What was this? If he’d seen some hint of her purpose here, he wouldn’t waste breath on words. “The father is gone,” she said.
“Dead?”
She feigned calm over top of hate, but made no reply. Better not to think on Arak’Jur, for fear of drawing the shaman’s visions too close to the truth.
“I have seen promptings from the spirits,” Ka’Yiran continued. “A guardian’s child grows in your belly.”
Fear spiked through her, and she prepared the gift of ice.
“The father is Arak’Doren, isn’t it?” Ka’Yiran said. “Before he was slain by Sinari treachery.”
“We are meant to be hunting kirighra,” she said, turning away to hide her relief. “Why do you ask me these things?”
“As I said, I have watched you,” Ka’Yiran said. “If the father is Arak’Doren, I am sure he would give his blessing for your child to be raised by a fellow guardian. I was Arak’Yiran before I became Ka.”
She turned back, finding an earnest look from Ka’Yiran as he’d stopped to face her. She’d come here as an assassin, keeping her distance until the time was right, as Ka’Inari had instructed her at the Sinari sacred place. She’d been prepared to give everything—her life, her unborn child—to stop the Uktani, to kill the shaman who hunted Arak’Jur. And Ka’Yiran had asked her to consider taking him as her man.
“I hope you will consider it,” Ka’Yiran said. “We have placed great trust in you already, but it could be more.”
“I’ve told you what I want,” she said. “Revenge for my people. Perhaps when that is done …”
He nodded, a solemn gesture she hoped would put an end to this line of talk. “This is good,” Ka’Yiran said. “It is just, and right. But the spirits see more for you, Corenna, and for me. Vengeance is a hollow salve; your father will have taught you as much. Even now they whisper to me of things-to-come. I see you, alone, with a child at your breast, in need of a protector in spite of all your strength.”
Her heart pounded, suddenly all the more aware of the munat’ap and the forest around them. If he called on visions of her, it could draw all too near her secrets.
“I see you leading an alliance of many tribes,” Ka’Yiran was saying. His voice had grown distant, too distant, as her father’s had done when he received a prompting from the spirits. “I see a great battle, at the walls of a fair-skin city. I see a reunion, between you and …”
He stopped, pausing to look at her with disbelief.
“… the Sinari guardian,” Ka’Yiran said. “Arak’Jur. You come to us, claiming sanctuary, and yet the spirits see the two of you, together.”
She conjured ice before he could react, spears to impale the munat’ap through the jaw, sending icicles through the roof of its mouth and into its brain.
A shield of earth sprang up around Ka’Yiran before she could turn on him, exploding outward with force enough to throw her to the ground. Raised voices sounded through the trees, shouts warning of the sounds of fighting that would draw the Uktani hopefuls toward them. Ka’Yiran had turned toward her with fury in his eyes, the truth of her betrayal made plain by her actions, and by the spirits’ visions. She saw it as gray slate encasing his eyes, the gift of stone preparing to conjure earth to strike.
Ice formed again, flung from her fingertips in a desperate salvo. He had to die. Ka’Inari’s vision had been clear, delivered to her where Arak’Jur hadn’t been allowed to hear: feign her way among their enemies, kill the Uktani shaman, and their pursuit would end. The Sinari people and their alliance would be left at peace. Ka’Inari had promised it, seen the truth of it from the vision spirits at Ka’Ana’Tyat. The very spirits who had given her assurance it had been Llanara, and not Arak’Jur or any of the other survivors, who had been behind her people’s destruction. Her faith and hope for peace and goodness had overpowered guilt; they all came back to her now that the moment had arrived.
“Betrayer,” Ka’Yiran said, a mix of shock and anger in his voice. “You throw your life away for nothing.”
Her ice had shattered on his shield of earth, leaving splinters of cold melting in the grass, and she rose to her knees, flinging a last salvo of ice before she drew on the gift of stone herself, conjuring earth to collide and crack against Ka’Yiran’s barriers. Yet he seemed to know her strikes before she did, shifting his shield to break her attacks before she made them.
Raised voices drew closer. She had to strike.
Inky tendrils from the Lhakani sacred place at the heart of the swamp rose from her hands, creeping around Ka’Yiran’s stone. He stepped back, his earthen shield collapsing as a wind rose to scatter her attack. He did it with a snap gesture, as though he were impatient to see her strikes through to an inevitable end. Contempt showed on his face as he conjured wind to knock her back to the ground, dispersing another attempt to summon the shadowy tendrils before they materialized as more than wisps of smoke.
“A waste,” Ka’Yiran said. “A waste of so much strength and beauty. I would have been better for you than—”
His face lit with understanding, and he spun in time to dodge kirighra’s mauling attack from behind.
The Great Panther had materialized from nothing, a cat made of pure shadow. It swiped down with its claws, raking the air where Ka’Yiran had stood an instant before. Her conscious mind knew she should feel terror, the same instinct she’d had when a kirighra had savaged Arak’Jur’s shoulder and side. But she felt only relief.
Wind came to obey her call, the blessing of Hanat’Li’Tyat, the sacred place of the Ranasi tribe, and she formed a tempest into a cutting blade of air. Ka’Yiran had squared himself to face the kirighra’s attack, and she brought it into the shaman’s side, ripping through his skin in a rain of red and gore.
The Uktani shaman screamed. She struck again, whipping lashes of air toward his head, and he fell silent.
We know you.
The voice came as a whisper, sounding inside her head. Kirighra had turned, leaving its now-dead prey and eyeing her instead.
Come to us.
Kirighra sprang toward her. Wind sheared through the beast, slicing wisps of shadow in a furious gale. For a moment the cat hung in the air, the forward momentum of his leap stalled by the upward force of her summoned storm. Then its body broke, a forward leg severed by cutting wind, its head twisting as its body collapsed into the dirt.
The world faded.
YOU KILLED HIM.
Her consciousness fell away into the void, the voice sounding all around her. It was as though she had entered a sacred place, though she had not moved from where she’d struck at Ka’Yiran and the kirighra, lying on the forest floor.
Great Spirit, she thought back. How is it we are speaking? Did I enter Jati’Ras’Tyat unknowing?
NO. THAT IS A PLACE OF STORMS. YOU SLEW A GREAT BEAST, AND SO NOW WE COMMUNE. THIS IS THE WAY OF THINGS, THE WAY OF THE GUARDIANS.
But I am a woman.
The shock of it coursed through her.
YES, the voice responded. BUT WE REMEMBER. THOSE WHO PREY ON THE SPIRIT-TOUCHED ARE WORTHY OF MORE.
Ka’Yiran. She’d killed him.
He’s dead, she thought back to the void. The Uktani shaman. Arak’Jur is safe.
THIS NAME IS KNOWN TO US. ARAK’JUR. THE SINARI CHAMPION. YOU WISH FOR HIM TO BE MADE YOUR QUARRY?
Horror rose in whatever passed for her gut here in the void. No, she thought.
ALL ASCENDANTS MUST PROVE THEMSELVES. THIS IS OUR WAY: TO SEEK THE STRONGEST. KIRIGHRA HUNTS THOSE WITHOUT PEER, AND SO SHALL YOU.
No, she thought again. I want no part of the madness that has driven our people to war.
YOU ARE ON THE PATH TO ASCENSION. WE GRANT YOU OUR GIFT, TO SEAL THE WAY. IT IS NOT YOUR PLACE TO DENY US.
Light flashed, and visions came, of stalking her kill, melding into shadows, hunting men and beasts alike.
She let it pass through her, accompanied by a growing certainty that was no emotion of hers. Violence, somewhere to the sou
th. A nagging drive compelling her to seek her prey, stronger than any sense of love or duty. To hunt and kill, as kirighra did, the strongest of the champions among men.
INTERLUDE
AD-SHI
Wilderness
Lhakani Land
Life stirred around her, in the thrumming of cicadas, the chirping of newly hatched songbirds, the parents caring for their young. Even the grasses grew longer in the hot months, when the winds blew air laden with moisture from the east. It was sweeter, knowing the impermanence was finally more than an illusion. She had seen hundreds of summers, lived for the passing of thousands, and this would be her last.
Thinking it was a release unto itself. She was dying, finally surrendered to the cycle that consumed all life. There was fear in her; she recognized it as an old companion, long forgotten in all the years of her Godhood. But without the fear of death, the brush of the grass against her legs, the smell of the pollen in the air, the whirring of insects and birds and smaller creatures all amounted to no more than the dust that made them. There was beauty in being a part of the decay.
“You missed our last meeting.”
Paendurion’s agent approached, climbing the small rise upon which she’d sat to wait for him. Ad-Shi opened her eyes to see him, the sort of pale-skinned, blue-eyed man Paendurion had always favored for his vessels. This one wore the military uniform of one of the Imperial powers of this cycle, his yellow-trimmed jacket an absurdity in the southern heat. The golden eyes marked him for what he was, light spilling out as though miniature suns had been implanted in his sockets.
“Apologies, honored brother,” she replied. “I was in recovery.”
The gesture with her right arm toward where her left should have been soured Paendurion’s vessel’s expression. Ad-Shi’s arm had been torn off, a clean slice only mareh’et’s claws could manage, leaving a severed stump where her shoulder ended. It would regrow in a few weeks’ time, but not before the rest of her body had healed its lesser wounds in preparation.
“How close did you get to dying this time?” Paendurion asked. His voice was laden with bitterness he made no attempt to hide. Once, the rebuke nestled there would have stung; now, she felt it as no more than the summer breeze.
“Close,” she said. “Closer than I had in many, many years.”
“Ad-Shi …”
“What news from your would-be ascendant?” The interruption was rude; they had long ago learned to respect one another in conversation, as the least part of learning to live eternity together. But there were limits to her appetite for scolding, when so few moments remained to her before the end.
Paendurion’s vessel remained standing, towering over her as she sat among the grass.
“My enemy waits,” Paendurion said, “dithering with politics. Axerian’s plan to pin the Sarresant forces in the north has succeeded, and I have consolidated enough reserve to snare them here in Vordu lands for the remainder of the time before ascension. If all continues as it has, I will again champion Order when the moment arrives.”
“A fine turn, for you,” Ad-Shi said.
“And with you? Your injuries were at least fruitful, I hope?”
“It remains to be seen.”
No point raising his hopes before she was sure. But he seemed to detect the note of confidence she knew would be there. The Sinari guardian had slain another spirit-touched man or woman, and drawn on more than enough gifts to secure ascension. All that remained was to nurse him back to health and find in him the drive to defend the world. An easier thing, if he were a younger man. But not beyond her ability.
“You’ll never find someone to match you,” Paendurion said. She might have taken it for praise, had that been Paendurion’s way.
“Nonetheless, it is decided.”
Suddenly his anger turned hot. “What am I to do with that? With your decision? You’ve chosen to abdicate your duty. You doom me to face the enemy with a half-mad fool and a half-trained pup at my side.”
“There is some time, to train him.”
“How much time? A season at best? Two? You’ve doomed the world with your cowardice. You must think beyond your emotions. See reason. See your folly for what it is, and return to me, or you are no better than all the false ascendants we have slain together, or all the failures who came before us. Do this, or you are a coward, and a fool.”
His words rolled off her like morning dew from a falcon’s wings.
“This is the last time we will speak,” she said. “Do not send another of your vessels into Vordu lands, and do not expect me to tell you where to find me.”
“Wretch,” he said. “Craven. After all this time, you run when I need you most. Do you imagine the shadow will ignore you, or your people? The Veil is dead, Ad-Shi. If we lose now, there may not be another cycle.”
“You were a true brother to me, Paendurion. Do not soil it in our last moments together.”
“You can go to your spirits. Beg forgiveness; plead their understanding. They will let you re-ascend. It’s always the apex predator with your kind, is it not? None can stand against you. Act, and see reason for once in your bloody life.”
He glared at her, as though he waited for her to speak, and she met him with silence.
“You truly were the weakest of us,” he said. “I always knew you would break, though I’d hoped you were stronger than this.”
Valak’ar gave his blessing, and she moved with the wraith-snake’s speed before she’d had time to process the thought.
Paendurion’s vessel gagged, valak’ar’s venom spreading in black spiderwebs from where she struck him in the stomach, reaching his face above the rise of his collar. His skin bruised and bubbled into open sores, and he fell forward on his knees before he collapsed into the grass.
Quiet returned, in the birds’ songs and the low hum of insects on the wind.
She closed her eyes, letting the rage coursing through her dissipate. All of this was hers: the sunlight and the warmth on her skin, the smells of the grass and trees and swampland. She’d fought to make it so, to change the world from ash and poison to lush beauty. But she’d never been fool enough to believe it would last forever. She’d paid every price that had been asked, until now. If it made her weak, so be it. But even the mightiest fire guttered out in time. Even the strongest beasts had to lie down and die.
She left Paendurion’s vessel there to seep into the ground, and rose to return to where she’d left Arak’Jur’s body. He would wake soon, after his limbs had regrown and repaired themselves. And she had not truly abdicated her duty. Always, with the Vordu there was a master and apprentice. Life was finished with her, but she could pass on what she knew before the end.
PART 3: AUTUMN
DAMYU | EARTH SPIRITS
38
SARINE
A Coastal Bluff
Chappanak Land
She sat atop a small rock, just high enough to elevate her legs to serve as an easel. Pressed white birchbark sufficed for paper, and if her coal hadn’t been refined into a pencil to avoid blacking her hands while she worked, it was similar enough to what she was used to. She drew the coastline, the evergreen trees that grew so thick it seemed they might encroach into the ocean itself, given enough time. She drew her companions, gathered together on the shore. She drew the waves, crashing toward the base of the cliff in steady rhythm. And she drew the Divide.
She’d never have believed it was real without seeing it. Even Axerian’s accountings—of a black, billowing cloud stretching from the sea to the sky, swallowing the ocean’s currents not more than a quarter league from the shore—had defied her imagination. She’d pictured a second Great Barrier, but next to the Divide the barrier was flimsy, a thing made by men and women, like comparing the majesty of a cathedral tower to a mountain. The Great Barrier was a wall, with a clear base and a fixed height and width. The Divide was the land itself. Blackness, as far toward the horizon as she could see. A place where maps would end, and the place she meant
to take them, once Axerian finished bartering for a boat.
Ka’Inari’s footsteps announced his coming before she’d finished the sketch. She glanced up to greet him, but he seemed in no rush to disturb her work, and so she returned to her bark to finish adding details to the coastline while he sat atop a rock a few paces away, staring out at the sea. She made quick strokes to add definition to the pine and fir trees’ needles, and broad, slow ones where the waves broke into the base of the bluff. She’d been able to barter for only a single sheet of white bark—evidently it was precious, used to line the interior of boats and longhouses—and with only one sheet, she meant to capture the coastline in as much depth as her lack of practice would allow.
“May I see?” Ka’Inari asked when she paused to consider whether she was done. Bless him for waiting; he’d kept still, seated and looking over the ocean while she’d worked. She gestured him over, giving him a full view of what she’d done so far. It was a scene more inspired by her view than a literal translation of the view itself, sketched from a perspective slightly above where they sat, as though a bird perched atop a tree behind them, looking down to see them standing at the edge of a cliff, overlooking the shadows of the Divide.
Ka’Inari stayed quiet too long, until she worried he was searching for the right words to tell her he hated it. She almost moved to continue working, to apologize for showing it in a half-finished state, when he spoke.
“There is truth here,” he said. “You have a great gift. Perhaps you will make a drawing for me, someday.”
“I’d let you keep this one,” she said, feeling a rush of relief, “if I had any sediment to fix the drawing. As it is, it will smear within a day or two. But I hadn’t had a chance to practice in weeks.” She lifted the birch-paper gingerly, offering it to him as she rose to stand. He took it with reverence, and she stowed her lump of coal in a belt-pouch before clapping her hands to remove a hundredth part of the black dust caked across her palms and fingers.
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