The Broken Heavens

by Kameron Hurley

  “You can do this,” Roh said.

  Anavha closed his eyes. Raised his hand. Oma’s crimson breath swirled up from the bottom of the pedestal and blanketed him.

  Lilia waited, expecting something to happen to her dais, but nothing did. “What are we doing wrong?” she called to Luna.

  “We need the Key,” Luna said. “Taigan? Do you see it?”

  Taigan stood just outside the ring of columns, frowning. “I see what looks like a very uncomfortable cage,” he said.

  The position for the Key was a twisted white structure that bisected the room, floor to ceiling, just behind where Lilia stood. It looked like a great tendon with a body-sized gap at the center.

  “Taigan,” Lilia said, “you’re the last one. You want to burn them all up? This is how to do it.”

  “Who’s to say I couldn’t just go back and–”

  “Taigan! Please!”

  He shrugged and sauntered over to the great quivering mass of the web.

  The air trembled. Lilia felt a deep groaning beneath her, as if the whole room were shifting.

  “What is that?” Zezili yelled.

  The circle on the floor they had come through glowed a brilliant green.

  “Oh no,” Roh said, “someone’s coming through.”

  “Hold the line!” Zezili called.

  Lilia screamed, “Taigan!”

  Taigan heaved a great sigh, and climbed up into the great gory cage. The moment he stepped inside, a burst of brilliance emanated from the other pedestals, blinding Lilia.

  The dais beneath her heaved like a ship at sea. Her stomach churned. And then something in her – she could not say what it was, or where it had been – something within her opened, some vital connection that had long been burned closed.

  She gasped.

  Taigan’s clothes and hair were instantly incinerated. His body – the flesh, the tendon, muscle, bone – burst into a fine red mist that spun around in the chamber, coagulating together into a fiery red eye of blood.

  Lilia’s stomach heaved. The blood rippled, became flesh, great gobs of it roiling and flexing like sticky cheese. His body was trying to remake itself.

  The gobs of flesh burst again, imploded back into the red eye, the gory mist. A blinding white light pierced through the organic cloud of ephemera that had once been Taigan as the form began to flush with new skin again, roiling and bubbling with half-formed, inhuman shapes before breaking again under the incredible power being drawn from all five temples.

  The light shuddered through the great tendon and through the water all around Lilia, crawling up her dais as she began to rise from it, as if caught up by the hand of a god.

  She spread her arms, and light burst from her fingertips, flooding the room. All around her, a massive shifting orrery bloomed, bursting into being as if it had been there all along, and she had simply not been equipped to see it. She found herself floating inside a multicolored sphere of power, and struggled to stay upright.

  The game, the game, how to start the game?

  She raised her left hand and concentrated on the nearest sphere, a great red orb. It hummed through the air and floated just above her palm. When she gripped it, her fingers found purchase. It was solid. She thought she would see her reflection in its shimmering surface, but no – instead she saw great armies, all marching toward the center of the world. She recoiled. Released the sphere. It floated back into the whirling orrery.

  “I don’t think I need the piece!” Lilia called down at Zezili. “It’s responding without that symbol! I can do this myself!”

  Her attention was so fixed on the spheres that she heard Zezili’s voice only dimly.

  “They’re here! They’re sending more! Defenses up?”

  Lilia felt a little smile creep across her face. “Let them come,” she whispered, and called on more power.

  Her shadow fell across Luna, below, who trembled.

  42

  Kirana brought them all together in the Assembly Chamber – Gian and her jistas, Yivsa and twenty of her best soldiers. She had one of the stargazers, Talahina, there as well. She wanted a scholar with them, just in case. She had two of her own omajistas, Mysa and Shova, standing side by side. The smell of smoke still permeated the air. Much of the temple’s interior still burned, but had been contained by four very exhausted parajistas. She had called them all from the coast, winking them here quickly from their failed attempts to smother the People’s Temple.

  Yivsa poured a large jar of Kirana’s brother’s mud-thick blood onto the ring in the floor. The ring of flesh glowed softly blue, just as it had done when the boy, Roh, had stepped into it and disappeared through the floor as he held the book.

  “Let’s see what we can do,” Kirana said. “Yivsa, take Mysa and Shova with you and ready your weapons. Gian, we’ll wait until they are in place and open a wink to us from… wherever this goes. I don’t want to risk this entrance for all of us. You said they had twenty people?”

  Gian nodded. “I had time to count them. They joined hands and stepped onto that circle. They will no doubt have defenses in place.”

  “Then let’s prepare to break their defenses,” Kirana said. “Remember, we don’t care about who they have in the niches, those four jistas. They will be locked in until this ends. We want to control the center.”

  “Who will operate it?” Gian asked.

  “I will,” Kirana said. “We know enough to do the minimum. Close the ways between the worlds. The rest, we can do in time. In thirty hours, this will be over, one way or another.”

  Yivsa raised her hand. “You heard her. Mysa, Shova, to me, one on either side of the circle.” She gave orders to the others, and then they stretched out their hands and clasped them.

  Yivsa stepped onto the glowing blue ring. The others followed.

  Kirana took a breath. Nothing happened.

  “Maybe it doesn’t respond to him?” Gian said.

  “He’s yours, temple,” Kirana muttered. “Fucking take him.”

  And Yivsa and the others sank through the floor.

  Kirana smiled. Those remaining in the chamber shifted uncomfortably. One of Gian’s little parajistas gasped.

  “Now what?” Gian asked.

  “We wait,” Kirana said.

  The air shuddered a moment later. A wink opened just above the Assembly Chamber table, and brilliant white light poured into the room.

  Kirana recoiled.

  On the other side, Yivsa yelled at her to come through. “They’re already in place! We need to overwhelm them!”

  Gian strode through first, much to Kirana’s annoyance. Kirana didn’t want her to take some fatal blow so early in the day.

  A hot wind emanated from the wink. Kirana waited for Gian’s parajistas to put up defenses, then stepped through with her tirajistas beside her.

  Mysa and Shova had both opened winks. The second wink looked out onto the sandy peninsula where Monshara’s soldiers waited to reinforce them.

  Kirana stumbled on the sloping floor. Yivsa held out a hand, but Kirana ignored it, transfixed by the flaming figure at the center of the room. She knew exactly who it was, the ghost of a girl who had come to her before Kuallina, and sat her down later over a poisoned meal, the little rebel girl all the Dhai proclaimed the next Faith Ahya, their prophet-god.

  “Can you hold…” Kirana shouted at Yivsa as a great rumbling shook the chamber. The floor tilted and heaved. The temple itself moaned. Water began to bubble up from the floor’s lowest side. Were they… sinking? Had the temple shifted off the sand bar?

  A great ball of light rolled off Lilia, hurtling itself toward Kirana.

  “Fuck,” Kirana said.

  Zezili kept low; there were too many jistas in the room and too much power. What she needed were more projectile weapons to distract the jistas. The tangled defenses and offenses were mostly parajista and sinajista, air and fire, and the best defense against both was to wait for a gap in their casts. She saw Kirana immediately, a
nd barked, “Her! That’s the one! Kill the head and the beast dies!”

  A blast of heat crackled, burning up three fighters and one of the jistas.

  Zezili came up quickly, hunched over, yelling at her people to close the line.

  Something thudded into her shoulder. She went down.

  Shocked, winded, Zezili looked around, sword raised. People were coming through the second wink, the one that opened onto the plateau. She recognized the man with the bow immediately. Natanial. That fucking fuck.

  Behind him, waving through more jistas, was Monshara. Oh, Monshara, how long ago that acquaintance had been. And here Monshara was, still fighting for these awful people.

  Zezili pushed herself up. Fuck them. Fuck Natanial. She heaved herself toward him, breaking the line.

  Kirana surged into the air, brought aloft by a spinning rainbow of powerful light. She whirled toward the central pedestal and the burning figure of the girl there.

  The girl’s face was a bitter rictus. “I want to murder you!”

  “Do it then!” Kirana shouted. “You’ll murder yourself, too. Did you forget that? Forget you’re one of us? Kill me, and you kill yourself, and you kill your little friend Gian too. Did you see her? Fallen from the sky, far tougher than that little nymph you brought to the table. Send us all back to our dead world, and you’ll be there with us, hacking your guts out.”

  Invisible bands of power constricted Kirana’s body. She gasped.

  “Not the Tai Mora,” Lilia said. “Not all of us. Just you, Kirana. Just. You.”

  “Gian and I are… bound…” Kirana gasped. “Kill me… you kill her too… How many… more times… will you… kill her?”

  “I want to murder you!”

  “Do it. Do it, you coward!”

  “I want you to suffer as my mother suffered.”

  “No one can suffer that much.”

  Lilia screamed.

  Natanial let loose another arrow; it slammed just below the first into Zezili’s left shoulder. She kept coming, like an angry bear. He backed up; she was too close now. He shouldered his bow and pulled his sword.

  Zezili tackled him. They both went over. Behind her, her lines of fighters broke, one after another, in the face of overwhelming offenses. Monshara and Natanial had brought a fucking army with them. Far more than Lilia or her Saiduan had ever anticipated.

  Natanial’s hands found her throat. Her grip found his as well. They lay locked like that, grunting and gasping, splashing around on the cold floor.

  A knife of cold fire went through Zezili’s body. She gaped. Natanial punched her, and she went over.

  Zezili gazed up to see Monshara standing over her with a great infused weapon, eyes blazing.

  “Wait!” Zezili said.

  A massive cracking filled the room, and water from the lower end of the temple rushed in, faster and faster as the temple continued to plunge deeper into the sea. Water began to pour from the ceiling. How far under were they already? Death by Monshara’s hand, or the sea’s?

  Death on all sides.

  Lilia was aware of Gian breaking through the defenses. Roh had fallen. The shield of air lay broken. Gian’s forces were already attacking Anavha and Kadaan, trying to loosen them from their pedestals.

  Saradyn was the last defense around Roh, and Gian cut through him like his raging, bearish body was nothing. She was fast, determined. Her hair had come undone, and blew back across her face; Gian, my Gian, Lilia thought. No, no, she is just another Gian. Who Gian could have been, in another world. I destroyed my Gian. I destroyed them all.

  “Lilia!” Gian yelled. She came to the edge of the water and raised her weapon. “Don’t do this! There’s another solution. We can–”

  “You’re a liar! You’re all liars! She’s taken everything!”

  “Lilia!”

  Lilia screamed, and squeezed.

  Kirana’s back bent, her mouth open in a silent cry. Blood burst from Kirana’s eyes and nose, splattered her mouth.

  Gian crumpled like a puppet with a cut string. Tumbled into a heap on the floor. Water rushed over her body, growing deeper and deeper.

  Lilia sobbed and released Kirana. She fell into the water surrounding the pedestal, floating face down, not so much as a bubble of breath escaping her lungs. Blood sank swiftly through the water in whirling tendrils.

  The temple shuddered again.

  Lilia released the wave of power, the same way she used to release Oma’s breath. But the orrery still whirled around them, locked into orbit, waiting for someone to break the world. Or perhaps put it back together again. Was that possible? Lilia thought. Was that ever possible?

  Her heart hurt. She saw Zezili flopping around on the floor like a breathless fish. Lilia sank to her knees. Luna, just behind her, shouted, “Lilia! Lilia, you haven’t stopped it yet!”

  Lilia gazed at the bodies of Gian and Kirana. She cried, great gasping sobs that racked her body.

  Behind her, Luna waded across the water and began to climb up the pedestal. Luna, breathless, pulled hirself onto the dais and took Lilia by the shoulders. “Lilia? You hear me? We aren’t done.”

  “I’m done,” Lilia sobbed. “I’m done.”

  “We’re not here for revenge,” Luna said. “We’re here to save the worlds.”

  Lilia got to her feet, shakily. The chamber heaved again. Kirana’s people rushed to her body. Someone raised a bow, notched an arrow.

  “Let them,” Lilia said. She raised her arms. “Go ahead!”

  Light suffused the platform again, a burst of power so great it blew Lilia off the pedestal and into the water below. She gasped and paddled, crawling up beside Kirana’s body. Gazed up.

  Luna drew deeply on the mass of energy, body shivering with power. Luna began drawing globes together; they crashed and sparked.

  Lilia sobbed. What came after closing the ways between the worlds? Nothing. No future, for her or for any of them. She pushed over Kirana’s body and stared into her bloody face.

  “You did all of this,” Lilia said. “Now you and I are done.”

  Several of the Tai Mora came to the edge of the water, weapons pointed at Lilia. Lilia pulled Kirana’s head into her lap. “Let us alone,” she said.

  There was a stir behind them as the orbs crackled overhead. Something… else was coming through the wink.

  Great, golden-skinned figures with wasp-like waists and bulging green eyes tottered through the wink. Lilia had a long moment of dissonance, unable to comprehend what she was seeing. The figures walked on four legs, and they were tall, so tall, like giants! A woman rode through after them on a chariot pulled by two more of the figures, her eyes blazing, a misty whirlwind of power making the air around her shimmer like a soap bubble.

  “No!” Lilia yelled.

  Lilia had killed Kirana. She had murdered her. The body, here… Lilia held Kirana’s head, gazed into the sightless eyes, and raised her gaze to meet the piercing stare of this new version, this more powerful version, whose terrible soldiers were tearing apart Lilia’s companions and the Tai Mora with equal relish.

  By killing this Kirana, all Lilia had done was free another to take her place.

  A man rode the great chariot behind this new Kirana. He stepped off as it came to a halt a few paces from the pedestal.

  “Suari!” this new Kirana said. “Get that one off the dais! Keep the others in place! I want control over this!”

  This Kirana spoke accented Dhai, not Tai Mora.

  Lilia gaped at her, but this Kirana paid her hardly a glance. A sneer at the body of the dead Kirana, but no more. Her forces were intent on controlling the device.

  What did I do? Lilia thought. What terrible thing did I do? She had killed this Kirana… only to unleash another one. A darker one. Opening the way again and again to another Kirana…

  Oh no. Oh no…

  A wave of fire rolled toward her. She shrieked, knocked back into the water. She splashed around, and finally crawled out the other side.
<
br />   Suari was riding a wave of power to the top of the dais. He knocked Luna off with a great burst of fire. Luna fell, landing hard on the stones. Lilia heard the crack of Luna’s skull. Saw the blood.

  Lilia struggled out of the water, crawling toward Roh and Saradyn. The gleaming orrery shivered, waiting for another worldbreaker to operate it.

  Not me, Lilia thought. It was never me. I chose wrong.

  She got to her feet just as a passing Tai Mora swung her blade, catching Lilia in the side. Lilia gasped, stumbled. Blood bloomed from her belly.

  43

  Roh’s defenses burst. He lost his hold on Para and slid across the wet floor. Three arrows seethed through the broken defenses and sank into his guts. He rolled over, gasping. A wave of Tai Mora came at him. Saradyn roared and positioned himself in front of Roh, shielding him. The orbs of the orrery shimmered and danced in the room, obscuring his view, causing confusion and chaos. The trickling sound of water had become a constant stream, the mutter of multiple waterfalls. The water rose around him.

  A wave of chittering figures burst forth from the wink that opened onto the plateau. Saradyn roared and threw himself at the figures. They hissed and broke around him, as if fearful or in thrall to him. He laughed, a great guffaw.

  Saradyn grabbed Roh by the arm and hauled him up. Blood wept from Roh’s guts. Pain made him woozy.

  “The circle,” Roh said. He looked back to where Lilia sat, weeping. “Get Lilia. I can go a while on my own.”

  The wasp-waisted figures continued to ignore him and Saradyn. Saradyn kept hold of Roh’s arm, dragging him painfully through the water.

  Saradyn looped another arm under Lilia’s. Roh noted her wound. Gave one last look to the pedestals where Kadaan, Maralah, Anavha and Taigan were locked into the device. Luna’s crumpled body was just visible on the other side of the main pedestal. The man this new Kirana had called Suari stood atop the pedestal, hand outstretched to the new Kirana.

  Saradyn got them within six paces of the great green circle on the floor before an ax took him in the back. He went over, dropping them both.