“He died fighting the lizards?” she asked, and when he didn’t immediately answer, she added, “No dishonor in using a dead man to shield a retreat. The dead are dead. We bury them when we can, but when we cannot—”
“I killed him!” Talmadge growled, spinning about.
Khotai jumped just a bit, startled, but relaxed quickly and made no move and showed no reaction. Nor was she holding her weapons, Talmadge noted.
“I put my sword, this sword, into his chest,” he confessed. “Slid it right to the hilt. I smelled his blood and his last breath. I felt the warmth of that blood spilling over my hand.”
“You do not sound as if you much enjoyed it.”
“I hated it,” he said through his gritted teeth, and truly Talmadge wanted to scream out then, or fall down crying. “You think I wanted to kill him?”
“Then why?”
“Because he tried to kill me. And before that, he would have let me die—he hoped I’d die so that he could take my share of the goods and trade them with the villagers of Car Seileach.”
Khotai appeared confused—how could she not?
So Talmadge told her of the events of that long-ago day, of the giant clo’dearche lizards fleeing the water, of Badger’s shove when he had gotten out of the canoe, and the man’s run to the tree.
Of the taunting by Badger during Talmadge’s fight with the giant lizard.
Then the prompting by Talmadge to get Badger to reveal the depths of his treachery as the pair headed for their craft.
“He stabbed for my back, but I was ready for it, and I knocked his blade aside and put my sword into the opening,” Talmadge finished.
Khotai nodded, and seemed somewhat impressed.
“And you hung him here for the other lizards,” she said, putting it all together. She smiled as she finished and moved to a spot just below and to the side of the rope, where she fell to her knees and began scraping at the dirt and brush. A moment later, Khotai held up her prize: a sizable portion of a human skull, upper jaw and teeth still intact.
Talmadge recoiled.
But Khotai was smiling knowingly.
“Is that the only time you’ve killed a man, then?” she asked.
He didn’t answer, but his expression and the sheer level of discomfort here made it quite clear that this incident was indeed unique.
“He would have killed you?”
“Yes.” Talmadge had to force the word from his throat.
Khotai nodded, her smile remaining. “In the time it took you to hang him up for the beasts, you could have gone to your boat and paddled far away,” she reasoned.
“No, the lake monster was out there. It’d driven the lizards from the water, and schools of fish, too. I needed to stay on the land for a…” His voice trailed off as he came to realize how incredibly feeble his story sounded. He could have simply gone up the same tree Badger had climbed!
“Because you were mad at him for trying to kill you,” Khotai said. “Outraged! Killing him wasn’t enough for you. No, you had to insult his corpse, to let the lizards eat him as he had hoped they would do to you.”
Talmadge had no answers.
“Admit it,” she said, but quickly added, “to yourself. You’ll feel all the better.”
Talmadge stared at her curiously.
“Which bothers you more?” she asked.
He shrugged.
“Killing the fool or hanging him for the lizards?”
Talmadge swallowed hard. “All of it.”
Khotai gave a little chuckle, one that showed both sympathy and amusement. “Now I’m getting why you demanded we let those three criminals go free back at the river,” she said. “It’d have been smart to kill them, and we had every right. But Talmadge couldn’t travel that dark road of killing again, could he, because the ghost of Badger’s been chasing him for most of his life?”
He didn’t deny a word of it, nor did he try to argue about his decision regarding the three people he had saved from that goblin attack.
“We all write the stories of our life,” Talmadge said, echoing the philosophy Khotai had explained to him many times before. In Khotai’s To-gai-ru world, the journey of one’s life was considered a story unfolding, written by the subject with her actions. It was a way of looking at life that Talmadge considered both liberating and selfish, but the more the man had become familiar with Khotai and her ways, the more he had come to recognize the limited avenues of his life, and the more the philosophy had won him over.
“We do,” Khotai answered. “Ours, each, is the tale of a life, one life, traveling roads and bouncing into others. But in the end, it is a solitary journey, a tale of one woman or one man.”
“In my story it will be written that I killed a man,” Talmadge said. “That is not a tale I wished to write.”
“Few would wish to write that tale,” Khotai replied. “Yet many do. Too many, especially out here.”
“Has Khotai written such a tale?” he asked.
The woman didn’t answer, other than to return a dubious stare, as if she couldn’t even believe he would ask the question, or more pointedly, that he believed he had to ask the question!
“Many such tales?” Talmadge asked.
“My story is wide and thick” was all she’d say, and Talmadge understood her to mean thick with both lovers and enemies—dead enemies. The roads of a life’s story as defined by Khotai’s way of looking at the world were usually more about people one bounced against than the physical roads one traveled.
“Well, now you know that mine is perhaps thicker than you had believed,” Talmadge offered.
Khotai shrugged and returned a warm smile. “The fool tried to murder you and you were the stronger,” she said in unvarnished tones. “His death is his own doing, and better that outcome than th’other. No matter your choice then, he’d have been eaten by the lizards whether you’d strung him or left him, or eaten by worms and beetles if you’d buried him, or by fish if you’d dragged him into the lake.”
“Thank you,” the man said, straight from his gut and before he could even consider his response.
“I cannot know what is in your heart,” Khotai told him. “Not really. No one can know that of another. But we watch and hear and listen to each other and to common friends, and we make a guess. Long ago, I guessed that Talmadge was a good man, a man of honor. I’m not surprised that this journey with Badger, all of this, burdened you so, and for all these long years.” She paused and dropped the skull and then swept her hand and gazed up toward the tree limb and the rope that had grown to be a part of it. “Your pain at telling me the tale only proves my guess.”
The man felt better, felt as if a great weight had, at long last, been lifted from his shoulders. For most of his adult life, the incident here with Badger had haunted him—how he had wanted to take Khotai here before! To show her the way of the lake tribes and the sheer beauty of Loch Beag and the majesty of the Snowhaired Mountains, the Surgruag Monadh.
He looked down at the skull on the ground, then picked it up and held it aloft between himself and Khotai.
“Well, Mister Seconk, you entered my tale of your own accord,” he said. “And you left my tale of your own actions.”
He shrugged and tossed the skull, and motioned to the boat, for he had no more reason to be at this place.
More importantly, though, Talmadge had no more reason to avoid this place.
PART 3
WRITING THEIR STORIES
I am often amazed at how a simple difference in the way one looks at the world can transform one’s actions so profoundly, as obviously as the turn of a prism can change the color of the world seen through it. What may seem a play on words can change the colors of the world around you.
Many of the tribes I have encountered name their members after the actions or duties or even a particular aspect of an individual. A hunter may be named Urcharsleagh because he can throw a spear with great accuracy, and so his talent becomes his moniker. Similarly,
the tribes often name and number their gods in the real animals about them, or in storms they will have to know and learn in order to survive. There are gods of thunder and wind, and great deity beasts to represent the bears or hunting cats.
The simple association of language with action, of deifying the great natural events and animals, ties these peoples more closely with the world around them—every word becomes a reminder of responsibility or threat, and as such, they’ve turned their very language into an archive. Transferring information one might find in a library at a monastery in Honce.
It is brilliant in its simplicity, and a fair warning to those of us “more civilized” folk that too often overthink and unnecessarily complicate that which should be obvious. The answers to puzzles are, quite often, right there before us.
The obvious is sometimes the truth.
I am reminded of Marcalo De’Unnero, once my mentor, though more truthfully my tormentor. He led me down a myriad of tangled webs of justification, each walking me further from the simple truth of the immorality of my actions. So easy is it to justify selfishness and pride and all the deadly sins to one who would be so cooed.
De’Unnero viewed the world through a turned prism. He had so convinced himself of his elevated, godly duty to protect the ignorant peasants from the truth of their destiny that he could justify any action—murder, torture, war itself—under the guise of service to a higher purpose.
So many turn their prisms away from obvious morality, it seems, whether the thief in the streets of Palmaris, the murderer in the Wilderlands, the too-proud king, or the tyrant Father Abbot, so sure of the word of god that all must be sacrificed in service to that inaudible voice and invisible hand.
This is how we write our stories—and is that not our life journey? To write our personal stories?
A woman named Khotai told me that, though it is a simple way of looking at the journey of a life that should have been obvious to me, to us all. And yet it was not—not to me at the very least. Not until I encountered this exotic person, a rare combination of To-gai-ru and Alpinadoran heritage, raised in the steppes of To-gai, yet wandering beyond the Wilderlands, the Wilderlands themselves, or even the avenues of Honce-the-Bear’s great cities.
Khotai views her life as a tale to be created, to be written, by her every step and choice. She is an actor in her own play, as are we all. If she finds her play becoming dull, she will seek a new road, a new conflict, a new challenge. Something, anything, to write a page that engages the protagonist, the prime actor, in this journey: herself.
She is not restless, but rather, engaged. She is not reckless, but neither timid. This is her story, her journey, her life … a wasted step is one less step to spend.
Thus has Khotai turned her prism, and thus does she turn her prism, never allowing for a static, dull, view.
It is a trick of semantics, perhaps, or a most simplistic reminder of a philosophical desire to die without regret of those roads untraveled or those mountains unclimbed. Either way, Khotai’s way of viewing the world and her walk is a continual prod and an unceasing whisper that we, this part of our journey at least, are finite, with end.
So we all write our stories. Some end too soon, like the child who dies of plague before learning to even speak, or the mother who, upon finding a new and exciting road to travel, dies in childbirth before the first steps of that are even recorded.
Some stories are quite long, a century even (and many centuries for the Touel’alfar and Doc’alfar!), but walk a small circuit so often that the tracks are dug into the paths. The words repeat, repeat, repeat, and so the long story itself becomes nothing more than illusion.
You can repeat a sentence a hundred times, but it is still just one sentence.
To Khotai, this would be the same tale as written by one who died a child.
It is so simple, so obvious.
How I thank Khotai for showing it to me.
Aydrian Wyndon, “In My Travels”
17
AFFINITY
(The last day of the ninth month, Parvespers, God’s’Year 854)
Seonagh squared her shoulders, clenched her fists at her sides, and declared again, this time through gritted teeth, “Aoleyn is not ready.” It was her third denial, and her most forceful retort, and she sucked in her breath as the powerful man towering over her scowled.
“It does not matter if she is ready or not,” Tay Aillig said with a level of calmness that hinted of murder. “She is a woman, no longer a girl, and so she must now learn her place. And accept it.”
He seemed as if he were about to continue—no surprise to Seonagh, for a long rant from the ever more forceful Tay Aillig was easily set into motion. This one was overly proud and surely did not like to be contradicted, and particularly not by a mere woman!
Indeed, she saw that flash in his eyes, a promise of a continuing spew of threats and anger, but an upraised hand just to the side stopped him short.
“Sit,” said an old and shaky voice, but one that carried great weight among the Usgar, for it was that of Raibert, the tribe’s Usgar-forfach, the appointed caretaker of the sacred winter plateau and the crystal caverns beneath Craos’a’diad. Raibert had earned his current position honestly, for he had been, as Tay Aillig was now, the Usgar-laoch in his youth. Then, as Tay Aillig hoped for himself, Raibert had become the Usgar-triath, the Chieftain, and his word had held as final arbiter on every issue for more than a decade before he had been bested in formal challenge by a giant of a man named Thorburn.
That had all occurred decades before, and Thorburn was now long dead, and so respected had Raibert been that whispers had lingered for years, even to this day, of reinstating him as Usgar-triath. For no other had the accomplishments and respect to assume such a title. But Raibert was in his ninth decade of life, too frail to take on such all-encompassing duties. While most of the tribe thought him half-mad, the rest of the tribe thought him entirely so.
Despite that, or because of it, the Usgar looked upon him with reverence. As if the crystalline god spoke through Raibert in every pronouncement. On those rare occasions when Raibert spoke, everyone listened. Even Tay Aillig. And if the old man’s words sounded as gibberish, as was often the case, the Usgar looked past that and sought deeper meaning.
Raibert shakily rose to his feet. The light of the fire in the predawn cast eerie shadows on his face, accentuating the deep lines of age and the deeper scars left from a combative youth; his raids and hunts were still in the songs of Usgar skalds. He spoke slowly, heavily. “The witch speaks truly,” he began. “This girl, Aoleyn, is not ready. But are women ever ready?” He gave a raspy laugh, permission for the other men to join in, and so they did, aiming their mocking tones squarely at Seonagh.
Raibert held up a gnarled hand for silence and stared hard at Seonagh. “This young Aoleyn has been properly claimed,” he said, and laughed again, and there was something sinister there, Seonagh thought. “Some man’s to ride her! Oh, if I were younger.” And he wheezed and laughed some more.
Seonagh tried to hide her repulsion, but doubted she was being very successful in the attempt. Even Tay Aillig, who had never seemed overly interested in sex, appeared uncomfortable as Raibert began detailing some of his sexual adventures in great detail, laughing and wheezing. He went so long down his memories that Seonagh half expected him to drop his pants and begin stroking himself right there in front of them.
It wouldn’t be the first time.
“She’s bled,” Tay Aillig said after Raibert had wrapped himself into some story of an encounter so deeply that he seemed to completely lose sight of the present. “Aoleyn is a woman, and she will be a wife or she will be a witch, or both. But not neither. She must learn what that means in the ways of Fireach Speuer.”
Seonagh stared at him hard, not judging, but rather, trying to decipher. They didn’t have to do this now, but if they didn’t, then Brayth would be free to stake his claim to Aoleyn and consummate his marriage. If they did, and Aoleyn li
ved up to her promise, that moment would likely be put off, perhaps for a long while, as Mairen staked her own claim to the young woman. If Aoleyn proved to be the witch-in-waiting, the next in line for the Coven, Mairen would not allow her to become thick with child anytime soon.
It seemed to Seonagh that Tay Aillig preferred this second possibility.
“Might that I’ll put the girl to her knees!” Raibert said unexpectedly, cackling with every word.
Seonagh felt her face screw up at the vulgarity of the old man.
Some of the fire of his youth yet remained, though, and before Seonagh could get out a word, Raibert snapped at her. “You do not decide things here, witch!” he said, pointing a crooked finger her way. “You have spoken your words and have been heard, which is more than you should expect! Now you must kneel to the decisions of the men, as Aoleyn would kneel before me if I so desired!”
Seonagh took a moment to compose herself. She thought of Hew, who had been her husband, who had so often spoken to her in such a manner, and usually with an accompanying punch.
She didn’t much miss him.
She thought of Fionlagh, who would never say such things, and of her sister, Elara, and envied her fortune to have been chosen by such a man as that.
“I knelt to the demands of my husband, in accordance with the ways of Fireach Speuer,” Seonagh dared to retort. “He is not here.”
“He is dead,” said one of the other venerable tribesmen, a man called Ahn’Namay. “Two dozen years. You should be dead as well, for as long, in fidelity and respect.”
Seonagh stiffened, trying to not let the words shake her. Sometimes in Usgar culture, the wife would “accept” death when losing the man who had chosen her. Again, Seonagh thought of Elara, who hadn’t chosen such a course, but who had broken with the fall of Fionlagh and so had been helped to the Corsaleug, the Jeweled Shore of Usgar heaven, by the other men, who so happily had thrown her into Craos’a’diad.
“And yet, here I stand!” she answered defiantly. Seonagh had been in the Coven when Hew had fallen from a ledge to his death while in pursuit of a deer, and so Seonagh had been beyond the wicked grip of angry men. “You, all of you, in your wisdom, tasked me with the teaching of this girl, like so many before her who have grown under my eye. And when those others neared womanhood, they were ready, I told you as much. But I tell you for the sake of all involved, including Brayth too, that this one is not ready.”