Seirei no Moribito - Volume 2 - Chapter 1.4

CHAPTER IV THE KING’S SPEARS 

After much debate, Kassa and Gina finally decided to tell their parents about the stone. If they had just gone to the caves to test their courage, they could have kept silent as long as their absence went unnoticed. But luisha was another matter. A piece no bigger than a fingertip could buy enough grain to feed an entire clan for half a year. It was too big a secret for them to handle on their own. 
They decided to wait until morning, as waking everyone up in the middle of the night would only make things worse. When they reached home, Kassa climbed up the rope first, then pulled Gina up after him because of her injured foot. They both slept little, nodding off only to start awake again, and greeted the dawn with relief. While they dreaded confessing to their parents, it was, as Gina said, better to get it over with. 
When Gina came limping into the living room, her mother immediately noticed something was wrong. “What happened to your foot?” she demanded. 
Gina glanced at Kassa. He turned to his father, who was about to leave for work. “Father, please wait. There’s something we have to tell you.” 
When he began explaining their escapade, his mother looked stunned. “How could you be so stupid?” she cried, cutting him off. “You could have died!” She grabbed Gina by the shoulders, hugged her fiercely, and then smacked her smartly on the bottom. 
“Leena, calm down,” their father, Tonno, said, soothing her. He turned back to Kassa. “Go on. Tell us what happened next. You said that the hyohlu, the Guardian of the Darkness, bent over Gina?” 
“Yes, and when I threw the torch at him, he ran away and …” 
Tonno’s eyes grew stern. Kassa’s voice trailed away under his glare. “Kassa, do you really intend to lie to me?” 
He turned to Gina for help but she just stood there looking deathly pale. They had promised to keep their encounter with the woman a secret, but Kassa could not lie to his father. The tale he and Gina had thought up last night sounded false even to his own ears. Finally he blurted out, “Well, no … We were actually rescued by a traveler on a journey of penance.” The true story poured out of him. Tonno listened doubtfully, but when Gina pulled out the luisha and handed it to him, the blood drained from his face. 
The stone’s mystic beauty remained unchanged even in the light of day, glowing blue like the water at the bottom of a deep spring. The stone shone from Tonno’s trembling hands, illuminating his face. Kassa’s mother and grandmother caught their breath, mesmerized by the shining gem. 
Gina broke the silence. “Father, does this mean we’ll be rich?” 
The adults glanced at each other for a second, then Tonno slowly shook his head. “Gina, luisha belongs to the king of Kanbal. You learned that at school, didn’t you? It’s not for people like us.” 
“But we risked our lives to get it! Can’t we sell it secretly? To some foreign trader or something? Then you wouldn’t have to go away to work in winter, and we could eat three meals a day all year round….” 
No one spoke. Even the adults, who knew full well that Gina’s suggestion was impossible, could not help imagining what it would be like to sell the stone and make a fortune. Then Gina’s mother sighed and shook her by the shoulder. “That’s a foolish, shameful idea, Gina. Even if it could be done, it wouldn’t make us happy. Just think about it. How would we explain our sudden good fortune to the rest of our clan? Even if they believed our lies, would you feel good about deceiving your own people and keeping such riches for yourself?” 
Her words seemed to hang in the air, but their bitter reality was as heavy as stone. Tonno shook his head. “At any rate, this is too important to keep secret. We must take the luisha and consult Chief Kaguro. Kassa, wait for me after school. You must come with me and tell the chieftain what happened.” 
Kassa shuddered. He was afraid of the clan leader, a stern, forbidding old man who had lost his right eye and arm hunting a wolf one winter. “But Father, we promised we wouldn’t tell anyone about the woman. She’s doing penance.” 
“I have my doubts about that, and that’s another reason I think we should tell the chieftain. Where did she come from? The darkness? And she led you out of the caves without once losing her way? Can’t you see what that means? Only the King’s Spears, like Master Yuguro, should be able to do that. If she knows the caves in Musa territory that well, she may be a threat to our clan.” 
Kassa felt a chill creep over him. “But she saved our lives!” Gina exclaimed. “We can’t break our promise to her.” 
“Calm down,” Tonno replied. “I’m not saying that we’ll do anything to harm her. But think carefully. What if she’s involved in some kind of plot against the Musa?” 
“Then she would have killed us both in the cave!” Gina retorted. 
Well done, Gina, Kassa thought. 
Tonno was momentarily at a loss, then he sighed. “I can’t remain silent about something that could endanger our clan. If she really was doing penance, then she won’t come to any harm just because people know that she saved your lives. And if she lied to you, then telling the truth isn’t betrayal.” 
Not even Gina could argue with that. 
“Listen, I for one am very grateful to her. Even if it turns out that she is plotting against the clan, I’ll stand by her to the end. Now are you satisfied?” 
The two children nodded. They finished their breakfast without really noticing what they ate. As they left the house for school, Kassa suddenly realized that their parents had forgotten to scold them for entering the caves. The luisha had driven all that from their minds. 
Little did he dream that, in the end, he would endure much worse than a scolding from his father. 
 
Kassa had sparring practice that day. He took his spear down from the rack on the wall inside the school. Although its lethal point was sheathed and everyone wore neck guards of thick leather, it was far more exciting to practice with real spears than with plain wooden staffs, as the younger boys did. 
Kassa clearly remembered the first time the sheathed tip of an opponent’s spear had swung toward his neck: A shiver had shot from his throat to his stomach as he imagined, all too vividly, the point piercing his windpipe. Death had never felt so close. 
He stepped out of the darkness of the school building into the blinding sunshine, thin and autumnal despite its brilliance. “We’ll have a practice tournament today,” Muruzo announced. A big man of almost forty with broad shoulders and a loud voice, he was responsible for training the young men in the village. If any boy froze in his first encounter with a spear-wielding opponent, one gruff bellow from Muruzo was enough to break the spell. 
There were eight fifteen-year-olds, including Kassa, and twelve sixteen-year-olds, including Shisheem. They broke into two teams of evenly mixed ages and lined up facing each other in two rows. Their shrill shouts echoed in the large outdoor sparring grounds. 
Kassa liked spear fighting. An opponent with a long reach had the advantage when fighting with daggers, and Kassa, who was not as tall as his peers, always ended up frustrated because he could not get under his opponent’s guard. With the spear, however, height and reach did not matter as long as one had skill. In fact, Kassa’s nimbleness could give him an advantage over someone taller, as longer arms slowed down one’s swing. Moving with a speed that bemused his opponents, Kassa felt like he was dancing in space. He won his first three matches and, in the fourth, came up against Shisheem. Looking up at the older boy, he remembered what Gina had said about him the previous night. 
Shisheem smiled loftily. His confidence was justified, for he surpassed all his friends with the spear. He was, after all, the son of Yuguro, the chieftain’s younger brother and one of the nine Spears. But few boys liked sparring with him, because he enjoyed toying with weaker opponents and defeating them in a flashy display of skill. Kassa especially disliked it because Shisheem always seemed to shove their difference in rank in his face. Today, however, Kassa felt strangely composed. From the moment they faced each other, he felt his mind grow calm and focused. The noises around him faded into nothingness. 
Shisheem’s eyes flashed. Suddenly, with a shout that split the air, he drove his spear mercilessly at Kassa’s throat. Kassa instinctively raised his spear, deflecting the blow, and followed through, driving the point toward Shisheem’s nose. Shisheem barely managed to twist away in time and blood spurted from his ear. The smile had been wiped from his lips and his face was white with fury. Leaping back, he leveled his spear again, and it whistled along the ground to flick up into Kassa’s face. Kassa tried to turn the blow aside, but Shisheem shifted in the same direction, and the spear whipped back toward him. This time Kassa could not dodge the blow, and he felt hot pain sear his cheek. 
“Hold!” 
Sound returned with Muruzo’s shout, as if an invisible curtain had been torn asunder. Kassa’s friend Lalaka thumped him on the shoulder. “Good job! Nice work!” Kassa pressed his hand against his cheek and a smile touched his lips. 
Shisheem was watching him. He put his hand to his ear and, when he saw blood, wiped it on his clothes. Some color returned to his pale face as he took a deep breath, then gave a twisted smile. “Well, Kassa, you’ve gotten pretty strong, haven’t you?” He tapped him lightly on the shoulder as he passed. “You’ll be a good spearman someday. Pity you weren’t born to the chieftain’s line. You’ll waste all that talent herding goats for the rest of your life.” He raised his hand to a friend and walked off toward his next match. 
The excitement that had burned in Kassa but a moment before drained away. 
At noon, he still had not shaken the gloom that weighed on his heart. His stomach growled with hunger as he sat on the steps, waiting for his father. He and Gina had just shared the cheese that his mother had given them for lunch, but it was nowhere near enough to keep him satisfied until supper. If only we could sell the luisha, he thought. Trying to cheer himself up, he let his imagination follow this train of thought. I’d start off by treating myself to some grilled sanga beef with spicy ganla sauce. Then I’d buy a cheese losso with plenty of yukka fruit in the filling…. 
Still, he knew it could never happen; luisha was just too rare and too valuable. Luisha only came to the surface once every twenty years or so, when the flute of the Mountain King sounded from beneath the mountains. That was the invitation to the king of Kanbal to enter the land below, accompanied by his nine Spears and their attendants. There the Mountain King presented the Kanbalese king with luisha as a sign of their friendship. 
According to the legend Kassa had learned, the practice had begun over a thousand years ago, when a brave young man ventured into the caves and found his way to a palace under the land. There he met a beautiful maiden with whom he fell in love. But she was the daughter of the Mountain King, and the king told the young man that if he wanted to marry her, he must best the king’s son with the spear. Taking up the challenge, the young man defeated the hyohlu, the Guardian of the Darkness. The king praised the young man and let him take his daughter to the land under the sun. To make sure that both kingdoms prospered, he promised to send a gift to his daughter and her descendants every two decades. That gift was luisha. 

The young man who wed the Mountain King’s daughter was hailed as a hero aboveground. He became chieftain of his own clan and gathered the other nine clans together to form the kingdom of Kanbal. He vowed to use his right to the Mountain King’s gift to care for all ten clans, establishing the royal custom of using luisha to purchase grain for the people. In return, the nine clans delivered laga, a cheese made from goat’s milk, and dried meat from one hundred goats to the king, which he presented to the Mountain King in turn. The rites enacted at the Giving Ceremony were a secret known only to the king, his Spears, and their attendants; commoners knew nothing about what went on at the Last Door to the Mountain Deep. And yet a piece of luisha had come to Kassa…. 
He saw his father approaching the school. As soon as he glimpsed his face, Kassa knew that Tonno was already regretting taking on this extra burden, and the thought filled him with sadness. When Kassa had turned fifteen this spring, he had been presented with his dagger and become a man, with the right to join the other men when they gathered at the meeting place. But there he saw a side of his father that he had never known existed. Tonno seemed so subservient, trying too hard to please the other men, completely different from the man Kassa had respected since he was a child — the competent overlord of the Herder People. 
Reaching the bottom of the steps, Tonno looked up at him. He was wearing his best outfit rather than his usual torn and threadbare clothing, and he had clipped his dagger smartly to his belt and polished his boots until they gleamed. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said. “Let’s go.” 
Just then, they heard two shrill horn blasts from the village gate. 
“Master Yuguro has returned!” Tonno exclaimed. A double horn blast always signaled the arrival of Shisheem’s father, the second son in the chieftain’s line. From his perch at the top of the stairs, Kassa saw a cloud of dust rising beyond the outer wall. Normally, Yuguro lived in the capital, where he served as the king’s master of martial arts. Even among the Spears, he was considered the greatest warrior in the land, and he brought much honor to the Musa clan. People ran out of their homes and workplaces to meet him now. 
A group of eighteen riders came first, hooves clattering on the white stone pavement, and they raised their hands in greeting as the people shouted, “Welcome back!” Yuguro followed on a magnificent black stallion of foreign breed. He held the reins in his left hand, while his right grasped a spear bound with the gold ring that marked him as one of the King’s Spears. His eyes were keen in his hawklike face, his beard neatly trimmed, his body lean and fit. Despite a streak of white that ran through his jet-black hair, he looked much younger than his forty-one years. He exuded an aura of power coupled with a grace that drew people to him. 
If my father was like that, I’d probably boast about it too, Kassa thought. Yet he could not imagine Shisheem ever being like Yuguro, no matter how many decades passed. 
The gold ring on Yuguro’s spear flashed in the sun as he approached. Kassa started, suddenly recalling the spear borne by the woman in the cave. He had only glimpsed it briefly in the light of the torch and paid no heed to it in his confusion. But now he realized that the mark on her spear shaft was the same as that on the spears of the chieftain’s line. Who was she? he wondered again. The encounter seemed like a dream to him now. 
The riders drew closer. When he caught sight of Kassa and his father, Yuguro smiled slightly and inclined his head. Tonno smiled broadly in return and bowed very low. Yuguro was always kind to his younger sister’s husband, a fact that filled Kassa’s heart with pleasure. 
A young man right behind Yuguro flashed Kassa a quick smile — his cousin Kahm, the eldest son of Kaguro, the chieftain. He had just turned thirty-one this year. Kassa grinned back and bowed respectfully. Unlike Shisheem, Kahm had always treated him well, and Kassa, in return, loved this reserved, fair-minded cousin. 
“Thank the gods in heaven,” Tonno murmured. “The chieftain is an honest man but sometimes he can be very rigid. It’s a relief to know that Master Yuguro will be there.” 
The riders galloped up the hill and passed through the gate into the inner enclosure. Kassa and his father waited until the dust from the horses’ hooves had died down and then began walking toward the hall. 
In Kanbal, the chieftain’s hall was always in the middle of the village, on high ground surrounded by a stone wall as a last defense against attack. Once Kassa had looked down over a cliff at their village, and it reminded him of a boiled egg sliced in half. His house was located at the very edge of the egg white, against the outer wall, while the enclosure around the chieftain’s hall was the yolk. The thought of boiled eggs now made his mouth water, despite his nervousness. While skirmishes had happened frequently during clan wars, the last century had been relatively peaceful, and the heavy, solid gate before the hall looked as if it was stuck open. 
The chieftain’s hall was a huge building made of smooth gray stone. The roof was shingled with thin blue-gray slates and steeply peaked so that the heavy snows would slide off in winter. An archers’ gallery circled the top of the building just beneath the roof. At the guardhouse beside the entrance to the hall, Tonno told a young man that he had urgent news for the chieftain. The hall was in a flurry due to the arrival of Yuguro and Kahm, and it was some time before the young man returned and told them to enter. 
Inside it was dim and chilly. Neither the few tallow candles placed in brackets along the walls nor the sun slanting through the small skylights could banish the shadows from the wide, high-ceilinged corridor. As he walked along the passageway, his boots echoing, Kassa could not help thinking how much warmer, brighter, and more comfortable his own home was. 
The pungent smell of smoke assailed them as they entered the chieftain’s chamber, which likewise felt cold and cavernous. There was a huge fireplace built into the north wall, but even in the middle of winter the chieftain would only permit a small blaze during the day. 
Kaguro stood up from a large chair beside the fireplace. “Tonno. Kassa. Welcome,” he said in a deep, rumbling voice. He had assumed the chieftainship at a young age due to his father’s untimely death, and he bore himself with great dignity. But where his younger brother Yuguro was like the sun to Kassa, Kaguro seemed like the dark night. He had a beaklike nose and closely cropped gray hair and beard, and an ugly scar ran from his right eye to his chin, the mark of the wolf that had robbed him of his eye and arm. 
Before Tonno could speak, they heard two raps on the door and Yuguro entered. 
“Kaguro … Oh, Tonno. Sorry. Did I interrupt you?” he asked. 
“Not at all, Master Yuguro,” Tonno replied in an awed voice, looking back and forth between Yuguro and Kaguro. “I know how busy you must be, but if possible, there is a matter on which I wish to consult both of you….” 
Yuguro frowned for an instant, but then nodded cheerfully and closed the door behind him. Tonno began to speak nervously. He must have gone over the story many times in his mind. While he occasionally checked a detail or two with Kassa, his explanation was clear and succinct. 
Kaguro and Yuguro listened, expressionless at first. But when they heard that an unknown woman had bested the hyohlu they began to frown, and by the time his father had finished, they were both looking at Kassa incredulously. 
“Tonno, I know you mean well,” Yuguro said with a smile, “but I’m afraid I can’t believe your story. I can’t help but think that Kassa made the whole thing up.” He fixed a stern gaze on Kassa, as if to say, You might fool your father, but you can’t fool me. 
“Yes,” Tonno replied. “That’s what I thought at first too. Until I saw what the hyohlu had dropped when he bent over my daughter.” He pulled out a cloth and unfolded it. A blue light shone from his hand. 
The chieftain and his brother caught their breath. Yuguro walked over and picked up the stone. “It’s luisha!” 
The two brothers looked at each other for a long moment, then Kaguro returned his gaze to Kassa and his father. “If your tale is true, then there are a couple of points that puzzle me.” He stared at them as though weighing something in his mind before speaking again. “What I’m about to tell you is known only to those belonging to the chieftain’s line. But you are my younger sister’s family: Will you vow not to tell anyone else?” 
After Kassa and his father nervously promised to keep the secret, Kaguro continued. “First of all, it’s unusual to see the hyohlu so close to the surface. Many people believe that children who disappear in the caves are eaten by the hyohlu, but we know that, in most cases, they simply get lost and can’t get out again, or they’re swept away by a stream and drown. The hyohlu are servants of the Mountain King. They would only harm someone from overland if that person wandered very deep into the caves and committed a great evil. Gina was probably so startled by the hyohlu that she stumbled and fell. 
“But Kassa, you said that you took a torch into the caves, right?” Kassa nodded. “That was a very dangerous thing to do. The hyohlu hate fire, and they will try to extinguish a burning torch. Sometimes they inadvertently hurt or kill people in the process. If a hyohlu really did come up near the surface as you say — and I have no doubt that it did, if that stone fell off its body — then this may be the year the Gate to the Mountain Deep will open. If so, the king will issue his summons soon. But then our next puzzle is this traveler. You said she was a woman with a spear, right, Kassa?” 
“Yes,” he answered, his voice catching in his throat. The gleam in Kaguro’s eye was terrifying. 
“And she fought and beat the hyohlu?” 
“Well, yes, but Gina and I couldn’t actually see what was happening, because everything went pitch black when the torch went out. But I could hear them moving and their spears whistling through the air…. The only thing I saw was the glow of the hyohlu as it disappeared into the cave. Then the woman told us that it was all right.” 
“And she led you through the dark out of the cave?” 
“Yes.” 
“She didn’t ask you to light the torch while you were in the cave?” 
“No….” 
Kaguro turned to look at Yuguro and frowned. “What’s wrong?” he asked. 
Yuguro looked stricken, his face white and frozen. He blinked and looked toward his brother. “Nothing. I’m a little tired from the journey. If you don’t mind, I’ll just borrow this chair.” He sat down heavily. “Sorry. I must be getting old. You were saying?” 
Kaguro turned his gaze back to Kassa. “You said that she wore strange clothes and spoke Kanbalese like a foreigner.” 
Kassa nodded, then he suddenly remembered the spear. “There’s something else. I caught a glimpse of her spear in the light of the torch, and I just realized that the mark on it was the same as the one on Master Yuguro’s spear.” 
Beads of sweat broke out on Kaguro’s brow. He turned to his brother and muttered, “Could it be his spear?” 
Yuguro stared at him without answering.