along the unlit road.
Three
There was a disturbance in the town the next day. His father's forge was on the main street, and from where he worked he could see through the door, always open in the heat, directly out to where people walked past. At around midday there was a small scurrying crowd, followed by a procession of figures in robes, followed by some more onlookers.
His father left his anvil and stood at the doorway to watch. After a few minutes, he turned back to his work with a grunt, saying nothing.
Jay did not ask him what he had seen. As far as possible, he never spoke to his father. And his own interest was only faint; everything that happened on Anhual now seemed diminished and insignificant, and of no importance to him. He hardly even resented the forge, or his father's bent, glowering figure.
As soon as dusk fell, and he could escape, he ran straight for the road that led up the hill to the temple, without going home first to wash or eat. If he could catch the Murai before classes began, he would not have to wait another two hours before hearing what else she had to say about her plan for him.
He was hoping, too, that she would give him some money. He had a little, but he knew that it would be nowhere near enough to buy passage on a starship, let alone to masquerade as a priest.
He sensed that there was something wrong as soon as he reached the gates. The doors to the temple were standing open, and outside, knots of acolytes and students were huddled in groups like gawpers outside a house fire.
An acute and sensitive fear stopped him going any nearer, and making himself conspicuous in his worker’s clothes amongst all those robes. Instead, he hid behind the tall gatepost and watched.
Murai Shiell emerged from the main doors, flanked either side by four priests in elaborate robes. Her demeanour, and theirs, told him that she was being led away, and the atmosphere of disarray amongst her students and the temple staff - he recognised the candle-lighters, and the polishers - suggested confusion, sudden catastrophe.
He shrank further back against the gatepost, desperate that she should not see him. Even if she did not betray him, he was afraid to catch her eye.
When he looked round again, there were another two priests leading out someone else. Jay craned his head dangerously from his hiding place to see whose face was half-concealed under the robe and recognised Lean Duhal, one of the young novices serving his first few years of dedication to the temple. Duhal's head was bowed low, quite clearly in shame, and with a physical sensation of coldness Jay understood that she had been with him too.
He crouched down lower and forced his mind to work. There was every possibility that they had looked for him in the temple and, not having found him there, they were going now to seek him at the forge or at his family’s house. Even if they did not know about him now, Shiell might betray him when they questioned her. The decision was made for him now, in this brutal way. He could not even risk going back home before fleeing, but he could not set out as he was.
The crowds were outside watching the retreating prisoners and their guards. Jay walked quickly round to the side gates and through the back entrance to the temple, which was never locked, unnoticed. As he had expected, the building was empty. If they were looking for him, they had finished their search in here. He slipped into the Murai's private robing chamber.
Her scent still lingered in the atmosphere. He paused for a moment in the low candlelight, looking at a scene which told him that she had been surprised in here; with Duhal, presumably. On the bench was a neatly folded novice’s robe. When he picked it up, some other garments and a bag tumbled out onto the floor.
It was a strong fabric satchel, bearing the crest of a temple he did not recognise, finely worked in silver. Inside was a well-read copy of the Word of Lonn, with the same crest stamped on the inside cover, and a pouch full of silver coins.
She had prepared this for him, he was sure of it. She had meant to give him this embroidered shift and silver-wrought belt and acolyte's robes to enable him to impersonate a pilgrim from a good Priest Caste family.
A curious transformation happened when he put them on. It seemed as he looked at himself in the mirror that the boy whose image he saw was not an imposter, but a reality separate from himself. He had created a new person, he had become something different in the very act of clothing himself. After all, who ever dressed in the clothes of another caste? What servant ever wore fabric like this? Who, looking at him, would begin to guess that he was not what he seemed? He practised the shy, downturned look of the novice priest, sneaking an upward glance from under his eyelids.
It was the same power that the ability to speak untruths gave him, except that this was orders of magnitude more exciting. Emboldened, he swung the bag over his shoulder and stepped out into the main hall.
He walked almost straight into one of the unfamiliar priests.
Jay bowed, reacting on instinct. "Greetings. Excuse me, I wonder if you could tell me - I'm looking for Murai Shiell."
"You won't find her here."
"Indeed? I thought this was her temple."
"It was, until today. She's been reassigned."
"Ah. I had a message for her from the Murai of my own temple. I'm on a pilgrimage to the Capital for the Festival of Stars and I was asked to stop off here. Where might I find her now?"
"I couldn't say."
Jay bowed his head again and tried to move past.
He held his breath as the priest touched his arm with his staff, and turned back to him respectfully.
"What is your name, novice?"
"Jhannon," he said, at random.
"From the Temple of the Triluminary on Calcua, I see."
"Yes, sir."
"I've heard it's very beautiful."
"It is, sir, yes."
"You've come a long way and you've a long way to go. I'm sorry you will have to take disappointment back to your Murai, but you may tell him that Shiell will not be able to receive messages for quite a while."
Jay nodded, bowed and escaped, his heart thudding with excitement. With each step he put between himself and the temple, his sense of exultation mounted. There was no sign of Shiell or Lean Duhal on the road, and the crowd had dispersed entirely. He longed to break into a run, past the turning that would take him back down into the town, and straight ahead towards the sea where the local docks were, but he made himself fall into a typical slow, drifting pace.
He passed two lay members of the Priest Caste walking together up the hill, and exchanged bows with them without hesitation or recognition. It was going to be easy, he realised, because no-one expected deception and yet he had no difficulty practising it. He had not, before this day, recognised the extent of his gift, and the immensity of its value.
At the docks he gave his name as Jhannon of the Temple of the Triluminary, Calcua, and paid for his passage to Anhual’s only starship dock in the Land of the West with two of the silver coins. He was shown respectfully to a window seat in the vessel by two uniformed servants who would not even look directly into his face. His fear of being recognised by someone from the town had vanished now. Everyone saw what they expected to see.
And Jhal the apprentice metalworker no longer existed, if he ever really had. He had been a bad dream to himself since descending from school into the forge. As the transport lifted from the ground with an odd, cushioned sensation of flight, he wondered very briefly about what would happen to Shiell. She had run her own risks in full knowledge of the probable consequences, and it wasn't as if she had confined her favours to him.
A sharp sensation of unease spoiled his euphoria as the coastline receded, and he watched the familiar shore become like a line in a drawing. Despite his disgust at the thought of her with Duhal, the image stirred a craving that he knew he could never satisfy again. He glanced across at his immediate travelling companion, a sedate young woman of the Swordbearer Caste, and tried to imagine what she looked like without all the clothes swordbearers wore. There were so many el
aborate layers of armour that peeling each one off must add to the excitement, and the body eventually uncovered must be all the softer and slighter and sweeter.
The swordbearer looked up from her pad, and their eyes met briefly. He dropped his lids in the correct fashion and inclined his head respectfully. No, never again.
Four
It was a long journey, even by military corvette. When the moon came into view at last, it had been seven hours since they had lifted off from the camp on Antra. As the ship began its descent towards the moon’s main city, Paril moved closer and said in a low voice, “Everything below us belongs to Lord Carral, sir.”
Jay made an expression of interest, and continued to watch the farmlands rolling below. Captain Paril would not have said that to Neveth, their commander on Antra, on two counts. He would not have used the archaic honorific, as if Carral, technically nothing more than a Swordbearer Caste general in rank, were of the Noble Caste, and he would not have implied that he owned the lands as his clan had done in the old days. But then, Jay had made it safe for Paril to say things like this to him.
When he stepped out of the ship, the first breath of cold air was like breathing in the past. He stopped for a moment to take in the dark, bleak landscape and the castle – it really was a castle – brooding on the hill above the landing site. It was home, or unpleasantly like it.
“Impressive, isn’t it, sir,” said Paril, with quiet confidence.
Jay nodded, feeling real and unexpected misgivings for the first time. There seemed to be no-one there to meet him, though he was supposed to be taking command of an entire army, and as they walked up the rough-made road towards the castle gates, the sky darkened overhead and icy rain began to spit against his face. He had left Antra that morning in brilliant warm sunshine, but he remembered weather like this.
“Is it always this cold?” he said.
“No, no, sir – in winter, it’s colder.”
“Delightful.”
“You’ll get used to it, sir. Cold purifies the soul, they say.”
“My soul is pure enough.”
It ought to be, he added to himself. Seven years in the temple, becoming a perfect imitation of a young priest, turning from novice to acolyte until the prospect of having to choose a particular path galvanised him to escape the robes and rituals. He could not face spending the rest of his life pretending to be a murai, or an administrator, or even a martial arts master. He never wanted to light a candle or fake meditation again.
He had prepared the path very carefully for his second unconventional caste conversion. Instead walking out on the spur of the moment with a bag of stolen money, he had solemnly informed his Murai that he felt called to go on a solitary, itinerant mission amidst the scattered communities on the forest world of Neelor. He planned to walk with a staff and the Word of Lonn through that planet’s vast forestlands, stopping at towns and villages to offer instruction, aid and inspiration to people who saw little of other worlds. It was a perfect place to disappear. Others who had trodden that path had followed it for years, reporting back to the temple only very occasionally. As far as the temple was concerned, Jhannon the missionary was still wandering in the forest on a distant planet.
Perhaps he was, too. As Captain Paril knocked with the hilt of his sword on the great iron doors of the castle, Jhaval the newly-made commander squared himself to meet his master.
Six thousand years ago his kind ruled the Empire. The great, hereditary dynasties of warlords, feuding amongst and allying themselves with each other, and all resenting the scholars and the priests; in this remote satellite world, a colony planted in the earliest days of imperial expansion, the influence of civilisation and the Court had not really changed the way the people had lived for millennia. Carral was a general, trained at Par Sheval and presented at Court to pledge service to the Empress, but as he advanced down the length of the great hall his bearing and his manner made it obvious that he considered himself to be a warlord still. He was massive, bearded, his hair bronzed and arranged into elaborate spikes. At either side, pacing at a steady distance, were two swordbearers who comported themselves like a feudal retinue.
Paril made a kind of deep, sweeping bow that Jay had not seen before. Jay, in his turn, inclined his head in the usual way.
“Commander Jhaval at your service, sir.”
“You’re young. Younger than I thought you would be.”
He had an odd accent, much deeper than Paril’s faint lilt.
“Eventually I will overcome that fault, sir.”
Carral’s expression was unreadable for a moment, then he grinned and held up his fist in a gesture of welcome. “It’s what I asked for. What Car’a’vil needs. Send me your rising star, I said to Neveth. But see that he’s a good man, I said to Paril. Let’s hope they haven’t let me down.” He punched Jay on the arm, and turned with a sweep of his cloak to lead the way back into the fortress.
Paril flashed him a look of half-smiling apprehension. Jay returned a neutral gaze, and followed the general. Soon, he thought – as soon as he was sure of his ground here – he was going to have to start distancing himself from Paril. It was good to have an ally, it had been imperative to cultivate his confidence on Antra when he had heard that there was urgent need for a commander on Car’a’vil, but he was wary of letting someone get too close. He lived over a thin surface of danger, and anyone who got to know him might slip through it.
Carral lead them through wide, half-darkened stone corridors into an extraordinary vaulted chamber larger than the great hall in the Temple of Lonn. The main light came from a huge fireplace, which seemed to be burning something organic.
“The great hall,” said Carral, flinging his arms up and making his voice echo. “In the old days, the clan would gather in here to feast, and debate laws, and hold trials.”
“Yes, I see. It’s certainly large enough.”
“When the clan of Vil ruled this world, every mountain and all the sea, and the priests and scribes feared the sword. Does this kind of talk bother you, eh?”
“Not at all, sir. Why should it?”
“It bothers the straw men on Antra. Nobles and swordbearers running around for the scribes and the priests like servants. We don’t live like that here on Car’a’vil.”
“So I’ve been given to understand.”
“But I wanted fresh blood, to give us new training, new techniques. My cousin, Naril – you heard what happened.”
Jay knew of course that Carral’s previous commander had died in a hoverspeeder, flown into a mountain. He nodded sympathetically.
“When this one’s old enough he’ll take over.” He indicated Paril. “He’s my closest kinsman, the next in line – I have no son. He told you this?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I sent him to be trained on Antra, but I’d rather have him here. With Naril gone, I need my close clansmen around me, and I need a fully trained commander in the meantime. Teach him everything you know.” He waved his hand, and a servant, who had been waiting near the door, brought him two drinking vessels from the back of the room.
Jay received his, watching carefully, unsure of the ritual. The same servant fetched a jug and poured a dark liquid into Carral’s tankard, and then his own.
“Glyn juice,” said Carral. “The noble drink of Car’a’vil. Made from the berries of the glyn bush – only grows on this moon. We leave it to ferment. Ever tried fermented juice?”
“No, sir.” It was in fact illegal both to make it and to consume it, and he continued to watch the general. If this was a test, either of his warrior daring or his moral integrity, he did not want to be wrong-footed.
But Carral tossed the juice carelessly back, and Jay immediately followed suit. It seared his throat, making him swallow hard to stifle a cough. Carral grinned at his reaction, then turned to the door.
“Here she is! Where have you been lurking? Come in and meet our new commander.”
She came out of the s
hadows of the doorway, not hesitantly but calmly. For a moment, Jay thought he was looking at a daughter whose birth must have disappointed Carral. As she came towards him, he saw an expression of longer years than that in her eyes. The eyes arrested his senses. Not only were they dark, which was unusual enough; they were deep, rich brown, glinting almost black like an animal’s.
“My wife, Dazil of Vil,” said Carral, without ceremony. “This is Jhaval – don’t know his clan.”
“It’s a very small obscure one,” said Jay, locked into the velvet gaze. He deliberately savoured the few moments it took before he could break off and linger over the rest of her. Her face made intriguing angles of the firelight, her skin was white and asked to be touched, her body – firmly enclosed in brass, leather and layers of long silk robes – was a strong, slender secret.
“You are welcome to the hold of Car’a’vil, Commander Jhaval.”
Her voice was low and lilting, and though he did not know the local ceremonies Jay could guess that she was greeting him somewhat more correctly than her husband had. He made a general-purpose bow. “I’m honoured to serve here, my lady.”
“May your time with us be full of fire and song.”
It sounded almost like a hope, or a promise.
Five
Find the job that no-one else wants to do, and do it well.
That was the advice an old alai had given him once when, as a novice, he had confessed to being ambitious. He found that as a way of gaining favour it worked as well in the camp as in the temple.
It was obvious why Carral had been unable to find anyone senior or experienced to take over command of the Car’a’vil battalion. Quite apart from the remoteness of the world and Carral’s reputation as a difficult and capricious general, it was soon clear that his initial impression that the way of life here was backward had not been a superficial prejudgement. On his first walk through the town near the stronghold, servants actually gathered in the main street and bowed as he and his men passed. The smith who took his sword from him to embellish it with the crest of Car’a’vil would not look at him, keeping his eyes downcast like an acolyte in the presence of an alai. On the other hand, when a group of priests walked on the other side of the street the swordbearers actually stared at them, with something near hostility. Jay inclined his head nonetheless, and the senior priest looked affronted at the acknowledgement.
In fact, he had never seen such caste segregation before. Even on Anhual, where life had been provincial and traditional, there had been a proper, practical degree of interaction in everyday life. On Car’a’vil, the swordbearers and the scholars and priests seemed to hate each other, and the servant castes were regarded by them all as a form of sub-sentient life.
The atmosphere this generated was strange