All around you a storm is raging. Above you, beneath you the storm is raging. Here, in this moment, when enemies gather and fears assault, become quiet as the earth. In your breathing take all things into you and so will you find a space none can reach. Then comes the power to ride all waves, and penetrate all things.
Ifandell Modet, The Crystal Teaching
Zahem
The City of Nava
The cellebell went off while the sky was still grey, and Erek could tell by the feel of the bedroom he shared with his wife that this would be a warm day despite the approach of winter. He touched the buzzer and cleared his throat before saying: “Brother Erek.”
“Brother Erek,” the serious voice of Brother Horem spoke from the other end of the com, “you are needed in the Prophet’s Wing immediately.”
Now, beside him, Mareesa was awakening, and she whispered to him, but he mouthed, “I have to go.”
He dressed quickly, pulling on the trousers hung up in the closet, a fresh white shirt—there was always a fresh white shirt—and then the black robe over it, and Mareesa cinched it and kissed him goodbye. She opened the door for him as if he was going out to war, and he went down the hall of Helamon House and then, passing through the lush courtyard, went through a long dim hall and entered the part of the palace called the Prophet’s Wing.
It was silent so early in the morning, filled with grey, predawn light as he entered the main hall, hung with chandeliers, and made his way up the staircase to the second floor where the Prophet and his family resided. He could already tell, as he walked under the high ceilings and through the walls covered in the paintings of Prophets past, what he knew when he came to the line of men, all in black like himself, before the door.
“Brother Skabelund,” Brother Horem Allman greeted him, touching his hands gently, and making way for him to enter.
The other men greeted him the same way. He was the head of the Council of the Young, those groomed to join, one day, the Council of the Elders, and all around him were the Elders. Brother Allman, aged forty-three, black haired and kind faced was the newest of them, and he had left Helamon House only a year before.
Here in the great room, Erek witnessed what he no longer needed to be told. He slipped out of his shoes and, barefoot, crossed the great room. The Prophet’s room was high and white and nearly as large as the courtyard in the middle of Helamon House, the floor covered in thick, white carpet. In the center of the room was a high canopied bed dwarfing the corpse of a tiny man surrounded by men, one who was the Elder of Elders, Rom Adhadgent, born from one of the oldest Zahem families, descended from the Prophet Joses himself.
“Brother,” the old man said, coming to Erek, his bare feet making no sound on the thick carpet as he clasped Erek’s hands, “know that the Prophet Zakil, blessed of memory, passed out of this world at the moment we called you. That would be two and one half quarters past six this morning. Nine months and a day from that time we will search for him again. You will lead the search. For now, take Elder Allman with you, and notify the new Prophet that his time has come.”
Erek bowed his head, sparing no time for looking upon the body of Zakil. The kindly old man was gone now, but gone in several ways. Now his ghost was beside his body, still very much Zakil, but in the morning, when they all gathered in the Temple to re enact for him the Great Ritual which all of them had undergone on a regular basis since the time of their ordination to the priesthood, he would be with them, and they would guide him through the Gates, and there he would remember himself in totality and prepare for rebirth again.
Erek looked at Allman, who nodded. Of course, Allman had already known what was going to happen. The youngest of the Elders and the oldest of the Young, separated by about a decade, departed the room, and going through the hall, made their way through the Prophet’s Wing, crossed another courtyard, and entered Kasaydon Hall. Now the sun was rising, and as they entered the lobby and spoke in low voices to a guard, they could see part of the long side of the grey stone Temple where all great mysteries took place. There, walking along the parapet, were the mysterious Temple guards, the Hands.
The house guard departed, and a few moments later, in a disheveled robe, hair tumbled into his face, came a eighteen year old boy who looked, as usual, irked. For not the first time, Erek wondered if they had gotten it wrong, if somehow all the signs had been mistaken.
While he was still wondering, Elder Allman, who truly must have thought the same things, went to his knees and tugged Erek with him.
“My Lord,” Elder Allman declared, “the Prophet Zakil has departed from this world, and now the Spirit of Prophecy had descended upon you again.”
Erek kissed the boy’s hand, not daring to look at his face, not willing to see the teenage scorn that might be resting on it. Eyes lowered he murmured, “Long live his Holiness, the Prophet Dhalan.”
A thousand years ago, when the Prophet Joses has died, or rather been killed in southern Westrial, his rightful successor, Yahn had brought the Zahem together when they were on the verge of scattering. He had led them out of Westrial and into the great Wilderness, and his reign had been, if not merciful, long.
One day, when Yahn, who had come to power tall, hard faced, and dark haired, a widow, was an old, white bearded mystic with fifty-five wives, the people had asked which of his sons or which of his close disciples would follow him.
“None of them,” Yahn had replied, “for when I die, you will find that exactly twenty-five years before my death, was born a man who is, in fact, the Prophet Joses returned. From now until the end of time, we will always come to you.”
And so the day that Yahn had died, the senior three of his wives had come to wash his body and wrap it in white cotton, and after his burial, his councilors had gone out to find the new Prophet, leaving in charge the Elder of Elders. The Prophet had turned out to be a young man living in the mountains with his three wives, all of them dark skinned Yute women. This was the Prophet Jarom, who was greeted with the news that he was Joses reborn.
The skeptics, and there had always been skeptics, noted that the Prophet Yahn had said all manner of things which people had chosen to forget. He had declared that he could split the Great Dead Lake in two, that the mighty Royan had dark skin as a curse and were devils, that people lived inside of the sun and God was a man who lived on a planet in the heavens. They also remembered that Yahn had often sent young men off to build cities and fight wars, to become missionaries for the true religion, and then, while they were gone, taken their wives to himself and dispossessed them, strengthening his dynasty. Those who remembered Yahn as more of a ruthless but necessary leader of the young Zahem thought that perhaps choosing a prophet who was exactly twenty-five at the moment of Yahn’s death, but not in the circle of his chosen followers, was a way of keeping his power safe while he lived, and that declaring him to be Joses reborn was a way of giving this unknown man a greater and not a lesser power than Yahn, and therefore making the role of Prophet stronger in every generation.
Over the course of time a theology had developed which, like all theologies, was said to have always been there. When Jarom had died, Anisse came to power, said to be Yahn reborn. Every prophet would be mighty and holy, but it was every other prophet, every coming of Joses, which was said to be the Most Holy Prophet.
It was said that only after the ritual where the soul departed beyond the Gates, could the soul of the recently dead Prophet, which usually only remembered this current life, remember himself in totality. At that moment he would journey to a faithful Zahem man and woman and, at the moment when they conceived, enter into the woman and be, after nine months, reborn as their child. The couple was always Zahem, always faithful. The child must be born without physical defect, and he must always be male. Of course one had to allow for premature or slightly late birth. One had to allow for the soul of the Prophet lingering in the spirit world as long as a month. Zakil had been the reborn Yahn, and though a great man, it was known that Yahn was less holy than Joses, and so one had to allow for his soul tarrying even longer. But after a long enough search one could find the child who was Prophet reborn.
The idea was that the boy would be discovered and properly trained, perhaps groomed to join the councils and sufficiently old and wise when the time came for him to succeed the Prophet before him. This was how it had been with Zakil. Zakil was sixty-five when his time had come, for the Prophet Manoah had lived many years. But sixteen years ago, at the ripe age of ninety, the saintly Manoah had passed out of this world and so, Erek frowned to think of it as he left Lehi Hall with Brother Allman, he had been reborn as this floppy haired, disinterested eighteen year old.
In the wake of the visitation, Dhalan, now called The Prophet Dhalan, stood staring after the two men.
“Your Holiness,” the guard began.
“Stuff it,” Dhalan said, wearily. “Give me a cigarette. I know you’ve got one.”
The guard stared at the boy in disbelief.
“Why are you looking at me like that? If I’m the Prophet reborn now, I was the Prophet yesterday. I haven’t changed. And,” he said, holding out his hand, as Merom reached into his breast pocket, “if I’m the Prophet, then why wouldn’t I know you’ve got a fag to spare?”
The Kingsboro
“Your Grace, would you like me to sing for you tonight?”
The food was being taken away, and wine was being served. Cedd blinked at Niveah.
“My dear,” he said to the girl who had sung in his private courts and whenever he had traveled in the past, “why would I not want you to sing?”
She began to answer, then leaned in and whispered.
“Your Grace, for a while, since your father died, you have not been as lighthearted.”
“You mean since I came to the Throne?”
Fires raged across the country. All about, priests were ready to string up witches, and Cedd was half tempted to let them. Cedd did not say to Niveah that his rage at Anson had risen when he realized that, departing, Anson had made off with their sister as well. The High Prince, now traveling with Lord Austin and the powerful mage Ohean, could not be dragged back with the girl Cedd had intended to sell into a humbling marriage and so, now, Cedd had to pretend he did not notice this, or that Imogen’s journey with her brother was all in his plans. They had better go to Rheged, oh they had better, for if they came to Inglad, or into Essail, Cedd would see that his brother and sister were hauled back to Kingsboro in disgrace.
He took a deep breath and calmed himself. Anthony sat beside him, and once or twice he had made bold enough to touch his friend’s hand. Cedd laughed.
“And you are kind, for I know I have never been lighthearted, and I have rarely been kind.”
“Your Grace has always been kind to me,” Niveah said. “This is all I know.”
That’s all she ever would know. It was no secret Cedd had been called the Black Prince, and many had preferred Anson to him, and it was well known that, no matter what Cedd said, Anson was not simply off on a trip west, but that he had fled the moment Cedd was sole king in Westrial. Whatever was said of him, though, and whatever he was, one day, years ago, fighting the Daumans, he had come upon a little girl about to be raped by soldiers. They were just setting to when Cedd ran for them, swung his sword and lopped off one man’s head in the moment of opening Niveah’s legs. He had been a gruff savior, not speaking as he put her on the back of his horse, and leading her back to his home and later the castle.
Anthony had been there at the time, and the girl had been so afraid that after some time, while she was eating at a table between Cedd and Anthony, Anthony said, plainly,
“She thinks we’re going to rape her.”
Cedd blinked.
“I never raped anyone,” he said.
“It’s something men do,” Niveah said.
“Child,” Anthony said, tenderly, “has it been done to you?” Then he said, “If it makes you ashamed, I will not ask you to speak of it.”
“It has never happened to me,” she said. “But it almost did.”
“Well now it never will,” Cedd said gruffly, frowning. “You will find that Anthony and I are… a different type of man. Rest. You never have to worry around us. Now that you are under my protection you never have to worry at all.”
Niveah learned quickly that the bronze haired Prince Anson, whom she could not help swooning over a little, was the same sort of man that Cedd and Anthony were. For some reason though, Cedd and Anson did not get on. They ought to have been friends. She also learned that, though no one really spoke of the type of men the three of them were, everyone knew about Anson, and Cedd was insistent that in his case it be kept quiet, that his relationship to Anthony never be discussed. He had never said it out right, but rather in gestures and words.
“I have trusted you with knowledge I have given to no one,” he told Niveah.
He and Anthony had made sure she was educated, and sent her to be schooled with a Royan bard. Niveah learned the songs that delighted Cedd. But since the coronation, a black cloud had been upon him, even moreso than usual, and music could not lift it. Tonight, though, he said, “Sing.”
That night she sang a tale of a knight whose treacherous wife had, when learning he was a werewolf, taken away the clothes by which he was able to change back. She had taken a lover and, meanwhile, the knight, in the form of a tame wolf, had sought out his king who had been his beloved friend. In time, all the treachery had been learned and the wolf restored, and the wicked wife and her lover had been forced to depart while the king was left with his beloved friend. It was a favorite tale of Cedd’s, for the wolf and king were friends on many levels, and how one interpreted the tale was different for whoever heard it.
It aventoer dat jo hawwe heard is gjin idel fabel.
Wis en yndied is bard sa't ik haw sein.
It liet fan 'e wienen-Wolf, wier,
waard skreaun dat it moat ea wurde
betocht.
As Niveah’s slim dark fingers fell from the harp strings, the courtiers who applauded gently, sleepily, with satisfied smiles on their faces, rose from the fire lit hall where gold and red shadows played on the walls, and on the banners of each loyal lord. The sleepy courtiers threaded their various ways to bed. Cedd kissed Niveah lightly on the head and Anthony did the same.
In the King’s chambers, Anthony and not his servant, undressed him, and then Cedd undressed Anthony and the two men sat, one in the chair, one on the bed, naked before each other, discussing the next day.
“What do you think of Princess Isobel?”
“Don’t do this to me,” Cedd said.
“I’m not doing anything to you,” Anthony said, “unless taking care of you and looking after your interest is doing something and, come to think of it, it is. So you are welcome.”
“And I thank you,” Cedd said, putting his hand on Anthony’s knee. “I only wish—”
“Stop,” Anthony put up a hand. “Enough of wishing for a world that is not.”
“We should have never let them leave so quickly.
“Put that out of your mind, for in a matter of days you will be a king with a queen, a princess of Sussail, and take an understanding,” Anthony gave him a crooked smile, “bride into your bed.”
“Whatever understanding bride the future may bring, tonight you are mine,” Cedd said, standing up and reaching for the lantern to blow it out.
The hangings and finery of the room fluttered in the guttering light of the dying lantern before going into darkness. There was only the sound of Cedd’s body settling on the bed beside Anthony’s as Anthony told him, “I am yours every night.”
