Realm of Ashes

by J. D. L. Rosell

  Xaron and I slipped between the guards to enter within. The decor inside almost made me wonder if we were still in the Laurel Palace and not transported to the Bali plateaus. The room was brightly lit with green pyr lamps. Vines crept along the walls, vibrant and alive, and leafy potted plants in great decorated pots filled the corners. As we were in the hosting room of the suite, there was a table and cupboard, likely holding liquors and other things to entertain guests.

  Komo stood in the middle of the room and watched as we approached, his young features drawn. He’d discarded the ceremonial garments from before and wore a simple, white tunic and loose pants that cinched around his ankles above his bare feet. “First Verifier Airene,” he said gravely. “I am surprised you visit me so soon after…” He shrugged. “Well, you were there.”

  Despite the urgency, I couldn’t let things lie at that, especially when his advisor stepped into the room with a severe look. Before they’d believe me, I had to have some measure of credibility.

  “I apologize, Heir Komo. We meant no offense. Archon Jaxas was not aware of Nomusa’s heritage, and I didn’t think of what trouble it might cause.” A quick look at Nkosi included him in the apology.

  The advisor did not ease his hard demeanor. “And now you bring us your royal jester to salve the wound. Tell me, Airene the Finch. How many ways do you wish to insult us this day?”

  Before I could think of a reply, Komo looked around at the advisor. “Peace, Nkosi. You have taught me to look at people and give time to judge them fairly. I do not think we have given the First Verifier a fair measure yet, nor time to explain herself.”

  A small smile softened Nkosi’s features. “I have not judged her, Shaka-na. I meant to cut to the quick of the matter through sharp words. But perhaps even that was not yet necessary.” He looked back to me. “Please, First Verifier. I will assume then you did not come idly.”

  My estimation of the young ruler-to-be had risen greatly. Even though I knew as Nomusa’s friend I ought not to like him and his kin, I couldn’t help a begrudging respect forming.

  “Thank you Heir Komo, Advisor Nkosi. I do come tonight with urgent news.” I paused, gathering the courage to say the words. “I fear your lives might be in danger.”

  They didn’t react with the surprise I expected, but merely shared a look.

  “And from whom do you expect this attack?” Nkosi asked calmly. His posture seemed to have shifted minutely, but suddenly, it he seemed as if he might spring forward at a moment’s notice.

  Time to throw the spokes, as Talan would have said. “From Seekers, those who ascribe to the movement known as the Manifest. They have wardens among their numbers. And I believe they are coming after you tonight.”

  “Why so soon?” Komo wondered aloud as he looked again to his advisor. “Our negotiations may yet fail. Why attack before anything has even been decided?”

  The advisor only nodded his head in acknowledgement. “Zolani,” he called out.

  The veteran guard peered in at once. “Yes, Nkosi-sa?”

  But the advisor didn’t have time to answer, as the room suddenly split with a shriek like from a great dying beast.

  The ground shook under us, and I fell to my knees and stared up. The ceiling had ripped open, not in fragments of stone, but like the very seams of the world had been rent apart. Ever color and light known to humankind assaulted my senses from it. I knew immediately what it meant as a familiar wave of nausea flooded through me.

  Someone had cut open a path from the Pyrthae.

  “Xaron!” I shouted.

  Just as he looked up, our attackers emerged from the tear, clumsily turning about midair to fall gracelessly to the floor. Three at a time, they poured through, as much as the tear would allow. Violet tatu adorned their faces, and dark robes whipped about them. Seeker wardens.

  The room burst into a frenzy. Zolani whipped his sickle-shaped sword at the closest of the Seekers. The warden screamed and collapsed, but threw up his hands as he fell. A wave of kinesis barreled into the veteran guard, and he flew backward to land against the wall with a crunch.

  I narrowly avoided the erratic wave as I threw myself to the ground. Scrambling to my feet, I saw Xaron slam one into a wall so hard that his skull cracked with red lines, a grotesque parody of his spidery violet tatu. The moment after, Xaron cried out as a line of fire cut against his shoulder.

  Nkosi, despite wearing cumbersome robes, fought with hands and feet, disabling and knocking one of the wardens flat to the ground before striking his throat with a savage jab.

  Komo, though a boy, fought with as much prowess as the men, moving with the grace only hard years of practicing Ixolo could have afforded him. He knocked one Seeker to the ground with a sweep of his legs, then leaped and kicked a Seeker just emerging from the rent into the wall. I stared at the force behind the blow, then was confirmed in my suspicions as, a moment later, another of the wardens threw kinesis at the boy. Komo turned and met it with open hands, then twisted his body around. The blast dispersed around him. I stared in amazement. The boy was a warden.

  But a Seeker had finally noticed me huddled on the ground and raised hands toward me, sparks gathered at her fingertips. I desperately willed my locus to open, but I remained as closed to the Pyrthae as before. The split second of hesitation was enough. Fire leaped toward me.

  I turned aside too late. Fire caught my shoulder, searing where it touched. Tumbling to the ground, I gasped against the pain and scrambled away.

  A glance back showed the warden readying a second attempt at my life, but someone barreled past me, steel flashing in their hands. As the second of Komo’s guard attacked, the Seeker turned the fire on her, but missed. The guard flashed her sickle-blade across her opponent’s throat, and the Seeker fell amidst a red spray.

  Gasping with fear and pain, I fled for the door. Every movement of my right shoulder pulled at the scorched skin and sent waves of sickening pain through my body. Yet as I found the safety of the cool stone outside, I gritted my teeth, reached around under my back, and pulled free Nomusa’s knife. I held it up in my left hand as the screams of pain and rumbles of channeled energy sounded from within. I’d killed before, but I was no warrior. I was scared near witless just thinking about entering within again. Even though I’d weathered the horrors of the Despoina’s trial, I wasn’t prepared for this.

  But I never would be.

  Gripping the knife tight, I turned into the room again. Five Seekers still fought against Xaron, Komo, and Nkosi. Xaron and Komo often wove into each other’s conflicts as they dodged and dispersed the attacks against them. Each had sustained wounds horrible to look at, but didn’t seem to slow them. Nkosi kept to the walls, only striking out when a Seeker came near. Zolani and the female guard lay motionless along the walls. The Pyrthaen tear still hovered above, flooding the room with a strange light. None seemed to notice my return. I ghosted along the edge of the room, the walls now pocketed from errant blasts of fire and force.

  As Xaron flung one Seeker toward the wall six feet away from me, I buried my fear and leaped forward, raising my knife with both hands. The pain of my burn only fueled the fury with which I stabbed the knife down into the stunned man. The knife, clumsily aimed, entered between his neck and shoulder, tearing through the flesh with an ease that stunned me. The Seeker jerked his head up at me, horror and fury and pain mixing together. As he raised a trembling hand toward me, I jerked away, leaving my knife in his shoulder. Before he could try for vengeance, his hand fell away, and his head collapsed forward.

  “Back!” one of the Seekers shouted above the fray. “Back to the ‘Thae, fools!” The warden followed her own advice and, with a kinesis-propelled jump, flew back into the rent above.

  Her retreat broke the rest. The last three Seekers immediately followed, two crashing into each other in their haste to flee. Xaron gave one a parting burn on the leg before he sank against the wall, gasping.

  I stood and watched dully as Nkosi stepped up next to t
he Shaka-Heir and placed a hand on his shoulder. They both looked up into the tear to the Pyrthae, which had already begun to seal over. Though my ears were dull from the battle, I faintly heard the advisor’s murmured words. “You did well, Komo. Very well. Now we must care for our fallen. See to Zolani. I will go to Sunto.”

  My gaze drifted down to my wet hands. The blood had begun to form a strange lattice as it streamed down my skin, the pattern reminding me of the violet tatu of the Manifest.

  “They’re both dead,” Komo said quietly, but he did as his advisor asked, kneeling by the crumpled body of the veteran warrior. “He has no pulse, nor life in his eyes. He has joined our ancestors.”

  “Sunto as well.” The advisor knelt next to the woman guard, who lay twisted on the ground on the other side, a pool of blood under her head. “Kwagati umya wako umgoda hlahla. Would they had died under the boughs of the isikhayha.”

  “They will find their way rootward, I don’t doubt. Their spirits were strong and their hearts true.”

  My gaze lingered on the veteran. He’d meant to serve Komo all his life. A bitter irony it had ceased this night.

  But I had my own to attend to. Still seeming as if I walked in a dream, I knelt by Xaron, wiped my hands on my trousers, and put a hand to his head. Blood matted his hair.

  “Xaron,” I said softly. “Are you alright?”

  He looked up with a pained grin. “They ruined my outfit.”

  A small smile crept over my own lips. “I’m sure we can find you another potato sack to wear. Let’s get you to a healer.”

  Ignoring his protests that he could walk, ignoring my own pain, I pulled Xaron’s arm over my good shoulder and helped him stand.

  To my surprise, Komo stood at his other side. Though cuts and burns puckered up the skin of his arms and chest, and his white clothes were splattered with red, he didn’t seem much wearied or injured from the battle. He met my eye without hesitation as he extended a hand with a bloody knife in it. I flinched as I recognized the knife as my own.

  “You spoke the truth, First Verifier Airene,” he said. “I will remember your warning. Now, let me help you.”

  I stared at him, not accepting the knife. “Help? You’re nearly as badly injured as he is.”

  He gave a small laugh. “My wounds will heal.” He suddenly looked to Nkosi. “It feels wrong to laugh in the face of death.”

  His advisor shook his head. “If we cannot laugh now, then what good has laughter ever served? You do no injustice to their name, Shaka-na. The passed do not wish the living to linger, but to move on and be merry when they can.”

  Komo gave him a small nod, then turned back to Xaron and me. “I don’t mean to delay. Let us be off. But do you not need your knife?”

  Though my skin crawled, I accepted the knife and clutched it hard. If we weren’t still in danger now, we would be eventually. I couldn’t let the fear of hurting others stop me from protecting myself and my companions.

  No matter how I might wish otherwise.

  Several turns later, Xaron was settled into a bed, and I sat next to him. It was the same bed I’d occupied just under a span before, and I sat in the same chair Corin had. I wondered if she’d discovered anything of her sister yet. At least she must be safer than us.

  Just as she’d led me into the situation that landed me in that bed, so I’d done with Xaron. I glanced at him. He slept finally, though he’d moaned for the previous turn, complaining about being unable to move to his sides from his wounds. The healer had said his injuries were not serious and would heal, and had given him a poppy tincture to help him rest. Yet cracked ribs and seared skin were far more than I wished my friend to take because of me.

  I stared down at the exposed knife in my lap, clean of blood now. It glinted dully with the green light coming in through the windows. The storm had broken, and the radiant winds were out once more, pulsing as they streamed over the city. I didn’t touch the blade, but studied the sharp edge of it. I had killed a man with it. The second person I’d killed; third, if Vusu succumbed to my quarrel. It didn’t have the shock of the first time, yet I doubted the great emptiness that welled up in its wake would ever go away. I wondered bleakly how many more I could kill before there was nothing left of me to drain away.

  Despair covered me as a blanket, suffocating, with no escape. I didn’t try to throw it off. I let it bear me down, down to an oblivion where it might ease away.

  Only in the midst of the darkness did I see the glimmer of light. It pulsed gently like a star on a clear night. Instinctively, I reached toward it, the only light in this place. As I touched it, the light eased a little wider. I grasped eagerly at it, pulling for more, and it readily complied. It cast off a suffusing warmth, one that drove away the darkness. I allowed in more, letting it fill me until it threatened to burn.

  I jolted awake, suddenly aware. Half of my fingertips, dug into my trousers, glowed with a dampened light. Trembling, I raised them. Two fingertips on my left hand and three on my right glowed warmly. Held in the midst of the comforting warmth, I didn’t fear them. Radiance filled me to the brim, but I didn’t overflow with it. Easing my tensed muscles, I relaxed into it and let the energy swirl inside me.

  Nkosi had told Komo not to linger on the dead, but to move on and be merry. The guilt and horror of what I’d faced hadn’t faded. Yet, embraced by the power of the Pyrthae, living the culmination of fanciful childhood dreams, I allowed myself to smile and drift away on a river of light.

  Interlude

  Seda

  Seda balanced the tray in one hand as she slipped the key from her neck. She always carried it under her chiton, hanging cold against her skin, where no one might be tempted to steal it from her. It still made her uneasy, carrying the key to Master's room. She didn’t want to fail his trust. But even more than that, it was unsettling that he needed a lock at all. Before his illness, he’d feared nothing, for nothing could harm him. Now he had not the strength to leave his room.

  She banished the traitorous thoughts as she fitted the key in the lock. Such thoughts could sink her into despair, and then she couldn’t serve Master. And he needed her as he never had before.

  Almost as soon as she entered, he called out to her. “Seda?” His voice was cracked and weak, as if parched. Yet the ewers of water she brought to him were always empty when she returned.

  “I am here, Master.” She pulled the door closed and locked it, then turned too quickly and almost upended the tray. A bit of broth spilled from the bowl onto the crusty bread. Stupid girl. Clumsy girl. Master wouldn’t approve her cursing herself. He always told Seda she, like every being, had a spark of divinity within her, and that if she couldn’t respect herself as she was, she should at least treat herself well for that. She tried to obey. But when she acted so stupid, so clumsy, she knew she deserved to be punished. As Valem punished his children, as Seda’s father had punished her with his fists, so Seda felt she should punish her failings. She must, for she couldn’t fail Master.

  She was careful with the tray as she walked to him and set it down. His room was square — fourteen paces each way, she’d discovered during long turns of waiting. Only the light of a single, swinging pyr lamp illuminated the room. Master preferred torches, saying fire was cleansing while pyrkin was crowding, but even he admitted he was too weak to risk it now. And Seda worried even the small amount of smoke of a torch would weaken him further.

  “I brought bread and broth, Master,” she murmured as she knelt and took the bowl and spoon in hand. Master was facing her, still dressed in the torn robe he’d worn since the night his illness began. Once it had been white, but now it was charred ashy and stained dark with blood. She wished he would let her bathe and clothe him. But it was his eyes that bothered her most. Always open, they stared past her into places that Seda couldn’t see, and that she feared no man should look.

  She stifled her worry and brought the spoon to his lips. “Drink, Master. It will make you feel better.”

  A
s soon as the spoon touched his lips, he lapped it up greedily. Seda smiled. A hungry day was a good day. Giving him a few more spoonfuls of broth, she asked, “Would you like softened bread, Master?” She didn’t expect an answer, and didn’t receive one. Tearing off a bit of the bread and dipping it in the bowl, she brought it to his lips. Master accepted it and chewed, his expression absent and blank.

  As she dipped a second piece of bread, his hand snaked out and grabbed her arm, upsetting the bowl of broth. She bit back the curses at herself as she stared into Master’s urgent stare. “Yes, Master?”

  “Seda,” he said, voice gravelly but stronger than before. “You are still here.”

  “Yes, Master. Always.”

  “No.” He shook his head slowly. “Not always, loyal one. Soon, you must go to another.” He closed his eyes, and Seda wondered if he’d fallen asleep.

  Then his eyelids fluttered open again. “He tries to claim me,” he muttered, more to himself than Seda. “He has his claws in me. I don’t know that I can let him go now.”

  The words stuck like barbs in her. Before she could decide on soothing words, Master spoke again. “Do you remember when you came to me, Seda?”

  “Of course, Master.”

  “A girl nearly killed by her father.” Seda was gratified at the fire that burned in his eyes. “You couldn’t stay with him, that much was clear. And I saw in you the unbreakable honor it requires to remain a true servant.”

  “Yes, Master,” she replied, and tried to believe it. But she couldn’t shake the doubt that nothing in her was unbreakable. Nothing was even whole enough to break.

  “And do you know how I knew this?”

  “No, Master.”

  “I knew because no matter what your father did to you, no matter how bruised and bloody he left you, you refused to leave him. No amount of suffering would cause you to leave those you had dedicated yourself to.” His eyes seemed to reach behind her.