B is for Broken, page 5
She nodded. Nereyu himself had gone to fetch the things she had requested, returning with a set of clean clothes, a suit of leather armor, a pair of shining swords and his own shaving kit. She sat with it now, metal mirror propped on her crossed legs and ignored the occasional passerby who slowed to witness her transformation.
“Osovalia.” Warmaster Inu was crouching beside her. He peered at the bleeding piece. “You captured a hundred Muto Qeyunar in the desert caverns there.”
“They were fixating children, experimenting on them.” Firelight gleamed on the blood, the blade, the hand that wielded it.
I shuddered, felt the Muto Vele slide and climb again, a little farther this time. Another mass of hair fell to the floor. It went with the first, into the fire.
She glanced at my boot and returned to her work. “Closer now. They smell like—”
“Sweet.” I retched. “Too sweet.”
Inu rose with a purpose and looked down at Rain. “Warmaster Zheri—”
“Don’t call me that.” The razor flashed again, revealing a ribbon of decorations from her forehead to her nape; Master Swordswoman, Master Vessel of Naré, Defensive Adept, Mark of Valor, Mark of Valor, Mark of Valor, Mark of Valor. Indeed, the layer of grime I thought I had seen beneath her hair was merely the lower edge of that work, finished by some clever artist into an interlocking border for her many combat glyphs.
“I don’t have time to coddle you, and I need you to answer my questions.” The warmaster’s focus was needle-sharp on the woman beneath him, and yet it was plain he wanted to be with his Qandunar now, in these final hours before battle. “You were fixated at Geriahar. Am I right?”
Rain slid a thumb along the flat of the blade to clean it. “Henny sa—” She paused, hands dropping to her lap and stared into the flames. A moment later, she spoke again in a stricken voice. “I was exhausted, and I had already lost so many, but I couldn’t let my Qandunar see me...” A long sigh caught in her throat like a sob. “I don’t remember killing them; I only remember the waterfall. Fixation is like that.”
“Here. Let me.” I bent down, took the razor and continued the work, my fingers caressing her tattoos as if I might brush away the pain they represented.
Inu stepped closer to Rain, laid a hand on the dagger at his thigh and swept his gaze around the gathering chamber. It was empty and dark. Many who could sleep had gone to bed, while the rest were surely out at the cliff’s edge, waiting.
“And now you need me to be that person again, but first you need to know if I can resist the Muto Qeyunar.” There was an ominous surrender in her tone and in her body, as if the words themselves were leaving her open to attack.
A grim, conflicted sorrow seeped into the tension on his face. “I do.”
I shaved the last of the hair from her scalp, tossed it into the fire and tightened my grip around the razor. You dragged her into this, I wanted to say. You know how sick she is. But instead, I drew a shaky breath and stood my ground, beside my friend.
“I don’t know.” Rain shrugged. “I can fight, but I can’t lead.” She looked up and lifted a hand to lay over his, as if to bless it. “And if I’m fixated again, I’ll be very, very dangerous.”
Inu drew a deep breath and squeezed her wrist. “Then be Rain. Fight with us, here, in the present, and leave Zherinah’s ghosts at Geriahar.” He plucked the razor from my grip and bent to slip it into the shaving kit. “You’re a better man than you realize, Novitiate Sama,” he remarked, and strode away toward the monastery doors.
When I was a little boy, I once watched a man skin a vixen for her fur. He clubbed her on the head with a stick, strung her up by the tail and began to peel the flesh from her feet with a slender knife. The fox was stunned but still alive, and she screamed as he worked; a gurgling shriek of agony that went on, unceasing, until she weakened into death. Perhaps this was the reason I forgave the temple Vele. It was that shriek I heard from a Muto Vele’s mouth as she poised above my body, ready to strike.
And it was that shriek I heard all around me now as the Muto Vele staggered up the stone toward the plateau.
The morning was brittle-bright and cold. From atop the monastery roof I could see Rain on the right below, hands resting on the blessed isché blades at her hips, legs apart, listening. Sometimes we flinched together as the mounted Muto Qeyunar climbed, their indurate power congealing the slippery shield we had wrought. Directly ahead, Lieutenant Nereyu passed orders from the lift platform to the left and right of a refugee camp losing faith in the mountain. Mother Anyamé strode across the rooftop, leaned between a pair of Qandunar archers and looked down into the Vele courtyard. I knew she was waiting for the cats to be locked in the cellar, away from the chaos of battle where they might do harm to themselves and others. Satisfied, she signaled to Warmaster Inu, who shouted down the order to open the main doors. The refugees poured inside.
I could hear the Muto Qandunar singing now; a consonantal chant so like the brittle brightness of the morning that I wondered if a hammer-blow might shatter them both. A vowelly Qandunar chant rose up to confront it, and there was naré in the song. The chants clashed, intermingled. A shout rang out on the left below, and a volley of shining arrows followed it down the cliffside. Behind the Qeyunar on the roof, another volley defended the rear of the monastery at Inu’s command.
Go with the refugees now, while you can, into the dormitories. My feet were stumbling toward the ladder before I realized the admonition had come from within. I stopped, fought to remain still. My memories fought back. A bestial scream, pain, a putrid wound, abomination. I gasped, a paroxysm gripping the blackened scars at my chest. No. No. I thought of Rain. I thought of Nereyu. I will not be a victim before the fight even begins. I backed up, gritted my teeth and closed my eyes.
When I opened them, there were Muto Vele on the plateau.
Bright, the long bones of their bared teeth and claws. Immense, the bulging muscles of their gray and umber shoulders. Jewelly, the slitted spheres of their eyes, big as fists. For a moment, I forgot my scars and wanted to be devoured by such a creature, to give it the worship of prey for the perfect predator. Who wouldn’t want to be a Muto Qandunar, mounted on the back of a flawless killer, grinning in the rictus of fixation? And oh, behind the rictus there was joy, release, intoxication, absolution, an imperfect life traded for perfect deathlessness. The terrible gift of the Muto Qeyunar shone in their warriors; everlasting gratification so fierce it held their minds in stasis and their bodies intact against the vagaries of change. It united them, one and all. Fixated Qandunar, bald and tattooed. Young men and women culled from their villages. People so riddled with grief or guilt they would take any medicine to make it stop. Draped in the copper and black of their masters, the Muto Qandunar were forever glorious, and they would ruin anything, slaughter anyone only to shine, shine, shine, on, on. Beside them, the unmounted Qandunar looked so small and pale that I nearly wept for them as if they were already dead.
But they were not dead, and the Muto on the plateau were fewer than expected, thanks to Rain’s work and mine. I could still feel them climbing, knew more were on the way, but for now the Qandunar had a momentary edge. On the left, an archer leaped onto the back of a Muto Vele behind his rider, and in a burst of naré that blinded like a sunrise, he drove an arrow into the woman’s bare shoulder. The missile flashed, releasing its own reservoir of power, and she gasped as if waking from a nightmare. The perfection of her body withered into a broken back, a severed jaw, a skull dented as if by a fall from a great height. Even from the rooftop, I saw the agony in her eyes as she slid to the ground in death. The archer shot forward and drove a dagger into the beast’s eye. Again, a burst of naré from the warrior and his weapon and again, a crippled body crumpling away from life. Oblivion is liberation too, I thought in sorrow, wondering how many Qandunar would grant that awful mercy today because of the advantage we had given them.
“Muto in the garden!” This from a marksman behind me at the lip of the right wall.
Warmaster Inu sent a handful of archers to hold them off and shouted over his shoulder at Mother Anyamé. “Both side doors are barred, correct?”
She confirmed with a nod and turned her attention back to the battlefield.
My gaze traveled down and right, seeking Rain in the fray. She was just outside the circle of naré around the refugee camp; head down, arms rigid at her sides, fists clenched.
Henny hates to see people fight.
A Muto Vele was closing in.
Something happens inside, and she can’t control it.
Desperate to help, I stepped into the flow of impermanence, reached for the scattered naré on the plateau and flung the transmuted power at her in a mudra of awakening. Her head snapped up, and teeth gritted, face glistening with tears, she charged the beast.
The instant before they collided, she threw up a storm of naré that crackled with yesterday’s weather and slid beneath his forepaws, isché drawn, to slice at his middle legs. Another blast of naré beneath his body and then she was behind the Muto Vele, on her feet and atop his back.
The Muto Qandunar there turned to engage the fight, but she was too quick. A final torrent of naré struck him full in the face as her blades found the meat of his thighs and discharged a bit of their blessing there. The beast beneath them bucked, roared and fell to his side. The man, a warrior himself, rolled away as he woke from fixation, bearing Rain to safety.
The Vele and his rider lifted their heads. They were hurt, but they had climbed the mountain without falling, and now they were free. A trio of archers raced to help them, and Rain rejoined the battle with a will.
“Muto in the courtyard!” Another marksman called from the left wall.
They were cresting the plateau in greater numbers, pushing the Qandunar back, butchering our defenders with a harrowing efficiency. There were boots and claws on the ring of naré around the refugee camp; I could feel them, but they never encroached on the circle of peace inside.
Nereyu seemed to be everywhere at once. He shouted orders, shielded warriors, directed the wounded into the temporary refuge I had helped to create. A dancer in combat, adapting from breath to breath, he poured the blessed water of change over the stone of those he fought.
Behind the Qeyunar on the roof, Inu was the wind and the weapon upon it. I had never seen such a fleet archer, never known so much naré to follow an arrow in flight, and yet he retained the presence of mind to command and communicate with the runner between himself and his lieutenant.
But it was making little difference. The tide of battle was turning, and not in our favor. There were simply too many.
Worse, the naré of the Qandunar was beginning to wane, and without it, they were defenseless. At a signal from Anyamé, we plunged into the flow of impermanence, but the Muto Qeyunar were already there in every place we sought; leaching all they touched, mutating the power of change to maintain themselves, their mounts and their warriors. There were only scraps of naré left in the wake of their coming. The valley below was a withered thing, the sky too static, the dead too cold.
Moments later, the Muto Qeyunar crested the mountain, and I despaired.
Peerless as a noonday sun. Exquisite as an elegy for a god. Sweet as spilled perfume over a corpse. They rode naked from the waist up, hair coiled in copper wire, shoulders and breasts painted black with blasphemous glyphs. Even the most ancient among them was matchless, magnetic, so lovely my tongue itched to bathe the perfect skin of his feet. They rode with supple carriage, undulating as the Muto Vele moved while they surveyed the battlefield with eyes like twin moons. No rictus in the set of their lips, they were fully conscious of their beauty, their power. We cannot die, they said with their bodies, their faces, their antipathy. Perhaps you may join us, if you are worthy. And I wanted to, so much. The ruination of my body, the brokenness of my spirit might both be given purpose if only I heeded the wordless, triumphal summons that sounded in every fragment of my being.
Mother Anyamé signaled us again, her mellifluous voice a counterpoint to the seduction. The summons changed in timbre, grew disdainful. Then give up the metamorphoses of your life. I shuddered, found the flow of impermanence like a fumbling child, but Brother Empho was there to guide me in and out to the hollow-boned flight of Sufeli on a distant horizon. A Muto Qeyunar followed us there and plundered the beating of their wings until they plummeted from the sky, warbling with terror. Then she reached beyond the Sufeli to we who had only sipped at the gift of their naré.
Beside me, Brother Empho gasped and shielded my spirit’s return as she tore at the flow of blood in his veins, the movement of air in his lungs, the spark of cognition across his mind. My eyes fluttered open in time to catch him as he fell and learn that he would never be my mentor.
Exhausted, I lowered him to the tiles and poured the dregs of naré I had recovered into Rain and Nereyu below. When I rose, there were Muto Vele cresting the roof.
“Into the monastery!” Warmaster Inu shouted at us. “Now! Go!”
A trickle of urine wetted my legs, but I gathered the courage to kneel and hold the ladder for everyone else. Below, the mounted Muto Qandunar gathered before their masters; a vicious wall of sword, claw and tooth. They took up the chant again, and shrieking as a single voice, the Muto Vele scattered the unmounted Qandunar in a shower of gore. Around the refugee camp and through a score of tents, Nereyu followed his people toward the main doors; goading some, helping others, watching the rest as they all ran.
But the profane persuasion of the Muto Qeyunar was stronger now; a soporific chant, a mesmerizing sequence of mudras, a captivating display of glyph-painted skin that promised eternal life and bewitched the warriors. I watched in horror as first one and then another stopped, gazed at the riven bodies of their comrades and surrendered to hopelessness, fracturing the wells of their spirits as if they were slitting their own bellies before the enemy.
Into that ruptured darkness, the Muto Qeyunar came like torches and lit a path to the place where nothing mattered anymore but a false, fixated joy, where these crippled Qandunar became the enemy of all they had loved just moments ago. Flesh hardened, eyes gleamed, lips thinned in exultation, and then they were lost to us.
The retreating force flung open the monastery doors and turned to dance again with the Muto as the monastics fled inside. They were nearly empty of naré now, but in a desperate flash of isché, in a wild sweep of limbs, they told the truth of impermanence to the enemy and resisted the call to fixation. Rain was with them, and her telling was perhaps the wildest and truest of all.
The last of the Qeyunar descended the ladder and held it for me. I pivoted on my knees, stepped down and looked up. Inu had abandoned his bow for blades, and together with the men and women under his command, they confronted the rooftop deluge of Muto Vele with a bleak surety for which there was no sufficient gratitude. I could offer them nothing but grief, and so I left them and hurried to join the others in the gathering chamber.
By some miracle of plank and hinge, the courtyard and garden doors were holding, but soon the main doors were rattling, bowing, cracking under Muto Vele claws and shoulders. The Qeyunar assembled near the dais, and Mother Anyamé led us in a final, desperate search for naré that yielded nothing. The battle itself was inviolable; fixation protected the Muto, which left only the Qandunar, whom the fallen monastics fought to claim and we fought to empower.
Beyond the mountain, the valley had petrified, and below it, the flow of lava had cooled to basalt. We repelled the Muto Qeyunar there as they grasped at the naré of our bodies, and in the frenzy of their assault, I saw the wisdom in Warmaster Inu’s hope for a fight. Their conceit had driven them up the cliffside at too great a cost. They needed to win the battle quickly or lose control of their people and beasts.
The doors broke inward. A flagging Muto Vele stumbled into the gathering chamber bearing a puzzled Muto Qandunar woman on her back. I pointed at the pair and shouted, “Look! They’re losing fixation!”
The attention of the Qandunar shifted toward the rubble. Behind the Muto Vele came a dozen Muto Qandunar on foot. I recognized them all, spread my fingers in a warding mudra, exhaled through a mouth fallen open in dread.
This was how the Muto Qeyunar would win.
The fence of swords around the dais wavered in doubt. Fight their former comrades and die, or join them and live forever in that false, fixated joy. This was the terrible choice before the defenders that remained.
In the hush ahead of the final confrontation, my eyes sought and found Rain in the hall. Head up, isché drawn, she had faced that choice before and would never lose herself to it again.
So when the Muto Qeyunar swaggered in, unmounted, and lifted Warmaster Inu’s head on a pike, only she danced forward into the fray.
Nereyu’s isché clattered to the floor, and his face contorted in the anguish I had seen two nights ago. The howl that fled his throat found an answering sob in mine, and we wept together; for the warmaster, for the fixated and fallen, for ourselves.
Implacable as poison, the Muto Qandunar advanced, but they were not so perfect as they had been even seconds ago. The ghosts of recent injuries colored their bodies. The blood lust in their eyes faded to chaos.
I gathered a lungful of air behind my vocal cords and screamed. “Rain! Rain!” She turned mid-attack and followed the line of my arm to Nereyu. “Help him!”
Rain disengaged and bolted between the armies; down the wall of Muto Qandunar, over the base of the fountain, toward the lieutenant. The battle was poised on the point of a dagger now. If he succumbed, the Qandunar would surely follow. But if he did not, the Muto Qeyunar might spend the last of their naré in defense. They knew it and focused the fullness of their seduction upon Nereyu.
One of the fallen nuns took Inu’s head between her hands and licked his sightless eyes with a pink tongue. The others lifted their hands in the profane mudras of permanence. Some chanted, and the song was sweet as the voice of a dying child.
