Full Circle

— Taylor —

They came from every garden, large and small. Dagono, Pashtuk, Bitter Spring, Emerald Pool, Saluja, Lustrous Voice, Running Phlox, Broken Ode, and Saphir. Those were just the larger gardens. A dozen smaller ones were represented, too. Day after day, new parties arrived from the farthest-flung corners of the desert. They came to see the monster that had caused them all such pain.

Allowing time for every garden to arrive and gawk at penned-up Darkmaw was Anisca's idea. To maximize their gain, an audience was needed when he killed her. Until then Taylor kept a vigil at her prison, under a spacious awning inscribed to keep the area beneath as cool as a garden grove. He set a railing along the nearest rim of Darkmaw's pit to keep the visitors from accidentally falling in. They had expected pilgrims and sight-seers, the vengeful and the curious, doyennes and mauls, but not whatever this was.

In his days watching over the site, Taylor witnessed some extraordinary behavior. Hunters threw spears at her in vain, yet went away satisfied. Grievers stood at the railing and screamed their pain over the edge, so their anguish might die with her. Men and women cut their long hair short to discard the unwanted tresses in the pit. Others brought boards with written messages on them, set them on fire, and hurled the burning slates at the object of their pain. Several groups arrived with pots of oil to set the monster on fire.

Darkmaw glowered through it all. Sometimes, she shot venom from her tail but little of it reached the edge. She rammed the sides, but several meters of disciple-hardened stone was too much for her. She spat rocks but couldn't get enough height. Mostly she rested in the shadiest part of her cell and conserved her energy. Through it all, fragments fought her living darkness.

She couldn't leave and she wouldn't die.

In the dead of night, disciples showed up and tried a variety of weapons and attacks. Taylor even gave the new crossbow a try, loaded with enchanted bolts. The ammunition was designed to pierce armored men clean through, yet bounced off her naked eye. Nothing affected her.

The stalemate appeared complete.

After their exertions, visitors often stopped by his awning to rest. Most of them were reverential, not just to Taylor (and to Anisca, who was often sitting with him) but to the proceedings. When Darkmaw ravaged the city of Sand Castle, she killed people from every garden. Calique might be a federated society, but they were also a distinct people with a shared grief. Nexus offered them pure cold water, a place to rest, and kept female disciples on hand for the wounded and the overcome. Taylor's awning became a place of quiet rest and reflection.

All around the base of the prison hill, a city grew. Red Tower built bunkers for itself, arched spaces underground with spirit lamps, and trellises of fruiting vines thanks to Anisca's farmer, Riculta, who was proving her worth with help from local gardeners. The Calique all brought tents, mostly big round ones that they insulated with layers of cloth, leather, and thick sheets of coir fiber. An especially large one was set aside for circle meetings: all the doyennes, plus one or two tabla attendants each, could fit comfortably inside.

At first, Taylor thought it strange that Anisca didn't approach them. If she was done reaching out to them, how could they accommodate each other? When asked, she only smiled and said the doyennes would come to him. And, after every garden had their chance to vent themselves at Darkmaw, the doyennes came. They climbed the hill in slow procession, each one carrying sheaves of palm or grass or some other vegetation, followed by their maul. One by one, they lit the sheaves on fire and threw them into Darkmaw's pit until there was a decent little bonfire burning. Fragrant smoke rose up, perfumed by precious saps and woody spice. Each maul threw broken weapons into the pit, hurling them at the monster in her jail.

Then the doyennes, with their mauls, came to Taylor. The Nexus resting station was much expanded to meet the pilgrims' demands, so they were able to accommodate all the visitors with cushions, water, and fruit. Apprentices did the work, while one ran downhill to fetch specific disciples. The visitors arranged themselves in a layered circle, with the most respected doyennes in the center. Taylor and Anisca were directly opposite of Wise Yalda, who was chosen as their primary speaker likely because she was on the best terms with Nexus. Uzan of Dagono, Taylor noticed, was relegated to the second row and off to one side where she was least likely to catch his attention.

There was little said while they were settling in, not even greetings. The mood was still a somber one, and Anisca seemed content to let the gardens speak first. To their surprise, it was the mauls who made the first move. By some mutual agreement, they stood as one and paid reverence to Taylor. Not only did they press their palms together and touch their fingers to their lips, but then they touched their foreheads. He hadn't seen that gesture before, and he wasn't sure what it meant.

"The mauls all thank Eldest Brother Phillip of Red Tower for trapping Darkmaw." Iraj spoke for them, but fully half the men were openly sizing up the young maul. Taylor was aware that his disciples had been busy sparring with the visiting hunters, proving their strength, but it looked like he had more work to do in that quarter.

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"We are glad we could assist our new neighbors," he replied, with the customary return gesture.

Iraj gave him a wry smile, "Now how are you going to kill it?"

"With some difficulty," Taylor chuckled, and the men all nodded with him. Taylor motioned them to sit. "Not even disciple weapons can harm her. We could bury her and let her starve to death, but a normal scorpion can survive a year without food. A monster like this one could take years to die, and who knows what could happen in the meantime? I think we'll all rest easier if she's properly dead."

"That's true," said the maul from Broken Ode (judging by his colors), "but how will you do it?"

"First, I have to weaken her. I'll use the spiritual arts for that, but the specifics are hard to explain to the uninitiated. It'll take some days to make her vulnerable. Then, I will call upon a higher power to smite her until she dies."

Their response was a shocked silence. Nobody wanted to say it, especially when he had just trapped the unstoppable terror, but nobody wanted to believe he was about to call down Olyon to kill the monster for him.

"Little Maul!" Iraj was so surprised that he reverted to his usual form. "You can't mean …"

"You'll understand exactly what I mean, when it happens." Taylor reassured them. "All you have to do is wait. It could take a couple of weeks, but Darkmaw is going to die."

There was a considerable amount of cross-talk at that point, with some mauls arguing that Taylor was spouting nonsense and those who countered that there was nothing nonsensical about what he'd done so far. Someone pointed out that Taylor himself hadn't done anything so far, to which Iraj replied he'd killed fifty Satomen nearly on his own.

The doyennes had to intervene to settle down their men. Once the meeting was orderly again, Aygerim of Saluja addressed him. "Many gardens are offering you khartang, and others will follow suit if you kill that," she nodded in the pit's direction. "It would be natural then to consider you for Pasha when the war with Kashmar comes." A few mauls looked hopeful, while several looked angry that they might never be considered for the warlord's role. But, as a doyenne was speaking they held their tongues. Barely.

"I regret to say you are behind the times, Wise Aygerim. The war started months ago when Kashmar attacked Satoma and took all their wives. That was a deliberate move to send the Satomen against the gardens, taking new wives by force until open hostilities broke out. The fewer fighters you have, the easier things will be for Kashmar when they come.

"Since then, they've occupied Satoma and started building a fort there. They intend to use it as a staging ground for their invasion."

Everyone started talking all at once, until the maul from Broken Ode stood. The circle quieted to let him speak. He was an older man and, from the other mauls' reactions, a respected one. "If you know the enemy's movements, why haven't you done anything about them?"

"Because I am not your Pasha. And even if I was, Nexus won't fight your battles for you. We'll only fight with you. Besides, I'd like Kashmar to invest a lot more into their little base before we crush it. It'll hurt them more that way, especially if we let them stage significant supplies first."

There was scattered nodding at his idea, but Broken Ode was not so easily pleased. "Young maul, you are very young to command an army. With respect to your accomplishments so far, waging war is something else entirely. It is the most absolute of all endeavors. What makes you think we would entrust the lives of all our people to you?"

"I have many arguments I could give, but only one you'll listen to. Let me introduce you to my field commander, Disciple Ma'Tocha." Ma'Tocha entered the covered space, fully looking her part in tirun scale, men's color on her face, and her hair bound up in cloth. "You may know this one better by the epithet … "

"Scourge of Bandits," said the maul of Broken Ode, "I remember this one well. You were younger back when that name was struck."

"Speak for yourself, Masood," retorted the disciple, and offered Nexus bow to the assembly. "I'm still much younger than you are."

"Ho ho! Now this one I could support for Pasha if Nexus came with him! He drove out the Grand Company and …"

"I decline to be Pasha," Ma'Tocha said, and loudly. "I can lead Calique against the tyrant of Kashmar in the field, but the role of Pasha must go to Phillip the Younger."

"Why?" demanded Broken Ode. "He is barely more than a child."

Ma'Tocha raked them with a look that told them not to be so dense. Did she have to say the obvious? She pointed an emphatic finger at the pit. "She killed two cadres of disciples; Ravaged Sand Castle; Ate thousands of your people; Spawned children that drove you from your gardens. You ran from her for half a year, but it was Phillip the Younger who put her in her place without losing a single life. That's what you need in a Pasha.

"His youth is immaterial. He's the most powerful disciple in living memory. He's done things that haven't been seen since scripture was written. Enclave is terrified of him. But the most important reason is, he makes the impossible possible. This gathering is proof. A full circle of every garden, talking about making an outsider Pasha? Impossible! And yet, here you are."

"We can fight Kashmar without Nexus," Masood insisted, "we know how."

Taylor took that as his cue. "Yes, you do. But at what cost? It will be a calamity, on top of the calamity you've already suffered. You would barely have any hunters left, which could make you vulnerable to Hyskos slavers." He watched their faces, counting odds and casualties. If the debt-slavers chose to raid the western gardens outright, they'd take all the women and older children. Who would stop them if there weren't any hunters left?

"What Nexus has to offer goes beyond disciple power. We have tools and tactics that will give Calique a strong upper hand, and we're developing more of them. And, when Kashmar has lost, I intend to make sure they won't even look south again for a hundred years."

There was murmuring among the mauls but not the doyennes. "Do you plan on becoming tyrant?" asked Broken Ode.

"No thanks," said Taylor with some heartfelt revulsion. "My hands are going to be more than full enough with Nexus. Look, instead of me trying to convince you of everything right now, why don't we meet again after I've killed Darkmaw? Then you'll know I can do the things I say I can."

"And if you can't," countered Masood, "there is nothing to talk about."