The Woman Who Buried Nations Read online

  THE WOMAN WHO BURIED NATIONS

  CT MACNAMARA

  Contents

  1. The Man Who Would Tame Monsters

  2. The Fragile Ones

  3. Lord Dober’s Return

  4. The Age of (Relative) Maturity

  5. Quills and Ink

  6. A Reunion

  7. The Queen’s Sister

  8. The Scriptorium Massacre

  9. The Future

  Also by CT MACNAMARA

  COPYRIGHT 2021, CT MACNAMARA

  ALL CHARACTERS AND PLACES IN THIS BOOK ARE FICTIONAL.

  To You, for Reading….

  The Man Who Would Tame Monsters

  My story begins, as so many others do, in the northern rim of the middle continent, planet Thanatos. Now, with your blessing, let’s visit this world eighty years past. It’s an ancient time, a nearly forgotten time, but I still remember.

  You might as well sit down and make yourself comfortable, dear, for it will take a while to tell. I know your interest lies in the Scriptorium Massacre, but please do me the honor of listening to my tale from beginning to end. I assume that your youthful mind lacks the patience of this craggy old mountain, but I think you’ll gain a much greater historical perspective if I may first provide the proper background. How else can you understand a story, after all, if you do not know its narrator? And how can you ever begin to understand Lord Dober, and the horrible things he did, without knowing his past?

  It begins with a moving river of men, stomping and slicing through thickets of overgrown bramble, on muddied footpaths, and over the twisting marionettes of their own ghastly shadows. The local wildlife then was greener than the goddess Thanatos herself, as the Kimall Clan ventured below the Myradian Mountains for the first time in our long yet primitive history.

  Dense footsteps marked our draw, bagpipes bellowing the path forward through the thick escarpments of glacier-forged rocks, bituminous and ancient as the world itself. Our women and children trailed behind, heads astern and bodies spread out like so many shattered bits of tesserae. And monsters too, for the Kimall Clan were the first to have aligned with the slippery beasts of the northern Chaledonian Forest. The ainbheithioch was the given name of such demons, although those putatively domesticated by the Kimall Clan were known as the bancheki.

  The bancheki crawled on all fours through the aromatic air, stomachs ever growling under the pearl-dropped leaves of the temperate forest. A fresh petrichor caught in their sensitive noses, memories of the prior night’s rainfall. With lacertine agility, their lithe bodies twisted ever onward, maintaining a steady pace despite the excess of their movements, their large jowly faces dripping green gelatinous sweat as they roamed forward in that sweltering second summer.

  Finally, in the rear of the endless menagerie gamboled Adair Kimall, our leader, tamer of both beasts and man. His hair appeared as thick and white as that of the horse he rode, his armor tight-fitting, and momentarily verdant as it cast a reflection of the forest, and the many bancheki, who blended and camouflaged into the seams of those very woods. Adair’s important to this story, but not terribly so, for he would soon be dead. He’s what you might call the catalyst, however. So often in life violence begets greater violence. I believe that generations have more cycles than the moon. Despite our many efforts, it appears we are always waxing and waning in the old familiar ways.

  But at that moment Adair was alive – and by that I mean breathing – as he nonchalantly patted his deputy, Boyd, on the right shoulder. That was how closely together those two rode their mares. They were half-brothers, each sharing the same father, although they did not look alike other than the uniquely contoured shape of their heads. Triangular, but thin at the base. Boyd wore his red beard long, even in the furnace of second summer. They didn’t think much alike either, but they thought they did, and sometimes that’s enough.

  “It’s an impressive sight, is it not?” said Adair Kimall, his right hand gesturing to the roving caravans before them. I recall this was a remark he often made. Adair thought that everything he tasted was flaked with gold. Not because it actually was, of course, but because it was on his tongue.

  “Aye,” said Boyd, swatting at encroaching flesh flies with his large, stuffed-pepper hands. “Only I see everyone is tense today. Tonight brings new moons...”

  “We all must make sacrifices,” Adair replied, his right hand tightening on his bridle. “That is sometimes the price of peace.”

  “But what good is peace without security?” Then Boyd quickly looked away, in the manner of a canine attempting to diffuse aggression from a larger dog. I heard this all quite clearly as I was stowed away on the back of a covered mule. The young have always been blessed with a keen sense of hearing, and adults never speak as softly as they intend.

  On our left the caravan passed a glacial river, moldering with a peculiar odor of brine and salt. A gentle breeze tiptoed past from the meadowed valley ahead.

  “I know I’ve had a tough go of it lately,” Boyd said. “It’s our month, and the children are afraid. As you can imagine, Hilda is beside herself—she is none too happy with us.”

  “Well, you certainly have my sympathies,” Adair said, the tone of his voice unchanging in its timbre.

  “And there’s more,” Boyd ventured to say.

  “Oh is there?” Adair said with a whipping tongue, speaking in the middle language, Kimbrick dialect as it was known. “Well, do go on…”

  “Our people fear the recent bloodshed,” Boyd whispered. “Last night was the second this month.”

  “And what can I do about that?” Adair asked.

  “The people are saying…” Boyd paused. (Here I strained my little ears.)

  “Well, go on…”

  “They’re saying that you need to speak with the bancheki…”

  Adair whistled, a round ringing note that pierced through the dense jungle of conifer, past the rearguard, past the bancheki, past me, then round and through the huddled crags of women and children, and finally to the caravans and soldiers at the apex of the horizontal descent. He whistled again until there was a general halt, and then he dismounted from his horse and gathered everyone and everything around him, so that our endless sea of eyes were fixated on him, on his goose-necked nose and his smokey mustache, and on his wide eyes of flaked metal. Behind him, in silhouette, were the chunky mountains of our ancestral land. I recall their beauty even to this day. They were receding. Even in my interminably long life, I would never set eyes on them again.

  “Everyone, listen up and listen good,” Adair said. “I’ve heard there are those among you who are concerned about the presence of our bancheki friends. If so, I would like to hear your specific critiques.” Nobody answered at first, so Adair shouted, “Now!”

  The bancheki’s many ears perked up when they heard their name mentioned, they reanimated and gathered closer to the center of the crowd, where they lay docile and obedient at the feet of their ‘master.’

  “Go on, you may all speak freely,” Adair cooed. “Isn’t that correct my bancheki friends?” The monsters did not answer, but slurped, and licked their own high-wedged nostrils, and snorted ember-colored clouds of dust particles and liquid slime into the mossy foliage. Then, rising they encircled the clan as though the guild were but one beating heart, and they the stenosis of once lively veins.

  “You asked the question, and so I’ll do my best to answer honestly,” said Dramadi Moore, the old herb witch. Adair’s head turned to meet the claudicate woman – his great aunt – and the eyes of his people followed.

  “Yes, Dramadi,” said Adair with evident impatience. “We wouldn’t expect you of all people to hold your tongue. Do speak.”

  D
ramadi smiled and balanced her spidery frame on a chiseled cane of native wood. She had the most beautiful gray hair, long and tight as a rope. “With all due respect to your skill as a tamer of monsters,” she said, “and in full acknowledgment of the awful agreement we each swore in blood to uphold, it must be said that agreements must be honored by both sides. And I for one—”

  Adair cut her off with a swift wave of his right hand. “Do not the bancheki protect us in battle? Do not the other clans now cower in fear as we pass? Do they not call me ‘Adair the Wise?’ And am I not the tamer of monsters and the protector of men? With shame do I now bear your cutting tongue, Dramadi, the same weapon that once bestowed praise now rots and curdles with each flick of its decaying flesh.”

  “But you see,” Dramadi growled. “You are but stealing from the future.”

  “The future?” Adair said. “What future did we have before? Miserable, cold, a bunch of empty-bodied turnips waiting around for anyone, just anyone to uproot us! Farming lousy soil, waiting for the sun to rise so we could toil again. For what? Not for any earthly gain.” He stomped on the ground defiantly. “Are we not a warring clan? Is metal not in our very blood? I ask any of you to offer me a better description of war than a theft from the future. And if we are indeed borrowing from days ahead, I say take all we can now, for I grow mighty weary of our collective past serving as mere mulch for future days to come.” He smiled gallantly. “Or not.”

  “Perhaps there’s some truth in your pride,” responded Dramadi, her gray silken hair suddenly blowing free in the late-afternoon wind. “But just remember, as with magic and as with life, there is always a cost. Do you remember when you asked me for a spell of everlasting youth? I believe it was on your fortieth birthday.”

  Adair grunted, not wishing to remember, but his great-aunt continued. “I told you then that one can never borrow from the future. Not for long anyway, or eventually you will lack so much as a present. It’s the same thing now, trading our very children to these…beasts.”

  Adair unsheathed his sword and plunged it into the knot of a shedding conifer. “Enough, old witch,” he cried. “Did not the banchecki take yours and ours before the accord? And what did we get in return? Nothing. Nothing but the loss of our children, endless pain and misery, and not so much as a single seed of grain in returoen for our collective sacrifices. But now…” he shook his head, in a solemn fashion that highlighted his receding hairline, the one he always took great pains to hide. “You all agreed to the one child a moon cycle sacrifice,” he roared to the group. “You called me ‘Adair the Great,’ and ‘Adair the Wise,’ and you made me your lord.” His neck bulged with an insolent throbbing. “If anyone was uncomfortable with the terms I then brokered, they were free to leave...” He spat on the ground and his eyes wearily took in the cadre of faces surrounding him. “I said that to you last spring, and I say it to you again now.” He smiled, but it was the twisted smile of pride. “There’s no need to draw a line in the soil. If you want to leave, simply do so. I assure each of you to a man, I will not raise a pinkie to stop your egress.” And I remember in that moment thinking him great, even though I was a child that may one day be sacrificed. I suppose children always acclimate to the reality of their situations, no matter how bleak.

  “But if you do leave,” Adair seethed. “There is no coming back.”

  Then his soot-black eyes narrowed and burned into the softer irises of Dramadi, she of the gray eyes, blighted by cataracts. “You speak of the future,” he mocked. “You, the oldest of us. You of all people shouldn’t concern yourself with the future. I’ve never before taken you for a fool, Dramadi.” But then his face softened and he walked over and placed his left hand gently on his great-aunt’s cheek. I remember I felt suspended in air at that moment. I suppose that’s how it always feels to be of two minds simultaneously. I both found malice and solace in his words, and I’m sure that was true even of the more experienced in our party.

  Nobody spoke as Adair swung around, nor as he retreated and remounted his stallion, his feet barely catching on the primitive stirrups, for he too was no longer young. Then his voice sounded like thunder, for he was above and us below. He spoke like a woodland canopy during a hail storm, shooting out solid rocks of disgust and pathos at our gathered nation. “In the times before,” he bellowed, “the lot of you were almost happy to be rid of your children, burden that they were and with no food to feed them. Now with your bellies’ fat and your toil reduced you forget; you forget and you no longer wish to sacrifice. I’d be disappointed in the lot of you, if I were at all surprised…”

  “It’s not just that,” said Boyd, perhaps surprising even himself with his voice. “With all my deference and respect, our good sir, we are concerned by the strays. Of late the banchecki have been taking two children each month, rather than one, and that’s not our bargain.”

  The bancheckis' ears all pricked up at this accusation, and the leader of their horde growled and hissed in Boyd’s direction before lying back on her hindquarters to further assess the situation. Body movement was everything with the banchecki’s, there were no words of recrimination, just constant action.

  “There’s no proof of that,” Adair shouted.

  “Jimmy Connors, missing,” Boyd said. “Lyrissa Maguire gone. Both taken from their tents during the night, both devoured.”

  “Perhaps by wild animals,” Adair rejoindered. “We are, after all, wandering through a forest.”

  “Or perhaps by your beloved banchecki,” Dramadi said with a bold sneer.

  That evening, as the lone sun dipped west into the basin of a drained, moonless sky, we found a suitable alcove to set up camp for the evening. A fine mist encircled us, landing on the elder’s beards and naked arms, appearing to fall from the floor of the forest up, like evaporating dew. So it was in the temperate rain forests of the northern rim. Everything felt upside down in that part of the Chaledonian forest, where the tricks of nature and plain old magic have always combined in their most powerful tranches.

  An effluvium of misery and fear gripped us; even our horses paced as though before a storm. The air hung thick and humid as Adair approached Dramadi and demanded that she alight her magic rings, the ones that sparkled and danced and chose…

  “Not tonight,” the old woman plead. “I don’t think I can do it anymore…Oh please, please, Adair, don’t ask this of me.” She spoke in a hushed tone, her back against a weary pine and her voice echoing through the camp’s primary fire, her words rising and passing through the furnace and to the others in billows of mottled-gray smoke. The taste of smoke teased our throats and burned our eyes. Behind us, forming miniaturized shadows under the star-reaching trees did the banchecki huddle together, their eyes inflamed and red, reflecting the jumping flames of their master’s fire, and their scaly backs splayed out like the feathers of a peacock. I tell you; they knew it was almost supper time, and clearly they were famished. Their very skin dripped thick acrid secretions upon the forest floor. Why, the horde of imps were so eager-lipped, they were masticating on the air itself in preparation of their feast. In the weeks between feedings they often made due with small forest rodents such as lycens. In the leanest of times, they consumed woodland berries and roots, which were not endemic to the natural state of their digestion, for in truth they dine most of all on emotion. That is why they are most satisfied in times of war, or when feasting upon small children, whose fear is the purest.

  “You shall use your charmed rings and you will choose,” Adair commanded. I sat on my mother’s lap, watching my father and the others perform their horrible dance. I remember mother smelled of pine cones and nervous sweat. I did not know then that I would never see her again. It wasn’t our month, but everyone knew there was something wrong and unnatural about our bargain. Were we taming the banchecki, or were they taming us? Yes, everyone felt it was wrong in the pits of their stomach, and yet so few said anything against the practice. And none spoke who had no children of their own, save Dram
adi, who in a way was the grandmother of the entire nation. I often wonder if maybe the best nations are not nations of one. All or none, I suppose. Anything in between can only lead to conflict.

  “Remember when you were just a child,” Dramadi said, her expression both solemn and mawkish with each stray cat flicker of light that passed her by. “I’ll never forget—”

  “The only child I care about right now,” said Adair. “Is which one will be chosen to satisfy our guardians.”

  And then our people moaned or gasped, to show our displeasure in the relative anonymity of the moonless evening, and Dramadi clucked her tongue, and Adair sighed wearily into the virginal twilight.

  “What I meant to say,” said Adair, “Is that it’s no good for any of us to put this off. It’s a difficult enough situation as it stands. We simply must move forward with the ritual.”

  Boyd walked over and clasped Adair’s sagging shoulder.

  “As always, our leader proves himself wise,” Boyd said. “No reason to delay this moment, unfortunate though it may be. It is the price we must each freely pay for our newfound freedoms.”

  “But it’s not fair,” said someone from the tumult of the thrumming mass of people. “Old Adair has no children…”

  “That’s true,” Adair quickly answered, “but I too know the bitter ale of loss.” He looked out through the dancing flames at his army, for what is an army if not a collection of like-minded people? “My first wife Niamh died during child birth, and my second wife Ciara of a wasting disease just six months after we wed. My own sister was taken by a banchecki when she was three and I all of five. I could not stop them from their thirst for young flesh. I’ve buried my father after battle and my mother after prayer. At my age I am well acquainted with death, and more so with each passing day. Who has breathed that knows not loss?” I knew it then and I know it now. That is the curse of all flesh.” These were powerful words, and well-received by the crowd. There is often wisdom in the maddest of minds. Why should it be so? only the gods know for certain.