The Immortal City

by May Peterson

  He was cat-shaping.

  The change erupted like a tide of magma. His entire skeleton seemed to open on the beast that was striding forth to the tune of snapping bones. Cat-shapes usually were no bigger than panthers or lions, but I’d seen Kadzuhikhan expand to the size of a small elephant. And his silhouette burst to that capacity now, a visceral warping sound accompanying the new limbs that filled the shadows.

  My thoughts spun on the edge of the moment—I could dove-shape, try to match him in bulk before he got to Hei. But beast-shaping was an art, and a swift change was the sign of refinement. A refinement I did not possess. He’d have Hei in his teeth before I would have shaken the pain from my senses.

  A fresh arm struck the dirt, whole and strong as it pulsed with his cat-shape’s strength. It was like forging life out of literal nothing, the same substance that fueled his cat’s-step. An oppressively large feline maw snapped into the light, his silver eyes molten with rage.

  “Ari.” Hei’s voice seemed to cross oceans to reach me. “Stay with me.”

  I quailed. And Kadzuhikhan’s leap across the distance seemed to crack time in two.

  Hei dropped in the corner of my eye, dashing forward in a roll. Kadzuhikhan was too huge—the maneuver that had served Hei until now would see him squashed. No time remained for thought. I was in the air, buoying myself up to intercept him. His weight falling on me would hurt, but I’d heal.

  I had enough grace with beast-shaping to will talons from my fingers, catch on Kadzuhikhan’s hurtling mass. I met the force of his paw, smacking me to one side. It crushed the wind from me, but in the same moment, I raked talons across his face. It was enough to snare his ear, stagger the trajectory he’d pushed me on. A roar split the room, and I struck the floor in a spray of stars.

  “Ari!” Hei’s throat seemed to burn with urgency. My vision cleared in time to see him flinging the blade over the battlefield—and standing under Kadzuhikhan’s descending paw.

  I shouted, leaping up to snatch the blade. Hei seemed to collapse under the blow. The first two seconds of grasping the silver blinded me, but I kept running, calling his name. Kadzuhikhan’s tail swung toward me, and I followed Hei’s suit—sword edge raised, I leaned into the attack.

  The impact was almost enough to disarm me, but I held on. Then the viscid stink of blood burst around me, a rupture in his tail streaking my body and arms. The feline cry was deafening as he fell back. Then I saw it—Hei hadn’t been hit.

  He was poised on his belly, apparently having spun away in time. And a coil of cloth was suspended between his fists—knotting around Kadzuhikhan’s paw.

  “Stay with me!” he all but shrieked.

  Now. It had to be now. I put every ounce of strength remaining into throwing the blade like a lance. The distance was short, space shining as if the silver’s motion corroded the air. And with a sickening thud, the tip pierced Kadzuhikhan’s side.

  Kadzuhikhan flailed, blood streaming from his tail, his haunch. One paw struck aimlessly at his side, but his balance shook against the pressure of wounds and Hei’s entanglement. In the next instant, Hei shot up onto his back as if mounting a horse. Panting, moving faster than I’d ever seen a mortal move, he spiraled the unspooling band around the cat-soul’s neck.

  Kadzuhikhan couldn’t reach the blade. And anointed cloth was strangling him within an inch of his afterlife. In seconds, he collapsed to his belly, jerking and crying out.

  “Help me!” Hei’s shout was strained. I sprinted to his side, and readied a breath to grab one end of the cloth. Pain eclipsed everything for a moment, but I was still gripping the bandage when I opened my eyes again.

  And Hei was extracting the sword. A fresh surge of blood gushed over the floor, sending plumes of steam off the metal. Kadzuhikhan struggled, but he was losing strength. Heaven knew I was.

  “Hold him.” The hardness had returned to Hei’s demeanor. He tightened knees around the cat-soul’s shoulders—and hoisted the sword above his head. For a moment, an almost malicious current seemed to scour through Hei’s body. It manifested in a wicked smile.

  “Oh, Kadzuhikhan. I cannot tell you how fondly I have looked forward to this.”

  My numbness was thawing, allowing my thoughts to catch up to me. “Hei, wait, no—!”

  He plunged Lightray into its master’s eye.

  The motion resolved on a flash of light and a burst of blood, and stillness flooded the room. Something snapped within me. A storm of tremors jerked through Kadzuhikhan, and the blade dug deeper. In moments, he had slumped to the floor. Such a blow wouldn’t kill him, even with a silver weapon. It wouldn’t kill him. He was immortal, he’d regain himself in a matter of minutes or hours. Even dismemberment could eventually be recovered from, as long as the moon-soul—

  Hei heaved as he dragged the sword from the eye. The blood on the metal was steaming, raw chemical silver-aversion curling off it like smoke. Hei was shaking, his breath ragged. He raised the blade as if signaling victory.

  “You don’t have to.” Words shot from me like shouts of pain, involuntary and panicked. “We can just run. Hei. Hei, I don’t—”

  There seemed to be no words in existence that would express the way my world was dividing down its center. Hei swung the blade down, hit where the anointed cloth was looped around the great feline neck. Silver cut through, rising again and again until it broke through bone. With a grit cry of fury, Hei beheaded him.

  I had let go of the cloth without realizing it, sensation returning to my hands. But all I seemed able to feel now was tingles, a rain-spatter of dissociation. Oh, god. Of course he’d had to kill him. Given time, a regenerated Kadzuhikhan would have found us anywhere in the city. The cat-step would move him faster than flight. But he was dead. He was immortal and now...

  Hei had transformed into an angel of rage, of sobbing and destruction, hacking at the severed head. The violence was blinding, desperate. Soon Hei was crouched over the remains, keening, holding himself against the upright sword. The mist seemed to be closing around me again, surrounding me in numbness.

  I should go to him. Or I should run. Everything had been a guess that this was the right thing to do. But one of the only people who’d been there for me, and had betrayed me, a rapist, was destroyed.

  I hadn’t considered. If I took this path, there’d be nothing left.

  And Hei was collecting himself, his bright, stunning body gleaming with sweat and carnage. He looked unharmed since I’d healed him. But his eyes flamed, and the sword in his arms...

  The mist centered on him, his gentle lies and mysteries, his rage and terror, the heat and cold of his space in my life.

  Oh, god. I had no idea who he was.

  “Ari.” His voice was like a weight on the ground. “Ari. It’s not enough.”

  His image had become a thing of terror, a harbinger of the thing I’d left behind. Something like recognition crawled through my lightless depths. Was he—?

  I shook, backing away semi-consciously. He stood, took a step closer, the sword flickering red and gold.

  “Ari. Please. I need you.”

  I couldn’t. Confused tears stung my eyes. Scrabbling to my feet, I seized the wind and rushed for the window.

  “I need you!” Hei shouted, but the wind was already bearing me away.

  I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. This was too deep. He couldn’t know me. Couldn’t need me.

  I was dead.

  Chapter Eight

  I flew until the wind killed every sound in my head.

  My reaction cut me in two—the me that had been Ari since before my death, that still was, the me that mattered to someone. I shouldn’t run from Hei. This was more than the path I had chosen, it was the route back to warm blood, a heart that beat with human feeling. I wanted him to have his miracle, to go back to his life, safe and healed and not alone. I didn’t want him to be
lost here, like me.

  But he had come here to assassinate moon-souls. The skills and weapons he’d revealed rendered every other explanation impossible. This didn’t mean I was one of his targets—but he had come to me, picked me, for a reason. And the fact that he had investigated me could no longer be one more elusive scrap of evidence. The entire time, he’d possessed a plan that exceeded his sad story of Kaiwan and Beniro. And with Kaiwan’s promise at hand, very few things could have moved him to delay his absolute last choice. It was a passion that had enabled him to face Kadzuhikhan and not only live, but slay an immortal.

  And the violence of that passion terrified me for reasons I couldn’t name. I had been painting Hei’s image as fragile, gentle, lonely—and the sight of him beheading Kadzuhikhan seemed to set that image aflame, unleash a far more visceral truth that I feared to taste. He was not an angel sent to comfort my wounds, play the role of victim I could protect.

  Tears dazzled my eyes, made the reeling sky a blur of indecision. I should go back to him. Demand the truth of who he was, who I was to him. I should fly, and fly, and never turn back. Fly until the tundra swallowed me, blasted the whole earth white. A horror climbed my bones, that if I soared until the wind itself died, I would never reach the end of the snow. The world was dead too. Everyone entering Serenity was a soul bound to our gem-lit hell, as unable to turn back as I was. The earth itself was nothing more than a vast conjoined dream, fading as our memories drowned in the dark.

  I reached the edge of the mountain, a crop of rock looking over Bare-Sky Road. I could keep going. I could test my theory, at last. But convictions were amassing on my thoughts like snowfall. There would be nothing.

  Tamueji’s story was about more than Umber’s cunning, or the ravages of time. None of us had anything left to find again, because it would mean nothing.

  Hei knew me. He had to. And I was no longer the me that it would mean something to.

  I sobbed into my hands as the moon plummeted into sleep. Then, in the crystal certainty of the dark hour, I realized what my immortality was. It was not a second chance. It was not a new life everlasting, a reward for being nameless and insignificant in my mortality.

  No. It was something far more brutal. Someone had simply exhumed my corpse. Lit it with the consciousness of its own hollowness. I was only remains, condemned to know it forever. My actual soul—Ari’s soul—was already gone. Maybe that was all Umber’s godhood was, a way to clean up the imprints left behind. Purge out the last eroded illusions that any of us really existed.

  I took to the air again, unaware of where I was going. Until the ring of worn rocks came into sight. This was where my path through mist had taken me. And there may be only one person who could tell me whether it was still possible to turn back.

  I all but fell to the dirt in front of Kaiwan’s sigil. Hands shaking, I grasped the diamond chip dangling at my throat. This may not be an arcane prism—I had no idea how such things were made. But maybe it would be enough.

  Holding it out in one hand, I tried to calm my breath, recall the words Hei had sung. “O warrior who has transgressed time... Witch who unweaves the hours...the hours...” I struggled to remember the full verses, and my Zangenjai wasn’t good enough to put them all together. I stamped a foot on the ground. “Fuck! Show me the way!”

  It was a desperate call. The gem lay inert in my palm. Surely she wouldn’t hear me. It wouldn’t be enough—

  Except just then, a pale flicker flashed from the diamond. And the spiral of her seal began to glow. It flared brighter, the wall seeming to open inward as it had before.

  The passage within seemed shorter this time. I gripped my stone, heart flailing under my ribs, and said a prayer of thanks that this wasn’t the winding trail of the last time. In minutes, the carved rock door of her home was looming over me—and was already open.

  I gulped and stepped in.

  Kaiwan stood by her dais, a pearl-colored robe draping her limbs. She faced me as I entered, hair falling free, and the same stalwart impassivity on her features. This time, the aura of solemnity she exuded felt sorrowful, painful. As though I could no longer look on her tremendous age without its implications digging into my skin.

  She nodded faintly. “I see you have come alone.”

  I lifted the diamond in my grip. “I’m not asking for a miracle. Just answers. Please. Will you accept this for them?”

  A frown wrinkled her composure. But she acquiesced by taking the diamond from me. “I will answer if I am able.”

  It hit me then that I had no idea how to ask of her what I really wanted to know. So the current rushed out, eager for release. “I’ve heard that you created Serenity. Did you mean for it to be this way? Did you design it to be somewhere you could never leave—that would never give your soul back?” Tears dampened my chin before I realized that I’d shed them. But there was no point restraining them now. “Did you mean for this place to be a graveyard?”

  She stood there, wrapped in her stillness, watching me as if I’d gone insane. It was too much. After a minute passed, I fell to my knees, shoulders trembling as I covered my face. It was too much. Not enough. I should have stayed dead.

  In the next instant, the sound of her motion startled me—followed by a touch on my shoulder. I looked up, and an expression of sympathy was waiting. The sorrow that radiated from her was as strong as a scent. “No. I never wanted that. My own graveyard, perhaps, but not like this. No, this—” she gestured around at the column of light from above “—this is the effect of time. The debris of the ages. I have watched the years break, like waves, on the mountainside. And each new tide brings more ruin. It has grown beyond my wishes.”

  She hadn’t denied the legend. So she really was older than the city itself? I took her in, the way she crouched at my side, her contemplation of the lights and shadows of her space. The imprint she’d left on time must be almost incomprehensible by now, like writing too huge to read. How could she possibly bear that, in this silence?

  I sniffed. My following words fell like stones. “Kadzuhikhan is dead. Hei came here to kill him. Did you know that was his plan?”

  At that, Kaiwan’s eyes narrowed. She stood, raiment flashing white at her feet. “And Lord Umber—does he yet live?”

  I licked my lips. That was probably a good question. “Unless Hei has already found a way to kill him.”

  Wait. Was that what he’d been hoping to do—was that why he’d agreed to Umber’s meeting?

  Kaiwan’s frown had matured into a thoughtful scowl, one finger curled under her chin. “Then the time is drawing closer. Even I cannot escape it forever. I had hoped to delay it longer this time.”

  This time? I tried to shake off the clamor of possibilities, focus on the moment. “Why? What does it matter to you if they’re alive or dead?”

  Her gaze wavered, perhaps uneven with worry. “Here. Allow me to help you. Sit.”

  I accepted her hand, and she maneuvered me to a seat near the imitation hearth. She produced a jug from a cupboard and, before I could ask, filled two clay cups. The aroma of wine greeted me when she offered it. Alcohol may not do for me what it once had, but I was glad she hadn’t offered me tea again.

  She swirled the contents of her cup, staring into it as if it were a divining pool. “Serenity has served many purposes across the generations, and serves many still. One is that those who are determined enough to reach it, and to find me here, may ask an impossible boon. A miracle that no other power available to them might grant. Comprehend me—this is not a limit I place out of any desire to judge who is worthy and who is not. I am not interested in behaving like some fickle god. No, indeed, were it possible, I would gladly roam the earth, undoing wrongs. I’d create every miracle in my power, freely.”

  An ominous sensation was knotting within me. I had misjudged her then—but I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what force or wound could constrain a
witch of such power.

  She gulped a mouthful of wine and went on. “I have said that my gift is to be a last resort only. You must understand why. My magical art is named time-mending.” She looked into my eyes briefly, perhaps searching for recognition. “Even time can be turned back. But further still, it can be mended. It is like patching a piece of fabric. One piece of time can be replaced with another, and all threads issuing from that cloth will likewise be changed. The difference is that the moments I change are woven into the new fabric whole, so that their threads run as one. However, this also means that greater degrees of change require much more work, more care, in order to create a future that will fit this new pattern.”

  Witch who unweaves the hours. So at least some of the rumors were accurate. The thought of such a power was staggering. “Is that how you’re able to live so long? Er. If I may ask.”

  Her brow flicked up momentarily, but otherwise she seemed unperturbed. “Indeed. Long ago I strung the hours of my youth around my present moment, so that I remain strong even as I move through each new age. Time can be reshaped without being frozen entirely.” Her gaze dropped to the dust at her feet. “Doing so has its cost, however. Whatever powers lie at the heart of the cosmos, they do not allow me to work this art with perfect freedom.”

  She touched her palm to the place over her chest. “Every mage’s magic is seated in a particular region of their body. Mine dwells in my heart. And as I rework time, the magic uses what is within my heart to give the art strength. As a result, my spirit grows weaker the more power I use. My joys, my longings.” A ghost of a smile shadowed her face. “All that has given the world color. It fades with each day and year I have moved. Now, all that is left is a great emptiness. It is as if the sky has become gray. I feel almost nothing, except the specters of who I once was.”