Page 127 of The Salt King

Jericho had gone tight. “What has that to do with joining the Church?”

“It was evil, what happened. I caused it, it was my fault, but it . . .” He shrugged slightly. It was long ago enough now that there was no horror left in it. It was just—boring, nearly. Some wearisome thing that he could have bloody done without but that he hadn’t the energy to be angry about anymore. It was just what happened when an unimaginative devil on the edge of a marsh threw its toys out of the pram. “An obnoxious kid shouldn’t be punished by the annihilation of a whole clan. And then Father Li told me about a god who forgives you, and that was the kindest thing I’d ever heard.”

Jericho said nothing. Between them, the fire mouse faded and became only embers and ash. Avelyn looked up in time to see the firelight glint too much in Jericho’s eyes, but then Jericho turned over and away from him.

Shocked, Avelyn sat up and winced when he surfaced from Jericho’s dark aura and the salt light burst across his vision again. The room was blinding. He pressed his hand over his eyes, trying to work out what to say and a way to ask what the matter was, when an insane artificial joy burst over him.

“Fuck, it’s outside,” he managed, already fighting the pull towards the door.

He should open it. Everything would be better if he just opened it, he would feel so much better, what was the use of all this sorrow when outside was . . .

He heard himself say it this time.

Gaudezhte *khiram.

This time, he could almost think a way around it, just enough for a tiny detached part of him to rage to know what the fuck that was, what did it mean, why everyone had said it, why he kept saying it—

Jericho stood up suddenly. It was faster than Avelyn had ever seen him move before, and smoother, soldier-swift. As he crossed the room, he changed.

His clothes, the Hreod jumper and Heaven-and-Hell boots, shifted and warped. Instead there was a cloak, armour, and somehow there was a spear in his hand, and then he wrenched open the door.

It was only for a split second that the thing on the other side was a ball of roiling salt light flickering through too many shapes to understand. All at once it was something more like a person. Avelyn caught the coil of a dark cloak, an alarmed almost-human face, but then Jericho had smacked it flat on its back, spear point at its throat, and he was talking, but the words weren’t English. They sounded ancient and maddeningly familiar at once, there were clicks, and moments where his voice split into eerie harmonies, almost-song, but then it was over and the thing on the ground was scrambling away, and Jericho slammed the door again. He thumped his head against it, resting his hands on the surface. Silver crept out from his fingertips, sealing the door, then the whole wall, thick, mirror-polished.

Avelyn sat perfectly still. Every fibre of him was frozen, certain he was locked in a room now with a thing far more dangerous than whatever had stalked him in the Hringen forest.

“It means,” Jericho said, turning around, “Rejoice, for we have returned.”

PART V

The Salt King wakes

47

Everywhere

The song of the legions was not a sound. Not everyone heard it. But up in the mountains, above the salt ruins of Lancang, Kalden heard, in the same way he heard the spirit under the monastery. In Rome, Cai Li heard it. In Salt Lake City, gathered in front of the white edifice of the Temple, holding candles and singing hymns, the crowd saw the bronze angel on the roof move, and sound the trumpet—and heard the ecstasy roar of the choirs. At the Masjid al-Haram, the million souls who had flooded into the mosque complex and then overflowed into the city and the foothills of Arafat and the Mountain of Light cried out, because the ground was shaking under the power of those celestial voices, and the horn calling to advance.

As the angels poured into the world, free and looping and laughing, they sang.

Down on the ground, in the oldest language there was, the one that was already holy the last time the host had come, all the people said:

“Rejoice, for we have returned.”

48

Caer Halen

Jericho slung the spear aside, but it vanished into the salt light before it hit the ground. He slid down the silver-sealed door. By the time he was on the floor, he was himself again, no armour. He lifted his eyes to Avelyn. He had gone still and calm, but it wasn’t his doctor calm. It was blankness.

“They come once in every few thousand years. One great harvest. This place, this world, everything you know—it’s a farm. Theirs.” He knocked one knuckle back against the silver. It sang. “In order to live, we need to be believed into shape, in the same way you need to eat. The more you believe, the stronger we are.”

“You’re talking about gods,” Avelyn said numbly.

“No,” Jericho said, suddenly sharp. “No, no, we are not gods, those are something else, we’re just . . . anglerfish. The ras is the lamp. It brings you to us, you know something must be there, you believe, and we live.”

“But . . .”

“But over time,” Jericho said, smiling a terrible not-smile as distant and cold as the stars, “if we go away, which they like to do . . .” He pointed behind himself at the door. “Then you forget why you believe, then you forget what, and then you stop believing at all. Your lives are so little. After two thousand years, most things fade into stories that could be history or could be legend. After three thousand . . . you’re lucky if you even have a myth. And so, after the time it takes for you to forget, they come back, and they make you believe all over again. It’s a feast. After that, you believe and believe, you give and give, and they thrive.”