“This won’t work,” Rey decided. “We’ll just cut each other up.”
“Let me do it,” Bowbaq said in a deep voice. “I want to do it.”
The actor moved out of the way, leaving space for the giant, who stood above the opening and closed his eyes. He listened for the smallest sound coming from the stairs . . . and let his anger brew.
He was erjak, so when the spirit had contacted his own spirit, he had let it in. The next moment, the visiting spirit invaded him. By then it was too late. Bowbaq hadn’t been ready, and he had fallen under the ghost’s control.
He had watched, powerless, as his body built the fire, threw the wardrobe over the stairwell, and danced on the flames. The entire time he had fought it, but in vain.
“Were they very far behind you?” Léti asked, worried.
“I don’t know,” Rey responded. “Maybe.”
Bowbaq had suffered through the experience like torture, and he had endured so much pain that even the violence he wanted to commit didn’t bother him. The episode with the Gyole dolphin hadn’t revolted him as much as being possessed. He was ready to fight.
“Yan is waking,” Lana announced.
“I think I can hear something,” Rey said. “They’re coming.”
Bowbaq had heard them as well. He raised his weapon over his head and took a deep breath.
“As soon as they get here, we have to leave immediately,” Rey urged. “The Tower could crumble at any moment.”
His friends didn’t move, and he had to push Léti, Yan, and Lana toward the exterior, thinking that, for once, he was the only one being reasonable.
Bowbaq alone heard his friends running up the stairs. He could hear them gasping for air. They were close, and the giant expected their pace to slow, but the opposite seemed to be true. Something was pushing them, and they ran faster than ever.
The giant opened his eyes and saw the light of a lantern approaching. A few seconds later his friends finally appeared. Grigán shamelessly pushed Corenn through the hole and dove through after her. They were red, breathless, terrified.
“Bowbaq, outside, now!” Grigán ordered.
The warrior dragged himself and the Mother to the door as fast as he could.
But the giant ignored Grigán’s advice; he had never been so sure of himself. Something enormous emerged from the darkness, and Bowbaq struck.
The Rominians watched the Deep Tower’s destruction in satisfaction. Some even laughed as it burned and then crumbled. Someone suggested they dance, and they circled around it joyously.
The Eclectic Library was, for the less informed, an ancient symbol of royal tyranny. For the more well educated, it was a phantom’s lair that they should have destroyed long ago. No one understood that Romine lost one of its great treasures that night; no one dreamed that this treasure represented thousands of years of human knowledge. Of course, it didn’t all burn; most of the lower floors were simply buried in the rubble—just as the Romerij library had been before. How many centuries would it stay buried this time?
Hulsidor disappeared in the crowd. The heirs were cheered when they fled the burning tower. For the moment, no one cared that they were foreigners. The usual xenophobia was forgotten as the Rominians treated the strangers like liberating heroes.
The heirs gathered at a distance, and Grigán made sure no one approached them. They heard a dreadful crash, followed by loud applause. The second floor had just collapsed.
“Bowbaq!” Léti cried, running toward the tower.
The entire building crumbled with a resounding crash. The heirs contemplated the disaster in silence, hardly hearing the Rominian degenerates’ cries of joy.
A pile of debris at the edge of the rubble suddenly moved, and Bowbaq—his hair in disarray, covered in ashes and dust—looked around, stupefied. He began to cautiously search through the rubble, ready to strike anything that moved. The heirs nimbly pulled him away.
They ended the night in the Othenor’s quarters, their last welcoming retreat before leaving for the Holy City of Ith.
Apart from Yan, they all had serious wounds. Bowbaq had bruises all over his body and a few burns, one of which, he learned, came from Léti. All were exhausted and in a piteous state.
They had lost nearly all of their equipment: Corenn, her journal; Rey, the antidote for the Züu’s poison; Lana, her Eurydian robes. And their cat, Frog. Once again, their group had shrunk. If Rey hadn’t hidden part of the stolen treasure from the Small Palace, they would have been completely ruined.
With his veteran expertise, Grigán gave advice on treating the different wounds they had sustained. Their equipment room became a dispensary where the healers worked on their friends first, and then tried to heal themselves.
Since returning, they hadn’t spoken much. When they were sure that everyone was all right, they relaxed a little and told their stories.
Bowbaq confirmed that the “leech” resembled a giant urblek, but no one else had ever seen one, and the Arque failed to describe it any other way. Eventually, frustrated, they stopped pushing him. After being chased for more than twenty floors, Corenn would have liked to learn a little more.
Yan recounted his own story, telling them of another portal that led to Jal’dara. In Sola, in the Oo kingdom, Nol had appeared five centuries earlier with a group of wise emissaries, as he had done on Ji with the heirs’ ancestors.
“Well, that brings the number to four, at least,” Corenn summarized. “We know Ji’s portal, the one in Jérusnie has never been found, and the Great Sohonne Arch in Arkary has never seemed to work. Maybe the one in Sola . . .”
Grigán caught the Mother’s gaze and understood what she meant.
“That’s lunacy, Corenn,” he said. “The voyage would take more than five dékades alone, with a significant part in the middle of the Eastian Kingdoms. Surely we have better options!”
“Once we reach Ith, we will already have covered half the distance,” the Mother argued. “There is a chance that the portal in Sola still works. We have to consider—”
She stopped herself when Lana rejoined the group with a serious expression. The Maz had just finished her translation of the stolen page. She read to her stunned companions:
Child neither good nor evil
Man or god, same naïveté
One is himself from his first breath
The other is only a god that men make
Mortal only exists in flesh
Eternal survives on spirits
Warm water of Dara’s valley
Somber mud of Karu’s pits
Promised day when gods will hear the voices
Open the portals, bind the guardians
Banish the unjust, make the virtuous kings
When the highest break their chains
A long silence followed her reading. The Maz acknowledged that she had finished by letting her hands fall to her sides. The heirs contemplated the meaning with growing alarm.
Vaguely unnerved, Bowbaq asked, “What does that all mean?”
Lana took her time to choose her words. The poem had been sown with hidden meaning and mystical references, which no other Maz would have understood without knowing the heirs’ secrets. But for her friends, she had to be as clear as possible.
“It means, dear Bowbaq, that the children behind the portal are different. Very different,” she added, emphasizing the word. “And that Jal’dara is much more than a paradise. It’s the birthplace of gods.”
They sat with this overwhelming knowledge for a moment, long enough to grasp its implications. One of them immediately came to mind.
If Jal’dara was the birthplace of gods, it was also the birthplace of demons.
They started to understand what their ancestors might have seen, and from whence came Saat’s power. It was terrifying, and they had thought their situation couldn’t be worse.
Their enemy had immortals on his side.
BOOK VI: PILGRIMS
The heirs had been in Romine fo
r only two days, but they couldn’t wait to leave the inhospitable city where they had skirted death.
They were at the end of the Hearth’s dékade. It was the Day of Bread, as Lana taught them, as they prepared for their voyage to the Holy City. The day was a short one, as most of the heirs slept until well after the sun rose to recover from their sleepless night, and there was so much to do that they had almost no time to discuss their discoveries. Each of them wanted time to gather their own thoughts before suggesting anything to the group.
Their pilgrimage to Ith would be by land, as Grigán and Corenn had agreed. The warrior thought it would be faster to go through the Wet Valley and the Murky Mountains toward Pont in Lorelia, even though the coming Season of the Earth would slow down the effort. They would then continue to Lermian, traversing to the south of the Grand Empire, and finally they would take the Alt to the Holy City. By sea, the voyage would take three dékades, without allowing for damage to the boat or any storms they might encounter. Grigán hoped to reach Ith in less than twenty days on horseback.
They didn’t have time to find a buyer for the Othenor, and were forced to abandon the sloop in the waters of the Urae. Before turning their backs on the vessel, the heirs scrabbled together the last of their equipment. Yan looked at his sword, Lorelien clothes, and Junian socks, and laughed to think of the harpoon and fishing lines he had brought with him when he left Eza only five dékades earlier. It might as well have been a century ago, so much had happened since.
They planned to pass the first leg of their newest voyage with Rey’s friend’s troupe of street performers. The artists gained an escort to Pont, while the heirs got a cover story and the easy passage between kingdoms that was always given to entertainers. This would be especially important in Semilia, and when passing through Pont.
The heirs next had to find themselves mounts and wagons. They decided to take only two wagons, but those were large enough to shelter them all from the Murky Mountains’ frequently bad weather. Lana approved of the choice, as did Yan, Bowbaq, and Rey. Compared to Grigán or Corenn, they all struggled to ride, and the idea of traveling on horseback for twenty days straight didn’t please them much. Nonetheless, the Mother suggested they each get a mount as well, in case of emergency.
Still using the stolen treasure for funds, the heirs replaced the equipment they had lost in the Deep Tower. Food and potable water, of course, but also candles, matches, blankets, and warm clothes were secured. Who would have thought their quest would take them all the way to the cold season?
Finally ready, the heirs joined the street performers, a well-traveled troupe that didn’t much care about their travel companions’ strange origins. Introductions were done quickly and without any real enthusiasm. Only Rey’s friend, the Lorelien juggler with the strange name of Gallop, paid them any attention. The fifteen other traveling artists, Rominian for the most part, hardly turned to greet the newcomers.
The heirs couldn’t ask for any better treatment than being left to themselves on their last night in Romine. They wanted to speak alone, and they piled into the largest wagon for a serious discussion.
Grigán carefully looked around the wagons before joining the others, but the area where they were staying the night was a calm and rarely visited abandoned neighborhood. In contrast, Gallop and the others were headed to one of the busiest streets in Romine for a final performance. Yan realized that he had no idea what their show even looked like, before burying the thought. He would have other opportunities to see it.
The heirs began by talking about everything except what was most pressing in their minds. There was fear among them too, as if by simply mentioning their names, gods, demons, or ghosts would materialize out of the mist that covered the city for the second night. But Rey’s jokes made them slowly relax, enough that they were soon ready to discuss serious matters. Saat and Jal’dara, the gravest of topics, were the first to be addressed.
“We are facing something,” Corenn commented to herself, “that goes beyond just our own destinies . . .”
They all turned to face her and hear what the Mother had to say. Corenn woke from her daydream and noticed their attention, each waiting to see what their leader would say about the most recent events. Perhaps she would indicate how they should move forward. The Mother forced herself to take charge.
“Our enemy is no longer a simple mortal. He has survived beyond his natural limits for more than a century. He knows the place where gods grow. We can guess that he went there, when our ancestors did, and from there stole a great power, something strong enough to control demons and maybe other things we don’t yet know.”
Though no one had interrupted her, Corenn paused. The Mother couldn’t help but use her powers of persuasion, even though her audience already agreed.
“Saat is easily the most powerful human in any kingdom, if we can even call him human. And, unquestionably, he is evil. The implications of our quest are now bigger than any of us. Saat surely has the power to influence thousands of lives. The power, and the intent.”
“But how?” Léti asked. “And why?”
“I don’t know. Maybe for the same reasons he exterminated the heirs,” said Corenn.
Rey interjected, “A thousand apologies, Lady Corenn, but that is a lot of maybes.”
“Maybe you are smarter than all of us; can you come up with a solution?” Grigán said, glaring at Rey.
“Let’s summarize what we know for sure,” the Mother re-sponded. “I think no one here will doubt Usul’s words? Our enemy is Saat the Treasurer, ambassador of the Grand Empire of Goran to Ji more than a century ago. He is still alive, against all logic. Outside of that, the portals all lead to the same place, a place called Jal’karu or Jal’dara. And it, according to the text we found in the Deep Tower and Lana’s translation, is the birthplace of gods. As extraordinary as it seems.
“Moreover, Saat commanded that all the heirs be assassinated, but he has no apparent reason to hate them. To hate us. We can only guess that he fears us, which reveals him to be evil, for only an evil man kills those he fears. So the questions we have to ask are: What is he trying to accomplish? And how can we oppose him?”
No one had a response. Corenn had just exposed their deepest fears to a cold, pale light. And though everything was clearer now, the problem seemed no less insurmountable.
Yan thought about Usul’s prophecy. The Upper Kingdoms would soon lose thousands to a deadly war. It wasn’t simply a possibility, it was the future as foretold to him by a god. Could Yan really influence the course of history and avoid a war whose players he did not yet know? He saw no way he could, just as he saw no way to help his companions. Grigán’s illness, his own relationship with Léti, the darkening cloud of war—it all seemed too much. Yan’s head sagged under the burden.
“We at least know a partial answer,” Lana said. “As you already noted, Corenn, Saat killed only the heirs born after the emissaries returned.”
The Maz stopped her explanation there. In fact, she didn’t know how to use this information. There were too many possibilities.
“I don’t understand,” Bowbaq announced. “What does this all mean?”
“It means that Saat is scared of us,” Rey responded with a frown. “But we don’t know why.”
“Our ancestors must have known,” Grigán intervened. “Maz Achem must have known. Maybe he wrote about it in his journal?”
“And maybe not,” Rey said before trailing off.
“We won’t know until we get to Ith,” Corenn concluded, disappointed that they couldn’t figure anything out before then.
Yan felt worse than ever. Only he knew part of the response, but what help would it be to add more troubles to the fears that weighed down his friends?
All they could do was wait, reach the Holy City as fast as possible, and hope. Hope that they wouldn’t face opposition along the way, hope that the journal would still be there, and hope that its contents would help them.
But time was thei
r enemy.
Gallop was a little shorter than Reyan, and a little younger, but no less talkative—and just as arrogant as any Lorelien. The acrobat was a juggler by trade; he and Rey had met for the first time when the actor was trying to master the difficult art of knife-throwing. That memory brought up another for Gallop, a much more amusing one, since the juggler couldn’t stop laughing when he recounted why Rey had quit that profession. The actor very seriously commanded Gallop to stop his story, and his friend agreed reluctantly, though his laughter never stopped. The heirs never learned the truth, but they found that they liked the small Lorelien right from the beginning.
He was the only acrobat who spoke to them. The others, either because they were impressed or because, like most of their Rominian brethren, they just didn’t open up easily to foreigners, showed them nothing more than indifference.
The small group had sixteen people. Apart from Gallop, the heirs only met a few others. There was a giant, and two clowning dwarves who never removed their makeup. In addition to those three, there was a “master of wolves” and a “master of monkeys.” The first had only one animal, which was so old and so accustomed to humans that the “master” didn’t even bother chaining him up. Likewise, the wolf only moved to take naps away from the bustling camp, or to beg for treats like a common dog.
The master of monkeys, Tonk, was fat and, as the heirs later witnessed, violent. He had two pairs of mimastins, smallish monkeys from the Lower Kingdoms. Bowbaq saw burn marks and bruises on their furry little bodies. The giant stared at them for a long time with his fists clenched, contemplating how painfully the tiny monkeys were tortured. Grigán, seeing the anguish on his friend’s face, forced the giant away from the cage, warning him that Tonk was watching them.
The giant, not Gallop, was the chief of the little troupe. He was a massive man who went by the name Nakapan and periodically stared at Bowbaq’s muscular body jealously. Nakapan’s wife was a fire-breather, his son an acrobat, and his two daughters horsewomen. The only words he spared for the heirs was a warning he gave while looking at Rey: they should always be respectful to his daughters. As Nakapan walked away, Grigán repeated the recommendation to the actor, who feigned anger at the lack of trust.
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