Jio’s eyes go wide. He moves his lips like he wants to say something, but then he shuts his mouth and grits his jaw. Sibu’s face gains a reddish tinge, his nostrils flaring with shock. “But Aba, you can’t! He’s not our mystic!”
“It is his right, Masiburai,” the chief says. “Were it not for him, our clan would be in ruins. This is the least we can do. Now leave it be.”
Sibu fumes while Salo flounders, not knowing what to say. VaSiningwe is a chief; before that he was a great warrior of the Queen’s Regiment. He is the epitome of what it means to be a Yerezi man: strong, courageous, honorable, stoic, and loyal to a fault.
Salo never realized that at least some of this loyalty would also extend to him.
Charged silence pervades the hall. The emissary clears her throat. “I suppose that settles it.” She gives Salo a fixed, professional smile, betraying nothing of her thoughts. “I wish you all the best. I imagine you’re quite anxious, but you’ll be helping to keep the Plains safe in a way no one else can. That’s something, isn’t it?”
Salo weighs the folder and the bag of coins in his hands. “I guess it is,” he says, and he sounds defeated even to his own ears.
A flicker of something pained crosses VaSiningwe’s stern face, but the man knows to be stoic at all times, so it’s only a flicker. “I know you’ll do well, my son,” he says and leaves it at that.
17: The Enchantress
Yonte Saire, the Jungle City—Kingdom of the Yontai
In a terraced garden overlooking a great city in the jungle, the Enchantress sits down with a Faro—a high mystic of immense power—and together they speak of treasonous things.
“When will it happen?” says the Faro.
The Enchantress has burned psychotropic incense around the garden to confuse any prying ears, yet she takes a moment to look around before she leans across the side table between them and says, “In the coming days, Your Worship.”
The Faro crosses one leg over the other in a gesture that shows a complete lack of unease. Then again, fear and unease might as well not exist in a high mystic’s vocabulary. “You should know that I intend to disrupt your plans.”
The Enchantress blinks, alarmed, and for a second she sees all of her carefully constructed schemes and plots falling apart right before her eyes. She speaks carefully. “But I presumed we had an understanding, Your Worship. The advancements I’m offering you would transform this kingdom. You would be centuries ahead of the rest of the Redlands. And with ciphermetric machines it would be easier for you to train and induct new mystics. Your covens would fill to bursting—and that would just be a start.”
This is why the Enchantress knew the high mystics would be receptive to her advances. Their ancestral talent, unique to the KiYonte tribe, lets them share their Axioms with other mystics—their acolytes—a process that also makes them more powerful with every new recruit. Ciphermetric machines would drastically reduce the difficulties associated with awakening, which would only increase the number of potential new acolytes and thus deepen their pools of power.
So why the change of heart?
“I am aware of all of that,” the Faro says, “but the agreement no longer suits my purposes. I have found something more . . . compelling, and I wish for us to come to a new understanding.” The Faro’s expression reveals nothing. No anger, no emotion, like a metaform simply following its directives.
What was it Prophet said to her when they last spoke? Your plan has too many moving parts. Maybe he was right. Hard to play a game when the pieces are playing games of their own. What could be more compelling than Higher technology delivered on a gilded platter?
“And your colleagues?” the Enchantress ventures to ask, watching the Faro closely. “Do they know how you feel?”
“I’d rather keep them in the dark,” the Faro says. “In fact, I’d rather . . . remove them from the picture, so to speak. They are ineffectual, too caught up in their own divinity and power. But that is a discussion for another time.”
This conversation was treasonous before; now it has become blasphemous. The Enchantress brings a hand to rest on her crimson jewel and slows her breathing. This makes no sense. Of all the Faros of the Shirika, the seven men and women who serve the KiYonte tribe as gods on earth, this one struck her as the most pragmatic. “But why, Your Worship?”
The Faro seems thoughtful for a while, eyes distant, fingers steepled. “Power is a duplicitous friend, is it not? All my life I have watched it turn the best of people into fools, liars, and degenerates. And yet its pursuit must be the logical corollary of being good in a chaotic universe, for when the forces of entropy can crush the innocent and reward the wicked, being good has little to do with feelings of kindness or sympathy, only one’s ability to defeat injustice—and this, my dear girl, demands power. But I wonder: Am I letting myself become a fool?”
To this illogical soliloquy, the Enchantress says nothing, and the Faro gives her a piercing look. “I know not what ambitions have brought you here, why an outworlder would seek to meddle in our affairs, but I see an opportunity in your presence. You seek to revive the Ascendancy, do you not?”
“I do,” the Enchantress says cautiously. Playing games with high mystics is perilous, requiring a deft tongue.
The Faro nods, mulling this over. “And you seek to make this tribe the center of the Ascendancy.”
“It is the only thing that makes sense. This city is the world’s beating heart, after all.”
“Then you will understand why I must renege on our agreement. I appreciate your devotion to the cause, but let us face the facts: What you are aiming to build would only be a travesty of the true Ascendancy. It would be a laughable mockery pretending to be something infinitely superior. A farce.”
The Enchantress tucks a strand of dark hair behind her ear, trying to hide how exposed she feels. She thought she’d moved the mountains that were in her way, but now her success is slipping from her fingers.
“Do you know why the Hegemons of the Ascendancy never conquered any part of this continent?” the Faro asks.
“It was hallowed ground to them,” she says, wondering where this conversation is headed.
“Indeed. Every Hegemon came to the Redlands at least once before rising to power. It was here that they found themselves and their purpose. They might not have been Red of blood, but they recognized that this was the Mother’s true land and the only place they could forge the strongest connections with her. You people of the outside world have allowed yourselves to forget the Hegemons and their history, but some of us here have not forgotten. We know things about them—about the Ascendancy—that you do not. Things that would shock you.”
The Faro’s eyes flash with unspoken secrets. “Suffice it to say, you will find no better home for a resurgent Ascendancy than the heart of the Redlands, but at present, you lack the key to its true power. Furthermore, this so-called Ascendancy would not stand the test of war with external forces. How could it, when the center is divided against itself? You would be better off removing all divisions first, reuniting the central tribe under one king, with no clans and no headmen, as it was in the days of old.”