Two

I L Y S I A

 

A week later Neythan stood in the Forest of Silences staring up at the dry, fruitless boughs of his bloodtree, remembering the day he’d planted it, the same day he arrived here in Ilysia as a six year-old boy. “The Shedaím say a thing’s life, its essence, is its blood,” Tutor Maresh had told him then. Then he had taken a flint knife, drawn it across Neythan’s palm, and spilled Neythan’s blood over a dull grey orb the size of a chestnut.

Welcome to the Shedaím.

To Neythan, the orb had resembled a decrepit eye. It wasn’t until Maresh had marched him into the Forest and up its lush green slope to plant it here that Neythan had realized it was a seed. That was a whole sharím ago, eleven long years, and yet here the tree remained, barren as it had always been.

“I know what you are thinking.”

Neythan turned from his bloodtree to find the short, thin-limbed frame of Master Johann behind him, his eyes black as onyx, glinting in the dawn light. The old man stood, as always, with his hands clasped loosely behind his back, the beginnings of a smirk in his eyes, observing Neythan.

“You’re thinking if the outing had gone as planned,” the master continued, “your tree would have its first leaf.”

Which, Neythan felt, was a reasonable enough thing to expect. It had been three days since he and the other disciples had returned, after all. It hardly seemed fair that his tree still remained the only one yet to bud.

Yannick’s had gained its first buds years ago and was now thick with leaves. Josef’s had grown to a long strong oak whilst Daneel’s was one of the strangest in the Forest, with a slight kink midway up its trunk and sharp hot-coloured leaves pluming from it like fire. Even Arianna’s was a spectacle, with its tiny blossoms that changed colour every month. Yet here Neythan’s tree remained, the same as always. Bare, despite his having made his first kill.

“Your father’s was the same, you know,” Johann said.

“It was?”

“Well… Perhaps not quite as long in budding as yours, but longer than the others.”

“But why? Why did it take so long?”

Johann shrugged. “There can be many reasons why. A seed, as with anything, needs for that which surrounds it to be just so. The right soil. Rain. Nourishment. The light of the sun, the heat or cool of the day. It needs help to become what it ought…” He nodded at Neythan. “Just like the one to whom it is bound.” The master gestured to the other trees, nearly thirty of them in all, each belonging to a member of the Shedaím. Most of them died with their owners, withering to a brittle mass before crumbling altogether. But some, belonging to Brothers whose sha was greater, endured, living beyond the lifetimes of those to whom they’d been bound, and continuing to grow and plume regardless. Of these, none was greater than the tree of Qoh’leth. The First. A giant willow at the Forest’s very centre, cresting the mountain’s highest point. Qoh’leth’s tree was the oldest of them all.

“Your problem, Neythan,” Master Johann said, “is sometimes you can do this…” The old man smiled gently and tapped a finger against his temple, “…a little too much. It is as much a weakness as it is a gift. You must learn to still it. Once you are sworn and made a Brother, and then finally leave this place, you will understand.”

“And what if I am not sworn?” Neythan said.

To which Master Johann cocked an eyebrow and paused. “You have spent almost every hour since you were six years old here in Ilysia, being taught to become what you now are. Do you think because you failed to fulfil a decree you’ll be kept from taking the covenant?”

“My tree is barren.”

“As are all things before their season, Neythan. Whatever the elders decide, your time shall come. But you must not lose sight of what matters most. It’s true, you have been taught to wield a variety of weapons, and you do so skilfully, but all you have learned is for but one purpose – to save and protect life. It is this, above all else, that remains the goal of the Shedaím. The very goal you accomplished on your outing…” The master turned to face Neythan’s tree, examining the branches. “The purity of our purpose, Neythan, and our devotion to it – this is what separates the Order of the Shedaím from the institutions of men. It is what makes one a Brother of the Shedaím, or not.”

The master looked at Neythan to see he understood.

“Yes, Master.”

“Good… you should go now. The gathering will begin soon, and you must join the others for breakfast.”

So Neythan left Johann there and turned to walk down the mount, thinking, against the master’s advice, about it all. His first day here when Uncle Sol brought him as a child, journeying halfway across the Sovereignty from the sunny shores of their fishing village in Eram, far to the south beyond the sands of the Havilah. Neythan couldn’t remember much about the place now, only the countless stories Uncle Sol would tell of Watchers and lost gods and a thousand other things Mother didn’t like him to hear. It was by Sol’s tales that Neythan first learned of the Shedaím. The Brotherhood. The Faceless. Everyone had a different name for them but to most they were no more than idle rumour, a myth half-whispered by evening fires to keep children from misbehaving. It had been strange when Sol first told him that the Brotherhood was real, and that both he and Neythan’s father had once been of their number. But even stranger was the sudden month-long journey Uncle Sol took him on when Mother and Father died, all the way here, to Ilysia, so that Neythan could become one of their number too.

“Ravenous as monkeys, all of you!” Yulaan said as Neythan arrived. The others were already eating. Neythan took a seat next to Yannick and grabbed a bowl.

“You always say monkeys,” Arianna answered between mouthfuls. “Why monkeys? Why not lions, or wolves? Or a bear. Ravenous as a bear.”

“You’ve never seen hungry monkeys,” Yulaan said as she ladled the muddy broth into their wooden dishes. “And that is what you are all like.”

It was still early. The village flocks were bleating loudly by the yard wall as they went out to pasture whilst Yulaan cooked.

“Back home, in Livia,” she said, her Low Eastern accent turning her voice to a song, “we have monkeys everywhere. In the markets, in the streets, in palaces. And there is nothing so wild as a hungry monkey.”

Yulaan was mother-aged and full-bodied, with copper skin, crinkled eyes and a stout, fleshy neck. She’d come to Ilysia while they were children. She’d even told Neythan the story of it once, as reward for a quickly emptied plate, of how she had once been a harlot heading a brothel in the strait streets of Hanesda. Not a crime in itself. It was the secrets she’d learnt from those who frequented her house and then peddled to other interested parties that had brought about her exile to this high, hidden mountain village. It was the same for almost every villager here: Ghandry, the hot-tempered butcher from the High East; Jaleem, the woodworker, with his deep bronzed skin and still eyes, and that long scar down the side of his face he refused to talk about. Each were fugitives of some kind, rescued by the Brotherhood and brought to Ilysia to build, or shepherd, or cook.

“I saw a monkey once,” Daneel said. “Yannick too, didn’t we, on my first outing in Qareb.”

Yannick nodded, slurping up another spoonful of Yulaan’s soup.

“Funny little beasts,” Josef murmured.

“Yannick tried to catch it,” Daneel went on. “But couldn’t. Too quick for him, wasn’t it, Yannick?”

Yannick, looking down, took another slurp of his soup without responding.

“Is it true that a monkey can be as clever as a man?” Arianna said.

“Man once told me,” Daneel said, “the souls of damned men are given to dwell in those furry little bodies of theirs, that’s why they’re so cunning.”

“Pass me the melon there, Dan,” Josef said.

“Who told you that, Dan?” Neythan said.

“A man in an inn during my outing last year.”

“He meets everyone in an inn,” Josef quipped.

“They’re educational places, brother, you ought to try them sometime. Shouldn’t he, Neythan?”

Neythan glanced up at the pair across the table: Josef, eating calmly, eyes down on his food whilst his twin brother, Daneel, jabbed a spoon at the air as he talked. It was the kind of thing, years ago, he’d have smirked knowingly at Arianna about. But it wasn’t that way with them anymore. Not since Uncle Sol’s exile. Neythan looked toward her at the other end of the table, thinking about the walks they’d take together in the evenings, after the day’s training was done and the others had gone to their huts, and how they’d sit there, just the two of them, and talk and–

“Neythan?”

Neythan glanced up. Daneel was still waiting for an answer. “Who was he?” Neythan said instead. “The man in the inn?”

“I forget. He looked Haránite. Low Eastern. Like Jaleem, the carpenter, or Yulaan here. That’s how he caught my eye. Anyway. So I was in this inn with Tutor Hamir and the Brother I was shadowing, third sharím I think he was, I forget his name.”

“Is there anything you don’t forget?” Arianna asked.

“The taste of good wine,” Josef answered for him.

“You want to hear this story or not?”

“Go on, Dan,” Neythan prompted.

“So anyway. I’m in this inn and this woman approaches from across the way.”

Yannick rolled his eyes, nudging Neythan, his thumb tapping against downturned fingertips as he nodded at Daneel.

Daneel frowned. “I’m saying it as it was.”

Yannick cocked an eyebrow, unconvinced.

Neythan couldn’t help but smile, which was something Yannick had known how to make him do since they were children, back when Neythan was mute, stunned silent by the deaths of his mother, father and sister, deaths he’d apparently witnessed but remained unable to recall. For almost the entire first year in Ilysia it took for Neythan to regain his speech, Yannick, himself deaf, was his only friend, their silence a familiar shared tongue. Until Arianna taught Neythan to speak again.

“I’m telling the truth, Yannick,” Daneel said, then turned his attention to the rest of the table. “She walks across to me. Good-looking woman. Hefty, you know…” Daneel winked, palms upturned. Arianna sighed heavily. “And she says to me, ‘Where’re you from?’”

“Doubtless she hoped to send you back there,” Arianna answered.

“Funny, Ari, but I don’t remember you being there.”

“I don’t need to have been there to know you can be a–”

“Disciples!”

They turned in unison. Tutor Hamir was standing by the threshing floor at the entry to the yard. His tall, bald scalp glowed in the sun as he cleared his throat.

“The elders have come down the mount.”

Josef stopped chewing.

“Your summons has come,” Hamir confirmed. “You will see the elders at eventide by the Tree.” He turned to leave and then stopped, glancing back. “You ought to make ready. You are to cease your discipleship. You will take the covenant and become Brothers tonight, and be gone tomorrow.” And then he looked at Neythan. “You as well.”