“Just out of curiosity,” the mystic says, watching her, “why this? You could have asked for anything else. Coin, perhaps. I know how much you Umadi love coin.”
The Maidservant commands the talisman to go dormant and clutches it in her bloody palm. “That is no concern of yours.”
“I suppose it isn’t. Though I should warn you, in case you were planning on deconstructing the talisman to learn its secrets: Don’t bother. I took measures to ensure you’d never succeed. Those secrets belong to the Yerezi. If the Umadi want to start making talismans, you can figure out how for yourselves.”
But I have no intention of deconstructing it . . . “Consider me notified. Now, if you would let me go. Our business is concluded, and I have places to be.”
The mystic takes her time to comply, slowly drawing magic into the cosmic shards branded on her forearms. Finally she waves the wards away. “Let our paths never cross again.”
Without another word the Maidservant bursts into a cloud of flies and swarms out of the cave and into the twilight skies.
7: Musalodi
Khaya-Siningwe—Yerezi Plains
The day the Carving almost took his life was the first time he encountered the blue apparition.
At first it was just a ghostly outline lurking within the Carving’s ancient forest, a cold presence hidden beneath a veil of blue mist, watching him silently. Nothing had ever followed him into this realm before, so he initially dismissed the vision as a product of his nerves; after all, losing track of the Carving’s shifting paths could mean being stuck there forever.
But the mist seeped out of the trees, and Salo glimpsed therein an exceedingly tall blue-skinned man wearing only a hide loincloth, like a man from centuries past. He held a long spear of the strangest blue metal in his right hand, and what Salo could see of his face was unnaturally angular and sharp. His eyes, too, were unsettling, old and unforgiving things that shone through the misty haze like enchanted sapphires.
Salo stopped, feeling his heart begin to thud in his chest. “Who are you?” he asked.
Remember. He doubted the apparition had moved his mouth, and yet he heard his voice all the same, something like the whisper of wind or an echo in a vast chasm.
Was this another of the Carving’s tests? “I don’t understand,” he said.
A woman appeared behind the apparition right then, dark skinned and coldly beautiful, with ocher-smeared dreadlocks and a little red snake looped around one wrist. The floral kitenge covering her body was drenched in blood, and so was the glass vial in her right hand. A large feline shape skulked in the trees by her side—all Salo could see of it was a cold metallic gleam and neon-blue eyes.
Fear unlike any he’d ever known took hold of him. He shook his head, taking a step back each time the woman stepped forward. This was a vision lifted straight from his nightmares. “No. It can’t be. Not this.”
Remember, the apparition whispered, still a distant echo, though it sounded a little closer now.
“No!”
He turned around to flee, but the ground erupted with thick roots that lunged upward to ensnare his arms, pulling him down to his knees. The restraints would not budge no matter how much he struggled.
“Let me go!”
He was helpless as the woman approached, and it was almost exactly like that first time all those years ago, except back then he was a boy and knew nothing of what was to come.
The woman watched him with mournful eyes. Guilt sat in those eyes, too, but her determination weighed heavier, and it was this that pushed her forward.
“No!” Salo thrashed around in his prison. “Please, don’t do this!”
Tears flowed down the woman’s cheeks, yet she continued to advance. “I have to, my sweet. Don’t you see?” Her voice was thunder, making the ground shake. “I have looked to the edge of time, and I know what awaits there, the great and terrible things that will one day part the skies and shatter the world. It is why I must do this.” She opened the vial in her hands, and Salo felt roots curling around his neck so that his face tipped upward. “Your pain and your tears, even as they destroy me, will build me anew, and your blood will be my victory over the coming darkness.”
Behind the woman, the slinky feline shape finally stalked out of the shadows, its glistening canines bared, eyes gleaming hungrily. Blood stained its metallic leg muscles as it padded around its master.
Salo’s eyes brimmed with tears. “Please, Ama. Please don’t do this. It will hurt.”
The woman’s voice became something feeble and broken. “Forgive me,” she said. “Forgive me. Forgive me.” And then she tipped the vial and poured its acidic contents onto his eyes.
Salo screamed. His eyes became live coals in his skull, and scarlet flames filled his vision. He screamed until his throat tore itself open, until the world shifted around him and the roots disappeared.
Then he could see again, but now he was kneeling in a pool of blood with the woman lying in front of him, trembling in silent pain as she bled out from the mortal wounds on her belly. A witchwood blade lay discarded nearby, stained crimson.
“No.”
The sight was like a jagged splinter boring a hole into Salo’s skull, another crack in the dam holding back painful memories he did not wish to revisit.
“Ama, no!” He crawled toward the woman and gently cradled her head. “Oh, Ama, what have you done?”
Her head tilted so she could look up into his eyes. “Help me,” she said in a weak voice. “Stop the pain.”
The blue apparition was still there, standing in the background, watching with his unforgiving eyes. “Why are you doing this?” Salo shouted.
Remember.
He couldn’t do this. Salo let the woman go and got up to flee. The apparition’s voice echoed behind him, repeating that same word, but he wouldn’t stop. He fled across the forest’s twisting paths until his feet started to bleed. He fled until he woke up in the workshop to find Nimara hovering above him, trying to resuscitate him. That day he wept in her arms until his eyes ran dry as dust, though she would never understand why.
That was the last time he used the Carving, but the woman and the blue apparition would continue to haunt him in his dreams.
Not until the suns have risen over the kraal the next day does the fog of shock begin to burn away and the scale of loss become clear. The witch came, she fed her lord’s Seal with the blood of twenty-seven clanspeople, and then she fled, leaving gaping holes in the lives that survived her onslaught.
The committals are scheduled for the moonrise that day, as is customary, which occurs around high noon for a waxing half moon. Ten of the chief’s fattest uroko are slaughtered—an offering of a kind never seen in the Plains before, one not even a chief would merit at his funeral. The Ajaha perform their tribute dance twenty-seven times, honoring all who fell, not just those who donned the red. Twenty-seven burial rafts are carried down to the lake’s western shores, not just one. Mourners from the rival Sibere clan across the lake come in their numbers—a first in Salo’s memory—and their genuine sorrow surprises him with its intensity. He comes to understand that this was a crime committed not solely against Khaya-Siningwe but against the whole Yerezi tribe.
Monti’s aba lets him help carry his son’s burial raft down to the lake. The man has never liked Salo, and Salo can see the embers of blame burning hotly in his eyes, but on a day like this, all differences are set aside in honor of the dead. So Salo carries the raft with Monti’s aba and two uncles, while Monti’s ama trails behind with her only other child—Monti’s older sister—and together they lead the procession of mourners toward the clan’s place of committal.