The Dagger's Path

by Glenda Larke

  A short time later, they crested a granite-capped hill which had a view back down to the lagoon and Bandar Ruanakula. Far below, Golden Petrel could have been a toy on a painted background. The ocean outside the reef was dotted with sails, but as far as they could see, none were large enough to belong to any ship of the Lowmian fleet. They’d climbed high enough for the air to be cooler and she ran fingers through her hair and tousled the wet strands so they could dry in the breeze.

  “Look up ahead,” Ardhi said. “That’s where we’re going.” The path wound down again into the trees of a valley and out of sight, but he was pointing across the quilted canopy of the rainforest to a nearby ridge. For a moment she’d thought the ridge was capped with limestone half-overgrown with creepers and other vegetation, then realised the outcrops were ruins, the tumbled remains of stone towers and walls. An ancient castle perhaps, or a temple.

  “No one can live there,” she muttered. “It’s just a heap of stone blocks!”

  He didn’t reply.

  In the distance, a bird began to sing. Piper stirred and whimpered, but didn’t wake. The song started softly, every note as pure as crystal, one following another until there was a cascade of sounds falling into the valley like droplets of rain. Each note was perfect, and each was part of a perfect whole. The glorious tune enveloped her senses, until she wanted to weep at the beauty of it.

  Just when she thought she could not stand any more, that it was too much to bear, the song halted in an unpleasant discord. She gasped again, this time to draw breath. Somewhere she had stopped breathing.

  “That was a… love song,” Saker said. He sounded awed. “It’s a young male practising a courtship song.”

  She was about to ask how he knew, then remembered his witchery.

  He added, “Sadly, I don’t think a female bird would be very impressed. He knows he didn’t sing all the phrases correctly and he made a mess of the ending. He thinks the adult birds will laugh at his attempts, and he feels embarrassed.”

  She stared at him, incredulous. “You once told me that birds never do much thinking about anything, except eating and fighting rivals.”

  “This is not Ardrone, and these birds are not Ardronese.”

  He was subdued. Perhaps it was fear. No, not Saker. He always seemed so fearless. Awe, then.

  “Watch,” Ardhi whispered. “Watch.”

  They both turned to look across the valley again, their gaze soon drawn to the remains of one of the towers of the ruin. Age-old bricks appeared to have been suddenly gilded.

  “Chenderawasi,” Ardhi murmured. “You are about to see something not given to many. Remember this, for it is my… my caridaum.”

  Another word she didn’t know. She gave Saker a glance.

  “A Pashali word. A sort of lament of premonition,” he said, paling. “No, that’s not quite right. Something that you see or hear that reminds you that your death is imminent.”

  The shock of his words was still reverberating when she saw the golden patch on the ruins launch itself into the air, like a dragon of legend. For one wild moment she thought that was what it was, a fearsome winged animal. But no. Although it was surely twice the length of a man, it was a shimmering bird, not a dragon, and much of its length was in its tail. It spread its wings and soared, and as it soared, its feathers thrummed with harp-like notes so loud they carried across the valley.

  She saw its underside as it rose, lifting on an updraft. A golden body rippled into a blush of vivid red, only to change to purple before fading into gold again in waves, starting at the throat, washing downwards to the tip of the tail.

  And oh, the tail… Plumes so glorious she would never have words to describe them. Much larger than the feathers Ardhi now carried. The outer ones curled stiffly like wires to the side, the middle ones spread and contracted rhythmically to match the alternations in colour.

  Sweet Va, the bird was not only changing its colour as it flew, it was playing music with its feathers.

  It dipped, effortlessly, coming closer. A wingtip rose as it banked to reveal its upperside. An iridescent collar flared green, flattened and faded. Each change in hue heralded an increase in the tempo of the music as plumes vibrated. The creature passed them several lengths away, oblivious to their presence, but close enough for her to see single feathers trailing behind the back edge of each wing and others from the centre of its back, feathers that shivered in song like plucked lute strings.

  When the thrumming reached a crescendo of sound, the bird contorted, throwing its head back and flipping its tail high to meet the wings raised over the back. The sound cut out abruptly. For one magical moment, the bird hung in the air in silence, a golden ball. Then it plummeted down, wings extending, straining for control, the wind streaming through its feathers to produce an eerie blending of chords.

  She gasped, sure the bird would crash into the canopy below, but at the last moment it flattened out, skimming the trees, then disappearing into the foliage. She looked down and saw she had clutched Saker’s hand, her grasp tight. Quickly she let go.

  “That was a full-grown male bird,” he said. “Those were the courtship rituals, but he wasn’t really trying to win himself a mate. He was demonstrating to the younger male bird, the one that sang, how it should be done.”

  “Mocking him?” she asked.

  “Not exactly. More like boasting. The younger bird has to learn by watching the other males showing off. That, I suppose,” he added, addressing Ardhi, “was one of your paradise birds. The ones you call the Chenderawasi.”

  “Yes,” Ardhi said quietly.

  Sorrel turned on him in a fury. “Your people kill such divine creatures for their magical feathers? How could you!”

  He turned to her, horrified. “Never! How could you even think that!”

  “All birds moult and replace their feathers, at least once every year,” Saker pointed out to her. “We don’t kill our geese for goosedown, do we?”

  “Oh. Oh, of course. I’m sorry, Ardhi. That was stupid of me. I was just so… enthralled. The idea that anything so glorious could be hunted–it’s unimaginable.”

  “I wish it were. But that is what the Lowmians want to do,” Ardhi said. “And perhaps your Ardronese tars too, if they had the chance. I’ve heard your court ladies dress their hair with bird plumes.”

  She exchanged a look with Saker, knowing he was as appalled as she was–because it was true.

  “Come, let’s move on before Piper wakes and starts her crying again,” Ardhi said. “Remember, you must open your minds to all you see if you want answers to your questions. You must not try to change anything because you disagree with it. Chenderawasi… is other.”

  37

  The Other

  Other.

  Blister it, that single word summed up the place they stepped into.

  Other. Not just another hemisphere, but another world.

  Ardhi had led them into the ruin through a crumbling stone archway. Human hands had built that, at least, but once inside the roofless ruined walls, it was clear that something else had been involved since the building had crumbled.

  Sorrel’s immediate impression was one of chaos, of nature run wild in unrestrained exuberance, watched over by gigantic painted stone statues of vultures. They glowered at her from equidistant pedestals along the remains of the outer walls.

  Prickles ran up her spine as she tried to absorb everything–no, not everything, anything.

  A slight movement caught her eye and she turned to take a better look at one of those statues. A vulture had turned its head to regard her with a single unblinking yellow eye.

  Va-damn. Not a statue.

  It wasn’t a vulture either, but a living black and orange bird vaguely reminiscent of the flying bird they’d seen, but without the long tail plumes or the range of colour. A duller, more trimmed version. Claws, brutal things curved like scimitars with honed edges, dug into the ancient stonework. Va, the stone crumbled under its grip. As she watched,
it unsheathed a spur from between two hard projections of bone along the back of a leg. The sound was worryingly similar to that of a sword being pulled from a scabbard.

  She shifted her gaze from bird to bird; each was alive, and there was nothing friendly in their eyes. Something told her they were waiting for an order to tear them–or any human intruders–to pieces.

  Va help us, Ardhi has betrayed us. Oh, Piper…

  “They want us dead,” she said, certain she was right.

  “No, not–not exactly,” Saker said, and his tone was more wonder than fear. “They are warriors, yes; but they are a guard of honour. Look at them. They are protecting their monarch’s abode.”

  “What abode?” she asked. There was no building apart from the ruins that she could see.

  “Saker is right,” Ardhi said. “These warriors failed to protect Raja Wiramulia, arriving only after he was shot. Had they been there at the forest pool, those sailors would have been ripped to pieces.”

  She swallowed, still keeping a wary eye on the birds. “Do they–do they eat human flesh?” she asked.

  “No, of course not!” His revulsion was intense. “But they can certainly kill us.”

  Saker’s right hand had dropped to his sword hilt, but he didn’t draw it. “We won’t give them cause.”

  “Can you… Can you control them?” she asked, thinking of his witchery.

  “I doubt it. They are not normal birds, believe me.”

  She was prepared to believe that much. Who’d ever heard of birds being guards? She tore her gaze away from them to glance around the ruins. If this was a guard of honour, where was the Raja? This place had none of the trappings of a royal building. It was a ruin, for Va’s sake!

  The roofless interior was festooned with bambu structures and intricate rattan weaving. Flowers and ferns grew everywhere. It all appeared unplanned and arbitrary, yet it reminded her of something. She groped for the memory and found it: Lady Friselda had ordered a huge cage built in the Regala’s garden, with peacocks and Pashali parrots inside. A bird cage, filled with perches and swings and toys for the parrots…

  This was a gigantic playground for birds. The bambu was for perches. The decorations here were living flowers, mostly orchids in an array of colour and shapes that was staggering. The wildness about them belied the idea that this was the work of a human gardener, but they were planted.

  She shivered, appallingly aware that she and Saker did not belong here. They were the aliens, not the birds. “Who built this, Ardhi?”

  “The Chenderawasi,” he replied, but as he used the same word to describe the islanders, the birds and the magic, it was no answer at all.

  “Look how intricately everything fits together,” Saker marvelled in a whisper. “No nails. Just knots and notches, as if they are carved to fit…”

  She let her gaze drift around the structures curving across from wall to crumbling wall, all adorned with plants and flowers, creepers and vines. She thought of the intricate weaving of the garden bird nests she’d used to show to Heather. She looked back at the spurs on the closest warrior bird. As if in answer to her enquiring gaze, it unsheathed its spur and stretched its leg and wing on one side. The leg spur was matched by another on the bend of the wing. Each was a formidable weapon.

  Or maybe a tool.

  “Oh, rattling pox. They built all this,” she whispered. “Saker, the birds built it all. Not the original ruin, but everything else.”

  He regarded the birds. None of them had moved from their individual perches, or made a sound. He turned to Ardhi. “What are they waiting for?” he asked. “What are we waiting for?”

  “The young Raja,” he replied, “Raja Suryamuda, and his mother, the Rani Marsyanda. Because of his youth, she will speak for him. She will address you, Saker. Do not shame me. Address her as Tuanku Putri, ‘your royal highness’.”

  Saker repeated the words.

  “Yes. Just remember all I have said. I trust your heart. Your understanding. Listen carefully, because her face will tell you nothing. Nothing at all. Yet the voice you hear can say many more things than words.”

  Another confounded riddle, she thought.

  “I might do better if I knew all that you know,” said Saker.

  Ardhi shrugged. “Take Piper into your arms now. The Rani or Raja might have to touch her.”

  As Saker turned to take Piper, Sorrel was washed through with the cold of fear. She’d been struggling to understand the Pashali words Ardhi was using, some of them still foreign to her, but she suspected that Ardhi had just implied that she had no more role to play here.

  No, she thought. No one dismisses me so lightly, not where Piper’s welfare is concerned. No one. And I don’t care a fig if this woman is a fobbing Rani…

  Though she allowed Saker to take the still-sleeping child, her determination on that point did not waver.

  “Stay here for a moment,” Ardhi said.

  He walked towards the centre of the ruin, moving under the strange woven canopy with its many blank spaces, until he was in the centre where there was nothing at all above. The warrior birds swivelled their heads to watch, their yellow eyes unblinking.

  Sorrel, seeking a way to keep herself from panic, studied the bambu that had been used to fashion many of the structures, noting the way each piece was seamlessly joined, one fitted into another so tightly it could have been the work of one of the finest carpenters of Throssel or Ustgrind.

  Master craftsmen. Was it possible? Could birds cut the bambu in the forest, carry it here and craft all this? She suddenly felt certain they could. “Those warrior birds perched up there–are any of them female?” she asked Saker in a whisper.

  He shook his head. “I think females don’t have spurs. I’m wondering if these are more like… eunuchs. No, that wouldn’t be right. I think I mean non-breeding males.”

  Before she could say anything more, a bird dropped down into the space above Ardhi and perched on one of the bambu crossbeams. A cascade of tail feathers spread out in a fan, and then closed to hang like the soft folds of a chiffon curtain. It was beautifully coloured, but still not as gorgeous as the courting bird they’d seen.

  “The young male,” Saker whispered. “The one we heard singing.”

  This bird was closely followed by another, larger, but not as ornate.

  This one is a female, Sorrel guessed. They must be some kind of pets of the Raja.

  The second bird was dark, the feathers sheened with a rich purple, its neck swathed in a ruff of white, its head crowned with red. Its tail was only a third of the length of the one on the bird they’d seen performing the courtship ritual. Black eyes, ringed with red, regarded them. Ardhi knelt and lowered his forehead to the ground. Beside her Saker stood so still for so long staring back at the female, she wondered if he was mesmerised.

  She wanted to ask him why he was transfixed, but something held her back. Ardhi, still kneeling, started to speak in his own language. And he was addressing the bird–as if it understood.

  Even then she was slow to understand. Saker was the one who could talk to birds–sort of–not Ardhi.

  When the truth hit, it swamped her.

  She warred with the idea forming in her mind. It’s impossible.

  Then: Sweet cankers, what purblind muckle-tops they’d been. This was why the sakti of the Chenderawasi had pushed and guided Saker to this point in time. This was why Ardhi had acted the way he had. This was why the path the dagger had chosen had led them to this place, to this moment.

  So that Saker Rampion, who could speak to birds, could communicate with the ruler–or his regent–of the Chenderawasi Archipelago.

  The Raja of Chenderawasi was–and always had been–not a man. Indeed, not human. A bird. No, there had to be a better word. These weren’t just birds. Avian. They were Avians. The Raja Wiramulia’s regalia weren’t plumes of some long dead bird to be worn by the ruler on a hat; they were plumes ripped from the Raja’s own breast as he lay dying. The Lowmians rea
lly had killed the Raja, without realising what they’d done. They’d thought to slaughter a bird, and had killed a king instead.

  Sorrel fell to her knees, not so much in abeyance, but more in shock at realisation of just how far she was from all she had ever understood.

  How dare we call these people Va-forsaken? We don’t know the first thing about them!

  Sakti.

  The magic of the Chenderawasi Islands. Governed, or so Ardhi had hinted, by the Raja. Sakti planted in the dagger through the Raja’s regalia and the Raja’s blood.

  And he, Saker, had missed the obvious: the sakti was in the plumes because they had been part of the Raja. As much an element of Raja Wiramulia as the blood in his veins and the bones of his body. The Raja had not been human, any more than his heir was, or his consort. And these “birds” were not really birds. They had many bird-like features perhaps, but they were also creatures of intelligence and of magic.

  The glimmer of understanding had begun to cast its light when he’d heard the song of the Raja Suryamuda. He’d understood the young bird’s confused yearning as clearly as if he had used spoken words. But it wasn’t until he’d come face to face with the Rani Marsyanda that he fully understood. When he heard inside his head not the nebulous thoughts and appetites of a bird as he was accustomed to hearing them but the articulate words of a queen spoken with royal imperiousness.

  At first, she spoke not to him, but to Ardhi, and he guessed she was using the language of the islands–yet he heard her words inside his mind as if she spoke in Ardronese.

  You have returned. So many seasons to complete your appointed task. More than just words, too. Saker felt the contempt in her sneer.

  Ardhi kneeled and touched his forehead to the ground. “I regret that it took so long, Tuanku Putri.”

  You have brought back the regalia?

  “Yes, Tuanku.”

  Show me.

  Carefully Ardhi extracted the plumes from the bambu and laid all four on the ground. He then stepped away from them.

  The Rani inclined her head towards her warriors, and four of them dropped to the ground, each to pick up a plume and fly away with it.