by Fiona Patton
Kursk nodded. “Once, just before I became wyrdin. Your tayin, Ozan, dared me to walk out into the storm. The spirits swirled all around me like a thick fog and I heard them singing of hunger and of rage. They wanted my life, my power.” He smiled reassuringly down at her. “But they couldn’t take it. I’m too wily.” He turned his attention to the shimmering plains in the distance. “They frightened me that night, but they also taught me that they’re no different than any other wild creature, regardless of what they’re made of; when hungry, they’ll attack the weak but flee the strong. And sometimes they can be tamed just enough to give up a little of their prophecy in exchange for the power they crave.” He smiled. “But that prophecy’s hardly ever given in song, and even less often in words. Usually it’s more like a vague sense of anticipation, much like what you’re sensing now. And the responding emotion it evokes: dread, or caution, or joy, speaks more to the future than the anticipation itself.”
“What emotion did it evoke for you today?”
“Caution, but then, I’m an elder, too,” he said with a chuckle, “and riding toward flooding and pestilence at a gallop. Why don’t you call a spirit up yourself and tell me what it evokes for you.”
With a pleased smile, Rayne rose up in the saddle and, putting two fingers into her mouth, gave a piercingly high whistle.
The spirit that shot up from the ground beneath her pony’s hooves caused the animal to jump back nervously, and as the tiny, protective bells woven into its mane jangled with the movement, the spirit spun into Rayne’s hair in agitation.
She flicked it away with an impatient shake of her head. “Serves you right for trying to spook her,” she admonished. “Behave!”
The spirit froze a hand’s width from her face and she stared at it, watching it shimmer with a translucent, silvery light. Held by the force of her directive, it twisted in the breeze, growing first substantial and then insubstantial until she released it, tossing it a seed of power as Kursk had taught her to do. As it rose straight up into the air like a tiny shooting star, Rayne tucked a loose strand of hair back into her braid.
“They’re a lot more nippy than usual,” she noted with a disapproving frown. “And less playful.”
“How did that make you feel?” Kursk asked.
“Tense and ... annoyed,” she said after a moment. “But mostly...”
“Mostly?”
“Excited.” She turned. “Something’s going to happen, Aba, something big.”
He nodded his agreement. “And you see the difference between age and youth? Where one sees caution, the other sees excitement.”
“So what are we supposed to do?”
“Go and find out why we should be cautious about something exciting. But not tonight,” he added as she made to turn her pony toward the wild lands at once. “Tomorrow we go chasing after prophecy; tonight we bring in the flocks, and it seems that your kardon may have missed a sheep to the east.”
Her head snapped around instantly. “That was Caleb’s fault,” she huffed angrily. “He was supposed to have cleared that whole area by now. He’s so lazy!”
“He has a broken arm, Raynziern,” Kursk admonished gently.
She snorted unsympathetically back at him.
“Well, why don’t you go show him how it’s done, then,” he suggested.
“Don’t think I won’t.” With a wrathful expression, she urged her pony into a gallop, making for the distant figure of her youngest sibling already heading back toward the encampment.
Shaking his head, Kursk watched her go; then after a final glance toward the darkening plains to the west, he followed her.
Beyond the hills, the spirits slowly drew together as the sun continued its downward trek toward the horizon. They came from the wild lands of the west, rising from the pockets of power which dappled the Berbat Ridge, from the small Gol-Bardak Lake with its scattering of Yuruk encampments to the north, and from the southern range of the Gurney-Dag Mountains where the Petchan hill fighters still sprinkled their hair with goat’s blood to protect their people and their herds from the spirits’ touch as they had for over a thousand years. Merging and flowing like a huge flock of misty migrating birds, they slowly made their way east toward the great silvery lake of power, as they had every spring since the world was formed.
And every spring since the Lake Deities had risen from the depths and joined with their human worshipers to surround the source of Their strength with walls of stone and power, the spirits came up short against an impassable barrier. They pressed forward once again, and once again they were denied. Swirling in frustration, they began to hammer against the barrier, spreading themselves thinner and thinner along the miles of guarded shoreline seeking entry, but as always, the barrier held. Thwarted, the spirits withdrew, some to the south, some to the west, but most to the north—making for the great shining place the Deities had built at the mouth of the sea.
The barrier was at its weakest there—so far from the lake of power—and in the past a few tiny spirits had managed to thrust their way inside just long enough to snatch up the life of some tiny, incautious creature, especially on the nights when the Wind Deity screamed and gyrated in time with the High Spring storms, spinning their energy into ribbons of rain and balls of jagged hail. Yesterday the smallest of their number had managed to squeeze through the cracks in the wall of power just long enough to taste the fluttering life of a dying man unclaimed by any God. It had strengthened them as nothing had before and they wanted more. Tonight. As the cloud-obscured sun touched the distant horizon, a growing army of spirits began to press against the barrier around Anavatan.
Deep in the depths of Gol-Beyaz, the God of Prophecy sensed the spirits’ hunger and knew it was time. Calling up His newly fashioned prophecy, He reached out for the boys whose futures He had marked: one to feed the spirits so that they might have strength enough to breach the barrier about Gol-Beyaz, one to give them form and substance enough to take their place among the Gods, and one of two candidates chosen to possibly destroy them should Incasa deem that necessary. This latter choice was the most important and, as He cast a fine white mist over their thoughts and intentions, the easier to manipulate them to His will alone, the God of Probability reached out for His first candidate, the one with the greatest potential for both creation and destruction with a mind sharp but fragile and prophetic gifts both powerful and unrealized.
Tossing his dice into the depths, Incasa spoke his name like a whisper of wind on the waves.
“GRAIZE.”
Unaware of the God’s attention, Graize crouched beside two large stag beetles battling in a ring of sand on the Western Trisect dockyards. Around him, half a dozen youths watched silently, each one intent on the combat, until a sudden gust of wind caused the largest of them to glance up uneasily.
Drove frowned at the cloudy sky, sensing the approaching storm’s growing nexus of power above his head. Fourteen years of experiencing Havo’s Dance on the streets as one of the unsworn had made him acutely aware of the passage of time, but now it seemed that they’d somehow, inexplicably, lost track of the hour. Chewing uncertainly on a ragged hangnail, he tried to remember the afternoon’s events.
They’d dined at Kedi-Meyhane, then made their way along docks still crowded with people finishing up the afternoon’s trade until they’d met up with a party of vintners’ and brewers’ delinkon. With plenty of time, Graize had directed him to build the sand ring. That had been less than an hour ago. He narrowed his eyes. Hadn’t it been?
A faint crack of thunder in the distance made him jump, but as a tinker’s cart trundled past them, he relaxed, feeling foolish. It would be all right, he told himself firmly. Graize knew what he was doing; he always knew when to cut and run. Always.
A skip of lightning across the skies made him flinch.
Always until now.
He glanced nervously up at the darkening sky again, then down at the other boy. He coughed gruffly. Graize ignored him. He coughed again,
and finally Graize glanced up with a studied frown, his eyes as pale as mirrored glass.
Graize had calculated the afternoon’s game precisely, so much time for so many gamblers to add so many coins to the pile neatly stacked to one side before Havo’s Second Night called the game. The combatants’ weariness and Drove’s nervousness was right on schedule. Now, narrowing his eyes, he fixed the larger boy with an appropriately impatient glare.
“What?” he demanded.
Drove bit his lower lip. “Um ...” He jerked his head at the sky.
As one, the other youths looked up, suddenly realizing how late it had become. They glanced at Graize, who showed no sign of calling the game, then to the owner of the other beetle, who began to gnaw uncertainly at her lower lip, her eyes straying longingly to the pile of coins. Torn between their own greed and their fear of Havo’s Dance, they hesitated for one moment longer; then, as the sky suddenly crackled with thunder again, they scattered. The rising wind whipping through his ragged, light brown hair, Graize turned a challenging stare on the other combatant, who finally caught up her beetle and made off as well. Graize smiled coldly, tucking his own insect into a pouch at his side, then began to pick up the money with a satisfied air.
Drove fidgeted impatiently as rain began to splatter against the docks.
“We should go, Graize,” he urged, his voice tinged with panic.
“Yeah, in a moment.”
Across the city, the priests of Havo began the first notes of the day’s farewell.
“No, really, we should go now.”
Graize glanced up with an annoyed expression, then frowned. The sky had grown unrepentantly dark in the last few moments and for the first time the pale-eyed boy felt a thrill of uncertainty. Was it really as late as it seemed? It couldn’t be. Could it? He stood.
“All right, come on,” he decided. “We can just make the Sakin Hostel.”
Together, they took off running through a faint snow-white mist that began to swirl almost imperceptibly about their feet.
In Gol-Beyaz, Incasa nodded, then reached out for his second candidate, the one more likely to choose creation perhaps, but the one more likely to wield destruction nonetheless.
“SPAR.”
Two streets down, Brax and Spar were also running for shelter.
They’d spent the afternoon hovering about the docks as well, and had made enough shine to feed themselves but not enough to buy a place to sleep and, like Graize and Drove, the dusk had somehow come upon them more quickly than they’d expected. Realizing with a start that they’d also strayed too far to reach any dockyard safe house, Brax glanced about uncertainly, clenching and unclenching his fists as it began to rain.
“All right.” He took a deep breath. “All right, you remember that place under the docks where we saw that really big, dead rat?” he asked.
His eyes wide with fear, Spar nodded.
“Well, just past it, you know where that street, what’s it called ... Liman-Caddesi starts up, there’s an old, upturned fishing boat. It’s small, but it should hide both of us if we can get underneath it. We can make it if we run. You game?”
Spar nodded again.
“All right, then, c‘mon.”
Together, the two boys pelted down the docks. At the end of the final wharf, they hesitated for just an instant, then jumped. Spar hit the sand hard, but Brax caught him up by the jacket and half dragged, half carried him beneath the pier. The light was already gone when they reached the first broken cobblestones of Liman-Caddesi.
“We’ll never make it!”
Shouting to be heard above the rising wind, Drove’s panic-filled voice rocked Graize to a halt. He glanced about wildly. The buildings around them were already locked tight and he snapped his head back and forth in frustration, feeling more and more like a cornered rat.
“Shit, shit, shit.” Banging his knuckles against his teeth, he racked his mind for the memory for some, for any, bolt-hole. “C‘mon, Graize, c’mon, you wanna die tonight? Think, think, think,” he chanted to himself, using the words to try and clear his mind gone suddenly, frighteningly, cloudy. “Where you gonna go? Find somewhere, find anywhere.” His eyes wide and unfocused, he raked his gaze across the docks, then gave a sharp nod as a sudden breath of icy wind cleared his mind. “All right, I know a place. It’s not much, but it’ll be safe. C‘mon.”
Together they raced down the pier.
Across the city, four of the Gods’ six main temples were preparing to meet the Second Night of Havo’s Dance in the same manner as the rest of Anavatan, with fastened shutters and bolted doors, while at Havo-Sarayi the festivities were already in full swing, the revelry invoking their God as surely as any ritual, and at Estavia-Sarayi the Battle God’s warriors prepared to obey Her command.
In the seer’s shrine, Cyan Company held its collective breath as Kemal drew his sword. Dropping to one knee, he held the weapon out across his palms, offering his worship and his service to the God of Battles. As the rest of his company followed his lead a heartbeat later, he felt Estavia’s presence within him begin to stir. At his signal, Bazmin tolled the shrine’s wide, bronze bell once.
The sound echoed across the temple’s empty courtyards. To the east, the great bell of Lazim-Hisar responded, then one by one, each stronghold from the smallest of the city gates to the largest of the village watchtowers signaled their readiness. With a deep breath taken to still the sudden pounding in his chest, Kemal began the Invocation.
“God of Battles, I pledge you my strength!”
On Liman-Caddesi, Incasa’s four boys reached the fishing boat at the same time. Brax immediately pushed Spar behind him and drew his knife. With a snarl, Drove did the same and, as the rain turned to hail, he attacked.
“God of Battles, I pledge you my blood!”
The waters of Gol-Beyaz began to swirl as each company, each garrison, and each tower took up the call, channeling their power through Kemal to their God, struggling to break the constraints of another Deity’s territorial hold on the physical realm. His body shaking with the force of their combined strength, he gripped his weapon by the hilt, sweeping it upward to point toward the domed ceiling high above his head.
“God of Battles, I pledge you my worship!”
“Spar, get under there!”
Swinging his own knife in a tight arc, Brax kept Drove at bay as Spar threw himself against the boat. It shifted slightly, but then he was tugging his own knife free as Graize darted around Brax’s flank.
Shifting his blade from one hand to another, the pale-eyed boy smiled coldly.
“Hey, Spar, you wanna move or you wanna die?” he asked conversationally.
Spar’s own eyes narrowed, but he said nothing as Graize leaped forward, only to come face-to-face with Brax as the other boy jumped between them. Graize showed his teeth at him as Drove edged closer.
“You can’t hold us both off forever, Brax. Better run now while you still can,” he sneered.
Squinting into the growing darkness, Brax snapped his head from side to side, trying to keep both opponents in view. A spattering of hail scored across his cheek and, as he flinched back, Drove swept in under his guard to slice through his sleeve, leaving a thin, red line along his arm.
Beyond the ancient wall of stone and power the spirits reared up, alert to the sudden call of blood and pain. As Brax took a staggered step backward, they threw themselves at the barrier and, as Drove brought his knife slashing down again, they broke through en masse for the first time in a millennium.
The streets of Anavatan filled with a broiling, blood-flecked mist. Within it, driven along by the wind, the spirits sucked up whatever power they could snatch from the tiny creatures in their path, then turned toward the dockyards.
“God of Battles I pledge you my will!”
In Estavia’s shrine, the power of ten thousand warriors surging through him flung Kemal to his feet. He felt as if he’d been thrust onto a great wheel, arms and legs stretched out along the s
pokes and held immobile by the force of their worship. As his sense of self slowly shredded under the onslaught, Estavia rent Havo’s prerogative and burst from the waters of Gol-Beyaz.
Kemal’s vision went red. Jerking like a puppet, his teeth scored across his lower lip and, as the Battle God’s presence flowed into his mouth to catch up each and every tiny drop of blood for Her own, he found his voice again.
“God of Battles I pledge you my service for as long as I have breath in my body!”
As the force of Her power took control of his mind, Kemal felt Estavia shoot into the air like a behemoth, then, twirling Her flashing blades in the air, She turned and streaked toward the western streets of Anavatan.
Lightning skipped across the sky as Drove leaped forward, jabbing his blade at Brax’s face. Brax fell back, then swept his own knife up, slicing through Drove’s jacket but missing the arm. Behind him, Spar caught up a rock and threw it at Graize with all his strength. Graize avoided it easily. Waggling his knife at the smaller boy, he stepped forward, then froze.
A fine, white mist had gathered around them while they fought, clinging to their feet and legs like strands of sticky spider webbing. As Graize looked down, he saw the faint outline of a thousand wraithlike creatures racing toward them. He opened his mouth to shout a warning to Drove, but as the thunder cracked above their heads, the spirits attacked.
They lunged forward, knifelike teeth and claws outstretched in raging hunger. Graize stumbled backward, screaming in terror and, as Drove turned, the spirits caught him up in a deadly enveloping shroud. Flinging him about like a rag doll, more and more of them leaping upon his back and neck with every turn, they sucked greedily at his body like huge, misty lampreys, then flung his corpse into the street. Strengthened now to a terrible degree, they swept toward the other boys, nearly corporeal hands reaching out with blood-covered claws, while hundreds more poured into the street behind them. Dozens clamped themselves onto Brax’s injured arm, the rest made for Graize and Spar.