Eternity's Blade, page 16
Cultist shots replied, blasting back at the Black Cloaks. Pelting sounds hissed like angry hornets. Dust pocked and blood fountained. Outsiders tumbled flat, missing whole chunks of limbs. Soh’shoro had never seen such violence. He fought the urge to vomit at the sheer barbarity of these killings.
“Reload!” Yei’an commanded. “They’re charging! Fire, then brace for melee!”
The Black Cloaks finished a final salvo, muzzles flashing silver. The trail disappeared once more beneath billowing smoke and its acrid scent of sawdust. Lily-Eaters burst from the smog, swinging clay swords or firing small, hand-sized rifles point-blank.
Fear and confusion quickened Soh’shoro’s lethargic body. Should I help them? But he did not understand why the men fought, or what purpose these killings served. He looked for Yei’an, but she had vanished into the smoke.
Then he glimpsed it. A flash of lacquered memory, amid the now-trampled wreckage of his funerary bower. The carving called to him like a siren’s song. Without thinking, Soh’shoro stumbled toward it and into the melee. He moved low and animal-like, partly to remain hidden and partly because his spine ached with leaching cold. Still his Qu’su instincts held, timing his motions with the drifting smog. He reached his litter unnoticed. And kneeling amid its crumpled silks, he grasped at the icelike lacquer.
The mask of his bride.
“You’re alive,” he whispered breathlessly. “You will all be alive.”
For if Soh’shoro had awoken from Death to this place, why not his wife? Why not An-go’yi’ki? Even Obajen-mahoe? They too might have crossed those same Mists, just as he and Yei’an did. They could live again. The world fell away in the face of sudden, unbelievable possibility: that a rotting princess might still hold him; that a murdered brother might still forgive; that a suffering father might call his name once more. That all the horrors of the Valley might be undone beyond their veils of Mist. That Outside, Soh’shoro might find himself redeemed.
“I’ll find you,” Soh’shoro repeated, clutching her mask to his chest. “I’ll find you.”
But it was already too late.
In the Valley, the Voice always accompanied violence. So Soh’shoro’s instincts had habituated to its warnings, anticipating danger only alongside its keening rush. But now, no such cries called. So the gunstock caught him completely off guard, smashing open his face. Soh’shoro spilled to the ground, tangling in the wreckage of his funeral bower. His back jarred against something flat and heavy, brightened by dancing cranes. My ri’shou’an. The Lily-Eater stepped over him, raising his clay sword for its killing stroke. But instead, a strange smile widened the man’s glassy eyes, stopping him.
“Found him!” the hulking Cultist slurred. “I’ve found our last. The prophet he wants!”
Soh’shoro’s heart thundered icily, as he tried to draw his ancestral blade. But his muscles, atrophied by Death, struggled pathetically. Funeral bindings held its ossuary firmly shut, and his sword never left its sheath. The Cultist sneered derisively, pinning Soh’shoro to the ground.
“I’ll crush the fight out of you . . .”
Lily stench poured from his mouth as the Cultist reared back. But the prince waited for the Voice to time his dodge. So the strike caught him full force in the face. The world spun. His grip on his ri’shou’an slackened.
The Voice! Soh’shoro panicked. Where is the Voice?
Once more the Cultist struck. And again, Soh’shoro listened for his mother’s haunted warnings. Still there came only silence. The blow shivered his ribs, and he spat blood. I can’t hear her anymore.
Only now Soh’shoro accepted the truth:
Beyond the Valley, no supernatural force existed to protest life’s brutality. There is no Voice Outside.
Now as the Lily-Eater hit him again, Soh’shoro trusted only his own reflexes. But mere personal instinct felt stilted and labored. He managed a weak block. Then his counter arced far too slowly. Another exchange, and only now did Soh’shoro manage to catch the Cultist’s wrist, exposing his neck for a killing blow.
But he hesitated. Where will this man go when he dies without the Voice, without the Valley?
So Soh’shoro merely drove his knee into the Cultist’s ribs, setting his hips into the motion as hands seized shoulders. The Lily-Eater flipped overhead, thrown into the gun smoke.
“Retreat!” Yei’an shouted over the chaos. “There’s too many! Fall back!”
Soh’shoro gasped for breath, fury and fear refusing to quiet. And lifting both blade and mask, he ran toward her voice.
“Yei’an! I’m here!”
“Soh’shoro!” She lurched from the smog beside him. “We’ve got to run! I gave orders to explode the hillside. To cover our retreat.”
Yei’an snatched his hand. The pair weaved through the melee, toward a final formation of Black Cloaks, firing in staggered rows. Behind the line, a small group packed heavy powder satchels into a mountain fissure.
“Hold fire!” Yei’an called, gesturing desperately to her fellows. “By the Black, hold fire! It’s us! It’s the prince of the Valley!”
But her cries drew the attention of another rifle.
Soh’shoro wheeled just as the Cultist aimed; the same man Soh’shoro had thrown from the bower. He imagined Yei’an’s heart’s blood, fountaining over mountain moss, as the gunshot echoed. And he shouldered her wide, knocking them both flat to the ground.
The bullet sailed overhead, hissing through the rain. Saltpeter sparked as its errant arc struck the powder satchels. Then a brilliant flash caught skin like sunlight. Compressing air rattled bones as black smoke mushroomed skyward. The entire trail shuddered.
“Avalanche!”
Yei’an scrambled upright, hauling Soh’shoro beneath the nearest ridge, just as the landslide started. Scree pounded overhead, building in intensity, until the world stormed stone. Rock dust billowed. Dead-falling trees and earthy tides smashed flesh to pulp. Everywhere men screamed.
“Hold on to me!” she hissed. “Don’t let go! If we . . .”
But the prince could hear nothing else over the thunder, as the trail beneath them sheared away.
Chapter 14
Remedy
Instinct saved them.
Ossuary bindings snapped. Golden webbing flared through quaking dust. Metal sparked. And Soh’shoro’s ancestral sword speared into the mountainside, catching just as it had atop his House pagoda. One hand grasped the weighted ring guard, the other Yei’an’s arm. And he held her close like that, as the avalanche churned overhead.
He did not know how long the world shuddered. Each moment both stretched and aborted, terror and exertion quickening time even as they numbed perception. Soh’shoro heard only the pounding of stones and the miserable rush of earth, as hideous rivers of rock reverberated around them. Scree split his forearm, exposed beside his ri’shou’an. Gravel pelted his shoulder, bruising bone. But the worst of the avalanche deflected against the ridgeline, tumbling past its overhang and thundering deeper into the lower hills.
Eventually Yei’an’s breathing, panicked and animalistic, grew audible over the slowing stones. Still they clung to each other, hanging by the blade, until the landslide’s last tremors faded. Lily petals floated alongside dust motes, framing the collapse and its crumpled corpses.
Such strength. The powder could destroy anything. A strange thought came to Soh’shoro then: even the Mausoleum.
“The mountain’s settling,” Yei’an interrupted, letting go of Soh’shoro hesitantly. Nimbly she slid down the avalanche’s track, perching on a level rock. Soh’shoro wrenched his blade free, slipping after her.
“You’re hurt,” she gasped, staring at the prince’s bloodied sword arm. Angry gashes, where scree had scraped free flesh, streaked the limb. Each laceration blended with the veinless stains of the Qu’su, as if extending them toward Soh’shoro’s heart.
“Nothing is broken. I’ll manage.”
“We got lucky then,” Yei’an replied. “Between the overhang and your blade.” But a bone-deep gash brightened the monk’s brow. Testing it, she flinched tenderly. “I doubt anyone else made it. But we check for survivors all the same.”
Together the pair picked their way down the avalanche, past disjointed limbs and half-buried corpses. Close by, a Lily-Eater retched with pain.
“I watched you fight this man,” Yei’an began, “beside your litter. You could have finished him.” She kicked the Cultist’s gun away before drawing her own narrow dagger. “Why didn’t you?”
“What’s the point”—Soh’shoro swept his hands across the massacre—“of all this killing?”
“To live,” Yei’an answered, slitting the Lily-Eater’s throat. And without even glancing back, she continued down the collapse, to check if the next body breathed.
But Soh’shoro did not follow. “Why are you fighting these men?” he called. “What is going on?”
Yei’an turned. “You hate the Onan’ji, like I do?”
He nodded.
“They’re his, Soh’shoro. The Cult worships the Valley as paradise, and the Qu’su as its guardian angels.”
Still Soh’shoro hesitated. Everywhere was splattered blood and broken limbs, painting a prophetic tableau of limitless suffering. Is this all my power brings when it is shared? And for the first time he wondered—for all its static misery, for all its rotting secrets—Was the Valley not better than this?
Yet he followed her.
Ahead Yei’an bent over a wounded Black Cloak, pressing his upper chest with both hands, counting strangely between each compression. “Please,” she kept muttering. “Please.” Tears streamed from her eyes. “He is a friend.”
Soh’shoro kneeled beside her. “Let me help.”
“Press here.” She clasped his hands with hers, teaching him to pump the Outsider’s chest. Despite the horror and exhaustion, Soh’shoro still shivered at her touch.
“Keep steady,” she instructed. “This is a science. The chirurgeons taught me that.”
“And who are they?” he asked between rhythmic pushes.
“The leaders of the Black Cloaks and of Outside, before the Cult conquered their Haven.” Soh’shoro recalled the city’s floating lights atop the Ocean. “I’ve got to take you to them.”
“Why?”
“Because the Valley has changed,” Yei’an replied ominously. “And what you remember from before you died might tell us why. Explain how we can stop the Mists.”
Soh’shoro froze. “Stop them?”
“Look.”
He glanced up at their gray veils. Already the upper trail, where he had awoken, lay smothered by shifting plumes of silver. As if the Mists leached farther and farther into Outside.
“They’re spreading?”
“It began recently,” Yei’an explained. “Slowly at first. But every day since, they’ve quickened.” She swallowed. “The Cult claims the Mists will soon swallow the entire world. Purging the unbelievers and welcoming the faithful back into the Valley.”
Is this the Onan’ji’s madness?
But before Soh’shoro could ask more, the Black Cloak coughed to life. Spittle and blood dribbled from his mouth, as his eyes rolled with small seizures.
“Easy,” Yei’an soothed, probing his torso gently, speaking now to the wounded man. “You’re breathing again, but your ribs are broken.” She pulled bandages from her pouch, cinching the Outsider’s stomach. “Just hold on. We’ll get you to Remedy soon.” She looked up at Soh’shoro. “That’s the settlement where the chirurgeons retreated.” She swallowed hesitantly. “And where I took your father, after I found him.”
“He’s alive?” Soh’shoro’s eyes widened.
Yei’an nodded, unwrapping her onyx cloak. Carefully, she rolled the Outsider atop it, creating a makeshift litter. “He told the chirurgeons what happened in the Palace. That’s why we searched for you. Because he thought the Onan’ji would . . .” Her voice trailed off.
But Soh’shoro completed the thought: He thought the Onan’ji would kill you. Was the Qu’su so obviously his better? Even if Soh’shoro could return to the Valley, how could he hope to defeat such an opponent? After all, he had already failed to do so.
“Were there others with my father?” Soh’shoro pressed. “From the Valley?”
Yei’an flinched as if struck. “You’re asking about her, aren’t you? The Ang’soon princess?” She sneered the name.
“Yes.”
She shook her head suspiciously. “I don’t know. The Traders took many corpses to the Cultists at the Haven. Before the chirurgeons realized what was happening.”
“Then I need to go there.” Soh’shoro instinctively reached for the lacquer mask, where it lay nestled between his robes and chest.
“That’s suicide. The Cult would kill you on sight.” But Soh’shoro remembered the Lily-Eater’s strange shout from the bower: I’ve found him. The prophet he wants. “Besides, I can’t carry the wounded by myself. And you must see your father, before it’s too late.”
“What do you mean?” The rot. “Is he sick?”
“I can’t describe it.” Pain creased her face. “And I don’t want to try. We just need to hurry. For all of our sakes.” She lifted her corner of the cloak, signaling for Soh’shoro to do the same. “Come on.”
Together they finished searching the avalanche’s terminus. Only one more Outsider still breathed, but when Yei’an rolled her over and saw only half a face, she slit the woman’s throat just like the Lily-Eater’s before her. Then she opened the corpse’s powder case, scavenging it to refill her own, before moving on.
Eventually their descent led back to the beaten tar of the mountain road. But Yei’an remained wary of Cult reinforcements. Twice they heard shouts somewhere down the trail. Soon they fled the track entirely, forging across scrublands before vanishing into an overgrown ravine. The monk kept rubbing at her head wound, as if trying to relieve pressure beneath its swelling skin.
As night fell, they reached Outside’s amaranthine sands. Strange centipedes, sparkling cinnamon in the starlight, skittered curiously close. Yei’an sparked a small fire beneath a rocky bluff to mask its light. The wounded Black Cloak slept the miserable sleep of pain. And Soh’shoro watched the Mists. Always they continued their inexorable creep, as ice seeps across a winter pond, gradually swallowing more and more of the world.
“Let me see your arm.” Yei’an dangled needle and thread in the firelight.
Soh’shoro kneeled beside her. The scent of winter bur and honey filled him once more.
“We can’t risk infection,” she explained, swabbing each gash with clear liquid from a narrow bottle. Then the needle darted. Soh’shoro’s heart quickened with both pain and closeness. For a time neither spoke.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, as Yei’an’s eyes sparkled silver with small tears.
“You know.” She licked the needle distractedly, smearing blood across her lips. “We both know.” Her luminous face beamed up at his, like the sun through a storm. “I lost you, Soh’shoro. And now you’re here.”
The fire crackled sharply.
“I never meant to hurt you.”
“Then don’t. Not again.” She dropped the thread, stroking his cheek.
“Yei’an. I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.” She smeared blood across his lip as she kissed him.
“Yei’an . . . Stop . . .”
But her mouth ran over his throat, then his chest, and she stripped back his shirt to scrape fingernails over old scar tissue. She traced the Qu’su’s veinless staining, pinching slightly. And without speaking, she pulled him down atop the rough sand.
“This is what I learned Outside,” she whispered fiercely. “Nothing matters in the end. But it does matter now.” She licked his neck with feral eagerness. Her heat filled him. “This isn’t like the Valley. There isn’t more. There’s just this.”
Her body danced brightly over his. Her luminous eyes swallowed the world, like a lake drinking in its drowning. The suture needle caught beneath him, lancing his ribs. The cracked mask of the princess watched from where it lay beside his mother’s blade.
Afterward she rested against him. But as he stroked her hair, she flinched each time his fingers brushed the gash on her forehead.
“It’s getting worse, isn’t it? Your wound?”
“The chirurgeons will know what to do.”
Though they tried to sleep, both pain and anticipation prevented it. So they set off into the sands well before sunrise.
Here great drifts of orange silt piled against scraggly shoots of hollyhock and elderberry, punctuated by sparse weeds and weakly flowering shrubs. Overhead, the clouds blazed brilliant calico streamers. Soh’shoro traced their ribbons through the dawn, beyond and above the sparkling sea. On and on into that limitless forever.
“Does the Ocean end?” he asked. For the sea’s ceaseless span seemed too incredible, compared to the Valley’s finite frontier.
“Not as far as I know,” Yei’an replied. “But there must be other lands, beyond those waters. That’s where the Black Ships came from, in the beginning.”
Soh’shoro wanted to ask more. But it clearly pained Yei’an to speak. So instead, he shouldered the Outsider’s full weight, tying the wounded man to his back like a traveling satchel.
“We can’t keep going like this.”
“There are farms ahead, beside the rivers. We’ll find help there.”
Soh’shoro scanned the horizon for the willowy green of rice plants. But though several broad tributaries cut inland from the Ocean, only stone houses and wooden partitions dotted their banks. Silhouettes of men raked clumpy whiteness from their currents.
Is that salt? he wondered, tasting sour familiarity on the wind.
They limped closer. With afternoon they reached the nearest farm, shouting for help. Soon Soh’shoro found himself eating a gifted meal of soup, strangely reminiscent of the Traders’ food, but full of thick chunks of chewy rawness. A low, grinding wheel spun outside the stone cottage. Its bucketed ruts churned with the river’s current, rotating a central axle that hissed with rust.
