Cradle of Sea and Soil Page 18

  “Narune.” Colibrí frowned as she raised her spear in a guard. She felt him tense against her back. “We can’t fight this many at once.”

  “This ground is too good for the boars,” he acknowledged. He was right; they could charge and go wild without fear of slipping off the root-roads. Peacemaker had forged his trap well. “I’m not sure we can just run through.”

  “No,” she admitted. “We’ll fight for an opening and then flee. Understand?”

  “Yes,” Narune said. His voiced betrayed fear, but only a little. She reached back with one hand quickly and squeezed his thigh.

  The halja at the center had finished growing or rising or whatever they did, and when she saw what it was her heart sank. The others were lesser halja, shallow memories of life, but this one was another twisted idea, and one she knew as well as the Victory. The Empty Fury straightened to twice her height, its body a simple outline of a human, muscular and broad-chested. There was only a cavity where the head should be that cut down at an angle into its chest.

  Two long arms ended in angular axes instead of hands, and a second pair of arms, these with bulbous ends, curved up from its back to beat on the misshapen masses growing from its shoulders. The sound of war-drums—which somehow emanated from the fleshy masses—soon filled the air in a furious rhythm that sent fire through Colibrí’s veins.

  She didn’t even have time to cry out a warning before everything fell into chaos.

  The Empty Boars charged all at once while the Empty Fury lurched toward them. Colibrí threw herself out of the way of a Boar’s charge, rolling forward toward the Fury. Her spear trailed behind her and dragged across the Boar’s rear leg, crippling it and sending it tumbling. She pulled her spear free and swung it toward the Fury before it even approached.

  The Empty Fury slammed an axe down. Colibrí caught it on her spear, muscles burning in spite of her Islandborn body and her greater strength as a Halfborn. It swung its other axe, forcing her to push off and deflect that one instead.

  The blows came slow but powerfully. Colibrí tried to strike back between them, but they were coming faster and faster as the Fury’s namesake anger grew and fed it power. Another Empty Boar stomped around the Fury and tried to gouge her with its exaggerated tusks, but she twisted as it dove. Her spear caught it across the face, then, sweat streaming down her cheeks, she ripped it through and out of the fat Empty Boar’s body to parry another blow from the Fury.

  She caught a glimpse of Narune further away. They had been separated by the Boars, and he now faced three on his own, but her son cleverly positioned himself so that either they got in the way of each other, or the forest did and was trying to make his way back toward her.

  Focus. Colibrí wet her lips and retreated from the Fury as it slowly continued its approach. Its sinewy flesh was cut and torn in multiple places, but these didn’t seem to inhibit it at all. Her attacks had been messy and desperate; she hadn’t placed them well.

  And now I’ll pay for that mistake, she thought grimly. She growled and sprang away from another Boar as it clambered over a bit of root-road and clumsily tried to impale her, then drove her spear into it again and again until the thing crumbled.

  Colibrí coughed as dust filled the air and tried to keep her gaze on the Fury, hoping to position herself better and kill it before—

  —the greater halja threw both arms to the side and the drums on its shoulders beat such a furious rhythm that its entire body vibrated. One arm then reached out and pointed an axe at her.

  Colibrí shuddered and readied herself. All of a sudden, the Flows of Creation vanished and were instead replaced with something that burned her skin, and pumped cold anxiety through her veins.

  The world dimmed, with the immediate area around Colibrí and the Empty Fury becoming the only regions of light, and the only sound she could hear was its drumbeat. Whenever she looked away, darkness flooded her vision; she could no longer see or hear Narune, or anything else for that matter.

  The Fury came at her again, this time wild and frantic. Colibrí charged into it, her heart playing its own drumbeat, and knew she was dead if she made a single mistake. She danced around the halja’s first strike and beneath the second as its arms rose, then ducked again when it spun around, axe-first.

  She caught the Empty Fury on the knee with her spear and it stumbled, but it didn’t fall and instead smashed down with one axe. She jerked ever slightly to the side and let the axe smash into the ground, keeping its arm between her and the other axe. It hesitated, and in that moment, she slammed her spear into its wrist and kicked viciously at the axe’s head, using her full strength.

  The spear sank deep and held as her foot smashed into the flat of the axe. The sinews holding its axe-hand snapped and the axe bent at an angle. She leaped back as the Empty Fury tried to turn to swipe at her and the motion tore its dangling axe-hand off.

  She readied herself for the next charge—and barely managed to react in time as a spear thrust out from the darkness. Muscle-memory saved her, but it was still a clumsy guard and the gray spear cut across her side in a spray of blood and agony. The enemy spear snapped away, then whipped back across her head.

  The force knocked her to the ground and left her stunned, disoriented. She blinked, her vision blurred, and she gulped air as the Empty Victory rushed into the small area of light around her. She feebly raised her spear only to have it batted away, then one of the Victory’s spear-like feet rose for the killing blow.

  Colibrí rolled as it came down, then squirmed forward on her back, between its legs, and flipped onto her knees. She crawled forward, hands slipping on the slick dead leaves, but she was blind, the world shrouded in darkness thanks to the Empty Fury.

  Colibrí whirled and to find the Victory turning almost causally, her own spear in its hand, and it closed the distance with all too much ease.

  She was saved by the Empty Fury—it stepped in and shouldered aside the Empty Victory, then swung at the other halja with its useless arm. The Victory stood motionless as its kin beat on it while still ‘facing’ Colibrí, and she could only stare back in disbelief for a drawn-out moment.

  Then they both turned and a spear slid forward to rest at her feet.

  Narune emerged from the artificial darkness, his Flowing Blade awakened in his hand. Her son was bleeding and gasping for breath, an Empty Boar chasing after him, but he skidded to a stop and turned at the last moment just in front of the two greater halja—and tripped.

  The Empty Boar did too, turning and sliding across the moist detritus. Narune swung his weapon as he flailed and cut through the Empty Victory’s leg, then scrambled back onto his feet. He was saying something, but the Empty Fury’s drums isolated her senses from the world around her.

  Colibrí snatched up the spear and sprinted forward. The Victory was still more interested in her, but now it was forced to deal with Narune too, so it spun its spear to catch his Flowing Blade. The spear now shimmered with a subtle gray light and the same light ripped out from wherever her son struck a blow, but the Victory still staggered back on one leg.

  She ignored it, instead charging directly at the Empty Fury. It hunched forward to meet her and raised its axe-hand. It swung as she twisted and thrust forward.

  Blood flowed from her shoulder where a chunk of skin had been cleaved off, but her spear was in its chest now. She grunted and forced the spear down through the sinew.

  The Empty Fury trembled and snapped its axe back again—then collapsed to its knees and started crumbling to dust. She fell forward herself, gasping, so grateful that she almost cried—it was impossible to know how much damage a halja would endure before coming apart. The only thing that seemed to make a difference was damaging sinew close to its center, whatever that happened to be, and it wasn’t always an easy target.

  She tiredly stood up—and was surprised to find her son giving a frustrated snarl as he tore his Blade through the Empty Victory’s second leg. The last Empty Boar charged at him, but Colibr�
� rushed forward to intercept it and plunged her spear into its neck. She used her strength to turn aside its charge, slipping with it, and then brought it down. Instead of trying to tear her spear free, she instead used it to hold the halja in place, tore her knife free, and then slammed it down on the halja again and again until it began to crumble.

  She glanced around for other opponents, found none, then went toward Narune. He stood on the Empty Victory’s chest, his tail and ears extended, and chopped his Blade down on the Victory’s body. When it weakly raised a trembling arm, he reacted with surprise, as if it were a serpent appearing suddenly, and leaped forward to cut at it with overzealous passion.

  In spite of everything, the sight forced a weak laugh from her lips.

  The Empty Victory crumbled not long after, leaving Narune covered in blood, soil, and sweat. He glanced at her, gulping air, and then shrugged. “It won’t be bothering you now,” he said breathlessly.

  She smiled, then they retreated back into cover, slipping in between a cluster of root-roads that curved up into the middle layers. They hunched there together for a while, gathering their strength and their breaths. Peacemaker neither appeared or announced himself.

  Colibrí didn’t think he would, now, and she wasn’t too worried about the possibility that their adversary was lying in wait—she made her way through the forest more carefully now, and she doubted Peacemaker would get anything near a good shot down here. In fact, bows were difficult weapons to use within the tangle of the forest, which was probably why he had waited for such an opportune moment the last time. Even then, he had still leaned on his sorcery, which was ironically what saved her life.

  Peacemaker also simply didn’t strike her as the kind of foe who faced opposition head on with fang and claw. The illusions, the indirect way he had tried to deal with her the first time, and the trap laid here all underscored that belief.

  So baiting him into battle won’t work after all. It had been a somewhat long gamble, one that assumed he wouldn’t let their hunts for Stillness go unchallenged. She had been right about that, but wrong about how he would deal with it. Colibrí also acknowledged that this was a kind of warning, and that left her wary of continuing with just her son—what if the next trap had more halja, or more dangerous breeds?

  Colibrí rubbed her forehead, pushing back the screaming storm that now hammered against the inside of her eyes. The voices had surged close during the battle, but she was so used to shoving them away that sometimes she didn’t notice the screams unless they were especially vivid and loud.

  Well, we’re learning more about our prey, at least. Now we just need to find a way to use that knowledge to track him. If Peacemaker really was avoiding a confrontation, then maybe all they had to do was get their teeth around his throat and he’d go down without much effort.

  Oh, is that all? She sighed at herself.

  Mother, Narune whispered into her mind, his free hand on her wrist. We’re too wounded and exhausted to stay. We should go.

  She eyed the expanse of corruption lit by her lantern off to the side, the watery blue light smooth and cold against the gray of Stillness. His words echoed her worries, so she knew it was the wise thing to do, despite the itchy feel of cowardice at the back of her mind.

  “Yes,” she replied with a scowl. “Let’s go home.”

  Chapter 18

  Narune danced through the Flowing Blade stances. All his aches and pains, the fatigue of his muscles, and the worries of his mind faded away; there was only the Carrion Flow. It moved through him and he swam within it, and together they became motion itself. Subtle motion, because Blackflow was thick as sludge and moved just as slowly, but it was motion all the same. The screaming storm raged around him, its chaotic song deafening, but he sheltered from it with what was becoming an almost habitual mental gesture.

  Sanemoro sat cross-legged in the shade of their bohío, writing leaves spread out before him, some pinned by stones against the morning wind. A stub of inkstone rolled between his fingers, and he had black stains all over his hands, lips, and face. His mother watched from beside the sage, leaning back against their bohío. It was late into his turn to sleep, but she had woken up early during hers. Neither of them had been sleeping well.

  He paused after the final movement, Flowing Blade snapping out in a horizontal cut. He held the pose, Blade still except for the ever-flowing sliver of black that made it, and released his breath slowly. His Flow dissipated from inside him, starting with his Blade. It sputtered out until the Carrion Flow was again a distant presence—one that was always there, just like with the screaming storm, but unlike it, his Flow was subdued and far more obedient.

  Narune slipped it back into his Gourd, then Channeled once again to continue filling the seemingly infinite depths of the sheath.

  He was still a long way from being able to Channel all the time, and especially from doing it without conscious thought, but that would come with experience. From what he had read of the spiritseer manuals, everything came down to experience; knowledge was what prevented deadly mistakes.

  Narune glanced over at Sanemoro. “The screams have stayed the same,” he announced.

  “Good.” Sanemoro wrote down some more notes on a leaf and then squinted over at the rising sun in the distance. He looked as tired as Narune and Colibrí; the sages were being used heavily now, and that was without Sanemoro also making time to train him. “Well, so far you and your mother both align with all previous accounts of Halfborn. Especially when it comes to Flow making your symptoms worse. There are still a few things that leave me puzzled, though. Like how Kisari began hearing the screams the same time you did, and hears them constantly now, but never lost control of herself.”

  Narune blinked, realizing that was true.

  “I theorize it has to do with the differences between the three of you,” Sanemoro continued. “Such as how she inherits from plants while you two borrow from island coyotes.”

  “And what about the Halfborn that came before us?” his mother asked lazily from their bohío’s wall, spear beside her. “Did the sages pass on nothing?”

  Sanemoro twisted to scowl at her. “Of course they did, but the Halfborn that betrayed us were collectively the first.” He scratched at his chin. “There has never been as large a mass appearance of Halfborn since then, and obviously those few who were born afterward were given back to the forest.”

  He paused, blinking, and gave Colibrí a sheepish look, but she continued to stare off into the distance without comment.

  “My point is that they were not studied for long,” Sanemoro resumed with a sigh. “The sages marked the two kinds of Halfborn—those borrowing from creatures of the land, and those from plant life—and how their bodies differed from Trueborn.

  “The ‘screams,’ as you call them, confused the sages and the previous Halfborn as much as it confuses us now. Every account says it was overwhelming the first time, but far easier to control every other time and, unlike you two, the previous Halfborn leaned heavily on the storm in their heads.”

  “I can understand why,” Narune remarked, tail twitching. He still remembered how the storm’s rage had empowered him, and how he had felt not even the slightest bit of fear even while surrounded by enemies.

  Sanemoro nodded and glance down at his notes. “Yes, well, they were still wary of the screams, enough to respect them, just as we do true storms, but the Halfborn were also convinced they could partially control it.”

  “That was what led to their downfall, then,” Colibrí said. When Narune and Sanemoro looked at her, she shrugged. “It’s easy to see the path. The Halfborn were pushed into becoming warriors if not spiritseers, and encouraged to hone this new power of the tribes, then they were sent to the Primordial Wound, which was where everything went wrong.”

  “Yes,” Sanemoro admitted. “Though, more specifically, they betrayed their oaths during a great battle meant to breach the Stillness. Some of the Halfborn had already been to the Wound by then,
so…”

  “Well,” she said as she straightened with a stretch. “I’ve fought at the Wound. The screams are louder there, probably because the Flows of Creation are also strongest there, but I could still ignore them. You know what’s the difference between us? I’ll tell you—I didn’t depend on the screams.”

  Narune nodded eagerly, eyes widening. “If all we need to do is ignore them, then—”

  “Calm, Narune,” Sanemoro said. “It is dangerous to leap to answers, especially if they are the ones you want to find. Let us pace ourselves and leave no stone unturned.” Sanemoro paused and cocked his head. “On another note, I would like to stop calling it ‘the screams.’ Prior sages named it the Jurakán and I think it fits better.”

  “Isn’t that a name from the old stories?” Narune asked, frowning as he sorted through the tales he had devoured as a sproutling. “The ones that tell of a great slumbering leviathan?”

  “Yes!” Sanemoro said with a grin, finger waggling at Narune. “A Jurakán is a mystic storm commanded like a weapon.”

  Colibrí laughed. “Well, it’s better than saying ‘the screams.’ And Narune is already taken with it.”

  Narune tried not to look indignant, but his tail hanged low and gave him away. “It’s a good name. Very fitting; the screams do feel like a storm, and when they become strong enough they even look like it.”

  Sanemoro began packing his things up, stacking each of the leaves together and placing them in his little basket. “Well, that settles it then. At least we are getting somewhere there.” He sighed and brushed his face. “The cacica has not been pleased with your reports, Colibrí. In fact, she has commanded me to send word ahead whenever I bring news from you. That way she can be water-minded first.”

  Colibrí snorted.

  “So, your attempts at baiting Peacemaker have failed to hook him,” Sanemoro continued, his voice growing lower as he glanced between Narune and Colibrí. “What will you do now?”