Almost, I fooled myself into thinking his eyelid twitched at my words. But, despite what Kyros had said, I knew it was nothing more than my imagination. Linos clung to his body, but just barely. He likely wouldn’t wake until I figured out a way to help him.
I sighed and, turning from him, summoned the healers.
Once Linos was secured inside the carriage, we made our way back to the Laurel Palace. I tried to ignore the world outside for a few moments of peace. I held Linos’ hand for the trip and tried not to listen to the shouting and sounds of struggle interspersed by the creaking of the carriage. My mind lost itself in a sea of vague fears and worries.
I woke from my uneasy rest to the squeaking of the palace gates. Sitting up straight, I waited for the carriage to ascend the long way up the hillside. But before we had gone far, the carriage rolled to a halt.
If we hadn’t been inside Wreath grounds, I might have been worried rather than curious. Just as I was about to poke my head out and see what was the matter, a knock came at the door. I opened it to a laurel guard standing stiffly at attention.
“Lady, there’s a man here who says he must deliver a message. He told me to tell you that he bears, ah, ‘a chalice of unrequited intoxication’—”
I pushed past the guard before he’d finished and saw him standing just beyond. His hair was ragged and singed, his clothes torn and stiff with dried blood. It didn’t matter. He was here. He was alive.
Talan flashed me his half-grin as he pulled me gently into his arms.
“Not too gentle,” I told him as I squeezed him harder. “My ribs are healed.”
“They healed?” He chuckled into my hair. “Ah, Airene. You never cease to amaze me.”
I was barely conscious of the guards and driver watching as I held onto him. He reeked of smoke and blood and grime, but I didn’t care. “How did you survive?” I whispered into his chest. “You were so weak. I thought you’d never rise again.”
I felt him nod. “Four Silks bore down on me. I was already drained from fighting my way into the Underguild. Dismissing one Silk is difficult. I’ve never dismissed more. I’d thought I was dead, and, I’ll admit, I’d given up. I’d done what I’d set out to do. I thought to myself that, as long as I saved her life, that might balance out the scales of my life.”
I pulled back and tiled my head back to look into his amber eyes, shimmering with emotion. My eyes burned as well. I opened my mouth to speak, but I couldn’t find the right words.
“But then someone came,” he continued quietly. “Someone rushed into my being and demanded I rise. You didn’t speak with words, but bared the secrets of your life to me. Of a childhood fraught with death and disappointment. Of an unsettled youth searching for something more than an ordinary life could offer. Of the loneliness you never dared show to anyone lest they think you weak.”
My knees felt as if they couldn’t support me. “I showed you all that?” I asked faintly.
“And more. You left nothing of yourself hidden. Every part of your being, Airene, wished me to rise again.” The smile crept onto his lips again. “So I must reveal my little secret in recompense. I never could refuse you.”
Fire filled my body, a very different kind than I’d experienced recently. For the moment, I didn’t care that the world teetered on the balance. All I wanted was for this moment to go on.
I leaned up and kissed him.
Our lips lingered on each other’s. Underneath the sweat and smells of battle, something earthy and wholesome and entirely of him filled my lungs. I didn’t want to stop breathing him in.
He pulled away first, clearing his throat lightly as he glanced behind me. A flush crept up my neck as I followed his glance. The driver was busy pretending not to notice, but all three of the guards were grinning and openly watching.
“I’ll find you later,” he offered. “For a walk,” he added pointedly as the guards began to snicker.
“I’d love that.” My smile was making my cheeks ache.
How I found the strength to turn from him and enter back inside the carriage, I didn’t know. As the driver cracked the reins and the mules began to pull us away, I watched out the window until Talan disappeared around the hill’s bend.
The rest of the day passed in a blur of activity. Arriving with Linos, I tracked down Nikias and settled my brother into a room and secured proper care for him. The steward irritably reminded me there were guards injured from the foray into the Manifest, but I didn’t stop pestering him until he promised he would send a healer by as soon as one was available.
By the time I returned to the room I’d taken as my own, I found a message waiting for me.
Meet me at the Silvencrest. Eighth turn. I’ll be waiting.
I marveled at Talan’s quick sleuthing in discovering my room even as I wondered at the location of our rendezvous. The Silvencrest on the Conclave grounds was where the largest wave on the Oedijan coast crashed into a breakwall on evenings when the three moons were aligned in the sky. By some fortune, it seemed such an event was happening tonight. But that was the least thing that excited me. I smiled to myself, but knew there wasn’t time to indulge in fantasies at the moment.
Quickly going to the dining hall, I found Nomusa and Xaron there. As I ate a hasty meal, I divulged all I could of the afternoon’s events.
“That rogue,” Xaron groaned. “I always thought that whole thing between you two would just blow over. You just kissed him on the cheek, surely?”
“That’s not how I remember it.” I winked at him.
Xaron received his own share of teasing when Isidora came up behind him and wrapped him a hug. Nomusa and I grinned at each other.
But having finished the meal, I was eager to be away. Just before I could escape, Nomusa stood and wrapped me in a hug. “I’m glad you both can find some happiness in the midst of all this,” she said, the smile fading from her expression. “Don’t be your usual self and feel guilty about it.”
“I hadn’t until you said something. But now…”
She snorted and turned me toward the door. “Just go.”
I took her advice and pushed worry from my mind as I headed for the exit. Yes, Avvad marched on Oedija. People starved in the streets. Famine lurked somewhere out of sight, restrained for the moment by Vusu’s fading strength. But, I told myself, I couldn’t always delay my happiness for the world’s problems. Jaxas had charged me with two impossible tasks. One night away wouldn’t harm my prospects.
As my walk went on, passing down the hill of the Laurel Palace to the bridge across to the Conclave, my rationalizations grew thinner. Yet I clung resolutely to them. One night of rest, I begged myself. One night with just Talan and me. Yet I couldn’t dislodge the feeling. Worry had planted a seed in me and taken root. And though I struggled against it, it pressed on my mind, growing and stretching and making my head ache.
As the pain spiked, I suddenly realized this wasn’t just a guilty conscience. Something had started to run rampant through my mind, beyond my control. My head felt heavy and full as a melon. My vision fuzzed. I stumbled forward a few steps, then lost my balance, scraping my hands as I fell to the rough stones of the bridge. Wild thoughts raced through my head. Had I channeled too much quintessence? It felt as if the pain couldn’t possibly grow further. My senses faded before it. Panic rose in my chest, and my breaths came quick and shallow. I thought I would faint.
My mind split open.
Colors and lights flashed around me. I spun around and around, disoriented. Only as my turning slowed did I see that I floated apart from my body in a different Oedija. I tried gathering my wits as I looked wildly around me. The Pyrthae appeared the same desert as it had before, only now, it had gained a new feature. In the center of it, a large, black chasm yawned open, leaking motes of light and shifting iridescent colors. I stared at it with dread and slow understanding. The worry had not left my mind, but swelled by the second. It grew and grew until it became a drive I’d neglected, a desire I’d never
fulfilled, a thirst I’d never slaked. To my horror, I found myself drifting closer to the pit, the hunger that roared inside me directing all of its attention toward it, as if I might be satiated by whatever lay within. A horrible suspicion seized me. I knew what this was.
Then he emerged.
His head came into view first, as large as a dozen palaces stacked on top of one another. His black, pitted eye seemed to see everything and nothing at once. His maw, gaping impossibly wide, showed long, sharp teeth nearly as dark as his eyes. His body came slithering out after, covered in dark, great scales oscillating between purple and red. Two pairs of powerful legs were attached to the lithe, snake-like body, bowed like a lizard’s and ending in wickedly curved claws. His long form stretched nearly the length of the ruined Oedija below as his tail emerged, sparking with lightning and fire.
The dragon’s sinuous body curled and undulated across the sky. From his dance, Famine seemed to enjoy his newfound freedom. I drifted ever closer, unable to help myself. The hunger had wholly seized me. I felt nothing but the desire to lose myself in the daemon god. To be consumed.
Take me! I flung toward the dragon. Come take me! I offer myself to you!
He didn’t even turn his head toward me, but froze. Like a predator suddenly smelling blood, Famine jerked his head to the side and stared east.
I didn’t care what he looked at. Here! I thought desperately, then launched myself at him.
But the Quintyr had his sights set on something greater. His yearning suddenly poured out from him so that I nearly drowned in it. His serpentine body writhed and began to slither through the air with impossible speed. I stared in despair after him as he faded into the distance, finally drifting to a halt. The hunger inside me ached, then suddenly abated.
With it returned reason and horror. Only with the hunger’s release did I understand what I’d witnessed. I would have collapsed had I been in the real world. Vusu had already failed. Famine had returned. And there was no one to save us from him now.
No one, if Vusu was to be believed, but Linos. And me.
I drifted through the desolate, mirrored world, staring after the dragon god. For several long moments, I could do nothing but watch, expecting at any moment for him to rush back and seize me in his jaws. But he was gone. For now, there was no sign of his return.
I drifted back down to myself. Though the bridge was broken in this version of Oedija, I knew my body waited just below. And if the end of the world had come, I couldn’t lie in the middle of the bridge and wait for it. For what little good it would do, I had work to attend to. And no time for happiness.
I descended into my bruised body and, as pain washed over me afresh, rose shakily to my feet. I almost turned toward the Conclave grounds and Talan waiting at the Silvencrest. But I imagined the disappointment on his face when I told him all that could not be. And in this moment, I couldn’t bear it.
Despair sapping my strength, I turned and walked heavily back the way I’d come.
Epilogue
Eazal
Eazal stared at the endless expanse laid out before him.
Perched atop a dune, the desert stretched for miles in every direction. The world had leached of color. Gray dominated the landscape, the strange sand of the Wumofu seeming the ashes from a great fire that had long ago swept over the land. Nothing but twisted trees survived here. Neither men nor spirits walked this place, the sand and air undisturbed by the passage of even the wind.
His were the only footprints on the still dunes as he pushed ever further into the wasteland’s heart.
As if sensing his mood, Azhi spoke to his mind. I am with you. Do not fear. I have walked this path before, long ago. Would you like me to tell you of it?
Eazal bowed his head. Being comforted by a child — was this what he’d come to? “I’m fine, lad. But I would hear that tale still. I should know what’s to come.”
Despite his words, as the boy spirit began to speak and Eazal continued his long walk, he barely listened. The loneliness of the desert pressed in around him, no matter his constant companion. Azhi, the spirit who had first brought Valem’s curse of magic to him, had been with him since his hasty departure from Oedija. When he’d failed the Valemish and was most at risk, the boy had appeared to him through a whisper finch and led him safely from their grasp. And after, when he’d begun wandering as he had in the years before his return to Oedija, Azhi appeared again, this time to give him purpose. Eazal had listened, though he hadn’t believed him. The words the boy had spoken were impossible. Taozu the Corrupted — or Famine, as Oedija knew the God of Hunger — was not only real, but reborn. Even coming from a spirit, it was too far beyond his experience to comprehend. What did he know of gods and the higher and lower realms? He’d failed to retain the religion of his ancestors. How could he now believe the gods not only existed, but one had come again to bring ruin to the world?
But Azhi hadn’t given up. How he’d convinced him in the end, Eazal couldn’t explain. There didn’t seem a beginning to their journey. He’d ignored the boy’s first urgent warnings, dwelling on his own losses. His wife and daughter had slipped fully from his grasp. It had been one thing to be pursued by the Finch girl, Airene, and her companions. It was another to stand against the whole of the Valemish. Despair had made the days of walking meld into one another, numbing him to any sense of purpose.
Yet all the while, Azhi stayed by him. At night, he watched over him while he slept, and had saved Eazal’s life from beasts and highwaymen by waking him with a sharp peck. Eazal had come to trust the boy, and with trust came a listening ear. Slowly, the emptiness of his life filled with the spirit’s unwavering resolve, and he’d taken Azhi’s task as his own.
Only when he’d accepted the call had Azhi given him the visions. He showed him the things he’d seen of Taozu’s past comings: the great rent in the earth south of Avvad’s provinces; the lake that had once been filled with blood in the Bali highlands; the great, wasted empire of the Wumofu Desert. All, Azhi had said, had the Corrupted to thank for their destruction. The same ancient spirit who would inevitably claim the whole of the world. Unless something was done to stop him.
Then he’d told Eazal what he meant to do, and how he needed Eazal to do it.
And so Eazal had traveled northeast to the far reaches of the Four Realms, where the Qao Fu cavern-cities marked the edges of civilization. Then they’d pushed past even that boundary, out into the Wumofu Desert, despite all the warnings they’d received. Only the Yusishu can walk the path, they'd told him, before the last one went and never returned. Eazal had his own misgivings looking at the forbidding desert. But Azhi had told him not to fear. He’d walked this path before and would lead Eazal true. Trusting him as he’d trusted him many times before on their journey, Eazal had packed water and supplies for five days, then walked into the desert with only the spirit to guide him through it.
All was calm and quiet around him as he walked. But Azhi spoke of a different time in his mind. The wind never ceased, he was saying. Only by wearing veils woven by a lost art could one travel the desert. An endless storm, deep at the heart of the old empire, drove those gales howling through the rest of the Wumofu.
Eazal listened as he walked without replying. The spirit’s voice had grown stronger as they continued their journey. When they’d reached the Qao Fu caverns, he had spoken to Eazal directly for the first time rather than through the whisper finch. Why he could suddenly speak into his mind, the boy didn’t have an answer. Yet they had been through much together. To doubt him now would be folly. He had to trust that the spirit would bring him through this task alive, as he had done through the rest of this journey.
This hidden road was called the Ancestor’s Path in those times. The spirits of our dead kin would sing the path to the one who walked it, if they had ears to hear. I kept my mind open to their calls for days as I walked, for to shut out the ancestors would be to lose your way, and to become lost meant certain death.
Azh
i went quiet for a moment. Eazal wished he had found another point in his tale to stop speaking. The reminder of death was the last thing he needed in this forsaken place. He sighed, rolling his aching shoulders. He was far too old to be plodding up dune after dune, taking two steps where one would have served on firmer ground. He wondered what he was even doing here, traveling this desert. Why had he let the boy convince him this was necessary?
Look, the boy said suddenly. Look to the horizon ahead, and tell me what you see.
Eazal obliged, though without interest. As he’d expected, he saw nothing. The air was hazy with heat. Mirages were commonplace; he’d seen enough false watering holes now to know that much. Perhaps even a spirit’s eyes could be fooled.
He began to tell Azhi as much when the words died in his mouth. At the top of his vision, something projected from the blue sky. It was faint with haze, but it didn’t disappear as Eazal blinked. The mirages had always been near the desert floor where the heat’s movement was greatest. Nor was this any watering hole. It looked like a multitude of pale fingers scratching against the sky.
“What is that?” he asked, his dry tongue moving thickly in his mouth.
Our destination. The place where we will recover what was lost long ago. And, by it, we will seal Famine away once more.
It took all day to reach it. Eazal had watched with unceasing awe as what looked like an impossibly large tree emerged from the sky. Its bark was gray, though Azhi claimed it had once been white as fresh-fallen snow.
My ancestors bound Famine in this place. For a thousand years, the one named the Yusishu would walk the Ancestor’s Path to here, the Chains, and sacrifice themselves in order for him to remain bound. The Yusishu were lauded and praised, so much so that it was one every child dreamed of accomplishing themselves. Children cannot comprehend the end of themselves. They only saw the glory in it, the offerings left to them before their journey, and the statues carved of them afterward. They didn’t understand what the sacrifice truly meant.
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