text: Spring in the mountains, like something Zezili had read about as a child: the smell of tree lupines and honeysuckle, wafting on a wind that carried with it the stink of her little army. She got a warm week of that, and then they descended into the Tordinian lowlands on the other side of the pass, hurrying just ahead of a pack of strange animals Zezili had no name for.
  
  The animals sprang on them their first night in the cold, foggy bottomlands, an attack so fast Zezili didn't have time to pull up her trousers from the pit she was pissing in. She ran into camp with sword in hand, naked ass bared to the cold air. She hacked and slashed. Her blade found purchase. Slid home into some scaly backside. A yelp. Howling.
  
  Zezili pulled her blade from what looked to be a giant scorpion dog. She had no other name for it. She grimaced and wiped the violet blood on her boot, hoping it wasn't anything poisonous. Rhea's tears, how did anyone put up with living in such a vile place?
  
  The dogs took two of her women, and badly mauled another, so savagely Zezili suspected she'd die of the wounds. But leaving her there would be bad for morale, and sending her back with a couple of others would mean losing three women instead of one. So they pushed on, carrying her at the back of the train on a muddy litter.
  
  "We're leaving the lowlands," Jasoi said from her mount at Zezili's side.
  
  Zezili glanced over at her. The fog was lifting. Jasoi's expression was, as ever, blasé. She was smeared in scorpion dog blood from head to foot. The first slash of open water they found, Zezili wanted a dunk, no matter how cold. Her skin itched.
  
  "You all right with being in Tordin?" Zezili asked. She'd asked before they started, but suspected the answer she might give in Dorinah would be different than one back on the turf of the place she'd grown up.
  
  "Saradyn burned down my mother's farm," Jasoi said. "I've got no quarrel with burning down a few of his."
  
  "Going to be more than a few farms."
  
  Jasoi spit. She was chewing on some bit of bonsa sap. "Better than gutting chattel."
  
  "Yes, the dajians were a nasty business."
  
  "You think she's going to kill the rest? Have someone else do it, now we're gone?"
  
  "I don't know," Zezili said. "I'm not sure our… agreement with the Tai Mora is still on."
  
  "You fuck that up?"
  
  "As much as it could be fucked up, yeah."
  
  "Tordin's different from every place else," Jasoi said, dismissing the other conversation as if she knew it to be as potentially fraught as Zezili did. Jasoi was a woman of simple pleasures, but she was not stupid. "Wild here, kind of like in Dhai. Lot of jungle, bands of thieves. They'll skin you as soon as look at you. Most are refugees from the fighting. Civil war, all the time."
  
  "All the time?"
  
  Jasoi shrugged. "Long as I can remember. The Empress's cousin, Penelodyn, ruled here for a while before the Thief Queen unseated her. And after that it all started falling to pieces. Saradyn's trying to bring everybody together again under a sword. Side with the guy with the biggest stick, you know?"
  
  Zezili cleaned her weapon and sheathed it. She urged the bear forward and called up at Storm, "You going to put better scouts ahead? I don't want any more surprise dogs!"
  
  Storm glanced back. "I thought you'd be pleased at the chance to show your skills."
  
  "Fuck you, Storm."
  
  "I sent a boy up."
  
  "A boy? Is that a joke?"
  
  "He's fast. Good eyes."
  
  "That's soft, Storm."
  
  "Just practical. The clearing's ahead, another mile."
  
  Zezili slapped her bear, and the animal trundled on ahead of Jasoi and the half dozen legionnaires between her and Storm.
  
  Storm rode at the head of the group, something Zezili would not have done herself. Any kid with a bow could loose a bolt in her throat. But Storm swayed on ahead with apparent ease. He had even loosened his collar and taken off his greaves.
  
  "Think they'll take us both out together?" Zezili said as she came up beside him.
  
  "Who, bandits? Saradyn's men? No, not a group this size."
  
  "I've learned caution."
  
  "I can see that in your face." There was no sarcasm in his voice, but Zezili flinched.
  
  "We should have a clear view of the crater from this clearing," he said. "Should be an old temple to Rhea here, the Empress says. Our first landmark on the map. If this is it, we're only a week or so away from the site she's sending us to."
  
  As the trees thinned, Zezili saw a massive mound jutting out of the clearing ahead. She was a little surprised they hadn't seen it before now, but the tree cover was thick. If the trees were two hundred feet tall, the mound was easily three hundred, a conical tower of soil covered in thorny vines and twisted saplings with yellowing leaves. When they broke into the clearing Zezili saw heaps of bones peeking up from the crawling vines. She stopped her bear at the edge of the clearing, and held up a hand for Storm to stop.
  
  "You think there's some beast out here?" Storm said.
  
  "We'd have drawn its attention before now," Zezili said, "unless that boy runner of yours was already eaten. You think he went up that?"
  
  "Around, maybe," Storm said. "He's to scout, not explore."
  
  Storm put his fingers to his lips and whistled for the runner. Zezili waited with him while the bears and bodies behind her snuffled and shifted. Zezili was glad most of them couldn't see the bones.
  
  Storm whistled again. Zezili saw movement ahead of her, to her left, and gripped the hilt of her sword. Another flash of movement, then a bob of dark hair. Not some creature, but a boy with his hair shorn monstrously short. He wore dark colors, and was wiry as a bonsa sapling. She saw a bit of hard strength in his face that she didn't like. He had the audacity to meet her gaze for a short moment before looking quickly away.
  
  "Any monster out there?" Storm said. "Or worse? Another woman like Syre Zezili, perhaps?"
  
  The boy shook his head. Young man, really. Twenty or so, if Zezili guessed right. "No sign of people ahead, for at least the next half mile. Biggest wildlife is a couple hundred pounds, some boar, long-necked herbivores–"
  
  "Long-necked what?" Zezili said.
  
  "Animals," he said, "that eat grass."
  
  "Like range deer?"
  
  "Bigger, and striped, not spotted. Sorry, I don't know the name."
  
  Zezili pointed to the mound. "Scout up that next," she said. "Should be our landmark."
  
  Storm frowned, scrunching up his scraggly beard. He had the decency to continue having his mane of hair done each morning while on the march, at least. "I can confirm it's the same as what's on the map," Storm said.
  
  "He'll have a better view of what's ahead," Zezili said. "No more surprises."
  
  The young man's throat bobbed. He glanced at Storm.
  
  "Don't look at him," Zezili said. "We're both leading this charge. Get your skinny ass up the mount."
  
  "Go on, child," Storm said.
  
  The young man crept to the edge of the clearing and tread slowly across the tangles of yellowed bones.
  
  Zezili leaned forward. She realized she wanted to tear the tunic from him, and watch him navigate the gauntlet naked. A perverse pleasure, she knew. But her pleasures were fewer and fewer these days. What she could not control, she wanted to punish. It was an instinct that served her well in Dorinah. Outside of it, she realized, it meant punishing everything, everyone: the world; the sky.
  
  Zezili admitted she was surprised when he got to the base of the mound unscathed. He kicked at the loose soil and began to pull himself up, gripping vines and dying saplings for leverage. After a few feet, one of the saplings he grabbed tore away. He yanked it from the soil, and as it tumbled free Zezili saw the roots of the sapling were tangled around something that looked distinctly like a hunk of flesh of some kind. Animal or human, she didn't know. She rubbed her eyes. It had been a long ride.
  
  The boy climbed higher. Below him, the sapling and whatever it had rooted itself to tumbled into the wash of bones and vegetation below. Zezili saw the detritus tremble. She squinted. It continued to waver; a sea of bone. She saw ripples move out across the pile.
  
  "Storm…" she said, pointing.
  
  "I see it," Storm said. "Come down, boy!"
  
  "Don't!" Zezili said. "He's making progress."
  
  Storm slid off his bear with a grunt. He strode to the edge of the bone sea. "Come back!" he yelled. "Don't go further!"
  
  "There are stairs further up!" the young man called. "I can see steps built into the tower here."
  
  "Come down!"
  
  The young man swung further up the mound. Gripped what Zezili supposed he meant by "steps." From this distance, there was indeed some kind of patterned protrusions on the outside of the mound, but to Zezili they looked like teeth.
  
  Zezili didn't get off her bear, but she edged it forward to get a better look. The boy was at least thirty feet up, climbing with some regularity. Zezili saw bits of stone and loose soil tumble down the edge of the mound as he ascended. His fingers dug into the irregular grooves.
  
  Then the soil began to fall faster, and the falling stones grew larger. Zezili recoiled. The entire mound trembled.
  
  "Get off there!" Storm yelled.
  
  Zezili drew her bear back.
  
  A massive moaning broke across the clearing, as if the world had cracked open.
  
  The young man yelled, and held on. Great, fleshy tendrils erupted from the mound, a thousand snaking arms of tuberous tentacles. The boy screamed and let go. He slid four feet toward the bone yard before the tentacles caught him.
  
  The fleshy tentacle shook him like a doll, so violently Zezili thought he would come apart. Zezili heard the cracking of his spine.
  
  "Retreat!" Storm yelled at the women behind them. "About face and forward!"
  
  They were all too eager to obey. Zezili heard the jingle of tack, the babble of muttered prayers.
  
  Storm lunged back onto his bear, sliding his substantial girth into the saddle. He brought his mount around. He galloped ahead to catch up with the tail end of their force.
  
  Zezili gazed back a moment longer at the seething mound. The tentacles began to retract back into the soil. They took the boy's broken body with them. Zezili watched as the tentacled thing folded it into the maw of the giant semi-sentient flesh-eating plant. The horror gripped her then. She gagged. Yelled at her bear.
  
  She followed the retreating tail of their force. Storm forged on ahead to take the lead, but Zezili remained at the rear, looking constantly over her shoulder for some massive tentacle to come curling up from the undergrowth.
  
  They had no tracker for the Tordin woodland. Jasoi had left the place as a girl. What did she know? Foolish, to bring women to a place as wild and contaminated as Dhai. No infrastructure. No order. No law.
  
  An hour before dusk, Storm had them burn out a clearing and pitch camp. The Empress's Seekers were well gone, run out or destroyed by the Empress herself, so they worked with foreign tirajistas and parajistas from the island country of Sebastyn, a rocky shore much fought over by Dorinah and Saiduan. They enjoyed a negotiated peace now, one that had the Sebastyn collective agree to hand over a dozen jistas as a sign of good will and friendship.
  
  The Sebastyns were mostly short and dark, with a couple exceptions. Zezili had yet to learn their names. It felt like an inordinate amount of work. She had spent much of her time drinking and sleeping. It worried her that the Empress had placed her trust in whatever needed to happen to wake her sleeping weapon into the hands of these foreigners.
  
  Storm's pages put together Storm and Zezili's tents. Zezili yelled at one of the jistas to come over and burn out a tendril that looked like it was moving again, then sat down and started untangling her armor. After the tents were up and darkness descended, Storm invited Zezili over to his fire. Zezili saw Storm's second there, and Jasoi, and even the youngest page, a girl Zezili had taken to calling "runt" because she had some kind of mangled walk.
  
  Zezili was already a little drunk, but she shuffled over. Drinking alone got old, and in the right light, Storm's second looked a little boyish.
  
  "What did you think of that… thing today?" Jasoi asked. Her eyes were bright, and her cup was nearly empty.
  
  "I think we need some help," Zezili said, "or we're all going to get eaten out here."
  
  "It tells us we're on the right track," Storm said, "and we have the jistas."
  
  "Jistas traveling at the center of the group," Zezili said. "They aren't going to be much help if something surprises us again."
  
  Storm grunted. "That surprise could have been avoided."
  
  "That so?" Zezili said. "You'd rather I took you and Jasoi up there, so it was our bodies getting eaten by worms?"
  
  "Just a waste, is all," Storm said. "We didn't need to scout that view."
  
  Zezili leaned forward. "Every one of us is here to be ground to death for one purpose. To wake up whatever the Empress has huddled up here. That's it. And we'll fall for it, every one of us. There's no waste in that. That's precisely why we're here. If we took a load of apples with us, and ate them, would you say they were a waste for being eaten? No. That's their purpose. There's no waste. Same with you or me."
  
  "You always were a cold bird, Zezili," Storm said.
  
  "You should have romanced proper," Jasoi said. "A nice warm woman."
  
  Zezili glared at her. Jasoi hiccupped, and covered her mouth.
  
  "I have a husband," Zezili said.
  
  "Husbands are sufficient for children," Storm's second, a lean woman named Haloria, said warmly; a little smugly, "but love is only for equals. Love is something only a woman can bring you." She said it like she was reciting from The Book of Rhea.
  
  "You making me an offer?"
  
  Haloria guffawed. "I know some good girls who could warm that soul."
  
  "It's not my soul needs warming," Zezili said. "It's up to the task." She didn't like the way the conversation was going. She stood. "Long day tomorrow."
  
  "Yes, Syre," Storm said.
  
  Zezili narrowed her eyes. Was the mocking worth a scene? She wasn't certain. She was tired. She stepped to her tent and kicked out her fire. Inside, she pulled on a heavier coat and kicked into her bedroll. For a time, she sat awake listening to the noise of the camp; laughter and murmured prayers, the singsong voices of recited stories, the dark whispers of the day's fears. The Empress had put her in charge of all of it, all of these lives, again, though she had watched half her women burned to death by some mad omajista, and declared her own life forfeit. The Empress liked to move them all around, just to see how far she could push them.
  
  And she can push me far, Zezili thought, all the way to Tordin. She closed her eyes and saw, again, the runner's body broken, his meaty suit of humanity yanked into the boiling mound. She imagined the Empress was that alien, unknowable thing, devouring all she touched, scattering bones at her feet.
  
  We are not wasted, she had told Storm, and that was true, perhaps. They were no more wasted than those bones. It was their fate, to become bones fed to the ravenous beast that was their Empress.
  
  Or to feed the Empress her own bones, in the end.
  
  Whatever way it went, Zezili didn't much like it.