Lilia gaped.
The chamber was far larger than her descent made it seem. The ceiling stretched far above her, a perfect dome decorated with twining vines and figures that she thought were geometrical until Elaiko raised the lantern. The twining designs were stylized Dhai characters, glistening wetly as if made of something organic. The air here was much warmer than above. The walls themselves pulsed as if alive.
A massive pedestal took up the center of the room, ringed in four more, all skinned like the walls and trembling faintly.
“Well, here it is,” Elaiko said. “You wanted to see it. You need to be quick, though. The guard makes rounds again in an hour. We need to be well gone ahead of that.”
Lilia placed her hand on the shimmering green walls. Where the Tai Mora had breached the floor, the wound oozed with a gooey amber sap. Lilia sniffed at some of it that had dropped to the floor: tangy everpine and something more fetid, perhaps fungal. She dared not taste it, but the thought occurred to her. She stepped away from the wound and turned, lantern high.
The pedestal at the center of the room glowed an eerie blue-green. Had her light triggered something within it? She approached and gazed at the great round face of it. There, at the center, was the Dhai word for Kai. Was the Kai supposed to stand here to trigger… whatever was supposed to happen? Surely they would only want… But as she rubbed away the dust and dirt, the symbol became clearer. Not Kai, but something far more abstract: a simple circle with two lines through it. Where had she seen that symbol before? Lilia sneezed at the dust. Tira! Yes, it was the symbol for Tira’s Temple that she had seen on the mosaic map of Dhai laid into the round table in the Assembly Chamber.
The puzzle drew her. The intricate symbols, the niches, the glowing light: it was a strategy game.
Lilia dug into her pocket. Pulled out the little container of the child Kai’s blood. She rubbed again at the Tira symbol at the center of the pedestal, looking for instructions of some kind. Instead: an intricate pattern of raised metal tiles. As she ran her fingers over them, they lit up, bright blue. She moved her fingers the other way, and they lit up, bright green. She tried a few combinations, tapping at the tiles as if they were keys on some instrument. The pattern was easy to recognize. She tapped in the correct sequence her third try, and all the metal tiles sank into the pedestal. The center, too, sank with it, and from beneath each side a shiny device rose. It clacked together: two plates of some substance much like that of the temple walls. The two plates formed a human face devoid of detail, as if stretched from the mold of a newborn babe. Lilia was not entirely sure what to do next.
She pressed her hand to the face.
It glowed green, faintly, then dimmed.
Nothing else happened.
Elaiko made a little startled noise behind her. Lilia glanced back to see the woman already had one hand on the ladder, as if ready to flee. She did not blame her.
Lilia uncapped the canister of coagulated blood, which was now the sticky consistency of thick mud, and rubbed each of her right fingers into it, then smeared some on her palm for good measure.
She pressed her hand to the face.
A brilliant blue light blinded her.
Lilia yelped. Leapt back. Pressed her hands to her face.
A shushing roar, like the opening of a great dam, filled her ears. Elaiko screamed.
Then silence.
Lilia opened her eyes.
The face, fully aware now, animated, the ghostly features dancing across the mold, peered at her. Said something in a language Lilia did not recognize.
“Get away from it!” Elaiko cried.
Lilia waved her away. “Who are you?” Lilia asked the face.
“Who are you?” it countered. The voice did not come from the mold, but from all around them. It made Lilia shiver.
“I…”
The face trembled. The misty countenance blew away, like a cloud in a storm. The rushing of water sounded again, and the face disappeared back into the pedestal, which closed behind it.
“What was–” Elaiko began.
A shimmering form grew out of the pedestal. Lilia took another three steps back until she bumped into Elaiko.
The ghostly specter wore a long flowing robe and had knotted hair tangled with green ribbons and bits of glass or stone. It did not stand on the pedestal, but floated just above it, and the gaze it gave Lilia was glacial.
“Who are you to try and destroy me?” it demanded.
“We weren’t,” Lilia said. “You are… you’re… what are you? A temple keeper? Like… Ti-Li? The woman unstuck in time?”
“I am the creature. The temple keeper is no more. With Oma’s rise, the temple keepers were no longer captive here. They were able to escape to their own times. They have left only the creatures, the beasts. I am the Creature of Tira. What are you? You are not Kai, though you have summoned me.”
“Just… Lilia. We were here… you know how to stop people coming here? From other worlds? These worlds are all coming here and killing. They are–”
“Oma has risen.”
“Yes.”
“Why have you injured me?”
Elaiko said, “The Tai Mora broke in here, not us! They’re trying to stop others from entering our world. They’re going to use you to do it.”
“I wanted to speak to you,” Lilia said, “to see if it was really true, that the temples were alive.”
“Of course we are alive,” the creature said. “More so now that Oma is risen. Why are you still tangling with other worlds when you could simply send them back to their world yourselves with the power of the engines?”
Lilia came forward again. “We could… send back the Tai Mora? To their dead world?”
“Of course. All things are possible, if the creatures work together. We could sink the continent, if you willed it. If the Kai… but… No, you are not the Kai.”
“No, but I know where she is,” Lilia said.
“You can do anything you like,” it said, waving a hand. “You could reshape oceans. Break the world. Sear the sky.”
“But I don’t want to do any of that,” Lilia said. “I want to get rid of the Tai Mora.”
“And you could do that,” the creature said, curling a lip. “But that is far less imaginative than I’d hoped. All they ever want to do is kill.”
“How?” Lilia asked.
A great amber light filled the room, bright as daylight. Lilia shielded her eyes.
A roiling mist bubbled up from the floor and slowly formed a massive series of elliptical rings on which rode twinkling orbs of all sizes and types: greens, blues, reds, swirling with orange waves and flaky white patchwork. The orbs moved along the elliptical orbits, all spinning and sparking. It was like a massive orrery, so tremendous that its dimensions clearly exceeded the size of the room. Many of the misty parts ended abruptly in the walls and ceiling.
“When they made us,” the creature said, “we broke the worlds apart. This was not their intended purpose, but it was the final result. Infinite worlds. Infinite timelines. So very many choices. Things go wrong in many of these worlds. What none of them understood, then, was that when their worlds began to break, they would feel compelled to come home, to Raisa, here, where it all began.”
A misty blue-green orb was faintly visible all around the creature, as if she were standing now inside a soap bubble. “No single person has the power to move and shape the worlds,” the creature said. “There are five great machines, our engines. These temples. Each driven by the power of those who can call on each satellite.”
“Five?” Lilia said. “The People’s Temple? The Tai Mora have dredged it up.”
“Yes, the fifth temple was lost to you after the last rising of Oma. The temple of the People. When the other beasts are equipped with the proper bearers of the satellites’ powers, the People’s Temple will be fully activated. It will have enough power to do… whatever you like. Send all of those from the other worlds back to their own spheres within
the orrery, if that is your wish.”
“This temple,” Lilia said, “the People’s Temple. How was it lost in the first place?”
“I can only tell you what your predecessors spoke of in my presence. Faith and Hahko believed the power too great, that using it would corrupt the society they were trying to build, inciting violence and hatreds and powerful rivalries. They believed the cycles should be maintained, that it was not their place to alter them. I suspect this is why they ensured the temple was forgotten.”
“Wait,” Lilia said. “You’re talking about… Faith Ahya? And Hahko? The first Kai?”
“You met Faith Ahya?” Elaiko said. “But… but I have so many questions!”
The creature waved a hand. The misty image of the orrery blew away, curling up like smoke. The white lights dimmed, leaving them under the glowing blue of the creature alone in the dark, musty chamber. “I can tell you only what I know from times before. You have made a mess of everything, cycle after cycle.”
“Not this cycle,” Lilia said. “We’re going to do it properly this time.”
“What are you talking about?” Elaiko said. “We have to stop what the Tai Mora are doing here. We have to… I don’t know! Burn the temples? Prevent the Tai Mora from getting in? Seal these back up? You heard what it said! They could break whole continents.”
“Don’t you understand?” Lilia said, turning to her. “We don’t have to wait for anyone else to reshape this world, to make things right. We can do it ourselves.”
15
Taigan had seen many strange things in his extended life on this strange world, but the great half-severed ark jutting up from what was once the stronghold of Kuallina was among the most impressive in his memory.
He had meant to make his way directly to Oma’s Temple, but he had been close enough to Kuallina on his ride up that when the mountain fell from the sky, the tremors took him from his stolen mount. The terrified creature wisely ran in the opposite direction while Taigan found his footing on the newly buckled turf. That slowed him down considerably.
This far inland, he found more Tai Mora soldiers, including many clearly recruited from countries beyond Tai Mora. That made his journey far easier. He murdered a soldier who was about his height and tugged on the ill-fitting uniform. This let him release his glamor, which had increasingly become an annoyance.
While he still got looks along the road, riding the Tai Mora bear outfitted in the red and purple livery of whatever guard or regiment he was supposed to be from, a simple hazing ward made it more difficult for them to recall him. A neat little trick, the hazing ward. They had the added bonus of being nearly impossible to detect by another jista unless they actively sought it out. That scullery girl’s mother had been clever to use it.
The mountain intrigued him. The stir of soldiers around the area drew him in. He left his bear corralled with others and took up a perch in a collapsed heap of bonsa trees to oversee the activity.
The double helix of the suns had begun to set. From where he sat, the suns cast the looming shadow of the mountain over his position. The air cooled quickly as the light was drenched from the world. From this vantage he observed that the mountain was an organic ship of some kind, like those sailed by the Aaldians, but fully enclosed, as if meant to travel underwater – or through the air, he supposed, as this one clearly had. He wondered if omajistas had hurled the thing through the rent in the sky. Creating a tear that large and moving an object of that size would have taken a good deal of power and resourcefulness. And clearly not all of the ark had made it intact. The top of it was shorn neatly, as if the gate had closed too soon behind it.
As he observed the comings and goings of the soldiers setting up the perimeter, he saw a tear open in an area designated for such travel just below. It was staked off by itself, the boundary set with red-painted stones warning others not to tread into the space for fear of being suddenly split apart like the ark.
A woman came through; tall and lean, wide in the shoulders, with a long sloping nose and the dead-eyed stare Taigan had always associated with Maralah. Several soldiers hurried to her side once she cleared the stone circle, including a broad-hipped woman in a long red robe that would have marked her an omajista even if Taigan had not seen the subtle play of the satellite’s breath around her. Was this a general of some kind, then? Behind her came a young bearded man; Taigan saw the blooming red mist about him, as well. Another omajista. How many did the Tai Mora have? He half-expected them to keep coming through the tear, one after another after another, but it was just the two: the female general and the male omajista.
Taigan followed their progress as they met with a small delegation under a hastily erected tent. The meeting intrigued him. He slipped from his perch as dusk settled, and kept to the edges of the activity.
As the general and the omajistas moved together toward the ark, flanked by half a dozen soldiers, he followed in the shadows, seamlessly inserting himself into the rear of the retinue. His hazing ward would cause their gazes to flit right over him unless he asserted himself.
They stepped through a massive split in the skin of the structure and into a dim underbelly lit with brilliant green phosphorescent lichens. The glow transformed the group into something otherworldly, which was perhaps appropriate.
The group picked their way through corridors scattered with broken glass and some gooey vital fluid leaking from the broken skin of the great craft. The party came upon two omajistas, one who appeared Dhai, another who could have passed for Saiduan. They wore tattered blue robes smeared with the brownish secretion from the walls. One bore a wrap around her head, which Taigan found odd. An injury? Could they not heal themselves?
“Wait until we announce you,” the tall, Saiduan-looking one said. Her accent was Dhai.
The other passed directly through the skin of the craft behind them. The skin seemed to thin to admit her, then thicken again as she passed. Very clever. He liked the cleverness of these people. When she returned, they were admitted. Taigan lingered still at the back of the group, wondering how much longer he could keep up the ruse. The dimness helped.
He crept through just as the door began to thicken again behind the Tai Mora group, and kept to the back of the new room, clinging tightly to the shadows. It was dim in here as well; the only light was the phosphorescent flora lining the tops of the walls and a single flame fly lantern at a table in the center of the room. The room itself had, perhaps, once been grand, before the crash.
The table was partially cracked, and the walls here oozing just like those in the hall. Scattered goods – clothing, weapons – lay stacked against trunks that had burst their locks on impact, or in drawers that popped open despite stops that had clearly been designed for shipboard life.
Six more people waited inside, five of them in boiled leather armor shot through with silver, clearly there to protect the sixth at their center. She was a wiry woman, with her left arm held against her chest in a sling. Taigan noted the hands belied her age: strong hands with slender fingers slashed with fine white scars and discoloration that indicated bare-knuckled fighting. Her dark hair was pulled back from a handsome face which Taigan at once found deeply familiar, though it took him a moment to place her. Something to do with a lip curled at Taigan, as if Taigan were more dangerous than she. It was the same look the woman now turned on Kirana; distaste on the lips, but a hint of fear in the eyes.
Ah, of course, how could he have forgotten that sneer?
“I take it you are Gian?” Kirana said, nodding at the sneering woman, whose face smoothed at being so critically considered.
“Chief Commissar Gianlynn Mursia,” the woman corrected. “Only my mother and my consorts call me Gian, and you are neither.”
“We have come to know you by the moniker.”
“And you are Kirana, the tyrant.”
“Empress,” Kirana said, “if we are using titles. Kai is also an appropriate title. But come now, you and I are not so different that we shou
ld be formal. We want the same things, and we have done much to achieve them. Few other worlds have been as successful as ours, not even this one.”
“I heard they fell without a fight,” Gian said.
Taigan prickled at that. Saiduan had fought them for years, admirably and honorably. And not so honorably, when the fight called for it.
“Those who remain are pacifists,” Kirana said. “But you and I are clearly not. We have both achieved much. Your ark is an incredible feat of engineering. I understand your intentions may be similar to mine. To find a home. To begin again.”
Gian watched her.
Kirana continued, “I know you are in a sore place. You would not have agreed to see me, otherwise.”
“My people won’t be slaves.”
“Nor will I ask that of you.”
“You’re a flesh dealer. A tyrant. There is no compromise with flesh dealers and tyrants. You chose to build an army ten years ago, when the worlds began to fail. You chose to murder and destroy. We chose to build an ark. We chose to save what we loved, not murder an entire world. We are nothing alike.”
“There are plenty of places on this world for you,” Kirana replied. “You don’t need to settle here. What I offer is, perhaps… a truce. We are looking to seal the ways between the worlds. Surely you understand that the more worlds that come after us, the more contentious our settlement here will become. Constant war. Strife. Famine. Famine, especially. But you and I, together, pooling our resources – we can close the ways.”
“Impossible. No one’s done it. Not during any cycle.”
“We have the knowledge. I simply need… a few more jistas. Omajistas, especially.”
“You cannot buy them! We are not–”
Kirana held up her hand. “I’m not seeking to buy them. I am, truly, offering you the chance to work together. You can be free of us, after. If you will but… tolerate us, as we will tolerate you, for another month, two at the very most, until Para has risen. You will need that time to recover here, anyhow. If we are to be temporary neighbors, we best work together.”
The Worldbreaker Saga Omnibus Page 121
