6: A JORATESE TOURNAMENT

Jorat Dominion, Quuros Empire. Two days since Kihrin D’Mon was Returned to life

“I like the way you describe looking past the First Veil,” Kihrin said to Qown when the priest paused. “Does everyone who trains with the Vishai Mysteries learn that? I mean, I don’t know much6 about how religion works. I’ve spent time around religious people, but I wouldn’t call them priests. What you did just sounds like sorcery, so what’s the difference?” Kihrin looked around, a little embarrassed, as he realized he should have checked for anyone listening before bringing up what might be heresies.

“I don’t know how other religions function either,” Brother Qown admitted. “I suspect it involves prayer and promised offerings for favors? But the Mysteries aren’t like that. You see, our god is dead.”

Kihrin coughed. “Your god is dead? Excuse me?” Butterbelly had talked about light and the temple at Rainbow Lake. He’d never mentioned worshipping a deceased deity.

Janel started to say something, then stopped herself.

Brother Qown smiled. “We follow Selanol’s teachings, try to spread his light to the world, and protect people from the demons he died fighting.”

“Selanol? I’ve never heard of him,” Kihrin said.

“He’s the eighth of the Eight Immortals. In his memory, we give of ourselves and hope to experience and encourage enlightened lives. But as our god is dead, he cannot answer prayers, so we must make do with our own magical gifts.” Qown paused. “My views on sorcery are rather heterodox.”

Kihrin sat back, stunned. “Wow.” The name was different, but there was only one ‘vacant’ slot among the Eight, only one among them who might be considered ‘dead,’ although different regions were always offering up new candidates for the role. Kihrin himself had grown up thinking Grizzst the Mad, who’d bound all the demons, was the eighth god. That had turned out to be just as wrong as all the other stories.

The real Eighth Guardian had been named S’arric, not Selanol. And if that was who Qown meant, Kihrin suspected the priest would be horrified to know what had really happened to the ‘god’ of the sun and stars. Kihrin certainly was. “So that’s why your religion was outlawed?”

“Oh no. Our religion was forbidden because we maintain gods are nothing more than mortals who’ve given themselves great power by exploiting magic, and thus shouldn’t be worshipped.”

Kihrin stared. “Huh. Yeah, I can see how that might upset folks.” Kihrin shifted in his seat, gaze still fixed on Brother Qown. The priest wasn’t wrong, of course. The Eight hadn’t started out as gods to be worshiped, but as champions tasked with saving everyone else from the invading demons. But S’arric hadn’t died fighting such. He’d been murdered, betrayed. Still, Kihrin could see how the narrative might have slipped into saying he’d died that way. Or how, over time, the “god’s” name had changed from Solan’arric to Selanol.

Kihrin hoped the Vishai Mysteries didn’t have some belief Selanol would return to save everyone, but he wouldn’t be surprised if they did. He looked over to see Janel had a blank expression on her face. She looked like someone with her fists balled up under the table to keep her from commenting.

He had a feeling she considered “gods” a sore point.¹

So to change the subject, Kihrin said, “I’m curious, Janel: Did Baron Tamin just out and out tell you his plans?”

She smiled ruefully. “You know, he rather did.”

Janel’s Turn. The tournament grounds in Mereina, Barsine Banner, Jorat, Quur.

Outsiders seldom understand the tournament’s importance in Joratese life. The knights who perform in the contests are heroes. In other dominions, knighthood, if it exists, is a function of noble blood; the aristocracy’s sword-wielding arm. In Jorat, we don’t attach such trappings to our knights. They are our finest horsemen, athletes, and swordsmen, trained and sponsored to represent their liege’s interests on the field of honor. Anyone can aspire to be a knight.

Anyone but a ruling noble.

Is it any surprise, therefore, that the knightly class is so beloved here? Knights sit at a pinnacle reachable by anyone daring enough, brave enough, and strong enough to win the field, no matter what their birth. Knights are champions who might represent lords, merchants, towns, but they are risen from commoners. The crowds who come out to watch their displays of prowess are best described as “every mare, stallion, and gelding who can possibly attend.”

The tournament is the heart of the Jorat community.

And thus, it didn’t take me long to realize how much of Barsine’s heart had rotted.

After I left Mare Dorna, Brother Qown, and Ninavis, I found the nobles’ box at the head of the stands. A thin crowd filled the seats, a few tired pennants waving from wooden poles. All belonged to Joratese merchant associations, who had arrived with the opening of the morning Gatestone—travelers from other parts of Jorat arrived for trade. All the knights who had milled about in the fortress courtyard the night before were gathered on the sides. Their demoralized, tense postures spoke of people with no real interest in the contests to come; they’d shown up because their wages depended on it. The sullen atmosphere felt more appropriate to a funeral than a tourney.

If the tournament’s antipathy troubled me, the twin wooden posts sunk deep into the lawn—facing the nobles’ box—made my laevos stand on end. Kindling and branches were piled high at each post’s base. Chains pierced holes drilled through the thick timbers, which had glyphs carved along their lengths. The scorched earth underneath those woodpiles testified to previous bonfires.

Next to each would-be pyre rested a large cage, covered with oilcloth. I didn’t have to check under them to realize who I would find, to know why the guards had said an even number would be better.

I’d found Ninavis’s companions.

“Did I miss anything exciting?” I said, masking my anger as I entered the baron’s box. I’d missed the opening invocation, the ceremony that dedicated each tournament to the Eight. I’d likely also missed at least a few of the earliest contests. Hopefully, none of that was important.

Tamin paused mid-drink. “Janel! I worried you had taken ill.” He grinned as he crossed to me, setting his hand behind my neck and resting his forehead against mine.

Or at least, he tried.

“Are you well?” He drew back.

I touched his hand, a compromise for the greeting I’d denied him. “It was a trying journey.”

He swallowed and, for the first time since I arrived, looked uncertain. He motioned to his side. “Count Janel, may I present Warden Lorat, one of my banners.” He introduced an elderly man in his dotage, too weak to stand on his own. Too weak to still be warden, but I held my tongue.

Warden Lorat paused from feeding meat scraps to a small dhole puppy on his lap, which occupied his attention far more than the tournament itself.

“Warden.” I inclined my head.

The elderly warden said something unintelligible, and the serving woman standing near his chair rushed to his side. She pressed her ear to his lips, listening while the old man continued mumbling. The puppy licked his fingers.

The nurse straightened and turned. Her coloring was startling: a gray-eyed milk mare, bleached of all hue save the subtle blue and violet veins marbling her skin. I’d have thought her another ice-cursed Yoran, but her features were wrong. Too long, with thin lips and a straight nose, compared to Yoran small noses and pouting mouths.

“The warden greets you.” Her accent betrayed time spent in the west.² “He apologizes he cannot do a better job of addressing you, but red fever has left it difficult for him to speak.”

“Of course,” I said, speaking to him. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” I smiled at the nurse. “Thank you for helping with translation.”

Those gray eyes rested on my face. She tilted her head in acknowledgment. Then she returned to waiting on the warden.

I had the feeling I had just been dismissed.

“And this,” Tamin said, motioning to the last person present, “is my esteemed teacher, Relos Var. I feared you wouldn’t be able to meet him before he left.” Tamin sighed at the man. “Is there nothing I can do to convince you to stay?”

I remembered Ninavis’s words then; Kalazan had overheard Tamin speaking with his teacher about a prophecy …

The man looked unassuming, Quuros by ancestry, dressed in simple clothes appropriate to a servant. Relos Var wore his hair trimmed in a short cut, his face shaved, his boots suited for horsemanship or travel.

The man looked over at me, and our eyes locked.

Relos Var smiled.

I notice when people stare at me with desire. Men and women had been giving me such looks long before it was appropriate to my age. This was something else.

“Janel Danorak,” he said, smiling in pleasure. “The Lonezh Hellmarch’s only survivor.”

“Janel Theranon, Count of Tolamer,” I corrected. “And many souls survived the last Hellmarch, or we wouldn’t be having a conversation right now.”

Relos Var chuckled and ducked his head in a gesture a forgiving person might interpret as a bow. “Still, your reputation precedes you.” Relos Var gave the baron an equally insincere bow. “And my apologies. I’m so very sorry to leave your side, but I received word a relative has fallen into some trouble. I must return at once to see to his proper disposition.”

“What sort of trouble?” I asked.

I asked only because he presented a strange addition to an already strange tableau. Too many foreigners, too many mysteries, too many changes from how tournaments are conducted. And there was this talk of prophecy. Was Relos Var the same person Kalazan overheard talking to Tamin, about the “demon-claimed child”?

Something about him …

I’m not sure to this day what gave him away. Maybe he wanted me to notice him.

His confidence showed when our eyes met. Tamin hadn’t introduced him as being western nobility or royalty. He should have been a being of thudajé, comparable to the serving girl. He was … not.

Indeed, his idorrá was so strong, I didn’t understand why everyone in the viewing box wasn’t on their knees.

Relos Var paused before answering my question. “My younger brother is about to go up on the auction block in Kishna-Farriga.” He let out a bitter laugh. “He has a talent for getting himself into trouble. Himself and everyone around him.”

“Sold as a slave? That does sound serious. Safe journey, then.” Ah, how I wished I might have plied him with the questions his comment provoked. Where was this Kishna-Farriga? Since the baron wasn’t sufficiently ranked to have his own Gatekeeper, how did Relos Var intend to depart to rescue his brother? Had he worked out a deal with the Gatekeepers, or was he a Gatekeeper himself?

“Thank you, Count,” Relos Var said. He bowed then, a real bow. The warmth in his eyes when he smiled surprised me. “What atrocious timing. I hope we’ll meet again in circumstances where I can give you my full attention.”

He seemed sincere, his expression kind, and yet his words struck me as a threat. I felt a chill, married to the certainty I wouldn’t enjoy Relos Var’s “full attention.”³

“And you,” I said.

He left as the crowd drummed their feet in anticipation. I claimed his now-empty chair and tried to act interested in the outcome for all the normal reasons, but I couldn’t stop staring at the pillars. Var had almost distracted me, but my true purpose for being there stood right in front of my eyes.

“Sir Xia Nilos,” Tamin said, drawing my attention back to the match. He pointed to a knight in a beautiful sky eagle headdress and a gray-and-white beaded coat, riding a lovely dappled gray mare with matching ribbons in her mane. “She represents the Seven Journeys Trade Consortium. Facing against her is my man, Sir Dedreugh.” He didn’t need to point out the other knight. Dedreugh dressed in yellow and brown, gold and bronze, his parade dress resplendent with streamers catching the air and sailing behind him. He made his turns along the contest grounds and shouted threats to his opponent.

The crowd’s enthusiasm felt forced and unnatural. If Dedreugh’s boasts to me hadn’t been a fool’s bluster, then he was this little wood’s tiger king. I expected him to have loyal fans and admirers, waving his flags, dressed in his colors. Instead, the locals clearly cheered for him because they had to cheer for him.

Visitors cheered for Dedreugh for the same reason they cheered for any knight: they’d placed a wager on the outcome.

“Your captain mentioned last night he usually wins the final tournament prize of arrested saelen. Your judges don’t feel that’s a conflict of interest?”

Tamin’s expression soured, but then he laughed. He waved at the old, doddering warden. “There sits my only judge.”

My eyes widened.

“I know,” Tamin said. His mouth twisted. “But what can I do? My other wardens refuse to attend, claiming hardship from the winter. It would be a scandal if I tried to lead the judges myself, and he’s the only one who’s bothering to show up these days. The others have deserted me.”

“There are no high mares—?”

“Warden Dokmar’s daughter Ganar is down there in a cage,” he snapped. “She’s a murdering whore, who threw her lot in with witches and assassins. Shall I have her be a referee?”

I shuddered. I wondered if Warden Dokmar knew his daughter waited to be executed for treason and witchcraft.

Tamin reached out and grabbed my hand. Had I been any other person, I would say he grabbed far too hard.

“You,” Tamin said, “are the only good thing that’s happened in months, Janel. Your arrival feels like the coming of spring.”

“Tamin,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm, “it is spring.”

He stared at me for a second as if I’d just said something surprising and unbelievable, told him the sky was blue instead of teal, announced magic legal throughout the land.

If I’m being honest with myself, he didn’t look sane.

A loud, jarring clash interrupted whatever response he’d have given. We both turned back to the grounds in time to see the two knights complete their initial pass. Xia Nilos, being lower ranked in idorrá, had chosen the form of the bout, in this case, the Contest of Khored. In turn, Dedreugh picked the technique—Sword Crashing style—which favored brute strength over subtlety. I thought it a poor strategy for Xia Nilos, one that resulted in her current predicament: knocked from her horse, struggling to find the weapon she’d dropped. To the side, Nilos’s squire grabbed a second blade and ran toward his knight.

Sir Xia Nilos raised her shield in time to intercept a stunning blow from Dedreugh, which pushed her backward. Nilos fumbled her sword, put both hands up to support her shield.

I’m sure under other circumstances, against other opponents, Sir Xia’s skills would have seen her through. But not here. Not against an enemy like Dedreugh.

I looked over at the warden. “She’s defeated. Call it.”

The old man mumbled to himself.

“Let Sir Xia decide when she’s conquered,” the servant said on Warden Lorat’s behalf.

The blows Dedreugh rained down on Xia seemed less appropriate to a contest of skill than to hammering a blade on the forge. Xia’s shield dented.

“Do it,” Tamin whispered. His eyes brightened.

The woman picked the dhole puppy up from the warden’s lap and turned away.

“Do you yield?” I cried out. I didn’t think the knights could hear me over the boos of screaming spectators.

The squire ran in with the second sword.

I saw what followed as if time herself had slowed to watch. The reverberating blows from Dedreugh, supernaturally strong and so forceful I thought he could punch through the shield to overwhelm his opponent. Sir Xia’s unsteady steps as she tried to find her balance. The shout from the young squire as he put the blade into a position for Nilos to grab it. Time paused.

Dedreugh swung his sword back and took the squire straight through the stomach.

I stood. Everyone stood.

Shock and the naïve belief that the match had finished—it had to be over, didn’t it?—lowered Sir Xia’s guard. Her gaze fixed on her dying squire.

She stopped paying attention to her enemy.

Dedreugh pulled his weapon from the dead boy’s body, spun back to Sir Xia, and used the bloody blade to flip the woman’s shield out of line.

Sir Xia screamed as Dedreugh’s sword pierced her armor’s neck seam, before punching down into her armpit. Dedreugh yanked the blade up, blood spraying as he opened a major artery and severed her arm.

“Tamin!” I shouted.

Tamin’s expression turned ecstatic, his focus lost in victory and bloodlust. His nostrils flared as he heard my admonishing voice, and he turned to me. “You’re my friend, not my count. Your tone is unwarranted.”

“They’ll die,” I said. “Both Sir Xia and her squire will die.”

Tamin stared at me as if I spoke a foreign language. Why should those deaths bother or concern him? He sat in his chair. “Aren’t the tournaments designed to ready us for war? In war, don’t people die?” He raised a hand in a benediction to Sir Dedreugh while others came out to collect the bodies.

“Tamin—”

He smiled and waved, but his expression turned cold when he glanced at me. “Don’t question my actions, Janel. I have a banner on the brink of catastrophe. I have to take drastic action.”⁴

“Drastic action?” I fought to keep my voice level. “Tamin, Dedreugh is your man. You’re responsible for paying the death price for those he slays. If your banner is in such straits, how can you afford that?”

“I won’t accept advice from a stallion who fled her own canton, rather than face Censure.” Tamin leaned forward, his expression nasty. “You think I don’t know the truth behind your visit? Your former betrothed, Sir Oreth, bought out your people even before your grandfather breathed his last. All the while you sat there, oblivious to being made a laughingstock. That’s why you didn’t come by Gatestone—you had neither Gatestone nor Gatekeeper to use.”

His words hurt worse than blows, not least because they were true.

They were also a deflection, and I wouldn’t be turned aside.

“Dedreugh is a monster. As a friend, I caution you not to employ a monster to prove your idorrá.”

There have always been people who think idorrá requires violence—that the stick is the most effective enticement to keep the herd in line. That mistaken belief is the reason we have Censure. Nobles may rule in Jorat, but they rule because they have our citizens’ trust. And when the nobility becomes a greater hazard to our people than any other danger?

They are removed. Such has always been our way.

“As a friend,” Tamin said, “I caution you to manage your own herd, not mine.”

I held up my hands in acquiescence. “Tamin, I meant no offense. The winter has been hard for us both.”

In my peripheral vision, I saw the tournament’s Black Knight enter the contest ground. He’d been sent to distract the crowds from the gore being mopped up behind him. The crowd had been cursing, “Thorra, thorra!” but when Captain Dedreugh turned his attention to them, they fell silent.

Some of the anger left Tamin. “How I envy you, Janel. At least you could outrun your demons.”

I felt those words like cuts. “Not all of them.” I put my hand on his, choosing what I said carefully. “But we could help each other.”

The Black Knight japed and pranced as befitting his role. He dressed in ornate black armor, too small for him in all the wrong places. His large belly flopped exposed while he danced and cantered around the yard on a flame-kissed black fireblood.

Tamin jerked his hand away from mine. “I don’t need help. Those witches think they can get the better of me. I’ll show them. I will burn them all.”

“Is that what you intend to do with the prisoners I brought you?”

“They’re witches or in league with witches. What choice do I have?” He gritted his teeth. “I’ve known Kalazan since we were children, Janel. I can’t believe he betrayed me.”

The warden paid no attention to our conversation; the serving woman had returned his puppy. She, on the other hand, studied the frame of the nobles’ box with such intent concentration she must have hung on every word. The woman only stepped away when a field judge approached with questions.

She didn’t consult the warden before giving instructions.

“You must feel much like I did, after what Oreth did to me,” I said. “After he turned on me.”

“He loves you,” Tamin said.

“An obsession with owning something isn’t the same as loving it.”

He sighed and poured himself more wine. “Have you always been so wise, dear Janel?”

“You flatter me, Tamin. If I were wise, I wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“You understand, don’t you? We both must do what is necessary. I must kill every witch in this banner. Every one. I’ll leave none to summon the demons who would destroy us. Relos Var has opened my eyes to the danger.”

I turned to him. “What danger?”

“The child,” Tamin said. “The demon-claimed child. There’s a prophecy: The demon-claimed child gathers the broken, witches and outlaws, rebels outspoken, to plot conquest and uprising while winter’s malice hides her chains in the snow king’s palace.”

I stared at him.

“Don’t you see it? It’s obvious!”

“I don’t—”

“There’s another,” he persisted. “The claimed child waits, not dead but sleeping, dreaming of evil and souls for reaping, for when day and night at last are one, the demon king’s bars will come undone. Surely that’s clearer. If the demons find the child they seek, they will use him to destroy the world.”⁵

I didn’t think it clear at all, but I also didn’t volunteer my opinion. “When day and night at last are one … an eclipse?”

He missed the sarcasm that crept into my voice despite my best efforts to tame it. “Yes, I think so. But I can’t be sure. It could mean anything.”

I resisted the urge to ask him to repeat that last sentence again, more slowly.

I lifted my chin. “So the runes carved on the posts down there? Those are designed to … hurt … demons?”

“Yes. Every witch who dies is one less witch who can summon demons.”

“Ah, how clever,” I said. “I understand now.”

Which was true. I understood perfectly.

You see, because of Xaltorath’s “loving” upbringing, I could read the runes carved on those stakes. I also saw the unnatural strength that gave Dedreugh his victories. I’m not a fool. Tamin’s teacher Relos Var, his trusted mentor, had spun a pretty web of lies. Tamin had swallowed every single one. Someone was indeed summoning demons in Barsine Banner.

Unfortunately, despite his own clear belief to the contrary, that someone was Tamin himself.