Barid's Story Read online

  Barid’s Story

  Book 2 of the Dragon Pearl Series

  J F Mehentee

  The six books in this series are dedicated to my brother, Viraf.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  A note from the author

  Also by J F Mehentee

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  1

  When a Dragon required a sword, Barid Nurti of Sudaypur was commissioned to forge it. Not only did he make the finest swords in Tun Bistdo, Gaurang had declared him the Dragonfolk’s swordsmith. In recent years, however, whenever a Dragon visited Barid’s workshop, the Dragon received his sword not from Barid but from his daughter, the Dragoness Jiri-so Nurti. Often, and to Barid’s amusement, the Dragon would be speechless, shocked at how such an exquisite blade could have been made by a girl of no more than nineteen summers.

  Today’s sword binding was no different. At the centre of the workshop, Jiri sat on a straw mat, facing the Dragon who stood at its edge. Barid and his apprentice, Pin, sat behind her. The Dragon knelt to receive the sword from its maker and to be bound to it until his ascension.

  ‘Receive this sword of Dragon steel, which holds your breath within,’ Jiri said. She held the curved sword by its hilt in her left hand and rested the furthermost edge of the blade on the fingertips of her right. She leaned forward.

  Barid watched as the young Dragon accepted the sword, unsure of which to admire: the beauty of the sword and the wavy tempering unique to every blade, or the beauty of its maker.

  Everyone heard the single tap as a drop of blood struck the mat.

  With the sword held above his forehead, the Dragon glanced at the mat. He looked up when he spotted the blood, then bowed for longer than was customary, making Barid wince.

  Realising his error, the Dragon quickly rose. ‘Thank you,’ he said, while his eyes looked everywhere but at Jiri and the rill of blood beneath her nose. He received the scabbard from Pin and carefully sheathed the sword. He bowed once more before taking backward steps toward the showroom door. Barid followed after him.

  Once in the showroom, gripping the handle of the door that led to the street outside, the Dragon said, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to stare.’

  ‘There’s no need to be sorry,’ Barid replied.

  The Dragon slid the door open and stepped into the street. Slipping on his sandals, he added, ‘Please pass on my humble apologies to your daughter. I meant her no disrespect.’

  ‘I will,’ Barid lied. ‘And she understands.’

  Barid watched the Dragon march off down the street, the scabbarded sword still clutched in his right hand instead of hanging from the sash he wore around his waist and over his silk robes. Barid sighed, shook his head and slid the door shut.

  He braced himself before turning.

  Jiri stood before him, her face pale and her eyes red with rage and humiliation. It was the same look he had seen when, as a five-year-old on market day, she had experienced her first nosebleed in public. Back then, she did not cry when so many of the Dragonfolk had regarded her with pity, but instead, she had balled her fists and shouted at them to stop looking at her.

  His chest tightened while she stood there, so wilful and so increasingly fragile. Despite Gaurang’s reassurances, Barid did not believe that he would be able to live without her.

  ‘I’ve packed,’ she said.

  Barid nodded. She lashed out when she was angry. And she did the same when she was scared. Unlike a Dragon, there was no need for him to hear her thoughts to know that she was experiencing more of the latter.

  ‘You should get changed, then,’ he said. ‘Gaurang will be here soon.’

  He saw an eyebrow twitch. He strode up to Jiri as her eyes puckered, and wrapped her in his arms before she could bow her head. He could never bear to see her cry. His eyes closed at the weakness of her embrace. She had insisted on making that last sword, and in doing so, it had almost unmade her.

  You will not cry, he told himself.

  ‘I don’t want to go,’ Jiri said.

  ‘I know. I don’t want you to go either.’

  She looked up at him, her eyes pleading. ‘Then let me stay.’

  ‘You know why you can’t.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ she said. ‘I’d rather die here, with you, than live on some isle alone.’

  ‘Staying there will make you strong again,’ he said. He brushed away a tear with his thumb. ‘And besides, you’ll have your undertaking to complete.’

  ‘How can you say that?’ Jiri said. She stepped out of his embrace. ‘I’m already a swordsmith, second only to you. I’ve fulfilled my undertaking.’

  ‘But that’s only part of it. You know that.’

  ‘How can you trust him when he won’t tell you what else he expects of me? Dragons go to those isles when they’re ready to ascend. I’m not ready. So, why should I go there now?’

  To his left, a low table had been laid with a cast iron teapot and three cups. If the Dragon had not been so hasty to leave, they would be drinking tea and toasting his sword. He called out to his apprentice. ‘Pin.’

  ‘Yes?’ came a voice from the other side of the wall.

  ‘Some hot water, please.’

  When Pin appeared, Barid told him to fill the teapot and then take the afternoon off.

  Pin nodded. Before returning to the workshop, he performed a clumsy bow to Jiri.

  Jiri, who had composed herself before Pin’s arrival, returned the bow.

  ‘Take care, mistress,’ Pin said.

  ‘And you,’ Jiri said, smiling.

  That besotted boy will carry that smile to his grave, thought Barid.

  ‘Sit,’ he said after Pin had slid the door closed. Jiri looked from him to the table and back again. After years of practice, he had learned how to hide his thoughts from her. ‘Please.’

  Having poured the yellow-green tea, he gazed at Jiri sitting opposite him. ‘It’s no secret that Gaurang carefully selects a Dragon’s foster parents. Have you been happy here, living with Kanishka and me, you and I working together?’

  Jiri’s brow steepled. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then that should be enough for you to trust him.’

  Jiri studied her cup and its contents. She glanced up at him. ‘But that doesn’t give him the right to decide where I live or how I die.’

  ‘I know,’ Barid said. Jiri had used this argument before. ‘And as I’ve always said, no one has that right. This is your choice, Jiri. No one will force you to do anything you don’t want to do.’

  ‘Then why are we having this conversation?’

  ‘Because I brought you up to do the right thing.’ Barid raised the cup to his lips, his eyes never leaving hers. He may as well have lifted one of the display swords
from its mounting and pushed its point into her heart. He hated himself as much as he resented Gaurang for making him do this.

  Jiri placed her cup on the table and stood. ‘May I be excused, Father?’

  ‘Yes.’ Barid sipped his tea.

  He stared at her cup as she crossed the room and slid the showroom door shut behind her. The cup’s once-smooth lacquer had chipped and cracked under the heat of his daughter’s touch.

  Barid poured himself more tea. As he drank his second cup, his mind drifted back to the first time he had met Gaurang, the monk with his begging bowl. Until now, he had always considered their meeting both a blessing and a miracle.

  2

  Barid loathed having to walk up the hill to Kot Pulta. Life as the kot’s blacksmith was bearable so long as he remained at the bottom of the hill and in his smithy. Let the villagers come to him with their broken utensils, blunt coulters and ploughshares that required tinkering. But tonight would be a new moon, and he had run out of lamp oil.

  Halfway up the hill, Barid stopped and looked back. Thin clouds of dust swirled about the fallow, ochre fields that surrounded the smithy on all sides. Close to the dun-coloured Imperial Highway, the pear tree he had planted behind the smithy resembled a verdant isle surrounded by an ocean of tilled soil. His friend Noor had been right about it: the tree would prevail. But after seven long and lonely years of waiting for him in this wretched place, Barid knew the same could not be said for Noor.

  At the top of the hill, he stopped again, straightened, then tugged the hem of his singed waistcoat.

  Jangid and the rest of them have to give you whatever you need, he said to himself. Just get the lamp oil and go. Don’t give Jangid the excuse he needs to make you leave Kot Pulta.

  About to pass through the opening in the kot’s perimeter wall, he caught sight of a man down below on the opposite side of the hill. He was dressed in saffron robes and carried a brass bowl under one arm. The man, a monk, Barid decided, raised his hand in greeting. Barid frowned. He would have to act quickly before the monk arrived and gave Jangid an excuse to delay, or even deny, his request. Barid pressed on.

  The walled kot was bisected by a central corridor whose doorways opened into the villagers’ compounds. Barid groaned when he heard voices behind the corridor’s left wall. With nothing to do until it rained, the men often finished lunch and then congregated in Jangid’s compound to pass the afternoon, talking or playing mancala. Asking for lamp oil while the other villagers watched would provide Jangid with the kind of sport he relished. Barid stopped before turning left into Jangid’s compound. A night without lamplight to read by was punishment enough for arriving late. It would serve him right if he was visited by the recurring thoughts that only reading could assuage. But if he left now, then Jangid, without having raised a finger, would have won. How he wanted to grab Jangid’s head and twist sharply until he heard a satisfying snap. Instead, Barid rubbed the day-old burn on his forearm. The bittersweet pain allayed the tension caused by the frequent indecisiveness that was so unlike his former self.

  ‘Hello.’

  Barid turned. Standing in the corridor was the monk, his brass begging bowl tucked under one arm.

  ‘Are you the village head?’ the monk asked.

  ‘No,’ said Barid.

  The monk’s eyes narrowed, the space between his eyebrows crinkling. Before Barid knew what was happening, the monk stood beside him, had put down his begging bowl and was examining the wheal on his forearm. ‘That looks painful,’ he said as he lightly traced the edge of the wound with a fingertip. ‘Don’t rub it. You might infect it.’

  This monk was unlike anyone he had met before. His skin was paler than the damp-earth brown of the locals, and the shape of his eyes—the way the end of the upper eyelid folded over the lower—suggested that he was no native of Tun Bistse. It was not so much his appearance that made him different but a quality that Barid found difficult to describe. There was something about this monk, something that made him more solid and significant than others. And although Barid was taller and more powerfully built, he felt safer standing beside him.

  ‘If you’re not the village head,’ the monk said, ‘do you know where I can find him?’

  ‘Follow this wall,’ Barid said, pointing the way. ‘It leads to his compound.’ He made to leave, but the monk caught his upper arm and held it with a firm grip.

  ‘Sounds like there are others with him. You should come too.’

  His mind protested, but Barid’s legs complied with a will of their own.

  ‘I’ve something to say that everyone should hear,’ the monk said, turning the corner. ‘You’ll find it interesting. I promise.’

  Most of the men circled those playing mancala—they shouted and jabbed at the air above the holes that had been drilled into the dry dirt, watched as a player placed his coloured stone in one of the holes, then shook their heads if their advice went unheeded. The remainder sat in pairs and chatted, while others, their backs leaning against a wall, dozed.

  Amar Jangid stood in the doorway of his hut, his arms folded across a drab work shirt, his head crowned by a sunflower-yellow turban. Every now and then, he tugged the ends of the bushy moustache that hid his upper lip.

  ‘Kothi,’ Jangid said.

  Conversations stopped mid-sentence.

  ‘Are you the village head?’ the monk said. He pushed past Barid and entered the compound.

  ‘I am,’ Jangid replied. He unfolded his arms, stepped over the threshold and strutted toward the monk. Halfway across the compound, he stopped. ‘What do you want?’

  The monk raised an eyebrow. ‘I’ve come to collect alms.’ He raised his begging bowl for all to see. ‘Why else would I be here?’

  ‘Then you’re wasting your time,’ Jangid said. ‘The rains are late, and very soon, we’ll be eating our oxen’s barley. There’s nothing to give.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ the monk said, and smiled. ‘A little discomfort now, a cycle of reincarnation skipped. That’s not much to ask, is it?’

  Jangid glowered. ‘There’s nothing to give.’ His answer sounded like a threat.

  ‘Perhaps then a drink,’ the monk said. ‘It’s been a hot and very dry walk.’ He sat down. ‘Relieve my thirst, and I’ll be gone.’

  Barid wondered whether the monk was either brave or stupid. He decided not to hang around to find out. Now was not the time to ask for lamp oil.

  ‘Kothi,’ the monk said. ‘Come sit beside me.’

  Like a bird about to take flight, the corners of Jangid's moustache rose. He began to laugh. The villagers joined in. ‘Yes, kothi,’ Jangid said. He gestured at the monk. ‘Come in, Barid and join our guest.’

  Again, Barid’s legs moved as if they were no longer his. Noor had often talked about how Sultan Subhan would use a magus to influence the minds of those who could not be cajoled, threatened or bought. Was it possible that this monk was one of them?

  When Barid sat crossed-legged beside him, the monk said, ‘Why are they laughing?’

  ‘Because you called me a kothi.’

  ‘But I thought that was your name. I don’t know what the word means. I’m sorry if I insulted you.’

  Before Barid could answer, Jangid raised his hand. The laughing stopped. ‘And would the kothi like some water, too?’

  A villager guffawed at the remark, then cupped a hand to his mouth when Jangid scowled at him.

  ‘Water?’ the monk said. ‘First you tell me you have nothing to give, and then you insult me by offering water. Is this the kind of hospitality you show someone who’s travelled all the way from Tun Chahardah to help you and the surrounding kots?’

  Jangid rested his hands on his hips and frowned. ‘What do you mean, help?’

  ‘First a drink,’ the monk said. ‘A real drink, not water. And then we’ll talk.’

  Jangid scrutinised the monk.

  The village head was a shrewd and short-tempered man, but he also cared about his kot. If it were not for the menti
on of help, Jangid would have taken the monk by the ear and led him out of the compound—something Barid had seen him do when a tinker had failed to comprehend Jangid’s, No. Barid shot a sideways glance at the monk, who smiled, apparently unaffected by Jangid’s piercing stare.

  The sound of something being fried burst from the hut’s window. It was soon followed by the aroma of fried onions.

  Jangid turned slowly and tramped toward his hut.

  ‘Don’t forget to bring a cup for my friend here,’ the monk said.

  The villagers cringed. Jangid stopped and turned.

  The monk raised his hand and widened his smile so that his eyes turned to slits. ‘Thank you.’

  As one, the villagers exhaled after Jangid disappeared into his hut. The compound soon filled with low chatter.

  ‘What’s your name?’ the monk said.

  ‘Barid.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Barid. My name is Gaurang.’

  3

  ‘Here,’ Jangid said, marching across the compound. He carried a dusty earthenware flask and two unglazed cups. He handed a cup to Gaurang and then Barid, making no attempt to hide his displeasure. He poured sparingly. ‘Drink.’ It was an order, not an invitation.

  Gaurang slugged his drink. Barid’s sip of the sweet sugarcane arak burned the tip of his tongue.

  ‘So, you’ve had your drink.’ Jangid said and sat down so that he faced Gaurang. ‘Tell me how you’ll help us.’