The Chained Adept (1-4)

Chapter 16

CHAPTER 16

Zandaril scrambled after Penrys up the steps and into Hing Ganau’s wagon, hauling the tailgate up behind him and pulling the cover tight to keep the persistent rain from penetrating the waterproofed canvas.

The two of them dripped at the very end of the wagon, and he held up his hand to keep her from moving. “Wait.”

He pointed at the clean woolen robe he had been saving as an overrobe for winter use, draped now over one of the bean sacks. “I will turn my head, see? And you will drop your wet clothes here where we can hang them. Once you’re dressed, and I am dressed, then we will celebrate the holiday, dry and comfortable.”

He handed her a cloth to towel her hair and turned away, listening for the squelch as her clothing hit the wagon bed. When she cleared her throat uncertainly, he turned back. As he’d expected, his robe was long on her, not quite to the ground, and large enough that the sash he’d provided held it well-wrapped against her body. The dull blue was a good color, he decided. Her hair was wet and shaggy, but no longer dripping.

She picked up her sopping clothes and wrung them out one by one over the edge of the tailgate, then hung them over the rope he’d stretched where they could drip without soaking anything else. Out of long habit, Hing had found a slight upslope to park on, so any liquid that accumulated ran out the back.

“Now you must turn your back, please,” he said.

He wore his only other robe and it was soaked, but he’d laid out his formal robes. Good to get some use of them, and suitable for the kuliqa, the turning home. Since this included breeches and undergarments, he was much better clothed than his guest once he was done, but it couldn’t be helped. He left his hair bare like Penrys, to dry—too wet for the turban.

Once he’d hung his own discarded clothing, he offered Penrys her choice of his clean socks or his too-big tent shoes of soft leather, and she chose the long woolen socks.

“Well arranged,” she commented. “And I like your robes. For ceremonial occasions, I presume?”

“I debated whether to bring them, but then, maybe I would be the only Zan where I was, and wanted to represent my nation with dignity.”

“And very fine you look,” she added, in wirqiqa-Zannib.

Zandaril broke into a broad smile. “Yes! Let us spend this evening in the language of my home, if you will. In honor of the day.” It was a relief to shed the constant struggle with Kigali-yat, like removing a blanket from his thoughts.

“Come, take the guest-seat.” He gestured toward the bean sack, covered in the red cloth of life. “I will be host, under the sky.” He waited for her to sit cross-legged on the edge of the jimiz, the scholar’s rug, before he lowered himself across from her to lean on the sack with the sky cloth.

Penrys glanced curiously all around. “You brought all of this with you?”

“You must pardon me—this is but a meager setting,” he said. “We should be under the great kazr with its central sky hole or, better, under the open sky if it were clear. All the clan assembled, at least those of the taridaj, with the noise of the yathbantudin, the children newly old enough, and the smells of the cooking fires.”

He pointed at the tiny brazier placed behind him, with its curl of resinous piney smoke, and her nostrils flared to catch the scent. “This is all I could bring, for my private celebration.”

“How many people would there be?”

“As few as eighty, perhaps, or as many as two hundred.” He smiled, picturing his relatives settling into place in clusters of families and friends, the gossip quieting down as the evening began. They would all be doing this tonight, the taridaj, those on the migration, all across his nation.

“The zarawinnaj, the leader of the migration, the taridiqa, would stand, and everyone then would hush, until all you could hear would be the fires crackling, and the bells of the herd leaders. He would announce the day, as if that were needed, and recite the tahaziqa, the traditional verses.”

He leaned forward. “The young matrons, when they can, try to time their births for the winter camps, so many would be pregnant, and oh, so proudly so, with their husbands behind them trying not to swagger.”

“There would always be some new yathbantudin that year, so the zarawinnaj would call each of them to the central fire and recite both lineage and accomplishments on this, their first taridiqa.”

He remembered his first time, his fear that he might bring dishonor on his family, and his relief that he had been judged worthy. Now, of course, he realized he had almost never heard of a failure. There was always something good to say about yathbantudin, some way they could fit in and serve the needs of the clan.

“Is this the first time you’ve missed it?” Penrys asked.

“The fourth. I was ill-prepared the first time, and it was very sad for me, not joyous like it should be.” He gestured around the little space within the wagon. “But this time I am ready. Would you like to see? Few outsiders have ever attended.”

He felt both curiosity and sincerity in the light mind-touch they maintained. “Please, show me. I would be honored.”

“Well, as I said, it begins with smells, so many of them, but perhaps you can imagine with just this.” He opened the pouch near the brazier and added a pinch of yawd-suragh to the yawd-rub already burning. He could feel the muscles of his face relax in the familiar, dusty scent, but a sneeze from Penrys recalled him to his duties.

“And then the sound of the herd bells. I brought a little one.” He pointed to a brass ram’s bell, dangling on a string from the side of one of the bows supporting the roof canvas. He leaned sideways and shook the string to let it jangle freely, then picked up a short stick bent at one end with a leather-covered striking surface to tap it lightly like a rough gong, without activating the clapper.

He pointed at an improvised stand that displayed a portion of a scroll, his own preparation, the ink painted on with a brush of his own goat’s hair, the same one that had provided the skin. “The recitation of the verse.” He cleared his throat—he had never done this with someone else listening. “If you will allow me… Close your eyes and listen.”

When she had obeyed, he intoned,

“Under the sky is the fruit of the land and its beauties.

The little gods watch us to keep us in touch with the right.

Our faces are turned to the end of the year and our duties,

To strengthen the clan and bring it again to the light.”

As he recited, he tapped the bell with the stick in the rhythm of the verse, and marked the end with a louder strike that he let die away.

The throb faded under the noise of the rain on the canvas and Zandaril felt his whole body melt into it, his spine anchored between earth and sky, even while sitting in a wagon instead of on the good ground.

His guest held her position in silence, and he could only hope some of it reached her, too, but he left her mind in privacy to feel what it might, outsider that she was.

After a moment, she murmured, “Who are the ‘little gods’ in the verse?”

Zandaril felt a spurt of approval. She questioned, as a child should question.

“The lud, the manifestations of the dunaq wandim, the world-that-surrounds.”

At her puzzled look, he sighed. “It is hard to explain to outsiders. The Zannib do not have the dozens of gods, large and small, that the Kigaliwen and Rasesni do. We do not see our world in that way. A… benevolence created our world, and we honor it. It is not much concerned with us as individuals, but we have a duty to that same benevolence, to righteous behavior. Sometimes we meet little manifestations of that spirit in the world.”

He rose and led her back to his portable shrine. In honor of the day, he had unrolled it onto the top of a stack of food stores to display his two stones and the thunderbolt, a bit of iron ore fused by lightning in the ground. He picked up the first stone and placed it in her hand.

“See the movement in its form, feel its personality, judge its balance. I found this one day, when I was a child in the zudiqazd, the winter village, too young to go on taridiqa. I had lost two ewes from the flock I was in charge of, and was ready to give up and go home, since I had never been so far away before and I was afraid. And when I stared down at the ground in despair, this… winked back at me and captured my soul. It was beautiful. It spoke to me.”

He glanced at her attentive expression. “Not in words, mind you, but a sort of resonance. As if it had endured trouble, and would continue to endure, and the experience had shaped it.” He had bowed to it and stopped for several minutes considering, before he decided to take it with him. “If I had taken it, and not persisted until I had found the sheep, that would have been… unthinkable. A slap in the face of the world.”

“And you would have been a coward not to take it, is that it?”

“Exactly!”

She sniffed the stone, then returned it to him, and he gave her the second one.

She weighed it in her hand. “It’s sad, isn’t it? Yearning.”

She glanced at him for the story, but he just took it back and replaced it on the soft sheepskin of the shrine. Not for strangers was his determination go wifeless yet, his conviction that his nayith, his masterwork, must go on, whatever the cost.

“This one is different. I saw it born.” He picked up the thunderbolt which still reeked of iron to his nose. “Lightning hit an oak tree not far from the camp of my taghulaj, my teacher. The tree was riven, but what was truly strange was that another oak nearby was also killed, though it hadn’t been struck. My teacher could not say why, but I wanted to know. I looked carefully along the ground between them and discovered traces of a line where the grass was damaged. I dug there, and this is what I found.”

He handed it to her, and she smelled it as he had. “You can smell the iron—this was in the low hills where we sometimes dig for the ores that produce iron. The lightning made it all by itself. I don’t know why.”

Something about power, he thought, but it didn’t make sense to him. Not yet.

He shook off his thoughts. He had a guest to consider.

“Please, sit. Now we drink.”

She raised an eyebrow, but returned to her seat obediently. He picked up his binwit, his mead kit, and brought it back to lay between them, on the jimiz.

“This is lovely,” Penrys said, stroking the fine leatherwork of the rolled kit.

“It was a gift from my tigha, my first brother,” he said, “the day I became a tushkzurdtudin, a man of the tribe instead of a boy.”

He started to untie the straps that held it together. “It is a customary gift, from a parent or a brother, or a close friend. Every Zan you meet will have one of their own, and sometimes more, waiting for the right recipient.”

He unwrapped the three stoneware jukwit bottles, each the size of two fists, with an indentation around the middle for hanging from a cord, and the two rough stoneware cups, the abin, that fit his hand perfectly and sang out their presence. His brother had chosen well. He pulled the stopper from one bottle and offered it for Penrys to sniff.

“Sweet! Honey?”

“Yes. Khimar is almost a ‘little one’ for us, like the trees and rocks we get it from. The liquor from grain or grape is just drink. But mead, baijuk, is for special times, like this one. Even the bottles and cups are passed down in the family, when possible, or traded for.”

He filled a cup for each of them, and restoppered the bottle. “It is not for drinking alone. You do me great honor by sharing with me.”

They sipped in silence for a moment, and he felt the heat permeate his limbs and warm his chest. The rain sounded cozy now, defining their shelter by contrast. With the verse said, a brazier for a central fire, and a guest to share with, however strange this bikrajti might be, it began to feel like a real kuliqa, even far away in alien Kigali.

“Tell me of your family,” Penrys said, and her voice had an odd, constrained sound.

He took another sip of the mead. “I am Zandaril, son of Ilsahr of clan Zamjilah, of the Shubzah tribe, and my mother Kazrsulj is daughter of Khashjibrim of the same clan.

“I am second-son, my brother Butraz being a scant year older, and celebrating the kuliqa on the taridiqa this night, as we are. His wife Yukjilah and our first-sister Ghuruma are both in the zudiqazd of my clan, awaiting births and tending their little ones.”

He smiled fondly. “Ghuruma swore she would let our mother raise her infants so she could return to the taridiqa, but the babies changed her mind for her. Once they’re grown enough, she’ll return.”

Penrys asked, “You don’t take children on the migration?”

“Only those nine years or more, the yathbantudin who have proved their readiness, though sometimes an exception is made. Better for the younger ones to stay in the zudiqazd, under their mother’s care or a close relative.

“Next are my two sisters, Rubti, almost sixteen, a tushkzurtudin, and Washi, and the youngest boy, Nirkazdhal, on his first taridiqa this year. I am sorry to miss it.”

“Six children!”

“Yes, I believe my mother is done, though she has not said so. She returned to the taridiqa six years ago, when my brother married and provided a caretaker for her youngest. It’s what our women do—travel with the herds when they can, unless they are too old, or have some specialty that keeps them in one place.”

Zandaril noticed his cup was empty, and Penrys’s, too, so he refilled them both. It felt good to speak of home.

“Is yours considered a large family?” Penrys asked.

“Not at all. My father has seven siblings that lived, and my mother eight.”

He felt her surprise and hastened to reassure her. “Not all in the same clan, of course. A few of the women married out-clan, and one of my mother’s sisters surprised us by joining the Kurighdunaq clan of the Undullah tribe, many miles away. I’ve never met her family.”

“You must have dozens of cousins!”

He cast her a puzzled look. “Well, yes. Everyone does. It’s very handy, good for introductions or trade.”

He reached for the bottle to top up their cups, and was surprised to find it empty. When he glanced at his guest while he worked on the stopper of the next bottle, he thought she was looking more relaxed. She’s smaller than I am, she’ll never be able to keep up. I should be careful about that.

“Can you name them all?” she asked.

He straightened up. An easy challenge—all his brothers and sisters had learned the list, adding new members to it as needed.

“In birth order or by branch? My father’s line first, then my mother’s, and then those of their parents.”

He started out, hearing an echo of his brother’s voice reciting with him as he went along. “My nephews and nieces…” As he continued he found his tongue betraying him and a growing smile on Penrys’s face, so he switched to mind-speech to remove the impediment. *…and Ilbirs, Nibarzan, and Surbushaz, the sons of my father’s second brother, and their children…*

Penrys kept count for him, but he began fumbling badly in his grandparent’s generation and had to stumble to a stop. *If I had the family scroll, I could continue for quite a while, but I will admit the baijuk is a handicap. And the younger ones do keep having children.*

Reminded of the cup in his hand, he took another sip. His touch on Penrys’s mind turned up peculiar emotions, with envy and loneliness chief among them. And not nearly as much drink confusion as he expected. He prodded her with a silent inquisitive. *Hmm?*

*Seventy-three first cousins in your own generation, and more coming still. I can’t imagine it. And you’ve met them all?*

*Most of them, except the very youngest. A few are close friends, the ones in my own clan. Like brothers and sisters, after a fashion.*

*No one is without family, then? Even orphans or foundlings?*

Zandaril sputtered out loud. “There’s always room for one more, somewhere. Of course there is.”

He could feel her becoming more sober by the minute. He held up his cup and looked at her. “I don’t understand—why aren’t you drinking anymore?”

She smiled sadly. “It doesn’t last very long, so after a while it’s pointless. Doesn’t mean you should stop, though.”

“I’ve had enough,” he managed, with dignity. “I brought the blankets from my bedroll, in case we did not feel like returning to the wet tent. People curl up around the fire to finish sleeping out the night—it’s customary.”

“Would you care to stay? No harm will come to you,” he said solemnly, blinking in the lantern light swaying overhead.

His last clear memory was of someone tucking him into a blanket and the soft feel of the jimiz against his face.