Amanda Downum - The Drowning City

Deilin smiled; she was lovely when she wasn’t frothing mad. The resemblance to Anhai and Vienh was clear. “I won’t warn you if I do.”

Isyllt smiled back and turned her eyes to the forest sloping around them. “What do you call this place?”

“The Night Forest. The unsung dead remain here, with the spirits.”

“Where do the others go?”

“East, or so we’re told. The songs and offerings carry them to the cities of our ancestors, on the far side of the mountains.”

“But not you.”

Deilin shrugged, one hand on her knife hilt. “I wasn’t given to the Ashen Wind. The Assari left my corpse to rot, and scavengers have long since eaten my bones. I might have walked, climbed the Bone Stair, but the way is long and dangerous and I was afraid. Even if my granddaughters were to sing me on, my wounds will never heal. And I doubt they would, now.”

The soft bitterness of the last turned Isyllt’s head. “Why did you do it?”

Deilin didn’t answer for a moment and Isyllt wondered if it was worth compelling her to answer. In the silence, she heard the soft, wet sounds of the woman’s ruined lung flopping inside her chest.

“I don’t know,” she said at last. “I wandered in the forest so long-I was already half mad when Chu Zhen found me.” Dark eyes flickered toward Isyllt. “Kaeru, she called herself to you. She was the last of the Yeoh clan, or at least of those who didn’t sell themselves to the Assari. We were close as girls, but she fled south when her family died and I married soon after.

“She found me only a few seasons ago-I hadn’t realized so much time had passed till I saw how old she’d grown. She told me of the city and the Khas and the Dai Tranh, how we lost more children and warriors every year, to death or despair or the lure of Assari decadence. She told me of my granddaughters, and my half-blooded great-granddaughter. And the more she told me, the madder I grew, till my blood burned and all I knew was the need for flesh, for revenge.” She touched her wound absently; the blood faded from her fingertips as she pulled them away.

“It’s anathema, of course, for the dead to possess the living, but no worse so than for children to forget their ancestors. I remember thinking that, just before Chu Zhen broke the seals and summoned me into the house. Then the madness took me and everything was blood and hate until I woke up in your stone prison.”

Isyllt’s hand tightened around the ghostly reflection of her ring.

“You argued with her, though, on the boat.”

Another shrug. “It’s anathema, and I was calmer then. Being bound gives one plenty of time to think.”

“What do you think about?”

“Revenge.”

Steel hissed and Isyllt spun, turning just in time to watch Deilin’s knife sink into her gut. It burned like ice, colder and cleaner than living pain. Deilin bared her teeth as she twisted the blade.

Silver-blue light spilled from the wound. Not blood, but life and magic. It hissed and steamed down the blade and Deilin jerked her hand away as it burned her fingers. The hungry ground swallowed what fell.

Isyllt touched the hilt and grinned. Light surrounded the phantom blade, dissolving it, absorbing it. An instant later, blade and wound vanished, leaving glowing drops on her fingers. Deilin gaped and Isyllt laughed.

“Not so easy, I’m afraid.” She reached out and touched the ghost’s face with a whispered word of banishment. Deilin vanished with a curse on her lips.

With the woman gone, Isyllt let go of her bravado and staggered to one knee, grunting with pain. Leaves crisped and crumbled where her unblood struck. Kiril’s voice rose in her mind, the echo of long-ago lessons. Take care of your soul as well as your flesh, or you’ll find yourself with neither.

Pride drove her to her feet, pride and the too-close growl of a spirit-beast drawn by the smell of shed magic. She reached for her heartbeat, and in the space of one found herself beside her body.

Zhirin slept, her face stained with tears. Some priests taught that death was an end to pain, but that was a lie. Sleep, at least, might keep it at bay for a time. Isyllt sank into her weary, aching flesh, bound herself with blood and bone, and let the darkness take her.

Xinai and Riuh made better time on the way back, marching through much of the night and finally reaching Cay Lin near midnight five days after they’d set out. Her legs ached to dragging from the pace she’d set and cramps twisted her guts-the sight of the ruined walls filled her with bittersweet relief. Perhaps Selei would be asleep, Xinai half hoped, and she could deliver the news in the morning.

But when the guard escorted them to her makeshift house, a light glowed inside. Xinai didn’t recognize the broken building and didn’t try to recall who had lived there so many years ago. Selei sat cross-legged on a bedroll, maps spread in front of her and the remnants of a meal set to the side. The old woman looked up as they entered and Xinai frowned-Selei might have aged years in the days they’d been gone. Unhappy lines seamed her face and her eyes were sunken and red-rimmed.

“Grandmother?” Riuh knelt in front of her. “What’s wrong?”

“More of us dead.” She shook her head, hair tangled and streaked with ashes. “The Khas attacked a Dai Tranh boat last night-no one survived. One of my oldest friends was aboard. My sisters, my cousins, my friends…So many of us fallen. Nearly a generation lost to Assari blades, or living clanless and alone in the city.”

Xinai knelt beside Riuh and took the old woman’s hand. So fragile and light in hers, and she swallowed around a sudden tightness in her throat.

Selei smiled, brief and bitter. “But grief is a luxury I shouldn’t indulge in yet. You found it.”

“Yes.” Xinai stripped the diamond charm off her neck, and only manners kept her from flinging it into the fire. She dropped it on a map instead. “On the eastern side of the mountain. They fish the stones from the river. It’s as you feared-prisoners die there and rot unsung.”

“Father might still be there,” Riuh said. “Or his ghost. We have to find out.”

Selei shook her head sadly. “This is greater than one family’s grief.”

“What, then?”

Her mismatched eyes narrowed, gleaming in the firelight. “We destroy the mine.”

“How can you destroy a river?” Xinai asked.

“I don’t know yet. We’ll find a way.” She slid a map out of the stack. “Show me where it is.”

Xinai leaned forward to mark the spot with a smudge of charcoal. “They’ve hung ghost-wards all around, but they’re only a distraction.” She fought a grimace as she rocked back on her heels; she’d begun to bleed.

Selei stared at the map, at the sinuous curves of the river and the sharp lines of the mountain. One thin, calloused finger tapped Mount Haroun slowly. “I don’t think we’ll need to worry about that.”

The Ki Dai gathered at dawn. Xinai had never been introduced to the rest, or even known their names, but it wasn’t hard to guess-all those around her wore charms or witch-marks, and a chill followed them, greater than any one ghost. Shaiyung kept close, till Xinai’s arm tingled with cold.

A few protested at first as Selei laid out her plan. It was madness. If the mountain erupted, it would easily destroy the mine and the Kurun Tam mages responsible for it, but the jungle was sure to burn as well. But the more Selei talked, the more sense it made. The Assari had bound the mountain with magic as they’d bound the land with steel and stone-what better way to teach them the strength of a free Sivahra than to unleash the fire they tamed? The forest would grow back, unlike all the clansfolk who had died in the mines.