They were big men, big in every way: size, confidence, ex perience, influence, resource, and intelligence. Their hands used pens for weapons; the steel of their coins was sharper than swords. They spun impenetrable webs between foreign émigrés, Malacarite politicians, the wealthy, and the discon tent. They shaped destiny as if it were clay, using the muscles of laborers, partisans, resistance groups, serfs, tycoons, drag onmasters, and Clutch overseers. They stood at the pinnacle of the Great Uprising’s pyramid, networks and armies of people as their expansive base. Not one of them, save Malaban, was from the council I’d stood in front of before.
Five of the seven were aosogi. One was the dark brown of those descendants from Lud y Auk. One was a blue-eyed, gray-haired Xxelteker.
There wasn’t an ivory-hued fa-pim body in sight. But neither was there a whorled one.
Maps covered the walls: aerial maps, ground maps, and diagrams of destrier squadron formations. Half-eaten food, empty wine flagons, inkpots, quills, and parchment covered tables.
Savga waited outside the closed and guarded doors, Aga wan on her lap, as I stood surrounded by those maps, be fore the seven of the Great Uprising. I wondered how the indefatigable men before me felt, sitting before a woman from some obscure pagan prophecy as they prepared to engage in warfare.
“You’ve made a mistake by spurning the council of Djimbi elders we sent you,” I snapped. “We needed to make provisions to protect against Kratt’s Skykeeper—”
“Tell us what it can do, what we can expect.”The Xxelteker man fired off the command as if it were an arrow.
I paused, considered. “The Skykeeper is berserk. She’s insane.”
“She?”
“Otherworld power is heedless of gender.” I didn’t need to stand upon a crate box to educate whomsoever sur rounded me.
One of the aosogi men unrolled a scroll of vellum. He pinned its corners down under a wine flagon, an inkwell, and two dusky plums. A sensuous female Djimbi blazed forth: the likeness of Waivia, trapped by paint. “Is that your sister? The one who stands beside Kratt and controls the Skykeeper?”
I shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, the men be fore me could tear down and reshape a nation. “Don’t hurt her.”
“If your sister were captured, unharmed, then what?” asked the darkest of the seven.
“You won’t succeed,” I said. “The Skykeeper would per ceive capture as an act of harm to Waivia. We have to keep Waivia
away
from Xxamer Zu. Only if she steps upon this Clutch will the Skykeeper attack. The Skykeeper vowed it.”
“Will it hold to the vow?”
“She has thus far.”
A shift in the air. The Xxelteker man stirred, his peculiar bright blue eyes surrounded by tired fish-belly-white skin. “And if this Waivia is killed, then what?”
My guts curled. “You can’t kill my sister.”
“This is war. People die. So tell us: What becomes of the Skykeeper if this Waivia dies?”
I remembered how, each time I’d left Clutch Re prior to the haunt finding Waivia, the haunt had become embed ded within me. Would the berserk thing that was so intent on protecting Waivia become trapped within me should Waivia die?
(I’d be Mother’s child at last, with Waivia gone.)
I grabbed the edge of the heavy teak table the seven sat around, appalled at myself. “If you kill my sister,” I said hoarsely, “the Skykeeper will destroy every living thing on this Clutch. Me included.
Don’t hurt her.
”
Did I speak the truth? I didn’t know. Was I trying to pro tect Waivia? Most certainly.
“Does the Skykeeper view you as an enemy?” Malaban asked. “Could you draw your sister and her creature away from the battle?”
“How?”
“Those magics the Kwembibi Shafwai employed—”
“Are unknown to me,” I said tartly. “Those Djimbi mag ics are ancient, obscure. If not for the persecution of the Djimbi, more Djimbi would know such magics, but that’s not the way things are, is it? Djimbi have been reviled for what they know, not respected. The Djimbi race has been watered down, made
more pleasing,
by laws forbidding unions be tween Djimbi. The knowledge that you want, Malaban, now resides amongst the likes of the Kwembibi Shafwai, my sis ter, Daronpu Gen, and maybe a clawful of Djimbi who know the old lore. Such as the very Djimbi elders that we sent to you, and whom you’ve scorned to consult with.”
I turned my anger from Malaban to the seated seven.
“We have to locate my sister and keep her safe and away from Xxamer Zu. Kill her and you cut your own throats. For the love of wings, is that not clear?”
“And your Djimbi elders can help us locate her, amongst all those thousands Kratt has gathered out there?” The Xxelteker’s voice was cool.
“They can.” I hoped.
One of the men reached for a quill, scrawled something on a corner of parchment, and handed it to Malaban Bri. “Give this to the herald outside the door. Have these Djimbi elders summoned.”
My knees went weak; I could do this thing yet. I could keep Waivia alive, and safe, and away from Xxamer Zu. . . .
A noise outside in the hall.
Music that eclipsed my mind like a finespun cloud, both hirsute and silky. A green feeling slowly began pulsing through me, a raw, sappy feeling fluorescing with bud time, seed time, dew and youth. The stronger the sensation grew, the more it altered; I became buoyant, supernal, belonging to a higher world. I was lured and goaded by the sweeten ing infusion, a sound that incited and soothed both.
My flesh began pricking with latent memory. The sensa tion was akin to when one has sat too long in a still position, and then, upon moving, blood rushes painfully back into stifled limbs.
Djimbi chants. I was hearing Djimbi chants. As were the men around me.
The doors burst open and Daronpu Gen lurched in.
He was dressed in a tattered brown tunic belted by a cord of coarse jute. His massive hairy feet were bare, chafed, and blistered. His beard—snarled, black, touch ing his collarbone—had been cleaved in two and gave the impression of black tusks sprouting from his sunken cheeks. The black hair on his head looked like the wiry bristles of a wild boar. His skin—covered with weeping whip welts—was bark brown, the same hue as when I’d first met him, years ago, yet his cheeks were pale, as if he were drained, exhausted, as if he’d been running through jungle for days.
One of his eyes had been gouged out, was an appalling socket surrounded by weeping, puckered flesh.
“Had to use a charm on them,” he said hoarsely, ges turing at the guards outside the doors. The guards stood with jaws slack, eyes glazed, and were lovingly handling themselves beneath their skirts. Gen had used that charm before, to get past those who wouldn’t otherwise let him proceed. As he had done so then, Gen now shrugged. “Best charm I know.”
Savga slipped in from behind him and came to my side, Agawan asleep in the sling on her back.
“Where the Dragon have you been?” one of the seven growled at Gen. “And what’s happened to you?”
I looked from Gen to the man who had spoken. They knew each other?
“Gen,” I said hoarsely, and he turned his grisly, one-eyed gaze on me. There was something in his look and stance that stilled the relief, the joy, and the fiery hope that had exploded within me at his appearance. I sucked in a sharp breath and actually stepped back a pace.
The dark man addressed Gen, unable to disguise his dis gust. “You wield a strange power, Chinion, to get into this council.”
“Chinion?” I gasped. “
You’re
Chinion?”
Gen waved away the revelation as insignificant. “I’ve come to find the prophesied one, the Dirwalan Babu, who will win us the battle and be Temple’s ruin.”
A moment of silence. All eyes fell on me.
“You’re not referring to Zarq,” Malaban said.
Gen looked grim. “I was wrong. It’s not her. That crea ture Kratt wields is no Skykeeper. Is it, Zarq? Temple was right: It’s a demon.”
“My mother is no demon,” I said breathlessly, still reel ing from the revelation that Chinion and Daronpu Gen were one.
“Manifestation of love, manifestation of hate . . . two sides of the same coin,” Gen rasped. “The personification of passion without reason, that’s what Kratt’s creature is.” He looked at the seven. “I went back to Cuhan, followed the traces of the Skykeeper’s essence. It led me to
her
, what-hey.”
He pointed a bony finger at the vellum on the table.
“Long and long I watched that woman, like a bat in the night, like a roach on the wall. Twice I was caught and twice imprisoned and tortured. But I was successful, what-hey; I witnessed that woman’s interactions with the thing Kratt would have us believe is a Skykeeper.” Gen’s weeping eye socket turned again in my direction. “There’s no doubt it’s one and the same as the creature that once answered to you, is there?”
No point denying it. “It’s the same.”
“How long’ve you known you aren’t the Dirwalan Babu?”
“I’ve wanted to believe it ever since you told me.” I started to feel defiant, piqued that he’d hid his alternate identity from me. How long had he not trusted me, to hide such? “How long have
you
suspected that I’m not the Dir walan Babu?” I snapped.
“When I learned you were unaware of the magics that veiled your heritage. A fool, I’ve been. Made obtuse by hope, led by self-delusion. Humbling, blood-blood!”
My throat was dry. “What am I, Gen? Now that I’ve started all this: What am I?”
“Remarkable. But not, I fear, the Dirwalan Babu.”
“So this creature of Kratt’s is not a Skykeeper?” Malaban frowned. “It’s a
demon
?”
“It’s a shedwen-dar, the haunt of a dead osmajani,” Gen said.
“Which means?”
“Osmajani, osmajani, a . . . what would you call it? A Djimbi replete with knowledge of otherworld powers.”
“Are
you
an osmajani?” I asked.
“Not,” Gen said sourly, “a very good one.”
“And Waivia?”
“A fearfully damn good one.”
I didn’t ask if I was an osmajani. Didn’t need to. I already knew I possessed none of my mother’s pagan skills.
“Can it be conquered?” the Xxelteker man asked. “This
thing
?”
“Unlike a Skykeeper, a shedwen-dar is not immortal. Its powers are limited. It
can
be conquered.” Gen smacked his great palms together; at my side, Savga started. “Now all that remains is to discover the Dirwalan Babu.”
“The battle has all but begun,” the Xxelteker man said curtly.
“She’ll show, man, she’ll show! The prophecy foretells it:
Zafinar waskatan, bar i’shem efru mildon safa dir palfent.
The Dirwalan Babu is present the day the efru mildron clash, on the field soon to be marked by talon and blood.”
“You once thought those words meant I should be pres ent at Arena,” I said, and yes, I was bitter.
Gen swung his half-blind gaze toward me. “True, true, I did. But you yourself pointed out to me that the efru mildon, the colossals, don’t actually clash in Arena. No, the bull dragons don’t fight one another. And you were correct, hey-o! My interpretation of the passage was wrong.”
He looked at the men who were listening to him with in scrutable expressions. “Efru mildon is an old Djimbi term, used by some tribes to refer to dragons, by others to refer to any who wield great power.
We
are the efru mildon in the prophecy, we who will clash today. Our forces against Kratt’s and Temple.”
One of the seven rose from his chair and placed his knuckles on the table, his expression somber and intense. He waited several moments before speaking, a man used to receiving the attention of all present.
“I’d be foolish to dismiss what I’ve seen and heard, and I am not a foolish man. But now is the time for tangibles. We have thousands of men prepared to die today, and we need to talk strategy, deal with facts, and move fast.”
Grunts of agreement.
“Tell us how this thing Kratt controls can be beaten,” the man demanded of Gen. “By fire? Steel? Incendiary?”
Gen scowled. “No, no, and no! A shedwen-dar is the per sonification of a passion; we must eradicate the source of its passion.” He pointed a bony finger, and one by one every one looked at the rendering of my sister, Waivia. My heart stopped.
“You can’t do that,” I said huskily. “The haunt won’t let us get near her; it’ll be like throwing ourselves into a fire.”
“True.” Gen looked at me with pity, and that’s a pow erful thing to see from a man who has recently suffered torture: pity. “But if the shedwen-dar is locked in combat with a Skykeeper—our Skykeeper, a
true
Skykeeper, one prophesied to appear—we’ll be able to move in on Kratt’s osmajani.”
“You’re talking about killing my sister,” I said hoarsely, hands clenched. Gen had once been my ally, my mentor. No longer. He was not only undoing all my work to pro tect my sister, but was cutting me out of his circle of power completely.
“Osmajani, sister: it makes no difference,” he said.
“She has a baby,” I choked out. “She’s a mother, a woman.”
“Alas, Zarq,” Gen murmured, his one eye soft with em pathy, “death and otherworld power recognize no gender. Your sister must die.”
“Go splash in it if you want to,” Mother said, eager on my behalf.
Father laughed, delighted at the suggestion. “Fine idea. Splash, play!”
Waivia turned to me, grinning. “Come on, Zarq.”
So much expectation around me, so many smiles.
I didn’t really want to go into that dark, silver-plated wa ter. A river at dusk to a four-year-old who has never seen a river before in her life is a daunting thing, and, too, the wind was cool. But there was Waivia, grinning at me. There was my mother, smiling and urging me on. There was my father, eager to vicariously experience my play.
So I went into the water and splashed, squealing, terri fied, shivering violently, and afterward I curled up on Waiv ia’s lap before a fire, my teeth clattering. Her arms were warm. She seemed strong, big. I could hear her heart beat ing against my ear.
How cold a river can be at dusk. How heavy the love of family. How sheltering the arms of a sister.