The Legend of Broken (23 page)

“All right,” the Father says. “Just what
is
your remarkable tale?”

Heldo-Bah looks astonished. “Yes, just what
is
our tale, Veloc?” he echoes, fearing full revelation of their night’s activities.

“I’m sorry, Heldo-Bah,” Veloc replies, “but there may be importance to it—”

“Importance to
what,
Veloc?” Heldo-Bah murmurs, far more urgently.

“She’s my sister, damn it all!” Veloc defends, quietly but emphatically. “Those children are my niece and nephews—you can’t possibly expect—”

“I
expect
nothing, Veloc,” Heldo-Bah now whispers, pushing his nose close to his friend’s, and pointing to the Outragers, “except that we get out of this chamber without having to cut our way through those paragons of viciousness up there—”

“Enough!”
The Groba Father stands, and walks around the council table to face the silenced foragers. “What are we to do with you, Heldo-Bah?” he demands. “Eh? You remain the first and the only Bane to be condemned to a full lifetime of foraging, yet you still risk bringing the wrath of Broken down on us with your unremitting offenses against the Tall. Do you think that you are the only Bane who wants to see the destruction of that city? We all pray for it. But can you not work for the good of the tribe, rather than constantly seeking to harass the people of Broken?” The Father steps to his left. “And you, Veloc—far from offending the Tall, you wish to make
love
to them!”

“Well …” Veloc mumbles cravenly. “Not to
all
of them, Father.”

The Father balls his hands, speaking with measured fury: “No. Not to all of them. But every woman of the Tall you’ve bedded has brought retribution from Broken’s merchants and soldiers! Can you not be satisfied with a female of your own kind?”

“Are not the Bane men, too, Father?” Veloc asks, his mouth moving with more speed than sense.

“Don’t be clever with me, boy,” the Father answers, putting one trembling fist in Veloc’s face. “You know what I mean.” The Groba Father wanders back around the table toward his seat. “And I understand Keera least of all. She is our finest tracker, and has no flaws of character, save an inexplicable willingness to defend you two!
Why?
”

Veloc kicks at the cave floor. “It’s difficult to explain, Father. You see, we all grew up together—Heldo-Bah and I, and Keera—”

“A poor excuse for ignoring her responsibilities as a vital member of this tribe, Veloc—to say nothing of her duties as a mother!” The Elder collapses into his seat with another sigh. “Why I should have expected useful information from you three, I don’t know …”

Silence reigns; and Heldo-Bah, who has been wrestling with the sickly thing he calls a conscience, coughs. “Father—if I may speak?”

The Groba Father looks as though someone has put his thumb in a screw. “Must you?”

“Well, Father, you did ask, and Veloc was trying to tell you—that is, you wished to know if we had seen any activity on the part of the soldiers of the Tall. And, while it’s true that we did not see such activity—”

“Then why waste the Groba’s precious time in this hour of sadness and crisis?” the Priestess demands harshly.

“Yes, Divine One,” Heldo-Bah says, bowing in her direction, “it’s probable that I do waste your time. That is, if you consider the presence of one of the Wives of Kafra in Davon Wood to be insignificant.”

The Father’s shock is mirrored in the faces of the other Elders. “A Wife of …” His voice soon recovers its strength. “When?”

“Last night, Father—just before the sounding of the Horn.”

“And where? To the north? Speak, man, for out of your liar’s mouth may yet come the true answer to this deadly riddle!”

Quickly, and with embellishment from Veloc, Heldo-Bah relates the tale of the Wife of Kafra and the panther, as well as of the dead and diseased member of Lord Baster-kin’s Guard, with its golden arrows. All of Veloc’s storytelling skills go into heightening the drama of his friend’s account, and, following the completion of their performance, the Groba Elders whisper among themselves, doing their best to limit the contribution of the Priestess and her Lunar Sisters. Finally, the Father speaks:

“And Keera knew of nothing that could induce such behavior in the panther? Nor of any other cause for the Guardsman’s death?”

“She swore that nothing in Nature could explain either event,” Veloc replies. “It was surely sorcery of some sort, Father, regarding the beast—and the arrows speak for themselves.”

“We need no forager to tell us as much,” the Priestess scoffs. “What we do need is to stop dawdling—the Tall have sent the plague through Broken sorcery, and we will only be able to respond in kind.”

The Groba Father looks at the other Elders’ faces; and, one by one, they all nod assent. “It is agreed,” he says. “Heldo-Bah, Veloc, you are—”

The Father cuts his statement short, fixing his eyes on the entrance to the chamber. A figure has appeared in the shadows at the mouth of the passageway; and as it moves toward the table slowly, the Groba, the Priestess’s retinue, and the foragers can all see that it is Keera:

She carries her daughter, four-year-old Effi,
†
whose arms hang around her mother’s neck. The child has been weeping, and she continues to sob in an exhausted manner. Keera’s own face is wet with tears, and she stops when she has covered half the distance to the Groba’s table, blankly searching the faces of those arrayed before her. As Veloc goes to her, Heldo-Bah looks quickly to the Father.

“You may approach her,” he says. “If the healers have released them, they are safe. Would that we knew why, when so many others die …”

With that assurance, Heldo-Bah and Veloc rush to either side of Keera; and both men are slowed and then stopped by what they see. Keera’s face, ordinarily the image of confident (if realistic) readiness, has been transformed into a portrait of devastation. Veloc takes Effi from her, at which Keera does not so much kneel as fall painfully, feeling nothing as her kneecaps land hard on the stone floor. But it is the expression on her face that remains the principal cause for concern: her eyes are drawn deep into her skull, her lower jaw hangs in seeming lifelessness, and her skin is so drawn that she appears near dead. Indeed, Heldo-Bah realizes that he has only ever seen such changes to human features on the faces of those who have been tortured unto death by human hands, or expired amid the terrible cold of the high mountains in deep winter.

“Tayo was already dead,” Keera says of her husband, the words scarcely enunciated. “Effi is unaffected, but Herwin and Baza—they will not allow them to leave the
Lenthess-steyn.
Herwin may survive, they say, but Baza will almost certainly …” She begins to fall forward: it is only Heldo-Bah’s attentive agility—an alertness born of his expectation that the worst in life not only can happen, but usually will—that allows him to snatch her up before her face hits the stone. He holds her back upright, and she stares into his eyes without seeing them. “I did not recognize him … Tayo. His face, as well as his body—there were so many sores, so much swelling, so much blood and pus …” Tears come when she speaks of her boys: Herwin, eight years old, and Baza, only six: “Baza is barely alive … He cried out, when he saw me, and said there was pain—
everywhere
 … But I was not allowed to touch him. And Herwin looks as though—as though … Yet no one can predict—
anything.
”

She looks about frantically for a moment, murmuring “Effi,” and then sees the girl in Veloc’s arms. She snatches the child away, and together they begin weeping anew, Effi in the same weary manner—for she has been forcibly separated from her father and brothers in the
Lenthess-steyn
for over a day—and Keera with the rigidity of body that often is often present before the reality of death has become fully comprehensible: as if physical exertion can will it away. Heldo-Bah and Veloc each put a hand to her shoulders.

“So this is how the Tall kill, now,” Heldo-Bah says to Veloc, characteristically attempting to dissolve his own grief into bitterness. “Would that I had put my knife in that witch’s heart …”

A few silent moments pass, with only the sound of Keera and Effi’s sobbing playing off the walls of the Den, along with the occasional crackle from the fire. Whispers pass from Veloc to Keera, after he puts his mouth close to her ear; and the Groba Elders allow the little group of the foragers and Effi a few minutes before the Father gently calls out:

“Keera?” He stands again, and positions himself between Keera and the High Priestess. If more unfeeling remarks should escape the latter, the Father has decided that he will interrupt and then stifle them, lest they do yet more harm to Keera’s already brutalized soul; indeed, the Father determines that he will risk divine wrath by plainly telling the zealous young holy woman to hold her tongue, if he must. But his eyes stay on the foragers. “We grieve with you, Keera, believe that. There is not a member of the Groba who has not lost someone dear—children, grandchildren—”

“A wife of thirty years,” says the bald-headed Elder mournfully; and when Heldo-Bah looks at this man—who brought Veloc and himself into the Den without exhibiting the smallest sign that had suffered so devastating a blow—he feels not only remorse for the old man’s loss, but admiration for one who has, in so disciplined a manner, put the tribe ahead of his own suffering.

“Indeed,” the Groba Father says, looking back at his fellow councilor. “This pestilence has struck at every part of the Bane tribe, and will continue to do so, if we do not act quickly. So believe that our hearts are with you, Keera, and believe, as well, that you three foragers must now undertake a task that offers our only hope, not only of stopping the spread of this malevolent sickness, but of avenging the dead.”

At this, Keera lifts her face and turns to the Elders; then, slowly, she takes her brother’s and her friend’s comforting hands from her shoulders, and walks a few steps forward, approaching the Groba’s council table while constantly clinging tight to little Effi. She wipes at her face with a sleeve, and musters the strength to ask, “But—how is that possible, Father?” And then she adds, with humble skepticism, “We are only foragers.”

“Your brother and Heldo-Bah may be nothing more,” the Father replies. “But you are the best of our trackers, Keera, a true mistress of the Wood. No one has traveled as deeply into its southwestern reaches as you have—and it is there that we must now ask you to go again.”

And for the first time, a faint light of hope seems to dawn amid the wasteland that is Keera’s face, and to put the smallest gleam of comprehension back into her terribly deadened eyes.

But it is Veloc who speaks: “Your pardon, Father, but—why? You see what this disease has already done to my sister, to her family—how can you ask her to leave them again?”

“See how he avoids service,” declares the High Priestess. “Truly, this is not the party to send. The two men should fight with the warriors, not avoid the dangers yet to come. And the woman should be allowed to be near her children, when they come to face death.”

Heldo-Bah, whose eyes have been studying first Keera, and then the Groba, begins to smile. He turns to the Priestess, with a look that would, under other circumstances, provoke combat between himself and the Outragers. “But there
is
no other party to send, O Divine Trough of Lunar Grace,” he says, the falseness of his deferential tone now transparent. “Am I not correct, Father?”

The Father nods, then looks to the High Priestess and her Sisters. “Do not think that they escape danger by undertaking this task. Indeed, theirs may well be the gravest danger of all—” He looks to Keera again. “And more important than any battle of armies.”

All five of the Elders are examining Keera, Heldo-Bah, and Veloc, in turn; they are pleased to find comprehension in the first two, and are ready to wait for it to strike the third.

Soon enough, it does:
“Caliphestros!”
Veloc declares.

Heldo-Bah’s grin widens, as he looks at the Priestess; and his eyes speak eloquently of how badly she has lost this encounter. “Yes,” he says, giving voice to his quiet but pointed triumph. “Caliphestros …”

“Indeed,” the Father declares, giving the Priestess one final glance, as if to say:
And so, be still—there are no other possibilities.
Then, aloud, he repeats the appellation a third time: “Caliphestros …”

For several moments, all in the chamber sit still, absorbing the name with obvious dread. The Outragers, in particular, seem swept up in the superstitious fear that has been instilled in Bane children for the last two-score years, that to speak of the man—if man he is!—heightens the chance that he will come to one’s bed, of a night, to sweep the unfortunate victim’s spirit away …

Finally, it is Veloc who brings practical considerations back to the fore: “But, Father—it is true that we once saw his dwelling, or what we thought was his dwelling. But that journey was long, and largely the result of accidents. It nearly killed us, as well, and—”

“And it can be repeated.” It is Keera speaking, now, and her voice is regaining strength. “I can find the place again.”

Veloc moves up to stand with his sister. “But, Keera—we do not even know if he is alive.”

“Perhaps not,” Keera replies. “But if there is even a chance …”

“And what of the children?” Veloc insists, although it is clearly for Keera’s benefit: he does not yet trust that she is thinking clearly, and would not have her commit to an undertaking that will later cause her more grief and guilt. “Don’t you want to stay—”