The Ravens of Death (Tsun-Tsun TzimTzum Book 4)

by Mike Truk

  Neveah’s mother, Damaris, turned to her pot and sipped from her wooden spoon. “I would say so, yes.”

  “Then set the table, girl,” said her grandmother. “And hurry. I’m hungry.”

  I felt wrong-footed. I was all pumped up, face burning from the intensity of my emotions, but now ignored as the three women set about preparing for dinner. Trying not to feel foolish, I stayed out of their way; shortly everything was ready, the large pot steaming in the center, wooden bowls set forth.

  I sat down warily beside Neveah and watched in silence as Damaris filled each bowl in turn. The grandmother sliced a small loaf of dark bread with neat passes of a gleaming knife, then without preamble set to eating.

  The meal proceeded in silence. The food was good, nutritious and hearty, the bread still warm as if freshly baked. I kept waiting for someone to speak, to ask a question, but nobody did, so I held my peace as well.

  Damaris was fascinating. I couldn’t help sneaking glances at her. She was exactly as Neveah would be a few decades from now - lithe and composed, graceful and lethal, yet subtly different as well. She wore her hair in a loose bun through which she’d stuck what looked like a couple of chopsticks, and her skin had lost some of Neveah’s youthful luster. Faint lines appeared around her mouth like parentheses and radiated out from the corner of her eyes.

  I’d call them laugh lines, but fuck if Damaris looked like she’d not laughed since she was a toddler.

  Finally, the meal was done. Unbidden, Neveah gathered the bowls. I helped, carrying the pot back to the kitchen, and together we took care of cleaning up while the older women moved to chairs set before the fire. There they sat in silence, staring into the flames.

  I wanted to say something ironic, to poke fun at the ongoing silence, but the inherent dignity of everyone present stilled my tongue.

  When the dishes were washed and set to dry, the stew covered and returned to the oven, the utensils wiped, the placemats folded away, and the table washed, Neveah moved to stand before the other women.

  Instinct urged me to hang back.

  “Do you wish to know what happened to me since we last saw each other?”

  For a moment, I thought neither woman would answer, but finally, her grandmother looked up at her. “There is no need.”

  I bit back my urge to interject, seeing Neveah struggling with her own temper.

  It was Damaris who spoke next, her tone contemplative and soft. “The particulars do not matter, Neveah. You rose to claim the highest honor and were corrupted. People suffered as a result. Now you have been afforded a second chance and wish to cleanse yourself. What more need we know?”

  Neveah frowned bitterly and looked away. “Nothing.”

  Damaris nodded and resumed studying the fire.

  “But when are we going to do this?” I asked. “We need to return to Ur-Gharab as soon as we can. We’ve got three weeks to get to Malkuth, and -”

  “Patience,” said the grandmother. “All in its time.”

  “All in its time?” I stepped forward. “You’ll excuse my French, but what -”

  Neveah touched my arm. “Noah.”

  “What?”

  “They know what they are doing.”

  “I know what they’re doing. They’re getting sleepy in front of a fire with full tummies. That’s not going to help us cleanse you of your demon.”

  “I’d forgotten how impatient and self-righteous young men are,” said Damaris conversationally to her mother.

  “It is a necessary failing on their part,” was the response. “Like stags, they are driven by the fire in their blood to act first and think later. Still, without those urges, how would anybody ever get pregnant?”

  Damaris smiled. “Perhaps the universe would be better off if nobody did.”

  The grandmother snorted. “You say that now, but I recall how you glowed while you carried Neveah in your belly. Don’t pretend to have forgotten.”

  “That was the happiest time in my life,” said Damaris softly, looking up at Neveah. “How I projected my hopes and dreams upon you. And to think you’ve failed them all so badly.”

  Neveah paled.

  “Listen here,” I began.

  “Oh, be silent,” snapped the grandmother, and my ward against Psyche-Imperium shattered. My mouth snapped shut, and I found myself unable to even grunt in protest. “Neveah had more talent and potential than any of us, yet here she stands, drenched in foulness, pierced by horror, her sanskaras mutilated, her whole body little more than a fleshy casement for a travesty that makes me want to weep.”

  “Sariyah,” said Damaris chidingly.

  “Oh, very well. Go on, Savior, prattle on if you need to.”

  My mouth loosened and I knew I could speak once more. I considered the ruined amulet about my neck. How powerful did she have to be to break it so easily?

  “She’s right,” whispered Neveah. “You said I can only defeat my demon through acceptance, did you not, Noah? So why pretend otherwise? The girl I was at seven could defeat me today with ease. I am a shadow of my former self, and it is my fault. You need not protest otherwise. It can and should be plainly spoken.”

  I wanted to deny her words, to comfort her, but knew it would be folly to do so. Instead, I forced myself to nod. “Will you lead her through this process? Help her heal and master her demon?”

  Silence.

  Neveah held herself so stiffly by my side she practically vibrated.

  “Of course, we will help,” said the grandmother, Sariyah. “Were it otherwise, do you think we would have broken bread with you?”

  “It’s just good to hear it spoken out loud. And - thank you.”

  “Don’t thank us,” said Damaris, voice soft once more. “Nothing about this business is anything less than a tragedy.”

  It was hard to think of a follow-up to that, so for a minute or so I just stood there awkwardly, staring into the fire. Finally, I roused myself. “How will we go about it? Do you have a method in mind?”

  “He is stubborn,” said Sariyah, though she sounded almost pleased. “We’ve had heads of state and men five times his age too intimidated to speak in our presence, yet still he persists. How delightfully uncouth.”

  “I wasn’t hired by the Source for my manners,” I said.

  “I should say not,” said Damaris. “Your selection was questionable enough as it is.”

  To my surprise and delight, I saw the corner of Neveah’s mouth quirk up for but a moment before the smile smoothed away.

  “Regardless, no, we do not know how we will go about it,” said the grandmother, shifting in her seat restlessly. “These matters are best guided by the heart, by the Source, and by the moment. We shall decide when we come to it.”

  Neveah bowed her head. “I know you do not want my thanks, but you have it. Thank you, grandmother.”

  Sariyah waved a veined and liver-spotted hand. “Pssht, enough. You two can sleep in the barn. The tragedy of your presence and corruption is too nauseating to keep in the cottage.”

  “Of course,” said Neveah, ducking her head.

  I went to protest but caught myself. There was a limit to how far I could push this, and Neveah had already agreed. So, instead, I left both women before the fire, following her out the front door and onto the porch, then down the steps to the grass.

  The cold was almost shocking after the comfortable warmth within, and my breath plumed out before me as I followed Neveah back around the paddock to a small structure I’d missed before. It was little more than a shelter for the donkeys, with a manger along one wall and a single bale of hay against the other. The muddy floor had been frozen into hard ridges, and despite the frigid air, I could smell the stink of sweat and manure.

  After the homey delight of the cabin, the change was shocking. Still, I’d slept in far worse, so I set about shaping the hay into bedding.

  Neveah stood in the barn’s door, staring out at the night, hugging herself, and at first, she didn’t hear me when I
called to her.

  “It’s ready,” I said, sitting down gingerly on the straw. It did far less to cushion me from the cold ground than I’d hoped. “We should rest.”

  “I feel like I’ll never sleep again.”

  “Odds are against that one.”

  She didn’t smile.

  I wrapped my arms around my knees and waited.

  “Being back here. It hurts more than I could have possibly guessed.” Her tone was bleak. “It brings back so many memories.”

  “Good ones?”

  “You might not think of them as such, but yes.” She sounded wistful now. “More than what happened, I remember the person I used to be. The harder my mother and grandmother made my life, the more determined I became to excel. I felt… innocent. Fated for great things. It was a form of arrogance, but it carried me through every trial. Life felt… glorious. I’d forgotten. What it was like to enjoy living. It’s been so long.”

  “Come here,” I said.

  She glanced at me.

  “Come here,” I said again.

  She peeled away from the doorway, stepped over to me, and sat by my side.

  I wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “The future’s not written in stone, you know. We could pull this off tomorrow. Cleanse you. Then return to the fight. You could find that joy again.”

  “Perhaps,” she said softly. “But I’m no longer that young woman. No longer innocent. I don’t think I’ll ever find joy in combat again.”

  “Well, there’s got to be something you’re looking forward to. If this works, that is. If we pull this off.”

  She sat still, shoulders hunched. At last, she sighed once more. “Penance, perhaps.”

  “You’ve already earned that,” I said. “No, wait, hear me out. Sure, you fucked up. Your grandma’s urged us to mince words, so yeah. Ilandro, all of that. Your corruption. Your fault. But even since I met you you’ve been nothing but a source of strength and inspiration.”

  Neveah clucked her tongue and moved to pull away in protest, but I held her tight.

  “I’m serious. You might not want to hear this, but I’m going to say it anyway. If there’s penance needed for what you did, then I think you’ve fucking earned it. The Five Trials, Ghogiel, Tagimron - everything you’ve done to keep us alive, to keep us going. We’d not be here without you. That’s got to count for something.”

  She stared down between her feet. “It’s not enough. I don’t know if it’ll ever be enough.”

  “Then you’ll have to let me be the judge.”

  “You’re biased,” she said.

  “You know it. Because -” I took a deep breath. “Fuck. I mean, I straight-up love you, Neveah. And I believe in you. I trust you with my life.”

  My words hung in the air between us, and she shook her head. “I want to tell you not to, but it’s too late for that.”

  “It’s too late,” I agreed.

  “And I don’t know why you love me. Or what that even means, when the real me died so long ago. I feel like little more than a shell. A ghost of the woman I once was.”

  “Then I can only imagine how amazing you must have been if the ghost-version of you is so mind-blowing.”

  She snorted. “You don’t give up.”

  “Never. And you know who I learned it from?”

  There was silence, but it felt different now, more companionable.

  “Come on,” I said, pulling her down onto the hay. “We’re gonna need to snuggle really, really hard if we’re not to freeze out here tonight.”

  “That much I can do,” she whispered, laying her head on my shoulder and draping her arm over my chest.

  We lay in silence. Subtle sounds filtered into the barn from the world outside - the occasional clop of a donkey’s hoof, wind stirring the branches, the distant screech of an owl.

  Eventually, Neveah fell asleep, but I remained awake. I couldn’t take my eyes off the hilt of Morghothilim, which remained strapped to her back, its great length curved about her body, its hilt rising over her shoulder like a curse she couldn’t be rid of.

  I studied its dark hilt, a grim determination rising within me.

  Tomorrow, I thought. You bastard blade, tomorrow you will be undone.

  Chapter 14

  It was before dawn when I awoke, stirred to wakefulness by Neveah’s departure from my side. For a moment I considered curling up in the hay, digging deeper into what lingering warmth remained, but I pushed aside that weakness and sat up.

  The interior of the small barn was gray with the early morning light. Two donkeys had entered at some point to stand close by, heads lowered as they dozed.

  “Time to work,” said Neveah, pulling her mane of hair over one shoulder to deftly braid it.

  “Work?” I’d never needed coffee more. The night had been long and cold, an endless length of uncomfortable hours in which I never quite managed to sink into a deep sleep. “As in, getting ready for your cleansing?”

  “In a sense.” Neveah’s tone was brisk, quietly confident. “But not directly. We’re going to help with the chores.”

  “Help with the chores,” I said, mind still feeling full of cotton. “I see. And why are we doing that?”

  “Because they need to be done.” Her braid finished and thick as her wrist, Neveah tied off the end with a twist of leather and flipped it over her shoulder. “You don’t have to come.”

  “Yeah, right. Like your grandma would let me in the cabin if I didn’t.” I got up with a sigh, feeling sixty-years-old. “What do we have to do?”

  “More than you can imagine. Come on. I’ll show you.”

  She was right. I’d always heard that living on a farm meant back-breaking labor from dawn till dusk, but I quickly found out why. The cottage was self-sufficient, and that was due in large part to the crops and animals secreted around it within small glades where natural sunlight could reach. Nowhere did I see tree stumps or signs of Damaris or Sariyah imposing themselves on the forest.

  The result was a constellation of vegetable plots, fenced-in wallows and miniature pastures, and lots of walking between them. We first set to walking the fences, making sure they were in good repair, which, unsurprisingly, they were. Neveah, however, had higher standards than I did; we spent an hour or so replacing what looked like a perfectly good section of fencing with new posts, shaping the ends so they supported each other without the need for rope or anything but gravity.

  Then we hauled water to the cabin from the rear well, gathered eggs from an impressively fortified coop, and refilled the wood box. I left Neveah to milk the goats while I distributed feed to the six pigs and donkeys; the sun had risen over the mountain peaks by the time she declared us done.

  “Normally I’d work all day,” she said, wiping her palms together as we mounted the steps to the porch. “Making soap from lard, baking bread, canning everything you can imagine, which involved spending hours by the stove to make sure the process went well.”

  “Sounds like a dream,” I said, stomach rumbling loudly. “You ever get breakfast?”

  To my surprise, Neveah gave me a genuine smile with a sidelong glance, then laughed as she pushed open the cottage door and entered.

  I guess old chores were good for the soul.

  Sariyah was within, sweeping the floor. The morning sunlight was already sluicing in through the windows, bringing out the smoldering colors hidden in every corner.

  “Morning,” she said, tone as brisk as Neveah’s had been. “There’s beans, bread, and bacon awaiting you, along with chicory root coffee.”

  We both washed our hands in water so cold my fingers went numb, then sat to eat heaping portions off pewter platters. The coffee was earthy and strange but scalding hot and thus welcome. In a matter of minutes, the food had disappeared.

  “Now,” said Neveah’s grandmother, never ceasing her cleaning. “You can work on the roof which is about to spring a leak by the chimney, or head out and do some hunting. Our reserves are running low.”
r />   “Hunting,” said Neveah, taking my platter and moving to the sink where she quickly washed out platters.

  “Shocking,” said Sariyah, pausing only long enough to smile wryly at us both. “But be back by early afternoon. There is much to be done.”

  “Understood.” Neveah moved to a cunningly disguised cabinet that I’d not noticed before and pulled out two bows. She strung them both expertly, the muscles and tendons standing out in her arms as she bent them down, then handed me one and took up two quivers.

  Sariyah had already gone back to sweeping. I didn’t say a word; instead, I followed Neveah down the steps, across the grassy sward, and into the woods.

  “Question,” I said, content to just follow Neveah as she purposefully strode deeper into the forest. “I mean, where I’m from we’ve got these stories about monks who were deadly fighters but spend their whole time in mountain temples sweeping leaves and stuff. Is that’s what’s going on here?”

  “How so?” asked Neveah.

  “Well, your mother and grandma are like, some of the most powerful and lethal beings in the universe, right? Yet your grandma is sweeping, and your mother is probably mucking out the outhouse or something right now. Which, actually, makes me wonder why they don’t have like, acolytes or novices here to do all the work for them?”

  “That was me,” said Neveah, a fleeting smile crossing her lips.

  “But what I’m getting at is, why are they spending their time doing this stuff when Lilith is about to conquer the whole universe? Shouldn’t they be out there leading the fight against her?”

  “Lilith hasn’t come here,” said Neveah. “That’s not a coincidence.”

  “But still, they could make a real difference in the war, couldn’t they?”

  “If they chose to fight, then yes, they could.”

  “So why don’t they? There’s this guy where I’m from, Spiderman, and he’s got this saying that with real power comes real responsibility. Don’t your mother and grandma have a responsibility to use their power to help others in need?”