The Veiled Throne, page 28
“As you can see for yourself, Théra, this isn’t Taten and we are a people in exile. We have no slaves to build a grand wedding tent and we can’t afford to slaughter a thousand cattle for a grand feast. I hope you aren’t insulted by the simple rites and shabby preparations. What matters is that we seal the alliance as quickly as possible and begin the grand task of the rejuvenation of the Agon.”
Théra nodded. “Of course you’re right. The alliance matters the most. A quick ceremony is no insult to me—if that’s what Takval wants.”
“It is what Takval wants,” said Volyu. “The sooner we get the wedding concluded, the better. The return of Takval has created… certain instabilities.”
“What kind of instabilities?”
“Ah… it’s no surprise he hasn’t explained the details to you. I will be frank: My sister and I do not get along.”
Théra nodded to herself in recognition. Takval had indeed told her that Volyu had become chief of the Agon in exile over the claim of his sister, Souliyan Aragoz, though neither had been formally acknowledged by Nobo, their father. Most of the Agon warriors now seemed to accept Volyu as their leader, but it made sense that Souliyan would still have supporters—especially among those unsatisfied with Volyu. The return of Takval, strengthened by a marriage-alliance to Dara, no doubt would be seen by some as adding to the claim of his mother. No wonder Volyu was worried.
“You have nothing to fear from us,” said Théra decisively. It was important to allay Volyu’s concerns and show that they were here to help him, not unseat him. She hoped that was why Takval had wanted to talk to Volyu. “You’re the Pékyu of the Agon. Only when the Agon are undivided and strong can the alliance benefit Dara. I won’t tolerate any attempt to undermine your authority.”
“Very good. That is exactly what I wanted to hear. You won’t get much rest tonight, I’m afraid, since you will have to learn the rites before the ceremony tomorrow.”
“Will I have to do much to prepare?” asked Théra. She was a bit dazed as she tried to wrap her head around the idea of marrying Takval the next day.
“You need not trouble yourself about the ceremony itself as long as you learn your role,” said Volyu. “It is our custom for weddings to be planned by the elders of the two clans that are about to be united, not the couple themselves. I will send experienced shamans and elders with long memories to teach you what you must do and say during the ceremony.”
“But to seal the alliance—”
“Though the wedding will be conducted in haste and not lavish, I won’t skimp on the necessary rites to give it the required weight. It’s important that we proclaim the importance of this alliance, both for our families and our peoples, to all the tribes of the Agon.”
Théra nodded at this, somewhat reassured. The wedding was, above all, a political act, and she was glad to see that even among the Agon, there was the same marriage between theater and politics.
After Volyu left, Takval didn’t return, and she was glad to have a little time to herself as she sorted through her own complicated thoughts.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN COMMITMENT
THE OASIS OF SLIYUSA KI, UKYU-GONDÉ: THE FIFTH MONTH IN THE SECOND YEAR SINCE PRINCESS THËRA DEPARTED DARA (KNOWN IN DARA AS THE SECOND YEAR OF THE REIGN OF SEASON OF STORMS).
Late into the night, a succession of shamans and elders came to the tent to teach Théra what she had to do during the wedding. There were traditional chants to memorize and recite, specific dance steps that she had to perform to honor the gods and the heroes of the Agon people, and rituals she had to carry out together with the groom to demonstrate both sides’ commitment to the alliance.
After returning from visiting her new Agon friends, Thoryo stayed by Théra’s side and attended all the instruction. During the voyage to Ukyu-Gondé, Théra had taught her how to represent speech with zyndari letters, and Takval had shown her the various mnemonic techniques the people of the scrublands used: knots on a rope to mark important points in a speech, dance maps made from charcoal on hide, collections of stones of different sizes to symbolize events in sequence. Now she used these techniques to take notes and help Théra practice and memorize.
Later, after most of the elders had left, just as Théra and Thoryo were about to go to bed, a woman in her late forties entered the tent. She was dressed like the other Agon, with no obvious insignia of her rank—at least none that Théra had learned to read. But there was a natural air of command in her movements that drew Théra’s attention.
“Leave,” she said to Thoryo. The tone wasn’t arrogant or rude, but it brooked no disagreement. “I wish to speak to the Princess of Dara alone.”
Thoryo looked at Théra, who nodded. She bowed and exited the tent.
“I am called Souliyan Aragoz, daughter of Nobo Aragoz, son of Akiga Aragoz, once the Pride of the Scrublands,” the woman said quietly. Then, after a pause, she added, “I’m Takval’s mother.”
* * *
Pékyu Nobo Aragoz, last pékyu of the Agon, had fathered dozens of children by his multiple wives. After the Lyucu had successfully overthrown their erstwhile masters, Pékyu Tenryo Roatan gathered all the children and grandchildren of Nobo, and, on a day chosen by the shamans as pleasing to the gods, he had them kneel down in front of the Agon Great Tent. Then, the pékyu walked behind the line of royal children, sons and daughters of the man who had raised him like a child of his own flesh, and bashed in their skulls with a blow from Langiaboto, the Self-Reliant.
Tenryo’s own thanes had looked away as the kneeling young pékyus-taasa, some of them barely old enough to lift a war club, begged tearfully for their lives as their older siblings shouted at them to shut up.
“You think I’m cruel,” said the pékyu, pausing in his death-dealing walk to address his thanes, “but in fact I am being merciful. Leaving them alive so that their hearts would be gnawed daily by the shame of their own cowardice—now, that would be true cruelty.”
Once the Agon tribes, scattered to the ends of the scrublands, had settled into their new role as a conquered people, rumors began to spread that not all members of the First Family had died.
Two of Nobo’s children, Volyu and Souliyan, had been spared because their mothers had been Lyucu slaves serving Nobo, and the Agon pékyu had never given them his clan name or lineage. As the chiefs of the various Agon tribes jockeyed for power—in exile, the struggle over a larger oasis in the wastelands or a slightly more reliable patch of waxtongue bush grew even more intense than the fights over slaves and cattle and grazing rights to the grass sea when the Agon were masters of the scrublands—many saw the two children as valuable symbols. A chief who could claim that they were “protecting” the sole heirs of the last pékyu of the Agon could be seen as the protector of the memories of the Agon people and the legitimate leader of the ruined empire.
The two children became objects of deadly raids and counter-raids among the Agon, taken from one end of the continent to the other, nominally treated as heirs to the legacy of Nobo Aragoz, but in reality little more than pawns for ambitious chiefs who sought to aggrandize themselves and their families.
When they found out that the two royal Agon children had survived, Pékyu Tenryo’s thanes urged their lord to hunt them down. But Pékyu Tenryo demurred, explaining that the situation benefited the Lyucu. The game of capture-the-pékyus-taasa promoted strife among the Agon and prevented the tribes from uniting behind a new leader. As long as the Lyucu knew where Volyu and Souliyan were, they were content to let the Agon fight over these useless figureheads.
Surrounded by intrigue and deadly violence, Volyu and Souliyan came of age.
* * *
“My brother already welcomed you to Gondé and Sliyusa Ki, so I thought I should come and welcome you into the Aragoz clan,” Souliyan said, but there was no joy in her voice or her eyes.
Théra bowed to her. “Takval has told me much about you.”
Souliyan said nothing but looked at the Dara princess, her face unreadable.
Slightly unnerved by this cold reception from her future mother-in-law, Théra went on. “You have done much for the spirit of the Agon people.”
Souliyan’s face twitched. “Have I?”
“Of course. Takval told me how in the years after the Lyucu conquest, you used your status and influence to rally the defeated tribes and to stop the bloodshed that had surrounded you and your brother.”
“Was that how Takval explained it all to you?” muttered Souliyan. A bitter smile flitted across her face. “I wonder if that’s really the story he believes or if he was trying to make reality sound better to you than it was. Maybe he just wanted to make his family seem more impressive—how disappointing for you to find out that he is no prince, merely the son of a woman who never even learned to fight on the back of a garinafin.”
“There is more to strength than the ability to kill,” said Théra. “That your brother fears you tells me all I need to know.”
Souliyan’s eyes focused on Théra narrowly. “Maybe you’re not as foolish as I thought.”
Rage reddened Théra’s face momentarily, but she forced herself to calm down for the sake of Takval. “I hope to prove myself an equal partner for the next Agon pékyu, and my people valued allies of the Agon people.”
“I come to see you on the night before your marriage, and you speak to me of power and alliance. Are these the only things on your mind, Princess of Dara?”
“What do you mean?” Théra was befuddled. “The alliance is, after all, the entire point of this marriage.”
“So cold,” muttered Souliyan. “When Takval came to me, he spent the whole time talking about you: how clever you are, how capable, how compassionate, how decisive. I thought he was speaking of the goddess Aluro in human form, a woman more beautiful than a thousand sunsets, as wise as Afir herself. He was so busy telling me about you that I don’t believe he even asked after my health.”
Ah, I’ve been speaking to her as a leader of the Agon people instead of Takval’s mother, thought Théra. She thinks she’s losing a son rather than gaining a daughter.
“Forgive me for being unused to speaking about matters of the heart,” she said awkwardly, “especially in a language with which I’m still unskilled—”
Souliyan laughed. “How convenient it is to avoid the truth by pleading a lack of skill with our language. You seemed to have no trouble with words at the banquet, when you were verbally contending with my brother for dominance.”
She had not seen Souliyan earlier at the banquet, but she must have been there in the shadows, listening. Théra had had enough. “Your brother and you have both chosen to greet a new addition to the family by insulting her. Is this an Agon custom that I’m unfamiliar with? I hope to never have to learn it.”
“I want to hear you speak from your heart, not weave illusions that are as insubstantial as reflections in a water bubble in the grass sea. My son almost died to bring you here. The least you can do is to tell me the truth of how you feel about him!”
“All right,” said Théra. She hated being forced this way, hated being strong-armed into revealing her feelings. It went against every instinct she had acquired in the Dandelion Court. “I’ve never had much use for stories about love, and thus lack the clichés others find so easy to assemble into declarations of romance. I’ve always been more interested in words and deeds that touch upon the grander scheme of the world, about the flow and ebb of power that changes the fates of millions.”
As she spoke, the words came more easily. She didn’t care about her accent, or berate herself for not knowing all the words she needed.
“But just because I don’t like to talk about what’s in my heart doesn’t mean I don’t feel. It’s true that when I agreed to marry Takval, I didn’t know anything about him except his courage in crossing the whale’s way to come to Dara, searching for a path to free his people. My heart was filled with the presence of another, and the life I dreamed of was not the life he offered for me.”
The visage of Souliyan faded from her view. She stopped performing for an unseen audience, but spoke as though to herself.
“Times change and people grow. I’ve now lived with him and stood with him against death and despair for more than a year. Side by side, we’ve faced garinafin breath and dived beneath the sea with the aid of a cruben; we’ve voyaged across the pathless ocean and journeyed through the waterless wastelands of Lurodia Tanta; we’ve disagreed and argued, and together devised plots that kept as many alive as we could. Without knowing exactly when, my heart has grown large and made room for him, and I know he has made room for me. We’re not yet the mirrors for each other’s soul, but we can already dimly glimpse each other’s shadow in our thoughts. That is a state that many married couples yearn for but never achieve—”
“Then why are you agreeing to marry my brother instead of him?”
For a moment, Théra felt as though the ground had shifted beneath her feet, and she faltered. “What?”
“As Takval’s senior in lineage and status, Volyu has preempted Takval’s claim on you as your partner in the royal marriage. For the sake of your Dara, Takval has refused to challenge him, and agreed to go into exile instead. To assure Volyu, he’ll become one of the tanto-lyu-naro and renounce all warfare forever.”
“What… how… when… why?” There were so many questions in Théra’s mind that she didn’t know where to start. It felt like a betrayal. Not just of all that they had endured and accomplished, but of her heart.
Scrutinizing Théra’s face until she was satisfied that the Princess of Dara was telling the truth, Souliyan sighed. “I guess you really didn’t know.”
“I swear to you I didn’t!” Théra was both amazed and furious. Of course, now the strange behavior of both Volyu and Takval earlier made sense. All that talk about riding the garinafin; all those questions about whether she was willing to make sacrifices for their goals; all that nonsense about how certain things could only be discussed among family. She wanted to grab Souliyan’s shoulders and scream in her face. “Where is Takval? He needs to come back and answer me!”
She got up, outraged beyond measure, and strode toward the tent opening.
“Stop. You won’t find him in the settlement,” said Souliyan. “He’s already gone into exile. He didn’t want me to come see you at all until after the wedding. But I’m his mother, and I don’t need to listen to him.”
“And I’m not some talisman to be passed around between him and his uncle!” Théra shouted. “I’m his wife, and no one is going to be in—or out of—my wedding without my say-so.”
Souliyan’s face finally broke into a grin. “You’re not quite what I expected.”
Théra gritted her teeth. “Explain to me just what Takval was hoping to accomplish.”
“This is likely to be a long story,” said Souliyan.
Théra ran to the opening of the tent and summoned Thoryo. She whispered to the young woman to tell the others in her group to quietly prepare to leave the Agon camp. She turned back to Souliyan. “You’d better make it short then; I’m not staying.”
* * *
“Volyu and I didn’t have happy childhoods,” Souliyan said. “Our mothers were Lyucu slaves, and so among the Agon we were considered tainted, not truly the heirs of the Aragoz lineage at all. Later, after the fall of the Agon, we became symbols, little more than ceremonial weapons or talismans that an ambitious chief might possess to get better grazing rights over their neighbor.”
Théra nodded. Takval had told her as much. “Your brother and you are the closest things to a pékyu for the Agon, though you don’t hold that title. Tenryo was happy to let the Agon tribes fight over you as living crowns—er, garinafin helmets.”
“As we grew older, however, that power attributed to us as the last living descendants of Nobo Aragoz eventually became real. As we performed the ceremonial rites wanted by whichever chief controlled us at the moment—dances for better hunting, blessings for more calves and lambs, prayers for the fertility of the women’s wombs and the potency of the men’s seeds—we also took care to cultivate the elders and chieftains around us. While I built support among warriors loyal to the Aragoz name and kept alive the stories of the Agon, Volyu played one faction against another until we were finally able to build a base of power. With the help of warriors loyal to us, we escaped and established our own tribe, and the other chiefs found it more advantageous to curry our favor and thereby gain prestige rather than to dominate us outright as they used to.”
“And Tenryo allowed you to grow and build unmolested?” asked Théra.
“Ah, you’ve stabbed into the heart of the matter right away,” said Souliyan approvingly. “Once we established our independence and turned from mere playing pieces into players, Volyu and I both knew that attention from the Lyucu was inevitable. How could they allow the cubs of the slaughtered wolf to gain strength and seek vengeance?
“My thought was to seek refuge far from Taten, to take those chieftains and naros loyal to us and build a new life away from the Lyucu homeland, where our distance and poverty would make it clear to the Roatan clan that we were not threats.”
“You would give up the chance to seek justice for the Agon people?” asked Théra.
Souliyan sighed. “What is justice? My father slaughtered thousands to bring the Lyucu under the shadow of Agon garinafin wings, and Tenryo then slaughtered ten times as many to reverse the situation. My mother was born a Lyucu, but when the Lyucu overran her adopted tribe, they killed her for having borne an Agon child. I have neither the skill nor the interest to restore my father’s domain by killing yet ten times more. I wanted only to live in peace and relative freedom. I would have advocated that we all become tanto-lyu-naro if I could be sure we’d survive the harsh winters.”
