The First Binding, page 71
Lean. Whisper. Rumors. That’s all it takes to pass something along and have it stick.
“Do you want to know a secret they don’t know?” I looked sideways to the group he was heading toward. The promise of a secret, even untrue, is more than enough to ensnare most people. And I’d learned of their allure when dealing and trading them.
The young man looked at me, then his friends. He licked his lips and I could almost see the knot form in his throat. He and I both knew his friends were talking about me, and he probably nursed a healthy dose of concern that I had now stopped him. But he nodded in the end.
I leaned in closer—dropped my voice to a whisper. “There are three things said not to burn: Brahm, the Sithre, and demons. Which do you think I am?” I pulled away from him and gave him my best cryptic smile.
His mouth moved but he said nothing. I could see the sparks kindling behind his eyes as he thought but fell short of any answer, or at least one worth voicing. Instead, he shrugged his way clear of me and jogged over to his table. He gave me one last long searching look as he sat down.
I almost cared to wonder which of the three he’d chosen. Almost. In the end, it didn’t matter, because he’d share that choice with his friends. And they’d talk and spread it wide.
I lurked in Clanks for a while, listening to the renewed whispers and chattering all about the boy who couldn’t be burned. Then I left, deciding it time to finally head to a place I’d been waiting to visit ever since Mahrab first told me stories of the Ashram.
The Scriptory.
* * *
I crossed the main grounds, heading toward a building isolated from the others. No halls or stone tunnels led to it. It remained cut off from any source of noise, wind, weather, and all. A stone mausoleum without any adornment on the outside.
Two doors of bright and heavy wood, studded with brass, barred the way. I knocked on them and waited.
A slit opened at eye level and a pair of gray eyes stared back at me. “Name?”
“Ari.” I didn’t bother adding my family link. I had learned I was the only person with my first name at the Ashram.
“Oh.” The slit closed.
I stood there for a moment, unsure of what just happened. “Hello?”
The sound of latches snapped and clicked from the other side—the seam between the two doors cracked and light filtered through.
A young woman stood there, maybe a year or two older than me. Her hair was cut short, hanging just to the middle of her ears, and was just a shade of brown darker than the doors. Heart-shaped face with cheeks that still held to a bit of child’s fat. They helped offset the coldness of her eyes.
“Please don’t make trouble.” Her look hardened and she looked me over again. “I know who you are.”
I stopped midstep. “I won’t. Wait, what constitutes trouble in the Scriptory?”
She frowned. “Nothing to harm the manuscripts, the books, the tablets. Nothing. You don’t fetch anything yourself. You get one of us—a lorist in training—to get it for you. No ink. No graphters too close to anything. If you take notes, you do it from a safe distance. No water. No liquids of any kind. You thaw any snow off. No noise. Speak softly. And…” Her voice dropped to a dangerous whisper, made all the more serious as she narrowed her eyes. “… nothing leaves this library without permission and a record taken by either us or Master Lorist.”
“Understood.” I walked into the Scriptory and the doors shut behind me with a thud I felt more than I heard.
“Also, it’s not called the Scriptory. It’s the library.”
I inclined my head, letting her know I’d taken stock of that, but I had no intention of using the name. Everyone else had dubbed it the Scriptory for the unending spread of manuscripts in the Ashram’s collection.
A thought struck me that might save me some time and not irk her any further. “Hey, actually, I am looking for something specific. Mind helping me?”
She gave me a look that said she did mind, in fact, and would rather have been doing anything else. Instead, she let out a resigned sigh. “Sure. What are you looking for?”
“Any books on the Ashura.”
She stopped halfway to reaching me, her back and shoulders tightening visibly. “Monster stories and tales? Children’s fantasy?”
My spirits crashed and I tried to salvage the situation. “It’s for the stories. I like storytelling and was raised in a theater. I have a personal interest in folklore.”
She shrugged and motioned for me to follow.
The Scriptory’s inside was the opposite of its hard, stone exterior. It resembled the Artisanry in many ways from the wood-paneled walls and floors. Rolled manuscripts and bound books sat in solid shelving as far as I could see. The books were sealed safely behind layers of etched glass, likely crafted in the Artisanry. All of the light in the Scriptory came from glass orbs that radiated a warm pale glow. It made me think of the sun on a cold spring morning still too close to winter’s end.
“What are those?” I gestured to the spheres.
“Hm? Binder’s lights. The spheres are inscribed in the Artisanry to store sunlight and recast it. Light can’t be permanently generated, so we use these and set out others during the day to alternate with the ones that fade out later in the night.”
I had never seen one of these in my life. It made me reconsider the potential of the minor bindings.
“Here.” She gestured to one of the glass-covered shelves. The young woman produced a key, opening the small lock that held the glass seal in place. She opened the case and handed me a leather-bound tome. “Will you be needing to take it from here?” Something in her tone told me I shouldn’t.
I shook my head.
“To record anything from it? We have graphters here if you need and some parchment, though there is a fee for the pulp-paper if you take more than two sheets.”
I waved her off. “No, reading will be enough, thank you.”
She nodded and sealed the shelves again. “Once you’re done with that, I can fetch you another.” It didn’t sound like she wanted to, though. “One book at a time.”
I didn’t believe her, but I knew well enough than to keep pushing things, especially with my reputation hovering between awing and frightening depending on who you heard the rumors from.
I took the book to a table lit by one of the binder’s lights. The soft light made it easy to pore through.
If only the material had been of any use.
I learned the Ashura had been born of Brahm to punish humanity for wandering away from his path. The Ashura were men turned monsters from feeding on human flesh and were cursed for it. The Ashura came from the bad dreams of children gone untended to. Eventually, they took shape and went out to carry mayhem and mischief on the world.
The book was a collection of stories gathered by the author over decades of traveling the Mutri Empire and questioning all manner of people.
And the answers reflected that.
One story spoke of how the Ashura were the first beings in creation and resented those that followed, choosing to punish them over the long thousands of years since. That made no sense to me.
Another made a comment about how the Ashura lived in secret layers in frozen mountain ranges, far from traveling eyes, all out of fear that men would stumble across them. Absurd, considering Koli had been in, and operated out of, the heart of Abhar. A place with countless people.
The only usable piece of information in the book was this: A single entry detailed people throughout the Empire reporting odd signs that coincided with Ashura sightings. No proof existed that those people had ever seen the Ashura, but the signs stirred something buried deep in the back of my mind.
Of all the stories about the Ashura, there is a consensus among those that have encountered them that the demons’ coming is foretold by the following signs: fires giving off red smoke; a storm breaking out; the eyes of those who look on the Ashura bleeding, as do their mouths; also stones weeping blood. Some report the local birds going mad and a disturbance among fowls on farms.
The night my family was murdered played through my mind. I lost all sight of the Scriptory and remembered bloody walls and the eyes of those I grew up with. Red smoke billowing. Being on the roof of a building with Nisha and seeing birds go mad.
I committed these to memory. Again, and again. I went through the folds of my mind and burned the signs into those. The pages blurred before me and, for a while, all I saw were endless lenses in my head all showing flashes of the Ashura’s signs.
“Find something interesting?”
The question snapped me from the folds and my vision went white. It took me a second to find some clarity, but my head reeled like I had been slapped with the strength of someone’s full arm behind the blow.
I looked up at the source and found someone in rishi’s clothing staring down at me.
Her hair had been dyed the same color as that of the young woman who’d admitted me into the Scriptory. She wore it short, maybe just longer than finger length. Her skin spoke of spending many hours under the sun until it had developed a healthy rich tan. Sharp features with a prominent nose that made me think of a hawk.
I remembered her from my admittance. “Rishi…?” I had never gotten her name or title.
“Rishi Saira—Master Lorist.” She watched me with quiet interest. Her mouth remained tight and expressionless, betraying nothing of her thoughts.
I closed the book and decided to answer her question. “Somewhat, Rishi Saira. Just studying folklore and tales about the Ashura. They’ve been an interest to me—”
“Since you were a child?” A thin uneven frown crossed her face. I couldn’t tell if she was tired, thought poorly of the subject, or of me for wanting to study it. “Most students have that phase.” Something in the way she’d said “phase” made me think she didn’t see it in a positive light. “There are other stories worth studying for a young mind.”
She was judging me. I needed to think of a better way to explain my interest than as childish fancy. “I thought it interesting how stories change shape and truths the more they’re told, over distance, and depending on how many people speak about them. The Ashura are a great proof of that. Everyone knows of them, but no one tells the same stories about them. Why?”
She pursed her lips. “That is a good point, but that is the nature of stories. Do you know why my position is referred to as ‘Master Lorist,’ and not something like ‘Archivist’? We have no end of knowledge here, and they’re certainly not all stories and fables.”
I shook my head. “I hadn’t thought about it.”
“Because that is where it all starts.”
“Where what starts, Master Lorist?”
“Knowledge. The first things told and recorded were stories. Not great histories of man’s deeds. Not facts and locations about the world. No. It started with stories—lore—and the tales those people told their families first, before letting them spread wider in the world. You eventually learn everything is a story of something. A story of empires fallen and the ones that took their place. Stories of great men … and the worst of them. Stories of bindings and how they came to be, or how we think they did, and stories of how coinage systems work. But they are all stories first. Before any of the facts, the first keepers of knowledge kept stories.”
It made sense, and a part of me loved the idea all the more for its respect of storytelling.
“So, I understand your passion for stories and their shapes—their history, but might I recommend putting aside these particular ones?” Rishi Saira reached out and brushed her fingers over the tome’s cover. “There are better things to tackle—more respectable stories to study regarding what you want to know, hm?”
I nodded, trying to keep the disappointment from my face. “Yes, Rishi. Thank you for the advice.” My feelings must have made their way into my voice, however, because her expression softened.
“If you feel what hours you have in a normal day don’t permit you enough time to learn what you need here, come see me tomorrow just after fourth candle in my office. We can discuss the possibility of you working here and being a lorist.”
I shot up straight at that, close to beaming. But I kept the appropriate amount of excitement on my face and in my voice. “I will. Thank you, Rishi Saira. That would be a dream come true.” I thought of the many books here and all the stories I could learn.
She smiled and walked away. The Master Lorist looked over one shoulder as she moved farther away. “Be sure to have a lorist-in-training put that away for you once you’ve finished.”
I nodded. My hands went back to the shut tome as soon as Rishi Saira vanished from sight. While she had a point that the subject matter appeared childish, I knew what most children feared to be true.
The Ashura were real.
And now I had something to track them by, find them with. It wasn’t enough, but it had been more than I had had for years. I could start to hunt them, somehow.
A part of me knew it to be as childish as the study seemed to others. Kill the Ashura?
How? They had slaughtered an incalculable number over the ages according to the stories. I witnessed them laugh off my teacher and binder’s efforts to subdue them. And in the end, he died buried under rubble.
All the while Koli’s words still echoed through me. “We can’t be killed.”
I opened the book and resumed scanning through pages, looking for anything that could prove Koli’s words wrong. If there was a way to kill them, I would find it.
And I would introduce him to it.
Somehow.
SIXTY-SEVEN
WHAT ALL MEN MUST KNOW
I’d spent the previous day going through every book I could find on the Ashura. All of them turned up more misleading information than anything useful, which was to be expected. But I had still nursed hope to come across something like the signs I’d committed to memory.
The thoughts stayed with me until I’d gone to bed, then brought with them the sort of nightmares I wouldn’t wish on anyone save Nitham.
I woke the next morning feeling like I hadn’t slept at all; something becoming a habit, it seemed. I dressed and made my way down to Clanks more driven by curiosity than hunger. Though, I certainly felt that as well.
I spotted Radi and Aram at a table along with someone I didn’t know.
They waved at me and called me over.
I walked toward the table, watching pockets of students flash me short furtive glances that vanished as soon as I returned their looks.
Many of them had learned to speak softer, it seemed, as none of their whispers reached me today. I grumbled under my breath for having helped bring this about.
What good is spreading your rumors if you’re not privy to how they twist and turn behind your back?
I joined Aram and Radi, setting my tray down next to the newcomer. “Morning.”
Radi groaned. “Morning’s a hellish construct made up by someone too giddy too early in the day, too much so for their own good.” He shoved a mouthful of spiced lentils into his mouth, chewing. “And for my own good too.”
Aram rolled her eyes. “Don’t mind him, he’s just mad his night didn’t go as planned.”
I grinned, wiping the expression off my face before Radi could see it. “Another night alone—spent in the company of the only person who can tolerate you … you?”
Radi paused, holding another bite inches from his mouth. His eyes narrowed and he glowered at me. “I’ll have you know that I am irresistible, charming, and a damn pleasure to be around.” His argument turned into incoherent grumbling as he chewed his lentils.
I rolled my eyes. “I’m sure women find your drama and endless preening very charming.”
Radi looked up from his bowl, his expression a mix of mock injury and offense. “Please.” He pressed a hand to his chest, then ran the other hand through his hair. “One doesn’t have to preen when you’re this pretty.”
That drew a chorus of low groans from Aram, me, and the other man at our table. He had quite a few years on any of us by his looks. I figured him to be somewhere in his middle twenties at least. Possibly older.
The color of his hair was somewhere between a brown so dark it would pass for black in the deep of night, yet something that would shine a better, brighter mahogany under sunlight. His short and neatly trimmed beard was much the same. His eyes were more the dark of chocolate. All of it contrasted his complexion, which was far fairer than any of ours.
He hadn’t opted to wear the robes the Ashram provided students. He wore a fur-lined coat and the heavy pants of hunters that lived beyond the city of Ghal’s proper limits. Tribal, nomadic people.
His face was all severe lines and had a cold hardness filling it. If Radi had all the exuberance, warmth, and prettiness to draw in a young woman, this man had all the stark lack of any of that, which would give any girl a second’s hesitation in approaching him.
I inclined my head in a polite hello.
He returned it before offering a hand. “Thariq.”
I shook. “Ari. Thariq? Isn’t that…” I had to think for a moment on the origins of the name. “That’s Zibrathi?”
He took a spoonful of what looked like potato and carrot soup. “No. Past that. Koshtesh. Smaller, pass-through country, really. Same people in blood and language and religion, though don’t tell Zibrathi folks that.” He swallowed another portion of soup.
I looked him over, noting that he had none of the features of those people in his face or coloring.
He caught me staring and smiled. “Mom’s Ghalthi. Father’s from Koshtesh. Mixed blood. You know how it is along the Golden Road. Dad traveled a lot and reached these parts eventually. Met her and her tribe out there in the plains beyond the kingdom. I take more after her side than any of his.” Thariq frowned at that, looking down at the table as if reconsidering.
“Maybe not. I’ve got her brawn, and that’s what got me into the Ashram. But Dad’s brain…” He tapped the side of his temple.
