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

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Thirteen

The Citadel

(part one hundred thirty-seven)

Our road began to descend. Trees clung less precariously to banks that did not vault, but sloped. Soon the trees’ variety had much increased, and the loneliness of the mountain crags gave way to vivid life, to darting small game, birds that flitted alongside us, dropping to probe manure pats; or, when we camped, to steal a bite of meat from the spit.

Rockfalls no longer menaced. The way grew to a thoroughfare, broad and pebbled, with many wagons and riders making for the mountains. I could understand, having endured that nervous passage, the irony I heard in our guides’ voices, and the strangers’ answers.

“Live and return,” were the words of Ba’ahn and Diira.

The traders said: “Live in humility, with an empty purse.”

I asked Diira what was this curse, as her good cheer belied insult.

“We fast half-days under a waxing moon, until it has grown a seven-span, if the gods have allowed us peace on their road, and we spend nothing we carry from the plains.”

“Nothing?”

Ba’ahn slowed his mount, and fell in with us. There was space in this valley—which in shape was like the split logs, hollowed, that in Monsecchers brought water from the hills—for our company to spread and gather, gossip with those whose talk amused us most.

Ba’ahn said: “A new marvel for you, Totem-Maker. We will visit the palace in time, and you will see it, our gold and silver emptied into the zhatabe’s coffers.”

“Why? Or how?”

“For, that coins are not needed. Who has use for them? I want food and drink, shoes on my feet, a bed to sleep in, a garden where birds sing.”

“Yes, and so do I. But if I hadn’t these things, coins…”

He stopped me, and just as he spoke, I grasped what the zhatabe’s coffers had portended.

“In the city, but I will not name it for you…”

“He cannot. Some of our names are forbidden foreigners,” Diira said.

“Are they? And if I find favor with the zhatabe?”

“That is in their mind.”

I was puzzled. Her finality told me that the mind of the zhatabe…

But their. Was the zhatabe not a person, a sort of king? Their mind, at any rate, was another matter of the forbidden.

“The city, Ba’ahn,” I reminded him.

“In the city all wants are provided.”

“Happiness is universal? You have no lowly caste, no wealthy one?”

“No.” But he spoke in a conditional way, and I felt he meant yes.

“You will see,” said Diira.

141

Lore and Lessons

The Totem-Maker (part one)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)