“How do you know... Nevermind.” He shook his head, ignoring the poignant ache in his chest. Argus was part of her, more so all the time it seemed. He shouldn’t wonder at her knowing such things. “I want you to wear it and promise to bring it back to me.”
She let it slip from her fingers and fall down to slide beneath the clasp of her cloak. Her eyes moved up to meet his. “Deynas, I can’t…”
He held up a finger to silence her. “I know what you’re going to say. Think me crazy if you wish, but I don’t want to hear about it. Just accept that.”
She smiled wistfully and he saw his Argus in her features more distinctly than ever. “You were always a little crazy.”
He stared into her eyes then, a question weighing heavy on the tip of his tongue, one he knew he shouldn’t ask.
Her smile faded. “What is it?”
“Do you know if…” He fell silent. It was a foolish thing to ask.
“If what?”
Foolish. He shook his head and looked away. “Nothing.”
“If she ever loved you?”
His gaze snapped back to her face. Damn her perception.
“Yes. She does.” She smiled once more, an expression full of sorrow, and disappeared.
“No! Not yet,” he snarled, glaring up at the stars.
He felt as helpless as he had the night he left Argus in the city. It was a terrible feeling and not one he cared to experience again. He also felt naked without the pendant against his skin. It really had been foolish to give it to her, but it was the only thing he could think of that might protect her. If they killed her, then Argus was truly gone. Maybe that was the way it should be, but if Argus wanted to live, even this way, then he had to try to help her. He’d come along to do just that because he’d heard her spirit speaking to him in the room in the temple. Her voice inside him saying she wanted him with her. How could he refuse that?
The pain in his shoulder flared and he gritted his teeth against it. Tears stung his eyes and he blinked them back. Footsteps approached from behind, making a soft squeaking noise in the sand. He glanced back, spotting Settek as the part-demon strode purposefully toward him. He didn’t have the energy for hating the crossbreed anymore and he was too confused to know if he even should, so he nodded acknowledgement then turned to gaze at the sky once more as he had been when the Keeper joined him.
“I expected the Keeper to be with you.”
His hands tightened into fists. Even that increased the pain in his shoulder. “She was called to keep.”
“Ah.” Settek’s grim look said he understood the possible danger of that. He also caught on to the other implications of her departure. “If you’re piloting tomorrow, you’ll need sleep. I have something that will knock you out for a few hours.”
Deynas gave him a questioning look.
“I didn’t offer before because of the Keeper. With her gone, it seems less likely that we’ll need you to save us from any enraged demons.” Settek gave him a sly, teasing grin.
The crossbreed was turning out to be reasonable and disturbingly likeable. “Why are you awake?”
“I’m a light sleeper.” He looked up at the stars, his gold eyes gleaming with an inner fire Deynas almost envied. “I woke when you left and again when the Keeper went out. We can’t all sleep as well as Naago-ra.”
Deynas chuckled, unable to keep bitterness from the sound. He needed to have a few words with Naago. That would go easier if he had some rest as well. Just a day or so ago, he’d have turned Settek’s offer of drugs down with no little hostility. Strange how fast some things could change. “I’ll take you up on that offer.”
•
The Keeper appeared deep in the ruins below the Undercity in an unlit temple. The place had an eerie familiarity that prickled up her spine. Her eyes pierced the darkness, making out the rubble of a destroyed statue of The Undying that littered the interior. The typically towering central chamber came to an abrupt stop, the cut down walls butting up into the metal substructure of the Undercity above. The temple in the Undercity was the oldest such temple in existence. It wasn’t the passage of time that destroyed it or drove the ancient Endless from the place. Legend said the Endless angered a greater god and that god had sent demons to destroy this temple and much of the original city in retribution. A thousand years later, the Endless returned to the site and built the current city on top of it, a city that they would be driven from again almost four hundred years after their return.
The call to keep came from behind the remains of the statue, in the long room to the rear where the Endless elders once prepared the dead and performed the ritual of ascension along with many other important ceremonies. She wound through the maze of debris around the side of the statue, her nerves fired up with the Endless woman’s dread. Or was it her own? What did the Keeper have to fear?
One of the tall double doors behind the statue stood cracked a few inches. Dim light flickered through the narrow opening. She touched the door with her right hand, feeling a thick layer of dust under her fingertips. There were cleaner marks above her hand on the door where others had touched it quite recently. The black roots constricted and a tingling sensation swept through her everywhere they pressed against the skin. A warning?
The call to keep drew her inexorably on. She pushed the door open.
Thirty-six Blooded Women lined both sides of the long room, set apart in six groups of six with tall candelabra between each of the groups. The flickering flames of the candles, six on each candelabrum, provided the only light. The women faced the center, standing still as statues and silent. At the far end of the room, a creature lay upon a stone table. It looked like a furry white moth, though several times the size of a normal man. Its wings hung over the sides of the table, fine circular patterns in icy pale gray softening the bright white of the delicate appendages.
I’m sorry, Argus. Our time may be at an end.
The Endless woman’s sorrow was powerful, but an even stronger sense of pride rose to the surface and the woman rode along with the Keeper while she walked down between the Blooded Women. It was strangely reassuring, as if someone walked beside her, offering support in whatever happened next. Even with that comfort, the room grew colder with each step. The Blooded Women didn’t move. They were so still it was almost hard to tell they lived at all. Then the chant started, singing out in her mind in thirty-six identical voices.
That which is lost, she will find.
That which is forsaken, she will cherish.
That which is forgotten, she will remember.
That which is, she will keep.
She stopped before the table and placed her right hand upon the dead creature. A lesser god. Its spirit rose up from the dead flesh, glowing with a gentle violet light, its aura so beautiful and serene that brought forth tears.
Come to me and you shall be remembered.
As expected, the spirit complied, moving gracefully into her. The pain of its death was familiar, the all-consuming pain that came from the eyes of the Blooded Women. This one had not come to its fate of its own free will as the other two had. They had killed the creature themselves this time.
She had to grip the side of the table to keep from sinking to the floor, but she didn’t cry out. They would not see the true extent of her pain or how weak she still was from the demon she had killed to save Deynas. When the pain ceased, she took first one hand then the other deliberately from the table and rotated around to face her audience. There were punishments to deal out.
The Blooded were moving out from the sides of the room now. The nearest group of six slid toward her, their slippered feet hissing along the gritty floor. They were the ones responsible for this death. All of them together. The Keeper walked toward the first group. A few feet away, the Blooded Women stopped. They began to hum and their eyes started to creep open.
Did they think to kill this flesh before she could punish them for killing the lesser god?
She reached out a hand
as the ghastly pink light washed over her. Extraordinary pain pounded through the flesh and spirit of the Endless woman, arresting her motion. Then she felt a spot of heat against her chest and bright silver light blazed out from the god’s blood pendant. The pain receded, leaving in its place only a sensation akin to a sharp itch throughout her borrowed flesh. Unpleasant, but not debilitating. The Keeper closed the remaining distance and placed her right hand against the cheek of one Blooded Woman.
“You have committed an unforgivable crime. Your life continues at the whim of greater powers, for death is not mine to deal, but you must pay in suffering.”
You cannot punish us.
“I think I can.”
With those words, she passed all the pain of the lesser god’s death into them. All six of the Blooded Women started shrieking in her head and the Endless woman within her reveled in the sound, urging her on. The Keeper smiled and passed more pain through, the agony of a hundred deaths, a thousand. The tubes that ran from the Blooded Women’s jaws burst, spraying blood, and all six collapsed, twitching on the floor. Their voices fell silent. The ghastly light in their eyes faded to dull, lifeless black.
To kill only one had destroyed all six within that group. Could they really be so fragile?
The Keeper looked around the room. The other five groups of Blooded stood back now, neither coming closer nor backing away. They hadn’t expected this. She took a few steps toward the nearest group and they shuffled back, their eyes staying closed.
You know a new host must be found. Give yourself to us. Let us care for you as we always have.
The Keeper hesitated. Death is not mine to deal.
She had just killed some of them. They were the ones who moved her between hosts. They weren’t her enemies. What would happen when this flesh died if she didn’t have them to help her?
You belong with us. Where else can you go?
She could feel Deynas and Naago calling her. The call from their spirits was almost as strong and constant as that from the Blooded Women. If she returned to them, however, she would be putting them in danger again. Maybe the Blooded Women were right. Maybe it was time to stop fighting the inevitable. What point did it serve to cling to this flesh?
The pendant was still warm against her skin, though the silver light no longer blazed in her defense. Deynas had entrusted it to her because he loved her.
No. He loves Argus.
Making the differentiation weighed her down as if the city itself rested upon her shoulders. Did she care for him? Was the Keeper even capable of such emotions on her own? Whatever the reason, she couldn’t let the Blooded Women destroy this host without first returning his mother’s pendant to him. She owed him a great deal. The least she could do was see that he got his remarkable keepsake back and there was only one way she could think of to do that without going to him directly.
She glanced around at the Blooded Women again. “I am leaving and you will not try to stop me. I must finish something before you move me from this host.”
Animosity thickened the air in the room, but the remaining Blooded Women shuffled back to the sides, leaving her an open path. Her neck and back prickled with expectation of an attack as she left the room. The sensation didn’t go away until she made her way up into the crowds of the Undercity. Hidden by the cloak, she moved unchallenged through the streets and into the hotel adjacent to The Firelight.
She sensed the Warlord Kato in his suite that took up the entire top floor of the hotel. She didn’t need to request an audience with him. No one could stop her.
The magnificent demon was standing with his back to the door when she arrived, gazing out a window down at the main street. His tail swung back and forth, color moving down from base to tip in a slow, mesmerizing cascade.
The Keeper watched him for a moment, staying hidden. As soon as she entered his presence, the black roots warmed against their skin and she experienced an odd feeling of nostalgia. Had she dealt with him in some manner before? It didn’t seem likely that she would feel this way if all she had done was punish him at some point. This was something different, like encountering an old friend, only a disturbing unease was rising quickly up beneath that sense of familiarity.
“You needn’t hide from me, Keeper, I have known you and cared for you in many of your iterations.” He turned as he spoke, his scaled hide rippling with warm color, his voice rich and soothing. His gold eyes, when he stopped moving, trained upon the spot where she stood.
“Cared for me?” She let herself be seen and pushed her hood back. “Why don’t I remember you?”
“They don’t want you to remember. I am a threat to their careful balance because I know what you are supposed to be. I know what they have done to you.”
“They?” She put her left hand to her brow, hoping to stop the sudden spiraling sensation in her head.
Kato gestured to a chair. “Please sit.”
“We can’t linger here.”
His expression darkened to something more like that of a disapproving father, a look she suspected Settek was exceedingly familiar with.
“Sit,” he repeated in a firmer tone.
The dizziness forced her to oblige him and she sank down into a leather chair that could have comfortably sat another two people alongside her. The seat was too long for her to rest into the back so she leaned against one tall arm. She felt like a child sitting in her father’s chair, though the memory that accompanied the thought was something from the Endless woman’s childhood.
Kato gave a curt nod. “Better. You said we can’t linger here. I assume you were referring to yourself and this host.”
She thought back through the strange fog now filling her head. He was right, she had said we. Her stomach began to tie itself into knots. She could barely open her mouth to speak for the sudden fear of being sick. “Why do I feel like throwing up?”
“They’ve conditioned you to react this way so that you will not linger in my company should you and I cross paths.”
In addition to spinning, her head was starting to hurt now. “By they, you mean the Blooded Women?”
“And the one who controls them.”
“Who controls them?” she blurted, craving as much information as he could give her before she gave in to this rapidly escalating misery.
He smiled faintly though she couldn’t find anything amusing in the question. “Another. That is not important right now. What is important is that this host is very strong. She can help you, but you must stop fighting her. You fight her only because they have made you believe that she should be dormant.”
Her eyes were starting to tear up with the increasing pain in her head. She started to curl forward around her rebellious stomach. “What…” She swallowed a rush of bile. “What do you mean?”
“The relationship between the Keeper and her host is meant to be a partnership, not a hostile domination. The Blooded have desecrated that sacred joining. Embrace this Endless woman and her memories. Make her your ally.”
A partnership?
Were the Blooded really in the wrong? Were they controlling her?
That silent black rage Naago had found in her began to well up again.
Kato’s smile broadened, showing his bright, pointed teeth. “I sense fury in you. Good. Be outraged by what they have done to you. The anger will serve you well.”
“If they control me as you say, how can I stop them?”
He moved closer. The churning in her gut grew more turbulent and a thousand hammers pounded at the inside of her skull.
“Almost a thousand years ago they tore away the spirit of the Keeper. They have used it to control you and to leech away your memories when they move you between hosts. That spirit waits, imprisoned in the Halls of the Blooded now. Not the Halls in the New City, but those deep down below, in the caverns beneath the ruins where the blood spirits dwell. You must find your spirit and take it back.”
She wanted to scream. The nausea and pain were becoming too much to be
ar. “Where? How do I find it?”
He leaned over her, his gold eyes gleaming like stars. “Listen for the call of your spirit. It will guide you.”
She stood and scrambled away from him, nearly falling over another chair in her haste. Leaning against a wall for support, she reached around behind her neck and unclasped the chain. She let the god’s blood pendant fall to the floor.
“That belongs to Deynas-ra. He is coming to see you. Please make sure he gets it back.” With those words, she jerked up her hood and went unseen as she sprinted from the room.
CHAPTER TWENTY
When morning came, Deynas at least didn’t feel completely exhausted, though a few more hours of sleep would have been welcome. Every muscle in his body ached and the pain in his shoulder and ribs wasn’t much improved, but he could reduce it all to a tolerable level with the painkillers they did have and not impair his flying ability too significantly. The absence of his mother’s pendant left him feeling naked and he felt hollow without Argus there. No matter how often he tried to tell himself she wasn’t really his Argus, some part of him insisted that she was and loved her as much as ever.
Naago and Settek were both out by the flyers in the fast rising heat of a bright day. A strong, inconstant breeze picked up occasional funnels of sand, dancing them across the landscape before dumping them in a small pile somewhere new. Even if the wind stuck around, the afternoon heat was going to be blistering. They would want to make good time heading for the city.
Naago was stuffing his things into his hatch as though each item had done him some wrong. He’d been quiet and brooding all morning, ever since they told him of the Keeper’s departure during the night. Deynas got the feeling his sour mood was as much irritation that she hadn’t told him she was leaving herself as it was worry about her wellbeing. That possessive attitude toward her made it even more important that they talk things out. He could hear Master Kochan in his head telling him countless times that calm and rational conversation was always more productive than an emotional confrontation. Despite those wise words, just thinking about the other man’s quietly hostile conduct got his ire up.
The Keeper (The Endless Chronicles Book 1) Page 19
