The blade’s sharp edge slid over the rough cheek, scraping away the man’s beard, and with it, his identity. His eyes closed, wincing as the edge separated skin, calling forth warmth and tingling, and then pain. He reached his hand into the bowl, scooping up water and splashing it over his face, and the wince deepened into a frown as his fingers touched the buzzing flesh of the healing wound. It still seemed a miracle when it happened.
No—there was no seeming . It was a miracle. Even still.
He rinsed the blade and resumed shaving away the last of the hairs, and then felt his face. Smooth, but not as a woman’s was smooth. Would this be enough to make a new man out of him? Perhaps. Who had truly dared to look at his face in the last fifty years? Eyes scarcely dared meet his own-not the eyes of his men, not the eyes of his wives (dead women, now—all preceding him to the grave, and even their children in whom he played no part, these too, who seemed old men to him, they would not look into his face—they feared). Poets might sing him songs, and artists’ make stelae to his deeds—but the man they depicted simply did not exist. It seemed he walked as a ghost among them, unseen. Yet he knew the days would not be long before the spell was broken, and they would begin to see the man.
It was better to die than face exile. To be self-exiled than face dishonor. For the world to see the man as he was would be to see a monster.
Already tales had come to him that he was a man deserted by the gods. What stood him well in war was misery in peace, and any sign might mean a new king should rise. A plague there. A raid by the Gouti in some distant part of the kingdom. A storm to hold back ships. Any of these might mean the favors of the gods had been withdrawn, and well he knew how kingdoms changed hands.
Blood. His own hands were stained with it. It was not oil that anointed a king, but blood.
He reached for the bronze mirror to view his handiwork and shuddered in distaste. What manner of man was this? A scribe, the dust of clay tablets discoloring his fingernails? A merchant in the bazaar, with an eye for well-made pots and foreign gold, unalloyed? He wondered that even a Bedou would shun fighting him, seeing him as he now appeared—a bald-faced man. Only his scar made any suggestion that he was a man who had seen war.
His finger traced the line of puckered flesh that now seemed to stand in stark relief—none of his subjects remarked on that. It was not to exist, a blemish that might betoken weakness. But nothing about him had been remarked on for all his reign, but that which he made them speak of. Beloved of the god. Chosen by Inanna. God of the four corners. But of the legends he might make, the most wondrous of them was the one which simply went unsaid—that a man who lived out his three score and ten years should seem a healthy man of no more than forty—if that! Poisoned, stabbed, or fallen in the field of battle—obviously, the king was a god among them. What more need be said?
And such was the power of kingship, that nothing more was.
He needed little else to convince him that he would not be recognized as he made his departure—that beard or no beard, however, he might be recognized as a warrior, and that would be enough. And as he wet his face again, it seemed that at last he knew what he was.
A dead man. And as such, he was free. The future beckoned, inviting, like a stretch of land lying in wait to be conquered, its men asleep and their swords at rest, fine cattle, corn and women all his for the taking, and his own army at the ready—not that he had an army, at present, nor knew what land lie in wait for him, nor what else may lie in wait when he got there.
But he had a few ideas.
He knew what he expected to find were his brothers—the men he would know by the Quickening of his own blood.
He put down the mirror and dried his face, then rose and looked outside the tent at the night sky, full of stars. It was a moonless night, dark enough to aid in his flight from the life he knew. He sighed. Would faster flight come from the use of the horse which was so highly spoken of? He shook his head. A camel would serve for now—the first he’d considered his person a fit burden for such a beast as that!
Horses? He would need to learn about that, later.
He mapped it out in his mind one more time, as a general might think out the attack again and again before advancing. To the north, following the route of the merchants by way of camel, up even until he must procure the aid of their ships. And among these, he would still find men with whom he could speak, traders of tin, lapis lazuli and carnelian, men familiar with his kingdom, and speaking tongues he would know. And then, further still he would travel, where men had skins like old ivory, and where the mountains loomed from which precious metals and stone were wrenched, lands he knew of only by their names and legends, and some scarcely believable tales they oft times were at that—yet even in these reaches, there still might be men with whom he could speak.
And then he would need to climb, perhaps, or to penetrate the valley itself, there to find the horsemen who dwell among those mountains that loomed like the threat of the gods, and there in the land of the god-mountains, find that man who was god of them.
What was the manner of this man—Methos, the man whose counsel he sought? All the report that he had been given was that the man was shrewd and cruel, and yet, he was supposed to possess some heart—after a fashion, a sharp mind—and most importantly, the secret to survival. Methos could teach him much, if he did not kill him. And he had been promised that he should not be killed if he would only prove his strength.
He could dwell on these things no more—it was time to go. He left the tent with the few things he needed, and greeted the creature who would be his only companion with a look of distaste, that familiar stench of packing beast filling his nostrils. He ran his hand over the shaggy neck. He would be traveling light, with few clothes, a dagger, a bowl, a sword, some small ration of food, and wine in a skin. All his life, had had been provided for—now he would need to provide for himself.
His old self being dead, first he needed to provide for himself a life. And any newborn must have a name. There was a name he had been called once, foreign, yet fitting. It was the name he had been called when first he had been made a god, and so he would be known by that.