Soul of the World

by David Mealing

  She left the chapel and began her search for whatever signs the enemy had left. A mass grave or something equally vile. Of a surety, there would be some marker. This had been done to send a message, to sow fear among the people of Sarresant. The enemy would not leave his work hidden in shadows.

  She found nothing.

  She searched the ruins of buildings and houses, scoured the dirt that had once been the village green, even lowered a rope to test the water beneath the well in the central square. Nothing. It wasn’t until she thought to shift her vision to check the residues of the ley-energy that she began to suspect she’d been wrong. Body in abundance, and little enough Life. But of Death, the ink-clouds she expected to find below every building, every street, she found no sign. Only small traces beneath the cemetery behind the chapel.

  The people of Oreste had not been slain. They had been taken.

  Knowing it, she seethed with rage. What designs could the enemy have that required a village worth of innocents? Was Gand practicing the slave trade once more, a relic the civilized nations of the world had long since left in the past? A weight settled onto her shoulders, a duty to uncover the fate of these villagers. She had to know. She needed to know.

  Need.

  Almost instinctively, she closed her eyes, letting need guide her.

  There. Leagues away, far to the north. Golden light.

  She embraced it. Her need, and the need of the people of Oreste.

  Her vision shifted.

  She was bound at the hands, rope bonds tied to a cord running through the column of villagers as they marched. Dozens of them, perhaps the entire population of Oreste. Perhaps more. They shambled forward at a slow pace by military standards. And there were military here, wearing the red coats of the Gandsmen, shepherding their prisoners along in a column two by two. The dust clouds and the thrumming of shambling steps ahead and behind confirmed it: This was an army on the march, not an escort of a few prisoners. These villagers were in the middle of the pack, far enough behind that the ground they covered had been tracked into a semblance of a trail. And no chance this was the end of the column. No commander with half a brain would march prisoners behind the main body, where they could slip away at the tail end of the line.

  “Marie,” a voice whispered beside her. “Marie, your eyes …?”

  She turned and saw a man of middling years, his clothing ragged and face unshaven.

  “What’s happened?” the man whispered. “You look like one of them.” His voice dripped with venom.

  “Where are we?” she asked in a coarse whisper.

  “What? Marie, what’s going on?”

  “Where are we?” she repeated, adding a forceful emphasis long trained to give commands. “Tell me!”

  The man seemed taken aback, but whispered back to her in a rush. “You know where we are. They’ve had us marching north for weeks.” He gestured to the right of the column as if it were obvious. And it was.

  The Great Barrier. The division between civilized land and the wild, where beasts native to the New World threatened to massacre any who ventured outside the safety of the wall. If the prisoners were marching north through colonial lands it should have been on their left.

  They were on the wrong side.

  25

  ARAK’JUR

  The Guardian’s Tent

  Sinari Village

  Llanara’s eyes glowed as she looked up at him, closing the book she’d had open on her lap. She was seated cross-legged on the floor of the tent they shared, a place he found her more and more often of late. He mistrusted the book, a gift from Reyne d’Agarre; he’d seen books before, curiosities traded from the fair-skins, claimed to be stores of wisdom, ink pressed into pulp as thin as grass. In his view such things were the province of the shamans if they had to be handled at all.

  “My guardian,” Llanara said, smiling. “Welcome home. I trust the hunt went well?”

  “It did. The tribe is safe.”

  Her smile faded as he lowered himself to the pallet beside her. Weariness seeped through his muscles like water through a cloth. She must have seen some measure of it, folding her legs to the side as she edged toward him.

  “You are troubled,” she said.

  “Two of our number fell, hunting the urus.”

  “Not Ilek’Inari …?”

  “No. He did well. Better than most. It was Arak’Var, and Ilek’Uhrai.”

  She paused, and he completed the thought for her.

  “The Olessi guardian,” he said. “Ilek’Uhrai was his apprentice.”

  It took another moment before the meaning of his words settled in.

  “It’s happening,” she half-whispered, then spoke again, louder. “If both are dead, then the Olessi are without the guardians’ magic.”

  “Yes.” It was doom, simple and plain. No tribe could survive without guardians to ward away the great beasts. A sign of the spirits’ disfavor, a sure mark of a curse. Guardians were slain often enough, and apprentices, too, but the shaman saw the coming of such things in time to be certain a new apprentice was found. For the Olessi shaman to have failed to see it meant their tribe was doubly cursed, abandoned by the spirits of things-to-come and the beast spirits both. Arak’Jur had lived with the fear of such a thing since becoming guardian; Ka’Vos hadn’t foreseen his calling as Sinari guardian prior to Arak’Mul’s death, but the spirits had provided for his people. The same valak’ar that killed the old guardian gave its blessing to make the new one, and so the Sinari endured. But the Olessi had lost both master and apprentice. Even if other tribes’ guardians offered to protect them, no tribe could restore the favor they must have lost with the spirits, to face so dire a fate.

  “There will be war,” Llanara said.

  He winced.

  “How could it be otherwise?” she continued. “The Olessi will blame us for their guardians’ deaths. Us, and the others who accompanied you on the hunt.”

  The same fears had played in his mind since facing the urus, and now she voiced them openly. “The Olessi have been friends and neighbors for generations,” he said. “They were allies, against the Tanari.”

  “And now they are doomed. They will remember the men who were with their guardians when they fell. And they will remember the greatfire, where we condemned their shaman’s apprentice, on your word, and Ilek’Inari’s. After these events, they will see our justice in a different light.”

  He hadn’t thought to connect Ilek’Rahs’s madness to the guardians’ deaths; the Olessi envoys had made every sign of humility and acceptance at the greatfire. But he could well imagine them taking another tone now, debating in their steam tents the wisdom of violence.

  “If there was a danger of war, Ka’Vos would have seen it, and brought it before the elders.”

  “Would he?” Llanara said.

  His argument rang hollow in his ears already; Llanara’s doubt doused it in sand.

  Llanara cast a glance toward the book she’d held before his arrival. “I know this is not easy. But I have seen the shape of these events, written in the book.”

  His back stiffened, and he regarded the leather-bound pages as he might have a venomous snake.

  “It is time,” Llanara continued. “Time for you to—”

  “Llanara, do not toy with me. This thing, this gift of Reyne d’Agarre, if it speaks with the spirits of things-to-come, I cannot believe even the women would allow it.”

  “Peace. Calm yourself, Arak’Jur. The Codex merely allows me to better understand … certain things. Things of great import to us, to our people.”

  “I mislike the nature of this. Whatever our misgivings, it is neither your place nor mine to speak for the shamans. It was wisely done, to accept Reyne d’Agarre’s offer, and I have said as much. But there are limits.”

  “That is where you are wrong,” she said in a rush. “Reyne d’Agarre came to us because the time has come for this power, for this gift to reach our people. You spoke truth—the Olessi contemp
late war against us, even now. But my gift will see where Ka’Vos has been blind, and we will face this, together. Our time is near, my love.”

  He frowned. “Your words frighten me.”

  “Why else?” she continued, her voice flush with passion. “Why else would this power come to us now, when Ka’Vos’s gift falters? No, do not deny it—we both know it for truth. Ilek’Inari abandons their path, chosen to be guardian, and with my coming, the women of the Sinari will be the greatest of all the tribes. This is a time for change, and if that breeds fear, so be it. But you are strong, Arak’Jur. You will weather it, with me at your side.”

  When she finished, a cloud of stillness hung in the air.

  “You must reconsider these thoughts, Llanara,” he said. “You go too far.”

  “You do not go far enough!” she shouted back at him. “Always caution, always uncertainty. You claim to be the guardian of this people and yet you sit idly and watch as Ka’Vos’s visions fail. You refuse the mantle of chief, of warleader, hoping these times will sort themselves without your intervention. I tell you plainly they will not. Your people need you to act, honored guardian.”

  She made his title drip venom. He took it as a blow across the face.

  Without another word, he rose and left the tent, leaving her shouts echoing behind him.

  He walked into the trees, letting his feet carry him as his mind worked. His tent was on the edge of the village, on the cusp of the wild. He’d always chosen to live on the periphery, though his role as guardian kept him near the heart of the tribe’s political life. Llanara would have preferred a tent closer to the village center. He knew it, but his place was between the two worlds, even if Llanara didn’t understand.

  He repeated her words in his mind as he walked. Her book—she called it a codex—was well beyond his understanding. If it held a vision of things-to-come, he could not believe it sanctioned by the spirits. Such a thing violated every taboo he held sacred. But the root of her argument rang true, even if he was loath to admit it. The Olessi would be enraged when the news reached them. For Ka’Vos to have seen nothing of it, given no premonition or warning, cast a dark shadow over his gift, at a time when Arak’Jur had misgivings enough without the need for further doubt.

  And the rest of her argument. Was she right, that this was a time to act, to seize power in defiance of their councils, to claim the mantle of Sa’Shem or Vas’Khan? Few would oppose him, if he did. He was no coward, whatever Llanara wanted to think. But neither was he wise enough to lead by decree; in the councils, the collected wisdom of the tribe guided them all. Without the voices of men and women, old and young, the tribe could not be as strong. Yet for the councils to decide, they required true insight, and that meant the shaman, foremost above all. It came back to Ka’Vos. And much as he wished it were not so, and stung his pride to admit, where her argument touched the shaman Llanara had the right of it.

  He walked through the night, weighing the words in his mind, considering all aspects of his resolve. It was not until the first strands of dawn appeared at the edge of the sky that he found himself walking back through the trees, returning to his tent.

  He found Llanara where he’d left her, cross-legged on the floor of his tent, only this time the book was put away out of sight. She looked up at him as he entered, her face streaked with tears.

  “Arak’Jur, I am sorry,” she began, trailing off as he signaled her to let him speak.

  “Llanara. I have given thought to your words.”

  “I pushed too hard. Please, you must understand …” Again her voice faded as he urged her to silence.

  “I do understand,” he said. “I cannot fault you for seeing more in me than I see in myself. And I know you wish only what is best for our people, as I do.”

  He sat opposite her and reached a hand to brush tears from her cheek. She leaned into his touch, nodding in agreement.

  “You must understand,” he continued. “I have known loss, and gained wisdom from it.” She nodded again. She knew well the pain he felt at the deaths of his wife and child; she had helped him find what measure of peace he had made with their memories. “If I have shied away from a course that may lead us to war, it is only because I know too well the horrors that lie along that path.”

  She looked at him evenly, though he could see her guard beginning to rise. He raised a hand to ward away the argument he saw forming in her mind.

  “Your new magic unnerves me,” he said. “But I cannot deny wisdom, no matter the source. Our people would never have come to these lands if we did not listen, when the first shaman heard the voice of the spirits of things-to-come. And in this, you have the right of it. It is past time to confront Ka’Vos.”

  “When?” she asked, leaving the rest of it—the warmth and forgiveness, the pain of the words they’d exchanged—to linger in her eyes.

  “Now. I see no reason to delay.”

  Fire rekindled, and they rose together, sharing a firm embrace before he left their tent.

  “There will be war.”

  The words hung in the air with the weight of a stone. Llanara’s words, delivered through his lips, as bitter as when she’d said them, and as true.

  Ka’Vos stoked the coals of his fire, freshly kindled with the morning sun. An ordinary fire, orange and red, with none of the smoke of the ritual summons. It made the tent seem ordinary, somehow bereft of the supernatural, and Ka’Vos along with it. A dark omen, considering the nature of his visit.

  “You must see the logic behind my fears,” he continued. “The Vhurasi guardians offered to deliver the news of Arak’Var’s death, and well they did. If it had been me, or Ilek’Inari, can you say of a certainty we would have been received as friends?”

  Age seemed to hang from the shaman’s bones, a weariness pervading his tent like the sting of sour milk.

  “There may be truth in what you say,” the shaman said at last. “Enough to bring it to the steam tent. At the next turning of the moon, we can speak of this, and contemplate how we might tame their aggression.”

  A predictable reply, and he could imagine how Llanara would respond to further discussion and delay. There was wisdom in it. But the time for such things had passed.

  “Ka’Vos. I would know if the spirits have granted you the visions of war, the visions the other shamans claim have haunted them since the last turning of the seasons.”

  The shaman turned away. Pressing Ka’Vos on such a matter was taboo in the extreme, edging on blasphemy against the spirits themselves. A shaman’s visions were his purview alone; it had been so for as long as there had been shamans at all. But it was past time to settle the matter. If Ka’Vos would not speak on it when faced with a neighbor all but certain to have seen the visions, and given cause to act on them …

  “Yes.” A single word, ringing like a sheet of shattered ice through his tent. “Yes, Arak’Jur. I have.”

  “The signs of war … you have seen them?”

  The shaman nodded.

  “You have seen them and said nothing? Kept them hidden? Hidden from the Sinari people, hidden from me?” His voice seethed with anger, growing hotter as he spoke.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?” So much of his thought had been bent around this. He had contemplated dire omens, and worse possibilities: whether the shaman had lost his gift, or at least some part of it, whether their people had fallen out of favor with the spirits, or been cursed themselves. And now he had the start of it. Ka’Vos had spoken lies.

  He asked again, with greater force. “Why, Ka’Vos? Why?”

  The shaman’s expression softened, regarding him with a calm look.

  “I do not trust what I have seen,” he said.

  Arak’Jur stared at him, saying nothing, demanding more.

  “Imagine a companion carried by your side since you were a boy, a companion you know well, and, yes, whom you love. Now consider how you react when your companion begins to whisper madness in your ear. Where once you heard peace, and w
isdom, there is hate, and evil.”

  “The spirits of things-to-come have always spoken truth,” Arak’Jur said. “I fear these things as you do, but we cannot ignore truth for the sake of fear.”

  “No. When the spirits speak of horrors, the voice is changed. It is not always so. At times it is the same, familiar companion. But when the visions come, of war, of death … it is a different voice. A foul one.”

  “What could it be, if not the spirits themselves? You are the one speaking madness.”

  “Arak’Jur, the spirits would have us at war, every tribe seeking the blood of their neighbors. If the other tribes have thus far refrained, it is because their shamans have seen what I have seen and chosen not to act.”

  Ka’Vos’s words struck him with the force of una’re’s roar. Impossible. Unthinkable, for the shamans to hear the spirits’ whispers and fail to give them heed. Far easier to believe Ka’Vos had gone mad than to accept a shared delusion among the wisest men of the tribes. Once again he heard Llanara’s voice in his mind, urging him to anger. But this time he found caution.

  “How can you be sure? All we have heard from Ka’Hinari, Ka’Airen, and the others is that there are signs, courses that may lead to war.”

  Ka’Vos barked a bitter laugh. “No, my friend. I have seen it behind Ka’Hinari’s eyes. He sees what I see. The spirits have gone mad.”

  A chill went through the tent. The guardian’s gift made his flesh proof against the harshest winds and snows, the hottest fires of the sun. It offered no protection now.

  “I have been a coward,” Ka’Vos said. “I have feared what the people would say, what you would say. But you were wise; you asked, and I have answered. And now we must act, together, against what comes.”

  “You would cast aside the spirits’ guidance?”