There were a few gasps. People began to clamor out of the settlement and gather around him, pressing close, though not close enough to touch him without consent. They marveled at him. He noted all the young people bearing white ribbons in their hair and around their throat.
The bubbling conversation drew more and more people, until Meyna finally eased her way through the crowd to him, calling, “Yes, it’s true! It’s all true! The Kai has returned to lead us to our new home! There will be a meeting tonight, in the gathering hall, at dusk. We will share our vision with you!”
Ahkio gazed across the crowd and saw Yisaoh staring at him, her hands covered in sticky violet sap and plant matter, face spattered in dirt. When she saw him looking, she gave a little smirk, and put thumb to forehead, mocking.
He winced. He could not stomach Meyna’s politicking. He cast his thoughts again to Yisaoh. Kirana would hunt them all to the ends of the world until she was dead. Despair welled up. He had failed at so much. All he wanted to do was save his people. He just wanted to make it right.
But to make it right, he would have to do a grave wrong.
Ahkio shuddered. He was going to start sobbing again. He feared he would not be able to stop.
13
Roh wept at the sight of Asona Harbor. He wept again when he found out Taigan was alive, and that even such a powerful sanisi would join with the Tai Mora. What had Roh been fighting for all this time? Why had he fought so hard to get here, when everything was falling apart?
It had been more than two years since he had leapt onto a ship to Saiduan with his fellow Dhai scholars, looking forward to living a more exciting, less ordinary life.
He had found that life.
The trip down the Saiduan continent with Keeper Dasai, Dasai’s secretary Nahinsa, and their retinue, had taken far longer than he had anticipated when he begged them to take him back to Dhai to meet with the Empress. As a sort of magistrate for Caisau, Dasai had business to conduct, and his tall secretary with the lopsided face was equal parts lover, bodyguard, and contract writer.
Much of the business the Tai Mora did here at the end of the great war was dealing in food and human labor. One of those human chattel was Roh. He survived because he knew the Kai cipher, he insisted he was a relation of the Kai, and – most importantly – because Dasai knew that the man who shared Roh’s face in their world was already dead. There was no reason to kill Roh to save one of their people.
They traveled by cart through the old gates of Asona Harbor. Its teardown was nearly complete. Roh sat in the back of the cart with the other chattel – scaly chickens, three young boars, and piles of animal skins, silks, and rice destined for Oma’s Temple. He viewed the landscape with his gangly legs with their shattered knees hanging over the edge.
From this vantage point he saw the world pass him by after it was already behind him, and after a while he didn’t want to look anymore.
His joy at seeing home again did not last.
Perhaps he should have known what was in store when Taigan laughed at him in the bathhouse on the harbor.
The clan squares of Dhai had been burned out. The lift lines cut. The orchards were twisted wrecks. The fire that had pillaged the world the year before had been thorough, and routed much of the toxic plant life between the clans as well. He saw the mangled shapes of dead walking trees, first one and two and then whole families of them.
Wildlife had been caught in the routing as well; bones peeked through blooming spring wildflowers. Not all of the bones were animal, either. From a distance, he saw human skulls. While the Tai Mora had been busy trying to till the ground, and beat back the encroaching new growth, they had not had time to dispose of all the Dhai bodies. Around Kuallina, Roh saw heaped mounds of soil where he knew the bodies of his people had been buried. They had not been eaten or burned, but buried like fertilizer. Thousands and thousands of them.
Industrious groups of Tai Mora and their slaves were shoring up roads, clearing away toxic plants from new fields, tilling reddish soil, and tearing out old, fire-ruined orchards to make way for grape vines.
These changes were sad, almost expected, but not striking. The change that made him gape was far more permanent and unexpected. As they came up the top of the low hills outside Asona, he caught a glimpse of a great black mountain protruding from the center of the country. If he had to guess, he would say it lay near the Kuallina stronghold.
“What is that?” Roh asked Dasai, though he knew better than to speak unless spoken to.
Dasai ignored his outburst, but when he gazed at the great mountain, his mouth firmed.
They stopped at a wayhouse outside Kuallina where the tavern keeper regaled Dasai and Nahinsa with the story of Kuallina’s fall to fire during Sina’s rise, and the Kai’s retreat to Oma’s Temple, where he was chopped to pieces by his own people and thrown in the sewer dregs.
“It’s said they fished him out, after,” the tavern keeper said, making a two-fingered sign that Roh had learned was a ward against the ire of the gods, to the Tai Mora. “Then they ate him,” he said. “Those barbarous Dhai.” This last was said without a hint of irony.
“What of that black mountain?” Dasai asked. “We’ve heard rumor of a great upset here.”
The tavern keeper lowered her voice. “It fell from the sky.”
“Invaders?” Nahinsa asked. “An army?”
“No one’s sure,” the tavern keeper said. “Flattened the stronghold there, though, and made a great crater. Rocked the whole country like a terrible earthquake when it landed. Some of it got cut off, you can see, when the worlds came back together. Oma knows how big the whole thing was.”
Nahinsa knit her brows. “But how could a mountain–”
“It’s no mountain,” the tavern keeper said. “It’s a living thing. A boat of some kind.”
“From the sky?” said Dasai, incredulous.
“Wild worlds out there,” the tavern keeper said.
That night, Roh lay on a straw mattress at the foot of Dasai’s bed, clasping his hands together, pretending it was not his own hand he grasped, but that of some good friend or lover, someone who could keep him safe. He took comfort in that. The world had changed irreparably, but he wanted to turn it all back. The creature in Caisau had told him he needed to come to Dhai, but when would it be too late? All those conversations felt like dreams, now, the hallucinations of a boy battered and beaten.
What would happen when he arrived at the temple? The creature said he could talk to Oma’s Temple when he got there, but what if he couldn’t? And what would he have to say to Kirana, this mirror Kirana, the terrible shadow version of the Kai he had known before Ahkio? He closed his eyes and tried to remember her face, but it was all so long ago that all he remembered was the rough sound of her voice.
She had been a very weak tirajista, and he had once watched her coax a vine from between two stones when he was very, very young and Tira was ascendant. He could not remember her face, but he clearly saw the beaded dew on the vine, the little granules of soil as it twirled up and up into the air, the gods made real.
Two days later, they finally reached the Temple of Oma. On the edge of the plateau, which had once been nothing but amber-colored grass, the Tai Mora had constructed a fortified town.
As Roh entered the village, wondering whom they housed here, he saw the familiar chitinous armor of the Tai Mora soldiers. Among the soldiers were the support people, the dog-minders and launderers and cooks and doctors. Roh passed a doctor’s tent where a yowling woman was having a poisonous angler thorn, big as a tree branch, yanked from her leg. Roh had never seen anyone survive the sting of an angler bush when Tira was descendant, but with so many satellites in the sky perhaps she had a chance. He wondered if the Tai Mora tirajistas had some song they could use to heal that hurt, or if they had no idea that the woman’s life would be over in an hour without treatment.
He expected their presence to rouse curiosity, but no one paid them any mind. Dasai had bee
n someone up north, but he seemed unknown among these people. Many of these soldiers bore little resemblance to the Tai Mora or the Dhai. They were a mix of different peoples who had clearly come from a broad range of far-flung places across the other world. Some bore elaborate tattoos, others had piercings and dyed henna hair, or wore their hair in spiky locks, or slicked against their scalps with white paste or violet clay. They were tall, short, lean, with faces that were long or broad, foreheads peaked or flat, low or tall. He realized he compared the people of every other country based on how like or different they were to the Dhai. Dhai was normal to him, and these people were very different. Perhaps, now, he was the different one. This was the new world.
Roh noted the few surviving Dhai among the camp. He knew them by the tattoos on their necks, like his, and the cut of their gray clothes. They had not yet learned not to meet each other’s gazes. Roh still saw defiance in their faces. Where had his gone?
“Here we are,” Dasai said, as a soldier raised a hand to slow their cart.
Nahinsa explained their purpose to the soldier, and gestured to the cart of goods.
“You’ll want to see the quartermaster,” the soldier said, and waved them on through a fortified gate and into a large square. Here there was a courtyard of beaten dirt and several tents and hastily erected cabins. One was clearly a kennel, with spaces for bears and dogs separated. A blacksmith tended a forge, aided by a tirajista who worked at panels that had the gleam of Tai Mora armor.
Dasai ordered Roh to wait with the cart while he and Nahinsa went inside to meet the quartermaster. Roh bided his time, singing an old parajista song softly under his breath.
“Rohinmey?”
Roh started, nearly falling off the cart. He jerked around to face the woman who had spoken. She was a lean woman with a big frame, wide in the hips and shoulders. Her plump mouth was pursed, and a wrinkled line appeared between her brows as she regarded him. He guessed she was ten years his senior, and she bore the neck tattoo and plain gray clothes of a fellow Dhai. Her thick mane of black hair was pulled back under a broad gray scarf.
For a long moment, Roh did not recognize her.
She came to the edge of the cart and leaned toward him. It was her eyes that decided him, large and dark.
“Saronia,” he said. She had lost weight; the roundness of her face and figure were gone, replaced by a stark hunger that only emphasized the lines of her face. He knew Saronia was much closer to his age than she looked. She carried a basket in her arms, arms that had long shiny scars: burn marks.
“What are you doing here?” he said, in Dhai, and it was a stupid question. What were any of them doing here? It was Dhai, and they were, still, Dhai.
She shook her head. “Tai Mora,” she said, and continued their conversation in Tai Mora, even though she surely spoke too low for anyone else to hear them.
“We all thought you were dead,” Saronia said. “All the scholars sent to Saiduan. Was that–”
Roh shook his head. “It’s their Dasai, not ours. Ora Dasai… Chali, the others… No.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It was like that here. We thought Ora Nasaka would protect us, but she just opened the gates! We didn’t know what to do. They killed anyone who protested. Stacks of bodies, Roh, so many bodies. You have no–”
“I have an idea,” Roh said. He nearly placed his hand over hers, and stopped himself.
She caught his look, and looped his hand in hers. “It’s all right,” she said, “I consent.”
“I’m sorry,” Roh said. He looked around to see if anyone was paying them mind. A soldier at the door of the quartermaster’s office was watching them carefully.
Roh got down from the cart, painfully, and helped her pick up the basket. It was full of dirty laundry, and when she’d dropped it, various pieces of soiled linen had fallen in the mud.
“I’m so glad to see you, Roh,” Saronia said as he helped her refill the basket. They had not been friends, in the temple. Saronia was from Clan Garika, and she had been a terrible bully.
From the corner of his eye, Roh saw Dasai leaving the quartermaster’s office.
“You should go,” Roh said. “Let’s not draw more attention.”
She raised her head, and did not quite look at Dasai, but she clearly noted his presence. She took up the basket and hustled past Roh without sparing a glance back.
Dasai got up into the cart, staring after Saronia. “Who is that one?” Dasai asked. “Someone you know?”
“From a long time ago,” Roh said.
“Come now. The Empress has agreed to see us.”
The various guards and additional slaves in Dasai’s retinue stayed on the plateau while he, Roh, and Nahinsa were escorted across the natural stone bridge that connected the plateau with the small crag of land that bore the weight of Oma’s Temple. Roh limped along painfully, conscious of how different his gait was coming back into the temple than leaving it. He followed the height of the temple, up and up, to the familiar glint of the dome. The Tai Mora had torn down the fenced webbing that protected the temple from the plateau and had completely rebuilt the old stone walls. Inside the walls, much of the front gardens would lie in shade. Roh shivered as he crossed through them to the temple door, which was barred.
Roh had never known a time when the doors to the temple were locked.
They entered the temple proper, ushered by the sinajistas, who unwarded doors as they went. The temple bustled with slaves, liveried servants, guards, jistas, and specialists of all sorts. Roh was overwhelmed by the heat and noise of the place. It had never been this busy; Oma’s Temple was no longer a place of study, but one of war and conquest and rebuilding. He lingered behind as his party entered the foyer, and pressed his hands to the wall next to the door.
“Beast?” he murmured.
Nothing. Only the subtle warmth of the walls, which he had felt his whole life. Had Caisau been a dream? Had he come all this way for nothing? He racked his memory for some sign, some key piece of information the creature had given him. The creature on the plateau will know you. Step into her circle and the map will unfold. You are the map now. You are the Guide.
“Rohinmey!”
Roh started, and hurried after Dasai.
The sinajistas began up the great stairwell. Roh balked. Broke out in a cold sweat. “Keeper Dasai, I cannot. My–” he could not say, “My legs,” and choked on the words. But he gestured.
“Could you carry him?” Dasai asked one of the sinajistas.
She made a face. “Certainly not.”
“You, there!” Dasai called to a big man sitting next to a lean, petite woman on a bench in the foyer. “Can you help my boy up the stairs? Just a few flights.”
The big man rose. He was not tall, Roh saw now, just broad. His scraggly black hair and beard needed a wash and comb; he had the blunt features and stocky build of a Tordinian. He hunched a little as he walked over to them, right arm tucked against his torso. His right hand was missing. The clothes he wore were the simple cut of a servant. Someone had clearly dressed him recently.
The man said something, most likely in Tordinian. Roh didn’t speak it, but many Tordinians knew some Dorinah. His gaze was flat and black.
“Please, Father,” Roh said in Dorinah. “Will you help me up the stairs?”
“My dogs,” the man said, in mangled Dorinah – or, that’s what Roh thought he said. “You have? My dogs?” He seemed to be looking at something just over Roh’s left shoulder. “Ah, ah,” he said. “Your ghosts!”
“He’s addled,” Roh said to Dasai.
The little woman next to the man got up, peeked around the man; Roh saw she had the beginnings of a beard. She was pale as a Dorinah, and looked as exhausted as the man. She grabbed the man’s good arm and said, in Dorinah, “We are waiting for someone.”
“Could he take me up the stairs?” Roh asked, but before she could respond, the man was already moving, very quickly.
Roh scrambled back, but the man scoop
ed him up and hefted Roh over his shoulder. Roh let out a squeal.
“Good, then.” Dasai waved at them to continue up.
The way was deeply uncomfortable. Roh kept losing his breath. “Ghosts?” Roh wheezed.
“See you,” the man said. “Patron slayer.”
Roh froze like a captured rabbit. Who was this man?
The little bearded woman came after them, heaving herself up each step, daintily tugging at her belled trousers as she went.
When they got to the top Roh asked to be put down, and the man – surprisingly – obeyed.
They stood just outside the open door to the Assembly Chamber. The sinajistas announced them.
The Empress stood at the Kai’s seat at the great circular table of the chamber, one foot on the chair, pointing at two travel-worn visitors Roh took to be soldiers. Behind her were two slaves, waiting on her whim, and several jistas and councilors of some kind.
Roh expected her to look much more like the Kirana he had known during his time in the temples. But this woman was wiry, with a harder mouth and flat, intense eyes. No glimmer of mirth or mercy there.
She did not acknowledge them for a full minute as she continued speaking to the soldiers. “I thought I had Daorian murder all their jistas. How did this one escape, Monshara?”
The woman soldier, Monshara, said, “He was unknown to them at the time. Natanial, tell her of–”
“It’s good he did escape,” the lean man, Natanial, said. “You’ll need him for the end.”
“But Saradyn? Ghosts?” Kirana rolled her eyes.
“It’s complicated,” Natanial continued, “you should see–”
At the name Saradyn, the man who had carried Roh grunted and yelled something in Tordinian. The sinajistas surged forward, but the soldier inside turned, and called them back.
“No! Leave him. Saradyn isn’t terribly dangerous anymore.” Natanial crossed over to the big man, Saradyn, and took him by the elbow. Presented him to the Empress.
“Where is she from?” Natanial asked, in Dorinah, pointing at the Empress.
The Worldbreaker Saga Omnibus Page 118