Storm Bride (4 page)

Keshlik spoke the final words: “Until the Sorrow of Khaat Ban is repaid.”

They answered him in one voice. “Till the sorrow is repaid.”

A river trickled out of the mountains to the east like a line of molten silver, throwing off sparks of light from the reddening sun. On either side of its curls stretched yellow-green pasture, its colors as sweet as butter, cradling in its ripples charcoal-black, brown, and amber specks that barely moved against its tides: the cattle and the cow-maidens on their horses.

Juyut let out a whoop and charged forward, leaving a wake in the grass like a rutting bull. Keshlik tugged at the bound slave, leading him down the gentle slope into the midst of the herds. The slave had slowed Keshlik’s pace all the way back to the Khaatat encampment at the mouth of the Gap, but Keshlik was ready to forgive him now that they had arrived. The girls ululated and waved their wide-brimmed caps at the warriors passing by, while the cows grunted and moved slowly to the side. Keshlik looked back once and saw that the slave’s eyes were wide with terror, staring at the shaggy cows as if they might be monsters.

If the lowlanders were afraid of
cows
, then it was no wonder that the raiding band had torn through them like a knife through cheese.

The semicircle of yurts was on the near side of the river, in the center of the herds. The smoke of cooking fires drifted over the flags on the yurts’ crowns, and when Keshlik finally entered the crescent, he found Dhuja crouched over a pot of milk above a fire, slowly stirring it with her spoon. The sight of his wife’s midwife awoke a throb of longing in his chest.

Juyut had already tied his horse to the corner of their yurt, and he stood with his feet far apart. “We’ve come; we’ve come! Heya, we’ve come with plunder and a slave! Heya!”

“Dhuja may be an old lady, but she isn’t deaf,” Keshlik said calmly as he dismounted Lashkat in the half-circle. “You don’t need to shout just for her.”

Juyut looked momentarily abashed, but his embarrassment turned quickly back to pride as faces began to appear at the doors of the yurts. The elders came out, along with most of the women, and Juyut began showing off the portions of turquoise, mother-of-pearl, and the sheaves of pressed leaves that they had brought back. Keshlik untied the slave from his bridle and handed the other end to Juyut, who was recounting the story of the raid with exaggerated emphasis on his own prowess. Lashkat nickered.

“I’m getting there.” Keshlik quickly untied the leather straps holding the saddle and bridle in place, then he slipped the tack off her shoulders. She tossed her head and trotted away toward the pasture. Keshlik laid the tack in his yurt then returned and crouched next to Dhuja.

“Is Tuulo well?” he asked.

The old woman picked a fleck of straw from the surface of the milk. “Your wife grows better every day. She complains about having to eat curds all the time, but you’ve heard that as often as I have. She remains strong; she’d come out and take this spoon from my hands if it weren’t for the taboo.”

“May I speak to her?”

Dhuja nodded. She called another woman away from the crowd to stir the curds, then led Keshlik into the east horn of the encampment, to a small earth-colored yurt set just outside the semicircle. A ring of grass around the yurt had been pulled up, bound into sheaves, and burnt to create a circle of charcoal on the ground, with green grass on both sides and the yurt in the center. Keshlik stopped just outside the line.

“Tuulo!” Dhuja cried as she crossed into the circle and lifted the flap over the doorway. The door closed behind them and muffled Tuulo’s response. A second later, Dhuja reappeared with the pouch of sacred salt and sprinkled it lightly along the path from the door to where Keshlik waited. Then Tuulo finally opened the flap and ran across the salted grass to her husband.

“Finally! You took so long, I thought maybe you had been turned into cattle and had gone grazing instead of raiding.”

Her belly seemed to have grown, though it had only been a few days. Her face was ruddy and beautifully fat, and her gait was starting to wobble. She wore silver rings and combs studded with coral and jewels, the prizes of past raids, which Keshlik had given to her for their wedding. Keshlik smiled and felt like a young man coming to his wife’s tent for the first time. “Juyut led the raid. You’ve compared him to a cow more than once.”

“Well.” She halted just before the line of charcoal, reaching toward him but stopping short of touching. She smiled. “But Golgoyat fought among you.”

“He did. None of our men fell, and none of the traders escaped. They didn’t even suspect we were coming. And I brought you something.” He reached into the pouch at his chest and brought out the carved fish that he had found, the only thing he had claimed for his private use from the plunder. The nacre in the fish’s mouth seemed to glow in the evening light.

Tuulo drew in a sharp breath. She reached to take it from Keshlik’s hand, but Dhuja appeared as if sprouting from the earth and slapped her hand away.

“Foolish girl,” she said. “It’s as if Khou’s protection means nothing to you.” She snatched the bone from Keshlik’s hand and dipped her thumb in the pouch of salt hanging around her neck, then she rubbed the whole surface of the sculpture down. “Here.”

“Thank you.” Tuulo picked up the handspan of bone and lifted it up to the light, turning it over so the shard of mother-of-pearl caught the sun’s last rays, examining the colors and the shape. “Do the lowlanders have fish that look like this?”

“I don’t know,” Keshlik said. “We brought a slave back, hoping that he could speak to the Guza. I’ll ask him, if you’d like.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to take time away from the important things you have to ask.” She continued to turn the sculpture over in her palm. “Whatever those are.”

“The Guza say that there is a city to the south, along a great river. Presumably the man came from there and can tell us more.”

“A city? An actual city, or a mere settlement, like the flock of Guza villages?”

“A city. That’s what they say.”

Tuulo frowned. “That’s the first I’ve heard of it.”

Dhuja chided Tuulo with a look. “You are in Khou’s circle and aren’t supposed to concern yourself with what the war bands are doing.”

“Even if my husband leads them?” She gave Dhuja a glare that was equal parts affection and scorn.

Keshlik resisted the urge to cross the blessed line and caress Tuulo’s face and belly. “You have a wise midwife and a valorous husband. You worry about our son, and I’ll worry about the war.”

Keshlik lingered too long with Tuulo, and still he left unsatisfied. For the sake of their child, he would not cross into Khou’s blessed circle, but he ached to touch his wife’s hand again.

When he returned to the center of the encampment, he found that Hetsim, a Guza slave, had already been brought out from Bhaalit’s yurt to translate for the new captive. Juyut, Bhaalit, and a few of the elders sat around and listened. Keshlik stood at the edge of their circle and listened.

“—No walls, because they have no enemies,” Hetsim said. “The plains north of the river are uninhabited, except for the Guza who lived in the Gap, and the Prasei who live in the forest valleys have no interest in the high plains.”

The captive spoke voluminously, his eyes wide and pleading, as if by complying perfectly with his Yakhat captors he might earn his freedom.

“What is the occupation of these Prasei, if they have no enemies?” Bhaalit asked.

Hetsim repeated the question to the captive. The answer was long and eager.

“The people of Prasa are fishermen, traders, and craftsmen,” the translator said. “They have an alliance with the great king to the south, with whom they trade in great volume, and they trade also with the swift people who come in boats from the north. All of their livelihood is spent in friendship and trade. Why should they have enemies?”

All the gathered Yakhat laughed.

The captive seemed agitated by their laughter. He looked up, saw Keshlik, then glanced through the semicircle of yurts toward Tuulo’s secluded circle. He posed a long question to Hetsim.

Hetsim spoke hesitantly. “This man says that he noticed that you spoke to your wife who is pregnant.”

Keshlik tensed. “What about it?”

Another brief interchange. “He says that his own wife is also pregnant and that he hopes you will have pity on him for the sake of their shared condition and allow him to return to his people.”

Juyut laughed, and the elders smirked. Keshlik fingered the handle of the knife in his belt. He didn’t think that the slave’s glance would break the circle of Khou’s blessing around Tuulo, but the fact that the man had noticed him and had seen his wife raised his ire.

“Ask him,” he told Hetsim, “why I should let him return to the city and warn them about the Yakhat horde.”

After a moment, the translator responded. “He says he cares only for his wife and his family, and he doesn’t need to warn anyone about anything.”

“Does he expect me to believe such a blatant lie?”

Hetsim flinched. He mumbled something to the captive, who didn’t respond.

“Tell him,” Keshlik said, “that when the Yakhat reach Prasa, the whole city will surely perish. So even if we did let him escape, it would only be a matter of time before we killed him anyway.”

Hetsim repeated the words, and the man began to blubber. He threw himself on the ground before Keshlik and began to beg. Hetsim hesitated, apparently uncertain how to translate the incoherent babble.

Keshlik waved aside his attempt. “We obviously can’t let him return to the city. Bhaalit, when you’re done questioning this man, kill him.”

“I took this man for the commonwealth of the tribe,” Juyut said. “Isn’t that a matter for the elders to decide?”

Keshlik glared at the elders. “Do any of you think we should keep a weak and cowardly slave alive, once he’s told us everything he knows?”

None of them said a word.

Hetsim began to speak again to the slave, but Keshlik cut him off. “Don’t translate that. You’re alive because we may still need you, but your use could expire in a moment. Let this fool talk if he thinks he can buy his life with it, and let him find the knife at his throat after that.”

Chapter 4

Uya

“C
ome to the lodge,” Oire
said.
   
Uya was resting in the hammock on the Earth side of the lodge, and a spiteful refusal came right to the tip of her teeth. But her mother’s expression killed the thought, and she followed. Most of her aunts and cousins were already assembled inside, sitting on the floor or on the wooden benches along the walls of the lodge. Nei sat in the Eldest’s chair beneath the ancestor totems. She never sat there except when conducting Elder business. Uya’s heart skipped a beat. Saotse sat on one side of Nei beneath the ancestors, and a young man she didn’t know stood waiting on the other side.

Uya was the last to arrive, and she lowered herself gently onto a bench. Sitting on the floor was too hard with her belly. Nei glanced at her then addressed the stranger. “Jeoa, this is my
enna
. Tell us again what you just told me.”

Jeoa cleared his throat. “Yes, Eldest. As I said the first time, my
enna
set out on a trade mission to the Guza three days after your own left. Your
enna
is perpetually the first to leave once the spring snows have cleared off the high roads, since your scouts are the swiftest and your men ready themselves so quickly—”

Nei’s lips twitched. “You may omit the flattery. I’ve heard this once already. This is for their benefit.”

“Yes, Eldest.” He kept his eyes downcast, and he spoke barely loud enough for Uya to hear him. “We set out three days after your caravan, loaded just as heavily, and we caught no sight of your caravan on the road aside from the bits of refuse that they discarded. Then when we came to the place where the Saoleka River cuts through a ridge—I don’t know if you know it—but there is a small ravine, less than a mile long, where the river channel carved its way through. And there we found them. What was left of your caravan.”

He took a short, unhappy breath. His clothes rustled as he fidgeted.

Uya’s heart began to pound.

“We found parts of a broken wagon, broken wheels, and torn sacks. Then, further into the canyon, we found the pyre. The ground was all charcoaled and muddy, and the air stank. Every wagon from the caravan had been gathered together and lit on fire. And when we poked through the ashes, we found bones. Long bones, horse skulls, human skulls. We fled back to Prasa as quickly as we could. They sent me to tell you as soon as we arrived.”

The air in the lodge was still and closed. No one spoke. Uya’s hands trembled. Rada was gone. Her father was gone. Were they dead? Would they even know? Her knees weakened, and she grabbed her mother’s hand. Silent tears were running down Oire’s face.

“Did you count the skulls?” Nei asked.

“We didn’t stay long enough to count anything. We were afraid that the murderers of the first caravan would fall on us as well. We didn’t even light fires on our return.”

“So you don’t know if anyone escaped? Or was taken captive?”

“We don’t know, Eldest. I’m sorry.”

Another long, morbid pause encumbered the air of the lodge.

Nei asked Jeoa, “Why would the Guza do this? We’ve traded peacefully with them for centuries.”

“I don’t know,” the man said. “If you don’t know, Eldest, we have no way of guessing.”

Saotse stirred. “It was not the Guza.”

“How do you know?” Nei asked.

“On the night before the caravan left, I felt the ground quiver and tremble with a strange voice, as if a Power were speaking. But it was a foreign Power, not Azatsi or Prasyala or any of the other Powers whose names I know. Someone else. Someone from elsewhere.”

Uya quivered with the cold fear rising from her belly. The child inside her seemed to have stilled along with the lodge. “So the Power killed them? There is a new Power on the caravan road that devours men with flame?”

“No. The Power that I felt was not angry or hungry. It did not seek to destroy men. It was very lonely and very sad.”

“Then why did it destroy the caravan?” she pressed.

“Don’t be a superstitious fool,” Nei said. “That is not how the Powers work in the world.”

Uya’s cheeks burned, and she felt the stares of the other aunts on her. They were all content to remain silent. But Uya had questions, and she didn’t care if they called her superstitious. “But—”

Nei answered before Saotse could. “Saotse said only that a new Power is present. We need to discover what this means and what it has to do with the caravan.” She added in a quiet, creaky voice, “And we need to mourn.”

Silence resumed in the lodge.

“I’m sorry, Eldest,” Jeoa said again.

Nei tsked. “Bring our report to the Eldest of your
enna
. I will visit her later and convey our thanks.”

“Thank you again.” He passed the gathered women, avoiding their eyes, and slipped out the door.

A mournful sigh filled the still air of the lodge. Uya bit her lip to keep silent. Nei descended from the Eldest’s seat with a rustle of furs and the creak of skin on wood. One of her hands closed over Saotse’s.

“My children,” she said. “Oh, my children.”

A sob broke through the silence from somewhere to the right. Uya tried to stave off the weeping, because once she began, she thought she would never stop. But the baby kicked in her stomach, and the bitter irony of it set a shower of tears loose like dew shaken off a branch. Uya’s mother clasped her hands on her shoulders until she regained herself and looked up.

Nei was watching Uya with her head lifted high, trembling slightly, as if she might fall at any moment. “At sunset we will begin to sing the dead into the west. Prepare yourselves.”

The sun dropped into the sea. There was silence around the
enna
, save for the lapping of the seawater on the shore.

Nei came to Uya with the beam of burnt ash. She paused, putting her wrinkled hand on Uya’s belly, then kissed Uya’s cheek. They hesitated for a moment with their faces touching. Then she smudged Uya on the forehead and signed both of her rouged cheeks.

Chrasu was the last one to be marked for mourning. When Nei had finished, she moved to the center of the circle of the
enna
and sat. She took up a small white drum and began to beat a slow, irregular beat.

For a long moment, there was no sound but the pattering of the drum.

I don’t want to be here
. Uya knew what was coming, had been through many other funerals with the
enna
, but this time it seemed too much to bear.
Rada, my father, my uncles.
One dead was enough to fill the
enna
with mourning for a year, and handling them all felt like drowning.

Nei began with a quiet, throaty ululation. Uya hadn’t heard that sound since they buried her uncle twenty years ago. She had forgotten how it sounded—or perhaps it hadn’t been quite so doleful then. Nei mourned Asa, her husband, now. Her song was a quavering, wordless wail, rising and falling with drunken imprecision, growing suddenly loud then feebly draining away.

The sun dimmed in the west.

One by one, the other women of the
enna
took up the song. A few of them used words, but most simply wailed with the same wordless agony that Nei had expressed. Chrasu began to sing. Saotse did not, but her lips twitched in silent agreement.

Uya held back. She did not want to join the mourning. Her composure was at the edge of a chasm, and she felt as if a sea’s worth of grief were welling up from her stomach and trying to break through her chest. They would sing this song for a year, never letting the drum go silent or the mourning cease all that time. Her child would be born with the sound of sorrow in the lodge. She didn’t want it to start. Once she started, it would go on and on, the whole sea of grief breaking through her ribs and drowning all of them in the flood.

She wanted to believe that Rada would come back. She wanted to believe that her uncles and grandfather would come back. She didn’t want to believe that they had all died in some ravine—

And it broke out of her like a wave crashing against the shore. Her wail was high and piercing, almost a scream, until it tumbled into the murmuring pool of the
enna’s
grief. She had no words. The matrix syllables
heia haoa
fell from her mouth like rocks, and she lost herself.

The sun drowned in the west, and the stars came out. A cold wind blew in off the sea.

At some point during the night, the drum passed into her hands, and she drummed until her fingers were numb. The drum passed to someone else. She drank a little water. She sang more. The fervor of the song waned, then flared up again when someone let forth a fresh wail.

Some of the aunts began to chant the names of their sons and husbands, recounting their names or favored memories. Uya said nothing about Rada. What would she say? Their marriage was young, and she had only a little affection for him. But none of that mattered. He was her husband, and the father of her child, and now he was gone. She wailed again.

The sun began to brighten the east. Chrasu had fallen asleep beside her, but Saotse and the rest of the women were still awake. A few of them had stopped singing, but there were never less than a half-dozen voices trembling with sadness. The drum passed to Nei. The Eldest rose to her feet, beating more slowly now, and began to walk into the lodge. The
enna
followed her, singing.

The wood of the entrance creaked under their feet as the women ducked through the door and drifted to their places. Nei settled in the Eldest’s seat and continued to drum. An aunt knelt and began to blow on the banked fire. The sound of mourning echoed in the rafters of the lodge. Uya found a bench that could support her belly and pulled it next to the fire, crooning softly.

Oire’s hand touched her shoulder. “Go. Sleep,” she said. “Go with Saotse.”

“What’s wrong with Saotse?”

“Nothing except the weakness of age. The night was hard for her. You should sleep.”

Uya looked into the flames beginning to flicker in the fire ring. Having started the mourning, it seemed too soon to stop. She had barely begun to drain the ocean of sadness from her heart. “I want to stay.”

Oire shook her head. “This is just the first day of mourning. You will have plenty of time later.”

Uya relented. Saotse knelt behind her, and Uya took her hand and led her to the women’s side of the lodge, where they both dropped into beds and slept.

The drum was the lodge’s heartbeat. It stuttered all through the night and battered against the sunrise, underlining the daylight with dolor. Uya took it when her turn came and spent her hours by the fire, chanting softly the names of the dead, then lapsing into a murmur of
heia haoa
. Hours creaked by. She played beneath the ancestor totems until someone took the instrument from her hands.

Days dribbled past. She slept too much. She did not measure the time in sunrises but in her rounds with the drum, and she almost forgot how to speak except in chant. The drum was a refuge. Playing and singing the dead into the west, she forgot that her child would be born without father or grandfather, except for when the baby kicked and reminded her that it still lived. When she stopped, sadness enveloped her like a winter fog rising from the sea. Her limbs felt heavy and clumsy, as if she had swam too long in cold water. She could not think.

There came a bright day when Uya rose from her hammock and came to the fire that burned before the ancestors. Her back ached from too many days sitting in the lodge and lying down, and her belly seemed to have gotten larger in the meantime. Were her feet always so swollen? She needed to move.

Saotse pattered on the drum and chanted, and Nei sat next to her with her eyes closed, swaying gently.

“Where is everybody?” Uya whispered.

Nei opened her eyes. “The Prasada called them into town.”

“Why?”

“Do you really not know? Haven’t you heard a word that’s been said these past days?”

“I haven’t paid much attention to the rest of the lodge’s whispers. Aren’t we all supposed to be mourning?”

Nei considered her words for a moment. “Yes, but the sun rises regardless. You’ve done more than your share of singing away the dead. You should let others take their turns with the drum more often. As for your question, there is an earthworks being built at the north perimeter of the city.”