by Sarah Zettel
Or so it should have been. But now she felt stretched so thin it became painful. It was as if she crossed whole worlds instead of a single country. Every noise around her seemed unbearably loud. Even the sound of Mae Shan’s breathing grated against her eardrums. Then, faintly and from far away, she heard her father’s voice. It echoed up from the cooking pot, weakened by distance and effort.
Anna?
Relief gushed through her, so strong it almost broke her concentration. Only Father called her Anna. It was her birth name, and he had told her she should not speak it in the Heart, especially not before the Nine Elders, lest they use it and her horoscope against her. She closed her eyes and forced herself to focus. “Father, I need you.”
I know. Anna. He sounded sad. The Heart of the World is gone.
That jolted Anna. It had not occurred to her that he might have known. “Where are you, Father? Why didn’t you come for me?”
Anna, you must be strong, my child. I have died. Anna. I am speaking from the Shifting Lands.
Anna’s eyes flew open and she stated at the shimmering water before her. She couldn’t understand. She felt as if she had stepped outside herself and this was someone else. Father had never been with her, not since she was a tiny child, but he had always been there in the background. He had been in letters and in the amulet she hid in her shoe. That he had gone on, that he would soon fade into the Shifting Lands, and she didn’t know, hadn’t felt … that he wouldn’t be there, ever again … that he wasn’t truly there now …
“I wanted to reach you before,” she said, trying to find a way to understand how she could have not known. “But the fire was too bad. Mae Shan wouldn’t let us stop.”
Your Mae Shan was right.
“I should have drawn your horoscope. Then we would have known and I could have saved you and then you could have saved me.”
Father was silent for a long moment, and Tsan Nu wondered if he felt as sad as she did. Where are you going, Anna? he finally asked. I cannot see.
“Mae Shan is taking me to her family. We were going to wait there for you. Mae Shan says it will be very bad in Hung-Tse. She says the Phoenix is angry with everyone. I tried to tell the Nine Elders that.” She wanted him to know she had done her best, as he always told her she should do, that she had listened to him, and to her teachers.
Father’s voice grew soothing. You are both right. The Phoenix is very angry, and you must leave Hung-Tse.
“How?” Tsan Nu felt the fear growing close around her again. “Master Liaozhai hasn’t taught me to walk the Shifting Lands yet, and Mae Shan only knows Hung-Tse. Will the dowager help us?” Father had often spoken of the dowager empress and how much she depended on him.
The dowager is gone as well, Anna. There is no one in Isavalta who can help you now. There was an undercurrent to his voice turning it tight and brittle. Was he angry? She couldn’t tell.
“What should I do?” Her voice came out very small.
Anna, I want to help you, my daughter, but I need your help to do so.
Hope slipped between her and her fear. “Just tell me how, Father.”
Father spoke carefully, as he did when he was trying to make absolutely sure she understood. Tsan Nu strained to hear every word.
We are bound by blood, Anna. If you open your heart to me, the spirit that I am can enter into it and from there I will be able to guide you and help you return to Tuukos, where you have other family.
Tsan Nu hesitated. “Master Liaozhai said it is wrong to bring ghosts from the Silent Lands to the waking world. He says it disrupts the flow of the elements.”
Master Liaozhai is right, but we have no choice. I cannot come to you any other way.
Tsan Nu felt Mae Shan tensing. Did she hear what Father was saying, or was that for Tsan Nu alone? She couldn’t tell if the voice was only in her head. Tsan Nu itched to look up, to say something to reassure her bodyguard, but knew if she did the spell would break, and she and Mae Shan would be alone again.
“All right, but I don’t know what to do.”
It is very simple, Daughter. You need only reach into your magics, and want me with you.
Tsan Nu swallowed. In the back of her mind, Master Liaozhai frowned at her and spoke the Words of Harmony, “Let the current teach you of the river, let the direction of the wind teach you of the sky,” but she also knew if she did not do this thing, she would be alone, and Father would be gone forever.
Tsan Nu concentrated. She reached as deeply into herself as she could, and she wanted. She wanted so hard she shook with wanting. She thought hard of her father, how he looked, how he sounded; she tried to remember every letter he’d ever sent to her, every time she had ever seen him, and she wanted.
She felt her heart open wide. It was strange and frightening, and painful at first, and Tsan Nu gasped. In the next breath, though, the pain was gone and she felt warm and safe, as she had when she had been smaller and taken her father by the hand to show him her pool in the Star Garden. They had shared secrets that day, and in other days that came after. This felt like that, like a great, exciting secret to carry inside her, to make her strong and clever because she knew something no one else did.
Close the gate now, Anna, said Father’s voice from deep in her heart. It is not good to leave the doors open to the Land of Death and Spirit. Something unwanted may follow. Be still and I will help you.
Excited, as if she were learning a whole new working, Anna stilled herself and held her breath.
The world grew distant. Her senses, which her working had sharpened, turned dull. It was not an uncomfortable or a frightening thing, though, because at the same time she felt Father, warm and pleased in her heart. He lifted her head and slipped her hands into the pot she had used as a gazing bowl, scooping up a handful of water and pouring it out onto the earthen floor. The hard-packed ground drank up the water and Tsan Nu felt the spell dissolve from around her, but her heart was still full where Father waited for her and she smiled.
“Did it work?” asked Mae Shan, her voice tight with strain. “Will he come?”
“He is here,” announced Tsan Nu. “Safe in my heart. All will be well now.”
Mae Shan’s face shifted back and forth, as if she were not certain what to think. “Mistress, I’m only a soldier,” she said, speaking carefully. “I don’t understand this. Is your father a ghost?”
“He died,” said Tsan Nu simply. “But he is with me now.”
She fears you are possessed, said Father from her heart. Say to her that this is a matter between sorcerers and that unlike those untouched by magic we may touch, like to like, without such fears.
Master Liaozhai had never said such a thing, but it might be they had not reached that lesson yet. Tsan Nu repeated Father’s words to Mae Shan. Her frown smoothed out, but she did not look completely reassured.
“Do you feel well enough to go on, mistress?”
To her surprise, Tsan Nu did. She jumped up to her feet, feeling as if she had just had a long rest and it was the first thing on a summer’s morning. Everything was bright and golden, and all would be right.
Mae Shan’s face shifted again, as if she were holding something back with difficulty. “I’ll pack our things, then.”
Tsan Nu turned to help by picking up the pot and taking it to the door to empty properly outside.
“I don’t think Mae Shan is pleased,” she whispered to Father.
She is concerned about your well-being, said Father. That is a proper thing for a guard. We will watch her closely so we can find ways to help her better understand what is happening.
“Yes, Father.” Tsan Nu shook the last drops from the pot. “I’m glad you’re with me.”
So am I, Anna. So am I.
You should not be doing this alone, Mistress Urshila told herself.
She stood in her own small workroom. It was a very different place from Daren’s. This was a place of pots and paints, of wet clays packed in damp straws, of colored earths, paints
, inks, and colored stones. Sharp knives, their delicate blades protected by corks, waited in neat rows beside smooth plaques of precious, sweet-smelling woods brought from across the empire, and stored in the treasury since the last time she had set foot in Vyshtavos.
Urshila was, of course, familiar with many ways of shaping her magics, of the easy arts of thread and weaving, of the more difficult workings of air, or dance, of the perilous uses of blood, but she preferred slower, more careful weavings when she could use them. There was pride in a weaving shaped with precision over long, careful hours that would do its work subtly and last across the years. Carved in wood, baked in clay, set in stone, such magics were truly wondrous things.
Refurnishing this place had been a homecoming, but standing here now her agitation only increased.
You should not be doing this alone.
And what should I do? Distract and divide the others? With the Firebird bringing cold vengeance down on Isavalta, am I to raise the specter of Valin Kalami? And how do I explain this intuition of mine?
You see, Lord Daren, I ran into an old Tuukosov scullery woman and she mentioned to me …
Why would a Tuukosov mention anything to you?
You see …
Urshila set her hands on her hips. No. It would not do.
The truth was that she wanted to be sure of her decision. She needed to prove to herself that her loyalties did lie with Isavalta, not with Tuukos. That she did what she did of her own free will, because the only other choice was Tuukos, where her Isavaltan blood had made her suspect, where her older brother had been hanged on suspicion of running messages for rebels, and not one of their neighbors, not even the secret sorcerer who said he would take her to ‘prentice once she turned ten, did anything at all to stop it.
She would have to hide half of herself for the rest of her days no matter what choice she made, and she had been Isavaltan much longer than she had been Tuukosov.
But her encounter with the old woman yesterday had set her thinking, even as the world went dark around her. She had thought of Tuukos and the unrest of the distant island, the contempt in which its people were held within Isavalta, and the means they had used to try to exact their revenge, or their freedom, whichever they could achieve. One such partisan had been Valin Kalami, and he had nearly succeeded with intrigues that were as carefully laid out as any spell could ever be.
But he had failed in the end, and he had vanished, as had the Firebird. Now the Firebird was back. Where was Valin Kalami? The scullery woman had spoken of him. Given the course of the conversation it was natural enough, but did she know something Urshila did not? No one had witnessed his death, not even Bridget Lederle, who had seen the dowager perish. Kalami had escaped into the Land of Death and Spirit, she said, weak but alive. What had happened to him after that? If he was dead, it was of no matter, but if he was not …
If he was not, and the old woman was not alone …
Urshila did not want to waste time searching for Kalami. The world was vast, and the Land of Death and Spirit was without limit. She was needed elsewhere, and she could not waste her strength on this, if waste it was.
What was needed was a forbidding.
After a certain amount of wrangling, she had convinced the mistress of the house to yield up the key to the room that had belonged to Valin Kalami. It hung from her own small keyring now. Urshila surveyed her stocks and set to work.
She laid the key on her worktable and opened a pot of red paint. Water from a jug freshened the pigment. She also laid out a lump of red clay brought from the far north, her sharpest, most slender knife, and a small silver box with an exquisitely delicate lock and key that were a gift from a jeweler whose wife Urshila had delivered of twins.
She selected a delicate brush of seal hair. With the skill of a hundred years of practice, she painted the letters of Valin Kalami’s name along the barrel of the key, blowing on them gently to dry them, and to add her breath to the paint. As delicately, as precisely as she painted the name, Mistress Urshila began to draw her magics up and in.
“I make my wish, as I have made my wish before, and as my wish before was answered so shall my wish be answered now.” She breathed the words once, and again and again as the paint hardened on the shaft of the key. Then she took up the key and pressed it into the clay.
“I have found the bones of Valin Kalami. I have found the heart of Valin Kalami. I have found the name of Valin Kalami and I encase the whole that is Valin Kalami in my clay.” She folded the cool clay over the key, pressing it down and sealing it completely. She spat once, working the fluid into the clay and saying the words again. Then she sprinkled salt, and folded the clay again. “I have found the bones of Valin Kalami …”
She smoothed the clay into a neat oval and selected her knife. Her magics moved as easy as breathing, permeating the working, flowing through her hands and mind, allowing her to make the delicate cuts into the clay, weaving the letters of the spell and Kalami’s name together on the soft red surface. She must not cut too deep, for that would reveal the metal of the key and ruin the shaping. She must not pour out too much power, for that would flood the shaping with more than it could hold, and again the working would shatter.
When the carving was done, she lifted the clay and set it into the box.
“As the key is encased in clay and does not move, so shall Valin Kalami be unable to move in Isavalta. As the box is closed and locked around the clay” — Urshila closed the box lid and turned the tiny key — “so is Isavalta closed and locked to Valin Kalami. As the lock is invisible to the key hidden in the clay, so shall the borders of Isavalta be invisible to Valin Kalami.” She laid both hands on the box. “This is my word, and my word is firm. This is my word, and my word is firm!”
The working absorbed the last of her magics. Urshila expelled a long breath and slowly brought herself back from the working. Perspiration beaded her brow and moistened her hands. She wiped both on a clean cloth. Tired but satisfied, she placed the box in one of her storage chests and closed the lid. The key she slipped onto her ring. She would destroy it later when the forges were relit, after she had a chance to bake the clay to set the working more permanently. But for now, at least, she had done what could be done. If Kalami was not in Isavalta, he could not now enter its borders. If he was already here, he could not move freely or easily.
Later, she could let it be known what she had done.
Smiling to herself, Urshila left her room to make her way down the dim corridor to the Red Library where the others were already at work searching for the lore that would help them defeat the Firebird, or at least turn it aside. No such simple forbidding could stop an immortal creature. She doubted the clay would even seal if she tried it, even if one could find the name that would compel the Firebird’s essence.
Deep in the bowels of Isavalta’s cellars, Senja lifted her head, and frowned.
The Firebird perched in the dead tree. Beneath it, the branch was scorched and blackened and would not hold for long. Its tail hung down behind it, scattering sparks onto the damp forest floor. Under the usual circumstances, a new blaze would have already started, but these were not the usual circumstances.
The Vixen watched the fabulous bird for a while. She noted how it stared at the roofs of the village it had just overflown. She wondered if it was making sure of its work. She saw well how no smoke rose from any of the chimneys, although night was falling and despite it being summer, the air grew chill.
Having seen enough, she trotted from her hiding place to the base of the tree.
“Have you grown tired of smoking ruins then?” she inquired, sitting back on her haunches and blinking up at the Firebird.
“They imprisoned me because they sought the protection of my fire,” it replied. “No hero came to free me, no sorcerer bargained for my release. They all feared the loss of the fire. So I remove it from them now.”
The Vixen cocked her head, looking down at the village. She could hear the frighten
ed whispers, the crying of children already growing cold and hungry. “You could have flown ahead to winter and done this then. It would have all been over much more quickly that way.”
“I do not wish it to be over quickly,” replied the Firebird. “My torment lasted thirty years. My tormentors should have some taste of what that is like.”
The Vixen shook her head and clicked her tongue. “A taste of thirty years but no taste of bread, no soup, and no warmth. Surely a fitting punishment for those who had no idea of your plight.”
The Firebird glowered down at her. “What do you care? Your children have sported in ruins before this.”
“Everyone will keep bringing that up.” The Vixen sighed. “But if all the children of men are dead, with whom will my children play? And who will yours protect?”
She did not wait for the Firebird’s answer, but instead slipped quickly and silently into her own lands.
There was much to do.
The Vixen pulled the Shifting Lands around her like a well-worn cloak and let them settle into shape so that they became green, grassy hills, each topped with a single thorn tree. She herself took on one of her human forms — a woman with pale skin and flame-colored hair dressed in a simple robe of grey fur belted with a braid of fox’s hair. Her green eyes became mere slits as she watched for the Old Witch.
For those with ears to hear, a great rumbling and grinding filled the thin air. The Vixen schooled her face into an angry frown.
“Come here,” she ordered through teeth that were still sharp despite her human shape. “Stand before me.”
And Baba Yaga was there, hunched in her mortar, clutching her stained and battered pestle, her lips pulled back so her black iron teeth showed. She was as crooked as the Vixen was straight, as thin as the other was full, the colors of night, bone, iron, and blood.
“What would you of me?”
