We thwarted the true death for you! The queen’s thoughts were ragged, but so powerful that many of those listening cried out to hear them. All for you! And now that death stalks me in turn! Some of the Hikeda’ya were slack-mouthed and moaning.
“And so we prepared to strike at the mortals once more, and the War of Return continued,” said Akhenabi. “But again treachery overcame us! This time those of our own race—Ineluki’s own cowardly kinsmen—sided with the mortals. The turncoat House of Year-Dancing led the remaining Zida’ya against us, and less than half a Great Year ago we were defeated at the very gates of Asu’a. Ineluki Storm King, that great heart, that sacrifice for his people, was delivered to Unbeing and is forever lost to us—one of the bravest of all our kind, unmade. And when Ineluki and the Red Hand failed this time, our beloved queen was also nearly destroyed.”
Some of the gathered Hikeda’ya cried out in fury and shook their fists in the air, as if the treacherous Zida’ya were here with them in the depths of Nakkiga and could be punished.
“Futility!” cried Akhenabi. “Ah, such a bitter taste! There is no poison to match it. But do not underestimate our queen, who loves and protects us always. Because in the grim aftermath of that failure, as she wandered lost in the keta-yi’indra, great Utuk’ku was still searching for a way to destroy our treacherous enemies. And she found one.”
The cries of anger ceased. The great chamber fell silent. Even the Lightless seemed to pause and listen.
“Ineluki was gone, and most of his Red Hand, too,” the Lord of Song continued, “but one who had sacrificed all for us and for the queen still lived! And Utuk’ku, the Mother of All, found that fearless spirit in the lands where sleep and death meet.”
Although it was Akhenabi who spoke, all eyes were now on the motionless queen.
“Yes, for despite all the mortals could do,” Akhenabi declared, “Ommu the Voiceless, one of the greatest of all our kind, had not entirely perished in the Storm King’s destruction. Try to imagine such devotion, Hikeda’ya,” Akhenabi cried. “Already murdered once by mortals, returned from death to fight again for our kind, and then murdered once more by those same cruel mortal hands—and yet still Ommu of the Red Hand would not die!” Murmurs of horrified wonder rose from the crowd. “Full of secrets from the Places Between, still burning for the vengeance that has been denied us, Ommu the Whisperer did not surrender. And even as I speak, she still clings to existence in the dreadful lands beyond life! And in this very hour—but only with your help—the queen will bring Ommu back to us.”
Although he was as stunned by this as the rest, Viyeki was also full of doubt. Even if the bizarre tale of Ommu’s survival was true, what could death have taught the undead Singer that it had not already shown her the first time she died? How would bringing back one of the Red Hand change the Hikeda’ya’s fortunes when the queen and Ineluki themselves had not managed it? And why had Viyeki and the rest of Nakkiga’s elite been brought here to the Chamber of the Well?
“We will prepare for her return,” Akhenabi announced.
As he spoke, a squadron of Queen’s Teeth appeared from one of the chamber’s outer archways. Four of them carried an open ceremonial litter with a young woman of the Hikeda’ya swaying inside it. She was dressed in a robe as rich as one of Utuk’ku’s own, an ornate masterpiece of patterned spinsilk, and her jet hair was elaborately curled and pinned as if for a wedding, but despite her rich clothes and considerable beauty, Viyeki did not recognize her. As the guards set the litter down by the edge of the Well, her head wobbled. She did not seem to see anything around her—not the assembled nobles, not the Breathing Harp, not even the queen herself.
She has been given kei-vishaa, Viyeki realized. She walks in dream. But why? Who is she and what is happening here?
“Bow your heads, Hikada’yei!” commanded Akhenabi. “Lend your queen the strength of your hearts, and today the Mother of the People will bring back one whom the mortals could not unmake, for all their trying.” His voice grew softer; Viyeki thought the Lord of Song mimicked regret. “But that return is not without cost, and Ommu’s passage will not come without pain to us all. Praise loudly loyal Marshal Muyare, High Magister of the Order of Sacrifice, who at our queen’s request gives Ya-Jalamu, his own granddaughter, to be the Opener of the Way.”
“Praise Muyare!” someone shouted. “May the Garden remember and bless him always!”
“Praise the queen!” cried someone else. “Praise the mother of us all!”
Viyeki could feel everything the others felt, the fear and exhilaration of the queen’s struggle on their behalf, but some of his doubts remained. The girl might only be one of Muyare’s several granddaughters, and part mortal at that—Viyeki had heard her mother was a human slave, like his own Tzoja—but it seemed hard to believe that the marshal had surrendered her willingly to such a terrible fate, no matter how exalted the purpose. Muyare was a powerful man, with all the armed might of the Order of Sacrifice at his command: only an order from the queen herself could have made him do it.
“Respect this noble gift of the high magister!” Akhenabi proclaimed. “Revere Muyare’s loyalty and his granddaughter’s honorable sacrifice, which will open the door for Ommu’s return to us. The queen declares that in Ya-Jalamu’s name, an entire new league of the Order of Sacrifice will be created—the League Seyt-Jalamu!”
A shout of approval and gratitude went up from the assembled nobles, but Muyare still gazed steadily at the ground before him, as if the sacrifice Akhenabi was praising brought him only pain. He clearly could not bear to look at his granddaughter’s face, though she would not have known him in her kei-vishaa dream.
“Now our queen needs your silence!” Akhenabi announced, and the chamber grew quiet. Even the throbbing of the air seemed to diminish. Only the Lightless Ones continued as they had been, their distant song droning and echoing beneath the great chamber. “She also needs your hearts and your thoughts,” said the Lord of Song. “Only with the return of great Ommu can our queen resist those who would attack and destroy us. If our people are to survive, we must bring the Whisperer back from death to help our beloved queen fight for our survival.
“It is time for the Opening of the Way.”
Now Viyeki heard another note join the music of the Lightless, soft at first, but rising in pitch and volume until it wound through their croaking hymn like a single bright thread in a dark-hued tapestry: it was one of Akhenabi’s Order of Singers, kneeling beside Ya-Jalamu’s litter. More Singers joined, and it sounded as if the icy mountain winds had all been given tongue, each syllable so sharp and cold that they seemed to pierce the bodies of all those listening and turn their inner organs to frost.
Why perform such a ritual in front of us all? Viyeki wondered. The Order of Song never display their powers this way. Why now?
The answer came when he felt something touching his thoughts, a probing pressure that soon became an altogether more commanding intrusion. It was the queen, he realized, taking control of his mind and the minds of his fellow nobles, weaving them into one thing, using their strength and her own together to pierce the veils that bounded life. The magister resisted from pure reflex, but only for a moment—his strength was nothing against the queen’s. Within moments he and the others were no longer individual Hikeda’ya, but were being shaped into a single tool in Utuk’ku’s matchless grip. He could feel something of the queen’s emotions, her fixed determination and even her chilly satisfaction as she caught them all up and wove them together.
“Do not resist the Mother of All!” Akhenabi declared as if he had sensed Viyeki’s unwillingness. “Now, silence. Silence for the Word of Opening.”
The song abruptly grew louder, more painful to the ear, the words harsh as hammerblows. Then, as if someone had thrown open a door to fierce winter, darkness swept over the chamber and the cavern suddenly seemed to plunge into a terrible cold. But what Viyeki could fee
l through Utuk’ku’s thoughts was a thousand times worse. Beyond the cavern in which they stood, beyond their sacred mountain, beyond life itself, he could sense a lurking chill so deep and so cold that nothing alive could approach it. Only Queen Utuk’ku, armored in the song of Akhenabi’s minions and wielding the thoughts of her subjects like a weapon, dared to match herself against that ultimate, life-swallowing darkness. Viyeki could feel his own heart beating so fast he thought it must burst from the terror of that ultimate shadow, but at the same instant it seemed to be happening impossibly far away. He felt like a single bubble among thousands in one of Nakkiga’s frothing hot lakes.
Now Muyare’s granddaughter began to writhe against her bonds, head back and mouth agape as though she were drowning. It was hard for Viyeki to see through the deepening gloom—even the ocher light of the well seemed to be shrinking, dying—but as the song gained strength the young woman’s movements atop the litter became more rapid and erratic, until her head was whipping violently from side to side. Marshal Muyare let out a loud groan, and even seemed as if he might go to her, but one of his Sacrifice generals put a hand on his shoulder. The marshal grew still again, face stolid, but Viyeki could tell that beneath the stony pretense Muyare was as desperate as a trapped animal.
The light of the Well had faded until it seemed as dim as the glow of a distant, dying star. Ya-Jalamu’s blind eyes turned helplessly toward the watchers and her mouth opened in a shriek of pain that never broke free. Caught up in the song and helpless, Viyeki thought he saw his own daughter Nezeru there, calling to him for help that he could not give.
That is the other purpose of this, he realized in despair. Not just to bring back Ommu, but so Akhenabi can show us that only he has the queen’s favor, that he alone now decides who lives and dies. Muyare’s granddaughter, my child—no matter how powerful the noble or the clan, the Lord of Song wants it known that he can reach out to take whoever he chooses and the queen will support him. Viyeki looked to Utuk’ku, who watched the girl’s suffering without any sign of pity, and he felt something break inside him, something that had been there all his life—a belief, a trust.
That could be my own daughter, was all he could think, over and over. It could be Nezeru.
Ya-Jalamu was thrashing harder now atop the litter; for a moment it seemed the force of her agonized struggle might break the heavy bonds that held her. Then her bones began to glow. First the skull bloomed behind the girl’s face, a hot light that made her pale skin glow like the oiled parchment of a lantern. Next her grasping hands became things of fierce radiance, and smoke began to rise from garments torn and disarranged by her struggles. Within moments her clothing curled and darkened, becoming smoke and ash even as it lay against her ivory skin, until the marshal’s granddaughter was all but naked, legs and arms wreathed in flame, all her secrets exposed to the staring multitude.
Then Ya-Jalamu’s flesh itself caught fire—it licked upward even from her mouth and nostrils and the corner of her eyes—then, in an instant, all her skin blazed into light. She threw her head back and steam gushed from her sagging mouth. Shivers of burning red climbed out of her throat to splash flame in all directions over the litter, but the conveyance was made of ancient, cured witchwood, and mere fire would not harm it. Only the girl burned.
It was all Viyeki could do to keep his knees locked, to remain upright. He felt as though he were ablaze too, but instead of his flesh it was his thoughts, his certainties, that were burning away into ash.
Very soon there was nothing to be seen of Ya-Jalamu but a faint movement in the depths of the fire, a flutter of ash, a pair of black sticks waving. The heat was so intense that the air shimmered and grew untrustworthy, but Viyeki still had not felt it, and the Singers crouched around the litter seemed not to feel it either. A few paces from the heart of the blaze, Queen Utuk’ku stared down on the spectacle from behind her featureless mask; Viyeki could no more guess at her thought than he could have supposed the desires of a distant star. But a part of his own thoughts still resonated with the queen’s, and as he stared at her he felt something come through from the dark reaches beyond the world he knew. Something from that lifeless place was forcing its way out of the cold and blackness, into the world of the living.
As the flames began to die down the center of the blaze was visible once more, but instead of the blackened wreckage Viyeki expected to see there, a scatter of cindered bones, something else sat in the queen’s litter, something whole and strange—a figure of shifting red light, wreathed in smoke.
“Ommu k’rei!” cried Akhenabi. “Ommu the Whisperer, you have again returned to us from death! May your wisdom and strength help preserve your people—the people you twice gave your life to protect!”
As the queen’s grip on his thoughts loosened, Viyeki slowly collapsed to his knees in exhausted terror, as many others around him had already done. He could not look at the shape in the litter directly: it was too strange, too angular, and seemed both far away and terrifyingly close at the same time, as though it had not entirely emerged into his own world of length and distance.
Only when Akhenabi and his Singers rose and surrounded the shape did Viyeki realize that he had been holding his breath for so long he was nearly faint. He let it out with a ragged sigh. Some of his fellow nobles had fallen insensible to the cavern floor. Others had prostrated themselves, amazed and full of veneration to see their queen cheat Death itself, and exhilarated by the small part they had played in it.
Then, just when even the Lightless Ones had fallen silent, and it seemed that the ritual had ended, the shape in the litter suddenly began to thrash in a wild but silent spasm of movement and red light. Viyeki could feel it, though, a quivering touch on the membrane that separated the Chamber of the Harp from the regions beyond life, a violence against its tension, as though a doomed fly struggled against a web, and Viyeki himself was one strand of that web. Mist swirled, obscuring the litter and its occupant. He was surprised—could it be that Ya-Jalamu somehow still fought for the body Akhenabi stole from her? Brave heart, brave woman! A few heartbeats later, though, he thought he could feel something much different, something powerful that was trying to follow Ommu out into the living world—an old and angry thing, full of hate. His heart sped ever faster, until he feared it might burst.
The light of the Well flared for a moment, bright as an earthbound sun, then dimmed as a great, soundless cry of anguish made the assembled nobles grab at their heads in pain and horror. At the same moment a palpable sense of something ending swept through the chamber, as though all the strands of the web of thought that connected them had snapped at once: it was clear that the Way that they had opened into outer darkness had just closed again.
Ommu! Ommu she’she mue’ka! The queen had not spoken for some time, and these sudden words boomed in Viyeki’s head like a blacksmith pounding at an anvil, their gloating strength bringing tears to his eyes again. She has come back! The Whisperer! Praise her!
“Yes, praise her!” cried Akhenabi. “With Ommu’s help our great queen will be able to avenge all that has been done to us. We will burn the mortals from the face of the land! We will claim the Witchwood Crown!”
The glow of the Well abruptly faded to its ordinary brightness. Akhenabi’s minions wrapped the glowing thing in lengths of white cloth, wrapping it round and round as though it were just another a corpse being prepared to wait for the Garden’s return. But this thing lived, though its movements seemed those of an infant, the twitching of something that had not yet mastered its own limbs. The flames were gone but the shape itself still glowed, so that the Singers of Akhenabi’s order seemed to be swaddling a molten stone.
After a time they finished their work and stepped back from the litter. Though the figure that swayed there was wrapped head to foot in bandages, ruby light leaked between the wrappings each time it moved. Akhenabi stepped up and draped a ceremonial Singer’s robe across the figure’s shoulder
s, then tugged the hood forward to hide the faceless head, so that nearly all the glow was hidden. Those nobles who had not lost their wits and fallen senseless to the ground watched, listless and stupefied, but their expressions seemed almost ashamed.
The queen’s guards now lifted the litter and carried it and its shrouded passenger toward the arched doorway. The rest of the white-helmeted Teeth stepped forward from behind the throne and began to drive the confused and largely unspeaking elite of Nakkiga back across the cavern toward the stairs. It was not entirely clear what had transpired here in the Chamber of the Well, but Viyeki sensed that all of them had been made part of some grave bargain whose end remained unknown.
What truly happened? he wondered. Do we face such a terrible threat that a horror such as this, the murder of an innocent, was our only choice? Then why have we not begun to prepare against another siege?
Full of such dubious, almost certainly treasonous thoughts, he did not notice Jijibo the Dreamer approaching until the queen’s odd descendant reached out and took his arm. Exhausted and anxious, Viyeki recoiled.
“Congratulations!” said Jijibo, grinning. “Hea-hai, but just look at him! He’s been thinking too much and now it’s made him ill!”
It took the bewildered Viyeki a moment to realize Jijibo was talking in his bizarre way about Viyeki himself. “What do you mean, congratulations?” he asked.
“He really doesn’t know,” said Jijibo, wriggling with pleasure. “Your family has been noticed, Magister Viyeki! Yes, your family has been noticed in some very high places!”
Viyeki had no idea what the queen’s strange relative meant, but the words still chilled him. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“No, you don’t, do you? Not yet. But then again, it is not always good to be noticed, is it? After all, look at that one!” Jijibo pointed to something behind Viyeki, then turned and trotted away up the stairs, laughing and talking to himself.