Almost defeated forevermore, Darhul spat out his dying revenge. He cut off with his nine jaws his own nine heads and dipped them into his belly, steeping them in poison, making them deadly arrows. The arrows fell upon the Goddess’s newborn Suns, killing all but one. Six heads found their targets six times and killed six sons, six Suns of Enaka.
To save her seventh Sun, the life-giving Goddess hid him behind her chariot and opened her mouth wide to swallow the other three arrows. But the heads of Darhul sprouted and kept doing so again and again. A thousand times his nine heads became deadly arrows, and a thousand times the Goddess swallowed nine of them, their venom in her body until she grew enormous, the size of the Unending Sky. Finally, with one giant explosion, she burst and shattered into countless pieces. These countless parts of Her shone brighter than ever before. They flooded the night and became thousands of stars and new Suns, and her heart became Selene of the night. Selene rides the dark sky whole and strong at times, broken in half from sorrow over the loss of her sons at others, and the nights when Despair overpowers her, Selene is no more than a faint sliver of hope.
That was how the Goddess defeated the Demon. With her sacrifice and that of her children.
The stars were now myriad gleaming specks in the Sky, and the Demon, blinded by the Sacred Light, knew that he had been defeated. Life had been born. The nine heads of Darhul, all screaming at once, dove and hid forever in the depths of the cursed salt sea, and there he still lives, in the bottomless abyss where the light has no space to rest and where our warriors cannot walk or gallop upon the black water.
Golden stones from the stars fell to the earth, and fed the soil to give birth to our men.
But other pieces of the Demon’s flesh washed up on the barren shores, covered in pus and charred blackberry blood, and from them, our demon-bred enemies were created.
Reekaal, his firstborn sons; Drakons, his greatest curse; and the Buried Deadwalkers were the myriad warriors of Darhul. They were born from his wounds and his vengeful heart.
Archers from the stardust of Enaka rose to fight them.
And still, every day and every night, the war between Enaka and Darhul rages on. Their spirits are weakened now, but their offspring are stronger. Enaka prevails by day, and the Demon is triumphant by night, but there are still days when the Demon is all-powerful. With his nine breaths, the black clouds, he darkens the Sky and blackshrouds the stars, the Sun and Selene, the son and heart of Enaka. The Goddess fights him with her bow, sending her fiery sun rays in the day and her terrible thunderbolts at night.
And so the epochs and the winters passed with the children of Enaka caught in an eternal battle against the demons of Darhul, the Reekaal, and the other monsters.
But the Story has not come to its end. Here and now, in your generation, is the most fateful and glorious moment of its culmination. For the darkness has returned; unstoppable rivers of black slime run again and drown the rest of the world, and the Demon has poisoned, from end to end, everything in the lands farther away from here. Everything except Sirol.
Beyond the Blackvein, the Buried Deadwalkers, the undead, rule in the Southeastern Empire, servants of the old white-bearded Sorcerers of the Cross. They wait to be resurrected from their bones. Sapul, the city they call Thalassopolis, is their cursed palace and their heart.
In the Endless Forest in front of us, the Reekaal have sealed with horrors all roads to the West and have put the entire Western Empire under their command. That is where the hiding place of Darhul lies, in the seas after the West, and his tentacles reach all the way to the Forest and the tendrils of the cursed trees.
And in the white darkness of the North, the Drakons of the ice rest but never sleep, where the Sun is pale and frozen like a dead girl’s touch and no one ever dares approach.
The Final Battle is upon us, the one where the children of Enaka and the scum of Darhul will fight till the complete catastrophe. Have no mercy for any demonseed. Do not stop until the last one is annihilated.
You will live forever,
as brave and worthy among the stars;
or as cowards melting slowly in the belly of Darhul.
Glory to Enaka, the Only Mother and the Only Goddess of the Unending Sky and the Light.
Razoreyes had finished her Story under Selene’s silent, holy night. My men stood up and walked away shaken and distraught, more so because she would be spending the night in the tent next to theirs.
These were the Stories I had been fed like black milk since I was a small child. When I was young and foolish, I blindly believed in them. Later, I spat on them. In the end, I learned to respect them. Their wisdom and their brutal truth. This unlikely myth of birth, struggle and love, is nothing but the most common Story of each man and woman:
Darkness is our mother. We are born in Despair, by a faint, unlikely ember; but we find Love, and Love transforms us to Light and Hope. We live our Love for only one Night like a cursed Butterfly, and then we die, still fighting the Darkness with our last breath.
I had been chosen by this Ouna-Ma, this winter, and this is how it was meant to be. Razoreyes was already walking toward my tent, and I followed. The gazes of my men followed us too, but they couldn’t enter. She undressed and I marveled at the two magnificent snakes painted across her body. Their black heads on the left and right side of her shaved head, their red cloven tongues touching and hissing in her ears, the bodies of the snakes painted down on the back of her neck and to the sides of her spine, reaching her beautiful ass. Like the nine heads of Darhul, she wrapped her arms, her legs, and her henna snakes around me all night. Like the fiery scepter of Enaka, I went inside her and filled her loins with white-hot rivers of life. We wrestled ceaselessly, front and back, like two gods. One would dominate briefly and then the other, until we both lost ourselves together in the eternal end, a formless mass underneath the hides that covered us, as dark as lust and as shiny as sweat. I kissed her body a thousand times, she bit my flesh a thousand more. It was the one time she would be entirely mine, the sacred night of the winter full moon and the only moment when the Ouna-Ma could escape her vows and speak. Only to me.
My body had received nourishment and Truth. My mind searched for more.
I asked her, “The Legend says that the Archers were born from stardust?”
“That’s what it says.”
I remained silent. She understood.
“But who knows? If you fight bravely, it could say so about the Blades tomorrow.”
I didn’t much like her words, but she wouldn’t grace me with more hope.
“Tell me, how can I tell apart the children of Darhul from those of Enaka?” I asked.
“Foolish question, young Chief. You can always tell apart the people of our Tribe from the othertribers. From their color, their tongue, and their ways.”
“But I have the ninestar, the triangle of Darhul imprinted on my skin, and the pale-faced Sah-Ouna rules the entire Tribe even if she wasn’t born in it.”
She lowered her long head and crawled backward on her hands and knees, like an animal on all fours, wrinkled her brow, still looking at me as if she couldn’t believe what I had said. Her words were a threat but not an answer.
“Hold your tongue, strong man, because the prophecy listens, it is a haunted spirit searching for a body. Do not ignore it but do not challenge it either. Forget your ninestar destiny. Or else, if you challenge it, it will find skin and bones and come to life. Do not awaken the spirits of the North.”
That was not the answer I was looking for. The two lips I wanted to nibble again were spewing out nonsense. We had a few breaths left together before dawn would come again. For one more spring, summer, fall, and winter, she would not hold command over her own body. She had chosen me. Still, she was in a hurry to go, as if I had frightened her.
She lifted herself onto her knees and turned her back on me. I glanced for the last time at the two painted snakes on her back and then she put on her robe. She waited there silent
and distant, before the robin and the rooster called her away from her heart’s love.
I asked her one more question: “The Story of Birth, the Legend of Enaka that you sang tonight—”
“Yes? Haven’t you heard it before?” she said, reluctantly turning her gaze to me.
“Countless times. And it always says that the darkness is stronger than the light. It existed before the light. Enaka was born from the eye of Darhul…”
And that meant that in the end, the Light, Enaka, and the Tribe would be defeated. There was no need for me to say anything else.
Razoreyes did not think. She answered immediately. She knew. Her eyes, wide open, stared into nothing, their pupils giant black suns. Boundless was their magic. The otherworldly words escaped her lips of love.
“The Nothing always engulfs, precedes and follows. It existed before Something, and will after it. The Something always dies, even if it is born. It is an unequal battle that the Eternal Goddess fights for us. But have faith. The Nothing never dominates.”
“The Blades?”
As if she had guessed what I wanted to know, she continued.
“Blades, bows, horses—they do not go to battle alone. The Stories guide them. Believe. We will triumph. You will all sacrifice yourselves for Enaka’s victory, but you’ll rejoice and receive your reward beside her.”
“And what about me?”
“You…you, Da-Ren, are the blade of the Khun, the one who will rip first through the othertribers. Spare none of them. And when the Goddess calls you into her arms, accept your sacrifice as she did. Remember, she sacrificed her children for us. The prophecy says you will be First there, Da-Ren.” She said my name very slowly with her tongue inside my ear before her love faded abruptly. She had come alone, of her own will, to lie with me on the most sacred night of winter. “The Final Battle begins. That is what Khun-Malan sent me to tell you.”
XL.
Armor
Eighteenth winter. Chief of the First.
I hated armor. Metal plates or chainmail, armor always meant certain doom for those who wore it. It was death foretold.
“There, above the iron rings, below the beard, to the side, where your veins are still pumping. That’s where my arrow will sink.”
“A polished chainmail but it stops at your waist. I’ll have to thrust my iron into your groin.”
I suffocated each time I tried on the dark iron rings woven like impenetrable tunics. It slowed me down and weighed heavily on my joints as if the ghosts of the condemned pulled down my arms and begged for a quick death.
I hated the winter because it, too, was a kind of inexorable armor. It descended from the north and covered everything around me like a white linothorax. The rivers wore their own wintry armor, fat slabs of ice, and when they broke, rarely and with difficulty, they sounded like Darhul grinding the bones of our warriors between his teeth. The ground wore its own armor too, countless blue-white icy needlesheaths, one for each dead blade of grass.
And the men, it wasn’t only the dogskins but also the cold itself that swathed them tightly. It numbed and made arms and legs hard and unbending like their own skin had become a panoply of death. The winter winds punctured our bones and filled them with rust to the marrow, making them creak with every move. The cold slid inside the ears and made every command feel like an icy-hot needle piercing the ear hole. Every hope and song was cut in mid-breath upon bleeding gray lips. The armor of winter prevented them from reaching our heads.
The horses, unable to graze upon the burned grass, wore for armor their skeletons and their weakness, the armor of mercy. The weaker ones were left where they fell, only their legs visible in the snow, protruding upwards. The fish were lost beneath the frozen river, and the swans had disappeared. Hunting them was forbidden, and the last ones were taken to Malan’s tent.
The men wanted to scream for new raids, but their voices crashed against their crystal-frozen rotten teeth before even reaching the ears of the Reghen. The Truthsayers wore their gray hoods, their only armor for winter and summer.
He found me by the fire in my tent as I was taking off the unwanted armor of frost that was torturing my hands. With slow, careful words of winter, the Reghen spoke.
“Khun-Malan demands to see you in his tent tonight. A council will be held.”
I stepped reluctantly outside my tent’s scant warmth. The earth was sleeping under the white layers of fallen snow. The sun and the sky were hidden too, under white layers of clouds. More snow was coming. A valley of white emptiness above and below. Only in the middle, where gray men and brown-skinned animals toiled, a faint sign of life remained. As the lifeless sun descended on a bleak sunset, I took four Blades with me, to look important, and started out, covered in skins and fur hats.
“What is a council?” asked Sani, one of the four.
“Don’t know. My first one,” I answered. It was difficult and stupid to exhale many warm words in the frosty air.
I had never been to a council before, and nor had anyone else because Khun-Malan was the first to call for one. We arrived at the foot of the hill. At the top of it, the new wooden structure that we still called “the Khun’s tent” dominated, fearless of wind and cold. The Rods stopped my companions and forced them to give up their blades and dismount there, in the snow, far from a fire or tent.
I walked up the hill alone. The path to the Khun’s tent was marked by hundreds of poles to my left and right, painted a gleaming black against the white landscape. Iron sconces were mounted on the poles and most of them flickered weakly as I ascended the main path. To warm what? Nothing. The three spheres of the Sun, the Earth, and Selene outside Malan’s tent shined as the dew dripped from their curved surfaces. The Rods were keeping them warm. I looked back down at my men. I could recognize them from their hides and their hats, as if those were their only names. Their faces had been hidden for two moons now.
Thick felt covered the sides of Malan’s tent except for the three-level entrance with the heavy draping fabrics that stopped the freezing winds three times. The Rods to the left and right of every entrance looked even taller than the last time, well-fed and proud. I slowly strode down the aisle with the skulls. The ox skulls were my favorite. As stupid as the oxen were, their skulls looked wise.
There at the end, on the urn columns, they stood still, just as I remembered them—the two skulls, elongated like quivers, humanlike except for the horns and dog teeth.
“Bone, glue, horn,” I reminded myself. It was the ancient art of our bow Craftsmen. There are no monsters.
It is a lie. Don’t be afraid, Zeria. There are no monsters; you know that.
I breathed my escaping thoughts toward the smokehole to send them to the Forest. Her memory was the only armor for me, a shield to protect my hope—not my flesh. I would seek that memory every day and much more at nightfall.
It was warm inside Malan’s tent, as the heat of many scattered hearths emanated from every corner. The throne was in front of me, ahead of the skulls. Laid out were many sheepskins, rich and abundant, enough to warm three Packs. They were the armor that covered the dirt. To my right, there was a large circle of burning coals resting in a narrow trench. In the middle of the circle three Ouna-Mas, Sah-Ouna’s entourage, sat kneeling on the hides. They wore their short sleeved, torn black-ribbon, summer dresses. Razoreyes was there and turned to say something to the rest covering her mouth with a hand. She didn’t turn to look at me, but the other two did.
I approached them with slow steps, and some of their escaping whispering words made it to my ears.
“Evil.”
“North.”
The two Rods were quick to stop me and show me the way.
“Not here. The council is there,” one of them said, pointing to the opposite side of the tent.
I took a careful look at the glowing coals that surrounded the Ouna-Mas. The fires smelled like the Forest itself, blurring my mind. They were burning oak wood, not horse dung. I kicked the smoldering trunk
with my boot just to be sure. There were rules. Wood was for coal, what we used to feed the bloomeries which made the iron. The Blacksmiths had to burn wood to separate the iron from stone, as horse dung would not do. Wood was valuable, especially since the Forest was cursed. Wood was for the bows and the arrows, for the carts and the machines of the Craftsmen. Wood was not for warming men or naked Witches, or for cooking meat. Rules since forever, created by the Khuns and the Reghen.
The Rod tried to push me softly to the other side where the council had started.
“No need. I am going,” I said and walked to the small group of men.
“And the Chief of the First of the Blades arrives last,” Malan greeted me.
Everyone was sitting cross-legged, except for Malan, who was standing. He motioned for me to sit when he saw that I wasn’t doing it voluntarily. I sat and lifted my head to look at him. I was one of the two Chiefs of the Blades he had invited to the council. Druug, the Leader of the thousands of Archers, was there too, as well as Sah-Ouna, two Reghen, and a man I had never seen before. He had the brown ribbon around his arm, and I guessed he was a Tracker. All Leaders.
Most of them gave me only one quick glance. Druug’s eyes stayed a bit longer on my face. A great honor for you to be here, a fresh Chief ruling only thirty-three men.
The oldest of the Reghen continued as if the council had been going on for a while and I had interrupted.
“The men are hungry. For meat, for campaigns, for pillaging, and for young women.” He spoke loudly and sternly, addressing himself to Malan, and that woke me up immediately.
“We always start the campaigns in late spring with the Redflower Moon. And the loot comes in the fall. There is nothing we can do in this frost,” said the Leader of the Archers.
Drakon Omnibus Page 42
