I looked over at her, eyes wide. “What?”
Her chuckle turned nasty. “He’d been one of my students. Never liked him. It was just after Vol Karoth killed the rest of the Eight. After I made my breakthrough, Cherthog turned up on my doorstep with this little blue rock, about this big.” She held thumb and forefinger apart to demonstrate. “The Stone of Shackles. And that was that.” She held up the bear cub with her other arm. “Isn’t that right? Who’s been a bad boy? Was it you? Yes, it was you!”
She saw me staring at the cub, must have seen the question in my eyes. “You know you can’t be too specific with a gaesh command or you’ll kill the person, and if you’re too vague, you leave loopholes. Cherthog wanted to be hidden from the Quuros. And Suless did that for him, didn’t she?” The old crone waved a hand. “To Hell with them all. None of them appreciate me.8 Kaen’s no better than Cherthog. He’d make himself a god if he thought he could.”
“Kaen hates the gods. He thinks it’s his destiny to find Urthaenriel and kill the Eight Immortals with it, remember?”
She continued weaving her words across the wall’s clear surface. “Because he thinks they aren’t doing their job. Which is a fine way of saying he’d do a better job. When people pull down their idols, they never hesitate to put themselves on those same pedestals.”
I started to feel dizzy, looking at the unfurling words … “What—what are you doing?”
No cackle this time, but a deep, throaty chuckle, still animal, still hyena-like. She smiled at me like I was a cherished niece. Her remaining brown cat’s eye flashed pale ice blue. “Kaen told me to help you, my dear. It was a little vague … There was a prophecy about four fathers, you know. You might have heard it. Maybe you haven’t. But there’s another one about four mothers. A bit of trap, that. Because they don’t mean a mother for each of you cute little Hellwarriors, no. Four mothers just for you.” She patted her bosom. “I’m the fourth.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” I said. My protest wasn’t as strong as I would have liked.
“Ah, don’t worry, little lion. I am going to help you. I’m going to give you so much help you won’t be able to stand it.”
The script on the windows rearranged itself, transformed, and suddenly I could read it.
But it wasn’t Guarem.9 The words hadn’t changed, only my own perception.
Also, I don’t remember what I read. I know I read … something.
Then the world went black, and this time—
This time I didn’t wake up in the Afterlife at all.
* * *
The world looked white, and the sky looked bright blue. Not the sky’s normal teal color but Kazivar pottery glaze or House D’Mon blue.
I stood at the crystal pyramid’s summit in the mountains, which glowed so brightly from reflected sunlight I couldn’t look down without blinding myself. Skulls edged the top of the truncated pyramid, their eyes glowing with ghostly blue light. The air smelled of glacial ice and pine and, faintly, fresh blood and desiccated flesh.
I turned around and saw Suless.
She was still an old woman; I knew she could’ve been young if she’d wanted. I knew too that we existed in a place of her own invention, and she could’ve taken on any appearance. Her hair was white fur and her skin made the snow seem dark. She dressed in a style unfamiliar to me, archaic and alien. Yet she still looked like an old woman, wrinkled and sagging, her eyes the same ice blue as the white hyenas who sat at her feet. The hyenas paid no attention to me, more interested in gnawing on skulls.
“This world is controlled by power and will,” she said in a voice both majestic and deep. The hyenas perked up and looked at me for the first time, then went back to gazing at their queen.
“Wyrga—” I stopped myself. “Suless. Whatever you’re doing—”
“Child.” She rose from her crystal-and-diamond throne. As she did, I realized the throne sat off center. There had been a second throne up on this plateau once, now broken or removed—Cherthog’s, I assumed. “You’re on a quest, and it is a quest you cannot complete without help. If you will be so stubborn as to refuse the aid of your other mothers, then I’ll force my help upon you.”
I breathed deeply, ignored the way the cold air lanced through my lungs like knives. “I’m tired of being a piece in other people’s games.”
She walked over to me. Unnervingly, I stood taller than she did. Her pale blue cat eyes met mine. “So am I. But I watch and wait, and I act a bit touched in the head.” She smiled. “It’s not always an act, I admit. But they underestimate me. Oh, they’ve always underestimated us, have they not? We have behaved for so long. Played the good servants, the obedient slaves. It wins us no prizes, but they do think we’re beaten. Sooner or later, they let down their guard.” She reached out and grasped my hand. “Let’s see what we can do about that, shall we? Not long now, before all slaves are freed.”
“The prophecies?”
“Oh yes. Let’s be ready, for we’ll have little warning when the time comes.” And before I could dodge or pull my hand from her grasp, she grabbed my arm, drew me to her, and set her thumb against the center of my forehead.
My vision shifted, and I saw the universe differently. Suless didn’t stop there, though. I felt her slip into my mind, silken and cold and so very painful as she began to change contents. Rearrange thoughts.10
Moving down old roads, long forgotten …
* * *
I’m standing just off from the main stage, waiting to go on, my nerves so taut I feel like they’re about to start making their own noise.
I look across the room and see A’val, and I smile at her even as I curse that she’s talked me into doing this. I never intended to go into politics … yet here I am.
“C’indrol, it’s time.”11 She motions to me, and then I’m walking in front of the Assembly to give my first speech …
* * *
I remember when the demons first come, and I remember screaming when they kill my sister and then wear her body like a skin while they chase down my family. I remember the pain and the terror. I escape, but I never forgive myself for living, when they didn’t …
* * *
An impossibly bright light flashes through my apartment windows. I run to the door leading upstairs to our rooftop garden. I manage to step through the door when the blast wave’s edge hits. Then I remember nothing …
* * *
I ride on the back of a wagon while we travel down an old dirt road through an impossibly dry, hot desert. I shift my veil around my neck to catch the sweat while I practice chords on my father’s harp. One day, I hope to buy my own harp …
* * *
I’m crying as Valathea takes me into her arms, and the vané woman’s lips are soft. I still know this is goodbye. Worse than goodbye, because there’s nothing I can do to convince Valathea to stay. To stay living. To make the pain of existing bearable for just a bit longer. She puts her hand on my swollen belly and whispers, “Promise me you’ll teach him to play,” just before she begins the ritual that might as well be suicide.