The dragon settled down in the water—it had been a lake monster for many generations before Loch Beag had been drained—and Scathmizzane shrank down to the size of a large xoconai as the beast swam for the dock, moving close enough for the God King to easily step onto the wharf to join his high priest and his cochcal.
“It is time to begin our journey,” Scathmizzane told them. He looked around at the many boats that had been assembled, many carried down from the lake villages on the rim of the chasm but some newly built by the industrious xoconai.
“We can ferry a thousand at a time across the lake,” Tuolonatl told him.
“That is good,” he congratulated. “But unnecessary.” He looked to Pixquicauh. “You have brought the two mirrors?”
The old augur looked around and nodded to some other priests, who scurried to retrieve the mirrors, the one from the top of the great temple and the one Scathmizzane had given to Pixquicauh for his personal use, the same one he had used to torment the captured human named Egard.
“These are the purest gold,” the God King explained to Tuolonatl. “It lessens the risk.”
The risk? the woman mouthed under her breath, but she dared not ask aloud.
“This is your favored man?” Scathmizzane asked her, indicating the young and tall xoconai by Tuolonatl’s side.
“Ataquixt, God King,” she said, pushing Ataquixt forward.
“You are a fine mundunugu, I am told,” Scathmizzane said to the man, who kept his gaze deferentially to the ground.
“Do you think you can guide Kithkukulikhan with your steady hand?” Scathmizzane asked him, drawing several gasps from those around, including one from Tuolonatl.
Ataquixt’s gaze rose quickly, the mundunugu staring into the eyes of Glorious Gold. “I … I…” poor Ataquixt muttered, surely overwhelmed.
“We will see,” Scathmizzane said and, turning to the water, called for the dragon.
“Two augurs,” the God King instructed Pixquicauh, “and the mirror from atop Otontotomi. Fear not, we will replace the mirror presently, and if Kithkukulikhan eats the augurs and this young warrior, they will be replaced.”
Pixquicauh glanced back and motioned to two of the priests, young men both, bidding them to bring forward the desired golden mirror. Both hesitated, staring out at the dragon with clear trepidation, but Ataquixt’s chuckle mocked them, especially when Glorious Gold joined in.
Scathmizzane guided Ataquixt to the appropriate spot on the dragon’s huge back, then helped the priests to settle behind him. “Guide Kithkukulikhan to the spot where the fleeing children of Cizinfozza left the lakeshore,” he instructed Ataquixt. Then, to the two augurs, he said, “And there, set the mirror aiming back to this spot. Recite your prayer to the rising and setting sun. Catch the rays of the rising sun and redirect them to us back here on this dock.”
Away went the dragon, half of it in the water, half above, propelled by the snakelike body and the small, beating wings.
“Bring your mirror, Pixquicauh,” Scathmizzane told the high priest. “And you,” he said to Tuolonatl, “use that mirror to track the reflection of Kithkukulikhan.”
None of them understood what this might be about, but neither were they about to question their god. The second mirror was brought forth and set on the edge of the dock. Tuolonatl stood before it, just a bit to the side, directing the priests to turn it a bit left, then right, so that she could see the reflection of the dragon, which by then was nearing the spot far across the lake.
She couldn’t make out the movements, exactly, as the three xoconai debarked the giant mount and the dragon started away. The woman told the priests to turn the mirror to follow.
“No, watch your chosen scout in the reflection,” Scathmizzane instructed, and the mirror was quickly realigned.
“What do you see?”
“Flickers of the mirror, nothing more,” the woman replied. “They are far away, my Glorious Gold.”
“Look deeper,” Scathmizzane told her. “Let yourself flow into the mirror more fully. Trust in the image.”
Tuolonatl stared at the distant image and, to her surprise, it did seem to grow a bit in the mirror. She knew that the trio and the other mirror were too far away for this to be possible, but she could indeed see them, moving about, the augurs flanking the golden sheet, Ataquixt behind them, directing.
They grew bigger still when their mirror was turned correctly, catching the light of the rising sun and turning it back so that the glare became intense in the mirror before Tuolonatl.
So intense! A bright flash, blinding, washing away all other sights.
No, there they were again, the woman thought, looking at Ataquixt over the top edge of the mirror he had taken across the lake. So large now, and appearing so near! Tuolonatl felt as if she could reach out and touch—
The woman gasped and spun about.
She was across the lake, standing with the shocked trio of Ataquixt and the two augurs. Looking back the other way, she saw clearly the fissure of the ixnecia and the distant, tiny boats and their swaying masts, the docks, the Glorious Gold, Scathmizzane.
A flash in the mirror across the way became one in the mirror beside her, and then Pixquicauh was there.
“Glorious Gold,” he muttered repeatedly, shaking his head and seeming fully overcome with awe and shock.
“He comes!” Ataquixt said then, pointing out over the lake, and the others turned to see Kithkukulikhan flying toward them, with Scathmizzane, once more a giant, riding the dragon. He flew right up to them, hovering above them, towering above them.
“This is how we will move the legions,” Scathmizzane explained to them. “Flash-steps—we will cover a hundred miles a day, easily. And those trailing will erect pyramids, one facing behind, one forward, each with a mirror to keep this magical trail open to us. Go back now the way you came, Tuolonatl. Get the boats laden with supplies and sailing at once. Get my warriors and their cuetzpali to the docks and through the mirrors.
“Go back now the way you came, Pixquicauh,” Scathmizzane continued. “Gather the augurs and twenty-two more mirrors that we can begin a dozen points of flash-step travel. Quickly, before the sun climbs too high.”
“How many, God King?” Tuolonatl dared to ask.
“A hundred legions,” he answered.
The woman tried to quickly calculate how long that would take, given a thousand warriors in each legion.
“Only in the sunlight?”
“The sunlight is your mount,” Scathmizzane explained. “For now. There are other ways, but the sunlight will be enough at this time.”
More calculations swirled about the commander’s thoughts. She would have to get the mirrors across as quickly as possible, then send twelve lines in orderly flash-stepping. They would have to move in fast march to keep the bank area clear. They would have to take more mirrors ahead for a second hop, and a third. Would the most efficient process involve twelve on either side of the intended step or a line of mirrors allowing the warriors to frog-hop along, stretching the lines?
She tried to consider the logistics in light of this new and remarkable magic, and more than once shook her head, dismissing this arrangement or that.
“You will discern the best way, great Tuolonatl,” Scathmizzane said to her, drawing her from her contemplation and causing a gasp of embarrassment.
“This is why I chose you as cochcal,” the Glorious Gold told her. “You will find the best arrangement of the mirrors, and you will keep the mundunugu and the macana marching, or perhaps rafting, when the mirrors are not enough, when the sun cannot be caught to give passage. A hundred miles a day.”
Tuolonatl nodded subserviently. There was no room in Glorious Gold’s tone for her to argue or question or perform any less than had been demanded. Still, she had no idea of how they might accomplish this. Even going as fast as they could, it would take many hours to simply get the legions flash-stepping to the next spot, and many hours more if they lessened the mirror portals
. She could get her mundunugu to sprint forward spot to spot with fresh cuetzpali, even a total of a hundred miles in a day, but that, too, would be no easy task.
“I give you one more gift to complete your task,” Scathmizzane said, as if reading her confusion and doubts. “I, upon Kithkukulikhan, will fly the mirrors and their handlers, a dozen at a time, to the next point in line.”
The woman nodded, the process becoming clear, the task seeming suddenly far less daunting.
“A hundred miles a day,” Glorious Gold reiterated. “Go assemble my legions. Fill their packs, bring the supplies. The children of Cizinfozza will find no rest, and the nation of Tonoloya will see the sun climb from the eastern sea and sink into the western sea each night for its sleep.”
“Yes, Glorious Gold,” Tuolonatl said, and bowed. She could hardly catch her breath. In only two weeks, they would come to the small village Ataquixt had scouted. How much longer, she wondered, would pass before she stood on the beaches of the eastern sea?
And what carnage would a hundred fierce xoconai legions leave in their wake?
7
THE BIG, WIDE WORLD
Aoleyn perched atop a ridge, watching the somber procession as the beleaguered refugees continued their journey to the east from Matinee. They had been traveling for more than two weeks. The eastern mountains Aydrian had named as the Barbacan were now to the north, while the southern mountain range, the Belt-and-Buckle, loomed ever nearer in the south. They had encountered only a few scattered clusters of houses along the way, enough to resupply, but Aoleyn had been told that was about to change. In only a few days, they would reach the next, larger village in line, but then the traveling would supposedly get easier, with villages spaced roughly a day’s march apart.
Would it get easier, though? Aoleyn had to wonder. She had watched the expressions of the frontier folk at Matinee—a truly generous and kindly lot, a collection of independent-minded people who appreciated individual differences. Yet even they could barely contain a wince when they looked upon the uamhas who composed almost all of this caravan, with their elongated heads and double-humped skulls. Aoleyn wasn’t at all sure that the refugees of Ayamharas would find peace and hospitality in the lands east, where everyone looked more like her, Talmadge, Khotai (other than her much darker skin), Aydrian, and, she was thankful, Bahdlahn.
She scanned about, looking for her closest friend. She had been getting the sense that Bahdlahn had been somewhat avoiding her since that evening beside the lake, and memories of that conversation pained Aoleyn profoundly. It would have been easier for her—so much so!—to simply continue her intimacy with Bahdlahn, to give him her love and the security he likely desired. Easier for her, perhaps, but in the end, not so much for him. In many ways, Bahdlahn had to grow, to experience more, to learn more about himself before giving himself wholly to anyone else. Aoleyn did not at all regret spending that night in intimacy with him on the high mountain perch under the stars—it had truly been a magical and wonderful experience for her, a healing encounter in which she had shaken off the last vestiges of pain from the domination of Brayth and Tay Aillig.
That night on the high perch, Aoleyn had found so many answers, and confidence. And freedom, a more genuine and lasting understanding of her own physical independence.
It had been good for Bahdlahn, too, in many different ways. Most of all, they had shared the bond of trust, something neither of them had ever truly found outside of each other. She had not taken advantage of him that night, had not used him selfishly. And certainly, Aoleyn had never intended for things to progress between them in this manner and at this pace, for, at that time, she had no expectation of the great events that would so quickly undo their entire world!
“I never meant to hurt you,” she whispered, though she knew he could not hear.
She smiled when she at last spotted him, on the far side of the caravan, going through practice movements with a most amazing sword, under the direction of Aydrian.
The smile disappeared when Aoleyn considered that she might be grinning more about Aydrian than Bahdlahn. The man from the east had taken up the void, had filled the hole in Bahdlahn’s heart after the rejection by Aoleyn, by asking the young man to serve as his squire. Aydrian would train him in the ways of the sword and the bow, and even teach him the language of the east.
Aydrian knew what Aoleyn knew: Bahdlahn had great potential but remained far from a finished man ready for the severe challenges they were all likely to face soon.
She smiled again and didn’t care about the source. They had escaped, for now at least, and the road ahead was both promising and terrifying. A new challenge, she thought, and she nodded and smiled wider when she noted Khotai leaping all about in great and easy bounds.
Aoleyn had given her that gift. Aoleyn had made Khotai’s life better, and Talmadge’s life better by extension.
She had shared a great gift with Bahdlahn that night on the mountainside, one they had given to each other and that had lifted them both in confidence and purpose. And she had given him another, equally important gift that night by the lake.
She had given him his freedom, that he could discover himself fully.
Regrets could not take hold in the thoughts of the young witch. She looked back to the west only rarely and briefly. Her gaze was to the east, mostly, to the future, to the adventure.
She would survive this, she told herself, and she would do to her enemies as she had done to Tay Aillig.
She thought of him then, only briefly, lying among the fallen rocks, dying painfully, begging her for help.
The woman lifted an arm and watched it transform into the paw of a leopard. She flexed her claws, marveling at their length and delicate curve, and though her thoughts were grim and that memory of Tay Aillig’s ending was full of blood, Aoleyn nodded once more.
And grinned.
So be it.
* * *
The arrow flew from on high, speeding down to hit its target, though a bit to the left edge.
“You are drifting again,” Aydrian told Khotai as she descended from her seemingly impossible high leap.
“How can I not, when the breeze captures me and flings me like a dry leaf?”
“I mean with your eyes,” Aydrian explained. “Teach your body to hold fast your aim, though it is shifting aside.”
“I hit the target,” the woman countered.
“So you did, indeed!” Aydrian said with a laugh. He looked to Talmadge, Bahdlahn, and Catriona, the latter two having taken a break from their sparring to watch Khotai’s amazing leaps and her newfound skill with the bow, Hawkwing, that Aydrian had loaned to her.
“I still prefer the spear,” Catriona said.
“Fair enough,” said Talmadge. “But consider that Khotai will not be shooting as a distraction against her charge. With the magic Aoleyn has given to her, she is too light for close fighting, with no weight behind her blows and no way to stand her ground.”
“Even shooting an arrow sends me drifting,” the To-gai-ru woman said with a helpless chuckle.
“Do not despair,” Aydrian said.
“Despair?” she echoed incredulously. “A month ago, I was crawling about on the ground, ruining my hands from clawing, filthy from the dirt I could not escape, and dependent upon all around me. Now?” She stopped and sprang upward, her foot coming a dozen feet from the ground, and let fly another arrow, this one hitting nearer the center of the distant target.
“Now I can silence Talmadge from thirty strides when he annoys me,” she said, touching down easily on that one foot. She paused and glanced to the side, then smiled more widely still and said, “Because of her.”
All of them turned to follow that gaze, to see Aoleyn off in the distance, upon a ridge, watching, as she ever seemed to be watching.
And, they knew, protecting them with her magic.
Bahdlahn stabbed his practice sword into the soft ground and wiped the sweat and grime from his hands as he stepped aside.
“So you’re thinking that we’re done, are you?” Catriona teased, leveling the dulled spear that had put more than one bruise on the young man’s body this morning.
“I have to go,” Bahdlahn said seriously. He looked to Talmadge, then to Khotai. “I have to go and tell her.”
“We will make Appleby-in-Wilderland in three days,” Khotai reminded him.
“She should know before,” Bahdlahn replied, walking away.
* * *
“We have caught three of them,” Ataquixt told Tuolonatl, the pair sitting astride their mounts, the scout on a cuetzpali, the commander astride her beloved horse, Pocheoya. “They fight well and know the region, and they do not speak the same tongue as those we captured on Tzatzini.”
“I feared that,” Tuolonatl replied. “We are a long way from that land. I doubt these humans have had much contact with the villages we conquered, in many years, if ever.”
“Why are the children of Cizinfozza so disparate? Our Glorious Gold would never allow—”
“Because they are wider spread,” Tuolonatl explained. “And, from what High Priest Pixquicauh has learned, they are further removed from their god. Pixquicauh claims that the villagers on the lakeshore with the strange heads did not even worship the same god as those on the mountain, and that they shaped their heads simply to be different from those mountain humans, whom they considered demons.”
Ataquixt shook his head.
“What plans, then?” he asked, motioning down the wide expanse before them, where a massive building stood among many tents.
Tuolonatl spent a long while considering their next moves. The forward legion had flash-stepped through the mirror some twenty miles to the west, but the march from that point had commenced on foot and on cuetzpali, as Pixquicauh had ordered the forward golden mirrors to a new task. With the line they had to string to secure the movements of those still far behind, Tuolonatl had fewer than two hundred mundunugu this far east, and, by all accounts, nearly that number of humans—and humans who would fight well, by Ataquixt’s account—were certainly within and about that building.
Song of the Risen God Page 13