by Rena Barron
Shezmu is the most powerful of the Demon King’s generals, and it can be no accident the new path on the crossroads led me to him. I killed his daughter—he’ll want revenge for that. But he also needs me to release his master. I’ll have to face him soon enough, but right now, the tribal people are more important.
I turn to the gate. I’m not sure if the tribal people are still alive, but I’m going to find out one way or another. Essnai and Sukar tense at my sides, but neither speaks as I step through the arch, and the gate swallows me whole.
Part IV
The Unnamed Orisha: Dimma
Fram once asked me if, had another person fallen from the sky on my mountain, I would love them the same as I love Daho. I’ve pondered that question in the moments between my many deaths and rebirths. I still don’t know the answer, but I do know that my love for Daho cast a shadow over my mortal lives. I always had trouble bonding with others—until something changed in my final life. Alas, that is the end, and we are talking about the beginning. I will tell you about my gift to Daho.
We stand on a hill overlooking the royal city of Jiiek. Demons move around us, young and old, some with wings as crooked as tree roots. Some have knots of jagged bone where wings once had been. The word castration bubbles to my lips, but I hold my tongue as Daho grieves for his people.
“How could this happen?” Daho asks through his tears.
I open myself to the demons’ thoughts to answer that very question. The people had lived in peace for twelve generations under the Daneers—Daho’s family. There were no wars, within or without. Their nation flourished. A millennium before, their scientists had discovered cures to all known diseases. Life expectancy tripled. No one went hungry or homeless or suffered. But a growing faction believed that their people were becoming something unnatural. They wanted to return to traditional ways. When Daho’s father ignored their grievances, they incited violence.
Their leader, Yaneki, killed Daho’s family and punished those who opposed him. He had thousands of people beaten and stripped of their possessions. He had their wings broken or cut to remind them of their place. “The new Demon King did this.”
Daho’s wings flutter open in anger at himself, wide and glorious, and trembling. The tips are iridescent, and a rainbow of light dances across them. “This is my fault. I turned my back on my people.”
“What are you doing, fool?” a woman yells. “Stop before someone alerts the Royal Guard.”
Daho tenses and his eyes go wide in recognition. “Quiten.” He whirls around to face her.
She hobbles closer on a mangled left foot that’s healed wrong. Her wings are gone, leaving splintered bone in their place. Her eyes shine with unshed tears as she looks upon Daho, then glances at the people staring and pointing at him. “Come with me. It isn’t safe here.”
Quiten leads us through the crowded rows of shacks, and my magic spreads over the demons. It makes them forget that they ever saw us. “What are you doing here?” She frowns at me. “The Guard would behead you on sight.”
“Why?” Daho asks.
“As soon as Yaneki took the throne,” Quiten says, “he gave the endoyans two days to leave our lands or face death.”
“But our endoyan cousins have always lived and worked in Jiiek,” Daho says.
“Not always.” She leads us into a house with a tin roof. “As much as I am relieved to see you alive, it isn’t safe in Jiiek, my prince. If Yaneki’s spies discover you’re back, he’ll have you executed.”
“Please don’t call me prince.” Daho winces. “A prince doesn’t allow such tragedy to befall his country.”
“You will always be our prince.” Quiten fidgets with her shaking hands. “No matter the lies Yaneki and his followers tell people.”
Daho looks at me when he says his next words, understanding passing between us. “I’m here to take back my throne.”
Quiten lets out a deep sigh as tears slide down her cheeks. “The Resistance has lost all hope that we could ever stop Yaneki—he’s too powerful. No one who’s stood against him has survived.” She leans close to Daho and takes his hands into her own. “It can’t be an accident that we found each other, Prince. I am at your command.”
The next few days are a flurry of people visiting the little house. They talk and plan and plot. Daho tells them of the secret tunnel underneath the lake that leads to the palace. Some of them argue that Yaneki must have found it already, but I assure them he has not.
When we’re alone at night, I lay on Daho’s bare chest in a room with glass jars of food on shelves. The air smells of spices. “You don’t have to fight for your kingdom. I can give it back to you with no effort on your part. Yaneki would be the only casualty.”
“It’s not the same,” Daho says, his teeth grazing my earlobe, the sensation delightful. “I must earn my throne back, or it’ll be meaningless. The only things I have left are my honor and you.” He opens his mouth and lifts his tongue to remind me of the new organ I put there to prepare him for my gift. It’s a simple thing, a node of flesh with a split almost invisible to the mortal eye. The Uthurans use it to eat the souls of the deceased and extend their lives. “Promise me that you’ll let me do this on my own.”
Daho pulls me close to his chest, and I hear the quickening of his pulse, taste his fear. “I promise I’ll let you kill Yaneki on your own,” I say, choosing my words with care.
Days and nights pass as I calculate the possibilities of what will happen. Soon Daho is leading seventy-two men through a dark cave by torchlight. “Most of the guards patrol the perimeter of the palace grounds,” he tells them. “Once we’re inside, focus on the sentries. Leave Yaneki to me.”
The men ready their weapons and pour into the palace while Daho lingers behind, his eyes glowing in the dark. “Whatever happens, know that I will always love you, Dimma.”
“I’ve always loved you and always will,” I say, knowing it to be true.
Daho presses two fingers to his lips, then presses them to my mouth. “Forever.”
He storms the palace with the men, and I wait in the basement as the battle stretches out into a chorus of death. I listen only to Daho’s heartbeat, his breathing, the parry of his feet, the way he wields his weapon. He corners Yaneki in a library—and the man is quick as he slips a knife into Daho’s chest.
Here is where I break my promise. I dissolve into my true form—amorphous and fluid. I appear in the throne room the moment Daho collapses to his knees.
The king doesn’t see me; instead he laughs at the sight of Daho dying. “Now the Daneer line has ended.” He pulls the blade from Daho’s chest, and my love crumples to the floor.
The king’s guards file into the room and form two lines meant to stop the Resistance fighters, but there is no need. They will not make it this far. “Your death will quell any further thoughts of uprising,” Yaneki says. “I should thank you for that.”
I cradle Daho against my soul. He’s coughing up blood now—his breath catching in his throat. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.
“What did you say, boy?” Yaneki scoffs. “You’re sorry?”
I send the king hurtling backward until he slams into a chair. His soldiers spring into action to help him.
A hunger awakes inside me—an insatiable need, a longing. “Let me help you.”
Daho nods, the light fading from his eyes. I soothe away his pain, repair his body, give him strength. While two guards pick Yaneki up from the floor, Daho stands, too. The guards lunge at him, but I snap their necks. I take no joy in the action, and I bid them farewell as their souls return to the creator.
Yaneki gasps, his eyes wide. “What kind of witchery is this?”
“The best kind,” Daho answers as the two fight again, striking and retreating.
What Daho lacks in skill, he makes up for in stamina. He is much younger than the king, who’s grown round from celebrating his victory over the Daneer family. Daho slashes Yaneki across his belly.
“That wa
s for my mother and father.” Daho wipes sweat from his forehead, leaving behind blood. “This is for every single person you hurt.” He plunges his sword into the man’s throat. His death is quick.
“It’s done,” I say.
Daho squats beside Yaneki. The king’s soul is fire and rage and discipline. Although it’s still intact, lingering in his body, it’s starting to unspool. Daho glances up at me when I retake my physical form. I sense his hesitation, and I smile to encourage him. He squeezes open the man’s mouth, then opens his own. The organ beneath his tongue shivers, growing wider and wider and wider still. Golden light spills from inside it. Daho’s soul. Determined, resilient, vengeful.
Yaneki’s soul yanks free of his body, and as soon as Daho consumes it, I join with him. We become a tangle of three souls—Daho’s, Yaneki’s, and mine. My hunger to save him returns. It’s so intense that I almost lose myself to it. I want to devour both their souls to keep them close to me forever, but I let go of the hunger, pushing it away. I weave together Daho’s and Yaneki’s souls with a part of my own, giving him my immortality and with it, my gifts.
“What have you done, Dimma!” Koré hisses as she snatches us apart.
Koré is in physical form while Re’Mec is white light and shifting shadows. He strikes with a sword that appears out of thin air. The blade is quick and precise. I scream the moment it takes Daho’s head. The palace shakes, and quakes tear across Ilora, splitting the land.
Daho’s broken body melts into smoke—only to reform anew, uninjured. He’s curled up on the floor, shaking. “It can’t be,” Koré says. “It’s impossible.”
“Abomination.” Re’Mec raises his sword to strike again, but this time Koré blocks the blow with her blade. Re’Mec melts from white light into physical form, looking annoyed and shocked that she’s opposed him.
“It’s done now, brother,” she says, her fascination outweighing her anger. She turns to me, and her soul scrapes against my own, a warning. “Don’t make me regret showing him mercy.”
Twenty-Five
Arrah
The gate is a pool of black ink and veins of light that leads to endless worlds. Energy hums against our ears as the darkness peels away the fibers of our bodies bit by bit. The process isn’t painful—there is no physical sensation at all. We unravel until we become pulses of sounds, the lingering echo of a song, an afterthought.
We glide like raindrops on a slanted roof, careening over the edge and landing on the other side of the gate. Whole again, head spinning, I whirl around, intending to defend us against Shezmu and his army. I blink as thick fog rolls across my vision.
“It’s gone,” Essnai says, her voice a whisper.
“You can call the gate back, can’t you?” Tyrek asks, stepping in front of me.
I draw my gaze up from the fog to his panicked face, set in contrast against the night. His cheeks appear sharper, and his dark eyes gleam with light. The moon hangs low in the sky, the iridescent color of a seashell when the sun hits it at the perfect angle.
Sukar stares at writhing weeds that change from stark white to bloodred to white again. “This isn’t Ilora.”
“How could you possibly know that?” Tyrek laughs, but it doesn’t cover the panic in his voice. “Why would the demons take their prisoners anywhere other than their world?”
“You don’t spend your whole life an attendant in the Temple and not know the holy text.” Sukar glances up at the sky. “Ilora has twin moons, one for each of Koré’s first children—the endoyans and the demons.”
“Does the holy text describe any other worlds besides Ilora and Zöran?” I ask. “Any clue where we are now?”
Sukar shakes his head as he draws his gaze back to me. He still has that look from this morning, like he wants to lay his soul bare. My chest tightens with guilt. “The holy text only mentions Ilora by name.”
“I don’t care if this is Ilora or someplace else,” Essnai says. “Arrah, are the tribal people here?”
“Yes.” I feel the feather-stroke touch of their magic against my face.
It’s the first time since we’ve been on the trail that I’ve had more than a memory to guide us. I blink back tears as the tribal people’s presence calls to me, but I sense the demons on this side of the gate, too—their insatiable hunger.
I let my awareness go beneath the surface of the demons’ magic. When these demons attacked Tribe Zu, they had shed their bodies at will like the gods themselves. They melted into smoke and changed back into physical form to strike. They were impossible to kill. Is this why the orishas hid the truth about the demons from mortal kind? Before Re’Mec and his siblings had trapped the demons’ souls in their ancient war, they’d been gods in their own right. But how could that be possible?
You made it possible, the Demon King answers my thoughts.
Some part of me has gotten used to him talking to me as if I’m Dimma. I should ignore him, but I want to know more. Dimma made the demon people gods?
You changed our people to protect them from the gods’ wrath.
I can’t worry about what happened five thousand years ago when I have problems to face now. But I wonder about the cravens, who Re’Mec created to oppose the demons and their magic. The cravens’ natural state is always in flux. Fadyi’s, Raëke’s, and Jahla’s skin constantly rearranges itself, working to hold their shape. Did Re’Mec make them so adaptable so they could be formidable against the demons?
The Demon King does not offer an answer to that.
“Lead the way.” Essnai snaps me from my thoughts. “We’ll fret about how to get home once we free the tribal people.”
Essnai’s eyes are hard, determined, unwavering. She’s right—it doesn’t matter where we are. We have to keep going. With the moon bright, we have no trouble picking up the trail. I look to the night sky again, searching, my panic growing more frantic by the moment. I reach my palm up, beckoning for magic to come to me as if it might be hiding. Nothing happens.
“There’s no magic here, is there?” Sukar looks at my empty hand. “I don’t feel any outside of yours.”
I shake my head, dread crawling up my shoulders like cold fingertips. I have never not seen magic. Even when I was little, I used to count the sparks in my room at night to put myself to sleep. The absence of it hits me harder than I expect, like a drought in the middle of a sandstorm. I still feel the chieftains’ magic flowing through my veins, but it concerns me that I wouldn’t be able to call more if I needed it. Now I’ll have to rely on my gifts alone, and I worry that it won’t be enough against the demons.
“It does make you question why Heka chose our world to share his magic with and not this one or another,” Essnai muses.
“A world without magic,” Tyrek remarks as the trail leads into a forest of trees covered in thick vines. “Interesting.”
Nothing grows on the ground around the trees, and the soil sinks ever so slightly, leaving molds of our footsteps. Somewhere nearby, a twig cracks. Essnai puts a finger to her lips and jerks her head toward a cluster of bushes. Both Sukar and Tyrek look inclined to fight, but I’m with Essnai on this one. We crouch behind the bushes—the element of surprise on our side.
“Do you smell that?” Tyrek whispers. “It smells like death.”
I take a deep breath. The air reeks of sulfur and decay. My stomach twists in knots, but I don’t get a good sense of where the smell is coming from. With the wind still, the source must be close. I shift my position and the soil moves beneath me. I frown, almost thinking I imagined it, but the soil adjusts again. The grains fold back on themselves as if pushed from beneath the ground. I pick up a fistful of dark soil speckled with crystals that shine in the moonlight.
“What are you doing?” Essnai asks.
“There’s something here.” I press my ear to the ground and close my eyes. My senses dive into the soil. Gnarled roots wriggle in the shadows, pushing their way up through the dirt. I go deeper until I reach a wall of bodies with writhing arms and le
gs and cracked chests filled with dirt. I recoil, but not before a root explodes from the ground and whips around my neck. It jerks me forward, the soil caving in to draw me under. My vision fades in and out. I claw at my throat, but the root curls tighter.
Both Sukar and Essnai spring into action, quick as vipers. Essnai slams her staff into the root, making it loosen, and Sukar cuts it clean in two. My fingers tremble as I fumble to get the dead root from around my neck. When I do, I fling it to the ground.
“Burning gods,” Tyrek says, backing away. “What was that?”
“Don’t move,” I croak out, catching my breath.
Once we stop, the roots go still, too. The forest reminds me of the Gaer tree in the Kingdom, where the first Ka-Priest had taken root to cheat death. But this is so much worse. These trees, and the creatures underneath them, hunger for flesh. Why had the demons brought their captives to this world?
I search for the phantom memories of the tribal people, homing in on the moment they reached the forest. A hooded man steps ahead of them and raises his arms to the sky. The thick black vines that hang like ropes against the trees peel away and build a bridge above the ground. The demons force their captives to move forward onto the bridge, and I’m surprised it holds. When they’ve done crossing the forest, the vines return to the trees. “I know a way across.”
As soon as the words are out of my mouth, someone stumbles into the forest. His dark veins stand out against pale brown skin. “Help me!” he screams in the tribal common tongue.
“Stop!” I say in Tamaran—realizing too late that he doesn’t understand me.
The ground buckles beneath him and roots lash around his legs and torso, tearing flesh from bone. I start to move, but Essnai grabs my arm and shakes her head. It’s too late. It takes everything in me not to bring down a firestorm and burn the trees into withering ashes. Blinking back tears, I call forward the vines and build a new bridge that slopes up from the ground in front of us. It floats above the forest with my magic fortifying it, but as soon as we step onto it, I can feel the vines resisting, writhing to pull themselves apart. The bridge starts to unravel in places, and I weave more of my magic through it.
