Raybearer

  “Welcome to Eunsan-do,” murmured Woo In.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said quietly. “I wish Kirah could see it.” She had described Songland’s capital vividly, citing phrases from her poetry scrolls. Golden faces shaded by netted hats, bustling through the streets. High-waisted silk robes sweeping the cobblestone. Fish and noodles wafting from market stands, and muscular women carrying wheat bundles on their backs, rolling their eyes as fishermen called from riverboats. Children scampering across the curved rooftops, chasing kites in the shape of tigers. Kirah had made songs for each image, crooning as she stared beyond Oluwan City. Each note seemed to form a tether, linking her heart to someone far away.

  Woo In shifted on Hyung’s back and attempted to sound nonchalant. “Why would your council sister want to come here?”

  “I have no idea,” I lied, and punished him with silence for the rest of the journey.

  Hyung did not take us into Eunsan-do. When we climbed out of the pass, the frost abruptly disappeared, and green leaves crunched under the beast’s massive feet as we climbed a ridge that hugged the mountainside. By the time we arrived at a small clearing, clouds had smothered the moon. Tents, plows, and animal pens loomed around us. A single house with a raised foundation creaked beneath a curved, broad-lipped roof. When we staggered inside, the winter air dispersed. Numbness melted away from my feet, though the room had no fire.

  “Magic,” I whispered.

  “Songland,” Woo In corrected. “We build fireboxes outside. Smoke canals lead under our homes and heat the floor.” The inviting warmth increased when Hyung parked itself in front of the door, effectively sealing the entry shut. “Watch your step,” said Woo In.

  “Why should I watch my—”

  Then I stumbled over a lumpy bundle. It moaned. My eyes adjusted to the darkness, and across the long, low-ceilinged chamber, tiny bodies sprawled on the floor, faces peering up at me sleepily. Children—every single one covered in blue birthmarks.

  “What is this place?” I whispered.

  Woo In paused before answering: “A refuge.” Then he pulled me down a corridor to a windowless chamber that smelled of pine needles. “There’s a pallet in the corner,” he murmured. “Rest. We travel tomorrow morning.”

  “Where?” I demanded, dizzy with fatigue and council sickness. “Why am I here? What do you want from—” But he closed the sliding wooden door and clicked a lock into place. Only when Woo In’s steps retreated down the corridor did the cries from An-Ileyoba sink in.

  The emperor has gone to the village. He will not be back soon. Long live His Imperial Majesty: Ekundayo, King of Oluwan, and Oba of Aritsar.

  “Dayo,” I rasped as sobs came with sudden force. “No. I can’t be here; he’ll be alone.” I pounded on the doorframe. “You have to take me back. I didn’t get to explain. He’ll think I abandoned him again. He’ll think—” He’ll think I chose my mother after all.

  But I didn’t have a mother. Not anymore.

  I staggered back from the door, collapsing onto something soft: a thin leather pallet, piled with musty-smelling blankets. Then I cried my face stiff, sputtering in a pool of sweat and mucus as the empress and princess masks dug into my breasts. I moved only to twist my council ring, around and around until a red ring blossomed around my finger, and my demons dropped fitfully to sleep.

  I winced at the morning light trickling in from the corridor. Children’s voices and lowing animals sounded faintly through the walls, and my temples were on fire. I lurched upright from the pallet and regretted it. Nausea rolled over me.

  I hadn’t felt council sickness since my last year at the Children’s Palace, during an outbreak of pox. The testmakers had quarantined Dayo’s council, forcing us to sleep in separate rooms. Even Dayo had been required to stay away, because even though the Ray protected him from illness, he could still spread it.

  As it happened, none of us had the pox . . . but we might as well have, since council sickness felt several times worse. Through the fog of my headache, I noticed that my hand throbbed, swollen where I had twisted my seal ring.

  My heart skipped—another person was in the room. Above me stood a girl in a leather vest and patched trousers, with tan cheeks and stony brown eyes. Patterns shimmered faintly on her skin. No longer blue, as they had been nearly a year ago, but deep violet.

  “Ye Eun,” I breathed. “You’re alive. You made it out. Of course you did; you’re brave and strong, but Am’s Story, I worried about you so much . . .”

  I reached to embrace her. She caught my arrow-wounded arm with a small, firm hand.

  “I have to clean this,” Ye Eun said. Her face was a cold mask. “You could lose the arm if it gets infected. It happened to one of the younger boys.”

  She clutched a rag that reeked of astringent herbs, and shifted a bundle strapped to her back: a tuft-haired infant Redemptor, who babbled against her shoulder.

  “Ye Eun . . . don’t you remember me?” I asked. “We met at the temple in Ebujo. I—”

  “Of course I remember you.” Her voice was toneless, and her gaze was full of ghosts. “You’re the one who was supposed to keep me safe.”

  My belly turned to stone. “I’m sorry. I tried—”

  “We don’t need you, you know,” she said. “I’ll save the others, just like I saved myself.” The baby cooed and nestled into her back. More blue-marked faces, ranging from toddlers to older children, peeked into the room from behind Ye Eun’s legs. Except for Ye Eun, none of them looked older than ten.

  “Where are we?” I asked. “Where’s Woo In?”

  “You mean the Traitor Prince?” Ye Eun shrugged. “He’s checking the rabbit traps. He said to feed you, and to make sure you hadn’t hurt yourself. I only checked your hands and arms.”

  I glanced down. Dried blood crusted at the base of my finger, where I had twisted my ring last night.

  “I have to clean your wound and watch you eat,” she said, and took my hand impatiently. Her small, deft fingers swabbed my wounds and wrapped them in linen. A bowl of gray porridge steamed by my pallet, as well as a bucket and washcloth. As I washed and ate, Ye Eun peered at me more closely and huffed.

  “You’re already infected, aren’t you? Now Traitor Prince will be angry, and I’ll have to hike down to the village for garlic. I’m already behind getting the others ready for the Underworld—”

  “It’s not infection,” I cut in, wincing at the cotton sensation in my throat. “It’s council sickness.”

  Ye Eun’s scowl remained. “Then you should have brought someone. You’re like Traitor Prince. He gets fevers when he comes without Kathleen, or one of the others.”

  “Well, he won’t get fevers anymore,” I snapped, making the girl jump. I swallowed and winced. “I’m sorry. I just meant . . . Woo In isn’t part of a council anymore. The Lady is dead. And I’m his prisoner.” I smiled weakly. “So I wasn’t allowed to bring a sibling.”

  “If you’re a prisoner, we all are,” she retorted. “This is Sagimsan: the mountain where Redemptor babies are left. Sometimes it’s easier to abandon us at birth instead of waiting till we’re ten. Traitor Prince flies over the mountain and brings the babies here.”

  “Oh.” My heart twinged at the tiny curious faces in the doorframe. “Why do you call Woo In a traitor?”

  Ye Eun shrugged. “All Songlanders do. After he promised his soul to The Lady, and Crown Princess Min Ja disowned him. But I don’t really care if he is a traitor. He’s good to us.” She paused. “I didn’t think I’d come back to Sagimsan. After I escaped the Underworld, I thought I’d find my parents. They gave me to the mountain, but—I thought maybe—they might want me back.” She smiled dimly. “They didn’t. No one wants a girl who’s walked through hell and back. So my emi-ehran led me back here. I help make the Redemptors strong. I teach them how to survive, like I did, so they’re ready when it’s time. It’s not always enough. But it’s better than waiting for people in capes.”

  I winced, remembering how r
everently she had eyed my wax-dyed cape at the temple banquet.

  “You should eat your breakfast,” said Ye Eun. She watched my spoon, and I noticed for the first time how her cheekbones jutted, with no fat to soften them. “Traitor Prince will be back soon.”

  I held out the steaming bowl. “You finish it.”

  She swallowed, then shook her head. “If you don’t want it, we should give it to Ae Ri.” She turned, presenting her back to me. “Help me untie her.”

  I froze, terrified. I’d never held a baby for more than a few seconds, when peasants thrust them into my arms on goodwill campaigns. I had kissed the infants, as expected, and returned them as soon as possible.

  “She’s hungry,” Ye Eun insisted. “Don’t worry, she’s clean.”

  I huffed, gripped the baby’s underarms, and wriggled her from the harness. She was alarmingly light, even wrapped in a homespun shift and loincloth. Her soft curly hair smelled of hay and milk, and curiously, her skin was several shades darker than Ye Eun’s.

  I squinted. “Is Ae Ri . . .”

  “An isoken?” Ye Eun shrugged. “Maybe. There are illegal camps on the border, where Songlander merchants trade with Aritsar. That’s how I learned to speak Arit: buying supplies there for the refuge. It’s rare, but I’ve heard of merchants taking Arits as lovers.” She looked askance at Ae Ri. “Maybe that’s where she came from.”

  The baby squirmed in the crook of my arm as Ye Eun fed her, smacking up the porridge with pink, wet lips. Then she clutched the front of my gown and gurgled a greeting.

  “Hello,” I said uncertainly.

  Ae Ri cooed, and examined me with brave, dark eyes set in a lattice of blue birthmarks. My heart swelled with a familiarity I couldn’t explain. Suddenly, I was enraged.

  What kind of treaty would end this tiny story, would snuff the light of her soul, after ten short years? What kind of peace cost a life that had barely begun?

  A shadow filled the door, and Ye Eun reclaimed Ae Ri as Woo In stalked heavily into the room, clutching his freshly bandaged side.

  “I checked her for wounds, like you said,” Ye Eun reported. “She’s sick, but clean.” Then she turned to leave.

  “Wait,” I called out, not ready for Ye Eun to be gone. For so long, I had thought she was dead. It didn’t matter that she hated me; she was alive—gloriously, vindictively alive. When she stopped, I stammered, “What was your emi-ehran in the Underworld? Was it a leopard, like Woo In’s?”

  “No,” she said after a pause. “Mine is a phoenix.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  The hint of a smile played with her mouth. “I named her Hwanghu,” she said quietly. “Empress.” Then she vanished from the room.

  Woo In dropped a bundle of clothes at my feet. “Change into these. The journey will be short.” His half-moon eyes were wan; he had passed a restless night. He was sweating with fever, and it was likely his head pounded as mine did. I felt no pity. The Lady’s bloodied face still glistened in my mind.

  Before leaving me he said, “Summon the Ray. You can’t reach your council from this far, but it helps the headache when you try.”

  I obeyed him, letting heat build at the base of my neck, and sending an invisible beam of light in what I guessed was Oluwan’s direction. The light faded and grew cold when met with emptiness. But Woo In had been right—the pain, for now, was no longer unbearable.

  The garments were made of wax-dyed cloth, seeping with spicescented memories of Oluwan, where Woo In must have bought them. He had brought boots for me as well, and a cloak—blue like his, cut from warm wool.

  I dressed and passed into the house’s main chamber, seeing what I’d missed the night before. Diagrams of beasts and Underworld passages hung around the room, and chalk slates cramped with Songlander script lay abandoned on cushions. A schoolroom. On the longest wall, a map of the continent stretched from end to end, lodestones marked meticulously in each realm.

  Woo In and I left the camp on Hyung’s back, and soon crested one of the pine-covered steppes. After an hour, we stopped at a curved crevice in the rock face, tall and narrow, like a cat’s eye. The glistening blue veins that ran throughout Sagimsan seemed to meet here, joining to form lightning bolts across the mountain floor. Energy pulsed through the cold air, and when we dismounted, it hummed through me as well, exploring my body with relentless curiosity. The emi-ehran arched its back, its whiskers on edge.

  What kind of place could unnerve a beast who had seen the Underworld?

  “Hyung will wait outside,” Woo In said, then bent to pull off his worn leather boots, one by one. “I would advise you do the same,” he said, nodding at my feet.

  “Why?”

  “It’s a way of showing respect.”

  “Until you explain what this is, I’m not going anywhere.”

  Woo In shot a tense glance at the crevice opening. “I’m not supposed to show you this place. Its location is known only to the Songlander royal family. But . . .” He let out a slow breath. “There’s a story hidden deep in the mountain. It explains the Redemptors and Songland’s curse. But it’s spelled, so only certain bloodlines understand. According to the shamans, the Kunleos are one of them. So when The Lady came to Songland sixteen years ago, asking for aid with her coup . . . I brought her here. She read the story, but wouldn’t tell me what it said. She said it was dangerous. She told me to trust her, and I did.” His face hardened, then softened with desperation. “I need to know what’s in there, Lady’s Daughter. Please, we don’t have much time. The Treaty Renewal is tomorrow night.”

  “You’ve never said my name before.” I frowned, feeling strangely awake in that air, as though I’d been sleepwalking for months. “Do you know that? She’s part of me, Woo In, but we aren’t the same person. And we never will be.”

  He blinked, processing this, then nodded slowly and reached for my hand. “Please, Tarisai.”

  I let his fingers close around mine. Together, we slipped through the crevice, and descended into the heart of Sagimsan mountain.

  CHAPTER 32

  There was no need for a torch. Translucent bolts of blue rock glowed from within the tunnel walls, and we moved as with a current, energy coursing in one direction as we climbed down, down, down.

  We stopped in the mouth of a round stone chamber. The ceiling glittered with paintings of pelicans, halos radiating from their lifted wings. The floor was painted with the same symbol from the Oluwan Imperial Library, and from Aiyetoro’s drum: two overlapping suns, bordered by a circle of linking hands.

  My breath floundered. It was like the air had disappeared, and I inhaled nothing now but pure blue energy, thrumming through my temples. At the other end of the chamber, thousands of bright glyphs covered the wall.

  “The heart of Sagimsan,” Woo In explained. “Every blue vein you’ve seen in the mountain finds its source in this room. I can’t read that wall. But you can.”

  “How?” I crept toward the wall, squinting at script so complex, it made my eyes cross. “I don’t understand.” But the words began to murmur, whispers that wrapped around me in a seductive lullaby. My hand rose, as though possessed, and I pressed my fingers to the wall.

  The script jumbled in dizzying patterns—and then it shot from the wall in a beam. I gasped as the glyphs covered my body, clinging to my skin like running water. I shut my eyes. When I opened them again, the symbols had vanished . . . and instead, four words glowed on the wall.

  “Focus,” I heard Woo In yell, as though from a great distance. “Listen.”

  His voice grew mute as another filled my ears: a deep, lovely roar, like the voice of a fathomless ocean. It was not old or young, neither male nor female. But I knew, without seeing its face, that this power could unmake me with a single word.

  Tarisai.

  I fell trembling to the ground.

  Do not fear me.

  “Shouldn’t I?” I whispered, my back against the cold floor. “You’re . . .” My breath caught while I tried to
wrap my mind around the impossible. But I knew it in my bones. “You’re the Storyteller.”

  A considering pause.

  I am a memory of the Storyteller, it replied. Confined to rock, for when I am needed. You have ears. Will you open them?

  I nodded dumbly.

  Then you shall hear, Heir of Wuraola.

  The chamber fell away. Part of me knew I still lay within the energy-charged mountain, my body still as death as Woo In hovered, anxiously waving a hand in front of my open, unseeing eyes. But the other part of me hurled through a sea of images, smells, voices. I soared over a patchwork of realms: cities rising, falling, evolving as though I were riding on time itself.

  Several thousand moons ago, the ocean-voice said, a brother and sister, both warriors, watched their homeland being torn to pieces. Monsters rose from the deep, and contagions spread their fingers, and island turned on island. Enoba was brave, but Wuraola was wise. She saw how division weakened humans against the abiku. When she told Enoba, he enslaved an alagbato, demanding the power to unite twelve realms.

  I was back in the Swana savannah. I watched from above like a star, as a broad-backed warrior approached a dewy-faced alagbato: Melu, five hundred years younger. The immortal slept peacefully by his pool, shimmering wings tucked around his smooth, long limbs. With catlike dexterity, the warrior snapped an emerald cuff onto the alagbato’s arm.

  Familiarity chilled my spine. Through this story, I realized, The Lady had learned how to enslave Melu.

  For Enoba’s first wish, he asked the alagbato to grow land across the oceans, uniting the islands so they could be ruled as one. The alagbato-turned-ehru said, “It is done—” and for miles, earth covered the waters. Enoba was satisfied, and crossed his new continent with a formidable army. But lands so vast could not be conquered by Enoba’s spear alone, and so Wuraola used her words to win the hearts and minds of the people.

  Still, the brother and sister were unsure of victory against the abiku. Enoba returned to the ehru, and asked his second boon: the power to rule an empire for eternity. For this gift, the ehru climbed to the heavens and stole two rays from the blazing sun.