Kiravi's Travelogue Ch. 10

"I've seen you heal those with one foot in the Second Life," she grumbled, but the bronze was leaving her voice as even more Kroyu piled into the village and, still, the bedraggled bands remained outside of the waiting huts. "So many mouths to feed," Leotie kept grumbling, "Because obviously, no one else is doing it." She looked up at me with plaintive eyes. At that moment, I realized just how much of a toll the past weeks had taken on her. Her eyes were wide, and bags had started to form beneath them. She'd lost weight, too, and her braids were frizzy and wild. "Please, Kiravi, there's too many."

I was saved from responding by the appearance of a knot of apparent elders. They tottered and limped their way into the center of the village on the arms of younger helpers. A middle-aged male, a Bhakhuri shrouded by ragged hides and furs, accompanied them. He carried a long staff decorated in black feathers and chips of obsidian and other black stones. The elders, led by a stooped Qulki and a half-Bhakhuri like Leotie, clustered around the strange totem.

Many of the tribesmen, of every race we'd encountered so far, with dozens of Qulki and stranger offshoots of the Avian line, cast curious or fearful glances in our direction. But not the elders. They stooped and scraped around the totem until, it seemed, the last stragglers of the Kroyu tribe had arrived.

The half-Bhakhuri started a long, keening wail in the back of his throat, clasping the totem and turning his face to the sky. The other elders took up the same sound, each at slightly different pitches, and the mournful cry spread throughout the entire band. Each rank clasped onto the shoulders of the one in front of them, in a chain that reached all the way to the totem.

Gohika sidled close to us, nudging my elbow as the first elder changed his formless wail into drawn-out words. "He is singing a prayer to a god who is long dead. He asks why the gods won't answer us and why they've abandoned this land. He asks what spirits remain here to aid us, to give us the strength to endure our suffering."

"What are we getting ourselves into?" Serina whispered.

"This was your idea," Leotie muttered, "And I still want to take off." She kicked my shin, "But this beautiful idiot won't let us."

I'll be honest, dear readers, that Gohika's translation disturbed me and lent more than a bit of weight to Leotie's desperate requests to flee. The gods had blessed me with a unique flavor of bullheadedness, though, so I just grumbled back something unintelligible but venomous. But, of course, if things didn't turn out well that night, we could always practice my other gods-given skill: sneaking out in the middle of the night.

The keening wails abruptly stopped, and I was uncomfortably aware of a hundred sets of eyes on us. The leading singer spoke slowly, forming half-remembered words like a mouthful of gravel. "We spend long months in the high hills gathering thick hides and obsidian, as the Undying One commands us. And, when we return, we find strangers wielding magic in our village. So tell us, truly, before the totem of the dead god, if you serve the Undying One." His face betrayed neither the worry nor the illicit curiosity evident on all the other Kroyu faces. Instead, his lined features held only a fatalistic acceptance of my answer.

I had an uncomfortably reminiscent feeling of that first day I'd spent in Tebis, but this time the question was different: who in the infinite hells was the Undying One?

Leotie, already as jumpy as a desert hare, spoke first, "We told your hunters already! We don't serve anyone. We're exiles from Anghoret, that's all," I could feel her shift, sense her gaze searing into the side of my head, "Looking for a home."

His eyes, just starting to cloud with age, narrowed. As a whole, his coloring and features were similar to Leotie's, save for the rampant silver streaked through his hair, "Exiles. Aren't we all?" The hooded male holding the totem whispered something in their native tongue, and the elder nodded, "Will you swear to it? On our totem?"

I put a hand on my lovers' hands, delaying them, "I will swear, old one," on the shortlist of things that actually meant something to me, an oath was on there somewhere, "But who is it that I'm swearing not to serve?"

Those of the Kroyu that spoke Anghoreti murmured uncomfortably and muttered hurried trepidations, "The beast that rules all of Gavic, that remembers the drowning of the old world and the dawning of the new. Now, swear, and we will speak more." He shuffled out of the way and waved a lined hand at the totem.

Now, dear readers, I know that I wasn't as sensitive to magic as Leotie or Serina, so at the time, I didn't know if the faint rush I felt was from nerves or from some lingering aura the totem possessed. Either way, my insides fluttered as my hand wrapped around the solid wooden haft, and I realized that at least some of the stones dangling from its top looked just like the shards of the god-stone we'd carried across the border.

"I swear, as a noble of Anghoret, as a Magus, and as a Man, that I do not serve the Undying One." I tried to sound solemn and spoke slowly to allow the whispered translations. "Will that satisfy you, headman?"

He grinned, revealing a mouth nearly devoid of teeth, "It will, it will."

"Revered uncle," Gohika spoke up in Anghoreti, switching back and forth between our tongue and the Kroyu's, "These visitors have prepared a gift for us, and I have offered them my protection and my hearth. I recommend that they sit at your fire tonight and speak of the world."

"A gift?" The Qulki elder spoke, his Anghoreti clipped and harshly accented, "A gift for those that they did not even know?" He said something to the rest of the Kroyu, and a low chuckle rippled through the assembled group. The hooded man glanced at me, thin lips twitching before his face returned to its impassive default.

"What did he say?" Serina asked.

Gohika gave his version of a wry smile, "My father said that you are either truly generous, or great fools."

I sensed an opportunity and turned to our translator, "Tell them that I am often both!" Another wave of laughter surged through the Kroyu, lifting our spirits, but the night was falling, and they'd already traveled far.

It was a whirlwind of unpacking, fire building, and cooking after the brief ritual in the small clearing. I lost track of how many elderly matriarchs of various sub-bands and families thanked us and fussed over our strange and foreign kit, and it put me at ease to see that the act seemed to calm Leotie's nerves. Serina was overjoyed at the perfect outcome of her risky plan, and, to this day, I still smile when remembering the look of pure contented bliss she had.

Surrounded by wafting scents of stew and roasting meals, we found ourselves seated in the largest hut around a great fire. Gohika and other apparent relatives of the leading elders fussed with their kit and additional baggage, preparing bedrolls and hanging blankets of intricate beadwork and polished shells.

The half-Bhakhuri that had accepted my oath was named Tukyo, and the old avian with a sense of humor was Quiktu. He served as the Kroyu's medicine man and puttered about with all manner of powders, mixtures, and seeming potions even as we made stilted and polite conversation around the fire. Gohika was his son, and many of the avians amongst the Kroyu seemed related to him as well. The totem-bearer remained at the fringes of the group of elders, not quite in it but not a part of the families preparing the hearths, either.

At first, as I expected, the elders asked us about our travels and about the land that many of them had been born in. My lovers let me do most of the talking, with Leotie huddled protectively on one side and Serina still beaming with genuine joy and love on the other. My mind burned with questions, but we were guests in a strange place, in a new land, and I waited.

"Things do not change overmuch throughout the many seasons, it would seem," Tukyo sighed after demolishing another bowl of stew. "Anghoret is trying to be something that our world has never seen before, and that process will not be easy, nor will it be painless." Gohika brought him a bowl of some sort of porridge that we'd all been served, but none of us knew what went into it. "But I do not wish them ill, despite all they have done."

"You may not wish them Ill, but I also do not wish them well," Quiktu grumbled but shook his head hard enough to rattle the quills around his mane. "The gods make their wills known in Anghoret, and their judgments will not be far behind."

One of the elders, a milky-eyed Enges with gently shaking hands, passed me a skin filled with intensely flavorful and robust wine. While I was distracted, the ever-innocent Serina finally asked a question, "Why is it that so many of you were cast out from Anghoret?"

Some of the elders grumbled, and Quiktu clicked his beak, but Tukyo smiled faintly, "Anghoret is young, like you, and not so long ago was much like Gavic in places. My father, for example, was from a village in the west, not far from the border as it stands now. There was a drought, and they blamed his Huri blood and cast him out," He turned to Quiktu. "Others came more recently."

Quiktu clicked his beak again, "Some of us remember being chased out of the hallowed chambers of Seleyo's Academies of Alchemy at the tip of an imperial spear." He turned to look at me and cocked his head slightly, "But you're young, and the Imperial court seems to have used you up as well, so I have no issue with you."

"Good to hear," I smirked back, taking another swig and handing him the wineskin.

Tukyo smiled at Serina in the way all grandparents in all the lands of our world smile at curious youngsters. "Politics, debts, feuds, and superstition. Not just from Anghoret, but from high Yavlon and sodden Zungbo as well." One of the other elders rattled something off in the Gavican tongue, and Tukyo shook his head and frowned. "This is to be a day spent welcoming our new friends and enjoying their gifts, not dwelling on our status in this benighted land."

Shit, had Serina already exposed some sour rift amongst these bent-backed, dusty tribesmen? "She meant no offense, headman."

"There is no offense given or perceived, young seeress." Quiktu clicked and fluttered the quills along his neck and shoulders. "Our existence is...a difficult one, and that is all the more reason we should instead focus on your wonderful gift and the presence of new friends. It would've taken long, lean days for us to gather such bounty, all while our people went hungry."

Tukyo nodded agreement, "Though, I wonder, why you did not gather any acorns?"

"Acorns?" I asked, chewing on the unfamiliar word.

It was his turn to look confused as he pantomimed his message. "Acorns. The small nuts from the great oak trees?" He held up a bowl of gently steaming porridge, "Mashed up, we have them with every meal."

Quiktu laughed, his quills rattling in a distinctively different pattern from his earlier, irritated mood. "Sometimes, old friend, I think you forget the land so many of us came from. I do not think that a single oak tree exists in those sun-baked lands they came from."

A flush of embarrassment crossed Tukyo's already ruddy cheeks, and I flashed a sympathetic smile. "Even we elders don't remember everything," he admitted, and the knot of elders and helpers laughed along with him. His voice lowered, and he spoke something sincere and deep in the Kroyu tongue before returning to Anghoreti. The others closed their eyes and nodded, murmuring reverently, and the half-blind Enges beside me patted my leg fondly. "Young Gohkia was right to take responsibility for you Kiravi al-Kiral, Serina al-Wakh, and Leotie vaz-Dez. Without you, we would not be feasting tonight but instead would be feeding aching bodies with what meager resources we have from the high hills. The Kroyu welcome and accept you for as long as you wish to stay. Please, rest, knowing that you are under our protection and that you have certainly saved the lives of some of our very young, very old, or sick, with your gift."

The other elders murmured agreement once more, and Gohika and a handful of others shepherded us out of the large hut. At first, I didn't realize the totem-bearer, still silent, followed us as well, but the faint clatter of the totem betrayed his presence. I thought to turn and confront him, to determine just what place he held in this threadbare tribe, but I decided it was a question for another day.

That question would be piled beside the growing mound of uncertainties that filled my mind. Why were their prayers so miserable and fatalistic? Who was the Undying One, and did he rule the Kroyu from afar? Why would a tribe winter in the mountains instead of a fine if rustic village? And, most pressing, what else were they hiding?

The heady wine and pent-up but misplaced anxiety had exhausted us, though, and we gratefully entered the hut we'd been using before the Kroyu arrived. They'd kept it empty, save for our belongings, and someone had stoked a raging fire in the hearth. "I'm sure the elders will send for you in the morning," Gohika said, golden eyes seeming to glow in the reflected firelight, "Anything you may ask for, we will provide. Good night, Kiravi."

And, with that, my lovers and I huddled close together under familiar blankets in an unfamiliar land, and slept.