Roh was aware of the rest of the camp moving, and Lilia shouting. But he concentrated solely on Kadaan’s voice and the purling lines of Para’s breath he wielded. Even as they came together, Roh felt the hammering of their defenses, like physical blows that pushed the power of Para back under his skin. It might have startled him enough to break his concentration, a year ago, two years ago, but now he was far more used to pain and disappointment.
“It will get worse,” Kadaan said, “as they realize how strong this wall is.”
“I have endured worse,” Roh said.
Lilia went to Maralah’s side. Maralah stood rooted in place, hands raised, gaze fierce. A wall of flames licked up around the defensive wall of air, but Tai Mora were still bleeding through the edges of the winks, crowding around the outer edges of the defenses.
“Can you hold them?” Lilia asked.
Maralah did not answer. Lilia turned, surveying the camp. Fighters were moving to the outer ring of the camp, harangued by a gleeful Zezili. They were mostly Saiduan, who looked to Maralah before obeying. Maralah, for her part, gave them a nod.
Lilia broke away from Maralah, Roh and Kadaan. Taigan had said there were fifty-six Songs of Unmaking, that was fifty-six attempts to cut off their jistas from their satellites. The number of offensive spells that the others had to counteract would be far, far more. It would be all they could do to hold them.
She found Anavha cowered at the center of the group of civilians. “Where’s Saradyn?” she asked.
“He went to fight,” Anavha said.
Lilia leaned over him. Took his arm. Said in Dorinah, “Can you open a gate to somewhere safe?”
“I… in Dhai? I don’t… the plateau, the temples… they are everywhere–”
“Somewhere else?”
“They are everywhere,” Anavha said, and began to cry.
Lilia took a deep breath. “Somewhere safe. In Dorinah?”
“No, not–” he broke off, then, “Aaldia,” he said, and that seemed to stem the terror, the tears. “I can take us to the farm in Aaldia.”
“A farm? Good. That’s good. No Tai Mora there?”
“No, but–”
“What?”
“It’s all right. Nusi will understand.”
“I’m sure they will,” Lilia said, having no idea who Nusi was, nor particularly caring in that moment. “Can you do it now?”
“What if the defenses break? What if–”
“A great many things could happen between this moment and the next,” Lilia said. “Including you getting us a way out. Can you do that?”
He nodded.
She stepped back, giving him space to work, and called away a few of the civilians near them. The last thing she needed was panic at the center. Panic at the center would make them all rush to the edges, and right into the Tai Mora.
Lilia spotted a reasonably calm young man and pointed at him. “You! Keep them away from him. Let him work!” The man nodded almost gratefully, as if pleased to have something to do.
She hurried back to the medical tent where Sola was frantically packing her things and yelling at people to move one of her injured patients.
“Sola!” Lilia said. “We are getting everyone out through a gate, there, at the center – see that young man, the one with the brown hair? You and your patients go first. We’ll need you on the other side for injuries.”
“Where–”
“It doesn’t matter where,” Lilia said, “it’s safe.” She said the last part with more conviction than she felt. She had to trust that Anavha had some idea of what he was doing, or she’d spend too long overthinking instead of moving. Their survival relied on fast movement, before the Tai Mora got a handle on their defenses. The parajista wall could go down at any time.
Lilia knew that nine parts of getting people to listen to you relied on confidence. Sola met her gaze, and she must have liked what she saw, because she nodded and called for another to help her move the injured.
“Zezili!” Lilia called.
“Fucking busy!” Zezili barked from ten paces away.
“Namia,” Lilia said. “Come here, I need you to be my messenger, can you do that?”
Namia nodded.
Lilia grabbed Zezili, made her touch Namia’s head.
“The fuck!” Zezili said. She handed over a weapon to a young woman.
“Namia,” Lilia said. “Show her the sign for retreat.”
Namia did.
“And show her, fall back. Good. And advance.”
Namia gave the signs.
“You understand?” Lilia said. “Namia can give you orders.”
“I can fucking manage this myself–”
“You can manage jistas and fighters against Tai Mora, in three different languages? No. Listen to me.”
Lilia turned abruptly.
A roar of heated air blasted her from behind. Lilia pressed herself to the ground as a purl of flame licked overhead. One of the forces on the other side had broken though. Roh and Kadaan were already moving forward together, back to back, exchanging a few words as they sought to shore up the breach.
Lilia crawled back up. Namia came after her. Lilia went to Anavha, who was still struggling to open a gate. The air in front of him wavered, but did not part. He sweated heavily, and was trembling.
She leaned close to him and said softly, clearly, “The Song of the One Breath. You know it?”
He shook his head. “What’s your litany?”
“Poetry. Tordinian?”
She wondered how he had been trained. Did they try to break him down, the way Taigan and the Seekers had tried to break her? Lilia didn’t think she could feel pity anymore, didn’t think she could feel anything at all, but watching this young man struggle to save them while the air pressure heaved and the air crackled, she remembered the feel of the Seeker Voralyn’s stick when the Seekers captured her years ago, and the long freefall when Taigan pushed her over the edge of the cliff, daring her to fly. I am not you, Taigan, she thought. And this young man was certainly not her.
“All right,” she said. “Find a point to focus on. That broken poppy there, see?” She pointed.
His gaze fixed on the trampled flower just on the other wide of the wavering air.
“Good,” she said. “That’s all there is. You and that… poetry. That song. The rest of this is nothing. It’s not anyway. You want to focus on that, and where you want to go. Where do you want to be?”
“Not here.”
“It has to be firm. Focus. See it. Taste it. Smell it.” She closed her own eyes, remembering how she had sung the Saiduan Song of the Dead and burned the image of the Dorinah camp at the base of the Liona mountains into her mind, where Gian had waited for her. An age ago. Before Oma was lost to her.
Anavha smelled smoke. All he could see, when he closed his eyes, was the world burning.
“Smoke,” Anavha said.
“Not there. There’s no smoke there. What’s there?”
He trembled. He felt the heat and rush of the wind again. Another breach in their defenses. Yelling, in Dhai and Saiduan. He couldn’t understand any of it, only what Lilia told him in Dorinah, and that frightened him and soothed him at the same time.
Safe. Where had he been safe? He once thought safety was a quiet house with Daolyn, when Zezili was away. Safety was sitting with Taodalain in the city, reading to her as her pregnancy progressed. He once thought safety was Zezili calling him hers. And for a time, yes, he had felt safe with Natanial, wrapped in his arms, ready to give him whatever he wanted because Anavha felt so safe there.
But when Lilia asked him where he felt safe, the image that bloomed in his mind was none of those places. Instead, it was rolling fields of golden grass. A house nestled among the hills that looked like a boat at sea. Safety was with Nusi and Giska and their rotating group of farm hands, called in during planting and harvest. Laughing at the table. Warm, clean beds. No violence. No raised voices. It had not been exciting, or dangero
us. That made him anxious, those first few months. He kept waiting for the screaming. The flaring tempers. Getting locked in his room. Having things thrown at him. Fists raised to him. None of that happened.
“Nothing will happen to you here that you do not wish to happen,” Nusi had told him, and the idea of that, the promise of it, was breathtaking.
“The farm,” Anavha said aloud. “The planted fields. The dead man, from the sky. The hungry sheep. The dogs. I miss the dogs.”
He opened his eyes. A small tear in the seams between their position and the next opened.
“A little more, Anavha,” Lilia said.
Anavha concentrated on exactly where he wanted to be, the precise spot. The hill north of the farm, overlooking the house.
The tear widened into a great round door, so large he gasped a little and stepped back from it. On the other side: a clear lavender sky, and rolling golden hills.
Lilia said, “Can you hold it open there, Anavha? I need you to keep hold of it.”
“I have it,” he said. And in a rush of awe, he realized that he did have it. The gate solidified. Did not waver. His hands did not tremble.
Natanial winced as the winks opened, and a shimmering wall of heat blasted their front line. The heat was unexpected.
“Hold the line!” Natanial called. The heat was enough to be uncomfortable, but not dangerous, as long as no one panicked.
Otolyn gazed over at him, questioning. He shook his head. Para was risen, and that did mean that a whole slew of parajistas had come back into their power. Natanial had a moment to wonder how Monshara would handle that. Four stars ascendant. Were there even existing battle strategies for that? Surely not.
“Forward!” Monshara cried, and the mass of bodies and bears and dogs was moving, groaning, creaking, yipping, growling.
The heat intensified, and as Natanial got closer to the winks, he saw a small but chaotic scene ahead. As he came through, a whirlwind of air and fire battered him. The spinning satellites made him dizzy, so he kept his focus on the ground. They were up above the sea on some spur of land. He smelled burning, yes, but the sea, too. Madah had opened a dozen winks around a small encampment. It couldn’t have held more than sixty people, all of them grouped up in the middle.
Natanial tried to push forward, but his troops ahead were meeting resistance. Parajistas had a wall up, and waves of fire were coming off it, pushing his troops and all those surrounding them back against the winks.
“Hold the line!” Natanial yelled. Who was countering their attack? It should have been an ambush, no time to plan or retaliate. They should have crushed them here as easily as they had back at the other camp.
Natanial scanned the figures at the center of the camp. Whoever their jistas were, they were in no formation, no line. He could not identify a leader of any kind. Two rings of fighters had formed around those in the center, though, which meant the center likely held both civilians and jistas.
“We’re useless until they break the jista defenses!” Otolyn yelled.
Natanial growled. He hated foolish orders and confusion. She was right. Madah had gotten ahead of herself. His mercenaries were going to break and bolt at the next wave of fire; he knew his people weren’t high on the list of those Monshara’s jistas were going to protect.
“Retreat and regroup!” Natanial called.
Otolyn swapped flags and blew into the horn attached to her saddle.
His troops were not dignified or orderly. They simply turned and ran, breaking hard for the winks behind them.
A shrieking above the din of frantic soldiers, the huff of wind and fire. Natanial peered ahead as his soldiers streamed back through the wink all around him. The defensive barrier around the Dhai camp was shrinking, contracting. The ring of defensive fighters moved back with it.
How were they retreating? Where?
Natanial caught a glimpse through the shimmering defensive wall of air, and thought his eyes must be deceiving him.
There was Anavha, moving among the heads of the others – he could not mistake that willowy frame, that long face, and the silky brown hair, so out of place among the black-haired Dhai and Saiduan.
And standing next to Anavha – though it was impossible, as impossible as the blinking quad of satellites in the sky – was Zezili Hasaria.
When the winks appeared, Ahkio saw his moment. He sought out Caisa. There, near to him, as she had always been. He ran from Meyna’s side in all the chaos and reached for Caisa’s hand.
“Do you trust me?” he whispered, urgently.
“Kai, what–”
“Come with me,” he said. “Take my hand. I need you to help me draw out Yisaoh.”
“Catori Yisaoh? Why?”
“Please, Caisa. Trust me one last time.”
Winks were opening all around them. Ahkio scooped up Hasao, as Rhin and Hadaoh were now trapped by the press of fearful people, all pressing together toward the center of camp.
Ahkio looked for Yisaoh. Nodded at her. “Come! Yisaoh, this way!”
He charged through the gap between two winks, heading for the cover of the woodlands. Hasao screamed, the loud, piercing scream of a fearful child. The screaming child and the smoke made him think of the way his mother had screamed when he tried to save her.
The air assaulted him. A blast of it took him off his feet. Yisaoh yelled and tumbled beside him. Caisa reached for Yisaoh to help her up.
Ahkio let the child go; she tottered a few paces and then sat in the brush, still screaming, frozen. The child, at least, would live. Something would outlast him.
Ahkio rounded on Yisaoh before she had time to get up. He hit her on the nose stunning her.
Caisa gasped. “Ahkio!”
“Help me hold her!” Ahkio said.
“But, I–”
“Caisa!”
Caisa ran to him and twisted Yisaoh’s arms behind her back. Yisaoh was strong, and it took the two of them to hold her down.
“You fucking traitor!” Yisaoh screamed at them, and kicked him.
The Tai Mora swarmed forward from the winks, enveloping the camp, oblivious to them behind the main line of winks. Ahkio yanked Yisaoh up. “This is the only way!” he said.
A Tai Mora noticed them, then, blade drawn.
“We surrender!” Ahkio said, raising his hands, releasing Yisaoh. Yisaoh tried to twist away, but Caisa still held her, mouth an open moue, confusion still twisted on her face. “Kirana. I need to see Kirana. I’m her brother. Do you understand?”
The soldier hesitated.
Two more came over. “I’m her brother!” Ahkio insisted. “I have someone she wants!”
Ahkio spotted a woman on a bear, someone with far more authority than this group, and bolted past the soldiers.
“I have Yisaoh!” Ahkio yelled at her. “I have Yisaoh!”
The woman leaned over and took him by the collar. “Where?” the woman said.
Ahkio pointed.
Lilia gestured to Sola. “Go, now. Fast as you can.”
After Sola came the children and their parents, running over in groups of two, three, six.
When they were moving well, without panic, she turned her attention back to the jistas. They were all still rooted at the top of the path leading down to the beach. Kadaan and Roh had shifted only a few paces.
Taigan made his way over to her, but his look was more intense than she had ever seen it.
“There are more omajistas coming,” he said. “I’m holding thirty-seven Songs of Unmaking right now. Whoever they are bringing through is very powerful. I can feel them pushing already.”
“Anavha has a gate,” Lilia said. “I need to figure out… We’ll need to start compressing the circle, falling back to the gate.”
“We can’t let them see where we’re going,” Taigan said. “They will be able to follow.”
“I need every jista we have,” Lilia said. “I can’t leave any of them.”
“Not even me?”
Lilia tur
ned away from him. “Not even you, you fool,” she said, and then, to Maralah, “We need to pull back to the gate! We have a gate!”
“Namia,” Lilia then said. “Go to Zezili. Tell her, fall back. Tighten the circle. You may need to… show her that one. Go, please.”
Namia raised her head, cocked it, sniffed a long moment, then ran in Zezili’s direction.
“Maralah!” Lilia called again. “Pull back to the gate.”
Maralah shook her head, the barest movement. “Move the gate.”
“I can’t, Maralah. He can barely keep it open as it is. It would take too long for him to open–”
“If we pull in these defenses,” Kadaan said, “it will let more of them in. We won’t be able to hold–”
“We won’t have to,” Lilia said. “Pull back quickly. Speed. Speed, all right? We only have speed and surprise. You understand.”
Kadaan looked to Maralah.
Maralah was clearly in pain. The amount of power she was pulling had to be much more than Lilia had ever tried, certainly more than she’d ever attempted without burning herself out. But she moved her chin, once.
“Stages,” Kadaan said to Roh. “Ten paces. Break for one. Ten paces.”
“Start moving to the gate as you pull it,” Lilia said.
Namia returned as Lilia went back to the shimmering gate. Lilia asked, “Is she coming?”
“Unknown,” Namia signed, which didn’t bode well. Zezili had been switching back and forth between speaking Dorinah and Dhai, and it was possible whatever response she’d given Namia had been full of Dorinah curse words that Namia wouldn’t understand.
“She’ll figure it out when the defensive walls move,” Lilia said.
Zezili had not had this much fun in some time. She delighted in the opportunity to boss around the Saiduan, though she was not oblivious to the fact that Maralah had given them leave to listen to her. Some fool had given her a sword, and she held it aloft in her strong right hand, gripping the hilt like the cock of a long-lost lover. She kissed the blade. How had she gone so long trying to murder people with her left hand? This was fucking excellent.
She yelled a lot in Dhai, which she hated, but she knew only three words in Saiduan, and they were all filthy curses. She deployed those liberally, too.
The Broken Heavens Page 32
