15. SIN
SIN
JACEN
Jacen ventured into the White Cathedral’s archives in the dead of night.
From the airy upper levels, he ventured down, through a locked door off-limits to all but ordained priests and the High Lord.
Inside lay an ancient funicular system—a miniature version of the vast elevators that carried workers, goods, and equipment to the deepriver docks.
Like the dock elevators, the funicular never stopped moving, driven by some arcane mechanism as innate to Zivora as the floating polyhedra.
The track stabbed deep into the ground at an incline so sharp, Jacen avoided the view.
It descended at a ponderous pace, creaking and groaning down to where the shadows pooled and the air grew thick and muffled.
There lay the Church’s most restricted rooms: pitch-dark prison cells, secret archives, and the white room of which Ged had spoken.
Jacen paused as he passed it. Broad and smooth, adorned with two concentric silver circles, the door shimmered like pearl. Energy pulsed from beyond—a low, sick sensation as though the chamber had a heartbeat.
He picked at the dressing on his forearm, tugging his sleeve down over it as he resumed walking.
Sobriety threatened at the edges of his consciousness, bringing with it a creeping dread.
The muffled echoes of his footsteps were far too loud, as if the walls themselves knew he did not belong.
He was lost in the dark, unsuspecting fingers probing for purchase, brushing ever closer to knowledge he was not meant to have.
He froze in his tracks when he sensed another presence. Too late to avoid it. All he could do was brace himself before Brother Lev rounded the corner.
“Kheris,” said the Chief Exorcist. “What brings you down here so late?”
Jacen had meant to sneak in and pick the lock, but an alibi might serve him better. “Actually, I’m glad to see you.” He made himself add, “Your Eminence.”
His friendly tone might have been a touch suspicious, because Lev seemed taken aback.
“I was hoping you might let me into the restricted archive,” Jacen said. Might as well be forthright about it. “I want to have a look at Father Tamaran’s rite of exorcism. I’ve found myself rusty on the details.”
Lev raised his eyebrows. “You think that might be remedied by reading the original text?”
Jacen grimaced, projecting embarrassment as sloppily as he dared. “My novitiate and I had a theological disagreement. Suffice it to say she thinks she knows better than me, and I’d like to prove otherwise.”
“You want me to let you into the restricted archive to settle a bet with your apprentice,” Lev said, incredulous.
“What’s the point of having a friend on the Council, if not the benefits?” With the word friend, Jacen nudged Lev’s mind. Made him believe it, if only for a moment.
Just the barest, subtlest suggestion in the other man’s subconscious.
You like me. You trust me. You’re in high spirits and happy to do me a favor.
It was not compulsion; a talented novitiate could have done it, but to use this power on a fellow priest was a grave transgression.
Jacen shoved the guilt down, deep inside himself with all the rest. One more sin on his ledger.
“Come on,” he said, on the surface nothing but amiably forgetful. Nonthreatening. Drunk. It wasn’t as if Lev ever bothered to remember Jacen was Sixth Tier to his paltry Fourth. “A little favor, from Akkani’s new protege to her old one. Let me in, Your Eminence.”
The flattery tipped it over the edge. To Jacen’s relief, Lev grinned. He beckoned Jacen along the hall to the archives. He pulled out his keyring with a flourish and unlocked the door. “Just don’t linger too long.”
The archive was compact and fastidiously kept, not a speck of dust to be found. The original White Codex, the writings of Holy Father Andel Tamaran, sat on a pedestal at the center of several palestone bookshelves.
Jacen thanked Lev effusively, but instead of leaving, the Chief Exorcist leaned in, conspiratorial. “How is that novitiate of yours? I’d hoped to take her on myself.”
“Rest assured,” Jacen said, “I’ll train her well.”
“You won’t.” Lev waved a hand. “She’ll make a piss-poor priest. She’s always been an odd one, and she was never the same after what happened to her little friend.” He licked his lips. “But she’d have been nice to have around nonetheless.”
Cold flooded Jacen’s chest, condensed like a block of ice under his ribs. Lev slapped him on the back and laughed. “Relax, Brother. We’re friends.” He sauntered off, whistling a merry tune.
Though Jacen’s legs had gone weak, he fought through it and shut the door. He would do well not to stall.
He started with the tome he’d told Lev he came for—Father Tamaran’s original Rite of Exorcism. Where better to learn the secrets of demons? The red leather-bound volume was thicker than the copy Jacen had been issued. When he opened it, he went still.
Tamaran’s words on each page faced a wall of heavily annotated Zal script. This was not an original at all, but a translation. Jacen could parse the jedaat just well enough to realize the demon priests must have invented the rite.
The Church’s ancient enemies—and their earliest inspiration.
Jacen found several pages of sigils for various demons, some varieties which he had encountered, and others he had not.
The Zal had a three-category classification system, differentiating between vermin of the Source and the demons that granted their hosts power.
The third category had not been translated from the jedaat.
It proved frustratingly difficult to decipher.
Large portions were censored, entire pages missing or drenched in black ink, but he recognized the word demon beside a flourish he understood to mean lord or above.
Archdemon?
There were only a handful of sigils in this category. Then, a sketch of a human eye, its sclera filled in with black. At the very end, on a page by itself, an inverted triangular spiral had been etched in blood-red ink. He’d seen that symbol before, but where?
Jacen racked his memory until it returned to him: a tattered banner on an adobe wall, where a few days earlier, he and his colleagues had exorcised a child.
He’d assumed it to be a symbol of one of the Zal cities, but now he wondered whether it might be religious iconography.
He recalled the man’s reluctance to let them in, the quiet prayers his wife had murmured.
A chill crept up Jacen’s spine. But he would need to find someone more familiar with the jedaat. Before he could think twice about it, he tore the pages loose and crammed them into his robes.
He ought to have left then. It wasn’t wise to push his luck, not there, not now. But his gaze snagged on another massive leather-bound tome: the names and origins of every priest, acolyte, and novitiate to serve the Church.
He had to know.
He hauled the book off the shelf, onto a table, and opened it to the first blank page.
From there, he worked his way back until he found Nines’ cohort.
Acolyte Ninety-Nine, formerly known as Syl Inissa, hailed from the habitable zone of Kasoa, deep in the Fractured Peninsula.
She was listed, to Jacen’s surprise, as Tier 6.
Her lost friend, Ninety-Five, had once been called Daru.
Jacen flipped further back, all the way to his own cohort.
92—Female, Dalish, Rostall—Age 7—Tier 4—Shaileen Parranth—DECEASED
114—Male, Zal, Zivora—Age 6—Tier 5—Ylan Kirsaan—DECEASED
103—Female, Zal, Zivora—Age 6—Tier 4—Leda Therak—DECEASED
96—Female, Ithirian, Arkhanad—Age 5—Tier 4—Wen Bayan—HARVESTED
97—Male, Telu, Zivora—Age 6—Tier 4—Ramun Vinizara—ORDAINED brOTHER TAORO
109—Female, Telu, Zivora—Age 5—Tier 5—Hesaya Tersero—ORDAINED SISTER JINAAN
Though only Hesaya and Taoro remained, Jacen remembered each of the others.
One-Fourteen, who had a stroke the first time he faced a demon and never regained consciousness.
The attending exorcist had smothered him with a pillow.
Ninety-Two, who hanged herself when she was ten.
Taoro had found her and screamed loud enough to wake the rest of them.
Ninety-Six, who was given to the Harvest when she failed to meet the Church’s standards.
Ten-Three, who’d fled into the desert before she could suffer the same fate.
A scavenger had found her half-devoured corpse a few days later.
It was odd to see them listed there with names, not just the numbers by which Jacen had known them. Wetness pricked his eyes. He blinked it away.
And then, there he was:
99—Male, Zal, Lun—Age 6—Tier 6—Jacen—ORDAINED brOTHER KHERIS
No original surname was listed for him, only Jacen. And beside his name, those two words. Zal. Lun.
He had heard tell of Lun, less a city than a trading post, located in the habitable zone of the Scar’s northern foothills.
He had heard of trees with leaves like flames, kirikil with multicolored shells, and a vast, golden lake where the river Esh had its source.
But he had no memory of it. Only the snowy version of Alendal that Ogden told him did not exist.
If Jacen was Zal, why didn’t he look it? His coloring was all wrong, and his eyes . . .
The realization hit him like a fist to the gut. He didn’t know. He had been unusually young when his eyes turned, and had no recollection of what their original color had been.
He clutched the open book as though it had taken something from him and, if he stared at it long enough, it might give it back. Helpless anger rooted him in place, gods knew for how long, until he sensed someone outside the archive.
He slammed the book shut. The door opened.
If it had been Brother Lev again, or anyone else, Jacen could have handled it. But he knew as soon as he recognized the presence that he was in the deepest trouble of his life. A sick throb of panic speared his chest.