The Burning Ground

2. In the Mountains of God

The Heka’s Shawl drawn tight about her shoulders against the evening chill, Wintshikan sat on her leather cushion and watched the remnant of her ixis moving about the stopping ground, setting up tents, the mallits and femlits fetching down-wood and maphik droppings for the fires, hauling water for the maphiks that pulled the wagon and the three skinny milkers that was all they had left of the Shishim herd. Her anyabond Zell knelt beside her, elbow on her knee.

“When it started, I was fierce for the war,” Wintshikan whispered.

+I know.+ Zell’s hand traced out the signs on Wintshikan’s thigh.

“The Impix were doing evil in God’s sight, dirtying the land and air and water.”

+Yes.+

“I thought we’d teach them the Right Way and with God and the Prophet guiding our hands, it would be soon over and things would be right again.”

Zell sighed and stroked her hand along Wintshikan’s thigh, xe’s fingers eloquent in the gentleness of their touch.

Shishim Ixis was camped here, in the hills above Shaleywa, when word came of the Impix marching into the mountains to build their filthy smelters and claw away God’s flesh in their hunt for iron ores that they might go on in their blasphemous ways, destroying One’s body, stealing One’s blessings from their own grandchildren. And there on the Meeting Ground of Shaleywa the Hekas of all the Ixin and the Elders of the Pixa came together to declare Holy War. The Heka Wintshikan was strong in her loathing and sure of her rightness, impatient with the doubters and proud beyond pride when her mate Ahhuhl was first among the swell of volunteers to take arms.

It was here, in the hills above Shaleywa, that Ahhuhl lay for the last time in the arms of Wintshikan and Zell, his bondmates.

He was dead before leaves fell in the first War Winter.

It was her habit, when the Shishim Round brought her back to this stopping place, to spend her days in thoughts of God and her nights in contemplation of the occurrences of War, mourning her malbond and her only son who followed his father to God’s Arms the year after.

She heard Zell hiss, then lifted her head and saw Luca come strolling into camp, her face sullen, her bare feet filthy from tramping off-trail. “Bhosh! I wish I knew what got into that fem.” She lifted her hands, cracked them together. “Luca, get over here. Now.”

Luca was the youngest of the ixis ferns, moody and secretive, refusing to keep the Right Way. She came late to Praise and stayed at the edge of the group, hovering there as if she were readying herself to run at the first break she got. She wouldn’t learn the Sayings, wouldn’t join her heart to the heart of the ixis, wouldn’t take an anyabond though she lay with any mal who’d have her. She didn’t come out and say she refused to give a child to the ixis, but it was in her eyes and in her deeds. She hunched her shoulders as she answered the Heka’s summons, not quite daring-yet-to refuse to answer it.

“Why do you take your tent into the trees away from us when you’ve been told again and again that your place is in the heart?”

Luca shrugged, dug at the ground with the toe of her foot.

“If you find this ixis unbearable, though we would sorely miss you, Luca, I will speak at the Meeting Ground and find another for you.”

Luca’s mouth tightened, her throat worked as if the words she’d swallowed for months and yet more months were fighting to find a way out of her. In the end, she said only, “It doesn’t matter, does it. They’re all the same.”

Wintshikan pressed her lips together; it was a moment before she could speak. “I’ll think on that,” she said. “In the meantime, raise your tent where it belongs, or we will do it for you.”

She watched the fern stalk off, anger putting energy into her walk.

“Ah, Zell, do you see the world falling apart? I do. There’s no joy left in the Way. It’s like a shirt that’s been washed too often, only a few threads holding it together.”

“So sayeth the Prophet,” Wintshikan sang as the Praise began. “Rejoice in the Land for it is God’s Flesh given for your pleasure.”

“Rejoice,” the ixis sang back to her, the anyas whistling and signing-an uncertain thin sound with all the mals gone except Oldmal Yancik and Blind Bukh. Ten ferns (it should have been eleven, but Luca wasn’t there), seven anyas, two very young mallits and three femlits.

“So sayeth the Prophet,” Wintshikan sang. “Touch the land lightly, for it is God’s Flesh given for your sustenance.”

“Lightly,” the ixis sang back to her.

“So sayeth the…” She broke off as a band of Pixa mals came gliding into the firelight, nine of them; they moved into the circle of ferns, ignoring her and the Praise. A Pixa phela but no one she knew, led by a mal with a thumb missing and angry red scars on his face.

He set his hand on Xaca’s shoulder. “Where’s your tent?”

Wintshikan was shaking with anger. The phelas that had come by before had been perfunctory with pleasantries, but none so unrighteous as to break into a Praise or expect the ixis ferns to spread their legs without the courtesy of choice. “You are unGodly,” she said, her voice coming out strong and full, powered by the anger in her. “Step back and let us finish.”

He stared at her a moment, and she grew frightened when she saw there was no soul behind his eyes. He turned his back on her. “You want it here,” he told Xaca, “‘s all right with me.”

In the flickering firelight, Xaca’s face drained of color. Trembling, she got to her feet. “No. I’m not an animal.” Her voice shook as she said it, and she wouldn’t look at him. She walked ahead of him to her tent at the edge of the trees and went inside, still without speaking. She gave him no blanket blessing, telling him without words that she was unwilling.

Nyen, Patal, all the ferns except the missing Luca and old Yaposh went with varying degrees of reluctance into the tents with the mals of the Phela. The anyas huddled together around the children, holding them silent and still, silent themselves as always, shuddering under the waves of emotion amplified for them by the thinta that was their blessing and curse. Oldmal Yancik stared at the ground, and Blind Bukh waited with stolid patience for the Praise to go on.

Wintshikan closed her eyes a moment, tried to gather serenity around her like the Shawl, but she could not. For the children, she thought. We have to finish for the children’s sake. She cleared her throat, managed a smile as Zell’s fingers closed briefly round hers. “So sayeth the Prophet…” she sang.

When the phela had gone, Zell pushed the flap aside and ducked into the tent. Xe signed, +They are gone,+ then knelt beside Wintshikan and leaned on her thigh, looking down at the cards spread on the silk scarf, two in the top row, three in the middle, one on the bottom. +Change?+

Wintshikan sighed. “So it seems. I haven’t tried the reading yet. Hold my hand and look with me.”

She touched the bottom card with a fingertip, murmured, “From the Egg all things arise.” The card was a stiff leather rectangle painted white with an oval drawn by one sweep of a brush, set inside a thin blackline box with the number glyph for one at the top, a saying from the Prophet printed at the bottom, the whole varnished with a clear shiny substance. “A new thing arises and only God can judge whether it is for good or ill.”

She touched the first card in the second row. “Here are the determinants that mark the days ahead.” Inside the blackline box was a thick jagged line with arrow points on both ends and the glyph for nine.

“Lightning is God’s Fire, both joining and sundering, illuminating and destroying.”

She touched the second card, an inverted U drawn with one quick sweep of the brush by the long dead painter who’d made the cards; at the top was the glyph for six. “Mountain and fern, nurture and life, stability and the handing on of the Right Way.” The third card in this middle row showed an oval like the first, but this was one filled with black. Glyph twenty-four. “Death. The end and the beginning.”

She contemplated the row for a moment, then she shook her head. “Each sign is a contradiction of the others. I see only confusion not direction.”

Zell patted her thigh.

“Yes. Finish the first scan, then try to sort.” She moved her finger to the lefthand card in the top row. “These are guides to direct us to the Right Path.” Three vertical lines, the sign of the tribond, mal-fem-anya. Glyph three. “As God is All and In all things, so should the Three be one, cherishing difference and celebrating oneness. I feel this as a rebuke. I have left the Right Path and must return. I am Heka and have led my own astray.”

Zell pinched her, shook xe’s head, pointed at the last card.

Wintshikan moved her fmger, touched the card. Two vertical strokes with a third across the top, joining them. Posts and lintel. The Gateway. Glyph twelve. “The sign in the middle that looks two ways.”

She contemplated the layout for several more minutes, finally shaking her own head. “All I can take from this is that we are on the edge of something, walking the balance between good and evil. And we must be wise in our choices.” She gathered the cards and folded the scarf around them, replacing them in the bone box the Painter had made for them,

+You think of going hohekil?+

“I helped stone Raxal when he went hohekil, I called him a deserter and abandoned of God. I’ve cursed hohekil at the Meeting Ground. I’ve roared with the others to drown out their words. I never listened to them when they tried to tell us all that we’d chosen the wrong road, that this is not God’s war, but ours.” She rubbed her hands across her face. “Why isn’t anything clear and simple any more? Yes. I’m very close to standing before the ixis, taking off the Heka’s Shawl and saying to them ‘stone me if you must, but I turn my back on the war and walk away.’”

+I am glad. My heart for this war died with our son.+ “You never said.”

+What use are words? I could not leave you and I didn’t wish to add to your grief, Wintashi.+

A scream broke into the silence of the camp. Zell paused to gather up the card box and slip it into xe’s pouch, then ducked past the tent flap.

Luca stood by the embers of the fire, wild-eyed and panting. “Get away,” she shrieked, “They’re coming, Impix are coming, I saw them, they’re following that phe…” There was a shot out of the dark behind her, a sudden leak of blood darkening her sleeve. She dived away, scrambled on hands and knees into the shadow under the trees.

Then there were Impixa everywhere, yelling and shooting…