Chapter 35
“All right, let’s think this through rationally.”
After what feels like hours of staring at the vale gates but is actually just moments, Li breaks the silence with this optimistic pronouncement. Except he doesn’t see what I’m seeing. And what I see is horrific. Each vale gate is the size of a person and has tendrils that wriggle periodically, as if seeking intruders. Even worse, there’s a feeling emanating from them—a consciousness, almost. These aren’t the mindless vale gates I’ve seen before, the ones that just open haphazardly. These were made with a specific purpose in mind: trapping anyone who dares approach them. And by anyone, I mean my friends and me.
“Rationally?” I whirl to Li, my frustration bubbling up. Then I point at the feelers at the edges of one gate—the tendrils he, undoubtedly, can’t see. “The moment you near any one of these things, they snap you up, and just like that, the Idugu have you forever.”
“But there’s only one layer of gates, yes?” Keita has that thoughtful look in his eyes as he approaches me, only I’m now so frustrated, my reply comes in another growl.
“Yes, Keita, one layer. These things are prisons. They’re waiting for someone to come so they can trap them.”
“Good to know,” he says, abruptly wheeling his gryph around. “I’ll return shortly.”
As I watch, confused, he flies a short distance down a hill, then grabs a jatu who is using a terrified woman as a shield against a small reptilian vale wraith. He gestures, swiftly burning the wraith to a crisp, then points the terrified woman to safety before flying back up the hill with the jatu struggling against his grip.
Once he reaches us, he turns back to me, ignoring the jatu, who is now shouting all sorts of foul words.
“How far away are those gates?” he asks me calmly, all the while keeping a firm grip on the struggling, enraged jatu.
“Just beyond the river,” I say, pointing to the boundary of water that marks the farthest edge of the palace grounds.
“Perfect,” Keita says, tugging his gryph upward. He flies as near to the palace as he can, and then, when I call out a panicked “HALT!”, tosses the man clear across the river. “Off you go!” he grunts, wiping his hands clean.
And then he waits.
The moment the screaming man touches the air on the other side, the gates awaken, tendrils shooting forward. Within seconds, the man’s screams have turned to ugly, gutteral sounds as at least three or four gates snap him into quarters, their tendrils swallowing as much of him as they can before they disappear, leaving only open air in their wake.
“Brutal,” Adwapa whispers.
I turn to Keita, who is now returning from the river, his expression as unruffled as ever. “Well?” he asks, nodding at the vale gates. “Any of them gone? You did say they were prisons. Single-use, I imagine.”
I nod as I rush over to kiss him. “Oh, Keita, you’re a genius! At least three of them are gone!”
He shrugs modestly. “An education in savagery does have its benefits.” He glances back at the space just beyond the river. “So, was it enough for a path?”
I look at the air. Three gates may have disappeared, but that’s barely enough space for Belcalis, the smallest-statured among us, to slip through. “Perhaps three or more people,” I reply after some thought.
Before I even finish speaking, Britta and Belcalis are darting off, as are Li and Kweku.
“I’m getting the most people!” Li excitedly declares, heading toward the most brutal combatants in the area: the ones who use innocents as shields.
Britta turns back to wave at us. “Just be sure to tell us if we’re near any gates!” she shouts as the others look on in exasperation at her excitement.
The twins, Acalan, Katya, and Rian have no interest in this game, that much is evident.
Still, Britta and the others will make a path in no time, and it’s a relief. The space between the gates is already closing again, those tendrils stretching to repair the hole left behind. Which, of course, explains why the Idugu are so tired, they can’t move now: they not only have to communicate with their armies, but they also have to repair whatever traps they’ve littered around the palace. I’m certain they have much more than just these gates lying in wait for us.
“Hurry!” I call to my friends. “The path we already cleared is closing.”
“Comin’!” Britta says, excitedly riding back with a struggling deathshriek in hand.
It takes only a few minutes for the path through the gates to be cleared to my satisfaction, and the moment it is, I urge my friends onward. “Move, move!” I shout. “We don’t know how long we have before the Idugu realize we weren’t actually captured by the gates.”
“Not to mention the Gilded Ones.” I turn as Belcalis adds this under her voice to me: “If all those vales in the city are theirs, it won’t be long before they’re powerful enough to breach this place.”
The thought is enough to spur my panic. “Go, go, GO!” I urge, slipping through the opening, my friends behind me.
Katya and Rian are the very last to enter, and Rian has to be the luckiest soul I ever met, because he manages to scrape through just moments before the nearest tendril comes lashing out. Just like that, we’re on the palace grounds, a different world from the one across the river.
When my friends and I were still at the Warthu Bera, we visited Oyomo’s Eye at Emperor Gezo’s behest. At the time, I thought the imperial palace was the grandest place I’d ever seen, its halls awash with gold and light, its gardens lush and verdant, all sorts of exotic trees and animals flourishing in luxurious abandon.
That was two years ago.
Now those vibrant gardens are graveyards—the lush green grass a decayed brown, the delicate fruit trees withered stems, and the beautiful animals eerie white skeletons in the dirt. I shudder as I glimpse what appear to be the skeletons of a family of nuk-nuks, huddled together in their last moments. Somehow, the sight unnerves me even more than the vale gates did.
“What happened here?” Katya asks, eyes wide.
Kweku shakes his head mournfully at her. “Sacrifice, that’s what it always is.”
The entrance to the palace is somehow even worse than the gardens, the air a strange, slithering cold that chills me all the way down to my bones. And I haven’t even walked through the door yet.
Where are all the people I saw when I was here last night with the Being? Where are all the priests, the guards—where is everyone? Foreboding pricks me when I think of what could have happened to them, how the Idugu could have powered the gates we just left in our wake.
“It’s so strange,” Britta says as she slides off her gryph and glances around. “It’s like everything is dead here—even the wind.”
“Divine trickery, no doubt,” Acalan mutters, his lips a grim line.
I nod in commiseration, sinking back into the combat state. “Everyone keep your eyes open. There’ll be more traps.”
Just like the gardens outside, the hallways are empty when we walk through them. They look exactly as they did the previous night, the walls stripped of their decorations, the floor missing its valuable tiles. Worst of all is the sound—or, rather, the lack of it. When my friends and I came here during our time at the Warthu Bera, the palace was filled with noise, courtiers scurrying to and fro, the jatu patrolling, the air echoing with the sound of their footsteps. Now there’s nothing—merely a desolate, echoing emptiness.
“This is a trap,” Britta says nervously, blue eyes scanning our surroundings. “I can feel it in me bones.”
“Well, hopefully your bones will inform us exactly what the nature of the trap is,” Belcalis says archly, the way she always does when stressed.
“Keep going,” I say, moving steadfastly onward. “My kelai is down that way.” I can feel it now—have felt it since the moment I walked through the hole in the gates.
The thought fills me with nerves.
I force myself to focus on the path ahead of me, each footstep a death knell leading to the executioner’s final blow. This is it, the moment I take my kelai or die in the attempt. Either way, my journey with my friends ends here. As I inhale, tears suddenly stinging my eyes, Britta stops and glances at me. “Ye all right, Deka?” she whispers.
I just blink at her, my vision blurred. “I—I—” I begin, but I stop when a calming hand intertwines with mine.
“Yer all right,” Britta says gently. “I’m here with ye.”
“Me too.” These words come from Keita, who takes my other hand.
And together, both of them, the pillars of my life, walk me slowly and surely to my destiny.
It’s almost a shock that we encounter no more traps as we descend to the lower levels of Oyomo’s Eye, which are every bit as cold and dark as the rest of the palace. I keep glancing about, trying to see if a vale wraith or another such monster will emerge, but nothing else appears. There’s only that ominous cold and that chilling silence. It’s so constant that, for just a moment, I’m almost lulled into complacency.
Then we turn the corner and see the group of jatu and Forsworn deathshrieks waiting there in gleaming red armor, all of them surrounding a heavily armored leader whose milky-white eyes I recognize even before I feel the oiliness that pours off him in waves.
“Afternoon greetings, Deka,” the Idugu say, although I’m not certain if it’s all or one of them that’s currently inhabiting the massive jatu.
“Idugu,” I reply, annoyed.
Of course the gods would be here, in the hall outside the chamber. Of course they’d be waiting while I made my way here, doing everything I could to avoid their attention. I only wonder why they didn’t wait until I was in the chamber itself, where I would have less of a chance to escape.
“Okot,” the god corrects, tapping his atika against his thigh. “Only Okot.”
“Your brothers aren’t here?” I ask the question carefully as I unsheathe my atikas, preparing for the conflict ahead.
“My brothers are busy maintaining the vales and leading our armies. They left me here to sound the alarm once you arrived.”
“And will you?”
The last time I saw Okot, he was intent on betraying his brothers and taking my power for himself. That certainly would not have changed since I last saw him.
“No,” Okot says plainly.
And then he moves.
All I see is a flash, and then the jatu and deathshrieks around Okot have all been beheaded, blood and gold spurting from their now fully severed necks. I swiftly lift up my atikas, ready to engage, but to my shock, Okot steps to the side, gesturing for me to continue on.
“Get into the chamber,” he urges. “Hurry, Deka. My brothers will emerge here soon.” Even as he says this, I feel it, the pressure in the air. The pressure of the gods coalescing into material form.
“GO NOW!” he shouts, gesturing.
My friends and I fly to the other end of the hall, where the chamber door lies open, as if waiting for us to go in.
“Wait, yer helping us?” This disbelieving query comes from Britta, who frowns as she rises, shock visible in her eyes.
Okot doesn’t reply as he doubles over. He’s resisting the pressure, resisting the other gods trying, even now, to emerge in the hallway. “My brothers are almost here,” he grits out. “If you can get into the chamber, you will be safe from them. I’ve placed an arcane object inside—one that prevents doors. It’ll keep them from storming in, as will the divine covenants placed upon the chamber. GO!” he roars again, those white eyes flashing, and once more I feel it, the pressure as the air reacts to his will.
My friends run into the chamber, startled by it, but I glance at Okot one last time, still at a loss. “Why?” I ask, stunned. “Why help me?”
By now the god is on his knees, his body buckling from the pressure of his brothers, whose roars of anger shake the hallway as they attempt to emerge. But he holds firm, looks up at me, his expression regretful. “Anok,” he whispers. “She came to me. After all these centuries, she came back. Then she knelt before me in apology and showed me the truth of what she had become. What I had become.”
He shakes his head, that regret seeming to fill his entire being now. “All those centuries of anger. Of hatred. I had forgotten we used to be one. One person. One god. But then she reminded me. Showed me the truth: both our pantheons are corrupted beyond saving…and we are doing the same to this realm. Anok and I, we choose to return to the Great Circle. Together. But only you can make that happen.”
As I gape at Okot, the god who has seemed, for all these past months, my greatest adversary, he looks up at me again, determination in his eyes. “Reclaim what is yours, Deka. Become a god once more, and then sing the song of our pantheons’ unmaking before we destroy Otera and the rest of the world with it.”