by Davis Ashura
“You’re welcome,” Jessira replied.
Chak-Soon grunted, and the two of them fell again into silence.
Jessira looked ahead to where Rukh and Li-Choke spoke to one another. The two of them had a genuine affection for one another. It was hard getting used to. While Jessira had come to accept Li-Choke’s presence, she still wasn’t comfortable around him. Not like Rukh, who seemed to think the Baels were already allies. Again, it was his rare gift: he forgave those he should have hated with every fiber of his being. And if he could forgive Humanity’s enemies, then perhaps he could forgive those amongst her kind who had wronged him.
“Mother not right ‘bout you,” Chak-Soon said, interrupting her thoughts.
She glanced at the tall, powerful Chimera. For once, his inscrutable features were easy to read. The Tigon’s ears were wilted, and his gaze was cast downward. Even the way he walked: the droop of his shoulders as he shuffled beside her spoke of an inner turmoil. Chak-Soon was ashamed.
“You think Suwraith is wrong?” Jessira guessed.
Chak-Soon nodded, staring downward, unwilling to look her way. “We kill. Not good. Choke says brothers are we.”
Jessira studied the Tigon once more, searching for signs of deception. He sounded and looked sincere in his statement, and some of the distrust she felt for the big Chimera thawed. Perhaps Li-Choke was right. Maybe Chak-Soon could be taught a better path, one in which Humanity was no longer the enemy. It seemed an almost unbelievable change of heart, a miracle really, but it didn’t change the fundamentals of the situation. Chak-Soon was but one ordinate — what the Tigons named their commanders — alone in his way of thinking. He was a single green leaf on a tree full of autumn’s reds and golds, easily missed and overlooked. What chance did he have of changing the hearts of so many? Of those who held fast to their faith in the Queen and who would leap at the chance to kill those who She named evil.
Not much. There weren’t likely to be many others like Chak-Soon amongst the Tigons.
“What are the two of you talking about?” Rukh asked. He and Li-Choke had slowed down so Jessira and Chak-Soon could catch up with them.
“Chak-Soon was just thanking me for Healing him,” Jessira replied. “He was also … ” she broke off when she noticed the Tigon’s silence.
Once again, he’d separated himself, walking ahead with his head drooping. She understood. Chak-Soon wasn’t brooding or being sullen. He was humiliated. All along, the Tigon had been going through a crisis of conscience.
“The rest is for him to say,” she added.
*****
Chak-Soon was the last to cross to the eastern shored of the Soulless River. Fording the river hadn’t been easy — all of them ended up having to swim at least part of the river’s breadth — but at least the Creosote Plain was now behind them, and from where they now stood, the Privations soared directly ahead. In reality, the mountains were many miles distant. A thick forest of hardwoods — oak, maple, and elm — arose close by, stretching to the broad shoulders of the mountains.
Rukh turned away from the others as he stripped out of his wet clothes and donned a dry shirt and trousers. Jessira was doing the same. Rukh tried not to stare at her legs. From when they practiced, either with the sword or while wrestling, he knew just how strong her legs could be. How then were they also so soft and warm? He lost himself tracing the elegant lines of their length, the curves where they met …
“This is where we part ways,” Li-Choke said.
Rukh broke of his contemplation of Jessira’s legs. He hoped he wasn’t blushing.
“We’ll make our way to the Hunters Flats from here,” Choke continued, apparently not noticing Rukh’s reaction. “I imagine you’ll head for Ashoka.”
Rukh grunted, not bothering to correct the Bael. He didn’t like lying to Choke — he thought of him as a friend — but Jessira had been insistent that even the most vague sense of Stronghold’s location, or even its existence, had to be kept secret from both Chimeras. Rukh didn’t blame her. If the Queen ever learned of Jessira’s home or worse, its location, the city would be doomed. There was no Oasis to protect it.
“Hate water,” Chak-Soon complained, as he wrung out his dripping fur.
Rukh sympathized, an unusual sentiment to hold for a Tigon. In the beginning, he hadn’t been sure what to make of Chak-Soon. In fact, there had been many occasions during the early days of their travel together when he had wondered if he’d been wrong to ask Jessira to Heal the Tigon. Eventually, those suspicions had faded as he got to know Chak-Soon. The Tigon was trying to become a better being than nature and the Queen had made him. It couldn’t be easy, and Rukh wondered what Chak-Soon would do once he was back amongst his own kind — Tigons who still dreamt of murdering Humans, of rending their flesh in honor of their so-called Mother? What then would Chak-Soon do? Would he fall back into the habits he knew so well? Would he betray Li-Choke?
Rukh didn’t know, but he prayed it would be otherwise. He prayed Devesh — or someone — would see the young Tigon through his crisis of conscience. He was surprised by how earnestly he prayed for Chak-Soon.
“The Soulless wasn’t so bad,” Li-Choke said in response to Chak-Soon’s complaint. “You should try fording River Crush. All those rapids and falls.” He mock-shuddered. “I hear it can be tense. In fact, it’s said that the Western Plague loses more Chimeras to those waters than to any caravan of Humans.”
“Where will you go next?” Rukh asked
“To the Eastern Plague. Mother will expect a full report,” Li-Choke replied. “She promised to let my brothers live if I obeyed Her will in this matter.”
“What will you tell her?” Jessira asked, coming up to join their conversation.
Li-Choke smiled. “Anything to keep me and my kind alive,” he said without the faintest hint of irony.
Chak-Soon bared his teeth, exposing sharp fangs. It was an expression Rukh had learned was the Tigon’s way of smiling. “Mother think I stupid. She not care what say.”
“We’ll have to cut south of the Privations,” Choke added. “We might pick up some late snow.”
“You’ll be fine,” Jessira said with a smile. “You’ve got all that fur to keep you warm.”
“Not like fur wet,” Chak-Soon complained once again.
Jessira chuckled. “So much like a cat.”
Rukh was taken aback by Jessira’s expression of affection for the Tigon. It set him wondering if it really only required two weeks of travel and an open heart for centuries of hatred to be cleansed? He reckoned it was too simple a solution for such a deep-rooted, complicated problem. But then again, sometimes what everyone knew to be the hardest things in life were, in reality, the easiest. In any case, it was a reason for hope.
“Goodbye, Rukh Shektan,” Li-Choke said with a smile. Rukh found his feet dangling off the ground as the Bael hugged him. “Thank you for saving me. Again.”
“Travel safe,” Chak-Soon said, looking uncertain.
Rukh settled on a handshake with the Tigon.
Their parting words spoken, Rukh and Jessira watched as Li-Choke and Chak-Soon made their way southeast, before they eventually crested a hill and disappeared.
“Time for us to go, too,” Jessira said.
Rukh found her staring eastward, toward the soaring Privation Mountains. It was easy to understand why: Jessira wanted to go home. Rukh would have felt the same way if their roles had been reversed. “Stronghold it is,” he said.
“Are you sure you want to?” she asked diffidently.
Rukh smiled. “I told you before: my home is with you.” He felt the rightness of his words even as he said them.
Jessira’s eyes shone. Without a word, she stepped forward and fistfuls of his shirt were caught in her hands. She kissed him. It was hard and passionate, loving and possessive all at once. It was a kiss only she could give, and Rukh didn’t want it to end.
*****
The small fire crackled merrily. Rukh and Jessira had set up
camp along the banks of a small, spring-fed lake, deep in the thick woodlands that began north of the Privation Mountains and extended all the way down to Samsoul. In the clearing made by the pond, the majesty of the night sky was visible, spread out above them like a shimmering curtain of light. Jessira was cleaning up, wanting privacy while she bathed. The sound of her splashing could be heard, along with the noises of chirping crickets and a nearby owl as it hooted.
Rukh had already bathed, and he sat by the fire, fingering The Book of First Movement. It was such a slender book with a cover of soft, blue leather, and the title embossed in gold. The pages were of a yellow paper and black. All except the first page where Rukh could read a single line: Believe my song and serve greatness. Could this really have been written by the First Father? Why didn’t he have more to say with his final words?
Rukh glanced toward the pond. Jessira was mostly hidden by a bed of tall rushes that swayed gently in the soft breeze. He couldn’t tell, but it seemed as if her back was to him, and little beyond her head and torso was visible. She turned to the side and stretched, arching her back as she ran fingers through her hair. The flash of a pale breast was briefly visible in the moonlight. He sat forward, his interest piqued. He sighed in disappointment when she turned away again.
Jessira looked like she was going to take a while with her bath, so Rukh went back to studying the book in his hands. He turned it over in his hands, studying it from every angle before cracking it open.
When he thumbed through The Book, he was disappointed to find the stories were true: the pages were empty, all but the very first one. There, written with a man’s strong hand in blue ink was a single line: ‘Believe my song and serve greatness’.
Rukh pondered the words, wondering why it was no one else had been able to read this solitary script until Hume? And surely there had to be more to the First Father’s book than this one enigmatic line. He held The Book up to the light, looking to see if a faint tracery of words might be visible if the pages were backlit.
Still nothing.
A strange rushing noise filled his ears, a sound of ringing bells, strumming strings, and peeling horns. Rukh felt himself tumbling, down deep toward a gentle blue light.
“Rukh!” the voice was distant. Jessira. He tried to answer, to push against whatever was pulling him downward. He was helpless as a leaf on the wind. He fell …
Linder Val Maharj, the Son of the Desert, stood alone within a field of wildflowers at twilight. The sun had already set, and rich reds, yellows, and oranges burnished the sky in jewel-like tones. Autumn was here, and the harvest moon hung above, silver and serene, but the trees lining the field remained clothed in their summer foliage, verdant and green. It was a warm evening.
Linder was a tall, well-built man of middle years with a dark hue. His face was too rugged and worn to be called handsome; the result of early years spent exposed to the heat, the cold, and the rain. His nose was an axe blade that cleaved his acne-scarred face in twain and the dark, forceful eyes of a raptor peered out from beneath heavy brows. Long, black hair, touched with streaks of gray, was tied in the back with a simple leather cord, and an enigmatic smile curved his thin, fierce lips as he held a bouquet of flowers. Though Linder lacked physical beauty, there was a commanding presence to him, an aura most women found attractive.
Not that another woman could have ever tempted him. In the almost three millennia Linder and Cienna, his wife, had been married, he had never once considered sharing the bed of another. His wife was his life and his treasure, his anchor in the world, and he rejoiced every day when he awoke and gazed upon her face. They were immortal, but eternity would not be time enough for their love.
He admonished himself for his distracted thoughts. He was here to arrange a bouquet for tonight’s dinner. He already held tulips and hyacinths and yellow roses along with some other flowers that he couldn’t name. But, he still needed some sprigs of honeysuckle. Cienna loved the fragrance of honeysuckle, and his wife wanted tonight to be perfect.
After all, their only child, Lienna would be sharing dinner with them.
Linder’s smile slipped at the thought of his daughter. She had been such a bright, happy child. So inquisitive. Brilliant in ways few could comprehend. So many secrets she had learned of Jivatma. Only Linder and Cienna exceeded her mastery. How then had she grown into such a distant, distrustful woman? Withdrawn and cold. It had been decades since Linder or Cienna had heard from her.
Occasionally, strange rumors reached them, stories of burnings and terror in the settlements; of a mad woman, running naked, with her hair matted and skin the color of leaves, who capered through small villages on the fringes of the great forest. She would set the buildings alight, screaming that the world, Arisa itself, demanded vengeance for the death of the forests and the murder of small animals. The settlers — whose only crime had been to work their fingers to the bone from sunup to sundown as they tried to make a life for themselves in the wilderness — had been helpless before her. They couldn’t stop her madness. Sometimes the killer was given a name: Suwraith: the Bringer of Sorrows. Other times, she was called Lienna.
Cienna had refused to believe the mad woman might be their own daughter, but doubt had often lingered within Linder’s breast. He had seen the devastation wrought by this Suwraith, and his people’s pain stabbed at his heart. He and Cienna had practically been Nanna and Amma to all of Humanity, and indeed people knew of them as the First Father and First Mother. To see so many slaughtered had left him trembling with rage.
But one day a year ago, just as quickly as the killings had begun, they had ended. Since that time, no one again heard the name Suwraith or Lienna.
Then yesterday, their daughter, after an absence of over fifty years, had asked to visit her parents. Cienna was excited, but Linder had reservations. What had their daughter been doing in all these years? Who was she now? How could they know, not having seen or spoken to her in more than half a century?
Linder shook his head, wanting to clear such troublesome thoughts from his mind, unaware that he was frowning. Suddenly, his body whipped around in the direction he knew was home. His pupils dilated and his nostrils flared as though seeking to capture some elusive scent. He focused on some unseen event occurring at the Palace on the Hill, the home he had shared with his wife for over nineteen hundred years. His face grew ashen and seemed to sag as he felt prickles run through his body. A look of horror stole over his face.
Cienna!
He drew on his Well and Voyaged to a plain, small room in the Palace. It was down the hall from the dining room where he had last sensed Cienna’s thoughts. Why couldn’t he do so anymore? He’d been able to ‘feel’ Cienna since that day three millennia ago when they had first released the power of the WellStone and brought life to a desolate world. The question raised a fresh terror in his mind.
He raced down the hallway, with no other thought than to reach his wife.
Immediately, he noticed the bodies.
Linder slowed to a stop. These were the people who had chosen to make their lives here at the Palace, as servants to the First Mother and the First Father. They were all good friends. Now, blood pooled beneath their corpses. Knife wounds marred their bodies, some with throats slit. Even in death, their eyes appeared tormented.
Linder barely held down his gorge. He resumed his run, praying and hoping that Cienna had been spared. His fear for her was an illness. His skin was hot and sweaty. His stomach was lead and he couldn’t breathe. He felt as if he’d been mule kicked.
Faster, run faster was his mantra.
At last he came to the small dining room. It was an intimate space, square and highlighted by a round cherry wood table polished to a high sheen with seating for four. The light was soft and muted, and the walls were a sky blue. Above the hearth hung a painting of a smiling Linder holding a laughing Cienna. They were by the seashore, looking on as their then three-year-old daughter, Lienna played in the waves.
None of it
mattered now.
Where was Cienna?
There!
She lay face up, unmoving on the far side of the table. Centered upon her chest was a gaping wound. It was like the servants outside.
But Cienna’s murder had been different. Her clothes hung loose about her once lush and beautiful body, and her skin was pulled tight, her bones prominent. She appeared skeletal, as withered and dry as a roasted cornhusk. Writ large on her face was the torment of betrayal.
With an anguished cry that seemed to shake the room, Linder rushed to her and took her in his arms. His eyes watered as he wept with inconsolable grief. He rocked her back and forth gently, kissing her hair and keening like a stricken animal, crying out his grief and loss.
Time ended. He knew that even if he lived for another thousand years or even ten thousand, he would never recover from the pain of this moment.
His only hope and consolation was that Devesh would shelter Cienna, and he would find her waiting for him across the bridge of life.
“You found her.”
Linder startled. That voice. He recognized it.
He looked up. On the other side of table, standing in the entrance to the dining room was his daughter. She was a tall woman, still youthful despite her over century of life. She was strikingly beautiful by any standards, or would have been had she not been covered in blood. She looked to have bathed in it. Her honey-blonde hair was soaked in it as was her face. And she was naked.
Tears still flowed from his eyes, but Linder no longer sobbed. “Lienna … ?” Normally he had a clear, deep voice, a voice used to command and obedience. Now his words came out as a weak croak. He was confused, consumed with misery, his reason for living dead in his arms, and here stood his daughter looking to have been dipped in a vat of blood. “What happened? Who did this? Do you know?” he asked.
Lienna seemed strangely untouched by all the tragedy surrounding her. She wore an indecipherable, confused smile on her face and stepped around the table, seeming to stalk him.
Lienna displayed a foot-long knife dripping with blood. “Whoever killed your wife used this thing.” She paused and tilted her head to the side as though confused or listening to an unheard voice. “I think it’s called the Withering Knife,” she continued, “or at least … I think that’s what it … ” She trailed off into vacant silence.
