She is not alone. On the platform just a few yards away is a metallic statue of a woman—rather, a statue of a creature with the body of a woman and the head of a tronic hyena.
As she watches, the creature moves, as fluid as if its limbs were real flesh and not metal. The Maidservant instantly knows exactly who that thing is supposed to be.
“You.” Her words come out strange, like she has spoken a language she shouldn’t know. “What have you done? What is this?”
“Relax.” The Yerezi witch takes a few steps closer. When she speaks, her snout remains shut, not moving to form words. “I bound your talisman to mine so I could reach you if I needed you again.”
“My business with you was concluded.”
“Your business with me did not produce the desired result. There was . . . an unforeseen obstacle. I need your help removing it.”
“That’s hardly my problem.”
“Ah, but if you do nothing, sooner or later it will be your problem, and then you’ll wish you’d acted while you still had the chance.”
The Maidservant fails to detect deception from the woman, so she humors her. “Explain yourself.”
“A boy from the clan you attacked faced a redhawk about a week later. The queen should have never allowed such sacrilege, but somehow the boy had discovered a dangerously powerful aspect of Red magic—a power she now wants for herself. I don’t know her exact plans, but I believe she’s in league with a certain KiYonte high mystic, an old acquaintance of hers, and I believe that if they succeed in whatever they’ve planned, they will become grave dangers to both your tribe and mine. The queen sent the boy on the Bloodway; he is on course to Yonte Saire as we speak. You must stop him before he gets anywhere near the city.”
This has to be the same mystic the Dark Sun spoke of, in which case there are already people going after him. But the Maidservant doesn’t disclose this to the woman. She wants to hear more about this aspect she spoke of. “Why can’t you stop him yourself?”
The hyena shrugs. “My hands are tied. I cannot leave my clan without rousing suspicion, and the queen has eyes on him. It would be too risky for me, but if you sought out the boy, no one would ask too many questions.”
“I still don’t see why this is my problem.”
The woman’s tone grows more biting. “Irediti has always despised your tribe, my Umadi friend. If she and her KiYonte ally acquire what the boy will extract from the Red Temple, I can promise you she will use it to wage war against your tribe and raze every last inch of your savannas to ash. She must be stopped. The boy must be stopped.”
The Maidservant carefully watches the hyena witch. She might be a monstrosity in her current form, but her worry is an almost tangible wave pushing outward away from her. She is afraid of this boy and the aspect he wields, whatever it is, and she is clearly threatened by the idea of her queen getting her hands on it.
Why, though? Would it really make her that powerful? “What is this aspect you mentioned?”
The woman shakes her doglike head. “I cannot reveal specifics, but rest assured it is dangerous.”
“Then you can forget about getting any help from me.”
“You don’t understand. I cannot—” The woman stops talking, perhaps realizing she’ll get nowhere unless she is more forthcoming. She sighs. “Very well. But I need your word that you’ll stop him if I reveal the aspect’s secret.”
The Maidservant’s interest has grown from a mere spark to an inferno. If this power is real, it might be a faster solution to her problems. “You have my word.”
“They call it the Elusive Cube. An All Axiom that bends to the six crafts of Red magic. But that’s not what makes it so dangerous—not even close. You see, an All Axiom is an automatic key to an ancient power in the temple of Yonte Saire.”
The Maidservant listens closely. “And what power is this?”
The hyena witch takes a moment, perhaps trying to compose a response that won’t reveal too much. In the end, however, she reveals everything.
“The ultimate ancestral talent.”
28: Ilapara
The Open Wilds of Umadiland
As the suns rise on her first morning with Salo and Tuk somewhere in the savannas of Umadiland, Ilapara awakens next to a dead campfire to find a charcoal-colored fleece blanket draped over her. She sits up, looking around the camp, and sees Salo still sleeping beneath his crimson cloak on the other side of the fire. Tuk is already up, though, and for whatever reason, he’s hugging himself and staring intently at something in the southeast.
She gets up, grimacing at the stiffness in her shoulders from sleeping in her breastplate. Dear Ama, what she would do for a bath and a change of clothes. Tuk doesn’t look her way as she walks toward him, clutching the blanket in one hand.
She has yet to fully process the wild things he told them last night about who or even what he is. She’s not sure if she believes any of it. “This yours?” she says as she stops next to him, holding out the blanket.
A pale-blue cast dances in his eyes this morning. He doesn’t look away from the flat horizon. “You can keep it,” he says. “I have a cloak, so I don’t really need extra covers.”
Her automatic instinct is to reject the offer of charity, but last night was chilly, and the only reason she slept at all was probably because of the blanket. “Thanks,” she says, with sincerity.
“What are friends for?” A crooked smile grows on his face, like he’s challenging her to dispute the claim that they are friends.
She smiles, too, not taking the bait, and for the first time she notices the little pendant dangling on a thin chain around his neck, a stylized eye of blue metal that had previously been hidden beneath his black sleeveless dashiki. She also notices he’s wearing an ornate golden ring on each middle finger. How wealthy is he, I wonder?
“What are you doing here?” she says. “Is staring blankly at the horizon an outworld ritual?”
“I get this itch sometimes,” he says.
“Okay. Forget I asked.”
He gets a dimple on his cheek, his eyes flicking to green. “I’m being serious. I can’t explain it. I think I feel it when . . . something interesting is happening. I felt it right before Salo ran past me yesterday.”
Ilapara eyes him doubtfully. “Really?”
“That’s why I was paying attention.”
“And you feel it now?”
Tuk nods, pointing ahead. “Whatever it is, it’s that way.”
She looks, too, seeing nothing. “That’s where we came from.”
“Yep.”
A tingle of worry makes her frown. Following her instincts, she reaches into a pouch on her leather shoulder belt and fishes out the only soul charm in her possession. Tuk watches with blue-eyed interest while she palms the charm and possesses herself with the jackal spirit it contains.
She closes her eyes to receive the spirit, weathering a rush of dizzying flashes from a life spent hunting across the savannas and scavenging for carrion, relying on superior auditory senses to detect prey and avoid larger predators. Then the rush subsides and the merge completes, and when she reopens her eyes, her vision has an overlay painted in brushstrokes of vibrations and sound.