Steven Brust - Jhereg

“I hope,” I said, “that Morrolan isn’t planning on doing another number like your father did.”

“He couldn’t.”

“Why not? If he’s using pre-Empire sorcery . . . ”

She grimaced prettily. “I’ll correct what I said before. Pre-Empire sorcery is not exactly direct manipulation of chaos; it’s one step removed. Direct manipulation is something else again—and that’s what Adron was doing. He had the ability to use, in fact, the ability to create chaos. If you combine that with the skills of pre-Empire sorcery . . . ”

“And Morrolan doesn’t have the skill to create chaos? Poor fellow. How can he live without it?”

Aliera chuckled. “It isn’t a skill one can learn. It goes back to genes again. So far as I know, it is only the e’Kieron line of the House of the Dragon that holds the ability—although it is said that Kieron himself never used it.”

“I wonder,” I said, “how genetic heritage interacts with reincarnation of the soul.”

“Oddly,” said Aliera e’Kieron.

“Oh. So, anyway, that explains where the Dragaeran Houses come from. I’m surprised that the Jenoine wasted their time breeding an animal like the Jhereg into some Dragaerans,” I said.

“ That’s another one I owe you, boss. ”

“ Shut up, Loiosh. ”

“Oh,” said Aliera, “but they didn’t.”

“Eh?”

“They played around with jheregs and found a way to put human-level intelligence into a brain the size of a rednut, but they never put any jhereg genes into Dragaerans.”

“ There, Loiosh. You should feel grateful to the Jenoine, for— ”

“ Shut up, boss. ”

“But I thought you said—”

“The Jhereg is the exception. They didn’t start out as a tribe the way the others did.”

“Then how?”

“Okay, we have to go back to the days when the Empire was first being formed. In fact, we have to go back even further. As far as we know, there were originally about thirty distinct tribes of Dragaerans. We don’t know the exact number, since there were no records being kept back then.”

“Eventually, many of them died off. Finally, there were sixteen tribes left. Well, fifteen, plus a tribe of the Teckla, which really didn’t do much of anything.”

“They invented agriculture,” I cut in. “That’s something.”

She brushed it aside. “The tribes were called together, or parts of each tribe, by Kieron the Conqueror and a union of some of the best Shamans of the time, and they got together to drive the Easterners out of some of the better lands.”

“For farming,” I said.

“Now, in addition to the tribes, there were a lot of outcasts. Many of them came from the tribe of the Dragon—probably because the Dragons had higher standards than the others—” She tossed her head as she said this; I let it go by.

“Anyway,” she continued, “there were a lot of outcasts, mostly living in small groups. While the other tribes were coming together under Kieron, a certain ex-Dragon named Dolivar managed to unite most of these independent groups—primarily by killing any of the leaders who didn’t agree with the idea.

“So they got together, and, I guess more sarcastically than anything else, they began calling themselves ‘the tribe of the Jhereg.’ They lived mostly off the other tribes—stealing, looting, and then running off. They even had a few Shamans.”

“Why didn’t the other tribes get together to wipe them out?” I asked.

She shrugged. “A lot of the tribes wanted to, but Kieron needed scouts and spies for the war against the Easterners, and the Jheregs were obviously the only ones who could manage it properly.”

“Why did the Jheregs agree to help?”

“I guess,” she remarked drily, “Dolivar decided it was preferable to being wiped out. He met with Kieron before the Great March started, and got an agreement that, if his ‘tribe’ helped out, they would be included in the Empire when it was over.”

“I see. So that’s how the Jhereg became part of the Cycle. Interesting.”

“Yes. It also ended up killing Kieron.”

“What did?”

“The bargain; the strain of forcing the tribes to adhere to the bargain after the fighting was over and the other tribes no longer saw that the Jhereg could be of any value to them. He was eventually killed by a group of Lyorn warriors and Shamans who decided that he was responsible for some of the problems the Jheregs brought to the Empire.”

“So,” I said, “we owe it all to Kieron the Conqueror, eh?”

“Kieron,” she agreed, “and this Jhereg chieftain named Dolivar who forced the deal in the first place, and then forced the others in his tribe to agree to it.”

“Why is it, I wonder, that I’ve never heard of this Jhereg chieftain? I don’t know of any House records on him, and you’d think he’d be considered some kind of hero.”

“Oh, you can find him if you dig enough. As you know better than I, the Jhereg isn’t too concerned with heroes. The Lyorns have records of him.”

“Is that how you found out all this?”

She shook her head, “No. I learned a lot of it talking to Sethra. And some I remembered, of course.”

“ What!? ”

Aliera nodded. “Sethra was there, as Sethra. I’ve heard her age given at ten thousand years. Well, that’s wrong. It’s off by a factor of twenty. She is, quite literally, older than the Empire.”

“Aliera, that’s impossible! Two hundred thousand years? That’s ridiculous!”

“Tell it to Dzur Mountain.”

“But . . . and you! How could you remember?”

“Don’t be a fool, Vlad. Regression, of course. In my case, it’s a memory of past lives. Did you think reincarnation was just a myth, or a religious belief, like you Easterners have?”

Her eyes were glowing strangely, as I fought to digest this new information.

“I’ve seen it through my own eyes—lived it again.

“I was there, Vlad, when Kieron was backed into a corner by an ex-Dragon named Dolivar, who had been Kieron’s brother before he shamed himself and the whole tribe. Dolivar was tortured and expelled.

“I share the guilt there, too, as does Sethra. Sethra was supposed to hamstring the yendi, but she missed—deliberately. I saw, but I didn’t say anything. Perhaps that makes me responsible for my brother’s death, later. I don’t know . . . ”

“Your brother!” This was too much.

“My brother,” she repeated. “We started out as one family. Kieron, Dolivar, and I.”

She turned fully toward me, and I felt a rushing in my ears as I listened to her spin tales that I couldn’t quite dismiss as mad ravings or myths.

“I,” she said, “was a Shaman in that life, and I think I was a good one, too. I was a Shaman, and Kieron was a warrior. He is still there, Vlad, in the Paths of the Dead. I’ve spoken to him. He recognized me.

“Three of us. The Shaman, the warrior—and the traitor. By the time Dolivar betrayed us, we no longer considered him a brother. He was a Jhereg, down to his soul.

“His soul . . . ” she repeated, trailing off.

“Yes,” she continued, “ ‘Odd’ is the right way to describe the way heredity of the body interacts with reincarnation of the soul. Kieron was never reincarnated. I have been born into a body descended from the brother of my soul. And you—” she gave me a look that I couldn’t interpret, but I suddenly knew what was coming. I wanted to scream at her not to say it, but, throughout the millennia, Aliera has always been just a little faster than me. “—You became an Easterner, brother.”

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