Obsidian: Retribution (Book 2)

Thirty-Four: Compensations

The memory of his father Saracen often recalled during prayer time, was seeing the look in the old man's eyes as he carried his younger son, and knowing from that moment everything he wanted would be taken from him. It made sense that he hated his brother. It was his right to hate, even. His life had been fine, his future had been secure, his father had loved him, until Sarasef came into the world. Hate, Saracen believed, was a fair compensation for what had been taken from him.

And it was logic, as much as anything else. Unlike Sarasef, he was small, fine-boned, sickly, not very smart, and had none of his father's features. It didn't help that his mother had been a whore his father had kept for the child he'd accidentally put in her womb, or that said whore had left her six-year-old son and moved on as soon as Sarasef's mother had replaced her in both the chief's bed and heart. The last Grand Chief had loved his second wife, everyone knew. They had all seen his grief when the woman had died in child birth, and how, instead of despising the child who'd killed her, his father had chosen to raise the baby himself like it was some kind of holy relic whose protection he'd been entrusted with.

Who, then, was to blame if the firstborn whore son had been tossed aside to be raised by lesser men––most of whom scums with as much wit and prowess as a poor man's mule––into weaker, smaller, and nearer sighted boy than the younger son who had been hand-raised and trained by the Grand Chief himself?

It was Sarasef and his dead mother's fault, of course. Whose else?

He understood these things well enough, had even agreed with the fact that he, too, would have picked a better son as the next Grand Chief of the Rishi. For what he lacked in intelligence, pride, and modesty that everyone seemed to agree and couldn't be happier to point out, he was smart enough to see that much, modest enough to accept his shortcomings, and equipped with enough pride to never pretend said hatred for his brother didn't exist. But life was about living with what you hate, what had been done, and what one must do, and abstinence was needed to be accepted into the court of Marakai. For that, he had remained patient and loyal by his brother's side while praying to the Sky Father that his time would come. It helped that Sarasef had honored their father's instruction on his death bed that he was to be taken care of as befitting a son of a Grand Chief. It didn't help that Saracen's own instruction, given by the same dying man, was to support his brother's rule for as long as he lived.

Saracen had loved his father, however cruel and unfair he might have been. Sons and daughters always did, no matter how much shit you gave them, or how often they said they hated you. He was wise enough to know that too, and saw it in his own sons, how much they still needed his approval, never mind how many times he'd beaten them into submission. Parents could abandon a child and forget they existed––it happened––but you couldn't beat a child out of its needs for parents. He had, after all, spent his entire life trying to be the son his father wanted. His father had died wanting, and his mother had never looked back.

But time had come for something to change. Marakai had given him a dream––a sign––of Sarasef dying last winter. And when a god gave you a sign, you acted on it, even if it meant breaking the promise you made to your dead father. A priest had confirmed Marakai the Sky Father's approval of his brother's death, and had said that he might have acted on it too hastily to have failed twice. Then again, looking at where he was now––ruling more than a thousand Rishis with land given to them in Samarra by the soon-to-be-Salar, he found it hard to call such attempt a failure.

Saracen touched the ground with three fingers on his sword hand, pressed them against his heart and then his forehead as he knelt under the open sky facing the highest mountain he could see, and thanked the god for his mercy and the signs given. He also asked for forgiveness, over having broken the promise to his father, and for having tried kill his brother too eagerly and too soon. He prayed, that his sons would not have to kill each other too, and that their mother would not abandon them. He would have to kill her for that, and Maika was a pious woman who obeyed her goddess and served her husband well. He might even love her, in fact, if he knew what love was to begin with.