Ayae was struck blind.
In panic, she felt herself stumble backwards, felt her hand drop to her sword, felt a curl of flame open inside her, ready to strike out in defence. But the ground began to fall away, the sand not sinking beneath her heels, but rather turning to emptiness, as if nothing was below her. She desperately tried to regain her footing, tried to find solid ground—
There is a road beneath your feet because there is a road beneath mine, Ayae. It is narrow. It has been made by children who play in a lake nearby and it is surrounded by trees that turn brown and skeletal as the hard winter begins to approach. Ayae could feel mud beneath her boots and she stumbled in surprise at its touch. Despite her bad footing, she continued to walk, even though she had no desire to do so. You are not alone on this child’s path. Tinh Tu’s words were hard and precise, a steady and sure narrator. It is the path that my family and I walked a thousand years ago. A walk guided by a blue light. It is a single strange light that grows and grows until you come to the edge of the woods and you stand before Asila.
The city lay before her unlike any she had seen before. Its shape and form followed the side of a large mountain. Halfway up the mountain, on a flat piece of land, a dark tower rose in a straight line. From it a long path wound its way down to the base of the mountain, ending where the sprawl of the city began, nestled against both the natural and unnatural creations that reached high into the sky. It was from the city that the light that had guided Ayae through the woods originated. It was not a natural light, but it swept through the streets of Asila with a certain softness, and she felt, for a moment, that comfort was offered by it. Yet the longer she gazed at it, the more the comfort began to turn into a great sadness, an emotion that was shared by the men and women who began to appear beside her.
Our brother’s book had come to all our nations that season, Tinh Tu said. The seventy-first Samuel Orlan had written to us before, to warn us, but in our arrogance we had ignored him. It was not until each of us held the book that we began to sense the madness that gripped Qian. It was then that we heard about the horrors that were taking place in Asila.
Beside her, Jae’le stepped past Ayae and began to walk down the slope and into the city. He was different from the man she knew now. His face was full, he was clean-shaven, and his hair was shorter, the length of it tied back into a short tail at the top of his skull. At his waist he wore a pair of swords, the hilts an elaborate design of a fierce, taloned bird, the likes of which Ayae had never seen before. The leather armour he wore was beautiful. Strips of dark green leather had been woven into the stitching, the colour blending with the thick, green-feathered cloak he wore, the cloak he still wore. Jae’le was followed by Eidan. The stocky man wore a chain-mail vest made from dark metal, and though it reached up to his neck and over his impressive shoulders, it did not cover his thick arms. Instead, a leather shirt ran down to his wrists and ended where leather gloves began. Over his back he carried a huge, two-handed axe, the whole piece a construction of steel, rather than a mix of wood and metal. It must have weighed a ton, but Eidan bore it with no discomfort. Aelyn came after him. The armour that she wore was light, thickest at her chest, but around her arms it was only solid black cloth. Despite that, there was a severe quality to Aelyn’s appearance that surprised Ayae. Her hair had been cut against her skull, just as the rest of her body had been stripped of any fat, leaving nothing but muscle, blunt nails and a certain raw violence that surprised Ayae. Lastly, Tinh Tu emerged from behind her, holding the same ash staff that she held now on Yeflam’s shoreline. She wore robes of the finest fabric, made with the finest needlework.
Ayae followed the four down the hill to the outskirts of Asila. The houses defined themselves in the glow of the blue light, but what struck her most strongly about each building that she passed was not the colour, but the stillness in each of them. It felt ingrained, as if it had become part of the brickwork and timber, as if it filled the open windows and opened the shutters and the doors. In those gaps, Ayae saw wilting plants, rotting food, and she smelt an odour of decay that soon began to choke the air around her.
The first haunt she saw was that of a boy, no older than eight or nine. He crouched on the side of road, a rotting arm held in his grasp, the flesh torn open by his teeth.
At the sight of him, Ayae thought of Fo and Bau in Mireea, of the haunts that had torn into the flesh of the two Keepers, ripping them apart as if they were of no consequence. Yet what caused the sadness in her to deepen was not her memory, but rather the half-starved, feral look on the haunt’s face as he spotted the brothers and sisters walking down the road. With a swift motion, he scooped up the limb he had been eating and ran further into the city and into the heart of the blue light where Ayae knew, without a doubt, the main collection of the dead awaited.
The men and women beside her spread out as they continued towards the centre of Asila, yet, with no will of her own, Ayae remained beside Tinh Tu. Wordlessly, the old woman led her through empty buildings. Inside them, Ayae saw bodies in states of decay, the skin torn, the blood drained and the bones broken. Next to them lay spoiled food and broken plates and cups. Not one body looked as if it had been ready for what attacked it. In this way, each new street saw a new series of horrors unfold and each new street saw the sadness that emanated from the brothers and sisters grow. At the fourth, a sense of inevitability began to rise in each of them. Because she followed Tinh Tu’s memories, the thought began with her, but she knew, also, that Jae’le, Eidan and Aelyn thought as their sister did. By the time the pale glow from the city centre wound like a low fog around their feet and circles upon circles of dead flushed with Zaifyr’s power came into the sight, the four siblings had reached a terrible consensus.
For over ten thousand years, the dead had spoken to Zaifyr. For over ten thousand years they had whispered to him about the endless cold and about the hunger that accompanied it.
For over ten thousand years, they had asked him to stop it.
As the dead flushed with Zaifyr’s power began to part, as they created a path for his brothers and sisters to walk into the centre of Asila, Ayae realized for the first time the depth of the horror that Zaifyr had lived with. She finally understood the burden that he had inherited and accepted as his own. She saw the awful tragedy of his life, of the immortal life that saw the fate of all mortal men and women, the life that knew that everyone he loved and did not love ended the same. She understood, too, how he was powerless to alleviate their horror without creating a fresh, new horror. She saw for the first time the strength that he had to have to live with that for as long as he had. The discipline it took not to allow it to overwhelm him, for it not to consume him. But as she followed Jae’le, Eidan, Aelyn and Tinh Tu towards the huge, empty temple where he sat, the temple that had been built for him by the men and women who believed him to be a god, she saw the loss of all that control, all that discipline, and the madness in Zaifyr’s eyes. She saw that and knew that it had been inevitable. No one person could bear that burden. Only a god could hold such suffering and sadness within itself, could allow it to be the foundation of his or her divine being.
But none of them, she knew, was a god.
And that, Tinh Tu said softly to her, is how we came to realize that our beloved brother had to die.