9
Appetite
Afternoon was waning on the mountainside. The melted snow in the Witness pool had finally stopped bubbling and was beginning to ice over. After the labor of making the Witness and using it to speak with his master Akhenabi, Saomeji had stretched out at the base of a tree to rest with eyes closed, his strength exhausted. Goh Gam Gar, who had pulled the bound dragon all day and then dug the deep pit for the Witness out of the frozen ground, lay curled on his side within Saomeji’s fence of magical stones. The giant might have been a stone himself, a massive boulder covered in dirty white hair, the rumble of his slumbering breath echoing along the hillside. The bound dragon and the crippled chieftain had also gone quiet.
Nezeru took a long, deep breath and let it out, still shaken from the Singer’s Witness ceremony but grateful for a rare moment free from the demands of others.
Jarnulf gathered up his bow and quiver. “Now I must go hunt.”
“I’ll go with you.”
He did not hide his surprise. “Truly? What of your ward, Makho?”
“I have done all I can for him today and with little result. I do not see how he can live much longer.” She began pulling on her gloves.
“But what of Saomeji and the giant?”
“If one of them wakes up and kills the other,” she said, “then that is one less for us to worry about.”
Jarnulf’s look seemed almost admiring. “You have changed, Sacrifice Nezeru. You sound as though you have embraced Genathi’s Gift.”
She was impressed by his choice of phrase. It was a reference to the blind Celebrant Genathi, one of the first born in the new land after the flight from the Garden, who had famously said, “Living in darkness is a gift, since the darkness will take all some day and we who cannot see will be least troubled by it.” It was the kind of sour jest her father’s father might make. “You may think what you will, Huntsman,” she replied. “A Sacrifice is practical, and I have an appetite.”
They found a small lake nestled in a saddle of the hills, an hour’s walk from the camp. A flock of geese lay on the moonlit water like a rumpled blanket, and before long they had each taken a fat bird. Nezeru’s better eyes let her take a resting one with a clean shot; Jarnulf had to bring his down from the air with an arrow through its wing, then break its neck. The rest of the flock went flapping and honking to the far end of the water, so Nezeru and Jarnulf started back toward the camp. On the way they shot a brace of rabbits as well, but snow was beginning to swirl around them as they tracked the second rabbit’s bloody attempt to escape.
“We had better hurry,” Jarnulf said as they found the dying creature and added it to their bag. “Even you won’t be able to see your way through this soon.”
“I cannot see well now,” said Nezeru. “And there were places as we came out that I would not want to cross again without being able to see what was before me. I think we should take shelter until the worst has passed. The sky was clear a short while ago. This kind of mountain storm lasts only a little while.”
He looked dubious. “Saomeji will think we ran away.”
“But we haven’t,” she said. “Either he will send the giant to look for us or he will wait to see if we come back. You are not wearing a painful collar, Master Huntsman. You need not fear the Singer’s anger.”
He shook his head. “You do seem changed, Sacrifice Nezeru. I am not entirely certain I like it.”
“And I am not certain I care. Keep your eyes open. I remember there were some caverns, or at least openings in the rocks, somewhere just ahead.”
They found a deep hole in the cliff face, and once inside they huddled together, watching the snow fall.
“I wish to ask you a question,” Jarnulf said at last.
“Why do you need to announce your asking instead of simply asking?”
She felt him shake a little—a laugh. “I suppose I’ll find out. You are not carrying a child, are you? But you told Makho you were.”
Nezeru was startled. “How do you know anything of that?”
“We travel in a small group, day after day. I speak your tongue. It is not such a mystery. I saw how Makho and the other Sacrifice Kemme treated you—carefully, but without kindness. It suggested to me that they might be restraining themselves because you were useful in some important way, but they showed little evidence of that either. You were merely given duties that would not tax your strength, but neither coddled or protected you. I grew up among your people. I know how cautiously Hikeda’ya women are treated when with child. It seemed the most likely thing.”
He had surprised her again and Nezeru did not like it. For a moment it soured her independent mood. “So tell me, clever mortal, how you knew that there was no child in fact?”
“Oh, I heard Makho talking about it when you were away from his side—you know how he raves sometimes. I didn’t understand much of what he said, but I did hear him say, ‘The halfblood lied. There is no child—not yet. The prophecy is not fulfilled.’”
“The prophecy?” She was honestly astonished. “What nonsense is that? And what makes you think his babbling has anything to do with me? There are other halfbloods in the world.”
He gave her a shrewd look. “Come, Sacrifice, since the dragon’s blood burned him, Makho only speaks of two things—the end of the world and you.”
If Makho’s words somehow did refer to her, Nezeru could not imagine what they meant.
Jarnulf broke the silence at last. “Why did you tell them you were carrying a child?”
“So Makho would leave me alone.” She found herself suddenly enjoying this chance to speak freely. “Now you tell me something. Why are you with us?”
“You already know.”
“Simply to serve the queen? Liar. That makes no sense. Makho knew it from the first, and I suspect Saomeji does too. Let me tell you what I think. You wish to re-enter Nakkiga, for some reason. You have offended someone powerful, or broken a rule, but you are tired of exile.”
He nodded slowly, his face a pale, moon-silvered shadow. “Yes, I am tired of exile.” He spoke carefully. “You have most of it right. But that is all I will say. Still, I admit you are more clever than my first guesses.”
“As you are cleverer than mine.” She felt something bubbling a bit inside her, and realized she wanted to laugh. It was an absurd impulse that she did not understand, but she could not deny its strength. “So, here we are, two enemies who underestimated each other. What is next?”
“Two enemies? I thought we fought for the same side.”
“We are being honest here, in this cave in the snow, mortal. Jarnulf. You know our two kinds can never be anything but enemies, whatever temporary accommodations we might make. We Hikeda’ya must enslave or kill your people if we wish to survive. You must wipe us from the face of the world if you wish to do the same.”
He was silent then as they both watched the snow dancing in the moonlight. At last she moved closer, until she was pressed against him from hip to shoulder. She reached out a finger and traced his profile. “Like, yet unlike,” she said. “Do you think we were created by the same hand, that we should look so similar?”
His voice was gruff, almost angry, though he did not lean away. “I do not think so, Sacrifice.”
“You seem very certain. How can that be?” Her fingers now trailed down his neck to the collar of his jacket. His skin was so warm! How could mortals be so warm-blooded and yet take cold so quickly?
“What are you doing?” he asked at last.
“Touching your skin. It is different than mine. Differences are interesting, are they not?”
“What happened to honesty? I do not think you are speaking the truth.”
“Not the whole truth, perhaps.” She paused to consider. She had been watching Jarnulf for days with a sort of growing admiration, not for what was human in him, but what was like the Hikeda’ya—his near-tirelessness, his willingness to do what needed to be done, his patience while dealing with the giant and Saomeji. Whatever his true goal, a lesser mortal would not have put up with the suffering Jarnulf had endured on this trip, nor would a lesser mortal have saved her and the others as many times as he had done.
He should have been a Sacrifice, she thought. He has the making. He has the mind and the purpose, but the wrong blood—mortal blood. Like my own, but without the Hikeda’ya portion to offset the weakness.
“You . . . interest me,” she said at last. “And after so many days now without Makho and Kemme looking over my shoulder, always waiting for me to make mistakes, I find that interest has increased to something more. ‘Appetite,’ I said earlier. ‘Appetite’ is as good a word as any. I am as surprised as you are to find I crave comradeship—a particular kind.”
“That is not . . .” He stopped when her fingers closed gently in his hair. “Not a good plan, Sacrifice,” he said quietly. “Not for either of us.”
“We will not know for certain unless we try. Do you mortals never couple unless making a child? Is it as joyless for your kind, then, as it has been for me, a half-blood who owes the use of her body to her people?”
He gave her an odd look, as if it surprised him that she might display any resentment at all about her lot. And this mood of hers was unusual, Nezeru realized. She had been in a distracted, angry state ever since Saomeji had spoken to Akhenabi, and she had felt their conversation in her own thoughts and blood. Everything reminded her how little she mattered to them—that she was not truly the queen’s Talon or even Finger as far as the Order of Song was concerned, but more like a single ant in a nest, something to be used, sacrificed, discarded.
Sacrifice. The meaning of the name had never seemed so clear. And this was what she had spent her entire life trying to achieve—the right to be sacrificed. It had been one thing when she had believed utterly in those above her, from Queen Utuk’ku herself all the way down to Makho, her hand chieftain. But it all felt different now.
She realized they had both been silent for some time. “It is not your questions that have changed things. Do not flatter yourself, mortal. It is my own answers to your questions that trouble me.”
“You are in depths I do not understand, Sacrifice Nezeru.”
“Nor do I understand them myself. It is both frightening and . . . exhilarating.” She leaned back against the rock wall behind them. She could feel the length of his leg and torso against her. “What do mortals do when they are lovemaking?”
She could feel him start in surprise. “What do you mean?”
“You heard me. My mother calls it lovemaking. There is little of that in any coupling I have done with Makho or other Sacrifices since I reached womanhood. I cannot quite imagine it.” She laughed, a harsh, clipped sound. “So tell me, what do mortals do?”
He was silent for long moments. “I am not the one to ask.”
“Is that a joke? Or are you truly so innocent?”
“I did not say I was innocent. Only that I was not the one you should ask.” He stared at the swirls of white spinning in front of the cave mouth like downy feathers from a torn cushion.
“I do not care much,” she said at last, “whether you lovemake well or badly. I told you, I have an appetite—a hunger of the body, and something more. A hunger of the spirit, I suppose. I am tired of being alone in the world, with only those who despise me. Whatever else we are to each other, enemies, doomed allies, I do not think you despise me.”
“No. No, I do not despise you, Nezeru.” His voice was tight with discomfort, more than she would have expected. “But there is no true connection possible between us.”
“I said nothing of ‘true connection.’ I said ‘appetite.’ I wish to be soothed. I wish to be distracted. Now, show me what mortals do. Do you touch mouths?” She leaned closer, enjoying the smell of him, strong and lively yet not unpleasant, like a horse after exercise. “Do you do something else? Makho would only mount me and enter, like a conqueror taking possession of a town he had no interest in governing.”
For a moment Jarnulf sat motionless as she breathed warmly on his cheek, then he slowly turned his head until his mouth brushed her skin. He pressed his lips against hers—tentatively at first, the skin dry and cold, but as several heartbeats passed their mouths warmed.
In such a narrow space the mortal could not easily move the arm that was pinned against her side, but his free hand slid up her leg—slowly, as if he did not truly control it—then over her hip and onto the curve of her ribcage below her arm. For a while they only sat like that. Nezeru found it awkward but fascinating. Her childhood had been spent in the Order-house of Sacrifice, where little affection passed between the young troops, and any coupling had been swift and secret, a matter of stolen moments. The Hikeda’ya of her parents’ caste did not show physical affection in front of others—even an embrace was considered crass and showy when others were present—so this was utterly new to her. Still, she could not help feeling that something was wrong. Jarnulf, despite his rapid heartbeat and uneven breathing, despite every other sign of emotion, seemed content merely to sit like this, his mouth pressed against hers, his arm around her in an embrace that did not seem much more than brotherly.
She took his hand from her ribs and lifted it to her breast, pressed it firmly, even squeezed his fingers as if showing a new Sacrifice how to properly grasp a sword hilt. As she did, his mouth opened a little, and they pressed themselves closer together. His hand on her breast was beginning to make her feel warm, to stimulate the longing she had been feeling into something more serious, something that made her squirm a bit. She opened her lips wider and let her tongue touch his. As their mouths mingled she felt almost vulnerable.
Strange, so strange, she thought. Was this what mortals valued—not the sensations themselves, but the surrender to risk?
But the sensations were nothing to scoff at; the pressure of his fingers as he gently squeezed her breast was making her feel increasingly heavy between her legs—sensitive, like a bruise just beginning to heal. She wanted to push herself against him, wanted to rub on him like a bear scratching itself against a tree, and the ridiculousness of that idea almost made her laugh. First she undid the front of her jacket so that he could touch her skin, then she tried to lie down and pull him with her, but the cave was too small for them to stretch out. Still, she wanted more of this unusual feeling, so she reached up and folded her fingers around his hand again—he lifted it away suddenly, as though caught in the commission of a crime—then slid it down across her belly and into the fork of her legs so he could feel the heat at the center of her, the heat that was now making her squirm and rub against him everywhere they touched.
But the moment she closed her thighs on his hand to press his fingers tighter, he yanked his hand away and pulled his face from hers. He even began to clamber out of the cavern, which she only prevented by wrapping her arms around his waist and holding on.
“Stop!” she said. “What are you doing?”
“No.” He was talking as if to himself, not her. “No, no. It cannot be.”
“What cannot be? Coupling? Don’t you like it? Isn’t that what you’ve wanted from me all along?”
He shook his head violently. “No. I wanted nothing of the sort. You don’t know.”
“Don’t get up.”
“I’ll do what I want to—what I need to—!”
But she felt him relax a little, so she let go of his waist. “Do not be so foolish, mortal man. If you don’t want to couple with me, nobody will force you. I think even among your own folk a woman does not have to beg for someone to mate with her.”
He disentangled himself and pulled away as far as he could, not in revulsion exactly, but more as if he needed the space between their bodies to think clearly. She wondered if there was something else about mortals she did not understand. Were there formalities before coupling? Religious rituals? It was strange how little she knew about the creatures who were her own people’s greatest enemies.
It was stranger still that she had just been trying to couple with one of them.
“The weather is not so bad now,” he said without meeting her eye. “We need to go back. Saomeji will be angry if we stay away too long. He will be suspicious.”
It was plain that nothing further was going to happen between them—not here, at least, not now. “Very well.” She tied her jacket closed again as he looked out into the fluttering snow. “Lead the way, then.”
I have made some mistake, she thought as she followed him. Although Jarnulf was only a few steps ahead of her, she could barely see him through the flurries. There is something here I do not understand—perhaps he never thought of me as anything but a Sacrifice, as a Hikeda’ya, the people who enslaved him. But more than anything else, I feel frustrated again. And alone.
At first the scratching sound seemed only part of Tzoja’s dream. When she opened her eyes, the blackness around her was so complete that for long moments she did not know where she was, but the furtive noises continued even as she lay in quiet panic.
Finally memory returned, but the scraping went on. She turned over, her heart beating at a fierce, frantic pace, then crawled out of the parlor and down the twisting hallway toward the door.
The scratching had stopped by the time she reached it, so she put her face to the keyhole and, to avoid making the slightest sound, held her breath while she peered through. By the ghost-light of the glowing worm threads above the lake she could make out a bulky silhouette with what looked like an extra head, and knew it was Naya Nos and his silent steed, Dasa. She opened the latch as quietly as she could, then stood out of the way so the huge carry-man Dasa could shuffle in.
“What do you want?” she demanded in a loud whisper when the door was closed again. “Why have you come back? All my food is gone.”
“To make repayment,” said Naya Nos.
“Repayment?” she asked.
“Some of the other Hidden have come back from the water—the ‘lake’ you call it—with a good catch of . . .” He frowned, his childish face puzzled. “Swimmers. Swimmers, I think you call them.” He made a sinuous side-to-side motion with his hand.
“Fish?”
“Yes. Fish. Swimmers? But you are invited. Come to eat.” He smiled broadly, but his companion Dasa’s face remained empty as a spilled bucket. “You will meet her.”
Tzoja’s alarm returned. “Her? Who is that?”
“The Lady of the Hidden. She knows of you already. We told her.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You need not. Because she is good and kind. She is our Lady! And she wants to meet you.” He grinned again and drummed his little legs against Dasa’s broad chest. “Say yes. We wish to make good the wrong we did you.”
The idea made her fretful—every instinct she had told her to stay hidden, to stay away from these strange creatures—but if she could not find more to eat here beside Lake Suno’ku then she would have to return to the city to steal more food. The idea of fresh fish was also appealing—in fact, her stomach was already growling with anticipation at the thought.
“Very well,” she said at last. “I’ll come with you. But only for a little while.”
She let them lead her down to the edge of the lake, then followed in the carry-man’s footprints as he made his way around the water’s muddy verge through banks of ghostly white reeds. Dasa’s massive, shadowy shape suddenly turned to the side and vanished into a crevice in the cavern wall; Tzoja stopped in confusion. It was not merely a crevice, she saw as she stepped closer, but an actual gap that passed deeper into the mountain’s stony skeleton accompanied by a wide finger of the lake, and she allowed herself to enter. The glowing worms had also hung their glassy strands above the water here, so that she was accompanied into the depths by a dangling forest of small, cold lights.
After a short, cautious walk behind the carry-man and Naya Nos, Tzoja found herself in a large cavern with the channel of lake water in the middle of it, the stony floor as uneven as butter swirled in a churn. But as she stared she could make out movement here and there.
“Fear not, brothers and sisters,” called Naya Nos. “Come out! This is not an enemy but a friend.”
Tzoja, still bitter about the loss of her supplies, was not quite willing to go as far as that, but she was distracted by the sheer number of creatures who now began to creep out from behind stones and out of crevices in the floor and nooks in the walls. Having discovered at least a half-dozen pillaging the kitchen in the festival house, she had assumed there might be twice that many Hidden all together, but in just this chamber she could see scores of them, all smaller than Dasa but in many different sizes and shapes.
By Usires the Aedon and Dror the Thunderer, she thought, astonished. How do they all feed themselves? Especially when there is no one like me to steal from?
“Are these all your people?” she asked.
“Not all, but many,” he said. “Most! Some are out looking for more food. But they know we will feast today, so they will come back soon.” Naya Nos waved his spindly arms, clearly overjoyed by the idea of the bounty that awaited them. “And the rest are in the Lady’s Chamber, which is just there.” He waggled his hand at the place where the stream and the dangling glow-worms vanished into a dark oval at the far end of the large cavern. “She blesses the food!”
“I hope she cooks it, too,” said Tzoja, but too quietly for Naya Nos to hear. She had caught and eaten a small fish out of Lake Suno’ku the day before, too impatient to carry such a small thing all the way back to Viyeki’s festival house and then build a fire. Anything was better than starving, but sucking the tiny bit of clammy flesh off the bones had been a less than delightful experience.
The Hidden all shrank away from her as she followed her guides deeper into the chamber, but their eyes followed her every step. The creatures seemed as weirdly individual as those that had robbed her stores, ranging in size from nearly as large as Tzoja herself to some even smaller than Naya Nos, and in skin color from dark to pale. Many of them had features that resembled either Hikeda’ya or Tinukeda’ya—in a few cases, both—and most of those who had eyes shared the same color, an almost luminous yellow. Otherwise Tzoja could see no obvious commonality between them, except that all would have been culled without pity from the slave pens of Nakkiga.
At Naya Nos’s suggestion she seated herself on a flat rock by the side of the water. Dasa slowly sank to his knees beside her. His rider clambered down, wiry little arms doing most of the work, then pointed to the far end of the cavern and clapped his hands in glee. “Look! See, they come! The feast begins!” He leaned toward Tzoja. “Do not fear—a special portion has been put aside for you, because of the wrong our young ones did to you.”
She watched a couple of the larger Hidden approach with a dripping bundle between them that looked like a fishing net. As she watched the puddles that formed beneath their burden every time they stopped, Tzoja’s heart sank. So much for the meal being cooked.
“Ah, so tasty,” said Naya Nos. “Swimmers are my favorite.”
“Do all your people speak Hikeda’yasao like you do?” she asked, trying not to think too much about cold, raw fish. “I haven’t heard anyone else say anything.”
“Some do. Most do not, or will not.” His animated face became grim. “Many were punished severely for making any noise at all.”
“Punished? Who by? Where did you come from?”
“The Lady will tell you all you need,” he said. “Do not fear—she knows everything that can be known about the People and the Hidden and everything that happens in the Sea Definite and Internal. But here, now, here!” he called to the approaching Hidden with their dripping net. “Let us serve our guest! Just here, then you can give out to the rest.”
The two wide-eyed servers seemed torn between staring at her in fearful wonder and avoiding her return gaze. Both were naked except for rags around their loins, and both were achingly thin, with ribs and hip bones so prominent that one of the slender, graceful Hikeda’ya would have seemed overfed beside them. They set the net down and let it fall open. A pile of wet, wriggling shapes slid outward in all directions. Even in the cavern’s dim light, she could tell by the lumpy bodies and short, fat tails that they were not fish.
“Pollwags,” she said. Her stomach knotted. “Frogspawn.”
Naya Nos smiled, misunderstanding the tone of her voice. “We are lucky— so lucky! They breed near the place where the hot water comes up from below.”
She looked down at the wriggling, mostly legless globs. She would have to eat some. It would be foolish not to. She couldn’t guess when she would next find food.
“Bless us and bless this bounty,” she said, repeating the prayer the Astalines had taught her to say at every meal, but unable to make herself sound either enthusiastic or truly grateful as she scooped up a wet, squirming handful.
The last mouthful was no better than the first, but Tzoja had been hungry many times before in her life, so she shoveled it in like the rest and tried not to feel the swimmers that were still wriggling on their way down.
“We are lucky today!” said Naya Nos. “You brought us this luck, maybe. But look, she is coming out now!”
A stir went through the cavern as a little procession emerged from the chamber beyond, a scurrying parade of freakish shapes. Several of them were leading a larger figure by the hand, and as this newcomer appeared in the pale light of the glowing worms, Tzoja found herself staring. This was no crippled thing like the others: instead, this woman had the look of Hikeda’ya nobility in her height and graceful presence. Only her dark hair and large yellow eyes suggested a more complicated heritage.
“Uvasika!” cried Naya Nos, and others around Tzoja echoed him from mouths of many different shapes, reverentially and over and over, until she realized they were not calling out some word of welcome but the name of the one who seated herself on a rounded rock beside the narrow span of water. Instantly, just by the dignity of her presence, that rock became a throne.
“Come,” said Naya Nos. “Uvasika will want to meet you.” He scrambled up onto Dasa, who had been kneeling as patiently as any horse cropping grass, then together they led Tzoja across the cavern.
“You may bow to her,” said Naya Nos quietly, then raised his piping voice as they neared the rock. “Uvasika, Lady of the Hidden, we have brought you an outsider—one of the People.”
Tzoja made a clumsy courtesy. She had never learned any kind of court etiquette during her years among the Astalines in Rimmersgard or her childhood in Kwanitupul and the Thrithings, and her Hikeda’ya captors expected nothing from slaves except obedient silence, so she could only hope she was being properly respectful. She looked up to see Uvasika’s reaction, but found herself gazing into eyes that, despite their bright golden color, seemed as shallow as water on a flat stone. Is she blind? Why does she stare that way, as though she doesn’t even see me? “I am pleased to meet you, Lady Uvasika,” she said, but the dark-haired woman did not reply.
Naya Nos chortled from Dasa’s arms. “She will not speak to you, oh, no. She does not speak. Not for ears to hear.”
Uvasika’s placid stare turned to Naya Nos.
“Yes, my lady, thank you,” he said a moment later, exactly as if she had uttered some pleasantry aloud. “She is, yes. This is the one. The children stole her food.” He nodded vigorously. “Yes, she was given first fruits of today’s fine catch!”
Confused, Tzoja looked around at the other Hidden, who were watching their mistress with obvious admiration. Could they hear her, too? Was it only Tzoja herself who was deaf to the Lady’s words?
“The Silent Princess speaks only to me and a few others,” explained Naya Nos proudly. “Do not be ashamed. She welcomes you and wishes to make amends for the mistakes of her children.”
“Her children?” Tzoja could not help asking, looking around the wide cavern at the dozens of odd, malformed creatures.
“We are all her children,” said Naya Nos proudly. “Not of her body, but of her heart. She protects us—and the Dreaming Lord protects us, too.” He turned his attention back to Uvasika. “Of course,” he said, smiling his wide, toothless smile. “It would be an honor, Mistress.”
And indeed, as if they had all heard her clearly, the other Hidden began crowding closer, until Tzoja was so tightly surrounded she began to feel a bit panicked.
“The Lady asks me to make this a Story Day,” Naya Nos announced, and his audience murmured like excited children. “For the honor of our visitor, our mistress will tell the story of our kind, and I will speak her words aloud.”
“Once the People lived in a garden,” he began. “They lived happily, and all the trees and plants were there for them, and they ate what they wanted and made what they wanted. The People became many, and so at last they built themselves a great home that they called the Star, and they lived there a long time in happiness and peace.
“But although they did not know it, they were surrounded by enemies they could not see, and these enemies hated them because before the People came, the garden had been only theirs, unshared. So the enemies sent great beasts to attack the People—beasts of the water, air, and land—but the People were brave. They fought those beasts and triumphed. Then the enemies grew even more angry, and brought forth even more of those fearsome creatures that were the first dragons, and set these terrible worms upon the People to destroy them. But the People would not be overcome, and at last the dragons were defeated. Those worms that survived fled to the far reaches of the garden because they feared the People.
“The enemies of the People had no more fearsome creatures to send against them, so they came forth themselves, but in humble form, and pretended to make peace. At first the People trusted them, and together they built the Star into greater and greater beauty and size, and the People became even more numerous. But their enemies, who called themselves Vao, never meant true friendship. Instead they plotted in secret to drive the People from the garden or destroy them. As the years went by the Vao pretended to be the People’s allies, but all the time they were making a great and terrible magic, the greatest and most terrible ever done, called the Un Being. But when the Vao summoned the Un Being out of the void, they found that even they could not contain it or control it. Un Being began to devour the garden, and even the People with all their wisdom and craft could not make it stop.
“At last it became certain that the Un Being would swallow everything, the garden and every tree, plant, and creature in it, that it would destroy the great dwelling-place Star and at last pull each mote of the garden away from every other until nothing remained. So the People built great ships, hoping to escape the end of everything, and set sail for the Unknown West. They took with them all they could of the old garden—even their enemies, the Vao.
“Eight great ships brought the People here to this land, where the days were short as moments and the years flickered past like the wavering light of a fire. The People began to build again, and for a time the Vao worked with them, and it seemed that together they might make a world almost as perfect as the lost garden. But then the leader of the Vao was revealed to have plotted against the People once more, stealing from them what was theirs, and so he was cast into chains for his crime. His subjects fought against the People and were driven away, so the Vao went wandering, never again to have a home of their own, and all because of their own treachery.
“But the People survived. The People will always survive. And as long as we are loyal, we Hidden will survive, too. The silver-faced Queen protects us. The Dreaming Lord perfects us.”
“All praise to them. All praise!”
The Hidden replied obediently to Naya Nos’s invocation, but even with so many of them in the cavern, their voices remained faint, little more than a whisper. “All praise!”
The triumph they spoke of, and the Silent Lady’s protection, must seem very fragile, Tzoja thought, if they dared not make much sound even here in the depths of the earth. In truth, these Hidden seem no better off than I am, she decided, but the thought gave her no satisfaction. Knowing that others suffered did not make one’s own suffering any easier.
She was confused and a little disturbed by Naya Nos’s story, and the meal in her stomach was not resting easily, either. She staggered to her feet and said, “I have to go.”
Naya Nos was clearly distressed. “But we have taken much food from you. You must let us repay you.”
“We will see each other again, I promise. And I thank you for your hospitality.” She made a small bow to silent Uvasika, who regarded her with the blank face of a wooden doll. “Thank you, Lady. I wish you and your people health and good fortune.”
“We will guide you out,” said Naya Nos, but she waved him off.
“I can find my own way. Enjoy the rest of your feast.”
It was only when she had made her way back out to the shore of Lake Suno’ku again, tracing her steps back along its stony shore and trying to ignore the noise of frogs because it reminded her of her meal, that Tzoja suddenly understood one of the things that had been bothering her about the story.
The Hidden were clearly telling themselves some version of the Hikeda’ya’s own story—the Lost Garden, the city called Tzo, or “Star,” and the Great Silver Queen, who could only be Utuk’ku herself. But they were not themselves Hikeda’ya. She also wondered who the Dreaming Lord was, and why the name tugged at her memory?
It only came to her as she reached the festival house and made her way inside. The Dreaming Lord . . . could they mean the queen’s mad relative, Lord Jijibo? He’s called “the Dreamer.” Viyeki had told her that the Dreamer had as many secrets as Akhenabi and his entire Order of Song. But why would someone as powerful as the queen’s odd kinsman be concerned with the broken and malformed Hidden?
She could find no answer, and when the time came to try to sleep, she was haunted by the memory of empty eyes.