And both Tsua and Lo’a have taught me enough to make me realize the crystals we mined on Shiara aren’t the only material that can store energy. “This desosa didn’t even like me trying to do something as small as a wardstone. You think it’ll like me ordering it into an entirely new shape?”
“It’s not a new shape, though,” Sanii insists. “You’re not trying to make it do something new, you’d be giving it a way to return to how it’s supposed to be. Like removing a dam.”
“That’s…” I blink, looking between their faces. And everyone else’s. Everyone is watching me expectantly. “You think I can do this? Tsua would be so much better at it.”
“I can help you,” she says, nodding, “but no one I’ve ever seen—not in centuries—has your skill shaping the desosa. You’ve used it in ways far beyond what we thought fykinas could do, and so yes, Khya. I do think you can do this.”
“But…” I glance at Wehli, whose right arm now ends a few inches below his shoulder. He’s physically healed, but will be mentally reeling for a long time. How can he of all people look at me without doubt? “Okay, but even if we can fix the katsujo, or whatever Osshi called it, what’s next? We still need to figure out how to kill an immortal. And we won’t know for sure if it works until we try it against him.”
“We’ll know, because we’ll test whatever we create on us.”
My pulse jumps. “No we will not.”
“There isn’t another option, Khya.” Tsua’s smiling gently. Reassuringly. But…
She can’t be serious. “Putting aside the fact that this will kill you if it works, which should— No, don’t put that aside. If you die, not only will we lose everything you know and your ties to the clans on Shiara, we’ll lose the only people with a chance of defeating the bobasu in any kind of fight. How can you ask us to allow that?”
“Because being sure of the effectiveness of the weapon is more important,” Tsua says, still gentle. “Chio, Zonna, and I might be able to stand against Varan in combat, but that’s all we could do, Khya—stand against him. Long enough for the rest of you to get away, maybe, but not forever. Definitely not long enough to win. We’d simply delay defeat a while.”
“And Varan has seven more bobasu on his side than we do,” Zonna reminds me. As if I could forget. “We won’t win unless we can make them as mortal as you are.”
Zonna looks at Tsua, uncomfortable but seemingly resolute.
“All of you, though?” I swallow, making myself hold Tsua’s gaze. “You’re asking me to kill all three of you?”
“No,” she says. “I’m asking you to accept that this is necessary. When we have something ready, we’ll do it ourselves.”
“But if it works you’ll die.” And since Ryogo obviously isn’t the afterlife Varan told us it was, what will death send them to?
Still smiling gently, Tsua shakes her head. “We’ve seen so many generations come into life and leave it that we stopped counting. We watched the elements change the shape of Shiara over eons and seen the animals evolve to better survive. After more than five hundred years, we don’t fear death, even if only nothingness follows.”
“And you’re not asking us to do this, we’re offering,” Chio adds. “I should’ve stopped Varan before he went on his mad quest for immortality. I made a mistake, and countless people have paid for it. This is a chance to help you succeed where I failed. Don’t tell me I’m not allowed, child.”
Sacrifice, when it’s made with purpose and for the good of the clan, is a noble and honorable act. To sacrifice your life for those you’re charged with protecting will earn you rewards in this life and the next.
I’ve heard the lesson my whole life. The part about honors in the afterlife might not be true, but the ideal is deeply buried in my heart. I can’t deny someone else their choice.
Besides, there’s no way I could stop them. Even if I trapped them in a warded room, what would any of us gain? Rebuilding the banks of the katsujo under our feet is asking me to knowingly take us a step closer to watching them die. Still, I know I can’t—and won’t—refuse.
So instead of focusing on what I can’t change, I spend the next three days preparing, especially testing the reactions of the desosa at different times and at varying points in its tidal cycle. It doesn’t react when I use my powers within the clearing, without drawing on the Kaisuama’s latent desosa. It flares and shifts when I test the edges of the energy, not trying to use it, just touching the frayed ends. When I approach the buried desosa with intent, it surges.
It really is like a wounded teegra. All it wants is to stop hurting and to be left alone. Since we can’t do the latter, hopefully finding a way to help with the former will be enough to keep the vein of power from extracting too much more flesh and blood from us.
Even with everything I’ve learned about the katsujo, we try to find a way to protect me from another energy blast. Tsua, Zonna, and Chio assure me they’ll stay by my side to help, and the others promise they’ll be well out of the way, but it’s hard to imagine our second attempt going much better than the first.
But here I am, sitting at the edge of the clearing and wearing every wardstone we have left. The andofume are arranged behind me, and the rest of the squad is about to leave the valley, ordered by Tyrroh up to the path we used to traverse the ridge.
Tessen holds out his hand, taking mine and pulling me against his chest as soon as I close my fingers around his. “I wish I could tell you to stop getting yourself into situations like this.”
“Situations like what?” I wrap my arms around his waist.
“Where the chances are too high you might not make it out.” He turns his face toward my throat, almost hiding against me. “You wouldn’t be you if you weren’t always taking too many risks, but bellows, Khya. I hate watching you face them.”
“I’ll be as careful as I can be.” I’m just not sure what a promise like that means today. There’s only so much control I have over what’s about to happen.
“You’d better be.” His hold on me tightens as he lifts his head, and the kiss he plants on my lips is hard and sharp. Then he cups my face and kisses me again, this time softer, gentle and much more like a promise than a goodbye.
Tyrroh orders the squad’s retreat as soon as Tessen steps away from me. Sanii, Rai, and the others nod or wave or wink as I watch them sling their packs over their shoulders and disappear into the trees. Only after they’re well out of sight do I turn to the stone clearing.
“Think of it like shaping clay,” Tsua advised yesterday. “You’re not altering the material, you’re only giving it a shape better suited to your needs. And its own.”
It makes sense in theory, but this isn’t clay. This is like lightning, and even those with the power to create sparks of lightning can’t do more than give it fleeting shape and direction. I have to find a way to make lightning act as both thread and needle, and then use it to close a wound.
I breathe in deep cycles until my head feels airy, close my eyes, and reach for the power roiling under us. Once I’m sure the others are safely away, I begin.
I don’t pull or even grab; instead, I let myself sink into the waves of energy. They engulf me, spin me, toss me around. It’s dizzying. I almost open my eyes just to give myself a point of reference, but I remember Tsua’s warning. I’m in this now. There’s no coming out of here until I finish my mission. Or perish attempting it.
My physical hands are pressed against the cracked gray stone of the clearing, but it’s like I’ve been split in two—I feel the stone under my palms even as I watch myself from far below that surface. The shock at seeing myself is small, barely a flicker in my mind; relief is stronger. There I am. Clearly fine. Whatever’s happening to my senses, I am fine.
I settle into this strange separation and focus on the pattern in the chaos. I find edges. Beginnings. Fissures. Ends. Eventually I find enough pieces to see the true scope of the katsujo, what it once was and where Varan broke through, splintering the pow
er in ways it couldn’t fix. But that doesn’t mean it’s not fixable.
An idea slowly forms, one that’ll take time. And I’ll have to split myself further.
Sensation gets stronger—the cold air on my face, the prickling pain of the overexcited desosa against my mind, the smooth stone under my hands, the dizzy giddiness of feeling as though I’m made entirely of magic.
Above, using only the energy from within myself, I add weight to the press of my hands against the stone, spreading a web of ward lines through the broken rock. Usually I’m careful to weave my magic into something solid—what’s the point of a ward with holes in it? Now I leave spaces and hope the desosa inside the katsujo won’t notice the trap closing until it’s too late.
Below, I distract. Poke. Push. Prod. Pull. Move the katsujo’s energy away from the surface and back toward the lines it was meant to travel. It lazily struggles at first, moving like water to flood the places I’m not guarding, and then my net reaches the opposite end of the clearing, a bandage covering the worst of the katsujo’s wound. I latch the end of my ward to the opposite side of the clearing just as the katsujo’s energy brushes the web.
Then it screams. It rails and flares, slamming me up and trapping me between the ward and the fire of the katsujo. The desosa flattens me, crushing me so tight against the webbing of my ward I feel it slicing me into pieces. I lose my physical self, lose the feel of the rock and the cold and—
Pressure on my shoulder. Holding me together, reminding me where I am outside the katsujo, and giving me space to think.
I absorbed the katsujo’s desosa to keep it from attacking me at first, but it isn’t me. The web is; I created it out of the energy that rises inside me. It is me, and I can always shape my own magic. Which means I can pass through without losing pieces of myself, using it like a screen to help me leave behind what I picked up inside the katsujo. Most of it, at least.
I carry a single thread of the katsujo through the gap, quickly wrapping it around and through my ward web. Give it purpose, Tsua told me, so that’s what I do. The katsujo’s energy latches onto the frame I created, filling in the holes and merging my magic and its own until I feel something inside me release. A knot tied off. A breath exhaled. A mission finished.
But the release leaves me detached and drifting. The connection to my body feels frayed, distant, unimportant, but there’s a whisper telling me to fight.
Claw your way back to the world if you have to. You promised too much to too many people to fail now. Fight, Khya.
This time, though, a promise isn’t enough. Neither is focusing on the memory of rock under my palms and cold on my skin and weight on my shoulders and voices in my ears. They’re not enough to help me find reality again. And I can’t hold on to anything solid when I’m made of smoke and light.
No matter what I try to grab, my hands pass through it. And every time I miss a hold, I spin and float higher. The farther away from the top of the mountain, the thinner the connection between the two halves of myself gets. And the more remote my panic feels. The easier it becomes to forget why getting back down to the rocks below matters.
Everything is so hard down there. Above, existing is as easy as breathing. Easier. Like this, life, breath, and magic are all one, and all I have to do to join them is cut the last cord holding me to the land.
But the anchor I still have is the voices. The voices I latch on to are whispering about people, and their familiarity sparks memories. Tessen’s warm hands on my thighs on the floor of those cold caves. Zonna hesitantly telling me Varan’s secrets at the railing of Kazu’s ship. Sanii coming to see me once the ship was away from Shiara, forgiving me for failing Yorri when I couldn’t forgive myself. Rai and Etaro smirking as they corner me in Itagami, demanding details about my relationship with Tessen. Yorri sitting behind me in the crevice we’d claimed for ourselves, his fingers weaving my hair into intricate braids.
I hold onto the memories and the voices, and I drag myself back. Inch by inch. The closer I get, the darker it becomes, the world fading out at the edges to darkness barely sparked with veins of red. It gets warmer. And closer. Closer until I’m sinking into myself, realigning and resettling.
When I open my eyes, I have to blink. It’s solidly dark until my eyes adjust.
Stars spill across the sky like shining shards of crystal. The moon hangs large and low on the eastern horizon, barely risen over the peaks of the mountain. Tsua is kneeling in front of me, her eyes locked on my face, and she’s talking, but I don’t think the words are meant for me.
“No, bringing Tessen down here won’t help anything,” Zonna insists. “She’s physically fine. Give her another few minutes to come back to herself.”
They’re worried. About me? They’re talking like I passed out.
I’m okay. I didn’t hear the words, and they don’t respond. I try again. And again. Only after I force a breath that expands my lungs until they hurt do I make sounds.
“Khya, oh thank the Kaisubeh.” Tsua cups my face, tears in her eyes. “Are you hurt?”
“Hungry.” My stomach is so empty it feels hollow. As soon as they hand me something, I devour it, barely chewing. Otherwise, I think I really am fine. The more I eat, the deeper I sink into my own skin, remembering what it’s like to order muscle and bone to move. By the time my stomach can’t hold another bite, I feel normal. My head feels clearer, and I finally remember the question I wanted to ask. “What can you sense from the katsujo?”
Chio looks at me, something like wonder in his narrow eyes. “It feels… Not quite fixed. Patched. But we haven’t tried to use it. We wanted you back first.”
“I wasn’t gone.” Between pulling the two halves of myself together and opening my eyes, it feels like only seconds elapsed.
“You seemed to be.” Tsua hands me a canteen of water, and I swallow deep.
“How long did it all take?” It was maybe midmorning when we started, and it’s fully night now.
“At least ten hours.” Tsua glances at the center of the clearing. The stone is still cracked, but the white light shining through those spaces is steady now, no longer undulating with the chaos of the desosa underneath. “It’s like you taught it how to protect itself.”
“Hopefully I didn’t teach it too well.” I stand, my aching body protesting each motion. My first steps wobble. I quickly regain my balance and continue toward the clearing. “You’ve got to be able to use it to power the susuji—and whatever we come up with to kill Varan.”
“Exactly, but tomorrow we can— Khya?” Zonna’s voice sharpens with concern.
I step back from the wardstone I placed in the center, admiring how the glow from underneath illuminates the clear, multi-faceted stone. “Tomorrow, everyone will be back. We’ll have to send them away again to test this.”
“No!” Chio jumps in front of me, the lines around his eyes dug deep. “You’ve been working magic for hours. Rest first, Khya. This can wait.”
“I don’t need to sleep.” His expression tightens, and he opens his mouth; I break in. “I don’t know if creating the wardstones on Shiara increased my stamina, or if the katsujo refueled me as fast as it drained me, but I really am fine. I promise.”
Chio looks over my shoulder, silently conversing with Tsua and Zonna.
“After everything we’ve been through, I wouldn’t risk it all now,” I remind him. “Not for this. If it seems like it won’t work, I’ll stop. I know the energy of this place pretty well.”
Exhaling heavily and shaking his head—either in frustration or resignation—Chio backs away so I can work.
But it’s barely work. The desosa jumps like a well-trained soldier, rising so fast and with so much power that it flares in my mind like a wall of fire. I guide the energy into the crystal until it’s filled to bursting. The instant I release the desosa, the power drops away, sinking obediently into the ground.
Heartened and exhilarated, I remove the wardstones I’m wearing, placing them on the clearing an
d then quickly and easily recharging all of them. Simultaneously.
“Blood and rot.” I laugh, picking one of the stones up and reveling in the buzz of magic inside. “It took me more than a week to make these the first time. This is incredible.”
It took far less time, didn’t drain me at all, and left me with wardstones far more powerful than anything I’ve ever created. Or anything I have ever been capable of creating.
“I want to try one more thing before we bring the others down,” I say when Chio seems about to leave. He raises one thin eyebrow, but waves his hand, gesturing for me to carry on.
When Sanii and I worked on the niadagu spell before, ey helped me understand what I was doing wrong. Essentially, I’d been approaching the red cord the same way I did the crystals I created wardstones from, trying to force energy inside the material. Wrapping the desosa around it instead was the first step to mastering this spell. Now, I tie one of the niadagu cords around a small rock. With this much extra desosa under my feet, I want to see if I can take step two—giving the cord the power to bind something to a specific place. I’m starting small, trying to attach this rock to the clearing.
The desosa wraps itself around the niadagu cord as willingly as water following a path cut in stone. It winds and latches and when I whisper the spell words, “Tozaiko nitoko,” it holds. When I take a breath and try to move the rock, nothing happens. It won’t budge.
Laughing, I leave the red-wrapped stone behind and pick up one of my wardstones. With two successes after so many failures, it’s easy for hope to grow wild and unchecked. Hope that recreating Varan’s susuji, developing a way to undo it, getting back to Shiara, finding Yorri, and defeating the bobasu will all be as easy as this was.
I don’t believe it, but for this moment, I do hope.
…
For two days, no one has let me do anything but rest, at least where my magic is concerned, so I’ve had plenty of time to watch the andofume work on the susuji. Sanii and I sit a few feet away from the fire Tsua and Chio hung the pot over. It’s been simmering since I fixed the break in the katsujo, and the andofume haven’t had to do more than nudge the flow of energy to keep it pouring into the susuji. And that power is amazingly strong.
Sea of Strangers Page 19