Chapter 36: In the Shade of the Tree

They hid in the bushes at the edge of the forest and stared out over the expanse of the Kuruk village. Up close, Tarek couldn’t see the entirety of the Heart of the Song; at this distance it was merely a wide brown wall in the center of everything that rose up, up, up to an impossibly elevated canopy. It would take fifty men holding hands to circle its base. He’d done his fair share of gaping at the tree in the past few days as they approached it, but now his attention was drawn by the Kuruk village that crowded around the great tree’s base.

‘Village’ hardly seemed the proper word for it. The homes were built of wood and stone in much the same manner as Xochil’s, and even if none were quite so grand, they came close, with tall, peaked roofs of bark shingles and brightly painted doors. The stilts meant to hold the homes above the flood waters were no more than two hands high, meaning that even during the worst years the flooding was minimal in this part of the Land. Buildings crowded in around the great, spreading buttress roots of the Heart of the Song, and the lanes between houses were cobbled with flat stones. You could walk from one end of this great gathering to the other and never get your feet muddy.

“It’s beautiful,” Tavi said.

“They are beautiful,” Bachi corrected. “Look at them.”

It was true. Tarek tried to single out just one person to look at. He picked a child, a small one. A little girl, if his eyes did not deceive him from this distance. She couldn’t have seen more than five winters, but she was magnificently attired in a short dress of some kind of supple cloth dyed blue and green in stripes. It looked wonderfully soft. A wide belt of brilliant red cinched her waist and new leather slippers covered her feet. She was kicking a ball of sewn leather in the cobbled lane with her other little friends. As she ran her hair flew free, and he could see hoops of some brilliantly shiny material piercing her earlobes. He’d seen piercings before, of course, filled with ornaments of bone or stained wood, but the rings in her ears shone like the sun. It was mesmerizing. Looking around, he saw that this child was in no way out of the ordinary. Nearly everyone around her was wearing dyed cloth and fine leather, and many had shining objects of yellow or white biting at the sun in the ear or nose, or hanging at the neck, wrist, or finger. Tarek felt his own grubbiness keenly, crouching there in the bushes with only a shabby, trail-worn set of stolen clothes to cover himself.

And there were just so many of them. People swarmed like ants in a hill. Everywhere Tarek looked, there was motion. There was no place he could rest his eyes that did not have a person or a building or bridge or field of crops. The Kuruk had tamed this part of the Land and shackled it to make it serve them. He was both awed and disquieted.

Widening his focus, he suddenly understood why the others found the Kuruk to be so beautiful. It was not the clothing or jewelry, as impressive as those were, nor was it the fact that they were many hundreds strong. It was that they all moved together. Every step hit the ground at the same time, every sway of the hips hit the same beat, and even the ebb and flow of distant speech had a cadence, a music to it. These people lived in the Song. Looking to his friends, he saw the subtle sway and shift they all made together. Even Zulimaya, for all her strangeness, moved with them. They all felt the Heart of the Song making the music that drove the world, and their bodies responded to it. Tarek grimaced and tried to shrug off the sense of alienation that the Song always brought him.

“Look,” said Zulimaya, pointing away from the grand sights of the village before them. “They come.”

Following her pointing finger, Tarek saw a large group of men, women, and children trudging along the Tamarok’s shore, emerging from the forest along the trail he and his friends had abandoned only that morning. This close to its source, the Tamarok ran strong and deep, its banks sprouting reeds and grasses. The deep gorge it cut in the Land out in the Shinsok region had gotten shallower and shorter as they traveled until it finally disappeared.

“It’s your people,” Tavi said. “The Shinsok.”

“Not my people,” Zulimaya frowned. “My captors.”

“You should have bitten them more,” Pahtl advised. “That always helps.”

Tarek could see old Seppa at the head of the column of travelers. A delegation of Kuruk were quickly forming up to meet them, a tall woman in a feathered headdress in the lead. They waited at the point where the trail descended into the valley only a few hundred paces from where Tarek and his friends hid. The men had spears, but they held them loosely and spoke with their compatriots with ease. The women bore baskets of fruit and flowers. These were folk accustomed to receiving visitors.

When the Shinsok reached the welcoming party, the woman in the headdress held up her hands. “Who comes?” she cried. She pitched her voice so all the arriving tribe could hear. She had a strange accent, and her mouth moved oddly when she spoke.

“The Shinsok come for the Congress bearing no weapons,” Seppa replied. Her voice was strong and clear despite her age. “I ask for passage and trade for my people while the chiefs meet.”

“Will you pledge peace?”

“May our blood be spilt and our spirits roam restless if we bring violence to the Congress,” Seppa said gravely.

“Passage and trade are for family, not strangers. Who are you that ask?” asked the woman, holding one hand out, palm up.

“We are the Lost,” Seppa declared, taking the Kuruk woman’s hand in her own.

The headdressed woman turned to her people, holding their clasped hands aloft. “We are the Lost!” she shouted.

Seppa had turned back to the Shinsok. “We are the Lost!” she said, nearly at the same time as the other woman.

The tribes responded, every voice on both sides joining together in a roar of humanity. “WE ARE THE LOST,” they all shouted. For once, Tarek could feel the unity in those words. He wished he could share in it.

The simple ceremony complete, the members of the two tribes approached each other. The children ran freely to each other. The Kuruk little ones offered gifts: tiny sacks of journey meal, chains of flowers, or carved trinkets. They squealed and laughed and pointed at each other, the Shinsok children trying to imitate the closed-mouth way of speaking their new friends used and the Kuruk children moving their mouths exaggeratedly to show the strangers how they looked when they spoke. The groups mingled and trailed back toward the village.

“We could try to join in at the tail of the group,” Tavi suggested.

“They’ve seen us before,” Tarek said. “They’ll identify us as not a part of their tribe to the Kuruk, and I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“I’m not going near them,” Zulimaya growled.

“I think you’re going to have to wait in the forest no matter when we go in,” Tarek said, looking her over critically. “You stand out in a way we won’t be able to avoid.”

She shrugged. “Fewer fools to speak with. There is plenty to forage in these woods.”

“What about Kanga?” Tavi asked. “Is he any closer?”

Tarek probed at his internal sense of Kanga and shook his head. “I don’t know what he’s doing, but he’s days away.”

“Let him keep going until he loses himself in the mists at the edge of the Land and gets eaten,” Bachi grumbled, cradling his splinted finger.

“Pahtl can keep you company out here,” Tarek said to Zulimaya. “A talking otter will draw even more eyes than red hair.”

Pahtl huffed. “You will do stupid things if I am not there.”

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Tarek stroked his fur. “I’ll just have to imagine what you’d say and try to do that.”

“You’re going to bite everyone, then?” Bachi said.

“Maybe not that,” Tarek allowed. “But I’ll take a bit of your fur to put under my nose like before when we go in to take the chiefs’ blood.”

Pahtl cocked his head and considered this. “Even my fur is smarter than you.”

“With so many strangers around, we ought to be able to wander where we please,” Tavi said, looking toward the Kuruk village. “Everyone will simply assume that we belong to some other tribe.”

“So long as we don’t run into the Catori,” Tarek said. “We’ll need to be careful. But still, we have to go in and find out when the chiefs are meeting. We don’t even know if all the tribes have arrived yet.”

“I can do it,” Bachi said. “I passed through moons ago near the start of my Song quest and spent several days here. They received me warmly.”

“Benefits of being a Singer,” Tavi said.

“Well…” Bachi hedged, reddening. “The elders here didn’t seem to care about that much. But one of the girls was rather taken with me. Kapona, wasn’t it? I should look for her.”

“Let’s leave Kapona be for now,” Tarek said. “We need you to gather information for us. You’re friendly and harmless, and there’s no chance someone will recognize you and start screaming about blood magic. Once it gets dark you can sneak in without anyone seeing you coming, and then they’ll just assume you’re one of the tribes already here.”

“I wonder if the Wobanu have arrived!” the boy chirped. “My elders will want to hear about my Song quest.”

“If that’s what’s easiest, go to it,” Tarek encouraged. “Just make sure to find out what we need.”

“Too many people,” Zulimaya grunted. “Something will go wrong.”

“We won’t be staying any longer than we have to,” Tarek promised. “We’re here for blood, not to make friends.”

* * *

Tarek tried to still his beating heart as he walked casually among the Kuruk, unstrung bowstaff held like a walking stick, clothes freshly washed and long hair worn loose to keep any stray Catori from recognizing him. For three days they’d hidden at the outskirts of the great village, watching the mass of people below and sending Bachi down repeatedly for new bits of information. He’d been invaluable – he was young and affable enough that no one took him seriously or bothered to hide anything from him. And now the chiefs’ Congress was a fingerspan away from starting, and it was time to do as they’d planned.

Tarek wended his way through the throngs of people crowding the streets. Everyone seemed happy and excited. With all twelve tribes gathered, it was a dizzying press of people, some in loincloths, some in furs, and others in dyed cloth. No matter what they wore, an air of festivity hung over them all. Even tough-faced men, warriors or hunters by the look of them, had flowers strung in their hair and haggled for trinkets with the grandmothers of tribes that they might have raided a moon or two past. Tarek looked over the milling crowd before him and saw a waterfall of shining black hair swinging at a lithe young woman’s waist, and his insides clenched. Yaretzi!

But it wasn’t her, just as it hadn’t been the last four times the same thing had happened since he entered the village that morning. He wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed. He still wrestled with himself about whether or not to try to sneak in to see her. Bachi had informed him that the Catori were camped at the fringes of one of the maize fields, but Tavi had argued strongly against the idea. He was right, and you know it.

Someone bumped his elbow, and there was Tavi, almost as if the thought had drawn him. The boy gave him a subtle nod and kept moving. They’d meet again soon enough. It was time for Tarek to get in place.

The great buttress roots of the Heart of the Song spread through the village at irregular intervals, each one as tall as a two-story house and rising as they got closer to the tree. In some spots tunnels had been dug beneath the great roots to connect different streets without having to walk all the way around the roots. Tarek ducked into one of those tunnels now, circling the tree toward the north. The passage was well-packed underfoot and taller than his head, with flimsy whisker roots trailing down from the ceiling, which was actually the underside of one of the great buttress roots. The trailing wisps made him want to duck, but they had been cut back so that he didn’t have to.

He emerged into the sunlight and turned onto the cobbled street, houses rising tall and close on both sides. The streets spread out from the tree in a radial fashion. The closer one got to the tree, the richer and more opulent the homes and shops became. Each street terminated with a grand mansion that backed against the Heart of the Song itself. Only the wealthiest and most respected of the Kuruk lived in those homes. Tarek glanced back over his shoulder at the grand building that headed this street and marveled once again at the wealth the Kuruk possessed. Zuma would talk sometimes about raiding the Kuruk and taking the Heart of the Song for ourselves when he was drunk, but there could be ten times as many Catori as there are and we’d still never defeat the Kuruk. It felt strange and traitorous to realize that the Catori was one of the smallest and weakest tribes in the Land.

Tarek crossed another of the buttress roots – there was a laddered walkway going over the top of this one rather than a tunnel underneath – and at the top of the wooden archway found himself confronted by a sight he’d heard about in stories all his life but never thought to see in person. The Guriya river sparkled in the morning sun below, and there, only a stone’s throw up the cobbled street that ran on both sides of the river, was the source where it sprang up from the depths beneath the Heart of the Song.

The Heart of the Song is the center of the land, he heard old loremaster Ryki intone in his head, and all life springs from it. The great rivers are its lifeblood and spring from its mighty roots. The Ix flows to the south, the Tamarok to the west, the Guriya to the north, and the Shim to the east. Tarek had always thought that most of the old legends Ryki told the Catori children were fables meant to entertain and frighten, but this one was true. Huge volumes of water gushed out from the nexus between two great buttress roots, clean, pure, and sparkling. A short stone wall hemmed the great river in on both sides to keep children from falling in, and the cobbled street stood alongside each wall, homes lining the far sides of each lane.

It’s just water, he told himself. Focus on what you’re doing. He tore his eyes from the rushing cataract and stepped up onto the beautifully-carved bridge that spanned the Guriya. Two more buttress roots to cross, and he’d be in place.

The crowds grew denser as he approached the chiefs’ meeting spot. All of the Lost wanted to know what their leaders decided about the floods, and the closer they were, the quicker they’d get the news. Tarek had to edge through the mass of people, apologizing to elders and children alike if he jostled them. He kept a sharp eye out for any of the Catori, but with some two or three thousand people gathered together, the chances of running into one of only seventy Catori – no, only sixty-eight now that mamah and tata are gone – seemed quite low.

One more bridge over a buttress root and one more tunnel beneath another, and he finally reached the well-populated lane adjacent to the chief’s meeting place. Turning his face toward the great tree, he saw the beautiful home that backed up against the Heart of the Song itself on this street. According to Bachi, it belonged to the Kuruk chief’s brother, a powerful man in his own right who controlled the sale of Kuruk crops to other nearby tribes. Tarek still wondered why anyone would need to grow so many plants as to be able to sell the excess to strangers, but looking at the lovely stone home that such an activity built, he began to understand the appeal.

He meandered toward the home, stopping to look at the woven rugs, bead necklaces, and sharp knives that an assortment of tribal visitors had displayed for trade or sale. He had no beads, precious stones, or shining round bits the others used – coins, Bachi had called them, or maybe metal – so he didn’t linger in any one place for long. Bit by bit he moved toward the stone house, trying to make himself look like a gawking stranger with no destination in mind. It wasn’t hard.

Once he was close enough to the house, mostly clear of the pressing crowd, he sat on a low stone wall that separated the home from the cobbled street. No one paid him any attention. Everyone was clucking tongues with their neighbor about this year’s terrible flood, boasting of their tribe to a stranger, or gossiping about whether this Chogan-tribe girl would marry the Atl-tribe boy she’d been walking out with here at the Congress, and weren’t those tribes feuding?

Tarek waited for a moment when no one was looking his direction and let himself fall backwards over the low wall into the house’s yard. He scuttled on all fours along the wall’s base, dragging his bowstaff with him, thankful for the decorative shrubs and trees the owner had planted to beautify the space. They made it easy to sneak around the side of the house and into the rear, where more lovely trees and flowers ringed the private alcove between the house and the great tree. As Bachi had suspected, there was no one here. The Kuruk had strange ideas about people owning the land their house sat on, and others had learned not to infringe on their private spaces. Everyone wanted to be on their best behavior at the Congress. Except me. I’m pretty sure attacking the gathered chiefs and taking their blood qualifies as bad behavior.

The private yard was quiet and peaceful, and Tarek envied the family that had exclusive access to the space right alongside the most sacred object in all the Land. Shaking his head at the unending luxury the Kuruk seemed to enjoy, he strode across the grassy space behind the house, grateful that all the Kuruk were out in the streets rather than at home watching out their windows as he tried to climb the great buttress root and sneak into the chiefs’ Congress.

Reaching beneath his shirt, he untied his bowstring from around his waist and snatched up his bowstaff, stringing it quickly. Then he lifted his right pant leg and extracted the arrow he’d made in the woods and tied to his leg with creeping vines. Time was short. Reaching into his waistband, he extricated his nose-strap full of Pahtl’s fur and tied it around his face. Then he slung the bow across his back and clamped the arrow in his teeth. Moving to the great buttress root, he worked his fingers and toes into the cracks in the bark and began to climb.

When he crested the top of the wall-like root he stayed low, wedging his feet into deep crevices in the wood and peeking just high enough to see over to the far side without creating a man-shaped silhouette for those gathered below. The chiefs were all in place, and the Congress had begun.

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