Voice Lessons
Chapter Four

The armed soldiers led their horses through the thick woods. At a pre-arranged location, they stopped as one and mounted. Zahir looked across the open path and saw the glinting of metal as the other half of the squad stood in silent anticipation.

He yawned as he idly scratched his growing beard, pleased that he was finally getting to see combat.

It was three years into his squiredom with the King and Voice, and Zahir had lost all hope. He was resigned that he could never be the Voice, that he lacked some essential innate quality. It seemed that Jonathan had too, as for the first year and a half, the king had only grown more bizarre. Zahir assumed the man thought it would wake up his 'sleeping mind,' whatever that was. Perhaps it got bored easily.

Still, Jonathan had seemed inexplicably upset when it appeared that Zahir was incapable of becoming the next Voice. Considering what he had gone through to convince the man, that was quite odd, but Zahir was both relieved and disappointed. In the past six months, they'd moved to a more traditional knight-squire relationship, though Jonathan still asked him for random interesting facts, which Zahir was able to answer now without thinking.

So now, Jonathan loaned Zahir out on occasion to patrolling Riders or the Own in order to give him practical experience. This was the first time the Bazhir would see fighting up close.

There was a rather troublesome group of bandits plaguing the eastern hills; it was believed they included a mage rather skilled in illusions, but they'd finally been tracked to a location hidden deep in the forest. The two Rider squads had decided to create an ambush, as their campsite was too secure for a direct attack without Own backup.

As they waited, sweat trickling down their faces, Zahir felt an inexplicable sensation of danger. He glanced around unobtrusively, but the empty road provided cold comfort. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled as if being watched, and something ticked at his mind.

Ignoring the hissed warnings of the Riders, Zahir turned his horse around and peered at the thick underbrush.

There.

He drew his sword with the dull hiss of metal, and in the other hand, readied a throwing knife. For what, he didn't know, but it was important.

When the sharp crackof a branch sounded under the crowded trees, Zahir flicked his wrist and the knife plunged towards the noise. At a strangled gasp, Zahir shouted.

"To the rear!"

It was a chaotic battle, and Zahir hoped that not all fights were like this one.

Their plan shot to hell, their planned ambush turned into a counter-ambush, the Riders and Zahir fought for their lives. On horseback in the trees and not the open trail as planned, they were at a severe disadvantage against an enemy that melted nimbly back into the shadows.

To his horror, Zahir saw a Rider fall, then another. It seemed impossible, as if they were playing a child's war game, as he had back in his tents as a child and then as a page. That ominous red spreading over skin and staining clothes was not blood. He wanted to shout at them, the people who had cheerily welcomed a noble interloper, to tell them that this wasn't funny.

Somehow, as his sword arm lifted and fell and blocked and cut, Zahir found that he wanted Jonathan.

As if thinking about the man had summoned them, memories played out in Zahir's mind until they were a mismash of Jon's words and images.

I'm trying to waken your sleeping mind...

You've got to relax...

Stop thinking and concentrate...

Wake up!

His mind cracked in two, maybe three. Zahir couldn't tell, but something or things shifted, and the world slowed and became different.

The forest began to fill with red, dangerous fog that coalesced into the shapes of men. As Zahir watched, he realized that they weremen, or at least forecasted their movements. Bandits, real and solid, followed precisely, as if the bloody clouds directed them as puppets.

A scraggly-haired barbarian that rushed him with a long, two-handed sword; Zahir could tell where he would move next. The red cloud formed arms and legs and torso, and Zahir could even make out the man's savage expression. He saw the arms lift, and then the bandit's real arms lift, and realized that the man was about to attack him.

Then, it was as if a cloud of white drifted in front of him, and as the man moved - slowly, much too slowly - Zahir saw white arms wielding a blade and executing a perfect block. The white was his own path, he realized distantly. It was the best counter to block the strike and save his life.

Zahir impassively felt his sword raise up and deflect the blow that still seemed much too slow, and then he followed up by watching the white cloud of a ghostly arm slipping between the bandit's defenses, and reciprocated it more smoothly than he'd ever practiced.

Next he saw a giant man bare his teeth at the closest Rider, and he saw that the bandit was about to skewer the Rider Commander in his undefended back.

Zahir let himself fall into the lull and flow of the white clouds. He blocked the blade, killed the man, then danced away as he followed the correct path into the knot of attackers. Zahir lost count of the number of men he killed or the number of blows thrown at him that seemed to move through water.

At the end, Zahir blinked, and everything shifted back to normal. No clouds, red or white, and a crippling, agonizing pain in his head. He sat down hard on the the ground and cradled his head in his hands. Voice gathered around him, wonderous wonderful alive voices, and they gently lowered his upper body to the ground.

Zahir didn't look up when he heard the thundering hooves of horses on the trail, not even when the Riders gasped that the king was here and how did he know?

"Your squire saved our lives, Your Majesty," admitted Evin, the commander of the Rider's group. "I can't explain how he moved so quickly or how he knew who was in most danger, but I turned around and saw him kill a bandit who attacked my back. I would have died without him."

"Jon?" The world was fuzzy. The trees above him moved in a circle; they couldn't really do that, could they?

"I'm here, squire." Jonathan sounded more sober than he remembered.

"How?"

A soft cool hand landed on his forehead, and Zahir felt safe. "I knew you needed me."

Zahir and Jon were at the palace in the rooms that had become a type of sanctuary, a shield from prodding questions and expressions of disbelief from people who could not believe that a lowly squire could single-handily save an entire Rider group.

Inside Jon's chambers, all was quiet but for the soft clinks of tea cups against platters and the quiet sound of two men contemplating deep thoughts.

Finally, Zahir set aside his self-imposed silence, and the words tumbled forth as a dammed river overflowing.

"I felt it. I didn't know what it was at first, but I felt a warning; I heard a soundless cry and I somehow knew they were there. Then, something else happened. My mind, it split, it cracked, something gave. I saw shadows of what would be, of what should be, but there was more, too.

"It was as If I could look at a man and know him. Not name, age, or anything foolish like that. I knew him, who he was, his aspirations, his lost dreams. His failures. His motivations. The first man I killed? All he wanted was to feed his little girl, barely six years old. He left her in a village with his parents and told her he was going to Corus to find work. He didn't want her to know.

"Then the man who was about to kill Evin Larse? Larse's blonde hair reminded him of a lover he had who had framed him for less money than I have in my purse." He touched the nearly-empty coin-sack at his belt. "How can I be glad about killing them?"

Jon shook his head. "You can't, Zahir. That is the secret burden the Voice must carry his entire life. Taking a life will never get easy."

"No." Zahir's voice rang out like a deep bell. "There was one man there. He just liked blood. He liked to see it run in rivers down lifeless faces, into mouths, pooling on the skin. I'm glad I killed him." Then he shrunk again. "And I feel terrible for not regretting that I stole his life."

"Knowledge is a terrible sword, Zahir, for it cuts both ways."

"Does this mean I will be the Voice?" Zahir sounded both hopeful and reluctant, filled with trepidation.

Jon was silent for a long minute, and when he spoke, he sounded haunted as if by ghosts. "You might escape it, even though you've awoken your sleeping mind. You could fill your days with endless toil and your nights with never-ending distractions. You could never let down your guard, never cease moving or thinking, and you might live again without ever feeling like this."

Zahir shuddered. "This, every day?"

"It creeps at the corner of your mind. You can't control it, but it flashes at the worst moments, when you're looking at a friend and see him lie, when you think of your wife and suddenly realize that she no longer loves you."

"If, if I become Voice, does it go away for you?"

"Oh Zahir, weren't you listening?" Jon said sadly. "I said it never goes away. What you experienced is but a shadow of my every day, my every hour."

"But, how do you live?" breathed Zahir. "I'm going mad over a few minutes of it, but you... I don't understand. Why wouldn'tyou want to pass it on to someone else? Why did you fight against training me?"

Jon bowed his head. "No one should have this power, and I wouldn't damn a child with it, not even if he begged."

Which I did.

The two men were silent, one lost in dreams of what was, the other in what could have been. Finally, Jon stood up and touched Zahir on the shoulder. "Whatever you decide," he said quietly, "tell me in the morning. If you want to leave Tortall and ride until you don't feel so numb, I will accept it."

Zahir nodded and touched Jon's hand in return. "Thank you."

"One more thing, Zahir." The squire looked up to the king as he stood before the door. "That first man you killed, do you remember in what village he used to live?"

"Yes," said Zahir, slowly. "Why?"

Jon shrugged. "No reason, but I heard that Thayet's seamstress is looking for an apprentice. A very young apprentice." With that last remark, the king strolled away, thumb shoved through belt loops, a rising tune whistling from his lips.

When Zahir didn't show up the next morning at his doors, Jon said nothing.

When Zahir appeared after a week's absence, Jon said nothing, not even when Thayet informed him in passing that her seamstress had picked up a lovely little girl as a stray.