Chapter 21 Sirsha
Sirsha
Loli—or whatever the hells that thing was that looked like her—growled in irritation when Sirsha screamed.
The creature skittered into the darkness of the hallway and moments later, a draft of fresh air hit Sirsha’s nose; the front door was open, and the thing had escaped through it, into the mist beyond.
Sirsha’s heart pounded in her ears, and she could scarcely hear as she reached for her daggers. For a moment she considered slamming the door shut. One motion that would keep Div and that thing that looked like Loli away.
I’ll become a hermit, she thought. Live here in Loli’s house until I starve to death. Loli had water, grain, and enough jarred fruit for a small army. Sirsha could probably get by for a year or so.
But she cast away the thought almost immediately.
There was a chance that the creature she’d just seen was a possessed, warped version of her friend.
She and Quil had cast Loli’s heartless body into the river, but maybe a Karkaun warlock had fished her out and brought her back to life, thinking Loli still had magic.
Or it could be that some other force was at work. Sirsha considered the wind’s directive.
Go. Seek the truth.
Perhaps that was here in Loli’s home. Or within Loli herself. The only way to find out was to talk to her.
She approached Loli’s door, grimacing when she realized that the moment she stepped out of it, Div would be back in her head.
Sirsha froze, breath quivering, unable to move.
Here in Loli’s house, she’d experienced peace for the first time in months, even with the stench and the flies and the unexplained animal corpses.
Her Adah coin flared warm and Sirsha reached for it. Upon touching it, calm flowed through her, as if Quil had put his big hand over hers. As if the heat of his body close to her kept her warm and his cool yellow eyes reminded her she wasn’t alone.
“Don’t be a bleeding coward, Sirsha Westering,” she muttered, and straightened her shoulders. “Loli would do it for you. Ten times over.”
As she stepped out of Loli’s house, Sirsha braced herself for Div’s abhorrent voice.
But she heard only the roar of the waterfall, and beyond it the songs of the jungle’s night creatures, muted by the mist. Sirsha didn’t relax—she’d learned that lesson in Jibaut—but she did force herself to take a deep, shuddering breath.
“Loli Temba,” Sirsha called out. “It’s me. Sirsha. I don’t want to hurt you.”
Loli didn’t respond. She had quite a head start on Sirsha, but even without her magic, Sirsha had an instinct for her marks. Loli hadn’t gone far.
Sirsha crept down the staircase, whisper quiet, careful of the vines and roots that sprawled across the path. When she was near the livestock pen, she heard muttering.
“Ik farkug gaktasht la onric fa du. Dosk fi, dosk seg—”
Sirsha frowned. It was indeed Loli’s voice, but she was speaking Karkaun—something she rarely did. Sirsha slowed, white-knuckling her dagger as the pen came into view.
Her own horse was still picketed in one of the pen’s back stalls. Loli, meanwhile, knelt before one of the sheep, an old, gray-muzzled beast. As Sirsha approached, her friend’s head jerked up, and she fixed her pale eyes on Sirsha.
Sirsha stepped back, a memory surfacing of a Karkaun warlock who had come to the Jaduna Cloud Forest. She recalled the man’s blue tattoos and blond beard, his brown teeth, and the way his eyes burned, like he’d seen the hells.
Loli looked like that now, smiling at Sirsha, a flash of her old self that was obscene against the warlock burn of her gaze.
“Cloaked in the night,” Loli whispered. “A cape of screams. Waiting, waiting for so long. And they cannot leave, not until, not until—”
The sheep bleated and Loli swung her head back to it, her mutterings fading. The air shimmered around her as it always did when she prepared to use her magic.
Her old friend pulled a knife from her skirt. “Hurtab.” She bowed her head to the sheep’s matted wool—and then slit its throat.
It stood for a minute, blood geysering, before crumpling to the ground. By then, Sirsha had looked away, nauseated by the sound of tearing flesh and the pungent reek of death.
Loli whispered rapidly and Sirsha caught a glimpse of something small and pulsating in her hand. A moment later, Loli pulled her shirt open.
Sirsha didn’t know what she was seeing. Bone and viscera, a cavity and then a heart beating within it. More whispered words, and the color came back to Loli’s face. The sheep lay prone on the ground. The hole in Loli’s chest closed.
And suddenly, Sirsha understood the dead animals in Loli’s house.
Loli stood, looking less dead than she had a few minutes ago. Her hair was still a mess, and her moss-green tunic was ripped and stained with blood. But her skin was flushed. If she was a spirit creature, she was the healthiest one Sirsha had ever seen.
“H-hello, Loli,” Sirsha said softly. “It’s me, Sirsh. Your favorite houseguest.”
“You should eat,” Loli whispered. “You must be hungry. You’ve traveled from the Cloud Forest. Duah-la fa sinanh cha.” Home of the first sin. Loli spoke Jadne now—Sirsha’s mother tongue. The phrase tickled something in Sirsha’s mind, but it was gone almost immediately.
Loli brushed past Sirsha, muttering in Karkaun as she trudged up the stairs. “I feel the taint of that place on you,” she went on. “Of course they threw you out. They’re monsters. Do you know what they created there beneath their trees? Do you know the paths they’ve walked?”
Her face twisted as she spoke, in a way Sirsha had never seen when she lived with Loli. That Loli had been all gravitas and dry humor. This one seemed to be battling between many versions of herself.
“What is this?”
Sirsha nearly jumped out of her skin as Div appeared beside her.
“How is she alive?” Div said, staring balefully at Loli. “She was dead. Her heart is mine. Mine—”
Sirsha stepped back, alarmed at the creature’s wrath. Div whirled on her, red hair flying.
“Ask her,” she demanded. “Ask her how she—”
“She’s not in a state to answer,” Sirsha said. “Listen to her. She’s not making any sense.”
Loli’s soft snarls drifted down toward them. Sirsha hurried after her. “I don’t see why it matters to you, anyway,” she said to Div. “You ripped out her heart. You fed on her.”
“She shouldn’t be alive,” Div said. “I feel her still, here—” Div gripped her chest, and there was a strange expression on her face, a bewilderment that didn’t match Div’s usual cunning.
“It’s not fair!” Div said. “Why should she live when—”
Loli disappeared into her home. Sirsha followed swiftly, before Loli transformed back into whatever she’d been before she shoved that heart into her chest.
“No!” Div said. “Do not go within, little witch. You mustn’t.”
“Should have told me to run in and slam the door,” Sirsha said as she passed over the threshold, “seeing as I’d rather gnaw off my own foot than listen to anything you say.”
With that, she closed the door in Div’s face.
Loli moved from lamp to lamp, lighting them with a word and a breath. She muttered something else, and the skeletons and remains dissolved into dust, taking the stench of death with them. Then she skulked to the back of the house and began to pump water into a bucket.
Even without the animal corpses, Loli’s home was a far cry from the neat and cozy sanctuary it used to be.
In the lamplight, the mess couldn’t be disguised.
Books were strewn everywhere, many stained with blood or water damaged.
The floor near the pantry was littered with broken glass—it was a miracle Sirsha hadn’t torn her boots earlier.
But it was the walls that Sirsha found herself staring at.
She realized that the blood she’d seen earlier wasn’t splashed randomly.
There were words everywhere, many illegible, ending in strange symbols.
The letters that Sirsha could make out appeared to be a mix of Karkaun and a language she didn’t recognize.
Loli returned with a bucket of water that she thrust at Sirsha.
“You should eat,” Loli said, her voice normal as before, even if what she was saying was nonsensical. “I’ve made something. It will warm you, child. It will drive away the pain.”
You must hunt for her truth.
Sirsha ground her teeth. Loli wasn’t herself. But some part of her still existed. Sirsha just had to find it. Loli was always the most relaxed when she was working at a task. As if she couldn’t have a conversation with depth unless her hands were occupied.
Sirsha cast a look around and saw a bucket of bena nuts; she handed it to Loli.
“Will you crack these open, Loli?” Sirsha said. “We can use them at dinner.”
Loli took the nuts, sat on the floor amid all the debris, and began to shell them, humming to herself as she did.
“What’s for dinner tonight?” Sirsha asked.
“A roast, I think. I have a chicken that won’t lay anymore.”
Sirsha continued a line of easy questions that would lull Loli into comfort. After a few minutes of this, Loli appeared completely relaxed.
“I was wondering—” Sirsha began. “How did you, ah—survive, Loli?”
“Bound to the river, child,” Loli said, calm as before. “Bound in my bones. The jungle gives. The river gives most of all. My last spell, my greatest. The river speaks now. I know its song.”
Cryptic, even for Loli, but Sirsha could extrapolate.
Loli had always told her that the jungle river was a more powerful force than anyone gave it credit for.
When the Nightbringer taught the Karkauns magic, he taught them only death, she’d said.
But I discovered far more power in life.
If the Karkauns knew that the magic in nature was a thousand times more potent than what they stole from spirits, they’d strip the world until it was nothing but dust.
Loli must have used a binding spell to link her spirit to the river. Perhaps when Sirsha and Quil tossed Loli into the churning water, it had been more than an act of love. It might have preserved Loli’s spirit, even if her heart was gone.