With Chaghan, she felt as if a piece of her had been ripped away, was clutched in the palm of his hand, being taken somewhere of his choosing. She was immaterial, without body or form, but Chaghan was not; Chaghan remained as solid and real as before, perhaps even more so. In the material world, he was gaunt and emaciated, but in the realm of spirit he was solid and present . . .
She understood, now, why Chaghan and Qara had to be two halves of a whole. Qara was grounded, material, fully made of earth. To call them anchor twins was a misnomer—she alone was the anchor to her ethereal brother, who belonged more in the realm of spirit than he did in a world of flesh and blood.
The route to the Pantheon was familiar by now, and so was the gate. Once again the Woman materialized in front of her. But something was different this time; this time the Woman was less like a ghost and more like a corpse; half her face was torn away, revealing bone underneath, and her warrior’s garb had burned away from her body.
The Woman stretched a hand out toward Rin in supplication.
“It’ll eat you alive,” she said. “The fire will consume you. To find our god is to find hell on earth, little warrior. You will burn and burn and never find peace.”
“How curious,” said Chaghan. “Who are you?”
The Woman whirled on him.
“You know who I am,” she said. “I am the guardian. I am the Traitor and the Damned. I am redemption. I am the girl’s last chance for salvation.”
“I see,” Chaghan murmured. “So this is where you’ve been hiding.”
“What are you talking about?” Rin demanded. “Who is she?”
But Chaghan spoke past her, directly to the woman. “You should have been immured in the Chuluu Korikh.”
“The Chuluu Korikh can’t hold me,” hissed the Woman. “I am a Speerly. My ashes are free.” She reached out and stroked Rin’s damaged cheek like a mother caressing her child. “You don’t want me gone. You need me.”
Rin shuddered at her touch. “I need my god. I need power, and I need fire.”
“If you call it now, you will bring down hell on earth,” the Woman warned.
“Khurdalain is hell on earth,” said Rin. She saw Nezha screaming in the fog, and her voice wavered.
“You don’t know what true suffering is,” the Woman insisted angrily.
Rin curled her fingers into fists at her sides, suddenly pissed off. True suffering? She had seen her friends stabbed with halberds, shot full of arrows, cut down with swords, burned to death in poisonous fog. She had seen Sinegard go up in flames. She had seen Khurdalain occupied by Federation invaders almost overnight.
“I have seen more than my fair share of suffering,” she hissed.
“I’m trying to save you, little one. Why can’t you see that?”
“What about Altan?” Rin challenged. “Why haven’t you ever tried to stop him?”
The Woman tilted her head. “Is that what this is about? Are you jealous of what he can do?”
Rin opened her mouth, but nothing came out. No. Yes. Did it matter? If she had been as strong as Altan, he wouldn’t have been able to restrain her.
If she were as strong as Altan, she could have saved Nezha.
“That boy is beyond redemption,” said the Woman. “That boy is broken like the rest. But you, you are still pure. You can still be saved.”
“I don’t want to be saved!” Rin shrieked. “I want power! I want Altan’s power! I want to be the most powerful shaman there ever was, so that there is no one I can’t save!”
“That power can burn down the world,” the Woman said sadly. “That power will destroy everything you’ve ever loved. You will defeat your enemy, and the victory will turn to ashes in your mouth.”
Chaghan had finally regained his composure.
“You have no right to remain here,” he said. His voice trembled slightly as he spoke, but he raised one thin hand toward the Woman in a banishing gesture. “You belong to the realm of the dead. Return to the dead.”
“Do not try,” sneered the Woman. “You cannot banish me. In my time I have bested shamans far more powerful than you.”
“There are no shamans more powerful than me,” said Chaghan, and he began to chant in his own language, the harshly guttural language Jiang had once spoken, the language Rin recognized now as the speech of the Hinterlands.
His eyes glowed golden.
The Woman started to shake, as if standing over an earthquake, and then suddenly she burst into flames. The fire lit her face from within, like a glowing coal, like an ember about to explode.
She shattered.
Chaghan took Rin’s wrist and tugged. She became immaterial again, rushing headlong into the space where things were not real. She did not choose where they went; she could only concentrate on staying whole, staying herself, until Chaghan stopped and she could regain her bearings without losing herself entirely.
This was not the Pantheon.
She glanced around, confused. They were in a dimly lit room the size of Altan’s office, with a low, curved ceiling that forced them to crouch where they stood. Everywhere she looked, small tiles had been arranged in mosaics, depicting scenes she did not recognize or understand. A fisherman bearing a net full of armored warriors. A young boy encircled by a dragon. A woman with long hair weeping over a broken sword and two bodies. In the room’s center stood a great hexagonal altar, engraved with sixty-four intricate characters of Old Nikara calligraphy.
“Where are we?” Rin asked.
“A safe place of my choosing,” Chaghan said. He looked visibly rattled. “She was much stronger than I expected. I took us to the first place I thought of. This is a Divinatory. Here we can ask questions about your Woman. Come to the altar.”
She looked about in wonder as she followed him, running her fingers over the carefully designed tiles. “Is this part of the Pantheon?”
“No.”
“Then is this place real?”
“It’s real in your mind,” said Chaghan. “That’s as real as anything gets.”
“Jiang never taught me about this.”
“That’s because you Nikara are so primitive,” said Chaghan. “You still think there’s a strict binary between the material world and the Pantheon. You think calling the gods is like summoning a dog from the yard into the house. But you can’t conceive of the dream world as a physical place. The gods are painters. Your material world is a canvas. And this Divinatory is an angle from which we can see the colors on the palette. This isn’t really a place, it’s a perspective. But you’re interpreting it as a room because your human mind can’t process anything else.”
“What about this altar? The mosaics? Who built them?”
“No one did. You still don’t understand. They’re mental constructions so that you can comprehend concepts that are already written. To the Talwu, this room looks completely different.”
“The Talwu?”
Chaghan tilted his chin toward something in front of them.
“You’re back so soon,” spoke a cool, alien voice.
In the dim light, Rin had not noticed the creature standing behind the hexagonal altar. It walked around the circle at a steady pace and sank into a deep bow before Chaghan. It looked like nothing Rin had ever seen; it was similar to a tiger, but its hair grew two feet long. It had a woman’s face, a lion’s feet, a pig’s teeth, and a very long tail that might have belonged to a monkey.
“She is a goddess. Guardian of the Hexagrams,” Chaghan said to Rin as he sank into an equally deep bow. He pulled her down to the floor with him.
The Talwu dipped her head toward Chaghan. “The time of asking has expired for you. But you . . .” She looked at Rin. “You have never asked a question of me. You may proceed.”
“What is this place?” Rin asked Chaghan. “What can it—she—tell me?”
“The Divinatory keeps the Hexagrams,” he answered. “The Hexagrams are sixty-four different combinations of lines broken and unbroken.” He indicated the calligraphy at the sides of the altar, and Rin saw that each character indeed was made up of six lines. “Ask the Talwu your question, cast a Hexagram, and it will read the lines for you.”