I watched him wide eyed. An entire civilization that could so easily fall victim to the hands of a few people was frightening to consider. “Why do Jinee grant wishes?” I asked.
Rath leaned forward, resting his arms on his thighs. “Legends say that Jinee are the direct descendants of the seraphim. They, too, had the ability to grant wishes for mankind — for those with a pure intent. Ours is a perverted version of that ability. Our magic does not work on ourselves or on any other Jinee, so when we are alone, separated from the rest of mankind, we are safe and free. But when an outsider does a favor or exhibits a kindness to a Jin, we become bound to them until we have fulfilled a wish. Fortunately, Jinee can grant only one wish per person, so if they waste their wish on something petty, we can easily grant it and go about our lives once more. Often, however, our abilities are abused.”
Rath drank from his canteen. He cleaned the canteen every chance he got and often looked at me suspiciously before drinking. If he could survive without ever taking a drink, he probably would. It hurt to know that he no longer trusted me, but I could hardly blame him. I didn’t trust me either.
There were fewer spirits up in the mountains than there were near the cities. The few spirits I saw weren’t talkative; they went on their way without even noticing that I could see and hear them. After the constant chatter of the Voices and the deadmen and the spirits, silence felt foreign. As days passed, I slowly began to feel more alive and more comfortable with my own thoughts. I was slowly finding myself again.
Occasionally, I caught a glimpse of a young woman out of the corner of my eye, but she vanished before I ever got a good look at her. She never spoke.
I dreamed about Mel every night. Most of the dreams were pleasant memories that subsided into a dull ache when I awoke. Some of these dreams were less pleasant, and I would wake in tears. I took to calling my phantom visitor Mel, or Zarra, or sometimes I even wondered if the figure was what remained of my mother’s soul, guiding me and watching over me.
We climbed high enough that the air grew thinner and colder. We didn’t stop that night. At Rath’s insistence, we plodded on, my boots crushing frost-covered plants, Rath hovering beside me. He nudged me on until we crossed to the other side of the mountains and out of Aldrin. Then we both collapsed and slept all day, lying on our backs out in the open so the sun could bake some warmth back into our chilled bodies.
The next day, Rath told me about his childhood.
“I was a third child,” he said. He explained that Jinee usually had only two children, often a boy and a girl. Rath, a third, was a somewhat unusual surprise. He told me that the “Ki” syllable in his name marked him as a third. I hadn’t known there was a “Ki” sound in his name, but I nodded along as if I had always known this.
There was no room in Jinee family culture for a third child, so Rath was given to the seal guardians to serve Alaudrin. He mostly did chores, ran errands, and kept the seal chamber clean. His childhood was simple and busy, but not unhappy despite his status as a nobody. He learned how to make medicines from one of the seal guardians, which became his passion. He sometimes sneaked away from the temple to go out into the forest with the scavengers and find ingredients for his potions. He had no family, but he wasn’t lonely.
There were two other thirds, or kiys, that also served Alaudrin. They were an older boy and a younger girl, and they were quite content to be friends with each other since no one else could be bothered with them.
We stopped to rest beside a stream, to refill our canteens and give Rath a chance to relax his leg. The closer we came to Hira, the less Rath was willing to risk using the armor. He claimed that the armor gave off a pulse in response to Alaudrin’s seal. If he used the magic, the Jinee would sense that we were coming.
“Why don’t we want them to know we’re coming?” I asked. I stood up to my knees in the stream, enjoying the cool water on my blistered feet and sore legs. “You think you can open the seal. Shouldn’t that be kind of a big deal? I think they would be excited or something.”
Rath didn’t seem to hear my question. He launched into another story.
“Once every hundred winters, on the eve of the Insurgent’s Betrayal, the seal changes color from white and gold to blue and black. The seal no longer nourishes the life around it. Instead, it collects as much vala as it can muster. Plants wither, animals die, people grow ill. It is a terrible day. The guardians discovered that the best way to appease Alaudrin on the sys-day was to give him a life.”
I had been scrubbing dirt from behind my ears with an old rag. “You mean like a human sacrifice?”
“Exactly that.” Rath looked up at me with sadness in his eyes. “And what better sacrifice than an insignificant kiy?”
Startled, I dropped the rag in the stream. I dived after it before it could float away. “Oh no.” I thought I knew where the story was going, and I didn’t like it. I climbed out of the stream and sat on the rock beside Rath. “What happened?”
“I was fifteen winters old when the sys-day came. I was chosen as the sacrifice for Alaudrin, but I tricked the eldest kiy into playing a game in which the loser would forfeit his life to the seal.”
Rath stared down at his reflection in the stream.
“I cheated and won my life at the expense of my friend’s.”
Rath paused to gather his wits, then continued. “When the time came, I had second thoughts. I interrupted the ceremony and ran to him, trying to stop him, knowing that I should have been the one to die. But it was too late. I grabbed my friend’s arm as he touched the seal. Energy shot through him, killing him instantly. The force hit me as well. I heard the voice of Alaudrin. That was sixty-eight winters ago. I fled that day and never returned.”
I leaned forward, mouth agape. There were so many questions buzzing through my mind, but only one managed to make it past my lips. “How old are you, exactly?”
Rath chuckled. “I am eighty-three winters old.”
I gaped at him. I had assumed he was closer to my father’s age. He looked younger than Commander Shyronn, younger than my pa. Now I knew he was at least twice their age.
“Jinee do not age as quickly as outsiders,” Rath explained, clearly amused by my surprise.
“Hold up,” I held up both of my hands, “so you’re telling me that sixty-eight winters ago, you actually heard the voice of the Seraph Alaudrin. Why haven’t you ever mentioned this before?”
“It was a … personal experience.”
I spluttered. “Well, yes. What was it like? What did he do? What did he say?”
“Nothing.” Rath shrugged. “He just coughed.”
“He coughed.”
“Yes.”
“He coughed?” I was so disappointed I thought I would cry.
Rath grinned. “No, he didn’t cough. But the lie was definitely worth the look on your face.”
I might have hit him if I didn’t know contact would hurt me, too. “You’re a pond-larker,” I said, borrowing one of Mel’s favorite insults. “What did he say?”
The smile faded from Rath’s face. He looked me in the eye.
“He said, ‘You will set me free.’”
As we approached the Jinee settlement of Hira, the trees grew larger and larger. Many of these trees were taller than the castle in the Old Capital. Their roots were as thick as my waist. They twisted above and below us, creating a labyrinth of greenery. Navigation became a new adventure as I wriggled through the enormous tree roots like a beetle. Rath explained that much of the vegetation around Hira was this large, proof of the seraph’s life-bringing powers.
The Jinee buildings were snuggled among the roots of the great trees or else built right into them. In the middle of the village was the gutted remains of an old castle, long gone to ruin.
Rath grabbed my arm and pulled me behind a tree as two Jinee women strolled by carrying baskets of laundry. Jinee were tall, with dark skin and lithe, muscular bodies. Their hair was dyed a magnificent array of jewel tones. They w
ore bright, loose clothing with long slits in the skirts for ease of movement. Like Rath, their irises were the same color as their brown-gray skin. They all wore exotic face paint just like Rath.
I looked from Rath to the Jinee and back again a couple times, then snickered. When the two Jinee passed out of sight, I chuckled at Rath. “You’re a runt,” I teased.
Rath scowled at me. “Kiys are always small,” he grumbled. Changing the subject, he pointed his crutch in the direction of the wall of mountain to the east. “The temple is built into the stone. That’s where we’ll find the seal.”
We moved toward the temple, skirting around the outside of the village. It was a pain to follow behind Rath as he walked on his crutch, trying not to trip on the uneven ground. I was tempted to just pick him up and carry him, but I knew his pride would never allow it, and it would hurt us both to boot. Several times, he gave me a signal to jump into the bushes and hide. He was worried about being noticed, but while he would survive to be questioned, the Jinee would kill an outsider like me on sight.
It was evening by the time we were close enough to see the large doors set into the side of the mountain. By the light of torches on either side of the doors, we could see two big men standing guard, talking to a woman in a brightly patterned dress. She wore a headdress of wood and feathers that added another couple hands to her already impressive height.
“She’s one of the seal guardians,” Rath explained. “Come, I know another way in.” He handed me his crutch. Holding up his weight with one hand against the stone, he hopped away from the doors. He whispered as we went.
“Kiys are never allowed through the main doors, not unless they’re about to be sacrificed. We have another entrance to do the chores.”
He seemed to know where he was going, even in the darkness, so I didn’t bother lighting my candle. We didn’t want to bring any unnecessary attention to ourselves.
Rath gestured for me to stay put and then dropped to the ground. He crawled on his elbows, dragging his leg behind him. When he was comfortably hidden beneath a tree-sized bush, he reached his hand into the pouch on his hip. He fiddled with something I couldn’t see. I heard a quick puff of air and a guard I hadn’t noticed standing nearby grunted and dropped to the ground.
“What did you do?” I asked, helping Rath upright.
“Oh, look, the door appears unguarded,” Rath said, ignoring my question. I stepped toward the guard, but Rath whacked me on the leg with his crutch. “Don’t touch him. Don’t go anywhere near him. He is fine. If you show him any kindness or any sort of mercy, he will be indebted to you, and his life will be ruined.”
Rath wasn’t joking, even a little. I nodded. “I understand.”
“Take your shoes off.”
“What?”
Rath slid his crutch into the holster on his back. “It echoes inside. They’ll hear you walking.” When Rath lifted into the air, his armor glowed. He closed his coat and buttoned it up to stifle the light. “We’ll have to be quick,” he said as I pulled off my boots. “They’ll already notice something is wrong now that I’m using the armor. Let’s go.”
We ducked into a small, undecorated corridor cut into the mountain. Rath floated ahead, and I tiptoed behind in my stockinged feet, trying not to make a sound. The corridor branched a couple times, but Rath remembered the way after only one wrong turn, and we soon found ourselves atop a flight of steps that led down into a large chamber. Rath raised a wooden chute to his mouth and blew something in the direction of the only guard in the room, who dropped like a rock. He waved me forward, and we crept down the stairs into the sacred chamber.
A couple benches interspersed between stone columns were the only pieces of furniture in the room. The benches faced a raised dais on which sat a table that looked somewhat like funeral pyres we used for burning bodies in Hazeldown. There were no torches and no windows in this chamber, but there was still plenty of light, all of which came from one source. On the wall behind the altar was what appeared to be a large oval mirror covered with golden markings, which could have been letters or numbers in some foreign tongue. Energy pulsed from this mirror, making me dizzy. There was so much vala in this room that the air felt thick with it.
“An outsider,” a voice said.
I jumped at the sound and turned quickly to its source.
The stone columns cast long shadows on the floor. In these shadows stood the spirits of Jinee children. I thought to mention them to Rath, but then it dawned on me that these were likely the spirits of the other kiys that had been sacrificed to the seal. They all looked to be between ten and fifteen winters old. I decided it might be better that he didn’t know we weren’t alone.
Rath exhaled a shaky breath.
“Well,” he said, “this is it. Either this works, or we’re dead.”
I nodded, drawing my gaze away from the spirit who had spoken.
Rath approached the dais. Near the wall on either side of the seal were spears in decorative metal pots. Rath grabbed one and shuddered.
“Whoa. Izzy, don’t touch these. They’d probably kill you.”
Rath used the spear to tap at the seal. He was quiet and thoughtful for a moment. Then he set the spear aside.
“How exactly are you planning to break the seal?” I asked.
“I’m going to use a trick I learned from you,” Rath said. “Which you no doubt learned from Banash.” He said Banash’s name like it was a curse.
I watched him trace a circle in the air. Then three intersecting lines. He was using the same trick I had used to open the seal in the Old Capital. The spirits twitched restlessly. I felt distinctly uneasy, but I couldn’t pinpoint exactly why. Perhaps it was the sheer amount of vala that surrounded me, making me dizzy.
Rath clapped his hands together and the symbol appeared, glowing gold, on each of his palms.
“Stop!” Banash appeared at the foot of the dais. She was more flustered than I had ever seen her. “Do not open that seal,” she said.
Rath paused. He turned slowly to face Banash, the symbols still glowing on his palms.
“No,” he said ponderously, “I suppose you wouldn’t want me to undo your handiwork, now, would you, Insurgent?”
Insurgent?
Banash held up her hands. “I won’t deny it, Hurathschein-ki,” Banash said. She was the only person I had ever heard pronounce Rath’s name correctly. “I am the Insurgent.”
“You are the traitor who murdered the other seraphim and sealed Alaudrin away.” He spread his shining palms out. “This is all your fault. Everything in this world, Banash, is your fault.”
“I sealed Alaudrin away to protect the world,” Banash said. “He is a dangerous man.”
“You knew the seal was here. You knew how to release him all this time, and you never did. You let the world suffer through beasts and haunts and deadmen, and all this while, you could have stopped it all.”
“You think I haven’t been trying?” Banash asked. “I would love more than anything to rid this world of those monsters, but Alaudrin is not the answer.”
“I think the first monster this world needs to get rid of is you,” Rath said. “You are the reason the world is in such turmoil.”
“Releasing Alaudrin won’t fix anything,” Banash insisted. “You have no idea how much worse it will get if he returns to power!”
The symbols on the mirror had slowly begun to spin. Vala crackled over Rath’s glowing hands. “Worse?” Rath laughed humorlessly. “Nothing could be worse than it is now.”
“If you open that seal, Roth-Scheen, then Willian and Aerona’s deaths will have been in vain.”
I flinched. Bad move. Rather than being pacified, Rath was even more furious.
“Vain?!” Rath hollered. “Willian and Aerona never should have died!” Furious, Rath spun and slammed his palms against the seal.
Vala reverberated around the room with such intensity that I collapsed and nearly blacked out.
“What have you done?!” Ban
ash gasped as Alaudrin’s seal shattered.
Rath stumbled away from the seal as it burst, raining shards of glass all over the dais and altar. Where the seal had once been, there was now a man.
I didn’t know exactly what I had expected to find behind the seal. I mean, Seraph Alaudrin was everybody’s hero. I guess I expected him to look like all of the statues I saw of him. Tall and handsome with a demeanor that was both wise and kind.
I was more than a little disappointed by reality.
The passing winters had not been kind to Alaudrin. He looked older than time itself. His pale skin was stretched almost transparent over his bones. He had no hair. His robes were far too big for him, and his six wings were shriveled and missing most of their feathers. Slowly, he opened pale blue eyes and looked weakly around. Then he made a sound like a sigh and dropped unceremoniously to the floor.
I heard the anxious whispers of the spirits still hiding in the shadows.
Banash leapt into action. With a focused grunt, the Insurgent dashed forward, drawing her dagger.
Alaudrin flexed his hands against the floor. Another wave of vala shuddered through me. The spirits all around us vanished. The stone pillars changed into statues in their perfect likeness. They opened glowing golden eyes and moved with the fluidness of living people. Before Banash could reach Alaudrin, the living statues had seized her, holding her in place while she struggled in vain to escape.
One of the statues plucked me from the floor and held my arms as well. I struggled for only a moment before I decided it wasn’t worth it. These statues were just too strong.
“Golems,” Banash said.
Only Rath remained free. He stared, stunned, at Alaudrin. The seraph’s wings rustled as he stood on wobbling legs. It was hard to believe this weak old man was the cause of such commotion. A stiff wind would knock him right over.
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