by Lila Dubois
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re forgiven.”
“Tomorrow will be different.”
“Thank you.”
“Goodnight, lover.”
Chapter Eleven
“If we may return to the subject of vocabulary for a moment…”
This was met with a chorus of groans.
“If you tell us more about The Great City.”
“More about Anleeh-Ori!”
They giggled, the sound echoing like small bells in clearing. The day was unseasonably warm, and Siara had taken advantage of it to bring the girls out to the small clearing in the forest.
Out of all the people she’d met with, from old warriors and wise women to farmers who lived in the land beyond the wall, Siara liked these girls best. It was the same group of young women that had taken her in, treated her so kindly that first day. Anga sat at Siara’s right. Open in the girl’s lap was one of Siara’s notebooks, and even as the other’s giggled, Anga thumbed slowly through the pages, her lips moving when she came to a word she knew.
The other girls relaxed in various poses, languidly braiding flowers and ribbons into each other’s hair. Siara had gone through the bags the Queen sent, finding them stuffed with items from the Great City. Anleeh called her gifting ‘bribery’ but in a teasing manner. The gifts she’d been able to pass out to those she visited with had eased her way, from the crystals she gave to the witches to the ribbons the girls now toyed with.
“I have told you more than enough stories, you little gossips.” They giggled again, a few protesting and batting their eyes in mock innocence. It had become something of a game to them, to see how fast they could spread Siara’s colorful tales.
“Now, back to vocabulary, what do you call babies?”
“Baby.” Several answered.
“Very well, what would your mother call babies?”
“Babies.”
“And you grandmothers?”
This made them pause. Finally one answered, “Buba.”
“Why?”
“It is the old language.”
Siara dipped her quill and made careful notes. Though the language they spoke was the same, the word usage differed, especially among the older generation.
“Thank you, girls. Now, what would your father call babies?”
“Cubs.”
This confirmed her second theory. Men, especially the warriors, used animal terms for almost everything. Women were not pursued, they were hunted and chased. Quiet, gentle women were ‘does’ while wild ones were called ‘vilkat’ the name for a female forest cat.
“And your grandfathers?”
“Buba.”
Siara bent over her book, noting each word, writing a description and then dictating the terms of usage.
Over the past weeks she had filled three journals with her studies. With each person she talked to, each story she was told, Siara fell a little bit more in love with these people. Many were fierce, seemingly unkind, but with Anleeh by her side, she’d broken through that, learning to mimic their culture so that nothing she did or said made anyone uncomfortable.
Anleeh had stuck by his promise, spending every moment he could with her, visiting those she wished to speak with, easing her way, even intimidating a few into speaking with her.
Anleeh. The girls had started to chatter among themselves, and Siara let her mind wander.
She was worried, and she didn’t know why.
The past few nights she’d been woken by the roar of a beast, one only she could hear. It echoed in her ears even when she woke. With each dream she had, she became surer that her beast was trying to warn her that something was wrong with Anleeh, but Siara did not know what it was.
When they were alone, he was a mix of the man she’d known in the Great City, laughing and quick witted, and the man he was to the people of Den, a fierce and proud warrior, now a master trainer among their warrior class.
He seemed fine, if perhaps torn by trying to be solicitous of her when they were alone. But Siara felt her beast’s unrest.
How clearly she remembered his dire threats, the cloaked warnings he tried to give her regarding Den and what he had been. She’d grown to feel that many of his fears were unfounded, the people of Den were reclusive and hardworking, but showed no characteristics that justified his predictions of disaster. Siara decided that the nightmare that woke her, and her beast’s unrest, were a product of his warnings to her, rather than any real threat in Den.
Shaking off her unease Siara looked up, the girls quieting as they realized she waited for their attention.
“Next question.”
Anleeh lifted one of the newly made staffs and whirled it. It whistled thorough the air as he whipped in around his body, passing it from one hand to another behind his back. He thought of Rohaj, the dark skinned man who’d become his brother.
Rohaj had taught them all to become masters of the staff, for it was the weapon of Rohaj’s homeland. Anleeh had clocked himself in the head more than a few times while learning.
“Watch my hands. It looks like I am moving more than I am because of the way the staff moves. There is power in that; your enemies will be distracted, afraid, if they see you wield the staff well.” Anleeh flipped it into both hands and lunged forward, thrusting the eight foot staff before him. “You come out of the pattern swiftly, use the length to your advantage as you do, stab hard for the belly, wind your opponent.”
Anleeh stepped and turned, stabbing the other end of the staff straight down. “A single blow to the skull once they are down will end them.”
Around him the warriors grunted with satisfaction, some of the younger ones looking a bit ill.
“Pick up your staffs. Begin by simply holding it. Turn it between your hands; learn the weight and heft of it. Hold it in the middle with one hand, then two. Do the same at different points along the length.”
They each took a staff and then found a spot on the hard packed dirt of the training field.
The more experienced warriors did as he’d instructed, getting a feel for the weapon. Anleeh kept an eye on the younger warriors, remembering why he’d been glad the training of the Temple army was never his duty.
Two of the youngest were already trying to twirl the staffs.
Crack. One boy knocked himself out cold. An older warrior, the boy’s father by the resigned expression on his face, moved forward to take care of him.
The other boy, still young enough to be entirely stupid, did not learn from his friend’s mistake. He actually got a rhythm going, twisting his wrist to get the staff to spin. He lunged forward. The momentum changed the angle of his arm, and therefore his swing. The staff came up between his outspread legs and smashed his balls.
Anleeh winced as, whimpering, the young man fell to the ground.
“You were never so rash,” a gravely voice noted. Anleeh turned to his father, who’d come up beside him.
“Nay, I was not.”
“When you were younger than they, you were a better warrior.”
“I was perhaps more focused.” I was an animal.
“Walk with me.”
Nodding to those left on the field, Anleeh set down the staff in his hand and began walking with his father.
“Has Uncle agreed to speak with me again?”
“There is time yet for that.”
It had been nearly a week since Anleeh last spoke with Jahrl about the treaty he’d come here to negotiate. After days of being stonewalled by both his Uncle and his Father, Anleeh had decided to begin training the men, as a sign of good faith.
“Father…”
“I am aware, son, and you do much to strengthen our warriors.” There was something in his voice that gave Anleeh pause, and prompted him to ask a question that had been swirling in his mind.
“Father, the warriors … they seem…”
“Soft.”
“Yes.”
“They are. When you left and did not return, you too
k the warrior heart of our people with you.”
“Nay, the beast, the warrior heart, lives in each.”
“But none have the beast as you do.”
Thank the Goddess for that.
“Or did. I have yet to see your beast unleashed.” There was reproach, a hint of derision, in his voice.
“The day we arrived…”
“On that day a good man, a strong man, one skilled and powerful, fought, but it was not the warrior heart of Den.”
Anleeh could not deny it, but he could not bring himself to tell his father how hard he’d worked to burn away that part of himself. Under the gentle kisses and fiery lashes of the Priestess, now Queen, Anleeh had changed. In the presence of his brothers, the Zinahs, he’d learned skills that made him more powerful than he’d ever been in Den, but it was controlled power.
In Den, in the eyes of his Father and his Uncle, nothing but that warrior heart would ever be truly fearsome.
“I have learned to fight. I do not call the beast to battle; it is not necessary.”
“It is the way of our people. You were born with a strong beast, and he will not be denied.”
The beast is referred to as both a part of a person and separate from the person. The common understanding is that the beast is in each individual from birth, but must be awakened. There are various events and emotions in life that will cause this awakening. The youngest example I was able to find was of a 4 year old boy who became lost in the woods for several days. When they found him he acted like an animal, manifesting a beast which had been called by his fear and need. It was not until the boy was placed with his mother that he was calmed, and those who witnessed said she had to call her own beast to quiet his.
The beast can be ‘called,’ willingly drawn up, or the beast can simply come forth, drawn into control of the mind by circumstances.
There are no physical changes to mark the coming of the beast, only changes in behavior. A person who is inhabited by their beast reacts as an animal would, quickly and often with violence.
Relations between men and women are the most common place for beasts to come into play in everyday life.
Siara absently worried the edge of her furs with ink-stained fingers as she re-read her writing. She felt she’d captured the basics of what she learned, explaining them in the simplest manner. The issue of her beast, and why she had one when she was not from Den, was still a mystery.
“What do you write, heart of my son?”
Siara looked up. Standing before her, magnificently draped in white furs, was Anleeh’s mother. At last. Siara had been longing to speak to the woman; it was the one interview Anleeh had been hesitant to help her obtain. The dark haired woman was different from the rest of these people, and the difference went deeper than hair color.
Siara carefully closed her book and dipped her head in a bow.
“Walk with me, heart of my son.”
Siara rolled to her feet, a movement that she’d perfected in order to rise without exposing herself. Not wanted to delay this meeting, she left her notebook, quill, and ink on the straw strewn floor next to her cushion.
Anleeh’s mother started towards the back of the Hall. Siara fell in step slightly behind and to her right.
They circled to the back of the throne and then through a low door. Siara’s heartbeat tripped up as they moved into the dark space. What little light might have filtered in from the great hall was blocked by the throne and their bodies. As they moved deeper into the dark Siara kept her eyes trained on the furs the other woman wore, the creamy white seeming to glow in the black.
The glow of white disappeared, leaving her alone in the black. Siara blinked, but it did not help. The other woman was gone.
“Enter here.”
A flame grew in the dark, a lone taper casting just enough light to show that Anleeh’s mother had moved through an archway in the left wall of the hallway, the pale orange glow illuminating the haunting beauty of her face.
Siara stepped through the low arch, stopping just inside.
The air in the room was heavy, close and dense with a smell that tickled Siara’s memory, though definition eluded her.
“You have questions for me, heart of my son.”
“Why do you call me that?”
“It is the truth. You are his heart.”
Siara knew she should hold her tongue, maintain the lie, but this was his mother. “Nay,” Siara took a breath, “there is something you should know…”
“I know all. My son’s heart holds no secrets from me. It is between you and he that secrets exist.”
She stepped back, moving to a triptych atop which sat a shallow bowl of oil, three wicks set into the edges.
One by one she lit them, the room brightening, and, as it did, Siara’s lips parted in wonder. Every inch of the room was covered in carvings and paintings. Long columns of runes, like those Siara had seen etched into the cabin doors, created borders for primitive paintings, brushed onto the walls in the colors of earth: brown, ochre and green.
“How long have you loved him?”
Distracted by the walls, Siara spoke the truth. “Since the moment I saw him.”
There was a beat of silence and then a small sound of pain escaped Siara.
“You have never told him?”
“Nay.”
“Why?”
Because I knew he would never love me. “He belonged to the Priestess, and once he was freed, I knew he would never look to me as a companion.”
“His heart does belong to you.”
“Nay.”
“Tell me of the first time you saw him.”
Siara stepped a few feet further into the room, keeping her back to the other woman, pretending to look at the paintings. She spoke, even as her mind screamed to hush, to keep quiet, to protect her heart.
“I was newly appointed to be Headmistress of the College. They brought me before the Priestess to receive a final blessing. He was there. It was the first time I had seen him, though we heard that the Priestess had found the third of her Zinahs among the beginning soldiers.
“He stood behind her, and behind the Prima. And he was beautiful.”
Siara carefully set her fingers against a long stroke of green, the heavy air pressing down on her, the familiar yet unknown smell tickling her nose, the words tumbling from her as she remembered that day.
“Siara, come forward to receive your final blessing.” The golden Priestess’ bell-bright voice rang gently in the powerful beauty of her chambers.
Siara, careful in her stiff ceremonial shoes of white leather, came forward, resisting the urge to cover her arms which were bared by her simple dress, the heavily embroidered gold belt cinching her waist so that breasts and hips swelled above and below.
From an early age she had been sheltered in the College, dormed with other young women, her only real contact with men the occasional word with the male servants of the Temple. She felt exposed, vulnerable, and terribly insecure dressed as she was, in garments that she knew were not flattering, facing the three most virile and powerful men in the kingdom.
She had seen the Prima and second in command, Rohaj, before, and had done her best to avoid both. The vigorous air of command around the Prima intimidated her, and the dark skin and silent menace of Rohaj frightened her. But today a third man stood behind the Prima. Anleeh, they called him, a young solider, a fierce fighter, plucked from the ranks of the Temple army to serve the Priestess. No one had seen him for two months, but a few days ago he’d emerged from the private quarters, dressed in the finest garments the artisans of the Great City had to offer.
He wore a long green tunic, the sleeves and chest embroidered with vines, the color causing his eyes to glow like green flame in the pale oval of his face. A jewel-handled sword hung at his hip and a dagger poked out of the top of the smooth embossed leather of his boot. Even through the fabric of the close-cut leggings he wore, Siara could see the muscle definition in his thighs when he moved
, the slit sides of the tunic parting to offer glimpses of something Siara had never found desirable before.
When she reached the Priestess, tall, slim and golden in a gown of midnight blue, Siara folded her legs, preparing to kneel. A hand, sturdy and strong, cupped her elbow, easing her to the ground. As Siara’s knees touched down, she looked up. Beside her, Anleeh was bent, one hand still cupping her elbow. His eyes met hers, and that was all.
“There was something in his eyes, something so deep I could not name it, and still cannot, but I loved him then. It was in the way of young girls, lulled by his beauty and the unexpected show of chivalry. I told myself it would pass, as I grew older, I would not love him so. The girls I taught fell in and out of love as easily as the wind blew, and so I told myself it would be with me, but it was not. He is kind and bright, he laughs when other do, his power and bravery in battle were often spoken of, and so I love him still.”
“You asked for this duty to be with him.”
“Asked for … how did you know?”
“I told you that my son’s heart hold no secrets from me.”
Siara pressed her whole hand flat to the painting. “Yes, I studied this place, your people, because I wanted to know him. When the old King was defeated, I knew things would change, I knew that there were places they would need to send ambassadors, and that Den—and therefore Anleeh—would be one of the first.”
Her hand turned into a fist. “It was not just for him that I did it; do not think me so weak.”
“I do not.”
“I spent my life in the Temple, longing to be the explorers in the tomes I read. I know I am not the best for this duty. I do not have his easy manner with speaking to people, but I will learn. I have learned already.”
“You have found your life’s work.”
“Yes.”