The armed Ajaha who are present start wading to shore with their heavy shields and shiny spears in hand, faces grim, red steel secure and shimmery. It’s Salo’s first visual reminder of what’s coming, and he knows that if the Ajaha end up having to use those weapons, he’ll already be dead.
“A word of caution,” the queen says for his ears alone. “Run, and you shall surely die; but look death in the eye, and you might just live to see another day. Now wade into the water, and keep going until I tell you to stop.”
They say he’s a coward, and he thinks they might be right, but he knows he’s no fool. He knows that the queen speaks the truth: to run now would be suicide.
So he does as he’s told, and the cold water is up to his knees when the queen finally commands him to stop. Then the longest wait of his life begins.
When the redhawk first appears on the horizon, it is little more than a brilliant point of light, a falling star advancing from the east.
Then the star becomes a streak of red fire and smoke descending with a terrible rumbling that grows and grows until Salo can barely hear the gasps and cries of shock behind him. The approaching entity soon resolves into a definite shape shrouded in a red glow and lowers itself to almost skim the surface of the Nyasiningwe, parting the waters beneath it in a turbulent wake.
The first thing he makes out as it draws nearer is a wingspan as broad as a house. Then a maliciously hooked bill and a crest tapering into a horn. And then the redhawk arrests its flight with a mighty flap of its four wings and is suddenly there.
But what is it, this extraordinary beast? The malaika of rage, perhaps, come down on his chariot of fire and smoke? Or maybe a wrathful spirit of pure evil sent by Arante herself?
Looking up at the redhawk, Salo finds it almost impossible to believe that the beast isn’t some such metaphysical being, even though he knows that it is actually just a species of astrobird—one of those inexplicable creatures with plumage that can burn so fiercely they can propel themselves in and out of the world’s atmosphere. They live in the clusters of floating rock in low orbit around the world, in the deep black void beyond the skies, and come down in dazzling balls of fire to breed or to pillage livestock and inattentive cowherds. The terrible boom of their hypersonic flight is often a warning to seek shelter, or, for those not wise enough to do so, a portent of a grisly end.
In the silence just after the redhawk lands in the water in front of him, Salo envisions his clan watching as the bird devours him. He imagines the horrified looks on their faces—or maybe they’d just cluck their tongues and say, Most unfortunate, but he did ask for it.
In the silence and stillness when he first looks death in the eyes, these thoughts are what keep his feet rooted in the water when his instincts are begging him to run.
The beast before him stands at nine feet tall, peering down its beak with the pride of an emperor, as if the whole world is its domain. Upon closer inspection, much of its body is metallic, even its feathers, which aren’t feathers at all but scaly red plates burning with an inner fire. They give its four wings a nefarious serrated look about them, as if the bird could cut through the toughest bone with a well-placed swipe.
It probably could.
Salo kneels down before the beast, shivering as the water rises up to his waist. Its pupils are red points of light in whirlpools of darkness. Their inhuman gaze enthralls him, because if death has a pair of eyes, then surely they must look like this—deathful eyes, shining with startling intelligence.
The redhawk cocks its head curiously, then takes a step toward him on equally deathful black talons, creating ripples in the water that make him shiver as they lap against him. Another step, and then another, until its massive hooked bill is so close it could probably take Salo’s head off in one motion.
Total silence. Unnatural stillness.
The redhawk bends its long neck and lowers its head. Salo feels heat as its scales brush against the side of his face, but strangely, the heat doesn’t burn him. Stranger still is the powerful wave of calm that pervades him. He closes his eyes and waits for his cosmic shards to appear on his arms.
But an intruding presence uncoils from some corner of his mind like a serpent lunging to strike. He could not have known that he harbored such a thing inside him; now it pours out of him and into the redhawk. Salo feels the bird’s mounting confusion and then anger, and then it raises its head and belches out a horrible screech right into his face.
Smothered cries come from somewhere behind him, but Salo ignores them—rather, his whole body has grown so rigid he can’t even breathe, let alone flinch. All the calm he felt before recedes, and warmth spreads down his groin. They stare at each other, beast and man—or beast and coward, because a man certainly wouldn’t piss himself so quickly.
The redhawk shrieks like Salo has personally offended it. The next thing he knows, it’s raising a talon out of the water. He falls back with a cry, but not fast enough to escape the pain.
Drowning, thrashing pain. Salo’s chest is transfixed upon three long claws and pinned down to the lake bed. The cold water rushes into his mouth and nostrils. The pain is infinite.
Commotion erupts behind him. Cries. Shouts. Screeches from the angry god impaling his chest. None of it changes the fact that he’s dying.
How peculiar, then, that while he chokes on the bloodied water around him, he still has the presence of mind to wonder what he could have done differently during his short life. Maybe he could have tried harder to be more like Niko instead of just giving up. Maybe he should have never opened his ama’s journal all those years ago. Maybe he should have . . .
Maybe he could have . . .
Oh, but what does it matter now? The time for maybes is over. The world around him blackens, and that’s the end of it.
Except for a glade somewhere in the middle of a grove, where the sky is a lavender canvas spattered with many suns and ringed moons. Salo opens his eyes to find that he is standing barefoot in the glade on crimson earth, hemmed in by old gnarled trees with darkly luxuriant foliage. Their branches droop with their own weight; their thick roots twist into the ground in strangely familiar patterns.
Recognition strikes him like a ray of light. As sure as fate, this place is the realm of the Carving. And yet . . . something is different. A dreamlike essence always colored the Carving’s woods, an amorphous not-quite-there-ness he couldn’t put his finger on. But these trees, this here and now, it feels all too real.
There is great power here, something tells him, though what, he cannot say. He only knows that this is the same intrusion he felt earlier, and when he quests after it with his thoughts, searching the trees, whatever it is retreats deeper into the shadows.
How long I have waited, it says from the darkness, its voice like the hiss of a biting wind. How long I have hoped. And now, to finally be here . . . I shall not squander this chance. This time, things will be different.
“Who are you?” Salo says to the trees, but he thinks he knows. That voice is unmistakable. Cold and cavernous and unfathomably distant. He has heard it before. “Please, tell me who you are.”
The thing ignores him, flowing like smoke in the shadows around the glade. He tries to track its motion, but it continues to elude him. Then he looks down at himself. He has three bloody punctures on his chest, but when he touches them, he feels no pain. Still, his trembling fingers come away stained crimson. “Am I dead?” he wonders aloud.