by Sam Hawke
But this time, it was no trick.
“Os-Woorin!” the cries picked up again, as they had before, but this time more terrified than awed. The thing rising from the depths was no static humanoid figure, graceful and mysterious, but rather a whirling, formless thing of water and rock and weed, its shape changing and expanding as it rose. Yet it did not resemble the maelstroms created by the Speakers during the siege, nor the earthy fingers that had bound me earlier this morning. It had presence: not quite a face, that I could identify, but a sense of one. And consciousness, and deep intelligence. And rage.
Mist thickened around the thing, swirling over the water in a wafting, spinning cloud. No, not mist, steam: the water was bubbling, boiling, and spurting around the creature. “We woke it up,” Hadrea said, her eyes fixed on Os-Woorin. “Jovan, we’re feeding it.”
Spirits fed on emotion, she’d said, human emotion, and we had surrounded the lake with thousands of people in the heat and fury of battle, with surges of fear and optimism on each side when the army had arrived, and finally the infusion of hope and relief when we thought the fighting was over. And then we had convinced everyone around us that they were seeing the true Os-Woorin. We had made an offering, all right, but not the one we would have planned.
Os-Woorin roared, a terrible booming, gurgling sound like the crash of a waterfall. It turned, looking up at the old city on the east, where terrified Silastians cowered or ran. Part of its great, watery body extended toward the city, as if pointing. Then another deep rumble sounded from beneath the earth and a tower of water exploded out of the ground in the middle of the crowd on the shore, then another, and another.
“Honor-down, it’s burning them,” someone said, and my stomach turned over. It wasn’t the force knocking people to the ground but the gushing, steaming water itself that burned them.
The voice of a man behind me cut through the screams. “Os-Woorin is punishing the heathens! The spirit-killers! They have brought it on themselves!” But even as he tried to rouse support in his peers, Os-Woorin roared again and this time its rage was directed at the western shore; a snaky “arm” whipped out of the surface and crashed back down on the docks, crushing and splintering everything—and everyone—in its path. Darfri or not, Os-Woorin was taking its revenge on the city and anyone unfortunate enough to be near it.
I looked back out to the lake, where Tain was swimming frantically away from the bubbling center, but making little headway. I jumped back into the boat. “I’m going to try to get him.”
Hadrea fumbled in her sodden clothing and pulled out a handful of something green. She stuffed it into her mouth, then shoved the rest at Salvea. “Take it to the Speakers, Mother. Convince them to help.” Then she took hold of the rowboat and pushed it out. I started to row, staring at her as she chewed determinedly.
“What are you—”
Then I realized. The remaining supply of feverhead … what had Hadrea called it when she saw the illustrations? Babacash? She had said it was sometimes used to aid in fresken, and I had noticed but not thought much on her interest in the plant during Tain’s recovery. She had wanted it for herself, coveting the knowledge and power that had been denied her. She had brought it to the catacombs hoping to entreat Os-Woorin, but of course we had not found a shrine under the lake. She’d told me after our own small offering that she felt an open connection to the spirit and now she said it again to me as I pulled away from her.
“We are still connected! And I am going to stop this.”
Then she stepped out of my reach and into the deeper water.
No, not into the water, onto the water, as if she climbed invisible stairs underneath the surface, and her cupped hands held water in front of her. I stared at her as I rowed back toward Tain, struggling to get a rhythm in the choppy waves, but she looked only at Os-Woorin, and her eyes and face took on the same focused intensity as the Speakers’ had. She continued to rise as if on some platform until she walked on the very surface of the lake itself.
I glanced over my shoulder. Tain was treading water, captivated by the sight. I rowed harder.
“Os-Woorin!” Hadrea cried, and her voice carried over the shrieks and devastation, artificially loud. “Hear me!”
Os-Woorin, in the process of tearing the remains of Bell’s Bridge apart, froze in its destruction. It turned slowly, forming and reforming as Hadrea drew closer to it. The water settled somewhat, the great waves caused by Os-Woorin’s movements lowering into ripples. I checked on Tain again. He had seen me and started swimming in my direction, but his body was heavy and low in the water and his breaths more desperate than controlled. I tried to increase my pace, but my arms were so tired and my shoulder weak from the earlier wound; the sluggish haul of the boat seemed like it would never reach him.
Hadrea, by contrast, seemed propelled, gliding as she moved toward Os-Woorin, the water beneath her feet a platform. The crowd’s screams gradually died down as everyone’s attention fixed on the strange convergence of the woman and the spirit.
“Os-Woorin!” she cried again. “I entreat you: enough destruction. You have taken much power from us today. Do not use this against us.”
It made a noise in response, a low roar, but this time somehow it conveyed meaning; as the sound hit me I felt infused by its sense of betrayal and fury. But then strangely, equally strongly, I felt a sense of apology and compassion, and I knew the author of those feelings all too well. Whatever power had clustered around the lake, Hadrea had found some way to use it, too.
“It is a balance,” she was saying, and I could no longer tell if she was speaking aloud or not. “We share this power. It does not belong to you or to me. It is ours. It is fresken, and it is tah. We are bound together.”
One more stroke and Tain was within reach. Half-sinking, exhausted, he must have swallowed too much water. I hauled him into the boat and he slumped against the edge, coughing up water. Back on the west shore Salvea was bent over the Speakers, shaking shoulders, and even from this distance I could understand her emphatic hand gestures as she entreated the Darfri for help. How they could, I wasn’t sure. “Can you row?” He nodded weakly and I gratefully handed over one oar.
We turned the boat around and headed for the shore. Os-Woorin continued to morph and grow and shrink in turn, debris swirling around its watery form as if a visual representation of its thoughts. I could feel its consideration of Hadrea, its ancient indifference to this tiny person vying with its curiosity.
“What is Hadrea doing? How is she standing out there?” Tain broke off coughing to ask. “She can use Darfri magic?”
“She’s asking the spirit to stop. Can’t you hear her? Can’t you feel it?”
He shook his head, looking at me like he’d never seen me before. “I can see it, but I can’t understand what’s going on.”
If he couldn’t, I didn’t know how to explain. “Just row. I think she needs help.”
Another roar split the air, and under it Salvea’s heartrending cry as Os-Woorin blurred toward Hadrea in a sudden, immense wall of water that would surely crush her. I dropped my oar, heart in my throat. But instead of being knocked back by the force of Os-Woorin’s blow, Hadrea seemed to slide through it; the water rippled and parted around her, splashing harmlessly ten treads from where she balanced, facing the spirit with deep calm. I felt her calm, and so, too, did I feel the confusion of the spirit as its rage rebounded without victim or recourse.
“This is a shared power,” she said again, with more force this time. “We are connected. We are sharing the power, and we will not destroy each other.”
It made another attempt, this time spurting geysers all around her, but once more, none of the boiling water touched her. This time I understood, because it understood. She had shared with Os-Woorin—we both had—and it was its power she was channeling; all the power that it had sucked up from the people around the lake was the same power that was keeping her safe. “We are the same, now,” she said.
The spi
rit paused again, the geysers dying down. I felt a thin, fragile wavering, the edge of concession, and dared to hope.
But it darkened into rejection with the loudest, wildest howl yet, and the full force of the great thing turned on Hadrea like a concentrated storm. The Speakers on the shore—and others in the crowd—howled along with it, but our terror and hysteria was feeding it, making it stronger, and the invisible bubble of protection around Hadrea grew smaller and smaller until I could not see her in the assaulting waters, and could barely feel her presence.
“Help her!” I screamed at the Speakers, but they seemed incapable of responding. More and more Darfri in the crowd had come to the shoreline and were plunging their hands in the water beside Salvea, and I felt their efforts connect and grow. Os-Woorin could take power from us, but as Hadrea had said, it was a shared power. The miniature storm intensified, but then so, too, did Hadrea’s protective barrier, and suddenly it was her control that was growing. I could see her small figure in the center of the flurry, her hands outstretched, and I felt her push back, and with it the water moved, and solidified, and compressed back against Os-Woorin until their two presences seemed equal. Two forces pressing on a sheet of glass that wavered and wobbled as they battled for dominance. And all the while I could feel her communication with it, as well, beseeching it. We have wronged you, but there will be amends, she told it. The Compact will be restored.
Tain’s head ricocheted between the battle on the lake and the reaction of the crowd, uncomprehending, and it was his obliviousness to the true nature of the battle that triggered my memory. Hadrea had said we were connected. We had made an offering together, and somehow that link had remained. I wasn’t Darfri and I didn’t know how to help, not really, but I leaned over the side of the boat and plunged my hands into the water all the same, and tried to make myself open, to give her strength. As if that gesture sprang a trap in my mind, the tight intensity of the air broke into a million pieces and it felt easy and natural to pour into the whirlpool everything I felt for her and my home and my lost sister and uncle, and …
And the balance shifted.
The water started to tip away from Hadrea, back to Os-Woorin, and as I watched, my hope literally flowing into the maelstrom of power, she seemed to grow straighter and taller even as the spirit diminished. But she did so without aggression or anger, just calm determination and force of will. And empathy.
With a hiss like steam escaping a kettle, the tumult in the lake peeled back to calm, the geysers fell away to nothing, and slowly the creature’s form sank back into the surface of the water. One last sigh, and all of the sucking, draining sensation of power in the air was gone, and the release was like waking from an intense nightmare, or breaking one of my worst compulsions. I gasped for breath.
Out in the center, there was one last splash as the power died away and Hadrea fell from whatever had kept her buoyant. Without a word, Tain retrieved his oar and I mine, and we set out to rescue her as she had rescued all of us.
Traitor’s curse
DESCRIPTION: Toxin of unknown origin.
SYMPTOMS: Dizziness, followed by increasing swelling of the face and extremities, excessive perspiration, pressure sensation in the chest, difficulty swallowing and breathing, weak heart rate, heart failure.
PROOFING CUES: Unknown.
33
Jovan
As though the very weather celebrated the end of the war, the cold morning cleared to a bright day violent in color. The rich blue of the sky, the broken-mirror sparkle of the lake, the white walls and bursts of early autumn red and gold amidst the greenery made a glossy portrait of a city, painted over the violence and turmoil.
A weird dichotomy played between the rebels and the Silastians: deep relief at the end of the fighting, but inevitable distrust and suspicion as we came together. Nice moments punctuated the tension, though; families reunited between cityfolk and soldiers in the army and between some on both sides of the lake. The sight of them mingling on the shores that had so recently been a battlefield gave me heart. The hospital had become once again the busiest place in the city as hundreds of people who had fought for their lives now worked together to carry wounded from both sides.
Aven and her lieutenants marched across the bridge to applause from the city residents. The Warrior-Guilder strode first, magnificent in her decorated armor and crimson cloak, one arm held aloft to cheers. Tain met with her there on the bridge, clasping her shoulders and thanking her for her timely arrival in a voice rich with emotion. The army roared just as loudly for Tain as the residents did for Aven.
“By the fortunes, it’s good to see you alive, Honored Chancellor,” the Warrior-Guilder said, her face breaking into a rare smile. “We had heard otherwise.”
Together they walked back across the bridge toward the upper city. The crowd between us swallowed whatever was said next, and hard as it was to wend through the throng to Aven, I got there in time to hear the information I most desperately wanted.
“Your brave little messenger,” Aven was saying to Tain as they walked, shoulder to shoulder, heads bent close together. “How she made it through when no one else could, I just don’t know.”
“Lini,” Tain said, his voice quaking. He saw me and gripped my forearm, pulling me in. I barely felt the slash of pain from my hastily wrapped wound. I stared at the Warrior-Guilder, waiting, hoping.
Aven directed her gaze to me. “I’m afraid I didn’t get her name,” she said. “But she bore your Oromani tattoos, Credo Jovan.…” The hard lines of her face softened as she placed a hand on each of our shoulders. The feel of her rough squeeze sent a frisson of shock through my body.
“Kalina,” Tain said. “It was Kalina. Jovan’s sister.”
I turned my head, unable to look at her, unable to face the words I already knew were coming. “I’m sorry,” Aven said gently. “We think she must have swum in the river to avoid the patrols.”
“What happened?” Tain asked, though he must have known the answer, just as I did.
“The deep cold,” Aven said, shaking her head. “She made it to us, and told us enough to send us back here, but she was barely conscious and coherent then, and she … Well, she collapsed and never woke again.” I sensed her gaze on me. “I’m sorry, Credo Jovan. But your family should be proud. Your sister was a hero. We all owe the city’s safety to her.”
I couldn’t handle the sympathy in her face, or my own grief reflected on Tain’s, so I just stared at the ground. Though it had been barely more than a hope, I had secretly relied on the idea that my sister would come home with the army, and that I would retain some semblance of the family that had been my whole world at the start of summer. Now, after everything, it was just me.
They must have continued speaking, but I heard nothing as we made our way through the applauding crowd and toward the Manor, nothing but a high ringing in my ears and the distant babble of what might as well have been a foreign language. There wasn’t enough air to breathe properly. All I could do was count steps and alternate squeezes of my hands, hoping the calming rhythm of the repetition would get me through this day. And the next, and the next? Deal with them as they come. The voice in my head sounded more like Etan’s than my own.
Though the Council came together briefly, it was agreed that we would spend the day treating victims and cleaning up, with the Council and the representatives from the estates to meet to begin formal discussions first thing tomorrow. Perhaps it was relief, or perhaps a mark of how Tain’s power and honor had grown, that none of the Councilors criticized the early ideas Tain put forward: financial and other reparations, immediate representation on the Council, new Guilds, mass schooling opportunities; even Caslav had been unable to voice such things. Now they offered no argument. Bradomir looked a different man, twenty years older, like someone had stolen the life force from him. Varina agreed forcefully with everything the Chancellor said. She nodded, eyes bright with focus, through Tain’s heartfelt apology to the Darfri and other a
ssembled community leaders. She, too, looked a different person, though perhaps that was through a lack of drugs more than anything else. I said nothing. Following even the vague direction of the conversation was like clutching at smoke. I wondered if the others could see what I truly was—an empty man.
Tain sent everyone off to their allocated tasks. Tomorrow the real work would begin. Rebuilding the city, repairing the damage we had done over centuries, reimagining the way people interacted, wouldn’t be arranged in a single meeting. But it was a start, at least.
I looked up at last, thinking Tain and I were alone, and realized Aven, too, had hung back. She sat in the most relaxed pose I’d ever seen her, perched on the edge of the Council table, leaning back on one hand and shaking out her thick braid with the other.
“Honor-down, I’m so tired.” She scratched her head vigorously and shook her hair out with her fingers.
Tain sat beside her, dropping his head forward. “Me, too,” he said. “It’s over, but it’s not. There’s so much work to be done, it’s hard to even know how to start.”
Aven nodded. With her hair down and lacking her usual rigidity, she looked younger. Almost vulnerable. Her voice even sounded softer as she put a hand on Tain’s shoulder. “You’ll do it because you must,” she said. “And because you’re the most honorable man we could ask to lead this country. No one else could have done what you did today, and stopped the fighting.”
“I feel like I’ve failed,” Tain admitted. The two of them seemed not to register that I was still there.
“Failed? You?” She laughed. “You succeeded where none could have expected you to. You survived, and in the end you saved a lot of lives. You’ll be a Chancellor they’ll write about, Tain.”
Aven leaned closer, hand fluttering hesitantly and then, with more confidence, threading gently into his hair. And like a drowning man lunging for air, Tain kissed her, with all the hunger of months of watching and wanting her from a distance, and all the pent-up emotion of the day.