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March Episode: "Settling Scores"
I am Shi Tawapuh, once called Tawakhe, now called the Forgotten. If you wish, I will tell the story of my people and what happened to them. This is the only purpose that remains to me.
My teacher, Shi Manaua, was the first to suffer from the nightmares. On that first night, when the Undead war ended and strange lights flickered in the western sky, he stole away from our village without telling anyone--not even me, his apprentice. Later, our sentries were startled by shrieks of agony from the hills. We feared the attack of some deranged beast, and when we found Manaua missing from his hut, some thought the beast had already devoured him.
But there was no beast--only wise old Manaua, caught in the snare of his evil dreams. When he returned to us in the morning, pale and trembling, he made an excuse about a journey to observe the strange sky-lights. But I knew better, and when he tried to sneak away on the following night, I refused to leave him alone.
He was first annoyed, then furious. "Am I a foundling now, to be coddled and watched over? I am Shi Manaua; I go where I will!"
And so he did, but wherever he went, I followed. Finally, exasperated, he retreated to the sanctuary of his hut. I settled down to watch over the dwelling, and my watch was not in vain. In the frigid early hours before dawn, old Manaua's screams jarred me from my dozing. I rushed into his hut and found him clawing blindly at the walls, rending even his own flesh. Helpless with fear--and afraid to lay coarse hands on our elder shaman, whose life and honor were far greater than mine--I stood there, terrified, as he babbled and tore his skin. Finally, I had to wrestle him to the ground and hold him still until the madness passed. I realized then that Shi Manaua was in the grip of something he could not fight. Somehow, I had to protect him.
Two more nights passed in the same way before I summoned the courage to ask him about his dreams. A shudder passed through his leathery body as he closed his eyes. "The shaman's path is unity," he intoned, "unity with good and evil, with spirit and flesh. When the spirits suffer, I must feel their pain. It is my fate to walk this path, so I may see what is to come." He opened his eyes and regarded me with a familiar, sympathetic expression. "You have not seen the visions, then? Your dreams are not disturbed?"
"No, teacher," I replied. "I sleep as well as ever." In fact, I had taken to napping during the day so that I could guard Manaua at night. But whenever I did find rest, it was dreamless and deep.
"That is strange," Manaua replied. "As a young shaman, you too should feel the wrongness in the keh of the world. Even some of the children are beginning to feel it. They cry out in their sleep."
I shrugged uncomfortably. "I am fortunate, then," I replied. But I knew what Manaua was really saying: I had not the sensitivity to become a great shaman. And it was true. I became an apprentice shaman because of my uselessness with the spear and blade, my clumsiness at the forge, my ineptitude at sowing and reaping. When Manaua claimed me as his student, I knew he chose me not because of my talents, but because I had none. Perhaps he thought I would learn in time, but I think he was simply being kind.
And what need had our village for a second shaman, when Manaua's sight was already fit for legend? When our tribe left the Shelters to seek a home in Omishan, Manaua's spirits led us unerringly to a hidden valley with clean water and abundant game. When the Undead spread across Dereth, overwhelming other peaceful folk, Manaua led us in a great song of protection for our village, and we were not discovered. Time and again, Manaua's power and vision were our salvation.
We never imagined that those gifts could turn against us.
Our village boasted half a dozen children, the first born outside of the Shelters. As Manaua had warned, they were the next to succumb. One by one, the young ones began whimpering in their sleep, raking still-soft claws across their beds, and muttering incomprehensible oaths. The youngest were stricken first and suffered hardest. Yet none of the children could describe, after awakening, the terrors that had visited them during the night. As the dreams worsened, all of us started sleeping during the day. We lived under an invisible siege.
We begged Manaua to explain what was happening, but he would not, or could not. Instead, he left the village again, this time with me and three or four other able-bodied Tonks. He instructed us to build him a lean-to in the hills far from town, where he could sleep "without disturbing anyone." The others finished this task in a hurry and left, perhaps afraid of their once-beloved shaman. I had no such doubts. Lingering near the crude shelter, I confronted Manaua with my real suspicions.
"You think you are causing these visions, don't you?" I demanded of my master. "You blame yourself for the children's nightmares."
"Yes," he said heavily, "of course I do. And now that I have left, their evil dreams will cease. You will see."
"But why? Why would the spirits torment us because of you?"
"Because the spirits know me, young one, and because they are trying to tell me something that I seem unable to hear. All my life, I have lived close to the spirits. When I walk in the forests, Brother Tanae guides my steps and sharpens my senses. When I am lost or confused, Great Sister Wind whispers her secrets in my ear. But ever since that first night, their voices are strange and distant. I commune with them only in my dreams, and I remember nothing but their fear." Again, he looked at me with that pitying expression. "It is terrible to be alone."
"But you are not alone," I insisted. "When I walk in the forests, the trees are more likely to trip me with their roots than call me by name. I have never heard Tanae's voice, nor have I eavesdropped on the squabbles of Sisters Wind and Rain. But there is one voice I have heard all my life--a voice of wisdom and comfort. Your voice is always with me, Manaua. And I will stay with you now."
"You cannot," he replied sadly. "You must not."
But I did.
Weeks passed. I traveled back and forth between Manaua's new abode and the village, bringing the shaman food and news. He had been right about one thing--the children's nightmares had somehow been caused by his own. They once again slept through the night and played during the day, forgetting their brief agony. The other Tonks praised Manaua's wisdom in leaving the village, and assured me that the shaman would find a way to solve the problem. But they did not ask him to return, and his nightly torments grew steadily worse. Eventually, he stopped sleeping altogether, staring instead into the western sky for days on end.
"Sleep is nothing to me," he declared stubbornly. "I will endure this punishment, whatever its cause." But his eyes were haunted and his hands unsteady, and the food I brought from the village went too often untouched. I feared he would die, and then I truly would be alone--Shi Tawapuh, the forgotten one.
But Manaua did not die. Instead, a curious change crept over him. His skin drew taut over his bones and gained a strange, lustrous sheen. His eyes grew bright and wandering. Instead of staring into the sky, he roamed his makeshift camp restlessly from dawn to dusk. My fears shifted from death to madness. And one evening, as the setting sun washed the sky in shades of watered blood, Manaua asked me to help him build a seeing-fire, of the sort used to speak directly with the great spirits. I shuddered; it was forbidden to build such a fire outside the presence of the tribe, forbidden to stand alone before the spirits and speak for oneself instead of all Tonks. But my trust in Manaua outweighed my caution.
"Auberean's great Council Fire sets in the west," he said, "but we will build such a blaze that Night itself will fear to trouble our dreams." And so we worked together, gathering fallen wood for our great bonfire. By the time flames began to lick around its edges, a moonless night had fallen. The dancing shadows of the forest seemed to me more threatening than true darkness, but Manaua was unafraid. He crouched near the blaze, staring eagerly into its depths. He motioned that I should join him, and I reluctantly took my place at his side.
"I am not here to speak or to ask, but to listen," my teacher began. "Who desires communion with Shi Manaua?" he whispered intently. "Tanae? Volkama? Audetanga?" Surprisingly--for, as I said, I have always been deaf to the spirits--I thought I saw shapes forming in the core of the blaze. Mountains and rivers of fire took vague form, only to be scattered by gusts of wind or a shift in the burning logs. Frowning, Manaua tossed a handful of dried herbs on the flames. There was a sizzle and flash as they caught, but aside from a sweet, musky smell, I perceived no change in the fire. Manaua scowled with frustration.
"Night after night I call to you, and you do not answer. Yet you will not let me sleep in peace. One of the Voiceless Ones, then? Palenqual the Lost? The Blind Eye?" He hesitated. "Wharu?"
Suddenly, a low thrumming sound vibrated in the back of my skull. The sparks from the blaze swirled and danced in intricate, swarming patterns. I shuddered. All Tumeroks know the devastation that Wharu wrought in our distant past, when the children of Wharu Betrothed nearly consumed our people. Yet Manaua seemed quietly ecstatic to have received an answer from our spirits, even the darkest among them.
"We are no strangers to one another, Wharu. From life springs corruption, and from corruption life. I am no less your child than the termites and corpse-beetles. As long as you suffer in sleepless agony, so do I. And I would know the cause of your pain." Manaua began to sway back and forth, chanting words that I had never heard before, and black smoke began to swirl from the base of the seeing-fire. The sparks multiplied over and over, until it seemed that all the stars in the sky had crowded into our little blaze. Darkness and light intermingled until I found that I could no longer see Manaua, or the shadows of the woods, or even my own hands....
Alarmed, I leapt to my feet, confused by the smoke and the dancing lights. Suddenly, it seemed that the lights were stars, not sparks, and that the smoke had dissipated and hidden itself among the trees. I knew, then, that I was no longer in the waking world. I walked the dream-lands.
"Shi Manaua!" I cried out. "Where are you?" But there was no answer. I stood in the same clearing as before, but there was no sign of the seeing-fire, or of my teacher. Still, I was not completely alone, for the smoke had reconstituted itself as a numberless horde of pests. Ants and roaches crawled over my feet; beetles crept along the trunks of the trees and through the twisted mazes of their branches; worms patiently burrowed their way through rich soil. None of this frightened me. Instead, I was filled with a strange sense of fertility and contentment.
"Wharu?" I ventured into the darkness. "This is your domain, isn't it? I am seeing the world in your image." Without an answer, I felt compelled to continue. "These are your children--the hungry and overlooked. They have always been here, yet I see them for the first time."
Still there was no response. But, suddenly, it seemed that everything that crawled, crept or burrowed was heading in the same direction. I felt a powerful urge to follow the swarm, and so I found myself walking blindly through the woods--being scratched by very real thorns, it seemed, and tripping often on solid roots--until I stumbled into a clearing on a high hill. The dim landscape of Omishan was spread before me like a great tapestry, and everywhere I sensed the swarming children of Wharu.
For a brief time, everything was still and changeless, yet alive with thoughtless fecundity. I thought to myself that even Wharu was not such a terrible force after all.
And then I saw it in the distance, where my peaceful village once crouched under hidden branches. I saw the end of all things. And what I saw was this: a vast swirling pit, as black as tar, spreading to engulf and swallow all things.
But it was also this: a fork of lightning that thrust upward from the earth like a lance from the Abyss, wreathing every tree and blade in crackling death.
And it was also this: the laughing silhouette of a great black god, thorned and grotesque, swelling to blot out the stars and the horizon.
And I felt hunger. Such cavernous, immense, unnatural hunger!
It seemed that Wharu's children, too, felt that hunger--the only agony his children ever know. The intricate patterns of their swarms were lost in ravening chaos. Beetle consumed beetle and worm devoured worm. I screamed as a blanket of insects swarmed up my flesh, but worse than their biting and stinging was my own starvation. The children of Wharu were too small to satisfy such hunger--but ask me no more of that! I tore desperately through the dark forest searching for larger prey. If I had seen a hare or even a reedshark, I would have flung myself upon it and sunk my teeth into its hide, but nothing seemed to live in that dream-place except for the hungry ones and myself. In horror I realized that the swarm had reached my eyes, blinding me. Yet, senselessly, I ran on.
In my blindness, I tripped over something, tumbled down a slope, then fell for what seemed like an eternity, still wreathed in a cloak of gnawing pestilence.
Finally, I plunged into icy water. My awareness of Wharu was instantly extinguished, along with my consciousness. I did not even have time to thrash about in the water for a snake or a fish--anything to sate that awful craving.
Eventually, I awoke by the edge of a stagnant pool at the foot of the hills. I was covered with bloody wounds from tail to crest, but my sight had returned, and I was not hungry. Painfully, I washed myself clean in the water, hoping it was not as unwholesome as it looked.
Limping, I slowly made my way back to old Manaua's lean-to. But the lean-to was gone, and so was Manaua. Other things were missing, too. Every blade of grass had been razed to the ground, and the trees were stripped clean of bark.
Now I ignored my pain, sprinting down the long trail to the village.
The village, too, was gone. At least, every scrap of leather and cloth had been consumed, and the wood frames of our huts and tree-platforms had been gnawed to rotten splinters. But there were things that could not be consumed. Iron blades and spear-heads were scattered seemingly at random. And there were bones. A field of bones.
I did not need to count them or ask whose they were.
I built no funeral pyre for the fallen; my sadness was too great, my soul too weak. Since then I have wandered, telling my story to anyone who cares to listen. I believe I have been spared to deliver a warning to Dereth. But a warning of what? Wharu is a dark spirit, but we Tonks have dealt with him before, and that hunger was no part of nature, even Wharu's nature. I do not fear Wharu. I fear only three things:
I am afraid that my people died before Wharu's children reached them.
I am afraid that they died by each others' hands. To feed their hunger.
And I am afraid it will happen again.