Traveler of the Void
Part 1 - City on the Sea
Chapter 6 - Eshana's Ring
The flames of the candles lit inside the palace's salu lamps wavered. These lamps were made of large orange shells with naturally curved-in sides that blocked out wind and spread light more widely and evenly than ordinary lamps could. The shells that these lamps were made of were exceedingly rare, so salu lamps were a luxury that was only available at the royal palace.
Chagum sat in his rooms, not in a chair, but on one of the raised cushions with a low back support that had been brought from New Yogo. He balanced on one knee and leaned back in his seat. He had cleared the rooms of most people shortly before, so now it was just him and Shuga, who was looking at him with a complicated expression.
"There is nothing to be done, Your Majesty," Shuga said. "This is not your problem to solve."
Chagum frowned at Shuga's severe tone. "Why not? This is about saving someone's life. That girl definitely smells just like the waters of Nayugu. She's like I was. There has to be something we can do."
Chagum rubbed his arms in an unconscious gesture of self-comfort. "I remember everything. I remember how it felt as the Nyunga Ro Im grew inside me—it was like my soul was getting smaller and smaller. Sometimes I'd lose all sensation in my arms and legs. I couldn't see or hear... I lost control of all of my senses. The Nyunga Ro Im took over my mind and moved me without my knowledge or consent.
"In my case, the Nyunga Ro Im was always working desperately to save me, and itself, when it did things like that. And I was able to see another world—but it wasn't Nayugu, and it wasn't Sagu. The world I saw was a strange one, where the two worlds overlapped. My body could be walking up a mountain slope while my soul was underwater in Nayugu—under so far and so deep that the clear blue water seemed to have no bottom. But I could see parts of Sagu when I was there, too—uprooted trees floating past, or fish that couldn't see me..."
Chagum lifted his eyes and looked at Shuga sitting across from him. "That girl can't see, doesn't seem to hear, and moves as if her soul has left her body. She's just like—"
"She's not like you were," Shuga says. "She is different. Your Majesty, please be calm and think. That girl can't do anything for herself at all, can she? She is simply led around by others. In your case, the egg of the Nyunga Ro Im only took over your body to keep you safe and to get you to the location where it needed to hatch. A spirit like that is not manipulating this girl. She does not appear to be in control of her own movements at all. She is entirely dependent on other people to direct her."
Even if their situations weren't the same, one thing still disturbed Chagum deeply, and that was the white cloth that had covered the girl's eyes. He tried to put his cold dread into words, but as he struggled to do so, he realized that Shuga was right. The egg of the Nyunga Ro Im had possessed him when it had wanted to go home, or when it had needed to keep him safe, but otherwise it had allowed him control over his own movements. And when he had been possessed by the spirit, trying to lead him anywhere the egg didn't want to go would not have worked—he would have shaken off his guides and ran to wherever the egg wanted him to be. Putting a cloth over his eyes would probably have had no effect.
"But even if that's true—" Chagum tried to argue, but Shuga calmly interrupted him.
"Your Majesty. You have said that you desire to save this girl's life. Let's say for the sake of argument that she is exactly as you were. How would you save her?"
"I would explain what has happened to her to the King."
"And what evidence would you present?"
Chagum was at a loss. He understood what Shuga was saying: his experience was his own and didn't necessarily apply to this situation. Just because his and Eshana's experiences resembled one another did not mean they were the same.
"I have been learning about Nayugu from Master Torogai for four years,” Shuga said in a low voice. There are things about Nayugu that even she does not know. There probably are other spirits very like the water spirit that laid its egg in you in this world. Certainly, there is knowledge of such spirits that has been passed down since before the founding of New Yogo."
"Then we should at least try to verify that it's the same kind of spirit," Chagum said. "Shuga, that's what I want to do. You learned how to do a Soul Call from Torogai, didn't you? Just try it, once, for me—please? Try to call that girl's soul back."
"Your Majesty—"
"I know I'm asking you to do something dangerous,” Chagum said, interrupting him. "But if we just sit here and do nothing, that little girl is going to be thrown to her death. When I think about it, I..."
"Your Majesty." Shuga extended his hands and placed them on Chagum's shoulders. Chagum looked at Shuga with an expression of shock. Touching the Crown Prince without permission or cause was considered a grave offense for someone as low in status as Shuga. But Chagum did not protest. He was stunned silent by Shuga's expression.
Shuga enunciated each of his next words carefully, but his voice was barely louder than a whisper. "Calm down, and consider the position you are in. You are a foreign guest at the coronation celebration of a new king. Do you really intend to flout the customs and beliefs of this place, even after the King of Sangal has begged for your cooperation?"
Going against the king's wishes on the matter of the girl was likely not something that would be easily forgiven.
We're talking about saving someone's life, Chagum thought, but because of who I am, my hands are tied. There has to be something I can do. Chagum's chest hurt. He was profoundly irritated with himself. He felt helpless to do anything at all.
Slowly, carefully, Shuga removed his hands from Chagum's shoulders. Chagum's irritation collapsed to nothing. Of course Shuga was right. Shuga always thought of Chagum's safety and how best to guide him first and foremost. But that didn't make him feel better.
Chagum clenched his fists so tight that he left the impressions of his nails on his palms. Even after Shuga withdrew, Chagum couldn't sleep and stood staring out of a window in his rooms. He lifted the slatted shutters on the window and let in the sea air. It ruffled Chagum's hair, fluttered his clothes and cooled the sweat drying on his skin. It was the middle of the night, but the weather was still warm. The cool breeze carried a touch of salt. Beyond the palace and the rows of houses outside, Chagum could see the pitch-dark surface of the ocean, lit faintly silver by moonlight.
While he stared at the moonlit waves, the sound of the wind increased in volume and took on a cadence that was like a melody. Suddenly, sharp cold pain spread from his forehead to the rest of his body. He blinked. When he opened his eyes he thought he was seeing an illusion.
Water the color of lapis lazuli hung suspended from the night sky outside his window. He was soaked in the scent of the water spirit: it was the exact smell he remembered. He felt somehow that he was repeating something that had happened before.
The waves in the sky were not the same color or shape as the waves in the ordinary ocean. They were lighter, like waves lit by the sun at dawn. Then the window, the floor, the room—everything vanished as Chagum was sucked into the bright blue waves.
Inside that vast expanse of blue were innumerable tiny points of light. The green-yellow lights danced through the water, flitting past and around him, leaving trails of illumination in their wake. Their paths were as true and straight as arrows. The glowing light they emitted brightened when they moved and dimmed when they stood still, making them appear like fireflies in the dark.
Yona Ro Gai...the water dwellers!
Chagum remembered the water dwellers of Nayugu. They often lived in large groups and danced together joyfully just as they were now. He heard a high-pitched song with a slow melody, delicate and lovely enough to pluck at the strings of his heart...an irresistibly entrancing song.
From the depths of the sea below him, voices beyond number sang this song. Lights danced and swirled around him, leaving bright trails through the water. They seemed to be coming closer to him.
Chagum noticed that he was situated on a high undersea cliff. The ocean floor spread out beneath him, as bright and illumined as if it were high noon. Nothing seemed so beautiful to him as that ocean floor. He felt like he was being invited there and that he should go—just swim down and...
Something pulled him sharply back to himself. Chagum looked down at his hands and saw the signet ring of the Crown Prince of New Yogo around his middle finger. The music, the water, and the dancing lights faded away, leaving him standing at the window of his room once more.
Chagum put his hands on the cool windowsill and sucked in a harsh breath while continuing to stare at his hands. His heart pounded so hard it hurt. What was that? Had he been in Nayugu, just now?
This palace must be in Nayugu's ocean.
Nayugu overlapped with Sagu. Even if a place was on land in Sagu, it could easily be underwater in Nayugu. Chagum knew this, but he didn't understand how he had gone to Nayugu so easily. Even magic weavers couldn't see Nayugu without making special preparations first. It was possible that his time with the water spirit had made him sensitive to Nayugu in some way—enough for him to see it like that. But the spirit's egg had long since hatched and left him, so he shouldn't be connected to Nayugu anymore.
He revisited what he'd just seen in his mind and remembered something else. Blown on the wind, in the narrow space between Sagu and Nayugu, he had seen a shigu salua flower.
Could it have been that?
The shigu salua flower bloomed in places that connected the worlds. He'd seen the same flower when he'd gone to the Land of Feasting with the water spirit. But he didn't see any shigu salua here, in his rooms.
Maybe shigu salua aren't the only thing that can open the door between worlds.
Piercing cold spread through his chest like ice. He felt unsteady on his feet. He had a feeling like a door in his mind had just unlocked, and that if he opened it, he could go to Nayugu at any time. But why did he feel so much terror at such a possibility? He took shallow breaths to calm down so that he could try to discover the source of his uneasiness.
Eventually, he framed his sense of dread as something like a fear of loss. Like two measures of salt on a scale, Sagu and Nayugu existed in equilibrium. By opening the door, he could tip the scale. If either side tipped too far, Chagum had the feeling that one side or the other would completely disappear.
He didn't know how he understood these things. It was just a feeling. And he still didn't entirely understand how he'd been lured to Nayugu's ocean in the first place.
Why is the world like this? Why was I born like this? The last question was the hardest one for him to grapple with.
What he did understand was that the royal palace of Sangal was at the bottom of the ocean in Nayugu, and that people like Chagum that had spent time between the two worlds before could hear the voices of the water dwellers. So much seemed obvious.
But that meant that the little girl must have heard those voices, too—and been dragged all the way down to the bottom of the sea in Nayugu. Chagum shook all over.
Maybe her soul can't return. Maybe she's trapped.
Nayugu was very beautiful, but human thoughts—and even human lives—held about as much worth there as a grain of sand. He considered the egg's unrelenting single-mindedness when it had taken him over and understood what his life must have been worth in Nayugu. The egg had only used him so that it could hatch. But he did not believe that the water spirit was evil. Like a child reflexively obeying a parent, it had been reactionary to another's will.
Chagum had been close to dying, more than once. If the egg had not saved him, he would have died for sure—the monsters pursuing him would have ripped him open to devour the egg, and he would be dead now.
He thought about the ethereal, majestic beauty of the bottom of Nayugu's ocean. It would be so easy to entice people there, as he'd almost been. People who were successfully lured there were like pebbles dropped above water, inexorably sinking into the deep, never to surface again.
That seemed true of ordinary people, but if it was him—maybe he could chase down the girl. It was likely that he could find the girl in Nayugu. But then he'd have to open the door in his heart and enter Nayugu...and he feared the consequences.
He could find her. He was sure of it. But he wasn't sure he'd be able to bring either of them back to Sagu afterwards.
Prince Tarsan was also passing a sleepless night. He kept thinking about Eshana's radiant smile just after he'd given her the seashell ring, and couldn't even attempt to sleep. His brother and his oldest sister's husband, the Island Guardian Adol, had guessed at his true feelings, casting him scornful smiles as Eshana had been led past him. Those smiles had seemed to say that a prince had no need to care for a fisherman's daughter.
Brother, that's enough. Leave it, Tarsan thought. The ceiling above him was liberally embedded with shells the color of mother-of-pearl. A faint light like starlight reflected faintly from it. Tarsan thought it looked a little like the night sky seen from the deck of a ship.
On board a ship, the orders of the captain had similar weight to those of the King of Sangal. If a captain of the ship was experienced and knowledgeable, Tarsan would obey their orders without a scrap of hesitation, even though he was a prince. Sailing over a bottomless ocean with a boundless sky overhead, one's comrades became very much like a family that would live and die for one another.
Even though his brother was about to become the King of Sangal, he was sure that Karnan had never felt such camaraderie with a ship's crew in his entire life. Tarsan had been raised on Kalsh, a tiny windswept island not far from the capital. Long ago, Tarsan's ancestors had set sail from Kalsh. Of course, they'd had to conceal the fact that they were pirates in order to move freely. So much was common knowledge.
But his ancestors had been no ordinary pirates. No one would be willing to follow a leader that only took from their followers while giving nothing in return. Tarsan's ancestors understood that precept well and generously rewarded everyone that gave them faithful service. As their followers and wealth increased, the rulers of Sangal became wise in their treatment of others.
If Sangal's rulers have prospered, it's because they never threw away the hearts of the common people, Tarsan thought. He believed his ancestors would have understood him. The King of Sangal could not afford to be aloof and distant like the rulers of the northern countries if he wanted to unite the strong-willed people of the sea.
If only my uncle were still alive. Tarsan remembered Yunan well. As the younger brother of King Tafmur and High General of Sangal, he had been a true man of the sea. Yunan had told him often as he'd grown up that Sangal's King and the nation's people were bound by strong ties, as close as family. "If you understand the hearts of your people, they will believe in you. Advise your brother well, and the two of you will lead this country in the right direction."
Tarsan had spent much of his time living, working, and playing among the common people of Sangal. The Island Guardian Adol often said behind his back that Tarsan would have been happier as a fisherman than a prince, but Tarsan didn't care what he said. Besides, it was true.
For his part, Tarsan thought that Adol should have more direct contact with the people he ruled. He had married into the royal family, which seemed to fill him with pride—pride that Tarsan wasn't sure was deserved. He looked down his nose at the people of Kalsh. Tarsan didn't think that a man like that, who not only didn't know the hearts of his people but had no interest in knowing them, could be relied upon to lead or defend his people.
Soldiers that fought for the Island Guardians, and for the King himself, were almost all the sons of fishermen. Tarsan's personal guards had all come from Kalsh and its nearby islands. Every one of them was considered a Yaltash Shuri: a brother of the sea. If he didn't understand their motivations and convictions deeply, he was certain that he wouldn't be able to lead them.
One by one, he recalled the weather-beaten faces of all the Yaltash Shuri that he knew. Some served the King, or an Island Guardian, or himself, but their first loyalty was always to the sea. That was the source of their strength. He had been raised, not as a prince, but as an ordinary boy and man that had to earn his place just like everyone else.
The first time he had demonstrated sufficient skill at diving and the strength of his arm with a harpoon, he had been formally recognized by the Yaltash Shuri as one of their own. That had been one of the happiest days of his life. The men that guarded him now were those same men. He trusted them utterly and knew they would do as he ordered because they trusted him, too.
As he remembered the place he'd grown up, the face of Eshana rose up in his mind's eye. I wonder what Yata would do now. Tarsan remembered him with respect and a twinge of sadness.
Eshana's father Yata was about Karnan's age when he died. He was an incredible diver and fisherman. People said that he'd received the breath of the Nayugul Raita as a birthright. No one could match him at diving or deep-sea fishing. He could hold his breath for so long that people teased him about being part fish. He could also dive to the bottom of the ocean floor to depths that many people couldn't manage, due to the pressure. Even the form of his dive elicited universal admiration. He would jump straight up and then out like an arrow, all speed, leaving behind a trail of tiny white bubbles in the water behind him.
Yata was a man of few words, but when he laughed, the whole room laughed with him. A large group of people, usually children, followed him around during the day. He taught them everything he knew about diving and fishing.
Yata taught many of the island's children how to swim. Tarsan was one of those children, along with one or two others that he considered fierce diving competitors. Aside from Yata himself, the only person he knew of that could hold their breath longer underwater than he could was a Rassharō girl named Surina.
Yata always praised Surina. When he was very young, it galled Tarsan to constantly lose to Surina, but Surina was a gracious winner and a genuinely kind person. She also took no personal pride in her own diving skills. Tarsan and Surina learned diving and fishing from Yata together; eventually, they became good friends.
Tarsan remembered diving to great depths and feeling absolutely terrified as he seemed to shrink smaller and smaller in the cold dark sea, his breath running out. At those times, Surina would look him in the eye and smile. He ate with Surina at Yata's house and they played with Eshana together. Eshana greatly resembled her father. She wasn't a talkative child, but when she laughed, her face lit up with a cheerful light bright enough to shine all the way to the ocean floor. She was adorable, and adored.
Yata failed to come home after a storm at sea half a year ago. Tarsan stayed up all night with Eshana and Yata's wife Sasha. He prayed with them and all the people of Kalsh. Tarsan still couldn't believe that Yata had died at sea, but the facts were the facts: he had died, along with five other strong men.
And now Eshana's life had been snatched away as well. Tarsan could only imagine Sasha's pain at being left all alone.
Tarsan was just about to drift off to sleep when a something startled him awake. He thought he heard Eshana crying out. It was possible that it was all just a terrible dream, but the sound of Eshana's wretched sobbing made his blood pound in his veins.
He bolted out of bed. Where is Eshana's room?
She'd probably been placed somewhere along the western edge of the palace in an interior room, based on the status she'd been given. Tarsan steeled his resolve and prepared to go to her.
Just outside his door, his guards maintained their sleepless vigil. If Tarsan went out into the hallway, they would follow him. He took a step back and silently lowered himself out of his window onto the stone ground of the courtyard below. He took a moment to let his eyes adjust to the darkness outside, then started walking.
There would probably be priestesses and soldiers in and around Eshana's room. Tarsan didn't want to be seen, so he had no intention of entering her room through the door. His plan was to peek into her window from below to make sure that she wasn't crying. If she was crying, it might be a sign that her soul had returned to her body. Then she wouldn't be the Eyes of the Nayugul Raita any longer. She would just be a terrified or injured little girl.
Tarsan's bare feet were completely soaked by the grass in the courtyard gardens, but he barely noticed. He stopped under the window of Eshana's room and found it wide open. Tarsan put his ear to the wall and listened for any signs of movement on the other side.
Nothing.
He heard absolutely nothing—not crying, not even the sound of Eshana breathing in her sleep. After listening for a little while, Tarsan frowned. If the soldiers and priestesses were still awake, he should hear them moving. It seemed like there were no people in the room.
She must not be here.
Tarsan put both hands on the windowsill of Eshana's room and hoisted himself up. Dimly, as outlines, he identified the figure of Eshana, white cloth still hanging over her head. She stood with her back to him. Tarsan thought she was alone at first, but as his eyes adjusted to the room's total darkness, he realized that she was surrounded by the supine forms of soldiers and priestesses. They were sprawled out on the floor around her as if they were sleeping—or dead.
Tarsan gasped. Even though Eshana couldn't see—could she?—she turned around and faced Tarsan directly. Then she brought her hands up to her still-covered eyes and began to cry.
The sound was so heartbreaking that Tarsan jumped down from the windowsill into the room without thinking. He rushed to Eshana, reaching out for her hand as he said, "Did you come back? Ssh, it's okay now. You're all right. Please don't be scared."
The moment he touched her hand, a sharp pain shot from his hand to his spine. Tarsan had a sudden, agonizing headache. He lost consciousness before he could call for help.
Tarsan's eyes closed. Moving like a puppet on strings, he removed Eshana's ring from her finger and slipped it onto his own little finger. The ring was so small that he could not push it beyond his first knuckle.
The next morning, Tarsan woke up in his own bed. He'd completely forgotten about sneaking into Eshana's room the previous night. His head felt heavy. His mind wandered in a fog. He had trouble thinking about much of anything.
Tarsan sighed as he left his bed and did not even notice the tiny ring sitting below the first knuckle of his little finger.
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