by Sam Sykes
Chakaa stared at the corpse for a moment. She popped another morsel of meat into her mouth. She chewed thoughtfully.
“Huh.”
The third arrow came shrieking past. She stepped out of the way with an almost insulting casualness, then glanced toward the hedge of scrub grass. She peered through the foliage and her eyes found Kataria’s.
And she smiled a broad, yellow smile.
Fuck.
Kataria thought it rather than spoke it. She needed that breath as she drew another arrow, drew it back. She held it as she closed one eye, took aim for the span of a single heartbeat. She released it and the arrow as one.
And by then, fuck seemed no longer sufficient a word for the situation.
Chakaa was already rushing toward her. She did not so much as slow down as the arrow struck her in the collarbone. The only sound she made was the sound of sand crunching under her feet, of leather tearing as she pulled her massive blade free from her back and the wind screaming as she closed the distance and swung.
Kataria threw herself to the earth, felt the sand grate against her skin, felt her hair pulled by the wind of the tulwar’s swing, felt branches and leaves fall upon her back as the scrub grass was swiftly decapitated.
All of this compared to the feeling of her heart pounding as it bid her rise and run.
She leapt to her feet and took off at a sprint, struggled to pull and nock another arrow. Her ears quivered, listening for her foe. And when she was sure she had put enough distance between them, she whirled, aimed, and fired.
Chakaa had not taken a single step.
Chakaa did not so much as move as the arrow hit her.
She merely looked down at the shaft of wood quivering in her side. She looked back up at Kataria. Her simian nostrils twitched briefly.
“Rude,” she said.
And she took off running again, taking her weapon in both hands as she narrowed her eyes upon her prey.
Kataria pulled an arrow, nocked it, never got the chance to fire it. Chakaa was upon her in the span of three breaths. The fourth breath was robbed from her. The air seemed to be sucked out of the sky with the force of her massive swing. Kataria leapt backward and turned to run.
She had taken a single step before she felt simian fingers seize her by the hair and haul her backward. She let out a cry as they threw her to the earth, a cry swiftly cut short by a hairy foot connecting with her side.
Breathless, she tried to scramble to her feet—a task she found much easier when a hand wrapped around her neck and hauled her up. Had she any breath left, she might have spared some for the ease with which Chakaa hoisted her with one hand. As it was, breath and sense had both been beaten out of her and shriveled up in the desert air.
She could but grope at Chakaa’s grip and struggle for breath as the tulwar hoisted her off her feet and fixed her with a queer look.
“Huh.” Chakaa thrust her blade into the earth, reached out, and pinched the tip of Kataria’s right ear. “Pointy ears, like them.” She squinted as Kataria’s lips peeled back, revealing her canines. “Pointy teeth, like them. But you’re …” She furrowed her brow. “Pink.”
“Let go,” Kataria snarled. Or tried to snarl, anyway. It was really hard to make any sort of sound outside of a choked gurgle with Chakaa’s fingers around her throat.
“How strange.” The tulwar hoisted her up higher. “I didn’t know shicts came in different colors.” A long finger extended and gave Kataria a curious prod to her belly. “I learned something new!”
Her ears flattened against her head. Her teeth clenched together. Her eyes shut tight. And, as the fingers tightened around her throat and she had no more breath to give, Kataria screamed with another voice. Something deep inside her head opened its mouth wide and howled into the sky.
Chakaa didn’t notice. Chakaa merely smiled broadly.
“So, are there purple ones, too, or—”
There was probably more to that sentence, lost in the clack of teeth as Kataria’s foot shot up and smashed beneath her jaw. Chakaa didn’t cry out but dropped her regardless, and Kataria lay gasping upon the ground.
“What a shame,” Chakaa hummed, jerking her sword free from the earth. “We could have learned so much.”
“Stay back,” Kataria gasped. She kept her eyes on the tulwar as she crawled away, groping blindly for her bow.
“But I have sung this song many times over many years.” Chakaa’s voice was accompanied by the hiss of sand as she dragged her blade behind her like a child dragging a stuffed doll.
Kataria found enough strength to haul herself to her feet. And just as quickly, it was knocked from her as Chakaa’s fist shot out, catching her in the side and sending her back down. She hacked out a spittle-laden cough, squinting up as Chakaa loomed over her, the setting sun glinting off the blade high above her head.
“You will be just one more verse,” the tulwar said, “however unusual.”
Some people, including Kataria, had wondered what the last thing they would say before they died would be. No one, including Kataria, ever wondered what the last thing they would ever hear would be. And when Kataria shut her eyes and her ears, all she heard was the beating of her own heart.
But only for a moment.
In the span of an instant, in one great burst, her ears filled with a sound. It reached through her skin, into her skull, into her heart. It filled her body with a sound, something long and loud and torn from a mouth filled with teeth on a dark night. A howl.
One she had heard once, long ago.
And then, all she could hear was feet.
Feet on sand, leaving sand, flying. Screaming, roaring, colliding. To the ground, two bodies, two snarls. All in the span of an instant.
When Kataria opened her eyes, Chakaa was down, struggling, flailing.
And there was Kwar.
Alive. Awake. Roaring.
Her hand was wrapped around Chakaa’s throat, bearing the tulwar to the earth. Her other was wrapped around a hatchet, hacking wildly at her prey. Chakaa snarled, screamed, flailed. Kwar didn’t flinch, not as fists struck her, not as spittle spattered her, not as the screaming filled her ears.
The onslaught ended as Chakaa managed to seize her by the arms and hurl her off. Kwar tumbled with the force of the throw and sprang back to her feet. A knife leapt from her belt to her hand to join the hatchet. Her eyes were locked on Chakaa as the tulwar sprang to her feet, her fur parted by the dark cuts across her flesh.
Yet her eyes were wild with something other than fear. And her smile only grew broader as she plucked her massive blade back up.
“Oh,” she cackled. “I knew today was going to be special.”
No roars, no threats, just laughter as she rushed toward Kwar. She swung, and the khoshict swept beneath her blade and jammed her dagger into the tulwar’s side as she emerged behind her. Chakaa whirled, swinging her blade as she did, heedless of the weapon stuck in her side. Kwar was already out of reach, already rushing forward again.
Her hatchet was up, coming down in an angry arc. Chakaa’s blade shot up, catching it in a spray of sparks. The tulwar’s fist shot out, trying to catch Kwar as she drew closer, too close for the tulwar to use her blade effectively. The khoshict seized her dagger, tore it free from Chakaa’s side. She found a new space of flesh, stabbed. And again. And again. Over and over, shrieking with rage as she did, until Chakaa’s foot lashed out and drove her away. Her hatchet fell from her grasp and her dagger was left lodged in the tulwar as she staggered away.
Her side all but open, her body painted in wounds, arrows quivering from her body, the only sign that she had even felt it was a slight diminishing of Chakaa’s smile.
“This was exciting,” she said. “I learned something special today. I only wish I had been able to share it with—”
Chakaa spasmed suddenly. She blinked. She looked down at the arrow in her chest.
“Ah.”
And fell.
Kataria came trudging forward, h
er fingers still humming with the feel of her bowstring. Her body ached, her breath came back to her shyly, forcing her to gasp with each breath she took. But she was still alive. And Kwar …
“Kwar?” she asked.
The khoshict stood, breathing heavily, rigid with tension, but unmoving. She stared at Chakaa’s lifeless body, mouth agape, hands trembling.
Tentatively, as though she were scared to do so, Kataria reached out and laid a hand on her shoulder. Kwar started, then turned a gaze wild and wide and fearful upon her.
“I’m fine,” she gasped. “I’m … I’m fine.” She licked her lips. “We need to go. We need to get out of here.”
“Right,” Kataria said. “They had gaambols. Just give me a moment.”
She rushed to the corpse of the female tulwar and rooted around in her belt until she found the hide scroll. She tucked it back into her own belt, then hurried back to Kwar.
“Got it,” she said. “Now we can …”
She didn’t finish the sentence. She lost all words, all thoughts as something reached out and seized her by the hand. She looked down, saw Kwar’s dark fingers tightening around her own pale ones.
She had forgotten Kwar’s touch. Just as she forgot, then, that she had told her never to touch her. This barely felt like a touch, barely felt like it should be a shict’s. It was alive with something, something wild and screaming, a sound that reached through Kwar’s fingers and into hers.
And she looked up into Kwar’s dark eyes and whispered.
“You got up.”
“I heard you,” Kwar replied, voice trembling. “You spoke to me and I …” She looked down, saw her fingers around Kataria’s, immediately released them. “Sorry, I forgot. I … I didn’t think …”
“No, it was …” Kataria tried to finish that sentence, couldn’t think of the words to. The sound was still echoing in her skull, that long and wild roar that tore through her and raced through her body with heavy breath and sharp teeth.
The Howling. Kwar’s Howling. How long it had been since she had heard it. It consumed her, made her tremble as Kwar did. And through it, she could barely hear anything else: her breath, her heartbeat …
The sound of sand shifting behind her.
“That was exciting.”
A guttural chuckle. A body rising.
Kataria whirled around, nocking an arrow. Yet at the sight of Chakaa, standing there, breathing and hale and whole, the blood left her fingers.
“But I still feel a little insulted.” The tulwar’s smile was just as big as it had been. Her eyes were just as wide. And it was only now that Kataria noticed that the sands around her were completely dry. “You came to kill Chakaa Humn Mak Lak Kai, and you only brought three arrows, a knife, and a hatchet?”
Chakaa seized the arrow in her neck. Ungently, she pulled it free of her flesh. Not a single drop of blood left her body. And, with a big and broad smile, she looked to Kataria.
“Who do you think you’re fucking with?”
There was no word sufficient for what she was seeing. No curse blasphemous enough, no god powerful enough to hear whatever invocation she might say. Words only returned to her when she saw the two other tulwar begin to stir, begin to rise, as though awakening from a bad dream.
One word, anyway.
“Run,” she whispered.
And turned.
And fled.
“Run!”
She tore off without a thought for camp or supplies. She cast only a single glance behind her to make sure Kwar was following. And then she could see that the tulwar were in pursuit, as though they hadn’t even been injured.
If they couldn’t die, she wondered, could they tire? Could she ever outrun them?
That thought became more pressing as her injuries acted up, as her breath faded, as the tulwar closed in.
Kwar rushed past her, seized her by the hand, kept her moving. The khoshict looked to the hills and let out a shout of shictish words that flew into the sky. And was answered, moments later.
Baying, the great crested shape of a yiji came loping over the dune, skidding down and rushing toward her. Slavering, it bounded over, coming to a halt just long enough to let Kwar clamber atop it. The khoshict looked down at Kataria and held her hand out.
Kataria looked at it for but a moment, like she could barely recognize it, before reaching out and taking it.
She felt her feet leave the earth. She felt the yiji’s back beneath her legs as she was hauled up to it. She felt Kwar’s arm wrap around her and hold her tight as she kicked the animal’s flanks and sent it charging forward.
The sound of tulwar faded. The sound of her breath faded. And, in time, so, too, did all sounds.
All Kataria could hear was the sound of the woman behind her—her heart, her breath, her Howling—as the sun set behind them and gave way to night.
NINE
THE LAW OF CREATION
First, nothing.
And then …
“Ah.”
Mundas did not know a term more elegant for it. For him, it was simple: One moment he did not know something, the next he did. Mortals did the same thing, save with books and words and time.
All things he had left behind.
He stood up. He was on top of a roof of a building in a ravaged district of the city. The sun was setting over a horizon of ruined homes and shattered roofs. He walked to the edge of the building, tiles cracking under his feet until he stepped out over nothingness.
And then he was somewhere else. The sky was dark with night, the moon peering over distant dunes. The city and its ruins were one shadow among many, somewhere far away. The desert stretched out far before him.
One moment he was somewhere. The next, he was somewhere else. He was exactly where he needed to be when he needed to be there exactly. Mortals had more complicated terms and explanations for what he did.
They were simply more things he had left behind.
He walked up the dune where his companion was waiting, as he knew he would be. At the crest of the dune, an old man in a white robe turned and regarded him through a face of what Mundas assumed to be grandfatherly kindness. A breath later, the old man’s skin twisted and stretched and shrank and he became a small, finely dressed man with a painted face.
“You’re late,” Azhu-Mahl said.
Mundas saw no reason to reply to that. It was impossible for him to be late.
The skin across Azhu-Mahl’s face rippled like water. He sneered, lips peeling back and exposing teeth as long as nails.
“You could at least indulge me, Mundas,” he said. “It wasn’t easy getting out here.”
“I find that hard to believe.” Mundas began walking down the dune, toward a distant hill.
“It wasn’t easy getting out with any delicacy, at least,” Azhu-Mahl hissed, following. “The shadows are alive, Mundas. Every alleyway holds a thousand eyes. The air is filled with the screams of the people.”
“Expected.”
“The city has gone mad.”
“The city was born mad, along with the rest of this world.”
“And our intention was to cure that, no? To bring order and hope to this filth?” Azhu-Mahl gestured toward the distant city. “This war continues to drag on. The Jackals are scattered, but the damage they did cannot be undone. The Khovura are boiling up from below the city.”
“Expected.”
“I expected your pawn to be of more use than she has been,” Azhu-Mahl said. “I have been in Teneir’s house. She speaks to no one, babbles and whispers to the night, dreams of the powers she believes she will be given.”
“Not unforeseen,” Mundas said. “Fanatics, above all else, are pliable.”
“Above all else, they are unstable, and her especially. The Khovura were intended to be a tool. They were intended to expose the rot of this city and make its people ready to accept a savior. But they follow Teneir like hounds, liable to devour those we meant to save.”
“They are not withou
t need of salvation themselves,” Mundas replied. “The Khovura were chosen because the gods would not answer them. But, like every mortal, they yearn to be heard. They have heaped their hopes and their fears upon Ancaa. When he comes, in whatever form he chooses, they will fall into line behind him.”
Azhu-Mahl let out a low, unpleasant hum. “And what will surprise them more, I wonder? That their goddess is male or that their savior is a demon?”
Mundas chose not to protest.
There was no such thing as a complete record of the time that produced the Aeons, or even of the divine creatures themselves that ultimately were cast from heaven. But of all the fragments and myths and poems to have emerged from that era, only those on the God-King were of any particular use.
And while they had made no attempts to hide his shortcomings—his cruelty, his tyranny, his lust for worship—they had also venerated his ideals—his mercy, his attentiveness, his need to create. These were attributes that could salvage mortality from the dark earth from which they had crawled, even if they came with a burden.
The concept of ultimate benevolence only existed in gods.
And gods had long ago ceased to be an option for the Renouncers.
“If there are problems,” Mundas said, casting a sidelong glance at his companion, “I trust you can handle it.”
There was a wet popping sound, the creak of skin stretching and snapping, the thick squish of it re-forming. The small man with the painted face was gone. Walking beside him now was a saccarii woman, tall and regal in elegant robes. From ochre eyes not his own, Azhu-Mahl looked at Mundas and flashed a fanged smirk.
“I have considered it,” he replied in a feminine voice. “Though, once he arrives, I expect my talents will be needed many places.”
Mundas looked toward the top of the dune. At its crest, against the rising moon, a shadow was painted: small, slender, a delicate reed growing from the sand.
And his mouth curled into a thick, deep frown.