by L. Penelope
She took another moment to feel all the self-pity that rushed at her, unbidden.
And then she brushed it aside. Opened her eyes. Squared her shoulders.
“All right. She’ll be here soon. We’d best prepare.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The wise will hear the melody and
sing along.
The blessed will teach the tune to all
they encounter.
—THE HARMONY OF BEING
Kyara’s Nethersong avatar had grown into a growling, vicious-looking wildcat. Its hackles were raised as its ghostly form prowled in front of her, pacing back and forth, gaze locked on the target Murmur had provided. A row of improbably lush, leafy trees stood at the far end of the cavern, spaced evenly apart. Her task was to specifically aim for the center tree and destroy it, leaving the rest untouched.
She sucked in a breath, feeling the cat’s skin ripple in response. They were viscerally connected, she and this imaginary creature that embodied her Song. She sensed its moods and reactions and knew that it sensed hers. Since she’d discovered her deadly power, she’d felt as if it was always barely leashed. Never quite under her control. Now that it had manifested itself in a visible way, a leash wasn’t needed. Whatever magic was held in the walls of this mountain allowed this being to work as an extension of herself.
She focused on the center tree and released the massive feline. Its body dissolved into a blur of motion; it was gone and back again before Kyara had finished blinking. However, while she had directed her Song’s actions, she’d done so with no precision. Every single tree was blackened. The two on the ends crumpled and fell into a heap of ashes, fully decayed in an instant.
Behind her, Murmur sighed deeply. “Your heart still is not in this.” He stepped up beside her and waved an arm. The trees were once again whole, standing in a perfect line.
“Nethersong requires intention just as all magic does,” Murmur continued, “and if your intention is weak or unfocused, then so is the expression of your power. Look at how well the young one is progressing.”
Tana had taken to the training like a scalpel to viscera. On the other side of the cavern, her lizard, now a fierce dragon, let loose a fiery breath, which only affected the specific tree she’d targeted. Kyara sighed wistfully.
This was nothing like how her own brutal training had progressed at the hands of the Cantor. Of course she was glad that Tana was not being broken down to bloody bits and then rebuilt the way Kyara had been, but it was still bittersweet. Perhaps the gentle touch would not have worked for Kyara. Maybe she needed brutality in order to gain control.
“You must embrace your Light—your power,” Mooriah said, stepping up to her other side. It was like being in the middle of a disappointment sandwich. “You’re still trying to keep it at arm’s length when instead you must open your arms to it. Your progress is too slow. The wraiths will destroy the entire land before you are able to become remotely competent.” The woman glared then turned away, muttering a curse before disappearing altogether, leaving the heart of the Mother.
“Was she always such a ball of sunshine?” Kyara grumbled.
“Once, she was indeed lighter and happier,” Murmur said. “She was our shaman, responsible for the spiritual and often physical well-being of the clan. Her husband was our chief and they were good leaders. Together, they united the clans and helped us keep our way of life even as so many left the mountain for the Outside. But death was not the respite it should have been for her.”
Kyara swallowed at Murmur’s mournful tone. She’d never spoken to Mooriah of her life or afterlife much. Annoyed as she was by the woman’s imperious manner and amoral methods, such things had not come up.
“I’m not sure how to erase ten years of conditioning and hatred of my Song,” she admitted. “I don’t know what to do differently.”
Murmur peered at her with his colorless eyes, though here, in this strange, magic-made place, his irises and lids were indistinct enough not to be as uncanny as they were in real life. He finally looked off but she couldn’t read his expression. But he appeared to come to a decision.
“You must meet the Breath Father. It is usually a rite of passage after certain milestones have been reached in your training, but I think you should do it now. Perhaps the meeting would help to unlock your block and accelerate your development.”
“Is he … sentient?” She’d always assumed the Breath Father was like the Mountain Mother, part of Cavefolk myth and not an entity that could be met with. According to legend, the two deities had created the Folk from stone and water or some such.
“You will not believe my words, child. Best meet him for yourself and decide.” Murmur looked like he wanted to say more, but held back.
“What is it? Is there more I need to know?”
He took a deep breath. By now she was used to focusing on his face and not the expansion of muscle below. “Remember to breathe, dear. As deeply as you can. And bring the caldera with you—the one you call the death stone.”
Kyara stiffened, she hadn’t told anyone that she’d brought the strange rock along. “How did you know I brought it with me?”
He simply smiled cryptically and then turned to call Tana back from where she was playing with her lizard avatar. They all left the heart of the Mother to return to their physical forms.
* * *
Even wrapped tight in its bundling fabric and stowed in the pocket of her trousers, the death stone felt like it was going to burn a hole through her thigh. The heat wasn’t physical, the bundle actually felt quite cold, instead, the all-consuming weight of heavy foreboding was trying to eat through her clothes and right into the skin.
She followed Murmur down sloping tunnels she’d never been in before. The path was well-worn and lit with the strange glowing rocks that offered a muted shine, just enough so the journey wasn’t claustrophobic.
They traveled a long way, and she wasn’t sure she’d be able to find her way back again. Nerves ate at her, and Murmur didn’t seem inclined to puncture the silence with conversation. Finally, they emerged in a huge cavern filled with water. Except that when she looked up, a filtered blue sky was visible above them. This place was actually outside of the mountain with some kind of covering protecting them from the overhead sun. The surface of the water glowed softly from the dampened light.
“This is the original caldera,” Murmur said with reverence. “We call it the Origin. Created by an ancient volcano, this crater was filled in over time with water and power and is the holiest place in the Mother.”
“What’s up there?” She pointed to the thing protecting them from the sky. The covering was filmy and made the sunlight refract into waves of rainbow colors shining down.
“It protects us from the Outside. It’s constructed from a sheet of fluorite so those of us too old to withstand the sun’s rays can still come here.” He gazed at the quiet lake reverently, but a growing sense of unease crawled over Kyara. The place was beautiful indeed with its colorful glow, but something about it tickled her senses in an uncomfortable way.
“So what happens now?” she asked, still staring up. When Murmur didn’t answer, she turned around to discover he’d disappeared. She didn’t understand how, he was standing next to her and then as soon as she turned her head, his body was just … gone. Into thin air. He certainly couldn’t have moved that quickly.
She swallowed and considered retreating the way they’d come, but the path had disappeared, too. The only dry land was under her feet; she now stood on a tiny island in the midst of the crater’s lake.
She must have entered some kind of vision. It hadn’t required meditation or drugs, she was just instantly inside it. Her wariness multiplied.
Steam poured off the placid surface of the lake and it began to bubble. She trembled, not wanting to fall off the sliver of land beneath her, which was barely bigger than her footprints. Not wanting to know what was in the water to make it churn and roil like that.
>
Would Tana eventually have to undergo this as well? The girl would be frightened out of her mind—Kyara was nearly so. She sank into her other sight, hoping it would provide some comfort, some level of control, or even some answers. There shone the light of death, the darkness of life, and the staticky Void, all here in the lake, swirling around one another but separate, like water and oil stirred but always pulling apart.
Out of the mess, something new began to coalesce. It was the variegated energy of the Void, neither light nor dark, but present always between them. Somehow, the Void was solidifying, if that was even possible, and converging into a human-like form.
She opened her eyes to witness this shape rise from the water and float upward. The figure was difficult to make out, appearing to her eyes to be made of air and wind and steam more than solid flesh, but a face resolved into a bearded form—a man, with long coiled locks flowing down his back.
Kyara stared as he drifted closer, a man of air—of Void?—but visible nonetheless, and the power coming off him … Her knees began to shake as the presence approached. Standing before the Goddess Awoken had been awe-inspiring; this was bone crushing.
“Kyara,” the figure whispered in a voice that was both many and one. These were the whispers she’d heard in the desert, leading her to the crystal city and through the tunnels. She’d thought it was the Cavefolk speaking to her, but if so, they’d used the voice of this … whoever this was. The name Breath Father stroked her mind and she shivered.
“Why have you come to me?” The voice was timeless and, this close, pierced her marrow.
“M-Murmur said it was a rite of passage.” She shivered and thought she might vomit. “That you could help me control my power.”
The figure flickered, sometimes more visible, sometimes less, but the sensation of its presence never let up. “Your power is vast. And yet your training is stagnant. Why is that?”
She clenched her jaw to stall its shaking before being able to speak. “I don’t know. I don’t want this power.” Her voice was tight and small.
“Then why come at all?”
“For the girl.”
The figure drew even closer, nearly nose to nose, and Kyara looked up into ancient eyes—the only solid-looking thing on him. Just as colorless as the rest of his form, but somehow substantial. “No. You came because you require balance.”
She wanted to draw back, but remained motionless, conscious of the still-bubbling lake. “What do you mean?”
“What do you know of the power you wield?”
“What I was taught. To kill, harm, control. To manipulate the energy of death.” His face shifted and changed too much to hold a single expression, yet she sensed disappointment from him.
“And what of life?”
She shook her head. “I have no provenance there.”
“Do you not?” he asked archly.
“I—I don’t understand.”
“That is because your people have lost the way. The universe exists because of balance, tip the scales too far outside of equilibrium and a restoration is required. Life, death, Void—it must all equal out.”
“So we’ve gotten out of balance?”
“Oh, certainly. The coming war is a way of righting the scales. You are a way of righting the scales, and your part is to ensure that life, death, and that which lies between exist harmoniously.”
“Me?” She could barely even respond to that.
“There should be more, but there are not. So it falls to you.”
“But I don’t … I can’t…”
“There have always been sentinels,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “Those who monitor the three worlds. Mooriah was one. But now those places have been left without their guardians. This is part of what must be corrected.”
She was still confused, but didn’t say anything as he floated around her, inspecting her from all sides.
“The stone you bear, the trapped Song of the Nethersinger. Why are you afraid of it?”
She fingered the outside of the pocket where the death stone lay, nestled against her thigh. “It’s nothing but more death. I had no choice in what kind of Song I was born with. Had no choice about the lives I’ve taken. This caldera … I don’t know what it does and I don’t really want to. I just don’t know what to do with it.”
He stopped his perusal and settled before her once again, his form flickering and changing slightly with each breath. “You have been done a disservice.” He lifted a ghostly arm and a wall of water rose to the side of them. Kyara gasped and tried not to lose her footing. Rainbow-colored light danced in the waterfall that flew up from the lake and then arced back to crash down again. The light formed an image with a multicolored tinge to it. As it solidified, her stomach lurched. She closed her eyes.
“I don’t want to see that.”
“Open your eyes, my child,” the Breath Father said. “Bear witness.”
She took a deep breath and then did as he commanded. She was seeing herself at eleven, running around the courtyard of the harem she had grown up in. “Ahlini,” she whispered. Her only childhood friend, alive and well, eyes shining, braids flying out behind her as she pumped her arms and raced around a corner.
Little Kyara was laughing, too. Until she followed around the corner and was stopped by a frowning woman in uniform, one of the ul-nedrim guards. Kyara wasn’t allowed to play with the harem girls. But the guard looked around slyly and inclined her head slightly. Kyara grinned and took off running again.
Adult Kyara had no recollection of that. This memory, if it was one, had been lost to the ravages of time. “This is real? Not just another vision?”
“It is real,” the ghostly man intoned.
The images continued: Ahlini teaching Kyara to read from her own slates, sneaking food from her plate to supplement the meager rations servants received. Kindness. And not just from her friend. Kyara also did not recall the small things that the adult ul-nedrim, the other rare daughters sired by the king, had done for her. Not being boys and ineligible for whatever dubious benefits harem women had, they were second-class citizens. Destined only for guard duty or drudgery. But the ulla—the woman in charge—had looked out for Kyara, unbeknownst to her child self. She’d been given extra clothes, extra rations, lighter duties than others in her position in different cabals of the vast harem. Kyara’s eyes misted to watch the things she never knew had been happening.
And then that fateful day. Kyara was playing shelter-and-search with Ahlini. Her friend went off to hide and not long after the screaming began. Kyara followed her friend’s shouts to find the girl in a storage room being choked by a bedraggled man in tattered clothing. A man who had somehow gotten into the harem.
Ahlini’s untrained Song had lit every lamp and then sparked flames on the shelving as she’d tried to protect herself. Kyara had beaten at the man uselessly and smashed a jar over his head, but he was locked in madness. He reached out an arm and smacked her. She flew across the room and crashed into the wall.
Kyara had blacked out, never knowing how she’d killed the man and Ahlini, but in the vision, she saw the tiny kitten avatar leap from her prone body, transforming midair into the ferocious wildcat. It had entered the man’s body, instantly exploding the Nethersong within him and killing him.
The cat did not target Ahlini, but they were so close, only a hairsbreadth away from one another that the poison of Nether was absorbed by her as well. The avatar seemed to know what it had done and regret it immediately. It shrank back into its kitten form and retreated sadly into Kyara’s body.
The image changed to the infirmary. A guard cradled Kyara against her chest and lay her on the cot. The ulla arrived, out of breath.
“What’s happened?” she cried.
The guards shook their heads. “It looks like plague,” one said. “But it makes no sense.”
“It is not plague.” The old woman stroked a hand over Kyara’s forehead. “I had a dream about this child before she w
as born, a message gifted to me by my ancestors. In our branch of the House of Eagles, there is a tale that has been passed down for generations. It tells of an oncoming storm, one that will upset the three worlds and pit the living against the dead. When it comes, it will be silent like a viper approaching unseen through the brush. I sense within this child the oncoming clouds.”
The guards seemed perplexed, but hung on her words.
“She is special, she is a scorpion and we must protect her from the True Father.”
Kyara startled, recalling the little book she had found, The Book of Unveiling. It had been written by Mooriah’s descendants and told a cryptic tale of her story, calling her the Scorpion. She’d lost the book somewhere, in one prison or another. Had the ulla been one of Mooriah’s line?
In the vision, the guards nodded, more loyal to the woman who led them than the despotic king. But in the end, the Cantor herself had come for Kyara, accompanied by a contingent of Golden Flames. They had overpowered the ul-nedrim guards, cutting them down mercilessly, and dragged Kyara off to the dungeon. The ulla was executed for hiding such a valuable resource.
The colors of the image faded and then the waters fell down to the frothing lake. Tears streamed down Kyara’s face. She scrubbed at them violently. “Why did you show me this?”
The Breath Father did not emote, but the constant shifting of his form slowed sympathetically. “You were cared for, Kyara, always. You were loved and protected.”
“Those women died trying to help me.”
“Yes. They gave their lives because of their faith, their knowledge that you were special. They didn’t know how special, but the wheel of fate was rolling across your life even then.” The death stone in her pocket pulsed suddenly, as if it had woken up and wanted to be used. A burst of frigid air blast down her thigh and she shuddered.