Fevered Star (Between Earth and Sky, #2)(3)

The dreaming minds of all human beings are open to you, but the dreams of the creatures—furred, finned, and feathered—will remain closed. They dream in a different world from ours.

“Well enough,” he murmured. He had not thought to manipulate birds and beasts, anyway.

You may eat the godflesh whole, but it is better to make a tea of it. One cup may keep you in the dreamworld half the day and will exhaust you upon your return. It is best only to Walk when another spearmaiden can watch over your corporeal form.

Ah, yes. The spearmaidens who practiced this forbidden magic had always been paired. Well, that was not an option now. He read on.

It is best to begin with inquiry into the victim’s mind. Once you are confident, you may begin to plant thoughts and desires and return again and again to cultivate their growth. You cannot kill outright in a dream, but you may convince the victim to harm themselves or others because their dream demands it. Beware! It is a delicate thing to manipulate minds. Do not get entangled.

He read all day and well into the night, not eating or sleeping, and his household did as instructed and did not disturb him. So many warnings of death and madness coupled with promises of power beyond imagining. Balam suspected the author had been quite mad herself by the time she committed the magic to writing. But the text was all that was left of the practice; no dreamwalkers were known to have survived the purge that came after the signing of the Treaty of Hokaia.

He would be the first in an era, and he was ready.

He lit the copal and fanned it until it burned steadily, filling the room with sacred smoke. He donned the regalia of his station, similar to what he had worn to the temple, but now his cloak was rare white jaguar skin, and he wore white shell around his neck and in his ears and nose. He extinguished the lanterns, leaving the room in semidarkness, the moon through high windows the only light.

He took the godflesh from the small wooden box he had set on the table. He ate a piece the size of his fingernail and settled himself onto the cushions to wait. He did not wait long. The dreamworld opened to him. He marveled at its beauty, and at its terror.

And Balam went hunting.





CHAPTER 2


CITY OF TOVA (THE CROW ROOKERY) YEAR 1 OF THE CROW

Within even the smallest act of love lives the potential for a miracle.

—The Obregi Book of Flowers



The Odo Sedoh dreamed, and in his dreams, he was legion.

He was black-winged murder flying over a vast sea. He was the bloodthirsty havoc of beak and talon. He was the stately flock that wheeled over a city stained by injustice.

He became the shout of a thousand prayers on a thousand lips. He became a prophecy of revenge. He became the blossoming shadow that engulfed a sun.

He was Crow who then became the slaughter.

Serapio screamed and screamed and screamed and—

Gentle hands shook him, and his eyelids involuntarily fluttered open. But all was shadow, as it had been since he was twelve. His nose filled with the scent of crows. He felt the rough scratch of quills against his back. A voice called out concern for the Odo Sedoh.

I’m alive!

And then he was falling, falling… back into his dreams.

Dream morphed to memory, and memory took on shape and form.

He remembered speaking his true name under the black sun, and how it had shattered him.

He remembered that he had gone forward with staff and blade and become the whirlwind.

His remembered his hands had grown slick with blood, and his ears had filled with the cries of the dying. And standing amid the chaos he had wrought, he had exulted.

And then he remembered he had been thwarted. The Sun Priest who was his nemesis, her death his very purpose, was not there. She had been replaced by an impostor. Some fool wearing the mask and vestments of priesthood but lacking the essence of a god. The Odo Sedoh had slain the deceiver, his rage so dark that he barely registered the sweep of his knives separating neck and head.

And then the crow god had fled, and his body had begun to fail.

As it was meant to.

As was expected.

But there was one condition his creators had not foreseen. Something his mother had not anticipated, an occurrence for which his tutors had not planned. Serapio had made the small crows his friends. He had loved them and protected them. And in the moment of his death, those friends came to him with mutual love and monumental will and sacrificed themselves so that he might live. The southern sorcerers should have known the power of a sacrifice given with love, as such a sacrifice from his mother had been what tied the boy to her god so long ago. But perhaps they could not fathom that such small beings as crows were capable of so much love, and that a man whose deeds were as dark as his would deserve it.





CHAPTER 3


CITY OF TOVA (THE CROW ROOKERY)

YEAR 1 OF THE CROW

Put not your faith in the gods of old. Their will is unknowable, their power fickle. They will abandon you when you least expect it.

—Exhortations for a Happy Life



“Drink this.”

Someone lifted Serapio’s head, and liquid touched his lips.

Memories tumbled rootless and disordered, and he was twelve again, a clay cup sweet and cold in his hands, his mother smiling as she fed him poison. Her face morphed before him and became a skull, empty and leering. Her voice, the slap of running feet bound for flight.

Panic welled in his chest, choking, suffocating. A primal urge to get away rolled through his body, the need to stop what he knew came next.