The Hidden Icon (9 page)

I dragged myself out of my thoughts at his words.

“I want you to imagine that your mind is like a chain of mountains on the horizon,” he said, his voice still and hard. I read his eyes, black as a new moon and just as distant. I could see that he didn’t think that he would be a patient teacher, and I endeavored to do just as he asked.

“The night and day come and go and are beneath your notice, neither rain nor snow nor wind can change you. On one side of you the sea is churning and crashing, and this is the world. On the other is a deep vale where you dwell, your thoughts, your wants, the things that you fear.”

I gasped as a feeling like he had his hand on the pumping organ of my heart traveled through me, nothing at all like the little readings of me I knew Gannet had done in the time we had spent together. As invasive as the feeling was, I was keenly aware of just how gentle he was being with me, and this twisted in me, turning discomfort to a pleasure I could not understand. “You don’t possess the ability to keep me from your mind, not yet, anyway. But I do believe you can drive me away.”

I had the strangest sensation of being in two places at once; I was sitting with Gannet on my cot, but I was also in an internal world, the one that Gannet had described. He was there with me. His presence was not threatening, but I knew that he did not belong there and I should drive him out. Strengthened by the context Gannet had given me, I imagined myself at the foot of a great mountain, but this was one of my own making: cragged and cliffed, a terrible wind stirring the sands into dunes at its base. Behind me there was an oasis with water and shelter enough for only one, and he was not welcome. I willed the wind at his back, my dream come to life, sweeping his feet out from underneath of him and hurling him like a seed on the air back over the mountain.

My eyes snapped open and met Gannet’s, which flashed an emotion I could not read behind his mask before he looked away. I felt myself again, singular, my worries and wonders shapeless without his hand to guide them. I had to catch my breath, for I had been holding it, and my hands had tightened white on the cot’s coverlet.

“It worked,” I managed, and knew the answer to my next question before I even I asked. “Have I always been able to do this?”

“Yes,” Gannet admitted, the tenor of his voice departed some from that of a teacher. “It’s from that power, too, that you will learn to shield yourself all of the time, as I do.”

“And until then?”

He seemed strangely discomfited by my question, raising and dropping both of his heels against the barge floor as though to firmly anchor himself.

“You will go on as you have, blazing like a safe house in a storm. I’m the only one that will know any better, for now,” he answered finally, not looking up from where he had turned away. Uncertain, I knitted my hands together in my lap. From what storm would he look to an enemy for sanctuary?

“You know everything I’m thinking, then?”

“It’s not that simple,” he insisted, meeting my eyes again. His were blank, careful. “Your mind, our minds, are not the same as everyone else’s. Most people sound to me like the chatter of animals, but you, you’re like the language of moving water or wind.”

My cheeks filled with color at this unexpected compliment, though I was more surprised by what he said next.

“What I sense from you is never explicit, never clear. You do have secrets from me. I heard you better,” and here he paused, as though this was what he had not wanted at first to say and I had urged him to it. “I heard you better before I even met you, when you were brought out of the desert. That was how I knew who you were, not seeing you, as I said before. But hearing you.”

“And what did you hear?” I asked, finding it difficult to speak around the curious lump in my throat.

“Many things. Your hopes. Stories. Remembered days with your siblings when you lived in the palace.” Gannet crossed a hand over his brow, as though he perspired. He wasn’t. I thought back to our return from exile, the stories I had told aloud to distract my parents and siblings from the hard road, the heat, and the barbarians who drove us on without a care for either.

And another, apparently, who’d spied on our despair from the comforts of our former home.

“I don’t suppose you heard anything you liked. You haven’t since.”

My words were hard, but I didn’t care. It was easier to be angry, and I was grateful for something that wasn’t the strange tenderness I’d felt moments before.

Gannet’s eyes were cautious slits.

“Now wouldn’t be a terrible time to practice some of what I’ve just taught you, unless you enjoy being uncharitable.”

“You’re hardly the picture of charity.” I was seething now, refusing to break the eye contact he had made. “So you’ve attempted to enlighten me. I’m still a prisoner. What use do I have for your pity?”

We stared at each other, and I took his advice, for all I wouldn’t want him to know it: I walled up everything that wasn’t disdain, including the hope that my temper wouldn’t keep him from teaching me more. Especially that. Gannet didn’t look away, though it wasn’t brazen pride that filled his eyes. They were fired with something else, swallowing up much of my anger in their stillness.

“I’m not foolish enough to pity the icon of Theba.”

Before I could respond, there was a light cough at the curtained entrance to my little chamber. We both looked up, away from each other. Surprised though I had been by Gannet’s earlier claim to teach me, Morainn standing at the entrance to my chamber was as wild over again. She didn’t often leave her cloistered luxury, and I had never been able to tell if this was by choice or design.

“Imke and Triss are asleep,” she offered by way of explanation, looking less formidable somehow in the half-dark. Her circlet was absent, also, revealing a weary brow. “I escaped.”

Gannet rose as she entered, though there was no sense of urgency in his movements. With so few places to sit, he remained standing while Morainn elected to take his place next to me on the cot. He lit an oil lamp next, as though the three of us were old friends, gathered for an evening drink. And we weren’t.

But as Gannet relaxed idle on his feet, as Morainn settled beside me as one of my sisters might, I realized we weren’t entirely enemies, either. And I wasn’t sure when or how that had happened.

I considered again the stories Gannet might have heard in whole or part from his distant observations of me on the road into our capitol. The best of them had been my father’s favorite. I took a deep breath, like one might take to fan the flames of a dying fire, and delivered myself the evening’s greatest surprise.

“Gannet was just about to tell me a story,” I said carefully, looking at Morainn. Her eyes widened in surprise, but I saw, too, the hint of amusement in the way her eyelids crinkled nearest her nose. “I hope you’ve not yet heard the tale of Charrum and the key of hearts.”

“I haven’t,” Morainn answered, tilting her head questioningly towards her brother. Now we were each poised as listeners, though I was far more interested in how Gannet would respond than the tale. He didn’t disappoint. Eyes hooded, he opened and closed his mouth once, wetting his lips, before answering.

“The one with,” and he paused, sharing a muted flash of what was obviously his impression of the young rogue Charrum challenging the bandit king. It was surprisingly like what I had always imagined, though I supposed that was to be expected.

“That’s the one.” I couldn’t help but smile, both because of what Gannet had shared, and because he hadn’t refused my dare outright. It made me a little forgiving. “I can begin, if you like.”

And he did, a light nod confirming for me how little experience Gannet had telling stories.

“Charrum was a seeker of treasures, and the greatest treasure of his heart was Felea, the daughter of the wealthiest merchant in his village. Her hand in marriage was promised to the man who could deliver to her father the most unique, most priceless, most coveted object in the world. The trouble was that Felea’s father’s wants changed with the rising and setting of the sun. He didn’t know what it was he most wanted, and so it didn’t matter what Felea wanted most, which was to wed Charrum and leave her father’s house forever.

“In his twentieth year, Charrum rose to a challenge laid by the local bandit king for a great treasure, perhaps the very greatest of treasures, and one that he felt would please even Felea’s father. To enter the bandit king’s service Charrum had first to pass a test of spirit, and he made his camp that night in a circle of standing stones that were said to be haunted. Charrum laid himself down beneath the stars without a fire, shivering in the cold glare of the night as he waited for whatever was supposed to appear, to appear.”

I paused to give Gannet a window, watching his face carefully to see if he remembered this portion of the story. I had rehearsed it several times over in my mind before I told it aloud on that difficult journey, to steady my own nerves before trying to steady those of my family. I chose it now for both purposes, because he might know it, and because in telling it, I felt closer to them.

He didn’t interject, so I continued, grateful for the rapt attentions of Morainn, reclined in the narrative as much as she was on the sparse coverings of my bed.

“As Charrum slept, three ghosts set upon him, pinning his arms and legs to the earth with their rotting limbs. The first ghost pried open his eyes, the second tugged at his ears, and the third caught hold of his tongue.

‘What is like a man but is not a man, has room enough for one but one is sometimes too many, and is desired by men and babes alike?’

The ghost with his hand in Charrum’s mouth only let go for a split second, and the young man uttered his reply.

‘A woman,’ Charrum said, his tongue released like a clapper in a bell. The ghosts vanished as quickly as they had come, and when Charrum looked about him now he saw not standing stones but many doors, each carved with a sigil. This frightened him no more than the ghosts had, and when he stood to examine them he recognized the symbols for water and blood, earth and flesh, screaming and song.”

There was no question then that Gannet intended to continue, for I felt the slightest touch of his mind upon mine, as polite as a hand upon the shoulder to avoid startling someone in a room alone. Like Morainn, I turned my energies then to listening. It had been ages since I had gotten to hear a story, a pleasure I had greatly missed. I tried not to think too much about the fact that it was Gannet who told it.

“Drawing his knife, Charrum stalked out of the circle to a nearby wood and trapped there a rodent foraging. He returned with it to the circle, crooning before the sigil for singing before turning his knife upon the creature. Only when it had cried out did he deliver death swiftly, his whispered apology to the animal abrupt and tuneless compared with his song.

“Before another sigil he spit, and another he mixed the blood of the creature with his own when he cut into his palm, dripping the mingled blood upon the door that had been a stone. For flesh he bit into his cheek, and put his hands into mud to print on the door of earth.”

While not a terribly skillful storyteller, there was something about Gannet’s measured voice, his quiet confidence, that seduced me. He told the tale just as I would have, but it was different because it was coming from him, colored by the things inside him. I listened, hardly breathing, as he teased new life from a story I thought I knew completely.

“When Charrum had done all of this all six of the doors opened, each seeming to lead to rooms of greater treasure than the last. He knew even as he looked upon rubies and emeralds, gold and silver, upon a banquet table sagging with dishes of his favorite foods, that the bandit king would take only the man who would take for himself what was of greatest value. And so, when faced with unimaginable riches, Charrum settled himself down again and built a fire, roasting over it the thin carcass of the animal he had killed. He did not even take from one of the rooms a jeweled chalice for water, but cupped his hands together in a nearby stream.

“Charrum laid down to sleep after his meal. He dreamed, and in his dream the bandit king visited him with a fourth and final challenge. He was pleased with Charrum’s performance, and he promised him that the treasure would be his. It was, however, in the possession of another, and if Charrum wished to claim it, he would have to steal it. Because it was often the way of challenges such as these, Charrum was not surprised to learn that the treasure belonged to Felea’s father. That he should take it only to trade it back again for the hand of his bride seemed fitting.”

Gannet paused, looking at me strangely. My breath had returned, but it was short, steaming on my lips. I had been going through the telling in my mind, our two versions like hands rubbed together for warmth, a pleasant friction. With that look, he asked me if I wanted to continue. And I did.

“Charrum waited until very late the next night to go to Felea’s father’s house. He was stealthy as the shadows themselves, slipping from garden to cold hearth to halls that were lit well in daylight but were dark as pitch on a cloudless night. Many tools he had to avoid detection: stones that would erupt in smoke if thrown, mirrors to reflect the light should he be surprised. At every door he paused and pressed a little horn against the wood, listening for occupants awake and moving.

“Charrum dispatched several guards in near silence, clapping a hand over a mouth here, a sharp strike to the neck there, but he didn’t kill. The morning sun would wake them with throbbing heads, bruised egos, and nothing else.