Kirutu had strapped his mother to the post at her ankles and bound her arms behind the pole to keep her upright. A dirty brown sack covered her head.
They will burn her.
She is safe.
They will burn you.
I am safe.
There’s no way out!
There is the Way. And it is in, not out. Shaka said I would see it.
Shaka has gone mad!
You are madness.
Stephen came to a stop twenty paces from Kirutu, who stared at him, hand wrapped tightly around his spear. His chest rose and fell slowly as the thundering chant made his power plain. His mouth was flat, his face resolute. But Stephen saw something else beyond his eyes.
Fear.
Uncertainty. Terror, beneath layers of power and years of brutality, but hiding there still, in the deepest caverns of his mind.
A strange calm settled into Stephen’s mind. Who was Kirutu but another deeply wounded man who didn’t know what else to do but protect his costume?
The ruler was used to an enemy who would resist him, and he’d learned to crush any such threat. Now came one from Shaka who walked willingly to his death without fear. Kirutu could not understand this. And what he couldn’t understand, he feared.
Stephen felt the world fall away. The chants faded, the air thickened. He experienced no grievance, no judgment, no blame—these things were not his concern. And in that place without grievance, he saw no threat. Before him stood a child, crying out for what he had long forgotten.
Screaming out for a love he had never known.
Compassion swallowed Stephen whole and a knot rose into his throat. What was inconceivable to flesh and bone became perfectly clear to him. There were no words to explain it.
Kirutu lifted his hand, a casual gesture that was immediately taken as a command. The chanting ceased. The earth stilled, leaving only the crackling of fire and the anguished sound of a woman trying to hold back her sobs.
His mother was crying under the hood.
Stephen held his eyes on Kirutu, pulled by his mother’s fear.
Deditio. Surrender. Remember who you and your mother are. There is no threat. None.
Kirutu stepped forward, brazen before a people who could not see the fear in his heart. Blinded to it himself.
He stopped two paces from Stephen and ran his gaze down to his feet, then back up to his eyes.
“You wish to die,” he said in a low, graveled voice.
“You can kill my body, but not the love inside it.”
“And this childish love for a mother will end only in the burning of your flesh with hers.”
“I did not come to save my mother,” Stephen said.
Kirutu watched him, unblinking.
“I came for you.”
“For me. You would cut off the head of the snake, but this snake does not die so easily.”
“I didn’t come to kill you. I came to set you free.”
The man’s jaw tightened. “And yet you kill with ease.”
Yes, he had killed, and the memory of that now filled him with a deep sorrow.
“Forgive me. I had gone insane.”
“This madness has not left you. You see as an infant. This woman you call your mother is a slave who cannot be saved. So you come to die with her. You are mad.”
It was a natural conclusion, but wrong.
“You are the slave,” Stephen said quietly, riding the waves of compassion that rolled through his mind. “Hatred rules your heart and puts you in a deep pit of suffering where you live alone.”
The man wasn’t able to quickly respond, so Stephen told him more.
“Your power in this valley is unquestioned—no man can live without your approval. Even the trees bow to your will. There’s no more to be gained and yet you suffer, secretly hating all that you are and all that you’ve done. That is your pit. But you can be free.”
For a moment Stephen thought Kirutu was listening on the deeper level of his soul, no longer deaf to this hidden knowledge. And maybe, for a moment, he was, because his face seemed to soften and a hint of wonder relaxed his eyes.
But as he watched, Kirutu’s face began to change. His jaw tightened and his lips twisted into a snarl. His people couldn’t see the shift, because Kirutu had his back to them, but they’d surely seen rage consume their leader a thousand times.
Stephen looked at the warriors’ faces, all of them full of desperation. They too were enslaved by Kirutu’s hatred. But he also saw wonder in their stares. The powerful man from Shaka’s mountain could stand before their tormentor and his full army without fear.
There was surely a place in the heart of all Tulim that desired liberation from Kirutu’s tyranny. Kirutu couldn’t allow his people to see Stephen stand before him without fear.
A quiver had taken to the man’s hands. Stephen was about to speak, thinking he should tell Kirutu that he didn’t need to fear the loss of his power—instead he would gain a greater power—when the man turned, walked up to his mother on the post, and ripped the bag off her head.
Stephen now saw his mother’s face, filthy, stained by the tears that had raked her cheeks, still matted with blood from the cut above her jaw. Her eyes were bright with fear as she jerked her head to take in the scene. They fixed on Stephen and her face twisted into an unspoken plea for help.
Kirutu grabbed her hair and spun back to Stephen.
“This is the pig who bore you! She is the one I have crushed.” His voice cut like a spear, and, seeing his mother’s anguish, Stephen felt the dark sky above him reach for his soul.
“You come to my house to save her?”
Kirutu jerked his mother’s head to one side by her hair. She screamed: the sound of it sank into Stephen’s mind like a talon.
“Save her,” Kirutu mocked. “Show me the love of a son and save this wretched woman!”
His mother was beyond herself now, lost to terror, weeping loudly. He felt her anguish as if it were taking up residence in his own flesh. He was slipping.
“Save her!”
Kirutu glared, muscles drawn taut, made of rage and undone by it at once. His mother was shaking on the post, neck twisted to the breaking point, wailing—the terrifying keen of a dying animal.
Darkness pressed in and Stephen felt the first tendril of rage slip into his gut.
Kirutu lifted his right arm and brought his fist down on his mother’s face as he held her hair. The impact of bone on flesh produced a sickly thunk.
His mother’s body went limp, but that didn’t stop Kirutu from striking her again, as hard, pummeling the helpless to show his strength.
He released her hair and she slumped forward in her ropes, head hung low, unconscious.
The tendril of rage coiled into a ball and rose through Stephen’s chest. He couldn’t stand in the face of such brutality without resisting. Without extracting revenge. Without crushing the oppressor.
Without engaging Kirutu, even knowing that this was Kirutu’s ploy. The ruler could not abide an enemy that did not fear him in front of his people.
Which was why Stephen could not attach himself to the anger rushing through him. He could neither react to nor resist it without also fueling it.
His breathing thickened and he felt as though he might break. And if he did, both he and his mother would die.
They would die anyway. It was already over. There was no way out.
No, Stephen. There is the Way.
A narrow way, already misted over with forgetfulness. A realm seen only dimly through the fog.