Chapter 4: Paraluman | Rajah Versus Conquistador
She asked for you, and so you went.
You were deep into the tagay1 when her servant relayed the message. You excused yourself and the datus made their crude jokes. Tubâ has loosened their tongues, and your old friendship gave them the privilege.
The crescent moon has hidden her face behind the hills of Busay, leaving the night to the stars. Through gaps between the houses, pale light seeps from coconut oil lamps burning behind woven walls, their faint glow barely reaching the ground below. Their sweet, nutty smoke drifts down to the pathways. It's the kind of darkness that emboldens lovers and assassins, when even the most familiar paths become treacherous and secrets can be whispered without fear.
You stop right outside the main entrance of your royal payag – the biggest payag in Sugbo – so you can transform yourself.
You put on a garment that covers you from neck to ankle, similar to what the Gujurati traders wear. The sleeves hide your arms, concealing the marks of valor that warriors proudly wear. The flowing fabric drapes over your legs, shrouding the stories of conquest and honor etched into your flesh.
"Tao po," you call out, but not with the voice that makes datus tremble and slaves prostrate themselves. Instead, you shape your throat into the soft, hesitant tones of an ulipon seeking permission to enter. It is a voice that asks rather than commands, that begs entry rather than assumes it.
"Pasok," she commands.
In the language of her people, "tao po" is the polite greeting you use when asking to enter someone else's house, and "pasok" means "enter." You may not use your native tongue in her presence. Your humiliation is complete.
You enter, hands already positioned for a respectful bow. The oil lamps cast dancing shadows on the walls of finely woven bamboo. The air is heavy with incense – storax and benzoin, the same perfumes used in the death rituals of datus.
You dare to raise your eyes for a moment and you catch a glimpse of her. Through the haze, you see her seated on an elevated platform, sitting on silk cushions from Johor. She is dressed in the manner of Bruneian nobility – layers of rich fabric completely covering her form, making her seem larger than life. Her lips are stained with deep red from betel nut, while atop her head sits an elaborate headdress made of palm leaves.
"Closer," she commands, her voice carrying the authority of someone accustomed to being obeyed.
You crawl forward on your hands and knees, your garments dragging against the bamboo floor. She watches your approach with the detached interest of someone observing a ritual they've seen performed many times before.
When you reach her feet, you pause, waiting. The moment stretches like honey dripping from a comb. This too is part of the ritual – this moment of anticipation, of power held in perfect balance.
"You may kiss my feet," she says finally. She raises her skirts and contemptuously thrusts out a naked foot. You lift your dripping face and touch your lips to her toes. You lift you hands and grasp the white binukot foot and kiss it savagely – you kiss the step, the sole, the frail ankle.
***
Paraluman came to your life three years ago, at the end of the summer solstice.
Your brother, the Bendahara, arranged the marriage, claiming it would strengthen ties with the northern ports. The Bendahara and one of her older brothers became good friends during their time in Malacca. You immediately saw through her – the youngest daughter of a once-mighty datu family in Luson, now seeking new alliances. You knew her kind – a binukot raised in seclusion, trained in the subtle arts of power since childhood, her skin never touched by the sun.
Your brother likely had other motivations. The followers of Muhammad have transformed the northern realms. They brought not just a new diety but new ways of ruling – ways that did not require payment in the sacred currency of blood. Many datus have embraced these changes, leaving behind the old economy of slave sacrifice and spirit binding. Easy for them, you thought. You had visited the kingdoms of Luson in your youth and you remember their flavorless roast pig and their pale coconut liquor. The old datu families who clung to the ways of blood and spirits were gradually displaced by those who embraced the new power flowing from Malacca.
She was your brother's solution to your malady. It had been two years since Handuraw's death. Neither your wives nor any of the older baylan could replace her role as a counter to the serpent. Few men have been trained in the ways of the baylan and even fewer – perhaps none – have mastered the arts of the baylan as you have. Their powers were useless against you.
Handuraw taught you to see the hand of the diwata not only in the world of men, but within your own mind. Your twin is the most powerful diwata within you, but there are many others, all of them bowing before the slithering king.
The old stories tell of datus who rode sea serpents into battle, using their power to break enemy armies and seize new lands. But such force carries its own hunger. Like warriors who taste human flesh and cannot stop, these datus were eventually consumed by what they tried to master.
This is why the baylan emerged among the people of the barangay. Only they know how to sing to the serpent's ancient soul, how to feed its hunger without being devoured. While men might lose themselves in the frenzy of power, the baylan maintain the balance. Their drums match the serpent's pulse, their voices can pierce the battle-madness.
Even the mightiest datu must heed their wisdom, for a ruler without the baylan is like a man drunk on tubâ trying to grasp a cobra – impressive until the moment its fangs find his throat. The old ones say that before the first balanghay crossed the seas, before the first blade tasted mountain blood, it was the baylan who learned to speak with the bakunawa. They were the first to know that power from the unseen world demands its price – and they alone knew how to negotiate that terrible trade.
Handuraw miscalculated, or perhaps she did not care what would happen after her death, being herself a mistress of the serpent.
In the months following Handuraw's death, you discovered a terrible freedom. Without her songs to gentle the serpent, without her rituals to channel its power, you felt a wild joy you hadn't known since your youth. The carefully orchestrated violence that had served your rule gave way to something darker, more primal. Sacrifices were no longer just calculated offerings to maintain power – they became celebrations, festivals of blood that left you laughing in the darkness.
Your wives saw the change in you. How you would suddenly break into wild dancing during solemn ceremonies, how your laughter would echo through the halls at strange hours. The datus watched as their composed, strategic ruler transformed into something more akin to the diwata – unpredictable, ungovernable, intoxicating in its freedom. Even your closest advisors found themselves both drawn to and terrified by this new energy, never knowing if they would be invited to join your revelries or become part of the entertainment.
The Bendahara observed with growing alarm as you shed the careful masks of diplomacy. During meetings with foreign merchants, you would suddenly launch into stories of your battles, describing the kills that earned your tattoos with such vivid relish that even hardened warriors grew pale. You began hosting feasts that lasted days, where wine flowed like rivers and the screams of sacrificial offerings mingled with drums and laughter.
But it was the incident with the merchant from Gujarat that finally forced your brother's hand. The man had been a trusted trading partner for years. When he accidentally violated a minor port protocol, something sparked in you – not the cold anger of a ruler dispensing justice, but the wild joy of a hunter spotting prey. You didn't just order him killed. You turned his death into spectacle, a days-long ritual that drew on the darkest, oldest traditions. The Bendahara barely managed to save Sugbo's trade relationships, but he couldn't erase the stories that spread through maritime networks about the rajah who had rediscovered the old ways with terrible enthusiasm.
You underestimated the young woman that your brother brought from the north. You expected her to wither like a binukot suddenly exposed to the harsh sun – this sheltered daughter of a fallen house thrown into the viper's nest of your household. Your wives were veterans of decades of subtle warfare, masters of the invisible strings that moved people and power. They had survived countless attempts to displace them, had orchestrated the rise and fall of rival families through whispered words and carefully placed rumors. Their tongues were as sharp as any kris, their alliances as intricate as the tattoos that marked your warriors' achievements.
Only Bini, Kulambô's binukot wife from Butuan, stood apart from these games. Like Paraluman, she preserved the old ways of their kind. The two binukot formed an immediate bond, sharing secrets passed down through generations of women kept in twilight. Where your other wives saw Paraluman as a threat to their influence, Bini recognized a sister in the sacred arts of their ancestors.
Paraluman moved through your older wives’ schemes like smoke through fingers. Where they expected timidity, she showed startling directness. When they tested her with subtle insults wrapped in politeness, she responded with disarming honesty that made them look petty. She spoke to ulipon and datu with the same attentive grace, and somehow this made her seem larger rather than smaller.
Most surprisingly, she won them over by appearing to want nothing. She claimed no territory in the endless battles for influence, sought no special favors, played no favorites among your children. Instead, she became a sort of still point in the swirling currents of household politics. Your wives found themselves coming to her with their grievances, not because she took sides, but because she listened with such complete attention that they often found their own solutions.
Your sakop2 noticed too. The way she remembered names, asked after sick relatives, noticed small kindnesses. How she learned their customs but didn't pretend to be one of them. The way she carried herself – neither humble nor proud, but with a kind of certainty that made others feel more certain too.
Even the rest of the baylan, usually suspicious of northern influences, found themselves drawn to her. She showed genuine interest in their rituals without trying to participate, respected their power without fearing it. Some said they saw in her something of the old priestesses from before the time of the balanghay, when the islands were ruled by women who could speak directly to the diwata.
But she won them over mostly because she tamed you and restored order in Sugbo. Your wives had watched with growing dread as your wild revelries frightened away the traders who filled their storerooms with silk and porcelain. They saw how your unpredictable rages threatened the delicate web of alliances that kept their children safe and their households prosperous. When Paraluman somehow managed to gentle your moods, to channel your darker urges into more controlled rituals, they recognized the true value of her presence. They felt relieved. They could go back spending their days plotting favorable marriages for the daughters they bore for you and hoarding information they might eventually turn into weapons.
You suspect that Paraluman was not alone in restoring order within you, or at least tame the chaos enough for peace to reign in Sugbo. In those dark days after Handuraw's death, the boy you had locked away in boxes within boxes began to stir.
Handuraw taught you to see the diwata not as invisible forces that dwell in trees and stones, but as powers that move through all things – including the various kalag within your own being. She showed you how to enter the invisible world through the doorway of breath, how to track the movements of these powers like a hunter reading tracks in the forest. Your serpent twin was the strongest kalag within you, but there were others that it had learned to manipulate – the warrior that craved battle, the child that sought comfort, the merchant that calculated gain, the lover that yearned for beauty.
Each kalag wielded its own weapons. The warrior used kasukô, the red flame of rage that gave strength in combat. The child wielded kahadlok, the shadow of fear that kept you vigilant against threats. The merchant deployed calculation and cunning to protect what was yours.
But the serpent's most powerful weapon was how it had twisted bigâ – the burning hunger that should have belonged to the lover kalag. In most men, bigâ served gugma, driving them to seek connection and unity with another. In you, the serpent had ripped bigâ from its natural home and transformed it into a tool for domination. When you took slave women as prizes, when you added new wives to your household like collecting precious gems, the serpent approved. This was power expressed through possession rather than connection.
This is why the serpent feared gugma above all else – not the soft affection between mother and child, but something deeper and more dangerous. A power that could reclaim bigâ from the serpent's grasp, that could make even the mightiest warrior lay down his kris, that could turn the fiercest datu into a willing servant of something greater than himself. The serpent knew that true gugma was like death to its control – a complete surrender of the self to another. Sula, for instance, was on the path to becoming a great warrior like his uncle, Lapulapu. Yet he lost his fire when his lover kalag awakened to Ging-ging, a timawa from Bohol, and gugma reclaimed bigâ from the warrior's grasp. Gugma was a threat to the serpent's supremacy, and so you used the baylan mind techniques to protect yourself from it, keeping your lover kalag bound in invisible chains, muzzled and restrained where it could not challenge the serpent's rule.
Until Paraluman, you had only experienced true gugma once – the pure and terrible love you felt for your mother before the serpent claimed dominance over your kalag. Since then, you learned to transform all such feelings into forms the serpent could digest. Your love for your wives became possession, your care for your children became pride, your bonds with your warriors became displays of power. The serpent allowed the performance of affection, but never the surrender that gugma demanded.
But Paraluman broke through these careful walls with devastating precision. She saw the weight you carried – not just of Sugbo's prosperity, but of all the blood-soaked bargains that maintained it. Every sacrifice, every strategic marriage, every calculated friendship or betrayal – all of it resting on your shoulders. And somehow she knew exactly what you needed.
She became your Agaron – your master. Not through the usual tools of power like beauty or cunning, though she had both. Instead, she offered you something the serpent could not fight: the freedom of complete submission. In her chambers, you were no longer the rajah who had to calculate every word, every gesture. You were not the vessel of ancient powers or the keeper of bloody bargains. You were simply hers to command.
The rituals grew more elaborate over time. What began as simple acts of obeisance – the kissing of feet, the crawling on hands and knees – evolved into intricate ceremonies of humiliation and devotion. She would make you recite your titles and achievements while kneeling before her, then command you to beg like a slave. She would have you dress in rich garments only to make you soil them at her feet.
The serpent raged at first, but even it could not deny the strange peace these rituals brought. In surrendering to Paraluman, you found a few precious moments of freedom from the crushing weight of power. Your wives noticed the change – how you emerged calmer, more controlled, though they never knew the source. The Bendahara saw how trade flourished again as your violent impulses found a new channel. Some claimed she had slipped you lumay, the ancient love potion whose secrets were jealously guarded by northern binukot. Others suspected the hand of foreign diwata. None guessed the true nature of your surrender, the secret rituals that brought peace to Sugbo through the rajah's willing humiliation.
***
"Nagawa mo na?" she asks. Is it done?
You pause your task of worship to answer, "opo, aking mahal." Yes, my beloved.
As you say those words, you sense that tonight is different from all the other nights that witnessed your secret ritual. As you kneel before your goddess, you feel not the usual release but a burning shame. You remember submitting before the Kapitan's servants this morning, offering tribute like a common datu. The serpent writhes beneath your skin, and something of its rage must show in your face.
She starts to murmur directions for your worship, but her voice trails off into silence. Even in the dim light, you see her eyes narrow. She shifts seamlessly into the trading tongue: “The mask you wear grows thin, my sweet captive. Let me see the power you've hidden away.”
You rise slowly, deliberately. The garment falls away like shed skin. In the flickering lamplight, your tattoos come alive – each mark a story of blood and power. The serpent coiling around your left arm, marking you as a master of the sacred mysteries. Across your chest, the intricate patterns in royal Sanskrit that name you as Rajah Sarripada Humabon, descendant of the first datu who conquered these shores, master of the greatest port in the Visayan sea, chosen of the diwata, supreme in battle, speaker of seven tongues, collector of tribute from a hundred datus.
You see the change come over her. The proud tilt of her head falters. The imperious set of her shoulders softens. She recognizes what you truly are – not her willing slave, but a force of nature barely contained in human form. Her body remembers what her mind sometimes forgets: that you have sent whole villages to the afterlife, that you have sacrificed nobleman and slave alike to feed your serpent's hunger.
She sinks to her knees, then lower still, until her forehead touches the bamboo floor. Her voice emerges as barely a whisper:
"Akoang ginoo, akoang hari, akoang rajah."3
***
The ship's bell marks the hour of Compline. In his cabin aboard the Trinidad, Magellan takes out his worn rosary beads – a gift from his wife Beatriz before he sailed. The gentle sway of the anchored ship mingles with distant singing from the shore, where temple gongs mark unfamiliar rhythms.
He arranges himself carefully on the hard deck, bad leg protesting as he kneels. Even alone, he maintains rigid posture – the discipline of a lifetime too ingrained to abandon. The candlelight catches the red cross of Santiago on his tunic.
"In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti..."
He hadn't prayed like this since childhood, not until those endless days in that endless ocean. When the water turned green with rot and men's gums bled black, when the horizon stretched empty in all directions, he had finally broken down and sought out Father Pedro, despite the priest's Castilian origins and the whispered rumors of converso blood in his family. In those desperate hours, such distinctions had seemed suddenly trivial—a realization that both comforted and disturbed him.
"I cannot show weakness before the men," he had confessed in the priest's tiny cabin. "But I fear..." He couldn't finish the sentence.
The old priest had simply nodded and taken out his rosary. "Your mother taught you these prayers once, didn't she?"
"How did you know?"
“You cross yourself like a child whose mother taught him at her knee, rather than the measured style we priests learn in seminary.”
Something in him had cracked then. Not the stern Captain-General who had ordered mutineers hanged, but a small boy who still missed his mother's touch.
"Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum..."
The first decade, for his mother. He was too young to remember her face clearly, but he recalls the scent of jasmine, the soft touch of her hand guiding his fingers over the beads. Did she pray for him as he now prays for distant shores?
Through the cabin walls comes the sound of sailors singing—not their usual bawdy songs, but a hymn to Our Lady, Star of the Sea. Their voices carry notes of homesickness, of longing for distant ports.
Father Pedro had become his confessor during those desperate months at sea. While scurvy hollowed out his men's bodies, pride and rage had eaten at his soul. Each night, he would kneel in that tiny cabin and let his careful masks fall away.
"I am not worthy," he had whispered one night, when half the crew lay dying. "I led them here with my certainty, my pride..."
"And now you lead them with your humility," the priest had answered. "Christ himself knelt to wash his disciples' feet."
The second decade begins, and with it memories of Queen Leonor, who raised him at court. Who taught him that true nobility lies not in blood but in service. Her voice still echoes: "A knight's sword must defend the weak, Fernando. His strength must shelter others."
He thinks of how King Manuel had turned away when he tried to kiss the royal hands, denying him even that gesture of fealty. The old bitterness rises, but tonight it feels hollow, like an empty shell housing nothing but echoes.
"Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus..."
"Tell me again about the women of this place," he had asked Enrique earlier today. "Their slave girls are naked like savages but they keep their nobility veiled," Enrique had said. "Like your highborn ladies. They remind me of the noblewomen of Malacca in my youth. Pale and beyond reach."
The third decade for Beatriz, waiting in Seville. Does she stand at their window each evening, watching the western horizon? Does she tell their son stories of his father's quest for glory?
The fourth decade, for these foreign women that Enrique described. So like and unlike the ladies of Spanish court. May your grace, oh Lord, transform them into the image of your Most Holy Mother.
"Sancta Maria..."
The final decade, for the Church's triumph in these distant seas. “Mother of God, beacon of salvation, grant us the grace to free these souls from their idols. As you once carried our Savior, enfold these distant lands in your loving embrace.”
The candle gutters, casting shadows that dance across the cabin walls. So much here that seems foreign, yet underneath—are not all mothers the same? Do not all queens seek to protect their people?
"Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto... nunc, et semper, et in saecula saeculorum. Amen."
He tucks the rosary away, but remains kneeling. Tomorrow he must be the stern Captain-General again, enforcing discipline, maintaining control. But tonight, in the privacy of his cabin, he is simply a son far from home, seeking comfort in remembered embraces and ancient prayers.
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Tagay is a Visayan drinking tradition where a designated pourer serves a single cup of alcohol, usually passing it around in a communal gesture of camaraderie. Beyond drinking, tagay embodies social bonding and hospitality, reinforcing group cohesion through shared rituals.
Sakop is a Visayan term meaning "domain" or "territory," but it also refers to a ruler's subjects, emphasizing the hierarchical and reciprocal relationship between a datu and his people. In precolonial society, a datu's sakop owed him loyalty and tribute in exchange for protection and leadership.
My lord, my king, my rajah.