“Why?” she said. This time it was touched with anger. “The books, and d’Agarre’s Codex. You hid them from me?”
“From you? No. I destroyed d’Agarre’s copy, and the others had been taken by their owners by the time I got there, more’s the pity. The book is dangerous in the wrong hands, as you can well attest by now, I think. As for the rest, a revolution is no place for a trove of knowledge. I took precautions to store it all here until I could return.”
“You didn’t think I’d want to read them? To find some answers, something? Or to question you, for that matter.”
He gave a pained look. “I had to go. With d’Agarre’s ascension there are certain matters that had to be seen to. My failure need not count for Paendurion’s, or Ad-Shi’s. With my help, both their places might still be secured. And even with the Veil in stasis, the block she placed—”
The world lurched.
Vision blurred, and she was in a chamber of stone, but distorted, as though she viewed it through a glass. Two faces looked up at her, faces that pulled on her memory, each connected to her through arcing strands of energy.
NO.
Zi’s thought, and she heard it in two places at once.
The barkeep’s office pulsed with blue light, an array of beams seeming to radiate from Zi’s scales. Her companion had drawn himself up to his full height, staring at Axerian, almost trembling, for all he stood rigidly in place.
Her belly ached, and she watched as the lights receded, returning the room to amber lamplight. Bile stung her throat, and her stomach twisted, an afterimage of the stone chamber shimmering over top of the room before it faded.
“Apologies,” Axerian said quietly.
Zi was shaking, his coils quivering as he stood upright on the desk. He was in pain, and Axerian had done something to trigger it.
“Why are you here?” she asked, moving to Zi beside the desk. “Why come back to the city now?”
Axerian’s eyes lingered on Zi as he spoke. “I’m dying now, again, after so many years. I mean to spend my last days as I spent the last ten thousand.”
“You were responsible for d’Agarre,” she said. “You said as much. You manipulated him through your Codex. If you’re planning to loose another monster on this city …”
“No,” Axerian said. “My work here is simpler. There are two more ascensions coming. I mean to stop them, and I’d have your blessing, if you’d give it.”
She has never given you her blessing, Zi thought, though his voice sounded weak, giving the impression of frailty for all she heard it directly in her mind. Whatever you do, you do alone.
Axerian glanced to her, as though expecting her to countermand Zi. She’d done as much before, hunting d’Agarre and his fellows while Zi suffered for it. This time she said nothing. If there was a course for her to follow, she could determine it with Zi, in a manner that didn’t leave him quivering in pain.
“Very well,” Axerian said. “Then I expect this will be our last meeting. I remand the library into your keeping. Take what you like; I’ll see what remains stored safely against the worst of whatever comes.”
He hesitated for a moment, as though he meant to say more. Instead his kaas vanished as he turned and headed down the stairs, leaving her and Zi alone.
2
ARAK’JUR
Wilderness, Near the Sinari Village
Sinari Land
Familiar trees marked the way home. Oaks and cedars, firs and elms. On foreign lands one was much the same as another. But as they drew nearer the Sinari village, every leaf and stem seemed to offer its welcome, coated with the drops of wet-season rain.
Corenna stepped gingerly beside him, watching where he placed his feet. He grunted when he saw it, wearing a wry grin.
“I’m almost well again,” he said. “By tomorrow I will be running footraces with the children.”
“As you say,” she said. “Though you’ll forgive me if I lay my wagers on the children in those races.”
He tried to laugh, cut short by stabbing pain in his lung. It earned another bout of concern from Corenna, though she did no more than look him over when he stopped to catch his breath.
She was beautiful. He’d always known it, since their first meeting, but he saw the truth of it now. Soft russet skin, silken black hair, eyes that cut with heat that never burned. She’d accepted a place among his people with a grace he doubted he could have found within himself. And she fought like a tempest, wind dancing on water, hurling thunder and boulders with equal ease. Without her by his side, the kirighra would have gutted him like a fish, and instead they carried the creature’s fangs as trophies to present to the tribes of their alliance.
“Wipe those thoughts from your mind, Arak’Jur,” Corenna said. “You’re in no state for physical exertions.”
He drew her in, lifting her in spite of the singeing fire in his side. She laughed, and kissed back before he set her down.
“Later,” he said.
“Later,” she agreed. “Tomorrow, after those footraces.”
They exchanged smiles, and pressed on at the hobbled pace they’d kept since sunrise.
It had taken five days to reach the place where Ilek’Inari had foreseen the kirighra, and ten to make the journey home. His leg made the difference, shattered in half a dozen places, with bruises, rips, and bite marks covering the right half of his body. The kirighra spirit had mocked him, full of pride, when he dealt the killing blow with mareh’et’s claws, and rightly so. He’d been careless, and paid with fire in his lungs. The Great Panther had journeyed north from the jungle where he made his home, seeking to kill, and it had been a near thing between him and the great beast. But now he had the right to call upon its blessing, and the people of their alliance were safe. The rest would fade in time.
The leavings of a rainstorm showed in the brush and grasses beneath the forest, and the remnants of a fire, where his people had burned away sections of the land to make way for wild berries and chestnut, maple, and cherry trees. Without his and Corenna’s efforts, the kirighra might have sprung from the shadows on those who came to gather fruit; such was the great innovation of their people, which let them live among the bounty of the wild while the fair-skins and other folk cowered behind their barriers. Still an oddity for a woman, even a woman such as Corenna, to aid in the guardian’s duties, but it was a time for change, for rebirth and renewal. The tribes would adapt, as they had always done, and survive.
The sound of falling trees greeted them at midday, shouted voices presaging each crash, with whoops and cheers when they went down. It lightened their steps, and they pushed hard in spite of his injuries to cover the final stretch of their journey.
Home.
Laughter and shouting, raised voices colored by the accents of four tribes, and the sound of woodwork ringing through the trees.
“Slow,” a woman’s voice called. “Let them steady the base. We must set it before we raise the outer wall.”
They emerged into view, and the tribesfolk turned as one. Six men working under the woman’s direction—Symara, foremost among the Ganherat—kneeling around a square frame large enough for three tents, with enough lumber and stone piled to set the stakes for twenty.
“Honored sister,” Symara exclaimed, setting down a plank of wood and wiping sweat from her forehead. “Honored guardian. Run to rouse the tribes; let them know our guardians have returned!”
The last Symara said to a slight girl, who turned and ran toward the village. An apprentice, perhaps, however the women reckoned such things.
The men rose, offering warm greetings as Symara strode forward to wrap Corenna in a tight embrace.
“We’d begun to worry,” Symara said. “Ilek’Inari assured us all was well, but after so many days, we feared for both of you.”
“It was hard-won,” Arak’Jur said, grimacing through a smile. “Yet the spirits blessed us with a victory, and we cannot ask for more.”
“What is it you do here?” Corenna
asked, nodding toward the wood frame.
Symara glanced toward where the men had been working. “With the snows gone, we can construct shelters in the new style. Warmer and more resilient to the wild, with stone hearths and ovens built into the walls.”
“Difficult to carry a stone hearth, should it be needful to move the tribe,” Arak’Jur said, thinking of the shamans’ stories, of ancient times—fire, war, great beasts, floods—when tribes left the tent stakes behind and carried the hides when it became needful to flee into the wild. “Is it not so?”
“It is so, but our villages haven’t moved in living memory. Ilek’Inari saw a vision of us living in dwellings of wood and stone, as the fair-skins do. It is time we build for our future, together.”
The men murmured agreement, though they watched him for sign of his reaction. He misliked the look of the thing, all squared edges, and the promise of what it would become. Too close to a fair-skin house for his liking. Tribesmen didn’t live in such dwellings. But then, women didn’t hunt great beasts, and apprentice guardians didn’t see visions of things-to-come. The proposal would have been debated in the steam tent among the elders, and he was no Sa’Shem, to dictate what would and would not be.
“It will be an ugly thing, when it is finished,” he said. “But I will come and eat at your hearth, Symara of the Ganherat, and enjoy the comforts of your tent of wood and stone.”
The men relaxed, and Symara offered him and Corenna a wry smile.
“There will be time for work later,” she said. “For now, we will accompany our guardians, if they will have us, and celebrate your return.”
Cookfires roared, a warmth well suited for the fire in his side. Plates of food had been served by young women, trays of smoked elk, maize, honeyed nuts, and sweet potatoes, and he and Corenna had separated, seated among the men and women at their separate fires.
The men made allowance for him, giving space enough to extend his leg while he sat, but still they crowded close, waiting for him to speak.
“A victory,” he said. “And a new blessing, one no tribe has been given before.”
A hush rippled through the men, and excited whispers, piercing through the quiet.
“Kirighra,” he continued, unfastening the string on the deep pouch he’d carried fixed to his leggings. He withdrew the teeth they’d taken from the corpse, met by gasps when he produced them. Two incisors, each the length of his forearm, honed to deadly points.
“A snake?” one of the youths asked, a bright-eyed Vhurasi boy. “Like the valak’ar?”
“A cat,” he replied. “Stronger, thicker than mareh’et, with fur as black as a shadow and eyes like full moons.” He passed the fangs, one in either direction, and the hunters handled them with proper reverence, each man whispering the great beast’s name in awe. “He is not given to toying with his prey, as mareh’et does, nor does he claim territory like una’re. He stalks the land, smelling its scents, finding its secrets, until he knows the ways of every creature in his path.”
“It hunts every sort of creature?” the boy asked. “Birds, fish, beasts?”
A few of the elders frowned at the questioning; it wasn’t done, speaking over a guardian’s recounting of a hunt. Arak’Jur met the boy’s eyes, lowering his voice to just above a whisper.
“It knows them all,” he said. “But it hunts one. Kirighra is proud; he finds the strongest, the predator who is never prey. He stalks the land until he is sure, and then he strikes. In the jungle he might choose the boa; on the plain, the alpha wolf. Here in our forest, he might choose you, if you proved your prowess and slew a bear, or some other beast to satisfy his liking.” The boy’s eyes went wide; Arak’Jur had timed the telling to coincide with the arrival of one of the fangs in the child’s hands.
“In the west,” he continued. “Five days from our lands, the kirighra chose me.”
He gestured to the ruin of his right side, where claw marks raked his flesh, leaving a bore the size of an apple through his chest and lung, where one of the fangs had bitten clean through.
“He chose me, and stalked the shadows until he knew the pattern of my days. He waited, as patient as the anahret, until I slept. I woke with full moon eyes leaping at me from the brush, and the rest is between me, Corenna, and the kirighra spirit. Though you have the fangs, as proof of the tale.”
The men laughed, those near him clapping his shoulder, offering praise and blessings for the spirits’ favor. A ripple of tension broke as they took up the food, Vhurasi, Sinari, Olessi, and Ganherat sharing meat and maize together. A strange sight. Once, each tribe had their own village, their own shamans and guardians, any of whom might have told similar tales to men gathered around their cookfires after a hunt. Now the Sinari village burst with life, half a dozen fires for the men alone, and half again as many for the women, seated across the clearing, where they’d already expanded the tribe’s meeting place to double its size.
He glanced to where the women gathered, where Corenna was seated at their heart, sharing whatever passed between women on such occasions, though he supposed she would be the first, the one to decide what would eventually become tradition. In all the tribe’s stories, women had never hunted the great beasts, following the shamans’ visions to protect their people from the ravages of the wild. But now Corenna fought at his side, and they were stronger for it. It was wisdom. Ilek’Inari received the sendings of the spirits of things-to-come unabated, though he was no full Ka, even now. A sign of the spirits’ favor, in spite of change.
“Well done, honored guardian,” Valak’Ural said beside him, a master hunter of the Olessi. “A hunt well fought, and a tale well told.”
Arak’Jur bowed his head, enjoying a haunch of elk. “What passes with you, honored hunter, and with the tribes? It seems the turning of the wet season finds us in good spirits.”
“It does. I led a hunt in your absence, with the spirits’ blessing on our muskets, and our spears.” Valak’Ural gestured to the elk in Arak’Jur’s hands. “But I fear there is yet grief among us, for what passed on our lands, and the fair-skins’. The great beasts come ever more often, and yes, we are kept safe by your hand, but there is the matter of the shamans’ visions, the sendings of war given to us, and to other tribes.”
“Perhaps the worst of it is behind us,” he said. “Our alliance is strong. Few would dare provoke us, and we lay claim to the land of five tribes, a great distance between us and any would-be enemies, with as great a distance to see the comings of great beasts.”
“Spirits send it is so,” Valak’Ural said, then leaned forward, his voice lowered. “But there are whispers of sightings, of Uktani warriors in the north.”
“On Ranasi land?”
Valak’Ural nodded gravely.
Arak’Jur’s blood chilled. The Ranasi were gone—the price of Llanara’s madness, though their blood still stained his people’s hands—but the Uktani, their northern neighbors, had grown cold in the last seasons. Alone they would be no threat to the combined alliance of the eastern tribes, but the thought of violence put ash in his mouth, and he lowered his elk haunch, his appetite suddenly diminished.
“Ilek’Inari will have seen it, if they meant us harm,” he said at last.
“I hope you’re right,” Valak’Ural said. “Spirits bless us all, I hope it.”
He returned to his plate, finding his maize cold. He had seen enough of death. This was a time—and a place—of joy, of changing traditions and growth. Five tribes made a home here, to think of any who might challenge it, and so soon after—
“Arak’Jur.” A voice came from behind, a child’s voice.
He turned, though it spread fire in his side, and met a young boy’s eyes, a child of no more than five.
“Yes, little brother?” he asked. “What is it?”
“You are summoned to the shaman’s tent, by the will of the spirits.”
Corenna met him on the path, falling in beside his plodding steps. He hadn’t seen her leave the women’s ci
rcles, but she was there, and he was grateful for the company.
“It can’t be another great beast,” she said. “Not so soon. Even in desperate times, they never come so often.”
“Better a beast than something worse.”
She eyed him again, falling silent. He knew her mind, even without her speaking it. It had been no beast that ravaged her people. Corenna was the last daughter of the Ranasi, and it had been war and madness that took her father and the people of her tribe.
They crossed the village as quickly as his leg allowed, passing through a dull reflection of the laughter they’d left at the cookfires. Some few tribesfolk saw to chores or duties away from the village heart, but most feasted the return of the guardians, leaving tents and walkways empty. The child led the way toward what was still Ka’Vos’s tent in his mind, though the old shaman was dead. Another stain on Llanara’s hands.
“Smoke,” Corenna said. “A vision, then.”
She’d seen it first, but it was so: Red smoke billowed from the top of Ilek’Inari’s tent, and he swallowed bile at the sight. The child darted ahead, lifting the entrance flap, and beckoned them inside.
A thunderclap sounded, with a rush of smoke, as soon as they ducked within.
“Guardian.” Ilek’Inari’s voice seemed to echo within the tent, an ethereal mist swirling within his eyes, strange and distant. “Our children come. You must protect them.”
He fell to his knees, and Corenna beside him.
“Great spirits,” he said. “I don’t understand. We tracked and slew the kirighra. Is there another beast? What manner of spirit are you?”
“Arak’Jur,” Ilek’Inari said, still speaking with the spirits’ voice. “We know you. You must remember us.”
Corenna met his eyes with wonder. He shared the feeling for a moment; then the voice caught his memory. A deep ache, standing tall enough to brush the clouds. The slow rush of ages, watching the world break and grow and shape itself around his roots. He remembered what it was to be the Mountain, the oldest child of the earth, the gift of liquid fire flowing in his veins.
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