The Gilded Ones

by Namina Forna

  These past few days, she answered all my questions—even told me how she and Mother became allies.

  Being a okai, Mother never had to endure the Ritual of Purity. Any alaki at the Warthu Bera would be found immediately, since okai are injured almost every day due to the sheer brutality of their training. When Mother began bleeding the cursed—no, divine gold during her menses, White Hands quickly sensed it and took her on as an attendant, keeping her away from battle.

  Then Mother became pregnant and her superiors found out before White Hands could hide her properly. They sentenced her to death for tarnishing the honor of the okai. White Hands had no choice but to help her escape. She arranged for a retired soldier—Father—to give her passage, and from then on did not contact Mother any further for fear of endangering her. By that time, the emperor was watching her closely, distrustful of the ideas she was spouting about an alaki regiment.

  Then I turned fifteen, and the threat of the Ritual of Purity loomed. That’s when she and Mother went searching for each other.

  And that’s when White Hands sent those deathshrieks to Irfut.

  The irony of it is laughable. Those deathshrieks did everything they could to rescue me, but I commanded them to leave, thereby dooming myself to that cellar. I was the agent of my own suffering.

  But perhaps it is better I experienced that pain. Being raised in Irfut taught me what it meant to be a human girl—to believe so deeply in the Infinite Wisdoms only to eventually be caged in by its never-ending commandments and finally betrayed by the horrors of the Death Mandate.

  If I am to fight for women—all women—I have to understand how human girls think, have to have experienced the same pain they did.

  I keep that in mind as I nod at White Hands. “I am more than ready,” I say.

  “Then let’s prepare,” she says, gesturing.

  A pair of the elder alaki walk forward, shimmering white armor in their hands. It’s infernal armor, I know, but this is a type I’ve never felt before. If regular infernal armor tingles, this explodes like fireworks. A thousand colors ripple across it, like a rainbow reflecting in a lake.

  “A gift from our mothers,” White Hands explains. “Celestial armor—a worthy addition to your first gift.”

  She points to Ixa, who’s waiting at the side of the cave, covered in the same armor as mine. He has wings now—beautiful blue wings that glisten with feathers and scales, just like the rest of him.

  “The goddesses gave me Ixa?” I gasp, shocked.

  White Hands nods. “Every child needs a pet, and what better pet than one that changes form and can protect you when you’re vulnerable?”

  Ixa is undoubtedly all these things and more.

  I knew you were mine, I whisper to him.

  De…ka, he agrees happily.

  Once I am completely armored, I turn to the water, gazing at my reflection. I barely recognize myself, barely recognize this girl wearing winged armor and carrying shimmering double swords. My eyes peer back at me, a distracting gray in the brown of my face.

  The gray of my father’s eyes as he beheaded me. The thought fills me with anger, regret.

  The man I left in Irfut was never truly my father—none of his blood runs in my veins. Perhaps that’s why he abandoned me so easily to the Death Mandate. Even though he always claimed me as his own, something deep inside him must have whispered I wasn’t his. That I shared none of his flesh, none of his blood. Like the goddesses who created me, I am completely divine—a creature neither deathshriek nor human, with the ability to mimic both. I can be whatever I want to be.

  And I no longer want to be anything like that man.

  Even as I think this, my eyes are changing, darkening. When I look in the water again, they are the same black of White Hands’s eyes—of the elder alaki’s. They are the eyes that truly belong to me, the eyes that have always belonged to me.

  They’re the eyes that show I have matured into my power.

  Smiling now, I put on the war mask that comes with my armor, then turn to White Hands and Katya, who will be accompanying me on a gryph of her own. It rumbles when she pets it with an armored hand.

  “I am ready,” I say.

  White Hands smiles, strokes my cheek fondly. “Remember, you are of the divine. You cannot be killed by mortal means. The only thing humans can hope to do is imprison you, as they did our mothers.”

  “I will.” I nod.

  “Then let us go.”

  * * *

  We fly out of our mountain cavern to the roar of battle. Below us, armies crash into each other, alaki and humans fighting deathshrieks, red and gold blood against a sea of blue. The metallic smell rises into the air, accompanied by the earthier smells of piss and vomit. Battle smells. The smell of death and dying. My stomach clenches. Now that I know what the deathshrieks are, I cannot bear to see my bloodsisters raising their arms against them, unknowingly raising arms against their own kind. I cannot bear to watch them kill each other. My friends’ faces flash before my eyes—Britta, Keita, Belcalis, the twins, the other uruni. If something happens to them during this senseless battle, I don’t know what I would do.

  I try to force back my fear as I stand on Ixa’s back, mimicking White Hands and Katya, who are standing on their gryphs. The armies don’t notice us yet—they’re too busy fighting each other, too busy killing each other. They don’t notice the army of alaki marching toward them, swords at the ready.

  Now I know the reason the deathshrieks kept attacking the villages, the reason their captives were always young and always female, the reason I saw that little girl running away in the jungle during that long-ago raid. Deathshrieks can smell girls on the cusp of turning into alaki, smell the gold running in their veins. All this time, deathshrieks have been rescuing their alaki sisters, training them in the wilds for this very moment—the moment we free our mothers. It’s a thought that fills me with hope, determination.

  I will wake the goddesses.

  Already, I can feel the power welling up inside me. I don’t have to flow into the combat state to summon it, don’t have to sink into the dark ocean of my subconscious. It’s always been there, a wave waiting to rise in my veins.

  “Alaki sisters,” I roar in a voice louder than a thousand drums.

  The fighting immediately stops. Everyone looks up, shading their eyes when they see me hovering above them. I can only imagine the sight I present, an armored figure standing on a similarly armored, winged drakos, two women on gryphs flanking me, the sun at our backs. Even though Katya is a deathshriek now, I see her as female, because that’s what she is.

  Even more impressive are the orderly lines of alaki behind us, each one shining in her infernal armor, each one ready to do battle. These are all the girls the deathshrieks have rescued, the girls who are ready to do battle for their mothers.

  “Do not fight the deathshrieks. They are your sisters,” I shout. “The emperor and the priests have lied to you—they’re forcing you to kill your own kind. When alaki die, they are reborn as deathshrieks. Do not fight them!”

  For a moment, the alaki glance at each other, unsure. I have to give them more reason to believe me than empty words and a glittering spectacle. I have to convince them to obey of their own volition, not force them using my voice, as I was doing before with the deathshrieks.

  I remove my helmet and war mask, hand them over to Katya. Then I fly down until I’m just above the front ranks. I’m close enough now that I’m face to face with the generals, with Belcalis and the rest of the recruits. I try to find Keita, Adwapa, and the others among the ranks, but I don’t see them.

  “Deka,” Belcalis gasps, shocked. She ignores the sputters of the generals, the tense movements of the other soldiers, as she looks up at me. “Deka, is that you?”

  I nod. “I haven’t forgotten, Belcalis,” I say. “I’ll never forge
t what happened to you—to all of us.” I turn to the gathered alaki, using my ability to amplify my voice: “NEVER FORGET HOW THE HUMANS TREATED US! NEVER FORGET WHAT THEY CALLED US!”

  I stab my palm, holding it up when the blood begins to run.

  “Demons!” I shout, pointing at the soldiers now turning around in confusion. “They called us demons, even though we are the daughters of goddesses! The Gilded Ones were never infernal beings. They were the goddesses who founded Otera—goddesses the jatu imprisoned in these very mountains. Today is the day we free ourselves from the jatu’s lies. Alaki, fight with the deathshrieks, your sisters! Free yourselves from the jatu!”

  This time, the truth in my voice cannot be denied. A rustling begins as alaki break ranks, headed toward the deathshrieks. The alaki at my back begin marching down from the mountain, led by the elder alaki from before. There are hundreds and hundreds of them.

  Panicked, the generals shout to their soldiers, “Destroy the alaki! Kill all the traitors! And kill her!”

  They point at me, but I’m already flying back up before the archers can aim. “Deathshrieks, alaki!” I call out. “Do not harm the jatu recruits if you don’t have to. They knew nothing of this.”

  As I soar higher, headed toward the mountains, Katya accompanying me on her gryph, White Hands bows to me. “This is where I leave you,” she says. “I must remain and oversee the battle.” My dismay must show on my face, because she adds, “Don’t worry, there’s a guide waiting for you when you get to the temple.”

  “My thanks, White Hands.” I nod. “For everything.”

  Now more than ever, I understand how cunning White Hands is, how meticulous she’s been in her planning. She used the emperor to free her kind from the Death Mandate by promising him we would slay the deathshrieks, and instead began molding the alaki into an army—an army that fights at our side, now that they understand the truth of their heritage.

  Till our empire is free of the monsters…I understand now what she was talking about, understand who the true monsters are.

  White Hands nods again. “I may have seemed cruel these months past, but I had cause,” she says. “I hope you can forgive me for all the things I failed to do, all the truths I didn’t tell you, the pain you suffered because of my silence.”

  I nod. “I know now that you did all those things so I would learn,” I reply, accepting her apology.

  She smiles, then turns back to the battle, blows a curved ivory horn. A distant thundering sounds in response. When I turn, it’s to the sight of hordes of equus pouring from the dunes behind the human army, their talons moving with effortless precision. Yet more equus emerge on both flanks of the human army and smash into them, a timeless battle strategy.

  “Conquer or die!” White Hands waves to me.

  “We who are dead salute you!” I reply, pounding my hand over my heart.

  White Hands nods, smiling. Then she dives from her gryph, toppling a human general from his mammut as she falls. She rips his throat open with her claws before they land, then whirls through the front lines, dancing an effortless ballet of death as blood rains over her.

  I turn from the sight, my eyes fixed on the mountain peak above me. I have my own task to attend to. I can do this, I whisper firmly to myself. I will do this.

  * * *

  It’s cold and cloudy when Katya and I reach the peaks of the N’Oyo Mountains. Thankfully, I don’t feel the brunt of the chill. My celestial armor and war mask keep me warm and dissolve the ice crystals that form on my face.

  “Are you ready, Deka?” Katya asks as we continue. She seems nervous, biting her lips the same way she did when she was an alaki.

  “As I’ll ever be,” I say, staring at the glittering white peaks. Then I turn to her. “How does it feel? To be a deathshriek, I mean.” Now that I have the time to think, I’m curious—or perhaps I’m just trying to keep my mind from dwelling on the urgency of my task.

  Katya shrugs. “Not as strange as it did at first.” When I frown, confused, she explains: “One moment, those claws were slicing through my back, and the next, I’m waking up in this body. It happened like that.” She snaps her fingers. “There are these…eggs, you see. They’re all at the bottom of these ponds….”

  I gasp, eyes widening, as I remember the pond Ixa came out of, the golden boulders at the bottom of it. It’s probably one of the places deathshrieks are born. Ixa must have been put there to protect the eggs as they matured.

  I return my attention to Katya as she continues: “When an alaki dies, a new egg forms, and you wake up a full-grown deathshriek.”

  “What happens to your old body?” I’ve seen alaki corpses rotting on the battlefield, all of them that awful blue color from the final death. They just remain there, like every other corpse, but perhaps something happens later.

  Katya shrugs. “It rots, I suppose. But the new one…it just sort of bursts out of that egg and then you’re swimming up, and all these bloodsisters are gathered around calming you, telling you you’re all right—only they’re all deathshrieks, and now you’re a deathshriek. Even worse, everyone’s always so frightened of you.”

  Her eyes slide away from mine. “That’s the worst thing, you know: human fear.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  “Because it makes us kill them,” she whispers miserably. “The moment the humans sense us nearby, they begin to be afraid. It’s like they can feel us, and the fear overwhelms them. Then the smell of it overwhelms us, and that’s what starts the mist and the shrieking.”

  Now I understand.

  The Gilded Ones made deathshrieks natural predators. That’s why they’re bigger and more terrifying, why they have the instinct to destroy their natural enemies. They were literally made to withstand humans.

  Just as I was.

  I understand now why I see so much more clearly in the dark than others do, why I don’t need food or water to survive and my tolerance for pain is so much higher than the usual alaki’s. The Gilded Ones gave me all the abilities I would need to survive in a world primed to kill me.

  “I’m glad, though,” Katya adds abruptly.

  “Why?”

  She shrugs. “Because I’m not dead yet.”

  “But what happens if you die again? As a deathshriek, I mean.”

  I’ve killed enough deathshrieks to know that their bodies don’t disappear into the ether. They remain solidly on the ground, rotting…that is, until someone takes a trophy. Guilt churns through me as a reminder.

  “The elders say there’s the Afterlands, just like for everyone else.” Katya shrugs. “Although I probably wouldn’t mind it…the Afterlands, that is…”

  “Why?”

  She turns to me and smiles a brave, sad smile. “Because then I don’t have to fight anymore.” She looks down at her claws. “I told you before—all I ever wanted to do was to marry Rian. To have my children, a home…”

  Poor Katya.

  After all this time spent fighting, I’d almost forgotten about the girls like her—the ones who only ever wanted a family and a home. They always died fastest at the Warthu Bera, killed first on the raids either in accidents or in combat practice.

  “I’ll never have that now,” she says, “but in the Afterlands, I’ll have peace. Everyone deserves peace, don’t you think?”

  I nod. “Everyone deserves peace. Hopefully, once this is done, we’ll get it.”

  “I hope so too,” Katya says with a smile.

  Underneath us, the clouds are clearing and the Temple of the Gilded Ones is coming into view. It sits in the middle of a crater in the N’Oyo Mountains’ highest peak, at least four times larger than any other I’ve ever seen, the steps leading up to it at least a mile. A lake of pure white salt surrounds it, and the sun glints so harshly off the grains, I have to shade my eyes against the glare.

  To my
bewilderment, a group of zerizards, at least fifty of them, perch on the temple’s steps. Dread stirs inside me the moment I glimpse the red saddles. Now I know why I didn’t see the emperor or his guards on the battlefield. It’s because he’s been up here all this time, waiting for me.

  “The emperor—he’s already here!” I say, hurrying off Ixa.

  “No matter, so are we,” a familiar voice replies from behind me.

  I whirl, startled to find Adwapa standing at the shadowy entrance to the temple, a smirk on her face.

  She tsks. “You never did have much awareness of your surroundings, Deka. You should work on that in the future, if we survive this.”

  “Adwapa?” I gasp, running over and embracing her. “What are you doing here?”

  She squeezes me tightly, then sets me down. “Waiting for you,” she says. “We were sent here to serve as your guards.”

  Now I see the other alaki and deathshrieks standing behind her. There’s an entire contingent of them, and Asha is here too. She gives me a quick wave and smile.

  I return the gesture, then hurry toward the entrance behind Adwapa. “But how?” I ask, shocked. “Why?”

  She turns to me with a shrug. “The Nibari have always worshipped the Gilded Ones. Even after the Death Mandate, we held fast to our beliefs. My sister and I have been waiting for this moment all our lives.”

  When Asha nods solemnly, I finally realize: they deliberately got themselves sent to the Warthu Bera. They didn’t have to reveal themselves as alaki. Priests don’t live with the Nibari, finding them too heathenish. They only travel to the desert only twice yearly, to perform the Ritual of Purity. The twins could have hidden themselves their entire lives if they’d wanted to, but they didn’t want to.

  That’s why they always seemed so at ease during training, running faster and fighting better than all the rest of us, why they always seemed a little older, a little wiser, even when they acted immature.

  “Adwapa?” I rasp. “Are you one of the Firstborn?”