INTERLUDE

CORENNA

Approaching Jati’Ras’Tyat

Jatasi Land

Twin kicks to the walls of her stomach drew an unconscious hand, rubbing her belly as she walked. The sensation had grown familiar as the seasons changed. A child moved inside her. Everything from flaring moods to swollen nipples and sleepless nights could be laid there. Love stirred along with it. A dull ache, accompanying the pain of loss, the reminder of all she’d done to bring herself here. And still she hesitated.

“Kirighra will come,” Ka’Yiran said. “Make yourselves ready. He will not allow us to enter the sacred place; nor will he strike at us when we are together.”

One of the Uktani women turned to her as Ka’Yiran began the work of splitting the company into teams of twos.

“Have you faced kirighra before, honored sister?” Irinna asked. A girl, only a few years younger than Corenna herself. Irinna eyed nearby great beasts as she said it, the ipek’a and munat’ap wandering freely among their warriors, as though they were no more than domesticated dogs and horses. A dire wolf—munat’ap—stalked ten paces from where they stood, eyeing her and Irinna together, and nothing Ka’Yiran said could convince her it wasn’t weighing them both for suitability as prey.

“Yes,” she said in reply. “A new beast, but I faced one in the company of a guardian, during my travels.”

“So it is best, to hunt them in twos?”

“It is. Kirighra will strike the stronger of the pair; it will be up to the weaker to finish the beast before it can kill.”

Irinna’s face paled. A heartening word might have softened the task, but she hadn’t come to the Uktani to befriend them. As hard as her days had been among the Sinari, the weeks she’d spent here were harder, smothering her emotions and waiting for Ka’Inari’s visions to manifest themselves.

“Irinna,” Ka’Yiran said, finally approaching where they stood. “You will travel with Arak’Utai. Corenna, our Ranasi sister, you will come with me.”

The words froze and echoed in her mind, and she fought down the nerves that came with them. Now, finally, she and Ka’Yiran would be alone.

Irinna spared her another glance, perhaps hoping for the missing words of encouragement, before the Uktani girl went to find the Arak to whom she’d been assigned. Ka’Yiran watched the younger girl go before he turned to Corenna, snapping two fingers to signal her and the munat’ap both to follow. She felt her growing belly in every step now. It took an effort to keep pace with the shaman, who made no allowance for her frailties—just as well, since she would ask for none. The munat’ap strode beside her, hovering a step too close as they moved deeper into the wood.

“You are certain, honored sister, that the women have blessed your coming with us today?” Ka’Yiran asked.

“Yes,” she said, fighting to keep her composure. Close, now. So close. “I am fit to travel, and to fight. These are not times for mothers. If I lose my child, I lose it. The strength of our tribes is too important to do otherwise.”

It hurt her to say it, a feigned callousness she feared could all too easily become real. But Ka’Yiran only nodded along.

“That is the last Ranasi in your belly,” Ka’Yiran said. “Your words do your tribe great honor, but it would be an ill thing, for the Ranasi to pass altogether from this world.”

Memories of burnt bodies, broken tents stirred deep within. A simmering anger she had to force to quell. “I will fight,” she said, and left it at that.

They walked together, a trio of man, woman, and beast, deeper into the wood that marked the location of Jati’Ras’Tyat. She could hear the other pairs assigned to draw out kirighra, but more dimly with each step. Two dozen hopefuls, more than she had ever seen in any tribe. She could almost hear Ka’Inari’s voice, sounding in her memory, and fought it down. Who could say what the Uktani shaman’s gift could see?

“Your father,” Ka’Yiran said abruptly after they’d walked no more than five hundred paces into the wood. “He saw the coming of these troubling times, didn’t he?”

“My father’s gift was strong,” she said.

“This is why you wield so many of the spirits’ gifts,” Ka’Yiran said.

She said nothing, tracking close as the munat’ap paced beside them.

“I have watched you, Corenna of the Ranasi,” Ka’Yiran said. “You came to us in need, but not weak. I have watched for sign of a man to claim the child growing in your belly, and seen nothing.”

What was this? If he’d seen some hint of her purpose here, he wouldn’t waste breath on words. “The father is gone,” she said.

“Dead?”

She feigned calm over top of hate, but made no reply. Better not to think on Arak’Jur, for fear of drawing the shaman’s visions too close to the truth.

“I have seen promptings from the spirits,” Ka’Yiran continued. “A guardian’s child grows in your belly.”

Fear spiked through her, and she prepared the gift of ice.

“The father is Arak’Doren, isn’t it?” Ka’Yiran said. “Before he was slain by Sinari treachery.”

“We are meant to be hunting kirighra,” she said, turning away to hide her relief. “Why do you ask me these things?”

“As I said, I have watched you,” Ka’Yiran said. “If the father is Arak’Doren, I am sure he would give his blessing for your child to be raised by a fellow guardian. I was Arak’Yiran before I became Ka.”

She turned back, finding an earnest look from Ka’Yiran as he’d stopped to face her. She’d come here as an assassin, keeping her distance until the time was right, as Ka’Inari had instructed her at the Sinari sacred place. She’d been prepared to give everything—her life, her unborn child—to stop the Uktani, to kill the shaman who hunted Arak’Jur. And Ka’Yiran had asked her to consider taking him as her man.

“I hope you will consider it,” Ka’Yiran said. “We have placed great trust in you already, but it could be more.”

“I’ve told you what I want,” she said. “Revenge for my people. Perhaps when that is done …”

He nodded, a solemn gesture she hoped would put an end to this line of talk. “This is good,” Ka’Yiran said. “It is just, and right. But the spirits see more for you, Corenna, and for me. Vengeance is a hollow salve; your father will have taught you as much. Even now they whisper to me of things-to-come. I see you, alone, with a child at your breast, in need of a protector in spite of all your strength.”

Her heart pounded, suddenly all the more aware of the munat’ap and the forest around them. If he called on visions of her, it could draw all too near her secrets.

“I see you leading an alliance of many tribes,” Ka’Yiran was saying. His voice had grown distant, too distant, as her father’s had done when he received a prompting from the spirits. “I see a great battle, at the walls of a fair-skin city. I see a reunion, between you and …”

He stopped, pausing to look at her with disbelief.

“… the Sinari guardian,” Ka’Yiran said. “Arak’Jur. You come to us, claiming sanctuary, and yet the spirits see the two of you, together.”

She conjured ice before he could react, spears to impale the munat’ap through the jaw, sending icicles through the roof of its mouth and into its brain.

A shield of earth sprang up around Ka’Yiran before she could turn on him, exploding outward with force enough to throw her to the ground. Raised voices sounded through the trees, shouts warning of the sounds of fighting that would draw the Uktani hopefuls toward them. Ka’Yiran had turned toward her with fury in his eyes, the truth of her betrayal made plain by her actions, and by the spirits’ visions. She saw it as gray slate encasing his eyes, the gift of stone preparing to conjure earth to strike.

Ice formed again, flung from her fingertips in a desperate salvo. He had to die. Ka’Inari’s vision had been clear, delivered to her where Arak’Jur hadn’t been allowed to hear: feign her way among their enemies, kill the Uktani shaman, and their pursuit would end. The Sinari people and their alliance would be left at peace. Ka’Inari had promised it, seen the truth of it from the vision spirits at Ka’Ana’Tyat. The very spirits who had given her assurance it had been Llanara, and not Arak’Jur or any of the other survivors, who had been behind her people’s destruction. Her faith and hope for peace and goodness had overpowered guilt; they all came back to her now that the moment had arrived.

“Betrayer,” Ka’Yiran said, a mix of shock and anger in his voice. “You throw your life away for nothing.”

Her ice had shattered on his shield of earth, leaving splinters of cold melting in the grass, and she rose to her knees, flinging a last salvo of ice before she drew on the gift of stone herself, conjuring earth to collide and crack against Ka’Yiran’s barriers. Yet he seemed to know her strikes before she did, shifting his shield to break her attacks before she made them.

Raised voices drew closer. She had to strike.

Inky tendrils from the Lhakani sacred place at the heart of the swamp rose from her hands, creeping around Ka’Yiran’s stone. He stepped back, his earthen shield collapsing as a wind rose to scatter her attack. He did it with a snap gesture, as though he were impatient to see her strikes through to an inevitable end. Contempt showed on his face as he conjured wind to knock her back to the ground, dispersing another attempt to summon the shadowy tendrils before they materialized as more than wisps of smoke.

“A waste,” Ka’Yiran said. “A waste of so much strength and beauty. I would have been better for you than—”

His face lit with understanding, and he spun in time to dodge kirighra’s mauling attack from behind.

The Great Panther had materialized from nothing, a cat made of pure shadow. It swiped down with its claws, raking the air where Ka’Yiran had stood an instant before. Her conscious mind knew she should feel terror, the same instinct she’d had when a kirighra had savaged Arak’Jur’s shoulder and side. But she felt only relief.

Wind came to obey her call, the blessing of Hanat’Li’Tyat, the sacred place of the Ranasi tribe, and she formed a tempest into a cutting blade of air. Ka’Yiran had squared himself to face the kirighra’s attack, and she brought it into the shaman’s side, ripping through his skin in a rain of red and gore.

The Uktani shaman screamed. She struck again, whipping lashes of air toward his head, and he fell silent.

We know you.

The voice came as a whisper, sounding inside her head. Kirighra had turned, leaving its now-dead prey and eyeing her instead.

Come to us.

Kirighra sprang toward her. Wind sheared through the beast, slicing wisps of shadow in a furious gale. For a moment the cat hung in the air, the forward momentum of his leap stalled by the upward force of her summoned storm. Then its body broke, a forward leg severed by cutting wind, its head twisting as its body collapsed into the dirt.

The world faded.

YOU KILLED HIM.

Her consciousness fell away into the void, the voice sounding all around her. It was as though she had entered a sacred place, though she had not moved from where she’d struck at Ka’Yiran and the kirighra, lying on the forest floor.

Great Spirit, she thought back. How is it we are speaking? Did I enter Jati’Ras’Tyat unknowing?

NO. THAT IS A PLACE OF STORMS. YOU SLEW A GREAT BEAST, AND SO NOW WE COMMUNE. THIS IS THE WAY OF THINGS, THE WAY OF THE GUARDIANS.

But I am a woman.

The shock of it coursed through her.

YES, the voice responded. BUT WE REMEMBER. THOSE WHO PREY ON THE SPIRIT-TOUCHED ARE WORTHY OF MORE.

Ka’Yiran. She’d killed him.

He’s dead, she thought back to the void. The Uktani shaman. Arak’Jur is safe.

THIS NAME IS KNOWN TO US. ARAK’JUR. THE SINARI CHAMPION. YOU WISH FOR HIM TO BE MADE YOUR QUARRY?

Horror rose in whatever passed for her gut here in the void. No, she thought.

ALL ASCENDANTS MUST PROVE THEMSELVES. THIS IS OUR WAY: TO SEEK THE STRONGEST. KIRIGHRA HUNTS THOSE WITHOUT PEER, AND SO SHALL YOU.

No, she thought again. I want no part of the madness that has driven our people to war.

YOU ARE ON THE PATH TO ASCENSION. WE GRANT YOU OUR GIFT, TO SEAL THE WAY. IT IS NOT YOUR PLACE TO DENY US.

Light flashed, and visions came, of stalking her kill, melding into shadows, hunting men and beasts alike.

She let it pass through her, accompanied by a growing certainty that was no emotion of hers. Violence, somewhere to the south. A nagging drive compelling her to seek her prey, stronger than any sense of love or duty. To hunt and kill, as kirighra did, the strongest of the champions among men.