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by Therese Arkenberg
Fantasy, 8 pages.
Originally Published in MindFlights, 2008
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The rain had started suddenly. At first, those on the road only felt the occasional drop, but the heavy, gray clouds swarmed and soon the wide path was only a series of muddy islands in a brown river. Fortunately, the travelers spotted a rain shelter nearby, and they hurried under its roof.
The shelter was round, with low woven walls and a palm-leaf thatch. The roof was well made, and there was no wind to blow the rain inside, so the travelers had peace as they wrung water from their skirts and hair and settled to wait out the storm.
Then he came—a tall man, unbowed by age made obvious by wrinkles around brown eyes that flashed like the water in the flooded road outside. His flint-gray hair was slicked by rain against the crown of his head, and though his high boots were splattered with mud, he wore a white cape that was immaculate.
The shelter went still, and a space appeared around him as the people shrank away.
If they were hoping to avoid his notice, they failed.
One of those who had pushed away from him was a young man, wearing the scummy loincloth of a laborer. The tall man turned, flashing eyes locked on the youth.
“Do you know who I am?”
“Y-yes. Y-you’r-re the Ahu’a Hene-em Balam. Th-the wayab.”
Ahu’a Balam chuckled and turned away from him. Colors flashed on his white cape, as if tiny rainbow creatures were hidden in the weave.
Behind him, the laborer slumped in relief.
It was a market day, and farmers’ families had been out on the road. Their children, perhaps by instinct avoiding the strangeness of Balam, clustered together on the opposite side of the shelter. An old woman stood with them, leaning heavily on a twisted staff. Her gray hair lay in two braids, not the coils of a wife or widow, and she watched the wayab with a curious glint in her eyes.
“Oh, come now,” she said to the children around her with gentle forbearance, “you’ve nothing to fear from him.”
“From Ahu’a Balam?” one piped. “But he’s a commander of the way! I’ve heard he can turn into a huge cat and roam the hills. When he finds children out in the dark, he eats them! He’s heartless!”
Others near him nodded in shy agreement, casting nervous glances at the elderly lord.
“Oh, child.” The old woman sank down to a crouch, weight braced against her staff. “It was fear of the way that made him like that.”
“He feared the way?” a girl asked, brushing damp black hair from her eyes.
“Never.” The woman chuckled. “No, the fear was not his. You want to hear the story? Come, Auntie Isheb will tell it to you.
“Henem Balam was born a prince,” she began, with a covert glance in his direction. “His father was an Ahu’a, the lord of Mishec city.”
“Now Wayab Balam is Ahu’a of Mishec,” a child interrupted, proud to contribute this information.
“Yes, dear. Now, Henem learned the way at an early age, taught by one of the priests of the city. He let it be his one passion, and he excelled in it like no other. Eventually his father had to force him to learn to rule, but he had little heart for it. Now it is said how the people of Mishec rule themselves, and it is true, for the most part. He was never a cruel lord, but often absent.
“Wayab Balam had a palace in the west, a place he had built away from people where he could experiment and work with the way. His father remained in the city. After many years, when he felt the day of his death approaching, he sent for his son. It was time for Henem Balam to be married.”
Isheb took a deep breath, and her eyes returned again to the wayab.
“The woman who would be his bride was from a state on the coast. I forget the name… Tichen, or Comozel. Probably Comozel. I heard it so often then, but now when I need to recall… my age, you see, clouds these things.” She smiled in a way the children didn’t understand. “Her name, though, I remember.”
She paused. The children waited.
“She was Izahel,” Isheb said with peculiar vehemence, “called by some Izahel Kazam, the Fair. Her beauty, his power. It was a good match.
“Her father and his shared blood over their betrothal, and a date was set. But Balam’s father sickened, and died before he could see his son wed.
“Izahel’s father, the Ahu’a of Camozel would still have honored the betrothal, of course. Oaths sworn in blood are not lightly broken. But Comozel went to war, and he was killed in battle. With both those who had made it dead, the oath of betrothal was forgotten—”
“But didn’t Izahel and Henem Balam love each other?”
The old woman smiled softly. “They thought they did. Perhaps… Balam certainly loved her. And because of that love, he showed her some of his arts of the way. She wasn’t used to it… it frightened her… and because of that, her love for him became less. And without the oath to bind her, -- [End of Preview.]