The Poppy War (The Poppy War #1) - R. F. Kuang Page 0,153
powerful than you.”
“There are no shamans more powerful than me,” said Chaghan, and he began to chant in his own language, the harshly guttural language Jiang had once spoken, the language Rin recognized now as the speech of the Hinterlands.
His eyes glowed golden.
The Woman started to shake, as if standing over an earthquake, and then suddenly she burst into flames. The fire lit her face from within, like a glowing coal, like an ember about to explode.
She shattered.
Chaghan took Rin’s wrist and tugged. She became immaterial again, rushing headlong into the space where things were not real. She did not choose where they went; she could only concentrate on staying whole, staying herself, until Chaghan stopped and she could regain her bearings without losing herself entirely.
This was not the Pantheon.
She glanced around, confused. They were in a dimly lit room the size of Altan’s office, with a low, curved ceiling that forced them to crouch where they stood. Everywhere she looked, small tiles had been arranged in mosaics, depicting scenes she did not recognize or understand. A fisherman bearing a net full of armored warriors. A young boy encircled by a dragon. A woman with long hair weeping over a broken sword and two bodies. In the room’s center stood a great hexagonal altar, engraved with sixty-four intricate characters of Old Nikara calligraphy.
“Where are we?” Rin asked.
“A safe place of my choosing,” Chaghan said. He looked visibly rattled. “She was much stronger than I expected. I took us to the first place I thought of. This is a Divinatory. Here we can ask questions about your Woman. Come to the altar.”
She looked about in wonder as she followed him, running her fingers over the carefully designed tiles. “Is this part of the Pantheon?”
“No.”
“Then is this place real?”
“It’s real in your mind,” said Chaghan. “That’s as real as anything gets.”
“Jiang never taught me about this.”
“That’s because you Nikara are so primitive,” said Chaghan. “You still think there’s a strict binary between the material world and the Pantheon. You think calling the gods is like summoning a dog from the yard into the house. But you can’t conceive of the dream world as a physical place. The gods are painters. Your material world is a canvas. And this Divinatory is an angle from which we can see the colors on the palette. This isn’t really a place, it’s a perspective. But you’re interpreting it as a room because your human mind can’t process anything else.”
“What about this altar? The mosaics? Who built them?”
“No one did. You still don’t understand. They’re mental constructions so that you can comprehend concepts that are already written. To the Talwu, this room looks completely different.”
“The Talwu?”
Chaghan tilted his chin toward something in front of them.
“You’re back so soon,” spoke a cool, alien voice.
In the dim light, Rin had not noticed the creature standing behind the hexagonal altar. It walked around the circle at a steady pace and sank into a deep bow before Chaghan. It looked like nothing Rin had ever seen; it was similar to a tiger, but its hair grew two feet long. It had a woman’s face, a lion’s feet, a pig’s teeth, and a very long tail that might have belonged to a monkey.
“She is a goddess. Guardian of the Hexagrams,” Chaghan said to Rin as he sank into an equally deep bow. He pulled her down to the floor with him.
The Talwu dipped her head toward Chaghan. “The time of asking has expired for you. But you . . .” She looked at Rin. “You have never asked a question of me. You may proceed.”
“What is this place?” Rin asked Chaghan. “What can it—she—tell me?”
“The Divinatory keeps the Hexagrams,” he answered. “The Hexagrams are sixty-four different combinations of lines broken and unbroken.” He indicated the calligraphy at the sides of the altar, and Rin saw that each character indeed was made up of six lines. “Ask the Talwu your question, cast a Hexagram, and it will read the lines for you.”
“It can tell me the future?”
“No one can divine the future,” said Chaghan. “It is always shifting, always dependent on individual choices. But the Talwu can tell you the forces at play. The underlying shape of things. The color of events to pass. The future is a pattern dependent on the movements of the present, but the Talwu can read the currents for you, just as a seasoned sailor can read the ocean. You need only present a question.”