Alkawari

January 9, 2023January 9, 2023 by Babry Gernah

Chapter One

She tripped, lost her balance and stumbled. She stretched both hands out to the thickness of the dank, dimly lit forest, as she stumbled. Staggering from one unsteady leg to the other. Trying to find support for her blistered feet, among the twigs and bushy tree leaves but failing. Until she was crashing unto her hand and knees, on the thin layer of leaves on the ground.

For how long she had been running?

She truly did not know. She could only remember the running. The hard hours of it. The need of it.

She had been at it since dark. Running and constantly looking over her shoulders. Breathless. Her clothes muddy and shredded from the effort of pushing her way through the hardly lit thickness, created by intertwining tree branches and the vines in the wet forest.

Her hands, knees and feet, were all bruised. Blood seeping painfully through the broken skin. Sore from the many times she had lost footing and picked herself up.

She had lost her sandals too.

And as the undergrowth’s of the forest continued to tear painfully at her bare feet, the barely visible stains of blood she had started leaving on the forest bed, had become a steady trail of bloody footprints for those pursuing after her.

Now on her hand and knees, she tried to catch her breath. But Her heart felt as though it would explode any minute. And since all she could think of, was that ‘she needed to keep running,’ she could hardly relax.

Again, she tried to push herself up, but this time she couldn’t. The effort was just too much to bear. The strain of fatigue was finally overcoming her muscles. Tearing her from the inside out. Her mind screamed for her to move. But there was just so much a physical body can take. And she was so past the limit of her own.

‘If only she could cross the boundary into Dassa!’ she thought,

It was close. Painfully so. Dassa laid just beyond the shadow of great white Oak. There she would find sanctuary.

The Mirazhan, as soul-less as they might be, have a truce with the Phoenix King. And by the bindings of that truce, they were not allowed to hunt or spill blood on Dassa and any of its vassal kingdoms.’

She made one more fruitless attempt to push back to her feet but she could not. She tried to crawl forward, but the thin layer of leaves on the ground were wet and slippery. It had rained yester eve, but mostly, she was just spent.

She reached out for the white Oak.

As if stretching one hand furtively towards the old tree, that stood immovable yards away, would bring her closer to it, before the hand collapsed back to the ground.

She had known from the start it was pointless to run from the Mirazhan. And like most, she would have since surrendered her life. If her life was her primary concern. But her concern was for her extra weight. The three-year-old since strapped to her back.

She knew the stakes.

Protecting this child, was protecting everything. But now totally spent, she let lose the piece of wrapper firmly binding the child to her back. Waited for the child to climb down her back before collapsing flat on the ground.

The child stood over her spent guardian, fawning at her spent body, but there was nothing she could do. More than 10 minutes later, she pushed to her knees on shaky hands, propped herself up against the trunk of a nearby tree. The child’s tiny and unsteady hands offering what little help it could.

She reached out to the child and gently cupped her tiny face. She pathed the child’s dark skin affectionately. And as the child’s eyes turned wet, she fought to keep back the tears welling up in her own eyes.

“You will have to go it alone now!” she said laboriously, the words rolling of her tongue as she pushed them out between painful grasps of breaths. Confused, the child raised two tiny hands and held onto hers by the thumb, as she pathed her face.

“Sorry I failed you… but look we are almost there. Just beyond that tree,” she pointed towards the white Oak wearily. A large leafy tree standing alone in the space of the forest as though the other trees were afraid to come close, “…is Dassa. You have only to run past it, go now! The Mirazhan won’t follow you into Gandoki’s territory. Go now child! May Rayuwa’s light guide you! Go! Ple.e.aase”

And so, the child did as she was bid, while the woman laid there, propped up against the old tree, watching through weary eyes threatening to close one the last time.

She watched as the child rose to her small unsteady feet and started for the leafy fortress ahead, dawdling with intense urgency. The child pushed for safety, as fast as her little unsteady legs could carry her. The abruptly the child stopped halfway and looked back at the woman, small streaks of tears hot on her cheeks.

“Keep going! Please!!!” the woman called.

She had meant to yell at the child, but all she could manage was croak. She watched with a fear that intensified with every passing moment as the child made progress. But with the aid of only her tiny feet, and considering what was after them, her progress was painfully slow.

One small step after another, the distance between the woman and the child grew and the distance between the child and the Oak tree shrank.

Yes, the child was very close now. She was almost there. ‘Almost to safety,’ the woman thought.

She looked furtively around the tree she had been propped herself up against. There was no sign of the Mirazhan.

Yet.

She reminded herself, as her eyes searched the forest. Scanning the thick spread of trees, This way and that. To the child and back. hopeful.

‘But was there ever any sign of them?’ she thought.

The bow arms of Daxnome were called shadows for a reason. They said; if you heard a Mirazhan approach, you needn’t have fear, you were not its target.

The woman turned back to the child, willing her to move faster, even though she was almost there. Just a touching distance to the tree. If the child had been a woman grown. But by her size, she still had a few more steps to go, and the ground packed with undergrowth was hampering her progress to a crawl.

The woman watched, her heart beating wildly, as the girl’s right-hand made first contact with the giant tree.

Good!

Now if only she would just cross over the tree’s giant roots. The one traveling due west from her position.

The girl put one small unsteady leg on a root that was comparably bigger to her feet, trying to gain purchase. From there, the girl would pull herself unto the big tree root and cross over into Dassa and freedom.

Or not.

Just then the woman heard, no, felt a sharp wheezing sound fly past her ears, the sting of it, like an insect bite. She snapped in the direction of the sound. Almost in the same heartbeat. Nothing! Then dreading what had just happened, and yet compelled to look, she slowly turned back to the girl. To where she had last seen the girl, struggling to cross over into Dassa!

There was a quiet stillness and then the little girl who had tensed up from the sharp pain in her back, shock maybe, lost all feeling and embraced the gaping blackness that had come to swallow her whole.

The woman watched dreadfully.

Staring in horror as the little girl lifeless body slumped off the giant root and fell on the other side of the white Oak in a small heap. An arrow with fletching’s bleached yellow, protruding from her back.

Blood gushing out from the wound, through her garbs to the ground. To the wrong side of the country, in Gandoki’s territory.

Chapter Two

In the dazed silence of her thoughts, or the stunned lack of it thereof, the woman did not see the Mirazhan drop like an over ripe fruit from a tree, many distant trees behind her.

The shadow landed on her toes and bent in half, one arm, the hand grasping a powerfully built bull horn shaped re-curve bow, stretched fully to the left. While three fingers from her right hand, pressed to the leafy forest floor, to give her that extra bit of purchase on balance.

The Mirazhan stood gradually and made her way towards the tree where the woman she was hunting was now lying, her upper body propped up against a very old cashew tree. Moving with a slow gait. A gait of the accomplished. The kind, a wild cat moving in for the final kill would adopt, she turned around the tree and came face to face with her quarry.

The woman coughed.

The Mirazhan was young. Sixteen, maybe seventeen, but she looked hardly a day older. Even garbed in her night black light weight Mirazhan armor. Her hair was packed behind her in a strong pony tail. The pony tail woven on one side gave her small face a strong vicious look that far out aged her.

Her small eyes were luminous and alight with a fiery focus. The bow she carried was nearly as wide as she was tall. One side of her face, down to her neck, and the naked skin above her breasts and showing on her stomach was covered in tattoos.

Ancient writings.

“You must be 33!” the woman started. And coughed between hard breaths. “You are the spitting image of the Mahoria!” the woman added weakly.

33, tall and gracefully built, with strong arms and compact shoulders bowed an acknowledging bow.

The woman scoffed, a weak croak. “What have you done?” she asked 33,

“Hand over the cursed object, witch!” the shadow responded, almost respectfully

“You should have spared her life for that!” the woman said, making a gesture to where the child’s lifeless body was sprawled on one side of the oak tree.

“I am a shadow of the Mirazhan. I do not bargain!”

“Neither does what is coming for you now, for all of you!”

“Let Gandoki’s Legions ride. We will kill them all!” the shadow barked in a low growl, blood and venom on every word,

“Gandoki?” The woman asked, her words thick with vengeful amusement as she coughed painfully, “You really believe Gandoki is what has kept the Mirazhan away from setting foot in Dassa for 8 decades?”

“Enlighten me!” the shadow said in a low voice, crouching to her haunches with regal. Eyes fixed on the woman with a deathly focus.

“The treaty of Dassa was written in Ram’s blood and agreed upon in a ritual of Unai. It’s was an unbreakable oath, you oaf. A Shadow should know that!”

Thick creases formed on the shadows fore head. She searched the woman’s now pale face for any signs of deception, but there was only the lingering promise of death, eagerly waiting to embrace her.

“Yes, I can see that you are not totally stupid!” the woman said, spiting the words out with effort, “One way or another I have come to the end of the road” the woman said, indicating the bow in 33’s iron grasp. “So why should I lie? You have broken an unbreakable oath, child!”

“Save your threats witch. The spirit of unfulfilled promises was banished from our world by the Mehu Asenath thirteen years ago, locked away in Jangare in perpetuity”,

“Yes! Asenath locked Alkawari away, but not to Jangare you idiot…” The woman coughed, “Then the spirit would just possess something else and…” she coughed again, “… and return. She locked her within the only vessel that could contain such power. A cursed object. One of the four seals, and then entrusted the child to our order. This cursed object was our sacred charge!”

The shadow raised an eyebrow,

“Oh, did I forget to mention?” the woman grinned weakly, “That girl you just shot down, was, was the cursed object!” she coughed “You have been chasing after a three-year-old child that never grew, and you never thought to ask why?”

The Shadow frowned,

“Of course, you did not! The shadows of the Mirazhan do not asks questions…” The woman said and laughed between coughs. Then she added; “You my dear, have… have, just broken the first seal to the Dead Man’s Trap!”

Alkawari is coming for you! For all of you! And believe me when I say, you, my dear tree hoping oaf, are going to need a much bigger bow!”

Chapter Three

When she stepped in the doorway of the inner sanctum, a shrine in the sixth circle of the temple of Daxnome, her eyes inspected the room curiously.

She had expected more.

In her thirty-eight years on the island of Daxnome, this was the first time she had been invited to the inner sanctum, where the walls of prophecy themselves lived, and somehow it fell beyond her expectation.

She had not expected the shrine to be grand, but with the kind of power this room commanded on the island, she had just expected more.

The shrine had walls that were yellowed sick from centuries of lack of sunlight. There was moss and a few creepers climbing atop one another in a race to exit the dense darkness of the room, through the only two windows high up in the walls flanking the walls of prophecy itself.

As if to add to the creepy agelessness of the chamber, there was a small fountain of fresh water with no apparent source, right there in the middle of the room.

Just the fountain of water gushing out from the ground with fervor. The water running into a small stone well built around it. From the well the water followed into two small gutters that led out of the room, running on the ground perpendicular to the walls, out of the room and throughout the whole temple.

Legend even had it that, the temple had been around the fountain of knowledge hundreds of years ago by the oracles, to secure it sacredness.

The waters of the fountain only ran within the first three days of a new prophecy. And any time the water gushed out of the ground, an ancient ceremony followed, during which the Mehu, the Mother-Oracle, will drink from the waters of the fountain and speak its prophesies.

The other oracles would then inscribe the spoken prophesy on the wall, literally writing it in stone.

She counted six oracles in the room, each of the old mystics holding a torch. They seemed to have been arguing fiercely, even if, in hushed whispers. And they had only stopped, when they finally noticed her presence at the open doorway.

That gave her concern.

Oracles should not be arguing. The old mystics were supposed to be wise and all-knowing. A combination that should by its nature, eliminate difference of opinion.

Three of the oracles were standing facing each other, near the window to the left. The other two were standing closer to the fountain, garbed in gray over flowing dress that swept the ground when they moved.

They all stopped and turned to the doorway of the shrine, when they had finally noticed her presence.

She had appeared at the doorway of the inner sanctum noiselessly, growing out of the wall opposite it. Such was the nature of shadows, they could walk through walls, and with that ability in their arsenal, none ever saw them coming or going.

The oracles stared at her, all of them, except one, the Mehu, the oldest of them all.

The Mehu was holding a torch out to the newly inscribed writing, at the bottom of the wall, quietly studying the most recent of the ancient markings, her back turned to the shadow in the doorway.

“Mehu!” the shadow said bowing deeply to the Mother of the Oracles,

The mother Oracle turned to her. She stretched her torch sideways, out of the line of her aging sight and one of the other Oracles in the shrine quickly came up to her and exchanged the torch for her walking staff.

“I saw you coming Mahoria!” the Mehu said and started towards the door way with a slow gait, her back bent over like she was been crushed beneath the weight of all the knowledge an oracle of her standing should possess.

“I lost sight of you when you walked through the wall in the west wing of the temple, for within these walls, my hundred eyes are reduced to but two” As the mother Oracle talked, she walked past the other oracles and they all bowed solemnly.

“Walk with me, Yarr. Azumi, Azumi, the Second!” the oracle said and stretched her wrinkled hand to Azumi.