Markswoman (Asiana #1)(70)
“I saw a wyr-wolf,” Rustan blurted out. “In your death hut. Your men walked right through it.”
It had only been a hunch, but the effect on the shaman was remarkable. His face went pale and the staff dropped from his hand. He turned to talk with some of the older men and women behind him—elders of the village council, Rustan guessed. One ancient woman stepped up to him.
“Tell us exactly what you saw, Marksman,” she rasped.
Rustan described the huge beast, its thick gray fur, the intelligent eyes, the steady gaze. He told them how his six attackers had walked through it, and how it had then vanished from sight.
When he had finished, the woman exhaled. “He has seen the spirit of Varka, the wyr-wolf,” she announced.
There were murmurs and cries from the listening crowd. The shaman spoke a word of command, and one of the young men who had dragged Rustan out bent to untie him.
Rustan got to his feet and rubbed his wrists with relief. He wasn’t about to be lynched after all. “Who is Varka?” he asked the shaman.
“Our oldest ancestor,” said the shaman. “Varka the wyr-wolf fled the poisonous aftermath of the Great War and found refuge in Herat. He married Ersani, the youngest daughter of the Herati headwoman, and founded our clan.”
“How do you know of him?” asked Rustan. “The war ended over eight centuries ago.”
“We have dozens of ancient manuscripts, locked in trunks and buried in cellars, that tell this story,” said the shaman. “Most are in a script we do not understand, but some of them have been translated by our predecessors. Very few of us now have the gift of learning.”
“If your manuscripts are that old, you possess a treasure trove indeed,” said Rustan. “I could request the Maji-khan to send an elder to help you copy and catalog them.”
An expression of horror crossed the old man’s face. “Never! Strangers are forbidden to touch those sacred pages. They will crumble to dust and our heritage will be destroyed.”
Rustan sighed. Another superstition. “You can send some of your children to schools in Herat,” he said. “Perhaps, as they grow in years and learning, this task could be entrusted to them.”
“Perhaps,” said the shaman, noncommittal.
Rustan knew it was unlikely that the Ersanis would ever send their children to the town of Herat, but at least he had planted the idea in the shaman’s head.
“What happened to Varka and Ersani?” he asked. “Why did they leave Herat?”
“Jealousy,” replied the shaman. “Varka was too powerful, too strong. Ersani’s siblings grew afraid of him, and poisoned their mother’s ears against him. She banished Varka and Ersani from Herat. They made their way here, to till the land and start a family. To start a new clan.” A glow of pride lit his wrinkled face. “We have wyr-wolf blood in our veins.”
A likely story, Rustan thought. But he remembered the wyr-wolf he had seen in the death hut, and kept quiet.
The Ersanis gave him little trouble after that. Apparently, the spirit of Varka had not been glimpsed in almost a century, and he was very fortunate to have seen it. Everyone wanted to touch him and speak to him. In all the excitement, Samant was almost forgotten. But Rustan asked for, and received, permission to bring Samant out of the death hut and into the shaded porch of the village council hut.
He showed a woman how to boil water to make it safe for drinking, and gave an impromptu class on herbs and healing as he made a tincture for Samant. Not that he knew much about it, and he was hampered by a lack of all but the most basic materials he had carried with him: dried peppermint and garlic, a bunch of sacred basil, a bottle of spineleaf oil. But he hoped that some of what he told them would filter into their own practices, and prevent needless deaths in the future.
That night, Samant recovered sufficiently to ask for a glass of water. He held his katari gripped in one skeletal hand, as if afraid someone might snatch it away again. After he had drunk the peppermint-infused tea Rustan brewed for him, he drifted back to sleep, his breathing quiet and regular.
The rest of the village also slept, quiescent under the moonlit sky. From somewhere a bulbul called, piercing the night with its sweet cry. The wind wafted through the porch of the council house, filled with the scent of jasmine. Rustan blew out the lamp and stretched out on a woven grass mat next to Samant, allowing himself to relax for the first time in days.
He watched Samant’s sleeping form for several minutes, then turned his face to the darkness above, his thoughts drifting, as always, to Kyra. Her fierce expression when she fought, the way she pushed the hair away from her eyes when she was angry, the depth of her gaze, and how it seemed to plumb the very depths of his soul.
“Do you know, Elder, why I came here?” he whispered. “It was not to save you. It was to escape myself.”
Samant gave a tiny snore. Emboldened, Rustan talked on in a low voice, unburdening himself to the sleeping elder. He told him about the tragic mistake in Tezbasti, the arrival of the Markswoman through the Akal-shin door, and the news she had brought. “Barkav made me teach her dueling,” he said. “I was so busy doing that, I mostly forgot everything else. And then I discovered I cared for her. Cared too much. And so I left Khur. Is it so wrong, Elder, to love a woman?”
Samant cleared his throat and said, “No.”
Rustan sat up, horrified. Samant was awake.