Tarek stared at the hunched old man. “You were there.”
“Yes.”
“A thousand years ago.”
“Give or take a few decades.”
“You. Yourself.”
“I take back what I said about the spark. You’re hopeless.”
Tarek tried to believe it and couldn’t. “Were you reborn too, then?”
The flesh of Xochil’s face sagged, and the whites of his eyes looked yellowed and dry. “No such luck for me. Year by year, day by day… here the whole time.”
Tarek wanted to dismiss it all as impossible, but he couldn’t. “How?”
“Slowly, and with a deep well of despair in my heart.” Xochil shrank into himself. “Things didn’t go well for my brother, and I’ve waited all this time to set it right. To make it how it should have been.” With trembling hands, he pushed himself off the wall and staggered toward the exit. “Moon above, I’d give my right hand to have the stamina of a young man again. Let’s finish this tomorrow. I must rest.”
Tarek stepped in front of the frail old man and held out his bag, jaw set. “Don’t you dare leave! You wasted all this time telling me impossible tales, and that’s not what I’m here for.”
Xochil’s laugh was a thin, hacking sound, and it nearly stole his fragile balance. “Yes, your cure. Never mind that you’re supposed to be the kuhul a’hau, eh? Never mind that your very existence is throwing the Land out of balance and that I’ve spent my entire cursed life waiting to help you fix it. You’re the first to have the blood magic in five hundred years, do you realize that? But no, you want to give it all away so you can go sniveling back to some pretty young thing that doesn’t even want you!” His reedy voice rose in anger and the broke, the last of his strength spent. He stooped over his staff, bent nearly double. “You were always so stupid. So stubborn. Fine, then, mighty king. Let’s see how that falls out for you. Take the blood cloths from the bag and put them on the altar.”
Tarek rushed to obey, heart beating wildly. He can call me stupid all he likes – I’m about to be free. He dumped the tangle of brown-stained cloth strips onto the black stone surface and tossed the bag aside. “Done.”
“Now,” Xochil whispered, barely holding himself up, “eat them.”
Tarek looked up, surprised. “What?”
“I’m out of time, and I refuse to be seen like this. Eat them.”
“But…” Tarek hesitated. “Don’t you need to do something first? Extract the strains of the Song, concentrate them? I thought there would be a pot or something.”
Xochil pointed a dried-stick finger at him, and thick, heavy metal chains shivered into existence around Tarek’s wrists, held to the floor by a blackened ring. Tarek jerked against them, shocked. “What is this?”
Xochil slumped to the floor as one of his legs gave out. He clutched his staff, leaning into it to keep himself from falling completely. “You’re not leaving until you do as I say.”
Tarek heaved against his constraints, but they did not give. “Why are you doing this?”
“It’s for your own good. You may not see it, but it is.”
Tarek felt like a cornered rat, pulling hopelessly against his chains, unable to stop himself. “I won’t do it. This can’t be the cure!”
“There is no cure!” Xochil cried in sudden fury. “None! I lied.”
Tarek felt his heart stutter and his innards go cold. “What?”
“Needed you to see the tribes. Be seen. Exposed to their blood. Wanted you to taste some of it, you stubborn child. Come north, come here. See this. Only way.” The old man slid down his staff into a heap on the floor. With trembling hands he pulled his hood over his head. His skin was starting to slough off, and Tarek could see shining scales in the gaps.
Despite the horrific sight, all he could think about was what Xochil had said. “But I’ve gotten the blood, just like you told me. I did what you asked every step of the way. How will I ever be free?”
A long, slow sigh escaped from the old man, and he shrank even smaller. “No one with power is ever free,” he whispered.
Then the light winked out. In the total blackness he could hear Xochil gasping quietly, almost grunting. Over this soft sound he heard wet, ripping noises and the shifting of flesh against stone.
“Xochil?” he cried. “What’s happening?”
“Nothing I wanted you here for,” came the terse response. Xochil’s voice was stronger now, but it sounded… flatter. Colder. Less human. “If you’d let me go like I asked, we could have avoided this entirely.”
Tarek huddled against the altar in the dark. “Is this because I said no? Are you going to kill me?”
The noises stopped. “No,” Xochil said, a hint of his old weariness bleeding back into his voice. “My affliction has nothing to do with you. It’s an ill of my own making, you might say. But I’m not going to suddenly murder the idiot boy I’ve been waiting for just because he kept me up past my bedtime. I’m here to teach you, not kill you.”
Tarek grasped for reason, for hope. “I made you angry. You… you lied about there being no cure. Right?”
Xochil was silent for a long time, and then Tarek heard a sigh. “No. That was true. I hadn’t meant to tell you just yet, but I suppose it was vain to hope that you’d change your mind.”
Tarek sat on the floor, hands still bound, cold as a river in flood inside. “Why would you do this to me?”
“Because otherwise you’d have lain down in the jungle and let it kill you, and I couldn’t allow that. It was necessary, Tarek.”
Tarek thought of Yaretzi, of how she looked when she glanced up from her medicines in surprise when he snuck into the healer’s tent, of how her hands were always gentle and sure. “How can I ever go home?”
“You already know you can’t. Eat those cloths, and we can drop this silly business of a cure. If the men who bled on them still live, then your power will hold them. I don’t imagine it will be a pleasant meal, but if you’d given in and drunk the blood in the first place like I intended, you could have saved yourself some chewing. I’ll return tomorrow and we’ll talk about everything else.”
Tarek felt like a gourd scoured of its insides. “What will I tell Tavi?”
“You’ll think of something.”
“You said I’m supposed to be your brother. How could you do this?”
“I was never a very good brother. Believe it or not, this is me making things right. You’ll understand eventually.”
Tarek covered his head with his hands, chains clinking. He was exhausted, and nothing would ever be right again. “Go away.”
“Unlike some other people we could name, I’ll respect that request. Eat those things and then get some rest, lad. I’ll see you again when the sun sets tomorrow.”
Tarek heard the scuffling of feet and the sound of strong, sure steps. They stopped not far from him.
“I’m sorry, Tarek. I really am.”
And then the footsteps retreated, and the room deep inside the pyramid fell silent. Tarek sat there for a very long time and thought about nothing.
* * *
The room was less impressive by the light of makeshift torches than it had been by Xochil’s magical moonlight illumination, but it was warmer by far with his brother and friends standing by his side. Pahtl had come charging in first, led by his internal sense of where Tarek was, and the others followed close behind. They’d been sitting and talking together for the better part of a handspan.
“It does look a lot like you,” Zulimaya said, peering at the graven face of the long-dead a’hau.
“It looks exactly like him,” Tavi said sourly. “Let’s not pretend otherwise.”
“I was awake when the old one came for you,” Pahtl assured Tarek. “I only pretended to sleep.” He had said the same thing several times already.
Bachi said nothing as he inspected the fantastic carvings one by one.
Tarek tried to respond, but his jaws cracked in a yawn instead. The others said the sun was well past its zenith, and he had not slept. The bloody cloths lay untouched on the altar.
“The story of the Lost coming from another place is probably true,” Tavi mused. “I’ve always thought it had to be something like that. When I asked our loremaster about it he tried to avoid the question, but finally admitted that he didn’t know. Someone had to have suppressed the story.”
Bachi cleared his throat and strained for a loud whisper. It was gravelly and broken. “I wrote a song once… the Lost falling out of sky like rain.” He smiled ruefully. “Elders burned it. Called it wickedness.”
“Everyone comes from somewhere,” Zulimaya said, not looking up from her study of the carvings. “I do not think I came from the Land. I have always dreamed that my father brought me from some other place.”
“You do look strange,” Bachi whispered.
Zulimaya looked at him, expressionless.
“Good strange,” Bachi added. “Exotic. Never mind.”
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Tavi ignored them. “Just because he was telling the truth about some things doesn’t mean he was telling the truth about all of it, though. A little truth to season a larger lie – that sounds like something the old rat would do.”
“He was remembering it,” Tarek said. “He talked about this a’hau and I could see him looking into the past. He believed it.”
“You don’t know that,” Tavi objected.
Tarek took his brother by the shoulders and looked him in the eye. “Let’s not pretend, isn’t that what you said? There’s no cure, Tav. He lied.”
Tavi’s face crumpled, and he looked at the floor. “It’s not fair.”
“Nothing ever is.”
“When I see the old one, I will bite his throat until he dies,” Pahtl promised.
“I wish we could stay away from him entirely,” Tarek said wearily. He sat with his back against the black stone altar, chains clinking, and closed his eyes. The others were speaking, but he let his eyes drift shut. So tired. He was sick at heart, directionless and adrift. I’ll never be worthy of Yaretzi. She was right to shoot at me.
He felt a presence over him and opened his eyes, twitching in surprise. Zulimaya was there, silent and stern-faced as always as her green eyes bored into him. “What?”
“That is my question: what now?”
“I don’t know, Zu.”
“My name is Zulimaya.”
“Sorry. I’d like to just sit and not think about it for a while.”
“He will return soon,” she insisted. “He will make you eat the blood. If you do not make plans of your own, you are accepting his path.”
“I’m not accepting anything!”
“I have been one who went along with others’ bad plans. I know what it looks like. It looks like lying down and not thinking about it.”
With a silent snarl, Tarek wrenched himself to his feet. “Okay, here’s what I think: everything I’ve done since I left home was based on a lie, and now the woman I love hates me. I’m planning on being sad about that for awhile and not doing anything at all. I don’t care what Xochil or anyone else wants. I don’t care about soul-stars or dead kings. I’m not eating the cloths; I’m not taking over the tribes. They can all drown in the Year-Long Flood, every last one of them. Xochil can kill me if he likes – I’m not playing his game.”
Pahtl nuzzled his leg. “Sometimes even saying stupid, sad things is better than lying down and doing nothing.”
Tarek sank back to the floor and hugged Pahtl close. “Can I just be a water person for a while?”
“You are a bad swimmer, but I would carry you.”
“Whether everything the old snake said is true or not, something altered Gurobo’s path in the sky,” Tavi mused. “The idea that some dead a’hau’s soul was why is… a little hard to accept, but the fact is that we need its pull against the green moon every twenty years or else the moon’s orbit decays and the Land falls out of balance. You talk casually about letting everyone die in a flood, but that’s exactly what’s going to happen within just a few years. The Land will drown.”
“What can I do about that, Tav?”
“I don’t know.”
“Even if I am some great king reborn – and please, Tav, me? Really? – even then, what good does it do? I’ve got blood magic, not flood magic.”
Bachi snickered at the unintentional rhyme but fell silent when Tarek threw a glare at him.
“I’m not suggesting we trust Xochil,” Tavi said, “but he’s the one with the knowledge. Look at what your magic has done: healed wounds, given speech to animals, controlled men. Can we really be sure it couldn’t do something about the flood? About the Wandering Star?”
Tavi’s words made sense, but Tarek shook his head. “I’m done listening to that old man. I never want to see him again.”
“Tarek, you have to.”
“No!”
“Why not?”
“Because he said he could fix me and he lied!” Tarek shouted. His fists were balled and pressed against his stomach. ‘We were going to go home, Tav! It was going to be okay, and now, and now…! It was only so he could get what he wanted; so I could be a part of his insane story. I won’t!”
Tavi approached him quietly and reached up to put his hands on Tarek’s shoulders. At his touch, Tarek’s muscles unclenched, and he took a shaky breath, ashamed of his outburst.
“You don’t have to be bad, Tarek,” he said, looking into his big brother’s eyes. “We’ll figure it out.”
Tavi had touched the raw wound at the heart of the matter, and Tarek felt tears leak from his eyes. “I don’t know, Tav. I don’t know if I can.”
“Yes, you do,” he said. “You’ve already found out that smell is a part of it, and reducing that sense lessens your blood lust. Right? That’s a solid step towards controlling it. Practice. Repetition. Improvement.”
“If it works for Singing, it’ll work for other magic,” Bachi whispered.
“Your singing is not magic,” Zulimaya said.
“Oh, isn’t it?” he said archly.
“It’s a nice thought,” Tarek said, wiping his eyes, “but I’m not sure it’s the same thing.”
Bachi came to him and patted him awkwardly on the back. “The Song led me. I don’t think my quest ends here.”
Tarek shook his head doggedly. “Let’s say I can learn to control the blood magic – which I’m not at all sure of, but let’s say it’s so. Then what? Let Xochil lead me around by the nose? Make me some a’hau over all the tribes? I don’t want that. That’s not a good thing, regardless of who it is. The Catori are different from the Kuruk, who are different from the Wobanu, who are different from… anyway. Putting one person in charge of all of that? It’s nonsense. It’d never work.”
“It might,” Zulimaya said. “An a’hau could stop any tribes from keeping slaves like me.”
“Even so, it couldn’t be me. Me, in charge of things? The boy who can’t even hear the Song? Who would follow me?”
“I would,” Pahtl said.
“Me,” whispered Bachi.
“All of us,” Tavi said.
Even Zulimaya gave a brief nod.
“That’s different,” Tarek insisted. “You’re my friends.”
“Not everyone is so closed-minded as our tribe was,” Tavi said. “You’re a decent person, and you’ve seen how just touching people makes them like you. The Shinsok chief saw your worth, no matter what other harm she’s done. Even Zuma recognized it before he found out you have the blood magic.”
Tarek slapped the stone floor with one hand, chains clinking. “Will you listen to yourselves? Are you really trying to convince me I should let Xochil make me some kind of king?”
“No,” Tavi said firmly. “He can die of the crotch-rot, as far as I’m concerned. You’re my brother, not his. But just because he’s a manipulative pile of rat shit doesn’t mean we have to discard his knowledge or his good ideas. So you’re stuck with the blood magic – well, I hate that, but if that’s the way things are, so what? Learn it. Use it. I’ll find my peace with it and you’ll have to do the same. Let’s chart our own path. Xochil can find some other dupe to be his little king.”
“Our own path,” Tarek mused.
“Preferably one that lets me get my hands on his books,” Tavi grinned.
“I like the sound of that,” Tarek said, “but it’s hard to give a firm ‘no’ when I’m held captive here.”
Tavi knelt beside him. “I’ve been thinking about that. Xochil said his power comes from the lesser moon Shaka, right? That it’s all illusions?”
“This isn’t like one of his sendings or imaginary beasts,” Tarek said. “This is that metal stuff the Kuruk use. It’s harder than stone – my wrists are scraped raw already.”
“Illusions work because we believe they’re real, Tarek. Maybe he can put a little substance in his magic, but I don’t think it’s much. Our minds do the rest for him.”
Tarek gave him a flat look and shook the substantial chains. “Little elder, for a smart boy, that sounds awfully dumb. Look at them. They’re real.”
“But they’re real because you felt their weight to begin with and were convinced you’re trapped. Think about it: he reached the end of his strength and had to go rest. He can’t still be putting substance into those links. He’d have to be here for that.”
“My scrapes and bruises say otherwise.”
He reached forward and put his hands on the chains wrapped around Tarek’s wrists. “Close your eyes.”
“My eyes were closed for a good part of the night and the chains didn’t disappear.”
“But you never questioned their existence, did you?”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
Pahtl nipped gently at his elbow. “You know you are more stupid than the young one; I tell you this often. Try what he says.”
Tarek sighed and closed his eyes.
“Now imagine there are no chains.”
Tarek strained his mind to obey, but he still felt the heavy links on his arms. “I don’t know how.”
“Shh. Clear your mind. Think of something peaceful. Being at home.”
Tarek peeked, and Tavi had his eyes closed as well. His hands tightened over the chains wrapping Tarek’s wrists. Obediently, Tarek thought of the clearing under the rockwood tree. He thought of his time alone with Yaretzi on the day he’d been proclaimed a man of the Catori. She will never be mine. The truth of it struck him hard, and tears overflowed his closed eyes. I’m so sorry, Yar. Be well, even if I never get to see it. Even if you hate me. The bitter unfairness of it all lanced through him, mingled with the sweetness of his memories of her, and flowed out of him with his tears. The pain felt almost like lancing an infected wound. He sighed shakily, aching for the life he’d lost, knowing he could never go back.
The weight on his arms changed. It was warm and soft instead of cold and hard. Tarek’s eyes flew open, and though wetness blurred his vision, he could see that only Tavi’s hands bound his wrists. The chains were gone.
“What?” he whispered.
Tavi whooped. “It worked!”
Tarek clambered to his feet, looking at his skinned wrists in disbelief. “I didn’t do anything. I just… thought about home.” He wiped his eyes, reveling in his freedom.
Tavi massaged his brow. “I think I did it – I felt the chains shift and disappear, and it took some real mental exertion. You might be a good leader, Tarek, but counterfactual thinking isn’t your strong suit.”
“Noted. Let’s not be here when Xochil gets back.”
Zulimaya gave him an approving nod. “This is what I meant before. Make your own plans.”
Tarek smiled. “Bachi, give me your flint. Tavi, help me.”
Together they showered sparks onto the heap of dry blood cloths on the altar. In twenty heartbeats they had a flame going, and in another hundred nothing but blackened curls remained.
“That’s about the firmest ‘no’ I can give,” Tarek said. “Let him chew on that.”
“Little fires are fun,” Pahtl said, “but I wanted to bite the old one.”
“He’ll chase after us,” Bachi husked. “He’s mean.”
“Then let’s leave,” Tarek said. “I thought a lot about what Xochil told me last night. There’s more to our world outside the Land – let’s go see it. He’s so set on making me lead all the tribes, but if I’m well and truly gone, he’ll have to find someone else. He kept going on about stars and souls, but what he really wants is to be in charge. Let him. We’ll go somewhere else.”
“The mists,” Tavi said. “The ones that surround the Land. He won’t follow us through the mists. The moons won’t shine through them.”
“I’m not sure about that,” Tarek said. “He was able to follow me into the pyramid. No moon down in there.”
“Yes, and he tired and collapsed far more quickly than he expected to, right? He was cut off from his power.”
“You’re guessing.”
“Maybe, but it’s solid reasoning.”
Bachi squirmed, clearing his gravelly throat. “The mists kill. Turn us inside out. The stories say.”
Tarek shook his head. “Can’t be true. Our ancestors never would have gotten here. This is the first place they settled, even before they found the Heart and learned the Song. The way out can’t be far. We just keep going north until we find it.”
Bachi looked panicked, his broken voice growing a little louder. “Monsters in there. Human faces, claws, breath that burns.”
“Story-telling,” Tavi objected. “Exaggeration.”
“All the songs talk of monsters and death in the mist.”
“I will protect the fat one from bad-breath monsters,” Pahtl said.
“If people can’t survive in the mists, why would monsters be able to?” Tarek reasoned.
“Because monsters kill them,” Bachi explained, sounding as if he couldn’t believe he had to.
“There are no monsters,” Zulimaya told them flatly.
“You’re an expert suddenly?” Bachi whispered.
“I told you I listened to the Shinsok’s stories.” She shrugged. “When I was lonely, I’d hide nearby in the dark and hear them. They told of many monsters, but I noticed that no matter how they were described, they were always basically the same. They hurt, thy tear, they cause fear. I think people tell stories of scary things because they’re really scared of each other. Of themselves. The only monsters that actually exist wear skin just like ours.”
Tavi looked at her sideways. “There’s a giant turtle I’d like you to meet sometime.”
Tarek snorted, but then he thought of the Iktaka children that had laughed at his torture and wondered if Zulimaya might be right after all.
“Let’s not steal trouble from the morrow,” he said. “If there are things in the mist, we’ll face them or we’ll run. Either way, we’ll get away from Xochil.”
“I will go into the mists,” Pahtl said. “Do you think any other water people have done this before?”
“Definitely not,” Tarek assured him.
“Then I must. If I am to be the god of the water people, I have to go where none have before.”
Tarek nodded, warming to the idea. “We’ll go find the place the Lost first came from.”
“If it exists,” Bachi said gloomily.
“We didn’t come from nowhere. And Zulimaya had to come from somewhere, too, right? Let’s find it.”
Tavi hesitated. “But what if Xochil is right? What if you are the one who’s supposed to lead the tribes? Fix the Land?”
“We’ve seen my blood magic do some incredible things, but do you really imagine it could stop a flood? Change a star’s course?”
Tavi chewed his lip. “No.”
“There it is, then. Let’s not let him manipulate us.” Tarek paused and looked around at the others. “We don’t have to do this, you know. I may not be able to go home again, but none of you has to follow me into the mists.”
“Yes, we do,” Tavi said.
“Yes, we will,” Zulimaya corrected him.
Bachi sighed. “Leave the Land. My Song quest never ends.”
Tarek grinned and clapped him on the shoulder. “I’m supposed to be the Wanderer, aren’t I? I might as well do it right.”