by C. T. Rwizi
Tuk is tangled in a knot of reavers, not even trying to evade them. Bolts of lightning keep arcing around his form as the reavers unleash blow after blow onto his body only to strike a luminescent specter that disappears as soon as it appears. His flashbrand, meanwhile, cuts through the air unhindered, leaving ghosts of red light where he swings it. With his recovering arm and the exhaustion of a day’s travel weighing down on him, he’s far from the clinical swordsman Ilapara saw on the waterbird, but three reavers are already lying dead on the ground by his feet.
The split second of peace ends, and Ilapara sidesteps a hacking strike to her neck. A loud crack behind her tells her she just survived yet another lethal blow. Is this what cheating death sounds like?
She punctures a reaver in the stomach, retracts, swings her spear so forcefully the reaver’s mask gets chopped in half when the blow connects. He falls, his face a bloody ruin. She ducks—a peal as the machete behind her hits anyway, but it doesn’t touch her, so she shifts on her feet, pivots, and thrusts.
One by one the reavers fall to her spear. Men who are feared across the vast savannas of Umadiland, men who have raped and pillaged and killed for their mystic warlord; they prove no match for a girl they can’t hit.
“Kill the sorcerer!” At last one of them figures out that the real threat in this battle has thus far gone unmolested, but Tuk performs a dexterous twisting leap and cuts him down before he can test the winds blowing around Salo.
At this point, most reasonable people would recognize that the tide of battle hasn’t been in their favor for a while now, that perhaps it never was, and they would flee, but the three remaining reavers only grow more rabid, as if they have tapped into some previously sealed reserve of rage. Ilapara’s phantom shield cracks several times under heavy blows before she and Tuksaad whittle down the reavers and she impales the last one in the heart and watches his murderous fervor bleed out of his blackened mouth.
Abruptly the whirlwind gusting around Salo dies out, and he rises to his feet, anxiety showing in the high arch of his eyebrows. “Are you all right? I’m sorry I wasn’t much more help.”
Breathing heavily, Ilapara surveys the bodies strewed around what used to be their camp. The fetid reek of voided bowels is thickening in the air. She feels a stirring of nausea but fights it off. “We killed a dozen reavers without suffering a single scratch,” she says, panting. “I think you helped us plenty.”
“That ward of yours, Salo.” Tuk picks his way over a dead reaver lying facedown in the dirt. By the awe in his blue eyes, one would almost think he doesn’t even see the bodies. “A dynamic, self-activating kinetic barrier. Did you come up with that just now? And how is it so precise?”
Tuk’s enthusiasm fails to steal Salo’s attention away from the blood and bodies around him. For a while he stands motionless, taking in the carnage like he can’t quite believe his eyes. Ilapara sees signs of growing panic in the way his hands start to tremble. “Did we just kill twelve men?”
“Now’s not the time to think about it, Salo,” Ilapara tells him in a firm voice. “We’re not out of the woods yet. Survive first; panic later.”
“Not to mention the fact that they were trying to kill us,” Tuk adds.
“Right.” Salo takes a moment to process this before he nods. “Right,” he says again. Absently, he walks off and starts searching for something in the canopy beyond the clearing. Ilapara follows the line of his gaze but sees nothing there.
“I can’t sense Alinata anymore.” Salo turns around to face the bridle way. “I can’t even sense . . . oh no.”
Ilapara gives in to a surge of worry and steps closer to him. “What is it?” But before he can answer, something casts a shadow over them, and when they look up, they see it seeping through the high canopy like grains through a sieve. Then it swoops down faster than any of them can react.
“Watch out!” Salo cries.
Too late. While the main cloud of darkness veers away, a thin stream—flies, Ilapara notices after the fact—reaches out like a tentacle and wraps itself around Tuksaad, whisking him off the ground. She has just enough time to shout his name before she suffers the same fate, and the last thing she sees as an invisible force pulls her out of reality and into a horribly empty chasm is a face painted black with arcane ciphers.
41: Kelafelo
Namato—Umadiland
As the full moon approaches, each day counting down to Akanwa’s scheduled sacrifice at the Anchorite’s altar, Kelafelo finalizes her plans for escape.
Despite Kelafelo’s vow never to see the slave girl as her daughter, the Anchorite’s revelation about her malicious plans for the girl opened her eyes to the simple fact that she isn’t as empty as she thought she was. Moreover, that being empty isn’t what she wants for herself anymore.
If Urura’s death stripped her of her humanity, Akanwa’s arrival returned a small piece of it. She is not Urura and will never be, but she returned a modicum of color and laughter to Kelafelo’s life, and for that reason alone, Kelafelo loves her.
She makes no changes to her routine or preparations that will give her away to the Anchorite. She continues to work on her Axiom. She rereads every book on the Anchorite’s shelf, treatises on poisons, alchemy, and soul charm creation. She does her best to appear the hardworking apprentice resigned to a difficult task.
But in the privacy of her own mind, she makes plans for a life away from her master. She will disappear with Akanwa in the night while the old woman sleeps, and then they will take a boat and sail upstream, perhaps make their way to a town along the World’s Artery.
She won’t even need to awaken and become a mystic. She already knows enough about mind stones, soul charms, and healing elixirs to earn a decent wage. She will be free to live as she chooses, with no parent or husband or sister-wife to answer to. She will build a new life for herself and Akanwa.
On the eve before their intended escape, however, three days before the full moon, Kelafelo returns to the hut from laundering clothes by the river to find Akanwa missing.
At first she figures the young girl has gone chasing after the bronze-furred monkeys that sometimes come to scavenge through their rubbish pit or steal fruit from the Anchorite’s garden. But as the hours progress and the suns dip lower without any sign of her, a sick worry begins to twist her stomach into knots.
She walks over to the garden to find out if the Anchorite has seen the girl, but the old woman isn’t there either. She walks down to the river, calling out Akanwa’s name. Not finding her there, she trots back and searches the hut just in case she’s missed her, but the girl is nowhere in sight.
She searches the compound again, the chicken coop, the garden for a second time. She runs along the path to the village of Namato, the same path she used when she first stumbled here in search of vengeance over a comet ago now, but Akanwa isn’t there either.
When she is out of breath, she stops and shades her eyes with a hand, searching the flat savannas for any sign of movement. Did they go somewhere together? But where would the Anchorite take the girl, and why?
Kelafelo calls Akanwa’s name until her throat feels raw; then she runs back to the hut and searches it again. She looks everywhere twice and then thrice. She looks until she realizes that her whole body is shaking. Eventually she leans against the hut and waits, convincing herself that the Anchorite wouldn’t do anything to the girl. It is Kelafelo who is meant to perform the sacrifice, not the old woman.
When the Anchorite finally appears in the compound later that evening, however, Kelafelo takes one look at her and knows. She knows it in her bones and in her soul, and the knowledge breaks her.
Still, her trembling lips have to ask. “Where is Akanwa?”
“I sold her off.” The Anchorite stops and leans on her staff with both hands. She might as well be giving a lecture on magical theory or announcing what she wants to eat for dinner. “It was a bad idea in retrospect. I underestimated how strong a bond you’d form with the girl.�
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“Where is she?” Kelafelo asks again.
“You will never see her again. You’d have either tried to escape with her, or if you’d gone through with it, it would have destroyed what little humanity you have left, which is worse. We shall have to purchase a different slave. Perhaps an older man. Someone you won’t get too attached to.”
For the first time Kelafelo realizes that she can tell when the Anchorite is lying to her. It’s in the way her fingers keep tapping her staff. She cares what I think of her. A measure of cold clarity comes to Kelafelo’s vision. “You didn’t sell her off, did you.”
The Anchorite frowns. “It doesn’t matter. The girl is gone, and you should get over it. Need I remind you why you limped here begging for my teachings? Have you lost sight of what you are here for?”
On the contrary, things are suddenly very clear to Kelafelo. The Anchorite is absolutely right: she came here for a reason, but Akanwa took her away from that path. The time has come for her to return to it.
She lets tears fall down her cheeks and wipes her eyes. “I’m sorry, Mamakuru. You are right. I wasn’t going to do it. It would have been too hard.”
The Anchorite waits for her to compose herself before she speaks again, this time in a mild voice. “I should apologize for putting you in this position. Living alone for so long has made me a stranger to human compassion, but I should have known better. Sometimes we simply aren’t strong enough to go against our most powerful human instincts, and none is more powerful than the love of a mother. But don’t worry; I am committed to making sure you reach your potential. I have taught other students before, but you have been the most promising.”
Deeply grateful that the Anchorite has restored her vision, Kelafelo wipes her eyes one last time and says, “I thank you, Mamakuru. I will try not to fail you.”
And in a way, this is entirely true.
For a plan she never intended to put into motion, Kelafelo executes it flawlessly. On the night of the full moon, the Anchorite sits up in her pallet to find Kelafelo watching her from the table across the hut. Straining for breath, she presses a hand against her chest.
The hut is lit only by the moon’s crimson light, which lances through the shutters, but Kelafelo can clearly see the moment the old woman realizes what’s happening. It’s right when she gasps and turns her head toward the table.
To her credit, her voice is free of panic. “What have you done?”
“I mixed up a concoction from your poison vials,” Kelafelo answers, also calm. “Bloodrose essence to mute your sorcery, a slow-acting paralyzing agent, something to sharpen your senses so that you feel everything. And in case you get any ideas, your little centipede can’t save you. I trapped it in an urn and buried it just before you woke up.”
“How? I would have detected the poison in my food.”
“I smeared it onto your hoe. A day never passes without you using that thing.”
The Anchorite processes this and then grows visibly angry. “You would kill me for a Faraswa slave?”
“I’m merely following your teachings, Mamakuru,” Kelafelo says. “You told me I need to stain my soul if I’m ever going to reach my best Axiom, so that’s what I’m doing. It just so happens there’s no one else to sacrifice but you.”
The Anchorite gasps again. “You won’t do it.”
“You’re right. Not without help.” Kelafelo picks up the vial on the table next to her and holds it for the old woman to see. “Fortunately, you made this elixir of compulsion for me. Once I drink it, I won’t be able to stop myself until you’re dead. You taught me well, Mamakuru.”
“Perhaps too well.” The Anchorite begins to sink back onto her pallet, the poisons starting to debilitate her body. Her eyes remain wide open, though; Kelafelo made sure she’d be awake until the end.
“For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t be doing this if you hadn’t killed Akanwa. I’d have run off with her. I was actually considering giving up magic and my quest for revenge, if you’ll believe it, but you set me straight. I owe you for that.”
The Anchorite is wheezing now. “If you do this, the underworld’s darkness will consume you. You’re not strong enough to resist its call. I can see it in you. Why do you think I sent the girl away?”
An unexpected bolt of searing anger comes from nowhere, and Kelafelo almost shoots up to her feet. She holds it in, however, turning it into the hatred she’ll need to continue with her plans. “You killed her, Mamakuru. Let’s not beat around the bush.”
“Curse you, girl. Curse you and everything you touch.” By now the Anchorite’s tongue is numbing and her speech is slurring, but the rage seething off the old woman is almost tactile.
Kelafelo’s task will only be easier.
Without a second thought she reaches for the compulsion vial and downs its bitter contents, thinking about the thing she knows she needs to do. A witchwood knife rests on the table; she picks it up, gets up from the chair, and slowly approaches her immobilized mentor. “A glimmer of light had returned to my life,” she says, “but you snuffed it out, Mamakuru. Now darkness is all I have left. I am a monster of your making.”
Suddenly the Anchorite laughs.
The compulsion has yet to take Kelafelo, so she still has the sense to pause and be wary. Paralyzed and helpless on her pallet, the old woman somehow manages to summon the will to look up at her. “Foolish girl. Do you really think I am powerless over an elixir I made?”
Dread cools Kelafelo’s skin. “What are you talking about?”
“I am no bumbling amateur. I knew I couldn’t trust you, so I took precautions. You now have the most powerful compulsion magic in existence flowing in your veins—magic I created. You are completely at my mercy.”
“Lies.” But Kelafelo instantly knows it is true. She can already feel the stirring of magic inside her, twisting her thoughts, realigning her will.
The Anchorite wheezes and coughs. “Perhaps it is fitting that I die now. But you, oh, you will rue this night forever.” She gasps and her eyes go wild, and Kelafelo stands helpless as she utters one last malediction, a hateful curse that will echo into the future, long after she is dead. “You will be a slave to the one you hate the most.”
“No.”
“Upon my death he will know of you,” the Anchorite continues, “and he will come for you, and you will serve him as you would a god.”
Kelafelo takes a step forward, the compulsion taking root. She wanted this just a second ago, but now she tries to fight it. Her legs move forward anyway. “No.”
“Your thirst for vengeance will consume you, you will hate your enemy, you will wish him evil even as you stare at him, and yet you will lack the strength to lift a finger against him.”
“Stop!”
“The darkness will take you, my dear girl. You will lose yourself to it.”
In a wild rage Kelafelo rushes forward and gives in to the compulsion, screaming as she lifts and thrusts her knife over and over again, its blade flinging a rain of dark droplets. The world goes crimson with warm blood and rage and moonlight, but Kelafelo doesn’t stop, not until she has cried herself hoarse and the blood has soaked her to the skin.
That night, Kelafelo dies for the second time in her life, although this time, there will be no way back for her.
Two full moons later she journeys a hundred miles upstream to an old altar at the top of a lonely mountain and calls down her redhawk from the heavens. She feels no fear as the arcane bird descends before her wreathed in a firestorm, and she does not tremble when it touches their heads together and brands her arms with cosmic shards.
The contact brings with it an explosion that splits her mind open, as if a great chasm has been dug into the foundations of space and time and she can suddenly see what was hidden inside. A culmination of over a comet’s worth of tears, sweat, and endless hard work, and yet she knows this is only the beginning.
If she is ever going to break the Anchorite’s dying curse and accomplish wha
t she vowed to accomplish on the day Urura was taken from her, then she has more to do.
She begins by digging out the mind stone from the dead tronic centipede; she has no doubt that the key to breaking the curse will be hidden within its lattices. To her mild annoyance, she finds that the mind stone is now locked behind a wall of protective charms, but this does not trouble her too much. She will find a way to break through the wall in time. How hard could it be?
In the quiet isolation of the Anchorite’s hut, she puts her ancestral talent to use for the first time, rooting her shards to the Anchorite’s old domain. She finds that she can’t spread herself far in any direction before she encounters other powers rippling like currents in the land—in effect, boxing her in—but the little there is adds a second ring to her shards.
She commits all the old woman’s tomes to memory, building up her arsenal of spells and rituals.
She learns how to anchor herself to the Void by bonding her soul to a secondary vessel; changing forms becomes the simple matter of switching vessels, bringing one into the world while sending the other into the Void. For a secondary vessel she chooses the plague of blackflies that invades the Anchorite’s overgrown garden, where she disposed of the old woman’s corpse.
She learns to tap into physical agony to improve the potency of her sorcery, beginning the process of marking her flesh with ciphers of Blood craft so painful she has to abandon clothes altogether. The pain is a price she is willing to pay, a constant reminder of why she is still alive and not with her daughter on the Infinite Path, why Akanwa had to die.
The mind stone proves to be more challenging than she anticipated, and she grows more frantic in her attempts to break through the charms protecting it, knowing that it holds the key to her freedom.
