He looked at Jacen. It wasn’t a question. But Jacen shook his head. “If a map exists, it’ll be in the restricted archives. I don’t have access.” “You’ll find a way.” Ged’s tone brooked no dissent. “The next time we meet the gods in that chamber, we’ll be prepared. We’ll follow them to wherever they come from, and fight. We’ll have to deal with the
Church and my father first?—”
“Deal with?” Seth repeated, aghast.
“A figure of speech,” Ged snapped. “I need that ring to access the chamber.” He paused. “The night Brother Kheris brought us the skull, the High Lord told me the truth. The burden I’m meant to inherit—you can’t imagine it. But he is a coward and has long since closed himself off to the potential I saw in an instant.”
Seth had the look of a man who’d never heard a more frustrating sentence. Saraida said to him, more gently, “We’ll force Avram to step down. The Guard will follow our lead. Then Ged enters the white room to be anointed with Neri, just as Avram did with your grandfather?—”
“Neriisn’t Ged’s heir,” Seth pointed out. “Damir is. But he’ll be some-place safe, won’t he?”
Ged didn’t even blink. Jacen sensed another storm brewing, so he spoke up. “You might be overestimating what this demon can do. Killing one”—he had to force himself to say it—“killing one god is not the same as challenging them all at once. Not to mention the Church’s entire arsenal of inquisitors.”
“The Church is not as secure as they want us to believe,” said Saraida. “My fellow Captains have been ordered to arrest anyone suspected of venturing into the canyon and detain them for telepathic interrogation. Something has them scared.”
Jacen was about to argue, but Ogden cut in. “At the moment, we have a more pressing concern.” He looked at Ged. “Best to dismiss your knights.”
Ged jerked his head toward the exit. “You know your roles.” Saraida and the other knights departed, but Seth refused to move.
Jacen seized the opportunity to slink out with Ilusha, only for Ogden to say, “Keep the telepaths. Let’s see if you can prove yourselves useful.” He directed them halfway down the tower to a landing, through a corridor that opened on another stair. Jacen could have sworn Ogden’s gloved hand trembled as he pushed through the door.
Jacen disliked everything about this. He was already up to his knees in this nightmare of a situation, and yet there he stood, poised to wade deeper. But what choice did he have? He ground his teeth and followed the others.
The storeroom below was empty but for a fine layer of dust and, covered by a roughspun blanket, something shaped uncomfortably like a human body.
Ged stopped at the foot of the stairs. “What’s this?”
“A problem,” said Ogden. He crouched with a grunt of arthritic discomfort and pulled the blanket aside.
The corpse belonged to a young man, whose throat had been cut with a fine instrument. A sheet of dried blood stained his neck beneath a dark red line. By Jacen’s estimation, he had been dead for a day, maybe longer. His limbs were stiff, his chest did not rise, and there was no ebb and flow of extradimensional energy about him.
Yet he wore a blindfold. His hands were tied, his ears stuffed with wax. “This man came to my clinic as a patient,” Ogden explained. “He complained of a persistent headache and told me something had crawled inside his ear while he slept. Now, this isnot unusual in the Knots. We have an insect problem. But then I examined him, and?—”
He hefted the corpse on its side and removed the wax in one ear. The area was crusted with blood and appeared almost . . .
“Looks more like a rodent chewed through there,” Seth remarked, wrinkling his nose.
But Ilusha asked quietly, “You said he was conscious and speaking?”
Ogden replaced the wax. “He was. I observed significant trauma to his inner ear. It’s my assessment that something fairly large forced its way inside.”
“It didn’t kill him?” said Seth.
Jacen’s spine prickled as Ilusha locked his gaze. The inquisitor stood as far from the corpse as the room would allow, arms wrapped tight around herself.
So, Jacen said it aloud. “A demon wouldn’t have. They can mold themselves into tiny spaces, then blend seamlessly with brain tissue.”
Without thinking about it, for an instant forgetting everything but the task before him, he approached the body and knelt. He examined the man’s ear and lifted the blindfold to check his fixed, glassy pupils. “Seamlessis the operative word. Demons don’t tend to leave trauma like this.” He looked up at Ogden. “But you called us down here anyway. Why?” If Jacen hadn’t known better, he would have suspected that whatever had burrowed into this man’s ear was being intentionally careless. Forceful. Perhaps eventryingto inflict pain. Demons were dangerous and, by the gods’ definition, ontologically evil, but Jacen had encountered enough to know they were not malicious. They possessed only the animal instinct to survive.
Crueltyrequired intelligence.
“He did not exhibit signs of possession, nor of any malady I could address, so I sent him home,” Ogden said. “On the wayout, he collapsed. My staff and I tried everything. I was prepared to euthanize him, but early this morning . . . I heard something amiss. I found him wandering about, very much awake.” He pursed his lips. “It was also apparent to me that he was covering his tracks and had likely been searching my clinic each night since he arrived.”
Jacen glanced at the man’s slit throat, then back at Ogden. “Did you kill him?”
“Of course. But first he spoke to me in a way that . . .” Ogden shook his head. “I have theories. We need them confirmed.”
“This is a dead body.” Jacen stood, brushing dust off his robes. “You want me to perform an exorcism on it?”
