Guardian of the Darkness

by Nahoko Uehashi

  Shisheem’s eyes flashed. Suddenly, with a shout that split the air, he drove his spear mercilessly at Kassa’s throat. Kassa instinctively raised his spear, deflecting the blow, and followed through, driving the point toward Shisheem’s nose. Shisheem barely managed to twist away in time and blood spurted from his ear. The smile had been wiped from his lips and his face was white with fury. Leaping back, he leveled his spear again, and it whistled along the ground to flick up into Kassa’s face. Kassa tried to turn the blow aside, but Shisheem shifted in the same direction, and the spear whipped back toward him. This time Kassa could not dodge the blow, and he felt hot pain sear his cheek.

  “Hold!”

  Sound returned with Muruzo’s shout, as if an invisible curtain had been torn asunder. Kassa’s friend Lalaka thumped him on the shoulder. “Good job! Nice work!” Kassa pressed his hand against his cheek and a smile touched his lips.

  Shisheem was watching him. He put his hand to his ear and, when he saw blood, wiped it on his clothes. Some color returned to his pale face as he took a deep breath, then gave a twisted smile. “Well, Kassa, you’ve gotten pretty strong, haven’t you?” He tapped him lightly on the shoulder as he passed. “You’ll be a good spearman someday. Pity you weren’t born to the chieftain’s line. You’ll waste all that talent herding goats for the rest of your life.” He raised his hand to a friend and walked off toward his next match.

  The excitement that had burned in Kassa but a moment before drained away.

  At noon, he still had not shaken the gloom that weighed on his heart. His stomach growled with hunger as he sat on the steps, waiting for his father. He and Gina had just shared the cheese that his mother had given them for lunch, but it was nowhere near enough to keep him satisfied until supper. If only we could sell the luisha, he thought. Trying to cheer himself up, he let his imagination follow this train of thought. I’d start off by treating myself to some grilled sanga beef with spicy ganla sauce. Then I’d buy a cheese losso with plenty of yukka fruit in the filling….

  Still, he knew it could never happen; luisha was just too rare and too valuable. Luisha only came to the surface once every twenty years or so, when the flute of the Mountain King sounded from beneath the mountains. That was the invitation to the king of Kanbal to enter the land below, accompanied by his nine Spears and their attendants. There the Mountain King presented the Kanbalese king with luisha as a sign of their friendship.

  According to the legend Kassa had learned, the practice had begun over a thousand years ago, when a brave young man ventured into the caves and found his way to a palace under the land. There he met a beautiful maiden with whom he fell in love. But she was the daughter of the Mountain King, and the king told the young man that if he wanted to marry her, he must best the king’s son with the spear. Taking up the challenge, the young man defeated the hyohlu, the Guardian of the Darkness. The king praised the young man and let him take his daughter to the land under the sun. To make sure that both kingdoms prospered, he promised to send a gift to his daughter and her descendants every two decades. That gift was luisha.

  The young man who wed the Mountain King’s daughter was hailed as a hero aboveground. He became chieftain of his own clan and gathered the other nine clans together to form the kingdom of Kanbal. He vowed to use his right to the Mountain King’s gift to care for all ten clans, establishing the royal custom of using luisha to purchase grain for the people. In return, the nine clans delivered laga, a cheese made from goat’s milk, and dried meat from one hundred goats to the king, which he presented to the Mountain King in turn. The rites enacted at the Giving Ceremony were a secret known only to the king, his Spears, and their attendants; commoners knew nothing about what went on at the Last Door to the Mountain Deep. And yet a piece of luisha had come to Kassa….

  He saw his father approaching the school. As soon as he glimpsed his face, Kassa knew that Tonno was already regretting taking on this extra burden, and the thought filled him with sadness. When Kassa had turned fifteen this spring, he had been presented with his dagger and become a man, with the right to join the other men when they gathered at the meeting place. But there he saw a side of his father that he had never known existed. Tonno seemed so subservient, trying too hard to please the other men, completely different from the man Kassa had respected since he was a child — the competent overlord of the Herder People.

  Reaching the bottom of the steps, Tonno looked up at him. He was wearing his best outfit rather than his usual torn and threadbare clothing, and he had clipped his dagger smartly to his belt and polished his boots until they gleamed. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  Just then, they heard two shrill horn blasts from the village gate.

  “Master Yuguro has returned!” Tonno exclaimed. A double horn blast always signaled the arrival of Shisheem’s father, the second son in the chieftain’s line. From his perch at the top of the stairs, Kassa saw a cloud of dust rising beyond the outer wall. Normally, Yuguro lived in the capital, where he served as the king’s master of martial arts. Even among the Spears, he was considered the greatest warrior in the land, and he brought much honor to the Musa clan. People ran out of their homes and workplaces to meet him now.

  A group of eighteen riders came first, hooves clattering on the white stone pavement, and they raised their hands in greeting as the people shouted, “Welcome back!” Yuguro followed on a magnificent black stallion of foreign breed. He held the reins in his left hand, while his right grasped a spear bound with the gold ring that marked him as one of the King’s Spears. His eyes were keen in his hawklike face, his beard neatly trimmed, his body lean and fit. Despite a streak of white that ran through his jet-black hair, he looked much younger than his forty-one years. He exuded an aura of power coupled with a grace that drew people to him.

  If my father was like that, I’d probably boast about it too, Kassa thought. Yet he could not imagine Shisheem ever being like Yuguro, no matter how many decades passed.

  The gold ring on Yuguro’s spear flashed in the sun as he approached. Kassa started, suddenly recalling the spear borne by the woman in the cave. He had only glimpsed it briefly in the light of the torch and paid no heed to it in his confusion. But now he realized that the mark on her spear shaft was the same as that on the spears of the chieftain’s line. Who was she? he wondered again. The encounter seemed like a dream to him now.

  The riders drew closer. When he caught sight of Kassa and his father, Yuguro smiled slightly and inclined his head. Tonno smiled broadly in return and bowed very low. Yuguro was always kind to his younger sister’s husband, a fact that filled Kassa’s heart with pleasure.

  A young man right behind Yuguro flashed Kassa a quick smile — his cousin Kahm, the eldest son of Kaguro, the chieftain. He had just turned thirty-one this year. Kassa grinned back and bowed respectfully. Unlike Shisheem, Kahm had always treated him well, and Kassa, in return, loved this reserved, fair-minded cousin.

  “Thank the gods in heaven,” Tonno murmured. “The chieftain is an honest man but sometimes he can be very rigid. It’s a relief to know that Master Yuguro will be there.”

  The riders galloped up the hill and passed through the gate into the inner enclosure. Kassa and his father waited until the dust from the horses’ hooves had died down and then began walking toward the hall.

  In Kanbal, the chieftain’s hall was always in the middle of the village, on high ground surrounded by a stone wall as a last defense against attack. Once Kassa had looked down over a cliff at their village, and it reminded him of a boiled egg sliced in half. His house was located at the very edge of the egg white, against the outer wall, while the enclosure around the chieftain’s hall was the yolk. The thought of boiled eggs now made his mouth water, despite his nervousness. While skirmishes had happened frequently during clan wars, the last century had been relatively peaceful, and the heavy, solid gate before the hall looked as if it was stuck open.

  The chieftain’s hall was a huge buildi
ng made of smooth gray stone. The roof was shingled with thin blue-gray slates and steeply peaked so that the heavy snows would slide off in winter. An archers’ gallery circled the top of the building just beneath the roof. At the guardhouse beside the entrance to the hall, Tonno told a young man that he had urgent news for the chieftain. The hall was in a flurry due to the arrival of Yuguro and Kahm, and it was some time before the young man returned and told them to enter.

  Inside it was dim and chilly. Neither the few tallow candles placed in brackets along the walls nor the sun slanting through the small skylights could banish the shadows from the wide, high-ceilinged corridor. As he walked along the passageway, his boots echoing, Kassa could not help thinking how much warmer, brighter, and more comfortable his own home was.

  The pungent smell of smoke assailed them as they entered the chieftain’s chamber, which likewise felt cold and cavernous. There was a huge fireplace built into the north wall, but even in the middle of winter the chieftain would only permit a small blaze during the day.

  Kaguro stood up from a large chair beside the fireplace. “Tonno. Kassa. Welcome,” he said in a deep, rumbling voice. He had assumed the chieftainship at a young age due to his father’s untimely death, and he bore himself with great dignity. But where his younger brother Yuguro was like the sun to Kassa, Kaguro seemed like the dark night. He had a beaklike nose and closely cropped gray hair and beard, and an ugly scar ran from his right eye to his chin, the mark of the wolf that had robbed him of his eye and arm.

  Before Tonno could speak, they heard two raps on the door and Yuguro entered.

  “Kaguro … Oh, Tonno. Sorry. Did I interrupt you?” he asked.

  “Not at all, Master Yuguro,” Tonno replied in an awed voice, looking back and forth between Yuguro and Kaguro. “I know how busy you must be, but if possible, there is a matter on which I wish to consult both of you….”

  Yuguro frowned for an instant, but then nodded cheerfully and closed the door behind him. Tonno began to speak nervously. He must have gone over the story many times in his mind. While he occasionally checked a detail or two with Kassa, his explanation was clear and succinct.

  Kaguro and Yuguro listened, expressionless at first. But when they heard that an unknown woman had bested the hyohlu they began to frown, and by the time his father had finished, they were both looking at Kassa incredulously.

  “Tonno, I know you mean well,” Yuguro said with a smile, “but I’m afraid I can’t believe your story. I can’t help but think that Kassa made the whole thing up.” He fixed a stern gaze on Kassa, as if to say, You might fool your father, but you can’t fool me.

  “Yes,” Tonno replied. “That’s what I thought at first too. Until I saw what the hyohlu had dropped when he bent over my daughter.” He pulled out a cloth and unfolded it. A blue light shone from his hand.

  The chieftain and his brother caught their breath. Yuguro walked over and picked up the stone. “It’s luisha!”

  The two brothers looked at each other for a long moment, then Kaguro returned his gaze to Kassa and his father. “If your tale is true, then there are a couple of points that puzzle me.” He stared at them as though weighing something in his mind before speaking again. “What I’m about to tell you is known only to those belonging to the chieftain’s line. But you are my younger sister’s family: Will you vow not to tell anyone else?”

  After Kassa and his father nervously promised to keep the secret, Kaguro continued. “First of all, it’s unusual to see the hyohlu so close to the surface. Many people believe that children who disappear in the caves are eaten by the hyohlu, but we know that, in most cases, they simply get lost and can’t get out again, or they’re swept away by a stream and drown. The hyohlu are servants of the Mountain King. They would only harm someone from overland if that person wandered very deep into the caves and committed a great evil. Gina was probably so startled by the hyohlu that she stumbled and fell.

  “But Kassa, you said that you took a torch into the caves, right?” Kassa nodded. “That was a very dangerous thing to do. The hyohlu hate fire, and they will try to extinguish a burning torch. Sometimes they inadvertently hurt or kill people in the process. If a hyohlu really did come up near the surface as you say — and I have no doubt that it did, if that stone fell off its body — then this may be the year the Gate to the Mountain Deep will open. If so, the king will issue his summons soon. But then our next puzzle is this traveler. You said she was a woman with a spear, right, Kassa?”

  “Yes,” he answered, his voice catching in his throat. The gleam in Kaguro’s eye was terrifying.

  “And she fought and beat the hyohlu?”

  “Well, yes, but Gina and I couldn’t actually see what was happening, because everything went pitch black when the torch went out. But I could hear them moving and their spears whistling through the air…. The only thing I saw was the glow of the hyohlu as it disappeared into the cave. Then the woman told us that it was all right.”

  “And she led you through the dark out of the cave?”

  “Yes.”

  “She didn’t ask you to light the torch while you were in the cave?”

  “No….”

  Kaguro turned to look at Yuguro and frowned. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  Yuguro looked stricken, his face white and frozen. He blinked and looked toward his brother. “Nothing. I’m a little tired from the journey. If you don’t mind, I’ll just borrow this chair.” He sat down heavily. “Sorry. I must be getting old. You were saying?”

  Kaguro turned his gaze back to Kassa. “You said that she wore strange clothes and spoke Kanbalese like a foreigner.”

  Kassa nodded, then he suddenly remembered the spear. “There’s something else. I caught a glimpse of her spear in the light of the torch, and I just realized that the mark on it was the same as the one on Master Yuguro’s spear.”

  Beads of sweat broke out on Kaguro’s brow. He turned to his brother and muttered, “Could it be his spear?”

  Yuguro stared at him without answering.

  Aunt Yuka led Balsa into her living room and asked her to wait while she saw to some patients. Balsa sat down in a chair by the window. It was a comfortable room. The polished stone floor was strewn with sweet-smelling dried grasses, and a breeze bearing the scent of yukka fruit wafted through a window larger than those in most Kanbalese homes. Red embers glowed in the hearth, and a gleaming saucepan hung on the wall inside the wide inglenook fireplace. In the middle of the room stood a table covered in a thin green cloth. A single book lay on top of it. Bunches of herbs hung from the rafters in the ceiling, swaying in the breeze. They reminded Balsa suddenly of her good-natured friend Tanda, who was also a healer.

  For some reason, my fate seems to be bound to healers. She smiled as she recalled his face. Tanda, she thought, did I do the right thing by coming back? Won’t I just cause more pain by digging up the past and exposing it to the light of day?

  Fortunately, her aunt seemed to be as prudent as Jiguro had said. Balsa would tell her everything. If it seemed wiser to keep the past buried, she would leave Kanbal without meeting Jiguro’s family.

  And never come back.

  She heard footsteps approaching and looked toward the door. Her aunt entered, bearing a tray with some baked sweets and two handleless cups of lakalle. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” she said uncertainly. “Fortunately, there were fewer patients than usual today…. Why don’t you tell me your story now? You can take your time.”

  Balsa took the cup her aunt offered. A hint of fragrant spices filled her mouth with the first sip, stirring a memory so familiar it made her nose sting with unshed tears. “I know this flavor. My father used to give me this when I caught a cold.”

  Yuka breathed in sharply. She stared at Balsa and nodded. “Really? Then perhaps you are Balsa after all. Karuna and I developed this recipe when we were studying together at the academy in the capital. It’s made from a combination of spices that warm the body, and it’s an excellent cold r
emedy.” She sighed deeply. “Did someone rescue you after you fell in the well and were swept away by the current?”

  Balsa shook her head. “I never fell down a well. But before I tell you my story, tell me what happened to my father.”

  Yuka looked at her with searching eyes. “My brother was killed ten days after … after you disappeared,” she began. “The old serving woman found him lying slain at the back door when she went to work that morning. The palace guard claimed that it was the work of thieves. The house was a mess, as if a storm had passed through it.”

  Balsa closed her eyes briefly. Then she opened them and asked in a quiet voice, “Did you see his body?”

  “Yes. I was staying in an inn in the capital because I was worried about Karuna. He was so despondent over your death. I wanted to stay at his house, but he absolutely refused, almost as if he knew that he would be attacked.”

  She seemed to make up her mind about something. Looking straight at Balsa, she said, “Yes, I saw my brother’s body, and ever since I’ve wondered what really happened. He had two injuries. One was a deep slash that ran all the way from his left shoulder down across his stomach. Any robber who gave him a wound like that would have left him for dead. Yet they still cut his throat. When I saw that, I knew that whoever did it wasn’t planning to rob him: They came to kill him. That last stab in the neck made absolutely sure that he was dead.”

  Balsa nodded. “Jiguro said that if you saw the body you would be sure to notice something wrong. And he feared it might put your life in danger.”

  “Jiguro?” Yuka said sharply. “You mean Jiguro Musa?”

  Balsa was surprised at her tone of voice. She spat out the name as if it belonged to a poisonous insect.