She thought her eyes deceiving her, for she noted, too, the spirit of Aydrian beside the xoconai man, similarly posed.
The young witch promised to revisit that curiosity but knew it would have to wait. She now fell even more fully into her corporeal form and into the song of the witches all about her, joining them with her voice once more.
She felt the coldness permeating the lea. She knew that chill keenly from her time in the chasm, before the fall of the fossa, from the presence of her Aunt Seonagh and the other dead Usgar caught in the curse of the demon fossa.
She felt them, then, hordes of the spirits of the dead, rising from the grass of the sacred lea, from all about, from the God Crystal, too. Rising and flying away, free.
It went on for a long while.
Finally, the cold breeze fell away, replaced by the naturally chill autumn breeze of a Fireach Speuer morning.
Aoleyn staggered back from the God Crystal and called for an end to the song of the Coven. She dropped the sunstone, trembling, for it had unnerved her to her core. One hand went reflexively to her belly ring, the other settling on the wedstone on her hip.
She felt nothing.
She heard nothing.
“The crystal is dead,” Mairen whispered in horror.
Aoleyn looked to Mairen, alarmed. The young witch began to speak, to agree that they had killed magic, and the looks on the faces of the other witches showed her that they felt it, too.
Had they forever killed the crystal that had given life to the Usgar tribe for generations unknown? The possibility brought a profound sadness and sense of loss to Aoleyn, which was surprising, given that she had walked away from the cursed tribe.
Still … Her hand fell to her belly ring. These gemstones had saved her, had given her power when she was helpless, had facilitated the course that had brought them all to this place. She wondered who she’d be without the companionship of the magical songs, what strength she’d find.
She nodded. She knew who she was, firm in her beliefs. The magic had helped Aoleyn to get there, but there she would remain, even without the magic. And so she was content.
But then she heard it.
Her hand on her belly ring, she heard the song of magic, distantly at first, but growing closer.
She felt the power of magic returning, like a growing line of torches flaring up to battle the darkness. She felt the song of her jewelry once more and lifted her arm and transformed it, through the power of her tattoo, into the paw of a leopard, just because she could.
Mairen giggled like a young girl. “It is still here,” she said. “Sisters, it is still here!”
Aoleyn put her hand back on the God Crystal. It didn’t teem with energy as it had with the spirits trapped below, but she could sense the song below in the caverns still, the great crystals and their magic.
“It is as it was,” Mairen insisted. “Before the coming of the sidhe.”
“Xoconai,” Aoleyn corrected, turning to Tuolonatl as she spoke. “They are the xoconai.”
Tuolonatl nodded. “Your magic remains?”
“Enough to defend this place from your armies,” Mairen promised. “Bring your fifty thousand. Watch them die.”
“There will be no need,” said Tuolonatl. “Unless you choose to strike down upon us from on high.” She nodded to the giant crystal.
Aoleyn shook her head. “That power, that cursed power brought by Scathmizzane the deceiver, is no more,” she promised.
“And the truce?” Mairen demanded.
“Remains,” Tuolonatl stated flatly. “I will stand down the mundunugu and the macana. Tzatzini, which you call Fireach Speuer, is for the Usgar, for the humans. I hope you will welcome those of my people who would learn of you as fully as we will welcome any humans who wish to remain in Otontotomi, or to come there. Let us here on this first battleground serve as a beacon to the lands in turmoil.”
Brother Thaddius snorted—inadvertently, it seemed—drawing the attention of the others.
“War is general across Honce,” he reminded. “You are so quick to call a truce,” he said to Tuolonatl. “Why, then, were you so quick to lead an army to war in the first place?”
“They were led by a god,” Aoleyn said.
“I would not have done so if I did not believe it in the interest of a better way,” Tuolonatl answered.
“A better way for the xoconai, you mean,” said Thaddius.
Tuolonatl conceded the point with a nod. “But not only—even the humans, perhaps.”
Thaddius snorted.
“By our legends, the humans are the children of Cizinfozza, the god of darkness and death,” the xoconai man intervened. “Perhaps goblins, or perhaps prisoners.”
“As the xoconai were prisoners of Scathmizzane,” Aoleyn interrupted.
Tuolonatl and Ataquixt looked to each other and shared a resigned nod.
“We were enemies because our gods were enemies, so believed the xoconai,” Ataquixt went on. “Tuolonatl is the greatest warrior of Tonoloya. I follow her—nay, I love her—because she was ever called to settle the wars within Tonoloya and ever did so, while spilling as little blood as possible. She was kind to the human prisoners of the towns we first conquered. She demanded mercy from her warriors.”
He smiled and walked toward the humans. “You should see the cities of Tonoloya in the far west,” he said. “They are things of beauty, and ours is most often a way of peace. Is it so hard for you to consider that Tuolonatl, good Tuolonatl, honestly believed that the lands conquered by the xoconai would thrive for all, even the humans? Or that the humans, under the dark domination of Cizinfozza, would find a better way in the light of Glorious Gold?”
“The lie of your god, you mean,” Mairen said sharply.
“Indeed,” said Ataquixt, glancing through the opening of the pine ring. “And that is my spear in the eye of Kithkukulikhan.”
“Did you?” Aoleyn asked. “Did Ataquixt believe in the goodly light of Glorious Gold?”
The xoconai man chuckled and looked back at his companion. “I believed in Tuolonatl, always and from the beginning,” he answered. “I am no friend to war. I have survived a dozen battles in the march to the east, and defeated scores of humans, but not one of them did I intentionally kill.”
That seemed to surprise his xoconai companion, whose jaw dropped open a bit. She stared at Ataquixt curiously, as if looking for something she had not before known.
Tuolonatl came forward, never blinking, her gaze never leaving the man. She moved beside him and took his hand in her own, then turned to Aoleyn. “Perhaps it will change,” she said. “All of it, for the better of human and xoconai alike.”
“Promise that it will change!” Aoleyn demanded.
“I will do what I may, but I am only one voice.”
“One important voice,” Ataquixt insisted. “Perhaps the most important singular voice among the xoconai. There will be strife between the city sovereigns and the augurs, between the political leaders and the religious voices. Who knows how it will play?”
“My voice will be many times more important because of what you have done here now,” Tuolonatl said.
“What do you mean?” asked Aoleyn and Thaddius at the same time.
“The world, all of Tonoloya, faces an uncertain future—certainly hundreds of battles and strife, revolt, and oppression. What we—what you!—did here gives to me hope. I would not have expected your choice to forsake the power of the captured crystal, not from what I once believed of humans.”
She turned to the man beside her. “But Ataquixt told me. He predicted much of this on our journey back from the east. I am glad that I listened. The truce here in this place, mountain and city, is real. As long as I draw breath, it holds. The humans in Otontotomi are free to come here or to remain, as they choose. They are not slaves, nor even prisoners. If they remain, they will have voice in Otontotomi.”
“What does that even mean?” Mairen asked.
“Our city sovereign
s are chosen by the people of the city,” Ataquixt explained.
“The humans who stay in Otontotomi will have say in that choice?” asked Aoleyn.
“One person, one voice,” Ataquixt said.
“This is my promise,” Tuolonatl added. “This is my word.”
Aoleyn turned to Mairen, the two silently sharing agreement. She turned to Thaddius and found he was staring at the surprising xoconai pair, his eyes full of wonderment, his posture revealing his hopes—but also his pervasive doubts.
Aoleyn turned to Connebragh and her two uamhas companions.
“You would have us ignore our hatred,” Asba said to that look. “You would have us abandon our just revenge?”
Tamilee put a comforting hand on Asba’s shoulder. “What would Asef want?” she whispered.
Neither of them seemed mollified or even convinced, Aoleyn realized, and she knew in her heart that, for all the pretty words spoken here, for all the apparent victory in destroying Scathmizzane and freeing the trapped souls, the attitude of vengeance and mistrust would be the norm, not the exception.
I leave because I am done, and now my students continue my work.
For all the world west, and particularly east, the road ahead remained dark and uncertain and surely would be colored red with spilled blood. Human blood, xoconai blood.
Would the priests come forth from St.-Mere-Abelle and rain death upon the xoconai with their powerful magic?
Would the xoconai fly about their pyramid portals to find the vulnerable humans and perpetuate the slaughter?
Would any of them here even survive, or would the xoconai down below, outraged at the fall of their god and the destruction of their holy temple, murder Tuolonatl and Ataquixt and scale the side of Fireach Speuer to take revenge on the god-killers?
Aoleyn felt as if she were standing on a narrow ledge high in the air, the wind growing all about her, ready to sweep her away to certain doom. What choice truly lay before her? War or peace? But no, those were not the options—would that they were!
War or a desperate attempt to begin a spark of peace, those were the options. A tiny spark in a continent dark with rage and vengeance and generational hatred.
It all seemed so utterly hopeless. She felt as if she were hugging a single warrior on the end of a charging army while the swarm of her minions charged across the battlefield to engage the other vast army. But still, for her own sake at least, Aoleyn understood that her next step, her every step, would be critical. She looked to Mairen for confirmation, for some clue.
“This is my promise,” Tuolonatl said again. “This is my word.”
Aoleyn sucked in her breath. If she didn’t try to be that tiny spark, then who would?
“This is my promise,” she replied. “This is my word.”
EPILOGUE
“Stay with us,” Mairen bade Aoleyn.
Another group of uamhas arrived on the plateau, the numbers swelling as more and more climbed from Otontotomi to be among the reconstituted tribe, which now was larger than it had been in the days before the coming of the xoconai, before the fall of the fossa.
Aoleyn didn’t hesitate to shake her head. She had promised to remain for a bit, only to ensure the transition. If it turned out that Tuolonatl was lying or didn’t prove strong enough to carry through with her promises, Aoleyn would fight with her Usgar sisters.
Such had not been the case. Down below, the xoconai city had remained quiet and orderly, and there were no more than a scattered few stories of repercussions or retribution against any humans for the destruction of Scathmizzane, Kithkukulikhan, and the temple.
It was quiet—here at least. But when Aoleyn looked out to the distant east, she recognized that she looked toward lands much less in transition in any positive way.
“My life is out there,” she answered Mairen. “I would not have remained here on the mountain or about Loch Beag even before the coming of the xoconai. Even then, I had determined my road to be east, beyond the Desert of Black Stones.”
“With that uamhas,” Mairen said, her tone one of disapproval.
“Bahdlahn, yes,” Aoleyn admitted. “He is a good man. You should consider that truth carefully now, if you hold any hope of remaining in a position of power here. Your new tribe is uamhas, Mairen, save a dozen Usgar women.”
“That is why I need you to stay!”
“To hold them down and ensure Usgar supremacy?” Aoleyn asked with a chuckle.
Mairen fell back a step and stared at Aoleyn as if the woman had just slapped her.
“Open your mind and your heart,” Aoleyn told her. “These are not your uamhas, and not your lessers. No good will come of you thinking that way, and less good still for you and the Coven if the lake folk come to understand that this is the truth in your heart. They have not forgotten the Usgar, Mairen, and our raids on their villages for centuries uncounted. It is they, not you, who are being most beneficent and forgiving.
“Perhaps it is only because of the few choices before them, and that this is better to them than living among those who inflicted the most grievous and recent wounds upon them. But hear me now, Mairen—and I say this as one who has no stake in the outcome—if you give the uamhas coming here to resettle reason to remember the injustice done to them by the Usgar, then they will find a new course and choice. They will be rid of you and your Coven sisters.”
“And still you would leave us?”
“You, too, were victim, Mairen,” Aoleyn said. “Victim of Usgar, of the demon Cizinfozza, and of the tribe grown under the demon’s command. Know that. Let the uamhas know that, and perhaps you will survive. Perhaps you will even find that you enjoy the new company.”
“They are so ugly,” Mairen said, motioning her chin out to the side, to a woman who had two long humps on her head.
Aoleyn chuckled again. “I wonder who will lead the dances about the God Crystal, should I return here in five years,” she quipped. “If it is Mairen, then I will know that she has grown. When the migration is finished, the lake folk will outnumber you and your sisters fifty to one. And if you ever desire to lie in the arms of a man again, know that it will be no Usgar. It will be an uamhas, unless you find a desire for the xoconai.”
Mairen didn’t appear very happy with any of that lecture. She sighed and turned away, and Aoleyn, who had been well reminded, these last few days, of why she had decided to leave Fireach Speuer in the first place, was more than happy to let her go.
“Mairen,” Aoleyn called after her, halting her. “Do not convince yourself that I care more than I do, for you or for the remnants of Usgar,” Aoleyn told her.
The Usgar-righinn held her pose for a long while, staring back at Aoleyn with what seemed like a mixture of anger and bewilderment.
Good, Aoleyn thought, for she understood that if Mairen and the others were to have any chance of surviving here, they needed to put their ridiculous pride and superiority aside and recognize their vulnerability.
Mairen turned away again, finally, and walked off, and Aoleyn put her out of mind. She spotted a man to side of the plateau, near the steps between the caves once used for slaves, who was neither Usgar nor lakeman nor xoconai, and she went to him eagerly.
“Aoleyn,” Brother Thaddius greeted, when he noted her approach. “I had feared that you had already gone down to the city. I was told you were up there.” He motioned up the stairs that led to Craos’a’diad.
“I already said my farewells to Aydrian,” she replied, for the small clearing about the chasm was where Ataquixt, Aoleyn, and Thaddius had buried the ranger who had once been king.
“You are leaving, then?” Thaddius asked.
“This day,” the woman answered. “Tuolonatl and Ataquixt will accompany me to the east. Will you accompany us?”
Thaddius smiled but shook his head. “I have spoken with Tuolonatl and the augurs, and they have agreed to let me stay in Otontotomi for now, to learn about xoconai history and their ways. Perhaps in the future I will return to Hon
ce-the-Bear as an emissary of the xoconai. Perhaps I will do some good.”
Aoleyn was disappointed on a personal level, for she had come to quite like this monk, but she couldn’t argue with his choice. What did he have back there to rival the adventure awaiting him here?
“The vaults of Saint-Mere-Abelle should hold more truth about the xoconai, in any case,” the monk added, a hint of sadness in his voice.
“You loved her,” Aoleyn said, recognizing those echoes of wistful pain.
“She was my best friend in the world,” Thaddius admitted. “And yes, sometimes my lover and always my love. Elysant was a beautiful heart in a world too filled with darkness, and it is my trial to forgive the xoconai for her death. I am only able to pass this trial because I know that my failure would disappoint Elysant.”
“She would wish for a better way,” Aoleyn agreed.
She gave Thaddius a hug, then, and kissed him on the cheek. “I hope I see you again,” she whispered in his ear.
“Well, travel is now easier, if the xoconai allow, so who can know,” he answered.
Aoleyn agreed with the point but still felt, somehow, that she would never return to this place and would never again enjoy the company of Brother Thaddius.
She pulled away, wiped a tear from her eye, then giggled a bit with embarrassment. She looked around, saying a silent good-bye to this place that had been her home for so long. The last time—the first time—Aoleyn had left the mountain, she had been fleeing for her life, but even then she had imagined that she would come back to this place someday.
Now, she thought not. There was nothing left here for her. She was glad that the human survivors of the xoconai war would band together into a single tribe on the Ayamharas, but her words to Mairen held truth: this region wasn’t her concern or her business. She thought the uncovered and restored city of Otontotomi beautiful and interesting, but not enough to take her thousands of miles from that wider world she had found in the east.
She moved across the plateau to the point where the fall from it was highest, and there she called upon the malachite in her belly ring and let herself fall away. Then she called upon the moonstone and went half falling, half flying down the mountainside.
Song of the Risen God Page 44
