Hymn

by Ken Scholes

  “We believe Lysias and our men should have it implemented within days if it hasn’t already been. Last word was that they were close.”

  Rudolfo’s eyes narrowed. “And am I allowed at this time to know exactly how the poison is being delivered?”

  Renard and Esarov exchanged knowing glances before the Waste guide continued. “I think it is safe to tell you now. It is being administered through the water supply.”

  Now his eyes widened. “Gods,” he said. “How are you accomplishing that? The Y’Zirite forces are scattered across the Named Lands. The amount of coordination necessary would—”

  Renard shook his head. “Not camp by camp,” he said. “We’re putting it into the water supply of the entire Named Lands.”

  Rudolfo sat back in the chair. “You can do that?”

  Renard nodded. “Yes. There is an access to the water tables in the Beneath Places.”

  The mention of the Beneath Places brought Rudolfo’s eyes up. Yazmeera’s words, hazy now in the fog of all that had happened since then, prodded at him. “How long have the Androfrancines had access to our water supply?” Rudolfo’s eyes narrowed, and he leaned forward. “And have they taken advantage of that access in the past?”

  Renard looked uncomfortable, and Rudolfo noted it. “It’s really not a matter we’re at liberty to discuss.”

  Rudolfo looked to Esarov. “Do you know about this?”

  The overseer regarded him carefully and nodded once slowly. “The Office for the Preservation of the Light has been aware of it for about fifteen hundred years.”

  Rudolfo pursed his lips. What had she said on the day she’d told him about the Keeper’s Crèches? Pockets of habitable land—more than just the one he and his people called home—set aside like life boats, she’d said. And the Y’Zirite general had hinted that these crèches controlled the population and that the Androfrancines were aware of it and could have prevented it. “What else have the Androfrancines put into our water, Esarov?”

  The overseer blinked. “To my knowledge, they haven’t.”

  Rudolfo nodded. “But there are other organisms in our water?”

  “This,” Renard said in a firm voice, “is a conversation for another time, General. I’m sure Orius will happily answer all of your questions once the Y’Zirite threat is contained.” The Waste guide glanced at Esarov. “Continue, Overseer.”

  Esarov cleared his voice. “The organism will reproduce and spread quickly. As you’ve seen, it won’t harm those who’ve not been exposed to blood magicks.”

  Rudolfo had seen what their pathogen could do. He had no doubt that if they could deliver it, it would bring the war to a quick end. But another question tickled at his brain, and initially, he tried to push it aside. When he spoke, his voice was low. “As you know,” he said, “my son has been exposed to blood magicks. How long before he will be able to safely return to the Named Lands?”

  But even as he asked it, something Renard had said earlier to Ire Li Tam came to mind. He’d told her she would need to leave, and he’d not mentioned her ever returning.

  Now the two men looked at each other, their faces dark. Rudolfo waited, and when neither spoke, he asked again. “How long?”

  Renard sighed. “It will become a permanent part of the water supply.”

  Rudolfo felt his scalp tingle with the anger that spiked. “So when my son returns, it is only to die the moment he has his first bath or his first drink?” He heard the edge creeping into his voice.

  Their silence now had a weight to it that spoke of more dark news. “I think you should come with us,” Esarov finally said.

  They stood, and Rudolfo followed them from the room, walking quickly down the stairs to the main floor of the manor house. They took him down another set of stairs, where Esarov used a dark key to open a door. Behind it lay a cluttered workroom, its single table scattered with papers and pens. There, nailed to a plank by its wings, was a massive kin-raven, its body already decaying. As Rudolfo approached, its glassy eyes opened and its head twisted.

  “This bird arrived last evening,” Esarov said. “For you.”

  Rudolfo blinked. “It found me here?”

  Renard nodded. His voice was grave. “Yes.”

  “Was it followed?”

  “We don’t believe so,” Esarov said. “But we are moving you later today as a precaution.” The man’s face was grief-struck but resolved. “We will leave you to hear it.”

  Rudolfo waved away the man’s words. “I don’t require privacy.”

  But their eyes told him that he did, and he swallowed as they slipped from the workshop and closed the door behind them.

  He stepped forward, and the bird’s dark eyes fixed upon his own. Its beak snapped open, and the tinny voice that drifted out of it was heavy with a sorrow Rudolfo had not known possible.

  “Rudolfo, my love,” Jin Li Tam said, her voice cracking beneath the weight of that sorrow, “I bear unbearable news.”

  And as she continued, the room went gray and began to spin as Rudolfo heard a roar of wrath and grief the likes of which he’d never known possible. His knees went out from beneath him and he fell to the floor, bruising his fists upon anything he could strike. The roar was his, inconsolable and stretching beyond his sense of time; it chased him—a man carved by darkness—into a midnight of grief beyond his wildest imaginings.

  Vlad Li Tam

  The warm sea was full of light, and Vlad Li Tam swam the waters, dancing with the blue-green d’jin that surrounded him. He felt a vague, distant pull at his mind and wondered how it was he breathed beneath the water without his staff. Still, he did not question overmuch and focused his attention instead upon the single d’jin whose voice he heard most clearly, easily pulling it from the thousand, thousand others that sang around him.

  He opened his mouth to sing and drew in a great lungful of the salt water. His voice warbled, rasping and ugly within the context of their song, and he stopped nearly as soon as he started, though the joy and abandon he felt—the anticipation—was greater than any he’d known.

  Whatever pulled at him pulled again, and this time he turned his attention within to identify it.

  The staff. He did not have it any longer, and the moment of panic that struck had him scrambling for the surface. He broke through, gasping and floundering, beneath a sky filled with a scarred brown world that he knew was his home.

  Because I’m swimming with the d’jin—light-bearers—in a lunar sea.

  Limned in the light of Lasthome, the arches of the Moon Wizard’s Ladder rose up in the night like vast white bones. He turned toward them, knowing somehow that if he only swam through those arches, he would find himself in the colder waters of the Ghosting Crests.

  Except, he realized, that I am dreaming now.

  And even with that knowledge, he struggled to find the thread of reality he needed to drag himself back to wakefulness. He felt heavy, weighed down, and the warmth of the water longed to give him rest.

  Vlad opened his eyes, disoriented and groggy, and felt the wetness of his own drool upon his face. When had he fallen asleep? He’d been sitting in the chair, discussing Neb’s visit with Elder Reeve. And now he slouched in the chair, his body sluggish and his mind groggy. The others stirred to life around him, their own movement slow and hesitant as they sat up carefully from where they’d fallen to the floor.

  He felt the staff pushed into his hand as Elder Reeve leaned over him. When Vlad spoke, it was a whisper. “What happened?”

  The bearded old priest shook his head, his eyes glazed. “I do not know, Lord Tam.”

  Vlad pulled focus from the staff and sat up, suddenly alert. Children whimpered and adults whispered as he studied the room. Amylé D’Anjite still slept, stretched out upon the sofa. And Jin—

  Vlad gasped as his eyes widened. She’s gone. His eyes scanned the room faster now, taking it all in. There was something different now, a sweet scent lingering on the air, and as he took it in, he used the staff t
o trace its roots. On the table, near the door, stood a vase of white flowers. How long had they been there?

  He looked to Elder Reeve. “Those flowers. Who brought them in?”

  The priest looked to the vase. “Sister Tarma, I think.” He glanced around the room, his eyes finding the empty couch. “She’s gone, as well.”

  They took my daughter but left me the staff.

  These, he suspected, were the very ones who’d taken his grandson along with the Crimson Empress and her mother Chandra. And my knives, he thought. And more and more, he suspected these were also the ones who’d helped fund the Lunarists’ campaign, adding terror to his work here in Ahm’s Glory.

  But who are they?

  Vlad sighed. He’d been on his way to find out when the kin-dragon fell upon him. And he doubted now that he would get closer to them without somehow forcing his way.

  He looked again to the Younger God stretched out and sleeping peacefully. He’d done this somehow with the staff and knew instinctively that he could undo it when the time came. But what to do with her?

  And what had Neb told him? She was unwell. The boy had thought he could treat her somehow.

  Vlad glanced back to Elder Reeve. “I’d like you to try to arrange another meeting with your mysterious friends,” he said.

  The priest nodded. “I will, Lord.”

  “And tell them to keep my kin safe until I come for them or risk my wrath.”

  The Lunarist paled. “Yes, Lord.”

  Vlad climbed slowly to his feet and limped to the girl, using the staff to bear his weight. Each step ached, his muscles and joints protesting as he went. When he reached her side, he dropped to his knees and rested a hand upon her forehead, calling upon the staff as he stared into her sleeping face.

  He saw them both upon their different moons. One was the perfect summer, the heat dry and the sky blue beneath a blue-green world that he knew was a Lasthome that hadn’t existed now for millennia. The girl was young, her hair long and blond and caught by the wind as she stood upon that living tower and gazed out to the Seaway, watching the line of crystalline ships on parade.

  The other was a storm at twilight, the sky gray and the wind cold upon the dead bones of the Firsthome Temple. A broken, barren Lasthome hung in the sky, and the old woman watched it and growled beneath her breath.

  “Hello,” he said to both of them.

  They both turned to him, unaware of the other, and when he saw that the old one recognized him, he dismissed the girl. She opened her mouth once before vanishing.

  “You are the one to treat with first,” he said. “I am Lord Vlad Li Tam of House Li Tam. I would know why you attacked me, unprovoked?”

  She spat. “Unprovoked?” She stood to full height and pointed to the dead world above. He saw crisp anger in her fierce blue eyes. “You and your kind have murdered your parents and feasted upon their blood. You’ve murdered each other again and again, destroying Lasthome and proving out the Founders’ Counsel.”

  Founders’ Counsel? It was an unfamiliar term, and he raised his eyebrows to it. He would ask about it later. For now, he had other work to accomplish. “What is it you wish to accomplish by attacking me?”

  But he knew the answer when her eyes found the staff. He held it up. “You want this?”

  “The tools of the—”

  He waved off the remaining words. “Yes,” he said. “I’ve been told.” He leaned forward. “I can tell that you’re angry. I am angry, too. The people here murdered my family. They are the children of Y’Zir, and when I finish punishing them, I will no longer need this tool.” He extended the staff to her. “Nebios Whym lays claim to it, but I have no loyalty to him.”

  Her eyes raged, but her voice was calm. “Nebios Whym must not restore the Continuity Engine. The Founders’ Counsel was clear and the decision made when Lasthome was established. Before I saw what the Downunders did, I took my father’s view that the Founders had lost their path.”

  Vlad tried to piece together the words but found them vague, almost cryptic. Still, she fed him enough that he could set his hook and catch another fish that would help him move the river. His eyes narrowed. “If I gave it to you, what would you do with it?”

  She regarded him for a moment, and he watched her eyes soften with thought before they hardened with resolve. “I would let it finally end,” she said.

  Do not go down this path, my love. He felt her words through the staff, moving into his arm and spreading throughout his body like warmth.

  Vlad dreaded his disobedience, but even as the shame tickled at him, he glanced around the room. He’d lost his knives and he’d lost the children. He’d lost his daughter. But his tool belt was growing.

  He fixed his eyes upon Amylé D’Anjite and did easily what he needed to do. “I will help you let it end,” he said, “if you will help me finish punishing them.”

  The Younger God smiled. “I will help you.”

  Vlad returned the smile but saw easily behind hers. Does she see so easily behind mine? he wondered. “Good,” he said. “Then wait here until I call you forth.”

  He didn’t wait for the look of surprise on her face to finish registering. He squeezed the staff and shuffled her to the side like the turned page of a book.

  “Hello, Lady D’Anjite,” he said as he bent his smile into the other dream. The girl looked up from crying at the edge of her tower.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “My name,” he said, “is Vlad Li Tam.”

  Her face and voice were panicked. “Where is Neb? I was with him and then—”

  “Neb was called away,” he said.

  She stifled a sob. “I don’t know what’s happening to me.”

  Vlad stepped over to her and put an arm around her shaking shoulders. “It’s okay, Lady D’Anjite,” he said. “I can explain everything.”

  And then he did, telling the young girl everything she needed to know in order to best serve his purposes. He would shore up this aspect of the divided woman and keep the other one asleep until he needed her. Then Vlad Li Tam would push this one back into the darkness and rouse the wrath of heaven from her slumber.

  Marta

  Time in Behemoth passed without meaning or marker, and Marta found enough of it marched past that she was no longer bored. She’d explored every corner, every room that she could get to within the gigantic metal beast. She’d watched the fish in the catch tanks below; she’d learned to harvest the sea-water gardens located in the same space and had even spent hours watching the water scrub itself through a series of sponges as the massive machine made it drinkable.

  Once she’d run out of places to explore, Marta had turned to her companions. She’d spent as much time with Isaak as possible, despite the fact that he spent most of his time in that state he refused to call sleep, his eyes flashing dimly as he sat propped in a corner. Being with him, just sitting silently nearby, his metal hand in hers, was sufficient. But she’d also taken it upon herself to steer into her fear regarding Ire, the Y’Zirite woman, and had even talked the woman into showing her some of the stances for a beginner with the knife.

  Still, with all of this, Marta was ready to see the sky. It’s what she was thinking about when Ire’s knife clanged against her own unready hand to send her blade skittering across the floor.

  “You were somewhere else,” the woman said as she bent over the girl. “And you weren’t planted.” The woman used her feet to guide Marta’s, shifting them to a more solid stance. “Like so.”

  “Sorry,” Marta mumbled.

  Ire smiled. “Don’t even start me on your grip,” she said, nodding to the knife.

  Marta recovered the knife and offered it, handle first, to the woman. “My mind was elsewhere.”

  “Yes. I could tell.” Ire slid the knife back into her sheath. “Let’s take a break.”

  Marta followed Ire as they left the room and took the corridor down to the galley. There, the Blood Scout scooped two shells of water from t
he cistern and handed one to the girl. They sat and sipped.

  Marta had learned what she could of the woman, despite how very guarded Ire Li Tam was. The life she’d lived—from the early years before her death was faked to her first years in the blood cult where her grandfather had planted her—fascinated the girl. Marta had grown up all her life hearing from her father how everyone must do their part. This woman’s part had involved giving up her home and growing up in a strange place, adopting their horrific customs and climbing the ranks to become the elite of the elite. And all for the purpose of one day making a journey across the Churning Wastes to bear word to a sister who thought her dead, bidding her come to Y’Zir.

  She studied the woman. Her hair was growing out, red and unruly, stark against the white scars of Y’Zir carved into her flesh. Ire was tall and lithe, her muscles hidden beneath a slenderness that Marta knew better than to mistake for weakness. And at first, she’d smiled little. But in the days they’d spent together, the woman had become more human.

  “So do you think we’re nearly there?” Marta asked as she sipped the water.

  Ire nodded. “I do.”

  Marta swallowed. Once they arrived, she knew Isaak would try to keep her from following. She wasn’t sure exactly how, but she knew he would just as surely as she knew she would do her best not to let him leave her behind. “I wish I knew what was going to happen.”

  Ire Li Tam sighed. “I think we all do. My father is … unpredictable.”

  “I think fathers can be that way,” Marta said. “That’s why we have mothers.”

  The thought of her mother was an ache, and she thought she saw a similar shadow cross Ire’s face. “I don’t remember my mother,” the woman said. “The children of House Li Tam are usually separated early from whomever their mothers happen to be.”

  Marta tried to imagine it but couldn’t. “My mother died at Windwir.”

  The woman regarded Marta with calculating eyes. “Loss can make us strong and show us our path.”

  “Yes,” Marta said. “And sometimes it just hurts.”

  Ire nodded. “Aye.”

  She thought for a moment, taking another drink from the shell. The water was cool and sweet. “But at least with your family, it’s to serve a higher purpose.”