Way Walkers: Tangled Paths (The Tazu Saga)

by Leigh, J.

“Trying make certain he does not have bastardized accent,” she replied in her desert-hot tone. “Needs standard sound, not the cross-mix you two create.”

  Hatori joined them, apparently having finished his game of jimble cards against Esop and a few of the new travelers they’d coaxed into riding with them. “Bastardized accent?” he asked. “In what language?”

  “Clan,” she replied. “Those two mixing a rough Ashoni-Tan’cha accent with what sound like muddled mix you get out of Tar’citadel’s Clan district. Add his Tazu accent, and Jathen sound like hacking up a lung through teeth.”

  “And what, pray tell, are you trying to add to it?”

  “Imperial.”

  “Uck.” Hatori rolled his eyes then pinched the bridge of his nose. “My dear, with all due respect, your Imperial Clan is good enough for the road, but your accent reeks of just that—the road. Jathen, get your ears over here! If you are going to learn the language, you are going to do it with a man reared on the Imperial pronunciation who has also been living in the Tazu Nation for over thirty years!” He added in perfect Tazu, “Unless someone wants to debate the quality of my accent.”

  No one argued with him directly except for Ass’shiri, who asked Setsu to translate. Shuffling past Cy’shā, Jathen saw her smile and wink, apparently having achieved her true aim.

  “Now we really don’t have a private language to argue in,” Jephue huffed, then insisted Jathen brush up on his Lu’shun as well.

  Well, it’s an odd beginning, but at the very least it’s a fourth language and perhaps a personal step closer to prophecy.

  Chapter 22

  The terrain changed.

  Setsuken had warned Jathen that once they got within so many bounds of the Hebe River, the jungle would come upon them quickly, but he was still unprepared for the sudden shift in landscape. One day, they walked across steppe plains in warm, dry air, and the next, the trees thickened and the humidity rose, while Pilgrims’ Road became overrun by creeping plants in continuous need of being hacked by the guides. Hkym’s legs altered to a primate state, his flexible toes popping out to navigate across the gnarled jungle floor of roots and moss. The thick scent of wet earth and mold filled Jathen’s nose, while a mist of moisture and bugs clung to him like a drenched blanket. Within another day, sunlight was filtered behind the canopy, and the buzz of plains crickets was replaced by the howls of much larger beasts. Thus was the road to Furōrin-Iki.

  “It’s worse farther south,” Ass’shiri cheerfully relayed. “This is technically just the forest section. The deep, dark jungle is more downriver on the Hebe.”

  “Lovely.” Jathen scowled, swatting an orange bug the size of his thumb. “Hope I never see it.”

  The beasts grew more aggressive in the canopy’s artificial night, the glint of their hungry eyes shining through the leaves. After expressing his concern, Setsuken decreed that Jathen should be taught to fight properly.

  “I’m just surprised no one’s schooled the boy already,” Esop said.

  Jathen shrugged from atop his elefil. “It always seemed a silly thing for me to learn. After all, it’s not like someone my size could ever do any real damage to a full-grown Tazu.”

  Setsuken snorted. “You think I or Esop can’t take down a Tazu?”

  “Well, you’re Clan, and Esop could probably take down a small mountain.”

  “Being Clan has absolutely nothing to do with it,” Setsu said over Esop’s loud laughter. “Let me tell you something: Tazu are slow. They might be stronger and bigger in their tyrn form, but when they are bipedal, they are vulnerable to any hands and feet faster than their own. Put them in a confined space where they can’t shift, or seize on a pressure point so they can’t, and they can go down very, very hard.”

  “Pressure point?”

  “You don’t know about pressure points?”

  “Well, I know Jephue used them to relieve his flying sickness a bit, and Petalith is always pressing on this or that for medical purposes, but what does that have to do with fighting?”

  “Gah, no wonder you got beat on!” Setsuken shook his head. “There are about three or four pressure point locks you can use to keep a Tazu from shifting.”

  That bit of information piqued Jathen’s interest. “Really?”

  “Yes. If you can get a Tazu in a lock, you can usually keep him from shifting. Probably for a few moments afterward, too, depending on how hard you pressed.”

  “Huh, I didn’t know that either,” Ass’shiri said. “I might want to learn this too, if you don’t mind, Setsu.”

  “Not at all.”

  That evening after they set up camp, Setsuken gave Jathen and Ass’shiri a lesson on fighting Tazu. He showed them where to hit, grab, and punch—solar plexus, jugular, elbow, or shin—to stun their opponent. However, every punch Jathen landed seemed to radiate up his arm with so much force that he ended up being the stunned one, cursing and flapping his hand in pain.

  “I’m done,” Jathen said after Ass’shiri flipped him over his shoulder and onto the mossy ground. “If either of you were Tazu, I’d have been eaten by now.”

  Setsuken turned Jathen over to Cy’shā to see if he might have better luck with a short blade. Four days into training, Cy’shā threw up her hands. “You are a nincompoop.”

  Jathen lowered his sword, dejected. On the last pass, he’d actually tripped over his own feet. “I told you I wasn’t good with a sword. I’m not a fighter, and I don’t see why I need to subject myself to humiliation.”

  “Everyone needs learn to fight, at least for self-defense,” she said. “Don’t know how you managed to survive this long without, to be true.”

  “I don’t see you making Hatori show his swordsmanship,” Jathen said. “I thought we all had to prove we could defend ourselves.”

  “Excuse me?” Hatori raised an eyebrow. “I’m over seven hundred eighty years old, boy. I might be a charm master, I might go about wearing Beleskie pink and loving a man, but by my blood-born Child and Protector Rhean, I can use a ruddy sword.”

  “Ugh!” Jathen planted the blade into the earth. “What’s next? Is Jephue going to pull a long spear out if his ass and pole vault over an elefil?”

  “You’d be surprised what he can fit up there,” Hatori quipped before rising and strolling away toward the tents. Ass’shiri tilted wildly on his seat, clutching his stomach and laughing until he fell over.

  Later, Hkym stepped in and offered to teach Jathen to throw a dagger. He made Jathen hold the weapon while he shadowed him from behind, the two moving as one over and over again. Once Jathen could aim, sweep, and toss the blade in his sleep, Hkym made him participate in a contest, where they each had to split twigs from five lengths. He didn’t win against the silent Tyr’sat, but he wasn’t humiliated, either.

  “Thank you,” Jathen told him.

  “He say you are a good boy,” Cy’shā replied, translating her mate’s hand signals. “More powerful than you think. Smarter than you think. Better than you think.”

  “And what do you think, Cy’shā?” Ass’shiri asked.

  “I think he a nincompoop,” she said with a sweet smile and a wink for Jathen. “And Hkym is a Walker.”

  Ass’shiri rolled his lavender eyes and challenged Jathen to a knife bout, which went well, despite the Clansman’s superior skills and experience.

  “See?” Ass’shiri said with a grin after he’d won. “You aren’t a nincompoop.”

  “Yeah, as long as I stand far enough away and don’t fight a moving target who actually means me harm.”

  A couple of nights later, Jathen reached into his pack and managed to pull out a wicked-looking snake instead of his pencil box. Yelping, he dropped it and the pack on the ground. The serpent wrapped thrice around Seren’s puzzle box and his favorite gloves, flicking its tongue and hissing. Ja
then pulled his dagger out of the sheath Hkym had made him and flung it. The knife penetrated the base of the creature’s neck.

  “Don’t touch the blood,” Esop warned Jathen, as Ass’shiri scooped up the carcass. “It’ll make your fingers numb for days.”

  “I’m just loving this jungle,” Jathen muttered sarcastically. “Can’t wait to see more.”

  When the party finally reached the Hebe River, Jathen was nearly ready to turn back. “Is there going to be worse after we cross?” he asked, staring at the dense vegetation on the far bank with trepidation. “I don’t know if I can take much more of this hungry landscape with forty different ways to kill you.”

  “It could be considerably worse.” Ass’shiri smirked, turning around on their mount to poke Jathen in the ribs. “We could be back in the Clan Lands court, for example. Right, Hatori?”

  A grumpy snort came from the charm master. “Come on. Let’s get this nightmare over with.” Hatori urged his elefil forward into the dark water, while Jephue clung to his waist and whimpered quietly.

  “Wait. We’re swimming across?” Jathen’s eyes bulged as his elefil followed and began its descent into the murky river.

  “No, we’re not.” Ass’shiri chuckled. “But the elefils are. Relax, Jath. They know what to do, and we’ll hardly get our feet wet.”

  “What about sea monsters or some rot?” Jathen pulled his knees up higher so as not to have his boots fall below the waterline.

  “We’d need to be in the sea to worry about sea monsters, Jath,” Ass said. “The Hebe’s wide but relatively shallow, and there aren’t any predators this far upstream big enough to bother an elefil. Past the Natkz Falls, it would be another story, but we aren’t down there, so no worries. Now please relax. You’re starting to sound like Jephue.”

  “I am not!” Jathen fell silent, but he kept his death grip about Ass’shiri’s waist.

  Halfway across, rain began to fall, not a light drizzle but a downpour, as if someone had torn a hole in the bottom of a cloud and all the watery sorrows of heaven streamed down upon them.

  “Spirit in heaven,” Jathen groaned. “Did we piss off a water mage I don’t know about?”

  Ass’shiri, laughing, turned around and said, “Well, I suppose—”

  Jathen looked over his friend’s shoulder and gaped. An immense wall of water roared down the river, heading straight for them like the force wave of debris and dust that curls away from a collapsing building. Jathen stood up in his stirrups and leaned heavily against Ass’shiri. “Go! Go!”

  Ass’shiri jerked back around to face the front then tried to drive their beast to shore. The wave swallowed up two of the trailing elefils.

  The wall hit. For a moment after impact, Jathen was weightless, clinging to Ass’shiri while the world seemed to take a breath. Then the water surged beneath them with a colossal roar, carrying them downriver. Jathen tried to keep his bearings, but survival soon became the whole of his world. He gasped and choked, trying to catch a breath. The buzzing rush of the torrent filled his ears, and water filled his mouth. Sharp twigs and debris slashed and cut, while rocks pummeled him from seemingly every side. He felt a sharp pain in the left side of his head.

  A flash of light. Then darkness.

  “Breathe, Moot! Breathe!”

  Crushing pain throbbed in Jathen’s chest, then he was conscious and thrashing. He rolled over and heaved water out of his stomach.

  “Oh, thank whomever of the Twelve!” Ass’shiri patted Jathen’s back as another wave came up out of him. “You were starting to scare me.”

  “I started to scare me there.” Jathen coughed and looked around through the drizzling rain. They were on some isolated curve of the riverbank. The landscape was dense with trees so huge it would take four of them to wrap their arms around a single trunk. “What happened to the others?”

  “Not entirely sure,” Ass’shiri replied, sitting back on his heels. “I saw Hatori gain the bank—his and Jephue’s elefil was first in the line. Cy’shā and Hkym weren’t far behind, so they might have made it. But Setsu and Esop were behind us with the others, so I have no idea.” He shook his head. “But they’re big boys and well-trained Talents. I’m sure they made it out just fine. After all, we survived.”

  “So what do we do now?” Jathen asked.

  “Well, now that I know you’re planning on staying in the land of the living for a bit longer, I’m going to take a quick look around and see if I can get an idea how far downstream we are.” He stood, wringing out his black locks like wet rags. “I’ve still got my crossbow, but I lost my pack. While I’m about, why don’t you check your bag to see what survived?” He pointed at a clump of weeds. “I pulled it off you because I was worried it was restricting your breathing. You were tangled up in it.”

  “Thank you. You saved my life.”

  “Heh, it was more mutual than you realize. I wouldn’t have made it to shore without you. Apparently, moots are very buoyant. I’ll be back.”

  Jathen got up and went to his pack. Surprisingly, most the contents remained intact, thanks to the waterproofed pockets. He said a silent thanks to his mother as he pulled out his monetary notes, his travel log, and his Monortith seal. Lost in the Landscape had made it through as well, along with Seren’s puzzle box, his atlas, and even a few of his sketches. What didn’t survive were a good portion of the unused monogrammed paper from Petalith, the actual star puzzle from the box, and most distressingly, his knife from Hkym. All of his clothing was sopping wet and already exuding a humid, musky smell.

  Ass’shiri came back over to where Jathen sat. “Well, there’s no trace of our poor elefil.”

  “Now what?” Jathen shivered, cold despite the humid air. “We’ve got no dry clothing, no rations, and no idea what side of the ruddy Pit we washed up on.” He sneezed. “And it’s still raining.”

  “Actually, I have a very good idea where we are. We’re downriver. So the logical thing to do would be to move upriver. We know some of the group made the bank, so they are either waiting somewhere for us or, far more likely, heading downriver to search. If we get moving, we’ll cross paths eventually.”

  “And the rain?”

  He shrugged. “It’s not as if we can get any wetter, Jath.”

  “No,” Jathen replied, swinging his pack onto his back and rising. “But I can catch pneumonia.”

  “You can’t catch pneumonia, Moot. That’s a human ailment. Now, malaria, on the other hand…”

  “Ass, shut up.”

  They made very slow progress across the muddy and root-strewn ground, as every step was an adventure in balance. Tiny rivers of rainwater streamed through the mud, feeding back into the Hebe. It’s like walking through wet mortar.

  After an hour, Jathen’s leg muscles were screaming in agony. “I need to stop,” he said. “Or I think I’m going to die.”

  “Sure, Jephue,” Ass’shiri joked, but he sobered when Jathen shot him a pained look. “All right, these spring rains tend to come in waves. No use killing ourselves when we can wait it out. I’ll try to make us a shelter.”

  “Thank you.” Jathen sat on the roots of one of the massive jungle trees. Watching Ass’shiri cutting and pulling at some of the large umbrella-like leaves, he felt a spark of his chest ember. “I feel so ridiculously useless out here.”

  “You are a Tazu prince, bereft of any survival training. What made you think you should be useful? It’s my job to be useful out here. If we were in your court, I’m sure I’d feel useless.”

  The ember burned hotter. “Actually, it would make two of us because I’m especially useless there.”

  Ass’shiri struggled with the shelter leaves. He’d strung several between two low-hanging branches, but the middle kept caving in under the gathering water.

  “Overlap them,” Jathen suggested.<
br />
  “Won’t that make it too heavy?”

  Jathen shook his head. “Not if you extend it over a few feet to use the tree trunk as a third pillar.” Despite his aching body, he stood and went over to the other side of the shelter. “The triangle is the most stable basic shape in architecture. If we pull the lot of it down on this side…” He bent a section until it touched the ground. “Quick, use a few crossbow bolts to keep it in place.”

  Raising an eyebrow, Ass’shiri grabbed his crossbow and shot three bolts to stake the shelter piece to the ground. He stood back and viewed the little structure that backed up against the tree trunk.

  “Heh, not useful,” Ass’shiri said, crawling inside and shaking off water like a wet dog. “Tell me another one, Jath.”

  Jathen couldn’t help smiling a little, his body rejoicing in the ability to stretch out, even if it was on a muddy floor. “Thanks, Ass.”

  “Yeah.”

  Jathen noticed his friend was shivering. Memories of Jephue warning him about Clan biology and Feeding suddenly gallivanted through his mind. “Ass’shiri, do you need to…?”

  He nodded sheepishly. “Yeah, I’d better find something in the next hour or so, but I really don’t want to leave you alone here.”

  “Umm, do you want, like mine or…?”

  Ass’shiri laughed. “Oh, no. Jathen, don’t be silly. You don’t need to be weakened any more than you already are, and I still need to find us both some kind of dinner, or else our problems increase ten-fold. Snagging some small ground mammal will solve everything; I just need to know if you can stalk and be quiet behind me for a bit.”

  “I suppose I’ll have to.”

  “Good answer.”

  They opted to rest for a while and give the rain a chance to lighten. After about twenty minutes, the drizzle stopped, and they emerged, set to seek out a dinner to sate multiple kinds of hunger. Jathen found it took almost as much effort to stay silent in the jungle as it did to move through the rain, and he was thoroughly exhausted after another half hour. Ass’shiri had to put considerable ground between the two of them in order to pounce upon a small, rabbit-like creature, but the task was accomplished.