To his intense relief, Ogden finally spoke. “Before we arrive in the Shrouded City, there are some things I should tell you.”
“Some,” echoed Seth, twisting over his shoulder to give the old man a pointed look.
Ogden sighed. “In my youth, I ran afoul of the gods. I learned secrets I was not meant to know. Urien helped me escape.”
“I’d guessed that much,” Seth muttered.
“Oh?” Ogden’s bushy eyebrows rose. “Pity. That’s as much of my story as you’re entitled to.” He looked at Urien. “I imagine they’ll have more relevant questions for you.”
That was true enough. Jacen started with the most pertinent: “Why did you betray your people?”
“Why did you betray yours?” Urien countered without a hint of offense. “I imagine we’re more alike than you think. Sometimes, enough is simply enough.”
“What changed?” Seth asked.
“It’s difficult to explain. You know so little of my people.” It wasn’t an insult. In fact, Urien seemed almost apologetic. “Would you allow me to start from the beginning?”
Seth made a show of looking up and down the river. “We have time.”
Urien went quiet, pensive. Then he said, “My people—we call ourselves the Firstborn Empire—come from another planet.”
“What do you mean?”asked Nines.
“A world, not unlike your Celes Lor,” said Urien, “but farther away than any of us can fathom, lit by another sun. We call it Ihrafang.”
“How many other worlds are there?” Nines’ voice was tinged with awe. “Hundreds of thousands,” said Urien. “More than you or I could ever visit in a lifetime. Many—like this world, like my homeworld—have brought forth sapient life. We don’t know how or why, but without exception, each of these planets is touched by the Source. Some revere it, some fear it. My people exploitedit. We stripped entire planets bare in the name of profit, and so we viewed the Source, too, as a commodity to be bought and sold.
“In those early days, there lived a man who controlled a great deal of that wealth, who also happened to be an adept telepath. When specialists in his employ discovered a demon that could grant its host exceptional physical abilities and longevity, he took it for himself. His name was Tharanoth, of the great house Eregost.”
“Tharanoth,” Nines repeated, automatic. “The Lord of Hunger.” Urien lifted a finger. “Not quite. You’re an exorcist in training, correct?” She hesitated, then shrugged and nodded.
“You know that all demons, even the most powerful, begin as little more than animals. They learn from their hosts over time. They come to want what their hosts want, believe what they believe. When a demon remains with the same host for hundreds of years, it learns everything there is to know about them. It preserves a near-perfect copy of that host’s mind, with all its memories, intelligence, and personality. It is as at home in this universe as it is in the Source.”
“Enough to survive indefinitely, without a living host?” Jacen hedged. “Indeed. But by the time Tharanoth’s original host expired, he’d had plenty of time to choose his second: his own descendant, created from centuries of selective breeding—and the strongest telepath of their generation. This process has continued over millennia. Tharanoth was among the earliest, but now there are over a hundred of his kind. “Archdemon hosts are possessed very young, when personality is malleable and easily subsumed. They are raised to view themselves as an extension of their ancestor, and consent to integration without hesitation. It is . . . the greatest honor our empire affords.” Urien paused. “Some would say that the state of our civilization is a tragedy because we’ve given it over to demons. I do notagree. Everything a demon learns, it learns from us. What we’ve become is a horror of our own making. The first man to call himself Tharanoth Eregost desired eternity, supremacy, to rule over worlds, and so, that’s what has been passed down.”
Jacen felt ill. “So, the gods . . .”
“They’ve all worn countless bodies,” said Urien. “Their bloodlines exist to produce archdemon hosts, bred to genetic perfection.”
“That’s why they look different than you,” Nines surmised.
“Scions of the archdemon bloodlines are larger and stronger than our species’ baseline,” Urien affirmed. “When one hosts a demon, that strength is amplified tenfold. My kind live longer than yours, but an archdemon might wear the same body for a thousand years.”
“And they’re invulnerable?” Jacen recalled the stories he’d heard as an acolyte, of an arrow bouncing off a goddess’s skin. “Human weapons can’t hurt them.”
“That particular advantage is technological,” said Urien. “Personal shield generators.” He clarified: “Their host bodies bleed and break like ours do, though the point is moot, because I’ve never known them to go without their shields. Regarding the demons inside, however, you’re correct. They cannot be harmed by any weapons of this universe.”
“How did you fit in to all this?” Nines asked.
“I was born on Ihrafang. My family is sworn to the bloodline of Turil Manengol—you call her the Lady of Pain. I came to Celes Lor as an engineer, and for fifty years, I worked on the orbital station.”
Nines narrowed her eyes at him. “What’s that? What were you doing here?” This was the most Jacen had ever heard her speak in a single conversation.
“You’re a pet project of Lord Tharanoth’s.” Urien grimaced at his own habitual use of the honorific. “This world is asfascinating as it is deadly. The archdemons can endure the radiation in your atmosphere, but I cannot.” He tapped his helmet. “I only helped keep the station in orbit, ensuring it blocks out the sun each Harvest season. I never traveled planetside. I . . . knew that the Harvest serves to gather test subjects for certain experiments. I don’t know their exact nature. But the little I discovered?—”
“Suffice to say,” Ogden cut in, “it’s worse than you can imagine.”
For the briefest of moments, Seth’s rowing ceased. Part of Jacen wanted to ask for details, but a much greater part couldn’t stand to know. Not today. Seth and Nines appeared to concur; both remained silent.
