Starless

by Jacqueline Carey

  I saluted him.

  Nearer and nearer to the isle we drew, Aiiiaii swimming doggedly, the bits of both tow-lines in her jaws. All too soon, it was upon us.

  “My brothers and sisters!” Jahno cried. “Today we fight for our fallen brethren, for Eeeio and Keeik and Tiiklit! We fight for fallen Trask and Kerreman and Yaltha, and for all the lands that lie beneath the starless skies!”

  Essee whistled softly and signed, We fight for hope.

  “Just so, my darling,” Zariya murmured.

  The outermost spit was fast approaching. Members of the army of the risen and returned clustered upon it, gnashing teeth and waving weapons, lifting feelers and clicking claws, parting jaws to reveal teeth capable of tearing and rending.

  “Now,” Jahno said to Evene. Closing her eyes, the tattooed Drogalian woman took a deep breath and placed her palms together, opening them with an effort.

  Bewildered, the army parted. Wasting no time, Aiiiaii snaked her head forward, her chin resting on the basalt spit, her tail rising to loop around the railing of the prow.

  I vaulted atop her back and ran the length of her spine, leaping ashore.

  Behind me, Evene’s hands trembled.

  “Go, go, go!” I urged my companions.

  They came as best they could: Evene stumbling and concentrating on holding the way open, Tarrok watchful and awaiting a command to release the thunderclap. Essee and Tliksee served as sling-bearers, Zariya swaying between them; Jahno was scowling in an effort to read the battlefield and guide us in his role as Seeker. Kooie and Seeak dove overboard and swam ashore with Elehuddin deftness. Lirios raced light-footed, wings humming at his back, narrow blade in hand, and stalwart Vironesh brought up the rear. We had gained the shore.

  Ah, gods, but we had so far to go!

  Aiiiaii retreated to the safety of deeper water, towing the ship with her. We set out toward the distant mountain.

  The first fifty yards or so of our journey were strange and surreal, like something from a dream. Evene continued to hold the way open and we progressed over the rocky black terrain, a cacophonous chorus of frustration and fury rising on either side of us. It could not last, of course, and it didn’t. Behind us, both flanks of the army of the dead converged on the rearguard.

  “Now, Tarrok!” Jahno shouted, and all of us covered our ears. Vironesh stepped out of the way as the tall man drew one of those impossibly deep breaths and released the thunderclap on the army behind us. I glanced backward to see hundreds of them stunned in our wake.

  It bought us a few more precious minutes, but only a few, for Tarrok’s thunderclap had little impact on the hordes yet before us, only those behind and around us. Soon the battle was enjoined on three fronts, and I heard the sound of Zariya’s lightning unleashed behind me.

  Before me, the way remained open.

  The breath of the desert was rising in me like a sirocco and I yearned to turn it loose, yearned to join my companions in their fight; but no, glancing over my shoulder, I could see them holding their own, see Evene’s trembling hands beginning to fold. She caught my eye with a wild glance. “I can’t hold it open anymore, Khai!” she gasped. “I need a respite!”

  I nodded.

  Evene’s hands folded.

  The open corridor before me collapsed, and hundreds of undead creatures, human and inhuman, rushed toward me.

  I was Khai of the Fortress of the Winds, Pahrkun’s chosen. I had caught the hawk’s feather in my fist.

  With a high, fierce cry, I loosed the wind, letting it flow through me. My weapons in my hands, my feet moving sure-footed over the harsh terrain, I began killing.

  One …

  Two …

  Three …

  And then there was no counting, only killing. It was what I had been trained to do. It was what I was good at. I caught a descending obsidian blade in the tines of my kopar; I beheaded the undead soldier who wielded it with a single stroke of my yakhan, the wind-cutter that had once belonged to Brother Jawal. Whirling, I severed the neck of a slow-crawling tortoiselike thing with a sharp beak that was angling for my ankles. I was the point of a wedge driving deep into the army of Miasmus, the army of the risen and returned. I flowed into the spaces between them, killing left and right, carving out a path. Shrunken leathery flesh parted under my blade, blackened bones gave way. Corpse-light in hollow sockets flickered and died; the risen dead died again.

  Time seemed to hold still.

  I caught glimpses of the battle behind me as I fought, enough to see we were still alive, still fighting. Evene was behind me, hands still folded, lips moving in a silent prayer; Tarrok was at her side, a longsword in his hand. Essee and Tliksee staggered onward beneath their yokes, Zariya’s sling lurching between them, Jahno and Kooie and Seeak and Lirios defending them.

  Again and again, lightning crackled from Zariya’s fist, driving the attackers back from our column.

  Vironesh fought at the rearguard, calm and unhurried and deadly.

  I do not know how long we fought nor how much ground we gained. Enough that the smoldering mountain had grown closer. Enough that Evene regained sufficient strength to part the army again. We made haste in the gap that she opened. The exhausted yoke-bearers switched places, Jahno and Kooie taking a turn while Essee and Tliksee drew their long belt-knives.

  Tarrok unleashed another thunderclap, his lungs roaring like a bellows. The risen dead behind us fell back.

  We made haste, covering as much ground as we could.

  Onward.

  And then Evene gasped out another warning, her hands folding once more; and again the army of Miasmus fell upon us.

  As I fought, I saw something wading through the ranks of the undead from afar, its humped back rising high above them. Nearer and nearer it drew, and as it came, the ranks of the risen dead parted to make way for it, sickly green light gleaming in their eye sockets. Weapons in hand, I waited on the balls of my feet, the desert’s scouring wind blowing through me.

  It had been a tusked whale, once; a sea creature of enormous bulk and grace, as tall as a two-story building and as vast as a mountain. Now its shrunken, skeletal form stumped forward on unnatural legs that threatened to crush us all, long ivory tusks framing an immense toothy maw opened in a guttural roar of fury and anguish.

  It had not chosen this. For the first time, I was struck by the thought that none of the risen dead had chosen this perversion of existence. My heart ached at the knowledge, and I recalled the words of the Green Mother on Papa-ka-hondras. Here at the end of the world, kindness and love were required of us. The only kindness I had to offer was death; but perhaps it was a form of kindness.

  I hoped so, since it was all I had to give.

  I sheathed my weapons as the whale-thing charged on its ungainly legs, its massive head lowered. I caught one tusk in both hands. Its clawed feet plowed the stony ground and its massive body flexed, its head flinging upward in an effort to dislodge me. I let go, vaulting into the sky and somersaulting, landing on its back. If the tusked whale had been alive, I would have stood no more chance of slaying it than whittling down a mountain, but its bones were visible through its withered and rent flesh. Drawing my weapons, I plunged my yakhan into its spine, finding the space between one huge vertebra and another and parting them. “Find peace,” I whispered.

  It shuddered and died beneath me, its massive form crashing to the ground.

  My perch atop the dead whale’s back afforded a good vantage point. Glancing toward the west, I saw what must surely be our destination. Halfway up the smoldering mountain a great boulder blocked a recess. It appeared only a few scattered members of the army of Miasmus held posts on the steep and jagged slope to defend it.

  Behind me, one of the Elehuddin let out a shrill whistle of pain. I scrambled down from the whale’s back to find Seeak clutching his thigh, thick pulses of blood spurting between his long, webbed fingers, while Lirios defended him in a furious blur. A large stilt-legged fish with a long, saw-toothed bil
l lay dead at his feet.

  The creature’s sharp bill had severed an artery. Seeak would bleed out and die. I saw the knowledge reflected in his golden eyes.

  “Khai, what do we do?” Lirios cried. “We can’t leave him!”

  “We have to,” I said quietly beneath the clicking, screeching din of the army surrounding us.

  His gaze on mine, Seeak gave a single sharp whistle and drew one finger across his throat.

  I understood.

  Seeak tilted his head back, baring his throat for the mercy blow. I made it swift and sure.

  The Elehuddin keened in grief.

  The armies of Miasmus were pouring around the corpse of the fallen whale. Zariya drove them back with lightning.

  “They’re pressing hard from behind, little brother,” Vironesh called grimly. “Keep going!”

  Somehow, we did.

  Step by step and yard by yard, we fought onward; all of us fighting, Zariya’s lightning crackling around us. The stench of death and decay, scorched flesh and acrid smoke filled our nostrils. There was no more if this, then that, but if this, then that. All that was prophesied had come to pass. There was only the here and now. There was only the eternal battle. It felt as though it had been raging forever. It felt as though it would never end.

  Pahrkun’s wind blew through me, fraying my essence until I could not tell where the wind began and Khai ended. I was a creature of flesh and bone; I was the hot breath of the desert made manifest at the end of the world. One thing bled into the other. I sustained wounds I did not feel, none of them mortal. Like the wind, I flowed between one thing and another, finding the smallest of gaps, forging a path forward.

  I killed and killed and killed, offering death as a benediction to the unwilling risen dead.

  I was Khai.

  I had caught the hawk’s feather in my fist.

  It came almost as a shock when we gained the base of the mountain’s slope, and I shook my head to clear it, gazing upward.

  The scattered defenders glared down at me: long-limbed apes of some sort, suited to traversing the steep terrain. Later, it would occur to me to wonder how they came to be sucked into the maw of Miasmus, whether they were unfortunate cargo or members of an unfamiliar species, but at the time, I thought only of dispatching them.

  Behind us, the army of Miasmus pressed forward.

  “Hold them back!” I shouted to Vironesh. “I will clear the way!”

  I leapt from crag to crag. Above me, the undead ape-things hooted in challenge and launched themselves at me, long yellow eyeteeth gnashing, inhumanly strong fingers grasping at me. But I had been raised in the mountains, and I would cede nothing to them. My weapons in my hands, I flowed like the wind, danced on the mountainside, and killed them.

  One by one by one, I cut them down, until there were no more left.

  The slope was ours.

  Now I fell back to join Vironesh in the rearguard and grant the others safe passage up the mountainside. My mentor the broken shadow shot me a dire look. “Let us build a wall of corpses, little brother.”

  Together, we did.

  Our blades rose and fell, and the undead died a second death, the wall of withered corpses mounting. Above us, our companions scrambled and panted; climbing, climbing. Zariya’s sling lurched wildly on its yoke.

  The wall would not hold long. Already, the risen dead sought to clamber over and around it. Still, it would slow their passage. Vironesh and I retreated, following our companions. Here and there, we were forced to make our way around deep crevasses from which sulfurous smoke arose.

  By the time our company gained the ledge, Zar the Sun was sinking on the far side of the mountain. All three of the moons were rising. We stood in shadow, gazing at the enormous boulder that sealed the entrance. In my mind’s eye, I envisioned the whale bending its tusks and its might to the task of rolling it into place.

  Jahno glanced behind us. The risen dead were coming, crablike creatures scuttling in the vanguard, pincers clicking, the more dangerous enemies following at a slower pace. “We do not have much time, Brother Thunderclap,” he said.

  Tarrok nodded. “I understand, and I will do my best, Seeker. For the wife and children I have lost, for fallen Trask, I will do my best. Cover your ears.”

  We obeyed, and Tarrok drew breath, deeper and deeper, his chest expanding until it seemed it must burst his ribcage, shattering it like the staves of a barrel. He paused and held it at the apex, his face darkening, then loosed it in a shout, a shout like no other, a shout that struck the boulder and reverberated all around us. I felt the earth tremble beneath my feet as the impact drove us to our knees, hands pressed over our ringing ears; it stunned the armies of Miasmus behind us.

  With a resounding crrrack, a split ran the length of the boulder. Tarrok swayed on his feet, then crumpled to the ground.

  Lirios was the first to reach his side. Wings buzzing with agitation, he rolled the tall man onto his back. Tarrok’s eyes gazed sightlessly at the lowering sky, the whites red with ruptured blood vessels. “Brother, no!”

  Moving stiff-gaited from unseen wounds, Vironesh joined him and felt for a pulse. “I fear the effort has burst his heart,” he murmured. Gently, he closed the tall man’s eyes. “May his sacrifice not be in vain.”

  There were tears in Zariya’s eyes. “We must continue.”

  Jahno turned to Evene. “Now it falls to you, Opener of Ways.”

  Once again, Evene lifted her chin, the noose that she had escaped tattooed on her skin. I was not raised to be a hero, she had said to me on Papa-ka-hondras. But now, I thought, she had found a place beyond fear.

  A petty thief, an exiled blacksmith, a scholar, a sheltered princess, peaceable fish-loving Elehuddin, an earnest mayfly yearning for a mate … who were we to be anointed the defenders of the four quarters?

  And yet here we were at the end of the world, chosen by the Scattered Prophecy to do the impossible.

  Evene placed her palms together and closed her eyes.

  I watched the cords of her neck draw taut. Her hands shook with the effort of opening them.

  With a low, grating groan, the two halves of the sundered boulder parted to reveal a passage lit by a sullen glow.

  The final way was open.

  FIFTY-SIX

  One by one, we passed through the narrow aperture, Zariya abandoning her sling to hobble on her canes.

  “How many rhamanthus seeds are left?” Jahno asked her quietly.

  Her eyes reflected the dim glow. “A handful.”

  I prayed it was enough.

  We didn’t know. None of us knew.

  It was hot and close inside the tunnel, the air thick and acrid. Behind us, the aperture opened onto a glimpse of twilight.

  “The dead will be coming for us,” Vironesh said in a pragmatic tone. “Opener of Ways, can you close them, too?”

  Weary to the bone, Evene gave her head an exhausted shake. “I do not possess that gift.”

  Vironesh’s broad shoulders rose and fell in a faint shrug. “Then my role here is clear. I am not one of the chosen defenders. I will not accompany you on this final journey, but remain here and guard the passage.”

  “Are you hale enough to do so?” I asked, suspecting his injuries were more grave than he was letting on.

  A crablike thing advanced through the opening, eyestalks waving in the dim light. Vironesh crushed it underfoot, then drove the tip of his yakhan through its broken shell. “Hale enough, little brother. The big ones can only come at me one at a time.” His bruise-colored face was tranquil. “Khai, I wish to thank you. You gave me purpose when I had none. Your Highness…” He offered Zariya a one-handed salute. “You gave me hope. All of you give me hope. If we fail here, it will not be for lack of courage and perseverance.”

  “I owe you a great deal, my mentor.” I took a swig from my water-skin, feeling the sustaining water of Ishfahel the Gentle Rain restore me, and glanced down the length of the tunnel. It appeared empty, but I wanted
to be sure. “Brother Lirios, will you scout ahead with me?”

  His wings hummed. “With pleasure.”

  “Be careful, my darlings,” Zariya cautioned us.

  Weapons in hand, Lirios and I ventured into the tunnel. It twisted and turned as we went deeper into the mountain, the heat rising and the sullen glow intensifying the farther we went. I unwound my head-scarf to wrap a length of woolen fabric over my mouth. There were no members of the undead army to oppose us. Nonetheless, a strong feeling of menace pervaded the place. There was a sound, a low deep susurrus, as though an immense being breathed in and out at impossibly long intervals. The walls around us seemed to pulse with life, and I had a sense that we were being watched at every step along the way.

  Some hundred yards into our journey, the tunnel opened onto a massive pit, jagged ridges funneling down to a churning pool of red-hot lava far, far below us. It pulsed like the beating of a heart.

  “Khai?” Lirios’s voice was small and shaken. “Khai, I think we are inside Miasmus.”

  “I think so, too,” I whispered.

  We made our way back to report. Already, the battle had been enjoined in our absence, Jahno and the Elehuddin defending the opening to give Vironesh a respite before the final effort.

  “We dare not waste time,” Zariya said firmly. Essee whistled and hoisted one end of the yoke, and Zariya shook her head. “You have done enough and more, my dearest. Let everyone among us fend for themselves. Let me manage this last bit on my own, and stand against the rising tide in accordance with prophecy.”

  “It is fitting,” Jahno agreed somberly.

  Before Papa-ka-hondras, such a thing would have been unthinkable, but Zariya’s mettle had been tempered on that deadly isle. The healing she had found had come at a steep price, but her lungs were strong now. Step by step, she dragged herself forward, her chest rising and falling steadily, freed from the vise that had gripped it since childhood. We walked the tunnel together, all of us, and if our progress was slow, it was sure.

  Behind us arose the renewed sound of combat. Vironesh the broken shadow was holding the way.