55. Stolen Desires (Adranaya)¶
Adra knelt over Vaye, trying to keep the Anashi’s head from hitting the ground as she thrashed and moaned. She awoke suddenly, jerking upright and almost colliding with Adra before grimacing and gripping her skull, hissing in pain.
“Slowly, slowly!” Adra said, easing her back down. “You fell and hit your head.” She kept her voice calm, not betraying how worried she’d been. She had never seen someone react to an injury that way.
“And you were making weird sounds, like an angry skunk,” Gadarien added. Adranaya shot him a glance of annoyance, and he managed to look contrite.
Vaye wiped some drool from the side of her mouth, blinking rapidly. “The Siphon,” she said. She focused on Gadarien. “I know how to make it.”
He wrinkled his brow. “You hit your head and learned how to make the Siphon?”
“When I touched the bones, they sent me into some kind of dream, almost like a memory. I can’t explain it, but I’m certain that I understand the technique.”
“Are you sure you’re all right?” Adra said. Vaye still looked a bit green.
The Anashi nodded, then grimaced, clutching her head. But she looked better when she sat up, wiping her mouth. “I need to stay in here to make it. I think the bones are helping channel the flowstream. Can you bring me the witchglass from my pack?” She looked at the bones askance. “And remind me never to touch those things again.”
Gadarien stood, looking around at the glowing skeletons. “Well, I guess it’s not any crazier than the rest of this.”
An hour later, Vaye emerged from the tunnel with the Siphon, which resembled an oversized necklace. Three intimidatingly-large thorns were strung along a loop of witchglass thread, separated by about a body-length of space. The thorns had the familiar elongated-teardrop shape as the ones at School, but their points were so fine that they seemed to vanish into empty air.
“What next, Preceptor?” Gadarien said. His voice had a bright edge, like a newly-sharpened knife.
“We meditate and enter the balance trance,” Vaye said. “The mechanics are pretty simple, although the meridian placements are very precise. You can only derive the rhythm and timing from the exact physical layout of the page—a translation wouldn’t work. But otherwise, it’s like we did at School. We pin each other like we would for a flowtree, except the last person pins the first person, closing the loop. The tip of the tree connects back to the root.”
Gadarien frowned. “Didn’t the Preceptors tell us to never, ever do that?”
“Yeah, there was a story about some novitiates who tried it,” Adra added. “Supposedly one of them killed the other three and then jumped off the wall of the Velhade.”
“This is different. We have the Siphon,” Vaye said. “The spell says it will open the pathways. Also, we have, um… intimate knowledge of each other.”
“The spell mentions that?” Adra asked. She didn’t want to make Vaye feel any more self-conscious, but she couldn’t help but share Gadarien’s skepticism.
“It says we have to ‘know each other in body and mind’, although the word ‘know’ in High Anashic has several translations,” Vaye said. “In this case, I think it means ‘trust’. The page says our minds have to be open to each other so the ‘light of truth’ can flow unobstructed. Any secrets or distrust will cause blockages. It’s the blockages that are the problem, not the spell itself.”
“So that’s it?” Gadarien said. “We pin each other in a circle, and if we trust each other, we’re good?”
Vaye smiled brightly and nodded, saying nothing.
Adra and Gadarien shared an uneasy glance. Adra had plenty of her own secrets, but their lives were on the line, and her patience was starting to wear thin. “It can’t be that easy,” Gadarien said. “What aren’t you telling us?”
Vaye swallowed. “Well, the Siphon process might be just a little, tiny bit... uncomfortable.”
“Ah,” Gadarien said. “Horrific suffering. Got it.”
“And we might end up paralyzed,” Vaye added. Inexplicably, she looked like she was trying not to laugh, even while looking stricken.
“Off to a great start with the trust, Vaye,” Adra said. “Why couldn’t you just tell us this before?”
“When? In the fucking grotto?” Vaye snapped, her own patience clearly frayed. “Would it have made a difference? You both knew this would be dangerous. Telling you the details, so you could be as scared as I am—would that have helped?”
“Look,” Gadarien said placatingly, raising his hands. “We have to trust each other, right? So let’s start now. No more secrets.”
Vaye pressed her lips together and nodded, choking down her frustration. “Okay.”
“And you didn’t have to carry all that fear alone,” Adra said, laying her hand on Vaye’s forearm. “We’re supposed to help each other.”
Vaye slid her hand over Adra’s. “I know. I’m sorry.” She wiped her nose and sat down on the sand. “I guess I should start. I told you about what happened in Edeweri, that Grandmother had warned me about the disaster. But I didn’t tell you that I still talk to her. Not just in dreams, but...” She met Gadarien’s grim look. “Remember when you wanted to smoke nownow with me, and I told you that it does strange things to me?”
“I remember,” he said.
“That was a bit of an understatement.” She cleared her throat. “Nownow gives me a direct line to Grandmother. She takes me to a dream world, a clearing in the woods, and we talk. Sometimes she gives me gifts.”
Adra frowned. As fantastical as it sounded, it was clear that the Anashi believed what she was saying. Even if it was all a figment of Vaye’s imagination, they needed to understand what it was doing to her. “What kind of gifts?” Adra said.
Vaye stared at the ground, drawing idle figures in the sand. “Special powers, like new skills. It hurts when she does it, and sometimes I don’t remember what the gift was supposed to be.” She hesitated. “One time, after I talked to her, I started learning languages really quickly.”
Gadarien’s eyes widened, and he sat back, rubbing his jaw. Vaye continued. “Another time, I think she...” Her eyes flicked up then back down. “I think she gave me the ability to enter other peoples’ minds without their consent.”
“Not even Apogees can do that,” Gadarien said.
“Yeah, well, tell that to the guy I forced to stab himself in the face,” Vaye said quietly.
“Mother of Dawn,” Adra said softly. There was no denying that Vaye had strange abilities, like when she had almost brought down the School’s bell, or Healed that old man. Could Grandmother actually be real? And if She was, did that mean the darker legends about Her were real as well?
“What does Grandmother want in return for these gifts?” Gadarien said.
Vaye looked startled, as though the idea that Grandmother might consider it an exchange hadn’t occurred to her. “It’s not like that,” she said, a bit defensively.
“So she hasn’t asked you to do anything?” Gadarien said. “In all the stories, the gods always make demands of people.”
“I...” Vaye stared at the candle flame. “I’m not supposed to talk about it.”
Adra leaned forward. “Vaye, you said we have to trust each other, or the spell might kill us. So trust us.”
Vaye chewed her lip, then finally nodded. “Okay. Anashim have a holy duty called the Tashiya, which means ‘resurrection’—the resurrection of Grandmother. It’s a closely-guarded secret, since, you know, everyone thinks we created Grandmother to destroy civilization. But we really just want to reclaim our home and our place in the world. I think the reason Grandmother speaks to me, the reason she’s been giving me these gifts, is because she thinks I can bring her back.”
They were all silent until Gadarien cleared his throat. “So, is that your plan? To bring her back?”
“It was,” Vaye admitted. “Or, not so much a plan as a goal. But I’m not sure anymore. Sometimes lately, I wonder...”
“If it’s a good idea?” Adra said. Vaye nodded, looking down at the sand again.
“Well, I’m not sure how to follow that,” Gadarien said, trying to lighten the mood. This time, Adra was grateful. What sunlight had filtered into the cave from above was quickly fading, and Adra couldn’t help but feel that Vaye’s confession had given birth to that darkness.
“I’ll go next, then,” Adra said, to dispel the silence. It was time, finally, for them to know the truth.
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