Zan convinced me otherwise, but I had done terrible things before I believed her.
Despite our head start, our pursuers are gaining. We come up over the contested worlds—I see Tiltre off at our left, and I have a terrible memory of the day of the joining. How long ago was it now? A full rotation ago, surely. It feels like a lifetime. I see that the skin of Tiltre has been pulled back in places; it’s black and scarred. How many wars has Rasida been waging on other worlds while I lay trapped beneath the skin of Bhavaja, fighting for a future for this place?
A cephalopod clips my vehicle. I spin out. The Legion dances around me as I go whirling into the black. I recover, look back, and Sabita is powering back behind me, headed toward our pursuers.
She cannot see me, so I don’t sign at her. I keep my gaze forward, ever forward, and there, as I come up over the contested worlds, I see the familiar worlds of the Katazyrnas. My worlds. I zip past salvage vehicles and roving patrols. It’s impossible to give them orders to tail me, out here, unless some scout arrived ahead of me, and that hasn’t happened.
They let me by unhindered, and that’s good, because there is a far greater force I must face. It’s my own world, the great rising face of Katazyrna there, engulfing my view as the great orb of the orange sun blooms behind me.
I think, What if the Katazyrna doesn’t recognize me? What if I’ve become too much like the Bhavajas? What if giving birth to Zan’s child has changed me and the world no longer wants me?
I steel myself as I dip into orbit around Katazyrna. There is a great hole blown into the side of the world now, not as terrible as the one on the Mokshi, but significant. I power toward it. My fuel is almost gone, but I can coast forward on momentum for a good long while.
I am going faster than I’d like, so I kick off the vehicle and snag one of the waving tentacles as I go past. It wraps itself around me, and I crawl down it and step onto the surface of Katazyrna, finally.
And Katazyrna welcomes me home.
“TO THE PEOPLE BELOW, THERE IS NO SURFACE, NO OTHER WORLDS, NO LEGION. TO THE PEOPLE BELOW, WE ARE GODS AND MONSTERS.”
—LORD MOKSHI, ANNALS OF THE LEGION
33
ZAN
There are a dozen bodies piled on the shallow valley floor. They are arranged in a loose, circular group, as if they were walking up toward where we are now and fell where they stood. A few have slumped on top of each other, their long brown limbs tangled in violet robes.
The color of the robes fascinates me, because I haven’t seen anyone else with clothing that color yet. Their hair is long and black and braided back into a single tail. Most of them have hair that falls nearly to their knees. They have not been dead long. If I hadn’t seen so many dead already, I’d guess they were sleeping. This thought gives me pause, though. Have I really seen so many dead? I remember a field. A bright orange field of long yellow grass and tremendous white fungi, tall as I am, and bodies littered among them. Body after body, as far as I can see. I shake my head, and it’s gone. I can’t remember who they are, or even where, but it doesn’t have the feeling of a dream.
“If there are people,” I say, “there must be a settlement not much farther on.”
“Settlement of dead people,” Casamir says.
“Be optimistic,” I say. “Sulfur probably killed them. There’s a breeze now. It’s clearing it out. Let’s see if there are any survivors.”
They are a mix of old and young women, though none younger than the age of puberty. Still no children, even here? I think as I pick up a staff. It has a hole carved at the top, and set into the hollow is a brilliant lavender stone. The staff itself is made of soft yellow wood. They can’t be weapons—they would break in combat, or in contact with someone’s head or even a strong arm.
I check the bodies, but they are already beginning to cool. I was right: they are not long dead. But they have all perished.
It’s three sleeping periods more before we finally see signs of a settlement. The world here is watery and vibrant, full of twittering, buzzing life. That’s great for survival but bad for comfort, as I find myself pulling the heads of little biting bugs from my flesh every morning. They nest in the seams of my suit and are easy to brush off, but my companions, with less durable clothing, are not so lucky. They carry the bugs with them every time we move.
There’s a clear sleeping cycle here, as great bioluminescent trees glow more brightly during some periods and drop all of their sticky, leaf-like compounds at the end of it, only to regrow them during what passes for a sleeping cycle. The animals follow suit, with some sleeping while the trees light up, and others only coming up to chirp and bother us after the leaves have dropped.
There are human-made decorations hanging from the trees, mostly bone ornaments that click and clack in the wind. I see more signs of human habitation. Baskets left to rest under the trees. A network of paths crisscrossing the forest. Stacks of dead tree limbs and, eventually, a small lean-to made of a fallen tree and hemp covering.
Ahead of us I see something like a village proper. There’s a ring of two dozen dwellings arranged around a large square made of bone and metal tree trunks. At the center of the village is a tree so large that its spidery branches make a massive canopy over the village and travel up and up into the darkness of the sky. The branches pulse with the occasional blue light speeding up and across the branches and into the ceiling above, where they ignite a series of red and orange lights in the distant ceiling. It’s mesmerizing to watch and reminds me of the dancing lights I saw in my quarters when I first woke, like a secret language.
I hear only the clacking of the bone wind chimes, and the rustling of little flying creatures in the trees.
I walk to one of the huts, where someone has scraped a written passage into the face of it. I don’t know the language.
“Can you read this, Casamir?” I ask.
She jogs up next to me, squints. “Huh,” she says.
“Is that yes or no?” I say.
“It says there are monsters here. It says they come when the leaves fall.”
“If there are monsters,” Arankadash says, patting her offspring, “we should go somewhere there aren’t any monsters.” Her offspring has tripled in size already and pulses against her like a second stomach.
“There are monsters everywhere,” I say. “Running never makes fewer of them. Let’s see how we can shore up this village for an attack.”
“An attack from what?” Casamir says.
“Anything,” I say. I’m staring at the big tree at the center of the square and the place where its branches meet the ceiling. “I have an idea,” I say.
Casamir kicks at the bones of the square. “Well, great.”
“We’ll need weapons,” I say.
We rifle through the huts, and Casamir uncovers a number of multicolored vials. She whistles softly. “Wizards,” she says.