“The death rites,” Jotin said. “At least the rites as they are known to the mages.”
“They’re different?”
Jotin’s lips thinned as they watched two of the mages anoint Yudai’s hair with a sweet-smelling oil before waving a burning incense stick around his shoulders, the pattern of their hands and arms clearly a practiced art. “Mages have their own beliefs. They are more connected to the gods and the land, and they send off their departed with more specific instructions.”
“You said Ilaka resides in the basin to transport souls to the other side?”
“Yes,” was Jotin’s answer.
“Then tell him to wait longer for this one,” Tatsu said, and his voice was much harsher than he anticipated. Watching Yudai stand with his arms outstretched, preparing not to return, was sandpaper scraping against the inside of his throat. “The gods can’t have him today.”
“He is ready,” Hysus said. “Luia, please prepare to hold him.”
The mage Luia, a woman with coiled hair in a large bun at the back of her head, moved to the side of the pool and knelt down on the stone. Her arms were covered in thick leather gloves—a deterrent, perhaps, in hopes of keeping the siphon’s corrupted fingers from her skin a second longer.
Tatsu wondered if the rest of them were also at risk, standing near where the drain would be prompted into a frenzy. Even with the water’s crushing weight, he’d seen the extent of Yudai’s power, and he’d seen the aftermath that the siphon left in its wake. The pool itself might not be enough to stop it, and the mages could lack the required ability to control it. He thought briefly of telling the others to leave and then decided against it. Jotin already looked close to bolting for the tunnels again—the others likely knew the risks and had already made their choice to be present.
Hysus led Yudai to where Luia was kneeling and then prompted him into the water. Yudai gasped a little when he waded down in, so the water must have been cold coming directly from the rocks. The pool was a little more than waist deep when he finished, hitting below the center of his chest. Luia followed him in and stood behind him with her hands on his shoulders.
“He’s going to fight,” Tatsu said quietly. “His body will fight on instinct.”
“They’re giving him iyera,” Leil said.
The name rang vaguely familiar, though Tatsu couldn’t place it. “What is that?”
“A compound that causes people to become quite docile,” Jotin said. “It is often used by healers when their patient is badly injured. It has a cloudy effect on the mind.”
“For mages, the confusion is enough to cut them off from their abilities,” Leil added, nearly a whisper.
An image rose unbidden in Tatsu’s mind of standing before Tiran back in Moswar as she held the vial of Yudai’s blood. Iyera had come up then as having been used before, which made much more sense; something had to have removed Yudai’s magic from his grasp, for as long as Tatsu had known him, Yudai had never had full control.
“They will remove his connection to his magic so he does not lash out with it,” Leil continued.
Yudai had once said that being without his abilities made him feel like he was missing part of himself—to subject himself willingly to feeling it again, even if it was for a short time before he was pushed beneath the water, had to be a horrible decision. Tatsu stared at Yudai’s figure within the pool, but the man was steadfastly refusing to look in Tatsu’s direction. Luia pressed one hand to the back of Yudai’s head, tipping his jaw up, and Hysus moved forward from the side of the pool to pour a noxious-looking substance between his teeth.
“It begins soon,” Leil said. To her right, Alesh put one arm around Ral’s shoulders and tugged her closer.
“Yudai,” Ral called out, and Tatsu wasn’t even sure that it was loud enough for Yudai to hear until the man’s gaze snapped to her. “No more pain, Yudai.”
But the iyera was already taking effect. Yudai’s shoulders loosened as his body sagged backwards against Luia, and any response he might have given was lost. Everything in the cavern seemed to stop, including Tatsu’s breathing, until Yudai finally met his eyes. All Tatsu could see there was fear. The terror shone brighter than anything else as Luia put her hands on Yudai’s shoulders again.
“Gods,” Tatsu breathed. “This is wrong.”
Yudai’s lips parted, just a little, just enough, and that was when Tatsu moved forward with the intention of stopping the entire thing. He couldn’t watch it play out—he couldn’t watch Yudai die. They had rendered him listless and were going to shove him beneath the water, and somewhere inside Yudai’s thoughts, he had to know what was going on. To be complicit in one’s own death was a kind of horror Tatsu had never known, and he couldn’t let Yudai do it.
“Yudai!” he cried, and as he began to take the second step that would lead him to the pool’s edge, prepared to drag the man out of the water with his own two hands, Jotin’s fingers clamped firmly around Tatsu’s good wrist.
“Tatsu, no!” Jotin pulled backwards.
“Stop this! Stop them! Yudai!”
Jotin’s arm went around his middle, and Leil stepped in front of him with her arms outstretched as if she might tackle him. It was only over the curve of her bicep that Tatsu could see Yudai within the water and Luia’s arms pressing him down.
“No!” he shouted.
“Tatsu, stop! He made his choice!” Leil pleaded.
Tatsu struggled against Jotin’s hold, but the man’s strength was too much, his grip too tight.
“Yudai!” he cried. Luia pushed Yudai down completely, and Yudai’s head disappeared into the crystal-clear pool.
Fifteen
Tatsu watched, blood singing and palms clammy, as Yudai’s fingers and hair slipped beneath the surface of the water without any fight. It was awful to see him so limp, a rag doll lacking fight that Luia was pressing down towards the rocks at the bottom. Tatsu angrily shrugged off Leil’s hands but couldn’t dislodge Jotin’s arm as all the air left his lungs.
“No,” he said, a half-gasp. “Yudai, no.”
The surface of the water stilled to almost perfect calm, and in its clarity, Tatsu could see Yudai’s robes floating up around his body. It was a moment caught in time, a pause that felt more like a suckerpunch. They might as well have thrown him over the edge of the basin—the feather-light spread of his hair and clothes would be the same.
Then Yudai began to thrash.
The movement disrupted the pool so all Tatsu could see was the white-capped waves and splashes, but on the edge, Hysus was still visible, leaning forward with both hands outstretched towards the water flung in all directions. Hysus yelled something that Tatsu didn’t understand, and in the water, Luia’s expression twisted into a grimace.
“The siphon has started,” Jotin said.
When Tatsu tried again to jerk himself away, Jotin’s forearm dug painfully into his belly. “If you run now, you will disrupt the process and we may all die. They need to control the siphon or everything fails.”
Tatsu wanted to say something and couldn’t decide what—they never should have gone through with such a terrible ritual. The mages were going to lose control despite their good intentions, and Yudai’s magic was a spring-loaded box waiting to be opened. As he watched the scene unfold, Yudai’s thrashing intensifying and the expression on Luia’s face morphing into something much more like panic, he swore that his heart stopped entirely.
A noise sounded to his right, the ping of metal against stone, and then half the water rose up from the pool in uneven plumes reaching towards the ceiling. Tatsu couldn’t tell if it was Yudai’s magic or the siphon itself, and maybe it didn’t matter; the mess of the two were tangled up too far to be separated, and the whole ball of it was furiously reacting to the exertion of control. Three other mages joined Hysus’ side to mirror his stance, palms spread out towards Yudai and the spires of water.
Hysus yelled something else and most of it was lost in the thunder of the churning p
ool. Tatsu could feel the energy then; not a buzzing beneath his skin like usual, but a vibration that worked all the way up from his toes to shake his entire core. He stumbled as the sensation threw him off-balance, and it was enough to dislodge him from Jotin’s hold as both of them tumbled backward. Tatsu hit the rocks just in time to feel them all begin to shift and move beneath his fingers. An earthquake.
Yudai was going to bring the whole cavern down around their heads.
“Ral!” Alesh was yelling, and they were down on all fours trying to find a stable position with the clanging and rattling of the cave. In front of Tatsu, Leil was on the ground on her side, rolled into a ball with her hands covering her face. Tatsu tried to catch sight of the mages between the ground shifting and the water erupting up out of the pool, but he couldn’t see them through the spray.
The tremors shaking his body began to pull at him, like claws that had dug down into the flesh of his back and were frantically, desperately tugging him closer. It was the same tugging sensation he’d felt on his lips only the night before—the siphon. Just as Tatsu gulped down all the air his lungs could handle, pushing back against the pull on slick stones, everything stopped.
For a moment, the pause was literal. The plumes of water making contact with the ceiling froze in their upward trajectory and held there, sculptures solidified by a power greater than anything Tatsu would ever know. He did see Hysus and the other mages then, and they, too, were caught in mid-action. One of them was in the air, lifted clean off her feet, and another had started to topple forward into the pool itself. They hung motionless, suspended on nothing, as time within the cavern quivered with the taut anticipation of a bowstring ready to snap.
Tatsu opened his mouth to yell, and time rushed back to fill the sudden void with a small popping noise.
The crash of the water falling back down into the pool—and the sides, and the cavern walls—was all he could focus on for a second or two, and then he heard the splash as one of the mages completed his arc towards into the bulk of it. The water that hit Tatsu and Jotin was nothing compared to the wave that crested a few paces away, drenching Alesh and Ral. Tatsu scrambled to his feet, boots slipping across the surface of the rocks, and took three steps before he jumped into the pool.
Luia was already pulling Yudai’s limp form out of the water by the time Tatsu reached them. Tatsu threw his good arm around Yudai and echoed the movement with his bad arm as best he could, and the two of them hauled Yudai’s body to the side where Hysus was waiting to pull the weight out. When Yudai’s back hit the rocks with a splat, there was no movement. His lips were parted and slightly blue, halo of half-black hair a stark contrast to the too-white sheen of his skin.
“He’s not breathing,” Tatsu said and didn’t even bother to pull himself out of the pool before reaching, muscles seizing with fear, to find a pulse he knew wasn’t there. “He’s not breathing!”
“Turn his head to the side,” Hysus ordered.
Tatsu did as directed, and Hysus must have been using magic for the buzzing was back in Tatsu’s blood, a tingle that rippled outward inside him. Tatsu kept his head on the back of Yudai’s head as he waited a moment and then another before Hysus pulled the water free from Yudai’s lungs out through his mouth.
Tatsu put his head down against Yudai’s chest. His heart hammered out a frantic beat as he listened, willing Yudai’s lungs to move with everything he had in him.
When they finally did, a sputtering, hitching rhythm that was shallow but blessedly there, Tatsu let out all the air he’d been holding.
“He’s alive,” he said, sitting back up but unwilling to unwind his hand from Yudai’s neck. He looked up at Hysus. “Will he wake up?”
“We wait and see,” Hysus replied. “Nothing is certain.”
“What if he doesn’t?”
Hysus just shook his head and then turned to aid his mages climbing out of the pool while Tatsu stayed where he was, kneeling against the rock with his soaked shirt sticking to his skin. He stared down at Yudai’s face, at his closed eyes and parted lips, and willed the man to stir, over and over, until Hysus announced that it was time to carry Yudai back into the ruins.
They laid Yudai on a small straw cot in the receiving room, and one by one, the mages vanished into the corridors until there were few left remaining. Hysus put a weathered hand to Yudai’s face, checking the temperature of his skin and the pulse in his neck, and his expression betrayed nothing.
“We knew this could happen,” Hysus said. “His body could have been devoid of air for too long. For someone already ravaged by poisons and the drain, we always knew it was possible that the ritual would prove to be simply too much.”
“No.” Tatsu moved forward to take Yudai’s still fingers in his own. “There’s still a chance that he’ll wake up.”
“You should find something to distract yourself,” Hysus said, gently. “The first day is the most critical period, but if he does not wake up by morning tomorrow—”
“He will.” The corners of Tatsu’s eyes pricked with hot tears, and he swallowed it all down because letting it out meant accepting the offered reality. “He’ll wake up.”
Hysus’s hand touched Tatsu’s shoulder and squeezed, briefly, just enough to offer what reassurance he could, and then he too was gone, disappearing into the corridors to tend to his mages.
Jotin and Leil had left with the mages, but Alesh and Ral were lingering behind him. Tatsu didn’t turn but could imagine the concerned expressions and sympathetic eyes. He didn’t think he could stand to see the pity there. He rolled the shoulder of his bad arm and couldn’t even feel gratitude that the shocks of sensation rippled all the way down through his wrist.
“Tatsu…” Alesh began.
“He’ll wake up.”
“I’m sorry,” Alesh said. “I didn’t want this to happen. I never wanted this to happen.”
Tatsu’s tongue darted out to wet his chapped lips. “I would have followed him to the end, you know.”
“I know.”
“Ral?” Tatsu asked, and behind him, he heard the shuffling of her boots as she drew nearer. “What can you see? What will happen?”
“Dark, Tatsu,” was her reply. “All dark.”
“Will he wake up?”
There was silence then, and Tatsu risked a glance over his shoulder to see her shoulders hunch helplessly.
“Tatsu,” she started to say, and he was overcome with the realization that he couldn’t let her finish.
“Don’t. Please… just don’t. Don’t say it. There’s still a chance that he’ll wake up.”
“Yeah,” Alesh agreed, but it lacked conviction.
“Can I—can I be alone with him?” Tatsu asked. “I’ll stay here with him. You should both find something to eat.”
“Don’t do this to yourself,” Alesh said, but her fingers pressed lightly between Tatsu’s hunched shoulder blades in support before she led Ral out of the room and into the hallways. He’d thought it would feel better once he was alone, but it felt worse. The weight of the situation came barreling down on him, threatening to push him into the floor and swallow him whole. There was nowhere to run to escape Yudai’s lifeless body in front of him, and when Tatsu tried to take his next breath, his lungs rebelled against it, choking the action with a painful sob.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to get here,” Tatsu whispered as he tightened his grip on Yudai’s fingers and raised Yudai’s hand to his face. “I’m sorry I didn’t try to stop you from doing this. We could have worked around the siphon. This wasn’t the only way.”
Tatsu squeezed his eyes shut and with his bad hand dug his fingers into the straw of the cot. One of the pieces dug hard into his thumb and he pressed his hand down harder just to feel the ache jump up to his elbow—anything to try and distract his thoughts.
“Wake up, Yudai,” Tatsu mumbled against Yudai’s palm. “Wake up.”
There was no response. Tatsu stayed there for a long time, curled over the cot
until the sun made an arc overhead and the light streaming in through the windows waxed long across the stone floor.
The next morning, there was still no change. Yudai hadn’t opened his eyes, and though his breathing was steady, if a bit shallow, Tatsu knew that their time was running out. It physically hurt to pull himself away from the side of the mattress, but he managed it when Hysus brought in a handful of mages and a small silver bowl carried between cupped hands.
“We can attempt to stimulate his body into waking,” Hysus said and leaned over Yudai’s body with the bowl, which sported a smooth lid that rang softly when pulled free. “This is a compound used for injuries when the mind is unable to return to consciousness.”
“What if it doesn’t help?” Tatsu asked.
Hysus gaze, when it landed on Tatsu, was sharp. “Then the gods have made their decision.”
He took a pinch of the dried herbs within the silver and waved them before Yudai’s nose, and when that failed to produce the desired effect, he handed the bowl to one of the other mages and moved in closer. With his empty hand, he pulled down on Yudai’s jaw before placing the mixture on his tongue. There was an awful-sounding snap when Hysus pressed Yudai’s teeth back together, and he kept his hand there, as if he expected a backlash.
For too long, nothing happened, and Tatsu’s eyes pricked.
Then Yudai’s head jerked to the side, eyes first squeezing shut further before blearily opening, as if the bits of morning sunlight were already too much. Hysus released his fingers just as Yudai’s mouth opened to cough the herbs up onto the side of the mattress.
Yudai’s eyes darted around the room as his breathing quickened in a panicked sort of disorientation that made Tatsu afraid that some part of Yudai’s mind and memories had been stolen by both water and darkness. He swallowed hard before his eyes found Tatsu’s face and stayed there—one wheezing, rattling breath and then another—before Yudai’s fingers curled against the mattress one by one.
The Mage Heir Page 19
