Gods of the Flame Sea

by Jean Johnson

  “I’d think that much anima would draw Udrin to us,” Shava offered, then hitched her breath. “Oh! Oh yes, that would form a trap for him. We can bring in the anti-anima machines Zedren and Kaife shifted around underground, forming a barrier—maybe even use them to mask Ban’s presence, and then Éfan chases him into range so that Ban can capture him. And then we walk him through the Efrijt portal in Ban’s control. Once he’s out of this universe, away from his energy-source, he should be weakened, and thus containable . . . or eradicatable.”

  “Kefer, will the Efrijt accept him for containment?” Krue asked.

  “You’re lucky I read over the full contract on the flight up there . . . and that I read so quickly,” the younger Fae added dryly. “It is a contingent, yes, under the appendices covering extraordinary circumstances—Efrijt contracts are very thorough, but . . . there is a clause covering the contracted child somehow becoming a godlike being, but I’m not sure they’ve covered any of us becoming godlike beings in specific. There are clauses against us using our powers to gain any unfairly imbalanced advantages over managing this realm, and managing the access to it.”

  “How ironic, considering they’ve had the only means of interdimensional access for the last two decades,” Jinji pointed out.

  “At this point, that contract isn’t worth the water it would take to urinate on it,” Rua dared to assert. “I might use it for compost, or mulching material, since there’s so much of it, but nothing else anymore.”

  “Rua,” Muan protested.

  “That boy is not going to decide in favor of either parentage,” their horticulturalist reminded her. “And weren’t you yourself upset just a few hours earlier that he grabbed your breast and spoke like a lover to you? Your son, yes, but your own son?”

  “Muan . . . go find your co-parent,” Jintaya told her. “Bring him here.”

  The others blinked at her. Krue raised his dull gold brows. “You want her to bring an Efrijt here, into the heart of our stronghold?”

  Kefer raised his hand, soothing the Guardian. “Jintaya knows what she is doing. The contract is still binding, unless and until both parents agree the child is unfit to make any sort of decision—actually, you will need to bring Chadesh as well as Dakin,” he added to Muan. “A healer from each side must observe the child’s behavior, as well as each parent, before making a joint decision. That decision must be unanimous. Given that the kuro went with Udrin’s father to retrieve poor Doldj’s body for burial, I think both will agree that Udrin is not stable enough to make a sane decision anymore.”

  Jintaya nodded. “Thank you, Kefer; I forgot a second healer would be needed.”

  “It’s one of the subreasons why I insisted Chadesh should come back with us,” Kefer said. “Though I was imagining the reason would be from a failure to cure the mental problems caused by all that mercury poisoning the boy. As the second-ranked healer for the medjant, Chadesh will have the authority to speak for his triumvirate in this matter.”

  “Additionally, the Efrijt should have a witness to Éfan’s transformation,” Jinji pointed out. At Kefer’s confused, inquiring look, she gestured at the satchel at his feet, thick with the contract in question. “There are clauses in there that insist that each side has to prove goodwill actions in the raising and the disciplining of the contracted child. Clauses that we insisted go in there, to hold the Efrijt to the spirit as well as the letter of the agreement.”

  Muan sighed and shoved to her feet. “I’ll go find them. Both of them. Stars save me from ever engaging in any sort of contracted anything with anyone, ever again.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Rua said. “Zedren has his earring, but he might not be with them. If he isn’t, two of us can spread out to search around their last known point and find them faster. We’re short on time.”

  “I am now wondering if we should send Zedren’s anti-anima devices to the medjant valley,” Shava said as the other two left. “He has proven to be more cunning than we thought. Éfan might not be able to herd him to us over that distance.”

  “If he’s even still in that area,” Fali pointed out. “He could have gone anywhere.”

  “Load up the sky barge with all of us . . . and take the anti-anima artifacts with us,” Parren offered, glancing at her cousin. “Once we are full of anima, we can subsist on it alone, and spend decades if need be, traveling all over this world, looking for him.”

  “The anti-anima devices will interfere with the anima,” Fali retorted.

  “Not if they’re deactivated, cousin,” Parren pointed out.

  Their leader stepped in before the two could let their understandable irritation at the situation flare up. “Thank you for the suggestion, Parren. We will do just that,” Jintaya decided. “The people of the Flame Sea know how to guard their borders, they know how to create catch-basins and irrigation canals—by hand, if need be—and they have a healthy trade in exotic herbs and spices that have earned them many allies on all sides, cushioning them from the less civilized, more violently inclined tribes farther out. They can live safely enough without us.

  “Still, it would not be right to simply leave without any explanation of everything that has happened. I will therefore go to them, explain as best I can what has happened, and inform them that we will be making every effort to correct this mistake.”

  “Jintaya . . . will you also explain to them that I will become one with their anima, as Udrin has done?” Éfan asked her. “Will you find a way to keep them from worshipping us like some southlands god-being?”

  Fingers pressing to her brow, Jintaya actually lost her temper. “I am only mortal, Éfan! You are asking for a miracle, and despite whatever Siffu keeps claiming, I am not a god!”

  “Yet,” her niece stated. That earned her a sharp, annoyed look from Jintaya, but Jinji did not back down. “You are not a god yet. If Éfan can make the transition, and can fight Udrin . . . but cannot herd and contain the boy entirely on his own . . . he may need help,” their chief negotiator told her fellow outworlders, her gaze earest and sober. “He may need another to cross over. He may need all of us to cross over and join him.

  “We have to ask ourselves, is stopping Udrin worth risking everything? Our bodies, our mortal lives, and our right to return home should that portal ever open again?” Rising, Jintaya’s niece brushed the wrinkles out of her crimson-trimmed jacket, cut and mostly colored in Fae style but dyed along its edges in Efrijt-friendly hues. “While Muan and Rua find the others, I suggest we take the time to check on our personal quarters, settle our things for a long absence . . . and think long and hard about how far we might have to go to stop that wayward child who thinks he’s a god. Such as becoming gods ourselves, if we must.”

  “. . . Jinji is right. Go, all of you, and think about that,” Jintaya ordered the others. “I will place some of my faith in Éfan’s skills, but this . . . anima-form. It is too new to understand it in full, but it does come with benefits and hindrances, powers and penalties. Above all, we are at a crossroads of responsibility. I will go see to the care and well-being of Rua’s aquaculture garden, in case we need to move quickly, abandoning it for a while.”

  The others rose and moved toward the exit.

  “I know the system quite well, after all this time,” Ban said, rising and waiting for Jintaya, closest to the portal area and thus farthest from the doorway out of the grotto. He had not changed out of his war kilt, though he had dried it with a cleansing spell earlier. “I will help you secure it for her.”

  “We may just want to secure the whole stronghold with stasis spells,” Éfan warned them. “Those plants and animals in her garden are the only link we have to the foods we ate back home. If we can figure out how to reverse the anima transformation, it may return me to my original, unsaturated state. As in actually hungry for food, instead of eating as an absentminded or unnecessary pleasure.”

  “Do you real
ly think you can return?” Fali asked, curious.

  Éfan shrugged. “I don’t know. I won’t know until I’m on the other side, and can test how thoroughly my spirit integrates with the anima in the aether.”

  Jintaya felt fingers twining with hers, and looked at Ban. For the first time in decades, his expression had returned to being the inscrutable mask he wore these days only around strangers. She squeezed his hand gently. “It will be alright. Somehow. We will make this right.”

  He said nothing, just squeezed in return and walked at her side out of the grotto.

  Chapter Eight

  Five selijm from the Red Rocks Valley

  His creations had not progressed much in the lifetime that had passed since his last visit. Safe in their sand pit, which had developed striations and squiggles from the creatures digging their way through the colorfully streaked grains, they basked in what little heat remained from the sun that had shone into the valley earlier. With the mouth of the pocket canyon facing southeast, the western ridgeline shadowed most everything.

  Still, he was a god, now. Shadows meant little to his senses, for his senses seeped into everything. He was the anima, for a given radius around his central consciousness. The grass his hair, the valley rocks his bones, the creek and the little creeping insects his blood, the wind his breath. For the moment, Udrin knew peace in this place. A place that no one had found. Yet.

  Death will come for me, he acknowledged, watching one of the smallest sand-demons stalking a scorpion that had dared to crawl out onto the sands. I might be able to change his body, if I carefully do not touch his magic. Perhaps cripple his mind, so that he cannot focus his will? Nothing that would kill him . . . but . . . what would I practice on? Not my pets . . .

  Wait, can I alter bodies, if I have none of my own?

  His pets would not do. Yes, he still had plans to alter them a little further before unleashing them—symbol of the god that he now was—but they were still too few in number to risk. Turning his attention to one of the hares, he whisked it off its feet with a thought, provoking a squeal of fear and fast but futile kicks of its long hind feet. Its companions dashed for cover when he did that . . . and bolted outright a moment later, fleeing in terror when Udrin’s attempts to cripple its mind made the floating beast shriek.

  It didn’t last long. Udrin tossed the body into the middle of the sand pit for his creations to eat, and snatched up another hare. By the death of the third, he had a few things figured out. Seeing his pets scuttling in rills of disturbed sand toward its corpse, investigating the newest find, Udrin remembered some of what he wanted to do to them.

  Now that he knew how to shape flesh through pure anima, he set to work. Distracted yet focused, he worked for a while until something large dove down out of the sky and thumped into the sand next to his . . . well, presence, since he lacked a physical body. A buzzard, which eyed the rabbits, cocked its head, and hopped a little closer. Then squawked and flapped up.

  It took only a moment to discern what had happened. One of the sand-demons had tried to stab the scavenger. To Udrin’s disappointment, the tough, almost scaly skin of the bird’s feet had blocked the stinger from stabbing deep enough to inject its toxin. But it was a cautionary message, he realized.

  I’m wasting time altering my pets. Yes, I’m learning things, but I have only limited time before Ban tries to track me . . . and I do not want him to find me here. He might find and destroy my babies . . . though I would love to see him lying here, paralyzed and helpless, while the eggs mature and the larvae chew him to pieces on their way through his body to the other side . . .

  No. Don’t get distracted. I need to figure out how to affect his body without being blocked and caught by his magic. I need to figure out how to cripple a human mind, not just a mere hare’s. He’s a jumped-up animal as an outworlder, imbued with special qualities just because he’s from outside this realm, but he is still a human. He’s not Efrijt, and he’s not Fae.

  I can practice on the humans of the Red Rocks Tribe . . . and while I am at it, I can torment my father’s . . . the Efrijt.

  He did not want to remember anymore that he used to be half Efrijt. They were weak animals—far cleverer than humans, but too ambitious, too avaricious. Too strict and too demanding, but still weak.

  That portal is a danger to me, Udrin realized. If they somehow drag me through it—if, the very thought forbid, Ban captures me with his magics—then I will not have all the powers of this realm to play with. I need to harass them into leaving and sealing it.

  They do care somewhat for the humans. They won’t like it when I experiment on their laborers. A stray thought rippled his attention briefly. Do I even need mercury to think clearly anymore? When I have no body? Maybe I should try to see if mercuric vapors have a flavor . . . No, no, no! Focus, Udrin! . . . Or rather, focus, Taje Udrin-taje-ul . . . heheheh . . .

  Leader Udrin, Leader-of-All.

  Humming a tune that sang like faintly whistling wind, Udrin danced his way through the spell blocking animals from creeping through the mouth of the little pocket canyon. As he left, he took his time to retrace his physical route out of the mountains, since he’d never really flown straight to the canyon and back before, and wasn’t quite sure how he’d gotten to his little hideaway in his initial panic, other than pure longing for a safe hiding space.

  Not once did he notice the way his new anima-based self tasted and then devoured the energies of that warding-spell while passing through, dissolving the barrier keeping the frightened hares in the vale. The barrier that kept the sand-demons in place, too. Udrin-taje-ul, newly born god of this world, had far more important things to do.

  Medjant Kumon Stronghold

  Sejo Zakal woke at the rather loud pounding on her door. At first irritated, disoriented by the dregs of sleep, she rolled over and threw back the bedcovers with an irritated snarl, untangling her limbs from the fine blankets and sheets imported from outworld. By the time she got herself sitting upright, feet slipping awkwardly into her chamber sandals, it occurred to her that not even a kuro would have dared knock on the door to her actual sleeping room.

  Given how the panels rattled visibly in the faint glow of the crystals providing safety lights, that meant it had to be either one of her co-leaders, or a dire emergency. Rising without bothering with a robe, she crossed to the door and opened it. If this was a dire emergency, she would not have the time to change her sleeping tunic and trews for proper clothes. If it was one of the triumvirate . . .

  “Seso Parut.” She acknowledged the co-leader who ran the actual operations of Medjant Kumon’s mining business. “What has gone wrong?”

  “The workers—the human workers—they’re going mad, and most of them are dying,” Parut stated bluntly. He raked his fingers over his scalp, his ruddy pink fingers standing out against the dark curls.

  Without the light of the local sun picking out the reddish highlights in his hair, just the crystals providing a low ambient glow in her sitting room, it looked like he dug his fingers through streaks of soot. But as much as Zakal found him attractive, they were triumvirate partners, and this was . . . actually rather serious, now that she was awake enough to think about it. Regular madness—mercuric madness—would not be a cause to wake her from her sleep. Not when Seso Parut was fully capable of organizing an effort to cure the afflicted individuals; they didn’t have much access to magic in this realm, but they did still have some. “Kuro Chadesh Agadel left earlier for the Flame Sea, correct?”

  He nodded. “His daro tried extracting mercury from one of them, and should have been adequate for the task, even if such would not be pleasant, but the worker still died. And then Daro Jadal started jerking around. From what I was informed, he cried out that something was controlling him . . . and then bled from his eyes and ears, before collapsing in a heap. Dead, from no source that the witnesses who survived could see.”

 
“A rebellion among the animadjet?” Zakal asked. They worked the humans hard given the primitive technology they had to work with, and the humans undeniably were being poisoned by the cinnabar ore and concomitant vermillion dust stirred by the mining operations, but with the weekly help of the Fae, they cleansed the quicksilver from their workers well before it drove them mad. A madness that seemed to control a person and made them bleed from the eyes and the ears had to be a magical attack of some sort.

  “I do not know. Kuro Talan, Sefo Harkut’s niece, has been generous to the workers in the duration and efforts of their duties each shift. Kuro Suton has been generous in their pay, and has not heard anything above and beyond the usual complaints. Kuro Nazik has not heard the humans who shop among the traders and artisans complaining excessively, either.

  “Everything has been normal, Sejo,” he added, tugging again on his curls with both hands. “A healthy amount of complaints, nothing out of the usual or the ordinary . . . If this is a rebellion by the local mages, they are not acting with the will of the people. Or if they are, the people have one and all been deceiving us with normal behavior for an unknown length of time.”

  “They’re not sophisticated enough to have that level of discipline,” the sejo dismissed. “Certainly, we would have noticed something from the younglings by now.”

  “Then I do not know what is causing this. I . . .” Parut broke off, frowning. His dark red eyes focused on nothing as he thought. “I . . . have heard . . . that in lands far away . . . the primitives can get the anima to manifest with a rudimentary consciousness. But it only happens in lands where they believe in such things.”