Mage's Blood (33 page)

Meiros didn’t come to her that night though, or the next, or the next, until it felt like it had been just a bad dream. Ramita finally regained the ability to sleep.

Huriya grew more and more animated the further north she went, flirting with the guards, giggling uncontrollably at her own daring, clutching her mouth to mute her own hilarity. She had eyes everywhere. Nothing passed her notice. Ramita envied her this never-ending voyage of discoveries, but she could not share in it, instead retreating further and further into herself.

Beyond Kankritipur was Latakwar. They struck the banks of the Sabanati River during the week of the waning moon. The river was wide but low, more than two-thirds mud. Crocodiles glided near the barges that ferried them across the dark, sluggish water. To the west and east were distant hills, with the hint of larger, grimmer promontories beyond, but to the north, the horizon was flat. The land was grey-brown, the sparse grass brittle and dry. Gold and
green bee-eaters flitted amidst the bushes and kites circled high above. Once they even saw a cobra on the roadside, sidling backwards into a crevice, hooded and hissing. There were still people – always people – sun-blackened farmers labouring in the fields, bony children driving skinny cattle with sharp horns and quick tempers. They replenished their water barrels, bought an extra wagon full of feed and swapped their horses for a bevy of old camels. The town of Latakwar was wholly Amteh, the only places of worship Dom-al’Ahms, their domes crusted with windblown dust. The whole town was similarly glazed. The men were all dressed in white, the women wore black bekira-shrouds. They had a slow, distant manner, as if nothing were important enough to hurry about when exertion cost so much in sweat and energy in this dry, burning heat.

They slept in Latakwar for two nights and as the waxing moon rose, signalling her fertility, Ramita’s husband finally returned to her bed for his brief, awkward fumblings. She felt like a piece of livestock as he pumped his seed into her while she knelt with her buttocks in the air. He wouldn’t let her look at his body, though the few glimpses revealed nothing horrific, just a pale, somewhat bony frame that was surprisingly well-formed for such an old man.
He is vain
, she realised with a start.

‘Do I please you?’ she found the nerve to ask him this time as he rose to leave.

He frowned. ‘You will please me when you quicken,’ he answered tartly. ‘My seed is thin, as is typical of magi. We must rely on persistence and good fortune.’

‘And the blessing of the gods,’ she replied.

He snorted. ‘Aye and that.’ He left her to lie alone, until Huriya came in, chuckling softly.

‘I asked him how it went,’ Huriya giggled. ‘He just looked at me. I think he might actually have a sense of humour, if you seek it hard enough.’

Ramita looked aghast at her friend’s effrontery. That night she prayed for the blessing of Sivraman. But she bled, as she always did,
on the first night of the full moon, so they unfurled the blood-tent and she reacquainted herself with being alone. Her husband’s disappointment hung over the caravan like a pall of smoke. Huriya joined her in the blood-tent a few days later, as usual, and they retreated again into their own tiny world.

When Ramita emerged from blood-purdah a few days ahead of Huriya, she found they were hundreds of miles further north. All week she had watched the featureless lands roll by. The last week of Zulqeda, or Noveleve, as her husband called it, the dark of the moon: the air was freezing-cold at night, so that she had to use two blankets. She was looking forward to spending a couple of nights away from Huriya. Her friend was losing all her girlish modesty and a new creature was emerging, one obsessed with wealth and men, who speculated ceaselessly about both. And her excitement at the journey was making Ramita irritable. It was tiresome, but she couldn’t fight with her only friend, so she tolerated it. For now it was just a relief to be alone.

That night Meiros came and sat with her after dinner, beside the small fire Klein had built her. He pressed a book into her hands and she took it, trembling. She had never even touched one before. The lines and squiggles were odd, meaningless things that spidered across page after page. There were pictures though, of strange people with pale skin and oddly cut clothing. ‘This is a child’s atlas of Urte,’ he said. ‘It will help you learn Rondian.’

That night was a new type of awakening for her: more wondrous, more spiritual and awakening than any flesh-and-blood experience. These symbols contained
language
. They contained
knowledge
. Ramita dutifully intoned the sounds associated with each symbol and repeated them back to him until he was satisfied. Finally he put the book aside and mounted her, apparently for pleasure rather than duty. It wasn’t too awful, and he left her the book when he departed. She clutched it to her as she slid beneath her blankets, her mind bursting with this new thing. She fell asleep when her eyes could no longer take in the pictures swimming before her eyes.

From then on, she rode with Meiros in his carriage so she could continue learning to read, leaving a disgusted Huriya alone. The landscape had turned entirely to sand, a sea that rose and fell in golden waves. There were no trees, just rocks where snakes and lizards basked, or jackals snoozed in the shade, awaiting dusk. The camels walked slowly onwards, phlegmatic, surprisingly gentle animals. The camels in Aruna Nagar had been bad-tempered creatures, whipped and beaten by their owners into obedience, but these were well-cared-for, and they rewarded that care. Beneath the awning, the heat was almost bearable.

Meiros rode with his hood lowered, allowing her to study him. His long, thin hair ill-suited him and his beard was a lank thing that she longed to trim. His eyes were haunted, but he smiled sometimes as he taught her his tongue. He apologised that he had not brought a windship to speed their passage, but he said it would have attracted too much attention. She wasn’t sorry; she had never seen the legendary flying ships and the thought of going up in one petrified her.

She was slowly losing some of her fear of her husband. Behind the gauzy curtains of the carriage they were able to converse more freely, and she discovered he was a patient man for all his curtness. He seemed younger when he relaxed. ‘It’s the desert air,’ he said when she was bold enough to remark on this. She thought it was more likely being away from all his cares for a while.

Not all his teaching was of language. He taught her a mantra, a little chant, to hinder magi seeking to learn things from her mind – only for a while, but long enough to seek help. The notion frightened her, that these people could read her private thoughts, so she practised hard at maintaining her concentration on the mantra, no matter what distractions there might be. Meiros told her she learned well, which pleased her. He also taught the mantra to Huriya, who picked it up quickly.

She also learned a little about the place they were going to. ‘Hebusalim is a sacred city to the Amteh,’ he told her, ‘one of the three holiest. That is another reason why they resent the Rondian
occupation. It was a major city even before the Bridge was built.’ He told her about the sultans of Dhassa and old wars, but she was interested in more immediate things.

‘Who is the Justina you sometimes mention?’

Meiros paused in midflow. ‘Justina? She is my only daughter, the child of my second wife.’

‘Does she live with you? How old is she? Is she married? Does she have children?’

He was amused at the sudden torrent of questions. ‘Yes, she lives with me, but she has her own apartment and comes and goes as she pleases. No, she is not married; she has lovers, I suppose, but that is none of my business. She has no children – we magi do not breed easily or often, I’m afraid. As for her age …’ He looked her in the eye. ‘Justina is one hundred and sixty-three years old.’

Ramita went cold. It was so easy to forget that magi were not like other men. After a pause she asked, ‘What does she look like?’

He thought for a moment, then said, ‘She looks like a typical thirty-year-old woman, I suppose. She has long black hair and pale skin. She is accounted a beauty – she inherited her mother’s looks, obviously,’ he added self-deprecatingly.

Ramita pressed on. ‘What happened to your wife?’

‘She died of old age, forty years ago.’ He gazed into space. ‘She was the daughter of another acolyte of Corineus. We married when I settled in Pontus.’

‘Who was Corineus? Is he not your god?’

Meiros shook his head. ‘No, not back then, anyway. Baramitius and his ilk made him into a god afterwards, but to me he was just Johan – somewhat mad, incomprehensible, charismatic, compelling, but utterly human. He changed my life, several times over. I was a youngest son of a Brician baron, with no prospects beyond a career in the legions. Then Johan came to our village and lured me away. It was the time of the Rimoni Empire – we were all of the Sollan faith then, and the drui taught that salvation could be found through following personal vision, so travelling preachers abounded. I heard Johan Corin in the marketplace, talking about freedom and equality,
and I was captivated. He painted a vision of a world governed by love, truth and understanding: a dream world. He had his woman, Selene, and a dozen other followers, and I walked away from the life my family had prepared for me and joined them that very day. I was just thirteen years old.

‘For several years we wandered all over Rondelmar, teaching Johan’s version of the Sollan faith. We slept in fields or under trees, on the outskirts of those towns where the authorities had turned us away, but others welcomed us, and Johan’s following grew. Soon we were dozens, then a hundred, and by the following spring we were nearly two hundred-strong and growing daily. A new word was being whispered everywhere: “Messiah”, which means “saviour”. Corin became “Corineus” and people said that he’d come to lead us to a better life here on Urte. The legion commanders became frightened of our numbers, and when trouble flared and several of us were killed, Johan personally intervened and persuaded the legion commander to stop the violence. From then on we started to hear all these stories of miracles and great deeds – all nonsense, of course, but by midsummer we numbered more than a thousand. Johan –
Corineus
– began to speak more and more pompously, of visions sent to him from Sol and Luna. Selene announced that Sol and Luna had transformed Corineus and her, making them brother and sister, and she began calling herself “Corinea”.’ Meiros shook his head. ‘It’s almost funny now. Beware, Wife, of people who claim to speak the words of God. They will be lying. Most of the world’s biggest liars claim to speak for God.’

‘But priests—’

‘Especially priests! Never trust a priest – and never,
ever
trust a magi who claims his gift comes from Kore or Ahm or Sol, or anyone else.’ He waggled a finger at her. ‘Never!’

‘But you got magic from your god, that’s what Guru Dev taught me.’ In fact, Guru Dev had told her the magi got their powers from demons of Hel, but it felt unwise to repeat that, just in case.

Meiros laughed. ‘Ha – yes, well … the Kore have done well out of that little myth.’ He leaned forward. ‘The secret of the gnosis is
contained in a thing Baramitius made called the Scytale of Corineus. Baramitius was a great one for secrets, and for potions. He was Corin’s oldest disciple, an alchemist – he was the true miracle worker. He discovered the liquid he called “ambrosia”. Any who survived drinking it gained the gnosis-power to manipulate nature. I did not see any god that night.’

She looked up at him, confused, wondering. ‘Did you see demons of Hel then?’ she asked without thinking, then she almost swallowed her tongue in fright at what she had said.

To her vast relief, Meiros only laughed. ‘No, nor angels either – I have never seen any demon nor angel, Wife, and nor do I expect to.’ He chuckled heartily. ‘The gnosis has nothing to do with any god, do you understand?’ He jabbed a finger for emphasis and then paused and stared at it, as if amused by his own animation. Ramita felt a curious warming towards him. He reminded her of Guru Dev.

‘No, the Scytale had nothing to do with religion,’ he went on. ‘Johan Corin intended the drink to open our minds to God – he got the idea after taking Sydian opiates, which ought to tell you much of his state of mind. Baramitius laboured to make Johan’s vision a reality – he even tested his experimental brews upon fellow disciples – some died, but Johan concealed this to protect him. I only found out about his experiments years later, and I was appalled. Anyway, Baramitius eventually found what he sought, and got permission to administer it to the whole flock.

‘On the chosen night Corin told us we were to imbibe the wine of the gods and ascend to greet them. A legion had surrounded our camp, sent by some alarmist townsfolk, but Corineus was adamant the ceremony would go ahead. We gathered in north Rondelmar, on a balmy day in late autumn. The wolves were beginning to howl in the wilds, but we all went about garlanded with flowers and dizzy from drink. Corineus made a slurred speech about sacrifice and love and salvation as the ambrosia was shared out. We each got just a drop, and at a sign from Corineus we raised our cups to our lips and drank. Outside the camp, the legionnaires were closing in.

‘The fluid moved slowly from the belly to the heart. It was truly
debilitating: we all collapsed. It left us conscious, but unable to function. To me, everything was frozen and magnified; I could even see the separate colours of the rays of light that showered down from the face of Luna. Deeper and deeper we all sank and as light ebbed away, a shimmering opalescence seeped through the air and clung to our bodies. I heard someone cry out in an incredibly slow, deep voice for their mother.
Mother?
I thought, and suddenly I saw her, my own mother, as clear as daylight, sitting at her table hundreds of miles to the south, and she looked up, seeing nothing, but calling my name. All around me, voices murmured, invoking parents, siblings, children, all the loved ones they abandoned when they joined Johan’s flock, and perhaps they all saw them, as I saw her.