Drakon Book II: Uncarved

by C. A. Caskabel

  “Shoot! Or by Enaka, I’ll carve each one of you tonight!” Chaka shouted to all of us.

  Someone to the right of me—I didn’t see who but could guess—let the first arrow go. Others followed. And then all. Many times. When Chaka raised his hand we stopped.

  “I didn’t aim at him,” said Akrani next to me.

  “Neither did I,” said Gunna.

  No one aimed at Redin. At least no one admitted to that. Everyone aimed high at the Goddess’s embrace.

  “Did you shoot from the hunter’s quiver?” I asked Malan. One of the hooked-shoulder head arrows was still on his hand.

  Everyone turned to look at Malan.

  “I don’t remember,” said Malan, shrugging his shoulders indifferently.

  “Those arrows are man killers,” I said.

  “Let’s go see yours. See what those are,” said Malan.

  We walked to the stream and pulled Redin out of the crimson water. I had never in my life seen a body pierced so many times. Not even in the bloody campaigns afterward did I see one. For the son of the Leader of the Archers, he was properly dressed for death, the starling half feathers on the arrow tails a grim golden-green adornment.

  We had to get our arrows back. Mine had a brown line, the color of her hair, painted on the shaft before the feather fletches to stand out from the others. I found one of my reeds three fingers above his navel. I took that one out with one pull. Malan’s arrow was next to mine. I hadn’t aimed high enough; I didn’t shoot too many. The other children had a hard time, especially those who had struck the feet and head. If we didn’t take out all those reeds, he would flare up in the funeral pyre, even if he wasn’t laid on wood.

  “Are you scared, Da-Ren?” asked Malan.

  No one admitted to being scared or startled.

  “Sad day, but it was long coming,” said Bera who had joined us by the stream. “You’re no longer the greenhorn of the Sieve.” He knelt and we followed his example. “A prayer for the first Uncarved,” he said. “Death became your brother today. This is your first kill. Bury any guilt you have. Your arrows were aching for this. They danced alive for the first time. On their virgin killing.”

  This didn’t sound like a prayer to me. More like a triumphal celebration of death. No child talked proudly the rest of the day about what had happened. No one could claim or fear that he killed Redin. No one knew who the fateful arrow belonged to. The first, the second, the one that ripped through the heart.

  When darkness fell, the Reghen gathered all twelve of us around the fire with the silent Ouna-Ma. This one was younger and darker, and her head was shaved clean.

  The fire had just started to flare, and my breath was still the only thing that warmed my hands. There was a bit more space for everyone around the warmth from that night on. I had taken a firm hold of my short blade, and with its tip, I was carving the wet dirt. I wondered if it was my arrow that had found Redin first. I wasn’t the first one to shoot.

  I stared, bewitched, at the eyes and lips of the Ouna-Ma, and a flame grew between my legs. The Reghen began another Story. We heard many of them at the camp of the Uncarved.

  The Legend of the First Leader, Khun-Nan

  The Fifth Season of the World: Part Two

  Know this, you Uncarved Owls of the Tribe.

  When the Fourth Season, that of the Annihilation, ended and the Fifth, that of the Leaders, began, a fierce warlord, but not yet Leader of the entire Tribe, was Khun-Nan. He had fathered three daughters and three sons, but they had all died during the march to the West. Except for one girl, the one who had been given since birth the name Ouna-Ma. She was the First Ouna-Ma the Blind, the one who could see beyond this world. When, during the night, she would look out, eyeless, at the eternal darkness and scream, everyone’s heart froze with fear. Because they knew it was the Voice of Enaka she let out, the Voice that should not be heard by mortal men.

  But in the solace of her darkness, the Ouna-Ma had found the Sight and could even look into the eye of the Demon Darhul. That is how, they say, she lost her sight as a small child. She had slipped one night out of her tent and gone down to the shore of the Black Sea, and there she had spotted, first and alone, Darhul himself rising from the night’s waves. Enaka descended, riding on her chariot, pulled by Pelor, her brave horse, and sent lightning bolts to save Ouna-Ma from the jaws of the Demon. The lightning took the child’s eyes. But her life was spared. From that day on, she could see only Enaka and Darhul, the otherworlds, and nothing else.

  At her sixteenth winter, on the first full moon of spring, Ouna-Ma stopped talking. She even stopped screaming, and she silently kept pointing north. For one whole moon, Khun-Nan tried to persuade the Tribe to follow the Ouna-Ma’s prophecy and head north, but the other warlords mocked him. The Tribe then was a lawless horde, and each warlord challenged the future Khun.

  On the second full moon of spring, Ouna-Ma’s screams were heard again after a long while from Khun-Nan’s tent. No one seemed to worry until a brutal northerly chill descended fast and embraced everyone that night. The men looked to the sky, and they saw a black shadow starting to slowly hide a full Selene. At once, they started crying and screaming, tearing the flesh from their cheeks in despair, because they knew. This had been long foretold to be the second sign of the Annihilation.

  “Ravenfeather, the vilest of Darhul’s nine heads, flew out of the sea and swallowed Selene whole.” That was what they said about that fateful night. Selene, the heart of Enaka, was in the belly of the Beast, and they could still see her bleeding and shining ever so faintly.

  Many warlords fell to their knees and begged Ouna-Ma to bring back Selene and ask forgiveness for everyone from Enaka.

  “Follow my father,” she said, the first time she spoke men’s words again. And only when they swore to do that much, before dawn, Selene lost her red color, and a thin, golden moon peel appeared. Slowly, the round heart of the Goddess burst out of the belly of Darhul, glorious and full again. And that was how Selene stayed for the remainder of the night, and never again did the Ravenfeather dare swallow her in the nights to come.

  “So will Selene disappear and return, just as your faith in the Goddess,” said the Ouna-Ma.

  Before dawn, the men separated into two camps. Most wanted to follow Khun-Nan and Ouna-Ma, but a few remained faithless. Khun-Nan then raised his bow and told his supporters that whoever would follow him should follow his aim. Or they would fall.

  With the first arrow, he aimed to the north, and at least forty arrows from brave warriors cut through the sky in the same direction.

  With the second arrow, he aimed at his most ardent adversary, and forty more arrows followed to rip the chests of anyone who still stood in opposition.

  And with the third arrow, Khun-Nan aimed at his own woman, the wretch who had borne his six children, the five who had died and Ouna-Ma.

  After a while, the women, more than four times the fingers of two hands, fell dead from the arrows of their warrior mates.

  With that bow, Khun-Nan ended forever the customs of family, that abomination of same man and woman under the same hut forever, from the Tribe.

  “From this day forth, every warrior can mount any unfilled woman he desires. Except for Ouna-Ma, who will lie naked with whomever she chooses,” said the First Leader of the Tribe.

  The few men of the Tribe swore never again to raise children as their own, nor ever to learn which ones were theirs. They were to leave all the newborn together to be raised by the women of the Tribe. All swore that none would ever again live with a woman in a tent as a family and all would be warriors in Packs. They swore that any woman one brought, slave or of the Tribe, would also belong to the others.

  Those who did not obey were massacred, in the last family ritual of the Tribe, and the many marched for the North, with Khun-Nan, on the route toward salvation and glory.

  As long as the Tribe obeyed the First Ouna-Ma, the golden disc of Selene never bled again and was never swallowed again by a
ny demon in a cloudless sky. The One Leader was Khun-Nan.

  Our Father is a Legend,

  Our Son is every Archer,

  Our only Mother is Enaka,

  Our one Daughter is Revenge.

  This is the Tribe.

  Thus declared the Ouna-Mas, the Voices of the Unending Sky.

  The Reghen stopped and covered himself beneath his gray hood. The ashes of Redin, the first Uncarved we had lost, did not hear this Story. They had already risen to the Unending Sky. The Sky where we had aimed our arrows as Chaka had ordered. But Redin’s father, Druug, would understand. He would have shot the first arrow.

  XIX.

  Now I Am Ready

  Island of the Holy Monastery, Thirty-third Year.

  According to the Monk Eusebius.

  It took Baagh forty long days to persuade the First Elder and the rest of the monks to remove Da-Ren’s chains.

  It was just three and ten days after the barbarian’s arrival when Baagh requested to speak during the morning meal in the refectory. The monks did not object. It was the only suitable communal congregation for such conversations—a brief recess from prayer. He stood so he could be seen by all to the left and the right of the long cedar table and said, “It will be a pious act to free this man of his chains and record his story.”

  The monks stopped moving their spoons and looked up at Baagh. They had heard all stories of Heaven and Hell, God and Devil, the eternal truths. The story of a sword-bearing barbarian was not of any interest to them. They preferred that the barbarian remain chained. It is rare to find a story that deeply stings the minds and hearts of the wise worshippers of the Faith. But as fate had it, that was the kind of story I ended up writing.

  “A few days ago, you ordered for him to be chained,” said the First Elder.

  “He has no evil intention.”

  “I cannot endanger everyone based on your words, especially if they change so often.”

  “On the contrary, that is exactly what you must do, old and wise comrade. That is why a trireme of the Imperial fleet brought me to your island, and that is what the gold-seal edict commands,” Baagh replied.

  “Did you know all along that the barbarian would come here?” asked the First Elder.

  “I expected it. I wasn’t sure.”

  The wooden shutters of the big hall were banging fast and angry against the wall to announce a sudden summer storm that was approaching. The First Elder looked at me silently, and I ran to shut them.

  Baagh and the First Elder were about the same age. Baagh was probably older, but he didn’t have the short snow-white hair or the First Elder’s soft hands. Baagh’s silvery-gray hair fell back and sometimes stood on the air in separate clumps. Looking at his hands, you might guess that he had been a warrior or a farmer.

  Baagh continued with a calm and patient tone of voice, certain that his wish would prevail in the end.

  “The Emperor and his generals will want to read this man’s story. Protospathos, the First Eunuch himself, asked it of me. He has met this man.”

  “The First Eunuch of the Palace met this barbarian?” interrupted the First Elder.

  “Yes…and he too believes, as I do, that his story is of vital strategic and military importance. Especially if it is detailed. A matter of life and death. Thousands of lives of the faithful will be saved. Believe me; they will be indebted for every written word.”

  “I thought the only thing that mattered to you was to save this barbarian’s soul,” said the First Elder.

  “If that is God’s will, so much the better. But the important thing is to save other lives. Of the faithful. The many.”

  “We are ascetics, neither warriors nor eunuch advisors of the palace, Evagus.”

  “But, just as our Emperor, we too serve the One God. We have a sacred duty.”

  “Won’t he leave to go to find his wife and daughter if you free him?”

  “No, elders, he knows that his only hope for salvation is to do as I say.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “Yes. And you will be too when you read his story. There is nowhere left for him to go.”

  “My heart fears for the innocent,” the First Elder said, after moments of silence. “Here is what I will agree to do: We will keep him chained for one more month, and we will pray for him. We may release him after the celebration of Pentecost, the birthdate of our faith. All of us should pray till then for the fire of the cloven tongues of the Holy Spirit to enlighten us before we make our final decision. The clouds of this man’s sins and my fears obscure my judgment. If God wants him to live till then and you are still sure, then I might allow it,” said the First Elder.

  He continued the conversation with Baagh in a low whisper as they left the refectory, away from all other ears.

  It was the beginning of the honeyed season of summer when we freed him, exactly forty days after he first set foot on the island. Da-Ren’s legs were weak after being chained for so long. For the first few days, he was unable to walk unassisted, so I had to help him climb the steps. The pain in my shoulders every night felt as if they had been split in two, and I could find no comfort even in sleep.

  It took him weeks before he resembled the man who had charged up the thirty-eight and thousand steps like a demon wind that first day. Baagh ordered me to accompany Da-Ren on his walks, and we went out of the monastery together, always in the late evening before hesperia, at the most graceful moment of the sky. We would exit from the villagers’ entrance of the castle wall and walk on the footpaths that led away from the monastery to the north and west.

  The worried villagers stole glances. They weren’t looking at me. None of them had ever seen anyone like Da-Ren before, his face and body chiseled like a living statue of the barbarians of the North. He was a young man, older than I but hardly over the age of thirty.

  “Was Da-Ren handsome?” I asked myself many times.

  How could I, man and monk, appraise male beauty?

  As terror I came to know him; in terror I lived with him from the first day. But the women of the village, young or old, married or widowed, innocent or wicked, would have many tales to tell in the years to come.

  “This dark two-legged beast came one night in my sleep and forced me on all fours. He buried his fiery sword in my belly.” That is what the farmer’s daughter, five and ten years old, said when she bore, unwedded, a boy child. The baby had one brown eye and one green. The priest who heard her confession of the barbarian’s vicious acts absolved her of all sin. The priest also had a green eye. The other had been taken out by a pirate’s dirk when he was a boy. Both of her father’s eyes were brown. The peasants and the priest asked for Da-Ren to be put to death by the monks, but Baagh rejected their plea.

  “The infidel comes in through my window every starless night. In the unholy darkness, he grabbed my head with his hand and made me lick the gates of Hell. I lost my mind after that and can’t remember any more,” the miller’s widow said when she was unexpectedly found with a seed growing in her belly.

  Even the married women had some stories to tell, but they were less eager to repeat them. He was as handsome as unspeakable sin, they all wanted to whisper, no matter what words they used. Quite a few monks believed most of the stories in the beginning and commanded me to find him some kind of work away from the villagers’ settlement.

  “He has to labor for the common good. That is a mandate. He must be of service to the monastery. Solitary work,” the First Elder told me.

  I took him around to show him the various jobs he could do. He could weave baskets of the kind we traded with merchant sailors or help with the crops and the olive trees. I didn’t dare think of the food preparation or laundry. But when I urged him to begin such work, he refused, bringing his eyebrows together in bewilderment.

  “I can’t labor in such tasks,” he told me and showed me a scar on his left arm as if that was supposed to explain something to me. I had not heard his story yet and didn’t know if he was a
warlord or just lazy.

  “They won’t let you stay at the monastery if you don’t work,” I told him.

  My anxiety ended a few days later when we had to carry rocks to rebuild the church. Men were laboring in heat to carry the rocks from the eastern cliff to the cove and from there up the thirty-eight and a thousand steps. Work for the devil.

  “I can do that,” he said pointing at the man who was carrying a basket on his back filled with rocks. When Da-Ren began to work, faster than anyone else, all the monks and men from the village rejoiced, even though the women’s sordid stories continued unabated. He carried the rough stones that we needed for building and anything else that was heavy up to the Castlemonastery. When there was work, he did the work of twenty monks, but most days he didn’t have anything to do, so it was a blessing when we began the morning scribing of his story.

  For months, I read him tales and waited for the day when he would begin to recite his. All of our meetings took place in his unsanctified quarters, not in the monks’ building. Guests did not stay in the two-story building with us but in cells attached to the walls, like sand-colored wasp hives. Their few windows had the most beautiful view as if one were sailing eternally on the sea. They also suffered the worst cold in winter and scorching heat in summer.

  From these cells, visitors could gaze at similar barren islands with steep cliffs which rose in the middle of the blue-black waters. This was the only picture of the rest of the world. Spring is a God’s gift in my land. Even those barren islands blossom like carefree painted pictures of Paradise then. But they are nothing more than gray stone lands of exile in winter. Not even the rats survive.

  “The visitors are not members of the commune. They only have their one foot in. That is why they stay in the cells along the walls that border the monastery,” said the First Elder, explaining the symbolism of this practice. It would have been more virtuous of him to simply tell me that he was afraid of the thieves who came supposedly for worship and pilgrimage.