Chapter Fifteen #2
I hold my breath as we step through.
His mouth drops when we emerge safely on the other side.
As before, time dissipates all too quickly in the Abyssal.
It’s like a living garden, the space ever growing, expanding, the trees shifting and changing, the river gliding past with the fervor of a tide-swept sea.
Petals whisk about, dancing around us in a powerful breeze that ruffles the pages of the codices I dig through.
Being that the Abyssal is spread over multiple tiers and infuriatingly out of order, we still make very little progress—even with two of us searching. This place was not meant for visitors. Eventually, Sundar decides to go farther in, past another branch of the river.
Half an hour later, I hear him squeak.
“I’ve just found my brother’s book!”
I cross the bridge. Sundar has pulled several codices from their place, fanning them out across the stone floor. I drop to my knees and begin to sort.
“Here,” he says. “I’ve found two of them. And look! Mantrin’s is still being written as we speak, if the list of his sins is any indication…” He holds one out, and to my surprise, red ink crawls along parchment in a new line, something about slandering a Fate. Just like I’d seen my first day.
He flips to a former page. “Rat bastard. I always knew he stole my collection of thimbles.”
“Thimbles?”
“I like to sew. He liked to use them as little hats on his pottery figurines.”
An unexpected laugh pipes out of me, but then I notice his far-off expression. I place my hand atop his. “I am sorry, Sundar.”
“It’s strange,” he says. “I miss them, and yet it’s as if my grief is wrapped in fog. I don’t feel the connection to it the way I should, and I think that’s the worst part. Fates, I want to grieve for myself, too, but I can’t so much as muster a tear. It is unsettling, to say the least.
“We had a saying in Razam,” he continues.
“A true bond never breaks. Not by sickness or by sword, and not even when death cleaves its axe. My mother made us recite that every time one of us got in a fight. And souls did we fight a lot.” With a soft laugh, he closes Mantrin’s codex, then runs a finger over the spine before grabbing for another. “Arjuna’s.”
Arjuna’s codex is at least ten inches thick and deep purple, its spine foiled with the spokes of a waving sun and an archer’s bow.
“I don’t understand. Why aren’t the rest of your brothers here? Or your mother? Yours, even?”
“Mantrin and Arjuna are related by blood,” Sundar says.
“Bloodline,” I whisper. “Of course.” It isn’t so much family as it is direct relations, though often the two coincide.
It must be why some branch off, rise up into tiers. Where the bloodline splits.
“If only these could help us somehow,” I say on a sigh.
“Won’t they? Look,” he says, grinning. Arjuna’s and Mantrin’s codices radiate a faint glow. “The bond. This must be because their souls are connected.”
A modicum of hope lights within me, threatening to fizzle. “Is it limited to bloodline?”
“We will know soon. Arjuna is adopted, as are the rest of us. We are not related by blood.”
Right. I’d forgotten that. “Where did she find you all? I’ve always wondered.”
“In Razam,” he says, “femininity is of the most value, and not because of childbirth, for many either cannot or choose not to conceive.
It has nothing to do with how your body appears, in fact.
But our understanding of the Fates has always led us to believe that a feminine nature is inherently the more sensitive to the divine, said to attract blessings and wisdom from the Fates as well as repel misfortune.
They are favored when it comes to adoption.
Everyone wants a child that might bring favor.
“My mother only believed that to an extent, and it was quite simple. The orphanages were overrun near the palace. She went there and asked for the children who had been there the longest. The most undesirable. The ones who misbehaved, lashed out, and so on. She adopted me when I was eleven. Mantrin, at eight. The rest at similar ages. Her love,” he says, pulling the codices close to his chest, “healed us all. And one day we will do the same. We will marry. Our spouses will rule in equal portion with us on the council. And whether we have children or not, every one of us will continue her legacy and adopt.” At that, he frowns.
“Well, they will, I suppose. I won’t be there. ”
Maybe there’s a way we can save you, too, I do not say, squeezing his arm despite knowing I can’t promise it. But Anton found a way to bring me back, despite the cost.
“You know,” Sundar says. “Being here, holding their codices—it’s the closest I’ve felt to them yet.”
“I wonder if that’s why Moranya keeps this place sealed off,” I say. “If reading the codices of those you once loved reestablished the bond you had in life, the echelons would implode. Souls would fight to get back to one another. This is the bond from your saying.”
His head pops up. “If that’s true, it seems to reason that if you had my codex, Vasalie, you could merely run it along each shelf and see which one glows in order to find yours or Anton’s. In fact, these might work—at least to find mine or yours, if not his. It would save time, no?”
It would by a lot. My heart races, but…“Even if I find one, it would be hundreds, if not thousands, of pages to even see the Gathering,” I say, speaking aloud the fear that has slowly crept in. “And the curse will prevent me from telling him why he should read that much to begin with.”
“You’ll find a way,” he says encouragingly. “I know you will. Use your womanly wiles against him, if you must.”
“I’ll manage it somehow,” I say, ignoring that last part.
“Tie him to a chair. He’ll love that.” When I roll my eyes, he shrugs. “I’m only half kidding.”
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.”
As I rise, a blast of dizziness sends me back down again, forcing me to wait until it passes. Sighing, I massage my ankle. “We must be nearing nightfall. I’ll need to dance for him again.”
“I will come with you,” Sundar says, and when I give him a look, he says, “I’ll stay out of sight.”
I suppose having a familiar face there, a friend, would help. Someone to focus on rather than Anton.