by David Ferguson
in Issue 135, April 2023
Tal-Ya stood outside the tomb of her father’s murderer, searching for her rage. She needed that anger to help her do what needed to be done, but over the past few weeks, it had become harder and harder for her to find its warmth.
When she had first found out that her father had been killed by Melanius and his troops, the anger had been an all-consuming bolt of lightning. That sudden burst of anger had wiped away even her memories of the moment, leaving only a blur. People said that she had screamed at them, telling them that they were liars. She felt embarrassment at the thought. And now, all that anger felt almost like a stranger, replaced by an empty sadness. She would never again hug her father, or make him smile. And then, that too had changed, and the sadness had become a duty and a burden laid at her feet. Her childhood was over. The honor of her clan was buried in Melanius’ tomb, held tight in his dead fist, and she needed to get it back.
Ignoring her nerves and swallowing her hesitancy, she got ready to enter the tomb. There was no more time to wait – she didn’t believe in ghosts, but all the same, it was better to do it in the day before night came. No sense in inviting Grandmother Death to dinner. She packed away the pry bar she’d used to break open the door to the tomb, certain she’d need it again, and sheathed her long knives at her waist. Although she was also a fair shot with her bow, she left it behind with her horse, as it would do her no good in the barrow.
Breathing slowly, she ran her hands over her shaved head. She mentally checked the Patterns she had prepared one by one, and was pleased that none of them had slipped away from her. She had learned magic at her grandfather’s knee, and later from her father. They had taught her the Patterns, and honed her ability to focus the magic, to gather the invisible energy in the air and to press it down like a coiled spring waiting to be triggered. She knew only four such Patterns she could create reliably. There were others her father had been trying to teach her, but they were so complicated that she hadn’t yet been able to keep her focus long enough to force the energy into the spell correctly.
The Light spell was a simple one that almost every apprentice knew. She spoke the words that triggered it. The Pattern she had made earlier released and with a crackle, a ball of electric-blue light formed in the air above her, illuminating the darkness for at least a few feet.
The walkway was narrow, barely three feet across, and under six feet high. One of the hulking kaktari from the North – Plenneth they called it – would have found it hard going, as tall as they were, but she was barely five feet tall, and slender to boot. Still, if she needed to use her knives, it would be a tight space to fight in. The passage curved sharply, spiraling inwards and not letting her see much more than a few feet ahead. She had only gone a short distance when it turned unexpectedly to the right, doubling back and sloping downwards. She followed it as it began to spiral inwards again. She knew the passage could not be so very long. Melanius might have been rich, and might have been a feared wizard, but there was a limit to how much digging and construction his soldiers would do after his death. Or had they dug it before his death? She wasn’t sure.
She wondered why the Northerners would even build something like a tomb. It seemed an insane thing to do, so much wasted effort, but kaktari did many insane things. Why even bury a body and prevent the natural course of things, instead of burning it so that the soul could fly up into the skies with the Sky Lord’s breath? She couldn’t understand the thinking. And her grandfather’s staff was in there with Melanius, her stolen honor lying in his tomb. She thought it likely there were other treasures there too. He had probably been buried with many items and gold in the manner of his people, who kept their possessions close-fisted even after death. Stealing those would only add to her family’s honor.
She tried not to think of what might lay ahead, instead focusing just on the few feet that she could see directly in front of her. Her progress was slow, and she maintained her calm by breathing slowly and counting steps. It was very quiet, and the air was thick, earthy, and quite warm. Sweat rolled down her cheeks from her shaved head. Her tattooed arms were bare to the shoulder, but still shiny with sweat, and the neck of her tunic was getting damp. In the stories of her clan’s Teller, deep in the tomb there would be some sort of monstrous guardian, or else some horrible price to pay to reclaim her legacy. Stories were always like that. But really, what further price could she pay? She’d already lost everything she had in that moment they had told her about her father. She had no joy, no love, not even anger – not really. Just sadness, and determination that her family would continue.
She had no choice. It was not enough that her older brother had later ambushed and killed Melanius, or that he had given his life to do so. He had failed to bring back the clan treasure, the oaken staff of her grandfather that Melanius had stolen from her father’s corpse. He had failed to fully restore the family honor. That duty now sat on her young shoulders, and it had led here, to the tomb of her father’s murderer. Everyone knew that honor existed only by being taken from others. By killing her father and taking his staff, the thrice-cursed invader Melanius had taken something from her, and the other Rover clans would look down on her family until their honor was regained. Even if she could forgive the insult, the other Rover clans would not. They would look down on her, as barely more than kaktari herself, if she did not regain it. Only getting back her magic staff would erase that dishonor and show the other Rover clans the strength of her family. Only then could she hold her head high. Only then could she be sure that weasels like her sly cousin Toth-Mu wouldn’t try to replace her, to take over her rightful spot as the clan’s chieftain.
She thought she heard a footstep – she couldn’t tell if it was behind her or ahead of her. She froze, listening as hard as she could while her heart hammered in her chest. It was completely quiet aside from her nervous breathing. She waited as long as she could but heard no repeated sound. She must have imagined it, which she supposed was not really a surprise. She continued on carefully.
Finally, after one hundred and twenty steps, her light showed that she had reached a door. It was wood, with two narrow panels and metal handles, bound together with a short piece of rope. Using one of her knives she carefully cut through the knot, letting it fall to the ground.
The metal door handles looked inviting, but she was scared it was a trap of some sort, and in any case, she had planned ahead. Many times in she had used Alastor’s Unlocking Charm to open doors and locks, like when she had snuck into the home of the insufferable Toth-Mu and stolen his father’s favorite axe. The spell was a useful tool, and she had assumed she would find at least one lock barring her way into Melanius’ tomb. The magic required little more than a whisper, and although it only worked on locks within her reach, it did not require her to actually touch the door.
She cast the spell, and as the door clicked open she stepped back, just in case. The left-hand door swung a foot open, but nothing else happened. With a quick thanks to the Gods, she stepped through the opening.
The inner chamber was about eight feet wide and perhaps twice as long. In the center was a long wooden box on a raised platform, which seemed to be the source of the horrendous stench. Around the coffin were some dead flowers, and on a small wooden altar on the far wall was a small stone figurine of a pregnant woman clearly meant to be the Mother of Life. The lid of the coffin was painted with words in bold golden paint, but the letters were meaningless to her. She knew a few of their words, but not their writing. No doubt they bragged of the wizard Melanius’ triumphs. She tied a cloth over her nose and mouth against the stench and began to search the room.
She’d heard kaktari were often buried with their prized possessions, another of their madnesses, but she saw nothing of the sort. Perhaps they were in the box with the body? She unpacked the mallet and pry bar from her bag and set to work. She steeled her nerves, offered a quick prayer to Orone, and then another to Ethani the Protector, just in case. She worked the lid loose and pushed it off to one side. The stench got much worse.
Inside the box lay the body of her father’s murderer, in stiff red robes reinforced with brown leather. The body itself was very decomposed, skin almost purple, and Melanius’ face was withered and sunken, his eyes gone and his mouth open in a gaping scream.
She recoiled for a moment, not sure what to expect, but nothing happened. It was just a body; he was dead. She was in a strange way grateful – she knew her nerves were at their limit, and if something had happened, she might have fled like a child, and all this would have been for nothing. But Melanius was still dead, slain by her brother, and her barely contained panic stayed contained.
Instead, she spat in his rotting face. This was the man who had killed her father, a strong, proud Rover who had been a good chieftain to the clan. And this withered thing had not only stolen her father, but had stolen her legacy, as if it was nothing more than any of the other objects and trophies that he had taken to his grave, scattered in the coffin around him. Her grandfather’s staff lay alongside the body, half buried in several folds of a golden cloth – a banner of some sort. Also beside the body was a sword of the style of the Murmedrons, and a small pouch containing the weathered stones of a Rover shaman, no doubt looted from one of the other clans. None of it was of any real value she thought – apparently, they had buried trophies from his victories with him but had wisely kept the valuables for themselves. She had hoped that perhaps Melanius’ spell books had been buried with him as well, but even the soldiers were not that stupid apparently. Luckily, none of the fools had known of the magic in her grandfather’s staff.
She rescued it with trembling hands, lifting it carefully and wrapping her fingers around the smooth, warm wood that had been polished by her father and his father before him. Its end was blackened, as if by fire, and hanging from one end were small charms dangling from leather thongs. She knew the staff well, and everyone in the tribe would recognize it on sight. She held it in her hands; eyes closed, and could feel its power in her bones, the power of the lightning. Only a wizard could use it, of course, and luckily these kaktari had not recognized it for what it was, although Melanius himself certainly had. It held a different sort of magic, an older one. The staff held the power of lightning itself, which could be released by feeding the energy of a Pattern the wielder had prepared. It didn’t matter what spell she sacrificed to it. No matter what it was, the staff would consume that energy and transform it into a devastating bolt of electricity. Her grandfather had called it the Spear of Orone, the Sky Lord. With the staff in hand, she had reclaimed her honor and shown her superiority over the kaktari invaders. She could almost feel her father’s spirit smile down upon her as she lifted it.
But there was little time for such feelings now. She took the other trophies, claiming their stolen honor for herself as well. Then, using her long knife, she severed Melanius’ rotting head. She bundled it up inside the golden war banner as a makeshift bag. Melanius’ skull would soon show everyone her power over the soldiers from the North.
They had always been a thorn in her people’s side, her father had told her when she was little. For generations, they had nibbled away at the lands of the Rovers, as if by building villages on it and planting crops they could make the land theirs. They built forts, and garrisons, with soldiers to watch over their idiotic farmers, but such things meant nothing to the Rovers, who took what was theirs and went where they pleased. Wherever Orone the Sky Lord blew, the Rovers followed. They owned the plains and hills and every year wintered in a different spot, all the way from the Great Cliffs, to the Red Spine Mountains, and to the shores of the Ethalion Ocean. Not like the kaktari who built and farmed and died in the same few miles they spent their entire lives in.
Glad it was almost over, she hurried up the curving passage, back towards the open air and the open plains, the staff in her hands. Her overconfidence was a bad mistake.
Apparently, when they had come across the open barrow, they had assumed the thieves had already fled. The soldier in front of her looked equally surprised to find her still here, nearly bumping into her as they both rounded the bend and came face to face.
He was professional and recovered quickly. His shield snapped up in front of him, his sword pulling back for a piercing strike, even as he shouted something she didn’t understand. She threw herself back away from his lunge, barely keeping her balance as he advanced on her in a shuffle, sword and shield held ready. With a yell she hoped sounded more like a war scream than the weak yelp it felt like, she jabbed the staff at him as hard as she could. He caught it on his shield and knocked it aside. She managed to keep her grasp on the staff, but it threw her off balance. He didn’t hesitate long enough for her to attack again. The passage was too narrow for the staff, but before she could pull the knife from her belt, he had moved forward, dropping the sword and clouting her in the side of her head with a fist.
Black sparks danced across her eyes and she swayed. She had a moment long enough to wonder why it didn’t hurt – then she found herself pressed face down into the dirt floor with his crushing weight atop her. He struck her again, and the blackness was everywhere and his bellowing voice was fading into the distance.
The agony woke her up. After the darkness of the tomb, the daylight was painfully bright, and there was a stabbing pain in her side as she breathed. She wondered if it was a broken rib. No matter how still she tried to be, every breath she took felt like a knife in her guts. Her head hurt badly as well, but not as bad as her ribs, and there was a foul taste in her mouth. She spat out blood but it didn’t go away. After a few seconds of trying to get up, she realized her hands were tied together, and her feet as well. Her head finally stopped swimming, and she looked around.
She was in the graveyard outside the tomb. Around her were many stones, marking graves where the kaktari soldiers had buried their dead. She cursed them all. They had thought to take the Rovers’ land, and indeed, had taken at least as much of it as would cover their bodies.
The soldier that had attacked her was nearby, with two others. They were going through her things, and the one that acted like their leader looked very angry. Noticing that she had woken up, he stalked over to her, looking like he was going to kick her where she lay. Instead, he leaned over and yelled something at her, pointing back at the bundle.
“I guess you found his head,” she tried to say with a laugh, but it came out as a wheeze of pain. He didn’t understand her words anyway. Focusing, she ignored the pain in her face, and spat blood at him instead. It barely even dribbled down her own chin, but it angered him even more. The other soldier – the one she had met in the tunnel – stepped between them, trying to calm down the leader. The third man ignored them both, slowly sifting through her pack.
She tried to keep calm and think. It didn’t seem like they’d found her horse. If she hadn’t been tied, she could have run for it, but she knew she’d never even make it to her feet while they watched.
She had to escape. She knew she had to, but she couldn’t see any way. She was going to die, or worse, live as a prisoner to these outsiders, shamed forever. Her clan would be in the hands of Toth-Mu, and people would not remember her, or if they did, they’d only remember her shame. She felt cold, so cold, and she knew it was hopeless. She would not give them satisfaction – perhaps she could force them to kill her? She felt her father was watching her, and she had failed him, and somehow, she knew he pitied her. That was worse. She was just a child, and the honor of the clan was lost, and her father knew it was because of her. But these brutish invaders, these outsiders, were too much for her. She was still too young. Hadn’t even he fallen before them? How could she fight?
She felt the despair welling up inside her, and then to her sudden surprise, she realized that it made her angry. Not just angry, but burning with rage, tears streaking her face as the cold faded away. She grabbed ahold of that rage and welcomed it like a long-lost friend. She would not give in. Her father would not pity her; no one would look down on her. She was Tal-Ya of the Rovers, and she would not be dismissed. The anger was so intense that she almost forgot about the three soldiers and her temporary helplessness. She knew this rage, and she welcomed it back.
The leader yelled something at the scout, and stalked back to the group. The scout squatted down beside her, studying her closely for a moment. Then, in horrible Rover, he said, “You girl. Very young.” He gestured inanely as if to help her understand his words. “Why … why you cut head? Steal, yes, all Rovers are thieves. But why head? Why you come here? No money here.” His eyes looked at her, but she knew he did not see her. He was kaktari, he could not understand. He saw only what he wanted to see, what he could understand … and then, even through the pain and the anger, she finally saw her path.
She bit down an angry retort. Contempt for these soldiers rose in her, although she made an effort not to let it show. It would not help now. She was not a child. These outsiders had ended her childhood when they murdered her father. She was Tal-Ya, and she was Rover, and a wizard. She would never be helpless, never someone they could dismiss.
She didn’t know much of his tongue, but she knew a little. “Treasure,” she said in between gasps. “The staff.”
At the mention of treasure, the other two men came over, as she knew they would. The leader still looked angry, disgusted at the sight of her, but he didn’t look away from her as he spoke to the other men. After they talked amongst themselves, the man that spoke Rover asked her, “How? Staff is just wood.” He paused, thinking, before adding, “Not treasure.”
“Staff is a map. Big treasure. Markings on staff say where. Only I can show you.” She tried not to let her face show her lie. Instead, she tried to show them the pain she was in, and lifted her bound hands towards them. She knew they could only see a helpless young girl, as if she was less of a Rover because of her age. “I can show you, if you let go.”
They huddled together again several feet away, talking to each other in their sing-songy language. She couldn’t make much of it out, but she could see the greed on their faces plainly enough. While they were talking she got herself into a kneeling position. She forced herself to breathe normally, ignoring the stabbing pain in her side as she watched them examine her staff. They turned it over and over and inspected all the runes and symbols carved into it. Deep in her stomach, the fear tried to rise again, but she would not allow it. Instead, she focused on her anger. It was perhaps these very soldiers that had helped kill her father, or had killed her brother. Even if not, all kaktari soldiers were the same anyway.
Finally, after what seemed like several agonizing minutes, the third man came over. His odor was sour as he leaned close to her and checked that her hands were bound. Finally, the leader shrugged and pushed the staff into her bound hands. “Explain the words,” the scout asked. They all had stepped back a pace as if expecting her to swing it at them uselessly.
“You let me go?’
“Yes.” The lie was obvious on his face, but she didn’t care. With her hands tied, she could still wrap her fingers clumsily around the warm, smooth oak of her grandfather’s staff, and could feel it respond as she released the Pattern into it, merging her magic with the magic of her ancestors in the staff. Sensing something was wrong, the leader took another step back, pulling out his sword. The other two stared at her in surprise as she suddenly raised the staff above her head and shouted the last words of the spell, releasing the pent-up magic of her family’s staff – her anger, her father’s anger, the anger of the Rovers – and called the magic of Orone the Sky Lord.
From out of the clear blue sky, a single bolt of lightning crashed down in the midst of the soldiers. The blinding light and the loud explosion were simultaneous, washing away the world in a white glare for a few seconds until she could see again. She could not hear anything but a soft humming, more of a feeling than an actual noise.
Her skin felt warm and tingled, but she knew the magic hadn’t hurt her. As her eyes cleared, she saw that two of the soldiers lay dead, or perhaps unconscious, while the other was struggling to his feet. She wondered absently how he had survived the lightning. She could see the livid burns on his hands, arms, and face. He was staring at her with a horrified expression, and she knew with pride that he finally saw her.
She rolled back on her heels and stood up smoothly, the staff warm in her hands as she pointed it at him. Ignoring the dancing spots of light that still crowded the edges of her vision, she shouted, “I am Tal-Ya! I have avenged myself on the weakling wizard Melanius who slew my father! I am greater than he!”
The soldier turned and fled, staggering away. She let him go. It would only add to her honor. Let him tell the other kaktari of her family’s power, of her power, of how even a teenage girl of the Rovers had destroyed his companions, and how she had avenged herself on their leader, whose head she carried in her bag.
She would be gone before more soldiers could arrive. But she hoped they would see and hear what she had done, and think twice before offending the Rovers again. Perhaps they would retaliate, but what more could they do? Already they tried to steal the land, and they would never stop until they were all dead. But these were the lands of the Rovers, and the invaders from Plenneth would never have them. Each fortress they built here would be torn down, each soldier driven back home, every murder and every theft avenged.
It was just a moment’s work to cut her bonds, and her ride back home would not take long. She could already imagine the faces of her kin, of the Teller, and of her cousin Toth-Mu. None could argue that she was not a suitable leader for her clan. Not only had she erased her father’s shame, she returned with trophies. The staff was slowly cooling in her hands, and the anger was gone, burned away in her victory. She didn’t mind. She was Tal-Ya of the Rovers, and her ancestors smiled upon her.
©April 2023, David Ferguson
David Ferguson grew up on a steady diet of genre paperbacks, RPGs, and obscure B-Movies. Despite the effects of this on his mind and body, he somehow managed to secure gainful employment in software development, and now lives in Richmond Hill, Ontario, with his beautiful wife and three children. He enjoys writing heroic fantasy, horror, and science fiction, and is working on his first novel, HOTEL FRACTURA. You can follow him at https://karasupress.wordpress.com/. Ferguson’s work has appeared previously in Swords & Sorcery.