Blood of the Gods

by David Mealing

  “It’s the hundred words you haven’t said that I’m worried about.”

  Once more Lin’s expression returned to passive calm. He had half a mind to send her into the sea anyway, if only to establish clearly who was making the decisions between them. But then, she was right. Every word she’d said aligned with his only goal; so long as it was true that Remarin was being held here, and maybe Mei as well, nothing else mattered.

  He turned his back to Lin to find Sarine and Acherre still in conversation, the second woman’s eyes still pouring golden light as she spoke her foreign tongue.

  “Civil war, or a conflict between Kingdoms, though I’ve only heard talk of a single Empire,” Sarine was saying. “I can learn more, but—”

  A rush of foreign words came from Acherre, too quick for him to follow. She had a strange manner of speaking, swallowing consonants and vowels alike, the words running together and seeming to come from her nose as much as her throat. The light vanished when she was done, leaving Acherre blinking and steadying herself as Sarine offered a hand to keep her on her feet.

  “You were speaking with someone else,” Yuli said to Sarine. “Someone far away.”

  “I can see it, too,” the man—Ka’Inari—said, his eyes suddenly glazed, his voice speaking the Jun tongue as clearly as Sarine had done, though she’d said he didn’t know it. “Ka’Hannat’s vision. The tower is evil. A great shadow, but he was right; the shadows are not tied to the place. They are here, coming for us if we linger too long.”

  Sarine looked torn, a sudden anguish on her face.

  “We can’t abandon Hashiro’s company,” she said. “Didn’t he say the soldiers in red outnumber them five to one? They’re counting on us.”

  “Wait,” Tigai said. “It was you, who scattered the Imperial soldiers in the market, wasn’t it?”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  A chill cooled his blood at the admission—one woman, scattering the strength of how many thousands of men?—but the Tower pulled his thoughts in only one direction. Remarin was all that mattered.

  “If you follow Hashiro’s and Ugirin’s companies out of the city, we won’t get another chance to attack the Herons,” Tigai said. “Word of what you can do will already be spreading, and they’ll retreat from the field as quick as they hear it.”

  “What do you propose we do?” Sarine said. “I won’t leave these soldiers to die.”

  “You won’t have to. We attack in two directions: We move toward the Tower, while the mercenaries drive northward to escape the city. If we move now, the Imperial soldiers won’t know enough to account for what’s happening. If you can scatter ten thousand, you’re worth at least two companies by yourself. With luck their commanders will get the numbers wrong, and they’re far likelier to use their reserves to defend the Herons than to block the northern route.”

  She repeated his words for Acherre’s sake, and the other woman nodded along, exchanging words he couldn’t understand. Ka’Inari spoke, too, this time in a tongue no less foreign than the one Acherre used, though it was a different combination of sounds and strangeness.

  “No,” Sarine said at last, cutting them both short. “No, Tigai is right. We came here for a reason. We’ll do as he says.” She turned to him. “That is, we’ll do as you say. We have to let Hashiro know, but if he agrees, then we’ll move at once. Whatever shadows Ka’Inari sees around that tower will only get worse the longer we delay.”

  51

  ARAK’JUR

  Adan’Hai’Tyat

  Gand Territory

  A loose patch of gravel slipped from beneath his fingers, and he fell.

  His shouts echoed from the sheer walls, where the lone mountain rose among a sea of hills, its rocky crags towering, snowcapped, out of place among its brothers. Already he and Ad-Shi had climbed above the highest point on the horizon; in an eyeblink he fell, undoing an hour’s progress in a moment.

  Mareh’et granted his blessing, and spectral claws dug into stone, showering flakes and dust toward the valley floor.

  Silence lingered as the dust rose in a cloud around him, and his arms and back ached, grateful for a moment’s respite, no matter it had almost cost his life to get it.

  “You are alive?” Ad-Shi’s voice rang from higher up the cliff.

  “Yes,” he called back. His lungs burned from the strain, with no thanks for spending breath on words.

  “Keep on,” she called. “We will reach the peak by midday.”

  A glance upward revealed how much he had lost: a stretch of hard terrain, sheer, with only splintering cracks to lever himself up the face. The sun had cleared the eastern hilltops some hours before, and the mountain Ad-Shi had named Adan’Hai’Tyat stretched toward the heavens, promising hours more to scale its heights.

  Whatever tribe had once called these hills home before the fair-skins came, he pitied their shamans and their women. They would have had to train for many turnings of the seasons to make an attempt to reach their sacred place, and no few would have died in the trying. At the base he’d asked Ad-Shi how they would climb down, and been met only with assurances that the spirits would provide. An unsettling sentiment, staring up at a thousand handspans of sheer rock, and worse, now they’d scaled more than half the distance, caught between the treetops and the clouds. It was death, even for a guardian, to fall from such a height. And it was worse to fail to reach it. Short of undertaking a journey of a moon’s turning to the north to return to the Nanerat peaks, this mountain would be the only site for Hai they could reach before the cold season set in. Ad-Shi claimed his path would be revealed, at the summit. For the thousandth time since the base, he cursed that he had killed Arak’Atan atop a mountain. If the spirits were good, it might have been by the seaside, on a grassy plain, even in the fetid stink of the Lhakani swamps. But no; his path was the mountain, and so they climbed.

  The work was numbing for the body, and it freed his mind to think. In the few idle hours he’d had with Ad-Shi she’d given him some notion of what to expect when they reached the Hai spirits. Already she’d shown him how to exceed what he thought were his physical limitations; the spirits, so she’d claimed, would push him farther in his soul. It was no easy thing, imagining himself rising to become even a pale mirror of what Ad-Shi was, but then, that was why his people—and Ad-Shi’s, to hear her tell it—had always used masters and apprentices, to show those who would learn a thing the ways of mastery from an experienced hand. Humility brought him low, watching Ad-Shi carry the burdens of their journey without complaint. Each day they had traveled as far as his stamina allowed, and he was sure she could have pressed on had he not been there to slow her. The mountain proved itself against his strength, while Ad-Shi scurried higher, as nimble as a cat in a tree.

  Weighed against her skill, he could not believe he was the best suited from every tribe. She had to have settled on him for convenience’s sake. But if it was true, it counted for nothing. He was her apprentice. It would fall to him to satisfy the spirits, to protect every tribe. He had to learn strength, if he was not strong enough already.

  He nearly fell again, almost in the same place, before he found a crack to wedge his hands. One fist held tight while the rest of him pushed higher, until he found a new position and jammed his fingers in again. The nails on each hand had long since broken, his skin white from scrapes where it wasn’t blue or purple from bruises and dried blood. One hold at a time, each new position challenging him to solve where to place his hands, his feet, the center of his body, and his head.

  “Rest.”

  Ad-Shi’s voice, sounding from above, and for that one word he might have moved the mountain itself, if he’d had the power to do it.

  Only then did he realize she’d stopped, propping herself against a ledge he hadn’t seen, cut a full armspan or more into the cliff. He grabbed hold of the edge with one hand, then accepted her hand with the other, levering himself into a place beside her, letting his body relax against the wall.

  Br
eath came hard, and he accepted a waterskin without thought, dousing the cracks in his lips and watering the stinging dust from his throat.

  “You climb well,” Ad-Shi said. It was the first kind thing she’d said since their meeting; but for his exhaustion he might have reacted with more than a tired nod.

  “I’d never … thought to try it before,” he said between breaths.

  “I can tell,” Ad-Shi said. “But you’ve managed it, even so. Here. Eat.”

  She offered him a strip of dried meat, and he took it, letting it soak its juices into his tongue.

  “This is what being Chosen means,” she said quietly, just as he found the strength to chew. He gave her a questioning look and she affected not to notice, staring instead toward the horizon. “Always more than you believe you can endure. Always enemies, closer than you’d hoped to find them.”

  It took a moment for him to realize she was not staring blankly. A mass of bodies had appeared at the edge of their vision, diminished to the size of insects among trees that appeared no larger than blades of grass.

  He squinted, trying to magnify his sight. “Who are they?” The question formed on his tongue, though in his gut somehow he already knew.

  “Hunters,” Ad-Shi said. “Enemies.”

  “The Uktani,” he said.

  “Always something,” she said. “Always a shadow at our heels. Fight it, Arak’Jur. Fight until you are broken, and can fight no more.”

  “They will be there,” he said, “when we are done. Waiting for us.”

  She rose, dust falling from her leggings as she stretched and turned back toward the cliffside.

  “Rest as long as you need it,” she said. “I will meet you at the top.”

  Pride demanded he end his rest and follow as Ad-Shi climbed. But exhaustion had long since broken his pride. She stepped around him, using a crack in the face behind the ledge to move upward, angled to the right, and fatigue kept him in place, too strained even to watch the path she took. She must have stayed on the ledge for some time, and he would make use of the same, recovering his strength for the final stretch.

  The Uktani were moving over the hills in the distance, and he watched them come.

  No mistaking their path. They approached from the north, and from the cliff face he could see their movements in detail, as a hawk or falcon might have done, half a thousand men and women spilled like a cluster of seeds across hills and valleys near the mountain’s base. He’d dared to hope they’d lost his trail, or given up the pursuit in favor of another quarry. There would be beasts among them, alongside guardians, warriors, shamans, and spirit-touched among their women. A small satisfaction: It meant they were not threatening the Sinari, and the other peoples of the Alliance.

  Exhaustion let him feel a half-dozen emotions at once. Anger, for what the Uktani had done to drive him away from his home. An irrational rage, blaming them for Corenna’s decision to abandon him. Fear, for what was coming when he reached the top of the mountain. Surety, that the spirits would guide him to fight.

  The last surprised him, but it was there. He had run, before, thinking it would be enough to protect his people, but it was time to become more than a protector. Ad-Shi had shown a path to something else, something he’d never thought to want for himself. As a child he’d relished Sinari ways, reveled in the peace and prosperity of trade, proud to be a man of his tribe. He’d become a husband, a father, a hunter; every dream he’d ever dared to want, dashed in a moment of horror and pain. The valak’ar had stolen his life without killing him, in the bites that murdered Rhealla and his son. Guardianship had been a way to soak the pain, pouring himself into learning an older and more honored path than he’d ever sought to tread. And he’d done it well. He’d walked the Arak’s path, and grown strong in keeping his people safe. Part of him yearned for Corenna, for the solace she offered, the promise of a new wife and a new child. That was the dream he’d wanted. But he’d been forged for a new dream now.

  He rose, though he knew less time had passed than he’d intended to rest. The last of the water quenched the dust from his throat, and he fastened the skin to his belt. He glanced up and saw Ad-Shi a hundred handspans above him, following a thunderbolt of cracks to a face more rocky and less sheer than most of the stretches behind them. It would be easier going, if he could veer to the right and follow her path, but then, he would take each hold as it came.

  Mareh’et granted his blessing as he started his ascent. Strength surged through him, with spectral claws to aid in wedging his hands into the cracks. He couldn’t be certain he’d called on the cat spirit, but then, the spirits worked their own will. Perhaps he’d needed their blessing and had it granted without the need to ask.

  The first crack went quickly, and he’d transitioned past two more before the cat spirit’s gift faded. His mind calmed under the steady rhythm of the climb, thoughts and fears of what was above and below fading as he found places to prop his feet and hands. Ice began to appear in the depths of the cracks, and una’re gave his gift to shatter it, thundering across the rock face. Snow tested his grip, forcing him to slow to be certain he held to solid rock before he pulled himself up. By now he was level with the clouds; perhaps he’d risen so high when scaling the Nanerat peaks, but they had been a range of brothers and sisters, where Adan’Hai’Tyat stood alone among rolling hills. It made him seem more alone, here, perched above the rest of the world. Even the air seemed too thin as he breathed it, his heavy exhalations the only sound he heard, apart from the wind.

  Ad-Shi had vanished above another overhang, and he followed, feeling the weight of the earth as he found holds to defy its pull. He crawled under the outcropped rock until his body was parallel to the ground, his muscles and fingers screaming from the pain of supporting all his weight. By now he welcomed it, and mareh’et gave his blessing again, a renewed surge of strength to grab hold of the edge and pull himself over, ignoring the quivering pain in his legs, his back, and arms and feet.

  He tested the ledge over top of the outcropping and found it firm enough for a rest, allowing himself to lie idle while he recovered his breath.

  “You have done well, Arak’Jur,” Ad-Shi said. “The spirits will guide you from here, when you are ready.”

  Her voice startled him into looking up, and realizing there was no more cliffside overhead. Ad-Shi stood atop a snow-covered patch of ground at the mouth of a cave, hovering on the edge of the mountain, facing east. The sight kindled fire in his arms and legs, and he pulled himself up to his knees, still breathing too hard to speak.

  “You are not prepared for what you will face,” Ad-Shi continued. “But then, neither was I. Trust in the spirits. They will be your strength, when your will is weak.”

  A change in the wind gave a premonition, but he had no time to voice it before Ad-Shi turned to him, a wistful smile on her face, and leapt from the side of the cliff.

  “Wait!” he cried, too late. His heart raced, and he scrambled to the edge to see Ad-Shi’s silhouette plummeting, diminished with each moment until she vanished below the shaking boughs of the trees.

  52

  ERRIS

  Riverways District Boundary

  Southgate District, New Sarresant

  She blinked, and her vision cleared, returning to the darkened interior of her coach.

  Curtains had been draped across the windows, leaving flickering pillars of light shining through cracks in the frame, marking their passage through the city. Ka’Hannat sat opposite her on the velvet cushions, staring as though she were a lamb that had somehow escaped the knife.

  “What did you see, High Commander?” Tirana asked. The translator sat beside the shaman, the three of them alone in the coach’s interior. It had been the best Essily could manage without advance warning, and had still taken an hour to see them settled and departing high command. Tuyard had ridden out on horseback, promising to see Jiri safely delivered to Royens’s encampment along the banks of the Verrain, to the south. They’d judged the s
ight of Erris fleeing the city on Jiri’s back too much a danger to draw her enemies out, where they might have shied away from attacking the council hall itself. A sensible plan, but she found herself missing Jiri’s strength now, whatever the advantages of a coach in working Need while they traveled.

  “Everything the shaman saw,” she said. “Everything Voren warned us was coming.”

  Tirana passed the words to Ka’Hannat, and translated when he spoke. “You saw the peoples of the East?” Tirana said. “The Dragon, the Wolf, the Ox at Ka’Inari’s side?”

  “They are people, not beasts,” she said. “But yes, they were there, as was your shaman. And the girl, Sarine. They confirmed it all. Armies, cities, a people at war with themselves.”

  The hollowness in her voice belied the turmoil in her belly. It had been almost beyond believing, but she’d seen it firsthand, through Acherre’s eyes. Strange architecture, tiled roofs and narrow streets, and soldiers in interlocking plate armor painted yellow and white. Sarine had claimed they’d found a way through a great divide, and meant to kill powerful mages before a broader threat could take shape; the specifics had been too much to take in, in the face of such overwhelming strangeness. Even now her mind recalled small details—clasps on their armor, filed edges of spearpoints, tassels on their poleaxes and muskets. They were men and women, ordinary for all their strangeness, and yet the shamans had promised dire threats came with them, to say nothing of Voren’s warnings.

  “High Commander,” Ka’Hannat said. His eyes had glazed; she’d come to recognize it as his spirits speaking with him, or through him, perhaps—and when it happened, Tirana had no need to translate his words. “These are the people of the shadow. When they come, they will darken the earth with their numbers. They are many. Their magics will rend and tear our villages. Our warriors will fall before them. Only the ascendants—the chosen of the Goddess—carry any hope of light.”