WHEN LIGHT and knowing came back to Yash, she was standing upright. Master Pinion was sitting in a stone chair not far away, studying something on a table by the light of a large lantern. She tried to start toward him, but found her limbs wouldn’t move. Her feet seemed a part of the floor, and in the same breath she understood that her body wasn’t holding itself up but rather was gripped by some unseen force, as if a powerful wind had somehow become motionless but retained its strength. As consciousness returned, so did pain and profound weakness.
Pinion didn’t seem to have noticed she was awake. She was able to move her eyes, and so she wandered them around what she could see of the room without turning, which she could not do.
To her right four slim pillars of blue stone connected floor and ceiling, arranged so their bases formed a square with sides the length of her arm. On her left stood another four pillars, these made of black stone. The pillars in front of her were white, flecked with silver. All of this was visible in the light of Pinion’s lantern, but it wasn’t enough to illuminate the rest of the room, which remained shadowed to her eyes.
“Master Pinion,” she said.
He frowned at what he was studying—she now saw it was a sheaf of papers with writing on it—then looked up at her.
“Hello,” he said. “I wasn’t sure you would wake up again, considering your wounds. I’m impressed. And also hopeful, because I’m having trouble deciding what to do with you next and you might be able to help me. But we have no time to waste. You could die at any moment.”
“You could tend my wounds,” she said.
“I have already done what I am able,” he replied. “I removed the arrow, and I bound your ankle. But you are bleeding inside. I’ve slowed it as much as I can, but there is no stopping it. Anyway, you won’t need that body for long.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ll have a new one soon,” he said. “It’s only—there is so little time, and the match has to be right.”
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” Yash said.
“You killed my bird, Ruzuyer,” Pinion replied. “You must replace him.”
“No, I don’t think I must,” Yash said. “Tch’etsagh was not a thing you owned. Neither am I.”
“Saying that doesn’t make it true,” Pinion said. He narrowed his eyes. “Anyway, it isn’t about that, is it? It’s not about my vanity, my pride in my power. Don’t you know? Don’t you see what you’ve done?”
“I’m tired,” Yash said. “And as you point out, dying. Can’t you just explain? Imagine I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“The tower monsters. Don’t you know what their purpose is?”
“What did I just say?” Yash replied.
Pinion sighed. “Just so. I’m wasting time. This caution, this—trying to guess who knows what and who doesn’t. It is an old habit, born from years of dealing with the other zuen”
He folded his hands together.
“Your people, my people. Both came here from the Moon World. This you know.”
“Yes,” Yash said. “Mine came many years before yours. Fleeing yours. The Hje had gotten too friendly with the monsters.”
He shrugged and held up his hands. “Perhaps so. But your people left, and some few generations passed. There was a war, a terrible one. Those who survived fled the destruction of the Moon World; we came here, to this place, and found all of the things we needed to endure. But we also made enemies, of course. Barbarians, savages. We had to fight to keep this place, to preserve civilization. Fight we did, and we became good at it. We extended our domain. But what we wanted most was peace, the peace we could never have in our ancient home.
“Then the Emperor tamed Nalzhu, the first xual. We don’t know where he got it, although most of us believe it came from your country, Zełtah, because it is filled with them. Nalzhu’s power was great. In time, it was too great. We began to fear the Emperor and his monster. And so we—the tower masters—found xual of our own. Using the sorcery we derived from them, we were able to tame the Emperor’s dread beast, to keep it in check. To render it quiescent, asleep even. This curbed the Emperor as well and made him receptive to our advice and guidance. This balance existed for centuries.
“And now, in less than a day, you have slain five of the xual and four tower masters. The balance is gone. The Emperor’s monster is waking, and it is angry. It knows its restraints have loosened. You saw what happened to Ruzuyer, yes? Or what did you call him? Che something?”
“Tch’etsagh,” Yash said. “Yes, something took him. The same thing happened to the Wejetsjah, the one you called the Beast.”
Pinion’s brow wrinkled impressively. “I didn’t know about that,” he said. “I knew he was slain, but not that Nalzhu took him. Even worse. He has two xual, then; their power joined with his own. And the others you slew?”
“They are gone,” Yash said. “Safe, back where they belong.”
Pinion nodded. “Qaxh still has his Thing, Xuehehs his Nasch, and Zuah his Taxual. Unless you know better.”
“I did not slay them.”
“So three remain. But the three of them are not enough. Not alone. Nalzhu will devour them, just as he did the Beast and Ruzuyer. But I will remedy that.”
“And this involves me, I take it?”
“Yes. You will be my new xual.” He smiled. “You, who have worked so hard to destroy us, now will be our salvation.”
Yash tilted her head. Was he joking?
“Are you joking?” she asked.
“Not at all.”
“But I’m not a spirit,” she pointed out.
“You are much more than bone and sinew,” Pinion said. “That is evident. You are linked to your country, much like the tower monsters. You derive strength from it, as they do. And you have this.”
He lifted something from behind his lantern. She saw it was a glass jar, sealed at the top. Through the distorted glass, she saw a blue-green insect, a big-one-who-carries-things-in-his-basket. Deng’jah.
“I’m not a naheeyiye,” she said. “Neither is he. This will not work.”
“It will work,” Pinion replied. “I was one of the first tower masters. I know the process. How I made Ruzuyer, for instance. Our hunters found him, long ago. The spirit of a place, its stone and earth, its plants and animals, its weather, its essence. A spirit as old as existence with no form and many forms, a spirit that has changed many times as the world itself changed. But in all of those shapes, all of those incarnations, there are one or two incarnations that represent the bleakest, angriest, most destructive form it has taken or might take. Once we discovered that, we shaped it to our needs and it became Ruzuyer. And that is what I shall do with you. But what is your nature? What are you in the Dream of the World? Qaxh would be able to see that easily, as I cannot. Unfortunately, Qaxh cannot be trusted. He is rather mad. But I can work in my own way, through the worlds that surround this world, of which everything is some admixture. The White Brilliant. The Silent Stagnant. The Sky World. The Ice Horizon. Ruzuyer was all of these in part, but he was mostly a creature of the Sky World. You see? Around you are gates to those four worlds. Once I guess your dominant nature and open that corresponding gate, I will be able to create a xual version of you.”
He leaned forward and poked a bony finger toward her. “But understand this,” he said. “If I shine the light of the wrong world upon you in this state, it might kill you outright. I spent a year in research before incarnating Ruzuyer. In your case, I have only a fraction of this night to make the right decision. So, please, help me.”
He was right, she realized. He could indeed make a monster of her. She felt that promise from each of the gates. But he was also wrong: whichever gate he opened, she would be bent to its power. She would be lost.
All but one of them, perhaps.
“This is all nonsense,” Yash said. “I am human, born of human parents.” But now she understood what he was about to do. And what she had to do, if she could manage it.
“Your insect friend is not human. Or an insect. And you are bonded to him. Which is it? Where should I search for your true nature? The White Brilliant? The Ice Horizon? The Sky World? The Silent Stagnant?”
“No,” Yash whispered.
“I heard that,” Pinion said. He sat still for a moment then smiled slightly. “You meant for me to hear you. You want me to think your connection is to the Silent Stagnant. You would rather die, I see, than serve me. But you haven’t tricked me. I surmise from your pretension that the Silent Stagnant is the wrong choice.”
“I meant ‘no’ to all of them,” Yash said.
“No, you didn’t,” he said, waving the back of his hand at her.
“Believe what you want,” Yash said.
“I already knew,” Pinion said. “All the signs pointed to it. But in trying to deceive me, you have helped me be certain.”
Yash closed her eyes. She took a deep, slow breath.
“You are dying,” Pinion said. “I am out of time. Answer me and you will live, albeit not in this form.”
“I have done what I could,” Yash said. “I do not fear death.”
“The opposite of the Silent Stagnant,” Pinion said. “The White Brilliant. That’s the answer.”
Yash didn’t open her eyes. But in the next instant every inch of her body burst into flames, inside and outside. She tried to hold back a scream, but one tore from her lips anyway.
She took a very long, deep breath, although it brought nothing but greater agony. She held it.
My arms
My torso
My head
My organs
My breath
My bone
I have listened to you before
Now listen to me
It is time to change again.
She opened her eyes and found herself surrounded by blindingly bright sheets of rainbow that curved away in all directions. The still wind that held her was gone, and her dying body crumpled to the ground. Her heart beat with the speed of a bee’s wings; she felt the blood pooling within her. Her thoughts came sluggishly, seeming to take days to form as her body rushed toward its end.
But then, slowly, her mind sped up, going faster until her heartbeat seemed normal, until the blood moved into her veins and her body responded to what she was asking of it.
We are a tree, filling our wounds with sap
We are a burned forest, sprouting green again
We are skin making scars
We are bones knitting
We are a lizard, growing a new tail
We are a sea-star, spreading new hands.
Her pain began to fade. The strength in her center began to move out into her limbs. Her body changed, male, female, both, neither, over and over again.
The rainbow faded, and now she stood on a plain of salt. Mountains drew blue lines in every distance under a white sky. Her heartbeats merged until they were no longer distinct, just a humming in her bones.
A figure stood watching her. It was bone-colored, only slightly darker than the salt. It didn’t cast a shadow. It was inconstant, changing shape and size constantly, so her gaze could not easily fix on it.
It moved toward her.
She didn’t see the point in waiting. Her fingers became curved knives as her skin hardened into chitin. The thing coming for her changed as well, became a huge bear with sun-bright fur. It flung its arms to gather her in a deadly embrace, but she leapt high, tumbling over its head, stabbing her claws into its rock-hard skull. When she landed, it had become a scorpion, its venomed tail striking down. She slashed that half off, but her claws stuck, and she realized the creature was made of pitch. It began to melt, forming a pool, sucking her arms farther in. She was already up to her elbows. She snarled, set her feet, and pulled harder, but the pool was oozing toward them, too.
Together, the creature said. Together we will be stronger.
She knew that was true, but it would also be the fulfillment of Pinion’s plan. She would become his new tower monster.
I’m strong enough, she returned. She was remembering the time she had traveled to the western ocean, what was left of the Ocean World, before dry land came from the Ice Horizon. At one of their camps, her cousin had shown her a tree oozing pitch and the insects that lived there. They hadn’t been in a hurry, and she had studied them for hours. Pitch wasps, someone had called them.
Remembering, she changed, fluttering her wings, pulling her thin, slick limbs from the sticky pool, and taking to the air. Below her, the creature was changing again, but she saw a thin sliver of shadow now, the doorway out of the White Brilliant. She entered it, regained her human form, slowed her heart, quieted the air rushing in and out of her lungs with the speed of a hurricane.
It might not be enough, she thought. When she passed through the shadow she might burst into flames and fall into a pile of burnt bones. But better that than to have the thing Pinion had called catch her, swallow her, become the skin of her xual.
She went through the opening. She smelled lightning and burnt air. Her eyes were open, but she saw only blackness like a night without moon or stars.
She could hear, though. The rasping of her breath in her ears. The rapid hammering of her heart. She was cold, freezing, shivering so hard she couldn’t stand.
“Master Pinion?” she gasped. “Pinion?”
He didn’t answer.
And she began to wonder where she was. Had she somehow ventured into the Silent Stagnant? Was she a skeleton encased in stone? Or was she frozen inside a glacier in the Ice Horizon?