Mother of Wasps frowned at him, tapping one finger against her chin. ‘All your charts?’
‘Every single one.’ He mentally catalogued those he’d left behind in Winter’s Hammer.
She looked at Little Cousin, who looked back at Sang Ki, perhaps not quite with his earlier trust. Sang Ki found it highly unlikely that Little Cousin himself would ever willingly surrender any charts he’d accumulated. ‘And what of the spirits, fat man?’ he asked.
‘The Five will protect us,’ the burnt woman said. She’d crept up to the ashes of the fire pit while they talked and sat with her head hunched, hiding her hideously scarred face.
‘There you go,’ Sang Ki said. ‘The Five will protect us, and we’ll make an offering to the spirits to keep them peaceful. We are cousins of theirs, after all – family enough for those starved of any.’
Little Cousin might still have disagreed but Mother of Wasps reached across to clasp his hand, swallowing his in her far larger one and squeezing hard enough to grind the bones against each other. ‘A bargain then, before the gods.’
The site had looked close, but it took them two days to reach it. Sang Ki knew he could never have found it without help, despite his maps. The dunes rolled into the distance in every direction, low golden hills shaped by the wind that blew across them every moment of the day, shifting them from place to place one grain of sand at a time. The oasis was soon lost to sight behind them, hidden from any but those who knew how to find it.
Despite having left the life of the oasis behind, the sensation of being watched had returned, a permanent itch between his shoulder blades. He nudged his malbeam closer to Little Cousin’s and asked, ‘Do others of your tribe travel nearby?’
‘Not travel, no. It is a shared duty among all of us, a place where there are no feuds. There is death enough here already.’
‘What duty?’
Little Cousin nodded to the horizon, where the wavering heat haze gradually resolved into the outlines of a dozen riders. ‘To guard that which must not be disturbed. We keep the graves of our cousin tribe free of scavengers. As Mother of Wasps said, there are many who come to steal its riches – Ashane and tribesmen and the Mangmeon, the people of the savannah. We protect the bones the spirits once animated and they spare us their wrath.’
The riders on the horizon had all turned to watch them, their blue robes flapping around them in the constant wind.
‘But you’ve never been to visit the place yourself.’
‘It’s forbidden, not so? For all but the guards, and guarding duty never passes to the River Ahn. But I’ve always wondered, and I can’t say I’m sorry for this chance, if your Five will protect us.’
It wasn’t quite a question, but Sang Ki said, ‘They will,’ with more certainty than he felt. Mother of Wasps kneed her mount to ride ahead of them, and by the time they reached the guards she’d already said whatever needed to be said to win their way through.
The guards parted without speaking. Their faces were hidden behind the blue scarves all desert-dwellers used to keep out the windborne sand, but their eyes were watchful as Sang Ki rode between them. And then they were over the next ridge and the grave site lay before them, an expanse of bone-strewn yellow that stretched out of sight in every direction.
Any comment Sang Ki might have made sank back into his throat at the sight. The Ahn dismounted their malbeam and Sang Ki awkwardly did the same. It seemed disrespectful to remain mounted here. He raised a hand to help the burnt woman down, though the movement pained his back. She gazed over the field of death and then asked Little Cousin, ‘Why hasn’t the wind covered them?’
Her voice sounded shockingly loud in the silence, but it was a good question. Even now, grains of sand were shifting and settling over the pure white of the bones.
‘Our people keep them clean,’ Little Cousin told her.
Sang Ki knelt beside one pitifully small skeleton, a child of surely no more than five. The skull had separated from its neck and lay a little distance away, empty sockets turned up to a sun that would have blinded the eyes that once lay within. ‘It would seem kinder to let the sand bury them.’
Little Cousin shook his head. ‘No, no. Buried they would be forgotten by the living, and then the spirits would truly rage. This way they are remembered, at least by us.’
Sang Ki shivered despite the baking heat. He hadn’t thought much of Little Cousin’s talk of spirits; he’d been taught all his life that the Ashane gods were ten times more powerful than the tribes’, or how else would the lowlanders have conquered them? And he’d read the works of Cathura of Fell’s End, who claimed that the gods were nothing but dreams. But that had been before the moon rose. Here among the bones of a whole tribe it was easy to feel the restless presence of their spirits.
Scraps of dried flesh and clothing still clung to their skeletons and Mother of Wasps had been right – there were jewels and gold at bony wrists and draped across sunken chests. Sang Ki wandered among them, looking but never touching, until he began to see some pattern to the grim arrangement of bones.
They hadn’t fallen where they marched. In fact, now that he thought of it, it made no sense that they could all have succumbed to hunger and thirst in the same place. There should have been a long, sad trail of bones over miles of the desert, but instead here the Geun all were.
Once he’d thought that, the bones began to tell their stories. He saw that they were arranged in groups: one larger skeleton with smaller ones all around. The smaller were arranged with arms by their sides as if they’d fallen asleep on the ground. But when he looked closer, he saw nicks in their spines, near to where their living throats must have been, as if those throats had been slit.
The largest skeleton in each group was less orderly, a jumble of bones that might once have stood upright. And somewhere in each adult skeleton there was a blade. Finally he came to one that made it all clear; the hilt of the blade driven between its ribs was still clasped in its own hand.
‘They killed their children and then they killed themselves,’ he whispered.
Little Cousin’s expression was as sombre as he’d ever seen it. ‘Yes, fat man. This was known to us. Remember this was just after the ocean crossing, when there were only women to rule and no boy older than five years old. When it became hopeless, men might have gone on, but the women chose a quick death for their children. You see now why we fear the spirits here?’
Sang Ki shook his head, not to deny Little Cousin’s words but perhaps to deny the reality of what had occurred. ‘To slit your own child’s throat … How could they know they wouldn’t find water or rescue over the next dune?’
‘Perhaps they sent scouts ahead and knew there’d be no relief. When your own child is dying the slow death of want, then you may judge, fat man.’
Sang Ki nodded, shamed. He walked on, trying to imagine how it must have been for them, to end their long journey over the ocean in this arid place. Despite all the care of their Ahn guardians, many of the skeletons had been reduced to fragments. One day all semblance of life would be gone from them and this would be nothing but a vast field of smooth white stones. There were such stones here already, but when he knelt to inspect one he realised it had never been part of a person. And was there …? Yes, there seemed to be writing on it. It was only a pace away from the outflung arm of a skeleton.
‘Leave it, Seonu,’ Mother of Wasps shouted as he reached for it. She strode over the sand towards him, her blue robes billowing.
He ignored her, picking the stone up delicately between his fingers. ‘There’s a message here,’ he said to Little Cousin. ‘This woman’s last words, do you see?’ He pointed at the delicate scratches on the white surface of the stone. ‘She used her final moments to write this. Don’t you think she meant for it to be read?’
Little Cousin hesitated a moment, then came to kneel beside him. He cocked his head to the side, very like one of the colourful birds of the oasis, as he puzzled out the writing. ‘Oh, I see!’ he
said at last. ‘It’s a little like the writing of the Eom. The lines are strange but I think I can … yes. It seems to be: Geun Ha Eun asks – no begs – her … This could be gods or ancestors. Both perhaps. Geun Ha Eun begs the gods and her ancestors to forgive her. You were right, fat man, this was her last message – but not for us, I think.’
Many of the stones must have been lost beneath the sand, but Sang Ki soon found another, beside a skeleton whose ribs had been torn apart by some predator. ‘Geun Su Bim begs the gods and her ancestors to forgive her,’ he read. ‘I suppose they must all be the same.’
‘Yes.’ Little Cousin stooped over another small heap of bones. ‘Here it is again. Oh!’
‘What is it?’ Sang Ki asked when the trader remained silent, bent frowning over the small stone.
‘Perhaps my understanding of the script is not so fine,’ Little Cousin muttered.
There was something in his voice, a jagged tone very unlike him, that made Sang Ki hurry to his side. He studied the stone himself, but he’d read it three times before the import of the words sunk in. ‘Seonu Min Ju begs the gods and her ancestors to forgive her.’
‘Perhaps she had friends among the Geun and chose to travel with them.’ It was obvious Little Cousin didn’t believe his own words. He and Sang Ki exchanged a troubled glance. They began to hunt by unspoken consent, lifting all the stones they could find while Mother of Wasps glared and the burnt woman watched.
Soon they had more than a dozen stones between them, but Sang Ki couldn’t bring himself to read them. Was this knowledge he couldn’t face? He didn’t want to think it of himself, but he handed the stones to Little Cousin and closed his eyes as the other man spoke.
‘Geun Sang Hoon begs the gods and her ancestors to forgive her,’ Little Cousin read, and Sang Ki gasped in relief until he continued, ‘Seonu Mi Kyung begs the gods and the ancestors to forgive her. Seonu Sun Young begs the gods and her ancestors to forgive her. Geun Kyung Hee begs the gods and her ancestors to forgive her. Seonu Ha Eun begs the gods and her ancestors to forgive her. Seonu Sook Ja begs—’
‘Enough!’ Sang Ki shouted, and Little Cousin dropped the remaining stones in shock at the anger in his voice. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said more quietly. ‘But there’s no need to read any more. It’s clear what we have here.’
‘Is it?’ Little Cousin asked.
‘Of course.’ Sang Ki was surprised at how steady his voice remained. ‘This is the grave site not of one tribe, but two. The Seonu no more survived the desert crossing than the Geun.’
‘But you are Seonu,’ Little Cousin said. ‘Perhaps some died here. Perhaps the tribe split …’
It was perfectly plausible, and yet Sang Ki knew in his gut it wasn’t true. He thought he might have known it his whole life. Because if the Seonu lay here, then his people weren’t the Seonu. And if his people weren’t the Seonu, who were they? He remembered the monumental rocks, scattered across the high, cold plain that was his people’s home, and thought that he could guess. The rocks with the moon’s face carved into them.
Some premonition made him turn away from Little Cousin and look back over the bonefield they’d crossed. He was watching the horizon when the figures appeared on it: first one, then a dozen – then more than he could count. None of them wore the blue robes of the desert tribe and the sun flashed silver on their drawn swords.
‘Mother,’ he said, when the riders had come close enough that he could smell the strange gingery scent of their mounts. Hana’s presence here felt so unlikely that the events took on the quality of a dream, in which one thing could follow another without explanation. Little Cousin seemed more intrigued than alarmed, but his aunt watched the interlopers with narrowed eyes and a hand near her sabre.
‘Sang Ki,’ his mother said. ‘My son.’
‘What are you doing here? How did you find me?’ He took a step towards her and then stopped, still ten paces short. The warriors beside her were Seonu – or whatever his people truly were – and none of them had sheathed their weapons.
‘I only waited until I could gather some of our tribe before I followed after you,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen the same maps you use. I know you. I knew where you’d come.’
‘And did you know what he’d find here?’ Little Cousin asked. He sounded genuinely curious.
Hana turned away from the Ahn trader, as if he was nothing to her, and answered only Sang Ki. ‘I knew. And you’d know too, if you’d waited just six more weeks.’
‘This is the Seonu secret, then?’ Sang Ki said, more bitterly than he’d intended. ‘That there are no Seonu.’
‘There have been no Seonu for many hundreds of years. They never stepped foot on the plains.’
‘But we took their name. We pretended to be them. Why, Mother? So vast a trick – a trick you played even on your own children. Why ever would you do it?’
She raised her head, a glint in her eye that seemed like anger, but might have been pride. ‘We are the Yronim, the people of the moon god. A thousand years ago Mizhara’s followers tried to snuff us out. I know you know it. You saw our slaughtered children at the bottom of Miduelle Lake. But a remnant of a remnant survived and hid in our last strongholds in the high mountains. We hid because we knew that one day the Mizharim would come to finish the job they’d started. And so when the tribes came to these lands, and we saw that they looked so very like us, we knew what we could do. We dyed our hair to match theirs and we hid in plain sight. We hid and waited for the day that Yron would return, as he’d promised us he would.’
‘This is fascinating,’ Little Cousin said. ‘Such a huge lie, so boldly told, as all the best lies are, not so?’
‘Please,’ Sang Ki said to him, ‘don’t … don’t listen.’
‘No, listen,’ his mother said. ‘Let all the tribes and the peoples of these lands listen. Yron has returned and we have returned to his service. We sent warriors to our lord’s forest, to serve his creatures as we did in days past – to armour them against their enemies. And we joined with the forces that would oppose him. I allowed you to join with them, Sang Ki, so that we could know their plans and thwart them. And now we do and we will.’
‘Just go,’ Sang Ki said to Little Cousin. ‘Please, just go.’
But he knew that it was too late, and Mother of Wasps did too. She also knew that it was hopeless, but like the women whose bones littered the sand, she chose a quick death over uncertainty.
With a fierce cry, Mother of Wasps drew her sabre and charged at the line of warriors who cut off her escape. She was big and strong and she wielded the sword like she knew how to use it. Her first stroke half-severed the leg of one warrior. He fell from his saddle screaming, and her back-stroke gutted the next warrior’s malbeam. She was through the line and she ran on, towards the Ahn guards, who must surely be dead already. It almost seemed like she might make it. But she was afoot and a moment later a mounted warrior rode her down and slashed his sabre across her back, sending her sprawling on to the bones below.
‘None must know this but us,’ Sang Ki’s mother said.
Now Little Cousin finally understood that he should be afraid. He drew his own axes and backed away. Sang Ki reached out to him, to protect him or to stop him, he wasn’t sure. It was futile anyway. The arrow that lodged in his chest couldn’t have been stopped. There was no moment when Little Cousin was dying. That didn’t seem right. He seemed like a man who should be allowed some last words. But the instant the arrow struck him, he was gone.
‘Enough!’ Sang Ki screamed, flinging himself in front of the burnt woman. ‘Leave her be! She can’t go to the Ashane. She has to stay with us!’
His mother frowned, then waved her warriors back. ‘She will come with us then. Let Yron decide her fate.’
‘Where … where are we going?’
She looked at him with something like affectionate pity, as if he was too foolish to be allowed to manage his own affairs. It was so like the way she always looked at him that he choked out a desperat
e laugh.
‘We go to Mirror Town,’ she said, ‘to join our god at last.’
36
On the seventh day after the mirrors were shattered, Krish walked down the grand central avenue of Mirror Town. Broken glass crunched beneath his sandals and he felt the fear all around him. Some of the mages had begun to fashion new mirrors, but they’d never make them in time.
He saw twenty sweating men and five women armed with a mismatched assortment of weapons scavenged from the walls of mansions and the cellars of the city’s museums. There was a sword so heavily jewelled it must surely have been ceremonial, a rusty halberd and an axe that the mage who hefted it could barely lift. In their centre stood a slave, a tribesman who’d once been a warrior. He spoke to the mages around him, instructing them in the arts he’d once practised, and smiled mindlessly as they demonstrated their incompetence at them.
Krish knew that weapons alone couldn’t save them. But Olufemi had sent for him this morning, after days of silent study. The mage was waiting for him in the Garden of Creation at the heart of the city. He’d wandered among the twisted sculptures before. Their eye-bending colours were hideous and the sun glanced at dazzling angles from the shiny glaze of their ceramic surfaces.
Olufemi leaned against one of the sculptures, a twisted blue-purple shape that might almost have been human. Beside her was another mage, so small and frail she seemed in danger of blowing away in the desert wind. Her hair was sparse and a pure, snowy white, a brilliant contrast to her dark skin. Looking at her, Krish wondered how he could ever have thought Olufemi old.
‘Krishanjit, this is Yemisi,’ Olufemi said. ‘She’s told me she has something to show us. Though why you brought us here to do it, Yemi, I don’t know.’
‘No indeed, you don’t know,’ the ancient woman said in a querulous voice. ‘That’s why you should listen. So, boy, has Femi told you what this place is?’
The Hunter's Kind: Book II of The Hollow Gods Page 40
