Splashing waves applauded the passage of the dugout. It was a nearly cloudless day, at last, and the water between the dugout and the outrigger log was as bright a blue as the winding paint that articulated the choruchor under Kotak’tak’s skin. While many of the Elu’ar—seeing men—were prone to rigid, straight choruchor, Kotak’tak’s spirit had shown itself to be one as convoluted as the tides. Kotak’tak looked up at the sky as he piloted his dugout between the dotted islands of Korhos. Soon he would be out on the water plain, and he would be able to see the omen true. Soon enough.
The islands on the south coast of Korhos were bubbled rock formations groomed on top with coarse woodland. Birds, both chirping and speaking, flitted from cliff to cliff. When the dugout grazed a sandy tidal isle, bright blue crabs tucked into their bone-white shells and watched it pass with beady eyes.
Kotak’tak drank it all deeply. This was the life of Gethra that kept his chaotic choruchor oriented on the responsibilities of an Elu’ar. He started to hum. It might have been a spirit song, but it had no lyrics. If he had sung words, they might have urged the energy around him to grow, but calling to the spiritual essence of the black gulls and the shoals of fish had to refute the constraints of words. There was no phrasing to capture the wistfulness of a sunbathing iguana. Just maybe, Kotak’tak could poorly mimic it with his hum.
When the islands gave way to the ocean plains, the seer’s hum fell silent. This place was a silent place. Its power was to be revered. Its history, stained with the blood of the defeated invaders, was to be respected. Its tranquility was to be assumed.
To interrupt that ominous peace with even a holy use of the choruchor, such as Elu, seemed immensely dangerous to Kotak’tak. He kept his eyes averted, watching the slowly swelling waves. When he pulled out his oar and rested it on his folded legs, he felt the chill of the saltwater and listened to the silence. His teeth were chattering in fear, it seemed. He clenched them.
After a few moments, he dared a glance up at the sky. It was clear blue still and the sun had passed its zenith. Kotak’tak looked down again. He had seen it, hadn’t he? That other dot, pale and piercing? He hummed a quiet prayer to the ocean plain. The other Elu’ar with their angular spirits had urged him not to make this journey. The seeing of omens could be done from land, without disturbing the energies of the ocean. But Kotak’tak was not a man controlling a divine gift. He was a gift existing in the confines of a devout man. This responsibility compelled him to raise his eyes again.
Sure enough, the second moon sat on the western horizon, almost touching the surface of the sea. It was smaller by half than the daily moon and a paler shade of blue during the daytime. Out here in the stillness, in the gentle rise and fall of Kotak’tak’s dugout canoe, the second moon could have been a hole in his vision. He could not look away.
A subtle sense of dread filled Kotak’tak’s gut. It wasn’t the uncanny lurch of the wave skimmer or the large meal he had eaten that morning. He felt his choruchor being dragged toward that slight moon and he knew the omen meant ill. The other Elu’ar—the ones who had sent words from Korhos’ many mountains of the first telltale signs of that portentous rising—would have interpreted it only as a sign of change. Kotak’tak knew that this particular appearance foretold something darker. He knew it in the fiber of his being and in the hum of his labyrinthine spirit.
Best not to linger, he thought. He put his back into the oars and soon left the ocean plain behind him. He passed over the salty graves of the white men who once waged war upon their isle, the so-called Orrene. It had been a thousand years since those wars. Did the rise of Tikiaki—or, as they called it across the sea, Caidolis—warn of another impending invasion?
If the venture to Kedar Isle had not been deemed impermissible for an Elu’ar, Kotak’tak would have made it. “Arduous,” was an understatement, but Kotak’tak would risk that voyage to learn something of Gethra beyond. The Elu’ar were blind to the world beyond Korhos. For the last few centuries, they had not been harmed by their ignorance.
Tikiaki would take over a month to pass over the sky. It had always been so. Then, it would not be seen for nearly three years. The change it prophesized did not always unfold during its brief tenure in the sky, but could always be tied to it. Three years ago, its omen had signified the birth of a son to the ruler of Korhos, Arasho. Nine years ago, Tikiaki had warned them of the Beetle Pox. Neither of those had settled such foreboding into Kotak’tak’s chest as had this rising.
His dugout sped northwest, through the scattered isles of Knife-Fall Ridge toward the sprawling settlement of Korhos. It took him most of the afternoon to return; during this time, most of the inhabitants had given up waiting for their seer to complete his task. Many of them had gone back to their professions or homes. His return was met by only a small crowd. When the children asked him what he had seen, he told them to fetch their parents. When the women asked him, he told them to fetch their husbands. When the men asked him—as he walked through the dirt streets toward the large town center—he told them to prepare themselves.
At last, the populace of Korhos had gathered to hear from him. The other Elu’ar were still completing their journey back from North Point, so he was the only seeing man in the city. They would heed his words far more than the news brought by field hawk.
Kotak’tak was not a large man. He climbed onto the spoked wheels of a wagon and leaned against its boarded rails, so that the crowd could see him. “Fellows,” he began. “I have seen Tikiaki, low on the horizon. Rising.”
A murmur spread through the men and women. The children listened in a daze. Those who remembered the last Tikiaki might anticipate the announcement of a new heir. Those who did not, held their breath in innocent anxiety.
“It is pale blue and the size of your smallest fingernail if you hold your hand at arm’s length. It is already one height of itself over the horizon, but it will be a week before you see it over the forest canopy.” The townspeople absorbed this information with little comment. Each pictured what he had said. Those Korho, the ones who felt attuned with their choruchor, would discern what the sign might mean for their lives.
Most Elu’ar would say little more about the omen. They were seers not sayers. Kotak’tak should have dropped down from the wagon wheel right then. His fellow Elu’ar would conclude the meaning of the omen by the end of Tikiaki’s journey across the sky. They would consult the intuitions of their whole people.
But Kotak’tak had more to say. Was it hubris that drove him? He paused to consider this possibility. His name and his wisdom would be brought to the corners of their great isle after he addressed the capital alone, as he had already done. It is not hubris, he decided. If he was driven by fame or vanity, he would have stepped down immediately. It was his responsibility—the result of his tangled choruchor perhaps—that drove him.
“Tikiaki is full of a dark energy,” Kotak’tak told his people. Murmuring welled up from the crowd like a fearful sigh. The soothsayer went on: “Whether it is a sign for our people or for the people beyond our shores, I know not. But I know, as surely as I breathe, that many lives will be lost in the year to come. Blood and disaster will follow the setting of the second moon!”
Cries and lamentations rose. Kotak’tak raised his arms and declared, “Hold fast and endure! We must endure.” His voice echoed into a brief silence. The ebb of conversation quickly rose, and a tidal wave of worry filled the town square.