CHAPTER II LUISHA, THE LUMINOUS BLUE STONE
Outside, the night air enveloped them, startlingly cold and smelling of snow: night’s breath blowing down from the snowcapped mother range. White peaks glittered blue in the moonlight. Arrested by the familiar scent of her homeland, Balsa stopped and gazed up at the star-dusted sky.
“Er …” The boy looked up at Balsa, his face faintly lit by the moon. A head shorter than her but sturdily built, he looked about fourteen or fifteen. His tunic of tanned goat hide marked him as a member of the warrior class, as did the broad knife that hung from the back of his thick leather belt. “Thank you,” he said, his voice husky, as if it had only recently changed.
“Yes, well, we were just lucky to get out of there alive,” Balsa replied, and then added sternly, “How could you be so stupid? Taking your younger sister into the cave to test your courage! A young man like you with the right to carry a dagger — you should have known better. She could have been killed!”
The boy looked surprised. “No, you’ve got it all wrong!” his sister interjected. “I was the one who went in to get the stone, not my brother.” Her voice was surprisingly firm and steady. Balsa had assumed she was only about ten, but she revised her estimate to twelve or even thirteen. “There’s this boy in our village who’s so stuck up — he keeps talking about how he’s from the chieftain’s line and laughing at us, and he said if we went into the caves to get a stone, we’d never come out alive because we’re just from a branch family. That’s why I did it.”
Balsa suppressed a smile. “I see. Now I understand why you did it. But it still wasn’t worth risking your life. You should never underestimate the caves. You almost died in there tonight.”
The two children said nothing, most likely reliving the terror they felt when they met the hyohlu. The girl shuddered on Balsa’s back, and she hitched her higher up. “Don’t ever go into the caves again, you understand?” She felt the girl nod. “Good. That’s settled then. Is your village near here?”
“Yes,” the boy responded. “I’m Kassa, son of Tonno of the Musa clan. This is my sister Gina.”
His words startled Balsa. Jiguro had belonged to the Musa clan. She had never heard the name Tonno, but still, it seemed a strange coincidence that the first people she should meet after twenty-five years were from Jiguro’s clan. Now she understood how he had known these caves so well. This was his territory, and that was why he had chosen this escape route all those years ago.
“Excuse me, but are you a foreigner?” Kassa asked hesitantly, interrupting her thoughts.
“What?”
“You’re dressed like someone from New Yogo, and the way you talk is, well …”
Since Jiguro’s death, she had had few opportunities to speak Kanbalese, and she now found herself searching the past for words. Apparently they had noticed it too. “No, I was born in Kanbal. But I’ve been on a very long journey.”
As she said this, her natural instinct for caution took over. She had come back to Kanbal to find Jiguro’s family and tell them the truth about why he had to escape. But before she did that, she needed to know what people thought about their flight. Royal politics and treachery had forced them to flee; to reveal her identity too soon might be very dangerous.
She looked down at the boy. “You’re Kassa and Gina, right? I want you to do me a favor.” Kassa nodded. “Don’t tell anyone that you met me in the caves. You can tell your family that you saved Gina yourself.”
It was too dark to see clearly, but she thought that Kassa looked troubled. “Can’t we tell our parents?” Gina asked from her perch on Balsa’s back. “If you come with us, I know they’ll want to meet you and have you stay for a meal. Please come with us.”
“Thank you, but I can’t.” Balsa had already thought of her excuse for traveling around Kanbal, and she used it now. “I’m on a journey of penance to save my foster father’s soul. If I accept any hospitality from your family, my good deed won’t have any effect. You know that, don’t you? So please don’t tell anyone that I helped you.”
The children nodded, and Balsa breathed a secret sigh of relief. The people of Kanbal believed that those who died without righting their wrongs suffered eternally as slaves of the Mountain King, the mysterious ruler of the land underground. Their only hope for salvation was for one of the living to abandon home and family and wander about doing good deeds in atonement for the dead person’s sins.
Balsa had no idea if this was true. She had traveled widely and found that people’s beliefs about where the soul went after death differed from one country to the next. She did not really care which of these versions was right: She would find out soon enough when she died. But people doing penance might wear a red headband or even don the clothes of the opposite sex, which would explain Balsa’s spear and men’s attire. It was the perfect excuse. And besides, she thought to herself, it’s not so far from the truth.
“Can you make it home from here on your own?” she asked. Kassa nodded. “All right, then. Oh, and by the way, what did you do with the torch?”
“I still have it, but it was snuffed out.” He held it up for Balsa to see. She frowned. The usually bristly top was flat and smooth, as if it had been sliced with a sharp blade. She remembered the whistling sound and the flash of light that struck the torch. Had the hyohlu thrown some kind of weapon? If so, she thought, it must have been very sharp and broad. And even then, could he really have snuffed out a torch in one throw?
But this was no time to be wondering. She lowered Gina to the ground and helped her climb onto Kassa’s back, then took a flint box from her bag to light the torch. She gave it to Gina and asked Kassa, “Will this last you until you reach home?”
They nodded. She could see them clearly for the first time in the light of the torch. Kassa had a boyish face and looked a little unsure of himself, but she could tell he was a serious youth who cared about his sister. Gina was dark-skinned, and her braided hair was looped on top of her head. Although there was still a trace of fear in her eyes, her firmly set lips betrayed a strong will.
“Well, I guess it’s time to say good-bye,” Balsa said. “I don’t suppose you could tell me the quickest way from here to the nearest market?”
“That would be Sula Lassal,” Kassa said. “It’s about thirty lon from here — what you’d call an hour’s walk that way, down at the bottom of the valley. It’s the biggest lassal in Musa territory, so you’ll find lots of inns.”
Balsa thanked him and headed down the path, but she had no intention of staying in an inn tonight. She would camp outside and wait until several hours after sunrise, when people were up and about. Then she would go to the market to buy some local clothes. If she wanted to be inconspicuous, everything else would have to wait.
The two children watched her disappear rapidly into the darkness before they set off for home.
“Kassa …” Gina whispered, “I’m really sorry.”
He said nothing. It’s not something you can fix just by apologizing, he thought. Still, he understood why Gina had gone into the caves, and the reason had a name: Shisheem.
“Let me tell you something,” Shisheem had announced that day at school. “Warriors who don’t belong to the chieftain’s line aren’t anything more than plain soldiers. They aren’t real warriors at all. That’s what my father says. I’m different, you see. I can be chosen as a King’s Spear, like my father, and go under the mountain to meet the hyohlu.” He looked down at Kassa and added, “We know the secret rituals, so we’re worthy of such an honor. You’d die if you tried to enter the caves.”
Before Kassa could respond, Gina said hotly, “Oh, really? And you think you wouldn’t? All right then — prove it! Show us a piece of hakuma.”
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