“I don’t know. He’s far away. You’re here.” I had to keep him talking. Somehow, I had to keep his lips moving and his mind focused until I could stop one of these men and get him to carry Valeo. But every man I saw either was stumbling along, similarly stricken, or helping another man already.
I turned back to Valeo. “Tell me about your family.”
Bad idea. “The guards. Are. My family.”
“Alright, let’s try again. Tell me your favorite song.”
“Song?”
“Anything. Your favorite story, song, prayer. Something.”
He squinted at me and tried to focus. “Markden. Woolass.”
“Start from the beginning.”
“Can’t.”
I saw a familiar head scarf dart and weave around the men and close in on where I stood, hovering over the seated, wobbly Valeo. I shouted with relief and a whole new fear. “Mami, grab his arm!”
“They weren’t aiming for you and me, Hadara.”
“This one’s hurt.” Wait, what had she said? Not aiming at us. It didn’t register.
“They’re loyal to us,” she said. “I don’t know why.”
The star comes to you as you come to it. I wondered if Mami would know what that meant.
Mami and I reached around Valeo from either side and propped him up and half-dragged him through the mud. Between his heft and his armor and the heavy wetness and thigh-high muck, the going was slow and tiring. I shouted at him to lean on us, keep going, don’t stop now, another step. Another! Keep going!
He slowed and teetered in place, about to crash over like a chopped-down tree. Mami shouted across to me. “We have to leave him!”
“No, we don’t.” I was panting. If we dropped him, we were giving up on him. I couldn’t do that.
I whipped around to the nearest soldier. “You have to help him. We can’t hold him.”
The guard waded beside me and shouted something in Fernai to the others, and they crowded in beside Valeo. I fell back and let them take over the burden of dragging Valeo along, as he’d nodded off, right there on his feet. There wasn’t anything I could do. I realized I’d likely just watched a man stagger to his death, but then all around me, soldiers were falling and not getting up again. I clutched at Mami, like she was the one safe spot in all the swamp, and she held back. I kept my eyes riveted on the men dragging Valeo forward, even as the tall grasses of the border marsh loomed into view. All the rowboats and punts were still moored. Safety was at hand.
For me, at least.
Then far behind us came an ear-splitting boom and a roar of sudden fire. My ears ached from the popping rush of air. The force threw me forward, Mami landing in the water on top of me. All that stopped me from sinking below the surface were the upright roots of the waterwood. I wedged between them, stuck, gasping.
The Feroxi renewed their yelling, and their tight formations evaporated. Men threw down shields and ran, even tried to swim, from the billowing flames that swept toward us. Smoke singed my nostrils. The intense heat sucked all the air from our lungs. Mami and I grasped at roots and bark to regain our footing, grabbed hands, and ran as best we could, not knowing if even the boats could get us away in time.
I planted among the giants’ frozen realm a magic seed that yielded a bitter harvest. All the male children born that year never learned to walk, their limbs withered in the womb. The priests could not cure them, nor would I spare any.
Know that I shall scatter such seeds throughout Kuldor, I told them. They are watered by your excesses, and you cannot cure them except by my mercy.
— Verisimilitudes 7, The Book of Unease
From his punt far ahead of us, S’ami shouted.
“A seed, a seed!” he said. “The demon’s cast a seed among us.”
Without Amaniel here, I had only a vague idea what that meant and no one to ask. Mami and I reached the boats, most of the long-legged Feroxi having passed us all. I’d lost sight of Valeo the instant the fireball burst. My own safety mattered most now.
Mami grabbed at a rowboat as it pushed off, loaded with men.
“Don’t you dare leave us,” she said.
“One only,” a guard said.
A soldier from another boat called out, “We’ll take one.”
The men in the second boat helped me aboard, and we pushed off, with four of them rowing in hard, long strokes, their pace brisk. I squeezed next to a guard but kept my eyes on Mami, wedged into the next boat over. She squinted back toward the swamp.
I followed her gaze and stiffened as the first orange licks of fire shot above the treetops. The swamp burned. I didn’t understand why. I know the Gek can make some things explode, but no one risks such massive harm to their homes, do they? The blaze roared through the tops of trees, sending thick, roiling smoke bending skyward. I rewrapped my scarf so it covered my nose and mouth, though it let some hair show. I didn’t care. Modesty was far down on my list of worries at the moment. Many of the men had fished out rags or torn off chunks of their togs to create a similar face mask. The smoke was blinding, choking—and everywhere.
Were the Feroxi responsible for the blazing swamp? I couldn’t see how. The swamp flooded so thoroughly in summer that the boles of trees were no longer visible beneath the inky waterline. Setting that kind of fire would be more of a job than the Feroxi had had time for.
The last guards straggled single file from different points along the swamp’s border, their faces sooty, many of them carrying the limp forms of other guards. For all I hated the Feroxi, I found myself rooting for their safety. I tried to think of what Babba would have to say about them had he been here. They only raised sword or spear when under attack. They’d retreated in order, quickly, methodically, and aided one another. There was much to admire about them, now that I had a few moments to reflect on it.
I shifted in my seat, squished and overheated, but pretty much in cozy luxury compared to my battered companions. A more bedraggled, hard-bitten, grubby bunch hadn’t drifted through these fens since the first settlers, I imagined. The cramped space and teetery boat didn’t bother them at all. They didn’t even look tired. I could only hope Valeo was made of similarly stern stuff and would ride out whatever the Gek had hit him with.
The singed guards wore a steel-eyed alert look that probably came standard issue with the rest of their gear. I figured I must look like I’d swum up from the murky depths myself, some brown-tarred, red-eyed creature in limp rags and soggy boots. Plus, I stank. It’s one thing to admire the musky aroma of the swamps and another thing to wear it. I needed a hot soak and a cool drink and time to reflect.
The soldier next to me shifted and surveyed the boats ahead of ours. His rangy frame fit tightly into the narrow space, and he was all elbows and knees and sharp angles that I could only avoid by not budging a finger-width.
Another man in our boat said something in Fernai. I caught a word—Valeo—somewhere in the sentence.
“What is it?” I said, remembering my manners only afterward. “That is, if you don’t mind my asking.”
The soldier beside me looked down as if noticing me for the first time. His startling blue eyes locked on mine for an instant until I remembered to look away out of modesty. No staring. Manners were a pain even when I wasn’t recently spared a harrowing death and overcome by stink and soot and worry. Right then, courtesy was a downright irritant, another pit in the path to safety.
“The guard who protected you. These men are in his unit.” The man’s thick accent was lilting and musical, giving his basso voice an unexpectedly soft edge. “He is in a boat far ahead.”
“He’s alright then?”
“His Highness is unconscious or dead. We cannot tell from here.”
My breath caught in my throat. His Highness? “I don’t know if there’s an antidote.”
“Antidote?” The guard sounded out the word to himself.
“The cure for the poison.”
“You mean a potion. His Highness would
rather swallow his sword. The Azwan will cure him if he can.”
“But if he can’t?”
“There is nothing the Azwan of Uncertainty cannot do if Nihil permits it.”
A quick glance over my shoulder told me the Azwan had other things on his mind. The punt radiated pale blue light from where the Gek girl was imprisoned with her treasure.
“I hope you’re right,” I said.
The man bristled and clamped a massive, filthy hand on my shoulder. The other soldiers in our boat glared as one.
“There is no Azwan like the Son of the Second Moon,” he said. “We are his men, and we will suffer no doubts on his behalf.”
I gulped back the first stupid thing that came to mind and stammered an apology. “I meant no disrespect.”
He shrugged and released his grip. “It seems to come instinctively to your kind.”
I had to let the insult pass. We had drawn up to the Azwan’s punt by then, and I had a clear view through the crushed reeds of both that boat and Mami’s just beyond. All the soldiers were watching, too.
S’ami rubbed his gold wisdom knot in his right hand, his brow knit in concentration. Beads of perspiration glistened on his forehead. The Gek girl lay curled, limp and unconscious, within a haze of bluish light at the bottom of the punt, but I couldn’t see the box from where I sat. It could be on the other side of Kuldor for all it mattered just then. The Gek may have wanted me to have it, but there’d be no getting it with S’ami hovering beside it.
He called out to Mami through the wisps of smoke and ash that sifted angrily all around us. Coughing fits interrupted him, but he managed to call out to her.
“It shouldn’t seem that I abandoned you, Lia, wife of Rimonil. You mustn’t think the Temple ungrateful.”
Mami bowed her head from her boat on the other side of him. Her face always went blank and passive around clerics. “I understand, I think, the importance of your mission, Azwan. I wouldn’t presume to preoccupy you at such a dangerous moment.”
“In other words, you can fend for yourself.” S’ami flashed a quick grin, while not taking his eyes off his prize. My sunburned face stung as it scrunched into a scowl. Fend for ourselves, indeed. Many fine thanks for that.
Mami only said: “If need be, sir.”
“For someone who makes her living defying the Temple and allows her daughter to grow up half-wild, you are a paragon of grace and modesty, Lia of Rimonil.”
“If it pleases you, Azwan.”
Mami was covered in muck and soot, as we all were. Even so, I could see her make her fiercest “be quiet” face at me beneath her soiled head scarf. She wasn’t having any of it, but I was silently being warned not to open my mouth. I nodded, like hers only a slight movement, and kept my gaze steady. Half-wild. I didn’t feel any shame about it. Mami had done the best she could, considering I would’ve had to have been tied to the boardwalk not to follow her out to the fens.
The Azwan’s right hand jerked then, and he grasped his totem with both hands, steadying himself. It was as if the odd little gold weight had startled to life. I heard it as a buzzing, almost a tinny, shrill sound, distinct from the hum of insects around us.
One of the guards poling S’ami’s punt paused. “Azwan?”
“I’m alright.” S’ami nodded. He glanced over to my boat, but not at me. He nodded toward the man beside me, who’d angled around to face the Azwan. “All your men off, Commander?”
The guard with the ice in his eyes placed his fist, thumb-first, in the middle of his chest by way of salute. His elbow nearly knocked me out of the boat. I tried to make myself as small as possible.
“Guardsman Makkio signaled from the last boat. All are accounted for, Azwan.”
“Casualties?”
“Thirty-three dead so far.”
“Wounded?”
“Unknown. The poison isn’t slow. For those still living . . .”
“I’ll take care of it.”
The Commander looked down his nose at me with an I-told-you-so grimace. I took a sudden interest in my ruined boots, until the Azwan’s hand jumped again. He had trouble wrestling his own wrist back to his lap, as if he’d caught a wriggly fish intent on returning to the marsh. His hands went high, then low, then up and to the side. The grating buzz grew louder.
Our boat and Mami’s and several others drew closer, the guards drawing weapons. The men who’d kept their shields raised those as well. Their helmets glinted dully in the sun beneath clusters of plumes angled toward the struggling Azwan.
“Back off,” S’ami said. “You’re in more danger here than me.”
The Commander signaled the boats to back away, and we floated off a body length or so, but no further. No one had spoken; we were all riveted to S’ami’s struggle. S’ami was too chatty to keep from us what was happening.
“It’s a seed,” he said. “I’d know if it were Nihil’s, but it isn’t. It tries to reverse my theurgy. The conflagration . . . the fire in the swamp. This is its handiwork, distorting my own.”
A seed? All I knew of seeds were the kind we planted in pots. I had some dim memory of learning about chaotic spells, but this was not the moment to ask. S’ami wrestled his own right hand back to a spot between his knees, moisture fanning out from his armpits and in a jagged line down his back. His chest heaved, and he closed his eyes. The Gek hadn’t stirred in her transparent cage.
“Lia of Rimonil,” S’ami said.
“Great Azwan.”
“What do you know of seeds?”
“Nothing but what the priest tells us.”
“And that is?”
“Nihil sows the seeds of random discord among us. They sprout in the fertile soil of our perfidy, Worthiness.”
“It isn’t our fault this time. I must leave off guarding this Gek child and her prize if I am to douse the fire in the swamp. You’ll sit with me, Lia, and keep your eyes on that box.”
My mother straightened up at that. “Azwan, wouldn’t your guards hold her better? What if she escapes?”
“It’s not the Gek, but what she carries. The demon is in that box. I can feel it. If Scripture is any guide, it’ll seek a human body so it can walk among us. You’d be easier to defeat than one of my guards.”
My hands flew up to my face. “Mami, no!”
An enormous, sooty hand clamped over my mouth. The Commander’s great paw held my silence, his meaty arm locking me in place against his armor. A dagger pressed against my lower back. I stiffened my spine and bit down hard on my lip.
S’ami turned in the punt to face backward, his eyes riveted to the giant plume of smoke that rose overhead. Hot ash swirled and sizzled into the water around us. Would the marsh catch fire? I realized that we might’ve been in danger all along. Mami’s boat pulled up alongside his punt and guards helped her aboard. She sat at one end by the Gek, taking pains to keep from stepping anywhere near the blue light. It faded and flickered out.
For a moment, nothing happened. The Gek huddled unconscious on her side, but I could see the gentle rising and falling of her chest. The tin box lay beneath one arm.
S’ami sat across from Mami, eyes squeezed shut, his breathing heavy. He began incantations in the lively rhythm of Tengali. The wisdom knot danced in S’ami’s hand, and he tightened his grip. Slowly, slowly, he raised his arms, his sleeves falling back to reveal muscled forearms. His chanting turned to the common tongue again for the spell I’d heard the Ward’s high priest use to summon Nihil’s power when all else failed. It was the incantation of last resort, unmistakable in its desperate tone:
From the void I come, through the abyss I fall;
My place is nowhere, and from naught comes all.
An explosion ripped across the faraway swamp. Flames shot into the sky. The force sent ripples through the marsh waters, rocking all the craft and sending men headlong into grass. The Commander released me as we both lurched sideways.
S’ami let out a shout. “An eldritch power. Like I’ve never seen.” His
face shone.
Men scrambled back into boats. Behind us, treetops burned to the horizon. Smoke obliterated the sky.
Mami hovered over the Gek, her angled features twisted in horror. At her feet, the tin box glowed a bright orange.
Nor shall you abide those who abandon faith; I am god, you shall follow only me.
—from Oblations 10, The Book of Unease
Our crafts drew toward a boat launch and a rickety dock near the tail end of Port Sapphire. A crowd began shouting and waving as they spotted us. Several healers in the blue smocks of the sick ward milled with constables in their yellow coats. Dockworkers scurried to pull our boats in, tying scarves around their noses and mouths to block the fingers of smoke that trailed us.
My boat went first so the Commander could leap out and give orders. He transformed what had been a loose mob into purposeful teams. At his direction, workmen pulled wounded and dead Feroxi out of their boats and loaded them onto a scow. They pulled Valeo up, too, and I thought I heard him moan. I watched until I could see only the soles of his muddy boots, the ones I’d stomped on. I kept watching for him until the crowds and smoke combined to block my view of much of anything. I choked back dry, scratchy sobs, my eyes watering freely.
Valeo had looked after me in the swamp until he needed looking after, and I couldn’t be sure those were only orders. I had to remind myself he was a bloodthirsty, lusty idiot with a bad shave. And he was dying. I suddenly had trouble breathing, and it wasn’t only the swamp fire to blame. I should flush in shame. The Gek were burning in their tree homes back there while I got all giddy about a man, even if he did have shoulders the width of the mainland and answered to “His Highness.”
I stood around not quite knowing what to do with myself, until I saw guards clambering from the boats with darts jutting from exposed skin. I waded into the crowd toward the first healer I saw. The Commander’s booming voice ordered my halt. I turned back. “The Gek poisoned them,” I said.
The healer brushed past me. “We’ll get them all,” the woman said. But she didn’t know the poison. I carefully pulled out the pin I’d saved and grabbed another healer’s sleeve, a man.
The Temple of Doubt Page 12