by Tara Maya, Elle Casey, J L Bryan, Anthea Sharp, Jenna Elizabeth Johnson, Alexia Purdy (epub)
The two exiles kept chewing. Their noseless, earless leader stopped.
“You’re not going to join us, are you?”
Kavio smiled apologetically. “No. I’m going to free the old man. You’re going to try to stop me. Then I’m going to kill you.”
The leader hefted his spear, which spurred his companions to do the same, but Kavio was already moving. Weaponless, it took him several minutes and cost him an ugly punch to the ear to kill all three rovers. He untied the old man and asked if his clanhold was far. The old man scrambled away, too terrified to answer. Pursuit seemed more likely to scare than help him.
He couldn’t desecrate the dead, even bandits, so he searched near the main path until he found a smaller path which paralleled it, a trail marked as Deathsworn by a black megalith capped by a skull.
To trod the path of the Deathsworn was to join them, or join the dead, and they in turn, were forbidden to taint the paths of ordinary men. The Deathsworn were neither fae nor exactly human, though they had once been human. The fae couldn’t see them. The Deathsworn recruited from all tribes and belonged to none. They were not allowed to involve themselves in tribal wars or clan politics. They performed a gruesome job, and most people loathed and shunned them, but everyone needed them.
He left the bodies beneath the skull stone. After a slight hesitation, he relieved one corpse of legwals and a spear.
The legwals stank of sour milk and blood, a stench that reminded him of the first time he’d killed a man. Though Kavio had only been ten, not yet past Initiation into manhood, he’d already been Tested and proved a Tavaedi. During the fight, he’d been so sacred he pissed himself, and because of that so embarrassed, he hadn’t told Father what happened. His stupid fear, his stupid pride, had almost started a war.
Was this the meaning of his journey omen? He’d spent his whole life trapped in the literal and political mazes of the Rainbow Labyrinth tribehold. This was his chance to shed those restrictions, grow himself anew. He didn’t want to be his father’s shadow, or his mother’s reflection, but neither did he care to be a rover. If he remade himself, he wanted to become more than he had been, not less.
Sheer cliffs lay directly west, so he took the gentler eastern path from the box canyon then circled back into the mountains. A generation ago, many thriving clanholds had nestled in the arroyos and cliffs of these mountains. Eagles nested in the thatch bomas where warriors had once stood guard. Whole clans had bequeathed nothing to the future but their bones. His father would not say how he had survived those years; that generation hoarded food and secrets, but Kavio knew more than his father suspected. It was in the West, in Yellow Bear, Kavio had learned his father was not the hero he’d always believed.
At times, he felt sure someone followed him. He went so far as to double back on his tracks, in case the rovers had friends. He saw no one.
At a major crossroads in the trail, however, a crowd of men and women waited. He growled to himself. He’d sharpened the stone point on the spear he’d won from the rovers, but if it came to real battle, he wasn’t properly armed.
This lot looked more deadly than the rovers. For one thing, he knew them and many of them were Tavaedies. It stung to realize that many of those standing there to confront him were young men and women of his own generation whom he had considered friends. Even Nilo, the son of Danumoru and Shula.
Kavio refused to show how they had hurt him. Weakness must be concealed; he’d learned that much from his father.
“Well?” he challenged.
“We want to come with you.”
This, he hadn’t expected. “Are you mad?”
“If the Morvae are going to start exiling Imorvae again, we want to be with you,” Nilo said. “If the blooded spear is to come, we’re going to be on your side.”
The others grunted agreement.
“Don’t be fools. There must be no blooded spear, no war. It would rip the tribe apart.”
“So you’re just going to accept being smoked out of the Labyrinth like a rat?” cried Nilo. “You’re just going to let Zumo win? You know that none of us will ever follow him as War Chief!”
“It’s too early to say it will come to that.”
“His blood flows from the Bone Whistler, and so do his ambitions. He’s already got you out of the way!” said Nilo. “With the White Lady under the Curse of Obsidian Mountain and your father growing older, and now you exiled—who else is there to stop him?”
“You going into exile with me won’t help,” said Kavio.
Nilo exchanged glances with some of the others. “It will—if we go to the Yellow Bear tribehold to raise an army against him. There are many of our people still living there who would follow us, who would follow you, Kavio. You could return in a year’s time with Tavaedies and warriors at your back! We could finally wipe out—”
“Enough!” said Kavio. He inhaled air past his clenched teeth to calm himself. “Enough, Nilo. You mustn’t talk like that. You mustn’t even think it. I will raise no army to march against my own tribehold. And I will take no one into an exile that I alone earned.”
“I guess we all knew you would say that.” Nilo shifted his feet. “That’s why we brought you journey gifts.” He held out his spear. “I want you to have this—no, don’t shake your head. You can’t refuse, it’s a journey gift. We took care to gather nothing from the Labyrinth itself, only outlying holds.”
One by one, each one of them pressed close to Kavio to give him gifts. Weapons, clothing, food, water, even jewelry. Overwhelmed, touched, Kavio could only murmur his thanks.
When his friends had dressed him and weighed him down with almost more than he could carry, they finally allowed him to say goodbye.
Nilo clasped his hand, then hugged him. He said in Kavio’s ear, “But you are going to the Yellow Bear tribehold, aren’t you, Kavio?”
“Perhaps.”
Nilo smiled, satisfied with that. “Whatever you do there, we will be waiting for you when you get back. We have no doubt you will be back. And then the blooded spear will be loosed, whether any of us like it or not.”
Kavio
Kavio camped alone, as before, in much greater comfort, but with even less peace of mind. Nilo and the others had meant to encourage him to come back to the Labyrinth. Instead, the disturbing conversation made Kavio wonder—if his return to the Labyrinth would ignite a civil war, maybe the best thing he could do would be to stay away. So much for the freedom of exile. His responsibilities trailed him like spies.
Perhaps actual spies trailed him as well. He again heard a rustle nearby, a subtle crackling in the leaves that made him tense. Maybe Nilo, or some other would-be ally, still wanted to follow him into exile. Or maybe some would-be enemy wanted to make certain he would never return.
Kavio climbed higher into the mountains. The peaks met like clapped hands to divide the rains of the world in half. All waters of the eastern fingers cascaded into a drought-dry landscape of sandstone phantasmagoria—stone rainbows, stone islands, stone waves, striated stone flavors of pepper and cayenne. All the waters to the other side flowed west, through terrain sweetened by late summer storms, down, gently down through valleys of oak and golden poppy, down, gently down to coastal forests and the sea.
In the mountains, however, autumn had already given way to winter, and he found the pass already thick with snow, where he sacrificed a night and a day to lay a trap. He had to choose his spot, plan his moves against possible countermoves, dance a spell without making it obvious to any hypothetical observers what he was doing. The crisp powder proved a convenient medium for false footprints. By the next nightfall, he was ready. He cast his prepared illusion around a log to make it look like his sleeping form, and then he doubled back over his trail, climbed a tree, and watched his own camp.
The moon rose with no sign of any intruder. Once he heard scritching in the tree where he waited and looked up into the stare of a snow snake, camouflaged like a fall of snow on the branch. Their venom was quite lethal,
he recalled. He glared at it until it slithered away to find its own damn tree. He took this living echo of his journey omen as a sign he wasn’t just trying to catch an enemy who existed only in his paranoid imagination.
Then, close to midnight, he heard a twig snap below his tree.
Two masked Tavaedies crept into position, and, after exchanging a silent nod, rushed to hack apart the log he’d left in his sleeping roll. They cussed like drunks when they discovered they’d dulled their flint axes for no reason. In the dark, he couldn’t see their tribal marks, and might not have been able to guess in any case, since they both wore furs against the cold. He shadowed them back to their camp, a neat affair of two leather tents and seven canoes. The snow gave way to the ice-choked grasses of a frozen river. The ice was unbroken, and the grass tall enough to offer cover, so he followed cautiously, but something nagged him. Two men had attacked his sleeping roll, but there were seven boats.
Five more men cracked out of the ice in a circle around Kavio. Human, not fae. He couldn’t tell their tribe. Lathered with lard for warmth, camouflaged by mud and rushes, they were clumps of living marsh. They’d been crouching under a layer of ice no thicker than flatbread, breathing through reeds, waiting to spring their trap. Nets weighted with rocks dragged Kavio down while the men cudgeled his back. The blows brought agony without the solace of oblivion —the warriors knew their art, and steered their blows away from his head, aiming to hurt and subdue, not kill—yet. They tied his hands and feet, yanked his hair to expose his neck.
A mountain of muscle tattooed on both arms and both cheeks loomed over Kavio.
“The death blow is mine, blame or fame. You are all witness,” the leader barked at his men. They grunted back.
This man knows who I am. Unfortunately, their acquaintance was not mutual.
“I know why you plan to kill me,” Kavio announced. Bold lies worked best. “But just the opposite is true.”
The leader shot a beefy hand out to grip Kavio’s neck. “Don’t waste my time.”
“Let me prove it.”
“How?”
Good question. Kavio would bet his mother’s goat and toss bones the big man and his sept of disciplined warriors weren’t petty bandits. The big man fought for kin and glory, but whose? What was his rank? Too good to be a mere sept leader, too far in the wilderness to be a War Chief. A war leader, then.
“Take me to your War Chief and let him decide after he hears my proposal,” Kavio dared him.
“Why should I waste War Chief Nargono’s ears on your begging?”
Nargono was War Chief of the Blue Waters tribe, once an ally of Rainbow Labyrinth, now one of his father’s bitter foes. To be fair, his father had a knack for embittering foes.
“Did you know my own father once gave me as a slave to the War Chief of Yellow Bear?” Kavio asked. “Yellow Bear—are they friends of yours?”
The big man glared at him through narrowed eyes. Whatever he saw, it bought Kavio another day of life. “Dump him in the boat.”
“Gag him, Rthan?” asked a warrior.
Kavio trotted the name through his memory, but it didn’t sound familiar.
“No, I want him to talk.” Rthan unclenched Kavio’s throat one finger at a time.
Chapter Three
Doll
Brena
Before dawn, the clanhold of Sycamore Stands already throbbed with the sounds of women pounding nuts. The astringent smell of acorn drifted from the leeching ditches between the clay domed huts. Once Zavaedi Brena made certain her snoopy neighbor, Auntie Ula, was not following her, she urged her two daughters, Gwena and Gwenika, past the clanhold stockade, down the embankment, to a spot hidden by sycamore trees. They did this every morning, yet every morning Brena had to battle all over again to force them to move, as if it were the first time.
Gwena, the oldest, spent an inordinate amount of time combing her hair. On the way to the woods, she craned her neck to attract the attention of young men burning brush for gardens. Several of the hooligans smiled at her like idiots, until they saw Brena and hastened back to work.
Gwenika, younger by two years, started her whining earlier than usual. “Do I have to practice today?”
“Yes. You have to practice every day.”
“But I’m feeling very dizzy this morning.”
“Hrmf.” Brena still smarted from her cousin Ula’s admonishments last night. For fifteen years Ula had failed to have children of her own, but she insisted on lecturing those who did. “You’re too soft on the girls, that’s why the little one is so lazy. A good mother wouldn’t put up with that.” In the next breath, Auntie Ula went on to say, “And why do you push those girls so hard? It isn’t natural for a mother to put so much pressure on her daughters to become Tavaedies. What’s wrong if they just want to be wives and mothers?”
Brena wanted to shake her. Well, which is it? Am I an unfit mother because I’m too soft on them or an unfit mother because I’m too hard on them? She already knew the answer. She couldn’t win either way. A woman, even a Zavaedi, had no business raising a family without a man, and Brena had made it clear to the whole clanhold years ago that one husband had left her bitter enough for a lifetime. The last thing she needed was another man in her life.
And if my girls become Tavaedies, they won’t be dependent on a having a husband to tend their fields either. After her husband died, what would have been her lot if she had not been a member of the secret society, able to earn gifts from the community by her own skills? With one hungry babe toddling at her feet and a belly full of a babe to come…she shuddered at the memory. It had been hard enough as it was, returning to the troop after she’d quit to raise her family.
She checked the clearing again to assure they had privacy, then clapped her hands to retrieve her daughters’ errant attention. “Today, girls, I want to see you walk through the Badger and Deer Positions, in both the Still and Moving forms.”
“Yes, Mama,” they chimed. Warblers chirped overhead.
“Begin girls!” commanded Tavaedi Brena. “Deer Leaps, from Still to Moving.”
Gwena flawlessly performed the steps several times. Gwenika, however, slumped through the forms with limp arms. She kicked at the dry leaves on the ground, then bent to pick up one of the spiky sycamore balls that littered the dust of the clearing.
“Can we dance somewhere else? These keep poking my feet.”
“No,” said Brena. “This is the safest place. I don’t want anyone spying on us.”
“How can you expect me to dance with poked feet?”
“Gwenika.” Every day it was some new complaint. Maybe Auntie Ula is right. I must have done something wrong with this one.
“Besides, my head is spinning. I’m feeling dizzy again.”
“Gwenika, I’ve told you—”
“Also, I’m suffering from fatigue. And my heart is beating more rapidly than usual.”
“Your heart is supposed to be beating more rapidly. You’re exercising.”
“Yes, but my face is pale and my lips and fingertips are white. See?” Gwenika held out her hand. “I recognize the symptoms from your Healing stories. I think the fae have hexed me with Feeble Blood Lack. Can I sit down?”
Beside her, Gwena rolled her eyes.
“The fae have not hexed you,” said Brena. “No one has hexed you. You’re just not trying. Let’s start that again. Gwena, good job, but keep your toes pointed in the leap. Gwenika, your leap looked like a frog, not a doe. Copy your sister.”
“I’ve been bleeding in unspeakable places for no reason,” Gwenika said.
At that, Brena swiveled her head and focused the brunt of her attention on Gwenika. For the first time, she noticed her younger daughter’s slightly swelling chest and widening hips. Oh no. It’s too soon. Where have the years gone? Yesterday, you were still my baby. Today . . .
Half encouraged, half disconcerted, Gwenika said, “I think the bleeding is causing Feeble Blood Lack.”
“You might
be right,” said Brena.
“I might?”
“You should sit down and just watch for a while.”
“So that means that the fae are hexing me?”
“No.” Brena pulled her hand through her hair. “It means that you, like your sister, have already had your first moonblood. It means I am running out of time to teach you everything I can before the Initiation.” She paced the clearing and gestured at the sycamore trees. “So little time left! These girls are still not ready!”
Or is it that I’m not ready for them to be ready?
“We’re trying to learn as fast as we can, Mama,” said Gwena.
“Aren’t we supposed to wait until Initiation to learn all the secret dances anyway?” Gwenika asked.
“Don’t let nonsense fall out of your mouth.” Brena scowled at what trouble Auntie Ula could cause if she had the idea that Brena was actually teaching the dances themselves. “I haven’t taught you any tama. I’ve taught you the basic steps, the hand gestures and the foot positions, the flips, the turns and the leaps. Believe me, without knowing those, you would never pass the Testing. And you also better believe that all Tavaedies teach their children these things. Why do you think that the honor of belonging to the secret society tends to stay in families?
“It isn’t forbidden for me to teach you what I do, as long as you’re still children. But once you are initiated, I will not be allowed to teach you any more. If you fail the Test, that’s it, that’s your last chance. Do you understand why it’s so important that you pay attention to everything I tell you now?”
“Yes, Mama,” both girls said in unison.
“Good.” Brena drew a deep breath. She put her hands on her hips. “Let’s begin again. Gwena, start with your feet in position—”
“But Mama!” said Gwenika.
With a toe tapping in annoyance, “Yes, Gwenika?”
“Gramma says that the best cure for anemia is eggs. Should I look for birds eggs?”
“Did nothing I said mean anything to you? You must practice, girl, practice!”
