Speaker for the Gods, week 10

Waylaid

Their forms slid from the shadows now, dark and streaked with pale yellow to clash with sunset’s orange. My machete came out and Iokepa took that queue to snatch the hatchet from his waist. I threw my hip against the nearest tree for support, leaning the crutch against the bark beside me. The warriors trailed leaves like green feathers from their arms and legs. Yellow and white paint splattered the heavy leather hauberks they all wore. Brown kapa waistwraps dangled to their knees.

I saw no tattoos, but every man’s face bore some piercing—either through the nose, lips or ears with thin ebony rods. The closest men had clubs and knives; their fellows behind presented speartips. They snapped off commands in Kane. My panicked brain wasn’t quick enough to hear beyond the words’ basic forms. I realized that, according to the story Iokepa believed, these men were supposedto be my allies.

“Hoaloha! Hoaloha!” I cried “friend,” sliding my back down the tree until I was sitting on the ground. I cast my weapon away and frantically motioned Io to do the same, mouthing “Keone.” He obeyed and the invaders’ spears drooped. They conversed amongst themselves and Io regained enough composure to speak back. They reacted badly at first—the nearest man backhanded him across the cheek and sent him into silence. I sighed and looked up again at the airborne homes. We were a half-mile from help but wouldn’t reach it.

Our captors took our bags, lifted us up and dragged us off the trail. Two men worked together carrying me by the shoulders. I was strangely grateful for the rest. We moved up the valley and backtracked a bit west before resting, within earshot of the rushing stream I’d crossed so awkwardly. Likely the scouts had picked us up there. If they were going to kill us, I reasoned, it would’ve happened already—our bodies cast into some deep brush.

This place was a crude and transient campsite. The invaders had dug shallow holes in soft ground to sleep in, shielded from night showers by with simple frames of leaves on branches. Our captors sat Iokepa down by the dead remnants of their campfire. They had taken our weapons but never bound us; what threat could we pose? I was led around the sleeping-holes and sat down at the base of a tree. Human shit caught my nose, wafting from the undergrowth concealing their waste pit. Three soldiers towered over me and the centermost asked in Kane whether I spoke it. “Badly,” I replied in the same tongue.

“Ing-lish?” he asked. His accent was different from Iokepa’s, lilting and handier with tough consonants. I nodded emphatically, repeated the word, transfixed on the long black dowel transfixing his nostril. A smaller rod sat higher up, piercing the bridge between his eyes and making me want to sneeze. It was much shorter than the first, to keep the tips out of his vision.

“Okay. Who are you? Who’s he?” I had to tell the same lies about myself that Io would.

“I’m Ashur, a traveler. A scholar. I’m hired by your king.” Lies are easier to tell when mixed with truths. “He’s Iokepa. Water monger from Kaleikaumaka. It’s a village west of here.”

“We got maps too, Ashah the scholar,” the man said crossing his arms. His face screwed up to peer at me, the ornaments a constant distraction. A wild black beard fanned out from his neck. He was a long thin man and I couldn’t guess his age.

“I’m on a mission for your King, like I said. Iokepa’s family helped me get this far. We went east looking for Keone’s men and Io will tell you the same. We’re happy to see you!”

He scowled, clearly taking me for a liar. It was true but not in any way he could prove. A little more pushing, then. “The King seeks a treasure. I’m to deliver it.”

“You got a treasure?” He looked me up and down.

“Not yet. I’m still looking.”

“Then you got nothing. You’re an ally of Keone Kahuna, then prove it.”

I feigned indignance. “I’m going to carry his banner, in enemy territory? I’m not a soldier. Just supposed to meet a man in Noio Koha. I was on my way, everything going fine, until I hurt my leg. Pua’a,” I finished, miming the injury with a stab of one hand.

“So why’d the To’means help you?”

“They hate the Speakers! They want your help killing them. The wai kalepa are ready to revolt!”

They reacted at that phrase and shot looks crossways. I elaborated. “They hid me from the Speaker in Kaleikaumaka. They saved my life, they love Keone, they hate the Speakers. They’re your friends,” I made big earnest eyes. My questioner pondered, muttered “keep him” in Kane to the other two and went to join the others near the fire pit where I couldn’t see. The soldiers spoke amongst themselves, joined occasionally by quick statements from Iokepa. My guards stood stoic.

Birds flew overhead, hunting bugs for their dusk meals. I counted their darkening shapes, listened to the stream and imagined peaceful places far away. Eventually the conversation at the fire stopped. Someone called out and I was lifted to my feet. One man handed over my crutch and they let me propel myself to the edge of the cold fire pit. It had its own shield, like that over the bunks but larger and angled to the southeast. They could burn it low without alerting Noio Koha. Iokepa sat on a half-rotted log, smiling happily, under no duress. Clearly there’d been a breakthrough. Relief flooded my body; luck had taken her sweet time arriving.

Iokepa spoke first. “We’re all right, brother Ashur.”

“Thank god. And thank all of you,” I saluted the scouts. “For listening to us. A lot of folks would’ve just stove my head in.”

“No point in killing a cripple. Keone Kahuna wants to know the truth in this forest, and Kimo delivers.” He thumped his chest.

“Then we’re indebted, Captain Kimo. We’ll help you however we can. I could try and lie my way past the walls.” Best to get myself clear of this bushwhacking war party before the To’means discovered them.

Kimo clucked his tongue. “No point. Can’t take Noio Koha, not enough men. We goin’ komohana.”

Io said it before my brain finished processing the Kane. “Going home, brother. Kaleikaumaka.”

My stomach dropped. “What about Keone? You must have been sent up here for a reason. Ahead of a bigger kaua, maybe?”

Kimo waved off the idea. “Keone took the army east. Groups of kiu like us are checking the mountain towns, testing their defenses.”

“That’s great!” I exclaimed, not meaning it. Keone expected unruly villages all along, which was sensible given the volume of cowries. But he didn’t expect to need them either, since he’d committed only a few men. As for the Molokai scouts, they might fight for spoils but could easily be bought off by Kaleikaumaka’s wealthy water mongers. Whatever Kimo’s plans, mine were truly fucked. I faced a long hike back across those godforsaken valleys, hobbling along on my crutch. “So when do we leave? All eight of us, to conquer a village?”

“Sixteen,” Kimo stated flatly. They had another party ranging the woods. “Sleep now and be ready to go. If you wander off I’ll bust you face, tie you up and carry you.”

Once the kaua dispersed, Io and I cleared a soft level patch as far from the shit pit as we could manage. With the constant Kane tradewinds, it was impossible ever to stay truly upwind. He struck a flame to a lamp nut: by its light I changed my leg wrapping. I smelled no odor from the wound and saw only a little pus. By this point the throbbing pain was a simple fact of life. The soldiers bullshitted at one another by the light of the dim campfire. Kimo produced my machete, his men immediately smitten. I listened silently to their awed chatter, socking away as many Kane words as I could. Io, for his part, passed out after eating most of the food in his pack. I expected snores from the chubby man, but he rested with a happy purr—secure in the knowledge that tomorrow he’d be home for dinner.

I slept well, waking just before dawn when Kimo’s scouts rose like silent ghosts from their shallow holes in the earth. Eight men had indeed become sixteen, the second party sneaking in overnight. The morning’s avian chatter rained from the trees along with occasional drops of dew. I dragged myself down to the stream, drank deeply, topped up my skins and pulled off my boots. My feet were revolting after days on the march and after an awful shock of cold the water felt perfect. Tadpoles spun startled wheels in the still water just offshore. I tried to remember whether tadpoles had eyes and couldn’t. Stars had faded beyond the canopy, but the waxing moon outlasted them. Mild breeze bore smells of earth and fruit through the forest. I scooted from the steam back to camp, gathered my bag and craned to my feet with a grimace. It hurt, but less than I’d expected—the lame leg took some weight before the wound screamed. In a few days I’d be able to hike without the crutch.

Iokepa slept late and I had to wake him myself, just before final muster. Kimo described the path ahead, miming with his hands the valleys I’d already crossed and we decamped from there, the two biggest kiu hoisting me over the stream with laughs and half-understood taunts like I was a scared puppy. Our cadre moved west along the trail from Noio Koha at a healthy clip with the Sun at our backs. Io walked amiably alongside me, continuing our dialogue on the local language and indulging my attempts at whole sentences.

“Happy to go home?” I asked feebly in Kane.

“You don’t know how,” he replied, keeping things simple for my sake. “We did it, you and I. It only took two days.” That infectious grin.

“We won’t be finished when we get back to Kaleikaumaka,” the Kane fought its way free of my mouth. “There is a battle.”

“Why do you worry? Nobody’s asking you to fight,” he acknowledged the hole in my left leg.

“No, but it always comes to that.”

“I’ll keep you safe if the fighting’s close,” he said earnestly. I wasn’t convinced.

I heard how he handled the if and made a note to try it out later. “Best not to fight at all.”

Hearing it, Io laughed. “It’s the truth,” I said, serious but not enough to upset him. “Nothing good happens to heroes, not for long. Find a wife, make some children, get fat and old.”

“Halfway there already.” He scooped a roll of belly fat and jiggled it. “I’d like to have children one day. With the right girl I’d have a son like Ioane.” Iokepa started nodding hard at this. His deep cork-wood eyes grew moist. “And he’d learn from the big man. He’d really take the lessons instead of just hearing them. I won’t be a hero. But my son, he could be.”

The Sun crossed the sky, riding high white clouds like Ienith on her chariot. Time flies when on a familiar road and by late afternoon I recognized the distant plate of solid basalt crowning the Halawa Valley. I pictured the pool below, the derelict water trucks, the severed heads. Some good might yet come from this, at the day’s bloody end. In the descending evening, our party holed up in a sheltered hollow of grey mossy rocks on the valley wall. Buildings and banana trees burned red in the sunset, angrier than the pink two dawns prior. Human forms like shadow puppets acted out tiny silent dramas.

Kimo sketched out battle plans while we waited for dark, one scheme after another demolished with swipes of his hand through the dirt. Buildings and streams rose from the ashes along with fresh human incarnations: attackers, defenders, innocents in their beds. Shadows fell down the valley from the other side, reaching for the village. I re-packed my wound, changed its dressing and buried the crusty kapa from inside my leg. Iokepa stared wistfully at his home as he sung old Kane songs under his breath, one palm outstretched to keep glare off his eyes.

He left once the Sun submerged, abandoning his gear to skulk back home alone. Under dark, as agreed with Kimo, he’d meet his father and contact the wai kalepa. The Molokai needed only a signal to strike; Io would return to communicate the time. In our protected hole, behind bushes and stones, light was no real risk and so I lit my friend’s kukuinut chain. It threw enough light to read by; I passed the time with Friar Waldman and a stick of dried fish that softened only with long chewing. Despite the day’s long march and the sanguine violet sky, the pall of impending battle hung over the camp and not one of us slept.

“The road wound back and forth across Hoku’e’s breadth and length, climbing inexorably towards the temple pyramid. Morning wore to midday but our guide’s energy never faltered. He’d hold us up from time to time, pointing out homes that had sheltered To’mea’s greatest military heroes and now housed the Koali’i of the present generation. I saw few children, but enough could be spotted walking alongside their basket-carrying mothers that Hoku’e must obviously house whole families in the Speakers’ service. Where one permits men and women to mingle, one must naturally expect the young to appear. Statues were placed along the boulevard, most carved from stone but others from orange sandalwood. All were draped with kaleidoscopically brilliant cloaks, either of cloth or of feathers and sized for their twelve-foot frames. Garlands of flowers hung from their shoulders and necks, were looped over their arms and coiled at their feet and lent to the eerie appearance of the dead dressed in living raiments.

“The guide led us up the road, stopping at each statue to describe those enshrined and lead us in prayer to their memories. High Speakers all, though some later lost their names when elevated to the highest of high: Mouths of Ku, for whom names have become irrelevant. Kai spoke along, head bowed and his eyes screwed reverently shut, which surprised me though I didn’t voice it. I will describe some of the enshrined as they were described to me, to illuminate those traits the To’means prize most in themselves.

“Hali’a Nukulani, Singer of the Sea: with To’mea afflicted by a dreadful blight and depleted by the ensuing famine, she called the people up from the eastern plains and with their safety secured she called the ocean. Wave upon wave crashed from the deep sea onto the dead farmland. When the water receded the corrupted crops were gone—in their place were fields of fish, clams, crabs and every other ocean creature left beached and gasping. Thus the famine was stayed for precious weeks while fresh crops were planted in the never-ending To’mean spring. Though the village of Waipio was washed away by Hali’a’s tide, its people dined under the stars on sea turtles like the ali’i of olden days.

“Manu Kalama’kala, He Who Blows Black Glass: a mighty warlord in To’mea’s early days (shortly following the Calamity, though that seminal event is not a recognized feature of the Speakers’ history), he fought alongside the legendary and ever-shifting Oleo’lani to end those barbarous times and to build Ku’s kingdom on Earth. Manu Kalama’kala wielded fire like a dancer’s lamps, casting it around and turning whole villages to cinders. His breath, it’s said, could melt sand to obsidian and disintegrate men to ashes where they stood.

“Moani Manahine, The Great Mother: the only Speaker in all of history to have brought the rain at her every command. Even among hai’olelo’s most powerful practitioners, the rain has remained mysterious—Ku’s words for raindrops being too delicate for the human mind to grasp intact. Speakers may summon storms, but such eruptions flood fields and tear coconuts prematurely from the palms. Moani turned these weapons into tools, wringing rains from the clouds with her words. Though droughts returned to the island upon her death, years of bulging aqueduct trenches had taught the Kane much about water and how to manage it. It was not until after her death, in fact, that very first wai kalepa emerged: mortals doing the work hai’oleo could not, a blasphemy that must continue daily if men and women and children are not to curl up groaning into balls from the pangs of drinking poor lowland water.

“I listened to each tale and pondered the mix of folk heroes and bloody conquerors presently on display. The To’means around were enraptured by the history, but I could think only of the Grand Monastery standing colossal at the crater’s very lip. Its proximity made me giddy, and it was all I could do to act sickly during the interminable walking, waiting and offerings of prayers to false idols.

“In a life of long travels across the East and the West, populated by a thousand sights both mundane and magical, the Grand Monastery of Hoku’e towered above the others. Of all human works now standing, it must surely inhabit the highest pantheon. Basalt from head to toe, it consists of a ziggurat-like leveled pyramid resting atop an enormous rectangular structure into which columns, figures and portals have been cut. This lower building appeared to be built from a single block of stone about four stories high. A broad stairway runs from street level up the base to join the tower and terminate in a set of enormous double doors. Other staircases reach from the base’s roof to the ziggurat’s higher levels, a dozen stories up. I could see trees and gardens far up there, greener than anything for miles around. The Monastery’s architecture was utterly like the buildings I’d seen in the Kane islands or indeed anywhere in the Pacific—South America came most immediately to mind. It was as though a highly creative people had arrived from elsewhere, plopped down one humongous tribute to their own genius and quit the world altogether.

“Tall chimneys rose like coral fingers from the base’s corners, belching steady streams of grey smoke into the air. From a distance their output had blended into the clouds behind. A rookery stood outside the ziggurat, clear from the soot and smoke oozing from inside. Tawny-feathered Kane eagles stood clawing their roosts—smaller than most varieties and dubbed ‘Io in the native tongue. The richest men in Noio Koha kept them as pets and sent them to hunt mongoose. Small birds were caught as well, returned whole and uneaten to their masters but gifted back to the raptor as morsels of favor once the finest red and yellow plumages were plucked. The Speakerage, our guide explained, maintained these birds as messengers and lookouts. As the most prized sons of Kamanuwai (the peculiar manifestation of the god Ku as a guardian bird), they are held in thrall to his word.

“Robed Speakers and rough-clothed workers bustled around the base, carrying out pedestrian business like any city on Earth. The unmistakable sounds of hammers and furnaces came from inside, and the soot on workers sipping water in the courtyard outside confirmed my suspicions of a nearby metalworking facility. Metal tools and weapons are rare across the Kane islands, and are frequently hoarded even where they exist. I had traveled across To’mea noting the odd iron implement here and there, but had never until this moment seen a proper forge. It answered a very important question indeed: what precisely, symbolism aside, was Hoku’e’s value?

“It became clear the Speakers’ dark sorceries sustained fires hotter than any these people could build on their own. With that infernal power they melted, re-forged and traded the island’s limited metal supply. The Kane volcanoes, as I’ve noted, have left their islands improvidently devoid of minerals or mineable ore. Hoku’e had its own formidable resources: cowries pumping through a heart of iron.

“The guide explained the forges’ workings, testifying to the power of the Speakers’ fires in their operation. What little science his speech contained was surely lost on the pilgrims, who stood gaping in awe at the Monastery’s sheer mammoth size. I tried to imagine what a true believer of Ku might feel in that moment—perhaps like a Christian pilgrim sliding at journey’s end into the River Jordan. We were permitted to ascend the steps, but only a little way before the conventional foot traffic ended and a pair of spear-bearing guards blocked the way.

“Our tour entered the ziggurat’s base, led into a large room walled off from the forges where stalls had been set up to sell cheap trinkets at exorbitant prices. Pilgrims eagerly exchanged long strings of cowries for tiny iron figures of octopi. One man was wealthy enough to buy a sharp iron knife, polished and gleaming in the firelight. Others settled for fist-sized stone facsimiles of the Grand Monastery’s superstructure. No Speakers inhabited this level, just artisans in their service, men and women obviously skilled in their crafts. I carried only a few cowry strings with some silver (for emergencies—a traveling man can ill afford absolute poverty) and wasn’t about to part with them here, so I lingered with Kai by the doorway. It was there, with my brain occupied fascinated by the frenzy of transactions, that a dark hood was abruptly pulled over my head. A mighty blow hit me in the gut just as I cried out through the musty-smelling cloth, knocking out the wind from my lungs. Another crashed into the back of my skull as I doubled over from the first. Heavy hands gripped me about the shoulders as I was dragged half-insensate from the room.

“I do not mean to alarm, or to dramatize excessively. It is clear as I write these words that I still live. My aim is to inform and illuminate, not titillate or hold the reader in suspense though the timid should be warned that terrible events do indeed follow. Through a door and up some stairs we moved, then down a long hall ringing with my captors’ footsteps. Heavy wood swung on rusted iron hinges, and I was rudely cast to a rough stone floor. The same door closed behind, and clearly I was imprisoned. I removed the hood, as my hands were left unbound, and beheld before me a tall wooden door displaying a small viewport above a mess of splinters, crude carvings, and dried blood. A chunk of human fingernail, I vividly recall, protruded from a deep divot.

“My cell was small but with a high ceiling that stretched three feet above the door. Amber light from a corridor outside shone in the crack beneath it. I could neither see nor hear my jailors; they’d neither said a word nor harmed me after from those first blows intended for stunning. Imprisonment is occasionally the curse of the holy man in heathen lands, and the Lord teaches us simply to endure the slings and arrows. The Kane were such generous hosts, I reasoned, they would inevitably come to check on me. “Haoles” being such curiosities on To’mea, the Speakerage was unlikely to simply let me rot. I worried only for Kai, whose trickery had gotten me so far at such terribly selfless risk. Praying for his safety, spasms of awful guilt wracked through my body for the danger I’d brought to such fine and generous people. Ephrem the Deacon, his wife, the children under their care—might all of them come to ruin for my dogged cursed curiosity? I fell to my knees and begged the Father to spare them, offering my only possessions: my life and mortal flesh. Yet as I did, the Abbot’s old admonition rang through me: ‘For his Brothers’ bodies, the Lord has little concern; they have in their Vows promised life and limb to His service. He hesitates not to cast them aside, for how did the Son meet His end? In agony and despair.’”