“You want me to let you into the restricted archive to settle a bet with your apprentice,” Lev said, incredulous.
“What’s the point of having a friend on the Council, if not the benefits?” With the wordfriend,Jacen nudged Lev’s mind. Made him believe it, if only for a moment.
Just the barest, subtlest suggestion in the other man’s subconscious.You like me. You trust me. You’re in high spirits and happy to do me a favor.It was not compulsion; a talented novitiate could have done it, but to use this power on a fellow priest was a grave transgression. Jacen shoved the guilt down, deep inside himself with all the rest. One more sin on his ledger.
“Come on,” he said, on the surface nothing but amiably forgetful. Nonthreatening. Drunk. It wasn’t as if Lev ever bothered to remember Jacen was Sixth Tier to his paltry Fourth. “A little favor, from Akkani’s new protege to her old one. Let me in, Your Eminence.”
The flattery tipped it over the edge. To Jacen’s relief, Lev grinned. He beckoned Jacen along the hall to the archives. He pulled out his keyring with a flourish and unlocked the door. “Just don’t linger too long.”
The archive was compact and fastidiously kept, not a speck of dust to be found. The original White Codex, the writings of Holy Father Andel Tamaran, sat on a pedestal at the center of several palestone bookshelves.
Jacen thanked Lev effusively, but instead of leaving, the Chief Exorcist leaned in, conspiratorial. “Howisthat novitiate of yours? I’d hoped to take her on myself.”
“Rest assured,” Jacen said, “I’ll train her well.”
“You won’t.” Lev waved a hand. “She’ll make a piss-poor priest. She’s always been an odd one, and she was never the same after what happened to her little friend.” He licked his lips. “But she’d have been nice to have around nonetheless.”
Cold flooded Jacen’s chest, condensed like a block of ice under his ribs. Lev slapped him on the back and laughed. “Relax,Brother. We’refriends.”He sauntered off, whistling a merry tune.
Though Jacen’s legs had gone weak, he fought through it and shut the door. He would do well not to stall.
He started with the tome he’d told Lev he came for—Father Tamaran’s originalRite of Exorcism.Where better to learn the secrets of demons? The red leather-bound volume was thicker than the copy Jacen had been issued. When he opened it, he went still.
Tamaran’s words on each page faced a wall of heavily annotated Zal script. This was not an original at all, but a translation. Jacen could parse the jedaat just well enough to realize the demon priests must have invented the rite.
The Church’s ancient enemies—and their earliest inspiration.
Jacen found several pages of sigils for various demons, some varieties which he had encountered, and others he had not. The Zal had a three-category classification system, differentiating between vermin of the Source and the demons that granted their hosts power. The third category had not been translated from the jedaat. It proved frustratingly difficult to decipher. Large portions were censored, entire pages missing or drenched in black ink, but he recognized the worddemonbeside a flourish he understood to meanlordorabove.
Archdemon?
There were only a handful of sigils in this category. Then, a sketch of a human eye, its sclera filled in with black. At the very end, on a page by itself, an inverted triangular spiral had been etched in blood-red ink. He’d seen that symbol before, but where?
Jacen racked his memory until it returned to him: a tattered banner on an adobe wall, where a few days earlier, he and his colleagues had exorcised a child. He’d assumed it to be a symbolof one of the Zal cities, but now he wondered whether it might be religious iconography. He recalled the man’s reluctance to let them in, the quiet prayers his wife had murmured.
A chill crept up Jacen’s spine. But he would need to find someone more familiar with the jedaat. Before he could think twice about it, he tore the pages loose and crammed them into his robes.
He ought to have left then. It wasn’t wise to push his luck, not there, not now. But his gaze snagged on another massive leather-bound tome: the names and origins of every priest, acolyte, and novitiate to serve the Church.
He had to know.
He hauled the book off the shelf, onto a table, and opened it to the first blank page. From there, he worked his way back until he found Nines’ cohort. Acolyte Ninety-Nine, formerly known asSyl Inissa, hailed from the habitable zone of Kasoa, deep in the Fractured Peninsula. She was listed, to Jacen’s surprise, asTier 6.Her lost friend, Ninety-Five, had once been calledDaru.
Jacen flipped further back, all the way to his own cohort.
92—Female, Dalish, Rostall—Age 7—Tier 4—Shaileen Parranth—DECEASED
114—Male, Zal, Zivora—Age 6—Tier 5—Ylan Kirsaan—DECEASED
103—Female, Zal, Zivora—Age 6—Tier 4—Leda Therak—DECEASED
96—Female, Ithirian, Arkhanad—Age 5—Tier 4—Wen Bayan—HARVESTED
97—Male, Telu, Zivora—Age 6—Tier 4—Ramun Vinizara—ORDAINED BROTHER TAORO
109—Female, Telu, Zivora—Age 5—Tier 5—Hesaya Tersero—ORDAINED SISTER JINAAN
Though only Hesaya and Taoro remained, Jacen remembered each of the others. One-Fourteen, who had a stroke the first time he faced a demon and never regained consciousness. The attending exorcist had smothered him with a pillow. Ninety-Two, who hanged herself when she was ten. Taoro had found her and screamed loud enough to wake the rest of them. Ninety-Six, who was given to the Harvest when she failed to meet the Church’s standards. Ten-Three, who’d fled into the desert before she could suffer the same fate. A scavenger had found her half-devoured corpse a few days later.
