And like the one Sam had seen in the north, I guessed. But none of those towers had anything like Janan. If they did, they wouldn’t have been affected by weather and life. So what had happened to those prisons and prisoners?
Cris seemed somewhen else, heavy with his memories. “We all went to rescue Janan, but instead, he said the secret to immortality meant he had to stay in the prison—for a while. He said phoenixes had made this tower, so it was already infused with their magic. And the rest of us were to wait for his success and return.” Cris gazed around the red-lit chamber. “Can you imagine five thousand years existing only in stone, just waiting?”
“He’s eating newsouls.” I clenched my jaw. “I’m having trouble sympathizing with him.”
“I didn’t mean—” Cris lowered his eyes. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just, five thousand years. That’s a long time.”
So long I could hardly imagine it. “I shouldn’t have snapped. I’m just exhausted.”
“I understand.” Cris flashed a pale smile. “Janan shed his mortality, but souls still need something to contain them.”
What did that mean for sylph, then? It seemed hard to believe that anything without a soul could love music as much as they seemed to.
“All this time, he’s been waiting, growing, gaining power. If he ascends on Soul Night and becomes truly immortal, no need to consume newsouls to survive, then he won’t need to reincarnate us.”
“What about the Hallow? Meuric said if he had the key, he would live.”
Cris smiled grimly, voice low and filled with hurt. “Why should Janan bother? We’ll be unnecessary, even Meuric and Deborl. With Janan free of the temple, there will be no need for someone to guard the key.”
The key. Another thousand questions revolved around that little box. Where had it come from? “The night of Templedark, Meuric said that birth isn’t pretty. It’s painful.”
“Add the Range caldera to that,” Cris said, “and you have—nothing. When it erupts, there will be nothing left but Janan.”
I wanted to be sick. I hadn’t even considered the caldera, but the earthquake swarms, the lake level…
The caldera beneath Range wasn’t just moving through one of its natural cycles. No, it was getting ready to erupt. There should have been lots of warning. There should have been years of evidence beforehand. But nothing about Janan was natural; the unrest in the caldera must have been his doing.
When Range erupted, the devastation would be complete. The ground would be ripped apart. Lava would pour across the forest, killing everything in its path. Ash would fill the air, blocking the sun. The world’s temperature would drop dramatically.
Not that anyone would be around to see that happen.
Heart—even Range—would be a hole in the ground.
Cris shoved his hands in his pockets, frowning at nothing. “Soul Night is still months away. There’s still time to stop him if you can escape.”
“By ‘you’ I assume you mean ‘we.’”
“No, I mean you. And Stef if she’d like to escape as well.”
From the other side of the room, Stef called, “What?” and stood. “You thought of a way out?”
Cris nodded as she rounded the stone table. “Ana, I have to confess something first.” His tone made me shiver.
“What?”
“Please understand the last thing I want to do is hurt you, but”—he glanced at Stef, who didn’t react—“I think you need to know.”
I waited.
“Janan is using us, yes, switching oldsouls and newsouls to feed himself. But he didn’t deceive us or trap us, in spite of these chains. We were told he’d gain knowledge and power to protect us when he returned, truly immortal. All we had to do was bind ourselves to him and he’d do the rest. We were afraid of the world, and of him, so we said yes.” Cris gestured around the room. “We all made the agreement to be bound. We chose to be reincarnated.”
It must have seemed like such an easy decision; after all, who wanted to die when you could live forever? “You didn’t know about the newsouls?” Surely they hadn’t known. Sam had been horrified when he learned the truth, and Stef and Cris were the same. The people I knew would never make that trade.
“Understand that we were young,” he whispered, his face ashen. “We were young and in a dangerous land that spat boiling water and mud. There were dragons and centaurs, trolls and rocs, plus the regular animals that live in Range. Half our number had already been killed on the journey here. We were—still are—terrified of death.”
Stef dropped her gaze. “It was selfish and desperate, but those were wilder times.”
“No.” I spoke as if denying it would change anything.
My heart beat itself into knots. I wanted to say I’d never make that decision, but how I felt now—knowing that no matter what I did, my life would be short—I might accept such a bargain. One more life with Sam, with music, with everything I ever wanted. All it would cost was someone who’d never know what they missed.