A Tribe of Kassia

By Tom Leveen

For family. For vengeance.

Tanin, a desert elf whose grown up in a peaceful desert enclave, is the only member of his clan not killed when White Riders ravage his town. They take few prisoners, but one of them is his betrothed, Memine.

Orrock of Guar has become a monk, taken in by a race of creatures not his own for the past ten years. With his training complete, he is sent back into the world to discover his creator's will for his life . . . never anticipating that he would be challenged to revert to his former barbaric nature to serve his god.

Despite crippling panic attacks after seeing the carnage back home, Tanin swears to track down the White Riders and rescue Memine. With Orrock's help and the aid of two other odd companions, he may stand a chance of finding the Riders somewhere in the wilds of Kassia . . . if his guide is truly leading the way . . .

• Language: English
• Publisher: FTJ Creative LLC
• Release date: Nov 11, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393380818

Tom Leveen

Tom Leveen is the author of Random, Sick, manicpixiedreamgirl, Party, Zero (a YALSA Best Book of 2013), Shackled, and Hellworld. A frequent speaker at schools and conferences, Tom was previously the artistic director and cofounder of an all-ages, nonprofit visual and performing venue in Scottsdale, Arizona. He is an Arizona native, where he lives with his wife and young son.

Book preview

ONE

Had the white riders slaughtered everyone? Had they left no survivors?

Tanin stood in the middle of Desita, the Fell town which lay crushed, crumbled, and burned to ash around him. Bodies sprawled, mutilated on the ground, golden faces of friends and neighbors smeared bloody and upturned to the darkening sky. The sun, it seemed, wanted to vanish and hide its face from the massacre.

Tanin desperately wanted to call out, to find survivors, but thought better of it; the beasts who had assaulted his friends at the river and torn through his home may lurk nearby. All the same, he did not try to hide as he picked through bodies and destruction, around fires and rubble that had once been home to his family, friends, and clan.

Memine . . .

Tanin pushed her from his mind. No, not now, not yet, there were things to do, things that must be done in the wake of this carnage. The riders had been thorough. Fell blood pooled in the dirt. Already desert scavenger insects were gathering to eat their fill.

He came upon the body of Veyley, an elderly Fell and friend of his father’s. Veyley’s abdomen was split apart, his innards baking in the sun. The smell reminded Tanin of the butchering of sandcats and the mountain deer his people would sometimes hunt.

Father . . . Mother . . .

Tanin’s vision wavered. He dropped to his bare knees, limbs quaking. He rocked backward onto his heels, digging his hands into his eyes.

Would this be Memine’s fate? They had her; would they butcher her like they had Veyley and the others?

Tanin stood and raced past burning and crumbled burrows and adobe huts, past baked-brick buildings and pools of gathered communal water. In this central plaza, the Fell would gather for their great feasts, with cooked meat over three roaring fires forming a triangle in the middle of the gravel floor. Homes and other buildings radiated outward from the plaza in concentric circles, each doorway facing the center; the eye, the heart of the Fell community.

There’d been many more of them, Tanin realized as he ran for home. The band of white riders at the river had only been a patrol of some kind. The destruction of Desita wasn’t the work of a few dozen of them; this was the work of hundreds.

Maybe thousands.

He reached the dark doorway of his family’s burrow. Most Fell buildings like this one were sunk half a body length or more into the ground, with short walls surrounding the ground-level perimeter of the burrow. The burrows were topped by domed adobe roofs and encircled by brick gutters to gather infrequent rain.

Swallowing bitterness at the back of his throat, Tanin took the three steps down into his family’s gathering room. The chimney hole in the center of the dome allowed a shaft of grim red sunlight to shine across two bodies.

And several limbs.

Mesiki and Raba, his mother and father, had been torn apart. Their bodies lay atop one another at crisscross angles, their arms and legs severed and tossed about the main room. Their blood flooded the dirt floor, creating crimson mud; Tanin could not leave the bottom step without his bare feet becoming saturated.

The sight of all this turned the desert heat to freezing ice in his veins. Panic welled in him, and the young Fell screamed their names.

No answer came from within or without the home. A warm wind blew through the doorway, bringing with it the unfamiliar smell of death.

Tanin wept and shook, his entire frame trembling with terror. He could not take his eyes off the remnants of his parents; the gore ensnared his mind, twisting it like wet garments being wrung out to dry.

What was there to do? There was no one left, no one to—

A groan. Tanin spun, seeking the source of the sound. He inclined his head and let his ears hone in. Someone alive, somewhere outside.

I’m sorry, he whispered to his parents—for not being there, for not sharing their fate—and ran from the burrow.

ORROCK OF GUAR SAT in his monk’s cell, his massive horns nearly scraping the stone ceiling. The sharp ivory extended half as far from tip to tip as his arm-span, curling slightly forward at the ends. Once, they were useful for dissipating heat, for digging in his native grasslands, and for the slaughter of his enemies. Now they were merely decorative, as the monks liked to joke; they were Tashri, smaller than Guar, and hairless, and lacking horns at all—a shame, Orrock thought. When he’d first joined the Brothers, he’d tearfully offered to saw his horns off. The monks had gently dissuaded him, promising that Holy Creator Anyi had made him who he was for a reason, and that he ought to keep himself whole. The days of self-mutilation were long past for the Brothers of the Hands of Anyi. Generations ago, yes, they’d enforced many forms of physical penance, and some distant sects in Kassia still practiced such barbarism. Not these Brothers, though; all creatures were to be taken as they came.

That included the enormous-horned Guar who Brother Obos had brought to the monastery all those years ago.

The seven-foot-tall acolyte breathed deeply through his broad nose, massive lungs filling with the scent of a pine candle, the only source of light in this little stone room that had been his home for ten years. Long, course brown hair spilled out from his short cleric’s robe and covered his limbs, which he scratched as his prayers drew to a close. It had taken one of the brothers several days to stitch together a robe large enough for him.

Orrock’s giant heart pounded despite his prayer for peace, for the previous night was his last here with the Brothers. The thought chilled him. This morning his mission would begin. He wondered, not for the first time, how he could ever fulfill his vows outside this lonely but warm little fort, high in the mountains of Kassia’s longest range. Obeying the scriptures of Anyi while among the Brothers had been easy once he and the Tashri monks had grown accustomed to one another. Obeying his god out in the world, in the wilds of Kassia once more . . . this worried the former mercenary.

Sitting cross-legged in the center of the room, Orrock prayed again silently to Anyi, asking—not begging, for Anyi had no need of beggars—for the strength and courage to commit to his vows.

Well . . . the courage, anyway. His strength was abundant. His forearms were as thick around as the thighs of the Brothers, and he could lift a draft animal overhead if he truly had a mind to. Then again, perhaps ten years of monastic life had softened his body.

He would find out at dawn, when he began his pledge.

Orrock opened his eyes at the sound of a knock on his pinewood door.

Brother Orrock? His mentor, Brother Obos.

Yes, Brother, Orrock answered, careful to keep his baritone voice as quiet as possible. The other monks still slept in their cells lining the hallway.

It’s time, Obos said through the door. Come and eat.

Orrock dipped his head and whispered a low, Amen to Holy Creator Anyi before climbing to his feet.

He opened the door and made sure Obos was clear before maneuvering first his horns, then the rest of his big body out through the doorway. The architecture was designed for Tashri, not Guar. Orrock tugged his orange robe into place, keeping his head bent in the narrow hallway.

Is it dawn? he asked, for he had no window in his cell.

Nearly, Obos said. How do you feel?

Unforgiven.

Obos reached up—far up—to pat Orrock on the back. Even after all this time, my friend?

Orrock nodded, causing his horn tips to scrape and chip the ceiling. There were many such scrapes scattered about the monastery.

What does Holy Anyi say? Obos asked.

‘Refusal to forgive hurts the man.’

And the next verse?

‘I am the god of all the world, giving forgiveness to all the creatures within it until there is no more sin, for the sake of my everlasting and abiding love.’

What does this mean for us?

The forgiveness of self is imperative.

Excellent. Your scriptural memory is still strong. Obos chided the tall creature: At least your time here was not in vain.

They turned a corner and followed a flight of stairs down to the narthex of the chapel. Three pillar candles burned without flickering on the altar, casting shadows against the stone pews. Orrock’s eyes lingered on the candles as they passed. Brother, I fear the creature I was when I arrived still lurks within me. I do not wish to leave.

Then you do not wish to take your vows? You do not wish to obey our Creator? Obos asked kindly. Is that true?

No, Orrock said without hesitation. I serve our god.

Which was ironic, Orrock had long thought, since the Guar and the Tashri believed in the same deity, yet acted upon that belief in diametric ways. Generations ago, monks like these Brothers had inadvertently set the Guar on their violent warpath. For Obos and the others to welcome him in the way they did . . . perhaps he was the first step in a larger plan of reconciliation between Creator Anyi and the Guar.

When they entered the narthex, Orrock stood to his full height. The ceiling was much higher here. He took a deep breath through his nose and shoved his giant’s hands into the sleeves of his robe.

I will not tell you to forget your fear, old friend, said Obos as they reached the banded-iron doors of the chapel. But I advise you to give it no weight. It is yours to wrestle with. You are, without doubt, the most unique acolyte this order had ever had the honor of teaching, and as you go, you take all our love and faith and blessing with you.

Obos opened the double doors and gestured for Orrock to step out into the flagstone courtyard. Orrock obeyed, walking to the stone table centered in the yard where the morning meal awaited, lit only by the graying Kassia sky. So it was with all acolytes re-entering the world to do Anyi’s will—a simple, silent meal with the acolyte’s mentor.

After: the world beyond, a world he had not seen in a decade.

Orrock felt his heart skip a beat, and hoped it did not show in his expression.

TWO

Mere hours ago, in Kassia’s vast western desert, Tanin and a party of young Fell had sprinted through sand, over pebbles and sharp granite, their unshod feet sliding easily over jagged rocks poking up from the earth. Their soles were tough as leather, immune to every warning the desert used to dissuade them from reckless abandon. The desert should have known better after so many hundreds of years: reckless abandon was the very nature of the Fell.

Tanin bounded along with his friends, a dozen other Fell his own age. He stole many glances at Memine beside him. At nineteen years old, Tanin’s blood ran as hot as Kassia’s yellow sun, and it burned for Memine unlike any heat he’d ever known.

Memine returned his glance, adding a coy grin. That simple gesture, one perfected in her eighteen years, made Tanin’s body flood with joy and desire. Memine vaulted a boulder in a breathtaking display of grace, the type of acrobatics Tanin could only dream of. She seemed to float momentarily above the gray stone, riding currents of faint desert wind scented with the salty aroma of creosote.

When she landed, Tanin pointed ahead to a pyramid of solid rock several body-lengths high. Race!

Memine laughingly accepted the challenge. They sprinted ahead of the others and launched themselves up the formation, their narrow fingers finding miniature crevices as handholds. Memine’s superior athleticism put her on top of the rock moments before Tanin. Upon reaching the summit, Memine flung herself to the ground, her knees bending expertly to absorb the landing.

Tanin, breathing hard, reached the summit and shouted, You’re amazing!

Memine flashed her brown eyes and waved for him to join her. Memine’s long, thick eyelashes, designed perfectly against the annual dust storms that plagued their desert home, blazed blue-black beneath the sun. Tanin paused at the top of the rock, staring openly at her tall ears, evolved like all Fell to release heat from the body. He loved her ears; he loved everything about Memine, from her sun-tanned skin to her stubborn insistence to win all dares and races, but the proud height of her ears always delighted him.

Tanin joined her—climbing down, not jumping. Do you still choose me?

Now and for every season to come. Memine winked, eyelashes fluttering. Even if you can’t climb!

They laughed together and walked side-by-side to catch their breaths. The rest of the party walked now, too, chattering and giggling amongst themselves.

I worry that I’m bringing nothing to our marriage, Tanin said, mostly teasing, but the humor had some truth to it. I pick fruit, I make pod flour . . . I’m not very exciting.

Memine took his hand. In the winter, when she turned nineteen, she would accept him as her husband. Fell females chose their companion for life, leaving the males to only hope for a mutual match. Disappointment, thankfully, was rare.

Winter seemed a very long way away.

"You make the best flour, Memine said. You pick the best fruits. You’ll feed us well. What more could I ask for?"

A Guardian?

She waved it off. Boring! Anyone can fight a sandcat. I want to eat!

They squeezed one another’s hands. If she’d wanted a Guardian, Memine would have chosen someone like their friend Chenoa, leader of today’s party, who was already in training to become the Fell’s closest approximation of a warrior.

Do you really want to know why I chose you? Memine asked.

The suddenness of the question surprised him. Memine was not given to bouts of seriousness. She waited until he met her gaze unswervingly, even as they walked.

It’s because you never said no to me. Every race, every dare, every challenge. You’re the only one who came along each time.

Tanin considered this and realized she was