12

ARAK’JUR

Outside the Steam Tents

The Sinari Village

Cold air passed through the elders as they stood beneath a moonless sky. An ill omen, on a night when they needed no portents of shadows over their future. Already too many stood waiting, gathered near the heart of the village. When the shamans arrived, the deliberations would begin in earnest, crowding the steam tents past the point of breaking. But for now they waited.

Corenna stood at his side, dressed in the full regalia of a Ranasi woman, the white dress and blue paint on her skin, the thick braid bound by cord for her hair. Asseena wore a similar style, though her furs were thicker, her hair bound but not braided, the designs painted on her face showing different markings. Ghella wore the Sinari women’s dress, and Symara the Ganherat’s. The rest wore fine clothing, as fine as they possessed, but the spirit-touched were few, even among the remnants of six tribes. Four women. Two apprentice shamans. One guardian. A frightening thing, for their people to be so near the loss of any of the three lines of the spirits’ magic.

A small boy approached the throng, and every head turned as he made his way up the path.

“Honored sisters,” the boy said when he arrived outside the tent. “Elders. Honored guardian. The shamans bid you wait as they listen to the spirits. They will come soon, to speak of what they have seen and heard. But not yet.”

Murmurs followed the boy as he wheeled and went back the way he came, and another gust of cold wind carried the words through the crowd. But none showed any intent to leave. The elders had gathered at sundown, having heard the news of the Nanerat’s arrival, wishing to be present for the formal induction of a new tribe into their alliance. But it was well past twilight now, and still they waited.

“What do you suppose it means?” Corenna asked in a low voice. “I’ve never known a vision to take so long, in all the years witnessing my father’s gift.”

He eyed Asseena before replying. The Nanerat woman stood alone, only she and Ilek’Hannat serving as elders among the remnants of their tribe.

“The Nanerat are a strong people,” he said. “They have endured much. We must give the spirits time to find a path for all of us, together.”

Corenna nodded, though he saw worry under her veneer of calm.

Another hour passed, and sleep threatened to take some, though most remained standing. And when Ilek’Inari showed himself, clad in white furs pristine as untouched snow, even Arak’Jur couldn’t have said whether the shaman appeared from nothing, or he had blinked to rest his eyes, and missed the apprentice’s approach.

Relieved sighs passed through the crowd, and the youngest, who had situated themselves at the entrance, opened the tent flaps, prepared to light the fires that would steam the rocks within.

“No,” Ilek’Inari said. “It is not the spirits’ will, for us to meet in council tonight.”

Silence fell behind the apprentice shaman’s words, and Ilek’Inari met Arak’Jur’s eyes as he spoke again.

“Gather the folk of every tribe,” Ilek’Inari said. “Men, women, children. Tonight we sit in judgment.”

“Judgment?” Ghella said, pushing forward from among the women of the Sinari. “Judgment for what? Who among us stands accused?”

Ilek’Inari held Arak’Jur’s gaze.

“Arak’Jur,” he said. “If he is being hunted, we must decide whether exiling one man is preferable to war.”

A greatfire raged by the time the village was emptied, a sea of tired faces roused from sleep, sober and unbelieving. The smallest children cried out, but the rest were quiet, a mix of wonder and whispered speculation as they filed into the meeting area where Ilek’Hannat tended the flame.

Six places had been made at the head of the gathering, on log benches between the audience and the fire. Four for the women, two for the shamans. The seventh place was his, standing at the center of every eye between the benches. He waited in silence as the tribes were roused to take up places on the grass. He had done nothing. The spirits could be inscrutable, but until the last year he had never known them to be unjust. Ilek’Inari seemed to wilt when Arak’Jur looked to him for answers, and Corenna simmered with cold rage in her place as judge. It was their way to honor the shamans’ spirits, and so he did, but if the corrupt voices had taken hold of Ilek’Inari or Ilek’Hannat, the night could well end in blood. A sorrowful thought, and a blasphemous one, but he was past such concerns. Or, he could be, for his people’s sake. For now, he waited to see what would come of the shamans’ visions, until the last of the tribes were gathered, and Ilek’Inari rose to speak.

“We have gathered at the spirits’ behest,” Ilek’Inari said, his voice ringing clear over the crowd. By now the night had deepened, closer to sunrise than the day before, and stillness hung over the village, amplified by the gravity of the apprentice shaman’s tone and the weight behind his words. “They have shown us the way forward, for our people.”

A hissing bang sounded from the fire, met with gasps from the crowd. Arak’Jur turned to watch as billowing red smoke rose into the sky. Another surprise; he had never seen shamans work ritual magic so openly, the smokes and powders of the divining ritual used to find the great beasts. Yet here it was, displayed for all to see.

The red smoke rose to form shapes writ against the night sky. A cat. A bear. A stag. More. Wolf and dog, lizard and beetle, toad and bird and crocodile. A dozen shapes, until they ran together. An army of beasts. And still they grew, more and more forms taking shape before they blended into the mass arrayed against the stars.

Fear and awe stirred in Arak’Jur’s belly, given voice in gasps and screams from the crowd.

“We are coming,” another voice said. Ilek’Hannat, standing beside the fire, though the apprentice shaman’s words seemed to rise with the smoke, forming from the mouths of the beasts as he spoke them. “We seek the Ascendant of the Wild.”

“See what we face,” Ilek’Inari shouted, directed to the assembled six but loud enough to carry through the crowd. “The great beasts. And more.”

As he said it the smoke rippled, shifting from beasts to men. A thousand shapes of men and women, raising weapons, charging forward until they burst into wisps of red vapor. Screams rose from the crowd at the moment of impact, turned to sobbing as the images faded from the sky.

“How can we trust these sendings?” Ghella demanded from beside the fire. “The spirits have whispered of doom too long for us to believe it now.”

“It is true, honored sister,” Ilek’Inari said, sadness in his voice. “Some among the spirits of things-to-come are corrupted. But their corruption is a power unto itself, and on this, we have heard both kinds speak as one.”

“Death,” Ilek’Hannat said loudly, his words still echoing from the clouds of formless smoke in the air. “We demand it. The Wild is ours, and we will not surrender lightly. We see you, and we are coming.”

“We can fight,” Symara said. “Our people are strong. If these malign spirits seek to challenge our alliance, they will not find us cowering in fear.”

“Not us, sister,” Asseena said. “They are not coming for us.”

Corenna was already staring at him when the rest turned to where he stood.

“Arak’Jur,” Corenna whispered.

“Arak’Jur,” Ilek’Hannat repeated, the same whisper seeming to come from the smoke, a thousand miniature voices echoing his name.

Dread settled on him like a fog. An Ascendant of the Wild. He’d been named as much, at Nanek’Hai’Tyat. He hadn’t understood what it meant then, but hearing it now, with all the trappings of judgment, it stung deep. The crowd took up the charge in whispers, giving voice to their fears by speaking his name. An omen of fear, and death.

He’d believed it of himself since he became guardian, unforeseen, the mark of a curse. Now every eye of their alliance confirmed it. He’d wondered why Ilek’Inari had summoned every member of the tribes. Now he knew. They meant for him to leave, and they needed every tribesman to see the cost if he refused.

“Go,” Ilek’Hannat whispered. His voice before had been dark and terrible, booming like thunder through the shapes writ in smoke above the crowd. Now it was changed—different, somehow. Softer. Almost a woman’s voice. “Arak’Jur. Go and seek your strength, while you might still become my champion. Do not fear. You are—”

“—marked for death,” Ilek’Hannat finished, his voice returned to how it had been before. “We are coming.”

Ilek’Inari went to Ilek’Hannat’s side, and laid a hand on the other apprentice’s shoulder. The greatfire returned to an ordinary blaze, and the smoke cleared from the sky, its red hue dissipated into gray wisps swallowed by the light of the stars.

“We call for judgment from our elders,” Ilek’Inari said. “You have seen what the spirits foretell. But the decision falls to us, as leaders of these tribes.”

Tears ran down Corenna’s face, as she was the first to rise from her seat. “I won’t,” she said, first softly, for his benefit, then again, louder. “I won’t pronounce judgment, no matter the threat he brings on us by staying. He is our guardian. We couldn’t survive without him.”

He longed to go to her, to wrap a hand around her, to draw her close enough to feel her belly pressed against him, where his son or daughter grew within. Instead he rose out of turn to speak.

“Is this the spirits’ will?” he asked. “Is it their will for this alliance to be left alone, without a guardian, defenseless against the wild?”

The unspoken accusation ran beneath his words: that the apprentices had misunderstood, or been deceived by the corrupt spirits. He wished it were so, even as he recalled the memory of astahg fighting alongside the Uktani, or older, of ipek’a fighting alongside Arak’Atan. The great beasts were roused to the causes of men, or men were roused to theirs; the fact of it was plain, though the cause lay beyond his understanding.

“The foul spirits seek men and women of power,” Ilek’Hannat said, his voice returned to normal, without the influence of the spirits. “They demand that these men and women surrender to their will, or die.”

“Ascendants,” Ilek’Inari said. “Those with the beast magic of the guardians and the war-magic of the land. They are unsure why these gifts have merged, but they speak of a Goddess, who has need of their power, in times to come.”

The Goddess. He’d heard the spirits speak of her, of her need. He’d never understood, before.

“If you stay among us,” Ilek’Inari continued, “the beasts will come, and the warriors sworn to their cause. We may be weakened without your protection, but we have the women’s gift—”

“No,” Corenna said. “I won’t stay behind. If Arak’Jur is hunted, I will be hunted with him.”

Arak’Jur winced. He hadn’t yet considered what Corenna would do. The shamans fell quiet, glancing between each other, and the women. Symara had a single gift of the land, the weaving of stone from Ondan’Ai’Tyat, and Ghella had only the visions of Ka’Ana’Tyat, the Sinari sacred place. Neither would be enough if a great beast threatened their people. Even Ilek’Inari’s gift from una’re would fall short if valak’ar or kirighra came near the village.

“Honored sister …” Ghella began.

“Don’t ask it,” Corenna said. “My people were slaughtered, and I forgave it for the madness it was. But I will not abandon Arak’Jur to die, not when his child grows inside me. You cannot expect me to do this. You cannot.”

She showed ferocity in her expression, but he could see her trembling, and knew it for more than anger boiling in her veins. Madness had cost her every comfort in her life, all save his company. He understood; even faced with the prospect of banishment for the good of the tribes, he would not want to face the wild alone. Duty compelled him to go, and her to stay, but weighed against the death of a wife, a husband, a child, all other concern gave way to desperation. And from desperation, clarity.

“We are not the only people with the strength to survive in these lands.”

The words sounded foreign to his ears, even as he spoke them. The rest of the men and women around the fire looked to him with a blend of curiosity and confusion.

“I will not stay among our people,” he continued. “Not when my presence draws such strength arrayed against us. Nor will I ask Corenna to stay behind. I mean to face our enemies, to find the source of their corruption and root it out. For that I will need her strength. But I will also need surety of this people’s safety. And for that I turn to the fair-skins, whose barrier is proof against the creatures of the wild.”