“What are you doing here?” asked the thing that was not quite a god. He was frozen in place, staring at Jacen, and for a fleeting second he might have even looked afraid. Then he seemed to collect himself. “Did Ogden send you?” A pause. “Are you well?”
Jacen was not, in fact, well. He had to be hallucinating. His brain must have finally broken after the years of abuse he’d put it through.
He stumbled sideways, knocking over something that shattered on the floor. Distantly, he noticed he’d cut himself. He slurred out an inane excuse about business at the Citadel. He half-ran, half-tripped back up the stairs, out of the clinic, back into the street.
After that, he remembered nothing.
13
DESCENT
YSIRA
Below the Scar, there lay a system of caves that sprawled across thousands of square miles. It reached north to the forested foothills of Lun and south to where the river surged aboveground and emptied into the sea, by the ruined coastal cities of Zal Kos and Zal Yss. From its shadow world far beneath Zivora, the deepriver Esh supplied the city with its water, as it had those of the canyon. Esh had many tributaries, but only a suicidal captain would steer their boat away from the main artery.
Ysira could not afford caution, so she chose the deepriver. First for water, second because, if one knew where to look, its currents led to the Shrouded City. Ysira had never been the sort to kneel and pray, but the faithful were predictable where the object of their worship was concerned. The cultists of the Shrouded City would protect Neri—or, at least, the thing inside him—with their very lives.
From Zal Fel, Ysira carried Neri past the tunneled habitats of giant spiders. She took care not to step on their sticky, glitteringwebs as they rustled in the shadows. But like the Osuun, they avoided her—avoidedNeri—as though driven by some instinct deeper and more ancient than hunger.
She reached an open gullet to the world below. Swallows dove in and out of nests along the red cliffs. A swarm of bats boiled up out of the sucking blackness. Ysira waited for them to clear before venturing down the steep path, into the rising odor of something wet and dark and unfathomably old. She followed the telkaan vines to the source from which they drank. Their gnarled, twisting bodies grew massive down there, thorns long enough to impale a man.
Ysira set Neri down to light a torch before the descent. The Zal held this place sacred—a darkness so complete, even their eyes could not penetrate it. The abyssal black was like a living organism, vast and devouring, barely kept at bay by her tiny puddle of flickering orange light.
Water on the surface was precious, but underground it became a more sinister entity. There, a drop would fall on the nape of Ysira’s neck and send a flood of cold down her spine. She would shine her light over something that could have been a shallow reflective pool as easily as some greater void below, the arched and asymmetrical cave formations warping her sense of up and down. She kicked pebbles before she stepped, watching for the ripples.
She passed the point where she collected mold for Ogden, then delved deeper still to where the river bubbled out of the rocks and diverted to a gentle whirlpool. She checked the water for telkaan roots. This would be a poor time and place for a hallucinogenic trip. When she found it clear, she laid Neri carefully on the bank and set to work on a campfire. The smoke had far enough to travel that it wouldn’t suffocate them, mingling with the frozen showers of stalactites overhead.
When Neri awoke, he crawled toward the pool and fell upon it like an animal. He shoved his face in the water, gulping it down until Ysira pulled him back and cautioned him to pace himself. His chest rose and fell rapidly as he struggled to breathe deep. Dark bruises bloomed over his sternum from Ysira’s compressions.
Her gaze snagged on a tear in his tunic, probably scraped against a rock wall somewhere. Reaching on reflex for her lost medicinal kit, she lifted his sleeve and froze. The abrasion leaked black blood, its color evident in the firelight—dark as the night sky. His eyes, wide with fear but still that brilliant, alien red, met hers.
“What’s happening to me?” he whispered. When Ysira had no answer he said, “I killed Casandra. Didn’t I?”
Ysira hesitated. “It wasn’t your fault.” “And you killed Damir.”
She nodded once.
Neri’s shoulders hunched. He stared into the fire, shadows dancing across his haunted expression. “My brother and sister are both dead.” He processed the words. Making them a part of his new reality. His eyes were brighter than the flames and shone with the threat of tears, but whatever he felt was more complicated than grief.
“They weren’t kind to you,” Ysira said quietly. “Were they?”
“I think Damir hated me. He wasn’t so bad before, but since Lilaya died . . .” Neri took a breath. “Casandra was nice to me. When he wasn’t looking. What—” His voice went watery, and he had to start over. “What’s Father going to do?”
“I don’t know.” What else was there to say?
“I couldn’t control it. I didn’t realize it would be like—likethat.”A shudder wracked Neri’s body. “I can feel it inside me. Am I the demon now? Is it controlling me? I’ve heard the priests talk; they say?—”
“The Church tells you about the demon priests, yes? Trading their own free will in pursuit of power, condemning themselves to eternal torment?” Ysira scoffed. “Demonis just a word. You’ve been taught to fear it, because power that doesn’t belong to Zivora’s gods makes the Church afraid. These creatures should be treated with caution, but . . .” She pressed her lips together. “But we’re past that now. I don’t know everything, and I can’t explain the side effects, but you are stillyou.”
“Are you sure?” Neri asked, almost pleading.
In truth, Ysira was not. After all she’d seen, she knew so much less than she had thought. But the fear in Neri was so vivid and painful, she could do nothing but offer him whatever reassurance she had.
“I’ve had my demon longer than you’ve been alive,” she told him. “I’m still me.”
“Yours heals you.” Neri’s hand flew to the abrasion on his arm. “Why doesn’t mine do that?”
She shrugged. “No two demons are alike.”
