Sword of the Gods III: Agents of Ki

Chapter 2-1

Chapter 2

November 3,390 BC (4 hours earlier)

Earth: Village of Assur

NINSIANNA

The shaman's daughter was a comely woman, curvaceous and olive-skinned, with long, dark hair which cascaded down her back like a waterfall; but her most compelling feature was her luminescent golden eyes which marked her as the Chosen of She-who-is. This status gave She-who-serves-the-goddess many gifts, but most revered was her ability to hasten healing. Today's patient was Pareesa's little brother; a boy who, at nine-summers-old, was every bit as precocious as his older sister. Ninsianna gave the Namhu's head a sympathetic tousle.

"How many times has your Mama told you not to eat the potted fava beans until after she's reheated them?" Ninsianna raised a shapely eyebrow and gave the boy a knowing look. "This isn't the first time She-who-is has punished you for snitching the leftover supper."

"The rainy season is now upon us—" Namhu grimaced as another pain shot through his stomach. "I was hungry and I thought it would be safe to eat."

Ninsianna scanned the crowded loft where Namhu shared sleeping space with his six brothers and sisters, including Pareesa and his papa's granny. In a climate which ranged from boiling hot to tepid, the proper storage of food was always a topic of concern.

"Even when the autumn grows cold," Ninsianna said, "it is still warm enough to provide a house for evil spirits. That is why your Mama cooks your food until it burns your mouth." She laid her hands upon the boy's battered tummy. "The time to exorcise evil spirits is before you eat them, little archer, not afterwards!"

"Isn't there something you can do for him?" the boy's mother, Tabriti asked. "Please, Chosen One? It's such a wondrous gift, the power to heal all wounds. I have seen the wound you healed in Mikhail's chest."

Old jealousies turned Ninsianna's eyes copper, but not every woman lusted after her husband. She forced herself to don a sympathetic expression.

"I can fortify your spirit light so you can heal yourself, but the gift of healing ultimately depends upon you." Ninsianna fixed her golden-eyed gaze back upon the boy, doing her best to appear wise. "What SHE doesn't like, little archer, is when she helps you once, and then you ignore her beneficence by repeating the same mistake over again!"

"I'm sorry," Namhu's lip trembled. He doubled over again as another pain wracked his tummy. He was a handsome lad, dark-complexioned, well-formed and slender as most youth his age were apt to be, but he bore the high northern cheekbones and straight nose inherited from his mother. The similarity to her own husband's unusual features elicited within Ninsianna a twang of pity.

"That's what you said the last time," Ninsianna sighed. "And the time before that, as well! Let's see if She-who-is believes you are truly sorry?"

She lay her hand upon the boy's stomach and closed her eyes, chanting the throaty song her Papa had taught her to chase away the evil spirits. As she did, her awareness increased of the cause of Namhu's food poisoning, some putrid-green blotches which grew on a pot of leftover fava beans which had not been heated enough to kill them. That same awareness whispered these were not true evil spirits, but the tiny creatures Mikhail called 'germs.' The first step to heal them was to purge Namhu's stomach of the evil spirits.

'Be gone,' Ninsianna whispered silently in her mind. 'Leave his body and plague this boy no more…'

"Ninsianna?" Namhu's stomach growled like a stalking lion as his flesh turned chalk-white. His cheeks puffed out as he inhaled, fighting to resist the inevitable.

"He's gonna barf again!" the next youngest sibling said.

"No he's not!" his little sister said.

"Is too!" a different brother said.

"No!" Namhu's voice came out as a strangled plea.

Tabriti shoved the pottery urn she'd emptied three times already under her son's face. Namhu retched into the pot, sobbing. Nothing but green stomach acid came up from his poor, battered tummy, but with her goddess-kissed eyes, Ninsianna could see the evil spirits which inhabited the contents he had just purged.

"There, there," Ninsianna soothed the boy. "This vomiting is the will of She-who-is."

That dark gift Ninsianna had sensed lately invited her to take her healing one step further, to draw the vile green spirits out of the boy's body into her own body and use her gift of healing to transmute it. She sent a thread of attention towards the place Papa said the gift to transmute sickness resided, a dark place, a place she had always feared. As her spirit touched the Dark Lord's realm, the darkness closed around her, eager, inviting, desperate to embrace her light. She could feel the boy's sickness as though it was she who had eaten the rancid supper, sending it's green tendrils of poison into her system and making her retch instead of the boy.

No! Every instinct she possessed shrieked to get out of there! She broke off the path of darkness and returned to the path of light which was the only path the Chosen One of She-who-is ever cared to tread!

"I am sorry, little one." Ninsianna gave the boy an apologetic smile. "She-who-is has no patience to heal a little boy who did not listen the last three times she warned you not to snitch the supper."

Namhu groaned.

Ninsianna turned to the boy's mother and ran her hand down the slight swell of her abdomen. Four months pregnant she barely was, but already Mikhail's child made it look as though she was five or six.

"If it were a life threatening illness," Ninsianna said, "I might risk singing the song of transmutation; but Namhu's symptoms are not life-threatening and I am with child. Papa said I should not take unnecessary risks."

Tabriti squeezed Ninsianna's hand, a mother of seven children to a soon-to-be mother of a half-Angelic infant. There were no accusations in her face, only disappointment.

"I understand," Tabriti said. "Namhu must suffer so he will learn his lesson this time. It is the will of She-who-is."

Rattling off a long list of care to administer the next few hours, Ninsianna donned her favorite red wool cape and made her way home to eat supper with her Mama. Mama was a woman of few words unless they were important ones and Ninsianna was not in the mood to be talkative. She pushed the lentils around in her bowl, only too mindful this was essentially the same meal which had just made Namhu sick.

"Are you unwell?" Mama's face filled with concern.

"No." Ninsianna lifted a scoop of casserole and tipped it upside-down to watch it stick to her wooden spoon. Why hadn't she insisted Mikhail take her with him to the regional meeting of chiefs instead of leaving her behind to tend to the lingering wounded? Wasn't that why she'd broken off her engagement to the Chief's son, Jamin? Because she hated being told what a woman could and could not do?

She stabbed her spoon into the congealed mush and sighed. Whether or not her husband saw her as his equal, he needed to be seen as Assur's unequivocal military leader if he had any hope of piecing together an Ubaid alliance against the strange, coordinated raids to kidnap women of marriageable age. No chief would follow a man who was henpecked by his wife!

"I just don't sleep well when Mikhail isn't here." Ninsianna lied. "How do you cope when Papa is away?"

Mama placed one hand over hers.

"I don't sleep well, either," Mama said. "But I'll tell you a secret. Do you know Papa's old work-shawl? The one he uses in the fields?"

"Yes." Ninsianna pictured the shawl Mama described. It was washed several times each week, but always bore the residual stain of sweat.

"I curl up with that old shawl so I can smell your father's scent." Mama's expression softened. "It's the only way I can fall asleep."

"I already washed all of Mikhail's shirts," Ninsianna sighed. "I have nothing with his scent on it except for a few of his molted feathers."

"Goddess knows he drops enough of those all over the house!" Mama laughed.

"I wish I'd had the foresight to gather them up when he went through the molt this past summer!" Ninsianna said. "For a few weeks I swear he took on the appearance of a plucked eaglet."

"Then next summer you must make a sack," Mama said, "so you can gather up all those soft little under-feathers to make yourself a pillow. It would keep them out of our food!"

Mama mimed the face Ninsianna made whenever she had to pick a pinfeather out of their supper and deposit it on the side of her plate. Ninsianna laughed. It was good to share this time together. Lately their relationship had been strained.

"How is Namhu?" Mama asked.

"He snitched a pot of fava beans that sat out the past two nights and fed them to his friends," Ninsianna said.

"Did you give him the tea of caraway, black seed, and asafetida?" Mama asked. She gestured to some neatly tied bundles of dried herbs which hung from the rafters of their large, multi-purpose room.

"Yes," Ninsianna said. "As well as an infusion of spirit-light to speed his healing. And I induced the vomit, to purge his stomach of its contents."

"What of the spirit songs?" Mama asked. "Your Papa would transmute the poison by singing the song of banishment."

Ninsianna could not meet her mother's eyes.

"That black shadow cat was at the entrance to the dark path," Ninsianna shivered, "waiting for me to travel down it."

"You must stop thinking of it as a path,” Mama said. "The person is sick. You simply allow yourself to feel their pain, and then picture how your body would fight that illness. There are no dark pathways involved."

Ninsianna shuddered. Perhaps it was a blessing her Mama couldn’t see what she invited into her spirit light each time she used her gift of healing? Ninsianna changed the topic of conversation before her Mama decided to drill her on her shortcomings as a healer.

"I have some bandages I need to wash in the river," Ninsianna rose from the table. "And I would like to bathe before I go to bed."

She helped Mama gather up the bowls and deposit them into the woven basket lined with goat-skin to make it waterproof for washing.

"Be certain you don't get eaten by a crocodile!" Mama said. "With fewer warriors to jab at them with spears, the accursed creatures grow bold."

"I will carry my bow," Ninsianna said.

"And your knife." Mama scooped up the heavy obsidian blade Ninsianna had left on the table and handed it to her, hilt forward. "A bow is too unwieldy to use in an unexpected fight."

Ninsianna scrunched up her nose and refused to take it.

"Would you like me to carry my spear, as well, Mama?" Ninsianna's golden eyes sparkled with laughter. "If I carry anything more I shall have no room in the basket for the dirty bandages!"

Mama pursed her lips into that disapproving mother look all mothers had when their daughters were being stubborn. The one that made you wish they'd thrash you rather than endure their silent admonition.

"Better to carry many weapons, daughter," Mama scolded, "than to be kidnapped by our enemies and sold to the lizard demons as a slave."

"They would not dare come at us again!" Ninsianna's chin jutted proudly. "They lost hundreds during the last raid. I doubt there is a single Halifian left who would dare take on Mikhail!"

"What will your husband say if he finds out you put yourself at risk?" Mama's brow furrowed with worry. "All of Assur protected the wall the last time they came at us, and yet they sent a raiding party into the village to kidnap you to get to him. -You- are his only weakness."

"The only reason they found their way inside our walls is because Jamin betrayed us to our enemies," Ninsianna said. "The Chief has taken steps to fortify our defenses."

"And you are going outside those walls." Mama shook the blade at her once more. "Where our defenses are not so tight. Siamek is too busy patrolling the perimeter to babysit one, stubborn Angelic's wife!"

Mama was, as always, frustratingly, maddeningly right. Ninsianna slipped her blade into the basket and made her way through the village, out the narrow alley which served as their northern gate, and down the steep embankment to reach the sacred Hiddekel River which kept Assur alive despite its placement in the middle of an unforgiving desert. With a sigh, she unwrapped the long, fringed shawl all Ubaid women draped around themselves to make a shawl-dress and waded into the cold water wearing only her loincloth.