by Matt Larkin
Malin stood on the poop deck, jaw hanging open, unsure what to say.
Before he could spew any foolishness, Balituk held up a hand to forestall him. “No, Malin. I’m old and I’m tired. It’s time for me to settle down and find a wife, start a family. I’ve had enough adventure for this turning of the Wheel of Life.”
The Keong Emas was beautiful, glorious. And so very fast. Malin had grown so rich on trading throughout the South Sea men called him a merchant prince. Appropriate, then, that he had married a Maitian princess.
“Get up,” Rahu said, shaking him.
With a start Malin realized they had stopped, that the canoe had pulled up to a mudbank in the wetlands.
“We have to do this while the moon is full.”
Malin grunted, barely able to stand through the pain. Rahu allowed him an arm over his shoulder and helped him from the boat. Mud squelched beneath his sandals as he climbed out, tepid water drawing up around his ankles.
“Why a full moon?” Malin asked, then regretted it. Speaking hurt even more than breathing.
Rahu guided him toward the tree line. “I don’t really have time to explain. She says the magic has to be done beneath the full moon.”
Magic … Was that …? Malin struggled to make sense of Rahu’s words through the haze clogging his mind. Was Rahu talking about witchcraft? More witchcraft. As if it had not brought enough horrors into his life. A witch had cost him everything. He couldn’t let one ensorcel him now. Not again. But … maybe that alone could break the curse on him, or at least grant him the power to overcome it.
A storm had swept over his ship, off the coast of Serendib. A storm born from the curse his mother had placed on him. Malin had denied her, unwilling to claim the woman in front of his princess wife, and broken her heart as only an ungrateful son could do.
He had not known his mother was a witch, of course. A witch whose curse would strip him of all he loved and leave him an empty shell. And it should have killed him.
The rainforest had grown thick here, so thick Malin’s foot gave way. Rahu caught him before he fell face-first to the ground.
“No,” Malin mumbled. “No witchcraft.”
“It will make you strong,” Rahu said. “Stronger than ever.”
Malin grunted. Dazed, he allowed the man to guide him through the rainforest and into a clearing created by the burnt-out husk of a tree that must have once brushed the sky. Its branches had fallen, opening a hole in the forest canopy through which Malin could see the full moon these Lunars worshipped.
Calon was there, kneeling before the tree, arranging rocks in some bizarre pattern. Seeing the ornately garbed woman kneeling in the dirt was almost comical. Assuming he wasn’t hallucinating. Upon the tree’s trunk an odd symbol was carved—recently, based on the flaking around it.
He tried to ask what it meant, but his strength gave out and he slumped down, barely able to fight down the urge to retch. Dimly, he was aware of Rahu lifting him, but the world spun so quickly around him he couldn’t make anything out.
And many, many years after he had left, he landed on a beach on his home island, not even recognizing it. Not until it was too late and their course was set. And when his mother had called out to him, he had pretended not to know her. Rejected her, rather than admit he was the son of a dirty peasant woman in front of his mesmerizing wife and loyal crew.
Pride.
“He is too weak,” Rahu said.
“It might be better that way,” Calon said. “Less chance he might fight it. Bind him to the tree.”
“Bind him? Is that necessary?”
The woman chuckled. “I’m told it’s as much for his protection as our own. These are not forces one takes chances with, my love.”
Malin blinked, things settling into focus as Rahu lay him against the tree. The man’s eyes held sympathy, but Malin couldn’t quite say why. What was happening? So hard to focus.
Rahu tied a rope around Malin’s wrist, wrapped it around the massive trunk, then tied off the other wrist, forcing Malin’s arms wide.
It took all Malin had not to cry out at the pain in his broken ribs as his arms were pulled apart.
Rahu’s woman drifted over, inspecting Malin. She pulled open his eyelid, then clucked her tongue and shook her head. Examining him like a disappointed mother.
His mother? Was she here? No. She was in Mait. He’d had no idea she was Mangkukulam—a witch, probably one praying to Hukluban. And when she cursed him, he’d tried to tell himself it had no power. But something had listened.
“I’m sorry,” Rahu said. “It has to be this way. But there will be power. I promise you that.”
Malin mumbled something—even he didn’t know what he said—and let his head slump back, closing his eyes.
Rahu and Calon were talking, arguing, but Malin couldn’t focus on it.
“Mother …” Malin mumbled.
The Keong Emas now rested at the bottom of the South Sea. Like all Malin’s dreams and future and past. His mother had cursed him. Her curse had whipped up a storm off Serendib that had sunk his ship and taken away his friends and his wife. And it would have ended him there, put him out of his misery, if only a Serendibian boy out searching for his own father had not pulled him from the sea.
Someone was speaking, chanting, but it came out as nonsense and Malin shut it from his mind.
Balituk had trained Malin in Kali, made him a warrior capable and feared. And he … The old man had retired. Left Malin a captain at twenty-one. A year later he was married. Months of perfection. And now … now she’d been gone for six months. It felt longer. It felt like yesterday. It felt like …
A sudden tightness built in Malin’s chest, a constriction that far exceeded the pain from his ribs. He tried to scream but no sound came out, no breath escaped his lungs. He couldn’t breathe at all. He tried to gasp for air, but the muscles in his chest refused to respond. The edges of his vision turned black and filled with spots.
The constriction gripped his limbs. His arms strained against his bonds, his legs kicking involuntarily before him, slamming his spine against the trunk again and again. Pain shot through his back like bolts of lightning with every convulsion.
Sweat drenched him. The fever that ravaged him only intensified until he couldn’t stop shaking from it. Then at last his muscles stilled and he could breathe. Lingering tremors wracked his hands and feet and he couldn’t stop the shaking inside his chest.
Was it over?
“What did you … ” his voice sounded slurred, like the day Tioman’s father had opened the finest Tianxian liquors for them.
Malin felt his fingers curling, turned slowly to look as they spasmed out of his control.
Rage.
Something cold, hard—something alien—pushed against him from the inside, like nothing he had ever felt. Like a snake had crawled inside him and slithered through his bowels. Malin roared, strained against his bonds. He screamed as the alien presence forced its way upward, the tightness around his heart returning with redoubled strength.
His scream died as the muscles in his throat contracted, cutting off all air. As every muscle in his body constricted all at once until he thought he’d burst. And then it reached into his mind.
Hunger.
It wasn’t a voice or thought, it was an intent. Another being inside him, subverting his will.
Agony ripped through him as his bones began to shift and pop, muscles rearranging themselves. The contraction in his throat released enough for him to scream from the pain of whatever was happening to him. His bonds snapped and Malin fell to the ground shrieking. Claws burst from his fingertips. Fur jutted from all over his flesh, ripping through, forcing its way out.
Hunter.
Malin’s back arched, his spine elongating and twisting into new shapes. He dragged his claw-hands, or paws as they now seemed to be, through the dirt, trying to catch anything to hold onto. As he blinked through the pain reality shifted before him, like someone had wiped a film from his e
yes. The world snapped into a new clarity. He could see better now, in the middle of the night, than he had ever seen in broad daylight. Could see and smell and hear everything.
Tiger.
That’s what he was. He was the tiger. Beast. They were the hunter in the night. The stalker in the rainforest. The one predator all prey feared.
Malin threw his head back and roared, reveling in the sound as it echoed through the forest and off far distant mountains. Flocks of birds took flight and monkeys shrieked.
He stalked closer to where Rahu and his witch stood, mouths agape. Walking on all fours came naturally. The tiger knew. The spirit knew. And they were one.
Malin stalked over to stand before Rahu. The man had promised him power. And he had delivered. Malin had never felt stronger, could feel his wounds knitting back together even now.
Rahu hesitantly reached out, then placed a hand on Malin’s head. “You shall be the tiger now. Harimau Jadian. And this is only the beginning, my friend.”
CHAPTER THREE
Innumerable statues of divine spirits decorated the water gardens in Tanjung’s new home. Bidadaris, in particular—divine bird maidens—drew her eyes. According to her father, Tanjung’s mother was a bidadari. Once, she had dismissed such frivolity as the man offering some excuse for the total lack of a mother in Tanjung’s life. She had assumed she was merely the bastard daughter of some ordinary Lunar, though her father had claimed her as his legal heir.
Her teenage years had made her doubt this. She could feel whenever a storm was coming, feel the rainy season coming days ahead of everyone else. Worse, voices occasionally whispered to her, just beyond the edge of her hearing. They told her things, secrets that, every so often, she was able to catch. Told her when a musician was cheating on his wife. Warned her before an eruption on a nearby isle. Hinted at truths she couldn’t know. And just enough of those secrets turned out to be true that she could not dismiss the whispers as the onset of lunacy. Still, she avoided using her Moon Blessings for fear of that curse.
The whispers had led her to uncover secrets of sorcery, had, in effect, made her a witch. They had guided her to old ostracized hermits and herbalists and witches, helped her collect secret lore. She liked to fantasize that her mother was leading her to understand Kahyangan, the secret world of the spirits.
A path of circular stone steps created a walkway through the pond, rimmed by those statues on either side. Tanjung skipped lightly from one stone to the next, admiring the statues even more than the giant stone fountains around this garden.
House Janggala was famed for these works. A low stone wall held back the rainforest—the House’s palace lay some distance outside Bukit—meaning the whole garden was surrounded by green in every direction. In the dry season the sky must have been brilliant blue against such a background. Now, a continuous drizzle of rain made the stones so slick she was almost tempted to draw her Blessings just to enhance her balance.
Sometimes, as a child, she had actually tried to call the rains. Succeeding once had left her so drained she couldn’t even stand for two days. Her parents thought she’d come down with malaria.
She’d not been foolish enough to ever try that again.
Still, she couldn’t give up her sorcery. It called to her, like the whispers in her mind demanding her attention. And so she worked her arts in secret over the years. Binding a spirit, however, left its Glyph branded on your skin. And there hadn’t been any way to conceal that from her new husband, Sidapaksa. When he had seen the marks, he hadn’t understood what they meant, though.
The man was beautifully innocent and she loved that about him. He had given her the Tianxian gown she now wore. Sea green silk gave her an exotic, foreign look that had made her the envy of every woman in Bukit. She could get used to being married to a wealthy House.
Unbidden, the whispers formed in her mind. Someone was watching her. Tanjung turned, her footing on the stone slab precarious, to look over her shoulder. On the sand beyond the edge of the pond stood a woman, red sarong flowing around her, a wicked grin on her face. Calon. The scion of House Arang had been one of Tanjung’s few friends growing up—her own House, House Nishadipathi, was quite small.
And Calon had been all too eager to join Tanjung in her quest to uncover the secrets of Kahyangan. Tanjung was not a fool, of course. She’d known Calon was interested in knowledge and power for its own sake, more than any shared attempt to understand Tanjung’s mother. But Calon was also fiercely loyal, brave, and the kind of girl who didn’t let other children give Tanjung shit for having no mother.
She’d hardly seen Calon since the woman married Rahu a few months back. But then, Tanjung was a wife now too, and certainly hadn’t had time to feel lonely. And still, she couldn’t help but smile to see the woman here now. They had so much to catch up on.
Calon walked out on the water, not bothering with the stone slabs. The smile slipped off Tanjung’s face. Were Calon’s Blessings so strong she could walk on water, or had she used witchcraft to bind some spirit and allow it? Either way, it was a foolish use of her powers. Use the Blessings too often and you went lunatic. And witchcraft … maybe Tanjung should not have ever taught Calon such arts. Spirits drew their price from your very soul. And Calon had never been cautious enough, as if she didn’t quite believe Tanjung’s warnings.
“I did it!” Calon shouted as she drew nearer.
Tanjung glanced around the garden to make sure no servants or other eavesdroppers were nearby. “You did what?”
“The spirit we talked about,” the woman said, eventually coming to stand on the slab next to Tanjung. “I bonded it to a human soul, created a race of Jadian.”
Damn. She had to suppress a surge of excitement at the thought. That was both impressive and foolish. Tanjung had taught her the supposed ritual, but she hadn’t expected Calon to try it alone. It was a dangerous experiment, one they had discussed months ago as a means of elevating their Houses. And, Tanjung had hoped, of getting her one step closer to reaching her mother. Jadian were shifters, Moon Spirits who could take animal form beneath Chandra’s gaze. Not exactly the same as a bidadari, but then, she was a Moon Scion, after all. She had hoped Chandra would forgive her. “So you’ve made vanara here, on the Isles?”
“Monkeys? No, why would I want to make weremonkeys?”
A sudden chill ran down Tanjung’s spine, one that had nothing to do with the rain falling on them, and she hugged herself. Calon had overreached herself, hadn’t she? “What did you put in him?”
“We found a warrior—a foreigner with no loyalties. The man is a disaster. He’ll be the perfect weapon.”
“What did you put in him?” Tanjung repeated, this time more sternly. “Please tell me you did not put a shark in that man. Do you have any idea what kind of damage weresharks have done in the past? Now. What in Rangda’s underworld did you put in that warrior?”
At her tone, Calon hesitated, then narrowed her eyes. “A … tiger. We call him Harimau Jadian, tiger shifter.”
“A tiger?” Tanjung shut her eyes and shook her head. This was not happening. Why hadn’t the damn voices in her head warned her Calon would do something so profoundly, monstrously foolhardy? Shouldn’t her mother have told her? Maybe her mother wanted to see her pursue sorcery further. Tanjung had always held out hope that one day she might find the Glyph needed to summon the woman who had birthed her.
“So …” she said, at last opening her eyes and favoring Calon with the most withering gaze she could manage, “you took a warrior, a broken man. And you put in him one of the most lethal predators in the animal kingdom? And that sounded like a good place to start?”
“Malin is under our control—”
“This Malin won’t be under his own control!” Tanjung immediately stilled herself. Shouting would draw unwelcome ears. “You have no idea what you’ve done. Oh, sweet Chandra, Calon … At least tell me you didn’t try to put an Alpha spirit in him.”
Finally Tanjung’s fear seemed
to get through to Calon, whose eyes had gone slightly wide. “Of course not. Just a middling.”
Tanjung blew out a long breath. A middling. She had planned to start with the weakest monkey spirit she could find. Shit, but she had the urge to slap Calon. She probably would have if the woman wasn’t married to the lord of another House.
It was done. She had to accept that. Now the question was what she could do to help her friend, and, if this Malin went out of control, to help the Lunars in general. “Show me the Glyph.”
“Sorry?”
“The Glyph for the tiger spirit.” Tanjung snatched Calon’s arm and pulled away her baju, looking for the mark.
“It’s …” Calon frowned. “Rahu insisted on doing it himself. I think he wanted to protect me from any risk.”
At that, Tanjung’s jaw dropped. Calon had taught her new husband witchcraft? Had let him perform a summoning he had no way to understand? For a moment, she wondered if Calon had truly gone lunatic. Every Moon Scion knew the price of overusing their Blessings, but the temptation was always so great. Those powers made you feel like a goddess. Sometimes, people just couldn’t let that feeling go.
And odder still, Tanjung had never known Calon to give up a single drop of personal power. Her husband must have made quite an impression on her.
“Don’t worry,” Calon said. “I’ll do the others myself.”
“Others?”
“We need an army.”
Tanjung held up her hands, barely controlling the urge to throttle the other woman. “You have breached Chandra’s domain, pulled a spirit right off the moon, and put it in a human being! This man will mate, Calon. That’s why we talked about introducing breeds. His children will be open to Jadian possession themselves.”
Calon shook her head, but her voice had grown meek. “That would take too long. We don’t have a generation to wait. We need to create a race now.”
“You have done enough! Let this be, understand the consequences before you take further steps. Have you forgotten every gods-damned thing I taught you?”
