Bah! But I’ll humor her. It’s best that I stop here anyhow. The rest that I must write—the story of Devon and Sabia—is both painful and sweet. The memory will comfort me as I lie awake, trying to keep fear as far away as possible, in the lonely darkness.
CHAPTER * 5
DEATH’S GATE CHELESTRA
CONSCIOUSNESS FORCED ITSELF ON HAPLO.
He awoke to searing pain, yet, in the same instant, he knew himself to be whole once more, and pain-free. The circle of his being was joined again. The agony he’d felt was the tail end of that circle being seized by the mouth.
But the circle wasn’t strong. It was wobbly, tenuous. Lifting his hand was an effort almost beyond his strength, but he managed it and placed the fingers on his naked breast. Starring with the rune over his heart, slowly and haltingly, he began to trace, began to reconnect and strengthen, every sigil written upon his skin.
He started with the name rune, the first sigil that is tattooed over the heart of the squirming, screaming babe almost the moment it is forced from the mother’s womb. The babe’s mother performs the rite, or another female tribe member if the mother dies. The name is chosen by the father, if he lives or is still among the tribe. [1] If not, by the tribal headman.
‘Children are extremely valued in the Labyrinth and are raised by the Squatters. Runners, such as Haplo, would often father children but, due to the nature of their lives, could not stay with a tribe to raise it. Female Runners, becoming pregnant, would move into a Squatter tribe until the babe was born, then give it to one of the Squatter families to raise. Occasionally drawing on the magic of either mother or wet nurse. And yet the name rune is the most important sigil on the body, since every other sigil added later traces its origin back to it first—the beginning of the circle.
Haplo moved his fingers over the name rune, redrawing its intricate design from memory.
Memory took him back to the time of his childhood, to one of the rare, precious moments of peace and rest, to a boy reciting his name and learning how to shape the runes. . . .
. . . “Haplo: ‘single, alone.’ That is your name and your destiny,” said his father, his finger rough and hard on Haplo’s chest. “Your mother and I have defeated the odds thrown for us already. Every Gate we pass from now on is a wink at fate. But the time will come when the Labyrinth will claim us, as it claims all except the lucky and the strong. And the lucky and the strong are generally the lonely. Repeat your name.”
Haplo did so, solemnly running his own grimy finger over his thin chest.
His father nodded. “And now the runes of protection and healing.”
Haplo laboriously went over each of those, beginning with the ones touching the name rune, spreading out over the breast, the vital organs of his abdominal region, the sensitive groin area, and around the back to protect the spine. Haplo recited these, as he’d recited them countless times in his brief life. He’d done it so often, he could let his mind wander to the rabbit snares he’d laid out that day, wondered if he might be able to surprise his mother with dinner.
“No! Wrong! Begin again!”
A sharp blow, delivered impersonally by his father with what was known as the naming stick, across the unprotected, rune-free palm of the hand, focused Haplo’s mind on his lesson. The blow brought tears to his eyes, but he was quick to blink them away, for his father was watching him closely. The ability to endure pain was as much a part of this rough schooling as the recitation and the drawing of the sigla.
“You are careless today, Haplo,” said his father, tapping the naming stick—a thin, pliable branch of a plant known as a creeping rose, adorned with flesh-pricking thorns—on the hard ground. “It is said that back in the days of our freedom, before we were thrown into this accursed jail by our enemies . . . Name the enemy, my son.”