“Oh, Mama, it was horrible! Even the squirrels laughed at me. I gave them my best roar, but they threw nuts at me. I came to the river; the fish were lazy, sleepy in the summer sun. Easy picking, I thought. I made my attack, and suddenly they were all gone. One fat porker of a salmon actually jumped out and smacked me in the face with his tail. I saw a perfect berry patch—the berries were so perfect, Mama! —glistening and nearly popping with ripeness. But as soon as I came close I was viciously attacked by a stinkbug. It sprayed me! My eyes are still crying from it.”

“My poor boy. So much to learn still. You can’t conquer the forest in a day. Try again tomorrow. Be patient and careful, but do not let your poor mama go hungry for a second day.”

For four days, the cub caught nothing. On the fourth day, he waddled through a birch glade, his stomach grumbling. Suddenly a finch, all yellow and obnoxious—all of their species have that unfortunate deficiency, I’m afraid—took it into its little brain to torment the cub. Around and around his head it flew, screeching always at the moment it passed his ears—for maximum effect, you understand. Finally, the cub had enough, and he swatted the bird with his paw. His swipe was mortally on target, and the bird fell at his feet, its wings awkward and its neck snapped. The cub looked at the bird and felt a savage kind of pleasure. It was the killing itself. He liked it.

That evening, he brought his mother a rabbit. She praised him, but something about his manner—maybe it was his eyes, she could not tell—frightened her.

After that, he killed more and more, starting with small animals like squirrels, and sometimes even bringing down a mountain goat or two. But the more he hunted, the more he began to kill for the mere pleasure of it. Sometimes he even wounded small animals and left them in the forest to die. The kill dominated his thoughts day and night. His mother saw the macabre series of dead creatures from afar, but she was a wise old bear. She bided her time.

One day, the cub came to her, shaking and crying inconsolably.

“Mama, Mama, I’m so miserable!”

“What is it, my sweet cub?”

“I can’t stop killing. The desire for blood is huge inside me. It’s so big now, it has nowhere else to go. Maybe I should jump off a cliff, so the forest will be rid of me.”

She cradled him in her warm embrace, like she did during his first months underground. He cried and he cried, until he could cry no more. Then she looked deep into his eyes, and he felt the pieces of something broken inside him come together again. Drying his eyes, he went out on the hunt again.

Two squirrels were playing in front of their cave, completely oblivious to the bears’ living in the vicinity. The cub felt the now-familiar, groping desire to kill them. He was not even hungry, but he could imagine the warmth of their blood and the feeling of power it gave him.

He looked at them for a long time, then sat on his haunches and bellowed. The squirrels nearly left their bushy tails behind them, so far they jumped, and began to chatter at him angrily from the safety of a high branch, though neither was brave enough to throw anything at him. He laughed at them and turned back inside. It was time to sleep.

“They loved it,” said Voran as he and Tarin enjoyed a quiet repast, sitting on the ground, leaning on one of the houses. “I didn’t think they would understand it, but they seem to have understood more than I did.”

“Does that surprise you?” Tarin’s voice was only slightly sarcastic. He seemed younger and in better spirits after the telling.

“How much of that story was intended for my ears?”

“You do think much of yourself, don’t you, Raven Son?” Tarin shook his head, apparently genuinely disappointed in Voran. “It was a story of the darkness that lives in the heart of every man, not merely the great Voran, son of Otchigen of Vasyllia.”

Voran’s face grew hot, and he was grateful for the sound of approaching footsteps. It was a little boy, hardly more than four or five. His face was pockmarked, and there was something wrong behind his eyes. The realization pained Voran more than he expected—the little boy’s mind was damaged, probably by some kind of disease.

He approached Voran, not Tarin, which surprised Voran, even as a kind of panic began to itch at him. What does one do with a damaged child? His instinct was to ignore the boy or to shoo him away. Actually speaking to him, interacting with him was more frightening than walking off a precipice in the wild. The boy looked at Voran’s shoulder, never at his eyes, but still he shuffled nearer. He had no shoes, only rough leather slippers tied together in a slip-shod manner. It suggested that the boy had an older sibling, but no parents.

“Is he an orphan?” whispered Voran to Tarin, unwilling to look at the boy, feeling the unwelcome revulsion, yet unable to look away.

“Why do you not ask him?”

“He is not?…You know…”

Tarin did not answer. The boy reached out a hand and touched Voran’s knee, then smiled, tucking his chin into his neck and leaning back. He moaned a little and began to chortle. The piercing in Voran’s heart was now a torrent of fire. With a trembling hand, he reached out to the boy and curled his fingers in, inviting him closer. The boy closed his eyes and shook his head, moaning gently, but he didn’t back away. Voran spread out both arms to the boy.

The boy cocked his head to the side, his eyes still closed, and turned sideways while shuffling forward, like a reticent crab. He tapped Voran’s knees, as if appraising them. Before Voran realized it, the boy was curled up in his arms, his head on Voran’s chest. The boy’s breathing stilled and deepened, and soon a faint snuffle rose and fell with the little shoulders. He was asleep.

Voran wept, afraid that his heaving chest would wake the boy.

“His name is Voran, by the way,” said Tarin, looking away. “And yes, he is an orphan.”

Voran did not think he could feel any guiltier in his life than he did at that moment.

When the tears were spent—though the wound in his heart still throbbed, as he hoped it would throb forever—Voran turned to Tarin. The old madman looked different now, as though the touch of a damaged little child had transformed the entire world for Voran.

“Tarin, this village. These children. What happened to them?”

“You happened to them. Vasyllia happened to them. But that is the difficult answer. The simple one is that they were in the path of the Raven’s armies. Many of them are Nebesti outliers living near the Vasyllian border. Their men were foolish enough to raise arms against the invaders.”

That was why there were so many women and so few men. Voran let the reality seep into him as it irritated his new heart-wound, like fermented potato-brew poured over infected skin.

“Tarin, I must find the Living Water. Finally, I know why I must.”

The old warrior smiled and closed his eyes. The wind shifted, bringing a strange, almost spring-like fragrance of budding snowdrops. Was it really so near the end of winter?

“That is good, Voran. It will help you in your training. As for Living Water, you are not ready yet.”

Tarin stood up and wiped the brown grass from his robes. He yawned hugely and stretched like a cat, until something popped loud enough for the entire village to hear. Tarin yelped in pain and grabbed his back.

“It is time we were off, Raven Son,” he said, straightening out with a grimace. “Don’t want to attract anything that might hurt these children. Your smell is ripe, and there are many hounds still seeking.”

Voran looked down at the boy, trying to commit every single pockmark on his face to memory. This is our son, Sabíana, our little Voran. They are all our children.

Don’t look for evil in the dark shadows. Don’t look for evil in the night. Look for it in the middle of the day. Beware the demon that wears the skin of those you love.

From “The Tale of the Raven and the Living Water”

(Old Tales, Book II)

Chapter 24

The Raven

Though it seemed like days, the Gumiren kept Yadovír and Kalún tied up for little more than several hours. When the guards came to untie them, they could hardly contain themselves for laughter. It seems this “imprisonment” was intended as little more than a practical joke. Yadovír failed to appreciate the humor.

He and Kalún were led, hands untied, to a flat space cleared of trees, various stumps poking out here and there from the frozen ground. In the center of the clearing lay a long sheet covered in a wooden board. The board was laden with foods of many different shades of brown. Wooden pitchers were filled with some white liquid. A group of Gumiren half-reclined, half-sat around the board, grabbing brown bits of food from common platters with their hands, then wiping them on their long, brown, fur-lined coats. By the designs on their hat-sashes, it seemed these were the elite. The Ghan himself, an enormous man with a rare beard and almost feral cunning hiding behind his eyes, sat at the head. His face creased into a smile, and he looked like he would explode any minute into a torrent of laughter.

The Ghan saw them and half-bowed, still sitting, indicating places on his left. For a moment, Kalún looked unwilling to debase himself at such a table, but to Yadovír’s relief he sat down, leaving the seat nearer the Ghan for Yadovír. Yadovír didn’t speak at first, thinking perhaps it would be considered rude to speak to the Ghan with no invitation. Kalún stared down at the food with a white face, and seemed intent on saying nothing at all.

“You no offend?” said the Ghan, laughing in his eyes. “Men have little jest at you.” He laughed loudly, his rounded belly bouncing up and down. “Eat! We make horse for you. Eat.”

They were given a plate of brown meat cut into small pieces. Yadovír was sure he would be ill if he ate any of this food, but the Ghan’s emphasis on the word “horse” made it clear they were being given a great honor. Yadovír took a large piece and tried to swallow it without chewing. It was not horrible, even faintly seasoned with a spice he didn’t quite recognize.

“Saffor, yes?” The Ghan frowned as one of the others corrected him. “Ah, yes. Saffron. Your people do not know this, I think.”

“It is very good, thank you,” said Yadovír, not sure what honorific to use.

“Ghan speak now, yes?” said the Ghan. “My name—Magai. Ghan Magai. You, I know. Priest Kalún and common man Yadovír. You have offer for us, yes?”