“Four years ago, you ordered an attack on the village of the Waliyo people. You took their young men. You took their young women. Your clan stole their prince, their princesses, their apprentice spirit-talkers. Those who opposed you were slain. So were children, and old people, who merely annoyed you. Or who you thought it pleasurable to harm.”
“Do not listen to my cousin’s lies about me.”
“It is not from Verkusht that this testimony comes. It is from those who were once Waliyo. Who can no longer call themselves by that name, because so many of the Waliyo were taken that their tribe cannot continue. The few survivors have toiled ever since to afford my modest fee. You slew an entire people. Now, in their name, I do the same to you.”
He is still imploring when the Azure Harpoon pierces his throat.
Katiiwa throws her head back; the demon inside her drinks its fill.
Chapter Six: Sacrificial Rights
We limp through humid jungle air. Brachantes, who can draw on the powers of any number of great beasts and mortal slaves, held captive on his distant island, may be pursuing us. Planning to hit us before we are fully healed. Or he may wait, to ambush us at our destination. He knows that the boy is cursed—god-touched, he calls it—so we must assume that he can also find the pyramid of Kitumu. His ability to track the boy, Obai muses, must be a stolen power, too, taken from an enslaved seer or prophet.
She and Sunasuka have healed as many of our wounds as their magic will allow. The halfling nature-talker is the worst off of any of us. We ache, and still bear the cuts and bruises of our battle with the outlander, but our open wounds have been healed, our burned and melted skin restored. We consider stopping, to rest and regain the healing favors of Nethys and nature. Instead we forge on. The best way to defeat Brachantes will be to beat him to the temple. To deliver the boy to his destined sacrifice, as we have intended since the beginning. Robbed of his quarry, Brachantes might resign himself to the loss and depart. Or he may still try to kill us. If he does, and if we die, it is better to do so having completed our mission and saved the people of the Expanse from the firefly plague.
As we plunge closer to the reputed site of the firefly temple, I look to the boy and to the others. Anger still flushes Arok’s face. He has worn a resentful silence ever since we pulled him away from Brachantes. The outlander killed the trees. He told Arok he belonged in a menagerie, as if offering him a gift. I have seen this look on the ape’s scarred face before. My friend does not easily give himself to murderous rage, but when it seizes him, it does not let go.
Katiiwa seems at peace, her task accomplished. Tarood the Bekyar is slain, the demon in her blood content with its meal.
Obai, as unreadable as ever, both happy and sad.
Verkusht watches me watching the others. He had the chance to betray us and did not take it. I tell him I am proud. He waves my words away, for once not wanting the praise he typically seeks.
Sunasuka, who has been warmest toward the boy, proceeds with features bleak and haunted. She won’t look at him now. I guess that she has resigned herself to his fate.
I wonder who among us is most likely to falter. To balk at the last moment and try to rescue him from his appointment with the divine.
As if struck again by a bolt of Brachantes’ lightning, I realize who it is.
Me.
I, Xhasi, who take pride in my acceptance of the jungle’s demands, cannot abide the thought of what must unfold. The boy has been brave. Has assured us that he is ready to do what is asked of him. He will step into the goddess’s maw, so that many others might live. It is this that cannot be borne. Were he petulant, if he sought to thwart fate’s decrees, I could reluctantly usher him to the bloody altar.
Would I go so readily? Would any of these others? No, we would scream and scheme and kick and find a way out. Were Arok god-doomed, I would risk anything to save him.
I will think of something, I decide. But what this might be, I cannot envision. And now the temple heaves into view.
In my mind’s eye I had pictured it in a clearing, proudly jutting to the sky, the forest gathered around it at a fearful distance. Instead we find it amid the trees, choked entirely by bushes, trees, and vines. The temple appears as a conical mound of vegetation. Only a stifling tranquility marks this nameless patch of jungle as different from any other. Bird song is absent. So is the screeching of canopy monkeys. I scan the trees for signs of animal life and see none: no snakes, no mice. I drop a crumb from my ration pack on the hard forest floor, waiting for ants or termites to swarm around it. It stays unclaimed.
In other circumstances Obai might lecture us on the hidden ruins. She would tell us what extinct people built them, and when. Today she respects the weird hush that blankets this place.
It is Verkusht who speaks. “Are you sure this is it?”
Obai ponders, but the jungle-priestess and the ape both nod. Nature is strong here.
As if to confirm it, a glow arises from the mantle of trees obscuring the goddess’s pyramid. It is soft and green. A cloud of fireflies.
This is why there are no other creatures here. This place belongs to them, and them alone.
Verkusht is the first to freeze. The rest of us do the same.
Is this how it will happen? Will the fireflies descend and devour the boy, as they took my friends the Ngali, and so many other innocents?
The beating of my heart becomes a pounding drum. Will they eat his deliverers, too?
And if they do, will it not be fitting?
As the glowing cloud of fireflies drifts slowly toward us, I see no course of action. No way to save the child.
“Mwonduk...” I begin.
The boy steps forward, shushing me with a gesture.
The fireflies float toward us. They settle first on Verkusht. They land on his forehead and drink from the sweat pooling in its furrows. Others cloak the priestesses, then Katiiwa, then Arok and me. I lose my caution and slowly move my arm. They follow it, forming a glowing garment.
Rejecting us, they swarm onto the boy. I wait, ashamed of my inability to prevent this, for the devouring to begin. I feel like the giant builders of Kembe, falling between worlds.
The moment extends agonizingly as the luminous veil lingers over the boy.
As one, the fireflies glide back to the pyramid, leaving Mwonduk unscathed.
“That can’t be it, can it?” Verkusht asks.
The ground rumbles. There is movement at the pyramid’s apex. Trees topple from it. Clouds of soil dislodge from their exposed roots as they tumble down the sides. A fissure appears in the topmost blocks. The fireflies swarm into it.
Comprehension dawns: the insects came to see if we had the sacrifice designated by the goddess, who dwells inside. Now she will come out to devour the boy herself.
I have heard spirit-talkers say that none may look on the face of a god and survive. Depending on the story, the foolish watcher may be struck dead, or driven mad. But of course I have never met anyone who has beheld a god, except in dreams and visions. The wise action will be to turn my head, and wait until it is over. The sounds of the devouring will be bad enough. I decide otherwise. I will force myself to look, even if it courts destruction. If I cannot save him, I will at least bear witness.
Like a pair of separating hands, the top of the pyramid parts into two.
A voice bellows out to shatter the scene’s solemnity.
“No, you mindless, petty godling,” it booms, “this one you cannot have.”
An immense, distorted creature that speaks with Brachantes’ voice breaks through the underbrush to charge at Mwonduk. He is as tall as a giant, as grotesque as a demon, as ponderous as a mokele-mbembe. The features of his face swirl and scud across the front of a misshapen skull. His flesh is in places furred, or scaled, or plated, or dripping and gelatinous.
“He has overtaxed his powers,” Obai says. “Before he drew on only one creature at a time. He has mixed them, and is lost.”
Brachantes’ monstrous eyes bloat into one, then separate into several, obliterating the rest of his face. A spray of brilliant color blasts from them, raking the ground at our feet, then striking us down. Obai is lifted from the ground and hurled into the pyramid. Verkusht is stopped in mid-stride, encased suddenly in stone. A thundering blast sends Katiiwa and Sunasuka sprawling, the azure harpoon and screaming monkey club flying from their grasps. Arok yips, seized by madness, and bounds away into the shadows.
“Brachantes' passion is all-consuming. And consume him it has.”
I am inside a column of flame, groaning as it licks away my flesh.
Fire follows me as I leap toward the monstrous interloper. He lunges at Mwonduk, grabbing him in a giant’s grasp. The boy wriggles partially free, and Brachantes lifts him further up, leaving him dangling by one leg. I reach the monster’s nearest foot and plunge my spear into it. It roots him to the ground. I throw myself onto his thigh. Suddenly it is covered with hairy spines like those of an enormous insect. They jab and scrape at my blistered skin. Wracking pain tells me to stop, to drop away and lie in a heap in the dirt. I ignore it, until suddenly I feel no pain at all. The loss of sensation tells me that I am gravely injured, but this thought I also dismiss. I keep climbing up as Brachantes bucks and weaves to throw me off.
Knives thunk into his chest above me, where he is covered in coarse brown fur. Hanging with one arm from the ripped remnants of clothing wrapped around Brachantes’ waist, I seek his kidneys and plunge my daggers in deep. Blood gouts from the wound, black and bubbly. It sprays into my face, blinding me. My grip on him turns slippery.
He flings me away. The trunk of a tree ends my flight. Mwonduk is on the ground again, running for shelter behind the priestesses, who themselves have found cover behind the foot of the pyramid. Brachantes has either dropped the boy or let him down, realizing he needs both hands for the fight.
Sunasuka wills a thorn wall into being, arraying it around Brachantes like a hedge. He pulls both foot and spear clear of the ground and steps over it easily, but this action leaves him off balance. Katiiwa pops up to point her harpoon at him. A bolt of blue lightning arcs from it to strike him in the chest. The electric bolt zigs between the metal dagger hilts jutting from his pectorals. The force of the strike knocks him down and into the jabbing thorns ringed behind him. He brays in protest and for an instant seems to be down for good.
Moments later, he rises again, his body encased in gleaming steel. He laughs, until the transformation of his head into a serpentine shape muffles the sound. He blows a cloud of choking gas at us. I run forward and grab Mwonduk, tumbling with him into the woods.
The spellcasters reel as the gas surrounds them.
Verkusht, broken free of his prison by the women, has run up the side of the pyramid. He shouts down into the fissure. I realize that my ears are ringing, and wonder which of Brachantes’ assaults has stolen my hearing. From his gestures and the few words I can make out, the Bekyar seems to be exhorting the goddess supposedly lurking inside the pyramid. He demands, or so I imagine, that the goddess come out and smite the one trying to steal her sacrifice from her.
If she intends to intervene on our behalf, Kitumu gives no sign of it. It is the way of gods, to stand distant while mortals act for them. Were I to ask Obai about it, she would give a long explanation, one of balance and the turning of the cosmic wheels. What is clear is that, with Brachantes, we are on our own.
Verkusht reaches the same conclusion, and with unusual bravery leaps onto the monster’s head, knife outthrust. It lands in the back of his skull, which is now elongated and has sprouted a spiraling horn. Verkusht swings from the hilt until swatted down by a jellied, fingerless limb. He lands on his back, howling, as a soapy residue left from Brachantes’ strike attempts to crawl down his throat and choke him.
I feel small hands on me; it is Sunasuka, healing my wounds.
She sees that I’ve left my spear behind, and hands me her double monkey club. Its wooden faces yowl. They
seem afraid.
“We’re running out of spells to throw,” she says.
Brachantes has a spear in his foot, and knives sticking from his chest and the back of his head. As he looms over Verkusht, I watch for signs that these injuries have left him vulnerable. When fighting an animal, or sometimes an unnatural beast, it is possible to judge the harm you’ve done. Observing this ever-shifting monstrosity tells me nothing.
With Sunasuka following close behind, I scuttle to the pyramid, to Katiiwa and Obai. We need a plan.
But then, we must also help the Bekyar.
Verkusht rolls away from a stomping foot, planting a serrated skewer in Brachantes’ ankle. The monster kicks Verkusht like a man shooing aside an annoying dog. Verkusht lies dazed on his back, a line of blood creeping from his nostril.
I’m ready to charge over to assist him when Arok, recovered from the fear ray, leaps down from the canopy. He plots his point of impact expertly, so that Brachantes topples face-first to the forest floor. Arok pounds percussively on the back of his neck, then yanks out a Bekyar dagger. He uses it to saw at the veins of Brachantes’ neck.
Brachantes responds by changing again. The slashed jugular reseals itself as his form shifts to something fishy and hellish. He slams Arok. The crunch of shattered bone echoes through the trees.
Obai’s thin lips purse together. Her tattooed frown-smile lends her an air of deranged detachment. “He draws power from the creatures of his faraway menagerie, yes?”
“That is what he claimed.”
“Then there must be unseen channels of arcane force, spanning the miles between himself and his island. They are the source of his might.”
“You are the one who knows such things.” But already I am following her logic. “Your globes, from the Bloodletting Aerie.”
She nods. “It is not how the magics are supposed to work. But perhaps, with Nethys’s favor, the conflicting energies may sever the bond between Brachantes and his menagerie. When I do this, all of you must hit him hard and fast.”
“Will it cut him down to size?”
“So I hope.”
I dash into the fray, swinging Sunasuka’s monkey club, rallying my allies’ attentions. The strange, carved weapon yammers in panicked ape speech. Arok and Verkusht array themselves around Brachantes, forcing him to defend against blows from all sides. Katiiwa orbits from a remove, firing arcane darts from her harpoon. They materialize as orbs of acid, each bearing a demon’s grinning face. Where they land, they scourge and pucker his writhing hide.
Obai’s twin circles shimmer into being around him—the light first, then the dark. Unlike the perfect orb summoned at the Aerie, this one buckles and is instantly malformed.
Brachantes’ features become recognizable again. Four eyes resolve into two. A set of yellow-brown tentacles retracts into his jaw. Annoyance gives way to dread as he seems to understand Obai’s scheme. He lashes out at the combined globes of light and dark, and they lose their shape, threaten to dissipate.
Obai cries out to Nethys. “Maintain the balance, O greatest god!”
The circles reform and stabilize. Brachantes seems to fold in on himself, rapidly losing height and heft. Within moments, he has shrunk from a giant’s size to that of an ogre. He is still bigger by far than any of us, even Arok, but for the first time I believe we can beat him.
No longer does his form change. Where before he took on the traits of creatures I know or have heard of, now he is at once all and none of them. He is a colorless, misshapen mockery of a man, his muscles puffy, the skeleton beneath them warped and improbable.
Arok tears at him. Verkusht sticks a long k
nife into
his spine.
With a great glob of a fist, Brachantes strikes me. I feel my teeth rattle in their sockets. Backward I spin, landing on my shoulder in the hardened dirt. The club goes flying. I try to get up, but my feet won’t go where I tell them.
There is still fight in our enemy yet. Arok rears back, surprised by a similar blow.
Verkusht kicks at Brachantes’ back, hitting the hilt of his dagger, driving it further in. He ducks a swiping return clout, yelling in disbelieving protest: “Don’t you realize, you Taldan excrement, that I’ve severed your stinking spine?”
I wobble up, head still ringing, to wade back in. Arok does the same, his jaw hanging at an alarming angle. Katiiwa, out of spells, staggers to join us.
Brachantes spots my abandoned spear, its head and haft still wet with his tarry blood, and seizes it, parrying jabs from the sorceress’s harpoon.
Behind us, Sunasuka mouths the familiar chant to summon a swarm of stinging wasps. Her call to nature yields no result. As I bash at Brachantes’ rearing, unstable form, I realize why it has failed: Kitumu allows only fireflies here.
Then the leaves and vines reflect a soft green glow.
In a teeming mass, Kitumu’s insect hordes reemerge from the pyramid. They surround Brachantes, tearing into his flesh as they did to my friends in the Ngali village, to the traders of Free Station, to the Latari tribesmen of Rechiend’s Plains. The firefly plague now visits itself on Brachantes. The luminous bugs find the parts of him that are fleshy and human. They burrow deep, boring through him like termites through wood, ants through the pulp of fallen fruit. A blood rain falls as his flesh is torn from him. He opens his throat to scream out his agony, but no sound comes.
He staggers, falling to one knee. Brachantes is smaller again now, perhaps returned to his native shape. It is hard to say for sure, with so much meat pulled away from his bones. I can see rib cage, and a patch of exposed skull above his left eye.
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