Cradle of Sea and Soil Read online

  Kayuya Village was the sprawling heart of the tribes and looked like it; Sanemoro had told him that though none of the villages were small anymore, Kayuya itself was truly a village of villages.

  War towers made of soil and living, interwoven plants stood at the north and south, but they were thickest along the western edge because of the forest. At the east end was the harbor where the seamaster and his sea sentinels came and went, sometimes bringing foreigners with them. Elsewhere, the village was comprised of circular rows of bohío with the occasional caney—larger and more lavish homes that were rectangular instead of round—here and there, all crafted from gifts of the forest and sometimes with the aid of sorcery.

  Mismatched tiles made of seashells or wood had been embedded in the soil between those homes. Coral lanterns hung above their entryways or on wooden posts, the polyps eating the last of their meals and only giving off a faint light. Even so, the lights were beautiful, each a different color, some the natural watery blue of the coral, while others had been made to glow red, gold, green, or purple.

  But he wasn't here for Kayuya Village. Not that the sentinels standing guard atop the war towers, bows in hand, would have let him enter unchallenged, anyway.

  Narune followed the curve of the village’s west side, keeping his distance. He kept going until he neared the northern corner where the ground became flat, the soil devoid of grass and beaten firm. Large wood-bordered pits filled with sand stretched across the area and beyond them sprawled a dizzying network of platforms, walkways, climbing walls, and other training devices.

  The grove of the Spiritseer Circle stood on the other side of the training field, between the forest and Kayuya Village itself. There were bohío and caney at the grove too, but it was the great shrine that drew Narune’s eyes. The structure was made of stone like basalt that was colored a deep blue. It mimicked a spiral shell, or maybe a spearhead, fat and pointing up at the sky.

  Five smaller siblings rose from the soil around the central structure. Crowning each of them were little tree-lords whose roots penetrated into the stone and formed their own network of roads and walkways, connecting all of them together like a miniature archipelago.

  Narune hungrily took it all in from atop a knoll, ears and tail fluttering against the strong wind, as he watched the spiritseers and their adopted novices train. Some observed from the walkways or from openings in the stone, but most of the spiritseers and novices were running circles around the shrine in groups. Others practiced in the nearest fields and sand pits, going through the motions required by their sorcery and unique warrior crafts.

  I'll be one of them, soon, Narune thought. A thrill filled him and he allowed himself a moment to savor it. Or so I hope.

  He waited, but didn't have to for long. Sentinels appeared on a higher hill across him that also overlooked the shrine grounds. They took positions, bows on their backs and spears in hand, two, then four, and finally six. He counted them and waited for the one they guarded.

  Cacica Yabisi, leader of all who were Islandborn, strode up the hill to watch the spiritseers. She was dressed in a sarong of woven flowers and leaves, a stormdancer’s sandals, and wore just a waterstone earring and two seashell bracelets.

  Narune licked his lips. You can do this. He paused, then shook his head. No, you have to do this. The cacica will understand.

  He began to make his way up to her hill. The sentinels didn't turn at his approach, but, to his utter surprise, waved him closer when he neared.

  Narune hesitated only a moment and then took the invitation. He knelt before the cacica and lowered his head, then thumped a fist against his chest. It was the single beat of a heart and a war drum, but no more. His body and calling hers to command; the fact that he hadn’t yet taken any warrior oaths was beside the point.

  Cacica Yabisi laughed without turning. “You’re not going to wiggle in the dirt and hide from me today?”

  He felt his face grow hot. The cacica had noticed him all the other times? “I’ve come to ask a favor, my cacica.”

  “A favor?” she asked. He watched her feet slide across the ground as she turned to face him. “Lift your head.”

  He did as she commanded and dared to meet her gaze. She reached out and clutched his chin. The cacica wore scents that were sharp and overpowering and her hair was left free to flow down her back, but some of it had been bound into a small warrior braid on her left side. She wore a simple band of feathers around her forehead in place of her usual headdress.

  Cacica Yabisi pressed a thumb to his lips and regarded him without emotion. She said nothing for a while, her gaze sweeping from his face to ears, and then his tail, which he reflexively wound around his waist. She snorted. “It's bold of the exiled to ask me favors.”

  “You exiled my mother, Cacica, but not me.” Not yet.

  Laughter again spilled from her mouth. “What is it that you want?”

  Narune swallowed and looked down at the shrine. Her gaze followed. “I wish to become a spiritseer.”

  “No,” she said, and then patted him on the cheek before turning away. “Now go, and don't return. Consider yourself exiled; I'll declare it formally by the day’s end.”

  Narune sprang to his feet. “Cacica—” There was a snap of motion and spears pressed against his skin. They were so close that even a tremble would draw blood. Cacica Yabisi hadn’t moved at all.

  “Please,” he said. “I’ll keep any oath you ask of me. My mother has kept hers, hasn’t she?”

  At this Cacica Yabisi turned and pursed her lips. “All save one.”

  “Eh?”

  “She swore an oath to give you back to the forest.”

  Narune frowned, tucked the words away, and then mentally circled around to pounce from a different angle. “Cacica, all I ask for is a raindrop of mercy. I will repay you. I swear it.”

  “This is my mercy,” Cacica Yabisi said, her gaze softening just a little.

  Narune felt his shoulders droop and his ears and tail with them. He would need to do some more thinking… there were other ways to chase after his dreams, but becoming a spiritseer was the surest path, so he wasn’t yet ready to give up. Maybe he could convince Kisari to talk to her father and—

  “Narune, was it?” Cacica Yabisi suddenly said, interrupting his thoughts. There was a new sharpness to her words that shocked him.

  He jumped and, after glancing at the sentinels for a moment, knelt once more. They allowed him to do so. “Yes, Cacica.”

  She looked at him for a moment, eyes narrowing. A storm rippled across her face. “Colibrí is one of the greatest warriors I’ve ever seen. She would’ve been one of my personal sentinels if not for her crippled spirit. Maybe even my warmaster.”

  Narune paused, unsure why she was telling him this or what he could possibly say in return, but she stepped forward and halted his fumbling lips with a finger.

  “I will allow you to take part in the next Ritual of Fang and Feather,” she said, voice barely whisper. The cacica glanced back down at the shrine and brushed aside strands of hair caught in the morning breeze.

  Narune’s eyes widened and he felt his heart soar. “Oh, thank you, Cacica—”

  “Hush,” she said, her voice hard. “I’m not doing this out of kindness, and I suspect you might even hate me by the end, because, in exchange for this, I want you to give me an oath in front of my sentinels: Fail to complete the Ritual, and you’ll not only give up becoming a spiritseer, but also a warrior or warden. That means no tribal oaths and forgetting whatever foolishness went through your head just now. It also means never again approaching the shrine or Kayuya Village. I don’t care what you decide to do afterward, but break this oath and I’ll have you gutted and thrown into the sea. Do you understand?”

  It was a terrible oath and he knew it. Narune hesitated, suddenly unsure of himself, all his hopes and careful plans crumbling to dust like a halja before the cacica’s gaze. Don’t I even deserve the right to give my life to the tribes, unwanted as
it is?

  If he took this oath, failure meant there’d be no looking for another root-road. That was… unfair. Even his mother had been allowed to become a warrior.

  “So?” Cacica Yabisi asked. “Didn’t you say you would give me any oath?”

  Narune frowned and stared into her eyes for a long time. She didn’t rush him. Eventually, he turned and glanced down at the training spiritseers and remembered why he had chosen to walk this path. No, this is good. I wanted a way to earn her respect and maybe this will be it. Narune turned back to gaze at her. Watch me, Cacica. I’ll leave you as awed as anyone who hears my story.

  “I’ll do as you ask, Cacica,” he finally said.

  Cacica Yabisi smiled, and there, just before the arrival of dawn and with the stars still sparkling above them, Narune voiced his first oath.

  Afterward, she told him when the next Ritual of Fang and Feather would be held. From there, the spiritseers would guide him along with anyone else who answered the Calling.

  Narune bowed his head to her again and saluted once more, fist to chest, before leaving. The sentinels watched him go, but his last glimpse of Cacica Yabisi was her frowning down over the shrine, a hand tugging at her hair.

  Even though the oath left him uneasy, Narune allowed himself to consider the morning an advance in his schemes. The thrill of that victory soon overwhelmed his worries and he could feel his excitement growing as he walked home.

  Home. Narune frowned; he would have to tell his mother eventually, and he wasn't sure she’d be pleased. Eh, seas and skies aflame, he cursed. Colibrí had been distracted lately, going and coming. Likely on warrior business, which upset him a little because she didn’t bring him along, but Narune had already known he’d need to challenge the Ritual of Fang and Feather—which was held at the village—so he had already begun to sweeten his mother.

  That mostly involved keeping his peace; Narune could nip his mother about not letting him join her hunts and prowling some other time.

  He grinned and hurried along the beach. He found Kisari there, crouching to piss while facing the great sea, her face still lax with sleepiness.

  “Kisari!” he cried. She often came to spend the morning with them whenever her parents attended their duties and had no need of her.

  She twisted to look at him and then, seeing who it was, turned back around. “Oi, you startled me.” She let out a drowsy yawn.

  “Want to guess what just happened?” he asked with a grin. “Eh, I’ll just spoil it: Ixchel and you were wrong. The cacica is letting me become a spiritseer!”

  Kisari finished her business and rose. She frowned as she readjusted her sarong, simpler than that of the cacica, and made of cloth. “What are you talking about?”

  “She’s letting me challenge the Ritual of Fang and Feather!”

  “Oh, Narune. I very much doubt it. Maybe you misheard?”

  He shook his head, tail wagging, and his warrior braid flicked around. “I definitely didn’t.”

  “Then show me,” she said.

  “Eh? Why?”

  “Why not? If it’s true then what does it matter?”

  He shrugged and gripped her forearm. There was a brief tingle across his skin and a feeling as if someone was thudding their finger hard against his forehead, then they were joined. Narune couldn’t resist his mother’s bond—it felt like being lost and adrift in the sea, the waters either calm or fierce at whim, the currents beyond his control—but Kisari was his equal and she could only take what he gave her.

  Narune dredged up his meeting with the cacica and relived it alongside her from his own perspective. The experience was a little odd, like having a vivid dream with a guest inside his skull, and it reminded Narune of how sages supposedly passed on their accumulated knowledge to their successors.

  In fact, Sanemoro thought their abilities might actually be related in some distant way, though Narune couldn’t recall anything with the clarity of a sage and kept his memories when he shared them, unlike a sage. Sanemoro’s experiments with passing bits of memory to Narune had proved fruitless so far though, so even if their powers were related, they didn’t seem compatible.

  When they were done Kisari drew back her arm and looked at him thoughtfully.

  “Hmm,” she said.

  Narune refused to leave her without teeth marks. “See?” he said, beaming. “I told you.”

  Kisari eyed him. “And you see nothing wrong with the weight of the oath you gave her?”

  “Eh, you know I’m not that dense.”

  “Oh, do I?”

  He waved her nipping away. “It is a heavy oath, but I’m ready for the Ritual of Fang and Feather. My secret is this: I’ve been preparing for it for a while now. Sanemoro has also taught everything I could think to ask of the trials; it’s not against the rules so long as he’s used as a sage and didn’t favor me over others.”

  They resumed walking to his bohío, following the beach. Their feet, his sandaled and hers bare, left tracks in the sand. “And what will you do if the cacica tells the adepts to refuse you?” Kisari asked as she watched a stinging crab hold its claws in the air at them in warning.

  “Well, that would be dishonorable of her,” he said with a face and then kicked sand at the same crab. It scuttled away, snapping its claws, the little prongs dripping venom now. “But it’s possible, so I asked about that too. Sanemoro says that a mystic’s worthiness is proved rather than given out like a trinket—and that’s what the Ritual is for. Being adopted by an adept is just a tradition and doesn’t always happen.”

  “Then who will train you?”

  Narune shrugged. “I don’t know. The shrine has many leaf manuals about their craft, so maybe I’ll train myself, or learn through watching them. I’m not deaf, you know. I listen to what you and my mother say. No spiritseer is going to adopt me, and I know it won’t be easy without guidance, but warriors are shaped to face difficult challenges. I know I can do it!” He glanced at her and hoped she’d see his determination. “So, what do you think?”

  Kisari thought for a moment as they walked, then said, “I think I’ll keep my shoulder ready for your tears.” Then she laughed. “But maybe you’re not as stupid as I thought.”

  “I’m quite the sage, I know,” he said, bowing. “Thank you, Kisari. I’ll remember your words forever; maybe I’ll even turn them into truth-marks. I could write them right between—”

  She hit him while he was mid-gesture. “Narune!”

  He laughed and ran, racing her to his bohío.

  Chapter 5

  Something was stalking Colibrí. She was sure of it now; the predator trailed her as she made her way home, likely waiting for a ripe moment.

  I’ve been here too long. Colibrí was exhausted and the day had gone to slumber ahead of her. She didn't fear the night but respected that humans simply weren't shaped for it.

  She continued along the root-roads, her braid barely holding together, her cheeks, arms, and legs streaked with mud and bits of detritus. Whatever was stalking her, followed. Maybe it had been watching for a while; she didn't know.

  Colibrí had spent the entire day hunting corruption, as she had been doing the last several days. During that time, she had found more signs of infection than she ever had seen before.

  It was beginning to frighten her.

  How are the sentinels missing all this corruption? She frowned as she leaped down to a curving root below her and followed it eastward, toward her bohío and Narune. Her spear roamed ahead of her, the black tip unwavering. It makes no sense. The patrols remain fierce and seem dutiful, but if I’m finding so much corruption on my own, then shouldn’t they be finding at least a little?

  Colibrí wished she had answers. She wished the sentinels would speak with her, or that Yabisi would tell her that she understood the gravity of all this. She also wished this damn thing stalking her would finally—

  —motion erupted from a root above her.

  The arrow should have killed her, but sh
e sensed the deception concealing it without understanding why. She twisted and the head cut across the front of her poncho, tearing it.

  Colibrí felt warm blood coursing down her side, near her hip, but it was better than having it sink into her. What really mattered was that the arrow had been ensorcelled—Colibrí had felt the Flow smeared around it.

  That left her with many questions, none of which were important right now. Colibrí scowled and darted toward an almost vertical cliff of root-road that blocked view of her from where the arrow had come, but kept her eyes scanning across the gloom.

  Colibrí was at every disadvantage; she didn't know how many enemies she faced or how many of them had bows. She knew so little—

  No, you know enough, she told herself as she stood there, sweating and pressing herself against the root while swallowing down breaths. Her opponent wasn't a natural predator—obvious now, of course, but startling in the realization.

  Focus! Colibrí forced her breathing to slow. Yes, there’s at least one of them and they can use sorcery. A phantasm… so the Unseen Flow, at the very least. She dipped her chin and swallowed a laugh. Colibrí was a veteran warrior, and what she knew about spellcraft told her that there was no such thing as a flawless spell—they all had limitations and costs—but she also knew that assuming what they were was almost always a lethal mistake. I'll need to run, then. Escape their vision and use the darkness as they do.

  Colibrí took a deep breath, ears flattened against her head, then winced as a familiar pain throbbed through her skull without warning. It was the affliction all Halfborn eventually suffered, one that manifested as a vortex of furious screams that no one else could hear or, when it was especially strong, see.

  The screams pounded into her head, eager to seep deeper into her spirit and gift her their thrumming, star-white fury, but the price was her sense of self—she would be swallowed and made blindly destructive, just like the storms her curse mimicked.

  Colibrí had vowed to never make that trade again.

  The screams didn’t care. They were always there, reverberating in her head. Some days were better than others. After so long, she had grown so accustomed to them that she sometimes forgot they were even there. She tried to push them back now and was relieved to hear the screams retreat, though they left a pounding headache in their wake.