CHAPTER XXIV

 

Izhar poked Chuman. "He hasn't moved at all."

The giant was a perfect statue gazing toward the mountains.

"Should you…wake him?" asked Sidge, uncertain.

Izhar twisted his lip and then spoke with finality, "No." He hobbled down the rise to a level spot, slid down the face of a smooth boulder, and closed his eyes.

Confused, Sidge followed. "Why not?"

"Because I could use a break." One eye re-opened. "With your permission, Master."

"A short one then," replied Sidge. In truth, he watched Izhar's haggard appearance with concern and decided he could have all the rest he wanted. Izhar closed his eyes again and groaned contentedly as though the rock he nestled against were a down mattress.

"How is it when we first found Chuman in the marsh that you knew to tell me to strike him with the Fire?" Izhar asked, his mouth twitching as he relaxed.

"What? Wake him?"

Izhar mumbled a half-awake confirmation.

"Back at the…" Sidge let the silence carry his meaning, unable to recount the site of Gohala's massacre. "I saw him stir under the carriage when you called on Vasheru. Then I recalled the first strike outside Stronghold. Chuman had performed a feat of strength after Kaaliya said he bathed in the Fire." Shame curled his antennae as he remembered the jealousy which had prevented him from sharing Chuman's deeds. "Something I…I never mentioned."

Izhar made a satisfied noise. "Well then," he mumbled.

Sidge waited for him to say more, but the sound of heavy breathing followed. He dropped into the lotus and watched his mentor sleep. Raucous snoring ended, replaced by a steady wheeze. The man's troubled look melted away. Sleep. A peace unavailable to a bugman except at the bottom of a bottle of thornsap.

Sidge's wings shredded the air. He needn't dwell on his past mistakes. No Wisdom would come from that. Trapping his unruly limbs against his back, he put his hands on his knees and intoned a deep note.

Vasheru was his guide. The Storm Temple. Nothing else. He couldn't afford to be driven off course ever again. If the marsh had taught him anything, it was how close to disaster he had tread.

Such a fragile grip, he needed greater control. He needed to reach out to the Dragon and prove his worth, for Izhar's sake and the sake of his lost brother, Farsal. Also for the Temple, soon to be without a leader in perilous times. This had gone beyond a matter of succession. It was a matter of leading the others on the proper path. Gripping the pendant at his neck, he recited a simple channeling. The corestone remained cold.

Maybe Izhar's suspicions were right, and he could never call the Fire. Izhar had yet to explain his reasoning fully. Even the brash heretic had run out of answers on their maddening journey. That must be why he'd been desperate enough to conspire with Chakor.

Sidge wished Izhar had shared his inner pain sooner. Maybe he could have helped, found whatever answers needed to salve his master's soul. Yet answers had not been easy for either of them to uncover, only more questions.

Why would Vasheru want this bugman to know the messages of the Wisdom and then deny him the means to call for it? Why had it taken a puffcap-addled Cloud Born to bring him the supposed truth?

Then again, there'd been no puffcap present in the marsh. Or had there? Trolls harvested it deep below the surface along the tips of roots. Perhaps it bloomed under the sleeping tree. Or perhaps whatever passage meant to be opened in Izhar's psyche had already been pulled asunder when he first used it, the spores taken root.

Or maybe puffcap never meant anything at all. That would be just like a troll.

If he couldn't channel holy Fire, perhaps he shouldn't try. What of channeling the Wisdom instead? Pulling Vasheru's power into oneself, exposing your inner soul to the Dragon to be judged. Mastery of the Fire always came first, according to the rules.

That day in the vardo, he'd been ready to accept his fate when he reached for Izhar's corestone at the center of Vasheru's blessed light. He'd been ready to give himself completely.

Then, it had been to save Izhar or die in the attempt, or so he'd told himself. He'd had a fleeting desire to encounter the Wisdom. That desire had quickly become a matter of survival. Surely Izhar couldn't go on without his faith. And of himself, he knew if he were not a Cloud Born, not an adherent of the Stormblade Temple, he had but one place.

Sidge held Chuman at the edge of his vision, letting the horizon wrap unbroken around him, night dying on one end and day sprouting on the other. To the north, a vast darkness loomed, and he imagined he could see the storm over the Sheath.

Wind rose on the stagnant air, and his antennae lapped at his forehead and eyes. His wings snapped outward and fluttered.

Leave everything as it is.

How could he? Always, countless images bombarded him. Extra limbs taunted. Antennae flickered across his lenses.

Sidge resolved to recite mantras until Izhar awoke. Given the time, he'd recite all twelve thousand, one hundred and sixty-two, each with perfect pitch and intonation. Such feats had been cast aside as a nuisance long ago when the Trials and parts of the Rebellion had been relegated to indecipherable mystery.

He reached out for the placid calm he'd uncovered in the blackness of a thornsap haze and found it close at hand. With the song silenced, he could tell the frozen world they inhabited teetered on the verge of being, and his mind balanced with it. He imagined the Undying Storm, just over the northern horizon.

Starting with the Trials, he made his way through the Wanderings of Alshasra'a, the Empty Palace, and the War of the First Born. So loaded with metaphor, Izhar had been the last one searching for their meaning. The last one that is until, close to finding it, the Master withdrew. Why?

When Sidge reached the Four Corners, the mantra which had marked the start of their pilgrimage, an unsettling feeling struck him as he recited the events of the past with the heavens locked in place.

 

Fire in the clouds

Knowledge in the Earth

Life in the waters

Shelter in the stone

 

Mighty Dragon, Child, Father and Mother

Blessed are the four corners

Farthest reaches of all creation

Freed are we from stone upon stone

 

Go forth

Seek the corners

Where the Worldblood pooled

In timeless dream

 

Timeless dream? They were lost there at this very moment. If he could hold each phrase in his mind at once and behold their beauty, more answers might be revealed. Salvation at hand. Izhar twitched restlessly.

Where he'd imagined he could see the Storm, the sky darkened. A boiling mass pushed toward the valley. Lightning arced and clouds glowed gray and clean like pristine robes. Shadow blotted out where silver and red met.

Then it struck.

Energy surged against Sidge's chest. An invisible force enveloped the corestone, and he held motionless, entranced by the coming storm. Wisdom boiled in its smoky grasp, he could feel it, and he wanted it to pour down and fill his soul. He wanted it more than anything. More than he wished to right the temple. More than he desired to find her, among the reeds, her soft lips waiting. More than he'd wanted to save his Master's life.

With a renewed sense of purpose, he dove into the mantras and began the four thousand and sixty-fifth of the Rebellion, the Black Wind Pursues. His throat felt dry and coarse, but he maintained the intonation flawlessly.

 

Death and ash rise on desert heat

The Khasmin darken the sky and scour the flesh

Kurath will show no mercy!

 

Kurath, the First Named. Kurath the Slaver. He would return. Lost to the ages, no one truly believed. Yet as Sidge sunk further into mystery, he felt the danger lurking just beyond his sight. Yes, as foretold, Kurath would ride from his Sun Palace to wreak havoc on the world. He would not suffer defeat at the hands of his insolent slaves. The Temple needed to be strong. Prepared for his return.

After the last mantra of the Rebellion came the Forge and the founding of the Stormblade Temple. An order headed by the most faithful, by those who knew Vasheru's will. They could not afford to leave the sanctum empty as the Stormblade warned. Nor could they fill it with politics and faithless lies.

Izhar had been drawn astray by Lord Chakor and his games, beaten down by Gohala's venom. Sidge had been left alone to restore the foundations. If this were the will of Vasheru, then so be it.

 

Four pillars I shall make of the teachings

To hold aloft the heavens and cradle Vasheru's power

To begin before time and end with my Rule

 

Shadow swept across the valley. Izhar stirred. A single light pulsed inside Chuman's body, tinted the hue of a blooming rose as it burned underneath flesh.

Around his neck, Sidge felt a weight as though a millstone hung there. Instead of dragging him forward it pressed him into the earth, and he imagined he could be a pillar, a great pillar that withstood the weight of the heavens on cabled tendons and metal rods.

The corestone leapt upward and hovered parallel to his chin, taut against his neck. Izhar's face appeared in the blinding glow. The former Cloud Born's lips moved. Sidge heard his name, yet his mentor's eyes were locked on the stone which radiated an all-consuming light. Struggling to hold onto the emptiness he'd found so easily, Sidge reached the final mantras of the Rule, the last of the twelve thousand.

 

Stronghold stands

Upon foundations of blood and sacrifice

Ruled by Wisdom, protected by Fire

 

Until the final mantra is spoken

From the highest heights and the deepest depths

Stronghold stands

 

The mantras all meant something. He would know their truth.

Energy sheathed him. The glow of the corestone was the weight which pinned him, a luminance denser than the rocky earth. Like the beginnings of Vasheru's Kiss, except instead of a prickly embrace it was the weight of an ocean. Mantras raced inside his head. He spread his arms beneath the blackened sky to receive what this could only be: Vasheru's Wisdom.

He'd called it. Channeled it. He was ready for answers. Proof that he, the lowly bugman, hadn't ever needed protection, hadn't ever been at jeopardy of losing his way. That his "kind" could be trusted with Vasheru's power and that the Mighty Dragon had indeed chosen him.

Above, a face became the heavens, peeling back the surging clouds. Cavernous eyes burned in flared, platinum cheeks. Lip curled, fangs bared, Vasheru's cry blasted them as if the firmament would be torn asunder.

Acolyte and master both flattened to the ground. It tore through Sidge's insides. The resonance needed no translation.

Insolence.

Hubris.

They were inconsequential motes on His divine wind.

No visions or riddles or flashes of enlightenment accompanied the presence, nothing but a stark realization. He'd been wrong to ever believe he could call Him. An ant guiding a horse. A thread lifting a mountain. Righteous fury sounded in the Dragon's terrible cry.

In this space between worlds, Vasheru had come and come of His own free will.

The pendant strained against his neck then the chain snapped. It hurtled toward Chuman. For a moment, the world darkened, and the glowing pendant tumbled through it.

A bolt of light ripped the black silk of the sky. At the center was Chuman, perched on the boulder's lip immersed in a column of snaking energy. The hurtling corestone flared and struck the giant, burning a gaping hole through his muscled flesh.

Then blackness returned. The weight released Sidge. His vision blinked in, one lens at a time, as if he floated up out of the abyss.

Even blind, he could feel the presence of the Storm Dragon withdraw.

Across from him, Izhar marveled, dark skin blanched and the white of his beard glowing bright and swollen in the afterimage of the strike. He stared in awe at the retreating storm.

"It was Him," croaked the heretic. Eyes wide, jaw heavy, he focused on Sidge. "You did it."

Insides drained and hollow, Sidge couldn't reply.

Pushing off the ground one palm at a time as though unfamiliar with an upright stance, he navigated to his two feet. On the rise, Chuman began his descent and Sidge took a tentative step to follow.

Stunned, Izhar called out to him again, but his antennae relayed dull mutterings. He knew he'd said the words and felt the Kiss. Even so, Vasheru had spared no Wisdom for the bugman. Instead, a being with metal bones had been granted whatever power or insight the Dragon intended. Sidge's every sense focused on their divinely chosen leader, the one who would take them to the truth.