55: THE PALE LADY’S JUDGMENT

(Kihrin’s story)

I’m impressed you had the guts to tell the truth about that, Talon.

Then again, what do you care? You’ve done a lot worse than take advantage of a teenage boy, haven’t you?

Anyway, Tyentso’s plan . . . well, it didn’t go as well as we had hoped.

To start with, because Khaemezra refused to help us.

We found Khaemezra the next morning, and I admit I’d assumed she’d agree. After all, why not? She was High Priestess of the Goddess of Death, and what we were asking her to do seemed normal for the weirdness that was a regular part of her religion. Tyentso would die. I’d have a magic lesson. Khaemezra would bring Tyentso back to life again. Easy.

Except apparently it wasn’t.

Tyentso cleared her throat, gave me an apologetic look, and turned back to the Holy Mother of the Black Brotherhood. “It’s a small departure from the Maevanos ritual. All I’m asking is we take a few hours out before my Return, that’s all.”

“Ty thinks this would work,” I added.

The old woman looked furious we would even make the suggestion. She stared down Tyentso. “This is about Phaellen, isn’t it?”

I had no idea who that was, but Tyentso turned white.

“Who’s Phaellen?” I asked.

Tyentso crossed her arms over her chest. “Phaellen D’Erinwa. He is . . . he was the ghost who taught me.” She took a deep breath. “It’s not important.” Tyentso returned her gaze to Khaemezra. “I didn’t think you knew about him.”

Khaemezra glared. “I know every one who dies.”

“And that’s not creepy at all,” I said. “I’m not thrilled about the idea of being possessed, but I’m even less happy about being trapped here by the Old Man. So, if there’s some reason why Tyentso can’t do this—besides flouting the normal rules of the Maevanos—please tell me so I can start working on my next harebrained scheme to get off this island.” I snapped my fingers. “I’ve got it. Any idea where I can buy five crates of hedgehogs?”

“You shouldn’t be trying to leave at all. You are still in training.”

I inhaled and fought back the impulse to say something nasty. “I don’t like cages. I especially don’t like what the Old Man wants to do to me.”

Khaemezra’s nostrils flared. “A ghost is not simply a dead spirit. Souls are not meant to stay on this side of the Veil, removed from the body that nurtured them. When you die, you travel past the Second Veil, into the Afterlife. Everyone does. That includes people who experience the Maevanos. To become a ghost, someone who lingers on this side of the Veil, requires you to be dead, yet too weak, angry, or tied to this world to successfully make the transition. That is dangerous. The lower soul drains away, and if you spend long enough trapped in that state, you—or rather, Tyensto—would be left unable to be Returned or to move on to the Land of Peace to one day be reborn.” Her eyes were hard as she gestured toward Tyensto. “And let’s not forget: you have yet to undergo a Maevanos. There is no guarantee that you would be allowed to Return.”

“I haven’t gone through it because . . .” Tyentso licked her lips.

“Because you suspect you might be found unworthy,” Khaemezra finished for her. “And what if you’re right? You have not led a pure life, my child.”

“I know what I’ve done.” Tyentso’s eyes met mine. “But this is important.”

I winced. I knew she was doing this as an apology, doing this because she felt guilty about the gaesh. And I hadn’t exactly absolved her of that guilt, had I? Did I really want to have Tyentso’s true death on my hands if this didn’t work? “Ty, I don’t want to get you killed.”

“Getting me killed is the whole point, Scamp. Anyway, lecturing you on magical theory until your eyes roll back in your head isn’t working, so let’s try something new. Learning this way was good enough for me. It damn well better be good enough for you, because I don’t intend on doing this twice.”

“Are you certain you want to do this?” Khaemezra said to Tyentso again. “You will keep no secrets while dead. Who you are, what you are, will be laid bare.” Her quicksilver stare turned to me. “That includes to him.”

“Stop trying to scare me, old woman. I’m doing this.”

A smile quirked the corner of Khaemezra’s mouth. “It seems you are.”

Khaemezra picked up a knife. She offered it to Tyentso.

“Hey now. Wait a minute. When you say we’re doing this, you don’t mean right now, do you?” I looked around, wondering if two Thriss with drums were about to appear.

Even Tyentso seemed taken aback.

“Yes. I mean right now. Your request is untoward enough that I don’t want this to be a part of our normal services. This way I can give you my full attention should anything go wrong.” She said it like something going wrong was less a possibility than a certainty.

My mouth went dry.

Tyentso took the knife. “Doesn’t this need a bit more ceremony?”

“No,” Khaemezra said. “All you need is the will to face Thaena.”

I raised a hand. “Okay, so wait a minute, why don’t we all take a breath and—”

Tyentso stabbed herself.

Her blood spread out in a slow stain of pure red across her white linen chemise. Tyentso gave Khaemezra a look of dull accusation before she collapsed on the floor. She seemed small and frail and inanimate.

Khaemezra stood still and silent.

“What next?” I asked her.

“We wait.”

“That’s it? We wait?”

The High Priestess tilted her head. “She must find her way back through the wild lands of the Afterlife. That is not an easy thing to do.”

“And if she can’t?”

“Then today will not be the day you learn magic from a ghost.”

“Right. Right.” I started to pace, not knowing what else to do.

I stopped. “Isn’t there anything I can do to help?”

Khaemezra stared straight ahead and ignored me.

I sighed and paced some more. Finally, I sat cross-legged next to Tyentso’s body and put my hand on her shoulder. I tried to shift my vision past the First Veil.

The First Veil was magic, and the Second Veil was death. It made sense then that I shouldn’t, as a mortal, be able to see past the Second Veil. But if Tyentso was trying to work her way forward, then I probably didn’t need to. If I could see past the First Veil, and perhaps see almost to the Second Veil, maybe I could act as a beacon for her to find her way back.

I admit the logic was suspect, but what did I have to lose?

I shifted my vision past the First Veil easily enough. I’d been able to do that since I was a child. Now I strained for more, focused with sight and something beyond sight. I struggled without moving, trying to push my vision past the normal auras. It was like staring at a mosaic so hard your eyes crossed, the intensity of the stare making the accuracy of the sight worse.

I reached out. I reached inward. I despaired.

A hand came down on my shoulder. Without looking, I knew it was Khaemezra, her gold-dusted bone fingers tightening on my flesh like iron claws.

My view of the universe shifted.

My previous experiences with seeing magic now seemed as effective as the vision of a newborn kitten. For one thing, I still saw the normal universe with perfect clarity, but simultaneously I also “saw” energy everywhere. There was something like sound too, as if every visible object made an audible sound. Each thing—living or not—existed with its own musical accompaniment, each with a beat, a vibration, a chord. Music and light were, well, everywhere, and it all vibrated against everything else, sending out ripples interacting and magnifying and canceling each other.

I looked up at Khaemezra, only to realize I had been wrong.

This was someone else.

The woman with her hand on my shoulder was a stranger. Her skin was supple and smooth and darker than the floor of the Manol Jungle. The highlights that limned her cheekbones and danced across her forehead glistened blue. Her hair, or her equivalent to hair, reminded me of butterfly wings, delicate and transparent with highlights that shimmered opalescent with greens and blues and violets. Her mouth was small but her lips full, and her nose was flat with nostrils that seemed peculiarly shallow. Her eyes were large and tilted and had no visible iris or pupil. They reflected the golden scales of her dress in mercurial shimmers with no color of their own.

Only then did I notice the belt of roses worn around her hips, clasped with a tiny skull, the matching roses worn as a diadem on her head. I realized that I had indeed seen her before.

Or, at least, I had seen statues of her, made of onyx and gold leaf.

I wondered, absently, why we called her the Pale Lady.

Thaena met my eyes.

Dread spiked through my soul. What I felt was not a sense of my own mortality or the dark void of a final end, but the most profound sense of nudity. Thaena didn’t look at me, she looked inside me, to every corner of my soul. Thaena knew me better than I would ever know myself. She had always known me, known me before I was born and was now simply waiting for me to return to her.

I looked away.

Thaena’s grip tightened on my shoulder. The Goddess of Death turned back to the other woman in the room.

A woman, I noted, who didn’t look like Tyentso.

She was young. Older than me, but not old enough to be my mother. This was a stick-thin woman, a sharp-featured Quuros. Her hair was a mass of lavender-gray cloud-curls that swirled around her head like a building storm. Her most striking features were her tilted eyes: large and black, with the endless labyrinthine depths of a god-touched member of House D’Lorus.

She had the same crimson stain spilling down the front of her chemise as Tyentso. She looked real and solid and I would never have thought her a ghost.

But I knew better.

“Tyentso,” said the Goddess of Death, “once named Raverí, daughter of Rava.^* I have seen your soul. You have been judged.”

Tyentso straightened, looking shocked. “Wasn’t there supposed to be a test?”

“The test was your life,” Thaena replied. “And you have failed it. You are a murderer and a demonologist, an arrogant liar who betrayed people who trusted you and sent the souls of hundreds to Hell. What sacrifice were you unwilling to burn on the altar of revenge? You never had a life worth living. What have you done with yourself but spread misery? What do you leave to the world that made it even the tiniest bit better than it would have been without you? Spend as long as you like teaching Kihrin, assuming he will have anything to do with you. I will not be Returning you.”

And with that, the Goddess of Death left the room.