A halo of auroral green tinted blue cascaded through a window midway down the next hall. Nalor urged Pilliap's body forward, then lurched at the window. Even through the bluebody's lamentable senses, resistance took him by surprise.
It relented immediately with a faint tinkling. He glanced back to see the opening encrusted with jagged shards. There must have been a pane of completely transparent ice set in the window. He tucked the factoid away to ruminate on later and pressed the body forward toward…
Toward Qilaknakka, he supposed. Not much else lay forward. A peek over the shoulder confirmed that the king had made it through the window. A little thrill spurred Nalor to refocus on running.
Here arose a flaw in his foresight. He hadn't undertaken any underwater trials. For all he knew, his connection would snuff like a candle when doused. The king would pull the body from the vertiginous wall of water and be upon him faster than he could wipe away the spittle of his sleep.
But perhaps that could be avoided.
He tilted his trajectory toward the gleaming path of Arsarneq. The dead man's hood whipped behind him, a flailing banner of the reckless. Had breath been required, the frigid scourges of wind would have chastised his lungs into piteous submission. As it was, the only blight he suffered came from the bluebody's endemic chill. Closer and closer he chased until he tore into the lush luminance, and Arsarneq dissipated his weight like an afternoon zephyr dispelling a dry morning snow.
Almost he thought he could see the green combing through the parka’s fur, coating the backs of his hands, but it was just a more brilliant blue. Where all hearing had been muffled before, the aurora seemed to quake through to him with a changeless roar of silence divine. The air clumped like half breaths in the chests of Nunapisu's many.
He stayed the southward track, glancing back only briefly to ensure the king still had his trail. Before him came the crash into Qilaknakka. In seconds, he careered into the bulwark of water that scraped the realms beyond sky. The transition hit him like walking into a chamber forgotten from youth, but he slowed only enough to be noticeable. His corpse face split into a grin. Arsarneq would provide him safe passage in its hallowed corridor. He ran on.
After a minute of pumping his legs, he finally checked over his shoulder and his eyes went wide. Qummukarpoq had made short work of the watery thicks between them. Mere seconds separated them now. For some brain-dead reason, Nalor had assumed the sea wall would snuff the king’s flame. He looked to the darkness that encroached everywhere save straight ahead. One last thrust, then withdraw back to his real frame and run like mad.
He tipped down and faced the abyss.
Leaving the solace of the light felt like a non-crucial yet beloved skin peeled off the bluebody at the aurora’s edge. The ocean sucked and pulled at his limbs with far more tenacity than had the evergreen road, but he made sure progress down and downward. The light receded faster than he would have thought, though due to his haste or being eaten by the ocean’s black he couldn’t say.
He’d passed far too many fathoms by when he realized that his connection to the corpse hadn’t died yet. Nalor floated to a stop and watched the unplumbed depths all around, spun up in threads of wonder. The king was nowhere to be seen. Must not have wanted to risk plunging into the infinite ocean so far from home.
Nalor pondered his next course of action and settled on swimming the complete opposite direction Qummukarpoq had seen him go. No knowing exactly what beastly brand of candlework the man might be able to conjure to hoist the corpse from the seafloor.
He flipped directions and stroked up, up past aurora, away from the castle of white. If windwalking was expedited striding, what was this tusk-aided transit he now made? Waveswimming? It was about as close to swimming as he’d ever prefer to get.
Up and up and up. He paddled his arms and legs so long that he eventually felt like they were moving of their own accord. His mind wound back through the days leading up to this attempted camisado, and it seemed that he recounted every wave that had bobbed the boat, matching them to strokes. Clever though his arrangement of candles was, he was amazed they hadn’t burnt to nubs yet. The blackness was everything. He couldn’t even say that he still traveled upward. Not that it mattered, so long as it was away.
Then it happened. The waters began to lose their dark. The occasional fish puttered by. Bits of sea debris floated to a current of their own. It was almost as if…
Life. He had found life.
Before he could reorient himself, his hand swiped through the air.
The air?
The bluebody popped out of the water and came back down in an indecorous splash. He merely trod while he awed, borrowed body slack-jawed. Qilaknakka had an end. Or, a beginning? A top. And on that beginning sat…
Islands. Splotches of paradise dripped from heaven’s ladle, swaddled in the light of their very own moon and stars. Thick with trees. Bulging with rocks. And—and—
The bluebody felt warm. This scene plucked from a wondertale somehow divested the corpse of its perennial cold. That alone was enough to deck him with chills.
He glanced between the three islands within his view. What… what was this place? And how could he bring his truebody here?
Finally, he gathered enough wits to force a blink and began stroking toward the nearest of the iceless isles.
18
Orluvoq
The tuuaaq had all burned off in the ritual, and now she felt fine. Perhaps the price hadn’t been as steep as she’d imagined. She still couldn’t conceive of staying for the marriage. Qummukarpoq was too… inhuman. Now that he had what he wanted, she would head north after they returned from this far-flung fantasy.
As they ascended the glowing tunnel, Orluvoq finally made the connection to a decade ago when she’d melted her village. She’d eaten so much she should have been lost in delirium for days. But she’d blasted it out, enough to make a lake of the igloos, then walked off with a good showing of wits.
After an age of climbing, she and the king burst out into that patch of night sky they’d been watching grow. Her legs slurred to a standstill and she began to fall from the air as the sight hit her. She reasserted her slack grip on her candle and windmilled her arms as if trying to fling away her panic. Her legs found their groove again and she avoided committing her body to the sea by a margin of fathoms.
As she followed Qummukarpoq circumnavigating this oasis atop Qilaknakka, she could only stare and blink, and stare and blink. Under moonlight alone, an obscene amount of green furred the clutch of islands before her. Green closer in kin to Arsarneq than to the coniferous trees that grew near the Nuktipik coasts. The scene glittered as if suffused with a light of its own; as if the spirit in every leaf couldn’t contain its joy for life.
She wanted to cast off her gloves and run her fingers up branches until the sun rose. Would the sun rise here? That couldn’t be a privilege only for those below Qilaknakka. What would it look like during the day?
The king led them to set down on a shore of moonlit pearlescent white. Orluvoq tested twice the way the sand sank into an approximation of her boot wherever she stepped, so like snow, yet so alien. A forest beyond the wilds of her imagination awaited them a few paces off. Flaring verdancy in every direction, leaves that dwarfed her head. Reds, yellows, blues, and purples spangled the green depths as if the otherworldly domain bled out a color for every mood.
She laughed. It was so beautiful.
And hot. Horribly hot. Her clothes had become servants to the all-enfolding oppression. She stuffed down the urge to disrobe. Who knew when they might need to flee back down the channel?
“Curious,” said the king, rubbing a trickle of sand between ungloved fingers. “It was a physical ascension I needed to attain my mythical ascension.”
A rustle from the foliage. They both snapped their eyes to the disturbance. The forest gave birth to a man, barely blued by their twin candles. His skin was darker, richer than any Orluvoq had ever seen. About his loins
was girdled a skirt of some type of plant. A string of long, sharp bones enwreathed his neck, backdrop to a stone face on a cord. Complex bands of black coated his left arm from shoulder to elbow. The opposite hand gripped a club studded with serried rows of serrated teeth. His carriage bespoke a familiarity with murder.
Her first instinct bade her run into the sky and never look back. Whatever savagery they courted as culture in this molten paradise, they could do so without her. Her second instinct was to recoil at the ridiculous outfit. A small second lapsed before the punishing weather reminded her of her own ridiculous trappings.
Something approaching caution and touching on awe tinted his eyes. His ample lips parted and he spoke. “He atua anei’oukou?” It was obviously a question.
“We do not speak your language,” answered Qummukarpoq. Orluvoq sighed inward relief that she needn't treat with the stranger.
The warrior pointed at each of the candles in their hands. “Ke lawe nei’oukou i ke ahi polū. Ke hele nei’oukou i nā lani. Aole anei’oukou he mau atua?”
She ransacked her mind to locate any hints that candlework could interpret tongues.
“This will take time, but I hope we can come to an understanding,” said the king.
Excitement poked into the warrior’s face. He babbled another senseless string punctuated by exaggerated, open palm gestures that they stay put, then he jumped into the forest and bounded away in vaulting arcs.
Orluvoq blinked. “Did he just jump higher than a man? From a standstill?”
Qummukarpoq, for the first time ever, showed less than complete resolution. “Whatever folk dwell on these heights might be fiercer than we’re accustomed to. Have another candle at the ready.”
She touched the pocket where her other candle lay, but a portion of her wondered if it would be enough. True, they had just carved through Qilaknakka. But the man’s ferocious countenance and casual use of power—it unsettled her.
And fed her a heaped dose of exhilaration. The two emotions arrived like bickering sisters.
A short time of shifting her discomfort between feet passed, and a low thrumming like the morning stretch of a giant rubbed her between the ears. She tossed her head back and forth, seeking the source. The king did the same. Then in the sky, her eyes found a phalanx of figures swooping toward the beach.
She tried to keep her composure as twenty men plummeted past the treetops and planted feet on the nacreous sand. Their presence slapped her with an anatomy lesson on the potential of human musculature. Every one of them was attired similarly to the warrior of before but differed on matters of neckwear and tattoo coverage. To the man, the company had tattoos over most of their torso, arms, and face. Far more than the occasional chin or forehead tattoo she was used to.
The middle one, the only man unadorned by a stone face necklace, stepped forward and spoke in a booming voice. “Which one of you is the blue god?”
His effortless command of their tongue twinged Orluvoq’s gut. Such foreknowledge was not an advantage to them.
“I would be called god by some, but king by all,” said Qummukarpoq.
The dark-skinned speaker broke into a toothy smile, white glinting between tattoos, and laughed in puissant tones. “I have the same struggle every day! I am Ariki Haka’atu, king of Rapai’i.”
Qummukarpoq inclined his head. “Qummukarpoq, king of the Nuktipik, and my queen.”
Orluvoq smiled over her unease. The foreign king’s mouth moved to a different yarn than the words that came out.
Haka’atu swung a broad gesture and stepped closer. “And look at her! She would still be called queen even if she didn’t know you.”
Her blush bloomed, though it contributed little to her heat-stoked cheeks. Everything about these Rapai’ians exclaimed grandiosity. Their entrance. Their hands. Their calves. Their lips. Their—at least his—voices. To say she felt out of her element would be too kind.
“You have obviously traveled far. Please, come to my palace and join me for an evening umu parehaoga. Yams, kekepu, swordfish, gu fish, mahimahi fish. A feast for gods. Even those of us who are only sometimes gods.” He winked and cried out in laughter.
Despite her angst, Orluvoq laughed back, more at the hoot than the jest. Qummukarpoq supplied a diplomatic smile.
“Come! Tell me of your Nuktipik,” Haka’atu beckoned with a meaty wave. “Do you need me to fly you?”
“No,” said Qummukarpoq. “We manage just fine.”
Three royals and one entourage took to the sky. The Rapai’ians’ feet remained posed as if they yet stood, while Orluvoq and her king pumped their legs.
“Ha!” called Haka’atu after them. “Slow down. We want to get there when the food is hot, not still cooking.”
They couldn’t go any slower, so they resorted to circling round the honor guard, much to Ariki Haka’atu’s amusement. The forest below enchanted more than her stolen face possibly could. The group took its time approaching an expansive building of tall stones slotted snug against one another. So much stone dazzled her. The Rapai’ian king pinged jibes off his warriors, and they slung back in kind. Or, so she assumed. All spoke gibberish save the king.
They reached the palace, snuffed their candles, and followed Haka’atu’s lead inside. The majority of the building, it seemed, was devoted to the main hall. A score of women in clothing of woven reeds crouched before multitudinous stone pits, moving red-hot rocks with staves and turning foodstuffs. The king led his guests to a mat and enjoined them to sit. Platters of steaming food were before them before Orluvoq even had time to realize that the heat was more oppressive inside.
The nonchalance. The convivial conversation. The sheer volume of men and women all mingling around the stone cooking pits like oldest of friends.
“Do you eat with your warriors every day, Ariki Haka’atu? Or is this a special occasion?” she asked after a helping of food, but she already knew the answer.
Haka’atu grinned, chin slick with grease. “Of course! Where else would my matatoa eat?”
“And… their wives? Or are these just maids?”
“Their wives, of course. Who else would take the job of cooking for these scallops?” He motioned at his entourage. “The children will eat after.”
“Another question. How is it that you talk to us, but no one else does?”
“You are turning out to be a very questionable lady.” He laughed and pushed her shoulder. “Look upon their necks. You see the moai hanging from each person?”
“The stone faces?” Some of them looked too hefty for neck bearing. “The thing you lack?”
“You women, so quick to judge a man by what he doesn’t have.”
She was saved from saying something in her defense by the king’s self-inflicted chortling.
“I kid, I kid. You made a stone face for a second.” He screwed his face into frozen scandal, then broke into another smile. “Those moai. I have one too, only I keep mine under the palace.”
Orluvoq furrowed her forehead. “Why would you…”
Haka’atu leaned in and raised a conspiratorial eyebrow. “Mine is ten times as tall as I am.”
“Oh. Wow.” It was a grand thing to someone who’d never seen a rock larger than a flagstone. “And… what exactly is it?”
Shock crossed the king’s face, then he burst into a laughing spate. “It is your stone likeness cut from the inside of a volcano. And what does it do, I anticipate your next question to be. Why, everything. They tell me it will even draw my life out a thousand years. Many kings only make it to three or four hundred before going fishing the last time though.”
“A thousand?” She glanced at Qummukarpoq to gauge his reaction. These moai seemed a greater magic by far from that alone.
The king of the Nuktipik sat mostly silent. He had never shown poor wit around her. His words struck true and undoctored. But in the presence of Ariki Haka’atu, he’d become most taciturn. Was he simply withholding information to maintain some upper ground, or had the king
at the start of the world finally been outclassed?
“I desire one,” he said, quiet and firm.
Haka’atu poked him in the chest with a voluminous finger. “A moai of your own, eh? Hah! Tell me, what is the origin of these candles? One of the other tribes, the Mokomae, tells tales sometimes of a blue god that visits them from the deepest sea. Then here you appear bearing blue flames. I must know! I must!”
“Light paints our night sky in a green river. A special whale, the narwhal, swims inside this aurora. Their tusk is full of the basest of magicks. It is this tusk, this tuuaaq, we burn.”
Orluvoq admired her king’s concision. She would have mangled the explanation.
“Excellent, excellent,” said Ariki Haka’atu. “I desire one.”
“A trade, then?” said Qummukarpoq.
“Your tuaku for my moai? A seemly enough deal.”
“Yes. I desire a moai as big as yours.”
For the first time, something other than joviality crossed the dark-skinned king’s face. “As big as mine? No, no. This is not the way of things. A moai nine times as big as me? Ten times as big as you? Fine and fine. But as big as mine? Suddenly we are evenly matched, except you have your tusks. It is, for me, a very bad deal.”
“I see.” Qummukarpoq considered a moment. “Then nine times as big as you.”
Haka’atu’s lips edged toward a smile once more. “It is a great thing you ask, but I think a trade can be. For this thing I will ask… hmmm… One thousands of tusks.”
Qummukarpoq’s eyes didn’t open quite as wide as Orluvoq’s, but his surprise showed, nonetheless. “It is a great thing you ask, Ariki Haka’atu.”
“I would not expect them cast in one pile blocking my door.” He laughed and stacked some fishbones on top of each other. “We can say, ah, fifty per year. Reasonable?”
A tense moment of calculation. “You would tell me this moai will take twenty years to make?”
Orluvoq Page 22
