by Tia Reed
In the centre of the village, a stocky, middle-aged man climbed off a roof he was patching with mud and straw. He wore similar clothes to the hunters, leather trousers and vest, and a loose, rough-spun shirt embroidered with the spiralling squares and circles which marked this tribe. His expression when he intercepted them, alert and considerate, lacked the kind of shrewd, judgemental intelligence that would have seen her risk an escape. His frown deepened as he spoke with Erok through the distressed wail of a babe she wished the mother would comfort. They waited while he washed his hands in a trough, and drank a cup of water pulled from another in one long draught. When Erok prodded them past the disordered collection of wooden longhouses, into stands of ash and beech, it almost brought tears to her eyes, so dashed was she to forgo a bath and meal. The rough track they took out of the settlement with the two displeased men set off a flutter of nerves.
“Can you call your genie?” she asked Timak.
His eyes widened and he shook his head.
“Please, Timak. I’m not asking you to bind her, just to invite your friend here.”
He looked straight ahead, returning to that insular state so he could pretend he had not heard. She sighed. The indigo djinn was bound to turn up at the first sign of trouble. It was just she was not sure exactly how deep was the pit she had already dealt herself into.
At a huge hollow trunk, they turned up a hill. The older man strode on ahead, his feet finding effortless purchase on the precarious pebbly ledge. She crept after him, thanking Vae’oenka Erok was not an impatient man. She was under no illusion about their status, but the hunter had, until now, treated them with crude respect. The gaping, black hole which became visible when they passed behind a pink-flowering bush changed matters. He said something that was clearly an order to move on. She was almost ready to risk his spear when the older man ducked inside. With him out of the way, a woman became visible. Dressed in nothing more than reeds and leaves, she clutched a staff decorated with a frightful array of pods and feathers. She stood gazing out over the valley with an air of ownership. When she turned her head, Kordahla started. Her milky eyes were sightless, and yet she planted them with unerring accuracy, as though she saw, dear Vae, not just tangled, walnut hair and torn, muddy clothes, but deep into the soul. The air became heavy. Kordahla fought for breath.
“I have been waiting,” the woman said. Ochre stripes lined her face, and her bound hair was dressed with feathers.
The weird searching sensation lifted. “You speak our tongue?” Kordahla asked, easing the tension in her forehead. Their misunderstanding could be cleared up. They might even leave with a guide.
“I speak what you need to hear, Princess,” she said.
A ripple of fear chilled her. “Father!” She peered into the cave but no mahktashaan lay in wait. There was only a girl sitting on a rock on the far side of the entrance, beneath bundles of herbs strung from vine. A few years older than Timak, her straight, fair hair screened her bowed head as she cradled one horribly burned arm in the other.
“You are far from those you love,” the woman said, and turned into the cave.
Erok nudged her to follow. It was dry inside, with furs arranged around a hearth over which a pot simmered. Sunbeams speared to the back, gilding dancing dust motes. A faint smell of ash imbued the place with an unsettling timelessness.
“How do you know me?” she asked.
This time, the woman looked past her. “I am Ishoa, Soothsayer of the Ho’akerin. You should not have offered us poison.”
“I…I thought only to make a gift. I am sorry if you are offended.”
“Were your family not outraged when you were presented with such a gift? How is it you think our tribe would delight in porrin’s curse?”
Kordahla flushed. To know these details this woman had to be in league with the djinn. “Your people wander our towns, searching for any means to acquire it.”
“Had you thought about it, you might have wondered why they were not with their families. The drug is outlawed, as are all who use it. It is only because Erok thought you might know something of our missing people that you live. He tells me Brax wanted to slaughter you. It would have been justice of your people’s kind.”
Her cheeks were aflame. She could think of nothing to say. If this were some sort of trial, she was doomed from the outset.
“Sit. There is much we need to discuss,” the soothsayer said, using her staff for support as she lowered herself onto one of the rabbit furs.
“If you know so much about me, then you are not going to help.” These people would want her returned to Ahkdul, to an agreement that dwindled the supply of porrin.
“And leave the surplus to pervade the hills of the Akerin?”
The woman was a mind reader. This talent she displayed was of a calibre that surpassed the mahktashaan. Staring, stunned, Kordahla could only sit as she was bid. Timak settled between her and the mouth of the cave as the soothsayer bid the girl fetch some wooden bowls. The child’s face was tearstained, her left arm blistered and raw. There would be heavy scarring if infection did not set in.
“There are people who could heal that,” Kordahla said to the soothsayer.
“Your mahktashaan would as soon put her to the sword.”
Kordahla swallowed. The tiny woman had stolen her confidence.
“Do you think us ignorant of the world?”
“I can give you the name of one to seek. He would help.” The soothsayer made no reply. Kordahla dropped her eyes. Arun would help.
The girl set the bowls by the fire. Erok ladled stew from the pot, placing the first bowl into Ishoa’s hands and handing the second to the older man. When she and Timak were catered for, he bid the girl sit, and settled a bowl on her lap.
“What do you want of us, Princess?” They had scraped the bowls clean and been introduced to Draykan, Leadsman of the Ho’akerin, and Sian, daughter of the tribe. The girl still refused to lift her head. Kordahla winced to think what dishonour one her age could have.
“Can you provide a guide to Myklaan?” she asked, more assured for her full stomach.
“You ask much of us at this time. Our numbers are depleted, our hunters are scarce and we require the best of our guides for the Gathering.”
“I can give you gold.” She had intended it to pay her way to Kaijoor once they reached Myklaan, but it was worthless if they wandered the hills lost.
“I care little for the riches of your world, and in the wrong hands your coin will purchase porrin. Do not reveal what you carry in the village, or the spirits shall demand retribution.”
She had nothing more to offer. “Will you at least indicate the direction?”
At her side Timak must have recalled some trifling possession for he was rummaging in his shalvar. She hoped he had more wit than to produce another packet of porrin. The coychan shell he withdrew brought a murmur from the men. The heedless boy wriggled forward to present it two-handed to the soothsayer. Sensing a gift was being made, Ishoa patted the air before her until her palm alighted on the shell. Her start, as she rotated her painted hand, was noticeable. She fixed her sightless eyes right on Timak with an intensity that made Kordahla shudder.
“I thank you,” the soothsayer said, “but this belongs to Sian.” Her hand remained outstretched until Timak crawled forward, took the gift and extended it to the girl. Ishoa spoke to her in the language of the tribe. At last and by degrees, Sian lifted her anxious face. She stared at Timak like she had seen a ghost. She blurted a few words, waiting for the soothsayer’s gentle reassurance before she took the shell. Her worried eyes never left Timak’s face.
“What did she say?” Kordahla asked.
“She has dreamt of this boy.”
Kordahla swallowed. Too much was happening that she did not understand.
Beside her, Timak rocked off his knees onto his feet. “I don’t know,” he said, his face tilted to the roof of the cave.
The girl sprang up. The bowl on her lap clattered
to the floor. She backed to the wall of the cave and pressed against the rock. The child was a mouse but her face was frozen in fear of the same high point Timak watched.
“Sian?” Draykan queried.
The girl did not respond. Kordahla shivered.
“I think she knows you’re here,” Timak said.
Of all the moments for the genie to turn up, this had to be the least opportune. She should not have been surprised. Meddle was what those infernal creatures did. Kordahla looked at the soothsayer. The wise woman had to have some advice.
Ishoa gazed into the flames, her back to the spot the children believed the genie to be. “Come, genie,” the soothsayer said. “There are none who would hurt you here.”
Sian ran to the soothsayer and buried her face in Ishoa’s lap.
“Hush, child,” Ishoa comforted, then spoke in the tongue of the tribe.
After some seconds of silence Timak said, “You mean like I can?” Again he listened before turning to Sian. “What is she doing?” he asked the girl. There was a pause during which he smiled. “I want someone else to say.”
Unnerved, Kordahla looked at the hunters. Erok was scratching his head. Ishoa spoke to Sian, stroking her back. Keeping her face buried, the child shook her head until Ishoa tapped a single sharp finger on her head. With a strangled sound, Sian raised her face, first to Ishoa and then the point smiling Timak watched with the rapt glow of innocence. She whispered an answer to her tribeswoman.
“She says the genie has a face that is eager to smile. She is kneeling with her hands on her legs,” Ishoa said.
“Sian can see her?” asked Kordahla.
“These two, they are like Dindarin and Daesoa. Our sky is not complete without either.”
“Or the sun,” Kordahla said offhandedly. She wanted answers, not rhetoric.
“Yes, or the sun. And so there must be another.” Ishoa warbled a note.
“You’re scaring her.” Timak cried.
Ishoa broke off. “Her heart is pure. She has nothing to fear from me. It is we who must fear the djinn. Princess, there is a shadow from the spirit world about you. Your future holds much suffering for the pact you have made.”
Her response was a frustrated release of breath. “Tell me what the djinn will take.”
Ishoa stood and shuffled to the mouth of the cave, her staff tapping the rock to guide each step. “I do not know,” she said, her back to them. The feathers in her hair stood out at awkward angles. “But it is a thing of great import.” She turned. Her white eyes locked onto Kordahla’s, and her voice took on an ethereal cadence as sunbeams flared around her and the wind moaned through the trees. “The spirits believe you must endure, Princess. Through your heartache, you must prevail, else the world will change around mortals, and our lives will fade away. Remember that when you suffer.”
Kordahla stood. Her hands were trembling. She had hoped to forget the terrible thing she had done until the djinn came to claim his due. Now here it was, confronting her. “What do you foresee?”
Ishoa’s gaze drifted. Her voice dropped to a murmur. “That the fates of our peoples are entwined.
“Then you will help me?”
Ishoa lifted her chin. Her bearing made her seem tall. “You shall have your escort to Myklaan.”
Kordahla woke sore and unrested on the hard pallet she had been allocated in the communal sleeping hall. In the depths of night, a baby had woken and screamed. She had been surprised how quickly its distress had passed. Timak had fretted for longer when Erok had tried to separate him from her. The hunter had eventually wearied of his mute struggles, and allowed him into the girls’ hut. He was curled on a pallet beside her, oblivious to the squawks and bleats that heralded dawn. She lay there, listening to the regular breathing of the children they had been placed with, all much younger than her, until the patter of feet and clatter of cooking implements told her the village had begun to rise. She found a comb among a wooden goshawk and polished stones in a basket beside her bed, and attended to her wayward hair. Then she tiptoed across the creaking floor of the common room and entered the sultry dawn, scratching at insect bites until her skin turned red. In a trough at the back of one of the longhouses, she found water for washing. When she returned, a lean, wrinkled woman beckoned her over to a fire and handed her a bowl of fragrant porridge sweetened with honey and a score of different birdsongs. The woman broke into a gap-toothed smile as she scraped the bowl clean.
A gaunt woman emerged from another longhouse. She must have been new to motherhood to drape her baby precariously over her thin arms, to swaddle it so tight, and in black, a colour most unfitting for a child. It was strange that the infant made no protest, no gurgle or burp, and stranger yet the lean old woman beside her clucked in anger as she forced the other to surrender the child. This grandmother may have raised a brood, but to push a grubby finger into the babe’s mouth was to invite an illness more severe than the malaise afflicting it. How could this mother have dawdled unconcerned when the babe did not suck, did not cry, did not even twitch? The old woman was already shouting to a boy who was watching Erok sharpen a spear tip at the edge of the houses. He ran in the direction of the soothsayer’s cave, leaving Erok with a frown as he downed his work to investigate.
When Ishoa arrived, a hand on Sian’s good arm, they gave her the child. She held it in tender arms though her head swayed back and forth as she keened a sound so choked with mourning it brought tears to Kordahla’s eyes. It summoned the tribe from longhouse and forest into a drizzly morn. Hunters peered from the trees, silent amid the pat, pat, pat of raindrops on leaves. Women broke off their gossiping to rise by the crackling fires, and children crowded on the steps, jostling each other for a better view. When the note ended, not a bird chirped, not a fly buzzed, not a monkey chittered. The forest itself was bereft.
In this silence, Draykan trudged up the steps of a longhouse, and turned to face his tribe. Oblivious to the strike of raindrops on his face, he weighed his words with such import, some calamity must have struck. Kordahla edged toward Ishoa. The soothsayer had the gift of sight, but this was a people in dire need of a physic. Sian’s teeth were clenched, her eyes glazed. Her burned arm had to be agonising.
“See what sorrow porrin’s bliss brings our people,” Ishoa said. She had not lifted her eyes. Without paint on her face or feathers in her long braid, she looked young to bear her power. “This baby’s mind is gone. He was addicted to porrin before he ever breathed the air. With care, he might have stood a chance, but Esa cannot bear his screams. Each day she feeds him a little more of the cursed drug.”
The baby’s wide eyes stared unseeing, its little body immobile, not a finger nor a toe wiggling, the slow, shallow rise and fall of its chest the only sign of life. Kordahla lowered her eyes. Was this what the Terlaani faced? Was she selfish to avoid a marriage that could ease the burden of the drug?
“I’m sorry,” was all she could think to say. She truly was, for all she had not supplied the drug.
Esa was wailing now, screaming even, her hands entreating, grabbing at Draykan. The leadsman had to be heartless to stand firm in the quickening rain. How could he think a mother would have anything other than the best interests of her children at heart? The three untidy youngsters who ran and clung to her skirts were bawling in sympathy. They didn’t just need her, they wanted her. Surely the old women picking up the toddler and pulling the children away saw that. What manner of tribe was this, that Erok would aim his spear at a mother as soon as her children were out of harm’s way?
Monkeys gathered in the trees, bouncing their backsides. Esa backed up.
“What will happen to her?” Kordahla asked as several men herded the woman past the longhouses. Timak squeezed his way out of the longhouse, past the children, and came to stand close, his young body tense.
“She is exiled from the Ho’akerin.”
The monkeys bounced and hooted.
“And her children?”
“They will be cared f
or by the tribe.”
Monkey hands rained plum stones on the woman.
A shout from one of the men turned their attention. A figure staggered towards the longhouses. The man reached the wash trough, mumbled then collapsed. Warm rain fell. Esa’s guard halted. Every member of the tribe began talking at once. A rosy-cheeked young woman fetched a cup of water and held it to the injured man’s lips. As hunters helped prop him up, the sight of his bloody, mangled leg drew a gasp from the tribe.
“O-GRES,” he cried, batting the cup from the woman’s hand. “O-GRES.” He was delirious, from fear or from pain.
Kordahla’s blood ran cold.
Esa screamed and hurled a tirade of words.
Erok looked to Draykan, who gestured with his chin at the babe and shook his head. It was wrong of Erok to force Esa back with the point of his spear. She would never survive more than a night alone. Kordahla took a step forward. Ishoa’s hand clamped on her arm.
“Do not meddle in our affairs, lowlander.”
Kordahla stiffened. She would have thought the tribe callous, were it not for the vacant child who sucked on air, oblivious to the commotion about it. Who, if Ishoa was right, was deprived a meaningful life.
“He is gone, Farina,” Ishoa said as a hunched old woman took the babe from her arms. “May he find his way to the spirits.” Tears glistened in both their eyes, though the boy yet breathed. “Take me to Lutham, child,” she said to Sian. Never looking up, the serious girl guided the soothsayer step by step, and helped her kneel by the mangled leg. The soothsayer’s hands hovered as she trilled a discordant prayer. Her instructions for cleaning and binding the wound were followed with alacrity.
“Another exile,” Ishoa said, as Kordahla helped her to her feet, and hunters carried the injured man into a longhouse. “Lutham repents and has asked for re-admittance to the tribe.”
“Will Draykan accept him?” she asked.