A wall of five warriors with spears ran at him as one, a sign they’d coordinated the attack. He met them with una’re’s roar in his throat, grabbing hold of a spear by the haft and wrenching it to parry the other four in one stroke. Black tendrils did the rest, leaving the Uktani shaking as they writhed on the ground. Still more rushed toward him, knots of three or four or five, but just as many wavered, hanging back as his gifts slaughtered the ones fool enough to attack. Even a munat’ap, the Great Timber Wolf, broke and ran from a renewed blast of flame, the Mountain spirits granting their gift again in clear sign of their favor.
“Betrayed,” was the call on the Uktani warriors’ lips as they shied away from him. “The Ranasi woman has played us false. We are betrayed.”
By the end, he’d broken a hundred or more of their warriors. Blood, vomit, and burning flesh decorated the base of the sacred mountain. Before, he’d chosen to flee when they’d pursued, to be hunted like prey rather than turn and bring this devastation. But now they’d cornered him, and even this was in keeping with the Mountain spirits’ charge. The Uktani had sought war. And now it ended, their warriors broken, retreating into the hills.
He turned toward the center.
“You must!” a man was shouting. “You must fight! It is kirighra’s way.”
Corenna had risen to her feet, but hunched forward, like a wounded beast, cradling her belly in her arms.
“Not him,” she said. “I won’t.”
“Corenna,” he called to her, approaching slowly. It was beyond reason, to find her here, at the head of the army he’d destroyed. An army meant to kill him.
“You must!” the man shrieked at her. “You were chosen, chosen, to ascend! Kill him, and seal the spirits’ bond!”
The woman at Corenna’s side, an Uktani elder, had fixed eyes on Arak’Jur as he approached, her eyes wide in horror.
“Corenna,” he said again.
This time Corenna met his eyes. He saw love there, but something more with it. A burning hate, fighting hard enough to make her body tremble.
“Kill him!” the man shouted. “Or our people have died for nothing!”
The woman beside them broke, turning and running toward the hills.
“No,” Corenna said, a whisper loud enough to cut across the battlefield, and her eyes went white, and she collapsed.
Arak’Jur’s heart pounded in his chest. The man beside Corenna seemed ready to shout at her again when Arak’Jur reached him. Mareh’et gave his blessing, and he sheared through the elder’s rib cage, sending the old man’s blood and flesh scattering into the dirt. He pivoted to Corenna’s crumpled body while the elder still wore a look of shock, as though the man hadn’t yet realized he was dead. It counted for nothing. Corenna was all that mattered.
Her eyes were glazed in communion with the spirits, though her body appeared to be convulsed in pain. But she was alive. He cradled her in his arms, smearing blood on her clothes and her forehead, where he’d meant to wipe sweat away. She writhed in his grip, and he traced hands over her body, ensuring she had not taken a wound. She hadn’t. She was whole, and alive. Whatever else had brought her here, and placed her at the head of an Uktani army, at least she was alive.
He carried her away from the mountain, and left death behind. Whatever had happened, he would have the truth of it from her lips. And he would be there when she woke.
Nightfall found him making a fire in the foothills, alert and awake for sign of the Uktani’s return. Corenna lay beside him, her body still quivering in pain, her eyes still filmed over with gray. She was half again the size he remembered her, swollen in her belly and her hips. He’d checked her body thoroughly since fleeing Adan’Hai’Tyat, even felt between her legs for sign of blood or trauma to the child. By all signs she was healthy, without injury, even her skin no more than scraped and cut. Yet her body kept a steady rhythm, alternating tranquility and quivering pain all through the afternoon.
He’d brought down a pair of elk, a young doe and her calf, and set to cooking their meat, drizzling juices on a strip of rags he held for Corenna to suck during one of her periods of calm. Her body accepted food, though her senses were elsewhere, communing with a spirit. He’d never known the war-spirits to speak outside the sacred places, but then, much could have changed, in the months since they’d been apart. Much would have had to change, for her to travel with the Uktani to hunt him here.
She started another period of quivering as he finished feeding her. Wherever her consciousness, she was in pain, and nothing seemed to quell it, save for time.
He sat back, roasting a haunch from the fawn for himself, and Corenna’s eyes came open, and she screamed.
He let his meat drop into the dirt.
“No,” Corenna said. “Not now.”
“Corenna,” he said. “Corenna, how are you injured? What must I do, to help?”
She looked up at him, and all the pain he’d seen in her quivering redoubled in her eyes. She gritted her teeth, and looked away.
He moved closer, and she winced, pulling back.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I …” she said. “Kirighra. It …”
She kept her eyes closed, and turned away from him, but offered a hand. He took it, and she squeezed with the strength of una’re, hard enough to whiten his knuckles.
She squinted for a breath, then hollered again, a scream of raw pain as she squeezed his hand.
He waited, cursing himself for inaction. He was no shaman, to know the secrets of medicine and healing. Something he had done had made her worse, or at least kept her from recovering. The quivering had grown steadily more intense with each hour, and he’d been able to find nothing to ease her pain.
The quivering subsided, and Corenna dropped his hand, once more pulling away.
“Arak’Jur,” she said, breathless. “I’m sorry. I never expected this.”
“You’re injured,” he said. “Tell me where, tell me how I can help.”
“No,” she said, shaking her sweat-slicked head. “No, Arak’Jur. The baby is coming.”
He looked at her belly, frozen where he knelt. Birthing was the province of women. Not even shamans were permitted to assist, or know its secrets. Suddenly her screams took on new meaning; even at a distance, he’d heard women’s screams from the birthing tent. That much he recognized, and knew it could persist well into the night, and the next day, if the spirits willed it.
Her eyes were still closed, her head turned away as she lay against the dirt.
“The baby,” she said. “And … there’s more. I was given a task. To hunt the strongest among our people. I thought … I was sure it was a woman. I had a vision of her.”
“Ad-Shi,” he said.
She nodded. “But then, as we approached the mountain, I had another vision. When you emerged from the cave, I knew …”
Her words cut short as another wave of pain washed through her face.
“Corenna,” he said. “The baby first. The rest we settle later.”
She tried to nod, once more offering a hand.
“Help,” she said. “Move me.”
He followed her directions in a daze, turning her to lie on her back, her legs propped up and spread wide. He moved the body of the doe he’d slain to serve as a rest beneath her back, so she sat reclined and upright, cradled against the doe’s torso.
She shouted through the movement, then fell silent as she dropped his hand. Tears slicked the sides of her face, her eyes still firmly closed.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I never knew it would lead to this.”
“Shh,” he said. “I’m here. Whatever course led you—”
“It tells me to hunt you, Arak’Jur!” she said, making his name a curse. “The sight of you puts madness in my head. Kirighra demands your death, and seeks to make me the instrument of the killing.”
He almost recoiled.
“Ka’Inari told me,” she went on. “He told me it would mean great sacrifice. He bade m
e leave you, sneaking away while you slept. He told me to say nothing of it to you, for fear the Uktani shaman would see. And now I cannot look at you without …”
She winced again, and collapsed back against the doe.
“It’s coming,” she said. “The next push, maybe one more.”
It took a moment to understand. The child.
“Can I …?”
“Yes,” she said, between breaths. “The struggle with kirighra is mine. But you can deliver the child.”
“What must I do?”
“Help,” she said. “Pull it out, as it comes.”
He nodded, staring at her blankly until he realized she meant for him to move between her legs. He did so, and stared again. She’d swollen there, too, white paste and blood and feces mixed in trails leaking from her openings.
“I can see it,” he said, his voice laced with awe. “Its hair, its head.”
She kept her eyes shut firm, nodding as her body tightened. Thoughts of the spirits and the curse laid on her fled at the sight of their child’s hair, covered in white, but unmistakably hair, mussed and wet and moving as the top of its head pushed through. He reached for it, easing its passing as it moved, and its forehead emerged, then the rest of its face all at once, eyes and nose and mouth and ears and jaw. He pulled the rest of its body free from her, his touch as tender as he could make it.
“A boy,” he said, staring as his arms cradled their child against his chest. “A son.”
Tears flooded his eyes.
Corenna collapsed back against the doe. Her belly had shrunk in half, though it still bulged. “The cord,” she said. “Cut it, and tie it.” Her skin had paled, he saw it even by firelight, and she was slicked with sweat. “Then, the afterbirth.”
Their son flailed his arms, and his mouth opened, letting loose a piercing cry. A sound Arak’Jur hadn’t heard in too many turnings of the seasons; the cry was different, when it was from one’s own child. Mareh’et’s blessing served for a sharp edge, severing the cord, before he delivered their son into Corenna’s arms.
“His name,” Corenna said, making it a question though her voice was flat. “What is his name?”
“Doren,” he said at once. “Kar’Doren, when we present him to the shaman.”
“Arak’Doren would have approved,” she said. “A good, Ranasi name.”
With that, the last of her strength seemed to give way, and she slumped back, still cradling the baby as she drifted to sleep.
Sunlight awakened him, though he didn’t remember lying down to rest. He rose to aching muscles, sore in spite of the guardian’s gift of rapid healing, the embers of their fire still pulsing heat, though the better part of it had died. Corenna still slept, with Doren in her arms, resting his head against her breast. Arak’Jur had managed to convince the boy to latch onto her nipple—that much he remembered from his first years of fatherhood—and Corenna had drifted between sleep and waking while their son took his first meals. The rest had been cleaning the boy with cloths from Corenna’s skirts, ensuring that he slept comfortably in her arms, and staring at the wonder of life, somehow no dimmer the second time than it had been the first.
He propped sticks together and blew on the ashes, and soon had the fire rekindled, spreading warmth in the cold hours of the late-season sun. Corenna awoke as he had the elk skewered and roasting on the fire, stirring toward him, though she kept the baby cradled close to her chest.
“Arak’Jur,” she said. “And Doren, our son. For a moment I feared it was a terrible dream.”
“It is no dream,” he said.
She surprised him by opening her eyes, looking on him where he sat beside the fire.
“Corenna,” he said. “Can you—?”
“I must bear it,” she said. He could see lingering pain in her; an aftereffect of the birth, but he saw more there. The same burning hate he’d seen at the base of the mountain.
“This burden …” he said. “You were chosen by the spirits.”
“Yes,” she said. “When I killed Ka’Yiran, of the Uktani. I killed the kirighra that stalked him, too, and it spoke to me. It chose me for ascension. Do you know of it?”
He nodded, watching her carefully, and their son.
“I won’t,” she said. “I won’t kill you. I refuse. So I will not ascend. But now I have you, and Doren. It will be enough.”
“Corenna,” he said. “Being near me causes you pain.”
“Yes,” she said. “But it is my pain to bear. I will live with it, and with you. That is my choice, and the spirits can curse themselves if they think to stop me.”
He fell quiet, watching her. She was strong, as strong as he’d ever seen her, but weakened, too. Her skin was pale, her clothing soaked with sweat and blood.
“Don’t,” Corenna said suddenly. “Don’t think to spare me by leaving. I am strong enough to fight off the kirighra spirit. There is still evil and madness in the world. There are still ways to fight, even without the promise of ascension.”
“You hear whispers, like a sending from the shaman spirits,” he said. “A vision, demanding my death.”
“Yes,” she said. “But my love is stronger. For you. For our son.”
“And mine for you,” he said carefully. The pain of it cut through him. He’d hoped every day for a reunion, and hardly dared to hope for the birth of their son, but now both weighed heavy between them. He was hurting her. The knowledge wouldn’t fade, for all he wanted to see warmth and life in her, and their child.
“With the Uktani broken, we can return to your people,” Corenna said, cradling Doren as he began to stir in her arms. “We can make a life there, and keep him safe, whatever comes.”
He nodded. It was enough, for now. But as she said it, the visions from the Mountain spirits, from Ad-Shi, played in his memory. The world, covered in shadow, gas, and ash. He was a father again, and whatever else lay between them, he would fight the shadows themselves if it meant keeping Corenna and his son from harm.
55
TIGAI
Tower of the Heron
The City of Kye-Min
The tower entryway glittered with a sheen that might have made a concubine blush. Gold-leaf covered its columns, a half dozen spaced in a circle almost as wide as the tower itself. Tapestries hung on each of its six walls, depicting the same image of a heron in flight, with the device repeated in yellow and white tiling on the floor. The splendor was marred by the blood of three guardsmen, splayed and gutted by Yuli’s claws and Lin’s shards of glass, their bodies draped over furniture and rugs laid across the tile.
“Do you know where your man-at-arms might be held?” Sarine asked him. He’d gotten used to her strange manner of speech; if he watched her closely he could tell her lips hadn’t formed the words he heard, though by any other account she spoke flawless, native Jun.
“I’ve never been here before,” he replied. “I assumed we’d climb the tower, come whatever may. We’ll find Remarin, and the Herons will find us, so we’d best stay ready.”
The other pale-skinned woman, Acherre, said something in her lilting, throaty tongue, and Sarine nodded.
“Acherre is right,” Sarine said. “We’ve already proven we can stand against their magi; better for us to be slow and deliberate, clearing the tower one floor at a time. If the grandmaster is here, we’ll find her eventually. Same goes for your man, and your sister.”
“A problem with your plan, Lady Sarine,” Lin said. “This tower goes down as far as it goes up. I don’t know its secrets any better than Lord Tigai, save that I know the Herons have them, the same as any Great and Noble House.”
“What are you proposing?” Sarine said. “If we can’t clear each floor …”
“Two groups?” Tigai suggested. “One going up, one down?”
Once again Sarine conferred with her companions, the pale-skinned Acherre and the curious, quiet Ka’Inari, who at times looked at him as though he wanted to lock him in a menagerie for private examination. Lin seem
ed content to stare at the newcomers; he hadn’t yet had time to suss out Lin’s fascination with Sarine, Acherre, and Ka’Inari, but it was clear there was more motivating her than devotion to the duty owed one’s captor. He suspected Lin would have fled or found some other means to betray him if not for their arrival. But it didn’t matter. For now she was willing to fight her former allies, and every dead Heron got him closer to Remarin.
“I’ll climb the tower,” Sarine said when they were done. “Tigai and Acherre with me. Yuli will lead Ka’Inari and Lin to—”
“No,” Lin said. “I stay with you and Lord Tigai.”
Sarine frowned, and if Tigai hadn’t already been certain Lin was planning something, he would have been sure of it now. Helpful, to know whatever game she played focused on Sarine, rather than the other two.
Ka’Inari said something in his strange tongue, every bit as foreign as Sarine and Acherre’s.
“Are you certain?” Sarine said.
This time Ka’Inari’s eyes grayed over as he nodded. “Yes,” the shaman said—now speaking perfect Jun, the same as Sarine. Wind spirits but these people were strange. “The shadow rises, gathering in this tower. Death waits here, to be summoned by its own reflection.”
“We need to move,” Yuli said. “The Herons will be coming soon.”
“All right,” Sarine said. “Lin, with me then. The cells are likely to be belowground. Yuli, if you find Tigai’s people, take them up the tower. Meet with us and we go out together.”
“Wait,” Tigai said. “If you have reason to think Remarin and Mei will be belowground, then I’m going with Yuli.”
Sarine gave him an uncertain look. “Ka’Inari will recognize them, from his visions. And we’ll need you, if Bavda Khon is at the apex of the tower. If things go wrong, we may need to retreat quickly.”
“And she doesn’t trust you, Lord Tigai,” Lin said. “She thinks you’ll abscond from the tower as soon as you find your friends.”
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