Revolving Door: Volume 2
Chapter 35: The Recruits - Side I
On Liss and Lacar's strength combined, the painted rowboat, severed from its ship and now its own vessel, shot through the cloudy blue between one patrol boat and the next. Within fifteen minutes, they had pummelled past the patrol route, and the forest had shrunk to a green carpet in the distance.
The boat was painted to be visible from afar, so even then, Liss rowed despite the burning of her arms, shoulders heaving with panting.
“So you’re a smuggler,” her attempts at conversation were not potent. “Was business good?”
“It was worth the price it fetched,” Lacar answered between wheezing, “if only to feed my family.”
“Family. Where are they?”
“We'll talk about that later.”
Panic wound through every second, spurring every thought in a singular direction: the triplet of islands on their bow. At its speed, the rowboat sliced waves like a larger vessel. Liss’ vision flashed with pain, yet still she hammered at the oars.
Over her shoulder, the hills grew and grew into visibility, distant salvation at the end of this wet, burning purgatory.
“We’ll make it,” said Lacar between gasps, long before they had reached the island shores. “We’ll make it, we can slow.”
Liss did not ease up for minutes more; she worked down from the pace she had set, feeling the burn set in in earnest now that she was not too numb to feel it. As they caught their breaths, sensations rose back into awareness: the sweat rolling down her neck, the rustle of the leaves that leaned over the atoll.
“Round that way,” Lacar croaked as the rowboat slowed, pointing to starboard. They switched to one oar and then back to two, tracing the ivory arc of the coastline.
The far coast of the island gazed out into the open sea, the expanse was grey to the edges. Through the clouds, the pale glow of the sun hung higher in the sky, rippling across the waves. From the trees, there peered a large rocky inlet, opening into the heart of the atoll. Lacar pointed them through it.
As they passed under the overhang of leaves and into the embrace of the ring-shaped island, Liss finally let her arms slacken. Lacar did too, drawing a huge breath and releasing it in a groan. The boat floated onward into the sheltered circle, jungle trees towering on every side like a fortress, from which trills of birds echoed.
“Where is the den?” Noma whispered.
“Can’t be seen from here,” Lacar answered, then pointed at a rocky cliff to starboard. They now picked their way towards it, across the placid waves.
At the shore, they dragged the boat up the sand and tied its rope to a shrub. Into the shadow of criss-crossing canopies they tiptoed, down a vegetated slope, over bushes and roots of trees. Now the rumble of the waves had receded into obscurity, overtaken by the whisper of leaves.
“How did the authorities not see boats coming and going?” asked Liss.
“We operated at night, and only with single-handed vessels. There were strict rules on the comings and goings…everything rested on that. Its location was a well-guarded secret.”
They circumnavigated the hill, and the muffled roar of waves ascended again from ahead, though no sea peeked through the trees. Carved into the other side of the rise was a short cliff face. And nestled in the curve of the overhanging cliff, one end recessed into it, was a wooden storehouse, draped in vines and moss. Gaps striped the walls where old planks had caved in, but the structure itself stood tall. The door hung ajar, revealing dimness, as did two decrepit windows with their slats open.
Once it had risen into view, all three tracked a straight path through the rustling undergrowth. A bird fluttered off, its glossy green feathers rippling. Skinks scampered under the leaves.
“This is the storehouse?” Noma asked, voice dropping. “It's barely bigger than my parents’ hut…”
“This is only the front half,” Lacar answered.
It was about now, as they trudged through the thinning foliage to the doorway, that Liss began to feel an inkling that something was not right, although neither of her companions seemed to have the same intuition. She glanced about in the clearing. The place felt used, although she could not place why.
“What are you looking for?” Noma asked.
“Call me too vigilant…I don't think we're alone.”
“Can't be too vigilant,” Lacar answered, one hand shifting to his sash on his belt. Then he pushed the door open with a creak.
Sunlight streamed gently through the windows and illuminated the wooded floor, and a snaggle of vines that had ventured in. Out in the middle of the storehouse, more thin beams of light filtered through gaps left by fallen planks, illuminating shelves upon shelves, at least five rows on either side. Between them, they had line of sight to the inner wall, little was visible in the dark. Metal gleamed on some of the shelves, and glazed ceramics on others.
In the wooden half, the ceiling was twice as high as the shelves, topped by a sloping roof. Then it became stone halfway in, and the ceiling descended, forming an alcove. At the other end, only dimly visible, lurked the faint shapes of tables and old barrels. The tables were empty, and chairs were tucked under them.
“I would have thought there might be some remains of the dead,” he murmured. “People preferring to hide here till death than to return to captivity. Lucky for us, we shan't dwell with their graves.” But these words only made Liss go tense, and she began to reach into her tunic pocket for a coin.
Lacar waved Liss and Noma inward. In the dim light, he wandered across the stone floor to the first of many metal scaffolds that held the place together. Tying a knot into his sash, he lit the first of several lamps in a hiss of gas. It burned golden and bright, and at once they could see the sparse rows of ceramic bottles on the shelves, in a variety of sizes and shapes. Lizards and spiders scampered away.
“I suppose oil doesn't spoil,” Liss heard him mutter, as he disappeared beyond a stack of shelves. Another hiss, then another, and each new light revealed more of this strange set: shelves of boxes, some of them misshapen, stepladders, a booth in the far right corner, where the floor and walls became stone, much like the one at the barter house on Henkor.
Henkor. What had become of the island since her deed? The only person she missed was Boka, the woman who had told the stories of old. But she couldn't help the rage that flared as she thought about her island and its forests and grave trees, then smouldered again.
“Liss,” whispered Noma, watching her with fright. “Are you sure this is safe?”
“Noma,” Liss answered seriously. “We’re safe as long as I'm around.”
She seemed about to retort, but only glanced away and smiled oddly. “Yeah, you're probably right. How are you feeling?”
The truth was that she would much rather be lying down than standing, but she considered the ways Noma might react if she knew her arms were still smarting with pain. So she said, “A little sore, but not much worse than whenever we went tree-climbing.”
“Do you need anything for it?”
“Atuis will help,” Lacar said, holding out a wooden string-tied box between them. Liss caught a cloying whiff of the herb. “I should probably not be offering it to children, but hey…”
“No, I'd much rather be alert,” Liss growled.
“More for me, then,” he said, already unravelling the twine.
*
It took a tenth of the day before Liss was finally convinced that they were not about to be ambushed. The comforts of this storehouse were meagre, but were more than she had enjoyed since they had left Henkor. By the lit fireplace in the stone alcove, she reclined in a misshapen hay sack and inhaled beef jerky, while Lacar’s atuis smoke diffused into the mustiness.
Liss flipped on the couch, taking care not to prop herself up on either arm.
Noma, who had been watching her with a frown, now said, “Liss. I can go forage for some herbs. It'll ease the aches.”
Had she made it so obvious? Noma is a trained physician, I can't hide that from her.
“I'll come with you,” she answered firmly. “Just in case. Not that you can't protect yourself, but two people will improve our chances.”
Noma blinked back, but eventually nodded. “I'd like your company.”
Leaned all the way back into his sack with the blunt between his teeth, Lacar lazily shifted. “Get me some.”
Together, the pair ventured into the forest outside, peering beyond the trunks. It was nothing but a tangle of vegetation, yet Noma seemed to read it like a book in a language Liss didn't know. Her friend glanced over her shoulder every now and then, as if to check if she was still following. Then she pushed on through the understory, following some invisible trail, until she slowed to a stop at a small mire that stank of sulphur.
“You're not about to scoop mud onto me, are you?” Liss laughed, but then Noma unravelled her leg wraps and plucked off her shoes. “Noma! I was joking.”
As Noma began to wade into the murky bog, Liss finally perceived the quarry of her search: a bundle of coin-shaped leaves, floating on the surface of the muck. She watched as her friend waded in to her shins, step by wide step, grimaced and leaned with fingers outstretched for the leaves, and then—
As she snatched the bundle, the splash of the viscous liquid gave way to a horrendous sucking as Noma toppled forward, shrieking, face first into the mud.
The sound spurred Liss, and before she even began to yell, she sprang for a vine and tossed it. It floated on the bog, the tip only just in Noma’s reach; she snatched it and wound a loop around her wrist while Liss began to drag her back to the bank. Noma gasped with fright as she toppled halfway onto the bank, trailing mud and dead leaves behind her, yet her left hand, grasping the bundle of leaves, she somehow kept above the muck.
“Noma, you scared me,” Liss muttered, grabbing her friend by the muddy shoulders and dragging her out of the mud’s grasp.
Noma did not speak for a minute. Her body heaved with her frightened panting, and Liss sat her down on a tree root, handing her shoes back. “Sorry,” she finally groaned. The girl began to wipe herself down with her hands. Liss, watching for a minute, finally wandered across the clearing till she found a shrub covered in a proper gauze of plant fibre, and returned with a handful.
Sitting amid the stench of sulphur, Liss began to wipe the boggy mud off Noma’s shins, upon which her friend halted in her own efforts. Liss worked away for a minute, until Noma gasped, “why are you doing that?”
Liss looked up. Noma's eyes were huge and cast down at her hands. “You just dove into a mire to get herbs for my sake. Why'd you do that? I could have recovered just fine with two nights’ rest.”
She returned to scrubbing mud off Noma, and the girl became very quiet, and looked away, seemingly unable to watch. “Why are you doing that?” she asked again. “You shouldn't be, you're not my servant!”
“Because I like you, and I am thankful for the effort you went to, is that a better answer?”
“No!” Noma cried, grabbing her cheeks with her hands and looking deeply ashamed. Liss chuckled. That was the end of her protests, and aside from a little indignant wiggling about, she let Liss assist her while she resumed scrubbing herself.
The pair returned to the storehouse after one detour in the wrong direction which took them to the inner coast. By then, Lacar had gathered up some old supplies in a pile, and was spinning a metallic object in his hand beneath the steady gold lamplight. He gave a lazy wave as they wandered in.
“Phew, where were you?”
“Noma went bog diving,” Liss said, watching as Noma picked out a mortar and pestle from below the counter and laid the herbs inside. “What's that you're holding?”
“A firestick, what else? Never seen one?” Lacar lifted the metal rod, and Liss saw that one end had a textured grip. “Imports from the northerly lands of Beghul, or so I was told.”
“You didn't say there were weapons here.”
“Why wouldn't there be weapons? We smuggled those, too.”
“You should have mentioned. We could use those.”
“You young ones think too much about violence. And you especially so, Liss.”
Noma wordlessly churned the leaves as they spoke.
It was ten minutes of effort on her part, then she tapped wine out of a barrel and mixed it in. Then she rejoined them before the fire, dipping her hand in the ceramic bowl. As Noma knelt beside Liss and began to smear the salve on her arms, she felt an odd sensation blossom on her skin: cooling, as if she had dipped her arm in water on a windy day.
Noma began to massage the paste in. As she did, Liss closed her eyes and sighed. “I don't know how you do these things. You knew those plants would do the trick, and then you found a bog in the middle of a forest. It’s amazing.”
“Me? I’m—I—” Noma sputtered, then drew her mouth shut, continuing with the circular motions of salve application, albeit more erratically. Lacar chuckled.
The man did not enjoy the same special treatment. Noma simply left the mortar with the herb at his feet and said, “don't let the fire dry it out.”
“Alright, alright. I getcha.” He picked up the stone receptacle and dug a finger inside.
“How long do we plan on idling here?” Liss asked.
“You make the call on that,” he answered, looking up from the dollop of plant matter on his fingertip. “You're the one in a hurry.”
“Once we know what we intend to do,” she said, “we can move.”
“What's your goal?” Lacar muttered, lowering the mortar.
“To free the world of the Orsandin grip.”
“Well, tough luck, then. Their empire spans lands we do not even know the names of.”
“Madan is the biggest town here, no?”
“It is the Orsandin base of operations in Makor Kirikiri, yes.”
“Makor Kirikiri?” Noma murmured. “Is that what you call these islands?”
“‘s our name for the Greater Isles and Doganir combined, yes.”
“Then if we wrest back control of Madan, we take back our islands.”
“Only if they do not send more ships from their next base.”
“Where is that?”
“Malogo, a city on the other side of the Mouth of the World.”
“Then how do they send for help, if it's an ocean away?”
Lacar folded his arms, frowning. “You cannot be plotting to overthrow them.”
“Not alone. But with weapons, and more people…”
He shook his head. “I cannot tell if your bravado is greatness or folly. Well, Orsand sends a warden every moon to assess the state of its colony and report back—I reckon a moon is how long it takes to sail here and back. Meanwhile, we would have closer ships to worry about, too, not just the ones from Malogo. Orsand has at least fifty ships patrolling the archipelago.”
Liss chewed on the inside of her cheek. “Alright. What happens if the warden arrives and finds unrest?”
“Then they send a fresh fleet to take it back. Makor Kirikiri is where they farm aroca, they would not let it go without a fight.”
“I thought so.” Liss frowned, her brow knitting. Was there an answer? She could only explode coins and nails. There must be more she could do with it. She only had to learn…
“Would Madan answer if we call? Would they fight to be free?”
“If they have reason to… A leader of the cause, and some hope… We were proud warriors, long before Orsand…"
As she fell silent, the gentle chirp of insects rolled in through the far window, and she noticed the light glowing dim through the gaps in the walls. “I shall think upon it.”
“Well, don't think too hard. At least not before dinner.”
*
Lacar did the group the kindness of roasting their salted fish on the fire. They ate quietly as the light deserted the forest and the chill of the night seeped through the missing planks of the roof.
“What happens if it rains?” Noma muttered, peering up through the gaps.
“The wood shall continue to spoil,” Lacar answered, “and eventually this storehouse becomes a part of the forest again. All things return to the Being in the end.”
“Yeah…but what do we do? Wouldn't it get cold and damp in here?”
Lacar shrugged. “We could sleep around the hearth.”
Liss watched the other two mumble in conversation for a while, leaning back in her sack, while three years of tension, of living under the eye of Orsand, seeped out of her bones. This was a good troupe to be travelling with. Lacar had proven a worthy ally, despite her misgivings. And Noma was, well, Noma.
“So, your family…how are they doing?” said Noma.
A chuckle. “They're not ‘doing’ much these days.”
Noma was, in all her hapless compassion, everything Liss was not. Liss could destroy anything she pleased, could extinguish a life in a snap. But it was much easier to end lives than to save them. And you're so good at saving, you know.
She watched her friend meticulously undo the wraps on her wrists and shins, smiling to herself. Then her thoughts drifted again to Lacar's disclosures.
Orsand held the world in its iron grip. A world whose depths she, in her youth and with her insular childhood, knew nothing about. She had only ever waded in the shallows. But to end the reign of Orsand would require her to ply every last fathom, to dive deeper than even they.
Who could do that, short of a god? It was easy enough to boast about becoming a god, just as she had bragged to the kids about earning the right to princehood, all those hazy years ago. But this was not merely about jumping off the top of a waterfall. How did people become gods? Did the Being know? Does the Being exist?
If the Being exists, all-knowing and all-seeing, then how could it simply watch our world without intervening?
As they lay in their hay sacks that evening, waiting for sleep in the light of embers, Liss thought she heard an unusual rustle.
If it was a creature, it was too cautious. The sound ended at once, and did not recur.
She straightened, and Lacar’s eyes flew wide open, following hers.
In the dim glow, Liss signalled to Lacar with a hand over her lips, and he nodded back. She lay with eyes open, watching the doorway, one hand slipping into her pocket.
Something crept outside, silhouetted by the moonlight. Her muscles went rigid as the humanoid shape glided soundlessly to the door, and it clicked quietly open.
Liss’ hand wrapped around a rusty nail longer than her finger. She rose from her reclining posture. Her hand tightened.
“Che oni?”
At the first echo of that voice from the doorway, a few things happened at once. Liss sprang from her sack, hurling the nail up the corridor. Lacar struck a flame with his sash, throwing a ruddy light across everything. Noma screamed. The intruder bellowed in an incomprehensible tongue.
Then the nail stopped flying.
It hovered in the dark between them, motionless, unfalling. There was a ripple in the air around the doorway.
Liss lifted her hand and clenched a fist, and the screw began to explode, but not all at once. She watched, eyes widening, as it fragmented, slowly, pieces of shrapnel separating in slow motion from the blaze unfolding within.
The stranger stepped to a side, following the wall—and then the projectile left its brief suspension, completing its explosion with a boom that rocked the glass in the room.
The stranger flinched as shrapnel grazed them. “Che oni? Who is there?”
The last words, spoken in Orsandin, shook Liss out of her startlement. “Who are you? How did you do that?”
“I will speak if you swear not to explode more things in my face.”
“I can allow that.” No knot could do what this stranger had. No one had halted an explosion like that before. “Come forward.”
Silence hung over the storehouse as the stranger walked into their firelight. “I mean you no harm, my friends. I simply saw signs of newcomers and came to investigate. I am Korithamai, a priestess of the Undying Ring.”
As the light fell upon Korithamai, Liss saw that she was tall, dark and pale-haired, wearing rat-bitten robes. Her eyes were opalescent, stark against her dark skin.
“You've been raiding our stores,” Lacar muttered. “I thought a few things were missing.”
“Can you blame a woman for trying to survive?” Her eyes did not meet any of theirs.
“How long have you lived here?” Liss’ suspicion was thawing to curiosity.
“I was shipwrecked here three years ago, with the crew that hired me. We were fleeing the Orsand fleet—alas, it took entering a storm to achieve it. But the storm was the crew's demise.”
“Crew? They died during the voyage?” Liss had started to recognise the indistinctness of her gaze, never settling on anything important: she must be blind.
Kori shook her head. “We were forced to abandon ship, and we rowed here while she sank. Then a flock of bats found us one night—and, well, we all fell ill. Lucky I am that I only lost my sight. No one else survived. I have lived off the land since, and lit fires to ward off the bats. I suggest you do the same.”
Lacar mumbled, “Terribly sorry to hear it.”
“Do not be, we weren't friends. They were the only ones to answer my call for travel. I was travelling at the behest of my temple.”
“Temple. To what deity?” Liss interjected.
“The Being Xemself, if I must name one. But more than that, it is a temple to the Nomad, the messiah whose teachings we now safeguard against the ravages of time and thieves.”
Every word she spoke made Liss’ eyes widen further. By now, Noma had been fully shaken from her slumber. She rubbed her eyes and peered over.
“And why were you travelling?”
She spent a few seconds thinking. “I do not know the Orsand word for it. The temple has us travel the world every seven years, like our founder did. Alas, this journey was doomed. I shall have nothing to say to my superior when I return.”
“And your temple has not been captured?”
Kori shook her head. “We have a terse truce with them.”
“How do you know the Orsandin tongue, if your land was never captured?”
“I was a devotee to the largest, oldest library in the world and we always sought more priests. We learned the languages we could.”
“I’ve never heard of any such library.”
“I have,” Lacar replied, and both Liss and Noma glanced at him, but Kori did not. “Not much, but in old tales…they spoke of the temple of the ring. A relic, they called it…of the world before the cataclysm. Locked up there are secrets we can only imagine…perhaps secrets to do with the Being Xemself.”
“Yes, so we are taught,” Kori answered, and her voice took on a chanting tone. “But not all its secrets have been decoded yet. And yet more secrets are not held among its isles. We merely hold the keys to other doors…”
Liss found these words filling her mind with visions of wonder, in a way no tale had done since she had been seven. She stared as they talked of this old, peerless library, last of its time, and its priests who could alter the flow of time, the warp of space—whose power and importance was so known and so abstruse that even Orsand respected it…
“I know they shall return to us eventually, when their conquest has stalled,” said Kori. “But only because they hope to wield our knowledge as military might.”
“Could it be used that way?” asked Liss. She sat attentively and watched the priestess’ face tauten.
“Oh, that is a dangerous question, young woman, but there is one thing to know about knowledge…it can be put to use to any end. Your spellfolding arts were not discovered as a tool of conquest, and yet Orsand refashioned them for it. Decoded, our archives could teach you what spellfolding is…how it is that folded cloth invokes power, and how that power could be bent in other ways…and that knowledge has protectors, because the wrong knower could use it to terrible ends.”
She perked up. “Then it could tell me why I can make things burn and explode at will.”
Kori was silent. Now Liss became aware of the changed demeanour of her companions: Lacar’s fear, Noma’s cautious fascination. Then the priest said, “That was at your will? Without a spell?”
“It was.”
She deliberated for some seconds. “I have rarely heard of such a thing. Power that is not invoked… I cannot tell you for sure, but the temple may be the only place where your answers can be found.”