Lakhoni (3 page)

The
morning’s chill woke Lakhoni. He shifted, hissing at the pain in his body. He
felt as if his joints and bones were fused tree branches. Cotton filled his
head, a dull throb at his crown reminding him of the blow he had been dealt. He
carefully levered himself up, stiffness in his neck forcing him to move his
entire upper body as he searched the hut with his eyes.

No
blanket.

Confused,
he pushed himself first to his knees, then to his feet, swaying precariously
for a moment before he put a hand on the wall. His ankle held his weight better
now, but still pulsed with every beat of his heart. Each movement produced a
hiss from between his teeth. He sat again, carefully, and tore a frayed strip
of leather from his breeches. He wrapped his ankle tightly.

Why
would the raiding party take his family’s blankets? It wasn’t as if the
blankets his mother made were special. Confusion combined with the heaviness
already in his head.
They steal our food,
our valuables—and now our
blankets.
How were these acts any better than the Usurpers? Stories of the
Usurpers stealing and murdering came to the village all the time.
This is no
better.

Lakhoni
stood again and stepped to the doorway, one hand going to the animal skin that
hung there.

Blankets.
Stupid
. He
was avoiding thinking about what would greet him when he went outside.

He
had a duty. He could not leave his people, his family, outside any longer.
Scavengers would no doubt appear soon. He hesitated at the task he knew was
before him. Lakhoni searched for his courage. He was fourteen. Nearly a full-grown
man.

Murderous
raiding party
.

There.
His courage sparked in the heat of sudden anger. His body trembling at what
would greet him, he stepped outside.

Bright
morning sun stabbed his eyes. He closed them, gasping. He blinked and stared at
the ground until his eyes became accustomed to the blinding light. He saw
movement. Scavenging birds flapped and pecked. A sick groan escaped his lips,
long and low. But fury took over and the groan became a shout. A scream. His
pains were forgotten as he hurtled forward, waving his arms in wild gyrations,
curses flying from his lips.

The
vultures squawked loudly and lifted off, their ungainly wings flapping heavily,
frantically trying to reach safety. Lakhoni wanted to snatch the birds and tear
them to pieces, vent his fury and revulsion on them, but he was too slow. They
flapped up and flew to the west. Lakhoni scanned the ground for a rock.
Snatching one, he hurled it at the departing birds, praying he might hit one.

The
rock fell into the trees. The vultures, untouched, flapped in wide circles,
moving farther off, probably back to their homes near the waste.

Lakhoni
screamed a final curse upon the birds, the words tearing through his throat. He
felt as if he had swallowed a handful of sharp obsidian arrowheads. His throat
was raw, his chest on fire. Lowering his head, he focused on the form on the
ground in front of him.

His
father, Zeozer.

Lakhoni
fell to his knees, his battered body protesting. “Father.”

His
father’s death gaze transfixed him. Lakhoni tried to close his own eyes,
knowing he should reach out to close his father’s. He could do neither. The
stick his father had been using to get around on his injured leg lay some ways
away.

It
looked as if his father had abandoned the stick in a hurry to get somewhere.

Lakhoni
found his paralysis had dissolved. He reached out and touched his father’s
forehead, then gently closed his eyes. A sudden tremble wracked Lakhoni. His
thoughts moved with the speed of an oldster telling a favorite story. His
father. Where was his mother? And Alronna, his sister?

He
had a duty. He must care for the dead—the dead that surrounded him on all
sides, searing his eyes. Perhaps not being able to see Lamorun’s body after he
fell in the last war with the Usurpers had been better than this.

A
sound somewhere between a grunt and a scream exploded from his mouth, his chest
feeling as if it would cave in. Lakhoni tried to hold the next scream back. He feared
the weakness that threatened to spill from him. He didn’t know if he could pull
himself out of the torrent if he let it flow.

He
imagined that he was inserting a rod of hardened iron into his spine. He
gritted his teeth. He had a duty.

He
passed a cursory look around the village center. Too many to bury. He would
have to burn them and do both dances: death and fire.

Lakhoni
pushed himself to his feet.
Wood first.
He moved toward the forest. With
two hours’ slow work, Lakhoni was able to build a large pile of dry branches
and logs scavenged from near the huts of the villagers.

As
he turned from the pile of wood, he shook with exhaustion and grief. He knew
what he must do, but he worried he couldn’t do it. His head still hurt. So did
his side. The more minor pains had faded with the work, although sweat stung in
his cuts, and his ankle still twinged in pain with every few steps.

How
could he be expected to drag everyone he had known his whole life into a pile,
then set them on fire? How could he touch—

He
choked back a moan.
Why couldn’t I die with them and let the animals and
forest do their work?

“Why?”
he whispered to the cool breeze blowing through the village. It gave no answer.

He
stood before the branches, his thoughts a haze of pain and burning grief. The
torrent within him surged. He swallowed tightly, clenching his lips tightly
closed.

“No.”

He
had no answer. He would never know why.
He looked around the village,
not seeing the bodies this time, but seeing ghostly memories. Marna heating rocks
for ancient Yeval’s feet. Enormously fat Salno waddling through the village,
carrying his pouch of herbs he used to make healing teas.

“I
can’t. I don’t know how,” Lakhoni whispered.

But
if not him, who would pay the final respects for the people he had loved and
who had loved him?

“I’ll
do it until I can’t anymore. The First Fathers would understand.”

He
turned and, before he could think any more about it, he crouched, hooked his
arms under the nearest limp form and walked backward. Carefully laying the body
onto the branches, he tried to avert his eyes before he saw the person’s face.
He wasn’t fast enough. It was his cousin Jona. Lakhoni reached out quickly,
closed Jona’s eyes and turned to the next.

If
I go fast enough, I won’t think about it.

He
worked for hours, deliberately staying away from his family’s hut. He found
that if he could turn off his thoughts and just focus on the physical labor, it
was much easier. Coming upon the body of his dog, Ancum, jolted him with fresh
pain. He knew it was wrong, but he placed Ancum’s body on the pile as well.
He
was my family also.

The
work cleansed him of the fuzziness that had plagued him. The raiding party must
have gotten ahead of him and left someone behind to catch any people outside
the village. That hunter must have hit Lakhoni, thinking he had dealt Lakhoni a
death blow.
Mother always said I had too hard of a head.
He clamped down
hard on the pain rising in his throat, blinking tears away.

Lakhoni
bent to the next fallen villager. Without thinking, he looked at the face.

His
mother, Sana. Lakhoni’s breath disappeared and he sat heavily, his arms still
hooked under his mother. Her light brown eyes were empty.

“Mother.”

Air
slammed back into him. His lower jaw shook as he tried to control the shaking
that took hold of him. His hands, between his mother’s arms and torso,
trembled. The need to flee filled him. He tried to get to his feet, tried to
pull his hands away. He couldn’t remember how to stand.

Dead.
His mother was dead.

His
mother. Killed with a casual slice of a hunter’s dagger. Dead. The word flashed
through his mind again and again.

Lakhoni
felt the tears on his face and knew he couldn’t hold it back. Too much, it was
too much. Murdered. His mother, with her kind nature always ready to comfort
any child in the village.

His
body shuddered as the torrent of grief exploded like a stopped-up river through
a weakened dam. His chest heaved, his mind flashing through images of her.
Cooking in the family fire pit. Giving his father her special smile. Her
unusually straight teeth glinting in the firelight.

Sobs
that shook his soul poured out of him. Lakhoni curled over the body of his
mother, soaking the dirt with his fear, grief, and anger. He rocked back and
forth, high-pitched moans escaping his clenched mouth, tears without end
streaming down his burning cheeks.

He
stayed that way for some time, until his body was spent, his soul empty.

No,
not empty. Nearly empty, but there was still something there. Something hot,
raw, and painful like a fresh wound.

But
this pain was good. Hot, flowing stone coursed through his muscles. He felt as
if he could walk through a tree, as if wind would bend around him. Lakhoni
stood, lifted his mother’s body in his arms and carried her to the soon-to-be-pyre.

Exhaustion
and pains forgotten, he finished his work quickly, realizing by the position of
the sun that he must have been bent over his mother for a long time. Last was
his father. He was much heavier than Lakhoni’s mother, but Lakhoni lifted his
father from the ground as well, knowing he must not drag his parents through
the dirt.

As
he straightened from the funeral pile, a thought struck him.
Where’s
Alronna?
Hope surged through him. He hadn’t found her body in the village
yet. It was said that sometimes raiding parties would take people back to the
king’s palace to serve the king.
Could she be alive?

Lakhoni
began to feel as if he might know why he was preserved. He would find his
sister and rescue her.

He
wanted to make an oath of vengeance, but knew that was not his place. His
vengeance would have to be directed at the king, and the king was appointed by
edict of the Great Spirit and the First Fathers. Perhaps not vengeance, but he
would finish here and then hunt those who took his sister. Alronna would not be
stolen like Lamorun, to die in some unknown and unseen place on the order of
the king. Lakhoni would find and free her.

He
took two fire stones from his family’s hut and gathered tinder. The first spark
caught and he coaxed the flame to life with his breath. In minutes, the dry
branches under the bodies caught, orange flames questing skyward.

He
cleared his head and thought of the dances he must do. His ankle hurt, but he
could do what had to be done—some of the stone strength from earlier still
remained in his muscles. He began, starting slowly and allowing the movements
to steadily take over his body. Lakhoni began the chant that allowed the
spirits of the dead to let go of those they left behind. Now came the part
where he must name the dead. If this had been a normal Death Dance, the village
would say the dead person’s name together.

Only
me. For all of them

“Salno.
Jona. Yeval. Marna. Omior.” He continued, his eyes closed as he gave in to the dance.
He left his parents for the end. As he twisted carefully, sliding his left foot
in then stepping backward, his hands reaching toward the fire, he sang,
“Zeozer. Sana.” Lakhoni turned a complete circle, lifting his arms toward the
darkening sky.

An
unexpected voice made him jump.

“Why
do you sing their names?”