worked. Strike saw his teleportation as a thin yellow thread connecting him to his destination.
Sasha perceived the life forces of all living beings, their ch’ul, as different kinds of music. Jade, being more practical than poetic, thought of the barrier as a big-ass chat room. The gray-green mist was the lobby, and it wasn’t all that hard to get in if you knew what time the room would be open—the cardinal solstices and equinoxes, and a few other days of astronomical barrier activity—and what address to type in—the proper spell and blood sacrifice. The chat lobby was moderated by the bloodline nahwal, a group of dried-up stick people with apple-doll faces, who harbored the collected wisdom of each bloodline without the attendant personalities. Like god-mods in an exclusive chat room, the nahwal were sometimes visible to all of the barrier’s visitors at once, like during the Nightkeepers’ bloodline ceremonies. Alternatively, they could pull a specific mage into an offshoot room for a private chat, or they could kick users out of the chat entirely, either sending them back to their corporeal bodies or stranding them in limbo.
Jade didn’t mind being in the barrier; it was one of the few places she ever truly felt like a mage, and an asset. One of her greatest contributions to the Nightkeepers’ cause had been when her ancestral nahwal had given her a private message during one of the cardinal-day ceremonies, warning her that the Nightkeepers needed to collect the artifacts bearing the seven demon prophecies. The heads-up had allowed them to defend the barrier against Iago’s first major attack and had made Jade, albeit briefly, part of the team.
So yeah, she liked the barrier. And she liked visiting the squishy gray-green place . . . during the cardinal days. But this was only the new moon, and she didn’t command the sort of magic it would’ve taken to punch through the barrier on such a low- power day. None of the surviving Nightkeepers did.
Even if she assumed her magic could’ve piggybacked onto Lucius’s library transport somehow, she hadn’t invoked the pasaj och spell required for a mage to enter the barrier. Which suggested that someone—or some thing—had summoned her.
“Hello?” she called into the mist, squinting in search of a wrinkled, desiccated humanoid figure.
“Are you there?”
There was no answer. Just mist and more mist.
“Hello?” Frustration kicked through her. “What, you’re going to drag me in here, then ignore me?
How is that fair?”
“Life’s not fair, child.” The words came from behind her, in a nahwal’s fluting, multitonal voice.
She whirled as the mist coalesced, thickening to reveal a tall, thin figure. As it stepped toward her, she saw the ch’am glyph of the harvester bloodline, that of an open, outstretched hand. But while that was as she had expected, the nahwal itself looked different than it had before. Instead of shiny, brownish skin stretched over ligament and bone, there seemed to be a thin layer of flesh between, making the nahwal look subtly rounded, bordering on feminine. More, its eyes, which before had been flat, featureless black, now bore gradations: There was a suggestion of charcoal-colored whites, with irises and pupils in darker gradations.
Unease tightened Jade’s throat. “What’s going on here?”
“You—” The nahwal started to answer, but broke off as it was gripped by a weird shudder. When it stilled, its face wore the neutral, expressionless mask she’d been expecting. More, its skin seemed to crinkle more tightly over its bones and the brief spark of personality she’d seen disappeared. In a multitonal voice it said, “Hear this, harvester child: You have a duty to your bloodline and your king.
Do not seek to be more than you were meant to be. Going against the gods can only end badly.”
A hot flush climbed Jade’s throat as the nahwal’s words echoed the things Shandi had been saying for months now—years. Your role was defined long ago , the winikin kept insisting. Don’t break with tradition when it’s all we have to go on . And the last, at least, was true; the magi were being forced to rely on legend, routine, and the few scattered artifacts to tell them what they were supposed to do—
and how to do it—in the triad years, the last three before the end-time.
But, damn it, she didn’t want to be a shield bearer.
Choosing her words carefully, all too aware that Rabbit had been attacked and nearly killed by a nahwal, she said, “With all due respect to my honored ancestors . . .” Saying it aloud, she realized that, deep down inside, she hadn’t really thought before about what, or rather who, the nahwal embodied.
For a second, she was tempted to ask about her mother and father, to check if they were inside the nahwal somewhere, if they could talk to her. She didn’t, though, because she knew that the only nahwal to retain any personal characteristics was that of the jaguars, the royal bloodline. In that regard, the harvesters didn’t even come close to ranking. Taking a deep breath, she continued: “With all due respect, there are too few of us left to stand on bloodline tradition; each of us must do what we can for the fight.”
The nahwal started to say something, then stalled as a second whole-body shiver overtook it. The shellacked skin writhed like there were bugs under it, or worse. Caught between horrified fascination and revulsion, Jade took a step back even as the shivers stopped. When they were gone, the nahwal once again had pupils and emotion in its eyes, and a hint of feminine curves. “Yes, you must do all that you can and more,” it urged. “Be the most and best you can be, and don’t yield your own power to another, particularly a man. Don’t let emotion turn you aside from your true ambition, your true purpose. Find your magic, your way to make a difference.”
Shock and confusion rattled through Jade at this abrupt one-eighty from the “duty and destiny” rhetoric the nahwal had started with. “But I thought the harvesters—”
“Don’t just be a harvester,” the nahwal interrupted. “Be yourself.” Abruptly it surged forward and grabbed her wrist, its bony fingers digging into her flesh. “Find your magic,” it insisted. The place the nahwal was touching began to burn, and the gray-green mists around them roiled.
Through the billowing mist, Jade saw the nahwal twitch and shudder, felt it start to yank away, only to grip harder. “What’s happening?”
“Go,” the creature hissed at her, its eyes neither alive nor dead now, but somewhere in between. It let go of her and staggered back, moving jerkily. “Go!”
The gray-green fog began spiraling around Jade, making her think of the funnel clouds several of the others had experienced within the barrier—terrible tornadoes that could suck up a mage and spit him or her into limbo. The others had escaped from their plights, but they were warriors with strong magic. She wasn’t. Yet even as panic began to build inside her, something else joined it: a spiky, electric heat that lit her up and blunted the fear. It felt like magic, but it wasn’t any sort of power she’d ever touched before. Had the nahwal given her a new talent? A glance at her wrist showed the same two marks as before—one hand outstretched as though begging, another clutching a quill. Those were the same bloodline and talent marks she’d worn since her first barrier ceremony. But the hot energy inside her was magic; she was sure of it.
Biting her tongue sharply, she drew a blood sacrifice. Pain flared, the salty tang filled her mouth, and a humming noise kindled at the base of her brain. For a split second, she thought she saw another layer of organization to the mist-laden barrier and the rapidly forming tornado—a layer of angles and structure, the metaphorical computer code beneath the cosmic chat room. Then the perception was gone and there was only the terrible funnel cloud that spun around her, threatening to suck her up. The mists whipped past her, headed for the gaping maw; wind dragged at her, yanking at her clothes and hair as she braced against the pull. Around her, within her, that strange, mad energy continued to whirl and grow. She wasn’t sure whether it was a memory or real, but she heard the nahwal cry, in what sounded like a lone woman’s voice, “Go! ”
It was the same voice she’d heard before, telling her to beware.
She wanted to stay and demand answers, but didn’t dare. She had to get out of there. Spitting a mouthful of blood into the whipping wind, she threw back her head and shouted, “Way! ”
