6 years ago

Lysander wove unsteadily down the barely visible spit of walkable land cutting through the sawgrass. He’d stripped off the sleeves of his roughspun traveling jacket, letting it dangle from his belt, but his wiry torso was still dripping with sweat and red from the sun. His close-cropped yellow hair was swimming under his wide reed hat. The slight reel to his steps was only partly a result of the clover liquor he was drinking from his never-emptying flask.

Travels to the Uktena summer encampment were always this way, situated as it on the Horned Serpent’s wide, muddy delta. The burning sun combined its forces with the steam rising from the murky water and the sawgrass holding in the heat to create an atmosphere that was, appropriately, as hot and terrible as a dragon’s anus.

Before—many years before—Lysander would have retreated into Nothingness to escape the sweltering heat, but now that path was closed to him.

A stray breath of wind bent the sawgrass for a moment and gave Lysander a peak ahead. Through the heat mirages, he could see the peaks of the Uktena’s summer huts, little more than frames stretched with tightly woven netting to hold off the mosquitos and biting gnats but allow the rare breeze through. It looked almost as if he could reach out and touch the dwellings, but that was the flat, unchanging landscape and evaporating saltmarsh water playing tricks on his eyes. If he ignored what he could see and reached out with his other sense—very carefully—he felt nothing but sawgrass for another half-hours’ walk.

He lifted his ivory flask and tipped back another swig, grimacing at the taste of fresh-cut clover, then continued to follow the furrow that marked the main route into Uktena summer territory.

Within an arrows’ flight from camp, he felt the presence of two bulky Uktena scouts. The greedy abyss in his chest lurched, but it couldn’t harm them. Lysander kept his heartcenter closed and his Ro pathways blocked every moment of the day. Uncomfortable, yes, but a necessary precaution.

The scouts stepped out of the sawgrass, nearly naked in the heat except for the demon beast hide loincloths and their Armor of the Stone-Souled Warrior glowing ruby against the browning vegetation.

“Brothers in study.” Lysander bowed his head in the Uktena’s abbreviated way and projected a wave of jocular camaraderie. “I don’t suppose you’ve learned anything about afar-off third continents in my absence?”

The scarred corner of one lip twitched, practically a laughing fit from a Uktena scout.

“We are honored to receive the traveling scholar once more,” the scout said. “Have you learned the source of the Great Unbreakable Truth, Lysander Foreign-Born?”

“I’ve learned the source of the Great Unbearable Heat,” Lysander replied easily.

Another twitch of the lip. “Chief Jaguar Three-Eyes is eagerly awaiting your arrival. If he is not at the rings observing, then he can be found at the longhouse.”

“My gratitude,” Lysander said, bowing once more.

He continued on his way, eventually stepping out into a wide island of dry sandy ground in the ocean of sawgrass. At this time of day, the encampment was empty of women from adolescence to old age. They had gone to hunt the wily river octopus and the enormous crocodile snapping turtles that roamed the silty mud of the delta’s bottom.

Here and there men the size of bulls sat under sunshades surrounded by groups of young children, imparting endless strings of information and knowledge. Even in the bright daylight, the children’s heartcenters glowed like tiny suns as they stored the knowledge in their Ro. Shouting and cheering in the distance let him know that the rest of the men would be with the older boys, practicing the techniques of the Stone Soul.

Lysander could see a bit of the training through the netted huts—boys already twice as wide and heavy as he would ever be crashing into one another like demon beast rams—but he sensed Jaguar Three-Eyes’s Ro in the opposite direction. The chief was in his longhouse.

Unlike the other huts, thin lines of sawgrass had been planted along each net wall of the chief’s dwelling for added privacy. Though the Uktena believed that the tribe’s strength lay in unity, they also recognized that some discussions and decisions should be handled by their chief alone, away from prying eyes and ears.

In his customary position guarding the longhouse door was the chief’s firstborn, Cold Sun. Every time Lysander visited, his perception reminded him how apt the name was. Cold Sun had been born with a severe Ro deficiency, rendering the young man’s heartcenter dark and cold where it should be filled with brilliantly glowing lifeforce.

On this day, however, a traveler knelt a few paces from Cold Sun, fists on his thighs, head bowed in thought. A young man with unruly black hair, skinny to the point of malnourishment, in tattered and dirty warrior artist’s clothing. The sawgrass at the corner of the longhouse shifted as if something were hiding inside it.

Lysander stopped where he was and pretended to root around in his pockets for his flask while he sent out his perception to investigate. It was a demon beast tucked back in the stalks of sawgrass, barely a year old, tier zero, little to no threat.

He turned his attention to the kneeling young man, appraising the boy’s Ro. It was oddly still, like that eerie green-lighted stillness between a thunderstorm and a tornado. There was a depth to it that puzzled Lysander. An age. The boy looked to be the same age as Cold Sun, perhaps sixteen at the outside, though one was underfed where the other looked as if he had eaten several young travelers just that morning. But the kneeling boy’s Ro felt far too old for his face. Nearly infinite.

Certain Paths taught masking of the Ro, Lysander’s own former Path included. Others, like the Path of Changing Scales, taught disguises that altered the appearance of the Ro. And there were many old legends which told of immortal rulers coming to the Land of Mortals in disguise but being recognized by Ros that didn’t conform to the age of their chosen body.

This last Lysander dismissed out of hand. He knew for a fact that there were no immortals. Even those who had learned the trick to stop aging could be sent to their grave—all it took was the right assassin. But perhaps the boy was much older than he appeared.

Weaving as if he were much drunker than he felt, Lysander approached the chief’s longhouse.

“Cold Sun,” he said, dipping his head in the Uktena’s greeting bow.

“Lysander Foreign-Born,” Cold Sun said, his voice rumbling deep in his chest.

Lysander raised his flask to the thin boy with the unruly mop of hair. “What information are you here seeking, traveler?”

The boy looked up at him, green eyes burning with something close to madness. He hesitated a moment, then finally answered.

“I seek information about the Path of the Water Lily.” As he said it, killing intent filled the air around the boy.

Those untrained in death often had a crude, blunt killing intent much like the broad side of a war hammer. Dangerous, but inept. The souls Lysander usually faced had much sharper, refined killing intent, like an acupuncturist’s needle. Fast, deadly, and the pinnacle of efficiency.

This boy’s was something much closer to the second than it should have been if he was truly nothing more than a young traveler.

Outside, Lysander chuckled and grabbed a wood pole at the corner of the longhouse as if to steady himself. He couldn’t use [the Reaper] so close to innocents like Cold Sun without killing them, but if he could coax the traveler into attacking, then he knew several ways to make death look like the lucky accidental trip of a bumbling drunk.

“Why would you want to learn about old scary tales like that?” he slurred, then took another drink. With another laugh, he wiggled his fingers at the boy. “Looking for something to frighten your little sisters with?”

As he spoke, Lysander directed an overpowering wave of antagonism at the boy.

The boy ignored it. Surprising, but not impossible. Well-trained inji learned to resist such suggestions or even turn them back on their originator.

The boy swallowed hard, the peak in his throat standing out like a blade.

Then all at once, the killing intent crumbled. The boy’s chest hitched and a tear tracked down his sunken face.

“They killed everyone in my Path,” he said. His balled fists shook on his thighs.

Lysander poked and prodded at the emotion with his perception. In less than a moment’s time, he had studied it from every angle. It was real.

The boy was no fallen inji, then. Lysander let go of the Reaper, locking it away again in a flash of black tinged with multicolored shards of light.

“Revenge?” Lysander slurred, swiping at his forehead with his sleeve.

The boy shook his head. “Their grandmaster plans to wipe out at least two other Paths. I have to stop them. I am the only one who can. The chosen one.”

“Chosen one, eh?” Lysander raised his eyebrows. “Nifty. Do you do tricks?”

Movement over Lysander’s shoulder. Without turning to look, he could sense Jaguar Three-Eyes’s information-dense Ro.

“We thought we heard your voice, Lysander Foreign-Born. Are you harassing the young traveler?”

Lysander turned to face the chief. The man was a head and shoulders taller than his son—who was already a head and shoulders taller than Lysander—and nearly as wide. His Stone Soul Armor was adorned with the more spikes than any other in the village, like the craggy old two-century snapper at the bottom of the river, and so strong that the ruby Ro manifesting it was impossible to see through.

“Just getting to know him, Chief.” Lysander tossed back another drink from his flask.

“Have you brought us any new information?”

Lysander and the few other traveling scholars who visited the Uktena always brought new information, but much like his own oft-repeated question about foreign continents, the chief was hoping for one bit of information in particular—news of a treatment or cure for the Ro deficiency his son suffered.

Lysander let the fall of his merry expression answer the chief.

Jaguar Three-Eyes nodded, accepting this as he always did, stoic.

“Come, brother in study.” His enormous hand grabbed Lysander by the shoulder and steered him into the longhouse. “We have not heard word of a third continent, either, but let us trade what knowledge we have gathered.”

As they left the young men behind, Lysander asked, “How long has the kid been out there trying to think of a reason he’s worthy to come inside?”

“Two days.” The chief blinked, a Uktena mannerism equivalent to a disapproving headshake. “When a child is told they are the chosen one born for a special destiny, it is very hard for them to accept that they are nothing.”

“What Path is he from?” Lysander asked.

The chief looked sidelong at him. “Darkening Skies.”

Lysander joined the bigger man in a raucous lip-twitch of hilarity. It was no wonder the kid couldn’t come up with the right answer. The Path of Darkening Skies taught that every life had worth and meaning, like that ancient parable about a beggar sneezing on one side of the continent toppling the empire on the other side. But if there was one thing a lifetime as a foreign castoff in the brutal world of the inji had taught Lysander, it was that every life was meaningless, nasty, and short. A beggar who sneezed on one side of the continent was probably going to die of a lung sickness—usually after his wife was unfaithful to him and his demon dog ran away—and he would rot where he fell.