Kefier’s thoughts were jolted when he heard a pebble loosened behind him. He didn't turn to the sound, but his fingers found the hilt of Oji's sword. He waited a moment, drew, and pounced at the dark figure behind him.
There was a terrible wail. Kefier felt fur against his chest as he forced one arm around its neck, his left hand holding the sword close. It struggled, dark hands flailing in the air, but he held his grasp. A furred tail smacked his leg. He lifted the sword higher, and against the haze he realized the thing wore a light tunic. And he noticed too, that it was smaller than him, the size of a child.
He heard the beast gasp in Kagtar.
“Let she go,” it was saying, the words mixed with an intelligible tongue that sounded like the hissing of a cat. He relaxed his grip, but not enough to release it.
“Who are you? Why are you stalking me?”
It started to whimper. “Play, play,” it gasped. Without his arm pressing tight against its throat, its voice was soft, no more than a child's. He smelled its fear, felt fur come off its neck in clumps, and released it. It scampered a few feet from him, eyes on his sword.
“What are you?” he asked, watching the beast turn around and face him, half-crouched. The light from the fire answered his question for him: it was a kusyan. A few lived in Cairntown, though they mostly kept to themselves and you would be hard-pressed to see one in broad daylight. Oji had explained to him, once, that they were closely related to the ka-eng, except they had more hair—nearly furred—and had a tail. For a time, the Kag had regarded them as beasts and had hunted them down with insane frenzy. It was Agartes who eventually forbade it, although by then they had grown too sparse and too wary of the Kags to ever fully integrate themselves into society.
“She is Xyl,” the kusyan told him, flat nose wriggling beneath a mess of whiskers. It—she looked almost cat-like, except her ears, like the ka-eng, were long. “She is safe?”
“I won't hurt you,” he said. “I'm sorry. You just caught me by surprise.” She looked harmless enough. “But why were you stalking me? I'm not used to being followed about at night.”
She cocked her head. “Follow? She is not following. She is hunting. See light. Wondered.” She did a quick hop and ran ahead, leaping on top of a rock. “Come, come,” she said. “Come, come, krawrmrrrr.” Her eyes gleamed in the dark.
“Come?” he asked stupidly.
The kusyan, Xyl, nodded.
“Where?”
“Home,” she said. She cocked her head again. “The hunting. Not good with you, ah?” She pointed at his empty fire. “Home. In the village.”
“There's a village out here?” He gaped at the mass of dark mountains in the distance.
Xyl, growing impatient, made a sound at the back of her throat. He made a quick decision and shoved his things into his pack. “Lead on,” he finally told Xyl, who dipped her head and scampered ahead. She stopped every now and then, spinning where she stood, leaping on trees and rocks and calling out to him in a singsong voice.
It was dawn when they neared the site of a small village. The smell of cooking meat wafted into his nostrils and he hurried to catch up with Xyl, which became impossible as she dashed forward and disappeared behind a crudely made wooden fence. Animal skulls decorated the sharp posts. Kefier swallowed and slowed his pace.
A large male stood outside the gates. He was wearing loose trousers, but was otherwise naked. His bare chest was covered in dark fur. At the sight of Kefier, his eyes narrowed. He uttered a low sound, the words unintelligible. Almost at once several armed kusyani emerged from the village, and Kefier found himself dragged to the village fire, sharpened stakes threatening to impale him from all sides.
Xyl appeared from behind a hut. Confusion dawned on her face, and then panic. She approached one of the men, tugging at his arm, looking pathetically small and frail beside its muscular frame. “Jama,” she murmured. “Jama!” When he did not turn to her she dropped to the ground and began to roll across the dirt. Some of the kusyani glanced at her. The rest had their eyes on Kefier though, faces hardened with anger and suspicion.
One of them poked him with a spear. A moment later he heard hushed murmurs and saw the crowd parting to let an old kusyan hobble through. He was a pale brown colour, though the hair was completely white around his lips and his brows. He lifted a hand in a gesture, and some of the guards pulled back, leaving only one to handle Kefier.
The kusyan asked him something in one language, and then another. Then he coughed, and said, “Forgive me. Kagtar, then?”
“Yes.” He had never been gladder to hear it in his life.
The kusyan nodded. “You must forgive us. It’s not often, you see, that we get visitors.” He grinned, showing dull white fangs between his lips. “Not very often. I am Faci. You have met Xyl. Honour us with your name.” He was holding a pipe in his hands, and he blew a stream of smoke into Kefier’s face.
“Kefier,” he managed to cough out.
He gestured again, and the guard holding Kefier pushed him away. He toppled to the ground, and felt his bonds loosened. “Come, come,” the old kusyan said, heading to one of the huts. Kefier dodged the angry stares of the rest of the kusyan and followed him.
“Sit,” the kusyan said, indicating the floor. Kefier dropped down, noting the smell of herbs and raw meat. He heard a rustle behind him and saw Xyl squeezing through the folds of the hut.
Faci smiled at her before returning to Kefier. “You are in the Rammrar village, if you must know,” he said. “One of the last few kusyani settlements in the continent.” He reached for a wooden bowl from the shelf and began to dig into it. A moment later, he looked up, and gestured at Kefier again. “My manners is forgotten. You must have travelled far. What brings you to our humble village?”
“Xyl brought me,” he said, blinking against the overpowering herb-scent.
“What brings you to our mountains, then?” Faci smiled. “She did not find you in Cael, did she?”
He didn't see the point of lying. “I was trying to escape some associates and thought that they wouldn't check this way. I'd heard back in Cael that there was a mountain pass here.”
The bored look on Faci's face dissipated. “That road has been sealed,” he said, running a claw under his jaw. “How did you get through?”
“I walked.” He remembered the trail was very old, virtually untouched for decades, but nothing about it had been sealed. There had been an instant when he walked and then woke up in the wilderness but he'd assumed the lapse in his memory was caused by hunger or exhaustion. Probably both.
Faci suddenly grabbed his arm and sniffed it. “You do not reek of the agan,” he grumbled. “But that seal should have repelled anyone trying to walk through. That is interesting.”
“The agan?” Kefier asked.
“The Dageis call it the skilled arts.” The kusyani took a handful of the dried herbs and crushed it in his palm. Smiling, he threw it in the air, and kept it there. “Us, natives of the Kag, not the pale men who drove us to the mountains, we call it agan, the energy that binds us all. A few are receptive and can be trained to manipulate it. In Dageis, they called it the skilled arts, and people receptive to it are about as common there as rats in an alley.”
Kefier glanced back at Faci, who had now allowed the herbs to fall to the ground as normal, and swallowed. “I will be out of your way soon,” he said. “Xyl said—there would be food? I ran out days ago. There is no game here I know how to catch.”
“Food,” Faci said, nodding. “Is very important.”
“Go,” Xyl murmured. “He like this. At times.” She took his arm and led him outside.
There were villagers around the fire, talking amongst themselves and chewing on roasted meat and mushrooms. They stopped at the sight of Kefier. Xyl, still holding his arm, said something in their wailing language, pleading or arguing. She pointed at Faci’s hut several times. Kefier surmised from the look on some of their faces what they clearly thought of the elder or his deci
sion.
A heavy hand landed on his shoulder, and he looked up to see Jama bearing down on him, his hot breath on his face. Xyl whimpered and stepped away.
The hand was dropped and a spit with a rabbit leg through it was offered to him. Jama said something to the rest of the kusyani, smiling, and left him alone. As if to follow his example, the rest of the kusyani began talking again, and it was as if he had never existed.
He settled against a log near the fire and began to chew on the tough rabbit meat. Xyl sat beside him, wolfing her own messily. She looked so frail, as if she could easily break in two against his knee.
He extracted himself from the group once his meal was finished and because nobody tried to bother him, decided to take a quick walk around the village. Mottled sunlight and shadow danced on his skin. The village was erected on a small patch of cleared flat land. Right at the edge of it, obscured by vegetation and shrub, was a steep ravine.
Green and grey mountains tainted the horizon. Kefier felt his belly flutter at the feel of the cool breeze. Most of the Kag wilderness, even as far away as Hartmur, had been alarmingly dark and obscene. This was different. A beetle landed on his elbow and buzzed its way pleasantly onto his palm.
He heard something break behind him.
He sighed, opening his fingers and allowing the beetle to scramble from his fingers and clumsily fly away. Could he ask the kusyani to refine their hunting techniques, maybe? If they didn’t decapitate him first. He felt something hairy behind him and turned, his fist colliding against the taut flesh on Jama’s belly. The kusyan roared and flattened him with a similar blow, landing on his shoulder. He rolled across the ground, twigs and leaves sticking behind him.
Jama leaped on him again and he reached out to kick him. The kusyani didn’t even bother to move aside. It was not a fight, but a hunter playing with its prey. Kefier, realizing this, scrambled to his feet, but he was knocked down again. He found himself rolling downhill. Seeing an opportunity, he made himself collide against Jama. They fell over a rock and into the forest floor.
Jama rose, looking as if he would lunge again, but he suddenly collapsed to his knees. Kefier tensed, the blood pounding in his head. A few moments passed and he realized that Jama was not going to attack.
He could not.
Kefier slipped past him and saw a tall preface, which rose into a mountain from behind. There was marking on a nearby rock; he could not tell if it was carved or drawn. It was in the shape of a rune, similar to the Sau letter in the Kag alphabet. It might have been Dageian. He drew nearer, slowly, one step at a time. Nothing happened. He reached out and touched the surface, his fingers reaching up towards the rune.
A cold feeling crawled into his hand. He jerked away, as if it burnt. He felt the ground quiver underneath him and saw the rune, dark copper against the stone, turn black. The vibration stopped abruptly. He saw the outline of a door.
He pushed against the rune, feeling a burning sensation on his palm as he did so. The rock swung inwardly, revealing steps that led into darkness.
He glanced behind him once, to look at Jama. The kusyan was still on his knees, his great black chest heaving, oblivious to everything. He looked distressed, but not alarmingly so. Kefier started down the steps, his boots feeble against the moss-covered rock. The air was damp, with a sickly sweet stench to it. He remembered Hartmur with unease.
The light behind him was faint when he reached the bottom of the steps. Something hard rolled against his boot and he realized, with a start, that it was a skull. There was no mistaking that scent, now. He lost the desire to investigate further and went back up. Jama had not moved at all, even with Faci bent over him, whiskers drooping.
“Did I not tell you to stay in the village?” the old kusyan asked. The timbre of his voice was different from that morning.
“No,” Kefier said. “You didn't, actually.”
Faci crookedly began to walk towards Kefier, his speed surprising for an old man. Kefier realized too late that he didn’t want to talk. He fell backwards, his face hitting dirt. Blood from a cut lip flew into his mouth as he swore aloud and turned to see the kusyan leaping, sharp claws glinting in the sunlight.
He tried to draw his sword. The belt snapped and he used the scabbard to block Faci’s attack. The kusyan was nowhere near as strong as Jama. The scabbard caught him under the jaw and he crumpled to the ground.
“Hey,” Kefier started uneasily. “Don't do that again. I don't want to hurt you.”
Faci rose. Slowly. Kefier felt a sudden burst of heat in the air. The image of the kusyan began to blur. His face twisted, turned, leaving a dark mask in its stead; his body contorted, growing scales between fur. The shadows around him began to bend in all directions, made it look as if he stood on a field of dancing rocks. Kefier felt the sweat trickling down his throat, cold as autumn rain, but he didn’t move.
The creature looked at him and stepped forward, its body rippling as if made of water. Its tail shattered rocks into dust. Kefier fought hard to keep his eyes open; he could not figure out where the creature began or ended. It had no definite shape. One moment he thought it stood as tall as the mountains behind them; then it was suddenly Faci’s size, weak and hobbled and paler than the moon.
Kefier managed to draw the sword, the scabbard cluttering uselessly beside him. The creature bent around the point, closer to him, a foot away, half a foot away…
The shadows began to dance faster. Kefier felt his heart at his throat, smelled the thing’s breath and remembered rain falling on dry soil. He swung. The creature laughed and danced away.
“Futile!” it said. “What good are your weak attempts? For me, the Kag cleaved! Who are you against my power?” Kefier didn’t wait to see what it did next, and lunged. He might as well have been stabbing air—the creature was beside him at once, the breath on his ear, like rain…
Kefier felt himself thrown against the rock face, beside the rune, narrowly avoiding crushing his head. The creature pressed against him. His body felt rigid, bound, near bursting. He looked up and into the deep knot of shadows in its eyes.
He saw a face.
He screams.
It is reflected there, in its eyes, for him to see. He screams, heat pouring into his pores, out of them. His sword reaches up, the leather hilt clammy with his sweat, touches the creature's face. It draws back for a moment, just a moment, but it is all he needs.
Thunder follows the purple cracks of lightning on the glass of the sky. The creature cries and falls to the ground. Kefier does not see why, what else happens. He is screaming still. He falls to the ground, his face wet with tears, the memories hot on him like the creature’s breath and that smell of summer rain.
He calls for him like he must have done a thousand times after his death, for forgiveness.
Chapter Five
Kefier opened his eyes and felt as if years had passed. It must've been only minutes, though. The kusyan was lying on the ground with a gash across his chest, his frail, dilapidated body struggling to breathe. Kefier crawled towards him. “Old man,” he said, unsure of why he still approached after what he'd seen. “Do you need any help?”
Faci's lips cracked into a smile. “You have a kind heart,” he said. “But no. I am beyond help. What you did for me...is enough.”
“I'm sorry.”
“For? Attacking something that would have killed you? That would have ripped your soul from your body, dragged it where souls should not go?” The kusyan shook his head. “This is not your fault. Nor his. He never really had a choice. The agan was strong in me, and I was right there.”
Kefier touched his limp shoulder. “You're making no sense, old man.”
“Hundreds of years ago,” the kusyan whispered. “The old kingdoms clashed. Dageis and Gaspar. They tore Bayatdan into pieces. They raped the women and killed the children and killed each other in the dark, in the light, under the gods’ eyes. They had done this for hundreds of years, don’t you see? Don’t you see? This is what they
do. This is what we do.”
He drew a deep breath, and for a moment Kefier thought he was dead. But he shook his head and went on. “But she, she was there, this time. Call her selfish. Call her what you wish to call her. But know that her dreams have been shattered, her life has been threatened, and she thought her love was lost to the sea. Know that there are people whose lives are torn every day, who must live despite that…know that she knew this, and that no one else loved so deeply as she did.”
“This is Naijwa,” Kefier breathed. “You’re talking about her.”
The kusyan smiled. His wound was bubbling, attempting to seal itself shut. “You're not as stupid as you look.”
“But Naijwa was—how long ago was that? You were alive then?”
“I told you. Hundreds of years. Flower, he called her. My beautiful flower.”
“Who is he?”
“Raggnar. Raggnar rog-Bannal.” He took another deep breath, his eyes clouding. “My master.”
“Did Naijwa make those things in the Kag?”
“Does it rain from the sky? Don’t ask insolent questions, boy. Those things—those toys, they don't matter. What matters was what she made. In there, before it was over.” He pointed in some direction. “That abomination. Her child, her last gift to the world.” He sighed and began to murmur.
“And in her fury so, she created him,
From clay and mage-fire and her unborn child within—”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying,” Kefier said.
Faci sighed. “The beast killed its own mother, and everyone inside the village of Hilal. Raggnar rog-Bannal arrived too late. The creature was already there, growing larger and fatter. He tried to kill it, but it was too strong.
“Raggnar was at his wits' end,” Faci continued, blinking. “He could not just leave it there, could he? So what if it was in Gaspar, made by a Gasparian witch? As a Dageian mage he could’ve just easily walked away, but he was its father. He couldn't just leave it. He asked his mages to help him. And I, too—I was so young, and only a staff-carrier, but he knew the agan was strong in me, though I was untrained in its use. Between each of us, we broke it into pieces and sealed it so that its power may not hurt the living world. Jaeth took his part to a temple in his home, I think. Farg did the same thing. They were very powerful, you know? The spells they knew...but I, I didn’t know anything, and we were running out of time. My master had no choice but to seal that part—its right hip—inside me.”
An Elegy of Heroes Page 20
