Cradle of Sea and Soil Page 23

  “Of course; we are grateful for everything you have done and all that you do.”

  Laughter again filled the space. “Enough, Colibrí. I do so only because I am my oaths, and my oaths are me.” She lowered her head suddenly until her massive amber eye filled the space in front of them and panned. “Which is why it darkens my heart to know that you are oathbreakers.”

  Narune jumped in shock, ears and tell going limp. “You know, then?” Then he seemed to realize what he was saying, and slumped even more. “Of course you do.”

  “Only in a fashion, young one. I can taste some of what your minds and spirits reflect onto the Flows of Creation; the rest is simple enough to guess.”

  Sanemoro frowned. “I am training Narune as a spiritseer, true, but that is still within my oaths.”

  “Ah, so you do not believe yourself to be an oathbreaker? Then I assume you would be willing to take a knife to the others if I promised to swallow their pain and prevent their resistance?”

  Colibrí crossed her arms around her spear, frowning, as Sanemoro trembled with shock and glanced across Narune, Kisari, and her.

  “Never,” Sanemoro said. He knelt once more, both hands on the ground, head low enough that his hair fell over his face. “I am sorry, Guardian. I will accept any punishment.”

  “You would refuse me, first and eldest among all warriors? You would turn from oaths older than you yourself are?”

  “I am sorry,” was all that Sanemoro said.

  The great Guardian glanced at Narune and her, and she immediately fell to her own knees along with her son and bowed her head too. What could she say? She was an oathbreaker and regretted the act but not the reason. Colibrí would do it again.

  The Guardian let out a thunderous hiss that sent goosebumps across Colibrí’s skin.

  “Our oaths are meaningful only because we ourselves must work to keep them. They are not a show of power upon the powerless or cunning against the dull; they are a reflection of our very spirits. A beautiful, pointless prison in which the awe is that we choose to remain bound.

  “Because of the ever-laughing chaos of life, you have become the hope of those who cannot—or do not—want to acknowledge this truth. The first Halfborn became that hope too, and they held their oaths close. Even so, they turned against us. What does that say of you who bear the shame of an oathbreaker with such ease?”

  Colibrí said nothing, and neither did Narune or Kisari, who now knelt with them despite never having broken any oaths to Colibrí’s knowledge. Her heart thudded with shame, but she still refused to believe it the wrong choice—she was not a mistake, and neither was Kisari, or Narune.

  The Guardian said nothing for a very long time. Colibrí would have thought her gone if not for the occasional hiss from the forest around them, but it was so gentle that it struggled to be heard over the quickened breaths of those around her.

  “In truth, I do not know what to do with you. I do not know how to find the answer, either. But I do know we are shoved closer to losing the war with each Cycle of Storms, and we must somehow find another way to endure. So, with that knowledge kindling in my heart, I will swallow your broken oaths and replace them anew this once.”

  Colibrí said nothing, ears and tail limp, head still lowered. Replace our oaths?

  “Colibrí: You promised to return your son to the forest, fulfilling the oath against Halfborn and Yabisi’s command. You did not. Narune: You knew well the disaster prior Halfborn spiritseers have caused, and you were refused the chance to become one, yet still you walk the mystic’s path. You have broken your oath to the cacica and ignored the lessons of the past. Sanemoro: Your friendship with these Halfborn stands in utter disrespect of the sacrifices that forged the oaths against them. Because you also bear such vivid memories, guiding Narune only further darkens the stain of your dishonor. Yet I still ask if any of you believe you acted in error?”

  Narune was the first to speak up. He lifted his head, eyes fierce, and looked at the Guardian. “No, Guardian. If anyone called my mother or Kisari a monster, then I’d laugh in their face. That truth is what pushes me to prove with all my strength that we’re nothing like the Halfborn of old.”

  Sanemoro came next, more hesitant, but he wore a gentle smile and looked across at them instead of the Guardian. “I agree. I do not regret any of my actions or experiences. Maybe the betrayal of the first Halfborn was inevitable, but I will never believe it. I would trust them with every fiber of my being even as they sank a spear into me, and not one of my beliefs would change even then.”

  Touched, Colibrí gave the sage a look, her tail waggling, and Narune openly grinned. Sanemoro looked embarrassed after a moment and looked away.

  That left Colibrí. She had spent most of her life thinking about this, so she didn’t have any fancy words, only her own truth. She lifted her head and sat back on her heels. “Narune and my oaths are all I have left. Take away those oaths, and I would still have purpose and more than enough happiness in my life.”

  Her son gave her a pained smile and she saw the same deep, awed respect from when he had been a sproutling.

  The Guardian rose and snapped her wings, scattering detritus around them. The air filled with leaves and a few stray feathers. “Then in place of three broken oaths, I shall ask an oath of three promises: prove the worth of the words you have spoken, prove you will respect the burden of what you have done, and prove that Islandborn marks your spirits more brightly than oathbreaker.”

  “Guardian,” Kisari called suddenly, surprising the rest of them. Her face was twisted into a fierce expression even though she toyed with the flowering vines in her hair. “Please, I know I broke no oaths, but allow me to bear this one along with them.”

  “Very well,” the Guardian said, her voice echoing out from the forest.

  Kisari bowed her head and whispered, “Thank you.”

  The Guardian hissed and drew close so her massive wings doused them in shadow. “You shall again be the first of the Halfborn or again the last, but this time it is an oath I will bear against any who would forget.”

  Chapter 22

  Sweat dripped down onto the grass as Narune let out a frustrated huff. Sanemoro circled him with a slight smile, leaf and stick of inkstone in hand, and said nothing. His mother watched with narrowed eyes, tail and ears frozen in place, her arms crossed around her spear.

  Narune Channeled, his Flowing Blade awakened before him and dancing as he went through simple stances—or at least they should have been simple, but his body was sluggish and his limbs trembled as he fought to maintain control over two depthless forces that refused to cooperate.

  The Jurakán swirled around him, as deep and violent as the Flows of Creation were this evening. The air was so heavy with the Flows that Narune felt as if he would drown in them; they made him feel like he had just stepped out of the sea, the sensation overwhelming even the stifling air and the actual sweat that drenched him.

  The Jurakán forced his ears flat, the screams so vivid that they were like physical stormwater whipping against him, and it reached desperately for both his spirit and the power he Channeled.

  The shrieks urged him to give in, to become a storm himself. Narune resisted, sheltering within its calm heart, but it wanted him to become the heart, to allow it the freedom to color his world in star-bright anger. He blurted all this out and Sanemoro wrote it down.

  Narune was sure he had said it all before, but Sanemoro was also making note of Narune’s condition as he toyed with the Jurakán.

  The sage glanced over at his mother, but she remained leaning against the back of their bohío. She had made her decision to reject the screaming storm clear to the both of them. Narune respected her for that, but he knew it was too late to let things rest there. The Halfborn of old made the Jurakán seem like the reason they had betrayed their oaths.

  Narune wanted to prove that it had been something else. He wanted to show the Trueborn that the Jurakán could be mastered and used for war
. After all, the Flows were dangerous too, but they were still their greatest weapon. How was this any different? They probably just needed to learn more…

  At the moment though, Narune found himself with… doubts.

  Sanemoro chewed his lips and glanced out toward the setting sun. It had stormed earlier that day, but now the skies were clear. “Seas aflame, I still understand none of this. How could anyone call going berserk a gift?”

  Narune nodded in agreement, thinking back to when he had first been swept up in the Jurakán. It seemed exactly like a storm; it didn’t destroy just enough, it destroyed until there was nothing left or it destroyed itself.

  He wiped sweat off his brow. “Well, is it fine if I take a break now?”

  “No breaks!” Sanemoro said, waggling his finger at Narune. “Not yet. Push back the Jurakán and practice your third foundation spell. This is the one that could most easily kill you, so you need to master it, even while tired or distracted. This will be good practice.”

  Narune swallowed a groan and instead nodded. He shoved back against the Jurakán so far, but it only retreated a little. Its voices continued shrieking in his head and made it hard to focus—made him want to claw open his skull, actually.

  His tail rose behind him and he licked his lips as he held his Blade out. A gentle breeze went through his hair and rustled the fur of his tail, but Narune drowned the sensation out. He tried to drown everything out—the chorus of coquí, the crash of waves, the rustling of the forest’s leaves, and especially the presence of the Jurakán and other Flows.

  Narune closed his eyes. Just him and the Carrion Flow. He focused on each breath and pushed his Channeling to the limit. This was all the spell really was, which was also why it was dangerous. It would flood his body with Blackflow—more than his Blade consumed and more than his Gourd could siphon. Any mistakes or clogs that created Stillness would probably leave enough corruption within him that his body would literally fall apart, if it didn’t outright kill him.

  His manuals had empathized this more than once, as it was a concern shared by advanced spells too; normally, minor mistakes caused minor infections of Stillness. These were mostly spiritual and could be scrubbed clean through careful Channeling, but if left alone, the corruption would grow and root, just as with Stillness out in the forest. But, with spells like this one, there was simply too much Flow being handled at once, which meant equally large amounts of corruption if Narune made a mistake.

  The manuals had continued on, describing—in gory detail—spiritseers whose arms had fallen off after their shoulders had crumbled into dust, or those whose innards had been destroyed in an instant, killing them without any visible wounds.

  So Narune kept his Gourd in mind as his Channeling grew faster and wilder. It would be a waste of energy to fight while allowing it to drink so much of what he Channeled, but this was what the Gourd was for; it softened mistakes and swallowed blockages so they wouldn’t become a knot of Stillness.

  A Gourd could store a lot of Flow and would keep it cycling like a swishing waterskin, but that wasn’t its only purpose; the mark of a spiritseer adept was their Glimmering Strike, a personalized technique where a spiritseer awakened their Blade while it was sheathed in its Gourd and then drew it. This in turn drew out everything stored within the Gourd at once, producing devastating spells.

  Normally adepts passed their Glimmering Strikes on to their adopted novices when they in turn became adepts. There was no one to teach Narune of course, but he had been thinking of how he might create his own. Ideas swam in his head even though he wasn’t ready to worry about such advanced techniques and probably wouldn’t be for a long time.

  Narune hadn’t even mastered the three foundation spells yet, and they made up the core of more advanced spells. He needed to be able to use them without thought if he didn’t want to stumble and kill himself, or allow Stillness to take root and spread like a disease, turning his organs and blood to dust.

  Narune’s eyes were still closed, but he could feel Blackflow filling him. His Channeling pumped more of it through his mind, spirit, and body like a second lifeblood, forever keeping it in motion.

  He wanted it to remain like that, because Blackflow already moved like lumpy, rotting sludge.

  With the effort came a rush of strength. His eyes snapped open and he grinned, tail whipping behind him. A spiritseer’s third spell empowered their body with raw Flow, and the foundation manual Sanemoro had given Narune named his Hunger’s Ward.

  He could almost hear Sanemoro’s voice intoning the words that usually preceded the formal display of a spell: Death comes in many forms and swallows all things; flesh and bones, pain and fear, hopes and dreams. But, eventually, death always gifts them back to another. First you must learn to consume; in time you will learn to return what you take.

  “I hate this one,” his mother muttered from against their bohío. She shifted, and he knew she was discomfited by his appearance.

  Narune watched deep black lines trace his veins and arteries, so unnaturally deep that they drank light and looked vivid on his already dark skin. He knew that his hair had also lost its texture, and that his eyes had been filled with inky streaks like the ones dancing across his arms and chest.

  True to the spell’s name, a deep, cold hunger settled within his belly and he began to feel lethargic, as if he really were starving. The manual had warned him of this. It wasn’t the first time he had used the spell, but Narune still had to fight back the desire to sit down and give up on his Channeling.

  He maintained his focus and began to move through his Flowing Blade stances while maintaining Hunger’s Ward. Fresh sweat poured down his brow, but he ignored it. There was no salvation from this technique if he made more than the slightest mistake—he was already filled with Flow, so if he fumbled and it turned into Stillness, then, well, it wouldn’t kill him slowly like a disease.

  The warnings in the manual—duplicated in every manual, Sanemoro assured him—promised that most of him would instantly gray and he would literally fall apart.

  Narune continued through the stances for several notches and felt horrible by the time Sanemoro finally told him to stop. Narune worried the sage had forgotten about him while lost in his thoughts and notes, but he said nothing when Sanemoro squinted at darkened sky and called an end to the day.

  Narune was relieved; Sanemoro came whenever his duties allowed him, which was usually evenings and early mornings, but they sometimes worked through the night.

  Sure, the three of them felt the weight of their oath to the Guardian—him especially, because now he needed not only to convince the Trueborn, but her too—but seas and skies aflame, all he wanted to do was rest for a while.

  Narune dispelled Hunger’s Ward, then let the edge of his Flowing Blade dissipate and slowed his Channeling to a tiny trickle. It was weak enough that he didn’t have to think about it, but he wondered what it would be like later, when he more or less had to Channel all the time. Maybe I’ll be so used to it that it’ll be like now. He hoped that was the case.

  His mother went to touch noses with Sanemoro, hand cupping his chin as she smiled, and then she embraced him fondly. She said something Narune didn’t catch, and Sanemoro left, grinning, with all his things. She turned to him then.

  “Do you want to go to bed early tonight?” she asked him. “I don’t mind taking a longer watch.”

  Narune was tempted, but he shook his head. “I’m going to go for a walk and settle my breath.”

  She nodded. “Good idea. Be careful, and keep an eye out for Kisari.”

  His friend had been coming every day recently, and disliked talking about what was happening in the village. Narune could tell she was struggling with her own parents, but he enjoyed her company and knew she came to them to forget her troubles, not be reminded of them, so he left her be.

  He waved acknowledgment to his mother, grabbed the spear she handed him, and took off along the beach, too tired to remove his warrior garb. He ke
pt his Blade at his side, but it was hidden within a nest of shadow feathers, so he didn’t worry about it.

  Narune went for a slow walk on the beach, intending to drift north toward the village; Kisari hadn’t come this morning, but even when she didn’t she still usually came in the evening to share a meal with them, and, he suspected, to avoid having to share one with her own family.

  The evening air was still warm, but it wasn’t as bad as it was during midday. The sea spray helped, and he allowed the tide to wash over his ankles. Pleased, Narune walked leisurely beside the sun and together they enjoyed peace, but of course it wouldn’t last.

  He found Kisari and Ixchel near the limestone outcroppings he used to mark the halfway point to the village. They were on the thin grass and weeds up the slope from the beach—

  —and they were fighting.

  Well, fighting might have been the wrong word. Kisari—of all people—was on top of Ixchel, her face locked in a fierce snarl, and she was trying to hit Ixchel who was holding back her arms and trying to avoid being kneed in the stomach or groin. Her new friends, Ikenna included, and quite a few more novices—probably the rest of the youths from the Ritual that had become spiritseers—stood in a loose crowd around them.

  They appeared hesitant, and they should be. Helping a warrior—a spiritseer—defend themselves from a warden, even one without any actual warden oaths, would shame Ixchel beyond belief.

  Narune cried out and sprinted toward them. Some of the youths turned in alarm and more than a few Flowing Blades surged awake, but he ignored them and went to his friends.

  “Ixchel!” he cried even though she was only trying to defend herself. She could have easily hurt Kisari, even with her Halfborn strength, but she hadn’t, may her days remain stormless.

  The youths continued to stand around like idiots while he moved behind them and tore Kisari off Ixchel with an arm. She struggled fiercely, so he dropped his spear and held her with both.