Chapter 6 The Highlanders
It took a full day for Wataru’s hangover to mend. By the time his headache, dizziness, and nausea subsided and he was able to eat again, Kee Keema returned from his trip to Sakawa.
“Never have I been so surprised in all my days!” the waterkin announced, clapping his hands furiously and literally bouncing in his chair. His loud voice echoed through the lodge. “I made it between Gasara and Sakawa in record time, I did. Yet still, in a few days, you managed to not only tangle with Kutz the Rosethorn but become the hero of Gasara!”
“I didn’t do anything so amazing,” Wataru said. “Just the sort of thing they’re always doing in the TV mysteries my mom watches.”
“TV mysteries?” Kee Keema said, cocking his head. “Something from the other world? Anyway, Kutz wanted you to come down to the branch when you were feeling better. So let’s get going!”
Down at the branch they found not only Kutz waiting for them but the tiger-man Trone and a wizened man with long whiskers that Wataru hadn’t met before. He looked like a goat. Must be another -kin, Wataru thought. His eyes were gentle and sparkling with intelligence.
“This is High Chief Gil, responsible for all thirteen Highlander branches in the land of Nacht.”
High Chief Gil reacted to Kutz’s rigid introduction with a warm smile, as he took Wataru’s hands into his own. “Quite impressive to stand up to two violent criminals like that at your young age, my brave Traveler.”
“If Kutz hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t have stood up to much,” Wataru admitted. “I was wondering, what happened to the wounded girl, the kitkin?”
It was Kutz who answered. “She needed more stitches after the fracas in her room, so now she’s resting. Give her a few weeks and she’ll mend up nicely, I think.” Then she grinned. “Her name’s Meena, by the way.”
Wataru’s face reddened. “I gathered from what they said that she was helping them…she wasn’t going along with their plans willfully, I hope?”
Kutz glanced at the Highlander official. Gil, still sitting, leaned toward Wataru. “Indeed. Those two boys threatened her and made her help them steal. She pretended to be a victim to save you, in fact. How did you know?”
Wataru explained how he had put it all together: the girl whispering “I’m sorry,” how she could have used her tail to cut her own back with a knife, and how he realized if he claimed to know who the criminals were, they would suspect Meena had ratted them out and come to get her.
“That’s some brain you got, Wataru!” Kee Keema said, clapping his hands. “Why I could be as old and grizzled as the Elder, and I’d never come up with that!”
Wataru didn’t bother explaining that co-conspirators pretending to be victims were a pretty common plot twist in the TV shows his mom watched.
“You want to meet them?” Kutz said, standing up and dangling a ring of cell keys in her hand. Wataru quickly followed after her.
“It turns out they’re both refugees from the north,” Kutz explained as they walked down the hall. “Five years ago, when they were nine and eight years old, they paid a smuggler to take them and their parents on a merchant ship crossing the sea. Sadly, the ship ran into trouble, and their parents died. These two washed up on the shore near Bog and moved to a refugee camp. Apparently they didn’t care for life there, so they escaped and began their career as thieves. They’ve been moving from place to place, stealing and worse, for about a year now.”
“I don’t get it. They risked their lives to cross over here, only to become thieves? Why?”
“Ask them yourself.”
The two were being kept in the same tiny cell that Wataru himself had been thrown in when he was the suspect. One was lying down on the bed, but the other—the older of the two, Wataru thought—was sitting on the floor, and his eyes gleamed when he saw Wataru in the doorway.
“Having fun, boys?” Kutz asked cheerfully. “I brought you a friend. He went through quite a lot on your account. Thought you might want to apologize to him, hmm?”
The sitting boy looked to the side and spat on the floor. The boy on the bed sat up and glared at Wataru. Seeing them in the light of day, Wataru realized he had seen them before that night. During the day, when everyone had been visiting him at the lodge after he claimed to know the identity of the criminals, they had been there, standing apart from the onlookers.
They looked better fed now than they had been then, for sure, but their eyes were still hungry.
Trone appeared at the end of the hallway and began walking toward them when the older of the two leapt suddenly to his feet, grabbed the bars to the cell and began shouting. “Keep that stinking foul beast away from us! I don’t want his stench in our room!”
Shocked, Wataru took a step backward. Trone kept walking toward them, grinning broadly. On the other side of the bars, both of the boys were standing up now, spitting and raging.
“See?” Trone said, coming to stand beside Wataru. “They risked their lives to escape from the north, yet inside their hearts, they’re still living firmly within the borders of the Empire.”
In the Northern Empire, the dominant ankha had decided that other races were inferior and without value, Trone explained. They imprisoned and killed his kind for the slightest offense.
“Oh be quiet, you two,” Kutz snapped. “If you don’t like it in there, I’m happy to send you back up north.”
Kutz’s words only agitated them further. “You look like one of us, but you smell like one of them,” the older boy growled.
“Death to you all!” his brother joined in.
“I’m afraid the one on its way out is your empire, not us,” Kutz said, almost sorrowfully. “By pushing the non-ankha out of the way, you’re ignoring so many resources, so much potential.”
“Shut up, beast-lover! All of you together don’t add up to one of us!” the older brother shouted.
Wataru took a step closer to the bars. “Where did you find Meena? What did you threaten her with?”
The brothers looked at each other for a moment, then pointed their fingers at Wataru and laughed uproariously.
“Stop that!” Wataru shouted.
The older brother’s face suddenly went serious. He stepped up to the bars and muttered something in a low, poisonous voice.
“What did you say?” Wataru asked, leaning closer.
The boy spat on his face at point-blank range.
“Ack!”
As Wataru wiped his face, the brothers laughed again. “Just watch. When we ankha have brought the south together, you’ll all be sent to the camps. You can lick our boots three times a day for your meals.”
“Boots?” The younger brother said, howling with laughter. “You mean butts! They can all live in our latrine and eat whatever drops down!”
Trone put his hand on Wataru’s shoulder. “Back to the office.”
Wataru nodded. Kutz stood a while longer, looking with weary eyes at the two boys before turning to follow.
“I’ve heard about conditions up there from refugees, but still…” Kutz frowned as she collapsed in her chair. “Even if it’s all true, what makes boys like that tick, I wonder?”
“You’re seeing the shallow pool that is us, Kutz,” said Gil. “Sadly, we all have it in our natures to be like them.”
It was true that the Northern Empire had suffered greatly due to its discriminatory policies against non-ankha peoples. Their workforce had dwindled, and their strength had weakened. Things were so bad, they couldn’t even grow enough food to feed their own people, the high chief explained to Wataru. “There are formal trade agreements drawn between the North and the South. Only the agreed-upon amounts of food and supplies may be exchanged. Still, that does not cover their need, nor do the supplies reach all the peoples of the north.”
So northern merchants had formed alliances with treaty-breaking smugglers in the south and lined their pockets with black-market trade.
“But of course, this contraband entering the North is far overpriced, again, not reaching the hands of those who need it most. Thus, the refugees come.”
“So who exactly lives well in the Northern Empire?” Wataru asked.
“A circle of privileged elites,” the Highlander replied slowly. “The family of the current Emperor Agrilius VII, nobles, politicians, officials, and the wealthier merchants.”
Gil nodded in the direction of the holding cell. “My bet is that the parents of those two boys belonged to that elite class. That’s the only way they would have been able to raise the funds necessary to purchase passage to the south. Not too high-class, of course. Perhaps the father was a petty official of some kind. I would assume some venture of his didn’t pan out, and washed up, he found himself unable to stay where he was.”
“You’d think they would come here and absorb what was different from the empire in the north. Why can’t they let go of their prejudices?”
The official’s lip curled in a faint smile. “Not all refugees from the North are like those two brothers, you know.”
“Yes, of course, but…”
“Failure and disillusionment are realities, but ideologies are made of dreams. And dreams, it would seem, do not fade easily,” the high chief explained. “Those two could not find success in the North with its prejudiced system. Yet still, those ideas were burned into their hearts from a young age. Such things are hard to give up. That is why, even though they may change their location to the south, those same ideas stick with them here. Doubtlessly, they would like to claw their way up to being privileged elites in our land and repeat the same mistakes their parents made.”
“Stupid,” Wataru spat.
“Stupid, indeed. As foolish as the North’s policy of discrimination against non-ankha. Yet, Wataru,” the Highlander leaned forward, his voice still calm, “that which is foolish is sometimes far stronger than that which is right, possessing an uncanny power to move men’s hearts. And foolish ideas have always found easy purchase on small parts, hearts with holes, hearts like hollow, barren trees waiting to be filled.”
In the corner, Trone nodded. “We in the United Southern Nations, we Highlanders do not fear the Northern Empire. But we fear the ideas they bring to our land. Like a plague, they cannot be seen with the eye. But they afflict not those who are weak of body but those who are weak of mind.”
Wataru remembered the drunkard at the lodge, how he had said those things about Kee Keema, yet quailed at the slightest word from the little lady.
“By the way, Chief,” Kutz said, tapping Gil on the shoulder. “Think it’s time to tell Wataru?”
His eyes went wide. “Of course! I had almost forgotten.”
Gil looked between Wataru and Kee Keema. “Wataru, as a Traveler you have a great journey ahead of you. You go to meet the Goddess, yes?”
“Yes.”
“You will need funds for your journey, then. So, you must find a way to earn them. It just so happens I have an idea.” Here, the Highlander official grinned. “I was hoping you would join us. You would perform tasks for the Highlanders, and for that you would be rewarded, even as you travel. You can even use our branches in other lands to help gather information about the tower you seek. It is like two birds with one stone, yes?”
Wataru glanced up at Kee Keema. The waterkin’s long tongue went whistling out to lick the top of his head. He looked as surprised as Wataru felt.
“But, he’s just a kid,” he said. “Isn’t he a little young to become a Highlander? I mean, it’s quite dangerous…”
“Yet he has already proved himself on one case, has he not? I believe he is qualified. And you will accompany him on his journey, yes?”
Kee Keema broke into a smile. “Of course! I’ve just received the chief’s permission!”
“Really, Kee Keema?” Wataru asked. “You’ll come with me?”
“You bet!” Kee Keema shouted, picking up Wataru and placing him on his shoulders as he had when they first met in the grassland. “I’ll be with you through thick and thin, as far as the road takes us!”
“Then it is decided,” said the Highlander chief.
Once the high chief had left—rather in a hurry—to some meeting of the United Southern Nations, Wataru was officially introduced to the members of the Gasara branch for the first time. Kutz was the head of the branch, with Trone her deputy, and beneath them were three other Highlanders. One was the large ankha that Wataru had seen before. Another was a waterkin, somewhat shorter than Kee Keema, and the third was a leaperkin—a sort of rabbitlike fellow with long ears.
“You sure had a rough introduction to our town, didn’t you, shorty,” the leaperkin Highlander said. “Kutz is always taking things too far, if you ask me. I mean, it was a good plan to use you as a decoy to catch the real criminals, but building a gallows like that…”
“That’s enough out of you,” Kutz snapped. Wataru looked at her in surprise.
“I was a decoy? You mean you really weren’t going to hang me?”
Kutz frowned. “Please, we do have trials and due process in our world. We’re not complete barbarians.”
Wataru burst into laughter. Pretty soon everyone in the room was laughing with him.
“Well now, it feels a bit backward telling you this, but you should know a bit about our history. You see, the Highlanders began in the southeast of this continent, in a place called the Ghoza Highlands,” Kutz explained. “There is a legend too.”
In the distant past, the legend went, when the Goddess created the world out of chaos, she had with her a great firewyrm, to defend her from those creatures of chaos that sought to foil her works. When the creation was complete, she thanked the firewyrm by bestowing upon him the form of a man. Taking the dragon skin he had shed, she made from it armor and a helmet. Bequeathing these to him, she made him a knight, and sent him out upon the land.
“The knight first arrived in the Ghoza Highlands, and there began to live among other people. His descendants were all brave, and given to great virtue, and in the many years that followed they spread across the land until the name ‘Highlander’ became synonymous with one who is brave and just.”
This was the origin of the Highlander name. It was even said that the small militia that first took the title was formed from none other than descendants of the firewyrm knight himself.
“Thus do we all wear the band of the firewyrm,” Kutz said, raising her left hand and showing him the red leather strap on her wrist. “It is the sign of membership, and also, a warning.”
Should a Highlander forget his calling and fall into disgrace, dirtying his hands with evil, then it was said that the band of the firewyrm would blaze and sear his flesh.
“These are yours,” Kutz said, handing out two red wristbands. “Place them on your left wrist, and stand straight. Then put your left hand upon your chest, raise your right, and swear after me.”
Everyone formed a circle. Kutz’s voice was loud and clear in the silence.
“Goddess Creator, we are those who receive the will of the firewyrm, protectors of the code, hunters of the truth. We who come before you now bow at your feet, Goddess, give to you our souls, and swear a solemn oath. To despise that which is evil, to save that which is weak, to drive back the chaos, and stand true as steel, until our bodies fall to dust, we will walk hand in hand, following always the star of righteousness.”
When Wataru and Kee Keema had finished repeating the oath, Kutz smiled. “Welcome to the family!”
For several days after that, Wataru joined Trone on walks around the town of Gasara, learning the duties of the patrol and searching for information about the gemstones and the Mirror of Truth. Kee Keema, hearing about some wounded gimblewolves escaping from the Knights of Stengel, set out on a hunt with the other members.
“I’ll see what I can find out from other Highlanders,” he promised.
As he walked around town, Wataru was impressed with the sheer number of people who came through the place every day. Yet no matter how many people he asked, he never received any information that seemed relevant to his quest. “No need to be in such a hurry,” Trone laughed, consoling him. But Wataru couldn’t help but feel that his time was limited. Now that plans were laid for his journey across Vision, he thought even more about his mother. Is she okay? What did she think when I went missing? Maybe they all think I disappeared like Kenji and his gang did.
He knew she would be worried. He just hoped she hadn’t given up.
Word came that the wounded gimblewolves were roaming together in one large pack, and Kee Keema and the others didn’t come back for some time. Kutz, left behind at the branch to continue the interrogation of the brothers, wanted nothing more than to join them on the hunt. She spent her days in a foul mood, muttering about how the Knights of Stengel weren’t fit to round up a coop of chickens, let alone a pack of feral gimblewolves.
“Kutz is a dyed-in-the-wool Highlander, you see. She doesn’t place much faith in this knightly order the United Southern Nations cooked up.” So Trone had told Wataru in a quiet voice that evening while writing the day’s patrol report. “You see, the Knights of Stengel are under the direct control of the Senate, and compared to us Highlanders, they’re newcomers. Nor are they all warriors as their title would make one think. Some of them are scholars too. Why, their captains are also senators in the Union.”
Sitting back, Trone pushed up his glasses and folded his thick arms in front of his chest. “Of course, they did that on purpose, to ensure the Knights would remain loyal to the Senate…but most senators are decrepit old politicians—certainly not what you’d expect for the captain of a knightly order. In other words, were something big to happen, it’s not likely the captain would pick up a sword and go to battle. It’s an honorary post, you might say. And Kutz, well, she’s a pragmatist. She won’t stand for decorative posts and titles without substance, if you know what I mean.
“Within the Knights of Stengel,” Trone continued, “there is a special division of peacekeepers, much like us Highlanders, called the Lancers. Each region has two units responsible for it, but because their jurisdiction ranges over the entire southern continent, they often travel quite a bit more than we do. It’s a hard task they have, no doubt about it.”
“And they’re made up of different races, like the Highlanders?”
For some reason, Trone hesitated in his response. “Well, not actually. There are other races within the Knights of Stengel, especially the scholarly types, but the Lancers are all ankha.”
“Why?”
Wataru thought that was a shame. Surely the winged karulakin would be ideally suited as a mobile strike force for the Lancers.
“It’s politics, really,” Trone said, stroking the ridge of his nose with a finger. “See, ankha are the most numerous race in Vision. You could put all the other races together in a group, and the ankha would still outnumber us six to four. They are the majority, and we’re the minorities. That sort of thing carries weight in the Senate.”
Not that this had anything to do with Wataru, Trone explained. “The real reason Kutz doesn’t like the Knights of Stengel is, well, she just can’t abide people who think they’re so important.”
Trone paused, and then added in a whisper, “That, and a long time ago she got dumped by a certain Captain Ronmel of the First Lancers division. Ever since then…”
“What was that, Trone?!” Kutz shouted, shooting him a look sharper than the tip of her whip. Trone jerked back so fast his glasses fell off his nose.
“Uh-oh! Let’s be going, Wataru. We need to meet with the doctor down at the hospital.”
That morning, the town guard had opened the main gates to find a merchant from Bog lying on the ground outside. It caused quite a commotion. The man himself said it was food poisoning, but the opinion of the doctor was that it could be some sort of plague, so they had him secluded in a hut outside the town walls. At the hospital, the doctor seemed busy as ever, but when Trone and Wataru showed up, he smiled.
“Well, it’s not the plague.”
“That’s good news.”
“Yes, but I was wondering if you might talk to the merchant for me?” The doctor continued, speaking quietly so the other patients wouldn’t overhear. “He says he grew sick to his stomach after drinking water from a well outside town.”
His symptoms, the doctor explained, were not unlike the plague he had feared, but also resembled the effects of drinking a solution used to keep insects off fruit trees.
Trone’s whiskers perked up. “Do you think someone might have poisoned the well?”
The doctor put a finger to his lips for silence. “I can’t imagine why anyone would do such a thing. But the merchant, that’s what he thought. Though he did say the water tasted fine.”
“Where is this well?” Wataru asked. For moment, he worried it was the well at the oasis where he had met Kee Keema. “Shouldn’t we put a lid on it so no one will drink the water until we get to the bottom of this?”
“Absolutely, let’s make haste.”
The merchant, still in his isolation hut, looked pale and was in some pain, but he was able to speak. The well from which he had drunk was not the one Wataru had visited, but an ancient, half-buried well at the base of some low rocky hills to the east of town. The merchant claimed he had never drunk water from there before, but with the heat that day, he hadn’t had a choice.
“The hills to the east…” Trone muttered, scratching his chin. “That’s an odd place for a merchant from Bog to be passing through.”
The merchant scratched his head. “To tell the truth, I heard a rumor that a treasure was buried out there. Normally, I just travel the roads between Bog and Sasaya. This is my first time in these parts.”
A merchant whom he shared a room with in an inn on the Sasaya border had told him that the ruins of a church could be found at the base of the hills east of Gasara, and all the treasures that the believers had once donated were still lying there, untouched for many years.
Trone made a sour face at the merchant. “Then I’m sorry to say you’ve been duped. I know the ruins of which you speak, but there’s no treasure to be found there. It wasn’t the sort of church to ask donations of its believers.”
“It just asked for their undying faith?”
“Quite the opposite. It asked for their lives.”
The merchant yelped.
“Is that a church of the Old God?” Wataru asked.
“No. Its teachings were not those of the Old God, nor those of our Goddess. Long story short, the whole thing was a lie.”
Ten years before, a traveling man by the name of Cactus Vira had briefly visited the town of Gasara and opened up shop, claiming to be a doctor. He was soon revealed to be a sham, and the branch chief at the time apprehended him and tossed him out of town. That’s when he dug a foundation at the base of the low hills to the east and built a hut, where he went into business again, claiming he could cure any ailment by the power of holy water given him by the ancient gods.
“Suspicious, to say the least. The branch apprehended him several times, but he always seemed to find a way to escape. As soon as they turned around, he’d be back doing the same old things. Over time he accumulated more victims, or should I say believers, and one day they began building their church.”
“So are these ancient gods older than the Old God?”
“Not sure. I believe the story went that they were deities from some other world.”
Once the church was built, Cactus Vira was installed as its pastor, and the believers began to worship him. Many of them took up residence in the hills around the church. They cut fields out of the barren soil, and brought their produce into Gasara, where they traded for daily necessities. Yet industrious as they were, they were very poor, and all of them—woman, child, and elder alike—were rail-thin.
“Since most of them had come at the promise of a cure-all, many of them were elderly or sick to start with. It had always been impossible to support the church merely through the efforts of its believers.”
Wataru remembered having heard news of something similar happening in the real world. How had that ended?
“Still, the believers were a tight group, and it was hard for the Gasara branch to know when the time was good to step in. Then one day, flames were spotted rising from the church. The Highlanders hurried to the scene, but they were too late…”
Hand in hand, the believers stood inside the burning church. Even as the timbers fell about them, they continued to sing the songs of praise to Cactus Vira.
“They did all they could to put out the flames, but the church had been built by amateurs, and it quickly collapsed. The bodies of the faithful were everywhere.”
Since all the corpses were badly burned, they were never able to identify the body of Cactus Vira. Even the branch didn’t know how many people had been living in the church commune by the end.
“Cactus Vira may have met his maker that day, or he may have escaped. Nobody knows for sure.”
It didn’t seem like the kind of place one would find a treasure, that was for sure. The merchant stared out into space, frowning. “But the man I talked to, he said that he passed by those hills at night, and he saw something glittering—a gem—giving off a light among the ruins of the church, making everything around it as bright as day.”
Trone chuckled. “Sounds like a great yarn to me. It would take a mighty big gem to glitter that bright!”
“He didn’t say how large it was, only that it was the most beautiful gemstone he had ever seen.”
“Gemstone?!” Wataru said, leaping to his feet.
Trone shook his head. “Don’t jump to conclusions. It’s just a rumor. And we don’t even have the source here to confirm it with.”
“Yeah, but we should check it out, all the same. We have to go seal up that well anyway, right? Let’s go, now!”