Blood of the Gods

by David Mealing

  He shook his head when he could manage it.

  “They refused,” he said.

  “They are willful,” Ad-Shi said. “I have made them so. You must be stronger. Try again.”

  Determination fought with sense, the latter bolstered by the exhaustion of hard travel and communion with the spirits. They’d traveled through two tribes’ lands, heading west, with no more than a few hours’ rest each day. Of his companion he’d learned little more than he already knew: She was small-statured and reserved, with a temperament like ice, though she was prone to bouts of biting anger. And above all, she could run munat’ap himself to tiring before she gave up on a pursuit. She’d given him nothing more than the words he was to say, the postures he was to take when they reached Eras’Ana’Tyat. Now she stared at him as though catching his breath was a distraction they could ill afford.

  “They were clear I was not to try again,” he said. “That I was no chosen of theirs.”

  This time she cocked her head, a gesture more like a falcon than a woman.

  “What else?” she asked.

  He drew a hard breath, grateful for a moment to compose his thoughts.

  “They said I had their gift already,” he said. “Though that is not possible; I have never ventured to Eratani lands. Perhaps they mistook me for another.”

  She clicked her teeth. “No. This place is Ana, bound to Visions. Your Sinari sacred place is Ana, too. You have been there, yes? But then, they said you were not one of theirs.”

  His mind reeled even as he suppressed the urge to wince, the old taboo of shamans’ and women’s secrets coming to the fore of his thoughts. He knew the similarities between sacred places’ names—Ka’Ana’Tyat in Sinari land, Hanet’Li’Tyat for the Ranasi, Nanek’Hai’Tyat for the Nanerat. But he had never guessed the names might reveal their natures. And this place, the Eratani sacred site, was called Eras’Ana’Tyat—having Ana in common with the Sinari sacred place, just as she’d said.

  Sudenly Ad-Shi turned her gaze at him, as full of fire as she had been before their duel.

  “Where did you first receive word from spirits you were chosen?”

  He almost started away from her. “It wasn’t at Ka’Ana’Tyat,” he said. “I remember, the ipek’a spoke of it, or perhaps …”

  She gestured to cut him short. “It would not have been a guardian spirit,” she said. “It would have been after a great victory, and it would have been a war-spirit, judging from …” She trailed off for a moment. “You used fire. The Mountain. It was Hai, wasn’t it?”

  His memory flashed to Arak’Atan, and the floating stones outside the Nanerat sacred place. “Yes,” he said. “At Nanek’Hai’Tyat.”

  She uttered something sharp, halfway between a guttural rumbling and a hiss.

  “You knew I was taking us to Ana,” Ad-Shi said. “Why did you say nothing of this? We’ve wasted days, when every hour is precious.”

  “I didn’t know …” he said, but she’d already blinked to glaze her eyes in the milk-white haze of the spirits.

  He fell quiet, feeling his ears burn. Not since his first days as a trapper had he felt so out of step with the path in front of him. Then, it had been the rebukes of Valak’Ser and Hanat’Ran and the rest of the traders he had feared. The worst they would have done was scold him, send him to find his way back to the village alone. And no more had ridden on his learning than the day’s hunt. It paled beside the future Ad-Shi had painted, and it tore at his sense of duty to have failed. It was a thing for young men to worry over excuses or blame; he knew the end was all that mattered.

  “Fortune smiles on us,” Ad-Shi said, her eyes returned to their deep brown. “There is Hai close to us, perhaps five days north and east.”

  He turned, at the same moment she did. Awareness of direction was among the first senses honed, by hunters and guardians alike. Even through the trees, he could see that the horizon showed no sign of mountaintops akin to the great peaks of the far north. There were hills at the eastern edge of Vhurasi land, but none broke into mountains, unless …

  He looked up at the horizon again. She meant to take them beyond where the fair-skins’ barrier had stood, onto the lands of their cities. And she meant to cover in five days what had taken him and Corenna three times so many, even traveling at a pace fit to flee from the Uktani’s pursuit.

  Ad-Shi had already started running through the trees.

  He followed, feeling his heart thrum in time with his breath.

  “Rest,” Ad-Shi said.

  He’d almost crashed into her, finding her suddenly still when the day had been a struggle to keep her in view. Even lakiri’in and mareh’et hadn’t proved enough to keep close; as soon as he’d used their gifts, she’d done the same, leading him through wooded plains without pause for food or sleep. The spirits had found the uses vulgar, taking longer and longer between granting their blessings. But after the first bursts of speed, Ad-Shi had called on them in sequence, rotating through any gift that might hasten their journey. Ipek’a had been used to leap from hillsides, astahg to blink from shadow to shadow as often as the spirit would listen to their call. Now his body screamed with pain, his calves and back and lungs sore, still not fully healed from his time in recovery.

  He staggered to a halt, lowering himself beneath a canopy of elms, and Ad-Shi paused to look at him. The sky had darkened past twilight, closer to dawn than sunset, but still he could make out the curiosity in her eyes. Shame blossomed under her gaze, but he was past the point of being able to conceal his fatigue. If she thought less of him for being willing to drive himself to the point of exhaustion, so be it.

  He expected some comment or rebuke; instead she turned and ran onward, vanishing into the wood.

  He half sat forward, intending to follow, but his body would not obey. Aches lanced through him, redoubled for the comfort of having finally come to rest.

  Thoughts were fleeting as he listened to his breath come heavy beneath the trees. He’d never pushed himself so hard for anything, even at the direst need, even in fighting beasts or men. In a way it was refreshing to find his limits. Ad-Shi seemed to revel in it, though he still had yet to fully grasp the meaning behind their journey. Enough that he was on a course to protect his people.

  Ad-Shi returned as suddenly as she’d gone, crashing through brush with a renewed bout of lakiri’in’s speed.

  She sat as quickly as he’d registered she’d come back, holding two slain raccoons by their tails. She slipped a bone knife from her belt, set to skinning them in quick strokes that took no care to preserve their pelts.

  “Food?” he asked. It would mark the first they’d eaten, since they began.

  She nodded, handing him the first skinned carcass as soon as she’d finished it. Blood ran over his hands, accepting the freshly slain animal. No part of him wanted to gather sticks for a fire; instead he called on Mountain’s gift, scorching the meat to a crisp char before he pulled it loose from the bone.

  She did the same a few moments later, blackening her meat with a burst of fire, then setting to eat it in the darkness.

  “It is customary for hunting duties to be shared,” Ad-Shi said suddenly. “You provide in the morning, I provide at night?”

  The question took him by surprise. From her he half expected a challenge to lift a mountain, or outrace the sunrise; nothing so mundane as shared hunting on a journey.

  “Yes,” he said. “We share the same custom, between master and apprentice.”

  He couldn’t make out her expression in the dark, but he saw the small nods that indicated satisfaction as she returned to her food.

  He watched her eat, the warmth of food in his own belly enough to bring back curiosity. She knew more of the spirits’ ways than any shaman, even spoke of the spirits themselves as equals, if not inferiors, for all she drew on their power. Yet she was alone, a quiet reserve and fragility in her manner he’d seen even in their first exchanges. It was clear she didn’t intend to venture unprompted answe
rs, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t ask.

  “Your people,” he said. “They followed the spirits’ ways as well?”

  “They were our ways,” Ad-Shi said. “Vordu ways, shared by men, women, beasts, and spirits.”

  “And this was long ago.”

  She set the last part of her meal on her lap.

  “Yes.”

  “How long?”

  “More days than there are stars in the sky,” she said. “More days than there are men and women in this world.”

  “There are stories of shamans grown old,” he said, “pruned as cracked leather. Older than mighty oaks. And yet you do not have the look of age.”

  “What do you wish to know?” she asked. “Ask only what you need, to motivate you to take my place. The rest is unimportant.”

  Her directness again surprised him. Even with Corenna, sharing had come slowly, a push to shed taboos together. And now, having the chance to ask, his mind worked to find the right words.

  “Being chosen,” he finally said, “does it mean aging as you have done? Outliving your people and customs, while the world grows old around you?”

  She gave a soft laugh, subtly shaking her head as she spoke.

  “Twice wrong,” she said. “Chosen is nothing; chosen is the spirits taking note of your potential. Ascension is what you seek: to become the paragon of our ways, the embodiment of the Wild in service to the Veil. And ascension carries no promise of age. That was Life, the Veil’s power. Unless she invests it in you, you will age and die in your rightful time, whether you are champion or no.”

  “And she invested it in you?”

  “No. I took it.”

  “Why?”

  This time she glowered at him, hard enough that he could almost see the fire in her eyes.

  “Ask another question,” she said. “Or sleep. It is no matter to me; we move with the sun, whether you are rested or no.”

  Her words bit sharp, but he sat straighter, invigorated with the potential for knowledge.

  “What can I expect from the Mountain spirits?”

  “They will set you a task, or help you divine one for yourself. Hai are protectors by nature, given to nurture and growth. Other chosen will have different tasks; the ascendant will be the greatest among you, at the end.”

  “You were the ascendant, before.”

  “Sixteen times before, yes. None have achieved so great a deeds as I have.” She said it bitterly, almost mocking in tone.

  He frowned. “How will the spirits choose another, if you are so accomplished?”

  “I will not be alive, when the moment comes. I will find a high cliff, and leap from it, when I am satisfied you have learned enough.”

  The stillness of night crept between them, stretching the silence too long for new words.

  In the face of that admission, any further questions soured on his tongue. There would be time for more, after the next day’s grueling pace. But now a fire kindled in him as he prepared for sleep, the first since Corenna had left. The spirits would confirm Ad-Shi’s words, and confirm the threat behind them. If it was true, it would fall to him to understand, to rise to protect not only himself and his tribe, but all peoples of all tribes. He had never sought status as a warrior or a leader, but he couldn’t deny the power Ad-Shi held. If it was the spirits’ will for it to pass to him, even in part, he would strive to be worthy of it, to find a way to still his doubts and champion their cause.

  The admonition cut through his fatigue, filling him with warmth in spite of the cold, and sleep came swiftly, carrying him through the last hours before dawn.

  47

  SARINE

  A Collapsed Temple

  The City of Kye-Min, the Jun Empire

  Their guide flinched as cannon shot rattled the building frame, shaking loose dust stored on rafters overhead. Fifty-odd more soldiers dressed in yellow dyed leather and wool beneath their scale hauberks did the same, shuddering as the building shook, huddled together in clusters beside small fires burning around the room. Trade their armor for the finery of the old nobility and they could have been in her uncle’s chapel at the height of the battle of New Sarresant. The sight struck a chord of longing mixed with grief. Her uncle would be worried for her, serving soup unaided to anyone who asked for charity, alone with only the Gods for company. A fine lot that had turned out to be, between the Nameless and the Veil.

  “My lady,” their guide said, bowing twice to her and then again to a soldier standing near a horse-sized idol of some strange creature she didn’t recognize, a serpentine figure crossed between an elephant and a snake. “I present Captain Hashiro, of the Company of the Golden Sun.”

  The captain wore armor of the same quality as his soldiers, stained by dirt and dented by fighting, with only a golden cord bound at his shoulder to indicate his rank. He had a few days’ growth in his beard, and leveled a weighing glare, first on her guide, then on her, Ka’Inari, and Acherre.

  “You are the magi Isaru Mattai promised us?” Hashiro said. “Three?”

  “That’s right,” she said. “Your men promised us there were leaders of the magi among your enemies. We’re here to deal with them.”

  The captain looked askance over his shoulder, toward a pair of soldiers in the same attire standing at his flank.

  “They are most effective fighters, sir.” The soldier who had been their guide spoke up. “With their aid we repulsed two companies at the waterfront, and drove through the center of the city to reach your headquarters here.”

  “My men have counted over twenty magi arrayed against us here in Kye-Min,” Hashiro said. “And Lord Isaru sends me three. Yet I have word some number of your fellows have reinforced Captain Ugirin’s White Tigers. Why would he not send you together? Does Isaru intend us to work with the Tigers?”

  Sarine swallowed a knot before it could form in her throat. Here was the risk of the masquerade she’d adopted in the moments after Axerian’s death, when a rush of soldiers had come on them praising their gods for their deliverance. They were here to kill the would-be ascendants of the Regnant’s lines; what better way to do it than to have soldiers point them out on a battlefield? But if the others—the ones these soldiers in yellow were truly waiting for—were to show themselves, it might well mean their ruse would fold. Still, her uncle had lectured her often enough on the virtues of pragmatism and adaptability. Best to use what she could, while she could.

  “I wasn’t given any information on Lord Isaru’s plans for the battle,” she said. “Only—”

  “Wait,” Acherre interrupted. “Translate for me. If he’s their captain, I can use him to understand what to expect in the rest of the city.”

  Captain Hashiro eyed them with suspicion. “I speak the Natarii tongue,” he said, changing the inflection of his words, though Anati still translated them for her perfectly.

  “Acherre doesn’t speak Natarii,” Sarine said. “But I can translate between you. She’s a … a captain in her army. Tell her what you know of the battle, and we can aid in planning our next attack.”

  “Our next attack …?” Hashiro said. “Forgiveness, my lady, but I must have misheard. I just told you we face a score of acolytes of the Great and Noble Houses, to say nothing of the Emperor’s soldiers at their backs. My men have been slaughtered here. If we survive the night, I intend for my company to withdraw into the field, to make an escape along the Songye river, if we can secure the northside docks.”

  “Tell him to give us a full accounting of their numbers and disposition,” Acherre said after Sarine managed a hasty translation. “His men, any friendly troops, and the enemy.”

  The captain went along with her requests, though she couldn’t dismiss his distant demeanor as merely an artifact of a foreign culture, much as there was plenty of that. Still, as Acherre began to understand enough of the battle’s layout to contribute to planning their next steps, the captain’s suspicion seemed to fade. Strange to think they could be ten thousand leagues from anyw
here familiar and still share the common bond of a struggle for survival.

  It became clear in their exchange that Captain Hashiro’s Golden Sun was a mercenary company, hired by a lord named Isaru Mattai to attack the city—which she learned was called Kye-Min. Two rivers cut through the city, emptying into its harbor from opposite directions, and the temple they were holed up in sat in the district situated between them, with the enemy holding the banks on both sides. A second mercenary company, Captain Ugirin’s White Tigers, was reported to be besieged in the east, surrounded by soldiers in red.

  “So you see,” Hashiro said after he’d described his latest scouts’ reports. “The situation is without hope, even with three magi to bolster our line.”

  “He mentioned more friendly magi with the White Tigers,” Acherre said after Sarine had translated. “Ask him how many, and what they can do.”

  “The magi’s secrets are beyond my knowing, my lady,” Hashiro said when she posed him the questions. “I am a simple warrior and general. I will honor my contract with Lord Isaru, but there is a time to fight, and a time to withdraw. If my lord demands my head as price for failure, then I will give it, but not before I see my men to safety.”

  “Bloody odd attitude for a mercenary,” Acherre said after she’d repeated it.

  “I’m not going to translate that,” Sarine replied, and Acherre grinned, both for Hashiro’s sake and hers.

  “Well, he’s not wrong, under ordinary circumstances,” Acherre said. “I’d judge he’s got maybe twenty thousand, and not more than thirty. Even if his friends on the other side of the river have the same number, the enemy has to have at least twice so many. Judging by the fighting we saw in the harbor, the sea isn’t going to be an escape route, which leaves him the rivers. That’s his one advantage; he has control of both waterways, and the enemy will have the Nameless to pay if he wants to try an assault across the bridges.”

  “All right,” Sarine said. She’d followed the thrust of Acherre’s analysis if not the specifics. “But I’m sure he knows this. What do you want me to tell him?”