A Lot Like Death
They rode as if demons chased them. After a full day on horseback, they’d closed the gap between them and Murin considerably. At a cost. Intense exhaustion swept through Zaz, his mouth was dry and every part of him ached. His heart thundered in his chest as if he had run the whole way instead of the horses.
“We need to stop for a rest.”
“No, we need to cover more ground.”
“And exactly how are we going to do that on dead horses, Mother?”
She threw a pinched look of anger over her shoulder at him. He slowed and guided his horse to a nearby stream cutting through the plain. He eased off the horse’s back and filled his water skin as the horse drank. While Mother conceded, she didn’t move from her horse, just sat there, looking fragile and formidable at the same time.
Soft grasses swayed and bobbed. Flocks of birds erupted in a flurry of wings and settled again. The horses chomped at the grass with hungry determination, and the tension and fatigue, which had been building up in Zaz, eased a bit.
“We need more supplies,” Mother said after a long while. Her eyes quickly scanned him, and with slightly raised brows and a huff she returned to looking straight ahead.
Was that supposed to be his fault, too? She would have been running out of things with or without him. He returned to staring at the mountains in the distance. She was hardly worth the battalion of thoughts scratching at the edge of his awareness.
After finally dismounting, Mother sat on a rock close to the water’s edge and glowered at the mountains.
“Do we know anyone close by?” he asked.
She shook her head, then stopped abruptly. “There is Kai’s.”
“He lives close to here? How do you know?”
She studied him as if she was trying to see his heart beating through his flesh. He grew restless under her gaze. “It’s time you stop asking the questions and answer some of mine, Zaz.”
“Such as?”
“Why you adamantly refuse to hunt? More importantly, why you are behaving so… differently?”
“I’m the same as I’ve always been.”
“No,” she said thoughtfully. “No, you have become a mystery.”
“Mystery breeds mystery.”
She looked away. “We need to go now to make it to Kai’s house before nightfall.”
Zaz smiled. He’d won something, cowed her into being the one to look away, the one to be ashamed, if but for a second. He mounted his horse and followed her. For a long time, the only sound to be heard was the soft thud of the horses’ hooves against the ground and their occasional grunts and whinnies. He listened to their talk as he studied his horse’s mane; the coarse hair glinted blue-black against the brown of his hide.
As the sky inched toward violet, the light played against the outer slopes of the mountains where the ancient rocks were worn down. Normally a soft shade of bone, the stone glowed pink in the remaining daylight. The rocks shimmered, giving the illusion that the hills vacillated, that they shifted and moved.
“Zaz, please tell me why you won’t hunt.” Mother’s voice was soft.
So now she was trying to be polite. After all her threats and criticism, now she decided to say please. “I don’t know if I can explain it,” he said. Or if he wanted to. Absently he stroked the silk of the horse’s hide. He leaned into the warmth of it.
Mother narrowed her eyes. “I will answer any one of your questions if you answer this,” she said finally.
“Now you’re trying to bargain with me?”
She sighed. In this light, her skin was so pale it was almost translucent. It seemed tightly drawn over her bones and petal thin. “Let’s get to Kai’s before dark.”
They galloped the last three leagues. Kai’s house sat at the base of the foothills, its walls the same color and texture as the surrounding trees. Zaz dismounted. Rubbing at the ache in his back, he peaked through the shuttered windows. It was vacant with no signs anyone had been there in some time. A strange door barred the entrance.
“Go tend the horses, I’ll get the house ready.” Mother came up and tossed the reins at him.
He let them fall to the ground. She busied herself with a paving stone. With the way she acted, someone might have thought she was more important than the Regent or Augur. Even more important than the Svarasa.
He walked into the barn. The horses followed him.
Surprisingly, the hay was still fresh and all the equipment was clean and in pristine condition. The horses chose one larger stall to bed in together. Zaz liberated them from the reins, bits, halters and saddles. He sighed. As he peeled these things off the animals, the tightness in his own back melted. Now that—that was weird. He peered at the horses, shook off the strange sensation of an unseen connection. He took his time brushing them. Even though food was probably waiting for him inside the house, he relished the time away from her. Weariness, hostility, and agitation eased and he almost felt like Zaz again. He retrieved water, hay and oats for the horses while thinking about the bargain she’d proposed.
What was there to say? He didn’t know what was going on with him, nor did he care to share it with her. One moment he was Zaz, and the next moment strange emotions rocked him, changed him into a different person. Maybe it was a consequence of the deer’s death. No. That never happened.
The dreams were real and they were his. The songs and the palace and his friend had nothing to do with her.
The house was warm and Mother had made a savory porridge with dried mushrooms and amaranth grain left in the food stores. Zaz entered, looked around. It was almost like home. After they ate, they pushed the table aside so they could lay their bedrolls next to the stove to keep warm.
As soon as he lay down, his eyelids grew heavy.
“Well?” Mother asked.
Her harsh voice startled him. “What?” he asked.
“Zaz, don’t be obtuse. Tell me why you won’t hunt,” she said with a hint of sharpness in her voice.
He stared at the faint glow licking the ceiling. “Perhaps I feel a deep connection with animals. Okay? Perhaps blood and gore and violence are uncivilized.” The words felt wrong in his mouth.
“Ridiculous. You’ve always emulated Murin. What happened?”
“Emulated?”
“Gods, Zaz, don’t they teach you anything during your stupid Initiation. It means to imitate, to model oneself after. Now what happened?”
“Answer this first: who are you?”
“Absolutely not. I asked you a question.”
“How do I know you’ll answer it once you have what you want?”
“It’s called trust.”
“Well, Mother,” he said, “I’m not sure I trust you.”
“How can you say that?”
“How can you chase after Murin and forget about the rest of us?”
“Zaz…” she said. It was a warning.
“Mother,” he said sweetly.
“You want to be difficult? Fine,” she snapped. “Labhair. Now, why won’t you hunt?”
Strings pulled at Zaz’s lips. An unseen hand moved his mouth and forced words out. At the same time, energy flowed into him, filled some reservoir hiding in his head, and in his gut. “It started with the deer. Father wounded it and waited for me to kill it.”
“What deer? When?”
The words came out haltingly as he tried to keep them in. “The one for Gupti. It stumbled. I was terrified and sad for it. I just wanted it to run away.”
“What happened, Zaz?” Her voice was firm.
“I don’t know what happened. It was some sort of … connection.”
“And?” She prodded.
“All I know is what I felt. It was like he and I were the same person. It was like I could see his mind, feel his pain. And when I killed him—” He gulped and blinked rapidly. “I felt his death.”
“How is that possible?”
Zaz wiped at the tears running into his ears. “I don’t know. I don’t want to remember it.”
Mother muttered something he couldn’t make out. “I don’t see how this is possible. Ketuans don’t possess the lineage,” she whispered to herself. “I controlled every—It just doesn’t make sense.”
“What doesn’t make sense?”
The blanket rustled as she turned. “Could he be?”
“Could I be what?”
“Nothing,” she snapped at him.
He felt vulnerable and raw. After a moment, he said, “I didn’t want to talk about it.”
“You needed to talk about it.”
“No, you needed me to talk about it.” He paused. “How did you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Get me to talk.”
She sighed. “I didn’t. We made a bargain.”
“What was that word? The strange one you said just before I couldn’t control my own mouth? How’s that possible, Mother?”
She said nothing.
Zaz picked at the blanket, tore off a piece of lint. “Who are you?”
“That is your question?”
“Why not?”
“Ask something else.”
“What’s wrong with my question?”
“It is ridiculous, that is what’s wrong with it.”
“Hardly. It’s obvious I don’t know you.”
“Ask something else.” Her voice was tight.
“You aren’t going to answer it, are you? That strange word,” he whispered, deciding to have at least one of his questions answered. He wanted to know what it meant, where it came from. “Labhair?” He expected silence.
“I came from an Empire called Seduma. From across the Sea.”
Great Kenara! She was actually answering his question. The one he really wanted answered. How had she changed her mind so quickly? “You already told me you weren’t from Tarska. Tell me something I don’t know.”
Zaz was stunned by what he heard next
“My real name is Niamh, not Claire. Kai helped me chose the false name when he sheltered me here, in this house. The spring before I arrived in Tolslovel.”
He swallowed. “Niamh? I’ve never heard that before.”
“It means radiant in the Dragon tongue.”
He stopped breathing and his eyes widened. Dragon tongue? “But where is Seduma?”
“Seduma borders Artesia.” She sounded as if she, too, struggled with her words, as if she was trying to bite down on them to break them into incoherent sounds. “Artesia is the empire at the other end of the tentacle of land you Tarskans call the Blade of the Sea.”
He didn’t miss the way she said ‘you Tarskans’. Disdainfully, and full of venom. “What did you do in Seduma? Why’d you leave?”
“My father was the king.”
Zaz bolted upright. “King.”
Mother hummed her answer. “Mm-hmm.”
“What does this mean?”
She snorted a derisive laugh. “It means I am a princess. A princess without a crown or throne. Not so uncommon for royalty these days.”
“But why would you leave? Princesses are still important, aren’t they?”
“Where I come from, they respect women about as well as Tarskans do.”
“You have plenty of respect.” Sure, Father and Mother-Claire-Niamh didn’t get along, but they worked well together. There was food, clothing, and strong healthy children.
“Oh, Zaz.” Her voice drifted, sounding distant. “Women and men should be treated as equals.”
“But that’s blasphemy,” he whispered.
“And why is it blasphemy?” She didn’t try to disguise the tears in her voice. “Because some curmudgeon eons ago said so. And what does life teach us? That Murin has better tracking and hunting abilities than you, that she is taller than you and stronger than her father and despite these superior skills and attributes, she must still bow down to you simply because you are men? I have a mind, education and experience. I form thoughts and solve problems and look at things abstractly. I can analyze and heal and yet I must subject myself to the tyranny of men, of Vapan. And what for? Because he is smarter than I? More capable? No. Simply, because he is a man and I am not. You call it blasphemy because that is what you are taught to believe. It is not a conclusion you have come to through experience or observation.”
He started to say something else, but Mother stopped him. “Enough. I’m tired.”
***
They packed up and rode out in silence during the early morning hours. The ache in his back returned as soon as the horses were saddled. It was so strange. He’d never heard of anything like it happening to anyone else. Could he really connect with animals? He thought about asking Mother, but they hadn’t talked since last night. She refused even to look at him. That hurt just as much as her prodding and snobbish comments.
He imagined himself cocooned in a blanket of steel, protected from her. He’d gotten the idea from a dream he’d had the night before. A dream in which he’d come up with his own far-fetched theory of what was happening, that it was a good thing, something he could learn to control.
It was quiet. Only the horses’ hooves clomping on the ground seasoned the air with sound. The morning held its breath, as though on the cusp of some transformation. Steadily they progressed toward the main road leading into the mountains. Once there, they turned into the slope and nudged the horses into a slow and careful pace up the treacherous road. Light diffused through the clouds, which sidled around the mountains like the curling tails of silver foxes. Morning passed into afternoon, but the colors in the stony heights still clung to grey.
Then the air became tight.
Zaz pressed a hand to his chest and wheezed each breath, as if a giant invisible hand had clamped around his ribs and squeezed him. The horses began shifting restlessly from side to side. They tossed back their heads with eyes rolling and mouths frothing. Fear amplified inside Zaz, threatened to split his head in two.
He gasped, stopped his horse and listened to the nothing. “Can you feel it?”
“Yes.” Mother breathed the word.
His heart slowed and each beat of it was painful. Sensation, breath and life slipped from him. They all froze. Life had simply stopped and all the nows the future promised had been discarded into the deep valleys hidden in the darkness below.
Put up your shield! Zaz gathered air into his lungs, and gasped. His energy flowed to an unknown point, it drew off his body, muscles quivered involuntarily. It was a lot like death.
Ananke and Eos 