Despite the ruin of his domain, Legaba was far from dead. But he was as dormant as a deity can become. He cared nothing for the decay that surrounded him; he was hardly even aware of it. His consciousness had become dim as an ember. There was no fuel left to sustain it. The most powerful among his worshippers, Jass Imbiah and the huangi, had all perished. The survivors scattered on the islands were too weak to engage his attention, and even if they were strong enough, he could not have answered their callings. And he had no more will to allow his Children to live. Now, all Legaba could do was dream.
He dreamed of what could have been ... what should have been ...what would certainly have been, had it not been for the intervention of that accursed alien deity, Almovaar ...
He dreamed of the triumph of Retribution Time: his worshippers overrunning the mainland, conquering, burning, killing all who resisted and enslaving the survivors, tearing down the monuments to the other Jagasti ...
He dreamed of walking the world again, while the other gods continued to cringe fecklessly in their Realms ...
He dreamed of the day when he would be the god of all the people of the Abengoni continent, his image scarred into everyone’s skin ...
One of Legaba’s eyes flared into life as those images filled his consciousness. The charred surface of his body rippled, as though something was stirring underneath, and he was on the verge of awakening. Then the scarlet blaze winked out again. And the defeated deity continued to dream.
2
The Uloan Islands writhed beneath a carpet of moving plant life. With the demise of Jass Imbiah and the huangi, and the defeat of Legaba by Almovaar, the ashuma that had kept the mwiti-plants at bay had subsided, then disappeared. Unfettered, the plants had soon begun to expand their movements.
Ubia-vines crawled out of the forests like a legion of grotesque serpents, overwhelming outlying villages and farms, attacking anything that moved or stood still. Grasses turned into lethal webs that enmeshed the unwary. Single blades grew higher than a man’s head, and they wove ominous patterns in the air, and they danced with a disquieting frenzy in the absence of wind. Fruits throbbed like beating hearts, with poisonous ichor beading like perspiration on their skin and dripping onto the ubia-infested ground.
The petals of flowers large and small opened and closed like hordes of groping hands. Clouds of noxious fumes wafted from blooms that unexpectedly shifted their colors and shapes. The roots of trees erupted like tentacles from the ground, whipping spasmodically in the air and ensnaring even the largest animals foolish enough to blunder into their reach.
When the first few Uloans were swarmed by ubia-vines or smothered in deadly snares of grass, the others were too concerned about the return of the Retribution Time fleet to take much notice of the mwiti. But as the toll of death mounted and the infestation intensified, the Uloans retreated, abandoning their homes and moving closer to the beaches ... closer to the sea.
Slowly, but inexorably, the mwiti were forcing the Uloans out of all their settlements. Large cities – even Ompong, on Jayaya – were being overrun and deserted. Even the cities of the dead, from which the jhumbis had marched to join the invasion of the mainland, were not immune to the incursion. Vines crept across the walls of the empty house-tombs, and trees sprouted inside them. Their rapidly growing branches split the structures apart from within.
With no means to protect themselves, the surviving Uloans could do nothing other than retreat, giving ground grudgingly, but inevitably. It was as though all the mwiti-plants had developed a conscious purpose: to expunge human life from its midst. And there was a reason for that purpose ... a reason the Uloans had long ago allowed themselves to forget.
The islands’ beaches were the Uloans’ final refuge. Beyond the edge of the sand, the islands’ interiors had become seething masses of mobile, lethal vegetation. By day, the plants of the mwiti blotted out the horizon like a writhing green wall; at night, they slithered and crept closer to their prey. Soon, even the beaches would not be a haven for the Islanders. They would either have to find a way to defeat the mwiti, or die on the blood-red sand ... or in the sea itself.
And still, the Uloans waited for the ships to return.
3
A tiny, gurgling wail pulled Awiwi from her troubled sleep and rescued her from a terrifying dream. In it, the Retribution Time fleet had made its long-awaited return to the Islands. Along with all the other surviving women, children, and elders of Jayaya, she waited on the beach. As always, the Uloans scanned the empty horizon, hoping that this time, the sight of sails would reward their never-ending vigil.
In Awiwi’s dream, the sails appeared, one after the other, until they covered the sea like fronds torn from palm trees during a storm. There were far more ships returning than had set off to wreak havoc on the mainlanders. But in her dream, that anomaly didn’t register.
The ships drew closer. The cheers of the Uloans on the beach drowned out the rumble of the waves that lapped the shoreline. But when the ships came close enough for their occupants to become clearly visible, the triumphant shouts of the Uloans fell silent, as though a single hand had clutched and squeezed all their throats at once.
The shapes that lined the decks of the Uloan ships were not alive. The occupants of the ships were jhumbis, one and all. Not a single
