17. THEOPHANY
THEOPHANY
YSIRA
The god was taller than any man Ysira had seen, with pointed ears, a lean build, and skin the color of sun-bleached bones. Vivid emerald irises peered out at her from ink-black sclerae.
She could not pinpoint his age; he could have been a well-kept sixty or a worn forty. His white hair was cropped short, and he wore a sleek black coat over a green tunic. He moved like a river, with a presence that made the hall feel even more silent, as though the very air went still for him.
“You have nothing to fear from me.”
Something brimmed beneath the low, musical tones and odd cadence of his voice.
It seethed and skittered, making Ysira’s scalp prickle.
Once or twice, she had witnessed telepathic priests perform extradimensional communion, and now she understood.
The language of demons was this being’s—the gods’—native tongue.
She battened down the hatches of her mind and reached, automatically, for a weapon that wasn’t there.
“Which one are you?” she croaked.
To her numb surprise, he answered, “I am Tharanoth.”
The Lord of Hunger was the least present of Zivora’s gods, more distant and mythical than the rest. The Priests of the Black Sun tended to agree that if one of the Six reigned supreme, it was Tharanoth.
There was something oddly familiar about him, though Ysira was quite sure she’d never seen him before. She couldn’t pinpoint it.
“Please,” he said. “Follow me.” Ysira didn’t move. “Where is Neri?”
Tharanoth tilted his head. A sharp, inhuman motion. “Who?”
Ysira carefully considered her next words. “The boy who was with me.” Tharanoth’s second eyelids clicked together. “The boy is safe.”
He gestured down the hall with one long, four-fingered hand. With little other choice, Ysira followed him through a sliding door to another corridor. She trusted nothing about this. She wrung her hands, running her thumb over the stump of her left little finger.
The next room resembled the inside of the White Cathedral, but open to the stars.
Soaring buttresses braced vast, clear windows.
The design seemed impossible, a show of reckless extravagance that left Ysira no choice but to gape.
When Tharanoth flicked his hand, the windows turned opaque.
He snapped his fingers. An image materialized out of thin air.
Ysira jumped back with an involuntary, undignified noise. A dense spiral of stars floated around her, casting the darkened walls in a rainbow glow.
“What is this?” she whispered.
“You are aboard an interstellar vessel,” said Tharanoth. “It traverses galaxies like your people’s boats might cross a lake. More broadly speaking, we are in high orbit above your planet. More narrowly, we are in my private suite.”
Galaxies. Orbit. Planet. Ysira had never heard the first word, and the other two were still too monumental, too unbelievable, to elicit a reaction.
“This”—the god swept a hand across the glittering wheel—“is our galaxy. It is comprised of billions of stars, some of which are orbited by planets like yours.”
Tharanoth made a pinching gesture. The projection shifted, its view plummeting in on a single pinprick of red-gold light. The sun. A star. Around it drifted Oe, the moons, and Ysira’s world.
“Celes Lor.” Tharanoth’s Zal pronunciation was flawless. He pointed out a third sphere in the planet’s orbit, smaller than the moons but closer. “This is our station, which we are presently aboard.”
He snapped his fingers again. The projection zoomed away, so fast and so far, it made her head spin, to show a different world and its strange purple sun. This one drifted alone; it had no moons. “This is Ihrafang. My home.”
Ysira did not trust herself to speak or move. Her sense of reality was expanding too fast, leaving her untethered—a needle dropping into a fathomless deep, falling and falling.
“My planet, like yours, is a nexus of universes. It is home to a great many . . .” Tharanoth pursed his lips, as though searching for the best way to explain. “Pockets of space where the fabric of reality is thinnest, by which passage is possible through the Source dimension.”
“The Gates,” Ysira ventured. Like the one she’d seen at Zal Fel, before those strange armored people—Tharanoth’s minions?—knocked her unconscious and brought her to this place.
“Long ago, my people found them and harnessed their power. You see, your understanding of the Source is limited. We call it dangerous—evil, even—because you are not safe to wield it. The same is not true for us.” Tharanoth’s unsettling gaze locked with hers.
“For your own safety, there are certain truths we keep concealed.”
“Truths,” Ysira echoed. “Such as that you’re just a man possessed by a demon?”
Tharanoth narrowed his eyes. Perhaps she shouldn’t have said that.
But then he chuckled. “The man you refer to, when you look at me, does not exist. I am one hundred thousand years of memories, acquired through eighty-six bodies, of which this is merely the latest.”
“I saw your . . . associate . . . move outside a body.” Ysira refused to give a name to what, exactly, the god Nabatar had done to Casandra Semira. She betrayed nothing but suspicion, no emotion Tharanoth might use to slip past her mental defenses. “Are you saying you can exist without a host?”
“In a manner of speaking.” Tharanoth flexed his fingers, admiring them in the projected starlight.
“These vessels are much more convenient, and our presence changes them in wonderful ways. After a century or two, they’re strong, fast, and nigh-invulnerable.
They endure for hundreds of years. With them, we built the Firstborn Empire—so named because we were the very first to expand across the stars. ”
His meaning was clear enough. Ysira could not hurt him, and he wanted her to know it. Unease crept over her anew. “You conquered our world.”
“Hardly. Your civilization was primitive. You would have destroyed your own planet had we not intervened.” Tharanoth tilted his head. “I prefer the word cultivate. Celes Lor is my prized achievement.”
Ysira took in the stars wheeling around them, all those other suns, worlds upon worlds upon worlds. How many had suffered the same fate as hers?
She asked, quiet and measured, “Why?”
“Call me a philanthropist. It’s also a matter of scientific curiosity. There’s nothing quite like watching a world evolve, and to cultivate yours has been a fascinating process.”
That word again. Cultivate. It evoked a visceral response in Ysira. “Is that what you call it when you Harvest us?”
Tharanoth did something like a sigh. “I do it out of altruism, difficult as it may be for you to perceive. You must understand: I was already old when your ancestors invented written language. When you’ve lived as long as I have, you learn to see the greater scope of things.”
Ysira did not believe in altruism, not from her own people, and not from the Lord of Hunger. He was manipulating her. But to what end?
That encompassing presence stirred at the edges of her mind. She doubted she’d have noticed it if not for the way her passenger jumped. Ysira was no telepath, so the best defense she could muster was to keep him at arm’s length, but she redoubled her efforts nonetheless.
“That’s what I was,” she couldn’t stop herself from saying. Her voice shook as bloody memories roiled in the depths of her subconscious. Bright lights. Cold metal. Body no longer hers. “A casualty for the cultivation of my world.”
Tharanoth regarded her without emotion. “I admit it was an accident that you survived, and something of a surprise. I am not easily surprised. It is a testament, I think, to the extraordinary resilience my work has fostered in your species.” He gave her a nod, as if he meant to convey a compliment. Her stomach turned.
But then she realized—
He doesn’t know.
Her passenger had been slow to change her, but change her it had. Extraordinary resilience—this being who called himself a god didn’t know the half of it.
“I will also admit,” Tharanoth said, “I’m curious how you survived the incident in the canyon.
” His alien gaze settled on hers and hardened.
Something ugly seethed beneath that surface of polite detachment, something he must have thought Ysira too primitive to notice.
“Extraordinary events demand an extraordinary explanation.”
“You still haven’t told me where Neri is,” Ysira said flatly, though her heart beat faster.
“Safe.” The word came out a long hiss. “But as I said, we caution you away from demons for a reason. And the demon of the canyon is . . . singular.”
Tharanoth sounded almost resentful. It was the most human thing Ysira had heard from him, a tone she’d assumed herself more often than she liked to admit—struggling to speak well of a gift she could never possess.
The demon that was Tharanoth might grant its vessel strength and longevity, but not whatever power Neri now wielded. And the Lord of Hunger coveted it.
Tharanoth must have spoken to Neri first. If he was speaking to Ysira now . . . he hadn’t gotten what he wanted. Horror built in the pit of her stomach, threatening to erupt into panic.
“Tell me what you’ve done with Neri.”
Tharanoth raised both hands in a gesture of appeasement. “Nothing. But that power is not safe in any hands but mine. It is responsible for the Cataclysm that nearly destroyed your planet. I am trying to prevent such a thing from happening again.”
Ysira operated under the assumption he was lying. She shook her head. “You may be powerful, and you may be from another world. But what makes you so different from any telepath who wields a demon, or the Zal valak?” Or from Neri. Or from her.
She gestured at the strange purple star and its lonely planet, drifting past her. “You found us; you didn’t create us. You’re not a god.”
“Aren’t I?” Tharanoth clicked his tongue.
“Semantics. I shaped your civilization. I have seen tens of thousands of years. I possess power the likes of which you could never imagine. The weapons at my disposal could end your world with a thought.” He snapped his fingers.
The stars vanished, leaving them in darkness.
“One might say that your obedience—even your worship—is simply what I am owed.”
But Ysira had seen the destroyed skeleton in the canyon and the way Nabatar had feared to touch Neri. She owed these self-styled gods nothing. She would not bow.
That smile again. Time seemed to slow and stretch, trapping her in that moment where those bright, alien eyes would not leave her. She still sensed Tharanoth’s mind like a tickle at the back of her neck, searching for a way in.
After a long, long silence, he blinked. “I know this has been overwhelming for you. I’m immortal—I’m patient.” He motioned up and down at her person. “Clean yourself up. Take some time to rest, and think on this.”
The Lord of Hunger did not entertain further questions. He dismissed Ysira, leaving her to find her way back to the bedroom. Alone but unmistakably a prisoner. She had no doubt that somehow, he watched her every move.
She found no obvious exit, just another sliding door to an adjoining washroom.
After a great deal of fruitless, frustrated searching, fiddling with every dial and lever she could reach, she decided she might as well bathe.
It was the strangest experience she’d had yet today—grossly wasteful, jets of hot water from the walls and ceiling, sweet-smelling liquid soap she used to scrub every inch of herself.
When she emerged, she caught a glimpse of her naked body in the too-clear mirror. Her heart constricted.
The white web of scars from her pregnancy, across her hips, breasts, and stomach, were some of the last things her passenger had failed to heal. Those, her missing finger, and the ragged line across her throat. They shone against her light brown skin, poorly concealed by her spiraling tattoos.
Ysira studied the woman in the mirror, searching that drawn face and scarred body for any trace of someone she wanted to be. She tried to hold her own gaze and found she couldn’t stand it.
She shoved her dirty clothing into a wall compartment labeled with a pictogram of a shirt.
An invisible force suctioned it down with a whoosh that made her jump.
Seconds later, an identical, fresh set dropped out of an adjacent compartment.
She stared at it until she’d recovered enough to put it on.
She sat on the floor and began to braid her wet hair. Her fingers trembled.
On the precarious edge of breaking, it took her too long to notice the fog.
It seeped from the ceiling, settling around her in an acrid cloud.
With the next breath she took, her passenger spasmed. Her vision blurred—then sharpened. She breathed again. The room swam, and so did her head.
Ysira lurched to her feet.
Her passenger tightened around her brainstem. Her pulse thudded, blood concentrating there, and with it, a surge of panic. She was being poisoned, and her demon couldn’t keep up with the damage.
Ysira staggered toward the washroom exit, fighting to stay conscious. Her passenger worked furiously, but the fog grew thick and heavy. She’d already inhaled too much.
Suddenly, her mind was too crowded. In trying to keep her alive, her demon had given her no warning at all. She was helpless as something invaded her headspace, insidious as an intracranial bleed. She swayed and hit the ground face-first.