“I can’t,” he said. “It’s not mine to give. That power belongs to the Speerlies.”
“Then take me to them,” Rin demanded.
And so he took her back.
In the realm of dreams, time ceased to hold meaning. Altan took her back centuries. He took her back into the only spaces where their ancestors still existed, in ancient memory.
Being led by Altan was not the same as being led by Chaghan. Chaghan was a sure guide, more native to the spirit world than the world of the living. With Chaghan, she had felt as if she were being dragged along, and that if she didn’t obey, Chaghan would have shattered her mind. But with Altan . . . Altan did not feel even like a separate presence. Rather, he and she made two parts of a much greater whole. They were two small instances of the grand, ancient entity of all that was Speer, hurtling through the world of spirit to rejoin their kind.
When space and time again became tangible concepts to her, Rin perceived that they were at a campfire. She saw drums, she heard people chanting and singing, and she knew that song, she had been taught that song when she was a little girl, she could not believe she had ever forgotten that song . . . all Speerlies could sing that song before their fifth birthday.
No—not her. Rin had never learned that song. This was not her recollection; she was living inside the remembrance of a Speerly who had lived many, many years ago. This was a shared memory. This was an illusion.
So was this dance. And so, too, was the man who held her by the fire. He danced with her, spinning her about in great arcs, then pulling her back against his warm chest. He could not be Altan, and yet he had Altan’s face, and she was certain that she had always known him.
She had never been taught to dance, but somehow she knew the steps.
The night sky was lit up with stars like little torches. A million tiny campfires scattered across the darkness. A thousand Isles of Speer, a thousand fireside dances.
Years ago Jiang had told her that the spirits of the dead dissolved back into the void. But not the spirits of Speer. The Speerlies refused to let go of their illusions, refused to forget about the material world, because Speer’s shamans couldn’t be at peace until they got their vengeance.
She saw faces in the shadow. She saw a sad-looking woman who looked like her, sitting beside an old man wearing a crescent pendant around his neck. Rin tried to look closer but their faces were blurred, those of people she only half remembered.
“Is this what it was like?” she asked out loud.
The voices of the ghosts answered as one. This was the golden age of Speer. This was Speer before Tearza. Before the massacre.
She could have wept at the beauty of it.
There was no madness here. Only fires and dances.
“We could stay here,” Altan said. “We could stay here forever. We wouldn’t have to go back.”
In that moment it was all she wanted.
Their bodies would waste away and become nothing. Shiro would deposit their corpses into a waste chamber and incinerate them. Then, when the last part of them had been given to the Phoenix, once their ashes were scattered in the winds, they would be free.
“We could,” she agreed. “We could be lost to history. But you’d never do that, would you?”
“They wouldn’t take us now,” he said. “Do you feel them? Can you feel their anger?”
She could. The ghosts of Speer were so sad, but they were also furious.
“This is why we are strong. We draw our strength from centuries and centuries of unforgotten injustices. Our task—our very reason for being—is to make those deaths mean something. After us, there will be no Speer. Only a memory.”
She had thought she understood Altan’s power, but only now did she realize the depth of it. The weight of it. He was burdened with the legacy of a million souls forgotten by history, vengeful souls screaming for justice.
The ghosts of Speer were chanting now, a deep and sorrowful song in the language she was born too late to understand, but connected to her very bones. The ghosts spoke to them for an eternity. Years passed. No time passed at all. Their ancestors imparted all that they knew of Speer, all that had ever been remembered of their people. They instilled in her centuries of history and culture and religion.
They told her what she had to do.
“Our god is an angry god,” said the woman who looked like Rin. “It will not let this injustice rest. It demands vengeance.”
“You must go to the isle,” said the old man with the crescent pendant. “You must go to the temple. Find the Pantheon. Call the Phoenix, and wake the ancient fault lines on which Speer lies. The Phoenix will only answer to you. It has to.”
The man and woman faded back into the blur of brown faces. The ghosts of Speer began to sing as one, mouths moving in unison.
Rin could not determine the meaning of the song from the words, but she felt it. It was a song of vengeance. It was a horrible song. It was a wonderful song.
The ghosts gave Rin their blessing, and it made the rush from the heroin feel like a feathery touch in comparison.
She had been granted a power beyond imagination.
She had the strength of their ancestors. She held within her every Speerly who had died on that terrible day, and every Speerly who had ever lived on the Dead Island.
They were the Phoenix’s chosen people. The Phoenix thrived on anger, and Rin possessed that in abundance.
She reached for Altan. They were of one mind and one purpose.
They forced their way back into the world of the living.
Their eyes flared open at the same time.
One of Shiro’s assistants had been bending over them, back on the table in Shiro’s laboratory. The flames roiling from their bodies immolated him immediately, catching his hair and clothes so that when he reeled away from them, screaming, every bit of him was on fire.
Flames licked out in every direction. They caught the chemicals in the laboratory and combusted, shattering glass. They caught the alcohol used to sterilize wounds and spread rapidly on the fumes. The jar in the corner bearing the pickled man trembled from the heat and exploded, spilling its vile contents out onto the floor. The fumes of the embalming fluid caught fire, too, lighting up the room in an earnest blaze.
The lab assistant ran into the hallway, screaming for Shiro to save him.
Rin writhed and twisted where she lay. The straps keeping her down could not bear the heat of the flame at such a close angle. They snapped and she fell off the table, picked herself up, and turned just as Shiro rushed into the room clutching a reloading crossbow.
He shifted his aim from Altan to Rin and back again.
Rin tensed, but Shiro did not pull the trigger—whether out of inexperience or reluctance, Rin did not know.
“Beautiful,” he marveled in a low voice. The fire reflected in his hungry eyes, and for a moment made him seem as if he, too, possessed the scarlet eyes of the Speerlies.
“Shiro!” Altan roared.
The doctor did not move as Altan advanced. Rather he lowered his crossbow, held his arms out to Altan as if welcoming a son into his embrace.
Altan grabbed his tormentor by the face. And squeezed. Flames poured from his hands, white-hot flames, surrounding the doctor’s head like a crown. First Altan’s hands left fingerprints of black against around Shiro’s temples, and then the heat burned through bone and Altan’s fingers bored holes through Shiro’s skull. Shiro’s eyes bulged. His arms twitched madly. He dropped the crossbow.
Altan pressed Shiro’s skull between his hands. Shiro’s head split open with a wet crack.
The twitching stopped.
Altan dropped the body and stepped away from it. He turned to Rin. His eyes burned a brighter red than they ever had before.
“Okay,” he said. “Now we run.”
Rin scooped the crossbow off the ground and followed Altan out of the operating room.
“Where’s the exit?”