by B. Muze
The Kolvas were led by the spirit of the bat through the deepest tunnels and even through the World of the Dead. They had to swim through the river of blood that fed the dead in the darkest plains. Only the wisest and best among them survived to find the surface of the living world again. When they emerged, it was a moonless night, and a sorrow struck their hearts to find this world almost as dark as the other, but the bat promised them light, though he, himself, could not endure sun. When the sun rose, the people rejoiced until they saw their faithful guide fall dead at their feet. They mourned the bat and hung him, as was their custom at the time, from the nearest tree. All day they sung their loss to the Great Bat Spirit. They mourned and cried and tore their hair. Then the sun sank, and the moon arose, and the bat stretched its wings and came alive again. He told them never to mourn for him, for even though he died each day, in every night, he would find new life.
The Kolvas grew in numbers and in strength through the years. Many spirits guided them and taught them their wisdom. Several times, groups of their people split apart, but those who remained became a great city, sure in its strength and proud of its beauty. They warred with very few, only the White Ones and, from time to time, some others. They always won, and their confidence grew.
When the Akarians first appeared, they came as traders with feathers, fabrics, foods, herbs and even tools never seen before and greatly prized. That was only seven years ago. They were graciously welcomed. The Kolvas eagerly made trading treaties, much pleased with the wealth they were offered. For three years the friendship grew until it seemed a natural thing to cement it with a joining of the peoples.
The Kolvas had a daughter of marriageable age, Faiel, a special person of considerable beauty and skill at weaving. The Emperor of the Akarians was a man with over two hundred wives and five sons of marriageable age who would be considered for emperor after him. The Kolvas woman was offered to the emperor for himself or his favorite son and the emperor gladly accepted.
The woman was sent ahead, and her family followed two weeks behind to attend the wedding. When they arrived, they were greeted royally and escorted to the temple, the center of the Akarian capital. In the open space before the temple a play honoring their god, Gorat, was performed. The Emperor’s eldest son, the high priest, played the young woman sacrifice. His costume was the flayed skin of the Kolvas woman. Her people, horrified and outraged, turned against the Akarians. Several men of great warrior skill fought to kill the Emperor, but were slain before they could succeed. Some others fled but only one, with the help of a kindly trader, ever managed to escape. That one was the woman’s great-grandmother and a shaman of almost mythic power.
Alone she managed to return to her people and tell them all that happened. As she recounted her story, her heart broke, and with her dying breath, she begged her people to avenge this terrible wrong. The promise was made and sealed with the shaman’s blood. The people mourned and armed for war, but the Akarians struck first.
They maintained that their god had been wronged by the Kolvas’ incivility, that their crops were failing because of it and only Kolvas’ blood sacrifice would appease their god. They came against the Kolvas with a mighty army which the Kolvas turned away, but they lost many brave warriors in the effort. The Akarians came again and again. Again and again, they lost, but each time the Kolvas were sorely weakened. Still, the Akarians came. They seemed to rise from the very blood of their slain warriors, three for every one that died. Their numbers were inexhaustible, and at last, they conquered the Kolvas.
They tore down the Kolvas’ temples and statues — every sign of their spirits — and replaced them with the image of their own ugly gods. They took many prisoners, even children, and killed those too old to be of use in the fields or to survive the journey back to their empire. They killed all the shaman-trained that they could identify and many who were wrongly suspected. They killed the leaders who would not bow to them and took their sons away and married their daughters to their own people who came and settled in the Kolvas lands. The Kolvas war king, who was not a shaman-trained but so particularly skilled that he was as highly honored, was taken as the highest leader of the Kolvas. He loyally named as his sons the sons of the Kolvas’ shaman leader, to be protected in their place, and let several of his own children be taken captive as common people. The Akarians came and ruled with bloody hands. Any voice against them was quickly silenced. The people who still could, were forced to pay tribute to them regularly, others were used as slave labor, and any who seemed at all unreliable were sent to the empire.
“We lived through death once,” Milapo explained through Difsat. “We remembered the bat and knew that we could die and live again. We let them kill us — became as nothing but breathing dead by day, and at night we made our plans. We took only what we could carry easily and run — food so we would not need to stop to hunt or gather and the few horses and dogs we could steal. We divided ourselves, and in the darkness of a moonless night we rose together and left the place of our birth, of our lives, to go, each group a different way. Families are broken, and friends may never see each other again, but the Akarians could not catch us all and some of each family, each clan, will carry on to a new life.”
She paused, tears in her eyes. Even Difsat now seemed sad — his laughing eyes distant in unhappy memory.
“The Akarians followed us but not with horses. They would rest at night, but we did not. They did not know the way of the desert as we did. We could get farther in the cool of the night than they could in the heat of the day. When they seemed to draw nearer we pressed on faster, by day and night, until they fell too far behind to hope to catch us. It has been almost a season, and we have not seen or heard any sign of those who chased us. We are hoping now that it is safe to rest and we have come to where we were told to wait.”
“Here?” asked Jovai, amazed.
Difsat nodded.
“Kital, the greatest shaman who survived the massacre, dreamed of a place where the sun was not seen until noon. At such a place we were to blow a dart toward the eastern sky, where the morning sun would be breaking the horizon if we could see it, and food would fall at our feet. For four mornings we have done this, ever since we arrived. The first time a honeycomb fell full of honey but no bees. The second time we received a bird of brilliant feather and plump flesh. Yesterday a strange fruit fell and all who tasted it felt happy and full. One who was lame walked and a child, near death with hunger, rose laughing and played with the others. This morning, a bat fell, clutching more of that same fruit. We mourned the bat and hung him from the nearest tree, his fruit on the ground below, and in the evening, he rose again and flew away, and the fruit had multiplied and surrounded the tree, and some had even sprouted. Now we are sure we are home, and the spirits will provide for us here.”
Milapo asked Difsat something. He answered soberly, then let her speak.
“My wife wants you to know that we wait here for the others who survived and for a great one — perhaps Kital herself. We know the spirits will lead them here and it is our task to be ready to welcome them.”
“But why…I mean, the Gicok camp…it is very close isn’t it?”
Difsat nodded, and at a jab from his wife translated for her. For once she sat quiet, with nothing to say.
“They are all dead!” exclaimed Jovai. “No one has prepared their bodies. No one has released their spirits. I would not wish to be so near, and I did not even kill them.”
“We did not kill them,” Difsat answered her implied accusation.
“Then who did?” demanded Jovai.
“We don’t know. We did not discover them until we found you there. We thought…we hoped that you would tell us.”
Jovai shook her head.
“The Gicok was helping me escape from the Akarians. He was taking me to his people. We had just arrived and found them all dead — his wife and children — everyone. Then you attacked us. It seemed natural to assume you had attacked them too.”
Jovai looked to Difsat for translation. He just shook his head.
“They are sorry for your friend and are trying to plan what they can do to ease his grief,” He shook his head in mock despair, but a tear was in his eye.
“I love women,” he said. “If their husbands were here most of them would say we should be careful of the Gicok taking revenge for his family on us — but our wives…except for Bulih and Trafed and this time, Freni…most of them think only of him as a man in pain and want to help. It will be up to you to protect him from their good intentions — or else he’s in big trouble.”
“Your people seem to have good hearts,” said Jovai.
Difsat nodded.
“We wish to help your friend,” Milapo said at last through her husband. “What can we do?”
“I will talk to him and let you know,” Jovai promised.
“He will not hurt us will he?” asked Freni next.
“I will tell him what you told me. I don’t know if he’ll believe me, but he is weak from his injuries now and is only a threat if your people attack him.”
“If we are kind to him, perhaps he will trust us.”
“He has suffered greatly, especially these last days with you. It might take quite a lot of kindness to convince him that you are not as hostile as you seemed.”
“Are you afraid of us?”
Jovai shook her head.
Milapo spoke to the others. Several raised their voices in angry protest — one at a time. Others seemed calmer, more rational.
“You can speak the shaman tongue. It helps you. Does your friend speak any other language besides the Dolkati and the Akarian?” Milapo asked Jovai.
“Not that I know,” Jovai answered. “We speak to each other in Akarian.”
“We all know a few words. Some of us know the language well, but we have agreed not to speak it since it is the language of our enemy.”
“Then you knew what I and the Gicok were saying all along?” asked Jovai of Difsat.
He smiled with charming mischief and continued his translation.
“Perhaps this is cause to speak it, but we cannot decide this now. We will discuss it further among ourselves, and we will have people help you learn our language. Will this help you?”
“It will help me, but the Gicok might not be quick with languages. He does not speak Akarian well. I don’t know if he would want to learn another.” She shrugged.
“We will offer you both a teacher and let him learn what he would like.”
Difsat turned to his wife and said something quickly. The only word Jovai caught was “Gilix.” His wife nodded, and others agreed.
Jovai’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. Difsat’s expression back was full of innocence — too much innocence.
“Now they would like to know what you would like to tell us about yourself — your other life before this one we’ve given you.”
“I am from people who dwell in a valley northeast of here. We call ourselves simply “the people.” The Gicoks call us “Vohee”. We have almost no contact with any other people — except the Gicoks who have made war on us almost every year since the oldest of our people can remember. Last year, the Gicoks led strangers — traders to us — hairy, smelly men with dark skins and golden hair. They traded us Gicok horses for metal trinkets and taught me to speak their language. I, in turn, taught some of our people. We are divided, some of us want trade with these strangers, others are afraid because our enemies brought them and because there have been terrible prophecies. My master was against contact with the strangers…”
“Your master was a shaman?” guessed Difsat.
Jovai nodded.
“And you?” he pressed.
Jovai paused, then slowly shook her head.
“What are you then?”
Jovai stopped and faced the uncomfortable silence, not knowing what to say.
“Are you a witch?” he pressed.
Was she? Was she one who twisted nature, misdirected spirits, and abused a gift that was not a shaman power but something dark and evil?
Milapo demanded translation from Difsat, and he gave it, as far as he had gotten.
“I have served my people as faithfully as I could,” Jovai said softly, before he could ask any more questions, “as their teacher of the traders’ language and also as a healer. But the people would not have me as a shaman and my master would not let me be anything else. It was…a bad business. When I went before the spirits, they did not give me a shaman name, or any name. So I am not a shaman, and I am not anything else.”
Difsat finished his translation, then turned to her and spoke gently.
“You should know, the death we put you through, that is also a trial for a shaman sometimes. By our standards, you are a shaman, if you consider yourself so.”
“I do not,” she answered. Didn’t he understand what it meant that she didn’t have a name? He had seemed a very powerful shaman — how could he be so ignorant?
She felt his eyes searching her soul and turned away angrily.
“As a healer then,” he acquiesced, “we are glad to welcome you.”
Chapter 27
Ghosts
The council seemed to have every intention of talking through the night about the various petitions they had already received from families wanting to adopt the new shaman/warrior, but Jovai was exhausted and soon could not keep awake. One of the women kindly escorted her back to the shelter where the Gicok slept.
As they walked, a small boy, uncommonly pale with still, yellow eyes crossed her path and stopped to stare at her. Jovai nodded, too tired to pay much attention until the boy faded into the evening fog before her eyes.
That stopped her. Suddenly fully alert, she grabbed the arm of the woman beside her.
“Did you see that?” she demanded.
The woman turned to her, uncomprehending.
“There was a boy — a Gicok — a ghost.” Jovai tried again, this time in Akarian. “He…he was there and then he vanished!”
The woman frowned at her, perhaps still not understanding. She said something softly in her language, in a tone meant to soothe, and took Jovai’s arm to lead her on to where she could rest.
“You must tell your shaman that there are ghosts about,” Jovai instructed the woman as she prepared her sleeping mat. “The living are not safe.”
The woman ignored her, but hurried to her task and, with a few kind sounding but incomprehensible words, left Jovai to sleep.
“Gicok,” called Jovai nervously through the dark. There was no answer except the muffled sounds of a sleeping man.
“The fools,” she muttered aloud to herself, as though filling the air with sound would leave less room for ghosts. “What crazy man is this they call their shaman? What fool would let his people lie so close to restless dead?”
She had no ghost bane to shield the door — no herb at all nor paint nor colored sand nor any tool of strength, nor any spirit to call for aid, but she could not rest easily while being completely vulnerable.
She felt the floor until she found one of the spikes to which the Gicok had been tied. With many tugs, she finally managed to pull it from the floor and, wielding it like a knife, she carried it outside and began the tedious task of using it to dig a circle in the stony ground around the hut.
The air around her felt bitter cold and was thick with mist that clutched at her clothes with moist fingers and brushed through her hair. She could not see the other tents, which she knew to be nearby, nor could she hear any living being stir, except the whining of some dogs many huts away, but still she felt watched. Every breeze that sighed through the night roused the tiny hairs on the back of her neck and made her breath catch in fearful anticipation.
At last, the circ
le was drawn. She knelt at the eastern facing door where the circle had begun and finished, closed her eyes and lifted her voice against the heavy night to seal the simple sign of protection.
As her prayer rose, she felt the power gather through her. She was flush again with the thrill. She felt light, almost dizzy, and happy and safe, like a baby in her mother’s arms. The seal was made and would hold as long as no one living crossed it.
When she opened her eyes again, she saw them, all gathered outside her circle, hovering about like moths to a flame. There were so many of them, the whole Gicok village perhaps, and they all watched her, blue, yellow and red eyes uncommonly still. Jovai had never seen so many up close. Tall and beautiful people they were, even though many bore the gashes of their death. The women, especially, were to be envied for the delicate strength of their features that made even the plainest among them worthy of a second look.
“What do you want?” Jovai demanded nervously. She had heard of the trapped dead. She had heard of them in stories told her first by her father, then by the shaman and the storytellers of their village, but never had she seen them or had to deal with them. Her master had taught her, of course, what to do if any of her own people somehow turned ghost, but these were not her people. Their customs were different, maybe even their spirit language. Who they had been and what their needs now were, both were beyond her understanding.
They made no gesture to respond to her question. They did not even seem to have heard it. They did nothing but press around the circle she had drawn and stare at her with still, expressionless eyes.
“I can’t help you,” she told them. “I don’t know you. I don’t know what to do. If you tell me, I can tell the shaman and he will help you.”
No answer even in the slightest change in their expression.