Blood of the Gods

by David Mealing

  “Yours should return to the east,” Arak’Jur said. “Back to our people. They need you, Ka’Inari. Ilek’Hannat’s gift is strong, but he is no full shaman. Even with the fair-skins’ magic to protect them, if your visions should falter, and the Uktani choose to attack them …”

  Ka’Inari showed him a weathered look. There was weight there that had never graced the young man’s eyes before. A certainty, and a sadness.

  “The Uktani pursue you, Arak’Jur,” Ka’Inari said. “Much as I wish our visions had been wrong, or our interpretations flawed. They know you, and they are coming.”

  Corenna came to stand beside him, having finished whatever passed between her and the fair-skin women. Sarine stood opposite them, flanking Ka’Inari, with Acherre at her side. The husk of wood from Ka’Inari’s vision loomed beside them, a blackened char rent by lightning, split and cracked, overlooking the grassy valley beyond. A fitting portent for the exhaustion he felt, for the broken paths set in front of him. It was wrong, for a shaman to leave their people. It was wrong, for him to be forced to do the same.

  “Spirits favor you, honored sister,” Ka’Inari said as Corenna approached, and the two of them stepped aside, sharing an embrace, leaving him to face the fair-skins.

  “Are you certain you can’t come with us?” Sarine asked. “Your magic is strong, and we’ll need everything we can manage, when we catch up to Axerian. We have to confront him with enough strength that he won’t even try to fight.”

  He eyed the serpent coiled around her forearm, sickly white, though it seemed to be watching him with its onyx eyes. The creature triggered memories of Llanara; he’d as soon have it far away from his people, even if it meant Ka’Inari going with her.

  “Thank you for what you did at Ka’Ana’Tyat,” he said. “You returned a great gift to us. But my path leads elsewhere.”

  “Where will you go?” she asked.

  “Ka’Inari has seen a glimpse of the corruption’s source, far to the south. A woman. We seek her, and we seek the gifts of the spirits along the way.”

  “A woman,” Sarine said. “Ad-Shi? It can’t be. It isn’t time yet.”

  Arak’Jur frowned, eyeing once more the serpent coiled around Sarine’s forearm. Llanara’s creature, too, had led her to give cryptic assurances of things-to-come. An unnatural thing.

  “If it is her,” Sarine said, “you must be cautious. She can set wardings in the minds of beasts and the land itself. But it’s never been her way, to come to the world before the appointed time. It isn’t like the kaas—she can’t just collect enough energy to re-ascend. If she’s here, she …”

  A blue light flashed, emanating from Sarine’s coiled serpent, and Sarine staggered, stumbling forward. He darted to catch her, and Acherre did the same. Both of them propped her up, but Sarine had gone limp, unconscious as though she’d been struck in the head.

  “What’s happened?” Ka’Inari said, turning from where he’d been speaking privately with Corenna a few paces away. “Is she well?”

  “Elle est tombée,” Acherre said, moving to lay Sarine’s head on the grass while Arak’Jur lowered her body. The woman had gone cold, enough so he reached for her wrist to feel her blood flow. Alive, but weak. She’d been healthy and vibrant mere moments before.

  “She’s fallen,” he said. “But she gave no warning sign anything was amiss.”

  Her eyes came open, expression returned to her face so suddenly he might have questioned whether she had ever been otherwise.

  “Another vision,” she said, pushing to sit up before he or Acherre could suggest she might do better lying down. “I’m sorry, Zi. I didn’t mean to.”

  A moment of silence passed, and she spoke again. “I’m fine,” she said. “I’m fine.”

  Acherre said something too quickly for him to follow, and Sarine looked down at her serpent, caressing the creature’s scales with a mother’s care.

  “We have to go,” Sarine said. “We have to find him now.”

  Sarine rose to her feet, using his arm as leverage though he hadn’t meant to do more than support her when she fell. A strange woman, and all the more unnerving to leave Ka’Inari in her company. Only after Sarine rose did he notice Corenna’s face was slicked with tears, that she was still standing where Ka’Inari had been speaking with her.

  He made sure Sarine was set on her feet, and he went to Corenna’s side.

  “I’m well,” Corenna said, betraying the sentiment in the tears she tried to wipe away. His worry sprouted, not knowing. Had Ka’Inari given her counsel, or shared some vision pertaining to her, to him, to their unborn child? She gave no answers, only accepted a proferred hand to stand by his side as they returned to face Sarine, Acherre, and Ka’Inari.

  “We go, then,” Ka’Inari said. “Care for her, and for our people, Arak’Jur. The spirits offer both of you blessings in your tasks.”

  “Blessings to the three of you as well,” he said, and once more wished he were bidding Ka’Inari farewell on a journey to the east, back to their people, instead of west into the unknown. But the fair-skins and Ka’Inari turned and started down the valley, leaving him and Corenna behind.

  They tracked along the valley’s edge, where the tree line broke enough to see the three specks of their former companions. The way south was still obscured by foliage, but he knew it well enough. They meant to keep to the east until the sukhrai river, the old boundary between Olessi and Vhurasi lands. It shouldn’t have been possible to track one man or woman over such a distance, but something had changed. Somehow his path was revealed to the Uktani shaman, and first they needed to see whether greater distance could throw off their pursuit.

  “A strange farewell,” Corenna said when they were away. “What happened with the fair-skin woman?”

  “Sarine fell,” he said. “And before that, she seemed to speak with great knowledge, in another voice. Not madness—not of the sort Llanara and Reyne d’Agarre brought to us—but some affliction beyond my understanding.”

  “She frightened me,” Corenna said. “To think she dismissed sre’ghaus so easily, by asking it to leave. Asking it! In all the women’s stories, I’d never heard of such a thing.”

  “Nor I, from the hunters, or the shamans. But I sensed no malice in her, and she helped us open Ka’Ana’Tyat.”

  Corenna seemed to concede the point, and they walked a few more paces before she spoke again.

  “I worry for what we face,” she said. “The wilds were never meant to be tamed. Yet Sarine appears, and she can do it. The woman in the south, the one from Ka’Inari’s vision, she must be able to do the same. How many more sources will there be of this corruption? How much more will we face, before our lands pass from under this shadow?”

  He had no answers, and so he gave none, only a grim acknowledgment as they continued on their way. Almost he asked after Corenna and Ka’Inari’s private word before their farewell, but it was her place to share; if Ka’Inari had meant it for him, he would have been brought into the telling. It didn’t stop him from worrying over what might have been said.

  They made camp on what felt like the first night of their journey, since it was the first night alone, without the fair-skin women and Ka’Inari for company. He urged Corenna to sleep first, and kept watch over her while she did. They’d picked a hilltop covered with trees for their camp, giving him vantage over the approaches without revealing his silhouette against the sky for those looking up toward him. There could be eyes out there, Uktani warriors driven to give chase. He almost hoped there were; the shamans had promised him the Uktani pursued him alone, but their assurance would not put to rest his fears for their alliance, left behind on fair-skin land far to the east.

  He’d meant to leave the Alliance behind the fair-skins’ barrier, and instead brokered a deal between Ilek’Hannat and Erris d’Arrent: the shamans’ visions for the fair-skins’ arms and magic. Strange to think their Great Barrier was down. It had always been there, in his mind, though he knew the stories of
its origin fifteen generations before. But now if he walked east he would arrive in one of their villages. No small part of him worried it was some fair-skin ploy, some trick to expand their claims and remake their barrier westward. Erris d’Arrent had seemed terrified enough to believe the crisis genuine. But if it was a trick, they would find his people ready to fight.

  Corenna woke on her own, before he would have roused her. She came to sit beside him against an oak tree, a welcome respite from his worries. She nestled under his arm and laid her head against his chest, looking northward over treetops lit by moon-and starlight, still some hours before dawn.

  “All is quiet?” she asked.

  “It is,” he said, holding her against his skin. She smelled of sweat and dust. A sweet smell, uniquely hers.

  “You should rest,” she said. “If the Uktani are following, it will be hard days ahead.”

  She left unspoken the threat of what would follow if the Uktani gave no sign of pursuit. It could mean they’d abandoned the chase, their shaman’s vision blurred by great distance. But it could also mean they followed the Alliance onto fair-skin land, or that they tracked Ka’Inari and the fair-skin women instead.

  “Corenna, if the Uktani aren’t following us, we would need to go back, to help the tribes, or—”

  “Shh. Even guardians need sleep. Ka’Inari said they would follow you. That is what they will do. Trust in his gift, and rest while you can.”

  His instinct was to protest. The horizon was clear as far as they could see, treetops blanketing the hills with boughs of dark leaves. No signs of fire or smoke against the sky.

  Instead he rose. Corenna ensnared him with a kiss before she took his place resting against the tree trunk, and he made way to the pallet of grass and leaves they’d made for her to sleep on. Dark thoughts set in at once, visions of what might happen if an Uktani army of men and beasts descended on the fair-skins without their barrier. He’d seen Acherre fight enough to know a grudging respect for their magic, and their powder and steel were strength, too, in their way. Unless the Uktani shaman could see him with perfect accuracy, there was always a chance they would believe him there, with the Alliance. He should have been there. Running was a coward’s path. Rhealla would have stood and fought. Even his dead son had found the courage to take up a spear, when valak’ar threatened their home.

  Fatigue washed his thoughts into darkness, and then dreams. Most nights he discounted the images he saw there, and this night was no better than most. He stood alone on a street in the fair-skins’ city, looking for Llanara. He heard Ka’Vos’s voice, but couldn’t see the old shaman’s face as he gave a warning against another new beast. A pack of hunters appeared, carrying pelts, offering to let him shoulder the burden, but no matter how he tried he couldn’t lift even the lightest fur. They laughed and went on their way. The fair-skins’ city was suddenly the Sinari village, where his feet were rooted in place. The tribe was packing their belongings, gesturing for him to come and join them, but he couldn’t move. Reyne d’Agarre appeared in his red coat, and urged the same: Go, join your tribe, leave the beasts to me, but again he couldn’t move.

  Sunlight warmed his eyelids, and his senses snapped into place. The sun had already crested the horizon, a few degrees above the tree line, lighting a blue, cloudless sky.

  His muscles tensed to quiet. Something was wrong.

  He rose to his feet quietly, scanning the view from atop their hill. Movement caught his eye, through a break in the trees. Men. Distant, but there. Either they had camped a few hours’ journey to the north, or they had traveled through the night. Heading south, toward his and Corenna’s camp.

  “Corenna,” he said in a low voice. “The Uktani. We must go, now.”

  No answer.

  He turned and found the hilltop empty, no sign of Corenna where he’d left her. He cursed, loping over the hillside toward the nearby stream. She must have gone for water. But when he arrived there were only birds scattered at his coming.

  “Corenna!” he called, louder than he should have dared. But if she was nearby, she should have heard. He tried again. “Corenna! We must go. Corenna!”

  Another flap of wings, a bird frightened to flee now, where it had tried to hide before.

  He strode back up the hillside, scanning for sign of her passage. At their camp he scoured the dirt, seeking bootprints in the soil, crushed leaves or grass, snapped twigs, brush bent or scraped or out of place.

  He searched until the sun had made its way clear of the horizon. He searched until fear over what might have befallen her gave way to certainty she must have hidden her tracks. He would have been roused, if a beast had come, or a man had taken her. She would have fought, or raised a cry to wake him from his sleep. Instead she’d stolen away, covering her trail, leaving him alone to face the day.

  24

  TIGAI

  Training Yard

  Temple of the Dragon

  Dirt scuffed as he sidestepped, keeping a wary eye on his opponent. The monk, Jyeong, was apprentice to Master Indra, and had been careful to remind him he hadn’t yet been accepted to their temple, as though he’d come here willingly and gave a shit about his rank.

  Jyeong tried a feint with his ji, whipping the blunt end of the polearm up as though he meant to strike before he came down with the bladed edge. Tigai saw it coming, spinning his own ji in his hands to block the attack. Wood struck wood, but Jyeong pivoted, sliding the bladed edge of his weapon down to shear Tigai’s fingers from his hand clean as cutting a flank from a slab of pork.

  Tigai shifted to an anchor before the pain could hit, though phantom echoes of it shot through him all the same.

  “Good,” Master Indra said, watching them from the edge of the ring. “Your form was good, though you erred in locking weapons overlong. But you were trained well enough.”

  “Trained well enough to stop this façade and tell me what the fuck I’m doing here?”

  The old man ignored him, pacing around the side of the training yard, eyeing him and Jyeong as though they were horseflesh come to market.

  “Again,” Master Indra said. “This time use an anchor to strike from two directions.”

  Tigai scowled. His days had begun with precisely this sort of nonsense since the woman—the bounty hunter, he supposed—Lin Qishan had delivered him here. Jyeong stood motionless, holding his ji level, knees bent and legs spread wide. Was the old man’s direction meant for him, or the monk? Before he could ask, Master Indra raised a hand in the signal to begin.

  Jyeong shouted some sort of battle cry as he charged. Tigai made a face and echoed it back to him in a mocking tone. Bloody ridiculous, fighting to the death over and over as though their magic were made for spectacle. He stabbed wildly, hooking to his anchor and blinking to Jyeong’s left side. He thrust again in a quick motion, then anchored, blinked behind, and stabbed again. The world shifted beneath his feet, so quickly it threatened to make him sick, but this time the sharp point of his ji found its mark, impaling Master Indra’s apprentice through his shoulder, sending him forward into the dirt.

  Jyeong snapped back to his feet an instant later, made whole by passage through the strands. “That was not what the master said to do,” the monk said, gripping the haft of his weapon as though it would add emphasis to his words. “You were told to strike twice.”

  “I’m not in the habit of letting my enemies know how I mean to attack them.”

  “I am not your enemy, you bloody fool. We are here to practice, to learn and hone our skill.”

  “I am here because you stole away my brother—”

  “Paryaapt,” Master Indra said, his tone making clear it was meant to be an end to their exchange. “Drop weapons. It’s time to eat.”

  Jyeong’s polearm clattered to the dirt at once. Tigai’s grip lingered for a moment before he let his do the same.

  The old man led the way between the ruined buildings, toward the brick ovens where their cookpots were stored, along with parcels of rice an
d herbs and meat. The temple seemed to be empty, as far as Tigai could tell. Cracked stone and missing roofs spoke of a once-grand complex, storerooms and twisting hallways, sleeping chambers and feast halls. Vines had long since claimed it, jungle overgrowth making it more a home for wild beasts than a strange old man and his apprentice. Only one building in ten had a roof to keep out the constant stream of warm drizzling rain; thankfully they’d let him sleep beneath one, though in a separate chamber from where the master or Jyeong resided. An unusual sort of prison, but then, they knew he could anchor himself away whenever he chose.

  “Sit,” Master Indra said, pointing to a pair of straw mats laid out beside the oven. Jyeong sat in a rigid pose, legs folded so his heels propped beneath his buttocks. Tigai stretched and opted for comfort. The old man would have told him if he wanted him to try to sit like a stone.

  “A well-struck maneuver, in the yard,” Master Indra said as he rummaged through stone shelves, withdrawing pots and rice to cook in them, a handful of vegetables and what looked like fresh-cut beef. He hadn’t seen any livestock on the grounds. But then, of course—the old man could take a jaunt to Ghingwai market and back here before he roused from sleep. Strange, to live with people who had his gift. “Two anchors so quickly speaks to your skill with the Dragon’s gift, though you need work, with the implements of war.”

  Was he supposed to banter with the man? “I prefer pistols,” he said. “No point getting close enough to stab a man when you can shoot him twenty spans away.”

  Jyeong snorted, but otherwise kept still.

  “Firearms have their uses,” Master Indra said. “But the precepts of our order teach harmony in the union of self and tool. Work done with one’s hands is better, closer to revealing the true self.”

  “Why use blades and polearms, then?” he asked. “Why not punch your enemies to death?”

  Master Indra paused to inhale atop his cookpots as he sprinkled spices into his rice. “If you would prefer to face Jyeong unarmed, I am certain my apprentice would welcome the challenge.”