For two days after the king’s envoys arrived, the village was caught up in a whirlwind of activity. The women rolled up bright wool tapestries and wrapped laga in clean cloth. The men decorated the carts that would carry these gifts until they were satisfied that they would outshine those of the other clans.
Then Yuguro, Shisheem, and thirty attendants rode off amid the cheers of their clansmen. Kahm and his father, their thoughts bitter, stood watching the glorious procession recede into the distance.
Kahm’s injury was slight, but he had spent the last two days closeted in his room, reluctant to meet anyone. He found that being alone gave him the chance to think things through. He felt betrayed by his uncle, which hurt all the more because he had worshipped him since childhood. He had spent more of his life with Yuguro than with his own father.
A seed of doubt sprang up in his heart: Would Uncle Yuguro make Shisheem his attendant for the Giving Ceremony? He could be overreacting. Yet no matter how he looked at it, his uncle’s version of the story seemed designed to disgrace Kahm and convince everyone that Shisheem should accompany him to the capital.
Traditionally, only those who had participated in the Giving Ceremony as attendants were chosen as the next King’s Spears. If the attendants returned alive from the Mountain Deep, they were promoted to Spear when they reached the age of twenty. If one of the chosen died or became crippled before the next ceremony, the King’s Spears gathered together to select a new candidate from his clan. A Spear who had participated as an attendant at the age of sixteen or seventeen would be in his mid-thirties by the time of the next ceremony — intellectually and physically in his prime. So it had been for centuries.
But then tragedy had struck, for all the young men chosen as attendants had been slain by Jiguro, and the interval between the ceremonies had lasted too long. They had been forced to change the system. Ten years earlier, the clans had held a tournament before the king to choose nine new Spears from the best warriors of the chieftains’ lines. Yuguro, naturally, had been selected from the Musa clan.
If the ceremony had been held at the usual twenty-year interval, Kahm would have been the right age. But now he was thirty-one, which was old for an attendant, and his eldest son, Kahmuro, who lived with his mother in the capital, had only just turned nine. Shisheem, on the other hand, was sixteen, the perfect age to serve. Kahm’s jaw clenched. Does Uncle Yuguro plan to make me stay in Musa as the next chieftain while Shisheem becomes a Spear?
Ordinarily he would have accepted this fate with good grace despite his disappointment. But it was at this ceremony that Yuguro would launch the plan they had been developing for some time — a plan so secret not even Chief Kaguro knew about it. Kahm had worked so hard on this plan; he could not bear to be excluded now.
Another suspicion gnawed at his mind. He had not known that Dom’s spear was smeared with poison. Such foul play was inconceivable. Had Dom been acting on his own initiative, or under someone else’s orders? And why would he have thrown the spear, knowing it could hit Kahm? Had he been hoping to kill both him and the woman?
Kahm dismissed the thought. That’s impossible. I must be reading too much into it. If he had died from togal poisoning, it would have exposed their plot to kill the woman without a fair trial. And surely his uncle would not try to murder him….
Still, what an amazing spear-wielder! Never had he seen anyone move like that woman. Not even the Spears, the greatest warriors in Kanbal, could compare to her speed and agility. If Jiguro taught her, he must have been a true master.
Suddenly he recalled something his father had said long ago, when they had been watching Yuguro train the warriors in the yard in front of the hall. His father, who would never wield a spear again, had a bleak expression on his face that made Kahm sad. Yuguro moved with skill and finesse and seemed to thoroughly enjoy displaying his superior strength.
“Too much wasted movement,” Kaguro had remarked abruptly.
Kahm did not respond. He thought that his father must speak from envy, although he could see no trace of jealousy in his profile. Rather, he seemed to be gazing at something in the distance.
“Jiguro was far better.”
Kahm could hardly believe what he heard. Jiguro’s name was taboo. None of the Musa clan ever mentioned him, and his father and uncle in particular never spoke of him. And yet his father continued, “I suppose it’s hard for you to believe, but I was always a better spearman than Yuguro. But Jiguro …” Following his brother’s movements with his one good eye, he muttered, “Jiguro was a genius. A warrior like that might appear once in a hundred years. That’s why my father chose him rather than me for the Giving Ceremony, even though I was the eldest.
“And he fulfilled my father’s expectations. He was chosen as the Dancer. No sixteen-year-old attendant had ever served as the Dancer before.”
Kahm knew that all the King’s Spears and their attendants competed in a tournament in the Mountain Deep to determine which one was the strongest. The victor became the Dancer and dueled one of the hyohlu, the Guardians of the Darkness and servants to the Mountain King. Only when the Dancer defeated the hyohlu did the Mountain King open the Last Door and invite the king of Kanbal, his Spears, and their attendants to enter his palace. Beyond that door, it was said, lay a vast castle made of luisha, the most beautiful gem in the world.
“But instead of bringing honor to our clan, his skill brought misfortune on the whole country.” His father heaved a deep sigh as he stared over the practice field. “But you know, to be honest, even if I had been the one to go after him, I don’t think I could have beaten him.” He lowered his voice. “Which is why I think that Jiguro must have let Yuguro kill him.”
At the time, Kahm had been disappointed in his father, believing that he belittled Yuguro’s feat out of envy. But now, as he recalled those words, new questions began to run through his mind. What kind of man could have trained a spearwoman like that? What did she really see when Yuguro fought Jiguro? His heart began to pound. And what if she saw something other than the glorious victory Yuguro proclaimed to the world? If she did, then I could see why he might use poison.