Racing the Dark (22 page)

Slowly, as though the air had grown too thick to move, Lana held the sharp blade above her left wrist. She stared at the wide blue vein and imagined blood pumping through it, and then imagined that blood as power. In a brief, almost casual act of violence, Lana slashed her wrist and allowed the vein to pump its dark red contents into the bowl containing the two jewels.

Power descended like a fog into the small room. She sensed the spirits' tension, the sharp way they watched her for any weakness. She refused to look back at them. Instead, she looked at her jewels. The blood slid easily from the blue one, coloring the water beneath it, but it clung to the red, deepening its color until it seemed to glow from the inside.

"Good ... very good, Lana," Akua said softly, guarded surprise in her voice. "Now read the geas."

With difficulty, Lana tore her eyes from the gently spinning red jewel and looked back at the yellowed paper beside it.

Lana broke off abruptly and stared at Akua. Her hold over the power wavered dangerously. The last word was written in pictographs she couldn't read. They looked as though they were part of the ancient scholarly writing style she had never learned. Since speaking in the middle of a geas recitation would break it, Akua frowned a little, then dipped her finger in the bowl of bloody water and scrawled four phonetic characters on the floor. Lana nodded.

"A sacrifice of fire, water ..." she stared at Akua's quickly drying scrawl, "or make-lai," she finished. The power sealed itself off. For a brief moment the surrounding spirits opened their mouths in what could have been a lament or simply a keen of rage-Lana couldn't hear them, but the hair on the back of her neck bristled and she shuddered. Then the room seemed to stabilize. The corners held merely shadows once again, and the haze in Lana's head was simply exhaustion. Akua stared at her, eyebrows furrowed but eyes unreadable. After a moment, her mentor plucked the two jewels-which felt somehow different, now, as though their power had mutated-out of the water and handed them to Lana.

"You know how to thread these, don't you?" she asked.

Lana nodded, too tired to speak.

"We're leaving tomorrow morning. Bore the holes by then and I'll give you some riverweed to string it on."

Lana was surprised. The supple, silver-gold strands of riverweed were rumored to be the fallen hair of sprites, and fetched notoriously high prices.

Akua stood and picked up the bowl of bloody water. She tossed its contents out the window and then poured a little more fresh water from a pitcher by the stove. She walked to a low cabinet and pulled out a small jar and a roll of bandages and walked back over to Lana, who was prostrate on the floor.

"Here," she said gently, "your arm probably hurts. You lost a bit more blood than I'd anticipated."

Once she mentioned it, Lana realized that her arm was throbbing. Red blood still oozed from the cut in a turgid flow. Akua fished a necklace-a key carved delicately out of bone-from the inside of her shirt and held it briefly. She muttered a quick geas and the blood slowed to a trickle-a masterful use of power that Lana could not help but admire. Akua then washed her cut and rubbed it with a balm that smelled of bee pollen and lichen.

"You'll have to wrap the bandage," Akua said, her slightly lined face showing signs of exhaustion. As Lana tied the linen strips around her wrist she felt an unexpected burst of affection. The witch had secrets, hidden motivations, and an undeniable streak of cruelty. But over the years Lana had come to admire her. Akua's intelligence, her flawless command of power, even the disdain she had for societal conventions had earned Lana's respect. Lana ripped the cloth with her teeth and tied it in a knot. Akua gave her a tired smile.

"You look exhausted. Why don't you just go to sleep? You'll have time to bore the holes before we get to Ialo"

Lana felt renewed surprise. Ialo was the second biggest city on Okika-a three-day journey by river. It was the last big port city on the traditional ship routes to the Eastern outer islands, the ones by the water shrine. "Why are we going to Ialo?" she asked.

"To set up shop. We'll do a bit of trading, and you can go on to Essel from there."

Lana was too exhausted to be more curious. She hauled herself off the ground and then staggered a bit as her vision went temporarily white.

"Oh, Akua?" she said, just before she climbed the stairs. "What does make-lai mean?"

Akua's fingers froze momentarily over the jar she was picking up. "It's a word of power in the river language. It hasn't been common for nearly 500 years."

Just before Lana went to sleep, she wondered how a word she had never heard before could sound so dirty.

The riverbanks were strewn with the gray, rotting carcasses of the liha'wai, who just months before had been dancing under the pregnant spring moon. Most of the more affluent passengers on this riverboat had pulled their brightly colored scarves across their faces, and some had even doused the cloth in heavy perfume to better hide the smell. The sight of the multicolored scarves flapping in the wind made Lana think of exotic birds. The sound of the other passengers' voices complaining about the stench blended with the imperative commands of the sailors into a cacophony, dulled by the wind rushing past her ears into something almost comforting. Despite the profusion of scarves, Lana thought the smell actually wasn't so bad-the docks in Okika had sometimes smelled far worse. It was the sight that disturbed her more-the dark, thick bodies of the flies crowding around the river nits' eyes and mouths. Some of the nits were still alive, flapping their tails and spindly legs uselessly even as the flies devoured their flesh. It was hard to see the beautiful sparks that lit the river in early spring reduced to such gruesome mortality in the harsh heat of summer. But the muddy edges of the wide river were crowded with flotillas of tiny pink dots suspended in beds of mucus. The liha'wai eggs would hatch in a few days and begin the cycle again, even as the air above them still stank of their parents' decaying bodies.

Akua had fallen asleep on her hammock, a leather-bound book shielding her eyes from the noonday sun. Lana walked over to her own hammock and fished the two jewels out of the pocket of her leibo. She didn't wear the diving pants very often anymore, since they made people look at her like she was some country bumpkin, but standing in her bare feet on the sun-shrunk boards of the riverboat, she could almost pretend she was back home. The weather would make it a cool day on her island, but at least the biting cold of the lingering winter had disappeared. Lana settled on the hammock and fished out the boring needle Akua had found for her before they left. She was nearly done with the hole in the blue jewel, and then she would start on the red. In her pocket were also two strands of the supple but improbably strong riverweed. She wondered about this strange trip as she patiently worked the needle deeper into the dense jewel. Why had Akua insisted she perform that geas, and then make necklaces out of her jewels? Akua's cryptic answers were beginning to make her feel nervous. The sensation-like being led over treacherous ground with her eyes blindfolded-was already familiar enough for her to hate it.

"Why do you want me to thread these jewels, anyway?" Lana asked softly.

To her surprise, Akua picked up the book and turned to face her. "I told you. For power."

"I know, but how? What did that geas do? What's in Ialo?"

Akua sighed, but the corners of her mouth lifted ruefully. "You just don't leave well enough alone, do you? We're going to Ialo to sell one of your jewels. The person who takes it will become a willing sacrifice for you to access whenever you choose, because of the power between the two jewels. They were already linked-more strongly than I had thought, actually-but the geas reinforced that bond and allowed you to take power with one through the other."

Lana's hands tingled as though she had been sitting on them for too long. "A ... willing sacrifice? But, wouldn't that hurt ... the other person, even if they didn't know what they were accepting?"

Akua shrugged. "It's completely benign. You get the power of a willing sacrifice and the other person feels a little more tired than normal for a day."

Lana began pushing the needle back into the jewel. "Really? So how are we going to find this person?"

"We'll go to market. You'll probably understand when you see them-a happy person, someone with a lot of energy. They'll be attracted to your jewel. All you have to do is make sure that they never take it off. If they do, the connection will be broken and you won't be able to use the sacrifice when you need it."

The needle broke through the other end and Lana fished one strand of riverweed from her pocket. She threaded it through and then tied it at the top. After a moment's thought, she concentrated, then spat carefully on the knot and muttered a simple geas. The strand heated briefly and her spit sizzled. When it had burned away entirely the knot was gone, leaving a smooth, unbreakable chain.

Akua chuckled, then shook her head. "You shouldn't show off, Lana. It's bad manners."

Lana smiled and looked back at her creation. The large blue jewel was glinting in the sunlight brightly enough to shine blue streaks of refracted light onto her lap. She swung it lightly around her fingers.

"This is pretty, isn't it?" she said. "Whoever buys it will appreciate that."

In honor of the spirit solstice, the citizens of Ialo had painted their houses a dazzling range of colors-as though there had been a contest for who could create the most vivid combination. The wealthiest had found the brightest gold and silver to mix with the traditional blue, but even the more mundane reds and oranges impressed Lana. The intricate, abstract whorls of color were like nothing she had ever seen before-back on her island, they had never had the leisure to paint such incredible decorations. Of course, Ialo was a city dedicated to the water, so it made sense that its citizens made such a production of the year-end holiday. According to legend, Yaela bound the water spirit, Kai, just at the end of the rains, which meant that although the spirit solstice was intended to honor all the bound spirits, it was celebrated on the anniversary of Kai. Floating next to the giant waterfall that gave the city its name, the riverboat slowly descended through a series of locks that would eventually deposit them in the large bay below. Surrounding the bay was the city, a horseshoe-shaped profusion of colors and crowds and ships that, over the years, had expanded right into the water itself. From Lana's viewpoint, it looked as though half the market district on the western side of the city wasn't on land. Whorehouses and gambling parlors crowded alongside abandoned buildings that were slowly rotting back into the bay. They all balanced on precarious wooden stilts, with a continuous porch extending perhaps three meters in front of the buildings. In some sections these walkways had fallen away, and Lana saw that most people took barges poled by ferrymen. The market district slammed into the actual harbor, where huge ships bobbed in the calm bay, restocking and repairing damage before making the rest of the journey to the eastern islands. Across the bay from the docks the land sloped upwards and the houses abruptly gave way to huge, leafy trees. At the top of the hill sat a large building, freshly painted in every imaginable shade of blue and green. The temple faced east, toward the outer water shrine.

As they descended closer to the city, the air began to smell like spicy fried dough, which was rolled and then skewered on pinewood-an Ialo dockside delicacy.

Lana breathed deeply. "Doesn't it make you hungry?"

Akua snorted. "Hardly. You'd be better off getting some food made by cleaner hands."

"So street food is beneath you, is it?" Lana asked. She leaned over the edge of the boat and laughed.

"Maybe I'm just getting unadventurous in my old age. Try some if you want."

The boat finally fell into the bay with a little splash. Lana watched in curiosity as the sailors pulled in the canvas and maneuvered the narrow vessel into the harbor. As soon as the dockside workers caught the ropes and tied the boat down, Lana grabbed her small bag, swung it over her shoulder, and scrambled down the side of the boat on the sailor's rope rather than wait for the gangplank. The sailors seemed a little surprised, then laughed and made some joke about how children always made the best climbers. Lana clicked her tongue in annoyance-she was so short that people often made that mistake. Since Akua would probably be the last off the boat, Lana followed her nose around the barnacle-covered hulls, seeking out the food vendors. She found some a few yards away, sitting in a small, flat-bottomed boat, seemingly unperturbed when waves from an incoming ship made the burning oil sizzle on the edge of the cauldron. The older woman frying the dough smiled at Lana when she approached, her warmth undiminished by the fact that she had only three remaining teeth.

"What will it be, keika?" she asked.

Lana smiled back and ordered six dough rolls, which a younger woman in the back of the boat made nearly as fast as the old lady could fry them. Lana took the food, wrapped in cheap packing paper, and then dropped a half-kala coin into the woman's lined palm. Halfway back to the boat, Lana squatted in the shadow of a trading ship that reeked of the deep ocean and pulled out a roll. The hot oil burned her mouth and the spices made her nose run, but she closed her eyes as she ate it, like she was a penitent at a devotional. When she opened them, she was a little startled to see Akua's familiar green traveling pants. She looked up at Akua's sardonic expression, suddenly feeling embarrassed.