The Legend of Broken

through those paragons of viciousness up there—”

“Enough!” The Groba Father stands, and walks around the council table to face the silenced foragers. “What are we to do with you, Heldo-Bah?” he demands. “Eh? You remain the first and the only Bane to be condemned to a full lifetime of foraging, yet you still risk bringing the wrath of Broken down on us with your unremitting offenses against the Tall. Do you think that you are the only Bane who wants to see the destruction of that city? We all pray for it. But can you not work for the good of the tribe, rather than constantly seeking to harass the people of Broken?” The Father steps to his left. “And you, Veloc — far from offending the Tall, you wish to make love to them!”

“Well …” Veloc mumbles cravenly. “Not to all of them, Father.”

The Father balls his hands, speaking with measured fury: “No. Not to all of them. But every woman of the Tall you’ve bedded has brought retribution from Broken’s merchants and soldiers! Can you not be satisfied with a female of your own kind?”

“Are not the Bane men, too, Father?” Veloc asks, his mouth moving with more speed than sense.

“Don’t be clever with me, boy,” the Father answers, putting one trembling fist in Veloc’s face. “You know what I mean.” The Groba Father wanders back around the table toward his seat. “And I understand Keera least of all. She is our finest tracker, and has no flaws of character, save an inexplicable willingness to defend you two! Why?”

Veloc kicks at the cave floor. “It’s difficult to explain, Father. You see, we all grew up together — Heldo-Bah and I, and Keera—”

“A poor excuse for ignoring her responsibilities as a vital member of this tribe, Veloc — to say nothing of her duties as a mother!” The Elder collapses into his seat with another sigh. “Why I should have expected useful information from you three, I don’t know …”

Silence reigns; and Heldo-Bah, who has been wrestling with the sickly thing he calls a conscience, coughs. “Father — if I may speak?”

The Groba Father looks as though someone has put his thumb in a screw. “Must you?”

“Well, Father, you did ask, and Veloc was trying to tell you — that is, you wished to know if we had seen any activity on the part of the soldiers of the Tall. And, while it’s true that we did not see such activity—”

“Then why waste the Groba’s precious time in this hour of sadness and crisis?” the Priestess demands harshly.

“Yes, Divine One,” Heldo-Bah says, bowing in her direction, “it’s probable that I do waste your time. That is, if you consider the presence of one of the Wives of Kafra in Davon Wood to be insignificant.”

The Father’s shock is mirrored in the faces of the other Elders. “A Wife of …” His voice soon recovers its strength. “When?”

“Last night, Father — just before the sounding of the Horn.”

“And where? To the north? Speak, man, for out of your liar’s mouth may yet come the true answer to this deadly riddle!”

Quickly, and with embellishment from Veloc, Heldo-Bah relates the tale of the Wife of Kafra and the panther, as well as of the dead and diseased member of Lord Baster-kin’s Guard, with its golden arrows. All of Veloc’s storytelling skills go into heightening the drama of his friend’s account, and, following the completion of their performance, the Groba Elders whisper among themselves, doing their best to limit the contribution of the Priestess and her Lunar Sisters. Finally, the Father speaks:

“And Keera knew of nothing that could induce such behavior in the panther? Nor of any other cause for the Guardsman’s death?”

“She swore that nothing in Nature could explain either event,” Veloc replies. “It was surely sorcery of some sort, Father, regarding the beast — and the arrows speak for themselves.”

“We need no forager to tell us as much,” the Priestess scoffs. “What we do need is to stop dawdling — the Tall have sent the plague through Broken sorcery, and we will only be able to respond in kind.”

The Groba Father looks at the other Elders’ faces; and, one by one, they all nod assent. “It is agreed,” he says. “Heldo-Bah, Veloc, you are—”

The Father cuts his statement short, fixing his eyes on the entrance to the chamber. A figure has appeared in the shadows at the mouth of the passageway; and as it moves toward the table slowly, the Groba, the Priestess’s retinue, and the foragers can all see that it is Keera:

She carries her daughter, four-year-old Effi,† whose arms hang around her mother’s neck. The child has been weeping, and she continues to sob in an exhausted manner. Keera’s own face is wet with tears, and she stops when she has covered half the distance to the Groba’s table, blankly searching the faces of those arrayed before her. As Veloc goes to her, Heldo-Bah looks quickly to the Father.

“You may approach her,” he says. “If the healers have released them, they are safe. Would that we knew why, when so many others die …”

With that assurance, Heldo-Bah and Veloc rush to either side of Keera; and both men are slowed and then stopped by what they see. Keera’s face, ordinarily the image of confident (if realistic) readiness, has been transformed into a portrait of devastation. Veloc takes Effi from her, at which Keera does not so much kneel as fall painfully, feeling nothing as her kneecaps land hard on the stone floor. But it is the expression on her face that remains the principal cause for concern: her eyes are drawn deep into her skull, her lower jaw hangs in seeming lifelessness, and her skin is so drawn that she appears near dead. Indeed, Heldo-Bah realizes that he has only ever seen such changes to human features on the faces of those who have been tortured unto death by human hands, or expired amid the terrible cold of the high mountains in deep winter.

“Tayo was already dead,” Keera says of her husband, the words scarcely enunciated. “Effi is unaffected, but Herwin and Baza — they will not allow them to leave the Lenthess-steyn. Herwin may survive, they say, but Baza will almost certainly …” She begins to fall forward: it is only Heldo-Bah’s attentive agility — an alertness born of his expectation that the worst in life not only can happen, but usually will — that allows him to snatch her up before her face hits the stone. He holds her back upright, and she stares into his eyes without seeing them. “I did not recognize him … Tayo. His face, as well as his body — there were so many sores, so much swelling, so much blood and pus …” Tears come when she speaks of her boys: Herwin, eight years old, and Baza, only six: “Baza is barely alive … He cried out, when he saw me, and said there was pain— everywhere … But I was not allowed to touch him. And Herwin looks as though — as though … Yet no one can predict—anything.”

She looks about frantically for a moment, murmuring “Effi,” and then sees the girl in Veloc’s arms. She snatches the child away, and together they begin weeping anew, Effi in the same weary manner — for she has been forcibly separated from her father and brothers in the Lenthess-steyn for over a day — and Keera with the rigidity of body that often is often present before the reality of death has become fully comprehensible: as if physical exertion can will it away. Heldo-Bah and Veloc each put a hand to her shoulders.

“So this is how the Tall kill, now,” Heldo-Bah says to Veloc, characteristically attempting to dissolve his own grief into bitterness. “Would that I had put my knife in that witch’s heart …”

A few silent moments pass, with only the sound of Keera and Effi’s sobbing playing off the walls of the Den, along with the occasional crackle from the fire. Whispers pass from Veloc to Keera, after he puts his mouth close to her ear; and the Groba Elders allow the little group of the foragers and Effi a few minutes before the Father gently calls out:

“Keera?” He stands again, and positions himself between Keera and the High Priestess. If more unfeeling remarks should escape the latter, the Father has decided that he will interrupt and then stifle them, lest they do yet more harm to Keera’s already brutalized soul; indeed, the Father determines that he will risk divine wrath by plainly telling the zealous young holy woman to hold her tongue, if he must. But his eyes stay on the foragers. “We grieve with you, Keera, believe that. There is not a member of the Groba who has not lost someone dear — children, grandchildren—”

“A wife of thirty years,” says the bald-headed Elder mournfully; and when Heldo-Bah looks at this man — who brought Veloc and himself into the Den without exhibiting the smallest sign that had suffered so devastating a blow — he feels not only remorse for the old man’s loss, but admiration for one who has, in so disciplined a manner, put the tribe ahead of his own suffering.

“Indeed,” the Groba Father says, looking back at his fellow councilor. “This pestilence has struck at every