CHAPTER 1
TAMBER
The horn
of the hunters sang from the heights of Taskiluh
Mountain to the east, blue peaks shadowed by thunderheads reflecting the fading
sun.
Tamber
White hair, son of Lantuk Twin Soul, waited beneath a
shaking allo tree as leaves of yellow and bronze
drifted down about his head.
He was
three weeks into his naming hunt. The mountain foothills had proved good
shelter from Yangmpabat parties, sent to search for
him here and in the Yangti Woods that stretched back
to the home villages of the Malai.
Damp air
caressed his skin, moisture dripped from leaves like a soothing balm on his
head.
He laid
his head back against the wood, praying to Great Soul for guidance.
The
spirit answered; the leaves of the allo hissed and a
waft of bitter, yellow incense assaulted him.
He smiled
tightly.
Favored
of the gods.
The
blessing, so Lantuk claimed, that was a curse.
The
hissing stopped, the tree went still and the incense sent waves of wild
happiness coursing through him and lit his muscles like a torch.
He heard
his prey-beast bundling through the trees.
The Pugi male darted from cover five spans to his right. Tamber
hefted his throwing spear, loosed it in one fluid motion and the blade sang
true as it took the two-legged beast in the chest, knocking it to the ground.
As he
made his way towards it, Tamber whispered a prayer of thanksgiving. The beast
was struggling, pulling with hooked claws, disturbingly like fingers, against
the sharp metal bedded in its puny chest. Tamber cast his shadow on the beast.
Fur on the thing's head hackled and it growled in its incomprehensible tongue.
Tamber raised his obsidian sword and swept the dim beast into oblivion, the
blow cracking the skull, splashing brain over his doe-leather boots.
He bent
and sawed through the gristle of the ears- proof for the Yangmpabat
when they finally caught up with him that he was a man and deserving of the
name.
That he
had not skulked as they hunted him, but had hunted in his turn.
In his
thirteenth year a man to be reckoned with.
Proud
warrior of the Malai, as his ancestors had been.
***
Six sets
of ears adorned the bandolier hung across his chest when the hounds driven by
the Yangmpabat hunters finally caught scent of his
trail. Two days earlier he had butchered a family of Pugi
he stumbled upon in the trees. He had not deigned to take the ears of children
or women for such trophies had no place on a warrior's baldric.
From the
tree-lined valley below and to his west came the blast of onyx horns, sharp and
shrill, as tradition demanded. The Yangmpabat
announcing that they had found his trail. The sound sent a thrill of power
through him.
***
Two
tendays and three suns ago he had been driven from the village, cudgeled by
men, stones cast at him by children and women.
His own
father had hit him last, tears rolling down the gray kill marks adorning his
face.
Tamber
had smiled then, through the pain, and grabbed his father in a bear hug.
"I'll be
back, Da." he said. "I'll make you proud."
Two
tendays and more.
Even the
legendary Tarnag had only lasted three tendays.
Tamber
knew he could relax now. Let them catch up on him, take the final beating and
let them drag him home in triumph.
A man at
last.
That was
not Tamberīs way. Tarnag's record had stood for five
generations but it stood to be broken. Why not by him?
He
quickened his pace a smile worming its way onto his face. Close to exhaustion
as he was, he could still lead the Yangmpabat a merry
chase.
Tarnag's
spirit would have to watch out for its premier place in the world would soon be
forgotten.
***
Night
began to fall in a curdling glory of thick purple air.
Tamber
climbed a knotty-barked ankha whose leaves were like
little blades. He climbed easily; hand over hand, his body still limber despite
the distance he had traveled.
The ankha soared above other trees and at the top he breathed
deeply and scanned the forest below.
He saw
them a league away, five hundred yards below down a steep, winding ravine.
The
excited yapping of dogs and the howl of brutal meskini
told him all he needed to know.
They had
a fresh scent. They were hot on his trail.
Darkness
would do nothing to stop them.
He
weighed his options. The white river known as Seskinglincuhun, Burden's Fall,
cut down the mountain towards the east. If he made it across, he could lose the
dogs and the meskini. In the absence of scent,
darkness would force the hunters to encamp, buying him precious time.
Howling
from the east dragged his eyes outward. He scanned the area near the river.
His eyes
caught a flash of darkening movement, a tight beam of evening light revealing
shapes of men running at a crouch.
The
hunters had anticipated that move, gotten ahead of him to the east. West lay
steep canyons, impassable and dangerous. He grinned and looked behind. That
left only high mountain- a place lowlanders like him did their best to avoid.
The tree
line ended half a league above, gave way to bare granite stunted with dwarf allo and spruce. Far above the rock gave way to snow and in
the fading light the gleam of snow and ice was dark as fallen blood.
If they
wanted him they would have to fetch him down from there.
His eyes
traced the path of an eagle soaring in flight and his heart soared with it.
***
His lungs
burnt and his head swam.
The air
here was thin and bled daemons.
He forced
leaden limbs ever forward. The sky above had grown fainter, false dawn
approaching.
Through
the long night, the sound of the hunters had grown ever louder.
The night
had turned on his thirty-first day.
Tarnag's
record had fallen. Tamber knew he should stop. His body screamed at him to lie
down on the frozen snow and wait for the dogs to come- to take his beating as a
man and return home in pride, to sit by fireside while the old women danced and
sang Songs of Truth and the old men spitted meat by the fireside.
He shook
his head, willing this weakness away.
They had
to catch him first. He would not surrender.
***
An
overhang of massive granite, shaped like the buried nose of a giant, slippery
with ice, barred the way. It towered over him, blocking out light, making him
queasy with vertigo. He edged left over a crumbling edge of rock, a sheer drop
tugging at him, towards a crevice he had earlier spotted.
Chill
wind whipped him, pulled at his hair. He leaned hard against the granite, its
dampness welcome on his skin. The wind carried the excited barking of the dogs,
closer now.
Always
closer.
He had
led them a merry dance, zigzagging back and forth across the face of the
mountain, climbing ever higher.
His eye
for land kept him out of trouble. An instinct told him where impasses would
appear, and he found he could usually calculate a way around them.
Also, he
had felt the hand of the Great Spirit, Atman Karra, breathing down his neck,
the warm damp excitement of the beast spurring him on.
He pulled
himself onto a ledge of frozen shale. The crevice ahead was too narrow for the
slanted sunlight of late evening to penetrate. He stumbled forward, eyes
momentarily blind, adjusting to the gloom. The shale beneath his feet tremored
as if he was treading on something living. The stone walls seemed to shimmer
like disturbed water. A faint wordless whisper, like nails on skin, wormed its
way into his brain.
He spun
on his heels in alarm.
Nobody
there.
He shook
his head, made his way fearfully deeper into the crevice, the whisper a chill
wordless mantra. Something awaited him here. He could feel its unnatural mojo,
like a giant cockroach crawling on his shoulder.
Further
back a ceiling of rock stretched over the crevice making a massive roof. Left
of center a worn funnel dripped ice water and the walls were covered in frozen
lichen.
He ducked
into the gloomy entrance to this sudden cave. His run had ended. More; he could
not stifle a feeling that he had been driven here, like a badger run to ground
by baying hounds.
A bellow
of air blew against him, powerful enough to knock him from his feet. He scraped
skin on sharp rock as he tumbled sideways, hitting his head against a bowl of
granular limestone.
As his
eyes blurred he saw her; body emanating light, long hair, naked breasts, body
radiating heat like smoldering timber almost ready to burn, skin which looked,
in places, rotten as a week old corpse. She leant close and planted a kiss on
his cheek and smiled.
His
arousal was painful and tight as she pulled him to her.
He
screamed as consciousness left him, aware that she was taking him. Riding his
soul.
***
Soaring
on the wings of the falcon, above seas of iron-green, he watched them come in
long ships as large as the basking whales the Malai sometimes hunted.
On the
ships stood men like beetles dressed in pale metal carapaces, a faint noxious
aura about them. Frail they looked, these foreign warriors. The warriors of the
Malai had nothing to fear from them, not individually, but they came in their
thousands. Insects boiling in from the sea, floating on great wooden homes.
Locusts or termites.
They
brought death with them.
When their
weapons spoke the Malai died and their whetted blades bit Malai flesh.
Ceaselessly.
Ceaselessly.
The world
fell apart.
Flesh
burnt. Men were strapped to wood and died. Fevers swept children like a foul
curse. Boils sprang up on their young bodies and dragged them screaming to Yimti's chill kingdom.
Blood and
tears dripped from Malai eyes.
The
callous earth drank the People dry as the gods mocked them for their weakness.
Like a
plague the beetles kept coming, carriers of pestilence, bearers of death.
In his
dream Tamber screamed and his scream was the voice of a bird protesting the
future.
***
A dog
barked- its wild, green-toothed fury tearing Tamber from the oracle's dream.
Pain
ripped through his arm.
He opened
his eyes, his body already in motion; the hound's fetid breath in his face.
The large
hound clamped its jaw on Tamberīs right arm its thick-neck lowered, worrying
him, trying to drag him from the crevasse like a stunned rabbit.
Pain like
a hot blade tore through Tamber, making him sick, angry. He drew his skiri from the belt around his waist and stabbed at the
hound. The blade sliced muscle and drove into the soft flesh of its neck.
Tamber rammed the blade home, twisting and slicing to inflict pain. Yipping the
beast fell away from him and lay flat on the ground whimpering.
Tamber
levered himself to his feet, kicked the hound in the head and smashed its skull
with his heel. He snarled and spat. The blood from the ragged wound on his
forearm dripped to the frozen earth, wisps of steam rising as it fell.
"Tamber
enough!" The voice was the deep bass of Tamber's father. "Take your beating as
the man you have become and let me walk you home, son."
Tamber
shook free of the rage that possessed him. He took deep breaths, sucking in his
father's words.
Gods how
he had missed his family, missed the company of people.
He
blinked tears from his eyes.
He
sheathed his skiri. The Yangmpabat,
a dozen hunters and an equal number of slobbering hounds, waited for him lining
either side of the crevice.
As he
passed each man raised the staff of his spear and brought it down on Tamber's
back. They did so gently causing nothing but mild discomfort.
His
father, the last in line, lashed out at Tamber's forehead, but pulled up so the
wood barely grazed his skin. The old man's chest was swollen with pride and
when he smiled the warmth in his eyes was like flame.
Father,
look at me, Tamber blazed silently with his eyes. I have made you proud. I am a
man and my Keni will be remembered for generations.
Neither
man said a word. His father touched his cheek in gentle greeting.
"Come
home with me, boy who is now a man. My Yemki. Come
home. Your mother will be worried sick."
***
The
village, walled by a palisade of stone, built atop a mossy earthen embankment,
lay on the lee of a stony hill. Cresting the hill was the ziggurat that held
the Gourd of Souls, and the chieftain's hall. Smoke rose in grey gouts from the
flue holes in the roofs of low-eaved buildings which
wound their way up the side of the hill.
The
leader of the Yangmpabat pack blew his large
yellow-boned aranyx horn, announcing their return.
People lined up outside the village on a path that threaded through waving
fields of flax and corn. The dozen veteran warriors of the Yangmpabat
shadowed their naked charges, those who survived the trial. Of the ten who had
set out only eight had returned.
Two young
men had been caught and killed in less than a tenday and their names consigned
to oblivion. Their families would not paint their faces with the dark red ochre
of mourning, nor would they mutilate their faces to show their displeasure with
the gods.
They
grief was to be suffered in silence for those men were gone as if they had
never existed. They lived now as nameless slaves who roamed the great hall of
Dasia Kerara, their souls but a pale shadow of the almost men they had once
been.
Tamber's
father strode beside him grim face betraying no sign of emotion but Tamber felt
the older man's pride like a cloak covering them both.
Tamber
puffed out his chest and swung his arms as he walked and, despite bone-deep
weariness, his heart welled with a fierce wellspring of emotion.
The thin
line of people lining the track moved aside as they strode by and fell into
step behind, a thin and gentle song of welcoming rising from their throats.
One of
the two striplings who had not returned was Tamber's oldest fried, Tengubkan. Tengubkan's father, a
quarrier, stared with a blank face, shock-riveted, as he realized his son was
no longer amongst the living.
The man
might cry with his wives in the stone hut he had built with the labor of his
own hands. He might indulge in kai-wine or even walk the path of sacrifice. If
he did, he would do so quietly. No public grief would be
allowed him.
Tamber
was moved by a brief impulse to reach out to the man, to whisper him words of
comfort. He squashed the notion. Friend or not, Tengubkan
had failed. He no longer existed. To grieve for him, or comfort his father, was
to make a mockery of the process of Yemki.
This was
the way of the Malai and it was this, the rigorous nature of their rituals that
set them over all others.
The Yangmpabat procession reached the commons in front of the
ziggurat. Three shamen and the chieftain stood in the
center, surrounded by men of the elder rank.
Blank
inscrutable eyes watched their approach.
The
eldest shaman hopped forward to meet them, willow withes in his left hand. He
spat in a circle, hopping one-legged and beat the drum in his other hand. Long
greasy hair swung about his face. Bones, braided in his hair, clacked as he
danced. His lined face was shadowed by the skull cap of the meskbear
he wore.
He howled
and beat the drums and the village held its breath.
When he
had driven the evil spirits away he signed the mark of Great Soul and sat
panting on the ground. The chieftain stepped forward. He clapped his hands. A Pugi male was dragged from a nearby stockade. The thing
squealed words in its unholy language as it was prodded forward on the sharp
end of tintuk blades.
Its eyes
were wide with fear. It started to blubber and its face melted as the tears
fell.
Tamber swore.
The beast's craven behavior was a bad omen.
The chief
drew his sword as the Pugi was shoved to his knees.
He swung the sword and the beast's head rolled, eyes and mouth still moving as
his spirit left his body. The shaman watched with hooded eyes the roll of the
head, sniffing the air and beating his drum in a
spastic motion. Eyes and mouth ticked and Tamber could see the whites shining
where his pupils should have been.
The
shaman hopped carefully over the splatter of blood the Pugi's
blood had left on dark stone.
He raised
his hands to the sky and howled.
The
people cheered. The omens were good enough.
The feast
could begin and Tamber would receive his tintuk
sword.
Tamber
could not drag his eyes from the shaman's hooded face. The man's lips had twisted
sourly and Tamber guess was he was being less than honest. Worms of fear
wriggled in the pit of Tamber's stomach; worms with round white heads crawling
amongst his intestines, growing and swelling, feeding
on the courage of the future.
In his
mind's eye he saw the oracle of the cave again, smelt her smell of sweet sweat
and rot. He remembered the dream she had given him, a dream he did not
understood and had almost forgotten.
A dream
of death.
The
shaman was lying. This augury was a bad one and the shaman was hiding that
fact.
To the
north, over the enormity of the ocean, thunder rolled and clouds gathered dark
and vicious.
Wind
whispered with the stink of Great Soulīs
sulfur. Tamber knew this was the true omen. Thunderclouds shadowed the future
and the wings of the world held nothing but fear for the Malai
The
shaman glanced at him and smiled from behind a stump of rotted teeth.
We need
to talk, young one. The voice in Tamber's head was a faint dry whisper. We need
to talk.
The
ceremony progressed. Tamber lowered his head as his father handed him his tintuk sword and the old men spoke of humility. When he
raised his head again, his eyes shining with tears they spoke of tender
nobility.
None
could see the sore wound, the vacuum of the future, troubling his soul.