Chapter 40: For You

 They ate like chiefs that night and for quite a few afterward. They stayed in the little copse of trees near the stream only long enough to skin the two males and one female they’d been able to bring down, cutting all the best meat from them. The raw meat they bundled into the wet skins, which they tied to the ends of stout saplings and carried over their shoulders. Tarek would have liked to have stayed by the stream to smoke the meat and cure the leathers, but the days were passing, and Xochil was waiting. He strung up the leftover carcasses from the trees with the secret hope that Kanga might be able to make use of whatever they left behind, and they set off again, heavily burdened with the extra materials but glad to have them.

They stopped early that evening and set to work. With gestures and whispers, Bachi let them know that he had a deft hand at smoking meat, and soon they had racks of tender meat strips drying over a green-wood fire that the Wobanu boy tended for the better part of the night. They had enough meat to fill Tarek’s journey bag and three more new ones besides.

The rest of them scraped the animals’ leather away from their flesh using knapped stone blades, being careful not to punch holes in the skin. The black fur they left in place, even though it smelled a little sour. It was a full evening’s work, and they slept huddled together as always, wishing the work were already done.

When they stopped the following night, they picked a spot with an enormous boulder with a large hollow worn into the top so they could soak the skins in water they steeped with saltgrass and their own urine. Finding enough wood to make frames to stretch the skins on took the rest of the night. The next two days of walking were brutally slow as they each lugged as many frames as they could carry, stopping in the heat of the day to let the skins dry and then walking late into the night to make up for it. Then, finally, they took shifts smoking the leathers over the fire until the skins were completely dry.

They discarded the frames, happy to be quit of their weight, and as they walked, all four humans held one of the big, unwieldy skins, working them back and forth with their hands, rubbing the stiff sheets of leather until they were supple enough to bend, shape, and cut. When Tavi complained that Pahtl wasn’t helping, the otter reminded him that he already had a skin that kept him warm.

That night and for the next two afterward, each person worked by firelight to make their own clothes, using dried, twisted intestine as thread to piece together garments that would cover and protect their bodies. Tavi and Tarek had done similar work before and showed the others what to do. It was tedious, and none of the resulting clothes would ever be mistaken for beautiful or sweet-smelling – but they were warm.

In the end, they all looked alike in their furry parkas, pants, and leather boots… except for Zulimaya, whose fiery hair and pale skin stood out all the more against the stark black of the animal fur. Bachi spent extra time on his outfit and created a great cape to go over his shirt and pants. He started sweating immediately when he put it on, but silently insisted on keeping it.

They moved more quickly once the clothes were complete. Most of the conversations over their evening fire that first night were about how nice it would be to not wake up sniffing someone else’s armpit or have anyone roll onto your hair in the night, but Tarek noticed that none of them strayed very far as they all bedded down each night. They’d grown accustomed to having each other close, though Tarek knew Zulimaya would never admit it. She still cuddled up to Pahtl every night, and now that staying warm was less of an issue, no one else was allowed to approach.

On their eighth night in the hills, Tarek started awake. He wasn’t sure what had woken him, but when he opened his eyes to the bright moonlight, Xochil was staring down at him with a quirked smile. Tarek blinked, rubbed his eyes, and opened his mouth to ask a question, but Xochil held a finger to his lips, pointing out into the night and gesturing to Tarek.

He looked around at the others. All were fast asleep. Pahtl was wrapped in Zulimaya’s arms and was every bit as unconscious as the humans. For all that wild animals were supposed to be alert and wary, Pahtl had taken to sleeping soundly and grumbling about waking in the morning like he was human at heart. Tarek considered waking Tavi to let him know where he was going, but he feared both that his brother would object and that Xochil would disappear if he looked away for more than an instant. The man was secretive, bad-tempered, and frequently uncooperative, and he was the only one that could cure him. If he crooked a finger, Tarek would go, no matter what misgivings he might have.

Wishing he had the Song to guide him, Tarek tiptoed out of their makeshift camp. Xochil was waiting in the trees’ shadow.

“It’s time,” Xochil said. “You have the blood?”

Heart racing with excitement, Tarek held up a finger and crept back into the glade. Tavi’s bag lay close by where he slept, and his little brother didn’t even stir as Tarek slung it over his shoulder. He turned back toward the trees where Xochil waited, wishing he dared to wake Tavi and bring him along. When I see him again I’ll be free of it. That will be enough for him.

When Tarek drew near, the old man turned on his heel and strode into the forest, not looking back. His hood was pulled back, and his bald pate shone in the patches of bright moonlight that pierced the patchwork canopy at irregular intervals. Tarek shook his head, annoyed by the man’s impatient silence, but still he followed.

After a few moments Tarek quickened his steps to walk alongside Xochil, unwilling to trail after him like a child. The old man gave him a sour glance and they walked in silence for perhaps a hundred heartbeats.

“That idiot from your village is following you,” Xochil said, breaking the silence.

“Yes,” Tarek replied. “We’ve run into him.”

“If there’s anyone that could be improved by an arrow through the eye, it’s him.”

“You’re not the first to say it.”

Xochil eyed him sideways. “You’re too nice, Tarek.”

“You say it like I ought to be ashamed.”

“Maybe you should. The Land isn’t a nice place; you know it better than most.”

Tarek pressed his lips together. The old man was wrong, but Tarek didn’t have the words to argue the point. “I can only be who I am. I’m sorry you don’t approve.”

Xochil grunted. “It’s not that I disapprove, exactly. Or maybe I do. Does it matter? I’m a useless old man. What do I know?”

“You know enough,” Tarek said. “You’ve got my cure.”

The old man shrugged and nodded. “Live long enough and you can’t help but pick up a thing or two. Speaking of… we haven’t discussed what happened at the Congress.”

“We got the blood. It was a close thing.”

“Not that,” Xochil said with uncharacteristic gentleness. “The girl.”

Tarek breathed through the stab of pain he felt whenever he thought of Yaretzi. “Were you watching us the whole time?”

“If the lesser moon’s light can reach me, I can send my eyes wherever it shines, even during the day. It seemed like an important moment to be watching.”

“And you couldn’t have helped?”

“I’d like to think we know each other fairly well at this point, Tarek. I’m not some kindly elder that steps in when things get too hard. If you want to be rid of your magic, you have to do it. Besides, riding a moonbeam in the flesh is a lot harder than just sending my seeing or an illusion form. I’ve been spending most of my strength here, preparing for your arrival. I haven’t been this tired in a very long time.”

“You’re really here, then?”

Xochil reached over and flicked Tarek’s earlobe hard with a long-nailed finger.

“Hey! You could have just said yes.”

“I’ll say it again: you should know me better by now.”

Tarek cast a dubious eye at the moonlit wilderness as they reached a wide clearing full of swaying grasses. “You said we were going to an old place, but it doesn’t look like anyone’s ever been lived in this part of the Land.”

“You’d be surprised. If you laid down and died right now, the Land would swallow your bones in just a few years. It can do the same thing to entire civilizations, given enough time.”

“Are you saying there were people here?”

Xochil clicked his tongue peevishly. “I’m saying this way. Stop asking stupid questions for a breath or two and you’ll see.”

They traversed the meadow in silence, staying close to the rocky incline on the west side of the clearing. Hardy scrub brushes had taken root in the cracks, veiling the hill in a dull green that glinted silver under the moon. Even the night sounds were different in this part of the Land. Tarek realized with a sudden pang that he hadn’t heard the sound of yaya bugs in more than a turn of the greater moon. It must be too cold for them here. Some unknown kind of insect droned through the night in these inhospitable hills with a foreign sound that told Tarek he had wandered far from home.

Finally Xochil stopped at a spot where the rock face disappeared behind a profusion of creeping vines and brush. He patted at the vines as if searching. “It’s here somewhere… ah. In we go.” He ducked into the mass of greenery, seeming to disappear into the rock face.

Tarek felt gingerly through the leaves and brambles where he’d vanished, finding an unexpected gap in the stone. Pulling back a mass of vines, he could see the carved stone edges of a tunnel set masterfully into the cliff’s face. It was wide enough for a single person to walk down with arms outstretched, brushing a hand against each side as they went. “I would have walked right past this and never known it was here.”

“That’s sort of the idea,” Xochil said from up ahead. “Has been for a long time.”

Tarek hesitated. “What’s down there?”

“The thing you’ve been waiting and working for all this time. Do I have to convince you at every step?”

Tarek edged forward in the blackness, the vines falling back into place behind him. “Forgive me for being a little cautious about strolling into the belly of a mountain in the middle of the night.”

“I’m tired, Tarek, and there’s much still to do. Trust me for once and come on.”

“That would be easier if you acted a little more trustworthy.”

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“As you said, we can only be who we are.” Xochil gestured into the darkness. “And you’re not going into the mountain’s belly, you’re just going through its throat. A short passage. I promise.”

Tarek took one cautious step after another, and a flat stone floor put itself under the leather on his feet. His outstretched arms touched the walls on both sides. They were rough-hewn and wet, slick with a green-smelling moisture and punctuated with tufts of moss and soft lichens. His scuffling steps detected a slight upward tilt in his course, confirming Xochil’s words that they were merely passing through instead of going down.

Without his eyes to guide him, Tarek’s ears strained at any sound. For a moment he thought he heard a footfalls ahead, but the subtle sound of trickling water all around made him doubt his senses. “Are you there?” he whispered, the skin on the nape of his neck prickling.

“Yes,” came the irritable response. “Keep walking.”

The heartbeats dragged on in a way that made it hard to tell how much time had passed. Tarek’s eyes darted from side to side, but the darkness was so complete that he might as well have left them closed. His breath was more labored than it ought to have been given the easiness of the path, and sweat beaded his skin despite the cool, wet air. He kept imagining how much earth and rock was on top of him, and how easily it could all fall on this empty vein poked through its middle.

“I didn’t finish what I wanted to say earlier,” Xochil said, a disembodied voice ahead of him. “The girl nearly killed your little friend and would have done the same to you. That must have been unpleasant.”

Tarek swallowed, seeing her in his mind once again, face hard, hand reaching for another arrow. “She might not have known it was me.”

Xochil’s snort told him what he thought of that. “Wasn’t she the reason you wished to be rid of the blood magic so badly?”

“Partly. Mostly.”

“Your tribe will never take you back one way or the other, you know that. Even if I came in and pronounced you clean, they wouldn’t trust you. You can’t go home.”

Tarek closed his eyes. It made no difference in the utter blackness of the tunnel. “I know.”

“And the girl doesn’t want you now, either.”

“You can’t know that!”

“It’s human nature, Tarek. We’re pack animals. No matter how she felt in the beginning, if the people she depends on day in and day out hate you, then she has to fall into line sooner or later. She can’t help it. Lost love is all very romantic, but it can’t survive an endless assault. Not when you aren’t there to give her something to hold on to.”

Tarek stayed silent. It was a bitter truth, but he couldn’t argue against it.

“So I have to wonder,” the old man continued, “what reason do you have to go through with this now?”

Despite his sorrow, the answer came quickly. “I told Tavi I would. I promised him.”

“Hmm. A promise to a brother. I had a brother once, you know. You might find those promises end up being worth less than you think.”

The tunnel rounded a bend and Tarek could see a circle of silver moonlight ahead. He took his first deep breath in what felt like an eternity and quickened his pace. The small dot of light resolved itself before him into the tunnel’s mouth with needle-leaf trees and tall grasses shining the washed-out green of a well-lit midnight just beyond. An indefinable relief filled him as he stepped out of the darkness, and he couldn’t keep himself from reaching out to stroke the grass and breathe in the comforting smells of the forest. The muscles in his neck and shoulders unclenched themselves. He hadn’t even realized he’d been holding them tight.

“I wouldn’t have pegged you as one to be afraid of the dark,” Xochil said as he emerged.

“It’s not the dark,” Tarek said. “It’s the rock.” He pushed his hands together as if crushing something in his palms. “It felt as if it was pressing in on us. Couldn’t you feel it?”

“I suppose there aren’t many caves to explore down in Catori lands,” Xochil said. “There’s no shame in fearing small spaces.”

“There can’t be many caves in Yura lands, either, but you don’t seem bothered.”

Xochil smirked. “That might matter if I’d grown up there. But I’ve only lived in that spot for, oh, the last forty years or so. In the grand scheme of things, I’ve hardly even moved in.”

“How old are you, exactly?”

The old man chuckled and shook a finger at him as if he’d asked something naughty. “Come on, then. It’s not far now.”

The tunnel had opened onto a long, narrow crevice that appeared to be entirely contained within the rocky mountain itself, as if some great knife had descended from the sky and carved a long slice out of the rock. Its steep sides were pocked with gnarled, bent trees that had muscled their way into cracks in the rock, and the winding crevice floor was host to strange plants Tarek had never seen before. Long stalks as tall as his head bore strange, paired leaves edged with red frills that looked almost like teeth. Leaves crunched behind him.

“Careful of those,” Xochil remarked. “They’re nasty.”

“What do they do?”

Xochil pointed to a dry stick on the ground nearby. “Touch that to the leaves.”

Tarek picked up the stick and gingerly tapped its far end against the broad, flat leaf surface beyond the frills. The instant it made contact, the leaf swiveled as if hinged and clamped itself against the neighboring leaf like jaws closing. The tooth-frills fit together in a saw pattern, and the stick snapped off just above Tarek’s fist, leaving half of its length prisoned inside the jaw-like leaves, which gradually worked themselves against each other until the last bit of wood disappeared inside the plant’s maw.

“Not much light gets down into this slot valley,” Xochil remarked. “And some plants want to survive just as much as we do.”

“Thank you for the warning,” Tarek said.

They wound their way through the slot, being careful to avoid touching any of the plants, and several hundred paces up the slope the slot broadened out into a bowl-shaped valley nestled between two slopes of the peak. Sitting in the deep depression, entirely hidden from view until they were nearly on top of it, was the strangest building Tarek had ever seen.

It was made entirely of square-cut stones quarried from the mountain itself, each one half as tall as Tarek himself. It rose to a single point, perfectly uniform on all four sides as they sloped up and in toward that artificial peak. It was a miniature mountain built by human hands with a precision and care that surpassed and defied any workmanship Tarek had ever seen. A broad ramp led up to the wide opening in its front face, and grotesque statues lined both side of that avenue like guardians.

“What is that?” Tarek asked.

“It’s a pyramid,” Xochil told him. “A very popular thing to build, once upon a time.”

“It’s massive! That thing must have taken years to build.”

“Many years, yes, and many hundreds of hands.”

Tarek shook his head, trying to take in the sight. It was too large and too close to see all at once. “Why build something like this in a spot where no one could ever find it?”

“They didn’t, usually. Most pyramids were meant to show off the strength and power of the ruler who built them, and so they’d put them right under everyone’s noses. Usually those were much larger than this one.”

Tarek goggled at the old man. “Bigger than this one?”

“Oh, yes, many times bigger. But this was a special one. Built out of the way, meant to be hidden.”

“But why hide it? It’s amazing.”

“To keep it safe until it was needed. Until the right person came along.”

Tarek tore his eyes away from the marvel again, trying to see Xochil’s eyes under the shadow of his brow. “The right person? I don’t understand.”

Xochil smiled, looking sad and old and tired. “Tarek, this pyramid was built for you.”

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