Vessel

by Sarah Beth Durst

  Aunt Sabisa kissed her on the forehead. “It is good to know. You know how I like to plan ahead. Your mother has laid out appropriate clothes for you. You’d do best to wear them.”

  “Aunt Sabisa . . .” She hadn’t said anything!

  “Goddess or not, I know my Liyana. Your eyes give you away every time. You care too much, my dear. And now you shoulder the weight of the world.” She shook her head. “Bayla, take care of our girl. She is a gift to all of us.”

  Before Liyana could think what to say, Aunt Sabisa swept out of the tent.

  Remarkable woman, Bayla said.

  Liyana did not reply. Feeling numb, she dressed in the clothes that Mother had left: a paneled skirt and an embroidered blouse. She had the blouse halfway over her head when she realized that these were Mother’s wedding clothes, the finest she owned. Gingerly she removed her arms from the sleeves. She laid the blouse back on the blanket and looked for her own clothes.

  “Put it on,” Mother said from the front of the tent.

  Liyana jumped and scooped up the blouse. “But I’ll ruin them. These aren’t for travel.”

  “You may change before you mount. But today, as they prepare to leave, to fight, even to die, the clan will see you as they should. They need that.”

  Your mother is wise, Bayla said. You would be wise to heed her.

  Liyana put on the blouse. Mother arranged her hair so that it fell around her in waves. “No braids, I think. We’ll let them see your full glory. You are not a child anymore, and they must realize that if you are to lead us to battle.”

  “Me? But Korbyn—”

  “The trickster is not ours, and he must return to his own clan to lead them.”

  She hadn’t thought about that, but Mother was right. He’d delivered her to her clan, and he had to gather his. She felt cold at the thought of proceeding without Korbyn. “But . . .”

  “Bayla, speak to her,” Mother said.

  You must be as a goddess, Bayla said. The clan must see me in you.

  Whatever reaction Liyana showed in her face must have been enough to satisfy Mother. Mother nodded and said, “Eat the flatbread and then walk the camp. Do not pack. Do not dirty your hands or your dress. Approve or disapprove of what you see. But be seen.”

  Mother left. Liyana helped herself to the flatbread that cooled by the fire. It was Aunt Andra’s recipe with roasted dates. Each bite melted in her mouth and triggered a hundred memories of birthdays and anniversaries and other celebrations for which Aunt Andra had made her special bread. Liyana savored the flatbread, but it sat as a lump in her stomach.

  I will help you, Bayla said. Her swirling thoughts wrapped around Liyana like a blanket. With the goddess whispering to her, Liyana walked out of the tent to face her clan.

  Bayla coached her, and on behalf of the goddess Liyana greeted men, women, and children whom she had known for her entire life. As Bayla fed her words, Liyana added her knowledge of each person. Eventually the starry-eyed looks of her people drove her back to her family tent. She found Korbyn and Maara there.

  Maara was deep in a trance.

  “She’s contacting other clans with deities,” Korbyn said. “I have asked your chief to send out runners to nearby clans without deities. Word is spreading.”

  “What about your clan?” Liyana asked.

  “After the midday sun has passed, I’ll leave,” he said.

  Liyana felt a pang, but she nodded. She had no right to ask him to stay. “You’ll rejoin us?”

  “That is the point,” Korbyn said, not unkindly.

  She searched for something else to say. “Do you need help?”

  “With my own clan? They’ll be intrigued by the idea of the clans stopping a massive army.” His tone was light, but she thought he looked worried.

  “You don’t think we can do it?” Liyana asked. She had been so caught up with Bayla and then Raan and then her clan. . . . She hadn’t stopped to think about the impossibility of their efforts. Even with the united strength of all the clans, the empire’s army would still vastly outnumber them.

  He hesitated before he answered. “I think we will need to be tricky.”

  The empire does not have deities, Bayla said. We will even the numbers.

  “If they were to attack with full strength . . . it would be ten to one, not in our favor,” Korbyn said. “We have to hope that they will not. If they underestimate us, we may have a chance.” He did not sound certain.

  Liyana paced through the tent. She touched the tarp walls, walked between her family’s sleeping rolls, and picked up and then put down her father’s favorite teapot. Being here didn’t reassure her. She’d thought it would have. But soon all of this would be packed, and they would be on their way to face terrible odds. She thought of Pia and wondered if she was right about how ephemeral they all were.

  “Done,” Maara said, opening her eyes. “It is time for me to rejoin my own clan.” She stood and stretched. “I will see you soon, Bayla. And Liyana.”

  Liyana nodded.

  Without any further discussion or any emotional farewell, Maara left the tent, and Korbyn and Liyana were alone. Or nearly alone.

  “I have never liked good-byes,” Korbyn said. He leaned forward, and Liyana quickly turned her head. His lips brushed her cheek. She couldn’t bring herself to meet his eyes. Her chest felt tight, and it was hard to breathe. “Take care of each other,” he said.

  Liyana nodded again.

  She listened as Korbyn left the tent. Outside were the sounds of the clan packing the tents and preparing the goats for travel. Orders were shouted, and people whistled and laughed and chattered as if this were a trip to the fair.

  He is mine, Bayla reminded her. This body may be yours. But Korbyn is mine.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The Emperor

  The emperor drank water from his canteen as he surveyed the array of clan tents. He didn’t taste the water. The view was as bad as his scouts had reported. At least thirty clans had staked out sites, with more joining them every day.

  He had marched his army across this wasteland without seeing one desert person. But here, a short march away from the mountains, he found them waiting for him, blocking his way to the mountains. He had no doubt that if he tried to bypass them, they would adjust accordingly. Their presence here was not an unfortunate coincidence. They were here to stop him.

  He wondered if Liyana was with them, or if Bayla was.

  “I had hoped to avoid any deaths,” the emperor said.

  General Xevi grunted. “Your Imperial Majesty has inherited your father’s optimism. It is an admirable trait.”

  “But not a realistic one, you believe.” He had hoped that during the journey, his generals would learn to trust him. The emperor caught himself before he sighed. Around them, soldiers were watching him for his reaction. He smoothed his face to project unconcerned interest.

  General Akkon nodded his agreement.

  “We outnumber them ten to one,” General Xevi said. “As you ordered, we have allowed their scouts to return unharmed. By now they must know the size of our force.”

  The emperor heard the disapproval in his voice and ignored it. He had hoped the sheer size of his army would cause the clans to disperse. But instead the clans had pitched their camps as if this were a joyous festival. “Gentlemen, your recommendations,” the emperor said.

  “Cavalry,” General Akkon said.

  He was a man of few words. General Xevi was not. “Indeed. It will show our intent and our power. We hold the remainder of the army in reserve to emphasize our superiority, and we trounce the savages with one elite force.”

  “The ‘savages’ could win,” the emperor pointed out.

  “Extremely unlikely,” General Xevi said. “We have superiority of armament and training. If they had chosen their battle in an area of topographical variation, then I would say they’d have the geographical advantage due to their familiarity. But a flat plain? Their choice of location reveals
their inexperience with battle tactics.”

  “They have resources beyond sheer numbers,” the emperor said.

  General Akkon grunted. “Bedtime stories.”

  “Might I remind you of the horses, as well as the worm that terrorized our finest?” His pet magician had not captured all the deities. The ones who still remained in the Dreaming would not be a problem, but a few had reached their clans successfully. Add in the ones who escaped. . . .

  “Luck,” General Akkon said. “A localized abnormality.”

  “Look at these people,” General Xevi said. He waved his hand at the clans. His jeweled rings flashed in the glaring sun. “They are barely above animals, scratching their lives out of the sand. If they had access to special powers, they would have built cities! We would be facing an advanced culture with civilized tools and weaponry. As it is we are facing the equivalent of our ancestors. Let us show them what the modern man can do.”

  “One strike with one elite force,” General Akkon said.

  “Yes!” General Xevi said. “Shatter their naive belief in their own power. Teach them what it means to stand in the way of the Crescent Empire.”

  The emperor thought about Liyana and pictured her as he’d first seen her, walking into his tent as if she owned it. He hadn’t seen her escape, but he’d heard about it. She had ridden on the back of that monster, the salt worm. She must have been magnificent. He wished he could have seen it. After the chaos had died down, he had not ordered pursuit. Looking at the gathering of clans, he wondered if that had been an error.

  Mulaf had seemed so certain that it was Liyana, not Bayla. But Mulaf was not available now to lend his expertise. He had been unconscious ever since they entered the desert. The doctors had hopes for his recovery—they reported moments of alertness and said he often twitched unlike any coma victim they had ever seen—but they could not identify the cause of his ailment. In his moments of clarity, he was said to be in good spirits, even giddy. Regardless, the man was useless in the moment in which the emperor needed him. The emperor had no one of the desert to mediate. Still he had to try.

  “We will parlay,” the emperor said.

  “They will not listen,” General Akkon said.

  General Xevi nodded vigorously and opened his mouth to expand on that sentiment.

  The emperor interrupted him. “Slaughtering them is a poor welcome to the empire for our future citizens. Send messengers to issue invitations. Invite one representative from each clan.”

  He returned to his tent to prepare his speech for the representatives, but he imagined saying each phrase to Liyana.

  * * *

  One by one the messengers filed into the emperor’s tent. Each held a folded parchment. Each handed the parchment to the emperor, bowed, and retreated without ever meeting the emperor’s eyes. A few sported bruises and broken noses. One limped. None spoke.

  The emperor accepted each parchment and thanked each messenger for his service. He then opened it, read the single line printed or scrawled on it, and laid it in a pile. Finishing, he bowed his head.

  “Your Imperial Majesty?” General Xevi ventured. “What is the response?”

  He swept the parchments off his desk with a swat of his hand and stood up so fast that he tipped over his chair. It crashed backward, and the gilded edges cracked. He stalked to the back of the tent and stared at the broken diamond statues that Liyana had left behind. Liyana had destroyed nearly all of them, even those without deities inside them. Resourceful woman. And stubborn. Like her clans. He’d kept the broken statues to ensure that he did not forget that. He couldn’t underestimate her or the clans.

  He heard the elderly generals bend to scoop the parchments off the floor. Each was stamped or marked with the symbol of a clan: wolf, silk, horse, raven, scorpion, wind, sun, snake, tortoise . . . Each held one sentence: You will not enter the mountains.

  “We must proceed with the aim to minimize casualties,” the emperor said. These were Liyana’s people, not his enemies.

  General Akkon grunted. “Cavalry. Or fifth squadron.”

  Turning to face them, the emperor shook his head. “You misunderstand me. The only way to minimize casualties is to ensure that we win the war, not merely one battle. We must convince them of the impossibility of opposing us now and in future generations. This victory must be swift, decisive, and thorough.”

  “Merciful brutality,” General Xevi said. “Your father would have approved.”

  He thought again of Liyana and wondered what she would say. “I am not doing this for him,” the emperor said. “Spread the word. We attack at dawn.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Liyana woke before dawn. She burst out of her tent and scanned the horizon. Black shadows, the tents of the emperor’s army, still filled the eastern view. Gray blue, the predecessor of the dawn, tinted the east. She saw a flash of distorted stars overhead—a sky serpent twisting in the sky. Ever since the clans and the army had pitched their tents at the foot of the forbidden mountains, the sky serpents had circled overhead. Liyana hoped that they would convince the emperor to retreat. But still he sent his messengers and made his demands.

  Her heart raced, and she didn’t know why. Bayla. There’s something wrong. Something woke us. I don’t know what it is.

  Bayla was silent for a moment, and then she said, I do not see the emperor’s guards.

  Guards typically paced the perimeter of the emperor’s camp. Liyana had gotten used to seeing them, a distant audience, as the clans went about the business of establishing their base. She had also become used to the sounds of the large camps as they drifted across the desert—their horses, their cooks, their hunting dogs, their endless practice drills. It was never quiet. Until now.

  Liyana accepted the magic from Bayla as easily as catching a ball, and she flowed across the desert to the emperor’s encampment. She expected to touch the souls of the sleeping soldiers. . . . But she felt no one. Bayla, they’re gone!

  An army that size cannot vanish. Check further out.

  Keeping herself tethered to her body, Liyana sped beyond the camp. She swept the distant horizon, and she circled the clans’ tents. And then she found them: fanned out on either side of the clans’ tents. The army had split into two forces. Each soldier was shoulder to shoulder with another. Row after row of them marched toward the clans’ tents as if to squeeze the desert people between them.

  Pulling back, Liyana sucked in air to shout, “Attack! Coming from the north and south!” She ran through the camp, sounding the alarm.

  Around her, the men, women, and children from her clan poured out of the tents. As per the plan, young children were shuttled by older children to the center tent. Also in the center was the clan’s precious water supply. Circling the children were those too elderly or infirm to be nimble. They armed themselves with spears and stakes, long-reach weapons that would slow anyone who broke through the outer defenses. All the able-bodied men and women rushed to the edge of camp. Liyana knew this was repeated in other clans with minor variations. For example, in Korbyn’s clan, the children laid traps around their tents, and the elders of Maara’s clan dipped every weapon in scorpion poison.

  Half the clans clustered to the north of camp, and half to the south. Readying their weapons, they waited for the armies to appear. Liyana pushed through the warriors, looking for Korbyn. His clan had dispersed and was distributing a variety of “surprises,” including throwing knives dipped in snake venom and ropes made of tough-as-wire silk that could trip horses. Everyone had a knife, sword, or bow—though as prepared as they all looked, Liyana knew that most had never used a weapon on a person.

  She found Korbyn on the north side. Moving forward, the army stirred a cloud of sand. Each soldier was clad in armor, and each held a weapon with practiced ease. Softly she said to him, “If the soldiers reach us . . .”

  Korbyn nodded. “We won’t let them.”

  He reached out and took her hand, and together they retreated to Korbyn’
s tent. The others deities were already waiting for them—eleven total, including Sendar and Maara. As Liyana and Korbyn entered, they all positioned themselves in a circle on blankets.

  “Since Liyana does not need to be in a trance to work magic, she will coordinate our efforts,” Korbyn informed the others.

  A few deities whispered to one another.

  Sendar scowled. “I will not obey a—”

  Do not prove yourself to be a horse’s ass, Sendar, Bayla said. Out of respect for me, you will cooperate. Liyana repeated her words, and Sendar fell quiet. Other objections were similarly quashed, primarily by Bayla.

  Korbyn squeezed Liyana’s hand. “Be clever, and be quick.”

  Around her, the deities closed their eyes and fell into trances. Liyana felt Bayla disappear for a moment and then return with the familiar flood of magic. Using it, Liyana expanded throughout the tent. Beside her were the souls of the deities. Each flickered like a ball of lightning. She spread further, blanketing the camps of the clans, and then she crossed the desert to touch the frontlines of the two halves of the emperor’s army.

  Circling around the deities, Liyana whispered in the ears of four of them, “Water. Summon water to the surface twenty feet in front of the armies. Create sinkholes and quicksand. Oyri, draw your worms to the water.” The chosen deities pulled the water up from the bedrock. It weakened the sand. Patches of quicksand blossomed in the path of the emperor’s soldiers. Liyana flitted from patch to patch, widening them.

  She ordered four of the deities to stir the winds, and she directed them toward the frontlines. Sandstorms whipped toward the soldiers. Wolves howled within the storms. Guided by Liyana, the deities blocked the storms from touching the desert people and channeled them through the ranks of the emperor’s army.

  Maara called the scorpions from the surrounding desert, and the Snake Clan deity summoned the snakes. Numbering in the thousands, they scurried over the desert floor and swarmed the feet and ankles of the soldiers.