As soon as he was out of the enchanted glade and stepped again into the snow, a much larger doe, its skin white as milk, appeared in front of him. Er-Ren let the small deer down and reached for his bow. Just then, the doe opened its mouth and asked with the voice of a woman of the Tribe.
“Why did you kill my beloved child, brave Er-Ren? Don’t you know that Enaka protects the young deer?”
Er-Ren was not at all surprised. He was expecting magic.
“And why are you not afraid, White Doe?” asked Er-Ren. “Run and save yourself because I will kill you too.” He would have killed the doe already if he hadn’t heard it talk.
“I am not here to save myself. I am here to redeem the life of my child,” said the doe. “Give me back his body so that I may breathe life into it again.”
“I cannot, White Doe; my people are dying without meat. I didn’t kill for pleasure but out of need.”
“In return, I will offer you my life,” said the doe.
Er-Ren looked at the young deer resting lifeless on the snow. Not a spot of blood on the white ground. He could not defend himself against magic. He let the mother approach the deer and she warmed the dried blood of its wound with her snout. The deer sprang to its feet at once and, with quick leaps, disappeared through the wood.
My father took another arrow from his quiver and nocked it. The doe didn’t try to run. The snow around it boiled crimson. Er-Ren had fulfilled his mission of death and life and ran to find shelter. But night had fallen, and the Forest had awoken, spiteful and hungry. Er-Ren lost his way wandering among the weeping songs of the night trees, carrying the bleeding doe on his shoulders until his legs and eyes finally betrayed him. He curled himself up inside his hides underneath a tree. It was bare, with thin branches that rose high like a skeleton waving his fleshless hands. They were white with snow on top and black like death underneath.
It was already too late when he realized in the darkest moment of the night that he was among cursed, enchanted trees. They were the walnut trees. Their fruit was skulls filled with the brains of enslaved children and their trunks hid the Reekaal from the light of day. The smell of the blood of the doe and the skin of Er-Ren roused the demons. In the greatest darkness of the night, they unstuck their naked bodies painfully but quickly from the old trunks of the walnut trees and surrounded him. The only light for Er-Ren was the bright red of their eyes. With that light alone, he fought on the snow for his life and for his kill. He fought bravely, he fought for long, and he fought until he fell. The Cyanus Reekaal, with the flaming, lidless eyes, wounded him mortally with his sharp talons.
Er-Ren took out the silver talisman of the wise Ouna-Mas, and that drew the faintest moonlight as his shield. It blinded bright the cursed offspring of Darhul and kept them away, else they would have torn him apart right there.
Dawn came and the Reekaal disappeared inside the trees. My father gathered his last strength to return to his Pack with the dead doe on his back. Paths of red flowers sprouted, melting the snow, wherever Er-Ren’s blood fell.
The young deer that he had killed first appeared again in front of him, more alive than ever, and said, “See how this ends, brave warrior. Death brings only death. You should never have come into the Forest, Er-Ren. My mother is the Forest Witch, and you killed her. If you hadn’t hunted us, my mother would have come to save you from the monsters.”
“I am not here to save myself, but to bring meat and life to my men,” said Er-Ren.
“Your death is honorable, Er-Ren.”
The young deer lowered its head as if to bow before Er-Ren and disappeared.
My father kept walking with the last strength left in him. As soon as he saw his comrades, he fell dead. But he had already etched the glorious final Story for himself. When the last breath of Er-Ren ascended to the Sky, the doe came back to life and ran away behind the bare trees. A young warrior tried to stop it by throwing a dagger before it was lost, thankfully in vain. A great curse that would be for all. For the people of the Tribe knew that the White Doe, the Forest Witch, was carrying the soul of my father to the Unending Sky. It was what all does did: carry brave souls to the Sky and cursed ones to the bowels of the earth. That is why their legs are quick but their eyes sad.
Next to the body of my father, where the dead doe should have been, appeared two fat oxen. The next day, winter ended, and I came out of my mother’s belly, wrapped in the first sun of spring. Er-Ren’s Pack slaughtered the two oxen and returned to Sirol with renewed strength. His death had given them life.
Thus declared the Legend of the brave Er-Ren.
It was a Legend that I had made up with the help of Rouba so that everyone would forget the real day of my birth and the mark of the ninestar that I carried. That is how I wanted to protect myself from the Ouna-Mas, the snake Witches of the Tribe, whom I called “wise” in the Legend. It was a Story that adorned the Witches with respect and honor, a Story of deer, Reekaal, a silver talisman, demon trees, and anything else that fed their madness and their strength.
No one would question this folly I created because I dressed it in their sacred robes and superstitions. No one ever claimed to have seen the Cyanus Reekaal, except for a few Ouna-Mas. And even those Witches did so only after they had drunk crazygrass in the dark moments of the night when their eyes rolled white. Never in the light of the sun. Maybe I had seen him too that night in Sah-Ouna’s camp. But I didn’t dare say this to anyone.
So we came to the fourth night of pouring rain, the fourth time that the stormy sky forced us into the Forest. Before I started retelling my Legend, shadows moved in the night mist between the tree trunks. The men strapped themselves with their blades and waited for the Reekaal with trembling knees. They were all looking at me. I had brought them here. I had said the Legend of Er-Ren and the Reekaal one too many times, I was Uncarved, I was the first blade of the Wolfhowl. I was not allowed to be scared.
“No fear. Go to sleep. It is only the Dasal, the forest peasants,” I said.
For one night, at least that night, I was the Leader of the Tribe.
I fell asleep and dreamed of Sah-Ouna. She was a little girl. Zeria, the Dasal girl, was with her. So was my mother. All three had blue eyes. They walked hand in hand in the Forest, away from me, getting deeper into the wood.
I awoke, not much later to the frightened screams of my comrades.
“Darhul’s demons, the Final Battle. Save yourselves,” yelled the men next to me. Some were already running to get out of the Forest.
The Reghen came running toward me, with Druug following him. “This is not a night for tales,” said the Reghen as he placed his palm on my shoulder to advise me. “You have to lead, Da-Ren. It is the time of the blade.”
“They are Dasal. Do not be afraid,” I shouted. But my voice couldn’t rule over the nightmares of hundreds of men.
I searched until I found Rouba sleeping in the dark, hunched under a walnut tree. I woke him up with difficulty.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I want you to come with me to find the Dasal. Their shadows are moving around us, the wolves howl, and the men are going mad. I want the two us to go deep into the Forest. That is my final trial.”
“Says who?”
“Me. Sah-Ouna. The dream.”
My other choice was to return and report to Khun-Taa how many brown-haired Garol, same as me, we had hanged. That is what I should have done—take the safe and easy path back.
But I did the opposite.
I fell into Sah-Ouna’s trap.
I did what she wanted. What I wanted.
I let the Reghen and Druug know.
“We two,” I pointed to Rouba, “will go to find them alone. The rain has stopped. Get the men out of the Forest and into the moonlight, and don’t wait for us.”
Druug tried to open his mouth, but the Reghen motioned him to stay quiet. I packed my things, letting the Reghen exchange some last words with Rouba.
“Don’t wait for us!” Rouba repea
ted my words to the rest. He was pulling his horse from the reins with one hand, walking forward at a quick pace. I followed. A calling whispered through the branches and invited me deeper into the Forest.
XXVIII.
Children Hand in Hand
Eighteenth summer. Uncarved—Wolf.
“My end is near, young man,” said Rouba. We had been walking for a long while, deep into the Forest, before the first ray of sunshine reached through the trees.
I stopped my stride and turned to face him. “What kind of talk is that?”
“I saw it. It wasn’t a sign of the Goddess. It was a man’s sign.”
The Guide was talking, but he wouldn’t look at me. He was already looking to the next world.
“What sign?”
“The Reghen have a secret way, their own, of signaling things. But after so many winters in the Tribe, I have learned it.”
“I don’t understand you, Rouba.”
He was fifty winters old, but that morning he looked twice that.
“You see the Reghen never touch a man or woman. But when they know that someone is going to die, they put a hand softly on the shoulder. Only then. Always the same. A send-off.”
“I’ve never heard of that.”
The birds had awoken early that summer day. There were so many of them, with colors I’d never seen in the Iron Valley. Colors without names. They didn’t want to sing about death, and their chirping drowned out Rouba’s words.
“That Reghen, before we left, he let his palm rest on my shoulder. First time in my fifty winters that a Reghen did that.”
I wanted to tell him that he was talking nonsense. It had to be nonsense. I needed Rouba more than ever before. We were together and alone in the woods. I changed the talk to take his mind away from death.
“Last night, before I came to find you, in my sleep, I had a dream: Sah-Ouna, my mother, Zeria.”
He didn’t ask me about my mother. We had seen the women of Garol. He asked me who Zeria was.
We reached a rough slope and dismounted. The ground was covered with thorny bushes and tall grass, and at some points, the foliage was so dense that I had to clear the way by parting the leafy branches with my hands so we could see our footing. Rouba had brought an ax, and we chopped our way through the woods to help the horses pass. We didn’t need the horses in the Forest, but we needed them to return and couldn’t leave them to the wolves.
“If you want to find the summer settlement of the Dasal, we will have to go two or three days north, to Kar-Tioo,” Rouba told me.
I did want to find the Dasal.
Rouba continued. “The Forest has grown and risen this summer. I don’t remember it this dense.”
“It is pushing us out. Like someone is resisting.”
“What did you say?”
“Like someone is—”
“Yes, I heard you. Don’t talk like that.”
I was fighting the green monster with the ax, opening its skin to get further inside. There was only one reason I was in the Forest. I had to find a way to tell him about Zeria.
“Rouba, is there really a Forest Witch?”
“Yes, and we are in her wood now. There is a Dasal myth. A deer that sings. A White Doe. This is how I came up with Er-Ren’s Story.”
“My father’s Story, is…from the Dasal?”
“Your father’s? Yes…”
There was a grimace of hesitation on his face, as if the word father actually meant something to him, something forbidden and forgotten.
“You never told me the myth.”
“I will, someday. Not now. We’re too close.”
“Have you ever seen her?”
“Maybe. Once. I’m not sure.”
“But you’re sure that she lives close by. How?”
“Because there are men here. And where there are men, there is a witch too.”
“Why?”
“To feed. Young men are the witch’s meat.”
This didn’t make any sense to me.
“Rouba, why don’t we kill the witches? We men have the blades, the power.” From far back when I had learned I was a ninestar, I had had the same question.
“Ha, ‘kill the witch,’ the boy says.” His eyes were searching around and forward to danger. “Man needs the witch. Else all he has is a cold blade.”
The first evening fell dark fast, and the night creatures rose around us. I took the first watch while Rouba slept, and I was alone with the whispering branches that brought the witch’s words.
“Why are you here, Da-Ren, ninestar offspring of the raven-haired riders? You don’t belong. You are born of dust and blood; this is the wood of the bluebell and the butterfly. Keep your blades away from my green-eyed children. Don’t come further inside me.”
This was her only warning, and then the whispering stopped. The Forest, the owl, and the wolf turned silent. I could hear only the fire’s crackling.
Rouba rose with a sudden move, as if from a nightmare. “My old head is restless,” he said. “I cannot sleep.”
“What bothers you?” I asked.
“That’s not the way of the Tribe. To abandon us here. Why did the Reghen and Druug let us go so easily? They were responsible for you. Strange. And who is Zeria?” he asked me again.
That was the Story I wanted to tell, and to ask him if the Forest Witch had blue eyes.
“Strange, yes. I will tell you a strange Story, Rouba,” I said, and I started to recount my betrayal from the last time I was in the Forest. A girl, a tree’s hollow, blue. I hid her from death.
Rouba’s face turned sour and worried.
“A man bewitched by a woman’s eyes will fall,” he said when I finished.
Before I had another chance to ask him or to explain we came upon a clearing. It was barren, and the sun was blazing hot above it. There was no grass or fern on its gray soil; nothing grew there. Only a swarm of flies were buzzing high in the middle of it. Rouba was alert again.
“Don’t step on that clearing, stay in the wood, we’ll go around it.”
He didn’t say another word that day and we spent it trying to distance ourselves from that cursed place.
We started our second day moving slowly on foot through the dense wood and then he started talking to me again, unveiling a future he didn’t want to see.
“It was her fate to go as sacrifice to Sah-Ouna, this girl you found. Why did you do it?”
I didn’t answer. I was looking for that answer myself in the Forest’s womb.
“You can’t just steal someone from Sah-Ouna’s black-horned knife. The Goddess does not forgive such trickery. You owe her.”
I lowered my head so I wouldn’t lose an eye to a branch and kept moving. The Forest was still resisting, pushing me away.
Rouba continued.
“I am telling you this so you can redeem yourself while there’s time. Let’s turn back now. I will not reveal your secret. Something stinks here. Druug shouldn’t have let you go.”
“They were scared. They wanted me to protect them from the Dasal,” I answered.
“You, to protect them? Who do you think you are, boy? The young and the stupid may have been scared. Not Druug. Tell me again,” said Rouba.
“What?”
“What were Sah-Ouna’s words the night she called for you?”
“She said that a great trial awaited me. If I pass it, the Goddess will accept me.”
“She will accept you as a Leader or accept you up there, next to her?”
The bushes and weeds were tangling around me, like the words of Sah-Ouna.
“I don’t remember.”
She said she would accept me. I hadn’t understood the Witch’s forked-tongue speech. I didn’t say that to Rouba. A new fear nested inside of me. Maybe I hadn’t been sent to the Forest to become the next Leader, the next Khun. Maybe I had left Sirol forever.
“This is like a trap. The Reghen, his touch, the Witch—she is pulling us closer,” he said.
�
�I am not afraid. I am here to find the Forest Witch,” I said.
At the sound of my words, the day’s light became ample as a piercing rain of sun rays tore through the canopy. The Forest glowed gold and silver and embraced me. She was not resisting anymore.
“Welcome, Da-Ren,” was her whisper. “Feed from my body.”
We hunted a rabbit and a deer like my legendary father, Er-Ren, and we lived with the meat and water of the wood. Invisible feminine arms wrapped us warmly that night as we slept among the tree spirits. Mine had blue eyes and golden-green garb. Rouba’s descended in a flame-covered chariot from the Unending Sky.
We kept traveling north, or so we thought. The oaks were getting bigger and wide-leaved, their trunks so wide that it took the two of us to embrace them. The moss on the north side of the wood was our best guess of where north was whenever we lost the marks in the sky.
“We’ve come very deep now. These are the first, the ancient trees,” Rouba told me. “No ax or knife has wounded them, ever. They were born together with the Earth, from Enaka’s first breath, and they are still standing.”
On the fourth night, I thought we were desperately lost as we came upon the same barren clearing again. There was a sickly smell of rotting carcass in the air.
“We are back to the same place,” I said and shivered with gooseflesh on my arms.
“I am not sure it is the same place,” said Rouba.
“It is, it follows us,” I said.
“It’s your fear. Ignore it. Don’t feed it.”
We knew we could not find our way back on our own. When the wolves, our ancestors and protectors, surrounded us at nightfall, we lit a fire and remained within its circle, wearing the wooden amulets that the Ouna-Mas had carved for each warrior. The Ouna-Mas had not forged this Legend with the wolves well.
“One of us needs to stay awake. I have seen men, can’t even remember how many, torn apart by wolves. None by Reekaal,” Rouba told me.
Drakon Book II: Uncarved Page 13
