Spin of Fate, page 18
“Right,” Aina said. Zenyra had been spending a couple hours each week observing her keiza at length, occasionally probing it with her chitrons and jotting down notes. It seemed wrong to let that all go to waste. “But if you fix my keiza, won’t that make it harder for me to project?”
“Harder, but not impossible. The other Balancers have done it, and the first projection is always the most difficult.” Before Aina could protest further, Zenyra added, “You need only project once to find your mother, Aina. But you will channel for the rest of your life.”
“All right, then,” Aina relented. “When will you teach me long-range projection?”
“Not today,” Zenyra said with a laugh. “Do not overexert yourself, Aina. Your mother has waited over a year to meet you. She can wait a few weeks more. Perhaps a dip in the springs might refresh you.”
* * *
Aina returned from the hot springs that evening to find Aranel outside her room, fidgeting with something behind his back.
“I guess you want tips on projection,” Aina said. She tried not to appear too pleased he’d sought her out. “There’s not much I can help you with, as it turns out I’m a natural.” She pointed at her keiza.
“Ah,” Aranel said. “That’s both a blessing and a curse, I suppose. But that’s not why I’m here, Aina. I needed a favor.”
“From me?”
“Yes.” Aranel licked his lips. “But before that…”
He held out her pouch of smashed rock. Aina grabbed it, hugging it to her. “Where did you find this? I didn’t realize I’d lost it!”
Aranel hesitated, then gestured at the pouch. “Open it.”
“Why?”
“Just open it.”
Aina did, peering inside. She pulled out one of the rocks and her stomach clenched uncomfortably. A little gazarou figurine sat on her palm, perfectly pieced together. It had been exquisitely channeled, each strand of fur curling gracefully at the tip and its fangs barely visible underneath a benign smile.
Aina tossed it back in and pulled out another piece. A nagamor, deadly eyes lidded, its tail feathers fanned out in a striking display. She threw it back in, then fished out a third figurine. A manikai, the sea turtle’s once-serrated shell now smoothed to a gentle bump, its sharp tusks whittled down.
Hot anger flared within Aina. How dare he! How dare he lay his hands upon them, that presumptuous, meddling—
“Do you like them?”
Aina raised her head at the tentative question and blinked back tears.
Aranel looked at her hopefully, his eyes bright as a sunlit forest. “They were broken, so I thought I’d…” He stopped once he caught her expression. “What’s wrong, Aina?”
“You—” Aina swallowed, the words dying at the tip of her tongue.
You useless jerk! Don’t try to fix things you don’t understand!
Because he’d ruined them, every last one. He’d remade them into something they were never meant to be. Removed all traces of her mother’s channeling with his bleeding Mayani sensibilities.
But she couldn’t bring herself to say any of that. Not with Aranel regarding her the way he was, tender and expectant, as if nothing mattered more to him than her liking his gift.
“You don’t seem happy.” Aranel’s face fell. “I messed up. I should never have touched them.”
“They look different,” Aina managed. “Different from how my mother made them.”
“I’m so sorry, Aina.” Aranel took a step toward her. “I’m such a fool.”
Yes, you are! Aina wanted to scream. She wanted to throw the rocks in his face. If it were anyone else she would have. But it was Aranel, and he’d tried to do something nice for her, and he was looking at her so softly.
And as Aina peered inside the pouch, taking in the prettily carved figures—so elegant, so refined, so like Aranel himself—her anger melted, leaving nothing but a strange fluttery warmth in her stomach.
“I like them.” Aina forced herself to smile. “They’ll take some getting used to. But they’re better whole than broken, and I couldn’t have mended them myself.”
“You don’t mean that, Aina…”
“Yes, I do. I like them, and I’m glad you fixed them.” If she said it enough, maybe she could convince herself. “You needed a favor from me?” she added, remembering. “What is it?”
“Ah. That…” Aranel’s brow wrinkled. “I was, ah, going to ask if you’d join us for dinner under the banyan tonight. Taralei was grumbling about how we’re so busy practicing that we never eat with them anymore.”
“Oh.” Aina felt a wave of affection toward Aranel and his cousin. “Yes. Yes, I will.”
She followed Aranel across the lake. Taralei greeted them cheerily and pulled Aina over to sit next to her.
“I believe congratulations are in order,” Hiraval said, eyes twinkling as he ladled a liberal helping of canned fishbone stew into Aina’s bowl. “You completed your first soul projection.”
“And broke the Balancer record at that!” Reimi clapped her on the shoulder. “Well done!”
“From now on, I shall place my bets on you,” Taralei declared, then held out a hand. “But before that, pay up, Aina. Your teammates sparred today. No surprises who won.”
“You bet on Aranel,” Meizan scoffed. “Have you learned nothing since coming here?”
Aina flushed, digging out a coin from her pocket and pressing it into Taralei’s hand. Across the table, Aranel shot her a tiny smile that sent her stomach swooping.
This is getting ridiculous, she told herself, taking a gulp of cool water.
She hadn’t come to Malin to get flustered by a boy or pulled into a betting ring. Yet, as Aina watched the other Balancers—a beet-red Aranel yelling something at Meizan amidst Taralei’s teasing and Reimi’s laughter, while Hiraval observed them all with detached amusement—something tugged at her chest, rooting her to this spot and to this crowded wooden table under the banyan.
She was comfortable here. Comfortable and content in a way she’d never felt running through the realm with her mother.
I could stay, Aina thought, watching Meizan pull Aranel into a headlock that caused the latter to spit out his stew. Once I master long-range projection and find Mama, we can come back and live here together. Here, or in one of the Balancer villages, since that’s where the rest of them will be going.
Taralei produced her pack of cards and began dealing as Hiraval and Reimi separated the two brawling idiots. Aina joined the game but paid the cards no notice, her mind painting a vivid future she’d never dared to dream of.
We’ll have our own hut in the village, Aina decided. Nothing fancy. A small hut made of stone by a stream filled with fish. They could be skunkfish for all I care, as long as they’re edible and we don’t have to starve.
Aina’s hand found the stone nagamor in her pouch, its form so unfamiliar, so different from how she’d known it, yet undeniably whole.
We won’t have to run anymore, Mama. We’ll have a home.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Sunken Barrier
It was a well-known phenomenon in Mayana that the petals of Kirnos’s great lotus changed color with each passing season. The white of winter blushed into the pink of spring before brightening to scarlet in the last days of summer.
Aranel thought of those petals now, letting the image of his beloved kingdom fill his mind. He imagined he was the lotus—his body its ever-changing petals…and his chitrons what lay within: the rivers, the pastures, and the cluster of thatched yellow huts.
Aranel exhaled and began emptying the lotus. First to go were the rivers, draining in a great surge of water. Next went the pastures, blades of grass ripping from their roots.
He was close to pulling off a projection. He could feel it. He had to do it, if he wanted to search for the Balancer villages.
Aranel’s original plan had been to seek Aina’s help. But after his attempt to fix her rock figures had ended in disaster, he couldn’t bring himself to ask Aina for anything. And his other teammate would likelier insult Aranel than ever agree to help him.
Come on, pleaded Aranel to his chitrons. Out with you!
The lotus was near empty now, but the huts were always the hardest to remove. Aranel’s chitrons tugged at his consciousness, twittering and chittering their disapproval.
Be quiet, he told them. Get out.
He was down to his core. The last few chitrons. The last thatched hut. One with square windows and a raised veranda all around.
That’s my hut. Mother’s wicker blinds hanging from the windows. And Sam’s favorite swing on the veranda, the one we always fought over as children.
How wrong it felt to uproot this hut from the lotus. It was a part of him, after all. It was home.
But it’s an empty hut now, Aranel reminded himself. His parents and brother were in Paramos. And if Aranel didn’t give Seirem what he needed, he’d never live with them again.
There was a bond between his soul and his body, but Aranel could break it if he tried. He shaped his chitrons into a blade and hacked at the hut’s foundations. It felt deeply and instinctively wrong, but Aranel had no choice. He hacked away, until the clay walls cracked—
And then he lurched forward until he was floating in thin air. Below, his own form slumped against the base of the gold-trunked banyan tree on the islet at the center of Incaraz’s lake.
It worked!
Aranel felt the pull of his soul trying to return to its proper container. He resisted and forced himself to float downward through the islet. What a surreal experience it was, not being attached to his body. Aranel drifted through the rock as if it were water.
He felt something hard, a part of the rock even his soul could not enter.
How was that possible? He was intangible. No physical obstacle should stop him.
And yet it did. For it was no physical barrier but a chitronic one, similar to the shield around Incaraz. If he looked carefully, he could see it: a diaphanous film stretched beneath the lake’s surface. Try as he might, Aranel’s soul could not pass.
That’s odd.
The shield around Incaraz made sense, but what purpose did this second, sunken barrier serve? Zenyra had never mentioned it before. And while the first shield had been designed to let him through, this one remained unyielding as the torana to Paramos.
Someone’s sealed off the bottom of the crater, realized Aranel with a jolt. Most likely Zenyra, since none other had the skill to create such a barrier. But why? Could she be hiding something?
The sound of voices above distracted Aranel from his observations. He drifted up to find Taralei and Aina standing over his limp body.
“He did it,” said Taralei. “And in just over a moon. Guess Sam’s not the only one in our family with talent.”
“Meizan is going to be pissed,” said Aina. “I practiced with him this morning, and he hasn’t even come close.”
Aranel listened to the exchange with glee and followed Taralei and Aina as they wandered across the lake. The pair sat down by its crenulated shoreline, and Taralei caught Aina’s limp body as she completed a projection. Aranel watched, entranced, as wobbly lines began carving themselves onto the ground. Aina returned to her body a few moments later, breathing heavily.
“Wonderful, Aina!” gushed Taralei. “Although I haven’t the slightest idea what you were trying to write.”
Aina’s already learned remote channeling? Aranel stared at the carvings and discerned something that could have passed as the letter A. And a line next to it that might be an I.
It was a pity about Aina’s keiza. Without the irregularity, Aranel surmised, her chitronic abilities might even surpass his own.
A tug at his soul dragged Aranel back to the banyan.
Not yet, he admonished, resisting the inexorable pull of his body.
Aranel floated back underwater. Once again, he pressed against the mysterious chitronic barrier. This time he followed it through the lake, into a stone passageway. The water around him took on a familiar shimmer, and Aranel realized this passageway led to the hot springs.
A dizzying energy pulsed through Aranel as he flowed with the current. It trickled into his chitrons and shook them so hard he feared they’d burst free of his soul.
Strange, thought Aranel giddily as he floated back toward the banyan tree. Perhaps it was a coincidence, but the chitronic barrier below the lake extended to the springs. Aranel still hadn’t figured out the mysterious substance in the spring water.
But there was something in there that had triggered a strong reaction in his soul. The same thing he’d observed Seirem sipping from his flask over a moon ago, although the Preserver had been careful with his drinking habits since.
Aranel snapped back into his body and opened his eyes to see Taralei leaning over him.
“It’s about time you returned,” she said. “I was worried you’d forgotten where you kept your body…” She trailed off, her expression turning to wonder.
“What is it?” asked Aranel. He stood and stretched his limbs.
Taralei gave him a small smile. “It’s just, I never noticed how bright your keiza had gotten. For a second, I thought you were your brother.”
* * *
Aranel was distracted later that night as he made his report to Seirem at the golden torana. The question of the spring water remained at the tip of his tongue, but it seemed rather rude to bring it up again.
“When did you say the next mission is scheduled for?” asked Seirem.
“In two days,” answered Aranel, taken aback at the realization. He’d been so occupied with trying to master projection that he’d forgotten about the seniors’ mission.
“That coincides with the preponed dates of the Advisory, as we suspected,” said Seirem. “I shall monitor the system myself over the next week. If we sense another disturbance soon, we can confirm it has something to do with the missions.” The Preserver’s expression turned grim, creases lining his forehead. “On that note, I have a theory regarding the disturbances.”
Aranel nodded, and Seirem lowered his voice. “I believe they are being caused by erasures.”
“Erasures?” The word sent a tremor through Aranel’s chitrons. “Why would you say that?”
“There is an enormous amount of energy holding together the chitrons of one’s soul and binding the chitronic core,” said Seirem. “During erasure, this energy is released all at once, registering as a small explosion in the chitronic system. I have been monitoring the system for decades, and I first noticed these explosions originating in Narakh. But recently, I observed similar disturbances in Malin as well, which leads me to believe—”
“That the Balancer missions are triggering erasures?” Aranel crossed his arms, fingers digging into his elbows.
Erasures only occurred when a soul lost its own will to exist. If subjected to enough violence and pain over a prolonged period, a soul might give up. Aranel found it impossible to imagine Zenyra or any of the other Balancers engaging in something so odious.
“Malin’s at war, Lord Seirem,” said Aranel. “Meizan told me Kaldrav’s soldiers spent the last few years terrorizing the villages and torturing those who resisted them. I don’t know about—the lowest realm.” He couldn’t bring himself to utter the name aloud. “But is it not natural to assume that, rather than any Balancer activities, Kaldrav’s crimes are causing the erasures?”
“It is possible, although the timing still concerns me. I need you to monitor those villages, Aranel.” Seirem lowered his voice to a whisper. “Have you mastered that technique yet?”
“You mean complete soul projection?” asked Aranel, and Seirem winced. The Preserver would never mention the name aloud, but Aranel had no interest in his attempt at plausible deniability. “I managed it for the first time today, but I can’t travel too far from my body yet.”
“I am sure that will come with practice. Soon, Aranel, you will be able to search Malin unhindered.”
Aranel clenched his fists. The idea of projecting outside Incaraz terrified him. How long would his soul last before reversing its spin?
“Fear not, my boy,” said Seirem. “Three moons in Malin, and your keiza has yet to dim. On the contrary, it shines brighter than ever. By searching the villages and discerning the cause of these erasures, you will be doing the universe a great service.” He spread his arms, invoking the Aria of Ascension: “‘Amongst many a good and generous deed, naught else is nobler than helping souls in need.’”
“Right,” muttered Aranel. Then instead of reciting blessed poetry all the time, why don’t you come down here and search for the villages yourself? Learn an illegal technique or two while you’re at it.
He recalled his brother’s warnings—that Seirem was using him and of Preservation politics—then briefly considered confronting the man. But Seirem was Paramosi and had been for longer than Samarel.
Just a couple more moons. Both Seirem and Taralei had commented on his keiza getting brighter. Whatever I’m doing here is lightening my soul. Soon I’ll ascend, and Sam will realize I was right all along.
His eyes fell on Seirem’s hands, empty of his usual hipflask. He still needed to report the presence of the sunken barrier, but something held him back.
Aranel gave a stiff bow. “If I may take my leave, Lord Seirem. We have a feast of sorts, to celebrate the upcoming mission. I need to hide the wine, lest my cousin drink herself into oblivion.”
“As expected of Taralei,” said Seirem with a fond smile. “Always a delight at parties, that girl. Do try to enjoy yourself as well, Aranel. Toranic Law would not object to a drink or two.” He reached through the torana and patted Aranel’s shoulder. “May your soul spin straight and swift.”
* * *
The next evening, Aranel found his cousin under the banyan tree sorting through a large wooden crate. Hiraval and Aina were with Taralei, stacking glasses into a large pyramid.
