26. SHADOWS
SHADOWS
JACEN
When the rumbling ceased, Jacen stopped running.
Now that the adrenaline had faded, his body screamed at him to lie down, and if it came to another fight, he’d be no good to anyone.
He might as well have been breathing gravel instead of air.
He could not match the pace Seth seemed determined to maintain.
No sooner had Jacen finally regained his breath, still clutching a stitch in his side, than Nines asked, “Did my eyes change?”
It was a milestone among Church novitiates, something they celebrated, but Nines was clearly upset.
After a moment, Jacen said, “Yes.”
“Tell me what color they were.” She swallowed. “I don’t want to forget.”
After all she’d confessed to him, Jacen understood. To Nines, this was just another piece of herself destroyed because of these gifts she’d never wanted.
“Dark grey,” said Jacen. “Like heavy rainclouds.” Nines said nothing but let him feel her gratitude.
Though Jacen suspected she had the stamina to forge ahead—her exertions over the last five years had probably consisted of more than brisk walks to the liquor cabinet—she lingered beside him. For what felt like hours, they continued in silence.
The passageway let out in an underground ruin so ancient, it was difficult to tell the crumbling walls from the cavern’s natural formations.
The deepriver rapids roared below, the only sound until they came upon a puddle of torchlight.
There, Ogden sat on a stone outcropping, alone, as though he had been waiting for them.
He said, “If you’d been one minute later, the passageway would have come down on your heads.”
“You did that?” Jacen spluttered.
“It was a timed detonation,” Ogden said, clarifying nothing.
Seth was already scoping out the path ahead. “Where’s Ged? He must have come this way.”
“He did not see the merit in waiting,” said Ogden. “He went his own way, presumably to reconnect with what’s left of his forces.”
Seth swore. “He’ll have taken the boat.” “So be it. I have my own.”
But Seth wasn’t done. “How did you know about this place?”
“I learned about the passages when I was a member of Avram’s court.
I’ve been planting explosives for years in case of emergency—probably enough to demolish the White Cathedral and the palace by now.
” At the horrified look on Seth’s face, Ogden waved him down.
“No, of course I didn’t trigger them all.
” He added, more or less to himself, “I’m rather surprised it still works. It could prove useful if—”
“What were you doing with my father?” Seth cut him off.
Ogden sighed. “Avram and I are old friends. We had a great deal to discuss.” A pause. “I take it he’s dead.”
Seth nodded, almost dazed, as if he still couldn’t quite believe it. “Ged killed him.”
“I suppose that was inevitable. Unfortunate—but inevitable.” A note of steel entered Ogden’s voice. “Zivora has been safe for too long. Let it burn. Let the people learn what it is to have no choice but to fight.”
Seth looked troubled. Nines did not appear to be listening, but Ogden’s gaze lingered on her. “That said, I would not blame you if you chose to leave this all behind. What’s your name, girl?”
She seemed mortified to have been asked. But when Jacen started to offer the name he’d found in the Archives—Syl—she said, “No. I’m not her anymore.” She exhaled. “I’ll be Nines until I feel like I’m someone else.”
Ogden inclined his head. “We’re going to the Shrouded City, and you would be most welcome there. Rest, gather yourself, and then you’ll be free to go wherever you please. Find your family in the south, perhaps.”
“We’ll see,” said Nines.
“And you.” Ogden eyed Jacen appraisingly. “You’ve earned my confidence, but my network may not share my sentiments.”
“I know,” Jacen said heavily.
“You think Neri and Ysira are there?” Seth asked.
“I know they are,” said Ogden. “I’ve received word. It’s probably time I fill some gaps in your education.” He stood, but when he took a step, he had to grab the rock for support. He swore under his breath.
Seth tried to take Ogden by the arm, but the healer raised a gloved hand in admonishment. Then Seth made a strangled noise. “Your foot is . . . the wrong . . . way.”
Jacen squinted, trying to suss out a trick of the light. Ogden’s left foot was indeed pointed backward. It didn’t seem to bother him in the slightest.
“Grateful as I am, Semira, I will not say this again. Keep your hands to yourself.” Ogden eased himself back down and lifted the hem of his robes, revealing—
They were legs. Weren’t they? Ogden’s legs appeared to be metal, anatomically perfect replicas of muscle and bone.
Without fanfare, he unlocked the lower leg from the stump of his left knee, turned it around, and pounded it back into place with his fist. Sparks darted down delicate silver threads with a whirring noise, twining around the limb like veins.
Jacen and Nines stared, as Seth said, “Fuck. Gods above. What the fuck.” He swallowed, and finished rather inarticulately, “What are you?” “This is a prosthetic.” Ogden removed a glove, showing them his right hand—another perfect metal replica. “I have four.” He waved
them onward, heedless of their stupefaction.
They followed him down a winding path through the ruins, to a riverside cove. It appeared empty, but Nines gasped. She’d sensed the presence seconds before Jacen.
“It’s safe,” Ogden said. “You can come out.”
The air flickered like a thousand tiny windows opening to let in the torchlight—and there stood the thing from the clinic basement.
The man—the god?—whatever he was, had traded his robes for sleek, seamless armor that encased every inch of his body. Browless blue eyes, deep-set in a pale, weary face, peered out from behind a glass pane.
Seth staggered back with an undignified yell.
Relief struck Jacen first, that this had not been a hallucination, that Ogden had in fact lied to him. Next came panic, because from a sober perspective, this sight proved far more unsettling.
“I remember you,” the being said to Jacen. His voice was muffled, with a slight mechanical quality—possibly a result of the helmet.
He turned to Ogden. “I triggered the incinerator in the clinic. They won’t find anything, even if they send someone who knows what to look for. Bugs have all been recalled.”
“Bugs?” Seth repeated.
“My spies,” Ogden said impatiently. “Inorganic. Undetectable to telepaths.”
But Nines addressed the being, as blunt as Jacen had ever heard her speak. “You look like the gods, but you don’t feel anything like them.”
“This is my dear friend,” said Ogden. “He is not a god, and he would appreciate it if you stopped gawking at him.”
“It’s quite all right.” The being inclined his head, an awkward gesture in his armor. “My name is Urien.”
Though Jacen wanted to say a million things, he started with the most obvious: “I’m sorry I startled you the other night. I . . . was not thinking clearly.”
“No need to apologize,” said Urien. “I’m only glad you’ve recovered.”
He seemed so sincere, Jacen couldn’t muster a response. Seth and Nines, too, were taken aback.
Ogden gestured around the camp. “If one of you would help him finish packing, I’ll need assistance with the boat.” When no one moved, he sighed. “The universe is much vaster than you’ve been taught. Urien was born on another world, far from Celes Lor.”
Jacen struggled to grasp that last sentence. “And you live in Ogden’s basement?”
Urien blinked. “It’s a bit difficult for me to walk freely around Zivora.” “He is of the same baseline species as the gods,” Ogden clarified.
“Without the archdemons that possess the Six.”
“The host bodies,” Nines murmured. “You’re the ones the gods use.” Urien’s expression turned grim. “Correct.”
Seth looked sideways at Jacen, as though expecting him to contradict the statement. Jacen shrugged. A halfhearted apology.
For many, such revelations would have proven too much. Too unbelievable. But Seth took it much as Nines had—in shock but not in crisis. It shouldn’t have surprised Jacen. Seth had always followed no creed but his own sense of love and duty, unbothered about the context in which they existed.
As for Jacen . . . He considered Ogden’s words, and Akkani’s before, turning them over in his head.
He prodded at his feelings like he might a sore muscle, stretching them out, testing their limits.
He found it surprisingly painless, his mind more flexible than he had imagined, capable of accommodating a larger world.
It was not the empty nihilism he feared he’d find once he let his faith go. It even felt strangely like hope.
When Jacen asked Urien, “How did you come to Zivora?” it was with genuine curiosity.
“It’s a very long story,” Ogden cut in. “And it will have to wait until we’re on the river.”
Jacen said, “I look forward to hearing it.”
Jacen’s attempts to help Ogden with the boat seemed to annoy the old man more than anything, so he soon gave up. He found Seth farther down the path, alone by the river, crouched on a rock and letting murky water run over his boots.
Seth had the look of a man at prayer. He did not stop Jacen as he approached, and for a time, they lingered there in companionable silence.
At last Jacen said, “I’m sorry about your father.”
“Me, too.” Seth stood, still fixating on the rocks with a troubled expression. “Ged was right to call him a coward. But me, too.”
Jacen had counseled congregants through grief before, but those had been believers.
They took comfort in assurances about the continuity of the human soul, the promise of a reunion in paradise, and some greater plan into which their loss might fit.
Seth had never been one for any of that, and Jacen . . .
Jacen no longer knew what he believed. He stood there, useless as he had not felt since he was a novitiate, both of them watching the river run by into the dark.
Then Seth said, “What if Ged was right about the rest of it, too? What good have I done for Zivora, playing politics, trying to instill Knight Candidates with a sense of justice, when none of it mattered? Not a blasted thing I ever did made a difference, because the gods are demons from another world.” He exhaled, incredulous, and shook his head.
He finally looked at Jacen. “How are you holding up?”
“Honestly? I want a drink.” Jacen paused. “Don’t let me do that.”
He had to say it now, seize hold of his courage before it slipped away from him once more.
For now, it was enough to focus on the task at hand and let the forward momentum carry him.
But he knew himself well enough to realize moments like this never lasted, and what was enough to keep him sober today would no longer suffice tomorrow.
Seth’s red-brown eyes warmed. With the solemn air of one sealing a pact, he said, “I won’t.”
Jacen nodded his thanks and averted his gaze.
“You truly believe in this, don’t you?” Seth remarked. “You’re willing to risk your life for whatever’s in the Shrouded City.”
“I do.” If the truth was not worth Jacen’s life, what else could be? “I wish I had your optimism,” said Seth.
Jacen was unaccustomed to being called optimistic, and the look on his face forced a chuckle from Seth.
“Maybe not, then. But I admire your capacity for faith.” His smile disappeared.
“You said I don’t believe in anything, but I do.
I believe in protecting the ones I love.
I believe that Ged and my father are both wrong and we can find a path to a better world in which we don’t lose who we are. ”
“I’m not sure the man I was would be worth mourning,” Jacen muttered.
“To me, you would be.” Seth added, more gently, “You have always been more than just a Priest of the Black Sun. Do you think I’d be here if you weren’t?”
Jacen had no response, because he feared Seth was wrong. The moral ground on which he’d stood had been the gods’, and with that ripped out from underneath him, maybe he was only a monster.
But now the illusion was gone. Jacen was sober, and for the first time in years, his head was clear. If that was possible . . . so too might be that better world of which Seth spoke. Perhaps they could look toward the future not with dread, but with hope.
Perhaps.
“We have to find Neri,” Seth said. “After that . . . I don’t know.” “We’ll have to fight,” Jacen realized aloud. “We have no choice now.” “That does seem to be about the size of it.” Seth managed a crooked smile, though it contained more than a hint of sadness. “Do we even stand a chance?”
As he began to head back up the path, Jacen clasped Seth’s shoulder. “I suppose we’ll have to have faith.”