by Lesley Smith
The roof of the cavern parted and blue skies greeted them, clouds churning against the fierce power of the waterfall. The walls of the cavern had been covered in drawings; ancient etchings that showed the creation myth. Trees, thousands of them, clustered together as far as the eye could see, and below them the River Sani wound through the valley, eventually ending in a great lake that seemed almost like a mirror, reflecting the vastness of the sky.
Vashi, once she stopped being stunned, was quietly describing what she saw to Saiara and the Oracle was just smiling. “It’s all right, Vashi. I’ve seen this place before.”
“Welcome to Canhei, daughters!” Taras said, acting like a boy who had just grown into his ieshiya.
Meresia had already mounted Nibian and pulled Vashi up beside her. “Come on, we should get to Baaren by nightfall.”
Jeiana realised that if they had continued down the pass, they would have descended into the valley. Instead they took the high road, further into the dense forest. The trail was unmarked but there was a path, beaten out by years of feet and baelish hooves. The forest smelled of life and vitality. Birds sang and forest cats jumped from branch to branch, chasing their prey.
They stopped only briefly, to relieve themselves, and then continued on.
Canhei was the valley and the mountain range beyond the Azure Grasslands of the Edoi. It was sacred ground and, in legend and heartfelt belief, the place where Ishvei stepped onto her world and created the first Kashinai from a lump of starstone.
They were heading for Baaren first, to the little town by the ocean where the Forgotten Sisters dwelled. The town was on the seashore, and if the tides did indeed rise, it would be swallowed whole and countless would be drowned. Saiara refused to let them die, not when safety was a few miles walk away.
Baaren Bay glittered in the sunlight as the trees parted, and white sand beckoned to them. Small boats with tail sails larger than even the biggest kerash clustered by the docks. It was a picturesque scene, so peaceful and perfect that it almost seemed wrong to go down there and disrupt the happiness of the Baareni people.
In the open grassland between the forest and the town proper, the other refugees were waiting. There was a field of thousands, some familiar and some not. People had come from as far as Gehol and Fenoi; others had traveled north with the Edoi and they were just the most recent of the newcomers. Most had already moved to the safety of Canhei’s sacred caves, preparing for the arrival of the final wave and for Saiara the Brave.
Lyse, the blind matriarch of the Order of the Forgotten Sisters was waiting for them in the sun-kissed groves which bordered the sacred grounds of their convent. It was a single building guarded by a small starstone gate on which was carved Kaiene’s most well-known saying in common hieratic, as it was on the gates of every temple in the land: “Aia speaks to all of us regardless of caste, creed, or clan, but only a few choose to listen to her words.”
Saiara, with Vashi at her side, walked up the path. Jeiana hugged Senna, their reunion as sweet as she had hoped it would be, and their ragtag band of refugees who had wanted to witness this historic meeting followed behind.
The young Oracle fell to her knees in supplication, showing a great respect to Lyse, one that Jashri had never earned. “My Lady.”
“Stand, child, for we are sisters in Aia’s blessing. I stand no higher than you and together we support a world which doesn’t want to hear our prophecy.” Lyse pulled Saiara to her feet. “Come, all of you, step into the cool. We have water and food, salves to cool your burning skins, and baths in which to wash.”
Vashi, Senna, and Jeiana later agreed that Lyse the Heretic was beautiful. She was thin with pale skin which made the golden veins dancing across her skin even more prominent. Her long, red hair was the colour of blood and copper caught in Thaeos’ light, bound in the Oracular style but also pooled around her neck in whips of fire signifying her rank as matriarch of this odd, forgotten order. Her robe was long and covered most of her skin, including her back, which even Vashi found odd, and she moved strangely, as if her legs weren’t quite connected to her body, and moved out of sync with her demands.
“Come, come. Before you get sun-sick. This is a bad time for travelling.” Lyse beckoned the people in, waiting for the long stream of tired, burned, and hungry souls to step into the darkness before she herself followed.
The cool darkness slammed into Vashi like a punch in the stomach. Her eyes were still strained by the brightness outside, and the sudden change in light and temperature caused her to stumble, falling flat on her face with a noise that made Saiara flinch.
“Vashi? What happened?”
“She has heat-fever.” Senna muttered an oath, hurrying over to help Vashi into a sitting position. Her face might bruise but that was the least of her worries. “Bring water quickly!”
Vashi drifted into unconsciousness, inner eyes seeing a different sky of stars emblazoned on her internal vision, until the healer poured ice cold water through her lips. The shock of it sent her retching back to consciousness; thrusting her back to reality with a violence that could have ripped her soul from her body if Jeiana hadn’t prevented it.
The indwelt woman helped Vashi up into a sitting position, but suddenly felt hot and tired, as if her last drop of strength had just been spent, and she swayed. “You’re all right…”
“Uryen’s Grace…” Senna said, shocked, staring at Jeiana’s arm. “Your arm. What happened?”
Jeiana’s arm was swollen and burning, a blister from wrist to elbow as if she had tried to cover her face from a naked flame and her arm had taken the brunt of the fire’s touch. Tendrils of infection were travelling, snaking veins of redness down Jeiana’s arm, heading for her elbow. The wound looked septic, and her fingers had that tint to them which didn’t bode well for their continued existence.
Senna beckoned to one of the sisters, a former attendant, and indicated Vashi. “Keep an eye on her for me a moment.”
“As you wish.”
“Ana, this is bad.” The healer almost moaned. “Oh Ana, this is very bad.”
And that was the last thing Jeiana heard as she passed out.
“Get me hot water, now!” Senna cried, the terrified fear in her voice. “And light, I need light!
Pulling out her supplies and her roll of blades, she pulled the lightstone from her pocket and illuminated the wound. It reminded her of a blister and yet blood dribbled out of it. When she made an incision to get a closer look and clean the wound, thick clots of bloody pus stained the clean white of the cloth. Jeiana moaned as she excised the pus and then washed out the wound with salt water. Even as she worked, she knew it was too late, Jeiana’s fingers were the wrong shade, blue-black and dying.
“Senna,” Vashi was insistent. “The bag, it’s for you. Open it.”
Senna looked at the bag. Jeiana had pressed into her hands, saying it was a gift brought from Abbia, but she’d not had time to open it. Everything had happened too quickly for her to think of it. She gasped as she saw the instruments, recognising them from diagrams in her scrolls. She realised quickly that scrolls and kit were never meant to be split, they belonged together.
While she waited and read, matching tool with description deep into the night, Jeiana slept. The next morning the incision Senna had made was aflame. It smelled of disease, just as Kadian’s burn had, but this was ten times worse and that left only one choice.
Senna paled, knowing Jeiana would not like her prognosis, much less the options left open to them. Then she looked for her new wrap of surgical tools and was glad she had brought both them and Uryen’s scrolls. She called for Taras, saying she needed strong men and the clanfather came quickly, bringing Kadian with him.
She quietly cursed but hid her fear. “Kadian, you’ve seen someone in the birthing position, yes?”
Vashi’s beloved blinked, startled. “Yes, of course.”
“Sit behind her as a lifemate would,” Senna turned to Taras. “Get me teirei, get me a flame an
d a cup of wine for her. Do it quietly, don’t argue. If she realises what’s happening it will distress her.”
The gruff Edoi Clanfather understood. You don’t show the calf you’re about to kill the knife, not if you want the meat to taste sweet. “Is this-?”
He didn’t finish and Senna nodded, a slow painful gesture that hurt. If she spoke, her resolve to save her beloved’s life would crack and fail. She needed to do this now. There would be time to weep later.
Uryen’s words from the scrolls she had saved rose in her mind: Sometimes, to heal, you must first harm. But do it quickly, with compassion, to save your patient further pain.
Senna observed her surroundings, she set her roll of instruments down by the fire and took the clay cup filled with wine Taras offered. In one section of her pouch, she kept dried herbs ground into a powder and forced into a stoppered glass tube. Mentally calculating the dosage; enough to dull her senses and ensure that while this was going hurt like falling into the heart of Thaeos himself, she wouldn’t remember it later.
She mixed the powder into the wine until it dissolved then took it to Jeiana.
“Ana, my love, drink this.”
Feverish and delirious, Ana was mumbling in a language that didn’t sound like any of the dialects the Kashinai spoke. Some of the words didn’t sound like words at all, but names. Strange incomprehensible names that rolled like magma onto ice from the Kashinai tongue.
Senna had to force the sweet liquid down her throat. It wasn’t pretty but half the things she did as a healer didn’t involve pretty. Cleaning up urine, shit, and vomit were ugly parts that every neophyte had to do before they got to learn, a foundation of respect that would make any aspiring healer realise their patients’ lives were more important than anything else.
She took one of the blades from Uryen’s kit and held it in the flame, waiting until the tip turned red and then white. The quicker the wound was cauterised the less chance of Ana, of Jeiana, bleeding out and the less chance of that cursed infection getting its teeth back into her.
“Taras!”
“I’ve got her.”
“No,” Ana whimpered, semi-conscious and drowning as Uryen’s Mercy tried to suck her under. “No, please, it’s my writing hand. I need it, please, please Senna.”
“Kadian, do what you can for her.”
The boy…oh she felt so bad for making him do this, he tried not to sound as scared as he was as he tightened his legs around her waist, holding her body in place while Taras waited to clamp down on her arm. “How will you know?”
Senna cursed herself then, begging the forgiveness of all the gods and Jeiana herself. Aia would forgive her but she wasn’t so sure about Ana. “I’ll know.”
Kadian was speaking gently in Ana’s ear, telling her it would all be okay. To just close her eyes and float on nothingness, but she seemed determined, even in delirium, to fight him. Senna’s gut churned as she held the blade, feeling the heat creeping up the baelish-bone handle. It was a large knife, better used by butchers than healers, but it was one of Senna’s most prized possessions. She had been drawn to them for their smooth blades, their balance in her hand, and for their ability to cut through muscle, bone and skin.
Ana’s weeping delirium turned to soft moans as Kadian played her ieshiya like it was a sheui. He made long strokes sweeping from her tailbone to her neck. Senna nearly shivered at the promise of it, for a second wishing she was lying in her lover’s place. Then, at the moment before the crescendo, before Ana cried out in pleasure and her brain muddled the signals, Kadian jammed a cloth-wrapped stick into her mouth so she didn’t bite her tongue in half. Senna whipped her blade from the fire as Taras pinned her arm and shoulder hard against the clean sheets on the floor, his hand on hers was the last thing Jeiana would feel with her hand.
For a moment she soared with celestial spirits on a scream of bliss, and then the agony of metal and heat plunged her into hell.
Senna—shutting out the screams as only a focused healer could—worked quickly, able to break the bone and cut through the joint of the elbow in a matter of seconds, which, to Ana must have seemed like hours. The wound sizzled as the blade passed through, stemming the blood and leaving a strange tang in the air, like cooking blood stew. Taras gagged and yet held on even as Jeiana screamed and then, it was done.
Taras held Jeiana’s lifeless arm like it was a newborn child, its ieshiya not yet attached and hanging from the back of its neck, limp and lifeless. He saw beyond the snaking infection, beyond her rotting fingers and the congealed blood-bruise and instead focused on the miracle: on the five nimble fingers, the opposable thumb and the way the bones linked together to make something capable of creating works of art or causing another person to cry in pleasure.
Her fingers moved, residual memory in the nerves slowly shutting down, and after a few moments her hand stilled, an odd colour in the sunset, and the old clanfather reverently placed it out of sight, wrapping it up in a swath of paper as you would a joint of meat bought from any butcher in any of the great cities.
He would burn it later, cremate the hand so that it would not haunt Ana for the rest of her life. For now he held it like he had his dead son. It was hard for him not to think of Ishran; and he left the healer and her lover, indicating Kadian should follow him, and went out into the world with her hand in his arms, hoping desperately she would not follow it into the darkness.
Outside Kadian fell to his knees and retched, bringing up vomit and bile until his stomach was empty and he collapsed onto the grass.
“You’ll be all right, boy.” Taras felt bad for his son and gently picked him up. “Come, let’s get a mug of something. We both need it.”
“As you wish, Clanfather.” Kadian wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve.
“But first, let us find a quiet spot and do what must be done.”
It didn’t take too long to cremate Jeiana’s infected hand. They took it to the nunnery’s small temple, offered it up on the altar and set it alight along with numerous sticks of incense to chase the foul, putrid smell of infection with the sweeter scent of lilies and callow-wood. The sight of it was made even more eerie by the lightstones which were reflected in the altar’s sacred mirror.
Then Taras quietly sat and wept.
Time returned, marked by the sound of droplets of water. The noise was rhythmic and Caspa groaned. His head throbbed. His wrist was broken, he knew that instantly, remembered hearing the bone snap even through the haze of memory.
“Caspa?” Jio’s voice sounded far away, echoing through the cavern.
“I’m here!” He called back.
The darkness was awe-inspiringly complete. No light, just sound and smell. The tang of salt mingled with his bloodied head and Caspa realised he could taste weed. The sea had knocked him right off his feet. He could hear the others’ oaths and moans in the air. How many had lived from their all too small number?
He pulled himself upright, wincing. “Jio?”
“Coming,” Jio’s voice was closer now. “Are you all right?”
“Bruised. I think my wrist is broken,” Caspa said. “Any idea where we are?”
“The wave swept us about a half mile from the Grotto,” Jio replied. “It’s flooded but the tree still stands.”
“How did you find your way back?”
The boy had laughter in his voice. “I’m Edoi. I can walk in the dark as if it was day.”
“Where’s Rand? Is he dead?”
“Waiting for us in the Grotto. He’s all right.” Jio put Caspa’s good hand on his shoulder. “Come on, let’s get you back and your wounds tended to.”
The Grotto had been ripped to pieces but the tree still stood, its branches covered in weed, though some were broken off and floating in the water. The cavern was half full of water and it would take time before it subsided. Caspa realised what had happened, that Aiaea had been swallowed by a great wave, just as Saiara had foreseen.
Caspa sat with his eyes closed as Jio a
nd Rand bandaged his broken wrist. That was when he first heard the music. It danced on the silence, almost too quiet to be heard. It sounded sad, like crying.
“What is that?”
Rand looked at him oddly, and Caspa realised he was questioning if more than just his wrist was damaged. “What?”
“The music, can’t you hear it?”
Jio shook his head. “There’s just the waves.”
“No, it’s more than that.” Caspa felt like a predator who had spotted prey and had no plans on giving up on it. He stood the second the other two men had finished binding his wrist and listened, honing in on the music. “It never used to be here.”
“Air trapped perhaps?” Rand suggested.
“No, it’s too…random for that.”
It was impossibly quiet, like the moment after a musical composition ends and before people begin to clap. It made him feel sad, impossibly so, and he waded into the water, into a small pool. There he found a strange floating thing, more like a mushroom than a fish or creature. It was attached to a stalk as thick as a man’s arm that leaked sap like a Kashinai did blood. Strangely, he wasn’t in the least bit surprised when a tendril-like vine gently encircled his wrist and bit into his skin, disappearing into a vein.
The music became so loud he wanted to cover his ears as images poured into his mind. He saw a forest of plants underwater, saw the water recede so much that for a moment, the great plants that were higher than the tallest trees on land tasted sunlight for the first time since the Singers had fallen back into the ocean thousands upon thousands of cycles before.
Then the Great Wave and the Devastation had fallen upon them. The young had been ripped from their parents, dragged into the depths and impaled or crushed. Some had been luckier and settled where their stalks might sink into the silt and one day regrow, even if took centuries, millennia of careful and focused healing.