Drakon Book II: Uncarved

by C. A. Caskabel

  The Change had begun.

  “What are you building here?” I asked a Craftsman who, upon seeing the arm of an Uncarved, got excited and rushed to explain himself. He was a short man, but his forearms swelled, and his palms looked as if they belonged to a bigger body.

  “Khun-Malan has ordered a new tent be built, bigger than any other before it. Six-sided and a skeleton made from wooden beams. It has to be bigger and sturdier than the bigger huts but covered with hides to look like a tent.”

  All of the tents were round, except for the wooden huts and those of the Ouna-Mas which were square, but no tent was ever six-sided.

  What if I had been Khun? It would have never crossed my mind to ask for something like that.

  “Why?” I asked.

  But, like me, he wasn’t good with the whys.

  Night fell, and my hut became a freezing cave. The Carriers had forgotten to bring dung for days now, and the first snow had fallen earlier than I ever remembered. Outside, everything was slowly vanishing in white. The milk spirit was the only friend lying next to me. When I had a lot, it brought back old friends: Malan, Gunna, Lebo, and the ghosts of the seven children, the seven Uncarved whom we had lost in the pyre. Seven children, hand in hand, begging me: “Don’t go. Stay with us.”

  The fading image of Zeria swirled around my head all the time, but it didn’t warm me. In the iron valley of Sirol, under the light of the Sun and Selene, her magic of gold and green had no power. The Rods and the Reghen came to check on the camp every day. They would summon us outside the huts, together with Bera and the few young ones left, take a count, and then leave. They hadn’t brought any news.

  After a few days, I passed by Malan’s tent again. White, brown, and black horsetails had been hung on the outside and fluttered in the song of the wind. The tails, more than thirty of them, hung vertically with bells and a red band tied at the ends. I remained completely indifferent to them, but those around me looked in awe to find the new Khun’s face, the hope, the change.

  To the right of the tent’s entrance, four heavy wooden beams were raised. They supported the Khun’s new emblem, a huge horizontal iron leaf.

  “And this is what?” I asked the Craftsman.

  “They say it stands for the Unending Sky,” he replied, his face glowing with pride.

  The metal plate had holes in the middle. Hanging from each were three spheres, each a different size.

  “What are those spheres?” I asked.

  “The Sun, the World, and Selene. It was what Sah-Ouna asked for,” he answered.

  “And why is the World a sphere?” I asked.

  The Craftsman shrugged awkwardly.

  “It is a magnificent emblem, though,” he said.

  No other tribe would agree with him, but I had to travel the world to witness that as I grew older.

  I wanted to go inside Khun-Malan’s tent and learn my fate. I wanted to tell him about the Forest, the Dasal who had saved me, and the monstrous Reekaal who had attacked me. I wanted to win the admiration of all because I knew the secrets of the Forest better than anyone else. But distrust and envy were enough to keep me back, and I didn’t do any of that.

  When Malan became Khun, my fate was sealed. At best, I could hope to become Chief of a Pack, forty men under my command. But I had to learn what Banner I’d follow first. There were three real choices: Rod, Archer, or Blade. There were lesser Banners also, like Hunters, Trackers, Craftsmen, and even Tanners, but they amounted to deadly disgrace for someone with my warrior training and ability. Somehow, I always knew that I would never be an Archer.

  “Have they told you where they will send you? How many carvings?” Bera asked. He had become the new Chief and only Guide of the few younger Uncarved, a useless honor that carried no importance anymore.

  “No. I hope only one.”

  One carving would mean that one day I could be Leader of many Packs, all Archers, all Rods, or something else, getting my orders directly from Malan.

  “But I’m afraid they’ll send me to the Rods,” I said.

  “That will be great luck for you. The Rods are Malan’s guard. They live next to him and drink from his power.”

  “I don’t like to be stuck in that camp forever.”

  The Rods spent their whole life around Malan’s tent. They could never leave for days and nights to roam in the Forest, or anywhere else.

  “They taste the fresh women first, eat the good meat, even the cow, get the best share of the loot, and are the only warriors with five horses each. Even the Archers get only four.”

  The Rods were tall men with powerful thews who stood proud and fearsome, but their lives were bowed and dark. Dark because they were constantly in the shadow of the Leader, and bowed because they saw him often.

  “They can keep their fifth horse, Bera. I don’t want to become a Rod.”

  “Yes, my Leader,” said Bera, bowing his head.

  “What?”

  “It is what they do all day and all night, those Rods. They bow to the Khun and say, ‘Yes, my Leader.’ You wouldn’t be good at that.”

  It was the one thing that I hadn’t been taught, having been an Uncarved for five winters. To bow. It would turn all my livers upside down. The reality of my training was that I wouldn’t be good at anything. I had been bred to lead the Tribe or to die trying. Not to kneel.

  For one and two and three more nights, I fought with those thoughts and the choices that I didn’t have. Even worse, I fought to remember my naked body embracing and entering Zeria’s in the pond at Kar-Tioo. If it had actually ever happened. Zeria, her legs wrapped around me, the feeling of her skin a dying memory…my downfall. That was how my nights passed: the dreams of her soft, warm flesh, the humiliation of my lonesome carnal pleasure, in the white exile of the snowstorm that had covered us.

  My torture ended on the thirteenth night of the new Khun’s leadership, when the frozen snowflakes of despair were falling heavier than ever upon Sirol. An Ouna-Ma with no other name rode alone through the white darkness and entered my hut uninvited. She had the most lustful eyes and the biggest breasts.

  And she brought the fire.

  XXXIV.

  My Iron, Your Fate

  Eighteenth winter. Uncarved—Wolf.

  I got good at fucking quite fast, just as I had at riding and blade fighting. It was a useful revelation that the basic secret to perfection was the same in all three. To think with my body and not with my head, and to take control of my opponents by leading them where my body wanted to go. When I was in control, everyone, from women to fearless warriors, could be pierced more easily and sensually.

  But the first time—the night I became a man on my eighteenth winter—wasn’t like that. I can hardly remember what my body did that first time. I was lying still on my back most of the night, burning but incapable of movement like a heap of smoldering coals while the Ouna-Ma danced on me.

  Whatever it was, it was what I needed. I needed this more than the Banners, prophecies, fathers, Legends, and Leaders, more than the life-giving fire of the winter night. The naked legs of a woman wrapped around me.

  It was that moon of my life when I had just about washed the Tribe’s Witch out from inside of me. She came back stronger than ever. The Ouna-Ma came as a woman but left as a demon and goddess, poison and water, death and life, curse and prophecy.

  She walked into the tent, looked at me without saying a word, and knelt in front of me. The fire was between us. She started to take some things out of her saddlebag: two wooden cups, dried herbs, and powder. I kept stealing glances toward the tent’s flap and expected the Reghen, the Guide, or someone else to walk in at any moment. She could not say words to me. Selene was not full, and I was not even the Chief of a Pack. She was mumbling a song to break the silence. The silence begged for words, and the song was an excuse to avoid uttering or listening to them.

  Selene would have been bright, almost full that night, if she weren’t hidden beneath the snow clouds. With the soft
est whispering song on her lips, she moved her head to the left and to the right to let me know that I shouldn’t expect anyone else.

  “It is just you and I alone in the white darkness tonight, Da-Ren,” was her silent promise.

  She turned silent only when she started undressing with slow movements, a sacred dance ritual she had probably done a thousand times before. She let the black robe fall behind her. A thin tunic covered her breasts and the upper part of her body and left her dark, taut skin bare from the waist down. She took that off. Her small nipples rested high and proud on her full breasts like fresh winter flowers. Nipples that had never been suckled by a babe.

  Her body was painted with red and black designs with the henna of the South. Designs that took whole days of careful crafting under a bright sun’s light to make. They said that the Ouna-Mas spent a lot of their time painting one another’s bodies. Her back was decorated with red henna in a pattern of spiral lines, four spirals connecting into a cross, feeding into one another. At the center of each red spiral was a black pattern: a mauler’s head to the north, the two crossed blades to the east, the double-curved bow to the south, and the long skull to the west. Her hands were painted with red henna in intricate blood-red ornaments: flower stems, blades, and arched bows, interlacing and curving like tendrils across the fingers and the top of the hand. They gave the illusion that blood had poured out from every nail and vein and was running everywhere, in harmony, representing with perfect shapes the cycles of life, the spears and the blades of death, and the roots of the trees.

  Those fingers touched me and made Zeria vanish for one night. They were painted like the red veil on her long head, the veil that came off last and revealed that long, painfully sensual head with the very short black hair. Her full lips, her forehead was long as a deer’s.

  I didn’t know how the Ouna-Mas came to our Tribe, or from where. But they were the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen, if only for those big eyes with the full iron-black iris that grew even bigger at night when they danced on a naked man. Even more than their rumps, it was their eyes that were trained for countless nights. She kept them fixed on mine as she moved on top of me.

  Later in life, when I would take the Witches from behind, they would always turn their long heads to the side as they were on all fours. Even as they moaned, they never closed their eyes but kept them nailed on me, as if that was the trial they had gone through for five winters. I never regretted that night, although it ended in horror. As I never regretted any of my many nights with the Ouna-Mas.

  In my life, I would take only one woman under the spell of eternal love, but as many times as I embraced and looked into her blue eyes, I never felt confused. Zeria’s eyes were colorful forest birds. They were the green of hope, the gold of light, the blue of life. I wanted to hide them from all men before they flew back to some faraway forest.

  The eyes of the Ouna-Ma were iron, fire, sweat, death, and a feast of fucking. That night, I truly became a wolf. I burned with unquenchable fire and shivered with the fear of the Sieve’s night from my lips to my feet. I wanted to scream with desire and tear her apart.

  When the end came, as she was dancing faster and more rhythmically above me, I lost myself inside the burning black water river of passion for the first time. I closed my eyes and tightly wrapped my arms around her in a sweet dizziness. I traced the henna designs on her back as her heart pounded between the painted patterns of the blades and the skull.

  She sealed my mouth tightly with her hand. I bit it hard. Her blood blended in with the red finger drawings. She wiped it off on my neck and dismounted me.

  I wanted nothing else, not even to speak a word. She wasn’t ready to leave, so she knelt and continued. She started her whisper song once more as she steeped the herbs and the powder she had brought with her in boiling water. She gave me a cup and filled one for her. The Ouna-Ma had put on her robe, but her bent legs, still showing, naked, made her even more desirable to me. Now I knew what she had inside of her, and it burned my head.

  A black horse with raven-black feathers rose from the fire in the tent, evaporated in front of my eyes, and disappeared through the smoke hole. I didn’t want to lose my senses again like I had done the last two times that Sah-Ouna had given me a wooden cup. She had deceived me twice in the past with crazygrass. The Ouna-Ma drank again. I pretended to swallow it all and threw the contents of the cup into the darkness. I kept my mouth full. She drank again. I spat out the black water when her eyes were not on me.

  The Ouna-Ma pressed her palm to the back of my neck, pulling me closer to her lips, stuck out her tongue, and pressed it even deeper into my mouth. She twisted it in a deep kiss that choked me. I had kissed Zeria, but it wasn’t the same. The Ouna-Ma’s tongue was fast and persistent, a worm determined to reach all the way into my mind and my heart.

  Like a helpless child, I fell backward on the hides, and she climbed on top of me again. For a second time. She started rocking fast again, still kissing me as if she were slowly filling me with poison, as if she were trying to pull out my soul. Or to make me less careful.

  Her knees were bent and locked around my body, her hand squeezed my neck even closer, and her tongue slid deeper down my throat. I came in the end, emptied for a second time, blinded by pleasure, my eyes shut.

  That was when the tearing pain came. In half a breath, with one long, angry scream, I flew upward, uncoupling her body from mine abruptly. The two, sharp iron rings she wore on her middle fingers had ripped my skin with quick simultaneous slashes, leaving two carvings. One just below the right nipple on my chest. I had, after all, just lain with my first Ouna-Ma. The other on my left arm, ending my days forever as an Uncarved. A gift to remember her by and an eternal punishment.

  I had thrown her off me. She was laughing hard now, almost growling like a satisfied beast at me, already victorious. She had stolen all she had come for. And against her vows, she spoke:

  “This is how the boy dies, and the man is born. My iron, your fate.”

  Whenever I saw others being carved, it was shameful and reminded me of horses being branded with a red-hot iron. It was probably an honor that one of the most beautiful Ouna-Mas had come with the order to carve me in this unique way. Her beautiful body moved away from mine. She had melted me, I had melted her, and the black water she had boiled had melted us both. She sat coiled next to me, looking the other way as if I were not there anymore. I was alone again. Sleep came fast and sweet.

  I woke up much later but still in darkness, delirious and breathing heavily. The horses in my nightmare were frightening shadows, blood would drip from their hollow eye sockets. The black water, the cup. I was losing my mind in that hut, abandoned there, Uncarved no more. The night had begun with hunger, fire, and desire, but it turned into an unsparing nightmare. And that was how it would continue.

  I had knives in my bowels. I curled up in pain. I had drunk crazygrass many times before. It had never burned my throat and my bowels like this. This was another kind of poison that swam inside me.

  I pulled the Ouna-Ma by the wrist to make her face me. There was blood running from her nose, reaching the edge of her lip. She tried to wipe it off with the back of her painted hand. This blood was not from my carving or my bite. It was from her insides. The poison was burning her too.

  She crawled to reach the waterskin. She took a sip but spat it out, coughing up green foam. She tried to stand upright. I went to help her, but my legs were shaking. She pushed me away faintly. The little white rim around her pitch-black iris had become blood red, and she stared, lost and desperate. She was trying to mumble, to speak, despite her vows to not say a word. She couldn’t.

  “What did you give me?” I asked, shaking her with both hands.

  Gone was her lustful gaze of absolute domination. The gleaming tears of her eyes reflected terror and agony. She barely managed to stand up. She was still trying to utter a word, and she pulled the black robe like a cloak to cover herself. She took two or three steps
backward and doubled over with a scream, holding her belly like it was hatching snake eggs that were biting to get out.

  She crawled out of the hut, half-naked and barefoot in the snow. But on that one last breath before she disappeared, the Witch looked at me like a frightened girl who had just burst into tears and uttered that one word, the last word I heard from the lips of the first woman I had taken.

  “Drakon…”

  XXXV.

  To Death

  Eighteenth winter. Uncarved—Wolf.

  Drakon. Solitary servant of Darhul, exiled to the North to guard the crossing of the icy rivers. A creature with indomitable power absolutely committed to protecting a priceless treasure. A mythical beast that spewed fire and wouldn’t die in any way known to mortals. Its poisoned blood could make a warrior invincible if he rubbed it on himself. Darhul himself, transformed.

  Stories for children, women, and fools. I had the rest of my life, as many moons as I had left, to find out. Drakons were the stuff of Legends. None of the men whom I met had ever come across a Drakon. Only Bera had said once, “They had sent me up, very far to the North, on a campaign. I was young like you. Thousands marched, less than a hundred returned, and of those few, no one ever speaks of it: I saw him.”

  “Saw what?”

  “I didn’t see the Drakon; I saw his cloudbreaths of green and blue above his lair. Have you ever seen green clouds dancing and shining in the sky at night?”

  “No.”

  “Those cloudbreaths were bigger than Sirol, moving, flowing like green rivers above our heads. They had taken the shape of the tongue, the body, the talons of the Drakon, the color of his cursed blood. He was there.”

  “You saw his breaths only. Green clouds.”

  “He was there.”

  The Ouna-Ma disappeared half-naked in the middle of the night. She left behind only questions of Drakons and erotic hunger for me to warm in my hut like drakon eggs. And she left the poison inside of me, the crazygrass or whatever it was that she had given me to drink.