Black Sun

by Rebecca Roanhorse

  I understand. And with a great flapping, she launched herself into the sky. Serapio broke his connection with her, his last vision of himself looking up, his face infused with joy.

  He was alone. His mother’s last words to him rang through his head.

  You must go home to Tova… there you will open your eyes again and become a god.

  He had two obsidian knives in his belt, and he took one now. He used his free hand to spread the skin of his eyelid tight and, one eye at a time, sliced along the narrow line of scar tissue that held his eye shut. His teeth cut through his lip as he struggled to hold in a scream, and blood filled his mouth. More blood poured from the wounds, and the pain doubled him over, but he didn’t stop until both his eyes were open.

  He was still blind. The damage had been done to his sight long ago. But he did not need human vision to see by the light of the black sun.

  He cupped steady hands and caught the blood, using his palms to wipe the sticky substance through his hair, slicking it back from his face. He hauled himself to his feet and stripped off his shirt, exposing his haahan. He took his staff in hand like a weapon and called shadow to his fingertips. It oozed from his skin and grew to encircle him lovingly, a cloak of darkness to ease his way.

  There was only one thing left to do. To say.

  For a moment, fear gripped him. He didn’t want to die. He had accepted his fate so easily before when Powageh had told him what must be. Even when Xiala had berated him aboard the barge, he had not wavered. But now, with the moment at hand, he wanted… different. He wanted to be Serapio. But he had not been Serapio since he was twelve. “A vessel,” he reminded himself. Not a person, not a man. A weapon. He forced himself to breath, letting the scent of his own blood fill his nose, his mouth. And the doubt passed through him, leaving him only resolve and purpose.

  “I am the Odo Sedoh,” he whispered.

  He felt himself fracture into a million pieces, felt the darkness suffuse him and break him apart and put him back together in his true form. He screamed, euphoric, and the world trembled at his coming.

  The crowd below him had stopped singing, and he sensed more than saw their confusion. Confusion turned to terror as the Odo Sedoh moved among them and began his slaughter.

  He swung his staff, and bone shattered bone. Movement to his right, and he ducked and turned, shifting the staff to one hand and sweeping it wide, taking men off their feet. He brought the staff up, and it connected with soft tissue. He pulled back, then jabbed forward, and the softness collapsed into a slick wetness. A woman screamed as she fell.

  More came, and he took them down. The shadow around him expanded, and where it touched the dead, it fed, leaving only ash and bone in its wake.

  He could smell their fear now, hear their too-quick panicked breaths and the quiver of terrified hands that held weapons that would not save them. He grinned, drinking in their terror, and a dark satisfaction filled his heart.

  The clans scattered. He let them go, his focus only on the priesthood.

  The Knives came for him. Once they were close enough, he dropped his staff and drew his own knives.

  They fought, the tsiyo striking like a pack of wild dogs, trying to bring him down in pieces. But he knew their methods and their poison blades and anticipated each attack. He was too fast, too unpredictable. He became a whirlwind. Untouchable. Unknowable. Inevitable in his destruction.

  He slew them all.

  He slit the throat of the priest in white, and she collapsed, striking her head against the rocks.

  He sliced the black-masked priest across the back of his knees when he tried to run, and then climbed his back to punch his blade into his skull in quick succession until he stopped moving.

  The Priest of Knives fought the hardest, and for a moment, he was pushed back, but then he called the shadow to his hand as he had once long ago and threw it. The Knife stumbled, blinded. He kicked the priest in the chest, sending them tumbling. He ran, sliding on his knees to come in low enough that the Knife had barely recovered when he tore his blades through the priest’s belly, opening it hip to hip.

  At last there was only the Sun Priest.

  He imagined what the priest must see before him. The crow god come to avenge his children, his teeth red and cheeks and hair stained with blood. His body carved with remembrance and his eyes endless pools of shadow.

  The priest ripped the mask from his face, his brown eyes wide with terror. He said words, but they were unimportant. He cried out, but there was no one alive on the Rock to hear.

  “My old enemy,” the Odo Sedoh whispered in his voice of a thousand wings. “I have waited a long time for my revenge. Forgive me if I savor it.” He breathed deep, the pleasing smell of death filling his nose. The dark satisfaction that had bloomed before, now flowered in its fullness. He could not keep the wide smile from his face.

  He reached out with shadow, a tendril of power that penetrated the priest’s chest like the sharpest blade and sought the essence of the sun god within. But he found nothing.

  His nostrils flared. The black veins in his neck strained, and darkness leaked from his eyes like pitch.

  “You are not the Sun Priest.” His voice was thunder, dark with rage. It was the cry of a murder, thwarted. “You are a lie.”

  “Please!”

  He cocked his head, seeking. She was here, somewhere. Not too far for a crow to fly, not so hidden he could not find her. But his time was short and this body he rode was failing. He must reconsider.

  Something pricked his side. He turned his attention back to the false priest. He had broken a metal piece off his golden mask and used it to stab him in the stomach. He pulled the projectile out, examined it, tossed it to the side.

  The false priest fell to his knees, and for the insult and the lie the Odo Sedoh used his obsidian knives to take his head.

  CHAPTER 40

  CITY OF TOVA

  YEAR 325 OF THE SUN

  (THE DAY OF CONVERGENCE)

  A smart Teek survives the storm, but a wise Teek avoids storms altogether.

  —Teek saying

  Xiala stood on the balcony of the Standard Dog with the other patrons and watched the eclipse obfuscate the setting sun. The servants moved through the room, extinguishing all the lights, torch and resin alike. And she saw the same happening on the streets and, from her vantage point on the balcony, the next street and the next, until the whole district was dark. And then the districts around it, the one barely visible across the canyon and even Sun Rock itself.

  She shivered in the darkness. It was like being at sea under a black cloud at midnight, save for the thinnest crescents of red that glowed on either side of the black hole that had once been the sun. People began shouting around her, yelling for the sun to come back.

  She tapped the nearest woman on the shoulder.

  “What’s happening?” she asked. “Why did they smother all the lights?”

  “It’s part of the ceremony,” the woman explained. “All light must be put out with the end of the year. But don’t worry. Even now the Sun Priest is lighting a new fire on Sun Rock. Runners will take the fire to all four districts of the city, and all new fires will be set by her fire. A new year!”

  Xiala nodded her thanks and moved away. Her hands trembled as she took a drink from the bottle she clutched by her side. She had been drinking since she woke up and came here, determined to find Aishe and forget last night. But she hadn’t worked up the nerve to ask about her friend, and the only thing in her head was the memory of Serapio’s hands on her body, his mouth as he sucked the honey from her fingers, the touch of his lips against her head.

  She tried to remember why she had let him go. Why she hadn’t fought harder. She was Teek, and Teek were stubborn. Teek didn’t give up. And she had her Song, a power that could change a man’s will. Why hadn’t she ignored his protests and just forced him to stay?

  The crowd was singing another song, and someone had begun stamping their feet impatientl
y, calling for the return of the sun. She looked around at all these strangers. She used to like a crowd, love a cantina, but all of it seemed sour now. Empty.

  “Fuck this,” she said. She grabbed the nearest patron, a man in a flowered cape, and shoved the bottle at him.

  “Here,” she said. “My treat.”

  The man looked confused at first, but when Xiala smiled and insisted, he took it and thanked her.

  Xiala wound through the balcony crowd and down the steps until she was back on the street. Crowds of people milled about in the darkness or gathered by bonfires that were waiting to be lit with the new year’s fire. She could feel her Teek eyes widening, shifting to take in what light they could, but it was so dark she had difficulty seeing her feet before her. She muttered apologies as she bumped shoulders and avoided obstacles, moving through the crowd. She didn’t realize where she was going until she was at the landing of the bridge to Sun Rock.

  She hesitated, looking out at the expanse. She could see something was happening on the Rock. Darkness, darker even than the false night around her, roiled over the mesa, churning like a living thing. She thought she heard screams, faint and distant. She couldn’t be sure over the singing and shouting. The woman on the balcony had said that a runner with a torch would come over the bridge, so she squinted into the blackness, looking for any sign of an approaching light.

  Something was coming. Something big and churning that set the bridge swaying. The thick braided cables rocked and strained against their stone bases. Screams—she was sure there was screaming now—grew louder.

  The churning mass revealed itself all at once. Dozens, no, a hundred or more people were running toward her, shoving and pushing to get across the bridge. She watched in horror as the great span tilted, and a woman dressed in a bright blue dress toppled over the edge. Another followed her, a body too dark to identify.

  Xiala blinked. It had happened so fast she couldn’t be sure she had actually seen it. The shadows were thick, even with her improved eyesight, and no one had stopped or cried out. The mob was still coming, and she ducked to the side just as bodies streamed across the bridge. Their solstice finery was torn and bloodstained, eyes wide in shock or broken by fear.

  Her mind tried to take it in, tried to process it all.

  “Serapio,” she whispered. She knew without a doubt they were running from him.

  She shoved her way into the crowd, fighting against the flow as best she could. But there were too many people. She didn’t make it far before she was pushed back, farther away from the Rock and back to Titidi.

  No! She would fight. She reached for her Song, and it came, wild and fierce, to her lips. She lashed out, a sharp weapon to drive her way through the crowd.

  The people around her halted as if suddenly frozen in place, but her Song didn’t reach far enough through the stampeding throng, and those who couldn’t hear her trampled the others. They went down without complaint, crushed underfoot.

  She choked, horrified, and modulated her Song, softening the command, lowering the pitch to soothe, not wound. She thought of gentle waters and star-filled nights. She thought of laughter and good food on a sandy cay. She thought of childhood stories shared with a captive audience of one. And it worked. People slowed, calmed. She raised her voice loud as she could, and everywhere she reached, people quieted.

  She pushed through pliant bodies, still Singing. Made it back to the bridge and well onto the bridge itself. She smiled around buoyant notes. It was going to work.

  Suddenly, the air shifted. A dark gale, shards of ice like glass, hammered down across the bridge. It whipped her hair, stinging, across her face. Sliced her skin open, sharp as obsidian. Froze her from the inside like ice crystals on a lake, deadening nerves and thought.

  Her Song faltered and died.

  Everywhere around her, people were falling, stumbling, wracked by the same unnatural wind. She was on her knees, clutching the thick rope of the bridge, sure the gale would throw her off into the canyon below.

  And then it stopped, but it was all she could do to hunch down against the railing, gasping, reeling from the pain, and trying to breathe. Panic rolled through the crowd like a rogue wave, and what calm she had been able to Sing drowned on a fresh wave of terror. The crowd surged around her, dragging her to her feet and back toward the landing. Someone kicked her, an accident, and then an elbow struck her cheek. Another blow, this time to her back, and she stumbled. A man hauled her up, and it was all she could do not to go down underneath indifferent feet.

  Ground beneath her again, slippery and churned by a hundred boots and shoes. Hands pushed her, tore at her sleeves, shoved her directionless through the streets of Titidi. People shouted and pointed. She couldn’t understand their words, but she lifted her head enough to follow where they were looking.

  In the sky above Sun Rock, the sun hung suspended. It was an enormous disc on the horizon, neither rising nor setting. The moon had stopped, too. It cast its shadow across the sun, eclipsing it entirely. A black sphere now rested where the sun had once been, only the barest slivers of light showing along its edges.

  Everything else was darkness.

  CHAPTER 41

  CITY OF TOVA (COYOTE’S MAW)

  YEAR 325 OF THE SUN

  (THE DAY OF CONVERGENCE)

  Today Saaya discovered a working in one of the forbidden volumes that is meant to bring back the dead. She brought it to me as eager as a child who had found a stray puppy and hoped to keep it. I read the text and was not persuaded. I encouraged her to focus on the more promising theory of divine transference and leave these ideas of resurrection behind. To harness the latent powers of a god into a single human vessel. Surely this was the highest of magics that would make even the Sun Priest in his high tower break with envy.

  —From the Notebook of Lord Balam of the House of Seven, Merchant Lord of Cuecola, Patron of the Crescent Sea, White Jaguar by Birthright

  Zataya used a long pole, the same kind the river monks used, to fish the body from the Tovasheh.

  “Foolish woman,” she muttered as she waded out into the slow-moving tributary to haul Naranpa from the water. “What did you do to end up in the river?”

  The witch motioned the two teenaged girls with her to grab the once–Sun Priest by the armpits and drag her the rest of the way to shore. They dumped the naked and waterlogged body on the barren muddy riverbank. They were tucked well under a heavy rock overhang away from the eyes of anyone who might be traveling the river. Not that anyone was. Solstice celebrations raged on as they neared the hour of the eclipse; all eyes were focused upward, not down into this fissure in the earth.

  Naranpa looked surprisingly fresh. Her face was slack, but her skin had not taken on the waxy coating or gaseous bloat of bodies that lingered in the water. Zataya guessed by her appearance that she had not been in the river more than a few hours, and perhaps had not even been dead when she entered the water. She ran rough hands over Naranpa’s body, inspecting her chest and back and probing her head under her hair, looking for wounds. But there was none. The woman had not been dumped in the river but had gone in alive and intact.

  “A small blessing,” the witch muttered, lowering Naranpa’s head gently to the rocky ground.

  Zataya’s two apprentices had kindled a small dugout fire. They huddled around it, trying to warm themselves after their wade into the river, but Zataya grunted and pushed them out of her way. Down here in the deep canyons, they were well away from the winds and frosted air at the top of the cliffs; Zataya thought it almost warm.

  She retrieved a bag of herbs from a string around her neck. She reached in, scooping out a handful, and dumped them into the fire. They crackled and hissed, sending up a fragrant white smoke. She fanned the smoke toward Naranpa and then motioned the girls over to take up her task.

  Satisfied, she turned back to the body. She drew an obsidian blade from her belt and, with a well-practiced cut, opened a long gash in her arm. Blood welled bright and red
. She held the wound over Naranpa and let the blood drip down on her chest and belly, even across her face. She signaled to the girls, and they knelt by the body, using their hands to spread the blood evenly across Naranpa’s cold skin while Zataya bandaged her wound. Zataya watched until she was satisfied that the priest was thoroughly coated. Only then did she shrug the mantle from her own shoulders to cover the body.

  She paused with the blanket poised over Naranpa’s face.

  “Open her mouth,” the witch said, and one of the girls complied. Zataya tucked a smooth white lump of salt beneath Naranpa’s tongue before dropping the blanket over her head. Then she made her way around the body, making sure the edges were tucked in tight and no air could get in or out. Done, she dropped to her haunches to admire her work.

  “What happens now?” one of the girls asked.

  In truth, Zataya wasn’t sure. She worked usually in earth magic—charms of finding, small fortunes told, potions and cures for ailments and colicky babies. But her mother’s mother had traveled widely and had learned some of the blood magic of the southern sorcerers. She had taught her daughter, who had taught Zataya. But for a Dry Earth witch who had never actually performed such sorcery and in truth had only learned about it at third hand, it was very possible that nothing would happen. But she had promised Denaochi that she would try everything possible to save his sister, so that was what she intended to do.

  Down here in the depths of the Maw, it was much too dark to have any use for the sun. Its light never reached this deep in the canyon. But Zataya shivered all the same as shadows spread across the city and the meager daylight disappeared altogether. She heard faint cries far above them, echoing down through the walls of the canyon. The eclipse must have begun.

  “What happens now,” the witch told the girl, “is we wait.”

  CHAPTER 42

  THE CITY OF TOVA

  YEAR 1 OF THE CROW