by Claire Luana
“Don’t even think about it,” she said, opening her third eye and giving him a fierce glare.
“Woah!” he said, stumbling back. “Mom, look at this!”
“Remarkable,” Kai said, peering into Rika’s face. “What does it do?”
Rika opened her mouth to explain, but someone cleared their throat across the courtyard. It was Emi. “I hate to interrupt the family reunion, but we’re getting our asses handed to us down there. Rika, does that big bird of yours do anything besides sit there blinding all of us?”
Rika pursed her lips to keep from grinning, her heart singing with gladness to be back amongst her family. “I missed you, Emi.”
“I missed you too, panda. Now can you hop to on the prophecy and start ridding Yoshai of these monsters?”
“Leeches,” Rika said, striding back towards Cygna. “We call them ‘leeches.’”
“We?” She heard Kai say as Rika scrambled her way up Cygna’s wing to her seat behind its neck.
“Where do you need the most help?” Rika called to Emi.
“The palace gates are about to fall. If that happens, we’re all doomed,” Emi replied.
Rika nodded. Cygna launched into the air. It did one pass above the lower courtyard, where a new group of three leeches and their thralls had resumed the attack on the thick wooden doors. A cloud of dark-clad thralls lined up behind them, waiting to push through once the doors were breached. Not going to happen, Rika thought.
“If we swoop by,” Rika shouted to Cygna, “can you grab one of the leeches with your feet?”
Cygna complied, beginning to come around. “I guess that’s a yes,” Rika said, tightening her grip on the bird’s feathers, flattening herself to its back. She opened her third eye again, and the threads and filaments of Kitina jumped into view. It felt so good to be home. The stars here shone brightly beyond the blue sky, eager to lend aid to defend this land. She located the threads of two particularly bright stars and pulled them, summoning them to her aid, directing them to the two other leeches that hammered at the door. The action sent a pounding through her head—lights bloomed in her vision, and a wave of nausea swept through her. She tightened her grip in Cygna’s feathers until her fingers creaked with effort, clinging to consciousness even as she clung to her mount.
They struck as one. Cygna swooped, burying its talons into the most exposed of the three leeches. The silver light of Rika’s stars slammed into the other two, tossing their heavy armored forms into their men in a wave of tumbling destruction. The light burrowed its way into the creatures’ armor, filling it with purifying fire that burned out the monsters inside. Cygna flapped its immense wings, making their way back to the upper courtyard, where her family watched with awe. It tossed the soul-eater it had retrieved with its talons down onto the stones before settling onto the edge of the wall once more.
Rika swung a leg over and stumbled down Cygna’s wing—her feet heavy, her steps ungainly.
“That was awesome!” Koji whooped and hollered, jumping up and down.
“You’re hurt,” Kai reached out a hand as Rika passed by her, her eyes fixed on the soul-eater Cygna had dropped in the courtyard. Green blood was oozing from puncture wounds in its armor, but it was still alive. Still dangerous. Rika wiped the blood from beneath her nose and pulled her blade from her belt. Having her totem in her hand sent a surge of strength through her, steadying her steps.
She came to stand over the creature, to look in its green eyes. She could see through her third eye the sickly threads that tied this creature to so many soldiers, that held the poor men in its thrall. But there were other threads too—threads that tied this creature to the heavens, to the stars. At one time perhaps, this had been a celestial being. Before it had been perverted. Warped into this thing of evil and destruction.
“Where is your queen?” Rika asked. Her voice was clear and strong. She was grateful for this.
“Why would I tell you?” the creature rasped, a wet cough following its words. It was dying.
“Because if you do, I won’t feed you to my constellation,” she retorted.
“I care little about my life. I am part of the whole. I live only to serve my queen.”
Rika grimaced. How did one torture an impossibly scary evil being for information?
But then a thought occurred to her like an arrow of light. She could see the threads connecting the thralls to the soul-eaters. Could she see what connected the soul-eaters to their queen? She peered at the soul-eater. Dozens of threads splayed from it in all directions like a spiderweb. But one…she squinted, examining it. One was different. Darker, thicker, pulsing with an unnatural heartbeat. She stepped back and let her gaze travel along it, let her spirit be born along the tether as it stretched across Yoshai’s walls, south towards Antila, and towards the sea. To where it ended. In a floating galleon ten times the size of the other vessels. The queen’s ship. Rika snapped her attention back into her body and turned to the soul-eater with a grin. “Thank you for the information.” Another idea came upon her, and she took the soul-eater’s thread in her hand. If she could sever the thralls from their masters, could she sever this one from its queen?
The creature lunged at her, its movements faster than the eye could see. But Rika’s third eye was open, and her totem was in her hand. Almost like it had a mind of its own, her arm was up before the soul-eater reached her with outstretched talons, and so the only contact made was the soft exposure of its face connecting with her blade. She cringed at the squelching sound as her arm reverberated with the force of the creature’s attack. It spasmed and shook, and Rika pulled out her blade, her blood singing with adrenaline. The creature fell to the stones and vanished in a surge of white light, leaving only empty armor.
Rika blew out a deep breath and wiped her blade on her sash before turning back to those who stood behind her. She supposed she would need to find out on another subject.
Kai had her hands to her mouth, eyes wide, while Koji had his sword half out of its scabbard. Emi just stood with her arms crossed, a look of—was that pride?—in her dark eyes.
“What?” Rika asked.
The soul-eaters and their army pulled back from the palace gates after the destruction of the three soul-eaters left many of their thralls milling about in confusion, freed of their compulsion. Though Rika longed to let the men through the gates, to shelter them from being retaken as thralls, the palace was already full to bursting. It was too dangerous to open the doors.
They had moved to her mother’s council room and were sitting around the long table. General Daarco had joined them, giving Rika a bone-crushing hug. “Oma will be thrilled you’re back,” he said. “She’s been beside herself.” Colum was the last to arrive, his curly salt-and-pepper hair wild. “I can’t wait to trade adventure stories.” He winked at her before taking a chair. He seemed as unflappable as ever.
The chair to her mother’s right sat empty, the memory of Hiro nearly as palpable as his presence. She couldn’t stop looking at it. Being here, being back—memories swam to the surface unbidden—his big, booming laugh, sitting on his lap listening to a story by the fire, riding Ryu like a horse when she couldn’t have been more than four. Her parents’ ever-present love—the stolen kisses before official functions, nights retiring early, Hiro’s arms wrapped around Kai, his chin resting on her head. Rika met her mother’s eyes and there was such deep sorrow there that tears sprang forth unbidden.
Kai reached out her hand, and Rika took it. “He’s waiting for me in the spirit world,” Kai whispered. “Someday we’ll all see him again.”
Rika could only nod, words failing her. Someday.
“Rika,” Emi said, drawing them back to the moment. “We couldn’t be happier to have you back. Even Koji’s happy to see you, and that’s saying something.” Rika chuckled and wiped her nose. “We want to sit by the fire and drink sake and hear all about where you’ve been and who’s your bird friend and how you’ve grown a new eye. But we’ve got an annihilation to avert.”
“What have you learned about them? These—leeches?” Daarco asked. “Emi said they have a queen. Can she be bargained with? Kidnapped and ransomed?”
“Killed,” Rika said. “If we kill her, this is all over.”
“How do you know?”
“Vikal…a friend. He had been under their compulsion but was freed when I killed the soul-eater who had turned him. He learned things while he was a thrall. The thralls send information back to their masters, but some comes the other way, too. They’re a hive structure. Like honeybees.”
“I’d prefer to face a hundred hives of those over these leeches,” Koji muttered.
“They have a queen that controls the soul-eaters. The soul-eaters in turn control the thralls. If the queen is killed…”
“Then all the soul-eaters die too?” Kai asked.
“I think so. Hopefully. Best case scenario, they all die. If not, at least, they will be disoriented—without orders. We’d have a much easier time of picking them off one by one.”
“Do we know anything about this queen?” Daarco asked. “What kind of guard she’s under? What abilities she might have? Are you sure you can defeat her?”
“No,” Rika admitted. “I know only what my friend told me. And he didn’t know much.”
“It seems risky. Now that we have a way to kill them, why don’t we go out there and kill them the old-fashioned way? Rika, summon more of those lightning bolts and a few more birds and it’ll be over in no time.”
Rika hesitated.
“That would likely kill Rika,” Kai said quietly. “Wouldn’t it? Your powers…they drain you.”
Rika sighed. “They’re connected to another land. Nua. It’s where I’ve been. They’re fighting the soul-eaters there too, and I left constellations there for that fight. I’m far from the source of my power and my strength is already divided. There are hundreds of leeches out there. I couldn’t kill them all.”
“So we kill the queen,” Koji said. “What are we waiting for?”
“We wait for a plan, my son,” Kai said wryly. “Do you have one?”
“No.” He crossed his arms.
“I have one,” Rika said. “And it just might be crazy enough to work.”
CHAPTER 32
VIKAL SAT ON the floor, numb with shock. It was done. Nua was free. But at what cost? He would never see Sarya again. Or Sarnak. He had lost so much. And Rika…she wasn’t even his to lose. Yet somehow he had lost her anyway.
Kemala came to kneel beside him, her voice velvet. “Are you all right?”
“She says to live. How do I live without her?”
“You know how.”
Vikal averted his eyes from Kemala’s penetrating gaze. She knew his secret, he was sure. The truth he tried so hard to hide from even himself. “Is it possible for a man to love two women?” he whispered.
“All things are possible when it comes to the human heart.”
“Does it not betray her memory?”
“She did not seem to think so.”
“Daddy,” Tamar said. She was tucked against Bahti’s leg, hugging it fiercely. “It’s moving.” She pointed to the soul-eater Vikal had pummeled. One set of its black claws was curling ever-so-slightly. It wasn’t dead.
Vikal was on his feet in a flash, his swords in his hands.
“Let one of the constellations finish it off,” Bahti said.
Kemala motioned to the eagle constellation, who perched on a nearby stalagmite, its bright eyes gleaming in the dark. The creature swooped down, landing on the soul-eater’s chest. The brilliant bird was as large as the black-clad monster.
“Wait!” Vikal cried, sheathing his swords. The eagle cocked its head at him in confusion.
“Have you lost it, bak?” Ajij asked.
“If we keep one alive, the astrolabes will still work. In the boats.” He had been moving through these past days like a ghost. But no more. Despite what he had done, what he had seen, he was still alive. He still had a future. It was time to act like it.
“Keep one alive?” Bahti asked. “You crazy? Kill it!”
“You want to go help Rika,” Kemala said, exchanging a look with Bahti.
“She left,” Bahti protested, his tone petulant.
“She lent us her strength to free this land, even though it jeopardized her ability to help her own people.”
“Rika deserves our aid. But can we leave our people so soon?” Kemala asked gently. “What if other soul-eaters lurk on the island? We should be sure before we leave them unprotected.”
“If we do not help her defeat the soul-eaters there, what is to prevent them from coming back here? The queen knows what we have done,” Vikal said. “And we would not have Rika to help us then. We would be helpless.”
“I am in,” Ajij said. “She is one of us. We help our own. Leave one constellation here to protect the island. Take the others and the soul-eater with you. Help her. Kill the queen. Make sure these creatures never set foot on Nuan soil again.”
Tamar turned her face to Bahti, wiping her tears with the back of her fist. Her voice was small but strong. “If Rika needs help, you should go.”
Bahti stroked her hair and pulled her into a hug. “I could not refuse my girl anything. We go.”
The centaur had pummeled the soul-eater a few times with a hoof to the helmet to ensure the monster was truly unconscious. They had wrapped it in cloth, and now Bahti dragged the leech behind them, complaining the entire way.
Vikal turned, looking over his shoulder, asking for the third time. “Do you want help?”
Bahti dropped the end of the fabric, his barrel chest heaving. “No.” He turned and gave the bundle a vicious kick. “That is for Sarnak, you disgusting leech!” He kicked again, his sandaled foot clanging against creature’s armor.
“I doubt it feels that through its armor,” Vikal said, doubling back and picking up one corner of the fabric.
“Still makes me feel better.”
Kemala shook her head and turned, continuing to trudge down the hill. No doubt she was used to her husband’s antics.
“And what is that smell?” Bahti asked. “Ugh. Sulfur.”
“Imagine being trapped on a boat with them. Sleeping near them. Killing for them.”
Bahti’s face grew grim. “I forget that however much we have been through on Nua, you went through more. You have lost more.”
Vikal had never thought he would feel a pain as deep as losing Sarya. But now, in doing his best to avoid such pain again, he might lose Rika, too. He couldn’t think of that right now. “We have all lost much.”
“Sarnak will want a shrine built in his honor,” Bahti said.
“A shrine? A temple!” Vikal said. “A palace!” He quieted. “In truth, he deserves all that and more. He was like a father to all of us. As angry as I am at him about Sarya, I cannot believe he is gone.”
“He will be back,” Ajij said from a few steps behind them. “I feel it. We will see him again soon. He will put on quite a show when he is reincarnated.”
“Biggest star-fall in fifty years,” Bahti agreed.
“Not the biggest,” Vikal said, remembering his childlike wonder as stars fell like confetti across the heavens, heralding the birth of the goddess of bright light.
“Do you believe what Sarya said?” Bahti asked. “That she knew? Before the end.”
“Oh, yes,” Vikal said. “She was brave and stubborn enough to try to take on the world herself. I believe her.”
“I have been blaming you, bak,” Bahti said. “It was not fair of me.”
“I blamed myself too. I still do.”
“Even the god of green things cannot control all the world,” Bahti said.
“So I have learned.”
Silence stretched between them, marked by only the swishing of their steps.
“You truly care for her,” Bahti finally said. Bahti didn’t say Rika’s name, but Vikal knew whom he spoke of.
“I will always love Sarya,”
Vikal said quickly. “But…yes. I care for Rika. More than I thought I was capable of.”
“I suppose…” Bahti’s voice was gruff. “I have not been entirely fair to that girl. She did leave behind the constellations that saved us. That saved Tamar.”
“True,” Vikal said, a small part of him enjoying Bahti’s discomfort. Was his friend actually going to apologize?
“What I am saying is…if you want to love her…then I guess I am all right with that.”
“That was downright civilized,” Kemala chimed in without turning around.
Vikal nodded. “That means a lot, bak.”
“Right!” Bahti said, his face flushed. “We go get your girl! Well, assuming she feels the same about you. She does feel the same?”
Vikal looked at the ground, avoiding Bahti’s piercing red gaze. He had asked himself the same thing many times. There had been moments where something had passed between them. Something deeper. Something more. But he had abandoned her. Left her to return home on her own, broken his promise. Could she forgive him? Would she want anything to do with him? A broken man from another world… “I do not know,” he finally admitted.
“She does, you foolish man,” Kemala said, again not turning. Her black hair swished behind her as she walked. “And it should not take the goddess of dark spaces to see it. You are fated. And the fates are not about to let you two screw things up.”
Bahti raised his eyebrows at Vikal, who flushed with hope. “Do not mess with the fates,” Bahti said.
“No.” A smile broke across Vikal’s face. “I would not dare.”
The soul-eaters’ ships sat quietly, spots of shadow in the crystal-clear water of the bay. They made quick work of dropping the unconscious soul-eater into a rowboat and making their way out to the nearest vessel anchored in shallow water. Vikal’s heart thudded in his chest, remembering making the same voyage with Rika just hours ago. Had she made it? Was she safe? Locked in the battle of her life against hundreds of soul-eaters? Would he arrive too late…only to find her gone?
“She is strong,” Kemala said, placing her hand over his where he was drumming his fingers on his knee. “And smart. She will survive.”