I searched for two days and nights around Kar-Tioo. Beasts in silent shadows were watching from a distance. White wolves with gleaming eyes amongst the crimson death, bucks with long antlers hidden within the bronze. The beasts stood horrified at my sight and never came closer. I ran, searched, and prayed, not stopping to hunt or rest, all day and all night crying her name from the depth of my lungs. The more I felt the urge to pray to a goddess I didn’t believe in, the more I ran. In a forest deserted by men and gods.
As hope waned and madness boiled, I started talking to the wood, calling the Forest Witch.
“Reveal yourself. I know I am not worthy to be here. I have broken every promise. I accept any suffering you choose, just help me see her one more time. I have survived all battles, a journey to and from the ends of the world only so I could be with her again. I made it back; no god can be so vile as to keep her away from me. I plead with you!”
No song answered back.
No beehive, or cicada, or even a night owl. The summer birds had long flown away, and the only sound was the gurgling of the rivulets.
I tore my clothes and threw them off; they weighed heavily upon me, like the many summers that I had wasted in an unworthy quest. I wandered like that for days, with only a loincloth around my waist and a blade close to my hand, like a half-mad Sson running through the trees.
No warm blood.
I cried Zeria’s name a thousand times.
Burned wood and blackened trees marked Kar-Tioo, the old Dasal settlement.
“Forest Witch, I beg you on my knees. I have returned triumphant and free.”
Free to scream alone like a mad beast returning to its lair to find it ravaged. Free to mourn Zeria. I searched in the hollows of the trees, I plunged into the lake to find corpses that weren’t there, I crawled through the thick bushes on all fours, torch in hand, through narrow caves. It was getting darker and colder every evening, one breath closer to winter.
Spiders. Spiders are silent.
The spiders of autumn had mated and multiplied by the thousands. They were crawling among the dead leaves and the moss, thriving in the damp soil, some of them already creeping up my cold skin. They begged me to stay forever.
“Where else do you have to go, Da-Ren?” they asked. “Sleep here. We’ll carry you down, into the bat caves where the children await. Do you remember the musty stench of the caves? So warm and rousing, the beautiful embrace of death.”
Two skeletons, ravaged by the wolves. A man, a woman. Dasal. It wasn’t her dress. I knew the bones of her hands; they weren’t hers. Days and nights went by until I lost count, alone and delirious mumbling her name. Kar-Tioo was nothing but charred earth. I had crawled through the steppe, the mud spewing volcanos and the salt lakes, the caves of Kapoukia, and the desert sandstorms. I had dived into the Pelago of the Thousand Islands and the thousand lies of Thalassopolis. The Reekaal were there too, hiding behind the pillars and in the mosaics of the opulent temples, collecting the taxes, sucking the blood and the life of the innocent.
But I hadn’t found their god or my Zeria.
Maybe those gods were gracious and had a true heart of gold after all. They had tried to stop me, to never let me come back to this, to spare me the agony. “There will be no forgiveness for you, Da-Ren. But oblivion may be enough.” Maybe they knew all along and even now they were mercifully granting me a last wish. To rest my head by the hollow tree, for the wolves to gather round and lull me into eternity, the spiders to weave a shroud. From my twelfth winter I had been running, where to I didn’t know. Maybe it was just time to stop and not get up again, to become one with the wood, let the tendrils of the roots and branches wrap around me and sip the life out of me slowly, as the Legends said.
My mind bled, and so did every part of my body, every finger and toe as I walked north, to reach the caves I’d never seen before. She was Zeria, the Forest Witch; she would know where to hide. I was lost in the woods for a whole moon, maybe less, maybe more, a naked madman.
I could make fresh rope out of a dead forest; a fresh rope and a sturdy branch could be a quick conclusion. Only for a few breaths did the cowardice conquer me. Zeria would never want such a dishonorable ending for me. When she was still a girl, she had pulled me out of the caves of the dead. My steps led me back to the deserted Kar-Tioo. I found the clearing where I had burned Rouba’s body. He was my Guide, and he had died because of my stupid dreams.
I swim Selene’s rivers, deep inside the Forest.
I must not lose myself. I have to get back.
I fell into a deep sleep, and Rouba’s solemn face came to find me.
“Once again you have abandoned your Tribe, Da-Ren. Why are you hiding in here? Your men are asking for their Firstblade in the darkness of Sirol; the Reghen will surround and betray them. I died because of your Zeria. Are you longing to die for her too? No, I owe you this. You didn’t leave me here to rot under the mud. And I won’t abandon you either. Go back to Sirol; it is the last thing I will ask of you.”
The rain woke me, falling sideways as the wind howled among the naked oaks. The canopy of the Forest was no more; the autumn colors had all turned to the first bleak gray of winter. There was nowhere to hide anymore, not even in there. The Goddess had found me.
She could still be alive; I hadn’t found her corpse. She could have crossed the Forest over to the West. Sani knew the path to the West. Or maybe she was somewhere in Sirol, and I hadn’t found her yet. They needed me back in Sirol. The Goddess, Rouba, Baagh, and Zeria. I owed them.
I walked again on two legs, a savage beast until I was out of the Forest.
I made it to the outpost, starving and exhausted. The half-blind guardian welcomed me and didn’t even laugh at my nakedness. He told me his name again, but I forgot it, as if he were a dead man already. He talked to me like a long-time friend, about how he’d braved all winter moons alone after all the others died. He offered me his old stinking clothes, dried slices of horse meat, and milk spirit. He had kept my horse alive and fed. He banged his fists, with excitement, every time I finished another battle Story, and I told them backward, keeping the one about the blood of O’Ren for the end. I talked to him about that stallion, the greatest stallion I had taken away from men unworthy, liars and cowards, at an outpost before the Forest.
“Do I know you, young man?” he asked with heavy-lidded eyes when I finished that tale.
“You do.” Under the small table, I pushed my blade deep in his bowels twisting and working there. “You never slaughter a man’s horse and offer him gruel,” I whispered as he bled away, his fingers trying to grasp the table, his milkskin, my hand as I leaned over him.
“Cold,” he moaned a single word.
“Death is cold,” I said, holding his hand. He was still trying to hang on to the living.
“No, man…not death…that winter…was cold…harsh…needed the meat…”
Like I needed O’Ren’s blood.
“Good Story! For a Blade, you…good Story…” he whispered, as his eyes turned glassy and cold.
Even killing a thief left a bitter taste inside me and the milk spirit wouldn’t make it any better. I slept the whole night next to his bleeding body until the buzzing flies awoke me at noon.
“I am going to need your clothes,” were my last words to him.
At least he had been a tall man.
“We ride back to Sirol, brave horse. Let’s end this Story honorably. Whatever fate awaits us, whatever doom, we’ll face it together. We brought so much sorrow to those faraway lands. Let’s drink some of our poison. Let’s suffer for Zeria till our dying days. Or, who knows. Maybe we’ll find her again one day. We’ll find her so that we can suffer even more.”
The first tents in the western outskirts of Sirol were those of the Uncarved. They were completely deserted, not even a Guide. I found a hide and trousers that smelled better than death and stole boots and a leather jerkin from the tents of the Archers. I was shaking with the tremors of madness, sleepl
essness, and hunger.
At the Archers camp, they gave me wine and a Chief brought me a piece of roasted lamb. Right there I knew he needed something. He sat down next to me and gestured to the others to leave us alone.
“I know you. You are the Firstblade. I recognize you from the old days before our Khun left,” he said.
“Good,” I said. The last man who recognized me too late is dead. “But I don’t know you.”
“I am Rhee-Lor,” he said, “named after—”
“Some horse, I guess,” I said, impatient and tired. He did have the face of a horse, big front teeth and a protruding mouth and jaw, eyes intense but stupid.
“The Great Pelor. Anyway, I know who you are, Firstblade, and I heard the Stories at the Wolfhowl. We Archers don’t have much respect for the Blades, but the times are changing. Sani rules over Sirol here. But I command close to a thousand Archers.”
And he commands only a hundred Blades.
“So?”
“Sani and you. Are you close? The Ouna-Mas sided with Sani, and so did the Reghen. I was not going to oppose the Redveils, but many of my men are not happy with all this. And all the changes.”
“The crops?”
“The what? No, no, the crops are good. Tell you the truth, we sided with him because he learned the farming. He feeds the camp. None of us was willing to disgrace himself with farming chores. No, I am talking about the other changes. The Guardians.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“You don’t know then; you haven’t seen the men around his tent.”
I shook my head. I didn’t care about this man’s Stories and worries.
“You must go see them, Da-Ren. See the Guardians he has gathered there. He says this is the way of the Tribe, and so do the Ouna-Mas, but that’s not what I remember from the old days. My men were ready to revolt, but then you said that Khun-Malan is coming.”
“Yes, he is riding from the steppe,” I said. “It is a long journey.”
“We’ll wait for the Khun,” said Rhee-Lor and then paused. “You don’t want that?” he asked and grabbed the remaining piece of lamb before I had a chance to reply.
“You do that. Wait for the Khun. You don’t want to do anything foolish before he is back,” I said. “Can I ask…” I was ready to ask him what he knew about Dasal slaves. But I didn’t have the courage to finish my sentence. “Can I rest here tonight?”
“It’s too late; you should,” he said. “Go see Sani tomorrow.”
Late in the morning, I woke up, but I didn’t want to visit anyone in the mess I was. Sirol was still a vast camp, four times a thousand tents and more, sheds for the supplies, and open fields for the horses. Most of it was a deserted maze of muddy paths, skeletons of abandoned tents, training fields that have not been walked upon in five winters, vultures and rats.
I headed for the Blacksmiths instead. Many of them recognized me too from the night at the Wolfhowl.
“A Story, Firstblade,” they said.
I might have become a disgrace to my own eyes, yet they looked up to me as if I were Khun.
“A Story, yes, the greatest you ever heard, the Story of Rikan the four-carved Blacksmith who became Chief of the First, who survived the burning towers of Varazam, the one who broke the enemy lines at the battle of the poppy fields with pails and made it back alive, the one who sacrificed himself in Apelo.”
It was a Story of exaggerations, half-truths and half-lies, but it didn’t matter. It would do Rikan good, do them good—to dream that a Blacksmith could be capable of such bravery. Even to me, it felt good telling it false and glorious. What else could I tell them? Your Khun was worthy only of betrayal and senseless sacrifice? Rikan died as bait in a trap. They deserved more.
I drank, ate, and slept the night and found more strength. In the morning, I turned east and reached the Tanners camp. The cobblers and the fur-makers dwelled by the river’s edge where they washed off their stink. I passed through the breastfeeding women, and I strolled among the orphan tents. Two boys and a girl, barefoot and scantily dressed, were throwing stones at a kitten. This was no play; they were hunting for food. They stood still as I walked past. Even though they were too young to know who I was, to their eyes I was power and hope. I shared the bread I had gotten from the Archers and told them a Story about a boy from the orphans who grew up to become a Firstblade. I slept a second night away from my Blades, in the tents of the orphans. I woke up by maulers howling and nightingales singing, and then it crossed my mind. This could be the exact spot where Rouba and Keko had taken me from when I was twelve-wintered, where it all started. But I couldn’t feel anything, pride or sorrow, only the numbness of the morning chill.
Noon’s brief sunlight found me walking my horse through the Craftsmen’s camp. It was only a few tents, a handful of the older folks and their young apprentices, the only Craftsmen Malan hadn’t taken with him. They were pounding the horse tendons, boiling them to make the glue, to mix with the horn and maple wood for the bows.
“In the four corners of the world your bows have sung victorious. No othertriber can stop our arrows,” I said, and their sweaty brows shone as if they were the gods of war.
The Khun’s old wooden palace, a crumbling ruin, stood deserted upon the hill in the middle of Sirol. No Rods and no emblems around it; they were all in the Southeast with Malan. Farther down were two red tents for the Ouna-Mas, and a third for the few remaining Reghen, with white wisps rising from the smoke-holes. Only a handful were left to spread the Voices of the Sky in a camp that was thirsty for more. Without the Reghen, the Ouna-Mas, without a Khun and the Great Feasts of Spring, Sirol had been reduced to a pack of wolves without a leader.
Sani’s tent was next to them. Sani had taken to the farming fields, and he had done well there, but he could not command awe and respect; he could not grace the Tribe with splendor and leadership. He was no Malan, and Enaka’s Sun would never shine brilliantly upon him. It could be the blinding daylight of the South that I had gotten used to, but I never remembered Sirol so bleak, as if Darhul’s gray tongues had brushed with their slobber, all sky and fields, stone and tree.
Late that afternoon I made it back to the Blades’ tents, where I could rest. They greeted me with cheers as if the battle of Apelo had just ended, banging their blades on whatever metal they could find to make noise as I was passing by. I had returned victorious, they said. But I had found nothing but death in the Forest. I dismounted and wandered around, stopping in front of every tent, shaking arms with each man separately, especially those who had stayed behind and hadn’t lived in one of our Stories.
“Bring the wineskins. Celebrate our triumphs,” I shouted. “Mourn for her,” I whispered.
I hadn’t found Noki, Leke or any of my comrades yet. I reached a clearing in the middle of the Blades camp and there I heard a ruckus. I saw a mob of about thirty men gathered around a circle, laughing and shouting joyously. I walked up to them, holding two half-empty wineskins, one in each hand.
“Celebrate! Wine!” I shouted once again, and I slipped through the bodies to see who was in the middle of the circle.
I couldn’t find joy anymore, but I was glad for those who did.
He was one of Sani’s men, a long-haired Blade, a young lad with a naked muscled back. He was standing with his trousers down in front of a butcher’s table, a heavy round block of oak wood, smoothed from a solid trunk. Dried blood and rotting sheep’s brains stuck to the sides of the fair-colored wood.
I stared between the man and the table and stared harder, I had been too long in the woods and didn’t trust my eyes. Couldn’t trust my madness. A woman bent belly down on the table, the strong fingers of the naked man pushing the right side of her head down, shoving her face into the wood. I could see her eyebrow, black, the shape of a leech. Desperate moans, a prolonged scream that sliced my heart in half. The man was trying to get inside her from behind, moving and thrusting back and forth. She kicked her heel back and hit him in the shin. His wei
ght fell on her, and he banged her head on the wood. He picked her up again, dazed and bleeding as she was and laid her, face down, on the table. She bit his hand, but he screamed only for a breath and then started to laugh with a roar. Her long black hair had hidden her face. Her head moved back and forth as the man pushed in and out of her, her skin rubbing on the oak. She kept kicking with her heels, one at a time, but without power anymore.
“The bitch is still fighting you, Ilan!”
“Finish off the damned witch!” someone next to me screamed.
Witch.
Poison dripping from my eyes.
A face you loved forever is easy to forget. If love becomes madness and you don’t see her for two thousand nights, then you start recognizing her falsely in any resembling image. Living or statue, painting, or mosaic. I’ve seen someone whom I thought was Zeria so many times before. Walking among the stalls in the bazaar of Antia, gazing at me through the church icons of Thalassopolis, kneeling on the troughs of Varazam. The beauty of the face can be deceiving because I had seen Zeria many times; whenever I saw beauty. But hands don’t change. I always recognized people from their fingers when their faces were disfigured.
Her fingers were grabbing the table tensely, her clawing nails purple on the trunk and I could see them so close, after two thousand nights.
My legs moved before my mind. Five strides and I was on him like a rabid mauler. I grabbed him by the hair and kneed him in the ribs. As he curled in pain, I banged his head on the wood, next to hers. Blood spattered on my arm and her cheek. I pushed her away with my other hand, never letting go of the man’s mane. As she fell, her hair waved high, revealing more of her face. Those eyes so blue. The dazed man was on his knees and tried to hold on to the table and get up. I helped him rise, and he tried to hold on to my arms, bloodied teeth and a shattered nose, barely conscious. I grabbed his mane again and banged him harder on the oak wood.
Drakon Book IV: Butterfly Page 4
