Guardian of the Dream
Part 1 - The Flower Sprouts
Chapter 1 - Yugno, the One Loved by the Li
Balsa was dreaming.
In the dream, it was night. She was standing on a grassy plain with no distinguishing features in the darkness. There wasn’t even any starlight: it was as if Balsa’s surroundings were coated with black paint. She felt the grass brush against her knees.
The wind blew through the grass, making her feel deep grief, though there was no obvious cause for it. A sound like a note sounded on a high-pitched flute rose up from beneath her feet as the wind blew her hair backwards.
***
Balsa woke up when she felt someone touch her hair. She didn’t open her eyes--she didn’t want anyone to know that she was awake. She remained motionless and tried to sense more about the person who’d touched her hair.
Balsa was a warrior. Even in her sleep, she should have been able to sense someone who was close enough to touch. Balsa was always alert to danger, even when she was deep in dreams.
A rat crawled through the undergrowth with a rustle but paid Balsa no attention. There was no one nearby that Balsa could sense, which was extremely odd. Balsa relied on her instincts; she knew what she’d sensed, but now, there was no sign of anyone nearby.
It must have been the dream. Or is there an evil spirit lurking around here?
Balsa opened her eyes slowly, breathing out her tension. The smell of dew-moistened earth wafted through the air. She lay stretched out in a grove of trees in the pale blue pre-dawn darkness.
The silence all around was shattered by the sound of rushing footsteps and rowdy voices. Several people were approaching from the direction of the mountain stream below.
Balsa extricated herself from the oiled paper she wrapped herself in while sleeping, carefully avoiding unnecessary noise, then grabbed her trusty short spear as she rose from the ground. When she looked down at the stream through a gap in the trees, she saw a man running across the slippery rocks from downstream.
Three men were chasing him. They wore bear skins, but they were obviously not hunters. Hunters in New Yogo didn’t carry swords. They looked more like mercenaries hired by a caravan. Among them was also a man with a bow, but since he didn't seem to be using it, they probably didn't want to kill the runaway. They must have a reason to try to capture him alive.
Balsa frowned. The runaway being outnumbered didn't necessarily make the ones chasing him the bad guys. Since they weren't trying to kill him, she had no reason to interfere. But the fleeing man appeared desperate, and Balsa wasn’t in the habit of abandoning desperate people to their fate. Balsa sighed internally.
Suddenly, the fleeing man looked up at her as if he knew exactly where she was. But how? Balsa hadn’t made any noise or called any attention to herself. The forest grove was still dark and should have concealed her completely.
The man was staring at her, mutely begging for her help.
The second their eyes met, Balsa stepped back involuntarily.
Impossible.
The man's face blended in with the darkness. She could barely see it.
In that moment, Balsa made up her mind. She jerked her chin, beckoning him toward her. He changed direction, climbing up to Balsa.
"Hey! He's running into the thicket!" one of the pursuers shouted. Balsa frowned severely. He’d spoken a language she hadn't expected to hear here.
That's Sangalese. Why are Sangalese people so deep in the northern mountains?
The kingdom of Sangal was much farther south. Even traveling by horse, the nearest border was ten days away.
Balsa gave the Sangalese man a once-over. He was tall and sported a dark mustache over his upper lip. He navigated through the swamp easily and was pulling ahead of his companions, steadily gaining on his quarry. The runaway was breathing heavily, grasping at grass and tree roots to pull himself up and away.
The man’s Sangalese pursuer finally caught up.
"You bastard! What a waste of time and effort…" The Sangalese pursuer stretched his arms out and tried grabbing the runaway's clothing, throwing himself off balance.
The second he grabbed the runaway's sash, a small rock hit his hand, making him gasp in pain and let go. He collapsed on the hillside, gripping his right hand with his left, and lifted up his face.
The Sangalese man froze as still as a statue carved in ice. The sharpened, white tip of a spear was thrust right in front of his nose.
He slowly looked up at the woman holding the spear in mute astonishment. She was a year or two past thirty; her black hair was pulled into an easy ponytail and she wore worn-out traveling clothes. The look in her eyes was steely calm, and the hand that held the spear was steady. She was battle-hardened, then, and trained to use her weapon.
"Seeing your face explains a few things," she muttered. "As does the sword you carry. You must be a slave hunter. One of the Galcinba."
The pursuer's face betrayed his surprise.
"You… How do you..?" Blood dripped from a shallow cut on his forehead and streamed downward into his eyes. He cried out and covered his face with both his hands. Before the man could react, Balsa opened several more cuts on his forehead.
With his vision blocked by the flowing blood, the pursuer staggered to his feet off the hillside, trying to find a foothold. Balsa approached from the side as if to pass by him and dealt him a knockout blow to his solar plexus with her left fist. The Sangalese man’s knees folded and he pitched forward, losing consciousness.
"Oi! What's going on?!" The remaining two pursuers had finally caught up. They stopped dead at the sight of a fast-moving silhouette coming right at them from a grove of trees. They noticed the short spear that the figure held and hurriedly drew their swords. They were breathing heavily from the exertion of running, but their battle-readiness indicated previous experience.
The pursuers were in a hurry to catch the runaway before he ran into the mountains, but haste didn’t make them careless. The spear-wielder being a woman was a surprise, but it was more shocking that she wasn’t Yogoese. They were in the middle of the Misty Blue Mountains, which spread out to the north of New Yogo. This woman was not Yogoese or one of the indigenous Yakoo. A solidly built , compact body severe and features were the mark of the people of Kanbal, the kingdom to the north of the Misty Blue Mountains.
"Who are you?" one of the men called out in halting Kanbalese.
Balsa chuckled. "No need to force yourself to use Kanbalese, Galcinba,” she answered them so in Sangalese.
The men exchanged wide-eyed glances. "There has been some misunderstanding. We're mercenaries hired to protect a Sangalese caravan. That man is a thief who stole some of the caravan’s goods."
The young, desperate fleeing man finally spoke. "That's a lie! I didn't steal anything!"
The pursuers, so distracted by Balsa before, now looked beyond her at the young man. Balsa clicked her tongue in annoyance. What an idiot. Why didn’t he run when he had the chance?
"Cut the crap." Balsa swung her spear sharply through the air before the men’s faces. "I know what having a jewel crookedly stuck on the right side of a sword hilt means. I don't care what kind of dirty jobs you do in Sangal, but I won't let you hunt people here in Yogo. The Blue Hand aren't that forgiving."
The pursuers exchanged grim smiles. "If you’re a Blue Hand, that makes you competition. Sorry, lady, but we can’t let you live."
The Blue Hand was the name of a human trafficking organization in Yogo. Balsa, of course, was not part of the Blue Hand, but the deception fooled the pursuers as she’d expected.
The men closed the distance between themselves and Balsa. Their swords were thick-bladed and curved--scimitars. The kind of weapon that displayed its full power on the downswing. Blades of this style were originally used for horseback fighting. Scimitar blades were short compared to Yogoese swords; the weapons sacrificed reach for the sake of speed and power. Balsa's spear was on the shorter side, only up to her shoulders, but a spear was a reach weapon. Her speed should be no match for theirs.
Even with that advantage in mind, the men didn’t strike at Balsa first. They hesitated, waiting for Balsa's attack, planning to slip past her spear and aim for her heart. They were hoping she would attack one of them so that the other could finish her off.
While the men gaped foolishly at her and did nothing, Balsa inspected their footholds and measured the distance between them. She went through various battle scenarios in her mind, considering all the moves they could make in this situation.
The stalemate was interminable. Balsa broke it, walking toward the men calmly with her spear in an easy grip, as if she were walking toward a friend.
The men were perplexed for a moment, but now that she’d moved, they didn’t hesitate to respond. The man on the left moved out of the short spear's reach and took a step behind Balsa. He waited for Balsa to attack his companion so that he could hurl his thick, heavy scimitar at her from behind. One blow from such a weapon would be crippling, and potentially fatal.
Balsa acted like she didn’t care. The men had been wrong to dismiss her based on the length of her weapon: she was faster than them and she knew it.
When Balsa attacked, neither of the men saw it coming.
Of course the man behind her saw nothing, but the man she attacked in front fared no better. He felt a sudden, burning pain in his right knee and went down screaming as the tendons of that leg were cut. He toppled into the river bed, still screaming, as Balsa jumped aside, turning around.
The other man had no time to throw his sword at Balsa. With her full attention fixed on him, he froze in petrified fright. He hadn’t seen the cut that had disabled his companion. As Balsa advanced, he retreated instinctively, step by step. When he thought he was out of the short spear’s range, he reset his stance and raised his sword.
The man was wide open when Balsa lunged, stabbing him through the kneecap. The pain was white-hot, sharp and sudden, like being run through with a fire poker. He looked at his mangled knee, then at Balsa. He forgot to scream: forgot everything except getting away from Balsa as quickly as possible.
Trying to put weight on his knee proved too much for him. He crumpled to the riverbed with a dull thud and didn’t rise. His companion was still down.
The man was still conscious; the throb of agony made him feel like he was still being stabbed. He’d lost all will to fight, but Balsa took the time to disarm him and throw his scimitar out of reach.
"Why didn't you move to the right side of the man in front of you and attack from there?" the young man asked. He sounded surprisingly cheerful, for all that he’d just witnessed Balsa’s brief battle.
Balsa raised her head, but didn’t answer. The young man walked toward her. It was hard to tell his exact age, but she guessed him to be around twenty or so. He was too thin and tall: built like a crane or a heron with long, hollow bones. His features were mixed-race Yakoo and Yogoese. His pale brown eyes didn’t firmly belong to either ethnic group, and the incongruity of them in an otherwise ordinary face was striking.
"If you moved to one side and attacked from in front of both of them, you could have fought them one by one."
Balsa, impatient, stormed up to the young man, grabbed his elbow and turned him back towards the grove with a forceful shove. “You idiot! Don’t talk to me; you don’t have time for it. You’ve got slave sellers on your tail, so get back to running and leave me alone.”
"But there were only three of them… do you think there’ll be more? You seem to have scared them off quite well."
"I only knocked out the first one. He should be coming to soon."
"What? You didn't kill him?"
Balsa stared at him. "Why should I kill someone for a stranger's sake? If anything, I'm relieved I could go easy on them."
Balsa hurried back to the place where she was sleeping earlier to gather her things. Irritatingly, the man followed her, matching her pace. With her things collected, Balsa went down the mountain path towards the swamp, taking care to walk on top of rocks so that she wouldn’t leave behind any footprints. She only went deeper into the mountains after she found a well-used animal trail.
The young man followed her the entire time.
A bit past noon, Balsa and the young man stopped to rest at a meadow near a small lake. Water bubbled up from the rocky rim of the lake. The early summer sun warmed the air, so that they were covered with sweat despite the typical chilliness of the northern mountains. Drinking the clear, cold water from the mountain lake invigorated them after the long hike.
As they rested, Balsa stole glances at the young man, who was sitting with his legs stretched out under some tree roots. His attire was very strange: worn-out gray robes that a Yogoese commoner might wear, but held together with an elaborated worked brocade sash. A bag hung diagonally from his shoulders. The bag was well-used, but also well-made; it had likely been expensive when it was new.
The young man’s arms, legs and neck were slim and long, like a woman's. His features were completely ordinary, save for his clear, pale brown eyes, which Balsa had never seen the like of on anyone’s face before.
A traveling performer? Maybe a singer…
If he was a singer traveling between towns and villages, he might have the means to buy his expensive bag and sash. Rich merchants' wives and lovestruck girls paid well for songs. And then, in wandering singer fashion, he could use those luxury articles to draw in even more people. But Balsa was acquainted with traveling performers, and while she couldn’t rule out the profession for the young man, he seemed considerably less jaded than most world-weary travelers.
"I don't understand.” Balsa slowly shook her head. "If you were a beautiful girl, I'd understand. But why is the Galcinba targeting you?"
The young man cocked his head. "You mentioned them before. Who are the Galcinba?"
"Eh, you don't know who kidnapped you?" Balsa sighed. "Maybe that's normal. Most people wouldn't know who kidnapped them until they were sold, if then."
"Hmm… I remember passing out drunk at the inn, but when I came to, I was in a wicker clothes hamper. Not because I wanted to be, mind you. I got very annoyed. I was very thirsty, but gagged, so I couldn't even scream. Somewhere along the way though, I got taken out of the hamper, and made to drink some awful-tasting water. Must have been some sleeping drugs. But luckily," the young man said with a laugh, "I've always been more resistant to drugs than other people. I've had quite a few problems because of that, but this time I think it helped. I woke up a bit before dawn. Thinking the drugs were still working, they had their guard down, so I used that opening to run away. That's all I remember."
Balsa shrugged. "Then you’re lucky twice over. Galcinba are Sangalese slave hunters. They prefer kidnapping beautiful girls and then selling them to rich merchants or nobility. Apparently, they mix drugs into wine so that the girls fall asleep, then carry them off in hampers before they wake up. They pretend to be a normal caravan while taking the girls to be sold.
"Not only is it a dirty job,” Balsa continued, “but if they're found kidnapping people in foreign countries they'll get into serious trouble, so they generally disguise themselves as merchants or mercenaries. I’ve heard that they work in groups of five, but since it's a pretty big organization, many of them don't know each other. To avoid getting in each other's way or going after the same targets, they carry swords with a jewel crookedly stuck to the handle to show that they’re in the middle of a job. Like those guys did…"
The young man listened with his mouth agape. "Amazing. How do you know so much about them?"
The young man was annoying. Balsa wanted to annoy him a little bit, too, in petty childlike fashion. "Of course I know about it; I’m in competition with them. You escaped from the wolf's fangs only to run into a bear's claws."
The young man gave a strained laugh. "There's no way you're with the Blue Hand, right?"
"You seem very sure of yourself, but the reason you got into this kidnapping mess is because you believed people too easily, isn't it?"
The young man said nothing to that. His smile didn’t falter. His expression and behavior made Balsa feel a pricking sense of unease.
"Well, anyway… I'm about to starve to death. On top of not having any breakfast, I've been forced to run around since early morning. Since we seem to have lost them for good, let's have lunch here." Balsa took out some dried deer meat and a hard, baked pastry that looked like it would keep a while from her pack. She gave the young man half, and he proceeded to stuff his face happily.
With his mouth full of the pastry, he mumbled, "This is jocom, isn't it?"
Balsa arched an eyebrow. "Yes. I'm surprised you know it. Not only does it keep for more than half a month, it's a very filling and convenient to carry."
"Some Kanbalese men coming to work here shared some with me once. You're Kanbalese as well?"
"By birth, at least."
The young man scratched his head. "I haven't thanked you for saving me yet. I'm sorry. I haven't told you my name either."
Balsa smiled. "No, you haven’t."
"As I should have said long ago, thank you very, very much for saving my life. My name is Yugno." The young man dropped to the dirt. With his forehead touching the ground, gave Balsa the most respectful Yogoese bow.
"I'm Balsa. I'm a traveling bodyguard. I've got nothing to do with the Blue Hand, so you can stop worrying."
Yugno’s laugh was carefree and incongruously young. "I see… A bodyguard! You're interesting, like a riddle. Even though you're Kanbalese, you speak Yogoese and Sangalese, and despite being a woman you're a crazy strong short spear user. I’d say you were impossible, but I think I just haven’t figured you out yet."
Balsa hmphed in disdain. "You, on the other hand look like an entertainer. A singer?" Balsa asked with a bitter, knowing smile.
Yugno's eyes grew round with surprise. "Well, yes… That's amazing, I'm astonished."
"In my line of work, I meet various people, you see. But I still have no clue why Galcinba is interested in a singer. I'm sure there are plenty of good singers in Sangal to capture."
Yugno stood up and walked to the edge of the lake, where he leaned over and scooped up water with both hands. After drinking his fill, he turned to Balsa. "It is true that there are many singers in the world. But there probably aren't many like me, who are gifted with a destiny."
Something in the young man's tone of voice made the nape of Balsa's neck tingle.
"You saved my life, so I'd like to sing to you. Not as part of my profession, but my true song."
Balsa raised her hand in denial. "Wait a minute. Singing here would be bad."
Yugno narrowed his eyes as if in response to something Balsa couldn't hear. "It's all right. There’s no one else within range to hear me."
He smiled in what he probably thought was a reassuring way. Balsa thought his eyes were laughing at her because of the expression in them. "You're probably worried since you know about the legend that you'll be cursed if you sing in the middle of the mountains by a body of water, but you don't have to be. Once you hear the song, you'll understand."
Yugno drew himself up, relaxed his shoulders, then closed his eyes. He took a deep, steadying breath. Then he began to sing.
The song and the voice weren’t what Balsa expected. Instead of a tune, Yugno made sounds like the wind rustling through tall grass. The world around them faded to silence, as if everything it had been sucked into a whirlpool. There was only Yugno, Balsa, and the strangest song she’d ever heard. Balsa couldn’t even hear herself breathing.
The sussurating melody repeated and started making sense as music. Balsa felt caught in it, like the song was passing through her and that parts of it remained within her, echoing throughout her body. It was like the vibration in the ground when there was a distant earthquake, but Balsa felt it everywhere, and the sensation only strengthened as Yugno sang.
Yugno's voice, more lightly than the wind, more delicately than a ripple over the mountain lake, made the air shimmer like a heat haze. From the surrounding trees and grass, countless voices echoed Yugno’s song: some thin and high, some low and rich, young and old… mysterious voices without clear owners.
The other voices’ contribution to the song made it richer, full and vibrant like a living thing. Like a woven tapestry, the voices melded together to create a wave of coherent sound. Balsa's entire body was caught in the wave, like drowning, but there was no panic and no pain. She could breathe, but when she did, she breathed the song. Nothing else in the world registered except for the song. The rest of the world might not even exist, for all she knew at that moment.
Things that Balsa had no names for, resonances that gave her body and her heart shape, vibrated along the echoing melodic line of Yugno’s voice. The shared song was joyful, triumphant like a victory march that would never end.
But the song did end. The voices reached a crescendo in unison. Balsa felt rather than saw the sound of those voices flying up to the sky before fading away and disappearing entirely, as if they’d never been.
The world around them reasserted itself. Balsa didn’t move. Insensate, Balsa searched for sound and touch and vision like she was lost in an expanse of nothingness. She blinked a few times and was relieved to find that she saw everything much more clearly than usual. It was like when the sky clears up after a terrible storm: colors were brighter and lines were sharper. She felt that she could almost see the essence of the forest all around her.
As awareness returned to her, Balsa twisted around a tightness in her chest and put her face to the ground. She was crying, though she couldn’t have said why. When she was listening to the song, even her feelings had disappeared. Now they all returned to her full-force, as if they’d been stolen and given back after rough treatment.
Balsa covered her face with both hands and sat still. She composed herself, then looked up at the young man. "That was… something. You must be Li Tou Ruen. I’ve heard stories. ‘The one who is loved by the Li'. Isn't that right? I didn't believe anything about that story until now…"
Yugno sat beside Balsa. "Yes. My father was a very ordinary farmer. I just loved singing, though, all the time. During work, during festivals, when wooing a girl I liked… songs were my allies and my friends. And they made me popular.
"But I think my parents were worried,” Yugno said with a little frown. “Parents have good intuition when it comes to their children, don't they? My mother always said ‘don't sing in the mountains, especially not near lakes or swamps.’ That's been a saying since forever, right? Li are supposed to live there.”
“What are Li?” Balsa asked.
Yugno shrugged. “They’re not like us. I think of them as echoes of voices that have come to life. My mother always said that if a child with a good voice sings near them, they'll be attracted to the child and might possess them--take over their body.” He shuddered. “The Li's song gives humans a very long life. But if you're seen by them even once, you'll never be able to live as a normal human again…"
Yugno’s habitual smile was full of self-reproach. "I only understood my mother’s warnings later. When I was thirteen, I wanted to see if the Li would be attracted to my song. I didn’t think it would work, of course. It was just a story, and I was just a kid. But I wanted to prove that I was extraordinary enough as a singer for the Li to come look at me.
“And they came.” Yugno looked up with his strange, pale eyes. "Seeing them made me happier than I’ve ever felt in my life. But after that day, they took everything from me. I belonged to them, and could never return to my normal life."
Yugno glanced at Balsa. "How old do you think I am?"
"Let's see… I thought you looked about twenty when I first saw you."
Yugno shook his head. "I'll turn fifty-two this year in the month of the chirping cicadas."
"What?!"
"The song of the Li really does give you a very long life… Hearing that song just now probably extended your lifespan a bit as well."
Balsa remembered the all-encompassing feeling that had made her body and soul tremble and slowly touched the nape of her neck. "If you don't watch out… If you let others know about this, you'll be done for. Of course the Galcinba are coming after you. You're like an elixir of immortality. No price is too high to pay for someone like you. The number of people who would want to get their hands on you is as large as the number of stars in the sky."
"Yes, I know that.” He sighed. “I've been as careful as I can. I moved away from my home village. A man who still looked fifteen at thirty would stand out too much. I can't stay too long in one place. That's why being a traveler suits me. But everyone makes mistakes, and my mistake is what got me into this mess."
“What mistake?” Balsa asked.
"Last autumn, I met a Sangalese cloth merchant at an inn. She woman had exacting standards of quality. Whenever she bought thread, she had to see it with her own eyes. She often made trips to Yogo to buy thread and other materials.
“She was also very beautiful. I fell in love with her... it sounds so foolish, doesn’t it? But I couldn’t help it. I wanted to be more than some worthless traveling entertainer for her, so I told her my secret like an idiot."
Yugno chuckled darkly. “You know, I hadn’t told anyone else about this, ever, except for my family. She took my hand looking very moved and told me that she would be coming to Yogo again next early summer. She asked me to decide the date, and we could meet at the same inn again. The day before yesterday was that agreed-upon day.
Yugno sighed. “But as I was waiting for her, only a man claiming to be her servant approached me and treated me to some wine…" After saying that, Yugno didn’t speak for a while. He stared at the ground as if he was ashamed.
"Maybe there's some reason for all this. Maybe her business was failing and she desperately needed money, and through tears was forced to sell you out,” Balsa suggested.
Yugno smiled faintly. "That would be awful… But yes, I want to think she had a good reason."
"Are the Li still close?"
"Yes. They’re over there, and there." Yugno pointed at the shadow of a magnolia tree and at a thicket near the edge of the lake. Balsa strained her eyes and looked, but she couldn't see anything.
"I can't see them, either. I have some kind of bond with them, so I always feel them. I can also hear them."
Balsa wasn't convinced. "I can't sense their presence. And that's something I'm very confident about."
"It's probably because their presence is similar to trees or grass."
Balsa remembered that someone had touched her hair and awakened her that morning. "I think the Li woke me up. They wanted me to save you…" Balsa said quietly. She looked up at Yugno. "Can the Li make you have dreams?"
"Who knows? They probably can. They haven’t given me any dreams, though."
Yugno's face lit up with a bright smile. "I don’t know what the Li can do, but I can make people have wonderful dreams."
"What do you mean?"
Yugno blushed pink. He waved his hand dismissively, then said, “Uh… Forget it. Please forget that I said anything.”
"Too late. Now I want to know."
Yugno laughed, but it sounded strained. "Well, all bards have powers like that, don’t they?” He smiled again like a child hiding a secret.
Balsa dropped the subject for the moment, but she was determined to find out what Yugno meant eventually. "Galcinba are pretty persistent,” Balsa said, “so you should grow your hair and beard out to change your appearance lay low for awhile. I know of a hidden house where you’ll be safe. Do you want to travel with me?"
Yugno frowned slightly. "Yes, absolutely, and thank you. Is the house yours?"
"No, it's my friend's house. I lived there often when I was a child, and now I come and go as I please. To be honest, I want you to meet my friend. He owns the house. His name’s Tanda, and he’s an apprentice magic weaver.”
Balsa couldn’t see or sense the Li, but she also didn’t have any magic weaving capabilities. She couldn’t understand Yugno or the Li in magical terms, but Tanda certainly could.
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