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Anna sat up, staring all around her, trying to remember why she was here in the woods. Her stomach felt sick. Her head was light. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.826415 | 7.1 |
Memory came back slowly. "What is it, Father?" | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.826647 | 7.1 |
_We are called. We must go_. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.826878 | 7.1 |
Anna pushed her hair back irritably. Dead leaves fell onto the scuffed moss beside her. "I don't hear anything." | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.82711 | 7.1 |
_Anna, don't argue. Let me take you_. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.827342 | 7.1 |
Anna didn't want to. It suddenly all seemed wrong. She didn't feel good. She wanted tea. She wanted Mae Shan and Master Liaozhai. But Father pressed her to one side and made her legs stand up and start climbing up the hill. Anna tried to feel warm and safe. Father would take care of her. But all she could do was watch, and try not to feel the way her feet hurt, and the way her stomach ached. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.827574 | 7.1 |
Father made her climb steadily. If he could feel her discomfort, he ignored it. Memory of the blows he had given her in the Silent Lands kept Anna quiet. _I must be good_ , she told herself. _I must be good_. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.827806 | 7.1 |
The slope got steeper. Rivers of stone ran between the tree roots, and great outcroppings jutted from the mountainside. One of those outcroppings had split open to make a cave, and Father took them straight inside. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.828038 | 7.1 |
The world went dark in an instant, and even Father had to stop. In charge of herself again, Anna swayed back and forth on tired legs and tried to catch her breath. Her heart pounded hard against her ribs. There were splashes of bright light in the back of the cave, but she couldn't see straight. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.82827 | 7.1 |
Slowly, though, Anna's vision cleared. Light and shadow resolved into sense, but her heart still pounded. She saw now that the orange glow was light reflected off damp stone and off a still pool worn into slick rock. The fire burned before an old man, naked to the waist, sweat shining on his skin the way the water shone on the cave walls. But where the walls were dark, he was pale, pale as death, pale as the bellies of the fish who lived in the depths of the ocean and never saw the light while they were alive. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.828502 | 7.1 |
Anna realized she should have felt scared, but she only felt sick. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.828734 | 7.1 |
As the old man seemed to take shape in front of her, the rest of her senses seemed to clear, and she knew what else was wrong. This place was filled with magic. It was as full of power as it was of air. It was not being drawn or called, it simply was, a whole great pool of magic unformed and unshaped, constant. How could that be? Magic had to be called. It required an act of will. Even in the most sacred spaces. And it had to be shaped, or it dissolved. It could not simply be captured like water in a bath, could it? | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.828966 | 7.1 |
The old man spoke. His voice was high-pitched and broken. She didn't understand his words, but Father did, and she heard them ring in her mind through him. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.829198 | 7.1 |
"Welcome, Daughter. Welcome, Son," the old man said. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.829429 | 7.1 |
She hesitated but Father bent her knees for her and bowed her head. Sounds filled her mind, and she realized they were words, the language of the Holy Island that Father had always said he'd teach her one day. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.829893 | 7.1 |
"Holy Father," she said, awkwardly, for her tongue wasn't used to shaping these sounds. "Bestow your blessing on your poor daughter." | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.830125 | 7.1 |
Anna looked up at the wrinkled creature before her. His cheeks and mouth were sunken in and his black eyes protruded. His hair hung in twisted clumps like snakes and his skin was loose on his bones. The kilt that was his only clothing was leather scraps sewn together with gut and smeared with soot and grease. His hands were black with ash and there was a stench that reminded Anna sharply of the city of T'ien while it burned. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.830357 | 7.1 |
This was a holy man? Anna thought about the clean temples, the monks and priests with their shaved heads, and the white faces of the gods and goddesses. They did not leer like this man. They did not grin with sunken gums. Anna trembled. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.830589 | 7.1 |
_Do not be disrespectful, Daughter_ , warned Father sharply. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.830821 | 7.1 |
"You fear this old man?" the "holy father" lisped, and Anna saw his tongue was stained as black as his hands. "You fear what you do not understand." | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.831053 | 7.1 |
Father gave her no words, and Anna was glad. She tried not to shake. She tried to remember that power, and holiness came in many forms. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.831285 | 7.1 |
"You have neglected this child, Valin Kalami," said the old man. "You have given her education over to foreigners." | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.831517 | 7.1 |
Anna shrank back gratefully to give Father room to speak. "It was a matter of necessity, Holy Father. But she is home now." | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.831749 | 7.1 |
"Yes, yes." The old man peered forward. His eyes were pale with cataracts and Anna wondered that he could see at all. "She is as you promised. New in her learning, great in her power. She will be a great seer for Tuukos." | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.831981 | 7.1 |
A thrill of fear ran through Anna at those words. A seer for Tuukos? What did that mean? Hesitantly she moved to touch Father, but the old man began to sway back and forth and she retreated again. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.832212 | 7.1 |
"Will be, will be," he crooned. "Come from water, come through fire to call fire back again." His whitened eyes stared into the darkness of the cave, but his hands began moving, like creatures with minds of their own, working among the bones and stones that surrounded him. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.832444 | 7.1 |
And Anna saw. A hundred images, a thousand opened in front of her. She saw a young man, tall and proud wearing a crown of horn with people kneeling at his feet. She saw the years parade past and the crowned man becoming shrunken, bitter, and mad. She saw the madness in waves and storms, a vision within a vision. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.832676 | 7.1 |
She saw the Phoenix in a golden cage. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.832908 | 7.1 |
She saw Father in a palace of stone talking with an old woman, urging her to something... she could not hear. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.83314 | 7.1 |
She saw Father in the dark lifting an infant from a cradle and wrapping a blanket around it as it slept. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.833372 | 7.1 |
She saw herself. She saw herself in the cave with a crown of horn on her head. She saw herself beneath the spreading wings of the Phoenix, her mouth open wide to scream. She saw herself beside a woman with auburn hair and green eyes in a plain grey dress. The woman wrapped her arms around Anna and wept. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.833604 | 7.1 |
She saw herself beside a golden cage, her arms lifted to the sky. She saw Father looking out of her eyes and calling the Phoenix down. She saw the Land of Death and Spirit open up around her. She saw a woman and a man holding hands in a little boat on a wide sea. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.833836 | 7.1 |
_What is this? Anna, what are you doing?_ | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.834068 | 7.1 |
"Nothing, Father. I swear." Before her, the old man only swayed back and forth, lost in his visions or his madness, she couldn't tell which. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.8343 | 7.1 |
_Stop this at once!_ | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.834532 | 7.1 |
"I can't," Anna cried. _I can't help seeing_. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.834763 | 7.1 |
_These are shadows and fables. Your power is confused by the presence of the Holy Father_. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.834995 | 7.1 |
But she didn't believe him and she felt his realization that she knew he lied and Anna bit her lip. She did not want this. She wanted to obey, to believe, to be dutiful and good. She did not want to see by the power of a madman. She closed her eyes, but she knew it would do no good. While the Holy Man called the visions, Anna must see. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.835227 | 7.1 |
She saw Mae Shan holding a demon at spear's length, a real one this time, not a ghost of ash. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.835459 | 7.1 |
Then, the Holy Father shook himself, laughing and crying all at once at whatever he had seen. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.835691 | 7.1 |
In the next heartbeat he frowned hard at Anna. "No, no, no," he spat. "It will not do. You are too much for her. Come, come, Daughter. Learn now the craft and power you are heir to." | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.835923 | 7.1 |
The old man got himself to his feet and scuttled like some huge crab toward the back of the cave, beyond the reach of the firelight. Something lay there in the dark on the stony floor. Anna did not want to move toward it. She didn't want to see anything more this madman had to show her. Father's anger washed through her, and tears began to trickle from her eyes. He didn't wait, he didn't even ask, he just took her body and moved it forward until she stood beside the Holy Father, and looked down at what he had to show. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.836155 | 7.1 |
It was a man of glass, laid out straight on the bed of stone. It was perfect in every detail, down to the lines on its knuckles and the shape of its nails. It was dressed simply, in a loose brown tunic and trousers. Its eyes were shut, but the artisan had even given it eyelashes. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.836387 | 7.1 |
"It was made many centuries ago, when we were great." Spittle flecked the Holy Father's lips. "See it now? See the fire, the earth, and water that went into its making. See the blood and the metals that painted it and made it whole." | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.836619 | 7.1 |
And Anna did see. She saw the fire in the great crucible, she saw the sorcerers crowded around with their buckets and their knives. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.836851 | 7.1 |
_Stop, please. I don't want this_. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.837083 | 7.1 |
Father paid no attention. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.837314 | 7.1 |
"Strike it, hear it ring." The old man knocked his knuckles against the statue's torso, and it rang like a bell. "Does it not call beautifully to you?" | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.837546 | 7.1 |
_Yes_ , said Father in the back of her mind. _Yes_. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.837778 | 7.1 |
"Lay your hands here, Daughter." He indicated the statue's heart. Anna obeyed. What else was she to do? The glass was smoothly contoured underneath her palms. It felt exactly like a man's chest, only cold and hard as death and ice. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.83801 | 7.1 |
The seer picked up a knife. It too was made of glass, but this glass was as black as coal. The edge was so keen, Anna could barely see it in the dim and flickering light. He lifted his left hand just long enough for Anna to see it was thick and twisted, not only with age and calluses, but with scars. His face was almost peaceful as he drove the tip of his knife into the tip of his first finger, setting the blood free to run in scarlet threads down his hand. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.838242 | 7.1 |
Anna felt the magic this place held twist and shiver. She felt the blood call it and it obeyed, eagerly. The old man murmured his charm, as lightly as a woman would hum a lullaby. The magic here was so rich and so ready, he needed no more force than that. He leaned across the statue and began smearing its face with his blood. Slowly, Anna saw that he was painting eyes on it. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.838474 | 7.1 |
Anna's heart tore open and she screamed, falling to her knees. Father rushed out of her with all the breath in her lungs. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.838706 | 7.1 |
The statue's eyes opened, and they were Father's eyes. Its hand moved, and it was Father's hand. He sat up and pulled his knees up under him, slowly, stiffly, like someone waking from a long sleep. Anna felt her eyes bulge in their sockets. It was Father. Truly. He was perfect in every way, just as she had seen him in the Land of Death and Spirit. For all her staring, she could see nothing false about him, except the tiniest glimmer in the light, that might have been a sheen of perspiration on his light brown skin. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.838938 | 7.1 |
"Father," she whispered, reaching out to touch him. To her relief, his skin felt warm beneath her fingertips, not cold like the glass. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.83917 | 7.1 |
The seer was grinning. Anna tried not to look at him. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.839402 | 7.1 |
Father moved his lips experimentally a few times, then he spoke. "This is not life." | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.839634 | 7.1 |
"No." The seer shook his head. "That is beyond what even the greatest of us could give. But you need no longer exhaust your daughter with your presence." He turned the smile to her, and she saw all his black gums. "She needs to be nurtured and cared for, not used up." | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.839865 | 7.1 |
"No." Father looked at her, but there was nothing kind in his gaze. Anna told herself it was his new eyes. He was not used to them yet. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.840097 | 7.1 |
He had a body of his own now. Now he would be able to be with her as she had always dreamed. They would have a house, and he would teach her all the things Master Liaozhai hadn't yet, and they would live together for a hundred years if they wanted to. It would be all right. She would be a good daughter, and he would never have to hit her anymore. He was only angry with her because she did not understand the things that were important to him. That must be it. She would learn, though. She would. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.840329 | 7.1 |
"Now." The seer sank back onto his haunches. "We must talk, your father and I, of such things as are not fit for the ears of one not yet bound by her apprenticeship oaths." | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.840561 | 7.1 |
Father gestured to her. The motion was fluid, but the smile that accompanied it was brittle. "Go outside, Anna. Play for a bit. Stay in sight of the cave." | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.840793 | 7.1 |
"Yes, Father." She was glad enough to obey. She wanted to be near him, but she also wanted to be away from the seer. She did not like his greedy, greasy looks, and she did not like his casual use of blood. Father did not truly mean to apprentice her to him. He would explain that when he was finished. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.841025 | 7.1 |
She remembered to bow, and hurried out into the sunshine. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.841257 | 7.1 |
Anna breathed the fresh air and stretched her shoulders with a feeling of relief. The cave was an unwholesome place, she was sure. She was not surprised that the Holy Father's mind wandered swimming constantly in so much power that was unformed and unused. Master Liaozhai would never have done such a thing. Perhaps, if he seemed in a good mood, she could talk to Father about it. Perhaps if the seer moved, he would get better, and not be so crooked and... so frightening. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.841489 | 7.1 |
Anna shivered and set out to explore to get away from the feeling. Father's release had been painful, but now she felt much better, as if she had put down something heavy she'd been carrying for too long. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.841721 | 7.1 |
She found she didn't want to think about that either. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.841953 | 7.1 |
It looked like there was a small plateau above the cave mouth. She could probably see out to the ocean from up there. Picking her way carefully on her bare feet, Anna climbed the slope. It was good to just be alone for a while under the trees, to see the mosses and the mushrooms, to collect the leaves of some of the trees, to see how the rivers of ancient rock, all speckled black and grey ran between the trunks of trees that were as crooked as the seer's arms. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.842185 | 7.1 |
Father had once told her that in ancient times the gods had cracked the mountain open so that it poured living fire down its slopes and melted the stone and sand it touched, and in this way showed the people of Tuukos the properties of glass and the secrets of its making. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.842417 | 7.1 |
She reached the plateau and stood up straight on the shelf of ancient stone. Her skin became gooseflesh in the cold wind that blew down from the mountaintop, but she didn't head back to the shelter of the trees. She had been right. From here she could see the long green and grey slope of the mountain like a quilted skirt, with the ocean spread below it as clear and blue as the sky above. She could even see a little boat with a snow-white sail bobbing on the waves, and just make out the three people moving about on its deck. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.842648 | 7.1 |
Anna froze. She had seen this boat in just this way before, in the split second before the Silent Lands had shifted for her sight and shown her that the boat was occupied by Mae Shan. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.84288 | 7.1 |
Mae Shan had followed them out of the Land of Death and Spirit. Mae Shan had found them, after she'd... after what had happened. Anna remembered the warmth of the blood on her hands. The breeze from the ocean smelled like the blood had. She wanted to run down to Mae Shan, to explain to her that it had been an accident, really, that Father had been afraid and needed to escape. He hadn't meant it, not really. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.843112 | 7.1 |
_Father will want to know she's here_. The thought sent a jolt through Anna. He didn't like Mae Shan and would not be glad she was here. She hadn't found a way yet to explain to him her bodyguard was just doing her duty, that they were friends, that Mae Shan was just worried about her, like Father himself worried. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.843344 | 7.1 |
But if Mae Shan found them before she had a chance to talk to Father, or if Father found out she was here and then realized Anna hadn't told him... anything could happen. Anna bit her lip. It would be best to tell him. He'd want to see the boat and she could bring him up here where the seer couldn't hear them and then she could explain things properly to him. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.843576 | 7.1 |
Anna jumped back down onto the slope and ran to the cave mouth. She stopped herself just before the line of shadow inside. She would not run in like a barbarian. She would walk in, humble and composed, and speak in a polite manner. She would show Father that she did know how to behave properly. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.843808 | 7.1 |
Anna smoothed her rumpled coat and folded her hands neatly. Then, taking small, tidy steps, she walked into the cave, following the sound of men's voices. The unused, omnipresent power was as stifling as the heat, but she gritted her teeth against it. She would not complain. She was not a baby. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.84404 | 7.1 |
Anna stopped while she was still in shadow. She would wait for a pause in their conversation, as was polite, and then she would excuse herself and ask to talk to Father. That was the right way to do things. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.844272 | 7.1 |
Their voices echoed oddly off the stone walls making it difficult to hear the individual words at first, which was fine with Anna, she did not want to be accused of eavesdropping, but gradually they cleared, and she could understand that they were talking about Father's new body and the nature of the spell that held his spirit confined. Before she could decide whether or not to move back a few steps so as not to overhear anything she wasn't supposed to, Father said, "You should not have taken me from her. I cannot control her so well now." | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.844504 | 7.1 |
No. That was not what she heard. She had misunderstood that. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.844736 | 7.1 |
"It was necessary," the seer replied. "You would have killed her shortly, or driven her mad." | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.844968 | 7.1 |
"I would not." _I love her! She's my daughter!_ "I need her." | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.845199 | 7.1 |
"You are dead. Your needs are greater than can be met by the living." | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.845431 | 7.1 |
"I was very close to life with her." | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.845663 | 7.1 |
"And that is why you came very close to draining it away. You are of more use as you are now, and she is in less danger. There has not been one such as she born in a thousand years. She will bring us to greatness once we have achieved our freedom." | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.845895 | 7.1 |
She should leave now. She should go back outside. She should run down the mountainside and back up again until she exhausted herself and forgot what she heard. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.846127 | 7.1 |
"I failed you, Holy Father, and I'm sorry." | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.846359 | 7.1 |
"You did not fail. You died before the completion of your work. That is why I have brought you back here." | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.846591 | 7.1 |
"How may I serve?" | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.846823 | 7.1 |
"By finishing what you have begun. You will cage the Firebird." | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.847055 | 7.1 |
"Holy Father, if I had that knowledge, I do not have the means. Mortal breath is needed." | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.847287 | 7.1 |
"It will be supplied." | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.847519 | 7.1 |
"Oh, no, no, my son. Her mother." | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.847982 | 7.1 |
"She comes. You will call the Firebird and shape the cage and she will seal it with her life, as her father did before her." | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.848446 | 7.1 |
"Holy Father, the danger is severe." | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.848678 | 7.1 |
"There is no danger too great for this. We will be free! I will be free!" | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.84891 | 7.1 |
"Without question." | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.849142 | 7.1 |
"The woman will give her life gladly, because if she does not, her child will die." | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.849374 | 7.1 |
"Yes, Holy Father." | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.849606 | 7.1 |
Moving as carefully and quietly as she knew how, Anna slipped out of the cave. She wanted to be sick. She couldn't even think, or see straight. She didn't know what to do besides run down the mountainside, crying as she ran. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.849838 | 7.1 |
Kalami sat cross-legged in front of the holy seer of Tuukos listening with both delight and trepidation as the ancient man gave his prophecy. | Zettel_The.Firebirds.Vengeance | 0.85007 | 7.1 |