The Totem-Maker (part one hundred thirty-four)

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Twelve

A Land So Perilous

(part one hundred thirty-four)

The stage where priests would conduct their burnings and auguries must be assembled and festooned within the amphitheater. Where, too, for three days before the feast, would be the throng of a holiday market, goods for sale displayed on the lower seats.

“Then a man of the Emperor may be shown the stones in private. He will carry word that these glories are too well hid to be discovered, and will be destroyed in the lake of Lotoq, if we do not get our price. Even the smallcrafters who were cheated, who last year lost all their labor to a company of soldiers, will be compensated.”

Takel’kalem had by this time warmed to possibilities.

Another unfolded a cloth, a painted map of known ways to the borderlands. “We must be well on the road before the curse overtakes them. Here! The road east ends, meeting this that comes north and goes south. They will suppose us to make south, for the sea. It is wise to escape by sea. But if we go north to the barbarous lands, I point out to you, that is but a second way of two.”

“North it will be,” Zetihama said. “One day’s march. After, away into the hills. We have no other hope.”

He lapsed into thought. Bani’s father began to fear that he sought the god’s blessing, and they would wait without food or drink for the Hama’s meditations to end.

But he returned. “We will raid the soldiers’ barracks, for forged weapons. We must gather the rosira seed.”

“We can’t. They always pour a cup for the table slaves, when the drink is of our brewing.”

“Lightly,” Zetihama said. “A seed or two.”

The council’s reasons were strong, but secret; their proposal wanted utter abandonment, utter embracing. All that the people knew and were comforted by, they must leave behind. They must obey in faith, and only after be told why they had. They could carry their artisans’ tools, their packed provisions, a blanket, warm clothes, hardly more. No garments of ceremony, such as the villagers treasured. Nothing of weight, no musical instrument for joy, save a reed pipe, no animal too slow or too skittish.

The infirm could not go, nor the frail elderly. Children of a certain age could not go, unable to walk at an adult’s pace, too big to be carried. It struck the council this plan must be over-harsh, and that some, confronted with it, might betray them. A second plan was arrived at, a second means of escape for the weak, into the thick forests on the western flank of Lotoq, where the seawinds dropped their burden of rain.

Bani’s father was charged with leading those villagers who could not or would not take the road, and he with Bani parted on that night of the festival. “Before your mother knows you have gone, be in the cave of the hermit, and serve him as he asks.”

“Won’t the soldiers scour the forest? And the demon-men, the white-faced ones? Where have they come from? What if they live there?”

138

Lore and Lessons

The Totem-Maker (part one hundred thirty-five)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)