Lassar, Year 1665 SM
On the morning that marked the start of her sixteenth year, Khari sat cross-legged on the floor of the tent she shared with her amma Vatiri, trying not to notice how strange the new fabric of her white blouse felt around her body. The tent flap hung open, letting in a ripple of breeze that still tasted of summer and the fragrance of the tall grass that ringed the tribe’s camp. Early morning sunlight slanted through the open tent flap and fell across Khari’s back and shoulders, so that she thought the white blouse must glow like the Moon Woman herself.
Vatiri, Khari’s mother-in-truth, knelt behind her, weaving Khari’s long hair into braids. The two of them had done this every morning since Khari was eight years old and began having the dreams that marked her as a future Lamp-Carrier. As of today, the tribe had two Lamp-Carriers. Vatiri had held that place since long before Khari was born, and now, with the start of her sixteenth year, Khari stepped into it too.
Vatiri’s quick fingers moved through Khari’s hair, smoothing and dividing it. She said, “You should wear white ribbon today.”
That made Khari smile. White ribbon braided in her hair, to match the blouse that showed her rank. At the same time, nervousness curled in her stomach. Tonight, the tribe’s Lodestone, Pradesh, would have a council to decide where the tribe should spend the winter. Khari would sit at that council for the first time, in her new role and her new blouse.
“Whatever you think, amma,” Khari said.
Vatiri laughed, a quiet sound like birdsong. “I remember when you weren’t so cooperative.”
Khari remembered it too. At age eight, she hadn’t wanted to leave her parents’ tent and her three older sisters to live with “the old Lamp-Carrier.” She hadn’t cared about learning to do the work, or how important the dreams made her, and she had actually fought and kicked when her father bodily picked her up and carried her to Vatiri’s tent. For the first couple of days with the older woman, she hadn’t opened her mouth even to put food in it. She’d turned her back every time Vatiri spoke to her.
But Vatiri had never given up or lost her temper. Now, as much as Khari still honored her mother-in-body, she loved her mother-in-truth even more.
“I don’t think I’ll be much help at the council, amma,” Khari said. “I didn’t dream anything last night.”
The tribe’s Lodestone, always a man, had to set the course for the tribe’s travels and direct its daily life. To do this, he needed the Lamp-Carrier, who was always a woman and always born to the work. Most importantly, she must have and interpret the pathdreams that helped the Lodestone make his decisions.
After eight years of training, Khari knew better than to expect pathdreams every night, or even most nights. Still, on the first day that she wore the white of the Moon Woman, the second-greatest of the three Powers that guarded the tribe, she wished she’d had more to offer.
“Don’t worry, child.” Khari felt Vatiri finish the second braid, tying it off with the end of the ribbon she had woven into it. “Pradesh will have all the guidance he needs.”
Khari thought she heard something strange in the older woman’s voice: a thread of something like sadness. When she turned around to see her, though, Vatiri smiled. The autumn sunlight washed over her face, bringing out the deep tracery of lines at the corners of her eyes and around her mouth. She gently tweaked the end of Khari’s braid. “Now your turn,” she said.
They traded places. Exactly as Vatiri had done for her, Khari brushed out the older woman’s hair. She wove it into a single long braid with a strand of white ribbon, to match her own, running through it. Vatiri’s hair had once been as dark as Khari’s, but now it was such a pale silver that the ribbon barely stood out against it.
For eight years, Vatiri had taught Khari how to dream with her “hidden eye” always open, watching the pictures that moved across her mind, constantly sifting them for what mattered. The Lamp-Carrier’s dreams were a gift from the Moon Woman, but it took skill to hold onto them in daylight and know what they meant. Vatiri said that Khari would soon be at least as good at that work as she was herself.
Khari had always felt proud of that. She’d liked to imagine Pradesh trusting her as absolutely as he, and the two Lodestones before him, trusted her amma. Now, though, she didn’t want to see Vatiri’s age, or think about the day when the tribe would only have a single Lamp-Carrier again.
“Amma,” she said, as her fingers worked quickly, “did you have a dream last night?”
They usually talked about their pathdreams, if one of them had one. Now Vatiri didn’t answer right away. Khari had worked her way down to the end of the braid before the older woman said, “We don’t need to think about it now.”
That same sadness. Khari tied off the braid. “But what was it?” she asked. She didn’t like the idea that she might have missed something in her own dreams. Today especially, she didn’t want to fail.
“Not now,” Vatiri said. When she looked over her shoulder, for a moment Khari saw the firmness she remembered from eight years ago, when Vatiri had finally set a clay plate of flatbread and roast venison in front of her and said that was enough nonsense, Khari wouldn’t leave the tent again until she had eaten every bite. Eight-year-old Khari had felt her stubborn anger shrivel up under those dark eyes. Besides, after two days, she’d been hungry.
For as long as Vatiri lived, Khari was supposed to obey her. “All right, amma,” she said. She held the questions in, but they still nudged at her.
***
That night, while the rest of the tribe went about its usual evening work, Khari and Vatiri joined Pradesh’s council around a fire at the edge of the camp.
The tribe was only one of the many groups of Pala Vaia people who lived in Lassar. Khari knew the story: how the Pala Vaia, the “First and Lost Ones,” as her people called themselves, had crossed the great mountains in the west and arrived in this land, more generations ago than anyone could count. Other people, with paler skin and a different language, had come later. The newcomers had claimed the place as theirs, because they built houses, then villages, towns, and cities. The Vaia didn’t leave marks on the land. They went where the seasons took them.
In summer, they looked for cooler weather, fertile land, and good hunting. In winter, when snow came to the Lasska woods and mountains, they went south to the friendlier plains. Khari’s tribe had spent the summer in northeastern Lassar. Now, the year was fading into autumn, so the tribe must furl its tents, load its carts and horses, and move again.
Khari sat next to Vatiri by the fire, close enough for the warmth to hold off the chilly night breeze. With them were Pradesh’s younger brother Radavan, and the old man Bakar who had marked seventy-eight years, and Pradesh’s nephews Handan and Mandhani, the tribe’s two strongest and, Khari thought, most arrogant men. There was also young Rahul, who had only marked eighteen years and had no ties to the Lodestone’s family, but he was already known as one of the most intelligent men in the tribe.
When everyone else had settled around the fire, Pradesh came up to take his place. Khari wasn’t surprised to see the Lodestone carrying the heavy chair of machia wood he had bought years ago in a Lasska village. As he set it down, the chair gleamed in the firelight, its grain a pattern of spiderweb-thin dark swirls against a gleaming silvery background.
Khari sighed. Pradesh was a decent enough Lodestone, everyone thought so, but too proud. If he had to have the chair at all – such a heavy thing to drag along every time the tribe traveled – he should have offered it to old Bakar, whose bones probably didn’t appreciate the hard ground tonight.
Pradesh settled into his chair and folded his hands against the spread of his yellow shirt. Only Lodestones wore yellow, the color of the Sun God. Khari couldn’t help thinking that Pradesh seemed to want to look like the Sun God in girth, too, but she arranged her face into its most respectful expression when his eyes passed over her.
He turned to Vatiri first. “Lamp-Carrier. What do you have to tell us?”
Khari bit her lip. She had never sat at a council before, but she thought even a Lodestone ought to sound more respectful. Vatiri had marked sixty years, enough to be Pradesh’s mother, but Khari knew the older woman respected the Lodestone as second only to the Sun God and the other Powers themselves. She had tried to teach Khari the same lesson. Khari had never been as good at it.
Vatiri answered with no hint of annoyance. “Last night I had a pathdream.”
Again Khari felt the curl of worry in her stomach. Why hadn’t she had one too? And why hadn’t Vatiri wanted to talk about hers?
Then Vatiri turned to look at her. The sadness Khari had heard in the older woman’s voice this morning was out in the open now, as plain on her face as the marks of her years. Khari’s worry melded into a solid stone of fear.
Amma, she wanted to say. What is it? Please.
As if the two of them had been alone, Vatiri said, “I’m afraid of what’s going to happen to us. Our tribe, and all the Vaia people.”
All of the Vaia? What could this be? Khari had no chance to speak. Pradesh said, “Explain.”
The older woman turned away from Khari to face the Lodestone and the rest of the circle. “Lassar’s new ruler,” she said. “Shurik.”
All of them knew the name. The Vaia never settled in Lasska towns or villages, and had as little to do with the people as they could. They all knew, though, that Shurik had become Lassar’s new ruler – the impera, he was called – at the end of the summer, after his father Mangevar died. Mangevar had been an old man and Shurik was a young one. Khari didn’t know anything more.
Now Vatiri said, “He doesn’t want the Vaia here.”
Again Khari felt the edges of that stone of fear, deep in her gut. Bakar spoke up. “No Lasska ruler has wanted us here.”
Khari looked across the circle at the old man, who sat at Pradesh’s left. The tribe’s younger men cut their hair short, but Bakar wore his long, the old way, in a single white braid down his back. His skin stood out dark against the bright blue fabric of his shirt. Khari thought he looked as strong as old wood, the kind that weathered so tough that if you took an axe to it, it would bite back.
Bakar said, “The Lasska have wanted us gone from the beginning, but we have more right to this place than they do.”
Khari understood that. Her people had lived here since time beyond memory. But Vatiri said, “Shurik is different.”
Pradesh asked, “How?”
Vatiri closed her eyes briefly. To Khari, her face looked shrunken, her white blouse too much like the cloths the tribe used in burying the dead. Then she opened her eyes again, and her words fell on the circle like the endless snow that fell on Lassar’s northern forests.
“In the great city, Cheremay,” Vatiri said, “Shurik is calling his fighting men to him.”
Khari had never seen Cheremay, the “eye of Lassar” where the rulers lived. She had only heard about the throngs of people, the shoulder-to-shoulder houses and buildings, the sky-clawing temples the Lasska built to their bear-shaped god. It all sounded brutal and strange. Vatiri said, “He is giving the men weapons. Swords, knives, and the powder that burns and explodes and throws balls of lead.”
Khari had heard about this too. She had never understood how a powder, apparently not much different to look at than earth, could explode. Vatiri finished, her voice still calm and quiet, “Shurik is sending his men out, with their weapons, to hunt us.”
Hunt people, the way you would hunt deer and rabbits to cook over the fire? Did Shurik’s men eat human flesh? Khari knew why Vatiri had kept this terrible, shadowy secret to herself. Mother-love, like the ritual of the braids and the matching ribbon that said that she and Khari belonged to each other. But what kind of dream could have shown Vatiri all this? And even while fear left tracks all over her skin, Khari wondered why she herself had seen nothing.
Across the circle, Bakar shook his head, whether in disgust or disbelief Khari couldn’t tell. Neither he nor Pradesh spoke.
Pradesh’s younger brother Radavan did. “Where are these fighting men now?”
Khari liked Radavan. He might be the Lodestone’s brother, but he didn’t have Pradesh’s arrogance. He knew how to listen. Six years ago, he’d taken Khari’s oldest sister, Dahila, as his wife, and they had twin girls and a boy, with another child on the way.
Vatiri said, “The soldiers are in Cheremay and other great cities. Shurik is gathering them together and telling them what to do. He will send them out soon.”
Handan, Pradesh’s older nephew, spoke up loudly. “So they’ll come and we’ll fight them. Lasska men are soft and flabby. They sit on cushions all day and nag their wives for honey cakes.”
Through her fear, Khari glared at Handan. The hunter, and his brother Mandhani, might be able to run and wrestle, but as far as she could tell, they had nothing between their ears except muscle. Everyone knew about the fierce, hard-trained Lasska soldiers. Mandhani agreed with his brother now: “We’re stronger than any of them. Let them come.”
Vatiri’s voice cut through their pride. “They’re well-armed. Their weapons are more dangerous than anything we have.” Khari knew this was true. The Vaia had no exploding powder, and while her people were strong-bodied and adapted to hunting and journeying, they were all smaller-built than the big pale-skinned Lasska. Vatiri added quietly, “They will kill us if they can.”
Handan jumped to his feet. “Let them try!” Mandhani scrambled up too, as if ready to face off against Lasska soldiers then and there. Rahul said something to Bakar that Khari couldn’t hear. Radavan held his hand out as if trying to quiet the chaos.
Pradesh said, “Enough.”
The word fell into the circle like a stone into water. The talk died and the Lodestone’s nephews sat back down. Pradesh said to Vatiri, “What did the dream say we should do?”
Vatiri turned to Khari again. Khari knew that somehow, whatever she was about to say would be worse than anything they had heard yet.
“The dream,” Vatiri said gently, as if to Khari alone, “said we can’t do anything.”
Handan and Mandhani started shouting again. Khari heard them from what felt like a long way away. She understood: Vatiri’s dream had meant the end of the tribe.
Khari read endless grief in the older woman’s eyes. She couldn’t take it in. She had only marked sixteen years. She had barely become a woman, had never served as a real Lamp-Carrier or offered the Lodestone a single pathdream. How could such a thing happen to them now? But Vatiri’s dreams never lied.
“Enough!”
This time the word was a shout. Pradesh had gotten to his feet. Anger burned in his face. For the first time, Khari understood how his authority could stand second only to the Powers.
“Vatiri,” he said. His voice was quiet now, but deep and full of fire. “I want to hear exactly what you saw.”
Available on Kindle and Paperback from Highlander Press on June 25, 2024
Kris Faatz (rhymes with skates) is a Baltimore-area writer and musician. Her short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in journals including Atticus Review and Rappahannock Review, and most recently won Black Fox Magazine’s July 2023 “Fox Tales” contest. Her second novel, Fourteen Stones, was originally released in New Zealand in 2022, with the American edition released by Baltimore’s Highlander Press in 2024. Her third novel, Line Magic, was shortlisted for the Santa Fe Writers Project’s 2023 Literary Awards. Kris teaches creative writing and is a performing pianist.
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