by Sam Farren
“Oi, Akela! Wanna help us track down a long-forgotten temple and take a share of the gold?” Tizo asked as she approached.
Akela stared blankly and smiled pleasantly, turning to me.
“She asked if you want to come on a treasure hunt,” I said, translating for her.
“Ah! Of course. I am always enjoying time spent with Tizo, yes. She is always making terrible decisions that are somehow working in our favour,” Akela said, nodding enthusiastically for Tizo's benefit. “Only, I am needing to be back by tomorrow morning. I am having a job I must attend to. Four whole days of being someone's shield of meat. But I am being paid well for it, do not be doubting that.”
I'd studied the map a dozen times over. I was used to being gone for days on end a few times a month, but the temple wasn't far, only well-hidden.
“We'll be back before it's dark,” I assured her.
Tizo picked a crew of twelve for the trip, not too eager to split the profits she'd already exaggerated a dozen times over in her head. I didn't want to imagine how she'd react if her faith in Varn didn't pay off, and the map ended up leading us in circles around the jungle.
We headed out before anyone could ask too many questions, sailing east along the coast, where the towering cliffs gave way to jungle so thick it was difficult to imagine that anything could fit within it, let alone an entire temple. Work tended to, I leant against the railing, eyes fixed on the clear green-blue of the sea, water churning white along the edge of the ship.
Brightly coloured fish darted beneath the surface, moving like paint on glass, and I traced the waves back to the horizon, not for one moment accepting that a single stretch of water connected us to Asar. When I was on the sea, it was impossible to believe I'd ever been anywhere else; once upon a time, I'd thought I might find work in the farms stretching out beyond Mahon, but there wasn't anywhere else for me, anywhere but the sea; and until we cast anchor, using row-boats to reach the narrow strip of beach, I was home.
“Perhaps we are finding that Isjin is taking a nap in this temple, yes?” Akela said, slapping me on the back when my feet didn't want to shift from the sand. “Or a real phoenix! How much are you thinking they are paying for that?”
Ten minutes in and Akela was the only one in high spirits. The path drawn across the map was clear, but the jungle proved to be close to impossible to navigate. A century of heat coiled beneath the canopy, and we were drenched within minutes, arms scratched by low-hanging branches and grasping shrubs, and no matter how we hacked at the thick undergrowth ahead of us, the jungle retaliated tenfold, drawing in closer.
A thousand insects decided to bite me in particular, and someone grumbled, “No wonder this temple ain't never been found. There's no getting through here.”
“If this is a hoax, Varn's gonna know we're ain't happy,” Tizo said, to a half-hearted murmur of agreement. We'd stopped caring about gold, only wanting to be free of the jungle. “Damn traitor.”
Two hours later, I'd finished off half my water, and was strongly considering plastering myself against Akela's back and letting her carry me the rest of the way. We'd taken more turns than the map suggested we should, but Tizo assured us she knew the way back. It was only a matter of following the smell of sea-salt, she'd said. I didn't know how she could smell anything over the dirt and sweat.
Relief came in the form of fruit the red-yellow-green birds had yet to stumble across, and refreshed, we carried on, until the ground beneath us abruptly turned into a sharp incline. The trees ran down the slope, canopy now beneath us, and all of us stared out across the green, until we saw it: the very top of a sandstone temple, pushing through the leaves.
The trouble we'd had tracking it down was set aside in favour of cheering, and led by Tizo, everyone charged down, hacking at branches and ripping vines out of their path. I trailed behind, not interested in gold, and found that I wouldn't have been disappointed, if that was what I'd come along for.
The temple was similar to the one in Mahon, though far bigger. The edges of the steps had been worn and rounded, and the entrances no longer held their original shape, rubble filling the doorways. If there'd been carvings decorating the outside, those were lost to time, but the golden phoenixes were there, just as we'd been promised.
They stood on stone pedestals, some the size of my fist, others so large they could've easily wrapped their wings around me. No one asked why they'd been left there, why the temple had been abandoned and forgotten so suddenly. They were only interested in prying the phoenixes free of the stone that held them up, but I was drawn to the dark of a doorway.
Carefully stepping over the rubble, I gripped the doorway, looked left and right down the corridor, and hoped nothing had made its den in there. It was dim inside, but the few windows let in light enough for me to find my way. I walked with a hand splayed across the wall, feeling the mismatched tiles of a mosaic beneath my fingertips. The colours were almost entirely faded, but I made out vague figures: a woman standing with open arms, red wax dripping between her fingers; a man with a cloth folded across his eyes, reaching for the sun; a child kneeling at the edge of an ocean.
I made my way deeper into the temple, unable to work out why it had been left behind. Many rooms and corridors were blocked off, but the destruction in the temple had been dealt by time and time alone. No longer able to hear the others outside, I came to a corridor where the only window was blocked by a bird's nest, and I barely saw the shape of the comets I felt carved into the walls, rushing through the stars, towards Bosma.
I didn't know what I was looking for. The people of Canth seemed so content when they spoke of Isjin; perhaps I wanted to understand why.
Something drove me on, and I felt my chest tighten before I realised that something other than my footsteps filled the corridor.
A low, sorrowful note rang out, passing someone's lips as though it was the only truth left within the world. For a moment, it sounded the way the ocean felt, when I stared down at the clear waters, at home atop the rocking waves, and then words tumbled out. A language I'd never heard washed over me, words rendered worthless by the weight of the tune. It was old, older than the temple, as though it had been built up around the song itself.
“Hello?” I called to the darkness, but found myself sad to have spoken. To have interrupted the song, if only for a second. It was close to me, too close, as though it had been sung to me every night as a child.
I took a step forward and the song stopped.
The shadows moved, and though I was no longer alone, I wasn't frightened, either.
A woman stepped forward, and the first thing I saw – the only thing I could look at – were her eyes. They were white as the moon, obscured by a haze that became her, and though I didn't want to weep, I couldn't imagine how I could bring myself to smile.
Long, black hair tumbled in waves from beneath the red swathe of cloth she wore wrapped around her head, long red cloak clinging to her, in spite of the heat. She looked at me and her lips parted, fingers pressing gently to my cheeks. I didn't flinch, didn't take a step back. Something had welled up within me, a warmth the sun couldn't contend with, a feeling of ease, of belonging, that the sea hadn't brought me.
“Aejin yu ka Aejin,” the woman said softly, staring into my eyes as if they were as brilliant as her own. I felt the words more than I understood them, and tilting her head to the side, she said, “Hakora yora. You are still brand-new.”
“I...” Trembling hands found her wrists. “I know you.”
The woman reclaimed her hands and stepped back.
“You know yourself,” she simply said, and no matter how I longed for it, she didn't repeat those strange words that had cut right through me.
“Northwood!” Akela's voice echoed through the temple, tumbling roughly through the present.
The woman in front of me lifted her brow and I turned, stepped back and called out, “I'm here.”
I glanced around the corner and saw Akela wrapping her arms aroun
d a great, golden phoenix, as if to stop it from taking flight.
“The others, they are wanting to know if there is anything worth taking in here,” she said.
“It's just stone. There's nothing else left,” I said, turning to find the woman gone. “There was...”
I said nothing more, stared blankly into the darkness, and Akela stepped in front of me, saying, “Northwood, something is wrong?”
“There was a bird. It... it made me jump,” I said, knowing there was no point in heading into the darkness, deeper into the temple. The woman was gone, and I felt no different than I had before seeing her, before hearing her.
Akela furrowed her brow and said, “I did not wish to be making you think that there really was a phoenix inside,” as she laughed at my expense. I managed a smile and followed her out, unsure of why I was keeping the woman's presence to myself. Back out in the light, I could almost convince myself that I'd been alone in there; that no one would ever believe otherwise.
The journey back was far easier, even with golden birds to carry. I was given what remained, the smallest phoenix with barely any details etched into it, and we headed back through the ever-thickening jungle, coming out on the beach a mile from Tizo's ship.
Akela sat in the sand as the rowboat ferried people back and forth, and I picked shells out of the surf. I washed away the sand as the water lapped at my hands, and threw back anything that didn't shimmer. I slipped the more interesting shells into my pocket, taking better care of them than the gold phoenix I'd let sink into the sand.
“If it is tomorrow and you are not busy, perhaps you are coming with me,” Akela said, watching me pace up and down the beach, toes in the water. “The crew, they are not having a problem with you coming, if I am pretending I am needing you there. Not that I am not appreciating your help with the translation, yes, but sometimes, I am even more intimidating if I am not reacting to anything that is being said to me.”
“Maybe,” I said, holding out a hand and helping Akela to her feet as the rowboat returned for us. “If I make it to the docks on time, I'll come along.”
Back home, Reis was out. It wasn't often that they left the books unattended for the day, and it was always strange to be in the hut without the accompaniment of their frustrated sighs and the scrawl of their quill. Kouris had taken the day off to do much of nothing, and had a great propensity for lying out on the pier, soaking up the sun.
Some days, I could manage to relax half as well as Kouris. With the memory of the woman from the temple relegated to the back of my mind, I placed the golden phoenix on my shelf along with the shells I'd found, and decided that I'd do well to spend the rest of the day following in Kouris' example.
“Alright, yrval,” she said as the pier creaked beneath my toes, letting me know she was awake. “How was that treasure hunt of yours?”
I shrugged, lowering myself and lying so that the top of my head almost touched hers, horns curving back and framing my face.
“Tizo's pretty happy with the haul. She'll probably be bragging for months. I half-expected the boat to sink on the way back, what with all the golden phoenixes we found,” I told her. “Found some new shells, too.”
Kouris hummed, impressed, having expected us to have fistfuls of rubble to show for our efforts.
“What was the temple like?”
“Old. Crumbling. There were a few faded paintings, but we took everything else of worth.”
Eyes closed against the relentless Canthian sun, I tried to recall what the red-cloaked woman had said to me, but her words became shapeless, weightless. The song too faded as the to and fro of the surf and the sloshing of the waves drowned it out, and instead, I let my mind wander back to when the last notable storm had hit the sea around Mahon. Five weeks. Five and a half. The pressure in the air was building; there was bound to be another soon.
Kouris and I idly spoke in Svargan for a few hours. I'd say the first thing that came to mind and she'd correct me. Recently, more and more often, she'd only need to reply to me. Months ago, I'd decided that if I was going to live forever, I wasn't going to succumb to boredom before the age of thirty, and had set about learning all I could of Kouris' first language. It was rougher than Canthian, but felt much bigger; I liked them both, but I liked being able to talk to Kouris like this.
“How often does Yin Zhou come to Port Mahon, anyway?” I asked, rolling onto my front and propping myself up on my elbows.
Kouris blinked her eyes open to stare up at me upside down, crinkling her nose.
“Yin Zhou turns up whenever she's wanting to,” she said. “Every two or three years. Sometimes more, sometimes less.”
I put a hand on Kouris' left horn, and ran my nails across the carvings Reis had worked into it.
“She could help us, couldn't she? Reis is always saying that she runs Canth, that she has some sort of deal with the Queen. So she could help us get back, right?”
Kouris paused. We'd had versions of this conversation a hundred times over, but she didn't want to point that out. Not again.
“Rumour has it Queen Nasrin's done business with Yin Zhou, aye. But say she does come sailing into port. What's making you think she'd do us a favour, yrval?”
“You're... you. Queen Kouris! And Atthis is here, too. That still has to count for something, right?” I asked, grasping. Kouris' mouth twitched into a frown, and I said, “Well, what about Reis? She owes them, right?”
“Reis might've got their leg blown off saving Yin Zhou's life, but look around. Reis has all the gold they could ever need, not to mention all of Mahon. I'd say that's pretty good compensation,” Kouris said, and I fell back against the pier, huffing.
There had to be something one of us could do to earn Yin Zhou's favour. I tried to escape the obvious answer, but could only think in circles for so long; I could earn her favour. Surely there was someone she wanted brought back. Surely I could promise to give her another chance, should something go awry. I held my hands up, squinting at the sunlight flowing between my fingers, and told myself that I wouldn't be scared.
If Yin Zhou made port, proving herself to be more than a pirates' legend, I wouldn't be afraid of my own powers. I'd earn my way back.
“Besides,” Kouris continues. “What are you thinking of doing once you're back, yrval?”
Saving Kastelir, I wanted to say, but how did I expect to do that, when my powers were fast-fading within me? I couldn't hope to bring down another dragon, let alone the dozens – hundreds – that had swarmed the country. And who was to say that anything worth saving remained?
“Atthis has plans,” I grumbled. “Dozens of them. He keeps reading them out to me, like I can find the faults in them. I could probably put them all into action myself.”
Kouris laughed, but the sound didn't last long. The truth was, none of us knew what we'd find in Kastelir, or what we'd do with it, once we were back. Perhaps being exiled to Canth was its own blessing. We'd been saved, we'd been allowed to escape with our lives and little more. I told myself it couldn't be a bad thing, but my stomach clenched at the thought of giving up and resigning myself to the life I wanted, but couldn't accept.
“I just wonder what would've happened if we'd got out of Kastelir when we'd planned to. If we'd made it to the Bloodless Lands,” I heard myself blurt out. “The dragons still would've reached Isin, but maybe we could've done something to fight back.”
“Yrval...” Kouris said under her breath. “Are you wanting to talk about—”
“No,” I said, and I said it so firmly that no more questions followed.
My thoughts roamed where I didn't want them to, and as the tide drew in, I raked what I could recall of the song, of that single moment of peace I'd felt, and clung to it like an anchor.
Even that wasn't enough to keep me still. I sat up, stared out at nothing on the horizon and laid back down, feeling each and every wooden plank dig into my spine. Kouris watched, said nothing, and waited me work the restlessness out of my system as I paced
up and down the pier, eventually splaying a hand against the end and lowering myself into the sea. I ducked my head beneath the waist-high water, salt on my lips, everything blocked out but the pressure of the ocean.
The third time I surfaced, Kouris was stood over me. Crouching on the edge of the pier, she held out a hand and I took it, letting her hoist me up. I shook like a dog and she clicked her tongue, putting an arm around me and ruffling my wet hair more than the wind could hope to.
“Looks like it's just you and me tonight. I suppose you're going to have to be putting up with my cooking,” she said, leading me inside and keeping me close.
I awoke early enough the next morning to still have time to decide whether or not I wanted to join Akela for a handful of days, but Katja made the decision for me.
“Good morning Rowan, Kouris,” she called out as she swept into the hut. Reis was still out, doing whatever it was they did when they weren't managing finances or mutilation, and I poked my head out of my bedroom door, supposing I couldn't hide away forever. “I do hope I'm not troubling you, but I do so dislike it when Akela and Uncle are both out of town. It's awfully quiet in the apartment. I thought I'd come here and make us all breakfast.”
I smiled at the basket of food she'd brought with her, and Kouris stumbled out of her own room, yawning and stretching and catching Katja in a one-armed hug. With her distracted, I slipped quietly into the living area and claimed a sofa for myself.
“No work today?” Kouris asked, gracious enough to pour us all drinks.
Katja shook her head, washing handfuls of fruit in the sink.
“Oh, you know how it is around Mahon, Kouris. The people here treat getting injured as though it's an obligation, not a mere risk. For this past month, I've dealt with nothing more interesting than the remnants of broken bottles that have met stomachs and arms, severed fingers, bite marks. I am quite beyond it all, today. The fine women of Port Mahon shall have to rely on bitterwillow for the next few hours.”
