by eden Hudson
“No evasion necessary,” Lysander said. With a brokenhearted sob, his voice changed to the rough tones of an outraged and grief-stricken sailor. “Blessed Cap’n Singh! Them old glass paintings are death traps, I say. Should hang the Breakwater proprietor up by their thumbs for not throwing out every last one of ’em! I want justice, by blood or by blade! Accident my foot! It could’ve been prevented, I say!” Without pause or gradation, Lysander switched back to his own slightly smug voice. “Enough of that and they ran the poor loyal sailor off.”
Koida shivered. It was terrifying how easily Lysander could flip from one extreme to another. Her mind flitted back to the night of the palace massacre and the foreigner’s carefree insistence that they were just out for a leisurely night ride—and this just minutes after he thought Raijin had been killed.
“This is a cultural difference I have been trying to understand,” Cold Sun said, turning to Hush. “Among the Uktena, a man like Singh would have been executed to protect the tribe. Why did you hope to stop Lysander before he killed the captain?”
Hush caught the foreigner’s eye.
“She says the timing implicated Koida, even if his death looked like an accident,” Lysander said, pulling back his hood and settling down in front of the fire. “Which I’m guessing means the princess didn’t tell you two that we were going to be run out of town by bounty hunters looking for her royal highness anyway. What’s one more murder down to her?”
“Even if the captain was scum, I’m growing tired of being accused of crimes I didn’t commit,” Koida answered wryly.
“You’ll get used to it,” Lysander said. “In truth, we’re fortunate everything rose to a boil in Pilau Iri. It’s nothing but grasslands for days in each direction, and they’re barely inhabited. Nomads, of course, but they ignore everyone but the odd horse trader and passing scholar. The desert beyond that is empty except for the oasis that holds the Great Library. We should make it there without being rounded up by imperial guards or bounty hunters.”
“In light of this, we are very fortunate,” Cold Sun said.
Koida wasn’t so sure. The few stories she had read about deserts always seemed to include people becoming lost and dying of thirst.
Lysander didn’t give her time to voice her doubts. “Now, what’s all this about cycling Ro down strange trails?”
“I dreamed of cycling my Ro in the shape of a lotus,” Koida said. If it had only been her and Cold Sun, she would have mentioned how using Raijin’s Ro had led her to him, but Hush and Lysander adamantly refused to believe that Raijin was alive. Every time she brought up the possibility, the foreigner grew angry. “But when I followed the cycling pattern, it felt like more than just a fanciful dream. It felt...” She struggled to find the words. “It felt like something I knew. Or used to know.”
Rather than ridiculing her, Lysander met her gaze. “Did you have any injuries before the dream that were healed when you woke up?”
“I don’t recall.” She thought back. “I must have had minor cuts and splinters from my daily tasks, but I can’t remember if they were there the next day. By that point, I think I had gotten so used to having them that I stopped noticing.”
The memory of being soaked in rainwater came back to her, but she couldn’t think of a way to explain it without bringing up seeing Raijin, so she remained silent.
“The inji have a cycling technique which sends Ro to their injuries, speeding the healing,” Lysander said. “But it’s more utilitarian than a full-body pattern. Like pouring water on a burn.”
Koida raised an eyebrow at him. “Did you read that in the Great Library as well?”
“You would be surprised at the things you can learn from a book,” Lysander said, which was not an answer at all. He reached into the oiled leather bag and pulled out bundles of black fabric. “Hush mentioned your return to the ship for the demons. Since we’re unlikely to be welcomed back aboard with open arms, we’re taking the land route through the Desert of Blushing Embers. You’ll need these.”
He tossed the smaller bundles to Koida and Hush and the largest bundle to Cold Sun. Koida unrolled hers to find a pair of billowing pants, a shirt, and a hood like Lysander’s.
Cold Sun held up his black fabric. His face betrayed no confusion, but he twisted the garment from side to side, then turned it upside down as if he couldn’t discern which way it went.
“A thousand apologies, guardian of knowledge,” Lysander said, “but all I could find big enough to cover you was a nomad woman’s dress.”
“I do not see why it should matter who the garment was made for if it protects me from the harsh desert sun,” Cold Sun said. He stood and pulled the dress on over his head.
Koida covered her mouth to stifle a giggle. Cold Sun looked as if he had stood up inside a tent that was far too short for him, lifting it off the ground.
“It suits you,” Lysander said. He turned back to Koida and Hush. “You two, change clothes. I want to leave as soon as possible so we don’t waste any more moonlight.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
LAND OF IMMORTALS
“Jin-Rammael, you have gained the abilities of a demon beast since last we spoke,” the Grandfather Spirit said.
“A guai-ray gave me her core stone in the mortal world,” Raijin said. “The abilities of the beast were the only part of that life that returned to this land with me when I died.”
The Grandfather Spirit hmmed, a sound that rumbled through his enormous body and sent vibrations through the earth beneath Raijin’s feet.
“It is more than the core stone. Your immortal energy has advanced down the path of the demon beast.”
“Apologies, Grandfather Spirit,” Raijin said, “but I do not know of this path.”
“Few immortals do. Once they have stepped onto the Immortal Path—” The enormous spirit gave an earth-shaking cough. “There is not enough water in this air for speaking. Let us retreat into the wetness of my home. We can have a proper conversation there.”
Grass rustled, trees cracked, and dirt crumbled as the Grandfather Spirit slid himself backward into the hole they had burst out of. Water exploded upward from below as he splashed into the pool, creating a new downpour for several seconds.
Tsune and Kitsu followed Raijin to the edge of the hole.
“If the Grandfather Spirit agrees, I’m going back to the mortal world,” Raijin told them. “You’re welcome to return with me.”
“We have appearances to make elsewhere,” Kitsu said.
“To prove that we didn’t help you escape,” Tsune explained.
Raijin’s broken left arm wouldn’t make a fist, but he held it with his right hand and bowed deeply over them to the twins. “You have been of incredible help to me, brave white fox twins. No matter what happened in our immortal past, I consider us allies now.”
Rather than returning his bow, the twins broke off in raucous, yipping laughter. They shifted to foxes and loped off into the underbrush.
“Wait until you regain the rest of your memories before you pardon us, Thunderer,” Tsune called back to him.
“You may change your mind!” Kitsu added between yips.
Their wildly fluctuating electrical signatures quickly passed outside the guai-ray’s reach, but their cackling drifted back through the forest for a long time after.
Laughing to himself, Raijin cradled his broken arm against his chest and searched around for the edge of the hole with his feet. When he found it, he hopped in, landing on the stone shelf below. The impact jolted his broken bones and flared up the innumerable bites, claw marks, and scratches covering his body from battling his way out of Misuru’s prison, but he shoved the pain aside. There were still tasks to complete. He could hurt later.
The guai-ray sensed the Grandfather Spirit floating in the pool before him, eyes and mouth above the water, his enormous body and long tail down in the bottomless depths.
Raijin sank to his knees and pressed his forehead to the stone. The pressure ma
de his eyeless sockets flare with pain, but he kept his head bowed.
“Wise Grandfather Spirit, do you remember the last time I came to you here?”
“My memory is long,” the spirit said. “In fact, there is much about these millennia I would forget that I cannot. Without your cleansing, the creeping fingers of the Whisperer’s corruption stole over everything I was, turning my nature to evil. I will carry the scars of what I’ve done to the dead into Eternity.”
“Apologies, Grandfather Spirit. I took too long in returning.”
“It is true that we spirits were under your protection, Jin-Rammael, and without it, we fell to evil. Though there are some who blame you for what we have become, I am not one. I saw your broken heartcenter all those millennia ago. You could have done nothing for us in that condition but delay the inevitable. Even with this mortal vessel, you are stronger now than you were then.”
Raijin sat back on his heels and took a long breath. The weight of responsibility seemed to hang heavy on his shoulders no matter which world he was in.
“You are very forgiving, Grandfather Spirit.”
The spirit rumbled thoughtfully, the sound sending out ripples in the water. “What is the use in withholding forgiveness? I may as well clutch a burning coal in my paw.”
“It is your servant’s fortune then that the Grandfather Spirit is wise enough to throw down the coal,” Raijin said. “I think many immortals—my past self included—would rather hold it tight and claim it was our rightful possession while it burns us to the bone.”
“I do not recall this in your past,” the enormous spirit said. “Explain your meaning, Thunderer.”
“When you sent me after Ha-Koi, I wanted to seek revenge for her Great Treachery,” Raijin said. “I only have a few of my immortal memories, but I remember feeling Jin-Rammael’s heartsickness and anger at what his wife had done.”
“You speak of Jin-Rammael as if you and he are separate beings.”
“Perhaps that is my wishes affecting my speech,” Raijin admitted. “I would like to believe I would set aside my feelings, not let my responsibilities to you or anyone else fall by the wayside while I sought revenge for injured pride.”
“I believe I understand now.” In the water, the Grandfather Spirit began to paddle his tiny legs, idly spinning himself on the spot. “On that day, you did not come to me with vengeance in your heart, Thunderer. When you learned that Ha-Koi had been banished to the mortal world, you asked me to send you after her to bring her home.”
“But...” Raijin shook his head as if trying to shake off the effects of a punch. “But in the memory, he—I—thought it would be much simpler if he could only hate her.”
“Don’t you agree?” the Grandfather Spirit asked. “If Jin-Rammael had only hated his wife, the desire for revenge would have faded eventually and he could have given her up for lost, leaving her trapped in the cycles of death and destruction she wrought. Instead, he fought for ten thousand years to find a way to join her and I can’t say how many mortal cycles to bring her back.”
Ha-Koi shaking and blistered at the bottom of that burnt crater appeared in his mind.
“She’s hurting herself, isn’t she?” Raijin asked.
“Each time the Dragon destroys the mortal realm and herself with it, her immortal energy is damaged further.” The Grandfather Spirit continued to paddle as he spoke. “After so much time, she has become mortal once more. She will not withstand another cataclysmic destruction. It is an Unmaking by slow degrees.”
“Why doesn’t she stop?”
The huge spirit hummed, the sound sending ripples through the water. “Why indeed.”
“Ha-Koi told the Thunderer that he—I—should have Unmade her when I had the chance.” He had felt the Unmaking in his heartcenter prepared to strike if she couldn’t call back her immortal energy. Had she known then that she was going to betray him? Had she been trying to warn him, or had her desire for destruction been so great that she wanted even herself to be gone? Raijin wanted to ask the Grandfather Spirit, but something held him back. A loyalty to the secrets of a wife he didn’t have.
So he asked instead, “Unmaking is a technique of the Corona of Falling Stars, isn’t it?”
“It is,” the enormous spirit said. “Unmaking breaks the laws of the universe by removing her from its fabric entirely. It is a sentence the Thunderer reserved for the most heinous of offenders.”
The Dragon’s wish for Unmaking. The Thunderer’s vow to stop the cycles of destruction. Koida’s crippled Ro. It was all beginning to make sense.
“All of my mortal life, I was taught that I was chosen to save the world from the Dark Dragon,” Raijin said. “I thought this meant destroying her before she had the chance to destroy the world. I even thought that Jin-Rammael was pledging to do the same in my immortal memory because of what she had done to him. In the Passage to Eternity, however, I saw a way I could save both the Dragon and the world from destruction. A Path she could take that would restore her rather than destroy her. That was what the Thunderer—or, I—meant when I vowed to stop her. That’s why I asked you to send me to the mortal world.”
An affirmative grunt and a nod from the Grandfather Spirit sent water splashing up onto the shelf, wetting the knees of Raijin’s pants.
“All the prophecies suggested otherwise,” Raijin said.
“A whisper can turn even the most well-intentioned man into a weapon,” the huge spirit said, “and what are prophecies but whispers of the future?”
“I can understand why Misuru wanted to defeat me and rule the Land of Immortals,” Raijin said. “She wanted power. Even Ha-Koi’s betrayal makes sense if she was remaining loyal to her sister by executing a treachery they had always planned to commit or throwing off what must have felt like a cage that I imposed on her nature. But I don’t understand why Misuru is so bent on destroying her sister.”
“I can only speculate at the Whisperer’s motivations, but I would imagine that even before the Sisters of Destruction hatched their plan to overthrow you, Misuru had a far-reaching strategy in place which would ensure that she would not always be a joint sovereign, but would one day be the sole ruler. With the Thunderer trapped in the mortal realm and the Dragon slowly Unmaking herself, the Whisperer thought her power was secure. Your unexpected return must have given her quite the shock.”
Raijin’s lips twisted in a wry smirk. “She managed to overcome it and imprison me again easily enough.”
The Grandfather Spirit let out another thoughtful, water-shaking hmm. “Yes, it is very likely that Misuru will now redouble her efforts to finish off the Dragon before you can save her. I cannot see the future, but the way the Whisperer has trained and cultivated and absorbed life forces these many millennia would make it reasonable to assume that her goal is to achieve the final tier of the Immortal Path and take the Corona of Falling Stars so she can Unmake you and any other immortal who might climb high enough to someday threaten her rule.”
Raijin’s fists balled on his thighs. “Then I have to stop her before she does.”
“I do not know if that is possible, Jin-Rammael,” the enormous spirit said. “She is nearly a Tier 8, and you have yet to reach the second tier.”
“Whether it is possible or impossible, I will do it,” Raijin vowed. He hardened his resolve like an Unbreakable Stone Soul. “I can’t lose Ha-Koi or leave all the planes of the universe to suffer Misuru’s corruption. No matter what it takes, I will do it. I won’t fail again.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
MORTAL LANDS
They rode across the grasslands in a pair of nights, hiding from the scorching sun during the days in the shelter of the rare twisted evergreen or the strange spire formations of rock that stuck out of the ground like enormous chimneys. From time to time, orange-patterned demon geckos, about half the size of their tree gecko cousin that Raijin had presented her father with what felt like years ago, scampered across the undersides of the rocky overhangs, sending dust
and pebbles tumbling down on them.
With every nighttime mile they traveled, Koida watched the high grass grow shorter and scarcer. She watched for Raijin’s demon ray, Nael, but the heat must have become too much for him, as he was nowhere to be seen. She couldn’t blame the beast. The rocky outcroppings where they could hide from the sun were growing rare. The land began to roll and dip, and the dirt turned to brilliant orange sand except in dry creek beds. Strange succulents began to dot the landscape with spiky, waxy green leaves as wide as Pernicious’s hooves radiating outward like an opening flower around a central glowing opalescent pearl.
“Prairie hen buttons,” Lysander explained to Koida. “Grassland tribes collect them for use in lanterns. Handy little things. They don’t require dry tinder during the wet season, and they won’t burn the prairie during the dry season.”
“The Wise Physician Hush would like to stop long enough to gather some of these buttons,” Cold Sun told them.
They reined in the demon beasts and dismounted. Hush began to fill a paper packet with handfuls of the glowing pearls, and both Koida and Cold Sun plucked a few prairie hen buttons of their own, fascinated by the blue-green glow they gave off. Nearby, Lysander dug around in his oiled leather satchel and pulled out a bit of parchment and a charcoal.
“I didn’t realize they were medicinal as well,” the foreigner said, making notes in a quick hand. “What do you use them for, Hush?”
Without looking up from her work, the silent physician shrugged. Koida caught the faintest impression of experimentation, almost as if she had heard someone whisper it from another room.
Lysander, however, seemed to have heard or felt it clearly. He chuckled.
“Well, when you find out what they do, let me know.”
On the dawn of the third morning they rode down into a small, rocky streambed that actually had a burbling stream running through the center, feeding verdant greenery and eye-wateringly bright blossoms. The banks seemed to hold in the humidity from the stream, and the thick wet air swam with the perfume of the flowers and plants.