The Veiled Throne, page 96
The second river, called the Ghost River, came out of the Foot Range (also known as the Wing among the Agon) and entered the lake (generally) in the east. The river’s bed was so shallow that its course changed unpredictably. Some years, when the spring melt was inadequate, the river even dried up altogether.
Because of its unpredictable nature, few tribes relied on the Ghost River as a source of water, but its ephemeral course wasn’t the reason for the river’s ominous name.
* * *
By sleeping during the day—with the garinafins concealed in whatever camouflage was on hand—and flying during the night, the group of escapees gradually made their way east and north, away from the Blood River.
Heading into the heart of the salt flats made pursuit less likely, but at the same time, it also made it harder to find water and food. The bone-chilling cold didn’t help. The riders shivered practically every moment they were awake, buffeted by the constant wintry wind.
The salt-stained landscape below was so white that it sometimes seemed as though they were tiny flies cruising above a gigantic vat of milk, or the stretched vellum skin atop the cactus drums for storytelling dances before any colored dust had been scattered over it. The monotonous view was beautiful in an austere way, but it also made the riders and their two mounts anxious. Since nothing changed, it was as if they were making no progress at all.
Food and water both ran low.
Sataari allowed her mount to pick the direction now, hoping that the garinafins would, by instinct, fly them to a source of potable water.
On the evening of the fifth day after their escape, something new appeared in the endless white earth: tiny dots, medium squares, triangles that resembled shark’s teeth, big circles with spiraling arms that seemed to stretch all the way to the horizon.
Each of the geometric shapes, ochre red, earthen brown, charcoal black, and dark clay gray, was composed from piles of rocks carefully placed in the empty landscape. Together, they formed gigantic images: birds, fish, beasts, humans, and strange structures that even Sataari, who had been memorizing lore since she was a little girl, had never seen in a voice painting or heard in a storytelling dance.
But the shapes could only be grasped and comprehended from high up in the air. The amount of labor and organization that would be required to construct them was unimaginable. This could not have been the work of a single tribe. Even if the Pékyu of the Lyucu had conceived of such a vision, it would have taken generations of backbreaking labor to construct it.
The riders fell silent with awe, and even the garinafins seemed stunned. They hesitated and circled in the air at the edge of the gigantic designs, refusing to cross into the air above them.
Sataari sighed and signaled for the garinafins to land.
“What are these things?” asked Razutana. He was staring at a pile of red rocks twice his height and as wide as the biggest tent back in Kiri Valley. It was the eye of a single bird in the grand design, and not even a very big bird by comparison with the rest.
Sataari seemed not to hear his question. “The garinafins will go no farther, and we should be safe from pursuit beyond this point. Let them go. We could make the water last longer if we didn’t have to share it with the beasts also.”
They watched as the two passengerless garinafins took off and headed south. Whether they would be able to make their way out of the salt flats before they fell from the sky, mad with thirst, was something that the refugees would never know.
Sataari pointed north, and the group began to march through the landscape of fantastic stone piles and walls, mere ants in a gigantic painting.
“Where are we going?” asked Nalu, Gozofin’s son and Tanto’s close friend.
Sataari made no response but simply trudged on.
* * *
The mounds first rose in the distance like outsized prairie voles poking out of their holes.
As they continued to march, the mounds grew steadily, until they became small mountains that loomed in their way, stretching from horizon to horizon. Even in the middle of winter, it was obvious that there was something odd about this region. Though much of the salt flats was inhospitable to any form of life, between the mounds could be seen the husks of leafless shrubs as well as a carpet of dry, dead grass and leaves.
“Hey, we could take shelter in those hills!” said Razutana. “And there’s the lake!”
After many days through the salt flats, they had finally reached the shore of the inland sea, which lay just west of the mounds. Just the thought of building a shelter against the relentless cold wind and nestling in a blanket of soft, dry hay was enough to get the children to quicken their steps.
But Sataari stopped, gazed at the mounds, and knelt down.
Razutana and the children looked at her, confused. For the first time that they could remember, they saw fear in the young shaman’s eyes.
Sataari closed her eyes and began to pray, rocking back and forth rhythmically. Though the children didn’t understand what she was doing, they stopped and knelt along with her.
The young shaman took out a set of bone tiles from a leather pouch and scattered them on the ground. She stared at them intently, muttering to herself. Then she got up, unsheathed her bone knife, and sliced it decisively across her left palm. Instantly, the cut filled with blood, and bright red drops fell onto the white, salted ground.
Tanto cried out in alarm and tried to get up to rush to her aid, but the young shaman held out her right hand in warning and shook her head without speaking, indicating with her eyes that the pékyu-taasa was to remain still.
The young shaman chanted and danced around the group. As she passed each kneeling figure, she pressed her bloody left hand against their face, leaving behind a smeared streak of blood.
She did this three times around the group, painting three bloody streaks across the forehead, nose, and chin of each person.
Some of the other children, finally realizing where they were, began to sob quietly. They lowered their heads and began to pray.
Razutana, Tanto, and Rokiri looked at one another, confused and more than a little frightened.
After Sataari had completed her three rounds, she knelt down again and prayed some more. She pressed her wounded hand against the salted ground and winced as the salt stung her. Gradually, the white earth around her hand turned into a dark patch of crimson.
Finally, she opened her eyes and looked at Razutana and the two pékyus-taasa.
“Where are we?” asked Razutana in a hushed voice.
“Taten-ryo-alvovo,” said Sataari. The City of Ghosts. “The Every-Mother demands that we survive winter in this forbidden place—it’s up to us to see how many of us will make it.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR THE THIRD CONTEST
GINPEN: THE SEVENTH MONTH IN THE NINTH YEAR OF THE REIGN OF SEASON OF STORMS AND THE REIGN OF AUDACIOUS FREEDOM (TWENTY-TWO MONTHS UNTIL THE REOPENING OF THE WALL OF STORMS).
Mota was falling.
Above him, the silk-clad frame of the Imperial airship Spirit of Kiji was in flames. The burning wreckage buckled and undulated gently in the air, covering half the sky like a crimson sail, like clouds at sunset, like the war cape of the Hegemon flapping in the cold wind as he made his last stand by the seashore opposite Tunoa, the homeland he would never return to.
Mota fell faster. The sound of the wind whipping by filled his ears.
How can something so beautiful die? thought Mota. His heart clenched, not because he was about to perish, but because victory had yet to be won.
A dark shadow interposed itself between the fiery wreckage and his eyes: a sleek, serpentine neck and tail, two large triangular wings like the fins of a skate gliding over the bloodred coral reef that was the doomed Spirit of Kiji. And another. And yet another.
The garinafins, he remembered. The garinafins had destroyed the ship and killed Captain Atamu. He and his fellow aviators were supposed to stop the garinafins from assaulting Dara, and they had failed.
His perspective shifted vertiginously as his body turned and the sea swung into view. Below him were other figures also plummeting through the air, plunging toward the sea as their arms and legs flapped helplessly, unable to slow their descent.
The voices of his comrades came to his mind.
The Four Placid Seas are as wide as the years are long.
A wild goose flies over a pond, leaving behind a voice in the wind.
A man passes through this world, leaving behind a name.
“Captain, do you think they’ll remember us in the future like they remember the Hegemon?”
“Probably not. Most soldiers who die are quickly forgotten. But we don’t fight to leave a name; we fight because it’s the right thing to do.”
The garinafins swooped through the air, slicing apart the tumbling women and men with their talons or skewering them on their menacing antlers. Many screams were cut off abruptly.
Mota howled with rage. He waved his arms and kicked, as though trying to swim in this all-too-thin medium, but gravity didn’t relent. They did not deserve to die this way. They should die with their feet planted on the ground, staring into the faces of their enemies, weapons in hand. Like the Hegemon. Like the heroes of old.
The sea was so much closer now. He closed his eyes. His would not be a heroic death; his would be a death full of regrets.
Abruptly, something powerful slammed against his torso and halted his fall. His organs felt in disarray, flung against his rib cage and spine. His head and legs throbbed in agony, having come close to being ripped off. His arms were pinned against his sides by shackles that squeezed and tightened. Overwhelming waves of pain stunned him.
By the time he recovered, he was looking into the malevolent eyes of a garinafin. The giant beast turned slowly in the air, its wings blocking out all light. Its talons wrapped around his body like iron hoops, and he couldn’t breathe. He was sure several ribs or worse were broken.
The garinafin pulled him closer for a good look, like a cat wanting to play with a mouse.
He squirmed and twisted, until he managed to free one arm, which shot straight for the short sword at his hip. A searing stab of pain from his ribs almost made him black out. But finally, he pulled the weapon out of its sheath and slashed against the talons locked around his torso. He knew it would be useless, like an ant trying to sting a man who had pinched it between his fingers. But he didn’t care.
The talons tightened in response, and the tips of the sharp claws dug into his back, slicing through muscle and sinew like a set of butchering axes. He opened his mouth to scream, but nothing came out because his lungs had no air. The sword dropped from his grasp. His vision narrowed to a tunnel as he teetered on the verge of consciousness.
The beast’s eyes loomed closer, but he didn’t look away. He couldn’t punch, kick, scream, spit, speak, or show defiance in any other way except by fighting to stay conscious so he could stare back into those eyes.
I do not surrender, he screamed in his mind. I do not yield.
* * *
Mota started awake, drenched in sweat and gasping for breath.
Arona held him. He was too big and heavy for her to lift his head into her lap, so she was curled up against him, her face pressed against his cheek, her cool hands resting soothingly against his temples.
She did not speak. Neither did he. This was an old nightmare, and she knew that he didn’t like to talk about it.
On that fateful day in Zathin Gulf, Mota had been one of the few survivors of the destroyed airships. He had lost consciousness when the garinafin finally let go of his broken body, and it was only out of sheer luck that a mangled spar had kept him afloat long enough for rescuers to pluck him out of a sea filled with the carcasses of exploded garinafins and the bodies of dead airship crew.
He, like the other survivors of the Battle of Zathin Gulf, didn’t become a hero.
At first, it was a matter of choice. He refused the offer of the captain of the ship that had rescued him to bring him to Admiral Than Carucono, claiming that he felt too weak from his injuries. In truth, what he felt was a complicated tangle that festered: guilt, self-loathing, shame. The looks of admiration and the reverent manner in which sailors spoke to him made him avert his eyes, his cheeks burning. He was not braver than Captain Atamu. He had not done more than his crewmates. Had he survived because he didn’t fight hard enough? Was he alive because the gods had found him unworthy to be invited to join the Hegemon and the heroes of old?
And after all, why should the survivors of the destroyed airships be treated as heroes? They weren’t responsible for defeating the Lyucu. Based on the accounts of the sailors later, it had been the Marshal who confronted Pékyu Tenryo and bested him in personal combat. She had stood at the prow of the Lyucu flagship after killing their leader and waved the banner of Dara to rally the fleet into one final assault that drove back the invaders.
Having given all she had to defend the people of Dara, the Marshal had then passed beyond the River-on-Which-Nothing-Floats.
But the Lyucu were still there on Rui and Dasu, still waiting to invade. Their garinafins grew stronger by the day, craving for a chance to do to all what they had done to him and his dead comrades.
“Dandelions are blooming everywhere,” said Arona. “Can you see the drifting seeds? They always remind me of jellyfish swimming through the air.” She ran her hands gently across his back, not shying away from the ugly, deep scars there.
Still curled on his side and shivering, he opened his eyes and looked beyond the window. It was true. White tufts gently floated through the breeze, as carefree as children at play.
Her voice calmed him. She knew that talking about the present, about the everyday beauty of the world, about the reality of living breathing moving eating, was what he needed in moments like this.
He didn’t answer, but simply wrapped an arm around her, resting one of his strong, broad hands against her back.
The Battle of Zathin Gulf was not a victory, at least not for Mota. He wasn’t a hero like his comrades, like Captain Atamu, like Marshal Mazoti. They had stopped the Lyucu onslaught by paying the ultimate price, while he had been deemed too cowardly for even a garinafin to finish him properly. Guilt racked him every waking moment. He was content to be discharged, to take the last of his wages and fade into obscurity.
Like the Hegemon, who had refused to go home to Tunoa because he couldn’t bear the shame of facing the elders, widows, and orphans who had entrusted their sons, husbands, and fathers to him, Mota couldn’t bear the thought of going home to Tunoa and having to explain why he had survived. He decided to wander the Islands, entertaining patrons at markets with feats of physical strength. It’s all I’m good for, he thought. A clown, a brute, a failure.
But though the aspen wished to stand still, the wind didn’t stop. The aftermath of the war shocked him. A peace treaty was signed. The new Empress Üna, Emperor Ragin’s daughter and chosen successor, led an assault against the Lyucu reinforcements coming through the Wall of Storms. She died in the attempt, though the Wall defeated the reinforcements as well.
And then it seemed that everyone was in a hurry to forget about the war, to forget about Rui and Dasu, to forget about how Emperor Ragin, Marshal Mazoti, and Empress Üna had died. The humiliating peace treaty, which required Dara to pay the Lyucu tribute every season, was celebrated as a trade pact that preserved the peace. There were no commemorative monuments erected to the memory of the Battle of Zathin Gulf. Efforts to recover the bodies and bones of the dead from that terrible day were called off. There was no recruitment drive to build up the army, the navy, or the air force. There was no talk from Empress Jia, the regent, of seizing the first opportunity to free the people in the conquered islands.
The men and women who had fought and died to drive back the Lyucu had been erased. Their names were recorded on tablets in the Hall of Mutagé, but there were no plays by the Imperial Troupe celebrating their lives, no poems commissioned by the Throne to memorialize their bravery, no proclamations by Empress Jia on the day of the Grave-Mending Festival urging everyone to remember what they had done.
Even the name of Marshal Mazoti was seldom brought up by the regent, as though the Marshal were not a hero at all, but an embarrassment, a death as inconsequential as a feather in the wind.
With the example set by the regent, officials, scholars, and even folk storytellers followed suit. After a brief burst of interest in stories about Marshal Mazoti and the band of fighters she had rallied around her in Zathin Gulf, the performances petered out. The storytellers grew concerned that Jia’s attitude was a signal of the official judgment of the Marshal.
She was a traitor who barely redeemed herself in that battle, whispered the people, best not to mention her.
“There should be fresh lotus seeds as well,” said Arona. “We’ll go get some in the market, and I’ll make you a cold, sweet soup. You always like that.”
He patted her back to show that he was listening, and he was grateful to think about sweet, cold lotus-seed soup rather than the bitter bile of rage, rage at a throne that seemed to treat those who had fought for faith and love as disposable, as inconvenient sacrifices best consigned to oblivion.
And the official indifference and forgetfulness weren’t limited to the dead. While the emperor virtually disappeared from Pan, doing gods knew what on his own, the regent did everything in her power to make the people forget about the ongoing suffering in Rui and Dasu. The refugees from Unredeemed Dara were at first sequestered in camps and then quietly released, their harrowing tales of enslavement and slaughter under the Lyucu given little publicity. Empress Jia and Prime Minister Cogo Yelu focused on commerce, agriculture, the promotion of learning and scholarship in what remained of Dara, as if fattening purses and indigo houses full of song and dance could drown out the cries of the people abandoned in the conquered lands.
