III
Set in a Downward
Sloping Circle

Atnan paddled into the sun all morning. No matter what, land was ahead. By late afternoon he sighted the rocky shore, some ways upcoast of the village. Fortunately, the area was familiar enough he could find the way home.

An assembly of villagers greeted him, waving oars and scarves. He set ashore and stumbled out, shivering, fingers and toes numb. His grandmother threw a new bearskin around him and with it, a long embrace.

Barlas and several others took him on a litter to the village roundhouse. Careful to conceal the surprise, Atnan clutched the urns close beneath the skin.

Five stone doorways led into the roundhouse, each marked with a cardinal rune on the lintel. In honor of his trial, they lowered him to the floor just inside Llyr’s door, then scuttled out.

Inside, sunlight filtered through the swooping arched ceiling of woven sea-cane, illuminating painted-plaster murals illustrating the particular virtues associated with each of the Five Spirits, faded with age. Atnan imagined the murals as they once were, vibrant and colorful. Out of respect for their antiquity, they could never be restored.

Let a thing go for too long, it gets stuck that way.

A green basalt band divided the gray slate floor into inner and outer rings. Five altars stood around the band, each facing a doorway and marked with the corresponding rune.

The men of the village stood in the inner ring, pointing at him with their oars, faces obscured by oversized totem masks, robes of dried kelp and switchgrass flowing down their backs like matted yellow fur.

Not men, but an assembly of divine judges.

The ring parted before him and all oars pointed toward his father, whose wooden mask leered back with huge yellow owl eyes. The Omrik-owl gestured for him to come join him on the greenstone, the smooth circle of green basalt at the center of the hall. Legend had it that the greenstone was there first and the ancestors built the roundhouse around it.

“Sons of Del!” His father’s voice rang flat, muffled by the mask.

The others raised their oars and cheered.

Omrik rested his hand on Atnan’s shoulder. “This one seeks Acceptance.”

Three times he rapped the butt of his oar on the floor. The assembly repeated in unison. The sharp report of wood against stone stung Atnan’s ears.

“We may be subjugated to the imperial authority of Kindhir — ”

Some men booed.

“— but our traditions survive! The Acceptance ceremony has been kept by fathers and sons going back to the first Fyrean sailors who found this land. Today, I present to you Eya-Atnan, son of Eya-Omrik, son of Eya-Natan, son of Eya-Kolath, son of Eya-Natchli, of the Clade of Owls.”

The men began tapping their oars on the floor as Atnan took his father’s place on the greenstone. Omrik disappeared back into the circle, as the tapping grew louder, like the sound of rain, like thunder, like a rockslide. Suddenly, it stopped.

Layram, in a bear mask, faced Atnan and poured a circle of sand and a circle of oil on the floor then set down a basket between them. “Eya-Atnan, what token do you present to Llyr?”

In general, tokens were unremarkable, an interesting rock or unusual shell. The point was to learn something about the Five and submit to the elders, not the token itself.

There has never been one like this!

With a dramatic flourish, he rolled the urns into the basket, then plucked one of the scrolls and held it aloft.

Some gasped. Some stepped back. Some put up their oars in a defensive posture. Debate erupted everywhere at once. Broken phrases bounced off the stone walls and floor: grave, bad omen, curse — not the reaction he had expected.

Layram clacked his oar, demanding silence. Careful not to touch them with bare flesh, he covered the urns with his grassy cloak. “Where did you go? Where did you find these? What have you done? Oh! We may as well ask a stone!”

“Such things’re best left be!” Old Dub shouted above the noise, ambling toward the greenstone, fish mask tucked under one arm.

Old Dub was not old so much as old-shaped: fish-barrel body with stumpy bow-legs; frowzy black beard that clung to his cheeks like seaweed; nose and mouth carved into a permanent scowl; eyes bulging with perpetual surprise.

“Burn them unholy things, now, and throw the ashes in the sea!”

Atnan started to protest, but Layram blocked him with his oar. “Speak, Ghoti-Dubarka.”

“So there I am, a young boy. Me and my uncle was out to deep water, after a run of pink bellies. Sun’s full-face and we see this little strip of rock — not unlike one young Atnan here must’ve landed on. So we pull ashore and climb up to the top, Uncle Lem first.”

Ornate gesticulation punctuated his sentences, arms waving, oar planted or pointing, eyebrows scrawling some indecipherable message across his brow in hairy black strokes. The hall fell silent. Old Dub was nothing if not an engaging storyteller.

“Well, Lem’s up there not long enough to get his knees unbent before storm clouds bunch up overhead. Wind kicks up, near about blows him into the water, and just as we’re scrambling for the boat, a fireball comes streaking down out of the sky.” He smacked his fist into his hand. “Right where Lem was standing, not half a breath ago.”

Layram interrupted, “Quite a story, Ghoti-Dubarka — gets better every time I hear it. How does any of this relate to the present situation?”

Dub squinted and dropped his voice to a husky whisper. “Ain’t it obvious? The trial of Llyr! You know them rocks was hurled out by the mountain spirits, all fire and brimstone, trying to knock the Five Stars right out of the sky! Few of them lie on the meridians, at crossing places, so they get stirred up with worms and bats and all manner of shades and sparks and vapors — none of them kindly, neither!” He leaned on his oar, as though what he meant to say next had sapped his strength. “Five turns in five I’d say them urns come straight out of a dead-speaker’s hidey-hole. Them old shrines was meant to communicate with dark things, powerful things, as ain’t been seen since the time-before-times, when the Maker cast down the Dragon-in-the-Sea!”

Unable to contain himself, Atnan signed furiously, using the signs of the coastal trade jargon supplemented with signs of his own devising.

Omrik repeated aloud for those not as familiar with Atnan’s vernacular. “He says they may belong to the village, or the ancestors, or they may be very old. If we destroy them, we’ll never know.”

Dub said, “Young man, I care more about the sanctity and traditions of this village than whatever them things have to say — and you should, too!”

     Atnan bowed but waved his hands in disagreement. As the hall filled with murmuring, he held a palm out toward them, five fingers splayed, moving them from above his head down and toward them.

“Sent by the Five,” Omrik translated, adding, “Well, that’s the question, isn’t it?”

Omrik left to huddle with the elders. After a while, Layram donned his bear mask and clacked his oar three times. “These things will be burned on the altar to Mystery as an offering and the ashes scattered in the sea. The Five sent them to us and can have them back.”

Incredulous, Atnan signed faster than ever, explaining as best he could about the fog, Shen, the little tree island.

Why was the trial set by Mystery, except to direct me to the sea? Why the fog? Why Shen, except to turn me toward that island? Why there, except for the urns? And why scrolls, except that I am a scribe? Can’t you see? All this is ordained!

Atnan waited for his father to speak, but Omrik waved that idea away. “No, no. The elders have decided, son. If these things are cursed, we will avert desecration; if they aren’t, this village has stood for generations without them and will stand for generations more … without.”

As the urns were carefully laid in one of the altars, the Laryam-Bear placed his oar-blade on Atnan’s right shoulder and pressed him to kneel. “We accept your token — indeed have heard quite enough about it. Now, to your oaths. Since you cannot speak for yourself, I will recite and you make a sign of your agreement.”

As Layram began a flat and hurried recitation of the oaths to each of the Five, Atnan imagined the letters flying out from between his teeth and floating around the hall. Five times he signed his assent, both palms up as though presenting a gift, and five times he was anointed, the final time with sweet smoke.

Finally, Layram presented Atnan with his oar. “This one belongs to us and we to him.”

The cheering assembly flowed out of the roundhouse like water bursting a dam, sweeping Atnan along.

“Do you feel like a man yet?” Omrik lifted his mask, showed a grin that spread the forks of his beard.

Atnan glanced toward the urns, slowly roasting over the embers. He signed fingertips away from lips. He had no idea.

“You will soon enough!”

As his father embraced him, Atnan leaned his oar against the wall.

Outside, the villagers gathered for the feast. Fish stew. Smoked shellfish. Jellied seaweed. Salt-cured squid and octopus. Honey cakes made with lentils and millet from Kindhirak. Fatty fish with wild onions and sea beans. Atnan’s favorite: fire-roasted shrimp with crispy heads and tails.

Layram poured out a small urn of berry wine hissing into the fire and croaked out a blessing. Everyone filled their bowls and ate until late afternoon, drinking honey beer from clay tumblers and making boisterous conversation. Barlas bellowed out a tune as couples danced around him by the light of lamps and torches.

Not yet recovered, Atnan sat near his grandmother to eat, half-listening to the old women exchange stories of husbands and children, aches and pains, trials and triumphs.

This same conversation has repeated since the elder days — only the names are changed!

Noting that the time for reading oars would begin soon, Atnan realized he was without his. He slipped into the roundhouse and found it propped against the wall.

The urns lay smoldering the fire. Still.

It’s unlawful to destroy things that don’t belong to you! We’ll never settle that question now.

A closer look wouldn’t hurt anyone. The broken urn was a charred husk. Two unopened urns sat beside it, cracked and split by the heat of the fire.

One had fallen sideways on top of the others, still whole. Without thinking, he licked his fingers and tapped the side. Hot, but not too hot. Hands insulated with sleeves, he snatched it off the coals.

Definitely too hot! Rushing toward the nearest door, he hid it on the floor behind a basket of sticks.

Stupid, stupid! That goes back on the fire!

“So this is where you disappeared to!” Omrik said. “It’s time to read the oars.”

Atnan waved his oar, indicating that it had been leaning against the wall.

“Left behind, eh? Well, you’ll accommodate to it soon enough. Come on now — everyone’s waiting!”

They emerged to a cheer. Atnan stood beside his father, who read out the text carved into his oar.

Eya-Atnan, son of Eya-Omrik, son of Eya-Natan, son of Eya-Kolath, son of Eya-Natchli. In the fifty-first winter of my father, with whom I am a scribe. I have learned the runes and the letters and some symbols of foreign tongues. This year I hope to learn more and to forget less.

The last line left Atnan wondering if any of the scrolls inside had survived and if so, whether he would be able to learn how to read them.

The older men read back the year from their oars: good fishing, bad fishing, torn nets, mended nets, new shoes, old boats. Interesting or not, everyone reported something. After that, each household chose an ancestral oar to remember, as commentary on the previous year’s events.

Around sunset they read the last oar, then Omrik started a song — without regard for the melody, as usual. Barlas joined first, then a woman with a harp followed by a man with a frame drum. Soon everyone was dancing in a ring around the fire, singing each verse louder and faster than the last:

I gave my love a thistle rose

and asked her if she’d marry me …

Normally, Atnan would have joined the song with his flute, but instead, he broke away and took a seat on a stone bench facing the sea. The sun, now flat and orange, sloped toward the horizon.

If the circle of the world is a robe, then Del is the tattered fringe. And what am I? No more than a loose fiber.

Oar cradled, blade resting on the ground, handle over his shoulder, the way his father did, he felt no more a man than yesterday — except that he had discerned right from wrong. The question was: Which had he chosen?

He hoped the Five were with him, guiding him along this new path.

Selolo descended the stony path, hitching up her heavy skirts. The outer ring of cabins reminded her of the consort house or Taláni’s modest cabin. The tall-house was anything but modest.

What it must be like to live in such a place? No, he’s too restless.

People lined both sides of the path, genuflecting with foreheads resting on their hands against the ground. As she walked, she worried about being an object of scrutiny, even though nobody looked up. At the porch, the Skiptéli wekáru bowed, hands on his forehead, then led her inside, calling her wikéria.

Her cheeks grew hot. This might be the moment she revealed herself as an impostor. The Matron — and Taláni’s mother! — were right: She was silly, unworthy.

No, I am a wikéria now, even if I don’t know what that means.

The lower story of the tall-house was one open room, lit by bronze censers hung from heavy rafters. At the far end, a raised platform nestled between twin staircases led up to the living quarters. Everything was cedar, carved with animals, plants, and geometric patterns. There were many symbols, but no story as far as she could tell. Her eyes adjusted slowly to the dim interior as she found her place near the platform and bowed down beside the last in a long row of eunuchs.

She didn’t see Taláni’s entrance, but the rattling of his beads and buckles was unmistakable as he stomped his way through the hall and kneeled beside her. The scent of his spiced oil, leather, and sweat overpowered the incense and cedar.

An assault on all the senses!

Soon after, Melíksi entered, walked the room like a lynx on snow. Selolo didn’t hear her steps, but the kneeling eunuchs caught and held their breath in turn as she passed.

After Melíksi rang a small gong, everyone in the hall sat upright, still kneeling, backs straight. Selolo and Taláni occupied one end of the elevated bench while the Skiptéli wekáru sat on the other end with his woman, younger than Selolo, but more confident.

This is not a social visit, though.

Melíksi remained in the center of the platform, stiff, silent. The eunuch who had been kneeling next to Selolo stood, gray, arthritic. He shuffled to the center of the room, spread out a round mat emblazoned with a red sun, and kneeled on it.

Once he settled, Melíksi thrust out her arms and sang:

The sun is a mountain of fire

Which towers over darkness.

The hall responded:

A living thing is a river of blood

Which flows until its death.

Arms dropped, she addressed them. “In the elder days, the spirits walked among us. They taught our ancestors the Ways of Knowledge: how to hunt, how to fish, to make clothing, which plants are food, which are poison. When the spirits migrated, the most ingenious among them taught us the Way of Blood: how to see by the light of the red sun beneath the world; how to illuminate the past, present, and future.

“This way was forgotten, suppressed. The people followed strange ways, from beyond the river, twisting their minds into knots.

“A remnant remained. My mother was a blood-mage, and her mother, and her mother before her. They preserved the Way of Blood so that we might retain the greatest mystery of the elder world: How to receive the life-blood from a living thing, draw its vigor into our organs and limbs, contain it, preserve it. The body may die, but the spirit lives on in the blood. The spirit of a friend is the sweetest of all.”

Two eunuchs approached, one bearing a silver basin, the other a small flake of flint, which he handed to the old man. Others produced drums, rattles, bells, and filled the hall with noise.

The noise stopped.

After a moment of tense silence, the old man croaked, “My friends, preserve my spirit.”

Flake pressed to his neck, he drew a steady crimson line from ear to jaw. The eunuch with the basin captured the flow, while the other steadied the old man until his neck ran dry, then lowered his body to the floor.

The rattles started up again, faint, rhythmic.

The eunuchs dipped silver ladles into the basin, filling bowls they sent around the hall. Melíksi took one, tipped it up to her mouth, sucked down a deep drink, handed it to Taláni. He filled both his cheeks, swallowed hard.

Both hands gripped tight, Selolo received the bowl, brought it carefully to her lips. The metallic aroma conjured the memory of her first taste of blood. In place of that horror, she summoned the most recent time, when Taláni had shared from his arm and she from hers, in communion.

This was different, though. Donation ceremonies had been a topic of conversation — something she had often wondered about — but this was her first participation. The man was dead, but not crossed over, his entire life-force sloshing in the bowl, warm, now pressed against her lips.

Life from death, living on in me.

She let a few rich savory drops spill on her tongue, then tipped the bowl down and passed it on. Cheeks burning, she wanted nothing more than to return outside into the snow.

Taláni leaned over to her. “A bequest of death-blood. A most potent drink!”

“Yes, wekáru, most potent.”

The old man’s presence traveled through her, preaching at her to be calm, as he had been.

Oh, wretched fellow! If peace was your goal, you should have migrated to the Silent Lands. Your last drops will soon be absorbed into me, as I am absorbed into Taláni and he into his mother — a breeze inside a storm inside a whirlwind!

* * * * *

Taláni emptied himself again to better enjoy the sensation of an alien consciousness perfusing his body. The feelings aroused were always different, always invigorating.

Skiptéli is small and weak. So are Lolo and all the communities of these valleys. I am weaving wisps into strands into threads into cords into an unbreakable rope. All the river-folk and woodlanders are mine and the Midlanders are under my sway. Soon, our wayward cousins, the lowlanders. The noose tightens. The good people back on the good land. The ancestors avenged. An age of undying sunshine. I am ready — but are they?

The eunuchs prepared the old man’s body for transportation. Blood-organs remained to be harvested and shared, bones, skin, and hair to be made into talismans, flesh to be left on rocks for scavengers.

Melíksi interrupted his repose. “Are you not energized, my son? He was strong and very learned. With this — ”

“Do not pester me, mother!” Euphoria disturbed, he signaled Selolo to stand with him. “The day wears on.”

The Skiptéli wekáru scuttled forward. “We have room for you and all your party — good food, honey-beer, lively conversation.”

“I have what I came for. Mother, will you ride with us?”

Melíksi pursed her lips. “I have business here, several days’ worth.”

Before Selolo could finish bowing to his mother, he rushed her away.

On the ride home, disconnected memories flashed in his mind. These he regarded with cold dispassion, as though they had happened to someone else. A dead thing, he owed his past self no allegiance. All that mattered was the present moment and what came next.

“The first time I went to battle with my father, I was very young.”

“You were born with a spear in your hand. Everyone says so!”

Such things were often said of him, things he found useful and worth cultivating, however false they might be. “We stood in the meadow, wearing animal skins, horns, antlers, tall headdresses. I remember it was too hot. So itchy! We smeared our faces with red and gold ochre and spiked our hair with clay.” He told her how the prominent men had worn flowing robes embroidered with beads and trailing long fringes, as though attending a festival.

As it happened, his father went out against the Lolo on this occasion, and may well have faced her father or grandfather. That detail he left out.

“They threatened. Danced. Jumped and howled. They threw dust and insults. They bared their buttocks at one another.” He told her how a group of warriors from each side would advance and fling a few spears to demonstrate their seriousness. Both sides exchanged volleys of arrows, but only after the warriors grew bored of chanting and rattling their shields.

Eventually, one of the arrows struck a Lolo warrior, seemingly by accident. Taláni’s father invited his rival to avenge the injury. They exchanged vows, obscene gestures, and detailed the horrors they would inflict, should they meet again.

Everyone claimed victory, packed up, and left. His father declared the battle a great success. When they returned to the Narála valley, the people greeted them with songs and feasting.

“It was all a sham, not a battlefield, but a marketplace, an occasion for the warriors to display their bravery and the rulers their benevolence.”

“Your way is different?”

“My father’s way was display without violence. My way is displayed through violence. I am not only killing but sending a message.”

“What message?”

“That depends on who I kill. And who is watching.”

“You will kill the Scrapers, to the last.”

He grunted in approval.

The old man’s death-blood has sealed her to my cause.

“They fight for territory, resources, survival. Never honor. They detest battle, so they make it violent enough to be short. Arms locked, weapons out, marching together, always pushing, never turning. If one falls, they step over.”

“Your father fought to fight, but the Scrapers fight to win.”

“They burned the villages and trees and put up farms. The animals left, then we left. When we had gone far enough away, they ignored us. The message is: ‘Nothing stops us but us.’ They are not brave, but they are strong-willed. And yes, I will kill them, to the last.”

“What is your message?”

“The spirits repay, sometimes late, but always in full.”

He could not help but admire the descendants of Kindhir.

How the blood of their fathers pulses in their veins! Even now, after so many generations of quiet living, it still runs sweet.

Anticipation of that dark coppery flavor inflamed his lust, despite his mother’s warnings against taking hostile blood. Turn the blood of a Scraper against its own? “If Taláni can’t do it, it can’t be done” — that was the common saying, was it not?

They rounded the last bend in the forest trail, arriving home in dwindling twilight. Men lounged on porches, dragging puffs of sweet-nettle smoke from long pipes. Young women kneeled, grinding acorns and pine nuts into a thick paste. Old women mended clothes, gathered firewood. Children darted between the cabins, playful, unclouded by worry.

Pitiful!

The blood of his people had stilled, hardened in their veins. They accepted his cause against Kindhirak as they had the blood-cult.

Lazy, complacent. Half-hearted! People only want to eat, sleep, or mate — anything else is an imposition. Oh, they will go along for a while, but they harbor the secret hope that anything that taxes them will go away on its own.

He would never be able to win the people to his cause. They would have to be driven to it. The ministers and military commanders who had accompanied him dismounted and unpacked their gear. Even these, his loyal ones who had pledged him their lives and their blood, were too soft.

No one goes to war unless the alternative is worse.

A hard lesson, but he would teach them.

Mekvat poured some honey beer for his guest, a short balding man named Luto, whose many rings clacked on the tumbler as he accepted it.

“The record of your achievements is enviable,” Mekvat said.

“I’ve been fortunate in my commissions.” Luto sipped his drink. “Oh, this is quality stuff! That plus the flattery tells me you want something special — or especially difficult.” He laughed, an unpleasant staccato sound.

Mekvat spread a parchment on the table and rotated it to face Luto. “This edifice will be my legacy.”

Luto examined the drawing. “Impressive! Have you ever thought of becoming an architect yourself?”

“I have neither the time nor inclination. How long and how much?”

“Oh, right to the meat, excellent!” Luto pulled a short stick with some irregular notches from a pocket in his robe to measure the sketch. “How long depends on how much — and vice versa.”

“Obviously. Let us say I wish to see it completed before I die, nor am I a tender calf.”

“Good, good! Could be done with as many as, oh, a thousand laborers, give or take a hundred. A few hundred in the quarry, a few score on boats, some in tool making, carvers, smiths, woodsmen, and foremen and all the support — bakers, brewers, janitors, and so forth.”

“How long?”

“I hesitate to say. As many as three summers, maybe five. More if the spirits decide.”

“What would an operation of that scale require, in terms of expenditure?”

“Standard rates. One measure per general laborer per day, two for the artisans, three to five for each foreman depending on how many men he controlled. It will be a small city by the time you’re finished and will require a small fortune to operate.”

Mekvat added up in his head. “Two thousand standard measures a day, or thereabouts, for three summers at about two hundred working days a year? In the neighborhood of twelve hundred weights?”

“For labor alone! Now, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. A finished design will be required first. That will run you a few hundred measures at least — ”

“The treasury of Mek will be yours to plunder in due time.”

“An official project, you say?”

“Of course. I am a minister of the court, but as I have no interests outside of the Academy of Mek, I draw no salary and hold no wealth. Nevertheless, Mek provides for me abundantly, if I may say.”

“You may, you may!”

“When could you get started?”

“Best to start work in late spring or early summer. As early as the year after next?”

“No, no, no, no, no. The site must be selected and prepared immediately. I require a completed plan no later than the fifth full moon, and work must commence this summer.”

“Year after next was me being generous! I can’t just put off all my other projects!”

“My dear Luto. I sense that some grotesque imbalance of your humours has left you unable to read my subtlety, so I will spell it out for you, slowly, in oversized letters.” Mekvat jabbed his finger into the center of the drawing. “This ‘project’ will be your legacy no less than mine. This complex will last a thousand years longer than any rich man’s hovel you’ve erected. Not so much as a gravestone or mausoleum will remain of your life’s work.” He tapped the drawing. “This monument will witness a full turn of the heavens and more.”

“Well! When you put it that way, what more can I say?”

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