The Hidden Icon (30 page)

“Perhaps you should reserve your judgment until you know us better.”

Jaken poured me a little tea, flecks of dried leaf floating and settling.

“I would like to hear one of your stories, Eiren. I would like to hear your favorite story.”

I was so used to being asked to tell listeners
their
favorite story that the request took me by surprise. But I already knew which story I wanted to tell.

“Before she was the wife of Shran and the mother of Salarahan, Jemae was a girl, and her temper was so fierce that her father and mother feared she would never be married, never mother a child. She stormed from her bed in the mornings and raged through her lessons by day. By evening time she was like a dying ember, smoldering and sulking. Many asked her, ‘What makes you so angry, child?’ Jemae responded the same every time: ‘Everything.’

“In her eleventh year Jemae struck her riding master on the hand when he attempted to correct her posture, and in fear of what her parents might do to her if they discovered the abuse, she ran away and hid herself in a flowering bush.”

Like it had been sometimes at the hearths of my youth, and more recently our resting places on the journey to Ambar, there were suddenly in the shadows listeners that hadn’t been there at the start of my tale. I didn’t falter in my telling to count them, though I took a sip of tea before continuing. It was sweet and hot enough to sharpen any lagging sense.

“Angry over having lost her temper, Jemae grew angrier still as she squatted in the bush, and began furiously to tear at the buds that had not yet flowered. As she reached for a particularly fat and ripe one, it unfurled before her, petals puckering like a mouth before speaking.

‘Why do you destroy us?’

“Jemae was taken by surprise, and did not tear at the plant again.

‘I was angry. I didn’t think it would hurt you.’

“The bush shook, showering Jemae with pollen.

‘Any act of anger is like a stone dropped in the sea. The waves it makes touch many shores.’

“Jemae considered what the bush had said before she gathered the petals she had torn from the ground beneath the bush and buried them. Her tears watered where she had dug, and when she left her hiding place and sought her parents, no scolding could stop her crying.”

I began to feel as though my listeners were doing more than just sitting idle. Like the times that I had shared my mind with Gannet, I felt images born between Najat and Jaken and Shasa and all of the rest. I had but sketched Jemae crouched beneath the bush, but my telling was buoyed by their imaginings, as well, what they took from me and what they carried within themselves. What happened now was more than a simple telling, and I released an anxious breath before continuing.

“The rages that had been Jemae’s domain before were replaced with tears that flowed in such volume that often she couldn’t leave the side of the fountain in her family’s courtyard. As quickly as she could drink she could cry out a cupful of water, and many superstitious villagers came to gather her tears to heal the sick or bottle them in charms. The girl Jemae would have been annoyed by such attentions, but the young woman she had become was only sorry she couldn’t do more.

“In her fourteenth year Jemae’s mother and father began to encourage suitors to visit Jemae, but their affections only caused her tears to flow faster and harder, so undeserving did she feel. They brought her gifts of flowers that reminded her of the bush that had sheltered her; they brought her sweets that tasted bitter on her tongue. One young man brought a great globe of brightly colored fish, but he was so startled by her crying that he dropped the bowl into the fountain and ran right out the way he had come.

“One fish swam to the top of the water near where Jemae was seated and began to speak in low, bubbling tones.

‘Why do you cry?’

“Though Jemae wiped at her eyes, there was room enough in her sorrow to be surprised at the talking fish.

‘Because I’m sorry for the things that I’ve done.’

“The fish gulped and splashed.

‘No apology is as potent as a deed. How you live your life will show that you are sorry.’”

In the minds of the gathered icons I could see the fish, for one his belly yellow and spotted, for another his whiskers as violet as the sky at twilight. It was as though there was a cauldron in the middle of the room and we were each pouring into it what we saw in the tale. I could hold in my mind the visions shared by everyone and my own besides. When Gannet’s bold, silver fish darted across my notice, I found his dark eyes in the crowd and held them as I finished the story.

“When Jemae’s last tear fell into the fish’s open mouth, he shed his scales and climbed out of the fountain, a young man who looked quite like her riding instructor once had. He bowed to her before leaving the courtyard, and when he had gone Jemae rose and went to her parents. Her days after were spent reveling in what she could do instead of what she had done. It is said that despite her trials, Jemae died smiling, that there was nothing in the world that did not make her happy.”

My blood pumped hot and certain as I finished, and I knew in that moment that I wouldn’t need Theba to recommend these people to me. I didn’t need to remember, for I knew now for myself that these were my people. Even if I didn’t belong yet, I would soon. I looked at Gannet and didn’t wonder where he had been or worry how soon he would go. If it was my lot that I should have him only for a little while, then have him I would.

But more than Gannet’s eyes were upon me. Jaken and Shasa and Najat and Paivi watched me, and all of the others who had introduced themselves to me aloud with hesitant smiles and shining ones. Dsimah, Korse, Daggen, Lira. Tirce, Hamet, and Galen, still others who only nodded, who shined with no light other than one of service. Not all those gathered here were icons; some had made a choice to serve them. I wondered at their welcoming me so readily, but the feeling was fleeting as I felt myself pillowed upon their trust and anticipation. I released a breath I felt I had been holding since I’d left home.

Gannet’s eyes behind the mask were shifting. His thoughts flew like a dart into my mind, hitting a mark I hadn’t realized was there. I imagined my lips a cork, bottling my sense of things before it could be spoiled. In me there was spiced perfume, scented oil, all promises made and kept. He turned to go.

Paivi’s eyes were leveled on mine, and despite not having the cover of Gannet’s mask, his were equally unreadable. What he saw I wasn’t sure, but I could guess.

“Eiren hasn’t recovered fully from her test,” he observed, and I felt sure it had been but a projection of him during my test, that he didn’t know what I had suffered. What he offered me now, I realized, was an apology. His words alone were enough to put distance between the other icons and I. The hem of Gannet’s cloak was just visible waving out of the chamber as he exited. Following him seemed like the most natural course, and so I did, hardly aware of the soft eyes of Najat on my back as I moved into shadow.

It was dark and I didn’t try to see. I ran my hands along the wall, dipping into the little shelves, my fingers lost in the characters that were etched into the stone. I felt like Jemae in a later story, one that I liked nearly as well as the one I had told. After marrying Shran, she had parted the twelve curtains on their marriage bed to find him asleep. Her kiss had caused him to wake, and while I was sure despite what my mother had withheld in her telling that more than kisses followed that night, I could think of nothing but what pleasure there could be had in being near enough the one you loved to share their breath.

“Would you like me to walk with you?”

Even without my sight I could sense Gannet in the dark, standing just out of reach. He had waited for me. Before I could respond he held out his hand. I took it. His palm was cool and smooth, the hand of a man who needed neither weapons nor tools, whose mind was both. He didn’t hold my hand as he had in the chapel garden, but placed it upon his arm, against the crook of his elbow. I was very close to him, but it was a formal posture, and I struggled not to betray my hesitation.

When we reached the base of the stair I didn’t want to ascend, didn’t want to leave the strange magic that had been stirred below. If we could only stay, the horrors that had followed me here might not find me again. Though I was among those who had known me first as Theba, I had not, since Gannet had told me who I was, felt further from her than I did then.

“Eiren,” he said softly, his free hand falling upon mine where it rested on his arm. It could’ve been a gesture of urgency, that we must climb the stairs and return to the world whether I wanted to or not, but his touch answered a want of another kind. My fingers bore into his sleeve and I lifted onto my toes, he was lifting me, his mouth and mine meeting with the sweet taste of intention. It was not at all like I had imagined, to be held and kissed, though our circumstances were as dire as any pair of lovers in my favorite tales. This was a closeness complimented by thoughts shared between the bridge that our bodies made, both of us thrilling, driving worry and regret as far as seeking lips and hands could banish them. I might at one time have considered him mad, another woman would perhaps have been flattered, but all I could think was that we had wasted so much time.

The kiss deepened but briefly; Gannet couldn’t allow it to last. I felt his hands travel to my shoulders and he withdrew, holding me at arm’s length as though to better study me.

“I have to leave tonight. I wanted you to know.”

I laid my hands upon his and on an impulse raised them to my neck, the heels of his hands against my jaw. I wanted him to stroke my face there with his thumbs, and he did.

“Why do you have to go?” I asked, though I knew the answer before he spoke. The words were softened, though only slightly, by the gentle pressure of his fingers, cool against my flushed skin. My own hands moved against his arms, drawing us together again.

“There are things that I have to do.”

“How can someone without a name have so much to do?”

Gannet didn’t sigh, but he couldn’t disguise himself from me when I stood with my cheek pressed against the throb of his chest. I could sense his worry, his hesitation, and already, his regret. I released a breath, gathering a great lungful of him before stepping back out of his reach.

“You hope that a few weeks here will rob me of the desire to ask such questions,” I assumed, and Gannet shook his head, drawing his cloak against the cold that threatened where my body had been. When he spoke, he gestured his hand toward the stair, toward the palace and my chamber, where he couldn’t follow.

“I hope that a few weeks here will grant you what you have always desired.”

Chapter 22

The next morning Gannet was gone as he had promised he would be, and I knew better than to ask where. There was no breakfast with the court, and it was the twins, Jaken and Shasa, who came to collect me from the palace in Paivi’s stead.

When I asked them where he was, their grins were light, amused.

“You’ve passed your test, so he won’t have as much to do with you now,” Jaken began, his sister following his words almost without a pause for breath. “You may be Theba, but you’re still coming to know her. It’s better for you to be with us, for now.”

“Will I be allowed to see Morainn?”

“Of course, but she has many duties, as do you. Perhaps later.”

We descended through the gate in the garden into the strange underworld of the icons, and I was momentarily disturbed by how like a homecoming it felt to me. It didn’t last, not when Najat was waiting in the common room and others, too, when we shared a meal that had none of the discomfort, the current of gossip, as the morning meal in the court. Though of varying ages and surely having come from different classes, the icons seemed to have complete trust in one another. Jaken and Shasa confided to me that they had been born to a family of carpenters in the north, the youngest pair of children numbered fifteen altogether. I didn’t bother to ask them if they missed their family, for it was clear that they had found another one. Again, I could be troubled only a moment by this, and then I was being passed warm bread and chutney, what chill had entered my body leaving through fingers that clasped an earthen cup of tea.

After breakfast, Najat shared with me what she had wanted to last night, and their work proved to be the greatest surprise of all. In addition to maintaining a library of ancient, crumbling texts, some of them kin to the strange book Gannet had shared with me and others in our shared tongue, they seemed to be a part of Jhosch in the way those who lived above could not be. I had wondered upon entering the city how it was that it could exist, seemingly carved out of the mountain and yet still sound, and filled with ghostly architecture and trees besides. The tunnels below seemed to correspond in part with the avenues above, and when we came upon a narrow chamber where the icon of Dsimah sat at a crude table working in a great pot of soil, Najat paused in what had begun to seem like a tour.

“Dsimah, will you show Eiren what you can do?”

I wondered for the briefest of moments when they would begin to call me by the name of my icon, but the mild figure of Dsimah, rising and inclining her head to the both of us, captured my attention.

In many of the tunnels I had noted great bunches of roots hanging, some of them gathered together and bound up, others hung with lights, though the ones in this chamber were shaggy and rough, heavy and free of the mottled earth above. Dsimah placed her hands, stained with the soil she had moments ago been in up to her elbows, upon one great fat root and then another, and where she touched the roots began to glow a soft, buttery yellow. I watched the light, for that was what it was, spread from where Dsimah touched up and down the length of the root to the roof of the cavern. As though placed in my mind, I saw far above us a great tree, one of the many strange hybrids that grew throughout the capitol, seem to shake and stretch, leaves flush with color. It was not a picture that came from Najat or Dsimah, but it was a true one. Perhaps it came from the tree itself.