by Gary Kloster
Corrianne, unaffected or too far away to hear that music, pulled back her hand, about to cast, when a bolt of palest blue struck her. It knocked her back, the green of her dress white with frost. Jiri saw her friends working their way into the room, pressed against the walls, keeping as much distance as they could between themselves and the umdhlebi's lashing vines.
Hoping this wasn't the last time she would see them, Jiri started across the wall, moving as fast as she could toward the statue-flanked arch at the end of the passage.
∗ ∗ ∗
The tunnel beyond the arch was a tight stone throat. Its walls pressed in around Jiri, bulbous stone formations growing from them like tumors, every surface slick with water, and the air that filled the space between the walls was thick with water as well and hot, like the jungle after a rain. The tunnel curved and sank, and Jiri's ears lost the sounds of the battle raging behind her.
There was nothing but the draw of her breath, the beating of her heart, and the constant drip of water.
And then something else.
Jiri stopped and listened. Somewhere ahead of her, something burbled and hissed, like a pot on a fire. The rock around it baked with heat, and the water, the blood of the earth, boiled. That was how Shani had described the cavern where he had been taken.
Where All-in-Ashes had been chained.
Jiri took the stone that she had wrapped light around and tucked it in her shirt, and she could still see. There was light somewhere beyond the next curve, thin and smeared by distance and haze, but there.
Patima? Maybe.
Mikki? Jiri had never seen the halfling back with Amiro and Corrianne. Patima may have taken her with her, one last guard to watch over her while she summoned All-in-Ashes back to the place it had been caged so long, so that she could try to leash the monster to her terrible vision of revenge and freedom.
It doesn't matter. One or both of them, or All-in-Ashes itself, I have to try to stop them.
Jiri moved, pushing forward toward that dim light, the hot, wet air wrapping close around her like the breath of beasts.
∗ ∗ ∗
The tunnel opened into a cavern filled with water, steam, light, and heat.
Jiri crouched behind a gnarled knuckle of stone that pushed out of the last bit of the tunnel wall, staring in at a huge chamber the size of the clearing Thirty Trees had stood in, and as steep and angled as a staircase. At its top, boiling water flowed into it, and at its bottom, the earth swallowed the water. But the hot water didn't drop in one pounding fall, or smash through the cavern in a torrential stream. Instead, it flowed down slow and smooth, filling hundreds of stone pools that stretched in row after haphazard row down the cavern. It was a terrace of cups, pools huge and tiny, filled with water that was clear and fast and boiling, or slow and blue and steaming.
Over it all, the ceiling glimmered with light. Crystals grew thick overhead, covering the curved vault, making it into a massive geode. Most of the crystals were small, but here and there were larger ones, ranging from the size of Jiri's head to bigger than Morvius. In the center of those larger crystals, light gleamed, like white stars trapped in glass, and made the cavern as bright as a night in the open with the moon shining full.
In that shimmering light, nothing moved but water and steam.
Quiet and wary as a mouse deer, Jiri stepped into the open. Paths ran between some of the pools, smoothed into the wide lips of rock that separated them. Some looked natural, others had obviously been worked some time long ago, little steps carved into the soft stone leading upward. Jiri looked down, at the crack that swallowed the hot water with a low roar, then up. The source of the heat was there, and she started to pick her way around the pools and climb.
Her bare feet were as sure on the wet stone as they had been on the ceiling, but the heat was growing around her. It made her sweat, but the air was already full of moisture, and the sweat clung to her, soaking her clothes, dripping from her braids. It ran down her arms and over her hands, and Jiri silently thanked the spider spirit who had bargained his magic to her. That magic was probably the only thing that still let her cling to the sweat-coated handle of the bush knife. She needed the reassurance of its sharp presence as she crept up, her eyes darting around her and seeing only steam, her ears hearing only water, her skin feeling only heat.
Until something slammed into her back, like a punch but worse—so much worse.
Jiri went down, barely staying on the path that stretched between a small, boiling pool to one side and a sharp drop to a larger, steaming pool below. Hitting the stone tore the skin off of her knees and palms, but those pains were lost in the agony that roared between her shoulder blades. Jiri reached back, and her hand found something hard. She jerked it out, dropped it clattering beside her. A little knife with a short handle and a narrow, sharp blade. The blood that covered it almost hid the black smear coating the blade's tip.
Poison. Mikki's here, I missed her, and now I'm dying.
Gods and crocodiles.
"Jiri, right?"
Jiri raised her eyes and saw Mikki standing on a ledge over her. The halfling had stripped to a thin cotton shift in the heat, and the cloth was dark with sweat, as was the chestnut hair on her head and her feet. A leather belt ran from Mikki's shoulder to her hip, bristling with knives, and Jiri could see steel shining in the woman's child-sized hand.
"Good to see you again. It was getting boring in here. Steam baths aren't nearly as fun without cute boys to look at and rub your feet." Mikki wriggled her toes. "Did you bring any cute boys with you?"
Jiri turned her head away from the little assassin. She could feel the poison working, a numbness spreading out through her shoulder. It did nothing to take away the pain, but it made Jiri's arm feel distant, weak, and when she tried she could barely move it. Jiri pulled her good arm up and traced symbols of time and death and healing into the sweat that covered the base of her neck, whispering a plea to the green spirits of healing, hoping that the sounds of water would bury those words and keep Mikki from catching them.
"No?" The halfling said. "Don't tell me you came alone. You don't look so good."
But I'm feeling better, Jiri thought. The magic that she had taken from the spirits of medicine plants was already working, taking away the poison's numbness, restoring the feeling and motion to her arm and shoulder. It was just a temporary cure. In a few hours, the poison would come back, potent as ever. But a few hours was all Jiri needed. Beneath her, hidden by her body, her hand moved, reaching for the bag she had tucked beneath her shirt.
"I don't suppose you'll rub my feet."
Jiri turned her head back and looked up at the halfling. The little woman was looking down at her, a knife spinning between her slim fingers. "No," Jiri croaked, trying to put all the pain she could into her voice.
"So what good are you?" Mikki asked, catching her knife. "I've been here forever, waiting for Patima to finish her song and dance. I need something to do." She looked over the knife at Jiri. "Whittling?"
"You could stop Patima," Jiri said, her skin crawling. Her hand had reached her pouch, and her fingers fought with the strings that held it shut, trying to open it with as little motion as possible.
"Why would I want to do that?" Mikki cocked her head like a little bird.
"Because if she succeeds, she'll kill thousands," Jiri said.
"Maybe," Mikki said. "Not in a good way, though. Not up close, not so she can watch the life flicker out of their eyes. She just wants to become that thing and fall out of the sky and burn everyone beneath her. Boring."
"Then stop her." Jiri finally pulled the bag open and slipped her hand inside.
"Why would I do that?" Mikki started moving, pacing easily along the edge of the pool, heading toward the stairs that had been carved down to Jiri's level. "I may not agree with how she's going to do it, but I'm absolutely behind her killing lots and lots of people. By the way, if I see you try to cast again, I'm going to throw this knife through your throat
."
Jiri froze. But she could feel what she wanted, brushing light against her fingertips. "Why do you want my people to die?" she asked, trying to slow Mikki's approach, to distract the halfling while she brought her mind into focus.
"Your people?" Mikki said. "I don't care about your people. I don't care about anyone's people. Everyone's the same to me: amusing or in the way. What I want is upheaval. Disorder. Chaos." Mikki skipped lightly down the stairs to the ledge where Jiri lay. "You see, I don't get along well in a peaceful world. I don't fit, and the more orderly things become, the less fun I can have. So I need things like this. A little war, some disaster, a giant flame-angel wreaking havoc—things like that keep attention away from me, and give me a chance to play." Mikki stopped in front of Jiri and shrugged. "We're all just looking for our place in the world, and I've found mine. In the chaos, in the flames of civilization's fall—that's where I fit, where I'm happy. Now, would you like to take your last stab at me? Because I'm ready to take mine." She laughed, her voice like bright chimes mixed with the bubbling of the water.
"Yes," Jiri said, and deep inside her, in her head and body and soul, she reached for change.
This time, the change came easy, her anger actually helping her grab it, and she wrapped her mind around it, clinging close as her hand clutched at the smooth bone carvings of Oza's necklace. Her magic arced through her, and her body twisted, becoming longer, lighter, taller. Her head lengthened, her face now a muzzle filled with teeth. Her hands became claws, and her legs became strong and tipped with talons sharper than the bush knife she had carried. She crouched before the halfling, the great gutting claws on her feet twitching, and hissed, baring her teeth and ruffling out the deep green feathers that slicked her back and tail.
Mikki looked at her and laughed. "Good godlings, what are you supposed to be? A werechicken?"
By every single ancestor, I hate her. But Jiri didn't throw herself forward at the halfling, claws slashing, the way she wanted to. Mikki was too dangerous for that. Instead, she leapt, landing easily on the next terrace down, her long tail balancing her as she hit the narrow stone edge of the pool. The magic of the spider spirit was still with her, and her feet gripped the stone as she started running along the ledge, away from Mikki and toward a path that would take her up.
"Oh gods, I hope you stay in the shape when I kill you," Mikki called out. A knife slammed into the stone just to the side of Jiri's clawed foot, making her stumble and almost fall. "I'm going to make such a hat out of those feathers."
Jiri spun, dodging another knife, and ran to the edge of the pool and jumped. She hurtled at the wall that rose ahead of her like it was a great beast that she meant to slay, hit the stone and clung. She started to climb, trotting up the curved ceiling that arced over the cavern.
"Ah ah ah, none of that," Mikki called from below.
Jiri felt the knife hit her, slamming into her hip, ruffling feathers and then bouncing off the scales beneath, but digging in enough to hurt, to make her stumble. She lurched into one of the crystals that hung from the ceiling, and it snapped free from the stone with a sound like bone breaking, tumbling down to land with a splash in one of the pools below.
She saw it fall, even as she watched Mikki below her, the halfling running easily along the edge of the pools, graceful enough to keep up even as she drew another knife. She'll hit my neck or an eye eventually, or just bleed me out of a dozen wounds. And even if I get ahead of her, she'll follow, and I'll be caught between her and Patima. I have to end this.
Jiri jerked to a halt, and a knife flashed by her nose, slamming into a little crystal and shattering it like a dry skull. Below her, Mikki laughed like an excited child playing a game. Jiri whipped her head down to see where the halfling stood, pulling another knife out, then jerked it around to find what she needed. Not perfect, but good enough. With a lurch to the side, Jiri slammed her feathered shoulder into a glowing crystal that was almost as big as she was. It groaned and she heard a snap, but it didn't fall. She reared back to try again and felt the bite of a knife in her back, so near the wound of the other one. She screeched and spun on her talons, her tail catching the crystal she had just hit, cracking it free.
"Close, but not close enough," Mikki said from below, watching the crystal arc down, and she was right. The halfling didn't even have to move, as the crystal was set to land a good six feet away.
Right in the steaming water of the pool she stood beside.
The halfling barely had time to start raising her hands when the wave of boiling water hit her, drenching her. Her high-pitched shriek sounded so much like a child's, and Jiri felt her stomach twist as she watched Mikki fall back, her skin red and blistering, still screaming as she fell from the ledge.
There was a dull crack as the halfling hit the edge of the pool below, and the scream cut off. Mikki spun and splashed down in the pool below that one and lay still in the water. She floated in the brilliant blue, her head haloed by her hair and a drifting cloud of red, steam drifting up around her face, slack and innocent and childlike.
Jiri twisted her head away, but that image, seared into her spirit, didn't leave her as she ran from the room.
Chapter Twenty-Two
When Ashes Fall
The boiling stream filled the tunnel with steam and plastered down Jiri's feathers. At its end, she stepped down the wall to the floor and shook the water from her, staring at the thinning curtain of steam ahead. A space opened there, filled with heat and pale light. Jiri crouched, listening, and over the hissing boil of the stream running past she heard a voice, cracked and broken, barely recognizable as it ground out the same words, over and over.
"All-in-Ashes, come. All-in-Ashes, burn. All-in-Ashes, come and burn with me."
Jiri listened to that croaking chant, so full of hate and helpless anger and want, and she shook.
Being the makumo wasn't like being the snake. Jiri's emotions were just as strong, and they roiled through her. Anger, fear—but worse, pity, and a devastating understanding. Patima had suffered, suffered terribly.
But so did Oza. So did Hadzi.
So did Thirty Trees.
Jiri stepped through the curtain of steam into the last cavern.
This was a made place, not natural, though who or what had made it Jiri couldn't guess. The great room was a hexagon, with six black-mirror walls of obsidian, and the floor and the ceiling were made of that same glossy stone. The boiling stream of water that Jiri stood beside ran down a channel that cut a razor-sharp line across the floor, a line that ran to the center of the cavern and ended in a bubbling pool. That perfect circle of roiling water surrounded another hexagon, a low platform of dark stone shot with veins of gray, stretching twenty feet from side to side. Light shone up from beneath that pool, a dull white light like moonlight on bone. It gleamed off the metal chains that lay coiled at each of the platform's six points and lit the steam that curled up from the water, rising to vanish into the hole that marred the ceiling's center. An uneven circle, that hole was the only thing in this chamber that wasn't precise and perfect. Through the steam, Jiri could see glimmering flashes of rain falling from the storm raging far above.
It was a scar, melted into the stone of the ceiling, a wound that ran from this place where All-in-Ashes had been chained to the world outside. Centered beneath it, wreathed in steam and rain, Patima knelt. She held the kindi she had stolen close to her, its black wings pressed against her, and her right hand rested on the iron spike that ran through the carving's chest.
No, it didn't rest—the spike ran through Patima's hand, tearing through palm and bone and tendon, until it jutted out of the back of her hand, smoking with heat. Jiri could smell it now, ugly beneath the water smell, the reek of blood burning, of charred flesh.
She slid a step forward, her claws clicking on the obsidian floor.
A small sound, but Patima stopped her chant, tipped her head just enough to look at Jiri, then turned her eyes back up toward the distant sky.
Her fanged mouth ill-suited for speech, Jiri stayed silent, her muscles bunching, claws twitching. Can she move? Can she cast? It didn't matter. The fickle spirits of fate and hope had blessed Jiri and let her get here before Patima could attempt her joining. Now was the time to end this. Uncoiling from her crouch, Jiri ran forward. She reached the edge of the pool and leapt, steam scalding her belly as she passed over the water, then hit the stone where All-in-Ashes had been bound. It was hot under her, like the stone of a fire pit, but she ignored the pain of it and ran toward Patima, ready to kick out with her claws and knock that terrible kindi out of her hands.
"Too late," Patima whispered, and heat slammed Jiri to the ground.
The air became an inferno. Jiri choked, her nose and lungs burning, and tried to see. Over her, filling the ragged hole in the ceiling, stretched vast wings of smoke and ash. The wings spread from a flickering heart of fire, a roiling center of red and white shaped something like a man. It hung there, burning so bright in the curling darkness of its wings, and Jiri could feel her feathers shriveling, could hear the falling rain cracking into steam in the fiery spirit's aura.
"All-in-Ashes, come. All-in-Ashes, burn. All-in-Ashes, come burn with me." Patima's eyes flashed with triumph and the reflection of fire. "Burn with me."
I can still stop this. Pinned under all that heat, Jiri pushed herself forward, crawling across the stone, edging toward Patima. A little closer. Just a little closer, and my claws will reach.
Fire fell from above, a hissing drop of brightness. It hit the stone in front of Jiri, searing the scales at the tip of her muzzle, making her head jerk back. Over her, All-in-Ashes hovered, watching.
It won't let me kill her. But it didn't kill me. It could, just by coming a little closer. The pain of the spirit's heat would spike up to agony, and Jiri's flesh would char from her bones. All-in-Ashes could kill her that easily, but it chose not to.