Today I observed a crow funeral. One fledgling had fallen from the nest and brained itself against the ground. Throughout the day all the crows of Odo came to visit the corpse, talking loudly among themselves and bearing witness to their fallen companion. I asked my uncle about it, and he said that the crows are only warning the others about a fatal danger so that they do not repeat and perish as well. But he did not hear the crows weep, as I did. He did not behold their terrible sorrow.
—From Observations on Crows, by Saaya, age thirteen
Okoa flew over Sun Rock on Benundah’s back and despaired. The ceremonial grounds had become a wasteland. Bodies were strewn across the amphitheater, or what was left of bodies. Many had been reduced to nothing, only dark smudges against the red rock earth. The rest fanned out from the center in a disquieting symmetry, as if their arrangement had a hidden deeper meaning.
He had studied war, but he had never seen anything like this. It turned his stomach, made him nauseated at the level of destructive power the Odo Sedoh had wielded. And he was convinced this man was indeed the Odo Sedoh. When Benundah had come to him in the aviary and urged him onto her back and brought him here, there was no longer room for doubt.
Although Okoa had no idea what being the Odo Sedoh truly meant. In all the Odohaa’s talk of a god reborn and vengeance, he had never imagined the reality of it. It had always seemed something far off, a noble battle between the dogged and underpowered cultists and the cruel Knives and their Sun Priest. But below him were people—just people—and he had no idea how to process it all.
Benundah cried out and made for the middle of the circle. He tugged at her reins, forcing her to bank and soar clear of Sun Rock. He wasn’t sure it was safe to land, even for her. But she shook her head, fighting his control, and turned back to the amphitheater, again. This time he let her lead, and she circled twice over the center, crying out in a voice he had not heard from her before. It was raw, primal, and it shivered down his spine, reminding him Benundah herself was a creature of magics.
Directly below him in the center of the circle of the dead he saw a figure. Small from this height and lying on his back. Benundah screamed again, and he knew it was him.
“All right,” he said to his mount, resting a reassuring hand against her shoulder. “I’ll go look.”
She immediately descended, swooping low to land at the lip of the amphitheater. Okoa slid from his saddle and took in the scene before him. The first thing to hit him was the stench. It smelled of death, of emptied bowels and viscera, and over the offal stench was the sweet and coppery scent of blood and the familiar must of crows.
He did not want to go down into the pit, but he had no choice. He breathed deeply through his mouth, squared his shoulders, and drew his knife before descending the stairs. He had been here only two weeks ago for his mother’s funeral, and countless times before that for celebrations and ceremonies, but now it seemed an entirely different place, unfamiliar and haunted.
He picked his way across the killing grounds. He recognized the bodies here. There were a handful of people arrayed in Sky Made clan colors, likely household guards, but mostly he saw the corpses of priests. A cluster of red-robed dedicants he knew to be tsiyos in training splayed out like the plucked petals of a ruined flower, a spiral of twisted limbs and torn bodies. He shuddered. If he had not seen it with his own eyes, he would not have thought such domination possible. All his life, the Knives of the Watchers were untouchables, demons from every Crow child’s nightmares. Even recently, they had bested him and his Shield. But here they were, mowed down like so much grass in the field.
As he moved closer to the center, he found the bodies of the masked priests. They were arrayed in a line of four, as if stacked side by side in sacrifice. The first was a young woman, her long burnished hair clotted with blood from a blow to her scalp that had shattered her mask of white dawn in two and likely killed her instantly. He reached down and delicately pulled the bottom half of her mask away, revealing a young face, soft and pretty even now with a red gash opening her throat. He amended his cause of death.
He had never seen any of the priests unmasked, but it gave him pause to see a young woman so… normal… revealed as a priest.
Beside her was an older man, his head crowned with wisps of white. His face was collapsed entirely as if half of it had melted, skin, bone, and flesh fusing into something grotesque. His black mask had been carefully set atop the broad expanse of his stomach, empty eyes staring upward at nothing.
Next was the headless body of a man. Cupped in his hands was what must have been his missing head, still wearing the radiant mask of the Sun Priest. Okoa bent to remove the mask, accidentally sending the severed head tumbling to the earth. He fought the urge to vomit.
He stared at the man’s face, thinking. Did that mean that the woman Sun Priest he had met at his mother’s funeral was not here this day? That eased something in his chest. He was not sure he wished her dead. And suddenly the message made more sense, and so did why he had not received a reply to his inquiries. Betrayal… he wondered what had happened within the walls of the tower. Wondered if he could have made a difference. Wondered if the woman was, in fact, dead after all.
There was movement to his left, and Okoa startled so badly he almost fell, a shout of alarm on his lips. He raised his blade, ready to defend himself. It was the red-masked priest. Okoa approached warily, but it was clear the priest was in distress, a deep fatal gash ripping low horizontally across her stomach, blood leaking from the wound to soak her red robe, turning it black. She had her hand pressed to the wound, fighting to keep her innards intact. She might be alive now, but she would not be for long.
Okoa gingerly lifted the mask away.
The woman was unfamiliar. She didn’t seem the same priest who had sliced his jaw open at the funeral. Her breath came in syncopated pants, tight and short, as she struggled to hold on to what little life was left her. Her long hair had come loose and stuck to her wide forehead in wet ribbons. Her gray eyes searched Okoa’s, pleading.
Okoa stared at the woman, his emotions a tempest of confusion. Here was a fearsome Knife before him. Not just a Knife but the Priest of Knives. And just as he had been strangely moved to see the red-robed dedicants, he was similarly moved to see their leader.
“All human after all,” he said quietly, and Okoa did the only thing he could do; he gave the Knife his mercy.
He found the Odo Sedoh surrounded by crows. They must have come while Okoa was crossing the Rock and tending to what was left of the Watchers. The birds circled the figure, calling to one another in distinctive bursts and clicks. Okoa recognized some of the smaller residents that shared the aviary and the surrounding nests of the Great House, but others seemed different in size and build—smaller beaks, feathers more blue than black, chests a different circumference. Voices echoed from above, and he looked up to see the great crows from the aviary circling overhead, adding their strident cries to the chorus.
Crow ceremony, he thought, and let them say their farewells.
After a moment, he stepped gingerly through the circle of crows and stopped, eyes wide. He had only noticed the crows on the outer circle and those in the sky. But there was an inner ring of corvids nestled against the man’s body. At first, he thought they were sleeping, they looked so peaceful, but the truth dawned slowly, and to Okoa’s horror, he realized they were freshly dead. Each bird had settled against the bare blood-painted skin of the man’s chest, wings spread like a blanket. His breath caught as he realized the crows must have sacrificed themselves for the man, but to what end? Had they joined him in battle, or only come to him after his collapse?
Okoa had never been a particularly religious man, but he prayed now, simple words of thanks to the dead crows for the lives they had given, before he reached down to push their black-winged corpses away.
The Odo Sedoh was not a large man. He was tall for a Tovan, stretched leaner and thinner than most of his kin, and certainly not as broad or muscled as O
koa was, but his wide cheeks and mouth resembled Okoa’s own. His face ran with rivulets of dried blood below eyes closed as if in sleep, and his hair was matted with it. The bargeman had said he had been blind, but Okoa could not tell either way. His upper body was carved well if not skillfully, showing a hand with more enthusiasm than practice. All told, the man could have easily been one of his cousins.
Okoa had decided he would not leave the Odo Sedoh here among his enemies, so he bent and lifted him in his arms. He was light, as if made from bird bones. Okoa pressed an ear to his chest. He thought for a moment he heard a heartbeat, fast and stuttering, but he couldn’t be sure. He did see that despite the blood matting his hair and coating his bare skin, the wounds on his body seemed superficial; there was a gash on his stomach but it was far from a fatal blow. It seemed hard to believe this man could have caused so much bloodshed, created so much carnage, and escaped death himself. But as Okoa looked again at the dozens of crows at his feet and circling above, he found himself reordering what he believed and what he did not.
Okoa stepped around the crows, who took to the wing as he passed, loud cries reverberating across the canyon. He made his way back to where he had left Benundah. She fussed and squawked when she saw him, or was it that she saw the Odo Sedoh? He remembered that she had sheltered him the previous night, and a tight spike of jealousy pricked his heart. But that was foolish. Benundah and he had a bond forged over years, and besides, this man was surely dead, or at the least at death’s front door.
Benundah bumped her head against Okoa’s shoulder so forcefully he had to catch himself.
“What are you doing?” he asked her, and she bumped him again, as if chastising him.
“Do you want to see him for yourself?” he asked. She ruffled her feathers, a kind of affirmative, so he held the man out and let his crow inspect the body. She prodded at the man with her beak, blowing puffs of air over his blood-caked form, until she finally seemed satisfied. She spread her wings, a sign for Okoa to mount.
He draped the man over her broad back before climbing on behind him. Once in his seat, he pulled the man upright until his body rested in the cradle of his own and his legs straddled Benundah’s wide neck. He wrapped an arm tight around his chest and grasped the reins with his other hand. The balance would be tricky, but he knew Benundah would be careful.
The great corvid took to the air, breaking through the circle of crows above them. Okoa had been so preoccupied with the battlefield below him that he had failed to notice the sky. Time appeared suspended, the world in deep blue twilight between day and night, and the eclipsed sun quivered in bands of barely seen red behind the swollen moon.
He shivered, unsettled. First the triple sun at dawn, now the halted eclipse. What did it mean?
Benundah wheeled west, away from the aviary, and he pulled her steady. But she fought him, forcing them west. West to the rookery, the safest place for a crow. A thrill shivered down his spine. He had never seen the rookery, no human had. But he trusted her to know best.
He hugged the Odo Sedoh tightly to his chest to keep him from slipping. The man’s head lolled back to rest on Okoa’s shoulder. At first Okoa thought it only the wind, but then he realized the man had purposefully tucked his head in the crook of Okoa’s neck. Okoa inhaled sharply as the man’s eyelids fluttered open.
“Hold on!” Okoa shouted over the wind. “If you can hear me, hold on. We’re going home.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND CREDITS
I’ve always wanted to write an epic fantasy with the scope, scale, magic, and intrigue I found in my favorites of the genre and set it in a fictional secondary world inspired by the pre-Columbian cultures of the Americas. So much of epic fantasy is set in analogs of western Europe that I think most readers believe that all fantasy must be set in a fake England in order to even be considered epic. Happily there seem to be more and more epics set in secondary worlds influenced by various cultures in eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, but it still seems incredibly rare to find a fantasy inspired by the Americas. I think part of the reason is the persistent myth that the indigenous cultures pre-conquest were primitive and had little to offer, when the opposite is true. Here were master architects who built massive pyramids that rivaled anything in Egypt and created citywide sewer systems when London was still tossing its waste in the streets. Here they built high-rises that housed thousands. Here they tracked the equinox, the solstice, and the movement of the heavens with stunning accuracy. They wove cotton and traded turquoise and shell and feathers and cacao along trade routes that stretched across continents. They lived and laughed and loved. They were, in a word, epic.
That’s not to say this book is a history book. This is pure fantasy, where I liberally mixed cultures and made a lot of stuff up (giant insects and talking crows among them, although the crows are closer to the real thing than you might think). Nevertheless, there are some aspects peeking through that I wanted to mention. The navigational skills of the Teek were inspired by traditional Polynesian sailing methods. The languages in the story were drawn from Yucatec Maya for the Crescent Sea cities and from Tewa for the Tovans but, again, with exceptions made for the fantastical.
A lot of generous people helped make this book better:
A huge thanks to my disability consultants. In many indigenous cultures, physical disability does not hold the social stigma it does in mainstream Western culture and in fact can be a sign that the individual is “god-touched.” Serapio is certainly god-touched, but I wanted to make sure he was genuinely human, too. Thanks to the book The 33 Worst Mistakes Writers Make about Blind Characters by Stephanie Green, which got me started. Thanks to Rose Johnson Tsosie for sharing her experiences, particularly in “blind school,” which inspired Serapio’s tutors and his woodworking. Thanks to Elsa Sjunneson for reading the manuscript and helping me avoid bad tropes, understand adaptive technologies, and tease out the difference between learning a skill and getting a superpower. Any mistakes or offenses in the depiction of Serapio’s blindness are entirely mine.
Thanks to Kate Elliot, who helped me with the early research on the maritime Maya and pointed me to the scholarship in the field. Thanks also for the talk at WorldCon. Miles, it is!
While a lot of Cahokia did not make it into this book, I very much enjoyed learning about the great city and hope it comes around in the next one. Thanks to Annalee Newitz for her insight into Cahokia, including her excellent article you can google and read.
Thanks to Critical Mass, especially those folks who read my 100,000-word manuscript in five days. Heroes without capes, every one. Thanks to Emily Mah, SM Stirling, Lauren Teffeau, and Sara Nichols. Thanks also to J. Barton Mitchell, Sarena Ulibarri, and Matt Reiten.
Thanks as always to my husband, Michael Roanhorse, for getting me through the writing process with coffee and infinite patience. Thanks to my daughter, Maya, who drew the initial maps of the Meridian and Tova and who is #TeamBroCrow.
Thanks to my agent, Sara Megibow, for making sure I got the chance to write this book.
Thanks to my editor, Joe Monti, who read the first draft of this book when it was entirely different and said, “It’s okay, but it’s not great.” That annoyed me so much I completely rewrote the book, and now I hope it’s a little closer to great. Thanks for shielding me from the BS and taking the heat so I wouldn’t have to. You, sir, are definitely great.
Thanks to the folks at Gallery/Saga Press for believing in this book and working to get it out in the world, including Lauren Jackson (LJ) and Madison Penico.
Thanks to Robert Lazzaretti for taking the imaginings in my head and turning them into amazing maps. It is a fantasy writer’s dream to get one map, never mind two!
Thanks to the brilliant Hugo Award–winning artist John Picacio for the stunning cover artwork. I am infinitely grateful you agreed to join the team. You are making your ancestors proud.
I read a lot of books. Here are a few that may interest you: Gift of the Crow, by John Marzluff and
Tony Angell; A Scattering of Jades: Stories, Poems, and Prayers of the Aztecs, translated by Thelma Sullivan, edited by Timothy Knab; The Chaco Meridian: One Thousand Years of Political and Religious Power in the Ancient Southwest, by Stephen Lekson; The Maya, by Michael Coe and Stephen Houston; Envisioning Cahokia: A Landscape Perspective, by Rinita Dalan, George Holley, William Woods, Harold Waters, and John Koepke; Cahokia: Mirror of the Cosmos, by Sally A. Kitt Chappell.
More from the Author
The Mythic Dream
Storm of Locusts
Trail of Lightning
Hungry Hearts
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
REBECCA ROANHORSE is the New York Times bestselling author of Trail of Lightning, Storm of Locusts, Star Wars: Resistance Reborn, and Race to the Sun. She has won Nebula, Hugo, and Locus Awards for her fiction, and she was the recipient of the 2018 Astounding (formerly Camp-bell) Award for Best New Writer. She lives in New Mexico with her family.
FOR MORE ON THIS AUTHOR:
SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Rebecca-Roanhorse
SimonandSchuster.com
SAGAPRESS.COM
Facebook.com/SagaPressBooks
@SagaSFF
ALSO BY REBECCA ROANHORSE
THE SIXTH WORLD
Trail of Lightning
Storm of Locusts
Star Wars: Resistance Reborn
Race to the Sun
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