2: Servants of the Crossed Arrows by Ginn Hale Page B

white wall and the iron door.
    “We’ve reached Rathal’pesha.” John pulled the sheepskin of daru’sira from his shoulder and drank. The juniper-like bitterness felt good against his dry throat.
    “You have to go through the door.” John still couldn’t get much more than a whisper out.
    “But I don’t know—” Fikiri began.
    “The word you must say is I-am-here-my-lord,” John told him.
    Fikiri tried and failed.
    “I-am-here-my-lord,” John repeated. “Say it.”
    “I’yam herem’myl’ord,” Fikiri whispered.
    “That’s great.” John sipped more of the daru’sira. The burning in his throat cooled to numbness.
    “I already knew the word,” Fikiri confessed. “My mother will never forgive me if I go in.”
    “I’m sorry,” John said.
    He suspected that Lady Bousim might not forgive Fikiri for becoming a Payshmura priest. She despised the Payshmura absolutely, maybe even more than she loved her son. John entertained no illusion about parents and unconditional love. It wasn’t fair to put Fikiri in that position. But then, life wasn’t often fair.
    And John had not climbed nine hundred and ninety nine steps to turn around and walk back down.
    For a brief, exasperated moment he considered dragging Fikiri to the door, kicking it open and hurling the boy through. Pivan had probably had something like that in mind when he had told John the holy password. But John was exhausted and the big iron door didn’t look like it could be kicked open easily.
    “Fikiri, you’re going to go in there one way or another.” John corked the sheepskin and swung it back over his shoulder. “You can either do it with pride and dignity or you can be thrown in on your ass, crying. Those are your options. Right now they are the only choices you have. So what’s it going to be?”
    Fikiri sniffed.
    “Look,” John said, “your mother isn’t going to know how you entered Rathal’pesha. As far as she knows, I beat you up, tied you in ropes, and you fought every inch of the way. But the men on the other side of that wall are going to be watching. And they’re who you’re going to have to live with.”
    Fikiri wiped his eyes.
    “What would you do?”
    “If I were you?”
    “If you were me,” Fikiri said.
    Shove the big exhausted guy out of my way and run like hell down the stairs, John thought in all honesty. But then, he wasn’t Fikiri and he would never have allowed himself to be carried up the steps in the first place.
    John said, “I’d walk in on my own two feet. I wouldn’t let those priests think that I was unworthy of them.”
    “Are you coming in with me?”
    “I am.”
    Fikiri straightened his shoulders and then turned to face the huge white wall. He strode to the door, called out the holy word, and then walked through as the iron door was pulled open before him. John felt a little proud of Fikiri as he followed silently behind him. At least he’d managed to pull himself together at the end, when it had mattered.
    Just past the iron door, hundreds of gray-robed priests had gathered to greet the ushiri candidate. They lined the walkway leading to the Great Temple and cheered as Fikiri stepped before them. Others stood on the high battlements that lined the great white wall and cheered.
    Most of them were grown men in their forties or fifties. The rest seemed to be spread between mid- and late-thirties. Only rarely did John notice a boy as young as Fikiri or even a man as young as himself.
    The uniformity in their slim builds, soft features, and dark hair implied some common heritage. Pivan would have blended into their midst flawlessly. Fikiri’s dark blonde hair stood out. But at least his build was small and slim. Aside from the slightly sharper point of his chin and nose, his features resembled those of the men around him.
    John, on the other hand, stood out among them as utterly foreign. Nothing he could do would disguise his greater height and muscular build. Months of hunger hadn’t