This puzzles the Maidservant since she knows the Tuanu to be generally hostile to foreigners. She wants to venture closer and perhaps listen in, but she senses the other presence slowing down and banking southwest.
One of the other parties hunting the mystic must have gotten too close.
The two of them are not the only ones on the mystic’s trail. The Maidservant can sense at least five other groups in pursuit, all of them making good time despite having to move stealthily across lands ruled by hostile warlords. But only two groups are close enough to cause trouble should they be allowed to continue.
The first is a death squad Sand Devil dispatched from a distant village in the east—over a dozen men with red skulls for masks, led by a disciple and drunk on tonics that make their blood boil with rage. They are approaching on mutant kerit bears, meaty creatures with spikes on their shoulders, erect manes, and no lips to cover their ghastly teeth; they’re still some distance away, but the mystic has slowed down considerably. Should they keep going past the borderlands, they will catch up to him sooner or later.
The other group of concern is a detachment of militiamen loyal to Northstar, machete-wielding warriors in grass skirts coming from the southwest on giant, swift-running sable antelope. Given the mystic’s current speed, they will intercept him within the hour if they maintain their pace.
It is this latter group that the other presence in the Void veers off to confront, and the Maidservant follows, keeping far enough away to remain cloaked in Black magic, yet close enough to see what the presence does with her own eyes.
The suns are behind her, and the flat woodlands spread out into the distant horizon, where a great mountain range can be seen shrouded in a haze. Movement in the trees below catches her attention, about a mile ahead of her; then a dozen figures come into view, bulky men riding even bulkier antelope with massive arching horns.
Their spear-wielding leader wears a wooden mask with no eye slits. His naked chest is an intricate network of scarification and tattoos. Judging by the red fires throbbing around his charmed spear of witchwood and tronic bone, the Maidservant guesses his strength lies in Fire craft.
How typical, she thinks. Rare to find a male mystic of Umadi stock who isn’t seduced by the destructive potential of moonfire. Rarer still to find one whose Axiom can actually put the craft to effective use.
He must sense something in the air, given how he slows down and calls a halt, searching the skies through his eyeless mask. His men wait patiently behind him, secure in his power and in the power of the lord they all serve.
They don’t realize that they are already dead.
The Maidservant ghosts just a little closer as she waits with bated breath for what she knows is coming, and when ravens explode out of the skies and swoop down onto the men, she is not disappointed.
Antelope bleat and rear up in alarm. The female silhouette she can just about glimpse at the center of the flock is a knife-wielding blink of motion whose blades are pure Void craft. They dart from one mount to another, tearing bloody smiles open and leaving the men clutching at their slashed throats.
In his desperation, the disciple detonates a spherical ward of moonfire that incinerates everything in its path as it rapidly expands away from him—everything including his dying men and their beasts. The ensuing shock wave is powerful enough to level some of the surrounding trees, but his attacker releases a counterward of Void craft that bends space around her to slow the fire’s approach. She storms upward and out of the sphere’s radius, escaping to a safe height before her ward breaks down and the fires dissipate.
But the attacker must know, as the Maidservant knows, that most Umadi mystics, especially those of the male variety, are rarely capable of sustained sorcerous battles. That spell was in all likelihood sitting at the back of his mind, waiting for him to unleash it at a moment’s notice. It will be seconds before his Axiom can provide enough Fire craft for him to perform another spell.
Sure enough, the attacker hurtles back down even before the disciple has reoriented his antelope to face her.
A brief struggle, a flutter of dark wings, the flash of a knife pulsing with shadows, and then the flock retreats back upward while the disciple falls boneless off his saddle. His beast vaults away without him.
Her curiosity sated, the Maidservant withdraws from the scene before she is detected. Now she knows why the attacker’s presence was so odd to her: deadly though she may be, the attacker is no mystic. She is a manifestation of the Yerezi ancestral talent, given the power of magic by a mystic of her tribe.
This must be what the Yerezi witch meant when she said her queen had eyes on the boy.
Mystic or not, the Maidservant decides that she might need help taking the boy and acquiring his secrets. She is confident in her own abilities, but she will not make the mistake of underestimating him. Not when she saw what happened to Hunter. The stakes—her peace of mind and the freedom to end her torment and finally fulfill her vow—are much too high.
32: Ilapara
Lake Zivatuanu
When a sprawling village reveals itself past a dense thicket of bush after two hours of silent trekking, Ilapara has to grit her jaw just to keep it from dropping to her chest.
Lying beyond the village is a body of water so vast it seems to her like the frontier of the world. The water goes on and on forever until it melts away into the sky in a shimmery blur, promising abysmal depths she shudders to think of.
“And here it is,” Tuk says from astride Wakii, wonder brightening his voice. “Lake Zivatuanu, the longest freshwater lake in the world.”
Salo whistles and slowly shakes his head. “I thought our lake was big. And look at those ships!”
Ilapara is just as awestruck. All the lakes she’s ever seen were puddles in comparison to this landlocked sea. And gliding over the water in the distance are vessels so majestic and fanciful they seem like giant birds. They even have ribbed winglike structures jutting up from the hulls, outstretched as if to take off in flight.
“Will we be sailing on one of those?” she asks, hating the anxiety she hears in her own voice.
“That’s the plan,” Tuk says. “We should count ourselves lucky, you know. The Tuanu don’t let many foreigners sail on their waterbirds or even come close enough to see them.”
“Waterbirds,” Salo echoes, looking out at the ships in the distance. “Now I understand the name.”
They are led down gravel streets lined with graceful triangular stone huts featuring wide decks. Unfriendly eyes peer at them through mazes of body paint. A fishy smell suffuses the air, but the streets are clean and cared for. Nothing at all like a stopover town, and Ilapara finds that she is grateful for it.
“Those are no ordinary sailing ships,” Salo says ahead of her. “If I had to guess, I’d say they’re a secret these people guard as jealously as we guard our red steel and talismans.”
“Over a hundred villages surround this lake,” Tuk replies. “The waterbirds are the heart of Tuanu culture and the lifeblood of their economy. Makes sense that they’d want to keep the secret of what they are.”
By the time they reach one corner of the village center—a square of dry earth surrounded by the largest huts they’ve yet come across—there’s a small crowd trailing behind them.
“How is it you know so much about this place, Tuk?” Ilapara says as they come to a stop.