Arnulf the Destroyer by Robert Cely

concentrating on the bark.
    At first Yodis didn’t answer.  His eyes watched the shaman’s hands, delicately separating bark from tree, careful to keep it all intact.  Inside, his mind was stirring.  He let the question tumble around before it became too much to keep in.
    “What is he testing me about?” Yodis finally voiced.
    “He is testing your resolve, to see if you would really carry out a deed so blasphemous.”
    “Is it blasphemous to do something a god tells you to do?” Yodis asked,  confused by the answer of the shaman.
    “Say no more about this,” Oron sighed.  Yodis could hear the irritation in his voice.
    They never spoke of it again.

    Three times that year Yodis partook of the Shivuk bark.  All three times he soared up to the Numa Din in the heavens.  All three times it was empty except for the towering figure of the Faceless One who loomed over the sanctuary.
    Fear overcame Yodis at seeing the massive god.  His knees would give way and he fell to his face, trembling, praying that the awful vision would leave him alone.
    “Destroy the idols!” the Faceless One would thunder from above.  “Destroy the idols so my blessing might descend upon here!”
    Yodis would never answer the god.  He couldn’t even look at him.  The lightning and thunder, the shaking of the ground, the stars plummeting from the heavens, the winged creatures, even the sweet strain of music that echoed about the sanctuary; it was all too much for him to bear.  It took all of Yodis’ will to keep his face to the ground and try not to let the voice that shook him to his very depths consume him body and soul.
    “Destroy the idols!” the Faceless One would boom, each time more angry than before.

    That year the rains dried out again.  Only a few times during the wet season did the skies open up and pour down its nourishment onto the jungle.  The People looked up at the sky nervously and prayed for rains that wouldn’t come.
    Later in the dry season the first baby died and the People grew anxious.  Oron went up to the sacred place almost every day.  He inhaled the smoke of the Shivuk bark to ask the gods why they punished the People.  But the gods would not speak to him.  Oron returned from his spirit walks and wept for the fate of the tribe.
    “Why won’t the gods speak?” Yodis asked everyday that Oron returned without and answer.
    “They must be very angry,” Oron would answer with a sad shake of his head.  “We must have done something terrible to offend them.”
    Yodis could not help but harbor the thought that he was at fault.  Was it because he did not heed the Faceless One that the rains had dried up?  Or was it that the Faceless One had chosen him, and this angered the other gods?  Either way Yodis could hardly stomach the thought.
    He spoke none of these fears aloud.  The shaman, he knew, did not want to speak of the Faceless One.  So Yodis kept it all in and let it waste away inside him.

    Later that year a fire swept through the jungle.  It didn’t touch the People but the smoke filled the sky for days.  Another tribe, the Anzi, had all of their lands burned up.  They took whatever they had left and moved on, looking for other lands.
    The Anzi passed through the People’s village on a search for another home.  The worn and tired travelers, some still covered in soot, begged the People for food and water.  It shamed the People to refuse, but they had no choice.  They didn’t even have enough for their own.  Yodis couldn’t even look up at the wailing Anzi women and the emaciated children they carried.
    The Anzi shaman cursed the People.  Spit flew from his cracked mouth as he called the gods to bring down evil.
    “Do not worry about his curse,” Oron said quietly. “If his magic were strong they would not have lost their village.”

    Weeks later Oron called the Council of Elders together.  The oldest men of the village, along with the most esteemed hunters, gathered alone in