Storm Bride

by J. S. Bangs

  Keshlik began to quake. Horror and wonder mixed in his chest, blocking out thought. Adrenaline and weariness mixed in his veins. He might crush the boy in his hands on accident in this state. “Take him,” he barked at Dhuja. “Take him!” He held out the babe at arm’s length.

  Dhuja took the child back from Keshlik and laid him in the nurse-mother’s arms. Keshlik turned away from them and buried his face in his arms. The baby’s wails punctuated Keshlik’s voiceless sobs. He heard the captive woman shush the child.

  He gathered enough composure to speak. “How did the captive woman come to take him to breast?”

  “I don’t know. I cut him free from the womb, and the woman took him and fled. We found her on the seashore, drenched with water, nursing the child. No one saw what happened.” Dhuja hesitated. “It is fortunate that she was here. Otherwise there would have been no one to nurse him.”

  “Fortunate,” Keshlik muttered. He looked at Tuulo, wrapped in the midwife’s death girdle, the yellow lamplight staining her brown, beautiful face. Fierce, kind Tuulo, the only woman he had ever knelt to. Strong enough to rebuke him, gentle enough to shame him. “Fortunate.”

  A gust of wind burst the door of the yurt and filled the space with chill air and the echo of rain. Dhuja pinched the flap shut.

  “If I had come more quickly…”

  “What would you have done?” Dhuja asked. “You couldn’t have entered Khou’s circle anyway.”

  “No, but…” A surge of anger passed through him. “Khou’s blessing did nothing to save my wife.”

  Dhuja was silent.

  He began to quake again. “I can’t stay here.” He pushed through the yurt door and into the storm. Rain blinded him as soon as he stepped outside. He slipped in the mud and fell. A curse burst from his lips. He rubbed the icy water from his eyes and struggled to his knees.

  The sun was dying beyond the clouds in the west, and the storm whirled and crashed around him. Lightning flashed. Keshlik glimpsed towers of boiling clouds lancing the earth with rain, trees bent over and thrashing in the wind. Another spearpoint of lightning flashed on the horizon, again lighting up the storm-battered landscape in splinters of white.

  “Golgoyat,” he whispered. He rose to his feet. “Golgoyat! Do you hear me? Speak to me now, as you spoke to my father!”

  Thunder shook the sky. Keshlik’s cloak thrashed like a banner in the wind. “You gave us victory on the battlefield, but there was no blessing for my wife? Have I carried your spear across the mountains so that my son could be nursed by a slave woman? Has your power dried up? Has Khou’s?”

  His breath ran out, and he fell to a knee, gasping. “Help me, lord of sky and storm. Help me. Show me where to go.”

  Again thunder rumbled, rolling across the sky from the east to the west. Keshlik looked up into the darkness of the storm.

  Lightning smote the shore. Thunder crashed. Through the trees between the yurt and the sea, he glimpsed the waves lifted like shields against the fury of the wind, and just above them was a shelf of rock that stood above the sea. Lightning flashed again, touching the stone, then struck the place a third time. The thunder sounded constantly, like the oncoming gallop of horses.

  Keshlik stared out toward the sea, though the landscape had faded into blackness. He rose to his feet. “I see your sign, Golgoyat, my lord.”

  He didn’t know what paths, if any, led from his position down to the sea, and he couldn’t see them in the dark. He charged under the spruces anyway. The trees bent and groaned, and water sprayed from their branches. The muddy ground was treacherous. His hands were soon bloody from the stones and stumps that stopped his falls, and he himself was slick with mud up to his waist. Lightning flashed shards of white light through the wind-whipped spruces.

  Keshlik stumbled out onto a grassy hillock above the beach. Lightning arced across the sky again, turning the sea a glaring white. The stone was a few hundred paces ahead on the beach.

  He slid down the rain-slicked slope that descended from the pines to the beach. His feet crunched in the pebbles. “Golgoyat, I’m coming. I’m coming.”

  He cast aside his waterlogged riding cloak and ran up the beach. The surf roared next to him. He fell headfirst into a storm-swollen brook that cut through the sands, kicked, and emerged spitting mud from his mouth.

  The rhythm of the storm drove him onward. The wind seemed to be his heartbeat. The thunder was his breath. When next a bolt painted the sky white, he saw the stone ahead of him, standing above the surf in defiance of the storm.

  The stone formed a little table, twenty paces wide, and rose just above the surf. The tide was in and had left a strip of seawater frothing between the beach and his goal.

  Keshlik hesitated. He did not fear lightning, but he couldn’t swim. “Golgoyat save me,” he muttered. He stripped off his pants and shirt and plunged into the water.

  The shock of cold water rushed over his legs. He pushed forward. The water rose to his knees, to his waist, to his belly, even as the rain pelted his back. Waves pulled at his feet, battered his chest, and splashed salt into his eyes.

  The water reached his shoulders. Just a little farther to the stone. A wave roared over his head, filling his mouth and eyes with sea foam, lifting his feet from the rocky sea floor. He thrashed in panic until his toes found the ground again.

  He spit the seawater from his mouth and lunged to the stone, digging his fingers into the slime-covered rock just in time to weather another wave.

  The rock cut into his fingers. He found toeholds and heaved himself up onto his belly. He kicked and scrabbled madly, pulling himself forward inch by inch, until he rested atop the stone.

  He waited there with his cheek against the rock, breathing heavily. His fingers, toes, and stomach bled.

  The sounds of the storm began to abate. No more time to rest. He gathered his strength and heaved himself to his feet. The clouds had begun to break apart to the east, and brilliant moonlight leaked through.

  He took a few steps forward. The moon lit something ahead of him, a dark shape rising out of the stone. He approached it, crushing shells under his bare feet.

  Three yards from the shape, he stopped.

  It was an old woman, silver-haired, wrapped in a white sheet. He bent and picked up a sharp stone—it was only an old woman, but he could not be too cautious—and crept forward.

  “Who are you?” He raised the stone to strike.

  She lifted her head, and he saw her face and her milk-colored eyes. He nearly dropped the stone.

  The witch.

  “Son of Golgoyat. You came.” She spoke Yakhat. Her voice creaked and groaned.

  He gripped the stone tighter and took a step closer. “What are you doing here? How did you get here?”

  “I should ask you the same thing. Do you often plunge into the ocean at night during a storm?”

  “Golgoyat called me here. Perhaps he called me to kill you.”

  “Perhaps he did.” She remained seated, as if waiting for him to act. Her eyes did not follow him. The moonlight reflected off the milky cataracts in their center.

  He stepped closer, cautious. She might split open the stone beneath him and swallow him up. But a quick blow to the head would bring her down, and he could crush her throat with a second blow. “Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you.”

  She cocked her head, as if listening to a voice he couldn’t perceive. “Because I am here. Because they were not human hands that pulled me from the water and clothed me in white.”

  “What do you mean? And where did you learn to speak our language?”

  “The answer to your questions are one and the same: Oarsa, of the deepness of the sea.”

  “I have never heard that name.”

  “But he knows you, and he knows the patrons of your people, Golgoyat of the storm cloud and… and Khou.” She paused, fingering
the edge of the white cloth that swaddled her. “Yes, her name is Khou. I called her Sorrow before.”

  Keshlik clenched the rock in his hand. Whether she knew the names of Golgoyat and Khou through spies or sorcery, she was here and in his power. In a moment, he could avenge the deaths of the Yakhat the witch had killed, and his people could be free of the only thing that could hold them back from final victory. He bolted forward, stone raised to strike.

  “Stop.”

  She had not moved, but her word struck him like an arrow.

  “Son of Golgoyat, remember your wife,” she said. “If you kill me here, war will not leave your people for the rest of your life.”

  “Why should I care whether war leaves my people? We’ve lived with war for more than a hundred years.”

  “Because war has already claimed your wife. It nearly claimed your child. It may soon claim your brother. Make peace quickly, lest you lose twice more than what you’ve lost already.”

  “My wife was not claimed by war,” he said. The stone dug into the flesh of his fingers. But the sign he had demanded from Golgoyat had pointed here, and he would listen. For a while. “What do you know about my wife?”

  “Khou left her. I know this, because Khou was with me, making war against the Yakhat warriors by burying them in the earth. Don’t wonder that Khou sided with your enemies, son of Golgoyat. It was but a small step from the broken wedding to outright enmity between Golgoyat and Khou. And I called up the earth mother with memories of the homes which your warriors despoiled, just as the city-dwellers first despoiled the Bans. You have become the image of your enemies. It wasn’t hard to bring Khou to my side.”

  She was quiet for a moment. “But do not fear. Khou has made peace and returned to her sacred circle. No stones will crush you now.”

  “But Tuulo…”

  “Tuulo wasn’t crushed by stones, but by a child who could not be born without Khou’s blessing. It is good for you to weep for her. It’s good for you to know a portion of the sorrow you’ve spread everywhere your spear has pointed.”

  The stone lay limply in his hand. He hurled it into the sea. “I have to know the sorrow I’ve spread? We Yakhat have known sorrow. Golgoyat urged the Yakhat to bring the Sorrow of Khaat Ban to everyone we touched. Making others know our sorrow was our calling.”

  “And, as was inevitable, that sorrow has returned to you again. Now if you insist, you can renew your campaign and pile weeping upon weeping, never resting from war. Every sorrow that you plant will eventually return to your own breast. But there is another way.”

  “There is no other way. The Sorrow of Khaat Ban—”

  “Is your sorrow. Is my sorrow. It’s the wounds suffered by the captive woman you gave to Tuulo. It’s the sorrow of the stillborn child she held in her hands. Did you realize that she made the same oath that your people made so long ago, at the boundaries of the Bans?”

  Keshlik spat. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that she swore to repay the sorrow she had been dealt and punish those who had wounded her. But though she had sworn to smother your son when he was born, and though she cast him into the water, she relented. She begged him back from the sea and put him to her breast.”

  The words struck him like a blow. Tuulo is dead, and I can barely continue to live. If I had lost my son as well… He gasped for words. He owed his son to the captive woman. She had sworn an oath—he would have done the same—but she had turned back.

  “Now you, too, must put aside your wrathful oath, Golgoyat. Return to Khou your bride. Let her make her home here, in a land hallowed by blood and milk, and marry.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Reconcile the Powers and put an end to this war.” The woman paused. “Marry the woman who nurses your son.”

  A growl of rage erupted from his throat, and he stepped toward the witch to throw her into the sea for her grotesque suggestion. She did not flinch, and the serenity of her milk-white eyes made his fury falter. Golgoyat brought me here. I will listen. “How dare you suggest such a thing? I do not want another. I want Tuulo. Your promises of peace will not bring her back.”

  The witch answered quietly, “But peace may save your son.”

  “How will it save my son?”

  “Without Uya, your child has no mother and will probably die. Even if you find a Yakhat nurse in time, you child will grow into war. Khou will leave your people, and she will not return. The sorrow you know today will be reaped by all the Yakhat—including your son, when his time comes.”

  “But the Sorrow is not avenged.”

  “It can never be avenged. Sorrow is not repaid with vengeance. But perhaps it can be healed, and the wedding broken at Khaat Ban be restored.”

  Keshlik trembled. “I cannot.”

  “You can.”

  He sank to his knees. “I would betray Tuulo and my people.”

  “No. You would save them.”

  He covered his eyes and began to weep. Tuulo, Tuulo. I cannot wed another. How could I set aside my spear?

  Yet the Praseo woman suffered my son to live, recanted her oath of vengeance. I cannot continue to make war against her people. “The Yakhat warriors will despise me.”

  He felt the witch’s hand on his shoulder. “Be not afraid. Your people are more ready for peace than you think. You must have the courage to first say the word.”

  “Peace.”

  “For the sake of your child.”

  “But the Yakhat do not want peace. I do not want peace.” The words tasted false. Perhaps he didn’t want peace, but he had lost his hunger for war.

  The witch’s silence accused him.

  Finally he asked, “Is there no other way?”

  She shook her head. “Only the captive woman could heal the tears of Khou. And only you, son of Golgoyat, can quell the thunder’s wrath.”

  He wanted to object, but every word that came to his tongue dissolved like salt in the rain. Tuulo was gone. The Sorrow of Khaat Ban, the rage of the Yakhat, the honor of the warriors—none of these mattered. What mattered was a newborn in a yurt, and the woman who had preserved the child for him.

  “I will do it,” he said.

  The witch raised her head. “You will restore the marriage of the Powers?”

  “Whatever is required. Let my son be the firstborn child of peace.”

  Chapter 31

  Uya

  The baby was crying again. Uya opened her eyes and saw daylight creeping through the door of the yurt. Morning. She had been up throughout the night nursing, after the sleepless night of attending Tuulo’s labor. Her limbs cried out for sleep.

  But the baby was crying again.

  She rolled over, unwound the boy’s swaddling, and cupped his warm, tiny body against her belly. He begged for her nipple, letting out a mousy squawk when she didn’t comply quickly enough.

  “I’m coming. I’m coming,” she whispered. “Just a minute.”

  She arranged herself against the straw-filled cushions that Dhuja had brought her. The baby squealed until she tucked him into the crook of her elbow and pulled him up to her breast. He bit down. She whispered a grunt of pain. He suckled greedily, and the pain passed as her breast let down the milk. It dribbled from the corner of the boy’s mouth and down Uya’s stomach.

  Dhuja was gone, and there was no sign of Tuulo’s body. Finally. Uya had been none too happy about nursing with a dead body in the yurt, but after wrapping Tuulo in the red sash, Dhuja had seemed in no hurry to remove the dead mother. Plus, there had been the awful storm. A person would’ve had to be mad to go out in the storm.

  Mad as the baby’s monstrous father had been, charging in and out at the beginning of the evening. She held that word—monstrous—in her mind for a moment, but it had lost its teeth. Her hatred dissolved with the flow of her milk.

  There was sile
nce in the yurt, except for the tiny movements of the nursing child. Outside, birds warbled in the dawn. Uya switched the child to the other breast, then rested her head against the cushions and dozed. The baby nursed in silence.

  When he was done, she bound him again in the white cloth and lay him to sleep. She curled herself around him and closed her eyes.

  The sound of startled voices outside the yurt woke her. One voice belonged to Dhuja, and the other to a man. The third voice sounded familiar. She straightened. The baby, too, was awake, observing her quietly with his narrow brown eyes.

  “They’re making an awful lot of noise,” Uya said. “They really ought to let us sleep.”

  The boy gurgled.

  She picked him up and tucked him against her belly and began to rock. She was hungry. But she had no idea how to tell Dhuja, so she would have to wait for the midwife to think to bring her some food. Hopefully it wouldn’t be too long.

  Dhuja ducked through the door of the yurt. Looking panicked, the midwife took Uya’s hand, pointing and jabbering and otherwise making it clear that she was supposed to come out.

  Uya batted her hand away. She had been cowering before the old woman for weeks, and now she was done being so timid. “I’ll come, but you’d better get me something to eat. Do you understand me?”

  Dhuja disappeared back through the door without giving any indication that she had heard Uya’s demand for food. Perhaps whoever was waiting outside would be more cooperative. Surely someone understood that a nursing woman needed to eat. Uya rose unsteadily to her feet and ducked through the door after the midwife, then blinked away the sudden morning brightness. Keshlik was there in mud-slathered clothes. Next to him stood an old woman, wrapped in a white sheet.

  The woman seemed familiar. Uya looked at her more closely, and her heart stuttered.

  “Saotse,” she said. “Saotse!”

  The old woman turned her head. “Uya?”