New wardings sprang up as she let the old ones fade, a cloud of Yellow moving with her as they approached the tower. The street they’d been on cut sideways, and they turned, following a path of abandoned carts and empty barricades. They made it another hundred yards before a pulse of new emotions brought her to a halt. Pride, determination, fear, strength. A small cluster of resistance amid a sea of fear and panic. A magi—or more than one—drawing near.
Her calls to alert were received with nods and resolve among her fellows. Ka’Inari hung back, staying near her side. Acherre had the vanguard, with at least half a dozen bindings held at the ready. Tigai stayed near Lin Qishan, and Yuli … changed. The pale-skinned woman grew taller, the tattoos on her face elongating until they became paint on her muzzle, her limbs stretched and thin, her fingers sharpened to metallic claws.
Ka’Inari drew close before the magi came into view. “Sarine,” he said. “Back there, in the market—what did you see?”
“Close,” Acherre shouted, making tight gestures with her hands to accentuate her meaning. “Keep close, for Shelter.”
Another barrier sprang up, a bar of filmy haze twenty paces ahead of Acherre, between their company and the next turn in the street.
Sarine glanced to her side, splitting her attention between Ka’Inari and where the magi would be coming. “It was quick,” she said. “A field of stars, like the night sky. For a moment I saw the same creature we encountered in crossing the Divide.”
“The shadow,” Ka’Inari said.
“Yes,” she said. “What do you know of it?”
“It’s been drawn to us,” Ka’Inari said. “Stronger, since we joined with these three magi. I worry we made a mistake, coming here.”
“What do you mean? We’re almost to the tower. If we should change course now …”
“No.” He shook his head. “We are here, and the spirits are clear on this: They remember ascension, now. They know what it is to be a champion. They speak as though a great burden had finally lifted, as though whatever had corrupted their memories had finally perished, though they’re not certain as to the source. If we can end even a handful of the magi’s masters, it may forestall a greater conflict. In that, nothing has changed. But—”
“Down!”
Acherre’s voice tore Sarine’s focus back toward the end of the street. Without thought she wove Shelter through a warding, and a new shield sprang into place before a boulder the size of a cart and horse smashed and broke apart above their heads.
Shouts swallowed any semblance of commands, and each of them went running. Body and lakiri’in granted speed, and Red a heartbeat later, quickening her senses until she could track every movement on the street.
Four magi had appeared, each in hooded orange robes belted with white cords, their faces obscured by mesh veils. They seemed to be working together, ripping chunks from the earth, collapsing buildings’ foundations as they spun materials into spheres of dirt, wood, and stone. Tigai was sprinting toward them, drawing one of the pistols on his belt in quarter-time motion, while Acherre had dropped her shield of Shelter, raising a hand that spat a sheet of caustic air. Lin Qishan’s body morphed mid-stride into a golem of crystal glass, and Yuli charged, fastest of them all, racing toward the orange-robed figures in a hunched-forward stance that looked as though she meant to move on all fours.
Acherre’s Entropy wafted into the magi just as one of their spheres of earth took form, and at once the fire guttered as it poured itself into the sphere, heating the metal until it glowed bright red.
Instinct made her call a warning; Anati surged White into her wardings, flaring a shield between Acherre, Tigai, and the magi just as the sphere shot toward them. The air tore like fabric as the magi hurled the sphere with the force of a cannon shot. It struck Anati’s shield and exploded, sending a rippling shock wave beneath the street like a stone dropped into a pool, hurling brimstone and shards of rock back toward the magi in a cloud of dust and ash.
Tigai added the bark of a pistol shot to the deafening blast, and Yuli vanished into the cloud, while Acherre sent up another Shelter barrier, venting the smoke away from their half of the street.
Terror surged inside her as the explosion spread. Even unknowing, it had been her gifts that redirected the blast. If the magi were dead, Black would come soon. The Veil would try to seize control. She braced herself, focusing her will on fighting down the rage boiling in her core.
Tigai flickered, firing his pistol again, then did it again. Acherre held her ground, pushing her Shelter upward to protect against the billowing smoke as it poured over the top, keeping the ash and sharded rock away.
The moment passed.
Yellow revealed no emotions other than the sea of fear.
“It’s done,” she called. “Stop. They’re dead.”
Tigai let loose another shot before her words caught his attention, and he nodded, keeping his weapon at the ready. Lin hovered behind him, and Ka’Inari beside her. Yuli’s form became visible as Acherre dropped her Shelter, the pent-up smoke dispersing in a wave that thinned from black to a pale gray as it spread. Yuli was already back to her normal height, all sign of the clawed and muzzled creature gone as she hovered over four mangled bodies lying on the street.
“Those will be among the Herons’ best,” Lin said, her glass armor vanished as quick as Yuli had reversed her transformation. “Short of Bavda Khon herself.”
“Is anyone wounded?” Sarine called out.
“We have to move,” Tigai said. “They could be watching us from the tower. When this smoke clears, they will flee unless we cut off their retreat.”
Yuli rejoined them, all six of their company appearing none the worse for their engagement, though the street was a smoldering ruin, with fires and ash hanging in the air. Raw wounds had been torn in the earth, where the Herons had made craters beneath the foundations of buildings to sculpt their stone spheres, and a ring of collapsed buildings lay flattened by the shock wave from the blast.
Sarine’s senses rattled as they moved toward the tower. It could too easily have been any of them among the dead. Even hanging back, trying to protect her companions, she’d brushed too close to the killing that would have triggered Black, and risked releasing the Veil. She was a danger to them all. Prudence said she should run, carry on alone if it was needful to carry on at all. But she was here. She’d sworn to help Tigai. When it was done, she might well send him and the rest of her companions away. But for now, they pressed on.
54
ARAK’JUR
Adan’Hai’Tyat Summit
Gand Territory
ARAK’JUR.
The mountain spirits’ voice was familiar, a bellow that seemed to come from beyond the horizon’s reach.
Great spirits, he thought. I have come seeking your guidance, and your aid.
Images flashed in his mind. The mountaintop, covered in snow, where Arak’Atan had fallen to valak’ar’s gift, wielded by his hand. Corenna, gathering kindling, building a fire to keep herself warm. His body, hairless and scorched by fire, with snow packed around the raw redness of his skin.
WE KNOW YOU, the mountain spirits said. A WORTHY CHAMPION, FOR THE GODDESS. YOU RETURN TO US NOW, WHEN THE HOUR IS ALMOST DONE.
I came as apprentice to the one called Ad-Shi, he thought.
A sense of revulsion hammered through him. A smell of vomit, the sight of worms infesting meat.
SHE WAS CHAMPION, ONCE.
Yes, he thought back. Now, she is dead.
Relief. An image of comfort, a mother cradling a child at her breast. A village, flourishing in the season of growth.
SHE BADE US LEAD OUR PEOPLE TO WAR. US, THE SPIRITS OF PEACE.
Sadness rose in his thoughts, at odds with the images the spirits sent. Ad-Shi had been a creature of great power, but he thought he’d come to understand her, before her end.
Great spirits, she told me of a time when the world was under shadow. She claimed the Goddess’s champions rose t
o fight against it. All she did, she did to keep the shadow at bay.
AN OLD MEMORY.
Is it true?
New images came. He saw wilderness untouched by fire, with great beasts wandering its trees and plains. Men appeared, clad in strange tunics of grass and hide, but with their eyes glazed over by visions of things-to-come. The image blurred, melting into a scene of death, then seemed to repeat itself. Naked wilderness, then men, emerging from mountaintops into the lowlands and the plain. It melted again, and repeated. Then again, until he lost count of the repetitions.
YES, the spirits thought as the images repeated. YES. WE REMEMBER.
Suddenly the wilderness vanished, replaced by rocky crags under a blackened sky. Lightning crackled inside dense storm clouds, and ash rained down, meeting eruptions of poison gas from beneath the earth. Men and beasts hid belowground, their eyes still glazed with visions as they huddled together in the dark.
This is what Ad-Shi saw, he thought. This is why I mean to follow her path.
ASCENSION.
The word chilled him, even here, in the formless void. The pain of the climb still lingered in his body, though it was far away. But it was why he had endured, when Ad-Shi drove him to fly across the land. He knew less than a tiny fragment of what Ad-Shi had known, but he was more than the Sinari guardian now. He would accept the mantle she had laid on him. He would fight.
Yes, he thought. I have come for your guidance on how to make it so.
THE WORLD ACHES. ASCENSION IS POWER, BUT IT WILL NOT HEAL THE WOUNDS.
What must I do? he thought. How do I become what Ad-Shi was, before her death?
OUR WAY IS NOT VIOLENCE. WE ARE SPIRITS OF PEACE. BUT OTHERS DO NOT SHARE OUR WAYS. OTHERS COME, TO DO HARM. THEY COME FOR OUR CHILDREN.
The Uktani, he thought.
Visions came again, of a great mass of warriors, moving as one. Men, women, young and old. But not the Uktani; or if there were, they were blended in among a mass of peoples, cultures, and traditions. Some familiar, most strange to his eyes. He saw warpaint mixed with beads and strings of animal bone, flinthead spears mixed with steel and muskets, women wielding war-magic alongside guardians channeling the spirits of the beasts. They fought among each other, cutting down the strongest in surges of violence and hate. Soon the tide of death encompassed fair-skins, too, their blue and red and yellow coats alongside warriors in steel plates, riding horses wearing the same. Some rode in wheeled boxes like armored wagons, belching fire, or flew in them like birds in the sky. Lightning spat from their guns, and explosions tore the earth apart, scattering bodies like raindrops until they melted from rolling waves of fire.
OUR CHAMPIONS DO NOT SEEK WARS. BUT WE MUST FIGHT THEM. WHEN OTHERS SEEK US OUT, WHEN OTHERS THREATEN OUR CHILDREN, THE MOUNTAIN ENDURES.
The violence spread as the spirits spoke, warriors and soldiers blended together until light encompassed them all. Then the vision flashed and went quiet, returning to formless void.
I am a guardian, he thought. I know what it is, to protect.
YES. THIS IS THE WAY. THERE ARE ALWAYS THOSE WHO SEEK TO BRING WAR. YOU MUST FIND ONE, AND KILL THEM. THIS WILL BE YOUR TASK, ARAK’JUR OF THE SINARI, IF YOU SEEK TO ASCEND ON OUR BEHALF. YOU MUST CHOOSE A CONQUEROR TO KILL.
A figure appeared, a man with a shaved scalp save for a narrow strip of hair down the center. He rode atop a mareh’et, wielding thunder and wind in place of spears. Villages burned around him, and warriors followed in his wake. A name formed in his mind: Arak’Namakh.
THIS MAN SEEKS WAR. HE MUST DIE.
Another vision came, this time of a man in a green coat trimmed with gold, standing on the deck of a fair-skin ship. The man raised a bronze tube to his eye, surveying the burning wreckage of a dozen smaller ships. Another name: Jelin bin Ahmad.
THIS MAN SEEKS WAR. HE MUST DIE.
Another vision, this time of ten men and women—twenty—forty—then too many to count, each connected by a figment of gold to a figure at the center. A woman, a soldier in a blue coat barking orders to tens of thousands more. And this time he recognized the name: Erris d’Arrent.
THIS WOMAN SEEKS WAR. SHE MUST DIE.
The vision seemed to repeat, only where the vision for Erris d’Arrent had been connected to hundreds of men and women by figments of gold, the next was connected to thousands, then thousands of thousands. A web dense enough to be a solid cord, winding to an unseen place at the heart of the world, where a man wove between his threads, unleashing tides of devastation that piled bodies beyond fathoming at his feet. And a name: Paendurion.
THIS MAN SEEKS WAR. HE MUST DIE.
Enough, he thought, and the visions ceased.
A rumbling quiet stirred as the last images cleared from his mind.
DO YOU UNDERSTAND OUR WAY?
Emotion welled in him, for having seen the spirits’ visions. He knew the horrors of the world, had lived through terrors, pain, and loss. Seeing it, feeling it, spread a raw pain that left him dull and sore.
I do, he thought. We stand against those who seek war. We fight, for peace.
THIS IS OUR PATH TO THE SOUL OF THE WORLD. PROVE YOUR WORTH, SLAY ONE OF THESE CONQUERORS, AND YOU WILL ASCEND.
I understand.
THEN GO.
The void dimmed. He felt the mountain’s winds grip him as his mind returned to his body, suddenly plunging his senses into darkness.
He walked toward the light, careful to test each step before he took it. The cave was old, with stale air and clouds of dust that stung his throat. There had been no cave atop Adan’Hai’Tyat after making the climb; it jarred his senses, awakening inside this one, but he saw the opening some hundred paces distant, and he moved toward it, weighing the visions he’d been granted, setting him on what would become his path.
Peace. It was no different than any course he’d walked before, but the sensations of the spirits made clear how he was to be judged. Killing. It meant not only striving to protect his people, but seeking out those who would plunge their own peoples into war. He’d seen four, but there had been countless more waiting. Impossible, for him to stop every would-be conqueror, tyrant, and warlord in the world, but the spirits had been clear: He had to choose one. Erris d’Arrent’s image played in his memory. No doubt she was a warrior, a leader of her people. If it fell to him to kill her, he would follow the spirits’ will. But he had measured her, and not found evil there. Then again, men and women could change. He would not commit to any course, yet, save following the light to exit the cave.
It was well past midday when he emerged at the base of the mountain.
He almost wept, for the spirits granting him a descent from the heights. But an instant after it was clear he’d been set down at the mountain’s base, he saw he was not alone.
The Uktani.
A ring of warriors knelt with muskets leveled toward the mouth of the cave, with ipek’a and munat’ap interspersed among their line. Dozens more stood behind, arrayed as though he stood before a greatfire, facing judgment before the assembled host of their tribe. Opposite the cave entrance, at the head of the half circle, two elders stood, a man and a woman.
And at the center: Corenna.
He met her eyes, and saw her falter. A veneer of hate had been there, the same mask he saw on every Uktani warrior’s face. She wore skirts in the Ranasi style, her long black hair pulled back and tied with leather cord, though her shirt had been let out to accommodate her now-swollen belly.
Confusion and pain lanced through him. She couldn’t be here. The Uktani warriors had tracked him, followed at his heels since the turning of the seasons. He would have sooner expected to see Llanara’s risen corpse at their head than Corenna. But she was here. She saw him, and her rage melted into an expression of the same confusion he felt, the same uncertainty and hurt. For a moment, all was still. Then Corenna wailed, screaming as she fell to her knees, and the warriors around her leveled their muskets, aimed at him, and fired.
Lakiri’in granted his boon
, and he flew away from where the Uktani warriors struck, clouds of smoke erupting from their guns as stone from Adan’Hai’Tyat chipped and flew behind him. He longed to run to Corenna’s side, to offer her comfort as she wailed, loud enough to carry through the belching roar of the guns. Instead he collided with the Uktani warriors, bringing death with him.
The Mountain’s gift tore a hole in their number, fire leaping from his hands to envelop the men, charring their skin black, melting the wood and steel of their muskets where he struck. Others howled, charging him in a rush. Una’re gave his blessing, and he landed a ringing blow on one warrior, sending thundering shocks coursing through his fellows as the corpse flew backward into their line. An ipek’a sailed over the fray, and he ducked, narrowly avoiding a slash from its scything claw. He wheeled to find another group of warriors swarming, and he struck them down, the Great Bear’s claws ripping men in half before they could touch him with spears or bayonets. The ipek’a leapt again from among them, and this time he caught it, seizing hold of its neck and slamming the creature to the ground. Two warriors grabbed hold of his arms as the ipek’a screeched, and he pulled free with una’re’s strength, ripping the warriors’ arms from their sockets with the force of his momentum. He smashed the ipek’a’s skull with a foot as another trio of warriors leapt on him, and he roared, spinning to fling them over his shoulder into still more warriors approaching from all sides.
This time he drew on the swamp spirit, tendrils of shadowy fog rising from his skin as he moved. He cut through a warrior and his musket with a thundering blow, and took another pair with una’re’s claws as the swamp clouds spread from his body. Where they touched Uktani warriors, men coughed and fell to their knees, vomiting and bleeding from eyes and noses.
“Corenna!” he cried to her in frustration. Her howls hadn’t dimmed, even amid a tide of shouts and cries from the men, but still he tried to reach her, to understand why she was here.
Blood of the Gods Page 49
