Again, they laughed. “You may fear touching us now, Wuraola,” came the phlegmy chuckle of Contagion. “But all Redemptors forget fear once they meet their emi-ehran.”
I blinked. What did they mean, “once I met . . .” But then my gaze locked on the end of the bridge, where a being slowly materialized. Water pooled in my eyes as my limbs relaxed, overwhelmed by a sudden, profound peace—and a feeling that I’d known this being a long, long time. Every human soul, the priests taught, was assigned a guardian spirit after meeting death: a companion for comfort as we marched in Egungun’s Parade. But since Redemptors met death while still living, their emi-ehrans followed them out of the Underworld—a companion for the rest of eternity.
“She’s beautiful,” I breathed. Emi-ehrans possessed no sex according to legend. But without speaking aloud, the creature told me its gender—and in the same deep, silent voice, she asked me for a name.
I walked as if in a trance across the lumpy, textured backs of the Warlord’s Deaths, my former fear vanished like smoke. The beasts dispersed as soon as I crossed, but I barely looked back, reaching out instead to touch my very own emi-ehran.
In the world above, I would have called her a rhinoceros. She was just as massive, towering yards above me, with the same ridged body and sharp, clever horn. But her horn was translucent crystal, and her skin the color of midnight, sparkling with sapphire stars.
No. Not sparkling. Blinking.
Each sapphire was an eye, fringed in silver lashes. They covered her like a mantle, each one wiser and farther-seeing than I could possibly imagine.
“Iranti,” I murmured, a word in old Arit. “Memory.” The name had tumbled from my lips, as though I’d been carrying it all my life—and perhaps I had. The creature nodded her assent. Then she named me back, in a language without words: a sequence of grunts and musical notes that I loved at once. After I voiced my acceptance, she jutted her horn, gently resting its tip between my eyes.
I gasped. My Hallow dove into the Underworld floor, submerging me in an ocean of color and voices. My whole life, I had always struggled to retrieve memories older than a few decades. But somehow, Iranti had amplified my Hallow, allowing me to see . . . centuries. Millennia. Billions upon billions of stories spinning around me until my chest tightened and my temples began to throb, and I—
Iranti drew back, tickling my cheek with a puff of warm air from her nostrils. An apology, I realized. She hadn’t meant to hurt me. Only to show me what she, what we could do. Together.
“You can find anything,” I whispered. “Any story, from anywhere. And you’ll help me carry them, won’t you?”
Her many eyes glinted, as if with humor, and again she spoke in that voice that was not quite a voice: Iranti never forgets.
I touched my brow to her cheek, nuzzling her wrinkled face as her eyes blinked against me. “Let’s get out of here,” I said.
Name your emi-ehran had been the fifth task on Ye Eun’s training. Now only one, the sixth, remained:
Ascend the Stair of Mirrors, not heeding your own reflection. Stop for nothing. Trust no one.
Escape the Underworld.
CHAPTER 33
The stair of mirrors, Ye Eun had warned me, would be the most treacherous part of my journey. But I found that hard to believe. After all, I wasn’t alone anymore—Iranti’s body radiated heat like a heavenly brazier, thawing my extremities from head to toe. When we arrived at the stairs’ bottom landing, hope flickered inside me.
Compared to the rest of the Underworld, the stairs were pleasantly bright—a steep, spiraling staircase several yards wide, lit ethe really by floating green lamps. The lamps were amplified, however, by the mirrors; the floor, ceiling, and walls enclosing the staircase were all hewn from dizzyingly spotless glass and when we entered, every movement we made seemed to echo on forever. When Iranti mounted the staircase, I half expected the steps to shatter—but the glass remained firm beneath her massive plodding feet and did not smear beneath my filthy ones. One last trek—one steep climb—and I would arrive at the Oruku Breach again. A free empress at last, and a live one.
At first, it was easy to ignore my reflection. I looked terrible, of course. A girl with puffy, bloodshot eyes, a stained blue wrapper, and skin made ashy from dust stared back at me from every direction. But after days or hours of that joint-grinding climb, the girl in the mirrors began to change. On one wall, a girl with my face and body appeared to address a crowd. This Tarisai, however, was several inches taller, black hair billowing around her in a coiling halo. She radiated grave wisdom, and the adinkra gown I had worn at my Pinnacle suited her muscled, commanding frame much better than my average one. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but I knew, instinctually, that masses would die to serve this girl. She stopped speaking then, glancing over her gold-powdered shoulder to meet my eye.
I froze in surprise . . . then she smiled, holding out a hand through the mirror. She mouthed, eyes bright with ambition, Ask me to guide you.
I was supposed to ignore her. Ye Eun’s instructions had been clear. And yet . . . griots described the Underworld as a portal to many dimensions, not just a liaison between Earth and Core. Perhaps this other Tarisai was the empress of a mirror world. One where peasant and Redemptor blood had never been shed. One where I had been so prepared, so capable that I had never made mistakes.
What if this better, improved Tarisai could help me? Impart knowledge that could change the trajectory of Aritsar, and make me the ruler I so ached to be? Surely I wouldn’t have to stay in her world forever. Just a little while, and she could tell me what I’d done wrong. Prevent me from causing future catastrophes.
She nodded encouragingly, seeming to sense my thoughts. Ask, she mouthed again, and I opened my mouth . . .
Only for Iranti to stamp in the stairwell, shaking her great head and grunting so loud, I was jarred out of my trance. All of her eyes seemed to scold me, wide with warning.
I stared at her, dazed, and then I realized the mistake I had almost made. If the mirror Tarisai was, in fact, another abiku, trying to lead me off the path . . . it would need my permission to touch me. Ask me to guide you may not have been explicit, but the words were enough to seal my doom.
I shuddered, stumbling back, and the Majestic Tarisai scowled and vanished, leaving behind my dreary reflection beside Iranti’s.
Onward we climbed. The mirrors showed spear-toting, Vigilante Tarisai, her clothes modeled shamelessly after Zuri’s, leading the oppressed in an armored charge toward liberation. Then came Cherished Tarisai, a grinning, round-cheeked little girl surrounded by imaginary family members, all of whom were delighted by her childish antics, and who caressed her without an ounce of fear. There was even Dancer Tarisai, resplendent in body paint and the envy of every festival, navigating her many partners with grace and rolling her perfect hips in sultry time to the music.
The hardest of my mirror selves to ignore was Mother Tarisai—a serene, doe-eyed woman decades older than I was, cooing as she held up a plump, gurgling infant. A proud, bearded Sanjeet circled both mother and child in his arms. She looked so peaceful. So confident that she would never hurt the treasure in her arms—would never betray or leave it. For a brief, achingly sweet moment, I let myself pretend that this Tarisai truly existed. That it wasn’t an abiku trying to murder me, but an alternate universe in which Raybearers didn’t exist, and healing was certain, and curses never lasted longer than a single generation.
I moved on, smiling sadly to myself, but to my shock, the child Tarisai appeared again.
Only . . . it wasn’t the giggling, doted-upon girl from earlier. This reflection was slightly older, perhaps nine or ten, mousy and fidgeting, and we were not quite twins, though her features strongly resembled mine. What’s more . . . she wasn’t standing in some idyllic scene, pantomiming a reality for me to envy. Instead, she stood still in the stairwell mirror, staring directly at me. Waiting. My mouth went dry.
I was staring at The Lady.
“No.” I clenched my fists and walked quickly past her. The Stair of Mirrors was supposed to show my reflection. “I’m not The Lady,” I snapped to the Lady-abiku in the mirror, who followed after me as I mounted the stairs with renewed rigor. “So if you’re trying to entice me, you’d better try something else. We are not the same.”
“I know that,” the child wailed. “I know that, Made-of-Me.”
I nearly toppled onto the hard glass stairs, grasping Iranti’s horn for balance. “You can talk,” I rasped. “The other ones. They . . . they didn’t talk.” I shuddered. Did these illusions get more powerful as I went along? Perhaps this meant I was almost to the Oruku Breach. I shook myself to regain my bearings and charged on.
“Wait,” ordered the reflection. Still, the abiku followed me, the spitting image of my mother as a young girl. “Wait. Please Made-of—I mean—” She cringed. “Please, Tarisai.” I paused, just for a moment . . .
And the illusion reached through the mirror, placing a firm, cold hand on my arm.
I jerked back, heart pounding. “You’re not allowed to do that,” I shrieked. “Abiku may not touch a living thing in the Underworld without permission. It’s—it’s—” It was the Storyteller’s law. Which meant, in theory . . . it was unbreakable.
The reflection sighed, holding out her hand again. “I am not an abiku, Tarisai. I am your mother. Your real one.” She fidgeted. “I know I look . . . different. They say the longer a soul stays down here, the more themselves they become.” Her musical voice, higher and thinner than the one I’d grown up with, yet altogether familiar, sent shivers up my spine.
“You’re lying,” I whispered.
But she had touched me. Ye Eun and Mongwe would have warned me if there were exceptions to the Storyteller’s rule.
“I don’t understand,” I said at last. “Why are you here? Why didn’t you go to Egungun’s Parade?”
The child stared at me for a long moment, her brilliant black eyes wet and tortured. “I tried,” she said at last. “I tried to do the parade. I knew it would be hard, but I didn’t think . . .” Her strong chin quivered—then tears rolled down her dark, soft cheeks. “I have hurt so many people. And in such different, terrible ways. How could I have been so bad?”
I watched with morbid fascination, struck by a need to comfort her. Then the impulse cooled, congealing into rage.
No. I was the child, not her. I was the one she had chosen to bring into the world, then starved for love and forced to attempt murder. I was the one half-delirious in the Underworld. She should be comforting me. And yet—And yet—
It was so hard to be angry at someone so small and insubstantial. I had never seen The Lady cry before. I hadn’t known she could. There was so much about my mother I hadn’t known.
“So you’re stuck down here,” I monotoned at last, shuffling my feet. “In the Underworld, instead of going to Core.”
She nodded woodenly. “But I can rejoin the parade anytime I like. My emi-ehran’s waiting for me there.” She smiled weakly. “I’ll go back to them. Soon, I expect. But I had to see you. I . . . I shouldn’t have locked you in that house. Always so cold, so lonely, with no one to talk to . . .” She shuddered and rubbed her arms, as if reliving my childhood misery. “And your suffering got so much worse after meeting the prince. It’s no wonder you tried to forget. But I was mistaken, Tarisai. And I’m sorry for the mother I wasn’t, even though I was only trying to secure your future.”
I smiled grimly. That last phrase—that thread of my mother’s indignant pride, which she could not relinquish even here, in the heart of hell—removed any doubt that this shade was my mother.
The Lady—the great and powerful Unnamed Raybearer, commander of an alagbato, feared by kings and emperors—was here in front of me. And she was sorry. Actually sorry.
“I forgive you,” I said, and to my surprise, I decided that I meant it. For now, anyway. Some days I would change my mind. My mother’s toxic legacy was permanent, like the scars on Dayo’s face, and whenever I dwelled on it, I’d be livid all over again. But for now, standing before that fidgeting shade of a little girl, surrounded by my reflections, I felt only a sad, resigned peace.
“I can do you a favor,” The Lady said then, holding out her dainty hand through the mirror. “The abiku have dug another route out of the Underworld. It’s closer than the Oruku Breach. I could take you,” she said eagerly, gesturing to her translucent hovering feet. “I can fly, after all. You’ve got several days’ travel left using the stairs to the Oruku Breach. But there’s a new exit to the Overworld now, much closer. I could take you.”
“Really?” I breathed.
“I think the abiku have been working on that exit for years,” replied The Lady. “I’ve been curious: Have you heard any news of creatures appearing in the Overworld? Escapees through a new breach?”
My eyes widened. She was telling the truth. There was a new exit from the Underworld—Sanjeet had found it.
“I’ll take you,” The Lady said again, extending her hand through the mirror. “Please, Tarisai.” If she had smiled then—that warm, radiant beam that had always molded my will to clay—I would have turned away, leaving her in the Underworld without a second glance. But instead, she only stared. Agitated. Desperate. I had seen that look before, on the face of a little Kunleo girl staring up at her brother, begging him to see her and let them be a family.
That earnest, heart-shattering look hadn’t worked on Olugbade. And by rejecting his sister—betraying her pure trust—he had created the wounded monster who would grow into The Lady.
“Please,” the girl whispered. “Let me make amends.”
I inhaled slowly. I did not—trust The Lady. Not exactly . . . but I knew, deep down, that I could not reject her in the same way her brother had. No one deserved that heartbreak twice. Not even my mother.
I glanced tiredly at Iranti, whose muscles were tense. The emi-ehran’s short tail flicked with hostility, then she moaned in her wordless, tonal language. Of her complicated song I could make out only one theme:
Danger.
“I know.” I sighed, stroking her face. “But what could hurt me, now?” I had survived the deaths. I had outwitted every attempt of the abiku to trick me. And what was more, I had not slept in what felt like days or weeks. Every limb in my body screamed for rest. The thought of my journey being over . . . of seeing my council siblings again, in hours instead of days—it made hope surge through my veins, like the heady rush of honeywine.
I leaned to whisper in Iranti’s ear. “If The Lady’s lying, we can always find our way back. I have a map, so there’s no risk. I know the rules, Iranti: I need not die.”
I turned to enter the mirror, but my emi-ehran stayed put, staring pleadingly with her sky of eyes.
“I’m going,” I repeated, and she huffed a great sigh . . . then disappeared. I frowned, but knew at once that she hadn’t truly gone. Not completely. I could feel her, somewhere in a near ether, waiting to reappear when I called.
“I’ll see you on the surface, then,” I told the air, and took my mother’s small, cold hand. The moment I did, both my feet left the floor, and I passed into the mirror, glass rippling around me like rings of troubled water.
CHAPTER 34
The lady and I were floating in another cavern, filled with sulfurous green fog. My stomach flipped at the height, but the girl tightened her grip on my hand, smiling reassuringly
“Won’t be far now, my daughter,” she said, still with that desperate, nervous gleam in her eyes.
We flew up, up, toward the emerald underworld sky, and parallel to what seemed like an ash-covered mountain. The fog cleared, allowing me my first aerial view of the Underworld.
The expanse of it numbed my senses. Shadowy cliffs and valleys teeming with shades; threadbare forests that spread for miles; gray ash dunes and winding, bone-white rivers.
The only lively feature was a colorful ribbon, long and quivering, seeming to stretch into eternity. I didn
’t realize what it was until I heard the drumbeats, faint but reverberating, possessing my limbs like a manic spirit. Immediately, my soul felt lighter. Why had I felt so weary about my journey through the Underworld? Why had I worried that it would never end? All stories came to completion, and no hill was too steep—no step too painful. I laughed, eyes filling with tears. I had been touched by the music of Egungun—and I was witnessing his parade.
“My emi-ehran is down there, somewhere,” The Lady sighed. “They refused to come with me when I left the parade.”
“I bet they miss you,” I replied after a moment. “What do they look like?”
The corners of her eyes creased with fondness. “A fox,” she said. “As stubborn and cunning as I am—though its eyes are soft, as mine once were. We understand each other, my Ifaya and I. They were the first to name me—and I, them. I’ll go back to them. As soon as I’ve made amends for my sins.”
“You mean, after you help me?”
She blinked slowly. “Yes,” The Lady said, squeezing my hand just a little too tight. “After I help everyone.”
We flew higher, leveling out over the plateau of a charcoal mountain. A glittering amethyst lake covered most of the plateau, and in its center lay a tiny island mound with a shrine of polished black marble.
“We’re here,” The Lady announced, flying over the water and landing on the island.
Immediately my nose wrinkled. A faintly familiar, metallic smell wafted from the shrine, which featured a tall, narrow statue. Fog, so cold it stung the back of my throat, curled over the glittering amethyst water.
“What is this?” I asked, rubbing goose pimples on my arms.
The Lady didn’t answer at first, pulling me into a tight embrace. Her child’s form barely reached my chest, and her skin was chilly, as were the tendrils of her robe as they wrapped around me.
“It’s your way home,” she whispered.
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