I lunged through the arch, feinting, then retreated to bring this enemy forward, where his movements rather than mine would be constrained by the stone. I could never have mistaken him for a living man, but the strength in him, in his arm, was certainly no less for that. His sword rang against mine in almost the ordinary way, for all the weapon's strange appearance.
The shadow warrior let me draw him—perhaps overconfident of his own skill, or perhaps, as he was already dead, he had no care for caution. When I feinted again, he tried to catch my sword with his claw-weapon, but I dropped the tip of my blade low and cut his forearm below the armor, then drove my knife into his thigh and tore it upward into the groin. As I had found before, this was both like and unlike striking a living man; the resistance was different, first more and then less, as though the shadow were less solid or less real once I cut through its surface. But when my sword came against his armor, shadow or not, the shock jarred my hand and arm. I tore my blade free, pivoting to throw the wounded enemy past me for Arayo to finish—now Raga would have a sword, so that was good—but the next shadow warrior came at me so fast I barely managed to face him in time to block his attack, and even then I was so badly off balance that the strength of his blow drove me to my knees.
My mistake might have made the battle disgracefully short, but the eagle hurled himself down in that instant so that the shadow warrior leaped back. The instant the eagle touched the stone, he was not an eagle, he was a man, an Ugaro warrior of moonlight and ice, his unbound hair flying, a sword in each hand. He struck twice with blazing speed and ferocity, cutting our enemy into pieces—his weapons cut right through the warrior’s armor—then he threw himself from the cliff and blurred into a streak of moonlight and then into an eagle again, wheeling away into the sky.
I regained my feet, barely in time to face our next enemy.
Above, the eagle screamed, folded its wings, and plunged toward us. When the nearest shadow warriors flinched and looked up, I seized my chance, throwing myself forward, not shouting, but silent, so that my enemies might fail to guard against me for that one instant too long. I took the chance to try my sword against one warrior’s armor, putting all my strength behind the blow, and found my weapon could indeed cut through the glittering black shadow. But, disastrously, I lost my sword because it lodged there, in the strange substance of my enemy. Another shadow warrior struck at me, so that I was forced to let go of my sword and leap backward.
The eagle touched the stone, rose up as a man, and threw me one of his swords. I caught this weapon with a shout and lunged to drive our enemies back. The eagle-warrior’s sword was so much better than my own that, against that weapon, the shadow warriors might as well have worn no armor at all. But even so there were so many I had to fall back again to the stone arch.
Arayo, behind me, said, terse and level-voiced, “Their own swords also cut through their armor better than ours, Ryo—get me one like that if you can.”
“Yes,” I said. I had not realized that. “Good,” I added. I started to say something else. I do not know what I meant to say. Before I could speak, I was seized with a conviction—this was like taking a sword-thrust through the body—that I had to go to Aras, I had to go right now.
I could not. It was impossible. I made that thought as clear in my mind as I could. If we turned and ran, our enemies would cut us down before we went ten strides. We had to stand and hold this position. We had no choice. I could not come.
Almost as I thought this, I snapped at my brother, “Raga! Hold this position.” Whirling around, I said urgently to Arayo, “Hold here as long as you can!” Then I left them there and ran away, up the path.
It was not me. I had not said those things. I was not running. My body was running, at my best possible speed. For the first instant, I had no idea what I was doing, what had happened, what was still happening.
Then I knew.
Behind me, I heard my brother cry, “Ryo!” The horror in his voice struck my heart. That was like taking a sword-thrust. I did not turn. I sheathed my new sword so that I could run faster. My brother called again, and then only a breath later, he cried out in a different way, and I knew an enemy had struck him down. I did not turn. Arayo was shouting fiercely, and Raga was screaming, and I did not turn. I could not turn. My body did not answer me. It was not mine. It did not belong to me.
Up and around the shoulder of the mountain, up more steeply, using my hands to climb, careless of my safety, my breath tearing in my lungs, I came at last to the crest of Talal Sabero, to the high place above and below the world. The air was bright and cold, the stars burning with their vivid fire, so close to the earth that I felt I could reach up to catch them from the sky, the Moon luminous above and beyond the stars. The place here at the very peak of the mountain was not large, the sky fell away on all sides, but the peak itself was almost level, which was good because I was running straight toward enemies.
I saw many things all at once.
Before me, the high peak of the sacred mountain rose up into a long, narrow, jagged spire, with winding about this spire a broad spiraling stairway, carved into the stone as far up as I could see. The stone of both spire and stairway was white as milk and shining with moonlight. It was quite plain that the stairway rose up all the way to the sky.
Inhejeriel was walking slowly up that stairway. She was paying no attention to anything below her. She had her hands raised, palm up, in a gesture like the one by which someone may ask for mercy. But this was a different gesture. She held her hands differently, higher, and her hands were filled with the light of the stars. She did not look to me like a living woman, though she walked and moved and held up her hands. She shone with light herself, as brightly as a lantern, as though she were made of porcelain and filled with starlight. The patterns traced on the right side of her face and on her left hand and arm were deep indigo against her luminous skin.
My sister walked on Inhejeriel’s left—even at this moment, my heart leaped up to see her there—and Lalani on Inhejeriel’s right. I was glad to see Lalani as well, though I had all but forgotten sending her before me. Neither Etta nor Lalani held their hands in the same manner. They walked up the broad stairway into the sky with their hands at their sides, but starlight fell across them, across their upturned faces, so that in their own way, they seemed almost as luminous as the Tarashana woman.
At the base of the spire, before the entrance to the stairway, Aras fought alone against two shadow warriors, using a sword of shadow, pouring all his speed and skill into that battle. I had never seen him fight like that, a real fight with nothing held back. Desperation will sometimes bring out a man’s best skill. He was holding them. But two more enemies—three—were running toward him from a different direction, from the other side of the mountain peak, to which a different path had brought them.
Before Aras, not far from him, lay the body of Hokino inKera, and a little way beyond that, the body of my brother Garoyo, each dead of many wounds. The sight tore at me. I felt as though the blade were still in my heart, twisting. I knew instantly what had occurred—or some of what had occurred. My brother and Hokino must have fought hard here for a long time. But then they had fallen. That was when Aras had at last put his will upon me, either at that moment or just before, at the moment he saw it must happen.
I passed them both, one and then the other, without pausing.
I had no idea whether they had fought for Aras because they had chosen to, or because he had taken their will, stolen their bodies, and made them his slaves. My brother might have died enslaved by a sorcerer, his will and his body stolen from him. Aras might have done that to Garoyo, exactly as he had done it to me.
I could not run fast enough to take the shadow warriors by surprise, even though they were both engaged against Aras. One turned to face me. I did not slow or pause or hesitate or even choose my stroke. My body chose all those things. I moved very, very fast, with no hesitation. I blocked my enemy’s blow, whirled my sword in a
tight circle to guide his down and away, and slashed across his throat with my knife. Then I took the second Saa'arii warrior from behind, carving two great gashes through his glittering armor and his shadowy body with the sword the eagle-warrior had given me. Before his body shredded away into wisps of empty darkness, I had already whirled to face the three that were approaching. They had checked, seeing how easily I had destroyed the other two, aware now that my sword was not a mortal weapon. But they came on, though more slowly.
Every breath tore my throat. My chest ached with the thin air. My stomach felt as though every stitch had torn out of the flesh, though I doubted that had happened. At some moment, I had taken a cut to my forearm, but though the blood ran down, it was not enough to cripple my arm.
All this, I could set aside. The pain of my body was nothing.
Probably our enemies had overwhelmed Arayo by this time. I knew he was brave, no doubt he was skilled for his age, but he had only fifteen winters. He would have tried to obey me, but he could not have held long alone.
He would have been alone, after our enemies struck down my brother. Raga had been too shocked by my abandonment to guard himself. He had not been a warrior. I doubted he had even struck one blow in his own defense. The shadow warriors would have cut him to pieces almost at once.
Or they might have struck him out of their way and left him. My brother might be dying even now. He might be lying helpless and injured, waiting for the shadow tide to rise high enough to take him.
Behind me, Aras said, “He’s dead. They’re both dead. I didn’t do this to Garoyo. Not to anyone but you, Ryo.” His breaths were as rapid as mine; his words came in painful gasps.
He had not released me. He did not do it now. I could not turn to face him. If I had owned my own body, I would have spun around and struck him down where he stood. Though probably I would not have been able to do it. The only good time to kill a sorcerer is in his sleep. Everyone knows that. Now the truth of that saying was more bitterly plain to me than ever before. A sorcerer’s slave cannot turn on his master. Someone else must kill the sorcerer to free those he has made into his slaves.
I could not speak. My tongue was not mine. My thoughts were my own, and the savage, dark storm of my fury and grief. Those, he had not taken from me. Or not yet.
Behind us, above us, Inhejeriel began to sing.
This was not like the song of an Ugaro singer. She did not ask anything of the gods; she did not ask anything of the world, of the sky or the earth. She only sang a name. Tal-Shalaseriad. It might have been any word in her own language, but I knew it was a name. After the first instant, I even half recognized this name; I thought she had spoken it before ... yes: tal-Shalaseriad. She had sworn by that name. This was the name of her teacher. A sorcerer, almost certainly, as she was herself.
She had sworn to sing the names of our people, my people, first of all, before the names of her own people. She had lied. I was not surprised. Sorcerers lie.
High above, a single echo came back to the world. Tal-Shalaseriad. It was not an echo. It was a voice, but not a human voice. That voice was high and pure, and the name lingered in the air, not dying away in the ordinary way.
“That is the voice of a star,” Aras said quietly. He spoke with less effort now, his breathing having eased in the pause. He said, “She has to redeem as many sorcerers as she can, first, because they are the ones who may drive back the Saa'arii tide—if we can guard Inhejeriel long enough for her to complete her great working and bring her peoplel, our people, back into the land of the living.”
The first of our enemies had almost reached us.
Aras added, speaking more quickly now, “She’ll begin to call back your people as soon as she can, Ryo, but we have to hold back the ka’a, the shadow warriars, so that she has time to complete her task. We have to hold, Ryo.”
My own breaths still came hard, but even if I could have spoken, I would not have answered him.
Then there was no more time to speak, or to breathe. Our enemies were upon us.
I did not make the decision to fight, but at least while fighting I felt nothing different in myself. One does not think while fighting hard. It was a vast relief to me to fight because my rage poured into my body and everything else fell away.
Aras had turned and gone up the stairway, following the women, letting me take the battle alone. I realized, distantly, without thought, that he would let me fight until the shadow warriars—these ka’a—cut me to pieces. Only when I was dead would he turn again to fight. Up there on the stairway, he might hold against these enemies for a long time.
I knew, or I believed, that he had told me the truth. Nothing he had told me mattered. I would fight as long as I could. When I fell, Aras would fight. When he fell, the ka’a would at once run up the stairway into the sky and cut down Inhejeriel and my sister and Lalani.
If Inhejeriel fell too quickly, everything would be lost. If she fell at all, then whatever names she had not yet given to the stars, those people would be lost forever. I knew this with a certainty beyond thought, beyond words. I could not tell whether Aras had put that certainty into my mind or whether it was my own knowledge. I could not tell whether it was true or a lie.
I destroyed another of my opponents—the eagle-warrior’s sword was a wonderful weapon, light and agile in my hand, as sharp now as when I had first struck through a shadow warrior’s armor with it—and to my surprise, I found myself backing up the stairway. Each step was as wide as a man’s height and as deep as a man’s arm, each carved even and smooth and exactly like the one before. To my left as I backed up, the white stone of the spire rose up. To my right, empty air fell away. That made fighting easier for me and more difficult for my opponents—as long as they were right-handed. I cut across the chest of one ka’a. The blow was not mortal, but I kicked him off the edge of the stairway, then took a cut myself, not deep, but not trivial. But I recovered, cutting through the body of another enemy who pressed me. That time, the blow was enough that his form dissolved into shreds of shadow in the way of his kind.
Then I suddenly pressed close to the rising spire and Aras was there, seizing the sword from my hand as he ran past me, taking the battle on himself, giving me time to recover.
Once I caught my balance, I backed away up the stairway, my breath coming in tearing gasps. I might have run forward again to resume battle, but my body did not do that. I dropped to my knees, resting, breathing. Now I understood the strategy was different than I had thought. Aras would trade the battle back and forth with me so that neither of us would become exhausted as fast. That was a better strategy. I should have understood at once. I had recovered enough to take back the fight, but I did not move. I could not move. My own intentions and desires did not move my body.
Aras had taken a wound, I saw the blood, and at once I realized he had probably taken more than one wound. Nothing that hindered him too much, not yet. He was not as fast now as he had been. Innumerable ka’a, too many for me to count, were coming, from three different directions now, all heading for this spire, this stairway, this battle.
I should take back the fight. I thought that. But I still did not move.
Then I did. I had not felt the intention at all, but I leaped up and ran forward, jumped over Aras as he dropped low, catching the sword he tossed up to me. That had been his intention, but the skill that caught that sword was mine. It was strange to move with all my own skill, but not by my own choice. Then I had no time to think of anything except our enemies.
I destroyed two, and a third. Their bodies would have blocked the way forward, except that they shredded away into emptiness instead. Worse, I saw now that the darkness that came out of them curled away into a clawing emptiness that did not disperse, but ate away at the substance of the world. Yet I had no choice but to destroy the ka’a as quickly as I could, no matter what might come of that.
A pause came. I seized the chance to back away, up one stair and another and another. The battle had come
a surprisingly long way upward already. I heard something different. This took me a moment, because by this time many stars were singing many names: all those faint, pure voices stayed in the air, reverberating beyond sound rather than fading into silence. But finally I became certain. I heard Lalani singing too. Her voice was not the high, pure voice of an Ugaro singer. That takes much practice as well as the inborn skill. Her voice was lower-pitched and husky, not the kind of voice that could carry from the earth to the sky, but when she sang a name, that was the name Etta sang next. Lalani was giving my sister names, one after another. How Lalani came to know those names, I had no idea, except that this was likely to be some manner of sorcery.
All of their voices sounded strangely distant. That was another puzzle.
Then enemies rushed forward. But instead of bracing to meet them, I stepped back.
As he passed me, taking the sword from my hand, Aras said aloud, “I can’t give you much of a breather, Ryo. There’s a ka’a coming who’s almost certainly too strong for me.”
I said nothing, of course—my tongue was not mine—but I stepped back again and turned. Nothing of those movements was mine, but when I faced upward, I saw something that astonished me. The stairway above me was no longer made of stone carved around a spire of stone. It was light, laid around a spire of air and mist. It was as though the stairway were made of slanted sunbeams, the kind that sometimes break through the clouds after a storm. Except the light was not sunlight, nor moonlight. It was starlight, tinted with many delicate colors that were almost white, but not exactly.
Inhejeriel and Etta and Lalani walked up that stairway, walking on light, surrounded by light. They had left the earth and stepped into the sky. No wonder their voices had sounded more distant to me.
Tarashana Page 38