Of Limited Loyalty

Chapter Thirty-two

15 June 1767 Saint Luke Bounty, Mystria

A week out of Plentiful, they reached the Altashee village of Saint Luke. Nathaniel had been surprised at how well Ezekiel Fire had managed to keep up on foot and in canoes. Kamiskwa had taken the preacher with him, and Nathaniel had Owen up front in his canoe. Once they left Plentiful behind, the men didn’t say much, each one being given to contemplation of what he’d seen.

As they grew nearer Saint Luke, an urgency built in Nathaniel’s chest. He tried to ascribe it to the aftermath of seeing Plentiful. Though the Altashee had never set their village up so dangerously close to a river, it would not take much of a natural disaster to destroy a village. He kept telling himself that his friends and children would be alive, well, and happy to see him, but until he laid eyes on them, doubt lingered.

But that which had destroyed Happy Valley had been anything but natural. Rufus Branch hated Nathaniel and knew where the Altashee could be found. More than once Nathaniel had awakened from a sound sleep while stretched out on the ground. He imagined hearing something beneath him clawing its way to the surface. For Rufus to race ahead through the earth and attack Saint Luke grew in his mind from a faint possibility to a dead certainty, and this pushed him to go further and faster.

None of the others resisted this effort or complained about it.

They spent the last six hours on game trails, moving through forests bright with summer green. The light breeze teased leaves. Meadow grasses swayed and bumblebees darted from orange flowers to yellow and red. The travelers cut around a small pond created by a beaver dam, and surprised a doe and her fawn in the process. None of them raised a gun, however, as the thunder of a shot would have spoiled the late afternoon peace.

Roughly a hundred yards out of the wooded valley in which Saint Luke existed, they came across a series of birch posts running in a straight line from northwest to southeast. The posts stood ten feet tall and were separated by ten feet. The bark had been scored with pictographs of a turtle, all facing back toward the Westridge Mountains. The line of posts disappeared from view in both directions.

Nathaniel signaled a halt. “We don’t go no further until welcomed.”

Owen took a closer look at one of the pictographs. “The turtle is a symbol of strength and protection, isn’t it?”

“It warns enemies that Saint Luke is prepared to defend itself.” Kamiskwa shrugged off his pack and began removing his clothing. “You might as well do it now. It will save time.”

Nathaniel likewise divested himself of his pack. “Best be doffing your clothes, too, Steward.”

Fire lowered his pack, but did not start unbuttoning his shirt or pants. “The Good Lord wishes upon us modesty. None should see us naked but our Creator and our spouses.”

“Ain’t really the eyes of God you need worry about right now.” Nathaniel jerked his head along the trail. Three ancient Altashee advanced. In the lead came Msitazi, the chief of the Altashee. He wore a much-patched red coat that had once belonged to Owen. His right eye shared the amber color of his son’s eyes, but the left had the milky color that suggested blindness. Nathaniel, who had known Msitazi for over two decades, often thought that eye saw the most.

One of the two Altashee trailing him bore a warclub. His tunic had been worked with shell in the pattern of a hawk. The other man carried an obsidian knife. A turtle motif had been used to decorate his clothing. They both stopped ten feet from the line of posts, and Msitazi advanced to it along the path.

Nathaniel clasped his hands at the small of his back and bowed in greeting.

Msitazi did not return it.

Ain’t no good coming of this. He exchanged a glance with Kamiskwa. His brother’s expression revealed nothing but surprise. The two of them, down through the years, had done things to get in trouble, but never had they done anything that earned a greeting like this.

Msitazi turned on his heel and headed back to the village. The other two Altashee remained where they were, closing ranks to bar passage.

The Steward kept his voice low. “Mr. Woods, what’s happening?”

“Iffen I knew, I’d tell you. I reckon tain’t no time for modesty, Steward.” Nathaniel shook his head. “I don’t know what Msitazi has in mind, but I’m going to be trusting it’s for the good.”

The four of them stood on the trail naked for nearly an hour, as measured by the slow lengthening of shadows. It disturbed Nathaniel a bit that the posts didn’t create shadows. It bothered him a lot more that when his shadow crept up to the post line, it did not extend beyond it. By the time Msitazi returned, the line had devoured the shadow of Nathaniel’s head and had started on his shoulders.

The Altashee chieftain tossed four leather hoods outside the line, then accompanied each with a pair of buckskin mittens.

Kamiskwa gathered them, then handed a hood to each of his companions. He opened his to reveal that the turtle symbol had been sewn into the interior. “We put these on and it prevents us from working wickedness.” He pulled his hood on and tied it tightly so that it would not come off without great effort.

Owen looked at Nathaniel. “How much danger are we in?”

The scout looked at Msitazi’s hard expression. “Fact we ain’t dead means there might be some redeeming coming our way. Failing that, though, I reckon we’ll be about as dead as Happy Valley.”

Owen nodded, glanced at his gear, then pulled his hood on. Nathaniel followed suit, tying it snugly around his neck. The hood immediately became hot and stuffy. Nathaniel swallowed to create a little space around the edge, to let fresh air in, but had little success. He shoved his hands into the mittens, felt the beaded pattern inside them as well, and waited.

Rough hands grabbed him, poking and prodding, spinning him one way and back. Fingers jabbed at wounds. A couple reopened. He could feel blood begin that slow, oozing crawl down his forearm and thigh. Then something splashed in the wounds and he yelped. The bag didn’t muffle other shouts, so he knew he wasn’t alone in how he was being treated.

Hands shoved him forward. At the point where he would have expected to pass the post-line, he met resistance. It felt no heavier against him than a spider-web, but it took heavy shoving to get him through it. He stumbled on the other side, but hands caught him. One man on either side marched him along the trail. A couple hundred yards further on they cut off the path. Grasses lashed his thighs, then he found himself on sand and could hear a stream burbling nearby.

His captors forced him down onto hands and knees, then shoved him forward. He crawled along and felt a leather curtain play over his back. Once inside other hands guided him to the left and shoved him down on his side. Another person, straddled him, grabbed his shoulders and hauled him up into a sitting position. The person loosened the hood’s tie and brought the edge up to just beneath his nose, then pressed a narrow-mouthed gourd to his lips.

Nathaniel tipped his head back and drank. Even before the turgid, sour liquid hit his throat, he knew what it was: salksasi. The Shedashee brewed it from mashed roots, adding some maple sugar and peppers. The scent immediately filled his head, clearing it, and the pepper burned his tongue and throat. The Shedashee saved it for rituals of all sorts, usually allowing a warrior only a mouthful because it could produce visions more easily than a gallon of whiskey drunk real fast. Nathaniel couldn’t swallow quickly enough, letting slender ribbons of the liquid roll down the side of his face like saliva.

Finally the gourd disappeared and the hood descended again. Nathaniel lay back and found himself propped up by skins. He tried to shift around, but his hands were numb and his legs had already been arranged so he sat cross-legged. I should have remembered that, shouldn’t I? Then he felt heat building against his chest and legs.

Someone pulled the hood off him, an old man wearing a carved turtle mask. A man in a hawk mask had removed Owen’s hood, and the man wearing a bear mask had removed Kamiskwa’s hood. The other two sat back awkwardly as Nathaniel did, blood trickling from the demon wounds. A small fire burned in the center of the circle, Nathaniel slowly realized, which sat beneath a short dome formed of birch boughs lashed together and covered with hides.

Turtle tossed something onto the fire. The flames shot up, shifting from red-gold to green. A sweet scent, part pine resin, part cedar, filled the enclosure. Smoke drifted down and Nathaniel breathed it in. It erased the last trace of salksasi.

Hawk fed a small wooden disk into the fire. Nathaniel found his eyes drawn to it. The surface had been worked with a sigil that reminded him of the squid motif from the ruin. And yet, even as he stared at it, the octopus’ limbs straightened and the symbol became that of the sun.

And Msitazi’s voice emerged from within the bear mask. “In a time before there was time, when young were the ancient spirits that tread the winding path…”

Msitazi’s voice faded, as did vision of anything but the sun. Nathaniel looked down from the yellow ball in the sky toward a valley, a broad green valley through which snaked a slow, blue river. He stood high on a promontory, yet could not see himself, nor feel himself. He was just there, an observer. He believed himself to be as light as a feather, and willed himself forward and down.

He went down because there, in the valley floor, was a vast city, built within a hexagonal series of mounds, just to the south of the river. To the east and west of it, vast fields had been cultivated, clearly made possible through the network of irrigation canals. Forest abutted the cleared areas, and the wood had been used to build many huts and even larger buildings-buildings that dwarfed the meeting houses, with wings added at odd angles which should have struck him as wrong, but seemed proper. They made the buildings stronger, not in the material world, but in the world of the supernatural. As the canals channeled water, so these walls could divert magick. Courtyards allowed it to pool. Towers sucked it skyward, letting it rain down in displays that teased him. They glittered like icy lace that collapsed when he studied it too intently.

In a large courtyard at the city’s heart-and Nathaniel knew instinctively that this city boasted more people than Temperance-people had gathered for a massive market. The Shedashee were well represented, with tribes he recognized from the east, and those he had dim knowledge of from tales. He even recognized symbols of tribes that no longer existed, which marked the vision as having taken place a long time ago.

In and among the Shedashee, moving between traders, laughing as did people in Temperance as they strolled the streets, were a golden people. Taller than the Shedashee and more slender, with golden hair and golden flesh, they appeared so achingly beautiful that they made Nathaniel weep with desire. Men and women alike wore broad girdles decorated with jewels and golden buttons. Pectorals of gold, worked with lapis and turquoise flashed in the sun. Nathaniel saw not a single weapon among them.

The golden people named themselves Noragah in his mind. They treated with the Shedashee fairly and happily. As the market day ended, the Shedashee retreated to the forests, and the vision vanished in a long night, which passed in an eyeblink. When it returned, the Noragah still strode among the Shedashee, but the Twilight People were not there as friends. They had been enslaved and their bonds appeared fashioned from the same magick that rose in wondrous fountains.

Fountains which now had become fouled and oily, stinking of rotting flesh. Noragah lashed out with magick, killing Shedashee, torturing the land. They forced it to produce food quickly, as had Deacon Stone, but the Noragah never bothered to harvest it. They would let it rot in the fields, then use magick to raise another crop. As they had enslaved the Shedashee, so they enslaved the very world in which they lived.

Nathaniel tried to pull back from the city, for he could feel the evil pulsing from its heart. Fight as he could, however, the city held him. He did not want to watch, but he recognized the need.

Winged demons followed their masters, doing their bidding and inflicting cruelty on slaves for pure amusement. And though this cruelty entertained the Noragah for a while, it was not long enough. Cities raised armies of the bat-winged demons, and the behemoth which had come after Kamiskwa in the Temple. There must have been rules to their wars, but Nathaniel could not bear to study them long enough to learn. If score was kept, if points were earned, it seemed they went for the most spectacular and torturous methods of destroying an army.

One of the Noragah tired of the game as quickly as Nathaniel. He removed his army from sport and used it to conquer his neighbors. From cities hidden in forests and plains across the continent, rainbows of energy arced through the sky and flooded the valley. The Noragah of that valley grew prosperous. Other Noragah sent their daughters as tribute and accepted sons as governors.

And all around, the land sickened and died. What had been lush and green, turned grey. Swaths of forest burned or blew over. The earth became so exhausted that even more magick could not make it fruitful. So the Noragah began killing the Shedashee and irrigating the fields with their blood. Whole tribes vanished to slake the earth’s thirst and yet even that was not enough.

So the leader of the Noragah wove great magicks which would allow him to tap the blood of the land, running hot and deep. He wanted to raise stone rivers and cover the face of the earth with molten rock, to make it anew.

And he would have succeeded, save for the coming of the dragons.