The Three Lands Omnibus (2011 Edition) (28 page)

"How did the priests react to this announcement?" Iain asked with a laugh.
"I suppose they would have thought it ridiculous, except that the priests had some sort of prophecy a few years ago that the Jackal God would come to Koretia soon and take over the High Priesthood. Some of the priests were impressed by the man; they said that he spoke like a god and had the presence of one. The others said that the man was simply an imposter who had heard of the prophecy and was taking advantage of it. They challenged the man to show his powers as a god, and he said that he could not use them in the presence of disbelievers."
"A convenient answer," commented Carle, chewing on a cool twig he had retrieved from the balefire. "I suppose he had an equally convincing explanation as to why he could not take off his mask."
"He claimed that he could not appear naked-faced to any man who refused to serve him, and that even among his servants, few would ever see his human face. Well, that convinced even more of the priests that this was nothing other than a pretender to the godhood. They threatened to place him under the gods' curse unless he abandoned his story."
"But he did not," said Devin, who was sitting with his chin on his knee, listening to the story with a serious expression on his face. I have discovered that the only men in the patrol who don't joke about the gods are the borderlanders. Even Quentin, though very Emorian in every other way, refuses to praise Carle's skeptical remarks about the Koretian religion.
"He abandoned the priests' house instead," Malise replied. "The Chara heard this story not long afterwards from one of the royal messengers who brought him news from the Koretian capital. Then, about three weeks ago, the man claiming to be a god turned up again, this time in the Koretian borderland. He was sighted late one night in the Village of Borderknoll – I am not sure where that is."
"Adrian?" Quentin, who had been standing silently apart from the rest of us, came over to crouch near me.
"It's in the borderland of Koretia, about a day's ride from Blackpass." It was also close to Mountside, but I didn't say this.
Malise, warming his hands over the fire, continued, "After that, he began to be spotted all over the borderland, but only a handful of people claim to have spoken to him. In every case, the Koretians say that this masked man calling himself the Jackal asked them to enter into his service, but the Jackal refused to tell them why until they had pledged their loyalty. I suppose that gods expect blind loyalty from their servants. Naturally, these Koretians were wise enough to refuse, but there is no knowing how many other Koretians have been tricked into serving this man. The Chara received a report on the Jackal's activities two days ago from one of his spies, and he is highly alarmed. There is already some sort of civil unrest occurring in Koretia, and if this Jackal-man adds fire to the situation through lawless activity, it could mean war, and that could affect our border."
Quentin was staring reflectively into the flames; I could see that his eyebrows were drawn low. Sewell, Teague, Devin, Carle, and the orderly were sitting close by Malise and were attentive to him; I was the only one who saw the look of concern on Quentin's face. He raised his eyes finally, saw me watching him, and said, "What can you tell us about this, Adrian?"
"I know about the prophecy," I said. "That happened when Fenton was at the priests' house. The prophecy didn't say anything about the god taking human form, though. It just said that he would come to Koretia and become the land's High Priest, and that he would destroy the Koretians' enemies."
Carle grunted and cast his half-chewed twig back into the fire. "Ominous news for Emor, if we should go to war with Koretia."
"What would it mean if the Jackal became High Priest?" Quentin asked.
"Well, the High Priest makes the final decision over matters such as the gods' law. At the moment, since there's no High Priest, the King has been making those decisions. I suppose you could say that the King has been Koretia's High Priest for the past seven years."
"So this man is a rebel," concluded Malise. "He wants to take the King's power away from him."
"Some of his power, at least," I replied uneasily, and looked over at Quentin. He had his chin on his knuckles and I could guess that, like me, he was worried about more than whether war would come to Koretia.
"You are Koretian."
I pulled myself away from my thoughts to reply to Malise, "Yes, sir. I joined the patrol five weeks ago."
"He is Emorian now, subcaptain," inserted Carle.
Malise gave a rueful smile and stood up to stretch his back. "Time was when I would scarcely talk to any man who had Koretian blood in him. When your lieutenant joined the patrol, my first thought was, 'Here's a brown-skinned dog sullying the fine tradition of the patrol with his slurring speech and superstitious ways.' I was sublieutenant then, and I was determined to drive Quentin out of the patrol by dirty means. I used every trick I could to get him transferred or even killed: I sent him against the worst border-breachers, I gave him orders that would endanger him if he obeyed me . . . He always obeyed me. Then one day – it was shortly after I had risen to the lieutenancy and had chosen a lesser man as my sublieutenant – I looked at Quentin and thought, 'When this man reaches his full power, he'll be a better soldier than I can ever be.' I nearly fell on my sword. Then I came to my senses and set about teaching Quentin to take over my job. I hope with all my spirit, lieutenant, that you never have to undergo such a disheartening experience."
"I think it unlikely that the lieutenant will ever meet anyone who might exceed him in skill," said Carle with a laugh, then turned the conversation to Quentin's acts of bravery.
I was closest to Quentin, so I was the only one who heard him say softly, "Don't be so sure." I looked over at him, and then my breath caught in my throat, for he was looking straight at me.
For a heartbeat, he held my gaze; then he stood up and went over to the other side of the balefire to examine the cut on Malise's throat. I was left alone on my side of the fire, wondering about the meaning of Quentin's look.
I've been wondering ever since then, and the conclusion I've reached is that it doesn't make any difference to my work whether Quentin thinks I'll be a good soldier or not, because I would work just as hard, no matter what level of skill or rank I was likely to achieve. Even so, I would like to believe that Quentin thinks well of me. I don't know why this is so important to me – it should be enough that I do my duty – but I suppose it does matter to me that he like me, since I admire him so much. I suppose it's all foolishness on my part.
I've spent so much time writing this entry that I have no time for further speculations, but of course one other thought remains in my mind as I go to bed: Has the Jackal God really become a man?
 
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The third day of December in the 940th year a.g.l.
I'm finding that I no longer have time to write in my journal regularly, since at the end of the day I'm too tired to do anything except sleep. By "end of the day," I don't mean when the day patrol ends its work, for I am usually awake for several hours after that, either playing Law Links – which is a duty for me, since I need to learn so much law – or spending the time in excruciating bouts of memorization.
There is so much to memorize as a patrol guard. There are many more whistles than Fenton ever guessed – hundreds, in fact – and I also have to memorize the names and locations of all the mountains near the pass, as well as the names and appearances of Koretians and Emorians whom I might encounter as border-breachers. These are people who have proved particularly dangerous or successful in the past twenty years; one day I found myself memorizing the description of a slave who could be none other than Fenton. I also need to learn of people who might try to cross the border in the future, such as the King's spies.
It's like being Fenton's student again, only much worse, for I've never been good at memorization. My only consolation is that Teague is far worse than I am. Carle says that he is an excellent guard otherwise, but that if his head weren't attached to his body, he'd forget to wear it every day.
It's becoming quite cold in the mountains. I wear my cloak every day now, except for last week when the winds ceased blowing for three days, as they occasionally do. Carle and I have been busy discussing our plans to rent a city house together when the patrol withdraws from the mountains at the end of the month. "If not sooner," said Carle, but when I asked why, he simply shook his head.
The fourth day of December in the 940th year a.g.l.
Teague and Sewell have been sent back into Emor with the horse and cart. Sewell broke his leg during tonight's patrol, and Quentin thought the leg should be inspected by a physician.
It was Sewell's own fault; he and Teague were taking a shortcut back to the patrol hut after they met our mail messenger. Chatwin has been eagerly awaiting a letter from his betrothed, and they wanted to see his face when he received it. The lieutenant gave Teague and Sewell a lecture on safe climbing that made even my ears burn; then he cut up his extra tunic as a bandage for Sewell's bleeding, as we are short of supplies at the moment. Usually we have two weeks' worth of supplies on hand, but Devin, who is in charge of supplies, got into an argument recently with the peddler who delivers our goods, and I suppose that the peddler is taking his revenge by delaying delivery.
Carle helped Teague and Sewell to hook up the cart and came back swearing mildly about incompetence in young soldiers. Carle's twentieth birthyear begins this winter.
"After all that, Teague didn't even remember to deliver the letters," said Carle. "Well, if Chatwin dies of heartbreak before they remember to send the letters back, it will all be Teague's fault."
He grinned then, and we spent the next couple of hours memorizing laws. Carle has promised to start teaching me the Great Three soon.
The fifth day of December in the 940th year a.g.l.
I awoke at dawn today to find that it was a beautiful day: the sky was dark blue, and clear like spring water. Even with my cloak swept back so that my blades were close to hand, I was drowning in heat, and I was sorely tempted to drop the heavy cloth down a fissure. Carle reminded me, though, of the patrol regulation I memorized last month, about always wearing cloaks in the month of December, so I spent this morning sweating my way along the paths.
"You're lucky compared to the rest of us," Carle pointed out as we took a mid-morning break from our patrol, near the southernmost point of our patrol route. "You're a southerner; you'll be able to bear the mountain summers much better."
"And bear the mountain winters much worse," I retorted. We were lying on the side of a mountain, watching a flock of migratory birds make their way south.
"Ah, but we won't be here during the winter, so you have the better end of the deal," said Carle, swallowing with a gulp the remainder of our bread.
"Greedy man," I said with a laugh. "That was meant to last us until evening."
Carle grinned. "We'll dip back into the hut at noonday and pick up some more. Devin won't like it; he has been guarding our supplies this week like a hen guarding her chicks. I sometimes wonder whether Devin was meant to be a woman; he has a woman's obsession with these trivial details of domesticity. May the Chara preserve me from ever marrying someone—"
He stopped. I thought at first that it was because of the wind, which was blowing so hard from the north now that it was becoming hard for us to hear each other. Then suddenly he was on his feet, blowing one long note: it was the Immediate Danger whistle.
He followed this with a series of notes so rapid that I couldn't follow what he said. He must have guessed that this was the case, for he grabbed me and shouted, "Run! Back to the hut! I will meet you there!"
I have by now become accustomed to following orders without question and without hesitation. Even so, something made me pause when I reached the curve of the mountain, and I looked back at Carle. He was busy sending out the whistle demanding to know the locations of the rest of the day patrol, and the others were busy sending their replies back. His red hair, bright under the sunlight, made a striking contrast with the blue of the sky, but in the brief second in which I watched him, his hair was thrown into shadow as the storm-clouds rolled over us like deadly boulders.
I was racing through the tunnel when the snow arrived.
When I entered the tunnel, the first few flakes were beginning to whip against my face. By the time I reached the end of the tunnel, a journey of less than a minute, the world outside had become a wall of snow. I stood uncertainly for a minute, trying to see through the white blanket smothering the hollow before us. Then I realized that the snow was becoming heavier as I watched, so I took a blind step into the storm.
I have travelled this route eye-bound, I have travelled it at night, I have travelled it with the wind howling so hard that I had no sound to guide me – why, then, was it so much harder to find my through the snow? I suppose that in the past there was always some small sense to guide me: if not my eyes, then my ears; if not my ears, then the light cast by the stars. Now, though, there was nothing to show which direction I was headed in, and the winds kept blowing me off course.
I hadn't gone far before my face was raw from the cut of a thousand tiny ice blades striking my face. My feet were too numb to feel the ground beneath me; more than once I fell when I slipped on the snow beginning to coat the grassy ground of the hollow. I stumbled over something hard, and my heart beat fast with hope, but a moment's worth of groping showed me that I had missed the hut and was standing next to the fireside rocks. I turned around, willed myself to walk in a straight line again, and started again.
In the end, I think my lone salvation was the fact that I was in the hollow: I could not wander aimlessly forever, as I would have done if I had not reached the tunnel in time. I bounced from one end of the hollow to the other until finally, by pure chance, I found myself touching something large and flat. I raised my hands higher and touched the whipping ring.
The wind was pushing me against the wall like a bully sitting on his victim. There was a great temptation to simply stay where I was and recover my breath, but I forced myself to grope along the wall. So intent was I on travelling in this manner that when I reached the end of the wall, I forgot to turn the corner and would have wandered off into oblivion again, except that hands grabbed me and dragged me a short distance to shelter.