Guardian of the God - Return from the Hard Journey - Part 3 Chapter 1 - Premonition of Disaster

 Guardian of the God

-

Return from the Hard Journey

(Book 6 of the Guardian of the Spirit Series)

Author: Uehashi Nahoko

Translator: Ainikki the Archivist

 

 Part 3 - Sada Talhamaya

Chapter 1 - Premonition of Disaster

    Sufar guided Tanda across the Rotan countryside on horseback, using all his wiles and tricks to make sure that Kashal loyal to Shihana couldn’t pick up their trail. They came across ordinary travelers occasionally, but more often than not they passed through pathless forests or little-traveled river valleys where there were no people at all. One extremely narrow path took them behind a huge waterfall.

    Other Kashal knew and used many of the same secret paths as Sufar. As a result, an infrastructure had been built up along the more commonly shared Kashal routes: there were inns, campgrounds and places to resupply all along their route.

    Tanda’s breath turned to white steam as he stared up at the leaden sky. It looked like it was going to snow again. It had been a few days since Sufar’s rescue; he wasn’t sure how many. They were heading to Jitan, so Sufar would find a safe place for them to stay and then scout ahead, searching for their next place to rest and gathering news. Thanks to Sufar’s scouting, they managed to avoid Shihana and the Kashal who supported her.

    Sufar also managed to meet with his own allies and learn about Shihana’s movements and plans. Receiving news from the rest of Rota seemed to provide an endless source of energy to Sufar; Tanda was hard-pressed to keep up with him sometimes.

    Sufar was viewed as the representative of the Kashal to Rota’s royal family, but the Kashal didn’t truly have a centralized leader. Elders governed some of the larger settlements, but that was all. One of the elders whose village was on the bank of the Saha river commanded many men; most of them were Shihana’s cousins. They would almost certainly support her over Sufar, but that wasn’t the case for the other Kashal settlements.

    Sufar’s apprentice, Mark, was the man who had pulled Tanda out of the prison jar during their escape from Shihana. Mark had also tracked down Balsa and Asra in the woods after their escape from the inn at the Herb Market. He almost never spoke, but he seemed honest and decent enough--and he was definitely loyal to Sufar. Before meeting up with Sufar and Tanda, Mark had chased after Balsa’s caravan with all the patience and care of a master hunter. He’d returned to that task shortly after Sufar and Tanda’s escape.

    After he left, Sufar said, “Mark will find Balsa and Asra. We don’t need to worry about what will happen until we reach Jitan. In the meantime, there are other things we can do.”

    Tanda objected strongly to having Mark search for Balsa alone. He was worried about what might happen if Shihana caught up to her first. But when Sufar told Tanda what he knew of Shihana’s movements, he let himself be convinced of the effectiveness of Sufar’s plan.

    “Shihana wants to change the kingdom of Rota overnight,” Sufar said. “She won’t waste more time chasing Asra when she already knows exactly where she’s going. She sees all of this like a game of tarzu. Asra is an important piece on the game board, but Shihana doesn’t need to capture Asra herself in order to manipulate her. We need to try to understand this situation from Shihana’s perspective if we’re going to defeat her.”

    Sufar and Tanda traveled for several days, keeping their ears open for any recent news. They rested in a secret place deep in the woods that was close to a Tal temple. The Tal Kumada who served there were people that Sufar had known for years; from them, Sufar learned that the Tal Kumada were not cooperating with Shihana’s plot. Some hadn’t heard of it at all.

    As Sufar and Tanda got closer to Jitan, Sufar discovered that some of the Tal people harbored secrets that laid hidden like water beneath the ground of a marsh. Some of them knew that the Hasal Ma Talhamaya river was flowing again and what that might mean for their people. Now was the time for the Tal people to honor their ancient promises. The Tal Kumada had drilled a fear of Talhamaya into all the Tal people for generations, but some of the people Sufar talked to quietly hoped for the god’s return. Some of the Ramau were teaching an alternate history of the Tal people that cast Sada Talhamaya in a more favorable light and warped the minds of some of the Tal people, especially the younger generation.

    The rumor that the Chamau had appeared and would become Sada Talhamaya reborn spread through the Tal people like wildfire. The massacre at Shintadan prison also became common knowledge; some claimed it to be a sign of Talhamaya’s wrath toward the Rotan people. People who thought this way hoped that the Chamau would unite with the god and liberate the Tal people from their long years of oppression. Many Tal people who feared Talhamaya were so embittered against the Rotans that they preferred her return over further suffering. Pockets of Tal rebellion broke out all along Sufar and Tanda’s route.

    No one knew who was spreading the rumors, but the Tal Kumada that Sufar spoke to all seemed deeply concerned about them. They suspected that the Rotans were spreading them to bolster their own position so that they could display their hostility toward the Tal people more openly. None of the Tal Kumada believed that the rumors about the Chamau were true, but they saw the effect of them on the Tal people who lived in their settlements. They’d been forced to reprimand apprentices who had taught people that Talhamaya’s power could restore the Tal people’s dignity and honor. The Tal people were sick of hiding in the shadows; they wanted to live freely and openly again without any prejudice or fear.

    The darkness that the Tal people lived in had become a heavy burden over the years. Many of the Tal people didn’t want to pass that burden to their children. They saw Talhamaya as a symbol of a brighter future for themselves and their families.

    The rumors became increasingly thick on the ground the closer they got to Jitan. In the Tal settlement closest to Jitan, the local Ramau had taken up arms and shut themselves inside their temple with the Tal Kumada priests they were supposed to serve.

    Sufar spied on the settlement through his hawk’s eyes and saw many of Shihana’s supporters scattered among the Ramau. It seemed that the Ramau and the Kashal had joined forces to change the Tal people’s perception of Talhamaya.

    And that wasn’t all--Sufar heard more troubling rumors about Rota’s northern clan lords. Most of these rumors centered around Prince Ihan and his role in supporting the interests of the north over the interests of the south. Some of the Kashal they met said that Prince Ihan would have to save northern Rota from an encroaching threat, and soon.

    Tanda thought that these rumors were maddening; none of them ever specified what Prince Ihan was supposed so save northern Rota from, or why. He learned from listening in on Sufar’s conversations that most of the younger clan lords in the north supported Prince Ihan and that the southern clan lords were behaving suspiciously. All of the southern clan lords were raising armies in secret under the pretense of hiring guards for their journey to Rota’s Ritual Hall for the founding ceremony of the nation. They would probably make their move sometime in Shasam, the first month of the new year; the founding ceremony was held in the Ritual Hall at Jitan on the twenty-second day of Shasam.

    Jitan had been built on the ruins of Rotarbal’s capital city. King Kiran defeated Sada Talhamaya in the same place where the Ritual Hall was now. Every clan lord from northern and southern Rota would gather in the the Ritual Hall for the ceremony. The southern clan lords were already making preparations to travel to Jitan. The number of guards they were bringing easily doubled what they’d brought with them in previous years. When the royal family sent messages pointing out this discrepancy, the southern clan lords claimed that they’d heard troubling rumors from the north and wanted to be especially cautious this year.

    King Yosam was abroad in Sangal for the new king’s coronation ceremonies, so Prince Ihan would be leading the ceremony of the founding of Rota this year. Many of the other Kashal had warned Prince Ihan to be on his guard. Tanda thought there were too many motives and plots in play; it was impossible to predict how everything would turn out.

    Tanda and Sufar hid in a low stone cave and prepared a simple meal of milk tea and skewered vegetables. Tanda looked up from his skewer and said, “Sufar?”

    “Hm?”

    “Do you think you have a good idea of everything Shihana’s planning now?”

    Sufar stroked the back feathers of the hawk on his shoulder, then nodded. “Yes, I think so. Everything is so uncertain right now. I feel like the country might be swept away by a wave at any moment. Shihana caused part of this instability, but not all of it. The north and the south have always valued different things, and the royal family has always struggled to unite them. The terrifying god of the Tal people has returned to Rota after hundreds of years. Any one of these factors or events would be capable of destroying Rota on its own, but all of them together...” He shook his head. “It’s hard to even imagine devastation on such a scale.”

    Sufar’s hawk, Shau, narrowed his eyes and blinked sleepily. He was clearly comfortable sitting on Sufar’s shoulder.

    “My ancestors didn’t just hand down the history of Rotarbal to us,” Sufar said. “I know a great deal more of Rota’s history than that. There have been other crisis points in history that are similar to what we’re experiencing now. I think of the flow of time like the flow of a river--never constant and always changing. A river can flow sluggishly one day and overflow with rainwater the next.

    “History is the same. We assign patterns to past events that seem related, even if they’re just coincidences. If enough unfortunate coincidences happen at the same time, the country is engulfed in a great wave of destruction and change.”

    Sufar narrowed his eyes. “Shihana didn’t really cause any of this. She just saw it coming before everyone else, somehow. She’s made herself a lifeboat to ride out the wave. She’s been widening the scope of her acquaintances and strengthening her relationships with her allies over the past few years. I knew she was doing that; I observed it. She’s a natural leader and has no trouble convincing most people to follow her. She has a gift for predicting outcomes and maneuvering people into the roles she’s chosen for them. It seems that she has both the younger Kashal and the Ramau working for her now.” Sufar’s tone was faintly tinged with pride. He cleared his throat and changed the subject.

    “The Kashal have been expecting the situation between the southern clan lords and the royal family to come to a head sooner or later. Shihana always thought that the southern lords would assassinate Prince Ihan as soon as King Yosam died so that they could seize power for themselves.

    “Prince Ihan is the first in line for Rota’s throne, but all the southern lords are related to the royal family by blood. King Yosam is tremendously popular, so they can’t risk making a move until after he’s dead. Prince Ihan is reasonably popular in the north, but the older lords don’t support him.”

    Tanda stared at his skewer roasting over the fire and tilted his head to the side. “But King Yosam isn’t in Rota right now. He’s not dead, but he is gone. Now might be a good time for the southern clan lords to strike.”

    “I agree. I think that doubling their guard in such a blatant and obvious way is intended as a threat. I don’t know anything else about their military preparations, but I understand their general attitude toward the north and Prince Ihan. They’re probably flaunting their guards in our faces in order to show their contempt for us.” Sufar ruffled the feathers on Shau’s neck and nodded to himself.

    “King Yosam sure picked a perfect time to go to Sangal, didn’t he?” Tanda muttered. “It’s a good thing  he left Prince Ihan in charge, at least, and not those greedy southern clan lords.”

    “You’re more right than you know,” Sufar said. “I’ve heard that the southern clan lords are in league with the Talsh empire. That’s the main reason King Yosam went to Sangal. Sangal is the wall that protects our nation from being attacked by the southern continent. Our alliance with Sangal has always been strong, but King Yosam gets few opportunities to meet with their king in person.”

    “I’m glad I’m a commoner,” Tanda said with a grin. He passed Sufar a skewer of vegetables that had been cooked thoroughly. “What does Asra have to do with politics and the royal family?”

    Sufar twirled the skewer Tanda gave him to cool it off. “I think Shihana intends to use Asra to save Prince Ihan from the southern lords.”

    “So you think she wants to use Asra as a weapon?”

    Sufar hunched in on himself, then nodded. “I’m worried about King Yosam’s health.”

    Tanda blinked in confusion, but Sufar didn’t seem to notice his reaction.

    “Everyone close to the king has seen how much he’s deteriorated over the course of the past year or so. He developed a high fever a year ago and has suffered intermittently with them ever since. His father died of a similar disease.”

    Tanda tilted his head. “And? I still don’t understand what any of this has to do with Asra. Let’s say that king Yosam dies and Prince Ihan succeeds him. Where does Asra fit in? Will Shihana use her to attack the southern clan lords?”

    Sufar sighed. “Probably. When king Yosam dies, the southern clan lords will almost certainly plunge our nation into chaos. The north and the south will go to war. Such a conflict would be long and bloody and pointless, but I see no way to prevent it.”

    “I understand that much, but I don’t understand what Shihana’s expecting Asra to do. Even Talhamaya’s power wouldn’t be enough to stop a war. It might not even be powerful enough to end one. I doubt Asra wants to use her power to kill half the country.”

    Tanda looked down at the cup of hot tea in his hand with a severe expression. “I don’t understand how Shihana would be able to convince Asra to help her, either...but there it is. She can’t afford to lose. I think she’s known Asra for a long time. She might be able to leverage that somehow.”

    Tanda suddenly remembered something Sufar had told him just a few days ago. Prince Ihan had ordered Shihana to find the Tal woman that he was in love with after she disappeared. Supposedly, Shihana had spent long years looking for her without success, but what if that was a lie? Sufar clearly didn’t know that Shihana had found Torisha or that she’d been Prince Ihan’s lover. Tanda wouldn’t have figured that out if Chikisa hadn’t told him everything he knew about his mother.

    That meant that Shihana had known where Torisha was for all this time--years, certainly--and she hadn’t told anyone. Not her father, and certainly not Prince Ihan. Sufar had only learned that Shihana and Asra had met before after she’d put him under house arrest before he escaped with Tanda. Tanda wondered why Shihana had kept Torisha’s location secret.

    “Maybe Shihana intended to use Talhamaya’s power from the start. Why else would she get close to Torisha and not tell anyone?” Tanda asked.

    Sufar’s eyes widened. He shook his head in firm denial. “No, that can’t be true. Her mother couldn’t possibly know that Asra would be the Chamau. She had no talent for magic weaving.”

    Sufar remembered Shihana telling him the secret of her mastery of the strategy game called tarzu: “All you need to do is imagine the shape your victory will take, then guide your opponent into the right position with your own moves. That’s all there is to it.”

    Sufar shook his head again. Shihana could not possibly have made Asra into the Chamau simply to suit her own purposes. And inviting Talhamaya into this world was a crime punishable by death. The Tal people had been conditioned to fear Talhamaya for generations. No matter what Shihana told Torisha, Sufar doubted that she would have sacrificed her own child in such a cause.

    But then a horrifying possibility crossed his mind: what if Shihana had been the one to identify Asra? What if she’d known about her power well before the Shintadan massacre and used what happened at Shintadan as an experiment of some kind to show off what Talhamaya could do? If Shihana really had known Asra for a long time, she’d be able to manipulate her easily. He shared this theory with Tanda. “She probably didn’t want to show her hand in things until she was certain she could win.”

    Tanda sank into silent thought. He took small sips of milk tea and tried to think through what Sufar had just told him.

    “It’s unthinkable for one of the Kashal to encourage the Tal people to bring back Talhamaya. It’s antithetical to who we are. But Shihana has always disregarded many of our customs and laws while ignoring others.” A shadow passed over Sufar’s face. “I can only guess at her motivations, but I think she was captivated by the idea of Sada Talhamaya’s power. I can almost hear her say it: ‘If I had that much power at my disposal, there’d be no limit to what I could do. I could use it to make the world a better place for everyone.’

    “But thinking of Talhamaya’s power that way is foolish. Her power surpasses human understanding. It’s too much for any one person to control. Even the kindest and wisest person in possession of such power would be corrupted into a tyrant. I’m certain that the original Sada Talhamaya was corrupted in just such a way.”

    Shau made a sleepy sound on Sufar’s shoulder.

    “Shihana knew how destructive Talhamaya’s power was, of course, but she never seemed disturbed by it. She’s always confident that she can handle anything. She’s also ruthless in pursuit of her goals. I think she would give up anything to succeed, including her own life--or someone else’s.”

    Sufar stared into the fire. Thinking of Shihana’s ruthlessness made him remember the time his wife had locked the front door and thrown away the key so that Sufar wouldn’t be able to enter. Shihana found the key and placed it into a flower pot that her doting grandfather had given to her as a little girl. No matter how many times her mother tried to remove the key so that she could lock Sufar out again, the key wouldn’t come out. Shihana had used magic weaving to keep it inside the pot.

    Eventually, Sufar’s wife became so frustrated that she smashed the pot into a dozen pieces. Shihana found the key and passed it to her mother, then started cleaning up the fragments of the pot in silence.

    Sufar’s relationship with his wife had always been a difficult one. The pot Shihana had placed the key in was precious to her; it was a gift made by someone who loved her. Having her mother shatter it in pursuit of her own desires acted as an object lesson for Shihana; it was why she was willing to sacrifice anything now.

    Sufar could still remember Shihana’s expressionless face and cold, colorless eyes in the days that followed the pot’s breaking.

    Sufar turned away from the fire and began to eat. He added a bit of salt to the vegetables on his skewer and took a sip of his tea, then shifted to face Tanda.

    “Shihana won’t hesitate to do anything in order to get what she wants. Anyone who gets in her way will be treated as an enemy. That includes me.” He sounded genuinely regretful.

    “She didn’t kill you when she caught you,” Tanda said. “Even Shihana must have some limits.”

    Sufar blinked. “I suspect she just underestimated me. She knows that I won’t do anything to hurt her. Not deliberately, anyway.” Sufar added some dried meat to his skewer.

    He’s right. I don’t think Sufar is capable of hurting Shihana, Tanda thought. He was traveling with Sufar now, but that wouldn’t be true forever. If Sufar’s actions ultimately served Shihana’s purposes, then Tanda owed it to Balsa, Asra and Chikisa to do everything he could to protect them. Sufar and Tanda were working at cross purposes, so Tanda had no choice but to consider Sufar an enemy as well. Tanda coughed from the fire’s smoke and looked up.

    Balsa. Where are you? Are you looking at the sky right now?

    The low clouds and oppressive dampness were sure signs that it was going to snow again soon.

    “We should sleep,” Sufar said. “We’ll get to Jitan in three days at this rate. We’ll probably get caught in one of Shihana’s traps on the way there, and I’d rather not be exhausted when that happens.”

    Tanda nodded. Rota’s winter nights were bitterly cold; Tanda felt the wind cut through him even though he slept near the fire and was covered by several layers of blankets. He dozed fitfully throughout the night, but found it hard to stay asleep for long.

    Tanda dreamed about Balsa. Not Balsa as she was now, but Balsa when she’d been twelve or thirteen years old. She was standing at the entrance to a cave, soaking wet and pale as a ghost. Her teeth chattered as she hugged herself and shivered violently. Her lips were turning blue.

    Tanda got to his feet and ran to her. He hugged her close and rubbed her arms and chest, trying to warm her up. He needed blankets or a fire. She was as cold as a block of ice. The more he tried to help, the colder she got until she went transparent like water and completely disappeared.

    Tanda jerked awake. His hands and his arms were freezing; he felt like he really had just tried rubbing warmth back into Balsa’s frozen limbs. Maybe the dream had been more than a dream? He broke out in a cold sweat.

    Balsa...you can’t be... You’re fine. Right?

    He was so terrified that he forgot to breathe. Had he just seen Balsa’s spirit? Had she come to tell him that she was dead? His face drained of blood and he started shaking uncontrollably.

    “What’s wrong?” Sufar asked.

    Tanda didn’t say anything. He stared up at the sky and shook. Even if he tried a Soul Call now, it might be too late to find Balsa’s spirit.

    Please let it be just a dream...

    Tanda shut his eyes tight.

    Sufar frowned deeply. He saw something moving out of the corner of his eye and focused on the cave’s entrance. A wolf was sitting just outside, shining silver-white in the light of the moon. The wolf was so still and silent that it looked like a statue carved of ice.

    Sufar looked into the wolf’s eyes and knew immediately whose soul the wolf was sharing. Sufar slowly lifted his hand and beckoned the wolf inside.

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