by C. T. Rwizi
Not heeding the warning at all, he says, “Khaya-Sikhozi is pretty dry, isn’t it? No lakes, no rivers?”
“We have rivers. What’s your point?”
His grin widens. “Don’t worry. I’m a good swimmer. If we should sink, I’ll be sure to save you.”
That will not do. Not even a little.
Smiling dangerously, Ilapara grabs Ingacha’s reins and braves the wide gangplank, outwardly calm and composed. Just to make her point, she stops halfway up to look back. “For your information, Musalodi, I happen to be a superb swimmer, so if anyone’s going to be saving anyone, it’ll be me.” She flicks her head away, then walks up onto the deck. Salo chuckles as he follows her.
Her confidence wavers, however, as soon as her boots hit the main deck. She can swim just fine, but she’s always been a child of the fields and the open plains, where she has a strong measure of control over her own destiny. To step onto this ship now is to give up this control and put herself at the mercy of the winds and the waters, whose capricious temperaments she can never predict.
Dear Ama, let this trip be mercifully short.
Salo helps lead Ingacha and Wakii down a steep ramp to the animal stalls in a lower deck, using his blessing to lull both animals into relaxed states. His totem remains wide eyed and alert where he has curled up by the starboard bulwarks.
With the animals settled, they take the time to explore the vessel. Its sleek, fluid lines, flowing from bow to stern, lend the ship a distinctly avian feel. A complex system of ropes, pulleys, and netting weaves over the decks like a canopy. Its lovingly polished surfaces don’t quite gleam with newness; indeed, the whole vessel bears the aura of many storms weathered, but only in that graceful way of things that grow better with age, like a fine wood or high-quality wine.
Ilapara feels the dread in her stomach unknotting itself. This isn’t so bad.
“Curious,” Salo mutters to the side. When she looks, she finds him with his shards softly aglow, searching the air with empty fingers.
“What is it?” she says.
“This vessel has been recently possessed by a spirit . . .” He tilts his head up. “But where’s the mind stone?”
He dims his shards when the youngest of the ferrywoman’s sons—a boy who’s seen perhaps fifteen comets—begins to arrange a set of musical instruments on the benches bolted down toward the bow of the ship. If Ilapara didn’t know better, she’d say he was setting up for an ensemble’s performance.
“The Tuanu have an ancestral talent that makes mystics practically redundant,” Tuk says while he watches the boy. “That’s why they kill anyone caught trying to awaken.”
Salo’s face contorts with a grimace. “And I was beginning to like this place.”
“Come now, Salo,” Ilapara says. “It’s not like the presence of mystics is always a good thing. Sometimes people are better off without them.”
“That’s certainly true for these people,” Tuk says. “They were slaves to their mystics until they realized they didn’t really need them. Their talent allows trained individuals to replicate any charms of Red magic, no matter how powerful or complex. All without casting a single spell.”
By the worried look that visits Salo’s face, he must be thinking what Ilapara is thinking. “That answers why they were so excited about the gauntlet,” he says. “They’ll be able to make more weapons just like it.”
“I’m counting on it,” Tuk says, evidently oblivious to their concern.
Ilapara scowls at him. “But why would you do such a thing, Tuk? Can you imagine the threat they could pose if all their warriors got their hands on one?”
Tuk huffs like that’s a ridiculous idea. “They won’t pose a threat to anyone who doesn’t threaten them. All they want is to live their lives without anyone coming here to bother them.”
“But what if they decide to go beyond that? With that kind of weapon, why wouldn’t they?”
“Sorry, Tuk,” Salo says, “but I’m going to have to agree with Ilapara. The weapon you’ve given these people could cause much suffering. They don’t call these the Redlands for nothing. An imbalance of power often leads to bloodshed.”
“I’m an outsider, I know,” Tuk says. “But hear me out, all right? What if I told you that the only reason these people continue to exist as they are is that they’ve always paid tribute to the KiYonte kings for protection? And yet they still lose people regularly to Umadi raids. This village is especially vulnerable since it’s practically in Umadiland. But that won’t have to be the case anymore. With what I’ve given them, they can fight back.”
Ilapara softens her expression, moved by his sincerity, but she still shakes her head. “Let’s hope it stays at self-defense. I shudder to think what would happen otherwise.”
“Ama forbid the warlords ever learn to make gauntlets of their own,” Salo adds.
“It won’t come to that,” Tuk says. “You’d need some extremely sophisticated machines to cast the type of charms we’re talking about, and you won’t find them in the Redlands. Also, the Tuanu don’t sell their charmed artifacts to outsiders. I wouldn’t have bartered my gauntlet otherwise.”
The ferrywoman comes up to the main deck with her other two sons, but instead of pulling some ropes or hoisting the wing structures like Ilapara expects them to, they all sit on the benches behind the arrayed musical instruments. The ferrywoman picks up the mbira, the oldest of her sons sits behind the drum set, and the other two pick up lyres of different sizes.
Ilapara trades baffled glances with Salo, Tuksaad just grins like he knows what’s coming, and at the bow, the Tuanu sailors begin to play.
First, the ferrywoman delivers a dramatic opener with her mbira; then her sons join in with percussion and strings. Instantly the most rousing music Ilapara has ever heard, and when the ferrywoman graces it with her powerful voice, she can’t help but laugh in delight at the sheer brilliance of it all. The music enraptures her so thoroughly she almost misses the moment everything starts coming to life around them.
The mysterious machines belowdecks begin to rumble. The ribbed winglike structures unfurl, stretching outward and upward as if to meet the suns. Ilapara realizes that a spirit must have impregnated the vessel, though she can’t tell where it could have come from.
Then the vessel steals into motion so gracefully there’s not even a tremor on the deck. The diaphanous wings flutter slightly with signs of life. Thin wisps of white-red light droop from the wing tips like delicate threads, swaying in the wind as the waterbird begins to sail away from the shore. Ilapara gapes, astonished, because she has never seen a spirit manifest in such a manner.
“I bet the view’s splendid from back there,” Tuk says, pointing astern, so the three of them venture there to watch the village’s triangular huts drift off into the distance. The skies are stained gold as the suns dip behind the woodlands in the west. A small crowd of Tuanu is standing by the docks to see them off; Salo waves at them and is visibly pleased when many wave back.
“It’s like we’re flying,” Ilapara says, failing to decide whether she should be elated or terrified. “By Ama, how fast can this thing go?”
“Probably half as fast as a moon-blessed warmount at a gallop,” Tuk says. “Except it never has to stop. We should reach the northernmost shores in less than two days.”
“But how is this happening?” Salo says, looking utterly perplexed. “Spirits expend themselves quickly unless hosted in a mind stone with a plentiful reserve of power to keep them going. I can feel the spirit moving the ship, but where’s the power coming from?”
“It might have something to do with the music,” Tuk suggests. “Maybe it conjures the spirit?”
Salo looks back at the ferrywoman and her sons. “The music is definitely how they’re controlling the spirit. I’m just not sure why it doesn’t expend itself with no obvious power source.”
“My knowledge of spirits is rather limited,” Tuk admits, “but speaking of which, I was told the Light
ning Bird will make an appearance at some point during the journey. If you don’t want to commune with it, they said you can just ignore it . . . although that would be quite the wasted opportunity, wouldn’t it?”
“We’ll see,” Salo says with a distant look.
Ilapara is getting the hang of reading Tuk’s eyes; the guy is trying not to push, but he really wants Salo to commune with the spirit.
“Tuksaad,” she says to him, leaning against the gunwale and turning to face him. “Maybe you can answer my question now?”
“What question?”
“About how you know so much about this place.”
Looking out at the receding village, Tuk smiles. “Diligent study, I guess. Before I crossed the Jalama, I read every book I could find on the so-called Red Wilds. There aren’t many, but I was lucky to come across a few well-informed journals written by previous explorers.”
“And the languages?” Ilapara asks. “Did you learn those from journals too?”
“Hardly. I bought a language skill nexus in Ima Jalama and spent a few days staring at it. You could say I got the languages hypnotized into me. Painstakingly so.”
“A skill nexus?” Salo says, echoing her thoughts.
“An artifact of hypnotic Blood craft,” Tuk explains. “It can teach you certain skills, provided you’re smart enough to avoid getting trapped by its magic. Well, at least that’s what the Dulama merchant told me when I bought it from him. A part of me thought it was a hoax, but I was desperate.” Tuk shrugs, smiling. “Turns out he was right. Now I speak most of the continent’s languages.”
“So that’s what it’s called?” Salo says. “A skill nexus.”
“You’ve used one before?” Tuk asks, his forehead crinkled.
“Actually, I have one. It’s how I learned ciphers. A carving of a grove.”
“Mine was a tapestry,” Tuk says, which makes Ilapara’s ears prick.
Her maternal uncle, who trained her in the art of combat, used to tell her he acquired his skills from a magical cloth. Could this be what he meant? A skill nexus?
“You won’t find that kind of thing in the Enclave, you know,” Tuk says. “They can’t make them. They’ve gone so high level with their magic they’ve forgotten the first principles that make it possible. Educated fools, if you ask me.”
“That gauntlet didn’t look foolish to me,” Ilapara observes, then gives Tuk a pointed stare. “And neither do you, as a matter of fact.”
His mouth curves into a humorless smile, and his eyes briefly fall to the deck. “Fair enough. I guess it’s true that Higher technology is second to none. But if you asked mystics of the Enclave to conjure fire, command beasts, or do any of the other types of magic that come so easily to you folk, they’d look at you like you’d lost your mind.”
Salo frowns. “Is that really true?”
“Oh yes.” Tuk leans against the bulwarks and watches the ship’s slipstream with a faraway look in his eyes. “The Redlands are the only place in the world where magic is still practiced in its pure form. The rest of the world runs on technomagical charms, but casting spells like what you did with the winds, Salo”—Tuk shakes his head with awe in his eyes—“that’s an art they lost long ago. One of the reasons they fear this place, in fact.”
Behind them the music winds down now that the waterbird has reached cruising speed. Only the bright and lively trill of a lyre remains, powering the vessel ever forward.
“You know what, Tuk?” Salo says, tilting his head with a thoughtful look. “Meeting you has made me realize just how insular I’ve been. You came from another continent, yet you know far more about my fellow Red people than I do. Clearly I need to do better.”
“So do I,” Ilapara says. “But curiosity about other places is often a luxury for those who can travel, isn’t it? And you know how our people feel about leaving the Plains or even interacting with outsiders.”
“I can’t say I blame them after some of the things I’ve seen,” Salo says, looking out at the horizon. “But maybe we lose a lot more than we gain by being so isolated.”
“You shouldn’t beat yourself up about it too much,” Tuk says. “Many people of the outside world are just as insular and disinterested in other cultures.”
“Why are you so different, then?” Ilapara asks him.
He thinks for a heartbeat, his eyes shifting into a duskier green. “You could say I’m on a journey of self-improvement. I want to be the best possible version of myself.”
Salo considers him. “Is that why you want my blessing?”
“It will certainly help me reach that goal.”
“But is that the only reason?” Ilapara asks, finally, because she’s been wondering about his real intentions for a while now. What does he really want with Salo?
He seems to catch on to the question behind the question. “I’ve told you the truth since we met. So if you’re asking if my motives are purely altruistic, then the answer is no. But if you’re asking if my motives are unworthy”—he flashes his dimples in a rather handsome grin—“then the answer is still no, though you’d be wise not to take my word for it.”
Salo smiles, and Ilapara fails to restrain a laugh. “At least he’s straightforward.”
Tuk’s eyes flash a brighter green. “I am rarely anything but, my dear Ilapara.”
Maybe he’s not so bad, she decides. She’s still not sure about him, and she’ll be watching him closely, but maybe he really is what he seems.
In the distance, the Tuanu village has become a blink of light. They all watch the tiny glow until it fades into the twilight.
33: Isa
Yonte Saire, the Jungle City—Kingdom of the Yontai
A strange dream troubles a king of late.
She is the lowest of the low among man- and womankind until one day she plucks a red petal from a bloodrose and makes a wish. Then she is transformed and becomes the most beautiful, most powerful, most intelligent person in the world. She proceeds to live a life of bliss, envied and admired by all and assured that she is meaningful now, that her power and virtue somehow make her life objectively significant, absolute.
But then she casts her gaze upward and finds that she can now see a pantheon of beings who dwell in the skies, who she could not see before because her eyes were closed in her wretchedness. They are perfect in mind and body, more perfect than she is even in her newly exalted state, and though she tries to be content with what she has, their presence in the skies shows her an inescapable truth: She is but a travesty of true beauty and intelligence. A fiction.
The truth torments her, and eventually she gives in and plucks a second petal from the bloodrose, making another wish. And a great wind rises to snatch her from the world, elevating her into the sky pantheon, where she becomes a god. The mountains roll away in fear of her awesome power and beauty. Mortals fall to their knees in worship and build temples in her honor. She rules over them from her celestial throne, secure in her power and objective significance.
At least for a time.
One day, however, she spots the foot of a staircase leading up into the stellar vault, and with her godly eyes she traces it all the way up to its highest extremity. There she sees, much to her dismay, yet another pantheon of gods. Greater gods. Gods as great to her as she has become to the mortal shell she left behind.
In a panicked rush she dislodges yet another petal from the bloodrose. Its razor-sharp edges cut into her fingers, but she pays no heed to the pain as she makes her wish. To her relief she ascends into this newer and greater pantheon, where her mind expands into the cosmos as she becomes aware of the stars themselves spinning about their axes.
But alas, soon she finds that there are cosmic gods, and that there are gods above these gods, and yet more gods above those. She keeps plucking petals from the bloodrose, on and on until her blood-soaked fingers are shredded to the bone, ascending through rank after rank of godhood, each one more magnificent than the last, but no matter how high up she goes, she
always finds that there are yet more gods above her, gods more awesome and more powerful.
Perched on the only chair in the citadel’s makeshift throne room, Isa gently traces the moongold mask-crown in her hands with her fingers and feels a shiver at the memory of the dream. She has no ambitions of godhood, but the dream that haunts her contains a truth she cannot ignore: the idea that she is powerful is nothing but a fiction so long as there are those above her who can change her destiny with the flick of a finger.
Can a piece on a game board ever claim to be powerful when it is a slave to the hand that moves it?
“It is time, Your Majesty.” The Arc’s scarified face stares grimly at her. “Remember, you are in total command of the mask. Simply order it to take you to the Meeting Place by the Sea, and it will be so. I should warn you, however: you may feel disoriented upon arriving. If you do, relax, and let your mind adjust itself.”
Glowing rubies in small openwork frames float magically in the air above the throne room, casting a warm light on the bamboo struts and arches of the ceiling and on the red tapestries lining the walls. Isa keeps caressing the mask, and her varnished nails glitter up at her like cut amethysts, complementing the silken length of violet cloth wrapped around her body. The garment leaves her back, navel, and shoulders bare, exposing the golden filigree painted onto her bronze skin. It hugs her hips and legs until it flows into a long train that will sweep the floor behind her as she walks. A disk of golden beads sits around her neck in a near-vertical position so that it almost frames her face. Ornate golden bands coil up her forearms. Her hair has been braided halfway and left to flare into a crown of tight curls at the back. She is no princess tonight, no simpering woman, but a king.
“If the likes of Kola Saai can handle the Meeting Place,” she says, “then so can I, Your Worship.”
The Arc nods with approval. “Good. The stronger your resolve, the easier it will be for you.” He glances at the young men standing in the throne room with them—Jomo in his blue robes, looking freshly washed and shaved, and a contingent of Sentinels in smart green tunics and aerosteel armor—all of them watching carefully. “As I’m sure you know,” the Arc says to Isa, “you are allowed to take two others with you to the Meeting Place by the Sea. They will be unarmed, however, since weapons do not carry into the Meeting Place, only minds.”
