‘That’s actually a good idea.’ She smiles. ‘I’m so relieved I found you; I was about to give up on this forsaken place. But now I know you’re alive, we don’t have to give up.’
‘What?’ I say.
She smiles. ‘I found a way to get us out of this hell, Leonie.’
‘The portal?’
‘No, that’s too far. I found something better, but I need your help.’
‘Anything, as long as it doesn’t kill us.’
‘Good. Very good. Come with me.’
‘Wait.’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘I can’t leave without my dad, Sersu. I need to get to him first.’
She nods. ‘And we can, but first we need to get something.’
‘Yeah? Define “get something”.’
‘In one of the chambers in the temple, there’s a relic, a powerful one. It was brought here a few days ago from another temple outside of the Dator Isles.’
‘Wait,’ I say, ‘you mean the relic that peacock—uh, I mean that ilwio person brought here?’
‘Yes, how did you know about that?’
‘I saw him holding it. But how will that help us?’
‘With it, we might just be able to stop this maiden.’
‘Stop it?’ I repeat.
‘No object can stop a maiden,’ Korren says.
She looks at Korren like he’s a dog that just spoke out loud, but she doesn’t comment. ‘This relic can. It’s very old and precious, and believe me when I say, one of a kind. It’s not supposed to be used to stop a maiden, but it has enough power to do so. I wish I didn’t have to use it, but we have no choice if we want to save everyone.’
I look at Korren. ‘What do you think?’
‘I think it’s unwise. What exactly does this relic do?’
‘It can seal any power, any soul,’ Sersu says, and I’m thankful she’s replying to Korren like an equal instead of biting his head off for asking. ‘If we get it, we can trap the maiden within it and release everyone from this hell.’
‘And then what?’ he says. ‘The Thrones may be dead and we’d have to face the rebels on our own. If it’s true what they said, the rebels have control over this maiden, which means they’re still alive. No, I say we go to the portal, little lion, and let the maiden tear this place apart.’
‘Leonie, please,’ says Sersu, stepping closer to me. ‘We can still save people. It’s not hopeless. If we obtain the relic we can set everyone free and save your father.’
I glance from her to Korren. So it’s my decision, my choice. That’s a first. I know that Korren is right, that getting and using this relic, an object we don’t know anything about, will mean the rebels will find us more easily and attack, and it will also mean wasting time that could be used to save Dad. I don’t even know if the relic will work, and we might even die trying to get to it, but…
‘We’ll get the relic,’ I say. ‘If there’s a chance people are alive, we have to take it. It wouldn’t be right to leave them to suffer when we can save them.’
Sersu smiles in relief. Korren doesn’t say anything, but I can tell he’s disgruntled.
‘But after that, Sersu, you help us get to my dad. I want to find him before we use the relic so the rebels don’t get in the way.’
‘Absolutely, my Lady.’
Sersu takes us to the outer quarters of the temple, a part of it I’ve never been to before. I vaguely remember how the ilwio came this way, walking with a group of soldiers. The mist isn’t as thick inside, but it still fills up my lungs, chilling them. We come to a beautiful door decorated in scarlet and gold, and we get Korren to pry it open. Sersu tells me that the doors are usually guarded, and when Korren fully opens the door, we see that it is guarded—by two soldiers’ corpses. There’s no visible damage to them, and their eyes are wide, jaws open as if they died of fright. I stare at them for a moment, fear prickling against my resolve, but I push it aside. I have to concentrate. I have to see this through.
‘This way,’ Sersu says, and I follow her.
There’s a spiralling staircase ahead, and I tell Korren to stay at the top of it so he can look out for danger. Sersu and I descend.
‘I wonder where the ilwio is,’ I say.
‘Dead,’ she replies. ‘I looked for him, thinking he could help with the relic. It’s unfortunate. But we’re not going to end up that way, Leonie.’
We reach the bottom of the staircase and walk into a room of gold and silver and treasure that gleams and glints in the torchlight. On the walls hang woven tapestries, looking old and worn, but somehow that doesn’t diminish the art. In glass cases lined with gold are strange artefacts, their beauty probably hiding the malevolence of their purpose. At the end of the room is a stone statue, chipped and damaged, and it seems odd in a place filled with beauty.
‘The fallen stargod, Ji-Husa,’ says Sersu. ‘A long time ago, the late Divinity forbade all worship of Ji-Husa, claiming that Elisuwi, stargod of wisdom, had visited him and told him that the stargod had fallen from grace. All representations of him were destroyed in an effort to wipe his existence from Duwyn.’
‘Then why keep this statue?’ I ask.
‘I was told that it was indestructible, the only vessel through which Ji-Husa can come into this world.’
When I look at the statue closely, the expression carved on his face seems sad, and I wonder what he did that was so bad that it caused him to fall—I shake my head. Why am I feeling pity for something that’s not even real? It’s not the time to be feeling sorry for some made-up god.
‘Here it is,’ says Sersu, looking down.
On the floor is the Imperium’s symbol, with a rendition of the cosmos around it in blues and greens and reds.
‘It should be beneath this part of the floor,’ she says.
‘How do you know?’
‘I just do.’
‘What’s this gold writing around it?’ I ask.
‘It’s not important.’
‘Tell me anyway.’
She’s hesitant. ‘“A truly terrifying punishment will befall any who open this”.’
‘Oh, now I really want to open it,’ I say.
‘Nothing will happen,’ she assures me. ‘It’s supposed to scare people, that’s all.’
‘It did the job. Sersu, normally I’d laugh at stuff like this as superstition, but after everything I’ve seen here, and after watching The Mummy several times, I’m really thinking opening up a relic with a truly terrifying punishment tagline is a bad idea.’
‘It’s all we have,’ she says. ‘But it’s your choice, Leonie. Only you can decide whether or not we should open this vault.’
‘Me?’ I ask.
‘A Pulsar should have enough power to break the seal. Several Thrones could do it together, but I’m not even one Throne.’
‘Sersu, I… I can’t do this. My powers, I mean, I haven’t even got any.’
‘But you have magic.’ She kneels in front of the vault. ‘It might not have reached its potential yet, but it’s still within you. Just put your hands on it, like this, and focus your magic.’
I crouch down. ‘And you’re sure this will work on the maiden?’
‘I’m sure. Believe in me.’
I hesitate, and then kneel beside her. How am I supposed to focus my magic? I’m reminded of O’Sah, his constant nagging to find inner peace. I rest my hands on the seal and close my eyes.
Inner peace, I remind myself. Find inner peace.
Something like that is impossible, though. If I thought I didn’t have inner peace before, I definitely don’t have it now. But, if this will get us out of this hell, I’m willing to concentrate. Don’t fail me now, O’Sah.
I try to remember something, something that will make me forget where I am, or at least make me calmer. I think of a day, more than two years ago now, when I was sitting on the edge of a hill looking out to the soft hills and blue sky. The wind was warm that day, stirring my hair gently. I could sme
ll the freshness of the grass, feel the soil beneath my hands, taste the summer air that was so inviting after long months of rain and cold.
And I remember her beside me. Her long blonde hair, her blue eyes, her constant smile. It was catching. I always found myself smiling back for no reason at all. She had been happy that day because she had made it to the next stage of her violin competition. I hadn’t been allowed to go to it—Dad never let me go anywhere—but I had been cheering her on anyway, resolute to go to the next one.
Abi.
That was probably such a non-extraordinary day, the day we sat on those hills, but it was one of the best. We were so close to the end, though ignorant of that, and the future was still there for us, and there were so many possibilities. The sky that day belonged to us, and even now, it still does. It always will.
‘You did it!’ I hear Sersu say.
I blink and look down to see my hands are faintly glowing. I instinctively pull them away, reminded not so fondly of my human glow-stick show, and the light fades. The floor begins to open up and reveals a small relic, a silver urn with intricate patterns etched on its surface.
‘This is the urn I saw the ilwio holding,’ I say, and I slowly take it out and give it to Sersu.
‘I can’t believe it,’ she says, ‘we can actually get out of here now.’
‘First, my dad,’ I remind her.
‘Of course, my Lady.’
We stand and head towards the staircase, climbing up the stairs and meeting with Korren at the top.
‘You have it?’ he asks.
Sersu holds it up.
‘Now to my dad,’ I say.
We go down a hallway that leads to an antechamber, and as we turn around another corner, I see someone walking towards us. When he spots us and recognises us, he runs at us.
‘Harriad,’ I say.
His face is pale and peeled and bleeding. He grabs me, and for a moment I think he might be attacking me, but instead his arms enfold me and he squeezes me tight.
‘I’m so glad,’ he whispers. ‘I feared the worst.’
‘Um,’ is all I can come up with, though I’m glad, too, so glad he’s all right. ‘H-how are you still alive?’
He laughs, of all the things to do. ‘I could ask the same of you!’ He pushes me back, his hands on my shoulders. ‘We killed most of the rebels, and the others, well, the maiden saw to them. I think they’ve lost control of it, they must have. There are a few left, though, I couldn’t rid us of them. It’s all right, though. I know a way out—through the portal.’
‘We don’t need the portal,’ I say. ‘We have this, and it can stop the maiden.’ I gesture to Sersu and the relic in her hand. She narrows her eyes when I do it.
‘That is…’ Harriad begins, and then looks up at Sersu, glaring with such ferociousness I blink in surprise. ‘Traitor!’ he shouts, and is about to attack her when she unsheathes a dagger and stabs him hard and fast in the neck.
The silence is profound.
‘Ser… Ser…’ I stutter, taking a few steps back.
She removes the blade, and Harriad stumbles back, trying to stop the blood from flowing out of him.
‘What did… What did…?’ I begin.
Harriad falls to the ground, choking on his own blood.
‘Harriad!’ I scream, but Korren moves in front of me so I can’t go to him. ‘What did you do, Sersu? What did you do?’
She turns to me, gaze unflinching. ‘Didn’t I tell you before? I was always here for you, Leonie, always, to cut your strings.’
KORREN
BLACK AND WHITE
‘I-I d-don’t understand,’ says my keeper. ‘You… you’re a s-soldier, your family are—’
‘Slaves to power,’ says Sersu. ‘Unlike me.’
I move in front of my keeper. ‘You’re a rebel.’
‘I am.’
‘Then why this façade?’ I ask.
‘Why? My position makes me indispensable to the rebels, and I’m one of a few who are willing to take advantage of it for them.’
‘But why rebel against the Imperium?’
‘I could give you so many reasons, such as how I loathe their black and white laws, but to be honest, I just want to see those pompous Council members fall from their pedestals. So I joined the rebels as a—how should I put it—as a spy. It was because of my position that I was able to find out a Pulsar was born again. It was only a rumour, and I had to be careful, poking and prodding people on the Council, but I soon discovered it was true, and that you really did exist. So I had to make it my business to get to you, to be by your side. That’s where my mother’s influence came in.’
‘You’ve been working with the rebels this whole time,’ says my keeper.
‘I have, and, Leonie, though what you’ve seen hasn’t glorified our cause, you have to believe that we’re the good ones.’
‘Good?’ she repeats, glancing at Harriad. ‘You unleashed a maiden, killed Magen, Harriad and maybe more, and you claim to be good?’
‘Fighting for a good cause doesn’t mean you’ll do good things to achieve it,’ says Sersu.
‘What about that?’ she says, looking at the relic in her hand. ‘Is that really what you said it was?’
‘In a sense; I just don’t intend to use it on the maiden.’
‘So you lied to us,’ says my keeper. ‘You tricked us.’
‘I had to,’ she says.
‘You never wanted to stop the maiden.’
‘The maiden is… was, on our side, however reluctantly. But I had to lie; you wouldn’t have helped otherwise. We’ve been after this for a long time. When we found out the Pulsar would be coming to the Temples of Elswyr, we knew we could kill two birds with one stone.
‘The rebels that attacked you, Leonie, when you first came here, they were my friends, and their objective was to be imprisoned.’
‘What?’
‘They could have just declared who they were, and the outcome would have been the same, but we didn’t want to arouse suspicion, plus we wanted you to know we were coming for you, to liberate you. We needed you to know that.’
‘Liberate me? Is that what you mean by cutting my strings?’
‘It’s part of it.’ She looks around and sighs. ‘I never wanted you to be here for this long. It wasn’t our intention. I was supposed to have you with me when my comrades came with the maiden, but I couldn’t find you.
‘You see, we knew the urn was being moved from the ruined temple near the Dator Isles to here, to where you were. It was fortunate on our part. One of the rebels who was captured, Ebren Ohmsfiel, he sacrificed his life for our objective. He had the power to resist any magic, including the imprisonment seal on his prison. That’s why he was chosen. He managed to escape and locate where the relic was being held and relay the information to me before he was murdered. He had to go back, you understand, knowingly to his death, otherwise the Thrones would have suspected something. All of them died…’
‘I didn’t want them to die,’ my keeper says.
‘I know.’
‘They died for nothing,’ I say. ‘Some urn that’s power is probably just myth.’
‘We live in a land of myth, kytaen, where anything is possible,’ says Sersu.
‘What does it do if not what you said it did?’
‘It’s important enough for people to die for. But we need you, too, Leonie.’
‘Why?’ she says. ‘I already helped you get that out.’
Sersu smiles. ‘I told you about your potential, didn’t I? So long as you’re in Crato’s grasp, you’ll never be able to reach that potential. But we rebels? We know what you can do, if you choose to.’
‘After everything you’ve done, after what you’ve unleashed today, you really think I’d go with you monsters?’
‘Ah, so we’re the monsters now?’
‘You all are.’
She smiles. ‘If you knew me, if you knew what I’ve been through, you’d know this attack was justified.’
‘That sounds like something O’Sah would say, justifying every wrong.’
Sersu narrows her eyes. ‘I know what I am, and soon you’ll know, too. Everything will be all right.’
‘Hah. My dad said that to me when I awakened, and look where I am now.’
‘You won’t be here for much longer, I promise.’
I don’t like how sincere her words sound, as if she is genuinely concerned for my keeper’s safety, as if she doesn’t want to be standing before us like an enemy.
Sersu holds out her hand towards me. ‘Now, just stay still, kytaen.’
‘What are you doing?’ my keeper snaps.
‘Since I know you won’t come willingly, particularly your kytaen, I have to make sure he’s docile enough to not follow instinct. It doesn’t hurt, don’t wor—’
A hand grabs Sersu’s leg, pulling her down. Behind her lies Harriad, blood-soaked but just alive enough to save us this one last time.
‘Quick, go,’ I say to my keeper.
And we run. We don’t think where to run, we just do, and we come out of the temple and out into the mist.
‘Ow!’
My head snaps towards my keeper. ‘What is—?’
Attached to her skin is a small, circular device, clinging to her like a leech. She pulls it out and looks at it, beads of blood dripping from it.
‘What is this?’ she says.
I don’t know what it is, but I know who shot it into her. The maiden specifically attacked me, a kytaen, which is unheard of, and the only reason it would attack a kytaen is if they told it to, to make sure I wasn’t in the way.
The rebels have found us.
I glance around, looking for them, but all I can see is silver mist.
No no no. Not now.
‘Run.’
‘What?’ she says.
‘Run—now!’
I start ahead of her, and she follows me, though her steps are irregular.
‘I feel dizzy,’ she says.
‘Just keep up!’ I shout back to her. ‘They’re—’
I feel something entering my skin. I almost lose my balance, but the pain soon fades. I want to tear off the thing they shot at me, but I’ll have to keep it on a little longer until we’re out of their sight.
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