by Rin Chupeco
“How?”
“I would need a volunteer.”
There was silence. Then Janella stepped forward, trusting. “What do you wish me to do, Your Holiness?”
“I want you to hold still.”
The lights swirled around her body; had patterns a sentience, I would have said they looked eager to start, like they knew she was ripe to channel.
There was a spot above Janella’s heart that felt softer for entry than anywhere else—the same spot where the darkness festered within my own chest. That was either a strange coincidence, or . . .
And in that moment, I knew. The lingering sickness in my chest served as an entry point for the galla to activate my abilities, in the same way I was activating Janella’s. I could not receive their gifts without it.
I guided the patterns through there, painstakingly chipping away at the barrier and pushing them into Janella in gradual waves. The barricade broke; light shone through.
Janella’s eyes widened, and she let out an odd, choking gasp, like she’d just taken in breath for the first time in her life. She stared down at her hands, and then back up at me.
“What did you do?” she asked wonderingly, before her eyes shifted color and her gate opened, a startlingly bright red.
Flames flickered to life, licked at the top of her fingers. With a squeal, Janella dropped her arms, extinguishing them immediately, wringing her hands like she’d been scorched.
Lan was already by Janella’s side, taking her hands and examining them carefully. “She’s not hurt. But it almost feels like . . . Janella, you have an active fire-gate.”
The young girl stared at her, disbelieving. Then she trembled. She covered her face with her hands and quietly began to weep.
I saw more green sparks ricocheting off Slyp, and my fingers curled into fists. Janella’s unexpected joy, her tears—I felt like I was leeching off her emotions, making me feel powerful, useful. Wanted.
Having a gate meant a rise in rank, more prestige. The gated were allowed more opportunities for higher wages and a better quality of life—even a crack at joining the Devoted if they were powerful enough. They might lose their gates again once we returned to Aranth, but here in the wildlands, being able to weave Fire and Earth made them valuable.
“Who’s next?” I asked, and everyone in the group with recessive gates dashed forward.
Lan had been insistent that she and Catseye Sumiko treat everyone to daily rounds of healing as a means to help cope with their newfound gates. Most of the others took easily to their new abilities, and my smugness increased at seeing Gracea so distraught. It would be harder for her to heap abuse on the rest of the crew when they could now retaliate in kind.
I’d encouraged them to use Graham for target practice, and many of his victims had been eager to take up my invitation. Merika, in particular, had rained down acid again and again onto the Seasinger’s withered form, screaming obscenities into his face until she’d finally collapsed, exhausted. “It’s a normal reaction,” Sumiko told me. “It’s not good to keep her emotions bottled up.”
“Did you know? About Graham?”
The gentle Catseye stared me in the face without guilt. “I wish I had, Your Holiness. Not all the Devoted knew. Gracea should not have let this happen.”
Gracea. All my problems always led back to Gracea, and Asteria herself. If Mother knew everything, as she likes to claim, then she must have known this, I thought, and my resentment grew.
Lan’s poise lasted until the next day, when we finally spotted spiraling twin peaks from a distance, signaling our entry into the Spirit Lands. Those mountains were still too far away, but it wasn’t just the sight of them that unnerved us; it was the ground underneath our feet. To my eyes the plains looked too flat for nature to allow, and something about the evenness of the land disturbed me. At least back at the Lunar Lakes there were bumps and ridges to disrupt the monotony of the horizon. Here, it was as if some celestial creator had reached out and smoothed away the blemishes on the soil, leaving something unnatural in its wake.
Lan, who had been leading the pack, halted. The line behind her faltered.
“Do you need some time?” Noelle spoke up, approaching the Catseye and laying a hand on her shoulder, and I cursed myself for not having thought of doing that first, forced down the sudden surge of jealousy. “We can take a break before we—”
“No.” Lan squared her shoulders. “The sooner we’re done, the sooner we return to Aranth. Stay alert. Follow no other path but the one I take. If you see anything out of the ordinary, sound a cry to the rest of us.”
And with that grim notice we officially entered the Spirit Lands.
The silence here was intimidating. There were no winds or rain, not even a suggestion of clouds in the sky. All we had was a gaping black emptiness that made up the heavens above us, and the flat plains that went on for miles. It felt like the ground was made of finely meshed soil, almost velvety beneath me. Despite the lack of a breeze the air remained cold, frozen into the stillness, and I huddled inside my cloak. How courageous had Lan and the other rangers been, to enter this horrific twilight? The weather was clear, but I preferred storm-swept Aranth to this.
There were no animals, not even so much as an insect, but I couldn’t shake off the feeling that we were being watched.
“This is creepy,” I heard Bergen say, and he was immediately shushed by one of the other men. In the eerie silence, making too much noise seemed an open invitation to the unseen things watching our every move.
Lan stopped. “Wait.” Her voice came out no louder than a rasp, but we all heard her in the quiet. “There’s something—moving—up ahead.” The words came out choked. “Prepare yourselves. Form a circle, facing outward. Noelle, distribute what weapons you can among those without gates. I want you all lined up, with at least one gated in between those who aren’t. Do not step out of the circle. This is important. Do not step out from the circle. Fight where you stand, make sure the person on either side of you doesn’t stumble out, either. Do you understand?”
There were a few murmurs of assent.
“There are creatures here. I’ve encountered them before. I don’t know what to call them, but they resemble winged birds with humanlike faces.”
Merika whimpered.
“They’ll try to attack from above, so you’ll need to keep your weapons in the air and attack their undersides. It’ll take a few hits to knock them down, but once they fall, very few get back up. Eyes always on the sky. Odessa, I want you standing inside the circle.”
“I can fight!” I protested.
“Yes, and that’s what you’ll do. You’ll see the attacks from all angles, and I want you to prop up the places where the rest might be getting overwhelmed. Got that?” At my nod, Lan’s expression softened. She bent down toward me, and for a moment I thought she might actually kiss me in front of everyone. But then she blinked and straightened again. “There’s a lot at stake here, people, and for the love of the goddess keep an ear out and follow any further orders from me!”
We hurriedly took formation, with Lan and me in the middle. Weapons were lifted and readied, all of us staring into a darkness we knew would fight back.
It happened quickly. I heard a steady rush of wings from somewhere in the distance, growing louder with every passing second, until something that looked like a bird but wasn’t at all came soaring out from the blackness, bearing down on us with sharpened talons and a low, inhuman howl bursting from its mouth.
Fire sizzled through the air, and the bird-creature burst into flames. Its body burning, the monster plunged to the ground, writhing. I looked to my right and saw Janella flexing her fingers, the look of shock on her face slowly turning into one of glee, then of determination.
More rushed out from the darkness, carrying with them the stench of death. They were terrifying chimera; a cross between a hawk, a lion, and a scorpion, but with faces and hair that could pass for human, if a human face could be distorted in such a manner. The
y swooped over our heads, raking us with bone-like claws, but spears and halberds and swords struck back from below. All the weapons Noelle had distributed had been blessed by Mother, and where they struck, they struck with deadly results. The bird-creatures veered away, bleeding heavily, and were taken down by lightning, fire, sharp ice knives, and water blades—every shape of pattern we could throw at them.
“Keep up the pressure!” Lan called out. She was darting in between the spaces that separated each armed person and gate user, her hands just as deadly as her sword. Each bird-creature she could snatch at came away with black bile pulsing out of its wings, in the grip of some sudden disease it had no defenses for. Many fell as the poisons did their work, froth bubbling from their mouths as they shuddered and finally lay still.
I extended my range, throwing my arms up to the sky and sending a storm of sharpened hail raining beyond the circle protecting me, toward the monsters still not within weapons’ reach. I hoped to slow down the numbers meeting my vanguard. Several I pinned to the ground, staked through with heavy icicles; for those avoiding my storm I simply summoned sharp stalagmites, stabbing them through from underneath.
Fresh screaming cut through the air. I saw blurred forms striking at the birds, saw many of them drop, dead before they even hit the ground. I caught brief glimpses of faces—Cathei, Graham—before they disappeared into mist again, leaving more dead monsters behind as they did.
My newly gated warriors fought admirably. I could see more streams of Fire as Janella took down the harpies with near precision. I watched Lorila summon Earth from the ground to encompass us like a Stonebreaker shield. Even old Slyp was brilliant, shooting Earth-arrows like he’d been born for this.
The attacks slowly trickled to a stop. We waited, panting and wild-eyed, while Lan tested the ground again for more threats. “Stand down,” the Catseye finally said, her voice weary. “That’s the last of them.”
A soft cry wafted up from one of the circle. Salleemae was on the ground, bleeding from the stomach. Sumiko hurried forward, pressing her fingers to a spot beside the wound. “She needs emergency care immediately,” she said, voice terse.
There were other injuries, but none as life-threatening, and the rest of the uninjured got to work hastily setting up a makeshift camp so that Salleemae could be tended to. A fire blazed to life nearby, without the benefit of logs or twigs; Janella had started it.
“Don’t show off, Janella,” Noelle barked at her, tossing a few pieces of kindling into the flames so it could keep burning on its own. “Using your gates without proper training will exhaust you.”
“Yes, milady,” Janella said, but once the steward’s back was turned, the flames burned even higher, and she smiled in satisfaction.
I gave the orders to spend the nightspan here to rest, with three people on watch at every shift. Gracea made no protest; I suspect she was still figuring out how to wrest back her position, and I knew, despite my own orders, that I would not have much sleep tonight.
Salleemae’s teeth were chattering, her face turning pale; I knew it wasn’t a good sign, from the way Lan and Sumiko kept looking at each other.
“I don’t know if she’ll make it through the night,” Lan told me wearily when I came to her, offering a small bowl of hot porridge for supper. “I don’t understand how she was hurt. Slyp was standing beside her; he swore that he hadn’t seen any of those creatures so much as touch her.”
“It’s not your fault, and you know that,” I soothed.
“I know.” She stared hard into the fire. “But I could have done better, all the same.”
I hugged her waist on impulse. It was so typical of Lan to take every injury on her conscience, but that was what I loved about her. “I’m going to stay with Salleemae for a little bit,” I whispered. “You and Sumiko should get some rest.”
She smiled wanly at me and squeezed my hand. “I’ll do that.”
The small tent we’d set up was warmer than it was outside, but Salleemae wouldn’t stop shivering. She was swathed heavily in bandages, but even those weren’t enough; I could see faint tinges of red underneath the linen and knew they hadn’t been able to completely stop the bleeding. Sumiko rose to her feet when she saw me, but I waved her back down. “I just want to stay with her for a while,” I said apologetically.
The Catseye smiled at me, but like Lan’s, it was a sad one. “I think she will like that, Your Holiness.”
I settled down beside her patient, taking Sumiko’s seat while she moved to busy herself with the ointments. Salleemae’s eyes flew open almost immediately. “Your Holiness?” she whispered.
“I’m here.” Not sure where to touch for fear of hurting her worse, I settled for the tips of her fingers, which were clammy. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I’ve been split open,” she said, and laughed softly. “I don’t feel much of the pain, though.”
“It’s the medicine. I want you to sleep. We’ll wait for as long as necessary for you to heal.”
“I don’t understand,” Salleemae whispered. “Why did she do it?”
Did she mean Lan? The assault had happened too quickly, but she had instructed us as best as she could. “I’m sorry, Salleemae. Lan tried to—”
“No. Not Lan. I—” She broke into a fit of coughing. “I just wondered—she said that she would look out for my left, but . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“I forbid you to take the blame for something you had no—”
“Your Holiness.” The fingers I held clung tighter. “Please give me another chance to be useful. Let me watch over you like Cathei. If my body is too weak, then let me be strong some other way.”
How could I answer that? My own face was already streaked with tears. “I promise,” I said hoarsely, since she so desperately wanted me to say the words, “but I would much rather you heal on your own.”
Salleemae smiled and nodded.
But it wasn’t to be. She died four hours later, her hand still wrapped tightly around mine.
Chapter Twenty
Haidee of the Sacred Spring
“THIS ISN’T A FOREST,” Arjun said, staring. “Aren’t forests supposed to have trees or shit like that?”
Arjun was rarely right, but he had a point. I’d been imagining towering oaks with an abundance of foliage and branches, so tall that they blocked out the sunlight as you strolled underneath them. I’d seen enough of those in illustrations to know how they should look. But all we saw were strange wooden bumps sticking out of the ground for miles, like ridges grown too big for the soil.
Sonfei shrugged. “I didn’t make the forest, boy. I’m only bringing you to what’s left of one. Used to have scores of those big green fuckers as far as the eye could see, before the world went to rot. Don’t be touching any of those stumps, girl. They’ve got two decades’ worth of poison in them.”
I shouldn’t have been disappointed. The sun might not have burned as fiercely in these parts, but journeying farther west didn’t always mean more from the old world had survived. The Breaking had left no part of Aeon unharmed.
“And this be where I leave you two,” the Liangzhu man continued. “We don’t stray too far from our territory, and even dead forests hold dangers, peaceful as they might look. Strange creatures move beyond these parts.” He looked at us. “I lost more men exploring out here than I’ve ever lost patrolling the Sand Sea.”
“What strange creatures, exactly?” There didn’t appear to be any wild predators afoot; any prey that would have called these woods their home was gone. In fact, I doubted that there was anything alive in here at all.
Arjun, too, was unconvinced. “So, like the ghosts of former trees trying to beat you to death with their branches or what?”
“Mock all you want, boy, but at the end of the day it still be you walking this cursed forest. Many of my best men I’ve sent in to explore never returned, and I’ve soon learned it’s better to leave this place be.” He stared at the nearby trunks, an odd look of lon
ging in his eyes. “This was a beautiful place, once,” he said quietly. “The wind . . . it had its own song. Good spirits made their homes here. But now they are gone, and there is something in the lifelessness of this place that eats at my gut, makes my knees shake. No, I will take all the risks and the creatures that the Sand Sea can throw at me rather than risk the quiet beyond these dying woods. Will you both reconsider?”
“You won’t stop us if we turn you down, will you?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Not in the habit of forcing people—I learned that dealing with your mother and her twin. But you have both survived crossing the Sand Sea. It is a feat my own men would struggle with. And if you are meant to help Aeon as you and I believe you will, then perhaps you will carry through when lowly men such as I cannot.”
“I have to, Sonfei.” As much as the thought of staying with him and the safety his clan promised was tempting, I knew I had to continue. “I owe it to the rest of Aeon to do what I can.”
Sonfei glanced over at Arjun, who scowled.
“I’m not milking any more of your damn worms.”
“Here is a map you may wish to follow. We escaped from Brighthenge through this route.” Sonfei bowed, more formal now than he had ever been. Behind him, his men did the same. “We will toast to your success, and hope to whatever god or goddess is still listening that you will return victorious. Should you ever find your way back, know there will always be a place for you at camp.” He grinned at Arjun. “And more deathworms waiting for your blue fires.”
He patted one of the rigs. “Consider this a gift from the Liangzhu to you. Good speed, Haidee, Arjun. Should the stars align, perhaps one day we can meet again.”
Waving, we watched them take their leave, their rigs speeding away until they were gone from our sight. “Milking worms?” I finally asked, once we were alone. “What was he talking about?”
He told me, and the silence of that clearing was broken by the sounds of my laughter, and his indignant sputtering.
Much of my mirth, however, faded as we stepped into the forest-that-was-not-quite-a-forest. From what I could see of the narrow trails ahead, the rig should be able to fit through them.