The Worldbreaker Saga Omnibus

by Kameron Hurley

  “What are your plans here?”

  “To leave. Do you want to eat?”

  Roh was indeed hungry, and wanted both food and a bath, but the urgency had overcome him among all these people. He wanted to tell them everything, and see if they could help him puzzle out what the temples had told him.

  “Is there…” Roh considered the stories he had heard traveling through Dhai, about a rebel leader with a twisted foot, all dressed in white. “Do you know if there’s anyone here called Lilia Sona? Or someone who knows where she is? I heard stories about–”

  Maralah came up short. “Lilia Sona. Now that’s a name that continues to haunt me.”

  “You know her?”

  “I sent Taigan to Dhai to find a worldbreaker. He hoped it might be her.”

  “That was you?”

  “Yes.” She waved a hand. “A lifetime ago. We gathered a number of young people, hoping one of them would turn out to be gifted enough to act as a worldbreaker, once we understood how to harness the power of the satellites when Oma was risen. All that work for nothing. We still ended up–” a darkness passed across her face as she surveyed the cluttered camp, “–still ended up here.”

  “I don’t think it’s too late.”

  “Good for you. I’m out of the business of changing the world. I just want to die old.” She conferred with a group of Saiduan. A young Woodland Dhai was with them, thumbs stuck in her belt, parroting back some passable Saiduan.

  “I can show them the springs,” said the young Woodland Dhai. Her head was shaved, displaying the full breadth of the tattoos that covered her face and scalp. “I’m Naori. I want to work on my Saiduan. And my valley Dhai!”

  “Good,” Maralah said. “Thank you, Naori. Roh, when you are clean and fed, there’s someone else who wants to see you.”

  “Are you sure there isn’t anything we can do now?” Roh asked. “Anavha could–”

  “Could what?” Maralah said, coolly. “Take us home? No, I’m sure a soft Dorinah man like him has never been to Saiduan. Yes, I know how traveling gates work, when they are used to travel across this world and not another. Could he take us to where we were going? No. I’m sure he hasn’t been to Hrollief either, which is where I pointed those ships before the storms captured us. And I admit I’m annoyed that you have any fight left in you, boy. Let it go.”

  “But I think… I think we could–”

  “Then you are delusional. Drunk on hope.” She pointed at Saradyn. “Be sure you wash him, first. He has the stink of a fucking bear.” She left them and followed after two more Saiduan woman descending the long tongue of the cavernous pathway that led below.

  “Don’t mind her,” Naori said. “She has struggled a long time. Her people are dead. You knew each other, though? Was she kind to you?”

  “She didn’t do any of this,” Roh said, though he did not gesture to his legs, or his other scars, physical and mental. “Not to me, anyway.”

  Naori cheerfully showed them around the camp and took them down another well-worn path to a bubbling hot springs. “My people, clan Kosilatu, we come here every year for bluestones, and to soak in the hot springs.”

  “Does your clan… Do you know about rebel Dhai living here? Valley Dhai? Refugees?”

  “Oh yes,” Naori said. “There are several camps, but like us, most of them move.”

  Roh sighed. The faint smell of sulfur permeated the air around the hot springs. Saradyn pulled off a boot, filling the air with a far grimmer stench, and dipped his foot in.

  “Ahh!” Saradyn said, and began to strip off his grimy clothing without any urging.

  “I can find some clean clothes,” Naori said. She laughed at Saradyn. “Him, though? I don’t know. He’s too broad for anything I have. I’ll see.”

  Roh stripped, heedless of the others, but Anavha hung back. “What is it?” Roh asked. “Don’t you want to get clean?”

  “When you’re through,” Anavha said, face reddening. Roh found that amusing. Was it something about being Dorinah?

  Naori met them back at the camp with clean clothes for Roh and Anavha, both Saiduan cuts, so they were too long. Roh helped Anavha with the hems.

  There was tea, and mashed tubers, a vegetable broth of leek and early spring shoots. Much of it was tasteless, but it was filling, and that’s all Roh wanted.

  “What are the Saiduan doing here?” he asked Naori. “She said they were going somewhere else.”

  “To Hrollief,” Naori said. “They were some of the last of the Saiduan, but their ship washed up here last month.”

  “What of the rest of the Dhai?”

  Naori gestured to the woods around them. “There are many camps. Some are resisting. I heard Catori Meyna and Yisaoh lead a good number of them. Maralah says they will meet her here and head south to Hrollief as well.”

  “What about the Kai?”

  “We had thought him dead.”

  “Had?”

  “There’s been a rumor he’s taken back up with Catori Meyna, and Yisaoh. I got the impression the Saiduan were bickering about that. My Saiduan is still… so-so.”

  Roh watched Maralah, who was working at the other side of the camp, helping three other Saiduan heave a small felled tree back down through the looping path to the sea.

  “Maralah was one of the most powerful sanisi,” Roh said. “She was… at the right hand of the Patron. It’s just… strange to see her like this.”

  “She is as human as you or I,” Naori said. “She bleeds and sweats, I can tell you that. My clan understands this.” She snorted. “All Woodland Dhai understand this. Power, titles, things… we are each of us only a disaster away from losing everything. Best to live without anything. Enjoy each moment as it takes you.”

  It was evening before Roh got a chance to speak to Maralah again. He had fallen asleep after eating, and it was well into dusk when he woke; the largest of the three moons, Ahmur, was full. The smaller moons, Mur and Zini, were only slivers in the night sky. The satellites were more difficult to see at night, as if the suns’ rays illuminated them, made them brighter during the day the way they made the suns bright at night.

  The sound of the sea was loud, but not loud enough to drown out Saradyn’s snoring, beside him. Anavha sat near one of the big fires, where a trio of Dhai were telling stories. The firelight played across Anavha’s eager face. He was rapt, like a child, though he probably couldn’t understand any of it. Maralah stood near the fire, apart from the rest, drinking something from a cup made from a hollowed out seed the size of Roh’s fist.

  Roh stretched and limped over to her. The night was cool. He rubbed his arms absently.

  “You’re awake,” she said. She offered him the cup. “Aatai?”

  Roh shook his head. “Where did you get it?”

  “We brought cases of it with us. Only a few left, though, at the rate my people drink it.”

  “How many came with you?”

  Maralah gazed at the fire. “We had fifty-seven, when we got on the ship. We have thirty now.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She drank deeply from the cup. “War of attrition. The Tai Mora have won it. We have plenty of room for your people on the boats, though. I suppose there’s that. Imagine, a little settlement somewhere of Saiduan and Dhai, trying to make some life together. Who would have dreamed it?”

  “You should know that we found the book,” Roh said. “The one you and the other Saiduan were looking for, that tells us how to use the temples to close the ways between worlds, and… much more, besides. Luna and I translated it.”

  Maralah continued to stare at the fire. The reflection of the flames flickered in her eyes. “It doesn’t matter now.”

  “It may not matter to Saiduan, but it matters to Dhai.”

  She said nothing.

  Roh gazed across the fire to the rest of the camp. Low voices from the side of the Woodland Dhai. The twang of some stringed instrument from the Saiduan circle of makeshift tents. A few dozen. All Maralah
was able to save. No wonder she was bitter.

  “Do you really want to leave all that power to the Tai Mora?” Roh asked. “The power of the heavens themselves?”

  “I won’t be here to see what they do with it.”

  “Do you think there’s a place in this world, or any of them, that she can’t reach?”

  “I’m not a threat to anyone.”

  “Neither were the Dhai.”

  She rounded on him. Her dark gaze was piercing, and he saw the sanisi in her, then: the old Maralah – the one he had first spied dancing in the courtyard with Kadaan – the woman who had commanded great armies and had the ear of the most powerful man in the world.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “You were always an arrogant child.”

  “They need a key, a guide, and a worldbreaker,” Roh said. “All focused on that fifth temple they dredged up north of here. I can get a small party to the People’s Temple from any other temple.”

  “You need more than that,” Maralah said. “I’ve seen the diagrams. The Dhai, Meyna, showed them to me.”

  “Oh,” Roh said. “You… but if you know, then–”

  “Who is this key, Roh? And a worldbreaker? And when you have them, remember that every temple needs four jistas, and a fifth to stand at the center of them and act as some kind of living conduit. How many jistas do you have? I haven’t kept up with what your new Kai, or Empress, or whatever she calls herself has been doing, but your people here have. She’s filling those temples with her jistas and putting all of her pieces in place. You are already too late. Her people are there.”

  “But–”

  “Be reasonable,” Maralah said. “I know it’s newer for you, but understand that I’ve been through what you have. I’ve seen my country destroyed, its people decimated. I had hope once too. It nearly destroyed all of us.”

  Maralah shifted her attention to two Saiduan men making their way over with another bottle of aatai. “Ah, here we are,” Maralah said. “Look who I found for you, Kadaan.”

  At that name, a thread of icy fire bit through Roh’s belly. He stared.

  The men came into the flicker light of the circle of fire, and there he was – Kadaan Soagaan, whom Roh had last seen fighting for his life in Shoratau. The Shadow of Caisau. By all rights, he should have been a ghost, too.

  Kadaan was thinner, wiry, and his hair was much longer. A new scar puckered the skin under his left eye.

  “You are a sight, puppy,” Kadaan said. Roh’s mouth went dry. He had no idea what to say.

  Maralah glanced from one to the other and said, “You look like men who could use some aatai.” When Roh still didn’t respond, she took hold of his shoulder, squeezed it, and bent over him. She whispered, “Oma is fickle, and grants us few choices to save what we love. Stop fighting, Roh. Stop fighting and live again.”

  24

  Zezili hated everything about the woods. The insects. The loamy smell. The crashing and chirping of the birds and tree gliders. She itched and sweated, but was still not thirsty, and hadn’t had to pee or shit the entire three days they had trekked through the woods. Maybe that was why she wasn’t paying attention to her footing anymore.

  They had come to the edge of the Woodland the day before, and were following the great ridge of the plateau where the trees and brush had been thinned by storms and poor soil. The sea smelled of death, and brought with it a cool wind, but this far up, it didn’t bother Zezili much.

  Lilia walked much more slowly, so Zezili paused to let her catch up for the hundredth time. She didn’t remember where exactly she put her feet, only that when Lilia got near enough, she pushed off on one foot to begin again, and the ground crumbled beneath her.

  “Fuck!” Zezili yelled. She reached instinctively for Lilia. Caught her sleeve.

  The two of them slid down the ravine together, rushing toward the beach. They landed in a tangle, covered in sandy soil and rocks. When the rolling stopped, Zezili found herself dizzy and damp. She raised her head and saw a marshy grassland, and sand beneath her fingers. The stink of the sea was much worse here. She stood, wiped herself off, and peered over the grassy dunes. She caught the sparkle of the wine dark seas.

  Lilia moaned.

  Zezili helped her up. “You alive? Anything broken?”

  “I’m leaking,” Lilia said, pulling her hand away from the oozing green pus at her shoulder.”

  “I think we’re close,” Zezili said, “if you were right about–”

  “Oh,” Lilia said. She gazed north, out past Zezili’s shoulder.

  Zezili turned.

  A thousand paces up the beach, a massive, decaying beast lay on its side, like an old snoozing dog. The wind was blowing in from the sea, but it was only a matter of time before they caught the stink of it.

  “Is that recent?” Lilia asked.

  “How would I know?”

  “I just wondered.”

  “It’s not rotten, not bleached from the suns. Not picked clean. I guess it’s new.”

  “How can you see that?”

  “Easily. You can’t?”

  Lilia frowned.

  They walked along the beach, keeping to the less sandy soil near the edge of the cliff because it was easier to navigate. The wind picked up, sending cool, lashing mist at them. Zezili didn’t mind it, but after a time, Lilia was trembling with cold. Zezili wanted to offer something – a blanket? But they had nothing. Lilia’s lips were flaking and parched, though she did not complain.

  Zezili realized how ill-equipped they were for a journey of any length. How long had it been since Lilia ate anything? Zezili had had nothing since the blood, and she still felt strong, though there was a pang of longing when she thought about how sweet the blood had been.

  “Maybe there’s something worth eating in that carcass,” Zezili said.

  Lilia make a retching sound and spit up a little bile.

  “You don’t know. Come on.” Zezili knew things were bad when she felt like the optimist in the group.

  They made it three more paces before Lilia collapsed. It was all very sudden. Zezili stood over her, and Lilia was completely out. Zezili sighed then simply picked her up and carried on.

  She drew closer and closer to the dead thing, until she could make out the curve of a great harbor carved into the cliffs just behind it. The salty spray of the waves kept churning up to the mouth of the cave and then stopping, spraying upward as if meeting some invisible resistance. Some jista illusion? Perhaps.

  Soon she found footsteps along the beach, coming from the direction of the curved harbor. If she squinted, she could just see a few dark shapes moving on top of the cliff. She paused just as three figures appeared from the mouth of the cave, seemingly from thin air. They scrambled across the broken stone, heading toward her. From a distance, she could not make out if they were Dhai or Tai Mora. Surely they were too tall and dark for either?

  Three was not too many. She could murder them all if she had to. But what she needed was water for her annoying little ward.

  As they caught sight of her, they reached for weapons. Infused blades. The air pressure remained stable. Not jistas, then.

  “I need help!” Zezili called in Dorinah, which was likely useless, but she hoped the tone would carry. “I need help. Water?” She curled her lip when they continued to look confused. She went on, in Dhai, “Water? Not armed.”

  The figures were a mix of people – two Saiduan and a Dhai, all bundled against the cool weather. The Dhai moved ahead of the others. Carrying a body, perhaps, made up for her terrible accent. She was clearly someone in distress.

  The Dhai took Lilia from her. Zezili tried to tell him it was fine, no, she could do it, but honestly, it was good to have her hands free. Her stomach ached briefly as Lilia moved away, but they did not go far, and Zezili continued to follow. “Water? Food, probably. Oh, a bone tree! You know–”

  “We know about bone trees,” the man said, in Dorinah.

  “I c
an speak Dhai too,” Zezili said.

  He narrowed his eyes. His gaze swept the beach. “Just the two of you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Come, follow us.”

  Zezili kept her mouth shut and followed them along the coast and back into the curve of the rocky harbor. The closer she got to the invisible barrier that broke the waves, the clearer it was that it was a jista-created thing. When she stepped through it, she came into a deep, cold cavern. Two battered ships rested in the back of the cave where the heavy stones had been beaten to fine gravel. A jet of light pierced the gloom, projected from a break in the cavern ceiling that illuminated a path worn into the rear of the cave that went up and up and up to what she assumed was a camp, above.

  The Dhai took her past the great ships. The sound of hammering and hauling, the scrape of leather on stone, filled the cavern. The air here was heavier; jistas must be working somewhere inside the ships.

  They climbed the path at the back of the cave and came up into the light. A scattering of tents stood amid a stand of young bonsa trees. There were clearly two camps – one closer to the woods that was mostly Dhai, and another, scrappier camp made of tattered old sails and scrounged wood that mainly housed Saiduan. Interesting. Possibly these were among the last Saiduan still alive in the world.

  The Dhai brought Lilia to an open-air tent on the Dhai side of the camp, one where several other patients were clearly convalescing. Yet it was a Saiduan who came up to them and gestured to an empty cot, said to Zezili in Dhai, “What happened?”

  “Bone tree.”

  The woman showed her teeth. “We’ve had a few of those. I’m amazed she’s still alive. Do you need anything? You look–” she gave Zezili a searching stare, “–well. You seem very well, actually.”

  Zezili was taken aback at the kindness. No weapons. No obvious jistas menacing her. If they had an illusionary ward below, they were certainly fearful of outsiders. But not her, apparently. Or Lilia.

  “I’m good. Great. But she’s… She needs to be all right.”

  “Is she your lover?”

  “What? Oh, fuck, no. I hate her.”

  “Oh. Um. All right, well, come and have some tea. I’ll attend her.”