The bonfire was in full bloom, the flames rose higher than Archos’ head, and the tribe gathered closely around this central flame. As Archos and Ayente approached in the dark they were not seen, but they could see and hear into the brightly lit area. Ayente felt a general disgust as she approached, however she sensed no understanding from the dragon beside her, and a wave of relief because of, not in spite of, his inhumanity washed over her.
The words spoken at the flames however, were clear as the light of the fire before her eyes. She twisted her face in rage, baring her teeth and tensing her entire body. “A dragon is as dangerous as keeping a snake to guard your children. You all know the stories, yes they have been known to help, but the price they demand is always terrible.” The speaker harangued the tribe with a cracked and angry voice, hair whipping in the breeze as she spoke.
‘Damn it mother, not now! Will you never stop this?’ Ayente wondered. A part of her wanted to quail from the woman’s wrath as she had in her infancy.
She took a deep breath as they came close enough that they were stepping into the firelight.
“Ya’sek gyot!” [I paid the price!] Ayente shouted in a furious voice, slapping her hand against her breast where her heart lay. She leaned forward and pointed at her mother accusingly. “Jao’ti hile Archos enlo!” [My body is Archos’s food!] She fairly shrieked it. “Ibto hile?!” [What now?!] She added, glaring at her mother as she announced to her and to the tribe that she’d taken her mother’s scathing criticism of offering her body, and gone one farther to make it literal.
For a full minute the only sound at the bonfire was the sound of the crackling fire itself, save for the occasional wail of an infant for the breast. Archos looked on with a stern demeanor, just what she’d said... he let out a mental sigh. ‘Too fast, she said something about herself, oh by my fathers and mothers she didn’t tell them... ‘ He clenched his talons tight. ‘I guess it makes sense, meat is meat, if others of my kind have been here, there is no reason not to have consumed these beings. Still, eating your hosts or those who help you? Hmpf, not acceptable. Still, at least she knows better, it is a good enough lie.’
As he pondered these things, he noticed that the face of Ayente’s mother had gone ghostly white, the old woman’s body actually shook. Ayente folded her arms across her chest and fixed her mother with an icy stare. “Yurif sto aol, maol oos mal a’ya.” [Revenge will come, your hate dies with me.]
All that was said was lost upon Archos, however he could detect the icy tension between the two, that ended with Ayente’s last words, and the older woman seated herself with a downward gaze and complete silence.
Archos broke the tension by speaking for himself, fumbling through their words as best he could. “I need to know what you face if I am to help you.” He kept his deep tone as gentle as he could as he moved to the circle. “Where are the cave children, how many are there, how do they fight?” He asked reasonably, holding his arms open at his side invitingly.
No one answered, the silence continued as Ayente moved close to his left hand. However, many eyes turned to one figure. Archos followed their eyes, including the glare he felt coming off of Ayente. A somewhat ‘rounder’ human sat on a triple stacked set of logs that gave him an elevated position above the rest of the tribe.
Even from where he stood, even across the lines of race and culture, Archos felt the unbridled smugness and arrogance of the one who sat there. He had a crooked smile on his face that was ‘almost’ a sneer. ‘Brave at least.’ Archos thought, though as he looked around at the poverty stricken conditions of a people that barely survived, he mused on, ‘I suppose it is easy to be brave when life is always lived at the edge of death.’
The seated man, aside from being portly, had a somewhat snub nose and small, cruel dark eyes that even to a being as foreign as Archos, struck the dragon as intelligent and cunning.
“Who are you?” Archos asked, and Ayente quickly translated for him.
“Malach. Shaman of the Red Ax and chosen voice of the gods.” He placed special emphasis on the final word, and when Ayente conveyed this back to Archos, she did the same.
Archos scratched under his chin for a moment as he thought that over, “Ayente has asked for my help in defeating the Cave Children. I have been moved by her offer of sacrifice to me, and therefore I will aid her. Triumph however, requires knowledge, who can fight those they cannot find? Who fights the unknown is bested by what they are not prepared for.” He explained patiently, speaking slowly so that Ayente could explain in turn.
“Ya enlo’ha eype mos aol.” [I am his food when victory comes.] Ayente began to translate his words as she understood them, looking at Malach with stony hate.
“You’d rather be a meal to a monster than honor your mother’s will?” He interrupted her sharply to ask, his eyes went wide for a moment.
“Do not pretend it is an offer for my mother’s sake. I have seen your eyes linger on me, I have heard your whispers to her in the dark, and seen the fruit of your whispers upon her face when she looked at me. You play the redeemer, but you are just a lecher. You say this one is a monster, yet he aided us for nothing once, and nothing but my one flesh now, and I will redeem myself in this final sacrifice. Better he consume me in a moment’s pain, than you consume me for a lifetime.” Ayente snarled out at him, and Malach shook with rage.
“Ya’me dragon a’ lope.” [Help my dragon to help the people.] She said with a voice of abject contempt, before summing up what he was demanding to know.
Those near at hand could hear the whispered words of heated contempt back and forth, and shook with disbelief as their shaman was so thoroughly disrespected by Ayente’s words. Not far away, nobody shook with greater rage than her mother, but being so close to the being who had rescued them, and who not a few feared yet, she clearly thought better than to speak aloud. Though her glare was constant, and spoke volumes to her daughter.
Archos felt the tension spike again, but on the spot, Malach could do nothing but acquiesce. “Very well.” He said to Ayente, who translated it back into a vague semblance of what she understood from Archos’s tongue.
“Bring your gods, that we may speak and I may have their knowledge to aid you.” Archos proposed, when Ayente translated that, he could hear the collective gasp, and Malach’s face turned purple with rage.
Archos looked down at Ayente, “What did I say?” He asked as he cocked his head curiously.
She shook her head as she looked at the ground. “The gods do not work that way. They speak when they wish, and only to their chosen voice, and too, they speak only in riddles.”
Archos could only blink at that reply. “That is madness.” He said in a disbelieving voice, he scratched under his jaw again, “How are you to know you worked out the riddle rightly? How are you to know that you have guessed their will? What am I to do with this?”
At that moment Malach began to shake, shiver, and his body slipped down the front of his elevated position until he was flopping around in the dirt as his body went into seizure. The tribe, save for a handful of their number moved away from the fire to surround him, and when they had done so, they bowed low with faces to the dirt as Ayente had done when offering herself as a sacrifice.
Ayente however, remained where she was near Archos, and slowly with dead and hollow eyes lowered herself with her head to the dirt. “What are they doing?” Archos asked, dumbfounded as he looked down at the strange behavior.
She raised her head slightly, so that she didn’t continue to kiss the dirt, and whispered, “Malach is receiving the will of the gods. Therefore he is at this moment, one with the gods. So we revere him during this time of glory.”
“Why then do you and the others not join with your tribe? Do you stand in watch for danger?” Archos asked innocently.
Water coated Ayente’s eyes as chants and moans of reverence filled the air around the worshiping tribe. “We are the shame children, unwanted by the gods, for us to worship with the rest of the tribe is to insult them. We may only partake if we are sanctified and blessed by redemption.”
“How does that work?” Archos asked as his curiosity got the better of him, barely noticing with his eyes, as he listened instead.
“We must produce a new member of the tribe or perish in the attempt, by producing one through ways not shameful, or simply dying for our people, our existence is forgiven.” She explained, she shook gently as she explained, and as her left arm dangled limply at her side, she drew her arms in and grabbed it at the joining of the elbow with her right hand, and squeezed tight. She was now more embracing herself than she was worshipping the embodiment of goodhood that was her shaman.
“I still do not understand.” Archos replied, “Forgive my ignorance, but my people have no such traditions.”
“It is well, and well for your young that you do not.” She whispered, “I will explain more later, but now, see, he is returning to himself.” There was a resentful note of awe to her voice as she spoke, and Malach gradually, with the aid of two others, got to his feet.
“The gods have spoken!” He shouted, his arms opened wide as the tribe remained prostrate, those their gazes rose to look at him.
Those who had been allowed to touch him and to help him rise, leaned close to hear him whisper the will of the divine, after which they went to both knees beside him as he reclaimed his seat. “Trust given out of water born will lead to unredeemed betrayal. Redemption must come before victory is given.”
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When Ayente translated that for him, he could only look back, dumbfounded. “What does ‘that’ mean?” Archos asked more loudly than intended. It got several startled gazes as his irreverent seeming conduct shocked the tribe to their cores. They might not have understood what he said, but they very definitely understood his tone.
“We do not know.” Ayente replied, “It falls to the voice of the gods to figure it out and tell the meaning to us. Others may make guesses as to its meaning, that is how the new voice is made known to the old one. As the voice grows old, he will select those who have over time, given the wisest, nearest answers to the truth and one of them will take his place when he dies.”
“So he alone hears the gods, he alone decides the meaning of what the gods have said, he alone reveals who has correctly interpreted the will of the gods.” Archos asked, the thick scales of his brow narrowed over his eyes.
Ayente nodded, and whispered in a somewhat regretful voice, “Thus it has been for longer than the ancient mothers of our tribe can remember. Why the gods decreed it so, I cannot say. They are the gods, they can do what they like.”
Archos felt the cynicism of court life creeping up on him in the picture she painted. “How long till the riddle’s meaning is revealed?” He asked with a growing sense of concern disguised to the humans by his inhuman features.
“If it is given at the request of someone else who has made an offering, they must interpret it for themselves, so it falls to them to determine if they were right after they have acted upon it. But when it is given to the voice for the tribe, it is...” She fidgeted uncomfortably, “unpredictable. He may tell us all at once, or he may reveal it only to the central figures of the riddle, or he may only tell us after we are forced to act as best we can, if the gods bind his tongue.” She could not keep the frustration from her voice.
Archos let his eyes wander over the tribe which had begun fevered chanting and rocking back and forth imploring their shaman for an answer to be given to them from atop his ‘perch’. Inevitably, he let his eyes linger analytically on the one they cast their bodies to the dirt in worship of. Despite the flatter face than his own, as Archos narrowed his eyes to look at the ‘round’ Malach, and tried to imagine the face elongated like his own… the imperious look of arrogance became inescapable. ‘Am I imagining this on my first impression?’ Archos pondered it, but as he saw the way the portly man looked down on others, and his glare grew clear towards a few, he had his doubts.
It was enough to drive him to move away from the tribe, and when she saw what he did, Ayente followed, as did those others with no welcome to be had for them, the ones she had identified as the handful of other ‘shame children’.
“You received one of these riddles?” Archos guessed as they entered his new residence together.
“I did.” She said bitterly, her eyes turned down to the ground with the corners of her mouth in a very deep frown.
“It was not to your liking.” He guessed again.
She shook her head as they went with Archos into the hut that had been made for him. “It was not. It said that unless I was redeemed to the voice of the gods, I would destroy our tribe.”
She fell to her knees in front of the dragon and clutched her body, hugging herself, “I rejected the prophecy, I rejected the gods, I refused my mother’s plea to honor their will. Our chief, he was like an uncle to me. He did not press me to obey. Now he has been punished by the gods, and the prophecy is nearly fulfilled.”
Archos looked to the others as Ayente fell to weeping.
The shame children sat cross legged in the house they had helped to build for him, and waited in silence for her to finish. Archos looked them over, there were four, including Ayente, each wearing sadness on their faces with wetness shining in their eyes against the thin beams of moonlight that broke through the gaps to illuminate the little building. He wondered why they said nothing, to him or to her or to each other.
He was not, however, long in waiting for Ayente to return to herself. She wiped her nose and face. “I see you do not understand... his prophecy required me to lie with him for my redemption, and bear for him, a child. I... hate him.” She said bitterly, “I could not bear the thought of his touch, so I refused. Had I obeyed... I could not have taken our people to the contested lake, our chief might not have listened to me when I proposed that we take the fight to the Cave Children, we have never had a fight like that before. So many... I did not think so many could die so fast...” She forced her gaze up to Archos, who found himself scratching his jaw again as he listened to her story.
“You are still lost... ah... when my people are... with child, we do not make for fighters, our children are carried within our bodies, as they grow large, making us slow and vulnerable, such women cannot go to fight. Had I listened, had I obeyed, all those lost, might still live. I would have had a memory to retch at, but so many would have lived. I was born a cursed one, a shamed one, yet the chief favored me in spite of that and now his body rests beside the lake and his heart is... well, he is dead. Our tribe will die, because the chief listened to me and not to the voice of the gods... unless you are able to pull us back from the waters of oblivion.”
She swallowed hard, a picture began to become ever more clearer in Archos’s mind. “Are these all the cursed children?” He asked. “They are all male?”
“Yes... I am the only unredeemed woman of our people, it brings greater shame to my mother that I will not obey. The others, they were redeemed long ago.” She replied in an unsteady voice. “If the males of our tribe who are unredeemed can steal a female from another tribe, their chance may come, or perform some great work that truly secures the future of our people... but most choose to raid another camp to find a woman for themselves. No woman of our own will bed them. Of course if an unredeemed man dies for the tribe, or in such a raid, he is also redeemed. There are few left now, most went with the chief and myself to the waters, and died there. Their blood too is on my head.”
She lost herself again, rocking back and forth in distress, curiously, Archos noticed that the others seemed to ‘want’ to move, to approach her. They raised their hands several times as if by instinct to embrace her, as he had seen happen to some of those who had been returned to the tribe. Yet each time they forced themselves to return to silent stillness.
Eventually she regained her senses, and continued, “How are you determined to have been shamed and cursed?” Archos asked in bafflement.
“If our mother is... how do I say this to you... does your kind ‘mate’? You are ‘male’ yes, so you have females. Can your males force a female to mate with them?” She asked uncomfortably as her nails dug into her skin enough that several red drops emerged on her arms.
Archos required several minutes to understand what she was saying, and it almost made him laugh, only her obvious pain kept him from a sound he was fairly sure would wound her, however unintentionally. Instead he kept his voice calm as if teaching a child. He held out his talons and let his jaw fall open, his tail thudded several times hard into the earth beneath his feet. Then he asked, “What do you think?”
She shook her head, and he explained. “Our bodies are born for violence,” he said casually, “while those females among us are not ‘quite’ as large as our males, claws, tearing jaws, and pounding tails are all so fierce that it is nigh impossible for one to do such a thing to another without being grievously wounded in turn. I have... heard of rare instances where a female captured in war is secured by mighty chains,” she looked lost at the word ‘chain’ and explained, “a kind of rope made of material similar to my sword... but the means to hold us fast, whether by binding magic or bonds of our making, are so difficult and costly that it is almost unheard of.”
“I envy the females of your people.” She whispered sadly, “It is not so among us, if a woman is taken against her will, but escapes before she births a child, she can return to our numbers. However if she bears a child after, such as myself, we are the cursed and the shamed, a punishment to the tribe for letting her alone to be taken, or to her for her recklessness. My mother was one such, carried away by the former chief of the Cave Children. She escaped him, but I can never escape her shame, or my own.”
Bitterness was thick in her voice, “That is why she is cruel to me, I saw that this displeased you, who saved me. I am grateful for that, but that is how it is for us for all our lives until we redeem ourselves. We may not be embraced in the sharing of sorrow, we must bind our own wounds... I was lucky in a way, the chief was a rare one. He was a great warrior, and he took pity on us, Malach warned him of the gods curse coming down on his head for bucking their will... he did not listen. You know how that went.” She bit her lip and trembled again.
“I am guessing that the females redeem themselves as soon as they may bear young?” He asked.
She nodded emphatically, “They do, and I do not blame them, even if they had to... say goodbye to me as we had been.”
“They leave the tribe?” Archos asked, unsure if he understood.
“No, a woman redeemed by the shaman may bear memory of friendship with those who had been unredeemed with them, but once their status changes, they can no longer speak to us as they had, as they are not one of us. I miss their company, when alone, we could even... does your kind ‘kadl’?” She asked curiously.
“What is a ‘kadl’?” He asked hesitantly.
Ayente stood, approached him, and with slow movement of her arms, brought them to his body, she couldn’t get much of him, but she pressed herself against his scales with her cheek pressed to him and looked up. “This is ‘kadl’.” She said, and stepped back with a smile growing on her face in spite of herself
“Touch to express camaraderie and friendship? Yes.” He replied. “Is that why,” he gestured to the others, “they do not touch you or each other despite their wish?”
She nodded glumly, “A curse can only increase a curse, therefore cursed ones cannot be kindly touched. Some would... do it anyway, when we were alone, but their fear of the taint increased when they became truly one with the tribe, they do not speak to me any longer.” She said wistfully.
Archos took out his sword and tapped the tip impatiently on the ground. “I do not like your ways.” He said bluntly.
She looked at him in utter shock, she translated his words for the rest, and their eyes were similarly horrified. “Are you... are you saying you will not save us? Please! Please!” She thrust herself at his feet. “Please!” She whimpered desperately. “I will do anything, I will ask another of our unredeemed to offer themselves, we will be your feast, I know they will do it, do not abandon us...”
As her words spilled out, the others imitated her posture, though they could not understand what she had said, they gathered he was displeased.
Archos growled unhappily. “Ayente, that is not what I mean. When I broke through the waters of the lake and saw the fighting take place, I saw the way you fought. You fought with skill and nobility, you reminded me of... someone I knew, when you, freshly healed, leaped in front of me with your spear, thinking to protect your fallen brother from me. My people are a warrior race, bonds forged in battle are the strongest of all, courage unto death is revered even between mortal enemies. Perhaps you did not notice but... you are quite a bit smaller than I am.” He let a hint of caustic humor slip into the rumbling voice, and she sniffled out a laugh.
“I did...” She replied gently, though still her body shook in fear of possible refusal.
“If you are a cursed one or a ‘shamed’ being, then I am... what did you call yourselves? ‘A human’ yes, that was it.” He snorted dismissively. “I will keep my word, I will help your people in this, before I seek my way home, your people will be safe...” He paused for a moment as he thought how best to say it, he felt a gut level revulsion at the maltreatment of a courageous one of their number, that would have to end for him to leave satisfied, “and you will no longer be shamed or cursed in the eyes of your people.”
A well of gratitude rose up in her breast as she translated for the others of the unredeemed, “Thank you, thank you...” She whimpered out. ‘Good, when he takes my life, I can perish knowing my people are truly safe. I will rest easy in the stomach of my redeemer, I will regret nothing. Not to the end.’ She thought happily.
It was at that moment when Ayente’s mother stood at the entryway, “The voice of the gods calls for you, that he may share the meaning of the prophecy of the gods, and tell you what he knows of the Cave Children.” Her voice was quiet and calm, but there was a hint of exhaustion to her voice as if she had been in a frenzy of activity.
Ayente translated her mother’s words, and Archos nodded and started to move, but then she continued. “However he commands that you present yourself to him alone, first.” She pointed to her daughter and glared angrily.
Ayente looked at her mother from down on her knees and curled her lip in a snarl. “Never.”
“Part of the prophecy pertains to you, their riddle, he said, was clear. If you do not obey, you will fail a second time. Will you keep me shamed with you forever?!” She snapped furiously, her nose turning up in disgust, letting her hair bounce as if it shook in fury of its own behind her.
Ayente went pale and silent. “What did she say?” Archos asked.
Ayente reluctantly explained, and a sense of foulness settled on his tongue as he listened. “Give these words to her and tell her to pass them on to Malach. This one has a bargain with me, and I will not see her beyond sight till it is fulfilled, if Malach or his gods care to take issue, let he or they come speak to me on their own.”
Ayente’s eyes were wide as saucers, she shook her head in a quick, small notion, as if fearing to explain it.
“Do it.” He said bluntly and pounded the club tip of his tail into the ground.
She did, reluctantly. Ayente’s mother went more pale than her daughter. “Your... monster, is powerful, but what is he before the gods? The makers of all life cannot be contested against! What will he do to them?! Their wrath from your disobedience destroyed so many...! How can anyone now dare to say such things...?!” She all but shrieked, but within her voice there was a clear and powerful note not of anger, but of raw and unbridled terror.
‘She’s afraid... by my ancestors’ spirits, she’s shaking with terror...’ Archos thought as he watched how Ayente’s mother was behaving, and he revised his earlier contempt and distaste.
“Ayente,” He asked, “What happens to those who die unredeemed?”
Ayente shuddered. But before she could answer, he raised a talon and cut her off. “Never mind, that is answer enough.”
Ayente turned her attention back to her mother, “I am bound by oath, Malach should know the meaning of this, if I go to him, it will be with he who redeems me by death.”
The woman relented only reluctantly, and as she stepped away from the entrance, Archos saw her shoulders slump, and her eyes water in what he was absolutely certain was sadness, and she shuffled away like a walking corpse with her spirit broken.
“Come, take me to his hut, she will not deliver my words, that much I am sure of. If the rest of you wish, you may wait here.” He said, and after Ayente explained to the others that they could share his house without him for a bit, they all but wept. He made another mental note of that, and followed where Ayente led him.