Earthborn (Homecoming) Page 7

  So they continued to move silently and smoothly along the rock, wearing their earth-colored tunics and leggings, their earth-colored blankets draped and pinned over their shoulders, their very skin and hair smeared with dirt to make them blend better into the stony cliff.

  If only we could find a way to go up and over these mountains and avoid this heavily-populated lake, thought Monush. And then a thought burst into his mind. Of course we can! Just back there behind us there’s a . . . there’s a . . . He couldn’t remember. What was it he was thinking of? Something behind them? Why? There were no pursuers. Had he forgotten one of his men? He stopped and made a quick count. All were there—and, because they had stopped, most were gaping down at the holy lake below them. Monush beckoned them on. The shelf rose again. They passed by the long lake, sleeping only two nights with it in view.

  After the lake, they passed through easier country, though it was all the more dangerous. It was a large region of lowish mountains, green to their tops, and every valley had at least some people in it, usually diggers, often humans as well, and now and then an isolated settlement of angels, though most of these were either slaves to a nearby Elemaki village or were “free”—but still tributary to one Elemaki king or another. Several times they were spotted by angels soaring overhead, but instead of crying out a warning, the angels always flew on, ignoring them. One angel even swooped low and landed on a nearby branch, then pointed down the ridge that Monush and his men were following and shook his head. Don’t go this way, he was saying. Monush nodded, bowed to him as to a friend, and the angel rose up into the air and flew away.

  It’s good for us, at least, thought Monush, that the Elemaki are so harsh on the few angels forced to live among them. It gives us friends wherever we go. Weak friends, it’s true, but friends are all welcome in the land of our enemies.

  On the fortieth day of their expedition, they came to a place where four streams met within a few rods. The water was turbulent, and yet no diggers or humans or angels lived near it. “A holy place like this,” whispered Chem, “and yet no one dwells here to receive the gift?”

  Monush nodded, then smiled. “Perhaps they receive the gift downstream.”

  He led them on, just a little way, and as they moved downstream they saw that no new hills seemed to rise up ahead of them. The land was about to change.

  And suddenly they understood. For the ground dropped away in front of them. The water of the river soared out like an arrow’s flight, spouting into the air and then falling as perpetual rain down onto the valley below. It was a place of power, the only place that Monush had ever seen or heard of where water from a stream turned directly into rain without first rising up into the sky as clouds.

  “Is there a way down?” asked Chem.

  “As you said,” answered Monush. “It’s a holy place. See? Many feet have come up this cliff.”

  It was almost a stairway, the descent was so artificial, steps cut into the stone, earth held in place by planks. “A cripple could climb here,” said Alekiam, the one who spoke the dialect of digger language that was most common among the Elemaki. Not that they were likely to run across many diggers who hadn’t adopted Torg, the trading language that was mostly the original human language, with pronunciations adapted to the mouths of diggers and angels and thousands of their words thrown in. But it was possible, here in these high mountains, where it was said that in some remote valleys diggers and angels still lived together in the old way, the diggers stealing statues made by the angels and bringing them home to worship them as gods—even as they sent raiding parties to kidnap the children of the angels and eat them. No one in living memory had run across such a place, but few doubted that people like that might yet survive—diggers who called the angels “skymeat,” and angels who called the diggers “devils,” both with good reason.

  “Quiet,” said Monush. “This place is well traveled. Who knows who might be at the bottom?”

  But there was no one at the bottom, and the land, being lower, had different fruits in season. Monush led his men to the brow of a hill overlooking the river that flowed away from the perpetual rainstorm at the base of the cliff. He told twelve of them to stay there and keep watch, eating what fruit they could find within sight of each other, while Monush himself took Alekiam, Chem, and a strong soldier named Lemech, who could break a man’s neck just by slapping him on the ear.

  As they moved carefully along the rivercourse, they could see signs that once this land had been heavily settled. The boundaries of old fields could still be clearly seen, though they were overgrown. And here and there they passed an area that had been cleared and crusted over with stone, so that no diggers could get silently underneath and burrow their way into people’s homes.

  “Where are all the people?” asked Chem, as they stood in the middle of one such place. “They built well, and now they’re gone.”

  “No they’re not,” said Lemech.

  A tall young human stood at the forest’s edge. He had not been there a moment before.

  “Hail, friend,” said Monush, for he could hardly hope to avoid an encounter now.

  At a signal from the tall young man, at least thirty soldiers stepped onto the platform of stone. Where had they been? Hadn’t they circled this place before stepping out onto it?

  “Lay down your weapons,” said Monush softly.

  “In a digger’s heart I will,” said Lemech.

  “They have us,” said Monush. “If we surrender, perhaps we’ll live long enough for the others to find us.”

  “For all we know these are the people we’ve come to find,” said Chem. “Not a digger among them.”

  That was true enough. So they laid down their weapons on the stone floor of the platform.

  At once the strangers closed on them, seized them, bound them, and forced them to run with them through the woods until they came to a place where twenty such platforms were clustered. On them many buildings rose, most of them houses, but not humble ones, and some of the buildings could not have been houses at all, but rather were palaces and gamecourts, temples and, most prominent of all, one solitary tower rising taller than any of the trees. From that tower you could sure look out over this whole land, thought Monush, and see any enemies that might be approaching.

  If the soldiers hadn’t gagged Monush and his men, he might have asked them if they were the Zenifi. As it was, they were thrown into a room that must have been built for storing food, but now was empty except for the four bound prisoners.

  In Edhadeya’s dream, thought Monush, weren’t the Zenifi asking to be rescued?

  Akma awoke from his dream, trembling with fear. But he dared not cry aloud, for they had learned that the diggers who guarded them regarded all loud voices in the night as prayers to the Keeper—and Pabulog had decreed that any praying to the Keeper by these followers of Akmaro was blasphemy, to be punished by death. Not that a single cry in the night would have a child killed—but the diggers would have dragged them out of their tent and beaten them, demanding that they confess that one of them had been praying. The children had learned to waken silently, no matter how terrible the dream.

  Still, he had to speak of it while it was fresh in mind. He wanted to waken his mother, wanted her to enfold him in her arms and comfort him. But he was too old for that, he knew; he would be ashamed of needing her comfort even as he gratefully received it.

  So it was his father, Akmaro, that he nudged until his father rolled over and whispered, “What is it, Akma?”

  “I dreamed.”

  “A true dream?”

  “The Keeper sent men to rescue us. But a cloud of darkness and a mist of water blocked their view and they lost the path to us. Now they will never come.”

  “How did you know the Keeper sent them?”

  “I just knew.”

  “Very well,” said Akmaro. “I will think about this. Go back to sleep.”

  Akma knew that he had done all he could do. Now it was in his father’s h
ands. He should have been satisfied, but he was not satisfied at all. In fact, he was angry. He didn’t want his father to think about it, he wanted his father to talk about it. He wanted to help come up with the interpretation of the dream. It was his own dream, after all. But his father listened, took the dream seriously enough, but then assumed that it was up to him alone to decide what to do about it, as if Akma were a machine like the Index in the ancient stories.

  I’m not a machine, said Akma silently, and I can think of what this means as well as anyone.

  It means . . . it means . . .

  That the Keeper sent men to rescue us and they lost the way. What else could it mean? How could Father interpret it any differently?

  Maybe it isn’t the interpretation of the dream that Father is thinking about. Maybe he’s thinking about what to do next. If the Keeper was just going to send another party of rescuers, then why send me such a dream? It must mean that there will be no other rescuers. So it’s up to us to save ourselves.

  And Akma drifted off to sleep with dreams of battle in his mind, standing sword-in-hand, facing down his tormentors. He saw himself standing over the beheaded body of Pabul; he heard Udad groan with his guts spilled out into his lap as he sat on the ground, marveling at the mess young Akma had made of his body. As for Didul, Akma imagined a long confrontation between them, with Didul finally pleading for his life, the arrogance wiped off his face, his beautiful cheeks streaked with tears. Shall I let you live, after you beat me and taunted me every day for weeks and weeks? For the insult to me, I might forgive you. But shall I let you live, after you slapped my sister so many times until she cried? Shall I let you live, after you drove the other children to exhaustion until the weakest of them collapsed in the hot sun and you laughed as you covered them with mud as if they were dead? Shall I let you live, as you did all these things in front of the parents of these children, knowing that they were helpless to protect their young ones? That was the crudest thing, to humiliate our parents, to make them weak in front of their own children. And for that, Didul . . . for that, the blade through the neck, your head spinning in the air, bouncing and dancing along the ground before it rolls to rest at the feet of your own father. Let him weep, that cruel tyrant, let him try to push your head back into place and make your vicious little smile come back to your lips, but he can’t do it, can he? Powerless, isn’t he? Standing there with little Muwu clinging to his leg, begging me to spare him at least one son, at least the last of his boys, but I’ll spare no one because you spared no one.

  With such wistful imaginings did Akma go back to sleep.

  Monush was dragged out of his sleep by two men, who seized him by his bound arms and hauled him out of the dank storehouse. He could hear that the others were being treated the same, but he could see nothing because the light of day dazzled his eyes. He was barely able to see clearly when he was hauled before the court of the king.

  For that is who it clearly was, though he was the same man who had shown himself before them on the day they were taken. He had not looked like a king then, and even now, Monush thought he was young and seemed unsure of himself. He sat well on the throne, and he commanded with certainty and assurance, but . . . Monush couldn’t place what was wrong. Except, perhaps, that this man did not seem to want to be where he was.

  What was this strange reluctance? Did he not want to be sitting in judgment on these strangers? Or did he not want to be king?

  “Do you understand my language?” asked the king.

  “Yes,” said Monush. The accent was a little odd, but nothing to be much remarked upon. No one in Darakemba would have mistaken him for one of the Elemaki.

  “I am Ak-Ilihi, son of Nuab, who once was Nuak, the king of the Zenifi. My grandfather, Zenifab, led our people out of the land of Darakemba to possess again the land of Nafai, which was the proper inheritance of the Nafari, and he was made king by the voice of the people. It is by that same right that I now rule. Now tell me why you were so bold as to come near the walls of the city of Zidom, while I myself was outside the city with my guards. It was because of your boldness and fearlessness that I decided not to allow my guards to put you to death without first knowing from your own lips how you dared to violate every treaty and defy our rule within the boundaries of that small kingdom that the Elemaki have left to us.”

  The king waited.

  “You are now permitted to speak,” the king said.

  Monush took a step forward and bowed before Ilihiak. “O King, I am very grateful before the Keeper of Earth that I have been left alive, and that you permit me to speak, and I will speak freely because I know now that if you had realized who I am, and who these are that follow me, you would never have suffered us to be bound and held prisoner. My name, O King, is Mon, and it was by the pleasure of King Motiak of Darakemba that men now call me Monush.”

  “Motiak!” said the king.

  “Not Motiab, who ruled when your grandfather left Darakemba, but his grandson. He was the one who sent us to search for the Zenifi, for there was a dream from the Keeper that said that the Zenifi were in bondage to the Elemaki and yearning to be free.”

  Ilihiak rose to his feet. “Now I will rejoice, and when I tell the people, they will rejoice, also.” His words were formal, but Monush could see that they were also heartfelt. “Unbind them,” he said to his guards.

  With the bands removed from his arms and legs, Monush could hardly stand upright for a few moments, but the guards who had before dragged him now held him up with steady hands.

  “I tell you freely, Monush—for I’m sure you deserve that name from all kings, if Motiak has so named you—that if our brothers from Darakemba can set us free of the heavy taxes and the cruelty of the Elemaki, we will gladly be your slaves, for it is better to be slaves to the Nafari than to have the Elemaki rip from us all that we produce.”

  “Ilihiak,” said Monush, “I am not the great Ak-Moti, but I can assure you that he is not such a man as to send us to find you, only to make you slaves in Darakemba. Whether he will allow you to continue to be a separate people within the borders of Darakemba, and whether he will confirm your throne as under-king, I have no power to say. But I do know that Motiak is a kind and just man, chosen by the Keeper, and he will not enslave those who wish to be loyal citizens.”

  “If he allows us to dwell within his borders and under his protection, we will feel it to be the greatest kindness ever offered, and we would not think to ask for more.”

  Monush heard this, but knew enough of the doings of kings to know perfectly well that Ilihiak would no doubt be a tough bargainer, holding out for all the independence and power he could get from Motiak. But that was a matter for kings, not soldiers. “Ilihiak, we are not many, but we are more than four. Will you permit me to—”

  “Go, at once. You are free men. If you want to punish us for imprisoning you, you have only to leave and we will make no effort to stop you. But if you have mercy on us, come back with the rest of your companions and let us counsel together on what we can do to win free of the Elemaki.”

  Chebeya worked in silence, trying not to watch as two of Pabulog’s sons kept knocking Luet down. It made her want to scream, and yet she knew that any protest would only make things worse for everyone. Yet what kind of woman can bear to let her little child be mistreated by thugs and do nothing, say nothing, simply continue to work as if she didn’t care?

  Luet began to cry.

  Chebeya stood upright. Immediately two of the diggers started toward her with their heavy whips. Of course they were watching her, every move she made, because she was Luet’s mother. So she stopped, she said nothing, just stood there.

  “Back to work!” said the digger.

  Chebeya looked at him defiantly for a moment, then bowed down again to hoe the maize.

  Where was the Keeper of Earth? In the days since Akma had his dream that the rescuers weren’t coming, Chebeya had asked the same question over and over. If the Keeper cares enough about us to sen
d Akma a dream, why doesn’t she do something? Akmaro said that the Keeper is testing us, but what is the test and how do we pass it? Does the Keeper want us to turn into a nation of cowards? Or does she want us to revolt against Pabulog’s hideous children and so die? We must each think of a way, Akmaro had said. We must find a way out of this dilemma ourselves, that is the test that the Keeper has set for us. And once we find that way, the Keeper will help us.

  Well, if the Keeper was so smart, why didn’t she come up with a few suggestions herself?

  No one knew better than Chebeya how their slavery was destroying them. Few knew of her gift, and those only women, except of course for her husband; but where once she had been able to alert Akmaro to small rifts in the community before they could become open quarrels, now all she could do was watch in despair as the bonds connecting friend to friend, parent to child, brother to sister all weakened, thinned to almost nothingness. They are making us into animals, depriving us of our human affections. All we care about now is survival, avoiding the whip. Each time we cower and let our children be mistreated, we love those children a little less, because it is only by not loving them as much that we can bear it to see them suffer.

  Not Akmaro, though. He loved his children more and more; in the night he whispered to her how proud he was of their strength, their courage, their understanding. But perhaps this was because Akmaro had a seemingly limitless tolerance for emotional pain. He could suffer for his children—no one knew better than Chebeya how much he suffered—and yet he clung all the tighter to them because of it. He is not afraid of his own love for them, the way so many other parents are. Am I like him? Or like them?