Voice Lessons
Chapter Five

Even though Zahir had full possession of the horrors that awaited him as Voice, he decided to continue - or rather, begin - his training. Having experienced a glimpse of the true burden that awaited, that of terrible foreknowledge, Zahir undertook it soberly.

It was only now that the reasons for Jon's behavior became clear.

In silence, Zahir felt dark tendrils of unnatural thoughts and truths linger. It was worse around people, for as his unconscious thoughts turned to them, so did his sleeping mind, and truths that he never wanted to know flooded his mind. Somehow, whenever he was around his knight-master, his mind fell silent. Jon told him it was because their awoken minds found another, and so they had lots of mindsex until they fell asleep, exhausted. Zahir doubted this explanation. He contributed the phenomena to the minds respecting each other's privacy.

In solitude, he could control himself better, and Jon assured him that eventually he'd have iron-clad control. It was easier for Zahir when he preoccupied himself, whether by training or by reading, or if he removed himself from people and sat alone. Jon's predilection for perching on rooftops was immediately understandable, and Zahir quickly gained a fondness for the slippery tiles and the slight ever-present danger that both sharpened his mind and inexplicably allowed him to relax.

Since his adventure with the Riders, people could often find their monarch and his squire seated silently on the palace roof. Sometimes they gazed into the distance. Sometimes they watched the slow progression of the sun and the stars.

Zahir had a new-found appreciation for bizarre facts that could hold his attention.

The first time Zahir consciously called his sleeping mind, Jon was gently coaxing him with detailed instructions.

By that, of course, they both were more than slightly drunk, barefoot, and leaning over the top of the palace roof to look down.

Zahir saw a bored-looking guardsman on the curtain wall, and wondered what the man thought of seeing his monarch prance along the rooftops.

The idle thought was quickly answered by a deluge of information, and Zahir stumbled as it crashed into his mind. Jon grabbed him to prevent him from pitching over the edge, but Zahir could not stop laughing.

"You dance naked in the rain?" he gasped, clutching his sides.

"What?" Jon peered at the guardsman, then his expression lightened. "Ah, I see. Hello, Franklin!" He waved at the other man, who grudgingly waved back. "He's usually on duty during the best storms," Jon confided. "You'll get to see him in a few days. The weather mages say there's a gigantic one on its way."

Zahir blinked away the lingering laziness from the wine. "Wait. We're going to be up here during a thunderstorm? Aren't you afraid we'll get struck by lightning?"

The question was more of a demand, but Jon merely shrugged and batted it away with a flighty hand. "It'll hit Balor's Needle first. We're hardly the tallest object in the area."

"At least we'll be clothed, right Jon?" Silence.

"Right, Jon?" Zahir said, a bit desperately. The silence was not comforting.

The weather mages were accurate as always. As they sat, shivering slightly in the crisp air that forewarned of the coming storm, Zahir asked Jon something he'd been meaning to for days.

"In our legends, it is said that the Voice cannot die without training a successor. Is that true?"

Jon scoffed. "Of course not." He picked at his fingernails. "To an extent. Voices are not known for putting themselves in harms way. The type of foreknowledge you experienced against those bandits is a last-ditch resort, but yes, it is remarkably difficult to kill a Voice."

"Besides," he continued with a suddenly hollow voice, "it's a gift from the gods. Fragile mortals cannot be trusted not to die unexpectedly."

"Has it been done before?"

Jon paused as he consulted the past Voices in his mind. "Only once," he answered slowly, "but there was a half-trained apprentice that managed to hold on to his sanity once the mantle of the Voice passed to him."

Zahir felt a chill run through his body that was unrelated to the weather. "People go mad?"

"Not if they're trained well. Which means that you might have some difficulties..." he trailed off, then laughed at the dismayed look on Zahir's face. "Come on, you already know that I'm half-mad. Does it seem so terrible?"

The squire grumbled just slightly and shifted as the rain began to fall, tinkling as tiny bells against the clay tiles. That Jon didn't want to answer directly could not be a good sign, but it was the only one he was going to get.

"Jon, when I am Voice,"- that was a certainty by now, right? - "you will lose much of your abilities. Aren't you concerned that you cannot be a good king without it?"

The king snorted. "When you become Voice, I will have lived with this burden for nearly forty years. It will leave its mark on me, have no fear of that, and I would be a poor king indeed if I needed to rely on such a crutch."

A loud crack of thunder echoed above them, and Zahir flinched. The deluge of rain began a breath later, leaving both of them soaked within seconds.

Jon laughed the open, delighted laugh of a child. He rose to his feet, hands outstretched, face upturned to the sky.

Zahir wondered at the man's intense joy, his pleasure in such a small thing as rain.

"Come on, squire," said Jon cheerfully. Then his voice grew increasingly hypnotic. "Relax. Feel the rain beat against your skin. Memorize the sensation of everything flowing away, of the tension and the stress, of the voices in the back of your mind, let them fade away until all you hear is the pitter-patter of raindrops."

As Jon began, Zahir reluctantly stood up, but as the flow of his words echoed and soothed him, he began to relax. All of his worries and fears drifted away until they were unimportant, until the only thing that mattered was the rhythmic beat of rain against his body.

By the time Zahir was ready to become the Voice, Jon was ready to give it up. He'd carried the double burden of kingship and Voice for over three decades, and though they helped each other, the stress of them both pulled at Jon, causing him to resort to more eccentric and bizarre measures to keep control.

Jon kept his sanity and held back the power that always sought to escape by distracting himself, so Zahir humored the man as he came up withe new schemes and ideas.

Once Jon ordered Zahir to drink a pint of brandy, run the curtain wall and back, and then read from the Book of Gold. This happened after they received the first report about the terrible killing machines in Scanra. For a brief hour, Jon did not look so pale and drawn when he guffawed and chortled as Zahir fumbled his way through the names.

Another time, after word came about the massacre of Commander Glaisdan and others of the First Company, Jon had Zahir see how long he could remain awake. For those five days, Zahir made sure to be nearby so that when the king needed a distraction by his sleep-deprived friend, he was easily found.

So when the two men faced each other over the smoldering coals of a ritualistic fire, Jon was eager to hand over his burden, and Zahir was willing to take it, if only to ease Jon's pain.

It was without ceremony that each slashed a long cut down the length of their forearms. Unlike at Jon's investiture, there were no watching tribesmen or anxious lovers. It was only a Bazhir and a King, two knights, two friends, two Voices.

"Two as One," intoned Jon. The fire spurted, just once.

"Two as One," Zahir repeated. The sky above gave a single ominous rumble.

"Two as One, and Many." There was a hint of power in the air that rose steadily, almost audible, like a high-pitched whistle.

"Two as One, and Many." The words felt heavy. They weighed down his tongue and made it reluctant to move.

Jon began to sweat, the power rising, becoming tangible in the air. "One as Many." Clouds rolled in, as if summoned.

"One as Many," Zahir breathed, feeling a great pressure on his mind that grew and grew until something shifted.

The crack of a lightning bolt filled the clearing, and two figures staggered away from each other.

One fell to the ground in the shock of something gained.

The other looked into the obscured sun as if seeing it for the first time. The sky wept, and Jon with it, tears of a relieved burden long carried, and tears of loss of something intimately lost.

"Jon, it hurts," moaned Zahir as he curled up on the ground, clutching his head as it throbbed from the mental anguish of suddenly hearing a thousand thousand voices crying out in joy.

Jon shoved away his own bewildering emotions and fell to his friend's side. "You're alright, Zahir," he said soothingly. He placed a hand on the man's shoulder. "Remember our first thunderstorm years ago? This is just like that. Accept them, accept their intrusion into your mind, feel their elation as you feel the raindrops on your skin."

The rain began falling more heavily, plastering hair to their heads. Zahir barely felt it. Jon ignored the cold that began to seep into his bones. "Absorb them, feel them, but let them roll off you, Zahir. Like raindrops. You recognize them, welcome them, but you are unaffected. Don't fight them, Zahir. Relax."

Slowly slowly, Zahir heard Jon's stream of words. He felt the steady hand that grounded him, reminded him of who he was, brought him safely from the chaos of a cacophony of jubilance. The pain began to die away, and Zahir remembered who he was.

"They, they are happy," he said with wonder, finally meeting Jon's eyes. "The Bazhir."

"So am I," Jon choked out.

"Thank you, Zahir, for releasing me."