The Book of Jhereg Read online

  This image came to mind of the Empress, with the Orb circling her head, holding up a severed finger and saying, “Now talk! What till have you been in?” I chuckled, and missed Aliera’s next statement.

  “I’m sorry, Aliera, what was that?”

  “I said that determining a person’s House isn’t hard at all if you know what you’re looking for. Surely you realize that each animal is different, and—”

  “Wait a minute! ‘Each animal is different,’ sure. But we aren’t talking about animals, we’re talking about Dragaerans.” I repressed a nasty remark at that point, since Aliera didn’t seem to be in the right mood for it.

  “Oh, come on, Vlad,” she answered. “The names of the Houses aren’t accidents.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Okay, for instance, how do you suppose the House of the Dragon got its name?”

  “I guess I’ve always assumed it was because you have characters similar to that of dragons. You’re bad-tempered, reptilian, used to getting your own way—”

  “Hmmmph! I guess I asked for that, eater of carrion. But you’re wrong. Since I’m of the House of the Dragon, it means that if you go back a few hundred thousand generations, you’ll find actual dragons in my lineage.”

  And you’re proud of this? I thought, but didn’t say. I must have looked as shocked as I felt, though, because she said, “I’d thought you realized this.”

  “It’s the first I’ve heard of it, I assure you. Do you mean, for example, that Chreothas are descended from actual chreothas?”

  She looked puzzled. “Not ‘descended’ exactly. It’s a bit more complicated than that. All Dragaerans are initially of the same stock. But things changed when—How shall I put this? All right: Certain, uh, beings once ruled on Dragaera. They were a race called Jenoine. They used the Dragaeran race (and, I might add, the Easterners) as stock to practice genetic experimentation. When they left, the Dragaerans divided into tribes based on natural kinship, and the Houses were formed from this after the formation of the Empire by Kieron the Conqueror.”

  She didn’t add “my ancestor,” but I felt it anyway.

  “The experiments they did on Dragaerans involved using some of the wildlife of the area as a gene pool.”

  I interrupted. “But Dragaerans can’t actually cross-breed with these various animals, can they?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then how—”

  “We don’t really know how they went about it. That’s one thing I’ve been researching myself, and I haven’t solved it yet.”

  “What did these—Jenine?”

  “Jen-o-ine.”

  “Jenoine. What did these Jenoine do to Easterners?”

  “We aren’t really sure, to tell you the truth. One popular theory is that they bred in psionic ability.”

  “Hmmm. Fascinating. Aliera, has it ever occurred to you that Dragaerans and Easterners could be of the same stock originally?”

  “Don’t be absurd,” she said sharply. “Dragaerans and Easterners can’t interbreed. In fact, there are some theories which claim that Easterners aren’t native to Dragaera at all, but were brought in by the Jenoine from somewhere else to use as controls for their tests.”

  “‘Controls’?”

  “Yes. They gave the Easterners psionic abilities equal to, or almost equal to, that of Dragaerans. Then they started messing around with Dragaerans, and sat back to see what the two races would do to each other.”

  I shuddered. “Do you mean that these Jenoine might still be around, watching us—”

  “No,” she said flatly. “They’re gone. Not all of them are destroyed, but they rarely come to Dragaera anymore—and when they do, they can’t dominate us as they did long ago. In fact, Sethra Lavode fought with and destroyed one only a few years ago.”

  My mind flashed back to my first meeting with Sethra. She had looked a bit worried, and said, “I can’t leave Dzur Mountain just now.” And later, she had looked exhausted, as if she’d been in a fight. One more old mystery cleared up.

  “How were they destroyed? Did the Dragaerans turn on them?”

  She shook her head. “They had other interests besides genetics. One of them was the study of Chaos. We’ll probably never know exactly what happened, but, in essence, an experiment got out of control, or else an argument came up between some of them, or something, and boom! We have a Great Sea of Amorphia, a few new gods, and no more Jenoine.”

  So much, I decided, for my history lesson for today. I couldn’t deny being interested, however. It wasn’t really my history, but it had some kind of fascination for me, nevertheless. “That sounds remarkably like what happened to Adron on a smaller scale, a few years back. You know, the thing that made the Sea of Chaos up north, the Interregnum. . . . Aliera?”

  She was looking at me strangely and not saying anything.

  A light broke through. “Say!” I said, “That’s what pre-Empire sorcery is! The sorcery of the Jenoine.” I stopped long enough to shudder, as I realized the implications. “No wonder the Empire doesn’t like people studying it.”

  Aliera nodded. “To be more precise, pre-Empire sorcery is direct manipulation of raw chaos—bending it to one’s will.”

  I found myself shuddering again. “It sounds rather dangerous.”

  She shrugged, but didn’t say more. Of course, she would see it a little differently. Aliera’s father, I had learned, was none other than Adron himself, who had accidentally blown up the old city of Dragaera and created a sea of amorphia on its site.

  “I hope,” I said, “that Morrolan isn’t planning on doing another number like your father did.”

  “He couldn’t.”

  “Why not? If he’s using pre-Empire sorcery . . .”

  She grimaced prettily. “I’ll correct what I said before. Pre-Empire sorcery is not exactly direct manipulation of chaos; it’s one step removed. Direct manipulation is something else again—and that’s what Adron was doing. He had the ability to use, in fact, the ability to create amorphia. If you combine that with the skills of pre-Empire sorcery . . .”

  “And Morrolan doesn’t have the skill to create amorphia? Poor fellow. How can he live without it?”

  Aliera chuckled. “It isn’t a skill one can learn. It goes back to genes again. So far as I know, it is only the e’Kieron line of the House of the Dragon that holds the ability—although it is said that Kieron himself never used it.”

  “I wonder,” I said, “how genetic heritage interacts with reincarnation of the soul.”

  “Oddly,” said Aliera e’Kieron.

  “Oh. So, anyway, that explains where the Dragaeran Houses come from. I’m surprised that the Jenoine wasted their time breeding an animal like the Jhereg into some Dragaerans,” I said.

  “That’s another one I owe you, boss.”

  “Shut up, Loiosh.”

  “Oh,” said Aliera, “but they didn’t.”

  “Eh?”

  “They played around with jheregs and found a way to put human-level intelligence into a brain the size of a rednut, but they never put any jhereg genes into Dragaerans.”

  “There, Loiosh. You should feel grateful to the Jenoine, for—”

  “Shut up, boss.”

  “But I thought you said—”

  “The Jhereg is the exception. They didn’t start out as a tribe the way the others did.”

  “Then how?”

  “Okay, we have to go back to the days when the Empire was first being formed. In fact, we have to go back even further. As far as we know, there were originally about thirty distinct tribes of Dragaerans. We don’t know the exact number, since there were no records being kept back then.

  “Eventually, many of them died off. Finally, there were sixteen tribes left. Well, fifteen, plus a tribe of the Teckla, which really didn’t do much of anything.”

  “They invented agriculture,” I cut in. “That’s something.”

  She brushed it aside. “The tribes were called together, or
parts of each tribe, by Kieron the Conqueror and a union of some of the best Shamans of the time, and they got together to drive the Easterners out of some of the better lands.”

  “For farming,” I said.

  “Now, in addition to the tribes, there were a lot of outcasts. Many of them came from the tribe of the Dragon—probably because the Dragons had higher standards than the others—” She tossed her head as she said this; I let it go by.

  “Anyway,” she continued, “there were a lot of outcasts, mostly living in small groups. While the other tribes were coming together under Kieron, a certain ex-Dragon named Dolivar managed to unite most of these independent groups—primarily by killing any of the leaders who didn’t agree with the idea.

  “So they got together, and, I guess more sarcastically than anything else, they began calling themselves ‘the tribe of the Jhereg.’ They lived mostly off the other tribes—stealing, looting, and then running off. They even had a few Shamans.”

  “Why didn’t the other tribes get together to wipe them out?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “A lot of the tribes wanted to, but Kieron needed scouts and spies for the war against the Easterners, and the Jheregs were obviously the only ones who could manage it properly.”

  “Why did the Jheregs agree to help?”

  “I guess,” she remarked drily, “Dolivar decided it was preferable to being wiped out. He met with Kieron before the Great March started, and got an agreement that, if his ‘tribe’ helped out, they would be included in the Empire when it was over.”

  “I see. So that’s how the Jhereg became part of the Cycle. Interesting.”

  “Yes. It also ended up killing Kieron.”

  “What did?”

  “The bargain; the strain of forcing the tribes to adhere to the bargain after the fighting was over and the other tribes no longer saw that the Jhereg could be of any value to them. He was eventually killed by a group of Lyorn warriors and Shamans who decided that he was responsible for some of the problems the Jheregs brought to the Empire.”

  “So,” I said, “we owe it all to Kieron the Conqueror, eh?”

  “Kieron,” she agreed, “and this Jhereg chieftain named Dolivar who forced the deal in the first place, and then forced the others in his tribe to agree to it.”

  “Why is it, I wonder, that I’ve never heard of this Jhereg chieftain? I don’t know of any House records on him, and you’d think he’d be considered some kind of hero.”

  “Oh, you can find him if you dig enough. As you know better than I, The Jhereg isn’t too concerned with heroes. The Lyorns have records of him.”

  “Is that how you found out all this?”

  She shook her head, “No. I learned a lot of it talking to Sethra. And some I remembered, of course.”

  “What!?”

  Aliera nodded. “Sethra was there, as Sethra. I’ve heard her age given at ten thousand years. Well, that’s wrong. It’s off by a factor of twenty. She is, quite literally, older than the Empire.”

  “Aliera, that’s impossible! Two hundred thousand years? That’s ridiculous!”

  “Tell it to Dzur Mountain.”

  “But . . . and you! How could you remember?”

  “Don’t be a fool, Vlad. Regression, of course. In my case, it’s a memory of past lives. Did you think reincarnation was just a myth, or a religious belief, like you Easterners have?”

  Her eyes were glowing strangely, as I fought to digest this new information.

  “I’ve seen it through my own eyes—lived it again.

  “I was there, Vlad, when Kieron was backed into a corner by an ex-Dragon named Dolivar, who had been Kieron’s brother before he shamed himself and the whole tribe. Dolivar was tortured and expelled.

  “I share the guilt there, too, as does Sethra. Sethra was supposed to hamstring the yendi, but she missed—deliberately. I saw, but I didn’t say anything. Perhaps that makes me responsible for my brother’s death, later. I don’t know . . .”

  “Your brother!” This was too much.

  “My brother,” she repeated. “We started out as one family. Kieron, Dolivar, and I.”

  She turned fully toward me, and I felt a rushing in my ears as I listened to her spin tales that I couldn’t quite dismiss as mad ravings or myths.

  “I,” she said, “was a Shaman in that life, and I think I was a good one, too. I was a Shaman, and Kieron was a warrior. He is still there, Vlad, in the Paths of the Dead. I’ve spoken to him. He recognized me.

  “Three of us. The Shaman, the warrior—and the traitor. By the time Dolivar betrayed us, we no longer considered him a brother. He was a Jhereg, down to his soul.

  “His soul . . .” she repeated, trailing off.

  “Yes,” she continued, “‘Odd’ is the right way to describe the way heredity of the body interacts with reincarnation of the soul. Kieron was never reincarnated. I have been born into a body descended from the brother of my soul. And you—” she gave me a look that I couldn’t interpret, but I suddenly knew what was coming. I wanted to scream at her not to say it, but, throughout the millennia, Aliera has always been just a little faster than me. “—You became an Easterner, brother.”

  10

  “One man’s mistake is another man’s opportunity.”

  ONE DAMN THING AFTER another.

  I returned to my office and looked at nothing in particular for a while. I needed time, probably days, to get adjusted to this information. Instead, I had about ten minutes.

  “Vlad?” said Kragar. “Hey, Vlad!”

  I looked up. After a moment, I focused in on Kragar, who was sitting opposite me and looking worried.

  “What is it?” I asked him.

  “That’s what I was wondering.”

  “Huh?”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Yes. No. Hell, Kragar, I don’t know.”

  “It sounds serious,” he said.

  “It is. My whole world has just been flipped around, and I haven’t sorted it out yet.”

  I leaned toward him, then, and grabbed his jerkin. “Just one thing, old friend: If you value your sanity, never, but never have a deep, heart-to-heart talk with Aliera.”

  “Sounds really serious.”

  “Yeah.”

  We sat in silence for a moment. Then I said, “Kragar?”

  “Yeah, boss?”

  I bit my lip. I’d never broached this subject before, but . . .

  “How did you feel when you were kicked out of the House of the Dragon?”

  “Relieved,” he said, with no hesitation. “Why?”

  I sighed. “Never mind.”

  I tried to force the mood and the contemplation from me and almost succeeded. “What’s on your mind, Kragar?”

  “I was wondering if you found out anything,” he said, in all innocence.

  Did I find out anything? I asked myself. The question began to reverberate in my head, and I heard myself laughing. I saw Kragar giving me a funny look; worried. I kept laughing. I tried to stop, but couldn’t. Ha! Did I learn anything?

  Kragar leaned across the desk and slapped me once—hard.

  “Hey boss,” said Loiosh, “cut it out.”

  I sobered up. “Easy for you to say,” I told him. “You haven’t just learned that you once were everything you hate—the very kind of person you despise.”

  “So? You haven’t just learned that you were supposed to be a blithering idiot, except that some pseudo-god decided to have a little fun with your ancestors,” Loiosh barked back.

  I realized that he had a point. I turned to Kragar. “I’m all right now. Thanks.”

  He still looked worried. “Are you sure?”

  “No.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Great. So, if you can avoid having hysterics again, what did you learn?”

  I almost did have hysterics again, but controlled myself before Kragar could slap me again. What had I learned? Well, I wasn’t going to tell him that, or that, uh, or that either. What did that leave?
Oh, of course.

  “I learned that Mellar is the product of three Houses,” I said. I gave him a report on that part of the discussion.

  He pondered the information.

  “Now that,” he said, “is interesting. A Dzur, eh? And a Dragon. Hmmm. Okay, why don’t you see what you can dig up about the Dzur side, and I’ll work on the Dragons.”

  “I think it would make more sense to do it the other way around, since I have some connections in the Dragons.”

  He looked at me closely. “Are you quite sure,” he said, “that you want to use those connections just at the moment?”

  Oh. I thought about that, and nodded. “Okay, I’ll check the Dzur records. What do you think we should look for?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said. Then he cocked his head for a minute and seemed to be thinking about something, or else he was in psionic contact. I waited.

  “Vlad,” he said, “do you have any idea what it’s like to be a cross-breed?”

  “I know it isn’t as bad as being an Easterner!”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “What are you getting at? You know damn well what I’ve had to put up with.”

  “Oh, sure, Mellar isn’t going to have all the problems you have, or had. But suppose he inherited the true spirit of each House. Do you have any idea how frustrating it would be for a Dzur to be denied his place in the lists of heroes of the House, if he was good enough to earn it? Or a Dragon, denied the right to command all the troops he was competent to lead? The only House that would take him is us, and Hell, Vlad, there are even some Jhereg that would make him eat Dragon-dung. Sure, Vlad; you have it worse in fact, but he can’t help but feel that he’s entitled to better.”

  “And I’m not?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I suppose,” I conceded. “I see your point. Where are you going with it?”

  Kragar got a puzzled look on his face. “I don’t know, exactly, but it’s bound to have an effect on his character.”