Page 22 of Humans Don't Have Horns
Using the remains of Mongans as weapons to hunt and enslave other Mongans is cruel in a way I can’t even name. But what turns me inside out are the crimes of Renya. The Renya I love. Renya with its leading universities and scholars, Renya with its healing and beauty. Renya, where the Queen’s council always has room for the opposition. Renya, where women and men are equal. My mother’s Renya. Did she know what was done to the Mongans? Was she part of it? Isthis why my sister is consuming what is gained from the death of others?
Maybe Amada deserves the demichads. Maybe the Puresouls are the ones who need to be made extinct and not the demichads. But my mother was good, I tell myself. I grip at that notion as if it is the only thing between me and an endless fall off a cliff to an oblivion of despair.
Chapter Eleven
Lian
In the morning, I tell Daton we need to warn everyone about the demichads. I have no idea what can be done about them, but I can’t just do nothing as certain death approaches us.
“Yes, we should. It will be tricky, though, as you and I have something in common,” he says. I raise my eyebrows in question. “We’re both wanted dead by everyone in Amada,” he explains.
Indeed, we are. I groan in frustration, and Daton snickers at the sound.
He squats and starts to draw a map of Amada in the dirt. The sea in the east, the Mountains of Doom in the west, Aldon and Kozari in the northeast, Renya in the southeast. The swamps are in the center, and in the southwest, near the Mountains of Doom, no kingdom rules. That is the Land of the Outlaws. Only runaways dare to live so close to the Mountains of Doom.
“Why do the Mongans live in the swamps and not there? Wouldn’t it be easier to live in the Land of the Outlaws?” I ask. Daton said the swamps are uninhabitable to humans. Hardly anything humans can eat grows there, and it is full of predators.
“It would be a far better place to live,” he hums in agreement. “The land is fertile there, but the Mongans dread the Mountains ofDoom. The oracle never agreed to move there. She believes there is great evil in those mountains. Greater than the Puresouls’ wantonness even. But if we go there, then we could find someone to spread the rumor of the demichads.”
I look dismayed at the map he drew and the shortage of options before us. “But they are all outlaws. How can we trust them?” I ask.
“We are outlaws too,” he replies with a shrug. I remain quiet at that, and he seems to sense my uneasiness. “When you left for Renya, I thought of going there. The land there is good. Easy to live off. I told you once I was a farmer—” But he doesn’t complete the sentence. As if it’s too hard for him to say those things out loud. After all the atrocities he shared with me. A hundred years ago, before they killed his wife and enslaved him, he was a farmer and loved farming. I can hear it in his voice. I can hear the longing for that. And it makes sense to me, although it shouldn’t because he’s the Butcher. But maybe some of us have parts that don’t quite fit. Maybe some of us are anomalies. Maybe we all are.
“But you said the Mongans fear those mountains,” I remind him.
“And the Puresouls believe in trolls. There are enough real things to fear in Amada. There is no need to invent more of them. And I’ve been there before. The mountains are gloomy and fearful with their looming, enormous black rocks. They are so high and steep that they look like a wall of nightmares, casting wide ominous shadows. But where the sun reaches, the land is fine. It’s quiet. And the eeriness of the mountains frightens away all unwanted company,” he explains.
“You’ve dreamed of going there for a long time,” I observe. It’s not a question because when he talks about it, he lights up in a way I haven’t seen before. He grins sheepishly at me. He smiles, and those creases at his eyes dance ever so lightly, and he suddenly looks like the farthest thing from the Butcher. Even his eyes don’t look obsidian black anymore. It is almost as if—
“Where did you plan to go? Now that Renya is not an option. Kozari, maybe?” he asks, and I realize I was too busy staring at him to actually keep track of our conversation.
“No.” It comes out harsher than it should.
“Right.” His voice is clipped and his smile so gone I think I imagined it. “Kidnapping you eliminated that place for you too. I—” But then he stops. Was he going to apologize? Does he feel guilty? I should tell him he shouldn’t, that he didn’t harm me. Not really. He kidnapped me from prison. Set me free in a way.
But now that I can’t go to Renya, where can I go? “When the path is unclear, the best thing to do is start walking,” I say to him and to myself. “We’ll try to warn everyone about the demichads. And after that, if I’m not eaten or killed, I’ll work something out. How long would it take us to get to the Land of the Outlaws?“
“Three weeks if I can steal us some horses.” He wipes off the map he drew on the dirt, and I frown.
“Why so long? It would be too late.”
“We’re in Aldon. So we can’t walk the main roads.” Neither of us speaks of the four soldiers from whom he rescued me. Also, according to Tilil, there is a bounty on my head. We’re basically the two most hunted people in Amada right now.
I swallow. “But it will be too late.”
He hums in agreement. “It is too long, but I can’t take you to the swamps. I won’t be able to keep you safe from the oracle. The best thing to do is go to the Land of the Outlaws and hope to run into a Mongan on our way.”
“But aren’t you banished from the Mongans? Wouldn’t they hurt you if you encounter them?” I ask.
“They can try,” he simpers as if the mere idea that Mongans can harm him is a joke. “If we can warn the Mongans, then everyone will be aware of the demichads’ return. Renya will warn the other Puresouls.”
I want to argue, but if my aunt was going to turn me over to Aldon, then she is in enough of a relationship with Aldon to ask them for help from the demichads. And Aldon will protect its other ally—the Kozaries. No one will protect the Mongans.
Although I’m less and less sure Aldon can protect anyone from the demichads. There are songs and tales of how King Desh, the king of Aldon during the War of Light,defeated the demichads with thehelp of Sun. Renya and Kozari submitted to Aldon because of the demichads. And yet they were not defeated at all if what the demichad told me is true.
***
I ask Daton to try to steal the horses from soldiers and not farmers. The farmers here are poor, and losing a horse could be the difference between working the land and becoming beggars. And I’ve seen how easily he can take down the Aldonian soldiers if he needs to.
