by Rin Chupeco
“Coinciding with your arrest,” Khalad murmured under his breath. “Definitely not a coincidence.”
“We’ll make a brief stop here at the House of Lords, to await the First Minister,” Lord Besserly continued. “And then we can proceed.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Proceed to what?”
“To the nanghait, of course.”
“What?”
“I’m surprised you hadn’t seen it on the way here, milady. It’s usually on the other side of the mountains when it resurrects, but it’s somehow made its way to our side before we had our first sighting. Surprising, no? We weren’t expecting its resurrection for another four years. In our Interior Minister’s defense, he’s quite terrible at arithmetic.”
“But…why would you elect him if you knew he wasn’t good at his job?” Likh asked.
“We rolled dice for the position. Fair’s fair.”
“Fair enough,” I echoed. “I would have appreciated some forewarning about the nanghait, Lord Besserly.”
“My apologies. My assistants may have jumped the arrow when they communicated as much to your Lady Mykaela. They may not have stated our intentions clearly…or they might have been drunk when they sent the missive. Drunk, more likely.”
“So when Lady Mykaela told them we were coming,” Khalad murmured, “the Yadoshans assumed it was for hunting the nanghait.”
“Lady Mykaela gave us rather short notice this time,” Lord Besserly went on. “It’s not how she’s planned these things in the past. I haven’t gotten the chance to thank you for saving me, have I? They tell me it was you who uncovered the plot to kill me, that you extracted it from some imprisoned Faceless months ago. If you would believe it, I was having lunch with the would-be assassin as I received the warning! Bloody hard to keep a straight face after that, especially when I was complimenting him on the grapes he’d sent me as a gift. Made him eat a bunch of them, just to see if they were as poisonous as the soup he tried to murder me with.” The Yadoshan laughed; what would have been a traumatizing incident to most was his funny anecdote. “Is that particular Faceless still around, by any chance?”
“She died, milord.”
“Ah, rotten luck. Was it a clean death?”
“No, milord.” I thought about Aenah’s last moments without regret. “It was not a clean death.”
“Well and good. I wished I could have run her through a few times with a sword myself, but I suppose you must be cautious around that lot.” He sobered. “I am very sorry to hear about Lady Polaire. She was a wonderful woman. What a fantastic minister she would have made, had she been Yadoshan. Would have given Stefan a run for his money if she’d fought against him in the commons, and she could drink me under the table if she’d had a mind to. She was well respected here, admired by my men. My heartfelt condolences.”
“Thank you, milord. She is—she is greatly missed.”
It did not take long for First Minister Stefan to make his appearance. The leader of the city-states was a tall man, easily several inches over six feet, and round as an ox. He was also heavily clad in chain mail, as were the assistants who accompanied him. “First Minister,” Kalen greeted him, a little warily. “I’m not entirely sure chain mail will be necessary for this hunt.”
“It’s always best to be prepared, wouldn’t you say?” Lord Stefan rubbed his hands. “I will leave the hard work to you and your friends, Lord Kalen, but the last time your Lady Mykaela put down our local daeva, she deigned to inform us only after the fact. While our army may not be up to speed when it comes to dealing with the nanghait, at least permit us to offer some backup, to save face if nothing else.”
“Can you promise me, then, that this has nothing to do with the games regarding the nanghait?” Kalen asked.
“I am afraid,” Minister Stefan responded, his cherubic face beaming with insincerity, “that I cannot make that claim.”
“Yadoshans,” Khalad sighed. “Lord Besserly, surely you can see why the practice should be discontinued?”
“Actually, good sir”—Lord Besserly drew back his cloak, revealing that he, too, was wearing armor—“I was rather looking forward to it.”
“Games?” I asked Kalen. “What do they mean?”
He scowled. “The Yadoshans are some of the bravest people in the land—and also the most ridiculous. There is a customary practice here called chasing the nanghait.”
“You seriously can’t tell me that means what it sounds like it means.”
“The opposite holds true, actually—it’s usually the nanghait that winds up chasing the Yadoshans. Hordes bait the nanghait before stampeding over each other when they get its attention, trying to avoid getting themselves killed before a Dark asha can bring down the daeva.”
“But that’s crazy!” Likh gasped.
“Lady Mykaela had been subjected to this insanity in the past,” Khalad said wryly. “It’s why she killed the nanghait without alerting the Yadoshans the last few times, although that’s never deterred them. I’ve heard of people camping out by the burial mound in the days leading up to its resurrection.”
“But don’t people die from this behavior?”
“There have been casualties. Buried with full military honors, even. Tea will need to put down the nanghait quickly, before any mishaps occur.”
“That’s easier said than done, Khalad!” I protested. “If Mykkie has been actively trying to discontinue the practice, then surely there won’t be as many participants this time around?”
I was wrong. As it turned out, a lot of Yadoshans had traveled to Thanh solely for this event, which was why I was seeing so many citizens armed to the teeth. “Thanh doesn’t have this many residents,” Lord Besserly told me.
I was aghast. “You consider this a celebration?”
“We celebrate life in different ways, Lady Tea. Yadoshans come from a long line of warmongers. We used to rule over the parts of the continent that’re now Odalia and Kion, until they decided we were right bastards and rebelled. I was told you grew up in Knightscross, milady. That’s as obviously an Odalian name as any, eh? We were too busy fighting each other to notice them break away until they’d amassed a good ol’ army of their own!
“We’ve given peace a chance for nearly three hundred years, and we’ve been liking it, but every now and then we get the urge to smash something. This is one of the best ways to go about it without causing anyone else too much trouble.”
“But I’m not going to let you be maimed or worse!”
“We’re all big boys, Lady Tea. We all know what we’re getting into.” The Lord Besserly was in his sixties, but the grin he shot my way was forty years younger than the rest of him. “We’re not used to having other people do our dirty work, but we don’t have much of a choice with daeva. We’ll stay out of your way—mostly. Who knows? We’ve made for good distraction for other Dark asha in the past. Maybe we’ll be of use to you too.”
“Are we really going to do this?” I asked Kalen as we led our unlikely and unwanted “army” out of the city, toward the nanghait’s last reported sighting.
“You’re not going to get them to change their minds,” Kalen grunted. “Focus on the nanghait. Whatever happens to the Yadoshans will be on their heads, not yours. They’re right about one thing—their ability to distract, not just the nanghait, but you.”
We could hear the daeva long before we could see it; a low moaning sound sang through the trees, and the winds sighed in counterpoint. Kalen was quick to disseminate my orders. With the exception of the soldiers already stationed along the way, the rest were to fall back until I said otherwise.
“It sounds like that bellowing could be coming from anywhere,” Likh muttered nervously.
I’d already woven my runes. Chief snorted his eagerness underneath me, pawing a hoof at the soil.
Entering a daeva’s mind for the first time
was always a disorienting experience, and the nanghait felt like it had as many minds scrambling for position in its head as it had faces. It was hard and time-consuming, trying to latch on to any one stray thought to find my leverage. Even its view of the world was multifaceted; I could see visions of the Five Rivers, visions of sky across the Swiftsea, visions of the Mithra’s Wall of mountains, and more visions of endless plains. I couldn’t pinpoint its location given the bizarre array of landscapes that collaged together in my mind. It was like multiple daeva minds in one body, each with its own perspective.
It didn’t usually take long to kill a daeva with the Resurrection rune, but I’d never summoned the nanghait before. Now I saw why Mykaela and other Dark asha of the past struggled, why the Yadoshans had more than enough time to spread their own mayhem; it was hard to take charge of a daeva’s mind when a myriad of them existed all in one head and at the same time!
I clutched at Kalen’s sleeve, frantically trying to chase down the wayward, discordant thoughts. “There’re too many of them,” I whispered.
“Too many Yadoshans? There always have been.”
“No. There are too many consciousnesses inside the nanghait. It’s going to take me time to control it.”
Kalen swore. “Which means there’ll be more opportunities for the Yadoshans to get themselves in trouble, won’t it? Likh, we’re going to…” His voice trailed off. “No, wait. I forgot about your wards. Stay close to Tea. You too, Khalad. And by all the festering boils of the seven hells,” he yelled at a few Yadoshans who were stealthily straying, hoping to escape his notice. “Keep away from the woods!”
“Be careful, Kalen, Tea,” Likh pleaded.
“Always.” Kalen marched forward, roaring at the others to remain out in the open, but very few of the Yadoshans were obeying him.
I latched on to one mind and fought to reach another, only to have the one I had anchored start to slide from my grasp. At the same time, the daeva’s moaning grew louder. It was a challenge to corral these runaway globs of awarenesses and still keep an eye out on what was happening on the plain.
My vision dimmed. The nanghait had shut each of its eyes, leaving me in darkness. But its thoughts continued to stream and pivot around me. I made another grab for the nearest, trying to imagine steel ropes binding it to me. “Likh, something’s about to happen. Tell Kalen that the—”
A sudden shrieking nearly made me let go of my hold altogether, and I scrambled to secure my grip as my own eyes caught sight of the nanghait dropping down from a nearby tree, where it had concealed itself all this time. It landed right in front of a poor Yadoshan. The beast seized the unfortunate man by the waist and lifted him up—then dropped him almost immediately as Kalen’s Fire rune sizzled through its arm, scorching the nanghait’s skin.
The Yadoshans began running in all directions at once, whooping and hollering despite the fear evident in their heartsglass. The nanghait turned to face them, still emitting that high-pitched groaning. It reared up on its hind legs and reached down. Clawed talons dug into the ground, coming up with clumps of soil the size of boulders that it lobbed at the warriors, enraged by their antics.
There was a fizzle of magic beside me as the runic wards dissolved, and Likh extended his arms above his head. The ground shuddered again, and a pillar of earth rose, shifting into an arch above us and taking the brunt of the daeva’s attacks. “Everyone, get underneath here!” Likh yelled, and the smarter of the Yadoshans were quick to follow his lead.
“Likh!” Khalad grasped the asha’s hand, looking horrified. “What are you doing?”
“Tea and Kalen can’t do this on their own. Not with this many people.” Likh shook off his grip and ran without a pause in his weaving. The Shield rune he created was easily fifty feet wide. Gritting his teeth, Likh braced his shoulder against the base of the spell, protecting the people cowering underneath it even as the sod assault hammered fruitlessly against it.
As a young girl, I’d played a game called ice and fire with other children in Knightscross. One designated child would be “ice,” and every person ice tagged would remain frozen until another child, representing fire, could tag them back. This felt very much like that game, with more devastating results if I didn’t tag the daeva minds quickly enough.
I snagged one more wandering thought and anchored another to the bundle I’d already harnessed, but I could feel them tugging away, wanting to break free. In contrast to the creature attacking us, its mind was almost playful. Two more, I thought desperately. Two more minds to secure.
Kalen was magnificent. Spear-shaped winds sang through the air and struck with deadly precision, and the nanghait’s voice rose to a near shriek as they cut into its form. All around us, the Yadoshans continued to scramble, some still hollering in glee. I could hear Khalad on my right, yelling at the remaining men to get underneath the protection of Likh’s Shield rune.
A thought zipped by me, and I lunged, catching it by its tail and stacking it on the growing pile of minds I was imprisoning. Only one more remained. It was the smallest of all the daeva’s consciousnesses, more adept at avoiding my grasp. I was breathing hard, the load from the others already weighing on me, my exhaustion beginning to take its toll on my strength.
“Khalad!” I heard Likh scream this time. I opened my eyes to see the nanghait heading for the Heartforger. It pounced, sensing victory, but Likh arrived first, throwing his arms around the stunned heartforger as the Shield rune stretched above their heads.
“Enough!” my mouth and my mind roared at the same time. I threw everything I had at the final untethered mind by expanding my own, filling the space until it had nowhere to go but through me. I snatched it up and yoked the minds together. “DIE!” I screamed.
The nanghait’s minds wobbled under my control, seeming to melt and re-form again into one. At the same time, Kalen all but lifted the nanghait away with wind before it could strike Likh, almost from willpower alone. The nanghait fell, wailed, and died, all in one breath.
The Yadoshans had quieted, staring in awe at the hideous beast, and then at Kalen and Likh. Lord Besserly turned to me, somehow managing to look shaken while still grinning widely.
“Now that,” he said, “was a celebration.”
Lord Besserly roared with laughter when I finished reading. “Lady Tea was right. We were quite the idiots then. Didn’t get a lot of asha in our part of the world, you know. Kion and Arhen-Kosho had nearly a monopoly on the runemakers, and the ones we did have wound up moving to Ankyo anyway. I had several ancestors who’d encountered the nanghait and lost and were celebrated for it. Sure, Dark asha bring them down faster than a Steerfall monsoon chases off summer, but it’d dishonor the people who came before me if I didn’t do the same at least once or twice in my lifetime.” He shrugged. “Reminds us we didn’t always have it this easy, that we may not always have it so. Always been our way.”
Ankyon pale lager made the man talkative, boisterous; he’d been the complete opposite earlier, when Empress Alyx decided to have the armies wait until Lady Mykaela’s body had been safely returned to Ankyo. Already reports told of the first ships docking at the harbor, of Mistress Parmina and her soldiers landing ashore, intending to complete the journey back to the city at day’s end. Lord Besserly balked at that, protesting that this could delay much-needed support to King Kance should he choose to attack the Drychta within the Hollow Mountains.
“Then it would be best he waits for our arrival,” Princess Inessa shot back. “Surely he’s aware that reinforcements are on the way? Surely he’s wise enough to understand that mounting an assault now means he will be greatly outnumbered?”
“It’s not easy to know what Kance thinks nowadays,” Empress Alyx said wearily. “But spies inform me that he is keeping his distance from the Drychta, instead choosing to skirt the borders and build defensive fortresses along the mountain exits. It’s a sound strategy, and the Odalians s
hould be safe from any counterattacks until we arrive—in two weeks.”
There was more to this plan than the empress was letting on. I knew there was more information she left us out of. That was not surprising, as I was a stranger by every definition, and Lord Besserly was a talker when in his cups. Still, I worried. That a new war brewed in the south made for disquieting contemplation.
Cheated of an early fight, Lord Besserly and several of his men had slouched off to the nearest tavern to drown their sorrows; I’d tagged along. Surprisingly—or perhaps not—Lord Fox joined them, buying the first three rounds much to their pleasure.
“None of us imagined that girl had so much firepower in her,” Lord Besserly continued. “We knew about the azi, of course. Everyone knows that. But she was quiet and polite, even though she could incinerate the whole lot of us without batting a beautiful lash. She’s a stunning woman—Lord Kalen was very smitten with her, gave us a good talking-to when he thought we teased her too much. Wasn’t till later that we realized how dangerous she truly was. She was—well, my mam would have called her a lodestone. She attracted people to her, but not always in a good way.” He paused. “Maybe we underestimated her because she could never hold her drink. My twelve-year-old niece took brew better than she did.”
“I can’t believe she did this to Kion,” Lord Knox said. “She didn’t stay long in Thanh, but she left on good terms with Stefan. But she made a lot of our best warriors nervous, and not because she was a good-looking woman.”
“Her and the other asha. Likh.” Lord Balfour was the quietest, almost sad, and currently the soberest Yadoshan of the lot. Lord Aden told me he’d been to see Lord Khalad, but said little of how their exchange had gone. “Prettiest I’ve ever seen.”
Lord Aden downed his ale and shifted uncomfortably. “Say, you don’t think Lady Tea would go back to Yadosha and set it ablaze too, do you?”
“She had a vendetta against Kion,” Lord Fox assured him, “not with Stefan. The chances aren’t very likely.”
