Kyroun’s hand also featured a number of tiny brown flecks, like spatters from an artist’s paintbrush. Perhaps they are his legacy from Yekunu, Tiyana thought.
Then she took his hand. And the In-Seeing began.
CHAPTER SEVEN
What Kyroun Saw
Behind his closed eyes, Kyroun beheld the past in which Jass Gebrem, Tiyana and most other Matile believed, and the present they now endured. It was a weave of images gleaned from dusty tomes and ancient legends; stories carved in sculptures, woven in tapestries, sung in songs – all of it filtered through a mental prism that rendered the Matiles’ history as half-truth, half-dream, beginning with the legend of Etiya ...
Long ago, in the Beforetime, the land called Abengoni was encircled by the coils of an enormous serpent called Adwe. The people of Abengoni could not live on the land; Adwe enveloped all, and even the sun could not penetrate the darkness cast by the serpent’s vast bulk. Not only did Adwe refuse to allow people to dwell on the surface of Abengoni; the serpent demanded tribute from them as well. So impoverished were the people of Abengoni that all they could offer Adwe in return for their miserable existence was the lives of their first-born children when they reached adult age.
The people lived in darkness and despair, even as they longed for the time before Adwe had tightened his coils around their world. They remembered the sky and the sun, the grass and the trees, the sea and the rivers, the abundance of animals. Yet even as Adwe blotted out those memories, the yearning for what they once had did not die among the people; and as time passed, they planned ways to get it back.
Singly, or in small, determined groups, the people sought ways to slay Adwe, or, at least, to escape the oppressive presence of the serpent’s bulk. All their schemes ended in their deaths. They would not be the only ones who died. When Adwe became angry, he would twist his coils, and that twisting would mercilessly shake Abengoni, and the guilty and innocent alike would die.
Whether he twisted or remained quiescent, Adwe continued to demand sacrifices, and the people descended further into hopelessness.
One day, a young woman named Etiya was chosen to be the sacrifice. And this time, the sorrow was even deeper than usual when the sacrifices were made, for Etiya was a singer, and the strains of her sweet voice provided the only hint of brightness in the gloomy netherworld to which Adwe had relegated them.
When the time came for her to be sacrificed, Etiya went willingly to the place from which Adwe would claim her, as he had countless of others before her. Resistance had by then become unthinkable. Yet Etiya was determined not to die meekly and quietly. She would sing one last song before the serpent took her.
And when Adwe came, his unimaginable bulk filling the horizon, Etiya sang. The words of her song bespoke hope and defiance, and the melody reached down to where her people huddled in their endless darkness and misery. If for only a moment, Etiya’s song lifted them from the bleak depths into which their spirits had fallen.
Adwe paid no attention to the song. The serpent cared nothing for either bravery or beauty, both of which were abundant in Etiya. But her song extended far beyond Adwe, and even beyond Abengoni itself. Etiya’s song travelled to the Realms of a pantheon of deities called the Jagasti. Although the Jagasti knew nothing of Abengoni, they hearkened well to the words of the song. And as the deities listened, they took pity on the singer of the song and her beleaguered people, and they decided to come to their aid.
The moment before Adwe was about to devour Etiya and silence her song, the Jagasti came down from their Realms and fell upon the gigantic serpent. Wielding weapons of sunfire and lightning, sky-iron and storm wind, they slew Adwe and cut his body into a myriad of pieces. Then they took those pieces and flung them high above Abengoni, where they became the Moon Stars, luminous clusters of light that would shine far brighter than any other star in the night sky.
When they were done with Adwe, the Jagasti released Etiya and her people from their imprisonment, and showed them how they could best reclaim the world the serpent had stolen from them. The Jagasti remained among the people for a time, until they longed for their own Realms and returned there.
Etiya continued to sing for the rest of her life. Her people took the name “Matile” – the “restored ones.” And the Matile made the Jagasti their gods and goddesses, and continued to sing to them long after Etiya’s life ended.
Kyroun then saw the time after the demise of Adwe, when the Matile were simple farmers and herders who had only recently ended ages of wandering, hunting teeming hordes of wildlife and gathering abundant fruits across the northern rim of Abengoni.
During that ancient time, the Matile’s claim to the land had been fiercely disputed by beings of human shape but inhuman nature – brutal, man-eating ogres called Zimwe and the enigmatic Tokoloshe, who were not then allied with humankind.
The fierce battles among the foes soaked the land with blood. No race could hold sway for long; their advantages – the size and ferocity of the Zimwe, the sorcerous talents of the Tokoloshe, the sheer numbers and dogged determination of the Matile – always offset each other and led to more conflict and bloodshed.
It was the discovery of a different kind of magic that eventually
