Kiravi's Travelogue Ch. 06

Serina nodded, scooted closer, "I think I understand. But you didn't seem to be upset after we'd crossed the river or when we made the offering to the Kwarzi after the battle?"

Leotie's face twisted as she tried to respond. "They...the Kwarzi on the west bank were like cousins to the ones I grew up with. They whispered with the same words, just a different accent. But," she buried her face in her hands, clenched her jaw, "The ones here...I can't understand them. I try to reach out, open myself to them, but they stay away, yipping like coyotes around a dire wolf feasting on a kill. If I can't commune with them, I can't draw on their power. I can't honor them."

They were close now, Serina's hand on Leotie's breech-covered thigh, their upper arms nearly touching where Serina had wriggled closer. For all the lustful imaginings I can assure you that I was having, dear readers, neither of the women seemed focused on the flesh of the other. Leotie alternatively clenched her eyes shut and glanced at Serina, and Serina's glowing eyes fluttered about the air around the huntress.

"I can see them," Serina whispered, just barely heard over the slap of ripples against the canoe, "all around you."

"See them?" Leotie hissed, incredulous and hopeful all at once. "They're spirits! No one can see them."

Serina smiled gently, inadvertently bringing her face closer to Leotie's as she peered at the empty space around them. "No, no, I see their magic, Leotie, their power," Serina took the hand not on Leotie's thigh and swished it through the air, accidentally brushing the huntress' hair. "I see them, swirling all around you, sniffing you, curious."

"They don't feel curious to me," Leotie shuddered.

"May I help you?"

I was the outsider, completely unable to see or feel or understand what Serina and Leotie were experiencing, able only to watch as Serina picked up one of Leotie's strong hands with her dainty one and interlaced their fingers.

"What are you...what are you doing?" Leotie muttered.

/Serina didn't respond, not at first, clutching at Leotie's hand tighter, glancing around even faster. Her eyes glowed brighter, flashing and fluttering suddenly through a dazzling spray of colors, "I don't know. I just want to help." She whispered, her voice seeming not entirely her own.

"Your staff," I muttered, ready to either throw myself over the gunwale or at Serina in case her magic flared out of control.

She didn't release Leotie's hand but reached to grasp Sata's old staff with her free hand. The copper baubles at its head immediately began to glow, matching the ever-changing color of her eyes. Serina's eyes never stopped moving, constantly shifting to look at points all around Leotie's head, and her lips began to move slowly, repeating the words that had filled my dreams for the past week.

"Sha naqba imuru, sha naqba imuru, sha naqba imuru."

A handful of things happened, dear readers, in the next few moments, and all of them turned my prior and youthful understanding of the world onto its head. Her eyes and hands glowed with soft blue light, transmitted through to the top of the staff. An aura of the same light shimmered faintly around Leotie's head and shoulders. Shapes, no bigger than nestling songbirds, flitted through the light that somehow managed to overpower the desert sunlight, each on its own unique and twisting path.

I knew I was seeing something not meant for my eyes, maybe not meant for the eyes of any mortal, only for the supernatural senses of those who communed with the Kwarzi through their conduits. But I couldn't look away.

"Talk to them," Serina whispered, her voice echoing within itself.

The air rippled and blustered around the canoe, disturbing the surface of the water even further. Leotie's face was as slack with surprise as I'm sure mine was, her eyes trying to follow the faintly bird-like spirits. She took a moment, though, shut her eyes, and began murmuring something to herself in her language. Their hands trembled where they were clasped tightly together, the aura of magic thrumming, pulsing, and the Kwarzi spirits darted closer and faster around Leotie's head.

Sweat beaded on their foreheads and temples, and Leotie's murmuring grew faster and more insistent. Serina was faltering, her words in her unknown tongue coming out in halting gasps, the blue light of her magic flickering. The Kwarzi swirled ever faster, some of them sweeping close to her braids, each of their strange and spectral forms glowing brighter with the same light as Serina's raw magic. Niknik bristled, swatting at the fluttering spirits with his wide paws.

Leotie cried out, somewhere between a whimper and a gasp, and pulled her hand away from Serina's. The sudden loss of connection shocked Serina, who had already been losing control of her unstable magic, and I launched myself forward from the stern of the canoe. I caught her as she slumped, making sure her hand remained on the staff, and swore and ducked as the Kwarzi burst away from Leotie's head and scattered in every direction across the water. They faded back into invisibility as they flashed away from the succor of Serina's magic. Still, the water rippled in the wake of their startled and energetic flight long after they'd faded from sight.

Silence and stillness slowly returned to the river, the only sound the slosh of the rippling water, the women panting, and my heart thundering in my ears.

"Are you alright?" I managed to find my voice after long moments of just staring at the sweating, panting women piled into the front of the vessel.

"You...you don't know what you did, do you?" Leotie said, still breathless but smirking.

Serina, sweet and naive Serina, surprisingly didn't miss a beat, "I haven't known what I'm doing since I left my father's hearth," we chuckled, all of us, letting the strange tension of the last few minutes flow out of us. "I just wanted to help you, Leotie," she sat up, her hand returning to Leotie's thigh.

"What did they say?" I asked, finding a waterskin for them to share.

She sighed, closed her eyes, and tipped her head back, "Nothing. Nothing I could understand anyway, but they're no longer angry with me. They accepted my gift of Serina's power." She paused, chuckled, "Probably the most excited I've ever heard a Kwarzi be."

I opened my mouth to speak, thought better, and closed it, opened it again. But the words didn't come. I had so many questions, dear readers. Remember that the purpose that had brought me onto this stinking and silty river was to gather as much knowledge as I could? How could Serina just give magic to the Kwarzi, and how had it flowed through Leotie? How were any of us able to see the Kwarzi at all? As many questions as I had, I knew the two women were at as much of a loss finding explanations as I was. So I just took their empty waterskin, handed them beerskins, and unsteadily waddled back to the stern of the craft.

By the time I sat down and returned my hands to the broad paddle, both women were already asleep, exhausted by trying to focus and channel so much magic. Trying my best to ignore the lingering hangover from the ritual wine, I began rhythmically pushing the canoe forward with long strokes of the paddle. The land slid past us, high and rocky on both sides and baked by the merciless sun.

Exhaustion and the strange connection they'd created kept the two women from going at each others' throats throughout the rest of the day. My women? I thought as I rowed. Their state kept the trip quiet, but it also kept them from paddling; by the time the blistering sun had slipped behind the jagged ridges west of the river, I was bone-tired, and the wounded skin in the center of my chest seared with pain.

I tried to fight sleep -- I don't know why dear readers -- peering at the shadowed rocks as the last of the light faded from the purple-black dome of the sky. Rocks clattered somewhere on the river behind us, faintly splashing into the water and sending startled birds flapping into the air, squawking angrily. I twisted and glared into the darkness as if I could see what manner of beast had misstepped at the river's edge.

I saw nothing, for a moment, until there was a faint glimmer of purplish light. It shined against the water but soon disappeared, and I wasn't even certain I'd seen anything at all. The birds quieted, the water rippled, and the wind faintly tugged at our awnings.

Too tired to be concerned, I nestled up amongst the sleeping women and Nikinik's curled, faintly purring form, and let sleep take me.

* * * * *

I woke before the others to the sound of Niknik growling lowly at something on the banks of the river. Both women had again draped themselves over my torso and legs, and they began to stir when I pulled my aching body upright. Despite the apparent situation Niknik was concerned by, I couldn't help but spare a moment to look down at the two of them. Serina, still looking just as young and tender as the day I'd begun escorting her, with her mane of dark hair scattered wildly around her. Leotie, surprisingly vulnerable looking with her features slackened by sleep and her powerful limbs and rugged core limp and stretched out.

Nikinik turned to look at me, flicking his small ears in annoyance, compelling me with his intelligent amber eyes to look towards the west bank. Tentatively, I reached forward to comfort him while his master tried to stir from sleep; he sniffed gently at my fingers before roughly headbutting my calloused fingers. Finally, I looked past his squat, robust skull at the bank.

The rocks to the west were the steepest I'd seen so far, rising to dizzying heights, near vertically, with the water below broken into whitecaps where massive piles of rocky scree had fallen from the cliffs. The newly risen sun's light was shadowed by the east bank's significantly lower hills, but I could still see what was concerning Leotie's companion.

At the crest of the western cliffs, silhouetted against the lightening sky, was a line of seated figures, motionlessly watching the waters below. Scattered amongst the rocks below, all down to the piled stones, were broken bodies ravaged by the fall, sun, and desert birds. The hair on the back of my neck prickled, the entire vista exuding a palpable feeling of wrongness. I had a vague idea of what may have happened here, and my stomach twisted on itself.

"What is it?" Leotie yawned, asking Niknik, not myself. He chuffed at her before rubbing the side of his fanged mouth against her shoulder.

I squinted, peering closer at the brutalized bodies. They were nearly all Bhakhuri, as far as I could tell, reinforcing my concern, "You won't much like it," I said, cautious.

Leotie took a few more moments to wake up enough to notice what I already had. "Who would do this to a tribe of my people?" She said, voice harsh enough to knock Serina from her slumber. "Was it them? Was it the ones watching us from above?!" She snatched up her bow, already grunting as she strung it.

I gently put a hand on her arm, kept it there even when she tried to flinch away. "The watchers above are more of your people, Leotie, children, and they have been sacrificed just the same."

"C-Children?" Leotie's harsh mask slipped for a moment.

"Why would anyone sacrifice children?" Serina had sat up, her glowing eyes already glistening.

"It's from the old ways," I sighed, "Never practiced in the Nekoar and stomped out here and in the Niza by the first Emperor. Even then, it's hardly been practiced since each of the three kingdoms were founded." I glanced at Leotie, "The tribes would sacrifice children by letting starvation or the elements take them and gift their spirits over to the Kwarzi."

Leotie sniffed, "You didn't say why."

"By giving over members of the tribe, the old Druids and Shaman of Tebis strengthened the Kwarzi and therefore strengthened themselves."

"Why do you know this?" Leotie trembled with emotion.

"It's taught to all noble children, and again at the Academy, to show how backward the other kingdoms were before the Empire United them," I stated simply. "Though old Nekoar was not without its fault as well."

"What about these others?" Serina asked, peering around at the broken rocks and broken bodies.

I grimaced, imagining the last moments of this grisly sacrifice that could only have happened a few days earlier. "I'm sure they objected to their children being chosen for sacrifice, and were driven over the cliff for it."

"My people would never do this to their own," Leotie snarled, shaking from an anger I'd never seen her express.

In those same high-handed classes, I'd been taught differently about the Bhakhuri, much differently, but I bit my tongue. Beyond that, Leotie only knew about the tribes she'd grown up with, not those across the rivers, but they couldn't be all that different, could they? The moment I'd thought that, though, I knew I was wrong; before the Empire, the separate kingdoms of the Mother Rivers had widely varied rites and traditions, so shouldn't the tribes be just as different?

Even so, I couldn't imagine anyone doing this to their own kind, "I'm sure you're right, Leotie. We can ask someone in Tebis if they know what happened here."

The current was quick there, fast and deep between the cliff and the hills, and it carried us quickly away from the broken bodies, and the children dried out and withered by the sun. Before the sun had cleared the eastern hills, we could see the plumes of smoke from Tebis, smell the urban stink on the wind. Even that far away, the air reeked of sewage, foul tanning vats, and the harsh tang of smelting forges. I was used to it, almost comforted by the disgusting side effects of civilized life, but Serina and Leotie wrinkled their noses against it.

They had ample time to grow accustomed to it as the river went through a final bend before straightening out and widening. Like Atala, Tebis appeared to be built along a series of shallow, rushing rapids where our forefathers would've had to portage their dugouts to move any further up or downstream. At least three clapper bridges ran across the river or out to a decently sized river island, the stretch of rock capped by an imposing palace of sandstone blocks.

The river's eastern side was far more built up, sprawling away from the Seleyo's floodplain in a tangled mess of homes, temples, and small workshops, all dominated by a low hill. Opposite the crowded east bank and river-palace, the western bank looked run down, provincial. I could make out a handful of temples and a massive concentration of bloomeries and steaming tanneries amongst the ramshackle houses. The floodplain and the flat land beyond both halves of the city were crisscrossed with fields of cotton, sunflowers, sweet potatoes, and cassava, served by parched irrigation ditches. A solid-looking wall of enormous sandstone blocks ran around the majority of the east bank buildings, with a significantly shoddier one of mud-bricks zigzagging around the city's western half.

Serina gasped, pointed at the plains of the eastern bank, and it took me a moment to realize she wasn't just reacting to the sprawling mass of Tebis. "Is that...?"

I saw the sprays of dust spurting high into the air and squinted. "Chariots, yes." It was hard to make anything out between the dust, shimmering heat, and distance, but I could see the strange, four-wheeled vehicles racing amongst the far fields. Four camels, larger and more robust than the llamas the qhatuqs used on the hill tracks, ran abreast ahead of each vehicle, pulling their loads of archers and spearmen. I couldn't see any quarry or foe, so I supposed they were rushing across the dusty plain merely for sport. My father and stoic, stolid eldest brother had spoken at length about the fantastic sensation of racing across the desert, but at the time, dear readers, I was unfamiliar.

Even Leotie stared, rapt, at the distant vehicles, so I was forced to steer the canoe towards the many water breaks myself. I grumbled, straining and sweating as I worked the paddle against the current, cursing all first-born nobles and their inflated self-worth. We slid amongst the dozens of other canoes and simpler craft clumsily, and Leotie and Serina hopped out as we reached the shallows of the east bank to help a pair of ragged-looking Bhakhuri drag the high-quality canoe onto the pebble-strewn shore.

We unsteadily disembarked on cramped legs, dragging our packs and kit loose. Now, it's without false modesty that I say this, dear readers, but I assumed that we looked exactly like what we actually were: bedraggled, sweat-soaked, fly-covered, and sun-beaten wanderers appearing from the cloying haze of the river. I'll admit, of course, that I was taller, broader, and more striking of a figure than most and that my female companions would certainly turn heads on any civilized street they walked down. But the porters' reaction baffled me, even with my noble pedigree.

Both Bhakhuri threw themselves down, prostrating their underfed bodies on the sun-baked pebbles, "My lord," one gasped, voice high and tinged with fear.

"We did not know we were to be visited by one of your station this day!" The other male made excuses for a question no one had asked.

Leotie grumbled, "I thought you said you'd never been here before."

"I haven't," I sighed, already concerned our time in Tebis would be more complicated than I wanted.

My Bhakhuri companion -- soon to again be more than that, I hoped -- said something to the porters in her language. She repeated it, sharper, but was rewarded with nothing more than confused glances from the bowing porters. "Their tongue must be different here," she said, brow furrowed with the same frustration she'd shown before the confrontation on the river.

"Up, up, get up," I mumbled to the two males, too tired to say much of anything else.

"Please, lord," one pleaded, even as he stood, keeping his eyes downcast. "We didn't know any of the Old Nobles would be arriving today."

"Old Nobles?" Serina asked, voice soft.

We were interrupted by platitudes that were somehow shouted and sycophantic all at once. "Oh! My Lord, Master of stone and water, Grandson of the Gods, welcome home to Tebis!"

"Shedia's Balls, what now..." Leotie mumbled.

What I could only assume was the dockmaster hurried through the boats and porters filling the shore of the Seleyo, robes dyed yellow and red with ochre fluttering out behind him. The human male was short and looked as if he'd been portly during past years when the harvests were richer and the river higher. A copper-gilded staff, a badge of office most likely, pushed aside sun-addled Bhakhuri and Men, held in bloated fingers adorned with copper rings.

While my ego certainly appreciated such a display, especially for the third son of a minor noble, dear readers, my patience was thin as a dragonfly's wing at that point, "Please, it's been a long journey downriver, dockmaster. We need a place to sleep, the largest Ettuku temple in the city, and I must speak with the Mayor." Leotie nudged my foot with hers, nodding towards the canoe. "Ah, yes, and we no longer require this craft, if you'd be willing to buy it from us."

The dockmaster halted midstep, wrongfooted for a moment. The thin, sagging skin of his wobbling jowls quivered, "The Mayor? Are you sure? Would you not be wanting to take council with the other Old Nobles?" His accent was curious, rhythmic, the vowels half-swallowed. After all, dear readers, Tebis had been another nation, another people, only two generations earlier.

But I was young, and impatient, and sweating as the heat grew and grew, "The Mayor. The temple. The traveling house closest to it. And the boat. Now."

The rest of the morning passed in a flash, the nervous and confused dockmaster exchanging a lovely fistful of obsidian chips for the canoe before leading us quickly out of the teeming mass of budding commerce, bubbling apologies the entire way. As the bank gave way to the city proper, he handed us off to one of his Bhakhuri porters to lead us into the buildings. Leotie tried to speak to him again in her tribal tongue, but he just shook his head in confusion.