Scarlet Odyssey

by C. T. Rwizi

  “What are friends for?” A crooked smile grows on his face, like he’s challenging her to dispute the claim that they are friends.

  She smiles, too, not taking the bait, and for the first time she notices the little pendant dangling on a thin chain around his neck, a stylized eye of blue metal that had previously been hidden beneath his black sleeveless dashiki. She also notices he’s wearing an ornate golden ring on each middle finger. How wealthy is he, I wonder?

  “What are you doing here?” she says. “Is staring blankly at the horizon an outworld ritual?”

  “I get this itch sometimes,” he says.

  “Okay. Forget I asked.”

  He gets a dimple on his cheek, his eyes flicking to green. “I’m being serious. I can’t explain it. I think I feel it when . . . something interesting is happening. I felt it right before Salo ran past me yesterday.”

  Ilapara eyes him doubtfully. “Really?”

  “That’s why I was paying attention.”

  “And you feel it now?”

  Tuk nods, pointing ahead. “Whatever it is, it’s that way.”

  She looks, too, seeing nothing. “That’s where we came from.”

  “Yep.”

  A tingle of worry makes her frown. Following her instincts, she reaches into a pouch on her leather shoulder belt and fishes out the only soul charm in her possession. Tuk watches with blue-eyed interest while she palms the charm and possesses herself with the jackal spirit it contains.

  She closes her eyes to receive the spirit, weathering a rush of dizzying flashes from a life spent hunting across the savannas and scavenging for carrion, relying on superior auditory senses to detect prey and avoid larger predators. Then the rush subsides and the merge completes, and when she reopens her eyes, her vision has an overlay painted in brushstrokes of vibrations and sound.

  On that overlay, a radiant glow hangs over the southeastern horizon, getting brighter by the second. Ilapara narrows her eyes, willing the jackal spirit to give her a clearer image. It expends all of its power to comply, but for the briefest second the glow becomes discernible to her as a brilliant cloud of individually distinct, regular vibrations.

  “Shit.”

  “What is it?” Tuk says, his irises darkening into pools of blackness.

  “We need to leave. Now.” Ilapara looks about and finds Ingacha grazing on a knotted bush just west of the camp. She moves to pick up his saddle. “Salo! Wake up. We need to get moving.”

  He stirs, then sits up, putting on his spectacles. His gaze tracks her as she makes her way to her buck. “Are we in danger?”

  “I think so.”

  Mercifully, the boys don’t ask any more questions. They quietly follow her example and resaddle their animals and are ready to go within minutes. But Ingacha seems more excitable than usual today, and when she mounts him, he rears up, grunting loudly and almost pitching her off the saddle. “Whoa! Easy there.”

  She needs several long seconds to get him back under control, and when she looks, she sees that Tuk is also struggling to stay mounted on his horned abada. It’s bucking and tossing its head, making him rock back and forth in his saddle. He seems to take things in stride, though, and when it finally settles down, his eyes sparkle with delight.

  “A good morning to you too,” he says, patting the mare’s neck. “Someone’s excited today.”

  “What the actual devil was that?” Ilapara wonders aloud. Then her gaze falls on Salo, standing next to his leopard, and she immediately knows he’s involved somehow. He has the most obvious guilty look she has ever seen. “Salo? What just happened?”

  He shifts on his feet, looking everywhere but at her. “I . . . may have blessed your animals last night while you were sleeping? Made them jumpy, I guess.”

  “You what?”

  “We need to go faster,” he says with a defensive shrug. “Ingacha and the abada—”

  “Wakii,” Tuk says. “I’ve named her Wakii. It means ‘scales of justice’ in a northern dialect.” He looks down at his mare and grins widely. “My goodness, but did you really bless her?”

  “She couldn’t keep up with Mukuni and was skittish around him,” Salo explains. “Ingacha too. I had to do something.”

  Ilapara closes her eyes and takes a deep breath—I am not my emotions—and then lets it out. “We’ll discuss your complete lack of personal boundaries later. Right now we need to go.”

  Salo nods quietly and ties his staff to the harness on his saddle before mounting his clan’s totem, and then they set off into the northwest, the kudu and the mare taking to their newfound power like they were born to it.

  The ravens appear half an hour later.

  They streak by overhead, cutting across the sky in a black chevron and then arcing back to make another pass over Ilapara and the other two riders. Her blood cools at this rather unnatural behavior, and she tracks the birds as they fly over her, only for her eyes to settle on the many bright points of scarlet light moving in the grasses not far behind, closing the distance alarmingly fast.

  She chokes on her breath, disbelieving her eyes. It is said that dingoneks were the creations of a warlord who used them as foot soldiers during her terrible reign and that upon her death the magic brimming inside the creatures grew wild and volatile. Ilapara has never seen one before, but she’s heard enough horror stories about them to recognize those lights for what they are.

  “We’re under attack!”

  Just ahead of her, Tuk and Salo look over their shoulders, and she watches them utter curses that don’t quite reach her ears.

  “Tell me those are not what I think they are,” Tuk shouts, his eyes wide and blue with ghoulish excitement. He glances over his shoulder again and lets out a loud, incredulous laugh. “My goodness, they are!”

  For some reason Salo looks up fearfully at the skies toward their far right. Ilapara spurs Ingacha a little faster to catch up with him on his left flank. “What is it?”

  With one hand, he draws his staff from its harness. “We’re not alone,” he shouts.

  Behind them a pride of heavily built feline-reptile hybrids finally comes into view, and they begin to fan out as they draw nearer, an obvious tactic to cut off possible routes of escape. Their eyes are like brilliant coals of moonfire. They have scales in place of fur, with spots that burn like molten rock. Ilapara shudders when she sees how they each leave behind trails of blackened grass that smolders without bursting into flames.

  She looks ahead and is met with an endless stretch of grassland dotted by acacia trees, no sign of shelter or refuge in sight. A growl of frustration rises up her throat. “We can’t outrun them! They’re too fast!”

  “Someone’s controlling them,” Salo shouts back. “I think it’s the same mystic from the town. There!”

  He points, and when she looks in the skies to their far right, her heart momentarily stops beating. Dear Ama, not him.

  The kongamato is a deltoid shape in the skies, sleek and silver, with a helmeted man bestriding its neck. It swerves toward them just as the first of the dingoneks breaks away from its pride in a menacing charge.

  Ilapara lets her mind sink into her spear hand, preparing to fall back and deal with the animal, but she hesitates when she sees Tuk raising his gauntleted hand and balling it into a fist. To her surprise the armor piece expands on his arm, silver panes sliding over each other to reveal a barrel shrouded in a red halo—which he points at the charging beast.

  Crack!

  His arm recoils slightly as a blast of moonfire erupts from the barrel and punches a hole straight through the dingonek. The beast goes down as if a crushing weight has slammed it from above, but the rest of the pride simply sidesteps its tumbling form and keeps pace with their high-speed gallop.

  Tuk releases several more blasts from his strange weapon, taking out a second reptile-cat and cowing a third into slowing down, but that still leaves more than Ilapara can count in one glance.

  “He’s casting a spell!” Salo shouts, a
nd sure enough, the rider on the kongamato has started gathering fire around his staff.

  Worse, a pair of dingoneks has drawn level with Salo on his right flank, making ready to pounce. Ingacha grunts beneath Ilapara as she steers him with her hips to intercept, putting herself between Salo and the attacking creatures. They close in on her buck, and there’s a terrifying instant during which the closest one leaps forward and she sees into the red-hot interior of its jaws.

  But she feeds that terror into her arm and thrusts her spear before the dingonek can bite. She feels a ripple in the aerosteel as a bolt of red lightning arcs from the tip and into the creature.

  The beast probably doesn’t die, but it emits a piercing caterwaul as it topples over. The other dingonek tosses it only a passing glance before bounding onward in pursuit, threads of drool dangling from its canines, eyes scarlet with untamed magic. This time Ilapara raises her weapon and swings it in a wide arc so that the ensuing bolt lashes outward and behind her. The dingonek doesn’t change course in time to evade the bolt and is left tumbling in the dust.

  Above and still to Ilapara’s right, the rider on the kongamato now has a sphere of red fire hovering above one palm. She glances at Tuk, who’s staring at the fireball with a worried look in his eye. “Try aiming up!” she shouts.

  He checks his gauntlet and shakes his head. “Still charging!”

  With an anxious shiver she takes a peek over her shoulder and sees that he’s more than halved the dingoneks chasing them. They also seem to be hanging back a little now, almost like they know what’s about to ensue. She looks back up in time to see the rider on the kongamato releasing his spell and is not in the least surprised by how slowly the fireball floats down toward them.

  “If you have magic that can save us,” she shouts at Salo, “now’s the time to use it!”

  Riding on his clan totem, Salo bites his lip in thought while he stares up at the approaching spell. A moment later he comes to some decision, setting his shards aglow and adjusting his grip on his staff. “Ride closer!” he shouts.

  Tuk and Ilapara immediately obey, steering their mounts closer to Salo so that they flank him in a tight formation.

  “How long till you can blast that thing again?” he shouts at Tuk.

  “Not sure,” Tuk shouts back. “Maybe a minute.”

  “Then I’ll buy you a minute!”

  Magic is now swirling around Salo’s arms. Ilapara’s ears pop from a change in pressure, and she feels the air around her thickening. The ball of heat flattens and stretches until it is a bar of red flames—a bar that then folds on itself to become the flapping wings of yet another kongamato, this one a spirit of pure moonfire. A massive triangular head appears between the wings, and fire comes out when it opens its long bill and dives down toward them.

  “Salo!”

  He fails to respond.

  She braces for the worst.

  But suddenly a cocoon of fast-moving wind rises all around them, encasing them in a dome of rapidly swirling grass and dust that matches their speed so that they are always at the center. The winds are so thick she can’t see much beyond the dome, and when the flaming spirit finally slams into it, the entire world becomes red fire.

  Ilapara gasps. The flash of heat is barely tolerable, but the moonfire gets sucked into the dome’s currents and slingshots around them like honey poured onto an upturned, rotating bowl.

  Salo raises his staff and screams in effort. “Tuk!”

  A visibly fretful Tuk checks his gauntlet again, only to shake his head. “Not yet!”

  Outside the dome, a portion of the red flames coalesces into the spirit’s hammer-like head. Ilapara watches as it rears back and smashes into the dome with so much force part of its fiery bill makes it through the barrier, though not far enough to do them any harm.

  Salo cries out again, his staff trembling in his hand. It strikes Ilapara that he is recently awoken; his power can’t be much compared to a high-ranking Umadi disciple, let alone a lieutenant of the Dark Sun. In fact, that they aren’t already dead is no small wonder.

  “Tuk!”

  “Hold on, Salo! Almost there!”

  The magic pulsing from his shards becomes too bright to look at. Ilapara once heard that magic has a certain peculiar taste when it is cast in great concentration, something akin to the tingle of lightning on one’s tongue. She begins to feel such a tingle, except throughout her entire body, as though the fabric of space were being stretched and warped around her.

  “On my mark,” Tuk finally shouts, and he waits three infinitely long seconds before his eyes go wide. “Now!”

  Mukuni emits a roar Ilapara feels in her bones as Salo raises his staff—and with it the entire vault of fire. The dome curves outward and upward first, becoming a bowl of fire, and then inward at the top into a sphere that completely envelops the spirit. It thrashes violently inside its new prison, and from the way Salo shouts, she can tell he won’t be able to keep it imprisoned for long.

  Tuk has already fallen behind on his abada and takes aim with his gauntlet. The ensuing discharge of moonfire is so fast Ilapara almost doesn’t see it tearing into the skies. But she sees the chunk of underbelly that subsequently rips away from the disciple’s kongamato and hears its screech, so terrible it hurts her ears. The creature flaps uselessly for a moment, stalling in the air, and then plummets down with its flailing rider. They hit the ground seconds later with a great booming thud.

  An explosion above makes her shield her face with a hand, the winged spirit finally roaring out of its prison. But it has expended itself considerably, so Salo manages to guide it away and over them in a radial starburst. It gradually loses its form and fizzles out into floating embers.

  She doesn’t waste time. Her instincts take over, and she directs Ingacha to gallop toward the fallen beast, ignoring the pounding inside her chest. The beast is still stirring when she arrives, and its rider is a motionless lump next to it, tangled unnaturally in the harnesses. She is off her kudu in an instant, bringing her spear with her. The rider senses her approach and blinks his reptilian eyes open, but given the state of his mangled limbs, it is probably all he can do.

  Apart from speaking, it seems. “You,” he rasps, his unsettling eyes fixing on her. “I know you.”

  Ilapara doesn’t give him a chance to say another word. She thrusts into his chest, and as his life leaches into her weapon and their gazes connect, she sees fear in his eyes, the fear of a predator suddenly forced to confront his own mortality.

  The world may be a dark place, but it seems that even the darkness can be made to be afraid.

  She used to hold the rules of surviving in Umadiland sacred, but now, having broken the most sacrosanct, she feels like a part of her soul has been liberated.

  Next to her the kongamato snaps its long, toothed beak. She proceeds to finish it off with a single deep thrust, grimacing at the reek effusing from its torn bowels.

  Salo and Tuk join her as she remounts her buck. They stare grimly at the dead creature and its rider. Neither of them comments on what she has done.

  She notices that Salo is breathing heavily and that his shards are still pulsing furiously with lights.

  “Everything all right?” she asks him, getting worried.

  He nods, though he looks like he’s just run a hundred miles. “I . . . borrowed a lot from the future. My shards are making up for it.”

  That makes no sense to her, but she’s relieved their hearts are still beating. “To make things perfectly clear,” she says, “I expect to be paid for this. Handsomely.”

  Both boys chuckle despite the circumstances. “Keep me alive, and I’ll break into the queen’s personal vault if I have to,” Salo says.

  “Good.” Ilapara goes on to scan the horizon and sees that the dingoneks are nowhere in sight. They’ve probably fled now that their master is dead, but they might return. “We should keep moving,” she says, and no one objects.

  She falls back a bit, however, when she spot
s a flock of ravens soaring on the winds in the east. She squints in thought for a moment, but the flock retreats before she can make her mind up about it.

  29: Isa

  Yonte Saire, the Jungle City—Kingdom of the Yontai

  The simple pleasures a king can enjoy while confined to the Red Temple: taking long walks along vaulted walkways and beautifully landscaped gardens, awaking to the uplifting sounds of choral music and drums, and braiding a friend’s hair beneath a tree by a pond.

  Except that Ayani isn’t really her friend, nor are Nadi and Lisha, the other two girls braiding Ayani’s hair. They are Saire servant girls who lived in the palace before what has come to be called the Royal Massacre.

  They were understandably awkward with her at first, when she came upon them during a solitary walk along the temple’s cloisters, but she settled smoothly into their conversation and proved that her fingers were up to the task, if a little slow. They all lost loved ones to the attack, and the pain is still raw for each of them, but they reminisce fondly about their old lives in the palace.

  Ayani speaks at length about how much she misses the palace kitchens, but Nadi whispers to Isa in an aside that kitchens in this context is actually code for “head chef”; Ayani just won’t admit it because the man was married and old enough to be her father. Lisha lost a sister during the attack and at one point has to stop braiding Ayani’s hair to wipe her eyes and recover her composure. Nadi keeps the conversation lighthearted with her perkiness and natural talent for amusing prattle, and she looks and talks so much like Cousin Zenia that Isa’s eyes keep prickling with tears.

  Still, the easy chatter reminds her she’s human, and not the only human in the world, for that matter.

  A distinctive voice makes them all freeze. “Your Majesty. I’m sorry to interrupt.”

  The four of them quickly rise to their feet and give womanly bows, though Isa’s bow doesn’t have to go as low as the others. “No apologies necessary, Your Worship.”