The Old Ways

 

Jaya did not want to leave her canoe, but she could not hope to keep pace with the Ekwa boats.  Without a word they unstepped her mast and removed the outrigger so they could lash her craft into a smaller bundle, and they stowed it aboard one of their own.  She admired the workmanship of their boats.  The sleek lines and the jagged black coloration.  They were made for eleven men each, deeper and wider than hers.

She sat at the center and watched as they rowed low and swift, bent over their places with their hard, tattooed hands on the seasoned wood of their oars.  The steersman sat at the stern, one leg over the side to brace his foot on the rudder.  They sliced through the waves and then out beyond the scattered rocks.  They stayed close in to shore, evading shoals and sandbars with the ease of long experience.  There was no chatter among them, no jokes or stories or songs, only the steady, low exhalations as they sped through the waters.

The day burned down behind them in the west, and they rounded a point and then struck out across the deeps toward the dim shadow of another island.  Jaya noticed how sharks haunted the waters behind them, sniffing at the drops of blood that fell from the fresh heads hung on the high prows.  The sea-beasts knew to follow these ships, seeking meat.  She imagined the Ekwa must feed them often, to keep them hungry.  Shark-hunted waters would help keep intruders away.

It was after dark when she heard the crash of waves, and by the light of stars and the rising blade of the moon the Ekwa rowed between high points of rock hung with clinging vines and night flowers and into a hidden lagoon between ridges thick with jungle growth.  She smelled cooking fish and boiling pitch, and she saw the shimmering lights of many fires.  Here was a village tucked away from seeking eyes, canoes drawn up on the white crescent shore and stilted huts clustered near the water.  She closed her eyes for a moment, for the sight and the smells, while different, were familiar enough to cause a pang in her chest, a missing place of home in her heart.

The Ekwa made a low sound as one, a grunting and a sigh, a chant without words, over and over, and she heard it answered from the land.  They climbed out into the shallows and dragged their ships up onto the soft sand, and then eyes turned to her, glimmering in the darkness, reflecting the shine of the moon, and she stood in the canoe and looked back at them, unflinching, knowing she must show no fear to men like this.

She stepped from the canoe and down onto the sand, seeing more of the Ekwa coming to see her as the word was passed.  The women looked as fierce as the men, with tattooed breasts and sharpened teeth, their faces marked by a stripe of smoky black across their eyes.  The women wore their hair much like the men, save that theirs was all gathered into a single ropelike braid looped and tied at the back of the neck.

Dhatun beckoned her.  “Come.  You will come before Chief Ankou.  Speak nothing, no word to any before you speak to him.  It would mean death.”

She blinked, wondering if he meant they would kill her, or the one she spoke to, but she decided not to test him.  Her sword was a reassuring weight at her side as she followed him up the slope away from the water, and the Ekwa made way for her, though their faces were not welcoming.  They looked at her like an eel staring at prey, and she saw their sharp teeth as they murmured to each other, watching her.  The sea was immense at her back, pressing in upon the land, eager to wipe it all away.

o0o

The greatest house on the hillside was the size of a longhouse, save that it was round, the roof peaked and layered with grasses to keep out the rain.  It was propped up on high, heavy pillars made from the trunks of trees, and the steps that climbed to it spiraled around twice before she reached the threshold.  There was a curtain of woven vines over the door, and when she followed Dhatun through she found herself in a high, open space, well-lit by lamps and a central fire.  The floor was covered in mats and the beams beneath creaked when she trod on them.

Across from her was a high seat, not so different from the throne her father had sat upon.  Behind it was a spray of jagged points made from whale bones, and at the center was a yawning shark jaw big enough to fit a head inside.  The throne was flanked by pillars of wood darkened by age and smoke, and they were each hung with the carved skulls of enemies.  The bone was aged to a rich luster and some of them had curved tusks fixed in the jaw, or strings of beads and knucklebones that hung below them.

Jaya looked side to side and saw there were women here, clustered beneath the eaves of the house, but there were also warriors gathered in the shadows.  She counted a dozen of them, and she wondered what her fate would be.  It had been easier, in the daylight, to contemplate making allies of these people, but now she was in their power, and she looked into the face of their chieftain.

Ankou was a towering man, and it was hard to judge his age.  He had a terrible scar across the side of his face and the eye was only a blank socket beneath a brow so heavily tattooed it was almost black.  He wore the lizardskin loincloth of the other men, but also many strings of beads and teeth both human and animal around his neck.  His hand rested on the hilt of a naked sword, longer than any other Jaya had seen among the Ekwa.  It was a heavy-bladed cleaver with the hooked tip dug into the floor.  She wondered if he always had it ready to hand.

“Come forward strange girl.  I do not seek the counsel of woman or child, but Dhatun has brought you here, and he has never failed me.”  Like the others, his speech was strange to her ear – lowered and flattened so it sounded like rattling bones.  He watched her with his one eye bright as a sea eagle’s, and his hand was easy on the hilt of his sword.

Jaya decided to be bold.  She stepped forward and stood as tall as she could, giving back his unblinking glance.  “I am Jaya, of the Tau’ta, daughter of kings.  I am child of Undun, who was son of Amida, back and back the many years to Kashyan the Three-Hearted and his sister-bride Shagati.  I come to your waters not seeking your blood, but that of those who came to my island and slew my father and my younger brother.”

The chieftain looked unmoved.  “It has been long since we had word of the Tautai, for we had been told that they sailed east and over the limits of the world into the lands of the gods.”  He looked her over.  “You are not a giant, and you do not bear the marks of the serpent people.  Do you bear the markings of the bloodline?”

Jaya reached for her hair and drew it over her shoulder, turned to show him the markings on her back.  She heard murmurings from the warriors and women, but Ankou silenced them with a small hiss.  She turned back to face him and saw him frown, as though uncertain.

“You understand it is not for me to decide the truth of this.  You must go to the shrine and be tested by the priestesses of the caves.  You must be judged by them, and they will learn whether you are indeed one of the Dread Ones.”  He leaned back in his chair, dug the point of his sword against the floor, and she saw it was notched there from many such moments.

He gestured.  “Take her.  Take her on the path up into the mountain, and there deliver her to the holy ones.  Call on them to show her the way into the dark, and there let her be measured.”  His face drew into shadow, and his single eye blazed there like an ember.  “Let it be done.  As it will be.”

“As it will be,” she said, in the formal fashion, and she saw some of his warriors turn away from the sound of her words, as though they were a poison.

o0o

Two girls led her away from the village, and by their youth and solemn demeanor she judged them to be virgins, chosen for this sacred task.  They looked at her sidelong, watchful, but they did not speak, only beckoned her into the soft jungle night.  She heard the sounds of birds and monkeys in the trees, some of them familiar, some of them strange.  The singing night insects fell silent as they passed, then renewed their fanfare behind them.

They climbed a narrow, twisting trail, hedged to either side by sharp, glassine rock, and Jaya felt the places where steps had been cut into the path underfoot to make it more passable.  The trees shaded away the stars, and so there was little light to go by, but her guides seemed to know the way, and they led her on with small touches if she hesitated, unsure of her path.

After what seemed an endless time, she smelled the sea wind stronger than before, and then they emerged onto a high ledge above a deep lagoon below.  The water was lit from within by drifting motes of blue and pink, like fallen pieces from the stars above, and across the water, on another jutting promontory of rock, stood a shrine.

It was a ruin, that much she could see, made from pillars of shaped stone set into the rock, flanking a cave mouth that led into darkness.  There were faces etched into the stone, blank-eyed and smiling with expressions of mystery and lost knowledge.  She had never seen stonework like this, and it was plain that this was very old, overgrown by vines and lichens that glowed softly in the dark.  She looked down, trying to judge the drop below, and felt a thrill of dizziness.

“There is no path down,” one of the girls said.

“You must jump,” said the other, and then she leaned close and kissed Jaya on the mouth, quick and soft.  The first girl smiled and kissed her as well, lingering a bit more, and Jaya blinked, feeling heat in her face.  Had she been a man, perhaps she would have been expected to take one of these girls, or both, she was not sure, and would not ask.  Instead she stepped to the edge and looked down, feeling the lift in her belly.  This was a good vantage, with nothing to interrupt a clean drop to the water.

Jaya had dived all her life, but never so high.  She did not hesitate.  A quick knot looped her belt tighter and wedged her sheathed sword against her belly.  She bent and looked down, hands on her knees, and then she gathered herself and jumped.

This time there was no weight to pull her down.  She folded herself, using her legs to lever her body into position.  She knifed down toward the water, faster and faster.  She took one breath and then she plunged into the blue, a churning wake behind her as she curved down toward the white sands on the bottom.  She saw colorful corals and the gleam of shells, and then she saw the shapes of human bones half-buried in the sand, and she knew she was not the first to face this challenge.

She kicked for the surface, and then something stung her leg with a spike of pain and she rolled and thrashed away.  All around her then she saw the many-colored things that glowed with their own light.  The stars of the deep with their trailing threads that stung and killed, and she understood why the cove was littered with bones.

There were many of them, and she tried to avoid them but there was no way through.  She was stung on the arm, and the hand, and along her side.  The filaments drifted around the things as they pulsed and swam, and wherever they touched her it was like the kiss of fire.

She broke the surface, feeling dizzy as she gasped for breath.  Already her lips felt numb, and her vision swam, seeming to see more and more light, until the cove was lit up like day.  She swam for the entrance to the shrine, feeling more lances of pain across her skin, until she staggered from the water and all but fell onto the stones, gasping for breath, feeling a heaviness in her limbs and her chest.  She knew the venoms of the sea flowers could kill a full-grown man, and she had seen children die of the stings.

Consciousness swam away from her and she fought back to it.  The stone was sloped and wet from the spray of the waves.  If she lost herself she would slip back into the water and drown, and then her bones would rest on the bottom along with all the others.  She bit her lips until she tasted blood, and the pain helped her to shake off some of the lethargy.

Clumsy on heavy limbs, she staggered to her feet and made her way between the pillars of the temple.  In her distorted vision she saw the carved faces shift and move, their eyes watching her, their mouths smiling at her weakness.  She put her hand on the hilt of her sword, glad it was still there.

The sky above was alive with stars, a blazing arch of light she had never seen before, or never seen like this.  She knew the venom was making her see things like this, but she wondered if what she saw now was a delusion, or if now she saw the sky as it truly was.  She wondered if now she saw the world as the gods made it, as they dwelled and saw and understood.

Jaya stumbled into the dark shrine, and even the dark was alight with colors and motion, as though there were spirits in the stone.  Ahead of her a lamp burned in an alcove cut into the wall, and the fire was all colors and yet none.  She leaned against the wall and followed a slope down into the cave, the rock wet under her feet, the smells of salt and fish and blood close to her, like shadows.

She entered a high hall, and it had walls thick with carved images of warriors and sea monsters.  She saw ships moving in great armadas, thronged with warriors led by the sign of her people – the mark of the Tau’ta like an all-seeing eye.  She saw hosts of warriors with spear and sword and shield, and she saw villages made of stone with towers that reached to the sky all aflame as the waters filled with the corpses of the dead.

A fire burned in a stone bowl at the center of the room, and behind it crouched three women with gray hair and faces covered by wooden masks.  They wore beads and teeth on long cords around their necks and arms, and their aging flesh was tattooed so heavily that they seemed beings made from the dark ink of their stories.  One of them had a serpent draped over her shoulders, the small head questing through the braids of her hair, tongue flicking.  It looked at Jaya and she saw a glimmer of light in the golden eye, like a spark.  It knew her, she felt it like a wind.  Here was the eye of Ularu, the serpent-god, the mother of all, who birthed the world as an egg in the night before the sun.  The death-speaker watched her, and weighed her courage.

“One comes before us,” one of the old women said.  “Such has not happened many times, for the kisses of the cove will slay all those who are weak.”

“Now this one sees the shadow land,” another said, casting dried flower petals into the fire.  They drifted up as they burned, curling ashes and tiny gleams.  “She walks where the gods may go, but who can say if she will return?”

The third one turned her head, and Jaya saw the glint of her eye beneath the painted mask.  “This one claims to be of the line of the Tautai.  A daughter of the Dread Kings, those who painted the seas with blood and drove the world before them.  A claim of the blood.  A claim of lineage and pride.”

Jaya drew herself upright, and she put her hand to her sword as though to draw it.  “You speak as if I were not here, as if I cannot hear you, but I do.”  The fire was so bright, it blazed like the sun.  Her lips and her tongue were dulled, and she fought to speak clearly.  “I see in the dark, I hear the whispers of the gods.  I named them and they heard me.”  She looked up at the walls, tracing ages of fractures through the stone with her gaze.  “I called on Arang, the flesh-eater, the sword of the seas.  He heard me, I saw him.”  She drew her sword, the sword of her fathers, and she held it up so the firelight blazed along the edge.  “I walk a path of vengeance, and you may not prevent me.  You may not.”

The wise women laughed then, but there was not mockery in it.  “Speak of Arang you may, but this is a shrine of Sa-Hantu, the sea-boiler, the many-handed, the three-hearted.”  The woman gestured and the shadow of her hand moved along the walls like vast tentacles.  “Go and offer respect to him, and see if he answers you.”

Jaya looked and saw a great form of the many-armed god carved on the wall.  It was cruder than the other, older reliefs.  The shadows moved and made the long tendrils seem to move as well.  There beneath him was the mark of a hand on the stone, the outline etched with red dye.  To her sight, everything glowed, and she felt a vibration in her flesh, a readiness.

She approached the idol, feeling as if she were floating, as though her feet were very far away.  When she stood beneath it she looked up and it stretched away into darkness, up and up, and at the limits of the dark she could not say if she saw the glimmer of the colored lichens that clung to the stone, or if she looked upon the stars wheeling in the sky, limitless and cold.

With her left arm she reached up for the print of the hand, farther than she thought her arm could go, higher than her head and then more, until she placed her hand within the larger print and a flare of many-colored light seemed to wash through the stone, illuminating the many arms of the sea god, to make his eyes glow with a fire from beyond, and she heard the wise women sigh and chant in the old speech.  She knew it, and she turned and looked at them where they sat before the fire, the blaze bright as summer.

“Dread is the hand that gives all life,” she said, answering them.  “Dread is the hand that takes it away.  They are the same hand.”  She held up her left hand and looked at it, feeling a tingle in her fingertips.  “This is the Dread Hand.”

The old women rattled their bones and their shells, and then Jaya saw motion beyond the fire.  The carved images on the walls came alive, moving as though they wrested themselves from endless sleep, and three warriors of the elder days stepped forth.  Through the shimmer of the heat they stood tall, their arms and legs adorned with shells and teeth tied on with cords.  Jewels and the glint of gold shone on their swords, and their faces were hidden behind masks that stretched them into shark-toothed phantoms.

They came toward her, shaking their tall shields, stomping their feet on the stone floor.  Jaya heard their grunting breaths, their hissing as they came closer, almost dancing to meet her.  The fire threw their shadows on the wall like the forms of giants.

Jaya laughed and whipped her sword through the air so that it sang, the edge cutting at shadows with a small sound, like a bird at dawn.  She took a wide stance, feet planted, arm held out before her, sword rearing up behind her head like a stinger.  They would come closer and try to surround her.  They would try to batter her with their shields and knock her down, and then they would take her head.

She would not let them do that.  She laughed again, and when they came a step closer in their dance she pounced on them, moving quick and then to the side, so the one on her left had to pivot to put his shield before her.  She caught the edge and shoved against it with her shoulder, driving the heavy hide against his body and making him stagger.  Before he could recover she pulled the shield down and cut into his side.

The sword bit meat and bone and then he was gone, whirling away like mist in a wind.  The other two came for her and she fended off their sword-strokes, the sound of steel on steel ringing out in the cave.  They seemed very slow to her, as though they moved underwater and she did not.  There was a clangor of blows and then she swept her sword through a neck and the warrior was gone, like the first one.

The last one came on her like a storm, his heavy sword flashing through the fire, trailing flames and sparks.  She gave back, circling to her left, keeping low.  He rushed her with his shield held to hide his attack, and so she slipped aside and cut at his leg, but he was too quick.  He tried to hit her with the bottom of his shield and she caught it, pulled hard and hit him in the face with the top edge.

He staggered, and she chopped into his shield, ripping the heavy hides apart with the clean edge of her sword.  He struck at her and she parried, then bound the blades and grabbed his wrist with her free hand.  She leaped off the floor and locked her thighs around his arm, pulling him down with her sudden weight.  They hit the floor and he tried to roll away from her and went into the fire.

There was a hiss of burning flesh and he cried out, dropping his sword.  Pain gave him strength and he pulled free of her, thrashed away from the flames and reeled across the cavern to fetch against the wall.  He struck the stone hard and his mask came away from his face.

Jaya struggled up, putting her foot down on his sword so he could not regain it.  She stood with her own blade held ready, feeling herself sway as if with the tides.  The walls were very far away, the sky was a vault overhead, whether stone or stars she could not tell.  She watched the phantom, wondering why he did not dissolve like the others.  Behind him the ancient warriors marched, towers burned against a flaming sky, and she saw revealed the face of the chief, Ankou, as he cast down his mask and stood there, hand holding the burn on his shoulder, his chest heaving with breath as he gasped, single eye a hollow in his face.  Jaya felt she was rising up and up, becoming vast, encompassing all.  She looked down at her hands and saw they were red as if stained by blood, and then she went to one knee, the world spinning around her.  She breathed in night, and breathed out fire, and then the darkness pulled in everything.

o0o

She woke with a slow heave, like the tide, and when she opened her eyes she saw the roof of the chieftain’s lodge above her.  Girls were gathered at her side, watchful, and they drew back as she stirred.  She felt pain in every joint, every thread of her body.  There were trails of fire on her skin and she lifted her arm to look at it, saw the braided mark there like a burn, which she knew for the sting of the sea-flowers.

Slowly, she sat up, making small sounds as she discovered fresh pains.  Her sword lay sheathed beside her and she touched it, reassured.  She remembered the cavern, the witches, and the idol of the many-armed god, but much of it was hazy and dreamlike.  The venom of the sea had been in her, and she wondered how much of what she recalled was real, and how much was a vision, or the haunts of a fever.  The colors burned in her memory, trails like the marks of bright light.  She blinked and rubbed her eyes, and when she opened them, Dhatun was there.

He went to one knee, and bowed his head.  He drew forth his blade with a shaking hand and laid it on the floor before her.  “The gods have spoken.  I am sorry for my doubts.  You are the heir of the Dread Kings.  You are the Killing Hand that stains the seas.”

“I am,” she said, wondering how much of it was true.  She was astride a wave, and there might not be any way to control it, now it was begun.

“Will you accept my oath?” he said.  “I would serve you and only you.”

“I will accept it,” she said.  She took his blade in her hand and ran her fingers along the smooth steel, touched it to her lips and her brow.  He looked at her and she gave his weapon back to him.  Her strength felt thin, but she did not want to show it.  “Now you will answer my questions.”

“I will,” he said, without hesitation.

“I come seeking the white giants.  The ones who travel in the tall ships and fight with fire and smoke.  The ones who take slaves and chain them in darkness.  They have pale eyes and hair on their faces.  I know you have seen them.”  She folded her legs under herself, wondering how long it would take her to recover her strength.  She closed her eyes for a moment and gathered herself.  Revenge was patient, and cold.

“They came into these waters years ago,” he said.  “We do not know where they come from, or what they want.  None who they take away are seen again, and some say they eat the flesh of men and women.”  He smiled for a moment, showing his sharp-filed teeth.  “I do not believe that.”

“Where will I find them?” she said.

“In the west,” he said.  “Always they come from the west, and to it they return.  But know this –”  He held up a hand.  “There is a place they have taken and made for themselves.  They built stone on stone and they anchor their ships there.  They come and go, and there are often many of them.  This place is on another island, south from here, but it is not far.  If you lead us, we will go and fall upon it with swords and spears, we will burn it and take the heads of those who defend it.  Perhaps there you will find the one you seek, or word of them.”

Jaya smiled in her turn.  “And what does your chief say to that?”

Dhatun laughed.  “You bested him.  The gods have spoken and he will not stay your path.  You are the line of kings returned to us.  Your coming brings glory and blood.”

Jaya drew her sword and saw it was cleaned and oiled, gleaming in the flicker of the fire.  “Yes,” she said.  “I believe that it does.”  She remembered the shape of Sa-Hantu in the darkness of the cavern, and she closed her left hand into a fist, seeing it again red in the firelight.  A killing hand.