The Gods, The Dead and their children
“Hold on.” She didn’t touch the vial. “Tell me what’s going on before I
hurl my spirit into the abyss with you. Which god are we visiting now?”
“Not the gods,” he said. “The dead.”
Her heart skipped a beat. “Altan? Did you find him?”
“No.” A shadow of discomfort flitted across Chaghan’s face. “He’s not—
I’ve never—no. But she is a Speerly. Most spirits dissolve into nothing
when they pass. That’s why it’s hard to commune with the dead; they’ve
already disappeared from the realm of conscious things. But your kind
linger. They’re bound by resentment and a god that feeds on it, which
means often they can’t let go. They’re hungry ghosts.”
Rin licked the tip of her index finger and poked it into the vial, swiveling
it around until soft, downy powder coated her skin up to the first joint. “Are
we speaking to Tearza?”
“No.” Chaghan took the vial back and did the same. “Someone more
recent. I don’t believe you’ve met.”
She glanced up. “Who?”
“Hanelai,” Chaghan said bluntly.
Without hesitation Rin put her powder-covered finger in her mouth and
sucked.
Immediately the Ketreyid campsite blurred and dissolved like paints
swirled in water. Rin closed her eyes. She felt her spirit flying up, fleeing
her heavy body, that clumsy sack of bones and organs and flesh, soaring
toward the heavens like a bird freed from its cage.
“We’ll wait here,” Chaghan said. They floated together in a dark expanse
—a plane not quite pitch-black, but rather shrouded in hazy twilight. “When
I found out you were marching to Tianshan, I went searching. I needed to
understand the risks. I know there’s no one alive who could push you off
the path you’ve chosen.” He nodded toward a red ball of light in the void, a
distant star that grew larger as it approached. “But she might.”
The star became a pillar of flame
Things that should not be on this earth
It didn’t come.
A deafening clang shattered the air—the sound of metal against metal.
The air itself shook with the unnatural vibration of a great force stopped
in its tracks.
When Rin realized she hadn’t been cut in half or trampled to death,
she opened her eyes.
“What the fuck,” Nezha said.
Jiang stood before them, his white hair hanging still in the air as if he
had been struck by lightning. His feet did not touch the ground. Both his
arms were flung out, blocking the tremendous force of the general’s
halberd with his own iron staff.
The general tried to force Jiang’s staff out of the way, and his arms
trembled with a mighty pressure, but Jiang did not look like he was
exerting any force at all. The air crackled unnaturally, like a prolonged
rumble of thunder. The Federation soldiers fell back, as if they could
sense an impending explosion.
“Jiang Ziya,” said the general. “So you live after all.”
“Do I know you?” Jiang asked.
The general responded with another massive swing of his halberd.
Jiang waved his staff and blocked the blow as effortlessly as if he were
swatting away a fly. He dispelled the force of the blow into the air and
the ground below them. The paving stones shuddered from the impact,
nearly knocking Rin and Nezha off their feet.
“Call off your men.”
Though Jiang spoke calmly, his voice echoed as if he had shouted. He
appeared to have grown taller; not larger, but extended somehow, just as
his shadow was extended against the wall behind them. No longer
willowy and fidgety, Jiang seemed an entirely different person—
someone younger, someone infinitely more powerful.
Rin stared at him in awe. The man before her was not the doddering,
Her çiçeğin bir mevsimi, her kitabın bir zamanı vardır. Haziranın tadını yeni hikâyelerle çıkarın.
My seasons are gone. Nothing comes of my days. They merely pass and I follow days. They merely pass and I follow them and eat up my world and listen to the ghost in the house.
Or maybe we were shipwrecked sailors. Washed up on an unknown shore, surprised and bewildered by our unexpected rescue, astonished to be alive, but with no knowledge of what might await us when we set out to explore the shoreline.
As if this hilarity lies deep down, as if it first has to well up to the surface through layers of disquiet and doubt, through questions and a lack of answers, like bubbles of gas trapped in permafrost that need time to thaw out.
Then I know it will soon clear up. The clouds will pass and there will be a glimmer of sunshine.