YASH STUMBLED and almost fell. She closed her eyes against the blaze of the sun.
Three times the night had come and gone since her walk began. Her empty stomach hurt. Her last drink of water had been the night before.
“I need water, Deng’jah,” she little-voiced.
“There is none,” her helper said out loud. “Not for a long while. Not if you stay on the path as you’re meant to.”
“Then I’m going to die,” Yash murmured. “Surely Grandmother knew that when she sent me here.”
“She did not mean for you to die,” Deng’jah said. “She intended for you to become improved.”
“That sounds like nonsense,” Yash said.
“There are things that live here, in this heat, with no water for months,” Deng’jah said.
“You mean like cactus and scorpions?” Yash asked.
“For instance.”
“Good for them,” Yash said. “And that’s an excellent point you can be sure to make to a cactus or a scorpion. But I’m neither, and I don’t find that helpful, Deng’jah.”
Deng’jah didn’t answer. Yash kept walking.
As the day was hot, the night was cold. The stars were like flecks of ice in the sky, the moon a ball of snow. But still there was no water and no food. She would have gladly eaten one of the scorpions she had spoken of the day before, but even they had more sense than to show themselves to the blistering sun and freezing stars. She had lost track of the distance she had traveled and had no sense of how far she had to go. She wasn’t even sure why Grandmother had put her on this path, or what was at the end of it.
Eventually, her body became more like a ghost than a solid thing. Her arms and legs were made of smoke from the fire in her lungs, but even those flames soon seemed to diminish, become less a part of her. It was easier that way. She let her mind drift far away, to cool meadows and mountain streams. Her legs carried on almost without her say-so.
As her spirit slowly disengaged from her body, she entered a canyon with high, sheer walls of striated stone.
She was hopeful, at first, because canyons often meant water in some form, but here was only a dry wash that had not run with rain in months, if not years. Her vision was beginning to blur, and even the shadows cast by the stone walls radiated light almost too harsh to look at. She imagined cottonwood and willow leaves rustling in the breeze, the smell of coming rain, the rushes on the highland lakes, an on-the-surface-it-moves-swiftly dimpling a still pool with its tiny feet.
Up ahead, something moved in the shadows. Something shone there.
Closer, Yash saw it was a woman, or what looked like one. She wore a white skirt and blouse, and her hair was all white, like an old woman’s, although her face looked young. She wore bracelets of coiled shells on her wrists.
“Hello, Little Mother,” Yash said. It was the safest thing to call the woman since Yash did not know who she was. It hurt to talk, her throat was so dry. She wasn’t even sure her words made sense.
“Granddaughter,” the woman replied.
Ah. She’d had the generation wrong. She corrected herself. “Thirst is killing me, Grandmother.”
“I can see that,” the woman said. “But as Deng’jah has no doubt told you, there is no water here. No food, either.”
“You’re not here to help me, then,” Yash said. “So I will continue on. Expect to find me dead a little further down the canyon. Thank you. May all go well with you.”
“Don’t you know this canyon?” the woman in white said. “Don’t you know what it is?”
“I do not, Grandmother,” Yash replied wearily.
“It is The Split Rocks Where They Touch,” the woman said.
“I’ve never heard of it, my grandmother,” Yash said.
“It is also called The Place Where They Changed.”
“That—that sounds familiar.”
“Think on it.”
Yash swayed, and everything grew brighter, so bright she nearly passed out. But when the dizzy spell passed, she examined the walls for clues. The tilted layers of stone lay in different colors: some red, some yellow, some grey-green. And here and there other patterns showed in the stone. Shells, the bones of fish, things that looked like strange plants but also like spiders. The hard parts of living things, without flesh or breath, made into rock. And creatures of the water, as if some ancient sea had once covered this desert.
Qeemelehk’e, The Place Where They Changed, she thought.
“My ancestors,” she managed.
“What touches here is the Silent Stagnant and the White Brilliant, the Ice Horizon and the Sky World. You recall the story of your ancestors? How they began?”
“They began as creatures like insects,” Yash said. “Some stayed that way. Others didn’t. They became other sorts of animals, and birds—some didn’t. Some became human people as we traveled from world to world. Some didn’t. Some became Rages, the Terrors That Follow.”
“Of course,” the woman said. “The world is change. Life is change. The Silent Stagnant is what-has-been. The White Brilliant is fast, like a hummingbird’s heart, and quickly destroys us. But between those things—between these walls and the sky—there is Change. Or at least, the possibility of it.”
“I’m too thirsty, Grandmother. I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me.”
“Is your body the same as it was when you were born?”
“It’s bigger,” Yash said. “And, yes, different, too. It changes all the time. I change.”
“But you have not learned your body properly, grandchild. You have not befriended it. It is not one thing, Yash. Your body is made of many things that work as one, but they are not one. Not yet.”
“I…” She could think of nothing to say.
“Your thirst,” the woman said. “Think of that first. Of your mouth, your throat, your belly, your blood. Learn them. Befriend them.”
It sounded stupid. She wanted to tell the woman to either give her something to drink or to shut up and let her die in peace. But she remembered Shede’e. She remembered the place that was no longer a place, that was creeping over outward like a disease. She remembered a dream about a monster that stood like a mountain on the horizon. She closed her eyes. She thought about her thirst and the pains in her belly, about her raw throat, and the illusion she had been painting in her mind of inviting places faltered and dissolved, drawing her spirit back into her suffering so that she was completely there, in the heat, in the pain. In her failing body.
It was awful, and part of her wanted to retreat again to the safe, easy places in her mind. But now that she was here, in her flesh, with her bones, she began to understand what the woman in white meant.
So she spoke to herself the way she had learned to speak to spirits, to the land, to all sacred things.
“My thirst,” she sang softly.
You are a thing alive
I see you now
I have nothing to give you but myself
And my gratitude
For without you, my thirst,
I would not know myself
All of myself.
Thank you, my thirst.
Let us be one together
Let us not separate
I will never again deny your existence
Even when I cannot give you ease
Even when it hurts
And I fear my death has found me
You are mine
And I am sacred
And I embrace you.
And as she sang, she felt her thirst somehow grow less. Or the agony of it, anyway. And now she knew what she was doing. She sang on—to her hunger, to her hands, her arms, her legs—and as she did, each of them became real to her in a way they never had been before.
And as that happened, they changed. All of the parts of her changed. And it hurt. But she was no longer fearful of the pain, no longer ashamed of anything. She screamed in agony and in delight. And when it was over, she opened her eyes, and was new. And whole. And stronger than ever.
The woman in white was still there. She nodded and smiled.
“Deng’jah,” the woman said. “Take Yash to Lightning Place so that she can master what is taught there.”
Yash started walking again, feeling everything, but now certain that she could finish the journey.
AS BRIGHT’S strange creatures emerged, their eyes crackled as if their gazes contained lightning, which, perhaps, they did. But this time Yash was ready. She felt their white gazes travel across her body, burn her nerves and muscles, but she accepted the pain. She let her body face their sorcery and let it change her as she had changed in the canyon. Let herself become better.
It hurt, of course, terribly, as change often did. She gasped in agony, and she saw Bright’s triumphant, gloating expression.
But Bright did not know what was happening.
The flashing in the monsters’ eyes grew brighter, deadlier. Yash grasped the bag Needle’s head had been in by the bottom and spun around in the Complete Whirlwind feat. She had emptied the salt Coral had given her into the bag, and now it flung out into the chamber. The air filled with the smell of lightning, hot stone, and salt. Made furious by the effulgence of the deadly gazes, the salt flared into incandescent sparks and blew through the room like a sandstorm. The little monsters shrieked as the burning particles flew into their eyes. They closed their lids against it, and the deadly light, the crackling lightning, was gone. The monsters continued to wail, their deadly eyes tightly shut.
Bright gaped. He looked from her to his monsters.
She gave him that second. Then she took the whirlwind to him.
Bright ran. He was much quicker than he looked, but that wasn’t what stopped her from reaching him. Even blind and deprived of their most lethal weapons, the xualudeh were still a nuisance. They swarmed around her, beating at her with their wings, which, as it turned out, were like sharpened glass at their edges. In instants she was covered in shallow cuts. She grabbed one by the neck and slammed its head into the stone floor and kicked another so hard it flew across the room. They were hard to kill, these little monsters. They didn’t have much weight, so her punches and kicks just sent them flying off, but they weren’t fragile. They kept coming back. She had managed to crack another’s skull on the floor when Deng’jah appeared on her shoulder.
“Jump out the window,” he said. “Now.”
She didn’t question him. Batting her way through the bird-monsters, she ran for the nearest window. A glance back showed Bright had returned and was standing in the doorway holding a bow, pulled back to shoot.
As she tumbled through the opening into the night air, white-hot heat scorched her back and she was half-deafened by a clap like thunder. The entire roof lit up as if in a flash of lightning, like a hole had been opened into the White Brilliant. She smelled her own hair burning. She managed to hit the roof on her feet, but it was a long drop and knocked much of the wind out of her. She knew she didn’t have time to recover, though, so she dashed back toward the tower, jumping through the lower window by which she had first entered. As she did so, another explosion of heat and light erupted, this one on the rooftops.
A glance back showed a big smoking hole in the roof, fire licking at its edges. Below, where she couldn’t see, people screamed in agony and shock.
Bright had turned the weapon he’d been using on her people against his own.
She clambered back into the tower, back into the room with the stone pillars and bones: the door to the White Brilliant. She stopped long enough to pick up what looked like the femur of something, about as long as her own forearm. It was twice as heavy as it looked. Hefting it, getting a feel for its balance, she charged up the stairs, with Deng’jah flying ahead.
Bright was waiting for her, half-hidden behind the doorway, arrow pointed down the stairs. She hurled the bone and kept running, knowing that if he managed to shoot that arrow, there wasn’t much she could do. Reaching him first was her only chance.
But luckily he’d had to wait to see her before drawing the bow. Its pull was probably too strong to simply hold. The bone hit Bright on his drawing hand before he could begin bending the weapon. He screeched and dropped both bow and arrow, then backed up, drawing a long knife similar to the one she’d had to leave on the roof. She saw his skin had also changed; he was covered in glistening gold scales.
She checked her charge and dodged to the side as Bright cut at her. The weapon was fast, as if it weighed no more than a willow switch. She stamped on his instep and punched him in the armpit. The scaly armor he had plated himself with absorbed most of the impact, but he nevertheless grunted in pain. He thrust at her with the knife, or tried to, but she was already inside of his reach, so she caught his arm and twisted it, disarming him and taking the weapon for herself. Before he could react, she had sliced him across the throat with the blue-white blade.
But the knife didn’t cut him; it turned on the golden scales. Bright cackled and punched her in the head.
“No blade can cut this armor,” he said as she staggered away from him. He ran toward the bow and arrow where it lay on the floor.
“I see that,” she said. She noticed the bone she had thrown lying nearby. As he grabbed the bow, she picked it up.
“That’s too bad for you,” she said.
The scales couldn’t be cut, but the armor was flexible, and the organs and bones underneath were no stronger than those of a normal person. It took longer to beat him to death with the bone, that was all. When she was done, and she was sure of her work, she went to investigate within the room and found all of the xualudeh were dead, burned up by Bright’s flying-star arrow.
“The guards are coming up,” Deng’jah told her.
“How far?”
“They’ve just started.”
She picked up the bow and the eight arrows Bright had with him and shot one of them down the stairwell then ducked back into the room to avoid the explosion that followed. She went quickly back to the remains of Bright’s xualudeh.
“Deng’jah?” she asked. “What’s happening on the stairs?”
“That didn’t kill any of the guards, but it sure scared them. They’ve stopped coming, for the moment.”
“Good. Tell me if they start again.”
She placed a hand on one of the strange little corpses and closed her eyes.
“I am sorry, my foe,” she sang.
I am sorry.
But we were fated to fight
And me or you and yours to die
I am sorry, my foe
I am sorry I do not know your name
The enemy captors had a name for you
Xualudeh
Minaqe Yeł Heqani
Some called you
In the language of my People.
But that is also a monster name.
What is your real name?
The place that gave you life
And meaning.
Where is your place?
I want to know.
For a moment, nothing stirred. The smell of burnt feathers and flesh stung her nose and the back of her tongue. Outside, she heard the distant wails of the injured and shouts of alarm. The sleeping fortress was now awake.
She pushed all that aside and repeated her song, more softly this time, placing all of the weight of her concern on each word, tone, phrase.
And in the space behind her eyes, something began to glow. Little yellow-green sparks drifting up from the grass, winking against the darker line of the forest beyond. A handful of stars in the deep blue sky twinkled in reflection on the quiet surface of a lake. On the horizon stood shadows of mountain peaks outlined in pale gold, and a gliding, low-throated song lifted up to fill the valley. More distantly, another song rose and fell on the faintest of breezes. She knew the shape of the mountains; she knew the valley she was looking across, the lake, the tree line. But this was not as she had seen it. This was as it had been once, before she was born. Before the hunters took its soul away.
It was where Shede’e had taken her. The first dj’ende place she ever saw.
Tears started down her face. She coughed to clear her throat.
“I see you now,” she sang.
Hush’ełdiik’e’, Whippoorwill Place
Ch’eh’mikunik’e’, Firefly Place
Wesdzik’e’, Owl Place
Be what you were
What you are
Before they unshaped you
Light the Dusk
Sing to the twilight
Be in Harmony
You are free now
To make your home
A Place once more.
The air in the room stirred. For a moment, she felt a mountain breeze and heard the songs of whippoorwills. A handful of glowing sparks wafted out the window. Yash paused, feeling the spirits, feeling their power. She could use that power right now. Bright had awakened the fortress. Things were about to become much more difficult. Why send these naheeyiye home when she could use them to fight her enemies? She knew their names. She knew how to do it. With their power added to her own, she would be very powerful indeed. Once victorious, she could free them again.
But she felt their longing, their sorrow. Their wish to return. She would not—could not—enslave them as Bright had.
She took a deep, slow breath and let it out. And they were gone.
She realized that Deng’jah was trying to get her attention and had been for some time.
“The guards,” he was saying. “They’re here.”
Yash jumped up, slipped one of the flying-star arrows onto the bowstring. Its head crackled and spit sparks. She pointed it at the man standing on the landing.
She found she was looking down the shaft at Deh, the xi she’d talked to downstairs. He stared at her, his face washed out by shock, a bladed mace in his hand.
“What… what did you just do?” he asked. “What went out the window?”
“Something the Empire took from my people,” she said. “Something I have now returned to its proper place.”
“The other guards are behind him,” Deng’jah said. “They’re getting ready to charge you.”
“And you killed Master Bright,” Deh said.
“Yes.”
His gaze picked about the room and settled back on her. “You have his bow. Was that you shooting the whole time?”
“I shot it once, the last time, to warn you not to come up the stairs. Before that it was Bright. He’s the one who blasted a hole in the roof outside.”
“You killed a tower master,” Deh said. “And his monsters, you killed them, too. How did you do that, Tchiił? Who are you? You aren’t a courier.”
“Listen, Deh,” Yash said. “I know the other guards are behind you. I know they’re getting ready to charge. If they do, I’ll kill them. All of them. If you doubt me, consider what you see here.”
“I don’t doubt you,” Deh said. “But my duty—”
“Your duty was to protect Bright. You didn’t. He’s dead. How many of your men have children at home? Spouses or lovers? Fathers and mothers and siblings? I’ll tell you this, Deh, and you can believe me. I am here to destroy the tower masters, including the Emperor. I thought that meant killing everyone here: every guard, every soldier, anyone who lends their arm to the Empire. And it might still. But I know now I don’t want to do it like that. It makes things more complicated for me, but that’s what I have decided. And I’m taking it one situation at a time. In this situation, you and your men arrived too late. Bright is already dead. If you had died trying to protect him, that would be one thing. But if I’m forced to kill you now, who does that benefit? Not you. Not me. Not Bright. Not Needle or Yellow, who are also dead. Not the other tower masters, not the Emperor. If you live now, you may choose to fight me again, later, when you have a chance of winning. If you insist on fighting me now, I let this arrow go, and you know what will happen. All of you will die without laying a hand on me. Is that how you want it to be?”
Deh stared at her for another few heartbeats.
“You’re right,” he said. “But if we just let you go we will die anyway, executed for cowardice.”
“Not if I was gone when you got here,” she said. “Not if you never saw who murdered Bright.”
She lowered the bow. “Think about it,” she said. Then she ran and jumped out of the window again. She might have to kill them eventually, but right now the thought of cutting down the men she had been speaking to earlier was not appealing.
But there was more to it than that, something that was starting to itch where her mind and her soul came together.
However difficult her task had been, when she came here it had at least been simple: kill the tower masters and anyone else in the fortress who got in her way, defeat and free the captive spirits of her country. That was it.
So why was she complicating things?
“I think there’s something else that needs your attention,” Deng’jah said.