by C. T. Rwizi
“Salo, come back to camp,” she says to the cat. “Now. It’s urgent.”
He must betray his position to the game birds, because they squawk and flutter off in alarm. He utters a curse, slightly annoyed by Alinata for ruining what would have been an easy kill.
What is it now?
When he treks back into camp, he finds Tuk and Ilapara frowning at the Asazi, whose worried look is instantly sobering to Salo. His annoyance swiftly turns into burgeoning dread. “What is it? What’s going on here?”
“That’s what we’d like to know,” Ilapara says as she glares at the Asazi. “Something’s clearly spooked her, but she won’t tell us what.”
“You need to let me fly you to the city immediately,” Alinata says to Salo. “We don’t have much time.”
He exchanges baffled glances with the others. “Explain yourself.”
She appears to bite back an impatient reply. “Look, there was a disruption in the Void tailing you from the south before I joined you. I was keeping track of it, but it disappeared a while back, so I assumed it had given up chase. But whoever it is must have found a way to mask their advance from me. I can feel them now, and they’re close.”
A tremor of fear runs through Salo. “What disruption? What are you talking about?”
“People have been chasing you since you left Seresa,” she explains. “You encountered one of them, but there were others. Two groups turned back after you crossed into the Tuanu borderlands; I dealt with a third, and a fourth chose to keep up at a distance. Now they are coming. If I don’t get you out of here right now, we’ll have a fight on our hands.”
Ilapara searches the surrounding jungles with a grim expression. “The Dark Sun has only one disciple who can move through the Void, and you’re acquainted with her, Salo.”
“The Maidservant,” he whispers and shivers at the name.
Tuk had also started roaming the trees with his eyes; now they snap to Salo. “You mean the same witch who—”
“Yes. She’s the one. And now she’s here for me.”
Tuk glowers at Alinata. “Is there a reason you didn’t mention this sooner?”
“I told you; I thought she’d given up chase,” Alinata says. “It’s virtually impossible to move through the Void without leaving a signature, and hers stopped approaching over a day ago.”
“Or maybe your powers of observation just aren’t as good as you think.” Tuk shakes his head with his hands on his waist. “Honestly, Alinata. It was highly irresponsible of you not to warn us sooner.”
“If not downright malicious,” Ilapara adds with a dark look.
“There’s no time for this.” Alinata walks toward Salo and grabs hold of his forearm. “I can fly you to the city. She won’t chase us there. She wouldn’t risk drawing the ire of the high mystics.”
“What about the others, Alinata?”
Her grip tightens. “I’m not a mystic. I can only take one other person with me into my Voidspace.”
“Absolutely not.” Salo jerks his hand free of her. “Out of the question.”
From the corner of his eye he sees Tuk and Ilapara sharing a look, a silent conversation seeming to pass between them. On whatever is said, it seems they agree.
“You should go, Salo,” Tuk says, his eyes somber. “We can take care of ourselves.”
Salo clenches his fists and almost lashes out in an outburst, but he bites his words so that they are almost a whisper. “Is your opinion of me so low that you’d think I’d abandon you in the face of danger, to a witch who killed dozens of my people, no less, one of whom I loved like a brother? Have I so badly represented myself to you?”
Ilapara grimaces like the words have cut her somewhere unseen, but she remains adamant. “We’re only looking out for you, Salo. That’s how this is supposed to work, isn’t it? If we’re your guardians on this pilgrimage, then your safety must be our main concern.”
“And yours must be mine,” Salo says. “I can’t let you risk your lives for me if I’m not willing to do the same for you. Maybe I’m a coward, but I’m not without honor. We will face this witch together.”
Tuk regards him warily, but his eyes betray him by lightening just the slightest bit. A begrudging dimple shows on one cheek, and he nods. “All right, Salo. I follow your lead.”
Ilapara frowns like she’s conflicted, but she relents. “As do I, I guess. Even though I think you should take the Asazi’s offer and get the devil out of here.”
“That’s not happening, Ilapara,” Salo says, and next to him, Alinata opens her mouth to protest, but he cuts her off. “This is my pilgrimage. If you can’t respect my decision, you are free to leave. Your choice.”
She tries to stare him down, but a staring contest with someone in reflective spectacles is an exercise in futility. “Fine,” she says. “How do we proceed, then?”
“How far away is she?”
Alinata closes her eyes briefly before she says, “We have an hour at best, and I sense she’s not alone.”
“If she wields Black magic, she could be bringing fell creatures from the underworld,” Tuk says.
Alinata shakes her head. “That’s not it. I mean, yes, that, too, but I can only sense what she moves through the Void, and the size of her signature tells me she’s bringing others with her. A squad of men, perhaps, and something bulky . . .” A thought seems to strike the Asazi. “Another group was in pursuit just before I joined you, but they were intercepted by a Tuanu patrol. Men wearing red skulls on their faces riding the largest kerit bears I’ve ever seen. She must have intervened.”
“Red skulls?” Ilapara fails to restrain her alarm. “They could be reavers. The Dark Sun’s personal cadre of elite raiders and assassins.”
Tuk shoots the Asazi another moody glare. “You really should have said something, Alinata.”
“I had no reason to suspect I was being duped by Black magic,” she says rather defensively. “And the last thing I wanted was to worry you for no reason. It was a mistake; I see that now.”
“What’s done is done.” Salo walks toward Mukuni’s saddle, where he sets his bow and quiver down and reaches for his staff. His mind is already racing with ways to counter what he thinks they’re all about to face, how to best deploy the weapons in his arsenal.
“When the so-called Maidservant attacked my kraal and killed my people,” he says, “I was weak, defenseless, and unprepared.” With a gesture he summons essence into his shards. Red sparks activate around the tip of his staff. “This time things will be different. This time she will find that I am ready for her.”
He begins by carving up a little kingdom for himself.
While the others stand guard rather nervously, watching the surrounding trees for any sign of movement, Salo sits down on a log by the dying fire Ilapara lit and commands his talisman to perform a continuous scan of everything in a two-hundred-yard radius. Such a feat demands more raw essence than the talisman has in its stores, so he feeds essence into it directly from his shards.
The talisman doesn’t produce a mirage; instead, he closes his eyes so that he interfaces with it telepathically. Soon it offers him a circular domain in which he has near-perfect information and spatial awareness, even though his eyes are closed.
For minutes on end, with his focus lensed through his staff, he devises parameters for his lightning-barrier spell. The tessellated hexagons worked well on the waterbird, so he uses them as the building blocks for larger barriers.
In the background Alinata keeps flexing her fingers as she watches the trees, occasionally throwing him impatient glances. Then her shoulders tense up, and Salo feels a ripple of cold energy as she wraps the Void around herself like a cloak. She appears to blur out of sight just the slightest bit while ghosts of fluttering ravens start swirling around her.
“She’s near. And she has company.” Something hardens in Alinata’s eyes, and she seems to come to some hidden decision. “I’ll distract her so you can deal with the others.”
/> Salo gets up to his feet before she does something foolish. “Don’t try facing her alone, Alinata. She’s too powerful.”
“We need to separate her from her forces if we want any chance of surviving this. I’m the best person for the job, and it’ll give you time to deal with whomever or whatever she’s here with.”
He doesn’t argue with her because he knows she’s right. “Are you sure about this?”
She nods, then seems to consider her words. “But if I get trapped in the Void, can I trust that you’ll get me out?”
Salo studies her face for a beat, and he thinks he sees the dimmest specter of fear hiding beneath her otherwise calm appearance. “I’ll do my best, Alinata,” he says, which gets her to tilt her head and smile.
“Your best has done great thus far, so it’ll have to do. See you on the other side of this.” And then she turns into a flock of ravens and flutters away into the trees.
40: Ilapara
Bonobo Province—Kingdom of the Yontai
Ilapara has never been one for patience in the face of impending danger. If she knows an attack is coming and she can’t escape, she prefers to meet it head-on. Take control of the situation, drive the enemy out into the open, never let them gain a foothold.
Probably why she starts growing impatient as she waits in the camp clearing for the Maidservant and her forces to ambush them. She taps into her training to sharpen her senses and quicken her reflexes but ends up too alert, picking up on even the softest hiss of the wind and the quietest chirping of bugs in the earth and trees around her. Maddening.
Several times she glares down at Salo while she paces restlessly with her spear locked in a tight grip. The boy is back to sitting motionless on a tree stump with his staff balanced on one end between his legs, while the red serpent on his left wrist shoots out regular arcs of light from its crystal eyes. She saw him cast spells of lightning earlier, but now he’s just sitting there like a wooden carving, waiting.
He should have left when he had the chance.
Tuksaad is almost her mirror opposite, facing the bridle path beyond the clearing with his shoulders free of tension, his face calm and serene like he’s basking in a pretty sunset. She would think him wholly unprepared for what’s coming were his eyes not as inky as the night sky on a new moon. There’s also the long blade dangling from his good hand, a sleek-looking thing of gold with a slight curve, chased with esoteric scripts that give off a red glow.
At last, Ilapara loses her patience. “Alinata’s been gone for minutes now. Where is she?” And why the devil are we not already under attack?
Salo responds without moving to face her. “She’s locked in battle with the Maidservant in the Void. It’ll be some time before it ends one way or the other.” And then, almost as an afterthought, he tilts his head slightly and says, “A large beast is approaching from the west. I’m sending Mukuni to intercept.”
The cat is on his feet instantly, his mane of metal spines rattling like peals of thunder, and with a fierce growl he makes for the bridle path and bounds west. Long seconds pass before the ground trembles under the weight of violent roars. Trees snap with loud cracks in the distance as the battling beasts tumble between them.
Ilapara shares a tense look with Tuksaad. At the same time Ingacha lets out a nervous grunt where she tethered him next to the abada.
“We’re surrounded,” Salo says rather distantly, like he might not be fully in his body. “About a dozen men armed with machetes. All wearing red skulls on their faces.”
“Definitely reavers.” Ilapara scans the trees, then twists to look over her shoulder at Salo. Dear Ama, I wish I had a soul charm right now. “A dozen, you said?”
“If there are more, they haven’t entered my field of view.” He tilts his head like he’s trying to get a better view of something in front of him. “Well, that’s a pity.”
“What is it?” Ilapara and Tuk say at the same time.
“Their garments have powerful protective charms,” he says. “I won’t be able to incapacitate them as I’d hoped.”
As if they can read each other’s minds, Ilapara and Tuk both move into vanguard positions, putting Salo’s seated form between them.
“Whatever happens,” Salo says to them, “I want you both to know that you’ve been good friends to me in the short time we’ve known each other.”
“Then let’s make sure we live long enough to become even better friends,” Tuk says. “I don’t intend for any of us to die today.”
They say reavers have no souls and are incapable of feeling pain or mercy. Beneath the terrific roars coming from the west, Ilapara tries to pick up the rustle of leaves and the crunch of footfalls, but if the reavers are coming, they aren’t making much noise.
Salo speaks, once more in a strangely detached voice. “I’ve warded the clearing. Stay within two hundred yards of this position. And don’t worry about me; I’ll be fine.”
She looks around, searching for signs of the ward, but sees nothing. Before she can ask, multiple flashes of movement appear in the trees around the camp. Shadows subsequently materialize and resolve into bare-chested men in black kikois, aerosteel vambraces, and hide skins hanging over their fronts. Red skulls cover the upper halves of their faces, making their heads look misshapen and protuberant from a distance. Their machetes are crusted with dried blood, and their leering grins are each and every one of them dental horrors of blackened teeth filed to spikes.
No one faces a dozen reavers and walks away with their head still intact. Ilapara knows this, but as she falls deeper into her conditioning, everything becomes a remote consideration, everything but the here and now, the spear in her hand, the breath in her lungs.
Survive this second and get to the next.
The reavers close in on the camp almost leisurely, like a pack of hyenas moving in on wounded prey. Ilapara readies herself for an attack, but the men all stop at some hidden cue, and then the tallest of them speaks in a deep, gravelly voice. “You have made us chase you a long way, sorcerer. That’s going to cost you dearly in blood and guts.”
Battle scars striate his entire torso, and a necklace of bones rests around his neck. Ilapara is taken aback by the sheer murder burning openly in his bloodshot eyes, like Salo is the bane of his existence.
Without moving an inch from where he’s sitting, Salo answers the man in Izumadi. “We have never met. I have not wronged you in any way. Why do you pursue me?”
“We serve a master,” the reaver snarls, “and when he says kill, that’s what we do. But you we will kill with extra relish for making us chase you this far. I’ve lost good men because of you.”
Ilapara feels rather than sees Tuk smirk. “Perhaps you should take better care of your men,” he says. “That way you won’t have to blame other people for getting them killed.”
“Is there no arrangement we can come to?” Salo asks.
The lead reaver bares his teeth. “None that involves you leaving this place with your head still attached to your body.”
All right. That’s it. No use in delaying the inevitable. “Then why are we even talking?” Ilapara says.
The lead reaver’s glare slides to her and intensifies. “Boys,” he says to his men, “take your time.”
And then everything happens very quickly after that.
Your body is a cage into which you are born a slave, her uncle would tell her as he taught her his secrets in the privacy of the open wilds, with nothing but the sky above and the savannas below to listen. Heartbeat, coordination, speed, pain, breath, fear; most of the body’s workings are naturally inaccessible to you. They control you, dictate the terms, and you either sink or swim. It is up to you to break out of your cage and take control of it, and the first step is recognizing the power of your mind.
A trio of reavers descends upon her all at once. A blood-spattered machete darts for her head. She sees it in time to sway away, using her momentum to whip her spear around, but these are reavers, high on tonics
and the thirst for blood: her spear cuts through nothing but air.
They give her no room to breathe. A machete comes for her belly. Another comes from behind, destined for her left shoulder. She spins away yet again—and straight into the path of a third blade already halfway to her face. The man wielding it is the same reaver who spoke, promising evil things to come. Here he is now about to kill her, because even in her accelerated state, she is only human, and this man is a reaver; she could never be fast enough to evade a blow already so close, only fast enough to see it and to register that this is the blade that will end her.
Except something curious happens, so quickly she almost misses it: a delicate field of red lightning arcs right before her eyes and deflects the reaver’s blow with a resonant peal, as though it has struck a shield of unbreakable glass. They all pause battle in surprise, and the reaver in question inspects his machete like he thinks it might be defective.
A proud enemy is an enemy set in his ways. His victory is assured; the laws of nature are on his side. It is why, when he is suddenly confronted with a creature that fails to conform to these laws, he will sooner question his reality than accept it and adapt. Punish him.
Ilapara doesn’t let the reaver make another mistake. She erupts forward with her spear and sinks it into the soft flesh at the base of his neck. His shocked face will haunt her in her sleep if she survives this, and so will the gurgling noise of blood gushing out of his mortal wound, but the nightmares will come later. Now she twists her spear to bring his life to a swift and permanent end and lets the body crumple to the ground.
Light flashes and a crack thunders as a blow that would have cut into her right flank is deflected away before she has reoriented herself. She moves to evade a little too late, and another peal sounds behind her, another blow that should kill her, but she remains unharmed.
In the face of her seeming invulnerability, the reavers attacking her grow wary, which gives her just enough room to maneuver herself out of their immediate reach for a precious split second and finally take stock of her environment. Out of the corner of her eye she sees that Salo hasn’t moved from his seated position, though he’s cocooned himself in a rather intimidating whirlwind of leaves and loose earth. The reavers are ignoring him for the more immediate threats, thinking perhaps that they’ll save him for last. Good.