11: A WINDOW INTO NIGHT

Kalindra’s reaction

The Lighthouse at Shadrag Gor

The sensation of returning to the present, returning to the Lighthouse, disoriented Kalindra. No one said a word.

Kalindra felt nothing but dread. She’d hardly needed to see her own memories paraded around for everyone else to know that none of their secrets were safe. That didn’t stop the reality from feeling like a violation. She was a woman who’d always cherished the power of mystery, who kept her past and her sins hidden from everyone around her. If Jarith hadn’t known about her background with the Black Brotherhood, neither Teraeth nor Kihrin had known about her history before joining it.

Jarith was dead. Kihrin was dead. And Teraeth was …

People weren’t even looking at her, turning their heads away as if to pretend they weren’t seeing her so … revealed. She couldn’t stand it.

Kalindra ran from the room. She ignored Xivan yelling behind her.

As soon as she made it out into the main hallway, she knew she’d made an error in judgment. She wasn’t dressed warmly—an absurd idea in the Capital, or indeed in Devors, rain or not. The hallway was so cold she felt like she’d been dunked in ice water and left outside in the Yoran winter. She’d have been far better off putting up with the pitying looks of those hypocrites while staying by the fire.

She stared down the hallway at the small tunnel connecting the manor with the Lighthouse. It wasn’t difficult to imagine movement. A dark shadow shifting at the edge of her vision …

The hallway visibly dimmed.

Kalindra darted through a doorway leading off from the hall. The room was warmer but still cold enough to make her breath frost. It was a sitting room, with couches arranged facing each other before a large window looking out over a landscape smeared into streaks of green and brown by thick, seeded glass. The room was austere and minimalist. Mostly stone, with a few pieces of cloth or wood to provide what might be laughably considered “comfort”—a cushion here, a table there.

Kalindra sat down on a couch and laced her fingers together in her lap.

Then Galen said, “How was that supposed to work, anyway? Were you feeding information back to the rest of your little cult, or did they just want you in position for when the order finally came down to assassinate the high general?”

Kalindra turned around.

Galen leaned against the stone wall in the back, his arms crossed over his chest. He must have been there when she’d entered, brooding in the darkness. The room wasn’t well lit; she hadn’t seen him.

“Galen, I…” Running from a room again would look ridiculous, but she was sorely tempted.

He didn’t respond. He just glared at her and waited.

“Both,” she finally said. “Please believe me, Galen, my target was never Jarith.”

That did nothing to console the man. “Would Thaena have told you if it was?”

Kalindra felt something in her stomach twist. She couldn’t meet Galen’s eyes.

No. Thaena wouldn’t have.

“I can’t believe—” Galen started to scold.

Oh good. The flare of pure anger she felt was a blessed relief. “No. Just stop. You think I didn’t love Jarith? Was anything in your memories that were dragged out and shown to that crowd a lie? Because mine were all true.”

“Sure,” Galen said. “You loved him. But not enough to tell him the truth. You didn’t tell him the truth, did you?”

Kalindra stared off at the window. It was raining outside. “Tell him the truth? No. They frown on that in assassin school.” She choked down her bitter anger. It was hardly the worst of her secrets, and she had no reason to think the forces determined to make her share like this were going to stop.

“Did he even have a choice, or did you use some kind of—”

Kalindra was done with apologizing for this. “I’d drown myself in filth before I’d use a spell to make someone fall in love with me. I understand why you were Jarith’s friend. But did he ever tell you why he was yours?”

Galen narrowed his eyes. “What are you talking about?”

“Did he ever tell you why he approached you, after he came back from Stonegate Pass? Why we started inviting you and Sheloran over for dinner every week and always made such an effort to include you in our lives? It’s not like he had to. And frankly, his father would have been much happier if he hadn’t. Or perhaps you hadn’t noticed just how done Qoran was your family?”

Doubt crept into the man’s blue eyes. Suspicion. “He’s my cousin,” Galen offered, but the tremor in his voice suggested he knew what a poor excuse that was.

Kalindra didn’t bother making her laughter light and friendly. “No, Darzin’s his cousin. The cousin he hated. And you are that hated cousin’s son. So why would he try to befriend you? Certainly not some scheme to get in Darzin’s good graces. Try again.”

Galen swallowed. “Fine. Why did he?”

“At first? Because I asked him to. I suggested that maybe you needed more friends in your life. People who weren’t just around because you were a good political connection. Don’t act like I never cared just because I had a master you didn’t know about.”

Galen said, “And I suppose the fact that this let you do double duty and get close to House D’Mon is just—”

“Get over yourself,” Kalindra snapped. “I did it because for the six months I was fucking your brother Kihrin, he never stopped talking about how he was going to storm the Blue Palace to get you back. Which I knew would never happen, so the least I could do was try to see to it that your life wasn’t completely miserable. You’re welcome.”

An emotion she couldn’t identify crossed Galen’s face, tucked out of sight as soon as it appeared. He scowled, started to respond, and then swallowed that too.

“Kalindra? Galen?” Thurvishar called from the hallway. They had exactly that much warning before the wizard, with uncanny luck, ducked into the sitting room. He smiled at them, but as his gaze slid past them toward the window, his expression froze.

Kalindra looked back at the window again and startled, standing upright and backing away.

The rain had turned to blood.

“There is no way that is good,” Galen said. He too was retreating to the door.

“Oh, it’s much worse than you know,” Thurvishar said.

“What do you mean?” Kalindra asked.

“The Lighthouse at Shadrag Gor doesn’t have windows.”

Kalindra felt her skin prickle.

All three of them stared at the rebelliously existing window. What would happen if she opened it, if she stepped through? Where would it go? Then she remembered the green land beyond she’d seen before it started raining and felt a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature.

Because Shadrag Gor was on an island in the far northeastern section of Yor. They should have been surrounded by storm-tossed seas, not land.

“Are you sure—?” She didn’t finish the sentence as she saw the look on Thurvishar’s face. He was sure.

“You’re trembling,” Galen told her.

“It’s cold,” she responded. Which was true and not at all why she was shaking. Kalindra knew better than to think he accepted that explanation.

“Why don’t we go back?” Thurvishar suggested. “It’ll be safer.”

“Safer?” Kalindra stared at him. “Teraeth’s corpse suggests otherwise.”

Thurvishar didn’t seem concerned. In fact, he gave her a small smile. “That’s why I came to find you,” he said. “Teraeth’s alive.”

---

Later, after they’d returned and Kalindra sat down by the fireplace, she turned to Thurvishar and said, “Your definition of ‘alive’ needs some work.”

Teraeth still looked dead.

“His souls are untethered,” Janel said. She handed Kalindra a teacup peace offering, holding it in both hands for a few seconds until steam rose from it. “It’s just that unlike me, his souls aren’t slipping into the Afterlife.” She glanced over at Senera. “Tell them the rest of it.”

The white-skinned witch, Senera, had dragged over a table from the kitchen and was using it as a workstation. She had a small inkstone sitting next to an open journal, as well as a fine camel-hair brush.

“There’s a great deal I can’t determine,” she said, tapping on the inkstone with the sharpened end of the brush, “because Vol Karoth is like Urthaenriel—a null space. But even that can be informative, depending on which questions the Name of All Things refuses to answer.”

Kalindra’s focus snapped back to the rock, apparently not an inkstone at all. Right.¹ She remembered the look on Khaemezra’s face when Teraeth had told her that Relos Var had the Cornerstone that would let him answer any question. Or almost any question, apparently.

She forced herself to drink her tea while it was still hot.

Thurvishar sat down on the arm of a couch. “We know Vol Karoth has a physical form as well as a psychic form. I suspect, although can’t prove”—he inclined his head toward Senera—“that this psychic form is more like a psychic space, something that can exist and be visited even while Vol Karoth is imprisoned.”

Kalindra forced herself back to the conversation. “I’m not following?”

“Five hundred years ago,” Janel said, “Elana didn’t break Vol Karoth’s prison, but she was still able to reach Vol Karoth’s souls and affect them. Therefore, his souls must not be imprisoned the way we think they are.”

More than a few faces around the room looked confused, but they seemed content not to interrupt, at least for the moment.

Kalindra was not one of those people. “You’re saying if Vol Karoth was truly imprisoned and unreachable, Elana shouldn’t have been able to free S’arric so he could be reincarnated as Kihrin at all.”

Janel looked uncomfortable. “He was imprisoned. But prisons are seldom impenetrable. Vol Karoth couldn’t escape, but it’s possible to ‘visit,’ if you will.”

Thurvishar waved a hand as if this was old news, which it probably was—for him. “When Senera merged Shadrag Gor and Vol Karoth’s prison, she also merged this psychic space. That’s where both Kihrin and Vol Karoth are right now.”

“I hate to disagree, but I do believe Vol Karoth is just down the hall,” Sheloran said. Her voice was carefree, but her knuckles clenching her fan were white.

“His physical body is just down the hall,” Thurvishar agreed. “His souls are on a mental layer that’s parallel to our own. We can’t see this psychic space. It’s possible that they can’t see us, but communication can occur between the two layers.”

“Communication? What kind of communication?” Kalindra asked.

“Forcibly sharing memories, for one,” Talea said.

“Teraeth’s souls have been taken into this psychic space, but he’s not dead,” Thurvishar said.

“At least not yet,” Kalindra added.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Xivan slammed her arm down on the couch. “Would you stop that?”

Kalindra ignored her. She looked over to the couch where they’d laid his body. Janel sat down sat next to Teraeth’s body. She held Teraeth’s hand and gazed at him with an expression Kalindra could only describe as wretched.

Kalindra scowled. So the woman cared about Teraeth too. Fine.

Janel looked over then. “Much as it pains me to say it, Kalindra’s not wrong. We’re operating under a time limit. Remove souls from the body for long enough, and eventually, the body receives the message ‘You should be dead’ and makes it true. If we can’t get his souls back from Vol Karoth’s psychic space…”

“He’ll dehydrate or starve to death.” Qown was holding his own teacup so tightly he was in serious danger of shattering it. “But … wait. Thurvishar, could you use Wildheart to keep his body alive?”

“Wildheart?” Kalindra scowled. “How many Cornerstones do you people have?”

Thurvishar, Senera, and Qown all raised three fingers.

“Oh, fuck me,” Kalindra muttered.

“Even if he does, Qown, it doesn’t matter,” Senera said, “because death is inevitable if you stay away from your own body for too long. If we can’t figure out a way to pull Teraeth’s souls back from this other mental plane, he’ll truly die. And being an angel of Thaena is no help when Thaena herself is…” She made a vague motion.

“Dead,” Kalindra snapped. “Just say dead.” She tried not to feel like the word was a dagger into her heart. It still didn’t feel real, but the silence on the other end of her connection to Thaena whispered the truth.

“Gods,” Galen murmured.

Thurvishar said, “Also I think … I think I can transport myself into that space. I can sense the edges of it. I’m reasonably sure it would work.”

“Well, great! Do that, grab Kihrin—” Galen said.

“But I’m not certain I’ll be able to come back,” Thurvishar mused.

“Don’t do that, then,” Senera said.

“But I do think we could do what Kihrin and Vol Karoth are doing,” Thurvishar continued.

“What? What do you mean?” said several voices at once.

Janel waited until the wall of questions died down and then turned to Thurvishar again. “Explain, please?”

Thurvishar pondered his answer before stating, “If we assume that Kihrin and Vol Karoth are somehow responsible for these visions, why are we seeing them? My theory is that it’s unintentional. This is more like opening a door and pouring a lake through. It doesn’t matter who’s on the other side. Everyone is getting drenched. But the advantage to that is that we don’t need to aim. We don’t need to know exactly who is on the other side or overcome their defenses. We too could open a door and pour memories through.”

“Yes, but whose memories?” Sheloran said. “It’s quite rude to point out the flaw in your theory, but wouldn’t that require the very targeting you say isn’t happening?”

“It’s not a perfect metaphor. I don’t as yet even understand why they’re choosing these particular memories…”

Talon guffawed. “Oh, come on. That’s obvious. Vol Karoth and Kihrin are arguing with each other.”

Everyone stared at the mimic. Even Senera rolled her eyes. “Talon, you can’t know that. We haven’t established why someone’s targeting us—”

“This isn’t about us,” Talon said. “And trust me, if there’s one thing I know how to recognize, it’s when two different personalities in the same mind are having a fight.” The mimic pointed at “his” temples for emphasis.

“Would you please stop looking like him?” Janel’s voice was raw.

Talon studied Janel for a long beat. Kalindra could hardly blame Janel for finding it unnerving. She found Talon’s resemblance to Kihrin unsettling, and she hadn’t seen him in years.

“Anything for you, Janel,” Talon told her, sounding like she meant it. Her shape morphed into a Quuros woman with wheat-gold skin who looked nothing like the person who, ultimately, was the reason everyone was in this mess.²

Thurvishar cleared his throat and continued, “What I mean is that we could do the same, but projected back into the psychic space. Our own shout. It would at least let Kihrin know we’re here.”

“Assuming he doesn’t already,” Senera said.

“Do we want to catch Vol Karoth’s attention?” Qown asked.

“He already knows we’re here,” Talea pointed out.

Thurvishar said, “This is an experiment. We need to find out what we can do, how possible communication even is.”

“If you’re looking for volunteers to be the next person to reveal their memories,” Kalindra said, “count me out.”

“I think Qown should go next,” Galen said.

Qown twitched in his seat, but he neither responded nor turned around to look at Galen.

There was a pause as everyone waited for someone else to speak.

“I’m serious,” Galen repeated. “I think Qown should be next.”

Qown looked over that time. “Why? What good would it possibly—?” The priest exhaled sharply. “You know what, fine. Yes. I’ll be next.” He moved from his seat at the table and over to one of the couches next to Thurvishar. He looked at the wizard expectantly. “I’m next.”

Thurvishar raised an eyebrow. “You’re sure?”

“Why not? At least this way, people won’t have to ask whether or not I was lying.” He glared at Galen.

Kalindra laughed under her breath. Someone needed to sit the boy down and explain that the cost of being a spy was indeed that those one betrayed would never trust them again. And would be completely justified to feel that way. There was no sense being offended when this was the prize his metal had purchased. How had he thought that was going to work out?

She thought of her own words with Galen a short time earlier and stopped smiling. So maybe it still hurt when you made the mistake of caring.

Always, always a mistake to care.

Thurvishar crouched down on his haunches before Qown. “I want you to concentrate on a memory. Keep it clear in your mind.”

“Any memory?” Qown’s voice was tremulous.

“It’s up to you,” Thurvishar said.

Qown stared at him with clear dread and guilt in his expression. He swallowed and nodded at Thurvishar. “Yes, I’m ready.”

“This shouldn’t hurt,” Thurvishar said, “but I can’t be entirely certain what’s going to happen, so please be prepared.” He locked eyes with the healer.

The world changed.