The Silver Lake (34 page)

During this time, Spar had taken his request for stories about Kaptin Haldin seriously and had been digging through Calinak-Koy’s library with the help of several librarian-delinkon of Ystazia. The evening before they were to leave to rejoin Cyan Company at Anahtar-Hisar, he very carefully laid a fme-paged volume open in front of the other boy, gently moving Jaq’s ever-present head aside before pointing at a large illustration.

Brax peered down at the brightly painted figure in the center with a suspicious frown.

“That’s him?”

Spar nodded.

“What’s he fighting, some kind of giant ... centipede? They usually have more legs than that, don’t they? And less teeth.”

Spar rolled his eyes. “It’s a spirit,” he said darkly, his tone warning Brax to take it seriously.

The older boy grinned at him. “Like the ones we fought on Liman-Caddesi?”

Spar nodded. “Haldin had to cut it into ten equal pieces to kill it.”

“But I thought they weren’t physical?”

“I dunno. Maybe he had a special sword or something.”

“Huh. I guess we should have thought of that the other night.” Brax traced the lines of misty power spraying from the creature’s wounds, then looked back at Kaptin Haldin. “What’s that silver-and-red stuff coming out of his mouth?” he asked.

“Into.”

“What?”

“In. To.”

“All right, into. What is it?”

“Her power.”

“Oh, right. They all get that. They call it up in their Invocations.”

“Not like this.”

“Oh?”

“This was stronger.”

“Really?” Brax peered down at the picture carefully. “How much stronger?”

“Lots. It was more ...” Spar thought for a moment. “Pure. More Her.”

“Does it say why She gave it to him?”

“Nope.”

“How about where he came from? How he got his training? How he died?” A negative after each question brought an exasperated frown to his face. “So, basically, it just says he killed giant spirit bugs?”

Spar showed his teeth at him as Brax picked up the book. “You know, I thought he’d be taller,” he observed, flipping carelessly through the pages, then laughed as the younger boy snatched the book away with an indignant snort. “Still, we know She gave him this extra-strong power to fight with, and if She gave it to him, there’s no reason why She wouldn’t give it to me, right?”

Spar gave a noncommittal one-shouldered shrug as Brax smiled grimly.

“Keep digging.”

By the time they took to the water to rejoin the rest of Cyan Company the next day, Spar had found two additional stories about Kaptin Haldin, both detailing his military exploits against the spirit world, and both with a similarly lurid picture of him fighting some fantastical creature while Estavia’s power flowed down his throat. Neither had said how or why. When Brax’d asked Yashar where they might find out, the older man had just shrugged.

“There aren’t a lot of stories surviving from that time,” he said, repeating Kemal’s words as he tossed his kit onto the barge that would take them south. “The only place they might have some written details of Haldin’s early life is at Ystazia-Sarayi’s main temple library at Anavatan, but since it’s about Estavia’s Champion and not Ystazia‘s, it’s hard to say.”

“When will we get back there?”

“Not for some months.” Catching Spar under the arms, Yashar lifted him into the boat. “I’m afraid you won’t find any magical shortcuts, Brax,” he added as he moved aside to let Jaq leap in after the younger boy. “Kaptin Haldin trained like any other soldier of his time. The God’s favor only increased his prowess later on. Besides, you want to be your own man, don’t you, not a copy of someone else? Pass me that bag.”

Brax handed it over with a scowl and, refusing Yashar’s help, joined Spar at the low railing as the sailors cast off.

Now, staring down into the brilliant waters of Gol-Beyaz, Brax pressed his hand against his chest, feeling the crinkle of vellum beneath his tunic. Spar would kill him if he ever found out that he’d carefully sliced that first illustration of Kaptin Haldin and the spirit bug from his book last night, but it comforted him somehow. It was like a talisman. And besides, if it had been the wrong thing to do, Estavia would have told him so.

He frowned to himself, feeling the seed of truth in this line of thought. Following Kaptin Haldin’s path was the right way to go, like Kemal had said—and he knew it, whatever Yashar might think—but he wasn’t going to find the answers in some library of Ystazia. Only Estavia could tell him what he needed to know, and if She wouldn’t answer him in his head, he’d ask Her face-to-face. Maybe She liked being asked that way. After all, it had worked on Liman-Caddesi; it could work again. And if he wasn’t meant to know, She’d tell him that, too. Face-to-face. The God of Battles wasn’t as subtle as Her people seemed to think She was. He’d learned that the first night.

Leaning over the edge of the low-sided barge, Brax trailed his fingers through the swiftly flowing current, ignoring the brisk wind that slapped his hair into his face. A school of small, silvery tchiros fish leaped from the water beside him, their shiny skins flashing in the late afternoon sun before flipping back under the waves again. They looked so much like tiny fish spirits that he wondered if they, too, were slowly changing, slowly becoming the Gods of fishes and mollusks and if they did, would the Gods eat them or erect them a temple shaped like a fishmonger’s?

Leaning farther over the side, he peered down into the sparkling waters, shifting his feet in frustration as he tried to maintain a grip against the deck’s smooth wooden surface. Chamberlain Tanay had come to Calmak-Koy late last night to make one final examination of their wounds and present them each with a brand-new pair of sandals along with a lecture on keeping them clean and supple. Listening to the leather creak, Brax wondered sarcastically if tossing them into the lake would violate those instructions. They didn’t feel supple, they felt stiff and hard and his feet felt hot, confined, and sore.

Beside him, Spar had already stuffed his into his kit bag and was curled up beside Jaq, fast asleep and, making a swift decision, Brax pulled the sandals off, then, gripping the lower edge of the railing with his toes, leaned over the water again. Far below, he thought he could just see movement. He stared intently down into the depths, until a sudden touch on his shoulder nearly sent him overboard. Laughing, Kemal caught him by the back of the tunic as Brax shot him a furious scowl.

“What are you doing?” his abayos asked in as innocent a tone as he could manage as Brax pulled away from him.

“Looking for the Gods,” he retorted from between clenched teeth as both-Spar and Jaq awoke to stare up at them.

“Well, you’ll never spot them that way; They don’t manifest physically until they leave the water, and never when the wind has the upper current moving along this quickly.”

“Upper?”

“Mm-hm. The upper or surface current flows north to south, the lower God-current—the one created by the movement of the Gods—” he expanded, “lies beneath it and it runs south to north. When the wind drives the upper current hard, the Gods go deep.” Dropping down beside the railing, Kemal stretched out his legs and lifted his face to the last of the sun’s rays with a contented sigh. “You’ll have to wait until They rise,” he finished, closing his eyes.

“So, when will They do that?”

“Hm?”

“The Gods, when will They rise?”

“You mean other than at the Morning Invocations?”

Brax’s expression fell. “Oh, I’d forgotten about that. Do They rise at other times?”

“Mm-hm.”

Brax waited a moment, then tapped one finger against his knee impatiently.

“Well?”

Kemal opened one eye. “Hm?”

“When?”

“When what?”

“Oh. Anytime They want to.” He closed his eyes again. “But generally at dusk,” he allowed, sensing the boy’s growing annoyance.

Brax stared back at the shimmering waves, now turned a translucent, golden-pink in the setting sun.

“It’s dusk now,” he pointed out.

“Mm-hm.”

“So where are They? Where do They come up?”

Kemal sat up with a resigned expression. “They don’t always
come up
at all, Braxin-Delin. And they don’t always come up together. Some people say they can call Them, but ...” he shrugged. “I’ve never been able to do it.”

“But you have seen Them? The Gods? Rise?”

“Oh, yes.” Kemal’s expression grew distant. “When I was growing up in Serin-Koy I used to sit by the water and watch Them dancing on the waves, sometimes far away, sometimes close by. Once, when I was fishing with my kardon—I must have been, oh, seven or eight at the time, I think—I saw Usara and Ystazia dancing together across the surface like a pair of huge swans.” He paused. “Except that most swans aren’t blue.”

“Or multicolored with three pairs of arms?” Brax asked sarcastically, remembering the many representations of the Arts God he’d seen in Anavatan.

“No, not that either,” Kemal answered. “I have seen
black
swans, however. The scholars call them Estavia’s Attendants, for sea battles anyway; it’s crows on land. But They—the Gods—moved as gracefully as swans, is what I meant.”

“And you’ve seen Estavia?”

Kemal nodded. “She prefers to rise closer to Her temple—I’ve watched Her from the southeast walls many times—but I saw Her from the battlements of Orzin-Hisar, that’s Serin-Koy’s watchtower, once when I was fifteen. I was on night duty and it was just before dark. The stars hadn’t even come out yet. She rose up right in front of me like a great, ebony behemoth, a hundred feet high, looked me straight in the eye, then vanished without so much as a ripple on the water.”

Brax exchanged a wide-eyed glance with Spar who was sitting up, as captured by the story as he was. “So, what’d you do?” he asked.

“Other than grip the wall so tightly I brought up a blood blister on my sword hand, not a lot.”