But none of those signs would help him now.
And then one morning when he woke he had it, and he muffled laughter in his pillow.
The key was brass—not the most potent of metals, but at least it wasn’t iron. First he honed the handle of a spoon by scraping it against the stone walls. When the end of it was thin enough, sharp enough, he used it like a pen to scratch the appropriate lines onto the grip of the key. It was flat, undecorated, and the relatively soft metal responded to the abrasion as iron would not have done. Blessing Acuyib for inspiring the Shagara to make this talishann a simple one of straight lines and no curves, he tried to remember how deeply the work ought to be carved into wind chimes or bowls or hazziri for maximum effect, but could not.
At length he told himself he would have to be satisfied. He used the end of the spoon to prick his little finger and smeared the blood on the sign engraved into the key and then all over the key itself. As he passed his finger over and over the brass, he was reminded of the days spent passing the spoon handle over and over the walls, and how the steady, rhythmic motion had formed a framework for his thoughts.
Or, more accurately, for certain words that he knew now truly had been spoken to him while he was awake, not while he was dreaming. He sucked gently on his finger to bring up just a bit more blood, and heard the words again.
You can choose to grow old, and die.
You can refuse to grow old, and choose to die.
Or you can die, but choose not to grow old.
Crossing the room from the white-draped bed to the door, he slid the key into the lock and began laughing softly to himself.
For there was another choice, one Solanna had not considered.
He turned the key in the lock—the key stained with his blood and bearing the talishann marked over the interior of every gate in every al-Ma’aliq palace, in combination with others that warned or made the gate exclusive to merchants or servants or guards, or in extreme cases halted anyone approaching it in their tracks. The lock caught, the door opened, and he strolled down a long hallway lit by brilliant spring sunshine, all the way down six flights of stairs and into a large chamber filled with desks and paper and pens and adolescent boys.
Smiling, he chose a desk at the back and sat down. And when the mouallima—a severe matron with a face like a sour plum—stalked up to demand what he thought he was doing, he replied, “My education is sadly lacking, I fear. Please, return to the lesson. I’m eager to catch up.”
“What’s your name? Who are you?”
“Qamar al-Ma’aliq,” he said amiably. “Sheyqir of Tza’ab Rih.”
And thus he made the choice that for all her talents Solanna had not envisioned.
I choose not to die.
He was an excellent student, diligent in his studies. In later years he said himself, with a smile, that his own mother would not have known him as he sat hour after hour, day after day, learning his craft. His teachers rejoiced in him, his fellow pupils delighted in his company, and he earned the love and respect of all the Shagara in their mountain fortress.
Any recounting of his life that asserts otherwise is a lie.
21
“White is the color of purity, of chastity, of clarity, of sincerity, of energy, of harmony, of serenity, of spirituality . . .” . . . of truthity and of protectiony and of meditationy and of sheer stark raving lunacy if this old fool doesn’t end the class soon! Qamar didn’t say it out loud, of course. The man had knowledge he wanted—needed—and in the last year, if he had not learned patience, then at least he had discovered endurance.
As the mouallima’s voice droned on about the properties of white, Qamar dutifully made notes to be added to the sheets already plumping the tooled leather folder at his feet. He had six of these folders, bulging with pages on each of six subjects: Color, Flowers and Herbs, Ink, Paper, Talishann, and Al-Fansihirro.
As for the first, had anyone asked him back when he lived in Hazganni, he would have said there were eight colors that looked very good on him, and why should he bother with the rest? In fact, according to these Shagara, there were scores of colors, and all of them had names and influences and powers and meanings, and the slightest variation could mean the difference between health and illness, even life and death.
The lessons about plants he found simply loathsome. This country had tried to kill him with its poisoned thorns. That it had also healed him was neither here nor there. It did not like him. He returned the sentiment.
When it came to the formulation of inks, it transpired that he had a real flair for the work. He got lampblack ink right the first time, for instance—not easy to do, as the mouallima grudgingly admitted. While the rest of the class was busy chasing down smuts of soot (lampblack was lighter than air and gleefully floated anywhere it pleased), Qamar was adding hot water one drop at a time to his little bowl and mixing it with a finger until the lampblack dissolved (again, difficult, as the soot tended to float atop the water). Subsequent formulations with various roots, leaves, flowers, nutshells, and tree barks were equally simple for him to master. And he found that he rather enjoyed it. Satisfying, to be good at something again without having to try much at all.
Paper turned out to be rather more physical than he’d anticipated. It seemed students were required to learn not just its properties but how to make it, and in several different varieties, too. His notes on this subject were scanty technical descriptions of various processes; the width of the folder was due to the samples. His work did not compare favorably to that of the masters who tried to teach him. Perhaps he had difficulty overcoming a Tza’ab’s ingrained horror of cutting down trees instead of planting them.
The masters of the craft were known as Qa’arta, which seemed to be an adaptation of a barbarian word for paper. Their work was as messy as tending dye vats and not nearly as colorful, as smelly as a tannery—almost—and surprisingly demanding physically. The slurry of soaked fibers from wood, cloth, lint, fishing nets, bits of hemp rope, and seemingly anything else they took it into their heads to add must be stirred in vats with great wooden spoons. The screened frames dipped into those vats could weigh so much it took two men to maneuver them. The presses that squeezed all the water from the pages must be screwed down as tightly as possible. And all had to be done with precision.
“Tilt the frame to gather the fibers, Qamar—not when removing it from the vat! You’ll end up with all the slurry at one end and all the water at the other! Do it again.”
“The sheet should peel off smoothly, Qamar, in a single piece—not in shreds! Do it again.”
“The task was to produce paper, Qamar—not a piece of shelving! Do it again.”
He sincerely hated papermaking class.
The memorization of seemingly thousands of talishann had a tendency to make his eyes cross. From the simple to the intricate, the mild to the dangerous, every stroke of the pen that formed the symbols demanded absolute concentration. Qamar’s mother had once accused him of having the attention span of a flitwing drunk on Challa Leyliah’s best stimulant tonic. Whole afternoons of copying and recopying and copying yet again the twists and turns of symbols that, if not perfectly formed, ended up as at best useless and at worst potentially lethal—ayia, more than once he was shocked from a doze by the rap of a willow switch across his shoulders.