“No,” I said. “I have to know.”
“Isn’t it obvious? When Relos Var invented the ritual to create the Eight Gods, he assumed he would be one of the recipients. When he was not, the rest of us assumed that he would be content with the judgment of our government. And we were, all of us, wrong.” She paused. “He picked S’arric for the purest of petty emotions. Jealousy. S’arric was his younger brother.”
You’re a long way from home, little brother, Relos Var had said.
You shouldn’t have brought him back. It was cruel.
She must have felt it when my whole body went tense. “He called you brother, didn’t he?”
“And you weren’t going to say anything, were you?” I pulled away from her, thumped the reed mattress with my fist as I turned around. “See? This is why we have trust issues. Are you serious? He hates me because in another life I was the brother he murdered?”
As I leaned back, the gaesh necklace stayed with her. Not just the gaesh necklace, though: I saw she was also holding a necklace I hadn’t seen in years. The necklace of star tears.
My mouth suddenly felt dry.
She piled the necklaces into one hand. “Haven’t you been listening? He did not murder you. I could have fixed it if he’d only killed you. He did something much worse.”
Thaena shook her head. “Var likes to claim that he didn’t mean for things to happen the way they did, but I never believed him. He was as jealous of you as streams are jealous of the sea. At first we thought he had slain you. It was only after Vol Karoth tracked us down one by one, like a shark stalks fish, that we realized the truth.”
“Which was?” I whispered.
“Relos Var hadn’t destroyed your former body, he’d changed it. And the monster he created using your flesh, Vol Karoth, didn’t have to kill us. He could feed. Feed forever on our energy, and through that, on the very concepts that powered us. He will eventually destroy the world, of course, but … he’d started with S’arric, and S’arric’s power was over the sun. The sun has a lot of energy. When he’s free, Vol Karoth feeds. He’s already turned our sun bloated and red, aged it far beyond what it should be, but it will be a while before he’s done with it. The sun and stars still exist and that meant you couldn’t be truly dead. Instead, your soul was still there, still trapped and imprisoned inside your own usurped body. And none of us dared face Vol Karoth to free you.”
What killed me, no pun intended, was that every word felt true, the pieces of the puzzle fit so well. I had to fight not to think too hard about what it would be like to be trapped in such a manner, locked away in a body that was completely and utterly under another’s control. To be locked that way for centuries, millennia, the dull numb passage of time grinding down one’s mind until there was only a gibbering lump of identity. How could anyone stay sane?
“Well, someone must have,” I said, “or I wouldn’t be here.”
She smiled. “When Emperor Atrin Kandor threw himself at the Manol vané and dragged most of the men of Khorvesh to their deaths, his wife, Elana, took it upon herself to journey into the Blight. Her aim was to try and negotiate with the Dry Mothers. She was only partially successful at brokering peace with the morgage, but she did free your soul, which was a feat no one had been expecting.”
“Wait. Elana Milligreest? Doc’s Elana?”
Her smile was wry. “The same.”
“I hope you thanked her.”
“Of course,” Thaena said, “then I did what any good general does when fighting an endless war against an impossible enemy: I sent her back to the front.”
I thought about that. “Is that what you did to me?”
“Yes. If it’s any consolation, you volunteered,” she said.
I sighed. “Yeah. I suppose I probably did.” I tugged a lock of my hair in her direction. “I have to ask though…”
“Yes?” The slant of her eyebrows suggested that she was very nearly at the limit of her patience for answering questions that night.
“Would you have Returned Tyentso if this whole mess hadn’t happened? Were you lying when you said that she’d failed your test?”
She hadn’t expected that question. A bit of the old humor returned in the crinkle of her eyes. “The true test was seeing how she’d react to the idea of being judged and found wanting. Even when her hour was darkest, she never lost focus on the reason she was there in the first place.”
“So you lied.”
“Yes.” She waved the hand holding the necklaces. “I lied. I do that. I lie, and sometimes I send unprepared children out to fight demons. The world is an imperfect place.”
The movement reminded me of what she had in her hand. I couldn’t take my eyes from my gaesh, from the star tears. She saw the look, and her smile grew gentle. Then she—
* * *
You know what? Fine. I’ll tell you. But only because I know there’s no hiding it from you anyway. There’s no point in trying to keep it secret.
* * *
Anyway, she took one necklace in her left hand, and kept the other in her right. The hawk necklace began to glow. It was a subtle thing at first, but the luminescence grew stronger and more vibrant. The glow dripped off Thaena’s fingers and pooled in her left hand like the light of a hundred captured fireflies. As I watched, the glowing ball fell away from the silver necklace entirely, drifting from her left hand to the star tear necklace held in her right. Finally, the nimbus sank into the diamonds, making the starlight shimmer even more brightly. Then she reached up and refastened the necklace around my neck and kissed me on the cheek. I felt a chill, the kind I associated with crypts and stale, old graves.*
“Why—?” I could barely articulate the question.
“Slavers’ gaeshe are crude things, and easily recognized by those who know their signs. It is best that your gaesh be in something whose value cannot be questioned. No one will wonder why you keep these so close, and greed will prevent their casual destruction. This necklace is worth a kingdom. You’re a good match.”
“But if you—” I inhaled. “You could reverse it. If you have that kind of power—”
“Oh Kihrin.” She patted my hand like she was my grandmother. “I have moved a cut flower from one vase to another. That does not mean I can rejoin it to the rosebush. This heals when you die and not before. I would slay you and Return you whole, but I feel certain Xaltorath is waiting for that to claim you, and it is not worth the risk.”
“Why would he? He’s not the one who gaeshed me.”
She snorted. “Oh, but he is the one who gaeshed you. I would know his psychic stench anywhere. He is a wild card, and I do not yet understand his part in this, but until I do, I would not risk playing into his hands. So, I will not kill you.”