36. AN UNGRATEFUL STUDENT

Xivan’s story

The Land of Peace, the Afterlife

Just after fleeing Xaltorath

For an awful, tense moment, Xivan wasn’t sure if she’d brought Janel and Talea with her. She didn’t know if she’d accidentally left them behind to fight Xaltorath alone. There was so much she didn’t understand about what had just happened, why it had worked, or what she had done (under Khae’s instruction). She didn’t know if Khae was petty enough to have left Xivan’s companions behind.

No. The problem was that she did know Khae was petty enough.

Then she heard Janel curse. Xivan glanced over to see both Janel and Talea were standing there, still ready for battle in a fight that had been rendered obsolete.

She exhaled.

“Where are we?” Talea asked.

“A place I haven’t been to in a lifetime,” Janel answered.

“Is it a place that can be described with a proper noun, though?” Talea grinned. “And why were the demons fighting Xaltorath. I thought he … or she? I suppose she. I thought she was their queen?”

“Self-proclaimed,” Janel said, “but it’s a fair question. Although from what I saw, I don’t think they were fighting her by choice. She was hunting them.” Janel glanced at Xivan. “How did you manage this? I’m not complaining, but I wasn’t aware that you’d stepped so much as a foot inside this place.”

It was a palace; that much was obvious. A beautiful palace crafted of white marble. Delicate columns supported domed ceilings. Soft rugs lined the floors. Silk tapestries and bas-reliefs on the walls depicted hunting scenes involving massive elephants trampling demons. Jeweled lanterns threw ruby diamonds across the walls, and the air smelled of funereal incense and roses.

“I haven’t,” Xivan retorted, “and I have no idea where we are.”

“We’re exactly where you wanted to be,” Khae snapped, her posture tight with offense.

Xivan stared at the old woman. “Since I don’t know where we are, I’d say that’s damn unlikely.”

“What?” Janel asked.

Talea put a hand on Janel’s arm. She grinned happily. “She’s not talking to us. Xivan’s finally found her Eshi.”1

The old woman spat to the side. “What a revolting comparison. Tell her to never do it again,” she ordered Xivan. “And yes, you did want to come here. You wanted someplace safe, and this is the safest place in the Afterlife. This is the Land of Peace.”

“Right,” Janel said in response to Talea’s reminder. “So this is the Land of Peace.”

Oh, that was going to be a problem. Xivan held up a hand. “Stop. You’re both talking at once.”

Khae shrugged. “Tell her to stop talking, then. This is your sanctum. You give the orders here.”

“Janel can’t hear you,” Xivan said. “Whereas you know damn well that you’re talking over other people. Give me a minute, would you?” Xivan turned to Janel. “I didn’t imagine that, did I? Xaltorath was eating those demons?”

“She’s consolidating power.” Janel’s worried expression was doing nothing for Xivan’s sense of calm.

“Consolidating power is when you make all the chieftains swear an oath and sign trade agreements. It’s not eating the rest of the nation.”

Talea smiled and rocked a hand from side to side. “Maybe it is for demons?”

“I still can’t believe they chose you,” Khae mumbled.

Xivan whirled back to the “phantom” memory of Khaemezra. “Excuse me! Do you have a problem?”

“Obviously.” The old woman looked visibly affronted.

“Get over it.” Xivan paused. “Do you have a problem with Khorveshans?”

“I don’t even know what a Khorveshan is,” Khae hissed, stabbing her cane down into the ground for emphasis. What it emphasized was that Khae wasn’t really there, that she was a helpful figment of Xivan’s imagination; the cane made no impact whatsoever on the slick marble floor. “Who chose you? They should have at least picked another voramer.”

“No, they shouldn’t have,” Xivan snapped. “The voramer don’t exist anymore.”

Khae inhaled sharply at the news about her people. Xivan supposed she wouldn’t have known, would she? Talea had been under the impression that while the seven remaining members of the Eight Immortals had all sat down and let themselves be subject to a curious sort of duplication, Thaena had been the least willing, the most uncooperative. While the others repeated the process over the years, keeping their magical “doubles” current with their own memories, Thaena hadn’t. She’d allowed it exactly once and then just tossed her talisman in the darkest, deepest hole she could find while she tried to forget that it ever existed. Khae’s idea of current events was millennia out of date.

“There aren’t any voramer left, just like there aren’t any voras left,” Xivan elaborated. “Or vordredd, for that matter. All the races are mortal now, splintered and fragmented. Everyone gets to die. And really, you couldn’t have shown up earlier? I needed your help back in Devors. Or hell, back at the Lighthouse at Shadrag Gor.”

“Yes, because the place for me to begin your lessons is in the Land of the Living,” Khae sneered. “If I was going to begin your lessons, and honestly, I have no idea why I should.” At which point, the old woman promptly turned around and began to walk off.

“She just walked away. Just like that,” Xivan said, stunned. She turned to Talea. “She’s leaving? Can she do that?”

“No, but I don’t think she has to talk to you either. And she sounds like such a sweetheart.” Talea clasped Janel’s arm. “Let’s step back and give these two a moment.”

“Hm. If you think it’s best.” Janel directed that comment toward Xivan.

“Probably a good idea,” Xivan said. “I need to talk with my ‘Eshi.’ We’ll sort this out.”

Khae’s voice echoed from down the hallway. “Ah, so you don’t want my help…”

“Eight Immortals, and I get the one who’s the biggest fucking bitch in the universe,” Xivan muttered.² She held up a finger to the other two women. “Just … give me one minute.”

Xivan trotted down the hallway to catch up with her “teacher”—aware the whole time that this was a ridiculous exercise in subservience. In theory, Khae couldn’t “leave” Xivan at all. She was just being dramatic.

When Xivan had Khae in sight again, she shouted, “You’re seriously going to turn your back on everyone who needs you because you don’t feel properly consulted about your replacement? What if I told you that you did pick me? That you, Thaena, personally picked me, put the cup in my hands, and told me to use it if and when anything happened to you.”

Khae paused.

Xivan was sorely tempted to let the woman keep walking. And why—why—did Khae look like an old woman, anyway? She didn’t have to. Xivan knew Khaemezra’s true form in life had looked young and beautiful, because all of the Guardians were immortal, weren’t they?

Khae turned her head. “Did she?”

“Of course not. You were far too scared of death to ever plan for it. Which is, I think, my new favorite definition of irony.”

The old woman turned around, furious. She caught Xivan’s stare and held it.

After a few seconds, Xivan raised an eyebrow. “Is that supposed to do something?”³

Khae huffed.

“This would be a lot easier if you helped me,” Xivan said.

The old woman wrinkled her nose like she was smelling something rotten. “And why should I help you? I told them that this was a stupid idea. You don’t have enough time to grow into the powers you need! And don’t say you’ll just go to the Lighthouse at Shadrag Gor, because you can’t learn some things in that damn place. You have to be here, in the Afterlife. This is your world now, not—” She made a vague gesture that Xivan assumed probably meant the Living World.

“So the circumstances aren’t ideal. That doesn’t change anything.”

“They should have brought Khaemezra back to life.” Her stubborn insistence on this point was far past the stage of grating on Xivan’s nerves.

Xivan leaned against a wall and kicked back her leg. “They couldn’t.”

“Why not?” Khae demanded. “They know how.”

“Grizzst’s dead,” Xivan explained, “and so’s Galava. There’s no one alive who knows how to bring Thaena back. I’m not even sure what happens to her souls. Will I find her somewhere here?”

Khae shuddered. “No. No, you won’t. That was the problem before. It would have been different if we reacted like a normal person, but our souls behaved … oddly. Like oil poured on top of water. We couldn’t re-form.” Her brow knitted together. “Although I don’t know what happens now that you’re taking over the job. Perhaps with the connection broken, she’ll end up here just like anyone else would and can be reborn like anyone else. Or perhaps she ceased to exist.”

What a lovely, cheerful thought. Because it was Xivan’s own fate Khae was describing as well. Talea’s fate too. “That’s a worry for another day. For now, it’s enough to know that Vol Karoth is free—really free and not just awake and grouchy.”

She thought that the news might make Khae a little more amenable to providing useful information and a badly needed shortcut to finding Terindel. Khae’s knowledge was out of date, but she knew Thaena’s mind better than anyone else and might know where Thaena would hide her former lover.

Khae reacted to the news like a slap, but only for a moment. Then she martialed herself and refortified her position. “That only makes my statement about you not having enough time all the more relevant. Honestly, why are you bothering? You have a year or two at most before Vol Karoth finishes annihilating everything. My advice is to enjoy the time you have. Your girlfriend’s a cute one. Keep her company. Take pleasure in each other. At least make your last moments nice ones.”

Xivan rolled her eyes. “Yes, great. Fantastic advice. Don’t be surprised when I pay zero attention to it. Anyway, stopping Vol Karoth isn’t the problem. Stopping Relos Var is the problem.”

The old woman looked confused. “Who?”

Xivan exhaled and then fought back laughter. She didn’t think the breathing was strictly necessary, but she did it, anyway. Probably because some deep-set animal part of her insisted that she should keep doing it. She told herself to focus.

“Rev’arric,” Xivan clarified. “He calls himself Relos Var now, and he’s the problem. He’s always been the problem. And yes, that means that I need to have this position even if we don’t have enough time, even if I’m not who you would have chosen. Because as long as this position is already filled, Rev’arric can’t assign it to someone of his own choosing—which he will do otherwise. He knows Thaena’s dead, and I have it on good authority that he’s made plans to usurp the Guardians. So I’m sorry that Khaemezra can’t be Returned, but it’s a war, and these things happen.”

The old woman’s eyes narrowed. “Did you have a grudge against Thaena? You did, didn’t you?”

“A grudge?” Xivan felt laughter, dark and black, rise from her before she could stop it. And why lie, when the bitter old hag had already made it clear that she didn’t feel like cooperating for no good reason other than because she was awful. “Yes, you might say I have a grudge. I hate your fucking guts. Excuse me—Thaena’s fucking guts. I’ve hated Thaena since she refused to Return me because my husband had been targeted by Rev’arric. Which played into Rev’arric’s hands beautifully, since it meant he could bring me back as an undead creature and thus win my husband’s cooperation. I spent the last two decades as one of the soul-bound dead because of Thaena’s refusal, and why? Because she was a petty bitch. I hated her even more when I found out everything she’d done, how she treated people, how she treated her own son. Maybe Khaemezra was once a good person, but that was a long time ago.”

Xivan rolled her eyes. “Never mind. I don’t need your help. I’ll figure this out for myself.” She stalked back to where the others waited.

Before she’d gone more than fifty feet, she heard Khae speak.

“Wait.”

Xivan paused. She didn’t turn around.

“How did Thaena die?” Khae asked.

“Do you really want to know?” Xivan didn’t mock, though. In Khae’s place, Xivan would want to know too.

“Yes. Tell me.”

Xivan turned back. “She was in the middle of trying to wipe out the entire vané nation, as well as kill her own son, after she’d murdered his father. And that same son broke free of her control and killed her with Urthaenriel before Thaena could murder his lover too. The same battle where Galava died, by the way, as well as Argas, Taja, and Grizzst. All of which, by the way, ultimately happened because Thaena was a damn coward.”

“You have no right to judge her. You have no conception of how terrible Vol Karoth—”

“The fact that her fear was logical doesn’t excuse what she was willing to do to avoid it. That’s where the cowardice comes in. Somewhere along the way, she decided killing people—even killing millions of people—was all totally fine as long as it kept her alive.”

The old woman cast her gaze at one of the tapestries, but Xivan didn’t think she saw it. She was looking at something much further away. “Killing’s such a useless word,” she murmured.

“What was that?”

Khae’s glare was scathing. “It’s useless! It doesn’t mean anything. So a bunch of souls go from the Living World to this one, and you call it death. So what? They won’t stay here. They’ll go back. They always do. It’s not like death is nonexistence. It’s nothing but going on an extended vacation. And anyway, I’m sure Thaena had a reason.”

“Were you not listening to a word I said?” She couldn’t help herself. Xivan marched back to Khae. If the phantom of a dead goddess had been anyone else, the look in Xivan’s eyes would have been a terrifying thing. “Thaena had a reason, all right. But it was a stupid, petty, craven reason. Ultimately, she did it because she was willing to justify any sacrifice that kept her alive. Now I don’t know how sentient you really are. Talea’s version of Taja seems to think she’s not alive at all. I’m less certain given the tantrum you’re throwing right now. But the closest you will ever get to truly living again requires helping me. It doesn’t require that you like or approve of me, so stop being such a fucking bitch and teach me what I need to know to do my damn job!”

The old woman seemed to grow several inches taller, her face suffused with rage. Then she started laughing, so abruptly that Xivan wondered if the anger had been staged. “Well done,” Khae said, tucking her walking stick under one arm to applaud. “See, I knew you had a brain in there somewhere. But seriously, you have a great deal to learn, and you’re already too far behind. You should have come here days ago.”

“Yeah, well, we were busy,” Xivan said. “Still are, in fact. So that motion earlier, combined with tenyé and desire, will take me wherever I want to go?”

“Within reason.” Khae nodded.

“What does that mean?”

“It means, it can’t take you across to the Living World; you have to use a different spell for that. But since you’re here, you figured it out already. And it can’t take you beyond the Wound … or even all that close to it. But other than that, anywhere you want to go in the Afterlife, just imagine it and poof! You’re there.”

“Great,” Xivan said. She made the gesture, dumped some tenyé into it, and stood there looking a little foolish as nothing happened. “Uh…” She looked at Khae for an explanation.

“I have no idea,” the old woman snapped. “Where did you imagine going?”

“To wherever Terindel’s souls are,” Xivan said.

The old woman rubbed her hand across her face. “Starting to reconsider that brains thing.”

“Listen, you annoying old—”

“Shut up,” Khae said, stabbing her phantom walking stick through Xivan’s middle. “Think. Where is that? Oh, you don’t know, do you? You’re the one doing the magic; it goes where you tell it to go. But you have to give the order.”

“I didn’t tell it to go to a place when I brought us here.”

“No, you didn’t,” Khae growled. “I did. Which worked because I know where the Land of Peace is.”

“Then how do we find him?” Xivan asked in exasperation.

“Think of places he might be, and go there instead of expecting the magic to make value judgments based on nonexistent information,” Khae replied.

“Fine,” Xivan said. “Tell me where his souls are.”

“Sorry,” Khae said with a shrug. “After my time.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that Khaemezra did whatever she did to Terindel long after I was ‘splintered off.’ I wasn’t present for the big event; it’s not like I can ask her, since she’s gone and you’re taking her place so I. Don’t. Know!”

“… Fuck,” Xivan said.

“Would now be a good time to interrupt and ask how everything’s going?” Talea said. She and Janel had been slowly walking in their direction until they finally caught up. Janel looked like she was contemplating jumping out a window.

Xivan rolled her eyes. “Khae doesn’t know where Terindel is, and I can’t just poof us there, because I have to poof us to specific places, not theoretical locations. So unless you know something…?”

“That said, I might have some ideas,” Khae said mildly.

Xivan’s spine stiffened, her head jerked up. She turned—very, very slowly—to face the old woman. “Are. You. Fucking. Kidding. Me?” The light around her seemed to dim momentarily. Her arm shot out, and her fingers closed around the space that would have been Khae’s throat if she had really existed as a complete entity. Xivan pulled, felt tenyé start to flow in her direction.

Talea and Janel both stepped away from her.

“Better,” Khae said from several feet away. “Now you’re getting the hang of being Thaena.”

Xivan’s hand was empty. She scowled at it before returning her attention to Khae.

“I wasn’t around for Terindel’s death, so I don’t know where Thaena put him … but I know where I would have put him if it were me … so unless a whole lot has changed, there’s decent odds that’s where he is.” The old woman smirked at Xivan.

Talea put her hand on Xivan’s arm. “Are you okay?”

Xivan barked a laugh. “No … but apparently, I’m getting better.” She faced Khae again. “Fine. Where would you have put him?”

Khae’s smirk grew wider. “With Xaloma.”

“Xaloma?” Xivan’s eyebrows shot up toward her hairline. “Who the fuck is Xaloma, and why would she be here in the Afterlife?”

“Oh, I know this one,” Janel said wearily. “Xaloma is one of Khaemezra’s children.⁴ She lives here. In a lake, when last I saw her. Xaloma is a dragon.”

“Of course she is,” Xivan growled.