the man himself, Japhet
As you will have noticed, the series has an ensemble cast, characters mostly more normal than extraordinary. I write stories populated with emperors, prodigies, and people with destinies, but this isn’t that book. Still, there is something that brings these ordinary folks together and transforms their lives into a comedic drama worth reading, possibly more than once.
Here he finally is, The Foreign Sorcerer.
from The Three Faces of Dissatisfaction
The corridor the pit had dropped him into led away in one direction, giving him no choice but to follow it. When it ended suddenly, he stopped. He had the sense that the empty space ahead was considerable, maybe almost as big as the temple. The air had a similar quality to that above: measured, solemn, the deep slow breath of the unknowable. Hallowed ground.
There was something additional, lacking above, which set his teeth on edge. The stink of bad sorcery. Malignity.
Predictable, predictable.
He could tell the room beyond was deserted, but continued to hesitate on the threshold. Whatever lay beyond sent a shiver of apprehension all the way down to his marrow. Telling himself he couldn’t stand here all night balking, he plunged forward.
It felt like a plunge, a weightless eternity of horrible misgiving when it seemed as though he had stepped into a dream, his soul untethered from his body and falling helplessly. A sensation he had experienced once before…
…in darkness, a chant threaded through thick clouds of sweet camphor and sandalwood, his head gone heavy as the pain finally faded above blood-sticky fingers too weak to move…
As abruptly as the feeling came upon him, the world righted itself. Japhet was left wondering if he had imagined it. There were lanterns here, and he lit a few of them. As his vision returned, he took in the catacomb in which he stood. It was significant, a single open space beneath a vaulted ceiling broken by frequent pillars.
The center seemed like the first place to investigate, so he went in search of it. What he found was a huge bronze disk, broad and shallow, perched on three squat legs. You had the immediate conviction that it was important; at the very least, someone believed it to be. He grimaced when he realized it stood directly beneath the altar in the temple above.
Four tall candelabra described a square around the bowl, none of their candles burning. Items had been piled around the bowl, whether haphazardly or in some chaotic pattern he couldn’t discern. The riches of a treasury, he first thought, but he changed the assessment as he studied them. He would have called these a barrow’s hoard: rings and bracelets set with precious gems, golden torques, heavy urns carved from jade and nephrite, solid silver knives. He couldn’t tell from looking whether the druda had selected this booty purely on the power of its fine materials, or whether these objects had a noteworthy provenance.
As he stood in contemplation, a sound reached him, one he had anticipated since he entered the rectory: approaching feet. There was more than one set, and they came from a different direction than that of the path he had followed. They moved sedately, and he had the sense this wasn’t the first wave of a search party, roused to hunt down the intruder.
He retreated into the furthest reaches of one corner and cached himself behind a pillar. It sounded like two people, two people conversing quietly. One was a stranger, but the other was Pauluk. Perhaps his luck hadn’t forsaken him after all. The opportunity to spy on Pauluk might be exactly what he needed.
from The Shuttle that Weaves the Shroud
Japhet trotted down the stairs, looking forward to some breakfast. He was still puzzling over the stupid demon: that it had vanished made it virtually certain it had found a host, but that shouldn’t have rendered it unseen. It would have had to bargain to gain entrance, it would have made promises. Promises to use its awesome power to help its host arrive at their desires, whether venal or high-minded. Like a large person hiding behind a small object, every time it stretched, it should have been visible.
The innkeeper stood at the foot of the stairs, observing him as he approached. He gave her a nod and was disquieted by the wary way her head drew back on her shoulders. The staff of his inn had been friendly toward him previously, and he hadn’t forgotten what Massedd told him: if he lost their trust, they wouldn’t just stop smiling, they would be incompetent at him. As threats went, it was appalling, because how did you fight back? Japhet had been on the other side of this equation and knew precisely how vast was the wiggle-room you could force open with enough imaginative hatred.
Say today they burned a shirt while ironing it. Say he shouted and demanded better service. They could consent and keep perfectly to the letter, and add too much starch to the next load so his shirts were stiff and itchy. And so on: the possibilities were endless. From burnt toast to under-toasted toast to Sorry, we ran out of toast. Late tea, early tea, tea that hadn’t had sufficient time to steep.
He came to a halt at the foot of the stairs, giving her the most winning smile he could manage. “Good morning, madam. Is there some difficulty?”
“Morning, sir. Blessings on your day. No problem at all!” The slightly hysterical note in her voice belied this assurance.
He delved into her thoughts, and what he found made him grimace. It could have been worse: he hadn’t lost their love. This wasn’t their fault, so he gave the innkeeper another smile—slightly forced—and excused himself. Then he walked through the jam-packed parlor and out the door, rather than stop for breakfast.
This had begun some weeks ago, and it seemed to get slightly worse with every day. Ordinary citizens kept turning up with strained nonchalance to hang out at his inn. All the extra custom was doubtless great for the inn, but it put him off his appetite, all those curious gazes fixed on him.
A few blocks north of the inn, he stopped at a pushcart attended by a Qral. The Qral were uniquely insular, holed up in their walled-in district, which made them the only people in this accursed city he could trust. Everyone else had decided Japhet was the best entertainment going. The boy had warned him about the way these people shared obsessions, and now he had become the latest scandal, the celebrated new show at the Comedies.
The foreign goddamned sorcerer.
He ordered a sandwich from the man tending the cart, spicy vegetables wrapped in fried dough, a typical Guelepani breakfast. “You the foreign sorcerer?” the vendor asked while the dough sizzled.
Japhet came back to himself, thinking: Even you? “I am.”
from The Tale of a Vacant House
Japhet was left staring at his reflection in the plate glass window of the greengrocer’s, wrestling with questions he barely knew how to articulate. The Vankrait hated him and had sent him into the midst of this dangerous situation and had given him a number of commands so foolhardy even she might be aware they weren’t advised. You could stack that up alongside the odd comments more than one of his fellows had addressed to him since he left and say, Well obviously she’s betraying you. But.
But but. But everything.
Sabananica hated him, but he wasn’t a person to her. She persecuted him the way you swatted at a fly: because it was there and probably had feces on it. The notion that she was plotting to betray him was nonsense. The place into which he’d been born in their society was so low and hers so high, she couldn’t see him with a pair of binoculars; forming a personal enmity toward him was unthinkable. He was rather the mechanism by which an intolerable state of affairs had been brought into being. It was true one needn’t develop feelings about a broken paving slate that caused rainwater to gather against a frontage. It needed to be replaced, and this wasn’t an argument against her happily cutting off his head.
Still he couldn’t make his fears and the facts fit together.
That she was forced to admit Japhet existed must be unpleasant, but he wasn’t the problem: Oren was. Her complaint lay in the fact that she’d staged a coup on a mind-bending scale, rearranging the balance of power in Halurál in a way the rational mind would struggle to credit, and she’d wound up second. When you considered that the person in question had gone missing a few years ago… Again, Japhet struggled to juxtapose definitely looks sinister with not how we work.
It wasn’t trust. It definitely wasn’t love. It was a habit of servitude so deeply ingrained, it might have been carved on their bones.
You obeyed the people over you and they obeyed the people over them, and everyone obeyed the Lord, the end. They had torn the amaatas out of Soubrál root and branch, but they hadn’t done it because they saw the flaws in the system. Japhet hadn’t even questioned it, until he came to the Cities, where these remarkable people taught him to rebel.
They’d killed all the other priests, but they hadn’t killed themselves.
from The King of Halurál
Japhet stood in Citysquare beneath a purple awning, watching the pedestrians who were watching him. People paused as their steps drew near, wondering whether they ought to stop. The morning was cold, threatening snow, and nothing was happening yet. It looked as though something might, however.
It would have been more amusing had he been certain something was going to happen. He had requested this meeting, but hadn’t compelled anyone to attend. He prayed some of them would. Some might have questioned whom, exactly, he was praying to, but Japhet had never expected his prayers to be answered. He hadn’t found the change hard to cope with.
He had brought Xecal along, mostly for the moral support. So that he wouldn’t have to hang about alone if no one came. After about a quarter of an hour, in spite of his fears, people began arriving.
The first pair was Ulad: one of their bone priests, a relatively young man wearing bland grey woolens of local cut under a fabulous fox-fur cape hemmed in tinkling bronze amulets, escorted by an ancient Uladtatayar in more traditional garb, an eagle’s foot perched atop her head like a crown. They came right over and greeted them both with the usual hugs and proclamations of friendship before taking up seats in the ring of benches he had set beneath the awning.
He and Xecal chatted with them about the difficulties they faced keeping their traditions alive so far from the land and lifestyle those traditions grew from. While they talked, others began to arrive. A handful of Qral came together, offering him shallow bows and holding silent. Then a couple Hidthrath, representatives of Golzadatk and Moida, who greeted him in a distant manner and sat with an air of spectators at a pageant. The Khrong delegation made a bright splash amongst the somber mob, poppies and sunflowers scattered on a pebbly beach.
The Rehaddelines trickled in singly or in pairs, bearing the stamp of every land in central Halurál, united by the circle of the Holy All hanging about their necks. Fair, iron-hewed Burrisaumm; Menawri indistinguishable from the locals but for the oiled barrel-curls in their hair; Kulahn with their midnight blue eyes and ink-black hair. The Kulahn in Liath-Tamren must pray to other gods and not only Re, but so far as he had been able to learn, those gods had no temples here.
The latest arrivals were still shifting on their benches and eyeing their neighbors when a larger procession appeared. Japhet felt faint with relief. He had laid awake for hours last night wondering what he was going to do if the man chose to shun this gathering. The rest of them, he had invited as a courtesy, with an eye toward the future. He hadn’t cared whether they came or not. This man, he needed.
He gave Tenast a bow, then gestured for him to take a seat. Gathering his elaborate white robe about him, the Artachs took a seat between the Ulad and the Kulahn Rehaddelines while the parade of hangers-on and flunkies that had followed him arrayed themselves behind him.
It looked as though everyone he had sent an invitation to save the Ceyonne had sent a representative. He hadn’t invited his own people, unprepared to address that quagmire. He took a seat on the other side of the Ulad, Xecal moving to stand at his back; bearing witness to the fearsome reputation of Destrabl’s tribesmen, the others had left open space around them, reluctant to crowd them. Save Tenast, who continued to amaze him.
When he decided to do this, he had dragged the woman with him to the Mayor’s Hall to request the right to use this public place. Alary had no more experience orchestrating an inter-faith summit than he did, but she understood bureaucracy and could help him navigate the paperwork necessary to secure benches, braziers to keep his guests from freezing, an awning to hold the snow off, and people to set these things up for him. That had turned out not to be so daunting after all, possibly because the clerk they dealt with greased the process for him. They even found a payadan-dyed pavilion to shelter him, which he hadn’t asked for. A length of purple fabric this large was a considerable luxury.
Faced with the prospect of actually attending to the task, he found himself thinking longingly of filling out another stack of forms.
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