Way Walkers: Tangled Paths (The Tazu Saga)

by Leigh, J.

  Got it! The buckle clipped closed, and the cord drew taut, only to slacken as Charmed Wind was again shoved sideways. Jathen held on tightly to the cord as he skidded off the back end of the charm-engine. Magically pressurized air hitting him full in the face was a singularly painful experience. Then a light buzzing filled his ears, and the air seemed to cool, becoming still. Is this death, this sudden quiet? He had but a few heartbeats to consider this strangeness before the world was restored in a torrent of sound and fury. A colossal roar permeated his senses, and Jathen was sucked into a whirlwind, where he spun like a kite in a tornado.

  Then… blackness.

  Chapter 13

  I’m still alive.

  Jathen was fairly certain the afterlife would not involve quite so much pain, so he had to assume he was indeed still alive despite his feeling of weightlessness.

  He swayed slowly, a tightness encircling his chest and one arm. I must still be in the harness, probably tangled. Maybe hanging off the gondola? Opening one eye, he saw a blur of gray, green, brown, and white. Desmoulein, help me. What’s wrong with my eye? Panicking, he reached for his face. His hands met with glass and rubber. Just the goggles. He removed them and spotted a sideways Pallotos tromping up a pine-covered slope.

  “I found him!” The captain grinned at him. “I’ll have you down shortly, Jathen.”

  Pallo helped him down from the tree. Once on his feet, Jathen looked around, and all traces of euphoria at being saved streamed off him with the rainwater. Deflated and tangled in several trees, the balloon portion hung off its internal framework like skin off of an emaciated body, while the gondola was wedged sideways in an outcropping of rocks. The wing-sails were mangled and broken, invoking an unsettling memory of the Tazu thief, shattered on the ground. Jathen rubbed his intact wristwatch in a comforting reverence. Hatori must make a hell of a charm.

  “Oh, Pallo. How can you keep grinning with Charmed Wind like this?”

  “She’s not as bad as she looks.” Pallotos patted him on the back. “And now everyone is alive and accounted for. Ships can be fixed, things replaced—not so much with people.”

  Jathen didn’t feel very irreplaceable. He’d failed. He followed Pallotos to the crest of the hill, where the two Lubreean riders had already begun to erect a makeshift shelter beneath the low-hanging gondola. “Where are we?”

  Jephue moaned from where he lay just inside the still-rising canvas shelter. Clothes crumpled and stained, he looked a ragged mess. “It could be a temple to the Red for all I care. I am on the ground. I never want to fly again.”

  Hatori jumped down from the wreckage, amber cane tucked under his arm. He was sopping wet in his high-collared coat but seemed otherwise unharmed. “You might get your wish.”

  “How bad is she?” Pallo asked Hatori.

  “By some insane miracle, the balloon fabric didn’t tear, and the framework isn’t twisted. The gondola’s in one piece, if stuck for the moment. But the charm-engines are a mess! On the port side, what wasn’t damaged by that bloody dragon was destroyed during the descent. The brake panel is gone, and the back of the steel tubing is in tatters. Interior-wise, the anchor-stone actually shattered. As for the starboard side, we landed on it, so it’s all exterior damage, but the tube’s bent around the anchor-stone, so Bree only knows how I’m going to pry it out. Needless to say, both the charms are dispelled, and I don’t think we’re ever going to get them going again without all new components. And, well, you can see the wing-sails.”

  Planting a foot on a nearby slab of rock, Pallotos sighed. “Is she salvageable?”

  “I need to get to a place where I can see it proper. Right now, if I can get it hammered out, I can manipulate a basic converter-charm, using what’s left of the starboard engine to fill the balloon and get us airborne. But we’re only going to be able to drift, no steering. How far to the next city?”

  “If we are where I think we are, there should be a Rheanic monastery just below the ridge. I already sent my boys down the path to look. If not, I’ll have no idea until this storm dies down and we can get aloft.”

  He was interrupted by the return of Dirk and Cale. Windswept and wet, they brought the good news of a monastery and small village a short hike down the hill.

  Pallotos grinned. “Excellent. It seems the Obsidian Dragon is protecting us after all.” He turned to Hatori. “We can see if they’ve got any supplies. Or if not, rigging the dragons to pull so we’ll have some steering capacity once up shouldn’t be too hard. But we have to wait out the storm.” Pallo called to the crew, ordering them to get their gear and the dragons ready.

  Hatori nodded. “Good enough, but it’s going to take me some time to get it done. Jephue, have you rediscovered your legs yet, or are you going to make me carry you down the mountain?”

  “Do as you please, for I am dead. I died aboard that wicked contraption.”

  Hatori hissed through his teeth. “Beleskie give me the strength to love you when you are being so irrational!”

  “I am not being irrational. You are the irrational one, all your ruddy vexing about times and costs, and the worst of all of it, the Red-tainted paranoid delusions about thieves and rumors.”

  “The crash was not my fault, Jeph.” Hatori glanced at Jathen then continued the conversation in Clan.

  “Well, maybe so,” Jephue responded in Tar’cil, “but we never should have been in the air even if—”

  Hatori plucked his squabbling partner from the ground, hoisting the slim frame over his shoulder as if Jephue weighed about as much as Dolomith. Jephue paused in his rant to ask the riders to get his bags before he switched to Clan to continue berating Hatori as they started down the ridge.

  Following Hatori and Jephue—the walking totem pole of sulkiness—Jathen hiked beside Pallotos. “Pallo, was the crash my fault?”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Just the way Master Hatori was acting.” Jathen swallowed hard. “He didn’t say a word to me. He barely looked at me.”

  “He was just worried.”

  They reached the fork in the road that ran between the monastery’s flat, dark walls and the cluster of smaller homes farther ahead. “I’ll go make inquiries about supplies in the village,” Pallotos offered.

  Keeping his gaze on Pallotos’s retreating back, Hatori said, “I’m going to take my whining love here and find a Desmoulein Walker who can deal with him. Jathen, can you find some way to amuse yourself that won’t involve needing rescue?”

  Jathen flinched. “I’ll come with you.” Dejected, he followed Hatori past the row of skeletal carts where vendors would normally be hawking fake articles of a dead Incarnation’s clothing or hair.

  At the gate, a black-robed human monk greeted them. “Look at you. Wet as fresh hatchlings! Come with me, and we’ll get you cleaned up and in dry clothes.”

  Wearied by sogginess, Jathen did not object to the monks’ fussing, and he appreciated the trip to the first real bathtub he’d seen in weeks. The Rheanics took his things and provided him with dry clothes, assuring him everything could be found with his friends when he was done.

  Afterward, Jathen was padding down a hall to search for his friends when he heard the voices of Jephue and Hatori. Jathen slowed, not wanting to walk into one of their more intense conversations.

  “You are too hard on him.”

  “You are not his mother, Jephue, to be coddling and fussing over him.”

  “No, I absolutely am not, but you, my love, are the closest thing that child has ever had to a father figure, so you’d better damn well keep that in mind before you run your devilishly snappy mouth.”

  “He’s never taken issue before. The boy has a tough hide, regardless of his lack of scales.”

  “No matter how tough the hide, anyone will flinch if you thrust a needle at his eye.” />
  “There’s a quote for a poet’s book.”

  “Fine, how about one of your personal ones: ‘Family is an extension of the heart, not the bloodline.’”

  “For the hundredth time, he is fine,” Chann said. “I can sense the boy from here, Jeph. He’s a bit brooding and moody, but that’s usual for him. He just needs some time to himself.” Jathen could practically hear the man’s eyes rolling as he added, “I can’t say I blame him for seeking some silence and solace.”

  Embarrassed at eavesdropping, Jathen turned back the way he’d come.

  Jathen was devastated when Hatori proclaimed they’d be separating from Charmed Wind. As soon as the repairs got the ship at least floatable again and they found a reasonable town to land in, Hatori, Jephue, and Jathen were to set out for the Lu’shun Republic on the ground.

  “Are you sure we can’t just wait for the full repairs to be done?” Jathen asked Hatori over dinner. The volume of his voice got him a few glares from the monks from across the dining hall, but he ignored them. “Charmed Wind can still fly with the riders pulling. It seems ridiculous to just abandon them and go on foot!”

  Hatori shook his head. “We can’t waste the time, Jathen.”

  “But won’t we make up the time flying once the ship is repaired?”

  “If it were just a matter of repairs, we might, but the parts are the real issue. A crystal to hold the level of charm needed is difficult to find, and then it would have to be modified to make it work. If they are able to make the repairs in a reasonable amount of time, they’ll most likely be able to overtake us. We’ll be easy enough to find on Pilgrims’ Road, and we can take to the sky again without any time lost.”

  Jathen asked Pallo, “But how will you be able to fix it without Master Chann? I thought he made the engines.”

  Hatori answered, “It’s easy enough if one leaves instructions.”

  “But what about just fixing the wing-sails to drift?”

  “Boy, I cannot argue it any longer. It is what it is.”

  Later in his room, Jathen scribbled the first lines in his log since the crash. This is heartbreaking, The trip is going to be wretched from here on out, Thee. I know it. And it’s all my damn fault. Writing the last word, he nearly stabbed a hole in the paper with his pen. Thinking better of it, he scratched out the last sentence. He wasn’t certain where the fault lay, and he was not inclined to ask Hatori. Being a moot was enough; he didn’t want to know if there was something else wrong with him.

  The day Charmed Wind was ready to fly, the sky was dark and the mountain misty. Like my mood. Jathen sighed as he climbed the rope ladder for what he knew would be the last time.

  They managed to get a blubbering Jephue aboard, and ten minutes after they lifted off, he was sound asleep with his head in Hatori’s lap, soothed by the rocking of the winds like a babe in a cradle.

  Jathen felt another stab of guilt for imposing the method of travel on poor Jephue. Quietly, he asked, “How’s he doing?”

  “The healer pumped him full of something to settle his stomach and help the vertigo, but it’s a temporary fix.” Hatori stroked the slumbering Jephue’s purple-black hair, a small smile threatening at the corners of his mouth.

  For all their bluster, they really do care about each other. Jathen noticed Hatori wore a little circlet of hematite, about the size of a pinky ring, on a cord around his neck. “I thought you followed Bree.” He bobbed his head at the souvenir, which indicated the Clansman had made an offering at the main temple before they’d left.

  “Pah, boy, just because you choose to follow one Child later in life doesn’t mean you forget the one you were raised with.”

  “Still, you just never seemed the type to be making offerings, regardless of the Way.”

  “Meh. You have some of the right in that,” Hatori admitted, staring at the piece. “Haven’t done so in a long time, to speak true. Just seemed like the thing to do, though, given the current state of affairs. Back in the Clan Lands, I mean.”

  “What state?” Jathen asked. The clans were almost always fighting among themselves, as far as Jathen knew.

  “Nothing you would know about. This old codger just said a few words to the Protector as a kind of… wish that certain events don’t go repeating themselves.”

  “You mean a prayer?”

  “I mean a bunch of Clansmen are getting cocky and need to be knocked down a few pegs, and it’d be nice if the Protector would nudge someone into actually protecting his people.”

  Jathen sniffed. “I wouldn’t hold my breath for Rhean to show up and fix things, Master Hatori. Or in your case, put off Feeding.”

  Hatori coughed half a laugh. “You are right there. Avatars aren’t always born when it’s convenient. Or they are and get themselves killed when they are still Incarnations and don’t Ascend into their power to stop stupidity from spreading. Hell, Montage didn’t decide to come back and Ascend to Avatar in time to stop an earthquake from dumping hundreds of ceilings on thousands of his chosen people.”

  “No, I suppose he didn’t.”

  “Nope. Truth is, boy, the chances of any of us ever running into an actual Avatar of one of the Twelve is fractional at best. Heh, I was born and alive during the rule of one, and he still managed to get himself assassinated by a Red-faced monster named A’ron De’contes. Just goes to show you, in the end, our lives are in our hands, and the Children are only there to set precedence or guide subtly from across the Veil.”

  Jathen pondered the complexity of faith and relationships while watching gray clouds whisk past. They reminded him of his mother’s allegory of flying in the storm of life his grandmother had told her. “You were there, weren’t you, Hatori? When the earthquake hit?”

  “Curious about the event that set your life in motion, eh?”

  Jathen nodded. “My mother won’t speak of it much.”

  “She has good reason. It was horrific. Earthquakes are rare on the continent and nonexistent in the Clan Lands. We have Orrick for preventing them; High Earth Mages are good for other things than gem creation. I’ve feared for my life before, but never have I been so physically terrified as on that day. It left me feeling… insignificant. Negligible. When the quake hit Kidwellith, it was as if the ground skipped heartbeats.

  “Hundreds died in the first wave from falling debris and the ground just… swallowing them. Jephue and I were lucky; we were outside in Selenite Square. All the walls collapsed around the outer rim. Smart ones like us stayed in the middle until the worst shaking stopped and then climbed out over the rubble. The aftermath was worse. That’s where most died, actually. People who were trapped and still alive were crushed during the aftershocks, and then of course, came the Nai’dol. When it crashed into the Peridot, the flood swept away half the rubble, along with the search parties who’d been trying to rescue the trapped. That’s how your granduncle died. Poor prince, he was a good one.”

  “What about my grandmother?”

  “The fires. That was what was so devastating—those damn fires. Ironic, considering they followed the flood. There was no electricity because the processor-charm generator facility under the city was majorly damaged, so everyone was lighting candles. Candles and aftershocks are never a good mix. There was too much chaos for the fire brigades to do their jobs. The entire original temple district burned down, and that’s where your mother and grandmother got trapped.” He shook his head. “They pulled Rhodonith out of the rubble. She had inhaled some smoke, but she lived. Her mother and ten others didn’t.”

  “The only survivor out of twelve pulled from a temple,” Jathen murmured. “I wonder how she must have interpreted that.”

  Hatori snorted. “I don’t think it takes that much wondering.”

  “I suppose not.” Jathen toyed with the end of one of the baggage straps holding their lu
ggage. “Did you lose anyone, Master Hatori? In the quake?” As much time as he had spent with the charm master, Jathen knew very little of his friend’s past. In some ways, he was practically a stranger.

  Hatori nodded sadly. “Charm Master Cowriss. He was the reason I was in the Tazu Nation. Good man, clever man. He was the one who first designed jewelry made with refined, thinly strung Tazu-hide strings, the same stuff they use to thread the shiftable clothing. He found a way to space the gems in loops along the threads so when Tazu shift, the stones remain draped across the neck and chest. Terribly fashionable and practical, but sadly, out of style now. I was desperate to learn the finer mechanics of it, so I was interning with him. It was only supposed to be a year, but eight months in, the quake happened. Cowriss had no other apprentices at the time, and I made it a point of personal pride to complete all his outstanding commissions.”

  “That was kind of you.”

  “It’s a Clan custom. We are accustomed to carrying on after those who die. Unless cut down by murder or accident, most of us will outlive the majority of those we come across. If they mattered to us, we take care of their affairs, settle their debts. It’s our way of showing respect, and part of our honor, part of what Rhean gave us. Without it, we would be beasts.”

  Jathen smiled, observing the gentle dance of Hatori’s fingers through Jephue’s hair. “I don’t know about that.”