Birthrights_Revisions to the Truth Page 7
As a child, he’d often begged his father and the tellers to tell him the histories of all the idols. But only the most notable were documented in the Oracle’s vast library. The origins of most were long-forgotten, along with the peoples who’d believed in them. At one time, each had been venerated. Now, they were strewn about, set at odd angles or tipped over—an arrangement intended to highlight their present insignificance.
Quint’s father considered the collection of looted and donated idols proof of the pre-eminence of the Allyrian Code. Teller Salf, who’d accepted the role—or “burden,” as he more often referred to it—of Quint’s primary instructor, said much the same. “Think of the idols like bridges,” the youngest teller had taught. “Donating these heirlooms to the Oracle is burning the bridge, removing their temptation to return to their ancestors’ faiths.”
Quint couldn’t understand why becoming Quondam necessitated abandoning the past. When his questions on the topic had provoked an indignant rant from the teller, though, he’d let the point drop. Upon reaching his fifteenth turn, he’d started his training to prepare him for the Rites of the Order. He’d hoped the training would reveal secrets that would resolve the questions that dogged him about his faith. But after two turns training, if anything, he found the Allyrian Code and laws of the Order even more confounding.
The creaking protest of seldom-used hinges signaled the opening of the chamber door. Quint crouched behind the gold bust of Smeit, the Allyrian god of death. The bust was close enough to the telling table for him to eavesdrop, large enough to conceal his full form. He removed his white prayer cap—it was too easy to spot, even in dim light—and stuffed it into his pocket. As the door opened, a shaft of sunlight illuminated the mounds of treasure.
“Whoa!” the financier’s son remarked when he glimpsed the contents for the first time.
As the door closed, the sunlight narrowed to a sliver then disappeared, returning the Hall to the muted light of oil lamps lining the aisle. At first, Quint could barely distinguish the outlines of the two men. As they neared the telling table, though, their features came into focus.
The patron wore a plain tan tunic under a simple brown mantle—fancy enough to have bone buttons, but not enough to draw attention. He was neither tall nor short, portly nor slender, handsome nor homely. With ordinary eyes and straight brown hair, he fit the stereotype of a middle son—forgettable.
Next to him, despite a frail body swallowed by silver robes, Teller Salf looked imposing. Not physically imposing—he was short and slight—but his posture exuded confidence, and his bright green eyes radiated a keen intellect. “Be seated,” he instructed, as he pressed his robes against the back of his thighs and lowered his body to the stool.
The financier’s son emptied a small purse into the palm of his hand then dropped onto the stool opposite. Not often were middle sons accepted for tellings—the Order only opened the Hall of Riches for the wealthiest and most powerful of the Quondam—and the six silvers in his hand would make a paltry offering. Perhaps aware this was the case, he looked nervous, stacking then restacking the coins on the telling table.
Teller Salf swept away the silvers with his arm, letting them clatter among the other coins on the floor. “They mustn’t think of the offering as a transaction,” the teller had imparted during Quint’s early days of training. “At the first meeting, no matter the sum, discard it. Let them perceive its insignificance compared with the wealth surrounding them. The first visit’s an investment, to secure their belief.” Although Quint wouldn’t perform tellings when he succeeded his father as Voice, he needed to understand the inner workings of the Order to, one day, lead it.
The young man’s face flushed as he watched his coins disappear into the riches covering the floor. “Can you really see the future?” he asked, still looking down, a question that would have provoked an angry response from most brothers of the Order.
Teller Salf, though, was renowned for his skill and patience in handling new patrons. He remained calm. “Anyone can see the future. You can see the future.”
“I can?” The new patron looked to each side, then behind him, as if he suspected the answer a trick. Then he blanched, perhaps deciding it was the teller’s veiled rejection of his meager offering.
Without warning, Teller Salf’s hands darted from his flowing robes and grabbed the young man’s wrists. “Close your eyes,” he commanded. “Picture in your mind what I describe.”
Quint leaned closer, pressing his face against the gold bust, entranced. Every first meeting was different—a dance where the teller needed to feel the beat to determine which steps should follow. This dance was unlike any Quint had witnessed in the Hall before.
“This very evening,” the teller continued when his patron’s eyes closed, “you’ll return to your chambers resenting the lightness in your pocket where before was coin. You might think you’ve been swindled, vow not to return.”
Quint was confused by Teller Salf’s approach. Is he instructing the man not to return—rejecting him as a patron? But he said before the amount didn’t matter in a first meeting? He watched, rapt, as the teller continued.
“As your bath is drawn, you see your maidservant waiting by the tub for the water to cool. You admire the smooth curves of her breasts and wonder how you failed to notice them before. When she stands to wipe the sweat from her brow, you can see the firmness of her buttocks by the way her clothes bunch against her lower back. This innocent admiration begets a hunger you fight to repress.
“Too long you’ve been imprisoned by shyness and uncertainty as a middle son. But great men aren’t satisfied by what’s offered. They take what should be theirs. You’re a great man. You grab her. She resists at first, a slave to an outdated morality. In time, though, she’ll invite your touch.”
As the telling unfolded, the young man’s hands tightened into fists. He bit his lower lip, his chest rising and falling with the pace of the words.
“When you slide her blouse from her shoulders, you relish her nakedness, throbbing in anticipation. No more are you an overlooked middle son. You’re a great man. You lift her skirt and drive into her not as a lover, but as a conqueror. When you finish, you sink into the still-steaming tub, renouncing the guilt creeping into your mind that presses you to beg forgiveness.
“She dresses and leaves in haste, but you know she’ll hold her tongue. As the door clicks shut, you begin to fantasize of the nights to come.”
Teller Salf released his grip. Eyes closed, the financier’s son spoke into the silence, his eagerness unrestrained. “And then?”
“There is no ‘and then.’” The flowing silver robes whipped about as Teller Salf pushed back from the table and pointed toward the door. “You’ve received your telling. If you’re allowed to return, don’t dare question the power of the Order of the Oracle.”
The financier’s son seemed to shrink as he stood. He backed away, flustered, then turned and left, opening the door just enough to slip through before closing it. The teller bent to pick coins from the floor. “Did you hear?” He always asked Quint the same question after tellings, referring to the meaning, not the words.
Quint emerged from behind the bust, his legs tingling from the time spent crouching. As the blood flowed again, he scratched at his trousers. “I’m unsure.” He’d learned admitting ignorance was better tolerated than providing an incorrect answer.
“Consider further as you deliver these to the maidservant.” Teller Salf dropped the coins into a pouch—six silvers, one gold—then handed them over. “And cover yourself.”
Quint returned his prayer cap atop his sandy blond hair, then hurried to the financier’s residence. The guards saw the ring he wore on a silver chain around his neck—the black stone with the silver flame of the Order etched into the top—and escorted him, as requested, to the servants’ quarters. There he delivered the purse.
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The patron applied to return to the Hall of Riches the very next day, but Teller Salf waited another three before granting a time and date for an audience. By then, Amalan had ended. The pilgrims had returned home, leaving a desolate calm and small ash piles of burned prayer requests in their wake.
As Quint headed to the Hall on the day of the telling, the buzz of worshippers had been replaced by the jangle of chains. The slaves were scrubbing away the ashen reminders of the Quondam’s pleas to their gods. He entered the Hall and reached the gold bust of Smeit moments before Teller Salf arrived with the financier’s son.
“It happened just like you said!” The young man was hardly recognizable. His eyes brimmed with excitement. He looked taller as he strode down the aisle—back straight, chin held high, hair slicked back—wearing a finely woven black jacket with shiny metal buttons over a tunic with billowed sleeves. From hand to hand he shifted a canvas sack, flexing his fingers after each transfer. He set the sack on the telling table with the clink of coin. This time, Teller Salf didn’t sweep the offering to the floor. With care, he lifted it then placed it beside him. “How could you have known?”
“You know better than to ask,” the teller erupted, slamming the palm of his hand against the table as he stood, “just as I know not to question how you came by your offering!” He lowered his hood then leaned forward until his face nearly touched the patron’s. Quint knew it was a practiced rage, but the delivery was convincing.
The young man’s air of confidence evaporated as he realized the implicit threat behind the teller’s words. He reverted to the timidity of the previous meeting. Teller Salf waited, daring his patron to speak, before returning to his own stool. “Great men are judged not by the manner, but the result.” The words were meant to reassure, but had little apparent effect.
As he had during the last meeting, he grabbed the young man’s wrists and cocked his head, as if straining to hear a distant voice. “You’ll soon face a choice where enemies lie in wait down every path. Only then may you return for guidance.” Not allowing for a response, he released his grip and stood to indicate the session’s end. The young man was unable to mask his disappointment, but the teller’s stony silence gave him no option. He retreated from the Hall.
Quint stepped from behind the bust the moment the door closed. “That wasn’t prophecy! You paid the woman!”
“It happened exactly as I said. That’s prophecy.”
“It’s not prophecy if you make it happen,” Quint contended, unsure his assertion was accurate. He’d leaned on the teller while struggling with his training. He’d trusted the man. But what had been done was something Quint considered manifestly wrong.
“What’s the purpose of prophecy, if not to shape the future?” Teller Salf strode, robes swishing, toward the back exit of the hall. Quint followed at his heels. “Whether or not he succeeds in usurping his brother’s birthright, his next offering will dwarf the sack of coins he stole from his father and just gave to the Hall.”
How did you know he stole his offering? Quint glanced back to the canvas sack next to the table. If the coins were silver, the sack held a small fortune. If gold, it contained more money than most Botherans would see in their lifetime. “What will you tell him when he returns?” Quint risked provoking his mentor by suggesting the tellings were scripted.
Teller Salf stopped in his tracks and bored into Quint with fierce green eyes. “Depends whether his brother has reconsidered his stance toward the Oracle.”
Quint was floored. Did he just admit the tellings are fake? Though he’d occasionally suspected this to be the case, a teller admitting as much shook the foundations of his faith. He knew he should bite his tongue, but was too agitated to hold back. “Are they all frauds like you? Do any truly see the future?” Even the son of the Voice couldn’t expect to escape punishment for such sacrilege.
Teller Salf responded with disappointment, not anger. “Every brother of the Order has seen the future. This is why we must change it.”
Quint’s father had said something similar. “Wise men don’t just see, they bend the future to their will.” But despite the efforts of his father, Teller Salf, and the rest of the Order to mold his perspective, Quint was still unable to view the world in shades of gray. His beliefs were black and white, leaving no compromise to reconcile lies and manipulations with a faith worth having.
Before he recognized what was happening, hands gripped his wrists, nails digging into his skin. The teller was stronger than he looked, and held firm despite Quint’s attempt to pull away. As the teller looked not at, but beyond him, his green eyes turned the silver of his robes. “An alloy most exceptional—brittle in youth, but stronger than any other.” The words came from Teller Salf’s mouth, but his voice sounded different, distant. “Only when tempered by the fires of passion and quenched in the ice of devastating loss, will you comprehend. By then, you will serve another.”
The teller released him and backed away, dazed. He extended his arm to steady himself against the wall. His eyes were green again, but wide with surprise. “Your training ends today.”
Panic gripped Quint as Teller Salf rushed from the Hall. I’m the son of the Voice. He wouldn’t dare suspend my training…would he? Is he trying to manipulate me like he does his patrons? But the crucial question for Quint was whether, after what he’d learned, he cared.
Welloch (The Fringe), Chapter 11
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The Convoy at Night
The wheels bump and thump on the path.
The guards, alert, march two by two.
Let us pray, for Jah alone hath
the power to save me and you.
It is from nowhere they’ll appear,
though our guardians bare their blades.
It’s not the battle brave men fear.
It is the vengeance of the Shades.
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—Opening to A Merchant’s Journey:
To the Fringe and Back
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Welloch
(The Fringe)
One Turn Later
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Quint chewed a flap of dry skin off his lip as he paced back and forth in the clearing. Even my body resists change in these mountains. Three moons with the Dragonborn, and he’d yet to acclimate to the elevation.
“You’re sure he said dusk?” Dusk had long passed. Countless eyes watched from the sky, bright and alert. Against a backdrop of night noises, Quint could hear the distant rush of water through the Dragons Teeth. The nocturnal symphony was in full swing, paced by the baritone da-dip of the stump toads. The realm of the Dragonborn was beautiful. He despised it.
Dermot grunted. He’d discouraged the meeting, just as he’d discouraged Quint joining the Shades and leaving Bothera in the first place. “It’s not like you think,” he’d warned, but Quint wouldn’t be dissuaded.
The Order had ended his training, but he’d lost his faith before their decision. He was the son of the Voice, but an unbeliever. He was a fraud living in the temple and performing the rituals. Joining the Shades, he reasoned, would allow him to stand for something again.
“Sure he’ll come?” Quint asked for the third time. He knew the Shades’ leader seldom ventured so far from the fighting, and didn’t want to miss a chance to make a personal appeal. When he’d volunteered, Quint had assumed he’d join Dermot to ambush scouts and supply caravans. Instead, he’d been assigned as an adviser to the Dragonborn, a remote Fringe tribe so distant their leader and people doubted the war would reach their borders.
“You’ll wear out yer boots!” Dermot snapped open another of the twillnuts and added the meat to his pouch. Men in Bothera struggled to accomplish with metal tools what he did with the nail of his thumb.
The former slave was the toughest person Quint knew. He wore scars the way fish did scales—his body a latticework of lash marks and reminders of combat. A still-seeping scab covered much of the right side of his face, where the edge of a shield had split open his cheek. Half his left ear was missing.
Quint resumed pacing. He loathed waiting, his privileged youth having taught him nothing of patience. He’d joined the Shades seeking action. Although both the Order and the Shades opposed the Council of Truth’s aggression in the Fringe, their responses couldn’t have been more different. The tellers cowered behind the walls of Bothera and their temple, manipulating people and events. The Shades took on the advancing forces directly, inflicting enough damage with their surprise attacks to slow the army’s progress.
“It’s not too late to go back to Bothera,” Dermot suggested. “You’re his only son. He’ll forgive you.” His words lacked conviction. Quint understood why. For many turns Dermot had worn chains and served his father’s will.
Quint felt uneasy bringing up that past to his friend, so instead he repeated one of his father’s addresses to the Quondam, an address he was sure Dermot knew. “Forgiveness encourages men to repeat their offense, and shows others they may offend without consequence. It is the requirement of atonement that gives men pause. Forgiveness should be left to those too weak to enforce this requirement.”
But it wasn’t just his fear of facing his father’s demand of atonement that prevented Quint from returning. He also felt a personal responsibility to the tribes his Allyrian ancestors had vanquished. It was their gods the Order locked within the Hall of Riches—their hopes that had been stolen. The Fringe tribes had surrendered their lands, riches, and ambitions when they retreated to this far corner of the Lost Land. Now the peace they’d been promised was shattered. Though this invading army didn’t fly the blue and gold Allyrian banner, he still held the Oracle culpable because Lord Fen had used the Oracle’s prophecy to justify the invasion.