Ysira followed the kirikil tracks from the High Lord’s stables, beyond Zivora’s walls. The armored mammals moved at a ponderous pace, leaving imprints of four splayed toes in the red earth behind them. She estimated she would catch up before Oe reached its apex in the sky. Out in the crisp evening air, amidst the stars, the wind, and the unhewn cathedrals of stone, Ysira had far less to fear than most.
She was not clear on the limits of her passenger’s abilities. She still needed to eat and sleep, and at just shy of thirty, she could not yet tell whether she would age as everyone did. A blow to the head might knock her unconscious, and the missing tip of her left finger made her suspect she could not fully regenerate. She did not remember losing it. She’d awoken to find it gone, as her passenger wriggled around her brainstem like a curious cat exploring a new room.
At first, it hadn’t quite understood how a human body ought to fit together. Eight years earlier, it had seen nothing wrong with healing a broken ankle at a perfect right angle to her leg. Ogden had been forced to break it again to set it correctly. The demon had seemed almost offended, but it had never made the same mistake again. It didn’t understand Ysira, nor did it particularly care to—it was only happy to have a home and did not like that home to be damaged.
Ysira traveled late into the night, until she came upon the rim of the canyon. It sprawled before her, a monstrous entity of shadow and stone. One could look down, down, down and see nothing but rock and long, twisting telkaan vines with thorns longer than her arm. Below that lay impenetrable darkness.
Her quarry had made camp in a cactus grove—two tethered kirikil and a tent nestled in the sand. The kirikil snuffled at the vegetation with shovel-shaped snouts, digging for insects beneath the rocks, beside . . .
A crater?
A rather large crater, which had not been there the last time Ysira came out this far. Strange glassy patches in the sand reflected Oe’s and the moons’ light, marking a trail toward the rim. Something about it made her scalp tingle. Had she come this way for any other quarry, she might have turned back.
Ysira gave the camp a wide berth, crossing a great stone bridge to the opposite rim. She propped her glaive and satchelagainst a boulder, behind a thicket of dry bushes. From there she could see everything that transpired in the camp. Likely, they would rest a few more hours, then venture into the depths before sunrise, so she did her best to sleep.
She was not successful. Worries and regrets churned inside her head as she lay on her back and stared at the stars glimmering down on her in silent judgment.
What could she say to Neri Semira—the son she’d chosen not to know—to make him trust her? Would he believe her if she said she’d come at Seth’s behest? If he asked who she was, how would she answer?
Perhaps it would be safest not to risk a conversation at all, to knock him unconscious and drag him back to the city like a sack of grain. She could be gone before he ever saw her face.
With the eclipse in the sky, dawn was difficult to detect. But Ysira felt it, a prickling up her spine as that silver halo rose over the horizon. The kirikil curled into balls, encasing themselves in their armored shells just as they would in a dust storm. Birds and insects fell quiet, and even the wind seemed to still.
Three figures rose from the camp. They trekked across the stone bridge and followed a path below the rim along those smooth, slippery patches where the nascent light caught on the rocks. Ysira darted down after them, swift and soundless as a shadow.
The Zal cities and their roads did not reach deeper than a mile below the rim, and as far as anyone living could recall, the canyon’s true depths lay at twice that distance. The trail led Ysira within view of Zal Fel, and the deeper she ventured, the more vestiges of civilization she found. The ancient city appeared as ordinary rock from a distance, but if one looked closer, they would see arches, windows, carved and graven walls, and the monolithic twin spires jutting high above the canyon cliffs.
Every now and then, Ysira passed a brazier that had once held a torch, a pit that had once held a fire, etchings in the red stone in a script she could not read, in a language already fading from memory. She climbed around a massive dome—architecture so masterful, it was difficult to tell what had been hewn by wind and water or carved by human hands. She moved quietly so as to not disturb the dead. With the wind and its uncanny music winding its way through the ruins, she couldn’t shake the sense of being surrounded by ghosts.
Neri, Damir, and Casandra stopped to rest in the dome’s hollowed-out interior. Ysira hid behind a column on the crumbling mezzanine. A bright blue lizard scuttled over her boot and tried to bite her, earning itself a knife through the better-formed of its two heads.
Below, Damir’s complaining echoed against the stone. “We’ve only been hiking for a couple of hours. At this rate, it’ll be night before we get there.”
“I’m going as fast as I can,” came Neri’s voice. “The kirikil would’ve been faster. If we hobbled it.”
“Stop it,” chided Casandra. “If he has one of his episodes, we’ll have to go even slower.”
“I still don’t understand why he has to be here,” Damir grumbled, as though Neri were not sitting beside him. Unbelievably, his words simmered with envy. “Why would the most powerful demon ever seen want a cripple for a host?”
To Ysira’s horror, Neri said, “I can do this. I don’t care if you believe me. Father said it’s my responsibility.”
He sounded worryingly serious. This might prove harder than Ysira had anticipated.
Damir scoffed, but Casandra admonished him, “We have to do what Father said.”
“Better hope nothing tries to eat us in the meantime,” said Damir. “You’re lucky I’m the best swordsman in the Citadel.”
“No, you’re not,” said Neri. “Uncle Seth is.” “Uncle Sethis a fat washout.”
“Don’t talk about him like that,” Neri snapped, as Casandra chimed in, “Didn’t he beat you in about ten seconds last cycle?”
Damir was quiet for a moment. “He tricked me.” “It’s actually called a feint,” said Neri.
“Who cares what it’s called? And don’t act like you know anything about swords,Lurchy.”
For gods’ sake.The tone Damir took drove a hot spike of fury through Ysira.
“Someone’s watching us,” Neri said suddenly.
