“Maybe those two can tell what will go down tonight,” he said.
Behind him stood the silver-haired Ouna-Ma and Blue. His face was the nightmare painted of lizard green and blue scales; her face was as beautiful as a nightmare could be.
They brought in a pot of boiling water, and the Ouna-Ma threw a gray dust into it and stirred, before filling a cup.
“Drink,” said Blue.
I couldn’t move, not even to reach out my hand; the crazygrass had broken me already. He grabbed me by my hair and forced me to drink. Warm salty water. Not long passed until I vomited once and twice in front of them. I threw up all the crazygrass.
“Why?” I asked.
His voice came out hoarse, slow, and colorless like the groan of someone who rarely used it.
“The Second. The Fourth. You killed two of my brothers in the Forest, Da-Ren. No!”
For an instant, his fingers tightened around my neck, and I lost my breath. The Ouna-Ma grabbed his wrist, and he stopped.
“No, you are not the strongest, Da-Ren. I am. You will die tonight. Slowly, and by my hand. Everyone will witness it.”
“Did Malan send you?” I said.
“I am not fighting for Malan. Only for me. My Legend. You will not become a greater Legend. You will not die a Legend who killed two Ssons. I’ll cut you up into pieces in front of everyone without witchcraft and crazygrass. Like I did your woman.”
“You lie,” I whispered.
He stepped out of the tent and when he returned he was holding the gray urn.
“Tonight,” he said. “You die in front of everyone. Your ashes will join hers, and I’ll piss in your empty skull.”
The Sson motioned to the Ouna-Ma to follow him, but she spoke in his ear, and he then left. I was alone with her.
She came close to me and touched my arm with her fingers. My mind fell back to my first Ouna-Ma, to the crazygrass she’d brought, all the Ouna-Mas whom Malan ever sent, and the one time I had lain with the silver-haired in the deserts of Apelo.
“So what now? Are you to give me the crazygrass again? Is that your stupid game tonight?”
“Do you wish to live, Da-Ren? I can get you out of here. South,” she said.
“Who are you? Why? I don’t even know you.”
“You don’t. But I do, down to the last drop of your blood. You lived inside me.”
“It was only one night.”
“No, it was every night after that one. But tell me, do you want to live?”
“I must save them. Tell me, what happened, can you help me?”
“Are you? Really?” She took two steps back. “Are you asking me about that blue-eyed witch?”
“Do you know what happened to her?”
“She is dead. Mourn her. Forget her.”
“You are lying.”
“I didn’t see it, but so they all said. They never sent them to the battle, but to Sirol with us. She tried to escape on horseback along with a young Dasal. A few days ago. That Sson shot her down with an arrow as she was getting away. So they said. He brought her body to the Khun.”
“You’re lying,” I said. She shook her head. “The young one? How is she?”
“She? They said it was a boy.”
“Veker?”
“I don’t know what those names are,” she said, ending her words with a sigh.
“You’re lying,” I repeated.
She exerted her hand out of the short-sleeved robe. It was covered in a silver dust, and it shone in a bright almost translucent hue as she touched my cheek. Her nails were painted gold and beautiful; the silver bracelets jingled heavy around her wrist close to my ears. She touched her lips softly to mine, and despite the intoxicating scent, I pulled back.
“A waste! For both of us,” she said. “Farewell, my lover. Your seed will live forever.” She then turned her back to me.
“Wait! What did you say? What do you know? Aneria. Where is she?”
“I am sorry, Da-Ren,” were her last words. She spoke them in the tongue of the Crossers.
I am not sure why I decided to include this incident in my Story. I can’t even be certain whether all this happened or whether it was a hallucination of the crazygrass. It felt real, yet it never made any sense to me, and it still doesn’t. What did she want, why did she come with Blue, how did she speak the Crossers’ words? No Ouna-Ma ever spoke in the othertriber tongue. This I still haven’t answered. She was a mad woman; that was my best guess.
Dusk is spreading fast and cold as we walk to Wolfhowl. Hundreds more around us walk the same path heading toward the same gates. They all hold a red cloth; it is a night of mourning and sacrifice. I am surrounded by the bear-skinned Rods; I am hiding under a hood so that no one can see my face.
Still, as we get closer, a company of Archers guesses who I am.
“You were one of them with the white cloaks, at White Doe. Firstblade,” one shouts.
Someone throws a stone, another jumps over the guards and spits on me, but the Rods push them back. They struggle to keep me safe from the crowd, and we quickly enter the arena through a one-man-wide opening next to the main gate. It leads in the arena rather than up the stands. We are inside on the wet soil, awaiting. My legs are slow and numb, I vomited the crazygrass, but not all of it is gone. Some made it to the veins and my head. I am dizzy and weak as if I were drunk.
“Firstblade,” I hear a voice from the stands to my right.
I backstep to get closer to the stands. The man who keeps calling me “Firstblade” is a monster I don’t recognize. His face is covered in bandages once white, now red and black with caked blood. It looks like his right side is burnt badly, and so is his arm, up to the shoulder, and even his head. What skin is still visible there is scarred.
The Rods are close to me. My hands are still tied; I take small steps in his direction.
“Firstblade, it’s me.” I know the sound of his voice.
“Leke? Fuck no!”
He nods.
“You must get out of here, Firstblade.”
“Have you seen Zeria? Baagh?”
“Gone.”
“What do you mean ‘gone?’ Where?” I ask him.
The Rods don’t seem to bother with me speaking to him, the grand spectacle of the Ouna-Mas singing our grief and the ten thousand red veils under the torches has mesmerized them. One of my guards turns to shout to Leke, but as he sees his face, he shuts his mouth.
“I’ll get you out of here, Da-Ren,” says Leke.
“Try to escape. Too late for me,” I say.
The Rods push me away from Leke. We walk up to the center of the arena and then toward the dais where Malan and Sah-Ouna are seated. The two of them, next to each other. The Reghen demand silence and that silence finally draws my attention, it’s stronger than all the howling, and wakes me up.
The First Witch stands to speak, and the scattered Reghen, one hundred of them repeat her words throughout Wolfhowl:
“Tonight, Da-Ren will face the Sson in combat under the Sky of Enaka and pay for his crimes. And his crimes are beyond shame and unspeakable, yet I must repeat them. This man is a traitor. Four Ouna-Mas and five Reghen were slaughtered eight winters ago when he had ordained himself Firstblade of Sirol. He had threatened them before they died. And he carried out his threat.”
I wasn’t going to pay for the defeat of the Tribe. That was Malan’s burden. Sah-Ouna had finished him with her words right there, and every man of power Reghen, Rod or Chief could sense it.
Malan’s fate was sealed much later when tidings reached the Castlemonastery from the merchant ships sailing from the north. You all know by now—it is no secret—even a holy celebration was held in Thalassopolis. The Khun was poisoned on his wedding night after the Tribe’s escape to the steppe. By his othertriber wife they said, but what do they know. That’s what the Witches and the Reghen told everyone.
But we children of the Sieve, the Uncarved, know better. Always knew. The Goddess is invincible, and her
Witch never forgets. One must never defy her prophecies, never abandon the path of faith.
You never asked me about that, Eusebius. You never asked why I didn’t care to return and take my revenge on Malan, to finally defeat him. Because our Khun, the first King of our Tribe is long dead. The news came even before we started writing my Story, on my first year in Hieros. Darhul swallowed him in nine pieces.
This is the fate of all who crave to be the brightest stars in her Sky. The Uncarved drink poison. Love turns to dust, blue turns to gray, fire to ashes. The Goddess sees all our crimes from above, she never forgets, and she can never be defeated.
The Rods cut the ropes, and I stand all alone now in the arena as they step away from me. Another Final Battle, my own, amidst a sea of myriad red veils.
Blue and Skullface descend the steps and jump in the arena. Sah-Ouna joins them through the Khun’s entrance. She carries a bow and quiver, bringing the death of Elbia back to my mind. There are about twenty paces away from me. Seven of the Rods follow them, carrying seven maulers that bark incessantly, the drool falling from their strong jaws. I can’t hear them barking; the crowd is too loud to hear anything.
Others come behind me, seven more Rods, and they pull a cage with seven wolf puppies. Puppies. A pack of seven wolf cubs. “They’re to fight the maulers by your side,” says the Rod. The maulers are five times bigger. Blue and Skullface walk toward me. Skullface unsheathes his blades, the long and the short and leaves them in the dirt close to me. Blue unsheathes his own and Skullface steps back toward the maulers.
Blue charges forward and brings his blades down on me with rage, not even caring to protect himself. I am weak, and I step back as fast as I can to avoid him, and when he is too close, I block his blows. I try to keep the distance and parry his long blade, but he manages to tear through my upper arm, and then above my knee with his short. The dogskins I wear are some protection, but they are no armor. He is half a head taller than me, strong and fast, painted like a scaled monster across his upper body. The skin around his eyes is painted yellow, Only a loincloth around his waist.
I backstep quickly to open the distance between us and then I charge forward full speed. I throw my long blade to him like a spear, the short like a dagger, I am without weapons but as he tries to dodge them I am on him, and I wrestle him to the ground.
“Killed her, killed her,” he screams in my ear, then tries to bite me.
I feel his breath and his teeth touching my skin, and the burning bleeding wounds and the pain make me mad, his words fill my rage, and I smash his head on the ground.
“You die, now,” I scream.
I wrestle him out of his blades, but he punches me in the face. He headbutts me, and I lose my breath. I’m crawling. He stands above me and lets out a howl of victory as he wraps his hands around my neck to strangle me, I find a short blade, his blade, in the dust and I bring it down to his foot, twisting it there and he screams in pain. I get up, I kick him in the ribs, and he reels backward. Blue doesn’t die so easily. He’s a beast hungry for revenge. He screams and charges forward, we wrestle, and he knees me hard on the ribs, and then he punches me again down to the ground.
He runs and grabs his long blade. I keep crawling back. He thinks I’m finished. He’s three feet from me. He hasn’t realized. I am on my knees, but I hold the blade, hiding it behind me. As he lifts his arm to bring down the blow, I bring it forward and with one move I push it in his belly and twist it deep. I roll to my left to escape his blow, he pulls my blade out of his guts, but he is bleeding badly. I fall on him and punch him hard, twice, three times I punch him, blood and guts between us, and then I get hold of the blade as he is losing strength. I crush it down his teeth, cheek and mouth. I step away.
The Blue Lord of Varazam is drowning in his own blood as it blackens the soil of Wolfhowl.
Revenge is mine.
“Zeria. Did you?”
He tries to laugh at my face, to mock me in his death, yet the blood out his mouth doesn’t let him utter a word. He dies spitting blood. I’ll never learn.
The crowd is still cheering and howling, still holding but not waving anymore their red cloths, standing up. What a spectacle, the last one to ever take place in Wolfhowl! A worthy ending. For the torturer of Varazam, for Zeria. For the children of Varazam. The children. I killed the third Sson of Sah-Ouna. Only one remains.
I am victorious in the Wolfhowl. The Truth of the Tribe says that I am free.
Sah-Ouna shouts out so that everyone at the Wolfhowl can hear.
“The Truths are to be obeyed.”
Sah-Ouna fears me, I see it now. There’s no point in her trying anymore, Da-Ren will never fall. She’d rather save her last Sson, protect him like Enaka protected her seventh Sun in the Story of Birth.
“He is a ninestar. He will bring darkness and blood to the Tribe. Exile him before his curse spreads further.”
The Witch believes her prophecies. Sah-Ouna speaks, dominating even in her defeat.
Skullface is foaming at the mouth with rage, while Malan is cursing both her and me, drunk and trying to stand up on one wooden leg.
But I am free. The First Witch can’t defy her own prophecies. If she does, they mean nothing, she defies her own power. This is her night. She comes close to me; she offers me the gray urn with the ashes. The crazygrass, she still has control on me, I can’t kill her, not even lift my arm. I take the urn, and step back.
“Give him horses,” she shouts. “Get him out of here.”
The Rods part as I exit Wolfhowl all alone and no one dares to touch me. Leke and Lebas jump from the stands and run behind me.
“Horses,” shouts Leke, to the Rods guarding the door. “You heard the Witch.”
We gallop out of Sirol, hiding under our hoods and bandages, for we must not be seen by anyone. The sounds of the arena die slowly as we increase our distance. The whole camp is deserted but I don’t know where to search. I look around.
“We must go. Now!” shouts Leke.
And then, as we turn to follow a smaller path, I see her, only a few hundred paces out of Wolfhowl. Women and children together, they toil in the mud. I point toward her, Leke holds me by the arm to stop me. The blue dress with the red ornaments, most of it brown from the dirt.
“It can’t be!” he says.
There is no other like it, in all of Sirol, nowhere north of the Blackvein. She has her back turned on me, and her head is hooded. I gallop toward her; my heart is ready to burst as I shout her name.
“Zeria! Zeria!”
She turns and faces me. Her face carved by age hard as old pine bark, the eyelids baggy and tired, the eyes gray-white like the fog. Rotting teeth, most of her hair fallen out. Greentooth, the old crone who raised me is wearing Zeria’s dress. Or her ghost, still haunting me after twenty winters. She grins; her grin ends with a vile hiss. There is a pile of corpses next to the old women. Another pile of clothes, sandals, boots, and weapons on the other side.
I stare for two more breaths. My shock chokes me, and the grief steals my breath. I am frozen, and Leke pulls the reins and swerves my horse away from her.
“Let’s go Da-Ren. We must go, before they change their minds,” he says.
“We can’t. I must find her.”
“Da-Ren, listen to me. Lebas was there. He saw it all, when that blue-painted Sson killed her. An arrow,” says Leke.
“I saw Zeria fall, Da-Ren. She is dead,” mumbles Lebas.
“You’re lying.”
“Why would he lie? He was even at her pyre, two nights ago. They filled the Wolfhowl every night, with sacrifices and pyres. Sah-Ouna was there too. They killed her, but tonight you got your revenge, Firstblade. That’s all we can ask for in this life. You did. Noki did. You’re the fortunate ones.”
“Was she alone?”
“No, there was that Dasal boy with her. He tried to rescue her.”
He is not lying. No one was lying.
“Lebas, give me the urn,” I whisper. I can
’t escape the truth anymore. I embrace the urn and press my lips to its cold surface. We gallop away, tears burning down my face, and the night wind turns them to ice and salt.
We ride for the harbor where Blackvein meets the sea. On our way there, I unearth the gold we had hidden long ago with Baagh. It is all there, Baagh had not taken any of it.
I offer half of it to Leke.
“Where I go, I need no gold,” he says.
“From here on, I go alone,” I say to him.
It is not even an order. He is in no condition to travel the seas and sail the Thousand Islands.
“You know me. I hate the black waters. Goodbye, my friend, the one who never falls,” he says.
“That was my curse,” I said.
“I hope one day you lift it and find a worthy death,” he says.
“Where will you go?” I ask.
“Not back to the steppe, not with them. I’ll hide at the mountain huts. Or in the White Doe. Seemed like a good place to die,” he says.
“Goodbye, my friend, the one who never betrayed me.” I embrace him for the last time.
I climb up on the boat. It is a fast and swift one, and its captain is a merchant, and a greedy one. I bought him out, and I hope he proves a man of honor. I hope he won’t betray me; I won’t sleep much until we make it to Hieros.
He keeps true to his word. The Poppy Moon is long gone, and he promises to take me to Hieros before the end of the North Wind Moon, as the sailors call it. Those moons change name in every tribe, yet they are as deadly. The north winds are gentle but strong enough to bring us to our harbor in twenty days. We see the one thousand and thirty-eight steps that lead up to the Castlemonastery, and I jump on the shore even before he ties the boat.
I am here, Baagh.
“I am here to redeem the lives of my wife and daughter.”
“I am Da-Ren, the First Blade of the Devil, and with those last words, same as the first, I complete my Story. Elders and monks, I thank you for your patience, and I ask for your help, as I am ready to offer my help to you tomorrow.”
“The words, Da-Ren,” says Baagh. “You promised.”
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