A breeze swept from the river Luzum, ebbing the sun’s heat on Barnam’s neck as he squatted, partly in the shade of a mud-brick house, turning the blackshine over in his hands. It was a hot day, drier than usual with not a cloud to dot the sky. Behind him, Barnam could hear the faint sounds of Ibandr, the city of the Hortens, as villagers, farmers, fishermen, and horseherders made their way around the homes and storehouses of the city. He heard laughing, haggling, arguing, neighing, crying, all bundled into a cacophony of sounds that somehow blended into the background of his mind. Sweat dripped from his brow onto his hands, the blackshine, the ground, as the Luzum’s breeze cooled Barnam and rustled his hair. Barnam’s eyes remained fixed at his hands. At the blackshine. He was enthralled at the small black stone, that with every twist had a new shape billow to life in the brilliant paradox of its color. The darkest black Barnam had ever seen, an abyss where it seemed every color absorbed and turned and mixed in the grooves of the stone. And yet, the marvelous scatter of a thousand points of light, coming together to form a blade of sun, a pinpoint of white, a shape that resembled a god, or some other tesselation of heaven that was wondrous.

The boy wondered where the blackshine had come from. He had swept it from the clay jar where it was hidden, off in the corner of his family’s main room, hidden in the piles of sorghum that filled the vessel. His father had always been secretive about the rock, where it had come from, why he kept it hidden, what he used it for. Barnam had only ever noticed his father take it out when he left and refused to tell the boy where he was going, late at night when the shadows seemed to pick at your ankles, following you home unless you had a torch to ward the spirits off. It was dangerous to leave when he did without a torch. Their house was one of the few that wasn’t built in a bundle with other houses, standing on the edge of the city with four free walls, by the canals that fed Ibandr. No one knew Barnam had taken the blackshine, though, and no one ever would. He’d make sure to stick it back in whichever sorghum jar he took it out of. He couldn’t quite remember which one it had been, but surely he’d figure that part out when he got back home.

Among the chatter of the city, he heard younger voices breaking from the rabble and coming toward him. Barnam’s squinted in the setting sun as he looked up from his rock. Three boys about his own age strut their way to him. Shirtless with plain hemp loincloths tied to their waist, bare feet leaving faint footprints in the dry, cracked earth, they looked at him with furrowed brows of interest. Sweat glistened on their face and shoulders, the heat of the sun baking both the world and the men on it. Barnam palmed the blackshine and put his hand on the ground, palm down. He tried to shift his weight to put it behind him.

“Boy, Barnam,” the one in front said, “what you got there?” He cocked his head at Barnam’s hand.

“Nothing important to you,” Barnam said back. The boy in front seemed bigger, older, stronger than the two behind him. He could not place the younger boys but to Barnam the leader was clear as the morning sun to him: Belis, the Zivold of Ibandr’s son.

Belis stopped mid stride, eyebrows shot up. “Everything you have is important to me,” he almost shouted, “in particular that blackshine you’re trying to hide like the idiot boy you are.”

Barnam looked at Belis, eyes unflinching. “I’m hiding nothing, and nothing I have has anything to do with you.”

“Do you know who my father is?” Belis took a step forward and pointed at his chest, “My father owns your grain! My father owns your horses! My father owns the small hovel of a cave you call home! My father owns yours! My father owns every piece of blackshine in Ibandr, even yours you worthless mud-worm!” Belis was shouting now and pointed fervently at Barnam.

Barnam’s nostrils flared, breath quickened, his mind raced with rage and dark thoughts. He stood up, left hand clenched on the blackshine. “Your father is the Zivold but you’re nothing!”

As if at once, the boys moved at one another. Belis swung his right arm, fist closed, in an arc at Barnam. Barnam leapt at the older boy, just moving into Belis to miss his punch. The boys fell down with a thud mixed with screams and grunts, kicking and punching and biting and grappling as they threw a dust cloud up around them. Somehow in the melee, Barnam found himself kneeling over Belis, both bruised and bloodied and cut, panting with his left arm raised over Belis and the blackshine still clutched tightly in his palm. But it seemed Trimr, the spirit of courage, had come to Belis’ two friends and they rushed to his aid. Barnam was knocked over with a thud and the two boys got to work kicking and punching at him. With more tussling and fighting, Barnam managed to roll out of the melee and took off in a rush, sides aching where he had been kicked and cuts flaming as they hit the dry air. His left hand ached, still wrapped around his stone.

He heard the boys take off after him, but Belis shouted, “Stop! He’s mine.” Barnam chanced a peek over his shoulder but kept at a run. Belis was only sitting up, panting, covered in dust and cuts with eyes fixed on Barnam. He made no moves to rise, but Barnam kept his pace and turned his head around to wind his way through Ibandr.

Barnam ran for some time but he was not the best runner, and after a short while of weaving between the fishermen and the horse herders, his panting became too much and he slowed to a walk. He looked behind his shoulder, fervently checking for any sign of the bullying boys of Ibandr, but no boy was there. Still, the way Belis had looked at him as he ran, the way his eyes had dug into his, stayed with Barnam.

“Watch your step boy!” Barnam almost fell getting out of the way of a large, thundering, bull of a man carrying a clay jar almost as big as Barnam. The man shouted curses at him and all stupid boys who couldn’t watch where they were walking. That was not the last time he almost ran into someone. Dozens, hundreds of people filled the spaces and walkways of Ibandr. They thronged through the city in narrow passages and walkways created in between the city’s housing complexes. The mud-brick houses crowded together, pushing up against one another with no streets or alleys in between, in bunches of five or six or so. Wooden frameworks jutted out from where the walls met the flat roof. They were clumped together haphazardly and at varying heights, roofs cascading and higher higher in a way that Barnam thought a giant could walk on top of them like steps. Villagers worked on these roofs, moving from one to another with ladders connecting the various levels together, calling both to one another and to those below.

Barnam’s walk through the city was surrounded by the racket of sounds that was city life. Horses neighed as they were hurried through the narrow streets, rooftop villagers bellowed out calls to their helpers on the streets, children ran into workers and were berated for their negligence, people worked in their houses baking pottery or chiseling copper tools, foreigners riding shaggy-looking horses spoke to one another in a foreign tongue. Despite the houses clumping together with no room for alleys or streets, the natural breaks between the larger complexes made way, in increasing width as you got closer to the center of the city, a gap that naturally fanned out to reveal the great storehouse of Ibandr.

Villagers were coming in and out of the round storehouse, guarded by a handful of people who checked their possession stones and went in and out getting what the villagers needed. Barnam never understood why the Zivold owned everything in the storehouse, why that meant he owned everything in the city. His father often went on tirades about how the Zivold didn’t know his place and he stole everything from everyone, how the Zivold would get his due one day, how it wasn’t always like this, how he had owned his sorghum once and didn’t have to lease it from the Zivold. Barnam shrugged and kept walking by the storehouse. Adult things and adult problems. They often told him he was too young to get involved so he just learned to ignore the rants and go play.

Barnam went past the heart of the city, winding his way between fewer and fewer villagers as he made his way home to the edge. Their house was near one of the canals. Carved out from the main body of the Luzum, it brought water as far as Barnam’s home so that his father and mother could grow and harvest their crops, mainly for the city but sometimes for themselves as well. As he neared his home, the Sinnamit [shaman, doctor, religious head] Hadr ducked his head as he walked out of the building.

“Sinnamit!” Barnam shouted, running up to the tall old man.

Hadr looked at him and smiled, one which turned to slight horror as he took in the dusty, bloodied, bruised boy in front of him. He took and kissed three fingers and spit in the air around Barnam. “ Tu tu tu,” he spit, “Barnam, boy, what have you gotten yourself into? Who did this? What did you do?” He went into a flurry of quiet prayers.

Barnam shrugged off Hadr’s hand as the man fretted over this bruise or that cut, stinging when he touched it. “It’s nothing, just some boys by the river.”

“Boys by the river don’t always hit boys sitting by the river unless they have a reason.” Hadr was looking at one of the cuts on Barnam’s face.

Barnam brushed his hand off again with his left, only just remembering he was still holding the blackshine. Hadr’s eyes went wide and he sucked in air through his teeth. His hand grabbed Barnam’s left wrist, grip like a rock vice.

“What is this, boy? Where did you get this?”

Barnam looked down, finding the Sinnamit’s feet suddenly very interesting. “I took it from father’s stores.”

The old man smacked Barnam on his head. “Stupid boy! Is this why the boys hit you? Did they see you with this? Which boys?” Barnam didn’t answer. “Which boys?”

Barnam squeaked, “Belis.”

“Belis? The Zivold’s son?” Barnam nodded and Hadr smacked him. “Stupid insolent little boy! Are you almost a man? Are you almost old enough to teach children and build a clan of children dumber than you are?” He smacked Barnam again and yanked him by his arm. “Come with me, idiot boy, come show your parents what you have.”

Barnam grunted as Hadr dragged him into the house. Barnam saw his father standing in the main room by the window, staring out into the canal. His mother was in one of the three back rooms, stoking a fire as she baked one of her clay pots. They both looked up as Hadr barged back in.

Barnam’s father, “Hadr what is this? Barnam? Where have you been?”

Hadr threw Barnam into the middle of the room. “Show them where you were, boy.” Barnam, without meeting his father’s eye, held up his hand and showed the blackshine in his palm.

Barnam’s father picked the stone out of his hand. He sighed. The boy looked up and saw his father turning the blackshine in his hand.

“They saw him, Huttl, the Zivold’s son saw him, fought him for it.” Hadr was panting, hands running through his thick, matted hair. “Huttl, the Zivold will know you kept it, will know you have it, that you’re planning something, that we’re all planning something.”

Huttl, Barnam’s father, only grunted in agreement, turning the blackshine over once more before turning to walk to the edge of the room. He opened one of the pots sitting by the corner and threw the rock back in. He came back to Hadr, and only said “yes.”

Hadr was incredulous. “Yes? Yes? Of course yes, of course yes.” He groaned and pushed past Huttl. “I told you,” he said, wagging his finger at no one in particular, “I told you and your brother when you brought us all together, the forty or fifty of us, and we all swore at Shahadr. We cut our hands, dripped the blood on the dog, and slit its throat. I made the oaths to Niovolin for the strength of Vastatn, to Aldr for cunning, to the river Luzum for life, I bisected that dog.

“When I took out the liver, it was diseased, Huttl. There were growths and it was red and black, blue and yellow, mottled with lumps. I’d never seen anything like that on any blood oath I’d conducted. And every organ was the same and I TOLD YOU, Huttl, I told ALL OF YOU that this was doomed to fail. Bartl said not to worry, you said that the Paroxl would know right from wrong and this omen was nothing but a sick dog.” Hadr stopped pacing and turned to look at Huttl. “What now, Huttl? He’ll come for you.”

Huttl was standing by the door, arms crossed, foot lightly tapping. “You’re sure he’ll know what we’re planning? Just from his son seeing my son with black rock?”

Hadr shook his head, “Huttl he made it clear seasons and seasons ago, when he first came to, that all blackshine would be his. Blackshine is the purest form of Vastatn on earth and it was only right to be in his home and only for me to use it in our festivals.” His eyes met Huttl’s. “That anyone holding blackshine would be a ward of Kloponin, destined to bring about the starving times once again.”

“We’re not ready.” Huttl rubbed his eyes and let out a deep sigh.

“It was going to happen sooner rather than later. He’s had a suspicion for some time and you, choosing to stay out here on the edge of Ibandr, with Bartl not much closer, only makes it that much easier for him to make a move on you, without any anger or suspicion.”

Huttl only nodded. “Yes.”

“He was ruthless at the beginning of the starving times and he’s worse now, surrounded by those sycophants of his. They’ll kill you and Bartl and anyone,” Hadr shot a glance a Barnam, “with you.” The old man let his words hang in the air. “You need to leave,” he finished, “you need to get out and let me do what I need to do. Maybe we can still make this work but I don’t know. Maybe I need to leave, too.”

Barnam’s mother came out now and placed a hand on Barnam’s shoulder. She kissed his head. “No,” she said, “You can’t leave. Where would you go, no, where would we go?” She said, patting Barnam’s head. “There’s nothing to be done now. Even if Barnam hadn’t taken the blackshine, the Zivold was bound to come for us and you both know this. Do not blame my son for your foolish bravery. You’ve made your decisions and you’ve acted on it. You’ve stolen from the Zivold, you’ve stolen from his food, you’ve stolen from his horses, and no one made either of you.” She pointed at Hadr, “you were not forced into anything, do not blame my husband for your decisions.”

She walked to Huttl now and embraced him, “Husband, this is no time to wait.”

Huttl kissed her forehead. “Mauain is right, Hadr. Where would we go? Alendr? Zola? Kinakals, only if Vastatn commands me.” He walked to Barnam and brought him close. “We cannot flee because no one will take the outcasts of Ibandr. There are forty of us who oppose the Zivold and his families. We can do this, Hadr, we can take him down. If we make the right sacrifices and the right appeals to the Paroxl, Ibandr will come back to our hands. This is the way.”

Hadr stood, unmoving, staring at Huttl. After some time, “we’re not ready.”

“No,” Huttl said, “but were we ever going to be?”

Hadr ran his hand through his hair again. “Huttl,” he said, shaking his head, “Huttl I don’t think I can. I’ll ask the Paroxl, I’ll shift and ask the spirits if you ask me, but don’t leave them here. If you stay, if we stay, you need to get them to leave. I know where they can go, east past the cities to the Anug. There is a family there from my youth, they will take them in. They can’t stay.”

Huttl’s eyes welled with tears. He held his hands to Hadr’s face, embracing it with both. Huttl kissed the old man’s forehead then turned to Barnam and cupped the boy’s head with his hand. “Stay alive, my boy. Swear on Izot that you will stay alive and avenge my passing on the Zivold. Swear it.” Barnam nodded through his own tears. They touched foreheads and that was that. It was time for them to flee.

Context: Blackshine is another word for obsidian, a rare ore in these parts of Xanthea, only brought from trade networks with the northwestern civilizations. It's rarity and unique look and feel have afforded the rock an elevated status in the Hortens pantheon, so that it is typically used in religious rites, rituals, and pacts of extreme import. The Zivold of Ibandr recently made every citizen in the city give up any obsidian they had so that it was under his possession and the Sinnamit (religious leader) was the only one who could use it. Partly, this was done so the Zivold could gain even more control over the population, partly to prevent pacts of extreme importance (like blood pacts) from being made to bind people together against him. Huttl had a rock of obsidian that he did not give up, partially due to his rebellious nature against the Zivold, but now it seems the Zivold knows he kept some from him.