Another year, another battle awaited.
Chanai stared into the vast, desolate field. The sun had yet to awaken the earth, and a heavy grey fog still roamed the plains. It was the quiet before the storm, before the Kharlu and the Jhungid would meet upon the steppe with clashing swords and lances upon the arrival of morning. Battle cries would echo into the sky and the soil would be soaked with the blood of the fearless and the desperate.
Some fought for the honor of the tribe. Others for the glory. And some, like her brother, for the thrill of battle. Bloodlust burned in his veins.
Slow footsteps, accentuated by the sound of the wooden staff prodding upon the land, drew Chanai’s attention behind her. The quiet clatter of bones and beads announced the arrival of the elder seer, although Chanai did not turn as custom demanded. She stood still, facing forward, her frame draped in a heavy cloak. As the older Xaela approached, adorned in layers of leather with carved ornaments wrapped around her neck and wrists, there were no exchange of formality, only silent acknowledgement for each other’s presence. Alone with the Elder, Chanai knew she could speak freely with the woman that raised her.
“Are you certain of the prophecy, Siban?” Her voice trembled as her gaze remained fixed on the prairie.
“The blood and the bones have never lied to me.” The older Xaela’s voice was cracked and brittle with age, and yet her certainty still cut through her words like a sharpened knife. “You took part in the ritual. You know the sacrifices that were made to even attempt that divination.” The woman ambled up to stand next to Chanai. With her back hunched, she planted her gnarled staff firmly into the ground and leaned heavily against it. The bones and the stones that hung from the metal rings on the head of the staff rattled.
Chanai clenched her fists by her side, turning her golden eyes upon the older woman. “Why would the gods be appeased by such a thing? Do we not shed enough blood already?” She felt the heat rising to her face, her heart starting to pound with indignation. Even a hint of such impiety would never be allowed in the presence of others, and yet Siban was the only one that she trusted with all her questions and doubts. And she was the only one that would have even considered performing the augury.
“It is because of our ways, that it has to be blood that is given.” Siban turned, her white milky eyes rising to meet Chanai’s ire. “This yearly strife, it is in hope of gaining the god’s favor. It is fleeting. We must fight for it yet again with the next turn of the year. You wish to forever end it? To end the cycle of carnage? The sacrifice must be made through suffering.”
A long pause of silence fell between them, before Chanai eventually turned her head, fleeing from the older woman’s unrelenting conviction. “Perhaps you still cling to the old ways, Siban. Perhaps it is you who desire such misery. It is all you believed in.”
Chanai regretted her words as soon as it left her mouth. They were said in anger, and she knew better. Siban’s Dalamiq origins always let other shamen see her as somewhat inferior and eccentric, in worship of a red moon rather than the Dusk Mother. But none would never say it to her face, for they feared her magic. Gifted unlike most with the ability to see into the mysterious patterns of aether through use of blood as her medium, many came to her for portents and healing. And it was under her tutelage that Chanai grew into her own talent in drawing upon the aether and the elements.
When she was met only with silence from the Elder, Chanai bowed her head. “I did not mean…”
“You asked the question,” Siban interrupted her, although her voice remained neutral. “I gave you the answer. Only you can decide what you will do with it.” She slowly turned away from the view of the plain, making her way back to the yurts.
“The fog is lifting,” the old woman said as she clacked away.
Stuttered breaths left Chanai’s lips as she turned back to the plains, and indeed, the heavy mist was burning away under the rising sun, the distant peaks of mountains becoming visible. She squinted her eyes and she could see the silhouettes of banners and yurts that were also starting to emerge across the field.
She turned, her cloak and hood wafting with the wind that suddenly swept into the valley, chilling her to the bone. It cleared away the last remnant of fog, as if to draw the curtains back from the empty stage.
A distant horn rang through the air.
