Peter Brett - The Daylight War

Inevera watched Ahmann, seeing recognition in his eyes as they took in the khaffit .

The voice from his past.

Inevera looked closer, studying the man’s face. She had to look past the thick jowls and cast back years, but at last recalled the boy who had carried Ahmann to the dama’ting pavilion all those years ago. A boy who had visited the pavilion himself years later, and left with a limp the dama’ting were not sure would ever heal. Abban, son of Chabin, the merchant who used to sell couzi to her father. That was reason enough to dislike him.

‘What makes you think you are worthy to stand here among men?’ Ahmann demanded. The anger in his tone surprised her. Perhaps the debt of his past was to be collected, rather than paid. Why else would a khaffit come to the First Warrior’s palace and risk his wrath?

‘Apologies, great one.’ Abban dropped to his knees and pressed his forehead into the dirt.

‘Look at you,’ Ahmann snarled. ‘You dress like a woman and flaunt your tainted wealth as if it is not an insult to everything we believe. I should have let you fall.’

Fall? Inevera wondered.

‘Please, great master,’ Abban said. ‘I mean no insult. I am only here to translate.’

‘Translate?’ Ahmann glanced up and noticed the Northerner for the first time. ‘A chin ?’ Ahmann turned to Ashan. ‘You called me here to speak to a chin ?’

‘Listen to his words,’ Ashan urged. ‘You will see.’

Ahmann studied the greenlander a long time, then shrugged. ‘Speak, and be quick about it,’ he told Abban. ‘Your presence offends me.’

‘This is Arlen asu Jeph am’Bales am’Brook,’ Abban said, gesturing to the Messenger. ‘Late out of Fort Rizon to the north, he brings you greetings, and begs to fight alongside the men of Krasia tonight in alagai’sharak .’

Ahmann gasped, and Inevera, too, felt a wave of shock. A Northerner who wished to fight was like a fish asking to swim in hot sand.

The men began to argue over whether the man’s wish should be granted, but Inevera ignored them. ‘Husband,’ she said quietly, touching Ahmann’s arm. ‘If the chin wishes to stand in the Maze like a Sharum , then he must have a foretelling.’

Inevera led the greenlander to a casting chamber. Ahmann insisted on accompanying her, and she could think of no easy way to deny him. He was naïve at times, but her husband was no fool. He sensed her interest in the man, and if the Northerner were indeed his zahven , he could likely sense that, too.

‘Hold out your arm, Arlen, son of Jeph,’ he told the Northerner when she drew her knife. The chin frowned but didn’t hesitate to roll up his sleeve and hold out his arm.

Brave , Inevera thought as she made the cut. The dice seemed to hum in her hands as she shook and threw.

A chill ran down her spine as she read the result.

No …

She pressed her thumb into the chin ’s wound. He grunted but did not resist. Inevera wet the dice afresh and threw them again.

And a third time.

The fate of Arlen asu Jeph am’Bales am’Brook spread out before her, the same on the third throw as it had on the first. Inevera had cast the bones for countless warriors, but never since Ahmann had she seen the like.

Could he be the Deliverer? She glanced at the greenlander. He was not much to look at, neither short nor tall, his hair the colour of sand and his face bare like a khaffit . He wasn’t uncomely, but neither was he as handsome as Ahmann.

But his eyes were hard like her husband’s, and the same potentials buzzed around him like insects drawn to a lamp — futures where men called him Deliverer, where he was martyred, or died alone, or failed, driving humanity into extinction.

If only I could take husbands like Ahmann takes wives. Her mind ran through the possibilities, but in the end it was impossible. Her powers were not infinite, and even a dama’ting could not take two mortal husbands. Just one pushed the boundaries. This greenlander, for all his potential, could not be the leader her people followed, and there could not be two such men, north and south. The land was not big enough for both. They would tear it asunder, losing Sharak Ka in the process.

And so it must be Ahmann.

‘He can fight.’ She put away her dice and daubed the cut, soaking up the welling blood. She administered a salve and bound the chin ’s wound with fresh cloth, pocketing the bloody one.

Ahmann and the chin left the chamber immediately, and she could hear her husband shouting orders in the hall. She knelt and drew her dice once more, squeezing the bloody cloth over them.

‘How can Ahmann take the son of Jeph’s power for his own?’ she asked as she threw.

— When the zahven finds power, he will share the secret with his true friends, but die before giving it up.-

Inevera quickly scooped the dice back into the pouch, getting to her feet and exiting the casting chamber. Ahmann was down the hall, about to leave for the training grounds. She caught his arm.

‘The chin will be instrumental in your rise to Shar’Dama Ka,’ she whispered. ‘Embrace him as a brother, but keep him within reach of your spear. One day you must kill him, if you are to be hailed as Deliverer.’

Alarms burned in the city that night, echoed by bells and the screams of women throughout the Undercity. The first wall had been breached.

It was unthinkable. Unheard of.

And yet it was Waning, and the dice had said Ahmann was to meet his zahven . Had the greenlander killed him? What if they had not been speaking of the greenlander? What if Alagai Ka had indeed risen this night and Ahmann was facing him this very moment? Was he ready if Sharak Ka began tonight?

It seemed the next morning that it had, and he was. A rock demon had smashed open the great gate, slaughtering warriors by the score and clearing the way for hundreds of other alagai . Such a thing had not occurred in the history of the Desert Spear, a calamity great enough to chill the blood of the bravest man.

But Ahmann had beaten them back, resealing the gates and rescuing countless warriors. He and the greenlander had faced the rock demon together on the Maze floor and trapped it for the sun. It was only by sheer luck it had escaped.

But the price had been high. Over a third of Krasia’s warriors dead in one night, and the demon, it happened, was a personal foe of the greenlander. The Andrah had wanted him dead, and Ahmann had put his reputation on the line to save the man in open defiance of his leader, calling him Par’chin, the brave outsider. It was only the broad support of the Sharum and key dama that had saved the Northerner and kept Ahmann’s head on his shoulders.

‘I will need more of the Par’chin’s blood,’ Inevera said.

Ahmann laughed. ‘Easily done. The Par’chin bleeds often in the Maze, but always at great cost to the alagai .’ The next time he brought her a rag so soaked in the greenlander’s blood that it filled an entire vial when squeezed. Inevera had attached a piece of hora to the glass under layers of opaque glaze and warded it for cold to preserve its essence.

Inevera herself served the Par’chin tea the night he brought the spear. Ahmann looked at her incredulously, but she wanted to get as close to the item as possible. The greenlander said nothing of its origins as the other Sharum gazed at the spear in wonder, but he had privately admitted to Ahmann that he had taken it from the ruins of the holy city of Anoch Sun.

The heavy curtains of the dining chamber were pulled tight, and she wore her warded circlet. It was years since she last served tea, but the precise movements of the ritual had been ingrained in her as nie’dama’ting , letting her focus on the spear. It glowed like the sun itself in Everam’s light — power that could only come from a demon bone core. The hundreds of interconnected wards were beauty beyond belief, and the metal was something she had never seen before.