The great beast of the temple was tilting, tilting, collapsing under its own weight, sliding off the sandbar and back into the ocean whence it came.
He swept his gaze across the room, now dim and dull, lit only by a ring of blue and green phosphorescence along the ceiling, the orrery only a brilliant memory. Others bobbed and gasped in the water all around him. Light pierced his vision again, light and pain in his head.
He gasped. The sea rushed in from the crumbling wall, pushing him and the others across the cavern. Roh bobbed and splashed, forced against the far wall, which gave under the pressure.
He was sucked out of the chamber and into the sea. Heaving, desperate, he tried to swim, but he was dizzy and overwhelmed. He vomited. His mind became clouded. Memories. Vertigo. Flashes of something, light – memory:
He was a farmer in a field, married to Kihin. He nursed his mother Naori through the yellow pox. He died in Saiduan, cut through by Kadaan and torn apart by bears. He and Luna ran off together across the tundra and lived to be old people, settled alone along the far northern sea. His father barred him from going to Saiduan, and instead he died next to Kai Ahkio, fighting shadows in a clan square while the world burned around them.
Split apart, he thought. They split us all apart.
Lilia hadn’t murdered them.
Lilia had pulled them all back together.
Every single one of them.
Roh tried to reach for Para – and found… nothing. Panic seized his heart. Para! He reached again, but could not even sense his star. Had it winked back out of existence? Was it descendant again? Who had an ascendant star?
He was going to drown.
Strong arms around him, moving him up, up, up. His lungs were near to bursting.
I’m going to die, he thought. What a time to die.
50
Kirana splashed through the rising waters, screaming. That was how she became aware of herself. Cold, screaming. The taste of salt. A rush of memories overcame her, tangling in her mind like hopelessly knotted nets.
She was cutting down a woman called Nava Sona. Murdering her coldly. Marrying her. She was a cobbler, like her mother, drowned early in the toxic rain that fell from the sky. Her brother was pulling her from a burning building, poor little Ahkio, his hands, his hands… poor Ahkio, whom she loved, whom she had to protect, because Oma was coming and he would not be prepared. He was too fragile for this world. She loved her country. She hated her country. She had no country, a refugee from some other lost star, stumbling into this world during the last two years of Oma’s rise.
She was all of these things, and more, an infinite number of selves, of memories, of choices, all colliding painfully, overwhelmingly.
The water filled the room, pushing her toward the far side of the cavern. People were missing – far more than could have been lost already. Zezili was gone, but there, there! Yisaoh!
Kirana reached for her. Took her by the arm as she whirled past.
“Yisaoh!” Kirana cried, and embraced her, but Yisaoh pulled away, her eyes so very black, gazing at her as if she were a stranger.
“No, no,” Kirana said.
Yisaoh punched her in the face.
Kirana reeled back in the water, nose burst, bloody. The sea rushed in and pushed her under and out through the back wall of the great structure.
She screamed under water, bubbles rising all around her. Kicking, up, up, what about her children? Would they know her for what she was? Who would they be? Which version? No, no, she knew who she was, didn’t she?
Poor Ahkio, too soft, and her mother, too soft, and Nasaka, always scheming. Nasaka…
No, I am not that woman! Kirana wanted to cry, but there was only the ocean around her, the sea. She flailed, bumping into a bit of detritus: a bit of wood already rising to the surface.
She came up out of the water and gasped. Spit, choking on seawater. She splashed all around. There were others not far away, heading toward the sandbar. Her mind seethed with memories, hers and others, so many others. I murdered my brother. I murdered my country. I destroyed everything and everyone that mattered to me.
“No!” Kirana screamed. “I’m not… I did this… I’m not that woman. I’m not a fucking monster, I’m not…”
Another wave of memories overcame her. She lost her grip on the piece of wood, and splashed further away from the sandbar. She would go back, start over, go to Saiduan, where she had been queen, where she had married the Patron, where her children became gods…
What life? In what world? In the memory of the worlds, of all her desperate choices: choices that she could no longer flee from.
51
Roh burst through the surface of the water, paddling madly. Waves rocked softly against a sandbar nearby, and he made for it as quickly as he could, terrified that the dissolution of the temple would pull him back under.
“Roh! Roh!” Luna, just behind him, splashing. “I can’t! Roh!”
He took hold of Luna, slipping an arm under hirs. “Kick!” he said. “The sandbar! Saradyn, help Luna too!”
They gasped and splashed their way to the sandy rise. Roh vomited saltwater. Luna burst into tears. Roh did not ask what hodgepodge of memories Luna was struggling with. He could barely cope with his own.
The body of a woman, face down, floated nearby, and Saradyn splashed out to haul her in. It was Yisaoh. He pushed her over and smacked at her back. She coughed and heaved. Blinked up at him.
“Roh?” she said.
“You know me?”
“Many of… a lot of me does. Does that… I can’t…”
“She brought us back together,” Roh said. “It’s… I can’t describe it either.”
“I’ve done terrible things,” Yisaoh said. “So many terrible things.”
“Who…” he hesitated. Why ask her which or who she was? She was all of them, wasn’t she? Their Yisaoh, the one who had caught him on the stairs, and Kirana’s Yisaoh, and more besides. All and none.
More stragglers made it to the sandbar, many weeping, some hollow-eyed and unresponsive, too shocked to speak, all stunned by whatever lives were warring for dominance in their heads.
Kadaan and Maralah came up onto the beach, dragging Anavha with them. Anavha was crying, calling for Zezili and Natanial.
“Has anyone seen Taigan?” Maralah asked.
“No,” Roh said. “Lilia?”
Maralah shook her head.
Saradyn pointed.
Roh turned, hoping to see Lilia, but it was Taigan, sloshing onto the sandbank, one hand pressed against his head. His beard was gone, and a great deal of his hair, burned or yanked out, Roh could not tell.
“That was memorable,” Taigan said. He pulled his hand away from his head.
“Taigan?” Roh said. “You’re… bleeding.”
Taigan stared at the watery red tail of blood snaking down his hand. “I… indeed I am. Oh, that is interesting.” He brought up his hands and marveled at the fine cuts and scratches, which still marred his hands, bright and bleeding. “I may even have some bruises!” he cried. He squeezed a bit more blood from the wound on his hand, inspecting it with wonder. “Look at that. It’s not healing! How extraordinary.” He furrowed his brows. “Wait, how long should this last?”
“For normal people?” Roh asked. “It depends on how deep it is.”
“Oh my,” Taigan said. “My, my.”
“Put pressure on it,” Roh said. “Press hard. That helps.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever bled this much from a single wound,” Taigan said. “This is very curious. Can I die now? That would be… remarkable.”
“Better not test that out,” Roh said.
Taigan glanced around the sandbar. “Where’s Lilia?”
“She… disappeared,” Roh said. “After she… I don’t know. Brought us all together. Do you… are you feeling strange? Do you have memories?”
“Memories?” Taigan said. “Only the ones I’ve always had.”
“Wh
at does that mean?” Luna said. “I… I have…”
“Me too,” Roh said.
“Ah,” Taigan said. “How… interesting. You carry memories of… other lives? Other worlds?”
“You don’t?” Roh said.
Taigan grinned. Clapped his hands. “How incredible,” he said. “I am unique! Perfectly singular to this world. How delightful. I always knew I was terribly special.”
Maralah said, “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Taigan. You’re bleeding. What bleeds can die, now.”
“Oh, how lovely,” Taigan said. “After all we’ve been through, after all this, you want more death?”
“No,” Maralah said, gazing back at the beached Saiduan ship. “I want to go home.”
“What happens now?” Roh said.
“Now,” Taigan said, “I will go off and have some excellent adventures, and hopefully never see a single one of you again.”
Anavha lay on the sandbar, sobbing, hugging himself, rocking slowly back and forth. His mind was crowded with memories, from this life and so many others. Zezili, so many versions of Zezili; he had loved her, she had killed him, he had killed her, Natanial had killed her, her sisters had killed her. Zezili, dying by the Empress’s hand. Death, over and over.
But in nearly every memory of his own life he lived. He married Taodalain. He married Natanial. He married Nusi. He lived alone in a print shop in Aaldia. He became a tailor. He had children. So many children! Oh, how he had wanted children.
The wave of memories overcame him. He lay on the sand, eyes squeezed shut.
“Anavha?”
Was that in his head, or here?
Anavha rubbed his face and looked up. There was Natanial, crouched nearby, mop of wet hair hanging into his face. “They aren’t real,” Natanial said, “they’re just memories. Let them come.” He brushed the hair away from Anavha’s face.
“I don’t know what to do!” Anavha gasped.
“I do,” Natanial said. “I… Every version of me does. I’ve been very selfish, Anavha. No better than the others.”
“Where is Zezili? Please, I have to know!”
Natanial cupped Anavha’s cheek. “Is she always there? Every memory?”
Anavha nodded.
“Not in this one,” Natanial said.
“You didn’t see her?”
“She isn’t on the beach, Anavha. I don’t think she made it out of the temple. Neither did that girl operating the mechanism. They’re both gone, together.”
“Natanial, I can’t feel Oma anymore. Is it… did it go away?”
“It did.”
“I don’t miss it. Natanial, it’s a relief not to feel it.” Anavha squeezed his eyes shut again, seeking that fine sliver of power, the nagging breath of Oma. But there was nothing. Just him and all of his choices.
“What do you want, Anavha?”
“I want to go home,” Anavha said.
“All right,” Natanial said, and lifted him up.
52
The seams between the worlds had closed. That much seemed certain, in the aftermath of the shattered temple and broken heavens.
The satellites had disappeared, leaving the sky empty, save for the double helix of the suns during the day and the three warbling moons at night.
Had Lilia made the satellites come back together into a single form? If so, where had it gone? Where had she gone? Sent somewhere else? Blinked out of existence, like so many of the other people that had been brought together from across so many worlds? Whole armies had gone missing, villages scoured of inhabitants. Those who remained went mad, struggling with a rush of disparate memories, of lives lived and unlived.
The world of Raisa had come back together. They had won. But to win, they had broken the world they knew. They had broken the sky.
A nascent world began that day. What that world would look like, though, no one knew. That was a future none of them had lived, not in any memory, not on any world.
It was something entirely new.
53
Roh felt a deep sense of loss as he stepped onto the repaired Saiduan ship with Luna, Maralah and Anavha. It had been three weeks since the sky broke, and not a single one of them had an ascendant star. He still woke at night, aching for Para, reaching for a power that was not there.
There was no more magic in the world. Just people who used to wield it. People who remembered it.
Over time, the memories of his other lives began to fade and flicker. He was aware of them most often in his dreams, when he experienced some bickering fight with Kihin, or when he woke sweating beside Kadaan, convinced that he had killed him, only to realize that was in some other life.
Yisaoh met them on the deck of the ship as the wind whipped around them. “I can’t believe you’re going back to Aaldia,” she said. “I thought you’d change your mind before today.” She rubbed her fingers together, as if longing for a cigarette that was no longer there. Roh suspected she would need to find a new habit.
“I like Aaldia,” Roh said. “And I think we could build a life there. A different Dhai. I’m sure Meyna will be back, soon. You know you’ll have to work something out, with whoever is in charge of the Dhai here.”
“It’s just as well,” Yisaoh said. “I keep expecting Mohrai to show up, some version of her resurrected by… all this. Wouldn’t that be interesting?”
“That’s a word for it,” Roh said. “But let’s hope not.”
For Roh, there were too many memories here, too many burned out orchards and clan squares and death and battle and violent politics. He had no illusion that a Dhai he helped create in Aaldia with the survivors from the Woodland would be much different, but he hoped the past would not haunt him there as it would here.
“Lots of Dhai still in the valley,” Yisaoh said. “Lots of madness, too. Lost Tai Mora.”
“You think you can build a peaceful society that includes those Tai Mora?”
“I think we can build… a different one.”
“Good luck.”
“To you, also, Roh. You think we’re the lucky ones?”
“Yes,” Roh said. “We get to live. The ones who live get to shape what comes next.”
Luna held out a hand to him, and Roh took it. Kadaan walked up behind him and took his other hand. For the first time in years, Roh felt comforted. Safe. For once he did not mind being merely a passenger, a follower.
He wanted to go to Aaldia and plant an orchard. He wanted to become a farmer, and die old there in his own grove, back pressed against the warm bark of a tree he had nurtured with his own two hands. He wanted to create something, to build something, because he was weary of destruction.
And as he gazed over at Luna and up again at Kadaan, he had a moment of audacious hope that such a life was possible, that he could build a home with the people he loved, and that there would be generations of Dhai and Saiduan or whatever they called themselves next, and that their children, and children’s children, would never have to experience what they had. Never again.
Natanial did not board one of the Saiduan ship to Aaldia, though Aaldia was certainly the only home he had ever truly known. Instead he watched the ships launch into the clear, sun-kissed sea. He stood on the beach, alone, peering out at Anavha’s dark head there on the deck for as long as he could before the ship’s distance swallowed him.
Saradyn waited beside him, turning his face up into the double suns and smacking his thick lips.
“Why didn’t you go with them?” Natanial asked. “I thought you’d follow that boy forever.”
“He was very powerful,” Saradyn said, pulling at his lip. “But now… Now, I can’t see his ghosts.” He peered at Natanial. “Or yours, for that matter. My head feels… clearer. I feel… more myself.”
“Which self?”
“Ah, that is the question.” He peered back at the suns, and Natanial wondered what he saw there; the Thief Queen he had murdered, maybe, or married, in some other life. The children he didn’t kill, the life of a
tavern keep, or a drunkard, instead of a king. Natanial did not ask because he did not want to know, did not want to get all those versions of Saradyn mixed up with the monstrous self-styled former king who stood before him. It could be easy to forget who was friend and who was foe, when the world had been unmade and remade again.
“I think I’ll take up a trade,” Saradyn said. “Making something.” He held up the arm still missing a hand. “Go into making fake hands! Ha! An art!” This seemed to please him, and he began to grin and snort.
“You’re in a good humor.”
“What’s left? I’ve already gone mad, once. I prefer humor. But you… You’ll want to get back to your men.”
“Will I? Half of them have probably gone mad, like you. It’s a long journey out of the Woodland to the valley, and I’m not sure what we’ll find there.”
“We are all mad, now. Now you know what it’s like.”
“There will be power upsets,” Natanial said. “You could go back to Tordin and be a king, truly. Unite Tordin like you always dreamed.”
“That was some other man’s dream.”
“What does this man dream?”
Saradyn furrowed his brows. “I don’t know.”
“I think I’ll go down into the valley,” Natanial said. “That Gian woman is bound to fill the void here, and she’ll need good fighters beside her.”
“You will still fight?”
“I don’t know how to do anything else.”
Saradyn guffawed. “You get after that pretty boy for following, but you are just like him.”
“Maybe that’s why I tried so hard to set him free. You make a habit of following others, thinking they will take you some place new, reveal something about you, give you some meaning. And when they don’t, you find you’re stuck in the same circle, trying to find comfort in servitude.”
“Can’t relate.”
Natanial sighed. “I didn’t expect you to.” He gazed one last time at the blot of the ships along the horizon, wondering what kind of life Anavha would live without him or Zezili, without the burden of being an omajista, existing as a foreign man in a foreign land. He hoped it was a different life than the one either of them had led up to this point.
The Worldbreaker Saga Omnibus Page 144