The Stone Knife

His surviving warriors led the way, for they knew the game trails and the safest route up the slopes to avoid the Swift Water that twisted and tumbled across the hill. The Yaloh warriors came last, turning often to stare down the trails for the tell-tale twitch of leaf or sudden silence in the usual clamour of the jungle.

Lilla’s thoughts circled memories of the ambush like a cat returning to its kill, worrying at the meat of events, clawing at his decisions and picking them apart. Lilla was Fang, the leader of his Paw: the fault was his, and so were the deaths, but now, at last, they were in familiar terrain. The humidity had risen steadily until the air was thick as resin and just breathing was a labour. The Wet would come soon, months of rain and storm, deluge and flood, that would wash the Empire of Songs back into its own lands and swell the crops for harvest.

It would bring much-needed respite from the war, but not from death and watchfulness. The Wet carried dangers of its own, ones that ordinary warriors couldn’t fight. But both the Wet and the war slipped from Lilla’s mind, just for a moment, when they finally climbed out of the jungle and onto Malel’s bare skin. Malel, who was at once the mother goddess, the world, and the hill itself upon which the Tokob, her first children, had built their greatest city. Up and to their right, still a few sticks away, the Sky City itself gleamed pale and majestic against the darker rock and splashes of green of the hill. The sun was high, picking out the glyphs and paintings adorning the city’s perimeter wall. Within, a maze of houses and markets, great plazas and temples to Malel and her first creations, the Snake and the Jaguar, kin to the Tokob.

Outside the walls grew widely spaced orchards of fig, mango, palm and nut, and small stands of rubber and pom for practical and ritual purposes, and then rows of terraced fields below, seedlings just showing green against rich, black soil. Most of the Yaloh gathered here now had never seen the Sky City. Their voices were low with awe and wonder, and not a little relief. The Sky City’s walls protected against more than predators; they were sturdy enough to protect its inhabitants from the Empire, too. Perhaps. Lilla heard their relief and felt it loosen something dark and hard in his chest. He was home. Safe. For a little while.

To their right the great bend of the Swift Water glittered and rushed, twisting towards them and then looping back on itself, following the contours of the land and its own channel, carved out of Malel’s belly since the world began.

‘What’s that?’ a child asked, pointing at a series of small, squat stone buildings running across the hill below the lowest fields.

Lilla followed her gaze. ‘Those are the water temples,’ he said. ‘See those long pipes coming out of them? Every morning, they’re put into the river so that up in the temples, we can turn the handles that draw the water up the pipes. That way, the people get the water they need and only the ejab have to face the Drowned.’

Her little face was round and her eyes were even rounder. Her finger wobbled as it pointed again, this time at the river. ‘They … go down there?’

Lilla nodded. ‘Every day. But you must never, ever, ever go to the river,’ he added when the girl’s mother scowled at him. ‘And you see these markers,’ he added, raising his voice for the Yaloh nearest. ‘These mark safe distance from the river. Never cross them.’

They nodded and he waved them on, waiting for the last Yaloh warriors to make their way out of the jungle, led by Kux. ‘We came the slow and safe way,’ Lilla said as soon as the woman reached him. He gestured right, to where the jungle grew to within a hundred strides of the river and the two solitary trees that stood opposite each other, one on each bank. There was a rope bridge stretched between them. ‘If we’re running, we take the bridge and pray the Drowned don’t spot us. Through the Wet, we’ll build pits and traps and fortifications across here and cut down the bridge to slow the Empire’s advance. It’ll buy us time.’

‘Why waste time digging ditches?’ Kux demanded. ‘We should be in Yalotlan. We will make the enemy pay for every stick of land in blood, and that price will be too much.’

Her voice had risen as she spoke, and her Paw were responding, fire in their eyes and murmurs of agreement on their lips as they crowded close, knuckles yellow through brown skin.

‘Too much?’ Lilla demanded, his own anger matching hers, quick to flare these days. His warriors fought and died by the side of the Yaloh, and for what? For this slow, creeping retreat as they gave and the Empire took, stick after stick, inexorable as encroaching night. ‘There is no such thing as too much blood to them. How many eagle warriors of the Pechaqueh have you fought? Barely any, because they’re sending slave warriors and dog warriors from a dozen conquered tribes against us, making us spend our strength against fighters who are owned and have been corrupted by the Empire and its song. Only after they have broken us will the Pechaqueh themselves come, sweeping through Yalotlan like—’

‘Let them fucking come,’ Kux snarled. ‘I will taste their deaths on my tongue and I will pull their Empire down around their ears. I will shatter their song so its foul magic can no longer hold the other tribes in thrall.’ Her Paw whooped and shouted, silencing the jungle cacophony below them.

‘Then you are free to go,’ Lilla said, sharper than he meant to. He took a breath and lowered his voice, clinging to his temper by his fingernails. ‘The decision is not mine, Kux, and nor is it yours. Our councils will discuss the matter; if they find merit in sending warriors into occupied Yalotlan through the Wet, then that is what we will do. And the Tokob will go with you, I swear by my ancestors. Until that decision is made, at least rest. Eat. Dance the death rites for those we lost, and for yourself as much as them.’

Kux stared at him, her dark eyes unreadable. ‘You seek to delay me?’

‘I did not drag you all the way up Malel’s flank against your will, did I? No, I’m not delaying you; I just want to know you have grieved and rested, so that if we are to fight, I can rely on you.’

Kux snarled. ‘I am the one fighting for my land; you need not concern yourself with me.’ She paused then, and some of the fire went out of her. ‘But I will dance for my dead, Fang Lilla. I will do that. And I will see you at the council meeting at dusk.’

She pushed past him before he could say any more, and the rest of her Paw followed her in silence. In an effort to calm his temper, Lilla stared into the depths of the jungle, lush and green and vibrant, living and dying in the eternal dance, the eternal balance. Was it Malel’s will that her children fall to the Empire’s magic and the Empire’s warriors? Was it time for the first children to pass from the world and be reborn anew?

‘No,’ he whispered fiercely to the sun and the trees and the bright splash of parrots that broke from the canopy above his head, red against the aching blue of the sky. The breeze kissed the sweat on his brow as if in agreement and lifted the heavy curtain of his hair, tugging playfully and stealing cool fingers across the back of his neck. His heart twisted with an almost violent love for his home and his land, this place where his feet rested upon Malel’s skin, where she breathed within him and he within her. ‘No. She cannot want an end to all this. She cannot.’

If the Yaloh and Tokob fell, then all the peoples of Ixachipan would belong to the Pechaqueh of the Empire. And their song would infect them all.

The room was crowded by the councils of two tribes, sitting in a double circle. There was one space free, between Kux and … Lilla came to an abrupt halt, joy swiftly subsumed by a sense of dread. It can’t be him. He shouldn’t be back this soon. Perhaps feeling the weight of his gaze, the man twisted and looked up, confirming what Lilla’s heart was already telling him from a single glance at those slender shoulders.

‘Tayan?’ His voice was hoarse.

Tayan scrambled to his feet and rushed into his arms, his expression complicated by too many emotions, before High Elder Vaqix rapped the smooth, polished stone on the floor in front of him. ‘Sit, please. There is much to talk over.’

‘Are you well, my heart?’ Lilla asked and Tayan nodded quickly, his eyes running over him with worried intensity, looking for fresh wounds or hurts. ‘I’m fine,’ he added soothingly, ‘but you weren’t at home. Have you only just now returned?’

‘I had to go straight to the shamans’ conclave to report; there wasn’t time to—’

Vaqix rapped the stone again.

Lilla tore his gaze from Tayan’s face and looked over his head at the high elder. Vaqix was tall and stooped, his beaked nose adding to the impression he gave of an angry vulture as he hunched on his cushion, glaring. Flanking him was Apok, the warriors’ elder, and Tika, the ejab elder, both sleek and powerful beside his gnarled frame. Lilla glanced back at Tayan again, at the formal blue band painted across his brow, and the second, slender line that ran from his bottom lip down the middle of his chin. The unfamiliar kilt was blue too – he had dressed in borrowed shaman’s finery for this meeting and Lilla’s heart ached to see him. He’d been gone for too long and, despite Vaqix’s glare, which had physical weight now – they were the only two still standing – he stole a soft, chaste kiss from his husband’s mouth and heard the tiny hitch in Tayan’s breathing, a sound he knew as well as he knew his own voice. It spoke of relief, and love, and want.

Lilla had so many questions, but instead they stepped into the circle and sat. Tayan squeezed Lilla’s hand and they held tight through the welcome of councillors, warriors, and travellers, and the formal invitation for Malel to witness the meeting.

‘Peace-weaver Betsu, Peace-weaver Tayan. Your return is swifter than expected. Have the Zellih agreed to our request?’ Vaqix’s tone was formal, his voice neutral, but there was tension in his shoulders.

Tayan’s hand became damp in Lilla’s grip as the silence grew heavy. ‘The Zellih say no, High Elder,’ he croaked, the usual music stolen from his voice. ‘They will not aid us against the Empire of Songs.’

‘They say more than no!’ Peace-weaver Betsu shouted as mutters rose among the elders. She was a short, stocky woman who’d come to council in her armour. She knelt on Tayan’s far side like an angry toad. ‘They say they have no quarrel with the Empire of Songs and no love for the peoples of Ixachipan. They reminded us that three generations ago, when the Pechaqueh suddenly began their conquest of the world, they urged us to stand with the other tribes and grind Pechacan to dust. To stamp the Singing City back into the mud. They know we look outside of Ixachipan for aid now because all the other tribes have fallen and we have nowhere else to turn.’

Her words had silenced the room and into that silence she laughed, bitter as venom. ‘And they’re right. We did ignore the pleas of the Chitenecah when their land was threatened, and the Zellih, even so far away as they are, did urge us to fight. While we cowered in our cities and villages and prayed for the Pechaqueh to look elsewhere, the Zellih called for war. And we said no.’

‘You blame us for this?’ High Elder Vaqix demanded, fury weaving through his voice. An echo of it stirred in Lilla.

‘Yes,’ Betsu said, ‘but no more than I blame my own people and every tribe that walks Ixachipan. Pechacan, its people and its song are a curse upon the world and they have stolen the lives and lands of too many – of almost everyone – but still, not all the obsidian and jade we could offer will make the Zellih fight the Empire now. They believe them too strong; they believe them unstoppable. They trust in their hills and the salt pans to protect them.’ She took a deep breath. ‘We are alone.’

‘You are not.’ Vaqix’s voice was strong as mahogany despite Betsu’s scorn and the shaken expression flickering across his gaunt features. ‘Tokoban stands with you.’

Betsu laughed again, its edges jagged. Lilla leant away from her sharpness. ‘Then perhaps we will survive one season longer as a result. I am sure that will comfort the new parents among both our peoples. They can spend it deciding whether slavery or death is the future they want for their children and themselves.’

The council chamber descended into hostile silence.

‘The Zellih also warned us that refugees will not be welcomed,’ Tayan said. ‘They are stationing warriors on the edge of the salt pans at the border of Ixachipan and Barazal, and they will kill any who attempt to cross.’

Lilla had thought the news couldn’t get any worse, but at Tayan’s pronouncement he felt the blood drain from his face and blinked, suddenly dizzy. At some point he’d let go of the shaman’s hand and now he stared down into his lap, focusing on his fingers with unblinking intensity.

‘What?’ Vaqix shouted, all his composure fleeing. The old man lurched to his feet, the council stone skittering across the floor as he kicked it. Under normal circumstances, it would have been a gross violation of protocol; now no one even glanced at it as it bounced to a stop. ‘If we have nowhere to retreat to, we’ll be massacred. They must help us!’

‘The Zellih elders advise us to either win or surrender,’ Tayan said in a monotone. ‘We will find no succour with them.’

‘Then we fight.’ Kux’s voice was strident with anger. ‘We fight to the very end and we make the Pechaqueh rue the day they sent their Talons against us. Once the Wet is fully upon us, if not before, they will send their warriors home and leave only enough to occupy those parts of Yalotlan they have already stolen. We’ll outnumber them, and I say we show no mercy and we leave none alive. Retake Yalotlan so that when they return after the rains they must begin their conquest all over again. And again, and again, until they give up.’

Every eye turned to Eja Tika at the pronouncement. The woman’s face was hard, her smile bitter. ‘If we fight through the Wet, we will be facing both the Empire and the Drowned at their most active. It would be foolish in the extreme.’

Kux started to protest, but Tika glared her effortlessly into silence. ‘But … we Tokob know our land, and we trust our Yaloh allies to know theirs. We can stay away from the rivers and ponds, and those areas that we know flood through the Wet. It would certainly take the invaders by surprise. It shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand.’

Kux was wild-eyed and grinning, savage in her small triumph, and Lilla realised he should say something, either for and against her proposal, but if he opened his mouth he was likely to throw up. So he sat in stricken silence as the argument raged back and forth for war through the Wet, for no break from the stress and terror and eternal vigilance. His chest was hollow with grief and fear, and at his side Tayan, peace-weaver and shaman, his husband and his heart, had no words of comfort.

Because Kux was right. Fight or die. Win or surrender. They had no allies and they were out of options.

TAYAN

Sky City, Malel, Tokoban

120th day of the Great Star at morning

It was deep night when the council meeting finally broke up. No consensus had been reached, and so Tayan had offered to journey to the ancestors and ask them and Malel for guidance. The councils had agreed, though he’d been able to feel Lilla’s disapproval coming off him in waves.

Now, as they left the council house, his husband seized his hand and dragged him along the side of the building into the deepest shadow. The night was intermittently lit with braziers and moonlight, diffuse through building cloud, though Tayan wouldn’t have cared if they’d been standing on the council-house steps at noon. He let Lilla push him back against the wall and slid his arms around his husband’s waist as his face was seized in a gentle, calloused grip. This kiss was not chaste, not in any possible way, but neither could it go where they both wanted it to. Lilla’s body was firm and warm against his and Tayan stretched up onto his toes to wind his arms around his neck.

It was a kiss of promise and welcome and more promise, heating until Tayan could feel his cheeks flushing under Lilla’s palms, and his husband felt it too, one of those hands sliding down his chest and around to his back in a long, languid caress that drew a shiver from his skin and a low whimper from his throat. Lilla smiled against his mouth and kissed him deeper, pressing him closer, and after so many weeks apart and despite his exhaustion, he wanted nothing more than to bury himself in Lilla’s hair and body and never come out. Instead, he broke the kiss.

‘And you’re really unhurt,’ he demanded when Lilla sighed and opened his eyes. Tayan had to swallow at all the promises they contained, but the shaman stroked his back and flanks, searching for a hint of pain in his expression or a flinch.

‘I’m really unhurt, my heart.’ He winced as Tayan’s hands slid along his chest. ‘Ah, except for a small – love, it’s fine.’ He laughed softly and batted away Tayan’s hands as he tried to lift his tunic and examine him. ‘I promise it’s not serious. I promise you can treat it when we get home,’ he added.

Tayan huffed. Neither of them would be going home for hours. Vaqix had made it clear they needed answers tonight.

‘There are other shamans, Tayan. Ones who aren’t newly returned across the salt pans.’

‘I am the one who failed,’ Tayan snapped. He took a breath and stretched up onto his toes again to kiss Lilla’s cheek in unspoken apology. ‘This journey must be mine. We need greater wisdom than the living can provide. I am the peace-weaver; it wouldn’t be fair to ask another to make the attempt for me.’

‘Then I’ll journey with you,’ Lilla said, fingers tingling down his flanks.

Tayan smiled and kissed him again and had a deep, powerful urge to just keep kissing him until the world changed for the better. As if the force of his love alone was enough. Lilla seemed happy to try, too, and it was long moments before they came up for air. ‘I need you here in the flesh world, love. I need you to watch over me and bring me out if … You know how this works.’

‘I know I don’t like it,’ Lilla grumbled and pressed himself back against Tayan and Tayan back against the wall. ‘I like this.’

Tayan arched an eyebrow. ‘I like it, too.’

‘It’s dangerous.’

Tayan pressed his hips forward. ‘This? Are you scared of me, warrior?’ he asked in an attempt at sultry spoilt by a giggle. Lilla just shook his head, but the corner of his mouth turned up.

‘You know what I mean. A journey now, when you’re already exhausted …’

‘Ah. So you stop fighting when you’re tired, do you?’ he asked and Lilla blushed and stood back up. Tayan didn’t blame him for worrying, but that sounded suspiciously like he didn’t trust him. ‘You walk the jaguar path with honour, my love, but mine is a spiral and I must journey it. Tonight. Please.’

Lilla let out a noisy, resigned sigh and kissed Tayan’s knuckles in silent apology. ‘The womb?’ he asked.

‘The womb,’ Tayan confirmed.

They’d stopped back at home to collect Tayan’s ritual tools before making the long climb uphill out of the city to the womb. Unlike the two large healing caves dug into the bones of the city, this system was different: tunnels of dark rock leading to a small cavern made from a paler stone and flecked with tiny crystals. Malel’s womb. The birthplace of the world and all the creatures within it, and the place from where the Tokob first children had sprung.

The birthplace of the shamanic magic, the shamanic ritual.

Tayan knelt on a square blue mat facing the rows of spirit carvings, representations of ancestors and the gods in their many guises. Carefully, he mixed the dried herbs and fungus into the small clay vessel containing the drops of diluted frog-venom, adding a little water before grinding them into a thick paste. He breathed deeply and set out the drum, the idols of his spirit guides and ancestors, and his paints. In the wavering candlelight, Lilla used a thin feather to draw vision symbols on Tayan’s brow, black against the blue.

‘Ready?’ he asked.

Tayan nodded and licked his lips, then began the drumbeat that would bind heart and mind and spirit to the realm of the ancestors. Lilla nodded in his turn, made sure the gourd of water was at hand, and then rose to stand behind him, a familiar, beloved pillar of strength and protection who would guard his flesh. The warding of his spirit, Tayan would have to see to himself.

The drum was the rhythm of life itself, of Malel the mother, who was at once the world, its goddess, and the hill inside which he knelt. She was home and judge and the route to rebirth. She was ancient and new, mother of gods and all the creatures that lived upon her skin. She was life and death, the bringer of disease and its cure. She was all things, and Tayan strove to connect the tiny wisp of his being, brought to life through Malel’s magic, to her immensity.

His spirit vibrated to the drum’s rhythm and the walls of the womb seemed to take the sound and double it and feed it back to him, as if the stone itself breathed. When his spirit was prepared, he swallowed the paste that would spark the journey-magic. It was bitter, sucking the moisture from his mouth and clinging to the insides of his throat, but he fought it down, fingers never faltering as they tapped the beat.

It didn’t take long for the magic to pull him into its grip; the flesh world began to glow and then disappear, the spirit realm, over and within and around it, fading into view. At his feet lay a wide trail, spiralling gently upwards. Innumerable others twisted around, above and even through it. Only one path was true: the others would take him to the Underworld, even as they seemed to lead upwards. If he concentrated, Tayan could see the flesh world too, his hand on the drum and the idols laid on the mat before him. But the flesh world could not answer his questions and so he let it sink and vanish.

Tayan changed the beat, calling on his spirit guides for aid. Something brushed his senses: a presence hot and volatile, a barely contained volcano. A huge black cat appeared on the path before him, tail lashing and fangs bared. Tayan allowed himself no unease, despite the fact that, of all his usual guides, this was the least predictable. Young Jaguar was often filled with caprice and sometimes with malice. More than once he had sought to trick Tayan’s spirit onto the wrong path for his own amusement. And yet his power was undoubted, and if he chose to stand with Tayan’s spirit and defend him, none could harm him.

‘Young Jaguar, I honour your presence here and offer you my thanks. I seek wisdom from the ancestors on the spiral path. Perhaps even from Malel herself. Will you show me the way to them as you have before?’

The spirit guide crouched lower, as if to spring, his eyes glowing with inner fire. Then his lips covered his teeth and he spun on his haunches and bounded away. Tayan spared a single glance down at himself: the golden thread connecting spirit to flesh was strong and anchored within him. It would lead him back to his body. He set out after Young Jaguar, hurrying in the giant cat’s pawprints. The spirit guide leapt onto a particular path and didn’t bother glancing back; Tayan ran after him, stepping off one trail onto another, questing outwards with his senses and his magic to see whether he had been led false. He had not.

When they reached the Gate of the Ancestors, tall and imposing, blocking their advance, Young Jaguar let out a roar that knocked Tayan back a step and then vanished, not waiting for the shaman’s thanks or offering. He provided them anyway, his empty body picking up the carved stone idol of the jaguar from the mat and spitting on it. ‘My body and breath, Young Jaguar,’ he murmured in both the flesh and spirit worlds. ‘My thanks and adoration.’

The Gate of the Ancestors swung open and the path continued on through it. A single path now, the true path, for the lords of the Underworld had no power to confuse here. Tayan checked the golden thread of his life again and stepped forward. From the mists, ancestors began to coalesce, drifting towards him, their translucent outlines shimmering and ragged, motes of light swirling deep within their forms.