Last chance to change my mind: I can still attempt to back out now though my shaved head will raise suspicions difficult to wriggle out of. This deep beneath the ground, at the very roots of the Place of Fennar, the ground is moist, the slimy grit treacherous as I halt on the last step. By now I should have been used to the stench, but I swallow back bile, grateful I’ve not eaten. There is nothing to bring up, despite my stomach’s contortions suggesting otherwise. The darkness here by the cells is so complete I can feel it sliding down my throat. Starbursts of colour bloom before me as my eyes struggle to adjust to the light that simply is not there.
Apart from the steady drip of moisture and my own ragged breathing, I can’t hear a thing. My toes curl around the edge of the step of their own volition and the sudden proliferation of doubt urges me to retrace my route and return to my pallet where I can wait until dawn to let the inevitable take its course.
“Ailas?” My voice cracks on the second syllable.
Something stirs at the other end of the row, perhaps a restless thrashing of limbs.
Go back, there is still time.
I take that fateful step, and it’s the beginning of the fall.
I crouch, feel in the dark until I encounter a wrist flung out between the bars. Clammy fingers twitch around my own.
“Unia...you...came.”
Tears slash down my cheeks, and my heart constricts. “I’m so sorry.”
For everything.
“I knew...you’d...come.”
“I brought you a philtre,” I say. “Do you think you can sit up and drink?”
The vile concoction will lend him false strength for a few hours, and hopefully enough for me to get him walking out of here.
I rise so I can unlock the gate as another tremor strikes, and just as fast I crouch while the earth shakes and stone grinds upon stone. Won’t it be a cosmic joke that I’ve come this far only to be crushed in a collapse?
“I can’t see,” Ailas says.
“The light’s gone out.”
“And there—” He coughs and coughs.
I get the mechanism open at the second try and swing open the gate. My brother is stick-thin and delicate in my arms. So easy to crush him, break him. How he’s managed to hold up until now only the vyra-demons know.
“You need to get a philtre into you,” I whisper.
He stinks of rotten blood, piss and worse, but beneath that veneer of horror, he’s still my brother.
Ailas nods and I prop him up against the wall while I reach into my pouch for the flasks. I unstop the first then find his lips. His drinking is feeble, and I’m not sure how much of the mixture he swallows and how much trickles down his chin.
His reaction is instant, and he gags, doubles over.
“Don’t bring it up,” I caution, holding him to me.
“Gods, that stuff is vile. I forget how.”
He’s already sounding stronger.
“Another one.”
“Oh gods.”
“Please, brother mine.”
He laughs. “You haven’t called me that in years.”
“Is it too late to go back there?” I try not to sound too hopeful.
This time he takes the second flask from me, and I can hear him swallow.
“Ngghh!”
“You all right?”
“Revolting.”
“Another one.” I hand him the last.
“You’re trying to kill me, aren’t you? It wasn’t enough that you stood next to that cadaver and helped him half flay me alive.”
“I’m sorry.”
He sighs, and the stopper clinks on the ground. “Down to the belly then with this. How long will it buy us?”
“Till about noon, I suspect.”
“Way more time than I need.”
“Enough for me to figure a way to get you out of the Place.”
“Oh, Unia, we both know that isn’t going to happen.”
“I’m getting you out of here. And please don’t call me that. I don’t deserve that name anymore.”
“You’ll always be Unia to me. And with getting out, there’s no point. You’ve already done what you needed to do. I just... I hadn’t thought that my own failure would in hindsight result in spectacular and unexpected opportunities.”
“Huh?” I can hear the smile in his voice and it needles me.
“We’d needed to gain entry into the Place. We knew the cost was high when we were preparing, and I thought...I thought I’d failed. The vyra work in mysterious ways.”
“Don’t start with the vyra-demon kama droppings.”
“Listen to me!” Somehow he’s found both my hands, and he squeezes hard.
“I’m listening! Not so loud!”
There is little chance that someone will come down, let alone hear us, unless they’ve checked in on Dona and can’t rouse him, but I don’t want to take unnecessary risks. Or, rather, I don’t want to expand on my calamity any more than it has already unfolded.
When my brother next speaks, his words are hushed. “When you betrayed me—”
“I’m sorry.”
“Bygones. I’m talking about the second time, not the first.” He is breathing hard, his grip on my hands unrelenting.
I groan.
“We were planning an operation to gain entry into your accursed Place, and now I have a chance to complete my task. I know what I believe, what I practice, goes against everything you’ve been taught but you’ve got to trust me. I don’t know how I can convince you except to frame it within the tenets of your practice.”
“We need to get out of here.”
“In a moment. I need to make you understand this first.”
His pulse hammers against my fingers. A strangled pause stretches between us.
“Speak,” I croak.
“What is the first thing you were taught?”
“That the vyra-demons lie, that they seek to control us. That they are all around us, working to destroy the very fabric of our society. We must be vigilant, we must—”
“But you have no faith,” he says. “You cultivate no belief in souls, in an afterlife. All that matters is the Place and its Fennarin, that you are but an ant in a colony. All passes but the Word of Fennar endures, a physical body here on this earth.”
“I know my own practice!” I snap.
“Yet you don’t deny that the spirits exist. That you yourselves use magic of sorts.”
“We oppose these things, and the powers we use have been sanctified by our Most Esteemed.”
He sighs. “Aye, that I know all too well.”
Sorrow pierces my heart—there is no bridge I can build between us that will last. “We are doomed, brother. Forever to stand on opposite sides of the divide.”
“Do you perhaps not think for a moment how it would be if you did not submit to the will of others?”
“I am here of my own free will, as you willingly allow yourself to be subjugated to the will of spirits.”
“It is not so much subjugation,” he whispers. “It is a partnership.”
“Then the same is for me; I gain a higher purpose.”
“But what do you want?” Ailas squeezes my hand. “As in really want. What dreams do you have that do not involve...this place. What does Unia want?”
“Unia doesn’t exist anymore,” I say. “She had to go away so that Lada might live.”
“You drowned her.”
“I may have.” My sorrow elbows my guilt and I have to suck in a breath. “It’s pointless wallowing in ‘what ifs’. We need to get out of here.”
“There will be no getting out of here for me. I knew that when I made the commitment among my peers.”
“There is, and it is you who should rejoice, for I will be coming with you. If I live,” I tell him. He is mad, wanting to throw away his life when he has this chance at freedom. It’s time for me to make a sacrifice.
His laughter rasps against my ears. “Now suddenly this change in tune!”
His sigh is drawn out. He’s not going to listen to me.
“I may not sway you from your course, but perhaps I can balance out the vyra-taint in you. We can find a compromise, find some other method to free you.”
“And people say that I am the one possessed!”
“It’s the only way I can think of.” My explanation is flapping broken wings, but I don’t know what else to say except that by deciding to free my brother, I’ve damned myself to tread a new path—one whose outcome is uncertain, painted in twilight shades.
“Come. I must rise.” He groans as he rises to his feet, and leans heavily on me.
“I don’t know if we’ll be able to get past the gate, but there are robes upstairs. We can get you one and perhaps fool some of the allies while we make an attempt on the entrance.”
“Sister mine,” he says, both hands now gripping my shoulders with renewed strength. “Listen to me. Now that I’m here, I have a task to complete. I cannot veer from this path. You know that, and you have helped me thus far, and I do not seek you to follow me into certain death. Return to your room. Pretend to have rested. Rise when the disturbance has broken out and you have a legitimate cause to be running about like the hellion you are.”
I shake my head then drag one of his hands to my scalp so he can feel the shorn hair.
He gasps. “What have you done?”
“I am already in mourning for that which has died.” Even if I do stay in my cell, the mere fact that I’ve shaved my head in grief will damn me as surely as speaking the words that might seal my fate.
He presses his forehead against mine, and his shudder courses through me as well. “My sister. Why?”
“Besides, I’ve been seen about the Place when I should be abed. They will remember this when dawn breaks and there has been trouble. Also, I have raised my hand against my own.”
His breath hisses, followed by another bone-deep tremor. “Very well. You will not hinder me then?”
“What are you planning?” I may as well damn myself further, shan’t I?
“Your order is dead to you?”
“I am dead to my order,” I say. “They just aren’t aware of that truth just yet.” The words ring with hollow finality. What am I doing?
We press against each other for a small eternity then Ailas straightens, leans hard on my right side and begins to lurch towards the stairs. “Come. You will not stand in my way. You will do as I ask, when I ask it.”
“I haven’t—”
“Are you with me, sister?”
“I am not against you,” I murmur, defeated.
My roots have been cut; it is simpler to allow my brother’s tide to sweep me along.
We halt on the first step. “Swear that this is not a trap. Swear on the souls of those who brought us into the world. Swear that you will make right for that afternoon.”
A taut line in my heart snaps with a sob and I nod, though I know he cannot see me do so. “I swear... I swear I’ll do right this time. On our mother and father’s ashes.”
I don’t know what is right. Once again I’m betraying everything that I’ve ever held dear; nothing matters anymore and I want to sink into a little heap on the ground where I will be found and kicked.
There is only the river that tumbles over the falls, an inexorable process. Am I a stagnant lake or am I the torrent that washes away the debris so that everything can begin afresh?
“I don’t trust you,” Ailas says. “For all I know this is just another way for your fraternity to capture me on the eve of my destruction, set up to deliver false hope so that I may be gifted with a greater burden of guilt.”
“What do you need me to do?” I ask. “This is not a trap. I’m casting my lot with yours.”
“No. You will live.”
“You sound awfully certain of yourself.” The philtre must’ve addled his mind. I need to get him out of here. Side effects include an inflated sense of invincibility, and I’ve given him not one but three times the normal dose.
“I’ve never been more certain. You still have a chance for a normal life.”
“And you don’t?” I scoff.
“No. No matter what you say or do, my path always led to this point. It’s just that my route has taken an unexpected detour, and now I’ll make the best of an untenable situation.”
“What do you mean?”
“We don’t have much time, so I’m going to be brief. At the heart of your practice lies the dogma that all other faiths need to be tamped down, destroyed even.”
“That’s not quite what—”
“We’re not going to argue the minutiae. All I ask is that you listen to me. I don’t care what you believe. I only ask you to consider a theory that is slightly different from yours and pretend, for a short while, that this is a possible truth. Then humour me until this is over by at least entertaining the notion that this is the truth.”
I wish I can see his face here in the choking dark, but all I sense is the heat radiating off his skin—heightened now thanks to the philtre that’s lending him this unnatural vitality.
After three breaths, I say, “All right.”
“Good. We have the vyra. They come into being and are shaped by our regard. Gradually, they grow in power. Some may attach themselves to a place, others to a person, where they can garner more power, grow and, perhaps, even die away. They exist in a multitude, some peaceful and beneficent, others predatory, consuming, hungry.”
“Evil,” I say.
My brother hisses. “Who’s telling the story? Do you interrupt your elders this way?”
“Sorry. Continue.” I hang my head, and attempt to feel contrition. This is an old argument we’ve been having since I first learned to talk.
“Then there is Fennar.” He huffs a breath. “Or your Word, as you call it. Fennar is old. It was brought here by the Ora—a foreign god fleeing the mainland when its people were persecuted.”
It is not a god, I want to tell him, but I press my lips together firmly.
“Before you try to tell me the Fennar is not a god, I want you to pretend, for just a little while that Fennar is. Consider how the thing devours, how it spreads, how this god of yours will not tolerate the presence of others.”
We stand in silence for a few heartbeats.
“Well?” He sounds breathless, impatient.
“I will concede that your theory has some merit. I cannot disagree on principle, even though we do not worship any entity. Our terms of description...are different.”
“Consider this the perfect ruse—by convincing the other spirits that it simply doesn’t exist Fennar isn’t a target.”
“Except for those who practice the Word of Fennar. We know the truth.”
“And such a bunch of hard-headed, boring old stoics they are,” my brother says with a sly laugh. “For years we fought for survival. Years. Until one day there was an elder who recanted. Embittered, because he failed at a challenge to become the next Illuminant.”
“The penalty of failure is death!” I exclaim. “There is no recanting!”
“He survived. Somehow he was not dashed to pieces on the rocks beneath the falls. Perhaps a vyra of the air sang with a vyra of the water, and they turned him over and over, and a vyra of the rocks moved aside so that instead of being crushed to a pulp, your erstwhile practitioner of the Word was carried along gently in the river’s bosom and brought to us. For his heart was open, receptive, and a spirit heeded his call.
“And this is what we were told—when an Illuminant grows old, the spirit requires a new vessel, and among your elders two or three hear the call. They undergo trials, and the one who endures offers up his or her body to the entity for however long they are able to bear it.”
Heresy!
“That’s insane!” I cry. “Your mind has been turned inside out!”
“No more than yours, if you think how long you’ve been allowing your thoughts and reason to be dulled by their polished words. The vyra at the heart of your organisation wishes to become the only vyra that can rule the minds and hearts of men. It is a spirit of empire building, of subjugation that has long bided its time but now wishes to become ascendant once more.”
What he’s told me is... It is so unbelievable I want to laugh. It is exactly the sort of nonsense they would tell each other in order to make sense of the Fennarin, to couch us in terms that are easy for them to understand.
And yet.
Two years after I joined, a new Illuminant had been selected—the knowledge of this wasn’t something that was shared with non-initiates. Trials had taken place and we all heard the rumours how the unsuccessful elders had perished, exactly as my brother said. Death by a plunge into the falls no man or woman has ever survived in living memory. Rocks protrude from the pools like jagged fangs and the water churns and froths. No soft-fleshed being can survive. For the past eight or so years, conflict between the vyra-possessed and our people has intensified, and continued to escalate. My brother’s tale is incredible yet oddly plausible that someone survived.
“I don’t believe you,” I say, despite this wriggle of doubt.
“I don’t expect you to, but I’ve planted the seed. I can hear the doubt in your voice. The ‘what if’.”
“Nonsense.”
He laughs. “We’ll see. You’ve come this far.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I... I will find a way to break this cycle.”
“And if you fail?”
“Others will follow. We are many hearts with many bodies. You are but one heart with many bodies.”
“And if I decide to stop you?”
“You know those are hollow words, sister. You would not have come here, freed me from my cell, unless you’ve had a change of heart.”
“I came here to save you, not free you to continue your mischief.”
“And I’d like to remind you that I am beyond saving now. There is only the purpose my vyra calls me to.”
The Firebird whose wings set fire to the land.
“You’ll die.” I shake him, and he laughs.
“We all die, sister mine. It’s how we die that matters. I’d rather my death have meaning than rot away on a porch, fat and lazy, with the Sunai rains drumming down while I am dry and content, and my belly is full.”
“That’s not such a terrible vision.”
“And in a way I must thank you, for if you had not betrayed me as you had ten years ago, I might have eventually married that girl and gone on to tend her papa’s orchids. And you may well have ended up making a good wife for Papa’s new son-in-law, and we all would have lived happily ever after.”
“You’d never have lived happily ever after. Not with that thing in you,” I spit.
“And you’d forever suffered a surfeit of piety, not knowing what life in this forsaken place would have been like, while you dandled a wailing infant on your hip. You were—and are—possessed by the Word of Fennar. We are the same, in a way, you and I. Yet I have not abdicated responsibility for the greater good.”
I want to throw his words back at him, but I can’t. Something in them rings true and I hang my head. Ailas pulls me close into his embrace, and I can hear how his heart races—the philtre at work, reminding me that we have limited time at our disposal.
Am I capable of another betrayal?
“We need to start moving,” I say to him.
Perhaps if I can show him that it’s futile, he’ll agree to us turning around and heading out to one of the side gates where I’m certain we can escape before anyone notices that he’s no longer in his cell.
I feel him nod. “I’m glad you agree, Unia. I can call you that now, can I?”
“I still don’t deserve that name.”
“Pity.” I can sense his wry smile despite the dark. Trust Ailas to find amusement in the midst of tragedy.