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The jewelry was so old, the pieces seemed fragile in Faunos’s fingers. He always handled them with care, even with reverence, if only because he knew that the last man to wear them was Mykenos Peleas Memnon. His father.
They were kept in a silk bag which lay inside a leather sack, padded on all side with goatskin. The sack lay in a box of black wood inlaid with mother of pearl worked in the spiraling designs of the House of Diomedas, so like the Keltoi magic signs. When he was twelve years old, he was allowed to handle them for the first time. When he was sixteen, he was allowed to put them on, and since then Faunos had found a great delight, a great solace, in wearing his father’s jewelry.
When he was unhappy, lonely, despairing of the future, he would put on the diadem, the collar, bracelets and rings. He would hook the heavy pendants into his lobes and nipples, and soon the gold would grow warm against his skin. As it did, a great peace would suffuse him, as if it grew out of the ancient metal, pearls and jewels.
He was sure he could almost feel the presence of his father when he wore these things, but he had never said any of this to Galen. It might have been too fanciful, and Faunos was still much too unsure of his own abilities to know if it were just the flight of his own imagination. But he could surely sense his forefathers gathered about him when he wore the jewelry which had once graced the limbs of Diomedas himself.
In the shifting yellow light of the fire, the soft, old gold gleamed. He had replenished the brazier before he opened the bags, and as always Galen watched without comment as he put on the jewelry. Faunos tipped back his head, waited for the peace to infuse him, and at last opened one of the few books he had salvaged.
He set his back against the wall, where the firelight was bright enough to read, but his eyes were blind to the characters. “I know the way back to the cave,” he said absently. “At low tide, tomorrow, I’ll fetch out the rest of the books.”
Galen answered with a grunt, and reached for the water jug. His voice was husky, and he coughed too often for Faunos’s liking. “Work with all the care you possess, and leave it no later than this next low tide.” He shook his head in exasperation. “Volcos has set his hand against us, and I don’t know why. What did the Zeheftimen ever do to anger him?” He looked at Faunos with eyes grown dark with misgivings. “I’ve felt the rock shifting under my spine three times, four times, since we’ve been here in this pitiful hut.”
“So have I,” Faunos admitted. “But it’s settling. Volcos’s anger is spent, at least for a while.”
“I hope it is.” Galen drank again and lapsed back into grumbling speculation. “Does the sea rise with the ire of Peseden, or does the earth itself settle ever deeper into its embrace?” He shook his head distractedly. “I’m sure I don’t know, but if we don’t move swiftly it's certain the books will be gone.”
“Tomorrow,” Faunos promised. “If we let them lie there any longer, they’ll only rot.”
“And if they do,” Galen warned, “you’ll be copying them word for word till your hand cramps and falls off your wrist! These old eyes aren’t up to the task, not now … and you couldn’t ask a marketplace scribe to do the work. Good gods! It’d get the both of us flayed alive.”
The remark made Faunos smile, but it was far from a joke. The Zehefti books still existed only because their guardians had been vigilant. They were never allowed to be damp, or too cold, or too hot. This had been the task appointed to Galen and his brethren – all of them teachers in the service of the ancient royal house of Diomedas; all of them lay brothers of the temple of Helios, whose desire for family, children, had been sublimated to the survival of Zeheft. They were indentured to the scribes as boys, and when the time came, gelded and either initiated as teachers or ordained as priests. Galen had grown old in the service; he would die in it.
People like Galen – men, women and eunuchs alike – had protected the fragile line of kings since the wars, but diligence, courage and sacrifice were not enough. Every generation brought fewer young men like Faunos. A day would come when there were none, and as far as Faunos knew, he might already be the last.
Many times he had asked Galen, were there others like himself, and where were they? The old man would not answer, and at last Faunos stopped asking. Galen could not tell what he did not know. And perhaps he would not tell because he did know, and the truth was too dire to be spoken.
If this truth was, ‘There are no more like me,’ Faunos wondered, what then? If he were the last, then the Power would die out of the world with him, and Zeheft would be erased so utterly, it might never have been.
He sighed heavily, chin on his chest, watching the fire, and for the thousandth time spoke silently to Helios. What am I? What shall I be? What becomes of me, moldering along with a mound of books which are more valuable than I am? What becomes of me when my teacher is dead?
How old Galen looked tonight. He seemed twenty years older than he had been the morning before the storm and wind came to take Zeheft, and no matter what he said, he was sick. He needed rest, comfort, good food, and Faunos could provide none of these things tonight, which left him with a gnawing sense of inadequacy.
He should be working, he thought, like other young men of his age. He could be on a fishing boat, or in the shipyard, earning a day’s pay for a day’s labor. He could dance, where rich men’s sons from Vayal came to watch the Zehefti youths and toss coins, and some vanished into the shadows for an hour.
And when the day was done, no matter what work he did, he should be out, free to run and play with his fellows, tasting the best and worst of all life had to give while youth was on his side and the experience meant something.
The danger of following his heart inspired a shiver, yet Faunos embraced the longing. Galen had not quite forbidden him to go out, though he had lectured many times on the foolishness of it. If Faunos were recognized as a scion of the House of Diomedas, he could be arrested. If he should be jumped by bandits, he would certainly be robbed, and money was hard to come by. If he found himself lured by the houris in the gypsy camp, he could be seduced out of the money, and if his luck had really turned sour, he could wake up sick in a few days, groaning with the whore’s illnesses which were common in the wanderers’ camps.
But Faunos knew full well that what concerned Galen most was the fact he could not hope to conceal what he was. He was a scion of Diomedas – he was very different, and it showed. The blood of ancient kings was diluted by many generations of Keltoi and Incari seed, but in every seventh son it seemed the line was reborn anew.
Galen swore that Faunos was so much like his own father, they could had been twins, and Mykenos could have been the twin of his father; and so it went, back down the line of their ancestors, to Diomedas Xenos Achilles. And the heritage was not merely skin deep.
Unable to find the concentration to read, Faunos set down the book and went back to the box where his father’s jewelry was kept. He was keenly aware of Galen’s eyes on him as he lifted out the black silk pouch. It lay in his palm, warm, always warm, and always vibrating slightly, as if it had a life of its own.
It was called the Eye of Helios, and it belonged to Faunos on a level so profound, even now he was unable to explain it. No other hand could touch it. Galen himself, despite a lifetime’s study, could not bear to touch it. He handled it with a pair of wooden tongs, if he had to handle it at all. It was like a great blue diamond, the size of Faunos’s thumb, and the last human hand that could hold it without being burned black belonged to his father.
“You want a lesson?”
The old eunuch’s hoarse voice took him by surprise, and Faunos seemed to jerk awake from a trance. “Not really. I can’t concentrate,” he confessed. “I just … holding it makes me feel close to my father.”
“The Power is growing in you,” Galen said tiredly, and sighed. “You might wish it were not.”
“I do wish it were not! It could get me killed. One day, it think it will,” Faunos said thoughtfully, still gazing into the heart of the immense diamond, where a blue fire seemed to burn. “It’s alive, isn’t it? I’m sure it is.”
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