Black as diamond, p.35
Black as Diamond, page 35
Wren’s determination was then tempered by a subtle misery. Look at him—driving himself into the arms of death so long as he could do this one thing for the man who held half his heart. His mind floated to Asaru. He ached, starved for the kindly touch at the other end of the brand that had become so precious to him.
They were friends. They were something different from friends. They were irrevocably bound.
As he imbued the needle with living liquid, Wren closed his eyes and listened to the sounds in the cave. The steady drip of water from stalactites bearding the upper curve, the echo of his pained panting, the padding of slippered footsteps that approached him. He cursed as his eyes shot wide. He pulled his hand from the page and hid it in the folds of his suman while shoving the needle up his sleeve. It scraped his inner wrist, but he was too agitated to acknowledge the blood it may have drawn.
Someone sat beside him. They remained as quiet as sleep.
“It’s time to descend,” Sagan said in a muted tone.
“To descend?”
“The last step in the Chronicler’s teachings.”
Sagan’s legs were splayed aside, crimson suman trailing in the water. He stretched his toes over the pool. From an inner pocket, he produced a white sprig surrounded by evergreen leaves. It resembled the mutant sun seen through a viridian filter.
“Qhat. It lets you breathe underwater and opens your mind. Allows you to grasp the fullness of the ritual and allows it to grasp you in turn.”
“Why now?” Wren asked, tracing a bloody loop over the cornucopia embroidered on his suman. What a morbid sight, it looked almost like he’d killed someone. Like himself, slowly exsanguinated for the sake of another. But this would all be worth it—he was more sure of that than his desires for the guild.
“Your friends have done their part. It’s time to do yours.” Sagan flipped the flower over the backs of his fingers like a coin and held it over his mouth. Stitched on his glove was the severe circle of a flame spell. He charged it with a single finger, light turning white, then red.
The qhat burst into a green cloud, hiding Sagan’s face and intentions. Through the mist, Wren met his eyes, swirling dark. They were the only two people in the world of this cave, and the water lapped at their feet.
Before he could pull away, Sagan grabbed Wren’s chin tight enough to bruise and pressed their lips together. Searing smoke passed between their mouths in a sweet puff.
Vapors clouded Wren’s head, eyes fluttering. Neither moved as Sagan held on for just a moment longer before pushing away with a set to his jaw. His irises were warped around the pupil by thin green lines that seemed to breathe. Inhaling, exhaling. He brushed down Wren’s spit-slicked lip, thumbed at its corner.
He smiled, but all Wren saw was a smear of color. Inhaling, exhaling. Smoke wormed through his body. His fingers flexed in his lap, desirous to run across his lips, to see if that had been real. It felt like blood loss. It felt like a lucid dream. Then he blinked.
And he was drowning. No. He was just underwater.
How did I get here?
There was water in his lungs and mouth, but he breathed just fine.
Where is here?
You’re descending, came the answer in a voice not his own.
He was immersed in the lake, cradled as if by a mother; it was warm in the descent, but nowhere close to boiling. The weight of watery fingers tried prying Wren’s lips open, and his heart beat a thousand times, shivering in the cage of his ribs, threatening escape.
This all felt like an illusion.
Knees curled up, arms wrapped around them, he tilted his head back. Moonlight circled around him, wavering through the depths. He was surrounded by rocky walls with caves carved into them. Inside those caves hid monsters—his fears, his awful desires, the worst of them formed from his mistakes. The darkness was heavy, as if something great lurked within. It felt like he was being watched. The assessing gaze of a wanting predator crawled its way beneath his flesh, wriggling with the sensation of maggots. Or maybe that was him. He felt like a mass of walking vermin.
Something sinister prodded at the reaches of his vulnerable brain. Weak. He was a weak and tender creature. After one more testing caress, the presence receded.
In the space it left behind, the ritual streamed into his mind, understanding accompanied by concentric circles. Sacred geometry, the base that formed the language of a spell. Spiraling and spiraling and spiraling, the glowing circles worked, built the ritual spellwork atop itself. See and know, touch and understand. With disembodied hands, Wren reached. The tips of his fingers grazed a strand. He tugged, intangible hands drawing the knowledge close, tucking it against his chest over the wreath of acorns.
Sparkling stones fractured into dust. The dust formed a tight coronet of thorns around his head.
All was silent. In this underwater world, he was the only living creature.
A trident shot from the dark caves and stabbed through his chest.
Wren’s eyes shot open.
He gasped, pain sparking through him until he was a raw, living nerve. Suddenly, he was so startlingly alone that for a split second he almost didn’t realize it.
Water bubbled into his throat. And he began to panic. Because he was drowning. He was drowning and he was alone.
Where—his air-starved brain sought answers. Where am I?
The Sky Court revealed itself, a wash of stars. The lidded eye of the moon glared at him.
Wren gasped, horrible spurts of breath drawn back into his lungs. Sound crashed into his ears, popping as pressure released. Pools formed under his knees as he coughed up water. What if he had drowned down there and this was the waking dream of death?
It had to be.
For what else could hurt as much as knowing—feeling—that there was nothing on the other end of the bond? Alone.
A voice whispered at the edge of his perception. Something seized in his chest, sending waves of pain radiating outward from the brand like the tendrils of a dying star. The brand burned and burned and bit through his skin. He froze, fingers curled and jaw clenched. He was being flayed apart, serrated by a super-heated blade cracking his heart in two.
He wasn’t in pain—he was pain.
Drawing his arm in, Wren bunched the fabric over his brand. It was dulled. Constant and chronic, he sobbed for—
“Asaru . . .”
Khetry clung to his skin, and his nose felt warm from the streams pouring down his chin. On his tongue was the iron tang of fresh blood. With the amount of it, his face must have been drenched. He felt like he was dying.
“I . . . I can’t feel him anymore.”
Everything passed in a discordant blur of unreality after that. Time twisted, swirled.
Someone lifted Wren to his feet, another someone placed a cool hand on his forehead, while yet another tied his hair into a tail. He was dried and dressed. A red cloak was fastened at his neck, and then he was pushed into the scores of Doyisha, who moved as one. They were a grand mass whose purpose was greater than the individual parts from which it was formed.
Through it all, Wren was alone. Alone.
His body either hurt or was numb, or the hurt was the numb. Mostly, he was tired.
So. Very. Tired.
Dazed eyes blinked as sand softened under his boots, before they adjusted at the sight of a structure of slate and jet half buried in a crimson desert. A true desert. Millions of tiny burning granules.
He was gathered with them, gathered with the Doyisha before a trio of wraiths clad in black, an abundance of slit strips fluttering by their legs. The shadows themselves seemed to writhe at their feet. Checkered masks hid their gazes. They raised their arms, and a midnight substance oozed from their fingertips. It arced up and spilled over, pooling in a mirror of dancing starlight on the sand. Moonlight beamed silvery blue onto the polished surface. One by one, the Doyisha entered the blackness and were subsumed in liquid shadow. Sagan was the last to step through the starlight. His unmasked face glanced over his shoulder, but he turned away quickly and disappeared.
Outside of himself, Wren took a step. He stood at the edge of nothing. He was nothing. Then a hand snatched his wrist. A steadying hand caught his lower back. It was a wonder he could still stand the way his watery legs shook. Through his glassy vision, he saw Niekthe at a similar height to him. Gray fabric fell to their feet, a gauzy shimmer cloaking their body as they locked gazes with him.
They reached inside his chest and pulled out his secret, holding the needle up between them. The small shard of bone was barely larger than a finger and as red as a hearth.
“Are you sure?”
In a faint glimmer of clarity brimming from the dissonant haze, Wren clasped his hand around theirs and tightened. That grasp kept him present, in the here and now, a living pillar of perpetual pain. His finger pricked the pale glinting point. Blood welled. And it was done.
“More than anything.”
Khetry looped around Wren’s neck, trapping him in its taut web. All red and red and red. An ominous glow cast their faces in long shadow. Made them look like monsters creeping out of the cavernous darkness.
In that light, he wondered how he had ever thought Niekthe was eresh keyel. Splendor thickened around them, tasting as ancient as the ages. Tasting of centuries of crossed steel, of the conflict from which he was descended.
Niekthe pushed the needle against his chest and nodded. No more words passed between them.
A vortex of black gurgled at Wren’s feet, whirling hypnotically. He was pushed forward, and the darkness enveloped him.
Asaru
On the fringes of lucidity, Asaru felt them guide him onto a bed—who were they? Rishé and Palenisa, his fading mind supplied. But the doubled chanting of his mother drowned it out. Tenat—she wanted him to come home, come back.
The ground swayed. Right, he was on a ship. Cherrywood, black flag, crewed by northern redheads. They’d sailed through a broken spine and found gleaming bright treasure in the heart of a stone tree. His recollection was a blur as the events bled into each other, less sequential and more all at once, like a long unbroken line of golden blood.
Come home.
He tried to. Tried to move through the miasma of hurt, but he found himself wrapped mummiform in pale sheets that reminded him of grave cloth, charnel houses, and ash, and of a slab shrouded in mourning white.
Everything was laced with a persistent ache—constant, constant, constant pain. Buzzing beneath his skin, inside him. Asaru felt like a raw nerve subsumed in dreamless waters. His protests died prematurely, released instead as a wounded moan as the two women buried him in layers of cloth.
“You’re sick,” one said, her voice low as a valley at midnight.
“Rest,” said the other, curling up at the ends like spoken cursive.
Their voices slithered into unintelligibility as the waking world quivered. Both weightless and leaden, Asaru fell away from clasped hands. There, then—gone.
The nonplace was tinted with shades of darkness. A myriad of colors swirled around him. Patterns shifted behind his closed eyes as reality splintered into something not so real.
Am I sleeping?
There was no response.
The ruby web hung around him. Black tainted the net like corrosive sores. Floating in the substance, Asaru held the indistinct ball of his own aether in his hands, close to his chest like a fallen star. It would have cast him aglow in silver if this place had something approximating light. Khetry threads tightened around his limbs until he lay there—wherever “there” was—supine.
As always, he was at the mercy of endless chanting. Warrior. The endless chanting of his mother’s voice. Prince. His mother’s distorting voice as it cradled him. Son. Cradled and swathed him in the gauzy tones of eternity. Come home, come back, come home. Asaru was adrift for an eternity. Whatever time meant in this nonplace.
Something wet dripped from his nose—blood. But when he reached up—at least he thought he did—there was nothing there.
He peeled his eyes open—did he even have eyes? In this unreality, he hadn’t thought to do that. Looking down, he saw a thin layer of water above the ground that didn’t exist. Below it were many intangible hands writhing like phantom maggots.
Stagnant water flowed into him, drenched and drowned him like a ritualistic fount. It receded, and through the blur it left behind, a figure approached.
“Alvarys?” Asaru tried, throat tight. The words came from the mouth he didn’t have. It took considerable effort to speak. A static pain throbbed at his extremities, and he was far too tired to try lifting his head.
“Asaru.”
His vision cleared, and he tried to peer through the clouded pitch in the direction of the voice. A form materialized from the void, larger than life. Every inch of skin bound in gray bandages and limp rings of gold hung like rotting streamers from a corpse. Behind the shadow of a veil lay sparkling black eyes inset in a jackal face—or a mask. Or both.
Khertote—comrade, companion, and guide to fallen eresh keyel.
Ah, I am not sleeping, Asaru realized faintly, I am dying.
Moribund, he was halfway between life and death, a talon toeing the threshold as bleeding wings fluttered black. He could almost see the veil where the divine Triumvirate resided, where his brother resided.
“I have been waiting centuries,” Khertote said. “But I am glad you have finally returned, though They have made it difficult.”
Asaru wanted to ask the illusion what it meant, but his tongue swelled thick and fat in his mouth. Everything was pressed beneath a turgid layer of sleep. He blinked—at least, he thought he did—and found himself enveloped in giant hands, looking up rather than down.
The figment watched him with the focus of a vulture picking at carrion. For a figment, it was so clear, though the dying mind could create intricate hallucinations. It opened its mouth; it opened its mask. “This is for your own good.”
What do you mean?
The thing resembling Khertote lowered its head, colossal hands outstretched before them. Twisting its wrist, it conjured chains from the fraying dregs of khetry.
Lead fell across Asaru’s neck, his wrists and legs weighed by the crimson bonds. His body yearned to move, to rage against the fetters as they smothered his protests. I still belong to myself. A limp refrain. Unyielding chains pulled him to the wet ground of this void space. His vision doubled, blurred into a kaleidoscope of smoke and crimson energies.
“This is not only for your own good, but that of khetry itself.” The voice of the simulacrum was a harmony of ululating birdsong above the relentless intonations of My son, warrior, my son, come back. “You, a traitor made, were never meant to exist until Her.”
What little remained of Asaru grew numb. The eyelids he didn’t have drooped.
“Return to dwell in the Red Web of Life once more and be content.”
Fading, he sank into the viscous embrace of ceaseless black hands. A hundred thousand tiny fingers trailed every inch of him with their malicious intent. Unkind and insistent, they dragged him down. Farther than he thought possible in this dreaming place.
The allure of the veil called to him. Soon he would be reunited with his brother. He could almost imagine a blue-eyed smile and an outstretched hand welcoming him to the beyond.
As his heart slowed, a familiar sensation pierced his moribund mind. Golden blood gushed over the colossal fingers of his possessor. Their bloody caress lingered at his nape. Cursed tendrils emanated from a stark black triangle, needling into the very fabric of his being. His mother’s voice swept in with fury as the chants began anew.
Asaru, warrior, son, prince. Come back, my son, come home—mine. Mine.
For a moment, Asaru’s vision went dark. Touched by cold, he trembled. Then he saw red. He saw himself in the celestial pools of Khertote’s canine eyes. Water shivered at his knees.
“No,” he sighed, every fiber of him resisting the void with keen desperation. “No.” He tore the collar from his neck. Exhaustion became raw fire in his veins. “I’m not done,” he said, staggering to his feet. Chains disappeared into the distance on either side, his arms splayed like wings. They threatened to wrench him back down, but he fought and forced his wrists free. The threads flickered as they peeled away like embers. “I am not . . . fucking . . . done.”
Above and below him, the entity resembling Khertote nodded. Then it vanished, wiped away like a broken circle.
A crossed pair of flaming blades sheared Asaru in two. Fingers pried apart his flayed remains, forming him into an imperfect totem. Then he was remade by a chorus of chants. Asaru, come home. They droned in one tone from everywhere. Their volume climbed until he was the voices, an unceasing harmony. Prince, son, brother, warrior, mine.
A hand wreathed in black shot down. The bright red claws of the presence sank deep into his chest. Through flesh and bone and violet stone. Burrowed to his innermost places. Gripping tight, it ripped out a trident with a cruel indifference.
Come back to me.
Hardened mineral crawled across him like frost. Black diamond crept up his neck to cover his face. As the cocoon came to a stop, Asaru tilted his head back to meet a pair of crimson eyes.
And his body no longer belonged to him.
One moment he was. The next he wasn’t.
Come, my son.
Asaru shot up.
His eyes were black and hollow, lacking the red spark of life. Cold pulled at his pallid skin. He barely felt it; he barely felt anything. Blinking, he looked around, taking in his surroundings. There was a bed beneath him and shredded sheets atop him. Beside him a human clad in changeant blue started with a yelp.
