“You drowned her.”
“I may have.” My sorrow elbows my guilt and I have to suck in a breath. “It’s pointless wallowing in ‘what ifs’. We need to get out of here.”
“There will be no getting out of here for me. I knew that when I made the commitment among my peers.”
“There is, and it is you who should rejoice, for I will be coming with you. If I live,” I tell him. He is mad, wanting to throw away his life when he has this chance at freedom. It’s time for me to make a sacrifice.
His laughter rasps against my ears. “Now suddenly this change in tune!”
His sigh is drawn out. He’s not going to listen to me.
“I may not sway you from your course, but perhaps I can balance out the vyra-taint in you. We can find a compromise, find some other method to free you.”
“And people say that I am the one possessed!”
“It’s the only way I can think of.” My explanation is flapping broken wings, but I don’t know what else to say except that by deciding to free my brother, I’ve damned myself to tread a new path—one whose outcome is uncertain, painted in twilight shades.
“Come. I must rise.” He groans as he rises to his feet, and leans heavily on me.
“I don’t know if we’ll be able to get past the gate, but there are robes upstairs. We can get you one and perhaps fool some of the allies while we make an attempt on the entrance.”
“Sister mine,” he says, both hands now gripping my shoulders with renewed strength. “Listen to me. Now that I’m here, I have a task to complete. I cannot veer from this path. You know that, and you have helped me thus far, and I do not seek you to follow me into certain death. Return to your room. Pretend to have rested. Rise when the disturbance has broken out and you have a legitimate cause to be running about like the hellion you are.”
I shake my head then drag one of his hands to my scalp so he can feel the shorn hair.
He gasps. “What have you done?”
“I am already in mourning for that which has died.” Even if I do stay in my cell, the mere fact that I’ve shaved my head in grief will damn me as surely as speaking the words that might seal my fate.
He presses his forehead against mine, and his shudder courses through me as well. “My sister. Why?”
“Besides, I’ve been seen about the Place when I should be abed. They will remember this when dawn breaks and there has been trouble. Also, I have raised my hand against my own.”
His breath hisses, followed by another bone-deep tremor. “Very well. You will not hinder me then?”
“What are you planning?” I may as well damn myself further, shan’t I?
“Your order is dead to you?”
“I am dead to my order,” I say. “They just aren’t aware of that truth just yet.” The words ring with hollow finality. What am I doing?
We press against each other for a small eternity then Ailas straightens, leans hard on my right side and begins to lurch towards the stairs. “Come. You will not stand in my way. You will do as I ask, when I ask it.”
“I haven’t—”
“Are you with me, sister?”
“I am not against you,” I murmur, defeated.
My roots have been cut; it is simpler to allow my brother’s tide to sweep me along.
We halt on the first step. “Swear that this is not a trap. Swear on the souls of those who brought us into the world. Swear that you will make right for that afternoon.”
A taut line in my heart snaps with a sob and I nod, though I know he cannot see me do so. “I swear... I swear I’ll do right this time. On our mother and father’s ashes.”
I don’t know what is right. Once again I’m betraying everything that I’ve ever held dear; nothing matters anymore and I want to sink into a little heap on the ground where I will be found and kicked.
There is only the river that tumbles over the falls, an inexorable process. Am I a stagnant lake or am I the torrent that washes away the debris so that everything can begin afresh?
“I don’t trust you,” Ailas says. “For all I know this is just another way for your fraternity to capture me on the eve of my destruction, set up to deliver false hope so that I may be gifted with a greater burden of guilt.”
“What do you need me to do?” I ask. “This is not a trap. I’m casting my lot with yours.”
“No. You will live.”
“You sound awfully certain of yourself.” The philtre must’ve addled his mind. I need to get him out of here. Side effects include an inflated sense of invincibility, and I’ve given him not one but three times the normal dose.
“I’ve never been more certain. You still have a chance for a normal life.”
“And you don’t?” I scoff.
“No. No matter what you say or do, my path always led to this point. It’s just that my route has taken an unexpected detour, and now I’ll make the best of an untenable situation.”
“What do you mean?”
“We don’t have much time, so I’m going to be brief. At the heart of your practice lies the dogma that all other faiths need to be tamped down, destroyed even.”
“That’s not quite what—”
“We’re not going to argue the minutiae. All I ask is that you listen to me. I don’t care what you believe. I only ask you to consider a theory that is slightly different from yours and pretend, for a short while, that this is a possible truth. Then humour me until this is over by at least entertaining the notion that this is the truth.”
I wish I can see his face here in the choking dark, but all I sense is the heat radiating off his skin—heightened now thanks to the philtre that’s lending him this unnatural vitality.
After three breaths, I say, “All right.”
“Good. We have the vyra. They come into being and are shaped by our regard. Gradually, they grow in power. Some may attach themselves to a place, others to a person, where they can garner more power, grow and, perhaps, even die away. They exist in a multitude, some peaceful and beneficent, others predatory, consuming, hungry.”
“Evil,” I say.
My brother hisses. “Who’s telling the story? Do you interrupt your elders this way?”
“Sorry. Continue.” I hang my head, and attempt to feel contrition. This is an old argument we’ve been having since I first learned to talk.
“Then there is Fennar.” He huffs a breath. “Or your Word, as you call it. Fennar is old. It was brought here by the Ora—a foreign god fleeing the mainland when its people were persecuted.”
It is not a god, I want to tell him, but I press my lips together firmly.
“Before you try to tell me the Fennar is not a god, I want you to pretend, for just a little while that Fennar is. Consider how the thing devours, how it spreads, how this god of yours will not tolerate the presence of others.”
We stand in silence for a few heartbeats.
“Well?” He sounds breathless, impatient.
“I will concede that your theory has some merit. I cannot disagree on principle, even though we do not worship any entity. Our terms of description...are different.”
“Consider this the perfect ruse—by convincing the other spirits that it simply doesn’t exist Fennar isn’t a target.”
“Except for those who practice the Word of Fennar. We know the truth.”
“And such a bunch of hard-headed, boring old stoics they are,” my brother says with a sly laugh. “For years we fought for survival. Years. Until one day there was an elder who recanted. Embittered, because he failed at a challenge to become the next Illuminant.”
“The penalty of failure is death!” I exclaim. “There is no recanting!”
“He survived. Somehow he was not dashed to pieces on the rocks beneath the falls. Perhaps a vyra of the air sang with a vyra of the water, and they turned him over and over, and a vyra of the rocks moved aside so that instead of being crushed to a pulp, your erstwhile practitioner of the Word was carried along gently in the river’
s bosom and brought to us. For his heart was open, receptive, and a spirit heeded his call.
“And this is what we were told—when an Illuminant grows old, the spirit requires a new vessel, and among your elders two or three hear the call. They undergo trials, and the one who endures offers up his or her body to the entity for however long they are able to bear it.”
Heresy!
“That’s insane!” I cry. “Your mind has been turned inside out!”
“No more than yours, if you think how long you’ve been allowing your thoughts and reason to be dulled by their polished words. The vyra at the heart of your organisation wishes to become the only vyra that can rule the minds and hearts of men. It is a spirit of empire building, of subjugation that has long bided its time but now wishes to become ascendant once more.”
What he’s told me is... It is so unbelievable I want to laugh. It is exactly the sort of nonsense they would tell each other in order to make sense of the Fennarin, to couch us in terms that are easy for them to understand.
And yet.
Two years after I joined, a new Illuminant had been selected—the knowledge of this wasn’t something that was shared with non-initiates. Trials had taken place and we all heard the rumours how the unsuccessful elders had perished, exactly as my brother said. Death by a plunge into the falls no man or woman has ever survived in living memory. Rocks protrude from the pools like jagged fangs and the water churns and froths. No soft-fleshed being can survive. For the past eight or so years, conflict between the vyra-possessed and our people has intensified, and continued to escalate. My brother’s tale is incredible yet oddly plausible that someone survived.
“I don’t believe you,” I say, despite this wriggle of doubt.
“I don’t expect you to, but I’ve planted the seed. I can hear the doubt in your voice. The ‘what if’.”
“Nonsense.”
He laughs. “We’ll see. You’ve come this far.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I... I will find a way to break this cycle.”
“And if you fail?”
“Others will follow. We are many hearts with many bodies. You are but one heart with many bodies.”
“And if I decide to stop you?”
“You know those are hollow words, sister. You would not have come here, freed me from my cell, unless you’ve had a change of heart.”
“I came here to save you, not free you to continue your mischief.”
“And I’d like to remind you that I am beyond saving now. There is only the purpose my vyra calls me to.”
The Firebird whose wings set fire to the land.
“You’ll die.” I shake him, and he laughs.
“We all die, sister mine. It’s how we die that matters. I’d rather my death have meaning than rot away on a porch, fat and lazy, with the Sunai rains drumming down while I am dry and content, and my belly is full.”
“That’s not such a terrible vision.”
“And in a way I must thank you, for if you had not betrayed me as you had ten years ago, I might have eventually married that girl and gone on to tend her papa’s orchids. And you may well have ended up making a good wife for Papa’s new son-in-law, and we all would have lived happily ever after.”
“You’d never have lived happily ever after. Not with that thing in you,” I spit.
“And you’d forever suffered a surfeit of piety, not knowing what life in this forsaken place would have been like, while you dandled a wailing infant on your hip. You were—and are—possessed by the Word of Fennar. We are the same, in a way, you and I. Yet I have not abdicated responsibility for the greater good.”
I want to throw his words back at him, but I can’t. Something in them rings true and I hang my head. Ailas pulls me close into his embrace, and I can hear how his heart races—the philtre at work, reminding me that we have limited time at our disposal.
Am I capable of another betrayal?
“We need to start moving,” I say to him.
Perhaps if I can show him that it’s futile, he’ll agree to us turning around and heading out to one of the side gates where I’m certain we can escape before anyone notices that he’s no longer in his cell.
I feel him nod. “I’m glad you agree, Unia. I can call you that now, can I?”
“I still don’t deserve that name.”
“Pity.” I can sense his wry smile despite the dark. Trust Ailas to find amusement in the midst of tragedy.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Inner Sanctum
Rarely have I ascended this high in the Place; the upper tiers are the territory of the elders, for the most, and the allies who have the dubious privilege of serving them. Only select penitents are permitted to work here, and once I numbered among their ranks.
I haven’t been up here since I donned the charcoal robes, but I know exactly which passages to follow in this termite’s nest carved into the living rock. There is a trick to it, always veering to the left on the ascent then to the right when descending. Even so, it is easy to become turned around, disorientated, for each hollowed-out byway is a wormhole designed to confuse.
Some say it was a giant grub like a nala beetle that chewed through the rock, and I’m tempted to believe those old stories, for the walls are smooth and rounded like glass. Every few paces a glow-crystal gives off an eerie green luminescence, which further adds to the air of otherworldliness.
Ailas’s features turn alien in this light, and despite the ravages he’s experienced, it’s easy for me to see the boy he once was, utterly fascinated by our journey.
I pray we do not encounter anyone. Already we take a massive chance coming up here, though one small blessing is that if his escape is discovered, they’ll assume he will try for one of the lower gates and not rush deeper into the stronghold of his enemy. As we are.
We have another avenue of escape I consider, for there are always the cliffs soaring above the sanctuary, and a determined individual might be desperate enough to ascend one of the narrow ravines there. No one ever has, but that’s not to say that it could never happen.
The passages are devoid of allies and elders—a fact that unsettles me greatly. Surely someone would be about? Especially in the light of Mount Ferion’s rumblings. Yet it’s as if we slink through a giant mausoleum that occasionally shudders with the mountain’s anguish.
The sanctuary can only be entered through a narrow slot set in the flank of Ferion. Ages ago, or so we are told, the earth shook, and a previously subterranean river burst out of the ground. Its passage gifted us with the chamber where our Illuminant spends his days and nights. The small antechamber where this unremarkable entrance is set is devoid of any life. Even the censer that is supposed to burn all day and night has been snuffed. The glows have gone out and stars provide the only light, for this area is open to the heavens.
Ailas crows in delight. “Is this it?”
I glance about, nod. “It is.”
“How thoroughly unremarkable.”
“Keep your voice down. There should be guards here. I don’t like it that there is no one present.”
He crouches, peers into the gloom then turns to me. “The vyra have ensured that the guards are otherwise occupied this night.”
I grow cold at the thought. “What?”
“I have sent word.”
“When?”
He doesn’t answer, only winks at me then crawls into the slot.
I consider that moment when we stepped out of the dungeons, where he’d stretched, sucked in a great breath and within a heartbeat appeared to shiver with pinpricks of light. I’d fancied it’d been a trick of the eye at the time, the stars blessing us with their light through the haze of ash. A breeze sighed, tugging our robes, and I’d thought nothing more of it, as I’d been intent on getting a move on before we were sighted.
A shudder of revulsion passes through me. If what he says is true, our Illuminant is but a vessel for one of these vyra, and our abilities stem f
rom the powers of this entity. If that is the case, then everything I’ve been taught to believe so far is a lie. I’m a mere vassal. A worker. A drone.
When viewed from Ailas’s perspective, this all makes perfect sense, and ties in with my own growing disillusionment during the past few years, as I’ve been privy to the inner workings of the allies and their own machinations within the order. No better than dogs squabbling over scraps the elders deign to pass down from the table.
With a small groan, I get down on hands and knees and begin crawling after my brother.
The passage is tight, the stone polished slick by centuries of supplicants doing exactly what I am at this very moment. It is akin to a birthing process, I am told, a privilege granted to but a few who are given permission to approach the most revered.
We are not a religious order, but so much of our dogma has been elevated to a near-religious state by generations of repetition. I suspect that’s what appeals to those of us who’re drawn to serve. We wish to be part of something greater, but without the supposed superstitious nonsense, yet we still fall prey to the very thing we desire—a higher power that appears somehow outside of us, more than the human experience.
How quickly we fall into the habit of allowing others to decide our actions.
I am just following orders.
And now? Am I still following? Why does this feel more honest?
Or am I so far gone in my treachery that I’ve cheapened any sense of loyalty I once possessed?
The passage spits us out into a fathomless chamber that stretches on into darkness. The light that spills in from the fissure above falls with a nacreous effect on the walls where giant pillars hold up the ceiling. Some twist of nature has created a massive hypostyle hall where smooth flowstone is slippery beneath my feet, and everywhere is the constant drip-drip of water rippling tiny terraced pools. A strong mineral tang in the air nearly overpowers the stench of incense, but it’s clear where the sanctuary lies, for our way slopes upward to small fires burning in braziers. A veritable fortune of oils and resins goes up into smoke here.
My brother straightens, stretches his limbs like a big cat, ghastly in this dim light with his skin abraded and blistered, patches of scalp shining through where the hair has come out in clumps. I’d like to have seen him as heroic, but he resembles more the ghuls in the scare-stories Mama used to tell us, his eyes wild and white-rimmed, the pupils so big they’ve devoured the iris. Lips pull back to reveal too-long teeth and the gaze he casts in my direction make me feel as if he might turn on me and make me the prey instead.
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