The Cedna (Tales of Blood & Light Book 2) (3 page)

A
fter
the ritual
, Ikselian supervised me like a hostage, forcing me to sleep in her tent, preventing me from going out while the Elders debated what to do with the most unlikely Cedna the Iksraqtaq had ever had. Judgments seeped through the thick wool of the summer tent. I didn’t need to see the accusing Kaluq eyes to know their hatred. It drifted on the air. They thought me tainted; they believed I was a harbinger of disaster.

That night I dreamt of the nightfires again, the ones where Mother had told stories to the Ikniq clan. Traditionally the Cedna lived in Nitaaraq with the Ikniq clan. Mother and I had dwelt there during my childhood, and while we were not exactly well loved—Mother’s mating with a sayantaq prevented that—we were not loathed as we were amongst the Kaluqs.

When the Kaluq Elders had learned that Mother was sharing the Cedna’s ancient stories, they had come west full of righteous indignation, complaining about secrecy and safety. They had brought us away from our Ikniq home to lock us in that horrible stone prison.

“No more stories, Miseliq,” they had said. “We must protect our secrets. What if the sayantaq southerners learn about our way of life? Stories spread, and soon everyone wants to hear them. We must hold our secrets safe to protect Gante and our magic. Without our magic, we cannot live.”

The Elders brooked no argument with their edicts. To live in a cold and desperate place, rules had to be followed: wood and meat stockpiled for winter, clothing made according to standards to bar the cold, Elders obeyed without resistance. We were not taught to question. We were all expected to make any necessary sacrifice to keep magic alive, and the Cedna most of all.

In the morning Ikselian breezed through the tent flap, dark eyes snapping. “I am sending you and Atanurat to study with Urasuq. You must make your sacred ulio; every Cedna must have one, though I doubt you have the skill to make a good one. It is appalling, how little you know of Iksraqtaq ways. You are as sayantaq as a southerner.”

I scowled and I stood up straight, towering over Ikselian. Ganteans tended towards low stature, though their bodies were wiry and strong. My southern blood made me an exception. I was taller than any Kaluq clanswoman, but as slender as a wisp of mist.

Ikselian mocked me for my ignorance, but I knew plenty about Iksraqtaq ways. The Cedna’s arcane knowledge, passed to me by Skeleton Woman in the ritual the night before, was full of Gantean histories, Gantean rituals, Gantean magics, Gantean stories. Ikselian had no right to call me sayantaq—cooked—a hopelessly ruined state for a Gantean.

Though it was true that my hands could not twist a rope or stitch a seam. I did not know the vital skills most young Ganteans learned: how to gut a fish or weave a net or flense blubber from flesh. But Ikselian herself had prevented me from learning by locking me up with my mother instead of letting me join a tiguat like any other Gantean child!

“Urasuq will teach you how to knapp the blackstone,” Ikselian said. “You and Atanurat will go to his tapiat tomorrow.”

U
rasuq
,
the Kaluq master knapper, lived in a tapiat house, a stone-lined network of tunnels and underground rooms dug into the earth for warmth in winter. Ikselian, Atanurat, and I stood before the entrance. I wore a new set of sealskins and new boots, the first clothes I’d ever had that fit me.

The dawn sky glowed lavender overhead. Kaluq fishermen moved quietly in the distance, hurrying down the bluffs towards the sea. Ikselian had dragged me from sleep straight into the crepuscular half-light and the morning’s chill. Atanurat looked fresh and fully awake, of course.

The wooden door of the knapper’s tapiat flew open to reveal a hunched old man. Deep furrows creased his face, as though he had spent years scowling. He glared at me with open loathing.

“Come in,” he said.

Ikselian and Atanurat hurried in from the cold, but I did not move. I had never liked the stone cavern where the Elders had forced me to live with my mother, and I did not like this tapiat, either, with its dim light and its earthbound walls bolstered by thick stones. Tight spaces unnerved me. I’d rather be cold above ground than warm beneath it. Ikselian clasped my wrist and hauled me forward.

Urasuq led us into a wide chamber, though the ceiling—if earth could be called that—remained within reach over my head.

“Are you ready to learn the path of the blade to make your sacred ulio?” Urasuq asked me.

Pride wanted to retort that I didn’t need his instruction, but prudence restrained me.

The old man’s hands and forearms were covered in scars, flecks of hard tissue where the blackstone had cut him. Knappers always suffered such injuries. My mother’s hands and arms had also been scarred, but worse, for not only had she had a blackstone shaper’s wounds, she’d also had a Cedna’s: straight, white scars that trailed up both arms from the bloodlettings. Soon I would be mutilated in this fashion, too.

I shivered despite the new cloak.

“Have you nothing to say for yourself?” Urasuq demanded, crossing his arms over his chest. Atanurat shifted from side to side, as though he might speak for me.

“Ikselian?” Urasuq asked, lifting his heavy brows at my silence.

“I warned you, master. Her mother’s influence has made her a recalcitrant creature. I do not know what to make of her. I will return for her in a moon, though I doubt she will finish her blade in that time. Perhaps she will be the only Cedna who does not manage to make one.”

Urasuq nodded Ikselian towards the exit. “I will do what I can, but I make no promises that she will succeed in my training. The boy seems more likely.”

“Yes, Atanurat is skilled,” Ikselian said. “He’ll give you no trouble.”

Urasuq turned back me. “The boy is Atanurat, but what shall I call you, girl?”

I glared at him. Everyone knew I had no name. They had never allowed me to be named, never allowed me to be given a tormaq totem, either. My mother, perhaps in an act of private defiance, had always called me “Cedna.”

Urasuq only snorted in reply to that.

U
rasuq made
us look at rocks for the first sennight. We studied them for imperfections, fissures, and crystals. He taught us to see the potential in the rock, the convexities and concavities that would allow us to shape or break the stone. Then we spent hours roughing chert spalls. The slow training galled me. I wanted to make my ulio and be done with it.

On the day we were given our first spalls to make actual blades, Urasuq handed me a piece of flint and Atanurat a spall of blackstone.

“Why does Atanurat get blackstone?” I demanded. The wind picked up my braids and tossed them over my shoulder. We worked out on the bluffs beyond the tapiat, overlooking a choppy grey sea.

“He gets blackstone because his hands have the finesse for it,” Urasuq said. “You have not shown that you have the skill. Blackstone is too precious to waste on clumsy hands. Our Gantean stone-fathers journey far to bring back this blackstone. Each piece represents a value beyond price.” He turned away from me, unimpressed. “Atanurat, today you will have your first try at making an ulio. It is a tricky combination of magic and skill. You must make only a single perfect strike on the blackstone.” Urasuq gestured the strike in the air.

My mother had once told me a shortcut for making the sacred ulio: using Skeleton Woman’s magic, reserved for Cednas. Skeleton Woman could lend her skill to my hands. Urasuq would never approve.

After Urasuq left Atanurat and me on the bluffs to work, I watched Atanurat shattering off the flakes as he tried to make his perfect strike again and again.

“Damn it!” he cried. “Urasuq will beat me for the waste.”

To my surprise, Skeleton Woman offered advice inside my head:
Your spirit hands! Your spirit hands break the rock. It is not the hammerstone. Your spirit hands slide and pull. Forget the Ijiq stone. It happens in Yaqi.

Atanurat yelped as his next strike went awry.

“Use your spirit hands,” I muttered, slamming away gracelessly on my dull flint.

“What do you know about it, anyway? You won’t get a piece of blackstone for another sennight if you can’t get your rock in better shape than
that
.” Atanurat jutted his chin at my misshapen spall.

“Flint’s harder than blackstone,” I said. I picked up my rock and my hammerstone and tried again.

The crumbled stone in my palm told me that I had ruined the spall.

“And you tell me what to do!” Atanurat laughed as I shook the stone dust onto the ground.

A
nother sennight passed
, and still Urasuq would not let me touch blackstone. I knew I was ready to work the precious material. Though Urasuq said I had to master flint first, I believed he meant to prevent me from ever making my ulio. Like Ikselian, he wanted me to fail.

A Cedna must bear an ulio knapped by her own hand. This was the reason I had been sent to Urasuq. If I could get my hands on a good chunk of blackstone and consult Skeleton Woman for assistance, I could make a blade worthy of my position. Once I’d made my sacred blade, there would be no reason to remain in Urasuq’s smoky, confining tapiat.

The blackstone spalls were stored in a cavern at the back of the tapiat. Sneaking in there would be difficult, as Urasuq slept only a few hours a night.

If I wanted to shape a blackstone blade in secret, it would have to be during those few hours.

The tapiat house was a subterranean maze of tunnels and caches. My tentative footsteps carried me to the blackstone supply in the rear cache.

I stood surrounded by glistening black spalls. I reached into the magic sense that linked me to the Cedna’s knowledge, and allowed Skeleton Woman’s hands to guide mine.

My mind went as dark as blackstone, but my hands moved like lightning, reaching, pulling, striking, in a precise choreography.

I looked down and found an ulio in my hands.

The edge was too thin to see, a blade to slice the air itself. I completed the hafting, finding a good handle in the store room, a whale’s bone that curved to fit my grip perfectly.

Blood dripped down my hands; in my trance I’d made a small incision at my wrist to provide blood to pay for the magic, but I had not cut myself by accident with the blackstone shards as Urasuq claimed I would if I tried to work blackstone too soon.

I had known that I was made to handle blackstone!

“Where were you?” Atanurat asked, sitting up in his furs as I returned to the underground room we shared for sleeping.

I slid the knife from my sleeve.

“Where did you get that?” he asked.

“I made it. I told you the way of it, but you wouldn’t listen. Now I am free of my apprenticeship, and we can leave this grim place.”

Atanurat’s forehead creased. “Skeleton Woman is consulted only for the benefit of Iksraqtaq, not for personal gain. A skill is a skill only if it is learned. Urasuq will be angry. Don’t tell him what you did.”

“Let him be angry. I am the Cedna. He should honor me instead of mocking me.”

Despite my bold words to Atanurat, I did fear Urasuq’s reaction. However, I had done the deed. If I meant to profit by it, I had to own it.

I walked out into the morning sun. In summer, dawn came early. Urasuq sat on a bluff west of the tapiat, a dark form against the pale sky. I thought he would notice the blackstone blade as I held it shimmering in the sun, but he did not even look at me.

I had gesture with the knife to get his notice. He glanced at it, eyebrows raised. “What is this?”

“My release from my apprenticeship. I have made my ulio.”

“You never made that.” He didn’t spend even two breaths examining it before he turned away.

“I did. Last night. I made this with a single strike. I have what is required. I am released from this apprenticeship.”

He pressed his lips together and pointed at the ground in front of him. “Sit down.”

I despised his tone, but I complied.

“Our Cedna must understand: all skills come first without magic. A time may come again when our Hinge unhinges and magic fades from this land. How will we make blackstone knives then, if we do not learn the way of it with our Ijiq hands? The Cedna knows many skills by virtue of her magic, but my students must live by the skills they have practiced in Ijiq as well as the gifts of Yaqi. You know what feeds the Layers. You understand the cost. You should be ashamed of yourself.” He shook his head at me. “You did not make this knife.”

“My hands honed the blade—”

“The knowledge was not yours, but rather, Hers. Must I honor the fruits of your misused magic? No.”

There would be more no discussion of the matter from Urasuq. I stalked down the path back to the tapiat house, shoving the rejected ulio into my tunic pocket.

I did not join Atanurat to work on the bluffs that day. Instead, my steps found their way back to Urasuq’s precious store of blackstone. He had at least a hundred spalls. I took one up. Then I threw it as hard as I could onto the stone wall. The glassy shatter invigorated me. I grabbed another spall and sent it flying. The breaking rocks rang out, cold and strong, like cracking ice.

Smash! Smash!
It felt so good to ruin the precious things. My body took on a reckless rhythm as I dashed spall after spall against the walls.

“Enough!” A roar cut through my joyous rage.

I released one last stone with a satisfying quiver that ran all the way into my gut. I met Urasuq’s glare.

“What have you done?” he whispered, his voice as thin and sharp as the fresh edges strewn about my feet. “This is sacred rock; our men suffered to retrieve this stone.”

“Your rocks are the hard, dead blood of my body,” I said. “I’ll do what I want with them.”

“Come here.” He struck his palm against his thigh as if bringing a dog to heel. I broke into laughter; my body shook with it, bent with it, and I grew weak from breathlessness. I fell to my knees. Blackstone bit my palms, but still I couldn’t stop laughing. I squeezed a handful of shards and threw them, leaving my hands cut and bleeding. Atanurat trammeled across the mess to my side.