Ichu stared in silence, blinking at the display of power. This elder was not what she said, though she seemed to favor Silluka for some reason. She had struck the killing blow against the turtleman. She had connected Silluka to the ampuka for the first time. He had to snatch whatever advantage was here, and quickly.
“You must help us train,” he told the elder, before he could think about it. He would normally never be so forward, but Elder Quilqi was the only key to discovering what risks they would face as the village migrated. “Silluka still doesn’t have a citizen chit. She’s going to be forced to travel with the undesirables when the village leaves, unless you can vouch for her.”
The elder shook her head. “I can bend many rules, but not that one, at least not for now. These elders are resolute in their beliefs. The strong survive in the Huaca.” Her lip twisted at the saying.
“Then train us. Share your secrets. I’ve seen your power against the turtleman. I fought him. I know how powerful he is. Others are coming and someone will need to protect the village as it travels.”
Elder Quilqi looked between them for a long moment, from him, to his sister, to the little Allwiya, who was still wearing the gruesome Huaca skull. He didn’t know what to make of Lugopo yet, but they seemed eager to please, if a touch morbid. He hadn’t spent enough time with Allwiya to know if that was normal, or out of the ordinary.
The elder seemed to come to a decision. She’d been teasing them this far, showing Silluka bits and pieces as he watched his sister’s hope swell. If the elder knew of some way to let her gain strength from the gods like the citizens of the Huaca, he would do anything to make that happen. Perhaps she could even show him how to avoid the slow decline he felt in himself. After all, the elder had used powerful bodycasting, at her age. She had to be past her seventieth year.
“Fine,” The elder finally said. “I was planning to only train the girl, but you’re persistent, and I can tell I won’t get any rest otherwise. Lugopo has his own path to travel.” She stood straight, nearly as tall as him. Silluaka’s eyes were as wide as he thought his were. He hadn’t honestly expected her to give in so easily. “You both know I’m not originally from your Huaca. There are strange traditions here, cut off from the rest of the world. I will show you what I can, but to you two alone! The rest of these little bodycasters have no drive. They only exist. Even your elders study the same chayus again and again. Magma and minerals! They stagnate in their perfection.”
Ichu wanted to ask, to find out what she meant and what was wrong with him, but the words stuck in his throat. There would be time later to confirm his own stagnation with the elder, now she had agreed to teach him. Instead he turned to Lugopo.
“You can measure our power as bodycasters. Are there other aspects of magic you can record? What about the time the ampuka lasts?”
The little Allwiya hopped from pole to pole until they hung in front of Ichu’s nose. “Time! Yes! My machinations are incomplete! Such brilliance from the foremost bodycaster. I have measured only power, but there is a temporal aspect too, until all are cast into the endless void.” They swung away, then came back with a metronome like bodycasters would use to time their moves precisely, but this one had the addition of a flat piece of slate connected to it, with a moving arm. They jiggled the metronome with a tentacle and some hidden mechanism moved the slate slightly as the arm made marks in chalk.
“Will record the time of the ampuka. Yes? Shall we begin?”
“Maybe outside?” Ichu suggested. It was very cramped in the Allwiya’s workshop, with him, the elder, his sister, the sled made from the turtleman’s corpse, and Lugopo. Muola was fortunately somewhere else at the time, as she was at least twice as big as Lugopo.
For the first time since he’d noticed his bodycasting diminishing, Ichu felt a glimmer of hope. Perhaps he would not have to become one of the elders, folded over scrolls he couldn’t read.
* * *
Sometime later, Ichu stood with Silluka and Lugopo, the latter dragging a pack full of strange creations. Elder Quilqi paced in front of them. They were in one of the village’s bodycasting arenas, deserted as everyone else was busy packing up the village. They had few possessions left to pack. Ichu had performed in this area many times, beating rivals, winning competitions, and returning triumphant with a new lover. It seemed so insignificant now, with the threat of the new island so close.
“Stances,” the elder began, her hands on her hips. “These are the root of the chayu. They are all found in the morning ritual. It connects you to the island beneath you. With no stance, you have no connection to the Tiyus, Tiyas, and Tiyes. She dropped her hands and stood relaxed, feet equally apart, around the width of her hips.
“Basic stance. It is the easiest to perform, but lends no special power.” She shifted so her feet turned in, knees pressed out. “Strength stance, to resist attacks.” Now she went back on one foot, the other a little out in front. “Reflex stance. For responding to threats.”
She shifted through each in turn with a description: Speed, Dexterity, Blocking, and Unmovable. “They all change how a chayu is performed, yes?”
Silluka was nodding along, but Ichu cocked his head. “Surely you mean the other way around? The chayu dictates which stance is used for which moves.”
Elder Quilqi looked surprised for a moment, then frowned. “Oh, are we going that far back? What all have you lost out here? Fine then. Forget everything you’ve been taught about how chayus work.” She slashed the air with one wrinkled hand. “While some stances are more suited for certain moves, there is no reason one needs to be used instead of another. You might not replace a Dexterity stance with an Unmovable stance when the purpose of that move is to cover ground, but it can be done, and the ampuka will still connect.”
“You’re saying each chayu could be performed from multiple sets of stances?” Ichu ran through combinations in his mind, his thoughts blossoming with the chayus he knew. “That would lead to…”
“To almost infinite combinations. Yes, boy. Gods and stars! Did you think bodycasting was so rigid?” She shook her head. “Let’s try one. Tortoise Shoulders His Load should be easy enough. Lugopo, ready with your instruments.” She looked to Silluka. “From you, girl, I want to see the ampuka by the end of the day.” Then to Ichu. “For you, well, you’ll need to unlearn a lot of bad habits.”
Ichu felt the ampuka from Tiyu Tiksimuyu flow through him almost immediately. The strength of the earth supported him. He was most familiar with Uncle Earth’s chayus anyway, favoring the solid movements and enhancements to strength and balance. Lugopo scampered to him and began to measure obscure angles and auras once he was done, mumbling to themself.
“Hm. Will need a scale. A baseline. How to quantify? One Tortoise? One Ichu. One Tiksimuyu?”
While Ichu waited for the ampuka and its effect to disperse, he helped Silluka with her form, showing where to open and close her shoulder blades, move her elbows in, and provide a path of energy from the ground to her head.
“But no ampuka,” she complained.
“Keep trying,” Elder Quilqi insisted. “You won’t see anything from a single attempt.” She hadn’t given them any other direction since revealing they could use different stances for the chayus.
“Approximately thirty minutes of benefit from the ampuka,” Lugopo stated. Ichu raised his hand to find the brownish glow had dissipated. So short a time? When he was competing as a bodycaster, he could keep the ampuka from Tortoise Shoulders His Load going for over an hour. He really was losing his edge. That had only been last year.
“You see how the chayus work in this simple case, yes?” Quilqi asked. Ichu nodded. It was simple. Silluka was still trying to make the ampuka work, but the chayu required a few finger motions with both hands. She looked frustrated.
“Now try the same one, but in a different stance,” the elder instructed. She pointed to Ichu. “For you, in Unmovable stance. For your sister, in Reflex stance.”
“Why would that make any difference?” Silluka asked.
“Stormy skies, girl, you want me to teach you or not?”
She hadn’t done much so far, but Ichu swallowed his own objections and turned his feet in, knees pointing almost downward, his shoulders hunched into his chest. Unmovable stance was normally only for very static chayus—ones that didn’t require the user to move around later. He could see how it could still work for Tortoise Shoulders His Load, but Reflex stance? That should be totally incompatible.
He moved through the chayu again, paying careful attention to each move as it was subtly different. Halfway through, he felt the ampuka again, but it was deeper, slower, and more powerful. By the end, he was glowing again, the aura darker, like strong honey.
“Very good! More powerful! Is it two Tortoises? One and a half Ichus? Scale must be more precise.” Lugopo scampered around him, measuring. Ichu didn’t know what such a scale could be used for, but he supposed the Allwiya had a reason.
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He turned, wanting to help Silluka, but every move felt like he was underwater. His feet dug grooves in the earth as he stepped, though he felt no extra effort. What was this power?
“You see, now, boy?” Elder Quilqi’s words seemed almost too fast. “chayus can change as needed. The right tool for the right job.”
Ichu nodded carefully, watching his sister. Silluka performed the chayu, her front foot only touching on the ball as she stepped through the motions.
Her eyes widened as the glow began around her feet. “I feel it!” she said. “Why is this so much easier?”
“Because the chayu is focused on the feet and movement now,” the elder answered her. “Your hand isn’t needed to lift. Instead, you can react with precise timing to evade. Tortoise has many ways of carrying his burden.”
“This way depends less on the placement of my stump,” Silluka summarized. “I see now.”
Then she faltered, and the glow dissipated.
“I had it for a moment!” she said.
“Soon you’ll have no problem with any chayu,” the elder told her. “Keep practicing. That’s one thing your little village has right.”
* * *
Over the next week, Elder Quilqi dragged Ichu and his sister through every chayu he knew, and a few he was vaguely familiar with. They practiced different stances for each one, and Lugopo muttered strange invocations and calculated percentages on a little board they carried with them always. Ichu supposed it would be helpful for something, but when he tried to talk to the Allwiya about it, all he got were arcane strings of words about energy connection, placement, and temporal residue. Lugopo glowed with a strange white and black light as they spoke.
Despite Elder Quilqi’s admonition she would teach only them, they drew the attention of other bodycasters in the village. The first two to arrive were a stocky boy and a tall girl, both about Silluka’s age. They introduced themselves as Waskar, the boy, and Tamaya, the girl. Ichu saw Silluka’s eyes follow the girl as she introduced herself.
“So, Tamaya?” Silluka said. “I’m…I’m sorry about Hufi. I didn’t mean—”
Tamaya shook her head. “The strong survive in the Huaca. He fought the greatest enemy we have faced, and we were able to hold the turtleman off until the elders could call on the gods’ power.”
“Elder Quilqi is teaching you, even though you failed the test?” Waskar seemed more than a little dense. Ichu raised an eyebrow at the boy.
“Her, being the operative word,” the elder grumbled and the stocky boy paled.
“Apologies, elder. But…can we watch? I’ve never been taught directly by an elder before.”
“Never been… What does this village teach?” Elder Quilqi waved a hand. “Fine. Watch. But don’t think you can ask me any question that bounces around your quirra brain.”
“I can show you some of what I’ve learned, but I’m not that good,” Silluka told Tamaya.
“Anything will be helpful to prepare against more invaders.” Tamaya went with Silluka to one side of the arena, where she showed the girl what the elder had taught them. Like Ichu, his sister appreciated all genders for their beauty. He didn’t think she had taken a close friend, and he suspected her embarrassment about her missing arm, no matter how well she tried to hide it, was the main cause of that. Maybe this girl would help her with that. He let the boy, Waskar, watch him, but though he was learning many more applications for his chayu, he still felt them decreasing in strength. Lugopo mumbled and hummed about strengths measured in ‘tortoises’ and ‘Ichus,’ but he could understand little of what it meant. The scale was different from chayu to chayu and Ichu couldn’t get a straight answer from the Allwiya about what he was measuring or how it was changing.
Several older bodycasters came by as well, but only to shake their heads at the obviously wrong methods they were using. Waskar and Tamaya remained the only ones to practice with them. Silluka talked with them after they practiced, even laughing with them. It was good to see her start to emerge from her shell. She’d taken the death of their parents especially hard.
Ichu tried to convince several of the older bodycasters of the power of different stances in chayus, but even with his reputation, few tried. When elder Papaki and Sinchi showed up a few days later, they all left—even the two young ones—cowed into preparing the village to evacuate. Only Elder Quilqi kept him and Silluka from being dragged off as well.
Silluka still hadn’t held on to the ampuka for more than a few minutes, despite the chayus she attempted. Her form was getting better, but she still couldn’t generate even a “Tortoise” of energy—Lugopo’s new term.
At least Ichu finally had a little clarity on what Lugopo had been calculating, their circlet squeaking about what “Whirling abyss” had given them. From the Allwiya’s records, most chayus generated between a fourth and one and a half Tortoises. Something simple like Jakua’s Claws produced about a fourth of a Tortoise, whereas the morning ritual, though it was never completed, Lugopo insisted would generate nearly five Tortoises in power. Changing the stance also modified the number. Tortoise Shoulders His Load in Unmovable stance, for example, generated about one and a third Tortoises. Ichu wasn’t sure what all that meant, save that the chayus did what they meant to. If Lugopo was happy with their scale, so was Ichu.
But Ichu wasn’t happy about his strength. He could feel his ability lessen day by day. Was this what happened to the elders? But Elder Quilqi was stronger than him. What was different about her? It made little sense, as Ichu’s strength was failing, slowly and surely. What had generated a Tortoise and a quarter last week was only getting him a little over a Tortoise and a third this week, at least if Lugopo’s figuring was correct.
The weather continued to get worse. It rained almost all the time now, and Ichu resigned himself to staying damp most of the day. At least it was a warm rain, or even hot. The land to the south was beginning to rise, indicating a volcano brewing. They would need to be on their way before it erupted. Even Tiyu Tiksimuyu couldn’t protect them from all of its effects. The elders had rounds of Huaca organized at all times to make the symbols of the earth, the sky, the sea, and of healing, to keep the gods focused on them.
* * *
They had been training for a week and a half with Elder Quilqi when the island came through the Wall of Storms.
Silluka was in the midst of Quirra Hides His Nuts, one of her favorite chayus, when she stopped, staring. Ichu followed her gaze. The Wall of Storms had parted, green dangling plants poking through. They must have been taller than trees for Ichu to see them from this distance.
“It’s so tall,” Silluka breathed, and Ichu saw she was right. The island cliffs were far above their heads, even above the mountains growing along the coast. The new island would collide with the coast in a few days, at this rate, toppling over their village and crushing it.
“It’s time to go,” he said.
“Past time, I would say.” Elder Quilqi eyed the flitting shapes of the storm warriors, parting around the island. “It’s moving faster than I expected. Enough practice for today. Gather your things and we’ll meet up with the rest of the village. Everyone will have seen what we did.”
“I still haven’t shown the ampuka for an entire chayu,” Silluka said. “The elders won’t let me in with the Huaca.”
“Then I’ll travel with you,” Ichu told her. There was no question. He wouldn’t abandon his sister.
“Time to figure that out later.” The elder shoed them with her hands. “Go, go. Lugopo, gather your tools and help Muola pack the last of the workshop. We need to leave today.” The low urgency in the elder’s voice but Ichu on edge.
By the time Ichu and Silluka got back to the temporary housing near the elder’s hall, the whole village was in an uproar. Most of the village supplies had been arranged on four massive sleds over the last week, each as long as a building, with entire teams of jakuas spitting and swiping at the handlers. They’d emptied out the stables and the handlers were performing Sleeping Beast as a team to calm them down. Ichu could see, after the training from Elder Quilqi, that the chayu might work better in Reflex stance on the sleds rather than the Dexterity stance it was usually performed in. He’d have to mention that to the handlers.
There was a boom like the whole island had fallen in on itself and a form streaked through the air toward them like a fireball from a volcano. But it had come from the Wall of Storms, he was certain of it.
The Wall of Storms itself was dissolving with the arrival of the island. The storm warriors were in a frenzy, and Ichu thought he spotted more turtlemen fighting them.
Huaca scattered as the fireball arced closer, like a leaf lazily drifting, it was so high up. Then it grew faster quickly, too quickly. Ichu stared, rooted in place.
Suddenly, Elder Quilqi was in front of him, arms windmilling as she spun through stance after stance. Ichu saw Reflex to Dexerity, to Strength and then Blocking. She went through other stances Ichu didn’t have a name for, squatting close to the ground and then popping up, arms pressing close, then spinning around her as if she was deflecting an entire flight of arrows fired at her.
The ampuka glowed around her, then grew bigger, enveloping those closest to her and more, until it surrounded the edge of the village closest to the incoming island.
The fireball fell like a meteor and Ichu ducked, certain it would destroy the entire town, but it flashed against Quilqi’s shield, guttering out. Something slid down the glowing surface, and the elder spun to a stop, arms coming in, hands together in Giving Water from the morning ritual. Ichu had never seen it used in a chayu before. The elder went up on her toes, then spread her hands to the side, the shield dissipating.
The village was silent, staring at the display of power. Several of the other elders had open mouths.
Elder Quilqi ran to what had fallen from the wall of storms, and Ichu saw it was a figure, dressed in glowing armor that looked as if it was fashioned from blue jewels.
“A storm warrior!” Silluka said from his side, and Ichu realized his sister must be right. What had happened? He jogged forward to join the elder, who was cradling the head of the warrior, speaking soft words to them.
As they got closer, he saw the warrior had the appearance of a young woman, though surely a god could appear at any age.
Quilqi gently cradled the woman’s head to the ground. A helm of glowing green jade was next to her, scorch marks heavy on it. Her face was partially burned, and her eyes were closed.
“She’s gone,” the elder said. “Her injuries were too severe for me to save her.”
“How can a god die?” Ichu protested. “The storm warriors have protected our coast since before my parents were born, keeping the approaching maelstrom between the islands from destroying us.”
“And as well you should thank them,” the elder shot back. “But the storm warriors are not gods. They are as far below the Tiyus, Tiyas, and Tiyes as you are to the storm warriors. Loma Tika served the storm warriors well for fifteen years. She didn’t deserve this fate.”
“You know storm warriors?” Silluka asked.
“Hills and valleys, girl. I’m old. I know lots of people.”
Ichu stifled a laugh even as he realized the elder had once again not answered a question.
She grunted and pushed to standing. Even though he had seen her spin through an incredible array of moves not moments before. “The storms will take this one in a better burial that we can give her as we flee.”
“What…about her armor?” Ichu suggested. He didn’t want to rob the dead, but the entire village would be traveling into danger.
Elder Quilqi shook her head. “No help there.” She tapped the helm with one foot and it collapsed in on itself. “The armor is sustained by the warrior. It is a part of them, and after death, it dissipates quickly.”
Ichu began to head back to the sleds, but Silluka stared at the fallen storm warrior. “They can make armor with the chayus?”
Ichu pulled up short. He hadn’t thought of it that way. He didn’t know any chayus that created physical objects, but just in the last few minutes, Elder Quilqi had created a barrier, and now, here was the storm warrior’s armor. And he thought he knew a lot about bodycasting.
He would have asked the elder about it, but that was when the turtlemen appeared through the wall of storms.