Chapter 21 Sirsha #2
“And—how long will this link between you and the river last?” Sirsha asked.
“The river speaks,” Loli said again. She stopped shelling, and her face was shadowed and gaunt. “It knows you. The Vessel will shake the world. It felt you coming, so I felt you coming.”
“What do you mean?” Sirsha asked.
But Loli only lifted her hand to her heart, as if pained. “Do not trouble me, child,” she said. “It aches so. I—cannot say more.”
Guilt ate at Sirsha, but her need for information was hungrier. “I need help, Loli,” she said. “I know it’s hard, but please, think.”
Loli grimaced. “I knew you’d bring that thing with you.
” She put her hand on Sirsha’s shoulder, and suddenly she was the same hawk-eyed version of herself she’d always been.
The one who dragged Sirsha from the muck.
Who cleaned her up and put her back together after she’d been broken by her family and all they’d left her to suffer alone.
“They cry out, Sirsha,” Loli went on. “You must hear their pleas. You must listen if you wish to free yourself of this shadow. If you wish to free all of us of it.”
“You mean Div.”
“She chose you, Sirsha. Why?”
“Because I’m the idiot who tried to bind her,” Sirsha said. “She’s leeching off me and I can’t break free. Help me. Please. I need to kill her, but I don’t know how.”
“Oh no.” Loli shook her head vehemently. “No, child. Death will not sever her from you.”
Sirsha went still. She thought of what the wind had said. You seek her weakness. Instead, you must hunt for her truth.
“Where is Div’s truth, Loli?” Sirsha said.
“Why did she choose you?” Loli asked, and Sirsha wanted to shake her. She felt sharp and short-tempered. Because she was tired and hungry—
Or because Div was changing her. She thought back to how she’d felt when Dolbra had died. That brief moment of rejoicing.
No, she thought. A fluke. Sirsha forced herself to find her calm. The wind had sent her here for a reason. She needed to discover it.
“Ik tachk mort fid lodra fi,” Loli said, and Sirsha recognized the phrase.
The version she’d heard was Ik tachk mort fid iniqant fi.
It meant “Death feeds the great sea.” It was a Karkaun reference to the Sea of Suffering.
It was there that the Soul Catchers cast all the suffering of mankind so that human spirits could move to the after unburdened.
Mauth, the source of all magic, presided over the sea.
Ik tachk mort fid lodra fi. Sirsha knew the word lodra, for Loli had used it when Sirsha had been injured. It meant “wound.”
“Death feeds the great wound?” Sirsha said.
“That is the heart of it, child,” Loli said. “You cannot kill her. You cannot bind her. No human can. If you hear only one thing from me, hear this: you must know her.”
Seek the truth.
“I want to know her.” Sirsha tried to be patient. “How do I find Div’s truth?”
Loli nodded, as if considering. “Find your own first,” she said.
“What does that—”
“Stop!” Loli said. “Stop your incessant questions, girl, my mind is splitting.”
But she couldn’t stop, because nothing Loli said had been particularly helpful, and Sirsha wasn’t about to give up because her undead friend had a headache. She thought back to what Kade told her.
“Div is from the Sea of Suffering, is she not?” Sirsha didn’t know if it was true, but it didn’t hurt to toss the theory out there. “How could something escape from there? Could it have anything to do with Karkaun death magic?”
Loli chuckled, a guttural cough that was nothing like the joyful, rare laugh she had in life.
“Karkaun death magic never belonged to Karkauns, girl,” she said. “It was brought to us, I told you. An outsider taught us to harness the power of ghosts. He who was the Meherya, the Beloved. King of the jinn.”
Loli leaned forward, her bloodshot eyes wide, pupils pinpricked. “The Nightbringer. If it is Karkaun death magic you seek, then you don’t need a Karkaun. You need a jinn.”
Sirsha’s stomach sank. “The jinn don’t concern themselves with humans,” she said. “And the Nightbringer is long dead. Are you certain—”
“The jinn can bind her. No other. And only if you learn her story.”
Suddenly, Loli pushed away the bena nuts. She lifted her head to the air, like a bloodhound scenting prey.
Then she began to kick Sirsha, who stumbled to her feet, grabbing her pack and swinging it on. “Stop, Loli!”
“Out—get out of my home! You’ll bring them down upon me!” Magic crackled in the air. Loli was gathering it to use against Sirsha, muttering in Karkaun.
“Please, stop.” Sirsha didn’t want to leave Loli like this. She didn’t know if her friend was living or dead, or what possessed her or how to save her. “No one is here—”
“Run, Sirsha!” Her friend’s old voice broke through, both terrified and enraged, fighting something within herself once more. “Remember my words and run.”
Loli shoved Sirsha out the door, slamming it behind her. The waterfall roared, bugs and birds chittered. Div, lurking in the shadows beside the falls, glanced up at Sirsha, eyes glowing amber as she braided her hair with small hands.
“Where shall you run to next, little witch?”
Sirsha said nothing as she observed Loli’s door, considering.
Hope flared in her chest, the first time she’d felt it in skies knew how long.
The jinn were in the Forest of Dusk. And Loli believed they could help.
She knew more about magic than most Jaduna even.
Sirsha trusted her. The journey would be long, and Sirsha would need to filch provisions along the way, but at least she knew what to do next.
A soft sound echoed from the jungle below the falls.
A familiar kind of music, one that recalled the immense trees of the Jaduna Cloud Forest and her mother bending over her, pulling a blanket up higher; the pounding of hooves, the stars above as she camped beside her Kin when they were on the hunt; smoke tainting the sky, a village set aflame. What have you done, S’rsha?
Jaduna coins. That’s what she’d heard. Her stomach sank when she understood what the sound meant.
Her people were here. They’d come for Sirsha.
Sirsha ran, taking the path that led directly into the jungle. She might be able to lose them if she was fast enough.
“Should have told me to run in and slam the door.” Div flitted alongside Sirsha, mimicking her voice. “Seeing as I’d rather gnaw off my own foot than listen to anything you say.”
“You hag,” Sirsha panted. “You wanted me in Loli’s cave, because then they’d be able to catch up to me. I won’t let you hurt them.” Sirsha pulled out a knife as she ran. “I’ll shove this in my own th—”
Something hard hit her in the back and she flew forward, striking the earth with bone-jarring speed, her dagger flying.
“No!” she cried out a warning. “She wants you to catch me. She wants to hurt you!”
Magic hummed. Pain—ten bleeding hells. As if her blood was on fire. They must have a Khind with them.
Sirsha couldn’t help the scream. It was roaring out of her before she fully understood what had happened. Then she was gasping as the Jaduna materialized like wraiths and yanked her hands in front of her. They gagged Sirsha, their magic binding her so tightly she could hardly draw breath.
A figure approached through the scrum. Familiar and once beloved. Her brown skin was tinged green in the jungle’s half-light, her black hair shot through with silver. She wore the full headdress of a Raani.
Sirsha looked into her mother’s eyes, half expecting Div.
But the dark pools that stared back at her were filled with regret and resolve instead of nothingness. Ma looked older. So much older than when Sirsha had last seen her.
“Daughter,” the Raani of Kin Inashi said. Her voice was raw with sadness. “It is time for you to come home.”
Sirsha tried to speak—to warn her mother. But before she could, a hood dropped over her head and darkness closed in.