He gestured down the hall with one long, four-fingered hand. With little other choice, Ysira followed him through a sliding door to another corridor. She trusted nothing about this. She wrung her hands, running her thumb over the stump of her left little finger.
The next room resembled the inside of the White Cathedral, but open to the stars. Soaring buttresses braced vast, clear windows. The design seemed impossible, a show of reckless extravagance that left Ysira no choice but to gape. When Tharanoth flicked his hand, the windows turned opaque. He snapped his fingers. An image materialized out of thin air.
Ysira jumped back with an involuntary, undignified noise. A dense spiral of stars floated around her, casting the darkened walls in a rainbow glow.
“What is this?” she whispered.
“You are aboard an interstellar vessel,” said Tharanoth. “It traverses galaxies like your people’s boats might cross a lake.More broadly speaking, we are in high orbit above your planet. More narrowly, we are in my private suite.”
Galaxies. Orbit. Planet.Ysira had never heard the first word, and the other two were still too monumental, too unbelievable, to elicit a reaction.
“This”—the god swept a hand across the glittering wheel—“is our galaxy. It is comprised of billions of stars, some of which are orbited by planets like yours.”
Tharanoth made a pinching gesture. The projection shifted, its view plummeting in on a single pinprick of red-gold light. The sun.A star.Around it drifted Oe, the moons, and Ysira’s world.
“Celes Lor.” Tharanoth’s Zal pronunciation was flawless. He pointed out a third sphere in the planet’s orbit, smaller than the moons but closer. “This is our station, which we are presently aboard.”
He snapped his fingers again. The projection zoomed away, so fast and so far, it made her head spin, to show a different world and its strange purple sun. This one drifted alone; it had no moons. “This is Ihrafang.My home.”
Ysira did not trust herself to speak or move. Her sense of reality was expanding too fast, leaving her untethered—a needle dropping into a fathomless deep, falling and falling.
“My planet, like yours, is a nexus of universes. It is home to a great many . . .” Tharanoth pursed his lips, as though searching for the best way to explain. “Pockets of space where the fabric of reality is thinnest, by which passage is possible through the Source dimension.”
“The Gates,” Ysira ventured. Like the one she’d seen at Zal Fel, before those strange armored people—Tharanoth’s minions?—knocked her unconscious and brought her to this place.
“Long ago, my people found them and harnessed their power. You see, your understanding of the Source is limited. Wecall it dangerous—evil, even—becauseyouare not safe to wield it. The same is not true for us.” Tharanoth’s unsettling gaze locked with hers. “For your own safety, there are certain truths we keep concealed.”
“Truths,” Ysira echoed. “Such as that you’re just a man possessed by a demon?”
Tharanoth narrowed his eyes. Perhaps she shouldn’t have said that.
But then he chuckled. “Themanyou refer to, when you look at me, does not exist. I am one hundred thousand years of memories, acquired through eighty-six bodies, of which this is merely the latest.”
“I saw your . . . associate . . . move outside a body.” Ysira refused to give a name to what, exactly, the god Nabatar had done to Casandra Semira. She betrayed nothing but suspicion, no emotion Tharanoth might use to slip past her mental defenses. “Are you saying you can exist without a host?”
“In a manner of speaking.” Tharanoth flexed his fingers, admiring them in the projected starlight. “These vessels are much more convenient, and our presence changes them inwonderfulways. After a century or two, they’re strong, fast, and nigh-invulnerable. They endure for hundreds of years. With them, we built the Firstborn Empire—so named because we were the very first to expand across the stars.”
His meaning was clear enough. Ysira could not hurt him, and he wanted her to know it. Unease crept over her anew.“You conquered our world.”
“Hardly. Your civilization was primitive. You would have destroyed your own planet had we not intervened.” Tharanoth tilted his head. “I prefer the wordcultivate.Celes Lor is my prized achievement.”
Ysira took in the stars wheeling around them, all those other suns, worlds upon worlds upon worlds. How many had suffered the same fate as hers?
She asked, quiet and measured, “Why?”
“Call me a philanthropist. It’s also a matter of scientific curiosity. There’s nothing quite like watching a world evolve, and to cultivate yours has been a fascinating process.”
That word again.Cultivate.It evoked a visceral response in Ysira. “Is that what you call it when you Harvest us?”
Tharanoth did something like a sigh. “I do it out of altruism, difficult as it may be for you to perceive. You must understand: I was already old when your ancestors invented written language. When you’ve lived as long as I have, you learn to see the greater scope of things.”
Ysira did not believe in altruism, not from her own people, andnotfrom the Lord of Hunger. He was manipulating her. But to what end?
That encompassing presence stirred at the edges of her mind. She doubted she’d have noticed it if not for the way her passengerjumped. Ysira was no telepath, so the best defense she could muster was to keep him at arm’s length, but she redoubled her efforts nonetheless.
“That’s what I was,” she couldn’t stop herself from saying. Her voice shook as bloody memories roiled in the depths of her subconscious. Bright lights. Cold metal. Body no longer hers. “A casualty for the cultivation of my world.”
Tharanoth regarded her without emotion. “I admit it was an accident that you survived, and something of a surprise. I am not easily surprised. It is a testament, I think, to the extraordinary resilience my work has fostered in your species.” He gave her a nod, as if he meant to convey a compliment. Her stomach turned.
