Asunder (Incarnate) (11 page)

“I remember. It’s silver.”

I stared at him. He’d never remembered before. Cracks were loosening the magic that kept his memories locked.
It had never been challenged, and if everyone had the same selective amnesia, then it didn’t have to be
good
magic. But he’d spent so much time with me, with my questions—

I shivered with hope. Maybe I could break the magic.

THROUGH THE WINDOW glass, the sky turned velvet indigo as the sun hovered below the city wall and horizon.

My backpack grew heavy as I filled it with dried fruits and crackers, bottles of water, and painkillers. When I’d met Meuric in the temple before, and he’d tried to trap me, he said I’d never get hungry or thirsty. Maybe that was true, but I didn’t want to take chances.

“Got enough stuff?” Sam said as he came into my bedroom and watched me shove a small blanket into the bag. “Sure you don’t want to add the piano? I bet you can make it fit.”

I made a show of looking back and forth between him and the bag. “I’m not convinced you can carry all that.”

He pressed his hand over his heart in mock indignation.
“I could. And I’d carry all your books. Your flute. Your rose, too.”

“Oh! My rose!” I grabbed it off my desk and threaded the stem through my braid. “Even if I can’t take the piano, I should be able to take something good. Besides you, I mean. I’m glad you’re coming.” The rose was starting to dry, though. Petals rasped under my fingertips. “How’s that?”

“Beautiful.” Sam snapped my backpack closed and pressed his mouth into a line.

“What? You don’t like my hair like this?” Too bad for him; I did. I’d get a hundred roses and put them in my hair.

“Oh, I do.” He put on his coat, then pulled the backpack on over it. “It just startled me for a moment. Cris used to wear roses in her hair, too.”

Her
hair.

Blue Rose Serenade.

“Ah. Clearly it’s the best way to show off flowers.” I tugged my coat sleeves over my arms, then checked my pockets for the important things. SED, knife, water bottle, temple key, and notebook. Not that I would have time to write in my notebook in the temple—or I’d have too much time—but I didn’t like going out without it.

The awkward moment passed, and Sam kissed my cheek before we headed downstairs and out the door.

My SED chirped with a message from Sarit, and I stifled a laugh as we took to the dark streets of Heart. “Sarit just
said to have fun and to make sure you massage my shoulders. I wish we really were just sneaking out for a few days of romance. It sounds like a lot more fun.”

“I think so, too.” Sam walked close to me, cutting his steps short so I didn’t have to run to keep up.

With a sigh, I put the SED back in my pocket and took my flashlight out instead. The moon shone brightly, but it wasn’t quite enough for someone who hadn’t been walking around Heart for five thousand years.

As we came to the road, I caught sight of the temple rising above the city, and the white glow of shifting patterns. It was almost hypnotic.

“What’s it like in there?” Sam asked. I’d warned him several times already, about the everywhere-light and the unsound, but that was knowledge he kept losing. The forgetting magic had cracked, not shattered.

I told him again as we walked to the market field, and his face grew pale and drawn, lined with fear. “You don’t have to go.” I spoke gently, and he really didn’t need to go, but I wanted him to. I didn’t want to go by myself. The time I’d been in there had been terrifying. Having Sam with me would make it easier.

“I’m going,” he said, and in the temple light, I caught his determination, and that strength he got from loving me. It made him brave.

Answers beckoned from across the market field. I
couldn’t help but imagine everyone all across Range looking up one night to see a strange, beautiful light, five thousand years ago. Of course they’d been drawn to the city. Sam had said they’d lived in tribes for a while, fighting over Heart before they realized it could easily house everyone. Maybe they’d been fighting over the light, too, if it brought them comfort.

My stomach turned. I couldn’t believe I was going in again. Willingly.

For the newsouls, for answers, I would do anything.

I stashed my flashlight away and took a quick drink of water before heading across the market field. There was no one out this late, so the way was clear as we approached.

There was a crevicelike place where the Councilhouse and temple huddled together; Sam had told me earlier that in a few of the back rooms, there were spots on the walls that glowed at night, though none of them were big enough to use the key to create a door. It would have to be done outside.

“Ready?” I pulled out the key and squeezed into the hidden place. It was just big enough for elbow room—for me. Sam stood a little outside.

“Yeah.” He took a deep breath, as though preparing himself, but tensed instead and looked over his shoulder. He swore quietly. “It’s Stef.”

“Sam!” Stef’s voice carried across the market field. “What are you doing?”

Sam swore again. “What will happen if we just go in with her looking? Will she forget?”

“I don’t know.” I really didn’t, but being pinned between these two buildings made me itch. “Go see what she wants.”

He nodded. “I’ll hurry.” Then he trotted toward Stef, who was halfway to the temple, and halfway to spotting me clutching the key and ready to make a door.

I held still while they greeted each other.

“Going somewhere?” Stef motioned to the backpack.

“Ana and I are taking a short trip out of Heart. Didn’t you get my message?”

“Yes, but you’re here in the middle of Heart. In the middle of the night.” She put her hands on her hips.

“So are you.”

I swallowed a groan. This wasn’t going to end well.

“I,” Stef said, “am going home after working on Orrin’s data console, since he insists he needs one at his house, too.
I
have been working on it for the last seven hours, because he decided he wants to track seismic activity in Range.” Her pause was sharp, daring. “Where’s Ana?”

“She’s waiting on me. So we can go.” Sam shifted his weight and didn’t glance back at me, but his shoulders twisted like he wanted to.

“At your house? At a guard station? We can walk together.” She hooked her arm with his. “Come on.”

“No, it’s fine.” Sam pulled away, and it seemed unlikely anyone had ever looked more suspicious.

The buildings pulsed around me, making my skin prickle. Being this close to the temple made the faint taste of acid crawl up the back of my throat.

Stef’s false cheer faded. Her posture straightened and her voice deepened, showing real hurt. “What’s going on, Dossam? You’re always off with Ana, caught up in your own private quests no one understands. You left Heart because you said Ana wanted time away, and that’s great, Sam. She’s cute, and I’m glad you’re having a nice time with her. You both deserve happiness.

“But ever since you came back to Heart, you just look more and more stressed. Whatever you did in Purple Rose must not have been very relaxing or fun. We’ve been friends for thousands of years. You don’t have to tell me everything that happened, but don’t pretend I don’t know you’ve been hiding something.”

I wanted to shrink until I vanished between the cobblestones. She meant Menehem’s lab. It weighed on him, what we’d learned, but it seemed like there was something more. Something he hadn’t told me, either.

“Stef—”

She cut him off. “Your friends are worried. The Council—well, you know the Council. They’re looking for a reason to toss Ana—and the other newsoul—out of Heart.”

“They wouldn’t.” Sam shook his head. “They wouldn’t, because we’ve done everything they’ve demanded.”

“They’re waiting for you to make a mistake.” Her voice lost some of its bite. “I just wish you’d let me help. How can we be best friends when you don’t let me into your life?”

Sam bowed his head. “We
are
best friends. But we’ve had five thousand years.”

“And she’s still working on her nineteenth. I know. So you’ll spend the next seventy years shutting me out. And if she’s reborn, what then? Do I cease to matter?”

“You know that isn’t true—”

“What about the rest of your friends? You hardly visit like you used to.”

“What are you talking about?” Sam raised his voice. “I see people as often as I always have. More, perhaps. But I’ve always needed time alone. You know that.”

“You’re never alone anymore. She’s always with you. And when you go out to see people, it’s for her. Introductions, lessons. Everything you do is about her.” Her anger made the last words fall like punches.

There wasn’t much Sam could say to that, and he seemed to know it. He
had
devoted a lot of his time to me. The moments he took to think about his response gave Stef another opening.

“You know what they’re saying,” she said, “about Ana and
the sylph. About
newsouls
and the sylph.”

“It’s not true.” He didn’t sound even slightly convincing.

“I was there, Sam. I saw Ana go right for her SED. I saw her when she immediately knew how to distract the sylph long enough for the others to get away. And I saw what happened with the sylph when Deborl and everyone came with the eggs.”

“Surely you don’t believe—”

“What am I supposed to believe? You don’t talk to me about things anymore. People keep asking me questions, because they think I must know what’s going on, but the only things I ever hear are rumors.” Her voice cracked. “I miss you. I miss how things used to be.”

Sam’s shoulders slumped.

This fight would last forever, and I couldn’t stay hidden in the crevice any longer. Every moment made me feel worse, and listening to them…

I couldn’t go out there. Stef had shown all her anguish, and she would be furious if she knew I’d overheard. She’d never
hurt
me, not like Li would have if I’d witnessed that kind of vulnerability, but I didn’t want her to be angry with me, nonetheless.

Sam couldn’t end this—Stef wouldn’t let him—and I couldn’t stay trapped here between walls that made me itch. Sam would know where I went.

Silver shone in temple light as I lifted the key and pressed
the shapes engraved into the metal and squeezed. A gray door swirled into existence.

With one last look at Sam and Stef arguing in the market field, I stepped into the temple.

NO SOUND EXISTED inside the temple, not even ringing in my ears, like silence after a loud noise. Temple silence was thicker than regular silence, like stone was thicker than air.

I clutched the door device to my chest, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the everywhere-light that left no shadows. The glow that emanated from the white walls wasn’t actually bright, but the reflections and lack of darkness made my eyes water.

Mysteries surrounded the temple like a cocoon. Everyone knew it was empty, and yet no door existed—not without the key I held. As far as I knew, the only other person who’d been inside the temple was Meuric.

The air pulsed with the temple’s heartbeat, making my
skin prickle. Janan was here. “Hello?”

No answer. Just the flattening of my voice in dead air.

Wishing I had the backpack, I tucked the door device into my pocket and tried to decide which way to go. The room was immense, though I didn’t think it was the chamber from the last time I’d found myself in the temple. Neither was it the hall with books, or the room with an upside-down pit where I’d killed Meuric.

Carefully, I strode across the chamber toward an archway, nearly invisible in the strange light. My footfalls made no sound, and not because I was trying for stealth. Sound simply did not carry.

Moans rippled through the walls.

I halted and waited, but they didn’t return, so I continued along my original path. I couldn’t let Janan intimidate me just because he was a powerful, incorporeal being older than everyone in Range. Just because—by all accounts—he held dominion over life and death and reincarnation.

Right. None of that was intimidating.

There were no stairs at the archway like last time. It just opened into another room, and when I crossed the threshold, the archway vanished, cutting me off from the original chamber.

The new room was smaller, with archways scattered across the walls that made gentle ripples like curtains. They did nothing to create shadows, but successfully conjured a
headache behind my eyes. I pulled out my flashlight, gave it a few twists, and shone it across the room.

It wasn’t perfect, but at least I could tell how far away things were, judging by the size of the beam.

I couldn’t trust my perception completely. The last time I’d been here, I’d found stairs that looked as though they went down, but actually went up. Nothing in this place was what it seemed.

The key’s weight in my pocket suggested I could make things easier for myself while in the temple, but I had no idea how to do that. Too bad Meuric hadn’t left instructions.

Determined to stop wishing for things I didn’t have, I slipped through another archway and lurched into a sideways room.

I yelped and dropped my flashlight. It flew left and shattered against the wall—or another floor.

My feet stayed planted on the floor where I walked, but my weight pulled to my left, as though I stood on a wall. The other floor was shiny and lumpy, bubbling around the shards of my flashlight like an unfortunate batch of cheese soup I’d once made. All the cheese had coagulated and the milk scorched; the house had smelled terrible for hours.

In the temple, there were no scents, save for what outsiders brought in.

Awkwardly, I sidled through the nearest archway and staggered as gravity righted itself underneath me. My
stomach flipped, and I swallowed repeatedly until I was sure I wouldn’t throw up.

The room was small, only the size of my washroom. An empty white box with no archways, not even the one I’d come through. Only the occasional groan and gurgle shivered through the tiny room.

Suddenly, the air grew sharp and crushing. The heartbeat pulsed louder until it rattled in my ears, and my chest ached with the fight to breathe. It seemed all the air was being sucked away.

“Now what, Janan?” I could barely speak.

No answer.

I withdrew the door device and jabbed at random symbols. The silver box swirled in my fading sight until I wasn’t sure I was actually pressing buttons, just hitting and jamming my fingers. I felt right side up and upside down, and on both of my sides. All at once. Acid crept into my throat.

My body ached as though I were being ripped apart, and my lungs burned with all the air pushing and sucking and swirling around. Vision grayed, and the only thing I could hear was the incessant weeping and moaning.

Janan’s hollow whisper silenced everything. “That is not for you.” It came from everywhere and nowhere. A place on the nearest wall rippled as though something moved beneath the stone, or inside it. I tried not to look because it made my vision worse, but it was impossible to ignore.

“Let me go.” I gasped at the thinning air. “I’ll keep pushing buttons.”

Pressure gathered around the lump inside the wall. For a moment, it looked human-shaped, though its proportions were wrong. Limbs too long, waist too narrow, head too wide.

Then the shape scattered in all directions, ripples smoothing into the glowing stone. A black archway shimmered where the shape had been, and noise returned in waves.

Whispering.

Moaning.

Weeping.

The air remained stifling, but I could breathe. My vision returned to normal as I replaced the key in my pocket and staggered toward the opening. Losing the key would surely end with my being trapped forever.

I’d gone through a black archway before. It had been as quick as stepping into another room, like any other archway, though they looked frightening.

This time, I stepped into ink and starless night. The blackness coated my skin like oil and made breath…what I imagined it would be like to breathe liquid and not die. It sloshed through my nose and windpipe, and I felt ever nearer to drowning.

Three more steps and I still wasn’t through. I stretched out my arms to feel the walls, but there weren’t any. The archway either led into an empty black room, or I hadn’t
made it through before the portal vanished.

That meant I was trapped in the walls. With Janan.

Groans and whines pursued me like sylph. There was no telltale heat or strange singing, only the heartbeat and pressure, and what might have been my hair—or someone’s fingernails—brushing my arms.

I ran.

The wailing grew all around, tangible, and Janan whispered right by my ear, “You wanted somewhere to go. Now you have everywhere.”

I pushed my legs harder, away from his voice, but the fingernails scraping my skin never ceased. If I stopped, he’d hurt me worse. He didn’t have to say it.

When I slowed enough to wrestle out my SED, hoping for some kind of illumination, the onyx air only swallowed the light. If anything, the darkness closed in further, though I couldn’t fathom how complete blackness could become even more perfect.

Hours passed. Or longer. It was impossible to measure time, if time even mattered in here, but my hips and legs ached and I had the vague sensation that I should be hungry or thirsty.

And then I was, because I knew I should be. I slowed to grip my stomach. I was
starving
, though Meuric had said before that I wouldn’t need to eat or drink in here.

“I am hungry, too,” Janan murmured, “and I am sure you are delicious.”

My hiccups fell flat on the liquid air. I wished Sam were here. I wished we didn’t know about Janan. I wished we were sitting at the piano playing a duet, our legs pressed together because neither of us were thinking about music, not really. I wished it all so hard that for a moment I thought I was there, but then a scream cut through the blackness, and I remembered the temple and running and Janan.

“No tears.” Not Janan. Not a real voice, either, but a thought that wasn’t mine. “The Devourer is incorporeal. He has never been able to touch the other one.”

My feet caught on themselves and I stumbled, dropped, and hit the floor. Stabbing pains raced up my palms and knees as I searched the darkness for the non-voice. If it wasn’t me and it wasn’t Janan, perhaps it was one of the weepers.

I struggled to catch my breath, then fumbled through my coat for the bottle of water and drank half of it. The sensation of claws on skin never faded, but the non-voice was right. The feeling was just in my mind, and stopped when I rubbed my palms over my face and neck and hands.

Janan’s words, and the weeper’s—they meant something, but my head was too fuzzy to let me think clearly. The darkness remained overpowering.

Maybe I was blind. No matter how I forced my eyes open
wider, I never caught light. I tried my SED again. A white glow pierced the dark, but illuminated only blackness when I held the screen to the floor. And blackness all around.

Trembling, I tried to send a message to Sam, but the SED beeped in error. I put it away and pushed myself to my feet. I couldn’t let the screaming get to me, or the crying, or the fingernails raking across my skin. They weren’t real.

They weren’t.

Determined not to let Janan stop me, I stepped forward, and the whole world changed.