Kiravi's Travelogue Ch. 13

Kiravi

It snowed once more as we broke camp and began the arduous trek past the burbling creek. The first snow had been surprising, whimsical, just another exciting experience on our long journey. But, that time, it seemed more like ash tumbling from the gray-smudged sky to mix with the increasingly barren terrain.

I spent those first few days scowling and growling at everyone around me. The Kroyu took it with the same dark resignation they faced everything with. Leotie glared right back and barked her own insults at me, but the playful undertone was gone and replaced by legitimate fear. Serina was exhausting what little energy she had trying to mend the rifts growing between all of us. Despite the soft words and the quiet tears she cried every night, she was failing, and her night terrors were only worsening.

Of course, dear readers, I realized I was being unreasonable and infantile after the first day or two. But, again, I'm more stubborn than a senile llama. So I just kept glowering, thinking of the half-truths the Kroyu had fed us and the looming threat of this 'Undying One' and the rest of the bastard Gavicans. We'd go to the festivals, certainly, to protect those we'd grown close to, but then what? This was only the least egregious of a pile of bad options. I had no idea what would happen, and I feared for Leotie's fate in what was turning out to be just another land of hate. Just like Tebis.

Every bit of me told me to run, run like I always did. But, never, never, had I been threatened by such an overwhelming and omnipresent threat. I'd never even heard of a mage or even a high priest capable of such wide-ranging awareness and such extreme power. So perhaps, I thought, it was all a ruse, or a cabal of minor mages or shamans controlling the entire land and pooling their power into some figurehead demigod.

Roughly sixty of us tramped down the riverside path. The other forty or so were the old, the mothers with newborns, the sick, and the lame. A handful of the hunters remained to bring them along after us, but Tukyo was making a desperate gamble. His most vulnerable tribespeople would arrive after the festival was well underway, after whatever danger awaited us had mostly passed. That was his intent, anyway, but who could say? Not I, certainly not I, when no one would tell me the full truth about this descent into madness.

The land reflected my new and changing outlook on this suddenly hostile land. The highlands had been lush, green, and fruitful, minus the handful of areas where the Kroyu had burned away the brush. Exposed rock faces and boulders crowded the banks of the river, faintly scorched by some ancient heat. The trees were shorter, their bark gnarled in places. The brush thinned out, and the soil itself faded from a rich, deep brown to various shades of gray.

"The game here tastes as bad as the rats in the Eastern Wastes," Leotie grumbled one day, trying to maintain a low level of conversation with me while continuing to avoid offering an apology for the half-truths that had led us here.

"I don't think it's all that bad," Serina murmured back. She'd also declined to apologize, though the misery on her face and how she slumped through each day more than communicated the appropriate message. Instead, she looked at me pleadingly, hoping I'd break the soul-crushing standoff splitting the three of us.

But, dear readers, I was still a stubborn and angry fool, so I just grunted something appropriately neutral and continued.

Serina stumbled, and I turned back to help her with the heavy pack looped over her shoulders. Another strap ran across her forehead, padded with soft leather and downy feathers, but I could tell the load was still weighing on her heavily. Leotie, the other hunters, and I all carried similar, backbreaking loads, only further souring my mood. Beyond ordering us into the Akagi's arms, so to speak, the Undying One also requested that the Kroyu carry all their own provisions and the furs they'd gathered in the mountains. Had the three of us not provided so much, I struggled to imagine the Kroyu being able to provide for themselves at all.

A cry split the crisp air from high above, and I craned my neck to see a trio of the massive buzzards — holhal, the Kroyu said — circling high over the bedraggled band. They'd followed us since the moment we left the village, and the Kroyu pointedly avoided paying any attention to them.

"Well I'm not a Kroyu, so I'll damn well glare at them if I please," I grumbled while removing sacks of acorn flour from Serina's pack and cramming them into mine.

"What was that?" Serina said, wiping sweat off of her brow with one of her ragged sleeves.

"Nothing, love," I murmured and kissed her forehead. I was angry, dear readers, but I couldn't just avoid Serina's palpable shame.

"I wish...I wish you'd try and understand what we did," she said as I helped her back onto the path.

I scowled, "I understand what you did. What I don't understand is why you hid it from me and lied all those weeks."

Leotie appeared and took Serina's other arm. "You're the one that lied to both of us for months about what each of us meant to you. Come on, Serina."

"Well, that all worked out in the end, didn't it?"

"So will this!" She snapped. "No thanks to you."

We didn't talk much after that.

The valley grew gloomier but somehow more vibrant. Bony, bleached cliffs shared space with blackened dirt and piles of broken charcoal. The trees had darkened bark, nearly black, with thick but unevenly grouped clumps of dark green leaves. The air stunk of the sea, salt, and rotting seaweed, mixed with the constant stench of burnt coals and damp leaves. Birds perched in the gnarled and sap-weeping branches, staring intently at us as we made our way to the sea.

A few times, I thought I glimpsed hamlets or hunting shelters amidst the thick stands of trees, but Tukyo made sure to hustle us away before I could investigate. More likely, I'm sure his reaction was to keep any locals from noticing our passage. I didn't see any silhouettes peering back at us, but even the squirrels and other skittering beasts paused amongst the branches to stare at us as the crows did.

As much as it was to avoid any more bitter conversations, my innate curiosity also drove me to speak with Quiktu as we descended further into the valley. "This place...it's not exactly lush, but not desolate either."

His quills constantly twitched, like leaves in a breeze promising a storm. His aged form shook from his heavy load, even with the staff he clutched in his talons. "You're not wrong, young magus." He leaned against one of the darkly vibrant trees and swigged from a waterskin I offered. "It is just another conundrum, my friend. If you ask Tukyo or his spirits, this entire place was blasted clean, the spirits corrupted, and the gods evicted. But the land seems to be continuing just fine, no?"

I peered around at the towering, lush, nearly black trees shading us from the springtime sun. "In a way, I suppose. I never heard any of my professors speak of magic having this effect. Even where the god-stones fell."

He chuckled drily, sounding altogether too much like a crow taunting its friends. "It would be simpler, I think, to assume that your Academy knows quite a bit less about the world than they claimed."

I laughed more richly than I had since we'd left the village. "I thought the same while I suffered through those lectures of theirs, but I've been clinging to their knowledge since..."

"Since you were exiled, just as I was. Perhaps a little less violently, but exiled all the same." He paused. "You can feel it here, can't you?"

"What?" I asked, but I could feel the twinge just as I had off the coast of Anghoret.

"There's more magic in the air here than anywhere else I've ever traveled. More than the grounds of the Academies, more than the high caves of the Yavloni. But it's not magic that Tukyo can harness, it's not the benevolent gaze of the gods, and it's not a natural surge in the Great River's currents."

I furrowed my brow, "The Undying One? He controls all this power?"

Quiktu nodded but shrugged, "It is the only explanation I can think of."

"But a single mage, pulling that much magic? From where? And how hasn't he torn himself apart?"

"No one knows, certainly not I. I've made a point not to get too close to him those few times he shows himself to the masses. He's..."

"Don't say a god," I grumbled. "I am sick of hearing it."

He clattered his quills in annoyance. "Because it is the best description I have, young whelp. Do not forget that I am educated in the High Academies, just like you. I'm no Hill-tribe bumpkin," he laughed at himself, "at least, I wasn't always one. But, if there is any being that walks this world with the aura of the divine, it is him."

I grumbled again, my mind selfishly running to the divine power growing within Serina. She, and the goddess whispering to her every night, was the only tangible divinity I accepted.

"We'll see."

"And how do you plan on proving or disproving this conundrum?"

"I have no idea, grandfather. I'm not big on plans. How do you think I stumbled into having two mates?"

He clicked and squawked with genuine laughter, but it faded quickly. "Be careful, young one. He is a god. Our destination holds nothing but pain and death for us. For now, as our guests, the same holds true for you." He paused, "Don't do anything...especially rash."

I knew that he was right, and I told myself I'd heed his words, but I couldn't imagine being successful for very long.

We saw Mopomo Chumaia a full day before we reached its shoddy outskirts. The river actually narrowed as we approached the Choked Sea, tumbling through heat-warped gorges and across black rocks that had collected decades of deadfall from upriver. The river turned northwest before sharply arcing back southwest to empty into the sea, leaving a wide gravel and mud bank along the north side, boxed in by a terraced cliff.

Three broad, semicircular shelves dominated the flat flood plain, each stacked one atop the other and choked with huts and longhouses. Those villages were well constructed and grouped around plazas and bonfires, but the construction beneath the first terrace and along the frothing river differed. Moldering wood and half-collapsed mud-brick made up the sorry-looking village, which resembled nothing so much as one of the slums that filled the cracked plains outside Anghu. Half of the structures seemed to have been purposefully cut apart for firewood.

Two other features made the village stand apart from any of its similar and more mundane counterparts in Anghoret. The same dark woods filled the land on the last approaches to the village, but the forest at the edges of the terraces and along the top of the cliff overlooking the entire space was different. The trees — trunks, boughs, and leaves — were all silver. Not sun-bleached white and dead, mind you, but a vibrant silver. Leaves caught the morning sun in a dazzling spray of reflected, brilliant points of light like sunrise on a dappled sea.

The second sight that drew my eye was a tall, narrow sea stack of blackened rock that rose from the shore on the other side of a rock pile that separated the sea from the mudflats. Silver moss and ferns clung to its sides, and a small thicket of shimmering pine trees ringed its crest. Nestled amongst them, an impressive longhouse caught the sun, built from more of the altered wood and roofed in closely woven silver boughs. Looking at the rest of the village with another critical glance, I saw a handful of other buildings constructed at least partially from the silvery wood. I could only assume it was a mark of favor or elite status. For a moment, I furrowed my brow in confusion while staring at the sea stack, wondering how in the Chaos Wastes anyone could get up there, but the sea breezes gusted, and I saw the narrow filament of a rope bridge connecting the pillar to the highway terrace of the village.

"Impressive, no?" Quiktu clicked beside me. "Still, nothing compared to Anghu or Tebis, but quite the equal of anything in Kazmar or Yavlon, yes?"

Having been to neither of those places, only learning about them at the Academy, and possessing an unrelenting feeling of superiority about Anghoret, I agreed. "Quite impressive for a nation that doesn't even farm."

He chittered with laughter, "The plenty you saw in the highlands was one thing, Kiravi. You'll see soon enough why the Gavicans will never need to farm."

I grunted and shifted the weight on my back. "If they have such a bounty, why in the infinite hells are we carrying so much more down to them?"

He scowled and moved to return to the group of elders, "I think you know the answer to that. Don't get too far ahead. It must be Tukyo that enters the village first."

My little band and the Kroyu hunters naturally gravitated towards the front of the ragged column, seeking to protect the rest from whatever unknown dangers lay ahead and weighed so heavily on the Kroyu's hearts. The path grew wider and wider, well-traveled by hundreds of other feet, and the underbrush thinned out until there was nothing but dark trunks and ashy soil along the track. Not just dark trees, dear reader: a closer look let me pick out carved totems, much like the Kroyu's effigies in the high country. These totems, though, were all obviously and explicitly human, with great care taken by the artists to ensure the proportions and features left no room for interpretation.

Just as we reached the flat edge of the widening river and the stink of the mudflats clogged my nostrils, I noticed something else around the totems' bases. Carvings of Archians and Bhakhuri. With spears driven through their hearts.

"Keep your eyes low, young Man, and say nothing." Tukyo had caught up, and his sweaty face was tight with a dozen different inscrutable emotions. "Not until we're into the camp." He glanced at Leotie and Serina before glaring at me again. "Say that you understand."

"I understand, grandfather," I said, though a current of anger, building throughout the journey and aimed at both my mates and the impossible situation we found ourselves in, threatened to boil out of me.

"You're wrong if you think I won't defend my band," Leotie elbowed past me.

"If you'd just listen, there'd be no need for that," Tukyo barked. "Just...just listen to me, child. This is how it's always been. There's nothing you, or your magic, or I, can do about it."

I could tell there was fear fanning Leotie's anger, though she'd never admit any such connection. Serina huddled between and behind us, knuckles paling where she clutched Sata's staff. "Stop, please," she muttered, touching me and Leotie in turn and briefly tamping down my sour feelings toward both of them. Briefly, dear readers.

We nodded and acquiesced, and Tukyo limped ahead onto the slightly raised path across the mudflats.

A gang of tall, powerfully built warriors yipped and barked from the lip of the terrace closest to the mudflats and the ruined buildings. Tukyo stopped immediately, bending his back slightly and hanging his head in deference, The other hunters followed suit, but I saw their temples throbbing with hot blood and twitching as they clenched their jaws. A faint sea breeze filled my nose with the muddy stink of the river. No one murmured; even our breaths were drowned out by the soft wind and the Gavicans' echoing calls.

All but Leotie's hot, angry breath, which flared her nostrils and swirled stray strands of her auburn hair across her tightly pursed lips.

"You're late this season!" The largest of the warriors called out as they squelched towards us through the mud surrounding the track. "Just like last year, old dog. Just like every year."

I strained to understand their tongue, though trying not to lift my head warred with that effort and every scrap of my self-restraint. The hunters were as broad and tall as the best of Anghu's Imperial Guards, though the leader, the biggest of them, was still a hand shorter than me. Their leather breeches were loose and open in the back but decorated lavishly with complex beadwork and clusters of long black feathers. They were tawny-skinned and raven-haired, just like Anghoretis, but their cheeks seemed sharper and their eyes narrower.

"We were delayed only by our wish to bring the Undying One everything he has asked of the Kroyu," Tukyo responded, head and back still bent. "And there are still several days before the festivals begin, Dahngva," he added in the admonishing way only elders knew how to speak.

The leader, Dahngva, snorted and kicked a clod of mud toward Tukyo's cracked feet. "Mind your words, old dog. I doubt anything you've brought will satisfy Him. Besides, the other mongrel tribes have already arrived and taken the remaining huts. The Undying One won't be pleased if you're still scraping holes out of the mud when the festivals and the hunts begin."

A low growl built in Leotie's throat, but Tukyo spoke quickly enough to cover it up. "The Kroyu are strong this year, Dahngva. We have much to give the Undying One and much strength to rebuild the camp that the Men of Gavic have chopped down."

This might've been some rustic town of backward tribesmen on the edge of nowhere, but I supposed mortals were the same everywhere. The battle of words and wits between Tukyo and Dahngva was the same that I'd witnessed a thousand times between scions of great families and the learned but lower-born staff at the Academy. There was some interplay of power and influence here, not so different from true civilization. I told myself that I would learn it just as fervently as I was learning Quisarlay's potions and elixirs.

Dahngva snorted again, glowering at all of us but pointedly avoiding lowering his eyes to Tukyo's bent head. "I doubt everything you bring to Mopomo Chumaia, old dog, even your words." He paused, and his eyes narrowed, "But what's this?" His eyes passed over my tiny band, sparing a moment and a raised eyebrow for the scowling Leotie but, surprisingly, lingering on me. "A new Man amongst your ranks, Tukyo? Most of yours are the criminals and cripples we've sent you in seasons past." He took a step towards our group, narrowing his eyes further. "And a Woman? Maybe you aren't lying this year."

I took Serina's arm in my calloused hand and pulled her slightly behind me before I unbowed my head and drew up to my full height. Dahngva stiffened, realizing I was larger even than him and his well-fed hunters. "May I, grandfather?" I asked Tukyo, trying not to undermine him even though he'd spent the last season hiding these truths from me. When he nodded, I continued. "I am a Qhatuq, master Dahngva, a trader from the south. And, as you can see, I am certainly not a cripple. I suppose you'll have to trust that I'm not a criminal." I smiled wolfishly at him. Well, my statement was as accurate as I presumed it to be: half of Anghoret would probably label me a traitor by that point.

"I didn't think you soft southerners came so large," Dahngva returned my un-warm smile. "Perhaps you have some good Gavican blood in you." I bristled at the implied insult, but my gaze didn't waver. "Doesn't matter. You are a trespasser until the chieftains and the Undying One decide to accept you. Or," his smile grew even wider, "to send you back to Anghoret in pieces."

My patience, already frayed by duplicity and exhaustion, unwound further. "I came here as a traveler and a trader, and I will leave the same way. The Undying One may certainly command me to leave. But I should like to see him try to do anything else."

Leotie smirked on my other side. Tukyo stiffened and grumbled. Dahngva just tipped his head back and barked with laughter, "This will be a fine festival! A great spectacle, I think. I look forward to seeing what it will cost each and every one of you animals and cheats. Tukyo, take your mongrels into the lower village and stay there. Men will come and take your tribute shortly."