60

ARAK’JUR

Approaching the Alliance Village

North of New Sarresant

Doren squealed and slapped his hands against Arak’Jur’s jaw. Corenna had helped him bind their son with strips of cloth to rest against his chest and keep him warm as they walked. He’d expected Doren to sleep—spirits knew the boy had done little enough of that in the night—but instead looked down to find tiny brown eyes staring up at him in wonder.

The sight put fire in his heart; a precious thing, when all else was cold.

“He wonders why your skin doesn’t make milk,” Corenna said.

“Do you think he needs to eat?” he said.

Corenna shook her head. “Not until midday.”

They went back to silence, traversing snow-covered grassland as they’d done each day since their reunion. Watching Doren’s first squeals had given them shared purpose in spite of the slow pace, hobbled by the child and by Corenna’s recovery from the birth. He’d hoped for laughter between him and Corenna, too, and found only distance. She hadn’t killed him yet, or made an attempt. But from the pain behind her eyes, that was too great a feat for him to feel any comfort by her side.

“It might be the Alliance village,” Corenna said after another hundred paces. Smoke rose on the horizon, fixed there over a hillside they’d seen the night before.

“If we’re far enough north,” he said.

Doren had taken to scratching Arak’Jur’s jaw, grasping at his skin as though his fingers made a miniature claw. It took his attention away from the silence following his and Corenna’s exchange.

“We are,” she said abruptly a few paces later. “There. A welcoming party.”

He pulled his jaw free of Doren’s grasp, and looked where Corenna pointed. She was right: Three figures approached, cutting a trail down the hillside toward them, no mistaking. Too far off to be certain they were there to welcome his and Corenna’s return, or even that they were tribesmen at all, but he dared himself a spark of emotion, hoping it was true.

“Arak’Jur,” Corenna said. “I … I haven’t said it in weeks, but … I …”

“You intend to leave the village,” he finished for her. “As soon as Doren and I are safely home.”

“What?” Corenna said. “No.” Her voice turned suddenly hot. “How could you think I would leave my son?”

“Our son,” he said, keeping his voice cool in spite of the building heat. He’d known this was coming. She’d been cold, distant, watching him as though she meant to put a knife between his ribs while he slept. He knew it was the spirits’ promptings. It changed nothing.

“No,” Corenna said again softly. “I don’t mean to leave. I mean to stay. It’s been all I could do, ignoring the spirits’ urgings as we traveled. But I need you to know I love you. I mean to make this work, and if I’ve faltered and made you hate me, so be it, but you should know how I feel, before you decide this can’t be fixed.”

He came to a halt. Even Doren seemed to sense the thickness in the air, dropping his hands and pressing them against Arak’Jur’s chest.

“Can it be fixed?” he said.

Tears appeared on Corenna’s cheeks.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve tried to ignore the spirits’ promptings. I want to trust myself. But I don’t know if I’m strong enough.”

“I thought you meant to leave,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for you to tell me, since we crossed the river.”

“No.” She shook her head. “No. I mean to fight. For us.”

He went to her, covering the ground before he knew he’d started to walk.

Doren pressed between them as he took her in his arms, saying with a firm grip everything he’d wanted to say with words. Their son squealed with delight, renewing his clawing at their jaws and necks as they kissed, a distraction that served to finally bring the laughter they’d missed between them.

“I’m sorry, Arak’Jur,” Corenna said, still leaning close when they separated. “For bringing all of this on us.”

“I know,” he said. He wanted to say more, and found the words dry on his tongue. Doren’s squeals served instead, and he felt the sun’s heat on his skin for the first time in weeks.

The figures descending the hillside were tribesmen; he saw it before they reached level ground. But it took closing the distance to realize who had come to welcome them home.

“Arak’Jur,” Ka’Inari said, at the same time he said, “Ka’Inari,” and they came together, wrapping arms to thump each other’s backs.

Two hunters accompanied the shaman, a Ganherat and a Vhurasi, and he exchanged formal greetings with them as Corenna took a turn embracing Ka’Inari, cradling their son to her side.

“What of the Uktani?” Ka’Inari asked.

“Slain and scattered, by my hand,” he said. “They won’t threaten us again.”

Ka’Inari nodded, solemn and grim. “You return to us, then. And with a son.”

“A son,” Arak’Jur said, feeling the rush of pride he heard in his own voice. “His name is Doren.”

Ka’Inari’s solemnity softened. “A strong, Ranasi name,” the shaman said. “As fine a namesake as Arak’Doren could have wished for.”

Arak’Jur and Corenna shared a weary smile. He felt the weight of the weeks they’d spent together, and the renewed hope that had bloomed between them. Ka’Inari paused for a moment, surveying them both before he spoke again.

“All is well between you?” Ka’Inari said. “At Ka’Ana’Tyat, the spirits set you both arduous tasks. It warms my heart to see you here, together.”

“We are well,” Arak’Jur said, putting surety in his voice. “The spirits are cruel, but we are strong. We mean to face our trials together.”

Corenna stood beside him, standing taller than he’d seen from her in weeks. She unwrapped Doren from around her shoulder, holding him toward Ka’Inari.

“Will you bless our son?” she asked. “We would have him accepted into the tribe and given the rest of his name, if the spirits see fit to grant it.”

“Of course,” Ka’Inari said. “Strip him naked, and present him to me.”

Corenna did as she’d been asked, peeling back the rest of the cloths she’d used as a sling, then removing the tiny furs Arak’Jur had cut and stitched for coverings. Doren flailed his arms and legs at the shock of the cold, with a moment of stunned silence before he began to wail.

Ka’Inari moved closer to Corenna, hovering over the child.

“He is strong,” Ka’Inari said. “A boy whose mother is known to the spirits. A boy whose father carries their blessings.” The shaman reached into a pouch on his belt, one he must have prepared in advance, and smeared blue paste on his fingers, tracing a line down Doren’s chest and belly. The crying ceased at the shaman’s touch, and instead the boy fell into a curious, reverent silence as Ka’Inari drew a second line, this time on the left arm, then a third on the right.

When the markings were done, Ka’Inari reached for Doren and Corenna handed him into the shaman’s arms. Ka’Inari’s eyes glazed over the moment he took the child, a sign he’d been granted a vision of the boy’s future, a premonition of things-to-come. Arak’Jur understood the shaman’s gift better now than he had when Ka’Vos had given a blessing to Kar’Elek, his firstborn son. But there was no less fear in it for his understanding.

“This child is half-Sinari, and half-Ranasi,” Ka’Inari said. His voice had changed, grown harder, more distant. “Is it your wish he be adopted into one, or the other?”

“No,” Arak’Jur said. “He is both, and carries both tribes’ strength.”

Corenna nodded firmly beside him, and Ka’Inari returned his attention to their son.

“Very well,” Ka’Inari said. “The child is accepted. He will wear many names in his lifetime. But first he will be called Kar’Doren, of the two tribes. He is healthy, and strong, and watched over by the spirits of things-to-come, the spirits of the wind, the spirit of kirighra, and the spirits of the Mountain. He will face great pain, but if he has the strength to bear it, the world will know him, before his end.”

With that Ka’Inari blinked, and his eyes returned to brown. Corenna retrieved their son, swiftly wrapping him in his furs and kissing his forehead with tears running from her eyes. Arak’Jur found himself in awe. Kar’Elek had received no such pronunciations from the shaman at his blessing. He moved to Corenna’s side, stroking Kar’Doren’s left shoulder, tracing the line of blue Ka’Inari had put there.

Finally Ka’Inari’s sober tones melted into warmth. “More will want to welcome you, and your return,” Ka’Inari said. “Let us go into the village, and speak of things past, and things to come.”

Word ran ahead of their coming, and a throng of faces greeted them at the village’s edge. Uncertainty lingered in their eyes, until Ka’Inari came to a halt near the outermost tents and buildings.

“Our guardians have returned,” Ka’Inari said. “The Uktani are broken, and the spirits have given their blessing. The danger is passed, and Arak’Jur and Corenna are to be welcome among us once more.”

The words cut through the crowd, turning questioning doubt to warmth. Hunters came forward to embrace him, and spread word among their fellows, until more than a few tears had escaped his eyes. He had been away too long not to feel emotion at the sight of Sinari patterns sewn in skirts and tunics, at hearing their tongue spoken aloud, at seeing Sinari tents alongside the strange new constructions of brick and stone. Corenna and Kar’Doren were swallowed among the women, too, and it took some time before word spread among the men that he had brought home a son. That spawned a second wave of welcome, shouts and congratulatory slaps across his back and shoulders. He met them all with good cheer, Sinari and Olessi, Vhurasi, Ganherat, and Nanerat alike. He was home. Corenna was home. Kar’Doren was home. It was a time for joy, and his spirit had grown bright by the time he and Corenna came together again on the snow-covered green at the village center.

The village had been built in two turnings of the seasons, but already was suited to sheltering the Alliance through the cold months. Hides and tent poles had been harvested and moved from the Sinari, Olessi, and Vhurasi villages, while the Ganherat had built three longhouses where they could eat and cook indoors. The rest of the Alliance made to deliver an impromptu feast for his and Corenna’s return, the men and women both gathering stores to put over the fires, regaling him with all that had transpired in the days since he’d been gone.

“Four foreigners came to the village,” Valak’Ser said, the old Sinari hunter having taken a place beside him, Corenna, and Ka’Inari when the food was served. “With too-narrow eyes, a tongue that sounded as though they had mouths full of food, and skin too pale for tribesfolk and too dark for them to be fair-skins. I’d never have believed the shaman’s story, had I not seen them myself.”

“There was a fair-skin, too,” Ka’Inari said, smiling.

Valak’Ser waved a pruned hand dismissively. “Too many of those lately.”

Arak’Jur set down his food—a haunch of turkey with baked cornmeal, squash, and beans. “You traveled to the west, and found what? Another people?”

“Another world,” Ka’Inari said. “Or, at least, peoples as foreign as the fair-skins, and twice as strange.”

“You left in the company of Sarine Thibeaux and Rosline Acherre,” Corenna said. “Who were these foreigners Valak’Ser speaks of?”

“Yanjin Tigai, Yanjin Dao, Yanjin-Zhang Mei, and Remarin Allan-Jaad ni Yanjin.”

Ka’Inari could as well have made gibbering sounds from his mouth for all any of that sounded like names, but the shaman wore an earnest look, the subject too serious for mockery or jokes. His old apprentice had grown in the time they’d spent apart; Ka’Inari had taken on some of Ka’Vos’s reserve, and now spoke with an air of authority and wisdom that had only ever been suggested before.

“Rosline Acherre was with us as well,” Ka’Inari continued, “though Sarine Thibeaux and two others from across the Divide—Lin Qishan and Yuli Twin Fangs Clan Hoskar—went missing before we reached the village. The others journeyed onward, into the fair-skins’ city. I would have followed, but for the spirits’ premonitions of your return.”

“You would have followed?” he asked. “You are back among our people, now. Surely your place is here.”

Ka’Inari shook his head. “There is much trouble in the world. Too much for us to pretend we can live here in peace.”

“Ka’Inari, where is Asseena?” Corenna asked. “Or Ghella, Symara, Ilek’Hannat?”

Arak’Jur frowned. Corenna had seen something he hadn’t—but now he recognized it, too. The spirit-touched women of all the tribes, and the Nanerat apprentice shaman, were missing, seated nowhere around the longhouse, nor had they been there to welcome his and Corenna’s return.

“He is Ka’Hannat, now,” Ka’Inari said. “And they are gone. Before my arrival, they boarded ships bound for the fair-skins’ lands, across the sea.”

“Before your …” he began, then pivoted to, “Across the sea?”

“I misliked it,” Valak’Ser said. “And said as much, in the steam tents. But we’ve been cursed by the spirits since Ka’Vos’s death—better to admit it, and seek redress in obeying their commands.”

“What commands?” Corenna said. “Why did they require our women, our shaman, to leave their homes?”

“To leave their homes and leave them undefended!” Arak’Jur said. “If they left before your arrival, then the Alliance was blind to the coming of the great beasts. How could the spirits ask such a thing of our people?”

“War,” Ka’Inari said.

The word chilled his skin in spite of the guardian’s gift.

“Our people are but one of many,” Ka’Inari continued. “In my travels I came to see and know this firsthand. There are darker shadows than fair-skin empires, more terrible enemies than tribes or even spirits gone mad. On the far side of the world, I saw visions of things-to-come. Hope for our people rests in fighting the shadows, in standing with the Goddess, in wielding the mantle of the spirits’ magic for her cause.”

“I will not allow our people to be drawn into fair-skin wars,” Arak’Jur said. “If it takes shedding my Arak name, becoming Sa’Shem, and defying the spirits’ will, I will do it.”

Ka’Inari shook his head. His eyes were full of sadness.

“That is not your path,” Ka’Inari said. “The spirits have shown me what they demand of you. And of you.” He said the last to Corenna, the sadness taking on new meaning as the shaman cast a glance between them.

“No,” Corenna said. “Kirighra set me an impossible task. I’ve refused it.”

The shaman nodded. “I’ve seen this course, and the pain it has caused you. But you are not alone in being chosen, Corenna of the Ranasi.”

Arak’Jur waited, taking every word from the shaman as a blow. He knew what was coming; he’d seen the visions in the cave atop Adan’Hai’Tyat.

“Mountain has chosen you, Arak’Jur,” Ka’Inari said. “They demand peace, through culling the warlords and tyrants of the world.”

“No,” Corenna said again. “We won’t leave our son.”

“It is what the spirits demand, if you seek ascension,” Ka’Inari said.

“Then I don’t,” Corenna said. “And Arak’Jur doesn’t. We will remain here, defending this alliance from threats as we have always done. We will raise our son in peace, far from fair-skin wars and the concerns of other tribes.”

Ka’Inari met his eyes while Corenna spoke, and he could have struck the shaman, for driving to the heart of the choice he’d already made, though he hadn’t known it before that moment. Ad-Shi had shown him the world in darkness, covered by ash and poison. A world where thousands died in fire and gas, driven belowground under a blackened sky. A world he would spare his son, at any price. It tore his heart from his chest, but he could not walk the path of peace in the face of war and terror.

“I will go,” he said. “I will follow the spirits’ path, wherever it leads.”

Corenna turned to him with shocked eyes, cradling Kar’Doren as though now she alone sheltered him from a hostile world. The image burned in his memory, searing him with guilt and pain.

“To the fair-skins’ city, then,” Ka’Inari said. “To Erris d’Arrent, and a reckoning with her enemies.”

Another vision came as Ka’Inari spoke the name, a memory from Adan’Hai’Tyat. Erris d’Arrent. That was his purpose: to kill those who meant to bring war into the world. Corenna’s pain, the renewed spark between them, and their shared love for Kar’Doren all faded against the enormity of his task. But it was his burden to bear, and he meant to see it through, whatever the cost.

“South, then,” he said, ignoring the hurt in Corenna’s eyes. “Without delay.”