Five

O A T H

 

“Neythan. What are you doing?”

Neythan didn’t think anyone knew this place. He’d spent the last three weeks, after he made the decision, trying to find the spot that would be just right. A quiet place. Where he’d be left alone, allowed his silence, somewhere still. He’d snuck out after the evening gathering, when the day’s training was ended and the evening meal shared; when they were left to their chambers for the night, that sweet closeted nook where all the voices stopped and the demands and the disciplines and everything else finally ceased.

“What are you doing, Neythan?”

Like sleeping. He’d asked Jaleem about it once, and that’s what he told him, though it could only be supposed. But Neythan liked to think perhaps that’s the way it would be. Like sleeping.

“Put it down, Neythan.”

And the blade seemed so right in his hand. And the night seemed so right, the stars above so clean and bright as if waiting to welcome him.

“Why?”

“You mustn’t.”

“Why not?”

But he knew he couldn’t. Not while Yannick was there, and so he decided to hand the dagger, handle first, to his fellow disciple. But when he turned around Yannick wasn’t there. A woman stood in his place. Her eyes were golden, glowing. She began to reach toward him, calling his name.

“Neythan.”

 

Neythan woke up.

It was dark. The air was chilly. Overhead leaned craggy angles of rock, sharp-edged and glossy. The dream lingered in Neythan’s thoughts as he stared up at them. Strange to have dreamt about that night. Nearly three years ago now. But then again perhaps not so strange. It was Yannick who’d found him after all, and if he hadn’t…

It was the first time he’d heard Yannick speak – his voice slightly mangled, the syllables blunted around the edges but apart from that surprisingly good. Not that anyone else would ever know. No matter how much Neythan tried to assure him, Yannick still refused to try his words with others, even Master Johann. Neythan thought about that often: how seeing him that night, alone with the blade, one year on since Uncle Sol’s exile from the Brotherhood, had been the only thing to push Yannick beyond his fear and make him speak. But the woman in the dream. Who was she?

Neythan tried to rise but he couldn’t. His head felt heavy and strange, as though filled with water.

He was lying on a raised flatbed of stone. To his left, a stool stood against the wall. In the corner there was a pot of incense, likely the reason for his sluggishness.

“You’re awake.”

Neythan craned his neck to see. The small man from the ravine came in carrying a lamp. In the light from the flame he looked even stranger than before. His head was tall and scabby. His jaw was narrow and misshapen. Pouches of crinkly skin hung about his neck like a turkey’s wattle.

He sat down opposite the broad stone slab where Neythan lay and put the lamp on the ground beside him. He regarded Neythan silently, his eyes moving over his body like a merchant eyeing merchandise. After a while, satisfied, bored, or both, the man sighed and then folded one leg over the other, resting its weight on the other’s thigh like some king’s courtier.

“I know what you’re thinking,” the man said, head tilting to one side. “How did this happen, hmm? Why am I here? Who is this strange little tyrant sat before me?”

A wineskin of blond goat hide appeared in the man’s hand. He looked at Neythan again, as if weighing a decision, then loosened the cap of the skin and swigged.

“Yes, I’m sure one like you, with your… breeding, your learned distaste for acquiescence, would have many questions, yes? You will be unlike most and so you must forgive me if I savour somewhat your being here. It’s not often I happen upon prey so rare.”

“I am not prey.”

“Ah, but you are, young one, you are. Come. See around you. You are captured prey. A man mustn’t be too proud to accept what he is.”

Neythan looked around, his eyes adjusting to the gloom. Fronds of light and shadow shimmied along the wall like watery ghosts. Perhaps there was an underground pond nearby. “What is this place?”

The man took another mouthful from the wineskin. “My home, as promised in the ravine. A man of my word, you see. And, as I told you, dry. Though I admit, perhaps not so warm. But,” he shrugged, “one can’t have everything.”

“How long have I been here?”

“Quite some time,” the man admitted. His head bobbed in a slow drunken nod. “You’ve been lying here still as a corpse for just over a week.”

“A week?” Neythan tried to rise again. The room lurched.

“Not the best idea,” the man advised. “You’ll need a few days yet.”

“I’ve been here a week?”

“Give or take. The dart I used, you see.” He shrugged apologetically, one palm opened in commiseration. “It was dipped in a little invention of mine, a mixture I use, very strong. Urdin berries and lingerweed and the heads of certain fungi, but you have to ferment the berries, which, by the way, are fairly rare in this season with all the rain. Then you must grind them together until just so. And heat them. And then… well, details, I shan’t bore you. Suffice to say the mixture is quite potent. I usually keep it to guard against bears and wolves but… well, you had a sword. One must improvise.”

Neythan laid his head back on the stone bed. The room felt as though it was spinning. “Why did you bring me here?”

“Where else was I to bring you?”

“But why? What do you want?”

“What do I want? Now there is a question. One might find a great many ways to answer were he to take his time. Truth is, a man seldom knows. I want gold, he says. Or to live in a palace. Or a thousand wives. A man wants for many things and perhaps sometimes gains them, without finding what it is he seeks…” He drank again from the wineskin and grimaced. “A dangerous question to ask really; what a man wants. Especially for the one who’s to answer. Wiser not to. The hungriest of all beasts, you see – we men – and with less mercy than most. Still, seeing as you do ask, I suppose there might be a thing or two a man of my means would settle for. Especially from one like you… Shedaím.”

Neythan looked at him. “You have not said how you know me.”

“I know the Brotherhood.”

“How?”

“The stench, perhaps.”

“You are a spy.”

“Hmph.” The man spat.

“Then what? Who are you?”

“Caleb. My name is Caleb. I am… a merchant. Of sorts. Spikenard, spices, wines. I deal in what can be found, and sometimes…” He nodded at the pot of incense in the corner. “Things of my own making.” He capped the wineskin closed and held it loosely between his knees as he leaned forward, elbows propped on thighs. “But you asked of what I want, didn’t you, erm… your name. What is your name?”

Neythan didn’t answer.

“It is only a name, boy. Hardly a dangerous secret. And you will need to tell it to me if you are to discover what I want and perhaps have a hope of leaving this place.”

Neythan thought about it for a while. “My name is Neythan,” he said reluctantly.

Caleb nodded. “Neythan… Well then, Neythan. I shall tell you how I know your precious Brotherhood. And I shall tell you what I want. I shall tell you it all. Whom else is there to tell, after all? There are so few a man like me can trust. But you… I know I can trust you, Neythan. I can. Because I know you are the rare soul who will understand what I’m going to say… You see, I wasn’t always as I now am. I was once as you are…”

Caleb waited for comprehension to gather on Neythan’s face.

Neythan said nothing.

Caleb coughed impatiently. “I was Shedaím. A Faceless One. One of your Brotherhood?”

Neythan laughed then realized Caleb wasn’t smiling. “You cannot expect me to believe that.”

“Is it so hard to believe, Neythan? Perhaps in time, should you live long enough, you will learn how deceiving appearances can be.” The man’s gaze wandered to the middle distance. “How sometimes you can think you know something, or even someone, and be deceived.”

Neythan thought of Arianna.

Caleb saw Neythan’s silence acknowledge his truth. “I was one of the most esteemed in my company,” he continued. “A master by only my third sharím.”

Which only made the story more fanciful. There are four sharíms in all, eleven-year seasons that mark a Shedaím’s time. The first is spent at Ilysia as a disciple, beginning as a child and learning the disciplines and apart for a few trips each year to witness the wider world – cities, townships, plains – remaining on the mount. The second begins with the taking of the covenant, which is when a disciple passes from discipleship to Brotherhood and leaves Ilysia, returning once a year to begin with but eventually only returning when summoned. The third sharím is a Brother’s strongest, when he is experienced, and yet still young enough to make best use of the knowledge he has gained. And then there is the fourth and final sharím. Although few survive to see it, it is during this period, as the strength of the body wanes, that the sha is believed to grow most. Those who survive it enter the tutorship at Ilysia or become one of the sharíf’s bodyguard and eventually, beyond that, perhaps an elder.

To be made a master before the fourth sharím was unlikely. But then to even know what a sharím was without having been part of the Brotherhood was even more so. Neythan decided to hear him out.

“So what happened then?”

“Ah. Well, funny you should ask.” He opened the wineskin and swigged. “I’ve asked myself the same question many times, Neythan. Many times… You know, it’s said a man chooses his place in the world, but I’m not so sure. I often wonder if it isn’t already set for him, like a seat at the banquet table, and his choice merely an illusion conjured to him by the fact he made his own way to the chair… But then, who can know? Only the gods perhaps, if there are such. If there are any, they are cruel. They do not smile on us. They did not smile on me, Neythan. They cursed.”

“You’re not making any sense–”

“Hikramesh,” Caleb said. “That’s where it happened, you see… I was sent there from a township north of it, along the Low Eastern foothills by the gulf. More than ten years ago now. Wild territory then. Desert lands, mostly. I was to seek out a scribe there – Sarwin, of the house Saliph. Fussy little fellow. Took me a few days to find him. I finally came upon the man at some night council where he was courtier to Jikram the Tirashite, the sharíf’s vassal. It fell to Sarwin to make preparations for his journey north to Hanesda for Helgon’s inauguration as sharíf. My decree was to deliver a letter. That was all. A letter that only his eyes were to see and afterward I was to destroy. Which, when you think about it, is a strange task to have asked of one like me – third sharím, a master?”

“And what did this letter say?”

“I never knew its contents. Never. I was not to read it. I was faithful to what I’d been decreed… I went to the council in the city’s eastern quarter by the watergate. I was to find Sarwin, deliver the letter, watch him read it, and then ensure it was destroyed. I did as I was bid. I delivered the letter. But when I did…” Caleb frowned, his hands beginning to tremble slightly. He gripped one with the other at the knuckles to steady them. “Must have been a trap, you see. The men in that chamber… They tried to seize me. Five men, six perhaps. Armed… I managed to kill two or three but…” and then he grew still, he looked puzzled. “Then there was a fire.” It came out almost like a question. He looked up at Neythan as if expecting him to answer. “From nowhere. A fire.” Caleb pointed to the tight and shiny seared skin of his face. “How I got my scars, you see… It was then they took me.”

“Took you where?”

But Caleb said nothing, staring at the ground.

“Where did they take you, Caleb?”

He tried for another swig from his wineskin and, finding it empty, grunted a muttered accusation at the flask.

“How did you come to be here?”

Caleb frowned into the empty skin, staring at the uncapped hole as if for the answer.

“Caleb?”

“What if I were to remove this incense,” Caleb said. “Release you from its effects?”

“What?”

“What would you do?”

“What are you asking?”

“Perhaps I’m asking for you not to kill me, should I, against my better judgment, free you.”

Neythan said nothing.

“I could even help you,” Caleb went on, “to find this lady friend of yours. The one you were seeking by the ravine.”

Again, Neythan just watched him.

“You see, I remember, Neythan. I remember many things about the Brotherhood. I remember it was forbidden to give one’s word in oath and break it.” Caleb rose from the stump and stepped toward Neythan. “That when one clasped hands with another the words spoken in that littlest of embraces were binding, just as any decree.” Caleb came closer still until he was standing over Neythan’s limp body on the stone bed. “I remember these things, and it occurs to me how intriguing the hand of Providence is. Fickle, but intriguing. And so I think to myself, perhaps she has come to me in hope of repaying a debt owed.”

“Again, you are making no sense.”

“I’m talking about a bargain, a contract, between you and me. Merchants together, Neythan. Stock and trade. I have something you want, and you, you have something that may be of use to me.”

“And what is that?”

“Yourself.”

Neythan frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I was betrayed, Neythan. That much has always been clear. What isn’t, is by who. And why.”

“And you think I can help you.”

“I think if you ever hope to see the light of day you will swear to help me. You will swear to be bound to the answering of these questions until such a time as I release you.”

“It has been many years since what happened, Caleb. Isn’t that what you said?”

“Yes. More than ten. So?”

Neythan just looked at him, thinking about it. “And you spoke of being able to help me?”

“With your lady friend.”

“You know how to find her?”

“I do.”

“If it is true you know something of how to find her, then I will agree.”

“It is.”

“Then that shall be our bargain. You help me find her. And I will help you find your answers.”

Caleb smiled. “You are the one imprisoned. You cannot set the terms. I will want my answers first.”

“I am the one imprisoned. With no reason to trust you. None. Whereas I, as you know, am bound by my word should we take skin for skin in the speaking. You claim to have been a Brother, but you are no Brother now. There is no covenant in your tongue. The bargain can be no other way.”

Caleb stepped away from the bed, thinking it over.

“What do you hope to do,” Neythan said, “when you find your betrayer? Talk with them? Reason? You free me, help me find her, and I will find the answer to your questions, and render judgment as you see fit. The bargain can be no fairer than that.”

Caleb stared long at Neythan. Then his hand slowly emerged from his ragged smock.

“It seems you are quite the barterer. It shall be as you say. We will find this girl you pursue. But afterward, Neythan, the answers. And, as you have said, judgment.” His eyes finally left Neythan’s to glance down at his outstretched palm.

Neythan lifted his own hand and placed it in Caleb’s. “Skin for skin,” he said.

“Yes, Neythan. Skin for skin.”