Illusion (36 page)

Delicate dryads with long pointed ears leaned against the leafy trees, their hair wound high with embroidered bands, staring with brilliant green eyes. Some sat high in the old oak boughs, their bare legs swinging, chanting and patting the trunks as if appeasing a fractious child. Below lurked several muscular warriors who appeared spellbound until Resh clicked his fingers, calling them back to life. They looked about wildly as if horrified, and stepped into the surrounding forest, vanishing from view.

Coven members wore thin skirts tied at the waist, and even the older men and women left their midriffs bare, ignoring everyone but their own kind. A huge bonfire smoked in the middle of the clearing surrounded by long tables set with ice-white cloth and food that no one sat down to eat. Tension filled the air as if everyone waited for a performance to start. Maya guessed the actors had just entered the stage and she blanched at the high expectations.

If they failed, tonight many of these creatures would die. The pressure weighed on her shoulders, making her feel small and useless.

Perspiration clung to her face and rolled between her shoulder blades. Although the conversation didn’t change, her neck prickled as hundreds of eyes followed their progress across the compound. It was uncomfortable, especially when one witch reached out and stroked Maya’s hair.

Clarice shook her head and the witch withdrew. “Don’t be fearful,” she murmured. “They’re curious and hopeful.”

“Intrusive,” muttered Resh.

Maya shuddered. “Don’t insult them,” she said, pinching Resh’s arm. Despite the Khereb, the mood between the races felt restless as if the tiniest spark would ignite a fight.

He flicked her an incredulous look that said he couldn’t believe she called the kettle black.

Esmonda broke from a group of warlocks and joined them, face set in a familiar scowl. “Finally, she says something sensible.” She watched the witches with disinterest, but her sharp voice sent a clear message. Silence opened up in the clearing, thick and tense, but brother and sister ignored it and walked side by side through the throng.

They passed a growing number of magical creatures filtering into the gathering from the thin paths between the trees. Pia flew between Clarice and Maya, dropping a small scroll into the scryer’s hands. The raven skated onto Resh’s shoulder and they continued, following a trail that led away from the music, the smells of incense and sweat receding as the walked toward a shrine. Wood creaked beneath Maya’s feet as she passed a gateway inscribed with symbols. She trod the ancient boards into the dark temple. She’d seen symbols like that before, on the old stelae she’d drawn when she was a teenager. Weathered but intricate stylized depictions of animals, men, and women intertwined with scrollwork.

Clarice walked to the middle of the apsidal room to the inner sanctum and lit a flat burner shaped like a snake. It flared to life, casting the temple in a clear white light and flashing off the hilt of Resh’s sword. Above their heads, someone had painted blue-white galaxies, yellow constellations, and red globe clusters. In the center of a darker group of red-white clouds, a winged serpent with the head of Anubis swooped in endless circles.

Clarice placed the grimoire on a wooden lectern and it thrummed to life, pages flipping wildly. Fog drifted out of the book, pouring down the lectern across the wooden boards, covering their feet in wraithlike tentacles.

Muffled thunder echoed overhead and Maya grasped the hard edge of the plinth.

“The Khereb have arrived,” Resh said.

Maya jolted and looked up in alarm, but the ceiling disguised what was happening in the sky.

Resh shifted next to her as the book opened, revealing a woman. She loped beneath tall, shadowy buildings and a dark sky. The setting might be Earth, but Maya couldn’t be sure. The time period seemed off. The woman wore a scowl on her face and dark hollows circled greenish-yellow eyes that were oddly feline. The page turned and another image appeared. A younger woman with pale yellow eyes crouched beneath a straggly tree, dragging herbs from the ground and placing them in a leather pouch tied across her chest. A naked skeletal figure flew into the tree and the woman straightened. The page flipped again.

“My sisters,” Maya said, recognizing the eyes.

“Yes.” A soft voice came from next to her. Clarice held her hand above the grimoire pulling currents of magic from the parchment, a look of concentration on her face.

Resh swore. “Show us the path of the high ritual,” he said. The pages flipped.

Footsteps on the boards heralded the arrival of a dark-haired man wearing armor. Resh introduced him as Lord Seth. After hearing about the Governor Lord of Nephthys, Maya expected a much older man. Instead Lord Seth was middle-aged, square-faced with dark, coffee-colored skin. Across his shoulder he wore his broadsword. He greeted Resh like an old friend and congratulated him on his new office, but watched Maya warily, giving her a small nod in acknowledgment.

The fog parted to reveal Indira as if unwilling to touch the drifting figure or her odor of sweat and death. Her pointed toes drifted several inches above the ground. She wore a low-slung skirt and long beaded necklaces, her skin leathery and brown.

Oxyhiayal joined them in the circle around the grimoire.

Indira’s thick eyebrow rose in a sharp question. “A Circle of Eight, the finest composite number for the highest of rituals: warlock, mage, dryad, witch, sorceress, demigod, demon, and pyschopomp.”

“Who’s the demon?” Maya asked.

Indira smiled, showing black stumps, and seized Maya’s chin with her fingers, covering her in the smell of rot and death. “We might have exorcised a demon, but your warrior carries its characteristic force and always will. That cannot be undone. Promise you’ll lead my coven and I’ll join the ritual.”

Maya pulled away and stared at Resh, as horror dawned. “Did you willingly accept possession from Molokh in hopes of this?”

He shuffled under her glare. “The truth. It was the bargain by which he allowed my release. I kept it under control, and knew the witches would remove the primary. Besmelo agreed to the compact.”

She wanted to hit him and it must have showed because he made an impatient sound. He’d known something inhabited his body while they’d been intimate. And he must have known he’d be altered by the possession. She just might kill him herself. Damn the warrior. He was always plotting and planning, trying to keep a step ahead of the game. One side of his mouth lifted in a crooked smile as if he could read her thoughts and she glared, furious.

“It’s by divine intervention or luck that we have the required number of races around the grimoire right now.” Lord Seth interrupted the tense moment. “Artemis is with us.”

“Hecate, warrior.” Indira reached across, but Lord Seth withdrew and wiped his hand as if contaminated.

“Cultic affiliations aside, if a god observes this, it’s playing it safe so as not to incur the notice of the pantheon,” said Lord Seth. “Balkaith has fallen and Tau is under siege, but the
Milites Order
won the battle in Nephthys. The Khereb regroup to the south. We don’t have much time before darkness floods the realm. We need to find a solution fast.”

An image floated in Maya’s mind. “I’d like to show you something,” she said, following intuition more than anything else.

Resh nodded, arrested from watching the grimoire’s turning pages by the serious note in her voice.

“For years I thought I was mad, dissociating at odd moments. Jane made me see a therapist who told me it was trauma; he said it would be with me for the rest of my life.” The matter-of-fact words still irked her. “It’s why I used so many of Jhara’s spells, to get through a day without falling apart. But there’s an interesting side benefit to dissociating. It could prove useful.” She shrugged in embarrassment, the focus of all their attention. She no longer struggled with the restless feeling, the itchiness in her bones. Being with Resh softened it, dulled the edges. She no longer searched for spells or alcohol to settle the violence thrumming beneath her skin.

“What’s the advantage?” asked Esmonda, frowning.

Maya swept aside other thoughts and focused on taking shallow breaths, stepped back into a quiet place in her mind. She imagined light flooding her body, secreting from her skin, and an intense feeling of vitality bloomed, filling her with amber luminescence. Her body brimmed with color and it overflowed, conjured into reality. The emission interacted with the oxygen in the air, buzzing slightly and falling to the floor as mist. Resh and Clarice stared in surprise at the fog secreting from her skin. Evil or not, this was something she knew how to do. The illumination changed the temperature in the air, creating icy clouds of vapor between them. Resh reached out to touch her arm and she felt the ping of electricity clinging between them before she pulled away.

“I’m not sure what it will do to you,” Maya said, but it came from a great distance, her voice muffled and low. Thunder rumbled above as her double reappeared several feet away, releasing more mist. He shook his head as if clearing his ears.

“Quite a trick,” he said, making an effort to remain calm but his eyes gave him away, shining like pewter.

“Indeed,” said Clarice. She smiled in admiration as Maya drifted back to herself, the light and mist receding. “When a predator is near, you create a perfect copy of yourself.”

“Have you heard of another creature that can do this?” Resh’s drawl thickened.

“I’ve never heard of one that can convert light or transform themselves. Even breeding programs…” Clarice looked up at Resh, whose brows had drawn together in a frown.

Maya stiffened. “What? Don’t protect me; spill.”

Resh’s pupils were dilated, making his eyes dark. “It appears you’ve been especially engineered by Molokh. Manufactured to resist plague and genetic disorders, survive holocausts and avoid extinction.”

“He’s hidden specific qualities in your genetic makeup,” murmured Indira. “Your mind-body split enables you to cross realms, while your art recreates genetic imagination, recreating worlds.”

“My early incarnation in Mesopotamia gave your ancestors the grimoire, helped them sacrifice children to increase Molokh’s power,” Maya said. “Perhaps every time I’m born, my goal is to make him stronger.”

“Powers that wouldn’t show up as a genome in the average test result. Not a magical creature in the eyes of scientists on Earth. Hiding like a chameleon in your cells,” Oxyhiayal said. “When we first came out on Earth, the humans murdered thousands of magi. It resulted in the war and culminated in the death of millions. Molokh must have predicted the resultant paranoia and disguised the genetic marker for transmogrification.”

“While her art gives voice to genetic memory,” reminded Indira.

No wonder Besmelo despised her, wanted her to return to the Abyss. She couldn’t be reincarnated if held behind the Gates of Mithra. An unsettled feeling washed over her. The spirit considered her an abomination against nature. In making the covenant between the realms, he’d tried to stop future trouble.

Adrenaline pumped through Maya’s body. “So far all we’ve been doing is following Molokh’s plan. He’s laid it out like a road map, planned it thousands of years ago, and we’ve traveled it in a predictable pattern.”

“Rivers of blood wash him in power,” Esmonda said. Thunder cracked like a god’s gavel, striking the realm. Lightning flooded the room with a white glow. Indira gazed around warily while Lord Seth pinched a handful of herbs from his waist and blew them over the grimoire. The herbs landed on the book and disappeared, revealing a row of dancing glyphs and symbols.

“He’s had time and genetic engineering up his sleeve, knowing both would give him immense power, help him rip a hole in the Veil, cross to the mortal worlds.” Maya could almost admire Molokh’s work. “All hidden in plain sight in a human with a troubled past.” No wonder he’d bred her into poverty and abuse; her panic and dissociation stirred her powers to life.

His mastery was terrifying and she’d played right into his hands.

“Can he return?” asked Esmonda, casting a fearful glance around the shrouded temple.

“Not unless someone feeds him power. Those children…” Resh closed his eyes in despair and Maya wondered what he saw behind his lids that made his skin pale and shrink until the bones showed through.

Her stomach clenched in dismay as she recalled the faces in the shards of glass when she’d battled Molokh. “The souls have been released.”

Oxyhiayal grimaced. “And once I return, the tripartite government will learn…”

Right. They had to restore the pillars and evoke the Enim Warriors first. They looked at one another with a mixture of anger, fear, and despair.

Resh interrupted. “Maya, your first picture of me, why did you draw it?”

“Who knows where inspiration comes from? I just saw someone standing beneath a huge moon and drew it.”

“What else?”

“Nothing. Wait. There were black shapes in my picture, flitting across the mirror in Jhara’s factory.”

“Khereb,” breathed Clarice. “You pictured Khereb, and so they had access to the portal. But you’d never seen one before, so how…”

“Genetic memory, passed on by her father,” said Indira. “Can you recall the Enim Warriors?”

“I’ve dreamed them. They look a bit like the dog-headed serpents you see everywhere in this realm,” Maya said.

The book groaned, pages flipping wildly so Maya’s hair flew back over her shoulders. Resh stepped forward and they all followed, huddling around the book. It opened to a page of a swirling figure eight, a four-squared cube, and a Maltese cross. In the middle a beautiful gold-leaf chariot flew around a gold nebula. Gas and fire flung off in all directions, spitting from the page. Next to it circled an insignificant dot and a funnel of black space that seemed to suck everything in its path. Maya squinted at the red-gold light streaming from the page.

“We haven’t time to decipher this,” said Esmonda, withdrawing from the book.

“Patience, child.” Indira traced a black ink arrowhead cross with her fingertip and the page yellowed and withered slightly. “All will be revealed. The Maltese cross represents light and dark. The exploding sun shows what will happen if gods walk on the Earth, the annihilation of the four-squared cube or Tesseract, and end of life as we know it. The alchemic elements of onyx and silver refer to the four Pillars that guard the entrance between realms. Gold refers to the sacred marriage between opposites, copper being the ultimate sacrifice.”