She broke off every branch of the tree but those that held the body. Then stepped back to regard it. A lone bird sat atop the tree, just above the body, eyeing her as if she would steal its meal.
“You alive?” she asked. The girl was very familiar. Twisted foot, a soft new left hand, and a forgettable face covered in shiny little scars. Was this Lilia?
The body’s eyes opened.
“You Lilia?” she asked.
The girl gave a sluggish nod. “Yes. You…” Her eyes widened. “You aren’t… No.”
“What have you done to me?”
“I don’t… know?”
“I was in a fucking box!”
Lilia huffed and gagged. She thought the girl was having convulsions, a stroke, but no, she was laughing.
“The box… it was you in the box…” Lilia said. “Oh, Oma, you think you’re so funny.”
“Why is it…” She stopped. A thunderous understanding came over her. A tree. A mirror. This girl’s scarred face. She sank to her knees. “Oh no,” she said.
“I didn’t know,” Lilia said. “I didn’t know it was you in the box. You were supposed to be some great warrior.”
“I hope you didn’t overpay.”
Lilia wheezed again. “Please get me down. This tree is killing me.”
“Why should I, after what you’ve done?”
“Because we’re bound, that’s what Kalinda said. If I die, you die.”
“Maybe I want to die.”
“Do you?” Lilia huffed. Closed her eyes. “How many times do you really want to die, Zezili Hasaria?”
Zezili pressed a hand to her own throbbing shoulder. A searing pain began to work its way into her back. The same places Lilia bore injuries.
“I chose to die,” Zezili said. “But it was under false pretenses.”
“So get revenge,” Lilia said. “That’s what I am going to do.”
“If I get you down from there, what’s next?”
“I have no idea.”
“What if I just want to murder everyone who wronged me?”
Lilia huffed and snorted. “I can help you with that.”
20
Anavha sat at the end of a large bed that took up most of the narrow room that the man called Suari had shoved him into. A slim window gave him a glimpse of the world outside, but only just. It didn’t make it feel less like a cell.
He was already shivering, clutching his hands in his lap, conflicted about what he should do.
Natanial had told him he would be free, not some slave. He hadn’t understood much of what was said with the Empress, but getting hauled off by Suari and shoved into a room, alone, with no explanation, did not bode well. He desperately wanted to trust Natanial, but who was Natanial next to the Empress? How much power did he truly have? Anavha knew he had a very limited amount of time to make a decision, and the knowledge of that made him sweat.
He always waited too long, until it was too late. Zezili would have been bold. Zezili was always so good at making decisions.
The wall in front of him trembled. Anavha shifted his gaze and stared at the rippling surface. Was this another quake, like that one when the mountain fell from the sky? No, he wasn’t shaking. Just… the wall…
A boy tumbled out of the wall.
Anavha shrieked and leapt onto the bed.
The boy on the floor groaned and rubbed at the arm he had fallen on. He sat up. It was the boy from the foyer, the one with the broken knees who spoke Dorinah, like all the Dhai seemed to.
“How did you get in here?” Anavha said.
“I… Oh no,” he said. “This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. Dasai… he’s going to murder me. They’re going to kill me for this. Sina, take me swiftly.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Keep your voice down,” he said. “Please. They are going to be looking for me. And when they find me…”
“What did you do?”
The boy struggled to his feet. Anavha got up and helped him.
“Thank you,” he said. “I’m Roh. You’re Anavha?”
Anavha nodded.
“Did you understand what they were saying, up there? About warding you?” Roh asked.
“No. They just threw me in here and–”
“They are going to ward you like they did me,” he said. “You will be bound to the Empress. You won’t be able to hurt her. Betraying her will cause pain. It’s terrible. I want to… do terrible things, but I can’t… I can’t…”
“Natanial said nothing bad would happen to me. He’d protect me.”
“That soldier up there? He’s a mercenary,” Roh scoffed.
“He’s looked after me–”
“Has he? If you had not believed that, where would you be right now?”
Anavha sat back on the bed, distraught. He would have been home in Aaldia, cooking or curled up in bed with Nusi. “He said I was free. It was my own decision.”
“Well, I’d make another decision on your own, now,” Roh said. “I need to find a way out of here.” He went to the window, peered out. Tried to shove his shoulder through, but it was far too narrow. “Do you have any extra clothes?” he asked. “Maybe I could–”
“I can get us out,” Anavha said.
“How?”
“I just… I don’t know where we’d go. Home, for me, but… people are falling from the sky. Natanial said if I joined the Empress, I could stop it. Now, I don’t know…”
“Listen,” Roh said, and he took Anavha by the shoulders and peered at him. He was a beautiful boy, Anavha saw, sad and broken, with large eyes and long lashes, skin dry and flaking from too much stress and sun, but very pretty nonetheless. Anavha knew very well what those with power did to pretty boys. “There’s a Dhai resistance. You know who the Dhai are? Before the Tai Mora came–”
There was a shout from the hall. The sound of pounding feet.
“Where exactly are these Dhai?” Anavha asked.
“What? I… I don’t know. The Woodland? Somewhere.”
“I can only take us to places I’ve been,” Anavha said. Roh’s frantic movement and warbling tone made him anxious. “Well, sometimes I end up… elsewhere, but that’s if something is wrong. But I’ve gotten very good at taking myself places I’ve been.”
Roh ceased his pacing. “Where in Dhai have you been?”
“We arrived on the plateau, out there, near the camp with all the soldiers in it.”
“Directly onto the plateau?” Roh gaped. “You… you opened a wink? You’re an omajista!”
Anavha winced. He still did not like that word. “That’s what they say. I suppose so. I can’t get to other worlds, though, just… this one. Places here.”
Roh went to the wall and pressed his forehead against it. Then his palms. He murmured something in Dhai that had the reverent tone of a prayer of thanks.
“All right,” Roh said. “Can you take us to the plateau?”
“But, there are soldiers there and–”
“From the plateau, you’ll be able to see into the valley, right?”
“I… suppose, yes.”
“Then you can wink us into the valley. And from the valley you can see–”
“Woods. Oh!” Anavha considered that. “You are very clever.”
“I know,” Roh said. More shouting from the hall. “Can you hurry? What do you need from me?”
“I don’t… I’m not sure…”
“You can always come back,” Roh said. “Please. I can’t.”
His eyes were so very beautiful. Anavha nodded. He stepped away from the bed and concentrated on the terrible Tordinian poetry, as Coryana, the teacher Natanial introduced him to, had taught him, and as he had practiced all this time.
The air split in two. On the other side was the broken yellow grass of the plateau, and a sea of soldiers inside the temporary barracks and outbuildings just a few paces distant.
Roh said, “Do we just–”
The door burst open.
/>
Anavha gasped. The wink wavered.
Roh heaved himself forward and tumbled through the rent in reality. Fell face first on the grass on the other side.
Two of the Tai Mora guards pushed into the room. Anavha leapt after Roh. Grabbed him and helped him up. They began to run across the grass, Anavha half-pulling him.
Roh grimaced, clearly in terrible pain. “Close the wink! Close the wink!”
But Anavha was too startled. He kept running. The guards came through after them, and behind the guards, someone else, a hulking beast of a hairy shadow.
Saradyn pushed the two Tai Mora out of the way and began to gain on Anavha and Roh.
“What does he want?” Anavha hissed.
“Open another!” Roh pointed. “The valley, there, open another!”
“I can’t see–”
But the edge of the plateau came into abrupt focus. They were moving too fast now. Anavha heard the thundering of Saradyn’s great feet. The heaving of his breath. The Tai Mora, too, were coming. More and more pouring from the wink that Anavha was still too flustered to close. He needed to let go of the threads, release the… Oh no, they were at the edge, he needed another wink. Concentrate, concentrate, another spell…
“Anavha!” Roh yelled.
They came to the very edge of the plateau. Anavha gripped Roh’s hand tightly and bent the world.
A wink appeared, a jagged slash opening there at the edge of the plateau. Anavha and Roh crashed through it, so fast and hard they smeared up dirt and loam on the other side. Anavha lost his breath.
“Close it!” Roh gasped, crawling forward. “Close it and open another!”
Anavha could see nothing but dirt and trees. Heard the rush of the river. He could not get his bearings.
“Anavha!” Roh pulled at him.
Anavha rolled over just in time to see Saradyn leap through the wink after them. Saradyn babbled something at them. Anavha tried to concentrate, tried to untangle the threads of Oma holding the wink open. At least a dozen Tai Mora were rushing toward them across the plateau, only paces away now.
“Anavha!” Roh tried to heave himself up.
Saradyn took hold of him. Roh squealed, but Saradyn only righted him and said something, something that made Roh’s eyes big.
Anavha concentrated on the wink. Focused on the little breaths of red mist. The first of the Tai Mora was close enough that he could see the sweat on her face. The hunger in her gaze. She lifted her wrist, and a willowthorn sword spiraled out, coming straight for Anavha’s face.
“Let it go!” Roh said.
The wink went out.
A severed hunk of the willowthorn sword landed at Anavha’s feet. He collapsed in the dirt, panting. “That was–”
Saradyn yanked him up. “Go,” he said, in Dorinah.
“We need to keep moving,” Roh said. “How many more of those can you do?”
“I… don’t know,” Anavha said. “I’m dizzy. I need to… eat.”
“Away,” Saradyn said, pointing up the hill.
“I… can’t,” Roh said.
Saradyn gestured for him. “Up!” he said.
Roh clambered onto Saradyn’s back. Anavha was a little jealous. He was so tired of traveling.
“Just to the top,” Roh said. “They will be coming down after us. We can rest over that rise, until you get your strength back.”
Anavha found that his hands were trembling, but Saradyn was already moving, carrying Roh, and he feared being left behind. Anavha glanced back once, at the severed bit of willowthorn in the mud.
By the time they reached the top of the rise, Anavha was out of breath. They hunkered down on the other side. Saradyn hummed something, some Tordinian song no doubt. Roh rubbed at his own knees, wincing.
“How much do you know about your friend Natanial?” Roh asked.
“He helped me, that’s all.”
“How did you meet him?”
“That was… well, it was complicated.”
“How do you know Saradyn?”
Anavha grimaced. “That’s also complicated. It’s a very awful story.”
“We have a few minutes.”
“Well… it was… a misunderstanding. Natanial kidnapped me and took me to Saradyn. Saradyn used to be some kind of king, in Tordin. Now he’s very mad though.”
“Lot of that going around,” Roh said. He eyed Saradyn. “What’s all this he says about ghosts?”
“He can tell who is from this world and who isn’t, that’s what Natanial said. He can see people’s… ghosts. Images from their past, I guess.”
“Natanial kidnapped you and you still trusted him?”
“He… let me go.”
Roh shook his head. Muttered something in what was probably Dhai. “Let me know when you can open a wink again. We have to keep going.”
“But where?” Anavha asked. “No one knows where these rebel Dhai are, do they? If they did, the Empress would have found them.”
“I have a good idea we won’t need to find them,” Roh said. “They’ll find us. But it’s likely to be north, near the coast. That’s where I’d have gone, if I were Lilia.”
“Who is this Lilia?”
Roh looked away, off into the woods. “She was my friend.”
“Is she still?”
“I don’t know. But it’s worth the risk to find out. Are you ready?”
Anavha closed his eyes and reached for the burning thread of Oma. Took a breath. Held the power beneath his skin.
“Yes,” he said.
21
“I was supposed to protect him,” Natanial said, slogging his way through the rolling grass of the plateau, the jistas and guards from the temple just ahead of him, Monshara grumbling beside him. “Now he’s gone, Saradyn’s gone, that little boy is gone. That’s not on me. That’s on your empress and her temple’s terrible security.”
“She’s going to be pissed,” Monshara said. “That boy could traverse through the temple like a specter.”
“I should never have brought him,” Natanial said. “I failed him. I went after him for foolish, selfish reasons. Just like Zezili.”
“Maybe he’s just gone home,” Monshara said. “I’m the one here looking like a fool. She’ll want my head.”
“This is such a fucking nightmare.”
The Empress herself met them in the front garden. She was yelling at the jistas about securing the temple against omajistas. When her gaze found Natanial she stabbed a finger at him.
“Here we go,” Monshara muttered.
“The two of you,” Kirana said, “come with me to the Sanctuary. Right now.” She brought two soldiers with her, ones he recognized from upstairs, and several more he took to be jistas of one type or another.
The Sanctuary was a marvel; Natanial hadn’t seen anything like it in all his travels. The great dome of glass filtered the light of the double helix of the suns. The bloody red eye of Oma stared down balefully, precisely centered over the stained-glass representation of the satellite that had been worked into the ceiling… how long ago? Another cycle ago, perhaps, many cycles, the first cycle, if the rumors were to be believed. They had built these temples knowing exactly where Oma would appear in the sky.
Altars to the Dhai gods, the satellites, still ringed the central pedestal. Stone lanterns circled each altar. There was an ancient library here, filling the eastern stretch of the room, and dozens of tables piled with books and papers and diagrams.
An old man waited for them, hands stuffed in the pockets of his tunic.
“Empress,” he said immediately, and made to cross to her, but she held up her hand.
“Hold there, Dasai,” she said. “Close the doors, Monshara.”
She did, leaving the four of them alone in the great space, their voices echoing. Natanial was very aware of his own breath. He let his gaze travel up the green skin of the temple to the domed glass again, shielding his eyes from Oma’s light. The other satellites were visible, Tira and Sina, at th
e outer edges of the dome.
“You all brought a good many messes into my temple,” Kirana said. “All at once.”
“I apologize,” Dasai said, “but as you can see, the boy can converse with these temples if we–”
“I get it,” Kirana said. “Monshara, you can see you’re not the only one I’m pissed at. That boy shouldn’t have been able to channel. Suari should have put a Song of Unmaking on him. That’s his fuckup and I’ll have words with him. Dasai, I want you out of here. Pack up your little friends and get back to Caisau. I’ve no need of you here.”
“But Empress, this boon–”
“You brought me nothing,” she spit. The temple seemed to tremble at that, but it may have been Natanial’s imagination. “You are creeping perilously close here to being suspect. A year it took you to get here, after you knew what he was?”
“It’s very complicated. I–”
“You have your own little flesh deals, yes,” the Empress said. “I know about your scheming in the north. I know that you’re looking to consolidate power. I’ve no time for that. Madah? Oravan? Light him up please.”
“This is–” Dasai sputtered.
Madah flicked her wrist, releasing a willowthorn sword that wrapped around her wrist and pressed back against Dasai. She maneuvered him away from the tables.
The air heaved.
Dasai burst into flames. He shrieked, once, long and loud, bringing his arms up even as the flesh seared away, curling his arms into long claws. The body collapsed, still simmering, mostly charred bone and papery flesh, sizzling fat. The smell made Natanial’s eyes water.
“And you,” Kirana said, rounding on Natanial and Monshara.
Monshara said, “I have ever been loyal. You know that.”
“I do,” Kirana said, folding her arms. “It’s why you’re alive. But you,” she said, jabbing a finger at Natanial. “You I don’t know. Monshara says it was your idea to bring that boy here, and the old man.”
“I honestly thought it would help your campaign.”
“And why do you want to help me, Tordinian? Or are you Aaldian?”
“A bit of both,” Natanial said. “I’m a mercenary. That’s true. I like to align myself with the strongest players.”
The Worldbreaker Saga Omnibus Page 126
