The Book of the Burning

NAVA

The first thing he did was unbind him.

The second thing Prince Rendan did was declare:

“If it were up to me, I would let you go.”

He was marching up and down the long marble hall of his apartments in the Takarand and saying, “You are a royal prince. Just like me. Only a hell of a lot more heroic than me. I haven’t done anything. I know I wouldn’t go into that temple.”

Suddenly Rendan threw down the red towel he’d been ringing and the look in his eyes that people in the Great City knew was dangerous came.

“Hey!” Rendan said to Ethan. “Howabout I spring you now? How’s that? That’ll show them!”

“Yes,” the dirty man smiled wryly, “and then I am sure they would show you, and I don’t think you want to be shown by Phineas. Shown anything.”

“Oh…” Rendan looked frustrated, “I’m not afraid of him!”

“Well, you should be,” Ethan said, simply. “I was in his power a long time, and there wasn’t a day I wasn’t afraid. Letting me go might be momentarily satisfying for the both of us, but he would catch me. Quickly. And make you pay. And your father would pay as well.

“No, right here is the safest place for me to be. And for you to keep me.”

Rendan put his hands behind his back. He was medium height, good looking with far apart eyes and broad shoulders.

“What can I do, then?” he said quietly. “This isn’t right, and I don’t know what to do.”

“Well, you could start,” Ethan suggested from where he stood on the other side of the room, “by ordering me a bath.”

“We were headed back to the farm,” Mehta told them over a large meal at the Whitefoot Hotel.

“We thought to be back in two days time.”

She shivered. “Ever since that ship came into the city, and the Temple was lit, and those drums started pounding, it’s been a place I’ve wanted to get away from.”

She turned to Nelson, who was also Gimble, and said to Theone, “I know who you are. You have never been out of his mind. I already know who he was. Where he was. He needs to get out of this city. We all do,” she said.

Nelson was looking at Mehta with deep respect, as was Theone, and Theone said, “Dear Mehta, we cannot do that. We’ve come into the city for a reason.”

“Perhaps,” Ohean said, “the same reason that ship has come.”

“Phineas, the High Priest of Mozhudak is in the City,” Nelson said. “I remember the feel of him. The Zahem believe he is the High Priest of their God—”

“But he is,” Austin said. “I remember him from my childhood.”

“But do you remember the last High Priest?”

“No. But it was his uncle, Elkenah. And before that Hopni.”

“Friend,” Nelson said, “what if I was to tell you the majority of the High Priests on your records are nothing more than Phineas come again and again in different forms? What if  I was to tell you that Phineas had always been the dark priest of Mozhudak?”

“That is… the story we tell with our Prophets,” Austin said, “that there are really only two, exchanging life after life.”

“I do not know the truth of that tale, but the truth of what I am saying is well known among the Black Hand,” Nelson said. “And Phineas does not die. He only brings death and in bringing death he finds new life, and changes form.”

“He is the Seventh,” Ohean said, “the one who is broken.”

“We saw his procession,” Mehta added.

Conn leaned into Ohean and said, “Ash, if he’s here then he knows we’re here.”

“He knows someone is here,” Ohean said

“Tea…” Nelson began, and started over again. He couldn’t believe he was looking at her. “Theone… why are you here?”

“It’s…” she looked from him to the others.

“I think the two of them should be alone,” Ohean said.

“I agree,” Anson nodded.

“I’m all for them being alone, really I am,” Mehta said, lifting a drumstick. “But truth is I’m hungry right now, and what that means is it’s the two of them,” she pointed at Nelson and Theone with her chicken leg, “who ought to withdraw.”

Their speech was nearly inaubible in the crowded dining hall of the Whitefoot Hotel.

“I thought you were dead.”

“No. I thought they would kill me,” Nelson said. “They told me I lost what I had, that once I could kill without thinking and now, here I was, bawling on the floor over a child. And a child who was meant to be another Hand or just a usewoman. They turned me out with not even my cloak or my sword and shut the door. They declared that I not be given food or quarter for four hundred miles around. They set the White Mark upon me and bound my tongue. They didn’t kill me, but they almost did. If I had not found my name again, I could never again have spoken. I would never have been able to put myself back together.

“This was how Mehta found me. I was only a little ways from Turnthistle Farm. That’s what we call it.”

“Turnthistle?” Theone said.

“Yes. Isn’t it a funny little name?”

“No, Gim—I mean…”

“Orem,” Farmer Nelson said. “My name is Orem.”

“Orem,” she repeated.

“Yes,” he said.

“It’s only… We stayed there. A few nights back we stayed there. A young man,. Arvad—”

“Yes, Arvad’s the lad who runs things.”

“Arvad kept us. He talked about you. But… How could I know who you were? To me.”

“I named him. The baby.”

Theone looked up at him.

“I named out baby Saran.”

Theone nodded. She nodded a lot to keep from crying.

Neither one of them said anything for a long time. Then she spoke.

“Orem…. I…”

“You can call me Gimble.”

“Gim,” she said, “I’ve wanted to say your name. I… I didn’t know I loved you until almost before it was too late. I made my heart so hard all this time thinking about you. Dead. What they did to you. And now you’re here. You’re right here, and…”

“I know.”

“No you don’t,” she said. “I… I’m afraid to touch you or look at you because… you might disappear You’ve been dead to me so long I’m afraid you’re a ghost. Even now.”

Orem reached out to touch her face and then, to his surprise, drew back his hand. His laugh was a little shaky.

“What?” said Theone.

He gave a long sigh and said, “I’m afraid to touch you too.”

“We shouldn’t be so…”

“Nervous.”

“Yes,” Theone said.

“I feel just like a stupid little boy. And I shouldn’t. We’ve… We aren’t strangers to each other.”

“We are,” Theone told him.

“I… when I think of those days. When I think of how I met you… Whatever it became, it was wrong how it started. When I think of that—”

“If you think of all the wrong that happened in that place, you’ll never stop thinking,” Theone said. “If you think about all the things you boys were taught, the love you never had… You did the best you could. I never felt…”

“Raped,” Orem said

“No,” Theone said. “Or maybe I am so damaged by that place I can’t accurately say. One boy who came to me wept in my arms all night, and then I learned they had killed him, decided he was to weak. I almost wished I’d gotten with child by him, just so that something of that poor boy could remain.”

Theone shook her head.

“It wasn’t right what was done to you or to me. We were abused, all of us. And it was another world.”

“Only it’s not another word,” Orem’s eyes went to the windows, toward the towers of the not distant Temple.

“No,” Theone said, quiet and nervous before a man who had lain with her, given her the only joy she had known in bed, whose child she had born.

They stood like that for a long time, and then Orem said, “I guess we will just have to be very gentle to each other. Make sure neither one of us blows away.”

“The time has come to tell the whole truth,” Ohean said. “But it cannot be told here.”

Conn nodded. Theone, Orem, Mehta and Anson, and Austin looked at him.

“None of us can be left out of this. We are all here, called together for a purpose, I believe,” he said. “Not believe, but know. Though I cannot say how. But we must not discuss matters here.”

“I still have the use of my rooms for one more night,” Orem said. “We can head back.”

Mehta sighed.

“Look, Mehta,” Orem turned to her. “I know you wished to be gone from here by the end of the day. If you wish I will not hold you. You may return to the farm.”

“I do not wish to take the cart a two days journey by myself,” said Mehta. “And I do not wish to leave you either. We will go back to the hotel. We will remain in this city.”

Orem opened his mouth to say his thanks, but Mehta shook her head. “You don’t have to say a thing to me, Master.”

“If this is important,” Orem said to Ohean, “and I see that it is, then we should go back to our old rooms at once.”

“You remember my kinsman, Ethan, who was kept in the dungeons?”

“Yes.”

“He had secrets—” Theone began, but Ohean held up a hand.

Theone looked up and Ohean moved all about the room, when he reached the middle of a wall, making a gesture with his hand, again and again, and when he passed the balcony, in view of the Temple, he cast a sharp gesture at it, then drew down his hand like one pulling close a curtain and said, “Continue.”

“He had secrets,” Theone said, still watching Ohean, “that I could not tell you, Gimble. He was searching for a Stone.”

“The Stone of Mozhudak,” Orem finished.

“The Stone of Elladyl,” Theone corrected. “A gift from her to the queens and kings of my people. Ethan sought it and was caught. He escaped the prison, and I chose to come after him when I was free. See, he said he would come back and rescue me once he had gotten the Jewel. He seemed to think it would be so easy. Ethan is probably dead, but then who knows? I thought you were too. Anyway, I was going to get it when I met Conn, Anson, Austin and Ohean, whom you already know is an enchanter, said he had been sent to help me. I believe him, and he knows more about what we’re doing that I do. He said I had to trust him, that we all had to trust each other. And now I do.”

Ohean nodded and said to Orem. “And now you and you too Mehta are also in this.”

“You all are going to enter the House of Mozhudak and take from its secret place his—the,” Orem corrected, “Stone?”

“Yes.”

Orem turned away and he looked at the ground. He clasped his hands together.

“Orem,” Theone began. Then, “Gimble. What is it?”

He looked up at her.

“You do not understand, Tea. I was a Hand. Look,” he exposed his wrist. “I still have the Black Star. I killed men. I killed…. People,” he said. He shook his head. “You speak so lightly of just going into that Temple. But I… I was consecrated there. That was where I lost my name. I…” he shook his head. “I believe it was evil. I believe that now, but it was what I was born to.”

“It’s what I was born to as well.”

“No, Theone,” Orem said. “Your father was, but he escaped. Your mother was made to serve, but she escaped. They took you back. It is part of you, but… It was all of me. It was the only world I knew. And… I don’t mean to say I respect it. But… I cannot go against it.”

While Orem looked at the floor, Theone looked up to Ohean.

“There’s no shame in that,” Ohean said, simply. “None of us asked you to. Only try not to hinder us.”

Orem nodded his head.

“I’ll more than that,” he said. “I will try to help you as much as I can. I mean that.”

The weather was warm enough to sit on the balcony, and insects were chittering that night. Beneath them was the low noise of the city of Nava at night, and Theone came out, pushing a hand through her thick hair, and sat beside Anson and Conn.

They could see the firelit form of the Temple, long and grand, crowned by its towers, the eternal smoke rising from it.

“It really is something,” Anson said because he could not think of anything else to say.

Theone nodded. She twisted her stiff neck around.

“I never realized how much it is part of what I was brought up in. How closely it is linked to that horrible place that almost destroyed me. That almost destroyed Orem.”

“You just called him Orem.”

“Well, yes,” Theone said. “That is his name. And it fits him. He almost lost it. He’s so… He’s a good man, but he was so beat up by them. And he’s still beat up. I never saw that before. He was strong when I came to him. He was strong in the ways of the Black Star. Not quite a good person. Now he is good and so weak and so fragile I don’t want to break him.”

“You love him.”

“Yes,” Theone said. “I’ve heard of girls falling in love. I didn’t fall. I simply love him.”

“You had his child. You could go to him.”

“No,” Theone said, shaking her head.

“You’re afraid to.”

“Yes. He’s back. It’s new. It’s too new. When I woke up this morning he was dead and gone and I had learned to live with it. He was the only man who ever… Who I ever loved being with, and after him, after Saran died, I never loved another. I don’t know if I’d break him or he’d break me. I can’t go back to him. Do you understand?”

Anson nodded, thinking of Ohean, thinking of the lovers he’d met in the shadows of Kingsboro and the tents of war, thinking of the bleak beds he’d lain in after Ohean was gone, lit only by Derek, and Gabriel and finally Pol, his dear Pol who was now on the White Island..

Austin said, “I’ve spent half of my life loving a woman I could not love properly, then experiencing pleasure I could not understand. All the time I thought of the love of my life, who broke things off with me, who is in this very city right now. I still think of him, and you know what, Tea?”

She turned to him.

“As much as I want to find him, see his face again, touch his lips, the truth is I’m just as afraid as you of what will happen if we ever meet again.”

END OF CHAPTER FORTY-TWO