“Do you want to rule over all of them, Da-Ren? Or just beat Malan?”
“What’s the difference?”
“There is a huge difference!”
“Yes, I want to rule over all of them.”
“Yes?”
“Yes, Chaka.”
“And do what, my Khun? Where will you lead us? Do you know what’s out there?”
My stare followed his hand as it made a full circle over the purple darkness beyond the river to the south, the black darkness in the east, the hazy nothing to the north, the bronze sunset over the Forest.
“Everyone is coming at us, Da-Ren.”
“Who?”
“Everyone. And from everywhere. The Final Battle. Sah-Ouna said so.”
“You believe that?” I asked.
My horse snorted in fear as if it had smelled a jackal.
“Can’t you see? This world is ending. When I was young like you, everything was so much simpler. We did not have siege machines or all-powerful enemies. We had weaker bows. You wouldn’t even hit five water pumpkins with them today. Now we want gold to trade with; we need to find craftsmen from other tribes to build the machines, to trade wheat, barley, and flax for clothes from the South. Everything has become gold, machines, craftsmen. This is another world. There is no bravery anymore. Three thousand arrows leave our bows and annihilate everyone within a four-hundred-foot distance. Only machines. The world runs like a mad bull to fall off the cliff.”
I had heard about the gold but didn’t know what it was good for.
“That was always the Story of our Tribe,” I said.
“No, there is not enough for all of us anymore. We are going to eat each other alive. Our enemies are descending, the Trackers have seen them,” he mumbled to himself.
“We will find meat and horse on the way to the West.”
“We will find shit and death! Who will lead all of them to the West? Who can cross the Forest? You? Are you the One of Enaka who will ride First among all in the Final Battle? Or just a common mortal? Just like the rest of us? Or…or a cursed ninestar?”
My eyes had filled with tears in the night—from rage if it had to be from something.
“You gave me the red ribbon of the First Uncarved, Chaka.” It was the only thing I said with the voice of a little child.
“And I would give it to you again. Because I have known you for five winters. But those down there? Most of them—”
“What?”
“If they see the mark of the ninestar before the battle, they will run scared like panicked sheep. They have feather and grass for brains. They are stupid. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I said with my head down.
“No, you don’t. That is the one curse of the Uncarved. You grew up only with the best for five springs since the Sieve, and you don’t know. The ones down there are in pain. They are hungry. They don’t have many nights. They will not give you five winters to get to know you. They will see your mark, and they will know.”
“It’s not like that.”
“It’s exactly like that! That is why we have marks, banners, sevenstars and ninestars and longskull Witches—so the many and desperate don’t lose time thinking.”
“What can I do?”
“Nothing. You can’t. I seek only One. Not the best or the bravest. I seek the one they’ll fear. The one they will believe in,” he said as he pointed down the hill.
My mare lifted her head; she had smelled something. The moonlight shimmered on the silver-gray back of a jackal crouching ten paces away. Two small shiny white holes, his eyes, were watching us.
How right he was.
XXVI.
The Calling
Eighteenth summer. Uncarved—Wolf.
It was the calling of summer. The hot easterly wind blew softly and blended with the chamomile and the fragrant yellow-white mums. The mosquitoes fell on us like a raging storm and Sirol filled with bloated corpses that rotted faster than we could burn them. They gave off a sickly-sweet scent from their blackened, rotten livers. In the summertime, I always confused those two scents, of chamomile and corpses, because they became one very fast.
That was when her calling came as well.
“Sah-Ouna summons you in her tent,” the Reghen told me on the first day of the third moon of summer. The moment I had been waiting for had come, my only chance to make amends for being born on a cursed day. I wore only a white linen tunic above my trousers. I went to strap my blades and quiver around me, but Chaka didn’t let me.
“You don’t go to the First with iron.”
Alone, naked of weapons, I rode to meet my destiny.
“Cover your face with this veil,” Rouba advised me.
It was a rare gossamer cloth, made by the othertribers of the south or the east, but certainly not from anyone in Sirol. Suitable for women. And for mosquitoes. I took it.
I followed the central path of Sirol, that of the packhorses and the supply carts. I crossed half the camp, arriving at the tents of Khun-Taa, and in the distance, I saw and passed the Reghen’s tents. Khun-Taa’s guards, the Rods, stopped me soon after that, at the entrance of the settlement of the Ouna-Mas, close to the Blackvein.
“Get off your horse, Uncarved,” said one of them.
I was nameless to them. I just had a title that tomorrow could mean everything or nothing.
Square tents—some with black and others with red painted stripes—were in front of me. The settlement of the Ouna-Mas did not have the traffic and noise of the rest of Sirol. It was a camp of shadows, fire, and smoke, of skinny cats and eagle owls that mostly stayed asleep until dusk. In the middle of the day it looked deserted.
Few Redveils walked around the tents; none of them alone. Their dresses were long but airy with a tied cord defining their slender waist. Below the waist the fabric was slit many times vertically, and the dress was reduced to black dancing snake ribbons. The skin of their legs was visible in their summer step. Their sleeves were short, above the elbow, to show the painted red designs on their arms. This was their summer garb that made the blood rise hot in a warrior’s head. Unlike the Reghen, the Ouna-Mas were unique in ways that were unknown to us. One had to look up close at the henna designs and to the different shapes of the half-shaved heads to see that they were all different from each other.
The Rods led me outside of a tent that was twice as big as the others, with wolfskins hanging from tall poles to the left and right of its entrance. That was all I had a chance to see. Their Chief tied a cloth around my eyes.
“Sah-Ouna is not ready for you. You will wait here,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Listen to me. Do not take that cloth off. Whatever happens, whatever you hear.”
I didn’t answer. He pushed me to my knees. The dark cloth was tied tightly behind my head, and light turned to utter darkness. My arms just hung down, my hands empty.
“Sah-Ouna will come at dusk. But if you take off the cloth, even for one breath, I will throw you out of here, and you’ll never see her,” the Rod said.
I didn’t hear his voice again. Silence fell for a few moments until I heard growling next to me and then that familiar and panting sound from the Sieve. My hands were not tied, so I could raise them to feel around. But I didn’t. The mauler licked my arm, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, frozen in the heavy heat. His piss, burning hot, flooded the dirt in front of my knees. Its smell brought back to my mind the Greentooth of my youth, the pails that she used to load me with. I held my breath and waited for him to stop. He left as he came, but I could still hear him. I didn’t open my eyes. The blindfold was drinking the sweat of my brow, the heat was scorching my skin, and the smell was deep in my nostrils.
It was much later that I heard the voices of the Ouna-Mas, rising crystalline and lustful in front of me. I couldn’t see their faces. I had heard this song many times. It was the easiest, the simplest, and the strangest at the same time. It spoke of brothers and dreams. They hit som
e long wooden tubes that made a rippling sound, the kettle drums came in strong, and the cymbals broke the rhythm from time to time. In the beginning, the Ouna-Mas were silent, and only the sounds could be heard. Then the words started coming out.
One word for Selene.
One for the wolf.
One for the horse.
For the Ouna-Ma.
One for the Sun.
One for the bow.
Their voices stretched each word for a long time, and with eyes closed I envisioned the Witches dancing, each word of theirs becoming a serpentine ribbon from their dresses and wrapping around me. In the middle of the song, their voices became a plea, a prayer, and then they started again from the beginning. I could feel them closer every time. Their words were now licking me everywhere.
An Ouna-Ma came so close that I could smell her skin. I didn’t see her, but her whisper burned next to my head. Her mouth was right there, and her lips brushed against my ear.
“Da-Ren. Crystal-cold water,” she said, putting a cup to my mouth. I was melting like a candle in the fire. I drank it as a newborn life.
I had come to their camp in midmorning to see Sah-Ouna. I remembered that, but I didn’t know why anymore. To ask for what? What would my first words be?
Their song began yet again, the prayer more melodious than before.
Another Ouna-Ma approached. Her voice was different. Burning hotter than the first.
“Da-Ren. Ninestar fire,” she whispered.
I felt her breath traveling over my neck, and it sent shudders down my spine as she put her tongue in my ear. I tried to raise my hands to touch her, to feel her, but she had already left. Another hand, a woman’s, cool to the touch, grabbed mine above the wrist. “Don’t, Da-Ren! Don’t open your eyes; obey Sah-Ouna.” A second hand touched me. And a third. They didn’t hurt me or pull me; they just gently caressed my skin. Countless hands were all over my body. It was late afternoon by now—I could feel it in the sun that didn’t burn anymore. But still, I trembled as if a freezing wind had embraced me. As unexpectedly as they had come, the hands disappeared. I wanted to find them again, but I didn’t open my eyes.
“Close your eyes. Or else you will lose them forever.”
I heard a low and deep voice behind me, and I guessed it was Sah-Ouna. Her words were warm, not threatening. I kept my eyes closed against my will. The words of the Witches’ song began again rhythmically, now far from me. Two strong men’s hands raised me and dragged me until we entered through hides in a space where the heat was even stronger.
“Now you can open your eyes,” said the Rod.
My eyes stung from tears of weariness and the smoking fire. I was in her tent. Weak torch flames lit the space, and Sah-Ouna sat across from me, sitting on her knees on a hide. Deep inside the tent I saw two huge hooded creatures. They were dressed like Ouna-Mas, but they were tall and broad-shouldered, bigger than I even. They stood completely motionless; I didn’t know if I was looking at carved, painted statues or monstrous Witches. Their arms were crossed, and I couldn’t see their faces under the hoods. As the light danced on their bodies I thought I saw blue ornaments on their strong forearms but I didn’t trust my eyes.
“Why are you here, Da-Ren?” asked the Witch.
“What are they?” I pointed at the creatures.
“A dream. A nightmare. Are you afraid? Why are you here, Da-Ren?”
Why should she have the most beautiful voice? She didn’t look like an old woman to me anymore. When I was a twelve-wintered I remembered her as a vile, scrawny bitch. But now I saw a figure slender as a fallow deer, and her eyes shone with the black fire of the forest animal. Her skin was unwrinkled, and though I remembered it pale, it was now dark. I was starving. She did not have the long head of the Ouna-Mas. Neither veil nor hair bun could hide that. I wanted to touch her, to feel the power emanating from the Goddess herself. For a moment, I thought the hooded creatures moved under the half-light and were looking at me.
I hadn’t answered her.
“Why are you here?” she asked me again.
“You called for me,” I told her.
“Did you open your eyes out there?”
“No.”
“Everyone does. When they touch.”
“I speak the truth; I didn’t open them.”
She nailed me with her stare, trying to suck out the lie from inside me. But she couldn’t find it.
“You speak the truth,” she said.
I hadn’t opened them, not even for one breath.
“I want to become—” I went to say.
“You know what you want to become?”
“Yes.”
“But you don’t know what you are. Why didn’t you open your eyes? Maybe a demon’s daughter stole them from you, Da-Ren?”
“No.”
“In the Forest. Blue?”
How could she know? Even I had forgotten the blue eyes for a day. This camp of shadows, the tongues of the Ouna-Mas touching and singing to me had erased them.
“No.”
“You didn’t open your eyes. But you did see the blue. Your mother, Da-Ren.”
How did she know? She caressed my arm, moving from the elbow upward while thrusting the words inside of me like a knife. What did the demon want inside my head?
“I was raised an orphan.”
“Yes, yes, you were sent to the Greentooth as a baby, your mother screaming and cursing when they took you from her. I remember as if it were only yesterday when they first brought her from up north.”
I didn’t care about my mother.
“She bore you a ninestar. On purpose. It was what she wanted.”
“I am not—”
“You are. Her blood. Her darkness. Her curse on us. Even the Goddess can’t see inside of you. I do.”
“I am First of the Uncarved,” I said.
She did not answer to that. She filled two cups with steaming black water.
“A great trial awaits you, Da-Ren. If you pass it, the Goddess will accept you.”
“I am not afraid.”
“You have to learn fear, desire, and terror. You did not open your eyes. You endured in the darkness. No one is that strong unless he is a son of the darkness.”
I had to find the words, the pleas, the wishes. This was my one chance. Sah-Ouna extended her arms to give me the cup. Her arms so close to my chest. A memory, an image of the past. Elbia. Elbia, the sacrifice of the Sieve returned to my mind.
“Drink now, but once you are back outside, you must not open your eyes. Promise the Goddess.”
“I promise.”
Someone was walking to my left in the darkness of the tent. I couldn’t see. Sah-Ouna offered me the cup to drink again. I smelled the crazygrass. I didn’t want to swallow the black water that steals the mind. I kept it in my mouth. Sah-Ouna, smiling calmly, pressed her fingers on my cheek as she had done on the first day of the Sieve. I kissed her hand spontaneously with desire.
Darkness consumed me and I was embracing it silently.
“Spit it out my love,” I heard two lips whispering behind Sah-Ouna. It was there behind the Witch, Elbia’s ghost-white face. Her empty eyes were no longer brown; her mulberry lips, no longer the color of rose petals.
Sah-Ouna turned to look back and then turned to me again.
“How? You see her, Da-Ren?” As if she could see Elbia too. She blew the dust toward the girl with a hissing sound. Elbia’s ghost vanished. “Do you see in the darkness of the caves, Da-Ren? So many surprises you bring, young one! You desire her? Now you can have her. Just close your eyes,” were Sah-Ouna’s last words to me.
I had swallowed the black water. I was lost.
She was beautiful and young, like an untouched Ouna-Ma before her virgin veiling.
I closed my eyes. I dreamed of her naked.
She took on the face and body of a grown-up Elbia.
The breasts of the Witch, small and upright, chirped dark songs.
Maybe she was naked. The
crazygrass.
Even now I don’t want to admit it.
I felt her hands gently embracing me, fire burning inside. Elbia’s body. My eyes shut, my body riding a dark horse.
I awoke from a heavy slumber. Only a few embers around me; neither Sah-Ouna nor the hooded creatures were there. Those were not statues. I remembered Gunna describing the monstrous Reekaal who had attacked him one night in the Forest.
The Rods came in, blindfolded me again and took me outside of the tent where they left me alone. I heard the song of the Ouna-Mas from a distance. “Don’t open your eyes. The Goddess is watching,” Sah-Ouna had commanded me.
“Everyone opens their eyes,” she had said.
Was it fear or desire? Shame or unsatisfied lust? Had she defeated me? I could still defy her. I raised my hand, tore off the cloth, and threw it away.
I wanted to see. Twenty paces from me a group of Redveils had gathered around a tall fire. One of the hooded shadows stood much taller than the rest next to the angry flames, while the serpents of their dresses were moving around it. The tall shadow removed its hood, and I looked at it, him, whatever it was, for the first time. In the distance, I saw a longskull, I saw a man, I saw a monster seven-feet tall, his enormous arms opening wide under his robe like wings, fingers like talons emerging, eyes glowing in the reflection of the fire. Potent crazygrass that was. It made the Witch beautiful and conjured Elbia and the Reekaal. My body was freezing as the day’s sweat met with the first chill of the night. The Ouna-Mas stopped their song and turned to face me with eyes like smoldering coals. The huge monster was burning silent, his body and arms painted blue like the heart of the fire. The Cyanus Reekaal of the Legends.
The one of color. I had to get out of there.
“Run away, Da-Ren. Run, now,” whispered the wind-ghost girl with the whitest eyes again.
I ran without looking back, found my horse still there at the gate of the settlement, and disappeared into the night.
Enaka was the only one still watching me from above. Her First Witch had made me promise to keep my eyes closed. I had betrayed her yet again. Sah-Ouna, Elbia, the Ouna-Mas, Enaka, the Greentooth, even my own mother. This one and only night, all the Witches of my life—alive, dead, and eternal—had called me to them and fought for the right to nest in my heart forever. They were all defeated. The night didn’t scare me. It came, licked me, and passed over me like a summer breeze.
Drakon Book II: Uncarved Page 11
