by Raye Wagner
Behind me, a female exclaimed, “Rot and ruin.”
4
I turned toward the wide-eyed magî walking toward me on the Little Rê, my heart thumping with her sudden appearance.
She was neither short nor tall, and her warm skin, the color of barely toasted coconut, was free of mud, except around her feet and ankles. She had dark, wavy hair, but the last six inches were a rich coppery color, likely bleached from the sun. Her tunic was a stylish sleeveless wrap, accentuating the three bands of tattoos on each of her upper arms. The markings were made with a strange white ink, in an odd pattern of triangles with a dot in the center of each.
“W-who are you?” I stammered, scrambling to my feet.
She halted a dozen feet away from me on the road, her gaze darting from me to the undercanopy and then back.
“Were you about to walk into the jungle after that panthera?” she asked, shaking her head.
“He saved me.”
She raised her eyebrows, perhaps a silent question, but when I said nothing more, her expression pinched into blatant disbelief.
Taking a deep breath, I glanced down and tried to formulate an approach to gain her trust—and maybe some help. Gross. My attention stuck on my filthy tunic, the once-orange fabric barely noticeable beneath layers of muck and blood. I ran my hands over the front of my garment, and a clump of mud fell. Mortified and blushing, I glanced toward the path I’d come out on, all but swallowed now by the prolific growth.
Had I been hiding, or had someone else hidden me? I gawked, speechless with the thought.
“Are you okay?” she asked, waving her hands in front of my face. As soon as I met her gaze, she continued, “If you’re lost, I can help, but I wouldn’t recommend going that way unless you want the bûyî to get you.”
“The bûyî?” From her tone, the bûyî was bad, but I’d never heard the word used this way before, at least not that I remembered. “Are the swamps filled with magîk? Or does bûyî mean something different . . . now?”
Her eyes widened as I spoke, making it even more obvious I was clueless.
“Where are you from?” she asked, her incredulous expression communicating far more than her words. She shook her head, as if she couldn’t believe I would ask something so stupid, and then held out her hand. “Sorry. That’s rude. My name is Esi.”
I stared at her hand, her clean hand—attached to her clean arm—and then her. This close, I could see sparks of gold in the dark depths of her eyes, and I wondered if she would be an ally or an enemy. What’s wrong with me? Who thinks like that?
“Do you not want to tell me your name? I’m not a Serîk, and I promise I won’t turn you into them.”
The Serîk served as personal guards to Qrali’s highest ruler, the kümdâr, and were meant to keep peace. Why would she turn me into them?
Esi frowned again, studying me with that same look of disbelief. “Do you remember who the kümdâr is?”
I relaxed, a little, and gave Esi a tentative smile. “Zevn.”
She pursed her lips, and her brow furrowed. Her expression made it clear Zevn was not, in fact, the kümdâr. My insides squirmed, and I glanced behind the girl at the empty road, wondering where she’d come from and where she was going. I wondered what had happened since Zevn’s rule ended and—for the thousandth time—why I didn’t know anything.
“Do you know where you’re going?” she asked.
I debated lying, but something about her bluntness made me go with my instinct to trust her.
“Not really,” I said. Maybe someday I would remember where I was from, and then I could figure out where to go, but right now . . . I pointed at the almost invisible path I’d come down and said, “I was living in a hovel back that way, but I’m done living there now.”
She studied me, her expression tight, and then nodded as if this made perfect sense. Maybe now, in this Qralî, it did.
Esi glanced back and then stared at the road beyond me, squinting. The golden sparks in her eyes brightened, and then her pupils widened until they devoured her irises.
I swallowed, forcefully pushing the anxiety back down into my chest, and waited. Eventually, the rich brown reappeared, shattered by the gold. I narrowed my gaze but, even though I knew she’d just done her magîk—said nothing. How could I explain to her this feeling of trepidation about using magîk?
She took a deep breath and then said, “I don’t see any Serîk, but eventually they’ll pass this way. And I can’t leave you here to be discovered by them.”
I nodded, not because I understood what she was talking about, but because faint memories simmered just beyond reach. I still didn’t understand why being discovered by the Serîk would be bad.
“Fetid rot.” She whispered the familiar curse and shook her head. “You really don’t know anything?” Glancing up to where the sunlight filtered in through the canopy, she inhaled another long breath, and then her attention returned to me. “I think you should come with me.”
Helplessness crept down my spine and solidified in my stomach like a brick. My attention darted to the dense growth, where I’d last seen Ruin, and my jaw dropped when I met his gaze. I blinked, but his green eyes didn’t disappear. He was watching—waiting—and the fact he hadn’t jumped out to attack the young female magî reinforced my sense of trust.
I nodded, turning toward Esi with a tentative smile. “My name is”—I grappled for a name, blurting the first one that came to mind—“Taja.”
She raised her eyebrows and said, “Really? I thought you didn’t remember anything, Taja?”
I shrugged, offering a half-smile. “I made it up because I don’t remember my name. Do you have a different suggestion?”
She frowned and said, “You’re serious? You really don’t know who you are?”
Why did I feel guilty? “I’m pretty sure I didn’t forget on purpose.”
The dark-haired girl rolled her eyes. “That’s not what I meant. Sorry.”
She didn’t sound sorry, but maybe that was how she dealt with stress. Sarcasm seemed better than talking to animals on the coping scale. Both a lot better than crying—maybe.
“Maybe I should go look for answers closer to Yândarî. Travel to the innerposts and see if any of the magî there know me,” I said, asking but not really asking.
“I’m not going to tell you what you should or shouldn’t do, but I’ll give you a bit of unsolicited advice. There are still at least three months of rainy season left, so getting to Yândarî is . . . risky. Flash floods happen all through the valleys south of Heza, and that’s the route of the Western Rê, not to mention the Serîk.”
She was right about the floods during the wet season. More information without knowing why or how I’d gained it, but the fact that she was honest about that did a lot to make me trust her about the rest. “Thanks for the advice.”
“Doesn’t cost a thing,” she said, pursing her lips.
I glanced away, awkwardness filling the gap of silence between us.
“So,” Esi said, drawing out the word as if there was a question attached to it.
Not much I could give her to that. “So?”
“How long have you been living back there? A couple weeks?” She raised her eyebrows. “A couple months?”
“I have no idea,” I said, shaking my head. Was she being funny or testing me?
“All right. You can come live in Pûleêr until you remember—or until you decide to leave. Just don’t do magîk.” She narrowed her eyes again as she stared down the road, the gold brightening and then disappearing because of her widening pupils. “We need to go now, though. There are Serîk on the road.”
The decision was easy, but not only because I had few other options. Ruin apparently trusted her, and more importantly, she understood the importance of not using magîk. Maybe she could help me remember why that was significant, too.
5
As Esi hurried down the Little Rê, I glanced back at the jungle’s lush growth, a weigh
ty feeling of loss in my chest, but I couldn’t see Ruin. With a sigh, I rushed to catch up with Esi.
She set a steady pace, demanding but still manageable. I darted furtive glances at her, noting her furrowed brow, and she bit her lip again. Dread grew inside me, the sensation nauseating.
“Pûleêr is about thirty miles. If we stop for one or two fifteen-minute breaks, we should get there way before the supper bell. But if we have to stop for the night, we’d need to either get way up a tree or take the time to make a clearing—and I don’t climb trees.”
Pûleêr. One of the farthest outposts from Yândarî. The post was known for . . . I tried to remember, but . . . I frowned because I couldn’t think of anything significant. It was a post of lesser magî, no artisans, no specific crops that weren’t available elsewhere, nothing spectacular, but they did have some magîk.
“If we can’t make it all the way to your post, couldn’t we just camp on the road?”
“No, we’d be caught by the Serîk. So even though it takes hours to make sure we have a clearing, that’s preferable to the certainty of the Serîk.”
My thoughts jumped, and as I passed a giant aleph-ear plant, I pulled at the greenery, tearing off a large chunk. I ripped the leaf, intending to shred my anxiety through the plant, but Esi grabbed my wrist.
“What are you doing?” she asked, her eyes wide. “You can’t just shred that and leave the pieces on the Little Rê.”
I glanced behind me and then back to Esi, who was frowning. “Why not?”
Her features pinched, and she threw her hands into the air. “Were you not listening? First”—she held up a finger—“we don’t want to leave any traces the Serîk can track. Second,” she said, holding up another finger, “if you leave shreds of plants on the ground, what happens to them?”
“Eventually, they’ll decompose. It’s the circle of life, or has that changed?” The laws of nature seemed off, so there seemed some validity to the question. “Also, you keep saying the Serîk are bad, but I don’t understand why.”
She snorted. “Right. So, here are the big pieces. Five years ago, Zerôn became the kümdâr and took Zîyanâ to be his bondmate. Before that, I’d never even heard of the bûyî, but other magî say it’s been around for over a decade. However, in the last five years, it’s become the second biggest concern for the magî of Qralî.”
“What is it?”
“No one really knows for sure. It’s like a bog of rot, only there’s no way to get out of it. If you get sucked into the bûyî, you die.”
“A bog?” I lifted my foot, the sticky mud falling in clumps from in between my toes as I wiggled them. “Like the ground isn’t already one?”
“Not like this. The bûyî doesn’t look different.” She pointed at the Little Rê. “It just suddenly appears and sucks whoever is there in. Their body disappears, and their soul moves on.”
“Have you seen bûyî before?” I pressed. My skin prickled with the thought, and the packed mud of the Little Rê offered little comfort, the grime seemingly crawling up my ankles. I shivered and shook one of my feet.
Esi chuckled, likely at my odd dance, and then answered. “Nope. We’ve had only one instance in Pûleêr.”
“So how do you stay safe?” I’d do a lot to avoid drowning in muck.
“The bûyî comes with the undercanopy’s decomposition. If we keep the growth cleared . . .” Esi shrugged. “At least that’s what we’ve been told in Pûleêr. There was a magî, Lea; her family let the borders of their area go—put off clearing it—and when she went into the decomposing leaf-litter to pick orchids”—Esi made a loud sucking sound—“her bondmate and sons saw her get sucked in. One of the boys ran to help her, and he got sucked in, too.”
My jaw gaped. “That really happened?”
“It’s been happening all over Qralî,” she said with a nod. “That one time in Pûleêr was two years ago though, and everyone knows about it. Since then, we keep our borders clear, and we’ve been safe.”
We continued to walk, and sweat trickled from my hairline down my neck and back. The muggy heat made the trek so much worse than just the distance. Wait. “What about the Serîk?”
Esi blanched, and her gaze darted ahead, side to side, and then she turned to check behind us. Even after confirming we were alone, she pursed her lips. “If I tell—and anyone ever asks—you didn’t hear it from me, right?”
I nodded. “Of course.”
She took a deep breath and then whispered, “It’s because of the kümdâr.” She cleared her throat and, still keeping her voice hushed, continued. “At first we thought things would continue as they had under Zevn’s rule, but the sovereign and his bondmate spoke of the old Qralî—when the magî arrived from Kânkarâ. They touted the superiority of zetas and said we would see the strongest magî rise again.” Esi held up her hand to stop my questions. “I don’t know what they meant when the announcement was made, but two weeks later, Serîk arrived in Pûleêr, the kirinî was reintroduced, and magî started dying.”
I frowned because that made no sense. The kirinî was a trial to assess magîk, a way to filter out the best magî to be the kümdâr’s guards. “Every kümdâr has a kirinî; that’s normal.”
“That’s what we thought, too,” Esi replied. “For three seasons afterward, things were quiet—at least here—but then the Serîk came again. In the past three years, the Serîk have taken hundreds, maybe even thousands, of magî, from all over Qralî, and none of them return to their homes.” She must’ve seen my disbelief for her expression hardened, and she seethed. “Eventually, even way out here in the outposts, news travels. Whatever Zerôn is doing, the magî don’t survive.”
6
While I wondered why the kümdâr would kill his own, Esi continued to grumble under her breath as she walked, kicking at the occasional stones in her path. One of the rocks scuttled into the thick groundcover, and the surrounding croaks and chirps waned for several seconds before swelling back to their normal volume.
“Why is everyone going along with it?” I asked, throwing my hands up.
She looked at me like I was the post-idiot and shook her head. “Who’s going to usurp him?” she asked. “He’s a zeta, and so is his bondmate—and he has dozens of Serîk.”
“What about Zîvrünê? He’s a zeta.”
“The kümdâr’s brother? I don’t know what happened, but Zîvrünê didn’t contest his brother’s actions. I even saw him touring after the kümdâr took his bondmate. But the news I heard a couple days ago in Terit”—she jerked her thumb over her shoulder—“is there was a coup attempt, but Zerôn won. Maybe Zîvrünê was involved with it, maybe not, but allegedly he’s gone now. Not that it matters. I live in Pûleêr; the zetas don’t visit the distant posts, and we stopped using magîk so the Serîk can’t trace us that way.”
I’d only known Esi for a few hours, but the anger in her eyes and her pinched expression made it obvious she did care.
“Is there more I should know?” I asked. “Like why the jungle is growing so fast? Or is that not important?”
Esi huffed, and I hurried to keep up. She said nothing for several minutes, but eventually, she turned toward me and frowned.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “Things have always been a bit different in Qralî, right? At least that’s what the legends say. Come on. We really only have a couple miles left, I think.”
As we walked, she told me about Pûleêr, how they’d elected a council and the entire post worked together for the betterment of the whole. She purported no one went hungry, and the rules were fair and kept the entire outpost safe. “There’s a sense of comradery,” she said with a grin. “You’ll make lots of friends.”
I nodded, instinctively distrustful of any claim to utopia. She continued, detailing the layout of the post, including the two rivers, the latter with a beautiful waterfall.
“That sounds lovely.” And refreshing. “Let’s go there first.”
She chuckled. “You do nee
d a bath.”
The anticipation drove me to pick up my pace for the better part of a quarter hour, but my legs felt like overcooked plantains.
As the afternoon sun dipped, I glanced up at the canopy. “How much longer?”
Esi snorted. “This usually takes me seven hours, and we’ve been walking for over eight. You’re definitely not from a western outpost.”
Which would mean I was from one of the innerposts, closer to the capital, or the other side of Qralî.
“How can you tell?” I asked.
“By how slow you walk, your vernacular, and the quantity of worthless knowledge you spout.”
I couldn’t protest on my speed, but the rest? “What do you mean, vernacular?” I asked, grimacing. “You say fetid rot just as much as I do, and you haven’t used a single word I didn’t know—except bûyî. And I was familiar with the word, but the context . . . has changed. And what worthless knowledge are you referencing?”
The trail we walked on shifted from packed dirt to sticky mud. As we distanced ourselves from the Little Rê and drew near Pûleêr, the sounds of people crawled down the path toward us. We turned the bend, and ahead a guard post overlooked the lower layers of the rainforest.
“Partly, it’s how you talk. I say fetidrot, as though it were one word; the d often never makes it into the conversation. You say, ‘Fetid. Rot.’ Two words, and fetid has a hard d.”
I pursed my lips, just as a monkey hollered through the trees above.
“What?” she said. “You can’t hear the difference?”
I nodded. “Yes, but that’s not vernacular—it’s diction. The way we enunciate our words.”
Esi snorted. “Exactly. You just proved both my points.”
We passed by the bell tower, and Esi waved at the male standing at the top. Around the next corner, we stepped into a massive clearing, and I froze, a tingling familiarity washing over me.
Examining the area, I searched for a reason why it felt familiar, even though I couldn’t remember ever being here. Somehow I knew the long building to my left, open on three sides, was a communal kitchen, even if the smell of roasting meat hadn’t given it away. Under the roof, a long counter ran the length of the structure where dozens of people talked as they chopped and stirred, preparing a meal. Close to fifty rectangular tables and twice as many benches occupied the space in front of the kitchen, enough to seat at least a thousand, with tall poles supporting countless thatched roofs over the communal space.
