CHAPTER 46
Caer Halen
Now
The fire mouse was sitting in Avelyn’s hands, washing its face and smoking. He felt now like he’d felt then with Father Li, as though it had all happened to someone else.
Jericho had gone tight. “What has that to do with joining the Church?”
“It was evil, what happened. I caused it, it was my fault, but it . . .” He shrugged slightly.
It was long ago enough now that there was no horror left in it.
It was just—boring, nearly. Some wearisome thing that he could have bloody done without but that he hadn’t the energy to be angry about anymore.
It was just what happened when an unimaginative devil on the edge of a marsh threw its toys out of the pram.
“An obnoxious kid shouldn’t be punished by the annihilation of a whole clan.
And then Father Li told me about a god who forgives you, and that was the kindest thing I’d ever heard. ”
Jericho said nothing. Between them, the fire mouse faded and became only embers and ash. Avelyn looked up in time to see the firelight glint too much in Jericho’s eyes, but then Jericho turned over and away from him.
Shocked, Avelyn sat up and winced when he surfaced from Jericho’s dark aura and the salt light burst across his vision again. The room was blinding. He pressed his hand over his eyes, trying to work out what to say and a way to ask what the matter was, when an insane artificial joy burst over him.
“Fuck, it’s outside,” he managed, already fighting the pull towards the door.
He should open it. Everything would be better if he just opened it, he would feel so much better, what was the use of all this sorrow when outside was . . .
He heard himself say it this time.
Gaudezhte *khiram.
This time, he could almost think a way around it, just enough for a tiny detached part of him to rage to know what the fuck that was, what did it mean, why everyone had said it, why he kept saying it—
Jericho stood up suddenly. It was faster than Avelyn had ever seen him move before, and smoother, soldier-swift. As he crossed the room, he changed.
His clothes, the Hreod jumper and Heaven-and-Hell boots, shifted and warped. Instead there was a cloak, armour, and somehow there was a spear in his hand, and then he wrenched open the door.
It was only for a split second that the thing on the other side was a ball of roiling salt light flickering through too many shapes to understand.
All at once it was something more like a person.
Avelyn caught the coil of a dark cloak, an alarmed almost-human face, but then Jericho had smacked it flat on its back, spear point at its throat, and he was talking, but the words weren’t English.
They sounded ancient and maddeningly familiar at once, there were clicks, and moments where his voice split into eerie harmonies, almost-song, but then it was over and the thing on the ground was scrambling away, and Jericho slammed the door again.
He thumped his head against it, resting his hands on the surface.
Silver crept out from his fingertips, sealing the door, then the whole wall, thick, mirror-polished.
Avelyn sat perfectly still. Every fibre of him was frozen, certain he was locked in a room now with a thing far more dangerous than whatever had stalked him in the Hringen forest.
“It means,” Jericho said, turning around, “Rejoice, for we have returned.”