Six heavily muscled guards flanked Jass Imbiah’s throne, three to each side. Their hands rested on the hilts of huge, curved swords that could lop off a man’s head at a single stroke. Thick, v-shaped incisions marked their chests, and rows of spider-scars lined their arms. Thin lines resembling whiskers were cut into their cheeks. They wore headgear of dry yellow grass that simulated the mane of a lion – a beast that, like the elephant, no Uloan had seen in centuries. Yet those animals of the Mainland continued to serve as powerful symbols in the Islanders’ memories, and a connection to ancestors far away in time.
Also present were huangi, the priests and priestesses who wielded the dark ashuma of Legaba. They were clad in costumes made from the radiant plumage of birds that lived nowhere other than on the Uloas. For all the brightness of their garments, the expressions on the faces of the huangi were forbidding in their severity. Like Jass Imbiah, their bodies were covered with spider-scars.
Bujiji was on his knees before Jass Imbiah’s throne. His gaze followed hers as she looked at the barb-marks on the tube. Beads of sweat slid down the scars on Bujiji’s face. Now, he was beginning to regret the extra time he had spent with Awiwi, despite the pleasure that dalliance had given him.
“You bring I this tube with the mark of the ubia on it,” she said. “What these marks mean?”
“Them mean I and I almost not catch the tube in time,” Bujiji answered truthfully, with not even a thought of prevaricating. “But I still catched it before the ubia can. The message inside not harmed.”
That was all he could say in his own defense. Now, he could only wait for Jass Imbiah to proclaim his punishment.
But Jass Imbiah said nothing about punishment. Instead, she slid one long fingernail down the side of the tube. Her nail left only a slight scratch on the wood. Yet the tube split open like a dry reed.
She pulled Sehaye’s message out, unrolled it and read it. First, her eyes widened. Then, they narrowed. Then, her brow furrowed in a scowl, and the corners of her mouth turned downward.
“Them mainland blankskin find they a new ally,” she murmured, more to herself than to Bujiji or the guards. “An ally who come from far, far away.”
She paused and reread the message. When she spoke again, she still seemed to be thinking aloud.
“I and I must ...”
Jass Imbiah’s body stiffened as she broke off in mid-sentence. Abruptly, she shot up from her throne, her feet lifting from the ground before she caught her balance and began to pace the floor in front of her throne. Her movements were stiff and disjointed, as though she was no longer in control of her limbs. Her eyes rolled up, showing only bloodshot white crescents.
The others in the chamber looked on wide-eyed, for they knew that Legaba was now riding – possessing – Jass Imbiah. And they trembled inside, for even though Legaba was their one god, he was could be vengeful, spiteful – and unpredictable.
With a sudden twist of her limbs that seemed to wrench her body in several directions at once, Jass Imbiah tore off her chamma. Her naked form was lean, cadaverous, androgynous, ageless. Spider-scars covered her from head to foot. And on her skin, the spiders were moving ...
When Jass Imbiah spoke again, Bujiji and the guards covered their ears and collapsed to the floor in awe and agony, even as they realized that Legaba was riding Imbiah, who was his Vessel. Her voice was no longer that of a woman, or even a human being. It was Legaba’s voice: a voice that roared mightily through the palace and into the streets of Ompong, and from there across the whole of Jayaya and to all the Shattered Isles.
RETRIBUTION TIME! the Uloans’ god cried again and again through the fraying vocal cords of his Vessel.
RETRIBUTION TIME! RETRIBUTION TIME! RETRIBUTION TIME!
Throughout the islands, the Uloans heard the revelatory message of their god. Some people shouted in ecstasy and repeated the cry of the revenge that they and their ancestors had long hoped would “soon come.” Others wept in trepidation. All knew that the destiny for which they had waited so long had finally arrived. All knew that their lives had changed from this day; and that the lives of some would be lost when the Uloans gained their revenge for the evil the Mainlanders had done to what were once the Happy Isles.
4
Much later, alone in her chamber in Ompong, Jass Imbiah gathered her strength, which had been sorely depleted during Legaba’s violent possession of her body. The only light came from a ring of candles mounted in the skulls of mainlanders who had been slain in battles of the past. The dim light of the candles wavered on her scarred face as she mouthed words of power handed down from her ancestors. Her muscles ached, and her throat felt as though it had been ripped inside out. She concentrated on healing herself.
Among the Uloans, Jass Imbiah’s position was a combination of Emperor and Leba. Other Jasses ruled on other islands, but only Imbiah had the ability to withstand being ridden by the Spider God. Still, her power over the other Jasses had been more symbolic than real – until now.
Until Retribution Time ...
Even as one part of Jass Imbiah’s mind focused on the healing process, another ruminated on what had happened when she read the message from the mainland spy. During a possession, Legaba was part of her, and she was part of Legaba. She knew what the spider-god knew and felt what he felt. When Legaba rode her this time, he assured her the prophecy he had given to one of Jass Imbiah’s predecessors soon after the end of the Storm Wars was about to be fulfilled.
When Retribution Time comes, the dead will fight beside the living, and the final victory will be ours ....
Why now? she had dared to ask Legaba, even as she had screamed his message to his worshippers over and over. After so many years, why now?
Instead of telling her, Legaba showed her. She saw the arrival of the Fidi ship in Khambawe’s harbor, and she saw the pale people from far away, of whom the Uloans had retained fewer memories than had the mainlanders. The islanders paid less attention to the past than the blankskins; their main concern was the vengeance they foresaw in the future.
However, it was not the coming of the Fidi that caused Legaba’s declaration that Retribution Time had finally come. It was the new deity the outlanders had brought to Abengoni. Unlike the enervated, largely absent Jagasti, this outland god, whose name was Almovaar, was potent ... dangerous.
Legaba showed Jass Imbiah an image of the new god’s Seer: a pale, white-haired man surrounded by an aura of eldritch power that stretched to the sky. The man’s eyes glowed like circles of fire, and hands appeared to reach out to grasp her before Legaba dispelled the illusion of his presence.
And Legaba told her the man’s name: Kyroun.
Here is your true enemy, Legaba said. If you do not destroy him, he will destroy you.
Even as Legaba’s call for Retribution Time thundered through her throat, straining her vocal cords beyond their limit, Jass Imbiah had experienced an emotion unlike any other the Spider God had ever shared with her when he rode her.
It was not fear. The notion that fear could touch one of the Jagasti was inconceivable to Jass Imbiah. What Legaba had imparted to her was ... apprehension. And if this new god and his Seer could cause such disquiet to Legaba, how could she, a frail mortal despite the power that she wielded, prevail?
But she knew she had no choice. Her god had declared that the moment for which generation after generation of Uloans had waited had finally come. Preparations for Retribution Time would be long and hard. Jass Imbiah would need all the strength she could muster, and all the ashuma Legaba could infuse into her. And she knew even that might not be enough for the task ahead of her.
“Legaba,” she whispered hoarsely. “Help I.”
And the flames of the candles tilted toward her, as though she were drawing strength even from the feeble energy of their glow.
PART TWO
RETRIBUTION TIME
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Adaptations
1
Shortly after dawn, Tiyana fou
nd Kyroun at Khambawe’s City of the Dead. The immense cemetery extended well beyond the outskirts of the city of the living, sheltering the remains of a hundred generations of Matile. The Matile interred their deceased in oval-shaped crypts of stone. Simple piles of gravel covered the graves of commoners; those of emperors and the Jassi were surmounted by carefully carved miniature palaces that proclaimed their occupants’ grandeur in the afterlife. The corpses of rich and poor alike were carefully mummified to enable their flesh to remain as close to whole as possible in death to what it had been in life.
Long ago, a small section of the cemetery had been set aside for visitors from the Fidi countries who had died in Khambawe back in the days when the two lands were still in direct contact. That was where the bodies from the dead of the White Gull were buried. Dardar Alemeyu had allowed the present-day Fidi to observe their own funerary customs, even though he and other Matile found those practices as incomprehensible now as their ancestors had centuries in the past.
Kyroun stood in front of a row of earthen mounds, each marked by a single slab of stone at its head. The mounds were strewn with flowers, and the names of the dead were inscribed on their markers. Beneath the mounds, the Fidi dead were interred in flimsy wooden boxes rather than the stone crypts that held the Matile. The markers on the older graves were weathered by the long passage of time; their inscriptions barely legible, the flowers that had been laid upon them long since vanished, their dried petals blown away by sea-winds.
The White Gull survivors had politely declined the Matiles’ offer to build crypts for their dead, or to mummify their bodies. They could not understand their hosts’ compulsion to preserve corpses and keep them forever in stone cells. And the Matile could not fathom the impermanence of the wooden coffins the Fidi carpenters had built.
“But the wood of the boxes will rot away, and the flesh of the bodies will be eaten by ground-worms, and, ultimately, absorbed by the soil,” Jass Gebrem had said to Kyroun during a discussion in which the Seer had tried to explain the Fidi practice. “They will become as one with the earth.”
“Exactly,” the Kyroun had said.
Shaking his head in bewilderment at the Fidis’ unfathomable disregard for the sanctity of the flesh of their forebears, the Leba had politely ended the conversation. And the foreigners were allowed to practice their peculiar customs without comment or interference, just as they had in the distant past.
When Tiyana reached Kyroun’s side, she remained silent while he stared at the graves. Gebrem had told her of his conversation with the Seer, and she remembered it now as she stood next to him.
Kyroun had conducted funeral rites for his people months ago, consecrating the souls of Almovaads and non-believers alike to the afterlife promised by Almovaar. And every day since then, he had visited their graves in the City of the Dead. Only the Seer went there; never the Acolytes, the Adepts, or the other Almovaads. It was as though Kyroun was performing a penance only he could understand.
Sometimes Jass Gebrem joined him among the dead; sometimes Tiyana. Kyroun had not said a word to either of them during his daily vigil, although he talked willingly before and after his self-imposed ritual. But he had never discussed his sojourns in the burial place.
Not until now.
“So many lives lost,” he said in a near whisper.
A breeze stirred the petals on the graves. Unlike the ones that had been strewn on the mounds of earlier burials centuries ago, these flowers neither wilted nor faded. They remained as fresh as they would have been had they been placed there the day before. But Tiyana knew that no else had put flowers on the Fidi graves since the burial ceremonies – Kyroun had forbidden his followers to do so.
More Fidi magic, Tiyana thought as she looked at the undying blooms. However, thinking about the sorcerous power the Seer commanded no longer stirred suspicion or uneasiness within her. The passage of time had diminished her distrust and suspicion of the newcomer. So had Kyroun’s unfailing kindness and courtesy, to which she could not help responding. Eventually, Nama-kwah’s warning during the First Calling ceremony had become little more than a faint echo in the back of her mind, easily ignored.
“So many deaths on my hands,” he continued, not looking at Tiyana. “They put their faith in me. And I failed them.”
Kyroun turned to Tiyana. The anguish in his gray eyes was almost unbearable to see. But Tiyana held his gaze. Her own eyes mirrored her empathy for his sorrow. She waited for him to say more, sensing that he wanted to speak openly to her about the suffering he had kept to himself for such a long time.
“And the others, whose graves are on the bottom of the sea ... I failed them as well,” he said sadly. Then he looked away and bowed his head.
Tiyana took his hand in hers.
“The choice was theirs, Kyroun,” she said to him. “They knew the risks. They knew there was no guarantee that your journey would succeed, or that they would live through it.”
“But I would have succeeded in saving them, had I been strong enough,” Kyroun protested, looking at her again.
“You were as strong as you needed to be,” Tiyana said. “You were strong enough to do what no one else could have done.”
They were conducting their conversation in the Matile language. The sorcery Kyroun had employed to provide translation when he first arrived was no longer necessary; by now, most of the Fidi had achieved a working mastery of their hosts’ tongue, although their accents were unmistakable and sometimes difficult to understand. Kyroun, on the other hand, spoke the language as fluently as he would have had he been born in Khambawe.
Kyroun and Tiyana stood in silence for a time, still holding hands. Tiyana was clad in a plain white chamma, and silver and gold jewelry glinted at her wrists and throat. Her hair had grown to shoulder-length, and multi-colored beads dotted her many braids. Her demeanor was more serious, as if she had acquired several years of maturity in a matter of only a few months.
The season of First Calling was over, and the rains had departed after giving renewed life to the land. Abengoni’s hot, sun-drenched, dry-season weather had been kind – almost rejuvenating – to Kyroun. The pallor was gone from his skin, and his carriage had become that of a younger, healthier man. But his eyes were still haunted by guilt and regret, of which he seldom spoke to the other Almovaads, and only now to Tiyana.
Tiyana squeezed his hand, as though her touch could banish the guilt that plagued him like an ailment for which he could find no cure.
She thought about all that had transpired since the Fidis’ ship had arrived in the harbor. The newcomers had long since been permitted to leave their crippled ship. Even though Alemeyu had made them Gebrem’s responsibility, he had also proclaimed the newcomers as Emperor’s Guests, with free access to everything the Matile could provide for their comfort. And the Tokoloshe had taken a special interest in the Fidi who were called “Dwarven,” the ones who so uncannily resembled themselves. The dwarves often visited the secluded Tokoloshe embassy, sometimes staying overnight.
The others, Believers and ship’s crew alike, had been domiciled throughout Khambawe; many people willing to take the strangers into their homes, and having Fidi guests soon became a symbol of social standing. However, Pel Muldure, the captain of the White Gull, his first mate, Lyann, and most of the crew had elected to stay on the ship to oversee its repairs. The absence of Athir Rin onboard had been noted with relief.
The Emperor had given Kyroun a suite of rooms in the Gebbi Senafa. However, the Seer spent most of his time with Gebrem and Tiyana. His hours with the Leba were consumed by long discussions about sorcery, history, power, and gods. Only to Tiyana had he revealed any uncertainties or misgivings, and never before as much so as he had this day.
Only Tiyana knew the extent of Kyroun’s disappointment when he learned that the house of his distant ancestor, Yekunu, had long ago been razed and replaced by a succession of other dwellings over the centuries. He had hoped to turn the site into a shrine to Almovaar.
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Now, his guilt and shame over the deaths of his followers had become another secret they shared.
And secrets are all we share, she thought, even as a flash of annoyance about what others thought momentarily furrowed her forehead.
Tiyana had rarely stayed at the Beit Amiya since the Emperor’s charge to her and her father of responsibility for the Seer. Still, she knew many of the other Vessels whispered behind her back about the growing bond between her and the leader of the Fidis, a man who appeared to be older than her father. She knew how deep some of them thought that bond had become.
And she ignored those rumors even as she performed only the minimum duties her service as a Vessel of Nama-kwah demanded. She did not seem to notice that a distance had developed between her and her friends, a gulf that was growing with the passing of each day.
She looked into Kyroun’s eyes. With her free hand, she touched the skin of his face above his beard.
“You are not to blame, Kyroun,” she said. “You were obeying the will of Almovaar, just as I obey the will of Nama-kwah.”
Kyroun remained silent for a long moment. Then he took Tiyana’s other hand, and they stood like that for a while, sharing a moment of mutual compassion.
“You really do understand, Tiyana,” Kyroun said. “I am fortunate it was you who reached out to me just before I would have given up my struggle.”
They smiled together. Then, hand-in-hand, they walked out of the City of the Dead, leaving the grave-flowers to wave in the wind.
2
Morning light streamed through the small porthole in the captain’s cabin of the White Gull. In the narrow bed in the cabin that was his again now that Kyroun had moved to the palace, Pel Muldure and Lyann lay in each other’s arms. Lyann’s breathing came in the slow cadence of sleep. Muldure was wide awake. Already, he was planning the final stages of the repair job on the ship.
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