Raybearer

by Jordan Ifueko

  “Don’t leave us again,” she said, touching his cheek. Then she turned and seized me into a hug. Sanjeet scooped up all three of us, crushing the air from our lungs, and we laughed until the army of fretting attendants broke us apart.

  “Wait,” Dayo croaked, before the healers could whisk us away to the infirmary. “There’s something I have to do. Something . . . I have to ask.” He turned to me and grinned that impossibly bright smile.

  I squirmed, feeling awkward as everyone stared at us. “You almost died, Dayo,” I muttered. “Go with the healers. Anything else can wait.”

  “No, it can’t.” Dayo drew a chain from beneath his ruined shirt, and on the end dangled a gold-encrusted vial. “Do you love me now, Tarisai of Swana?”

  My heart raced. “Dayo,” I whispered.

  “Your mind connected with the Ray,” he said. “You passed the test. You heard me . . . saved me.” Shakily, he knelt on the marble floor and uncorked the vial of pelican oil. He smiled and said the scripted words so many emperors had before him: “Shall you be moon to the morning star? Are you willing, Tarisai of Swana? Do you accept my hand in councilhood?”

  The room burst into excited murmurs. I blocked them out.

  Say yes, screamed every cell in my body. Rule the world. Have a family. Think of Dayo. Think of Kirah, and Sanjeet, and the castle by the sea.

  But I couldn’t. The Lady’s wish had been clear: The moment he anointed me, I would become a monster. My cursed hands . . . they would fly around his neck, here, in front of everyone, and they would never let go. I was not normal, try as I might. I was broken. And The Lady’s words were carved into my mind, a permanent scar, unless—

  Unless they weren’t.

  Slowly, my gaze found Sanjeet, who watched me anxiously among the whispering throng of candidates. I remembered how he had looked when we first met: haunted. Hunched with nightmares and shadows, the Prince’s Bear. But now his back was straight, and his brow was grim but clear. I had helped him. I had healed the scars on his mind. I had made him forget his story. Why couldn’t I do the same for myself?

  Inhaling deeply, I dug my fingers into my temples and laid waste to my own memories.

  I was an invader, kicking down the doors of my mind’s palace, and setting flame to every room. First I burned Kathleen and Woo In, letting their faces and voices smolder into hazy smoke. My mind fought back, desperate to fill in the new gaps. Who had brought me to Oluwan? A man and a woman. Or . . . had it been two women? I didn’t know. What had they talked about? The Lady—Hallows—a mission . . . The words turned rapidly to mush, like fallen mangoes decaying in dry season. I knew nothing of my journey to Oluwan, and the people who had brought me were ghosts. My head swam, but ruthlessly I pressed on.

  Next room.

  Now the flames engulfed Bhekina House, and Melu’s savannah, and the memory of Mother’s first two wishes. My body began to swelter and shake. Distantly, I heard Dayo and the other children murmur in concern. Someone brought a stool and I sat, Dayo kneeling before me worriedly.

  “Just a moment,” I croaked. “I just—need a moment.”

  Most of my memories were located in just a few areas of my mind, but Melu was all over, a virus in every vein, bending me to The Lady’s will. His spirit was living, reaching with difficulty from his savannah to speak into my mind.

  Stop, he bellowed.

  “No,” I rasped.

  Stop! No good can come of this. You are half-ehru, and your destiny is—

  NO, my mind roared back at him, and with a wave of snickering flames, Melu’s face and voice turned to ash. I knew him no more.

  The last room was the hardest. I held my head between my knees, rocking and whimpering with the pain.

  “We need a healer,” Dayo cried, and Kirah began to sing a soothing chant, but I covered my ears. Now was not the time for distractions.

  The Lady’s face resisted the flames, as though she were encased in adamant. I threw embers and blazing torches, I sent rivers of fire; still she smiled, unscathed. Give up, the smile said. Your mind protects me with the same ferocity with which it defends your own name.

  But I’m not you, I whispered back.

  Are you sure?

  My brow beaded with sweat. My name is my own. My name is my own. My—name. My—own—

  And at last, the shield of adamant shattered.

  Gone was the glow of her brilliant black eyes. Gone was the jasmine scent of her arms around me. Gone was the music of her throaty voice, the chant of me and mine.

  And concealed in impenetrable smoke were those lethal words, spoken over me like an incantation: I command you to kill him.

  I opened my eyes. The whole room stared at me, eerily still, as though turned to stone. What had I just been thinking about? I had been anxious about . . . something. I had been unhappy. Was it the fire? Bad people . . . Someone I knew had tried to kill Dayo. I had been so worried. Terrified. I couldn’t bear to lose the prince, because . . . because . . .

  I stared down at the scarred face below mine, the mop of black locs, the gangly features I’d come to know as well as my own. I love him. My feelings were certain, like the sun rising over the palace turrets, or the grasslands rolling beneath the Swanian sky.

  I left the stool, knelt, and touched my brow to his. “I am willing,” I said. “I accept your hand in councilhood.”

  Tears glistened on Dayo’s cheeks. The smell of sea salt and burnt feathers filled the air as he drew a star on my forehead with pelican oil. Then he produced a small knife and made a shallow cut in his hand, then mine. “Now you’re mine,” he breathed, pressing our palms so the blood ran together, and heat burned through me.

  I froze. Something bad was supposed to happen now. Something horrible I couldn’t remember . . .

  But nothing did.

  Dayo stood and pulled me up into an embrace, and I shivered with relief. His touch was more than a comfort. I needed to be near him, now; needed Kirah, and Kameron, and Umansa, and all my other council siblings. My body ached for their warmth, with the same fervor that it longed for food and water. Council sickness: the permanent hunger of Anointed Ones.

  Sanjeet knelt for his anointing afterward. “I never needed a sacred title to protect you, brother,” he told Dayo, and smiled at the new cut in his palm. “But to stay by your side, I’ll take whatever name you give me.”

  Then Dayo presented us to the crowd of courtiers and candidates, and they sank to the floor in respect.

  I blinked.” They shouldn’t be bowing. Not to me.”

  “Of course they should,” Dayo replied, linking his fingers through mine. “Anointed Honor.”

  CHAPTER 10

  The world outside was chanting my name, but all I wanted was a nap.

  “Thank you for visiting Ebujo, Anointed Honor. Look, it’s you!”

  “Sorry,” I mumbled. How long had the child been kneeling there? From my gilded stool in the temple, I squinted down at a gap-toothed boy. “What did you say?”

  Beside me, my council siblings smiled as commoners approached their stools. How my siblings managed to stay in such a good mood—accepting gifts and congratulations, kissing every infant thrust at their faces—I had no idea. We had barely eaten for hours, and had traveled nonstop for a year. After Dayo anointed our last council member, kindhearted Zathulu of Djbanti, we had taken a goodwill tour of the empire. We had crossed sand, snow, and savannah, and been greeted in each city by the people we would one day rule. Our journey had culminated here, in the holy city of Ebujo, where all council members received their official titles.

  Platforms drawn by tamed lions with braided manes had paraded us through the streets. The cheers and drumming drowned out even my own thoughts.

  “Don’t stop waving,” Mbali had ordered us before the ceremony. “Don’t stop smiling. They will pass your faces down to their children and grandchildren. You are not human beings—not anymore. You are nations. You are history walking.”

  The road winding to the t
emple teemed with commoners in their best festival wrappers. Perfume thickened the air, and children tossed petals from the battlements, a flurry of gold, red, and white. Griots beat shakers and drums, and to the rhythm, the townspeople of Ebujo sang a new version of Aritsar’s well-known folk rhyme:

  Tarisai brings his drum; nse

  Sanjeet and Umansa bring his plow; gpopo

  Kameron and Theo watch our older brother dance—

  Black and gold: Ekundayo!

  Mayazatyl sharpens his spear; nse

  Kirah weaves his wrapper; gpopo

  Thérèse and Emeronya watch our older brother dance—

  Black and gold: Ekundayo!

  Zathulu braids his hair; nse

  Ai Ling brings his gourd; gpopo

  Eleven moons watch the sun dance:

  Black and gold: Ekundayo!

  But all I could think of was my blistering headache.

  “Are you all right, Anointed Honor?” the boy in the temple asked, shifting his feet.

  My vision swam, but I forced a smile and nodded. “What do you have there?”

  The boy held up a rag doll and dropped it shyly in my hand. “It’s you. I made her from my best tunic. It was too small for me, and Ma wanted to sell it for scraps, but I wouldn’t let her.”

  The doll’s body was sewn from dark brown linen, matched carefully to my complexion. Cheerful button eyes shone over a seam smile, and black yarn braids burst from its brow.

  My heart twinged. Memories of the boy’s fingers, shakily wielding a needle and pricking himself by accident, leeched from the doll into my palm. I made the tiny Tarisai bow to him, and the boy giggled.

  “Thank you,” I told him. “How did you know what I looked like?”

  “There’s a portrait in our family inn, Anointed Honor. A merchant brought it all the way from the capital. It has you, and Prince Ekundayo, and the Prince’s Bear, and the other Prince’s Eleven. Sometimes we leave maize under the portrait. Or cassava, and palm wine.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

  “Offerings,” he said, blinking as though it were obvious. “So the town will have a good harvest.”

  I opened my mouth, then closed it. Commoners and nobility from all over the continent were lined up before our elevated stools in the temple. Their eyes devoured the jeweled weave of my wax-dyed wrapper, the stacks of rainbow beads on my wrists and neck, and the golden cuffs on my biceps. I squirmed. They knew I was only mortal . . . didn’t they?

  “You’re my favorite, you know,” the boy chattered. “My sister thinks Anointed Honor Ai Ling is prettier, but you can read minds. Or is it memories? Sis and I couldn’t decide. Auntie says it’s suspicious how no one knows who your mother and father are, but Papa says that doesn’t matter because you saved Prince Ekundayo’s life, and I think . . .”

  His voice faded away as the pain between my temples surged. Those words: mother and father.

  Ever since my anointing, headaches had plagued me. I remembered only two things from my life before the Children’s Palace: a mango orchard and a name—Lady. I had obeyed Mbali in my years as a candidate, never speaking of my mother, and now I couldn’t even if I wanted to. But as I slept, a song echoed on the edge of my dreams: Me, mine. She’s me and she is mine.

  “Are your parents poor?” the boy whispered conspiratorially. “Will you visit them when you go back to Swana?”

  My temples throbbed. Air ceased to travel through my lungs. “I—I don’t know. I—”

  “That’s enough questions for Her Anointed Honor.” Dayo had risen from his stool.

  The child froze and blanched. “Your . . . Your Imperial Highness.”

  Dayo smiled and crouched so the child’s face was level with his burn scar. The thick, raised skin crept down Dayo’s cheek in an intricate lattice, ending in several branches on his collarbone. It had been the best Kirah’s healing song could do after the fire, and the sight of it always made my headaches worse.

  Dayo’s obsidian oloye mask dangled from his neck; there was no need to hide it now. The twelve stripes of his immunities glittered, reflecting rainbows across the little boy’s face.

  “Your mother must be proud of you,” Dayo said gently. “I bet you’re the best dollmaker in Ebujo.”

  The boy nodded woodenly, and Dayo ruffled his hair. Then the child bowed and retreated into the crowd, dazed with shock.

  Dayo placed a hand on my shoulder. “Still no memories?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “It’s horrible. I’m supposed to be the Imperial Delegate of Swana. But how can I represent a realm I don’t even remem—”

  “Forget Swana,” Dayo cut in, and I blinked in surprise. Dayo rarely interrupted anyone. “I mean . . . ,” he faltered. “You’re one of us now. That’s all that matters, right? And you won’t be Delegate of Swana anytime soon. Until Father di—That is, until Father goes to the village, we’ll just be running campaigns and throwing parties at Yorua Keep. That could last for years. Decades, even.”

  In Aritsar, it was bad luck to refer to the death of an emperor. Instead, we said that a deceased emperor had “gone to the village, and would not be returning soon.” Most emperors did not go to the village sooner than eighty years of age, which meant that Dayo could be well into his forties before our council rose to the throne. Until then, we would live at Yorua Keep, the sleepy fortress in coastal Oluwan where all crown princes lived after completing their council. Once the goodwill tour ended, we would move straight there, only returning to the Children’s Palace on rare visits to the capital.

  “It will be nice to run our own home,” I conceded. “I won’t miss the trials. Or getting woken up by drums.”

  Dayo peered at me curiously. “You’re sweating. Is the Breach making you nervous? Nothing’s come out of it for years, you know.”

  I grimaced. “Nothing needs to come out of that hole for it to stink. How do the priests stand it?”

  The heart of the Ebujo Temple was a vast chamber with high walls and no roof. Centuries ago, monsters had decimated the domed ceiling. Pillars of translucent limestone shot through with purple veins rose around us, supporting nothing but the sky. One side of the chamber held a marble altar, our semicircle of gilded stools, and standing room for onlookers. On the other side, hedged by a low spiked wall and guarded by shaman warriors, lay the Oruku Breach: an entrance to the underworld.

  The rift sunk into the ground, a smirking, sulfurous mouth that steamed with blue miasma. The temple had originally been built as a fortress around the Breach, guarding civilians against undead monsters. But after Enoba’s treaty, Redemptor children were forced to enter the Breach regularly, and so the impenetrable fortress had been converted into a temple. Every hundred years, the Breach chamber hosted the Peace Ritual between the Arit crown prince and the continent’s ambassadors. The ritual was preliminary, a less grand version of the continent-wide Treaty Renewal, which took place one year later in Oluwan City between the emperor and all the continent’s rulers. This century, the preliminary ritual happened to coincide with our council’s ensealment ceremony, in which we learned the titles we would inherit from the Emperor’s Eleven.

  I glanced over at Kirah, who sat a few stools down from me. We had been encouraged to wear clothes representing our home realms, and she looked resplendent in the billowing tunic and trousers of Blessid chieftains. Though our titles had not yet been announced, everyone knew she would replace Mbali as High Priestess of Aritsar. Aside from Dayo’s, Kirah’s receiving line was longest: commoners and nobility alike, desperate for a taste of her healing Hallow. A balding old man knelt weeping at Kirah’s feet, bobbing with gratitude as she chanted over him.

  I summoned Dayo’s Ray. When warm pressure pulsed at the center of my head, I directed the heat toward Kirah. Don’t tire yourself, I thought. You can’t help anyone if your voice gives out.

  Kirah looked up, sneaking me an exhausted smile. I don’t have the energy to heal any of them fully, she thought. But they still look at me lik
e I’m a god. I don’t know if that’s funny or tragic.

  I frowned, sending a pulse of sympathy through the bond. When she responded, rejuvenation coursed through me. Nothing satiated council sickness like Ray-speaking.

  These days, I barely remembered what it had been like to love without the Ray. The freedom to speak into my friends’ minds—to share pictures, even feelings if we wished—was an intimacy unlike any I had ever felt.

  At least, any that I could remember. Sometimes when I slept with my anointed siblings, our bodies tangled on the Children’s Palace floor like a litter of lion cubs . . . familiarity twinged inside me. I had belonged to someone before, in a way just as intimate and consuming as the Ray bond. Before the Children’s Palace, someone had owned me.

  Like an island obscured by fog, a corner of my identity floated out of reach. I could build a raft and row to it—fight through the waves of my mind’s resistance, reclaiming the shores of my past—but I was too much of a coward to try.

  “So don’t,” Dayo always said when I worried. “You’re home now. Why would you need anywhere else?”

  That man and woman, another voice Ray-spoke in my mind. Tarisai, you’ve seen them before.

  The voice caressed the center of my spine, a velvet bass thickened by a plosive Dhyrmish accent. I suppressed my pleasure, hoping it did not travel through the Ray as I met Sanjeet’s eye.

  He sat one stool to my left, resplendent in the pearl-studded black kaftan of Dhyrmish generals. With his head, he gestured to the next group of well-wishers in my receiving line. Don’t you know them?

  An isoken woman in a hooded green cloak and a man whose full-body birthmarks betrayed him to be a Redemptor stood before my platform. Most well-wishers were bashful, staring at their feet as they stammered congratulations and handed me a gift. In contrast, these visitors stared directly at me . . . and smirked.

  I shook my head at Sanjeet. I’ve never seen them before. Have you?

  He looked uncertain. Once, I think. In the stories you used to show me from your memories, before you forgot your childhood. But that was years ago. I could be mistaken.