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THE SINGER
The source, Singing City, Pechacan, Empire of Songs
The song is life and wealth and bounty from the earth. The song is courage in childbirth, strength in war, cleverness in creation.
The song lifts us and binds us, as beautiful and inevitable as my brother, the Great Star, in his endless cycle of appearances at dawn and dusk, and his regular absences to do battle with the lords of the Underworld.
As the Great Star always returns on the appointed place in the calendar, victorious as he rises from the depths to watch over us once more, so the song cannot, does not, falter. For the song is mine and I am its Singer. I take strength from my brother, and I give strength to him. Between us, we bring the earth into harmony.
And today, on the Great Star’s 118th appearance at dawn, I enter the eleventh year of my reign. All you Singers who have gone before, you holy Setatmeh who send the rains that bring the crops to fruition, see me wax into my power and know that you are honoured. My song is but an extension of yours, my glory but a shadow of the glories you achieved.
Soon, all Ixachipan will be ours.
Soon, it will be time to awaken the world spirit.
For I am the Singer, and this is my will.
XESSA
The Swift Water, below Sky City, Malel, Tokoban
118th day of the Great Star at morning
They said that the Drowned were the souls of the dead, angry that the living still walked beneath the sun, still breathed the air and ate the good food of the land. They said that this anger made them vicious and desperate, and that they sang to lure the living into death with them.
They said the Drowned were the ancient spirits of the land displaced by the Tokob people, who were the first children brought into being by Malel, and that the Drowned were slowly reclaiming the world for themselves, one life at a time.
They said the Drowned were those who had died of grief or betrayal, that their hurt was so great they clung to life in another form, their bodies as twisted and ruined as their hearts had been. That they would stop taking people if only they were loved. That their songs were laments.
And they said the Drowned were another branch of life, like the great jaguar and the tiny chulul – the same but different. That they were trying to communicate, and meant no harm, but their songs were irresistible. That they ate what they caught because it was in their nature to do so.
So many tales. Xessa had grown up with the myths and legends of the Drowned, the theories of Tokob historians and shamans and storytellers. She thought the stories were the biggest pile of steaming monkey shit she’d ever read.
Whatever they were or might be, one thing was certain: the Drowned were somehow linked to the vast, sprawling Empire of Songs that these days covered almost all of Ixachipan. To the Pechaqueh of the Empire, the Drowned were sacred, and that said all Xessa needed to know about that people and the lies they told of peace under one Empire, one ruler.
She cleared her mind of thoughts of the war against the Empire to focus on the battle to come. She’d left Toxte, another eja and her duty partner, in the water temple further uphill, ready to begin turning the water screw once she had the pipe in the river and connected the turning rods. The pipe’s hard rubber coating bore fresh claw marks; a Drowned had tried to destroy it during the night. When they succeeded, they smashed the wooden scoops of the screw that lifted water uphill, forcing ejab like Xessa to risk proximity to the water to fix them.
Xessa squatted on her heels, bare toes dug into rich loam, her spear in the crook of an elbow, and studied the river’s edge. A warm breeze tickled beneath her salt-cotton armour and the bamboo scales stitched over it; she ignored it, ignored too the flash of a bright bird whirring from the trees on the slope below, ignored everything but the water before her and the earth beneath her.
Her dog, Ossa, hadn’t signalled; there was no other danger she needed to be aware of. Just the Drowned, then. Xessa’s smile was grim. That was still more than enough for one eja and her spear.
Xessa ran her tongue around her gums and eased forward, dropping her knee into the soil and releasing a spike of scent – rich rotting things, moist earth, life. She ignored it the way she’d ignored the bird. The spear slipped from her elbow down her forearm to slap comfortably into her palm, warm and ready and lethal. Her movement didn’t cause movement in response; there was no explosion of water, of snapping teeth and clawing fingers and long, black talons. The edge of the river was six strides away and seemed serene, innocent. Xessa knew better. She’d known better all her life; all the life she’d lived for this moment, all the training, the hardships.
Water was life and breath and plenty, and water was death and pain and fear, held in a balance like day and night, sun and moon. Xessa was a thief, stealing from the balance without offering anything in return except her sweat, her fear, her blood. One day, perhaps, her life. It was a fair trade for the lives of her people and the refugees from Yalotlan, fleeing the Empire’s endless ravening.
Eja, the ancient Tokob word for snake: patient, cunning, and resourceful. Her brothers and sisters; her kin. Ejab walked the snake path, winding and oblique, stillness into movement without hesitation. The strike and recoil, faster than blinking. The life-and-death dance of sacred harmony, the balance made flesh.
With a snake’s patience, Xessa eased herself onto her feet to approach the river when a double thump like a heartbeat shivered up through the soles of her bare feet and something black flashed in the corner of her eye.
Ossa. She took four rapid steps away from the river before looking. The dog jumped again, landing back feet, front feet, the impact on the hard earth easily missed were it not for her acute focus. She raised her arm, palm forward, requesting information. If she hadn’t seen him, his next action would have been to race towards her and grab her by one padded sleeve, but now he merely pointed his nose and Xessa followed his gaze to the burnt-back ground on the other side of the river.
A spotted cat, its ears back, padding slowly down to the river’s edge, wariness in every smooth, lethal line of its beautiful body. It paid her no attention, its gaze fixed unwaveringly on the water, as alert to its danger as she was. Xessa clicked her tongue twice and Ossa raced to her side. She scratched behind his big ears, tapped his nose once so he looked up at her, and then gestured in a wide circle. The dog bounded away, on the alert again for more danger.
The cat knew she was there, so it was unlikely it would attempt to skirt the edge of the river to get into the fields and orchards and lie in wait. They’d lost four farmers this planting already and there were more cats than ever coming to drink, coming to stare at the fields and livestock and people, their eyes hungry and patient and so very dangerous as they tracked the crowds of hollow-cheeked Yaloh who’d fled the warriors of the Empire of Songs.
Nerves pinched Xessa’s belly as she moved slowly back to the water’s edge, scanning its surface, the spear ready and the net hanging from the back of her belt. The Drowned had two targets now, both armed, both dangerous. Even as she thought it, one’s head broke the surface. Mottled brown and green like the riverbed, thin ribbons of hair on its head like weed, it stretched a clawed hand towards Xessa and opened its mouth.
Xessa knew it was singing; all the Drowned sang and all their songs were lethal, an irresistible lure to any human who heard it. Like nectar to a hummingbird, the Drowned’s song was the sound of life itself, or so those with hearing said. When they sang, people walked straight into their embrace, going to death like a lover to their partner’s bed, and with less regret.