The Legend of Broken (7 page)

Korsar turns to Arnem: an expression of warning is in the old warrior’s blue eyes, despite the smile beneath them. “Apparently, things have reached so desperate a state that you and I need nursemaids. And pretty nursemaids they might be, were they actually the women in whose manner they paint themselves.” The Guardsmen bristle as one at this; but Korsar only smiles and holds up his hands. “A poor attempt at humor, Linnet, I apologize—we see so little true fashion in the Fourth District that we become awkward in its presence. Please, take no offense. Rather”—the yantek points to the Celestial Way, keeping his eyes on the leader of the guardsmen—“escort us, if you will. Yes, by all means, escort us …” With a wave of his hand and a nod, Korsar dismisses his own men, so that only Niksar—now looking as troubled as he did when he first appeared on the southern wall to fetch Arnem—remains. The guardsmen encircle their charges, and the party marches on in the direction of its hallowed destination: the High Temple of Kafra.

For what seems a long interval, Yantek Korsar is silent; and when he begins to speak again, his words are cause for further concern in both Arnem and Niksar. The yantek offers more mocking comments on the possibility of the Bane having attempted the life of the God-King, sentiments that Sixt Arnem shares and might have echoed, mere minutes ago; but now his mind and heart are in turmoil. The identity of the old lunatic in the street (a realization so fraught with evil possibilities that Arnem dares not speak the man’s name aloud, even to Korsar), as well as this detachment of Lord Baster-kin’s Guard, combine to make the yantek’s air of caustic dismissal seem ill timed.
No,
the sentek suddenly realizes;
it is more than that—it is careless.
Carelessness: a trait that even Korsar’s enemies among the younger leaders of the city—who have never known the perils of war, and see little in Yantek Korsar save an old man of sacrilegiously ascetic habits—have never accused him of exhibiting. Yet the yantek seems consumed by it, even though the Guardsmen are plainly committing every deprecating word to memory. Whatever the case, Korsar’s mood quickens his pace along the Celestial Way, so that the younger men must rush to match his speed.

When the group passes into the First District, the yantek’s behavior changes yet again: his stream of cynicism seems to be exhausted, and Arnem, trying hard to focus on duty rather than doubt, hopes that his commander has finally realized that he should do the same. But a mere glance at Korsar’s face offers no such assurance. As the yantek silently casts his scarred, seasoned gaze at the splendid stone residences of Broken’s wealthiest nobles and merchants—structures known as
Kastelgerde,
†
which rise to two and even three stories in height, and are built from the blocks of granite cut from the mountain to create the seamless expanse of Broken’s outer walls—unmistakable disgust emerges through the grey beard and under the long, tangled eyebrows.

“Observe, Arnem,” Yantek Korsar says, and Arnem studies anew structures that he, like his commander, disdains. Disdains, not merely for their size, but for the statues of their illustrious forefathers with which the various merchant clans have filled their gardens: all are rendered with legs of exaggerated power and idealized features that Arnem finds absurd. “You didn’t see much of this as a boy, did you, Sixt? Not really the style, in the Fifth District.”

“The people of the Fifth find their own ways to obey Kafra, Yantek,” Arnem replies. “And I can assure you that, though humble, they are equally—
enthusiastic.
”

Korsar’s broad chest heaves with a lone laugh that betrays no true merriment. “Yes. I suppose that everyone in this city, even the miserable souls of your district, must find some way to perpetuate the dream of a god that loves them for both their avarice and their cruelty.”

“Yantek?” Arnem whispers urgently; but Korsar ignores his subordinate’s concern, forcing Arnem to try drawing the yantek into a safer discussion. “The society that venerates achievement and perfection also venerates hope and strength, Yantek—your own life demonstrates it. Only consider your actions in my case. In what other kingdom would a commander elevate a man with my past to the command of a noble legion?”

Korsar laughs: once again, without humor. “Dutifully recited, Arnem.” Then, to the linnet of Baster-kin’s Guard, the yantek adds, “I trust you take note of the sentek’s piety, Linnet! As for me—” Yantek Korsar coughs up a smattering of phlegm, and spits it hard onto the cobbled avenue; and with it seems to go, finally, the last of his defiance, and his voice is transformed from a deliberate bellow into a resigned murmur: “I can see neither hope nor true strength in any of it. Not anymore …”

“I don’t take your meaning, Yantek,” Arnem says. He has known Korsar to be irascible and moody since the death of his wife; and he has known him to take great chances as a commander, as well; but he has never seen him court personal disaster in so fatalistic, so defeated, a manner.

“You
will
understand, Sixt, my friend,” Korsar replies, in an ever more melancholy tone. “All too soon, I fear.”

Arnem says nothing, but is deeply alarmed, for all his silence: Korsar’s words are uncomfortably close to those the sentek heard from the apparitional old man he met on his way to the Fourth District …

The party, keeping a brisk pace, is now approaching the High Temple, which stands atop the mountain’s highest formation of granite; and as they do, the sounds of the Stadium beyond that sacred structure grow louder. Some of the hundreds of voices are frantic with enthusiasm, while others cry out in desperation; and occasionally the crowd, which can number in the thousands when the stadium is full, breaks into wine-slurred song. But these chants always fall back, after only a few repetitions, into the deep, disorganized moaning that attends so many disappointed hopes. Yantek Korsar seems to grow sadder, on hearing these sounds: even his sarcasm can find no voice strong enough to rise above the roars of the three-tiered stone oval.

Trying to explain Korsar’s melancholia to himself, Arnem returns to thoughts of the yantek’s wife, the foreign-born Amalberta, and especially to memories of her death. The couple had endured a childless marriage for many years; for so long, in fact, that the yantek had resigned himself to Amalberta’s being barren—until, at the remarkable age of thirty-seven, she conceived, safely carried to term, and delivered herself of a son. Amalberta’s joy was great, although perhaps not so great as that of her husband, whose pride took a particularly martial form, inspiring his planning and successful execution of that same campaign against the eastern marauders during which the conduct of young Sixt Arnem first came to his attention. Arnem has always felt that the yantek’s championing of his own interests was due in no small part to Korsar’s new paternal instincts, which the sentek believes had so welled up over the years that, once loosed, they could not be confined to one object of affection. Whatever the truth, the first ten years of the child Haldar’s life were the most important of Sixt Arnem’s, as well: for it was largely through the example of the yantek’s family that the talented soldier from the Fifth District came to know a side of Broken that had been remote to him, as it was to most who hailed from that part if the city—a side that prized faithful service, and valued perfect affection as much as perfect appearance. Thus, for Arnem as for many soldiers, Haldar Korsar became a symbol: as much a breathing talisman as a boy. It seemed natural and good when, at the age of twelve, Haldar announced his desire to enter military service as a
skutaar
†
, which would require him to serve a linnet selected by his father, and to live within the Fourth District. After this term of service, which would conclude with his own elevation to linnet, Haldar would naturally assume a position of importance somewhere in the army, and carry on his father’s work—

But such had not been the will of Kafra. At the coronation of the God-King Saylal (a ceremony during which the new monarch was never actually seen by anyone save his priests, though he had full view of the large audience inside the High Temple), Haldar, along with two or three other youths and young ladies, was noticed by the Divine Personage amid a children’s chorus composed of the offspring of Broken’s most successful families; and priests soon arrived at the Korsar’s door, to announce that the boy had been selected for service to the God-King. Honor though such selection was, the thought of losing forever a child whose arrival had been so long delayed was a mortal blow for the yantek and his wife; and there were those who said that Amalberta’s heart began to wither the day she saw her son disappear forever through the gates of the Inner City. By this time, Arnem had married, and fathered the first of his own children, also a son: he could scarcely imagine having such a scion as Haldar snatched away so young, no matter the spiritual rewards that a life of service in the Inner City might bring. Yantek Korsar was a creature of duty, and eventually learned to exist, if not truly live, with the loss; not so Amalberta, who, after several years of trying to make a life without the boy who had become her life’s purpose, as well as her solace when Korsar was campaigning, seemed to simply surrender her will to live. Korsar, frantic over his wife’s steady decline, begged the Grand Layzin to release Haldar from divine service; but his requests were consistently refused, the last disappointment proving too much for Amalberta, whose heart quietly ceased to beat when the yantek brought her word that there was no hope of their ever being a family again.

Having been at the yantek’s side during this ordeal, Arnem developed a deep fear of the day when he would be asked by the priests of Kafra for one of his own children; and now, with that request finally made, the sentek finds that it has brought a distressingly deeper understanding of the twin burdens that Korsar has carried for so many years. The loss of Amalberta, his one truly intimate companion, following hard on the loss of the boy who had embodied his hopes for a meaningful legacy, seemed to shrink Korsar’s world: it was then that the yantek abandoned his own house (one of the more modest dwellings in the First District) and went to live in his headquarters, plainly intending to do nothing more than continue attending to the work of keeping Broken safe, until his worries as a commander would exhaust and destroy him.

But now Arnem must wonder, given the yantek’s strange behavior, if the business of Broken’s safety is all that Korsar has been pondering, during his long nights pacing those quarters that were never meant to be a home.

The small detachment of soldiers reaches the wide granite steps of the High Temple. At the foot as well as the top of these steps burn enormous bronze braziers, throwing their golden light onto the massive granite façade and the twenty-foot columns of the Temple. Given this setting, made all the more awe-inspiring by the time of night, the sentek feels that he is following Korsar into something more complicated than a council of war—a feeling confirmed when the yantek throws a heavy arm around Arnem’s neck, and urgently whispers:

“I meant what I said, Sixt. Whatever happens inside, you’re to stay out of it. The army will need you now, as never before.”

“You sound as though you expect to be relieved, Yantek.”

“That is certainly
among
the things that I expect,” Korsar replies, grunting. “But it will hardly be the most important. No …” Korsar takes his arm from the sentek’s neck, looking out over the city, and smiles: not in the false manner that has marked him thus far tonight, but in the manner of … Arnem gropes for words, and remembers Niksar’s earlier statement:
Like a man who senses Death hovering nearby, yet makes no move to elude it.

“Unless I’m very much mistaken, Sixt,” Korsar continues, with something that is strangely like anticipation in his voice, “I will never see the sun set over the western walls of this city again …”

The Bane foragers witness a disordering of Nature,

before the Moon summons them home …

“Lies! Lies, lies, and still more lies!”

“You dare question my honor
again
?”

Keera splays her small, slender fingers over her face, as Heldo-Bah and Veloc rail at each other.
It is remarkable,
the tracker thinks:
the shag steer stew has been in their stomachs for less time than it took to remove the pot from the fire, yet they are ready for more senseless bickering …

“There is no end to it,” is all that Keera has the patience to murmur aloud, as she stares through the dark, dense tangle of vegetation that surrounds their camp, alert for any sign of movement. Having led her party south of the Fallen Bridge at a good pace, Keera has decided that it is safer to allow Heldo-Bah to enjoy some of his precious beef now than it would be to attempt the journey back to Okot with him complaining every step of the way. She has found a fortunate site for their meal: a small clearing surrounded by thick ferns and briars, and sheltered by fir trees which obscure the light of their fire, if not its smell. As her companions continue to argue, she begins to wish that she had been less thorough: if they were not so well-concealed, she would have reason to tell both men to keep their mouths shut. As it is …

“Listen to me, Veloc,” Heldo-Bah says, as he leans into the fire, unconscious of its heat, and holds his back strap beef over a high flame with one of his knives. “That foul city has never meant anything save suffering for the Bane tribe—all your other ‘historical’ discussions only confuse that one supreme truth!” With his free hand, Heldo-Bah snatches up a stick of firewood and pokes at the bright coals mere inches from his deerskin boots, sending sparks flying at Veloc.

“Here!” Veloc cries, swatting at the glowing embers. “Unprovoked immolation is a crime, Heldo-Bah, even under Bane law!”

“Oh, I’ve been provoked!” Heldo-Bah counters, the beef having revived his strength. “By falsehoods from a festering philanderer!”

Veloc returns to the calm condescension that is ever his course of last resort when he is losing ground to his friend’s bullying: “Perhaps your own luck with women would be better, Heldo-Bah, had your father not eyed a sow with lust and produced a son with the face of a pig.”

“Better the son of a sow than a patron of Broken whores!”

“Whores?” Veloc’s false demeanor is shattered. “Why, you ape, I have never paid any Tall for her favors—each has offered herself to me!”

“And I suppose that you have never been indicted by the Groba for the trouble your failure to pay these ‘willing’ women has created?”

“Dog!”

The two men face each other across the fire, seemingly ready to fight to the death; yet Keera exhibits no great concern, for she knows how the exchange will end. Both Veloc’s and Heldo-Bah’s jaws tremble with anger for a silent moment; and then, with a suddenness that might bewilder anyone unfamiliar with their friendship, each bursts into laughter, throwing dirt harmlessly and rolling on the forest floor.

“It seems folly to bicker so,” Keera remarks, to herself as much as to her companions, “when, on every occasion, you only end by—”

Suddenly, the Bane tracker gets silently up on her legs, keeping them bent so that she can spring in any direction. Her remarkable nose is in the air, while her hands cup her ears. Heldo-Bah and Veloc stifle their laughter and creep noiselessly to Keera’s side: in much the same manner, she notices, as her three small children do when frightened. The men listen to the Wood, but are unable to catch the noises or scents that have alarmed her so.

“Again he moves,” Keera whispers in frustration. “But I cannot
understand
his movements—he neither hunts nor makes his den …”

“Not the same panther?” Veloc murmurs in disbelief.

Keera nods slowly. “I was worried that the smell of the stew might draw him, if we crossed paths again. But such an encounter seemed unlikely—I deliberately chose a different route. And yet there is no mistaking that step. It is so … 
odd.
Hesitant, anxious, searching—he could be wounded, I suppose. Or I may be wrong, he may stalk us. Whatever the case, we must seek refuge. Heldo-Bah—”

But when Keera turns, Heldo-Bah has already disappeared. She worries for an unreasoning instant that her noisy friend has been taken silently by the panther, for the great cats are more than capable of thus picking apart a group of humans: without ever being heard or seen. Soon, however, Keera hears grunting from above and sees Heldo-Bah, his deerskin sack slung over his shoulder, scaling the straight trunk of an ash, one of many trees that, due to the thickness of the forest canopy, have no lower limbs to offer a panther an avenue of pursuit. “By the Moon!” Keera murmurs. “Up the tree before I’ve given the word!”

“Waste your explanations on your fool brother,” the squirming Heldo-Bah hisses, by now some twenty feet up. “I’ll be no cat’s dinner!”

Veloc and Keera quickly follow Heldo-Bah, using their powerful feet and legs to climb two neighboring trees. Once lodged in the closely clustered aeries provided by the extended branches of their protectors, the three Bane watch expectantly—but the dreaded panther fails to appear.

“You’re certain it comes, Keera?” Veloc whispers quietly to his sister.

Keera lifts her shoulders in confusion. “Ordinarily, I would say that the fire might be keeping him away—but this cat was close enough to both smell and see the flames, yet he continued to venture nearer …”

“Likely it’s deciding what order to eat us in,” Heldo-Bah hisses, clutching his sheathed throwing knives with moist hands. “But I’ll—”

Keera raises her hand; and then a resonant growl can be heard outside the hemisphere of light created by the fire below. “At last,” Keera whispers, allowing a small smile. “You almost made me look a fool, cat …”

The panther rumbles; but it is a confused sound, neither aggression, nor pain, nor any other noise that so experienced a tracker as Keera can understand. Her smile quickly reverts to an aspect of consternation.

And then he appears: his great paws of the darkest gold padding against the Earth of the clearing, the panther enters
†
the light of the camp. He is young, but large (well over five hundred pounds) with short tufts of hair about the neck and shoulders.
‡
The dark spots and stripes on his nine-foot body are pronounced, giving the animal a distinctly masculine coat. This is significant: the Moon faith teaches that uniformity and richness of color in a panther’s coat are signs of divine favor, and certainly of mature (and usually feminine) wisdom. Though lacking such, this animal yet displays evident power in his long, thick muscles—which makes his interest in the diminutive foragers more mysterious, for he could easily take down a stag or wild horse, or even one of Lord Baster-kin’s shag cattle, any one of which would be a better meal than a human.

As the newcomer circles the camp, he shies, yet does not run, from the fire, which would ordinarily keep the majestic beast at a safe distance: but this male has an apparent purpose that emboldens him. With each step, his thick muscles cause the rich, iridescent fur to ripple ever more splendidly in the firelight, as though he is attempting to intimidate a rival or display his power for a mate. Yet Keera is right about the complexity of the panther’s behavior: for the amber eyes are glazed with passion, and, along with the quick panting of the tongue and mouth, they create an impression of consternation that belies the purposeful body.

“What is it, cat?” Keera says softly. “What agitates you so?”

As if in reply, another form slowly enters the light of the fire: two feet taller than even Veloc, it is a young woman, her seemingly flawless body moving easily inside a black silk robe edged in red velvet.
††
Visible through slits up the sides of the garment are long, beautifully formed thighs and calves, the movements of which mirror those of the panther’s four legs, as he paces on the opposite side of the fire. Sheets of black hair fall to the woman’s waist, and her eyes—which glitter an alluring green in the torchlight, a green the color of the best emeralds the Bane have been known to bring out of Davon Wood—are fixed on the amber orbs of the panther, which already betray some sort of enthrallment.

“A woman of the Tall,” Keera whispers. “In Davon Wood!”

“And one of rare form,” Veloc adds with approval, his gaze lustful. “She’s no farmer or fisherman’s wife, and no whore, either.” But then Veloc’s attention turns from the woman’s flesh to her raiment; and his stare becomes quizzical. “But—her robe. Heldo-Bah, am I mistaken, or—”

Heldo-Bah shows the black gap in his vicious teeth. “You are not.”

Keera looks at the gown. “What is it that he is so correct about?”

Heldo-Bah’s whisper takes on a killing tone, without either increasing in volume or losing its air of delight. “She is one of the Wives of Kafra.”

“A Wife of Kafra!” Keera nearly slips from her branch with the news, although she, too, keeps her voice from rising. “It can’t be. They never leave the First District of Broken—”

“Apparently, they do.” Heldo-Bah holds a knife by the blade between the thumb and first two fingers of his right hand, judging carefully the distance to the ground. “And by the Moon, this is one that won’t get back again—not tonight, at any rate.”

Veloc looks uneasily at his friend: the dim light and the shifting shadows of the leaves are transforming Heldo-Bah’s face into an exaggerated mask of delighted bloodlust. “You would murder a woman, Heldo-Bah?” Veloc whispers.

“I would murder a panther,” comes Heldo-Bah’s answer. “There are better uses for the women of the Tall—and not the kind you’re thinking of, Veloc. Or not
merely
that kind. She could also bring a ransom such as we have never demanded: weapons that the Tall have always refused us—”

“Stay your blade,” Keera whispers urgently, putting a hand before Heldo-Bah’s arm as he lifts the knife. “You’ll murder neither woman
nor
panther—not unless the cat attacks us. They are possessed of powerful souls, and I want no such enemies—” Her lecture stops short. “Hold …,” she says, more perturbed than ever. “What sorcery is
this
?”

The Wife of Kafra keeps her eyes on the panther’s as she squats before the animal, her long legs angling out through the slits in her gown. The great beast begins to growl again, and to shift from side to side nervously—but just then, as if seeing the fire and the stew pot for the first time, the woman glances about quickly, beginning to hurry her apparent ritual.

“Has she seen us?” Veloc asks, withdrawing deeper into the leaves of his tree with no more sound than a flitting thrush.

“Steady.” Heldo-Bah, too, nestles further into his perch, looking even more pleased. “She’s seen nothing—but we, apparently, are going to see a great deal …”

The Wife of Kafra quickly unties a golden cord that gathers her robe at the waist. With impressive confidence, she strides directly to the panther, as ever staring into his eyes intently; then she kneels, and puts her nose to the throat of the beast.

“She invites death!” Keera says. “Unless she
is
a sorceress …”

The foragers grow silent once more. The woman’s long hair falls in front of her breasts as she moves her cheeks against the cat’s face in long strokes. The panther growls, but the noise soon fades into a loud purr: the beast, still confounded, is now completely enthralled.

“Oh, Moon,” Keera whispers. “This is sorcery, indeed.”

“If she persists,” Heldo-Bah cackles, leaning forward eagerly, “what that cat will do to her will be anything but sorcery …”

As the panther continues to purr and only occasionally growl, the woman begins to run her long fingers through the thick golden fur as she might a human male’s hair, coaxing the animal to fold his forelegs; and then, with a swiftness that startles the Bane foragers but not the cat, she slides onto the animal’s back, looping the golden cord that girdled her waist about its thick neck. When the woman pulls back on the cord with authority, the panther stands; and when she tightens her knees on the cat’s shoulders, he starts forward slowly.

Heldo-Bah clearly fears that his prized quarry will escape, however unbelievable the method; and he produces the same knife once more, ready to do what he must. But then he, his two companions, the Wife of Kafra, and even the panther snap their heads toward the southeast, expressions of alarm on all their faces:

Through the forest comes the low call of a powerful horn, its sonorous, steady drone slow to reach its peak but full of urgency. Called the Voice of the Moon, the massive instrument rests against a high hill in the Bane village of Okot, and is as old as the tribe itself. It was fashioned from clay taken out of the bed of the Cat’s Paw, after the first of the banishments resulted in the exile community’s establishment two centuries ago; and it has been used ever since to order tribesmen home, throughout as much of Davon Wood as its twenty-foot tube and ten-foot flaring bell—so enormous that the Horn requires huge bellows to produce its single, mournful note—can penetrate.

The foragers silently wait out the sounding of the Horn, hoping that they will not have to descend while the Wife of Kafra and the panther are still present. But after a few seconds of silence, the enormous instrument calls out again, and with greater insistence; or so it seems to Keera, who is keenly aware that danger in Okot means danger to her family.