13. DESCENT #2
Ysira had long since learned to turn a blind eye to Zivora’s grim reality so long as she carved out a decent enough life for herself and the people she owed.
She had insisted there was no shame in what she’d chosen, because it had been no choice at all.
She was destined to live out her days in hiding from the Church lest they capture her and devise ways to punish her—for whatever unspeakable eternity she could endure.
She had convinced herself she’d lost her chance at anything greater.
Hadn’t she?
She was so much stronger than she’d had any reason to believe.
And Neri . . .
He could change everything. This boy might become the epicenter of a conflict that could break—and remake—their entire world.
It did not seem just, nor particularly wise, to put the future of millions in the hands of a child. But how could anyone condemn them for his sake?
After a long silence, Neri asked, “What do you think I should do?” Ysira swallowed hard. “I want you to be safe.”
Was that the most selfish thing she’d ever said? The deluge of overlapping, contradicting considerations made her head spin. There were so many unknowns. But she knew one thing above all else, so much that she said it aloud:
“I don’t trust any plan of Ged’s.” She shook her head. “If you want this demon out, there are exorcists in the Shrouded City. If they won’t help, we’ll find Jacen.”
Neri frowned. “That priest who’s drunk all the time?” Ysira winced. “He’s better than he seems.”
As knight candidates, Ysira and her classmates had all been made aware of Jacen’s abilities. A Sixth Tier telepath had little need for a sword. Only Seth was ever bold—or stupid—enough to provoke him. Ysira’s lips twitched at the memories.
Whether any exorcist she’d ever heard of could stand up to this sort of demon remained to be seen. But if such an exorcist existed, it would be Jacen Kheris.
“Did you know my father, too?” Neri asked. She’d said too much. “We’ve met.”
“I don’t trust him, either.” Neri’s voice was very small. “I feel so stupid.”
“You’re not stupid,” said Ysira. He was eleven. She clenched her fists, nails biting into her palms, glaring into the fire until it dried out her eyes. If she ever saw Ged again, she swore to herself she would kill him.
Then Neri blurted, “Is Uncle Seth my real father?”
Ysira looked up at him. He pressed, “Is that why he sent you? Because he—because he’s the one who actually—” He couldn’t finish. It made Ysira’s heart clench.
She shook her head several times. “No.” She finally said it: “I’m so sorry.”
The tears fell. Neri wiped them away, ashamed, but a sob escaped him, and he gave up.
He hugged his shoulders, eyes squeezed shut as his body quaked and his breath came in gasps and wheezes.
Ysira sat frozen, telling herself she was giving him space.
She’d known what to do when the Osuun attacked and even when his heart stopped. But not now. Not for this.
For the briefest of moments, she considered telling him the truth of her identity. But she would not impose that on him, not now and maybe not ever.
Did she make this choice for his benefit or her own? Did he deserve to know? Or was he still, after all these years, better off without her?
Ysira let Neri cry himself to sleep, then took off her outer robe and folded it into a pillow. She lifted his head to slip it underneath, careful not to wake him.
As the fire burned down to embers, Ysira sat in near-total darkness, unable to sleep. Beyond the drip of water in the cave, delicate as the patter of strange footsteps, a new sound echoed from the depths.
No, not quite a sound. And maybe it had been there all along, but she had finally been still long enough to hear it.
It wasn’t the red thing—probably not. She assumed that had gone silent after it crawled inside Neri.
But it tugged at the periphery of her senses in a similar way, as compelling as gravity.
Her passenger writhed around her brainstem, agitated. It grew to a point where she couldn’t stand it. She jolted to her feet, pulse pounding, hand clamped around the base of her skull.
“We’ll go look,” she muttered. “If only to shut you up.”
She pulled a skein of tough cactus-fiber thread from her belt and anchored it around a boulder on the riverbank.
She readied a new torch but hesitated over Neri’s sleeping form.
The creatures of the canyon avoided him.
He should be safe there. Besides, she needed to ensure whatever she sensed did not pose them a greater danger.
Ysira’s passenger guided her along the river, like an insistent kirikil yanking at the reins. She unspooled her skein as she went, marking rocks when she ran out.
It did not often occur to her to be claustrophobic, but she’d also rarely ventured so deep.
How many tons of rock lay overhead, held up by—what, even?
She didn’t trust it. Where the way grew narrow, the cave seemed to taunt her, molding itself just large enough for her to pass.
The inky blackness pressed up against every nook and curve of her, a hungry thing threatening to dissolve and digest.
Ysira reached a series of switchbacks, only to realize they were stairs—unthinkably ancient, hewn out of the rock, leading down to a looming triangular door.
She could not read the jedaat glyphs on its facade.
So deep under Zal Fel, though, this could only be the holiest of temples, which must exist in total darkness.
Light glimmered beyond the door.
She snuffed out her torch. The very fact that she’d brought it so near there bordered on sacrilege. And this light—even to Ysira, who cared little for tradition—this was obscenity. The closer she moved, the brighter it grew, throwing the red stone walls into garish relief.
She was so fixated on it, she forgot to watch her step. She stumbled over a cable.
A cable? Ysira squinted down at the thick coil of unfamiliar material. It reminded her of the mechanisms supporting the dock elevators in Zivora. Slow and cautious, she palmed a knife and pressed forward.
She came upon a vast circular space illuminated by cylindrical apparatuses arrayed between titanic columns. Those cables were threaded throughout it all, connected to larger, stranger pieces of machinery that she could not begin to identify.
In the center of the space was a hole in reality.
Trying to focus on it made Ysira’s head hurt. A space where the air became liquid, colors blurring together and shimmering like oil. Raw energy—there was no other way to describe it—pulsed off it in waves. Her skin prickled, electrified, and her bones vibrated.
This was the sound she had heard—or, rather, that her passenger had heard. Almost without realizing it, she’d wandered very close. The demon squirmed, bizarrely, as though satisfied.
She’d heard tell of such things but never imagined she would see one for herself: a Gate.
On instinct, she reached out a hand to the beckoning void.
She had the sense of leaning over a precipice into a liquid darkness, into a dimension where thought and physical form were one and the same.
The Source. This far realm of stardust and shadows, where demons dwelled.
Some slumbered, some sang, others hungrily beckoned.
Time ceased to exist. All of creation lay at her fingertips and she could reach out, touch it, become it—
Her passenger seemed to grow much larger.
As her constituent parts began to drift, her essence unraveling, her demon’s form changed and spread.
It flowed through the space between her flesh, blood, and bones.
It was as if she inhabited it and not the other way around.
In the Source, it was home. There, it would protect her and keep her whole.
Ysira stepped back, heart pounding. Reality slipped sluggishly back into focus.
“Stop right there!”
A man’s voice, strangely distorted. Ysira whirled, shielded her eyes from the light. Someone was running toward her, but their footsteps faltered. Another voice joined the first, shouting. Angry with each other or with her? Or—was that fear?
Two of them approached. They wore big, blocky suits of armor and helmets that obscured their features. They moved cautiously, staying close to the enormous lights, as though they could not see in the dark at all.
There was something familiar about them, less a conscious memory than an instinct, buried in Ysira like a splinter. These people did not belong. Less, even, than the Osuun who painted the ruins in blood. They did not belong in this temple, nor in this canyon, nor anywhere near her.
Run, Ysira’s intuition screamed, but one of the strangers pointed something at her. Another device she didn’t recognize.
A dense ball of electricity hit her in the chest. With a cry, more stunned than pained, she sank to one knee. She dropped her weapon and skein of thread. Her passenger spasmed. The sensation faded.
She tried to stand and it hit her twice more, two jolts to the heart in quick succession. Between the light, her passenger’s odd behavior, and the hole in the universe, she was too disoriented to make sense of it. Her vision blurred.
“Don’t move!”
Something struck her in the back, hard enough to knock her over. Her jaw cracked against the stone. She thought, half-lucid, mind spiraling wildly, No please no not again—
“Take her upstairs,” someone said. “Call a transport to the station.
They’re going to want to hear about this.”
This time, they hit her in the head. The world went black.