by B. K. Boes
“My brother’s faith is in a questionable place at the moment,” Oracle Lan said a little louder. “I wouldn’t trust everything he values.”
“You mean because of my mother?” Mae shouted, her cheeks growing red.
“Yes!” Oracle Lan shouted back this time. “And if you don’t heed my words, you’ll be going back to her. If you are unteachable, I will not waste my time with you.”
Mae drew in a breath and angry tears brimmed her eyes.
Jabin felt stiff as a board. His mouth ran dry and all he could do was look from one person to the other as they argued. Things had gotten very personal, and he had never felt so awkward.
Oracle Lan pressed his lips together and looked at the floor. Mae stood and ran out of the room, pushing the curtain aside.
Jabin swallowed. He wanted to run after her. He didn’t understand why she’d gotten so upset in the first place, but he did understand the oracle had hurt her with his final words. He stood and walked to the door, looking one time over his shoulder. Oracle Lan let out a frustrated sigh, waved Jabin off, and turned on the rock to face the opposite wall.
Jabin ran after Mae, but he didn’t have to go far. He found her under the wisdom tree, sitting between its ebony roots. He sat beside her.
“You could have said something.” Mae sniffed as she picked at the grass, gathering little pebbles in her hand. “I thought we were friends.”
“We are!” Jabin said. “But, Tamonn? I’ve read of how young oracles used to die on those journeys or get seriously hurt. Why would you want to try and stop death all by yourself? Why not work within the system of communication the Temple has set up?”
Mae shook her head. “Because it’s not the same. In Sozo, our faith is very personal. I want to show my loyalty, my ability, and my inner strength to my God.”
“But, doesn’t the Sustainer already know your heart and mind?” Jabin asked.
“That’s not the point,” Mae sighed and threw a pebble across the path.
“You don’t have all the details. This woman could be in Nomika or Okleria. You can’t travel that far on your own. Maybe Oracle Lan would be open to a compromise if it’s closer,” Jabin said.
“A compromise?” Mae asked, looking at him for the first time since he sat down. “Like what?”
“Well, if the woman you saw falling to her death is nearby, then maybe Oracle Lan will take care of it and let you go with him.” Jabin smiled a little, hoping the idea would comfort Mae. “We can do things differently without straying from the way things are done.”
“Or we can change things by our actions,” Mae said. “I don’t want a compromise. Tamonn is important to me. Besides, I doubt my uncle would agree to any compromises.”
“Why not?” Jabin asked. “He’s a reasonable man.”
“Maybe with you,” she said. “He just wants to drill the Sozian out of me.”
“That’s not true,” Jabin said, though as he said it, it felt like a white lie.
Mae got up. “It is,” she said. “But thanks for saying it isn’t.”
She turned to leave, and Jabin hopped to his feet. “What are you going to do?” he asked.
“I’m going to meditate, and I’m going to ask the Sustainer for clarity,” she said. “No matter what happens, I want the woman I saw to live.”
Jabin nodded. “Let me know if you need anything,” he said. “I might be able to help.”
With a sad smile, Mae stepped toward him and kissed his cheek. “You’re a good friend, Jabin.”
Jabin watched her go, her kiss lingering on his skin.
Chapter Thirty
Anakai
Kelda Canyons, Adikea
7th Cycle of Chenack
989 Post Schism
Anakai unwrapped Jerg’s wound, wincing as Jerg sucked in sharply. “Sorry,” he said.
“Nah.” Jerg grimaced. “It’s my own fault.”
“You came so close,” Anakai said for the hundredth time.
“Doesn’t matter, does it?” Jerg looked away as Anakai unwrapped the final layer of cloth. “How’s it lookin’?”
Anakai dipped a rag in clean water and dabbed the wound. “No signs of rot,” he said. That was what Jerg was really asking. If rot set in, his arm would be lost. If his arm was lost, he’d be nearly useless, maybe sent off to work the death barges if he was lucky.
“The new slave-sons get here yet?” Jerg always changed the subject quickly after hearing progress on his wound.
Anakai applied the paste the physician had given him. It was precious stuff, and they had to use it carefully. The physician wouldn’t give Jerg any more. “They arrived this morning,” Anakai said. “I heard the generals talking about some kind of blood sickness. They lost fifty boys over the last year who were due to come to the canyons in this last batch. General Vordon said if the sickness keeps picking up pace, we’ll be down even more next year.”
Jerg raised his brows. “A blood sickness, huh? From their foreign blood?”
“Yeah, that’s the rumor.”
Jerg whistled. “Fifty boys coming of age dead in one year? I wonder how many of next year’s lot is already gone. If they don’t get that under control, we’re in trouble.”
“I know,” Anakai said. “But, the general says they are pulling in new foreign blood from the North every day. The more slave-wives we have, the more slave-sons will be born. The blood sickness will fade.” The thought pricked Anakai just slightly. Did he really wish for more slave-wives like his mother? He pushed the thought aside. Loyalty to Adikea was paramount.
He wrapped Jerg’s arm once again with fresh cloth. “I’m going to have to go clean your old bandages and get fresh water for tomorrow.”
Jerg nodded. “I wish I could go with you.”
“You have half a span before you must join us again in training. I’m surprised they gave you this much time. You’d better use it. You have to rest. Get stronger.”
“I know,” Jerg said. He looked down at his hands, folded in his lap. “Thanks for helping me,” he said.
“You’re strong enough to beat this. If that wasn’t true, the general would have ended you already. I believe your value is greater than the time I’ve spent cleaning your wound.”
“Yeah. I’d do the same for you, ya know?”
Anakai put a hand on Jerg’s shoulder. “I know.”
He left Jerg to rest. He had things to do. Besides the things he needed to do for Jerg, it had been too long since he’d painted the square of cactus spikes on their cavern floor with leetosh poison. Every once in a while, they found an intruder’s body on the spikes. And with the new boys coming in, their cave would tempt someone, as it did every year. With Jerg weak as he was, they made a fine target for any slave-son wishing to find themselves secure living quarters or a few valuable tools.
Before climbing out of their little cave, Anakai packed away the bloodied bandages and their canteen in a sack and slung it over his shoulder. He hung his small axe from his leather belt where his dagger fit nicely into a sheath. Every year, they gained some new prize for surviving, usually weaponry. They’d built up a small cache of things that made it easier to survive the canyons. Anakai climbed out of the cave, knowing by muscle memory where every safe handhold was located.
The afternoon was hot with no breeze or cloud cover. Anakai made his way to the edge of the slave-son territory where the leetosh lizards were easier to find out in the open. Usually, Jerg would distract the thing while Anakai came up behind it and chopped it in half. The therbaks stayed clear of them due to their poison, so the creatures could be found sunbathing on rocks out in the open.
It was quiet this far into the canyons. Anakai stuck to thin corridors. Just because the therbaks avoided the leetosh lizards, didn’t mean they wouldn’t be thrilled to find him out in the open. He didn’t have to go too far to find what he was looking for. A leetosh, bright red against the browns and rusty reds of the canyons, sat on a rock in the sun, about twenty-five paces into
a clearing.
Anakai slipped the axe out of its holster, gripping it with two hands. He would have one shot at cutting the creature in half before it scurried away, maybe spitting its stinging poison in Anakai’s face for good measure. One quiet foot in front of another, slow and steady, Anakai stepped into the clearing. His senses were on high alert. He opened his ears and made himself aware of the periphery of his vision. His skin tingled as the sun bore down on him, hot and persistent.
Fifteen paces to go. Ten. Five. And then he raised his axe and struck. As his axe split the flesh of the leetosh, a distant roar echoed through the canyons. Anakai jumped at the sound. He
quickly slid his axe back into place and grabbed both halves of his prey. His heart beat fast as he ran into the narrower corridors. Though the therbak sounded distant, its sound had still frightened him.
When he was breathing a little easier, he headed back to his cave. By the time Anakai had painted the spikes with fresh poison, the sun was beginning to descend below the horizon of the canyon walls. Jerg was sleeping when Anakai left. He walked to the main clearing in warrior territory with their own small water barrel, now empty, and the dirty bandages in his sack.
First, he entered the adjacent, smaller clearing where the slave-sons came to be lectured and to practice their sparring techniques. The slave-son infirmary was tucked into the back of a larger cave. Orduke, the physician assigned to Anakai’s kind, was digging through a small trunk when Anakai arrived.
“Master Orduke?” Anakai said. “I’ve come to wash the bandages for Jerg.”
“Ah. Yes, yes.” Orduke waved him off without looking at him. “There’s a bunch of bandages in the corner bucket. Been soaking in alcohol half the day. Take those. Rinse them with water and dry them before using them. Leave the bandages you have now in the bucket.”
Anakai didn’t ask anything further and left the physician to his digging and mumbling. Orduke was a strange man, always seeming distracted in some way. The bandages were in a bucket of red-tinged liquid. Anakai wrung out five of them and replaced them with the bandages in his sack. They smelled strongly of alcohol but didn’t look very clean. It was unfortunate that some of their drinking water would have to be used, but he figured rationing out their water allotments was better than Jerg losing an arm.
When he entered the larger clearing, he noticed a few young boys, new slave-sons, sitting in the clearing. No one else was around.
The general must have sent them away to find caves already.
It was getting dark, so Anakai filled his little barrel with water from the larger water barrels lining the canyon wall. He placed it in his sack and slung the now heavy bag over his shoulder. As he passed a boy hugging his knees, Anakai stopped.
“You need to go. Get yourself some shelter. Recruit one of these other boys, maybe two. You won’t survive out here.”
The boy looked up at him, tears streaming down his face, but didn’t say anything. Anakai sighed and shook his head. There was nothing else he could do. The first test of this boy’s journey in the canyons was an important one. If he couldn’t find shelter, he didn’t belong there. And if Anakai helped him too much, the boy would fail and Anakai would be punished.
He turned away from the few pathetic boys still in the clearing and headed toward his own cave. I have plenty of my own problems to worry about.
As he approached his home, in the dim twilight, he saw some movement at the crack of the opening to his cave. A figure lit a torch and dropped down into the cave, followed by another.
A scream of pain echoed against the canyon walls. Anakai couldn’t tell if it was his friend’s voice or one of the boys invading their cave.
Jerg! Damn the Other!
Anakai ran toward the slit in the rock. The third figure had noticed him and yelled down into the cave. Anakai dropped his sack on the canyon floor and leapt up the slight incline where the third figure still stood. Anakai swept the boy’s feet out from under him and the boy rolled down the incline.
“Stay there,” Anakai growled. “Unless you want me to kill you.”
The boy scrambled up and ran the other direction. That would work, too. Anakai quickly made his way into the cave, dagger drawn. He found one boy impaled through the thigh with one of the poisoned spikes. He was sitting against the wall, the poison already working. He’d be dead in minutes.
It was the final boy that posed a problem. He had Jerg’s own knife against his throat. Their torch was on the ground, burning low, its orange light not allowing much observation.
“Fix my friend!” the boy yelled.
Jerg was pale. He was still too weak to do much. “I’m sorry, Anakai,” he said. “I was asleep until he had the knife to my throat.”
“Shut up!” The boy was shaking. “Fix my friend! Take the spike out of his leg.”
Anakai held up his hands in front of him. “He’s already dead,” Anakai said. “That’s poison on the tips of those spikes.”
“Poison? Quay didn’t say anything about poison.”
“Quay?” Anakai furrowed his brow. “You know him?”
“Not really,” the boy said, “He just said this would be an easy cave to take. Told us about your sick friend.”
Anakai laughed quietly and rubbed the back of his neck. Stupid true-son. When is he going to get over himself?
Ever since the obstacle course when Anakai had saved Quay’s life, he’d been trying to prove no true-son needed a slave-son for anything. Quay had targeted Anakai before when the true-sons worked with the slave-sons in training, but he’d never done this.
“Don’t laugh at me,” the boy spat.
Anakai took a deep breath, sighing. He yanked one of the long spikes out of the clay dirt floor. “Look, boy. If you kill my friend, I’ll kill you. Let him go, and you live.”
The boy swallowed audibly. “I don’t know where else to go.”
Anakai shrugged. “Not my problem. This is your test. From the looks of it, you’ve got a bit of Adikean blood flowing through your veins. You’ll make it. Find another cave.”
“Let me stay here.”
“No.”
The boy dug into Jerg’s neck until he drew blood. “I’m staying for the night. I’ll find a new cave tomorrow.”
Jerg held his head back as far as it would go. “Let him stay,” he said. “I like him.”
“Put the dagger down, and we’ll talk about it,” Anakai said.
The boy looked at Jerg and back at Anakai. “Promise you’ll let me stay unharmed, and I’ll put the dagger down.”
“Fine.” Anakai sighed. “One night. But this isn’t how you make friends here.”
The boy loosened his arm around Jerg’s neck. The moment he did Jerg used his good arm to knock the boy back and take his dagger. Jerg raised it over the boy, who cowered below.
“Jerg,” Anakai said. “Don’t. The boy was just doing what we all do. Trying to survive.”
Glaring at the boy, Jerg spat. “You’ve got a minute before I skewer you,” Jerg said. “Get out.”
“But… you said I could stay!” The boy was still cowering but didn’t move.
“Jerg…” Anakai didn’t want to see the boy harmed. “The Army needs all the slave-sons we can get. With that blood sickness on the rise, and how many die here anyway, we don’t need to kill them off on purpose. The canyons will do that for us if his blood is too weak.”
“Get out,” Jerg said again. “And tell Quay we’d be happy to entertain him here any time.”
The boy scrambled away toward the wall that led up to the opening. Anakai watched him climb haphazardly up and out, and he hoped the boy found shelter before he was killed. He turned to Jerg.
“We could have let him stay,” Anakai said.
Jerg collapsed back on his bedroll and held his good hand to the cut on his throat. “The little bastard cut me.”
Anakai gave Jerg a flat stare. “Barely.”
“You really think he would’ve just stayed one night? What’s
to keep that little rat from pullin’ a dagger on one of us again?”
“I guess you’re right,” Anakai said.
“One of us should stay up tonight. In case more of those little maggots try to invade again.” Jerg made himself more comfortable, favoring his bandaged arm.
“You mean I should stay up tonight?” Anakai said.
“Yeah, well, I’m injured,” Jerg smiled a toothy grin.
Anakai sat beside Jerg and punched his shoulder, a little above his injury.
“Ouch!”
“Yep. Still injured.” Anakai chuckled. “Guess I’ll have to be the one to keep watch after all.”
Anakai let Jerg go back to sleep. He wrapped a rope around the dead boy and pulled him up and out of their cave into the clearing. For a moment, he stared at his face, young and round and childlike. Anakai remembered his first night in the canyons. It wasn’t fair, that this boy had to fight on his first night and Anakai had been given more time.
Anakai shook his head. No. He was weak. Reckless. The canyons took him. Not me.
He tore his eyes away from the body and picked up the sack he’d dropped earlier. When he was back in his cave, he rearranged the spikes to cover the entire entrance, and then he leaned against the opposite wall. Anakai didn’t sleep that night.
He thought of the dead boy in the clearing and about Jerg. What if he had come home to find him dead? How would he survive without his best friend? His mind drifted to his mother, a habit he never could rid himself of completely. He couldn’t remember her face anymore. Not really. He knew her eyes were brown, that there was something special about them that made him feel safe, but he couldn’t see them anymore in his mind’s eye.
A single tear wet the corner of his eye. Anakai touched his cheek as it fell, and he held out his wet fingertips in front of his face. He hadn’t cried in years.
He straightened his shoulders and blocked out the desire to dwell on things he couldn’t change. His Adikean blood bolstered him, and he set his jaw.
I am a warrior. Warriors can scale walls and survive the canyons and kill anyone who stands in their way. But warriors don’t cry.