Outlaw (28 page)

“I did not come to save my mother,” Stephen said.

Kirutu watched him, unblinking.

“I came for you.”

“For me. You would cut off the head of the snake, but this snake does not die so easily.”

“I didn’t come to kill you. I came to set you free.”

The man’s jaw tightened. “And yet you kill with ease.”

Yes, he had killed, and the memory of that now filled him with a deep sorrow.

“Forgive me. I had gone insane.”

“This madness has not left you. You see as an infant. This woman you call your mother is a slave who cannot be saved. So you come to die with her. You are mad.”

It was a natural conclusion, but wrong.

“You are the slave,” Stephen said quietly, riding the waves of compassion that rolled through his mind. “Hatred rules your heart and puts you in a deep pit of suffering where you live alone.”

The man wasn’t able to quickly respond, so Stephen told him more.

“Your power in this valley is unquestioned—no man can live without your approval. Even the trees bow to your will. There’s no more to be gained and yet you suffer, secretly hating all that you are and all that you’ve done. That is your pit. But you can be free.”

For a moment Stephen thought Kirutu was listening on the deeper level of his soul, no longer deaf to this hidden knowledge. And maybe, for a moment, he was, because his face seemed to soften and a hint of wonder relaxed his eyes.

But as he watched, Kirutu’s face began to change. His jaw tightened and his lips twisted into a snarl. His people couldn’t see the shift, because Kirutu had his back to them, but they’d surely seen rage consume their leader a thousand times.

Stephen looked at the warriors’ faces, all of them full of desperation. They too were enslaved by Kirutu’s hatred. But he also saw wonder in their stares. The powerful man from Shaka’s mountain could stand before their tormentor and his full army without fear.

There was surely a place in the heart of all Tulim that desired liberation from Kirutu’s tyranny. Kirutu couldn’t allow his people to see Stephen stand before him without fear.

A quiver had taken to the man’s hands. Stephen was about to speak, thinking he should tell Kirutu that he didn’t need to fear the loss of his power—instead he would gain a greater power—when the man turned, walked up to his mother on the post, and ripped the bag off her head.

Stephen now saw his mother’s face, filthy, stained by the tears that had raked her cheeks, still matted with blood from the cut above her jaw. Her eyes were bright with fear as she jerked her head to take in the scene. They fixed on Stephen and her face twisted into an unspoken plea for help.

Kirutu grabbed her hair and spun back to Stephen.

“This is the pig who bore you! She is the one I have crushed.” His voice cut like a spear, and, seeing his mother’s anguish, Stephen felt the dark sky above him reach for his soul.

“You come to my house to save her?”

Kirutu jerked his mother’s head to one side by her hair. She screamed: the sound of it sank into Stephen’s mind like a talon.

“Save her,” Kirutu mocked. “Show me the love of a son and save this wretched woman!”

His mother was beyond herself now, lost to terror, weeping loudly. He felt her anguish as if it were taking up residence in his own flesh. He was slipping.

“Save her!”

Kirutu glared, muscles drawn taut, made of rage and undone by it at once. His mother was shaking on the post, neck twisted to the breaking point, wailing—the terrifying keen of a dying animal.

Darkness pressed in and Stephen felt the first tendril of rage slip into his gut.

Kirutu lifted his right arm and brought his fist down on his mother’s face as he held her hair. The impact of bone on flesh produced a sickly
thunk
.

His mother’s body went limp, but that didn’t stop Kirutu from striking her again, as hard, pummeling the helpless to show his strength.

He released her hair and she slumped forward in her ropes, head hung low, unconscious.

The tendril of rage coiled into a ball and rose through Stephen’s chest. He couldn’t stand in the face of such brutality without resisting. Without extracting revenge. Without crushing the oppressor.

Without engaging Kirutu, even knowing that this was Kirutu’s ploy. The ruler could not abide an enemy that did not fear him in front of his people.

Which was why Stephen could not attach himself to the anger rushing through him. He could neither react to nor resist it without also fueling it.

His breathing thickened and he felt as though he might break. And if he did, both he and his mother would die.

They would die anyway. It was already over. There was no way out.

No, Stephen. There is the Way.

A narrow way, already misted over with forgetfulness. A realm seen only dimly through the fog.

A chill washed over Stephen’s crown as his mind flopped between assurance and the desperation that tempted him. He was going to fail. He’d come in trust, leaning only on the understanding that came from beyond his mind, and yet there was his mother, bleeding on the post, and he, powerless before the people.

Kirutu closed the distance between them in three long strides, face dark like a storm.

He could save his mother now. He could kill Kirutu with the man’s own dagger. In the space of one breath he could twist out of Kirutu’s way, slip the bone knife strapped to his thigh from its sheath, and bury the blade deep into the back of his skull, forcing upon him the full meaning of
surrender
as used in conquest.

Deditio.

Stephen caught himself.

Deditio.
This was his way.

He stood still, allowing the fear to wash through him. The terror was only his costume in full protest. He had to stay surrendered to the Way in which—

Kirutu swung his hand and slapped him, a slicing swipe that crashed into Stephen’s jaw and jerked his head to one side. For a brief instant the world became perfectly dark and silent, a void with no valley, no Warik, no body. Only stillness.

But only for a split second and then he was back, in the flesh. Pain ballooned in his skull, and with it the terrible fear that his body and his breath weren’t only his costume. His very life was being threatened. He had to save himself!

But he couldn’t. Not now.

“You have no will to stand like a man?” the ruler bit off. He slammed his fist into Stephen’s gut. And as Stephen folded forward, Kirutu brought his knee up into Stephen’s face—a glancing blow that struck his cheekbone and sent him staggering back.

Once again the world sputtered to darkness and silence. A void. The end of existence.

Once again that void vanished and he returned to the place where he was being beaten while his mother hung limp on a post. Panic welled up and screamed his name.
Live, Stephen! You can’t die…not now
.

“Fight!” Kirutu stepped to him and swung again. When his fist connected with Stephen’s head, Stephen dropped to a sitting position. Blackness swirled through his mind and he felt the world slipping. On the edges of his consciousness the loud demand that he protect himself persisted. He must kill this man and save his mother.

But he could not. Would not. His whole life was staked on this truth that his Master had taught:
When the evil man comes against you, do not resist. You are not your body. Walk on water, Stephen
.

He felt himself sinking into darkness, like a rock into a pool. Over him Kirutu, enraged and roaring, beat him. He was aware that he was lifting his arms to ward off the blows. Aware that a heel had slammed into his rib cage with a crack. Aware that he was curling into a ball to save himself. Aware that he was being beaten to death.

The world suddenly blinked off. And this time it stayed off. The rushing of blood through his head fell away. He wanted peace to flood him but he felt none.

Instead he felt alone in the darkness, and so deep was that darkness. Isolated, lying on his side, quivering.

Abandoned.

In that moment he felt like a child, powerless to protect himself. He had failed again. The world had been rolled onto his shoulders and he’d been crushed by its weight.

He only wanted to die now. It was too much.

“It’s alright, darling. It’s only our costumes they take.”

Stephen heard the voice, clear and present, and he snapped his eyes wide.

The first thing he saw were the bands of color flowing through the air. The darkness was gone, replaced by a sky that streamed with light, and wide bands of red and orange and blue.

He jerked his head off the ground and stared. He wasn’t in the valley. He was above it, far away, on the cliff overlooking it. The trees glowed with life under the flowing, colored sky, and with a single draw of breath, the truth returned to him, as if living in the air itself.

All was well.

All was perfectly well.

“It’s going to be alright. They can’t hurt us, Stephen.”

He turned his head and saw that his mother stood two paces from him, gazing out over the valley, hair lifting with a gentle breeze.

This was real?

The colored world suddenly blinked off. He was back in the valley, cheek pressed against the cool earth. Being beaten by Kirutu, who landed his heel on his side. He heard himself grunt.

His mother hung forward against her restraints on the post. Unconscious, as though asleep.

Dreaming of another place. A place on the cliff, above all of this savagery.

They can’t hurt us, Stephen.

The words had been his mother’s, spoken in the other place as she dreamed, and his memory of them turned off the night.

He was suddenly there, back on the cliff under brightly colored ribbons of light, looking up at his mother, who was walking toward him, then kneeling. Smiling softly.

She lifted her hand and stroked his hair. “You’re going to be alright. We have no reason to fear.”

He saw her words. They came not only with sound, but with color like the bands in the sky, flowing from her mouth as she spoke. They washed over his face, waves of intoxicating power that flooded him with overwhelming peace and love.

“We’ve always been together and always will be,” she said, and again the words flowed from her in waves of raw color that stroked his soul. “Here there’s nothing to fear. We are one.”

He wanted to wrap his arms around her. He wanted to rest his head in her lap and let her hold him close.

But the gratitude smothering him had turned his muscles weak.

“I love you,” he said. And the words came from his mouth in another wave of colored light. They streamed to her face and he watched as she breathed them in. She smiled, intoxicated by that love. “I’m with you always,” he said.

Tears misted her eyes. “Always.”

Here there was no problem. No darkness. No time. No pain.

Here there was only infinite love and power.

And there?

The words Shaka had spoken after touching his eyes returned to him like a soft echo.
You will see more when the time comes
.

This is what he’d meant?

“When you speak, I can see color,” he said.

She looked at him. “Color?”

“Like the color above us.”

She glanced up at the sky. “I see only the bright sky.”

And then he knew what Shaka had meant.

He stood up and helped her to her feet. All around there was color. He could see it with each of her breaths, very faint, but there. She was inhaling and exhaling more than air.

“I see it, Mother,” he said in wonder. “I see it everywhere!” He blinked and looked out over the cliff. “You’re dreaming now on the post. It’s the same gift that first drew you to this valley.”

He looked back and saw that she understood.

“You see clearly when you’re asleep.”

She offered a gentle nod.

“And when you’re unconscious. Like you are now.”

“Yes. Yes, you’re right.”

“And now I can see as well. And what I see is more.” He took her hand. “There’s power in your words, Mother. Great power. When you speak I can see it. I can feel it. But when you wake up, you forget who you are and fear fills you.”

“Yes. I try…”

“But don’t you see, Mother? It’s
your
love that Kirutu must see. The forgiving of all grievance from the woman he has crushed.”

“But when I wake…”

“Not when you wake, this is too much for you. But now, while you embrace that love completely, reach out to him.”

Her eyes were wide.

“I see it now,” he said with rising passion, watching his words wash over her. “I see that I was brought to the valley to help you love him. Now. They are down in the valley, killing our costumes, but we are here, and here we’re swimming in power and love. Can you forgive and love him?”

“Now?”

“Yes, now.”

“Yes,” she said. “Now I see his costume as nothing more. There’s no need for any grievance.”

“Then speak to him now.”

She blinked. “How?”

“How were you called to this valley?”

“A song,” she said.

“Then sing as Shaka sang to you. Draw him where soul calls to soul, as you were called.”

She stared out over the valley, awareness dawning in her eyes. “Yes,” she whispered.

“Yes,” he said. He lifted his hand and caressed her cheek. “Sing to Kirutu, Mother. Sing to him now, while you can. Let that song hold you in its embrace of love and call to the one you would forgive.”

A tear broke from her eye.

“Forgive him,” Stephen said. “He is only a broken child who doesn’t know love.”

A slight smile nudged the corners of her mouth. “Yes,” she said, and wiped the tears from her cheek. “Thank you, Stephen. Thank you.”

Then his mother turned to face the valley, stared into the colored light for a moment, closed her eyes, and began to sing. A simple long note, pure and crystalline. It streamed from her mouth into the air, bearing more power than had ever been known in all of the Tulim valley.

THE WORLD shifted, and Stephen found himself on the ground at Kirutu’s feet. Two things he knew before he had time to open his eyes. The first was that nothing had changed in the valley, because only a moment had passed, not enough time for Kirutu to land more than one blow.

The second was that everything had changed in the valley. He could hear the sound, very faint, only at the very edge of his consciousness. It was a note and it came from his mother.

He opened his eyes and saw her in his direct line of sight, hanging from the pole, head slumped, hair draping her face.

And now he knew a third thing. He could still see. A very faint wisp of color drifted from his mother’s mouth, eked out by a note so thin that perhaps only he could hear it.

He lifted his head off the ground. The sky above was still dark, yes, but from his mother on the post, color was coming into the valley.

“And now you will watch her burn,” Kirutu was saying.

He landed another blow to Stephen’s face, but this didn’t bother him. His eyes were on his mother and his heart was one with hers.

“Sing, Mother,” he whispered.

He watched in amazement as a red wave left his mouth, closed the distance to his mother, and washed over her body.

He said it with more power. “Sing.”

Another blow from Kirutu landed on his body.

“Sing…”

She sang. Eyes still closed, head still hanging, she sang from her soul, a long note that streamed with increasing volume and color.

“Sing…”

The note came pure and long, a haunting tone that could not be denied.

Stephen shifted his eyes and saw that Kirutu had hesitated. The soft song was now just audible above the roaring flames—he’d heard it. Surely he had.

The man twisted his head and stared at the slumped form on the post.

There was his mother, hanging as though dead, and yet from her mouth came a beautiful song that defied her state. They could all hear it and they’d all gone still.

And as Stephen watched, his mother’s head began to rise. Her eyes were still closed, but her mouth was parted and the colored light that streamed from it shot past him, up the hill, into the night sky far behind him.

Kirutu slowly stepped back, away from Stephen, fixed by what he heard and saw. Not the color, surely, but to hear such beauty from such a desolate victim…

“Sing,” Stephen whispered. “Sing.”

Her head came all the way up and she sang to the distant mountains, now with even greater volume and growing intensity. Light streamed from her face, shooting deep into the night sky.

Stephen was just twisting his head to see where the light was going when the first band of color from that distant horizon swept through the sky above him.

Her simple call for forgiveness was being returned, not as another streak of light, but in thick ribbons pushed by a wall of light that rolled into the valley.

A thundering, concussive tsunami of brilliance that rushed toward the valley. The ground shook with its power as it approached, moving fast.

Cries of alarm spread. The Warik weren’t looking at the sky—they couldn’t see the light. But they could feel the earth trembling and it sent them scattering, running for their very lives.

Still the light came, hurling down the valley like a rolling mountain of color, threatening to crush everything in its path.

Still the Warik fled in terror before the thundering sound and bucking earth.

Then the light reached his mother and blew through her, lifting her hair from her shoulders.

She sang on, one long crystalline note returned by crushing power.

The flames of the fires bent low, bowing toward his mother under the power of the wave.

Still she sang, as the light streamed past the fence, through the village, and flowed toward the lowlands beyond.

This was the song his mother had first heard in her dreams, now made manifest in the Tulim valley. This was why she’d come.

This was why he’d been saved. So that they too could be saved.

Her song remained unbroken and beautiful until Stephen wondered if his own body could stand the power sweeping through it. Her hair streamed backward as the light rushed past her, but her face glowed in perfect peace, like that of a child singing through a dream.

For an endless breath that robbed Stephen of his own, she sang, face full in the rushing color.

And then, when Stephen thought his own lungs would burst, she closed her mouth. Her song quieted and the rumbling earth settled. But the silent, colored light did not abate. It flowed through her, filling her with its infinite life. She hung from her pole, head erect, bathed in power.

The Warik warriors who’d fled crept back, eyes on his mother, as the earth stopped shaking. Villagers—women and children and the aged—rushed out of the gates and pulled up short at the sight before them.

His mother’s eyes opened. She stared ahead for a moment; then, as if knowing precisely what she must do, she slowly turned to look at Kirutu.

For a long time she said nothing. When she spoke, her words flowed as light.

“Let me speak to you, my husband.”

Her light reached out to Kirutu and flowed through him, and although he couldn’t see what Stephen saw, the power of her love was affecting him already. He stood rooted to the ground, unable to comply or refuse. The night seemed to have stalled completely.

His mother turned to the man who stood next to the emaciated woman. “Cut me down, Wilam,” she said softly.

A tear glistened on Wilam’s cheek, but he showed no other outward signs of emotion. He looked at his brother, who made no move to stop him, walked over to a warrior, took the man’s knife from his hand, and stepped up to the pole.

Stephen pushed himself to his feet, watching with vision blurred only by emotion.

With one last glance at Kirutu’s wide eyes, Wilam cut the grass ropes—first the ones at her feet, so that she could reach the ground, then the ones that bound her hands behind the pole.

His mother stepped away from the pole slowly, on light feet, as if still in a dream. She took Wilam by the hand and led him halfway toward Kirutu before releasing him and crossing the rest of the way alone, eyes fixed on the man who had tormented her for so long.

Kirutu might have objected, Stephen thought, but here with a full army in the face of no threat, doing so might be seen as weakness. And more, there was a place in his wounded soul that surely cried to be free of the prison he’d lived in for so long.

Or perhaps there was another reason—Stephen didn’t know—but Kirutu made no move.

She stopped in front of him and searched his eyes.

“You are a great leader, my husband. And I am your humble servant.”

The words streamed into Kirutu’s face, unseen by all but Stephen yet felt by Kirutu to his very core. His eyes were wide.

“In any way that you have hurt me, I remember it no more.” The tangible power of her words reached Stephen as a warm wave that swept over his skin. She was speaking to them all, he knew. And to the whole world.

“My heart cries with you and your people. Like children we long for love. Know my love for you. Know that your Maker would see only the love in your heart. Hear his call, Kirutu. Hear his song calling your name and know that he will remember no blame on your part.”

Kirutu’s hands were shaking. He might have been trying to stem the tears that filled his eyes. If so, he failed miserably.

She stepped up to him, lifted her hand to his face, and brushed away his tears with her thumb.

“The heart of all Tulim cries for a great love that would make you innocent of all but love,” she said. “Hear my words and see this same love now. It is my gift to you.”

She took his hand and kissed his knuckles.

The first sound of crying came from the woman who’d stood by Wilam. His wife, Melino, stood thirty paces away, weeping softly, unabashed. And Wilam too was quickly besieged by tears, his silent. They had suffered too deeply and for too many years to hold steady in face of such beauty.

His mother leaned forward and whispered something to Kirutu that only he could hear. But its power became immediately evident.

Even as she spoke, Kirutu began to shake from head to toe. And the moment she pulled away he sank to his knees. He sat back on his haunches, let his arms drop by his sides, and began to weep with his head hung low.

The sight of their powerful warlord so overcome by kind words swept away the last bonds of fear that had kept his warriors in check, and now the soft sound of crying could be heard spreading through their ranks.

Stephen slowly scanned the scene before him. He had a few broken ribs, and his head had taken far too many blows, but the pain sat at the edge of his awareness, only a minor disturbance.

The Warik, on the other hand, had suffered a lifetime of cruelty. They looked like lost children, some confused, some weeping, some only standing with vacant eyes. Their minds could not begin to understand the full implications of what they were witnessing, but in their hearts they knew that something had changed in the Tulim valley. In time to come they would find a new life. Then they would understand more.

It was for this that his mother had been called. It was for them that she had suffered.

Stephen looked at the sky. Stars shone brightly. The bands of light were no longer visible, not because they weren’t there, but because he no longer needed to see them with these eyes, placed like buttons on his costume.

Why should he? The full power of the light lived inside him already.

His mother was walking toward him, eyes swimming in the sea of such love and power.

She took his hand.

“Come with me, my son.”

And she led him away from the Warik so that they could be together.