Racing the Dark (35 page)

After the woman left, Yechtak and the old man dug into their food as though they were the wolves she had seen in the encampment earlier. Neither of them seemed to mind the way the blood in the uncooked center ran down their chins and mingled with the melted fat. Lana ate all of her bread and then began, reluctantly, to eat the meat. She had no excuse for wasting these people's food. It was chewy and even the parts that weren't bloody still tasted of animal. Beside her, Yechtak had sucked the marrow out of the bone and was looking as though he was actually still hungry. As surreptitiously as she could, Lana took the basket out of his hands and put hers in its place. He looked at her gratefully and began devouring it. So long as someone ate the meat, she didn't feel so bad about being rude. And despite the lingering queasiness in her stomach, the bread had finally satisfied the hunger that had been gnawing at her for the past few days.

After he finished eating, Yechtak rocked the old man-who had fallen asleep-gently by the shoulder. They talked for a few minutes and then he turned back to Lana.

"Tomorrow ... we have ceremony. The next day, I will lead you to ruins?"

Lana nodded. "That's good," she said.

When she followed him out of the tent she felt the old man's gaze on her back, but the death didn't linger there. As always, it followed her.

The next day, Lana felt torn between wanting to continue her journey and being grateful for the chance to stop and catch her breath. The beautiful red rocks and the cloudless sky looked brighter to her the next morning, as though her eyes could now register their actual hues. After Yechtak's mother served her a simple breakfast of bread and some kind of boiled vegetable, Lana found herself wandering around the camp. Most people smiled at her and some called out greetings, but they generally ignored her presence after a few seconds, returning to whatever tasks they had been doing. She began to feel like a ghost-or even like the death itself, silently observing people's lives, but unable to directly participate in them. Eventually she wandered to the far edge of the camp, where women chattered to each other as they sat in a circle grinding flour on large stone slabs with round stone pestles. Among the workers, she recognized the same woman who had brought her food the previous evening. She smiled at Lana and beckoned for her to come closer. In the middle of their circle was heaped a pile of the strangest grain she had ever seen. They were each about a foot long and covered in gold, orange or red berries that the women sawed off with knives before mashing in their bowls. The woman quietly handed Lana a stone slab, a pestle, and a basket already filled with berries. Curious, Lana sat next to her and began grinding the grain into coarse flour. The slab had a trough worn into the middle of it, precisely the width of the stone. After some initial covert glances, the other women ignored her and she fell easily into their rhythm. One of the older women raised her voice in a high, ululating chant. Lana paused and shook out her wrist, sore from the unaccustomed work. The women around her began hitting their pestles in unison and responded to the elder's call in rough harmony. As she didn't know the words, she stayed silent, but she swayed in rhythm and smiled at the comforting familiarity of it. Back on her island, she and the other divers had never been made to do these kinds of domestic chores, but she recalled the harvesting songs of the women who climbed the hills before the start of the rainy season to harvest the taro and manioc that grew there. In some ways, these strange people were far more familiar to her than the jaded citizens of cities like Okika and Essel.

Hours later, when the sun was beginning to sink behind the dusty red rocks to the west, Lana heard the dry screech of a hrevech echo in the valley. The women looked at each other and then, silently, began to put away the day's work. The pounded grain they packed in tightly woven baskets and the remaining husks they stored in a small cave in the rock face. Through an evening sun bright enough to make her shade her eyes, Lana saw the wheeling figures of the hrevech settle down on rocky promontories. The women were oddly subdued as they walked back toward the main part of camp. In fact, everything was eerily quiet-all of the tents looked deserted. Even the wolves and horses had fallen silent. She wondered where everyone had gone, but when she tried to ask someone, the woman closest to her made a quiet shushing noise and gestured for Lana to keep walking. They walked until they left the outer edge of the camp and arrived at a range of large rocks a couple of hundred yards away. In dead silence and fading daylight, the women climbed up the worn path in the rocks one by one. The death stayed close by Lana, silent and brooding. It had been like this ever since she came to the wind island, and she was beginning to wonder if such close proximity to the stronghold of another spirit's power made it uncomfortable. If so, she thought, that knowledge might be a potent foundation for a geas. The climbing wasn't very difficult, but small rocks had gotten inside her sandals and cut the bottom of her feet. She had to pause every few minutes to kick them out, much to the annoyance of the women below her. Eventually she saw a large natural amphitheater, separated from the climbing path by a narrow passage that could fit two people abreast. Inside the huge flat space, surrounded on all sides by higher rocks, she saw a massive bonfire and hundreds of men and boys-what looked to be every single male in the tribe. The women, however, barely paused, climbing perhaps thirty feet above the amphitheater before emerging on relatively level ground. Hundreds of other women had already gathered there. Some sat, some stood, but no one spoke. They had a very clear view of the men below. The women let her near the edge of the rocks, and as she got closer, she recognized Yechtak, wearing only a loincloth, standing by the fire with the old shaman. He glanced up at Lana, but another woman clamped down on her hand when she tried to wave. This must be his initiation, Lana realized. She had expected it to be something like her own test when she had become a diver, but all of this felt far more intense. There was no sense of expectant happiness here-only worried anticipation.

Slowly, Lana lowered herself to the rocks and waited for the sun to finish its descent. Like all the other women, she could only wait and see what would happen.

Yechtak saw Iolana's attempt to wave at him and a nearby woman's rush to stop her from breaking the taboo. Of course Iolana had no way of knowing that communication between men and women during an initiation was forbidden, and her innocent gesture helped to ease his nervousness. She was a strange person, he thought, but he liked her. She had a habit of looking into space and quietly speaking-not as though she were talking to herself, but as though she could see someone he couldn't. He recalled Erlun's cryptic remarks about his bringing two guests the night before and wondered what kind of burden this woman carried. Tomorrow they would begin their journey together, and maybe he would be able to find out.

Soon after the last of the women arrived, Erlun raised his hand to signal the beginning of the ceremony. On the opposite side of the fire, Gervach pounded the lead drum into the ensuing silence. Moments later, the other drums began filling in the rhythm, slowly increasing their tempo until the whole amphitheater rang with the sound. In the distance, Yechtak heard the lonely call of a hrevech and the answering sigh of the wind.

Although Erlun, as shaman, was the ultimate leader of the tribe, Gervach's position as war chief made him nearly as powerful. In war councils, Gervach's opinion was tacitly understood to be final, but initiations like these were entirely under the shaman's jurisdiction. And a good thing, too-Gervach knew as well as anyone what this initiation meant, and he had been angling for years to have his son succeed Erlun after his death. Over Gervach's angry pounding, the shaman began chanting, a deep throaty sound that made the hair on Yechtak's arms shiver.

Erlun's two assistants took Yechtak by his shoulders and pushed him gently to the ground. He lay with his bare back on the cold, hard stone, staring up past the bonfire to the sky. The stars shone like hard, scattered bits of light, and the moon itself was barely a sliver. His heart was nearly pounding in time with the drums, but he tried to control his breathing. Erlun lit a torch in the fire and held it a foot from Yechtak's face.

"Who do you serve above all?" Erlun asked. The drums had stopped.

Yechtak watched the hypnotic motion of the torch as Erlun passed its searing heat over his chest and tried to remember his response. "The wild wind," he said, finally.

?" W y.

"To atone," Yechtak said. He wondered if the heat from the torch was burning his skin. "We are the descendants of the ancient guardians. We must honor the wild wind by repenting for its imprisonment."

Erlun nodded and handed the torch to an assistant. Yechtak stifled his sigh of relief. The shaman's blind eyes fixed on his face. "The path to the ruins is the spirit's closest secret," he said softly. "Do you swear to guard it well, my son? For all of our sakes?"

"I swear."

The drums began again, faster than before. His hands guided by an assistant, Erlun took up the special hrevech-bone tattoo quill and heavy wooden hammer. He began his chant again, an ancient hymn of honor to the wind spirit, as he dipped the quill in the deep black ink made with charred nuts. A man's hands held Yechtak's shoulders firmly, but he struggled not to squirm or wince when Erlun's hands came down with surprising sureness on his chest. The needles pierced his skin and the ink bled into the wounds as Erlun hammered on the sharp quills. Though Erlun had not been able to see the pattern on his chest for decades, he still knew its shape intimately, and no one else was permitted to transmit such a sacred design. The pain was horrible. Yechtak bit his tongue and stared into the fire, willing himself to be strong. After long minutes had passed, he found himself getting light-headed with the pain. The drums and Erlun's chants wavered in his ears and he turned abruptly away from the fire. He had to find something else to focus on. Looking up at the silent, shadowy figures of the women, he saw Iolana sitting with her legs over the ledge, staring down at him. He felt stronger looking at her, and the pain of the quills relentlessly pounding into his chest didn't seem so unbearable anymore. After half an hour, it was over. Someone put a wet cloth over his chest to soak up the blood and excess ink. Erlun, looking exhausted and far feebler than Yechtak had ever seen him, leaned forward when the drums fell silent. Beads of sweat dripped from his nose onto Yechtak's face.

"I wonder," he said, his voice low and raspy. "If I should have done this. I have changed your life forever ... just for that one Binder. I sense it ... a new path stretches ahead of you, and it is painful. Will you hate me for it later?"

"Never," Yechtak said in a strangled whisper. "I could never..."

Erlun smiled softly and patted his shoulder. "Of course, we all have choice. If you turn away now, I won't blame you. And yet..." He turned his face briefly away from Yechtak's and looked up to where some of the women still watched. Iolana was staring down at them, the light of the bonfire making the frizzy edges of her long, dark hair look like a bright halo around her head. Erlun looked back at him. "I somehow think you will stick to the path, no matter the dangers. She is dangerous, my son. She knows nothing of our ways, our language, and yet the wind spirit wishes to see her. That alone says enough, but I sense it. It's not just the burden she carries. She has more power than she realizes, and that is dangerous. Do your duty, but no more. Do not let her trap you."

Yechtak looked into Erlun's earnest, sad face and shuddered. "I won't. I promise."

Another man put a hand on the shaman's shoulder and helped him stand. Conversation burst like an air bubble, a loud and unintelligible stream of noise that Yechtak simply let wash over him. What was it about that girl that could scare Erlun so much? Even though Yechtak barely knew anything about her, it was his duty to lead her safely to the ruins. Tomorrow, his real initiation would begin.

They walked on foot, leading a stubborn burro that carried all of their supplies and water. For the first few days of their journey, Lana had wished almost continuously for a straw rain hat that could at least keep the worst of the sun from her face. Now, two weeks after setting out, she was beginning to get used to the pounding sun. They generally avoided walking in the grueling hour or two of high noon, spending it in the shade of rocks, if they could find them, or huddled beside the stoically uncomfortable burro if they couldn't. Yechtak was a nice companion, and his command of her language improved drastically over the days. He had learned it originally from his father, he said, who had spent some time on other islands when he was younger.

He fell unusually silent after mentioning his father, and Lana didn't press him. Instead, she diverted her attention by marveling at the subtle changes in landscape that she had been noticing over the past few days. While the land where Yechtak's tribe was camped had been virtually devoid of all plant life except for the occasional stunted scrub bush, the ground here was far moister, sprinkled with brightly colored wildflowers and an occasional tree. These trees had white bark with high, leafy branches that spread out like a paper umbrella. Up a hill in the distance grazed a herd of animals that looked something like deer, only larger and with fur of mottled blue and yellow patches. Several yards beyond them a similar creature nearly twice their size watched the herd protectively, occasionally waving his dangerously sharp tusks at the few other tusked creatures who tried to get within striking distance of the others.

"What are those?" she asked, pointing to the strange animals.

Yechtak seemed to snap out of whatever dream had been holding him. "Oh, the dveri. They are Ofek's this year, so I cannot touch them. Besides, there are only two of us, and wasting any part of a dveri is a crime. It would bring another war on our tribe."

Lana's stomach felt queasy at just the thought of eating such beautiful creatures, but she didn't comment, instead latching onto the implications of what Yechtak had just said. "Another war? With the other wind tribes? You fight each other?"