by BJ Hanlon
They were all white as if the man had no pupils at all.
The translator spoke and the man blinked.
Suddenly, they were there, yellowish brown eyes with maybe a hint of red in them. The man was seemingly staring at nothing and then suddenly, his eyes darted around the room as if looking for some unseen apparition.
“This is our Suuli,” the translator said. “Speak your names?”
Without thinking Edin said. “I am Edin de Yaultan.”
“Edin of Yaultan. Hmm.” He turned toward Arianne.
“I am Arianne. Where are the rest of our crew? The ones your people didn’t murder.”
Suuli spoke in his tongue as if he understood exactly what they were saying.
The translator nodded once, keeping his gaze on Arianne. “You three are the ones we wish to speak with, daughter of the King.”
Though the men didn’t answer, Edin saw Arianne go rigid in his peripheral vision.
“How do you…”
“Suuli is the word for our seer, our spiritual leader.” The translator looked at Dorset. “And your name young scholar?”
“Dorset,” he said with a puzzled look on his face.
“Terestio,” Suuli said, he looked at Arianne. “Gusoria…” then to Edin he said nothing, only cocked his head.
The translator had a questioning look on his face. He glanced between Edin and the old man then spoke but the Suuli waived a dismissive hand.
The translator cleared his throat and motioned for them to sit. “We are the Foci Dun Bornu tribe from the north,” the translator said. “My given name is Aniama.”
A not so common name Edin knew, but one he’d heard in the south.
“And where are you from Aniama?”
A smile came to his face. “I am from Antulete as are we all.”
Arianne spoke. “He means, you speak the common tongue well and you don’t seem to be from these peoples…”
“Foci Dun Bornu?” He chuckled. “What gave it away? No, I am from the south as well, Carrow, daughter of Alcor.”
“How do you know that?” Arianne asked.
“I do not. Suuli does. He knows much.”
Suuli spoke quietly. Edin barely heard the whispers as Aniama placed a few split logs on the fire. A moment later, Suuli raised his hands and the fire latched on to the logs like they were doused in oil and they began to crackle and sing.
It grew significantly warmer.
“Is he a Tosoria?” Arianne asked.
“No. He is a seer; this I have told you.”
They were silent for a few moments as Edin stared at the dancing flames devouring the wood.
Then Dorset spoke. “We are far from the sea,” Dorset said, “you called it the Great Beast…”
A smile crossed Aniama’s face and Edin suddenly wasn’t sure what the statement was meant for.
Dorset continued. “You are clearly familiar with the ocean, yet you fear it. Despite that, a party of warriors met us on the stony beach many miles from here.” Dorset nodded toward Suuli, “did he see us coming? Is that why you ventured far from this place? Is that why you… an aged man accompanied the warriors and brought us back?”
“Perceptive young scholar. Almost as perceptive as I—”
“To what purpose?” Edin asked finally seeing what Dorset was getting at. “Why send a party of warriors to retrieve us?”
“That is not known to me,” Aniama said, he glanced at Suuli out of the corner of his eyes. “Though I have asked.” He paused for a moment. “Suuli has met you, and there is a shelter being constructed just outside the circle of Dun Bornu. You may rest and warm. Tonight, we shall feast for Suuli has seen a great kill.”
Edin could see Suuli’s ribs to the side of his white breastplate. It took a moment to see two things. One, he wasn’t well fed either and two, the things that comprised the breastplate were bones and he hoped they were animal bones.
3
Foci Dun Bornu
Suuli bowed his head slowly at Edin, holding his eyes for just a moment. Then Aniama stood and led the three of them outside.
“Princess, you will be sharing the ladies hut.” Aniama motioned his hand toward a conical tent off to the west. “That is for women not yet wed.”
“She wishes to stay with me… I mean us,” Edin said moving between them.
Aniama understood the meaning but still shook his head. “You are not yet wed. It is unseemly and ill in the eyes of the Foci Dun Bornu.”
Arianne took his hand. “It’ll be fine. I’m just right here.” She turned to said nothing, then trod off around a clothesline strung taut between two Y-shaped posts. The skins on it were saturated. It was still cold and damp out and Edin wondered why they bothered.
Their shelter stood off toward the edge of the plateau. A few feet beyond it, the earthen mound disappeared in a wicked drop of nearly forty feet.
Edin backed away from the edge before following Dorset into the structure. Inside were Henny and Spider seated around a small fire. Henny was feeding it small, damp branches as Spider whispered something to him.
As soon as he saw Edin, Spider stopped and looked away.
The smoke was thick and stung Edin’s eyes but he noticed the two men were in their undertrousers and their clothes hung above the flames as if they were hogs being smoked.
This was a better idea than hanging them outside.
At the top of the cone, right in the center, there was a small opening and the smoke rose through it. The posts were long and thin trees with black bark leaning against each other and lashed together by some sinewy rope.
“Welcome to the lodge.”
“Where’s Berka?” Edin asked.
“Outside, tied to a tree.”
“There are no trees here,” Said Edin, not liking where this was going.
Henny shrugged, “but there are at the bottom of the hill, near where the water runs off.”
“I don’t want him dead,” Edin said.
“That makes one of us.” Dorset added as he laid down on one of the small animal hides that acted as a rug. “I don’t want him in here.”
“This is my task, my mission, you didn’t have to come.”
Dorset looked up at him and adjusted his spectacles. “You need me. I like you Edin, but you’re not as smart as you might think.”
“Or as tough,” Henny added holding his steaming hands before the fire.
Edin left. He turned toward the steps that had led them up the plateau. Did these people construct it? It had to have been manmade… but it seemed almost ancient.
As Edin started to descend, he noticed another white man staring at him near from twenty yards away. A younger man who wore the same tribal fur as the rest.
At the bottom and slightly to his right Edin saw a ball of human flesh curled beneath a fir. It was Berka without any cloak. His pale skin was goosed up, the freckles like the icy peaks on mountains. Edin could hear his teeth chattering from ten feet away. He stopped and looked up at the hill.
The Crillio Slayer had joined the white guy and they were staring down at him like sentries.
Edin crouched before his old friend, not wanting to sit in the mucky grass.
“Are you going to make that tree your girlfriend? You look like you’re going to give it a big ginger kiss.”
“I’m pretending it’s your ma. She is the best kisser,” Berka said.
Edin shifted.
“She was…” Berka said, he looked at Edin. His lips were blue and his face pale. “When I found out what they did…” He shook his head. “I hate you but she… she was good.”
“I know,” Edin said holding back his memory of her. He untied the knot that held Berka to the tree and helped him stand. After he was on his feet, Edin took off his thick cloak and put it over Berka’s shoulders. Slowly, they climbed the stairs under the watchful eyes of the two sentries.
As he reached the top, fires began to rise around the knoll. The fog in the air held the orange glow low to
the ground. A thick stream of smoke lifted from a tent off to the north. As the gentle wind shifted, he could smell a roasting meat.
“Reminds me of Ali’s cooking,” Edin said.
Berka’s teeth were no longer chattering and his jaw was clenched. He didn’t respond. A few words was all he could get and once again, Edin wondered why he’d brought him.
But Edin knew, the biggest reason he told himself was that Berka would be killed, executed, if he were left in the care of Casitas. Even if the Placisus or Le Fie tried to intervene, they wouldn’t put up much of a fight.
Berka was a Por Fen, that was enough.
Maybe Edin was hoping one day to reconcile with his oldest friend. If so, that hope flickered like a candle in a hurricane.
He pushed Berka’s head forward and made him duck to enter the small tent. There were five men inside but it was still roomy and much warmer now, even cozy.
Edin checked one of the posts that held up the structure. It felt like it was dug into the ground and wouldn’t move when he tugged at it.
After lashing Berka to the post and setting an animal skin rug down for him, Edin took a seat. He ignored the glare of the weaselly looking Spider. Dorset was snoring lightly.
“I wouldn’t let anyone die from the cold. Even Casitas.”
“Casitas would let you,” Dorset said quietly, his snores obviously a ploy. “But you have to be nice… I’m betting your friend would let you die like that.”
Berka said nothing, he was lying on his side facing the tent walls. His hands were clasped and bound as if praying to some horizontal god.
Edin shrugged.
“The feast will begin soon,” Henny said. “It’s all outside, I don’t know how these people can stand weather like this.”
“This is early spring in Yaultan, wet and cold.”
“What’s winter like?” Dorset asked.
“Snowy, windy and frigid.” Edin closed his eyes to try and sleep.
Sometime later, he woke to murmurs around him, strong voices sounded just outside then a moment later, the flap opened and the Crillio Slayer came in with the second white man.
“I… Yechill,” the warrior said with stuttering broken words. “I… ask you…” he pressed his fingers and thumbs together and motioned them toward his mouth chomping on invisible morsels of food. “Eat with us.”
“We would be honored,” Dorset said ending the words with a yawn. He sat up.
The white man spoke quietly in the warrior’s ear.
“We thank you.”
Edin noticed a resemblance between the white man, probably in his thirties or so, and the translator Aniama. His son probably?
After collecting themselves, the rest of the group stood and left, leaving Edin with Berka alone in the tent.
Edin touched the hilt of his blade and stared at Berka’s back for a moment. He said nothing. Then he stood and walked outside alone.
A large fire had been erected, with much smaller ones circling the outer perimeter of the plateau. The hill was alight with the dancing flames. More men and women had appeared from their conical homes. Women carried white woven baskets, men carried young children if they had any or nothing at all.
A group of kids ambled over, some with the guilty look on their faces of ones caught doing unseemly things.
Unseemly, possibly like Arianne and he sharing a tent or whatever these were called.
He saw her, appearing with the other unmarried women, all of them in late teens to early twenties. They wore brown shirts that covered their chest but stopped just above their bellies. Their skirts barely reached the middle of their thighs and they wore boots that came up to their knees.
Arianne was dressed this way as well and she looked great.
They locked eyes and she looked away, almost shyly. Then glanced back and patted her hair. It was weaved and braided and her bangs were swept to the side like a wheat field under a thick breeze.
His other companions were off to the side speaking with the Yechill and the other white man.
He began toward Arianne as the other women moved around her like a boulder in a river.
“How’s your tent?” Edin asked.
“Cramped, there’s ten of us in there.”
“Do you wish you were back in your palace?”
She snorted. “Do you wish you could be out at your lonely tower pining like a child for me?”
“You think I pined?” Edin guffawed. “It’s not like I didn’t know you’d come back. You would not be able to stay away from all of this…” He patted his chest.
“That was only in your dreams. How many times do you wake needing to change your trousers?”
“Excuse me, we do not talk with the women before meals.”
Edin turned and saw the younger white man, shorter than Edin by a few inches, staring at him. He had broad shoulders and a round face. His eyes seemed dark in the firelight.
“Arguments about things like who cleaned last or why are you wearing my dress can spill over into the feast.” He eyed Edin and then Arianne, “though sometimes, they make for very humorous results especially when the cocobo is mixed in.”
“Cocobo? Is that some sort of drink?” Arianne asked but the man did not answer her.
His face was impassive as if he didn’t hear her.
Edin smiled at her and gave a curt bow of his head. For once, he did not want to risk offending the hosts. He followed the man back toward his companions. As he did, he noticed that all of the men were moving toward one side of the fire, the women to the other.
“I apologize about separating you from your woman; it is a practical rule that the Suuli has instituted since…” He paused.
They were within feet of his companions now. “I am Fokill, son of Aniama.”
Edin nodded. “Edin de Yaultan. Son of Rihkar I guess...”
His brow furrowed slightly and then he looked away. “Peoples, here is your unabashed friend breaking the rules on the first day with the tribe.”
“He’s always doing that,” Dorset said. “You should’ve seen him on the first day at the Island. Got drunk, insulted our Suuli, and slept through work.”
Fokill raised an eyebrow toward Edin, appraising him again.
Edin shrugged.
“You enjoy drink much?”
“Oh yes he does,” Dorset said, “far too much.” Henny was nodding as well.
“No wildness okay, keep your hands to yourself.” There was seriousness in his tone. Something said this man did not smile.
A large blackened animal, a deer by the looks of it, was brought out of a tent by two men. It hung from a thick branch between them, its black eyes seemed to stare at Edin and he looked away uncomfortable. They set it on a fur and stepped back.
Appearing out of nowhere, Suuli moved in front of it and the men bowed before him, dropping to their hands and knees and shuffling back.
Behind him, stood Aniama looking as if he were a guard. Soon a different warrior came up. He carried an arrow in his hands, the tip was brown with what looked like dried blood. He bowed and presented it to the old man. Words were spoken and a chant erupted from the crowd. One word. The warrior’s name perhaps?
The warrior dropped to his hands and knees and scuttled back.
A pair of women came with knives and began carving the animal, then serving Suuli and the hunter first.
Then the food was passed around in some progression Edin didn’t understand. Arianne and the other unwed women were near the front of the queue, then families, then warriors and finally Edin, the two Foci warriors and his friends.
The tribe sat in groups around the fire. There were no forks, knives, or plates and the blood from the meat dripped vigorously.
Edin tore into the meat with his teeth and was chewing a particularly fussy piece when Aniama came over and placed a hand on his dour son. “Well boys, how have you been fitting in?”
“We are not boys?” Spider said almost offended. “I am near forty years.”
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br /> “I call all boys. Three mages together in this land. I would not have believed in a million years it would be so.”
Dorset sat up. “Is there a problem?”
The man’s tone wasn’t accusatory, but Dorset wasn’t great with people skills and didn’t understand. Regardless, Edin glanced toward Arianne, she was laughing with another woman. Did she know the language somehow?
“Take no offence, to either comment.” He said this last looking at Spider. “I only was observing. And no, we peoples of the north have little worry of magi… there are other things that worry us.”
“Pa,” Fokill said gripping his father’s hand.
“It’s okay, my boy, like speaking with women before the meal, we do not speak of that which we worry.”
“Can we sit with the women during meals?” Edin asked glancing toward Arianne’s group.
“What, are we boring you?” Dorset asked. “We’re not good enough?”
“You may sit with the women, as long as it is not the unwed ones.”
Edin sighed and went back to his chunk of meat. He wasn’t exactly sure what part of the animal it came from. It was thick and chewy and blood oozed out as he bit into it. At the center of their circle was a plate that held a pile of corn paste. The warriors just dug their hands into it and scooped mounds into their mouths.
It didn’t seem very clean and bordered on gross.
They drank from jugs of the cocobo. A fruity drink that warmed the body and gave his throat a heck of a sting.
“So why is it you are here?” Dorset asked Aniama who squeezed in next to his son. From the juice stains on his clothes, it was clear the translator had eaten.
“Me personally or the tribe?”
Dorset shrugged.
“Well, I originally am an anthropologist, there were stories of tribes in the north so I came up here to study them. They sort of took me under their wing. Fokill was born to my wife while I was away.” He paused for a moment. “She did not survive so I came back, retrieved him, and we’ve lived here ever since.”
“You never wanted to go back?”
