The mirror was broken. Every good commander had two or three alternate plans, but this was the one she liked the least. With Saiduan all but routed, its libraries sacked, she needed to turn her attention to the next phase of their invasion – cross over into the now weakened Dorinah, the country with the softest and largest rent between her world and the next. She could take out Dorinah and get her people safely established there, just in time for planting season. That gave her the summer to continue to hammer at Dhai, though she expected it would not take that long, not unless they figured out what she wanted there before she had it.
Across the swampy marsh, Yisaoh watched them from atop a great white bear. She wore a massive brown cap, her hair twisted around its base in black braids, knotted in tiny beads and bells. She was the most extraordinary person Kirana had ever seen, and she suspected now, even preparing to cross into another world, that Yisaoh would remain so. Her heart ached, and for a wild moment she wished she had permitted their children to watch. But the children were very young, and the outcome of this breach was uncertain. Kirana could lose half her army if the gate collapsed while they were still in transit. She had lost countless thousands to failed gates in the early days of the war. It’s why she had devoted so much time to the mirror. Another failed endeavor.
“On my command,” Gaiso, Kirana’s parajista company general, said. She was a plump woman with broad hands and features. It had been a boon her shadow was already killed in some petty skirmish on the other side. Kirana hadn’t wanted to settle for the second.
Kirana braced herself. Those unfamiliar with tearing open the way between worlds often thought the end of the line was a safer place to be, but she knew better. As the first one through, right up alongside the omajistas who opened the thing, she could get herself clear of any blowback. Sometimes when the way opened it imploded, yes – but an implosion didn’t affect those who had already gone through. If she ended up in the wrong world, well – that’s why she only stepped through next to an omajista. Her own skills with the dark star didn’t bend in that direction, much to her frustration.
Fourteen omajistas raised their hands. All around the field, for as far as Kirana could see, were cart after cart of jars filled with blood. When the omajistas said what they had brought was not sufficient, Kirana had killed another fourteen of her own people, drawn by lot, and piled their bodies, too, at the edge of the swamp. It was amazing what a person would put up with, when freedom from certain death was so close. Many turned on comrades, men and women they had fought with most of their lives.
The jars burst. Kirana stood her ground. Did not close her eyes. Did not cover her ears. This was the greatest expenditure they had ever made, and she had to be present and aware. Because they would end up in a lake, she’d had to remove her armor. Behind her, the twenty thousand troops she intended to bring with her were a nearly nude bunch, scratching at the dark seeds of the weapons in their wrists.
The air shuddered. A great weight descended on them, and something more – wind. A wind so hot and sudden Kirana caught her breath.
A black storm of blood poured into the sky from the shattered jars, a wave so mortifying that Kirana had woken screaming for three months after seeing her first. Now it looked like freedom to her. Promise.
It looked like survival.
The bloody gate coagulated ahead of her. She felt the soft crimson mist against her face. Her ears popped. The blood folded in on itself, as if devouring its own substance from the inside out. A seam opened in the world, a massive tear. Kirana saw a cold blue lake shining before her on the other side. Dark trees. Low mountains.
Gaiso barked at her parajistas. The wind kicked up again. The lake ahead of them on the other side rippled, then went still.
“It’s solid,” Gaiso said, and stepped through the tear in the worlds and onto the invisible bridge of air now riding the surface of the lake.
Kirana could not see work done by parajistas – she was a tirajista with some sensitivity to Oma – but if Gaiso said it was good, she trusted it.
She wanted to say something hopeful or inspiring, but her feet were already moving. She didn’t even look up at the black, toxic star in her sky. Only when she stepped onto the hard surface above the glassy lake did she look back once, at Yisaoh. But the angle was all wrong – Kirana could no longer see her. And she needed to move, move, move because her army was coming behind her, and the longer they were on the bridge, the more vulnerable they were.
“Fan out,” Gaiso said to her parajistas, and as they came through, the hundred parajistas leaped out across the water, skipping on it like stones, to take scouting positions along the perimeter of the lake.
Kirana did not release her weapon, but she stayed at the center of the next wave, a mixed contingent of tirajistas and regular infantry. The scouts said the area was clear. With the Empress’s Seekers scattered to the winds and most of the country’s publicly owned Dhai slaves dead, there was little to impede their progress.
As they marched across the lake, Kirana’s stomach churned. She tried to look straight ahead. She couldn’t swim, and losing the bridge would be embarrassing at best – deadly at worst.
Gaiso glanced over at her. “Not seeing any movement.”
“It’s quiet here this time of year,” Kirana said. “I’ll be confident when the whole army’s through, though.”
“She’s not a fool,” Gaiso said.
Kirana made a pinched motion with her hand. She had no interest in discussing the Empress of Dorinah within hearing of half her army. She was well aware the Empress wasn’t a fool. If she had given over her Seekers and the dajians so easily, it meant she was confident she had something else she could use against them. Something far worse.
The Empress had sent a company to Tordin. For whatever purpose she sent them there, it left her even more vulnerable. And unlike tiny little Dhai, Dorinah had enough land to support a vast number of Kirana’s people. If the end came in the next few months instead of the next year, she’d have at least saved this many. It was a risk to move now, but far riskier to wait.
Kirana jumped from the bridge of air onto dry land, and resisted the urge to kiss it.
The tirajistas closed ranks. Kirana moved further up the shoreline to wait for the mounts and supply carts.
Her infantry commander’s squire, Lohin, met her on the low rise. “The squad’s about done with the way house,” he said, motioning to the squat little building on the opposite shore. “Should be cleared out shortly.” Lohin was a mean-faced little man, wiry and stooped. She was not particularly taken with his talent on the field, but he was Yisaoh’s brother, and she’d promised Yisaoh she’d get him to the other side, one way or another.
“I’ll wait for your mother’s all clear on that,” Kirana said.
Lohin’s jaw hardened, but he only pressed thumb to forehead and trudged back down the path. She imagined it would not be so terrible, to serve as squire to one’s mother, but Lohin resented every hand she offered him. He didn’t even have the good sense to thank her for getting him across. Kirana watched his back, wondering if she should tell him the murder of his shadow had been accidental, and if it’d been up to her, she’d have continued to leave that particular death up to chance until the bitter end.
But here they were.
When she heard the all-clear for the way house, Kirana made her way there, where her pages were already mopping up the blood and pushing together the inn tables. Six bodies were stacked outside.
The infantry commander, Rasina, stood just inside the door, arms crossed. “Got someone for you to see,” she said.
Kirana gestured at the pile of bodies. “That not all of them?”
Rasina laughed. She was a long, lean woman – Lohin’s mother through marriage, not birth – and she had a warmer face. “Sure isn’t,” she said, and gestured Kirana upstairs.
Kirana’s wrist itched. Her everpine weapon already tasted her unease. “You going to give me a hint?” Kirana said, trying
to keep her tone light. She had had enough horrible things happen in this horrible war to last eight lifetimes.
Rasina glanced back. Grinned. She came to the top of the stairs and opened a guestroom door wide. The air inside was heavy. Two parajistas and an omajista stood in the room, their specialties clear from the symbols on their collars.
A woman lay prone in the bed, arms held stiffly at her sides, obviously bound by the jistas. It took only half a breath for Kirana to recognize her.
“Oma’s eye,” Kirana said. She grinned now too, and met Rasina’s merry look. “This is the happiest coincidence of the war.”
“Isn’t it, though?” Rasina said.
Kirana bent over the bed. It was the same woman, aged ten years from the one Kirana had fused with her mirror on the other side, but easily recognizable.
“Nava Sona,” Kirana said. “You have no idea how pleased I am to find you here.”
21
Lilia climbed the stairs up the great harbor wall, dragging her foot behind her, trying to make up the difference in speed by pulling herself hand over hand on the rail. Her breath came hard and fast, and she found herself wheezing. She had to slow down, though wave after wave of militia pushed past her, like she was just a drudge again, some spectator caught on the stairwell.
When she reached the top, it was still dark, but the moons were out, and they bathed the world in a pale white glow. All along the piers, dark, chitinous figures were pouring out of the boats.
“Parajistas!” Lilia huffed. She coughed, then – “Where’s Ora Naldri?”
“Not on the wall yet!” a young parajista called from her place at the parapet.
“Do you have the barricade up?” She leaned over, trying to catch her breath. She needed to let it go. Not think about it. Just breathe.
“It’s up – but I can see Para’s breath around their boats. They’re going to deploy something!”
Taigan was at the other end of the wall, barking at two young parajistas just roused from sleep to join the two on watch at the wall.
“We need to double that barricade, Taigan!” Lilia called.
“They’re too raw to act quickly,” Taigan said, and Lilia recognized a Saiduan curse.
Lilia limped down the opposite side of the wall to see how many people they had on it. Forty militia, crowded up to the front of the battlements with their bows.
“Stand three paces from the wall!” Lilia said. Her chest hurt, but she had a thread of breath again. The parajistas were getting lost in the muddle of bodies. “Let the parajistas get line of sight!” She spoke as loud as she could, but to these people, she was just a little shouting person. She was no one of consequence.
“Mohrai!” she called. She continued down the wall, breathing deeply, until she found Mohrai, shouting orders for the militia to prepare the first volley.
“Give the parajistas line of sight,” Lilia said. “They can’t attack what they can’t see. Three paces from the wall.”
Mohrai frowned. Turned back to the militia, shouted, “Three steps back and hold!”
The line of militia obeyed, as if Mohrai wielded her own bit of magic. Lilia paused a moment more to rally her ragged breath, then called – “Parajistas!” and she started back down the line of the wall again, shouting, “Make sure that barrier ends at the top of the wall! Top of the wall! Make sure this volley can get through! Mohrai is sending a volley!”
Her throat was already hoarse. Though strategy on paper was all very well, limping and shouting along the wall was not the best place for her. She needed her mahuan powder. If not now, then very soon.
One of the parajistas broke away. She was a young woman, a few years older than Lilia, and though Lilia could not see the blue waves of power she manipulated, she recognized the slack face, the lack of concentration. The woman stepped away from the parapet, trembling.
Lilia yelled, “Step up!” right at her face, though Lilia was a head shorter.
The parajista cringed. “There are too many of them,” she said. She bolted.
Lilia staggered after her, and nearly collided with a member of the militia. A spit and hiss came from the harbor, and a blister of red breath penetrated their defenses. Lilia fell back, but the tangle of mist collided with the militia member and the three behind her. Their clothes smoked and flamed. Their skin blistered. Screams.
The line of parajistas wavered. Lilia yelled at them again to hold. She skirted past the dying militia and forged after the parajista who had fled the ranks. The woman reached the stairs and plunged down them, far too fast for Lilia to follow.
Lilia crumpled by the entrance to the stairs, gasping like a dying fish. She saw another wave of red mesh slip through their shoddy defenses, but did not have the breath to even warn them. The red wave engulfed two parajistas. They flailed and vomited, their skin sloughing off as if soaked in acid.
Naldri came up the steps behind Lilia, out of breath. He gaped, staring at the bodies, and Lilia, and the quavering line of parajistas. He yelled below, calling for a doctor, and headed out to the line of parajistas, shouting at them to hold their ground.
“There’s a tide!” one of the parajistas yelled. “Plant matter of some kind, crawling up the coast!”
A half dozen militia crowded forward at the parapet.
Lilia watched them as if from a great height, listening to the rasping of her own breath.
Then there were two doctors on the wall, an apprentice snapping her fingers at Lilia, Lilia mouthing “mahuan,” and then Gian was there, and there was more shouting, and another red sliver darting through the parajistas’ barrier, setting an entire line of militia on fire.
Gian argued with the apprentice. Pulled out the mahuan from her pocket. How did she think to carry it everywhere? She tipped it into the apprentice’s water bag, shook it, and poured it into Lilia’s mouth.
Lilia was so starved of air that stopping to drink felt like drowning. She coughed and sputtered. Naldri came up behind her, calling for the parajistas, but it was all a jumble. Now they had Naldri and Mohrai, at the far end, yelling at them. Disparate orders. Fear. The lines were falling, one by one.
The apprentice ran off to tend the next felled parajista, or militia. Two dozen bodies littered the parapet.
Gian kept Lilia drinking until she spit it into her lap and pushed her away. Lilia tried to get up, stumbled, fell into Gian, and Gian held her up. She smelled of sex and lavender. Lilia clung to her a moment longer.
Her breath came better now, enough to find her feet, but she was delicate, she knew. “Go below,” Lilia said.
“We should both go,” Gian said. “There’s nothing you can do here. This is for Mohrai and Ora Naldri.”
A cry came from further down the wall. Lilia saw a snarl of red mist engulf another parajista.
“Go below,” Lilia said. She pulled her hands away. “Now, Gian.”
Gian’s expression was pained, but she went, looking behind her twice, three times, before she disappeared down the stairwell.
Lilia saw the remaining parajistas, trembling and sweating, their concentration breaking. It was too much – for her and them – to watch this horror.
She limped across the parapet, dragging her bad leg. She sucked at Oma’s breath, pulled it fast and deep. In that glorious, blinding moment she could take a real, full breath of air. Her lungs opened, like she was perfect and powerful. And in that giddy first blush of total power she wanted to burn the whole world down, just because she could.
Below them, the red algae tide deployed twenty minutes earlier had reached the hem of the gate. Red flesh bloomed up the outside of the gates.
The parajistas were stepping back, making more sounds of distress. Dhai did not have the stomachs for fighting. Taigan had told her that again and again, and she hadn’t listened.
“Burn it out!” she yelled. But they had no sinajistas on the wall yet to burn the algae tide. They had only her – raw and untrained.
Lilia let loose the burning breath of
Oma. She drew deep and pushed the breath from her body out onto the gate, tangling it into intricate flaming trefoils with long tails. The massive clouds of mist met the red algae and burst into roaring flame. Just as she let go of Oma, she saw the answering tide of omajistas on the other side.
A solid wall of red mist formed ahead of the ships and moved toward the gates at an astonishing speed.
“Parajistas! Wall!” Naldri ran down the lines of parajistas again, rallying them.
Lilia had no idea what was contained in that red wall launched by the Tai Mora, and would not know until it burst upon them. Fire, choking smoke, pestilence, or something else? She didn’t know everything Oma could do. She had no idea how to counter it.
What if she could build anything she imagined? She brought up her fist, and watched a ball of red mist curl up and away from her skin. She was brimming with Oma, soaked in it like bread left in water.
She could not see if her parajistas had succeeded in forming a wall. She could not see its chinks, its holes, its weaknesses.
“Is it up?” she called to Naldri. He wrung his hands. She realized that no matter how well she planned, the best strategy in the world was nothing if she had no people on the ground who knew how to carry it out. They had not trusted her.
The wall of red was just a hundred paces away.
Lilia spread her arms and opened her mouth and gasped as the star filled her lungs and suffused her skin. Push it out, push it out… push it out… She expelled the breath from her lungs, forcing it out through her body, like vomiting some great formless monster. She had no litany for what she wanted, only will.
Turn it away. Push it back.
The power left her and roiled out across the parapet. She took a breath, but instead of air, drew Oma. She choked.
“Lilia!”
Oma’s breath entangled her. She saw great streamers roiling into her body, taking form only as it touched her bare skin. She tried to scream. But there was nothing. She fell.
Taigan was running toward her. “Fool!” Taigan yelled.
The Worldbreaker Saga Omnibus Page 73
