Curse of Witch and War: The Skyfall Era (A Prequel)
Date: 2015-10-22 01:57:09+00:00
Description: "Tiger. That's what he was. He was the tiger. Beast. They were the hunter in the night. " Broken and alone, Malin comes to the Lunar dynasty of the Skyfall Isles having lost his wife, his fortune, and his will to live. Rahu--a Lunar lord--offers him one chance to redeem himself--become the first weretiger and serve a higher purpose. And in his melancholy, Malin accepts the chance without considering the cost. Now, while he struggles to contain the beast within, Rahu plots to take over the entire Lunar Empire and ignite a war. And to do so, he'll unleash the very beast Malin hopes to control. I
Publisher: Incandescent Phoenix Books

CURSE OF WITCH AND WAR

The Skyfall Era (A Prequel)

MATT LARKIN

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, businesses, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2012-2015 Matt Larkin

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Edited by Brenda Pierson

Cover by Robin Ludwig

Published by Incandescent Phoenix Books
incandescentphoenix.com

First Edition 2012

Expanded Edition 2015

For Juhi. Always.

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Author’s Note

This novella serves as a prequel to Children of Sun and Moon and opens 21 years before it. I would recommend reading that book first, as this one contains spoilers and some big reveals about the cause of later events.

Special thanks to Brenda, Shannon, Ginny, and Amber for support on this project, and for loving Malin enough to give him his own tales.

PART ONE

(1170 After Pact)

CHAPTER ONE

The rainy season had arrived and the Isles were thick with petrichor and the putrid smell of corpse flowers in the rainforest. The monsoon had begun some days before Malin reached these shores. Now, though, it slowed to a faint drizzle that almost seemed to mock the blaring sun above this fishing village on the northern shore of Swarnadvipa.

The village was mostly huts on stilts, lifted only a few feet out of the aquamarine sea. Villagers passed between the houses using canoes. In some cases mere children drifted about, throwing their own nets, or perhaps bringing fresh water to older fishermen.

Malin paddled his canoe between two houses, more focused on the waters below him than the village or its inhabitants. With the sun out like this you could see down to the bottom, see the fish and urchins and seashells. Tioman had loved this quaint little place, had loved to watch the fish swimming below and pretend there were mermaids hiding just out of sight. Malin had brought her here in his days as a merchant prince. Another lifetime now.

His jaw hurt from grinding his teeth so hard, but still he couldn’t relax. For months he had begged Anagolay to return Tioman to him. If the Goddess of the Lost heard him at all, she gave no answer. Perhaps the dead were beyond even her reach.

Coming here had been a mistake. A vain, foolish attempt to hang on to the only thing he had left now: memories. Wells of pain and lamentation and the profound self-loathing born of knowing his own crimes had cost him everything.

Had he been stronger, he would have simply ended things. He should have died in the storm that took his ship and his crew and his wife. Instead, a fool child had saved his worthless life and forced him to bear witness to the utter fulfillment of his mother’s curse. To her perverse justice.

The largest of the houses was for the community, a feast hall where the locals could take their meals and gossip about their pointless affairs. It was almost midday, the lingsir kulon phase as the locals called it, and much as Lunars were wary of outsiders, they would never turn away a hungry guest.

Malin allowed his canoe to slap into the dock around the community house, making no effort to tie it off. He’d bought the damn thing with stolen money anyway—he never used to be a thief—so he couldn’t bring himself to care if it drifted off. Someone would make use of it eventually.

Tioman had always wanted a proper tour of the Skyfall Isles. They had their charm, if one could ignore the near total lack of liquor. These people divided themselves into three dynasties, each claiming descent from sun, moon, or fire. This was a Lunar village, and while Malin knew Lunars preferred isolation, this island was closer than the Solar ones.

A few of the locals glanced at him as he slunk into the feast house and plopped down at a bench as far away from company as he could get.

A girl in a red sarong drifted over to him, wearing a frilled headdress of leaves painted gold. “Sayur labu?” she asked with a big smile, offering him a wooden bowl filled with the chayote soup.

Malin thumped the table in front of him with one finger. His travels had taught him the Skyfall tongue, but he had no desire to talk to this girl or anyone else. And her eyes were a bit too much like Tioman’s. Rather than let her see his distress, Malin sneered at the girl.

She dropped the bowl on the table and scampered away.

“Malin?” a man asked a moment later. “Malin, is that you?”

Malin grabbed his bowl with both hands and began to sip from it, pretending not to hear.

“Sweet Chandra, it is the Maitian!” a man said as he settled down in front of Malin. “Been a while, hasn’t it?”

Groaning, Malin slammed his bowl back on the table, deliberately splashing the Lunar. Who was this Hukluban-damned man? Malin cared about as much as a shark cared who it ate.

“Rangda’s spit!” the man cursed as hot soup soaked him.

Now Malin did look up. Yes, he had dealt with this man before. Not a villager—a Moon Scion, one of those Lunars supposedly descended from their Moon God, Chandra. A few bribes to the leaders of war bands like his ensured safe travel in Lunar waters. But Malin had neither money nor interest in the Lunar now. “Leave. Me. Alone.”

The man rose, stared down at his soaked baju. “Rangda take you, Malin. I thought we had an understanding.” He glanced over his shoulder at a crowd of a half dozen or so men who had risen from another table, then leaned in closer and whispered. “I can’t well have you disrespect me in front of my men, can I?” He leaned back and raised his voice. “Apologize and pay your dues, Maitian.”

Rangda—that was what the Skyfallers called Hukluban, the Demon Queen of the frozen underworld. With a sigh Malin rose from the bench, reaching behind his back as though for a purse. “Rangda has already taken me. I am the living, suffering embodiment of her curses. I have looked into her eyes and seen despair.”

The Moon Scion’s eyes widened, though whether at Malin’s blasphemy or temerity Malin didn’t know. Or care.

“You want what you’re due?” Malin’s hands closed around the two yantoks—Kali fighting sticks—he had tucked into the back of his sarong. He jerked them free then whipped both forward in intersecting arcs.

Despite the disbelieving look on the man’s face, the Lunar moved with superhuman speed, raising his arms in time to keep the sticks from hitting his head. Instead they smashed into his forearms. The Lunar sucked in a breath at the obvious agony, falling back.

Immediately the man’s warriors rushed forward, drawing undulating keris knives or fighting sticks of their own. Malin pressed his advantage on the Moon Scion by leaping on the table and kneeing the man in the face. Or trying to. The Moon Scion somehow blocked out his pain, caught Malin’s leg, and flung him to the floor.

The impact jarred Malin, but he smiled. Pain was a welcome respite from the all-consuming ennui that had swallowed his soul. Lunars swarmed around him. Malin rose in a single fluid motion, swiping one stick high to keep multiple attackers at bay while whipping another in a low arc. It shattered a man’s knee and he fell, screaming and clutching his ruined limb.

No time to savor it. Malin spun, parrying a thrusting knife with one stick and twirling his other in wide arcs. He actually had to laugh. These men were warriors, but Malin was a Kali master, trained by a hero of the Lam-Ang War. And he had one advantage over these Lunars. He could fight with no care for his own wellbeing.

He flew through every form he knew, constantly shifting to deflect angles of attack rather than trying to parry each individual strike. And he landed several blows of his own, cracking skulls and arms and shoulders.

As another of the Lunar warriors fell, the Moon Scion stepped in to take his place. Malin swung in another wide arc, only realizing his mistake too late. The Moon Scion moved with impossible speed, bending back under Malin’s yantok and coming up on the inside. His fist slammed into Malin’s side with such force it actually lifted Malin off his feet. Ribs cracked under the blow, and a haze of red, beautiful pain blurred Malin’s vision, cutting out all other senses.

He stumbled backward, fell to his knees. Then spit blood at his attacker as he struggled to regain his wobbly balance. Malin roared at him and charged forward, swinging again. The Moon Scion caught his yantok in both hands and yanked it from his grasp, then tossed it aside. The maneuver had probably been intended to end the fight, to demonstrate superiority. But while the man had both hands full Malin flung his full weight at the Scion and bore him to the ground, head-butting him in the face as they fell.

Somehow, Malin doubted the man could block out the pain of a broken nose.

Malin flipped his remaining stick around and jabbed it through the man’s eye like a knife. The Scion’s body twitched under him.

“Son of a bitch!” one of the remaining men screamed.

Malin turned, too late, as a keris gouged open a foot-long gash along his chest. Fire seared through him and blood drenched his shirt. Malin grabbed the man’s leg and yanked, threw him to the ground, then climbed atop him and began raining blows upon him.

A stick cracked across his back, knocking all strength from his limbs and sending him stumbling onto the foe he’d been attacking. He tried to rise but his arms wouldn’t respond.

“Enough!” a woman’s voice shouted.

“Who in Rangda’s frozen underworld are you?” the man attacking Malin demanded.

“Calon, of House Soma. Formerly of House Arang. Which owns this little village. Your Scion is dead. You have no authority here. Leave the foreigner and go.”

Malin tried to tell the woman he didn’t need her help. He didn’t want her Hukluban-damned help! Instead, he only managed to sputter out some blood and roll onto his back.

Even through the blood stinging his eyes and the haze of pain clouding his vision, Malin could see the woman was beautiful, if tiny. Her long black hair shimmered, offsetting the red silk dress she wore, and she was heavily laden with golden jewelry. A man stood beside her, his hair nearly as long as hers. House Soma. Moon Scions grouped themselves in Houses, supposedly tracing descent to all the women impregnated by Chandra.

The Lunar war band watched the woman for a moment before scampering off, out of the feast hall. As did everyone else almost immediately after, leaving Malin alone with the Moon Scion and her man. Bodyguard? Husband?

Most likely Malin would not be able to kill another Moon Scion today. Not with broken ribs and the amount of blood he was losing from his wound to the chest. He crawled toward his yantok anyway.

“This is the one we’ve been looking for,” Calon said.

“Him? He’s half dead.”

“The spirit will let him heal from almost anything, assuming he survives the infusion.”

Malin struggled to protest. What spirit? What was she talking about?

The man stared at Malin as if looking through him. “This man has a death wish. What good is that to us?”

Calon knelt beside Malin and tossed the yantok away, out of his reach. “Rahu, darling. He will be death to our enemies. Those with the Jadian in them will be very hard to kill. This is what we’ve been waiting for, the chance to solidify House Soma’s place. As a human he just fought six men, killed a Moon Scion. Imagine what he could do for us with the power of Kahyangan in him.”

“Wha …” Again the sound came out as a gurgle. He couldn’t catch his breath. What in the underworld of Hukluban were they even talking about? Kahyangan. That was the realm of spirits. Nothing good came from touching it.

The woman put her hand on his cheek. “What’s your name, Maitian?”

He gave over fighting against her. It was unlikely he could have hurt her if he tried. After a moment he managed to mumble, “Malin.”

“Malin? We’re going to offer you a chance at greatness, Malin.”

Malin slumped back to the floor and let unconsciousness claim him.

CHAPTER TWO

Malin’s whole body ached. Breathing hurt. The gash along his chest had been bandaged, but it burned with what had to be infection. He trembled with chills, though he knew he was burning up. Fever from the infection. So cold. So hot.

He opened his eyes to see he was in another canoe, the man Rahu paddling them through some river in the rainforest. The place still smelled rotten, which meant the corpse flowers were still in bloom. They only lasted a few days, so Malin couldn’t have been out long.

“You’re awake,” Rahu said.

Moving his arm was agony, but Malin had to check his wound. He peeled away the bandage, then immediately regretted it. The noxious smell alone almost set him vomiting—or more likely into dry heaves, given the way his stomach growled. Chances were good he’d die from that wound after all. It had not been too deep, but it had turned rotten. He’d seen some of his crew die from wounds like that—delirious, calling out for lost loved ones as they withered away. Somehow, the prospect of dying in a fever dream sounded less appealing than going out in a blaze of glory, falling in battle. A pointless battle, of course. As pointless as the rest of Malin’s life.

Except his life had given him Tioman. He, Malin, lowborn son of a fisherman, had married a Maitian princess. Had sailed with her all around the South Sea. Had loved and laughed and lived his dreams. Only to wake from them.

“It was an impressive fight,” Rahu said. The man’s accent was slightly off, much like Malin’s own. A man who had learned the Skyfall tongue, but was not as accustomed to speaking it as a native. Or perhaps he was simply from one of the other islands. There had to be ten thousand of them, after all.

“I would have … would have killed them all,” Malin mumbled, finding it hard to form words.

Rahu snorted. “If my wife hadn’t stopped you? No, I don’t think so. Moon Scions have power you cannot match. Not yet.”

“What … ?” Malin struggled to make sense of Rahu’s words through the fever haze. “What does that mean?”

“What if I could offer you all the power you could ever dream of? Power to face six men and be the only one to walk away. Power to kill those who wronged you?”

What madness was Rahu speaking? Malin’s flesh burned. He could almost feel his brain baking. He would die and this would be over. Over, and Malin would have lost.

The Keong Emas. It had been a ship before the storm took it.

No, no. Before that. Before that it had belonged to Balituk, a hero of the Lam-Ang War, a master of archery and Kali, the fighting style of Mait. The man had come to Malin’s village for supplies and trade. And his ship had been beset by pirates.

Malin, a boy of fifteen thinking himself a man, had snuck aboard and murdered the pirates in their drunken slumber. It was the first time he had killed a man. Balituk, in gratitude, had taken Malin under his wing. He’d taught him to fight, taught him all he knew. And Malin had left his old life far behind to make his fortune and search for the father who had abandoned him.

“Do you still want to die?” Rahu asked.

Malin grunted. To die …  would he see Tioman again? Was that what he’d wanted all along? No. His mother’s curse would no doubt deny him solace even in death. He would be dragged down to face torment in the underworld of Hukluban or Rangda or whatever name she went by. No idea … what he even wanted. Kill? He wanted to kill. Rahu had said kill. For an instant when he had killed the Moon Scion he’d felt relief. Was that his true nature, or had his mother’s curse made him into a monster?

“No,” Malin said. Not to die. Not yet. He wanted … what? Revenge? On his mother? She was far away in Mait. And he could not really blame her. He had brought this on himself. Revenge on the world? No. Tioman! He wanted Tioman, and that was impossible now.

“You want to live? And do you want power, power like that Moon Scion?”

No gods had heeded his prayers. Not Bathala or Anagolay or Aman Sinaya. And would this Chandra? Malin struggled to find sense in his jumbled thoughts. “Power …” Power to do what? Make a difference with his life? Power to overcome the curse on his fate. To prove he could be the master of his own destiny. And could he then get Tioman back?

“Change … fate?”

Rahu started. “How did you … ?” Then he shook himself. “What do you know of fate, Malin? You want to change fate?” Rahu was silent for a moment. “Maybe it’s enough power to change both our fates.” The man looked too far away for Malin to guess what went on in his head. “You accept my offer?”

The power to change fate. To break this curse and salvage his life?

“Oh, yes.”

Rahu nodded. “Then rest, friend. You have an ordeal ahead of you, I suspect.”

Malin shut his eyes, trying to take Rahu’s advice. But his mind burned and he couldn’t untangle his thoughts.

“She’s your ship now,” Balituk said.

Malin stood on the poop deck, jaw hanging open, unsure what to say.

Before he could spew any foolishness, Balituk held up a hand to forestall him. “No, Malin. I’m old and I’m tired. It’s time for me to settle down and find a wife, start a family. I’ve had enough adventure for this turning of the Wheel of Life.”

The Keong Emas was beautiful, glorious. And so very fast. Malin had grown so rich on trading throughout the South Sea men called him a merchant prince. Appropriate, then, that he had married a Maitian princess.

“Get up,” Rahu said, shaking him.

With a start Malin realized they had stopped, that the canoe had pulled up to a mudbank in the wetlands.

“We have to do this while the moon is full.”

Malin grunted, barely able to stand through the pain. Rahu allowed him an arm over his shoulder and helped him from the boat. Mud squelched beneath his sandals as he climbed out, tepid water drawing up around his ankles.

“Why a full moon?” Malin asked, then regretted it. Speaking hurt even more than breathing.

Rahu guided him toward the tree line. “I don’t really have time to explain. She says the magic has to be done beneath the full moon.”

Magic … Was that …? Malin struggled to make sense of Rahu’s words through the haze clogging his mind. Was Rahu talking about witchcraft? More witchcraft. As if it had not brought enough horrors into his life. A witch had cost him everything. He couldn’t let one ensorcel him now. Not again. But … maybe that alone could break the curse on him, or at least grant him the power to overcome it.

A storm had swept over his ship, off the coast of Serendib. A storm born from the curse his mother had placed on him. Malin had denied her, unwilling to claim the woman in front of his princess wife, and broken her heart as only an ungrateful son could do.

He had not known his mother was a witch, of course. A witch whose curse would strip him of all he loved and leave him an empty shell. And it should have killed him.

The rainforest had grown thick here, so thick Malin’s foot gave way. Rahu caught him before he fell face-first to the ground.

“No,” Malin mumbled. “No witchcraft.”

“It will make you strong,” Rahu said. “Stronger than ever.”

Malin grunted. Dazed, he allowed the man to guide him through the rainforest and into a clearing created by the burnt-out husk of a tree that must have once brushed the sky. Its branches had fallen, opening a hole in the forest canopy through which Malin could see the full moon these Lunars worshipped.

Calon was there, kneeling before the tree, arranging rocks in some bizarre pattern. Seeing the ornately garbed woman kneeling in the dirt was almost comical. Assuming he wasn’t hallucinating. Upon the tree’s trunk an odd symbol was carved—recently, based on the flaking around it.

He tried to ask what it meant, but his strength gave out and he slumped down, barely able to fight down the urge to retch. Dimly, he was aware of Rahu lifting him, but the world spun so quickly around him he couldn’t make anything out.

And many, many years after he had left, he landed on a beach on his home island, not even recognizing it. Not until it was too late and their course was set. And when his mother had called out to him, he had pretended not to know her. Rejected her, rather than admit he was the son of a dirty peasant woman in front of his mesmerizing wife and loyal crew.

Pride.

“He is too weak,” Rahu said.

“It might be better that way,” Calon said. “Less chance he might fight it. Bind him to the tree.”

“Bind him? Is that necessary?”

The woman chuckled. “I’m told it’s as much for his protection as our own. These are not forces one takes chances with, my love.”

Malin blinked, things settling into focus as Rahu lay him against the tree. The man’s eyes held sympathy, but Malin couldn’t quite say why. What was happening? So hard to focus.

Rahu tied a rope around Malin’s wrist, wrapped it around the massive trunk, then tied off the other wrist, forcing Malin’s arms wide.

It took all Malin had not to cry out at the pain in his broken ribs as his arms were pulled apart.

Rahu’s woman drifted over, inspecting Malin. She pulled open his eyelid, then clucked her tongue and shook her head. Examining him like a disappointed mother.

His mother? Was she here? No. She was in Mait. He’d had no idea she was Mangkukulam—a witch, probably one praying to Hukluban. And when she cursed him, he’d tried to tell himself it had no power. But something had listened.

“I’m sorry,” Rahu said. “It has to be this way. But there will be power. I promise you that.”

Malin mumbled something—even he didn’t know what he said—and let his head slump back, closing his eyes.

Rahu and Calon were talking, arguing, but Malin couldn’t focus on it.

“Mother …” Malin mumbled.

The Keong Emas now rested at the bottom of the South Sea. Like all Malin’s dreams and future and past. His mother had cursed him. Her curse had whipped up a storm off Serendib that had sunk his ship and taken away his friends and his wife. And it would have ended him there, put him out of his misery, if only a Serendibian boy out searching for his own father had not pulled him from the sea.

Someone was speaking, chanting, but it came out as nonsense and Malin shut it from his mind.

Balituk had trained Malin in Kali, made him a warrior capable and feared. And he … The old man had retired. Left Malin a captain at twenty-one. A year later he was married. Months of perfection. And now … now she’d been gone for six months. It felt longer. It felt like yesterday. It felt like …

A sudden tightness built in Malin’s chest, a constriction that far exceeded the pain from his ribs. He tried to scream but no sound came out, no breath escaped his lungs. He couldn’t breathe at all. He tried to gasp for air, but the muscles in his chest refused to respond. The edges of his vision turned black and filled with spots.

The constriction gripped his limbs. His arms strained against his bonds, his legs kicking involuntarily before him, slamming his spine against the trunk again and again. Pain shot through his back like bolts of lightning with every convulsion.

Sweat drenched him. The fever that ravaged him only intensified until he couldn’t stop shaking from it. Then at last his muscles stilled and he could breathe. Lingering tremors wracked his hands and feet and he couldn’t stop the shaking inside his chest.

Was it over?

“What did you … ” his voice sounded slurred, like the day Tioman’s father had opened the finest Tianxian liquors for them.

Malin felt his fingers curling, turned slowly to look as they spasmed out of his control.

Rage.

Something cold, hard—something alien—pushed against him from the inside, like nothing he had ever felt. Like a snake had crawled inside him and slithered through his bowels. Malin roared, strained against his bonds. He screamed as the alien presence forced its way upward, the tightness around his heart returning with redoubled strength.

His scream died as the muscles in his throat contracted, cutting off all air. As every muscle in his body constricted all at once until he thought he’d burst. And then it reached into his mind.

Hunger.

It wasn’t a voice or thought, it was an intent. Another being inside him, subverting his will.

Agony ripped through him as his bones began to shift and pop, muscles rearranging themselves. The contraction in his throat released enough for him to scream from the pain of whatever was happening to him. His bonds snapped and Malin fell to the ground shrieking. Claws burst from his fingertips. Fur jutted from all over his flesh, ripping through, forcing its way out.

Hunter.

Malin’s back arched, his spine elongating and twisting into new shapes. He dragged his claw-hands, or paws as they now seemed to be, through the dirt, trying to catch anything to hold onto. As he blinked through the pain reality shifted before him, like someone had wiped a film from his eyes. The world snapped into a new clarity. He could see better now, in the middle of the night, than he had ever seen in broad daylight. Could see and smell and hear everything.

Tiger.

That’s what he was. He was the tiger. Beast. They were the hunter in the night. The stalker in the rainforest. The one predator all prey feared.

Malin threw his head back and roared, reveling in the sound as it echoed through the forest and off far distant mountains. Flocks of birds took flight and monkeys shrieked.

He stalked closer to where Rahu and his witch stood, mouths agape. Walking on all fours came naturally. The tiger knew. The spirit knew. And they were one.

Malin stalked over to stand before Rahu. The man had promised him power. And he had delivered. Malin had never felt stronger, could feel his wounds knitting back together even now.

Rahu hesitantly reached out, then placed a hand on Malin’s head. “You shall be the tiger now. Harimau Jadian. And this is only the beginning, my friend.”

CHAPTER THREE

Innumerable statues of divine spirits decorated the water gardens in Tanjung’s new home. Bidadaris, in particular—divine bird maidens—drew her eyes. According to her father, Tanjung’s mother was a bidadari. Once, she had dismissed such frivolity as the man offering some excuse for the total lack of a mother in Tanjung’s life. She had assumed she was merely the bastard daughter of some ordinary Lunar, though her father had claimed her as his legal heir.

Her teenage years had made her doubt this. She could feel whenever a storm was coming, feel the rainy season coming days ahead of everyone else. Worse, voices occasionally whispered to her, just beyond the edge of her hearing. They told her things, secrets that, every so often, she was able to catch. Told her when a musician was cheating on his wife. Warned her before an eruption on a nearby isle. Hinted at truths she couldn’t know. And just enough of those secrets turned out to be true that she could not dismiss the whispers as the onset of lunacy. Still, she avoided using her Moon Blessings for fear of that curse.

The whispers had led her to uncover secrets of sorcery, had, in effect, made her a witch. They had guided her to old ostracized hermits and herbalists and witches, helped her collect secret lore. She liked to fantasize that her mother was leading her to understand Kahyangan, the secret world of the spirits.

A path of circular stone steps created a walkway through the pond, rimmed by those statues on either side. Tanjung skipped lightly from one stone to the next, admiring the statues even more than the giant stone fountains around this garden.

House Janggala was famed for these works. A low stone wall held back the rainforest—the House’s palace lay some distance outside Bukit—meaning the whole garden was surrounded by green in every direction. In the dry season the sky must have been brilliant blue against such a background. Now, a continuous drizzle of rain made the stones so slick she was almost tempted to draw her Blessings just to enhance her balance.

Sometimes, as a child, she had actually tried to call the rains. Succeeding once had left her so drained she couldn’t even stand for two days. Her parents thought she’d come down with malaria.

She’d not been foolish enough to ever try that again.

Still, she couldn’t give up her sorcery. It called to her, like the whispers in her mind demanding her attention. And so she worked her arts in secret over the years. Binding a spirit, however, left its Glyph branded on your skin. And there hadn’t been any way to conceal that from her new husband, Sidapaksa. When he had seen the marks, he hadn’t understood what they meant, though.

The man was beautifully innocent and she loved that about him. He had given her the Tianxian gown she now wore. Sea green silk gave her an exotic, foreign look that had made her the envy of every woman in Bukit. She could get used to being married to a wealthy House.

Unbidden, the whispers formed in her mind. Someone was watching her. Tanjung turned, her footing on the stone slab precarious, to look over her shoulder. On the sand beyond the edge of the pond stood a woman, red sarong flowing around her, a wicked grin on her face. Calon. The scion of House Arang had been one of Tanjung’s few friends growing up—her own House, House Nishadipathi, was quite small.

And Calon had been all too eager to join Tanjung in her quest to uncover the secrets of Kahyangan. Tanjung was not a fool, of course. She’d known Calon was interested in knowledge and power for its own sake, more than any shared attempt to understand Tanjung’s mother. But Calon was also fiercely loyal, brave, and the kind of girl who didn’t let other children give Tanjung shit for having no mother.

She’d hardly seen Calon since the woman married Rahu a few months back. But then, Tanjung was a wife now too, and certainly hadn’t had time to feel lonely. And still, she couldn’t help but smile to see the woman here now. They had so much to catch up on.

Calon walked out on the water, not bothering with the stone slabs. The smile slipped off Tanjung’s face. Were Calon’s Blessings so strong she could walk on water, or had she used witchcraft to bind some spirit and allow it? Either way, it was a foolish use of her powers. Use the Blessings too often and you went lunatic. And witchcraft … maybe Tanjung should not have ever taught Calon such arts. Spirits drew their price from your very soul. And Calon had never been cautious enough, as if she didn’t quite believe Tanjung’s warnings.

“I did it!” Calon shouted as she drew nearer.

Tanjung glanced around the garden to make sure no servants or other eavesdroppers were nearby. “You did what?”

“The spirit we talked about,” the woman said, eventually coming to stand on the slab next to Tanjung. “I bonded it to a human soul, created a race of Jadian.”

Damn. She had to suppress a surge of excitement at the thought. That was both impressive and foolish. Tanjung had taught her the supposed ritual, but she hadn’t expected Calon to try it alone. It was a dangerous experiment, one they had discussed months ago as a means of elevating their Houses. And, Tanjung had hoped, of getting her one step closer to reaching her mother. Jadian were shifters, Moon Spirits who could take animal form beneath Chandra’s gaze. Not exactly the same as a bidadari, but then, she was a Moon Scion, after all. She had hoped Chandra would forgive her. “So you’ve made vanara here, on the Isles?”

“Monkeys? No, why would I want to make weremonkeys?”

A sudden chill ran down Tanjung’s spine, one that had nothing to do with the rain falling on them, and she hugged herself. Calon had overreached herself, hadn’t she? “What did you put in him?”

“We found a warrior—a foreigner with no loyalties. The man is a disaster. He’ll be the perfect weapon.”

“What did you put in him?” Tanjung repeated, this time more sternly. “Please tell me you did not put a shark in that man. Do you have any idea what kind of damage weresharks have done in the past? Now. What in Rangda’s underworld did you put in that warrior?”

At her tone, Calon hesitated, then narrowed her eyes. “A … tiger. We call him Harimau Jadian, tiger shifter.”

“A tiger?” Tanjung shut her eyes and shook her head. This was not happening. Why hadn’t the damn voices in her head warned her Calon would do something so profoundly, monstrously foolhardy? Shouldn’t her mother have told her? Maybe her mother wanted to see her pursue sorcery further. Tanjung had always held out hope that one day she might find the Glyph needed to summon the woman who had birthed her.

“So …” she said, at last opening her eyes and favoring Calon with the most withering gaze she could manage, “you took a warrior, a broken man. And you put in him one of the most lethal predators in the animal kingdom? And that sounded like a good place to start?”

“Malin is under our control—”

“This Malin won’t be under his own control!” Tanjung immediately stilled herself. Shouting would draw unwelcome ears. “You have no idea what you’ve done. Oh, sweet Chandra, Calon … At least tell me you didn’t try to put an Alpha spirit in him.”

Finally Tanjung’s fear seemed to get through to Calon, whose eyes had gone slightly wide. “Of course not. Just a middling.”

Tanjung blew out a long breath. A middling. She had planned to start with the weakest monkey spirit she could find. Shit, but she had the urge to slap Calon. She probably would have if the woman wasn’t married to the lord of another House.

It was done. She had to accept that. Now the question was what she could do to help her friend, and, if this Malin went out of control, to help the Lunars in general. “Show me the Glyph.”

“Sorry?”

“The Glyph for the tiger spirit.” Tanjung snatched Calon’s arm and pulled away her baju, looking for the mark.

“It’s …” Calon frowned. “Rahu insisted on doing it himself. I think he wanted to protect me from any risk.”

At that, Tanjung’s jaw dropped. Calon had taught her new husband witchcraft? Had let him perform a summoning he had no way to understand? For a moment, she wondered if Calon had truly gone lunatic. Every Moon Scion knew the price of overusing their Blessings, but the temptation was always so great. Those powers made you feel like a goddess. Sometimes, people just couldn’t let that feeling go.

And odder still, Tanjung had never known Calon to give up a single drop of personal power. Her husband must have made quite an impression on her.

“Don’t worry,” Calon said. “I’ll do the others myself.”

“Others?”

“We need an army.”

Tanjung held up her hands, barely controlling the urge to throttle the other woman. “You have breached Chandra’s domain, pulled a spirit right off the moon, and put it in a human being! This man will mate, Calon. That’s why we talked about introducing breeds. His children will be open to Jadian possession themselves.”

Calon shook her head, but her voice had grown meek. “That would take too long. We don’t have a generation to wait. We need to create a race now.”

“You have done enough! Let this be, understand the consequences before you take further steps. Have you forgotten every gods-damned thing I taught you?”

Calon narrowed her eyes, then shook her head. “I have a duty to my House, to my husband. We have the chance to make House Soma great.”

So that was it. Politics. Damn her. She’d let her obsession with enhancing her earthly status make her turn to unearthly powers.

And the woman had not heard a single word Tanjung had said. She never listened, did she? If Tanjung turned her back now, Calon’s quest—whatever it was she thought she was doing—would just continue to spiral out of control. Bukit, Swarnadvipa, the whole Lunar Empire would be caught up in the maelstrom Calon was creating. And nothing would ever be the same. Tanjung couldn’t physically stop Calon from using sorcery—and she’d been a fool to ever teach the girl—but if she could not dissuade Calon from further playing with Kahyangan, perhaps her only hope was to control the witchcraft.

Control. The whisper made her cringe. Was it her mother? Chandra, she truly wanted to believe it. But sometimes, times like these, she wondered if she heard spirits talking to her from Kahyangan. An old witch had told her once that the veil between worlds was thinner in some places than others. That spirits waited, watching the Earth just beyond the realms mankind could see, looking for an opening. And some spirits might be beneficent, but many others were far from it.

“Do not do anything else without me,” Tanjung said, forcing as much iron as she could muster into her voice. “Go back to your husband and try to control this Malin as best you can. And when we call any more spirits, we will be taking weak ones, not middlings as you call them.”

“Tanjung, you should be happy—”

“Go home, Calon!” she commanded.

Tanjung spun, turning her back on her friend, and hurried across the slick stones toward the opposite side. Her heart was pounding against her chest and the voices at the edge of her awareness had become a cacophony, until it was impossible to make out any single word. As soon as she hit solid ground she broke into a run and dashed from the gardens back toward the palace.

Trembling, she burst through the main doors and straight into her new husband.

Sidapaksa swept her up in an embrace and held her close. “Playing out in the rain? Good way to catch a chill.”

The power is there.

She shut her eyes, wishing she could shut her ears. Tanjung laid her head against Sid’s muscular chest. The man was beautiful, with a clean-shaven face and bright eyes filled with a perpetual hint of mischief. He was everything she could have ever wanted in a man.

Heedless of the servants watching, Tanjung kissed him, then bit down on his lip hard enough he lifted her off her feet, pulling her closer. And if he took her to his bed now, maybe it would be enough for her to forget the things she had unleashed.

“I love you,” she said.

Sidapaksa swept her up in his arms and carried her toward his chamber, paying no mind to a few servants who chuckled. He had carried her like this when they were wed some weeks back. It was perfect. It was all she needed to forget.

Almost.

CHAPTER FOUR

Beast.

Hunt.

Kill.

Malin’s whole body trembled under the onslaught against his soul. How long had it been? A week’s travel south, perhaps. Longer? Hard to tell. Hard to say what thoughts were his own. What thoughts were its thoughts.

Blood.

Meat.

He shook himself and shivered in the downpour, though not from cold. The moon was coming up. He could feel it. Offering him release, the chance to run. Run! Hunt, kill, mate. Malin growled at himself. No! He would not take another wife. He was Tioman’s, only Tioman’s. He had promised himself to her forever. They had planned to start a family and now …

Mate.

Crouched low in the mud, he snarled at the sky. Mere moments until the burning sun set. Until the moonrise freed him. Free to beast. He would beast. He needed beast. His fingers dug trenches in the mud.

“Sweet Chandra,” Ketu said from behind him. “What have you done to this man?”

“We’ve made a weapon,” Calon said.

“You’ve made a lunatic,” Ketu answered. Ketu. House Soma. Married to Simhika, Calon’s cousin. And he claimed Rahu was his brother. But he wasn’t. Rahu was as foreign as Malin. Smelled wrong. A trick, a trick.

Malin didn’t care about tricks.

Calon patted him on the head like some dog, though he remained in human form. Not a dog. Oh, he could smell her. Sweet, succulent. He’d flip her over and fuck her brains out. Her and Ketu’s wife Simhika, too. They’d have so many cubs … he … cubs? No! He was a man. He loved Tioman.

This thing inside was ripping him in half. It tore at his brain and savaged his soul and soon only it would remain.

Malin rose to his full height, looked down into Calon’s eyes. Her pupils dilated when she must have realized what he wanted.

“Malin,” Rahu said.

Their leader. Malin spun on him and his rage cooled for a brief instant under Rahu’s steady gaze.

Four Moon Scions. Two not-brothers and their wives. And Malin, their pet.

Rahu pointed to the hill lands in the south. “It’s time to see just what you can do. Up on the tallest hill lies the palace of House Shravana. Enemies of our House, Malin. They burned our palace to the ground, destroyed our home. We seek justice. Go to their palace and kill them.”

Kill.

An entire House? So many people. He was not a murderer … Oh. He was a murderer. He had killed many people. He’d killed pirates preying on Balituk’s ship when he was but a teenager, in another lifetime. That was why the man had taken him on. Because Malin was just so damn good at killing.

Kill!

“Wait,” Ketu said. “Young children … spare any children.”

“We cannot leave any survivors of that House,” Rahu said.

Ketu shook his head. He smelled … afraid? Concerned? Guilty. “I don’t want them killed, Rahu.”

Rahu grunted, then turned toward Malin. “Fine. Destroy the adults, Malin. All of them. We will be right behind you if you need help.”

“Kill …”

“Yes. Kill.”

Malin’s heart surged in his chest. He didn’t want to … He had to kill!

The moon rose.

Malin dropped to his knees and roared. Bones popped and fur sprouted across his body. Hands became claws. Man became tiger. When the transformation was done he panted, then roared again, this time the sound echoing through the rainforest.

Villagers below stared off into the night. No doubt wondering why a tiger should draw so near their settlement. In a low crouch, Malin stalked toward the palace on the hill.

A single bound carried him to the eave of the lowest saddle roof. It creaked under his weight, tiles cracking. But his balance was perfect. He stalked forward, then peered into the inner courtyard. Men and women sat around a fishpond there, talking.

Oblivious to the hunter.

Death.

A great leap launched him forward. His weight and momentum slammed a man to the ground. Malin bit out the dazed man’s throat before the others could even scream.

A woman shrieked and ran for the doorway leading into the palace. Malin jumped into a tree and kicked off it, landing in front of his fleeing prey. A single swipe of his claws disemboweled her. Another human ran at him, keris knife ready. Superhuman speed.

Moon Scion.

Malin ducked his swipe and dodged away. His prey faltered, as if shocked a tiger would use such tactics. Malin jumped over the human and raked him with his back claws as he leapt forward. He landed in a sprint and dashed inside the palace itself, keeping to shadows.

Kill.

At long last he was free.

From the shadows he brought down a pair of guards who never saw him coming. Around the corner, another Moon Scion rushed him. Malin jumped to a wall, kicked off it, and landed behind the Scion. His claws hamstrung the fool. Malin bit him, jaws crunching down on the man’s windpipe. Hot blood squirted over his face and down his throat. The copper tang of life itself empowered him. More! His jaws closed tighter. Whiskers felt it as the man’s pulse dimmed.

Room by room, corridor by corridor, he stalked. Children ran screaming. Small animals. Malin’s shoulders jerked from an involuntary reflex to chase fleeing prey. No! Not them. Not them. Not …

Before he could stop himself he’d leapt atop a boy and ripped him to shreds. Blood and guts caked him, soaked his fur. Then he coughed. What had he done?

Tiger!

Hunt. Kill. Mate. Eat.

Ragged breaths escaped him. Feed! He needed to feed on his prey. So many dead. Waiting to fill his gut.

And then he would truly be an animal.

He was a disgusting beast. Malin forced himself to run from the corpses, to run to a corner, an empty room. His future? Was this all he’d be now?

Power. He’d wanted power. But this wasn’t even his power. The tiger roared as Malin pushed against it, grappled it. Its rage threatened to devour his soul. In his mind he wrestled the tiger itself, beating it down until at last his form began to shift again. Bones snapped back into place and Malin collapsed to the floor, stung by the pain of numerous small cuts. Compounded by the pain of the shift.

Harimau Jadian.

And he had become like a demon of Rangda’s frozen underworld.

A tiger demon. There was no man left, was there? Malin stumbled from the room only to be charged by a guard wielding a yantok—toyak, they called them here. Malin dodged the strike with ease, muscles still moving faster than a human. He caught the man’s arm and throat and squeezed. Squeezed until the human stopped moving.

When the prey was still, Malin realized he’d hefted it by the throat with only one hand. Crushed the life from it with one hand. The tiger demon was still in him. It was him.

Grunting in disgust, Malin tossed the corpse aside. At least he no longer wanted to eat the body. Not much, anyway. And still, still he craved blood. It covered his naked form, painted him red and slick. So all could see him for the horror he was. And still it demanded more blood.

This was his legacy. He had started his career with the blood of pirates. Now he’d reach its climax with the blood of innocent and warrior alike. Because he was a demon.

And the demon stalked through the palace, continuing its rampage. Dimly, Malin saw Ketu and Rahu rounding up children. Hostages? The demon didn’t care. A woman tried to run. A single bound carried him to her. Malin grabbed her hair and slammed her head against a wall, punching right through the wood and splattering her brains.

More and more. Guards. Scions. Cooks. Maids. The old. The young.

He hadn’t even realized he’d resumed his tiger form until he felt claws ripping through a man. Malin wanted to weep. But demons did not cry. Demons killed.

The whole palace floor had become slick with blood and gore. But nothing moved. Nothing but Rahu and Ketu.

Malin collapsed in the courtyard, suddenly forced back into his human form. The tiger shrank away as the first rays of dawn snuck out. And finally, finally Malin could weep. Hukluban should have devoured his soul. He should have died on that ship with Tioman. His life had become a mockery, a nightmare.

Limbs shaking with exhaustion, he crawled to the pond and sunk into it. Could he end it here, now, in these shallow waters? Malin held himself underwater and opened his mouth. Choking fluid gushed down his throat and reflex took over, forcing him to sit up. Fits of coughing expelled the water.

Couldn’t even kill himself.

In sunlight, the full horror of his crimes was illuminated.

This garden was filled with death.

That was Malin’s legacy.

All a part of his mother’s curse? Much as he wanted to believe he had denied fate, was this the true horror she had wished upon him all along? Had he run from destiny only to crash headlong into it?

His stomach clenched, and Malin bent over and retched, vomited until his stomach was empty. He crawled a few paces then fell into dry heaves. What had he done? What had he become?

“Mother, please,” he moaned. “Please …”

Tears streamed down his cheeks, mixing with the blood on his lips. He didn’t want to be this. It wasn’t what he meant. “I’m sorry.”

And no one listened. No one ever listened.

And the horror he felt now … It would go.

One day, only the tiger would remain.

CHAPTER FIVE

By the grace of Chandra, Tanjung had not been forced to bear witness to the massacre in Bukit. But she had heard the tale a half dozen times before she even reached the capital. House Soma had come in and destroyed House Shravana in a single night. One of the four strongest Houses in the Lunar Empire, wiped out before it could muster a defense. Wiped out by Calon’s husband, Rahu.

Except Tanjung knew damn well what had let him do so. The Harimau Jadian had done exactly as they had meant for it to do. No one had been prepared for a weretiger. Given time, the Moon Scions might have worked together and brought him down. But Jadian hadn’t walked in the Skyfall Isles since ancient times and no one was prepared. It’s why weremonkeys would have made such perfect assets. And Calon’s foolish hubris had ruined that.

And now the spirit had done its work, and they would be left to bask in the aftermath. Malin had slaughtered men and women and even some children. Calon thought to make a race of these monsters?

Call them.

Tanjung grimaced at the voices. “Is that what you want? More breaches into Kahyangan?” Sweet Chandra, it was, wasn’t it? Perhaps her mother’s blood let her hear beyond the veil, but maybe it had never been her mother calling her. The spirits wanted her to call them, to let them loose upon the Earth. And like a scared little girl, desperate for a mother, she’d delved deeper and deeper into hidden truths, dragging Calon and Simhika along with her.

She shut her eyes, trying not to think of such things. The rains had abated for the moment, but Tanjung could feel them waiting. There would be a heavy downpour this afternoon.

House Soma had only a handful of servants and they were hard at work, washing the blood out of Palace Shravana as Tanjung approached. Vile job. Rahu should have burned the palace to the ground, as had been done to House Soma’s palace up north.

Calon stood nearby, watching the work with folded arms. Her expression could have been pride in what her witchcraft had wrought, but Tanjung preferred to think her friend was concerned. Tanjung sure as Rangda’s icy grasp was. She wanted to tell herself this wasn’t her fault. She’d been a child when she began toying with sorcery, and a child when she introduced Calon to it. Oh, and toying was the word, wasn’t it? She had played with magic like it was a game. But like everything else born of Kahyangan, it was alien and powerful, and, ultimately, beyond human comprehension. A witch had told her once that all magic corrupted a human user. Tanjung had thought the woman just weak, afraid. Tanjung had been a fool. Sorcery had slithered inside Calon and twisted her soul into knots. And what of her own soul? She liked to believe her mother’s blood protected her.

“Why clean this place?” Tanjung asked when she reached Calon.

Calon started, then offered a small bow of respect. “I’m glad you’re here. We need the support.”

Tanjung looked pointedly at Palace Shravana. Her presence here was not meant to symbolize House Janggala’s support of this, but some would take it as that. She never seemed able to escape politics.

“Rahu thinks to repurpose it, to call it the Hill Palace. It will be a symbol of House Soma supplanting House Shravana.”

One of the greatest Houses in Lunar lands was going to be replaced by a House with only four Moon Scions? “How do you plan to …” Tanjung shook her head. “Chandra’s dark side, Calon! After all this, you’re still thinking of making more of these monsters?”

“The Harimau Jadian are our greatest asset. With them we can build our House. Rahu!” Calon shouted the last at her husband, who supervised the workers some distance away.

He turned at her call and climbed down the hill toward where they stood. The only other time Tanjung had seen the man he’d had hair long as any woman. Now he’d cut it short in the manner of most Lunar warriors. There was something off about Rahu, and Tanjung couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was. The voices in her head whispered whenever she saw him, whispered about a man who did not belong here.

Stranger.

“Satisfied?” Tanjung asked the Lord of House Soma when he drew near.

“With the Harimau Jadian?” Rahu nodded, a faraway look on his face. “They will do. We’ll need an army of them, of course. I’m a little concerned about Malin, though. He seems … unwell.”

“Of course he’s unwell,” Tanjung snapped. “His own mind and soul war with a spirit possessing his body. He just brutally killed dozens of people. Have you even begun to consider the toll all this will take on the man?”

Rahu stroked his goatee, then shook his head. “Malin volunteered for this.”

Tanjung raised an eyebrow. She sincerely doubted the foreigner had any idea what he’d been agreeing to.

“And our point had to be decisive. We have to win over the Lunars without question.”

Much as she hated both the action and the means behind, Tanjung could at least acquiesce that—if it was to be done, it was best done quickly. Maybe the other Lunar Houses would not now challenge House Soma and … Tanjung hesitated at the way Rahu was staring not at the palace, but over all Bukit.

“This isn’t going to end here, is it?” she asked after a moment.

Rahu shook his head, then pointed toward the harbor, or, perhaps beyond it to the South Sea. “Out there, on Puradvipa, the Lunars are handing over the Astral Temple. Letting the Solars take another year of custodianship. The birthright of all Lunars, in Solar hands. Is that acceptable? After all, they let our people guard it every other year. Yes, let us. Because while Lunars remain in isolation on Swarnadvipa and a handful of islands around it, the Solars spread, their power growing and growing. And here we sit, fighting petty squabbles among our own Houses. How long before the Solars no longer believe they have to grant us any special treatment?”

Tanjung frowned and shook her head. “The truce has held for four hundred years. Don’t pretend to make this about the Solars. You feed your own lust for power. Save the propaganda for the masses.”

Rahu sneered at Tanjung, and even Calon favored her with a withering gaze. Still, it had to be simply because they didn’t like anyone seeing through their facade.

They both turned then, eyes locked on the ragged, long-haired man who approached. An undeniable energy laced his steps, a walk that promised sex and violence all wrapped in a single man. This had to be Malin.

“What have you made me into?” Malin demanded. “What have you done?”

Though she had to fight not to tremble at his rage, it was almost a comfort to see something of the man remained. He had clearly just washed, though some blood remained caked in his hair. His sarong was damp and he wore no shirt, exposing his powerful chest and Maitian tribal tattoos along one arm.

Rahu held up a placating hand. “Malin, please—”

“You promised me the chance to change my fate!”

Oh. Was that what they had offered him? And what did he think his fate was that he would go to such lengths to alter it? Much as Tanjung condemned Calon for what she’d used Malin for, he was … fascinating. Using Tanjung’s knowledge, Calon had deliberately bonded Malin’s soul with that of a Jadian.

“And we gave it to you,” Rahu said. “Are you not powerful?”

“I am a demon!”

A demon? Had Calon put a tainted spirit in this man? Tanjung glanced at her former student, who shook her head, looking confused.

“Malin—” Calon began.

“Why?” the Maitian demanded. “Why do this to me? To them?” He pointed at the palace as he shouted the last. “I am cursed! I am damned for what you have made me into!”

Calon opened her mouth to speak again, but Tanjung put a hand on her shoulder. “Please. Let me talk to him.” Maybe she could fix this. Or at least control the situation.

“Let her try,” Calon whispered to Rahu.

Whispering was pointless, of course. Tanjung stood close enough to hear every word, and Malin could probably have heard the whisper if he still waited atop the hill.

“Who in Rangda’s frozen underworld are you?” Malin demanded.

“A friend.” Tanjung reached out a hand for Malin, trying not to let it shake. One could not show fear in front of Kahyangan, though there was so much there worth fearing. Moreover, this man needed to feel himself a man, not a demon to be feared.

Malin looked at the proffered hand a moment before grabbing it in an ironlike grip. He leaned in close to her. “Toy with me, witch … Give me a reason …”

Tanjung shivered despite herself. He knew she was a witch? Could he smell the touch of Kahyangan on her? It was in him now, too, of course.

She led him a few steps away and bid him sit down on the grass. “It’s Malin, right?” she asked when he had settled across from her.

The man just cracked his neck and scowled.

“Malin, you called yourself a demon.”

“A witch like you made me one!”

Shit, he was one misspoken word away from attacking her. Part of her wanted to take Sid and just leave this whole mess far behind. But if she did … if Calon did create more like Malin, this would only grow worse. They would all take their lead from Malin.

“You’re right about one thing,” Tanjung said. “I am a witch. And I taught Calon. I know … some of the truths of Kahyangan. And you are no demon, Malin. What they put in you was a Moon Spirit. You can feel it, right? When the moon comes out, it calls to the spirit in you. The tiger wants to be free to run?”

“Free to murder? I am not a murderer. I don’t want to be a murderer.”

“Then don’t.”

“I cannot control what they have done. This Harimau Jadian they made me is an animal!”

Tanjung nodded. “An animal, yes. But not a demon. Demons are far worse. Rangda Demon Queen rules the World of Mist. That is a world of demons, a frozen nightmare unlike anything you can imagine. The spirit in you is born from Chandra himself—it is a disciple of the Moon God. And like the phases of the moon, it is wild, savage—but not evil. And neither are you.”

Malin shut his eyes and Tanjung dared to hope she was getting through to the man buried beneath the tiger. She had to. If Malin allowed himself to believe he had become a monster, then he surely would. And it would not take long before even Rahu and Calon could not control his rampages.

The whispers in her mind had grown eerily quiet in his presence. Perhaps the spirit in him drowned them out. Though at the moment, she almost wanted their advice.

A low growl built in Malin’s chest. For once, Tanjung was grateful for the Sun God’s cursed rays, preventing the Moon Spirit from manifesting inside Malin.

“You are not a murderer!” Tanjung said. “What if … what if …” He was going to snap. Even in human form, he was strong, fast, and brutal. They were three Moon Scions, but neither Tanjung nor Calon were warriors. Could Rahu alone control this beast?

Malin’s eyes snapped open and his growl deepened into a full snarl as he bared his teeth.

“What if you didn’t have to be just Harimau Jadian, Malin? What if I could make you something else? Not a murderer … but a protector. A guardian in the night.”

The snarl abruptly cut off. “You can change what’s in me? Can you take it out?”

Exorcise the spirit. Doing so would test the limits of all she knew, but maybe she should try. The Jadian was not merely possessing Malin, though, it was bonding to his soul. Removing it might well destroy him, leave him a hollow shell.

Before she could answer, Rahu spoke. “No. That’s not possible, Malin.” Tanjung cast a glare at him for eavesdropping, but he ignored her, continuing. “But you can be a protector. And more. Protect us and avenge our losses. You will always be a killer, but it is not murder when it’s justice.”

Tanjung tried not to let the shock show on her face. Rahu was clever. Channeling Malin’s need for violence might just work. Trying to suppress it entirely could lead it to erupt like a volcano. Perhaps like this, he could be made into the obvious weapon Rahu wanted.

“You can do that?” Malin asked.

Tanjung nodded, slowly. “I’m a witch. I can do many things.”

She spared a glance at Rahu and Calon, then slipped a keris knife from the back of her sarong, slowly, careful not to seem threatening. Tanjung opened her palm, then used the blood to trace a meaningless Glyph on Malin’s forehead. The Maitian held stock still, teeth clenched as if braced for pain.

Tanjung mumbled under her breath, invoking the name of Chandra and Rangda, of Nyai Loro Kidul, and Agni, and every other deity she could think of. “Malin. From this day forward, you will no longer be merely the tiger shifter Harimau Jadian. You will be the protector and avenger, Macan Gadungan. You are forever charged with guardianship of the children of Chandra. Go now, and sleep. Wake a new man with a new purpose.”

Malin’s mouth worked, but no words came out. Instead, he nodded curtly and rose, then stumbled away. He looked almost like he would weep. Relief? Tanjung hoped that’s what it was.

Part of her felt responsible for him. Did the blame for what Calon wrought with sorcery Tanjung had taught her fall on her shoulders? The woman had made her own choices, but she had only learned witchcraft because of Tanjung.

Tanjung too rose, shaking her head, and walked in the opposite direction, toward the Loghouses where the poor lived. There would be hot food soon for the lingsir kulon meal. She desperately needed a plate of rendang and a cup of coconut milk. Needed anything to calm her nerves and keep her mind off the Maitian killer who now lived in Bukit.

Calon chased after her, but Tanjung didn’t look back. “Thank you,” the other witch said. “Now he’ll be under control.”

“I hope so,” Tanjung said, still not looking at her former student. Calon was her best friend and she loved her. But today, part of her hated the woman. It was unfair, perhaps, given that Tanjung had led her down this path. So desperate to find answers, to fill the hole in her heart left by her mother, Tanjung had damned Calon, hadn’t she? All because she was too afraid to walk this road alone.

“You never taught me such a spell.”

“Spell?” At that, Tanjung did stop. “Sweet Chandra, are you such a fool, Calon? I didn’t do anything, except put an idea in his head. If Malin manages to control himself, it will be his own doing. He had convinced himself he no longer had a choice. Chandra-allowing, now he will think he has no choice but to be Macan Gadungan instead.”

Calon hesitated, mouth agape. “You painted a Glyph in blood …”

Tanjung shook her head again. “Showmanship. The best witches know there is more than enough magic in belief and a few herbs. And you had better pray my display holds on him—take every opportunity to remind him he is a protector, not a murderer. Because the more you unleash the animal, the harder it will be to put it back in its cage.”

With that, she left Calon standing and trod off alone.

As expected, the rains came heavy all afternoon and long into the night.

CHAPTER SIX

“We can hardly refuse an invitation from House Rohini,” Sid said. “They’re one of the four—well, three now—greatest Houses.”

Tanjung sat on a windowsill, half watching the rainfall outside, half watching her new husband. The man smiled placatingly, as if he knew she didn’t want to go. Besides the fact she was still settling in to this new palace and its wondrous gardens, House Rohini was far to the north. A week’s trek through dense rainforest, or even longer if they stuck to the coast as far as possible. That meant leaving Calon alone for at least two weeks.

Tanjung’s childhood friend had proved mercurial enough before, and a few days ago she had admitted she was pregnant. The witch barely had control of her new Macan Gadungan army. In the past month they’d created what, ten of the monsters? Calon had taken to offering slaves freedom in exchange for volunteering to be weretigers. Freedom was the wrong word, given that these people traded slavery for eternal work as bodyguards. But she held her tongue and helped Calon do it, rather than let the other woman make a further mess of it herself. Even now, she bore three new Spirit Glyphs on her skin.

And the rush, the power of commanding the spirits, was undeniable. She had never felt like such a goddess. Was that how her mother felt using her powers? But Tanjung was human, at least in part, and this road would lead to lunacy or worse. At least, unless she could find a way to reach her mother.

Now, though, Tanjung could hardly leave Calon to her own devices. Chandra alone knew what the woman would come up with next. Calon had never had enough caution. Never. Tiny little thing that she was, she’d once punched an older boy in the nose for disrespecting her family. The boy had beaten her to a pulp.

And Calon’s reaction to all that? Begging Tanjung to use her witchcraft against him. Tanjung had done so, driven a snake to bite the boy while he played. The child had lain on the edge of death for a week. And Tanjung had spent most of that week sick to her stomach with her own guilt.

Sid sauntered over to her, face lit by a smile that would have spread the legs of a bidadari in a heartbeat. Tanjung felt herself flush, too, and looked out the window rather than admit it to him.

“Come on, Tani,” her husband said. “A little trip after marriage can be good for a couple.”

Tanjung tried not to smile, imagining what he planned. And Sid was right—one did not refuse House Rohini. Probably they just wanted to congratulate Sid on his marriage. Either way, they made excellent friends and terrible enemies. House Janggala had moderate power, certainly more than House Nishadipathi, Tanjung’s former House, but nowhere near a match for Rohini. Other Houses were constantly testing Janggala’s holdings, defenses, control. Rohini could change all that. With the backing of one of the three great Houses, Janggala, and by extension even Nishadipathi, might suddenly find itself exempt from raids and petty politics.

Tanjung sighed, but nodded. It was all the invitation her husband needed. He slid a hand up her calf, gently brushing away the edge of her sarong as he traced a route up her thigh. Tanjung shuddered with pleasure.

And then a servant cleared his throat. “My Lord. Calon of Soma is here for the Lady.”

Sid’s face immediately soured, and he glared at the servant who remained in a tight bow, eyes studiously on the floor. “Your friend grows wearisome.”

Tanjung could not dispute that. But then, true friends were hard to come by. And Calon had stood by her without fail since childhood, more than willing to delve into any danger to give Tanjung even the chance of understanding where she came from. That kind of loyalty was rare as dragons.

Tanjung slid off the windowsill, straightened her sarong, and brushed Sid’s face with the back of her hand. A silent promise of things to come could keep a man under control—at least for a little while. “Tell Calon I’ll receive her in the atrium.”

The atrium was open to the rain, but the roof overhung it, offering shelter from the elements. House Janggala often received guests there—when the water gardens were not practical—because the atrium served as yet another display of the wealth and beauty of their House. It was filled with exotic stonework said to be carved by Ignis in the days before the breaking of the Pact. The statues depicted various divinities, Chandra among them, but were now overgrown with ivy and jasmine and other fresh flowers. When the wind blew, it filled the entire palace with scents straight from the rainforest.

The servant scurried off to inform Calon, and Tanjung lingered a moment. Perhaps keeping her friend waiting would serve as a reminder that Tanjung was not at her beck and call. For a moment, she even considered going back to her husband and finishing what they had started. Then she shook her head. No. She could hardly focus on enjoying herself knowing Calon was waiting a few rooms away.

“Make it quick,” Sid said. Or purred.

Tanjung fled then, before she had time to reconsider.

She found Calon sitting on a bench under the overhang, sipping tea a servant must have arranged for her. As always, her friend wore the latest fashions—a gilded sarong, golden headdress, fine rings Rahu must have spent a fortune on.

Tanjung sat down beside her and accepted a cup herself when a servant approached. She took a few sips, letting the warmth soak through her. It was laced with cinnamon and perhaps saffron from the Spice Islands. The aroma alone was relaxing, and she breathed it in deeply before speaking. “Everything well with the babe?”

“Mmmm. She’ll be a girl, I can feel it. I dreamed it. I’m going to call her Ratna.”

Tanjung sipped her tea without answering immediately. Could Calon truly have the Sight, or was that her own hopes at play? “A princess of House Soma, then.”

Calon laughed like Tanjung hadn’t heard her laugh since they were children. The warmth of her smile filled Tanjung with a hope that things might truly be fine again. That the worst was behind them. But the voices in her head spoke otherwise. Whispers of something dark still brewing.

Call us.

She didn’t want to ask, but she had no choice, really. “And … Malin?”

Calon’s face turned dark just as quickly and she groaned. “Your trickery keeps him in check. Is that what you want to hear, Tani? That’s the problem, really. And no, of course I’m not going to tell him it was a trick. But now he and all his Macan Gadungan are convinced they’re just bodyguards.”

Chandra be praised for that. “Perfect.”

“It’s not perfect. How in Rangda’s frozen underworld are we supposed to advance House Soma now? We need killers. Other servants to take on the unsavory tasks Malin now refuses.”

Like the massacre at House Shravana. Tanjung set her tea down on the bench. “You sound like you’re about to repeat the same mistake you made with Malin.”

“Mistake? Even as a bodyguard the man is an unmatched specimen. He’s perfect. You begged me to promise not to do anything else without you. So now I’m asking. What else can we use?”

Damn it. Tanjung had insisted Calon not act without her. And if she refused to help now, the woman wouldn’t trust her in the future. The only way to control the situation at all was to be part of it. Besides, part of her still thrilled in it. A part she would never admit to Calon, of course. “You can’t just go around massacring the great Houses. One, the others might put up with. But two becomes a pattern, and a dangerous one. You’ll find every Lunar House hunting you down and you don’t have near enough Macan Gadungan to handle such an onslaught.”

Calon nodded, as if she’d already known what Tanjung would say. “We don’t need to massacre any more Houses. That was … well, the point has been made. Now we need merely prepare for conflict with the Solars. We need Jadian that can slip in unseen and bring back information.”

“Spies?” Tanjung folded her arms. That was a little more acceptable, though she didn’t see why Rahu and Calon were so intent on the Solars in the first place. As long as it was done with caution, though, spies should not be a problem. “The monkeys would be perfect for that.”

At that Calon sighed. “They may sometimes need to carry out … less savory tasks. And to defend themselves.”

And now the truth came out. “You want assassins.”

She had grown up hearing legends of Warak Ngendogs, dragon beasts native to Suladvipa. Some said the fearsome Arun Guard could even command those creatures. A Warak Ngendog, if roused to anger, became a destructive force of unparalleled devastation. Sending assassins among the Solars sounded a lot like antagonizing one of their dragon beasts. A risk only a fool would take.

“If need be. Tani, please listen to me. We have to do this right, decisively. Half measures won’t work here. We need weapons that can be what the Macan Gadungan cannot.”

Tanjung said nothing. Calon clearly already knew what she wanted. Let her admit it.

“There are crocodile Moon Spirits, yes?”

Oh. That was marginally better than weresharks. Or even weretigers, for that matter. She chewed her cheek, uncertain how to respond. If she helped rouse the dragon, was she culpable for the destruction it wrought? And if she did nothing, would she then bear responsibility for Calon inadvertently unleashing even worse dangers from Kahyangan? No matter how dangerous the Solar Empire might be, it was nothing compared to the horrors a witch could let free from the Spirit Realm if she wasn’t careful.

This could be done. And if she was there to oversee it, maybe it could even be done safely. Yes, perhaps she had been a fool to drag Calon into the supernatural world. But she had done so, and Calon had always, always stood by her side.

“The Solars are people of the sea,” Tanjung said at last.

“They love their boats.”

Crocodiles could disappear into swamps and rivers and even the sea if needed. They would make ideal spies. And assassins. And maybe, just maybe, if they did their jobs well enough, the Solars would not even know who was responsible.

“Full moon tonight,” Calon said.

She was going to do this no matter what. If Tanjung was there, at least she could make certain it was done correctly. And yet … to play with such forces, no matter how well-conceived the plan, was to invite disaster. A simple mistake, a misdrawn Glyph, a misspoken name, and they’d find spirits riding their bodies as vessels. And deep down, maybe that was part of the rush. Not only commanding power over life and death and the worlds beyond, but the thrill of knowing that danger. “I don’t think you understand the forces you play with.”

Calon grinned. “So explain them to me.”

“What I understand better than you is just how much I don’t know about Kahyangan. These Moon Spirits have animal bloodlines, but they are not animals. They are beings ancient beyond fathoming, things not of this world.” Tanjung shook her head. Why had Calon learned so little from what she’d done to Malin? Rangda damn them both.

“Are you going to help me do this?” Calon asked.

Tanjung favored her with another withering gaze. She’d known Calon a long time. The woman would do exactly what she wanted, no matter what anyone else said or did. “Of course I’m going to help you. If you’re determined to walk into a fire, I’m not going to let you go in alone. Bring the vessel when the moon rises. Not here. Down to the beach, beyond the Loghouses.” She rose and left Calon without so much as a nod.

Was she a fool for helping her? Or would she be a greater fool to do nothing and risk letting Calon make a mess of this? By guiding Calon when she selected more tiger spirits for the Macan Gadungan, at least she had ensured they took only the weakest, the most easily managed. Sooner or later, though, this would bite Calon—bite them all. How many spirit Glyphs must be burned into Calon’s flesh? And with each evocation, bits and pieces of Calon’s soul and life-force were siphoned off by the spirits she bargained with.

And the only way Tanjung could hope to save her friend was if she was by Calon’s side.

Tanjung stormed back into her husband’s sculpting room where he had resumed work on a new statue.

“Get out,” she snapped at the only servant in the room.

Then she slapped all the tools off the worktable and climbed onto it, spreading her sarong wide.

Sid dropped his chisel and stalked over to her, eyes dilated and nostrils flaring. “Maybe your friend should visit more often,” he whispered in her ear.

“I don’t want to talk about Calon. Take me. Hard.”

He did so, working with such fervor Tanjung drew her nails along his back. And still, when they were both spent, she couldn’t shake the fear clenching around her heart. Nor could she silence the voices in her head whispering about her foolishness.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The moon rose. And as Tanjung had promised, she went to meet Calon at the beach. Rahu was there, eyes dark, holding a young girl by the arm. The girl couldn’t have been more than six or seven years old. It was impossible to judge what the man thought, but clearly the girl was nervous. Tanjung could hardly blame her.

Calon had already guided a middle-aged man to a stone slab and was strapping him down.

Tanjung walked to meet her friend, who rose as she approached. “Who is he?”

Calon shrugged. “Former slave. A man willing to trade anything for a step up in life.”

“And the girl is his daughter?”

Calon glanced at the child Rahu held. “No. Just another orphan with nowhere to go.”

These people were certainly getting power and advancement in society, but Tanjung doubted they appreciated the gravity of such a decision. “Why a child? What good will that do?”

“Rahu believes starting young will make our servants more pliable and give them plenty of time to train.”

While that was probably true, Tanjung had to suspect the decision had as much to do with Malin as anything. They had put a powerful spirit into a powerful, willful warrior, and—surprise—had found him difficult to control. It had taught them a lesson. Tanjung could only pray they had learned the right lesson. If Rahu was planning so far ahead as to train children it might—perhaps—be a good sign.

Tanjung sighed, shook her head, and began to trace spirit Glyphs in the sand. Most were for protection, control. The spirit they actually wanted to possess the man she would paint on his forehead. She had used the afternoon to research one such crocodile spirit—younger, weaker, and hopefully less likely to turn on them all. That was, of course, part of the reason for protective Glyphs. A witch had to use one spirit to protect against another in a kind of vicious cycle that burned out your life-force and left you ripe for possession yourself. And if Calon kept up this level of sorcery her friend would wind up nothing but a vessel for Chandra alone knew what.

Tanjung had told her that a thousand times. The woman was going to do what she wanted to do. And maybe the best Tanjung could do for her friend was ease the burden.

“I’ll do this one myself,” Tanjung said.

“But I—”

“You can do the girl.” Not even Tanjung wanted to try two in one night, and Calon was mad if she thought she could do so.

Tanjung waved Calon away then drew her keris along her palm. One didn’t have to use blood to paint the Glyphs, but it seemed more effective in summoning spirits. She traced the Glyph on the man’s forehead.

“What’s your name?” she whispered.

“L-Lengser.”

“Don’t be afraid, Lengser.” Tanjung continued painting as she spoke. “You’re getting a gift. Your soul will bond with that of another, make you strong. And because you were first, others like you will always look to you for guidance. Can you do that, Lengser?”

The man nodded, slowly.

Tanjung rose and turned her back on him, not wanting him to see her own nervousness. She had to seem confident or he might panic. The truth was, this was an operation few sorcerers in the world would even attempt, and with good reason. Intentionally calling a spirit to possess someone—and trying to keep that possession in check, to form a symbiotic relationship, was beyond challenging. It was an exercise in hubris.

Fortunately, Calon had enough of that for the both of them.

Breathing deeply, she began to pace in wide circles around the stone slab where Lengser lay bound. Slowly, under her breath at first, she started to chant, calling the names of the spirits whose Glyphs she had drawn in the sand. Begging for favors, for protection, and paying them with little bits of her soul. They heard her. Every soul in the universe had its own unique Glyph. If you drew that Glyph and spoke the soul’s name, it would come to you.

There was power in names. Common lore warned children never to call out Rangda’s name when you were alone or when in darkness. Even the Demon Queen might answer to her name.

A gasp escaped her as something fed on her life-force. It latched onto her like a leech, and with each word that escaped her lips, she felt it drain a bit more. Chills wracked her body, but she dared not stop. A circle of spirits was needed, each to control the next, their names chanted in a continuous mantra of protection. Of desperation.

The air rippled ever so slightly. Tanjung almost could have imagined it. Something like a face pushed against the other side of the air, like it was trying to press through membrane far thinner than anyone wanted to acknowledge.

Tanjung forced herself to look away, to keep chanting. Until at last she called to the crocodile she had chosen for poor Lengser.

Nothing happened at first. Mortal eyes could not see into Kahyangan. The Spirit Realm was said to be much like Earth, but cloudy, suffused with starlight and wandering spirits. Spirits that watched everything mortals did with wonder or desire or hatred. Waiting for a foolish sorceress to open the way into this world. To do exactly what Tanjung had just done.

Without warning, Lengser bucked against his bonds. He cried out in obvious pain, but his cries were cut short. No doubt the muscles of his neck contracted and shifted, forcing him into crocodile form. Tanjung backed away, not truly wanting to see the shift, but neither daring to turn from it.

She knew it took mere moments, but it seemed a phase the man writhed in agony before at last becoming the crocodile. The creature watched her, its vertical pupils seeming far too alien, though the iris retained a hint of Lengser’s amber color. After a moment, it turned and slunk off into the sea.

Tanjung’s knees wobbled and she let herself collapse onto the beach, head in her hands. She had done it. She had put a new race of Jadian into a man. Chandra forgive her temerity if she had overstepped her bounds. She giggled. Oh, if she had overstepped, Calon had made a flying leap over those boundries.

The rain began to fall again and Tanjung shivered in it, lacking the energy to even wrap her arms around herself for warmth.

She heard Calon begin chanting, probably calling the same spirits Tanjung had. Their Glyphs were already here and those spirits were no doubt nearby. Listening, watching. Probably angry at being forced to serve mortals.

The little girl was now bound to the slab, eyes wide with terror. And … a tear streamed down her cheeks. The girl whimpered.

Tanjung tried to stand, but her legs gave out. She reached out a hand for Calon, then caught herself. One did not interrupt a witch in the midst of an invocation. That was madness. Even the protective spirits might then be loosed to wreak their vengeance over the Earth.

But this girl clearly no longer wanted the spirit. Had she ever? Was the child a volunteer at all, or merely a slave Rahu had bought to test his theories? House Shravana, the voices in her head whispered. So rather than kill the youngest Scions, Rahu had kept them for this?

The girl screamed, a high-pitched wail that tore Tanjung’s heart to pieces. What had she allowed to happen? Chandra forgive her for more than temerity—she had helped Calon force a spirit into an unwilling host, one too young and too weak to resist.

The girl bucked against her bonds, her incessant shrieking ripping Tanjung’s heart to pieces. She crawled for the child, desperate to offer some comfort and knowing there could never be any. Maybe never again for that girl.

Tanjung had wanted this, had wanted to open the gates of Kahyangan to find her mother. And Calon wasn’t the only one who’d failed to heed her warnings—Tanjung was guilty of the basest hypocrisy. And this little girl was just her latest victim.

The shrieking went on and on, the girl barely even taking in breath. Tanjung reached her, took her hand, and the girl’s grip pinched her so tightly she had to hold her breath. The spirit was already in her, making her too strong. And that spirit might well devour the girl’s soul, turn her into a vessel that might as well have been possessed by a demon.

“You’re going to be all right,” Tanjung said.

Scales burst through the girl’s skin, claws from her fingers. They tore through Tanjung’s hand and she was forced to jerk it away. The child’s face shifted, elongated as her bone structure rearranged itself. The sound of bones snapping and cracking was even more sickening with the werecrocodile than it had been with the weretiger.

She sat, dumbfounded, watching the revolting transformation until it was done. A little baby crocodile had slipped off the rock and now scampered toward the sea.

Tanjung struggled to her feet and trudged over to where Calon herself had collapsed into the sand. And she slapped the woman. “How dare you?”

A strong hand snatched Tanjung’s wrist and flung her away, and she stumbled to the sand. Rahu towered over her, his glare silencing any retort Tanjung might have made and more effective than any reprimand. He held her gaze a moment longer, then turned to help his wife up.

Tanjung watched them as they walked away, Calon leaning on his shoulder, worming their way down to the sea. She cast a mischievous gaze over her shoulder at Tanjung. Taunting her? And then she stood by the water. Where they would no doubt await the return of their newest … servants? Assassins? Victims.

Sweet Chandra, she was going to be sick.

Maybe when they visited the north, she and Sid could stay there a while. A long while.

Tanjung had seen more than enough of Bukit. This was her fault. She had convinced herself she could make this better by helping Calon. And she’d been a fool. Instead of trying to control the damage by aiding the other witch, Tanjung should have done everything in her power to put a stop to this. And it was too late now. Too late for her to fix her mistakes.

Too late to do anything but run from the chaos Calon and Rahu were unleashing.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Rohini Palace was built around a massive banyan tree, one that reached at least four stories tall and covered the palace atrium in a canopy of shade. The tree dwarfed even the elegant saddle roofs of the palace, and its roots spread throughout the atrium, creating a maze children darted around and under. Tanjung sat on one such root—one big enough to be called a bench—watching the House children play. This palace was so densely packed with Scions, servants, and slaves that everywhere she turned she was greeted by the bustle of humanity in odd contrast to the persistent greenery suffusing this place.

Slaves hurried about the atrium, navigating the root maze without any apparent thought. One girl approached her and offered her a glass of coconut water. After being treated to tea no less than three times since she woke that morning, Tanjung welcomed anything else. She took the offered glass with a nod at the servant, who bowed and slipped away, practically disappearing behind roots.

Sidapaksa was, as usual, nowhere to be found. He’d left her to her own devices while pursuing one political agenda or the next. Most likely he thought if he could befriend enough Scions of this House, House Rohini might take House Janggala under its protection. What would that be like? To live in a world where one didn’t have to worry about being raided by another House?

Except that, as Rahu and Malin had proved, even the greatest Houses could fall prey to surprise attacks. House Shravana had seemed so powerful, so in control of the Lunar capital, that people had called its head—Lady Kencanawungu—Queen Kenya, though Lunars had not had true royalty in centuries. Kenya had managed to make Bukit neutral ground, a city more or less free of the continuous House wars that swept over Swarnadvipa. And now she was dead. Now Calon was using her sorcery, sorcery Tanjung had taught her, to turn Bukit back into a battleground. And a staging ground for a war Rahu obviously planned against the Solars.

As children, they had scrounged after every magical secret they could find, all in the name of connecting Tanjung with her mother. Was Calon really only ever after the power? No, that was too cynical. Calon had been a loyal, loving friend. But the desire to control everything, to grasp at power, it had been there all along, and Tanjung had been too obsessed with her own quest to notice.

Tanjung might have been the one who always uncovered the names and Glyphs of spirits, but it was Calon who insisted on practical uses. Ways to gain leverage over others, be it blackmailing her brothers into getting her way or sending a bout of malaria among enemies of her House.

Her latest endeavors had taken her too far, though. If she and Rahu truly wanted war with the Solars—and that seemed the ultimate ambition—that was one thing. But to begin forcing spirits into unwilling children …

Then stop her.

Tanjung tried to keep from looking around for the source of the voice. Even knowing it was in her head, it was always a hard instinct to fight, especially when the spirits spoke to her so directly. What was she supposed to do? She sure as Chandra’s dark side wasn’t going to physically harm Calon. Could she use other spirits to bind the witch’s power? She’d never heard of such spells, but what if it was possible? Calon would never forgive her, but at least she might save her friend’s life, save her very soul.

Tanjung finished her coconut water and handed the glass to a slave who miraculously appeared at her side, as if they waited, watching her every need. Of course. That was exactly what they were doing. The stunning lack of privacy suddenly hit her, left her short of breath. This place pretended to be lush with nature, but it was thick with politics, too thick for her tastes. There really was no respite anywhere, anymore.

“My lady?” the slave asked.

Tanjung shook herself. She’d expected the girl to disappear back into the root maze as quickly as she had appeared. She raised an eyebrow at the slave.

“Lord Sulakrama requests your presence in his sitting room.”

More politics. She supposed she had a role to play as well in securing the future of her new House. To mingle and make a good impression. Tanjung nodded, rising from the bench, then looked around. Which way was the lord’s sitting room? Even the atrium aside, this whole palace was big enough Chandra himself might have gotten turned around in it.

“This way,” the slave girl said, clearly reading the confusion on Tanjung’s face.

Tanjung followed her around the atrium as the girl effortless ducked under the arches of roots, sidestepped children playing with ultops—popping toys—and avoided other slaves as if by some unspoken language. The slave led her back into the palace proper, around several corners, and into a lush room. The center of the room was open with a moonroof that looked down on a fountain. Drains could be opened to keep the fountain from overflowing during the rains, though the sun had peeked out for a few hours this phase. Tanjung could feel they’d return, but probably not for another full phase.

A number of plush couches surrounded the edge of the room, creating enough sitting space for a mid-sized party. All were empty now. The slave motioned to one, and Tanjung took a seat. Sulakrama would probably keep her waiting as a subtle show of his power. It wouldn’t have bothered her, except it gave her far too much time to obsess over what to say to him. These tedious, half-formal meetings always left her grinning like an idiot, trying to think of witty conversation starters and never, ever succeeding. Maybe, had her mother been around when she was a child, Tanjung might have learned such arts a little better.

The man himself strolled in before she’d come up with anything and Tanjung rose to greet him.

Sulakrama kissed her hand, then bowed. “My Lady Tanjung. Welcome to my estate. Or should I say welcome back?”

Tanjung arched an eyebrow. Her father had brought her here as a child years ago, but Sulakrama was too young to have been the lord back then. Had she met him? It was all a blur of faces.

“Time has made you only more beautiful.”

“I … Thank you, Lord Sulakrama.” Heat flushed to her cheeks.

“I remember you, you know. A little flower not yet in bloom, and me a boy just beginning to feel a man.” Sulakrama snorted at some private joke, then the man’s eyes drifted from her face to her breasts, drawing another blush from Tanjung. “I understand you’re seeking the blessings of House Rohini. You want protection? I can be an excellent protector to my loyal servants.”

Tanjung backed away, or tried to, but found the couch immediately behind her. She did not like where this was going, or the uncertain racing of her heart. “We were looking more for friendship than to be servants.”

Sulakrama brushed a hand over her cheek. Tanjung shuddered and tried to pull away, but he was practically on top of her. “I can be an excellent friend, too.” The man leaned in, pinning her in place with an arm to either side of her head.

“I have to go,” Tanjung said. “My husband is—”

“Oh. He’s busy. But if you truly want to serve him … you could serve me.” His nostrils flared, and then he grabbed her breasts with both hands, moving faster than she expected, faster than she could react. Drawing Moon Blessings.

Tanjung shrieked both in surprise and pain as Sulakrama squeezed. “No! I am a married woman.”

Sulakrama shoved her back onto the couch and straddled her, tugging at the laces of her baju. “Sshhh. He won’t mind. You know you want this.”

Tanjung’s muscles trembled. With barely a thought she drew her own Moon Blessings. Strength suffused her limbs beyond any surge of adrenaline. Sulakrama’s Blessings were amazingly strong, but Tanjung’s were fueled by her lineage, and for once, she wouldn’t fear that. She grabbed his wrists and began to force them away. Sulakrama’s eyes widened, clearly shocked she could match his power.

“What on Chandra’s dark side!” Sid shouted from the doorway.

“Sid!” Tanjung called out to her husband. Thank Chandra. He’d get her out of this and they could leave this cursed House.

Sulakrama leapt to his feet as Sid stormed over. “Forgive me, Lord Sidapaksa. Your wife was so … lustful. When a woman shows a man her bosom the man can hardly be expected to resist.”

“What!” Tanjung demanded. “You lying son of a—”

“Blasphemous sun-drinking whore!” Sid shouted.

His tone and outburst left Tanjung sputtering, unable to form a sentence.

“You star-cursed bitch monkey!” Before Tanjung could even make sense of his words, Sid grabbed her by the hair and threw her to the ground.

The impact stunned her more for its brutality than the sudden pain in her joints. He couldn’t … couldn’t believe Sulakrama over her. This wasn’t real. It was a nightmare. “Sid, I—”

“You!” Sid thumped a finger against Sulakrama’s chest. “This is how you treat your guests? Lustful barbarian child of a monkey-fucking frog-brained Igni! I shit on you. I shit on your whole House. I shit on your mother—”

Sidapaksa’s rant cut off when Sulakrama’s fist cracked into his jaw. Tanjung’s husband sprawled to the floor.

Sulakrama waved to a cluster of servants who had appeared at the commotion. “Throw them both out,” he said, shaking his head, and shrugging as he turned away.

Rough hands grabbed her and hefted her to her feet, then ushered Tanjung outside the palace. Sidapaksa resumed his tirade on the way, spewing blasphemous profanity Tanjung could never have even imagined.

“You betrayed me!” he shouted at her once they were deposited outside the palace.

No! How could he even think such a thing? How could he take the word of that monstrous man over his own wife? Tanjung could no longer hold back her sobs. “Please,” she murmured between gasps. “Please, Sid, listen to me.” His backhanded slap cracked across her mouth and she fell, unable to even think for the sudden pain and shock.

“Rangda devour your soul, you treasonous whore,” Sidapaksa spat at her.

Blinded by tears and barely able to sit, still she reached for him. Not happening …

Sidapaksa’s keris knife ripped open her abdomen. Pain unlike any she had ever felt flushed through her. A throbbing agony that crippled her. She doubled over, gurgling on blood, unable to even properly cry out.

Chandra … she tried to call, but all she could manage was a moan.

Sidapaksa kicked her, but the impact was nothing compared to the burning of her wound. Sweet Chandra, she was going to die. She didn’t want to die. She wanted life and love and … and … why? Why hadn’t he …?

The voices had now become a jumble, no single word audible.

“Chandra?” Tanjung sobbed. Please save her. Please …

The Moon God gave her no answer. He was too far away. Or maybe he didn’t hear while the sun was up. Or maybe he didn’t even care.

She was alone. Even Sidapaksa had gone now. Left her to bleed to death on the road through the rainforest. A death that would be hours of agony. Tanjung choked down another sob. Please no. Not like this. She didn’t want to die.

“M-mother?” Could she hear if Tanjung called out for help? She’d never asked her mother for anything. She’d made her way alone. “Mother … save me.”

Trembling, she shut her eyes, praying over and over to her mother. No answer came. Maybe her mother had never cared. Maybe she … couldn’t hear … Tanjung didn’t even know her real name. You couldn’t call a spirit without a name.

She was in darkness. She was really, really going to die. Her, a Moon Scion, daughter of a bidadari, a witch. Murdered by her own husband and left to rot in the middle of nowhere. If she could hold on until sunset, maybe Chandra …

Thousands of Lunars prayed to Chandra. He didn’t answer, not directly.

She would hold on until night and then die alone in the darkness.

What wouldn’t she give for another chance?

Don’t call her name, the stories said. Do not speak her name when you are alone or in the dark. She just might answer. Do. Not. Call.

A lump had built in her throat. By the time she opened her eyes, the sun was already setting.

“Chandra,” she moaned, already knowing the Moon God would do nothing for her. “Ch …”

All she had to do was let go. Give in, and let this all be ended.

And let them win.

Tanjung coughed, trying to clear her throat. “Rangda,” she mumbled. “Rangda Demon Queen. Your servant calls to you … Save me … and I am yours …”

Still, no answer came. Not even the goddess of black magic and Mist seemed inclined to hear her prayers. She was doomed. She shut her eyes again, welcoming the darkness.

“Rangda …” Tanjung moaned.

And then it was all darkness.

CHAPTER NINE

Malin paced around in front of the Hill Palace, casting constant glances in its direction.

“It’s not like it’s your baby,” Rahu said. He stood there, holding his baby daughter Ratna in his arms, watching almost as furtively as Malin.

Calon was inside now helping her cousin Simhika birth her own child. Malin wasn’t sure whether Calon had actually banished Rahu from the palace, or whether he simply felt more at peace outside of hearing range. Of course, Malin could hear Simhika’s wails of pain.

The rains had gone at last, and the late afternoon sun baked the back of Malin’s neck. Part of him longed to stalk into the rainforest and hide until moonrise. Then he’d let the tiger out and run. But this child … Protect and avenge. That was his purpose. It was his very nature.

Tanjung had given him that purpose, and for that he had to thank her. Even if she had taught Calon these dark arts. He couldn’t blame her for all the darkness in him, but he could at least blame her for some of it.

“Malin,” Rahu said, then approached, rocking Ratna in his arms. She had begun to cry again.

Malin cracked his neck. The baby had been fed and changed. What more did she want? So helpless.

“Malin,” Rahu said again. “Make the face for her.”

On a whim Malin had once pretended to shift into a tiger in front of Ratna. He’d just wanted to scare the child silent. But she’d giggled at his widely spread mouth and bared teeth. Now Rahu seemed to expect him to perform on command. Looking at the innocence of the child, Malin knew he would. Protect.

Malin raised his hands beside his head, curling his fingers like claws, then bared his teeth in a grimace that should have made a grown man shit himself. And the baby laughed.

Finally, the cries from within the palace ended.

Malin looked to Rahu. “It’s done.”

The man nodded, then strutted toward the front door.

Before he even reached it, Ketu burst from it, holding a baby high above his head. “My daughter!”

“These cousins will be like sisters,” Rahu said. “What will you name her?”

“Chandi. My little princess.”

Rahu chuckled and congratulated his supposed-brother. Malin could have easily eavesdropped on their conversation, but he chose to grant them privacy. Not long after, Calon came out and took Ratna.

Two little girls. The children of witches. The children were utterly innocent of their parents’ crimes. And Calon had committed crimes, if not against the laws of man, then against the laws of nature. Malin had seen too much witchcraft in his life. He wanted to believe some ultimate good could come from the curse Calon had placed on him. Some form of redemption.

Hunter.

No. Now he was a protector. Protect and avenge. That was his destiny.

If there was redemption, it would come from Ratna and Chandi. They did not bear the stain of their parents’ souls. They could be pure. And Malin would protect them. He had to have a reason to carry on, to live. He would spare those two girls the torments of this world as best he could.

Despite himself, Malin rather liked Lunar society. There would be feasting and dancing and partying all through the night and into the morning to celebrate the birth of a new Moon Scion. When Ratna was born a couple months back, Malin had even managed to get his hands on some Tianxian liquor—long gone now, of course.

If he was drunk enough, he could pretend not to see the way the Lunars stared at him and the other Jadian Calon and Tanjung had created. The looks of fear and revulsion and … awe. Tonight, though, he’d have nothing to drink. Didn’t matter. He would be there to protect. Didn’t matter what the Lunars thought of him.

Other Macan Gadungan followed him as he stalked through Bukit. They often did. Like being the first or the strongest meant he had answers for them. He had no answers. There were no answers.

Except to protect. Protect. Protect. Protect.

It was the duty that kept him from being a murderer.

It was his last flimsy grasp on humanity.

He was not an animal.

He stopped at the community house to grab some rendang. The spicy Lunar dish was an excellent treat, this batch made from duck. Hot grease stung his fingers as he tore it apart, not bothering to sit at any table. Instead, he slumped down by a palm tree.

The other weretigers grabbed their own meals and sat down around him, the males careful not to draw too close. Malin shook his head, wishing he had some answers to give them.

“Something troubles you?” Bintang asked. She was a strange one, one of only four female weretigers. After him, Calon had chosen this slave woman to be the second Macan Gadungan. She wore her baju mostly unlaced, like any of the male Macan Gadungan. More interesting was the hints of a tattoo that peeked over both her shoulders, obviously covering her entire back.

Malin watched her, careful to keep emotion from his eyes. Few of the Macan Gadungan spoke to him unless spoken to first. Whether out of respect or fear or the same instinct that told the other males not to draw too near him. Bintang was bold. That was not a bad thing. Not in a weretiger.

“You see it,” she said. “We were promised freedom, but we’re still slaves.”

Malin scoffed. “You are not slaves. You just walked into the feast hall and helped yourself to the food like any free woman.”

“And if I decided to leave? If I no longer wanted to serve the Moon Scions?”

Malin almost smiled at the mental image of Rahu’s face if one of the Macan Gadungan asked him such a question. “You have been given a gift.”

“It’s not a gift if it has a price.”

Malin growled at the woman, suddenly irate she dared correct him. He shouldn’t care. He hadn’t asked to be their leader. But if he was, he deserved their respect.

Bintang jerked back, as did several of the nearby females. The males just watched, perhaps wondering if he would strike her. Malin would not. He was not an animal. He didn’t need to give in to these petty instincts.

Before he could think of something to say instead, she spoke again. “Do you know the story of the Satrio Piningit?”

“I’m not originally from these Isles.”

Bintang nodded. “The Satrio Piningit is the Hidden Knight. A warrior who will rise up and lead the oppressed to a new, better life. Change everyone’s future. They say the prophecy comes down to us from the days when the Pact first broke.”

Malin tossed aside the remains of his duck bones and rose. “I’m not interested in superstition and prophecy, girl.” He turned and walked back toward the Hill Palace.

“It could be you,” she shouted after him.

Malin stiffened, but did not turn to look back at her. They were like cubs, children. Powerful imaginations had them grasping at fairy tales. Malin was no hero and certainly no revolutionary out of prophecy. He was a murderer who could barely control his own actions. He was a victim, both of his own pride and his mother’s curse.

If there was any redemption left for him in this life, it would come from Ratna and Chandi. It would come from protecting those children.

CHAPTER TEN

The Buaya Jadian—werecrocodiles—were becoming an issue. Malin crouched near the Jadian boy. No more than ten. He lay on the hillside, bloodied and bruised. This was the second such incident. Hard to trust the crocodiles, true. Smelled wrong.

But he couldn’t let the other Lunars beat a child, even a werecrocodile child.

Protect. Avenge.

Yes. The tiger was completely in agreement with him.

Except Malin couldn’t take revenge on Moon Scions. They were his charge, not the Buaya Jadian.

He lifted the child. Daylight was the problem. In daylight the Jadian were trapped in human form. The boy couldn’t escape, couldn’t dive into the waters. Like the Macan Gadungan couldn’t go running in the rainforest. No one attacked them, though. Not yet. Not with Malin watching. The other Lunars feared him too much.

There were some dozen of the crocodiles now, mostly children. They liked to gather on the beach. Foolish child must have gone into the city alone. Malin carried the boy back down to the beach and left him on the sand, a few dozen feet from the other Buaya Jadian. They all watched him. Unblinking eyes. They were always too still.

They offered no response when Malin nodded. So he left. A narrow path led back up the cliff to where Bukit lay in the highlands. Other Lunars didn’t frequent it much, called it precarious. Malin found no difficulty holding his balance.

He made his way back to the Hill Palace and found Rahu standing outside.

The lord turned at his approach, face a mask. “Where have you been?”

“Another Buaya Jadian was attacked.”

Rahu scowled, then rubbed his goatee. “So I heard.”

“This cannot continue.”

“No. And I have a plan, Malin.” Rahu turned, pointing to the south. “There’s an island out there, off the coast. Uninhabited and wild, overgrown with the rainforest. It’s called Bangdvipa. And I’m going to make this island a training ground for both Jadian bloodlines.”

Malin growled. Or the tiger did. “Tigers and crocodiles don’t mix.”

Rahu’s eyes narrowed. “It’s a big island. They’ll manage. The difficulty is overseeing the island. House Soma can’t spare anyone, so I’m having to bring in an outsider.”

That didn’t sound good. “Outsider? Who?”

“House Kshuparaka, a Scion named Padmawati. Calon found her.” Rahu shook his head. “I know what you’re thinking, Malin. But I always knew I’d have to share the Macan Gadungan, both Jadian bloodlines, really. If I want to win the loyalty of the other Houses, I have to give them something. Right now, the other Jadian are pent up, lacking focus. You serve as a bodyguard to House Soma, but we don’t need dozens of such guards, do we? But if they were trained properly, the Macan Gadungan as protectors …”

“And the Buaya Jadian as spies? Assassins?”

“They were created for a purpose. If not given that purpose, how can we expect anything but trouble concerning them?”

“How do you know this Moon Scion will even do the job?”

“That’s why I want you to go with her, make sure things are established correctly down there. I want the adults ready for action in a few months. The children need to be educated, trained for a life of … meaning.”

Meaning. As Rahu had given him? A few months ago Malin was ready to die. Had this man saved his life? Maybe Malin could do that for the other Jadian. Bintang was a fool to call him some Hidden Knight … but if he could give their lives purpose, that was a kind of saving them. He nodded, saying nothing.

“Go down to the harbor and meet Padmawati. A dhow is being readied for you this afternoon. Some of the Macan Gadungan and Buaya Jadian will go with you. The rest we’ll send once you have things in place. I expect you back here in no more than two months.”

Malin grunted. Rahu had clearly thought a lot about this plan. Always planning. Scheming. And still sometimes he smelled of fear. Whatever he had lost in his former home, whatever had possessed him to come here and claim Ketu as a brother—he feared it. Must be why he was so damn determined to build his army here. And maybe Rahu had saved Malin. So now Malin would give him that army.

He returned back down the same narrow path he had just climbed—the shortest route to the harbor. He didn’t mind the climb. Gave him time to think. Most of the other Jadian had little combat experience, some had basic training in the Skyfall martial art, Silat. Malin had spent the past few months adapting his own training under Balituk to the Silat styles. There were distinct similarities, but just enough differences to keep the practice entertaining. Diverting, at least. Maybe learning stick fighting would help the other Macan Gadungan. Protectors needed weapons in the daylight, too.

A woman waved to him as he drew near the harbor. She wore a white, ruffled baju embroidered in the local style, songket they called it. The elaborate work clearly marked her a Moon Scion. That and the calculating look in her eyes. Lust for power. The tiger knew all about power.

Beside the woman stood a boy, no more than ten, and he held the hand of a young child, perhaps two or three.

“Padmawati,” Malin said to the woman, offering her a bow and ignoring the children.

The woman nodded at him. No bow. So he was beneath her? No matter. Malin had been saved to serve. Protect. That was what he’d do.

“We’ve selected eight Macan Gadungan and five Buaya Jadian to begin construction.”

“Construction?”

“There’s an old temple on the island but it hasn’t been used in centuries. We need to repair it. It’ll give us a place to work from.”

And she planned to use the Jadian instead of Lunar laborers to do it. Teach them subservience and hard work. Crude, but probably effective. A warrior’s training often began with strength and endurance building exercises. Construction would do.

She turned back to the children, as if Malin no longer mattered. “Rang, watch over your brother while I’m gone.”

The older boy nodded, then led the younger away. The woman watched them go with a forlorn smile. “They’ll be fine,” she mumbled to herself. This woman so believed in Rahu and Calon she was willing to leave her children behind for the task? More likely it was her own ambition, a struggle to gain control of the new power the Jadian represented.

“Do you have children, weretiger?” she asked, watching her own children walk down the beach.

“Not that I know of. Are you offering to help with that?”

The Moon Scion’s look of disdain could have wilted a corpse flower. “You do know which of us is in charge, yes?”

Unbidden, a snarl escaped Malin. Mostly he had the tiger under control. Mostly. The Moon Scion’s eyes widened just enough Malin couldn’t help but smirk. He stalked up the gangplank, giving no other answer.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The aquamarine waters around Bangdvipa welcomed Malin. The dense rainforest covered all but the rocky shore. This island was primal. The dhow anchored offshore and Padmawati ordered canoes lowered to carry them ashore. Malin didn’t wait. He leapt over the side and plunged into the sea, then swam to the rocks.

Mine.

The tiger approved. It liked the wild places.

The sea had cut an archway through the rocks, forming a natural bridge to an outcropping, upon which lay the ruins of an ancient temple.

The rocks were slick, hard to climb, but Malin hefted himself up. Splashing behind him. Malin turned to see Bintang climbing up beside him.

“Don’t think you get all the fun.”

Malin bared his teeth at her and scrambled ahead, racing his way to the temple.

The girl laughed and charged after him.

The rock bridge was worn smooth by wind and rain. Running was dangerous. Would have been dangerous for a human. Malin was not human. He’d get to the temple first.

He burst through the entryway and into the chamber within. The walls were stone, and though nearly as weathered as the bridge, they remained strong. But the ceiling had rotted away and hundreds of sunbeams peeked through the roof, illuminating the central temple.

Bintang skidded a stop just past him, still chuckling amidst her panting. “You had a head start.”

Malin paid her no mind. Across from the entrance stood a half-circle slab of stone, as tall as he was, though the top had cracked off. Still, he could easily see the crescent moon face of Chandra watching him. Would the Moon God welcome him to this place? Tanjung had called him a Moon Spirit. Or called the tiger one. Sometimes it was hard to separate himself from it.

More disturbingly, on the east wall stood another such slab, this one engraved with Surya. The Solar’s Sun God. Malin had traded with the Solars in his days as a merchant prince, mostly in the Spice Islands far east of Swarnadvipa. He knew their religion well enough. On the west wall was a third slab, this one marked with flame.

“Why fire?”

Bintang strolled over to the slab, examining it. “It’s Agni. The Solar slaves, the Ignis, they worship the Fire God. This temple must date back to before the breaking of the Pact. Back when all three dynasties ruled the Isles together.”

“You know a lot.”

She snorted and rose, stalking to stand close before him. “I used to run with a pirate band. I wasn’t born a slave.”

“We are not slaves now.”

She bared her teeth in what could have been a grin. Except it was a challenge. Prove it. Prove to her they were not slaves of the Moon Scions. When he didn’t immediately answer, Bintang chuffed, blowing a breath of hot air on his face. “What do you even know, Macan Gadungan?”

In the shadows of the temple, her pupils had dilated. Her scent had grown heady enough to draw a low growl out of Malin’s chest. Malin grabbed her by the throat and shoved her back against the wall. “I am first! I am free!” Free of the curse. He had to be. Free to change his fate. Free to make a new destiny here, among the Lunars. And not as any slave.

“How free?” she asked, her words faint as he applied just enough pressure against her neck. She grabbed his wrist, her own strength impressive, but not enough. When she failed to pry his hand away, Bintang grabbed Malin’s throat in turn. “What does being first of a slave race buy you?”

Malin leaned in close to her, relishing the pain and adrenaline as she choked him. “I am first of the Macan Gadungan.” Talking hurt. Wonderful pain. “You are beneath me.”

“Prove it,” she growled.

Malin couldn’t shake her scent, couldn’t still the trembling in his chest. He pried her hand free of his throat and flung her to the ground. Was this what she wanted?

Mine.

Only daylight kept him in human form. The tiger writhed beneath his skin. Demanding he claim what was his due. Malin dropped down on top of Bintang and flipped her over, ripping away her sarong. It was in control now.

Mine!

The tiger tore off Malin’s own sarong and thrust into Bintang. It roared. She hissed, then laughed. Her moans drove him on, melding with his own, echoing through the temple. He yanked her kebaya away, exposing her full back. The tattoo he had seen only in pieces was revealed now. A massive tree stretching into the clouds, birds flying among its branches.

And beneath it, near the rise of her ass, a man, seeming to stand guard over the tree.

Any thought of her tattoo fled as Malin roared, his release. Bintang was screaming too, laughing.

“You are fucking animals.”

Malin turned see Padmawati standing in the temple entryway, hands on her hips, a whole crowd of her followers watching. He rose, mortified as he scrambled for his sarong. But only for an instant.

All mine.

It was in him. The tiger took what it wanted. Took what was offered. Embarrassment? For mortals. There was no shame in mating with a willing female. He tossed aside his sarong and strutted toward Padmawati, no longer minding his half-naked state.

And he snarled.

She fell back a step, then glared. “Y-you make as much noise as real tigers.”

“We are real tigers!”

Malin’s outburst surprised him almost as much as it seemed to her. The Moon Scion’s mouth hung open, and she sputtered.

Bintang giggled behind him. “You have no idea what we are, Moon Scion.”

Padmawati glanced back at the Jadian behind her, then straightened her sarong. “Be whatever you want. But I expect this roof rebuilt in a week.”

Malin chuckled. With a small army of Jadian? “We’ll have it finished tomorrow. Now go back to your boat, Scion. Tonight, Bangdvipa belongs to those who would be animals.” Her eyes widened deliciously, and Malin couldn’t stop himself from leaning in. “Unless you want to join us? Can you smell love on the wind? Any of these males would happily fuck you from dusk until dawn. All of them, if you want. Want to feel a tiger inside you, Scion?”

The Moon Scion scoffed and spun around, stalking back across the bridge. As if his words had broken a dam, several other Macan Gadungan grabbed each other, letting lust take them over. This place brought it out. Maybe it was mating season. Maybe it was the wild nature of the island. Maybe it was just the taste of freedom. Most of these people had been slaves before they volunteered to be Jadian.

Some of the adult Buaya Jadian leapt off the rock bridge and into the sea. Malin had no interest in how or where the werecrocodiles planned to mate.

Instead, he sunk to the floor beside Bintang, who hadn’t bothered to cover herself. Malin turned her by the shoulder, to examine the tattoo. The leaves were done in brilliant pink that somehow reminded him of the cherry blossoms he had seen in Tianxia once.

“What does it mean?”

“Djambo Baros.”

“What?”

“You really aren’t a Skyfall native. Djambo Baros is the Tree of Life, housing the Wheel of Life. It guides us, all our fates, our lives, our rebirths. All the cycles that make up existence and connect Earth to Kahyangan.”

Guiding fate? She purred as he traced the lines of the tree along her back. Tempting to blame this Djambo Baros for his misfortunes. But he knew a witch’s curse had brought him here. And maybe, just maybe, another witch’s curse had set him free. “Who is the man?”

She turned then, bore him down and nibbled on his ear. “Satrio Piningit.”

The Hidden Knight again. A man who would lead revolution. Malin would never be such a man, even if he had stood up to Padmawati. That had certainly felt good though. “You really believe in this prophesied warrior?”

“You have to believe in something.”

Did he? What did he left to believe in? Maybe not even himself. But if he could make this island a sanctuary for the Jadian, maybe his life would have some meaning. Maybe he could provide them some shelter. They had lived as slaves, but here they could be free.

“The Moon Scions need us,” he said at last. “Need the Jadian to be their protectors and spies. We do not have to be their slaves.”

“Your loyalty to Rahu blinds you, Malin. Did you not see the way Padmawati looked on us?”

He shrugged. “Too prudish to admit what she wanted. She was probably jealous.”

Bintang laughed, but it was a brief laugh. “I guess she had a right to be.” Then she pulled away, a forlorn look on her face. “One day you’re going to see them for who they really are.”

Or perhaps he could show all the Jadian a better life than the one they had left behind.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Darkness gave way to a haze of mist before Tanjung’s eyes, no matter how tightly she shut them. It was calling her, somewhere far to the north, beyond Malaydvipa, somewhere in El-Hind. She couldn’t quite say how she knew, only that she was certain it was there, waiting for her. A gift from Rangda—or, rather, an insistence. A grimoire of secrets from a forgotten age long, long before the breaking of the Pact. Maybe even from before the founding of the Pact.

The goddess didn’t speak to her in words. Just sensations, instincts that came from nowhere, and dreams. Always the dreams.

Tanjung had fallen into darkness and expected to become a wandering shade, lost in Kahyangan, unable to tear herself away from Earth or find her way back to the Wheel of Life. Such was often the fate of those murdered and unsent. Except she didn’t die.

Palace Janggala had once seemed so inviting a home, with its magnificent water gardens and fine ornamentation. Tonight, though, it seemed another world. And her memories here were just memories of a dream. She knelt behind a grove of ferns, gazing in at Sidapaksa. Her lover. Her husband. Betrayer. Murderer.

Damned forever.

The last had been a voice in her head, but not like those that had so often spoken to her before. This had come from within her. The spirit that had taken residence in her body rarely spoke to her, but it hated House Janggala maybe even more than Tanjung herself. Hated with such vehemence it seeped into Tanjung’s every pore and suffused her waking thoughts and dreams alike.

Dying in the rainforest, she had witnessed an endless expanse of mist. Not the mist that clung over Swarnadvipa in the early morning, blanketing mountains and forest in cloudy canopy. This mist held the icy chill of death, of an entire frozen world. Snow-covered mountains peeked above the mist, forming a ring around a tundra that stretched on and on.

Out there, in the mist, things moved. Not only mere ghosts of the damned, though they were there in multitudes. But other creatures—demons, if she were honest. Demons born of Mist. Some were headless corpses, not rotting in the chill, waiting. Waiting for heads that had flown away and sought other souls to torment and consume. Revenants and leyaks and the stuff of nightmares. She’d prayed to Rangda and she found herself damned to the Demon Queen’s underworld.

Or so she’d thought. And then she had woken, her wounds now icy to the touch. Everything hurt. As if Rangda had not healed her body, but rather simply denied her soul the ability to depart. Forced her to keep living despite wounds that should have killed her. Even now, after the long trek back, still her gut ached. Breathing hurt. Eating hurt. Taking a shit was utter agony. She had prayed to live, not even realizing death might be a release. Her injuries were healing, but at a painfully slow rate.

And how much of her continued existence did she owe to the Demon Queen? How much did she owe to her mother? Perhaps part of the reason she’d been able to live was her supernatural heritage. She was a Moon Scion and the daughter of a bidadari, making her a half-goddess. No. She was kidding herself to think that she’d have lived through that wound without aid from the underworld. That ghost had settled around her soul. Maybe it would have possessed her, controlled her, if not for Rangda’s power. Now, the spirit merely kept her walking on days that pain should have crippled her.

And that insistence was ever in her mind, calling her to the tome. Demanding she find it, though what the Demon Queen wanted Tanjung to do with the book she had no idea.

Either way, she had something she had to do here first.

“Ghost,” she whispered. “Come to me.”

The thing inside her stirred, shifted. It wasn’t used to her addressing it directly. But the spirit was clearly subservient to Rangda, and that was all Tanjung needed to know. At the moment, they were on the same side.

“Aid me.”

Betrayers.

The ghost’s fell, icy whisper in her mind sent a shudder down Tanjung’s back.

“I know who you are … Dewi Anggraeni, right? They killed you, didn’t they? House Janggala.”

Anggraeni had been a Solar over a century before, one fool enough to marry a Lunar, Prince Panji. And House Janggala had had the girl murdered because her marriage had broken an engagement between Panji and one of their Scions. Of course, after so long, the truth was lost in the legend. But the hatred, the incomparable rage wafted off the spirit and infected Tanjung, feeding her own need to avenge the wrongs done to both of them.

Kill.

Tanjung snorted. “That would be too easy. He has to suffer for what he has done.”

Torment.

“Show him,” Tanjung said, certain the spirit inside her could feel her intent. They were so intimately connected it would probably know what she wanted even if she did not speak.

Something pulled at Tanjung’s insides, her heart lurching into her throat, and she slumped down on her ass, then fell onto her back as Anggraeni crawled out of her. Without the ghost inside, Tanjung lacked the strength to stand and her pain redoubled itself. But, then, Anggraeni would help her share that pain.

The spirit’s form was hazy as mountain mist, blue-white in color. Her face must have been beautiful in life, but her eyes were now pupil-less pools of icy blue. She flickered twice, each time becoming more solid in appearance. And more like Tanjung.

Tanjung shuddered at the sight, like looking in a mirror. As a Moon Scion, she could use the Blessing of Glamour to disguise her appearance. It was pale illusion compared to the perfection with which the ghost could copy her form.

Anggraeni strolled through the garden, walking just on the edge of it, so that Sid might catch sight of her from the corner of his eye. Tanjung had to stifle a laugh. She crawled forward to watch the spectacle.

Sid spun to look, but the ghost had already stepped behind a banyan tree then vanished. Next, she appeared on the other side, once again vanishing as Sid turning to watch her.

“T-Tanjung?” He shook his head, then scurried away from the water garden, practically tripping over himself to escape back into the palace proper.

Tanjung pushed herself up. The alien presence settled back inside her, lending her the strength to stand, to make her way over to the house. Sid had no idea just who—or what—he had betrayed. But he was going to learn there was a price for it. “What room is he in?”

Anggraeni didn’t answer in words, but after a brief hesitance, a vision appeared in Tanjung’s mind, revealing Sid’s chambers. Run back to his room like a frightened child? What next? Would he call for a moon priest to protect him?

Tanjung frowned. Would that work? Could a priest invoke the name of Chandra and keep Anggraeni at bay? And since when had she become the fears that haunted the night? But Sid had brought this on himself. It would just be this one time … this one time she would use her power and have … It wasn’t revenge. It was justice.

She sent Anggraeni to stroll past Sid’s window—repeatedly, since he didn’t notice the first time. And then into the palace, appearing at every turn. For a phase or so she punished him, waiting for the moonrise. But it wasn’t enough. He ought to see the fate before him.

“Can you give him visions?”

Yes.

“Show him her world. Rangda’s world.”

The spirit’s snicker filled Tanjung’s head, echoing until it sounded almost like a cackle. She shook her head, trying to dislodge the sound, but it suffused her very being. Anggraeni was still inside her, her thoughts polluting Tanjung’s own.

Polluting?

“Just do it. Show him what awaits him beyond this realm.”

Tanjung crept by his window to watch, but he had locked the shutters closed. Instead, she slumped against the palace wall just beneath the window and lowered her head into her hands. She wanted to smile as the whimpering began within. She wanted to feel Anggraeni’s terrible mirth. Maybe Rangda expected that of her. But the pitiful moans that issued from Sid’s chamber only left her weary.

And she wasn’t surprised when the man burst out his front door and went running off toward Bukit. Probably seeking Ketu or some other moon priest. So predictable.

“Return to me.”

A heartbeat, and Anggraeni was inside her again, giving her the strength to quicken her pace. Walking still hurt. And that pain was a reminder of a keris blade, sunk deep in her gut by a man she had loved. A man who should have trusted her. Instead, he had pierced her to her very soul. This was his fault. He brought this on himself. He brought it on himself. She was just doing justice …

As if that were the domain of Rangda Demon Queen. No, Rangda was the mistress of black magic, of death, of damnation. And that was all Tanjung had to offer now. She had been pushed to this course.

And she needed to see it through. Before Sidapaksa could summon aid.

So she sent Anggraeni to slow her former lover. The ghost drifted in front of his path and by now, that was enough to set the man screaming, coming right back toward Tanjung. She didn’t even need to call Anggraeni back. The ghost reentered her in anticipation.

Sid dashed toward her, glancing over his shoulder every other step. It was too easy. Tanjung stepped up, drew her keris knife, and let her love run right into it. It sank between his ribs and pierced his lung. The look of surprise on his face was both horrifying and strangely fulfilling.

The man glanced at her knife embedded in his chest, then slumped to his knees.

Tanjung knelt with him, easing him down as he began choking on blood. “A far cleaner death than you gave me, lover.”

Delicious fear widened his eyes.

Tanjung placed a hand on his cheek. “I just want you to know two things, my love. First, I was innocent. I would never have betrayed you. You cast me aside when you should have protected me against that bastard Sulakrama. And second, when you reach Kahyangan, your soul will be drawn to Rangda’s frozen underworld where the Queen will feast on it for the next thousand years. When that penance has been served, then I will forgive you.”

She jerked her keris free as she rose, then turned away. She didn’t need to watch him die.

And no longer could she deny the command of her queen. She had far to travel.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

A man could hardly travel to the Skyfall Isles without hearing stories of the mythic Astral Temple. Both Lunars and Solars revered the place, high atop cliffs on Puradvipa. They alternated years holding it in trust, as they had done since the end of the Third War some centuries before. Other than handing off the temple, Lunars avoided contact with Solars for the most part.

Malin had never seen the temple before. At night, it would have been impossible for a human to make it out from the beach below the cliff. But Malin’s eyes had become so adapted to darkness he could see it clearly.

“Are you certain?” he asked Rahu.

They both stood on the beach called Astral Shore, looking up at the cliff. The Solars had control of the temple this year.

Malin’s Jadian waited farther down the beach, waited for his word. A word that would start a war. He owed Rahu. The man had saved his life, given him purpose. Maybe allowed him to escape the prior course of his destiny.

Months of training had prepared them, had turned the Macan Gadungan from men and women following animal instincts to true warriors. Malin had passed onto them all the techniques Balituk had once taught him. They were his students, almost his children, in a way. The Buaya Jadian Padmawati had trained in stealth and subterfuge herself.

Rahu did not answer Malin’s question for a time. No way he could see the temple. But he stared at something off in the distance. “This place is sacred to the Lunars. Yes, to Solars, too,” he added before Malin could object. “But it was the Lunars who took us, who took you in. The spirit in you comes from the moon, from Chandra.”

Malin growled. “I know where my loyalties lie.”

“Good. We need the symbol the Astral Temple represents to rule the Lunars. And they need to be united. Every year more and more of the Skyfall Isles fall under control of the Solar Empire. While the Lunars hide on their own island, bickering among themselves with their petty internecine wars, the Solars expand.”

That was true enough. Malin had seen too much of such Lunar infighting. “I am not a murderer.”

Rahu sighed. “I am going to do this, Malin. Are you going to let me walk into danger alone?”

Protect.

“No.” He cracked his neck. Phrased like that, Rahu hardly left him a choice.

The man nodded without looking at Malin, as though he’d known exactly what reaction Malin would have. So Rahu manipulated him. Malin had to believe taking this place, this symbol, was different than slaughtering an entire House. He had to. This time, he would be in control. He would be doing what he had to, just to protect.

So fine a line.

Protect.

“One thing, Malin. There will likely be at least one Arun Guard there.” The Solars’ legendary elite. A fighting force rumored to be the most deadly warriors in the whole South Sea, perhaps the whole world. Malin’s muscles itched at the thought of such a fight. “Do not underestimate them. According to Ketu, these people are faster than any Moon Scion and able to instantly appear at any location.”

Sun warriors. How unpleasant. The thought soured the tiger within him. Malin, however, merely nodded. Then he motioned the other Jadian forward. “Lengser, take the werecrocodiles and slip in close, unnoticed. Eliminate as many of the sentries as you can by stealth, but do not reveal your nature. The Macan Gadungan will handle the open conflict.”

The Buaya Jadian man nodded once, in affirmation. Always a little too still, too stiff. Damn crocodiles. He slipped off into the rainforest, taking the long trek up to the temple.

Malin gave them a brief head start, then motioned for his Macan Gadungan to follow. Rahu and his Moon Scions would scale the cliff itself and attack only once the weretigers had occupied the Solar forces.

Bintang trotted up beside him. “Can you feel it? The energy building within. The moon is calling us.”

It was calling. He could feel it. The tiger shifted within him. Time to let the beast run.

Malin tossed aside his baju and kicked away his sarong. The other Macan Gadungan did so as well. They had all seen each other naked so many times no one even hesitated anymore. And they shifted. Almost as one, they became tigers.

Legs ached to run. But he needed to save his stamina. Tigers were built for sprints, not long races. And they were solitary. Malin suspected the rainforest had never seen a parade of a dozen tigers following one another. Lorises chirped and chattered at their passage, sticking to the canopy above.

The tiger wanted to hunt the monkey-things, but Malin forced it still. He had a task this night. All those other nights hunting Bangdvipa had given him a bond with the spirit within. A measure more of control.

Bintang trotted up past him. Even if he hadn’t recognized her scent, he’d have known her from her stripes. As a man he’d never really noticed, but each tiger had unique patterns. Having the other males too close set him on edge, but he’d grown to identify the stripes of every female Macan Gadungan. He’d slept with most of them, too, though Bintang remained his favorite.

Focus.

At the edge of the rainforest they paused. The Astral Temple was surrounded by a white crenelated wall some twenty feet high. Even for Malin, that was probably too high to jump. A wooden gate barred the only entrance. Malin snarled, then took to climbing a nearby tree. It wasn’t ideal, but he’d chased more than one monkey into the canopy on Bangdvipa. The others followed, scaling their own trees, able to get level with the wall.

A twenty foot horizontal jump, that should be no problem. Malin waited until a sentry passed along the wall, then leapt onto the man, cutting off his astonished cry instantly.

The other tigers leapt onto the wall right after him. Some began stalking left, some right. All hunting down the few guards up here with bows. He had to trust the Buaya Jadian would have eliminated any other watchers that might spy the Moon Scions climbing the path.

Which meant it was time to announce his presence and deal with this Arun Guard. Assuming the man wasn’t one of those fools his people had already killed.

Malin roared and leapt down into the temple complex. It was, in fact, a series of many smaller temples arranged in concentric circles. At the center of all these stood eleven white pillars. Malin didn’t know what any of it meant.

Nor would he have cared, except the tiger was almost afraid of this place. Or reverent.

His people jumped down beside him and charged through the complex, pouncing on Solar guards and priests and servants wherever they found them. The only way to protect his Moon Scions was to eliminate threats before Rahu arrived. So Malin joined in the slaughter.

He was not a murderer. He was not an animal.

A tiger yelped behind one of the temples. Malin turned swiftly, kicked off a temple and changed directions to dash to the sound.

A man in a cerulean shirt stood over the corpse of a male Macan Gadungan—Nayagenggong, one of Ketu’s freed slaves—now reverted to human form. Another tiger leapt at the Solar. The man vanished, appearing above the tiger and thrust his sword down at it even as the tiger descended. The blade—a straight keris similar to a Maitian kampilan—pierced the tiger’s neck, killing it instantly. The Solar vanished again before Malin’s fallen brother even hit the ground.

The man appeared near Bintang, who roared and clawed at him. He was so fast Malin’s eyes could barely track him, even when he wasn’t vanishing and reappearing in new locations. This was the Arun Guard.

Another tiger charged in, roaring. The man vanished, repeating his maneuver and killing it midair. This Macan Gadungan, a young girl, crashed to the ground.

Protect!

Malin had to fight every instinct he had to keep from charging in the way the others had. This Guardsman could react to any danger he saw coming. It meant he had to be stalked, the way one stalked a wild boar. Malin circled around, drawing ever nearer. He flinched as the Guardsman drew a long cut along Bintang’s side. She kept her head enough not to leap anywhere, at least. Too hard to change directions in midair.

The tiger demanded he snarl as he pounced from behind on the Solar. Malin silenced it. Made not a sound until he impacted the Guardsman. His weight bore the man down. The Solar tried to shift beneath him, but Malin was much stronger. His paws pinned the Guardsman to the ground and he bit down on the man’s neck. A torrent of coppery blood gushed down Malin’s throat, enough to gag him, though he didn’t dare release this monstrous enemy. Not until it had stopped twitching. For all his power, the Guardsman died like any other man.

Malin bit harder, crushing the man’s spine, then tossed the body aside.

He shifted back to human form to examine Bintang. She bore numerous gashes, some deep. The tigress now lay down and shifted back herself, panting.

“Getting sweet on me?” she asked, though the effort obviously pained her. “Tigers don’t mate for life, you know.”

“You’re going to be all right.” He patted her bare shoulder, then helped her move so she could lean against one of the temples.

Only then did Malin look down at himself. Naked and covered in blood, drenched in it, like it painted his entire body crimson. Just as it had back at Palace Shravana. Nothing had changed.

Protect?

“Is that what you think?” he demanded of the spirit. “That we protected something here?”

“You protected me,” Bintang mumbled.

Malin shut his eyes. He had started a war. Was Rahu right about the Solars? Somehow, Malin doubted it really even mattered. The man lusted for power. And Malin delivered it.

Protect and Avenge.

Yes. The Solars had killed Malin’s people. The Jadian were his people now. He might have started this war, but now it was his duty, his purpose to see them all through it.

Maybe there was not so much difference between the Macan Gadungan and the Harimau Jadian. Maybe that was his true curse. He could couch it in whatever terms he might like, but he would always be a killer. A hunter.

And if that was what he must be, then he would at least be a master at it.

PART TWO

(1181 AP)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Ten years since Tanjung had seen the Lunar capital. Ten years she had wandered the world, drawn by the visions of her mistress. Drawn across vernal Malaydvipa where scores of petty kingdoms struggled for dominance while still worshipping the ghosts of their ancestors. Beyond into the growing empire of Syama, and finally into El-Hind. And there it had taken her years to uncover the grimoire Rangda promised her and years more to realize it had never been meant for her.

That hurt, of course. To be forced to face the reality that she was merely one piece in the queen’s larger plan. But she had given herself over in soul and service and she had to trust in that plan, even if she couldn’t see its full scope. She was, at least in part, mortal, after all. How could she hope to comprehend the scale of machinations played out over the course of millennia?

And she returned alone, having long since released Anggraeni. Once her body had healed, she no longer needed the ghost’s strength. Still, she had bound the spirit to her. A witch never knew when she might need an ally. Given the war with the Solars, that time might come soon.

This was not the same Bukit she had left. Gone were the factionalized districts of the city, the petty squabbling over them. Now, the various Moon Scion Houses worked together, united under their War King, Rahu. The man who, according to all stories she had heard, had promised them a return to the glory of ancient times. From what Tanjung could see, Rahu had instead ignited a losing war against a clearly superior enemy.

Every town and village she passed through told war stories—exaggerated perhaps—but they all agreed that the Solar navy dominated the seas, making every incursion against them a near-impossible endeavor. Worse still were those engagements where the Arun Guard appeared. The Jadian had been intended to aid Moon Scions in fighting the Solar elite, but it didn’t seem to have been enough.

Tanjung hefted her satchel higher on her shoulder and stared at the Hill Palace, not yet ready to make that final climb. She had no reason to be nervous, of course. No one could have known she’d killed Sidapaksa. The crime was so long gone now … and with the war, who would be thinking of a murder a decade ago? Besides, she was not the same scared young woman who had fled here. She was a high priestess of Rangda, given a divine mission. Her mistress would protect her.

Or was it something else? Was it facing Calon now, after abandoning her friend and pupil for so long? Would the woman welcome her back now? She blew out a long breath. Calon would have no choice. Rangda demanded Calon serve, and Tanjung would see to it that she did. Clinging to her old friendship was like clinging to anything else from childhood—futile. One had to grow up. Tanjung didn’t even miss this place anymore.

And her task would not grow any easier by standing here beneath the beating sun.

She trudged up the hill, toward the palace. She had not even reached the main door before another woman slipped from the shadows, all feline grace and confidence.

“Who are you?” the woman demanded.

Even if the woman’s movements hadn’t identified her as Macan Gadungan, Tanjung could feel the spirit within her. Just how many of these Jadian had Calon created? Tanjung cocked her head. She had seen this woman before, one of the first of the weretigers … Bintang. That was her name.

Bintang wore her baju only half-laced, barely concealing her breasts. Probably the Macan Gadungan wanted to be able to shift easily, though it must be mere habit now, since Surya’s glare would have contained the Moon Spirit within her.

“I am a Moon Scion.”

The woman tensed, one hand closing around a toyak she wore tucked into the back of her sarong. “The War King is a busy man.”

“And you are his guard … cat?”

The Macan Gadungan snarled at her and Tanjung had to fight a smile. It would not do to let these people know how powerful she had become. Rangda had helped Tanjung uncover the true potential of the bidadari blood running through her veins. No mere Jadian could stop her, but it was not her task to kill weretigers. The queen’s plans required finesse.

“I am Bintang, Macan Gadungan to House Soma. Appointed by Malin himself.”

Malin himself? It would seem the first of the Macan Gadungan had grown in stature despite the losing war he now fought. Instead of further mocking either Bintang or Malin, Tanjung simply bowed. “Tell Calon that Tanjung has returned. She will want to see me.” At least Tanjung hoped she would. If not, her task would become immeasurably more difficult. And Rangda did not tolerate failure.

The weretiger seemed taken aback at Tanjung’s bow and sudden politeness, and, after a moment’s hesitance, returned it, then slipped away into the palace. Shortly thereafter, Bintang returned, beckoning Tanjung to follow. The weretiger led her toward the palace courtyard. They passed a war room where Rahu stood staring at a map, then slapped it off the table, scattering papers everywhere. Tanjung wanted to pause, to ask Rahu about the war, but Bintang’s glare made her think better of it.

The other woman left her in the courtyard at the center of the Hill Palace, and Bintang went to stand by the fishpond. This had been Palace Shravana once, and glorious then. She supposed it was House Soma’s due after winning against them. Back then Tanjung had been horrified at what Rahu and Calon had used Malin for. Now, it seemed only right. Shravana had been weak. Most people probably didn’t even think of the fallen House anymore.

Tanjung’s concerns had been so petty. She’d let fear drive her every action. And for all her fear and caution and trying to do the right thing, she’d still wound up with a blade in her gut. The goddess had shown her the true error of her ways. Calon had been right all along. What mattered was power.

“Tanjung?” Calon asked.

She turned to see her old friend, now wearing a golden kembaya that perfectly matched her jewelry, looking almost a queen. From the lines around her eyes, though, she was queen of a doomed kingdom. And she knew it. Despite the heat, fabric covered nearly every inch of her skin. Concealing the Glyphs of the goddess knew how many Jadian bonds, most likely. The sorcery had worn away at Calon’s soul. A normal person might see it merely as the ravages of age, but Tanjung could see the signs—a hollowing in her eyes, a gauntness in her cheeks. The witch was in her early thirties but probably had only a few years left before she tried to call something from Kahyangan and that something decided to take up residence in her body. She grieved for her old friend, but Rangda got what Rangda wanted.

Calon hesitated, then shook her head and embraced Tanjung. The sudden warmth of it caught Tanjung off guard. She wanted to hug the woman back, but it was over before she could even react. No one had touched her with warmth in years. Was she ready to sacrifice this? To sacrifice Calon on the altar of Rangda’s glory? An icy pit opened in her stomach and she felt like she was falling. A subtle warning from the goddess not to lose sight of her mission, no doubt. Tanjung owed the Demon Queen her very life, and even her soul.

There was no room left for hesitation or fear or half measures.

“Where on Chandra’s dark side have you been?” Calon asked.

Tanjung chuckled. “Everywhere. But I’ve returned now, and I find all anyone talks of is this war.”

Calon slumped down in front of a palm tree and motioned for Tanjung to follow. “We’re going to lose. They’re going to come here and they’re going to kill us all, kill little Ratna, even. The Solar advance is slow, steady. Sometimes we take an island, a village. But we always lose it again when the Arun Guard show up.”

“I heard Malin has killed a few of them.”

“Four over the years, yes. And each one has cost him. He tends to take the deaths of the other Jadian personally.”

“He’s not here?”

Calon shook her head. “He’s often out with Ketu, taking one island or another. Trying to slow their advance on us. I’m not sure it matters. Another year, maybe, and we’ll have nowhere left to hide. And I don’t think I can make many more Jadian. The strain is …”

“I can tell.” Tanjung stared at the fishpond rather than meet Calon’s gaze. She had warned the woman sorcery would have a price. It was not a replacement for soldiers on the battlefield. And yet, here she was, going to drive her childhood friend, maybe her only remaining friend, to further magic. And Calon would have as little choice as Tanjung did—this war left her no choice. They needed power. It always came back to that.

Tanjung drew the grimoire from her satchel. It was bound in ancient leather, stained a red as dark as dried blood, and marked with Glyphs on the cover. “Lunar morale is breaking.” There wasn’t even a question about that. “The best way to reinvigorate that morale is to suck it right out of the Solars. What if you could evoke spirits without having to bond them?” As if there would not still be a price. “What if you could break the Solars, leave them vulnerable to your war bands?”

Calon ran a hand over the cover, then drew it back. “What is this? It’s cold.”

“A gift.”

Calon’s eyes narrowed. “A gift? From whom?”

This was it. She’d have to tell Calon sooner or later. “From the queen of sorcery. From an enemy of the sun.”

“The queen of … ?” Calon’s mouth dropped open, the confusion vanishing from her face. “You mean … Rangda?”

“The patron of witches, Calon. You started down this path of your own volition. In this book are secrets beyond your dreams. And I can help you understand them, uncover them. But the choice has to be yours. If you open this door, nothing will be the same for you.”

Calon’s hand drifted over the book again. And then she opened it.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The city stank of rot. After so many years as a Macan Gadungan, Malin had learned to filter out common smells. The fresh floral scents of the rainforest, the tingle of clean dirt and water, those he could relish. But he’d learned to ignore the thick putrescence of Bukit. Mostly.

Tonight, though, the air tasted acrid and slick, almost from the moment he climbed the hill to the Lunar capital. Tonight he took no notice of the saddle roofs that always welcomed him home from so long away at war. The other Macan Gadungan watched him stalk through the city. They’d smell it too. But they’d leave it to him. They always expected him to be their voice, and it was a duty he would not shirk.

Before the Hill Palace, little Chandi chased Ratna with an ultop. The toy’s crack, as the ten-year-old slammed the rod through the funnel, sent nightjars aflight from the palace. Ratna screeched and ran from her cousin. Straight into Malin’s arms.

“Malin! Save me!”

Malin scooped the War King’s daughter up and cradled her against his shoulder. Shame Ratna didn’t have Chandi’s courage. Ratna was the War King’s only child and thus his heir. She’d need strength to lead her people. With one hand he brushed Ratna’s hair, casting a smirk over her shoulder at Chandi. The child’s wide smile revealed gaps where her adult teeth hadn’t grown in yet. The mischief in her eyes was so endearing he almost wanted to applaud her, but that wouldn’t do.

“Mind your family, Chandi,” Malin said. “Nothing can replace them.”

Only odd moments like this still reminded him of Tioman. If things had been different, they’d have had children about Chandi and Ratna’s age. Little girls or boys playing games like these. Dwelling on such things was pointless. A few of the Macan Gadungan had born children to him, but he was not close to them, not the way he was with Chandi and Ratna. They had been sent off to train at Bangdvipa and Malin had seen little of them. Still, the Macan Gadungan, all of them were his family now, or as close to family as he could get.

Malin set Ratna down. “Go on. Go play.”

Even through the putrid stink of the palace, Malin could make out Bintang’s scent. He’d had her appointed to House Soma in his absence. A protector to Rahu and his family while Malin was away with Ketu, fighting the wars. There was no one he’d trust with the task more.

“The knight returns home,” she said.

Malin scowled. “I’ve told you a thousand times. I am not this Hidden Knight.”

Bintang merely shrugged. Always had to act like she knew better than everyone else. And knew Malin liked confidence in his females. He chuffed at her and pushed her aside, then slipped into the palace, only to find Rahu waiting.

Malin dropped to one knee, head bowed.

“Malin, come.” The War King led him to the courtyard, then sat beside the fishpond. Rahu stroked the baju he wore, gold songket embroidery on imported black silk, a gift from his wife. What it had cost Calon to get Tianxian silk in the middle of this war, Malin couldn’t guess. “I fear for my wife, Macan Gadungan.”

“Something is ill in the air,” Malin said.

“Yes. The Solars will seek her out, I can feel it. You must watch over her.”

Yes. The tiger within demanded he protect his charges. It was the reason for his breath, now. Eleven years this spirit had clung to his soul. Made him stronger. Sometimes, his old life seemed to have happened to someone else. Eleven years, and for ten of them, Solars had tried to kill those in his care.

Protect.

“Her own witchcraft draws them,” Malin said.

Rahu raised an eyebrow, a silent rebuke that allowed Malin no further response. There was none to be made, he supposed. Calon had created the Jadian bloodlines and now, if rumors were true, had turned to even darker arts. And still, she was his to protect. That was what being Macan Gadungan meant. Without that, he was mere Harimau Jadian, and damned for it.

Malin bowed, then stalked through the palace toward Calon’s chambers. The War King’s wife was not alone. Bamboo walls muffled the women’s voices. Other ears wouldn’t hear them. Malin’s did.

From the doorway he watched them. The shutters over the window cast the room in shadows, broken beams of moonlight illuminating symbols painted on the walls. Calon sat in the center of the room, poring over some old, foul-smelling book. Those symbols were of Kahyangan. He’d seen those before—seen Calon paint them when she put the tiger spirit inside him.

Calon’s friend Tanjung was here again, surprisingly elegant in her sea-green dress. Just another witch. After so long away, Malin might not have recognized her but for her scent, though it had changed, now suffused with the same rot the witches’ magic cast off. He’d dared hope Tanjung was gone forever. She might have helped him transform from Harimau Jadian to Macan Gadungan, but there were already too many witches in this city.

Tanjung whispered into Simhika’s ear, instructing Chandi’s mother on how to paint those symbols. His muscles itched. Eyes stung until he had to look away from the Spirit Glyphs. Unnatural symbols, like that of the thing she had put inside him. And now she called more. More spirits to ravage mankind and leave them empty! Breaches in the barrier between this world and the next that only the queen of all fools would open on purpose.

Malin stalked forward and grabbed Tanjung by the shoulder, spun her to face him. “What in Rangda’s frozen underworld are you doing?”

Tanjung sneered at him, at his hand on her shoulder. She was a Moon Scion, heir of Chandra. Protect. Malin released his grip on her, and she turned back to Simhika without a word. Sympathy passed over Simhika’s face, but she too said nothing. Chandi’s mother was far too easily swayed by Calon.

And, of course, it was Calon who answered. “Rangda’s underworld is right, Malin. The Demon Queen has a gift for the Solars. The crops on their island wither and die. Disease takes their animals and their young.”

The spirit within growled. Malin couldn’t tell if the others heard it. Didn’t care, either. The Macan Gadungan clawed at his mind. If Malin didn’t know better, he’d say it was afraid. And why not? Calon was talking about things far worse than Moon Spirits.

He knelt beside Calon. “Your husband wants me to protect you.” He leaned in close to her ear. “But you need protection from yourself. Abandon this madness, Calon. You are a child of the Moon God. The Demon Queen will bring nothing but damnation.”

Calon laughed as she rose, her grin filled with more mischief than Malin had seen in her in years. “Damnation indeed. The Solars want to live in an undersea city. Let’s see how they like having their villages on land flooded.” She stroked her fingers over the book in her arms. “The secrets here, weretiger—you have no idea. The truths of Kahyangan can end this war. A small spirit in you made you the unstoppable killer you are now—”

“I’m a bodyguard. Not an animal.”

“Imagine what else we could call. Imagine what more powerful spirits could do at our behest. I understand your fears. It’s right to fear the Spirit Realm. But I can save my husband, my daughter with this. We can use Kahyangan, once we learn the old truths.”

“Some things are better not known, witch.”

Calon glowered at him. Perhaps he’d crossed the line. “If I can end this war with the Solars, I have to do so. I will not let my family fall to the Arun Guard!” The woman drew herself up, as if her five-foot frame could be intimidating. “A mother would do anything to protect her child, weretiger!”

Malin winced at her words. Some mothers, perhaps. His had been less nurturing.

“Leave, weretiger,” Calon said. “Leave us to our work.” The witch’s hair danced about her face, despite the lack of breeze. Her crooked smile revealed a hint of perfect teeth. Calon met his gaze unwavering.

Tanjung snorted when Malin looked to her. Some claimed the woman had spirit blood in her. Maybe that was why she was the last of her House. He’d heard a rumor her brief marriage to Sidapaksa ended when the man was murdered by some war band or bandit.

Calon and Tanjung were too far gone to listen. Malin grabbed Simhika by the arms, looked deep into her eyes.

“Malin … ” she said, “some things must be. I won’t see Chandi grow up to face these same troubles.”

Malin shook his head. Three witches would call plagues down on the Solars. Chandra let this madness end the blasted war. Mankind had no business touching Kahyangan.

Malin tried not to listen to the spirit names the witches called as he fled the palace. Tried not to imagine what might answer.

Instead he sat beneath the shade of a palm tree, watched the young Lunar soldiers training with their keris knives. Watched the sun set and the night market open. Watched, and waited. Afraid to leave Bukit, day after day, as he kept his promise to guard Calon.

His other Macan Gadungan brought him food while he kept his vigil. He rarely slept. Nightmares haunted him when he did, visions of the Spirit Realm. Did they come from his own fears, or the memories of the spirit within him? Malin didn’t want to know.

On rare days when Calon opened her window, Malin would creep up to it and watch her. Once, Calon swept her daughter into her embrace. Moon Scion strength was more than enough to lift a ten-year-old girl.

“Maybe your father and I shouldn’t have started this war,” Calon said to Ratna. “But I’m going to end it. I’m going to give you the world, my little bidadari.”

Malin’s neck spasmed. He cracked it from left to right. Breathe. Maybe Calon was right. He returned to his palm tree, sat. Maybe she could end this. But Malin knew nothing of bidadaris or other heavenly inhabitants of Kahyangan. The only things he knew of the Spirit Realm were darker. Calon was letting loose spirits from Rangda’s underworld and it sickened the tiger in him as much as the man.

Some days, Chandi and Ratna sat with him, playing nearby, or asking for stories of his homeland. Stories from before he was a weretiger. From another lifetime, when he’d been a sailor, a man, a husband. The girls’ friend, Mahesa, liked stories of the sea. Most Lunars didn’t appreciate the sea enough. The Solar navy scared them away from it.

Ratna wanted stories of romance—stories Malin would never tell. He didn’t even want to think of Tioman. Some things were best left buried. And Chandi, truest little Scion of the Moon God, she wanted stories of adventure. Those Malin had. More than he ever wanted. Stories of running from pirates, of storms at sea, of coming to the Skyfall Isles.

And sitting there, watching over the children and their fool mothers, Malin could almost pretend he was still that man. Could almost pretend the war was not happening.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Part of Malin wanted to remain in his unending watch, sitting with the children. Ratna and Chandi, they knew nothing of the curses of Solars or witches or wars. They knew only the laughter when he would hoist them over his head with one hand. They knew the man he would have been, in another lifetime. The man he wished he was, but could fool no one but children into believing in.

So his heart ached as Rahu approached, long before the War King spoke. Because such things never lasted. Not for Malin. Had he ever broken free of the fate his mother had cursed him with? Perhaps. If so, he’d gained his freedom at the price of his humanity.

“The Solars have launched an attack just off our island.”

Malin sighed. Yes. At last the consequences. Send plague and flood among the Solars, feel the wrath of the Arun Guard. Always a price. Calon had taught him that lesson eleven years ago. Saved his life and changed his fate—and changed him with it.

Rahu looked him dead in the eyes. “An attack on Bangdvipa.”

A snarl ripped out of Malin’s chest before he could stop it. Bangdvipa. How dare they! Bangdvipa was sacred, the only refuge of the Jadian. Malin had cubs there, mates, his people. He leapt to his feet and took off toward the harbor.

“Protect my wife, Malin,” the War King shouted after him. “I will lead this battle. The Solars have overextended, attacked too close to our center of power. We can destroy the Arun Guard and break them, even without you.”

In the Hill Palace, behind those walls, Calon vied with that damn book. She wasn’t going to stop. Wasn’t going to leave the Solars be. And they would slaughter all the weretigers on Bangdvipa to find the Lunar witch.

A tremor seized him, rumbled through his chest until he could barely stand. His muscles itched, demanding he become the tiger. Protect. The tiger protected and avenged. The Solars were killing his people. The Macan Gadungan were what remained of his family.

No. He was no Hidden Knight, no savior to them. But he would protect them as fiercely he protected his charges.

Malin spun on Rahu. “I’m going.”

Rahu jerked to a halt. Of course, Malin had never openly questioned him before. Never defied him. But the shock on the War King’s face passed. Maybe he saw wisdom in taking his bodyguard for such a battle.

“Best way to protect your wife is to kill the Solars,” Malin said. “End this war. I’ll make damn sure they never come to our island again.”

Rahu smiled. “Very well, Malin. Show the Solars what you’re best at.”

Yes. Best at killing. But not an animal.

“Bintang!” Malin shouted, knowing she would hear him wherever she was in the palace.

Moments later she rushed out, toyaks in hand as though expecting an attack. If he told her the truth about Bangdvipa, she’d insist on going there, insist on going to save her children herself. “I’m going to battle. Protect the girls and … the witches.”

Bintang nodded. Thankfully not questioning him.

Rahu said little on their way to the harbor. They took the cliff-side path down from the city, gathering Moon Scions and weretigers in their wake. Word had already spread about the battle, but, with luck, the dhow would be away before Bintang heard the rumors. The Moon Scions came for glory. Malin’s Macan Gadungan came for vengeance. This time, Solars had attacked their home.

And Malin was going to make them regret it.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

From the harbor they took a dhow toward the island. A few phases at sea gave Malin too much time to think. Pity. Good only came from actions. But then, so did evil. The smell of rot that had permeated Bukit of late was borne from Calon’s black magic. The curses of Kahyangan could bring suffering to your foes. But not only to foes.

Darkness had fallen before they reached Bangdvipa. Better. In moonlight, he could be the tiger. In moonlight—freedom.

Solar dhows surrounded the harbor. Rahu had brought three ships with him, but not enough to face the five the Solars had. Malin ran to the prow. Focused on the lead Solar ship. Only a skeleton crew. He smiled. “Board them.”

The War King ordered his men to sail up beside the Solar dhows.

Yes. They’d unloaded so many soldiers onto the island, they hadn’t left enough to defend all their ships. Malin leapt onto the rail, then hesitated. So many on the island …

Where his people were.

Rainforest covered most of Bangdvipa, but there, on the rocky shore, rose the temple. The Moon Scions lived there, training their weretigers. Training their future protectors. And all of them, Macan Gadungan and Moon Scions, were prey for the Arun Guard.

Malin ripped off his baju and dove into the sea. Fresh brine and seaspray washed over him, refreshed him, though the sand clogged his sinuses. Yes. Let it free. The tiger tore through him, raging, clawing its way through his soul. His muscles shifted and warped with that spirit, taking its form.

The tiger had webbed feet, making him an even faster swimmer. The waves crashing over him barely slowed his approach, and soon he reached the shore, then shook the salt water from his fur. His paws kicked sand through the air in his passing. Let the Moon Scions fight off the Solar dhows. The island was for the Macan Gadungan.

Screams echoed from the temple above. Malin dashed up the rocks, leaping from one to the next. Wet sand caked them, made them slippery. Humans would struggle to climb this way. Malin’s claws found purchase with little effort.

Atop the rocks he climbed onto the land bridge and sprinted for the temple. Solar soldiers rushed from the temple, charged him. Malin’s claws tore them to pieces. The tiger snarled, clawed, bit. It savored the blood. Just the tiger. Not Malin. Not an animal.

Then a man stood in front of him, long Solar keris sword at the ready. Malin knew him. Not his name. But this man led the Arun Guard. The Guardsman’s people were in the temple, killing Moon Scions. Maybe Macan Gadungan cubs. Maybe Malin’s own offspring.

The tiger in him roared. Malin roared with it. He leapt at the First of the Arun Guard.

The man vanished.

Malin’s claws scraped rock. He spun, tried to move, but the Guardsman had already appeared behind him. The man’s sword bit into Malin’s flank.

The tiger spirit tried to drown the pain in his mind. Didn’t do much, but did enough. Malin kicked his rear claws back, scraping along the First’s shin. A satisfying scream escaped the man’s throat.

The Guardsman vanished again. Damn Sun Stride let him appear anywhere. At least his screaming and panting made him easy to track.

The temple.

Malin ran—tried to run—but the gash in his flank made it impossible. He slipped, his back leg giving out. Blood made the land bridge slick. The blood of a pair of dead Solars. The blood of an overmatched weretiger, trickling down his own leg.

“Come, Malin,” Rahu said.

It shouldn’t surprise him the War King had made the climb so soon. He was the most powerful Moon Scion, after all.

Rahu grabbed the scruff of Malin’s neck and yanked him forward, helping him along. “We’re not finished with him yet.”

Malin followed Rahu into the temple, passing the bodies of dead Lunars. There, lying amidst a pool of her own blood, lay Padmawati.

The woman was surrounded by the bodies of young Jadian. Malin crouched by the body of his son, nuzzled it with his nose. It didn’t move.

The tiger didn’t want to care. But Malin was not just the tiger. He could not weep in this form, so he roared.

No, they weren’t finished with the First of the Arun Guard just yet.

The timbers in the roof burned, filled the air with choking smoke, ash. The scent of so much blood, the sounds of so many screams—Malin couldn’t track the First. And then the man was beside them. The Sun Brand that let him appear anywhere also made him fast, faster than either Moon Scion or Macan Gadungan.

The Guardsman’s sword darted for Rahu before the War King knew what was happening. Malin lunged for Rahu, hurled him to the ground. The Solar’s blade ripped through the War King’s baju and into his shoulder. Malin’s claws probably did as much damage. No time to consider.

He spun, swiping at the Solar. The Solar vanished again appearing a short distance away. He spun quickly, lunging for Malin. Not as fast as before—he was running out of sunlight. Malin leapt to one side, forcing the man to use more of his sunlight and chase him.

As the man appeared beside him, Malin reared up on his hind legs and landed on the Solar. His fangs caught the First’s throat as the man tried to free his sword. The Guardsman Sun Strode, carrying himself and Malin across the room.

Malin reeled from the sudden change in orientation. Shut his eyes against the shift, bit deeper. Dug his claws until the thrashing stopped.

Malin spat blood, then resumed his human form. His arms and legs ached, the shift of bones and muscles leaving them like water. The cut on his hip and thigh had begun to scab over, but blood still oozed from it. Naked, he dragged himself to his king.

“My lord.”

Rahu choked, gurgled. The First’s keris still impaled his shoulder. Malin’s claws had torn deeper gouges than he’d known. Not good. Moon Scions healed better than humans, but not as well as Macan Gadungan. Such wounds could kill even Rahu.

“My lord. I’ve got to remove the blade.” When Rahu grunted, Malin jerked it free. The War King gasped, then lay still a moment. “Your injuries are severe.”

Rahu struggled until Malin helped him sit. “I have something … a tonic on the ship. Could help heal me … If I take it, though …”

Malin couldn’t contain the snarl. “More magic?”

“No choice … Take me to the ship.”

Protect.

“Yes, my lord.”

Rahu was his to protect, but the dead Jadian demanded vengeance. In the distance, a woman screamed. The sound of a Macan Gadungan dying. Without the First of the Arun Guard, the Solars would break, but not soon. So many of Malin’s people dead already. His mates, his cubs. Gone! And more would fall before the Solars withdrew. And for what? Calon’s black magic had driven the Solars to desperation. Driven them to throw away their lives in the hopes of taking Lunars with them.

Every muscle in his body itched as he paddled a canoe to carry Rahu back to the dhow.

Avenge!

Yes. Avenge them. Better than face the emptiness left behind.

Rahu insisted Malin leave him alone in his cabin. So be it. Malin curled up on the deck. A slave brought him clothes and he tied the sarong around his waist but ignored the shirt and slumped against the rail. Walking no longer hurt much, but he had no desire to stand.  A great victory, killing the First. Great honor for House Soma. All hollow. All because of Calon’s Rangda-damned magic.

Because it had cost him so many of his people. They looked to him. Bintang thought him some kind of savior. And he had done nothing. No, he was no Satrio Piningit. He was a broken shell pretending at greatness.

And he was a fool.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Tanjung woke in a cold sweat, shaking from the screams of the damned filling Rangda’s underworld. They set her heart racing. And then it skipped a beat when another scream echoed while she sat, wide awake. She could hardly swallow, could barely breathe. Her head pounded as she rose. She had returned to the traditional home of House Nishadipathi, little more than a hovel compared to the Hill Palace, and empty save for her. It sat in the highlands outside Bukit, but close enough she was certain the scream had come from there.

As she rushed into the night, another followed and another. A pit opened in her stomach. Whispers in her mind confirmed it. The Solars had somehow figured out that Calon had sent the plagues among them and they had come for her. Come for her while the Macan Gadungan were away on Bangdvipa. It had all been a diversion to catch Calon defenseless. Except she wasn’t quite defenseless. Tanjung was here and if she had to, she’d rip the Solars apart herself.

She touched a Glyph on her arm. “Anggraeni!”

She had bonded the ghost for dire circumstances. This qualified. The air shimmered, just a hint, as the spirit passed by her. A normal person might never have even seen it.

“Go, distract the Solars!” Tanjung commanded.

The spirit’s face pushed against the air for a moment. Then it vanished, Tanjung hoped, to do as she had bid.

She drew her Moon Blessings and took off at a dash. Once, she had feared her Blessings. Now, she merely needed to conceal their extent, make sure the others saw her as no stronger than any other Scion. Rangda would probably save her from lunacy, but the Demon Queen was also queen of secrets and she had taught Tanjung well. She would use Chandra’s gifts, but with care.

She sprinted past the Anuradha Theater and into Bukit. Flames spread among some of the palaces, and a small force of Solar troops engaged Lunar war bands. Tanjung raced past them toward the Hill Palace, which too had caught fire.

The Macan Gadungan Bintang charged out, slamming into a Solar and sending him flying. She shifted into a tiger and pounced on the downed man. But even if the few Macan Gadungan who remained in Bukit fought off the Solars, the whole damn city was going to burn.

All her life she’d feared revealing her heritage. She could feel it, sense it long before a storm came. Powerful storms like cyclones, those she could feel days ahead, like a thrumming passing through her chest.

More screams escaped the city as the flames rose.

Tanjung had embraced Rangda herself to escape her fate. It was time she accepted the other parts within her. Maybe someone would see her, would understand. But if she did nothing, all she had worked for might burn away. All Tanjung’s work to shape Calon for the glory of Rangda would mean nothing if the Solars destroyed Bukit, or worse, killed the witch.

She sunk to her knees, heedless of the chaos around her, and pressed her hands together, shut her eyes. And she felt the sky. Her soul reached out to the clouds—reached out and grabbed them and squeezed. That thrumming in her chest began to build, the warning of a storm. A big storm. She fed the vortex opening inside her, fed it her rage and pain and fear. Fed it her very life-force.

With an agonized cry she jerked her hands wide and opened her eyes. Lightning streaked down and crashed into one of the houses. The flash left her seeing spots of white that blurred the battle. The roar of thunder deafened her, blocked out the sound of her own screaming. An overpowering smell of burning air filled the night, washed away an instant later as the clouds rent asunder and vented a downpour over Bukit.

Tanjung crashed to the ground, barely catching herself on her palms. Monsoon rains drenched her long before she could even rise back to a sitting position. She had done this. She had commanded the sky itself. She blinked, trying to regain her vision. A high-pitched whine still filled her ears, preventing her from hearing anything else.

She was the child of a goddess. She was like a goddess herself! The thought made her actually giggle as she finally climbed back to her feet. The world swayed beneath her and she slipped back to her knees. So she had poured rather a lot of herself into calling the storm. After a few deep breaths—and finally blinking away the afterimages of the lightning—she tried to rise again, then stumbled toward the Hill Palace.

The rains had begun to extinguish the flames there, and at least slowed their spread through the rest of Bukit. Calon rushed from the palace entrance, her ten-year-old daughter clutched in her arms. Tanjung turned to watch as the woman ran toward her cousin, who likewise held her own daughter.

Tanjung ambled toward them, pausing to catch her balance twice along the way. Calon spun to face her before she had even reached them.

The other witch left Ratna with Simhika and rushed to Tanjung. “What happened? Are you injured?”

Tanjung shook her head, then felt dizzy. Calon grabbed her under her arms and guided her away from the fighting.

“I thought they were here for you,” Tanjung mumbled. If Calon had been killed Tanjung suspected Rangda would have been quite displeased. Tanjung didn’t know why the goddess had chosen her childhood friend, but she clearly had a plan for the woman. The voices in the back of her mind had demanded she give the grimoire to Calon, which meant there was something special about her.

“They attacked, but … something … stopped them. A ghost seemed like it tried to cross into our world. The Solars ran screaming. With the fire we had a hard time escaping until the rains came. They’re early this year. Chandra must have been watching over his children.” At that, she turned to look back at her daughter.

The rains were early indeed. Tanjung didn’t bother explaining the downpour or the ghost. It was better if Calon didn’t know too much anyway, at least not until she had fully dedicated herself to Rangda.

Calon hugged herself, her golden kembaya now plastered to her form, though the rains had already begun to abate. Tanjung just didn’t have the strength to force any more from the clouds. Some houses still burned, but the people would have to deal with those fires the old-fashioned way.

Moon Scions and the few Macan Gadungan had begun driving back or killing the last remaining Solar invaders. This was over. They had gambled a great deal to attack Bangdvipa, to draw Calon’s guardians away. And they had failed. As if further evidence of Rangda’s glory was needed—clearly Calon’s curses had begun to wear away the Solar resolve. With the grimoire they could push even harder, deny the Solars sustenance long enough, and they would break. Ketu and the other moon priests might think that would open the way for an empire of Chandra, but Tanjung had another deity in mind once the Solars had fallen.

She smirked. Really, this couldn’t have gone better. Now they only needed to punish the Solars to prove the point. “Bring the tome,” she said. “I have something special in mind that will ensure they never try this again.”

“I-I left it in the palace. I had to get Ratna.”

Tanjung spun on Calon, working her jaw. “Go. Get. It.”

Calon frowned, perhaps at being so addressed, perhaps at her own foolishness. Tanjung didn’t care. It was unlikely flames could hurt the book of Rangda, but Calon should have known better than to leave it in a burning building. By the frozen underworld, she was going to have to have a long talk with Calon about priorities.

The other witch rushed off back toward the palace, doing as Tanjung had demanded. Tanjung followed more slowly, choosing her steps with care. She needed a good night’s sleep before trying any sorcery, but a point had to be made. And Calon was still fresh enough.

The other woman met her at the palace entrance, eyes wide and face ashen. “It’s gone …”

“Gone?”

“My chambers were ransacked.”

Tanjung shut her eyes and clenched her jaw. Thrice-damned Solars. And she was the greatest fool of all. They didn’t need to kill Calon—they just needed to take away her power! Calon was so busy worrying about her idiot child she didn’t guard her most precious asset. And Rangda … Tanjung tried to swallow but couldn’t over the lump in her throat. They had lost the tome of Rangda. If she didn’t get that book back she didn’t even want to imagine the Demon Queen’s fury.

Stilling her own trembles, Tanjung grabbed Calon and guided her back inside.

“I can send Bintang to track them,” Calon said.

Tanjung shook her head. “In the chaos of battle, and with the rain …” And that because Tanjung had wasted her own strength trying to save this damned city. Maybe a weretiger could track it. But she wouldn’t take that chance. “No. We’ll get it back. But we need something more powerful than a Jadian for that.”

Calon paused at the threshold to her chambers. “What do you plan to do?”

“Not me,” Tanjung said. “I will show you how to call it. You have lost something belonging to Rangda. But if you are very lucky, she may give you the power to retrieve it.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The crew was celebrating as the dhow returned to Bukit. At least until they saw the smoke and heard the screaming. Old smoke. Smoke of a fire already burned to cinders and ash that hovered in a cloud over the city.

Rahu emerged from his cabin looking hardier than a phase of rest should have allowed. Hardier than a few weeks of rest should have allowed.

“What has happened?”

Malin glowered. “Isn’t it obvious? Bangdvipa was a ruse.” He didn’t wait for the order. He leapt from the side of the ship and ran for the cliff-side path. Trickier to run up the path in human form. But he’d need to ask questions. Easier to get answers when wearing clothes.

A dead woman atop the path looked like her throat had been gnawed on. Malin edged around her body then hurried into the city proper.

A palace lay in smolders, but not the Hill Palace, thank the Moon God. Lunars ran about, wailing, screaming. So many things assaulted his senses. But one word he caught repeated by the townsfolk, again and again, whispered into the night.

Leyak.

The subject of children’s horror stories. Spirits of the dead, come to feed on the living, to animate the corpses of the fallen. Spirits of Kahyangan, returned to Earth. It was impossible. Not even Calon could be such a fool. But then, Malin knew she was. Her sorcery had brought this down on them. And her answer—more sorcery.

Malin stormed through the Hill Palace. He hurled Calon’s bamboo door open with such force it shattered. “What have you done?”

The woman sat on the floor, head in her hands, while Tanjung sat in the shadows, back against the wall. Calon started to rise to meet him, her limbs trembling. Malin charged over and yanked her to her feet. “What have you unleashed, witch?”

Calon tried to shake him off. As a Moon Scion, she should have had strength even greater than his, at least while he was in human form. He doubted she could match his rage at the moment, though. And she seemed too weak now. He dropped her and she sank back to the ground.

“A Guardsman came here. Imagine the gall, weretiger. Snuck into my palace. Stole my book. But Tanjung, she still knew enough without it, to send something after the man. The Solars will never come here again, not after what we’ve sent them.”

“A leyak.”

Calon nodded.

“Rangda take you, witch.” Malin backed away from her. Backed away from her damning smile. “You’ve unleashed the spawn of the Demon Queen on this island. Our own people are dead, a whole palace burned to the ground. My children are dead! My mates dead! All for your arrogance.”

“Arrogance? I’ve ensured a future for my daughter, peace for my people. And I’ve done as my king and husband commanded. I’ve turned all my powers on the Solars.”

Malin skittered away from the witch. “No.” Rahu wouldn’t have unleashed something like that. He was the War King, the Voice of the Moon God, guide and guardian of all Lunars. He would never have told the witch to call a leyak.

Calon’s snicker faded as he backed away. Maybe her hand trembled, but she clenched it so quickly, Malin couldn’t be sure.

“I’m going to stop this thing you’ve unleashed. And then we’re going to have a long talk, Calon. You’re not going to enjoy it.”

Calon stared at him, her expression blank. He turned and ran from the palace and nearly collided with Bintang.

“What of Bangdvipa?” she asked.

Sooner or later she would learn the truth. But Bintang would become a wreck when she learned one of her children had perished. “The War King is wounded. Protect him!” Malin shoved her aside. He didn’t have time for this.

The same rot he’d smelled permeating Bukit since Calon had begun her black magic now emanated from the leyak like a clearly marked trail. The bodies it left in its wake assured him he was heading the right way.

Oh, the leyak would find Calon’s book, Malin had no doubt. And he would send the demon back to Rangda’s frozen underworld. And then he’d find a way to deal with the cursed book and the witches both.

CHAPTER TWENTY

“You cannot rely on Malin,” Tanjung said.

Calon narrowed her eyes, and folded her arms over her chest.

By now they had finally dried out from the rains Tanjung had called, and Tanjung was just managing to get her strength back. Still, she was in no shape to do much herself.

Powerful as he was, Tanjung seriously doubted Malin could destroy a leyak. But could she afford to take that chance? Could any of them risk further offending the goddess? Tanjung liked her soul firmly lodged in her body, and in one piece.

Simhika entered bearing a tray of hot tea. Calon’s cousin was not terribly talented as a witch, but her dedication to her family meant Tanjung had to tolerate her presence. Calon would have it no other way.

“You think he might be able to kill the demon?” Calon asked, then took Simhika’s offered tea.

“Kill it? No.” The spirit itself could not truly be harmed in this world, and it had possessed a corpse, so in that sense, it was already dead. “But suppose he manages to delay it. The Solars will use the opportunity to escape with your greatest weapon.”

“Maybe we should let them,” Simhika said. “The curses we called down are what led to the deaths tonight.”

Tanjung glowered, wishing she could strike the foolish girl. “And would you rather the Solars begin turning those curses on our people? Would you like to see our rice fields ridden with pestilence? Would you have your children laid low by malaria?”

Simhika and Calon exchanged a look Tanjung didn’t quite understand, then both shook their heads.

“What would you have me do?” Calon asked.

With a sigh, Tanjung put a hand on her old friend’s shoulder. She wanted to empathize with the things Calon cared about, but they seemed so far away now. For the hundredth time, Tanjung cursed herself for wasting her strength calling down that storm. That was what her empathy had bought her—weakness. Weakness in her body born of the brief weakness in her heart.

“Take your Macan Gadungan and go after the Solar yourself. Kill the thief, kill them all. But keep the party small—you cannot allow even other Lunars to know the truth of your source of power.”

The rumor that the War King’s wife was a witch already had half the Lunars whispering behind her back. Give them confirmation and they might find a revolt on their hands.

“You summoned a leyak to do all that,” Simhika complained.

“And now Malin is interfering,” Tanjung said.

The other woman frowned and turned to Calon. “You don’t want to do this. Think about the girls.”

“I am thinking about them!” Calon snapped. “I always think about them. What if Tanjung’s right? Chandi barely survived her last bout with malaria. Are you willing to take the chance she’ll resist it again? What if it’s Ratna this time? I will not let the Solars win! They don’t deserve the book.”

Tanjung concealed the smile threatening to overtake her face. It was good. Rangda had clearly begun to seep inside Calon as well. Once they got the book back, they could truly begin. Through Calon she would build the kingdom of Rangda Demon Queen. And Tanjung would be the power behind the throne. If Rahu got in the way, perhaps Calon would need to become a widow. The Lunars could have a War Queen if need be.

“You must hurry,” Tanjung said.

Calon rose and nodded. “I’ll just bring Bintang. She knows her place, knows to keep her mouth shut.”

“No,” Simhika said. “No. If you’re going to do this, I’m going too.”

Calon opened her mouth, but Simhika cut her off.

“You just asked me about Chandi! You think I’d let something happen to my daughter? And I’m not going to risk you either. We are two Moon Scions. We’ll watch each other’s backs. Just like we always have.”

At Simhika’s outburst, Calon snapped her mouth shut, then she nodded. “They must have a ship, probably to the north, away from the fighting.”

The two women looked to Tanjung, who offered them a slight bow, though the movement left her dizzy. Then they took off, slipping from the palace and racing out after the Solars.

Tanjung worked her way out of the palace as well, slowly heading back for her own home. She needed sleep badly. She needed her strength back to help Calon through the changes to come. And that meant she needed to be doubly careful about revealing the extent of her powers.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Blood and gore splattered the rainforest where the leyak had passed, leading into the southern marshlands the werecrocodiles called home. Little chance they would help him. Spies, assassins. They had their roles, and he had his.

The scent of putrescence drew him on and on, guiding him toward the demon in an all-too-clear trail. Fortunate, as night had grown dark and he needed to find this demon quickly.

In the shin-high muck, he almost tripped over the body. Headless, a gaping hole where its neck should have been, as though something had ripped away the head and insides. Malin swayed, barely controlling his nausea at the sight. Stories said the head of a leyak flew free to hunt for prey at night.

It would return to its body at dawn—only a phase away now—and might even pass for human again. He couldn’t let that happen. It had hidden its body in the swamp to keep it safe. But not safe enough. With a grimace, Malin set about dismembering the corpse.

A shriek echoed through the marsh. The scream shredded the edges of Malin’s mind, a sound like the cries of the damned. Something smashed through the tree branches, crashing and plopping, hissing.

The head flew above Malin, entrails hanging behind it, leaving red smears of gore on the branches it passed. Its too-wide grin revealed a mouth full of fangs. No, not a grin. Baring its teeth. Malin did the same.

He tried to swallow the fresh rise of bile. Tried to shake it off. “Come to me, demon,” he said, hoping bravado made it into his voice.

The thing’s eyes glowed red. It dove for him, flying faster than he ever expected. The entrails whipped his legs out from under him. Malin caught the demon’s chin with his hand as he fell, tried to push its head away. Its saliva—or venom, perhaps—dripped on his chest. Burning.

Searing.

Malin grunted, trying not to think about the smell or sound of skin sizzling.

The leyak’s intestines coiled around him like a constrictor snake, squeezing the life from him. He couldn’t breathe. Ribs cracked. His vision blurred and the world swayed, until his face fell beneath the muck. Mud and water stung his eyes, filled his mouth.

The leyak jerked itself free, shrieking again. Malin struggled to the surface, sputtering, coughing. Blood and swamp water trailed down his face.

The leyak had squared off with a man, a Solar. The fucking thief who had started all this. The man held a book before him—one bound in dark leather and smelling foul—taunting the leyak, before tossing the book aside. The leyak’s gaze followed the book. The Solar pulled a keris sword and charged.

The leyak spun back and lunged for the Solar, whipped its entrails about and smacked the Solar in the face. He fell. Should let the demon eat the thief.

But that Solar had saved his life. Damn it. Malin didn’t want to owe the man a fucking thing.

“Over here, Rangda’s monkey!” Malin shouted.

The leyak shrieked and spun back at him. It darted for him like an arrow from a bow and it was all Malin could do to leap aside. He grabbed the leyak by the entrails as it flew past and swung it like a rope. The head collided with a tree root.

The Solar rose, shaking himself, and trudged through the muck toward the demon.

No time to shift. Malin leapt on the head and held it down. The demon strained beneath him, shooting knives of agony through Malin’s broken ribs. The Solar rammed his keris into the skull. The demon flopped once more, then was still.

The man freed his sword, held it between himself and Malin. Only a boy, really, probably not even twenty.

For a moment, Malin stared at the Solar. Then he batted the sword from the boy’s hand. “You come into our city, attack our people, steal from us. Who are you? Why should I let you live?”

The Solar backed away. If he was Arun Guard, why not Stride away? Not a Guardsman, then. “I’m Empu Bahula, son of Empu Baradah, and potential for the Arun Guard. And I saved your life.”

Malin glared at the boy until he took another step back. He didn’t bother saying he had just returned the favor. He owed the Solar nothing. And if this bastard hadn’t shown up and taken the book, the leyak would never have been released.

“Wait—” the man began as Malin retrieved the book. “You can’t return that to her. You saw the demon. You think she can control Kahyangan? You think anyone can?”

No. Clearly not. Nor should anyone. Malin stared down at the book. He didn’t know where Calon or Tanjung had found this thing or if they had made it. And it didn’t matter. Maybe he was deluding himself if he thought Calon wouldn’t have ever called the leyak without Empu Bahula’s interference. Rangda damn her, she’d probably call another as soon as he brought it back to her. The Solar was right. “Burn it.”

“We tried. The witches did something to it. It’s why my father gave it to me to hide while he drew off pursuit. Now, please, Lunar. Please let this be the first step toward peace. Or at least the first step toward sanity.”

Sanity. Yes. Madness had crept into Bukit. Lunacy, even. It had come from Calon. The Jadian were only the beginning. Plague, pestilence. And now demons. Or perhaps he should trace it all to Tanjung. The other witch had taught Calon her sorcery, had she not? That meant all of this tracked back to her. And what had witches ever wrought but evil? Magic was not meant for mankind. It never had been. Curses and demons and pain. And the war with the Solars was bad enough without the supernatural ravages this tome would unleash.

He tossed the book back to Empu Bahula. “Pray to your Sun God I never see you again.”

With a bow, the boy left.

Malin spat, cracked his neck. Moon God help him.

He knew the werecrocodiles watched him as he left their marsh. They watched, but didn’t speak. Perhaps they’d seen the battle. Perhaps they’d seen him spare the Solar. If so, they might not let the boy leave the marsh alive. Which wasn’t Malin’s problem.

Calon and Tanjung were his problem.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The sun had risen, harsh and burning, when he returned to Bukit. Most of the city had calmed, gone to sleep at last. Not the Hill Palace, though. Still a flurry of activity, but no sign of Bintang.

“The War King demands your presence,” one of Rahu’s soldiers told him.

Well. Demands were new.

The palace servants seemed to have found somewhere else to be. Or at least somewhere else to turn their gazes. Rahu, though, paced about the courtyard, then whirled on Malin as soon as he entered.

“Calon and Simhika are gone.”

Malin cracked his neck. So Rahu’s witch wife had fled, and taken Chandi’s mother with her. Did she fear Malin’s wrath? Doubtful. More likely Tanjung had drawn them into further schemes. He was going to kill that witch. All of this was her fault. She had brought witchcraft to Calon in the first place.

“Don’t just stand there, Malin, find them!”

Malin jerked at Rahu’s abrupt tone. Demands indeed. Given Rahu’s injuries and the state of Bukit, he supposed he could excuse the treatment. This time. He bowed, then slipped from the courtyard. Still the servants tried to look like they weren’t watching him. Cowards. He could browbeat any of them into talking, but Calon probably didn’t tell servants anything useful.

Tanjung would know, though, if she was still here. He ran for the old house on the edge of the city. House Nishadipathi, once powerful, now consisted of a solitary woman. A witch, living in a near-ruin.

Malin barged in without knocking. Tanjung jolted upright, hand over her heart. Malin yanked her to her feet, pulled her face close to his. “Where are they?”

Tanjung looked like she might form a question. His glare must have withered that idea. “They went after an Arun Guardsman who stole her book. You were so concerned about the leyak, Calon thought you might not bring it back yourself. They figured he must have a ship to the north.”

Malin dropped her. The witch fell onto her cot with a thump. So easy to end her. End this madness. But she was a Moon Scion. Even if no one in Bukit cared for this outcast, no Macan Gadungan could turn on a child of the Moon God. That was his only purpose, to protect. Maybe he’d failed at it, but if he killed Tanjung, he would be abandoning any hope. He’d be accepting himself as an animal. And despite it all, he wasn’t ready to do that. He didn’t hide his snarl, though. “Be gone before I return, witch. If I find you on Swarnadvipa again, we will see which of us is truly the greater monster.”

He fled the house without waiting for her answer. The look on her face told him enough.

The wet rice fields blurred as he sped past them. Couldn’t maintain this pace for long. Still he had to find the Guardsman. The witch was mad, going after him, and Rangda take her for it. Maybe he shouldn’t have released the Solar boy. Part of him hoped the werecrocodiles would get him. Part of him hoped the boy would take the book so far away no one would ever find it.

He trudged on. Had to pass through the fields to reach the shore. Farmers scattered at his passing. Malin didn’t spare them a glance. If he caught Calon and Simhika before they found the Guardsman, he’d thrash the witch. Or Rahu would, when he found out.

The wet fields sloshed as he passed through them, slowing his steps. Too much. Even the air burned his lungs. His ribs hadn’t fully healed. His chest heaving, he leaned his arms on his bent knees. Couldn’t catch his breath. Rangda take witches.

Three, four deep breaths. He pushed himself up and trod on, broke through the fields onto the shoreline. The water no longer dragged at his legs, but still his steps slowed.

Bintang lay on the beach, face down. Her blood had stained the sands in a wide circle around her. Malin rushed to her side and dropped to his knees. No. Not her too. Hadn’t he lost enough this day? Slowly, hesitantly, he turned her over. Her eyes had gone blank, staring at nothing.

Malin shook himself, unable to weep for her. She had been his mate. Had he loved her? No, he supposed he was no longer capable of love. But she had mattered. And she had believed in him, more than he could ever believe in himself.

He shut his eyes. “Are you happy now, Mother?”

There was more blood on the wind. Malin rose, scanning the beach. Beyond Bintang’s corpse lay two more bodies. Malin trudged toward them, feeling numb. Didn’t need to see them. Couldn’t look away. He knelt beside Calon and Simhika’s bodies. Cut open with a sword. Calon’s golden kembaya was now soaked with the tide and dirty with sand. The waves had washed the blood from half the dress. Malin pulled Calon away from the waves, then almost dropped her when she stirred.

“The Moon God wasn’t saving us,” she said, her voice raspy. “I thought Rangda … She could offer power. I thought what Tanjung taught me …”

Malin cradled her head. “You thought it wouldn’t have a price?”

Blood trailed from her mouth as she turned her head, turned to see her dead sister-in-law. “Protect our daughters, Malin.”

“Forever.”

It was all he had left. Protect them. Protect the children from the ravages unleashed by their parents. And maybe, just maybe, they would be his one redemption.

Malin held Calon’s hand until her grip loosened. Nothing else he could do. Maybe Rahu’s tonic could have saved her, but the War King was in Bukit. Malin shut the witch’s eyes, then pulled the bodies further up onto the beach.

Both women had known Silat. But not enough. Not enough to fight an Arun Guardsman.

Malin, though, he knew enough. He’d killed Guardsmen before. After killing the First, another Guardsman would be easy prey. He’d spared the man’s son. The boy had done nothing but try to end the black magic. The father, though, had murdered Bintang and Malin’s charges, both. And the tiger could never forgive that. Protect. And avenge.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Deep breath. Salty sea air stung his eyes and lungs. The taste of blood filled his mouth. The tiger shifted beneath his skin, aching to escape, denied by the cursed sun overhead. So be it.

He followed the footprints in the sand. The tiger demanded vengeance. It would have it. Protect and avenge. He’d failed in the first. Not in the second.

Half a phase he walked, keeping low to the tall beach grass. Stalking prey that would never escape. There, just beyond the shore, a Solar dhow drew near. On the beach, priests and soldiers waited, here, on the Lunar homeland.

And why not? If the soldiers had to go after a witch, they’d want the blessings of their god. Meaningless wards against black magic. Malin would show them how fragile their protections were.

Only three soldiers on the shore, with a priest and a priestess, camping beneath a palm tree. A small party to avoid attention while the battle raged at Bangdvipa. Malin’s people made into targets so Solars could hunt down Calon. And it had worked. They’d fallen for it every step.

He could slip up to them silent as a whisper. End half of them before they knew he was there. But something in him craved more. Craved the fight.

So he stood, revealing himself and stalking right into their camp. One soldier shouted and charged him, sword drawn. The man swung. Malin caught his wrist and twisted, making the Solar drop the blade. Malin shoved him away as another soldier rushed in. He caught the new attacker and flipped him over his shoulder, slamming him headfirst into the palm tree. The entire tree shuddered from the impact, and the man crumpled to the beach.

The third soldier approached with caution. Malin continued his momentum, spun and jumped, landing with one hand on the ground. The other closed around a coconut that had fallen from the tree. He came up spinning and smashed the coconut into the attacking soldier’s head. His skull crunched under the impact, spraying blood and brains over Malin.

The priest screamed and took off running. With a single bound after him, Malin flung the coconut. The improvised missile cracked the priest’s skull and he dropped to the ground. The first soldier’s fist caught Malin in the jaw. The blessed pain barely slowed him. He blocked attack after attack from the Solar, caught the man, twisted him back over his knee, and slammed his fist into the man’s sternum. The Solar’s chest caved in from the blow.

The priestess was on her knees screaming. Young, less than thirty. Pretty, probably refined, when she wasn’t terrified out of her mind.

“Where is Empu Baradah?”

“Please,” she said. “Please, I’m a mother.”

Malin knelt over her, leaning close to look in her eyes. “So were the three women he killed. Where is the Guardsman?”

The woman glanced at the ship, then flinched, like she hadn’t meant to give it away.

“Should I kill you, then? There are two girls back in Bukit without mothers. Ten years old, and no mothers, priestess.”

The woman’s trembling subsided. “Committing more wrongs won’t solve that. My son, Naresh, he’ll be twelve soon. Would you leave him without a mother, too?”

Malin snarled. “I—”

The sudden appearance of a Guardsman to the side cut him off. The Solar swung his keris. Malin dodged, caught the man in the ribs with a right hook. Satisfying crack.

The Solar staggered, clutching his side, but didn’t drop the keris.

Malin advanced on the Guardsman. The man bore a clear resemblance to the boy he’d spared. Empu Baradah, his father. Murderer. “I’m not so easy prey as those women.” He lunged.

The Solar vanished. Predictable. Malin dropped to his knees, spun as the man appeared behind him. He took the slash to his shoulder. Fire bit through him, but he’d heal.

He slammed his fist straight down onto the Solar’s thigh. An agonized roar ripped out of the Guardsman as the bone snapped.

Malin rose, swinging in an uppercut that sent the Solar sprawling. He advanced on his fallen prey, then pounced. He hefted the man up by his baju and pressed his face close. And he roared, teeth bared and wide as he could make them in human form. Tiger demanded to be free. And Malin wanted to let it out.

“I’d enjoy sinking my teeth in you, but beating you to death will do, murderer.”

The Solar shook his head, spitting blood. Malin shoved him away. Yes. Savor this vengeance. He would beat the man to a pulp.

Again the Guardsman Sun Strode. Fool.

Malin swung his legs behind him. Hit only air. The Guardsman had appeared near the priestess. Had a hand on her. She clutched onto him, desperate for her life. For a moment, Empu Baradah’s eyes met Malin’s. Then he and the priestess were gone.

On the ship. Malin could hear him shouting not to bring the dhow to shore.

No. Rangda take them all. “Come back here! I’ll hunt you down, murderer! I will hunt you to the ends of the Earth! No matter how long it takes, those women will be avenged! I will burn your empire to the ground!”

Malin didn’t know if human hearing would let Empu Baradah catch his words that far out at sea. Nor did it matter. He hurled a rock from the shore at the dhow, though even his strength wouldn’t let him throw that far.

The fade of adrenaline reminded him of the pain in his shoulder. He took two steps, then wobbled. Lost more blood than he’d thought. He crashed down onto the beach. And he screamed.

He had not protected.

He had not even avenged.

Two phases, maybe more, he made his way along the shore. Bringing the women’s bodies, with his torn shoulder, it was too much. And he had no choice but to leave Bintang behind, to return for her later. Again and again he had to stop and rest. Stop and think. Malin hated being alone with his thoughts. He had far too many. Because things Calon had said, they made too much sense. And he wouldn’t believe it.

Moon Scions came to take the bodies when he returned to Bukit. News spread like the plagues Calon had wrought. When Malin found Rahu, the War King stood waist-deep in the fishpond, head in his hand, weeping.

He looked up as Malin approached, his eyes red.

“I hadn’t thought I would love her, Malin.” He paused, then walked from the water, to stand next to Malin. “You failed … You failed to save her?” He said the last almost as a question. Like the man couldn’t believe he would lose someone in all this as well.

“Yes,” Malin said. He had failed. But he was not the only one culpable. “Did you tell her to start this madness? To raise unholy spirits from Kahyangan? To bring forth worse than the thing she put inside me?”

Rahu laughed. “She put inside you?” With a trembling hand he unbuttoned his black baju—still torn—to reveal his chest. To reveal Spirit Glyphs branded into him like tattoos. “This is your mark,” he said, pointing to a Glyph near his heart. “This is the Glyph for the spirit I put in you. Calon only showed me how.”

Malin gaped. Couldn’t find words. Rahu had been the one he thought he could trust. The one offering him purpose. He didn’t stink of witchcraft. He wasn’t, couldn’t be …

“I offered you power, meaning to your life. You never stopped to ask where it came from. You didn’t care back then. Why now?”

For two breaths Malin shut his eyes. No, he hadn’t asked. Hadn’t asked the price of what he was offered. “Eleven years I served you. I never questioned. Now I question. Why? You started this war with the Solars, destroyed centuries of peace. For what? Years of war and chaos and blood. Your wife is dead. Your sister-in-law dead. My children and mates are dead! Why?”

Rahu turned, looked far away for a moment and tapped his upper lip with his finger. “He’s coming. Coming after me. I have to control the Isles. Have to have power to face my foes. To crush him …”

A growl slipped from Malin’s throat. “You’re nothing but a paranoid madman. You didn’t have any enemies before you made them.”

The War King spun on him. “You forget your place, tiger. I made you a god.”

“You made me a slave!” The words escaped him before he knew he’d thought them. Before he realized Bintang had been right all along.

Like lightning, Rahu’s hand shot out, grabbed Malin by the back of the neck. “Then serve.”

Malin struggled in the War King’s grasp, but the Moon Scion was too strong.

“You failed me. Now you question me. Learn your place.” Rahu flung him.

Malin hurtled through the air before colliding with a palm tree. The wind blew out of him and he landed hard on the ground, couldn’t brace against it. Agony shot through his spine like tendrils of lightning. He tried to rise.

Rahu kicked him in still-tender ribs. The force lifted him, threw him into the pond. Sputtering, Malin dragged himself to the far side. Water streamed down his face as he stumbled to his feet.

The War King circled the pond. He took another swing at Malin. Once, twice, Malin blocked the blows. Then one landed on his jaw, sending him sprawling.

Blood seeped from his face, staining the sand around the fishpond. Malin didn’t move.

“Never forget your role, tiger. You serve my House. It’s the price for your power.”

When Rahu had gone, Malin rolled over onto his back and shut his eyes—let his nature begin to heal his wounds. The damage to his body would be gone in a day. But some things had been broken he couldn’t heal.

Bintang had been right. She had been right all along. The Macan Gadungan were slaves. He’d thought Rahu more than his master, he’d fooled himself into thinking the man was his friend. Maybe there never was and never would be a Satrio Piningit. Malin didn’t feel like any kind of knight. Or maybe … Maybe that was why it was called the Hidden Knight.

That was what she’d wanted. She wanted him to become a symbol to the Jadian. Not merely the first of them, not a leader by default, but a leader in fact. A voice to speak for them. To lead them to freedom. And that would be a long, long road. Between here and there, he still had charges in his care. Those who could not defend themselves. And he had made a promise he would never break.

At last he rose.

For a long time he walked. Walked until he found Chandi and Ratna on the cliff above the harbor, clutched in each other’s arms, sobbing.

Malin knelt beside the girls. Put his arms around them.

“It’s time for you two to master Silat.” Time to make damn sure they could defend themselves against the Solars. Against anything.

Malin had failed their mothers.

He’d never fail these children.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Langyaxiu was just one of numerous city-state kingdoms littering Malaydvipa. To the uninitiated it might seem no different than any of the others. A ramshackle collection of shanties and whorehouses making up the slums on the outskirts while the nobles lived in palaces in the center of town. But Tanjung had spent enough time here to know this place well. Like all Malaydvipans, they both feared and worshipped ghosts and other spirits of Kahyangan.

Tanjung passed through the streets, reveling in the stares of common folk and nobles alike. She had, after all, donned a golden headdress and a matching Tianxian cheongsam for just such a reason. The form-fitting gown accented her curves and the golden silk suggested majesty—the air she needed for this to work.

What set Langyaxiu aside from the other petty kingdoms here was its king, a man supposedly lost in the depths of despair over the death of his only son in war. And, more importantly, a man seeking the solace of any witch who could contact his lost loved ones. By all accounts, this king was weak, failing, but in command of vast wealth he all but threw away to any offering him glimpses of the other side.

Tanjung could offer so much more than a glimpse.

She strutted toward the palace like she belonged there and the guards flung wide the gates at her approach, not even questioning her regal bearing. A doorman threw open the front entrance at her approach and she continued on without pause, into the great hall where the king sat on a throne. His eyes had glazed over, and he stared at a woman sitting crosslegged before him. She mumbled nonsense and swayed back and forth.

Tanjung had tried the subtle approach in her homeland. She had tried to build the kingdom of Rangda by manipulating Rahu and Calon. After all, no matter how great her own power, she was no match for an army of Moon Scions and the Rangda-damned Macan Gadungan. The gall of Malin, to dare command her to leave! As if he could banish her, a Moon Scion. A priestess of Rangda! Had she had her full strength, she might have killed the Jadian for it. But she needed to prove herself to the goddess, not waste her energies on petty revenge.

And here, with no Moon Scions or Arun Guard, here in the hall of a weakling king courting witchcraft, she need not be so subtle. She swept an elegant bow and rose, a knowing smirk on her face. “My king. I hear you seek knowledge of the worlds beyond our own.”

The other witch stiffened and turned to glare at her. “The king already has his advisor on the occult.”

“Anggraeni,” Tanjung whispered.

The ghost would do her this one last favor, and then Tanjung would free her. At Tanjung’s call, the spirit brushed through the chamber, never appearing, but her presence was enough to send a chill down the spine of every person in the throne room. Even the other witch, whose eyes widened.

“What do you know of the Spirit Realm, girl?” Tanjung asked, then approached the throne. “My king, I am Tanjung, a princess of the Skyfall Isles and a sorceress of the highest order. I have traveled far to heed your call.”

The other woman climbed to her feet and moved in on Tanjung, spurting indignities. Tanjung drew her Moon Blessings and grabbed the pretender by the throat, then flung her aside. A murmur ran through the onlookers at her display of strength. The woman landed on her ass and scampered away, not even bothering to rise.

Almost. She almost had them all. She drew her Glamour Blessing, not disguising herself, but intentionally making the air shimmer and distort around her as she took the final steps toward the king. A collective gasp ushered through the hall and the king’s eyes, first wide in shock, filled with excitement.

Tanjung allowed herself a small smile. Ingratiating herself into the man’s bed and then his heart would be a small task now. A few simple conjurations to string his hopes along—whether his son’s soul lingered here or not was immaterial—and she was quite certain he would ask for her hand. She would be a queen of this little kingdom.

But the glory of Rangda demanded far more than that. Once her power here was secure, they could begin expanded outward, taking the rest of Malaydvipa, and then, one day, beyond. Rangda would still have her domain on Earth, but it would be born here rather than the Skyfall Isles. And one day, when she had grown strong enough, Tanjung would return to her homeland.

Return, and claim it for the goddess.

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KEEP READING

The Skyfall Era

Children of Sun and Moon

Currents of Wind and Tide (Interlude 1)

Legacy of Moon and Fire

Fragments of Memory and Dream (Interlude 2)

Avatar of Night and Day

Prequel:

Curse of Witch and War

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GLOSSARY

Arun Guard: The elite protectors of the Solar Emperor. They receive the Sun Brand.

baju: a buttoned shirt worn by males and females, typically long-sleeved.

belacan: Solar spicy shrimp paste.

bidadari: angelic beings from Kahyangan.

Children of the Sun: clergy of the Solar faith, led by the Radiant Queen.

dhow: a mid-sized sailing vessel with lateen sails and a long, thin hull.

Djambo Baros: the mythic Tree of Life, which houses the Wheel of Life.

ekor pari: a Lunar rope-whip, called “stingray tail” by the Solars.

gandewa: a hunting bow, used in war by some Solars and by pirates.

Glamour: Moon Scion power of illusion. Used to create superficial changes to appearances. A closely guarded secret.

gudeg: sweet stew made from jackfruit.

Ibu: title of respect given to adult Solar females of equal or greater standing.

jukung: an outrigger canoe. One of the most common means of transportation around the Skyfall Isles.

Kahyangan: the Spirit Realm.

karedok: Solar salad with peanut dressing.

Kebatinan: a Solar meditation technique believed to bring them closer to their god, Surya.

kemban: a bodice wrap sometimes worn by females.

keris: the most common weapon carried by both Lunar and Solar warriors. The Lunar keris knife is an undulating dagger with waves that symbolize the synthesis of fire and water. The Solar keris sword is a straight-bladed shortsword said to house the honor of a Solar warrior.

kolak: a Lunar sweet dish made from palm sugar, coconut milk, and fruits.

leyak: demonic servants of Rangda.

Macan Gadungan: Weretigers who serve Moon Scion houses as bodyguards and avengers. Despite their power, they are virtual slaves in Lunar society. They can only assume tiger form when the moon is out, but even in human form they have supernatural strength, speed, resilience, and senses.

Moon Blessings: Magic powers of Moon Scions including superhuman speed and strength, the ability to walk on walls, and the Glamour. The more a Moon Scion draws his Blessings, the faster he becomes a lunatic.

Moon Scion: The Lunar nobility, who claim descent from the Moon God, Chandra. They possess magical abilities called Moon Blessings.

nagasari: banana-filled cakes made with palm sugar.

nasi goring: rice curry. Traditional Solar breakfast.

Pact: an accord between the three dynasties of the Skyfall Isles to hold the Astral Temple in trust of the gods. It was broken in the year 1 AP (After Pact), igniting the First War.

Pak: title of respect given to adult Solar males of equal or greater standing.

Radiant Queen: leader of the Solar religion, the Children of the Sun. The last was Aji Bidara.

Radnai: Lunar dance theater that combines music, dance, and Silat.

rendang: the signature Lunar dish, made from beef or duck covered in coconut milk.

sarong: a skirt that wraps around the waist, worn by both males and females.

Selamatan: a Solar ritual performed several times for the souls of the dead. Without Selamatan, Solars believe souls can linger as angry ghosts.

Sepak Takraw: a Solar sport where players kick a rattan ball to keep it airborne. Once a children’s game, now a professional sport.

Silat: martial art of the Skyfall Isles. Lunar Silat places more emphasis on unarmed combat, while Solar Silat focuses on swordplay.

songket: a Lunar method of weaving gold into silk.

stagen: a sash worn by women for special occasions.

Sun Brand: a magical tattoo the Arun Guard receive on their backs. This allows them to store sunlight, then spend it to move at superhuman speeds, affect the minds of animals, and Sun Stride (instant teleportation).

toyak: fighting sticks made from rattan wood.

ultop: a child’s toy that presses a rod through a funnel to make a loud pop.

War King: a supreme leader of the Moon Scion houses during times of conflict. Currently this is Ketu.

Warak Ngendog: amphibious dragon-headed hybrid creature. It has a long neck and body similar to a giraffe, small semi-functional wings, and a dragon-like tail. The Arun Guard use the Sun Brand to control them and use them as mounts for soldiers and weapons of war.

Wayang: Solar shadow puppetry.

Wheel of Life: most Skyfall natives believe that in death they are returned to the Wheel of Life, through which they will be reincarnated.

Places

-dvipa: Skyfall language term meaning “land.”

Academy: a university hosted by the Ministry of Information; located in its own district in Kasusthali.

Astral Temple: religious site sacred to all three dynasties. Located on Puradvipa.

Bukit: the Lunar capital, located in northeastern Swarnadvipa.

Kasusthali: the Solar capital, a city under the sea, off the coast of Yawadvipa. Destroyed in 1195 AP.

Mait: an archipelago north of the Skyfall Isles.

Malayadvipa: A land near the Skyfall Isles.

Puradvipa: one of the central Skyfall Isles. Home to the Astral Temple, and settlements of both Lunars and Solars.

Serendib: an island nation across the sea.

Spice Islands: a chain of islands in the Outer Isles famous for its spices.

Suladvipa: a province of the Solar Empire, ruled by King Kertajaya. Home island of the Ignis.

Swarnadvipa: home island of the Lunars.

Tianxia: a faraway land known for its exotic goods.

Yawadvipa: home island of the Solars.

Deities

Agni: Fire God, patron of the Ignis.

Antaboga: serpent of the underworld and harbinger of Rangda, Demon Queen.

Bedawang Nala: the mythic world turtle that carries the endless sea of the Earth on its back.

Chandra: Moon God, patron of the Lunars.

Nyai Loro Kidul: Queen of the South Sea. Also called Dewi Kadita. Possessed Landorundun and presumably died fighting Rangda.

Rangda: Demon Queen, ruler of the frozen underworld. Goddess of death. Called Nirrti in Serendib. Released from the underworld and possessed Ratna. Presumably destroyed fighting Nyai Loro Kidul.

Surya: Sun God, patron of the Solars.

Phases of Time
bangun: pre-dawn morning phase.

esuk: post-dawn morning phase.

teng’angi: mid-morning phase.

lingsir kulon: early afternoon phase, the time of the midday meal.

asar: late afternoon phase.

sore: evening phase.

sirap: night phase.

tengah wengi: midnight phase.

lingsir wengi: late night phase.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Who am I? I’m a writer who loves speculative fiction, especially epic fantasy. I adore mythology and history, and those passions inspire most of my works. I studied philosophy in college, then publishing. More importantly, I went backpacking in India where I met my future wife, Tarannum “Juhi.” She supports pretty much all my crazy obsessions, like writing novels, so I started Incandescent Phoenix Books, and she eventually became my graphic designer. We’re a husband-and-wife team, which is pretty much the coolest thing ever.

I pretty much love to hear from readers, so feel free to email me at matt@incandescentphoenix.com. Really, it’s cool.

If you loved this book and have a moment to spare, I’d really appreciate a short review wherever you bought the book. Every review makes a world of difference.

Table of Contents

- Title Page
- Dedication
- Like This?
- Author's Note
- Map

- Part ONE (1170 AP)

- Chapter One ￼
- Chapter Two ￼
- Chapter Three ￼
- Chapter Four ￼
- Chapter Five ￼
- Chapter Six ￼
- Chapter Seven ￼
- Chapter Eight ￼
- Chapter Nine ￼
- Chapter Ten ￼
- Chapter Eleven ￼
- Chapter Twelve ￼
- Chapter Thirteen ￼

- Part Two (1181 AP)

- Chapter Fourteen ￼
- Chapter Fifteen ￼
- Chapter Sixteen ￼
- Chapter Seventeen ￼
- Chapter Eighteen ￼
- Chapter Nineteen ￼
- Chapter Twenty ￼
- Chapter Twenty-One ￼
- Chapter Twenty-Two ￼
- Chapter Twenty-Three ￼
- Chapter Twenty-Four ￼

- Like This?
- Keep Reading
- Glossary
- About the Author