by C. T. Rwizi
He’s never known where his eyes came from, and he’s never wanted to know. He’d rather forget the whole issue and never have it mentioned again. But to find out that someone else—or something else—might have worn them before him?
A knot of black emotions twists his soul. One of his fists clenches around the folds of his cloak.
Tuk’s anger melts from his expression, and his voice softens. “They’re faulty, aren’t they? There’s something off with the resonance. That’s why you need charmed glasses to see.” When Salo fails to respond, Tuk looks down at his feet and sighs. “Look, I’m sorry for attacking you like that, all right? I guess I’m not . . . as over . . . my past as I thought. I clearly have insecurities I need to work on, but I want you—no, I need you to feel free to ask questions about me. I have to learn to talk about who I am without getting upset.”
Tension hangs over the campfire as thickly as smoke.
“So a heretic mystic made you in the Empire,” Ilapara says. “Why?”
Despite his professed desire not to get upset, Tuk’s eyes gleam darkly. “Heretic creations are technically illegal in the Empire, but the elites there like to keep my kind for all sorts of purposes. Servants mostly. Expensive pets sometimes. Toys.”
“Are there many heretics in the Empire?” Ilapara asks.
Shaking his head, Salo blows out a cloud of smoke. “I don’t like that word.”
“Me neither,” Tuk says. “Do you know what they call the moon?”
“What?”
“It translates to ‘the Vice.’ They call their suns ‘Valor’ and ‘Verity’—pretty much what you call them—but Ama Vaziishe isn’t ‘Mother of Sovereigns’; she’s ‘the Vice.’ That alone should give you an idea of what they think of Red magic and those who practice it.”
By the scornful look in his eye, he clearly finds the name ridiculous. “To answer your question, Ilapara, worship of the moon—and Red magic in general—isn’t popular in the Empire. You could even say it is proscribed. You’ll only ever find Red magic in underground cults or highly guarded temples and academies, the latter so it doesn’t corrupt the rest of society.” Tuk curls his lips almost unnoticeably. “Hypocrites. Imperial elites will openly shun Red magic, but the bulk of them certainly don’t mind indulging in its creations. I know this from personal experience.”
By now Salo’s earlier discomfort has ebbed away into curiosity. “Why do they fear us so?” he asks.
Tuk seems to think about it, then exhales deeply, like the day’s journey is finally catching up to him. “Take your pick: ignorance, misinformation, religious propaganda. But I’d be lying if I said the fear isn’t a little well founded. Red magic is notoriously difficult to wield, but those of you smart enough to figure it out can do some pretty horrific things.”
Salo’s thoughts drift back to Seresa, to the terrible serpents, the burning wagon, the stench of rotting flesh swirling around him. Did he hear cries? Maybe he didn’t, but he can certainly imagine them.
“And then, of course, there were the Hegemons,” Tuk says. “Ever heard of them?”
Both Salo and Ilapara shake their heads, which makes Tuk smile for some reason. “Only in the Redlands,” he says. “Anyway, the Hegemons were a succession of horrendously powerful lunar mystics who ruled over an empire they called the Ascendancy. At its height it nearly spanned the entire world beyond the Redlands. That’s six continents, if you’ll believe it.”
“Six continents?” Salo finds the scale astonishing. What are the Yerezi Plains compared to such a monster?
Tuk nods with a solemn look. “Unfortunately, as is often the case with people of unequaled power, these Hegemons were extremely destructive people. They had a penchant for bloody conquest and liked to enslave entire populations. It took a united front of solar magic and centuries of war to finally bring them down, and when the last Hegemon fell, what remained of the Ascendancy became the fragmented world powers that exist today. The biggest one, the newly formed Empire of Light, vowed that the world would never see another Hegemon, and so far they’ve managed to keep their promise.”
An entire history Salo has never heard of, a shock because he’s never given much thought to what happens beyond the Redlands. He certainly didn’t think the history could be so momentous. “How did you end up in the Enclave, then?” he says. “What is the Enclave, anyway? I know it as that strange place beyond the northern desert with strange people we don’t talk to.”
Ilapara snorts. “That’s as much as I know myself.”
“You shouldn’t feel too bad about it,” Tuk says, clearly amused. “The people there are as ignorant of the Redlands as you are of them.” His smile weakens as he prods an ember in the fire. “I ended up there after my maker learned of my . . . living circumstances back in the Empire. She arranged for my escape and put me on a windcraft to the Enclave’s capital.”
“A windcraft?” Salo and Ilapara say at the same time.
“A ship that flies on magically generated currents of wind.” Tuk’s eyes twinkle at their amazed expressions. “Windcrafts are how most people cross the oceans, though you folk don’t know of them, given how they all circumvent the Redlands—deliberately so, I should add.”
Salo and Ilapara glance at each other, and he sees his worry in her eyes; if the people beyond the Redlands can fly across oceans, then they must be mighty indeed.
“As for what the Enclave is,” Tuk goes on, “when the Ascendancy fell, many moon worshippers fled to this continent in fear of persecution, but they didn’t really fancy entangling themselves with the indigenous peoples—you folk, in other words. So they stayed in the unsettled regions north of the desert and established the Enclave.”
“That’s why we keep away from them, though, isn’t it?” Salo says. “They are of the moon, but they are not like us. They are not quite Red. They accept the foreign customs of the Empire and shun our ways, so we shun them too.”
“In their defense,” Tuk says, “they shun you mostly because they can’t afford to be seen associating with you. A survival strategy.”
“How so?” Ilapara says, and Tuk leans forward.
“The thing about the Ascendancy is that they revered this place. That’s why they never invaded. On top of that, their brand of magic was not too different from yours. Tamer and more technological, perhaps, but they used axiomatic ciphers just as you do.” Tuk spreads his hands. “Can you see why the Enclave had no choice but to distance themselves from you?”
Salo ponders the question for a moment. “I guess they didn’t want the world to think they were a new incarnation of the Ascendancy.”
“They had to become less Red, so to speak, or risk being exterminated in retribution,” Tuk says. “But they took things a little too far, if you ask me. They changed their magic so much it needed a new name; they call it Higher Red and yours Lower Red. And no one campaigns harder to keep this place quarantined. They don’t want you folk having contact with the outside world until you’re more civilized.”
Ilapara gives Tuk a sharp look. “You don’t think us civilized?”
“That’s not my opinion,” he says, palms raised and eyes flashing green with humor. “I’m simply telling you what the Enclave believes.”
“Then what is your opinion?” Ilapara says.
“I’ve seen people in glistening cities do the most savage of things, and people in the heart of the hinterlands do the noblest. I don’t think civilization is a place or a culture or a level of technological development. I think it’s simply the recognition that all life is valuable and must be treated as such. Everything else follows from there.”
Salo digests that in silence as he pokes the fire. “What do you mean by hinterlands?”
“These are the hinterlands,” Tuk says as he takes in his surroundings with his arms. “Or the Lost Lands of Sylia, or simply the Red Wilds. That’s what they call this place, why I crossed the Jalama Desert to come here. I wanted to see it with my own eyes. You’re all quite mysteri
ous to the rest of the world, you know.”
“You must hate it, then,” Salo says. “How can you not after what you’ve seen?”
“Hate it? I’ve never felt more alive!” When Salo and Ilapara give him mistrustful looks, he grins. “The honest truth. The whole continent of Sylia has a deep connection to Ama Vaziishe—that’s why the Enclave was established here. But there’s no doubt that this connection is strongest in the Red Wilds, the land of Primeval Spirits and tronic beasts. Here it feels more . . . visceral. My blood feels thicker in my veins, and my heart beats louder. Here I am at home.”
Everything Tuk says stays with Salo late into the night, joining the cacophony of thoughts swirling restlessly inside his mind. He rests facing the milky spirals of the Devil’s Eye, that conspicuous constellation whose bright core marks the world’s celestial south pole, and he spends a long time staring at it in thought. His aago always said that the Eye was getting bigger and that the devil rules over a realm of ice beneath it that will one day engulf the rest of the world. He used to have nightmares about that story as a child, but now, after seeing the things he’s seen today, gruesome things that plague his vision whenever he closes his eyes, now he thinks that maybe the story being true wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Why, it would be exactly what the world deserves.
Just before sleep claims him, the night lights up briefly as a ball of fire streaks across the sky and then upward, accompanied by a deep rumbling, like thunder from a distant lightning flash.
27: The Maidservant
Southern Umadiland
At dawn she retreats above the tree line, on a mountain in the highvelds of the south, where nothing but the hardiest shrubs can thrive. There she draws essence into her cosmic shards, sinking it into the earth beneath her feet when they become saturated. The essence spreads down the mountain at the speed of an echo, like roots seeking nourishment from the soil, and she feels a rush as her ancestral talent begins to work, expanding her pool of power.
Slow as the rising of the suns, the same wave of euphoria she felt at her awakening overtakes her now, so intense she falls to her knees, gasping for breath. Ahead of her a vast woodland spreads southward from the base of the mountain and into the Great Tribe kingdom of Valau, its trees brimming with leaves in every shade of red, from rust to vermilion. In her euphoria the colors are unnaturally vivid, dancing and bleeding into each other, and for an instant she feels one with them.
And then the feeling abates, and when she looks at her forearms, she sees that a sixth set of rings has appeared on her shards. They now draw from a greater swath of her lord’s territory, including the mountain beneath her. Others drink from it, too, besides her master. Seafarer. Hunter.
There used to be another, conspicuous now only because of his absence.
A pang of sorrow stabs her chest, and she has to find relief in the burning pain of her cursed skin. She remains on her knees on the mountaintop for a long time, trying to scour her mind clean with pure-white agony.
Her focus is imperfect, though, and she can’t stop seeing a pair of trusting eyes watching her, forgiving her even as she dimmed the light of life they held.
Weariness envelops her like a hateful embrace, so heavy she feels it might pull her down into the ground and keep pulling until she reaches the furnaces at the center of the world. She wonders what it would feel like to burn there until she was nothing, until her atoms were separated and reassembled into something else, perhaps something better.
I want this to end.
I’m tired.
I want to remember the taste of peace.
But no. She has gone too far along this path, shed too much blood and caused too much sorrow. Something must justify what she has become.
Nothing can justify your existence, says the bitter voice in her mind. You seek to rationalize your crimes, but they will stain you till the end of time. You have already lost yourself to the underworld; all that is left is for it to take you.
She summons her tronic mind stone and returns to the business of breaking its protective charms with her Yerezi talisman. She sits in a posture of meditation, the talisman’s illusions floating in front of her, and for a time she loses herself to the indifferent world of cold logic and cipher prose.
Then a strange presence reaches out from hundreds of miles away to entangle itself with the talisman, taking her mind away from her work and into a false plane that knits itself together around her like a waking dream.
In this plane she takes shape on a marble platform floating somewhere in the middle of an ocean, though somehow she remains aware that she isn’t really here but is on a mountaintop in the Umadi highvelds. The skies above this false world are bright with stars, and calm waters stretch away from the platform in every direction, no land in sight.
She is not alone. On the platform just a few yards away is a metallic statue of a woman—rather, a statue of a creature with the body of a woman and the head of a tronic hyena.
As she watches, the creature moves, as fluid as if its limbs were real flesh and not metal. The Maidservant instantly knows exactly who that thing is supposed to be.
“You.” Her words come out strange, like she has spoken a language she shouldn’t know. “What have you done? What is this?”
“Relax.” The Yerezi witch takes a few steps closer. When she speaks, her snout remains shut, not moving to form words. “I bound your talisman to mine so I could reach you if I needed you again.”
“My business with you was concluded.”
“Your business with me did not produce the desired result. There was . . . an unforeseen obstacle. I need your help removing it.”
“That’s hardly my problem.”
“Ah, but if you do nothing, sooner or later it will be your problem, and then you’ll wish you’d acted while you still had the chance.”
The Maidservant fails to detect deception from the woman, so she humors her. “Explain yourself.”
“A boy from the clan you attacked faced a redhawk about a week later. The queen should have never allowed such sacrilege, but somehow the boy had discovered a dangerously powerful aspect of Red magic—a power she now wants for herself. I don’t know her exact plans, but I believe she’s in league with a certain KiYonte high mystic, an old acquaintance of hers, and I believe that if they succeed in whatever they’ve planned, they will become grave dangers to both your tribe and mine. The queen sent the boy on the Bloodway; he is on course to Yonte Saire as we speak. You must stop him before he gets anywhere near the city.”
This has to be the same mystic the Dark Sun spoke of, in which case there are already people going after him. But the Maidservant doesn’t disclose this to the woman. She wants to hear more about this aspect she spoke of. “Why can’t you stop him yourself?”
The hyena shrugs. “My hands are tied. I cannot leave my clan without rousing suspicion, and the queen has eyes on him. It would be too risky for me, but if you sought out the boy, no one would ask too many questions.”
“I still don’t see why this is my problem.”
The woman’s tone grows more biting. “Irediti has always despised your tribe, my Umadi friend. If she and her KiYonte ally acquire what the boy will extract from the Red Temple, I can promise you she will use it to wage war against your tribe and raze every last inch of your savannas to ash. She must be stopped. The boy must be stopped.”
The Maidservant carefully watches the hyena witch. She might be a monstrosity in her current form, but her worry is an almost tangible wave pushing outward away from her. She is afraid of this boy and the aspect he wields, whatever it is, and she is clearly threatened by the idea of her queen getting her hands on it.
Why, though? Would it really make her that powerful? “What is this aspect you mentioned?”
The woman shakes her doglike head. “I cannot reveal specifics, but rest assured it is dangerous.”
“Then you can forget about getting any help from me.”
“You don’t understand.
I cannot—” The woman stops talking, perhaps realizing she’ll get nowhere unless she is more forthcoming. She sighs. “Very well. But I need your word that you’ll stop him if I reveal the aspect’s secret.”
The Maidservant’s interest has grown from a mere spark to an inferno. If this power is real, it might be a faster solution to her problems. “You have my word.”
“They call it the Elusive Cube. An All Axiom that bends to the six crafts of Red magic. But that’s not what makes it so dangerous—not even close. You see, an All Axiom is an automatic key to an ancient power in the temple of Yonte Saire.”
The Maidservant listens closely. “And what power is this?”
The hyena witch takes a moment, perhaps trying to compose a response that won’t reveal too much. In the end, however, she reveals everything.
“The ultimate ancestral talent.”
28: Ilapara
The Open Wilds of Umadiland
As the suns rise on her first morning with Salo and Tuk somewhere in the savannas of Umadiland, Ilapara awakens next to a dead campfire to find a charcoal-colored fleece blanket draped over her. She sits up, looking around the camp, and sees Salo still sleeping beneath his crimson cloak on the other side of the fire. Tuk is already up, though, and for whatever reason, he’s hugging himself and staring intently at something in the southeast.
She gets up, grimacing at the stiffness in her shoulders from sleeping in her breastplate. Dear Ama, what she would do for a bath and a change of clothes. Tuk doesn’t look her way as she walks toward him, clutching the blanket in one hand.
She has yet to fully process the wild things he told them last night about who or even what he is. She’s not sure if she believes any of it. “This yours?” she says as she stops next to him, holding out the blanket.
A pale-blue cast dances in his eyes this morning. He doesn’t look away from the flat horizon. “You can keep it,” he says. “I have a cloak, so I don’t really need extra covers.”
Her automatic instinct is to reject the offer of charity, but last night was chilly, and the only reason she slept at all was probably because of the blanket. “Thanks,” she says, with sincerity.
