Vessel by Sarah Beth Durst
Hearing birds, she opened her eyes.
The amphitheatre was around her, rising out of the desert sands, exactly as she’d pictured it. But it was empty. Wind blew across the steps.
“Summon the gods,” Jarlath said. “Dance.”
Liyana spread her arms wide and imagined she was sending her voice across the sands. “Ebuci o nanda wadi. Ebuci o yenda. Vessa oenda nasa we.” She repeated it. And then she began to dance. Spinning, she heard bells—the silver bells were again in her hair. She twisted and twirled in silence.
Drums began. Steady as a heartbeat.
A syncopated rhythm joined it.
She danced faster, her arms swirling with the rhythm, her feet pounding to the heart drum. A melody soared above. Pia was singing, she realized. And Fennik and Raan were drumming. Jarlath spoke the words as Liyana danced. “Ebuci o nanda wadi. Ebuci o yenda. Vessa oenda nasa we!”
All of a sudden the drums fell silent, and the melody ceased. Liyana stopped dancing. Around her and Jarlath, the amphitheatre was filled with gods.
Some of the deities shone like soft moonlight. Others blazed. Above them the light shifted and waved like an aurora. Liyana saw that the sky had darkened to a deep blue.
One of the goddesses lifted her hand, and the birds fell silent. All eyes fixed on Liyana. She felt her throat go dry, as if it had never known moisture. The eyes of the deities burned her. Liyana tried to find the words, or perhaps a story. . . . Her mind felt blank.
Jarlath laid his hand on her shoulder. “Perhaps this is why I am here,” he said. He walked past her and stood in front of the gods and goddesses. His face was as calm as stone. He raised his voice. “Deities of the desert, children of the children of the turtle, I am not your enemy.”
He talked, and the words flowed out of him like water from a stream. He told them of families whose fields had died, whose children with hungry eyes were thin as sticks, whose parents had to choose who to save. He told of the desperation and the terrible hope that drove him with his army into the desert. And he told the story of his parents’ deaths. “We came to the desert to find life, not death. Yet now my people are killing and dying on the desert sands. Please, you must end this. Save us from the sky serpents and one another.”
One god rose. His eyes gleamed like stars against his night black skin. “Your words are eloquent, and we are not deaf to your plea. But we in the Dreaming cannot affect the world of the living no matter how much we may wish it. Indeed, that is the purpose of vessels. Only from within a vessel can our magic touch the world.”
A goddess whose hair wound in coils to her feet spoke next. “Already there are several deities with vessels in the desert, and they are ineffective to halt the slaughter. I do not know what you expect us to do without vessels.”
Others nodded in agreement.
Liyana touched Jarlath on the shoulder as he began to speak. “And this is why I am here,” she said. She raised her voice. “Once, there was a desert girl who saved her goddess. . . .” She told them how Bayla had entered her but Liyana hadn’t left. She told them how they had worked magic together—and how the power was amplified when conducted through a human mind. “And that was with only one deity inside. Add more . . .” She told them about Mulaf.
Gasps and whispers spread through the deities. Many did not believe her. Others suspected exaggeration. Only a few thought it could be truth. She scanned the amphitheatre, trying to spot the gods who had been inside Mulaf. She doubted they’d remained in his body once the lake water had forced him to leave.
“If you don’t believe her, ask Mulaf,” Jarlath said.
“Bring him before us,” one of the gods commanded.
Pia vanished for an instant. When she reappeared, Mulaf was with her. He blinked at the assembly of deities. “You!” He pointed. “Filthy parasites! Plague upon our world!” He spat on the ground before them.
“You will tell us of your experience—” one god began.
“I will tell you nothing!”
Pia vanished and reappeared again, this time with a woman.
The woman was as lovely as a bird, with a delicate face and soft hair that flowed over her shoulders. She stepped in front of Mulaf, and all his rage drained away to be replaced by naked anguish. Her hand touched Mulaf’s cheek, and he let out an inarticulate cry, like a small animal in pain.
“I would have avenged you, Serra,” Mulaf said.
Gently Serra said, “I never needed to be avenged. I went willingly into death.”
He looked as if she had stabbed him. “But . . . you had no choice.”
Her smile was sad. “There is always choice. I wanted to help our people. I believed, as did we all, that the death of the vessel was the only way.” She cupped her hands around his face and leaned her forehead against his. “My love, you have caused much pain in my name. I do not know if I can forgive you for what you have done or for what you almost did.” Her voice was as hard as her face was sweet.
Liyana put her hand on the woman’s shoulder. “He can begin to make amends right now. He must tell the gods how he nearly destroyed the lake.”
“Tell them, my love,” Serra said, still cradling his face in her hands.
He yanked away as if her touch hurt him. “Do not ask this of me! Please, Serra. . . . These parasites caused your death. Needlessly!”
Liyana spoke again. “Once the truth is known, no vessel will ever need to choose to die. Gods will never again freely walk the world in a stolen body. Isn’t that a kind of revenge?”
She saw the emotions play across his face.
She pushed harder. “Besides, doesn’t your story deserve to be told?”
“Indeed, it does.” Mulaf faced the assembly of deities. He pointed to six of them. “You, you, you, you, you, and you . . . I captured you inside of me.” He went on to describe how he had trapped them in false vessels, summoned them into his body, controlled them, and then used them. “Their power was combined and then magnified through me. Speak the truth to your fellow parasites!”
One by one, the six humiliated deities, including Somayo of the Falcon Clan, whose statue Liyana had held and not broken, confirmed his story with hatred in their eyes for how they had been used. After they sank into their seats again, Mulaf clasped Serra’s hands to his chest. “Now can you forgive me?”
She removed her hands. “With time. Perhaps.”
“It is fortunate, then, that we have eternity.”
Pia tapped Mulaf’s shoulder and he disappeared. Serra vanished as well.
“So here’s the trick,” Liyana said to the deities. She hoped Korbyn would approve of what she was about to do. She thought he would. “I return to my body. All of you come with me. And through me, we end this.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Liyana took Jarlath’s hand. “You are coming with me.”
He raised her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles. “My body is dead. I cannot.”
“You do not say no to the girl with the deities.” She wrapped her arms around his waist and then yanked him off-balance. Together, they fell into the pool of water.
Light swirled around her. Colors sparkled, shifting as they shimmered. She imagined the feel of her skin, the shape of her body, the throb of blood pulsing through her veins, and the rush of air into her lungs. It was the reverse of how it felt when she used to picture the lake. Carefully she poured her soul into her body.
Liyana? Bayla’s mental voice was stunned.
I’m not alone, Liyana said. Ready yourself.
The other deities filled her. Liyana was engulfed in wind, buffeted by a storm within. She clung to the familiar contours of her body, grounding herself in her muscles and bones. She drew on everything she had practiced in all the lessons with Korbyn, and she seized control of herself before the other minds could establish themselves.
The other souls jostled inside her, but she held on, not relinquishing control. All the pounding by Bayla had prepared her for this onslaught, though this
Bayla!
Yes, Liyana? Bayla’s voice rose from the vortex of other voices.
Slowly, painfully, Liyana reached into the chaos toward Bayla’s voice. She felt Bayla move through the souls as well, shepherding them into semicohesion. Liyana coaxed the spinning souls to swirl in the same direction. Together, the two of them swept the other deities into a single cyclone inside her.
Are you ready? Bayla asked.
Yes, Liyana said.
Voices spoke in unison, echoing her. Yes. Yes. Yes! She felt them speed up inside her, all their emotions and thoughts tumbling in a thick storm.
Feed me magic, Liyana ordered them.
She felt them all still for a moment.
And then the magic dumped into her, more and more, like an ocean pouring into a bowl. She pushed her soul wider, expanding it as fast as she could as the magic flowed in. She flowed through the valley. She sank into the earth and felt the life of the plants, the strength of the stone, and the heat of the dirt. She swept through the mountains, into their hearts and over their peaks. The magic surged within her, forcing her faster and wider and deeper.
Oh, sweet goddess, it’s too much! she cried.
You can do this, Liyana, Jarlath whispered within the deities. You are strong.
She pushed herself harder, and she became the wind in the mountains. It was her breath. She breathed out and spread into the desert. She felt the souls of the soldiers and the clans like bursts of fire in the wind. She felt their deaths as their souls flickered past her, en route to the Dreaming.
You must end this tragedy, Jarlath said.
She targeted one of the sky serpents. As Mulaf had done, she focused the heat of the sun on its glass body, and she intensified the heat rapidly, as if a year’s worth of sun pounded on it at once. The heart of the sky serpent heated to white-hot, and then the sky serpent cracked and shattered in an explosion that rained down on the clans and army below.
She focused on the next sky serpent. . . . But there were hundreds.
You’re killing them, Jarlath said. Our people. Find another way!
The shards that fell below were as deadly as the serpents themselves. She needed to make them vanish, not explode. Only then would her people be safe.
I need more magic, she said as an idea occurred to her.
Liyana stirred the wind high above the clans and army. She controlled the wind in a tight cyclone, keeping it from touching the humans, and then she widened her whirlwind. Pouring magic into it, she swept the wind into the sky serpents. She caught them in a net of air. The sky serpents tumbled head over tail. Their glass scales caught the sunlight and twisted it until the sky looked as if it were filled with thousands of jewels.
Fueled by the gods’ magic, Liyana propelled the sky serpents across the mountains and then beyond, a hundred miles west over empty desert. She let the wind die, and she flew her soul back to the clans and the army, leaving the sky serpents far behind her.
They will return to their mountains, Bayla said. It is how we made them. They must guard the lake.
When they return, they will find no one to kill, Liyana said. She spun the wind again, and this time she aimed it down at the army and the clans. She ripped through the sands, splitting the clans from the army.
She added more whirlwinds. It felt like stirring a soup with her finger. She guided each one carefully, using the wind to gently separate the combatants. She plucked a soldier up midbattle and blew him north to his encampment, and she removed a desert man from the encampment and returned him to the clan tents. She scooped up a clump of desert children and delivered them safely away from an advancing soldier, and then she delivered the soldier to his army. Jarlath helped direct her, pointing out his people and steering her toward them. After nearly an hour of intense concentration, she had corralled the empire’s army with their tents and the clans with theirs.
She then broadened the wind and blew the entire army eastward, across the desert and into the hills, over the border, and into the Crescent Empire. She left them on a golden plain—soldiers, horses, tents, and all.
Done, she returned to the clans. She narrowed her focus to locate the Horse Clan god. She found him, a spiky soul mounted on a bleeding horse. She sent words toward him, wrapping her thoughts in magic as if they were a summoning chant. Sendar, tell the clans that it is over. Tell them to leave the mountains before the sky serpents come back. Tell them to return to their oases and their lives.
You? His voice was as loud as a horse’s bray. You eliminated the sky serpents?
I am not alone, she said simply. She sank back toward the valley where her body waited. She felt herself lying in the grasses, sun on her skin and the smell of flowers around her. The voices within her faded. She reached for them. . . . The magic felt like a tiny pool inside her. What’s happening?
You have done well, vessel, Bayla said.
Wait! I do not understand—
Jarlath, listen for your voice. It chants for you. Follow it, Bayla said. To Liyana she said, Do not be angry with Korbyn. Or yourself.
She lost the feel of the wind inside of her. She no longer touched the valley or the mountains or the desert. She had her own human arms and legs again. Bayla—
The feel of the deities was faint, like a whisper on skin. It has been an honor, Bayla said. An uncomfortable honor, perhaps, but still . . . You were worthy of me.
And then they were gone.
* * *
Liyana woke to silence. She felt the earth on her back, and she stared up at the sky. It was day, and the bleached blue sky was empty. The sky serpents were gone. Bayla? Jarlath? Anyone?
Only quiet, inside and out.
She inhaled and felt her ribs expand. She ached in every muscle. Stretching, she tested her arms and legs. She clenched and unclenched her hands. She was whole and alive. But she felt as empty as the sky.
“Liyana.” Jarlath’s voice. Close. Outside her.
She turned her head. He lay beside her in the grass. He reached out his hand, and his fingers twined around hers. “You’re alive,” she said.
“As are you.”
Cheek against the ground, she smelled the dirt and the grass. She also smelled flowers, sweet as honey. She watched Jarlath as he pushed himself up to sitting. She saw his eyes widen and his lips part. He opened his mouth as if to speak and then shut it, wordless.
Gingerly she also pushed herself up to sitting. “Oh, sweet goddess,” she said.
The lake was dry.
All that remained was a perfect oval of jewel-like pebbles. On its edge, Mulaf’s body lay facedown where he had fallen into the water. Liyana rose and walked, her legs shaking like a newborn calf, to the shore. She didn’t look at Mulaf.
“Liyana, don’t—”
Kneeling, she laid her hands palms down on the pebbles. She felt only dry stones.
She heard Jarlath walk over the pebbles and halt behind her. He placed his hands on her shoulders. Picking up the pebbles, she held them in her palm. She rolled them so that they sparkled in the sun, and then she let them drop onto the lake bed. They pinged as they hit, and then rolled until they settled. She stood and walked across the pebbles to what was once the center of the lake.
“It’s gone,” she said. She heard her voice, and it sounded as empty as she felt. Breathing deeply, she tried to concentrate, to drop herself into the familiar trance and picture the lake to draw its magic—but she saw only a memory and felt nothing.
She tried again. And again.
“The magic is gone,” she said. She wondered if the gods had known this would happen. If she had realized that—oh no, she thought. “The gods . . .” She saw a shape in the grass, lying still. She ran toward it. She barely heard Jarlath follow her.
She collapsed in the grass next to Korbyn’s body. Hand shaking, she touched his face. He felt cold. Like touching the pebbles. She drew h
She sat there for a long time. Silent, Jarlath sat beside her.
At last she and Jarlath carried Korbyn to the lake. They laid him in the center and piled pebbles on him to bury him. Without tools it was the best they could do. Liyana cried silently as she piled the pebbles higher and higher.
After, they buried Mulaf in the same way.
When they finished, the sky was gray. Liyana stood between the two mounds of rocks in the dry lake bed, and she looked across the green expanse of the valley, shadowed by the cliffs. Birds were calling to one another from the trees. She wondered if they had eggs in their nests. She’d seen plants with berries and a few of the trees looked as though they had fresh dates. Others had nuts, and others she recognized had edible bark. She could fashion new waterskins out of snakeskins—this valley had to have snakes. And they could find water within the succulent plants and cacti.
Quietly Jarlath asked, “What are you thinking?”
“He wanted us to live,” Liyana said.
She took his hand, and they walked out of the lake.
Epilogue
Three years later . . .
The sky serpents circled above the mountains. Glass scales split the sun into a thousand shards of colors, and their wings reflected the blueness of the morning sky. Liyana kept an eye on them as she urged Gray Luck up the slope.
Behind her she heard the clan warriors and the imperial soldiers jostle for position. She didn’t have to look back to know that the more sure-footed desert horses had taken the lead.
She crested the top of the ridge and reined in Gray Luck. She looked down into the valley. Green cascaded from the rock slopes and stopped where the pebbles began. The lake was still an oval of pebbles.