The Legend of Broken

“imperfections”: weaknesses of body or mind, unusually small stature, the bearing of evil markings at birth, a tendency toward recurring illness — the list is almost endless, and is kept in the Sacristy of the High Temple in Broken. But there is a class of exiles that are viewed as lower even than the fated — the “accidental” Bane — and it was out of these dregs that Heldo-Bah arose.

The ranks of the accidental Bane are regularly replenished, not by the birth of new members, but by misfortune that befalls young children far from Davon Wood. Sold into slavery outside the frontiers of Broken (for the buying and selling of humans is unlawful, in the kingdom of the Tall), such children are brought into the wealthy kingdom by men who pass as “labor dealers,” and who offer their young commodities as indentured servants within the letter of Broken law. But the lives of these “servants” are as unrewarding and as devoid of choice as are those of the more honestly styled “slaves” in such great empires as Lumun-jan. And, as an uncertain Moon (or, perhaps, a capricious Kafra) would have it, certain of these unfortunate children, after being sold, are further revealed as marred by some one or several of the physical afflictions that are intolerable to the Kafran faith; and they thus go from the betrayal of being sold as slaves by their own families, to lies told about them by the labor dealers, and finally, to a culminating sentence of exile to Davon Wood.

Ordinarily, such exile is the limit of this fate, and the unfortunates, if they survive the Wood long enough to be located by the Bane, are welcomed into the tribe as fated members. But once in a great while, the most cursed of these children also demonstrate, while in Broken, flaws greater than those of the body or mind alone: flaws of character so flagrant that their punishments, the priests of Kafra say, cannot stop at mere exile.

In Heldo-Bah’s case, the physical indication of his unworthiness was stunted growth: a “fault” that he was able to hide for several years by telling simple lies about his age to the First District merchant who held his indentureship, and who enjoyed having the alert boy attend to the horses in his stable. But when Heldo-Bah also displayed, over time, a far greater talent for thievery than for grooming horses, even the merchant could not protect him. Heldo-Bah was doubly cursed by Kafra, pronounced the priests; and as such he was marked, not for exile, but for death. The Grand Layzin of the God-King Izairn — predecessor of the current Layzin, just as Izairn preceded Saylal on the Broken throne — elaborated on this judgment (while making sure that his opinion never reached the ears of Second Minister Caliphestros, who was known to oppose the banishments, especially of children), and declared that only the influence of the malevolent spirits that were still believed to inhabit the lower slopes of Broken’s mountain could so pervert a boy not yet thirteen years of age. The remedy? Death by drowning in the Cat’s Paw, which, if carefully carried out, would ensure (or so the priests said) that the demons would be trapped in the furious river, once their host was dead.

During the whole of this time, Keera and Veloc continued to enjoy a childhood that contrasted sharply with Heldo-Bah’s: passed in one of the small communities to the south of Okot, this childhood included hard work for the whole of the family, without question; but it also offered Keera and Veloc time for exploration and adventure. And it was only through the siblings’ curiosity and daring that Heldo-Bah was ultimately saved. For events so conspired as to find the two young Bane one day fishing along a relatively calm stretch of the Cat’s Paw, below the Ayerzess-werten. The priests and soldiers assigned to the ritual of drowning Heldo-Bah lost the nerve to face those dangerous cascades, and they agreed among themselves to obey the spirit rather than the letter of Bane law, by binding the boy’s hands and feet and placing him in a coarse sack, closed with a few winds of rope. They then threw him into the waters east of the Ayerzess-werten and departed — not knowing they were observed all the while by a pair of very curious Bane children.

Once certain that the party of Tall priests and soldiers were indeed gone, Veloc and Keera snatched the wriggling sack from the river; and when they cut Heldo-Bah out of his soft instrument of execution, they found that the boy was close to dead from breathing in the cold waters of the Cat’s Paw. They carried him home; and for as long as was needed for Heldo-Bah to recover from his near-execution, he lived in Keera and Veloc’s home, was fed by their parents, and behaved with gratitude commensurate to their kindness. Even so, after several years, the tug of a mischief-maker’s life proved too strong for the boy who was, in truth, neither Tall nor Bane (indeed, Heldo-Bah has never known precisely who his people are; nor has he ever voiced a grain of interest concerning the matter to Keera or Veloc). He accepted membership in the tribe readily enough, and he did not steal from Bane households; rather, his unshakable preoccupation became vexing the Tall in any way he could, and his activities more than once brought real trouble from the soldiers of Broken, not only for the Bane’s own soldiers (for the tribe did have an army, in those days, although it scarcely merited the name), but for foragers, traders, fishermen, and hunters, as well.

Asked by Keera and Veloc’s parents to leave their home when old enough to see to his own needs, Heldo- Bah took to passing his summers in the Wood and his winters in abandoned huts. And, while he remained fast friends with his childhood rescuers, he was all the while honing his talent for raids across the Cat’s Paw, in those smaller Broken villages that served as way stations between the city on the mountain and its principal trading center on the river Meloderna, the walled town of Daurawah. These villages usually consisted of a small collection of earthen houses, stone storage and trading stations, and a large tavern or inn: activity enough to attract Heldo- Bah’s taste for mayhem. As he reached manhood, he added gambling and brawling to his recreations, on those occasions when there was nothing present worth simple stealing, or when Broken soldiers presented themselves as victims. When Veloc became a man, he began accompanying Heldo-Bah on these adventures, which grew in scope to include nocturnal forays into Broken itself, raids during which the handsome Veloc seduced lonely Tall women (who had often been told mostly mythical tales of the remarkable physical appetites of the Bane — myths which happened, in Veloc’s case, to be true) while Heldo-Bah emptied the distracted mistresses’ houses of anything of value that would not slow a hasty escape.

Yet none of this explained the special anger that Heldo-Bah reserved for those “blessed” men back in Okot who were periodically chosen by the Priestess of the Moon for entry into the Outragers. Heldo-Bah would often speak of that hatred, first to Veloc and, later, to Keera, when she began to slip away from her tracking duties and join her brother and the friend they had known since childhood on their increasingly infamous forays across the Cat’s Paw. After Keera married Tayo (a young tanner and butcher who made good use of the game that Keera hunted) and gave birth, in rapid succession, to three children, her participation became more limited, as was natural; but on occasion, she would still find herself drawn into the many arguments with the Outragers that Heldo-Bah and Veloc indulged in wherever they went; and if apprehended, she shared their terms of foraging. Yet through all these years and the many adventures and punishments that the three experienced together, neither Keera nor Veloc ever learned the reason behind Heldo-Bah’s hatred for the knights, which rivaled even his loathing of the Tall.

A sharp scream suddenly interrupts the monotonous roar of the Ayerzess-werten, along with Keera’s remembrances, and causes the tracker to bolt upright from her seat on the rocky lip of the crag. Is it a cry of pain, Keera wonders, or merely of terror? Not that it is of consequence; she has no intention of returning to the spot until her companions call for her. Keera has seen enough of death and blood and strange events, this night, and she will be happy to get home to the good-hearted Tayo and their three playfully obstreperous children: two boys who have, thankfully, taken after their father, and a girl, the youngest, who, just as thankfully, is much like her mother. Keera sits again, listening to the pre-dawn chatter of birds that are nested close by the Ayerzess-werten and chiding herself for having once again gotten mixed up in trouble between Veloc and Heldo-Bah and a group of Outragers, and thus securing for herself a place on this term of foraging. She does not seriously believe that either she or Veloc will ever so associate themselves with Heldo- Bah’s troublesome ways as to earn lifetime terms of foraging, as he has already done; but such consolation does not free her of the shame and heartache of being absent from her children. How would she feel, she sometimes wonders, if the situation were reversed? If her children ran away, even for a short time, leaving her naught to do save await their return? Keera cannot imagine life without the little creatures of her flesh, who have already begun to learn to hunt, and hunt properly: with respect for the Wood, for the spirits of the game, and finally for those other, far less visible spirits that lurk in the forest. How could she ever exist without the companionship of those pieces of herself?

A bad churning in her stomach, a cold rattling up her spine: the mere notion has frightened Keera more seriously than any of the night’s other peculiar events. She remembers, too, that she has not yet reasoned out any adequate explanation for the many soundings of the Voice of the Moon, but has been left with the shapeless dread of some sort of attack on Okot. With these considerations in mind, she decides to brave the short screams that continue to emanate from the direction of the oak, and begins to gather up all her party’s goods, ready to tell her brother and Heldo-Bah that she will continue on her way home immediately, whether they accompany her or not.