They decided to come, so we ride at the front of a caravan. This feels normal, except for the big vellaw who never takes his eyes off Sally, and the churning in my guts that’s never stopping. I reach for Sally at night, but she turns her shoulder-blade to me and I lie awake with my hands pressed to my belly. It’s worse than being alone.
I can tell we’re close to Craego when, over the shrubs bordering the wide road, we see long, rolling rows of purple flowers. The Whale rides alongside me and says: “We are lucky to be here in spring. The crocuses are at their most spectacular.”
“You like flowers?” I ask, trying to sound cheerful.
“It’s the closest thing to a view of the sea anywhere in the Southern Plains.”
“Why use that name?”
“There are still northern plains, my boy, they just don’t kneel to the Fallen Empress any more. Why would they? There’s a clue in that name, too.”
“Do you call her that to her face?” I mutter. I think ve hears, but ve says nothing.
We reach Craego and pitch our tents in the gardens of the palace as dusk gathers. The Whale takes Sally to be presented to the Empress. When they return, they go into Bralue’s tent, and moments later Bralue comes out looking worried, more than usual. He spots me and calls out: “Tell everyone we’re doing Song of the Stars.”
“But we can’t just—” He waves away my objections.
Everyone’s yelling about how it can’t be done, when Bralue and the Whale come into the tent.
“Simmer down,” says Bralue. The mob gets louder.
The Whale makes a strange, mournful, not-human noise. Hush falls. “Thank you,” ve says. “A performance of Homeland Heroes would cause distress to the Hostis delegation. Delicate talks are in progress. Her Majesty begs your understanding.”
Sickness roils in my belly. We are to bend over backwards not to offend these murderous savages, so we can negotiate some mealy-mouthed compromise? I want to object, but my voice has fled in disgust.
It’s a rough performance. Sally gives it everything she’s got and afterwards, pale and exhausted, falls into my arms. I carry her to our tent and help her out of her costume. I salve her wounds. I kiss her hands. She shakes her head when I make to speak.
The Empress comes to congratulate her. “Oh, it was marvellous!” Her eyes shine. What nine-year-old would not enjoy a circus? “I especially enjoyed your parts. The Swords of Light!” Sally bobs her head. She doesn’t mention the fact that these Swords are mere illusions. When I think about this, my love for her becomes a burden. I’m ashamed for both of us.
While the Whale attends the negotiations, we explore Craego. We eat exotic food and drink exotic wines until we reel with merriment. We spar between the tents, dancing over the guy ropes. We make love clumsily, desperately, and it’s not like it was before.
As we ride to Azmai my turmoil grows. I dreamed of an army, and all we have are a few ceremonial guards and a coven of politicos. Worse, the enemy rides with us. They speak in their own tongue and laugh when they catch me watching them.
The noon sun blazes above us when we reach my family’s lands. Sally and I are arguing.
“What makes you think they’ll honour the treaty, not turn Azmai to their side and scorch us all? You don’t know what they’re like.”
“I haven’t forgotten what’s happened to your family. The decision to trust the Hostis isn’t yours, nor mine. It is the Empress’, and the council’s. We must do our duty to Amitsa.”
“A child and a flock of old women! How can this fulfil our duty?”
“We must trade, or starve. Do you want me to bind every spirit in every stone, every grove, every stream in Azmai? I could bury all my bones and not bind a tenth of them.”
“All I know is that if I could do it myself, I would do it, a thousand times. You are a blood-mage; what’s the good of that if you won’t defend your people?”
“We have no divine right to Azmai, no more than we did the rest of the Empire. We will survive.”
“Your grandmother bought us the right.”
That night, I follow Sally down the track between the thorn bushes. She’s heading for the shrine to our valley’s Loaram. Why is she sneaking off? Why has she let me suffer, thinking she didn’t care? I keep my distance, walking softly. I know every turn in the track, every hiding place.
She stops at the shrine, looking up at the twisting, ferny figure. The carving is beautiful and menacing; wolf-like teeth snarling, ears pressed back against its head. Sally clenches her fists, rubs her palm against the stone. She steps back, hands on the hilts of her swords. The carving shifts and the black eyes glow violet. The teeth shine and the gums glisten red.
“Loaram of the valley,” says Sally, bowing her head. “I come on behalf of one to whom you have done great harm. He cannot rest until that harm is redressed. The ghosts of those you killed cannot rest. His people cannot walk this valley but in darkest dread.”
“His people are strangers to me,” it growls.
“They have dwelt here for three generations.”
“They drove out my people, who yet fear and love me. Who yet pray, and burn offerings; they cross the abominable border and keep me alive. I will not abandon them.”
“Alive, in hatred and resentment.”
It smiles, all teeth and eyes.
“The settlers were prepared to love you,” she says. “They love the valley. They fear you because of what you have done, but even now, they do not hate you.”
“You lie.”
Can it feel my hatred? Sally spreads her hands, palms up. “Soon your people will return. The Amitsans will withdraw and return the mountain to the Hostis. Does this comfort you?”
“Will justice be done to those who drove out my people and cut the ground with cold steel?” The spirit sneers. “You know it will not.”
“I’m sorry. I must bind you now. It would have been best to do so with your heart at peace.”
“I will rend you limb from limb and defile your corpse, necromage! You have no sacrifice; you have no power.”
“I’m not a necromancer. I’m a blood-mage. I will lock you beneath the earth.”
Sally draws her short swords. The wolf-thing lunges at her. Her blades whirl. The spirit snaps at her throat. Its teeth click, inches short but all too real. An image of of Sally ripped and rent, broken and lost, pushes into my head. You won’t do to her what you did to my mother, I think, forcing myself only to watch, and not to move.
At first her blades slice clean through the monster, but as they turn black in the moonlight, blood running down the grooves in the metal, they begin to bite. Her dancer’s balance and agility are little use against this foe. There’s force behind its attacks, but it isn’t bound by mortal physics. Again and again it drives forward, wrapping her limbs in indigo fronds, fangs seeking flesh. It slashes at her, never finding a purchase, but she’s tiring. Her thrusts are slowing, her chest heaving. Eventually its jaws close around her forearm. She hacks at its neck with her free sword, but it doesn’t let go. I leap into the clearing, my knife drawn-!
“No Kodju!” she shouts. “You can’t help!”
I plunge my knife into the thing’s back. My blade passes through it and buries itself in the ground. My knees hit dirt. I let go of the knife and roll forward, past Sally’s booted feet. Blazing pain lights up my shoulder. Immortal fangs pierce my leather cuirass and my skin, lodging against my bones. I scream. I can’t see anything, but I feel Sally wrestling the monster, trying to wrench it off my back.
When I come to, she’s standing over the prone Loaram. Its head has disappeared between its fronds. It whimpers. Flat red ropes, like bloodstained bandages, bind it tight.
She pulls off her left gauntlet, wincing as the spurs tug her wounds. She holds up her bare hand, regards it briefly, then in one swift motion slices her little finger off: it drops to the ground. Ignoring my cry of horror, she presses the flat of her blade against the stump. When she takes it away there is no ble
eding. She pokes the severed finger with the toe of her boot.
The finger sinks into the soil. Three white spikes emerge. She takes each one and bends it across the body of the monster, creating a cage. She passes her injured hand across her eyes, mutters something. The cage and its contents drop, as if in quickmud, until nothing can be seen. She stops to light a cigarillo, before she comes to tend to me.
IV. Osalma
The Hostis outnumbered us seven to one, but they had no blood-mage. Like countless other tribes across the world, they’d never met a force like ours. The dragon-god was formidable, but they had not the lore or power to bind vir fully. Still, many of our warriors were scorched to embers before I gathered the strength to call vir down.
I stood on my trisk’s back. Her bright feathers were sticky with blood; mine, hers, friends’, foes’. The Swords of Light whirled around me. The Whale fought at my back. Ve had lost vir trisk, yet vir head was still as high as mine. My eyes were gummy with blood. My mouth was copper-full, my body a simple meat shell for a being made of light and pain. The Whale held vir amulet high, vir scent mingling with the scents of gore, burnt mountain grass and cooked flesh. The Swords were bright and sharp, more real than real, the bodies they sliced into were mere shadows. Shadows shot through with ruby; ruby that melted and flowed into pools on the ground. The power I drew from the ebbing lives of all those warriors – quickly, quickly, before their blood cooled – washed away the boundaries of my mind and I touched the essence of the dragon-god.
“Loaram Azmai,” I whispered.
Ve lashed vir tail, dove towards me, wings folded. I recalled the Swords from their butchery and arrayed them above my head, points directed at the dragon’s plummeting heart. They shimmered: coruscating fire. The swords in my hands were things of the earth, and they drew blood viscerally, their blades an unbroken line from my will to my arms to the throats of my enemies. The Swords of Light were something else; they danced and sang for love of blood alone: sought it, smelt it, spilled it and rejoiced. I could direct them only as one directs a falcon. By their quivering obedience I knew they desired the blood of Azmai.
At the bottom of vir stoop, ve tilted and stretched, talons gleaming, eyes bright as the sun in winter.
Ve dipped vir head and belched fire. The Whale threw one arm into the air, and as Azmai landed, vir flames were driven back by a dank miasma, as of sea-caves when the tide has flowed away.
“Azmai,” I said. “My people will take this mountain, the range beyond, and all the land about. I must bind you. Will you be bound?”
The answer was No. I was shaking with No. I would be blown to nothing and the Amitsan army too. The Empire would dwindle and vanish. Azmai would rule a blasted land before ve bowed vir neck to my binding.
The Swords pounced. The dragon-god knocked two of them back, and three buried themselves in vir feathers.
A jolt threw me sideways. I arced through the air, thumping to the ground. The Whale had pushed me from the back of my trisk. A spear passed through the space I had occupied. The sky was black with ash, the sun blotted out.
The Hostis had not fled when their god came to earth. They rallied, and swarmed over us. The world was nothing but the clash of steel on steel, the cries and groans of the dying, blood, guts and the reek of death.
V. Skylla
Before the gathered dignitaries, atop the bone-strewn plateau, I face the entrance to the tomb where my grandmother once bound the Loaram Azmai to the earth. My mind is numb. I can’t do this. This is not my place. This is not my destiny. Dancing the role of Osalma in a circus show has not prepared me to take on her mantle on this wind-scoured mountain. The stump of my missing finger throbs in agony with every beat of my heart.
“Blood-mage?” says the Hostis priest, vir hand on my arm. I can feel vir apprehension. I want to shake my head and put an end to this charade, but I nod, and raise my hand. Guards heave the slab aside. Inside is utter darkness.
It’s a little like standing on the platform high in the circus tent, ready to step into space and descend on my invisible wire. But there is no wire. Nevertheless, I step forward, because everyone is watching me and that’s what they expect me to do. The priest grabs at me, and together we pass into the rock-walled tomb. My throat thickens with – not soil, but the idea of soil, the memory of soil, of rock, of captivity.
A clicking of flints, and the priest holds a lit candle. Trembling, I squeeze my fist. Five drops of blood, five ersatz Swords of Light. Though false, they glow. The priest hisses, does not blow vir candle out.
“Azmai?” ve asks.
Before us is a cage of bone and within it lies the dragon-god. Ve is grey, as though carved from the rock around us, but when I reach between the bars I feel soft feathers. My hand comes away streaked with dust. So many, many bones, to hold this half-dead god against the earth.
A deep groan comes from all around us. The chamber shakes.
The priest falls to vir knees, muttering in Hostin. A bulky shape materialises beside me.
“Whale.”
“Skylla.”
A moment of silence, then: “You must speak with your grandmother.”
“She’s dead, Whale.”
“She’s here. So many died that day. She was so strong. When she . . . passed—” Vir gaze becomes unfocused. “—she remained in Ap’da. You must enter the world-beside.”
Ve grasps my hand in vir huge one. I feel like a child again, putting my trust in vir to lead me. “We will not swim deep,” ve says. Releasing my hand, ve takes a pouch from within vir cloak. When ve opens it, there’s a strong smell. “The salt weed of the rocky shore beside the shrine to Mysticecia. It’s a long time since I made pilgrimage – I have only a little, but it should be enough.” Ve dips vir hand into the pouch and brings it out dripping. Three passes and my head and face are soaked in vile brine.
The Whale puts vir arms around me and the world shifts. The chamber grows brighter, Osalma’s bone cage whiter, the dragon-god’s feathers shine, and the Whale’s eyes grow dark and limpid. The Hostis priest becomes a shadow of virself.
The Whale presses my injured hand against the bone cage. I bite my lip; the stump is hidden in my gauntlet. I don’t want sympathy.
The bone-cage shudders and brightness swirls away from the structure and coalesces into a glimmering image of a woman – it is like looking into a mirror at myself after a performance. Her skin is taut, her eyes intense, her mouth a hard line of pain.
“Osalma,” says the Whale. “Preshka.”
“Whale.” The spirit hisses, a susurrating whisper. “My deliverer.”
Tears roll from the Whale’s rock-pool eyes. “You gave everything.”
“Does the Empire thrive?”
“We cannot hold Azmai. We must make a new peace, for the sake of trade. This is your granddaughter, Skylla. We are ordered to undo the binding and return Azmai to the Hostis.”
She turns her awful gaze to me. “Isman lives?”
The Whale speaks for me. “Your daughter died valiantly. I raised a carved monument amidst the salt marshes. Her memory lives.”
Osalma’s ghost lets out a chilling moan and lunges towards the Whale. “I left her in your care.”
“Ap’da!” The voice of the priest, startled, triumphant. “Rana’a mi carulin va-sha Azmai!”
We turn to see the priest blowing a fistful of golden sparks into the bone cage. A small fire blazes behind vir.
“Not yet!” says the Whale.
“What?” I ask. “What’s happening?”
“We are ordered,” repeats the Whale, speaking low and urgently, “to release the dragon-god to the Hostis. This priest is pledged to bind Azmai in vir own fashion.”
Inside the cage, the feathered god twitches. Ve struggles and flutters. Looking past Osalma, I see the true Swords of Light, driven through vir wings and tail, pinning them to the rock.
“Free me!” Vir command reverberates inside my chest.
“Never!” Osalma cries.
“Priest,” I say to the Hostis, who appears crazed with delight at vir success. “You must ready your bindings before I break this cage.”
“Break the cage?” screeches my grandmother’s ghost.
The priest stops capering and nods eagerly. “Bindings ready.”
I look to the Whale. Ve sniffs the air. “There is powerful fire magic here, but – Azmai . . .” Ve shrugs. “We have given our word to the Empress.”
Osalma screams in fury and snatches at my arms. I ignore her, leaving her to the Whale, who wraps vir arms around her and holds her close. There are a thousand things I want to ask her. I want to know her, to hear her story in her own words instead of from the untrustworthy mouth of the Whale, but there’s no time. I clench my fists until the spurs grind against my bones. I let the blood run down onto my hands, then place them against the nearest bar of the bone-cage. I’m surprised when the bone responds to my touch. I concentrate my power. The bone starts to dissolve. Somehow it’s dissolving into me. The stump of my lost finger throbs, and joint by joint I feel it growing back. Though Osalma still rails against me, I start to feel a connection with her, with the power she wielded in life. I move around the cage weakening the bars, until, with my swords, I can slice through them.
Meanwhile, the gazes of the priest and Azmai are locked together. When the last bone strut falls, the dragon-god rears up vir head atop the long, sinuous neck. The priest exclaims: “I will, Loaram!” Ve is holding a bag of vir own, and from it ve draws a pigeon, feet and wings bound. It struggles just as Azmai did. The priest twists its neck, throws it to the ground and smashes the body with vir heel.
The ground shudders and heaves. The walls of the chamber are blasted away and the light of the plateau pours in. The delegations and the pretty guards in their pretty uniforms are showered with shattered rock; they cower and cry out.
“This is no binding,” says the Whale. I have never hear vir sound afraid before.
Terrified, I rush the priest and knock vir down, straddle vir and shove a blade against vir windpipe.
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