It took no small effort to persuade Haesha and the others that I really, really needed to sail back to Blight before we went home to Joabei. Because I was the only one who could tell Sedam—or Vo Lai—that his plans had been foiled and have a half-decent expectation of surviving. And it needed to be done, because while the war might be over, the true threat—the architect of it all, whose selfishness had pitted nations against one another and led to hundreds of thousands of deaths—remained untouched and undeterred from trying something else.
We had the wraith cloaks in the hold and a bunch of unspun Eculan wool besides, half of it dyed that exquisite indigo from the island of Slivovi, and half undyed. Both our fame and riches were assured when we got home, and we were so close. Haesha pointed out correctly that we had pregnant women getting closer to their due dates and that we had already escaped death so narrowly so many times that it would be foolish to flirt with it again. But I couldn’t go home without fulfilling my promise to let Sedam know what happened, not least because I truly wished to see how he reacted, but also because it behooved us to prepare ourselves for what he might do next.
We anchored off the east coast of Blight, never approaching the dock, and I told Haesha to give me a day before sailing home without me. I fastened a wraith cloak about my neck and gave her a stern warning: “Do not, under any circumstances, come ashore to look for me. If I don’t return in a day, I’m dead.”
Haesha had already argued with me and it had been settled days before, so she only nodded, said, “Aye, Zephyr,” then requested permission for a hug.
As we embraced, I whispered, “I intend to come back, but if I don’t, you are the finest of friends and I wish you long life.”
I grasped the sides of her head and used my kenning as a balm to heal her scars from the pine shrikes. Haesha felt the change, gasped, and put her fingers to her face, feeling the smooth skin there.
“What did you do?”
I smiled through the pain that effort required and kissed her briefly on the forehead. “Just being a balm.” I likewise healed the scars on Leisuen, even regenerating the lost cartilage from her ear, then summoned wind to fly me to the kenning site and landed in front of the throned god. The grass between the paving stones, I noted, had grown somewhat unruly. But as before, there were no wraiths in this area; they preferred to keep their distance from Sedam, no matter what state he was in.
I took a closer look at him; his stonelike skin was of a slightly different hue than the marble statues of his siblings. A faint rose blush to it, perhaps. He had obviously sunk into his dormant state while he waited for events to play out. I wanted to put an end to that waiting.
Removing the wraith cloak, I spoke to him in Joabeian. “Sedam, it is Koesha Gansu, and I have come to you with news. Please wake so I can tell you what happened.” I repeated variations of this for perhaps a half hour, keeping a nervous eye on the surrounding forest. If any wraiths decided to risk coming for me, I wanted some warning.
The rose blush of the marble eventually deepened, and the eyes cleared and focused on me. The stone cracked and then smoothed again as it transformed to skin, and the lips finally moved.
“Koesha. Welcome. I see you have used your powers as a balm. You look significantly older than the last time I saw you. What news?”
“First, let me remind you of your promise to do me no harm.”
He smiled indulgently. “I need no reminder. I wouldn’t think of it. But that’s an inauspicious beginning. Have you come to deliver bad news?”
“When I left, you spoke of events in motion that you could not stop and that had an even chance of succeeding.”
“Yes, I remember.”
“While I don’t know precisely which events you had in mind, I believe your schemes have come to naught. Your army in the north is destroyed and will not be bothering the krakens. And the second invasion from Ecula will never happen. The fleet is burned, your cult is outlawed, and a new government rules there now. Isposnik Draško is dead by my own hand, and the kraljic slain.”
He clutched at his throne, visibly seethed for a few seconds, then calmed himself with an effort before grinding out in a tight voice, “How is this possible?”
“An alliance of the nations and people blessed by your siblings. All six kennings against the seventh.”
“Six kennings?”
“Yes.” I pointed to the last statue on my right. “Your sister finally blessed someone. A young Nentian man who calls himself a plaguebringer. He can speak to any animal, including a kraken, and they obey him. That allowed us to cross the ocean with our fleet. He walks around with a bloodcat.”
Sedam’s face reddened and he bellowed at the sky in frustrated rage. Then he slumped back on his throne, defeated. “I did not think she would ever bless anyone. She played a much longer game than I did. So all is lost.”
“For you, perhaps. Your siblings are still determined to keep you here. For the rest of the world, I believe they would say all is won. Ecula will rejoin the nations as a trading partner.”
He covered his eyes with his hands. “So much work ruined. I should have made that last fool a harvester of souls. He might have tipped the scales in my favor, had he been there.”
“Perhaps.”
Sedam abruptly sat up, eyes boring into mine. “And you say you played a crucial role in this defeat. Where did you kill Draško? Was he at the temple?”
“If you mean the temple of all gods, then no. He was at the Cloister.”
“And how did you do it? Your kenning should not have threatened him.”
“A sword through his head that he never saw coming.”
“Ah. I suppose that would work. And did you burn all of Sveto Selo down with the fleet there?”
“No, the city stands, except for the Citadel and the Cloister. But the fleet was at Riba Oči in Drvo.”
He slumped again, since I had passed his tests. “So it’s true. You were really there.”
“Yes.”
He sighed. “A result far short of what I hoped, but much as I feared. Outmaneuvered again by my siblings, so my exile shall carry on. I am so tired. And…defeated.” He fell silent and looked around despondently. I dared not disturb the air with my breath. Eventually he continued, his voice moribund. “I cannot bear to think of enduring this isolation for centuries more, with no allies left and no hope of escape. Perhaps it is best to give you the final victory you crave and give myself an end to this torture.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll make it clear shortly.”
He rose from his throne, standing on the dais, and spread his arms out from his sides. He looked to his left and then his right, spoke in a language I did not recognize, and beckoned to the trees with outstretched fingers.
And then the wraiths that had been absent from the temple grounds came to visit.
All of them.
They streamed past me, moving backward, as though pulled against their will. And I realized that they were being summoned against their will—summoned to Sedam—and they fought to escape like people fighting to stand against a hurricane. Then they were consumed, as he absorbed them one by one and glowed with their collected power. By the time the last one had been sucked into him, he was nearly too bright to look at, and I had to squint against the glare. But he exhaled slowly, and the light dimmed.
“There,” he said. “This island is no longer plagued by wraiths. A boon given freely to all. And for you, to show my gratitude for bringing me this news, I return all the years you have sacrificed thus far, and then some.”
His arm outstretched to me, and I felt my body firming up, my skin tightening, the vigor of youth returning.
I didn’t know what to say, so stunned by what I had witnessed that the breath of Shoawei escaped me.
“Much better. You look to be the paragon of health and vitality. And if I can beg a boon from you, I hope you will not consider it an imposition.”
I snorted in disbelief. “What boon could I possibly grant a god?”
“You have already seen how I prefer to escape boredom and wait out the years, correct? I slow down my body’s rhythms and needs and grow a skin not unlike stone.” I nodded, and he continued, “But you perceived that it’s not quite stone, if you looked closely?”
“Yes.”
“Good. So you will know the difference this time. I am going to leave this world by transforming myself fully to stone—a metamorphosis that requires tremendous energy. I ask only that you let it be known.”
I blinked at him a few times. “Known to whom?”
“To whomever you meet. But primarily to my siblings. They have stunted the growth of this world to keep me in exile, and it’s time for them to give everyone their freedom.”
“How would I let them know? I can’t speak to them as I speak to you.”
“They will hear it at the kenning sites if people shout it long enough and loud enough. Though I’m not sure about the sixth. How did she make that work?”
“The source changes every few weeks among different groups of animals who attack the seeker. Bloodcats, monkeys, spiders, whatever.”
“Clever. Might be dangerous to inform her, then, but I hope it can be done. They should know of my passing.”
“Very well…I will do that, if you, uh, you know. Actually do that.”
“I will do it now, since waiting accomplishes nothing. I have waited a very long time already and thought of such an exit on numerous occasions. But I wish to thank you, Koesha, for keeping your word. You have proven to be a formidable adversary but also the closest thing to a friend I have met in centuries. There are much worse ways to go than a pleasant conversation with a remarkable person.”
I didn’t know what to say. Was he simply being polite, or was he trying to flatter me for some reason? What reason could he have if he was about to commit suicide? I merely nodded once, and he returned it. Then he sat back on his throne, arms resting on either side, and spoke again in that old language. He glowed briefly, then his mouth closed and his face arranged itself into an expression of peace. He paled even more than was customary, and his clothing likewise lost all color as it transformed into marble along with his whole body, rewriting the very codes of flesh and fiber and transforming to something other. The entire process took less than a minute, and I stood still, watching him, for a full minute afterward. Was this real? Had that just happened?
I crept closer, comparing the tone of his marble to that of the actual marble of his siblings’ statues, and saw that it matched. I stepped up to the dais and snapped my fingers in front of his blank eyes. I tickled underneath his jaw. Tugged on the solid protrusions of his braided beard. I climbed up onto the chair, standing on his thighs, and delivered a swift but ineffective kick to his stone groin. Not a single reaction. He either possessed tremendous restraint or he really had chosen to become stone.
“No way,” I breathed, and since it was uttered without thinking, the breath of Shoawei speaking through me, it deserved some thought. Why did I not believe the evidence of my own eyes—and the evidence of my touch? He both appeared and felt like marble. What else could he be?
A sneaky, conniving anus of a man, that’s what. The kind who farts silently and blames someone else for the stink.
The kind who manipulates an entire civilization with lies so that it attacks others. The kind who sheds not a single tear for the deaths of uncounted thousands just so long as he gets what he wants: freedom from consequences. I did not believe he would suddenly accept them now.
And the rest of us were not free from the consequences of his past behavior, so neither should he be free of them. It was because of him that krakens cursed the oceans. It was because of him that my sister died, and all her crew and countless crews before her, and a third of my crew as well. Though I had to admit that it was also because of him that I was blessed, as were so many others, if his stories of the Rift were true.
He’d had too much power over this world, even in exile and forgotten for so long. I did not think he would willingly give it up or exit gracefully for everyone’s benefit; he was the sort to stay alive out of spite. Someone accustomed to long-term scheming would never make such an abrupt decision, no matter how much he protested that he’d thought about it for ages. I was certain this had to be a trick, because he was Vo Lai the White Demon and not to be trusted. But I was unsure what to do with my certainty.
I descended to the courtyard stones, somewhat nervous because I worried that the wraiths hadn’t all been expunged. There could be some lingering at the perimeter of the island. It would be best to confirm their absence, so I picked up the cloak from where I’d dropped it and resettled it over my shoulders.
My eyes fell on the temple opposite Sedam’s throne. What was inside? I’d never taken a look. It was time.
Once I stepped over the threshold, I discovered that the shrine and relics and candles I expected were not there, nor any altar or priceless paintings or art of any kind. It was nothing more than a fancy toolshed, meant to appear sublime but housing the mundane. It contained everything one would obviously need to maintain the temple grounds, as well as some other items whose intended purpose was not so obvious. There was a stack of split logs for firewood, but I had seen no firepit. There were tools for outdoor work and fine finishing tools for carpentry but no evidence of why they might be needed. Perhaps there was more on the island that I had yet to discover, hidden beneath the canopy of trees. A garden, perhaps, or even a dwelling of some kind, if Sedam felt like being present for a while.
My gaze rested for a time on a particular tool without registering what it was or why my eyes wouldn’t move on. Some distant flurry deep in my mind stirred and whispered of possibilities, of the many paths a leaf might take as it falls to the ground, of the often vast differences between our plans and their executions. But that uncertainty, applied to me, applied to everyone else as well. I seized the tool with both hands and lugged it out of the temple, leaning to one side with its weight, then realized it would be easier to simply drag it behind me. My plan, in the end, was pretty simple.
Was it rash? Ill-conceived? Perhaps. But he had fooled us all for so long. If history wished to call me rash and unthinking, I’d prefer that to being called a gull.
With some spirited grunting and no little effort, I clambered up onto the new statue of Sedam with my prize. Balancing precariously with my feet planted once again on his thighs, I stood over him and lifted the tool over my head. Calling to Shoawei for help, I summoned a bit of wind to give me some extra velocity as I brought the sledgehammer down with all my strength and then some onto the crown of Sedam’s head. A large chunk of his forehead shattered into pieces, leaving a sizable, ragged dent, but it certainly felt like stone upon impact and broke apart like stone, none of the crunching of bone.
Except that the statue jerked and moved afterward. It even produced a grinding, inchoate cry of surprised pain.
Sedam was still alive! He’d been trying to trick me after all, and if he got any words out, maybe he’d rip my soul from my body and eat it like he did all those wraiths.
Horrified and furious and needing most urgently to end him, I struck again and again, all the while screaming, “Die, Vo Lai!” until my voice cracked and I went hoarse, wheezing past ravaged vocal cords.
After the seventh strike, he finally stopped moving. His head was essentially rubble, and even if he managed to return to flesh after that, he’d have no head. But in the very center of the ruin, there was a spot of color: It was blood. The very core of him was still flesh. Was that because I’d interrupted the transformation before it was complete, or was it his plan all along?
The former was possible, I supposed—who knew how much time such magic took to work. But the latter, I thought, was more in keeping with the character of a conniving anus. All that power he absorbed from the island’s wraiths—power he’d purposely saved for a very long time, judging by their numbers—couldn’t have been necessary to transform him to stone. But it would be necessary to transform him back. Or—since he had said metamorphosis was a one-way street—transform him into something entirely other. Something that wasn’t exactly Sedam, something that maybe his siblings would miss. When caterpillars spun their cocoons, they dissolved into goo inside before re-forming as butterflies or moths. This stone exterior might be his cocoon.
That made much more sense to me. The way he’d led me on and suggested that I tell everyone what happened here betrayed his design. The very fact that he’d stored up wraiths for literal decades, only to consume them now, meant that he had planned something like this a long time ago. If someone like me—a reliable sort who worshipped a different god—reported he was dead, then maybe the krakens wouldn’t patrol the oceans anymore. Everyone would let their guard down, and he’d be able to escape. And it would be my fault.
There was no way I’d let him use me like that.
I went back to work, with the same determination if not the same level of frenzy as before, because all that energy he’d inhaled was still in there, and if it was capable of healing him, of regrowing a head or transforming him into something else, I needed to destroy it. The people of Teldwen needed to be free of him. No more sisters lost to the deep. No more brothers lost to war.
His arms had risen somewhat and moved inward to grab at me, and I was trapped in an incomplete embrace, which I discovered when I tried to back up and got poked. But once I struck the arms off, I was able to focus solely on the torso. The pool of blood thickened and widened the farther down I went, and it bubbled too. The heart was still pumping, albeit weakly. That needed to stop.
I kept going, even though my arms felt like noodles. I toyed with the idea of bringing some sailors in to help me but dismissed it. This was a job I needed to do. It wouldn’t pay for the lives of my lost crew or my sister, but at least it would prevent anyone else from losing their loved ones because of this despicable god.
Two more strikes and the beating heart was exposed, pulsating in a hollowed-out cavity of solid marble. It had a small shimmer around it, like an ethereal protective shield. Which I supposed made sense, or else the impacts from my strikes would have already damaged it. Just to make sure, I swung at the heart, and the hammer bounced off it with such force that it was torn from my hands and clattered to the pavestones below. But I had my answer regarding his intentions.
There would not be a shield around the heart if he intended to exit the world. He had planned to come back somehow, no doubt about it, and swim away while no one was looking.
I drew my Bora—forged in likeness of the sword that was supposed to defeat Vo Lai the White Demon so long ago but never did—and pointed it at the heart. I hesitated for a moment: Could I even pierce that shield? And if so, what would happen when I tore a hole in a vessel that contained so much stored energy? Would it destroy me?
It didn’t matter, I realized. All that mattered was making sure that it was destroyed and that the seventh son of Kalaad and Teldwen could never scheme against humanity again.
I wept, realizing I might well die. “Shoawei, forgive me my countless bad decisions. Maesi, I am so sorry I never found you. May my crew and family forgive me my pride and stubbornness and innumerable faults. May they never forget that I loved them.”
Then, certain that I was doing the right thing, I plunged the tip of the Bora into the heart with a quick stab, feeling it slice through the shield and sink into the flesh, and let go of the hilt.
As I feared and expected, the heart exploded.
But most of the energy shot straight up through the rent I’d created and engulfed my sword, and the rest of it crumbled the stone surrounding the heart, reducing the statue’s torso to pebbles, more than a few of which knocked me back off the statue and perforated my chest and the arm I threw up in front of my face. They didn’t penetrate to any fatal depth—but my uniform was shredded and my cloak torn up. The well-spun wool prevented anything from penetrating to my skin, though, so I only had injuries down my center, where the cloak didn’t cover completely.
Moaning, I sat up and picked rocks out of my chest and forearm, the wounds bleeding freely. Could I use my blessing as a balm to heal myself, if not restore my own youth? Yes. I aged a little, but the bleeding stopped, the skin closed.
Struggling to my feet, I examined the remains of Vo Lai the White Demon. The legs below the knee were still intact, but they had no blood coursing through them. I’d obliterated everything that could bring him back—though I’d make utterly sure of that.
My Bora was a twisted, blackened snake of metal, practically slag. If I hadn’t withdrawn my hand, no doubt it would have been melted off. I would keep the sword as a souvenir, but it needed time to cool before I touched it. Good enough: I gathered winds to return me to the Nentian Herald.
After explaining, I brought a cloaked squad of sailors back with me—no wraiths seen—and we dumped every single piece of Sedam’s stone remains that we could into the wheelbarrow and took them out to the ship. We even broke down the remains of the legs, leaving only an empty throne and six untouched statues.
Once the Herald was loaded up, with everything stowed, I finally gave the order everyone had been waiting for: “First Mate Haesha.”
“Aye, Zephyr?”
“Set a course for Joabei. Take us home.”
The general cheer was loud and sustained, and it swelled again as I filled the sails with the breath of Shoawei. Our faces soon hurt from smiling so much. That is a rare pain but one that I relish.
I dropped bloody marble pieces of Sedam—our ancient adversary, Vo Lai the White Demon—into the ocean at intervals as we sailed, scattering him into the abyss.
Once we cruised upon the open ocean, where we knew there simply had to be krakens roiling in the deep, and we were no longer under the protection of a larger fleet, I spotted signs of worry among the crew. What if Abhi’s enchantment on our hull failed? And even if it didn’t—well, there was plenty of guilt to go around, the sort that survivors feel when tragedy strikes people they know. We would be facing the families of the lost crew members soon, seeing their crushed expressions and hearing their howls of grief. They would ask the same question I asked myself: Why had I lived when others had died? They deserved to be here every bit as much as I did. And I know many people in Brynlön and Rael must ask themselves that question too. It never goes away, that guilt, and it lurks like a longarm in a coral cave, ready to emerge and strike when least expected.
“There’s no satisfactory answer to your question,” I called in Joabeian, which left out the Nentians among us, but it was appropriate in this case. The crew turned their faces to me. “I mean the one you’re asking about why you’re still here. I will tell you this: You must live in such a way that you discover the answer yourself. For my part, I am following clues. I am here to love and protect you. I am here to complete, with your help, a historic journey that so many of our sisters were never able to accomplish. I am here to witness and celebrate a new generation,” I said, gesturing to those who were pregnant. “But that is not the fullness of why I am here. I will need to discover that each and every day. And those days will always contain a measure of mourning, and another of regret, but also a measure of pride and a measure of hope, and, if we are fortunate, a measure of more discovery. And so I order you now to do what we must all do until we die: Carry on.”
I whispered a soft but earnest prayer to Shoawei when I tossed the last piece of her—or their—little brother into the sea. Perhaps they would not be able to hear it, now that I knew they were bound to specific places in the world. But it was deeply felt nevertheless.
And our faces hurt from smiling again when we spotted Joabei on the horizon. We were not expected, but a small crowd had gathered anyway by the time we docked, because we had come from the deep waters without krakens consuming us and our ship didn’t look precisely Joabeian.
I’d prepared the crew for this: We did not immediately disembark. We lined the rails instead, with our Nentian partners in plain view and the painted name of the Nentian Herald facing the quay. Because this was history—the first crew to circumnavigate the globe—and we wanted as many people as possible to witness the moment so they could tell their friends and family that they were there when we docked.
Our hold full of Eculan cloaks and wool would fetch us a pretty sum, but the true prize—the indisputable truth that we had been around the world—was the Nentian husbands.
Joabei comprises only two islands, the northern one being inhospitable and unable to sustain life except seasonally. As such, we have strictly limited our population to ensure that all those who live do not have to starve. Women earn the right to bear children by serving the nation somehow, and exploration is the only guarantee of earning that right. It is the most dangerous and most esteemed activity to our people. We have all indisputably earned children.
To others—Omeshans, for example, and certainly Eculans—our restrictions make no sense. But the Omeshans live on bountiful islands, and the Eculans reproduced so far past the ability of their land to support them that they wound up becoming starveling people who fought for more land, ribs showing through their skin so that the Brynts called them Bone Giants—or maybe the bone armor they wore had something to do with that nickname, now that I think of it. They earned it either way.
I was pressed with suitors after my return but distrusted them all, since it was so clearly a result of my fame and newfound fortune. We sold our cargo for an enormous sum; the cloaks, enchanted by a now-dead god halfway around the world, fetched even more than we thought. It was enough to purchase additional ships. Haesha, Leisuen, and I started a new trading company and were immediately flooded with merchants eager to trade with Brynlön and Rael.
I captained the Nentian Herald, Haesha captained Maesi’s Legacy, and Leisuen captained a ship she named the Plaguebringer, after the young man who’d saved our lives twice and made it all possible. Using the trick we learned during the counterattack on Ecula, they sailed their ships in tight formation with mine so that the enchantment on the Herald’s hull would protect their ships as well.
Our trading would no doubt prove to be immensely profitable, but that was not so important to me as another errand when we reached port in Pelemyn to formally begin our mercantile relationship with Brynlön. Before I could attend to base matters of goods and coin, I needed to visit the pelenaut and inform him of what had transpired on Blight, that the Mistmaiden Isles were now clear of wraiths, and that Joabei would like to settle an island or two—along with anyone else who wished—if he would be agreeable. I handed over letters from our leader, introduced a woman who would be our ambassador to Brynlön, and delivered this account to the historian Dervan du Alöbar. Then I visited the Raelech embassy, there to engage a courier or, if not, their speediest conveyance to a courier in Rael who could find Abhi, wherever he was in the world, and this is what I sent:
My dearest friend and brother in my heart,
Žalost—or Sedam, or Vo Lai—is absolutely dead. I returned to Blight, destroyed him with a sledgehammer and my sword, and have personally scattered his dismembered remains in the Peles Ocean. You can inform the kraken in the north, she can lift the curse, and then all nations can sail freely at last and become a united world.
I would expect you and the old kraken to verify first. But to prove that this is me and not some trick, here is something between us that never got shared by the bard, and therefore is unknown: One night in Malath Ashmali, you were getting drunk with Haesha, Leisuen, and me on the beach by the howling tube. Despite your warning that you were not attracted to women, Haesha tried to kiss you, and you fell backward over your bloodcat to avoid it and then staggered away into the dark. She was monumentally embarrassed by her poor judgment, and we still tease her about that. And we all still adore you. Haesha and Leisuen send their love with mine.
Let the world know when it is done?
Forever yours,
Koesha Gansu
I hoped I would see that dear boy again, and if I did, I would most certainly require another hug from him. But if circumstances never allow it, I shall count myself blessed to have known him for an all-too-brief span in the sunshine of my life. I am forever a leaf on the wind of Shoawei, and they have sent me to so many unexpected places.