Then light flooded the land. It was so sudden that Aviti exclaimed aloud. The moon had come to chase the Kalsurja. Its weak light reflected from the frozen surface of the land. She saw figures move in the distance. Aviti saw them struggling to move, but they pushed onward to their destination.
Their struggling may have been in vain, but it showed Aviti that there were still those in the land willing to fight.
'Can you take us?' Aviti asked Sevika. 'Can you take us to the Dhuma?'
Sevika looked at Tyla, but he tended to Wist. Sevika nodded.
'We must go to the Dhuma, to the place that the Intoli kept the Waren imprisoned and attempt to return them there,' announced Aviti, 'for I can think of no other course of action.' Tyla shrugged, and Haumea rose. The Giantess ran her hand over the staff that Nikka had crafted for her.
'So be it,' she said. 'So be it.'
The Redemption of Wist
Book 3: Prasad
Part 1 - Loss
1 - Gone
Aviti touched her shoulder where her scar still ached. She needed a moment of solitude before she could go back to her comrades. Just one moment would do, but she knew she would not get it.
‘Oinoir says that is where the fallen city is,’ said Tyla.
Aviti shrugged and took a breath, then she asked the Lyrat, ‘Where is Wist?’ but she did not turn around. Silence, then a flicker of annoyance impinged upon her mind.
‘Wist is with Haumea.’
Aviti greeted his answer with some silence of her own. She ran her fingers over her head, but she could not feel the inch of hair that had grown back through her rough, animal-skin gloves. Then the bitter air pricked her skin, so she pulled the hood of her cloak back up. From her mouth, a cloud billowed up and drifted into the sky. The moon’s light gave it a spectral veneer, until a cloud stole the light away and her breath vanished.
The natural darkness allowed her to see into the snow-ladened valley below her vantage point. She caught a faint glimmer at the far end of the vale where the land curved along the side of the mountain. Aviti held her breath for an instant, but then she let it out when the light flickered. Just campfires. Just someone trying to stay warm; trying to survive.
After her patience ran out, she said, ‘Sevika, tell me again what you know of Medicaut.’ The Intoli made no noise, but Aviti knew she would be there, standing beside the Lyrat. She never left his side.
‘I know little, as I have said,’ replied Sevika, talking in the sibilant tongue of her people, the Intoli. When Aviti had burned the link that enslaved her to Sevika, she thought she would have lost the ability to understand the Intoli
‘Humour me,’ Aviti insisted, grimacing as she pulled her robes tighter against the cold.
Sevika hesitated and Aviti ground her teeth, but then the Intoli said, ‘Medicaut was an old place. It was there before the humans arrived. I have never been, but some of my... Some of the Intoli returned with tales of a fantastical place. Wasted on the humans.’ Her voice trailed off once more. Anger rose in Aviti, but she knew that the Intoli was only repeating what she had heard.
The girl from Mashesh kicked the top layer of snow away from her. It had crusted hard and it turned to powder when she put her foot through it, blowing back over her legs. She had thought that this place was cold before the Ghria Duh had eaten the Sun.
‘It was as if the place had been constructed for them,’ Sevika added. ‘Or it had been abandoned.’
‘And yet the great Intoli knew nothing about that?’ asked Aviti in her own tongue. The snow crunched behind her as Tyla shifted.
‘The tremors that revealed the Arkasona to us, sent the mountain city to its doom.’
The Arkasona. The blood-stone. Tilden had deceived the Intoli, letting them believe that it would cleanse the Source. Then Wist, because of his obsession with his brother Tilden, had destroyed the stone and now they were all lost.
Aviti breathed in more of the sharp air. It caught in her lungs, but she fought down the urge to cough. Then she said, ‘Decheal said that the city was ruined before that.’ The curse of the Damned had fallen there and its inhabitants had fled; those that had not succumbed to the deathless plague.
The snow grumbled once more beneath the weight of its oppressors. Then Sevika spoke again. ‘We... the Intoli have not returned that way since the city fell. The path to the Arkasona was blocked, so there was no reason to go that way.’
‘No reason,’ repeated Aviti. ‘If only one of you had stopped to question why?’
She heard flat and echoless footsteps further behind her, as if the terrible white powder that surrounded them tried to devour all sounds, as well as the heat from her feet. She resisted the urge to turn around. In a moment or two, she would be ready, but not yet.
Aviti lifted her head to the sky to look upon the stars. They had changed. The familiar shapes of the southern desert sky had slipped away and now unfamiliar patterns greeted her, spelling out a new fate or confirming the same doom they always had. For an instant, she hoped that they would dance for her, the way they had before.
Then the valley fell silent once more, apart from their breathing. As Aviti sank into reverie, someone bumped into her. She started to shout, but when she turned, she saw the slack features of the pale-skinned man that had shattered her life.
His skin used to be white, but now it was stained red. The last of the thick clots of the dragon’s blood came away the last time Tyla had bathed him. Behind his beard, Wist’s face now resembled one of the tattooed slaves from the far south of Tapasya.
Wist’s unfocussed eyes stared through Aviti. A ghost of a smile was the only indication that he was still alive. She would have taken him for one of the Damned had they been in Mashesh, but they were a long way from her dead home, and Wist was no ordinary man.
He wore a loose cloak allowing the frigid air to assault his exposed arms. Anyone else, even one of the Giants, would perish after a few hours unprotected in this bitter night. There was heat within him. It was buried deep, but it was there; the smouldering embers of the blaze that had cast them all into this eternal night.
Tyla moved beside Wist, turned him around and then guided him back to stand with the three Giants. Aviti took a last look at the sky and then followed Tyla, counting her footsteps as she went.
The Giants stood in a semi-circle awaiting her: Haumea leaned on her staff, using it to offset the curvature of her spine; Oinoir and Decheal flanked her like a guard of honour. Both Oinoir and Decheal stood head and shoulders above the crippled Giantess. Oinoir’s blonde hair glistened with crystals of ice, whilst Decheal’s dark mop poked out from under her hood. The warrior Giantess Decheal wore a heavy cloak over her gleaming armour. It was made of hundreds of interlinked pieces, many of them gilded to shine in the sun; to inspire awe and fear in her enemies.
‘Blood and bone, are we to continue with this madness?’ said Decheal.
‘Decheal,’ began Haumea, but Aviti interjected.
‘Let her go Haumea. We have no need of another warrior.’
‘I do not take orders from a human, especially one who keeps a pet Demon,’ said Decheal pointing at Sevika.
‘When you have been dragged across this land on the end of a leash, you may think differently my friend,’ said Haumea placing her hand on Decheal’s gloved forearm. The warrior shrugged off the touch.
‘And what of you Oinoir?’ said Decheal. ‘Have you not lost enough? Oinair, Ionracas, Durach our king, and Brathoir… all of them gone; all of them dead. Would you have us add our own bodies onto the pyre? And for what? Some human promises and lies.’
‘I have made no promises,’ said Aviti.
Decheal snorted. ‘Treibhreas has left to claim the throne. It should be you Oinoir, brother of Oinair. You must lead us. That is why I followed you here. You were made Prime Glaine in Ionracas’ stead, then it was confirmed by our king.’
‘I am Prime Glaine, as is Haumea,’ said Oinoir. Decheal shook her head, but as she went to continue,
there was a flash of light from the black sun in the east. It gave Oinoir’s face a crimson cast. Then it was gone, replaced by malevolent darkness. The exposed skin on Aviti’s cheeks and forehead tightened, as if her skin sought to repel the corruption.
‘Haumea proved herself in the battle of Dilsich,’ the warrior Giantess resumed. ‘But the Giants require a leader that we can believe in. We cannot follow a cripple.’ If Haumea took offense at the label, she did her best not to let it show.
‘Treibhreas failed us all,’ she continued. ‘He could have stopped this calamity. He could have slain Durach and saved us from this fate, but his courage failed him. He is, and always has been, a coward. Before the war, he hid in the Council, sniping at the King with his co-conspirators. Now, he has his chance to seize power. If we let him succeed, it will be the death of us all.’
‘You squabble over the throne of a fallen kingdom, in a dying land,’ said Aviti.
‘And who is to blame for that? Who was it that set our King ablaze? Who was it that blackened our Sun?’ The Giantess pointed first at Sevika and Aviti, and then at Wist.
Wist had turned his back to them to watch the black sun, the Kalsurja as the Intoli called it or the Ghria Duh as it was in the Giantess tongue, rise. Aviti suppressed thoughts of Nikka as she dragged her attention away from Wist.
‘I hear your words, brave Decheal,’ said Haumea. ‘I feel the pain that is within them, but would you council that we should abandon all hope? Would you have it that we should run from the thing that all others fear to face?’ Haumea’s breath creaked as it wound its way around her compressed body.
‘As for failure, Decheal, my part in the disaster at Dilsich is as large as anyone’s here, but do not presume that I travel North to escape my infamy or to redeem myself in the eyes of my people. I travel, with human, with Giant and with Intoli. I travel from Pyrite to Prasad to find an answer to that.’ Haumea pointed with her staff at the black sun, which bathed them in obsidian light. Even the torches that the Giants bore struggled to make an impression in the frozen snow at their feet.
Decheal laughed. ‘Answer? What answer can you hope to find? And carrying that twig around as if it will protect you from the cold.’
‘Then why are you here Giantess?’ asked Aviti. ‘Why not run home and spare us all this nightly debate?’ She knew the answer before she had finished asking the question.
‘I am here for our Glaine.’
‘Glaines,’ corrected Aviti.
‘Glaines,’ accepted Decheal with a spark deep in her brown eyes, then she made an intricate gesture with her free hand. ‘And to provide council.’ Then the comrades were flooded with light once more, forcing Aviti to blink. Moonlight soaked the ground. It was less substantial than the Sun, but it had been weeks since they had last been able to move without the aid of torches or the moon.
‘I miss the sunshine,’ said Aviti.
‘You will never see it again,’ spat Oinoir. Before Aviti could form a response, he added. ‘Let us go while the moon lights our way.’
‘What about him?’ asked Decheal pointing a gloved digit at Wist. ‘Why not leave him here?’
Aviti saw Tyla shift his weight and his fingers move towards his katana, but Oinoir started moving before anything else could be said. Then Decheal laughed bitterly and traipsed off beside him. Tyla moved his arm behind Wist and together they resumed their torturous dance. As soon as Tyla moved, Sevika followed, like a pale shadow.
Aviti pushed her legs into motion once more. Her toes ached from the constant chill. Tyla had recognised the need to protect their extremities from the cold. Aviti’s toes were wrapped with a layer of fur from a creature that the Lyrat had trapped. Skin from the same beast encased the fur. Tyla had captured enough of them in the first few days of darkness to allow him to outfit all the humans. Bruised pride had forced Decheal to improve her hunting skills enough to equip and feed the Giants.
A gust of wind threw back Aviti’s hood and exposed her head once more. Then a hand lifted it back into place. ‘Ah, you must take care of yourself young Aviti,’ said Haumea as she offered Aviti her arm, but Aviti refused it with a shake of her head.
‘Nikka told me of your journey from Masheen,’ said the Giantess.
‘Mashesh,’ corrected Aviti with a smile.
‘Ah yes, Mashesh. Forgive me please; my memory is nearly as full of holes as my outfit.’ The Giantess wiggled a fingernail, which poked through the end of her mittens. ‘Ah, my fingers are too blunt an instrument to provide me a life as a seamstress.’ Then she laughed and thumped her staff into the snow as she walked.
‘Nikka made this for me,’ Haumea said as she nodded at the staff. ‘It is made from petrified bones, or so he claimed. Did you ever see him meld stone?’ Aviti shook her head beneath her cowl. ‘No? Ah, you have missed the chance to witness a wonder.’
The Giantess slid her gloved hand along the mottled ivory staff as a cloud skitted by the moon, throwing garish shadows over them. ‘He gave it to me as repayment for saving his life, and now I shall be forever in his debt.’
‘Nikka spoke of you with great admiration and fondness, Aviti’ she continued. ‘He said that he wished he had an ounce of your bravery and spirit when he had been young. Ah, I am glad that he is not here to witness the loss of our Sun. I think it may have broken his heart.’ Haumea fell silent for a moment, punctuating the silence with her steps and rattling breath.
‘You are blameless for your part in his Nikka’s death,’ said Haumea once she had gathered her thoughts, ‘and for that of our King.’
‘So, your King set himself on fire, did he?’ shot Aviti.
Haumea smiled and said, ‘On several occasions, yes.’ Then her brow furrowed. ‘When we went to him in Athadh, whilst you were enslaved by the Intoli, he burned every night. When the Ghria Duh was in the sky, Durach burned with lifeless flames. Your part in his demise was involuntary.’
Aviti turned her head and asked, ‘Was it?’ but it was the Giantess’ turn to shake her head.
‘Aviti, you and Sevika saved us. When all was lost at Dilsich, and the Intoli were set to slay us, you made Sevika understand.
‘No, no, no,’ Aviti protested. ‘It was not me.’
‘Not you? Ah, this is a strange jest Aviti. Oinoir heard you, though he did not comprehend the words.’
‘It was my father,’ said Aviti.
Haumea raised an eyebrow. ‘Your father?’
How could she explain to the Giantess that her father had spoken through her? Her father, whom she had abandoned outside their farm in Mashesh, his funeral pyre still warm. Her father, who had chosen to communicate with Sevika the Intoli, rather than his daughter, just as he had chosen to speak his last words to Wist, rather than her or her brother.
A sharp barb of pain caused her to grab her shoulder and massage the scarred tissue. She saw Tyla’s hand twitch and felt the reflections of her own emotions in their shared bond. Haumea reached out to help Aviti steady herself. Again, she shrugged away the hand.
‘Thank you,’ she said and managed a smile. The wind picked up as they trudged forward once more along the valley, but it gusted from behind them now. The two Giants Oinoir and Decheal trailed behind Tyla and Sevika. Ever since Aviti had escaped her enslavement to the Intoli, Sevika had latched onto Tyla as if he were her saviour. Was Tyla even aware of her following him? Aviti could sense nothing of the Intoli. Their bond was dead.
Tyla ghosted across this frozen landscape as if he were on the arid dunes of Tapasya. Sevika fared less well, but her light frame enabled her to stay above the frosted surface. Oinoir and Decheal however, battled through the snow. Together, they churned up billowing moonlit clouds.
As the company proceeded along the valley, bare earth broke through the enveloping white above them; stripes of reality breaking through the numbing blanket. There, Aviti witnessed the earth’s pain, as the life was smothered out of it
‘Why are there no trees here?’ she asked the Giantess. ‘When I passe
d,’ was dragged, she thought, ‘through eastern Pyrite, I saw nothing but trees. Why are there none here?’
‘Ah, you speak of the duality of my land. You may as well ask why people are sometimes angry and sometimes joyful.’ The prime Glaine of the Giants laughed and whirled her staff around to point at the land. ‘The Plains of Uram and Eu-Dochas, far to the southwest. That is my land. There are no trees there, only grass, hills and mountains. Perhaps the grass stops the trees from growing, or maybe the land is not condign for trees to grow?’ The Giantess stopped her speech and exhaled another rattling wheeze.
‘We only had a few trees in Mashesh,’ said Aviti hurriedly. The sound of the Giant’s breathing brought back too many memories of her father’s last days and she could not face those thoughts yet. ‘All the trees in the south of this land were the same. All of them were sharp, biting things.’ She scratched at her shoulder through her mitts and her clothes.
‘My friend, if we cannot find a solution to the Ghria Duh then we shall have the same number of trees in all of the lands.
Aviti shivered and then said, ‘I saw you end Nikka’s life,’ as more clouds obscured the moon. Haumea did not reply, so they walked on in silence for a time, watching clouds gather above them. All Aviti could hear was the crunching footsteps and the muffled whump of Haumea’s staff.
‘I accuse you of no crime Haumea.’
The Giantess gave her a complex look and then she turned her attention to her staff. ‘I saved Nikka twice. Once, when we fell down the side of a mountain, and once, when you tried to drown us, but do not worry. I accuse you of no crime.’ Then Haumea laughed and added, ‘Ah, yes, I saved him and he made this for me. Then I relieved him of the burden of his life.
‘I know he would have died anyway, Aviti…I know.’
Ahead of them, the other Giants had stopped. They stood at either side of Wist who gazed into the dark sun. Then Tyla stepped out of the darkness in front of Aviti. Haumea started, but Aviti had sensed him coming.
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