by J L Forrest
“Yea, of that I need no reminder.”
At the first sight of a Templari—a monkish figure who looked not more than fourteen, a sallow boy who moved like an old man—a quiet growl rolled from yw Sabi’s throat. “Fetch hot tea,” she told him, “and be quick about it, you useless crustacean.”
◆◆◆
On horseback, Nyahri left the shadowy halls of S’Eret, emerging into a bright but frigid daylight. Braced wooden barricades encircled the fortress gates, a wide buffer between the stone walls and a gathering Oudwn crowd. Some hundreds of men, women, and children fell silent as Nyahri rode into the light, leading Turo behind Kwlko.
“The witch,” one man said.
The witch, Nyahri thought. The word meant something different in Oudwn than it did in E’cwn, something dangerous, something whorish, and she disliked it.
The mob craned their necks, searching past her for the Atreiani. The Templarii closed the great doors behind Nyahri and bolted them, leaving her alone to face the throng.
“Why have you come here?” someone shouted.
Another shouted, “Why is the Atreiani among us?”
“What message,” a woman called, “does she bring to us from the netherworld?”
“Do all the Atreianii awake?”
“Will she help us?”
“Is she here to judge us?”
“Will she punish us?”
“Help us!”
Nyahri calmed Kwlko, who sidestepped nervously from the crowds. The cold wind blew her hair, the night-falcon feathers of her coronal swirling around her, giving her the unnatural semblance of the Atreiani herself. “I do not know the answers to your questions,” she shouted in reply. “I am only her servant.”
“What can you tell us?” another woman asked, and a hundred others waited on the answer.
Nyahri studied them, noting the sick, old, and weary, the same as at Aukensis. “She does not mean you any harm!”
“They say she is bringing medicines!” shouted a man.
“Yes!” others shouted. “Medicines!”
Where, Nyahri wondered, would that rumor have begun?
“She will try,” the E’cwni answered them.
A woman cried out, “Thank the gods!”
“When?” the man asked.
“When she can,” Nyahri said, thankful for the oratory practice of an Ahtros’s daughter at the great tribal meets. “She has much to do. Be patient! Now, friends, I would like to walk your city and learn it for myself.”
A young man called, “I will show you!”
“Thank you, but I would go alone.”
She waved to them, guiding the horses not through the crowd but toward a wider street, deeper into the city. Heavy flagstones paved the way between low buildings of granite, wood, and thatch. Cooking fires flavored the air. Youth played in a plaza, a chasing game punctuated with delighted squeals, just as E’cwn girls and boys would play. Nyahri walked the horses at a slow pace, still on Kwlko’s back, their hooves clacking on the pavers.
Everywhere she went, Oudwnii watched her. Some glared, some bowed their heads, some stared in awe or fear or scorn.
Overlooking the city’s waterways, a higher street followed the contours of the land, and Nyahri chased it upward. Along the hillsides, the houses and avenues angled oddly, no straight lines except a long east-west boulevard, the same upon which Dhaos had led them more than ten days before. Two rivers crossed near S’Eret Fortress. The first was a meandering gray wash from the highest glaciers of the western ranges, churned by a more tumultuous rush of silty red water from the north. Winding eastward, beneath a series of stone bridges, these tributaries collided into a single waterway.
Among the close-standing masonry houses, Nyahri dismounted and tethered the horses to a post beside a swath of grass. She walked past the homes, nodding to anyone who met her eye. Chickens clucked, hurrying from her path. One woman sighted Nyahri, halted her children playing, and herded them from the street. Others cleared her way, as well, even full-grown men.
Rounding a corner, Nyahri stopped short. She encountered a round-bodied matron, who wore an apron and a generous smile, and who burst with surprise at sight of the E’cwni. The woman stood in a fenced yard, goats bleating around her. Behind her yard, a divinely delicious scent of roasting meat wafted from an open doorway.
“The E’cwn witch,” the woman said, as if delighted. “Witch of the Atreiani!”
“My name is Nyahri, not witch.”
“My name is Colhina.”
From the doorway emerged a heavyset man, twice Nyahri’s age, carrying a copper cup. Gray peppered his beard. His eyes told her of kindness. He wore a well-tended smock which spoke of a care for his profession, whatever it might be—A baker, Nyahri thought. He had the soft eyes of someone who’d never killed in battle.
“This is Ahlon,” Colhina said, tilting her head toward him.
“The Atreiani’s witch,” he said, his eyes going wide, and he dropped the cup. It clanged, bounced, and splattered water across the dirt.
“Her name is Ny-ah-ri.”
“Nyahri,” he repeated, bowing his head, “an honor.”
Nyahri raised her face, drawing a long breath, coveting the meal waiting inside. Her belly grumbled. How many myths did her people tell which began with the guile of good food and ended with bloody death? Too many. Yet she studied the generous expressions of these two Oudwnii and found nothing in them to distrust.
“We have lamb pie,” Ahlon said, a nervous jitter in his voice.
Nyahri scrunched her nose. “I—” She stood taller, choosing an expression more fitting for the servant of an Atreiani. “I do not know what pie is.”
Pie was not an E’cwn word.
Colhina smiled, puffing out her chest. “Come in then, E’cwni, and find out.”
A rustic home, in many ways simpler than an E’cwn tent, it nonetheless held a marvelous cast-iron stove. The couple sautéed vegetables and roasted apples. They inquired about Nyahri’s life on the plains, what she thought of Cohltos, whether she wanted for anything.
They asked her nothing of the Atreiani herself. They made no demands.
In their company, Nyahri discovered that warm lamb pie with carrots and beets tasted like the grist of the gods. Her hosts fed her graciously, and they shared generously.
Afterward, as Colhina walked Nyahri to their front gate, she said, “Be well, witch.”
“Thank you for your kindness,” Nyahri replied.
“Take this.” The woman pressed a loaf of bread into Nyahri’s hands. “The best kind of weapon—it beats away hunger.”
Nyahri departed with a smile, but also with a heavy heart—she liked the Oudwnii. She returned to the horses, wrapped the bread in a square of cloth, and packed it in the saddlebags. After mounting Kwlko, she started southward down a new street.
◆◆◆
For hours, Nyahri sat on a granite boulder in a wide meadow, outside the city, while the horses grazed. Releasing the pent-up energy of ten days indoors, Kwlko ran, working himself into a sweat.
Lovely stallion, Nyahri thought. Well endowed. Sire to many foals in her father’s herd.
Unlooked for, thoughts of the archer Dhaos overtook Nyahri. Her heart burst for yw Sabi, not one measure diminished by her imaginings of the handsome Oudwni. The last night’s pleasure, so close and real, remained with her. She wanted to repeat it, to have her mouth on yw Sabi again.
Yet still, Dhaos occupied her mind, invading from the edges.
It is possible, Nyahri thought, I am not a safi. It is possible I like both.
It is possible I want both.
She sighed.
The land poured into her eyes, like nourishment, like good drink. The late-day clouds broke while sunlight splashed from the river. The lie of the drainages impressed itself upon Nyahri, revealing the order of Cohltos’s bundled houses, the quilt of farms and crops, and the broad swatches of apple orchards coating the valley’s gentler slopes. The cold wind sw
ept from the highest hillsides, but the sun warmed Nyahri’s face.
This is more than the flutter of attraction in my stomach, she thought. My guts feel twisted like horse ties and there is little to be done about it. So this is what love feels like?
Nyahri considered the weight of the Atreiani’s revelations, of an Exemplari’s deep magic, of what a claime meant, and she found herself excited by it. Kwlko trotted to her and stamped the ground. She rode him bareback, prancing over the high mountain grasses, Turo chasing them all the while.
What might it be, Nyahri thought, to walk forever with the spirits of the dead? What will it be to become one?
She waited till the sun grazed the western peaks. By twilight, she took the horses’ leads, making her way back to S’Eret Fortress.
{23}
Nyahri closed the library door behind her, lowering the latch. A dozen candles lit the room. The sun had set, but Lwn and Stashwn shone through the high windows, approaching full. Feet propped on the table, yw Sabi sat with her chair tilted back, her hands folded in her lap, and her head bowed.
“Mistress?” Nyahri prompted.
The Atreiani’s gaze flicked toward her. “Nyahri.”
Nyahri hesitated, sensing a weight on yw Sabi, some deeper concern. “Everything well?”
Yw Sabi rubbed her eyes, then gave Nyahri a lopsided, crafty smile. “Planning.” She set aside her books and leaned forward in her chair, its front legs clacking against the flagstone.
Nyahri sat beside her. I must grow fond of chairs and tables, she thought, hating them, unless we are back on the trail soon.
“What did you see today?” asked yw Sabi.
Nyahri told her, as many details as she could remember. The Atreiani took particular interest in Nyahri’s description of the streets and their layout, of the rivers and the way they divided the city, of the placement of the bridges which Nyahri spotted from higher along the slopes.
“What do we do next?” Nyahri asked.
“Soon, we’ll do as Kepler wanted from the first. You and I will descend into Sojourn Temple. It will detect my presence and initiate a sequence to wake some hundreds of Atreianii.”
Nyahri blanched, thinking of the morning when Suhto entered Abswyn, thinking too of yw Sabi’s warnings about awakened Atreianii and the violence they might do. “Why would we do so?”
Yw Sabi leaned forward to whisper, “For the Atreianii, coming out of deep suspension takes hours. Before they do, Nyahri, we must accomplish some things inside Sojourn. There’s equipment to retrieve, and I’ll want time with you in the Hall—it’s a good place for show and tell, and seeing will help you understand many things.”
“You would show me what?” She guessed, “Things from the Culling?”
Yw Sabi tilted her head, a hint of surprise at Nyahri’s question. “And other events. Telling you of the past will not be enough.”
“You need tell me nothing—I am already committed, have already decided to come with you.”
Yw Sabi smiled. “For that, I am grateful, but by then there’ll be no turning back—the showing will not be to convince you, but to prepare you for everything which might follow.”
“I understand.”
“Are you afraid?”
“I was frightened on my first hunt, but I hunted anyway. When my brother led me in my first raid, I was so terrified I reeked of my own piss before we returned home.”
Yw Sabi raised one eyebrow, leaning her chin against her fist.
“Still, I ran the Bk’fern camp,” Nyahri said, “right there with all the men, and I made my kill. I danced the blood dance, and no one again doubted my right to a longknife. My knees trembled when my mother took me on spirit walks, when I first heard of you and the other Atreianii. Before I first swam the spring ice torrents with my brother, I thought my legs had frozen in dread, and I could hardly dive.”
Yw Sabi tucked a strand of Nyahri’s hair behind her ear. “Ice torrents?”
“Flood every year, when the waters come rushing down the canyons and fill the arroyos. The floods sweep everything before them. My brother called other men cowards, and he rode the waters. I followed him.”
The Atreiani gave her a look which said what she thought of such foolishness, but she held her words. Her thumb traipsed along Nyahri’s neck.
“I could not,” Nyahri said, “let him be braver than me.”
“I suppose you couldn’t have,” yw Sabi replied. “Sounds like you’re still competing with him.”
The Atreiani kissed Nyahri’s forehead, then her lips. They leaned upon each other.
“Will I like her?” Nyahri asked.
Yw Sabi understood. “That’ll be like asking whether you like yourself. I believe so.”
Will I like her? How little the question matters! Better to ask, Where will I end and she begin? That is how it will work, nay? Powerful witchcraft—
Nyahri set another delighted kiss upon yw Sabi’s mouth and said, “I am yours.”
“Ah, lovely one.” Yw Sabi stroked Nyahri’s hair. “I am yours too.”
◆◆◆
They returned to their bed and, for hours, they rested quietly, intent only on each other’s touch, on one another’s skin, lips, and breath. Nyahri shut her eyes, kissing yw Sabi’s mouth, her tongue traipsing along yw Sabi’s teeth, glancing the edge of the long canines. She leaned her forehead against her mistress’s shoulder, then sat back again, meeting her gaze.
“Sojourn Temple’s defenses will register you as an Exemplari,” yw Sabi said. “The Citadel will recognize you as one of our own.”
Nyahri trembled. Whatever she had believed throughout her years had been only frail mythologies with more potent truths behind them, truths which she’d be the first in millennia to learn. Trembling too from desire, she reached behind yw Sabi’s neck and pulled her close again.
“Once we have what you need,” Nyahri said, “what then?”
“We’ll override the Citadel’s power supply, as I did at Abswyn, and we will destroy the Sojourn Temple.” She gestured at the scattered books surrounding her. “I’ve learned all I can from these.”
“Yet still you delay?”
“Because more than twenty thousand people live within the blast radius, and we need to save as many as we can—we will save every human we can.”
Nyahri closed her eyes, nodding gratefully and remembering Colhina and Ahlon, but also appreciating the challenge. “From the moment we arrived,” she said, “you had already considered the innocents?”
“I’ll take no life wastefully. There has been enough of that, far too much.”
“What of the Atreianii you will kill?”
“At this facility, there’re none I count innocent. To rule again, every Sojourn Atreiani would slay nearly everyone alive today.”
“They sleep now, though, yea?”
Yw Sabi nodded.
“Could we not simply slay them in their beds? Quietly? Destroy nothing else?”
“Spoken like an E’cwn raider.” The Atreiani laughed, a quick exhalation, full of bitterness. “I considered such a possibility, but no. The logistics are too difficult, and the risks of losing are too high. The surest way to kill the Atreianii here is to destroy Sojourn itself.”
“Hellfire burned at Abswyn,” Nyahri said. “Will it be the same here?”
Yw Sabi nodded. “The radius will be even larger, the entire city.”
“Nothing could survive, no one.”
“So help me figure it out,” the Atreiani said. “Here is our challenge—How do we evacuate many thousands of Oudwnii without announcing our intentions too soon?”
“What if we do announce them? What if we simply tell the people why we do what we do?”
“Lovely one, you would make a potent Ahtras one day, working through your tribe, building consensus—difficult with two hundred tribesmen, but honorable. Yet with thousands, over something so critical? The Templarii will oppose us tirelessly, and they will brace Oudwn minds against us. Disc
ussions would carry on for years. Some Oudwnii might concede. Others, no matter what we offered, would resist to the end. Cohltos would be fortified, putting even more humans at risk. We’d need to raise an army—my least favorite option—and return with it. Need I go on?”
“Is it not the right of the Oudwnii to decide their future?”
“Ah, rights.” Rolling onto her side, yw Sabi tucked a pillow beneath her head. “Perhaps if we had time. My intuition tells me we don’t. Borea remains silent and the odds surrounding my awakening belie chance—we’re snared in a larger contest, one whose boundaries remain invisible to us. So, we’ll destroy all the Citadels as hastily as possible. It’s the undertaking I began before the Eventide, and it is what I’ll finish now.”
Nyahri considered this—
The raider in her understood it.
“If the Oudwnii will not flee?” she asked.
“I’ll still annihilate the Citadel, and it’ll kill them all—men, women, children. Compared to a future of millions dead, or billions, twenty thousand Oudwnii are no different than sixty- three C’naädii.”
“What shall we do?”
“First, find the entry to Sojourn Temple,” yw Sabi said, “quietly and quickly. The Templarii will soon become confident of the truth—I have indeed come as their enemy.”
“Yea, mistress, I will find it.”
“Good. We must trust nothing except ourselves, not the Templarii nor anything about this place. By the time we force the Citadel, we’ll need to command the entire valley.”
I understand these things perfectly, Nyahri thought, these impossible tasks. But one thing must come before another—
“I will need to wear your collar,” she said, “before I can enter the Citadel.”
“Without it, the Citadel will kill you.”
Nyahri caressed her own throat. “When shall we?”
“Soon.” Yw Sabi kissed Nyahri’s brow. “Too soon. In our day, most Atreianii made a ceremony of it. I’ll give it as much sacrament as I can, poor as it’ll be.”
“Whenever you wish, Atreiani.”
