Chapter 9: Ties and Bindings

Tarek awoke in a kneeling position, his hands tied behind his back, submerged in water halfway to his chest. For a dizzy, confused moment he wondered if he was in some pit slowly filling with water – rain fell thickly, and he was soaked and chilled – but as his eyes cleared he saw he was in the village clearing, the great wimba trees only dim shadows through a curtain of rainfall. It hasn’t even been raining a full day and already the ground won’t hold all the water. Unbelievable. His knees and hips ached nearly as bad as his stiffened, battered face, and he wondered how long he’d been slumped there unconscious. But then the memory of why his face hurt came rushing back, and the pains of his body became a candle next to the bonfire of his shame.

A loose half-circle of Catori hunters stood around him, up to their knees in muddy water and fingering their spears. Gwatemoc was right in front of him, and he could see Kirima, Asapa, and Hyrin without turning his head. None of them would meet his eye. He heard someone behind him spit in disgust.

They’re right. I’m disgusting. Tarek thought of how he’d made a puppet out of Kanga and wanted to weep with self-loathing. He had latched onto the man like a sucker-worm and fed on him. It was vile, unnatural, evil… and when remembered the taste of blood, he wanted to do it again. Ones Beneath, it would have been better to let Kanga kill me than be like this.

But done was done, and death would come for him soon enough. There could be no doubt of that now. They’d hang him from the branches and cut him adrift in the flood waters for the wandering caiman so his blood never touched the soil of the ancestors’ tree. They’d make sure no bit of him contaminated the Ones Beneath. It was what the old stories demanded.

Yaretzi’s shape appeared out of the concealing rain, and Tarek seriously considered tipping himself over into the rising water and drowning right then. Her face was composed now, but he would never forget the look of utter horror on her face when she’d seen him covered in blood and bent over his prey. He looked down and hoped she would not speak. He feared what she might say.

The hunters let her approach, and she reached out to lay her hand on his head.

“Don’t touch him,” Kirima snapped. “He’s dangerous.”

“He’s trussed like a rabbit,” Yaretzi replied, a hint of anger in her voice. “Leave me be while we speak.”

The healer was one of the most important people in the tribe, and her apprentice only slightly less so. The men looked at each other uneasily, but when she leveled her flat glare at them, each one waded back a pace or two, the rain giving them the barest illusion of privacy. Yaretzi sank to her knees in the water and lifted his chin, forcing him to look at her.

“You could have picked a better day,” she said.

Tears welled in his eyes, blinding him. He’d been going to fetch her veil. They would have been married by now, if only… He thought of telling her about Kanga pouring blood on the veil, but it all felt pointless.

“Better it happened now,” he husked through a thick throat. “Before you bound yourself to a monster.”

“You’re not a monster,” she said with hushed fierceness.

“I am, though. You saw me, Yaretzi, you saw.” His tears mingled with the rain. “It’s better this way.”

Her lip trembled and her fists clenched. “It’s not better with you dead. I love you.”

“And I love you. I do, I do. But there’s no stopping it.”

“They’re going to hang you, Tarek.”

“They have to. What I felt, what I did… it can’t be allowed. It shouldn’t exist.”

“Couldn’t you… I don’t know, control it?” she pled. “Hold it back? You must have until now. This was just, just a lapse. A mistake.” Her composure was cracking.

“They wouldn’t care if I could. I have the blood magic, Yar.” He paused, feeling the weight of the words he’d never let anyone hear. “I have it. That’s death.”

Through the jagged gaps in her usual calm he could read her emotions clearly. Anger chased disbelief, followed by fear and confusion. Then came despair and swallowed them all. She clutched his head in her hands. “I can’t watch,” she confessed.

“I don’t want you to,” Tarek replied, feeling an unexpected mantle of peace descend upon him. All the choices were made, all decisions removed from his hands. His lie was known, and there was more than a little relief in knowing he could never hurt anyone again. “Go sit with your mother and sister at home. Make yourselves some soothe-flower tea. It will be done soon enough.”

Now it was her turn to cast down her eyes in shame, and more tears fell unseen in the rain. She pulled the heart-knuckle ring from her finger. She leaned around to his back where his arms were bound and slid the ring onto his last finger.

“A woman who deserved this would stay with you.”

“Keep it,” he said.

“If I keep it, I’ll never forget, and then I’ll spend my whole life missing you,” she said.

You are reading story Wander the Lost at novel35.com

A small part of Tarek thought that sounded good, but this was no time for selfishness. “You deserve better than that.”

“I deserve you,” she said bitterly. “Why did you do this?”

There was no answer to that. “I love you,” was all he said.

She looked him in the eyes one last time. “May the Ones Beneath take you to your rest.”

That brought a sad chuckle to his bruised lips. “They won’t.”

Fire sparked in her gaze and her lips twitched into a snarl. “Then they don’t deserve you either.”

She walked away without rushing, looking for all the world as if she were calm and collected. Her long black hair sleeked down her back like a waterfall, and she looked like nothing so much as a willow in the rain. She was beautiful, and Tarek knew he would never see her again.

Shad approached, looking grim. The other hunters stood aside for him, and he looked down at where Tarek knelt. “I’ve talked to the other elders,” he said. “We’ve reached consensus.”

Tarek nodded.

“I thought better of you,” Shad growled. “How could you stoop to such filth?”

Tarek merely shrugged. There was no answer that could stop what was coming. Shad spat at him and turned away, retreating into the rain-shadowed clump of villagers that was gathering. Tarek thought back to where he first went wrong, when he’d used a bit of his magic to hunt down the mist-hart. Was it truly only yesterday? Every step along his path had seemed necessary, logical – and even after hearing Xochil’s story, he hadn’t believed he would come to this end. Yes, the blood magic was forbidden, and to be found using it was death… but that wouldn’t happen to him. He was different, or so he’d thought. Now he was being disabused of that notion in the most permanent of ways.

Most of the tribe had gathered now. Kanga wasn’t there, of course, but Tarek could feel him in the near distance – inside the healer’s hut, based on the direction he sensed – unconscious and radiating pain. For all the sorrow Tarek felt at giving in to the worst impulses of the blood magic, still he was glad he wouldn’t have to see the man’s face as he strangled on a rope.

Zuma strode to the front of the gathering crowd. Tarek couldn’t see his family anywhere, and he hoped that Tenoch had taken Mecumsta and Tavi to their hut and shut the door. He didn’t want them to see this.

The chief raised his arms to quiet the murmurs and hisses from the Catori. “I don’t care what stories that old fool Xochil tells, I say that never in the history of our tribe have we felt the curse of blood magic. For it to stain us now, at the start of the worst flood in five hundred years, is a blight from which I may never recover.” The big man passed a shaky hand over his eyes. “The Catori can ill afford to lose a single set of hands.”

The grief fell from his face, replaced by fierce determination. “But the law is known! To possess the blood magic is death. This truth has been kept among the Lost since the beginning of time, and it is absolute. We will not let evil infect us. We have to destroy it – root, branch, and stem!”

Zuma looked to the tribe, his face regretful but resolute. “Let us not flinch from what must be done. Bring them.”

Shad and Kirima waded up from the back of the crowd, pushing Tavi and Mecumsta in front of them. They were both gagged, with their wrists bound behind their backs. Fear painted their faces, and Tavi was struggling hard, thrashing against his bonds and splashing everywhere. Tarek’s heart stuttered in his chest, and dread flooded him.

“No!” he screamed, trying to rise to his feet. An unseen hunter at his back pushed him back down. “You can’t do this! They’ve done nothing!”

“They share your blood,” Zuma said grimly. “This is the only way to be sure.”

“No, no! It’s me, it’s only me! None of them have ever touched it, they don’t have it! I’m the one, I’m the evil, please!” Tarek strained against his bonds, but the power he’d felt with Kanga’s blood on his tongue had long since faded. He could no more break the guaro bonds that held him than he could resist the lure of blood once he’d tasted it. “You can’t do this!”

The hunters deposited his mother and brother on either side of him and forced them to kneel. Within heartbeats all three of them had ropes tied around their necks, the other ends tossed over a thick branch of the wimba overhead. The hunters jockeyed for position behind them, two to each rope.

Tarek screamed wordlessly, thrashing with all his might. He’d resigned himself to his own death, but the thought that his mother and brother would die as well was unbearable. He wondered dimly at the back of his mind if his father had fled, knowing that he too would be hanged.

Something hard cracked him across the back of the skull, and he slumped forward, stunned, sputtering and choking on the rising water. His vision swam and his ears were ringing. Zuma was saying something, but he couldn’t quite tell what.

And then he was in the air, his feet kicking free and his throat on fire. His head felt like it wanted to burst. He caught the barest glimpses of Tavi and his mother struggling in the rain beside him as he twisted back and forth. His chest began to burn with the lack of air, but no matter how hard he fought, his throat was closed. Bursts of light danced inside his eyes, and the edges of his vision began to blacken. Oh, mamah, I’m so sorry. Tavi. I’d kill Kanga twice if it meant I could save you.

But he couldn’t. Together the three of them jerked and dangled, and all Tarek could do was watch them as his world narrowed to a pinpoint and he started the slow, terrifying process of dying.

You can find story with these keywords: Wander the Lost, Read Wander the Lost, Wander the Lost novel, Wander the Lost book, Wander the Lost story, Wander the Lost full, Wander the Lost Latest Chapter