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A hail of arrows erupted from the Federation force.
At the same moment Altan lit up like a torch.
He called the Phoenix and the Phoenix came; enveloping him, embracing him, loving him, bringing him back into the fold.
Altan was a silhouette in the light, a shadow of a man. She thought she saw him look back toward her. She thought she saw him smile.
She thought she heard a bird’s cackle.
Rin saw in the flames the image of Mai’rinnen Tearza. She was weeping.
The fire doesn’t give, the fire takes, and takes, and takes.
Rin screamed a wordless scream. Her voice was lost in the fire.
A great column of flame erupted from the site of Altan’s immolation.
A wave of heat rolled out in every direction, bowling over the Federation soldiers like they were straw. It hit Rin like a punch to the gut, and she pitched backward into the inky black water.
Chapter 25
She swam for hours. Days. An eternity. She remembered only the beginning, the initial shock as her body slammed into the water, how she thought she had died because she could not make her body obey, and because her skin prickled where it hit the water as if she had been flayed alive. If she craned her head she could see the research base burning. It was a beautiful burn, crimson and gold licking up in tendrils to the softly dark sky.
At first Rin swam the way she had been trained to at the Academy—a stroke with a minimized profile so her arms would not exit the water. The Federation archers would shoot her dead in the water if they saw her, if there were any left alive . . . Then the fatigue set in, and she simply moved her limbs to keep afloat, to keep drifting, without any consideration for technique. Her strokes became mechanical, automated, and formless.
Even the water had warmed from the heat of Altan’s conflagration. It felt like a bath, like a soft bed. She drifted, and thought it might be nice to drown. The ocean floor would be quiet. Nothing would hurt. There would be no Phoenix, no war, nothing at all, only silence . . . In those warm, dark depths she would feel no loss at all . . .
But the sight of Altan walking to his death was seared into her memory; it burned at the forefront of her thoughts, more raw and painful than the salt water seeping into her open wounds. He commanded her from the grave, whispering orders even now . . . She did not know if she merely hallucinated his voice, or if he was truly with her, guiding her.
Keep swimming, follow the wings, don’t stop, don’t give up, keep moving . . .
She trained her eyes on the constellation of the Phoenix. Southeast. You must swim to the southeast.
The stars became torches, and the torches became fire, and she thought she saw her god. “I feel you,” said the Phoenix, undulating before her. “I sense your sacrifice, your pain, and I want it, bring it to me . . . you are close, so close.”
Rin reached a shaking hand toward the god, but then something jolted in her mind, something primal and terrified.
Stay away, screamed the Woman. Stay far away from here.
No, Rin thought. You can’t keep me away. I’m coming.
She floated senselessly in the black water; arms and legs spread-eagled to remain afloat. She wavered in and out of reality. Her spirit went flying. She lost all sense of direction; she had no destination. She went wherever she was pulled, as if by a magnetic power, as if by an entity beyond her control.
She saw visions.
She saw a storm cloud that looked like a man gathering over the mountains, with four cyclones branching off like limbs, and when she stared at the source, two intelligent spots of cerulean peered back at her—too bright to be natural, too malicious to be anything but a god.
She saw a great dam with four gorges, the largest structure she had ever seen. She saw water gushing in every direction, flooding the plains. She saw Chaghan and Qara standing somewhere high, watching the fragments of the broken dam stream into the shifting river mouth.
She brushed against them, wondering, and Chaghan jerked his head up.
“Altan?” Chaghan asked hopefully.
Qara looked to her brother. “What is it?”
Chaghan ignored his sister, gazing around as if he could see Rin. But his pale eyes went straight through her. He was looking for something that no longer existed.
“Altan, are you there?”
She tried to say something, but no sound came out. She didn’t have a mouth. She didn’t have a body. Scared, she flitted away, and then the void was pulling her through again so that she couldn’t have gone back if she’d tried.
She flew through the present to the past.
She saw a great temple, a temple built of stone and blood.
She saw a familiar woman, tall and magnificent, brown-skinned and long-limbed. She wore a crown of scarlet feathers and ash-colored beads. She was weeping.
“I won’t,” said the woman. “I will not sacrifice the world for the sake of this island.”
The Phoenix shrieked with a fury so great that Rin trembled under its naked rage.
“I will not be defied. I will smite those who have broken their promises. And you . . . you have broken the greatest vow of all,” hissed the god. “I condemn you. You will never know peace.”
The woman screamed, collapsed to her knees, and clutched at something within her, as if trying to claw her very heart out. She glowed from inside like a burning coal; light poured through her eyes, her mouth, until cracks appeared in her skin and she shattered like rock.
Rin would have screamed, too, if she had a mouth.
The Phoenix turned its attention to her, just as the void dragged her away again.
She hurtled through time and space.
She saw a shock of white hair, and then everything stood still.
The Gatekeeper hung in a vacuum, frozen in a state of suspended animation, a place next to nowhere and on the way to everywhere.
“Why did you abandon us?” she cried. “You could have helped us. You could have saved us.”
His eyes shot open and found her.
She did not know how long he stared at her. His eyes bored into the back of her soul, searched through all of her. And she stared back. She stared back, and what was she saw nearly broke her.
Jiang was no mortal. He was something old, something ancient, something very, very powerful. And yet at the same time he was her teacher, he was that frail and ageless man whom she knew as human.
He reached out for her and she almost touched him, but her fingers glided through his and touched nothing, and she thought with a sickening fright that she was drifting away again. But he uttered a word, and she hung still.
Then their fingers met, and she had a body again, and she could feel, feel his hands cup her cheeks and his forehead press against hers. She felt it acutely when he grasped her shoulders and shook her, hard.
“Wake up,” he said. “You’re going to drown.”
She hauled herself out of the water onto hot sand.
She took a breath, and her throat burned as if she had drunk a gallon of peppercorn sauce. She whimpered and swallowed, and it felt like a fistful of rocks was trying to scrape its way down her esophagus. She curled into herself, rolled over, hauled herself to her feet, and attempted a step forward.
Something crunched under her foot. She lurched forward and tripped onto the ground. Dazed, she glanced around. Her ankle had wedged inside something. She wiggled her foot and lifted it up.
