A Song of Legends Lost: 1 (Invoker Trilogy, 1) - Tapa blanda

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M. H. Ayinde was born in London’s East End. She is a runner, a lapsed martial artist, and a screentime enthusiast. Her debut novel is A Song of Legends Lost. Her short fiction has appeared in FIYAH Literary Magazine, F&SF, Fantasy Magazine, and elsewhere, and she was the 2021 winner of the Future Worlds Prize. She lives in North London with three generations of her family and their Studio Ghibli obsession.

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Chapter One: Temi

ONE Temi

By the time Temi arrived, not even bones remained to send to the ancestors. She stood at the edge of the abandoned wharf, looking out across the small, muddy beach at what remained of her uncle’s boat. The hull was charred and blackened, as were the oars, and nothing moved within. No sign of her uncle and cousins. No sign of their cargo. And yet she had heard the screams as she ran down the dirt road. Had seen the strange green flames from the top of the hill.

Temi slipped down onto the riverbank, her bare feet sinking into cool mud. Beyond the boat, the River Ae crawled by, ruddy and sluggish as always. Great galleys slid through its waters, but nobody noticed this tiny, abandoned harbour in a ruined corner of the City of Nine Lords. Beyond the river wall on the far bank stood the shacks and huts of the district of Lordsgrave, and beyond those, like knives thrusting towards the sky, loomed the jagged crystal towers of the vanished Scathed.

Temi dropped to her knees. The curiously sweet tang of the fire caught in her throat as she blinked back tears. Four of her family were dead. An entire shipment of their cargo was lost. Six moons’ earnings had been taken by the flames. And the worst part was the driving rain would turn whatever ashes remained to sludge. She’d have nothing left of her cousins to burn on the pyre. Nothing to send on to the ancestral realm.

“This was no accident,” said a voice behind her.

Temi turned to see an old woman squatting in the mud. The many layers of her linen robes were plastered to her portly frame. At first glance, she resembled a nun—the bald head, the tataued feet—but the rings on her fingers and the crystal at her throat told a different tale.

“Do I know you, Old Auntie?” Temi said. Few souls came to the abandoned harbour. Surely this woman had heard the screams too, had smelt the strange, sweet smoke? And yet the smile she offered Temi was calm.

“No,” the crone said. “But I simply couldn’t walk by such terrible grief. Who were they, these poor souls?”

Temi drew in a shaking breath and unclenched her fists. “Relatives,” she said. “Cousins, from Jebba Province. Weren’t close family, but they’re family still. What’s it to you, anyway?”

“No ordinary fire could do this,” the crone said, nodding towards the ruined boat. “What natural flame turns bone to ash but leaves the wood beneath merely charred? And in these rains! No, someone powerful has done this, child. Someone who wanted them gone.”

“They never hurt nobody,” Temi muttered. “They’re just traders.”

“Traders, eh? Docking out here, so far from the market?” The crone settled down in the mud, the rain sliding off her bald head in sheets. “You know, when I was a girl, this part of the river was used by smugglers. The Ae is the lifeblood of our great City of Nine Lords, and the spine of the Nine Lands. All sorts of things travel up its poisoned waters. Mind telling me what it was your family traded in?”

Temi looked away. “That ain’t your concern, Old Auntie.” Likely the old woman was simply a curious traveller—there were enough of those in Lordsgrave. But the ancestors turned from souls who were loose with their tongues.

The crone stared thoughtfully at the wreckage. “Such a tragedy,” she muttered. Then she pushed to her feet and set to opening the pack that stood beside her. “You’ll never get a spirit-wood fire going in this. By the time the rains stop, everything will be washed away. I heard a story once, about a man who drowned. Swept out on the Ae during a storm. He was never seen again. His family had no body to burn, and so he did not return to the ancestors. When his wife died, though their children burned her body, her spirit lingered, searching for him still. Do you wish to remain forever roaming the city, seeking the bodies of your lost kin?” She jerked her chin towards the river. “Spirit wood won’t burn in this, but I have something better.”

Temi couldn’t muster up the energy to question, and so she knelt silently as the crone set to work, her wrapper clinging to her legs, her braids heavy with the rain. The crone hitched up her skirts and darted about the blackened boat, sprinkling something from a pouch in her hand. It looked like sawdust to Temi, and much of it blew away in the wind, but some fell upon the mud and shallows, sparkling like tiny jewels.

Soon, the old woman stood rubbing her gnarled hands and removing her outer robe. The body beneath, in its closeclothes, was wholesomely round and soft bellied. As rain slid out of the grey sky, the crone danced, hands lifting and dropping as she chanted in the Forbidden Tongue. Temi watched her, feeling numb, until she heard a shuffling at her back.

She turned, expecting to see a lizard or a rat, but it was a cat, a scrawny thing hiding in the old woman’s pack. Temi held out her hand instinctively, but the creature hissed at her and flinched away.

“Well fuck you too,” Temi muttered, and turned back.

The old woman had worked herself up into a frenzy. Her eyes rolled, and her arms and legs jerked as she danced. Temi was just wondering whether she should say something to stop the crone before she gave herself a seizure, when the dancing ceased, and the crone dropped her hands, and as she did so, a perfect circle of green fire rushed to life around the ruined boat.

Temi scrambled backwards in surprise as the keen green flames flared and then softened. Now, a merry ring surrounded Uncle Leke’s boat. Neither the wind nor the driving rain seemed to touch it. Even the ruddy waters of the Ae could not wash it away. It was as irrepressible as the City of Nine Lords itself.

“Oh, ancestors!” the crone intoned, lifting her hands to the skies. “Oh, ancestors, please guide your children… What were their names?”

“Leke,” Temi said, her voice catching. Who else had been planning to come with him this time? “Raluwa. Abeni. Sede.”

“Please guide your sweet children, Leke, Raluwa, Abeni, and Sede, safely back to you, oh, ancestors. Guide their spirits beyond the pyre and into your realm, that they might be reunited with you for all eternity. Let the tears of those they leave behind serve as an offering, and proof of their worth.”

Temi heard the cat shuffling behind her again as the crone hobbled over, eyes fever bright. “It is done,” she said, squatting down. “They have crossed. They will return to those they loved.” She squeezed Temi’s shoulder.

“What about the spirit wood?” Temi said.

The crone smiled. “You see before you an ancestral circle formed from the shavings of a very rare kind of techwork. It is called Dust of Ancestral Light.” She eyed Temi. “Does that trouble you? I assure you, it has been Cleansed.”

“Techwork, is it?” Temi said.

“Just so.”

“But you’ve made it safe for me. How kind.”

“Think nothing of it, my child.”

“Just one thing, though.” Temi grabbed the woman’s wrist. Held her fast. “There’s no such thing as Dust of Ancestral Light. And you’re a fucking liar.”

The crone’s face hardened. “Traders, were they?”

“Yes, traders. And we know a thing or two about Scathed relics. You can’t use techwork to send souls to the ancestral realm.”

“Such ingratitude,” the crone muttered, trying to extract her arm.

“Why would you want to trick me?” Temi said, voice rising with her temper. “I’m sitting here looking at the ashes of my family, and you come serving up this shit. What do—” She heard the shuffling again and turned around to see the cat creeping towards the crone’s pack. In its mouth was a coin. Her coin. Part of the payment that had been in her satchel.

Temi dived for the crone’s pack, tore it open. There lay three more golden suns. There lay little Maiwo’s beaded necklace, a gift for Uncle Leke.

“You thief!” Temi cried, grabbing the woman’s arm again.

The crone snorted. “You ungrateful brat. It was a small price to pay for the peace that I was about to give you.”

“A peace built on lies!”

“Let go of me or you shall regret we ever met.”

“I already do!” Temi shouted. She glanced at the pack. “Where’s the rest of my money?”

“What money?”

Temi tightened her grip. “Give it back, or ancestors help me, I’ll take it from you.”

“Oh no you won’t,” the crone said, touching Temi’s free arm with a sickening smile. Something sharp bit into Temi’s skin.

“Ow!” Temi cried, releasing the crone. A perfect circle of blood welled in the brown flesh of her left arm, next to her family tatau. “You cut me!”

“Yes, and that’s not all,” the crone snarled. She lifted her hands. One of her many rings began to glow. “I place a curse upon you!”

“Oh, please—”

“I place a curse upon you, Temi of the City of Nine Lords, Temi of the Arrant Hill bakers—”

“How do you know my name?”

“I curse you! Now, and forevermore!”

The crone began to shake, her eyes rolling up, her lips quivering with unspoken words. The ring—blackglass set with a red gem—glowed more brightly, pulsing ever faster.

“I grew up in Lordsgrave, witch,” Temi said. “You can’t scare the likes of me.”

But then the light from the ring flared, and a great force knocked Temi backwards, and all was darkness and silence.

Temi woke chilled to her core and with a dull throbbing in the back of her head. For a moment, she wondered why her brother had left the window open. Then she remembered. The river. The boat. The ashes.

Temi sat up, rubbing her head. The sky beyond the line of buildings was a rich blue, the remaining clouds tinged with the familiar golden glow that emanated from the king’s palace at the heart of the city. Mercifully, the rains had stopped. Traffic crawled by on the river beyond.

Temi groaned and rolled onto all fours, trying to piece together what had happened. Then her hand touched something soft, and she remembered the crone. No; the spirit witch—for that was surely what she was. A nun cast out by her peers for dabbling in techwork. To her surprise, the old woman lay on her back in the mud, eyes open, mouth open, arms spread wide.

“Don’t play dead,” Temi muttered, reaching for her satchel. The witch’s pack lay a few paces away. Temi could still see the curve of Maiwo’s necklace in the half-light. She crawled over and took it back, and her coins too. Then she turned to the witch.

The woman lay unchanged. Tentatively, Temi reached out and poked the woman’s hand. Then touched her again, more forcefully this time.

The witch sat up, drawing in a great raking breath. Her eyes had rolled back, but she turned towards Temi and croaked, “The ancestors have spoken! The king must fall by your hand!”

Then a terrible choking gripped her, and she clawed at her throat before collapsing back where she had lain only moments before.

“Shit,” Temi muttered.

She watched, wondering for a moment if the witch was playing another trick: trying to escape through feigned death. But as she stared at the crone’s chest, looking for movement, counting her own breaths, it became clear. The old woman would never stand again. How she could simply have dropped down dead, Temi could not imagine, and wasn’t particularly inclined to. Perhaps, in her rapture, the woman’s heart had given up. Or perhaps Leke and her cousins truly had crossed the pyre and had sent the witch her death as punishment for her misuse of their names. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that someone had murdered four of her kin, and the last thing Temi needed was to be found at a well-known smuggling cove with a cooling corpse beside her.

She checked the boat one last time, just to be sure. Perhaps she’d been wrong. Perhaps they had swum to safety. But no: there among the blackened sludge was Leke’s single gold tooth. She scooped it up, along with the sludgy ashes that remained, and deposited the lot in her satchel. Maybe there would be enough there to burn; whatever the witch had claimed, she could still try.

Something nudged against her leg. Temi looked down to see the witch’s strange cat. It mewled piteously at her.

“You two-faced little shit,” Temi muttered. But still, she held out her hand and let it lick her with a hot, rough tongue. Perhaps it saw in her a kindred spirit. They were both grieving now. But when she looked more closely, she saw it was no normal cat. Beneath its matted grey fur, she glimpsed blinking lights… A twist of metal where the outer skin had peeled away. This was no cat, not truly. This was something else.

Temi lifted her foot. It would be a simple thing, just to bring her heel down. To grind the creature’s glowing eyes into the mud. It was a greyblood. A tool of the enemy. A destroyer of civilisations. It was her duty to rid the Nine Lands of it.

Temi sighed. “Follow me if you like,” she said, pulling her satchel full of ancestors over her head. “I won’t stop you.” And she set off home.

At sunset, Sister Relina the Humble, High Shadedaughter of the Eighth Circle of Enlightenment, sat up in the muddy darkness. She drew in a painful breath and blinked the moisture back into her eyes. Her pack still lay where she’d left it—the foolish girl hadn’t thought to take it with her. But the techwork abomination was gone. That was something, at least.

Sister Relina lifted her hands, closed her eyes, and muttered under her breath. She touched the sacred jewel embedded in her skull and called softly to the ancestors to send her words to the Holy Mother.

And presently, the ancestors answered.

[Speak,] the ancestors said. [The Holy Mother is listening.]

“Your Holiness,” Relina said. “It is done. I have prepared the one who will bring down the king.”

Good, came the reply. Now let us hope that we have acted in time.