Dragonoak: Gall and Wormwood, page 46
“When I returned to Phos, I did so with an army at my back. I marched for the house Essua had secured for us, but the door had been broken down. Dragons circled the skies above us and pane took up weapons for the first time since the world was dreamt into being.
“I bled light and the stench of death welcomed me into the house.
“But Laos was safe. For a moment, I could focus on nothing but that. I could not see the blood staining her robes. I could not see Thorn on his back, sword through his heart; could not see my mother and grandmother collapsed on the sofa, no longer moving. Why should I? It did not matter. I could take it all away. I was stronger than this.
“Sino-Toku’s uncharacteristic squawking brought me back to the moment. I rose the three of them before my heart could break. Laos, sobbing from what she’d seen, clung to my shoulders and asked me what had happened. She asked me how I was there, for the last thing she had heard, there had been an army biting at my heels.
“They did not kill you to prove a point. They want me to know there are still things that can be used against me, I murmured.
“What happened? Laos demanded while Thorn, still trembling, saw to my mother and grandmother with his hands pressed over the bloodstain covering his unscathed chest.
“I took her to the window. I showed her those I had risen, trapped forever between life and death. She shuddered. She pulled away from me. But what did it matter? I had done this to protect myself. To save her. Had I let myself be captured on the mountainside, Thorn, my mother and grandmother would still be dead.
“They made me do this, I said. I told her I would keep her safe. I told them all nothing would ever hurt them again. Where are Essua and Haru-Taiki?
“Laos shook her head. Thorn brought me a neatly bound parcel and explained in a small, cracked voice that the people who had… the people who came to—that it had been left for me.
“Sitting squarely on the floor, I peeled back the leather wrapping. There was a letter folded into quarters, along with a small jar. I recognised Essua’s writing immediately.
“Kondo-Kana,
Aejin yu ka Aejin,
You are young. You cannot yet hear it. But the silence, it is in my ears. In my heart. I cannot—I will not abandon any of my Aejin yu ka Aejin, but some days, I feel as though you are the only one wh
“The ink smudged, then faded. There were no more words, other than those written across the clay jar.
“It was not Essua’s writing, but it was his name.
“Kondo? Thorn asked, when I clutched the jar to my chest.
“Essua did not betray us. He did not lead the King’s soldiers here.
“I said it as though it was of any consolation as I cradled his ashes. They had taken him. They had burnt him. And he was strong, stronger than I was. How many days had the flames eaten at his skin? How many times had he prayed to Isjin for it to all be over? And because of me. Because of my plan. He had been fighting to be his own long before I was born, and it was only now that—
“No. No. I could not blame myself for their actions. That was what they wanted.
“Kana. Kana, please. Please, I know it feels impossible, but look at me. Look at me.
“I did not know I was trembling until I met Laos’ gaze. Her eyes were wide with fear, a fear that I never should’ve been able to evoke in anyone, least of all her. But I could not stop what frightened her so. The floorboards turned white around my feet. It spread to the corners, up the walls, across the ceiling. Out into the streets. Try as she might, Laos could not stay with me. None of them could. Their eyes and minds ached to look upon it, but to me, the white was endless. Relaxing. There was peace there.
“The King sent more soldiers. My army killed those as well, and I rose them for my own, long days later. This was the war history has spoken of: me, sitting in my void of a house, calling the dead to my defence, while my family cowered in a room where colour remained. I wanted to listen to their pleas but could not. There was no going back, not now. This was for them as much as it was for me.
“After three weeks, the King sent me a peace offering. He wanted to meet. I left my dragons to guard my fortress and took my pane to the castle.
“If there was peace, true peace, I would take it. If I could be free, if I could be forgiven, I would ask for nothing else. I would not be petty. I would put my Aejin yu ka Aejin first.
“Thorn accompanied me. There was no need. His presence was barely ceremonial, but he insisted upon it. And though he was supposed to look for enemies on our way, would-be assassins and those who would see me turned to ash, he tensed every time the risen pane took a step. His knuckles whitened around his halberd as he slowly shook his head.
“Leave them, Kondo. Have them return to the mountains and lay to rest. This isn’t right. The King is your enemy. Ishan, too. The pane are not, he said. He was not yet too scared to speak freely around me.
“They are my allies, I told him. They were not pane: they were more me than they were themselves.
“At the palace, the King’s guard too was largely ceremonial. All there knew that if my risen pane did not kill them, then I would do so with a single thought. They stood to attention and held their shoulders squared not out of respect, but fear. It was not like the days when the streets would fill to catch a glimpse of me, and all would line up in hopes of catching my eye. Walking between the rows of soldiers and their unsteady weapons made me doubt that the past had ever been mine.
“Once I reached the throne room, high up in Myros’ tallest tower, I understood how the King had gathered the courage to face me head-on. It was not because he believed this was the only chance for peace; it was because Maya and Siv were stood behind him.
“Did Essua know you had sided with the King? I asked plainly.
“The King has ensured us that the restrictions on our fellow Aejin will be lifted, Maya said, So long as…
“I am made an example of?
“She called the laws binding us restrictions, as though they had merely conflicted with a prior engagement or saw her out of bed earlier than she wished to be. She called them restrictions as though she had not sat around a camp fire with me and spoken of how endlessly suffocating it was not to be able to let her powers flow freely.
“And you believe them?
“Enough to betray me. Enough to stand behind the King while Essua’s ashes were in the jar I had clung to so tightly my fingerprints were worn into the surface. The King told me he was willing to extend the same offer to me, and that it was not becoming for a Daughter of Isjin and a King to trade petty threats. That was all it would be, if I were to accept his offer. It would be in the past. Forgotten.
“And Skalo would still be dead. Not even I could change that.
“I did not want peace. I did not want forgiveness. I wanted what I was owed.
“I told him I did not accept. I told him he would free all of the necromancers, myself included, and that he would abdicate. Having expected such petulance, he gestured for Maya and Siv to approach me. I looked at Thorn and he readied his weapon. I did not know whether my power would work on another necromancer and quickly learnt the hard way.
“There is no way to express it. There is not enough ink on Bosma for me to describe the way it feels to experience the pull of another Aejin, to know they are forever buried in your heart, and attempt to kill them in the same moment. I pushed my power into them and they did the same. It was as though my skull was cracking along impossibly small fractures. Everything I was pounded, screamed, and the bile in my throat told me to stop, stop. Yet I would not.
“The void formed around us. Thorn charged with his halberd, knocking Maya off balance, and in that moment, I forced death into her. Siv, equipped with a blade as well as Isjin’s gift, thrust the sharpened steel through Thorn’s gut before I tore the life from them, as well.
“Kneeling by Thorn’s side, I pressed my palm to his face and brought him back the moment he faded away. In the aftermath of a bright, blinding battle, he remained curled up on his side, hands pressed to another wound that had retreated as quickly as it claimed him.
“The King had not counted on that. He’d thought of me as reckless and self-serving, but had never considered that I might be stronger than any of my fellow Aejin. My fellow Aejin, dead at my feet. Dead in a way even they could not rise from. Something within them had been severed and I knew it was not my place to bring them back. The King had done this to them; he could be the one to live with the consequences.
“I took a single step towards him. He did not rise from his throne. I pried Siv’s blade from their hands and wiped it clean on my red robes.
“Do you not want to know, the King asked, fingers tightening around the arms of his throne, How I knew to find Tela-Laos, your mother and grandmother? Your guard?
“I did not need an answer to that question. Maya and Siv had betrayed me and in doing so, they had betrayed Essua, too. Perhaps they had helped torture him before the flames took him.
“The King shook his head. I was wrong; it was not so.
“I did not give into the temptation to ask who it had been. I did not need to. As if everyone gathered knew their lines and cues but me, Haru-Taiki flew into the room in a blaze of red and orange. He perched on the back of the King’s throne, lest I misunderstand his arrival.
“Of course. Of course! Haru-Taiki had been assigned to me by the King. He had been following me for half a decade, had witnessed every choice I’d made and saw me slowly turn down whatever dark path it was they believed I had set myself on. I should not have been surprised. I should not have been moved to anger. And yet. And yet—
“He had been my friend. Not born of necessity, or of a bond that bound us together. We had learnt to tolerate each other, and it had become something more. Something greater. But it was all for nothing. He had been my friend. He had been my friend.
“I marched towards him, Siv’s blade tight in my hand. He spread out his wings and began to explain that he had not wanted to hurt me, that he had only done this to save me, but I would not listen. I did not need to. His words were poison.
“I snatched him out of the air and drew Siv’s blade across his throat. Flames began to spark along the edge of his wings but I drew the light out of him before he could set himself ablaze. He thudded heavily against the stone. I looked at the King and did not need to ask him what he thought I would do, after seeing what had become of my fellow Aejin and my friend.
“He pressed his lips together and held my gaze. Knowing it could only buy him time, he asked me the one thing that could make me take pause: did I want to know what the silence was?
“I confessed that I did. I placed Siv’s blade on the floor and sat down, legs crossed. Thorn was close by, and still he did not move. I reached out a hand and ran my fingers through his short hair.
“The silence is all that there is for necromancers, after this life. The silence is nothing. The silence is the void left behind for those who cannot be reunited with Isjin, who cannot enter the Forest Within. The silence is the realisation that a body that can come back from almost anything cannot have a soul that frees itself from its mortal form. You are stabbed through the heart; you die; you do not visit the Forest Within; but you return. But what happens when your body becomes ash? When there is nothing to rise from?
“The silence is all you have. It is all you become. And that is why we set you on this path. That is why we make certain your choices are measures, your actions careful. Controlled. Because this life is all you have, and we do not wish to make you live forever with your mistakes. You have too much power, Kondo-Kana. Too much for this world. You are young. You are frightened. The silence has driven you beyond despair, yet you have not heard a single note of it.
“He was wrong. He had to be. I was made of Isjin, of her light. She had divided herself up that my Aejin yu ka Aejin and I might live. Why would she abandon me to this life, to the salt of Bosma, and not wait for me as she waited for all others? He was wrong. My fingers twisted in Thorn’s hair and I tilted his head back, demanding that he describe the Forest Within to me. His words were scattered and strained, his tongue reluctant to move, and I pictured it as clearly as any fantastical landscape from any book.
“It did not mean anything. I had not been there; I had not died. Of course there was much of nothing in my mind. The King was wrong. It was but another story he had spun, another web of lies to keep the Aejin yu ka Aejin tangled in. Yet Essua had been so insistent. It tormented him. But he had not told me what the silence was. It was… It could be—
“I did not know. I did not know.
“And so I took the King’s life and his crown. I pushed his corpse from the throne and picked up Haru-Taiki, feathers soaked in blood, and shoved him into a box, that he might never be thrown into the Phoenix Fire.
“Thorn watched all of this, face paling. I told him we had our freedom. I told him it was over. He pushed himself up on shaking arms and asked me if I thought it would end there. With the King at my feet and an army of the risen dead casting a long shadow across Myros. I told him to bring Tela-Laos to me. He asked if I wanted her to see me like this. I pressed a hand to my forehead and drew the light from the stone of the castle, until there was not an inch he could bare to look at, and asked him again.
“He left. I did not know if he would do as I had said, but I waited. I tried to move Maya and Siv’s bodies but they were as lead weights to me. I could not bring myself to rise from the throne and drag their bodies away and did not care enough to move the King. I stared into the emptiness I had created and found it endlessly fascinating. Time slipped away. The ache in my chest ceased to matter.
“When Laos came, I couldn’t tell if it’d been hours or days. She was out of breath and her hands trembled as I finally tore my gaze from the void around me. It did not cut her to the bone, as it had Thorn. She did not see it. She did not see anything but me.
“I rose from the throne. I told her that I had done it. I told her that I was free, and that we had won.
“Thorn had told her what had happened. To the King, to my Aejin, to Haru-Taiki. Why, she asked. Why was all she was able to say. That single word summed up all of the hurt that swirled in the pit of her gut and rushed up to her chest.
“They made me. They gave me no choice, I said. I was no longer certain who they were. The rest of the world, perhaps.
“They did not make you do this. These were your actions. It was your choice. When a lamb is bitten by a wolf, it does not then become a wolf, Kana. It cowers. It backs away. It finds a way to live another day, and does not let its guard down for a second time. A lamb is still a lamb, no matter how it is mauled. But you— Here she sucked in a breath. Here she stepped away from me, eyes dark. In that moment, I knew she would never call me Kana again, because she would never mean it. You were always the wolf. I understand that now.
“Laos! I called after her, but she was already gone.
“Alone in my tower, I collapsed back in my throne. I cursed it all. Bosma. Myros. The King and the high Priests, the artists with their inks and needles, and the healers who trapped me inside of myself. Above all, I cursed Isjin. Where was she? Why would my own creator, my own light, force me to endure this?
“I could not rule. And Thryce, Agadia, Mesomia; what would they think of this? There would be retribution. There would be retribution and it would not end until all the Kings and Queens and rulers had been wiped from Bosma. All the Princes and Princesses who would take their places, the elected leaders and generals; the common people who would rise, with no one above them.
“I could not do it. I could not destroy all of Bosma. Even if I could.
“I could not rule and did not want to. But I sat on that throne, watching through a distant window as the void rippled through Phos and people began to flee the Kingdom.
“And the rest? The rest is not yet written. But I think you understand. I think you know what Ishan did to Tela-Laos and how pulp and splintered bone was returned to me in sodden handfuls. I think you know what I did to Ishan and all the other high Priests, once I no longer had Laos left to lose. I think you know that Thorn stayed with me, out of loyalty, out of fear, and died in my arms over and over, until he begged me to never bring him back again.
“I think you know that I took Myros and Thryce. That I took all remaining life, human, pane and phoenix, without hesitation. I took the warmth from the earth and the spirit from the rivers, the wind from the air and the light and dark from the land. I took all of it and held it within myself, claiming all that was true and Everlasting, and never let go.”
CHAPTER XXV
Kondo-Kana didn’t look as though she’d told me the story of her life, or at least how it began. She thumbed back a few pages, frowned, and fixed something with her quill.
“Was any of that true?” I asked. What else was there to focus on? The thought of my life being endless in exchange for my death being nothing?
Smiling, Kondo-Kana leant back in her chair.
“It is true at this moment. It is what I remember, and it feels right to me,” she said. “But it may not be true tomorrow. It will not be true in a decade.”
“You… you killed Haru-Taiki.”
I pressed my hands together under the table, feeling the nail marks dug into my palms.
“He betrayed me. He had Essua killed. My mother, my grandmother. Thorn. That is true, yes. He remembers it as well as I do.”
“But I don’t…” My gaze dropped to the book. She pinched the pages she’d read between a finger and a thumb. There were barely two dozen of them; hundreds more were left blank. “That was it? But you…”
“Have so many more blank pages? I spoke of the first twenty-five years of my life, yet there have been one-thousand, five hundred and twenty-eight of them. Do not think that this is the meat of it, simply because it is what you have heard. What history remembers. There are still tales for me to write. Lifetimes of them.”
“I have to go,” I said, pushing myself to my feet. It wasn’t what I’d intended to say. No wonder he clawed apart your face or Everything they said about you is true might’ve been more fitting, but I couldn’t face her. I wished I’d never heard her story, her gall and wormwood, and that I could continue believing that not knowing was worse than whatever she could’ve told me.
