74: WHO THEY USED TO BE
(Teraeth’s story)
When Teraeth followed Janel into the ant house, he found her standing in the middle of the room, looking at nothing. They owned nothing to unpack. They had nothing with them but the clothes they’d been wearing when Rol’amar struck. Teraeth would, in fact, have to arrange for the Brotherhood to provide all such sundry supplies for them, from clothing to soap. Janel didn’t say a word.
This didn’t bode well.
“I didn’t ask Khaeriel to put us in the same room,” he protested.
She frowned, looking surprised as she turned to face him. “I never suggested you had.”
“Then why are you looking at me like I murdered your favorite horse.”
Janel gave him an even look. “You can’t guess why I’m not in a fantastic mood? Hint: it’s not because of you.”
He sighed and sat down on the bed. “Kihrin.”
“Kihrin,” she agreed. “The others seem content to pretend nothing happened back there, that none of us saw what we all saw.”
“Maybe they didn’t know what it means.” He exhaled slowly. “In point of fact, I don’t know what it means.”
Janel seemed taut and drawn, every muscle tensed. “This is my fault.”
“I doubt that’s true,” Teraeth said.
She made a scoffing noise and rolled her eyes. “Why can’t you simply take me at my word for once?”
“Veils, Janel. We don’t have time for self-pity—”
She moved damn fast when she meant to. She was suddenly only a few inches from him, leaning over with her face next to his. “No, damn it. Listen to me. This. Is. My. Fault. I don’t mean in a ‘whoops, I tripped and broke my favorite crystal glass’ kind of way. I mean I’m responsible for this. Elana Kandor didn’t free S’arric’s soul the way everyone assumes. That’s why this is happening.” Her eyes were hot and wet, on the verge of murderous, angry tears.
It would have been easy to tell her she was wrong. Teraeth forced himself not to. “Would you mind explaining what you mean, then?”
“I’m starting to remember my past lives.” She made a face.
He swallowed an angry knot. “I suspected that was happening from the way our relationship has taken such a delightful turn for the worse in the past month.”
She ignored that. “I’m starting to remember what I did. I didn’t free S’arric. If I had, that would’ve meant he and Vol Karoth were separate entities, but they aren’t. It’s more like—” She straightened, turned away from him and then back as she struggled to find the words. “It’s like Vol Karoth was the rot eating away at a tree, the cancer taking it over. So I cut away the healthy parts of the tree—branches and leaves—transplanting them so they could put down new roots and grow into another separate tree. Kihrin isn’t S’arric. Kihrin is more akin to a cutting taken from S’arric. But the first tree still exists. I couldn’t destroy it.”
“Wait.” Teraeth shook his head. “You’re saying that Kihrin’s souls are just … pieces? Half of what they should be?”
She made an angry, frustrated hand flip. “S’arric’s soul is. Not Kihrin’s. And less than half. What was left of his soul barely qualified at all. Mostly upper soul, a few tattered wisps of lower soul.”
“No. I’m sorry, Janel, but Kihrin’s been gaeshed. You can’t gaesh a broken soul. That’s why you can’t gaesh someone who was already gaeshed.”
She rolled her eyes. “Listen to me. The transplanted cutting grew into a new tree, Teraeth. It took about five hundred years, but the missing sections healed. Vol Karoth’s souls are damaged and incomplete. Kihrin’s are not. And Elana did something. Strengthened Kihrin’s souls somehow so he could survive the trauma of what she—what I—did to him. I did the same thing to his soul that I did to yours.”
That last statement caught him completely off guard. “What? That can’t be right. Elana didn’t even know any magic. She shouldn’t have been able to—” He paused.
She shouldn’t have been able to free S’arric the way she had. Teraeth had heard that story so many times, he’d never questioned it, not even after he remembered being Atrin Kandor. He’d never questioned how Elana had done it. Deep down, he’d assumed Valathea had somehow been involved or Tya had been responsible. He hadn’t believed Elana had done it alone.
But if Elana had—if the Elana he had known, who most certainly had not been a wizard—had performed a magical feat of that magnitude without the aid of goddess or wizard, there was only one way it was possible. Only one way he could think of.
“Elana was remembering a past life too. That’s how she knew how to do this.”
She closed her eyes. “Yes.”
“A past life where you knew S’arric.” He sat down on the faux bed. Of course. It made so much sense. It certainly explained—
She whispered, “Yes.”
Being around Kihrin and Janel was like watching two lodestones draw to each other. The pull was irresistible and immediate. And of course, the thing about magnets was they only worked in pairs. Trying to force the issue with three lodestones just made a mess.
He’d never stood a chance, had he?
“The more I remember, the more I hate being able to remember,” Janel said. “It feels like another person taking over my mind. Someone else’s thoughts intruding on my own. I’m not … those people anymore. You don’t know how—”
“I don’t know how … what?”
She put a hand against the silken wall, turned away from him. She had tears running down her cheeks she didn’t want him to see. “You don’t know how I envy you and Kihrin.”
He could only stare. Of all the things he’d thought she’d confess, he’d never once imagined those words. “What? Why would you envy us? That’s ridiculous!”
Janel wiped her eyes as she turned back toward him angrily. “Is it? What you have between you is real. That friendship, that love, is real. The two of you earned it together. You don’t have to question if you’re feeling it because it’s genuine or because some phantasm from another life is intruding on your own. Whereas the love I feel for Kihrin, the love I feel for you, will always be tainted by the love my other lives felt for S’arric and Atrin. You love me because of guilt, and he loves me because S’arric loved C’indrol, but I haven’t earned either emotion.”
He had no idea what to say. Teraeth could only sit there, shocked to his core, quite unable to comprehend.
But then part of what Janel said struck home like sword blows. “What? The love your other life felt for Atrin? Elana didn’t love Atrin.”
Janel looked at him oddly. “You don’t think she did? Why would I—Elana—have strengthened Atrin’s souls otherwise? I’m the reason you’re remembering your past life too, you know, but I have to say if I could go back in time, I’d kick Elana’s ass for doing it.”
“If that’s true, then I don’t know what your motive was, but it wasn’t love. Not after what Atrin did to her.”
Janel stared at him and scoffed under her breath. “After what Atrin did to her. Do you understand what Atrin did?”
He bit back on the impulse to snap at her. “I was there, so I’d think so, yes. Elana didn’t marry Atrin willingly.”
“Are you so sure?”
He blinked. “I bought you. I didn’t ask your permission first. I’d barely even spoken to you before our wedding night, and we didn’t do a lot of talking then either, as I recall.”
“So? Do you think it would’ve been different with another husband? Just because Atrin Kandor’s motives were suspect doesn’t mean Elana was automatically his victim. Because surely Elana was miserable being swept away from her horrible, abusive family by the emperor of Quur. The peasant girl whisked away by the handsome king, like something out of a god-king tale.” She raised an eyebrow. “Oh no. Such cruelty. How dare you.”
Teraeth stood up, mostly because what she was saying so unnerved him that he felt like he might need to be near an exit. “Kandor was a monster.”
She regarded him coolly. “Kandor freed Jorat from Khorsal. He did so in a way that allowed the native Joratese to maintain their culture, dignity, and identity. He may not have been a good ruler, but he was undeniably a great one. And if he hadn’t married Elana, she wouldn’t have had the authority to negotiate with the Dry Mothers, she wouldn’t have been in a position to free S’arric, and I doubt either Kihrin or I would be here now.” Janel paused. “Well, Janel and Kihrin might exist, but their bodies would house a different pair of souls.”
Teraeth slowly shook his head, searching for some flaw in her reasoning, her logic. “But what he did to the vané…”
“Was a mistake. You did make them, you know.”
“That was a pretty big mistake.”
“You ruled a pretty big country, didn’t you? I’m not saying you were perfect. You were arrogant, conceited, insufferable”—she rolled her eyes up to the ceiling and laughed—“also very, very good in bed.”
“That last part hasn’t changed.”
She studied him. “Don’t kid yourself, Teraeth. None of it’s changed. You’ve gone from professional mass murder to custom one-off jobs. It’s just a question of scale.”
Teraeth’s mouth twisted. “Now you’re mocking me.”
“Kihrin’s not here. Someone has to pick up the slack.” She drew in a deep breath. “I’m … sorry. I shouldn’t have said any of that.”
Teraeth wasn’t about to disagree. “I refuse to be Atrin Kandor. I don’t want to be anything like him. He nearly doomed the whole world. If he hadn’t invaded the Kirpis, because … I don’t know. Because I wanted my soldiers to have better armor? Terindel might have done the right thing, but the fucking vané king was so incensed at me—at my mere involvement with the Ritual of Night—that he refused to cooperate.”1
A strange look crossed Janel’s face. “Who told you that?”
“My mother! And she was there. I just … I just want to be my own person. I don’t want to constantly keep defining myself by what Kandor did or didn’t do! By his powers, by my shitty judgment—”
“So you do understand.”
Teraeth stopped. He rubbed his hand across his face as he stared at her. “I suppose I do,” he finally said. “I suppose I do at that.”
The room fell into silence. He didn’t know what to say to her, and the feeling seemed mutual. Two magnets, after all, but too alike to pull together. The harder he pushed, the more resistance he felt.
Teraeth pointed toward the door. “I should go find out what Khaeriel wants.”
She nodded without speaking and watched as he left.
Teraeth found Khaeriel in her room. The woman had wasted little time decorating, so it no longer resembled a hollowed-out mass of silk. Delicate floral tapestries and watered fabrics covered the walls, making it seem like a luxurious tent. Teraeth wasn’t sure if she’d used illusions or had literally transformed the silken material. Perhaps it didn’t matter.
She sat on a chair, hands in her lap, staring at a wall.
Teraeth cleared his throat. “You wished to speak with me?”
The deposed queen glanced over. “Sit down, Teraeth.”
He did, glad she’d created more than one chair.
“We have two weeks to secure a two-thirds majority of Founders who support our case. If we fail…” Her mouth twitched. “Well.”
“If we fail, the parliament’s amnesty is over, and we’ll all be arrested.”
“Exactly,” Khaeriel agreed. “Although I doubt you would come to any permanent harm.” She didn’t clarify the perfectly obvious: that she would come to a great deal of harm.
But then, she was going to die no matter how this played out.
Teraeth leaned back in the chair and examined his knuckles. “I admit I’m curious about your enthusiasm to see this done, given what will happen to you when you perform the ritual.”
She lifted her chin. “I didn’t realize you knew about that.”
“As it happens, I was there the last time it was performed. I saw a whole room full of very nice dreth elders die spectacularly.”
She frowned at him, because she knew he wasn’t that old.
“I’m not lying to you,” Teraeth said. “I’m remembering a past life. Your son isn’t the only one the gods reincarnated.”
Khaeriel tapped her fingers against the arm of the chair. “How close are you to my son?”
Teraeth wished he understood her motives. It would make this so much easier. He had a terrible suspicion she was planning something. That she’d thought of some clever scheme to escape her current predicament. He’d tell her the truth: that he was desperately, ridiculously in love with her son and had been since before he was born.
“We’re friends,” Teraeth answered.
An amused expression stole over her features. “A good enough ‘friend’ to consent to an arranged marriage with him?”
Teraeth blinked.
She smirked. “Would that be so terrible? You clearly like him. I suspect he likes you. And since you are Terindel’s only living child, a match between the two of you would result in reuniting the vané royal lines. That would be a reassuring idea to the Founders who might otherwise hesitate to overturn the Law of Daynos for fear of returning to the days that led to civil war. A political marriage between the two of you seems an obvious solution to a great many problems.”
Teraeth felt his throat go dry. That “solution” had never occurred to him, in large part because his father was, well, Doc, which made the likelihood of him ever inheriting a title something less than zero. And as much as he’d be the most extraordinary liar to claim he had no interest in marrying Kihrin …
But he had to say something. “A same-sex marriage is hardly a scandal to our people, I know. You and Miyane being a prime example. And yet—”
Khaeriel’s expression turned disdainful. “Go on.”
“My point is there’s usually an expectation of progeny—” Teraeth paused, then exhaled, and again felt a fool. Damn it. “You know about voramer.”
“Young man,” she told him, “if this business with the Stone of Shackles had never occurred, you would be my uncle. And your older sister, my mother, never hid her nature. Her marriage to my father was conditional on the magical guarantee neither myself nor my brother would inherit her voramer qualities. So yes, I am well aware this would only be a same-sex marriage in the short term.”
Teraeth kept his face blank. He had no intention of allowing the voramer transition to happen to him. He had nothing against the idea of being female; but he had nothing against the idea of staying male either. He enjoyed being a man. Why would he change that? If they wanted an heir that badly, they could damn well use the Well of Spirals to make one.
She must have suspected what he was feeling. “I know this must be difficult for you.”
“With all respect, Your Majesty, you don’t know me.”
Khaeriel inclined her head. “As you say. But I see no reason for you to deny yourself what you already want. In the meantime, we have two weeks and a lot of people to convince to do the right thing. I assume I can count on your cooperation in persuading them?”
Meaning, Teraeth knew, his cooperation in making sure the right people went to his mother’s realm early.
He bowed. “Of course, Your Majesty. I live to serve.”