Racing the Dark

by Alaya Dawn Johnson

  "Don't be such a blowhard, Nahe," Bopa said. "I thought his conclusions were well-founded. What good is a Kulanui without a little debate?"

  Nahe looked angry enough to hit Bopa, but she stared at him until he sat back down.

  "Enough," he said quietly. "I am the head of the council, and I say that this student is unfit to enter our ranks. In fact, I declare that the sloppiness of his work makes him unfit to be in the Kulanui at all, and I hereby divest him of his rank and forbid him to further waste anyone's time with his hopeless aspirations."

  Kohaku stared, but he could not even summon indignation to meet Nahe's look of triumph. Yesterday's cold, sharp-edged anger was still there, but buried under a turgid river of grief.

  You can't do that, Nahe. The council can still overrule you-

  "And what if you try and fail, Bopa? What if more side with me? What do you think will happen to you then?"

  Bopa stood up abruptly and gathered her papers. "I refuse to be a part of this monkey trial," she said as she walked toward the door. "Kohaku, I'm quite sorry. I still say your work was excellent."

  "And you, Totome?" Nahe asked.

  Totome glanced at Kohaku and then gave an infinitesimal nod.

  Nahe smiled. "You're dismissed, Kohaku. You can leave your robe and headband on the table."

  Kohaku pressed the filtering cloth close to his mouth and nose. The air this close to the lip of the volcano was acrid-poisonous, if you stayed too long. The lavish expense of this funeral ceremony was due in part to the inherent dangers involved in climbing the volcano. Up ahead, priests and priestesses chanted ancient songs of supplication. They asked for his sister's spirit to be kept within the islands and they asked her not to bear the living grudges for her untimely death. Emea had always loved Nui'ahi, and after his failure to protect her, he realized it was the only thing he could do. The fee had taken all his money, even after he had sold their apartment and all their possessions. Still, there wouldn't have been enough if Lipa hadn't given him the rest. He didn't know how he would ever repay that debt, either. Four white-clad men carried his sister's body on a mat of woven reeds. Around her shoulders, contrasting with the stark white of her dress, he had tied the carrying cloth she had made so lovingly. The path was rough and filled with rocks that crumbled under his feet and made it difficult to find a purchase. The air was so foul that he thought he might vomit, but he continued, viewing it as a penance, if not a method of purging his grief.

  The altitude had plugged his ears, but he didn't bother to unplug them-he liked the dampened sound. He tried to imagine what life had been like for his sister, who hadn't been able to hear since she was four. He watched the mouths of the chanters move in unison, but didn't hear what they were saying. Perhaps his sister's inability to hear had been more of a blessing than a curse-it was one less reason to feel pain. It would have been so much easier to tune out the world with one less sense for it to overload. Finally, they reached the lip of the volcano. This part of the ceremony was quick, for the whole funeral party would be in danger of passing out if they stayed much longer.

  He touched her hand when they reached the top, trying not to notice how unnaturally cold and stiff it felt. His eyes fell on the blue and gold of her shawl. Not quite understanding the impulse, he untied it just before they tipped her body in the orange-gold pit of molten lava. She went directly under, and then bobbed like a cork to the surface. Her clothes caught fire, then her hair. She burned until he could no longer make out her figure, and the ash that clogged his throat might just be hers.

  7

  ANA SAT BY THE OPEN WINDOW in her shift, squinting as she sewed a button back on her shirt. She hadn't acquired a new piece of clothing in nearly four years, and the wear was beginning to show. This shirt-blue with a shiny orange strip down the middle-had been a gift from her parents during her first visit to Essel four years ago. Since it still looked less shabby than her other clothes, she had planned to patch it up as best she could and wear that when she visited her parents in two weeks. But Akua had been a hard taskmaster recently and this would probably be her only chance to mend her shirt before she left. Lana glanced periodically at the stove, where the draught Akua had been making for the past three days simmered quietly. Akua had gone out earlier that morning to gather the final ingredients-although Lana could hardly believe there was anything she hadn't already used in it. The smell didn't bother her as much as it had at first, but she was still grateful for the periodic breeze. Akua had not yet told her what it was for-a familiar annoyance. She seemed to delight in tantalizing her with powerful geas and then refusing to explain their workings. Lana, it seemed, was never quite ready enough or strong enough to tackle a major working of power. As for today's potion, she felt Akua had already bound too many geas to it for her comfort-ever since the incident with Saulo two years ago, she found it difficult to trust Akua when too much power was involved.

  Just as Lana was tying off the thread, Akua opened the door, a small smile on her lips and a worn canvas bag over her shoulder. A strong gust of wind made the door slam shut, but Akua didn't seem to notice. She walked over to Lana, barely sparing a glance for her draught.

  "What is it?" Lana asked. She had rarely seen Akua so excited.

  "You're ready," she said. She finally seemed to register that Lana was only in her shift and she waved at the shirt impatiently. "Put that on," she said. "We're going out for a few days."

  Lana stared, but pulled the shirt over her head. "Akua, what are you talking about?"

  "Get your mandagah jewels. I am going to teach you a technique of great power."

  "Why on earth would you need..." Lana trailed off, her heart thudding painfully. "Jewels?" she whispered.

  Akua smiled gently. "I've always known, Lana. Do you think you could hide something like that from someone who's spent her whole life studying power? Go get them, then-the blue and the red."

  Lana couldn't even speak. She ran up the stairs, terrified and excited with the conviction that Akua was finally going to teach her a geas of power.

  Akua held out a tall earthenware cup, filled to the top with the foul-smelling draught that had been simmering on the stove for the past three days. Lana glanced briefly at Akua's serious eyes and fought her nausea. It smelled something like soured pomegranate juice, with the sweetness replaced by the stink of rotting vegetation. A layer of dung-brown foam floated atop of the liquid. Every few seconds an oily brown bubble would rise to the top and break, giving her another whiff of its rank stench.

  "You want me to drink this?" Lana said, carefully breathing out of her mouth.

  Akua laughed. "If you hold your nose it won't taste so bad."

  "I have to drink the whole thing?" Akua nodded and she sighed. "What is it, exactly?"

  "It invokes certain spirits, so that when you perform the real sacrifice over the two jewels the power will be doubled. I'll show you how to prepare it once you see what its effects are. This way your binding between the two jewels will be nearly unbreakable."

  Lana wondered why that would be necessary, but she had been with Akua long enough to know that the witch never explained herself before she was ready. Shrugging her shoulders, Lana pinched her nose and tipped the noxious mixture into her mouth. Despite the fact that she couldn't breathe, the very feel of it sliding like a worm down the back of her throat nearly made her vomit. She dropped the cup on the floor, where it landed with a dull thud. The little bit of liquid remaining dripped out, but it seemed to have lost all of its viscosity and seeped through the floorboards without even leaving a damp spot. Through the silvered haze that descended over her vision, Lana watched Akua nod in satisfaction and pick up the cup. As soon as the draught entered her stomach, she became aware of the prickling sensation of incipient power, much stronger than anything she had ever invoked herself. It felt as though Akua must have tied this geas to all three of the bound spirits-water, death, and fire-an unusual and tremendously powerful technique. Lana lay sprawled on the floor, staring at
the wooden ceiling beams gone nearly black with age. She had the strangest sense that she could see shapes in their shadows-the brief flick of a scaled hand, the shiny gleam of too-white teeth. She suddenly realized that she was surrounded by spirits-some leering, some laughing, some sitting stone-faced, all waiting to see why she had called them here and if she had the power to bind them. As she lay prone on the floor in a haze more profound than anything she had ever experienced with amant weed, it occurred to her that until this moment, she had never understood the real danger she courted every time she cast a geas. If she didn't prove capable of binding them, these spirits would devour her from the inside out.

  Akua helped her to sit up and smoothed her hair back gently. Lana noticed that the spirits seemed to back up at the sight of Akua. Could that be respect in their insubstantial eyes? Fear?

  Akua put the two jewels in a bowl of water, where they bobbed gently. "Don't worry, Lana," she said. "One day you will command power much greater than this. They are all subject to your will, as long as you are sure of yourself."

  The phantasms in the corners were laughing, but Lana focused on Akua's reassuring eyes and nodded firmly, though her head felt in danger of floating off her neck.

  Akua pressed a knife into Lana's loose grip. "Use this to cut your wrist. Not too shallow, not too deep. Then read this-you'll know when." Beside the bowl Akua had placed a yellowed sheet of paper, with a single geas poem written in old-style pictographs in its middle. Lana stared at it for a few hazy moments before gripping the knife's wooden handle more firmly. She would have to be strong enough. The spirits that crowded around her-a badger whose dun-brown head was twice as big as its body, a fish with hard golden scales and eyes that dripped thick, viscous water-flickered in and out of visibility. Unlike Ino, they were not strictly bound to this world; their existence was only partially physical-until someone like her forced them to submit to a geas.

  Slowly, as though the air had grown too thick to move, Lana held the sharp blade above her left wrist. She stared at the wide blue vein and imagined blood pumping through it, and then imagined that blood as power. In a brief, almost casual act of violence, Lana slashed her wrist and allowed the vein to pump its dark red contents into the bowl containing the two jewels.

  Power descended like a fog into the small room. She sensed the spirits' tension, the sharp way they watched her for any weakness. She refused to look back at them. Instead, she looked at her jewels. The blood slid easily from the blue one, coloring the water beneath it, but it clung to the red, deepening its color until it seemed to glow from the inside.

  "Good ... very good, Lana," Akua said softly, guarded surprise in her voice. "Now read the geas."

  With difficulty, Lana tore her eyes from the gently spinning red jewel and looked back at the yellowed paper beside it.

  Lana broke off abruptly and stared at Akua. Her hold over the power wavered dangerously. The last word was written in pictographs she couldn't read. They looked as though they were part of the ancient scholarly writing style she had never learned. Since speaking in the middle of a geas recitation would break it, Akua frowned a little, then dipped her finger in the bowl of bloody water and scrawled four phonetic characters on the floor. Lana nodded.

  "A sacrifice of fire, water ..." she stared at Akua's quickly drying scrawl, "or make-lai," she finished. The power sealed itself off. For a brief moment the surrounding spirits opened their mouths in what could have been a lament or simply a keen of rage-Lana couldn't hear them, but the hair on the back of her neck bristled and she shuddered. Then the room seemed to stabilize. The corners held merely shadows once again, and the haze in Lana's head was simply exhaustion. Akua stared at her, eyebrows furrowed but eyes unreadable. After a moment, her mentor plucked the two jewels-which felt somehow different, now, as though their power had mutated-out of the water and handed them to Lana.

  "You know how to thread these, don't you?" she asked.

  Lana nodded, too tired to speak.

  "We're leaving tomorrow morning. Bore the holes by then and I'll give you some riverweed to string it on."

  Lana was surprised. The supple, silver-gold strands of riverweed were rumored to be the fallen hair of sprites, and fetched notoriously high prices.

  Akua stood and picked up the bowl of bloody water. She tossed its contents out the window and then poured a little more fresh water from a pitcher by the stove. She walked to a low cabinet and pulled out a small jar and a roll of bandages and walked back over to Lana, who was prostrate on the floor.

  "Here," she said gently, "your arm probably hurts. You lost a bit more blood than I'd anticipated."

  Once she mentioned it, Lana realized that her arm was throbbing. Red blood still oozed from the cut in a turgid flow. Akua fished a necklace-a key carved delicately out of bone-from the inside of her shirt and held it briefly. She muttered a quick geas and the blood slowed to a trickle-a masterful use of power that Lana could not help but admire. Akua then washed her cut and rubbed it with a balm that smelled of bee pollen and lichen.

  "You'll have to wrap the bandage," Akua said, her slightly lined face showing signs of exhaustion. As Lana tied the linen strips around her wrist she felt an unexpected burst of affection. The witch had secrets, hidden motivations, and an undeniable streak of cruelty. But over the years Lana had come to admire her. Akua's intelligence, her flawless command of power, even the disdain she had for societal conventions had earned Lana's respect. Lana ripped the cloth with her teeth and tied it in a knot. Akua gave her a tired smile.

  "You look exhausted. Why don't you just go to sleep? You'll have time to bore the holes before we get to Ialo"

  Lana felt renewed surprise. Ialo was the second biggest city on Okika-a three-day journey by river. It was the last big port city on the traditional ship routes to the Eastern outer islands, the ones by the water shrine. "Why are we going to Ialo?" she asked.

  "To set up shop. We'll do a bit of trading, and you can go on to Essel from there."

  Lana was too exhausted to be more curious. She hauled herself off the ground and then staggered a bit as her vision went temporarily white.

  "Oh, Akua?" she said, just before she climbed the stairs. "What does make-lai mean?"

  Akua's fingers froze momentarily over the jar she was picking up. "It's a word of power in the river language. It hasn't been common for nearly 500 years."

  Just before Lana went to sleep, she wondered how a word she had never heard before could sound so dirty.

  The riverbanks were strewn with the gray, rotting carcasses of the liha'wai, who just months before had been dancing under the pregnant spring moon. Most of the more affluent passengers on this riverboat had pulled their brightly colored scarves across their faces, and some had even doused the cloth in heavy perfume to better hide the smell. The sight of the multicolored scarves flapping in the wind made Lana think of exotic birds. The sound of the other passengers' voices complaining about the stench blended with the imperative commands of the sailors into a cacophony, dulled by the wind rushing past her ears into something almost comforting. Despite the profusion of scarves, Lana thought the smell actually wasn't so bad-the docks in Okika had sometimes smelled far worse. It was the sight that disturbed her more-the dark, thick bodies of the flies crowding around the river nits' eyes and mouths. Some of the nits were still alive, flapping their tails and spindly legs uselessly even as the flies devoured their flesh. It was hard to see the beautiful sparks that lit the river in early spring reduced to such gruesome mortality in the harsh heat of summer. But the muddy edges of the wide river were crowded with flotillas of tiny pink dots suspended in beds of mucus. The liha'wai eggs would hatch in a few days and begin the cycle again, even as the air above them still stank of their parents' decaying bodies.

  Akua had fallen asleep on her hammock, a leather-bound book shielding her eyes from the noonday sun. Lana walked over to her own hammock and fished the two jewels out of the pocket of her leibo. She didn't wear the diving pants very
often anymore, since they made people look at her like she was some country bumpkin, but standing in her bare feet on the sun-shrunk boards of the riverboat, she could almost pretend she was back home. The weather would make it a cool day on her island, but at least the biting cold of the lingering winter had disappeared. Lana settled on the hammock and fished out the boring needle Akua had found for her before they left. She was nearly done with the hole in the blue jewel, and then she would start on the red. In her pocket were also two strands of the supple but improbably strong riverweed. She wondered about this strange trip as she patiently worked the needle deeper into the dense jewel. Why had Akua insisted she perform that geas, and then make necklaces out of her jewels? Akua's cryptic answers were beginning to make her feel nervous. The sensation-like being led over treacherous ground with her eyes blindfolded-was already familiar enough for her to hate it.

  "Why do you want me to thread these jewels, anyway?" Lana asked softly.

  To her surprise, Akua picked up the book and turned to face her. "I told you. For power."

  "I know, but how? What did that geas do? What's in Ialo?"

  Akua sighed, but the corners of her mouth lifted ruefully. "You just don't leave well enough alone, do you? We're going to Ialo to sell one of your jewels. The person who takes it will become a willing sacrifice for you to access whenever you choose, because of the power between the two jewels. They were already linked-more strongly than I had thought, actually-but the geas reinforced that bond and allowed you to take power with one through the other."

  Lana's hands tingled as though she had been sitting on them for too long. "A ... willing sacrifice? But, wouldn't that hurt ... the other person, even if they didn't know what they were accepting?"