57: GHOST WALK

(Kihrin’s story)

I stared at the doorway Thaena exited, as if staring might make her return. I heard an inarticulate noise next to me, and when I looked, I saw Tyentso’s ghost standing there. Tears streamed down her face, the same look of dull shock there as when she had taken her life.

“Tyentso—” I reached out a hand, and was surprised when my fingers passed right through her arm, leaving a glowing trail where the two images intersected.

I’d forgotten she didn’t exist in the same world as me. Well, not as a living person.

She flinched regardless, shook her head, and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “So let’s begin then.”

I blinked. She couldn’t mean to go through with the lesson on magic, could she? “Ty, this is exactly what I didn’t want to happen. You know, your body hasn’t been dead for long. Is there some way we can fix it? Restore you to life? Could I heal you if you guided me?”

She laughed, bitter and hard. “You could heal the body but then what? Return my soul without Thaena’s permission? It wouldn’t be life, Scamp. I’d be some horrible parody of it, while my lower soul drained away to nothing.^* What’s done is done. I damn well knew the risks.”

I swallowed. “What she said about you . . .?”

Tyentso raised an eyebrow. “Are you asking me if I’m innocent?”

“Just tell me you had a good reason.”

“I can’t do that, Scamp. Every fucking thing she said about me was true. I’m a terrible person. I’ve done all those things and more. But you know what? I knew this was going to be a one-way trip from the start. I’m just so angry at myself for thinking that she might forgive me.” She shook her head. “That’s never been my luck.”

“I can’t—” I struggled to find the words. “You can’t be that bad.”

She scoffed. “You’re so adorably naïve. I was younger than you when I orchestrated my first murder. I was never caught.”

“So? I tried to get someone killed a couple years ago. Unlike you, I just sucked at it. And I would have gleefully killed Darzin if I thought I could get away with it. And I’ve done worse. People I love are dead because of me.” I closed my eyes and choked back on a full confession.

“Oh goddess. Shut up.”

I opened my eyes again.

Tyentso glared at me. “This isn’t a fucking contest, you ass. I’m not going to drag out my sins to see who’s graded higher on the awful-person test. It doesn’t matter anyway. You think Mother Death is going to leave one of her special prophecy brats to rot in the Afterlife? Not likely. Me? I’m disposable. You aren’t.” She didn’t make it sound like a compliment, but were I in her shoes I wouldn’t be happy about the situation either.

I opened my mouth to protest, but paused. I could have tried to explain to Tyentso what the Goddess of Luck had said to me about that very fact. However, I didn’t think Tyentso would graciously accept me having visions sent from one of the Eight Immortals as proof that I wasn’t special. Tyentso had sacrificed a lot for me—far more than anyone should give—and she had every right to be more than a little upset about the outcome.

“If you want me to leave,” I said, “I understand.”

She was in the middle of a sigh when some idea occurred to her, and her eyes narrowed. “You can see me.”

“Uh, yes?”

“Is that your doing or Thaena’s?” Tyentso’s tone was full of fierce curiosity.

“I was trying to see beyond the Second Veil—”

“Mortals can’t do that,” she snapped.

“Then I guess it was Thaena’s doing.”

She pursed her lips, nodding, and then held out her arm. “Take my hand.”

“I can’t—”

“Take my hand!” she insisted.

I reached for her, knowing as I did my fingers would slide right through hers.

Instead, her fingers vanished when they touched mine, as if dissolving into acid.

Then the world went dark.

Literally dark, and not because I was blinded or unconscious. Tyentso was gone, and I was instead in a dark cave that looked like Khaemezra’s room but with all the furnishings removed. The basalt walls had been replaced by something softer. Roots grew through the ceiling and up through the floor, and the air was thick with the smell of humus and rot. A more ambiguous quality coated everything, a sense of decay and disintegration reminding me of tombs and corpses left long undisturbed.

I tried to move forward to look outside, but found I couldn’t move at all.

“Easy now, Scamp.” I heard Tyentso’s voice even though I didn’t see her. “What are you seeing?”

“Where are you?” I asked her. “What are you doing? Stop it.”

My hand moved without my orders then, fingers turning back and forth in front of my eyes. It was as if I’d never seen my own hand before and wanted a better look. I hadn’t thought to move my hand, hadn’t wanted to move my hand.

I realized where Tyentso was: she was inside me, controlling me.

“Everything’s going to be fine. Don’t worry.”

“No. I need you to stop this. Stop it please. Stop.”

Everything that I had feared would happen if the Old Man dug his claws into me was happening now. Right now. It didn’t matter that Tyentso was a friend, and that I had asked for her help. I had known she was going to do this, but somehow just hadn’t realized what possession would mean or how it would feel to be thoroughly under someone else’s control. Unable to physically protest, my very soul rebelled hard against the idea. I couldn’t run. There was no way to move, no way to hide from this. I was trapped.

I panicked.

You wouldn’t have known it to look at me, of course. I couldn’t even widen my eyes, but inside, I was screaming. A giant sense of revulsion and denial welled up inside me, even as I drowned, each metaphoric flail dragging me under a little bit more. The whole universe pressed down, and something inside me pressed back. There was a terrifying moment when I could feel not just myself but the sense of something other. Something far away and yet so close I felt its presence in the room, in my heart, under my skin, trapped and angry. Terrible. Hateful. Hungry.

Something inside me snapped.

And that quickly, I was no longer on Ynisthana.