Raybearer

by Jordan Ifueko

  That night I slept in fits and woke up just as exhausted as when I had first laid down. When Ye Eun offered me breakfast, I shook my head. The screams of phantom children still rang in my ears. “I need air,” I said.

  Ye Eun didn’t move from the doorway. “You upset Traitor Prince.” She looked haunted. “We heard him, late into the night. He was crying. Traitor Prince never cries.”

  “I’m sorry, Ye Eun. He’ll be fine after a while. Don’t worry.”

  “I never listen when big people say that. ‘Don’t worry.’ As if they know. As if they can protect you from anything.” The child watched me for a moment, taking in my tense shoulders and swollen eyes—and her hard expression softened. “Sometimes when I think of the Underworld, I scream for hours and hours. I have to. I can’t do it in front of the little ones, but when it gets bad—I go to the shrine.” She pointed through a window up to a stony, overgrown path that crept into the woods behind the house. “It’s old. Traitor Prince says shamans built it centuries ago. It’s meant for prayers, but when I cry . . . I don’t think the Storyteller minds.”

  I nodded. “I don’t think so either.” And since my numb feet had nowhere else to go, they left the house, turned, and crept up the path.

  Wind chimes echoed through the trees. Bits of color flashed, crystals hanging high above in the branches. They must have been tied decades before, when the skyscraping trees were close to the ground. The chimes grew in volume until the path finally ended, and I arrived at a lean-to with a peeling green roof, overgrown with vines. Stacks of smooth boulders marked the remains of a shaman’s meditation garden. A mysteriously clean marble altar rested beneath the lean-to, and fading on the rotting green overhang was a mural: the Pelican of Am, splaying its wings.

  I fell to my knees. Dew seeped through my trousers. I felt suffocated—trapped in a cage with no walls, stretching to the cloudy Songland sky. I had failed Aritsar. I had failed Dayo. And now, I would fail Ye Eun, Ae Ri, and countless others as well.

  Monsters were nothing. The true terrors were people like me—the ones who saw suffering, who heard the screams of a hundred generations echoing for miles around them—and still did nothing.

  Chimes jangled in the trees overhead. A delicate breeze rattled the shrine, and for a moment, the pelican’s eyes seemed to flash.

  “It’s never enough,” I told the mural. “The ones I save won’t outnumber the people I’ve hurt. Not in ten years. Not in a hundred. Or a thousand . . .” The damp carpet of pine needles looked suddenly inviting. My voice slipped away to a whisper as I sank to the ground, resting my cheek by a mound of stones.

  Hours could have passed, or minutes. I neither knew nor cared. The chimes grew louder and distorted, and with the growing cold, a new kind of sleep spread through my body: the kind from which many winter travelers have never woken up.

  But before my mind could slip beneath that cold, still pool forever . . . Something glowed from the shrine. A pulse of heat rolled over me in waves, like the gale of an enormous creature beating its wings.

  Then a tritoned voice—not old or young, not male or female, but warm as the sun on a clear savannah morning and resonant as a griot’s drum.

  Do not ask how many people you will save. Ask, To what world will you save them?

  The voice, soft and calm, seemed to fill all of Sagimsan Mountain.

  What world, Wuraola, is worth surviving in?

  Then I woke, alone.

  The chimes were silent as I sat up, and pine needles fell from my hair as I blinked dazedly. Gold streaked across the sky. The morning had aged to afternoon—mere hours between now and sunset.

  I turned up the path and ran. I did not stop to wonder why my cloak was warm as a brazier, instead of damp from dew. I did not question why my limbs were lithe and swift, instead of rigid with the forest’s chill. I did not ask myself if the tritoned voice had been real or a dream.

  I knew only one thing: A world worth surviving in wasn’t built on the screams of children.

  When I returned to the camp, Ye Eun stood on the porch with Ae Ri, watching grimly as I mounted Hyung. “Goodbye,” she said, and did not ask where I was going.

  I whispered my destination in Hyung’s ear, and used my thighs to coax the emi-ehran into motion. Then, propelled by the heat of Ye Eun’s gaze on my back, I disappeared down the hillside forever.

  Mountain air burned my lungs. My hair swelled in the wind, beating my shoulders in a black cloud as I clung to Hyung’s neck. The emi-ehran bounded down into the Jinhwa Pass, leaving paw-shaped craters in the snow. The storm had stopped; the old magic must have sensed that I was leaving. Still, a white wasteland stretched for miles before us. In the distance, a fortified wall marked the border of the Arit empire, and beyond it, my first lodestone.

  The Jinhwa Mountains bordered two Arit realms: Moreyao to the west, and Biraslov to the north. Hyung veered toward the latter, and pale-skinned border guards in fur hats watched in terror as I neared the wall. I flattened myself against Hyung’s sinewy back as arrows sailed past. The guards were too far away to see my council ring—they had taken me for an intruder. But I would not stop. Ducking for cover, I wrestled the crown princess mask from beneath my tunic. Arrows grazed Hyung’s unnaturally thick pelt, glancing off without piercing. Swallowing to moisten my throat, I held out the mask and read its name. I had to believe now. I had to believe what I said, or there was a chance the mask would not listen.

  “Iyaloye” I hollered . . .

  And nothing happened.

  No light. No sign. Had it all been a lie? Perhaps Olugbade had been right. Perhaps I didn’t have the Ray, perhaps . . .

  Then I remembered: The Lady was dead.

  I put away the princess mask and seized instead the mask of the empress.

  “Obabirin,” I yelled as Hyung careened toward the wall. “Obabirin!”

  The mask’s eyes flashed, emitting a blinding light that made the guards stagger back.

  The stream of arrows ceased. “I am Tarisai Kunleo,” I screamed, heart pounding. “I bear the Ray of Wuraola. Obabirin. Obabirin!”

  And Hyung soared through the opening in the border wall.

  The lodestone was yards away. Warriors were yelling, running to block our path.

  I roared the old Arit word again, and with another flash of light the warriors halted. Hyung leapt over them in a bound that knocked the breath from my chest, and we landed running. A yard more—then another—and with a tremor that shook every bone, we had crossed through the first lodestone.

  Through waves of nausea, I smelled the sweet, green perfume of rice fields, and heard new voices cry out in surprise. According to the map in Ye Eun’s schoolroom, I was now at the northwestern tip of Moreyao, and my next lodestone was two miles south. Hyung plowed on, passing fields in a blur, leaping over carts and dodging petrified village farmers. We reached the next port in minutes.

  “Obabirin,” I cried, and again we were through.

  Balmy sea air. The port had spirited us to the coast of Sparti. My insides threatened to rise up my throat, and against Hyung’s rippling muscles, my ribs had begun to bruise. But there was no time for rest, no time for any thought but forward.

  After the fifth crossing, my left hand grew numb. I flexed the fading fingers, willing them back into view as we flew across the foggy moors of Mewe, only to see my thumb disappear when we crossed a lodestone into Nontes. By the eighth crossing into Djbanti, I could not feel either foot, and when I inhaled, my chest shuddered with excruciating pain, as though a lung had gone missing.

  Still, Hyung’s paws beat against the ground. What story will you live for? What story do you live for?

  The humid air of Quetzalan rainforests washed over me, and my vision swam. It was the thirteenth crossing. “Obabirin,” I croaked as we crashed through the dense brush and vines, narrowly escaping the blow darts of hidden warriors. This time, my voice dissolved into a cough. Something gurgled in my throat. A stream of crimson trickled onto my chin and I
wiped it away.

  Crossing seventeen hurled me into the spice markets of Dhyrma. I wasn’t sure whom the merchants feared more: the enormous Underworld beast, or its half-vanished rider, with her clothes stained with blood and vomit, and her ghostly hand outstretched, bearing a lioness mask with glowing eyes. Spots began to cloud my vision.

  I lost count of the lodestones.

  A wall of heat told me I had passed into the Blessid Desert, and the scent of camels and cinnamon reminded me of Kirah. I wondered, dreamily, if I would ever see her face again.

  Forward. The red earth and colorful awnings of Nyamba.

  Forward. Grass, everywhere, and the distant hum of tutsu. Swana, I realized with a surge of fondness before blacking out again.

  When I returned to consciousness, the air hummed with voices. Bodies pressed all around, and above me loomed the smooth onyx face of Enoba the Perfect. A statue in a grand market square.

  “I’m here,” I murmured through lips I could no longer feel. Oluwan City—I had made it to the capital. “Dayo. I’m . . . I’m coming.”

  The sun dipped toward the horizon, bathing Palace Hill in bloody gold. As I rode, the rulers would be lining up before Enoba’s shield. Dayo would be last, so perhaps I could make it. I could—

  Guards intercepted me at the An-Ileyoba gates, bellowing and pointing their spears at Hyung. The mask, I remembered dimly, as a faint ringing sounded in my ears. The mask will make them go away. But when I tried to reach for it . . . nothing happened. I couldn’t feel my arms. Couldn’t see them. No. I’m Tarisai Kunleo, I tried to say. I bear the Ray of Enoba. See me. See me. I’m here.

  But I wasn’t. Not anymore.

  For the first time in hours, Hyung stopped moving. My body faded in and out of view, a dying firefly. I opened my mouth to speak—and then even that was gone, a hole in the air, a void of silence.

  “It’s an evil spirit,” shrieked the guards. “It’s here to curse the Treaty. Stay back. Don’t let it near. Fetch priests from the temple.”

  I was so close. Dayo was just beyond those walls, about to commit the only atrocity of his life. Deciding the fate of thousands of children, draining an ocean of stories.

  No.

  I tried to yell. I fought the shadows creeping at the edge of my vision; I begged for my feet to reappear. I am not a ghost, I screamed without words. I am not nothing. I am not nameless; I will not fade into graceful oblivion like every other Kunleo girl, every other Empress Raybearer.

  But I could not speak. I could not stand, and when I tried to summon the old anger, the indignant warmth of the Ray . . . I felt only emptiness.

  I’m sorry. I sent the thought to Dayo, and Sanjeet, and Kirah, and Ye Eun, and every other person I had failed. I wanted to write a new story for you. For all of us. I tried.

  I tried.

  Then the remains of Tarisai Kunleo slipped from Hyung’s back, and the world dwindled to gray.

  I expected to wake in the Underworld, feeling the icy fingers of children that my ancestors had damned. I would let them take their vengeance, dragging me down to a world of lost songs and buried dreams, far from the heat of sunshine.

  Instead, my ears roared with familiar voices. Ghosts from the story I had lived before, a life that had drifted far away.

  Until you grant her third wish, neither you nor I will be free.

  Do you love me now, Tarisai of Swana?

  A bellysong: the cure for any soul in bondage.

  You have never worried me, daughter. You have only disappointed.

  Only one thing is more powerful than a wish, and that is a purpose.

  I was levitating, thrashing in a warm lake of light. My skin, limbs, and organs had been lost in the lodestone ether. Now they returned, painful but whole, as though my parts were made of clay and a master potter reassembled me. When my vision cleared, I stared up at steeply slanted, gold-flecked eyes. My body was being cradled in pole-like limbs, and around them, transparent wings of cobalt blue gave off sparks.

  “Melu,” I murmured. “Are ehrus like the abiku? Can you visit the Underworld?”

  “No.” He beamed, shimmering brighter. “The abiku are spirits of death. Alagbatos are guardians of life. We are not in the Underworld . . . And I am not an ehru anymore.” He lifted his long, dark forearm, and I gasped: The Lady’s emerald cuff was gone. “You have set us free, daughter.”

  I took in our surroundings. We were still in Oluwan, just outside the palace gates. Hyung stood protectively between Melu and the palace guards as the sun sank in the sky. But the warriors were no longer raising their spears. Instead, they watched in frozen reverence, kneeling, brushing their chins in the sign of the Pelican as Melu helped me to my feet.

  My bloodstained clothes were gone. Instead, a wrapper of green and gold clung to me like a second skin, its fibers too fine to have been spun by human fingers. My arms glowed like they had been polished, and on my chest hung the two masks of Aiyetoro, their eyes shining.

  “I didn’t set us free,” I said at last. “The Lady died.”

  “But her ambition would have haunted us still, enslaving your mind forever . . . until you found a purpose.” The alagbato reached down with narrow fingers, touching my cheek. “Wanting to be loved was not enough. Devotion to your friends was not enough. But wanting justice—to carve out a new story for this world, no matter the cost—that was enough. No human’s wish may rule you now.”

  Tears filled my throat, but I only nodded, reaching for Hyung. The beast knelt, and I lifted myself to sit sideways on its back, unable to straddle it in my gleaming wrapper. “The story’s not over yet,” I told Melu.

  He nodded. “Go. There is not much time.”

  I whispered to Hyung, and the emi-ehran sprang into motion. We bounded through the palace, crowds of guards and courtiers parting like water. I crossed courtyards, scattering peacocks and splashing through fountains. When we arrived at the towering doors of the Imperial Hall, I slid off Hyung’s back. The warriors guarding the door brandished spears to keep Hyung at bay, and gaped when they recognized me.

  “Anointed Honor,” one of them stammered. The warriors wore red bands on their forearms, mourning for the late emperor. “We heard . . . you were kidnapped by a wicked Songlander. His Imperial Majesty will be relieved at your return.”

  I realized with a jolt that they meant Dayo. “I have to see him.”

  “Apologies, Anointed Honor, but the Treaty Renewal is underway. Once it’s over, we’re sure the emperor will—”

  Hyung let out a deafening yowl, making the warriors leap back. Taking advantage of the distraction, I pushed past them, heart slamming in my chest, and burst through the double doors of the Imperial Hall.

  “Stop,” I screamed. “Stop the ritual!”

  The heat of a thousand gazes bored into me. Shocked murmurs hissed like wind in a storm, but I didn’t care. Only one person mattered . . . and when I saw him, every bone inside me threatened to buckle.

  Before a sea of courtiers, Dayo stood in his father’s clothes on the dais, just as the premonition on Sagimsan Mountain had shown him. The twelve rulers of the continent stood gravely behind him, while my crowned council siblings watched from the sidelines. Enoba’s shield lay on a gilded stand, and Dayo’s hand hovered over it, a knife pressed to his palm. He froze when he saw me.

  “Stop,” I said, sprinting to the front of the hall and evoking protests as I pushed through the kings and queens sharing the dais with Dayo. I seized his wrist. “Don’t do this.”

  But before Dayo could respond, slimy voices raised the hair on my neck.

  “Hello, killer-girl.” Four abiku stood before the dais, hands interlinked. Their childlike bodies were dusty gray, as though they had rolled in ash, and their pupil-filled eyes glowed pink, like rats. They stood so unnaturally still, I had not even noticed them when I entered the hall. The abiku cocked their heads and spoke in unison. “Again, you interfere with our covenant? Were the lives lost at Ebujo not enough? Still, you thirst for
more?”

  “You are the ones who thirst for blood,” I spat, then turned back to Dayo. “The treaty isn’t fair. I can’t explain now, but you have to trust me: Enoba rigged it. Kunleo blood overrepresents the Arit realms, so Songland loses every time. If you finish the ritual, thousands of Songland children will die.”

  Gasps echoed through the hall, and Dayo recoiled from the shield, dropping the knife on the floor.

  “I knew it,” one of the rulers gasped. From her accent, I realized with dread who the person was: Queen Hye Sun of Songland. Wrinkles framed her eyes like dragonfly wings, and gray hair shone from a high coronet. The corners of her mouth were fixed with vast, cumulative grief. “I knew the Storyteller could not have cursed us so.” Her voice shook. “It was the Kunleos all along.”

  “Of course it was,” snapped a young woman at her side. She was an unwrinkled version of Hye Sun, and I recognized her sardonic tone: it matched her younger brother’s. I gulped, suspecting that when Crown Princess Min Ja took the throne, relations between Aritsar and Songland would not heal easily. I didn’t blame her.

  “Dayo didn’t know,” I insisted. “No one did, except Enoba. Woo In can vouch for me.”

  “You know where my son is?” breathed Hye Sun. “He is safe? Alive?”

  I nodded. “He sent me.” I didn’t mention that I’d left him feverish and bleeding from an arrow wound.

  “When it comes to the people he trusts, my brother has shown foolish judgment in the past,” Min Ja pointed out. “Why should we believe that your emperor was ignorant of the curse? And what does it matter if he was? The Arit throne is soaked in the blood of our children.” Her face was white with rage. I felt the prickle of what Woo In had called sowanhada in the air, and in one graceful movement, the princess summoned a wind that upended Enoba’s shield. It landed at my feet, its crimson contents splattered onto the dais. The abiku hissed, but Min Ja showed no fear. “Songland withdraws itself from the Redemptor Treaty.”

  The abiku smiled, four identical sets of tiny pointed teeth, in mouths that unhinged at the jaw. “Then it is war you want,” they said. “A return of the Underworld above ground. A millennium of death, and disease, and the earth teeming with flood and fire. Very well. We accept.”