2: Servants of the Crossed Arrows (9 page)

Pivan gave a slight laugh, then said, “There is one other thing. It is a sacred word. It must be said when you reach Heaven’s Door.”

“All right.”

“It should be Fikiri’s to say but I don’t know how much of a bad influence his mother may have been on him.”

“He may not say it?”

“His voice might betray him or his tongue might be cursed.” Pivan turned his attention down the road. “It’s true what they say about her. She has Eastern blood and witch’s bones.”

Two days ago John would’ve had no idea what Pivan was talking about, but since then he had overheard numerous conversations about Lady Bousim. As he traveled from the Bousim pilgrimage house to the prayer shrine, he had listened to the stories and gossip as they had spread and transformed. The lady had grown from a willful wife who shamed her husband and al
lowed her silver wedding chains to tarnish into an Eastern witch. Stories of how she enchanted her husband, seduced priests, and even cast spells over her son abounded.

Pivan never started any of the rumors but he did nothing to stop them either.

“I don’t think Lady Bousim would harm her own child,” John said.

“No, but she would go to great lengths not to lose him. She loves the boy as much as her husband despises him.”

John disliked hearing this. He hadn’t met Fikiri but he knew that the boy was only thirteen, too young to be despised by anyone, but especially by his own father. John knew all too well how badly that mere idea could hurt a young man.

“You think I’ll have to say the word for him then?” John asked.

Pivan gave a silent nod. John waited, but Pivan kept his lips pressed tightly closed.

“I can’t say the word if I don’t know what it is,” John reminded him.

“It is sacred and divine. You must respect it, for it is Parfir’s own tongue. You must only speak it when you are worthy of him
 
in your body and soul.”

“I understand,” John replied too quickly.

“No!” Pivan rounded on him and for a moment John thought Pivan might strike him. “No, you can’t understand. This is a bargain for you but for other men it is their calling. Parfir’s will smolders within them; his word lights their souls and burns through them. This word was given to me by such a man. It was his last word.”

John bowed his head. He knew better than to let Pivan see his face. Countless conversations with Laurie had made him wary of any person wearing that expression of fixed intensity and speaking with a strained, aching tone of conviction.

John didn’t doubt that Pivan felt a deep reverence, but the best John could do was respect a spirituality he didn’t share.

“I will give you this word for Fikiri’s sake, because his mother should not be able to bar him from heaven.” Pivan drew in a deep breath and closed his eyes, almost as if he were in pain.

“I-am-here-my-lord.” Pivan slurred the English words together but John still recognized them. He was so surprised to hear them coming out of Pivan’s mouth that out of reflex his head jerked up to make sure that it had been Pivan speaking.

An expression of relief swept over Pivan’s features and he smiled at John.

“So, his word does touch you.” Pivan closed his eyes. “Then this is his will.”

John didn’t trust himself to respond. Luckily a movement on the road caught his eye.

“Someone’s coming.”

Six rashan’im, including Mou’pin, rode their tahldi hard up the road. Dust and frost flew up beneath the animals’ hooves and their fast breath rolled out in white clouds like smoke from a steam engine.

A terrified boy with short dark blonde hair clung to the neck of Mou’pin’s tahldi. His heavy black coat and hood made his skin look sickly pale. Tears streaked his face.

“Gaunan Fikiri’in’Bousim?” John asked. He was smaller than John had expected and seemed younger than thirteen.

Pivan nodded. “He has not yet entirely committed his heart to the priesthood.”

“I can see that.” John considered the Thousand Steps again. That would be quite a distance to drag an unwilling boy.

The distant pounding of the tahldi’s hooves became a thunder. The riders surged up to the top of the road and Mou’pin reined in his tahldi beside Pivan. Grinning, he tossed Fikiri down to his commander.

Pivan caught the boy and set him on his feet directly in front of the steps.

“Today you are called to serve Parfir. Honor him and honor his house.” Pivan shoved the boy forward but Fikiri resisted.

“She’ll hate me if I go!” Fikiri cried out.

Pivan leaned down close to the boy and whispered, “I’ll kill you if you don’t.”

Fikiri bolted forward, scrambling upward in a panic. Pivan straightened and then clapped John on the shoulder.

“He’s all yours. Parfir help you.”

John just started climbing.

The moment Fikiri caught sight of John behind him, he threw himself ahead with greater speed. He slipped and caught himself, and then gave out pathetic groans and sobs. He sprinted up the steps with reckless energy. John didn’t try to catch him. He paced himself.

Twice he called out to reassure Fikiri that he meant him no harm, but his booming voice only seemed to further frighten the boy. After that, John concentrated on not falling down the frost-slick steps. As he went higher, the frost solidified into thin sheets of ice.

Steadily the air grew thinner and colder. Wind cut through John’s coat. The first dull ache began to play through the muscles of his thighs and calves.

Behind him, Pivan and his rashan’im had receded to tiny shadows against the Holy Road.

Ahead Fikiri dragged his feet up one step, swayed, and then slowly negotiated the next. He glanced back at John and, seeing how much distance John had gained, again bolted forward. He stumbled up a few steps and then slipped down to his hands and knees, sobbing. He curled his arms around his legs and sat there in a miserable, trembling heap.

When John reached him, he knelt down and said, “I’m not going to hurt you.”

Fikiri’s face was red and wet from exertion and tears. His breath came in gasps and unappealing snuffles.

“I want to go home,” Fikiri mumbled. He didn’t lift his eyes to John.

“I know,” John told him. They had that in common at least.

“Please, can we go home?”

“I’m sorry, but no.” John slipped the sheepskin of daru’sira from his shoulder and handed it to Fikiri. “Drink some of this.”

“What is it?”

“Daru’sira.”

Fikiri met John’s face for the first time. He seemed startled. He said, “You aren’t Alidas.”

“No, I’m called Jahn.” John smiled, exploiting the innocuous nature of his Basawar name as best he could.

“I had a hunting dog called Jahn.” Fikiri gave him a weak smile and glanced to the edges of John’s hood, where strands of his blonde hair hung against the black wool. “Are you a friend of my mother’s?”

“I’ve met her. I’m the man who stopped your convoy on the Holy Road the night before you reached Amura’taye.”

Fikiri looked at him blankly.

“You were in a carriage on your way here,” John reminded him.

“I remember the train station at Nurjima but after that all I remember is the priest’s voice, chanting prayers over and over…” Fikiri trailed off. Tears began to dribble down his cheeks.

“Drink a little daru’sira. It’ll warm you up,” he told the boy.

Fikiri sniffed and sipped the drink and then handed the skin back to John.

“Do you think you can walk?” John asked.

Fikiri’s mouth trembled. “Do I have to?”

“Yes, you have to.” John felt like an utter asshole making the boy stand and keep going, but he needed Fikiri to get into Rathal’pesha. And anyway, Pivan wouldn’t offer Fikiri much of a welcome if he caught him dragging himself down the mountain.

John helped Fikiri to his feet and let the boy lean on him as they continued climbing.

Icy mist from mountain clouds drifted over them, enfolding them in whiteness and cold. Sudden, sharp winds swept down, slicing through John’s clothes and chilling the sweat on his back and thighs. Fikiri shivered constantly and wept intermittently. When the sound of his crying didn’t drown it, John could hear the boy’s teeth chattering against each other.

“They won’t let us enter even if we reach Rathal’pesha.” Fikiri sniffed. “They’ll leave us out to freeze to death on the mountainside. There are prayers that have to be said and words—”

“I know,” John told him. “I know the prayers and I know the words.”

Fikiri halted as though riveted to the stairway.

“You know them?”

John shrugged and then began to chant the prayers.

A strange, dreamy expression spread across Fikiri’s face.

John stopped chanting and said, “You see? It’ll be fine.”

“What did you say?”

“I said, it will be fine.” John frowned at Fikiri.

“No, it won’t!” Fikiri’s lips began to tremble. “There are prayers and words that have to be said . I don’t know what they are.”

“I just told you that I know them.”

“You did?” Fikiri’s look of surprise seemed utterly genuine.

“Yes, I just said one of the prayers to you.”
          

“You didn’t say anything,” Fikiri told him.

John began the prayer again, and once more the tension and fear drained from Fikiri’s face. His arms hung limply; his eyes drooped nearly closed. A slight, sweet smile spread across his lips and he swayed with John’s voice as if it were music. Then Fikiri began climbing. He took the steps with the rhythm of John’s voice, moving with an ease and grace that he had previously lacked.

So that was the purpose of the prayers, John realized. Inducing this trance-like state was what the attendant did and why Fikiri needed one. There was no way he would endure the climb on his own will alone. Left to himself, Fikiri would have just sat down and cried until sunset.

John felt slightly guilty as he continued chanting prayers that compelled Fikiri to mindlessly climb the steps. It seemed like a sinister power to have over the boy and one that, as a decent person, he shouldn’t use. On the other hand, they were making much better time this way and Fikiri wasn’t crying.

John kept praying.

The words that had pervaded the last two days flowed from him. One prayer led into the next and the next after that. They repeated in a long cycle, the words pulling him onward.

John’s climb wasn’t a painless daze like Fikiri’s. His muscles burned and his throat ached. He didn’t dare to look ahead him. He didn’t want to see the endless line of steps still before him. He kept his eyes on his feet.

There was snow now. Little patches of it filled the shadowed corners of the gray stone steps. Clumps clung to John’s boots. John’s legs felt like weights. The bruises across his back throbbed. Ahead of him Fikiri continued, oblivious to both fatigue and cold.

Suddenly, John felt something in the air. Something like a breath blown against his ear. It was a familiar sensation. It was the way the air seemed to tremble just as Ravishan appeared before him.

“Nahara’hi, muhli,”
a low voice hissed.

John instantly looked up, searching for the source of the threatening words. But only Fikiri stood before him, his dreamy expression fading as John fell silent, listening.

“Shir’im’hir inaye!”
the voice came again.

John whipped around and looked down the steps. Still, no one. He looked farther ahead on the steps.

“Korud,”
a second low voice growled over them.
“Shir’im’hir maht!”

A terrified whimper escaped Fikiri.

More voices joined in, hissing and growling in Basawar.

“Turn aside, unworthy filth.”

“How dare you walk the Thousand Steps to Heaven’s Door, hideous, ugly creature.”

“Dirty.”

“Sinful.”

“Filthy.”

“Piece of shit.”

Fikiri collapsed to his knees, weeping and begging Parfir to forgive him, to spare him.

The voices swept over them, seeming to rise from the sky and stones. John narrowed his eyes. Sky and stones didn’t speak Basawar or any other language. These were human voices, men’s voices. The air shivered with the sensation of hidden spaces opening and slipping closed. It had to be the Payshmura priests.

“Fikiri.” John crouched down beside the boy.

“I’ll kill you,”
a voice whispered.

“Tear you to pieces,”
another hissed.

“Burn you alive.”

Their words were like a swarm of insects slashing through the air. John could almost feel their words
 
brush across his face. He could smell their breath.

“It’s a trick, Fikiri. They’re testing you,” John told him.

Fikiri sobbed. “I don’t want to die! Please! I don’t want to die!”

“You won’t.” John placed his hands over Fikiri’s ears.