The Totem-Maker (part one hundred twenty)

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Eleven

Lore and Lessons

(part one hundred twenty)

That road. Samatho fell entranced for a moment, thinking of it. A way beyond his father’s land that others, in liberty of whim and choice, travelled. The newcomers climbed, hailing Liben, who rose and called to his wife. She with her daughters was curtained away, their chamber reached by steps that served for benches—below, where the men held important talks.

Samatho was told to go up to the women.

“They have brought me news. The news may concern you, but I shall have to hear it. We’ll see, we’ll see…”

Liben was off, whistling an air, lending a hand to the messengers, and Samatho, in difficulties with his pride, passed through the curtain. He refused food and drink; he gave short answers to Liben’s wife. But her learning surprised him…she spoke Darsdena to best her husband, and knew of the king’s late conquests, and the state of his purse.

She dispatched two daughters to perform an errand, the exchange low-voiced, glances and smiles sent his way; while Samatho, piqued, sat deaf to all he might have half-understood.

“Come sit by my middle girl, Karabitha Noakale. What lands does your father promise you upon your own marriage?”

Samatho did not dwell in such isolation as to miss this comingling, of daughter and marriage. “Unless my father and brother both were dead, I expect nothing at all.”

Liben’s wife thrust at him a stick of peeled bark. “Now, now. Put that in the fire. Pray Chos forgive you. ‘Carry my words by the west wind, lest the sun set on them’.”

He knew the prayer. He understood he was to repeat it. The girl, Karabitha Noakale, tapped him on the shoulder. “Stubborn? Pray Chos-kit steal away mischief from your heart. Suppose, boy, you were to marry wealth? Is it in that heart to wish ill on your father and brother, when you have no need of theirs?”

He pushed the stick in the fire, and said, loudly enough to draw a laugh from the other side of the curtain: “Pray Chos forgive me.”

She tapped him again.

“Carry my words by the west wind, lest the sun set on them.”

[Chos-kit was a thief of fame, the god’s bastard, the only of his two hundred children not born of his wife. She, this great mother of the northerner’s faith, was no Aza, who never could have spawned so unseemly.]

“You wonder why Noakale had her way with me. I knew my position, and I knew my danger. Not even from displeasing Liben, but for displeasing my father. And if I cost my brother his ambition, he too would have my head. Then, Liben’s wife, who was my elder and a lady… And the girl, of course. She had insulted me badly to call me boy. But she had touched me, and I felt something lingering in it.”

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Lore and Lessons

The Totem-Maker (part one hundred twenty-one)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)