“The crazed Allwiya?” Silluka paused, offering Lugopo an arm to swing off Elder Quilqi’s shoulder. “Do you know who they are?”

Lugopo’s lidless eyes and lack of face somehow still looked abashed. “We do not share the stories of their conquests. Such terrors of Whirling Abyss, ever reaching for new heights of creation! They do not worship all three gods, only one, and they are not balanced like me!”

Silluka carefully kept her mouth shut, but Lugopo must have sensed something in her demeanor. They tapped the circlet.

“I do not lie! They craft with no head for what will happen. Only what they need at that moment. They are very dangerous!”

“I do not think she doubts your words,” Cosquella added. “We had one Allwiya who went to join the crazed ones, they did, just after I was born. Father told the tale—” She stopped and swallowed, and Silluka rested her hand on her shoulder. Riding on her arm, Lugopo reached out with a tentacle and copied the movement. They had left her father in the healing center just before the volcano and the turtlemen’s attack. There had not even been time to check on him since.

Cosquella gave a wan smile. “My father told the tale. Wallwa started acting strange—well, stranger, I say—one day, then started building. They didn’t stop to rest, their tentacles forming sores and cracks from overuse and lack of water. He came out one day, my father did, and the door to the yard was blocked by a giant contraption that rumbled and quaked the moment he stepped outside. He said he felt it staring at him. It nearly took his leg off. He still has a scar on his thigh, he does.”

She shrugged. “But that’s about the end of it. Father always makes a big deal of his story, but the other Allwiya performed a ceremony, or some like, and Wallwa fled. We never saw them again.”

“They likely joined the others who live between here and the capitol,” Akamu put in. Ichu stood close to him. Silluka hoped the storm warrior wouldn’t break his heart. He was always more centered when he had someone to take care of. Kuillay had been a mistake from the start, and Ichu had just about gone through the pool of available suitors in the village.

“The crazed Allwiya are completely unpredictable,” Akamu continued. “I have seen them ignore parties, ask for a surprisingly reasonable toll, offer to join the travelers or make something for them, or indiscriminately attack them, slaughtering without mercy.”

“The drives of Whirling Abyss are unknowable. Unrestricted by Crawling Dark of Squirming and Manylegs of Reaching, such ideas become boundless!” Lugopo reached up with five arms, as if trying to bring the sky to them. Then they brought their tentacles in, clutching themself. “But dangerous. Such conquest may harm the self or friends.”

“Yet you will leave our village unprotected while traveling through these lands?” Ichu asked Akamu. “May we not have even one of your number to protect us?”

Akamu pointed to Elder Quilqi. “The ancient one can protect you more thoroughly than any of my stone warriors could. Besides, would you rather have one potential head-on fight, or have us travel with you, and be on the watch for Allwiya in front and Eztli Macatl sneaking up behind?”

Ichu stepped away. “Then we will have to make the most of the days you are with us.”

Silluka wasn’t certain if Ichu was speaking of the stone warriors as a whole, or of Akamu. Perhaps a little of both.

“Come with me now. I’ll introduce you to the others,” Akamu said. “Kiqema has already expressed an interest in meeting you.” He took her brother away, and Silluka turned back to Cosquella.

“We should prepare too. Don’t worry about what happened today. I’m sure you’ll get it next time.” She glanced over to Elder Quilqi, who had a pensive look on her old face. “Let’s go to your father. He’ll want to know you’re fine after the attack.” Lugopo scampered off to the rest of their kind, muttering about stresses in the sleds.

“Thank you. You’re good to an ungainly girl like me, you are. You could be spending time with your other friends.”

Silluka gripped Cosquella’s rough hand in hers, gesturing with her stump. “‘Friends’ is a stretch. I know a bit about being different than others. Oh sure, Tamaya is a pretty one, but I’m starting to realize she has the personality of a drowned quirra.”

Cosquella laughed her deep loud laugh, and it made something in Silluka’s stomach turn to hot jelly.

“And the less said of Waskar, the better.”

Cosquella shook her head. “He’s not so bad. He should spend more time thinking before he speaks, he should, but not a bad sort. I do worry for my father though.”

But when they got to the healing center, Cosquella’s father was still unconscious, breathing weakly, gulping for air. Both he and his nephew were wearing the filters Lugopo had created, and Silluka hated to think what their condition would be without the aid.

Elder Sinchi was on duty, as healing chayus were some of the only ones they practiced on a regular basis. She looked tired and shaken, though she moved smoothly through Tree Sap Flows, beginning anew every time she finished a repetition. Her eyes asked Silluka for some update.

“The fighting is over, Elder” she said. “The turtlemen are defeated, and stone warriors came to help us. We should be moving soon, but my friend wanted to check on the patients.”

Cosquella knelt next between the mats holding her father and her cousin, her head bent forward. She grasped each of their still hands in one of hers. Silluka studied her hair, at her chest height even though Cosquella was kneeling. It was like a wave of ebony, slicked back from her brow. Could she cut it? Did it grow? But even though they’d traded stories about their arm and skin, Silluka still found it odd to ask.

“Has there been any change in them?” Cosquella asked Elder Sinchi, who paused at the end of a repetition of Tree Sap Flows.

“None, I’m sorry to say. If we are preparing to travel again, it will be rougher for them, once the sleds are moving.”

“The strong survive in the Huaca,” Cosquella said, and Silluka cocked her head. They had that same saying at her farm? It seemed it was a popular refrain on the coast.

She knelt down next to Cosquella, propping her stump on a mat and putting her hand on Cosquella’s back. “Others survive too. We’ll visit them every day. Maybe when we get to Chimor, the people there will be able to heal them.”

She met the healer’s eyes, begging her not to contradict her words. They all knew the two would likely not make it that long.

* * *

Silluka and Cosquella pitched in with the villagers, the two others from Cosquella’s farm, the Allwiya, and the stone warriors. There was much to be done. The volcano quieted over the next day, though it still pumped oozing magma from several vents. The Allwiya made filters for everyone to protect from the dust in the air, and the stone warriors took on the brunt of cleaning up the ash and cooling volcanic stone, as ones who could walk barefoot on lava.

For the rest of the second day, the magma surrounding the first sled and the banks of the river cooled into a thin crust, though the ground was hot to the touch. The river itself was gone—completely evaporated by the heat of the volcano. They had planned to sled across the sands of the desert, pulled by jakua, just not this soon. They couldn’t start yet either. The jakua completely refused to step on the magma, even shaking off the effects of Running Beast.

Stolen novel; please report.

Silluka stayed near Cosquella, close to where Tamaya and Waskar helped out. Tamaya would sometimes offer an insight about how well she thought the sleds would run over earth and sand. It turned out her mother had worked with the Allwiya in building the sleds. Waskar parents were both jakua trainers, which was why he’d been targeted to help them in the first place.

Silluka chatted quietly with Cosquella about life as they worked. Neither of them told too much of their past. Silluka could sense the missing parts in Cosquella’s story as much as she knew the other girl could sense hers. There were some things that were still too raw, such as her parents’ death, and Cosquella and her family fleeing her farm. She did gather they had been running for more than a week, from far up the coast.

“I wonder where the Eztli Mecatl who taught me ended up, I do. Are they in Chimor?”

The question came from nowhere, as Silluka worked with Cosquella and others to shift supplies to the back of the first sled, reducing weight on the front. Tamaya pointed out to the team where to dig it out from the silt pushed over the front of the sled by the river. It would need to be clean and polished to prepare it to sled across sand. Having a light front end would help.

“The stone warriors seem to know about them, so I suspect at least a few made it, if they weren’t killed by crazed Allwiya.” Silluka braced her whole arm with her stump, helping to lift a bag of maize. She’d found even just barely touching her arms made lifting heavy objects easier, as if her stump was a support for her full arm. She could tuck a lighter object under her stump, pressed to her body, but couldn’t carry nearly as much as Cosquella. Despite having two hands, she was taller than Ichu and built like a boulder. She lifted sacks and furniture that were heavier than Silluka. She pushed away the thought of being cradled in those arms. Maybe when they weren’t in danger from all sides.

“I wonder if old Oaxoch made it to the city,” Cosquella mused. “She was the oldest of them, she was, but strong as stone. If any survived, she might have, the old rock.”

Silluka stood as one of the stone warriors—the woman Akamu had called Kiqema—gestured with one hand and a circle of cooled lava in front of the lead sled crumbled away. Soon a puddle of water bubbled up, steaming and hissing.

“She did that with no chayu.” Silluka set down the sack she was carrying to watch. The woman made the same gesture three more times, then traded off with another of the stone warriors, though the way wasn’t cleared yet. They had done that all afternoon—going here and there and removing the forming stone in some way. “They must be using stored chayu. But why do they stop? Did they not do the chayu enough? Did they run out of energy?” She needed to practice more, to find out how the chayus really worked. That wasn’t something she expected to want.

“You ask a lot of questions.” Cosquella lifted three bags of nuts weighing more than Silluka in one hand. “Right now we should be clearing the sled to move quicker, I think.”

“You sound like Ichu,” Silluka complained, until she saw the fear in Cosquella’s dark eyes. Fear for her father and her cousin. “But you’re right. We can learn later.”

Still, she watched the stone warriors as she worked.

* * *

On the third day, the stone warriors pronounced they were ready to move again. They had performed amazing feats, cooling the lava around the immediate portion of the river, crumbling the new rock to dust, and getting the sleds unstuck. Surprisingly, water had bubbled up from under the lava, creating a shallow waterway. Not enough for the sleds to ride on, but at least enough to let them move to dry ground.

The stone warriors also helped them build ramps to transition from the level of the river to the desert banks around it. The whole village, Huaca and undesirables—Silluka wondered if that term would apply when they got to Chimor—pitched in to tow the sleds up the ramp one by one. While the stone warriors had cleared the path in front, everyone else had been moving supplies and digging out the ash and rock pinning the sleds in on the sides.

The lava rock spread across the landscape was cooled enough now that the jakua agreed to walk on it, though they stepped gingerly, as if it would leap up and bite them, ears slanted back as if offended to stoop to such a level.

By the end of that day, all four sleds, plus the undesirables’ cobbled-together barge, plus the Allwiya’s smoking contraption, towing the turtleman-sled, moved slowly across the new rock, crossing under the looming anger of the still-smoldering volcano. Rather than in front of them, it was now to their right, almost parallel. What had been desert sand here was gone, flattened and buried under the lava. Now though, with the merging islands, this area would have bushes and small trees in months, fed by the nutrient-rich volcanic rock and the water, especially if they grew as fast as the ones Silluka knew near the coast. It had happened many times, especially to the south of the village.

Their lookouts nervously eyed the desolation behind them, searching for more signs of turtlemen. Cosquella was sitting with her father, watching him slowly decline, Tamaya and Waskar were off somewhere by themselves, and Silluka stared out across the blackened landscape.

“Now we are moving again, are you ready to attempt the morning ritual once more?”

Silluka jumped at the words. Akamu was standing right behind her. He could move as silently as a snake when he wanted.

She saw the anticipation in his eyes, and it rivalled what she had felt this morning. A love of learning, of reaching for the next step. Her questions surged back from where she’d pushed them aside.

“Absolutely. Where is Ichu?”

“He practiced with me this morning, before we began today’s work. We took some time together, and he told me you did usually did not like to practice with him anyway.”

Silluka hid a smile. So not the only reason Ichu wanted to be alone with Akamu. She looked around for Elder Quilqi, but she had been holed up with the other elders all day, discussing the best path to the stable desert with the eldest stone warrior, who was also their geologist.

“Just you and me then? Where should we—” Silluka broke off as the world went sideways. She blinked, looking up at Akamu from the floor of the sled.

“What was that?” She looked ahead to see mounds of sand in the distance. As she watched, one seemed to slide to the side with the quake.

“You see now why we call it the shaking domain.” Akamu offered her a hand and she grasped it, the end of her stump supporting her whole arm. This wasn’t like the testing, being frowned at by a room full of dried-up bodycasters, and her unable to even summon the ampuka. Akamu pulled her to her feet with a grin. He was incredibly handsome, and gracious. She could see why Ichu liked him.

“The shaking domain. So this happens often?”

“All through this area, and more as we enter the true desert.” Akamu braced against another round of bumpy shaking. A jakua howled in protest and rising noise of conversation floated over the sleds. “It’s a transition area between the chaos of the coast and the stable ground of the interior. It will take a few days to pass through, but makes for a good challenge when practicing.”

“Then I’m ready when you are.” She set her feet wide to compensate both for the sled moving across the ground and the ground itself shaking.

They ran through the morning ritual together. Silluka was still rusty—she hadn’t practiced it every morning like Ichu. In fact, she might have only performed it five or six times before they evacuated the village. But the pieces came together in her mind, a pressure building that told her she was summoning the ampuka, connecting with the core of the world.

Minutes later, she performed the last move, Pray, and the energy surged through her.

“Capture it in your sungu, quickly,” Akamu commanded. She could hear the stress in his voice as he did the same. “Don’t let the energy escape.”

Silluka strained, trying to pull the energy flowing through her to some central part of her being. Like last time, there was a small portion that seemed to stay with her, but most of it left her body, racing through her fingers.

“Again,” Akamu commanded.

Silluka panted. She could barely stand up straight. “We only did it once the first day, and you stopped our practice.”

“Now you know more.” There was a snap to Akamu’s voice, and for the first time, Silluka really understood he was the leader of this band of stone warriors. He commanded them.

The second attempt, the ground shook the whole time while she moved through the morning ritual, trembling like a quirra caught in a jakua’s jaws. She stumbled. The feeling of connection fading.

“Keep going,” Akamu growled, moving from Strength stance to Unmovable stance, arms passing through Raven Spreads His Wings.

Silluka regained her stance, but the shaking continued. She copied his motion as much as she could with one hand, though that barely mattered any longer, using her intent.

“How long will this go on?” she asked. The whole sled was trembling. The first forward flip was coming up, and she wasn’t the best at it on stable ground.

“Sometimes the tremors go on for minutes. Sometimes it is hours. They seem to happen more in the afternoons.”

“Which is why you wanted me to practice now.” She braced, moving into Reflex stance, then flipping. She landed on both feet. Barely.

“Your brother said you were weak in practice, even if you are strong in spirit. Those in Chimor have practiced connecting to the core since they were children. You and your village does not have that advantage, though they have others.” They both made the second flip, and this time Silluka didn’t stumble. She was getting used to the shaking. “Neither the crazed Allwiya, nor the Eztli Mecatl, nor the people of Chimor will give you a smidgeon of ground if you are not strong. They will eat you alive.”

Silence reigned through the rest of the morning ritual, and at the end, Silluka pulled at the energy with every fiber of her being and her will, forcing it into her center. She felt like she was buzzing with energy, like she would catch fire from the inside. Silluka let her legs shift as the tremor finally ended.

Akamu came close, observing her, touching her shoulder to correct her posture. Finally, he stepped back, watching her.

“That was better.”

Silluka relaxed.

“Again.”

Another tremor began.