by Ken Scholes
They left, and Jin saw the knowing glance from Administrator Gras as she escorted them toward the edge of the meadow and a waiting wagon. Jin caught Rudolfo’s sleeve. “It is time, my love.”
Rudolfo pulled her to him, their son between them, and as the boy began to giggle, the Gypsy King began to dance. He held her awkwardly, so much shorter than she and with her hands full of their boy, but they moved together to music that wasn’t there.
“You are my sunrise and my sunset,” he said, “and I would burn down my forest to keep you.”
She laughed. “You would be a fool.” But then her tears spilled over. “I’ve told you how sorry I was, but I have not told you how very much I love you and how proud I am of my husband and the father of my son.” She kissed Jakob, and he laughed as she passed him over to his father. Then she looked at Rudolfo, saw the storm of anguish that filled his own eyes, and tucked away any other words. They were not necessary. But leaving was.
She wanted to look back but didn’t. She wanted to stop, to throw herself at Rudolfo and her son and beg one last day or even an hour—some better bargain than this.
The Grandmother Tree opened to her, and Jin Li Tam went inside.
It is a hard thing, Great Mother. And you will never forget that you lost something. Now it shifted to a dry whisper. “Come closer to my heart.”
“You said my ending would change.”
“Yes,” the Grandmother Tree said. “It has.” You will never forget that you lost something. Jin saw shadowy images blurred by tears. But over time there will be so many other losses. So many. You will lose sight of the ones that shaped your sacrifice and gave you roots for strength, boughs for shelter and sap for life. But the voice was weaker now. “Come closer to my heart.”
Jin moved into the chamber and saw the red pulsing vein. “What is it I’m to do?”
A dry chuckle. “Your body will know. There will be light. And movement. And eventually, sleep. And dreaming.” There was a pause. And then awakening to something new with all of this a distant ache in your heart.
Branches unfolded again for her, and this time Jin Li Tam stepped into them. They bore her up and pressed her against that heart, and she took the sap into her again and felt it burn from the inside out even as light blossomed within that chamber to a blinding crescendo.
And then she herself was in the vein, feeling the fire all about her as the blood of the earth translated her slowly into light and pushed her through the Grandmother Tree’s veins, down into the roots.
She built speed as she went, and she felt the same vertigo that had seized her when she’d used the lightway. Only now, this was no instant flash of arrival. She moved faster and faster and only vaguely became aware of the roots falling away as she raced the deeps of the earth.
When she spilled out into cold water, she experienced a burst of blue-green light and realized it was her.
I am a ghost in the water, Jin Li Tam thought.
Yes, a faraway voice compelled her.
And somewhere ahead of her, a song beckoned and she knew it. Without effort or force of will, her body moved toward that song, and Jin Li Tam poured herself into that forward motion.
She lost all track of time as she raced the ocean, and when she surfaced at last, she saw the white pillars arching against the sky and leaped up, the song pouring out from the waters ahead filling her new body with joy and the need to move.
She swam past a single vessel there in those waters and already could not recall what she’d fled. There had been light there. And there had been love. And so much loss. And she knew she’d left something behind—something vast—but that loss was folded into a larger song, a hymn to light in darkness and life in the midst of death.
Jin Li Tam felt the water shift around her as she moved into the warmer lunar seas. And now she smelled the path of the others who’d gone before her—thousands upon thousands of them—who’d left their scent within the waters. And the scent was enough to guide her the rest of the way.
Jin let the song move through her, let it weigh her as she dove the depths and swam until the light no longer required her to swim. She felt her body shift again in a safe and warm place that waited for her, then felt her roots take hold even as she drifted into the long sleep that would let Jin Li Tam, the forty-second daughter of Vlad Li Tam, grow strong and able to care for her myriad children as only a Great Mother could when at long last she next awakened.
Vlad Li Tam
Spray from the ocean salted his wounds, and Vlad Li Tam strained at the ropes as he screamed.
He’d begged the regent not to cut him anymore once he’d given them the number of screams he thought they might expect, and so, of course, Eliz Xhum cut him more. Vlad did not tell them that the pain in his body—deep in his bones—as he withdrew from the staff was far worse than the Y’Zirite’s blades. He’d seen the world go gray enough times of late that he welcomed the knives and the wind.
The hook is set and the line is drawn taut.
And he’d begged them to take him belowdecks when the regent wasn’t bent over him with his blades and his constant banter. So they’d left him tied to the table at the bow of the ship with the sky tossing wildly above him and the salt in his wounds.
When he saw the dragons flash past, high in the sky, he knew they were getting close. He’d done his calculations, though there was no way of knowing how long it had been since he’d eaten the fruit and whether or not his body was already too compromised.
Somewhere beneath their knives, Vlad was certain he’d seen his father. The man was the way he was when Vlad was a boy—the summer he’d sent him to Caldus Bay—and he sat at the railing watching in sorrow as they cut his boy. Vlad had met his father’s eyes and saw remorse there.
He’d memorized the last word he’d received from his father. I’m sorry, the note had read, I was wrong. And Vlad knew those words applied so many other places besides his father’s complicity with the Y’Zirites.
But he changed paths and created the plan that made me. And Vlad had taken the pain of that making and made it into an army, finishing his father’s work.
Because I am my father’s son. And there was no escaping that snare. The Tam way was instilled in their children as soon as they were snatched from their mother’s breasts too soon and taught to rely upon the lord of House Li Tam for everything.
As Vlad watched his father watching him, he thought about all of the last words he had heard. He’d heard his children’s last words—and his siblings’ children’s—for as long as he’d been the head of the house. And then, there upon that island, under Ria’s care, he’d heard so many more. Too many.
He felt the knife twist as it kissed his skin, and he hoped his howl would hide his smile. Ahm was there now, and they’d been asking him questions about the staff.
But he had used it up in his father’s work. His father smiled now, too, but it was a sad smile. “It is your work, too, Vlad. And you are nearly finished with it.”
Yes, he thought. It is my work too. And it was necessary. If they were to survive, they would need time and peace so that they could find their way.
“You can tell us now,” the regent said, “or you can tell Sister Elsbet. She is much better with the knife than I am, and she’s prepared a place for you near Lord Y’Zir’s room.” He ran the knife along Vlad’s rib lightly where he’d just finished his last Y’Zirite word. “We will have plenty of time to figure out the staff.” He leaned forward and smiled. “And our magisters assure me they can keep you alive and feeling pain long enough for your kin-healing to be thorough.”
Vlad saw a flash of white from the corner of his eye and stopped screaming. He drew a breath and held it, then released it.
Ahm Y’Zir was there now, leaning forward over him. “Near me, fear me, dear me, hear me,” he ranted. A gout of green vapor shot from the exhaust grate in his metal chassis.
Vlad drew another breath. More white—massive and impossible against the sky—and he
knew it. He’d seen it before. The Moon Wizard’s Ladder. That was the name he preferred for it, and he’d never forget the first time he’d seen it in an ocean alive with d’jin, led there by his own ghost in the water.
Now the ocean was dark and the wind was cold.
And suddenly, the moon rose over the bow, blue and green and undulating as it leaped and then fell. And before it dropped beneath the waves, Vlad heard the same song he’d heard so long ago upon the bow of his own ship, only now it was sung by one solitary ghost that swam those waters.
Oh my love, he thought, swim free of this place and far from me. As if hearing him, the last d’jin sped away.
He thought about Amal Y’Zir, his ghost in the water, and how she’d found him, guided him, given him the staff. She was the closest thing to love he had ever known, and he was surprised to look up and see her also sitting upon the rail with his father. Her hair was dark and her eyes were darker, and she smiled but it was stern.
“Oh my love,” she said to him. And she said nothing else. She inclined her head, and then Vlad’s father did the same.
And then he waited in silence while the regent started carving yet another Y’Zirite word into his flesh. At the last, Vlad reached out to the library, but Petronus was not there. But the guard was, and the tower was vibrant with the same song that the ghost had sung alone.
“Are they back yet?” Vlad asked the guard.
Eyes wide, the guard nodded.
Vlad closed his eyes and pushed the library away.
In the end, he faced what needed doing the same way he had expected his children to. And he did it for the same reason he had done everything, without regret but sometimes with remorse: because he was a Tam. Change was the path life took, and House Li Tam shaped and guided that change, moving the rivers to erode the mountains and empty the valleys of life. I have moved many rivers, and I have been moved myself in more ways than I can ever know.
“My work is finished,” Vlad Li Tam finally said as he met the regent’s eyes and smiled.
Then the lord of House Li Tam opened his mouth and began to sing. He sang and kept singing until the ship burst into flames around him, until the ocean boiled and the great stone arches above their heads cracked and trembled and came crashing down. He sang until he was flooded with heat and seawater. And he gave himself fully to his singing until Vlad Li Tam was burned away and nothing remained but motes of light and a song that faded at last into a final gray.
Neb
The song was everywhere, nothing at all like the distant melody that had brought them to the moon in the antiphon, when Neb set foot upon the rooftop and sent his kin-dragon away. This was no ancient metal man bent over a harp. The entire Firsthome Temple was alive with the song, and it emanated from the floor where the library waited.
Petronus led the way. “It’s coming from the command pool.”
They’d only had a few opportunities to talk since arriving at the Firstfall Forest in New Espira, and all of the new information was a blur. He waited for Winters, and once she staggered onto the rooftop, eyes wide and nostrils flaring from her first flight, he took her by the hand and followed Petronus.
“This is astonishing,” she said as they slipped through the doorway and started taking the long winding stairwell down.
Neb thought back to his first experience—starting in the places beneath the tower after Amylé D’Anjite. His pursuit of her up the stairs and finally breaking out into the light on the rooftop when Petronus unsealed the tower and set them free. When he’d first been inside the temple, it had been dark and he’d thought dead. But Petronus had brought it to life, and now something had it singing.
They reached the library, and Petronus paused. “Have we seen him lately?” he asked the guard.
The man shook his head. “I will send for you if I see him.”
Petronus nodded, and they kept moving. Nadja Thrall and a handful of officers were waiting at the door when they reached it. Neb was surprised when she took Petronus into her arms and kissed him. Then she held him back from her and looked into his eyes. “How are you feeling?”
Petronus blushed. “I’m fine.” He looked over his shoulder at Neb, and Neb saw the embarrassment in his eyes. “May I present Lady Winteria bat Mardic,” he said.
Nadja smiled and it set off the dusting of freckles over her nose. “Lady Winteria, the Dreaming Queen. My brother has spoken highly of you.”
“He was most helpful. I look forward to treating with you.”
Petronus stepped up to the door. “Come with me, Neb,” he said. The door opened, and after Petronus stepped in, Neb followed. The door closed quickly behind them.
“What about the others?”
Petronus winked. “Soon enough, Son. But you are the Homeseeker and the Homefinder. The temple was yours to unseal, and the staff was yours to wield. Things haven’t gone as planned, but they’ve still managed to go.”
Petronus stopped at the silver rod that jutted up from the floor of the room. Neb felt the room’s pulse and saw the pool and vines. “Is that what I think it is?”
Petronus nodded. “When Vlad authorized me, the temple grew this room, and I think it grew a new rod. It’s the command pool for the temple. But some things have not grown back; some things have been lost.”
They seemed true words to Neb. Much had changed in his life since that day upon the hill. Some things had not grown back—like his awkward, innocent orphan-boy love for Brother Hebda. And all of that innocence lost when he watched the genocide of the only people he’d known, the desolation of the only home he’d ever had, and again when he’d learned of how deeply some of those people had betrayed him.
And so many lives. He forced himself back to the moment.
Petronus placed a hand upon the staff. “Put your hand upon it with me,” he said.
Neb did and felt nothing.
Petronus smiled. “You are authorized.”
Power flooded him. The song upended him and threatened to capsize him. Neb jerked his hand away. “Oh.”
“Take it,” Petronus said. “You’ve surely paid for it.”
Neb drew out the staff and felt it moving in his hands, pulling like a serpent to the pool. The vines there writhed and waited as the blood of the earth began bubbling in its basin.
Neb let the rod pull him, and he climbed into the basin clutching it to his chest. He felt a binding that held but needed release. He felt a pressure that pulled steady and would not yield. And around all of it, the song roaring, and the Calling hot upon him.
“Oh,” Nebios Whym, Homeseeker and Homefinder, said.
Then the temple began to shake, and the song warbled but held. At first he thought it was part of the pool, but then he saw the mottled color of the walls. This shaking was more violent, and he felt his stomach sink even as his heart sang with the temple.
And he didn’t fully understand it, but Neb knew that time truly was of the essence. He climbed up from the pool, pulling at the vines as they rushed to release him. And he didn’t wait for Petronus. He didn’t stop at the door to explain to the curious and fearful looks that met his wide eyes as he rushed past them on his way to the roof.
There was cacophony at the edge of the song now, and it made his pulse race. The staff within his hands sang, too, and Neb suspected that it was the source of the song, augmenting its voice by turning the entire temple into a vast and resonant megaphone.
He took the stairs two and three at a time, and by the time he’d reached the top, the temple had stopped shaking. Far in the south, a white fist of steam rose up in the direction of the Seaway. And all around them, the sea boiled, but it had been boiling even before—or at least had appeared to boil.
Neb stood upon the roof and watched that plume. Petronus reached him first. “It was Vlad,” he said. “He appeared just after we left the library.”
“The Seaway?” But Neb didn’t need to ask Petronus. He moved a thumb over the staff and let the temple tell him. “It’s gone.”<
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Neb had no time to ponder that. The song continued to build, and the orphans he and Winters were collecting now came trickling through the doorway to fill the roof of the Firsthome Temple. Y’Zirites, Marshers, Gypsies, mechoservitors and New Espirans all united by a dream that had brought them to the moon.
The song rose, and as it rose, Neb felt the staff grow light within his hand. It pulled upward and he obeyed the impulse, raising it high into the sky.
Now there was a different shaking. A vibration beneath his feet and upon the air as if the world trembled at what followed. The waters foamed, and lightning from a clear sky ran ribbons along the surface of the distant sea.
They were large and dark, oblong and smooth, like seeds the size of a city-state. Neb counted six of them as they slowly lifted from the lunar sea. Water rolled from them, and steam billowed about them as they rose up.
Winters stood beside him, and the wind pulled at her brown hair as her eyes went wide. She took his hand. “The Time of Sowing is at hand,” she said in a voice full of awe.
Yes. And Neb watched as those seeds rose into the sky to be light sown in darkness and seeds scattered in hope.
“The Continuity Engine of the People is restored,” he said, and his voice boomed out across the jungle and over the lunar sea. Then Nebios Whym watched his people return to the stars in search of their next home.
Chapter
26
Petronus
Petronus looked at what little remained of his life here at the end of it. He’d laid it out upon the mossy bed in his quarters alongside his empty satchel. He had one compact volume of the core precepts of P’Andro Whym, a battered toiletry kit missing half of what was needed, a few scraps of clothing left over from before he could clothe himself with the blood of the earth. And then of course the tiny kin-raven and the blue stone Nadja had given him. He’d lost Vlad’s notebook somewhere along the way. Or maybe he’d given it to someone. He couldn’t remember. And he’d passed the crescent back to Rudolfo for safekeeping in the library there in the shadow of the Grandmother Tree.
