The cabin banged slightly as they touched down and the engines sputtered into silence. Kahina stood up and gave Gideon a serious look. “Coal. Water. Food. Blankets. Anything we should have had on that mountain, we need now. All right?”
Gideon nodded. “Sure.”
Asha watched the pair open the metal door and step out onto the grass, and then she helped Priya to follow them. They stood on a flat grassy field just a stone’s throw from a wide dirt road. To their left the road plunged through an orchard and disappeared toward the cedar forest, but to their right the road wound around a narrow creek and up to a small cluster of farm houses near a tall wooden windmill.
As they walked up the road, Asha paused to stare back at the forest behind them.
“Something the matter?” Gideon asked.
“When we were in the forest, I thought I heard something following us. Something large.” Asha watched the tree line, seeing nothing but cedars.
“Oh, I doubt it. There’s nothing bigger than a hare in there.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Well.” He glanced away. “I’ve been here before. I know the area pretty well. I had to walk on the ground back then, of course. There is an old story about a giant man and a monster bull, but they only tell that story down south, and it’s a very old story. You probably just heard a falling tree in there.”
“Probably.” Asha narrowed her eyes and continued past him toward the village. “Then again, there are strange souls wandering the world these days.”
The small cluster of houses encircled a single covered well, and there were two old women sitting on a rough hewn bench beside it. They both looked up to watch the strangers approach, and Asha saw the sleepy apathy in their eyes transform into excitement and wonder. The two women rose up on unsteady legs, their hands clasped and their thin lips rising in crooked little smiles.
“Hello,” said Kahina. But the women looked right past the pilot.
“Hello,” said Gideon. “Lovely day, isn’t it?”
The old ladies gasped and came forward. “Gideon? It is you, isn’t it? Gideon?”
The young man blushed. “Uh. Well, yes. Yes, it is me. I’m Gideon.”
“I knew it!” one of the women said. “I could never forget that face. Oh, it is so wonderful to see you again.” She glanced over at Priya and Asha. “I’m sorry to make a scene, but it has been so long.”
Asha shrugged. “It’s all right.” She looked up at him. “When were you last here?”
“Oh, a while ago,” he said.
“More than a while.” The old ladies chuckled. “We were barely more than children when he was last here.”
Asha frowned. “Really? This man?”
“Oh yes!” They nodded merrily. “But where is that magic sword of yours? The one you used to slay the Bull of Heaven?”
Gideon winced. He looked sideways at Asha. “It wasn’t the Bull of Heaven, I swear. It was just a big bull. A regular bull. Just very dangerous.”
“Ah. And you had a magic sword?” Asha glanced at his belt, but no weapons hung there.
His face wrinkled with awkward embarrassment. “Sort of. It’s not magic though, I can promise you that.”
“So what happened to it?”
“Well, I had it modified when I was in Marrakesh a few years ago.” He held up his right arm with the strange brass gauntlet. Then he yanked back a small lever on the side, there came a sharp click and hiss, and a shining white blade shot forward out of the flat box on the side of his arm. The blade extended two hand-lengths beyond his fist, protected by the thick leather glove.
The short sword had a triangular blade, rather wide at its base and narrowing quickly to its point, and the steel itself blazed with a pure white light.
Asha grabbed Priya and pulled her away from the man. “Get that thing away from us.”
Gideon’s eyes widened. “No, please, it’s fine, I’m sorry.” He pulled the little lever again and the blade shot back into the device on his arm. “I didn’t mean to startle you.” He held up his empty hands.
“It’s not fine,” Asha said, drawing a steel scalpel from her bag to point at him. “I’ve seen swords like that before. They don’t just kill, they steal souls!”
Gideon nodded, his sad eyes fixed on Asha as his hands sank slowly to his sides. “Yes, I know. But it’s all right. I’ve never used mine on a person. I swear.”
“Liar. It’s the souls that make the blade glow, and yours is glowing brighter than the sun.”
“Yes, but not from killing people. It’s from destroying other swords like it.”
Asha hesitated. “It is?”
Kahina nodded. “I’ve seen him do it once.”
The two old ladies nodded. “We saw him do it, too, when we were girls.”
“Gideon?” Priya spoke softly. “How old are you?”
“Ah.” He touched the little golden pendant hanging from his neck. “Well, that’s a bit of a long story.”
“Then tell it,” Asha said. “And if I don’t like what I hear, I won’t let you walk out of here to use that sword again.”
“All right, I’m happy to tell you.” He grinned again. “Although, I sort of doubt that you could stop me from leaving.”
Asha lifted her other hand out of her bag to display the scalpels and needles arrayed between her fingers like claws.
Gideon blinked. “Oh my. All right, let’s sit down.”
5
Gideon raised his eyebrows and inhaled slowly. He said, “I was born about two thousand years ago in the city of Damascus, although the city was already old at that time. I had a pretty unremarkable life. My father made bricks. My mother died when I was young. I played in the streets until I could work, and then I made bricks for a few years. When war broke out between Damascus and Tyre, I was summoned to fight. There were a few battles and I fought pretty well, so when we returned I was made a full-time guard in the king’s palace.”
Gideon sat on the ground fiddling with a blade of grass. The two old women sat on their bench, while Asha and Priya sat on the edge of the well. A pair of young boys ran out and sat near the old women, who shushed them.
“A few more years passed. Then a man came to visit the king. He was a scholar of great renown called Master Bashir. He had studied with the wisest men in Aegyptus and India and other places I had never heard of. But for all his wisdom and knowledge, he was still just a man. He counseled the king by day, but played dice and drank wine in the city at night. And one night there was a fight. I happened to be nearby and saved Bashir from a couple of gentleman with unpleasant intentions and very large swords.” Gideon grinned and shrugged. “So Bashir asked that I be assigned to be his personal bodyguard. For a few months, I followed him around and pulled him out of fights. One particular night he was so drunk that I actually had to carry him home. He was laughing, babbling that he didn’t really need me, that he couldn’t be killed, or that he wished someone would kill him. He kept babbling until he passed out.
“The next morning, he was so grim, so serious. I’d never seen him so miserable. And that’s when he told me that he was thousands of years old. I thought he was crazy, of course, but Bashir explained that he had found a strange metal that could control aether and human souls. And he had devised a way to make a person immortal,” Gideon said. “It was a hard life, he said. Living forever. Living alone. But he had made other people immortal too. An entire family in Aegyptus, for starters. And he had just returned from India where he had made a young prince immortal. Bashir said this prince was the paragon of every virtue, and he hoped to see what might happen if a kind ruler were to rule forever. But Bashir had not given this prince an immortal companion, and that little oversight was what had made him so sad when I met him. He felt guilty, you see.”
