Outlaw. Part 32

For a long moment Stephen stood still, hardly aware of the meaning behind those words. And yet something in him had shifted. The sounds of the jungle had faded, as had the faint, high-pitched whine that had come and gone with his remembering and forgetting.

Slowly a new awareness grew in his mind. An isolation that he'd never contended with. The dawning realization that Kirutu was right. He was alone. He didn't have a mother. Hadn't Shaka taught him this very thing?

Hadn't Shaka said that his ident.i.ty with and in the things and relationships of this world only distracted from his true ident.i.ty and could thus be his downfall?

He looked at the warriors staring back at him with vacant, dark eyes. He knew that he was forgetting something-being one with his Father-but he now felt oddly disconnected from that truth.

Here in the flesh, in the real world, he saw only rejection. And he felt only isolation. The feeling threatened to bring fear with it, so Stephen shut his eyes and took a deep breath.

It's OK. It's going to be OK.

When he looked back at Kirutu, the ruler wore a knowing grin.

"I don't belong to your world," Stephen said. "It holds no power over me."

"No? And I say that every pig will root in the mud until he finds food. Perhaps if I show you that food, you will pretend to be alive. Then I will have reason to kill you as well."

What he could mean, Stephen didn't know.

"Bring her!" Kirutu ordered to one side, expression now flat.

Two warriors emerged from around the corner, supporting a hooded woman who struggled feebly in their grasp. She was one of them and her hands were tied behind her back.

They stood her up next to Kirutu, who kept his eyes on Stephen.

"All of this valley and everything in it belong to me," the ruler said. "What I do to one, I can do to whomever I choose."

He waited a beat to let his words carry, then issued an order.

"Remove her hood."

One of the warriors jerked the hood from the woman's head. Stephen's mind put reason to what he saw before his heart could react.

Here stood Lela, hair still matted with blood. She was awake and her eyes were round with fear. If not for a gag, screams might have accompanied the tears running down her cheeks.

But he didn't need to hear her screams, he could hear her heart already. Save me, she was crying. You said you would protect me.

Before Stephen could react, Kirutu stepped behind Lela, grabbed her hair, jerked her head back, and ran a sharp bone knife across her exposed neck.

He held her still for a moment, then released his hold. Lela collapsed to the ground. Dead in her own blood.

Stephen recoiled.

Do not forget. Do not forget.

"She means nothing to you because you are dead," Kirutu said. "And yet you show fear because you mistake yourself as one who deserves a woman. You deserve nothing but your own misery. In this too you are alone."

Shaka's teachings flowed through his mind, longing to be absorbed but finding no place to rest. In their place a larger realization swelled: Lela had accepted him where these others did not. She had trusted him. He'd failed her.

"Take her!"

The two warriors grabbed her arms and dragged her around the corner, leaving Stephen numb on the path.

"In the Tulim, life is mine to give and take," Kirutu said. "I have taken the place of the shaman who once spoke the ways of the spirit. I am now ruler of this valley. The woman you call your mother believed that by giving me her life, she spared yours. But she only sentenced both of you to death. Now you both live at my whim."

"No," Stephen said.

Eyes fixed on him, Kirutu lifted his hand and motioned with two fingers. "Come."

A woman slowly stepped into the daylight from the dark entry above Kirutu. A white woman dressed in a top and a short skirt, both woven from strands of palm thread. Her skin was luminous and her dark hair long, and Stephen knew immediately that he was looking at his mother.

She stood on the landing, tall and brave, arms at her sides, staring down at him. He hadn't prepared himself, not knowing what to prepare for, but looking at her now, he could see his face in hers. His skin on her body. His eyes in her face.

Eyes that brimmed with tears as she gazed down at him.

His mother slowly descended the steps, walking upright, holding her head steady. There was a bruise on her right arm...two more on her legs. No cuts that he could see.

Her fingers were trembling as she set her feet on the path and stepped forward. Stephen stood still, at a loss. But he didn't have time to consider the matter because she was suddenly rushing forward.

Her face twisted and tears streamed from her eyes as she reached him. The woman who was his mother threw her arms around him, pressed her cheek against his chest, and clung to him as if he were her flesh.

"Thank G.o.d...thank G.o.d...you're alive. You're alive. You're alive."

She was speaking in the language Shaka had taught him. The tongue of his mother.

She pulled back and looked up into his eyes. "You're alive." She touched his arms, his shoulders, his neck, drew her thumb over his cheek, nearly frantic in her thirst to know that her eyes did not deceive her.

He'd never felt so treasured as he did in that moment. It was as though she lived only for him. And now he stood before her, flesh of her flesh.

"You're healthy?" she asked. "He took good care of you?"

Stephen wasn't prepared for the emotions that rose through his chest at her question. A whole new world blossomed in his consciousness. Where he'd felt a desire to be close to Lela, he felt perfectly as one with this woman.

She was the one who'd given him birth. Who'd submitted herself to life under Kirutu's brutality so that he could live.

So that she could live through him.

And yet upon her seeing him alive, her only concern was for him.

The details of her story, merely fascinating only two nights ago, now flooded Stephen's mind with vibrant life. In that moment he became his mother's son. Wholly and without reservation.

"I'm your son," he said, speaking her tongue.

She blinked, eyes wrinkled with smiling grat.i.tude. "You remember me?"

He somehow did, if not in his mind, in his bones.

"I read what you wrote."

"So you know."

"You will come with me?" he asked.

"No." Fresh tears spilled from her eyes. "No, I can't come now. In their eyes you are Outlaw."

Stephen felt the crushing weight of that single word as if it were a boulder dropped from heaven. He felt his fingers tremble at his sides. Why, he didn't know. She was his mother; he was her son. Yet he was Outlaw. Unworthy to be with her.

"You are well?" he asked.

"Don't worry about me," she said.

But the bruises on her body suggested he should.

She glanced over her shoulder at Kirutu, who seemed content to let them speak, which confused Stephen in the wake of his harsh words.

His mother turned back, speaking now in a whisper. "I have dreams, Stephen. I can only remember parts of them when I wake, but they keep me alive. They are something beautiful. A great love. Shaka taught you how to love?"

"He taught me many things..."

"You must remember his words! They're from beyond all that you see, like Shaka himself. You must not give in to the thoughts that will tear you apart."

She knew, then.

"There isn't time, sweetheart." His mother placed her hand on his chest and gazed up into his eyes. "Promise your mother you'll remember. Promise me."

"Enough," Kirutu said.

Enough? Fear swiped at Stephen's mind, threatening to pull him into its prison.

"I beg you, Stephen. You have to remember, because I can't. It's the only way."

"Enough!"

She backed away from him, eyes pleading. "Don't give in to the fear. I beg you!"

Kirutu stepped up from behind and struck her jaw, sending her staggering.

"Enough!"

He grabbed her hair and pulled her up against him.

"Find the light," his mother said.

But Stephen could see no light now.

The warriors on either side closed in next to their ruler. Kirutu brought his knife up to her exposed throat and pressed the blade into her skin, deep enough to draw blood.

"You have no mother because you are dead. The dead feast only on bones. It would be this woman's bones that I feed you."

The world had darkened and his mind was spinning, taunting him with a terrible fear. He couldn't leave her in this monster's house.

Three paces to Kirutu's right, Lela's blood still soaked the ground. The bodies he'd pa.s.sed upon entering the compound still hung from their perches. Tulim was a valley of death, and the mother who had given her life for him was in its grasp. She too would die. Of this Stephen suddenly had no doubt.

"You will leave this valley and the mountain on which you hide, never to return. Know that she will serve me as I see fit, as she has. She too is dead."

Stephen's self-control was slipping, he could feel it, like silt being drawn by a deep current, pulled toward open waters.

A very faint voice at the back of his mind suggested that Kirutu was playing him, taunting him, daring him to react. But the warning was already distant, a voice far out from the sh.o.r.e. And then gone. In its place Stephen heard only the rush of blood in his ears.

Kirutu lifted his blade and swiped it against his mother's cheek, leaving a bleeding gash in her flesh.

She gasped with pain, and Stephen felt something in his mind snap. Only one thought remained.

Save her.

And with that thought, a hundred emotions he'd long mastered overtook him. To save his mother he had to terminate the threat against her.

Kirutu. And the warriors at his side. Those who'd subjected her to endless abuse because she'd given herself to save her son.

All of this came to him in a single blink of his eyes, exploding into his awareness like a ball of fire that consumed his mind.

With that awareness, only one impulse.

To kill.

Chapter Twenty-eight.

HIS BODY moved without forethought, overtaken by the instincts that Shaka had nurtured in him. Exact movement and calculation of forces, isolating muscles for their most efficient purpose, directing nerves to trigger with precision.

Since being taken by Shaka as an infant, Stephen had been in contact with no other man, much less lifted a hand to harm one. But these were no longer men in his mind. They were simply forces of darkness aligned against his mother. Black bodies inhabited by evil.

They were death itself, and his mother was in their grasp.

He had taken three long running steps directly toward Kirutu before he realized that he was moving. But Kirutu couldn't be his first target. The man had his mother by her hair and a knife at her throat.

If directly threatened he might kill her. If not he would keep her alive as leverage. Stephen needed his mother alive. And he needed a weapon.

He didn't know how this logic came to him-he was simply aware of it, knowing Kirutu's animal instinct as well as the air he breathed.

Already at a full sprint, he veered sharply to his left, directly toward two warriors already throwing their spears. Stephen saw the shafts leave their hands and he saw it slowly, the way Shaka had taught him to watch thousands of his own projectiles travel to their intended targets. If properly focused, the mind could more accurately perceive.