by SC Huggins
He met Rami’s accusing stare with an impassive and neutral one. O! he took what he could. He always did, Tafik thought smugly. Rami glared and he sobered up, and tried looking suitably distressed for the occasion.
They had returned from their fight in the Chaldi expecting the chiefs to have taken care of business- make a grab for the throne and kill Jani and Rork to secure it. Thinking mother and son dead, they returned instead to an empty house and a quiet village.
They’d thought of everything. And now, this.
Rami contrived the feeling of fullness on his son, then Jani should have raised an alarm informing all of Rami’s death and the chiefs in a bid to take the throne, would murder mother and son. There was no reason for Jani to run off.
They hadn’t planned for their total disappearance.
A plan left simmering for the past five winters when it became obvious the boy was no true son of the Mapus shouldn’t go awry since they’d had time to cook it right. Rami was justified in his anger, but there was no time for it now, they had to find them.
The chiefs had waited patiently for Rami to die from one his raids. Rami waited for the right time to kill his son using the chiefs’ greed as a weapon. Tafik waited patiently for Rami to kill his son, so he’d be next in line to the throne and Jani waited impatiently for her husband’s death to run off with Tafik for a better life, one without Rami in it. What a family they were. Tafik pushed the golden locks of his hair back with hurried fingers and prayed Jani hadn’t foolishly run off to Chaldi.
The rulership was the most important thing in his brother’s life, and he would make sure to keep it. Kill anybody to keep it? Yes, he would. Serve the Yasre? He would even do more than that, for a man without power was nothing.
But they needed to find Jani and Rork first.
For all their scheming and careful planning, they never thought trouble would come from their own family. They truly expected the biddable wife to wait calmly until their return. The very last outcome they had expected was to come and find them already gone. Where was Jani?
“She isn’t at the house and her farm tools are gone!” Rami snapped.
Tafik locked his jaw angrily. They had burned the farm first just in case the chiefs hadn’t made their move. The ashes from the still smoldering farm threatened to stain his tunic permanently. But her farming tools were gone. Where could she be? He raised his tunic off the ground and shifted away from the farm.
Rami seethed with frustration and glared at his brother. Gritting his teeth at the words about to spring from his lips. They had always been close, simply because they understood each other and wanted the same thing- power. Given enough incentive, he knew with complete certainty Tafik would gladly stab him in the back, as he had been doing all his life at every opportunity. Yet, Rami trusted no one more. Theirs was a strange relationship indeed.
Tafik could have killed him for the ruler-ship, if he could. He would, if he had the opportunity. Rami knew this, since Tafik didn’t have the power to do what he really wanted, he worked to at least keep the ruler-ship in the family. There was some prestige to being a brother to the Qiga at least.
But Tafik tried to spite him in other ways. By sleeping with his own wife. Idly, Rami wondered if Rork was even his. He had often wondered where the boy got his good looks from. So, he felt no compulsion, no remorse at killing the boy. Ya, even if the boy had been his, with no power, no strength to speak of, he still would have killed him. Or if he did spare his life, send him far away where he would never be seen or heard from forever.
A strand of his bushy hair blew into his face, and he pushed it back in irritation. Looking up, he scowled at the skies, the weather was too good.
He needed to change it.
He needed to find the woman and child.
He needed another child. He needed many things. Rami thought in exasperation.
Rami glanced at his brother. Tafik stood off to the side, on an ash-free part of the road, tunic still as clean and as carefully creased as when they left this morning. Who travels to the next village and back, burn down a thriving farm and remain unstained? Only Tafik. His neat appearance snapped Rami’s patience.
“How. Did. She. Know?” He clipped out quietly, dangerously.
Tafik gritted his teeth.“I—”
“Did you tell her about the Chaldi skirmish?” Rami bit out, “that it was all pretend?”
Tafik looked up almost beseechingly. Then remembered Rami could never know he had been sleeping with Jani right from their marriage night.
“She could be in the farm,” he offered tentatively.
“Which farm?” Rami asked with a scathing look at the burned remains where her farm used to be.
“Dead?”
“Where are the bones?”
“Where did she go?” Rami asked quietly.
“Maybe you forgot to confirm the faked feeling of fullness had actually work—”
“Don’t insult me,” Rami said, muscles coiled tight and ready to strike.
Tafik backed off immediately.
“Where did she go?”
Tafik threw up his hands in exasperation. “How am I supposed to know that?” he returned a bit smugly.
Rami smiled. “Why not? You might have whispered sweet words to her in bed?” Rami sneered with a nasty grin and a cruel lift of his eyebrow, daring Tafik to deny it.
He didn’t, couldn’t.
The Qiga turned away. Already disinterested in his brother’s white face. He needed to find the boy especially. If Rork remained alive, powerless or not, he would stay the rightful heir. Everything they’d done would be pointless, the invented skirmish in Chaldi, the lies to the chiefs, everything. Rami gave his bushy beard a sharp tug in frustration.
Jani had obviously run away with the boy. Where would she go? Rami pulsed in annoyance when he realized he had no idea. “Ya!” he cursed fluidly without a care for Tafik’s flinch.
“Where would she go?” he asked. “And don’t tell me you don’t know,” he added.
Tafik breathe through his nose and thought quickly. Surely, she hadn’t taken him seriously and left for Chaldi.
“What?” Rami prodded impatiently.
Tafik shrugged. “She spoke of a friend in Chaldi, just once,” he warned, “and I might have deceived her into thinking we would run away together—”
Rami doubled over in laughter. He laughed so hard that spit ran from his mouth into his beard and tears flowed from his eyes. He looked up just in time to catch the look of disgust on his brother’s face.
“Wait,” Rami grinned evilly, “you love her.”
He laughed again.
Tafik looked away. Then he rose, the movement graceful. “No,” he taunted, “I tired of her and needed her off my back. Didn’t know she will take me seriously,” he finished with a mutter.
Rami smiled again and held up the scepter to his brother’s face and watched with satisfaction as he swallowed his envy with difficulty. He knew exactly how jealous Tafik was that he couldn’t use these ancestral objects without his permission. He licked his lips greedily at the flare of resentment in the blue eyes women like Jani found irresistible. “Just pray that’s where she went.”
Without hesitation or a glance of acknowledgment at his brother, Rami gripped the Triga and disappeared.
AS THE NIGHT GREW DARKER, the wind picked up considerably. Rork glanced at his mother out of the corner of one eye and held back his sigh of relief that she waited. She had convinced him to continue the journey past the path that led into Chaldi at least, so they would be clear off the forest. Where was father?
He shivered and glanced around, confusion and trepidation a bigger weight than the egg in his pocket. Rork took a deep breath and probed the dark with his eyes until he could just make out Mother’s face in the dark. The dark caused his skin to crawl and cut off the air he needed to breath. He hated the darkness, it started when he had gotten lost in the farm and had stayed there all night.
With f
ather absent and no magical power to find his way home with, he remained in the farm throughout the night until father appeared to pick him. But the night wasn’t the worst that day, no, it was the morning when he learned father waited deliberately to see if fear would force him to use his powers.
Since that day, the dark became his enemy and it irritated father to no end. He never voiced it, but Rork could feel it. The anger, the surge of irritation that his own son could do nothing. Dago would always say he’d outgrow his fear—
Because he was looking for it, he saw the twinkle of a light first. The same twinkle he saw the darkest day of his life before father arrived to pick him up from the farm.
Rork rose in anticipation. A moment later, Rami appeared.
At first, Rork didn’t move. Then, he propelled himself into his father’s arms out of sheer relief. Father held him up and Rork smiled down into his father’s eyes. He came just as he prayed he would.
“Father,” that one word was uttered, with so much love, awe and adoration.
Jani rolled her eyes.
He didn’t notice father’s silence, or the sword he held in one hand. The butt of the sword pressed hard into his hip, where his father held him, but relief robbed Rork off his ability to detect these signs.
He twisted excitedly in his father’s arms to peer at his mother. Frowning, Rork wondered why mother showed no emotion on seeing father. “Father’s here,” he reminded her unnecessarily, excitedly.
Still seated, Jani glanced briefly from Rork to his father.
“Yes, your father is here,” she acknowledged.
Relieved at having found them both, Rami’s gray eyes nevertheless narrowed on Jani. Running away with her lover and his son in tow, eh?
With his son held above him, Rami awkwardly, but with great strength raised his sword arm with the other. He grunted with effort, for Rork was tall for his age and was no light weight.
Rork threw his head back and laughed excitedly.
Head thrown back in delight, Rork glanced at his mother. A look of stark hatred twisted her face into something ugly beyond belief. Guiltily, he swung back to face his father, only to draw back sharply at the sight of the sword. He gulped audibly. The sound overly loud in the silence of the woods.
Eyes cold, Rami held up the sword by the hilt and pressed it slowly into the young smooth line of his son’s neck. His blood trickled out, a shocking red against the white pale skin.
He looked up, into the boy’s shocked eyes and saw the light of realization dawn in young eyes eerily like those of his mother and smiled in satisfaction. He’d waited too much for this day, and Rork had given him too much trouble, he would take his time getting his revenge. Memories of the not so discrete glances of condemnation, joy and smug satisfaction from the chiefs and villagers when Dago humiliated the Mapu family at the dance of the ganga passed through his mind’s eye and he pressed the blade harder, but slowly.
“Father,” Rork gasped. The one word full of pain even as his eyes rolled back in his skull.
“Son.” Rami drew his eyes from Rork to meet Jani’s gaze across the distance. He gave her a grim smile.
Jani shivered and looked away.
At that moment, Rork threw his head back, exposing his neck further. In acceptance? Rami’s lips twisted in disgust. He paused, eyes on the small cut across his son’s neck. No true son of his would face certain death so meekly.
The woods, the night, the very air went still, frozen in time, almost in acknowledgment of a boy being murdered at the hands of his father.
Rami eyed the cut with satisfaction and pressed the blade deeper. He pulled the sword out and prepared to nudge it in deeper. As he watched the flesh on both sides of the cut puckered close and...Rami blinked.
He blinked again, and the cut seemed normal again. Rami shook his head to clear it and pressed the blade in with renewed purpose. At that moment, the air slowly lifted, raising the leaves and the hair on his nape along with it. Rami thought to kill him off, but Rork deserved a slow death, for the ridicule he had suffered for his powerlessness, the shame and self-doubt it caused him.
The leaves whirled around them and the wind picked up. Rami paused. His eyes shifted to the side as he tried to track the change in the air. He had fixed this weather himself and no one else in the clan could reverse it. No one had that power. But it was obvious the weather had changed around them, Rami recalled the throne room eavesdropper and felt pure fear slither down his spine, leaving his body, still heated from the flames of the farm cold. The leaves moved up until they were suspended in the air on exactly the same height he held Rork.
No one was as powerful as he was.
He nudged the sword in father, grimacing at the resistance. Sweat slid down the side of his face and disappeared into his beards and the scent of fresh blood caused his nostrils to flare. He blinked at the cut and shivered, the slash he’d just made on his son’s neck was healing, fast.
Rork gurgled on his blood and struggled to speak. “F-F-Father,” he said faintly, dangling uselessly from his father’s hand.
Rami studied Rork. Puzzlement at the healing wound shifting to satisfaction as the blood trickled down his neck to soak his tunic. He drew his eyes up from the blood-splattered clothing to Rork’s eyes.
Jani watched and plotted. She knew Rami would kill her, had in fact read the intention in his eyes. He also knew about her relationship with Tafik. Well, she could do nothing about that. She had loved Tafik from the moment she laid eyes on him.
The wind kicked up again and she thought it was Rami, then she noticed his reaction to the change. It didn’t matter, he should just kill Rork and be done with it. How difficult it was proving to be, killing a powerless Rami descendant. What cruelty, causing the boy to suffer so. Briefly, she wondered what she would tell Wereu if she managed to survive Rami.
Wereu.
The hold the supposedly mad witch had over her frightened Jani. Were it not for the promise she made to Wereu to bring Rork, she’d have made a run for her life. But without Rork, she had no life. Returning to Rami was out of question, if she ran, he’d use magic to hunt her down, easily.
The witch made her promise, more like threatened her into bringing Rork to her. For whatever reason she may have, the mad woman insisted repeatedly that Rork be brought to her.
Alive.
To begin a new life with Tafik, she needed Rork. Then, Wereu would erase Rami’s memory or kill him or make him disappear, Jani didn’t care, she just wanted the ugly man off her back. The day suddenly lit up with a bright light. Jani squinted hard in the direction of father and son, stunned. Something glowed in Rork’s pockets, illuminating father and son and throwing the evil deed of the father into sharp relief. It had to be the egg shining with a white light.
Jani grew cold with fear. She always suspected the egg was no ordinary egg, but not to this extent. She laughed hysterically, never to this extent. She only accepted the egg to indulge the witch and gain her trust.
Who was Wereu?
The flickering light from the egg reflected off the sword and Jani stared, stunned. A gurgling sound reached her ears, sickening and unmistakable. She grimaced, he should let Rork go, the boy dangled like a leaf tossed to and fro, dried out and forgotten.
Should she take a chance and return to Chaldi, if she could slip away? Jani worried her lips with her teeth as her mind raced. She’d beg Wereu and explain everything, Tafik would have found his way to Chaldi and must be wondering what was holding her up. He was more important than Wereu or her son.
Her slightly plumped lips turned down, giving her a comical look. She had to find a way out and at least reach Chaldi and her rendezvous with Tafik.
So absorbed was Jani in her thoughts, and Rami with Rork that when the creature bounded out of the woods, she didn’t see it, Rami didn’t either. In a blur of limbs and black silky hair, the creature staggered out of the bushes, lumbering towards them. It was an ewr.
A cursed khorn creature created and ba
nished at a time when no mortal existed, it walked out awkwardly on two feet, and stopped in the middle of the road.
Wereu
The ancestral realm should freeze like the top of the mountains during the cold season, Jani thought numbly. Perhaps for the first time in forever, mortals and an ancestral creature stood taking each other’s measure.
And there was no contest.
Immobilized by shock, Jani’s blood seemed to flow and pulse in the direction of her ear, it streamed past in a wave of thunder, dulling her senses. She swayed on her feet, with no idea when or how she’d risen. Aghast, she stared at the seven-foot tall creature with wide eyes. No wonder, The Creator banished it to non-existence, but why and how was it here?
Her intention to escape forgotten, she watched in almost sick fascination as a creature banished for the past thousand years dropped down on all fours, its front paws landing on the ground with a sharp thud that caused the ground to vibrate. Stuck in a tableau not of their own making, they could only track the movement of the ewr as it dropped its head down.
And charged.
It skidded to a stop before the slack-jawed Rami, the force of its onrushing motion raising clouds of dust in the Qiga’s shocked face. The ewr rose, stretching up to stand comfortably on two legs, it threw its head back and roared its fury into Rami’s paralyzed face.
Raising its right paw, it smacked Rork off Rami’s grip. Its strength so great that the casual smack sent him flying in a graceful arch through the air until he landed against the rock outcropping beside Jani with a smack. She jumped back in fright and stared at Rork’s damaged head.
Even if the boy survived his father’s blade and the smack from the ewr, he would never survive the hit on the head from the rock. She dragged her eyes from her son to the action unfolding before her. Huge, and over seven feet tall on two legs as it was now, the ewr was a mighty creature, complete with silky black hair any woman would be envious of and two horns positioned just above its ears. It was also extremely ugly.