Matabar

The snow crunched underfoot as they walked. It greedily swallowed their footsteps, sinking a few centimeters with every step they took. It also left diamond-like ice crystals all over their heavy boots, causing them to shimmer in the starlight. Shaia shivered and reached for her face, but just in time, she remembered Grandpa’s warning and refrained from rubbing her tearstained cheeks. Instead, she clutched tightly at the bundle of woolen blankets and rags from which small, barely perceptible clouds of steam occasionally escaped.

"Just a little farther, my dear," came a voice from the darkness. The wind, joyfully welcoming the mountain winter, was whipping up swirls of snow dust, making it nearly impossible for Shaia to see the figure ahead of her. "Hang on. We’re almost there."

And perhaps that was why it seemed to her like there, in the shimmering darkness, amid all the snow and the sparse, low trees, her husband Hector was walking with his head held high. Shaia quickened her pace, now almost knee-deep in the cold and damp, reaching out with her hand and her whole body, but in the end, she only brushed the fur on the hood of a slightly hunched old man carrying her firstborn in his arms.

No, it was all just an illusion…

Hector Egobar had been lying under a rock for several hours now, near the place Shaia had, until recently, called home. But what kind of home was it if your husband didn’t return to it, if your children’s laughter no longer echoed through it, and if there was nothing left... Just a cold hearth, rotten floorboards and empty rooms. Rooms as empty as a significant part of Shaia’s own heart...

"Ardi will be fine," Grandpa repeated.

They’d found him a few hours after Hector and the new Sheriff had descended the mountain and headed for Evergale. He was so cold, pale, and had traces of blood on his face and hands. He looked so small and shriveled. His cheeks glistened with frozen tears, etched there in crimson streaks.

When Shaia had first seen her son, it had felt like she’d forgotten how to breathe. The air had been knocked out of her lungs, and like a fish caught in a net, she’d silently opened and closed her mouth over and over in shock. Then, weakened by childbirth and worry, she’d picked up the boy, who was both too big for his age and as light as a feather, and ran.

At that moment, holding her eldest son in her arms, she had known. Clearly and unmistakably, without any doubt or vain hope, she had realized one thing:

Her husband was dead.

A few hours later, the Sheriff and the others who’d carried Hector’s broken body up the mountain had confirmed it. Shaia had looked at his pale skin, at his eyes that had almost popped out of their sockets, at his swollen tongue that had hung from his mouth like a whip, at the dried foam at the corners of his lips. But even then, she’d still seen her beloved husband. The one who...

She shook her head.

Shaia couldn’t afford any more tears and grief. That would come later. Not now.

"We have no other choice," the old man in front of her seemed to be answering her thoughts.

His feet didn’t sink into the snow. His skin didn’t turn blue under the onslaught of the northern wind. He was walking through this high mountain blizzard as easily as a lord strolling from one salon to another.

Shaia held the sleeping Erti in her arms and somehow envied her youngest son. Wrapped in warmth and comfort, he didn’t yet know how cruel and harsh the world around them was. How it greedily consumed every little ounce of joy. How it resembled the night sky — an endless darkness occasionally pierced by shards of light. Light that no longer seemed so bright to Shaia.

Everything around her had paled. Faded. Darkened. It was as if the colors that had once filled her home and all of the Alcade were also mourning the loss of their last hunter.

"I could work more," Shaia didn’t have the strength to shout over the howling mountain wind, but she knew Grandpa would hear her. "Not only as a seamstress, but also as a laundress and a cook and-"

"And who will raise Ertan?" Grandpa interrupted her. Despite the storm, the wind and the lack of air at such a height, Shaia heard his voice clearly. It was almost as if they were sitting in the kitchen again, drinking flower tea and talking about something insignificant, but oh so pleasant. Only... there was no tea, no kitchen, and this conversation cut into the woman’s soul like knives. "I can’t do it, Shaia... You know that."

Ertan...

Grandpa had never, as far as Shaia could remember, called her eldest son by the name Hector had given him. He’d always said that the wind could catch a word and carry it to the ears of those who should not know one’s given name.

"Maybe the blood of the Matabar is just dormant within him, maybe-"

"Maybe," Grandpa interrupted again. "Or maybe not... I am getting weaker with each passing day, Shaia. I can feel it."

The old man stopped so abruptly that Shaia almost bumped into her guide through the cold and darkness. And by the Face of Light, in that brief moment, as she found herself within arm’s reach of his wizened, hunched back, something inside her started whispering treacherously:

Stop.

Reach out.

Push him.

Take your son.

Run.

Run!

But there was nowhere to run. Shaia had never thought of herself as weak. And she never had been. But in her thirty years of life, she had learnt all too well that this world, at least here in the southern prairies, belonged to the strongest. She, who had barely survived a difficult childbirth, who had lost her breadwinner, and who only knew how to sew clothes, couldn’t count herself among their ranks.

And even if you set all of that aside... Nature had also chosen to hamper her. In its foolish way, it had decided that men should be stronger from birth. And for what? To go and die for those who hate you and scare their children with stories about your people?

And where was that strength now?

Here, on this cold, high mountain, there were only four of them: an old man living out his last years; a newborn child; a little boy stuck in a magical sleep; and an exhausted mother.

Face of Light have mercy...

"Not even a dozen years will pass, Shaia," Grandpa continued, "before my path among the mortals ends and I go to my Queens and my wife. I barely have the strength to help you with Ertan. And Ardi... you know him. You know him better than the god to whom you pray at night, for it was you who brought him into this world. With your pain, your blood and your tears. You. Not him. And you know who Ardi will become among the humans."

Fresh tears drew burning lines across Shaia’s cheeks, and even the wind was unable to cool their heat. She could picture it all too well: the cheerful, kind and curious boy who somehow found room in his heart for everyone, be it a hungry squirrel or a broken branch, gradually changed.

He became withdrawn. The distant horizons no longer interested him. He seldom looked at the peaks of Old Alcade. Grandfather’s stories were forgotten, and the carved toy figures had long since turned to ashes in the hot oven.

After school, the boy would disappear to the shooting range, and then, as soon as he felt strong enough one night, he would secretly slip away and head out onto the prairie to find his father’s killer. And only the Face of Light knew which would be worse — if he actually found him, or...

"Six years, Grandfather," Shaia’s shoulders slumped. Suddenly, she could feel the weight of those words — the entire life contained in them, so much so that her legs almost buckled under their weight. "Six years..."

"My dear," Grandpa stepped closer, and for a moment, Shaia saw different eyes in his. Eyes that were so familiar and loving. "I’m not saying they will go unnoticed by you. No. Not at all. Believe me — you will groan and howl. And sometimes, you will even try to run over here to find your son. You’ll have time to grow gray. Your heart will know no peace from this separation. Your face will be etched with wrinkles."

Shaia felt like Grandpa wasn’t just talking, but... remembering. Remembering someone dear to him. And he was doing so with the same kind of pain with which Hector rarely spoke of his mother.

"But every time you want to see your son, just look here," Grandpa turned to the peaks of the Alcade, spread out under a thick blanket of clouds. "This is Ardi’s second home. And every time you feel anxious, lonely, or sad, you will know that your son is fine. That every day, he grows stronger. Braver. More independent. And when the time comes, he will return to you, embrace you, and you will find in him the most reliable support and help you could ever want. This is the path of the Matabar, my dear. We leave as children to return as hunters."

Grandpa turned and walked up the snow-covered slope. Shaia followed him in silence. Every step, every breath she took was imbued with a faint hope, one barely perceptible even to herself. The hope that soon, just a little later, she would wake up. It would all turn out to be a bad dream. An illusion of the old gods, the kind that only existed in stories and legends these days.

But reality reminded her of its existence again and again. With the snow in her boots. With the pain in her belly. With the tears on her face. With her lungs, which were empty from lack of oxygen. With the wind. With the night. And most of all, the sudden return of a feeling she had hoped to have escaped twenty-five years ago.

Back when, just like Evergale today, her own village had burned. Not because of the Shanti’Ra and the orcs, but because bandits had come to the town and decided that they could find something to plunder there. Or maybe they’d done it just because they’d been tired of the harsh prairie winter, where there was no hiding from the weather. Where even the slightest wind chill, no matter how much warm clothing you wore, could freeze your bones.

And only now, as a mother herself, ready to part with her child for its own good, did Shaia understand the look her mother had given her that day. A look she’d feared she would see in the mirror one day, and now she knew it was already there. That sad, doomed look full of regret and sorrow. The look of someone who was no longer fully alive.

And while Shaia’s mother had had to live with that feeling for only a few hours — until the moment a revolver bullet had made Shaia an orphan — she herself would...

Six years.

"We’re here," Grandpa said and stopped.

Shaia emerged from her memories, clinging once more to the intoxicating hope that everything around her was a dream. How else could she explain that the blizzard hadn’t subsided, and yet hadn’t touched this strange place? At first glance, it was an ordinary clearing, but...

Shaia looked around.

Goosebumps gradually covered her body as the air around her changed from cold, damp and icy to light and pleasant. It was still slightly cool, but no more than that. And her feet sank not into the heavy, viscous snow, but into tall, green grass. It swayed to the rhythm of the gentle gusts of wind, and Shaia thought she could see strange figures wandering along the spiral of stones laid out in an intricate pattern.

But as soon as she turned, the vision vanished. The only constant was the wall of snow. For a moment, Shaia felt like a tiny spider in a tall glass. Only instead of glass walls, there was a swirling blizzard around the clearing and a wall of snow at the edge of it, framed by simple river stones.

Sacred places...

Shaia had often heard about them from Grandpa and almost never from her husband.

Places where, before the Empire of the New Monarchy came to these lands, the hunters of the Matabar tribes had gathered to pray to their gods and spirits.

But Shaia had never come here before.

Crossing the gorge that separated the Old and New Alcade was a challenge, but climbing one of the high mountain peaks... Shaia doubted she could have made the journey had it not been for necessity.

Grandpa’s words, though unpleasant, bitter, and in a way resigned, had nonetheless contained the truth. Shaia could not take care of the children and work at the same time. Not to mention that Erti, by all accounts, had been born a fragile child and would need much more attention. And milk... Shaia had already had trouble producing enough milk last time.

Hector had constantly had to go to the village for special mixtures and medicines to support Ardi.

And now Hector was gone...

Grandpa gently placed the sleeping boy in the center of the stone spiral, then turned to Shaia. Their eyes met.

"If you have any doubts, now is the time to turn back," Grandpa said.

Shaia looked at her son. At his funny, chubby cheeks. At his long, wavy hair. At his slightly upturned nose and the cute dimples that appeared when he smiled. And he smiled a lot. So often...

She could still hear his laughter and his childish screams. She vividly remembered scolding him for playing where he shouldn’t.

Oh, by the Face of Light, what she would give to have it all back...

She approached the boy and ran her fingers over his pale face. She caught a stray curl that was about to slide down his nose. Then she stepped back, and it took all her strength to stop herself from breaking down, rushing to her son, grabbing him, and running away from the mountain.

"Then let’s begin," Grandpa nodded.

He took off a wooden pendant hanging from a leather cord around his neck and placed it on Ardi’s chest, then took his staff in both hands and raised it above the ground, pointing its tip toward the sun. The old man’s lips moved. He muttered something slowly, in a sing-song tone. At first, Shaia wasn’t sure if he was even doing anything. But with every moment she spent among the stones of the sacred place, something changed.

Not in her, and maybe not around her, either, but in the way she felt everything. She slowly became convinced that the stones were moving. They were circling them in a dance, moving around the still people in the center, as if guarding her son. And it was as if these barely visible figures had somehow begun to dance to Grandpa’s words in a ragged but rhythmic manner. They remained almost invisible the entire time.

Suddenly, Grandpa slammed his staff against the ground, and Shaia distinctly heard a chime. A real chime. It was as if crystal shards or two empty iron pots were colliding. First ringing out clearly, then muffled, it echoed through the mountain peaks.

It was a sound that the old carved staff hitting the damp ground couldn’t possibly have made. But every time Grandpa lowered his staff, Shaia heard that same chime. And the more it sounded, the more the world around her changed.

The stones began to bounce and take on the bizarre shapes of animals, birds, rivers and valleys, hills and mountain peaks, clouds and even stars. The shapes became denser, and the world around them...

Shaia thought she saw firs and pines, oaks and cedars. They were rising out of the darkness, taking shape in the snowy blizzard, and seemingly not daring to tread on the sacred ground. She imagined hearing hawks screaming in the air above them and eagles flapping their wings. She was convinced she could hear streams gurgling beneath her feet and the barely audible trickle of spring itself. It was as if animals from all over the Alcade had come to the edge of the stone circle to represent all the seasons.

They bowed low, whispered something in their unknown language and... went away.

Everything fell silent.

Everything stilled.

Shaia found herself standing in the center of the stone spiral once again, and the only thing that was still remarkable was the wall made up of the swirling snowstorm at the edge of the circle. Had she imagined it all? Had it all just been a trick played on her by a mind exhausted by grief, fear and mountain sickness?

"This is not right, old friend."

Shaia jumped and looked at Grandpa. Directly across from the old man sat a snow leopard. A small boy was lying between the man and the animal. Although... Shaia had never seen animals like this before.

It was the size of a mustang, and its fur shimmered slightly, but it didn’t reflect light, it seemed to be generating it from within. Behind the creature, multiple tails swayed gently. Six at once. Or maybe there were four of them... One look at their intricate movements had made Shaia’s head spin.

"This was Hector’s wish, Ergar," Grandpa said haltingly, breathing heavily all the while. "He asked me to ensure that if anything happened to him, Ardi would get to learn the ways of the First Hunters from you. And you owe him that."

"My obligation is to protect this boy through his first twelve snows!" The snow leopard growled. "Not to be his teacher!"

Ergar calmed down a bit, bowed his head, and then looked at the boy.

"I spent several days with the cub, and I have seen his heart," he continued more calmly. "There is no thirst for battle in him. His path is not among the snow leopards, old man. He has the cunning of a squirrel and the sharp mind of a lynx. But he is weak. Both in mind and body. He will not survive the mountain trails. Let him go to the forest. You have called upon the wrong spirit and-"

"Ardi... is not weak!" Shaia herself didn’t know where she found the strength to say those few words. "He’s not weak..."

The snow leopard turned to her, and for some reason, she saw something like human emotion in his amber eyes. Interest.

"You are the female who gave birth to Ardan and tainted the blood of the First Hunters," the snow leopard said rather than asked. "And if not for your blood relation, I would not have let you come here, to our lands. So speak, but know this. If your words do not please me, I will relieve you of your suffering, and do the same to the child you hold in your arms. And with your blood and your flesh, I will nourish Hector’s cub so that I may eradicate all that is human in him. Perhaps then he will be strong enough to run with the snow leopards."

Shaia’s eyes flared with fire. A fire so hot that it seemed to make the snow wall retreat even farther away.

"You spent a few days with him?" She repeated. "I carried Ardi right under my heart for nine months. I was by his side for six years. I saw him fight nightmares, banish evil thoughts when his father was delayed. I saw how he rushed to comfort and help everyone who reached out to him, despite dangers and obstacles. I saw how-"

"These are not the qualities required for running with the snow leopards, female," the snow leopard said, stepping forward. "You have made your choice. You failed..."

Shaia knew she couldn’t run. And she knew Grandpa wouldn’t help her. Not because he didn’t want to, but because he simply didn’t have the strength anymore. So, this was how her journey would end? In a strange shrine of her husband’s people? With a child in her arms who would never know his mother’s name?

But the snow leopard, who had taken that first step, had yet to jump. He stood still instead, looking down at his feet.

Small fingers that were alarmingly blue from the cold were pressed against his fur.

Ardi, despite still being trapped in that strange sleep, had somehow reached out to the snow leopard and tried to grab his paw.

Long seconds stretched into minutes of painful silence. Finally, Ergar spoke.

"I don’t know what will come of this, old man," he whispered. "In the thousands of years that the spirits of the mountains, forests and lakes have protected and taught the First Hunters, never has a cub been trained by an alien teacher."

"That’s true," Grandpa nodded. "But perhaps it is because we have followed that appointed path that the last of our blood now lies before you? The last of the Matabar?"

The snow leopard looked at Grandpa. They communicated in silence for some time, then Ergar turned away. He wrapped Ardi in one of his tails and laid him gently on his broad back. Without looking back, the snow leopard said:

"He will either return a hunter," and Shaia knew that the beast was addressing her, "or he will not return at all."

And a moment later, lightning flashed above the shrine and a blizzard descended, instantly obscuring the snow leopard from view. Only the long wail of a woman, which pierced through even the howling wind, accompanied the sleeping boy as he was carried deep into the ancient mountains.