by L. W. Jacobs
Marea swallowed. “Do you think they’ll be at the stone?”
“No,” Avery said. “I don’t think they’d have the army make such a big move if they were planning to do something themselves. But I do think it’s a good sign we’re headed for the right stone. If anyone would know whose power is in each stone it’s the gods themselves. And they wouldn’t waste political capital this way unless it mattered.”
She shook her head fondly. “How’d you get so smart? Weren’t you raised on the docks?”
“On the docks by the ninespears,” he said. “My math and history might not be that great, but my archrevenant politics? Second to none.” He nodded at the three travelers, likely pilgrims headed to Aran. They had seen many in the days since Fenschurch. “Make one of them stumble?”
It was mean, but fun too. She could do this. Marea focused her imagination, closed her eyes, and struck resonance. A shout sounded, and she opened her eyes to see two of the travelers down, a bag of clothes spilled open, the third looking befuddled.
“Nice work,” Avery said. “That’s the best you’ve done yet.”
She waggled her eyebrows at him. “Better watch out. No telling what I can do.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Is that an invitation?”
He paid for their pastries and they wandered out of town, finding a secluded spot by a stream to pass the afternoon in a pleasant tangle of kisses and touches and whispered words. Marea found herself playing with her resonance as they did, inviting his hands to slide higher up her arms, hold her more closely to his chest, whisper sweeter words when he spoke. He knew when she did it of course, and smiled, and kept on. He was amazing.
The sun’s evening rays found them curled together in the mess they’d made of the late season meadow grass. Marea sighed, snuggling herself deeper into the warm, solid expanse of his chest. “Doesn’t it all feel so unreal?”
“Doesn’t what all?” he asked, one hand stroking her hair.
“Aran,” she said. “The waystone. My resonance, the arch-revenants, all of it.”
He shrugged. “I guess I grew up knowing about all that stuff.”
“But the danger,” she said, pressing on. “I mean, the Councilate’s planning to kill all of Aran. Right when we get there, probably. And after that we’re going to battle the strongest shamans for the chance to open a stone and take the power of a god? It just seems crazy.”
He nodded. “It is crazy. But it’s something we have to do.”
“Why?” she asked, frustration taking some of the shine out of the moment. He was so determined. “I mean, Tai’s trying to protect his people, I guess, but why do we have to do it?”
“Because we’re in danger too,” he said. “You’re in danger, after what happened at Yatiport. The cell there will know who we are. Know we’re with Tai, and if someone else takes Semeca’s power Tai will be the first one they go after.”
“So we leave Tai,” she said, pushing back to meet his eyes. “There’s no guarantee they can open the stone anytime. Maybe we play it safe, wait for whatever happens at Aran to happen, wait to see if anyone takes the spear and goes after Tai, and if they don’t, then we can make our move.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think it would work out like that, love. Maybe no one will open the stone, but I’ll bet you Tai and Ella have the best chance of anyone to do it, based on what they’ve done. And if anyone gets that spear, we’ll never be safe again.”
“Even if Tai and Ella get it?”
He hesitated. “I—don’t know what they’d do with it. But if they get it when we’re not there, I don’t get my share of the power. We don’t get it.”
Marea felt her cheeks getting hot. Was that really what was most important to him? Some power? “But if we die that doesn’t mean anything. Is it really worth the risk?”
“We won’t die,” he said, quiet and sure.
For once his quiet tone didn’t convince her. “What makes you so sure?”
“Because we have you,” he said, stroking her hair again. “My lucky strike. The thing they’ll never expect.”
That was sweet, but she couldn’t help thinking it was naive too. “But I’m just learning.”
“I have faith in you,” he said. “And once we open the stone, none of it will matter. No one can touch us again. We can live forever, Marea. Just you and me.”
She wasn’t sure she wanted to live forever after meeting Nauro, but forever with Avery? “I could handle that part, at least.”
“We’ll just have to keep practicing,” he said, still running fingers through her hair.
She sighed, trailing her fingers down his chest. He was so confident. “What do you want me to actually do, when we get there? Wish the stone open?”
“Maybe,” he said, catching her hand in his and pressing his lips to it. “We’ll know when we get there. For now we just need to keep practicing.”
“In secret?” They’d kept what they were doing from Tai and Ella.
“No one else needs to know,” he said, then looked up in mock uncertainty. “Unless you… don’t want to spend time with me?”
Marea let go of the last traces of her fear. It was so easy with him. So easy to trust him. “That’s all I want,” she said, and leaned into his embrace.
42
Do not heed the voices, nor the desires of the flesh. Heed the Eschaton, for only when all men live in harmony will the Descending God return to set us free.
—Yersh Book of the Eschatol
Tai squared his feet on the planks, took a deep breath, and struck resonance.
“Remember,” Avery said. “Revenants need your belief to stay attached. A revenant thrown at you as an attack has no time to build that belief. They just try to overwhelm you immediately, to take control of your body, but you’d have to be a simpleton to let it happen. What they will do is consume your uai. And in the middle of a battle—”
Tai nodded, his body aching, the ship’s cabin cramped and hot. “I’m dead. Disbelieve in the pain. Disbelieve in the voice. Hold my uai.”
They had been at it all morning: lecture, attack, pain, repeat. Ella had begged him to stop after the last—it was no fun to watch someone you cared about get attacked over and over—but he needed to learn this, to learn some defense against the ninespear attacks.
Tai closed his eyes and nodded. “Do it.”
Something hit him, and then there was pain. Pain and a scream that drowned out all thoughts. Not real, Tai thought, struggling to stay conscious. You’re a revenant. You’re not real.
The pain went on, ripping up his spine, though Tai could feel resistance. He pushed harder against it, striking his resonance again, a trickle where it should have been a roar. But if he could just hold on to it—
“Enough!” Ella cried, somewhere on the far side of a sea of pain and screams.
The scream stopped. Tai found himself on the floor, breathing in gasps, spine hurting, uai gone. Like so many other times that morning.
“Close,” he panted. “I was closer that time.”
Avery nodded, offering him a hand. “You held onto your uai. That was good.”
“And a practiced shaman could have kept all their uai?” Ella asked, pulling him close to her. As much as the attacks hurt, Tai knew this was harder on her. He’d get his turn when she started learning it.
“A practiced shaman dismisses this kind of attack like you’d wave off a nettle wasp,” Avery said. “It doesn’t affect us at all.”
Ancestors. He had a ways to go then. “Again,” Tai said, squeezing Ella’s shoulder and pushing away from her.
Avery eyed him. “I think that might be enough for today. Too much and the insertion point can get raw.”
“Thank the Prophet,” Ella said.
Tai took a deep breath and let it out. The practice had done nothing to ease his mind about bigger issues. Made them worse, if anything. “I’m going to get some air. Avery, come join me?”
The thick man looked surprised but fo
llowed Tai out the door and down the stairs, a brisk wind swaying the goldbark stands along the Oxheart. The only space to walk on the packed barge was a gap around the outside of the barrels lashed to the top deck. Tai followed it, taking a few deep breaths.
“Was I—going too hard on you, back there?” Avery asked, following behind.
“No,” Tai said, rounding the bend at the back of the barge, Oxheart’s waters rolling in the ship’s wake. “I want you to go hard. Whoever we meet at Aran isn’t going to cut us a break.”
Avery brushed the hair out of his eyes. “So, what’s on your mind?”
“The revenants,” Tai said. “The way they scream when they attack. Is that something you’re doing to them?”
“No. Revenants like that, they’re trying to overwhelm your senses. Screaming is part of that, along with pain, and losing sight, and whatever else they manage.”
The man sounded like Nauro at times, though he couldn’t be much older than Tai. “What do you know of their natural state? Are they—naturally unhappy? The spirits of people who died unfulfilled?” Doomed to suffer was the term Ydilwen had used.
“That’s one theory. It’s pretty hard to find out, because it’s difficult to talk to a revenant who doesn’t have a host, and all the attached revenants stick to their personas for dear life. And, I guess knowing that doesn’t really change anything, so no one’s really tried to find out.”
That sounded too much like how the Councilate thought of Achuri people. What they felt about being conquered didn’t really matter, so why would they worry about it? “And everyone who dies leaves a revenant?”
Avery considered, gazing at a herd of sheep grazing on the far bank of the river. “A woman from my village died once. She wasn’t old, but she’d been sick a long time, a year or more. She had children, but she was ready to go. Bluefoot fever, a terrible disease. Anyway, I knew enough of shamanism then to watch her as she passed. And her revenant, it just,” he shrugged. “Turned to air.”
Tai nodded. “And the rest of them? They can die?”
“Slowly. Look at the south bank, if you can. Along that patch of burnt grass.”
Tai unfocused his eyes, seeking the shamanic sight. And saw something among the waving grass, like drifting tatters of cloth. “Is that—”
“A revenant,” Avery said, “or what’s left of one. If they don’t find a host to feed them uai they start to disintegrate. One that far along, it might not be able to attach even if you offered it a host.”
Tai watched it until it rolled out of sight. “But if they get a host, then they come to life again?”
“More like they have a chance at life,” Avery said. “The uai helps them survive, but what they want is control. They want a body. They want power.”
“So they can do what they failed to before death?” Ydilwen had wanted Tai to visit his mother in Yatiport. To leave her money, probably.
Avery nodded. “That’s why they try to isolate their hosts, to be their only friend, their lover, or whatever trick they’re using. So that eventually they can get control over what their host does, where they go. The Book talks about revenants taking over, where the host becomes a revenant and the revenant gains control of the body. I’ve never seen that, but some of the hermits you meet in the woods, the true hermits, it’s like their personalities have blended, driving them both crazy.”
“I saw something like that. When we used to overdose people with yura.”
Avery licked his lips. “Why do you ask?”
“My revenant,” Tai said. “The one you cut out. He—it asked some questions I didn’t have answers to. And I wanted to know if it was telling me the truth.”
“And?”
“It was.” He stopped at the stern, watching the ship’s wake roll back into the Oxheart’s slow current. Could Ydilwen have really been Ydilwen? “Do you think all the people I’ve killed have become revenants? That they’re out there somewhere, starving for uai or trying to trick their hosts, wishing they had their bodies back?”
Avery took his time about answering, learning his forearms against the worn lip of the barge. “Probably.”
Tai rolled his shoulders. How many was that? How many ghosts made for his rebellion? Did the Broken count too?
“What happens if I take the spear? If we get there and open the stone and don’t die and I take Semeca’s power?”
Avery gazed out over the water. “You get the power of a god.”
Tai shook his head. “What does that mean? I know I’ll be getting uai from all her revenants, but what will I be able to do?”
“Well, for one thing, anyone who has thralled mindseye revenants since her death will lose their uai, so all the shamans there will instantly stop being threats. That’s why they are in such a hurry to get it first. Once someone holds the spear, it’s all done.”
“Okay, but what about after that?”
Avery shook his head. “Anything. Anything you can imagine. Live forever. See the world. Bend the rules of reality. It’s up to you.”
“And the revenants under me? I would have control over them?”
Avery nodded. “From what I understand, archrevenants control the basic strategies their revenants use: what kind of person to attach to, what personas to use, that kind of thing. My cell had a book that was supposedly the translated journal of an archrevenant from just after the Prophet’s time. He talks of controlling individual revenants when he felt like it, almost like shamans do, but from the inside instead of the out. Like wearing a glove instead of picking it up and moving it around.”
“And if I wanted to release them?”
Avery frowned. “What?”
“Pull my hand out of the glove,” Tai said. “Let them go. To kill them, I guess. I could do that?”
“You’d… lose all your power,” the stocky man said.
“But I could do it. I could take her spear and destroy the revenants attached to it, and end their suffering. Liberate their hosts.”
“You could. But you’d do more good using those revenants. Keep your people safe. Stop the Councilate. Remake the world the way you want it to be.”
“At the expense of all those souls thralled to me. And every person I killed along the way would become another one.”
Avery smiled, lines of his face looking much older in the bright noon sun. “There will always be more revenants. People are unhappy, and then they die. You can’t change that.”
Funny how Avery talked of remaking the world, but not this part of it. And how Sablo had talked of the revolutions of the wheel, of how pointless it was because it all repeated. Wasn’t this the same, on a different level?
None of which needed to be said. Tai nodded. “Feynrick said something like that too. Thanks, Avery. I appreciate you taking the time to teach us. I know this knowledge is supposed to be kept much more secret.”
He shrugged, a dockworker’s shrug. “Anything I can do. And you are still planning on giving me my fifth of a half, right? Or is it a fourth, now that Nauro is gone?”
Tai nodded. “Those were the terms, and I’ll honor them. A fourth of a half.”
Avery thanked him and left to see to Marea. Tai turned back to the rolling waters, to the passing banks, to his thoughts of Ydilwen and Semeca and ultimate power. There was no guarantee they would get the stone open, or survive long enough to even try.
If they didn’t, Ayugen and all his friends would die.
But if they did, what then?
43
They pulled into the next town near sunset, a simple semi-circle of huts around a long wooden dock jutting into the Oxheart. Ella stood at the back of the boat with Tai, who seemed to have taken roost there in the last few days. She didn’t mind—it was the best spot on the boat to enjoy the scenery, as it had been on Ralhens’s ship, but she worried about Tai. He didn’t seem to want to spend any more time than necessary in their cabin the last few days.
She squeezed his arm. “It looks tiny. Come on land with me, just for
a bit?” He hadn’t left the ship since before Fenschurch, which she suspected was part of his melancholy.
He shook his head. “It’s not worth the risk.”
She made a disbelieving click with her tongue, like her father used to do. “There’s hardly anyone there! I don’t see any white coats.”
“They don’t have to be whitecoats to recognize me. And if the messenger finds out who I am, or the captain or any of his boys, this all gets a lot harder.”
Him not leaving the boat also meant they’d gotten no time alone together, which was frustrating because she watched Marea and Avery sneak off together almost every port.
Then again, Marea was young and beautiful.
Ella stamped down on that line of thought, stamped down on her fears. Tai said he didn’t care that she’d aged and she had to believe him, or what was this all for? She nuzzled her face into his shoulder. “You just afraid to spend some time alone with an older woman?”
To her gratification he grinned. “Not that at all. I’d love some time alone with a perfectly young woman I know. But doing it under fear of attack isn’t my idea of sexy.”
She sighed, knowing Tai well enough to know from his tone she wasn’t going to convince him. The man could be stubborn as a mule. “Some people are into that sort of thing, you know.”
He gave her a rueful smile. “Let’s try it again some time when the stakes are a little lower.”
“That won’t be hard,” she said. “You want anything from town?”
He declined and she left him with a kiss, picking up Feynrick from where he was sharing a pipe with a few crook-toothed Yersh sailors.
“I’m surprised you aren’t looking for some farmer’s daughter out here,” she said, taking his arm lightly as they climbed the bank to the little circle of huts. Prophets send it had a decent bakery—the last two towns had only sold unleavened millet cakes, which were a poor excuse for a pastry.
