Instead they reached the opening, where looming blackness swallowed the sky, the branches of the trees grown together to suggest a passage into darkness.
“This is it,” Sarine said, her voice touched with awe.
Their horses skittered back, and Sarine dismounted, passing the reins to Acherre.
“We’ve reached the entrance,” Arak’Jur said. “But stay alert. There have been great beasts guarding our sacred places for six turnings of the seasons. I have no cause to believe it would have changed.”
Ilek’Inari unslung his pack, kneeling in reverence as he withdrew the pouch of implements he’d prepared almost a full year before.
“I saw nothing on the way in,” Corenna said, joining Sarine in dismounting, though Acherre stayed on her horse. “And I see the way unblocked, now, where before it was walled over by the trees. Perhaps …?”
“It’s still blocked,” Sarine said. She stepped toward the opening with a hand outstretched. “It was like this in the sewer, but bricked over instead of blocked by wood. It isn’t real. Ad-Shi can only use the blue sparks to weave a barrier against those not chosen by the spirits to enter. There are limits to what can be done, even for me.”
Sarine’s voice seemed to echo with a surety he’d never heard from her before. Almost as though someone else spoke with her voice. Before he could dwell on it, a rush of energy sucked through the air around them, a snapping sound as blue light flashed, draining from the air around Ka’Ana’Tyat’s opening to absorb itself into Sarine’s fingertips.
“Spirits’ blessings,” Ilek’Inari said, staring into the darkness. “She’s done it. The way is clear.”
To Arak’Jur’s eyes nothing had changed; it had been a passage into darkness the first time he’d escorted Ilek’Inari and Corenna here, and it remained so now. But Ilek’Inari rose to his feet, his eyes wide with awe, and walked toward it slowly, one step at a time.
Sarine waited for him to approach before she strode forward at his side.
They reached the edge of the darkness, and Ilek’Inari vanished, swallowed into the spirits’ presence. Sarine remained behind.
It took a moment to realize she hadn’t intended to stay back.
“Why?” Sarine demanded, directing her question into the opening. “Why not me?”
The wind shifted, and his instincts sharpened. Something was wrong.
“No,” Sarine was saying. “You have to let me in. I have to find Axerian. Zi is dying!”
A chittering noise. Approaching from the south. Distant, but drawing nearer too quickly to be rustling, or the wind.
“Caution,” Arak’Jur shouted. “Something approaches.”
It was all he needed to say for Corenna to be on alert. The soldier, Acherre, responded as well, to his tone even if she wouldn’t understand the words.
The noise grew louder, and he saw a black figure in the distance, vanishing as it moved between the trees.
“I know this beast,” Corenna said. “Sre’ghaus.”
Two more black shapes appeared, swirling masses, almost-man-shaped, crashing through the trees toward the clearing around the passage into Ka’Ana’Tyat.
Not one beast. Not two, or three. Thousands. A roiling mass of insects, beetles swarming toward them, clouds of fluttering wings and gnashing jaws.
Corenna struck the first blow with a gale of wind, scattering the creatures into the upper boughs of the trees as she smashed apart one of the man-shaped figures. Acherre split into three copies of herself and her horse, each one drawing its saber as they charged. Arak’Jur stayed back, hovering near the entrance to Ka’Ana’Tyat. Corenna had told tales of facing sre’ghaus: long hours of fighting, with an uncertain end. The spirits’ gifts would have to be conserved as long as possible.
“Please,” Sarine said behind him. “I was promised you could show me visions of where Axerian is, of how I could make Zi well. Please don’t let him die.”
A fist-sized cluster of beetles descended from the trees, flying with chittering wings as they formed into a bird shape. He struck, and a stinging pain bit his forearm. The beetles came apart, dashed against the forest floor, but they raked with their teeth where they touched him. Foam rose from the tiny crosshatched wounds, and hissing, leaving a burning sensation on his skin. Acid.
Trails of beetles flew between the trees, and he lost sight of Corenna and Acherre. The creatures seemed to take their time swarming, forming shapes and masses before they struck. Buzzing drowned out all other sound as they arrived in full. His instinct was to retreat, to flee and return prepared for what they faced. Without the shamans’ counsel he couldn’t know the beast’s weakness. But Ilek’Inari was already inside. If they left, the apprentice would emerge alone against the chittering mass.
He called on ipek’a, and leapt.
A cloud of beetles flew together overhead, gathering like a beehive on the edge of a branch. He grappled the tree with one hand, cutting through the center of the insects with the other, dispersing them like stinging smoke. He leapt again, passing through a formless stream of the creatures as he fell back to the earth. He braced himself for more stinging wounds, but none came. Instead the mass broke apart, flowing around him before re-forming into smaller shapes, each going a different direction than before.
Black specks decorated the ground, some skittering together, more smashed and leaking green ichor over the boughs and grass.
“Strike before they form,” he shouted into the buzzing horde. Corenna had to be close; spirits send she was close enough to hear. “They attack only when they join together.”
A stabbing pain took his shoulder from behind, and he whirled to smash a cat-shaped mass, ipek’a’s scything claws fending them off as they tried to bite. He leapt again, toward another cloud hovering at waist height behind a tree. Fluttering wings enveloped him as they burst apart, and he shielded his face. They seemed to multiply, engulfing the clearing in a deafening roar.
Acherre rode through a cloud, cutting with her saber as she wove to dodge the trees. Then another copy of her dashed past going the opposite way, parting the beetles like ribbons dropped to the forest floor. Both were swallowed by the beetles as soon as they rode through, more clouds forming as quick as they could be dispersed. He leapt into one, cutting with ipek’a’s gift, feeling the creatures’ blood spatter as their bodies fell. Still they came.
Worry rose with every shape he cut, until he found Corenna. She held her ground, hurling ice, needlepoint barrages casting whole swarms into the grass. Mareh’et came when ipek’a faded, and for a time he fought at Corenna’s side, until a man-shaped cloud danced between them, forcing them apart.
His limbs ached with exhaustion and pain as he fought. Mareh’et gave way to lakiri’in, and then kirighra, and the war-magic of fire. It seemed sre’ghaus fought with attrition, losing thousands of their number to score a single blow on their enemies, and he’d taken a score of their cuts, acid-drenched teeth marks ripping lines across his skin. He tried to shout directions to the women, in the tribes’ tongue and the fair-skins’, but his words were swallowed by the buzzing and clattering as the beetles flowed between the trees. He lost sight of the entrance to Ka’Ana’Tyat, and worried what would come when Ilek’Inari emerged, if they lasted long enough to wait through the rituals. Of Sarine there was no sign; he reasoned she’d been granted her plea, and must have vanished into the depths of Ka’Ana’Tyat’s shadows.
But it was her voice he heard, when the chittering dimmed.
“Stop,” Sarine shouted. “Stop fighting them. Let them leave.”
He struck through a horde, splitting what was on the cusp of forming an elk shape, earning another searing cut slashed across his arm.
It took the beetles falling to the ground like the patter of rain on snow before he registered that he’d heard her voice.
“Stop,” she said again. “Show them they can trust us.”
This time he paused, only a moment of lowering his guard, and the beetles receded at once,
backing away as though they were cautious of him. They withdrew through the trees, a cloud of black withdrawn to reveal Corenna, and Acherre. Both women stood, on their feet but haggard. Corenna’s wraps were torn, hanging open to reveal skin cut and bleeding. Acherre was reduced to one copy, her military uniform in tatters, her saber scored black and green. Her horse was dead, a half-eaten corpse with rib bones protruding through flesh burned by acid, fifty feet from where Acherre stood. The captain ran to the beast as soon as the swarm retreated enough for it to be visible. He ran to Corenna.
She saw him at the same moment, and met him with strength in her arms. A tight grip, full of life, thank the spirits.
“How did you do this?” Corenna called to Sarine when finally he let her go, though she kept an arm around him for support, and he did the same.
Sarine walked toward them, stepping gingerly around the blanket of slain beetles draped across the ground.
“Sre’ghaus didn’t want to be here,” Sarine said. “They were compelled by Ad-Shi.”
Sarine turned to Acherre, and he and Corenna turned to look along with her.
“Are you well, Captain?” Sarine asked.
Acherre made a reply in the fair-skin tongue, too fast for him to understand, though her voice was hoarse and ragged. Tears soaked her cheeks, and she clutched her fallen horse’s body, though whatever she’d said must have satisfied Sarine as to her well-being.
“Honored … Sarine,” Corenna said. “Would you …?”
She motioned to her belly, but left the question unasked. He tensed as Sarine laid a hand on Corenna’s skin.
“The baby is fine,” Sarine said, and once again the world lifted from his shoulders. “Better than you, from the look of it.”
Corenna wiped a tear from her eyes, thanking Sarine as she tightened her grip around his lower back.
“Spirits curse my soul,” Ilek’Inari said from behind. “What happened here?”
Arak’Jur turned to see his onetime apprentice hobbling over the corpse-strewn ground, picking his steps gingerly as he regarded them with awe.
“A great beast,” he said, at the same moment Sarine said, “They wouldn’t let me in. I didn’t get the answers I needed.”
“I know,” Ilek’Inari said. “It was never your place, to speak with the spirits of visions.”
Sarine swore, taking a challenging step toward the dark opening. “Ilek’Inari, I need your help. Convince them to permit me. I need to—”
“I am Ilek no longer,” he interrupted, and for a moment a chill wind seemed to blow around him, a haze that blurred the edges of his form against the shadows behind. “The bond is complete. I am Ka’Inari, and I have sworn an oath to aid you on behalf of the spirits of things-to-come.”
21
TIGAI
A Hidden Temple
Deep Within Shanshin Jungle
One of his escorts shoved his lower back, sending him staggering forward. He kept his footing, spinning with a glare for the spearman. Both guards showed him a mocking smile—he couldn’t be certain which of them had done the pushing. They stayed back, hovering in the doorway he was unceremoniously made to enter.
“Put it on,” the woman said from a dark corner of the room. Lin Qishan, the captain he’d abducted from the prison camp. The magi. His jailor, so long as she held Dao and Mei and Remarin.
He squinted to see through the dark of the chamber. After ungodly weeks marching through the jungle, being indoors felt alien and strange.
When he saw what she’d pointed to, he laughed, making it as scornful as he could manage. A hauberk of metal plates, a half helmet, and a short, curved blade, lying together in a pile atop a wood bench. Old weaponry. The sort used by soldiers centuries ago, and for entertainment today.
“Am I to be a pit fighter for you? After all this trouble?”
“You are to do as you are told. Put it on.”
“No.”
She gave him a cold glare, weighing him as though she tried to discern how seriously to take his refusal.
“You’ve had me on the road long enough to have tracked halfway to Nikkon,” he said. “I’d expected a bath waiting at the end, perhaps a warm meal. At worst a prison cell. But if you think I’m donning pit fighter’s gear for you without seeing Dao, Mei, and Remarin alive and untouched, your wits are as soured as your manners.”
He’d practiced a better speech in his head, but circumstances dictated a certain amount of improvisation.
She held her glare as his speech gave way to silence.
“Pick one,” she said.
Well, it was progress at least.
“Mei,” he said. “Let me see her. If she can confirm everything is—”
“Kill the woman.” Lin spoke past him, for the benefit of his two guards.
“What? No!”
Lin nodded, and the guardsmen showed him wicked grins, the leftmost one wheeling to deliver the order.
“You carry that out and I leave this place, returning only to murder you and everyone who dwells here in their sleep.”
This time Lin gave a signal to hold.
“Our time together will pass more easily if my commands are obeyed,” she said.
“We have no time together without Mei, Dao, and Remarin.” It helped to say their names. Remind her they were people, not merely hostages. “If you hold them, show me, or I will assume they are dead.”
“Do you imagine I am ignorant of the workings of a master Dragon’s gift? If I bring them to you, you are gone, and they with you.”
Flattering, for her to give him such a lofty title. He’d never mastered anything, so far as he knew. But she knew well enough the workings of the strands; he’d been planning to do precisely that, to anchor himself to his family and escape.
“Then we are at an impasse,” he said.
“Only if you don’t believe I have them, and I think you know I do.”
For the thousandth time he weighed the truth behind her words. It would be a trivial thing, to hook himself to the starfield, to return to any place to which he felt a strong enough connection. Doing so meant a last farewell to his brother, to Mei and Remarin. It would be like cutting off a leg. Unthinkable. Easier to follow instructions, to let come what may.
He eyed the pit fighter’s gear again. “I won’t kill for you.” A lame stand, but he needed at least a sliver of defiance after too long spent bending his pride.
“You have killed many men, Yanjin Tigai. Do not expect me to accept that you will blink at violence.”
“I said I won’t kill for you.”
This time she smiled. A cruel, strange gesture. It seemed out of place on her, though she would have been pretty enough to court, had he met her in a different world.
“Very well,” she said. “Now put the armor on. We’re already late.”
He shuffled onto the dirt of what had to be a training yard, encumbered by the unfamiliar weight of steel. Not a pit fight, at least, or not one with an audience. He’d attended the pits at Qoba once. Nasty affairs, with blood and crowds trained to scent it. But those arenas were towering walls and rows of staired seating, constructs of clay with iron gates, roaring crowds, vendors hawking wares and taking bets amid the chaos. This was an empty ring of dirt surrounded by stone buildings nestled in the jungle. The only watchers were a pair of men on the far side of the ring, each dressed in white robes with saffron belts around their waists. His two guards completed the audience, and Lin Qishan, waiting at the center while he trotted into the ring.
“He moves like a boy in his father’s armor,” the elder of the two men said, a pruned figure with a thin white beard. Hagali, from the look of him, or one of the coastal peoples. The other robed man said nothing, a young, bald, well-muscled man with a Jun look, holding a staff almost as tall as he was.
“I assure you,” Lin said, “he is everything that was promised.”
“We shall see.”
Suddenly Tigai felt like a horse at market. “Why am I here?” he demand
ed. “You’ve given me arms, am I meant to fight for your amusement?”
“You are here to answer for Captain Lin’s wild tales,” the younger robed man said, then turned to the elder. “Master, with your leave?”
The elder gestured toward the center, and Lin Qishan bowed, retreating to the edge of the ring, leaving him alone on the dirt.
“Hold on,” Tigai said. “I never agreed to this. I told you, I won’t kill for you, or for them.”
“No one expects you to be the one doing the killing, Lord Tigai,” Lin said.
Shit.
The younger robed man strode onto what had suddenly become a dueling ground, working his staff in both hands. His opponent had a familiar grace, the sort of lightness on his feet Tigai had come to recognize in Remarin, and the best of the soldiers Remarin had trained. Hardly fair to give him unfamiliar weaponry against a man clearly trained to the implements at hand. Then again, he had armor on his chest and head, where the monk didn’t even have the luxury of hair to shield his scalp. His enemy had the advantage of reach, whereas he had a sharp edge to his weapon. And of course, the starfield and the strands.
He set an anchor where he stood, then fell back, brandishing his sword in a two-handed grip at waist height. Pistols were his preferred implement, but he’d spent enough hours to know a stance or two with the blade. As soon as he set his feet, the monk spun his staff into a different grip, nested beneath the crook of an elbow.
Without warning the monk snapped forward, darting the butt of his staff in a jab aimed at Tigai’s head. He brought his sword up in time, shoving it away, and found the staff withdrawn and jabbed again as quick as he could blink. This time it caught his helmet with a ringing thud, and the world rushed out from beneath his feet. Pain crunched along his side, and air left his lungs.
The elder laughed from the edge of the ring; if he said anything it was swallowed by the ringing in Tigai’s ears.
The monk shuffled forward, a cautious step with the staff extended like a spear, pointing at him. No sign that his enemy intended to allow him to yield. Of course not. Why would it be easy?
Blood of the Gods Page 20
