Quibble, 60. Nahli (ii)

Haunted by his treachery, Nuah becomes the boy who fell in love with night.

rem

Though the remainder of Quibble will be available in full only to paid subscribers, I’m making an exception for this and the previous chapter. Taken together, these chapters comprise a short story, originally entitled “The Boy Who Fell in Love with Night” and intended to sit apart from the novel. I’m so delighted with the story, though, that I can only countenance offering it to readers for free.

60. Nahli (ii) @Qahf

Qeht-uhn-far-jah-im-li-djer, please sit there, so that we may all have im around this fire. Yes, Qihbel, I can see well enough to know to whom I speak. I have cataracts, but sight has not wholly left me. It is much like what you say besets Nuah, which you call figure-blindness. I have oft wondered whether the people from which you say you spring, the Uhn-far, are blind as well, for our lore says they cannot see each other.

But we shall come to that. For now, Nuah, let me resume your story. No, Lurah, there is no need to remind me where I left it off. Remember, I am the Aht-ri, long practiced at recitation.

Nuah, you were astonished by the plans Halim-uhta-nah-qasreh laid for you, but Wahn-jahli-aht-qah-nefri was astonished herself the next day when Qasreh came to the Aht camp to honor her with a visit and introduced the bashful boy who had stared and stolen glimpses at her during the prior days’ audiences. Nefri’s mother and I were also astonished to learn you were Qasreh’s son. We had thought you only an errand-boy. It was clear to us that Nefri was impressed with you, but she was shrewd and knew how to play her own bones.

“He fetches letters to you from the Uhta?” she asked the nah.

“As my son, yet forbidden by law to be nahli-qah,” Qasreh answered, “Nuah has become a sah, but he has not gone far in martial training or the study of law. Instead of enforcing the law, he inquires about how it is enforced. He does not argue these matters with the Uhta, only listens. All cannot receive an audience with me. So Nuah brings me their letters and tells me what he has heard, and then I answer them.”

“You read and write, then?” Nefri said to you, raising an eyebrow.

“Yes,” you stuttered.

Damn my bones! Qasreh thought. Now we must not only teach him to fight but also to read and write?

When the Uhta-nah left, Nefri spoke with her mother and father. We were concerned that she was interested in a young man of the Uhta, not the Aht, for whom she would someday be a jah if not the nah. Was it not wiser, her mother the jah asked, to marry a Sehlim-aht as her uncle the ri had?

“Jah, did you see how Nuah was dressed at the Uhta-nah’s audiences?” said Nefri.

“Like their paupers, Nefri,” said her mother. “Like a nahli!”

“Precisely. He goes among the people like that, humble. He has not learned how to fight, I think, because he does not care for fighting. He cares for the people, for giving them justice. Now, is it not a kind sah who enforces the law thoughtfully? And does it not promise he may become a good ri? We are the compassionate Wahn, but there may be things Nuah can teach us. I have spurned a sah and a jahli-qah because they were brash, conceited young men who will never find the sea if they continue in their ways. Now I consider a learned sah interested in his people, and you object?! Let me throw all my bones about the matter: I would marry a nahli if he was as Nuah seems!”

Wahn-aht-jah-asnul was silent, but I said, “You are not as wise as us, jahli-qah, but in this you are right. The lad’s own quality is the real issue. That is im. And who are we, the Wahn, but givers of im? Tell us what to do.”

“Please write a letter to Nuah. Tell him that he may call again by himself, under guard if he wishes. I will host him. Then we may learn more of him, see if he is really as he seems. And tell him, ri, he may wear what clothes he wishes.”

The first thing Qasreh taught you to read was Nefri’s letter. She patiently told you what each glyph meant, but you puzzled over them a long time.

“No, nonsense!” she interrupted at last. She pointed at the page. “This figure.”

“The woman with a drawn sword?” you said. “That is a sah.”

“In a square – a retinue of sah. But look at the way she faces. Remember, animals and people face toward the reader. Thus, the line does not begin there—” She pointed at the left side of the page. “—but there.” She pointed at the right. “This letter’s lines were written first left to right, then right to left. So, what does the second line say?”

“You may keep—”

“Bring, not keep!”

“You may bring a guard of sah with you.”

“How many?”

You looked at the square. “Four.”

“Correct. Now go on.”

“Assume, or wear I suppose, the clothes you like best.”

“Close enough. Which do you like best, Nuah?”

In honesty, you liked the plainest of the clothes the Uhta-ri gave you. They were cotton, and you were used to it.

“Very well, wear them,” Qasreh said.

“There’s more,” you noted. “This is in a different hand. It is not glyphs.”

Bending over the page, the nah sighed.

“I have not the time to teach you hieratic, a script only derived from glyphs and thus not purely symbolic,” she said. “But this line is from Nefri herself – the lone glyph, the seated woman at the end of the line. She asks you to be open in all things into which she and her parents inquire.”

“Oh,” you said.

“Oh,” Qasreh said. “Then be open with them, I suppose. Do not give your prior name unless they ask, but if they do, tell the truth. If they get angry, do not get angry yourself. Just leave – do it politely but quickly. Tell me at once, and I will try to placate them. Lupah has forced my hand intolerably, but I will not play host to a civil war of the Aht. Take care you do nothing to put me in that position!”

The nah need hardly have worried. Your visit with the Wahn a week later was no less than a small miracle. You were perfectly polite at the table of im. You knew politeness well, thrown on charity as you had been. You gave im to us in all things and seemed open with us. You admitted you only read glyphs and you were not yet a good writer, and you asked Nefri if she would care to teach you hieratic.

She agreed to that, and then she asked, “Nuah, tell me which you think is better: the nah with good sah or the jah with a good ri?”

“The Aht are warlike, so for you, good sah are invaluable,” you said. “But let us suppose you were neither Aht nor Qahlif but a Northern tribe – Uhta, Qehb, Sqoh – or the Isleh of the West. Or even these strange people of which I hear, the Ayzhed, who are said to be uhn-qah in the flesh. If you ask me which is better for anyone, I would say the well-advised jah is better.”

“Why?” Asnul asked.

“Jah do not decide but only dispute. This is taken to be less, but in fact it is more. What the jah say, the tribe repeats. If the jah do not speak wisely, disputation becomes a bad spirit in the tribe. For surely if a tribe has any qeht, it is how the people talk. Even a strong nah must heed that.”

Nefri smiled at her mother then, and the jah smiled back. Yes, her smile said, I see what you mean, jahli-qah.

“But the question you asked perhaps presents us with a false choice,” you said, seeing their smiles and growing overconfident. “The best of all worlds would give us a nah with both good sah and a good ri. The Uhta-nah cannot claim to have sah to match the Aht-sah, but she is well-advised.”

“If that is so,” Nefri countered, “then I do not understand why she does not seek to change the law of the Uhta.”

“What laws do you think we should change?” you asked.

“Do not the Sqoh and Qehb treat their nahli better?” I posited.

“So I hear, ri,” you replied, “but our laws are not unbearable for the Uhta-nahli, and in Halim-uhta-nah-qasreh they have a kind nah who cares for them, year after year. She clothes them, feeds them. She ensures they can get work and fend for themselves.”

“But, Nuah, that is only one nah!” objected Nefri. “You must consider that it will not always be so. A merciful law is better than a kind nah.”

“The nah’s words and deeds are also law, Nefri.”

Nefri found that answer suspicious. Did it only mean you respected your nah, or did you favor a tyranny?

The next day, Nefri sent an uhn-say of the Sqoh in her own employ as a spy into the city to ask about the sah Nuah. The uhn-say returned two hours later in a dead run, chased by Uhta-sah. Walking out alone and unarmed to claim him, Nefri told the sah that the Aht camp was no place to chase waifs. They went away abashed.

“Are you sure?” Nefri asked, amazed at the news Sqoh-jahli-aht-hnefn bore.

“Jahli-qah, please remember I was nahli,” Hnefn said. “The Uhta-nahli know all the city’s people. They certainly know their own.”

“So the Uhta send their letters to the nah by the nahli?”

“And the nahli bear other news to the nah, too. They are her eyes and ears.”

“So she treats her eyes and ears well. Most wise. What of Nuah himself?”

“A harmless nobody, jahli-qah. He might have become a sah next year anyway – some Uhta-nahli do at sixteen – but he was not training for it until now. He would have become uhn-say. The Uhta-nah is seeking a better fate for him, though none of the Uhta seem to know why.”

Nefri sighed. “Hnefn, tell my parents nothing of this unless they ask.”

At her third audience with you, hosted by Halim-uhta-nah-qasreh a week later, Nefri asked you for your hand. Now you hesitated, but she pressed you, and at last you accepted. Thus, you changed your name yet again, becoming Halim-qah-wahn-uhta-qah-aht-nuah. Then, when you and Nefri wedded the day before the Aht departed for the journey south, you became Wahn-jahli-aht-sah-nuah. For Lupah upheld her end of the bargain with Qasreh, making you an Aht-sah.

As the Aht struck camp, Qasreh met with you one last time.

“I have never risked so much or worked so hard to send away a nahli, nor have I ever been so sorry to see one go,” she told you. “We have lost half a dozen beeves, and my ri still mutters about losing his best cotton suit, but I believe it was all well spent.”

“The Wahn will not take this kindly,” you reminded her.

“Not at first. They have good hearts, though. Their argument for changing our laws regarding nahli is right. Perhaps my ri and I may accomplish that. And perhaps in time Nefri will choose to become my nahli-qah, rather than Aht-nah as her mother the jah hopes. Then all will be happy with this game of bones, not least Sen-aht-nah-lupah and her nahli-qah. The Wahn will see you have a good heart, too, if only you remember to be grateful for this. Reflect well on me, Nuah, and when we see each other again, next year or the year after that, I will again embrace you as my son.”

And so you left the city of your birth with your nah’s best wishes.

I was fond of my son in qah, but I also worried about you. I thought you spent more time alone than you should. Also, you took jests at your expense rather too seriously. It is our custom to tease newlyweds, but you tolerated it poorly.

All the Aht noticed your aversion to being among people very long. As an orphan, you had known all the Uhta, but you had also known privacy, for the neglected have a privacy all their own. You now found yourself stripped of it, and that suited you ill. You seldom joined a circle at fire in the evenings. In im, you were apt to be the outlier – the fourth in a triangle or the fifth in a square, hesitant to speak. If we asked you about your health or the mood of your qeht, you only shrugged indifferently. And of the Aht’s gibes, one in particular insulted your hel – that in your heart there was love for anyone other than Nefri. You were not quarrelsome by nature, we knew, but once you even challenged another Aht-sah to im-hel-qah on account of this gibe. You did not grasp, Nuah, that in a way you invited it.

You were fond of darkness. In the night, you did not like to lie in a tent and stare at a fire. During the first two weeks of the trek south, while the weather remained cool, you took long walks at dusk. When we reached the Sen-an-dah, you slept well outside the encampment’s fires, alone, and there looked upon Far-nah-si, the cloud-spirit of the night, and her brother the moon-spirit Far-nah-luhn. You enjoyed the solitude of your heart in the midst of night.

By day, you were all that a husband should be and you did all you should do. You built the morning fire, cooked meals, tended the livestock, and kept an eye on the water which would see us through the desert. You were thoughtful, courteous, and kind with Nefri. During her audiences with visitors, you always bore in mind that she was jahli-qah, held your tongue, and let her direct the flow of im.

Yet when Far-nah-sol died in the western mountains, you left camp and slept in the open. In words, your love for Nefri was beyond question, but we never heard a love-cry coming from her tent. This mystery perplexed us all, but it also amused us. So, partly to tease you and partly her, the Aht began to call you the boy who fell in love with night. And indeed, even now, that is what many of the Aht call you.

This gibe nettled Nefri, too. One night, vexed past restraint, she sent Sqoh-jahli-aht-hnefn, the uhn-say, to spy out your nightly wanderings. The Aht were then camped here, in this canyon of the mountains west of Ahnk-say-har. Reporting that you did not sleep but stood at the brink of a precipice, Hnefn guided Nefri to you.

You were so lost in thought that you did not hear your wife approaching. Your gaze was fixed on the heavens, where there swam a sickle moon and many stars. Nefri thought you looked to them as if for an answer to some question.

“What do your friends the sky-nah say?” she asked as she stepped to your side and took your hand. You flinched at her voice, but then you smiled softly and faced her.

“Lore tells us of a people called the Uhn-far, who dwell in a darkness we cannot imagine.” Spreading your hands as if embracing the sky, you asked, “Do you suppose the stars are really the Uhn-far?”

“That is only a story,” Nefri said.

“Yet who are we but stories?”

Reflecting, Nefri said, “Lore also says the Uhn-far’s darkness is so absolute they cannot even see one another. If we can see the stars from this height, I imagine the stars can see one another as well as we can. So they cannot be the Uhn-far.”

“That is well reasoned,” you admitted.

“But you are like Uhn-far. Have you not heard what the Aht call you?”

You snorted. “The boy who fell in love with night! I know I have kept to myself, Nefri, but do you really think I meet Far-nah-si for a lover’s tryst?”

“Of course not, Nuah! Even if I listened to such nonsense, how is it wise to be jealous of a spirit? I have only wanted to know why you shun my bed. Now I wonder why you stand here, above an abyss. I hope it is not for the reason I suspect. If your heart is troubled, tell me of it, for that is the im of those joined in qah, as we are.”

You looked into the depth of night for several minutes as Nefri waited. She had almost given up on hearing a response when you spoke. At first you were hesitant, but as you reconciled yourself to your choice, you spoke ever more urgently. For sometimes a confession, to be made, requires not only the courage to begin but the heedlessness to finish it.

“I have deceived you, Nefri,” you told her. “I wish I could say the fault lay with scheming nah, but their scheme would not have worked if I had not been selfish. I am loath even now to say what a shadow I have brought upon my hel. For the truth is that before I met you, I was only Uhta-nahli-nuah, a nobody, and I have nothing to give you. I shun your bed because I am too ashamed to lie there, though often I want to. I have no im with you now, no right to ask anything of you. Send me away if you wish, jahli-qah. I will go back to my own people or die in the Waste, as the Far-nah decide.”

Nefri was quiet herself a long moment. To you, it seemed nay, an eternity. Then she extended her hands to you, giving im, and you returned it.

“Thank you for being open at last, Nuah,” she said, “but I knew you were nahli before I asked for your hand.”

“You knew? Then why did you ask?”

“I thought, ‘Here is a wise one, yet he is bold, too, for he is risking his life among strangers out of no motive I can discern but love for me. He knows that is the best of all motives.’ Never believe yourself to be a nobody, Wahn-jahli-aht-sah-nuah. You are not like any other man I have ever met, and now you are mine, somebody to me. I have not told the jah or the ri who you are. I think we should do that together. We must convince them this is no time to move the Aht to dissent. Sehlim-aht-ri-supra is right: the Wahn must be like water if we are to survive this bloodthirsty nah. So be the husband I know you are, Nuah, and help me.”

You were so surprised by Nefri’s words that you could find none of your own, but now your heart lay entirely in her hands. It was all you had to give her, but wise as she was, she accounted it worth all the world.

Then, realizing you were an orphan no longer, you began to cry. Your lover and savior embraced you. There, at the edge of an abyss, the two of you became one. Your love-cries reached no ears save those of the sky-nah and those of an uhn-say child. The next day, Sqoh-jahli-aht-hnefn told all the Aht that Far-nah-si drew her hands, which are the thinnest and deepest clouds, across the winking eye of Far-nah-luhn so that her brother would not see how the boy who fell in love with night had betrayed her.

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