by Richard Nell
Ruka had come in the full panoply of his guise. He had shaved his head and covered it in ash, tracing runes with his finger before wearing a thin helm of mostly iron bars. From his Grove he had brought a thin layer of mail covered in flat discs drawn with the name of every major god. Even Sula he had covered as if for war in steel—his proud neck shielded by spikes raised from dark, leather barding. If I am to be feared, he thought, let it be for good reason.
Many in the valley’s outskirts fled before him as they saw.
He did not change his pace, and ignored the warriors mustering on the edges of the crowd, desperately donning armor in small packs. He marched his entourage deep into the valley before the chief protecting it this year had rallied enough men to try and oppose him.
These formed a shieldwall directly before the lawstone, and soon a hundred men stood haphazardly, others still running from every direction to join their ranks. Ruka had ordered his retainer’s weapons sheathed unless they were attacked.
Of course the crowd did not know that, yet many came closer than reason would dictate, clinging still to their belief in law, and the illusion of its safety. Ruka had the urge for violence just to teach them sense.
Dala clucked her tongue, and rode forward. “Bukayag, son of Beyla, has come for words at the peak. Stand aside.”
A short, but thick man at the front of the shieldwall gawked at Dala’s shawl, then at Ruka, and at the pack of warriors covered in runic arms and armor. Ruka saw his chief’s earring, but by the look of his soft arms he had earned his position with more words than deeds.
“Yes…mistress. Of course. Except…have you…,” the poor fool’s face contorted in perplexed anxiety, “have you come here willingly?”
Ruka almost smiled as Dala’s eyes flared.
“I do not move anywhere unwillingly, chief. I am chosen as Nanot’s Highest Servant by the holy Order of Galdra. I am Matriarch.”
The little man’s face paled. “Yes…yes, Mistre…Holy Mother. Yes of course.” He wiped sweat from his face with the sleeve of his sword arm, then gestured to his confused men to collapse their shieldwall.
Ruka nodded to his ally, enjoying the display perhaps more than he should have. He rode on, feeling the eyes everywhere upon him, the mix of fear and loathing, interest and excitement.
At the foot of the mountain path, he told Dala to have the Lawspeaker and the valley-chief distribute the rarely used voting stones—flat rocks taken from the river, one side painted white. Each man and woman in the valley would be given one to hold up when the moment came. Paint meant yes, rock meant no.
Ruka waited for a time, but soon his feet were on the legendary path—a winding mixture of cut-stone steps and sloped mountain, gentle enough to climb without tools. Ascending it was not easy, which he expected was intentional. As he rose higher, with every rock avoided or flat surface used, he wondered if a great hero had done the same.
When he at last reached the peak, he looked down at the gathering of Alverel, which seemed closer than he expected after the hike. His ancestors had chosen this place because the mountain and the valley slopes would carry a voice further, naturally mimicking the echoing halls of the islander courts.
Ruka waited without stepping forth and watched the crowd. The richest matrons and even many priestesses had clustered near the front. Richly dressed warriors stood behind them, no doubt many of them chiefs or their trusted retainers. Perhaps five thousand people and maybe more packed the space around them.
To see such a crowd of the powerful from Orhus, and formed so quickly, gave Ruka at least some hope. No doubt they had all whispered of the wall, the new matriarch, the weapons, the ships and the capture of the fertile ring. They would know their world was changing around them, and that soon there must be words or blood to re-align it. Ruka felt a sense of pride, too, for Egil the Skald, who had gathered so many with so little time. It seemed words were not so meaningless after all.
At last Ruka stepped out to the edge to speak, and the crowd began to hush. He had practiced this many times, and intended to convince the wealthiest, most powerful citizens of ash to turn all their efforts to a single purpose—to prepare one day to abandon their homes, and push out to a sea they’d been told was endless, working for a day many years in the future on his word alone. Unlike the past, it could not be a rebel cry to desperate men. He could not play on the weakness of the trodden.
This time he intended awe, and wonder—the power and promise of the gods to take their children to paradise. But as he looked out at the crowd, he considered the lies he would utter and carry, and the many years he’d carry them, and he could not speak.
He realized if he lied to them now, if he tricked them into salvation, he would be no different than the Order. His new world would be built on a foundation of sand, and one day, it would crumble. In his heart Ruka believed no people requiring a lie to save them deserved to live at all.
He took off his helm, dropping it off the cliff, and spoke from his gut as Egil had taught him.
“You know who I am.” He waited. “I came to impress you with trinkets, and deeds. Yet what have I accomplished? The land still freezes, still starves. No matter how many words I give, next year it will go on freezing, and starving.” He paused and surveyed the crowd, and found them rapt. “So I offer one truth, and one choice, and the truth is this: North, beyond the sea, is land. This land is already filled with people, cities and kings, living under warm suns with good, black earth wider than the steppes. Some few men and women amongst you now have seen it, but they too offer only words. I have brought strange people and trinkets from this new world, but these things could be tricks. I do not ask you to believe. I offer only a choice.
“You can ignore me. This choice is easy. You can go on freezing and starving, telling your children stories of Bukayag the Bastard and his madness. Choose this and risk only the loss of the one chance in your lives to give those children something better. Do this, and I will do what my mother failed to do—I will hurl myself from this cliff, and die.” He looked away from the crowd, the height of the cliff suddenly dizzying. His fear of it angered him, and hardened his tone. “Today my life is in your power, cousins, and mark it well, for it is the last time you will have it.” He waited here for the muttering and whispers, but still the crowd watched, almost too surprised to speak.
“Or,” he shrugged, “you can follow me into this new world. This choice will be hard. You will have to wait many years for the road is long, and in the meantime treat old enemies as allies. You will have to toil and sacrifice and one day face the unknown with courage. Some of you will die in the attempt. You will have to listen to a son of Noss, though what the future holds not even I can say. But whatever it is, choose to face it, and it belongs to you. I say no more.”
With that he gestured to Dala, who after a pause did the same towards the Lawspeaker at her stone. Ruka stepped to the precipice.
The crowd came alive, murmuring and shouting for they had expected a speech that went on far longer. It was clear many were not ready to vote, no doubt wanting details of how, and when, and who would make decisions and what about the land and the harvest and a thousand other things.
Ruka let them whisper and argue. Some even yelled and pushed at his followers at the bottom of the rise, as if they meant to come up and lecture this upstart shaman properly. Ruka finally shouted over it all, voice harsher now, the power of it booming across the valley.
“More words will not help you. You can not bargain with winter, you can not negotiate with death. There is no comfort, no safety, nothing to be found in soothing voices. We are the children of the dead. When faced with sickness, with bitter cold, with deadly creatures bent on their destruction, our ancestors could have chosen to hide in their caves, but they did not. They went forth upon this earth and faced their doom. They made their choice. Now so must we. Choose.”
Ruka looked below again to the rock that would be his death. Still he heard the arguments from the crowd,
the muttering, even fighting, and he thought perhaps they would fail. He felt Bukayag’s rage swelling inside him at the thought, struggling against such a foolish errand, wanting only to go down the way they’d come and begin a campaign of terror against such unworthy things.
“It is their failing,” his brother hissed, “not ours. This is weakness, brother. We do not ask. We do not beg. We demand.”
Ruka closed his eyes and breathed, thinking no, not this time, this is not our decision. Men were pack animals, and Ruka alone could not redeem the dead.
In his Grove, the corpses stood around him staring. They had come in his distraction, surrounding him, their eyes filled with regret, or hatred, love or sorrow. Boy-from-Alverel could not smile with his broken jaw, but Ruka could still see it in his eyes.
Redeem us, Ruka almost fell to his knees and cried out to the men and women of ash. Make worthy all I have done, and all I must do. Redeem us, redeem me, I beg you. Please.
He feared instead he would die here and now, and fail, for he had meant every word. If hell existed then that is where Ruka would go, but he would not complain. He had earned it with his deeds, and if the afterlife were fair, he would accept it. But he did not want Beyla’s people to die.
As if some great serpent shedding its skin, the crowd before him swayed and steadied, almost in unison, shifting across the valley as men and women whispered and turned their faces.
Ruka blinked, trying to understand. He looked and saw the lawspeaker had raised her hand—this one just another old priestess, another creature of the Order that had doomed a little boy to misery and death. He expected nothing different from before, and almost laughed because he thought perhaps this time it truly was justice.
The old crone exposed her bony grip, and Ruka blinked as he realized it held the painted stone. He turned his gaze to see Dala had raised her first, as had all his retainers at the foot of the mountain.
The color of fresh snow swept from the lawstones through the matrons and the chiefs, back through the crowd, into the valley from East to West, until the yellowed grass beneath them had all but disappeared.
Ruka collapsed upon his knees on the precipice, and did not try to hide his tears. His body wracked with sobs two decades in the making, and he saw wetness even in the eyes of his followers as they watched him, perhaps surprised by the emotion the same as he.
The children of ash held their stones in the air far longer than was needed, trapped or perhaps enthralled by the moment as a son of Noss wept upon the peak of heroes. Ruka could not speak, though he wished to praise them—to tell them of the Vishan and how they honored them now with their courage.
Holding their white stones visible to the star-gods, his mother’s people had spoken—the children of Tegrin had at last come of age, and with their first words, they had chosen life. They would live. And they deserved to.
You were right Beyla, Ruka thought, on his knees now in his Grove too before her image, his hands trembling as they touched her feet. I am not a demon, I am not a mistake.
Beyla had spared him, she had redeemed him, and now her people would live, so she had redeemed them, too. This she had done without blood, and without words. She had used only the love for her child, strong and demanding, without bitterness or hate. With only this, Beyla had saved them all.
Chapter 65
Three months previous, in the palace of Sri Kon
“Brother? Fara-che? Farahi? Roa take me, leave your daydreaming for one bloody moment and answer me!”
Farahi blinked, and forced himself away from visions of the future. He sat in one of the royal wing’s dining rooms in a simple chair across from his sister. The servants had been sent away. His food remained untouched on his plate.
“Brother my spies tell me you’ve ordered every royal family in the isles to attend your court.” Kikay looked more perturbed than usual. “That you did this days ago. And yet, you and I have sat together and eaten our meals, just like this, and you have not breathed a word.”
Farahi blinked again and frowned. He had been close to the end of a useful thread. “I don’t discuss every little detail with you, sister.”
She stared at him as she cut her pork with far more effort than required. They’d been having this same conversation in various forms since Hali died, but this was the most important thing he had denied her.
“What are you planning, and why aren’t you telling me? I only mean to help you, to protect you.”
“I don’t need your help in this, sister, nor your protection.”
“As you didn’t need it when they almost gut you in father’s chair?” She sliced her pork in half. “When you almost died retching in my arms? Have you forgotten that, brother?”
“No,” he said, half-closing his eyes again to search for the end of the vision. He heard her knife clatter.
“No?” She jerked dramatically. “No. Just ‘no’.” She sneered. “Father was right, you can be so cold, so closed to the world. I feel like I’m speaking to a stone.”
He sighed, thinking here we go.
“Do you know what Father called you privately, brother? Farahi the Fish. Mother said he could never make you laugh. He’d make faces and strange voices and you’d just stare at him with those eyes, as if judging him. And then you grew older and you never changed, always watching, always judging. ‘No joy in life’ he said. ‘No love in him.’ Maybe I just felt sorry for you, maybe that’s why I paid so much attention. But now I know it’s true. After everything I’ve done, still you can shut me out like I’m nothing.”
Farahi let his sister spend her rage. To use their father as a weapon meant she was out of other options and desperate, which gave him no pleasure. In truth he had wanted to tell her all along. He missed her advice, and support. But he couldn’t trust what she might do.
Kikay would never accept the future he was choosing. She hated Ruka, and so he could never tell her his true goal. This knowledge made him feel more lonely than he had ever been, for despite her flaws, Kikay was the only person in the world Farahi trusted besides Hali—the only kin he had besides his children. As a boy she had been the color in his gray, cautious world, the spark of life he watched in awe and sometimes shared in.
It was why he had stopped her from getting on the boat with father those years ago, and saved her life. Early on he had seen the possibility of a future without her, and warned her of every danger out of habit.
Since that day she had believed somehow he knew what would happen to the rest of their family. She did not speak it, but he knew she suspected his involvement—that perhaps he had given word to his father’s enemies. She had believed the very worst of him, the same rumor spread by common men—that all along, even as a boy, he had wanted to be king, and was a kinslayer.
Had he truly known he would have tried to stop it. As a child his visions had been confusing and this was long before Ando’s help to focus them. He had seen only a future without the sister he loved, and thought perhaps it was the sea that claimed her and her alone. He had not feared for his entire family.
Farahi finished his pork and wiped his face with a napkin, then pulled back his chair. Long ago, with their feet dangling in the Lancona, Ando had told him: ‘To be a king is to be alone’.
“You will know what I’ve done as I present it in court, sister. One day I will tell you why. Perhaps in the meantime you’ll consider trust is not a river and does not flow one way. Perhaps you’ll try to remember I am king, and give me at least the benefit of the doubt.”
He rose as she clattered her fork across the room. He knew her rages could be deadly but decided this time she would eventually calm. And if not, at least he had Eka.
He stepped out into the morning sun knowing so many important threads depended on the result of this single day. Sometimes, he thought, it would be easier not to know. Easier to live like other men, going through life without the constant fear of misstep, afraid that if only he had thought longer and more carefully the future might have
been saved.
All his life he had been watching, preparing, and waiting. But not today.
He closed his fists and cleared his mind as Ando taught him. For many years he had acted the part and made few errors and stayed alive. Now came the end of that caution. Now came choice and deed and a great risk in his private game of Chahen. Now he would choose a future for his people.
* * *
“Tell me again.” Farahi stood outside the entrance to his court next to his newly appointed ‘speaker’—a sebu actor he’d picked from a good family.
His father never would have used such a man. He had been a loud, gregarious speaker who loved playing host and ringmaster, and took every opportunity. But Farahi had thought he looked like a fool—self-aggrandizing and narcissistic. And most importantly, not threatening.
Farahi had always thought a king’s voice should be uncomfortable. It should be like violence—rare, shocking, and ultimately, decisive. Let the lesser men of state prattle and charm.
The guests had all arrived now—many just representatives and not the royal families themselves. Save for the Molbog, his allies had come, their lesser families as well. The turn-out was not as impressive as he hoped, but far better than he feared.
“I am not to announce you,” the speaker repeated. He looked nervous, but confident. “I will stand at the dais while the royal family seats, then I will invite the priests to perform their ritual. I will not smile, and I will say nothing to the guests.”
Farahi nodded, and gestured inside, and the speaker collected his bearings and entered the courtroom to take his place.
Kikay and Farahi’s wives and children would enter through the usual door and take their places next. Farahi would enter alone through the furthest gate.
For the first time in public he had not worn the royal wrapping-silks of his station, but rather a simpler, thinner silk dyed almost black. He wore a silver circlet rather than the Alaku crown, and removed all rings or jewels, as well as the amulet around his neck. He did not wish to appear in any way to compete with the others, because he did not intend to. After today, he would be beyond these things.