Chapter 16: Proper Motivation

The brothers passed through the front door into a world full of arcane objects, stacked paper, and cobwebs unlike anything they had ever seen. The entry to the home was a small box of a room with no purpose other than storing a multitude of cloaks, robes, shoes, and hats. Branching wooden stands festooned with the clothing stood on all sides, crowding the arched doorways leading to either side. To the right was a dimly lit chamber at least twice as big as Tarek’s family hut dominated by an enormous wooden table on which stood clear containers full of fluids of every color under the sun. Tarek thought the containers might be of crystal or some such material, but they were smooth and well-shaped, not faceted. They looked like the same stuff that filled the windows. He itched to put his hands on the fascinating things, but Xochil herded the boys into the room on the left instead.

This space was no less interesting than the other, though it was completely different. This room was well-lit, with an even, white light that emanated from clear, shining globes hanging from the ceiling. It wasn’t fire, and it wasn’t the glow of any luminescent bug, either. He had no idea what was burning in them. A cheery fire burned in the stone hearth, and dark wood shelves covered most of the walls. Strange rectangular objects sat in rows on the shelves with cryptic marks on the side facing out; some had brightly colored outsides and others were wrapped in leather. He wanted to pick them up and find out what they were, but Xochil’s warning against touching things rang in his head.

Xochil himself looked far older in the bright light than Tarek expected. He’d always been crabbed and bald, but now his skin looked thin and faded, and his liver-spotted hands shook. He looks twenty years older than he did two days ago.

“I hate flood season,” the old man said petulantly. “Doing the simplest things is twice as hard.” He settled in a padded chair by the fire with a groan and covered his legs with a blanket. “Don’t hover over me,” he snapped. “Sit by the fire or something.”

“The flood seems to bother you less than most,” Tarek said, settling by the fireplace alongside Tavi. The heat was delicious. His long-clenched muscles began to relax.

“Not everything is as it seems,” Xochil said. “I’d hoped you would have realized that by now, especially in regard to me.”

“Holding back the flood must take great magic,” Tavi said, a strange look in his eye.

Xochil merely smiled.

“How do you do it?” Tavi asked.

Xochil snorted. “The little shit wants my secrets,” he said to Tarek. “Watch out for the greedy ones.”

A growl sounded from a darkened doorway at the far end of the room and then a bell-like baying filled the room. A dark shape the size of a panther darted toward Tarek. It leapt before he could get his feet underneath him, and he was bowled over backwards onto the flagstone floor. Tarek instinctively thrust his hands at the thing’s throat to keep its sharp teeth from his face. It snarled and growled, slaver flinging in all directions. No matter how Tarek pushed, it kept lunging for him. He was thoroughly pinned.

Stop! he thought desperately, fingers digging into its skin. Friend! Not fight!

The sending was weak without blood or saliva to connect them, but the skin-to-skin communication worked. The creature gave a startled whine and backed up, its heavy, arm-length tail swinging in a broad arc from side to side. It sniffed at his feet gingerly and then sat back, panting and grinning a broad, toothy grin.

It was exactly the sort of thing he’d done for years as a child and not touched again until his manhood hunt. As much as he feared his blood magic now, he’d reached for it without hesitation.

“What is that?” Tarek asked, pointing at the thing. His voice quavered more than he might have liked, but he was just glad he still had a throat to make noise with.

“The worst dog in the world,” Xochil replied. He hadn’t shifted so much as a hair in his seat. He looked at the creature with disdain, and it wiggled happily around to lick at the old man’s ankles, its tail thwacking soundly against Tavi as it waved furiously in an erratic arc.

“Dog?”

“Not native to these parts, but they make good guard beasts. Some do, at least; not necessarily this one. Her name is Axies.”

“She did well enough,” Tarek said, reaching out a tentative hand. Axies sniffed at his fingers carefully and gave them a friendly lick with her long, floppy tongue. The momentary bond brought by their previous touch had faded, but a sense of the beast flared back to life as the saliva coated his fingers. She was a friendly, loving soul, and for all her snarls and snapping, Tarek felt nothing but companionable interest now. “She was about three heartbeats from ripping out my throat.”

“Yes, and then she didn’t,” Xochil said, his eyes gleaming in the reflected firelight. “Now why might that be?”

“Did you…?” Tavi asked quietly.

Xochil was watching them closely, but it wasn’t a question that Tarek could deflect, not given Tavi’s fears. “Yes. I didn’t even think about it.”

Tavi gripped the hilt of the knife at his waistband and muttered too quietly for Tarek to hear.

“Should I have let her kill me instead?”

“Of course not. I just… never mind.”

“All right, enough dancing around it,” Xochil snapped. “I’m weary and you’re wasting time. You’ve got the dreaded, fabled blood magic and you want me to fix everything.”

Tarek spread his hands. “Not everything, but…”

“Tell me how you were discovered.”

Tarek glanced at Tavi, who squirmed uncomfortably and looked away. “There’s a man who hates me – Kanga. I found him tearing up Yaretzi’s veil and smearing it with blood just as I was fetching it for the wedding. I attacked him. I never meant to taste his blood—”

Xochil raised a skeptical eyebrow.

“In all truth, I didn’t. I swear it. I think his knuckles cut open on my teeth. Suddenly I was well again, strong, and I could feel him from the inside. He had to do what I said, and so… I hurt him. Badly. I lost all control and, and… I fed on his blood. More of it.”

Xochil stroked his beard with a shaking hand. “Once you had control of the idiot, why didn’t you just tell him to go away?”

Tarek blinked. “I… don’t know. I was so angry.”

“And so they all found you stuck to him like a tick.”

Tarek looked back to Tavi, who had one hand on the knife hilt and the other kneading the leather of his loincloth. He was staring into the fire with a deep frown. “Something like that.”

“Talk about falling on your ass into the circle of greatness.” Xochil gave a weak chuckle. “I can’t think of how you could have done it worse.”

“I never thought…!”

“No, of course you didn’t. Let me spin how that moment could have gone for you. You have a fight with your little rival and end up tasting his blood. That’s when you tell him to stop being a rat shit about your woman, to leave you alone, and oh, by the way, he can never say anything about the blood magic. You’re friends now. He apologizes in front of everyone about the veil, you marry that little slip you seem to like so much – or not, far wiser – and when all’s said and done, nobody hangs you in the middle of a flood. Sound like a better way for that day to have gone?”

Tarek nodded reflexively and then consciously made himself shake his head instead. “You don’t understand, elder. The blood…” He wrung his hands. “I wanted it. I turned into an animal.”

Xochil nodded. “So it’s hard to do. Everything worthwhile is.” He pointed at Tarek, glaring. “If you hadn’t run off so quick the other night and instead actually talked to me about your magic, I could have helped you. Prepared you.”

“I didn’t… I was scared. It was a secret.”

“And it would have stayed that way, stupid boy! Instead you’re here inside my house and I’m tired and I want you to leave and you haven’t even taken the first step in the right direction!”

“I can’t fix that,” Tarek sighed. “Please, what do I do now?”

Xochil sat back, running his bony hands over his bald pate, looking drawn and pale. “You’ll have to sneak into Zuma’s house in the night. I have a canoe you can use.”

“What good will that do? He’ll kill me on sight.”

“That’s why you wait until he’s sleeping, stupid. One prick of a knife anywhere you can reach and you’ll have his blood inside you before he’s awake enough to yell about it.”

Tarek felt a chill. “No.”

“You want to go home, don’t you? This is the only way that happens. You tell him everything’s fine and that you’re coming home. You’ll have to get him to bring all the others to his home one by one so you can do the same to them.”

“You want me to drink the blood of every single person in the tribe?” Tarek said, horrified.

“It’s your own fault. You let everyone find out and watch you get condemned. It’s a mess, and you’ll have to clean up yourself.”

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“You can’t do that,” Tavi said, intense.

“No, I can’t!” Tarek agreed. “Xochil, don’t you understand? I swore I’d never use the blood magic again. I want you to take it away, not make me use it more!”

Xochil looked baffled. “Take it away? Why would I do that?”

“Because it’s awful! I nearly killed a man, and I felt like a beast when I did it. I never want to touch that foulness again. I’d rather die.”

“You nearly did.”

“Yes, I know, but…” Tarek scrambled for the words to convince the old man. “If you can take it out of me, cure me, then I could go to Yaretzi and take her with me. The others will never forgive me now, but if I’m clean of the blood magic, she’ll come. I know it.”

“Would she?” Tavi asked quietly. “Really?”

“She would!”

“She gave the ring back.”

“That wasn’t…!” Tarek protested hotly. “She felt unworthy of the gift. She said so!”

“It’s so easy to say things when a person’s supposed to be dead soon,” Xochil said.

Tarek thought of Yaretzi’s perfect face frozen in horror when she saw him standing bloody and roaring over Kanga’s body. Would she…? “She’d come with me,” he said stubbornly. “She would. But I can never even ask it until I’m free of the blood magic. I can’t saddle her with that kind of curse. What sort of monstrous children would we have?”

Xochil shook his head, disbelieving. “You’d give up having power over anyone you ever wanted just to run back to some girl?”

“She’s not some girl,” Tarek said. “It’s Yaretzi.”

“I know who she is,” Xochil sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “She’s a perfectly adequate young woman. But if you made the decision with your mind instead of your nether bits, I think you might come to a different conclusion.”

Tavi stood up, shaking his fist at Xochil. “Stop trying to convince him to use the blood magic! It’s evil! Doesn’t that matter to you? So what if he can make people do what he wants? It would make him bad. Have you spent so little time around other people that you don’t care what happens to them, or are you evil yourself?”

Xochil pushed himself forward in his chair on shaking arms. “I told you to shut up, child,” he hissed. “I warned you.”

The old man pointed at Tavi, and the tip of his finger flashed with cool white light. Tavi clapped his hands to his face. He made muffled noises that sounded like cries of fear. He stumbled back across Tarek, who caught him as he fell. The dog Axies, excited by the commotion, dashed around them in circles, barking.

“What’s wrong?” Tarek cried, trying to pull Tavi’s hands away so he could see. The boy was thrashing, making those strangely quiet sounds of panic. His eyes were wide with fright. Tarek trapped one hand and pulled it away.

Tavi’s mouth was gone. Smooth skin covered the lower half of his face.

Xochil slumped back in his chair. “Come into my house and bother me,” he mumbled. He looked gray with fatigue.

Tarek clutched his brother. “Put it back!” he demanded.

“What, so he can make more noise?” Xochil said. “No thanks.”

Tarek wanted to leap on the old man and shake him into sticks and dust, but he couldn’t leave Tavi. “Please! He’s just trying to protect me. He didn’t mean any harm.”

“Can’t protect you,” Xochil muttered, pulling his blanket up over his chest. “My job.” His eyes were sunken, and he looked about to fall asleep where he sat. His shaking was worse, and his hair had gone pure white and brittle.

“Put his mouth back, Xochil. He doesn’t deserve this.” Tavi had gone quiet, his eyes darting and the breath through his nose harsh and quick.

“Noise, noise! I’m so tired. Nothing left. I’ll do it tomorrow.” The old man turned away in his chair as if to take a nap.

Tarek let Tavi down gently to the ground. He stood and crossed to Xochil’s chair. He filled his fist with the old man’s robes and pulled him upright. They were nose to nose. Xochil was shockingly light.

“Do it,” Tarek said, voice low and menacing. “Do it right now or else I’ll drink your blood and force you to. Then I’ll make you set your own house on fire and sit in the middle of it.”

Xochil laughed. The sound was weak and brittle, but his eyes glittered knowingly. “Proper motivation,” he said, patting Tarek’s cheek fondly. “All it takes.”

He snapped his fingers, and Tavi drew a gasping breath through his mouth. Tarek looked back at him, and his brother was touching his restored lips as tears leaked from the corners of his eyes.

Tarek let Xochil back down into his chair carefully. “Thank you,” he said calmly, backing away.

“This has been a productive little chat, I think,” Xochil said, gathering his blanket about him. His whole body shook now.

Tavi stood and took Tarek by the elbow. “Let’s leave.”

“Yes,” Tarek agreed. “This was a mistake.” He turned to Xochil. “Forgive us for intruding, honored elder,” he said stiffly. “We will find our way elsewhere.” Nodding to Tavi, he retreated toward the front door.

He made it as far as the doorway when Xochil said, “I can help you be rid of it.”

Tarek turned. “What?”

The old man looked half-dead. “Stupid thing to ask, but I can do it. Don’t leave.”

Tarek and Tavi looked at each other and then back to him. “You wanted us to leave.”

“Mean old man. Alone too long. Stay. We’ll talk in the morning.” He beckoned to them feebly. “Sleep by the fire. Axies’ll keep you company. Don’t touch things.”

“We don’t want to stay here,” Tavi said. “You’re crazy.”

“Yes,” admitted Xochil, “but I can fix him. Stay.” He closed his eyes for a long moment. “Must rest. Don’t leave the room… not safe.” He gestured to a tall vase in the corner. “Use that if you need to piss. It’s seen worse.”

“Xochil…” Tarek began, trying to find a way to say no.

“Door’s locked. Won’t open. Stay.” The old man sighed, and as the breath left him, so did the solidity. Tarek could see through his desiccated hand into the fire.

“What’s happening?” Tavi asked, staring at Xochil.

“Tomorrow. Talk. Do not wander.”

And then he was gone, vanished into thin air.

Tarek strode to the front door and pulled on it, but it was stuck fast, and he couldn’t find any way to open it. He sighed and turned back to Tavi. Axies watched them from her perch by the fire and wagged her tail.

“Looks like we’re staying,” Tarek said grimly.

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