Children of Fallen Gods (The War of Lost Hearts Book 2)

by Carissa Broadbent

  “I fucking despise this place,” Max muttered, and started walking. I followed.

  “There are no guards?” I couldn’t help but whisper. It was too silent — an unnatural silence, the kind that reeked of danger.

  The words barely made it out of my mouth before I stumbled into Max, who had stopped short.

  An old woman stood before us. She was draped in a black dress, with a matching scarf covering her hair, reminiscent of a hood. She stood perfectly still, her hands clasped in front of her. Shriveled scars occupied her empty eye sockets. A Syrizen.

  “Ascended above, that was unnecessary,” Max muttered.

  The woman did not acknowledge the comment, though the muscles around her scars twitched disapprovingly.

  I couldn’t help but stare. Is this what became of Syrizen, when they got old? I’d never seen one over the age of fifty. And while all Syrizen could be a little unnerving, this one seemed almost inhuman. A purple cast bloomed beneath her scars, like delicate bruises.

  “For whom?” she creaked out.

  “Vardir Israin,” Max said.

  The woman then gave me a stare that I felt down my spine.

  “She’s with me,” he added.

  The stare held for several more uncomfortable seconds. Then she abruptly turned away, as if we were now unworthy of her interest. She lifted a finger and pointed down a hallway, and by the time we began walking again, she was gone.

  Max strode on purposefully, as if that one feeble pointed finger was enough to tell him exactly where we needed to go, even though we continued to turn corners and wind down hallways. The carved white stone drowned out everything else, so bright I found myself squinting, and the walls seemed to press down on us.

  Everything was so strangely silent, as if sound itself withered and died in the air — even the cadence of our footsteps seemed odd, like they were defying nature. At one point, we turned a corner, and it was as if something cracked. A piercing, agonized scream sliced through the air, so sharp it dragged bloody fingernails through my ears.

  I froze.

  But the sound was gone as suddenly as it had appeared. It was like a single fragment of broken glass, cut off at the end and the beginning, audible for only a fraction of a second.

  And then, once again, it was so silent that I questioned whether I had heard it at all.

  Max and I had both stopped walking. We looked at each other.

  It took me a moment to realize what I had heard. Realize why this place was so oddly silent. “It’s a spell,” I said. “The silence.”

  He inclined his chin, grim. “Yes. It is.”

  The thought made a shiver run through me. Right now, the air might have been thick with screams, with agony, like what we had just heard through a single crack in magic. Here, just unheard, smothered beneath oppressive silence.

  I didn’t like this place.

  We continued down several more halls, until Max stopped and turned to the wall. He placed his palm flat against the white stone, and it simply parted, like a curtain opened by invisible hands. Where there had once been solid stone, now there was a door.

  Before I could move, Max caught my arm.

  “We tolerate nothing from him,” he said. “Nothing. Alright?”

  I gave him a nod, and Max opened the door.

  The thing before me didn’t even look like a man.

  Actually, there were a lot of things that were suddenly incomprehensible. The carvings on the walls seemed to be moving, though when my eyes landed in any one place, they were still. The room, a small box of that carved white stone, felt as if it both brightened and darkened all at once. There was no furniture in here, not even a bed or chamber pot. It reeked of human waste and decay, though I saw neither.

  The figure was curled up on the floor, his knees to his chin. He wore stained, plain clothing — a shirt that had once been white and torn brown trousers. His back was to me, giving me a view of just bony shoulders and a head of thin, scraggly white hair.

  “Vardir,” Max said, and when the man turned I had to stifle a gasp.

  He was grinning — grinning like a madman. He had to have been mad, because his face — the pale albino face of a Valtain — was destroyed, covered in bleeding gouges.

  At the same moment, Reshaye roared to life, its hatred overwhelming me.

  Vardir scrambled around to face us. Up close, I realized he was actually quite young, perhaps only in his forties.

  “Max,” he breathed. “Maxantarius Farlione. Two old friends, two in just so little time. What a treat, what a treat.”

  He scrambled forward, fingers reaching out crooked like broken tree branches. Max yanked me back.

  A flash of memory hit me. That same smile as he leaned over me, little knives in his hands, in a room of white.

  I had to catch Reshaye as it lunged for control — lunged for Vardir’s throat. My body seized, but one little sliver of Reshaye slipped through, a ragged whisper, “I am not your friend.”

  Not my voice. Not my accent.

  Vardir looked delighted. “Ah, yes. There it is. No matter how different the carrier may be, I always know.”

  Enough, I said to Reshaye, pushing it back. We need him.

  {He should die for what he did to me.}

  Being here is worse than death.

  “We’re not here for a reunion,” Max said. “We have some questions for you.”

  “Questions?” Vardir grinned wider, all those wounds over his face rippling. “I used to love questions.”

  “I want you to tell me if it is possible for a curse to bind one life to another.”

  Vardir paused, licked his lips. “Why? Did someone do that to you? Now that you mention it, I did feel something strange, something off-color—” He stopped abruptly, his gaze snapping to me. “Or is it you?”

  “You answer our questions,” Max said. “We don’t have to answer yours.”

  But the prisoner’s bloodshot eyes crinkled with delight, fixed on me. “It is you.”

  I slowly knelt down to the ground, until I was on Vardir’s level.

  “You are Reshaye’s creator?”

  A snarl. {He is not.}

  He laughed. “Creator! Not creator, no. I simply helped harness it here, in Ara. Who could have created such a thing? Perhaps the gods themselves made it to punish us. They do love to do that.” His eyes found the ceiling, and his face slowly devolved into terror, as if he was seeing something there that Max and I could not.

  Max and I exchanged a look.

  “Vardir,” Max said, and he jolted, as if jerking awake. He grinned slowly.

  “An old friend!” he exclaimed. “Three, in so short a time! How lucky am I, how very lucky.”

  My heart sank. This man was insane.

  “You were telling me about Reshaye,” I said.

  “Ah. Of course. I could not have done it without Maxantarius. Such a willing host. Reshaye wanted no one but him.” Vardir looked to Max, and his face went serious, a wrinkle forming at his brow. “It gave you a gift,” he said, quietly. “I can feel its magic still, in you. They took so much, but I can still feel—”

  “A life binding spell, Vardir,” Max pressed. “Is it possible? Could it be broken?”

  “I thought you were smarter than that, Captain. Anything is possible, and nothing is ever truly broken.”

  Max let out a hiss of frustration. But I pulled my sleeve back, exposing my forearm and the dark veins visible beneath the albino white patches of my skin.

  “Do you know what this is?”

  Vardir’s face went serious. Then horrified. Then delighted.

  “You— you did it.”

  He lunged forward, grabbing my arm and wrenching it forward, pulling it so close that his nose nearly brushed my skin. Max was halfway to him when I raised my other hand, giving him a silent assurance: Wait. I’m fine.

  “Did what, Vardir?”

  “You Wielded Reshaye’s magic directly. You alone.” He shook his head. “If I had my too
ls— if I had my study—”

  “What does that mean?” I asked, and Vardir arched his eyebrows at me.

  “You don’t even know? It means a channel has opened. A channel connecting you to the deepest levels of magic, deeper than Valtain or Solarie magic or even Fey magic.” He snapped his gaze to Max and grinned. “So this is why you ask about such blood magic. You have it too — yes, I see that now. I don’t know how I missed it, don’t know how, my mind has been so— so fuzzy lately—”

  I could feel his emotions rippling through his touch, and they were unlike any I had ever felt before — a million disjointed fragments warring with each other, as if he was constantly experiencing all emotions at once, and never knowing which one was real.

  Slowly, I pieced together what Vardir was implying.

  “You are saying,” I said, quietly, “that our magic is blood magic.”

  “Human bodies aren’t built to withstand such power. This magic feeds on life. It will take and consume whatever life you can give it, and more. The more life you give it, the more powerful it will be.”

  “And the higher the cost,” I murmured. Reshaye curled through my thoughts, landing on a memory — the memory of my fingers on skin, my magic reducing living flesh to black rot.

  Consuming life.

  Nausea roiled in my stomach. All those people I had killed, in Threll. Slavers, yes. I couldn’t bring myself to be sorry for their deaths. But there was something sickening, in that — in the fact that my magic consumed life itself, and thrived on death.

  Max looked as if he did, too. One look at his face, and I could imagine what he was thinking. All those lives in Sarlazai. All that death. Just making him stronger. Destruction begetting more destruction.

  Vardir’s gaze flicked from me, to Max. “Now tell me, have you tried combining your magics? Theoretically, if you both draw from the same level, you could—”

  Then he stopped short. His face went suddenly slack, then slid slowly into horror. Wordlessly, he lifted his hands and began drawing his fingers down his face. It was then that I realized: the cuts were claw marks, hundreds of them, from his own fingernails.

  I lurched forward to stop him, on instinct. One second, and I was yanking away Vardir’s hands—

  Another, and he lunged for me.

  I was pinned on the floor, Vardir leaning over me.

  “How did I miss it?” he breathed. “Until now, I didn’t see—”

  His blood, fresh in the newly opened scratches, dripped on my face. He was on top of me, his hands at my throat.

  A split second later, and I felt the heat of flames, Max’s cursing as he yanked Vardir away. The tiny cell suddenly was thick with the smell of burning flesh. My own magic tingled at my fingertips. Rot.

  Vardir scampered upright, pushing himself against the wall, his eyes glued to me. “They’re coming for us,” he said. “Because of you.“

  I leapt to my feet. My heart was pounding. Two strides, and I was there before I knew what was happening. Pushing Max aside, and grabbing the sides of Vardir’s bloody face.

  “You deserve to die,” my voice said. My voice… but Reshaye’s words. “You locked me up. You tortured me.”

  Black rot sizzled on Vardir’s skin, and he let out a raspy, ragged scream. “You will destroy us.”

  “You destroyed me. You—”

  “Stop.” Max pulled me away, and I whirled around to face him.

  “He deserves it,” I growled. “You know he does as well as I.”

  Fragments of Reshaye’s memories slid through my mind. My open entrails open on a table. A white ceiling. Incredible pain.

  “He does,” Max said. “So let him rot here tearing his own face off.”

  My body was tensed, uncertain.

  You told me the worst thing about being what you are is that you are neither living nor dead, I told it. Let him live that way too. It is the greatest punishment.

  Torture. Utter torture.

  Reshaye said nothing. But slowly, I felt it concede, and I carefully slipped back into control. I saw Max’s face shift, and I knew he recognized the change immediately.

  But we had no time to waste. Vardir let out a shriek, still lying on the ground, scratching at a face now so ruined and bloody that it looked like nothing but a smear of flesh. He was weeping.

  “I can’t believe I didn’t see, they’re coming, they’re coming, I can’t believe I didn’t—”

  The walls themselves seemed to move all at once, lurching in on us. When had it gotten so dark?

  I shot Max a look of alarm. “That’s enough of that,” he muttered, and grabbed me with one hand and pressed the palm of the other to the wall.

  And nothing happened.

  “Max…”

  “I’m trying.”

  Again. His palm to the wall.

  Nothing.

  It was so dark, now. So dark that I was beginning to see movement in the shadows, like ghosts crawling out of the stone carvings.

  The hair on the back of my neck stood upright. My heartbeat was rushing.

  “Alright, you miserable bitch,” Max muttered. “Enough play.” He pounded on the wall, and then pressed his palm to it. This time, I pressed mine beside his.

  Open. Open. Open…

  The wall parted, and I breathed a ragged sigh of relief. Max grabbed my hand and the two of us were rushing down those smooth stone hallways — Gods, had I thought they were bright before? Now, what had once been eerie bone-white was ashy and dark, as if smoke-stained. The carvings seemed to shift.

  One turn and then another and another. Every hallway looked the same. At one point, Max stopped short, his face snapping off down the hall, frozen.

  “What?” I asked. “What are you looking at?”

  No answer.

  “Max—”

  He turned away, pale. “Let’s just get out of here.”

  I could have sworn I heard a voiceless whisper:

  Stay.

  {Go,} Reshaye whispered. {Faster.}

  We rushed around another corner, and I stumbled to a sudden stop.

  There was a figure standing before us — a woman with wild black hair and eyes that looked like home.

  “Tisaanah,” she called to me, her hand outstretched. “Tisaanah, my love. My sweet daughter, my strong daughter. I missed you so much.”

  I could not make myself move.

  This is not right, a small part of me whispered, far in the back of my mind.

  And yet, everything else within me pulled to her. I could even smell her — salt and jasmine. The scent of childhood safety.

  “It’s not real, Tisaanah.” Max’s hand clasped mine, holding me back. “Whatever you’re seeing. It’s not real.”

  “I have missed you so much,” she breathed, tears streaking her cheeks. “I called for you so many times. But you never came.”

  I blinked, and her face was bloody, her outstretched hands decaying. “I died alone in the dark, and you never—”

  “It’s not real, Tisaanah.” Max grabbed my arm and pulled me away, and after a stumble, I was running again.

  Go back, a voice seemed to whisper. Don’t abandon her again. It echoed with her pleas, fading behind me: “Please, Tisaanah, please, help me, come back…”

  “That’s what this place does,” Max muttered. “It feeds on you. Don’t stop, no matter what it shows you.”

  My mother was only the beginning. I saw Max, chained and bloody, marred by decay that I immediately recognized as my own magic. I saw Serel, starving and emaciated, collapsed under the tear of countless lashes. Sammerin, Moth. The Threllian refugees. Always the same: Help me, help me.

  Max, too, lurched to a stop several times, growing paler and quieter each time. I could only imagine what he saw. Once, I needed to hold him back from turning around, dragging him around the corner until he regained his senses enough to push forward.

  By the time we got to the entrance, it was so dark that I struggled to see. The door was bigger than I rememb
ered it, tall and narrow and black. The symbols on it glinted through the shadows, despite there being no light to reflect.

  Max put his hand on the door.

  It did not move.

  The symbols were rearranging, like bugs crawling towards a carcass, collecting around us.

  I pushed the door, too.

  “Let us out,” I murmured in Thereni, as if to plead with Ilyzath herself. “We do not belong here.”

  You do not?

  The whisper surrounded us.

  “Alright, Ilyzath,” Max muttered. “We’re appropriately fucking impressed with you. Now let us go.”

  The symbols in the wall all skittered towards Max, framing his silhouette. Shadows reached from the corners of the room, caressing him.

  It sounded nothing like a voice, and yet I could understand its words perfectly:

  Why should I let you go now that you have returned to me? Perhaps you escaped me once. But you belong here.

  “No.” I thrust my palm against the door and threw all of my magic — all of Reshaye’s magic — behind it. A surge of light hit my fingertips.

  More and more shadows reached for Max, like ravenous hands.

  This is your home, Ilyzath crooned to him. And what difference does a few weeks make?

  The door held for one more moment.

  But another burst of power, and it flew open. Max and I stumbled through. My eyes recoiled against the brightness of the outside world. Max yanked parchment from his pocket and drew a Stratagram. He had to do it twice — his hand was shaking too badly to make the circle the first time.

  We landed behind the Farlione estate. It was a beautiful day. People were all around us, walking or chatting. So peaceful it was surreal.

  My gaze flicked to Max, and the two of us stared at each other in silence. His jaw was tight, and his face pale. My hand clutched his so tightly that it trembled. So tightly that I thought I would never let it go.

  We had seen many horrible things within those walls, but only Ilyzath’s whispers to Max followed me out:

  You belong here. What difference does a few weeks make?