hoshkamin?” the dama’ting asked. “You will rejoin your dal’Sharum brothers as their master, a kai’Sharum.”
“I am but seventeen!” Jardir said.
The dama’ting nodded. “The youngest kai’Sharum in centuries. Just as you were the youngest to bring down a wind demon, and the youngest to survive alagai’sharak. Who can say what else you may accomplish?”
“You can,” Jardir said. “The dice told you.”
The dama’ting shook her head. “I have seen the fate your spirit reaches for, but it is a path fraught with peril, and you may still fail to reach it.” She drew the white veil about his face. Her touch seemed almost a caress. “You have many tests before you. Bring your focus to the now. When you return to the Kaji pavilion today, one of the Sharum will challenge you. You must—”
Jardir held up a hand, cutting her off. The dama’ting’s eyes flared at his audacity.
“With respect,” Jardir said, recalling the gruel lines of the Kaji’sharaj, “the world of Sharum, I understand. I will break the challenger publicly before any dare follow his example.”
The dama’ting regarded him a moment, then shrugged, a smile in her eyes.
Jardir strode with pride into the Kaji training grounds, followed by Dama Khevat and the dama’ting. The dal’Sharum paused in their training at the sight, and there were murmurs of recognition as they saw Jardir’s face. One of them barked a laugh.
“Look! The rat returns!” Hasik cried, his s’s still whistling after all these years. The big warrior planted his spear with a thump. “It only took him five years to change out of his bido!” Several other warriors laughed at that.
Jardir smiled. It was natural for Sharum to test the mettle of a new kai, and it was inevera that it should be Hasik. The powerful warrior was still larger than Jardir, but he felt no fear as he strode forward.
Hasik stared him down coldly, unafraid. “You may have a white veil loose about your throat, but you are still the son of piss,” he sneered, too low for the others to hear.
“Ah, Hasik, my ajin’pal!” Jardir called loudly. “Do they still call you Whistler? I would be happy to remove a few more teeth and cure your affliction, if you wish.”
All around, Sharum laughed. Jardir looked among them and saw many who had served under him when he was Nie Ka.
Hasik growled and lunged, but Jardir sidestepped, spinning into a kick that knocked the big warrior onto his backside in the dust. He stood patiently as Hasik scowled and scrambled back to his feet unharmed.
“I will kill you for that,” Hasik promised.
Jardir smiled, reading Hasik’s every movement like writing in the sand. Hasik charged in, thrusting hard with his spear, but Jardir pivoted, slapping the point to one side, and Hasik stumbled past, overbalanced. He turned and swung the spear like a staff, but Jardir bent backward like a palm tree in the wind, avoiding the blow without moving his feet an inch. Before Hasik could recover, he whipped upright and grabbed the weapon with both hands, kicking up between his hands and breaking through the thick shaft of wood. He followed through on the kick, taking Hasik in the face.
There was a satisfying crack as Hasik’s jaw shattered, but Jardir did not stop there. He dropped the speartip but held on to the butt, advancing as Hasik struggled back to his feet.
Hasik punched at him, and Jardir marveled that he had once found those punches too fast to follow. After years among the dama, the fist seemed to move at a crawl. He caught Hasik’s wrist and twisted hard, feeling his shoulder pop from its socket. Hasik screamed as Jardir swung the spear butt, shattering the warrior’s knee. Hasik collapsed, and Jardir kicked him over onto his stomach. He was well within his rights to kill Hasik, and those gathered likely expected him to, but Jardir had not forgotten what Hasik had done to him in the Maze.
“Now, Hasik,” he said, as all the dal’Sharum of the Kaji tribe looked on, “I will teach you to be a woman.” He held up the spear butt. “And this will be the man.”
“Watch to ensure he does not fall on his spear in shame,” Jardir told Shanjat as Hasik was hauled off to the dama’ting pavilion, howling in pain and humiliation. “I would not see any permanent harm befall my ajin’pal.”
“As my kai’Sharum wills,” Shanjat said, “though they will have to remove the spear before he can fall on it.” He smirked as he bowed to Jardir and hurried after the injured warrior. Jardir followed Shanjat with his eyes, marveling at how quickly they fell back into old patterns, despite Shanjat having earned the black years ago, and him just this day.
Jardir had planned his revenge on Hasik for years, while he danced sharusahk in his tiny cell in Sharik Hora. It wasn’t enough for the man to suffer defeat; Jardir’s revenge had to be an abject lesson to any who would ever seek to challenge him again. If Hasik had not challenged him, he would have sought the man out and initiated the challenge himself.
By Everam’s infinite justice, every step played out exactly as he had imagined it, but now that his triumph was complete, he found no more satisfaction in it than when he fought Shanjat for his place in the nie’Sharum food line.
“You seem to have things well in hand,” Dama Khevat said, slapping Jardir on the back. “Go to the Kaji pavilion and take a woman before tonight’s battle.” He laughed. “Take two! The jiwah’Sharum will be eager to bed the youngest kai’Sharum in a thousand years.”
Jardir forced himself to laugh and nod, though he felt a clench in his stomach. He had never known a woman. Except for a few glimpses of the jiwah’Sharum that one night in the Kaji pavilion, he had never even seen one without her robes. Kai’Sharum or no, he had one last test of manhood in front of him, and unlike the crushing of Hasik or the killing of alagai, this was one none of his training had prepared him for.
Khevat left him, and Jardir took a deep breath, looking toward the Kaji pavilion.
They are only women, he told himself, taking a tentative step forward. They are there to please you, not the other way around. His second step came with more confidence.
“A word,” the dama’ting whispered, grabbing his attention. Relief and fear clutched him at once. How had he forgotten her?
“In private,” she said, and Jardir nodded, walking to the edge of the training grounds with her, out of earshot from the dal’Sharum in the yard.
He was much taller than her now, but she still intimidated him. He remembered the blast of fire from her flame demon skull, and tried to convince himself that her alagai magics would not work in the day, with Everam’s light shining down upon them.
“I cast the alagai hora before bringing you the blacks,” she said. “If you sleep among the jiwah’Sharum, one of them will kill you.”
Jardir’s eyes widened. Such a thing was unheard of. “Why?” he asked.
“The bones give us no ‘why,’ son of Hoshkamin,” the dama’ting said. “They tell what is, and what may be. Perhaps a lover of Hasik will seek revenge, or some woman with a blood feud with your family.” She shrugged. “But sleep among the jiwah’Sharum at your peril.”
“So I am never to know a woman?” Jardir asked. “What kind of life is that for a man?”
“Don’t exaggerate,” the dama’ting said. “You may still take wives. I will cast the bones to find ones suitable for you.”
“Why would you do this?” Jardir asked.
“My reasons are my own,” the dama’ting said.
“And the price?” Jardir asked. The tales in the Evejah always spoke of a hidden price for those who would use hora magic for more than sharak.
“Ah,” the dama’ting said. “No longer so innocent as you seem. That is good. The price is that you take me to wife.”
Jardir froze. His face went cold. Take her as his wife? Unthinkable. She terrified him.
“I did not know dama’ting could marry,” he said, fumbling for time as his mind reeled.
“We can, when we wish it,” she said. “The first dama’ting were the Deliverer’s wives.”
Jardir looked at her again, the thick white robes hiding every contour and curve of her body. Her headwrap covered every hair, and the opaque veil was drawn high over her nose, muffling even her voice. Only her eyes could be seen, bright and full of zeal. There was something familiar about them, but he could not even guess at her age, much less her beauty. Was she a virgin? Of good family? There was no way to know. Dama’ting were taken from their mothers early and raised in secret.
“It is a man’s right to see a woman’s face before he agrees to marry her,” he said.
“Not this time,” the dama’ting said. “It matters not if my beauty moves you, or if my womb is fertile. Your future swirls with hidden knives. I will be your Jiwah Ka, or you will spend your days looking for them without my foretellings to aid you.”
Jiwah Ka. She didn’t just want to marry him, she wanted to be first among his wives. A Jiwah Ka had the right to vet and refuse any Jiwah Sen, subsequent wives, all of whom would be subservient to her. She would have absolute control of his household and children, second only to him, and Jardir was not fool enough to think she didn’t intend to control him as well.
But could he afford to refuse? He feared no challenger face-to-face, but war was deception, as Khevat had taught him, and not all men fought their enemies with spear and fist. A poisoned drink, or blade in the back, and he could still go to Everam with little glory to buy his way into Heaven, and none to spare his mother and sisters.
And Sharak Ka was coming.
“You ask that I give everything to you,” he said thickly, his mouth gone dry.
The dama’ting shook her head. “I leave you sharak,” she said. “That is all a Sharum need concern himself with.”
Jardir stared at her for a long time. Finally, he nodded his assent.
The dama’ting wasted no time once the agreement was made. Before a week was through, Jardir found himself before Dama Khevat, watching as she made her vows.
Jardir looked into the dama’ting’s eyes. Who was she? Was she older than his mother? Young enough to give him sons? What would he find when they retired to the marriage bed?
“I offer you myself in marriage in accordance with the instructions of the Evejah,” she said, “as set down by Kaji, Spear of Everam, who sits at the foot of Everam’s table until he is reborn in the time of Sharak Ka. I pledge, with honesty and in sincerity, to be for you an obedient and faithful wife.”
Does she mean those words, Jardir wondered, or is this just a new way to control my life, now that I wear the black?
Khevat turned to him. Jardir started, fumbling for his vow. “I swear before Everam,” he said, forcing the words out, “Creator of all that is, and before Kaji, the Shar’Dama Ka, to take you into my home, and to be a fair and tolerant husband.”
“Do you accept this dama’ting as your Jiwah Ka?” Khevat asked, and something in his tone reminded Jardir of the dama’s words when Jardir first asked him to perform the ceremony.
Are you sure you wish to do this? Khevat had asked. A dama’ting is no ordinary wife you can order about, or beat when she is disobedient.
Jardir swallowed. Was he sure?
“I do,” he said thickly, and the assembled dal’Sharum gave a great shout, clattering their spears against their shields. His mother, Kajivah, clutched at his young sisters, all of them weeping in pride.
Jardir could feel his heart pounding, and part of him wished he was in the Maze, dancing alagai’sharak, rather than the dimly lit, pillowed chamber they retired to.
“Do not fear, alagai’sharak shall still be there tomorrow!” Shanjat had laughed. “You fight a different kind of battle tonight!”
“You seem ill at ease,” the dama’ting said as she drew the heavy curtains behind them.
“Should I be another way?” Jardir asked bitterly. “You are my Jiwah Ka, and I do not even know your name.”
