by Davis Ashura
Dar’El ground his teeth. Hal’El’s last statement had hurt, tying Suge Wrestiva to Rukh. It was a clever ploy. He looked out at his fellow ‘Els, too many of whom stared back at him with what appeared to be hostility. Dar’El could feel Rukh’s future slipping away. It had been so close, but once again, here came Hal’El Wrestiva to crush all hopes of happiness. Would the man never leave them be? He glanced to the other side of the Arbiter’s dais, and Hal’El smirked at him, victory reflected in his eyes.
Dar’El’s eyes swam with red and just then, he almost bellowed out what he knew about the Wrestiva warehouse and snowblood. By the barest of margins, he held his tongue. He had to hold onto that secret. It was too important. The city needed Dar’El to find what was really happening with the murders and the Sil Lor Kum, even if the cost was Rukh’s future.
Dar’El sought to recapture his poise, taking deep, even breaths to work out his anger. It didn’t work. Calmness wouldn’t remain. It broke apart like a thought in a room crowded with shouting people. No matter how hard he tried, serenity eluded his grasp. It kept slipping away, so he decided to use the anger instead.
“You have all heard how my son obtained his Talents, and what you have heard is the truth,” he began. “Or do you wish to hold false everything we’ve spent two millennia defending? All the blood spilled cannot be for nothing! Look into you hearts and find where Rukh sinned. Was it because of his unsought Talents? In that case, what would you have him do? What wisdom would you offer? According to The Warrior and the Servant, ‘A warrior must always choose the path of righteousness, but if one isn’t visible, then on his own, he must forge it’.” Dar’El glared about the room, challenging those he knew might vote against him. “Where was the righteous path my son should have taken? What path would you advise your sons to follow if faced with such a situation?” He glared about a moment more before answering his own question. “There is none!”
Sweat beaded on his brow, and Dar’El wiped it with a handkerchief. “We are told that death is the greatest gift a Kumma warrior can offer to someone in need,” he said. “I think this is wrong. The greatest gift is life. We all know what happened to Rukh in the Chimera caverns. He was left to die. It was shamefully done. Even his lieutenant, in the after-action reports, indicated this was true. But I ask you to think of what this means from Rukh’s perspective. He carried the burden of his shame. He accepted the abuse and hatred of his brothers. He suffered betrayal, but he fought on. He never quit. Duty demanded no less. Rukh held steadfast, never letting the treason of others defeat his heart, the sin of his unwanted Talents ruin his soul. He lived—with all the pain and loneliness that implies—because he is a Kumma. He lived so your sons didn’t have to die. Think of the courage it would take to endure in the face of such abuse, and ask yourselves if you possess similar bravery. I do not.”
Until this moment, Dar’El had never given full measure to Rukh’s accomplishments. Now, hearing the words spoken aloud, he was forced to do so. A tear leaked down the corner of an eye, and he had to take a shuddering breath before he could speak again. “Knowing all this,” he began in a quavering voice, “is it really possible that a man of such nobility would desecrate himself in any way, especially with a woman not of his Caste? He would not, and he didn’t.”
Silence greeted his final statement.
Shortly after, the vote was taken. In the end, eighty-five percent voted in favor of House Shektan’s petition.
Rukh was coming home.
A willingness to listen to and understand those with whom one disagrees is not enough. One must also offer acceptance.
~Sooths and Small Sayings by Tramed Billow AF 1387
“Where go next?” Chak-Soon asked.
Jessira shrugged, worried more about her footing then answering the Tigon’s question. Along the eastern edge of the Creosote Plains, the land rose quickly, and the terrain became rough and uneven. Add in the wet, slippery ground—it had rained for the five days since their departure from Hammer—and it wouldn’t take much to turn an ankle. Even the packhorse had sense enough to step carefully through the thick, green grass. It made for slow going, but at least this morning the sun had broken through the clouds and brought with it much needed warmth and a return to spring.
Spring.
It wasn’t something Jessira could smell so much as sense. There was a vibrancy to the sky and clouds, to the sound of water and birds, even the way the fish ran in the streams. All of it seemed to reflect what she knew: spring was coming. Hopefully, last week’s rain and cold would be the last of winter’s icy grasp. Then the world could start to come back to life.
Her smile of anticipation faded as she plotted their course.
Soon would come the Soulless River. Passage would be difficult if it was already spring-swollen.
“Where go next?” Chak-Soon repeated.
Jessira shot him an irritated glance. Now he wanted to talk to her? A week after she’d saved his miserable carcass? Not once, had the fragging Tigon offered any kind of acknowledgement of what she’d done for him. She often wondered if Healing the unholy beast had been the right thing to do. Rukh seemed to think so, but Jessira wasn’t sure. During their time together, all Chak-Soon had done was keep to himself. He glowered as he watched and listened to the others but offered little in return.
“We’re going home,” she said. “I have no idea where you and Choke are heading.” Of course, she wasn’t about to tell Chak-Soon where home was. As far as the Tigon was concerned, she and Rukh were on their way back to Ashoka. There was no chance she would trust Chak-Soon with the secret of Stronghold’s existence. Not even Li-Choke could know of it. Stronghold survived because no one knew to look for it.
The Tigon grunted. “You Heal. Not thank you. Should say so.”
Jessira studied the Tigon. His ears stood erect and faced forward. His eyes were wide open, the pupils narrow slits against the sunlight. But his cat-like features, so like a jaguar’s, were indecipherable. Typical. She’d never liked domestic cats either. “Are you saying ‘thank you’ or are you saying ‘you’ll never thank me’?”
“Thank you.”
If a boulder had fallen on her head, Jessira doubted she would have been more stunned. Chak-Soon was thanking her? Even after hearing the words, she struggled to believe that a Tigon was capable of feeling any sense of obligation or gratitude. While Li-Choke had said this Tigon was different, that he was learning to understand about the ideals of brotherhood and peace, even love, Jessira hadn’t believed the Bael. Not really. Rukh had been willing to give the creature the benefit of the doubt, but that’s because he did so for nearly everyone. Jessira wasn’t so generous. Perhaps it was because the Tigon was so quiet and withdrawn. In a Human, such an individual would have been described as being sullen or taciturn, ready to explode at the slightest provocation; and it didn’t take much to set off a Tigon. Yet here was Chak-Soon, offering honest appreciation for what she had done for him.
“You’re welcome,” Jessira replied.
Chak-Soon grunted, and the two of them fell again into silence.
Jessira looked ahead to where Rukh and Li-Choke spoke to one another. The two of them had a genuine affection for one another. It was hard getting used to. While Jessira had come to accept Li-Choke’s presence, she still wasn’t comfortable around him. Not like Rukh, who seemed to think the Baels were already allies. Again, it was his rare gift: he forgave those he should have hated with every fiber of his being. And if he could forgive Humanity’s enemies, then perhaps he could forgive those amongst her kind who had wronged him.
“Mother not right ‘bout you,” Chak-Soon said, interrupting her thoughts.
She glanced at the tall, powerful Chimera. For once, his inscrutable features were easy to read. The Tigon’s ears were wilted, and his gaze was cast downward. Even the way he walked: the droop of his shoulders as he shuffled beside her spoke of an inner turmoil. Chak-Soon was ashamed.
“You think Suwraith is wrong?” Jessira
guessed.
Chak-Soon nodded, staring downward, unwilling to look her way. “We kill. Not good. Choke says brothers are we.”
Jessira studied the Tigon once more, searching for signs of deception. He sounded and looked sincere in his statement, and some of the distrust she felt for the big Chimera thawed. Perhaps Li-Choke was right. Maybe Chak-Soon could be taught a better path, one in which Humanity was no longer the enemy. It seemed an almost unbelievable change of heart, a miracle really, but it didn’t change the fundamentals of the situation. Chak-Soon was but one ordinate—what the Tigons named their commanders—alone in his way of thinking. He was a single green leaf on a tree full of autumn’s reds and golds, easily missed and overlooked. What chance did he have of changing the hearts of so many? Of those who held fast to their faith in the Queen and who would leap at the chance to kill those whom She named evil.
Not much. There weren’t likely to be many others like Chak-Soon amongst the Tigons.
“What are the two of you talking about?” Rukh asked. He and Li-Choke had slowed down so Jessira and Chak-Soon could catch up with them.
“Chak-Soon was just thanking me for Healing him,” Jessira replied. “He was also….” she broke off when she noticed the Tigon’s silence.
Once again, he’d separated himself, walking ahead with his head drooping. She understood. Chak-Soon wasn’t brooding or being sullen. He was humiliated. All along, the Tigon had been going through a crisis of conscience.
“The rest is for him to say,” she added.
Chak-Soon was the last to cross to the eastern shore of the Soulless River. Fording the river hadn’t been easy—all of them ended up having to swim at least part of the river’s breadth—but at least the Creosote Plain was now behind them, and from where they now stood, the Privations soared directly ahead. In reality, the mountains were many miles distant. A thick forest of hardwoods—oak, maple, and elm—arose close by, stretching to the broad shoulders of the mountains.
Rukh turned away from the others as he stripped out of his wet clothes and donned a dry shirt and trousers. Jessira was doing the same. Rukh tried not to stare at her legs. From when they practiced, either with the sword or while wrestling, he knew just how strong her legs could be. How then were they also so soft and warm? He lost himself tracing the elegant lines of their length, the curves where they met….
“This is where we part ways,” Li-Choke said.
Rukh broke of his contemplation of Jessira’s legs. He hoped he wasn’t blushing.
“We’ll make our way to the Hunters Flats from here,” Choke continued, apparently not noticing Rukh’s reaction. “I imagine you’ll head for Ashoka.”
Rukh grunted, not bothering to correct the Bael. He didn’t like lying to Choke—he thought of him as a friend—but Jessira had been insistent that even the most vague sense of Stronghold’s location, or even its existence, had to be kept secret from both Chimeras. Rukh didn’t blame her. If the Queen ever learned of Jessira’s home or worse, its location, the city would be doomed. There was no Oasis to protect it.
“Hate water,” Chak-Soon complained, as he wrung out his dripping fur.
Rukh sympathized, an unusual sentiment to hold for a Tigon. In the beginning, he hadn’t been sure what to make of Chak-Soon. In fact, there had been many occasions during the early days of their travel together when he had wondered if he’d been wrong to ask Jessira to Heal the Tigon. Eventually, those suspicions had faded as he got to know Chak-Soon. The Tigon was trying to become a better being than nature and the Queen had made him. It couldn’t be easy, and Rukh wondered what Chak-Soon would do once he was back amongst his own kind—Tigons who still dreamt of murdering Humans, of rending their flesh in honor of their so-called Mother? What then would Chak-Soon do? Would he fall back into the habits he knew so well? Would he betray Li-Choke?
Rukh didn’t know, but he prayed it would be otherwise. He prayed Devesh—or someone—would see the young Tigon through his crisis of conscience. He was surprised by how earnestly he prayed for Chak-Soon.
“The Soulless wasn’t so bad,” Li-Choke said in response to Chak-Soon’s complaint. “You should try fording River Crush. All those rapids and falls.” He mock-shuddered. “I hear it can be tense. In fact, it’s said that the Western Plague loses more Chimeras to those waters than to any caravan of Humans.”
“Where will you go next?” Rukh asked
“To the Eastern Plague. Mother will expect a full report,” Li-Choke replied. “She promised to let my brothers live if I obeyed Her will in this matter.”
“What will you tell her?” Jessira asked, coming up to join their conversation.
Li-Choke smiled. “Anything to keep me and my kind alive,” he said without the faintest hint of irony.
Chak-Soon bared his teeth, exposing sharp fangs. It was an expression Rukh had learned was the Tigon’s way of smiling. “Mother think I stupid. She not care what say.”
“We’ll have to cut south of the Privations,” Choke added. “We might pick up some late snow.”
“You’ll be fine,” Jessira said with a smile. “You’ve got all that fur to keep you warm.”
“Not like fur wet,” Chak-Soon complained once again.
Jessira chuckled. “So much like a cat.”
Rukh was taken aback by Jessira’s expression of affection for the Tigon. It set him wondering if it really only required two weeks of travel and an open heart for centuries of hatred to be cleansed? He reckoned it was too simple a solution for such a deep-rooted, complicated problem. But then again, sometimes what everyone knew to be the hardest things in life were, in reality, the easiest. In any case, it was a reason for hope.
“Goodbye, Rukh Shektan,” Li-Choke said with a smile. Rukh found his feet dangling off the ground as the Bael hugged him. “Thank you for saving me. Again.”
“Travel safe,” Chak-Soon said, looking uncertain.
Rukh settled on a handshake with the Tigon.
Their parting words spoken, Rukh and Jessira watched as Li-Choke and Chak-Soon made their way southeast, before they eventually crested a hill and disappeared.
“Time for us to go, too,” Jessira said.
Rukh found her staring eastward, toward the soaring Privation Mountains. It was easy to understand why: Jessira wanted to go home. Rukh would have felt the same way if their roles had been reversed. “Stronghold it is,” he said.
“Are you sure you want to?” she asked diffidently.
Rukh smiled. “I told you before: my home is with you.” He felt the rightness of his words even as he said them.
Jessira’s eyes shone. Without a word, she stepped forward and fistfuls of his shirt were caught in her hands. She kissed him. It was hard and passionate, loving and possessive all at once. It was a kiss only she could give, and Rukh didn’t want it to end.
The small fire crackled merrily. Rukh and Jessira had set up camp along the banks of a small, spring-fed lake, deep in the thick woodlands that began north of the Privation Mountains and extended all the way down to Samsoul. In the clearing made by the pond, the majesty of the night sky was visible, spread out above them like a shimmering curtain of light. Jessira was cleaning up, wanting privacy while she bathed. The sound of her splashing could be heard, along with the noises of chirping crickets and a nearby owl as it hooted.
Rukh had already bathed, and he sat by the fire, fingering The Book of First Movement. It was such a slender book with a soft blue leather cover and the title embossed in gold. Could this really have been written by the First Father? Why didn’t he have more to say with his final words?
He glanced toward the pond. Jessira was mostly hidden by a bed of tall rushes that swayed gently in the soft breeze. He couldn’t tell, but it seemed as if her back was to him, and little beyond her head and torso was visible. She turned to the side and stretched, arching her back as she ran fingers through her hair. The flash of a pale breast was briefly visible in the moonlight. He sat forward, his interest piqued. He sighed in disap
pointment when she turned away again.
Jessira looked like she was going to take a while with her bath, so Rukh went back to studying The Book. He turned it over in his hands, looking at it from every angle before finally cracking it open. Just as the stories told, the pages were empty. He flipped through The Book before coming back to the first page. His eyebrows rose in surprise. A moment earlier, the page had been yellow and blank like all the others; but now there was a single line, written in blue ink with a man’s strong hand: ‘Believe my song and serve greatness’.
Rukh pondered the words. Why had no one else been able to read this solitary script until Hume? And surely there had to be more to the First Father’s book than this one enigmatic line. He held The Book up to the light, looking to see if a faint tracery of words might be visible if the pages were backlit.
Still nothing.
A strange rushing noise filled his ears, a sound of ringing bells, strumming strings, and peeling horns. Rukh felt himself tumbling, down deep toward a gentle blue light.
“Rukh!” the voice was distant. Jessira. He tried to answer, to push against whatever was pulling him downward. Helpless as a leaf on the wind, he fell….