“Put away your stiletto, and pick that up. Throw it in the fire.”
“No. F-Father … please! I don’t want to touch—”
“Pick it up!”
Odion shook so badly his body seemed to be spasming as he tucked the stiletto into his belt, twined his fingers in the man’s hair, and staggered forward to toss it into the flames. By the time he’d finished, he was sobbing openly, and turned to run.
Gonda grabbed him by the back of the shirt, swung him around, and forced him to stand there.
“Watch,” Gonda commanded.
The hair burst into flames, and a stinking black cloud of smoke rose. Next, the skin began to peel and char. When the frozen eyes shriveled into black husks and sank into the skull, Odion leaned heavily against Gonda. The smell of burning meat rose on the air.
Through the entire thing, Koracoo stood silently by, watching her son and former husband with sober eyes.
Finally, Gonda crouched in front of Odion and gently smoothed tangled hair behind his son’s ears. “His family will never find him. Together, we have made sure that no one will ever be able recognize his body. His people cannot call up his afterlife soul and perform the Requickening Ceremony to place it in another human being. No one can save him now. He will never travel to the afterlife. He will be a homeless ghost, condemned to wander the earth alone, forever. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” Odion wiped his runny nose with a blood-coated hand, then looked at his fingers. Tears filled his eyes. As though to get them as far away as possible, he extended both hands to Gonda. “Father? His blood. I—”
“Come on. Let’s go down to the river.”
Gonda took Odion by the hand, and they marched down to the water.
Koracoo silently removed her red cape from around her waist, shook it out, and slipped it over her head again, as though cold to the bone. The cape made a great bloody smear against the sickly haze.
No one said anything until Wakdanek murmured, “That was difficult to watch. More difficult for the boy.”
Koracoo blinked as though she’d just awakened from a nightmare. “Was it?”
“Well … yes,” Wakdanek said in confusion.
“It was necessary.”
“Really?” Wakdanek said as though in disbelief. “I doubt that …”
When she turned to look at him, his voice died in his throat. Her black eyes were hard and clear. “For the rest of my son’s life he will see two faces: one living and one dead. Every time he starts to relive what happened to him, he will see that charred head. He can hold onto that image. Eventually, the dead face will blot out the living face—and he’ll be all right.”
Wakdanek swallowed hard. “I just … I don’t think I could do that to my own child.”
Koracoo looked out across the camp and seemed to be weighing whether or not to continue the conversation. Finally, she added, “Children need to know that evil can be killed, Wakdanek. They need to know they can kill it. That’s what war is about. Killing evil.”
Koracoo walked away and began moving through the other bodies, searching the ground for a sign. Towa followed her.
When Cord, Sindak, and Wakdanek stood alone, Wakdanek shook his head, and Cord asked, “What’s the matter?”
Wakdanek gestured weakly. “I was just thinking about words. In the most terrible of moments, they are everything. They lend form to horror—define its contours and shape—make it real so that it can be borne. Though I think she’s wrong about the heart of war.”
“You’re a Healer. What do you know of war?”
“I know that the aim of war is revelation, not the destruction of the enemy. Not killing evil.”
“Revelation? Really?” Sindak’s brows plunged down over his hooked nose. “That’s not what my war chief tells me. Is that what you tell your warriors, Cord?”
Cord laughed softly. “No.”
“I didn’t think so. Please enlighten us, Wakdanek. What needs to be revealed?”
Wakdanek remained silent. Probably because he thought discussing anything sophisticated with savages would be an exercise in futility. After all, Sindak was from the Hills People and Cord was worse: a man of the Flint People. The Flint People and the Dawnland People had always been enemies.
Sindak pressed. “What needs to be revealed?”
As though annoyed, Wakdanek expelled a breath. “My friend, we all have an amnesia of the heart. We’ve forgotten that we were once the same people.”
For a moment, the strange purplish smear of wood smoke shifted, and wan sunlight penetrated the haze, falling in streaks and bars across the abandoned warriors’ camp. Cord took a moment to appreciate the beauty; then he said, “Well, if we were one people, it was a long, long time ago. What does that revelation get us now?”