27. The Heart of the Whirlwind (Vaye)¶
The bell hung overhead like an iron cudgel, suspended from the domed ceiling on thick chains. Each link was the size of Vaye’s forearm, yet the chain still didn’t look strong enough. The colossal black tube drank up every wisp of light that drifted in from the dome’s tiny windows. She couldn’t stop imagining what would happen if it fell, the sound it would make as it smashed her into paste.
The School’s vast entry hall was a dramatic venue for the Quartertrial, a test to determine who would be allowed to continue training and who would be kicked out. Their class had already shrunk considerably in the four months since Vaye had arrived. Some had departed due to injury, some had been asked to leave, and some had just given up. Two novitiates had been selected to become Orumir. They were both from old Sarmalan families, their piety making up for the talent they lacked. Adranaya claimed it was a huge honor, but Vaye didn’t see anyone else angling to flunk.
Vaye knelt facing Adranaya on a woven mat, surrounded by their group. Thankfully, the novitiates had been allowed to select their own partners for the Quartertrial. Creating a flowtree required a lot of trust, and it was possible to permanently injure each other in the process. Vaye didn’t know what she would have done if she had been forced to work with Hainzu.
Behind Adranaya, Preceptor Jovadão and two assistant instructors watched impassively, framed by the monumental, witchglass-infused tapestry on the wall. The act of connecting to another person via thorns was informally known as “pinning”, a metaphor Vaye found especially unnerving given the frog dissections they’d done earlier in the semester.
Adranaya winced as Vaye slid a thorn into her forehead. “Sorry,” she murmured.
“It’s nothing,” Adra said reassuringly. “You’re doing great.”
Vaye tried to smile and failed. Her hands were trembling, making it difficult to hold the thorns. The witchglass peljak, a rough copy of the ones the Sihiri wore, felt heavy and awkward on her shoulders. She was grateful that it was Jovadão monitoring her group rather than Yobaza, but the scrutiny was still nerve-wracking.
She blinked and tried to focus. Being this close to Adranaya, where she could catch intoxicating whiffs of the Sarmalan’s hair and occasional glimpses down her tunic, wasn’t helping her concentrate. She had never felt as close to anyone as she did to Adranaya and Gadarien, had never dared share as much of herself. But the real distraction was the promise of what they might have together, if Vaye would only let it happen.
Adranaya cleared her throat softly and Vaye realized she’d been staring. She pressed her lips together and dipped the back of her final thorn into the tiny cup of her own blood. The witchglass sucked up the liquid greedily, giving the point a milky hue. It was odd how witchglass bleached the color of blood away, as though stripping it of life. She sealed the tiny droplet in place and willed the point to harden. “Okay,” she said. “Last one.”
Adranaya smiled encouragingly. Vaye found the part in Adranaya’s hair—smooth and glossy as always, damn her—and felt along the meridian, sensing the subtle pulses of energy coursing through it. She closed her eyes, visualizing the correct angle, the optimal speed of entry. Then, trying to hold onto her imaginary Balance Point, she slid the thorn in, precisely mirroring the one she had placed in her own scalp.
“Wow,” Adranaya said, leaning back and exhaling through pursed lips. “That feels weird.”
Vaye studied the hum of their connection. Subtle spiderwebs of viriyeshet shimmered in the air between their corresponding thorns. Adranaya’s sensations were mapped to Vaye’s, allowing her to feel an echo of her friend’s every movement. The Sarmalan shifted, creating a flood of sensation that sent warm flutters into Vaye’s belly. Although she didn’t wear most of her witchglass at School, it seemed Adranaya had a hidden piercing in a very intimate place.
The Sarmalan grinned wickedly, realizing what Vaye had noticed. Vaye glanced up at Jovadão and flushed. “Stop distracting me,” she murmured, attempting to keep her pulse in check.
Pinning was an inherently intimate act, a penetration not just of flesh but of some intangible life force. The first time Gadarien had pinned Vaye, the sudden flood of intimacy had felt like an assault, as though he had stuffed his entire personality into her mind (and Gadarien had a big personality). She’d been forced to resort to Kravadi breathing forms to keep her panic in check. Eventually, she’d gotten more used to the sensation, and had even come to enjoy it when she was able to relax. Each connection carried a different emotional flavor: Gadarien felt powerful and restless and electric, while Adranaya was softer, vibrant and creative and warm.
But although they had gotten used to pinning and being pinned, they hadn’t yet attempted to connect so many thorns at once. The Quartertrial was as close to a true flowtree as they had ever gotten, and they were doing it for the very first time in front of their instructor. And all that was before they attempted to create a whirlwind.
Adranaya rose and sat next to Gadarien, who Vaye had already pinned. As the two of them meditated and drew further into balance, the connections solidified, vibrating like plucked strings. The other four novitiates who would fill out the flowtree sat patiently behind Gadarien and Adranaya. Vaye was now done with her part, but she had to maintain the thread of connection, which meant staying close to her own Balance Point. She glanced apprehensively at the pile of glittering dust behind her, then stood on one foot and closed her eyes, her other leg tucked against her thigh. Others thought it odd, but she’d always found that acts of physical balance helped her maintain focus.
Sensing some unspoken cue, she opened her eyes. Gadarien and Adranaya were looking at her, their pupils dilated wide. She probed the connection, then nodded, hoping it was stable enough. They each turned and began pinning the novitiates behind them.
The simplest flowtree was a binary split, each person pinning two people below them. The structure dictated the exact number of connections: three, seven, eleven, and so on. Advanced stormshapers were capable of more complexity, and in the field, flowtrees were adjusted based on each member’s abilities and duties. Privately, Vaye thought she could handle more, but she was content to keep things simple while Jovadão was watching.
She closed her eyes again, using Gadarien’s listening trick and opening herself to the sounds of the room, each breath the other novitiates took, each small movement as Adranaya and Gadarien placed their thorns. As her mind stilled and new thorns were added to the structure, the secondary connections grew more distinct, mapping her limbs to everyone below her. Her focus shrank and the rest of the world receded, leaving only the flowtree, like a skeleton stripped of flesh. She couldn’t directly control the movements of the other novitiates, but she had a kind of influence, as though she could tug on the threads and guide their actions. Gadarien and Adranaya acted as intermediaries, the midpoints of the intangible strings. The recipients of the guidance had to accept it, though. It was impossible to force another person to move against their will.
Unless, apparently, you were one of Grandmother’s favorites.
Vaye still didn’t understand what had happened in the clinic. Her conversation with Grandmother had somehow gotten off-track and she hadn’t gotten another chance to ask about it. The Preceptors and texts all agreed that what she’d done was impossible for normal people. Only a once-in-a-generation Apogee like the Vorkyrda could do so, and only with great effort. Someone like Vaye had no business even thinking about it. Yet it had happened.
“Vaye,” Jovadão said, not for the first time. She opened her eyes with a start. Adranaya and Gadarien were staring at her, as were Jovadão and all the other novitiates. “Are you ready?” the Preceptor said.
She nodded crisply, pretending she had been ignoring him on purpose. The novitiates formed a circle around the pile of sparkling witchglass shards. The pieces were tiny, feather-light, and shifted easily with every gust. Clinging to the Balance Point, Vaye stepped back into a half-moon stance, and the rest of her flowtree moved with her, linked together like a single machine. She paused to synchronize their breathing, feeling their lungs expand and contract with hers.
Holding one edge of her peljak, she lifted her right arm and willed the half-cape to stiffen into a fan. She proceeded cautiously, afraid of pushing the connection too hard, but her own facility with witchglass seemed to propagate to her group through the flowtree, which was a welcome surprise. Their peljaki snapped into precise shape.
She focused on her senses, observing the cold, smooth tiles under her bare feet, the rustle of fabric, the sound of the flowtree’s exhalations, the subtle glow of the whites of their eyes. The air itself was a sculpture in her hands, a complex dance of whorls and eddies. She perceived it without seeing it, almost like her sense of balance. Threads of ephemeral light flickered in a shifting geometry between their bodies, linking thorn to thorn.
It was glorious. She wanted to laugh, or perhaps weep, but wrestled back her joy, knowing that unfettered emotion could kick them all out of balance. Jovadão observed her restraint and nodded approvingly from across the circle. He had warned them that the flowtree was intoxicating, but she hadn’t realized he’d meant it so literally.
Taking one final breath to crystallize her focus, Vaye began the whirlwind maneuver, which was an entry-level approximation of the Teshkasir the Vorkyrda wielded. They’d studied the theory and practiced the individual components of the rite, but hadn’t been given the opportunity to put it all together until now. It seemed fair, but Jovadão had said that the ability to improvise under pressure was part of the test.
She scooped the air with her peljak, pushing it toward the next novitiate in the circle, who added to its speed, hustling it around the circle. As the artificial wind began to swirl, Vaye adjusted the motions of the flowtree and changed the shape of the fans, curving or straightening them with the speed of thought. A spiraling current took shape. Parts of it broke off and dissipated, but enough energy remained to lift the edges of the dust pile.
The particles rolled inward into a glittering column before thinning to a narrow cylinder that widened and faded at the top. Vaye sensed the edges of the structure and instinctively knew how to command it, how to pull the errant vortices back in and absorb their speed. She understood it the same way that she understood the structure of witchglass, a knowledge as thoughtless as breathing.
The feeling of rapture returned, and this time she was too focused on her technique to push it away. Not that she wanted to. Her flowtree became a pure vessel of her will, freeing her from the limitations of her frail body. She poured effort into the vortex, demanding that it rise higher, spin faster. A thin line of dust rose up in the center like a spear, somehow spinning the opposite direction of the rest. Dimly, she sensed the other novitiates beginning to tire as she approached the physical limits of their minds and bodies, but it was a muted background to the fierce joy suffusing her.
She heard voices, but they were muted and inconsequential. The whirlwind had begun to produce a keening wail, and she laughed along with it. The tip of the spear reached higher, until finally it caressed the great bell, which started to vibrate, adding its own low rumble to the cacophony. The bell began to swing on its chains, the wind layering energy upon each slight movement, the resonance growing louder and louder. Jovadão shouted something, but she couldn’t hear him, nor did she much care. What was his shouting compared to the storm in her veins?
Her rapture ended with a fierce stab of pain behind her eyes and a sense of the floor being pulled out from under her. She staggered, darkness constricting her vision from all sides, and fell to all fours.
When her vision cleared and she looked up, a rain of witchglass was floating down in a wide circle all around her. It formed a glittering blanket on the floor and the other novitiates, all of whom who lay moaning on the ground. Jovadão stood above her, a bloody thorn pinched between his fingers and an angry scowl on his face.
“Looks like you passed,” he growled, brushing the witchglass off his bald head. He glanced at the bell, which was still emitting an ominous hum as it swung on its chains. “Now clean this shit up, and then we’re going to have a little chat about controlling your emotions.”
Beta Readers: Click the that appears beside any paragraph to leave a comment. You're already signed in — no extra account needed.
Your comments are private — only you and the author can see them, and you can edit or delete them at any time.