by Tara Maya
“He can find you here as well as there.”
Zumo had already reached the same conclusion, even though his stomach roiled at the thought of facing his uncle. For mercy’s sake, Uncle Vio was the man who had once had prisoners lie down before him, still alive, so he could stomp on their skulls for fun. Rumor had it that his warriors took bets on how many stomps it would take him to crack the bone and spill out the brains like seeds from a broken pumpkin. Usually, it only took him one.
Vio hadn’t stomped on skulls for a while, and wouldn’t let anyone call him by his old Shining Name. Now you called him the Maze Zavaedi to his face, if you knew what was good for you. But who knew when he might start feeling nostalgic?
Zumo shuddered.
The walk from his house to Vio’s house was short. Next door, in fact. He did not need to enter the street at all, he could have jumped from one balcony to the other, as he and Kavio had as boys.
The distance had grown in other ways since then, however. So Zumo took no liberties. He climbed down the ladder from the balcony of his own house, walked the paces in the dusty street, and stood at the base of Uncle Vio’s house. Only two years ago, a mob would have beaten his cousin Kavio in this spot, had Zumo not intervened; though, to be honest, Zumo had probably saved lives in the mob more than the other way around.
“A guest is here, asking entry to your feast!” Zumo called up. Two warriors, supporters of the Maze Zavaedi, stood there, but ignored him. Then Uncle Vio himself peered over the edge of the balcony. He nodded, and the two warriors lowered the ladder.
No one offered Zumo a hand up on the last rung.
“Well met, Uncle Vio,” Zumo said, with some attempt at cheer.
Uncle Vio did not return his smile. His stony expression made Zumo’s heart sink. Uncle Vio climbed to the next level and Zumo followed.
The mats for the potlatch feast filled the whole second story balcony, which was a large one. The space seated sixty and more men and women. Larger potlatches would be held in the central square, for hundreds, even thousands, of guests, but for a gathering of this size, the amount of food was impressive. There was a whole roast pig, piles of sausages, bowls of leeks and onions, baked squashes, mashed beans, a pile of oven-blackened pigeons, plucked but with heads and wings still attached, a tower of flat round bread and bowls and bowls of cheese and diced meats for pishas. There were jugs of beer and milk and clarified butter.
One of Kavio’s friends, Nilo, held out a bowl to Zumo.
“Honeyed nuts, Zumo?” Nilo grinned. Zumo’s loathing of the sweet was well known.
Zumo just walked past him contemptuously. Nilo didn’t matter by himself. What mattered was that every other guest here but Zumo himself was probably one of his uncle’s supporters.
Or not.
To his surprise, as Zumo walked to his seat next to his uncle at the head of the mat—technically the place of honor, but often offered to an enemy at affairs such as this—he saw many Morvae. There were friends of his mother and father, and also quite a few from his own age cohort. In fact, it appeared that Uncle Vio had gone out of his way to invite all of Zumo’s closest friends and allies in the Labyrinth to this little soirée. They outnumbered the Maze Zavaedi’s own supporters. There was Gideo’s son—Rablo. Rablo was head of the Whistlers. Surely Uncle Vio knew that? Rablo wasn’t the only Whistler there. Zumo counted half a dozen.
By the time Zumo sat down and filled his plate, he felt lighter. He had many allies. No matter how angry Uncle Vio was, he would not dare retaliate against Zumo for locking up Aunt Vessia. No wonder Uncle Vio was such a grouch. The old man sat in his place and opened the feast with the usual speeches, but ate very little. He glowered at his plate. He did not look at Zumo.
Zumo enjoyed himself more and more as the meal progressed. He had friends, he had beer, he was alive. Life was good.
He’d just polished off a good bit of pork and was contemplating another rib when Vio stood up.
All conversations stopped.
Oh, muck, thought Zumo.
“Thank you all for sharing my food,” Uncle Vio said. “I wish I could have broken bread with you under a happier sky. As you know, my son, though exonerated of the charges laid against him two years ago, never returned from exile. It is my belief that he is dead.”
Zumo dropped the pork rib. The clatter sounded loud in the silence.
“It is my belief,” said Vio, “that Kavio was murdered.”
Zumo shook his head. His lips moved but no words came out.
Uncle Vio pointed right at him. “Zumo the Cloud Dancer, I accuse you of the murder of my son. Until you confess or stand trial, you will be confined to a cell in the maze beneath the tribehold.”
Nilo and the two warriors who had lowered the ladder appeared at Zumo’s back. Nilo had a bow cocked at him. The guards had spears.
“Oh, please, please put up a fight,” Nilo begged.
Zumo considered it. He darted inquiring glances at Rablo and his other friends. They sat frozen like stones. None would meet his eyes.
Uncle Vio leaned forward. In a low, pitiless voice, he asked, “Did you think you were dealing with a sheep instead of a wolf?”
Then Zumo understood what this had been all about. Uncle Vio wanted to show him that he could have Zumo arrested in front of all his closest allies and still get away with it. No one would dare challenge the Maze Zavaedi, War Chief of the Rainbow Labyrinth. Friends were useless.
Zumo was on his own.
He did not resist when the guards bound his hands behind his back.
“Confine him to the same cell where he imprisoned my wife,” the Maze Zavaedi commanded.
Dindi
Dindi ate her fish alone. Umbral avoided her the rest of the evening, and she was just as glad for his silence. The idea that some memory of Kavio’s might be the spoils of his gloating murderer was hard for her to bear.
The next morning, Umbral roused her before sunrise. They broke camp with nothing to eat except some dried roots because he had decided, apparently, they were to cross the Boglands, and he wanted to hurry. He kept muttering about the lead that Amdra would have since she had wings.
Nonetheless, as before, Umbral walked and let Dindi ride Shadow. She wondered if it were her imagination or if Shadow seemed a little smaller. More like a shaggy Northern pony than a horse.
The Boglands hooked a cruel name on a pretty land. Rolling hills, softened by snow, led them ever down, down, down into warmer country than the mountains they left behind. After several days, they descended past the snow line. The hills here were not the bright green they would be in summer, but shades of stained and faded browns mingled with dark spruce and grassy peat.
After several days, they passed a lake edged by marshlands. Many trees were submerged in the water. Probably the recent rains had raised the lake level, though the prevalence of sunken trunks in various stages of rot indicated it was not an infrequent occurrence. While collecting duck eggs, Dindi came across an upturned tree with an oval nest, made of moss, bark, twigs and rootlets, lined with feathers and hair. More than thirty winter wrens shared this little commune. They fluttered out of the hole in the nest and serenaded her with energetic song. Pixies rode on their backs, but the wrens had such fat, round brown bodies—almost as spherical as a child’s ball—that the pixies kept sliding off and plopping in the water. Dindi laughed out loud.
Suddenly, both pixies and wrens scattered. She glanced behind her and saw Umbral, watching her with a strange expression.
Dindi stopped laughing.
He looked away.
As if to punish her, he said roughly, “What you should do now is dance for another Vision.”
Here? Now? But she did not dare defy him twice in a row. She picked through the mud, trying to find a patch of ground that didn’t squelch under her toes, and began to dance.
Vessia (20 Years Ago)
On the day to choose the War Chief, Vio broke with only one tradition; he retired to his own house du
ring the Casting of Stones.
“I will not see who casts which stone,” he told the Society of Societies, who assembled in the great, three-tiered kiva, with a smooth river stone in hand. “Do not fear my wrath if you wish to cast your stone in another’s jar. If you want me as War Chief, my spear will be strong for you. If you choose another, my spear will be strong for him.”
Vumo and Nangi arrived at their house to report the results. Vessia lowered the ladder to them from the balcony, as houses in the tribehold had neither doors nor windows on the first floor. Vessia did not need to eat thoughts to surmise from Nangi’s disgruntlement which way the casting had gone.
“His little charade fooled no one,” Nangi grumbled. “The jars would have been full for Vumo, but Vio never would have bent his knee to his baby brother.”
Vumo looked uncertain. Listening to Nangi’s poison day and night had made him suspicious of his brother.
“If you don’t take Vio at his word, then test him,” Vessia said. “Tell him Vumo was selected, see what he does.”
“That’s not a good idea,” said Vumo. “He’ll kill me.”
“You owe him the chance to prove he is true.”
They climbed up one more ladder, to the third story rooftop, where Vio gazed out over the whole tribehold, to other rooftops where families lounged, also waiting for the news of whom the elders had chosen, and past that, to the hills where his enemies camped. He leaned on his spear like a walking stick, and his expression was impassive, but Vessia had learned to read the small ticks in his forehead and cheek that showed his extreme tension. He would not let himself ask how the casting went, but waited for his younger brother to speak.
“The elders acclaimed Vumo the One-Horned Aurochs as War Chief,” Nangi announced.
“Nangi!” complained Vumo.
All the blood drained from Vio’s face. He lifted his spear, and Vumo took a step back.
“Now, Vio, wait…” Vumo began.
Vio went down on one knee and placed his spear before Vumo. “You have my spear, my arm, my light. You are my Chief, and I, your warrior pledged. If I fail you by word or deed, let my spear be broken under your foot, let my life be spit in your mouth.”
Nangi plucked something from the air and tasted it. She heaved a sigh. “There is no deceit in him.”
On the other rooftops, men and women pointed at them. Their exclamations of surprise and outrage carried on the wind.
Vumo’s face flamed. “Vio, stand up!”
“As you command, my Chief.” He stood.
“No! I am not your Chief. You should not kneel to me!” Vumo prostrated himself and laid his spear in front of Vio. “Forgive my doubt. I only wanted to know if you would honor me. Of course they chose you, Vio. Of course they did.
“You have my spear, my arm, my light. You are my Chief, older brother, as you have been all my life, and I am your warrior pledged. If I fail you by word or deed, let my spear be broken under your foot and let my worthless life be spit in your mouth!”
Now cheers and yells carried from the onlookers on other roofs. Within a few days, the tale had spread, that Nangi and Vumo had tested Vio’s honor and he had proven true, and the esteem in which he was held rose. Yet there were those who had first rejoiced at the thought that a Morvae, not an Imorvae, would be War Chief, whose disappointment was all the more bitter for their hopes being raised then dashed. These malcontents made Vumo more nervous than Vio, and Vumo kept asking him, “You’re not still sore about that trick we played are you? It was Nangi’s idea.”
“No,” said Vessia. “It was mine.”
Vio measured her a long look, but to his brother said mildly, “I’m not sore.”
In earlier generations, only Tavaedies and warriors would have been expected to bend knee and pledge life to the War Chief, but the Bone Whistler had demanded the personal pledge of every tribesman and tribeswoman, all eight thousand of them, who lived inside the walls of the pueblo. The people were eager to purge themselves of the stain of the fallen tyrant, and the elders felt only a new pledge would break any lingering thrall of the Bone Flute. Vio stood in the central plaza and received a long line of men and women who knelt to him by turn. The process took days.
Nangi offered to eat the thoughts of those who gave their pledges, as she had for her father. In her father’s day, those whose thoughts belied their words would have been dragged to one side and killed on the spot. Vio declined her services.
“Is it because you trust them so much, or because you trust me so little?” demanded Nangi.
“Let each man and woman garden what thoughts they please,” said Vio, “I will harvest only their deeds when I judge their loyalty. The same is true for you, Nangi.”
She snorted.
With his position as War Chief at last secure, Vio assembled seven septs of warriors on horse to sortie into the hills against the Morvae. He mounted a speckled gelding whose haunches had been dyed violet. Purple and black ribbons were braided into his mane. Vio had an unpainted white mare brought for Vessia.
“Can you use a hoop?” Vio asked, tossing her one of the instruments the humans used to guide their mounts.
“I don’t need it,” she said.
He lost his skepticism only after she leaped onto the bare back of the mare, whispered into her ear, and left the kraal at a gallop.
He kicked his own horse to catch up with her.
“Fine,” he laughed. “Of course an Aelfae can ride. And you’ve brought your bow, which is fine. But stay out of the heart of the combat.”
She shrugged. She had once had a taste for killing humans, but that sun had set. She had no desire to end more of their sad, short lives. Privately, she vowed to kill only to protect Vio from imminent death.
The Morvae had septs of warriors on horseback, and many hundred warriors on foot, but there was no structure to their resistance. Vio routed them and chased them higher and higher into the mountains. After half a moon of harrying the warriors, the remnant of the Morvae forces overtook their families, who had fled ahead of them, most the very day of the Bone Whistler’s fall. Two thousand tribesfolk had fled to the hills, some because they clung to their hate of Imorvae, others because they feared retribution. They had taken their aurochsen and goats and whatever they could carry on their backs. This miserable straggle of refugees left a trail of cast off treasures and dead in their wake. Vio and his men “liberated” most of the livestock in a series of raids.
The refugees grew ever more desperate and ragged. The alpine landscape grew ever harsher. Desert canyons surrendered to snowy slopes. The oldest and youngest refugees died in droves, along with slaves who were sacrificed by the Morvae Tavaedies to cast hexes against the pursuing army.
Vessia killed nine humans. Three of those aimed weapons at her husband. The other six were Tavaedies dancing around a mariah, a sacrificial slave, whom they had tied to a tree. They threw rocks at him as they danced a hex meant to be sealed by the slave’s death. Vessia shot six arrows and pierced six throats. She cut the slave free.
“From which tribe were you captured?” she asked him.
“Y…yeeeellow Bear,” he stammered.
“Go home.”
The Morvae sacrifices and war dances were all in vain until they reached the border of Orange Canyon. A flock of Raptor Riders circled over the borderlands. Their leader shouted down to Vio.
“We know you betrayed your chief, Skull Stomper! If you cross into our tribelands, we will consider ourselves at war with the Rainbow Labyrinth!”
Vio ordered his men to halt. They drew their horses up on a ridge and watched the procession of refugees pour across the no-man-man’s land past trees branded with the mark of Orange Canyon’s totems, the Eagle and Ram.
“Let them go,” Vio ordered his men. “Our tribe needs rest from war.”
“I have not forgotten our other task,” he told Vessia privately. “But the tribelands of Orange Canyon lie between us and the Kiva Beneath the World. If I am caught there
with an army, it will mean war. If I am caught there alone with my wife, it will mean both our deaths. The Big Horn Pass will be watched by the birds.”
“Send your army home,” she advised. “Our horses too. Those prairie-prancers aren’t fleet enough for the mountain passes.”
He sent the seven septs of horsemen home, guarding the captives and livestock. He promised he would catch up with them as soon as he could. However, he was frowning when he spoke again to Vessia.
“I think I know what you intend, but I don’t think it is a good idea to travel by wing.”
“Why not?” she asked.
If her wings had not been stolen by Xerpen, flight would have been her preference. Vio still did not know she had lost her wings. How could she tell him, without also revealing her betrayal? She had been wondering what excuse she could give him for not flying. Perhaps he would give her one.
“I don’t think it’s safe,” he said.
A feeble reason, but Vessia nodded gravely as if it were the best argument in the world. “Very well.”
He looked surprised and relieved. “You concur?”
“I have something else in mind,” she said.
She whistled. Two bighorn sheep, ewes, trotted into the clearing where she and Vio stood. She danced herself into a trance to bring on the transformation. The tama lasted a long slide of shadow over the ground, much longer than it should have. She sorely lacked practice. At last, however, she felt warmth flow through her body, and she extended the multicolored threads of magic to twine into the bodies of the sheep. The animals bleated in dismay when their bodies stretched and grew. Soon both ewes stood nearly as tall as horses. Their woolly bodies were stockier, their legs leaner.
Vio examined the animals dubiously. “Can we ride sheep?”
“We Aelfae used to do it often. They are not much different from horses. Those also used to be small in stature, as the wild ponies still are today. We enlarged them only when we needed to ride, then returned them to their natural size. It was not until you humans stole a herd of horses from us while they were enchanted that they stayed that way. You should not have done that, by the way. It is one thing to ask animals for their help from time to time. They will do that much gladly if you ask in a way they understand. But it was not fair to the horses to make them into your slaves forever.”