I wanted to shrink until I vanished between the cobblestones. She meant Menehem’s lab. It weighed on him, what we’d learned, but it seemed like there was something more. Something he hadn’t told me, either.
“Stef—”
She cut him off. “Your friends are worried. The Council—well, you know the Council. They’re looking for a reason to toss Ana—and the other newsoul—out of Heart.”
“They wouldn’t.” Sam shook his head. “They wouldn’t, because we’ve done everything they’ve demanded.”
“They’re waiting for you to make a mistake.” Her voice lost some of its bite. “I just wish you’d let me help. How can we be best friends when you don’t let me into your life?”
Sam bowed his head. “We are best friends. But we’ve had five thousand years.”
“And she’s still working on her nineteenth. I know. So you’ll spend the next seventy years shutting me out. And if she’s reborn, what then? Do I cease to matter?”
“You know that isn’t true—”
“What about the rest of your friends? You hardly visit like you used to.”
“What are you talking about?” Sam raised his voice. “I see people as often as I always have. More, perhaps. But I’ve always needed time alone. You know that.”
“You’re never alone anymore. She’s always with you. And when you go out to see people, it’s for her. Introductions, lessons. Everything you do is about her.” Her anger made the last words fall like punches.
There wasn’t much Sam could say to that, and he seemed to know it. He had devoted a lot of his time to me. The moments he took to think about his response gave Stef another opening.
“You know what they’re saying,” she said, “about Ana and the sylph. About newsouls and the sylph.”
“It’s not true.” He didn’t sound even slightly convincing.
“I was there, Sam. I saw Ana go right for her SED. I saw her when she immediately knew how to distract the sylph long enough for the others to get away. And I saw what happened with the sylph when Deborl and everyone came with the eggs.”
“Surely you don’t believe—”
“What am I supposed to believe? You don’t talk to me about things anymore. People keep asking me questions, because they think I must know what’s going on, but the only things I ever hear are rumors.” Her voice cracked. “I miss you. I miss how things used to be.”
Sam’s shoulders slumped.
This fight would last forever, and I couldn’t stay hidden in the crevice any longer. Every moment made me feel worse, and listening to them…
I couldn’t go out there. Stef had shown all her anguish, and she would be furious if she knew I’d overheard. She’d never hurt me, not like Li would have if I’d witnessed that kind of vulnerability, but I didn’t want her to be angry with me, nonetheless.
Sam couldn’t end this—Stef wouldn’t let him—and I couldn’t stay trapped here between walls that made me itch. Sam would know where I went.
Silver shone in temple light as I lifted the key and pressed the shapes engraved into the metal and squeezed. A gray door swirled into existence.
With one last look at Sam and Stef arguing in the market field, I stepped into the temple.
15
WEEPER
NO SOUND EXISTED inside the temple, not even ringing in my ears, like silence after a loud noise. Temple silence was thicker than regular silence, like stone was thicker than air.
I clutched the door device to my chest, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the everywhere-light that left no shadows. The glow that emanated from the white walls wasn’t actually bright, but the reflections and lack of darkness made my eyes water.
Mysteries surrounded the temple like a cocoon. Everyone knew it was empty, and yet no door existed—not without the key I held. As far as I knew, the only other person who’d been inside the temple was Meuric.
The air pulsed with the temple’s heartbeat, making my skin prickle. Janan was here. “Hello?”
No answer. Just the flattening of my voice in dead air.
Wishing I had the backpack, I tucked the door device into my pocket and tried to decide which way to go. The room was immense, though I didn’t think it was the chamber from the last time I’d found myself in the temple. Neither was it the hall with books, or the room with an upside-down pit where I’d killed Meuric.
Carefully, I strode across the chamber toward an archway, nearly invisible in the strange light. My footfalls made no sound, and not because I was trying for stealth. Sound simply did not carry.
Moans rippled through the walls.
I halted and waited, but they didn’t return, so I continued along my original path. I couldn’t let Janan intimidate me just because he was a powerful, incorporeal being older than everyone in Range. Just because—by all accounts—he held dominion over life and death and reincarnation.
Right. None of that was intimidating.
There were no stairs at the archway like last time. It just opened into another room, and when I crossed the threshold, the archway vanished, cutting me off from the original chamber.
The new room was smaller, with archways scattered across the walls that made gentle ripples like curtains. They did nothing to create shadows, but successfully conjured a headache behind my eyes. I pulled out my flashlight, gave it a few twists, and shone it across the room.
It wasn’t perfect, but at least I could tell how far away things were, judging by the size of the beam.
I couldn’t trust my perception completely. The last time I’d been here, I’d found stairs that looked as though they went down, but actually went up. Nothing in this place was what it seemed.
The key’s weight in my pocket suggested I could make things easier for myself while in the temple, but I had no idea how to do that. Too bad Meuric hadn’t left instructions.
Determined to stop wishing for things I didn’t have, I slipped through another archway and lurched into a sideways room.
I yelped and dropped my flashlight. It flew left and shattered against the wall—or another floor.
My feet stayed planted on the floor where I walked, but my weight pulled to my left, as though I stood on a wall. The other floor was shiny and lumpy, bubbling around the shards of my flashlight like an unfortunate batch of cheese soup I’d once made. All the cheese had coagulated and the milk scorched; the house had smelled terrible for hours.
In the temple, there were no scents, save for what outsiders brought in.
Awkwardly, I sidled through the nearest archway and staggered as gravity righted itself underneath me. My stomach flipped, and I swallowed repeatedly until I was sure I wouldn’t throw up.
The room was small, only the size of my washroom. An empty white box with no archways, not even the one I’d come through. Only the occasional groan and gurgle shivered through the tiny room.
Suddenly, the air grew sharp and crushing. The heartbeat pulsed louder until it rattled in my ears, and my chest ached with the fight to breathe. It seemed all the air was being sucked away.
“Now what, Janan?” I could barely speak.
No answer.
I withdrew the door device and jabbed at random symbols. The silver box swirled in my fading sight until I wasn’t sure I was actually pressing buttons, just hitting and jamming my fingers. I felt right side up and upside down, and on both of my sides. All at once. Acid crept into my throat.
My body ached as though I were being ripped apart, and my lungs burned with all the air pushing and sucking and swirling around. Vision grayed, and the only thing I could hear was the incessant weeping and moaning.
Janan’s hollow whisper silenced everything. “That is not for you.” It came from everywhere and nowhere. A place on the nearest wall rippled as though something moved beneath the stone, or inside it. I tried not to look because it made my vision worse, but it was impossible to ignore.
“Let me go.” I gasped at the thinning air. “I’ll keep pushing buttons.”
Pressure gathered around the lump inside the wall. For a moment, it looked human-shaped, though its proportions were wrong. Limbs too long, waist too narrow, head too wide.
Then the shape scattered in all directions, ripples smoothing into the glowing stone. A black archway shimmered where the shape had been, and noise returned in waves.
Whispering.
Moaning.
Weeping.
The air remained stifling, but I could breathe. My vision returned to normal as I replaced the key in my pocket and staggered toward the opening. Losing the key would surely end with my being trapped forever.
I’d gone through a black archway before. It had been as quick as stepping into another room, like any other archway, though they looked frightening.
This time, I stepped into ink and starless night. The blackness coated my skin like oil and made breath…what I imagined it would be like to breathe liquid and not die. It sloshed through my nose and windpipe, and I felt ever nearer to drowning.
Three more steps and I still wasn’t through. I stretched out my arms to feel the walls, but there weren’t any. The archway either led into an empty black room, or I hadn’t made it through before the portal vanished.
That meant I was trapped in the walls. With Janan.
Groans and whines pursued me like sylph. There was no telltale heat or strange singing, only the heartbeat and pressure, and what might have been my hair—or someone’s fingernails—brushing my arms.
I ran.
The wailing grew all around, tangible, and Janan whispered right by my ear, “You wanted somewhere to go. Now you have everywhere.”
I pushed my legs harder, away from his voice, but the fingernails scraping my skin never ceased. If I stopped, he’d hurt me worse. He didn’t have to say it.
When I slowed enough to wrestle out my SED, hoping for some kind of illumination, the onyx air only swallowed the light. If anything, the darkness closed in further, though I couldn’t fathom how complete blackness could become even more perfect.
Hours passed. Or longer. It was impossible to measure time, if time even mattered in here, but my hips and legs ached and I had the vague sensation that I should be hungry or thirsty.
And then I was, because I knew I should be. I slowed to grip my stomach. I was starving, though Meuric had said before that I wouldn’t need to eat or drink in here.
“I am hungry, too,” Janan murmured, “and I am sure you are delicious.”
My hiccups fell flat on the liquid air. I wished Sam were here. I wished we didn’t know about Janan. I wished we were sitting at the piano playing a duet, our legs pressed together because neither of us were thinking about music, not really. I wished it all so hard that for a moment I thought I was there, but then a scream cut through the blackness, and I remembered the temple and running and Janan.
“No tears.” Not Janan. Not a real voice, either, but a thought that wasn’t mine. “The Devourer is incorporeal. He has never been able to touch the other one.”
My feet caught on themselves and I stumbled, dropped, and hit the floor. Stabbing pains raced up my palms and knees as I searched the darkness for the non-voice. If it wasn’t me and it wasn’t Janan, perhaps it was one of the weepers.
I struggled to catch my breath, then fumbled through my coat for the bottle of water and drank half of it. The sensation of claws on skin never faded, but the non-voice was right. The feeling was just in my mind, and stopped when I rubbed my palms over my face and neck and hands.
Janan’s words, and the weeper’s—they meant something, but my head was too fuzzy to let me think clearly. The darkness remained overpowering.
Maybe I was blind. No matter how I forced my eyes open wider, I never caught light. I tried my SED again. A white glow pierced the dark, but illuminated only blackness when I held the screen to the floor. And blackness all around.