Fifteen
I awoke to the sound of breaking glass.
My eyes flew open. Inside the cramped jair’oa house, it was dark. Meeka’s family surrounded me, tiny jair’oa curled against
my legs and ribs like domestic sand cats. They twitched in their sleep, never still, even when unconscious.
The sound came again, a sharp, chilling crack that sent a lance of fear through my heart. No one else was awake or seemed to have heard it. Raithe was nowhere to be seen.
In a daze, I carefully extracted myself from the pile of sleeping jair’oa kits and walked outside.
The city was eerily quiet. The luminescent mushrooms cast a surreal purple light over the walls and roofs of the jair’oa houses.
In the distance, the glass temple of the creator king shone like a massive diamond against the night.
There were no jair’oa to be seen anywhere on the roads or in the surrounding buildings, which seemed odd. Almost of its own
accord, my gaze was drawn up, up, to the massive glass dome that covered the whole city.
A silver crack, gleaming brightly against the darkness, sliced its way across the crystal surface. As I watched, unable to move, the crack widened, thin spiderwebs of lines fracturing out from the main. Sand began to fall, like wispy curtains drifting through the air.
I drew in a breath . . . and the glass dome shattered, pouring sand, beetles, and the massive, rotting form of the abomination
into the heart of the city.
I jerked awake with a gasp.
My heart was racing, a cold sweat trickling down my back as I sat up. On either side of me, the jair’oa kits squeaked in sleepy
protest, kicking and twitching as they burrowed closer. I was still in Meeka’s family’s house, surrounded by jair’oa, and
there were no sounds of breaking glass or cracking domes spelling doom for the entire city.
A shadow rose from the corner and glided soundlessly across the floor toward me. Raithe, of course. His pale eyes, gleaming
in the darkness, shadowed with concern as they met mine.
“Sparrow.” His voice was barely a murmur in the silence of the room. “Nightmares?”
I nodded, looking down at the blankets and the sprawl of jair’oa kits. My heart was still thudding in my ears, though it was
staring to calm as reality pressed in. But I could still hear the chilling crack of the glass dome in my mind, filling me
with quiet dread. “I wish they would stop,” I muttered. “I can’t even close my eyes anymore without seeing them.”
Raithe stepped close. Very gently, he scooped up the sleeping jair’oa and moved them to a nest of blankets on the couch.
His movements were so smooth and calm, not one of the kits woke up.
They snuggled against one another in a tangle of paws and tails, squeaked in their dreams, and continued to sleep.
I was watching one kit unconsciously gnaw the back foot of another kit when Raithe sat beside me on the bed and pulled me
close. Surprise flickered in my chest, but with his arms around me and the solid thump of his heart in my ear, my fear eased
and the wild roiling of my stomach calmed. I closed my eyes, relaxing into him.
Raithe didn’t say anything, just let the solidness of his presence soothe the fears clawing at me. For a moment, guilt pricked
me. We had been traveling hard, through some of the harshest climates, on very little sleep. And while my recurring nightmares
seemed to be getting worse, they were, after all, just nightmares of the nonmagical variety. I wasn’t sleepwalking to my death;
Vahn wasn’t showing up in my dreams specifically to torment me.
“You know, you don’t have to do this every time I have a bad dream,” I murmured, keeping my voice low so as not to wake up
the kits sleeping soundly close by. “I’ll be fine, Raithe. I’m sure you would like to sleep through the night once in a while
as well.”
I felt his smile above me. “Kahjai don’t sleep, Sparrow, haven’t you heard the stories?” he murmured back. “We are soulless
creatures of the night that feed on death and terror, at least according to some outside legends.”
I couldn’t help but snort at that. The kahjai were feared for a reason, of course.
Raithe was undeniably dangerous, skilled, and very good at what he did, but he was the farthest thing from a soulless creature I had ever known.
The longer we traveled together, the closer we grew, the more obvious that became.
“Besides,” he went on, and his voice had gone very soft, “I want to be here when you need me. Whenever you’re afraid, or hurt,
or worried. I want you to be able to come to me. You’ve had so much put on you, Sparrow; I can’t even imagine the burden you’re
carrying right now. I can only promise that I’ll be here for whatever you have to face, be it nightmares or demon abominations.”
He ran a hand over my head, his fingers sliding through my hair. “You are my mission now. And don’t worry,” he added, the
smile lingering in his voice. “I still remember my promise not to die. You don’t have to face anything alone. I hope you know
that.”
Never trust a kahjai with your heart.
I shoved the queen’s voice back, ignoring the tendrils of doubt that kept trying to curl around my heart. This time, I would
not let them sink in.
I raised my head and met his gaze. His eyes, open and defenseless, glowed a pale silver in the dim light of the hut. Softly,
I touched his cheek, and his hand came up to cover my own, fingers curling around my wrist. I leaned in, and he closed his
eyes as our lips met, igniting a writhing flame in the pit of my stomach.
And then I heard a squeak from the other bundle of blankets and glanced over.
Six pairs of beady black eyes stared back, noses and whiskers twitching, all ears pricked in our direction. The flame in my stomach instantly spread to my face and neck. I pulled back from Raithe and heard his sigh of amusement and disappointment as I did.
“Um . . .” I began, not knowing what to say. They twitched their ears at the sound of my voice. “Sorry to wake you guys up.
We were just—”
A rumble went through the floor, freezing the words in my throat. The kits also froze, looking like sand mice staring down
a hawk, before they scattered.
I gasped as another tremor went through the ground, and alarmed squeaks and chitters began to rise into the air. Leaping upright,
I fled outside with Raithe and found Halek and Kysa in the street. The rock beetles were behind the insect rider, both of
them huffing and tossing their heads in agitation as jair’oa scrambled around them.
As I had in my dream, I looked up—straight up—and terror gripped me with a stone fist.
The glass dome was crawling with beetles. I could see thousands, millions, of the hard-shelled insects scurrying through the
sand, flailing their legs against the glass. The streets of the nest were filled with jair’oa, bouncing over one another in
either excitement or panic, their chittering voices rising into the air.
“Goddess,” I whispered, as the horror squeezing my insides crushed the air from my lungs. “Vahn is here.”
“Not quite,” Kysa muttered, also glaring at the massive swarm over our heads. “But it’s coming. The abomination is close.”
“Human creatures!”
Meeka bounced toward us, long legs propelling him easily through the crowds. “Quickly! Follow Meeka!” he cried, “We go to Rememberers now! Not that way,” he added as I turned in the direction of the glass temple. “Must go to island! Rememberers wait for us at creator king’s shrine. This way!”
And he bounded off toward the underground lake. I tried to follow, but it was nearly impossible keeping up with a single jair’oa
when the streets were swarming with them. I almost instantly lost Meeka in the crowds.
Kysa gave an impatient sigh as we tried to move through the jair’oa swarms. “This is ridiculous,” she muttered, and turned
toward Rhyne, following along behind us with Ratuk. A short whistle brought the rock beetle to her side, and she swung into
the saddle, shooing away the jair’oa already perched on his back. “There he is,” she announced, as Rhyne tossed his head with
a snort. “I can see a bridge to a small island out on the lake. That must be the shrine the creature was talking about. Let’s
go. Fatechaser, you’re with me.”
“Ratuk,” I called, and heaved myself onto his back, settling into the saddle. From this higher vantage point, I could see
what Kysa was talking about. Over the scurrying swarms of jair’oa, I spotted the glimmering expanse of the underground lake.
A small island sat in the middle of the dark waters, a wooden bridge connecting it to the land.
Raithe slipped into the saddle behind me and curled an arm around my waist. “There goes Meeka,” he said, just as I spotted
the tiny, bouncing form making its way across the bridge. “The three Rememberers are on the island as well.”
“Let’s go, Ratuk,” I said, and the rock beetle lurched forward, plowing through the mobs of jair’oa swarming the streets.
At first I was afraid he would crush the tiny creatures beneath his bulk, but the jair’oa sprang aside or darted out of the way, often at the last second, as the rock beetle lumbered through the city.
As the edge of the lake came into view, a chill wrapped around me like damp, grasping fingers. I shivered. The bridge stretched
over the water, looking disturbingly thin, cobbled together with stone and wood and detritus. It creaked horribly under Ratuk’s
weight, bending like a sheet of parchment as he stepped onto the rickety planks. I held my breath, expecting it to snap and
plunge us into the cold, dark waters of the lake. But either luck was with me, or the jair’oa were better builders than I
thought, because the bridge stayed intact even as two boulder-size rock beetles crawled their way over it.
Behind me, Raithe shivered as well. “Look into the water, Sparrow,” he murmured as we reached the midway point of the bridge.
Blinking, I peered over the side into the shadowy depths, and my skin crawled.
The bottom of the lake glowed, the faint white light coming from millions of star grubs. They covered the ground in a writhing,
squirming blanket, crawling over each other in drifts and mounds. I didn’t know how deep the blanket of grubs went, but I
couldn’t see the actual lake bed beneath the unbroken sea of white.
We reached the island in the middle of the lake.
It was small, treeless, and barren, save for a wide, flat pedestal in the very center.
A stone sarcophagus, carved in the image of a man holding a shallow bowl, rested atop the pedestal.
By the glow coming from inside the bowl, I could guess what it was filled with.
The three Rememberers stood in a loose triangle around the sarcophagus, the white one at the head of the pedestal. They weren’t
alone. Several other jair’oa had gathered around the sarcophagus, perhaps a dozen in all. A few of them were furiously consuming
star grubs, shoving the larvae into their jaws one after the other. They all turned as we lumbered up, standing tall on their
hindlegs and pricking their ears.
“Human Fateless.” The white jair’oa beckoned to me. Her eyes, I saw, were no longer red but pure white, matching the rest
of her fur. Her jaws and muzzle glowed with a milky white residue that made my stomach turn when I realized what it was. “Many
star grubs we have consumed,” she rasped, sounding breathless. “Filled ourselves with magic to perform this ritual.” She glanced
back at the gathered jair’oa, looking grim. “It will take much magic and many jair’oa to send you where you need to go. But
we cannot wait any longer. Undead thing has found you.”
A muffled roar echoed overhead. Beyond the glass, the sand swirled, then parted, revealing a massive rotting form sliding
over the dome. It moved like a giant snake, leaving sloughs of skin and flesh smeared over the glass. Curling its neck, it
tilted a blind eye down through the glass, seeming to observe the scurrying creatures below it. Its jaws opened, and the air
trembled as it roared, beetles and worms spilling from its mouth to slide down the dome.
“Sssssparrrow . . .” The voice echoed through the city, raking into my mind like claws. The abomination’s skull dove forward, hitting the dome
and recoiling with a hiss. “You are here. Within the thousands of tiny souls that squirm beneath me. When they are gone, you will have nowhere to run.”
A chilling screech raised the hair on my neck as it sliced a bony paw down the glass, leaving four claw marks glimmering in
the dome.
“Human Fateless, hurry!” The white jair’oa sprang onto the sarcophagus, raising her crystal staff over her head. She gave
a high-pitched squeak, and the rest of the jair’oa scattered to the edges of the island, forming a loose circle around us.
Their eyes glowed white as they sat up on their haunches, tails waving, and stared at us.
“We send you to the other side now,” the white jair’oa said. Heart pounding, I looked around at the others; Kysa and Halek
were still atop Rhyne, who huffed and tossed his head at the circle of jair’oa. Raithe stood beside me with Ratuk at our backs.
I spotted Meeka atop the sarcophagus, perched on the edge of the bowl with his back to us. His paws glowed as he scooped up
armfuls of star grubs and stuffed them into the pouch at his belt. None of the Rememberers or the other jair’oa seemed to
notice.
Magic flickered, then flared all around us, the same energy I’d felt just before Meeka blinked us into the tunnels, only much stronger.
The white jair’oa gazed at me, whiskers trembling, as the magic continued to swell.
“Farewell, human Fateless,” she said, raising her staff over her head.
“Remember us, for we shall not forget you. Remember our kingdom, and may the creator king’s blessing go with you.
” As the abomination roared overhead, she raised her staff higher and slammed the tip down between her feet.
In the split second before the staff hit the sarcophagus and everything went white, I was almost sure I heard the chilling
sound of breaking glass.