Schisms

by James Wolanyk

  “I believe this is where we part,” Gideon said, standing proudly near Shem’s dais. Pride always followed victory.

  He was encircled by a throng of Chayam troops, all of which bore nationalist crests from the oldest and most venerated orders in Golyna. Breeding grounds for the breaker’s ilk, it now seemed. They’d threatened to drag Hazani women and children out of the city’s shelters and into the Nest, if it meant Anna’s cooperation. And after being marched through a procession of Volna’s screeching hordes, watching giggling, jaw-caged men trail them with a bleeding sack, listening to plains fighters swear they’d cut out her womb, she had lost all resolve. She’d knelt by Shem’s side, whispered to open their waiting tunnel, and prayed that his sleeping form could read the terror in her voice.

  But the Huuri’s devotion was her undoing.

  Anna now stared into the jaws of what she’d fled so long ago, still shrouded with vines and ornate columns and an artisan’s throne beneath painted light. But it was wrong, all wrong. She watched the Volna fighters parading around the orza’s former sanctuary, some naked and some bearing bleached animal skulls, all howling and pointing blades at the tunnel’s unseen eye in terrible silence. No matter what they did to her, she wouldn’t scream. She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t even fight.

  A bloodied burlap sack near her feet had already made such sacrifices. Yatrin’s body seemed to stir, though it was surely a trick of the candlelight. Judging by what awaited Anna, however, life would be the cruelest gift to grant him.

  Unlike Volna’s fighters, the Nahorans surrounding Gideon restrained themselves as they’d always done in battle. Some of them even had the decency to glance away when she met their eyes. One of them moved toward Anna with his ruj slung across his back, lifted Yatrin’s body like his own child, and approached the tunnel’s opening. His hands slipped through the divide as he gently sat the body down on the tiles, drawing a round of soundless shrieks and chest-beating from the other side.

  “Offer your final words, Kuzalem,” Gideon said. “I’ll ensure that the archivists record them with eloquence and majesty. But we’ll soon be departing—I can’t bear to witness your end.”

  Anna studied the bloody sack carefully, noting how the Volna troops seemed frightened to prod at it. She wondered why flesh could be so important to them. Two paces from the tunnel’s eye, she turned to face Gideon and his men. “Nothing can spare you.”

  She stepped through the divide and entered death.

  Chapter 17

  The stench struck her first. It was rotting fruit and burned hair and piss, all festering together under the eye of Har-gunesh, steeping in Malijad’s ancient heat. Then she saw the bodies lining the dome and walls, dozens of them, perhaps hundreds, shriveled or flayed or dismembered, hung from the setstone and marble with rusted bolts. Entrails hung in dark, withered loops over the garden’s trees. Half-eaten corpses littered the grass, dragged about and torn open by starved, mangy hounds.

  Anna met the gazes of Volna’s assembled horde. She could read the terror, or perhaps uncertainty, in the eyes of the nearest men. Despite the thundering of her heart, she worked to still her lips, to keep her hands loose and easy at her sides. To them she was not a girl, nor a scribe; she was an aggregate of legends and mistruths and superstition, and her silence could only feed that illusion.

  But directly ahead, sprawled out in the orza’s chipped throne like a swollen maggot, was Teodor. His stomach was stitched and bloated, spilling out beneath a wine-stained linen shirt. Oily hair and pustules peeked out beneath the brim of his tattered hat. His remaining eye, a haze of jaundice and red streaks, bloomed with savage delight.

  His other eye was sealed behind a brass square. Anna wondered if she’d find the impression of her thumb once she tore away his covering.

  “Don’t be shy, sukra,” Teodor boomed. “Come closer. Let me see if you finally filled out.”

  Anna met his diseased stare, but refused to move. Her eyes fell on the burlap sack.

  “That him?” Teodor asked. “Your lover? The easterner?” Nervous laughter sprang up among the fighters. Several of them edged closer, jabbing at the sack with their jagged blades. “Might as well bend over for beasts, girl.”

  “You seem lonely,” Anna said, fighting to look away.

  Teodor’s lips twisted into a scowl. “Look here, you fucking runt. Our war is done. We’ll see you gutted either way, no questions of it, but I’ve got a hefty say in how you go. Sooner, later, painful, simple. So you watch your pretty lips when you speak to me. I’ve been waiting on this.”

  Anna’s scalp prickled with sweat. “There’s nothing for you in Nahora.”

  “Won’t be, soon enough.” He shrugged. “Don’t play yourself down, girl. You think I’d march half our fucking columns into those wastes just for Nahora?”

  She narrowed her eyes.

  “When you think of every babe being thrown onto a pike,” Teodor growled, leaning out of his chair with a pointed nail, “know that it was your doing. No greater dishonor than to burn your own blood, sukra. Swore I’d hunt you down and see you scream for what you did, and now it’s here.”

  “You’re lying,” Anna spat. Some of the fighters tensed at that, but they were irrelevant, no more threatening than the trees around her. Everything in her awareness had collapsed down to Teodor, to his horrible truth.

  “All for you, girl,” Teodor cackled. “Every city razed, every child starved, every leg spread—it was all for you.”

  Her hands tightened into fists.

  “There’s that old spark,” he whispered. “Shame your old handler’s not here to see this. He’s too busy reaping the fruits of what we’ve done.”

  “What you’ve done?” Anna demanded.

  “Your corner of this world might be aflame,” Teodor said, “but things here are good. Better than good. Could’ve seen Rzolka for yourself, girl. You could’ve had it all.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Fuck’s it matter?”

  “Tell me.”

  Teodor scratched his chin, seemingly weighing her requests with great care. “Right,” he said finally. “As a final dignity, you’ll get your words.” He waved her closer.

  Hesitant, Anna moved toward Teodor’s throne. When she was close enough to smell him—his rot, his grain liquor, his fermenting flesh—he leaned inward. His cracked lips parted to reveal black, pitted teeth. “So it ends.”

  Before Anna could turn away her hands were seized, clamped by calloused vises from either side. Suddenly her arms twisted and her body snapped forward and her knees smashed into the tiles. She bit back the pain, shutting her eyes as her hands were forced onto cold stone, her fingers splayed open. A pause, then slam.

  Pain exploded through her right palm, her fingertips, the nerves running up to her elbow and beyond. It came in waves, throbbing in the blackness behind her lids.

  She opened her eyes to crooked fingers, to cracked and bloody nails, to a mallet’s red mark. And at once she knew it was all over, that her time in the world had ended. That bone fragments were drifting beneath the skin, twitching as a dead hand struggled to probe itself.

  Screeches and cheers echoed around her, overwhelming the ringing in her ears and sudden sharpness in her sight, surely driven by the shock. Yet Bora’s voice, incomprehensible and soft, seemed to play through her ears.

  This world is a passing shadow.

  At once, the noise fell away.

  Anna glanced upward, away from muddy boots and scarred feet.

  All eyes had fallen upon something behind Anna. Flaking lips tightened into grimaces, into wild masks of bemusement. Fabric rustled and shifted.

  “By the fucking Grove,” muttered Teodor.

  One by one the hands fell away from Anna. Several of the fighters stumbled backward, moving toward the throne. She looked back toward the living stairwell, somehow expecting Bo
ra, somehow—

  Yatrin stood with a short blade in his hand.

  He unbuckled his helmet and tossed it to the floor, then tore off his black covering, revealing a web of flowing sigils that still snaked beneath his flesh. His rune burned dimly beneath the powder he’d applied.

  They’d learned the enemy’s ploys.

  “If you turn her over now,” he said, moving closer with long strides, “I’ll make your ends swift.”

  Anna fought to keep the tears from her eyes. There was a time and place, but not here. Not at Teodor’s heel. Spying an opening in the gathering, she waited until a three-fingered fighter had edged aside before scrambling away from the throne. She crashed back to the tiles after three paces, then dragged herself toward Yatrin, all the while staring at her captors. They watched her with the terror that had surely been lurking in their minds.

  All but Teodor. “Your work?” he asked Anna.

  “Eastern,” she said in the river-tongue, standing and moving to Yatrin’s side. “I pray you’ve learned flatspeak in these years, Teodor. I’m not inclined to translate for you.”

  “Not inclined to beg, either,” Teodor said.

  “There’s nothing to beg for,” Anna whispered.

  Yatrin raised his arm, angling his palm toward the cluster of Volna fighters. He spread his fingers into a wide arc as he waited, allowing the fighters to gather up their blades and clubs from the grass, before advancing with slow, certain steps. The fighters exchanged worried glances, with some looking to Teodor and others snarling at the easterner.

  Anna trailed Yatrin, wondering what branching rune they’d given him before—

  The largest fighter among them, banded with metal studs that protruded from pale skin, lowered his club and pressed three fingers to his throat. A thin red line materialized from nothingness, creeping slowly at first, then drawing its way over the jugular in a swift streak. The fighter dropped his club and batted at himself, whimpering like an infant, as the others dashed away. Blood ran in bright sheets down his bare chest. He spent his final moment screaming, desperately trying to plug the gash in his neck, before staggering and collapsing into the grass.

  “Line up,” Anna called in the river-tongue. She studied each of the men in turn. After a moment of watching Teodor’s slate face, they set their weapons down in a collective clatter, then shambled into a row. Some of them had piss stains on their trousers. “You,” she said to the man farthest to the left, forcing his eyes wide open. “How many unarmed people have you cut down?”

  He mumbled something beneath his breath.

  “Louder,” Anna hissed.

  “None,” he said. “Nobody.”

  Anna looked down the row. “Is he lying?” After a brief pause, three of the men nodded. Anna glanced at Yatrin, then pointed.

  This time his cut was swifter, more reckless, spraying a gout of blood over the tiles.

  Anna looked at the next man, whose attention was robbed by the still-spurting corpse. “What about you?”

  His lips quivered. “Two.”

  Again, Anna pointed. Just as the man howled, she moved down the line. “You.”

  “I’m a good man,” this one said. He was smaller than the others, wearing a simple cotton tunic and sandals. His eyes were watery, hopeful. “I’ve never taken a life.”

  Few men found themselves in such a place by a twist of fate, Anna considered. She blinked at the man, then nodded. “How many have you raped?”

  His fingers curled inward. “One.”

  Anna pointed.

  One by one she worked down their line, reddening the floor and making the others sob, vomit, plead, and pray. All of it was wasted.

  The last body fell to reveal Teodor, now working his jaw restlessly as he sat slumped in his former throne. He had the unrepentant, cold gaze of a killer, of a man who’d burned his soul away long ago. Drawing a hard breath, he puffed out his bloated stomach and sneered. “On with it, sukra. Been waiting for the Grove since my first breath.”

  “You won’t go to the Grove,” Anna said. “You’ll suffer.”

  “I will?” he laughed. “Golyna’s set to be in ashes, girl. To these people I’m a fucking hero. And what are you? Some monster, some twisted fuck. They’d see you hang, just like we hung Bora’s strip of flesh.” His pitted smile spread, threatening to worm its way into Anna’s focus. “That’s right, girl. We used it for sling practice. We fed it to sows.”

  Not Bora, but formless flesh. “You were never a hero, Teodor. You, the tracker, all the rest . . . you’re cowards.”

  He cocked his head to the side. “We brought salt and water and fowl to every stretch of this land,” he said proudly. “What’ve you done?”

  “Stopped you.”

  Teodor threw up his arms. “But I’ve already won! Best believe that I’ve heard the whispers coming from the east. Golyna’s so certain it’ll survive the storm, yeah? The eastern jewel won’t shine so fiercely when we’re finished. It’ll be rubble.”

  Anna’s stomach turned. “What?”

  “Fucking heard me.”

  “Golyna’s not a fortress,” Anna whispered. “There are refugees in there.”

  “Rough day to be a traitor.”

  “You have the wrong target.”

  “Wrong? Looks like it’ll be just right.”

  “There are southerners in there too. Your own breed.”

  He shrugged. “We offered a plot and a handful to every man in our territory. Only plot those sukry are getting is a grave.”

  “Tell them to call off the assault,” Anna said, bending down to take a Volna fighter’s bone-handled dagger. “Send a mirror message now.”

  “Pull our hounds back?” he asked. “Or what? You’ll bleed me? Old crow and I had a proper deal.”

  “Do it!”

  Teodor’s remaining eye lit up. Anyone could be broken. Anyone’s armor could be pried off. “A thousand years of Volna’s reign, sukra. A thousand years to those who toiled without power.”

  Yatrin glanced at Anna, his hand still outstretched.

  “With your touch,” she said in broken Orsas.

  Anna moved toward the tunnel, already spying the icy ripples that indicated Shem’s presence, Shem’s attention. The oval began swirling faster, coalescing into its open state. Just before Anna reached its edge, Teodor’s laughter rose like a raven’s cawing. Between every whump and crack there was another cackle, another grunt, another amused snort. And as the final blows landed, turning from hollow thuds to wet sloshing, she could hear the madman’s calls to the Grove.

  “A thousand years, you traitorous little bitch! A thousand—”

  Yatrin’s footsteps came padding toward her.

  * * * *

  She knelt at Shem’s side, staring down into brilliant orbs that no longer saw the world. Her right hand, swollen and contorted, rested atop his stomach, feeling for the subtle tics of his heart and the glacial swells of his breaths. With the other hand she caressed his forehead, hoping that he might feel something—anything—within whatever void he’d come to inhabit. Memories roiled into awareness: the Huuri’s arms lending her strength; a boy in Bylka who’d fallen from a ladder and never stirred again; a dying calf squirming and writhing in a field.

  Soon he would depart this world. Or so she hoped. Perhaps he’d come undone, a bundle of goodness and light thrown back into the chaos of creation, or nothingness, or—

  But when?

  She leaned closer to him, trying to force stinging reassurances into his ear, but it was impossible. She couldn’t say with certainty that he’d ever sleep, that he’d be done with this cycle of twilight and darkness. Certainly not now.

  “Shem,” she whispered finally, “I’m here, I’m with you.” His knuckles seemed to shift, but she knew it was wishful thinking. Even with every tunnel extinguished and the Nest c
ollapsed down to a single chamber, making the warrens feel like a desiccated husk, Shem’s body was still being drained. The feat had been too ambitious and intricate for him, perhaps for anybody. It would take all of Anna’s scribes to grant him mere wakefulness. “Shem, listen to me. We need to find Konrad and the rest of his unit. Do you know where they are?”

  His lids flickered. It was monumental for such a placid body.

  Anna continued to run a hand over his forehead, smiling as though he could see her. “That’s good, Shem. That’s it. Can you show me where they are?” She choked on the final word and cleared her throat. “It’s very important, Shem.”

  At first there was stillness. A seeping, hollow stillness, chilling the air itself as the boy’s breathing ceased.

  Then a crystalline spark blossomed beyond his dais, spinning, radiating outward in glassy rings. A black forest crept into existence beyond the shimmering eye, followed by a blazing sunset, stacks of smoke fraying into the breeze, boot-dappled mud, and high, sprawling grass, its nearer stalks charred in ragged patches. Silhouettes moved at the edge of the woods, milling about rather than hurrying.

  “It’s them,” Yatrin said, wandering toward the tunnel’s veneer. “They’re alive.”

  Anna kissed Shem’s forehead. The tunnel’s surge of light gave some form to the warrens and its dwindling candles. “Don’t be afraid of the dark, Shem,” she whispered as she rose. “You’re not alone. You never have been.”

  * * * *

  Viczera Company was broken. Not strictly by morale, but by red-marked rosters, missing cohorts, unmarked graves they’d been forced to dig during their retreat to the coast. Their scouts, perched in treetop lookouts at the forest’s edge, had initially cheered at the newcomers. But as Anna and Yatrin proceeded into the camp, the reality of the situation seemed to occur to the company’s remnants. They hadn’t arrived with reinforcements nor rations.

  At the invasion’s onset, Viczera Company had stood at 200 strong. Now they were far less than a company, hardly even a unit. Seventeen fighters, ash-caked and thin, wandered out of their dugouts. An additional clump of Borzaq fighters, chewing khat as they sat atop muddy packs, glanced up warily.