Fan Fiction ❯ "I was born, six-gun in my hand . . ." ❯ Chapter 4

Ka is everything and everywhere. Like most Il'duri words, it has multiple meanings, but a direct translation would be “birth, life, death.” This translation falls far short of what Ka really is though. Ka is not these things, but the forces that lead through them, that guide a Ka-tei, a soul, into a vessel to be born in, through their individual path of life called a Ka-rueda, into the clearing of death and beyond, where none but the worthiest of souls (any Il'duri or one converted to our way of life) may venture. I suppose “fate” and “destiny” are better translations, but those words fall far short of the grandeur of Ka as well.

 

When I was young, my father would tell me “Ka like a wind.” He meant that sometimes it would merely ruffle your hair, sometimes it would blow down your house, or sometimes it would just blow you away. Some say Ka is cruel, but I don't think that's true. Ka is, and that's all there is to it.

 

Training to be a pistolera (we refused to say “Gunslinger” with each other to annoy our trainer/captors, opting for the term in the language of the Grandmothers) was six years of hurricane Ka. Everything went so fast, pushing us along until we stopped fighting it. When we'd first come to Chrysler, the Imperial capitol, we'd been in training to be Imperial commandos. I'd thought that training was difficult, but it was nothing compared to being a pistolera-iar. Our training was more intense, more difficult, and occasionally fatal.

 

Just like the beginning of commando training, Chief Kesh'ikai Saquorro was our overseer. We also learned he was a Gunslinger, and for the first time we saw him with his big revolvers with the ghostwood grips. But this new Chief Saquorro wasn't the Kesh'ikai we'd come to loathe. He was still hard on us, granted, but he also allowed us a small measure of respect. We had classes with other teachers (but never again Maerlin, thank God) but it was the chief who taught us everything important, including why we'd been taken. He was honest with us, and we were honest with him. He rather like the name Kesh'ikai and insisted we keep using it.

 

Our burgeoning affection for the Chief was balanced out by the difficulty of being pistoleros-iar. Training was thorough, which is euphemistic for dangerous, painful and damn near constant. Classes were challenge and failure to succeed was punishable. I made sure never to be punished. Our food was obviously seasoned with poisons and illnesses to build up our resistence to them if we ever encountered them, but we were growing and overworked, making hunger override self-protection against poisoning.

 

Half our number were turned out as unsuitable during the course of our training, adolescents who were physically incapable of either succeeding in or surviving the training. A handful didn't build up immunity fast enough and died when the doses of toxin in our food increased in size and number. Injuries were commonplace in the Chief's training - these things happen when you're rock climbing with no safety ropes and fighting without the aid of pads or armor - but in my time as a pistolera-iar there was only one death.

 

Six years into training, life wasn't that bad. Chrysler was home, training grew steadily easier by the hour, Kesh'ikai was now an affectionate nickname for our food no longer tasted funny or made us sick. Things were bordering on good, a strange concept to my fourteen-year-old mind, and then that damned wizard took a good thing and k'deimo it.

 

One of our number was another Asran'duri by the name of Muso. He was five years older than me, nineteen at the time, when he died. We were on the rock course which we could now cover in a matter of minutes, when I heard something I hadn't heard in over eight years - the cackle of a dead man. Maerlin was below us, grinning and holding a different piece of the Wizard's Rainbow, this one a sick green the color of rotting vegetation. The wizard looked at us and laughed again, then held out the ball.

 

I knew what would happen and told Muso to shut his eyes, but he was as unable to do that as I was. When I realized that, I looped our climbing rope around his wrist and shouted his name. Muso looked at me and I began to hope all would be well. Careful to look away from the Wizard's Rainbow, I pulled Muso up onto the platform where I stood. We huddled there, staring into space, when the chimes began. Like the humming of the Shades, it was terrible but strangely alluring. We both looked at the wizard and our eyes were drawn to the glass ball in his hands.

 

Alluring it was, but I'd seen one before. I tangled myself up in the rope, made sure it was anchored, but it didn't matter. Focused as I was on the Rainbow, I knew the wizard made sure it wasn't focused on me. It was looking at Muso. He screamed in anguish and I tried to grab his hand, but it was too late. He untangled his hand and pushed off the platform, landing on the ground, arms outstretched and reaching for the Rainbow. Maerlin simply laughed one last time, then disappeared.

 

I screamed for help and the healers took Muso away. He was screaming in pain with only the gods knew how many broken bones and internal injuries. Word spread among the Gunslinger-iar and soon they were all assembled outside the house of healing. As unofficial Kaisha, it was my duty to watch him and see the ordeal through to the end. Obviously I wasn't actually allowed in the room where they fought to save him, but I was outside the door, and the final pronouncement came to me and the Chief to whom I'd told my story already. When the announcement came, Chief stormed off to confront Maerlin, and I had to assume my duty as Kaisha of the Gunslinger-iar.

 

I came out and found myself surrounded by my fellow trainees, my fellow iar. They looked at me hopefully while I cleared my throat. While Muso hadn't been a member of the Ka-mais Zeke, Merak and I shared, he had been on the same Ka-turo which made him close. His loss was hard to take. But I couldn't let the others see that, so I cleared my throat again and looked at each of them as I spoke. “Rev kemo evai ven yamé a demoi turo. Gerai Ell ti Ka.” I made the sign of Ka and lowered my eyes in respect to the Ka-tei of Muso moving on to Valar. My words - He's gone to the clearing at the end of the path. It is the Will of Ka. - was traditional. Zeke's words were not, but they mirrored my thought's perfectly.

 

“Deinon erach, Vega?”

 

I mulled over those words. They had no direct translation, but the run of the thought was “revenge” and the question of its status, including whether it was needed and if it would be carried out. My response to that question was narrowed down to two possibilities: On deinon erach (either revenge was not needed or would not be sought - I was under no obligation to state which), or the option I chose. “Zeke, kan Vega Deinonych Erach.” Then, the last word in the language of the Grandmothers. “Un ojo por un ojo, un diente por un diente, sangre por sangre.”

 

Seeing such youthful faces turn cold was a bit frightening, but the ire of the Il'duri is not raised lightly. I had sworn Deinonych Erach and I would deliver - or die trying. To fail would be to forget the face of my mother, and I would never do anything that would bring me that low. And my course was delightfully clear. I could declare no vengeance oath against Maerlin so long as I was iar, by either the laws of the Il'duri or the Empire. To do so required I become dagath-aiyar, which meant facing the trial of (wo)manhood and earning my guns with ghostwood grips. I had to achieve victory in a battle with Chief Evim Saquorro, take his staff, and become a full-fledged Gunslinger at last.