NIAH. AAEL. FATHER AND MOTHER TO ALL DRAGONS. SLUMBERING IN SUSANO-ō’S SONG. THE GODS ARE NO CLOSER TO THE WORLD THAN IN EVERSTORM, SISTER. SAVE PERHAPS IN THE HELL YOUR KIND HAS MADE OF SHIMA.
Well, I can’t feel them. We’re too far away.
I CAN FEEL THE POWER WITHIN YOU, YOU KNOW. IT IS YOURS IF YOU CHOOSE TO CLAIM IT. STORMDANCER. THE GREATEST OF THEM ALL, SHOULD YOU WISH IT.
I don’t.
YOU ARE AFRAID.
You would be too.
THERE IS NO SHAME IN FEAR, SAVE WHEN WE LET IT RULE US. I KNOW IT HURTS. I KNOW IT FRIGHTENS YOU. BUT THIS POWER WITHIN YOU MAY SHIFT THE TIDE THAT SWELLS AGAINST US.
You don’t know that.
I KNOW IT IS PART OF YOU. AND I KNOW IF YOU DO NOT MASTER IT, IT WILL EVENTUALLY MASTER YOU.
Yukiko sighed, dug her fingers into his fur.
TRY.
I don’t want to hurt—
JUST TRY.
… All right.
She breathed deep, feeling him inside her head, his heat entwined with the heat in her womb. And closing her eyes, she focused on the wall she’d built between herself and the force within. A dam of pure will, stemming the power in her mind. And focusing on the tiny crack she allowed the Kenning to leak past, she clenched her fists and stepped through.
A hurricane of fire. Blazing in her psyche with the heat of a thousand red suns. She could feel herself burning, scarlet warmth spilling down the lips of the flesh on the thunder tiger’s back. Fear gripped her, an abyss opening up beneath her feet and willing her down. Buffeted by flaming winds, breath toiling in her chest, she opened her eyes and watched the fire dance. Immolating, enveloping, like the heat of all the animals and people she’d seen when last she opened herself wide. But it was different now—not just the heat of the beast she rode, the children inside her, the thousand lives sparkling in the waves below her feet. And, eyes open and gleaming, tears streaming down her face, she recognized the firestorm for what it was.
The Lifesong of the World.
The rhythmic existence of all around her—not just individual sparks, but life itself. The pulse of creation’s totality. She could feel everything.
Everything.
Gods, it’s beautiful …
She reached out to the Everstorm ahead, the flares of heat nesting and soaring around mountains of burning stone. The serpentine trails of sea dragons cutting the waves, long echoes of themselves trailing behind them in blazing ribbons, circling above the living infernos coiled around the islands’ base. Vast and reptilian, ancient as moon and stars, slumbering in Susano-ō’s lullaby. Scales as thick as city walls. Hearts as vast as fortresses, pumping blood like oceans through veins wide as avenues. Power and majesty like she’d never imagined.
I feel them.
The smile on her lips made her want to cry.
Buruu, I feel everything.
Reaching back the way they’d come, fingertips brushing Shima’s edge. She could feel Kaiah, blurred in the impossible distance, sleeping fitfully beneath the eaves of Kitsune-jō. Little Tomo, curled up at Michi’s feet and dreaming of dinner. She reached over the fortress, felt the pulses and life of everything within it: samurai on the walls, servants rising before the sun, the old Daimyo in his study, Guildsmen locked in his dungeons, even the blinded madman chained in the deepest, darkest cell, still aching with lotus withdrawal.
The Inquisitor.
His eyes were open. Bloody holes, black as deadlands fissures, splitting wider every season, every earthquake, leading down, down to gods knew where.
Gods knew where.
He can see me.
The Inquisitor was smiling at her. Rigid as iron, stretched against his bonds, lips peeling back from stained teeth. Empty sockets where his eyes used to be, swathed in bloody gauze, and yet she knew beyond any doubt that he saw her, just as she saw him. With those sightless holes the color of deadlands fissures, leading down.
Down.
The little ones are already here, after all …
And beyond him …
“No!”
She closed it off, fled behind the wall of herself and slammed it shut, lips and chin crusted with frozen blood. Curling up against Buruu’s spine, shivering from nothing close to cold. The arashitora’s concern was obvious, but she kept him locked outside, fingertips tingling, head still ringing with the Lifesong and the memory of those sightless eyes staring right at her.
Through her.
Buruu began fretting, growling and whining, until finally she opened up a crack and allowed herself to leak into his mind; an old, familiar warmth, the heat of a fireside in a favored inn, nestling down in the cushions and knowing you are welcome. You are safe.
WHAT DID YOU SEE?
I don’t know.
She shook her head.
… Something awful.
WHAT?
Something’s coming. Not so close that I could see. But close enough to taste.
I DO NOT UNDERSTAND.
Nor do I, Buruu. But we need to get to Everstorm and back to Shima. Quickly. All this, Hiro, Earthcrusher, everything we do …
She closed her eyes, tried to forget that bloody, sightless stare.
WE ARE A DAY AWAY. PERHAPS TWO.
We won’t have much time to convince the arashitora to come with us …