Chapter 52
52
R HAIF CROSSED THE bone field toward the fringe of jungle. He winced at every crack and snap underfoot. Shiya led the way, an unstoppable force. Still, she had already begun to dim under the threatening clouds, her bronze darkening to a leaden sheen. As she walked, her heavy feet crushed bones to dust.
He cringed as a small skull suffered that same fate.
Shiya never looked down.
He shuddered, remembering the claim Xan had shared with Pratik, that Shiya’s bronze form was possessed by the unsettled spirit of an old god, those callous and cruel beings from the Forsaken Ages.
Ahead, Xan flanked one side of Shiya, along with a scout. Another tribeswoman took up the other side. As they reached the jungle, the Kethra’kai picked out a path barely discernible in the darkness. They slipped through leaves and under a drape of thorny vine—that slithered away with a hiss as Rhaif tried to duck beneath it.
Aghast, he stumbled ahead.
Behind him, Frell and Nyx followed, stepping gingerly, their gazes sweeping warily all around. Aamon kept close to the girl’s thigh, his tufted ears pricked so high they looked ready to fly off of his furry head.
After only steps into the dripping forest, the path behind them vanished. The group drew closer. Ahead, Xan began to sing. There was no brightness to her melody. It was more a dirge, which matched this jungle’s dark temperament.
The other Kethra’kai found her rhythm and matched it, raising their voices with hers. As they continued, the forest seemed to scream, buzz, howl, and croak in tune with that song. Even the weeping drips added a drumlike tympani to their chorus.
Rhaif did not complain.
The wafting of their song seemed to drive creatures from their path. A bush to his right burst apart, each leaf revealing itself to be winged pests that spun menacingly through the air. More of the thorny vipers slithered away. A pack of furry damp beasts shot through the canopy overhead, using curved claws and strangling tails. They yowled down at them, baring rows of needle teeth from purplish leathery faces.
“Mandrayks,” Frell whispered as they passed. “I thought them all dead from this world.”
Rhaif, for one, would not mourn their passing.
A huge log, as high as his waist, blocked their path, frothy with glowing mushrooms and sprouting saplings. Once they drew nearer, its length bowed up, sprouting thick scaled legs, and sauntered off into the jungle.
Rhaif glanced back at Frell to see if he recognized the creature.
The alchymist only shrugged, his eyes wide and unblinking.
As they continued, the forest grew higher. The drips became a steady rain. The clouds darkened. The ground underfoot grew muddier. Only a thick layer of moldering leaves kept them from miring into the muck. Still, it felt like wading over a rotted corpse, one that threatened to give way under them at any moment.
The only heartening bit was that they’d left the bones behind. Though Rhaif imagined that was only because so few people had made it this far before succumbing to this place.
The Kethra’kai continued their chanting to the woods. Even Shiya had begun to add her voice, though to his ears there was a sad longing in her wordless strain.
One singer, though, remained conspicuously absent from this chorus. Fear had surely drowned any music in her heart.
“Look,” Nyx whispered to Frell.
She pointed to a forest of ghostly stone pillars that appeared ahead, spreading to either side of the path, disappearing into the shadows. Rhaif imagined them continuing all around this summit in a big ring.
Rather than quarried out of the black rock of this escarpment, the pillars were made of a bone-white stone. Figures and faces had been carved into their surfaces. Men and women, all writhing in agony. Stark faces screamed at them, as if warning them away. The sight alone left Rhaif shivering. His feet dragged slower.
What are we doing here?
It was as if this entire summit had been designed by a god who sought to keep people away by any means. Flora, fauna, weather, and now rock. With every step gained, this landscape pushed harder against them.
Maybe we should heed such a warning.
“Do not slow,” Xan called back, her command flowing with her song. “There is worse yet ahead.”
Rhaif wanted to balk.
Worse?
“Everyone will need to use their voices,” Xan intoned to them. “When I tell you, sing. Or hum, if that’s all you can do.”
With that dire portent and feeble instruction, she led them past the pillars and into the deeper forest. They continued for a long stretch, the jungle weeping atop them. Somewhere distant, light flashed through the darkness, briefly illuminating the underside of the dark clouds. No thunder followed, which only set his teeth further on edge.
A brittle crackling underfoot drew his attention back down. A knobbed femur poked out of the muck. Rhaif stumbled away, only to crunch through more bones.
Not again…
He nearly twisted an ankle as his muddy boot slid off the crown of a yellowed skull, white teeth grinning out of the bone.
The group slogged through this new graveyard and reached a narrow clearing that cut across their path in a wide arc. The dark skies glowered down at them. The ground ahead was tangled with bones.
Rhaif breathed heavily, his heart pounding, his vision narrowing in terror.
I’m not crossing that cadaverous river.
Even the Kethra’kai slowed, but Xan urged them onward. “Sing now. And do not stop moving.”
Rhaif had never felt less like singing. His mouth was stuffed with the roughest cotton. He could not catch his breath. Still, he was pushed forward by Frell and Nyx. Nyx meekly added her voice to the continuing choir. Even Aamon growled louder, as if trying to do the same.
Herded forward to that bony clearing, Rhaif had no choice but to stumble onward.
Frell coughed and started humming. It was tuneless, with a pitch that could never settle. Still, the alchymist’s poor effort encouraged Rhaif to try to do better. He took a deep breath, held it, and let loose a noise stuttering between a wheeze and a whistle. He sought to steady it but failed.
Still, the effort distracted him enough to keep moving.
Halfway across, a skim of mud flowed out of the jungle to either side. It flooded over the bones and coursed toward them. He tried to hurry, fearful of getting mired down. Their group fought faster across the treacherous bone field.
Frell suddenly gasped, losing his humming. But Nyx grabbed his elbow and got it going again.
Rhaif saw what had so frightened the alchymist.
It wasn’t mud racing toward them.
Spiders…
Each creature was the size of his palm, their clambering legs stretching even wider. Their dark brown bodies were striped in venomous yellow. Rhaif’s humming strained into a long whine of terror.
Then the horde swept through them. Spiders skittered up their legs, crunched underfoot. They fled across his chest, burrowed under his loose shirt, tickled his neck and cheek, crowned his head.
He kept humming, only to stop himself from screaming, to keep his lips pressed closed, lest they scurry inside, too.
Aamon shook a blanket of the creatures from his fur.
Still, their group all forged on—but that was not even the worst.
One of the spiders sped up his forearm, stopped there, clamping its legs in place. Then from its back, from those vile stripes, tangles of coppery filaments burst forth, writhing in the air, then diving into his skin. Scores of others did the same. There was no sting to their violation. Only the feel of maggots crawling under skin.
He shuddered, near to thrashing.
The hum died in his throat.
One spider had latched to his cheek, those coppery threads dancing before his eyes. He lifted a hand to rip it away, but fingers caught him. The firmness of bronze steadied him.
He turned to find Shiya’s eyes glowing at him. She sang—but no longer to the forest—only to him. She drew him onward, step by step. Behind her tune, he heard his mother’s lullaby. As it grew louder in his head, the crawl of spiders transformed into his mother’s fingertips, gently calming him.
His panic ebbed.
Finally, after an interminable time, the horde fell from his body, from the others, too. The spiders retreated away, seeping back into the forest. Rhaif knew the creatures were not of natural origin. They were masks, hiding coppery constructs inside, maybe related to Shiya.
If he had any doubt, a loud crashing to his left briefly revealed something massive, stilted on tarnished green legs, moving through the trees. It stalked the edges of the clearing, seeming to draw the horde back to it. The shaking of the canopy elsewhere marked the passage of more of those huge sentinels.
Rhaif rubbed his arms, tried to stop the crawling of his flesh, the pebbling of his skin. He knew the spiders had been a test of some sort. Like how a medicum used leeches to examine what was hidden deeper in a body. He gave his shoulders a final shake of revulsion, knowing one thing for certain.
Thank all the gods that we passed that test.
Xan had stopped singing, as if knowing the jungle would let them continue from here. “It is not far ahead,” the elder declared.
“What’s not far?” Nyx asked.
Xan turned and started off again. “Dalal?ea,” she answered.
Rhaif swallowed hard, remembering Pratik’s translation of that name.
The deathly stones.
N YX MARCHED THROUGH the dark jungle behind the others. She believed the forest would never end, despite Xan’s earlier assurance. Nyx could still feel the dance of bristly legs over her arms. She kept brushing away spiders that were no longer there.
The only change to this side of the forest was the increasing shatter of lightning that brightened the grim layer of clouds, casting the jungle into shades of dark emerald. Each blast carried no thunder, only a silence that felt heavier afterward.
This heft might be because the air grew thicker with both moisture and a fierce energy that could be tasted on the tongue. It smelled like the swamp after a lightning storm.
As they continued toward the source, Nyx’s shoulders climbed toward her ears, her head ducked lower. Aamon felt it, too. He no longer growled, as if fearful of drawing attention this way. All of his fur bristled as he slunk alongside her.
It grew so threatening that it felt like a wind pushing against her. Frell and Rhaif shared worried glances, too.
Just before she could take it no longer, the jungle suddenly ended.
She stopped in surprise, as did all the others.
Ahead, a towering archway opened in a tall stacked-stone wall. The rampart was only visible from steps away. To either side, the forest shoved tight against the wall, with vines scrabbling up it, but the bulwark held firm.
Nyx recognized the shape of the arch. It was the same as the one framing the stairs below: two legs of stones leaning against one another, forming a point at the top. Only this one was ten times as tall as the other.
They all edged closer, the Kethra’kai with reverence, Nyx and the others warily. Only Shiya continued forward, limping on her damaged limb.
Past the gateway, the jungle stopped. Bare stone, as black as the cliffs behind them, spread outward. Another spatter of lightning lit the expanse. Its brightness stung her eyes, bringing with it a freshening wash of those strange energies.
Nyx blinked away the dazzle and headed with the others under the gateway. The tall walls swept in a huge circle, enclosing a space as large as the first tier of the Cloistery. She remembered when she had first entered that school. She felt the same way now: lost and overwhelmed, feeling too small to enter such an intimidating landscape.
Within the walls, two circles of standing stones formed concentric rings, the outer taller than the inner, as if the stones were bowing down to the giant structure in the center. There, a double set of arches stood crossed at the middle and climbed twice the height of the walls, enclosing a cube of the same white stone as the terrifying carved pillars.
She stared around the breadth of the walls. Another three gates opened to the jungle. Each exit was marked by towering columns in the outermost henge ring. A pyramid of crystal crowned each one. Across the expanse, one of the crystals shimmered brighter in the gloom—then blasted forth with a jagged bolt of lightning. It struck the dark clouds overhead, briefly cascading smaller chains across their undersides.
The entire group ducked from the brilliant display, even the Kethra’kai.
Shiya ignored it and continued hobbling across the space. She passed the outer ring and headed toward the inner one. Rhaif hurried after her, drawing them all along.
Frell ran low with Nyx. “Keep close. If this is truly Shiya’s home, we best stay in her shadow.”
And in her good graces, Nyx added silently.
They caught up with the bronze woman at the inner ring and followed her toward the crossed arches at the center. Closer now, Nyx made out the shadow of a doorway inset in the cube.
As they crossed toward it, Nyx glanced to either side, to the dark jungle looming over the walls all around. She remembered the horrors out there, natural and otherwise. The threats reminded her of a hermit back home, a friend of her dah. The man had lived deep in the Myr and eked out a living by brewing firewater, a batch said to be as hot as flashburn. He protected his brewery with a labyrinth of fencing reinforced with insidious traps. He didn’t want anyone learning his secrets.
She studied where they were headed.
What needs this much protecting over centuries of time?
Finally, the door under the cube’s shadowy lintel revealed itself. They had all seen its likeness before. It was a copper oval, twice as large as the one they had passed through to enter the tunnel. Here, too, tangles of copper and bronze tendrils wound into the white cube and black stone.
The group gathered a few steps away from the cube.
Nyx turned to Xan. “Have you been through there before?”
The elder leaned on her staff and shook her head. “I do not possess the strength of song to move that door.”
Shiya clearly believed herself capable.
The bronze woman limped under the lintel and lifted both palms, as if testing invisible winds. Then she lowered her arms and began to sing. It was soft at first, the lightest breeze, wistful and quiet, then layers built within it. Nyx heard the firmer chords of an ancient foundation, first building, then crumbling. A rhythm overrode it, marking time, ringing the passing of centuries. An aria of hope, as light as the first notes but far brighter, tried to hold back a darker storm of bass undertones—only to be overwhelmed in the end. It was a mournful composition of time and loss, of pasts forgotten, of hopes dashed to ruins.
Nyx understood.
This was Shiya, declaring who she was, offering her truest name. The bronze woman stood at the doorstep and stated as simply as she could: Here I am.
As that grief swelled, a familiar reef of glowing strands—bronzed and tarnished, but still beautiful—flowed out with her song. They spread to the copper door, but unlike back at the tunnel, the strands were rebuffed, ruffling into incoherence against the stubborn metal.
Shiya drew them back, sang them brighter, and tried again.
Still, she was refused.
Shiya’s shoulders slumped, marking her despair.
Nyx turned to Xan, remembering the other door. “She needs your help. Like before. She’s too weak, possibly not fully herself, to open the way alone.”
Xan nodded and thumped with her cane to stand with Shiya.
Frell leaned closer. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m not sure,” Nyx whispered.
Xan started to sing, expertly merging her melody with Shiya’s. The elder didn’t try to control that song, only support it, to lend her strength to the bronze figure.
Shiya drew upon that font and spun her song higher, both thickening the strands and shaping them at their ends to a fine delicacy. It was so beautiful to see. Shiya would not fail now.
Nyx was wrong.
The design of tarnished bronze reached the copper and sought to meld through it—and failed yet again. The filigree tangled to ruin and washed down the door and faded.
Xan turned to Nyx and held out her hand.
They need even more strength.
Nyx knew she must try. She walked on numb legs to join them, stepping to Shiya’s other side.
The bronze woman still sang in chorus with Xan. Nyx listened, closing her eyes, her head nodding to find the rhythm. She waited until the beat of her heart found it, too. She let it build in her chest, inhaled more deeply to stoke it, then teased it out, letting it flow into their song, fueling each note with her own, building that wave higher.
Even with her eyes closed, she saw Shiya try again, weaving herself, her past, her need, into shiny bronze strands. They wove into a complexity that defied all dimensions. Shiya again cast its beauty at the door.
Nyx gasped as it collapsed into ruin once again, a wave broken on sharp rocks. Shocked and dismayed—both at the failure and at the loss of such beauty—she fell back a step.
We can’t do this.
Xan hung from her staff, drained and exhausted, and admitted the same. “We are not strong enough to open this.”
Shiya remained straight, but the song slowly faded from her.
Nyx shook her head and mumbled, “That’s not it.”
Frell pressed her. “What do you mean?”
Nyx glanced back, picturing the power in their chorus. “It’s not that we’re not strong enough. It’s more like we’re locked out.”
Then she knew the answer.
She snapped straighter.
Of course…
Rhaif noted her reaction. “Nyx?”
“Someone changed the lock,” she mumbled.
She remembered her struggle with the scyther’s helm, how it had fought her as surely as this door did now with Shiya. Nyx swung her attention to the seamless copper. She knew this door’s metal was no crude helm, but something far more daunting.
Xan pulled higher on her staff. “What are you saying, child? Can you mend this?”
Nyx breathed harder.
Not by myself.
She reached inside a pocket, to a paper-thin curl of white bark. Kanthe had given it to her after she buried Bashaliia. He had stripped it from the leafy sentinel over her little brother’s grave, a sacred tree that the Kethra’kai called Ellai Sha, or Spirit’s Breath. She remembered Kanthe’s instructions to her. If you wish to speak to those who have passed, you whisper into the curl, then burn it at a camp’s fire, where the smoke will carry your message high.
She didn’t have a campfire, but she prayed that the fire in her heart would be enough. For any hope in opening this door, she would need to draw all she could from her time with Bashaliia, to commune with the gifts that he had left inside her. To do that, she needed to foster a deeper connection to him.
She closed her eyes again and lifted the curl of bark to her lips. She whispered from her heart, speaking to that past inside her, trying to stir it to life. “Little brother, hear me. I need you. More so than ever before. Please wake and add your song to mine, so I can share the sight I need.”
She kissed the curl and held it to her lips, feeling a stirring of their connection. It was still there, even with him gone. She squeezed her eyelids tighter, struggling to hold those tenuous threads closer to her heart. They were so fragile and delicate. Even by opening her eyes, she might lose them. She used the crimp of bark to help maintain that bond to him. She felt the rough texture in her fingers, smelled the slight scent of tea from the tree bark.
She took a breath and sang again, not in harmony with Shiya, but with the keening of a young bat, a brother who had given his life for hers, who shared his mother’s love and milk, who had never abandoned her.
Not even now.
She pined for him and used her grief as power. She cast out his song in her voice, through her throat. She sang and keened his memory, his faithfulness, his sacrifice. As she did, his unique sight opened inside her.
He allowed her to share it, as he always had.
She stared at the door with her eyes closed. As her little brother’s keening reverberated off the door and returned to her, she saw the copper with perfect clarity, far more than she had with the steel of the scyther’s helm. The copper was no longer seamless but riven with imperfections and blemishes. Its ancientness was as evident as the wrinkles of a wizened old man. Yet, that was only its surface. Bashaliia’s song—her voice—delved deeper, showing alignments and inclusions and veins buried there.
She read a ghostly pattern and saw how it had been changed.
She lifted her free arm.
Xan and Shiya understood. Their combined chorus rose again. With her new sight, Nyx recognized their strength. It was indeed plenty. She watched from the side as Shiya built her pattern, the key to this lock. Nyx saw it was right long ago, but not any longer. She identified which threads were misplaced, which would no longer fit this door, or where a knot was twined slightly askew. She added her own song, unique to herself, while not losing her connection to Bashaliia.
She extended her strands and filled where Shiya’s pattern was empty, withdrew what was wrong, and reknit what was necessary. Once done, she compared it to the lock in the door—then swept her arm down.
On this signal, Shiya cast all her force forward and struck the door with it.
A deep intonation reflected her power back outward, shivering all their threads, turning all their songs discordant, even her connection to Bashaliia.
As it all collapsed into darkness, something appeared, just for a moment. Fiery eyes stared out of the darkness at her. She read approval in them—and something else, another message. But before she could understand, they were gone.
She opened her own eyes.
Once again, she was left hollowed out and weak, her legs shaking. Still, she held her place as her vision clouded over. Such efforts clearly took more from her than mere strength. She struggled with her eyes, returned again to a near-blind state.
Then another jagged bolt of lightning flared silently behind her. The flash reflected off of the copper, brightening the surface enough for her to see it. She watched the door swivel open into darkness with an exhalation of long-dead air.
“You did it,” Frell gasped out, rushing up behind her.
“Not me,” she whispered, still clutching a tiny curl of bark.