Yet for all the cruel damage it was undergoing, the spirit in the papaya refused to submit to the force that was destroying its host. The Kipalende’s vision of vengeance was too pervasive to be extinguished. Even as chips of its bark were torn from its trunk, the papaya continued its attempt to rally ubias and other mwiti that no longer responded to its calls.
Finally, the papaya’s trunk split as though it had been struck by lightning. Its two halves teetered, then crashed to the ground. It lay in a tomb of its own leaves and branches. The Kipalende spirit was the last part of it to die.
On the rest of the Uloan islands, the undoing of the mwiti rampage continued as the Almovaads’ strands of sorcery extended themselves far beyond Jayaya. By the time the assault was done, the animate plant life of the islands had either perished, or been transformed into ordinary vegetation. And the spirits of the Kipalende finally vanished from the islands: their dream of vengeance ended, their reason for continuing to exist defunct.
Eventually, the lines of blue fire that encircled the islands dimmed, then vanished, their work completed.
And on the beach of Jayaya, the surviving Uloans stared first at the reefs of dead ubia-vines that blanketed the sand, and the lifeless roots that jutted skyward like monuments to a fallen monarch. The Uloans’ own dead lay there as well. Only a pitiful few survived.
Then the islanders turned to face the blue-robed newcomers who were now levitating toward them, their feet lightly skimming the waves.
4
As the Adepts approached the beach, the Uloans retreated out of the water and onto the ubia-strewn sand. Shock, fear, bewilderment and exhaustion glazed their eyes and deadened the expressions on their faces. Circular wounds from the ubias’ mouths covered their bodies. Blood trickled over the raised tissue of their spider-scars. The islanders slumped in stances of extreme weariness.
The Uloans backtracked farther as the mainlanders’ feet finally touched the sand. None of them had ever seen a blankskin. Captives had never been taken in the raids the Uloans mounted, and more than a generation had passed since the last time the Mainland Matile had made an offensive against the islands. Legends and hearsay told the Uloans what their ancient enemies looked like, but legends and hearsay did not match what they saw now.
The blankskins the Uloans thought they knew had never floated across the sea like birds. They had never swathed themselves in plain blue robes. And even in their most vivid imaginings, the Uloans had never pictured Mainlanders with pale skin, or hair in colors other than black, like that of many of the small group of intruders who now confronted them. Memories of the Fidi had faded more rapidly on the islands than it had on the mainland; to the survivors of the mwiti assault, these new people were even more disconcerting than those they assumed to be blank-skinned Mainlanders.
Who them be? the Uloans wondered as the blankskins looked at them. Why them come? Why them save we?
For their part the Adepts, Matile and Fidi alike, looked at the Uloans and asked themselves how it was that people such as these could have been such formidable foes to the Matile for such a long time. They saw only young and old women, old men, and children ranging from suckling infants to near-adolescents. Their spider-scarred bodies were gaunt, showing the effects of dwindling food supplies. Wounds from the ubias puckered their skin like open, bleeding mouths.
The silence stretched. Then an old man stepped forward. Despite the ragged clothing that barely covered his blood-spattered skin, and the trauma he had just endured, he was still carried himself with a measure of dignity. His name was Jawai. Although he had never possessed the magical talent necessary to become a huangi, he had always been a man to be respected. It was Jawai who had attempted to use fire to forestall the ubias, and it was Jawai who now took the initiative to find out what these powerful newcomers wanted.
Tiyana stood a few paces in front of the other Adepts. Jawai believed that she was the one who would have the answers to his questions. He tried to read her intentions in her dark eyes and the calm expression on her strange, unscarred face. He could not. It was like looking at a mask.
“From Matile-land, you?” he finally asked.
“Yes,” Tiyana replied.
“Our warriors ... our huangi ... Jass Imbiah ... where them gone to? Why them not come back?”
“All of them are dead.”
Tiyana said nothing more. She anticipated a chorus of wails and curses, and, perhaps, a physical attack, against which she was well-prepared to defend herself. But none came. She had only confirmed for the Uloans what they already knew, even though they had assembled at the beach every day to wait for ships that would never return. They had known that truth, but they had not been able to accept its reality. Now, at last, they were forced to do so.
“They would not stop killing,” Tiyana said, feeling they needed an explanation. “They died bravely. But they died for no reason – for a mistaken cause. There is no ‘Retribution Time.’ There never was.”
Jawai closed his eyes as though he had just been struck. When he opened them again, he looked at the piles of dead ubias and the immobilized roots. Then he looked again at Tiyana.
“Why you do this for we?” he asked, indicating the evidence of what the Believers’ magic had accomplished. “Why you not kill we?”
“Because the war between us is over,” Tiyana replied. “Because there is no more need for killing.”
Jawai stared at her as though she had spoken the
