6. COVENANT
COVENANT
YSIRA
Ysira dreamt of a red thing in the desert.
Redder than the sands, redder than blood .
. . it pulsed and writhed, made her head hurt to look at it.
In the primordial, unfocused realm of her subconscious, she could not discern its shape.
It reached toward her as though calling, with beckoning tendrils of burning shadow. She reached back.
Then, agony. Her skin blistered and blackened as her head pounded with the helpless rage of a trapped beast. Her insides convulsed like something trying to break free. Too much power, with nowhere to go.
A hand clawed its way up through her esophagus with tearing strength. She doubled over, choking, shaking uncontrollably—tossing and turning off the stone slab where she slept, onto the floor.
She swore and eased herself to a sitting position, massaging her shoulder that’d borne the brunt of the impact.
It was the same one the thorn eater had bitten two nights ago, and she grimaced to find a tooth still embedded in the scar tissue.
It must have worked its way up overnight as the strange processes that kept her body intact recognized it didn’t belong.
It took a few seconds of digging to get it out.
She wrinkled her nose, hoping this scar would fade quickly—it ruined one of her most visible tattoos.
The blood red patterns, reminiscent of thorns on telkaan vines, spiraled all over her body.
By the warm yellow light of the globes in the wall, she assumed it was late afternoon. She hadn’t meant to sleep all day, but sheer boredom had gotten the better of her. It also seemed to irritate her guards.
As soon as they tried to transfer her to the deep river docks, she would find a way to escape like she always did. Of course, she’d have to make sure Saraida never saw her again. Perhaps it was time she left Zivora altogether.
The thought didn’t fill her with enthusiasm.
The demon priests’ Cataclysm had ravaged the world; not much remained beyond the Black Sun’s dominion.
Certainly nowhere as secure as the Palestone City.
This place sucked up the lifeblood of the surrounding lands like a bloated, failing heart, sustaining itself while its limbs withered and rotted.
To the west, the nomads of the Glass Sea killed each other for food.
To the south, the waterlogged lands of the Fractured Peninsula festered with disease.
Green places remained in Alendal, to the west. Or maybe she could venture farther north, beyond the Church’s reach, to whatever lay past the volcanic wastes of the Burning Hills. If anyone could survive such a journey, it was Ysira.
But all she’d ever known was the Scar. She loved the dry desert air and the red adobe of the Knots, its streets alive with laughter, haggling traders, and the rich sounds of her own language.
The smell of roasting chiles. The lumbering kirikil dragging their carts through the dust. For all its shortcomings, this land was home.
Someone banged on the door. A rank-and-file Guardsman hauled Ysira up by the arm, steered her out of the cell and down the hall. Spite compelled her to slip the tooth into his pocket. She only regretted she would not be there to watch him find it.
He shoved her into a new room with a palestone table and stools. Ysira was bracing to tell Saraida to eat shit but found her in the company of two men. Her stomach dropped as she recognized Seth Semira.
“Thank you,” he told Saraida, and touched her arm. “I won’t forget this.”
Saraida regarded his hand with mild bemusement until he withdrew it, looking rather hurt. “Do whatever you must.” She stalked out of the room and shut the door, leaving Ysira with no escape route and nowhere to look but at Seth.
The years had been kind to him. He had a proper beard now and a strong, substantial build. He had come with a priest, and . . . Ysira blinked. She knew him, too, though it took her longer to recognize him. Back in their Citadel days, he’d worn grey robes and had a number for a name: Ninety-Nine.
He had an unkempt, somewhat feral appearance, with white-blond hair, a long nose, and black robes that had been tailored for a larger man.
He was fair-skinned, probably of Dalish origin, but unlike Saraida or Ogden, his face had grown neither freckled nor leathery brown in the desert sun.
He was almost as stubbornly white as his eerie eyes.
“Ysira.” He motioned for her to sit.
She did not. “You look terrible.” She was a little disappointed when the priest didn’t respond. “Did they ever deign to give you a name?”
“Brother Kheris,” he said stiffly, then seemed to decide he’d made this awkward. “Jacen.”
Ysira turned to Seth. “This is a surprise.”
He was looking at her in a way that made her nervous—fondly. “How long has it been? Ten years?”
“Twelve,” said Ysira. At least Ninety-Nine—Jacen—looked as uncomfortable as she felt.
Then Seth said, “I need your help.”
Her eyebrows went up. “Audacious of you.”
“This was a mistake,” Jacen muttered. “I’ll find someone else, or—” Seth didn’t let him finish. “Ysira—it’s Neri.”
Neri. The name rang through Ysira’s skull, bell-clear and horribly familiar. She could only stare at Seth, sick to her stomach, until she managed to grit out, “What did Ged do?”
“Nothing yet,” Seth said, and for a moment, Ysira could breathe again. “Ged is . . . sending him to the canyon. I need you to bring him back before anything happens to him.”
“Why?” “Because—”
“Why would Ged send a child in there?” Ysira used her knight’s voice, the one she’d learned at the Citadel and had been very good at, back when it mattered.
This time, Jacen answered. “I’ve seen evidence of a demon in the canyon. It—” He pressed his lips together. “Ged believes he can use it as a weapon. Such a demon requires a telepath to become its vessel. Since Neri is a telepath—albeit barely—”
Ysira laughed. It startled Jacen, enough that he stopped talking.
But what else could she do?
She had been seventeen when she left the Citadel, determined to leave that humiliating chapter of her life behind.
Less than a cycle later, she’d been Harvested.
By the time she realized she was carrying Ged Semira’s child, it was far too late to do anything about it.
She didn’t even remember most of her pregnancy.
She’d been off . . . somewhere. Wherever the gods took their sacrifices, before they cut her throat and left her for dead.
She had returned to Zivora in a body she did not recognize, to a life that was no longer hers. Officially, she no longer existed.
Her own future was destroyed, and any son of hers would have suffered the same fate. But the son of a future High Lord of Zivora? He should have the world at his fingertips.
For this to happen instead—
She laughed harder, until tears leaked from her eyes and Seth said, “He’s not joking.”
“Of course not,” said Ysira. “It’s not remotely funny.” She wiped her face and jerked her chin at Jacen. “You’re the expert. This sort of possession—would it kill him?”
It wasn’t a foregone conclusion. Different demons had vastly different impacts on their hosts; she knew that from experience. But people in the Knots still whispered of heat and shadow, of a red thing deep below the desert that called to them, hungering. She shuddered despite herself.
Jacen stalled before answering. “I don’t see how it wouldn’t.”
He looked half a corpse. Whatever was going on in his head, Ysira didn’t trust it.
“What’s your plan, then? I go to the canyon, and . . .”
“Damir and Casandra will go with Neri,” Seth said. “You’d have to avoid them, split them up.” He hesitated. “We need to make it look like Neri disappeared somewhere in the desert. Then bring him back to Jacen’s chapel.”
“You want me to fake his death?” Ysira narrowed her eyes. “What next? Have you thought that far ahead?”
“If we do nothing, he’ll die.” Seth’s voice drowned hers out, enough that she stopped trying to talk over him.
“If not from this, from the Harvest. If Ged’s figured out what he is, before long, so will the Church.
I know you’re not a part of his life, and I respect that.
But we were friends once. And I love that boy as if he were my own son.
Please, Ysira. Please trust that this is our last, best option. ”
Ysira had some difficulty seeing herself as Neri’s mother, but as
one of the two people responsible for bringing him into this world, she owed him. She would always owe him.
She heard herself say, “I’ll do it.”
Seth’s shoulders sagged. “Thank the gods.”
“Thank me,” said Ysira, struggling to pull herself together. “But I have one condition.”
“I’ll pay you. Whatever you ask.”
“I don’t want your coin. I’ll help you on the condition that you do not tell Neri—” She stumbled over the name she’d given him. “He can’t know who I am.”
She could not make him hate her. “You have my word,” Seth said.
Jacen’s gaze, meanwhile, never left hers. Ysira lifted her chin, matching that intensity, and asked him, “What does Ged mean to do, should he obtain this . . . weapon?”
Jacen’s throat bobbed. With a sideways glance at his friend, Seth answered for him. “He means to use it in a coup. He thinks it could kill a god.”
He said it rather dismissively, and Ysira would not have believed it either—if not for the expression on Jacen’s face. What manner of horror had they stumbled upon?
She said, “I’ll leave at nightfall.”
“Thank you,” Seth said again, but Jacen remained silent.
He must have fallen far. Long after Ysira left the Citadel, she’d gotten acquainted with his novitiate, Elyas.
What happened to Elyas would damage anyone, and Ysira was unsure she’d be able to live with herself, had it been her fault.
Based on Jacen’s drawn complexion and the way his hands shook, she would hazard that he started his day with a drink. Or several.
Ysira had had her dealings with exorcists and their demons, but there was always something different about Jacen.
Something dangerous, made more so by his brokenness.
He had edges now, where a careless person might get cut.
Maybe he wasn’t even aware of it—or maybe he was, and he thought this would help.
One small act of defiance to bridge the unbearable chasm between who he should have been and what he had become instead.
She hated how deeply she understood.