Everyone nodded and began writing lists of supplies on their SEDs, discussing who would bring what and where they might be the safest when the caldera erupted.
When Rin got up to look at Sam’s hand, I slipped from the gathering and found my way to the large doors that led to the rest of the Councilhouse. Without thinking about where I was going, I wandered through the halls until I landed in front of my favorite painting.
It might have been a large eagle, except the feathers seemed made of flame. Ash from its pyre shone with sparks, and the lush jungle around the bird had dimmed in its light. In spite of the fire-bright bird, there was no smoke.
The painting was of a phoenix, or of someone’s memory of how the phoenix had appeared, because the beast on canvas was too beautiful to be real.
Once, I’d asked Sam if he’d ever seen a phoenix. He’d said no, which disappointed me. He was so old. He’d seen and accomplished so much. I couldn’t imagine how he hadn’t managed to see even one phoenix in his five millennia.
Cris had talked about phoenixes in the temple, before he’d fought Janan. He’d said phoenixes had imprisoned Janan in a tower, though not what Janan had done to deserve such a punishment. Meuric had also mentioned phoenixes. He’d said someone had cursed the sylph, and he thought phoenixes were behind it.
What had happened five thousand years ago?
I hoped the answers would be in the temple books. I just had to get them back. And translate them.
“Do you think phoenixes remember their past lives like we do?” Sarit’s voice behind me made me jump. “Sorry.” She stood next to me and looped one arm around my waist. “I saw you walk out.”
“It’s okay.” I leaned my head on her shoulder. “I just needed some time to think. So much has happened tonight.”
She nodded, admiring the phoenix painting with me.
“I asked Sam that question once.” I turned my face up to the painting again. “He said there’s no reason to believe they don’t remember every lifetime.”
“I hope you’ll be reincarnated, too.” She squeezed me. “Even if Range erupts and we die, there will be a lot of people far away. It might take a long time, but eventually we’ll all come back.”
I lowered my eyes. “Sarit.”
She waited.
The truth crowded my throat. I almost told her what I’d learned in the temple, but I couldn’t take the pity right now. “If Janan ascends, do you think he’d keep reincarnating everyone?”
“Maybe.” She sounded hopeful. “I guess it depends why he’s returning. To rule? He’d want people he could rule.”
“Meuric told me he needed a special key to live once Janan ascended. It seems like if you don’t have the key, you don’t live.” In the temple, Cris and Stef hadn’t thought Janan would reincarnate people, either. Since their memory magic was broken, and Meuric had never been subject to it, their prediction seemed the likely outcome to me.
“Oh.”
“You know that I’m trying to stop Janan from ascending, right?”
“Of course. Stopping him means stopping the eruption. But . . . What about reincarnation? Will his death stop reincarnation?”
I nodded. “It stopped during Templedark.”
“Yeah, it did.” Sarit shuddered, and her tone grew husky with grief. “So either way—it ends. No matter what happens next, this will be our final lifetime.”
“There’s a cost to reincarnation,” I said.
She looked at me, concern darkening her face. “What is it?”
When I’d told Sam, the truth had nearly destroyed him. And when Stef and Cris remembered—
Stef had been unusually nice to me ever since, and Cris had sacrificed himself to save me. I didn’t want to hurt Sarit, but she deserved to know the truth. Everyone did. And maybe she would remember. Maybe I could help break her memory magic, like I had Sam’s.
“Newsouls.” The word almost choked me. “Whenever someone is reborn, Janan takes a newsoul.”
“And does what?”
I closed my eyes and repeated what Meuric told me in the temple. “They’re being eaten.”
“Oh. Oh, Ana.” Her voice broke.
“Instead of newsouls being born, Janan takes the souls’ power and reincarnates an oldsoul. It worked like that for five thousand years, until Menehem was experimenting in the market field one night, while Ciana was dying.”
“The first Templedark,” she whispered.
“Janan wasn’t able to catch her soul, because he was asleep. So years later, I arrived in her place.” The first, but not the only. Not anymore.
“Menehem did the same thing last year.”
“Yes. Both to allow more newsouls to be born, and because he wanted to see if it was possible to stop Janan. He was just curious.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, a frown pulling on her mouth. “And because of his actions, so many souls are gone forever.”
And new ones would replace them.