The Firebird's Vengeance (51 page)

Call your mother. Call Bridget. She will hear you
.

Why did the ghosts tell her this? Mother’s name was Kaija and she was dead. They must be lying, trying to trick her as Father said. She must close her ears. She must focus on duty and obedience. She must not be persuaded by things that were false.

But why would these false ghosts come to her when her mother did not? Where was her mother to protect and guide them in this place?

And why were they speaking the same name Father had?

Our ancestors reside in Heaven with the gods
, Master Liaozhai said.
We are like the goldfish in the pond to them. When we pray or have need of instruction, they will descend into the Land of Death and Spirit to stand at the riverbank and touch our lives in its waters
. They had sat in the Moon Garden, watching the silver carp in their round, brown pond.

But sorcerers can walk in the Land of Death and Spirit
, Anna had pointed out.
Couldn’t I go there to speak with the ancestors?

Only in the gravest of emergencies. It is a reversal of the natural flow of the forces of the universe, and must not be undertaken lightly
.

But they were here already, and beset. Surely this was an emergency.

“Father,” she began carefully. She barely had breath left to speak. “Why don’t you …”

“Do not question me now, Daughter. I must concentrate. I feel … the river calls, but others call … I don’t understand …” Father lapsed into silence.

But why don’t you call Mother to help ward away the false ghosts?
asked Anna in her own mind. As soon as the thought of Mother came to her, she saw again the woman with the auburn hair and her companions in the boat, and she saw Mae Shan, who looked tired and frightened, and not at all like she was looking for revenge.

That is not Mother! shouted Anna to herself. Mother is Kaija Kalami, and she has blue eyes and black hair and she is living in Heaven with the gods, and she watches me as if I were a goldfish in a pond!

She strained her eyes, staring through the flashing, flying, turning, riotous images that surrounded her, that decked the evergreen, eternal forest and the crooked riverbanks.
Kaija!
she shouted in her mind.
Kaija Kalami! Mother!

But she only saw the stranger with Mae Shan, looking down the river, seeing her own destination, and then they were gone, and the river was empty again.

“Keep up, Daughter!” ordered Father.

“But I can’t see Mother!” she cried, tears stinging her eyes and sweat breaking out on her cold forehead. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t get enough air.

“Stop that nonsense!” His heavy hand cuffed the back of her head. Anna stumbled, stunned. No one had ever hit her, not Master Liaozhai, not the Minister of the North, not Mae Shan, no one. She couldn’t catch her breath for shame, and began to cough. Tears ran from her eyes, and where they fell, small flowers sprang up from the dirt.

Father didn’t look at her, he only tightened his grip on her hand and strode on.

“Something,” he muttered. “Someplace … we must leave here, or she will find us, don’t think, just walk, hurry, hurry … I feel it, I hear it, but where,
where?
”

Anna swallowed. She was busy worrying about lying ghosts and Mother when Father told her what was happening, and she was not attending to her duty. No wonder he’d gotten angry.

“I could try to see for you, Father …” she said meekly.

But Father did not seem to have heard her. “There!” he cried. “There! That is our way!”

Anna looked hard in the direction of Father’s gaze. She tried to focus, tried to shut out distraction, to relax her mind as she would open hand or an eye, and to only see what Father saw, and she looked …

… And she saw a path through the pines with their black trunks and their limbs endlessly swaying in the silent breeze. The path was dirt and it ran through the moss and pine needles to the riverbank. The river here was deep and swift, running with barely a ripple across its surface, and as she saw the surface, she saw past the surface and down to the stones and sand, and the stones and sand were person and place, as the river water was life and memory, and she saw a place of dim and flickering light, where the stone wall was stained with ancient blood and a wizened, half-naked man sat in the midst of the heat and red stone and called, and called.

Fear stabbed at Anna’s heart, and she tugged at her father’s hand. “No, Father, that isn’t …”

Father’s hand came down again, hitting her hard and making the whole world spin. He scooped her up into his arms and ran, jolting her with each step as the tears ran fast down her cheeks. She wanted to speak, wanted to warn him, but she was afraid.

He must see. He must know something, but we can’t be going there! That’s not Tuukos. It can’t be
.

But she did not dare speak. She did not want Father to think she was questioning him again. She did not want to earn another blow.

They reached the pebbly shore. Father stopped right at river’s edge, the toes of his boots just touching the rippling water. He set her down and she folded her hands and bowed her head, as she had done when Master Liaozhai was angry at her. She wanted to show him she was obedient and understood her duty perfectly so he would not be angry anymore.

But why could she not see Mother? The question would not leave her.

“You must lead me into the river,” Father said. “Here and now. I cannot go farther as myself anymore.”

“Yes, Father.” She took his hand, screwed up her courage, and walked forward into the river. It was not truly water. It was the route back to the living worlds, and it was dry and cool and dimmed the light of the Shifting Lands. As she walked and the world blurred, whispers began in her ears, telling secrets, lies, truths, nonsense, and deep sense. All the voices of life surrounded her, growing louder, growing stronger as the world around her grew darker. She could feel nothing under her feet, and the touch of Father’s hand melted away.

She tried to cry out but could not. Her footsteps faltered. She was blind and there were only the unintelligible voices around her.

But one voice called clearly. “Come. Come to me.”

The voice grated in Anna’s ears. It sounded wrong, although she could not have said how. She did not want to follow it, but she had nowhere else to go.

“Come. Come to me.”

She could feel Father inside her heart again. He did not speak with words, but she felt him urging her toward the voice. This was the way he intended her to go. It could not be wrong then. She must not think that.

Gulping back her fear and confusion, Anna followed the low, grating call.

Chapter Twenty

Sakra pushed himself up slowly from where he lay on the deck. Bridget did not look at him. She stared out at the river. The banks changed on either side, shrinking and shriveling until they were nothing but barren rock, grey and lifeless. The thin wind blew straight through her, but gave her no air to breathe. Shadows drifted across the green sky like clouds. They were being watched. She felt that through every pore in her skin.

She set her fear aside. She thought of Prathad and Richikha. She thought of Mikkel, Ananda, and the lord master Peshek who had known her parents and had come to stay at Vyshtavos for several weeks in the middle of winter to talk to her and help her get settled. She thought of Sakra, of walking with him and talking late into the night, of him teaching her the names of the Isavaltan stars and the plants in the gardens and the streets of the town.

But there was nothing. The boat drifted down the river as boats on real rivers did when there was no guiding hand.

She tried again. She thought of the woods and gardens she had seen, of laboring over the elementary language and reading lessons Mistress Urshila set her and how she had struggled through them, sometimes late into the night, furious at her teacher for treating her like a child, and furious at herself for not being a better student.

Where are you?
she thought to the whole world.

But the world did not answer. Another shadow scudded overhead. Something hunched and grey scuttled behind the rocks.

The woman was talking to Sakra, low and tense. Anger and fear warred with each other in her features. She tried to struggle to her feet, but the rocking motion of the boat robbed her of what little balance she had and she fell panting and coughing into the bottom. However long she had been here, it was too long. Her lungs were feeling the lack of air and her strength would soon ebb.

Sakra touched her arm, and said something else in her language.

“I will try to find what is left of the spell here to guide us,” he told Bridget, but his words and breathing were heavy.

Bridget bit her lip. She scanned the banks, searching for some sign. Stretching out with her sight to see past the jumble of grey stone. There had to be something. Something real and true she could see in this mist of illusions. There had to be.

On the right bank she saw the mirror image of the woman crouched beside her. She leaned heavily on her spear, and held out her hand, beckoning wearily.

On the right bank, she saw a withered, brown man with a great, ragged hole in his sunken chest. He grinned at her as if she were the funniest joke he’d ever seen. She saw other forms, indistinct and fleeting, behind and between the rocks. They watched and they waited. She could not see them, oh, no, not even with her vaunted, precious eyes, but they could see her quite well, her and Sakra and this stranger she had thought she was saving.

Something flashed overhead. Bridget winced, but did not look up. She dropped her gaze to the river water, willing herself to remember, to think only of Isavalta, but fear already nibbled at the back of her mind, and the knowledge that she had failed began to burrow into her heart. She felt Sakra’s magic writhing fretfully beside her like a sleeper caught in a nightmare, but it could not take form.

Again something flashed, in front of her this time, above the horizon, like a bird gliding above the waters. Bridget turned her mind inward, trying not to see. There was nothing to see. Mistress Urshila had been right. She had trusted too much to her eyes. She did not have enough learning. She had forgotten what little she had known and she had lost them. Lost Sakra, lost herself, lost this poor stranger and was trying to sift truth from illusion as if it were gold dust mixed in sawdust, not willing to believe, even now, it simply wasn’t there.

The woman spoke, Sakra answered, his magic stirred again, and fell still.

Flash. A shining form swooped over the river. A bird. A gull, but not a living gull. The bird wheeled closer, and Bridget saw it was a creature of crystal. Each feather was perfectly shaped from glass. It was a beautiful thing to watch as it dipped and dove, and rose again to circle overhead.

Stop, Bridget. Stop
. She squeezed her eyes shut.
It’s another trick. It wants you to follow it
.

The woman was speaking again. Her words coming in gasps. Bridget’s eyes snapped open. The crystalline gull had landed on the prow of the boat. Sakra had planted both hands on the bench and was trying to heave himself to his feet.

The gull was clear glass with smoked glass on the cap of its head and the tips of its pinions. She could see the river right through the heart of it, blurred and distorted, green and brown and grey and white. Its eyes were onyx beads, and it looked at her first through one and then the other, and Bridget felt her mind stir, and a sensation — part inspiration, part power — unfolded, stretched, turned, and wheeled.

The gull opened its beak and threw back its head in soundless cry and launched itself into the air.

“Urshila.” Bridget lifted her hands away from the gunwales so she could shade her eyes and watch the flight of the crystalline bird as it turned overhead.

“What?” gasped Sakra.

“It is. It’s her. She’s come to show us the way home.”

“Bridget, do you see her?”

“No.” She shook her head, grinning absurdly. “She’s shown me. Sakra, please, trust in this.”

Sakra only looked defeated. “We have no other choice.”

Bridget clambered back to the steering oar and gripped the smooth wood again. Her skin seemed extra sensitive. She could feel each line of the grain beneath her palm. She turned her gaze overhead, catching hold of the glass seagull with her eyes and held it, willing her mind’s eye open for whatever it had to show her.

The gull hovered motionless for one moment, glinting in the clear green sky, and then folded its wings and dove fearlessly into the river depths, and with mind, sight, and soul, Bridget followed.

It was like plunging into a thick pool. The world went mossy green, then brown flecked with gold, then black, and with her mind’s eye wide open, she saw the gull leading them on.

And she saw Mistress Urshila cold and dead on a flagstone floor.

And she saw Valin Kalami standing before the Old Witch, Baba Yaga.

And she saw the woman, the stranger in the boat, but she was running through streets filled with smoke and ash, clutching a young girl to her, and the girl had black hair and green eyes, and Bridget knew the child with all her heart.

And then the world opened up around them, and the prow of the boat slapped hard against a wave that sent up a shock of salt spray, and a thick, honest wind filled with the smell of salt blew Bridget’s tousled hair forward over her face and caught the sail, snapping the canvas out and singing through the lines. Ahead, breakers roared against a sandy beach that rose to form an island of winter-grey stone and spring-green forests.

Bridget grabbed hold of the steering oar, relief making her weak as water, and only instinct putting her hand to the line to haul the sail down before the wind drove them straight into the breakers.

They were in the living world and they themselves were alive and all of them dragging in great gulps of rich salt air.

But wherever they were, it was not Isavalta.