Kitabı oku: «Elinor. The Deserted Valley. Book 1», sayfa 9

9

Born on the border with Nanol-Mo, Wey-Leya came from an ancient family of Reed Foxes and had communicated with the Taurs since childhood. Surprisingly, being a very small girl, Wey-Leya received parental permission to visit the forest of a neighboring people.

And how on Elinor did the elders of her village react to this?

Perhaps that is why Wey-Leya now moved to Swa-Ioledea. Who knows, maybe she did not want to be forcibly returned to her native village. A few years of life among the Taurs will seem to any Vedich a rather strange circumstance.

In town, it was persistently rumored that Wey-Leya knew the Common Language, was strong in the trade craft, and whilst living with the Taurs she communicated with strange people driving caravans from the deserts. What the was desert, Fao still could not understand. Judging by the descriptions, a huge meadow without trees and grass, where it was very, very hot.

And how to live on such glades then? They say that in the deserts, there are people with the skin color of old oak bark, and they ride on fatty elk with huge humpbacks but no horns. Oh, whatever! You never know what kind of fables one could virtualize. Better let Wey-Leya herself describe everything! On the way to the Valley!

As the sunset disappeared into the forest, Fao arrived at the house of Wey-Leya, where Ina and Swaol-Ney were already waiting. While greeting them cordially, Wey-Leya did not hide her surprise from the unexpected guests as the girls crawled into a cozy house made of reeds and clay.

“Do you understand yourselves, what you want to do?” Wey-Leya asked very seriously as the girls settled in. Although not much older than girls, life had already taught her many sad lessons.

“Apparently not!” continued the Cane Fox. “You want to violate the prohibitions that have been honored for centuries! You are going to renounce your families. There will be no way back!”

The girls were silent. “But there will be no life here, either,” Fao timidly said.

Wey-Leya smiled sadly.

“I’ll lead you!” she said. “The elders of my tribe have already cursed me, and nothing will change from the curse of the elders of Swa-Ioledea. But beware, it will be hard! Unimaginably hard! And the punishment to all of us will be terrible if we fail!”

10

Arriving at the Forbidden Glade, Fao was taken aback. There she discovered Laol-Jamal, Molaynur, and Ainurmo, who at first refused to leave Swa-Ioledea. They explained to her that they weighed all their options and decided to trade the Vedich forest for something more. Fao was pleasantly surprised, but angry with Swaol-Ney. She called quite a few more children – Pariolwool, Muolwool, Mayamolive, Moulsabr, and even a very small Buka. Swaol-Ney only spread her hands:

“Well, they all wanted to come!”

“They still do not understand what they want!” Fao boiled with anger. But there was no turning back now. Either take a chance and go, or stay and wait for their conspiracy to come out sooner or later.

Ina brought Mo-Tenge-Lioywe, Muolkomes, Luoluy, Muoldock, and Rodolrod. The presence of the last one was not at all pleasing for Fao. He was always on his own wave, he frowned for no reason, then joked out of place. His humor was strange, sometimes too coarse and incomprehensible to the rest. Rodolrod was adult enough, but had not yet learned to turn into an animal, though he didn’t seem stupid and was skilled enough. He sometimes made Fao uneasy. But now she had to reconcile herself with his presence.

“I want to say goodbye to my mother!” Moulsabr declared suddenly.

“Me too!” Buka climbed up.

Fao immediately cursed the moment when she trusted Swaol-Ney. She was ready to pounce on a friend.

But then the matter came under the control of Wey-Leya.

“No goodbyes!” she said. “Whoever wants to leave leaves with us now! Who wants to stay, stays!”

“I stay!” Buka yelled.

“And I!” added Moulsabr.

“Good! Then we will tie you to the trees! And in the morning, they will find you!”

“Are you serious?” Fao grabbed Wey-Leya by the sleeve.

“I do not want to be in the court of the elders for the second time!” Wey-Leya confidently stated, and Fao even felt embarrassed at her own feebleness.

“But the six-fingered people will drag us away,” Buka lamented.

“If they yell like that, they’ll surely wake up some of the adults,” Ina whispered.

“Let’s go! We’re all going!” Nome fixed the situation, stepping forward. “Children too!”

They agreed, as the fear of being tied up in the clearing at night overpowered the fear of the unknown.

The detachment of the young Vedichs advanced into the dark thicket.

11

At first, they walked cautiously, but once away from the city, they broke into an easy run, led by Nome, who had excellent eyesight. Wey-Leya drove the little children from behind with her threats. Ina ran beside Nome, ensuring they followed the path Docko had described.

Fao and Swaol-Ney were in the middle. Rodolrod ran immediately behind Fao. This neighborhood was not very pleasant, and Fao could feel a heavy glare on her neck.

At dawn, they decided to stop because the younger ones were falling asleep. When they woke up, the sun was already high, and an excited Wey-Leya was ready to get moving. Fao, who usually woke up feeling cheerful and joyful, now felt worried and frustrated. She was ready to repent and go back. But having witnessed the zeal with which Wey-Leya was waking the detachment, she dismissed such thoughts.

After seeing no fallen fruit on the ground, Wey-Leya tore off the greenish fruit from the hazel bush. “Won’t doing that offend Mother Nature?” one of the young Vedichs asked cautiously.

“Mother Nature has already given us these nuts!” Wey-Leya insisted. “Sooner or later they will fall off anyway! So, what’s the difference?”

“But the elders say…” began Laol-Jamal.

“That you can’t leave the forest of Dockol-Mo,” Fao finished, amazed at how her idea of the world had changed in just a day. Just yesterday, she would have considered eating unripened nuts an outrage.

After eating a light breakfast, the detachment got back on the road to continue on their journey when suddenly, Nome abruptly stopped. He closed his eyes and gestured with his hand for everyone to stop. He stood for several moments in silence, and then opened his eyes wide.

“Sabers! They are running very fast! And a few other big animals with them!”

“A pursuit!” Fao guessed.

“We’ve got to hurry!” Wey-Leya ordered.

Soon, Fao heard the chase too. Suddenly, from the bushes ahead, the muzzle of a bear appeared, accompanied by a roar. The squad stopped. The first thought was that they were surrounded by the countrymen from Swa-Ioledea. However, very quickly Fao realized that it was not a Vedich, but a simple animal. The bear shook his head and disappeared into the bushes.

Can it be? Can it?

The heart of Fao began to beat faster.

“He’s calling us!” she announced and followed the bear.

“Impossible!” objected Nome, who rushed after his friend.

The thickets parted, and a forest river opened to Fao’s eyes. Just as she realized that it was too wide to cross, Fao saw four more bears rolling a huge dry tree trunk to the edge of the shore.

They are helping us! Yes! They are helping us!

“How can this be?” whispered Wey-Leya, apparently not believing her own eyes.

“That’s because they’re my friends!” said Fao proudly.

The bears rolled the trunk into the river, after which two of them dived into the water to push the dry tree to the other shore. The ferry was ready! The fugitives climbed aboard and quickly passed the newly emerged bridge. Once they completed the crossing, the powerful forest animals turned the trunk along the river where it was picked up by the current and disappeared, as though it were never there.

“Thank you! Thank you!” a joyful Fao shouted from the shore as Wey-Leya pulled her by the sleeve. “I’ll never forget you!”

From the thickets on the opposite bank, the predatory eyes of sabers began to show.

12

“What have we done?” Dockomol-Ildas began to lament first. “We have betrayed our own people! We will never be forgiven!”

“You should have thought about this before!” Wey-Leya reminded sternly.

“We did not betray our people!” Nome objected. “They were betrayed by our elders! If other people of Elinor have decided to go to the Valley, then why should we sit out in the woods? What did Docko say? That people from the Valley suddenly disappeared! Now the rulers of all nations send caravans to the Valley to find out what happened. And what if Dockol-Mo suddenly becomes empty? If suddenly we all disappear, who will remember us? Listen, we will all remain Vedich! Let’s swear on it to each other! To keep its life, we will use the culture and traditions of our people! But this doesn’t mean that we can’t communicate with other people! We communicated, after all, with the Taurs, didn’t we? So, it’s not the time to reproach ourselves! We must move forward!”

“I swear!” Fao jumped to her feet, proud of Nome and his inspirational speech.

“I swear!” repeated Ina.

“I swear!” recalled Wey-Leya.

“I swear!” said everyone in a chorus.

13

The forest was changing.

Somewhere in the eerie green, there was succulent grass that grew up to the waist and thickets of hawthorn and elderberry that clung to the branches and tore their embroidered clothes; where the flavors of flowers beat into the nostrils, making them sneeze.

Every day during the transition, it became easier to plunge into these fresh new colors. Or to more modest places, where blue forget-me-nots and yellow inflorescences of celandine shyly appeared along the beige cover of fallen leaves, where the oaks dropped on the heads of negligent travelers with heavy acorns, and from under the roots, the grunting of the wild boars could be heard.

There were quite gloomy ones also, where the dark green needles pricked in the face and the back, where the cones hurt painfully on the soles of the boots, then made them limp for a half-day, where the gray moss and cobwebs spread over the fragile branches, where the trunks were covered with sticky mold and raw bark, where huge mushrooms grow almost waist high; some could be eaten, and some with a single smell could conjure an image of the talking saber right before your eyes.

The transitions were very challenging, but traveling through the native forest was incredibly interesting. The Vedichs didn’t even know their Dockol-Mo could be so diverse. And it only took leaving one’s native city in the wilderness to experience a few transitions.

14

One night, as Fao, Ina, Nome, and Komos all suffered from insomnia, they decided to communicate quietly – almost in a whisper – so as not to wake the others. Only the solitary hoot of owls accompanied their conversation and gave it an ominous color.

“And remember,” said Fao, “how they frightened us with the six-fingered? Like, lock all the windows and doors for the night, otherwise the six-fingered will come and drag you away! And now? We already slept three times six nights on naked moss in the darkest thickets – and nothing! We were frightened by fairytales!”

“It’s strange,” Nome began to argue. “Tales or not, the images of these six-fingered came from somewhere, didn’t they! Why do they scare kids with them? My grandmother told me a fairytale about a swamp monster that could swallow a bear, and I was so scared! Just imagine what this monster is like, if it can swallow a bear!”

“They say the Goddess of Death, whom the Taurs worship, is also six-fingered!” Ina reminded the group.

“There is no Goddess of Death!” snapped Fao.

“Maybe not the Goddess of Death,” Nome suggested. “But Ayduen existed. Yes, even if she is a six-fingered, she just gathered the squad once and left Swa-Ioledea, as we did! Henceforth, the elders called her the Goddess of Death! To take revenge!”

“Aha, and now the Goddess of Death is called Faolabre!” giggled Ina.

Fao slapped her hand, “Why not Inaonomose?”

“Wait,” said Komos, who had been silent before. “Maybe there have been many six-fingered ones. Only they lived a long time ago and looked like people, but they had six fingers. They were very, very evil, and they killed everyone. People eventually defeated them, but the fear remained,” he said quietly. The Vedich girl shivered, as though she had become frightened by her own intonation. Fao and Ina stopped laughing at once.

And then the owls began to grow louder. Everyone became uncomfortable.

“You scare us,” Fao whispered.

“And I heard a story,” Nome continued in a serious tone, “that somewhere far away in the west of our forest, in one village, a baby with six fingers was born. His parents were so scared they immediately killed him.”

“Well, I won’t fall asleep now!” confessed Ina.

And then Fao felt something fall on her shoulder. She froze with fear.

Somebody’s hand!

Fao seemed to feel six fingers on her shoulder. She immediately screamed and jumped to her feet.

A huge bat flew from her shoulder and disappeared into the night mist.

Fao looked around, embarrassed. Now the entire camp was awake, as the younger comrades stared at her in bewilderment.

15

The next day, the forest began to thin out. With each step, the trees parted as more and more and openings began to appear all around, leading to a solar kingdom! Such a huge clearing in the world could not exist.

Fao guessed that they finally reached the great river Kawa.

First, they walked smoothly, holding their breath. They were whispering about what awaited them when the trees finally parted. They could distinguish a huge blue sky with white clouds, a powerful water barrier, and beyond it – an endless green glade.

“A field!” explained Wey-Leya. “Not a glade, but a field!”

Gradually, curiosity completely took over the most troublesome ones – Nome, Ina, Swaol-Ney, and, of course, Fao.

Laughing and shouting excitedly, they rushed forward. While on the move, they agreed to run a race. Whoever reached the river first wouldn’t need to do anything at the break. Nome broke forward, with Swaol-Ney not far behind. Fao rushed along with Ina, and then made a sharp jerk, leaving Nome behind.

She jumped out into the open space, and stopped dead.

In front of her stood a group of people lined up in black robes. They were dressed in absurd sleeveless jackets with an incomprehensible symbol at the center – a lizard with wings. Fao looked at the faces of the men, women, and even several children standing there.

In the middle stood a very lean man of short stature. Muscles showed through his clothes. The man’s hair was cut short in a strange ornament. Such patterns were also drawn with dark paint on his hands. He shifted his thick black eyebrows and looked threateningly at Fao. She tried to turn around and run back into the forest, but the terrible man extended his arm forward, and Fao stopped abruptly. She did not understand what kind of power was holding her, only that she could no longer move. She was frozen like a stone!

CHAPTER 4. THE DEPRIVED FROM THE SKIES

To know the teaching of Tau, one must know oneself.

Master Shan, School of Sunset Foothills

1

Ulari, throwing the sword from hand to hand, watched as Mou’Kaa, Khan, and Sa’Ea brought the rest from the forest.

Master Nao still held the four Vedichs in a daze. They were the first to jump out of the forest, however, the Ulutau were already prepared to meet them. They had felt the approach of the unknown people for a long time, and Ulari had no doubt their newly appeared captives were the Vedichs. Already in Tokana, Master Nao told his pupils how representatives of other nations can look.

“Is that all?” Ulari asked Mou’Kaa.

“It is,” she replied. “I’m sure.”

Ulari counted sixteen prisoners.

Four more are on the beach. The faces are very young, some are still just children.

“Who’s in charge here?” he asked calmly, but severely.

“I am!” the redheaded Vedich girl stepped forward. “My name is Wey-Leya and my people will serve as the Embassy to the Valley! By what right do you hold us and threaten us with weapons?”

Ulari looked intently at her face. Wey-Leya was also young, but still looked older than the others.

She is indeed in charge!

“Master Nao wants to talk to you!” Ulari preferred that his teacher himself answered the questions asked by Wey-Leya.

The leader of the forest-squad obeyed and followed him. The other Vedichs slowly followed. When they reached the shore of Kawa, Master Nao finally dropped his hand, and the four teenagers, who up until now were held frozen, collapsed to the ground. The master knew how to draw away enemies with a simple move of the hand – let it be six or six hundred.

“Her name is Wey-Leya,” Ulari introduced the red-haired Vedich girl to the master. “She’s the eldest!”

“I want to know why you stopped my squad!” Wey-Leya took a step towards the master, her voice angry.

Master Kuno and Master Ean took a step forward to help Nao, but he stopped them with a gesture of his hand.

“Are you Vedichs?” he asked Wey-Leya.

“Yes, we are the Vedichs,” she responded.

“Can you shape-shift into animals?” interrupted the master.

“I can, but…”

“Shape-shift, then!” he interrupted.

Now we will finally find out whether this is true or fiction! The wonderful gift of the Vedichs.

“Why are you ordering me?” Wey-Leya was furious.

“Shape-shift,” the master calmly repeated his demand.

For some time, Wey-Leya just stood still, until she lifted her head upwards and her face stretched forward, becoming a red, furry face. The Vedich girl’s reddish hair color was passed on to her body, which in a moment was covered with fur. From under the hem of a linen shirt, a fluffy red tail popped out. A few moments later, a large fox was standing on the clothes that had fallen on the ground. At that moment, representatives of all the three schools gasped at once.

“It’s true!”

“Incredible!”

“What an inexplicable power!”

Men, women, children – everyone whispered in surprise. Ulari, as though still not believing what had just happened, looked around at the faces of the Masters, who were also staring at the fox. And only one person seemed unperturbed – Master Nao, of course.

The fox looked into the master’s eyes, then sniffed loudly. She stood still for a while, and then rose to her hind legs. Then her features began to change again. The limbs became human hands and feet, and the muzzle became a face again. A girlish, attractive face.

Ulari regretted that the master treated Wey-Leya so severely. However, he understood the necessity.

A sage said that one should not yield to temptations of appearance. External beauty could be deceiving. Before you trusted a person, you need to know his inner world, look into his thoughts, look into his heart.

The Vedich girl was standing in the clearing, covering her nakedness with clothes picked up from the ground, and she was shaking, either from fear, or from anger.

“Shape-shift once more!” the master told Wey-Leya again.

“Enough!” she snapped.

“Shape-shift!”

“What for? I won’t!”

“Shape-shift…” The master continued to insist on this, slightly lifting his right palm up.

Wey-Leya clenched her teeth even harder, but still obeyed. She raised her head again. She strained all the muscles and her body continued to tremble. Finally, she collapsed on her knees.

“I can’t!” almost in tears, the Vedich girl cried out.

Master Nao calmly let his hand down.

“They are not dangerous!” he declared to his people. “You can lower your swords!”

Ulari drew attention to the gaze of his master. Though not a single muscle twitched on his face, that gaze expressed a bit of compassion. However, the teacher had made his discovery! Not all the Ulutau had realized this yet, but the master was able to understand that the unusual gift of the Vedichs was not magic, and that the strength of Tau was enough to stop the shape-shifting.

Master Nao did it! So, the Vedichian people are the same people who have flesh and blood, body and soul, and not at all beings of any other race unknown to people.

The Ulutau warriors lowered their weapons.

The two Vedich girls who first ran to the shore now rushed to Wey-Leya to help her stand up and cover her nakedness. The anger and pride that just overwhelmed the fox disappeared dramatically. Wey-Leya looked broken and depressed. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

“Who are you? And what will happen to us?” she asked the Master.

“If you have no bad intentions, nothing will happen to you,” the teacher replied. “My name is Master Nao. I am the new ruler of the Valley!”