by R. F. Kuang
She thought she heard a bird’s cackle.
Rin saw in the flames the image of Mai’rinnen Tearza. She was weeping.
The fire doesn’t give, the fire takes, and takes, and takes.
Rin screamed a wordless scream. Her voice was lost in the fire.
A great column of flame erupted from the site of Altan’s immolation.
A wave of heat rolled out in every direction, bowling over the Federation soldiers like they were straw. It hit Rin like a punch to the gut, and she pitched backward into the inky black water.
Chapter 25
She swam for hours. Days. An eternity. She remembered only the beginning, the initial shock as her body slammed into the water, how she thought she had died because she could not make her body obey, and because her skin prickled where it hit the water as if she had been flayed alive. If she craned her head she could see the research base burning. It was a beautiful burn, crimson and gold licking up in tendrils to the softly dark sky.
At first Rin swam the way she had been trained to at the Academy—a stroke with a minimized profile so her arms would not exit the water. The Federation archers would shoot her dead in the water if they saw her, if there were any left alive . . . Then the fatigue set in, and she simply moved her limbs to keep afloat, to keep drifting, without any consideration for technique. Her strokes became mechanical, automated, and formless.
Even the water had warmed from the heat of Altan’s conflagration. It felt like a bath, like a soft bed. She drifted, and thought it might be nice to drown. The ocean floor would be quiet. Nothing would hurt. There would be no Phoenix, no war, nothing at all, only silence . . . In those warm, dark depths she would feel no loss at all . . .
But the sight of Altan walking to his death was seared into her memory; it burned at the forefront of her thoughts, more raw and painful than the salt water seeping into her open wounds. He commanded her from the grave, whispering orders even now . . . She did not know if she merely hallucinated his voice, or if he was truly with her, guiding her.
Keep swimming, follow the wings, don’t stop, don’t give up, keep moving . . .
She trained her eyes on the constellation of the Phoenix. Southeast. You must swim to the southeast.
The stars became torches, and the torches became fire, and she thought she saw her god. “I feel you,” said the Phoenix, undulating before her. “I sense your sacrifice, your pain, and I want it, bring it to me . . . you are close, so close.”
Rin reached a shaking hand toward the god, but then something jolted in her mind, something primal and terrified.
Stay away, screamed the Woman. Stay far away from here.
No, Rin thought. You can’t keep me away. I’m coming.
She floated senselessly in the black water; arms and legs spread-eagled to remain afloat. She wavered in and out of reality. Her spirit went flying. She lost all sense of direction; she had no destination. She went wherever she was pulled, as if by a magnetic power, as if by an entity beyond her control.
She saw visions.
She saw a storm cloud that looked like a man gathering over the mountains, with four cyclones branching off like limbs, and when she stared at the source, two intelligent spots of cerulean peered back at her—too bright to be natural, too malicious to be anything but a god.
She saw a great dam with four gorges, the largest structure she had ever seen. She saw water gushing in every direction, flooding the plains. She saw Chaghan and Qara standing somewhere high, watching the fragments of the broken dam stream into the shifting river mouth.
She brushed against them, wondering, and Chaghan jerked his head up.
“Altan?” Chaghan asked hopefully.
Qara looked to her brother. “What is it?”
Chaghan ignored his sister, gazing around as if he could see Rin. But his pale eyes went straight through her. He was looking for something that no longer existed.
“Altan, are you there?”
She tried to say something, but no sound came out. She didn’t have a mouth. She didn’t have a body. Scared, she flitted away, and then the void was pulling her through again so that she couldn’t have gone back if she’d tried.
She flew through the present to the past.
She saw a great temple, a temple built of stone and blood.
She saw a familiar woman, tall and magnificent, brown-skinned and long-limbed. She wore a crown of scarlet feathers and ash-colored beads. She was weeping.
“I won’t,” said the woman. “I will not sacrifice the world for the sake of this island.”
The Phoenix shrieked with a fury so great that Rin trembled under its naked rage.
“I will not be defied. I will smite those who have broken their promises. And you . . . you have broken the greatest vow of all,” hissed the god. “I condemn you. You will never know peace.”
The woman screamed, collapsed to her knees, and clutched at something within her, as if trying to claw her very heart out. She glowed from inside like a burning coal; light poured through her eyes, her mouth, until cracks appeared in her skin and she shattered like rock.
Rin would have screamed, too, if she had a mouth.
The Phoenix turned its attention to her, just as the void dragged her away again.
She hurtled through time and space.
She saw a shock of white hair, and then everything stood still.
The Gatekeeper hung in a vacuum, frozen in a state of suspended animation, a place next to nowhere and on the way to everywhere.
“Why did you abandon us?” she cried. “You could have helped us. You could have saved us.”
His eyes shot open and found her.
She did not know how long he stared at her. His eyes bored into the back of her soul, searched through all of her. And she stared back. She stared back, and what was she saw nearly broke her.
Jiang was no mortal. He was something old, something ancient, something very, very powerful. And yet at the same time he was her teacher, he was that frail and ageless man whom she knew as human.
He reached out for her and she almost touched him, but her fingers glided through his and touched nothing, and she thought with a sickening fright that she was drifting away again. But he uttered a word, and she hung still.
Then their fingers met, and she had a body again, and she could feel, feel his hands cup her cheeks and his forehead press against hers. She felt it acutely when he grasped her shoulders and shook her, hard.
“Wake up,” he said. “You’re going to drown.”
She hauled herself out of the water onto hot sand.
She took a breath, and her throat burned as if she had drunk a gallon of peppercorn sauce. She whimpered and swallowed, and it felt like a fistful of rocks was trying to scrape its way down her esophagus. She curled into herself, rolled over, hauled herself to her feet, and attempted a step forward.
Something crunched under her foot. She lurched forward and tripped onto the ground. Dazed, she glanced around. Her ankle had wedged inside something. She wiggled her foot and lifted it up.
She dragged a skull out of the sand.
She had stepped inside a dead man’s jaw.
She shrieked and fell backward. Her vision pulsed black. Her eyes were open but they had shut down, refusing all sensory input. Bright flashes of light swam before her eyes. Her fingers scrabbled through the sand. It was full of hard little objects. She lifted them out and brought them to her eyes, squinting until her vision returned.
They weren’t pebbles.
Little bits of white stuck up in the sand everywhere she looked. Bones. Bones, everywhere.
She was kneeling in a massive graveyard.
She trembled so hard the sand beneath her vibrated. She doubled over onto her knees and gagged. Her stomach was so shrunken that with every dry heave, she felt as if she had been stabbed with a knife.
Get out of the target line. Was that Altan’s voice echoing in her head, or her own thoughts? The voice was harsh, commanding. She obe
yed. You are visible against white sand. Take cover in the trees.
She dragged herself across the sand, heaving every time her fingers rolled over a skull. She shook with tearless sobs, too dehydrated to cry.
Go to the temple. You’ll find the way. All paths lead to the temple.
Paths? What paths? Whatever walkways had once existed had long ago been reclaimed by the island. She knelt there, staring stupidly at the foliage.
You’re not looking hard enough.
She crawled up and down the tree line on her hands and knees, trying to find any indication of something that might have been a trail. Her fingers found a flat rock, the size of her head, just visible under a veneer of grass. Then another. And another.
She hauled herself to her feet and stumbled along the path, holding the surrounding trees for support. The rocks were hard and jagged, and they cut her feet so that she left bloody footprints as she walked.
Her head swam; she had been so long without food or drink that she hardly remembered she had a body anymore. She saw, or imagined, grotesque animals, animals that should not exist. Birds with two heads. Rodents with many tails. Spiders with a thousand eyes.
She continued following the path until she felt as if she’d walked the length of the entire island. All paths lead to the temple, the ancestors had told her. But when she came to the clearing at the center, she found only ruins among the sand. She saw shattered rocks engraved in a calligraphy she could not read, a stone entrance that led nowhere.
The Federation must have torn down the temple twenty years ago. It must have been the first thing they did, after they had butchered the Speerlies. The Federation had to destroy the Speerlies’ place of worship. They had to remove their source of power, to ruin and smash it so completely so that no one on Speer could seek the Phoenix for help.
Rin ran through the ruins, searching for a door, some remnant of the holy area, but she found nothing. Nothing was there.
She sank to the ground, too numb to move. No. Not like this. Not after all she had been through. She had almost begun to cry when she felt the sand giving way under her hands. It was sliding. Falling somewhere.
She laughed suddenly. She laughed so hard that she gasped in pain. She fell over on her side and clutched her stomach, shrieking with relief.
The temple was underground.
She fashioned herself a torch from a stick of dry wood and held it before her as she descended the stairs of the temple. She climbed down for a long time. The air became cool and dry. She rounded a corner and could no longer see sunlight. She found it difficult to breathe.
She thought of the Chuluu Korikh, and her head reeled. She had to lean against the stone and took several heaving breaths before her panic subsided. This was not the prison under the stone. She was not walking away from her god. No—she was getting closer.
The inner chamber was entirely devoid of sound. She could hear none of the ocean, not the rustling of wind or sounds of wildlife above. But silent though it was, the temple was the opposite of the Chuluu Korikh. The silence in the temple was lucid, enhancing. It helped her focus. She could almost see her way upward, as if the path to the gods were as mundane as the dirt on which she trod.
The wall formed a circle, just like the Pantheon, but she saw only one plinth.
The Speerlies needed only one.
The entire room was a shrine to the Phoenix. Its likeness had been carved in stone in the far wall, a bas-relief thrice her size. The bird’s head was turned sideways, its profile etched into the chamber. Its eye was huge, wild, and mad. Fear struck her as she looked into that eye. It seemed furious. It seemed alive.
Rin’s hands moved instinctively to her belt, but she didn’t have poppy with her. She realized she didn’t need it, the same way that Altan had never needed it. Her very presence inside the temple placed her halfway to the gods already. She entered the trance simply by gazing into the furious eyes of the Phoenix.
Her spirit flew up until it was stopped.
When she saw the Woman, this time she spoke first.
“Not this again,” Rin said. “You can’t stop me. You know where I stand.”
“I warn you one more time,” said the ghost of Mai’rinnen Tearza. “Do not give yourself to the Phoenix.”
“Shut up and let me through,” Rin said. Starved and dehydrated, she had no patience for warnings.
Tearza touched her cheek. Her expression was desperate. “To give your soul to the Phoenix is to enter hell. It consumes you. You will burn eternally.”
“I’m already in hell,” Rin said hoarsely. “And I don’t care.”
Tearza’s face twisted in grief. “Blood of my blood. Daughter of mine. Do not go down this path.”
“I’m not going down your path. You did nothing,” said Rin. “You were too scared to do what you needed to do. You sold our people. You acted from cowardice.”
“Not cowardice,” Tearza said. “I acted from a higher principle.”
“You acted from selfishness!” Rin screamed. “If you hadn’t given up Speer, our people might still be alive right now!”
“If I hadn’t given up Speer, the world would be burning down,” said Tearza. “When I was young, I thought that I would have done it. I sat where you sit now. I came to this temple and prayed to our god. And the Phoenix came to me, too, for I was his chosen ruler. But I realized what I was about to do, and I turned the fire on myself. I burned away my body, my power, and Speer’s hope for freedom. I gave my country to the Red Emperor. And I maintained peace.”
“How is death and slavery peace?” Rin spat. “I have lost my friends and my country. I have lost everything I care about. I don’t want peace, I want revenge.”
“Revenge will only bring you pain.”
“What do you know?” Rin sneered. “Do you think you brought peace? You left your people to become slaves. You let the Red Emperor exploit and abuse and mistreat them for a millennium. You set Speer on a path that made centuries of suffering inevitable. If you hadn’t been such a fucking coward, I wouldn’t have to do this. And Altan would still be alive.”
Mai’rinnen Tearza’s eyes blazed red, but Rin moved first. A wall of flame erupted between them. Tearza’s spirit dissolved in the fire.
And then she was before her god.
The Phoenix was so much more beautiful up close, and so much more terrible. As she watched, it unfurled its great wings behind her back and spread them. They stretched to the ends of the room. The Phoenix tilted its head to the side and fixed her with its ember eyes. Rin saw entire civilizations rise and fall in those eyes. She saw cities built from the ground up, then burning, then crumbling into ash.
“I’ve been waiting for you for a long time,” said her god.
“I would have come sooner,” said Rin. “But I was warned against you. My master . . .”
“Your master was a coward. But not your commander.”
“You know what Altan did,” Rin said in a low whisper. “You have him forever now.”
“The boy could never have done what you are able to do,” said the Phoenix. “The boy was broken in body and spirit. The boy was a coward.”
“But he called you—”
“And I answered. I gave him what he wanted.”
Altan had won. Altan had achieved in death what he couldn’t do in life because Altan, Rin suspected, had been tired of living. He couldn’t wage the protracted war of vengeance that the Phoenix demanded, so he’d sought a martyr’s death and gotten it.
It’s harder to keep living.
“And what do you want from me?” the Phoenix inquired.
“I want an end to the Federation.”
“How do you intend to achieve that?”
She glowered at the god. The Phoenix was playing with her, forcing her to spell out her demand. Forcing her to specify exactly what abomination she wanted to commit.
Rin forced the last parts of what was human out of her soul and gave way to her hatred. Hating was so easy. It filled a h
ole inside her. It let her feel something again. It felt so good.
“Total victory,” she said. “It’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“What I want?” The Phoenix sounded amused. “The gods do not want anything. The gods merely exist. We cannot help what we are; we are pure essence, pure element. You humans inflict everything on yourselves, and then blame us afterward. Every calamity has been man-made. We do not force you to do anything. We have only ever helped.”
“This is my destiny,” Rin said with conviction. “I’m the last Speerly. I have to do this. It is written.”
“Nothing is written,” said the Phoenix. “You humans always think you’re destined for things, for tragedy or for greatness. Destiny is a myth. Destiny is the only myth. The gods choose nothing. You chose. You chose to take the exam. You chose to come to Sinegard. You chose to pledge Lore, you chose to study the paths of the gods, and you chose to follow your commander’s demands over your master’s warnings. At every critical juncture you were given an option; you were given a way out. Yet you picked precisely the roads that led you here. You are at this temple, kneeling before me, only because you wanted to be. And you know that should you give the command, I will call something terrible. I will wreak a disaster to destroy the island of Mugen completely, as thoroughly as Speer was destroyed. By your choice, many will die.”
“Many more will live,” Rin said, and she was nearly certain that it was true. And even if it wasn’t, she was willing to take that gamble. She knew she would bear full responsibility for the murders she was about to commit, bear the weight of them for as long as she lived.
But it was worth it.
For the sake of her vengeance, it was worth it. This was divine retribution for what the Federation had wreaked on her people. This was her justice.
“They aren’t people,” she whispered. “They’re animals. I want you to make them burn. Every last one.”
“And what will you give me in return?” inquired the Phoenix. “The price to alter the fabric of the world is steep.”
What did a god, especially the Phoenix, want? What did any god ever want?