Chapter 3: Seeds of Hate

970 AD, Bukit Panau (Spotty Hill), in the land named Amdan Negara (City of the Valiant).

Biduk Bota (Ogre’s Ship) surveyed the area around Mahligai Gemilang Sakti (Palace of Sacred Glory). The palace previously named Mahligai Dharmakusuma (Dharmakusuma Palace). For two centuries it had been occupied, in turn, by various self-appointed narapati (provincial chiefs) hailing from Palembang who claimed to be, whether truthfully or otherwise, related to the royal house of Palembang Srivijaya, the latest among whom being Biduk Bota himself.

The people’s uprising along the entire Kelantan River Valley around Bukit Panau had been crushed, swiftly and brutally. Several rebel leaders had been captured, bound and thrown into prison. There they languished in fear, awating their final punishment. Their homes had been burnt down to ashes, their property seized. A few more of them were still on the run, now hunted like wild animals by Biduk Bota’s henchmen.

In an isolated settlement, a couple of prasanga distance from Mahligai Gemilang Sakti, Biduk Bota’s men, armed to the teeth, barged into two houses located nearby each other. They came out again dragging a man and a woman from each house.

“Father!” a small boy, about five years of age, cried on the serambi (annexe) of his house. “Mother! Wait! Don’t leave me!”

“Bastards!” another child, about the same age as him, from the other house, screamed angrily. “Don’t take my mother away! Mother! Where’re they taking you to? Father!”

The two men and their wives were bound in sturdy rope and brought to Mahligai Gemilang Sakti to receive their punishment. On Biduk Bota's orders, the women were first roughed up, then dragged into a room, one after the other, purportedly for special questioning by Biduk Bota alone.

"Hey, Biduk Bota!" One of the men screamed. "Don't you dare hurt my wife! I'll kill you if you even touch ..." Before he finished speaking, Demak Sawo smashed his head with the pommel of his sword, sending the man sprawling to the ground. As the other man opened his mouth to speak, Kebo Laro swung his knee into his gut several times, then punched the man with all his strength in the chest, taking the wind out of him completely.

The two villagers were then beaten up and tortured to within an inch of their lives, then dragged and hurled into a killer crocodile’s cage amid screams of terror, to be savaged then feasted upon by Jaka Pelara, Biduk Bota’s voracious reptilian executioner. In short order, their wives were executed by keris in public. The ghastly punishments were necessary, Biduk Bota insisted, to serve as deterrence against future rebellions.

One of the men somehow managed to whisper a weak request to two relatives, moments before he was dragged and thrown into the crocodile’s cage. “Utih, Uda. Save our sons … Pinang and Nibung. Take them away … to Gunung Sembatu. Leave them … with our good friend … the Lord of the Mountain.”

The two youngsters slipped away immediately. They rushed back to their village, sought and found their two small kindred, then quickly smuggled them out, taking them through isolated jungle routes, toward the mountains far upstream. They avoided going anywhere near the Kelantan River for fear of encountering Biduk Bota's men.

Only when they reached Krai, near the place where the Galas River met the Lebir River, did they dare to consider and take up a friendly looking villager's offer of a ride on his fast dugout longboat up the Galas River to Jelawang. Even then, Utih and Uda never took their eyes off the boatman for long, always keeping a sharp watch in case the man was a spy or a traitor who might turn them in, while at the same time helping to row the boat. Then they walked again through thick jungle, from Jelawang town in the direction of Gunung Sembatu, until they reached their final destination, the abode of the Lord of the Mountain.

Thus the two children, Nibung and Pinang, were eventually taken in by the Lord of the Mountain into his home, and raised by him as his own, with all the love a father could ever give, even though he himself had lost his beloved wife ten years earlier.

§

970 AD, Gunung Sembatu (Stony Mountain), Upper Galas River Valley, in the land named Amdan Negara (Kingdom of the Valiant).

For Kembang Seri Wangi, now ten years of age, the unexpected appearance of Pinang and Nibung in Gunung Sembatu (Stony Mountain) was like a fortuitous blessing, even if it had occurred in the most painful of circumstances. In a single day she had gained two little brothers, adding much needed life and cheer into her home. While awaiting a room of their own to be built for them, the two small boys shared her room with her.

Every night she would keep them company until they both fell asleep. Only then would she herself retire. While her father mostly preferred to sleep outside, in the guest lounge, rather than his own bedroom.

During the day, Nibung and Pinang would run around and play normally like the other kids in the neighbourhood. At first they were shy and reserved, preferring to keep to themselves. Eventually, however, their new friends won them over with their warm good-natured friendliness, making the two children forget momentarily the recent dark events in their life.

At night, however, when sleep came, all the terrible memories would come back to haunt them in their wild nightmares.

“Mother! Father!,” Nibung sobbed aloud in his dream, waking up Kembang Seri Wangi who had just dozed off. “Don’t leave me!”

Kembang Seri Wangi wiped Nibung’s face, wet with sweat, with a piece of moist rag. The child woke up briefly from his sleep, shifted his position a few times, and soon fell asleep again.

“Don’t take my mother away!” moments afterward, Pinang screamed. “Bastards! I’ll kill you all one day!”

Kembang Seri Wangi did the same with Pinang as she had done with Nibung.

“Wangi,” moments later Nibung had woken up again.

“Nibung,” Kembang Seri Wangi turned back to Nibung, readjusting her new brother’s blanket, which had by then shifted all over the place. “You’re tired. Go back to sleep, dear brother. Tomorrow you’d want to go play with your new friends again.”

“My mother and my father, when are they going to come and pick me up? It's been a long time since Uncle Utih and Uncle Uda brought me here. My old friends back home, and my relatives, I miss them all so much.”

The child’s innocent lament stabbed Kembang Seri Wangi sharp and deep in her young soul. But she made a big effort to keep her poise. She had to be strong for him.

“Nibung, my brother” she spoke softly, in a soothing tone. “Your mother and your father, they have gone to a place far, far away from here, so that they shalll not be disturbed by those bad people again. Be patient. One day, when they’re ready, they shall come for you.”

Thus young Kembang Seri Wangi tirelessly looked after and cared for the little boys, calming them every time she sensed turmoil rising in their small hearts. Day by day, night by night, she learned to fulfil her newfound duties and responsibilities as an elder sister.

As Nibung drifted into slumber again, Kembang Seri Wangi got up and opened her windows a little. She looked up at the night sky, watching the moon appear, disappear behind the clouds, then appear again.

“O Purnama, Lord of the Moon,” she pleaded. “Why are those evil conquerors of our land still lording it so cruelly over our people, still terrorising and mistreating them? Beating them up and torturing them, hurting their women, plundering and pillaging their land and property, wreaking carnage and destruction everywhere.  What are the sins of these two little brothers of mine, that they have lost everyone and everything dear to them at so young an age? What are the wrongs of their mothers and fathers, that they have all been abused, injured and slain so wantonly and violently?”

Without her realising it, tears welled up in her eyes and fell down her warm cheeks.

“Wangi,” Adhi Vira stretched himself, sat up slowly, rubbed his eyes and peered toward his daughter’s bedroom.

“Father!” Kembang Seri Wangi turned around, jolted out of her thoughts. “You startled me.”

“I’m sorry, Daughter. You haven’t gone to sleep yet?”

“I had, Father. But I was woken up again by the cries and screams of Nibung and Pinang in their sleep.”

“So was I.”

“They both seemed disturbed by some bad dream of theirs.”

“Don’t you worry about them too much, Dear. They’ll both gradually recover from their painful experiences. Time will heal their wounds. What’s most important is that we both take good care of them, always, and to the best of our ability.”

“I hope so too, Father. They are unfortunate children. Still, I can feel, like they shall bring good fortune to our family. Even now, their mere presence seems to have cured the loneliness, which I’ve often felt in our home all this time.”

Such was the character of Kembang Seri Wangi. She was barely ten years old, but her words often sounded better thought out than those of many other children much older than her. Perhaps, having long had to cope by herself in every awkward situation where another little girl would have gone running to her mother had somehow made Kembang Seri Wangi grow up that bit quicker than the rest.

“I’d be most happy if things turn out that way, Wangi,” said her father. “Anyway, like someone said, behind every cloud there’s always a silver lining.”

"You think so, Father? But what good can there be, in the abuse and killings, of the innocent people of Bukit Panau then?"

"I don't know the right answer to that, Daughter. What I can tell you is that, we can't, and we won't, let them go unpunished. There will be payback some time. That much I can promise."

"My mother came to see me in my dream!" Nibung sprang to the doorway, startling Kembang Seri Wangi. "Now I know what happened. Teach me how to fight, Sir. I want to face those murderers one day. I want to make them pay for their deeds."

"Me too, Sir," Pinang appeared alongside his cousin. "Those animals destroyed my family and my life. I want to kill them all."

"Teach me also, Father," Kembang Seri Wangi joined in with her two new brothers, her voice now sounding surprisingly steely with determination. "I want to fight with Nibung and Pinang. I want to liberate our land from those evil conquerors. I want to restore the pride and honour of our people."

"Bravo! Bravo!" replied Adhi Vira. "I'm happy and proud to have brave children like you all under my charge. When you're all ready, children, when you're old enough to learn the art of the warrior, I shall teach you everything."

"In the meantime," the prince continued after a pause, "you shall each live your life like children, and enjoy it like all children should do. When the time comes, when you're all big enough and strong enough, I shall be glad to have you all join me and my friends, in our fight for independence, against our arrogant enemies."

The children went quiet. They each had a bone to pick, an axe to grind. But a calm came over them and enveloped them in its cooling embrace. After a while, Kembang Seri Wangi led the boys back to their sleeping mats again.

Adhi Vira was a seasoned warrior. He understood the hunger for vengeance, that primordial human need to right a perceived wrong. He knew the immensity of its power too. For the sake of his ancestral kingdom, the fallen kingdom of Kelantan Amdan Negara, and her long downtrodden people, he strove to exploit that hunger to the full.

The early morning wind began whispering from the seven mountains nearby their highlands home. Kembang Seri Wangi closed her bedroom window. She readjusted, yet again, the blankets covering her new little brothers, Nibung and Pinang, so that their small bodies would be protected against the now increasingly cool mountain air.