Racing the Dark (47 page)

Lana swiveled around, a little miffed at being distracted from her reading. "Why? Do you want to play it?"

"No, of course not. I just thought looking at it again might help me see if I missed any other reason why it can work geas so powerfully."

Lana shrugged and fished it out of her pocket. "I told you, it's because it's a self-sacrifice."

"You're probably right," he said, fingering the worn holes carefully. "But I'm not getting anywhere with this other stuff."

He held it up to the light. "How old did you say this was?"

"Oh ... somewhere between thirty and forty years, I guess."

"Really?" he said, still squinting up at it. "I'm not sure, but the bone seems much older. It's so discolored and brittle." He lowered it to his lips and tentatively blew out a long, high-pitched note.

He frowned. "Nothing" He handed it to Lana. "Why don't you try? Blow the same note I just did."

Despite its offhanded, breathy edge, when Lana played the note, she still felt the familiar instantaneous reaction of spirits waiting, anticipating the geas about to be recited. Of course, she didn't recite a geas and the sensation quickly faded away.

Her palms were slick when she put the flute back in her pocketshe knew this meant something was wrong. He sat down next to her. "So it works for you, but not for me ..." He lapsed into silence and she leaned on his shoulder. "You know ... maybe it's the witch. Even if you're using it, it's still her sacrifice, isn't it? Whenever you use that flute, it's like you have the witch's willing sacrifice, but one far more subtle and nuanced than anything I've ever seen before. She must still have control over who can access the sacrifice."

Kai didn't say it, but Lana knew what he must be thinking. If Akua had given her that power, she could just as easily take it away.

The next day Kai handed her a well-worn tome, his expression so intent she suspected she would not be seeing very much of her pirate book over the next few days.

"What is this?" she asked. It looked old and a little mysterious, like the books in Akua's death temple.

"It's a dictionary of fundamental geas principles. Probably more comprehensive than any you worked with. I don't think your teacher was very thorough ... which is strange, because anyone familiar with a geas like the one you recited for your mother must have known them."

Lana frowned. "Fundamental geas ... I thought you just had to memorize them."

He stared at her. "Lana, you must have created some geas if you made it this far. You actually don't know anything about this?"

"I was desperate! It was either make up a geas and hope it doesn't kill me, or don't make up a geas and know it will." She felt vaguely uncomfortable under his disbelieving gaze.

"I wouldn't trust that flute, Lana," he said slowly. His eyes had gone stormy again. "You shouldn't rely on a gift from a witch who never even told you that you could make up your own geas."

She felt strangely panicked. "But ... it was never meant to happen this way. I was just supposed to learn enough to make my living-herbs for sickness, for getting rid of babies or helping them along and the geas that could help. I was never supposed to learn them just to survive, not like this. How could she have known?" But maybe this was part of the game they had played, and Lana had very nearly lost.

He looked like he wanted to say something more, but finally he just nodded. "Just be careful, okay?" He opened up the book and began speaking, his tone positively academic. "So, the basic principles. You should think of it like, say, geometry. Do you know geometry?"

Lana nodded. Well, she had several years ago, and she wasn't about to make another admission of ignorance.

"So, geometry uses a series of statements, one directly relating to another known statement to prove something. Like..." He raised his finger and a small stream of water spurt from it, forming a straight line in the air in front of them. "A line is the shortest distance between two points. We make another line on the same plane," he drew a line above the first, "we have two lines that seemingly have no relationship to each other, right?"

Lana nodded tentatively. She was quickly realizing that she must have spent most of her time in class with Kohaku daydreaming about him and not actually paying attention to the lessons.

"But," Kai said, "what if we draw a line going through them both?" He squirted a vaguely diagonal line. "Now, take your book and go check to see which angles are less than the corner." Reluctantly, Lana stood up and measured the angles, trying not to get the book wet. Both of the angles on the left side were slightly smaller than the paper.

"If the angles on one side are both less than ninety degrees, that means that eventually, these two lines that you thought had nothing to do with each other will intersect on that side."

Kai waved his hand and the lines evaporated. He turned back to her, a smug little smile on his face.

"Okay, that was ... interesting, but I don't understand what it has to do with geas."

He sighed. "What I mean is that from one simple premise-a line is the shortest route between two points-we proved how two lines can intersect each other. And if I wanted, I could use that to prove more things. It's the same with a geas, only the fundamental principles are less obvious, and the logic behind many of them has been lost. Once you learn them, though, the process of constructing a geas is virtually the same."

Lana cracked open the tome and flipped to the relatively small section in back about death. "It carries a key of lead," read the first short postulate. She looked up at Kai.

"Everyone learns these?"

"Everyone who wants to master geas."

The book was very thick, and the type was very small. Even if she did commit each of these to memory, would it be enough? If she and Akua were still playing their game, would it at least give her a chance?

After a solid week of studying, she had only managed to memorize the first ten pages of postulates. She had decided to start with wind (alternatively known as air, storm, and-most disconcertinglylight), in some sort of defiant homage to its "gift" Often, she wanted to stop and relax, or at least complain loudly, but Kai had buried himself so deeply in his research that she sometimes felt he forgot her presence entirely. His discovery about Akua's flute had disturbed him. She knew it must have revived his earlier concerns about Lana having something to do with weakening the death spirit's bindings, but she didn't understand how the two could be related. He had told her that the flooding on her island had only been one of dozens of similarly inexplicable disasters throughout the islands. And though the threat was remote-the bindings had held for more than a thousand years, after all-the possibility of one of the three spirits breaking free had consumed him. She wanted to help, but given her ignorance on the subject, there wasn't much she could do. So, she bit her lip and trudged through the postulates, muttering them aloud to herself until she could be reasonably sure she'd remember them. "Even the wind can freeze," she repeated, feeling like a temple officiate at solstice. Why hadn't Akua taught her any of this? She didn't doubt that the witch knew every postulate in this book by heart. Quickly, Lana went to the next line. She couldn't stand to think of that for very long.

"Lana," Kai said suddenly, surprising her. "That witch, Akua ... did she frequently invoke death? Was it her affinity?"

"She's a healer!" Lana snapped. "She only ever bound the most minor death sprites, and even then a handful of times." She was distantly surprised at how defensive she felt.

Kai nodded, but he didn't stop looking at her, and she shifted uncomfortably. What had those ancient books told him?

She cleared her throat. "You don't believe me again?"

His eyes were the very clear crystal blue of his most analytical mood. "I think you must be forgetting something."

Almost involuntarily, she recalled the first night Akua took her to death temple at the center of the lake. What were Ino's words? She belongs to the water, not to that. Not to death.

"There was a death temple. She took me there ... twice."

She wanted to run away-from both the memory and the implications-but she knew that Kai would never let it go. He was a guardian. He would protect the islands, even from her.

"What did it look like?"

Lana took a shaky breath, acutely aware of the flute in her pocket. "Old. There was a hole in the center ... like a column of air."

He stood up so abruptly that some of his books splashed into the water. They didn't get wet, of course. He walked over to her and gripped her shoulders.

"Lana," he said, "I know you were young, and you didn't understand and she deliberately misled you, but you cannot continue to defend her. I don't know what she intended with you, I don't know how precisely she did it-but she must be responsible for the death."

She shook his hands off angrily. "I recited the geas, Kai. I accepted the sacrifice. What could Akua have to do with that? Without the flute I would have died months ago. Why would she set me up and then help save my life?"

"I don't know."

"Then stop accusing her!"

He seemed very lost, suddenly. "I'm not accusing you, keika."

She laughed. "Well, it's a short step, isn't it?"

He found her a few hours later, napping in her room.

"I won't apologize for trying to learn the truth," he said, without preamble when she opened her eyes. "But I promise I won't accuse Akua of anything until I'm sure."

"Okay," she said, rubbing her eyes. "I'm sorry I got so upset. It's just ... I can't believe..."

She couldn't believe that those four years of her life were some elaborate lie. That her mother might have even suspected and let Akua take her anyway. It was easier to ignore everything.

"I know," Kai said.

A month later the rains began. Even though her room had no roof, the rain ran off an invisible barrier before it reached her. At first it was fun to watch the rain without getting soaked to the skin, but the relentless pounding reminded her of those final months on her island when the mandagah fish were nearly wiped out and Kali fell victim to the flood. When Kai left for several days to check on remote parts of the shrine and make repairs on areas that might be damaged by the flooding, she felt practically oppressed by loneliness. She had grown so used to his presence; now not even the death, her grim companion for so long, could reach her. So, she started wandering around the seemingly endless, bizarre maze of rooms, streams, and passages that always led to places she had never been before. Even though she had lived here for over two months, she could still hardly fathom the kind of sprawling, massive place she had ventured into. She wondered what the fire shrine was like-she had heard that the wives were locked in a tall tower and never allowed to leave because of the constant volcanic eruptions. Before, she had thought the story ridiculous. Now, she was just grateful that she had never run into the fire guardian.

The second day of Kai's absence, she discovered a vine-ladder near her rooms that led to an entirely different section of the shrine. On one side of a forked bridge in this newfound area she saw a series of stairs. She took them, since she so rarely saw anything that led upwards. After five minutes of circular climbing, she arrived, to her surprise, on the roof, in an area that was not protected from the rain. She was about to sprint back downstairs when she realized that from right here she had a perfect view of the spirit gate. The dark blue stone monolith looked particularly magnificent in the rain, and she nearly forgot about the water soaking through her wings as she stared. The wind spirit had given her the wings of a dry-climate bird-when she was flying, she dislodged enough water to stay airborne, but it wasn't a good idea for her to stand still in this kind of a deluge. Inside the arch of the gate, a shape began to form. She watched curiously before she realized what it must be: the death staring at her, its empty hole of a mouth curved into a smile. She stumbled backwards onto the first step, but its voice caught her before she got away.

"You can't stay there forever," it said. "I know you, Lana. I know what you love, what you hate. I know what you don't know, and I know that you will leave. Will you be able to bind me then? Or have you grown soft with your lover?"

"He's not my lover," Lana said, absurdly. Before she could hear anything else, she rushed back down the steps.

Her mood turned much blacker after that, haunted by the death's words and her renewed awareness of its waiting presence. Her wings were heavy and waterlogged, which made walking a far more arduous task than usual. She wandered into a corridor much like the one where she slept-minimal water, as though it was designed for humans and not water guardians. At the end of the corridor she saw a wide gap in the wall, but no door to speak of. The opening led to a large room, decorated with old-fashioned furniture that was caked in dust. There were two doors inside, one that led to a water closet and the other that led to an inner chamber, complete with a small, deep pond and what looked like still-rumpled bedding. That, too, was caked with dust. Who had lived here? She walked to the far wall, where she thought she saw some odd discoloration in the stone. But it wasn't discoloration, she realized, but writing. Someone had taken a rusty object and actually scratched characters into the wall-quite a long time ago, judging by how much it had faded.

I, Hiapo bei'Polunu, wife of the water guardian, have been imprisoned here for ten years. Should anyone ever find this, please pray for myself and my son, for I do not think I shall be imprisoned for very much longer. I have seen him emerge from that pool too many times. Today my body shall meet him, but my soul will escape forever. Se maloka selama ua ola, ipa nui.

What lies beyond the gate, I do not know. The catechism still recited in the ancient dialect at the end of funeral services.

Someone giggled softly behind her. She whirled around, heart pounding, to see that a female water sprite had emerged from the pond. She was made entirely out of water, but each of her features was delicately defined. She sat in its center, smiling and touching the water invitingly.