Shaman's Curse

by Audrey Faye

  Shaman’s Curse

  Audrey Faye

  Contents

  Author Note

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Thank You

  Author Note

  Hello lovely readers,

  When I started this series, I had a plan. Four Fixer books and done—Kish, Tee, Iggy, Raven. But then the Star Stories happened, and as I was writing Raven’s book, it became very clear that those short stories were more than just companion tales, more than just backstory. They’re deeply necessary, particularly to the final two books.

  I fought it for a while because what series has short stories as part of the required reading? But Raven insisted, and I eventually figured out that her book wasn’t going to write itself with any coherence until I made the changes.

  So. This series will now be five novels (yup, Tatiana’s getting a book too…) and two sets of short stories. The reading order is:

  Destiny’s Song (Kish)

  Grower’s Omen (Tee)

  Star Stories: Beginnings (can be read here or after Iggy’s book)

  Fortune’s Dance (Iggy)

  Shaman’s Curse (Raven, this book)

  Daughter’s Need (coming fall 2017)

  Star Stories: Epilogues (coming fall 2017)

  If you skipped the first Star Stories collection when it was released, I suggest you read that before you carry on with Raven’s story. Or rather, Raven insists, and I’m a little more polite. :)

  Audrey

  Dedication

  To the still, small voice inside me…

  and how loud she can get if she needs to be.

  Raven’s story wouldn’t have been right

  without her.

  “You will be as strong as the tribe needs you to be. There is no other choice.”

  The Grandmothers

  1

  Sometimes peace is a hard thing to find.

  I scanned the horizon and decided now was as good a time as any to stop. I’d walked for hours, and I still hadn’t shaken the restlessness that had driven me out here. I perched on a flat rock with a good view and pulled a water tube out of my backpack. I hadn’t arrived at anywhere in particular, but when you grew up in a jungle, that was a familiar sensation.

  I fingered the small raven painted on the front of my pack. Iggy’s work, and even though it was small and simple, it captured both the searing intelligence of my name bird and the subtle, decorative, sneaky wisdom of my best friend. My pack had been full and waiting by the door when I’d woken up this morning. Iggy’s not-so-subtle signal that she knew I needed some time far beyond the confines of the tame parts of Stardust Prime.

  She wasn’t wrong, but I still wasn’t clear on what out there was trying to chase me down. Which meant it was time to stop walking, park myself somewhere, open to the energies, and let it find me.

  I shifted enough to mold myself to parts of the rock that weren’t trying to poke me in the backside. I’d seen inner-planet spiritual seekers foolish enough to sit on a sharp pebble for hours, but on my home world, that was the kind of silliness that would just get you laughed at. Quixal didn’t get enough visitors to have good interplanetary manners.

  I breathed deeply, the dry, arid heat tickling my throat in ways that still made me homesick, even after fifteen years. I tilted my head up to the noonday sun. Stardust Prime might lack water, but the nearest star kept us plenty warm, and on days like this, the feel of it caressing my cheeks was worth the four-hour hike to get out of the carefully controlled atmosphere that protected the inhabited zones. As Iggy well knew, I’d trade a little dangerous radiation for sanity any day. Some parts of me just couldn’t stand being tamed, and the rocks and sand of Stardust Prime’s backcountry had been keeping those parts of me alive ever since I got here.

  I grew up in a place where tame isn’t even a word, and children learn to walk alone in the jungle pretty much as soon as they can put one foot in front of the other. Communing with the great mother of all, right under our feet. Honoring her. Respecting her right to be wild and ours to be wild right along with her.

  I leaned over the edge of the rock, setting my hands on the yellow-and-brown sand. The great mother felt different here, but she breathed life into me all the same.

  I felt my spirit web unclenching. Releasing. Drinking in air that hadn’t been scrubbed, sunlight that hadn’t been carefully filtered, resonant energies that didn’t have hundreds of trained Talents mucking about in them every minute.

  To most people on Stardust Prime, the carefully managed vibrations around KarmaCorp headquarters were wonderfully soothing. If I was honest, it beat the energetic cesspool of most other inhabited places hands down—but it wasn’t this. The pure, solid strength of the great mother, her heartbeat under my hands and her breath in my lungs and her ancient wisdom wrapping all around me.

  Filling me up so that I might serve.

  That was the part no one here understood. Being a Fixer wasn’t just a job. It wasn’t a thing I set down at the end of the day so I could go luxuriate in a bubble bath and get to be Leticia Ravencroft for a while. In Quixali, there’s no word for “job.” No purpose in life that can be laid down—not with honor. Not until the work is finished, and in a culture that thought ten generations ahead, that pretty much never happened.

  I emptied myself into the universe as a Shaman, and then I came back to the great mother to fill up so I could go forth and empty again.

  People found that heavy when I talked about it, even the very dedicated people who were my three best friends. I’d never been able to fully explain just how it felt to know, in every molecule of my soul, that I existed to serve, that it was part of the symbiosis that fed all the important parts of who I was.

  An Anthro once told me that those kinds of cultural constructs were a throwback to times long past, when populations were small and most wilds were untamed. In the Federated Commonwealth of Planets, such strange ideas only persisted on the planets that had been closed to regular contact with outside worlds.

  Growing up on a closed planet, I’d had no idea what those protections meant, how they allowed something to thrive that the universe deeply needed and didn’t know how to cherish. The kind of wisdom that was only born in wild jungles, exhaled by people who breathed in the muggy, wet heat of creation every day of their lives. The grandmothers fought to close Quixal, and I grew up taking that battle totally for granted. Every day I was away, I bowed down deeper in gratitude—even as being away changed me.

  I reached for handfuls of sand and let it run through my fingers. My spirit web had calmed, and that was allowing me to catch the first edges of the disturbance that was chasing me. The one that was coming, but wasn’t quite here yet.

  I tilted my head back, letting the heat of the sun soften my web, giving the energies a molten glow. Not all Shamans can visualize the forces we work with, but this is something I learned long before KarmaCorp decided they had a claim to me.

  Or rather, before the grandmothers offered me the choice.

  I breathed into the softness of my web. Into the core, where the wisdom of the great mother and the grand
mothers still lived, would always live. It shone brighter, that core, out here in the lands where no one asked for conformity or believed in structure or found comfort in things that didn’t change. On Quixal, all those things were anathema, foreign to a people who shared their heartbeat with the jungle and took comfort from it.

  I curled over my knees, feeling the amusement in my spirit web, watching as a strand of the square that had formed the first day of trainee school glowed brighter. Iggy’s new and fascinating rebellious streak, resonating with what moved out here in the land of barren rocks and glorious freedom.

  An interesting shift for my inner-planet-bred dancing soul sister. I’d seen the tectonic shift in her spirit web when she came back from her last assignment, and I was seeing it now in the piece of her that I carried within me. One Dancer, doing a lot less smoothing, a lot less calming of anyone’s ruffled feathers—including her wild Shaman roommate.

  I wasn’t sad for her. The molten core of Iggy has always been beautiful, but it was a special kind of bright now. I was a little sad for me. When I’d arrived on Stardust Prime, I’d been so certain of my life’s calling—right up until the moment when I realized the rest of the galaxy lived a life so alien that they didn’t even touch their food with their fingers. The first in a very long line of cultural shocks, and I’d responded in the only way a resilient, tough eleven-year-old could. I swaddled myself in friends. Ones who took care of me, buffered me from the strange new world I’d walked into, and helped me hold space for the wild, strong, untamed Raven I needed to be.

  They’d shared their water so that I might keep breathing.

  And now they were changing, these friends of mine. Growing into the full wisdom of their adult hearts. I honored them for it—and out here on this rock under the beating sun, I could also grieve for what had been lost. We were still the four, but the world came for us now. It was tardy, in my never-humble opinion. On Quixal, the grandmothers would have scooped us all up long ago, training us for the tribal seats we would one day fill.

  I breathed into the grieving, into the lines of wisdom placed at my birth, and reached toward the disturbance-to-be that was seeking me. I checked first on the lines that ran back to home and tribe, but those were steady. Whatever was coming, the grandmothers were not yet concerned.

  No surprise, but I always checked. I was a Shaman of KarmaCorp, but that would never make me less a daughter of Quixal. That wasn’t something I made a lot of noise about, because divided loyalties made sophisticated Federation types nervous, but I was a child of the jungle and I always would be. Home was breathed into our lungs at the first moment of our birth, and nothing that happened after that could ever take it away.

  I let the wisdom of home wash over me for a bit, warming my cheeks just like the sun. Then I shifted, because the tail of what I was seeking had found me.

  Or rather, its messenger had.

  The questing finger of the second most powerful Shaman on Stardust Prime. People tended to forget that was one of Yesenia’s Talents, but I didn’t. On my world, she would have been a grandmother. On this one, she had a different title, but the end result was the same—she decided how I served.

  And right now, she wanted me in her office.

  2

  I left the trail dust on my feet—Yesenia might as well have visuals to remind her why I was grumpy. Five minutes on a rock hadn’t been nearly enough to meet my needs, even with the eight hours of hiking to get there and back. Which meant she had a cranky Shaman on her hands, and she was nowhere near blind enough to have missed me coming.

  Bean winced and tilted her head toward the boss lady’s door. “She’s waiting for you.”

  I didn’t bother to say that she’d sent for me. Bean would already know that, and more. She was good at her job for a lot of reasons, but her genius ability to keep up with Yesenia most days was at the top of the list.

  That thought made me slightly less cranky. I wasn’t a puppet on a string. I crossed this threshold of my own free will, and taking it out on the woman waiting for me was an immaturity I should have long since grown out of. I laid a small pebble down on Yesenia’s desk—one of the ones that had been trying to poke me in the behind while I’d been meditating. “You wanted to see me?”

  She studied the pebble, her lips twitching. “That’s a roundabout message, even for a Shaman.”

  It was as complex as its recipient. I’d been raised by some of the best symbolic gesturers in the galaxy. “You have an assignment for me, I presume.”

  Yesenia pulled her attention away from my interesting gift, her look one of the non-committal ones that scared most Fixers silly. “You won’t like this one.”

  I already knew that. I waited patiently. I’d learned the power of silence at the knees of the grandmothers.

  Another trace of amusement flashed in her eyes. “You’ll be headed into the Arayas sector, to the DaVinci cluster. You’ll be staying in Galieus.”

  I blinked. That wasn’t an assignment for a Journeywoman Fixer, even one who was actively avoiding Master status. The trinary of planets that made up the DaVinci cluster was the scientific and technological engine of the Federation.

  In short, they were really important and they didn’t like Fixers—especially Shamans. KarmaCorp might have rich psychological data on the scientific basis for Talents, but most of the outliers were Shamans. We were hard to test and even harder to explain, and that meant most of the rigorously rational people of Galieus would find me a hard pill to swallow. I raised an eyebrow to let Yesenia know I’d finished my mental computations. “Did they ask for a Shaman, or was this your choice?” The first was bad—the second, worse.

  She paused a beat. “Neither. The request came from Regalis.”

  Regalis Marsden, the infamous and iron-fisted head of the StarReaders, never made requests. I’d never met the man, but any Shaman worth her salt could feel the ego-laden tendrils of his presence all over the galaxy. They made me inherently nervous, partly because I’d grown up in a culture that made no apologies for its matrilineal biases, and partly because the man worked alone, no matter what KarmaCorp tried to make anyone believe. His energy had as solitary a signature as I’d felt anywhere in the universe.

  Apparently, the man who moved Fixers like chess pawns had decided I needed some time chilling my heels on an inner planet that coddled brainiac scientists. Which was pretty much my definition of assignment hell. The Etruscan sector was warm and cuddly by comparison. “Did he request me specifically?”

  “No,” said Yesenia calmly.

  My instincts flared. The disturbance I’d been trying to find in the backcountry had just landed with both feet. “Then why a Shaman for an inner-planet mission?” Our ability to read the woo worked a lot better when it wasn’t trying to function in an overcrowded, jammed-together crush of humanity.

  Yesenia didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow, but her entire being got harder. “Are you questioning my directives, Journeywoman?”

  I was, and we both knew it. “I know that three of my friends have been sent out on assignment this rotation and came back changed. You’re the one who sent them.”

  She met my gaze steadily. “I did.”

  For reasons I didn’t understand yet, she was allowing me the latitude to explore this. “Were their assignments intended to do that? To shape them?”

  A flick of a shoulder. “Perhaps.”

  I could feel the energies swirling. I took a quiet breath, reached for a reading, and tried not to let my frustration show as the shapes evaporated. I considered trying silence again, but I didn’t have the gravitas of a grandmother yet. “They’re going to rock the boat more, all three of them. It will make your life more difficult.”

  “You deeply underestimate my priorities, Shaman.” Her hardness took on crystalline edges. “I am encouraging the development of a small cadre of Fixers who can think independently. I would have thought you would appreciate that more than most.”

  I’d already figured that much
out, but it was astonishing to have it confirmed. “Because I think for myself?”

  “That.” She turned to look out her window, and every centimeter of her was elegant ice. “And because one day you will sit in this chair. Go ahead and look. We both know you’re capable.”

  Most Shamans couldn’t catch resonances of future events, but I sometimes could, especially if they involved me. Which meant I’d already looked, and she knew it. “It’s not certain yet.”

  She turned her head back to me, her eyes dark brown lasers. “Why have you not yet challenged the testing for Master Fixer status? You would certainly pass.”

  Her tone was ice queen to peon. Apparently, we were done conversing—it was her turn to ask the questions now. I assumed the appropriately subservient position of the ordinary Fixer I claimed to be and gave her an honest answer. “I don’t want to leave my friends behind. They steady me.”

  She brushed off my words like they’d been errant stray dust. “You don’t lack ambition.”

  I didn’t—but she didn’t get to treat my friends like space gnats. “You have no friends. You barely know your daughter. I don’t want that.”

  Her eyes snapped with the chill of deep space. “You cross a line, Journeywoman.”

  I had, but I’d been following something in the woo—and it hadn’t gone away yet. “I’m not wrong.”

  She paused a beat. “Perhaps when you sit in this chair, you will choose differently. Until you do, you would be wise not to judge so harshly. You don’t yet know quite as much as you think.”

  She was right, but I was barely hearing her, because in the snap of pain she’d let fly my direction, there had finally been enough of the shape I’d been hunting to catch a read, even if only for a moment. What I saw shone a light into what we’d all been seeing only dimly.

  The instantly recognizable golden eyes of the golden child. Tatiana Mayes.