“Do the Malakiim really have that much power over you?” Kyla asks.
Lykos cocks an eyebrow. “They have enough power to wrestle heaven from the hands of the old gods. There ain’t many of my kin left these days, thanks to them.”
Faye shifts uncomfortably. “How about you all make plans for a revolution after you get Trebor back?”
Lykos chuckles. “Anything you say, boss. Ready, ladies?”
I look at Kyla, and she looks at me.
We’re about to go to Sheol—hell, by any other name. A place we learned about from my mother’s bedtime stories, passed down from her mother, from her mother before her. A place filled with demons and darkness, and who knows what else.
I swallow, and look at Lykos, eyes wide and shoulders square. “Ready as we’ll ever be.”
“You get your toys yet?”
Kyla and I look at each other, brows furrowed. We shake our heads.
“What toys?” Kyla asks.
“Those,” Lykos gestures behind us, to the crook of the roots where we made camp last night, at the very base of the Crimson Oak.
There is a single, large, golden oak leaf laid there, with two sparkling items resting on top: a gold-hilted dagger, and a necklace. My necklace. The pendant I wore to Kyla’s party, that Andy asked me about.
“This is mine,” I say, lifting the familiar necklace up to their eyes. “How did it get here?”
Faye cocks her head, eyeing the simply engraved pendant. “It’s an amulet,” she tells me. “For protection. Where did you get it?”
“My mother gave it to me. If it is an amulet, it doesn’t work.” I frown, remembering the events of that night.
Faye shakes her head. “It should work now. The Oak has charged it with her own magic. It’s very powerful, now.”
I hold the pendant in the palm of my hand and realize she’s right. I can feel it thrumming, a soft, warm radiance, reaching into me. I shake my head. “Kyla, you wear it.”
She looks at me, already holding the dagger in her hand. “I’m fine, I’ll take the knife.” She grins.
I shake my head. “No. Take them both. I have my own protection.” So long as I can focus the magic without Trebor’s help.
Kyla resists, but she sees my point. “Okay. Stick close to me, though.”
“Of course.” I smile, but I’m wondering about the nights Trebor and I have been able to make my magic work. “Faye—the Irin have their own language, right?”
She studies me, and nods.
“So…what would ahuvati sheli mean?”
Her eyebrows raise, genuinely shocked. “Is that it?”
I think about it. The first time, he did say something else. “Ahuvati sheli… salah, salah.”
Something in her sinks and riles at the same time, making her shoulders twist. She looks at me, long and hard, before she answers. “It doesn’t have an exact translation into the English language. Salah means something like the condition of peace. It would translate roughly to…” She hesitates, working her jaw, staring me straight in the eye. “Be at peace, my beloved. Be at peace.”
I try to maintain an expression of mild curiosity, but I can feel my face flush and pale, rushed at once with the warmth of affection, and then the terror of loss. I don’t have the time or energy to confront the feelings burning in my stomach, in my heart.
Kyla touches my arm and I flinch, pursing my lips. “Okay. Thanks. Ready to go?”
Kyla gives me a knowing look, and nods.
“All right then.” Lykos snaps his fingers, and if I thought Faye’s revelation was enough to leave me breathless, all the air in my body leaves at once, as the world burns away in a blaze of white.
— 52 —
Blinding white is all there is, all around us, all inside of me. The light has filled the spaces within me where air used to be, where blood used to rush through my veins, when suddenly the white shifts to an interminable black, and I worry that I’ve gone unconscious—worse, that I’ve ceased to exist. I have to struggle for breath, but when I finally conquer the vacuum of my lungs, the darkness fades away, vanishing with my first inhalation, sucking itself inside of me, nearly knocking me on my ass.
I reach for Kyla, find her hand already stretched towards me. Our hands clasp tight, and we hold each other up until the world stops spinning.
“Welcome to Sheol, kittens,” Lykos drawls. “Not much to look at, is it?”
I breathe deep, trying to ground myself, and am met with a sharp, dusty smell that tickles my nose and dries my throat. The air is warm and still—not as warm as you would think, for being the closest thing to hell, but arid and summery. The sky, if that’s what it is, is a black cloud laced with firelight, charred and red, golden and sharp. It does little to illuminate this world, but something must be casting light, if not radiating it. When I look around us, I find a red, rubble-strewn wasteland stretching out in all directions. Distant shadows on the horizon hint at cities and settlements; far, far out ahead of us, I see what looks like huge, jagged teeth—a mountain range, I think. The ground around us is cracked up into huge chunks, dark gaps forming a web from our feet, stretching out as far as the eye can see.
“No, it doesn’t look like much at all,” I agree with Lykos.
“So, where to?” Kyla asks, fingering the knife in her belt loop, undaunted.
I study her, still awash in my own feelings of surprise and awe at having entered another world—dimension?—but I’m not surprised by how unshaken she is. She’s Kyla. She can weather all storms.
“If he’s still down here, he’s in the Black Gash,” Lykos says, and gestures.
I can’t tell what direction it is, but I think I can follow it. I study the distance between us and the horizon. The cracks in the earth are big enough to walk between, small enough to jump over—but the height of the rocks themselves is only enough to cover us below the waist. It would be excellent if we needed to hide, but if we find ourselves needing to hide it will probably already be too late. “There’s not much cover,” I point out.
“There’s nothin’ out here besides snakes and salamanders,” Lykos points out. “And the Zee people in their wagons. But we’d see ‘em coming. Anyway, the rocks drop a little ways off, and there’ll be some cover when we get closer to the Gash. Come on then.” He leads us forward, gliding across the rocks.
I take my first hesitant step, and am almost surprised at how solid the ground is beneath me.
“Sura ain’t generally the kind of creatures to roam around deserts meditating and whatnot,” Lykos tells us as we walk. “They have cities they prefer to congregate in. Their power is greater there, where they form a hub. And they need all the power they can get to push each other through the veils, when they go.”
“Do they work together then?” Kyla wonders. “I had an image of the Sura as being kind of chaotic and selfish.”
Lykos shrugs. “Oh sure, a lot of ‘em are, but they’re willing to work together if it means personal benefit. Not all of ‘em are in cahoots, but there are plots and plans among ‘em, and I don’t doubt kidnapping Trebor has somethin’ to do with one of ‘em.”
I cringe inside. “Which means…I have something to do with one of their plots.”
Lykos looks back at me with his ghost-like eyes, and there is such earnest tenderness there I miss my own father for a moment. I wish I could tell him about all of this, and I wish he might have a solution—but he wouldn’t.
“We all have a part to play, sweet pea,” Lykos tells me. “In their plots, and in the Malakiim’s, and in your own. Just follow your heart, and you can’t regret nothin’.”
Kyla touches my arm, gives me a curious look and a reassuring smile. “You’ve got this, A. You always do.”
I hope she’s right.
— 53 —
As Lykos promised, the rocks drop off a few hundred yards ahead. They reveal a rocky landscape peppered with scrubby growth and black, withered, cactus-like plants. Huge spines protrude from the pseudo-c
acti, like darning needles, white as bone except for where they drip bright red poison from the point.
The sky glows overhead, steady flashes of lightning, without thunder, flickering behind the clouds. I sense the tension in the sky—a storm brewing, swelling, this close to breaking. I don’t think it ever has, or ever will, but I can feel the yearning of the wasteland for the deluge, as if it is my own. Maybe it is.
We wander between rocks and death-dripping needle points, silent, until Kyla speaks up.
“When we get to the Gash, how will we know where Trebor is?” she asks.
“Well, Ana should be able to tell,” Lykos replies.
“I will?”
“Of course. Otherwise we wouldn’t a bothered comin’ down here.”
I frown. “What if I can’t, though?”
Lykos laughs. “Sweetheart, you and I both know what’s goin’ on between you and Trebor. If you can’t find him, no one can. And I’m confident we’re gonna find him.”
Kyla raises her eyebrows. “What’s going on between you and Trebor?”
I shrug. “Nothing. He’s been training me to use magic, that’s all.”
“Ana!” Kyla elbows me. “Oh my god, this is serious, isn’t it?”
“What? Did you not hear me? Nothing is going on!”
“You’re in denial, that means everything is going on. Or it should be.” She smirks.
I shake my head. “You always think things are going on between me and boys. Trebor’s not even a boy. He’s like two years older than me, and not human.”
Kyla shrugs. “So? Looks human enough to me. And two years is nothing. I mean, Vanessa’s mom is almost ten years older than her boyfriend. And age of consent is seventeen in New York State, so, no worries there.”
I shake my head again. “I don’t want to talk about this.” What happened to being brave? I ask myself. I guess that was before I found out he was a fugitive, and that we’re both on the angels’ and demons’ Most Wanted lists.
Kyla looks sullen.
“I’m sorry, Kyla. I—” My ears perk at the sound of clacking up ahead—soft clinking of horseshoes against stone.
“Down!” Lykos whispers, and Kyla and I duck into the cracks of the rocks to our right. Lykos disappears as the clacking gets closer. After a few moments, he reappears behind us.
“Zee,” he hisses.
We crouch low, hidden in the cold folds of rock around rock. The space is narrow, sharp—I cut my hand leaning too hard forward to glimpse the passing threat, and my bruised ribs ache as I twist to peer around the rocks.
They arrive like something out of the past—horse and human and covered wagon—but with twists. The canvas over the wagon is filthy with red dust from the rocks. The horse is huge and black and six-legged, like an insect, towering above us as they pass. The human, even, has eyes so bright that they glow through the red-dark, and features so sharp and predatory I can’t help but shrink away, some part of me screaming to find cover in the farthest shadows from here. But I can’t risk moving now—the whisper of clothing, the distraction of movement—it could be enough to end us.
I hold my breath, waiting for them to pass.
Further down, the man at the reins pulls up, and the horse slows, snorting and stomping all six hooves in turn. The man speaks to someone inside the wagon in a swift and lyrical language I don’t understand, but is still somehow familiar.
A hand falls on my shoulder, and I jump, twisting back, up against Kyla. She clings to me.
“He wants me to invite the three of you to dine with us,” the Zee says, crouched above us on the rocks, greasy tendrils of black hair hanging around his face. His fingers dig into my shoulder, and his yellow eyes blaze as he grins. “I suggest you accept the invitation.”
— 54 —
It might be night here in Sheol—it seems to have grown darker than just dim, and the fire crackling against the darkness makes the contrast even more severe. It paints the Zee around us with gold and black, making demons of human faces, if they are even human at all anymore. An old woman sits on a rock next to me, two dead-white eyes staring into the flames while she shuffles a deck of cards. An old man sits beside Kyla, chewing on his own teeth.
Men and women young and old surround the fire, chattering, eating, staring, ignoring. They are pale and dark, black and white, fair and coarse. All sorts of people, joined as one, a band of nomads in a hellish wasteland. All of them, Fallen—all of them Sura, in human form.
“You have come for the Irin, I suppose,” the old woman muses at my side, drawing a card from her battered deck. The Hierophant looks up at me from the weathered card. “He is your teacher? Or your student?” She turns her ghostly eyes on me, sliding her thumb over the card as if she can glean information from the texture. A wide, crooked grin spreads over her face, gap-toothed and yellowed. “No. He is your destiny. Oh, how lovely to have such destiny.”
I decide it’s probably better not to speak until I’m asked something directly. The less they know, the better. The less I talk, the less chances I have of screwing things up.
Lykos hovers behind us. His one power is to lift the veils between worlds—it leaves him helpless in situations like this, but also invulnerable. He cannot be captured, but he cannot help, either. He just hovers, glaring, arms crossed over his chest, instead.
“You are a long way from home,” the man who found us says, his voice heavy with a brogue I’m unfamiliar with. He smiles, dark eyebrows curling up in a mischievous stare as his eerie yellow eyes dart between the two of us.
Kyla glares back.
“And you’re on our land,” he points out, clasping his hands before him.
“There ain’t no such thing as Zee land,” Lykos spits. “Yer nomads. Gypsies and mercenaries. Your home is in your wagon.”
The man frowns. “Silence, ghost. We possess the land we occupy. This is our realm, our home. You three are trespassing.” He looks plainly at Kyla and me. “My name is Ishmael. What are your names? And remember—” He holds up a finger and grins. “I will know if you are lying.”
I swallow. “Anastasia.”
“Kyla.” Her voice is like a growl, like her name has been pried from her tongue against her will.
“Lovely,” Ishmael comments, cocking his head. “Now, what can you offer me in trade, children of Iritz?”
“Trade for what?” I ask.
“For safe passage through our land, of course.” Ishmael smiles.
“This isn’t your land—” Kyla starts.
I touch her arm and stop her. “We don’t have anything worth trading.”
Ishmael looks us up and down, kneeling before us. He reaches for Kyla’s throat, and she slaps him away.
“Don’t you touch me,” she hisses, feral.
“Ouch, little one,” Ishmael laughs, and holds out his hand. “Your necklace, please.” A familiar, smoky scent emanates from him when he moves, as if he’s spent his entire life shoveling soot. The smell illuminates something inside of me, makes me remember that I should remember something, but I don’t. If I had the attention to spare, it would drive me mad.
Kyla frowns and looks at me, then back to Ishmael. She pulls the necklace out of her shirt and over her head. “It’s just a necklace,” she says, holding onto it tightly.
“Ah,” Ishmael‘s eyes grow large. “That is more than just a necklace. That pendant contains power from the World Tree. Very rare indeed.” He reaches for it, but Kyla closes her hand.
World Tree? I wonder. Do they know about the Crimson Oak? Is it maybe something else entirely?
“Why would you want it?” Kyla asks.
Ishmael glowers at her. “That’s none of your business. A trade, then? Safe passage, in exchange for that amulet. You can make more of them, surely, if you know how to find the Tree?”
Kyla glances at me, doesn’t say that it’s mine, that I’m the one with magic, the one who can find the tree, not her.
“Unless there’s something else you wish to re
ceive,” the old woman beside me murmurs. “Something more valuable to you than the Irin.”
Kyla is silent, staring at the little metal pendant, tiny glyphs chiseled into its uneven face.
The old woman draws another card: The Magician.
“You wish to know a name.” She touches the face of the man on the card, standing at his altar, wand raised towards the heavens. “The name of your father.”
I feel a lump form in my stomach. Kyla narrows her eyes at the necklace in her hand.
“I am my own person,” she says quietly, like a litany. “I don’t need to know him to know who I am.” She looks up at Ishmael, eyes swallowing the firelight, darker than I’ve ever seen. “If you’ll let us pass safely to our destination, you can have it.”
“Deal!” Ishmael snatches the pendant from her, laughing.
I stand quickly and pull Kyla with me. “Let’s go,” I say, and the Zee laugh at us as we hurry to leave.
“Oh, child,” the old woman rasps. “For a thing as eternal as what you are after, it is amazing how impatient you humans can be.” She titters dryly from within the shadows of her headscarves, gnarled hands fidgeting with her tarot deck.
And what is it I’m after? I want to bite back, suddenly defensive. But I’m afraid of what she’ll tell me—of what I already know. My fists clench, and my heart thumps a tiny bit harder, heavier, in my chest. “There is nothing eternal about my quest,” I reply, throat suddenly parched. “I’m just trying to help a friend.”
“Ah.” She bobs her head up and down. “Aha. That is what is in your mind. But it is not what’s in your heart.”
Looking from face to face, I can see that the Zee people have all guessed at the old woman’s meaning. They are smiling coyly, making kissy faces at me, laughing.
Kyla glares at the old woman. I grab my friend by the arm and turn to leave, hurrying into the shadows beyond their fire.
The Hierophant (Book 1 in The Arcana Series) Page 22