Finally, the last third of the first chapter.
When we left off, Kutho awoke and had a confrontation with Ren, which ended with Ren performing some weird magic that made Kutho nauseous.
As always, follow Munera here: page.php?id=737
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“Oh—oh—oh—” the girl gasped, her voice high and wild from fear. Her brothers had descended to her side.
Kutho’s heart pounded in his ears, unnaturally loud. Everything he was hearing sounded different. Louder and sharper, as if a cloth had been pulled away from his head.
“Look—would you look at that!” cried the older boy, pointing at Kutho.
“Macor,” said the small boy.
Kutho stared at them, and then he stared at the girl, and then he stared at himself. No, at his wrists. They’d been smooth and unblemished before, but now black markings ran over the smooth golden skin. They looped and intersected in a complicated pattern that reminded Kutho of a flowing river, and they were as dark as if they’d been freshly burned.
“He’s a macor,” the older boy said.
“A—a contract?” The girl’s voice was a gasp.
Kutho realized that he could understand them now.
Horror surging inside him, he gazed at the markings again. He might have called them beautiful—they reminded him of the decorations on his mother’s blankets—but a human had left them on him. The girl called it a contract. Because of it, he could understand them. Because of it, his spirit lines coursed not with the magic of the earth and sky, but human magic. Was this how humans enslaved the Icim? Had the same thing happened to Sazuk?
Sour bile rose in his throat. He’d come into the human city in the hopes of saving Sazuk. Instead, he’d become a slave just as his friend had.
“That’s…definitely a contract,” the girl said, slowly standing up. “But I…did I make it…?”
“Damn right you did, human!” Kutho shouted. “Don’t play innocent! You did this on purpose!”
The girl blinked. “Y-you can talk?”
“’Course I can! Why wouldn’t I?”
“I—I didn’t know. You weren’t t-talking before, just grunting,” the girl stammered. She pressed herself into the dented wall as if trying to put as much distance between her and Kutho as possible. Kutho hated her more. What a coward, unwilling to take responsibility for her actions.
“I can’t believe this, Ren!” shouted the older boy, thudding the girl on the shoulder. “You actually made a contract with a macor! A high-level macor, too!”
“You’re lucky,” the little boy said.
“What? Lucky?” The girl looked like she might cry.
“This is so cool! Even Delk only has a low level macor!” the older boy said. “I bet if you fought with this macor, you’d kick his ass!”
“Rau, no, please.” The girl fell to her knees again. “I don’t want a macor. I don’t want anything to do with Munera. I—I can’t believe this. I can’t, this isn’t happening…”
“Why don’t you tell me what’s going on, damn girl?” Kutho growled. He was fed up with this. As soon as he got answers from these humans, he was going to leave. “What the hell’s a macor? You keep talking about it, and what do you mean, contract?”
The girl buried her face in her hands. Kutho stepped forward, disgusted by her weakness, but the boys closed in around her. The older boy glared Kutho in the eye and folded his arms.
“Ren, it’s okay,” the little boy said, patting the girl’s shoulder. “It’s okay. Be happy, okay?”
“I can’t,” the girl groaned. “I have a macor now. A macor! How’d this happen? I don’t even know how to make a contract…”
“When you say macor, do you mean makhorre?” Kutho said..
“Makhorre,” the girl said. “Yeah, if you mean macor when you say that.”
“Macor are umm…what you are,” the older boy said.
Kutho stared at him in confusion. “I’m an Icim.”
The three humans fixed him with blank expressions.
Kutho sighed. “I’m Icim. You’re humans. Do you understand that at least?” He’d been told that humans could be rather thick, but he’d never imagined this.
“I, I don’t know about ‘Icim’ or anything,” the girl said. “I just know macor and humans. Macor…macor make contracts with humans and fight for them, that’s all. If you’re one, how come you don’t even know what you’re called?”
“Because that’s not what we’re called,” Kutho said. “We’re the Icim, always have been. Makhorre are warriors, like me.”
“Wait…” The girl stood. Her skinny legs shook, but she clutched the wall for support and when she fixed her gaze on Kutho, her expression was intense. For a moment Kutho’s breath vanished—he could see her as a shaman. But only for an instant. When he blinked, she was once again an ordinary human girl.
“Wait,” she said again. “Do you know what Munera is?”
Kutho answered truthfully. “No.”
“What? No way! How couldn’t you?” the boys shouted at once. They looked as if Kutho had told them that he didn’t know what the sky was. Maybe ‘Munera’ was the human word for sky, though that didn’t make sense because he understood them now, and he didn’t know why the humans would be talking about the sky anyway.
“Then…” the girl said. “Then do you come from Arxia? This city?”
“No,” Kutho said. “Thank everything for that. I came here on a mission—”
Recognition dawned on the girl’s face. She held up her hand to silence Kutho. Despite himself, Kutho obeyed.
“You’re a wild macor, aren’t you?” the girl said. “From the tribelands, right?”
For the first time, Kutho recognized what she was talking about. He ground his teeth and suppressed a flash of rage. “No, I’m not from one of those ‘tribelands,’ and I’m lucky not to be. Tribelands. You should call them what they really are—prisons. Death camps.”
“I don’t understand…no…wait…are you a free macor? From the forests?”
The humans looked amazed—and a little afraid. The boys began to back off and the girl looked like she was exercising her entire will to keep herself still.
Kutho nodded. Finally she’d said something sensible. “Our tribe has remained free. Not for a lack of trying, though. Just a few weeks ago, the humans attacked us and kidnapped a bunch of my fellow warriors. Including my best friend Sazuk. That’s why I came to this city. I’m going to free them.”
“So you broke through the ward?”
Kutho shrugged. He supposed by “ward” the human meant the wall of magical fire surrounding the city. Only humans could invent such a sickening thing.
“I didn’t know they captured macor from the forests,” said the older boy. “I thought they just, umm, bought ‘em from the market.”
“Well, the ones on the market had to come from somewhere,” the little boy said.
The girl’s skin acquired a slight green tinge. She said quietly, “You came here to save them.”
“Right. And you’re not going to stop me, understand? All I want are answers,” Kutho snapped, pointing at her. To his satisfaction, she leaned back to avoid getting poked in the nose. “Once you tell me everything I need, I’m out of here.”
“You can’t just leave,” the older boy said. “Ren made a contract with you!”
The girl shot him a glare that silenced him. Kutho watched in interest, especially when he realized that the boy had obeyed. So was the girl a shaman after all, if she could order around males?
“What do you want to know?” the girl said.
Kutho said, “What’s Munera?”
“It’s, umm…a tournament,” the girl said. She looked uncomfortable, like she was trying to explain…well, the sky. “A tournament where humans and macor—Icim—makhorre—whatever. Humans and people like you participate in. I mean, the humans, we make contracts with people like you. Those marks on your wrists and neck, that’s the contract. And when there’s a contract between a human and macor, the macor has to fight for the human.”
“That’s right,” the older boy said. “And when the macor and human fight, the human feels the macor’s pain. So the humans have to be tough, too!”
Kutho listened in fascinated disgust. Just when he’d thought he couldn’t hate humans more… So this was what humans used his fellow Icim for. And to think humans considered themselves so ‘civilized.’
“I think it’s horrible,” the girl said, shaking her head. “Everyone in the city’s obsessed with it, but it wastes time people could spend working.”
“Come on, Ren, you wouldn't think that if you actually watched a tournament!” the older boy said. “Or participated!”
“No! I don’t want anything to do with Munera, I don’t want to fight in a tournament, and I definitely don’t want a macor!” The girl threw her hands up and paced around the room.
“Then release me,” Kutho said. “Release me and let me go back to the city and find and free Sazuk and we’ll forget we ever met.”
“I don’t know how!” the girl said.
“That’s nonsense,” Kutho said. “You’re the one who created this contract!”
“Yes, and I don’t know how or why, all right?” The girl rounded on him. “So I can’t do anything about it.”
“You’ve got to be kidding!” Kutho reached for her, but the instant his hand closed around her sleeve, heat surged through his spirit lines and he was forced to release her. Was that the contract? No wonder humans could enslave Icim…
“I can’t. I’m sorry but I can’t! I don’t know what’s going on and I don’t care, all I want is to sleep!” the girl shouted. “I’ve had a rough day, okay? And now I find out I’m a—a macor master now, of all things. I just, there’s only so much I can handle.”
If Kutho had possessed an ounce less self-control, he’d have punched the girl. But the contract prevented him from harming her, and he knew that hurting her, as satisfying as it’d feel, wouldn’t help him save Sazuk.
“Do something!” he said.
“Not right now,” the girl said. “Not right now, I…I need to sleep…I…”
“Leave Ren alone,” the little boy said.
“Then what am I supposed to do?” Kutho shouted. He’d never felt so frustrated before. “I’m not gonna hang around watching you sleep.”
“Maybe you could go to sleep yourself,” the girl said, waving a dismissive hand as she exited the room. “You’ve been through a lot, haven’t you? It’s not every day that someone survives jumping the ward.”
Was it Kutho’s imagination, or did she sound a little sympathetic? Why did he care? She was just a human; he didn’t need her sympathy.
But he was tired. He’d been through plenty that day, and though his memories were hazy—he’d been too pain-befogged to care—he knew that his travails had taken a toll on his body. Forging the contract with the human had erased the outward signs of injury, but the areas where he’d been bruised still ached, and the unfamiliar new magic inside his spirit lines taxed his body. He really did long to sleep…
Surely he could turn this around to his advantage? That was right…if he went about this carefully, he could use this enslavement to further his quest. It’d be humiliating, but if it was for Sazuk, he’d do it. He’d do anything. Anything for the young Icim who had saved his life all those years ago…
I still owe you, Sazuk. Considering this me repaying my debt…because it’s as Chief Rannak always says. We Icim are different from humans, because we will go to the top of the sky and back to repay debts.
Well, this is me going to the top of the sky. For you.
With a deep grunt, Kutho fell face forward onto the bed, and his eyes slid shut and he vanished into the uneasy world of dream and memory, fear and conjecture.
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The ending still does not satisfy me, but whatever. This first chapter has gone on long enough.
As always, I welcome all reviews.
