The Gantean (Tales of Blood & Light Book 1)

F
or Beth
, who read it first

and gave me the courage

to pursue the dream.

T
ell
me a tale of Gante
, people once said when they heard of my homeland.
There are no tales of Gante,
I would reply. We did not have tales as the sayantaq did, for making merry, for song and feast. In Gante, our stories were all locked up in secrets. What stories we had were but fragments, the pieces hard to find and fit, the words that formed them only whispers. The Elders said it must be so, to protect our ways, our magic, our Hinge. We were Iksraqtaq—the raw, real people—and our stories were not to be shared with others.

Few people ask for tales of Gante anymore. They no longer recall that I was once Gantean, a barbarian to them. Or maybe they have forgotten their curiosity, as they have forgotten that the Ganteans once stood alone, a people separate from Lethemia.

My son’s tutors say Gante is a barren island, cold and uninhabitable, without merit for cultivation or trade. Destroyed, they say. They speak with the surety of southerners, as if there could be no other truth.

I do not correct them. Silence is a long habit of mine.

I know what Ganteans protected for centuries, what lies fallow, or sleeping, or dead on my cold isle. I was raised to respect silence and secrets both, and old ways stick to me like flakes of snow on wool. I am in no hurry to delve into those secrets. Someday, perhaps. Someday, when my boy is older and he might share the burden on my shoulders. If any of my scattered people still respect Gantean ways, my choices have led me too far from them to ever go back. I have done so much they would frown upon, and keeping my own blood-son bound to me is not the least of my transgressions.

I am sayantaq, cooked like a southerner, through and through. After years living amongst the soft people, I have come to appreciate a welcome embrace and love where I have found it. I have come to love soft things, silken gowns, warm beds, and the tight bond I share with my boy. I want peace. I want an easy life.

“Tell me a tale of Gante.” He is persistent, my boy.

I brush the black locks from his forehead and take him into my lap, though he is too old for it now. His eagerness to know about Gante always brings up the memories I have tried so hard to forget.

I whisper stories, simple and clean. He thinks these are Gantean tales, my bedtime stories about warriors and sea-bears. I have made them up for him, for entertainment, in a style I learned amongst his father’s people, and they have little to tell of Gante at all.

The truth is complicated, rough-edged like unshaped stone. It is uncomfortable, and by this feature you may recognize it.

My tale of Gante is the tale of its end.

E
ven
though we
were well into the moon of birch and berries, and the leaf buds spiked green to answer the returning sunlight, Gante’s ground remained frozen. As always, the island resisted coming back to life after winter. I’d helped Nautien set up her summer tent the day before, and the stakes had refused to go into the ground. I’d had to get three brawny men to help beat them down. The men had laughed when I’d asked for help, calling me “bird-girl,” tugging my long black braids, and making me feel like a child. Everyone treated me as though I still played in the children’s creche, what Ganteans called the tiguat,
on account of my small size, though I was fully eighteen years of age, and like any woman I marked the men who came home from a hunt with a deer slung over broad shoulders and the ones who willingly hammered stakes for an old woman like Nautien. The clansmen took little notice of me—I wasn’t the kind of woman they wanted: too small, too pale, too slender, too quiet.

Gante’s cold ground sent a chill even through the thick skin of my boots as I walked to the bluffs to begin my weaving. I passed a group of men gathered by the trail to the beach, speaking to each other in urgent voices.

I shifted the net I carried in my arms, careful to avoid dragging the edges on the ground. If I let even a corner drop, the men would chastise me and say I was too small to carry my own burdens.

“Leila,” one of them called.

I stumbled and dragged a piece of net in the dirt, my cheeks flushing.

“What is it?” I asked. A chilling wind blew up the bluffs from the sea.

“A ship,” the fisher-father Returat said. “An Entilan ship.” The wind moaned against Gante’s stark cliffs.

“C—coming here?”

“Warn the women on the bluffs and get back to the camp. There’s enough snow on higher ground to run dogs if you take the northern route inland.”

My net doubled its weight in my arms.

“Go! Now!”

I dropped my net; I couldn’t run with it. An Entilan ship could bode nothing good; over the past two years, Entilan raiders from Lethemia had decimated every remaining community on the island until only our camp remained—we were the only Ganteans left to guard and support our magical Hinge. If we fell, what would happen to the world’s magic? Desperation and fear galvanized my steps.

Four of my fellow net-weavers were gathered atop the bluffs above the shore. Behind them the grey Gantean sky stretched to meet the horizon, empty, the ship not yet in sight from here. The wind whipped my black braid across my neck. The other net-weavers stood around a large trawling net.

“Murlian!” I called.

She lifted her head, her freckled face breaking into a grin until her eyes met mine. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Raiders. Entilans,” I gasped.

“Here? Now? It’s too early in the season.”

“The men said they saw a ship.”

“Spirits protect us,” Murlian said, as she and the other women quickly tied off their work.

“They said to take the northern route with the dogs,” I said.

Nautien, the oldest of us and a clan Elder, nodded, her brown eyes wide with concern. “Someone needs to get Seleniq,” she said. “I sent her to put some small nets
in the beach caches.”

“I’ll go,” I said. “I’ll meet you back at the camp.”

Nautien unsheathed her ulio, a blade hewn from shimmering blackstone, and quickly cut a slice on her arm, dripping a few gem-like drops of blood into the dry earth of the bluffs. Her eyes blurred with the telltale signs of magic—the blood she’d spilled had paid for a scrying spell. The early arrival of the raiders must have distressed her greatly—Ganteans did not waste magic, and every spell was carefully weighed against the bloodcost we’d have to pay to power it.

Nautien commanded foresight, a skill that had given her a place in the ranks of the Elders years ago, and she did not like whatever she had seen as she scryed. She blanched and drew me apart from the others, whispering, “Take great care. Of all the young people remaining, you are the one with the strongest magic. If anything happens to the rest of us, you know what must be done. You must find the Cedna. It will be up to you, Leila.”

“Y—yes,” I stammered, though I could not process the magnitude of what she meant: if she and the other Elders met a bad fate, I would be responsible for our missing Cedna, the woman who was the lifeblood of our magic. She had abandoned Gante for the south years ago, when I was still a babe in the tiguat. The Cedna was not the only islander to have found the warm, accommodating southern mainland preferable to Gante’s cold duties and rules.

“Here.” From a twine around her neck, Nautien removed a carved anbuaq, a ring of seal bone with a round spall of red Hinge crystal lodged in its center. She pressed the anbuaq into my palm, though I did not wish to take it, knowing its significance. “Be careful, Leila. Do what you must.” She looked at me sternly. “Hide or adapt, survive, even if means you must surrender to the raiders. Remember you are Shringar Clan. Do what we do best: flow like water. Take the path you are given. Survive and find the Cedna. The task is yours.” She released me, and I strung her charm on the leather twine I already wore on my neck to hold my tormaquine, the carved bone charm that depicted my spirit animal, an osprey. My hands shook. What had Nautien just seen that would have prompted her to give up her anbuaq and set me such a daunting task?

“Now, go,” Nautien urged.

She pushed me, giving no time to ask why she thought I had any better chance of finding the Cedna than she did.

“I’ll go with you,” Murlian said. “You may need help finding Seleniq.”

“We may have to hide in the caches and wait out the raid,” I breathed to Murlian as we ran. “It might be safer.”

We hurried down to the pebbled beach with silent footsteps. Sparse patches of grass struggled to life along the edges of the trail.

“Can you see the ship?” I asked Murlian, who blocked my view.

“They haven’t rounded the point yet. The waters look rough, though. Maybe…maybe the Cedna’s old protective magic is working?”

I snorted. Our Cedna, before leaving, had made a costly protective enchantment, cast into the waters surrounding our island, which had held southern raiders at bay. After the violence and ruin of the last two years, it was clear that the enchantment had unwound. Only unfailingly optimistic Murlian would imagine it had suddenly come back to life.

Murlian and I scurried to the hidden caches tucked into the beach cliffs, ducking behind the boulder that hid the entrance.

“Seleniq?” Murlian called into the dark cavern, stepping over several sacks made from sealskin. Ganteans hid many treasures in the caches to protect them from Entilan raiders: nets, skins, supplies, and the sacred mushrooms we used in rituals. If they found them, the raiders would sell our precious goods for their own profit on the mainland black market.

“She’s not here.” Murlian tugged me out of the cache, scanning the beach for the missing girl.

A soft cry escaped her lips; the sound turned my belly into writhing eels. The ship had come around the southern jut of the cove and now loomed in the bay, hulking like a predator on the horizon. A tender boat traversed the choppy waters, carrying a full host of Entilan soldiers. They were so close I could see the sigils on their uniforms: a green water serpent twisting on a violet field.

A soldier pointed at us from the stern of the boat. He’d already seen us.

“What should we do?” asked Murlian.

A soldier leapt from the tender boat, wading through the freezing waters to guide the craft to shore.

The beach stretched into the distance, wide and empty, no protection there. The cliffs behind us were too sheer to climb. If we went back into the cache, we’d give away its location and lose the precious goods to the raiders, as well as getting caught. Squashed between the raiders and the cliffs like
shark
livers between stones, we knew all too well what the Entilans would do if they caught us: kill us or take us.

I took a deep breath. “Run for the trail,” I said. I’d distract the raiders for as long as I could, and maybe they’d miss Murlian as she picked across the open sand. I was as skinny and nimble as a boy; I might be able to outrun the men. Murlian, with her wider hips and heavier body, didn’t have my foot speed.

I took off at a full sprint, running towards the shoreline. The anbuaq Nautien had given me beat heavily against my breastbone as I ran. She would disapprove of my actions. Too risky.

The raiders yelled behind me. I tore down the beach, away from the trail and away from Murlian. Time slowed. My legs pounded the packed sand near the waterline. The strong Gantean wind pushed me at the raiders as though it wanted me caught.

I stole a glance over my shoulder and my heart hiccoughed. Five Entilan soldiers pursued me. The rest closed in on the beach trail, heading after Murlian.

She screamed. Shameful tears welled in my eyes, but the wind snapped them away like a thief. My feet barely left impressions as they flew over the sand. The soldiers called to each other in the southern tongue. Like any Gantean, I knew the language, though I was unpracticed in its use.

“Loop around to cut her off! Trap her against the cliffs!”

My fate loomed, as inescapable as the cliff before me. I darted to the side, but I ran into a different kind of wall, this one covered in the fine wool fabric the southerners favored.

“Got her!” A rough hand circled my wrist and jerked my arm behind me. I kicked down, hard, on the raider’s instep, using the defense tactics we had been taught in the tiguat.

The man only laughed. “It’s a child. A feisty child.” Of course he mistook me for a child. He twisted my other arm behind me. I resisted, but I couldn’t break his strong grip.

One of his companions brandished his sword. “Shall I do it or you?”

“Ah, you can’t kill this one,” my captor said as he bound my wrists behind my back. I fought to twist free of his grip before he finished his knots, but I could not.

“It’s too young. Orders were to take the young ones to the Lady’s slave market.

The other southern men studied me as though I were a wild creature they’d never encountered before.

“So,” my captor bragged, “whoever captures the fewest slaves buys drinks when we return to Queenstown, yes?”

His companions laughed. “But what about kills? Don’t they count for something?”

“The man with the fewest kills has to supervise the slaves aboard ship.”

The men groaned. One of them said, “In that case, I’m headed up that trail to find me some Gantean savages.”

My captor prodded me in the back. “Walk. You understand, savage girl?” I was tempted to try running again, but the tight bind of my arms behind me threw me off balance enough that I knew I would not succeed.

He grabbed my chin. The way he stared into my eyes terrified me.

When I trapped a snow hare and looked into its eyes to offer the prayer for dying before I broke its neck, I recognized the spirit in the animal. I acknowledged the sacrifice it made to feed me. This man did not see the spirit in me. To him, I did not exist at all. I was nothing but an empty, soulless body.

My captor left me in the tender boat with Murlian, who’d already been delivered there. At least they hadn’t killed her, despite the fact that she appeared fully grown. Two young Lethemian men supervised us.

“No talking,” one commanded as I leaned towards my friend.

Another tender boat finished unloading as we waited. So many raiders! How would the clan fend them off? Ganteans had never been warriors. We had enough to manage just surviving on our inhospitable island. As if in response to my thought, the wind gusted again. Our barren shore had no trees; the only visible plant life was the scrappy lyme grass that sprouted in patches near the cliff bottoms. The dull grass blades wavered in the strong wind. Waves lurched the boat.

One of the guards on the shore gestured towards the beach trail. “Head that way,” he called to the new raiders. “We caught some of them by surprise.”

Murlian’s hair had slipped from the braids I’d made last night. I flinched at her bare throat. They had taken her ring-seal tormaquine.

Losing one’s tormaquine augured the worst luck. It amounted to losing one’s soul.

Murlian turned to hide her tears with typical Gantean shame at showing emotion.

I inched closer to her so that our sides pressed together, hoping to offer some comfort. My hands went numb from the bindings as I stared at the shore. Finally the other Entilans emerged on the beach trail, herding several struggling clanspeople before them, including the man who’d warned me of the raid and old Nautien. The Ganteans were forced to stand, bound, before the Entilan captain, who presided over the beach like a god. He either nodded or shook his head, and depending on his gesture, the surrounding soldiers escorted the captive towards the tender boats or into a line against the beach cliffs. The adults, Nautien included, were all sent to the cliff line. My heart thundered against my ribs.

Three young children came to the boat, a boy and two girls. One was Seleniq, who we’d gone to find. She fell into my lap, and there she stayed, too terrified to release her grip on me as she shuddered like a feather on a rough wind.

Murlian sucked in a gasp. I gazed at the awful sorting on the beach. Our friend Merkuur fought his two captors with all his might as they brought him before the captain. My vision blurred and I could not breathe as I waited for the captain’s verdict. When he finally gave a curt nod, Murlian collapsed against me like a sack of stones and I finally exhaled.

The two soldiers herded Merkuur to the boat. His face was a beaten mess, and he swayed almost drunkenly as he stepped into the boat. Merkuur had spent his entire life on the deck of a ship and had the water-legs of a sea creature, so I knew they had hurt him badly.

“Murlian,” he groaned as he tried to move nearer to us.

An Entilan struck him so hard he fell to his knees and the whole boat rocked. Merkuur lifted his eyes dizzily to find Murlian.

The adult Ganteans remained standing against the cliffs, tied and helpless. The captain spoke to his men on the beach, but we could not hear his orders, though we all knew—we’d heard what had been done to other clans on earlier raids. The captain turned and stalked towards the tender boats.