So who was he now, washed clean in saltwater? He had accepted his failure with Suranna, accepted his failure as a Pilgrim master, accepted his failure as Nora’s mentor, and accepted that whoever she was now, the Nora he knew was lost to the Living Blade.
Acceptance.
He stared at his reflection in the water and realized that the distorted image was actually the one of the lone warrior with two arms, the fighter who had never fit in, who drew strength from his enforced solitude.
That wasn’t him.
Not anymore.
He closed his eyes and concentrated on clearing his mind, focused on his breathing until he tapped in to that feeling of calm connectedness that meditation brought him. The feeling he had had when he sat by the pool of inky water, that had made him reach out to touch it.
To connect.
The heat surged through him, burning away the slag. He felt he was falling, falling into a deep well, while at the same time staring into it from a higher position. A churning ring of gleaming flashes of silver, and in its center a chasm of dark night into which he kept tumbling.
The blackness below solidified and became the dark orb of an eye meeting his gaze. Something enormous lay down there, hidden, trapped, full of desire, wanting to know and be known.
He was falling into the black, but there was no void, only belonging.
Everything is connected.
A voice as deep as the sea roared the words over and over, until it reverberated through his very being.
And in the black he could make out glimpses, faces, visions.
Suranna.
Shinar—the Temple of Fire.
Nora.
The Temple of the Wind.
The gjalp maiden.
The Temple of Water.
The gjalp maiden growing, growing, growing until she filled the earth and covered it, became it.
We all believed that in the deep places there was fire, but all I saw was water.
Lin’s voice, broken, shattered, echoed by a thousand voices around him.
Everything is connected, the storm about him raged as he fell, rushing towards the giant wight eye.
He fell into the soft dark and it swallowed him whole.
Diaz broke his meditation, and jumped to his feet with a gasp. His sudden action propelled him onwards, splashing into the water. He disturbed his own reflection, breaking it up into shards of glittering sunlight, reminiscent of the spinning ring he had just seen in his vision.
“Telen?” Lin stared at him with her eyebrow drawn high. She sat by the fire and was dining on the steamed mussels he had prepared earlier. “Are you quite all right?”
His gaze swept across the water to find his gjalp, only the top of her head peeking out of the waves at his alarm.
“It’s the connection,” he yelled. “They’re all connected!”
“It’s fine. I think he’s still asleep,” Lin told the gjalp. “Sometimes people say weird things when they are still in their dreams.”
The gjalp trilled.
“I’m not sleeping,” Diaz said exhilarated, wading back to Lin. “I think I’ve been sleeping for most of my life and I just woke up for the first time!”
“Of course, dear.”
“Lin!” He grabbed her by the shoulders to make her look him in the eye. “They’re all connected. The temples. Listen. The wights believe that this temple is the oldest one, that it stands at the very heart of the world. They built the other temples in its likeness, on ley lines leading to this one, even the lost temples of Lara and Indis. Like veins to a heart. The heart of the world, Lin.”
“I feel your urgency, Telen. But you’re not making much sense.”
He let go of her and raked his hand through his hair, trying to find words to express the sudden certainty running through him.
“The humans tell stories of how the wights were there before them, how they built all these marvels and wonders and were messengers of the gods. But at the same time, the wights believe that they are the middle children of history, now being held in the twilight during the advent of the younger children, and that the gods who came before the wights were killed by those same children. But in all of those stories, whether those told by humans or those told by wights, they got it wrong. They’re not the full truth, only bits of it refracted into reality.”
“Yes?” Lin slid another mussel into her mouth.
He licked his dry lips, running his tongue over the frosted skin that had cracked from the salt and the dehydration.
“The stories say that the Living Blade was made by Dalem the Forger, a god of old, who combined the life force of the three kinds—gods, wights, and man—to create a power to destroy the oppression inflicted on the world by the ancient ones. The life force, Lin. The life force is in the blood. And I have seen the Blade in its unmade state, a silver fluid that reacts to whoever is nearby, just like the black water at the center of this temple. Because it is made of the same essence. The same life blood.”
Lin shook her head slowly. “I’m not sure I understand what all this means. Are you saying the black water in the pool of the Most Holy is the blood of the gods?”
“No.” He started to pace. “No, the black water is a manifestation of something that is greater than the gods. Something that predates even them. But at the same time, it is shared among all creatures of Yorth, whether wight or gjalp or man. And of course! That’s the problem. Everything is connected.”
He had trouble speaking as fast as his brain was firing. The sensation was akin to when he lost himself in a fight, his body moving, reacting as though of its own accord, while he wielded his double swords and lay his opponents to ruin. He took another gulp of air, but he noticed Lin and the gjalp still sharing a puzzled look.
“How is that a problem?” Lin asked, pinching the bridge of her nose.
He was parched. He couldn’t remember talking for so long since … he couldn’t remember ever having talked this much. Period. He reached for a flask of fresh water to relieve the ache whenever he swallowed.
The problem, he thought, was the connection, as well as the disconnect. Just like the wights had disconnected themselves, isolated themselves from all others, and had thus dwindled, suffering from an ill-begotten idea of purity, so the bloodwitches and watermages here had isolated themselves to this island, isolated the source, the essence into the pool below. Cut off from everything else, the water of life had stagnated.
At the same time, however, the channels must still be open somehow. He had felt himself be drawn to this place, and deep into its innermost heart. Others like Mari and Jeska had felt it, too. Most likely, the channels to the other temples were opened as well, though most other temples had either crumbled under the onslaught of time, the absence of worship, or had simply been destroyed. He thought of the destruction of the Temple of the Earth by Nora, by the Blade.
No. Only one of them was still very much alive and active.
Shinar.
The Temple of the Fire God.
Suranna wasn’t going to raise her divine patron from the dead. She had amassed the ancient treasures of the gods in her temple, shifting the balance. At the heart of the temple, the high priestess of Shinar had re-activated the connection and was influencing it, amplifying it, twisting it to her own purposes by means of her gathered artifacts of power.
Where once had been balance, there was now imbalance. Where once had been connection, there was now a disintegration.
He set down the flask and rubbed the scar tissue on his right side. A severing was a painful experience. Traumatizing. But he was not the limb he lost. He was more.
Slightly bent over, chasing away the memory of the pain, Diaz saw that he was perfectly placed, a connecting dot. The wight part of him, his human half, his nomadic life as a pilgrim master, Suranna, Nora, the gjalp—each a shining light illuminating the path he must tread on as clearly as if it were laid out before him. A single tapestry spun from the many threads, the pattern larger than j
ust his one life filling his sight. All he needed to do was take the next step.
No.
He straightened. He was already on the path. He just hadn’t realized it, too busy mourning the loss of who he thought himself to be. All he really needed to do was decide where to set his foot next.
He saw his gjalp and Lin staring at him as if waiting for an answer.
Well, he had one.
“Please take me into the Most Holy again.”
Chapter 33
Lin shrugged out of her billowing robes and ventured into the waters dressed in a patched, skintight suit that left only her hands and bare feet exposed to the chill.
Diaz stripped off his shirt, and wrapped it together with his boots and sword tightly into his waterproof coat, tying it around his chest to better swim with his all of his possessions. He had a feeling he wouldn’t be coming back for them, and so he took the time to look up at the gracefully arched windows of the Temple, taking in its ephemeral beauty as it clung like a shell to the black rock.
He waded into the water again, though his skin had barely dried out from last night, still puckered and soft on his fingertips and the soles of his feet. His gjalp was there waiting for him.
“I’ll need your help,” he said and stretched out his arm as in an embrace.
She whistled shrilly and somersaulted in the water before bounding over the waves towards him. She halted just in front him, and tenderly touched his face, his arm, his chest with her tentacles, fastening herself to his waist.
The three of them swam at a leisurely pace through the bay and were soon out in the open sea. There was no need to rush. They would do better to save their strength.
It seemed that they reached the crack in the mountainside much faster this time. Diaz didn’t feel as exhausted as he had. Indeed, he felt invigorated, even as he inhaled deeply to scrape his way through the twisting, turning fissure in the rock.
He broke through the surface with a splash and a whistling breath, nevertheless, and nervously waited for Lin to appear behind them. She did not make them wait long, and rose like a shadow from below, only mildly disturbing the water.
She did not seem out of breath.
“What?” She asked of him as she drew close to the tunnel leading to the next chamber.
“Nothing,” he was quick to say. “I’m just impressed at how fit you are for a woman—”
“Don’t say it!” she snapped, a twinkle in her eye.
“… your age,” he finished.
She bumped her a fist against his upper arm, then used the rise of the tide to hoist herself onto the ledge. He waited for the next wave to do the same.
The gjalp shook her head and sounded off a low wail as she swam circles in the water at their knees.
“I’m here,” Diaz said. “It’ll be fine. But I need you to come with me. Your folk need to know this. Need to understand where your Mother has gone.”
She pouted, half-disgusted, at the portcullis and swam out to the far wall where she had waited last time with her sisters.
“I know it’s scary,” he told her, holding out a hand for her to grab. “I don’t know what you smell or see or sense from this tunnel and the chamber beyond, but I know it can’t be very pleasant. But I will be with you. This time, I will carry you where you cannot go, just as you have carried me through the sea all this time.”
She did not seem happy, but she came closer and a single tentacle coiled out of the waves and reached for his wrist.
She was heavier out in the air than she seemed in the water, but they crawled through the tunnel together, under the copper teeth, and into the chamber with the cisterns. There the wind sucked the air through the door he had broken apart last time, a deep inhale, nearly sucking them forward.
She shivered and nestled her face into his shoulder, and he patted her on the back.
“It’s fine. It’s just the wind, you see?”
He nearly believed his reassurance was true. But as they entered the sacred silence of the stairwell, the immense stairs winding up to the heavens itself towering above them, he wasn’t so sure.
Below, the water in the pool seemed to ripple in anticipation of their coming. He still couldn’t look at it directly, but out of the corner of his eye, the more levels they descended, the more the black water seemed to boil over the rim of the pool, long coils like smoke snaked upward as though in greeting. But when he turned to catch a glimpse, it looked just as placid as the first time he had seen it. A dark reflective pool, nothing more, nothing less.
Lin shuddered as they walked down the last flight.
“I hate this place,” she said flatly. “I had nightmares about it for years.”
“It’s not the place itself that’s bad,” Diaz answered, “but its misuse by the people.”
“Yes. The people gave me nightmares, too.”
They skirted the pool and walked over to the altar. Diaz motioned for his gjalp to take a place there.
She did reluctantly, her suckers grasping firmly on his flesh as he lifted her onto the cold stone, his skin raised and spotted an angry red when she finally let go.
She was quivering, restless. Every lithe limb was trembling. He caught her upward gaze and saw the dull gleam of butcher hooks in the vaulted ceiling above the altar.
He caressed her cheek, her skin like sandpaper, and directed her unsteady gaze to him.
“Hey.” He smiled.
Some of the tension dropped from her shoulders as both of her razor sharp claws pressed his hand to her cheek.
She bared her teeth at him in her closest resemblance of a return smile.
“I’m not going to hurt you. Listen. I’m not going to let you be hurt. The terrible things that happened here, happened because of the separation between the water of Yorth and the outside world. Do you understand?”
She shook her head again, kneading her forehead into the palm of his hand, but then focused on his lips, warbling the first few notes from the love song.
She brought her face inches from his own, the smell of the sea engulfed him, and his breath hitched.
“I think I know what you want of me, but I am not the one you need,” he whispered.
He reckoned that Lin would pretend not to have heard anything while she checked the door behind the altar to the anteroom beyond. But a fear of her overhearing what he said was not why he whispered. It was so that the gjalp knew he was speaking to her and only to her. He saw Lin return and keep back from the intimacy between them. “Do you hear? It’s not me you seek, it’s a connection to something larger than both of us.”
He nodded at the pool, and she radiated sadness.
“Mari’s coming,” Lin said softly. “And Jeska,” she added after a heartbeat.
He acknowledged it with a look, then turned back to the quivering gjalp.
“The water in the pool is alive,” he continued urgently. “It has been sleeping here for—” He wondered whether the gjalp had a concept of time. What were their lifespans? Could they become centuries old like their wight kin, like he himself? Or did they have the lifespans of fish? “—for a very long time. Didn’t you feel its loneliness, its fear when we entered its realm? But now, by the edge of the pool, there is calm. There is safety and connection. It was once what we all shared together, wights and men and gjalp, our common heritage, and it has been trapped in here all alone. We cannot take it out of here, set it free, but we can bring the sea to it. It needs you.
“I’m going to lower you into the water. I will be with you all the time. You will hold onto me, all right? There is no need to fear. I do not believe it will harm you. In fact, I believe that it will want to help you and your sisters with your … procreation. But first, it must know. You must communicate with it. Will you try? For your own sake, and for your sisters?”
She shot an anxious look at the black shifting water, then gently laid her claws against his cheek, and sang to him.
“They’re getting close,” Lin warned. “What do yo
u want me to do?”
“Talk with Mari, Lin, maybe she will listen and see reason.”
Lin nodded and left quietly through the door. He knelt before the altar and gazed up into the sharp face of the gjalp, gently removing her hand from his cheek.
“I can’t,” he said with genuine anguish at the gjalp’s pain. “I’m so sorry. I need … someone else, and she needs me.”
Her head jerked back in surprise, black eyes wide. A question in her song.
“No, she is not here. She’s far away. And I have been a fool to hide myself away from her.”
She caressed his cheek one last time, then straightened, and pulled herself upright by her coils. She put her long webbed fingers with their fingertip claws in his proffered arm and together they walked over to the edge of the pool. As he looked at the gjalp, Diaz could see the black water writhe and coil, reaching out towards the gjalp with what seemed like many smoke-wreathed limbs. He lowered her slowly into the ink, anticipating a jerk or a twitch or something that indicated the gjalp had been burned by the scorching hot touch of the water. Instead her limbs went slack, rubbery, and she slid into the black with a satisfied sigh.
She dipped below the surface, and he could only just make out her lighter shape against the black, skirts spread wide. However, she couldn’t fully submerge herself with her hand around his wrist, his hand around hers.
He had given his word to hold onto her, to not let go. And he thought for a moment of all the promises he had made so far in his life, the formal ones at his initiation amongst the pilgrims, like his vows to bind himself to Suranna until death do us part, as well as all the unspoken ones, that weren’t less important only because they remained silent, engraved on his heart and mind, and lastly he marveled at how few promises he had broken.
This promise to the gjalp, though, he would keep. Bracing himself for the scorching pain he had felt last time, he lowered his forearm so that the inky darkness enfolded the whole gjalp, from the top of her head to the longest of her nettles.
It was hot, but not scalding. And though he had been prepared for another vision, a burst of vivid imagery rushing through his mind, he saw wavering heat flickers in the reflective surface. A stretch of desert. The silhouette of a lone woman trudging along, a shovel across her shoulders. His heartbeat fluttered. A consciousness as vast as the ocean and as old as life on this planet brushed up against his. Alien but not unwelcome. Instead of the salty sea, he thought he was breathing in his mother’s scent. Connection. A tender feeling aching in his chest. He was home, and all was well.
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