Speaking Bones, page 18
Lyucu kyo!
Ten dyudyu cupéruna?
Ukyu kyo!
Lurona ryo lurotan saten ra pécu,
Saten ra pécu!
Pégoz nara kita kita.
Gradually, the assembled naros and culeks joined Cutanrovo’s lone voice, until the mighty chorus shook the very deck of the city-ship with their thunder-roar, their flood-breath.
More than a few eyes on the ship were wet as the warriors recalled the dangerous journey across the seas and the terrible battles that had followed to secure themselves this foothold in Dara.
Who do the gods favor above all?
The Lyucu people!
They hoped that the many comrades who hadn’t lived to see this day would smile from the backs of the cloud-garinafins as they gazed upon this scene of celebration; they hoped that the gods of Ukyu would nod with approval as they observed Cutanrovo in her splendor, draped in the skulls of their enemies.
What do the gods favor above all?
The land of Ukyu!
In truth, the tradition of making and wearing skull capes had long fallen into disuse among the Lyucu, and was mentioned only in old stories. Even Tenryo, who slaughtered thousands upon thousands, first in his drive to unite the Lyucu to overthrow the hated Agon, and then during the long conquest of the mud-legged Dara-raaki, had never revived the lapsed custom, believing that such gruesome symbolism was unnecessary because his victories spoke for themselves. It was enough to leave that ancient vision of horror to song and story.
Spread the tent of head-tents,
Spread it!
There is nothing we cannot do.
But Cutanrovo understood that it was not enough to merely replicate Ukyu’s way of life in Ukyu-taasa. In order to fully revitalize the Lyucu spirit, dulled after years of accommodationist misrule and compromise, it was necessary to, in some sense, “out-Lyucu” the homeland. By reviving these customs from a mythical and even bloodier age, she and her followers could instill in the natives even more terror and boost the cohesion of the Lyucu conquerors.
And the skull cape was only the beginning.
Behind Cutanrovo’s dais, a dozen Lyucu warriors, all naros-votan, stood on the foredeck, massive clubs fashioned from whale bone and shark’s teeth over their shoulders. At their feet lay a group of seven Dara-raaki prisoners, the only survivors of the most recent rebellion in Dasu. Sedated with tolyusa juice and dream herbs, the prisoners were completely docile, unable to tell their fantastical hallucinations apart from the nightmarish reality around them.
Her opening chant at an end, Cutanrovo turned toward the naros-votan guarding the prisoners and clapped her hands together, causing the skulls in her cape to rattle and clatter like the singing dunes of Lurodia Tanta.
“Let the music begin!”
Two of the warriors picked up one of the sedated rebels and dragged her to the prow of the ship. They pushed her upper body out over the foaming sea and held her in place by her arms. The other ten warriors lined up behind her in a column.
The prisoner moaned, uncertain of where she was. Before her the Wall of Storms loomed, as unreal as the swirling haze in her mind.
Cutanrovo stood still, waiting for the skulls in her cape to stop rattling against one another. The naros and culeks held their breath. A solemn silence descended over the ship. Cutanrovo nodded at the naros-votan waiting in line.
The first naro-votan strode forward and slammed her massive club into the prisoner’s right ankle. The sickening, wet crack of shattering bone reverberated over the city-ship.
The woman faltered, but the two naros-votan on either side of her held her up. A moment later, as the pain pierced her drugged mind, she let out an inhuman scream, something not of this world.
Cutanrovo turned back to the rest of the ship, and raised her arms under the skull cape. “Gods of Ukyu, we seek your aid in opening the Wall of Storms and granting our votan-ru-taasa and votan-sa-taasa safe passage. There is no music more pleasing than the lamentation of our foes as they’re driven before you, and we offer this gift to you now in gratitude.”
The keening of the woman with the broken ankle gradually subsided. A second naro-votan strode up to her and slammed his toothed club into her left ankle. A fresh howl of pain tore through the air. The woman convulsed and jerked like a hooked fish.
Cutanrovo nodded, and the two naros-votan holding her up let go of her arms. The prisoner collapsed to the deck, screaming again, her broken ankles unable to support her.
As Cutanrovo watched, the other six prisoners were led up in turn against the prow of the ship. One by one, their legs were also shattered, adding their agonized screams and howls to the grotesque chorus that Cutanrovo was conducting for the pleasure of her gods.
Whenever one of the prisoners slackened in their wailing, one of the naros-votan would stride up to inflict a new injury: breaking arms; smashing fingers; shattering ribs; slamming the teeth-studded club heads into the prisoners’ private parts; slashing open their bellies to extract the entrails slowly, one loop at a time…. Only when a victim could no longer be roused through torture or could no longer scream due to choking on their own blood would one of the naros-votan end their life with a precise bash in the skull.
By the time the ritual sacrifice was complete, the last victim silent and dead, more than a few of the naros-votan, naros, and culeks were trembling. Even for battle-hardened veterans, the intensity of the ritualistic torture they had had to inflict and witness was overwhelming.
Cutanrovo smiled at the naros-votan who had made the prisoners sing for a divine audience. “The gods are pleased.”
The naros-votan nodded, their faces twitching.
Cutanrovo clapped her hands together several times loudly.
Shamans scrambled up from the interior of the city-ship, skull bowls full of crimson berries in their arms. They went first to the naros-votan and then among the rest of the crew, distributing the sacred fruits. The assembled warriors grabbed handfuls of berries and chewed them as though satisfying a desperate hunger, careless of the blood-like juice spilling down their chins. As the magic spread through their veins, their twitching faces relaxed. Visions of feasting gods and proud warriors on cloud-garinafins crowded their minds, and a manic energy suffused their limbs, seeking an outlet.
* * *
Cutanrovo laughed with pleasure. These tolyusa berries were a lucky find. The pirates were actually good for something.
Tanvanaki’s secret dealings with the pirates had always bothered her. The pékyu’s obsession with acquiring native artisans and their expertise seemed to her to betray a lack of faith in Lyucu traditions. However, she reluctantly accepted Tanvanaki’s reasoning that an army of natives had to be equipped with native weaponry, as the mud-legs couldn’t be allowed to learn to ride garinafins or to fight with bone weapons.
However, she kept a tight watch on the pirates, as they were prone to smuggling contraband into Ukyu-taasa for profit—mostly small carved idols of false gods consecrated at temples in the core islands and books of the words of Ano sages, which were very much in demand among native officials who continued to covertly practice their barbaric customs. (In truth, she fervently wished she could get rid of all the native officials, but they did serve a purpose in making the large population of slaves easier to control, like sheepdogs. We must cull the herd and reduce the number of mud-legs even further, she mused. It’s the solution to all problems.)
It was from one of these pirate smuggling crews that she had seized the first supply of special tolyusa berries. While she wasn’t surprised that the plant had become established on other islands in Dara—Ukyu-taasa’s supply had been derived from a patch discovered on Crescent Island, after all—she was amazed at how round and lush the berries were, far more appealing in appearance than the familiar variety in military-controlled patches on Rui and Dasu.
Instantly, Cutanrovo saw yet another opportunity to enhance her own power. Tolyusa was vital to the health and breeding of garinafins, and Goztan Ryoto, the last accommodationist in power, controlled the meager supply of tolyusa in Ukyu-taasa because Tanvanaki entrusted the garinafin force to her. However, tolyusa was also an important component in religious service, and Cutanrovo, even as chief shaman, had to beg Goztan for it, which the latter doled out only reluctantly. If Cutanrovo could secure her own independent supply of tolyusa, then she would be one step closer to toppling Goztan completely.
Her plan to keep the pirate-sourced tolyusa to herself, however, had almost been thwarted by Tanvanaki’s nameless spy. He found out about the smugglers and wanted to report the finding to the pékyu. Cutanrovo caught him just in time and tried to persuade him to see things her way—surely there was no reason to bother the pékyu with such a minor matter when she already had so many other things to worry about!
But neither enticements nor threats worked. He refused to contemplate the idea of keeping anything from Tanvanaki. She was a goddess, infallible, all-wise, ever-aware…. Cutanrovo heard enough. She killed him.
Cutanrovo regretted having to do such a thing to a fellow Lyucu, but the man had always made her uneasy. Clanless, tribeless, nameless, he just didn’t fit. That he was such a good swimmer, unheard of among the Lyucu, further marked him as strange, tainted, unnatural. She had been wanting to get rid of him for a long time.
What Cutanrovo feared most of all was that the man represented Tanvanaki’s eyes and ears, and could tell the pékyu things without going through Cutanrovo. She had already gradually replaced the guards and servants around Tanvanaki with people she trusted, but she had not been able to persuade Tanvanaki to assign the spy to her command.
Cutanrovo believed it was important to protect the pékyu by controlling the information she received. Facts were never found in nature, but shaped by mindset. There were simply too many “facts”—the harvest figures, the number of natives being killed, the health of the herds and flocks—that required the proper context and interpretation to be (correctly) understood as successes of hard-liner policies. Tanvanaki, on the other hand, often showed an unfortunate resistance to the necessary hard-liner mindset. To allow the pékyu to be exposed to information without proper filtering, therefore, was to leave her vulnerable to deception and manipulation by the wily accommodationists.
Viewed in the proper light, killing the nameless spy was a supreme act of loyalty. Cutanrovo was willing to stain her own hands with Lyucu blood in order to save the pékyu from deception-by-fact.
So she had blamed the death of the spy on native saboteurs, and executed a whole village as vengeance to comfort the grieving pékyu.
Her own sacrifices had been worth it. The pirate berries turned out to be much more potent than the traditional variety, and those who ingested them reported longer, more intense dream-hazes that brought them closer to the gods.
Cutanrovo saw the new tolyusa berries as a kind of sign. If a plant from Ukyu could take root in Dara and grow into a more intense, powerful version of itself, didn’t it presage that the people of Ukyu would also take root in Dara and become a more intense, powerful version of themselves? The Lyucu of Ukyu-taasa would evolve to be even more Lyucu than the Lyucu back home, exactly as she envisaged.
The pirates were vague about where they had obtained the berries, and Cutanrovo understood their reticence. Even outlaws among the Dara-raaki were as obsessed with profit and commerce as the rest of that benighted race. No matter; once all of Dara was conquered, the Lyucu would discover the source and have as much of the new tolyusa as they liked. Meanwhile, it was no trouble to advise the pékyu to demand more tributary gold from that coward Jia and divert some into her private coffers to pay the pirates for a steady supply.
And so Cutanrovo kept the source of the new supply secret. She increased the use of tolyusa at all religious ceremonies and dispensed berries liberally as rewards to warriors and togaten (and even a few favored, loyal natives) who devised particularly clever ways of promoting Lyucu interests. The native Wira Pin, for instance, received some tolyusa berries when he came up with the idea of requiring every native village to construct an elaborate statue of Tanvanaki in a competition to demonstrate their loyalty. Once the statues were finished, all natives were compelled to pledge allegiance to the village statue each morning and to confess their sins to the same statue each night.
Fortuitously, the new berries also bolstered her project to make the Lyucu more Lyucu. Shamans reported feeling closer to the gods; warriors reported more strength and energy; the togaten thought it made them feel closer to their Lyucu roots. The only people who objected were the surviving accommodationists, who, ironically, argued that such extensive use of tolyusa was “un-Lyucu.”
Cutanrovo didn’t even deign to dignify their whining with a response.
* * *
Now that everyone was in a proper festive mood, Cutanrovo decided to bring the ceremony to a climax.
“Let’s welcome our votan-ru-taasa and votan-sa-taasa with a fitting display of our Lyucu spirit!”
Music started again, as did the dancing. The twirling shamans leapt even higher and the frenzied musicians played even louder. Naros and culeks picked up their bone weapons and slammed them against the masts and gunwales while stomping their feet against the deck.
Cutanrovo extended her hands toward the Wall of Storms, as though beseeching the wind and the water directly, and intoned:
Cu na goztenva va péfir!
Cu na tatenva va péfir!
Yes, she thought, yes. Why can’t we build a paradise with our own arms? Why can’t we open the Wall by the strength of our own voices? The Lyucu spirit is indomitable!
The prayer, amplified and repeated by all the fervent throats on Toryoana’s Gift, expanded outward from the city-ship like the rumbling of thunder.
The Wall shimmered, as though ready to reveal the next stage in the grand conquest of Dara by the Lyucu.
* * *
At that moment, somewhere to the east of Toryoana’s Gift, below the horizon, Admiral Than Carucono paced the deck of the tiny fishing barge Toru-noki. A few guards, dressed as fishermen, gazed alertly out upon the empty sea.
Toru-noki was alone. Given the expiration of the peace treaty with Unredeemed Dara, everyone, from Empress Jia and Prime Minister Cogo Yelu to the junior analysts in the College of Advocates, thought it was best to refrain from any action that might be interpreted by Tanvanaki as a provocation. Thus, Than couldn’t be escorted by warships, including mechanical crubens or airships.
He was here to observe, not to start a fight.
The aged admiral peered north at the roiling columns of water and clouds. He didn’t pray to any of the gods of Dara, though he thought he could see the shapes of the gods in those ever-shifting storms and hear their voices in the dull clamor of distant thunder. Years of watching the great engineers of the empire at work—first Luan Zyaji, his old friend, and then Zomi Kidosu, the student who came to surpass her master—had taught him that it was better to trust the arcane symbols and the abstruse mathematics that they used to divine the future than the ambivalent signs of the gods. If Zomi Kidosu said that the Wall of Storms would reopen today, then it was as certain to occur as that the sun would set in the west.
The only uncertainty was who and what would come through, and that, he knew, had already been decided more than a year ago, since a year was how long it took to travel from Ukyu to Dara on the great belt current.
“Grand Princess Théra,” he muttered, “the die has been cast and the arrow loosed from its string. Have you succeeded?”
Than Carucono squinted at the Wall of Storms, waiting for the fate of Dara to be changed once again from outside.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN THE WOLF-THANE
TATEN: THE FIFTH MONTH IN THE TENTH YEAR AFTER THE DEPARTURE OF PRINCESS THÉRA FROM DARA FOR UKYU-GONDÉ (WHEN THE LYUCU MUST LAUNCH THEIR NEW INVASION FLEET TO DARA).
Another spring had arrived in Ukyu-Gondé. The scrublands, after a harsh winter, revived with a vengeance. Meltwater refilled dry riverbeds; spiny frog tadpoles wriggled in mud pools; flowers bloomed in the grass seas as well as on the shores of Aluro’s Basin and the Sea of Tears. Babies born during the winter sniffed for the first time the moist scent of cactus dew carried on fresh breezes instead of the perpetual smoky haze inside sealed tents, and all the earth seemed to have awakened from a long slumber.
In Taten, thousands busied themselves. Agon and Dara slaves, many of them captured from Kiri Valley and supervised by whip-wielding naros, labored over the city-ships, restoring them to seaworthiness. Butchered cattle and sheep carcasses waited in heaps outside smoke tents, where teams of culeks would turn them into provisions for the expedition. Agon slaves cut, dried, and tied bundles of waxtongue, thornbush, and long-ear grass, loading them onto the city-ships as feed for garinafins. Young naros wrestled and competed in feats of strength for the chance to be chosen as members of the expedition, while thanes jostled for political advantage—either to be designated as leaders in the fleet to Dara or to take up juicy posts left behind in Ukyu.
Having pacified the Agon-Dara rebellion and subjugated the ice tribes—though it was regretful that Tovo couldn’t bring back Takval and Théra, either alive or dead (Cudyu had been hoping to demonstrate his power by using Takval’s skull as a drinking bowl and making Théra his pleasure slave)—the pékyu now turned his attention to new victories and conquests.
He had, by guile and cunning (or rather, by divine revelation, if one were to listen to his explanation to his followers), discovered the next opening in the Wall of Storms, and now he would lead the greatest expedition in the history of the scrublands through it. He wasn’t rash and impulsive like his father; he would learn from the old man’s mistakes and be prepared. With the aid of the Dara captives taken from Kiri Valley, he would make these city-ships stronger and better. Through torture and threats, he would extract from them the most up-to-date intelligence concerning the strategic situation in Dara. Unlike the last expedition he’d sent, a perfunctory effort to fulfill his duties as a son and an opportunity to be rid of thanes he didn’t like, this one would be a serious effort drawing on the strength of all Lyucu. He would bring many more garinafins and riders; he would pack plenty of provisions and tolyusa; he would lead the bravest naros and the wiliest thanes.
