'No, I did not. But you offered me a bargain, and a promise that I would make it home alive if I agreed. So I took it.'
'I see. And what was this bargain?'
'That you would not stop me from my work, so long as I was training an apprentice.'
Osh chuckled. 'Ah, that would explain it. Yes, a fair bargain – one that I will stand by.'
'Good.'
'Tell me, then. How did you choose him?'
Ash was unsure of how to answer that. For a moment he was back in Bar-Khos, drifting in dreams during the long hot siesta, as a young man sneaked into his room to steal his purse.
Ash had been dreaming of home then: the little village of Asa, snuggling deep into a twist of the high valley floor – the view pitching sharply downwards past the many terraces of rice and barley to an endless stretch of blue sea that reached as far as the horizon.
Butai, his young wife, had been there, too. She was standing in the doorway of their cottage, a basket of wild flowers in her arms. She had a gift for making them into subtle perfumes, forever surprising him with new fragrances, and she was watching their son for a moment as he chopped wood in an easy, practised way; a boy of perhaps fourteen.
Ash had waved to them, but they did not see him – they were laughing instead at something the boy had said. Beautiful in her laughter, his wife looked as girlish as she ever had.
And then Ash had awakened in a strange room, in a strange city, in a strange land, in a strange life that was not in any way his own… his eyes wet with grief, the sense of loss within him as raw as though it had happened only yesterday. Pain washed through his head so sharply it was enough to blind him. He had called out to someone nearby, thinking for a moment that it was his son – yet, even as he did so, he knew that it could never be his son. In that same moment he had felt an isolation so all-consuming that he could not move for it. I will die alone, he had thought. Like this, blind, with no one by my side.
'It seems', he heard himself say to Osh, 'as though he was chosen for me.'
Osh accepted this, at least partly. 'For what purpose, do you wonder?'
'I do not know, but it is as though we both have need of each other in some way. I cannot say how.'
Osh nodded, with a knowing smile, but whatever it was that he suspected he chose not to voice it. Instead, he said, 'So you have not changed your mind about taking over the reins from me? I thought perhaps that you might, if I goaded you enough with Baracha's name.'
Ash could no longer meet his master's eyes.
'What would be the point? The illness is growing worse, and I do not think I have much time left to me. You know of my father, and his father before him. After their blindness struck, they went with great speed in the end.'
The smile on Osh's face faded, as a soberness came over him. He inhaled a sharp breath. 'I feared as much,' he admitted. 'But I hoped otherwise. I am deeply sorry, Ash. You are one of the few true friends I have left.'
A bluebird was singing outside in the courtyard. Ash turned his attention to it, away from his friend's untypical display of emotion.
The young Osh would never have been so open-hearted – not that Osh who had trained as Rshun back in the old country and in the old ways where only a few ever survived the ordeal. The same Osh who had left the original Rshun order after they had sided with the overlords, and who later became a soldier and fought at Hakk and Aga-sa, and somehow survived them both too; who had gone on to win honour after honour in the long war against the overlords, creating a name for himself, earning a high command in the ultimately doomed People's Army. Back then, it would have been unimaginable to hear the general lamenting so openly over the fate of a comrade. Even less so as he subsequently led them into exile, the only general able to fight his way out with his body of men intact after surviving the final, fateful trap that had destroyed the People's Revolution once and for all.
Osh had been lean and strong and tough in those days, a hard bastard in truth. His firm command had held them together on their long voyage to the Miders, when most of those in the fleet, including a grief-stricken Ash, had simply wished for death after their defeat and the loss of their loved ones either fallen in battle or left behind. When they had finally made it here to the Miders, and others in the fugitive fleet had taken up arms to serve as mercenaries for the Empire of Mann, or else turn against it, Osh had struck out on a different and much more uncertain path. The path of Rshun.
Yet here he was a withered old man on a withered old chair, both he and the chair sprouting tufts of hair and creaking every time their age-worn bodies shifted their weight; allowing his regrets to flow freely from his heart, as he finally looked towards the end.
Ash peered out from the high turret window over to the mali trees that clustered in the centre of the courtyard. The singing bluebird could be seen perching down there, its sky-blue plumage distinct against the bronze leaves.
'To be sad at passing is to be sad at life,' Ash quipped.
'I know,' said the old general, with a shake of his head.
The two veterans sat there in the dusty sunlight, listening for a time to the brief, fresh song of the late-summer bird. Calling out for a mate, Ash thought. A partner lost to it.
'I only wish…' Osh managed at last, but he faltered, and let the rest of his words hang there without being voiced.
'To see once more the Diamond Mountain,' Ash finished for him, reciting the old poem. 'And lay my lips on those I love.'
'Yes,' said Osh.
'I know, old friend.'
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Serese A strange hush fell upon the monastery after Osh's announcement of vendetta, and the departure of the three Rshun set upon fulfilling it, inspiring a new sense of purpose that had been lacking before then. Even the older men, who had been spending more time cultivating their gardens than engaged in practice, began to re-hone their skills. Rshun huddled together, talking in serious tones, and laughter became altogether less common.
The apprentices remained largely unaffected by all this earnestness. They were still too ignorant of the gravity of the situation, and their punishing training regime was sufficient to keep their youthful minds focused on their own daily concerns.
*
Nico had never been able to make friends easily, and he discovered that had not changed much, even here in this high place of isolation. The constant company of others tended to drain him after a while, to the point where he often withdrew into himself for escape. At times, Nico knew, this made him appear aloof.
He had found, in the past, that this reticence had attracted its fair share of trouble, but here he found the opposite to be true. The other apprentices appeared to like Nico well enough, and joked and conversed with him easily. But they also sensed his distance and, knowing him at least a little better by then, took it not as arrogance but solely a desire to be left alone. They respected that desire, and in doing so often excluded him from those moments of true camaraderie that they shared amongst themselves, so that even when he genuinely wanted their company, he could never quite manage to breach the gap that had grown between himself and the others.
It was ironic, therefore, to discover, that another of the apprentices was afflicted by a similar condition and that one should turn out to be Aleas.
They all liked Aleas, too, but he was the apprentice of Baracha, who they roundly despised. More than that though was Aleas's manner. The young man was humble in his way, and naturally so, yet all the rest could see how brilliant he truly was. This unsettled his peers. Such talent and modesty combined suggested to them, in their own private thoughts, that Aleas was somehow superior to them, and they in turn his inferiors. Such personal dynamics do not offer a sound basis for friendship.