The Beast Warrior Page 5

  Nudged by her hand on his shoulder, Jesse had fallen into step beside her, but now he scowled. “I can go home by myself, you know.”

  “I’m sure you can,” Esalu said coldly, “but there’s no guarantee you’d go straight home. Especially as you probably disobeyed your father’s orders by coming here.”

  Jesse’s shoulders drooped, and he heaved an exaggerated sigh. Craning his neck, he stared at Alu, as though reluctant to leave her.

  “Do you love Alu so much?” Esalu asked gently.

  Jesse gave a cocky shrug. “Of course I do. She’s my big sister.” He looked up at Esalu. “Will Mother be home soon?”

  Esalu blinked. “It looks like she’ll be away a little longer. I’ll let you know as soon as we receive any word. I’m sure you must miss her, but try to be patient.”

  Jesse pressed his lips together and stared at the ground, but his mouth was trembling. Esalu’s chest tightened.

  5

  AUTOPSY

  Dissecting the Kiba took a long time. Toda hide was so hard it could repel arrows, and no ordinary knife could penetrate where it was covered in scales. With a small, sharp dagger used by the Toda Stewards, Elin made her incisions in the underbelly. It was scaleless, but no easy task to cut through. Chimulu offered to do it for her, but Elin declined, partly because she knew it would be painful for him to insert a knife into the Kiba he’d helped raise from hatchlings, but even more so because she wanted to learn everything she could, including the feel of the hide, the layer of subcutaneous fat, and the flesh beneath.

  Even if she dissected the Kiba, there was no guarantee that she’d be able to determine their cause of death. In fact, it would be almost impossible to determine if there was no obvious internal damage. The care of both the Toda and the Royal Beasts was bound by countless taboos. Everything had to be done strictly according to the Toda Laws or the Royal Beast Canon, and no deviation was permitted. Toda had never been dissected before, and no records of their anatomy existed, so she wouldn’t be able to compare her findings with previous cases. Yet she had decided to dissect them anyway to pursue a hunch.

  If tokujisui was involved in their deaths, then the most likely cause would be a reproductive abnormality. As all the Kiba were female and it was egg-laying season for wild Toda, some change, such as ovulation, could have precipitated their deaths. She had to find out if her suspicion was right.

  Slowly and methodically, Elin dissected the first carcass and checked the various layers of tissue between the hide and the reproductive organs, examining them thoroughly and recording everything she saw. The work was much harder than she had expected. The protective slime that covered their hides was toxic and could have disastrous effects if she cut herself and got any in the wound. Just in case, she kept a cloth drenched in an antidote close at hand. Each time she stopped to pick up her pen, she had to wipe her hands first, which made the work much slower.

  All the while, she was conscious of Yohalu’s presence beside her. Like Elin, he had covered his mouth and nose with a cloth, and he stood silently watching her, showing no trace of emotion, even at the sight of the decomposing innards or at the ripe stench. He only left her side to relieve himself.

  As she examined the innards, Elin measured the intervals between Yohalu’s bathroom breaks. When she approached the reproductive organs, she took her time with other tasks, waiting for him to get up and leave. But this time it seemed like he never would. Not knowing what else to do, she began carefully feeling each vein with an expression of intense concentration, as though they intrigued her.

  “Is there something strange about those veins?” Yohalu asked from behind her.

  Without looking at him, she said, “Sometimes poison can cause lesions on the veins.”

  “Hmm,” Yohalu said, as if interested. Then he murmured, “I must be getting a bit chilled in here. If you’ll excuse me for a moment.”

  As he left, she began cutting swiftly near the reproductive organs. Although she was in a hurry, she bit her lip and forced herself to slow down, moving the knife with care. Suddenly, her eyes widened.

  What’s that …

  The Kiba’s fallopian tube looked swollen and deformed. She slit it open and found that it was plugged with multiple hard lumps. Her knife touched something different. Slowly, she explored the spot, and a round, fist-sized ball slipped out onto her palm. She stared at it.

  An egg. This Kiba, raised in an unnatural way, had reached maturity and produced unfertilized eggs without mating.

  Footsteps sounded at the entrance to the Chamber, and Yohalu returned to her side. He peered over her shoulder at what lay on her palm. “What’s that?” he asked.

  She glanced up, and their eyes met. For an instant her gaze wavered, and she regretted looking at him, but it was too late. Yohalu’s sharp eyes hadn’t missed her inner turmoil.

  “That’s an egg, isn’t it?” he asked.

  She nodded. She wished that she could have a little more time to think before she told him, but there was no way to avoid it now. Besides, if blocked fallopian tubes had killed the Kiba, she couldn’t lie to him anyway.

  “Was it pregnant?” he asked.

  Hearing the excitement in his voice, Elin shook her head. “No. I believe this is an unfertilized egg.” She pressed the point of the knife against the lumps in the tube. “Look here, and here. Here, too. Do you see these?”

  “Yes.”

  “These growths blocked the fallopian tube, preventing the egg from passing through. The death of organ tissue spreads out from here. I can’t say for certain yet, but I believe this is what caused their deaths.”

  Yohalu fixed his eyes on hers. “But what could have caused such a change? Poison?”

  Returning his gaze, Elin shook her head slightly. “I don’t know. And until I determine whether any other pathological change occurred, I can’t tell if this is what actually killed them.”

  She kept her eyes downcast as she spoke, grateful for the white cloth that masked her lips, because she couldn’t keep them from trembling.

  Tokujisui!

  Although she had no conclusive proof, there was no doubt in her mind. It was tokujisui that had caused this deformation—because that was the only difference between the Kiba and wild Toda. Shivers rose in waves from the pit of her stomach. Unable to suppress them, she stood up. “If you’ll excuse me, I’d like to step out for some fresh air.” Bobbing her head once in apology, she hurried from the caves.

  The guards bowed to her as she passed, but she did not see them. Only when she was inside the forest did she stop. Birds warbled, and sunlight filtering through the leaves dappled her face. Pressing her back against a tree, she closed her eyes.

  Tokujisui. What a dreadful potion. It turned living creatures into aberrations, yet, for centuries, they’d been giving it to the Toda to make them into powerful giants.

  The sunlight played on her closed lids. An image of her mother’s face rose in her mind, and she could hear the echo of her voice. “Tokujisui makes their fangs harder and their bones larger than Toda in the wild. But at the expense of other parts.”

  She realized now that her mother should never have shared such thoughts with her young daughter, but she’d probably been unable to stop herself.

  Think about it, her mother had said. What can Toda in the wild do naturally that Toda raised in the Ponds can’t? I’m sure you’ll find the answer for yourself one day.

  Mother knew.

  She had known that it would kill female Toda to give them the tokujisui that made them into Kiba. The chill that gripped Elin intensified. The Toda Stewards had no idea what effect the tokujisui would have, but her mother did. The change in the slimy membrane occurred during the egg-laying season. And with that change their odor probably changed, too, attracting winged insects.

  That’s why she told me not to tell anyone they smelled different.

  Which meant that her mother had noticed the change in the membrane. She’d noticed, yet had still given
them that potion, even though such a high dose would encourage ovulation and turn the tokujisui to poison.

  Elin didn’t need to ask why she would do such a thing. If she had told the Stewards they should stop using it, she would have had to explain why. And that was something she could never do. If she did, people would learn that Toda could be bred and multiplied by humans. Tokujisui and its diluted version were designed to prevent that. If the Toda were raised without tokujisui under conditions similar to those in the wild, they would mate and reproduce, just like Leelan had.

  Even though Mother was expelled by her people, she still …

  Adherence to the Law had been that important. Long ago, her mother’s ancestors had used Toda as weapons, destroying a nation that had flourished on the other side of the Afon Noah, the Mountains of the Gods. Filled with remorse, the Ahlyo, the People of the Mist, had lived ever since in strict obedience to the Law to prevent such a tragedy from recurring. Born and raised an Ahlyo, Elin’s mother would have tried to prevent others from breeding Toda, even if it meant her execution.

  But …

  Although Elin could follow her mother’s reasoning, emotionally she couldn’t accept it. How could she have done that to the Toda? It was so hard to understand. She pressed her palm against her forehead.

  Could I do that? Could I bring myself to give Leelan and Alu tokujisui to prevent them from being used as weapons?

  Just the thought of it filled her with revulsion. She doubted that she could ever do it. Even so, maybe it was something that had to be done.

  Another scene rose in her mind. Her mother’s face when she had thrown the Silent Whistle into the fire, her eyes and cheeks lit by the glow of the flames in the oven.

  “What I’ve done will make life so much harder for you,” she had said. “Yet, to be honest, I’m glad that I’ll never have to use that thing again … I hate watching the Toda freeze whenever I blow it … To see wild beasts controlled by humans is a miserable thing. In the wild, they would be masters of their own destiny. I can’t bear to watch them grow steadily weaker when they live among men.”

  Beneath her closed lids, Elin’s eyes burned. It must have been so hard for her to bear.

  Elin squeezed her eyes tight. Yet, despite that pain, despite her abhorrence for what she was doing, in the end, her mother had still chosen to continue perverting the growth of the Toda.

  Elin covered her face with her hands.

  If I had never been conceived … If she could have continued living as one of the Ao-Loh, the People of the Law, the true name of the Ahlyo, instead of becoming a Toda Steward …

  Surely her life would have been much easier, and so different. Would she have been freed of such dilemmas? Her mother, a Steward with the heart of an Ao-Loh, had been forced to witness firsthand just how cruelly the Law perverted the Toda. What had she been thinking as she stood chest deep in the chill waters of the Pond day after day? Had she ever doubted the wisdom of the Law?

  Once again, she saw her mother inside the Stone Chamber; saw her kneel on the frigid stone floor and bow her head to the Kiba as water from her sodden garments spread in a dark pool around her. That cold, dark water seemed to seep inside Elin and pool at the bottom of her chest. Knowing her mother, she had been begging the Kiba to forgive her. For killing them with tokujisui.

  What am I going to do?

  Now that she knew what her mother had known, what should she do? Should she conceal the secret of the tokujisui to prevent people from breeding Toda and make up some plausible explanation for why their eggs had been blocked? Or should she continue to investigate and, once she discovered the whole truth, confront it head-on?

  For the sake of the Toda, she would rather find a road that would keep them from being used as weapons. But there was no way that the Toda army, the kingpin of the country’s defense, could ever be dismantled.

  So what should she do? What could she do?

  Behind her lids, she saw the lifeless, infertile Kiba. She opened her eyes and gazed up at the dappled light. The leaves fluttered in the breeze, but the trunk stood steady. Narrowing her eyes against the light, her face grew calm.

  I can never give living creatures something that deforms them and prevents from ever bearing young.

  That much she knew. She took a deep breath and pulled away from the tree, feeling the cool breeze caress her sweat-drenched back.

  A twig cracked beneath someone’s foot, and she turned. In the shadow of a tree stood a woman.

  6

  A MESSAGE FROM THE PAST

  The woman was slender and looked to be about fifty years old. She stood with a basket in her arms and stared at Elin as though she wanted to talk. Although she was a stranger, something about her seemed familiar. She opened her mouth, then hesitated. At last, she seemed to gather her resolve and stepped out of the tree’s shadow.

  “You probably don’t remember me,” she said, walking slowly toward Elin. “I’ve been coming here as often as I could, hoping that I might have a chance to speak with you. I can’t enter the Stone Chambers, and it would be hard to talk where others might be listening.”

  “Excuse me, but who are you?” Elin asked.

  The woman flushed. “Oh, I beg your pardon. I should have introduced myself first. We’re actually related. I’m your father’s cousin, although I don’t know what relation that makes us exactly.”

  Elin stared at her openmouthed, feeling as though she had been hit in the chest.

  “It’s true,” the woman said, her words tumbling out. “We’ve met before. I used to play with you quite often, you know. But I married a man from this village when you were only five, so you’ve probably forgotten.” She smiled suddenly, as if remembering that time. “You couldn’t pronounce my name properly so you called me Auntie Chacha. My name’s Tsulana.”

  The name Auntie Chacha echoed in Elin’s ears, jogging a distant memory—the blurred brightness of day, a laughing voice, a flowered apron.

  “I remember,” Elin murmured hesitantly. “Not clearly. But I do remember. Did you wear an apron? One embroidered with yellow flowers or something?”

  Tsulana’s face brightened. “Yes! Yes, I did! I’d completely forgotten about it, but I used to wear an apron like that then. Amazing! So you do remember me!”

  The tension between them dissolved, and they smiled at each other. “I’m so glad!” Tsulana said. “I wasn’t sure how I was going to explain things to you. I mean, I never dreamed you’d remember me, and it would be so odd to have a stranger tell you they’re your father’s cousin.”

  “Yes, you really took me by surprise,” Elin said, finding her voice. “But I’m so glad you came.”

  Tsulana nodded. “Me too. I thought you’d died with Sohyon, so when my husband told me you were here, the shock knocked the breath out of me. Of course, I was thrilled to know you’d survived.” She stopped and gazed at Elin, then added, “You look so like your mother. Not just your eyes, but your mouth and your build, too. Your eyebrows and nose, though, remind me of my cousin.”

  Elin could hardly remember her mother anymore, yet Tsulana could see Sohyon in her face. And her father, whom Elin didn’t remember at all. Goosebumps rose on her flesh, and her lips trembled.

  Tsulana’s face twisted. “It was just so cruel. And Sohyon was so young, not even thirty.”

  Elin realized with a shock that she had not even known her mother’s age. She had been only ten at the time, and to her, Mother was just her mother. It had never occurred to her to wonder about her age. “How old was she?” she asked with a quiver in her voice.

  “Twenty-seven, I think,” Tsulana answered quietly. “Because she was only seventeen when she gave birth to you.”

  That young?

  Elin pressed her hand against the tree to steady herself. Many girls married at sixteen, so it wasn’t unusual to bear a child at seventeen. Yet the thought that her mother had been only sixteen when she’d chosen to abandon her people and marry a Toda Steward pierced Elin’s heart
.

  Tsulana seemed to be thinking the same thing. “My cousin died at eighteen and Sohyon gave birth to you at seventeen,” she said. “They were both awfully young, weren’t they? I was just sixteen then, too, but Sohyon seemed so grown up, I never thought of her as being just one year older than me. I knew their situation was awkward, but I’d always liked my cousin. Of course, I was a bit frightened of Sohyon at first. I mean, she was an Ahlyo, and that in itself was somehow scary … But she was a good person. The more I got to know her, the more I understood why my cousin had fallen in love with her. I really loved those two.”

  Elin listened, barely breathing. She wanted to hear anything she could about her mother and father, like how they’d come to be married or whether they’d had a wedding.

  “What was my father like?” she asked.

  Tsulana’s eyes shone softly. “He was such a warm person. He didn’t talk much, but when he smiled, he brightened up the world around him.”

  Muffled sounds came from the distance, and they both stopped, startled, turning their heads toward the noise. Yohalu had come out of the caves and was looking at them. Elin took a step toward him, but he raised his hand and waved her away, as if to say not to worry about him. He turned and began talking to the guards in front of the entrance.

  “Do you think it’s all right?” Tsulana murmured, peering anxiously toward Yohalu.

  “Yes. It should be fine. I can tell him later.”

  Despite this reassurance, however, Tsulana continued to frown, staring in Yohalu’s direction.

  “Auntie,” Elin said.

  Tsulana shifted her eyes toward her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s better if we don’t talk too long, although I know there must be so much you’d like to ask. And so much I’d like to ask you, too.”

  “But—”

  Tsulana shook her head. “I’m sure you know that in a small village like this, rumors tend to spread. Because people are afraid.” She thrust the basket she carried toward Elin. “Here. Take this. I made some rice cakes with shizu petals for you.”