Daniel Abraham - The Dragon's Path

Geder kicked at a pebble, sending it skittering down ahead of them. The sunlight pressed down on his face and shoulders.

“But you are going to go back out,” Geder said. “You said that you were waiting for the time to go back out.”

“We will,” the high priest said. They reached the edge of the well, a stone-lined hole in the earth with a rope tied to the stake sunk deep beside it. “When we are forgotten.”

“That could be any time in the last century,” Geder said, but the high priest went on as if he hadn’t spoken.

“When the wounds of the old war are healed and we can walk the world without fear, She will send us a sign. She will sort clean from unclean, and end the age of lies.”

Basrahip squatted, taking the rope in his hands and hauling, hand over hand, until it came up wet. The bucket had been copper once, given over now to verdigris. Basrahip tipped it up to his lips and drank, rivulets falling from the corner of his mouth. Geder shifted uncomfortably beside him. The high priest put the bucket down and wiped the back of his hand across his lips.

“Are you troubled, Lord?”

“I’m… It’s nothing.”

The wide smile was cool. The dark eyes considered him.

“Listen to me, Lord Palliako. Listen to my voice. You can trust me.”

“I’m only… Could I have a drink of that water too?”

Basrahip lifted the bucket up to him. Geder took it in both hands, drinking slowly. The water was cool and tasted of stone and metal. He handed it back, and Basrahip held it out over the blackness for a moment before he let it drop. The rope slithered as it sped back down. The splash was louder than Geder had expected.

“You can trust me,” the high priest said again.

“I know,” Geder said.

“You can tell me. Nothing bad will come of it.”

“Tell you what? I mean, I’m not sure what you’re saying.”

“Yes you are,” the man said, and started back toward the temple. Geder trotted to keep up. “Why did you come looking for the Sinir Kushku? What was it that drew you here?”

“You mean…”

“Through the ages, other men have found us here. Stumbled upon us. You came seeking. What was it that led you here?”

Two of the younger priests passed them, heading toward the well. Geder cracked his knuckles and frowned. He tried to remember what had started him. When was the first time he’d heard the legend? But perhaps that in itself didn’t matter.

“Everywhere I turn,” he said, the words coming slowly, “it seems like things are lies. I don’t know who my friends are, not really. I don’t know who gave me Vanai. Or who in Camnipol would want me killed. Everything in court seems like a game, and I’m the only one who doesn’t know the rules.”

“You are not a man of deceit.”

“No. I am. I have been. I’ve lied and hidden things. I know how easy it is.”

Basrahip stopped, leaning against a boulder. The wide face was impassive. Almost serene. Geder crossed his arms. A stirring of anger warmed his chest.

“I’ve been a token in everyone else’s game,” Geder said. “My whole life, I’ve been the one they tricked into sitting on sawn boards over the shit hole. I’ve been the one they laughed at. They burned my book. Alan Klin burned my book. ”

“Did that bring you here?”

“Yes. No. I mean, when I was a boy, I used to tell myself stories like the old histories. Where I led an army into a doomed battle and won. Or saved the queen. Or went to the underworld and pulled my mother back from the dead. And every time I’ve gone into the world, it’s disappointed me. Do you know what that’s like?”

“I do,” the high priest said. “You didn’t come here to write an essay, Lord Geder. You came here to find us. To find me.”

Geder felt his mouth in a grim, hard scowl.

“I did,” he said. “Because I want to know the truth. Because I am sick to death of wondering. All the lies and deceits and games that everyone plays around me? I want to be the one man who can cut it away and find the truth. And so I heard about the end of all doubt.”

“Would knowing alone be enough? Would it bring you peace?”

“It would,” Geder said.

Basrahip paused, listening. A fly whined around them, landed on the big man’s wide head to drink his sweat, and flew away again.

“It wouldn’t,” Basrahip said, hauling himself back to his feet. “That isn’t what you want. But you are coming closer, Lord Geder. Much closer.”

I heard them talking,” one of his servants whispered. “They’re going to kill us all in our sleep.”

Geder sat in the darkness of his cell. The whispers were supposed to be quiet enough to escape him. If he’d been back in his cot, they would have. Instead, he’d slipped out and padded across the dark floor on silent feet. His back was to the wall beside the doorway, his servants not seven feet away.

“Stop talking shit,” his squire said. “You’re just scaring yourself.”

“I’m not,” the first voice said again, higher and tighter this time. “You think they want people knowing where they are? You think they’re at the ass end of the world because they want company?”

A third voice said something, but he couldn’t make out the words.

“And let them,” the first voice said. “What I heard, he burned down Vanai just because he could, and laughed while he did it.”

“Keep talking about his lordship that way and it won’t be these sand monkeys in priest robes that kill you,” his squire’s voice said. “I’ll face down a hundred false gods before I cross him.”

Geder hugged his knees closer. He expected to feel hurt, but the pain didn’t come. Or anger. He rose to his feet, walking without any attempt to be quiet. He heard the silence of the servants outside his door, but he didn’t care about them. Not what they thought, not what they were, not if they lived. He found his tunic and a pair of leggings and pulled them on in the darkness. He didn’t bother trying to get the stays all tied. Modesty was preserved, and that was enough. Basrahip wouldn’t mind.

When he walked out into the starlit dark, his servants were pretending to sleep. He stepped over them, walking the narrow path along the mountainside, the dirt cooling his feet and the stones biting them. In the first cell he reached where a monk slept, he shook the man awake.

“Take me to Basrahip,” he said.

The high priest slept deeper in the temple. His rooms were dark, the pallet he slept on hardly big enough to accommodate him. The monk who’d brought Geder set down his candle and backed out of the room bowing. Basrahip tucked one massive leg under himself and sat up. He seemed perfectly alert. Geder cleared his throat.

“I’ve been thinking. About what you asked. I want to master the court. I want the men who used me to suffer,” he said. “I want them to beg my forgiveness. I want them humiliated where the world can point at them and pity them and laugh.”

The high priest didn’t move, and then, slowly, he grinned. He lifted a massive finger and pointed it at Geder.

“Yes. Yes, that is what you want. And tell me this, my friend. My brother. Would that be enough?”

“It’ll do for a start.”

The high priest threw his head back and howled with laughter. As he grinned, his teeth shone white as ivory in the candlelight. He stood, wrapping his blanket around him, and Geder found himself grinning too. Saying the words, having them understood, was like taking a stone off his chest.

“I had hoped, Lord Geder,” the high priest said. “From the moment I saw you—an honored man from a great kingdom—I hoped that this was the time. That you would be the sign the goddess sent, and you are. Brother Geder, you are. You have found your truth, and if you will honor it, so shall I.”