The Burning God (The Poppy War #3) - R.F. Kuang Page 0,79

down so tightly to the stretcher she could barely lift her head. She couldn’t see how much farther they had to march, but she suspected it would take hours. The only walking path to the entrance of the Chuluu Korikh grew treacherously narrow with altitude. There wouldn’t have been space to land anything as large as a dirigible more than a third of the way up.

At least she didn’t have to climb. As the soldiers hoisted her up the mountain, the rocking stretcher lulled her into a kind of half sleep. Her head felt light and fuzzy. She wasn’t sure if they had sedated her, or if her body was breaking down from wounds sustained earlier. She passed the march in a barely conscious fugue, just dazed enough that the bruises from Souji’s boot produced no more than a dull, nearly pleasant ache.

She didn’t realize they’d reached the Chuluu Korikh until she heard the scrape of the stone door sliding open.

“We need a light,” Daji said.

Rin heard a crackle as someone lit a torch.

Now, she thought. This was when Daji would turn on the soldiers, surely. She’d gotten what she wanted; she’d secured safe passage to the Chuluu Korikh, and now she only had to hypnotize them, lure them to the precipice, and push.

“Go on,” Daji said. “There’s nothing to fear here. Just statues.”

The soldiers bore Rin into the looming dark. An immense pressure slammed over her, like an invisible hand clamped over her nose and mouth.

Rin gasped, arching her back against the stretcher. She gulped down huge mouthfuls of air, but it was thin and insufficient, and did nothing to stop the black spots creeping in at the edges of her vision. She could breathe so hard she ruptured her lungs and it still wouldn’t be enough. The inside of the Chuluu Korikh was so grounded, so firmly material, a solid place with no possible crossover into the plane of spirit.

It felt worse than drowning.

Rin had barely tolerated the pressure the first time she’d come here with Altan. It was far worse now that she had lived and breathed for years with divinity just a glancing thought away. The Phoenix had become a part of her, a constant and reassuring presence in her mind. Even in Kitay’s absence, she’d still felt the barest thread of a connection to her god, but now even that was gone. Now she felt as if the weight of the mountain might shatter her from inside.

The soldier at the front rapped his knuckles against her forehead. “Ah, shut up.”

Rin hadn’t even realized she was screaming.

Someone stuffed a rag in her mouth. That made the suffocation worse. Rational thought fled. She forgot that this was all a feint, all part of Daji’s plan. How could Daji—Su Daji, who had lived with the voice of her god longer than Rin had been alive—withstand this? How could she walk calmly forward without screaming while Rin writhed, arrested in the last moment of drowning before death?

“All these were shamans?” The soldier bearing her legs whistled, a low sound that echoed through the mountain. “Great Tortoise. How long have they been here?”

“As long as this Empire has been alive,” Daji said. “And they’ll be here long after we’re dead.”

“They can’t die?”

“No. Their bodies are no longer mortal. They have become open conduits to the gods, and so they are trapped here so they don’t destroy the world.”

“Fucking hell.” The soldier clicked his tongue. “That’s rough.”

The soldiers halted and lowered Rin’s stretcher to the floor. The one at her head leaned above her; his teeth gleamed yellow in the torchlight. “This is your stop, Speerly.”

She stared past him at rows and rows of empty plinths, stretching farther into the mountain than Rin could see. Her mind was half-gone with fear. She flailed, helpless, as the soldiers unstrapped her from the stretcher and hauled her up toward the nearest pedestal.

Her eyes flashed to Daji, begging silently to no avail. Why isn’t she doing anything? Hadn’t this charade gone on long enough? Daji didn’t need Rin immured. She only needed safe passage to the Chuluu Korikh. She had no use for the Republican soldiers anymore; she should have already disposed of them.

But Daji was just standing there, eyes lidded, face calm, watching as the soldiers positioned Rin on the center of the plinth.

A horrible thought crossed Rin’s mind.

Daji hadn’t just been bluffing.

Daji needed safe passage to the Chuluu Korikh. She needed Master Jiang. But nothing about her plan required Rin.

Oh, gods.

She had