14: WHAT DEMONS ARE
Inside Vol Karoth’s prison
Just after Jarith’s vision
I narrowed my eyes at Vol Karoth. “It doesn’t do much to prove your point if you’re going to lie about it.”
That was the truth.
For a moment, my mind just … blanked. Stuttered.
What? No.
I didn’t want to draw a conclusion, interpret what it meant. Then my mind did it, anyway, because if Vol Karoth was right and he’d told the truth, then Jarith wasn’t dead. And if Jarith wasn’t dead, how would that even be possible? Was it possible? I’d seen Jarith’s corpse at the temple of Thaena, face locked in frozen horror after he’d been killed by Xaltorath—
After he’d been killed by Xaltorath.
Of course.
Damn it all to Hell, a phrase that was more ironically appropriate than I needed at just that moment.
I don’t need to lie. Vol Karoth sounded amused. Your so-called friends are everything I said, and so much more. Literal demons in several cases. When are you going to learn?
Jarith had been murdered by Xaltorath, but Jarith’s souls hadn’t been devoured by Xaltorath. Instead, the demon had infected him, turned him from a bright, compassionate, and noble man into a creature of darkness, the shadows curling around him, his face a blank mask. Jarith’s treatment at Xaltorath’s hands must have been much less gentle than his sister Janel’s.
Xaltorath had even gloated about it to Janel when they had told her, I made you a brother …
The odds were good Xaltorath had done it as a lark. They’d probably wanted nothing more than just to see the look on Janel’s face when she realized she’d been tricked into devouring her own kin. No reason other than that—petty maliciousness—but then again, that followed, since Xaltorath’s core would always belong to their first lifetime: Suless.
There was no coming back from that. Jarith had been turned into something worse than dead: he was broken, a creature that existed to feed on souls and pain and fear. He was forevermore a monster.
Kalindra was never getting him back. There would be no resurrection. Not by Thaena, not with any Cornerstone. The best—very best—she could possibly hope for was that he might keep himself enough under control not to turn that rage and hunger on her, on Nikali, on everyone he’d ever loved. It was a testament to the man’s will that he’d held out as long as he had. I knew what Xaltorath would have done to him, to try to force him to become something so vile that destroying him would seem a mercy, the revelation of his true identity a tragedy.
Hate flared through me. The grim determination that I would find a way to destroy Xaltorath once and for all.
But it wouldn’t recover my friend.
Hot tears fell down my cheeks as I went to my knees, head bowed.
I’m going to win this, Vol Karoth told me. The cruelest laughter lurked in his voice. But it’s your turn.
It was. I knew it was.
But I had no idea what to show Vol Karoth that wouldn’t prove his case for him. All I could feel was pain.
Kalindra’s reaction
The Lighthouse at Shadrag Gor Also just after Jarith’s memory
Kalindra thought she could hear the world hold its breath when the vision ended. The shocked silence, that profound. Her mind, a blank, numb sea.
When thought returned, it was this: that it never would have worked. Never. All her plans were dust. Thaena hadn’t refused to Return Jarith because she hadn’t approved of Kalindra’s love or even because a demon had consumed his souls. She’d refused because Jarith could never be resurrected. Nothing could bring him back. Not Thaena, not the Cornerstone Grimward. All the sacrifices that she had made, the crimes she’d committed—unnecessary and absurd. She’d been searching for a knife only to find she already held it, the weapon so sharp she’d never noticed it had sliced open every vein.
“The doll man,” Kalindra murmured softly, remembering the words her son had used. How the doll man had scared him.
Her breath froze in her lungs. Her husband was a demon, and her husband had shown himself to their son. There was no point in screaming, although part of her wanted to. There was no point in tears, although she very much wanted them too.
There was no point in any of it, since none of it could bring Jarith back.
Not as a human.
She looked to the side and accidentally met Galen’s eyes. The moment she did, she knew that he was thinking something very similar. He’d been chasing the same thing, after all: Jarith’s resurrection. Then his look shifted into something like pity, and she had to fight not to throw a knife at him.
Kalindra grabbed one of the blankets Thurvishar had crafted off a couch. If she was going to go off into one of the other rooms, at least she wouldn’t be cold.
Except Talea blocked her way. She had a hand on the hilt of her sword.
“Move,” Kalindra said.
“It’s not safe out there,” Talea told her. Her expression was so kind. So sympathetic. Kalindra wanted to stab it.
“Get the fuck out of my way!” Kalindra screamed.
Talea did.
Kalindra’s victory was short-lived, however. Footsteps pounded behind her. She started to turn back, to shout at Talea that she didn’t need a damn escort. But it wasn’t Talea.
It was Xivan.
The woman grabbed Kalindra’s wrist, her other arm around her shoulder, and half carried her, half threw her past one of the other doorways. This wasn’t a sitting room. Kalindra had the briefest flash of stone walls and a cage nestled into a corner. Her attention, though, was on the undead bitch fighting her. Xivan hadn’t pulled her sword. That was a mistake. She twisted her foot around Xivan’s and yanked, sending the other woman crashing to the ground. But Xivan rolled up quickly and tried to move past Kalindra.
Too fucking easy. Kalindra redirected the strike and used Xivan’s momentum to toss her down to the ground. She followed that up immediately with a twist of the arm that should have finished the fight—dislocated Xivan’s arm, put her in indescribable pain. It didn’t. It didn’t even though Kalindra felt the pop of the other woman’s joint breaking free of its socket. Xivan didn’t seem to notice.
Seriously, Kalindra hated fighting dead people.
Xivan yanked down, so Kalindra had to release her and roll or face the possibility of ending up sprawled on top of the other woman. As she stood to her feet, Xivan kicked, using Kalindra’s step back as an opportunity to stand up again herself.
Kalindra had her knives out then. And still Xivan hadn’t drawn her sword.
It made Kalindra pause. It made her think.
Undead were anathema to Thaena, but they were usually created by demonic possession, or more rarely by a sorcerer skilled enough to have devised some form of remote control. Something like Xivan was rarer and far more dangerous.
Kalindra was giving serious consideration to exactly how she could make Xivan’s situation more permanent when she realized Xivan wasn’t closing the gap between them. The woman was just standing on the other side of the room, watching her with an unreadable expression.
Xivan wasn’t her enemy. Not in this place, not facing what was coming for them. They had so much worse to worry about.
This was wasted energy.
Kalindra put her knives away. She cast her gaze around the room, but there was no place to sit except for a three-legged stool tossed into a corner. This was either a storeroom or a jail cell or probably both—it wasn’t meant to be comfortable. “Damn it.”
“We can keep fighting, if you like.” The corner of Xivan’s lips curled into something that couldn’t exactly be called a smile. “It always makes me feel better. I make a shockingly good sparring puppet.”
The anger bubbled up in Kalindra, exited out as a hard, hateful laugh. The horrible thing was that Xivan wasn’t wrong. It did feel good. It felt like soaking in the hot springs on Ynisthana, washing herself with a pumice stone until the grime and the dead skin were scoured.
“I don’t need your pity,” Kalindra snapped.
“That’s good,” Xivan said as she pulled her dislocated arm back into place. She didn’t even wince. “Because I have none, least of all for you.”
Kalindra turned back to face the other woman. “Excuse me?”
“You lost your husband during the Hellmarch? Fine. I lost mine three weeks ago. Shall we compare scars? See who’s bled the most?” Xivan’s sarcasm was thick, black, and bitterly amused.
“I think I’ll win such a contest since you don’t bleed. Three weeks? For a widow, you didn’t waste any time finding a replacement, did you?”
A huff of air escaped Xivan as the words hit. “Talea was never a replacement. Was Jarith a replacement for Teraeth? For Kihrin? Or did you realize that for reasons you couldn’t begin to fathom you’d found yourself lucky enough to find one of the few good, perfect people in this world? That against all expectation they loved you, even though you don’t deserve that love in the slightest.”
“Are we talking about me here?” Kalindra raised an eyebrow.
“Don’t be coy,” Xivan answered. “I know you.”
Kalindra almost demanded her to explain that, to describe what Xivan thought she was seeing. But as she looked into the flat white stare of that dead woman’s eyes, she had the sudden irrational fear that Xivan might not be lying. That Xivan might, indeed, see her. And know exactly what she was.
Know exactly how filthy, exactly how wrong Kalindra was. That one murderer might recognize another. The poor fools back in the other room might think themselves hard, but they, all of them, killed for causes. Because they believed in the righteousness of their actions.1 Even dear Teraeth had always been a shadow champion of justice, killing not out of selfishness or real malice but because he thought he was making the world better at the edge of a knife.
But Kalindra knew what it was like to kill for reasons that couldn’t be defended. And she was suddenly struck with the certainty that Xivan did too.
Kalindra said, “Do you think you have the right to judge me?”
Something around Xivan’s eyes shifted. An infinitesimal softening. “No. I don’t.”
Kalindra broke the stare. The acceptance was somehow worse. She couldn’t stand it anymore. Instead, she put her back against the iron bars, leaned backward until her head hit the cold metal.
Silence stretched out as neither woman spoke.
“You remind me of Jheshikah,” Xivan said.
“I’m sure that would mean something if only I knew who the fuck Jheshikah was.”
“One of my husband’s wives. Thirty-second, I think? Something like that. Anyway, her anger was like the tides. She’d scream, retreat to another room, think of something else that had to be said, come storming back, run away again…” Xivan smiled. “Maybe next time you’re upset, you might want to consider standing your ground.”
“Oh, fuck you.” Kalindra crossed her arms over her chest, aware of just how much the sullen little girl this made her look.
“Isn’t it funny? To think that you and I are probably the oldest ones here,” Xivan said. She didn’t say the next part—and yet you’re acting the most like a child—out loud, but Kalindra heard her fine.
It did nothing at all for her mood to know that Xivan was right. Kalindra was absolutely acting like a child. Jarith’s little sister Eledore would be shouting at her to grow up, and that was saying something.
“Anyway,” Xivan said, “I think you’re missing an important point.”
Kalindra ground her teeth. “And what would that be?”
“None of the visions have been from the point of view of anyone not physically present in the Lighthouse,” Xivan stated.
Kalindra stared at her for a second, not comprehending. Then she remembered. She remembered how part of that last vision had been from Jarith’s point of view. She straightened, even as all the blood in her body tried to pool down by her feet, leaving her dizzy and sick.
“He’s here,” Kalindra said, her pulse roaring staccato around her. Her thoughts were broken panes of glass, slicing her open as she tried to grab at them.
Jarith was here.
The thought wasn’t as comforting as it should have been. Jarith was now a demon, after all, and while apparently Kalindra was “on the list”—that didn’t seem to be true for anyone else. In fact—
Kalindra reexamined her encounter with Xivan. Other than the first initial grab, she’d never tried to attack Kalindra, had she? Had she realized that there was a chance Jarith might come to Kalindra’s rescue? Or had Xivan been counting on the fact that Jarith wouldn’t want to show himself while Kalindra was still around to see him?
“Yeah,” Xivan said. “He is. Somewhere. That’s the other reason no one should go off alone. Whether or not Vol Karoth can reach us may be in doubt, but Jarith certainly can.” She gestured to the door. “If you’re ready, we should go back. They’re waiting on us, and if you have any questions you want to ask about Jarith, well, Senera and her pretty rock are in the other room.”
“Right,” Kalindra murmured. She felt dazed.
They returned.
Thurvishar was talking about demons when they came back. It sounded like she was walking into the middle of a class lecture.
“—came from another world,” Thurvishar said.
“More precisely,” Senera interrupted, “from another universe.” Her gray eyes flicked over to the doorway as Kalindra and Xivan returned.
Thurvishar smiled fondly at the woman, not even seeming to mind the correction. “Yes, just so. But Xaltorath is not from another universe. One could argue he shouldn’t be called a demon, but he behaves enough like one that it’s usually not necessary to make the distinction. Except in times like this.”
Most of Kalindra’s career had been spent dealing with assassinations and talk of prophecies, occasionally attempts to counter Relos Var, even her share of hunting demons in the Afterlife, but very little on Xaltorath. She was starting to feel like her education might have been neglected.
Sheloran handed Kalindra a handkerchief. Kalindra stared at it for a moment and then realized it was for her tears. Which meant she’d been crying. She angrily wiped her eyes and sat down across from Thurvishar.
“Times like my husband being turned into a demon?” Kalindra asked.
“Turned into a demon by Xaltorath,” Thurvishar said. “When a demon infects someone—”
“I know how this works,” Kalindra snapped.
“How nice for you. Not all of us do,” Galen said.
Thurvishar cleared his throat. “Demons are like wasps.”
No one said a word.
Senera sighed. “I know what you mean,” she said. “They don’t.”
Thurvishar blushed. “Just as a wasp lays eggs in a host, only to have those eggs hatch and eat their way out, a demon will ‘infect’ a host soul. There’s still a great deal of debate as to whether the host is transformed, becoming a demon, or is eaten to provide nourishment to a larval form, which develops into a demon.”
Kalindra felt her stomach churn. If Thurvishar had meant for this to be comforting, he was truly an idiot. “It’s both,” she said. When people looked at her, Kalindra shook her head. “The lower souls are eaten, but the upper souls are not. Thaena—” She stopped and inhaled deeply. “Thaena always said that when she captured a demon, she made a point of untangling all the combined souls in order to put them back into the river of reincarnation.”
“Interesting,” Senera said.
“In either case,” Thurvishar said, “the new demon does seem to be a kind of ‘offspring’—they inherit qualities from their ‘parent.’”
Senera sighed. “Which is Thurvishar’s way of saying we have no idea what Jarith can do or even how he’ll behave. Certainly that vision implies he’s barely holding on to the tattered shreds of his humanity.”
Kalindra made a low keening sound.
“I’m sorry, Kalindra,” Thurvishar said. “Jarith was a good man.”
“If you’ll remember, you once called him a fool,” Senera pointed out.
“Challenging me to a duel was foolish,” Thurvishar said mildly. “He was still a good man.”
The banter would have been adorable in other situations. Here, now, it made Kalindra want to throw things at them both. Sharp, poisonous things. Kalindra felt her heart clench, painful and breath-stealing. She felt flayed.
She breathed deeply and tried to wrestle her despair under control.
“Do you people mind?” Kalindra managed, somehow, not to shout. “I don’t give a damn what your assessment is of my husband’s intelligence or character. I just want him back.”
“Why would Vol Karoth show us that?” Sheloran asked. “It’s upsetting, yes, but it also proved that all hope isn’t lost. Jarith is recoverable. Janel, after all, stands as proof that someone with untethered souls can still survive.”
Talon laughed. “You think Vol Karoth believed for a second we’d give a demon a pass? No, no. He was trying to foment unrest. Have us chasing every shadow thinking it had to be Jarith. Ideally, fan this into a situation where we stop trusting each other. Easy to do with me, of course; I’m inherently untrustworthy. But the rest of you? You all could be friends. Or are friends. Maybe you lot can band together and prove that friendship really is all we need to defeat all the evils in the world. Wouldn’t that be a hilarious joke?”
“Shut up, Talon,” Senera said. “I like you better when you’re pretending to be Kihrin.”
“She has a point, though,” Thurvishar said.
Everyone stopped.
Talon turned to Thurvishar and blinked several times, slowly. “I do? What point? Please tell me. I promise I won’t do it again.”
“Vol Karoth is trying to break Kihrin, and to do that, he needs to prove Kihrin’s opinions wrong. He has to prove friendship is a lie. Compassion is weakness. Love is delusion. Being a good person won’t save you from becoming a demon, metaphoric or otherwise. So yes, whatever visions we are sending him need to pick apart those arguments.” Thurvishar gave Galen a studied look. “Do you think your story might qualify?”
Galen winced. “You have met my family, yes?”
Thurvishar glanced at Sheloran. “As a matter of fact, I have. There are some notable bright points in all that darkness.”
Sheloran smiled. “Was that a compliment?”
“It might have been,” Thurvishar admitted. “It’s too early to say for sure.”
“Some of us,” Xivan said, “shouldn’t be part of that sort of ‘storytelling.’ We wouldn’t help Kihrin’s case.”
Talea threw the woman a worried look. “Oh, I don’t think it’s that bad—” But she let the rest of her protest slide away in response to the expression on Xivan’s face. Talea gave one quick, guilty glance at Sheloran and didn’t say another word.
“Talon, take over for me. You know what to do,” Thurvishar said.
“Says who?” Talon stood up from her chair. “Wait. What are you going to do?”
Thurvishar turned to her. “You watched what I did with Janel. You’re a mimic. Mimics are telepaths. You’re telling me you can’t reproduce that?”
Talon’s expression took on a sullen, pouting look. “The way my powers work is passive. I read. I don’t send. It’s completely—” She glanced at Thurvishar’s expression and paused, swallowing. “Yes, fine. I can do it too. But the better question is, why can’t you?”
“Because I’m going to help Janel track down Teraeth and Kihrin.” He moved over to the couches where both of them lay. Then he frowned and glanced over at the fireplace. “It really is cold in here. We should get some blankets out of storage and move to the bedrooms upstairs.”
Senera stood up as well. “Thurvishar! You said if you sent yourself into Vol Karoth’s mind, you didn’t know if you could come back. How has that changed?”
“It hasn’t,” Thurvishar replied calmly. “I’m taking a calculated risk.”
Senera’s complexion reddened. She pointed a furious finger at Thurvishar. “No. Stop learning terrible habits from Kihrin. We can’t afford to lose you!”
“Don’t you mean you can’t afford to lose him?” Talon said, grinning wickedly.
Kalindra couldn’t help it: she laughed. And then immediately shut up as the blazing look of fury in Senera’s eyes suggested it was probably a bad idea to bait wizards.
Thurvishar, however, just smiled and moved over to Senera. For a second, it looked like he was going to take her hand, but he never touched the woman. He just stared at her with uncomfortable, embarrassing intensity.
“I’ll be fine,” he promised her. “I’m not planning on dying today.”
Before Senera could respond, Qown interrupted, “I d-don’t think we should move people upstairs, though. It’s difficult enough to keep everyone warm. We’d have to keep watch on them. I’m not sure how safe that would be.” He fidgeted, all but biting his nails.
“Whatever you think is best. I trust you.” Thurvishar was still looking at Senera, so it wasn’t completely clear who he was addressing.
“Trust me?” Qown blinked.
Only then did Thurvishar look over. He took in the healer, then glanced down at Janel’s unconscious body. “With this? Yes.” Thurvishar turned away from the others and began to gesture. It wasn’t clear what he was doing at first, then sections of the stone wall began to visibly distort and twist. Within a matter of minutes he’d formed a set of stone platforms—bunk beds—several layers deep. It would give them somewhere to transfer the bodies without being forced to let Teraeth, Thurvishar, or Janel out of the group’s sight.
“Thurvishar, I won’t let you do this.”
He gazed at the pale woman fondly. “And how exactly were you planning to stop me?”
Senera just stared.
Sheloran made a motion to the door. “Do we need to give you two some space? We could just wait next door while you … figure this out.”
Senera turned red and didn’t respond.
With that, Thurvishar sat down on the lowest bed, winked at Senera, and closed his eyes.
No one said anything.
Mocking laughter drifted down the hallway. No one had to ask where it was likely coming from. Kalindra’s heart seized.
“Oh … I think this might have been a mistake,” Talea said.
“Really? You think?” Senera was all but snarling. “Fine. Who wants to be first?”
Silence.
“Someone had better volunteer or I’ll let Talon choose,” Senera snapped.
“What about you?” Kalindra suggested, right back to Senera. Kalindra had no particular desire to continue with her own experiences. As Xivan had said, some stories wouldn’t be helpful.
Sadly, Kalindra had the terrible suspicion that her story would be used whether she wanted it or not—just by Vol Karoth, rather than Kihrin.
“We can’t use Senera,” Talon said. “We need hopeful memories.”
Senera glared at the mimic. “What Talon means is that after we left the Korthaen Blight we came straight here to the Lighthouse and then to Devors so I could bring you lot here. Which means there’s nothing to tell.”
“I’ll go,” Galen said. “It’s fine.”
“Are you sure, sweeting?” Talon’s voice was the definition of solicitous concern.
Galen stared at her for a long minute, eyes flat. “Yes.”
Talon smiled. The world changed.