There are gasps from the circle. “Blackfeathers,” someone exclaims. “They’re blackfeathers!” Someone else steps up and takes the feathers, and passes them around the circle one to a person.
They’re sharp, Kjat wants to tell them. She cut herself on one once. But she keeps quiet, not sure if she should say anything.
The woman looks at the hooded man, and then back to Kjat. “That is wonderful, beautiful Kjatyrhna!” says the woman after a minute, but Kjat can tell that she doesn’t mean it. She sounds like Marta saying she likes Kjat’s dress when Marta’s dress isn’t as pretty and her mohma doesn’t have the money to buy her a nicer one.
But the woman leans closer to Kjat, and says more quietly, “I have dreams sometime, too, Kjatyrhna. Do you have dreams?”
Kjat nods silently, and bites her lower lip.
“I dream about swimming at the ocean, and playing in the sand. Is that what you dream about, Kjatyrhna?”
Kjat shakes her head.
“What are your dreams, sweetie?” says the woman from between clenched teeth.
Kjat can tell the woman is getting angry, and she’s not sure what she said wrong. She looks up at her mother, who has tears on her face.
Her mother gestures with her chin. “Tell them, Kjati.”
“Birds,” Kjat whispers. “Birds at the door.”
Another murmur runs through the mages. The woman jerks to her feet, spins and looks at the man in the hood. “She’s been coached,” she hisses, looking accusingly at Kjat’s mother like she’d love to slap her.
But her mother says nothing. More tears roll down her face.
Her mother looks beautiful in the firelight, Kjat realizes. Beautiful and sad and immortal.
“Not necessarily, Meghna.” The figure to the right of the man steps forward and takes off his hood. Underneath it he’s a Stona, a bird-man. He kneels down next to Kjat. He has a brown beak and light brown feathers that are speckled with white and gold. His eyes are big and soft. “Are they nice birds, Kjati? Nice birds like me?”
A tear streaks down Kjat’s face, too. She wants to hide herself in her mother’s sparkly skirts, but doesn’t want the man to think she’s a baby anymore. She shakes her head. “Not nice,” she says. Her voice echoes a little in the courtyard, since all the people in the circle have gone quiet.
“What are they like, Kjati?”
She looks at all of the hooded figures around her. They’re all bent forward, waiting for her to answer.
“Hungry,” she whispers. “Very, very hungry.”
• • •
They’re always hungry. They’re hungry now, climbing up inside her with all of their blackfeathers and razor claws, ripping parts of her insides away to devour and digest in their effort to get through. They want to take that memory from her, to make it their own, and if they get enough of her there will be no one standing in the way, but Kjat won’t let them. She fights for it—it’s the last time she ever saw her mother—and she buries it somewhere deep, where they can’t find it.
• • •
Here’s another memory that is grasped, pulled to the surface. It’s many years later, after she was anointed. She’s been living with the Disciples for a long time now, and can’t really remember what it was like to be in her mother’s city house anymore. The Disciples in Tamaranth move around the city, from one abandoned building to another. Every one of them has a small red bird painted on the door, to let other believers come and worship with them. And then once a year, they leave the city, travel off-lei to a place north of Tamaranth, north of all of the fords, into the vast stretches of grasslands there where they meet up with other groups. There are thousands of Red Robes here, from all parts of the known world. Some of them journey for weeks to arrive.
Kjat loves and hates this time. She loves the smell of the wind, the open sky, all of it so different from the damp and stink of Tamaranth. She loves the feel of the horse underneath her, the sun on her face, the vast expanse of so many stars and moons spinning in the sky over their heads, and the fact that she gets her own tent to sleep in and doesn’t have to lie next to everyone else on some dirt or stone floor, all of them grunting and farting in their sleep, rats and worse creeping around the corners.
And the dreams aren’t as bad out here.
She can unzip the roof of her tent, lie awake and watch the stars spinning late into the night, and when she does drift off they’re off on the edge of her mind.
She can actually get some rest.
One night she even saw one of the wild walking cities off in the distance. It was backlit by setting moons, all of it's lights bright and wrapped in steam, striding across the horizon in complete silence like a giant mechanical whale.
What she hates is being the center of attention for so many people. The Disciples themselves know her, treat her as they would anyone else in their group when they’re alone. But once the other groups come together, she’s again the Doorway, the Anointed One, and a lot of other titles too that turn her into a figure rather than an actual person.
Many of the pilgrims stare at her in awe. Some of them fear her and back away, mumbling and stuttering, when she gets into the meal line. Some of them follow her around and want to ingratiate themselves with her for their own spiritual or financial gain—hoping maybe to become a Disciple themselves someday, as if she really had anything to do with that. (Gokl keeps all of the order’s money. Fyrtobl-byre plans all of the complex logistics needed for a group as large as they are. Bhupen, the Baptist, still runs the ceremonies and is the leader of the order and has been since she was a girl.)
But it’s her they’ve really come to see. They’ve been waiting for her for three hundred years, Pokh says, and here she is, the foretold Doorway, so she has to expect the adoration, the fear. And yes, even the politics.
But it makes her feel hollow, worthless.
It’s the blackjackals and the featherwolves they really want. She’s just a way for them to get here.
This night, Pokh shakes her awake. It’s very early, before dawn. The Lover’s moon is just transiting the Assassin’s moon, and the moonslight across the grasses is deep and blue. She’s been asleep no more than an hour, but then some nights she doesn’t even get that. She’d been dreaming of the ocean for once. The endless stretch of dark grey, ebbing and flowing with the pull of the moons. It was a wonderfully calm dream, almost erotic in the push and pull of the water, without end, a calm eros with no man or woman and definitely no feathers to be seen anywhere.
She blinks the damp from her eyes. Pokh, her tutor, the Stona with the brown beak, is excited. His soft eyes are watering the way they do when he speaks of the Great Burning and the Time to Come After.
“Kjati,” he says. “Come quickly! Something wonderful!”
She groans, slides out of the sleeping bag, finds her heavy boots. She follows Pokh over toward the cooking tents and the center of the clearing, where a number of riders have just returned from their patrols. Six or seven of them are dismounting horses, two of the three-wheeled jeeps still have their engines running. They’re all smiling and highclapping each other. Someone is passing around a flask. When they see she and Pokh approaching, they grow quiet, but she can still sense their excitement.
Bjarkl, a Talovian and one of the patrol leads, steps eagerly forward and tips an ironic bow. “Teacher, Anointed,” he croaks. Strange, she thinks, to hear a Talovian with such a thick Kro accent. “I’m very glad you’re here to see this!” He motions them over to one of the jeeps. Each of the vehicles has a large cage in the back of it, and this one is covered over with a tarp.
He pulls the tarp aside, and for a minute Kjat sees nothing—the plain grey of the back of a rusting jeep, nothing more.
Then she sees the eyes.
Bright green eyes hovering in the middle of the cage, blinking at her.
As she’s trying to figure out what’s going on, the full creature shimmers into view.
Pokh has talked about them, but it’s the first time she’s actually seen one. The face is vaguely leopard-like, with a thick skull and wide ears that swivel in her direction. It has thick, wide shoulders, a large rib cage. Its fur is blushed white across face and neck, down onto its chest and out onto the arms, that end in heavy claws. Elsewhere its coloring shifts between the exact color and patterns of the back of the jeep and a mottled brindle. Its wearing a ragged, dirty wurf hide across its loins.
It’s a Hulgliev, though a small and old one compared to the pictures Pokh has shown her, where they’re dressed in full armor, all fangs and claws and heavy weaponry. It backs to the far end of the cage, bares its yellowing fangs at her, and growls deep in its throat.
Kjat was always perceptive, though. Behind those fangs she sees an older man, frightened and starving.
“An auspicious day,” Pokh says, clapping Bjarkl on the shoulder. “The first Beast in a decade! An auspicious day for us all.”
She and the Hulgliev stare at each other between the bars. His eyes study her, evaluating. Passing judgment. She wonders if he can see the featherwolves in her, because they are certainly aware of
him
. Deep inside of her, she can sense something from them that she’s never felt in the eighteen years they’ve been with her.
Fear.
In all of their blackfeathered fury, they’re very afraid.
It makes her think.
She likes them afraid, these monsters of her nights.
More people join them, with torches and lights, and the Hulgliev changes color again as they pass, flickering gold and red.
“He’s beautiful,” she whispers. She’d reach out and touch him, if she didn’t think he’d take her arm off at the elbow.
“Yes!” Pokh is clacking his beak in excitement and knocking his talons together. “The beautiful Beast of the earth! And tonight Kjati, you will kill him!”
The Hulgliev goes all black, snarls and throws itself against the bars over and over again, rocking the jeep on its springs.
• • •
Though she knew it was coming, there’s a feeling in the pit of her stomach like she swallowed one of her boots, and it doesn’t go away all of that day. Killing this Hulgliev is the last thing she wants to do. It’s a long day of prayers and fasting that seems to flash before her eyes now in this memory. At high speed and in quick succession, elders of the different congregations come up to congratulate her, to wish her well. Others coach her on how to use the ancient ceremonial spear they call Longinus. It’s gigantic, carved with elaborate runes, and painted a brilliant red. Overhand, they say. Underhand. In the side, in the chest, in the throat. Pokh drills the ceremony’s chants and responses with her over and over again until she can say them backwards.
The red-robed Disciples themselves erect the stake up on a low rise. They attach the crossbar, stopping to chant with every nail.
Too soon, the sun has set. Darkness lowers itself like a hood across the grasslands and then the moons bloom out in full to light them up again. Kjat is starving, and the smell of roasting wurf from the camps makes her mouth water, though you’d think she’d be used to fasting by now.
Bhupen convenes the circle, and the twelve disciples array themselves around the rise. All of the congregations from all of the tent cities have donned their scarlet hoods and they gather in a great ocean before the mound.
Pokh wraps her in the scarlet vestments and hands her the red spear. It’s surprisingly light in her hands. He leads her up the rise. The Hulgliev is there, tied naked to the stake with his arms spread out to either side. He stares at her, struggles against the bindings but its no use. He’s tied too securely and he’s too weak—from the bruises on his face, across his body, they haven’t treated him well.
From the rise she can see out over the crowds. There are bonfires here and there, and many in the congregations hold up torches or knives, glowing with their own light. Over the Hulgliev’s shoulder, off on the very edge of the horizon is another walking city, lumbering along under its own power, and she’s the only one who sees it.
She hears herself start the chanting. She hears the crowd roar back its response. The blackjackals spin and churn within her at the sounds. She watches herself step closer to the crucified Hulgliev, dreading to see what will happen next even though she knows
exactly
what will take place, and all the things that will come to pass afterwards, too.
She does not want to do this.
She places the tip of the spear up against the Hulgliev’s chest.
The Hulgliev stares back at her with a flat, angry look. He growls, and shows his yellowing fangs again, but he’s not submitting, not begging her the way she thought he might. He’s not giving away any of himself to them.
She’s not sure if him begging would have been better or worse.
She can feel the featherwolves rising up inside her, now, pushing against the thinning wall that separates their world from hers. Hungry, always hungry, they work their way with her with their spectral teeth and cutting wings. Their anxiety and fear rises in her, their loathing fills her throat with bile. She swallows, but up it comes again, choking out her own voice.
The chants from the Disciples rise in pitch and the crowd growls and slavers at her back.
And she watches, helpless across the intervening two years, as the pawn she was then leans in with all of her muscle and drives that huge red spear home.
17.
I
t’s been two years now, two years of running, two years of hell from that time on the grasslands, and yet even as she runs from all of them, the creatures of that dark other world get closer to her. They are infinitely stronger now, just on the other side of her mind, cawing and barking, howling through her head and gut. Every day they carve away at her will, and now here in the alley behind the warehouse of the tiny port they are ready to push through. Pokh never told her it would be like this. They have her beautiful mother’s face, calling
Kjati, Kjati!
They have those terrible blackfeathers made from stone and fire, claws and talons and teeth as sharp-edged as a knife is sharp, ready to draw her blood. They have Pokh’s voice, now, repeating to her the endless names of demons. They have the strength of a hundred mages both alive and dead.