The Burning City (Spirit Binders)

T
HE MORNING OF HER FIRST BLOOD, thirteen-year-old Lana is at once excited and terrified to perform her first dive alone. If successful, she will be initiated into the elite ranks of those who dive for the jewels created by the sacred mandagah fish. But two unusual jewels, given her by a dying fish, are destined to one day tear her from everything she has ever loved. In the islands, humans are engaged in a constant struggle with their environment—the countless volcanoes, floods, and divine winds that threaten their lives. And so, to control these natural forces and allow human civilization to flourish, a few brave individuals used the power of sacrifice to imprison the spirits of fire, water, and death that govern these acts of nature. Ever since that time, despite the continued worship by humans, these spirits have struggled to break free.

Soon after Lana’s initiation, floods devastate the small rural island. Although Leilani, Lana’s mother, is reluctant to leave, her father’s desire to travel to the city prevails. Lana and Leilani stay in another, smaller city while Lana’s father goes ahead to the metropolis of Essel—an urban center in the shadow of the smoking volcano, Nui’ahi, and home to the famed Kulanui, an ancient school.

Returning to the Kulanui is Lana’s island teacher and youthful crush, Kohaku. There he is happy to be reunited with his deaf sister, Emea, someone whom he believes is very sheltered from the rest of the world because of her handicap. Unbeknownst to him, however, she is carrying on an affair with Nahe, the head of Kohaku’s department at the Kulanui.

Meanwhile, Lana and her mother eke out a meager living in the dockside slums in Okika City. Lana’s harsh work at a launderer’s eventually makes her desperately ill, and Leilani turns to prostitution in order to pay for her daughter’s medicine. A mysterious one-armed witch approaches Leilani and offers her a deal: enough money to travel to Essel and live comfortably with her husband in exchange for Lana’s apprenticeship. Lana would learn how to harness the power of the spirits through sacrifice. Leilani must also wear a necklace with a bone charm carved in the shape of a key—the ancient symbol of the death spirit.

Lana generally enjoys her life with the witch Akua—although certain strange events sometimes make her question her mentor’s intentions. Lana ignores oblique warnings from Ino, the water sprite who guards the nearby lake. When Lana is eighteen, Akua informs her that her apprenticeship is nearly at an end. As a final lesson, she promises to show Lana a technique that can be used to harness great power. Under Akua’s watchful eye, Lana learns how to use the matched jewels she harvested during her initiation to trick another person into an unwitting sacrifice. What Lana doesn’t know is that she will slowly kill the other person to whom she gives one of the jewels. She sells it to Pua, an older woman who has spent most of her life in the outer islands raising her nephew Kai, the half-human water guardian. Then, in a ceremony Lana doesn’t understand, Akua binds Lana’s fate inextricably with her own, tricking Lana into accepting this burden.

Soon after, Leilani collapses. Using her connection with Pua through the linked jewel necklaces, Lana recites a geas that will allow Leilani to live, but only with great sacrifice: Lana is doomed to be hounded by the specter of her own mother’s untimely death until she herself dies. Akua, curiously unsurprised at Lana’s predicament, gives her a powerful means to survive—a flute made from the hollowed bones of Akua’s right arm.

In the days before Lana’s fateful sacrifice, Kohaku’s sister Emea dies—a victim of her lover’s callous treatment after she becomes pregnant. Nahe expels Kohaku from the Kulanui to discredit his accusations. Destitute and bereft, Kohaku makes the pilgrimage to the inner fire shrine, where hundreds supplicate the fire spirit to become the new ruler of Essel. Kohaku merely intends an honorable death: of those hundreds who vie for rulership, only one succeeds—and the rest are all sacrificed. On the boat to the shrine, however, Kohaku meets Nahoa, a rough-edged but lovely sailor. The unexpected love he feels for her rekindles his desire for both life and revenge, leading him to do the unthinkable. For the price of his left hand, Kohaku deliberately weakens the bindings that hold the fire spirit—and thus becomes ruler of the most powerful city in the islands. He and Nahoa marry, but their happiness is tempered by his bloodthirsty need to avenge his sister—who appears to him as a ghost—and his growing paranoia about Nui’ahi, the great volcano.

While Kohaku becomes Mo’i, Lana spends her days engaged in a desperate battle of wits with the death spirit. She goes on a pilgrimage to the original wind shrine, destroyed five hundred years before, when that spirit broke free of its human-forged bindings. After she endures a three-day vigil, the wind spirit grants Lana its double-edged gift—she grows black wings that can help keep her from the clutches of the death spirit. Lana thus becomes the first “black angel,” an ancient harbinger of destruction, in five hundred years.

Exhausted unto death, Lana flies away and collapses on the doorstep of a well-to-do country inn, wearing a cloak drawn over her shoulders. There, she is taken for a hunchback beggar and is about to be turned away before one of the richest guests demands that she be let in. The guest is in fact Kai, the water guardian, whose otherworldly features inspire more fear than respect. He takes her to his rooms and helps to nurse her back to health. Kai then offers her a gift she never could have hoped to receive: complete protection from the death spirit in his shrine on the outer islands. She accepts and begins a more peaceful existence with Kai in his home. However, despite their growing love for each other, he keeps his distance. Any woman who chooses to sleep with a guardian will kill him if she sleeps with another. Lana understands the risks, but gives herself to Kai anyway. As he teaches her more about the art of geas and binding, she discovers that Akua has left some vital gaps out of her education. This makes Lana suspicious, but she only fully understands the magnitude of Akua’s treachery when Kai tells her of his beloved aunt Pua on the anniversary of her death. Lana immediately realizes that this is the same woman she had used as an unwitting sacrifice a year before. Kai’s aunt died of a sudden illness one week after Lana cast the spell that saved her mother. Racked with guilt, Lana leaves the water shrine, determined to confront Akua and demand answers.

But Akua has abandoned the cottage, and the only information Ino can give Lana is a slim, ancient black book. And then, before she can look further, there is an explosion to the west. Nui’ahi, Essel’s great volcano, dormant for a thousand years, has finally blown.

Just before the explosion, Akua appears in the city, where she kidnaps Leilani. The two women witness the destruction in silence, both equally shocked.

At that moment, Nahoa is sequestered in the fire shrine, having left Kohaku when she discovered the brutally mangled body of his sister’s erstwhile lover. Nahoa gives birth to her and Kohaku’s daughter amid the fiery carnage.

Lana arrives in the devastated city to find her parents’ home razed. Her father tells her that her mother has gone missing, and the two grieve the only way they can, by playing a lament together in the smoking ashes of the great city.

Glossary

The black book

Characters

Aoi
– Narrator of the black book.

Parech
– Akane tribesman who served as a Maaram soldier.

Taak
– A Maaram soldier.

Tulo
– A Kawadiri princess.

Wolop
– A Maaram soldier.

Yaela
– First of the Great Binders, who bound the water spirit.

Nations/Tribes

Akane
– A loosely grouped network of tribes conquered by the Kukichans a generation before.

Essel
– The city that has become the dominant cultural and military power.