Chapter Six: Bad Blood
Quona returned yet again to the archives, determined to find out facts that either supported Raha's claims about the Souas' relation to the Noa, or disproved her theory. The quest for this knowledge had become an obsession…an unhealthy one Nobaya had warned him one day. Normally the impudence of so young a Soua would have had Quona lapsing into disciplinary violence. In this case, however, Quona was beginning to agree with the young Eesan.
A month ago he had spent only enough time in the crappy little dwelling that the city had provided him to ensure his people did not fall prey to prejudices that still lingered after nearly a decade of the two cities, Taysa and Donona, tearing at each other's throats. When they had been situated, and already mostly cared for by Tomakaya in his absence, he had started to search out hints, anything that would lead him to an answer one way or the other regarding the Soua origin.
Since then he had spent most of his waking hours scouring records dating well back into Soua history. Each time he thought he was close to an answer, he was thwarted. It was nothing that he could pick up on readily, all the records looked intact, but during the time period in which their return to Soona was to have taken place, according to the Noa liaison, the references became very vague on events. He wasn't sure if it was the incompetence of the record keeper at the time or whether it was a cover up of some sort. He wasn't ready to claim the latter. And yet the discrepancy stuck in his mind and he continued to dig for the answer, even when he was convinced that Raha had been fed a fabrication.
Currently his investigation was into the Taya registry, thinking that perhaps their alliance with the Soua might possibly date back far enough to recall precisely the events of those years. Taya held no political alliances with the factions of Soona, all the more surprising considering that Quarta had agreed to be taken for use by a group of Taysa . That lack of opinion forming would help him out if he could find one that had been flying since that time for the Soua. Lyonas' mandibles tightened over his face as another query was pushed through the system, pessimistic about the lead turning up any more information than his others.
A grunt reached his ears and he wheeled around to be confronted by Oona.
"You fit here amongst the moldering knowledge Lyonas," he snorted.
"Oona," Lyonas growled, "Why do you disturb me?"
"Mind your manners, Eesa, you are in my city now," he snarls, "You will address me properly."
"I will give you no such satisfaction," Lyonas said drawing himself up to his full height a good head taller than the much more diminutive throwback to another generation, "You haven't deserved the honor, not your entire life. It is a wonder you were ever chosen for the seat you fill, and I keep asking myself why. I never thought honor could be bought…you however have proven me wrong."
His face heated, and he drew in a long angry breath, and Lyonas considered that the Ot Eesa would try to rush him for his insolence. It would be a good death to be tried for killing this particular leader. A moment later the heat faded, and his adversary for more centuries than could be counted, pulled his lower mandibles away. Itwas his show of humor.
"I have heard the reason you squander your days in the bole of this tree Lyonas. I find it questionable of sanity that you would while your time here away chasing a legend, a rumor, and a myth, one told by a clusu and repeated to you by another."
"All myths have a seed of truth planted in them; I am trying to discern the degree of accuracy in that myth."
"Of what? That we are not cousins to the backward Noa, but direct descendants of them?"
"That is what Raha has told me."
"A folly, Lyonas, nothing more, a conspiracy to draw you away from concerns for the health of the Soua."
"What if it is true Oona? What if they are the forefathers? That fact could change the course of this war."
"By the time that you find your 'proof' there will be no Noa to make peace with, if that is what you are so foolishly suggesting."
"You underestimate the Noa, Oona, and your shortsightedness has cost lives before. If you insist that they are backwards, if you hold vainly to that notion, your prediction may come true, only there will be Noa, and no Soua. Their numbers are much greater than our own."
"And we make up for that with our technology."
"Sometimes it seems we rely too much on that technology, and that too is folly if taken too far."
"You worry over nothing Lyonas…too much and too often, your advancing age has feebled your mind."
"We will see who has the right of it Oona, for now leave me to my research."
"SSSS," Oona hissed, "I think not, Lyonas, your access to the archives is now voided. I will not have you spreading panic through my city with such wild accusations as this human has filled you with.
Lyonas looked up as two Huada step up behind the Ot Eesa.
Quona Lyonas straightened his back, drawing his own angry breath and let it out again.
"Wander the city Lyonas, visit the residence, enjoy the hospitality of Donona, relax your weary bones," Oona says with false pleasantries, "You have had a hard journey, and have worried your mind over too much this past month."
He stepped into Oona glaring down into his twisted, muzzled face. Oona to his credit did not back down, though Lyonas had cowed him before, a long time ago. The stylized sun between Oona's brows drew his attention suddenly, and it hit him that he had never seen that symbol before, ever…not in all the centuries he had been alive, and all the warriors he had been exposed to. It wasn't Sars and Chai, a typical and highly respected line of warriors. It was a single sun large stylized rays spreading into his brow ridges and a symbol he did not recognize in the middle.
Lyonas backed off blinking at the symbol, curious suddenly about what it meant. He stepped back from his challenge, something that would lose him points with Oona, not that he had many with the Soua to begin with.
Oona smirked in his odd way, seeing Lyonas back down from him.
Lyonas bowed his head, sidestepping the Ot Eesa and departing the archives, a Huada on either side of him. Let him think that he had won, there would be other days. As of now he had many things to think on.
Sitting in his dwelling, Lyonas continued to ferret through his more limited access trying to find out, not what he had been looking for before…that way was closed to him, but instead investigating the strange symbol that graced the brow of his nemesis of long ago. Odd, he thought that he knew all of the lines of the Soua, having dealt with them all in his time on the pack ships, training them to be young warriors.
The Soua worshiped no single sun. Lineage was well documented and very public, and the records revealed very little about the symbol he was looking for. Oona's symbol was documented as well, but the file gave no lineage history about his line. It could be a backwater tribe symbol. But that suspicion didn't pan out at all.
Frutrated he rose from the computer station in his hole of a dwelling and headed for some fresh air.
It is time to give this up, He thought, sighing mentally.
He stepped from his dwelling to be confronted by a Soua elder, well past his prime, and looking as if he should have committed grapada many cycles ago. He was positively skeletal in appearance, his ribs jutting prominently out from under sallow green skin. The creature's brows, cheeks, and crests were crusted thickly with long white spikes and nearly obliterated sunken eyes.
Lyonas had thought that Oona's appearance Neanderthal compared to his own until he got a look at this creature. The Soua had no mandibles what so ever top or bottom, instead he possessed a muzzle, one that was much more prominent and square than Oona. Instead he had long sharp teeth jutting down from his upper jaw, two sets of which were the snakelike fangs the outer longer and the inner shorter. His lower jaw was shorter than the upper giving the Soua an overbite and the lower fangs that grew from that lower jaw were longer and more tusk like, extending well past the top of his muzzle. His long dreads were nearly unadorned and were thinned with dehydration and extreme age.
He looked like he had been animated from a desiccated corpse. Those eyes were bright in the shadows of his face however and he looked focused and intent.
"Al Eesan," he hissed, his voice as mummified as his body looked. He bowed his head, bending slightly at the waist as he gave a sign of respect, "The answers you seek cannot be found by conventional means."
Tusks clicked together in consternation that this stranger knew something of his quest.
"Noranai, the blinding light, have always held sway over the Ot Eesan. It has been so since the beginning, for the survival of the Soua depended on secrecy then. Our people had need of belief in their own righteousness, and the truth would have crippled our society. Noranai Oona has been charged to keep the dead buried," the Soua went on, "he is adamant about keeping that duty."
"What secret, Kailan," Old one, "what secret is he charged with keeping."
"The secret you seek to stop the war," the Kailan swayed a minute, blinking heavily, "Each generation is charged with the secret, kept safe, hidden, ignorance is bliss you see."
Quona Lyonas twisted his head peering at the old Soua strangely. Then he noted the nearly spike obscured crest between his brows, a stylized sun, "You are as Oona's line?"
"You will find your answers, Al Eesan Lyonas," he added nodding gradually, "But you must look to the south gate, the twins do not just mark the exit, but the source as well. One twin is the stronger and one the weaker. The weaker points the way to your answers."
The twins were the trees that had been laced together to mark the exit to the south of the city, but he had been through those many times and had never seen any artifact or hint of another storage or other repository.
"We were not always of the trees, of the stars; the ground speeding beneath our feet was the rhythm of our lives. For a time we were the watchdogs, until Noora, until the uprising. Look to those names and the key will be presented to you."
"My gratitude Kailan," Quona said, "But why, if you were once charged with the secret, are you now pointing me on my way?"
"All lies must be revealed for balance to resume here," the Kailan muttered, "My peace will not come unless it is so. This world will die and our lines with it, if we continue to blind ourselves. The Noranai command it to be so."
"But Oona?"
"He moves on his own agenda."
That did not surprise Lyonas in the least, "But, Kailan, why can you not tell me now what this secret is?"
He merely shook his head, "You have need of proof…proof that a Kailan such as myself cannot be. I will only be undermined, shunned for feebleness, and made to throw myself on my sword. The evidence, the proof that you seek is as I have said. Look to the south gate, and all will be revealed."
The Kailan turned and stepped feebly away from the dwelling, leaving Quona Lyonas more confused than ever. He was anxious and hopeful as well, a seed of progress had been planted. And if the Kailan could be trusted perhaps he would have the answers finally, perhaps he could end the war before it became entrenched and threatened Soua annihilation.
A/N: Finally! I got it where I wanted it to go (Balking all the way! BLEH!) Another fairly short chapter..but now we get to swap back over to the story line I have been dying to get to! Straight up...Courtney, Gerard, and Gui'Yata back on Earth... and the trials that await them there. Courtney gets more than one surprise she isn't prepared for...Uh HUH! I'm not telling...you'll just have to guess!
Hope you like this...it was hard because it was setting up for later when we do find out just what lies beyond the South Gate of Donona. Let me know what you think!
Gotta bounce!
Darwin
