7. EXODUS
EXODUS
YSIRA
Following a rushed and unceremonious release from jail, Ysira returned to Ogden’s clinic.
It was one of the few buildings in the Knots with multiple stories, one of them—off-limits to everyone but the healer himself—underground.
Ysira had a room on the upper level, her home for the last ten years.
Through a window overlooking the empty desert she could see the twin spires of the old city of Zal Fel.
The black sun sank between them as it set.
She gathered a satchel of provisions and her vast assortment of knives.
She slung her glaive across her back, wrapped a thin scarf around her head and face to keep out the dust, and crept toward the back door.
She’d meant to avoid Ogden—and his questions—but his low, acerbic Dalish accent called after her, “Ysira.”
The healer was grey-haired and bearded, with deep-set hazel eyes.
He’d always been circumspect about his age, but had to be over seventy.
He motioned for her to follow him to a curtained treatment area.
He changed his dark gloves with his back to her, from one of his many stashes throughout the clinic. Ysira had never seen him without them.
He sat beside the cot, occupied by a comatose young man in threadbare clothes.
“Still can’t wake him?” Ysira asked. “How long has it been?” Ogden frowned at the patient. “Three days.”
“This is the one who said something crawled inside his head? I’d think whatever drugs he took would have worn off by now.”
“So one would think.”
Ysira leaned over to examine the patient. He was obviously quite unwell, with clammy skin and breath so faint, it was easy to imagine he’d died—if not for the occasional twitches and grimaces that suggested intense pain.
“If it was me,” she said, “I’d want to be put out of my misery.”
Ogden looked up at her sharply. “I’ve told you time and again, we don’t know what they can hear in a state like this.”
“Sorry,” Ysira muttered. “Do you suspect a stroke?”
“I did. But . . .” Ogden’s frown deepened. He would not elaborate. “Maybe you should call an exorcist.” Ysira said it in jest, but Ogden gave her a look that said he’d rather shove splinters under his own fingernails.
“I’ll solve this one, too. Eventually.” He leaned back in his chair and exhaled. “You’ve been gone two days. I take it you didn’t get my pancreas?”
“I ran into some knights.” Ogden being one of the few people she preferred not to disappoint, Ysira added, “You were right. Looked like more cancer.”
“Merely knowing helps no one,” Ogden said, “I need the specimen for study.”
What he thought he could do with a cancerous pancreas, Ysira didn’t bother to ask. He wouldn’t have told her, anyway. Sometimes, that drove her mad, but she of all people understood the need to keep secrets—and when those secrets were a matter of survival.
She had never been sure where Ogden learned his trade, let alone what motivated him, but she respected him more than anyone. She also knew she would never cross him.
She said, “I’ll have to steer clear of the funeral grounds for a while, but I’m headed to the canyon. Do you need more mold?”
“A new job?”
“Yes,” she said, and hoped that would be the end of it. It wasn’t.
“Who’s the client?” Ogden asked, and when she took too long to answer, he knew. “Is Neri all right?”
“He will be.” Ysira hesitated, then explained in the briefest of terms what Seth had told her.
“Interesting” was all Ogden had to say about the god-killing demon. “And Semira doesn’t have the resources to handle this himself?” The old man scoffed. “That he has the audacity to involve you, after what his family put you through . . .”
“I have to do this,” said Ysira. “I don’t trust anyone else.”
“Hmm.” Ogden was silent for a moment. “I hope you can prevent this. But if you can’t—”
“I will.”
“If you can’t. You should consider the Shrouded City.”
Ysira gritted her teeth. The Shrouded City was a code name for one of the many places Ogden had contacts.
A cult of delusional fanatics, the last remnants of the Zal demon priests, who were capable of little nowadays beyond petty theft and sabotage.
Their refuge was known on most maps by other names, and as far as most people knew, it did not exist.
To appease Ogden, Ysira said, “I’ll think about it.” “They would welcome you,” he said meaningfully.
The last thing Ysira wanted was to be pressed into a hopeless revolution. She had seen how that ended. She changed the subject. “Do you want more mold or not?”
He considered. “If you’ll be in the area.”
“Are you ever going to tell me what you use it for?”
“Not a chance,” Ogden said, though the faintest of smiles lit his face. “Do be careful, Ysira. You’re far too valuable to this clinic for me to lose you.”
“You know I’m hard to kill.”
He did. He was the only one who knew all her secrets.
Ogden had been a member of Avram Semira’s court when Ysira had come to them eleven years ago, desperate and due to give birth any day. He had delivered Neri himself and brought them both back from the brink of death while Ged pretended they didn’t exist. He knew Ysira should not have survived.
He knew what she’d brought back with her from the Harvest. Not just her son but the passenger in her brainstem—what the Church called a demon.
And when Ysira left, Ogden had gone with her.
He never gave a reason for his actions, but she suspected the old healer’s word was all that kept her from the Church’s clutches that day—and since.
Ogden offered her the slightest of nods and a tap on the arm, which, from him, was as good as an embrace.
Ysira departed for the Scar.
Ysira followed the kirikil tracks from the High Lord’s stables, beyond Zivora’s walls.
The armored mammals moved at a ponderous pace, leaving imprints of four splayed toes in the red earth behind them.
She estimated she would catch up before Oe reached its apex in the sky.
Out in the crisp evening air, amidst the stars, the wind, and the unhewn cathedrals of stone, Ysira had far less to fear than most.
She was not clear on the limits of her passenger’s abilities.
She still needed to eat and sleep, and at just shy of thirty, she could not yet tell whether she would age as everyone did.
A blow to the head might knock her unconscious, and the missing tip of her left finger made her suspect she could not fully regenerate.
She did not remember losing it. She’d awoken to find it gone, as her passenger wriggled around her brainstem like a curious cat exploring a new room.
At first, it hadn’t quite understood how a human body ought to fit together.
Eight years earlier, it had seen nothing wrong with healing a broken ankle at a perfect right angle to her leg.
Ogden had been forced to break it again to set it correctly.
The demon had seemed almost offended, but it had never made the same mistake again.
It didn’t understand Ysira, nor did it particularly care to—it was only happy to have a home and did not like that home to be damaged.
Ysira traveled late into the night, until she came upon the rim of the canyon.
It sprawled before her, a monstrous entity of shadow and stone.
One could look down, down, down and see nothing but rock and long, twisting telkaan vines with thorns longer than her arm. Below that lay impenetrable darkness.
Her quarry had made camp in a cactus grove—two tethered kirikil and a tent nestled in the sand. The kirikil snuffled at the vegetation with shovel-shaped snouts, digging for insects beneath the rocks, beside . . .
A crater?
A rather large crater, which had not been there the last time Ysira came out this far.
Strange glassy patches in the sand reflected Oe’s and the moons’ light, marking a trail toward the rim.
Something about it made her scalp tingle.
Had she come this way for any other quarry, she might have turned back.
Ysira gave the camp a wide berth, crossing a great stone bridge to the opposite rim.
She propped her glaive and satchel against a boulder, behind a thicket of dry bushes.
From there she could see everything that transpired in the camp.
Likely, they would rest a few more hours, then venture into the depths before sunrise, so she did her best to sleep.
She was not successful. Worries and regrets churned inside her head as she lay on her back and stared at the stars glimmering down on her in silent judgment.
What could she say to Neri Semira—the son she’d chosen not to know—to make him trust her? Would he believe her if she said she’d come at Seth’s behest? If he asked who she was, how would she answer?
Perhaps it would be safest not to risk a conversation at all, to knock him unconscious and drag him back to the city like a sack of grain. She could be gone before he ever saw her face.
With the eclipse in the sky, dawn was difficult to detect.
But Ysira felt it, a prickling up her spine as that silver halo rose over the horizon.
The kirikil curled into balls, encasing themselves in their armored shells just as they would in a dust storm.
Birds and insects fell quiet, and even the wind seemed to still.
Three figures rose from the camp. They trekked across the stone bridge and followed a path below the rim along those smooth, slippery patches where the nascent light caught on the rocks. Ysira darted down after them, swift and soundless as a shadow.