Spin of Fate, page 1
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York
First published in the United States of America by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2024
Copyright © 2024 by Ambika Nagino
Map illustration copyright © 2024 by Sveta Dorosheva
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Vora, A. A., author.
Title: Spin of fate / A. A. Vora.
Description: New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2024. | Series: Fifth realm; book 1 | Summary: In a universe that segregates beings based on the weight of their souls into upper realms of peace and lower realms of strife, three teenagers join a rebel group defying the powers that be by bringing aid to the inhabitants of the lower realms.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023033490 (print) | LCCN 2023033491 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593617564 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593617571 (epub)
Subjects: CYAC: Fantasy. | LCGFT: Fantasy fiction. | Novels.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.V6796 Sp 2024 (print) | LCC PZ7.1.V6796 (ebook) |
DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023033490
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023033491
Hardcover ISBN 9780593617564
International Edition ISBN 9780593857182
Ebook ISBN 9780593617571
Cover art © 2024 by Sidharth Chaturvedi
Cover design by Jessica Jenkins and Tony Sahara
Book design by Suki Boynton, adapted for ebook
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
a_prh_7.0_146938465_c0_r2
Contents
Dedication
The Four Realms and Their Beasts
Map of Mayana
Map of Malin
Prologue
PART I
1. An Adequate Crime
2. The Preservation Advisory
3. Last Free Clan
4. The High Priest
5. Unfortunate Destiny
6. The Dead Mountain
7. The Balancers
PART II
8. The Necessity of Violence
9. A Soldier’s Delusion
10. An Irregularity
11. Respect and Fear
12. A Forbidden Technique
13. Under the Banyan
14. The Sunken Barrier
PART III
15. Sinless Lives
16. The Rebel Army
17. The Walls of Kaufgar
18. Loyalty
19. The Second Principle
20. Divine Logic
21. Enemies Unmade
PART IV
22. The Shadowed Sea
23. Unbreakable
24. Blood and the Beast
25. Fallen Warrior
26. The Chitronic Prodigy
27. The Four Realms
28. Mother
29. A Shift in the Air
30. Splintering Sky Above
Epilogue
Of Language and Nomenclature
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
_146938465_
To maa, without whom
I would be nothing.
PROLOGUE
A Flash of White
A sharp twang pulled Aina from troubled dreams. She staggered to her feet, ignoring the protest of her muscles as she grabbed her bow and slung a quiver across her back. Razor wire hung across the craggy walls like the web of some monstrous spider. One of the trip wires stretched taut. Aina followed its trembling path out of the cave and into the moonless night.
Her mother whittled a thumb-sized stone by the fire, her back rigid as a blade. “What are you doing up so early?” she barked without looking up from her task.
Aina watched, transfixed, as her mother ran a finger over the stone, caressing away tiny chunks as if they were carved at knifepoint. But her mother had never needed a knife. Not when she could shape the world around her through channeling. The stone figure took on the form of a horned monkey with spines that glinted in the firelight.
“Will you give me that once you’re done?” Aina asked. “I want to add it to my collection.”
“I’ll give you a tight slap if you don’t go back to sleep. You’ll never learn to channel without proper rest.”
“Something triggered one of my trip wires—” Aina had barely gotten the words out when her mother sprang to her feet with a curse. “I meant a wild animal, Mama. The wire’s intact; it would’ve snapped under the weight of a human.”
“Say that part first, idiot girl,” her mother scolded before settling back by the fire.
Aina ignored the withering glare cast her way. The trip wires hardly mattered, given that her mother had channeled a protective shield around their hideout. Kaldrav’s stupid soldiers would bounce right off it if they approached, alerting her of their presence. And providing her mother’s inexhaustible wrath with another target, for a change.
“And where the blazes do you think you’re going?” her mother demanded.
“To get us some food. I’m starving, Mama. That’s why I can’t channel properly.”
Her mother made to stand again, but Aina placed a hand on her arm. Under the threadbare cloak, her mother’s arm felt brittle as a twig. Shadows ringed her eyes and wrinkles forked across her weathered skin.
“It’s probably just a rat,” Aina said. “Let me handle it. You get some rest for once.”
“You’ve had it from me if you’re not back within ten minutes.”
Aina nodded with a glance at the wire. It gave a violent tremor and stretched to the verge of snapping.
Larger than a rat.
Aina set off into the skeletal forest, squinting through the gloom. Fourteen years in Malin had given her excellent night vision. But today was murkier than usual, as if the misery of the realm had condensed into a grim fog that obscured everything beyond a few feet in any direction.
Aina’s heart stopped at a gleam of cobalt blue through the haze.
That can’t be what I think it is…
But as she inched closer the monstrous form grew clear: a giant nagamor, asleep outside the shimmering dome of her mother’s shield. The peacock snake lay in a mound of coils, each as wide as a tree trunk.
Aina crept past the beast and released a tremulous breath. It was just their stinking luck that the one thing in Malin deadlier than enemy soldiers had settled for a nap this close to their hideout. At least it hadn’t slithered onto any of her traps. That would have thrown it into a rage.
Quiet as a mouse, Aina followed the wire until she came upon her prey. A runt of a fox thrashed in her snare, teeth gnashing and yellow eyes rolled back in fear. The beast’s emaciated form carried enough meat to last them three days at most.
Aina’s stomach gave a painful rumble. Three days of fox meat would be a luxury after weeks of dried grass and the occasional lizard.
She drew her bow and nocked an arrow. Best kill it before it bit her hand off. The fox’s eyes bulged as she neared. Blood stained its fur as it strained against the razor wire.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Aina muttered.
Had it been born to the blessed realm of Mayana, this fox might have grown powerful and majestic. Instead it was born cursed. Cursed, like her, to live in Malin. At least, unlike Aina, it could die and be spared from its miserable existence by an arrow to the heart.
A soft whimper stopped Aina in her tracks.
She looked down to see a trembling lump of fur, small enough to fit into her palm. A tiny wet nose brushed her ankle. The pup gave a pitiful squeak as it crawled forward on stubby legs. The fox in the wires snarled as she struggled to reach her whimpering newborn.
Aina lowered her bow, chest folding over at the familiarity of the scene: a small creature and its mother trying desperately to survive the fate that had been dumped upon them. How would this fox pup live without its angry, snarling mother to protect it?
“Stop moving,” Aina hissed. She unsheathed a short knife and cut through the wires.
The injured fox jerked away from her at once. Aina stepped back, knife raised. But the creature had no interest in attacking. The fox snatched the tiny pup
Hunger clawing at her stomach, Aina trudged back toward the cave. The immense form of the slumbering nagamor came into view.
Then the world flashed around her. For a moment the forest disappeared, and Aina found herself suspended in a vast white nothingness. She’d never seen it before, this eerie blankness. Silent and still, it surrounded her.
Sudden as it had come, the whiteness faded. Aina returned to the same spot in the forest, within her mother’s shield, feet away from the nagamor.
What the hell just happened?
Aina had no time to ponder the thought. From beyond the shield came the soft, ragged scrape of scale over stone. Aina’s blood ran cold as the beast, awakened by the flash of white, raised its head and turned.
Bulbous eyes gleamed through the murk, the promise of pain in their bloodied depths. Then several tons of scale and sinew lunged forward and slammed against the shield. It held an excruciating second before shattering in an eruption of light.
Aina fled, gaze lowered as she stumbled through the splintered landscape of Malin. Without the shield, locking eyes with the nagamor would induce intense hallucinations—three years of torment packed into three agonizing minutes.
Living in this realm was torment enough. Aina had no need for more.
The stones rattled under the nagamor’s advancing bulk. Aina dodged the beast’s snapping beak to whip out her bow and fire at its underbelly. A tail swept through the air, batting away her arrows with a plume of rounded feathers. The beast twisted and struck again. Aina’s bow sang in desperation as she loosed more arrows.
But the nagamor’s serpentine body raged and wrapped around her, an inescapable whirlwind of pain. Aina’s quiver poked her back, the contents of her various pouches digging into her hips. The nagamor squeezed tighter and crushed the air from her lungs.
The ground beneath Aina erupted, and a pillar of rock pierced the beast’s cobalt blue scales. The nagamor surged upward with the rising rock, screeching as a cascade of blood poured from its flank.
Freed from its hold, Aina leaped to the ground and raised her eyes to meet a pair deadlier than the nagamor’s. “Mama—”
“Blasted fool,” her mother snarled, lowering her hands and releasing the channeling. The ground stopped rumbling and the rocks froze in place, although the impaled beast continued writhing. “Waking a sleeping nagamor! I’ll flay you to the last bit of your soul, if Kaldrav’s soldiers don’t get to us first!”
“I didn’t do anything,” Aina wailed. “I was only walking, when a flash of white light came from nowhere!”
Her mother stiffened. Before she could retort, the nagamor broke free of its stony prison and dove toward the ground, sinuous body curving like a scythe.
Swearing, her mother swiped a thumb across her forehead. Mottled energy pulsed from her palms as the fractured earth danced beneath her fingertips. In response, the nagamor loosed a soul-searing cry and swatted away her mother’s boulders as if they were flies.
“Run!” Her mother shoved Aina forward. Her dark energy swirled around them in a protective dome, the nagamor’s relentless assault eroding it bit by bit.
As they ran, Aina glimpsed something twinkling in the distance: a beacon of light amidst the gloom of Malin. An elegant silver archway and, beyond it, bright fields and a brighter sky. It was one of the torana—a gateway leading to another realm. This silver one led to the upper realm of Mayana.
Which meant Aina and her mother could never get through. They were lowers, with souls steeped in sin. Souls that spun in the wrong direction. The torana would deny them entry as it had all these years. Such was the Law.
Aina’s heart shriveled as she neared the torana, the nagamor smashing against her mother’s defenses. She pivoted in front of the archway and reached for an arrow.
But her blood-slicked heel slipped in the mud and Aina’s left leg slid backward, straight between the silver columns. Soft grass brushed Aina’s toes, and she let out a gasp.
Her mother turned to her, inhaling sharply at the sight of Aina’s sandaled foot planted in the upper realm while the other remained rooted in the filth of Malin.
“The white flash before,” she whispered. “So it’s true…your soul reversed…you’re light enough to enter Mayana.”
“That—that can’t be,” Aina said.
None could ascend from Malin to Mayana. It wasn’t possible to flip the spin of a soul.
The nagamor clacked its beak, arching its neck to strike. Aina grabbed her mother’s bony wrist and tried tugging her through the torana. But the gateway did not yield. An invisible barrier stopped Aina’s mother from slipping even a single fingernail into the upper realm.
Aina knew her mother was not a particularly good person. She wasn’t as bad as Kaldrav the Cruel, the despotic king of Malin. But she was bad enough, years of violence weighing her down. And if the torana had denied her mother, yet allowed Aina through…
“You’re Mayani now, foolish girl!” Her mother ripped her wrist from Aina’s grip. “Toranic Law has decreed it! Get away from me and stay in your realm!”
“Not without you,” Aina declared. Bracing her weight on the foot still in Malin, she made to step back through the torana. “I’ll stay here, Mama. I’ll—”
Her mother cut her off with a slap that split Aina’s lip. “Feather-soul! Counter-spinner!” she growled, shoving Aina fully past the pillars and into Mayana. “I don’t want to see your face! If you set foot into this realm, I’ll smack you till your skin turns blue!” In the dim light of Malin, her mother’s cheeks were wet. “I’ll make you suffer worse than a nagamor’s glare! I’ll—”
Whatever her mother meant to say next was drowned out by the nagamor slamming against the torana. Its fetid breath grazed Aina’s cheek, the grimy blue scales an inch from her fingernails.
But for all the ferocity with which it crashed against the archway, the beast could not enter Mayana. Like Aina’s mother’s, the nagamor’s soul spun backward. Toranic Law would not allow it to spill its filth into the upper realm.
Aina watched through the pillars in horror as her mother clashed with the beast, channeling stone and raising up small mountains against its twisting, thrashing mass.
Aina nocked an arrow and made to race into Malin to assist her. But an enormous slab of stone spurted up on the other side of the torana; her mother’s channeling had blocked the path that Toranic Law had let Aina pass.
“Mama!” Aina screamed. “Let me through!” Unlike her mother, Aina could not channel the stone away. So she beat it until her knuckles bled and the nagamor’s cries faded. “Please, Mama! Don’t do this! Don’t leave me here all alone!”
There was no reply, only the shuffle of footsteps away from the torana. Away from Aina.
“Mama…” Aina fell to all fours on the sweet-scented grass, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Don’t…leave me…”
Warm sunlight drenched her back, the air crisp and thick with birdsong. Aina paid it no heed as she lay there for hours, pounding weakly at the torana.
For the first time since her birth, Aina was in paradise. Mayana was an idyllic realm, free of Malin’s monsters and violence and corruption. Free from the tyranny of Kaldrav’s reign, from being hunted by his soldiers.
It was a realm protected by Toranic Law, where only those light of soul and good of heart were permitted to live. A realm that had admitted Aina but would never admit her mother.
Mayana was a heavenly place. Yet to Aina it felt like hell.
PART I
When earth was drenched in flesh and blood,
and hate split lives asunder,
when fire and steel surged forth in flood,
the skies lit by fey thunder,
humankind waged a brutal war,
their savagery a blight,
awakening the Beasts of lore
to set their world aright.
And thus the realm was split to four
by will of Beast who made it:
two realms for souls who relished gore,
who sinned and harmed and hated;
two for those proven true and kind,
their realms at peace, united.
