Night Calls the Raven (Book 2 of The Master of the Tane) (36 page)

He shook his head. “I don’t know why I have kept it. You are right though, it is a vile thing to have.” Taking it from around his neck, he looked at it. Whose was it? It was an exact replica of the one on his ankle. That there had been one like him gave him a small sense of hope but what had happened to that person seemed too close to what had almost occurred to him for his liking. Still, without it, he would never have known another like him had once lived.

He placed the TanIs on the ground in front of him, suddenly very glad to have it off of his neck. He had to get rid of it. Settling the argument in his mind, he knew what had to be done and would not hesitate anymore to see to its completion. Stretching forth his hand he laid it gently on the skin medallion. It was the right thing to do and the right way to do it.

“Shonosh.”
He spoke the word to draw out fire and then pulled back his hand expecting the skin to ignite and burn quickly into ash, but to his utter shock, the piece of leathered skin remained undamaged and perfectly whole.

“What happened?” Jne asked. “Why did it not ignite like the cook fire?”

Thane stared at her briefly and then looked again at the TanIs at his feet. “I don’t know, unless….” A thought suddenly entered his mind drawing away his breath with it. “It’s still alive.”

“What?” Jne gave him a look that suggested she thought he was either making a bad joke or that he had lost his sense. “How can a mere piece of flesh still hold life?”

He moved to pick it up but then recoiled from it. “It must still hold the spirit captive. That is why to remove a TanIs means instant death and spiritual banishment.” He turned to Jne with a half-crazed, half-excited look. “The TanIs must hold the spirit intact.”

Jne shook her head. “You speak as one who has fallen hard from his horse.”

“No,” he said, his excitement growing. “No, listen. A Chufa baby, when it is born, is not a real person until, on the eighth day, it receives its name and TanIs. It is the first time the child opens its eyes and is welcomed as a new member of the community. It is also when it receives its spirit. But that doesn’t happen until it is given its TanIs in connection with its Tane. That is why the TanIs remains intact to the body during the skinning of a
SeiEeDu
, because the spirit is held to the body there. It is only able to find release at the burning!”

Jne’s look turned from incredulity to concern at Thane’s babbling about fire, skinning, TanIs, and Tane. “You make no sense, Renja of the Chufa.”

Thane stopped talking and held up his hands. “I’m sorry,” he said, the excitement still in his voice. “It would not make any sense to anyone who knows little or nothing of Chufa culture. Let me slow down and try to explain.”

She eyed him warily but nodded her head and waved her hand for him to go on.

He smiled. “When a Chufa baby is born it waits eight days before it is brought before the leaders of each Tane and is given a name and the Tane it will carry. At that moment, the TanIs is placed on the ankle and the baby opens its eyes for the first time. It is at that same moment that the child receives its spirit and becomes Chufa.”

Jne nodded her understanding, encouraging him to continue.

“Now, when a Chufa dies the body must pass through the
SeiEeDu
to release its spirit to paradise. It is a very specific ceremony that must be followed exactly. The blood is drained from the body and all the skin is removed except for the TanIs. The TanIs remains intact on the body. Once that is done, fire is called from the body and the body and the skin are burned. Then the remaining ashes are sent on the wind. There’s more to it than that but that is the basics of it.”

Jne was starting to catch on. “So you think that the spirit is connected to the TanIs and that is why this one will not burn. Because it is not dead and only something dead can have fire called from it?”

Thane threw his hands into the air. “Exactly! To remove the TanIs from a Chufa, alive or dead, banishes the soul forever and now I believe I know why that is.”

“Because the spirit is still connected to the TanIs making it alive and unable to be burned by one holding the QenChe Tane because they can only call fire from something dead.”

Thane smiled at her. “Right.”

“But you can call fire from the living.”

His breath caught. She was right. He could call fire from the living. He still had not figured out how it was possible or how he did it, but he had done it twice already. He looked down at the TanIs still lying at his feet. “You’re right,” he breathed. “I could call fire from it.”

The thought brought a rush of questions that all begged to be answered at once. What would that mean for the spirit connected to the TanIs? Would it be released or snuffed out with the Tane marking? Did the spirit know what was going on around it? Could it see him now? Was it cheering him on to burn the marking or was it crying out in dread of being destroyed? But the biggest question of all was could he actually
do it? Could he pull fire from it? There was no great need. He was not in any peril. The TanIs posed no threat to him. He had already decided to be rid of the thing and now he had the answer on how. The other questions, he knew, could never be answered. He didn’t know if it would work, but he knew that he should try. He looked at Jne and bit his lip. There was nothing else for it but to try. It was the only way. Reaching his hand down he stopped just before touching the marked skin. “I can’t touch it,” he whispered.

“What?” Jne stood and moved to his side.

Looking at her, he shook his head. “When I called fire from the living before, I was not touching them. That must be why I could not call fire from the TanIs earlier. I was touching it like I would something that is dead.”

Jne nodded. “That sounds reasonable.”

He looked back at the TanIs. “You better stand back,” he said, his voice suddenly firm with resolve.

She quickly moved away to a position across the fire where she waited patiently for him to do whatever it was he was going to do.

He looked at her one last time. “If I pass out or lose my memory or something will you…?”

She cut him off with a snort. “It is but a small piece. We already decided that the energy it requires from you is relative to size. You should feel hardly any loss of strength at all.”

He nodded. She was right—again. But he still felt a little uneasy. Looking back at the TanIs he slowly extended his arm and took a deep breath. He paused for a brief moment and then spoke. “Shonosh.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Thane stepped back as the TanIs suddenly flashed, giving off a brief wave of intense heat while engulfing the skin and devouring it in blue flames and then leaving nothing but a small pile of ash. Looking up at Jne and then back at the charred mark on the ground, he leaned forward to get a closer look. He was relieved that he had not lost consciousness and that he still remembered who he was. In fact, he hardly felt a loss of energy at all. He could tell that something had gone out of him but it was nothing more than a slight drain.

Staring at the ashes for a moment, he shrugged and then looked back at her. “I guess that’s it, then. I don’t know what I was expecting but….” His last words were cut off as a sudden fury of wind rushed past, pulling air from all sides and concentrating their force into a point at the spot where the ashes had been, lifting them skyward in a roaring funnel. Thane was certain that he and Jne would be sucked up as well but instead both were knocked back with surprising force. They watched from their backs as the funnel climbed high into the night sky gathering tremendous strength and power before suddenly just snuffing out.

He looked over at Jne, an expression of excitement and surprise on his face but found his view was blocked. A tall figure stood just feet from him, shadowed by the backlighting fire that seemed unaffected by the powerful wind that passed mere moments before. The figure was tall and lean and appeared to be that of a man. Long hair flowed out behind him caught in the gentle breeze that had replaced the mighty gusts. Thane sat frozen, unsure of from where the personage had come or what his intensions were. Jne suddenly appeared at the figure’s side, one of her blades held firmly underneath his neck.

“Who are you,” she demanded, her voice cold as ice, “and where did you come from?”

The figure didn’t answer but instead leaned forward, Jne’s sword easily slicing through his neck as he fell to the ground prostrate at Thane’s feet. Thane backed up quickly expecting the man’s head to roll from his shoulders and his blood to spill out on the ground but instead a low moan escaped from his lips. Jne seemed startled, inspecting her weapon but finding no evidence of a recently severed head on it—it was clean.

“What are you?” Thane whispered, the hair at the back of his neck rising in alarm.

“May the name of Thane be shouted in hallowed glory forever!” the dark figure said with an eerie, hollow voice that chilled him with its lack of warmth or life. “I am Gelfin, keeper of the Tane. You have freed me.”

Thane swallowed hard, the terror that had gripped him slowly melting away into threads of excitement. “Are you the one that lost his
TanIs?”

“The very same,” came the hollow voice. “You have released me from my torment, may the name of Thane be forever spoken in reverence and awe.”

Jne moved around the apparition giving it a great amount of room as she stepped over to Thane’s side and offered him her hand to help him up. Though obviously ineffective, she kept her sword held tightly in her hand, possibly as a connection to reality in the face of something so otherworldly.

“How do you know my name?” Thane asked.

“I have watched a hundred life times pass as I remained a forced prisoner around Zadok’s neck. I was with him, and you, when you were in his lair of hatred and evil.”

So he did know what was happening around him while still attached to his TanIs. But of whom was he talking? “Who is Zadok?”

Gelfin moaned within himself, a sound that shook Thane to the core. It was such a disparaging sound that it seemed to sap any feelings of light or joy from his soul. “He is the one who took my TanIs,” Gelfin answered. “He is the one who has held me captive the past millennia. He is the one who wanted to turn you and use you as his pawn.”

Thane was still confused. He had never been in contact with anyone named Zadok. How then was he to be turned by and used by him? “How then did Bedler get your
TanIs?”

“He is not Bedler,” Gelfin hissed, “but Zadok. He has taken Bedler’s form and cast off the old husk that was once his own body. But he is still Zadok. He is my twin brother.”

Thane gasped with surprise. His twin brother? It could not be. How could a brother do such a thing to his own kin? “Your twin brother?”

Gelfin wailed an eerie sound of anguish that filled their souls with pain and sorrow. Both felt almost suffocated by grief. “He betrayed our people and then he took my life, cutting the
TanIs from my body and shutting me in an eternal cell of suffering.”

Thane remembered the teaching he had received from the five kinpa and the story they told of the evil one who betrayed their people. Zadok must have been the one of whom they spoke. He had been the great one. “He was the great one?”

“No, he was never great. Though I tried to help him and protect him, he made himself an outcast. I was the one they called ‘the great one’, but as events played out I was of no great value at all. I failed my people and therefore have probably deserved the suffering I have endured all this time.”