No one living had set foot on this bridge but Aras and me. And my sister, and Lalani, so that was better than it might be. But no one else.
If Aras had not called Garoyo and Raga out of the empty darkness of the Saa’arii tide, they would probably be safe. Instead, they were probably lost. Hokino inKera and his son Arayo, the same. Suyet, who had been called from the dark tide only to die, hardly a heartbeat later, at the blade of the first Saa’arii shadow warrior we had met here, never understanding anything that had happened. Tano, who had only just begun to learn what kind of man he could be.
Aras had probably known he might be sacrificing them even before he called them. Thinking of this now, I was certain he had known it. He had intended it. He had meant to use them exactly as he had used them: to guard himself and Inhejeriel. There was no limit to his ruthlessness once he had determined his course.
I thought again of Raga, shouting my name in horror while I ran away and left him to die.
Aras pressed a hand to his mouth, took a hard breath, and let his hand fall. He said, without apology, “I needed them too badly to leave them in the shadow tide, even though, yes, they would probably have been safer waiting for Inhejeriel to call them. Just as I needed you so badly I forced my will on you. I can’t let you go just yet, Ryo.”
I had not expected him to let me go. Not yet. Not while he might still need me to fight.
I did not trust that he would ever release me. If he did, I would kill him. He must know that. If he could not see it in my mind, he would know it anyway. He could hardly fail to understand that his actions had been utterly unforgiveable.
If he would not release me from his control, I hoped he would kill me. I made that thought very clear. I made it the only thought in my mind, pushing the rage aside so that he could not possibly fail to see it.
“I’ll let you go as soon as I can,” he said. “Soon. I don’t think the gods can hold back the sunrise much longer.” He was silent then, gazing down toward the distant peak of Talal Sabero. Where the eagle-warrior had shattered the bridge, the light frayed away into silvery mist. The gap was too wide for anyone to cross, shadow or shade or living person, but that did not matter now. The Saa’arii shadow warriors had gone. The empty blackness of the tide lapped high up around the highest peak of Talal Sabero. It was still rising. I thought that if that shadow tide drowned all the mountain, then it might not matter how bravely Inhejeriel strove to call back her people. Perhaps this thought was wrong, but I feared that, as the stairway that led into the sky was anchored to that mountain, if that anchor failed, then the stairway could not hold.
“I certainly hope that’s not the case,” Aras said. “But if you’re right, then I pray most fervently that the Sun rises before the tide reaches that height.” He paused, looking intently downward along the span of the bridge. “Look there, Ryo.”
I obeyed that order—that might even have been my choice; I could not tell. It was becoming more difficult to feel in myself the difference when I moved according to his will, to feel whether I moved at all according to my own. But then I forgot that thought, bitter though it was, because I made out the shape of someone, a man, an Ugaro man, not a half-seen shade but a living man, running across the crest of the mountain. The distance was too great to see him plainly. But even if I had not been able to count off the dead and number the living, I would have known who he was by the way he ran, hard, head down, putting all his will into endurance.
“I’ve been calling him as hard as I could, but of course he had no chance until the eagle drove back the ka’a,” Aras said softly. “Now the high bridge of the sky is broken, so I don’t know ...” he did not finish that thought.
I would not have believed anything could soften my fury by the smallest degree. But at least he had tried to save Tano. That effort might fail, probably it would fail, but he had tried.
Aras said nothing. We both waited. There was nothing either of us could do.
Tano reached the base of the base of the spire and flung himself up the stairway without pausing. He was still a long distance below us, but climbing as fast as he could, in our view and then out of it as he circled the spire. Soon he would reach the place where the stone turned to light. Before him, where the eagle-warrior had struck through it, one step ran out into broken shards of light and drifting mist. Seven steps were missing: a gap far too wide for any Ugaro to jump. I wanted to get up and go down the span of the bridge, although there was nothing I could do to help Tano. I knew Aras must know I wanted to do that, but my body did not move.
“You’re tired, Ryo, and you’re still bleeding. You can’t help him. Just rest.”
I had no choice. His will ruled mine completely.
“I’ll let you go as soon as I can,” he said, as he said before.
I met that with all the scorn I could, and he turned his face away, not speaking again.
Tano came to the broken place and stopped there, looking up at us. He took a step back and called out something, but I could not make out his words.
Far away, and yet seeming very close, the sky began to shift from silvery-lavender to a brighter shade. A warmer shade, not gold nor pink nor salmon. A color that was like those colors, but richer. I could not feel the direction, but I knew that must be the west. Above, in the land of the living, the Sun was setting. Here, in the land of the shades, he was about to rise. Only when I realized this did I see that the Moon had finally begun to walk down from the highest vault of the sky. She was moving fast now, much faster than usual, sinking farther toward the horizon with every breath.
Thunder cracked, sharp and close. From nowhere, from beyond the sky, the eagle flashed into view. Light streamed from his milk-white wings; the night itself barred those white feathers with black; the wind as he swept past made me sway where I sat, and Aras gripped my arm to steady himself, though he let go immediately.
The eagle drew a blazing path through the sky, circling, then plunged toward Tano, who took a step back, then braced himself and stood still. I had just time to be proud of him, and then the eagle struck—not Tano, but the air directly before him. The starlight fountained up, like still water when a boulder crashes from a high cliff into a lake. I swayed again, caught myself, and looked again as the light settled and the wind passed away. In that place, where the stairway had been broken, now the steps rose up unbroken, one after another in their smooth curve, so that the stairway spiraled all the way from the vault of the heavens to the highest point of Talal Sabero. Where the gap had been, milk-pale moonlight glimmered, not exactly like the opalescent starlight from which the rest of the bridge had been spun.
A heartbeat later, the Sun stepped into the sky.
Clouds had piled up in the west, and as the Sun finally stepped out from behind the teeth of the mountains into the sky, these clouds turned deep carmine and gold. The Sun’s blazing power rolled across the whole of the land of the shades, flooding the valleys between the peaks with a streaming light that seemed to flow like liquid, like pale honey. I thought of the shadow tide. The Sun’s light rolled across the land like that, but where the Saa’arii tide had eaten up the land where it came, when the Sun’s light poured into the black tide, the emptiness burned away and revealed the land that had been taken by the emptiness. The land was still there, or else the Sun remade it as his light revealed it. The stone of the western faces of the mountains glowed luminous gold and pink with reflected sunlight; ice streaked the high jagged tips of the mountains with crystalline fire. Lower, where the slopes fell away below us, light poured into every valley, brimmed over, and flowed away into the lands below.
Aras sighed, a long breath. He had tipped his face up to the sky. Now he lifted one hand palm up, in the gesture of a man asking for mercy. His other hand, he did not try to lift. The sunlight of the new day revealed, with merciless clarity, new lines of weariness and pain at the corners of his mouth and around his eyes.
The eagle blazed his path past us, above us, along the path of the starli
ght bridge, light trailing from his feathers and his talons. In the sunlight, the eagle was so white and so brilliant that his passing dazzled the eye. I blinked and blinked again, light blooming behind my eyelids whenever I closed my eyes.
Tano had crossed the restored span of the bridge. He was walking toward us, not very fast. He was clearly almost too tired to walk at all.
Aras lowered his hand, breathing slowly and deeply. I got to my feet and offered him my arm—this was not my decision—and Aras took hold of my arm with his good hand and pulled himself up as well, slowly. “Tano,” he said in taksu as the young man came to us. “Ryo can’t speak just now, but we are both very pleased that you lived and came to this place. Do I gather that you have something to do with the eagle? How did that come about?”
“Ryo?” Tano said, looking anxiously at me. I met his eyes, then reached out to set my hand on his shoulder. I was not certain if I chose to do that, or if Aras made me do it because he knew I wished it.
“Ryo fought very hard for a long time,” Aras said, as though this were a sensible explanation. “He will recover soon.” He turned, drawing us both with him, so that we all began to walk slowly upward. Inhejeriel was so far away now that I could not see her. I could not even hear her voice, if she was still singing. Perhaps she had fallen silent. I could not hear Lalani. But I heard Etta clearly. My sister was singing the names of Tarashana people, her voice as high and pure and perfect now as in the beginning. The sound of those names blended one into another, making a song that was not like any Ugaro song. Behind and around my sister’s voice, I could almost make out the voices of uncountable stars, each endlessly singing one name to the world. I could almost hear the world echo back those names.
Tano said, perhaps in answer to something Aras had asked him, “I saw Iro go up the mountain, yes. I thought I should follow him, I knew he would need help, I knew I should go after him, but I also saw how the Saa’arii broke past the taiGara, not many of them, but too many. I ...” he looked at me, hesitating. I nodded to him—perhaps Aras made me nod—and he went on, hesitantly now, “I went down instead. I hope—I thought—I do not think this was cowardice, even though I did not go down to fight. I went very quietly, avoiding any kind of battle—”
Aras said, “You wanted to make sure you had a chance to speak to one of the taiGara, not die uselessly. That was certainly not cowardice, Tano. That was well done. The eagle came to you there?”
Tano nodded. “For a long time, no one would speak to me. Everyone was fighting. I saw the shades there, they were fighting courageously, but too many of our enemies were getting past them. At last I stepped out into an open place. I made the gesture—” he echoed it now, the gesture by which one asks for mercy. He went on. “I thought, if no enemy killed me when I showed myself, perhaps someone would see I was a living man and that I asked for help. In a little time, the eagle came down. He made himself into a man. I—he asked my name, and I said I was inGara—” he broke off, swallowing.
“You are inGara,” Aras said firmly. “Sinowa inGara is not in the habit of saying things he does not mean.” His tone was very much as mine would have been, if my tongue had belonged to me.
Tano nodded. After a little pause, he said, “I told this warrior about Inhejeriel, about the Saa’arii, about the black tide that came into the starlit lands. I explained that the tide here was a shadow of that tide. I explained that driving back enemies here would not be enough, that what happened in the land of the living would determine what happened here in the land of the shades. I told him what you said, your thought that the Saa’arii might take the starlit lands for their own and then look farther, past the mountains, at the winter country.”
“Good,” said Aras. “And then?”
“The warrior listened to everything I said. Then he said, ‘This could be so. If this is so, perhaps I understand some things that puzzled me.’ Then he threw himself into the air and became an eagle again and flew away. So then I began to go up the mountain, but ... but I thought I was too late to be useful in any way.” He looked at me. “I found Iro’s body. I found one body after another. Everyone was dead. I had not been there to fight with them. But I did not find your body, Ryo, so I hoped you might still live. I thought ... I thought I would come to you, if I could, and you would know if I should have done everything differently ...”
His uncertainty stabbed at me. I stopped walking and turned to him, taking him by the arms and making him face me. “Tano,” I said. “You did well. You were right to go down and explain everything to the eagle-warrior. That was very well done. If you had gone after Iro, you would probably have died there with him; if you had not died there, then you would almost certainly have died soon afterward, to very little purpose. If you had not spoken to the eagle-warrior, then no one would have, because no one else thought of it. I did not think of it. Without his help, Aras and I would both be dead, and the Saa’arii would have killed Inhejeriel almost before she began her task.” I paused. Then I said again, emphatically, “You did well. You bring honor to the inGara. I am proud of you.”
Only then did I realize all these words had been wholly mine. For that moment, I had forgotten my anger. Perhaps because of that, Aras had let me move and speak as I chose.
Almost as I realized that, I felt him set his will back on my tongue and mouth and body. When I tightened my grip on Tano’s arms and then let him go and turned to walk on, none of that was my doing. But if I had ruled my own body and my own actions, I might have done exactly the same. Despite everything he had done, everything he was still doing, I could not help but feel grateful that Aras had allowed me that moment to speak to Tano as I wished. Again the stab of bitterness that followed was all but overwhelming. But no trace of my bitter fury showed on my face or in my movements.
Tano had noticed nothing. He had no reason to suspect anything was wrong, and besides, his attention was turned inward as he decided he believed my words. He should believe them. They were true. I should have thought that someone should explain everything to the taiGara. That had never occurred to me. I had not thought of that when the wolf had turned into the Lau woman, nor when the other wolf had shown me the way up the cliff, nor at any other time. Through all my rage, behind all my grief, I was proud of Tano, but embarrassed on my own account.
He said suddenly, realizing I had spoken to him, “Ryo? Are you better now?”
I could not answer, but Aras did not need to find a way to explain anything. We had been walking all this time, the light rising or the sky coming down toward us—I could not find words to explain what had been happening. Now, all at once, it seemed as though we walked among the stars, with their voices all around us, weaving a harmony just beyond hearing. Below us, sunlight spread out, rich and golden. We had come into a different part of the land of the shades—or perhaps we had come into the sky—I could not tell where we had come.
When I gazed downward—I could not tell if I lowered my eyes myself, or if Aras made me do it because he knew I wished to see—either way, I could no longer glimpse anything of the land of the shades below us. Nothing of the mountains, nothing but sunlight. The warmth of that light poured up past me, past us. Beside me, Aras was walking more easily, as though the sunlight itself gave him new strength.
But then I realized Tano had become less visible in this light. A moment ago, he had looked exactly like a living person. Now, as the sunlight poured over us, the color leached away from him, his face, his body, his hair. The light began to pass through him, as though he were made of mist, of air. He knew it, he felt this change in himself and turned to me, his eyes widening. He spoke, I saw his mouth move, but I could not hear him.
After the first heartbeat, I knew what had happened, what was happening. He had eaten a mouthful of snow in the land of the shades. Now he could not leave, not though every other person rose back into the living of the living. Grief struck me hard, different than every other grief, with far less anger and bitterness to it, but unbearable even so.
Then, all at once, the eagle was there. I had not seen him come. He was just there, an eagle of mist, of air. He was flying very fast, moonlight streaming past his wings, but despite the beating wings and the streaming light, he did not sweep past us and away. He was not moving at all. He was flying very fast, yet he stayed fixed in one place, exactly above Tano. Color came back to Tano, solidity came back between one step and the next. The eagle flew surrounded by the white radiance of moonlight, and golden sunlight poured past us, and the spiraling stairway of starlight rose—or fell—or lifted through the sky into the world—it was not a stairway, but a bridge—it was not a bridge, but a road—it was not a road, but a wide land rolling out beneath a luminous sky filled with uncountable stars.
We were walking somewhere different. We had come into the starlit lands. We had come into the land of the living.
The sunlight had fallen away. So had the moonlight. I had not noticed the instant in which that happened, but though we still walked surrounded by light, this was a gentler, directionless light. Above us, in a soft and velvety sky, the three Dawn Sisters stood high in the vault of the heavens, surrounded by uncountable lesser stars that burned with a soft radiance. The whole sky was filled with light.
The eagle was gone. Tano walked beside me, his eyes wide, as solid and real and living as Aras, who walked on my other side. Ahead of us, many Tarashana people walked across the land, turning aside now, walking away in every direction. They went quietly, far more quietly than Ugaro or Lau would have been in like circumstances, but they were not shades now. They were living people, though at first I was not certain of this because they walked so quietly and they shimmered with light. But the patterns on their faces and hands were living colors, pink and blue and a soft color like the sunrise on a summer morning. I could hear the soft sounds of their steps, the soft murmur of their voices, and I knew they were living people.
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