The bastard angels had a terrible beauty to them, the grace of the Fallen Mother evident even in the forms twisted by their father’s corruption. Neither the great flying seraphim nor the silent soldiers who rode them had appeared in Y’Homa’s vision on the Day of Becoming, but these black-scaled angels were obviously of similar lineage to the swarming cherubs she had beheld when Diadem Gate became a flickering window to paradise. Yet even if she had glimpsed these beings during the ritual itself or the constant dreams that followed, it scarcely would have made their appearance less stupefying. How could the mortal mind prepare itself for the visage of the divine? Staring in awe at the seraph that delivered her to the beating heart of the Garden of the Star, she’d found herself at a loss as to how she might describe it in words or even thoughts; it simply was, in all its winged, tentacled glory.
When it had lifted her up from the prow of her ship and carried her through the air she had felt such ecstasy as her heart had never known, gazing down on her new kingdom and marveling at how it was at once familiar yet mysterious. Instead of mundane boats the ancient harbor of Alunah teemed with great barnacle-flanked leviathans that bobbed beside the white stone pylons, black-armored figures swarming the breached titans. Soon the old city fell behind them as Y’Homa’s angelic guardian delivered her inland, and she basked in her certitude as she relived the visions from Diadem Gate … up to a point.
Instead of taking her directly to the Allmother’s waiting brood of warrior angels who would cleanse the Star of sin, she was flown deep into the verdant mountains, directly into the dripping mouth of a cave. Any uncertainty she felt over this change in prophecy was quickly alleviated as she saw the same ivory-faced, ebon-shelled cherubs from her prophecy scuttling all along the walls of her new sanctum. Y’Homa was then delivered to a bath where unseen spirits divested her of her last mortal trappings, her mitre and scepter left in the pool as they cleansed her impure flesh and anointed her with pungent oils. It was thrilling. Finally she was gifted with gloves of gossamer and a ceremonial yoke from yet another of the Fallen Mother’s angelic children, and proceeded through the glistening tunnels to claim the throne from whence she would rule the Garden of the Star.
It was a longer walk than she would have anticipated, and the tightness of the coils upon her throat made it difficult to breathe the humid air, but these were mortal concerns, and she pushed them away … or tried to, anyway. She frankly hadn’t expected the houses of the holy to have such a powerful odor about them, or to be made of pulsing meat, so far as that went. She was no stranger to strangeness, being a living miracle herself, but with each step she and her silent escort took into this otherworldly realm Y’Homa felt her unease growing.
Which was the point, obviously. Obviously. She had been naïve to assume her final test was her arrival at the harbor, before she had even met her first angel. The Fallen Mother presented the Garden as such a nightmarish place to her heir so that Y’Homa could reaffirm her worthiness, striding proud and confident through these grotesque halls. She would not be afraid. She would not. This was her birthright, her destiny, and when she sat upon the Allmother’s throne she would see this place for the paradise it truly was … yes, of course! That was it! How foolish of her, to think any mortal eyes could behold the true majesty of heaven—the sinner sees naught but sin, wherever she turns her gaze, and being still trapped in the world of the flesh, flesh was all she could see. The filth of the Star was a veil occluding her eyes, a mask that must be scrubbed free … but the rituals of cleansing were obviously well under way.
Let the tests continue! Y’Homa walked straighter, smiling wider as she felt the cherub’s yoke scrape against her mortal neck. She had been born a sinner, like all her kind, but she had been chosen by the Fallen Mother to rise above her kind. She embodied the six sacred virtues, and every day from the time she could speak she had carried out the sixty-six devotions. And now her reward was at hand.
The Black Pope’s respectfully silent attendants delivered her at last to a vast cathedral. The angel baby who had woven her yoke and gloves flitted down from the roof to embrace Y’Homa’s naked back. She tried to find her breath as she surveyed what lay before her, the cherub wrapping its long legs around her bare breasts and ribs.
This place was no mere cathedral. Far out across the wondrous garden of shimmering fans there sprawled a glowing lake, and from this lake there rose a palace of bone and muscle. The top of the ziggurat was blurred by distance and the haze of vapors rising from the steaming floor of the majestic chamber, but Y’Homa knew from the Chain Canticles what must await her. It was written that the throne of the Allmother rose from a lake of fire, and lo, another prophecy was fulfilled. The Black Pope had come home.
Y’Homa only hesitated long enough for the cherub to finish getting comfortable on her back before she descended a stairway growing from the wall of the vast throne room. Eager though she was to assume her seat, she forced herself to keep a slow and stately pace as she followed a meandering path through this, the true Garden of the Star. The play of light from the living votive growths made Y’Homa feel like a happy babe again, delighted by the mobile of angels that hung over her crib.
Emerging from the forest of luminous flesh, she crossed a bridge of braided sinew that spanned the radiant lake. Huge cherubs scuttled along its spongy shores, and even greater angels churned through the thick yellow waters, but Y’Homa kept her gaze on the ziggurat before her. It rose like an island from the holy lake, and as she stepped from the end of the bridge to the bottom step of the towering edifice a glowing wave broke over her bare feet. It did not burn her. It could not burn her.
Y’Homa climbed the ziggurat, reverently keeping her eyes fixed on her own feet until she at last reached the top. Only when there were no more warm bone steps to climb did she look up from her saffron-stained feet and behold the throne room of the Allmother. And she gasped. Instead of a single throne, a semicircle of them jutted from the top of the ziggurat like the points of a crown.
Most of them were already occupied.
Jarring though it was, this was by no means the first discrepancy between Y’Homa’s expectations and the true nature of paradise. A lesser mortal might have felt uncertainty in the face of a ring of ancient figures occupying the sacred space set aside for her, or even fear at their sinister appearance.
Y’Homa was not a lesser mortal. She was the greatest human being who had ever lived. As she stepped forward to demand answers from this unexpected council, she felt only righteous wrath at her uncle for failing to accurately describe what awaited her upon Jex Toth. Crucifixion had been too good for the false pope.
She silently counted thirteen thrones, all but one with a wasted occupant sprawled ignobly in the baroque organic seats. It felt like a grotesque parody of the Holy See, these hideous individuals even less appealing than the twelve cardinals who had forever been advising and lying and wheedling for influence.
Between Y’Homa and the half moon of enthroned figures was something else unexpected, here in the heart of heaven—a Gate stretched across the top of the ziggurat. It was far smaller than any of those on the Star, no more than a dozen yards across, but a Gate nonetheless. Unlike those vast pits on the continent that hungrily sucked in anything and everything that passed above them, this miniature hellmouth was crisscrossed with thin bridges of gleaming white bone.
“I am Pope Y’Homa III, Mother of Midnight, Shepherdess of the Lost,” she announced when none of the figures acknowledged her arrival with more than an ugly stare. “I have returned home.”
An enormous fat man swaddled in a toga of shimmering white sequins nearly toppled out of his throne with laughter. None of the others reacted as the braying guffaws of their confederate echoed out across the expanse, the vein-mapped roof emitting a pale green glow. Y’Homa’s hands clenched into fists, any lingering uncertainty and the ensuing fear she might have felt at the unexpected aspect of this place banished as her heart swelled with hateful malice at this grotesque abomination who dared laugh at her, here at the end of her many ordeals.
“Silence!” she shouted at the thing, but to her dismay her voice sounded small and tinny in the great space, and the bloated man laughed all the harder. Another test. She must be virtuous, she must be proud as well as wroth. “Be still, oh interloper in my throne room, before I cast you out! Before I cast you all out!”
At this several of the gaunter figures began snickering as well, but then a long-haired woman in a sparkling ivory gown raised a bony palm and the rest quieted down. Then she slowly turned her hand, beckoning Y’Homa to approach. She took a step to walk around the edge of the Gate when the forgotten cherub on her back tightened its eight furry arms around her chest and queasy stomach, the yoke at her throat tugging her to the side … toward one of the bridges that spanned the Gate, bridges crafted of impossibly long and thick spinal columns.
The Black Pope did not balk for an instant, aborting her doubts before they could fully form. The bone ridges felt sharp and damp beneath her bare feet as she stepped onto the bridge, but it was sticky instead of slick, and wide enough for a woman of her small stature to walk without fear. She was almost halfway across when she noticed the design mapped out by the overlapping bridges, a white pentagram straddling the black Gate, and she took succor in the holy sigil.
When she looked back up she saw that five of the ancient figures had risen from their seats and were fanning out around the Gate, each taking a position at a point of the pentagram. None of the thrones they had vacated were the blazing chair Y’Homa had dreamed of occupying. Instead of divine flames, blinking eyes and winking orifices adorned the thrones that sprouted like toadstools from the meaty plateau. Frail was Y’Homa’s heart, fluttering all over again as her mind struggled harder than ever to incorporate this bizarre place and the obvious ceremony she found herself in the middle of with all her preexisting beliefs.
She must have faith. When Pope Shanatu had summoned her to Diadem she was but Jirella Martigore, a naïve girl who knew nothing of the numinous nor the true nature of the world, a fool who didn’t even know that anathemas were real or that the Star was in spiritual crisis. The ordeal she had undergone to sacrifice her former self and become the Black Pope had also been an overwhelming, horrifying ritual, and in the moment it had not seemed as if she could possibly survive it … Yet she had, because the Fallen Mother willed it, just as she willed this. The Fallen Mother had called Y’Homa—
“Home,” croaked the woman who had beckoned her forward, standing at the end of Y’Homa’s bridge, both hair and gown dancing with white light. Could this be … Her? And if so, why in the name of the faith was she speaking High Immaculate instead of Crimson? “You are home, yes … but who are you? What claim have you to our kingdom?”
“I am the Black Pope,” said Y’Homa, taking another step forward. Before she had been studiously keeping her eyes on the narrow path as she crossed but now she trusted in the Allmother, fixing her eyes on the ancient woman. “Ordained by the Fallen Mother to resurrect the Garden of the Star. To pilgrimage here and claim my throne, from whence I shall order the Angelic Brood to punish the iniquitous and call home the faithful.”
“You summoned us!” shrieked a lanky white thing wearing a red-and-gold collar, shaking a thick-ringed finger at Y’Homa as it leaped from its throne and stalked over to stand beside the white-gowned woman. “You made the sacrifice! You brought us back!”
“I did,” said Y’Homa, resisting the urge to take a bow. If anyone ought to be supplicating themselves it was these angelic servants of the Fallen Mother she had called back to the Star. “And now I have brought all the faithful children of the Burnished Chain here to accept our reward.”
There was a pause while the heavenly host exchanged curious looks and gestures, and then the old woman rasped out a question so unexpected Y’Homa almost fell off the bridge.
“What is a Burnished Chain?”
“The church,” said Y’Homa incredulously. “Her church.”
“Whooooose church?” squealed one of the others who stood around the Gate, this one dressed in membranous grey robes that made it look like a heathen Immaculate.
“Who are you creatures?” Y’Homa demanded, done with whatever riddle or test this was supposed to be. She resumed walking down the bridge to confront the white-haired woman and her gem-collared confederate, her head held higher than ever. “Are you a council of archangels sent to aid in my reign, or devils intent on thwarting it? If you be true children of the Allmother, you shall welcome me properly, now. And if you be agents of the Deceiver, prepare for divine retribution.”
At this the fat one’s laughter returned, louder than ever, and even the old woman smiled sadly … but the figure beside her was not smiling. It strode past the woman in white, advancing onto Y’Homa’s narrow bridge and blocking her path. Its antique costume of black beads shimmered like the Gate beneath their feet. It held its ring-crowded left hand up beside its face, murmuring to itself and clicking the jewelry together as it reached out for her with the naked fingers of its right.
She recoiled, and her foot slipped despite the sticky coating on the bridge of bone. Y’Homa lost her balance, and in that moment when the terror of falling into the Gate overwhelmed her conviction the creature seized her wrist, and revelations blasted her mind.
The Ritual.
The Vex Assembly of Old Jex Toth, witch priests convening atop a pyramid of white stone beneath the naked heavens, the stars overhead flowing into a maelstrom as they carried out their rites. One by one, they sacrificed each other to the First Dark … only for each to rise in turn. The living rendered deathless, the mortal made divine. The ascension of thirteen who would save the Star from itself.
The Betrayal.
A sacrifice so great its ripples were seen across the Star, the yellow sun turned black, the blue sky turned yellow, the howling winds lashing across Jex Toth … and then, nothing. No, not nothing—the Sunken Kingdom had not fallen beneath the waves of the Haunted Sea, but somewhere far, far worse. It had sunk into the First Dark.
The Years Without Light.
The Hunger.
The Despair.
The Bargains.
And then, the Return.
“Yes, Jirella, you have come home … and so have we.” The hated use of her birth name jarred Y’Homa back to the present—ever since she’d assumed the Onyx Pulpit, the only one who had dared address her that way was her uncle … just before she had him crucified.
The voice that used it now was warm as mulled wine and syrupy as snowmead, nothing like the shrieks and rasps of the Vex Assembly who had welcomed her. Yet blinking the blood from her eyes, Y’Homa saw it was the same ring-fingered priest who addressed her. It had caught her hand in its own, holding her in place as she swayed back over the side of the bridge, over the center of the pentagram, over the Tothan Gate. Something had changed in its ancient features, and now that she could guess what, she desperately wanted to pull away … but to do so would be to tumble into the very place from whence it had emerged. “Do not despair, sweet child. In their quaint fashion your ancestors captured the essence of our worship, and we are not displeased.”
“She … She waits … Beyond the First Dark …” Y’Homa’s every breath was fire, powerful visions continuing to flash through her shuddering skull, aftershocks of the revelatory earthquake.
“And we shall call her home, just as you called us home,” said Y’Homa’s savior. “First we must anoint the sacrifice, to prepare it for the slaughter. Your fleet will carry out this sacred duty—you shall sail to the Star and warn your kind of our coming. You shall sow the terror and hatred that renders mortal flesh so sweet. You shall speak the ultimate truth you have always aspired to, and then we shall carry out our final work.”
“No.” Y’Homa couldn’t manage any other words, her heart beating so fast she knew it must surely burst. It was like some horrible nightmare, some trick of the Deceiver to deprive her of her reward. “No no no.”
The thing frowned, crinkling the leathery skin it had entered five centuries before … five centuries as the Star counted time, but so, so many more in the First Dark, waiting to come home. “You summoned us, Your Grace, and now we shall grant your wish—to cleanse this vile world, to sacrifice the Star.”
“No … you mustn’t …” Y’Homa finally gulped out the words. “You mustn’t warn the world, mustn’t give the sinners time to prepare. Take them unawares, use the army I have brought you—”
“This world died the moment you brought us back.” It smiled at her, black eyes shining like the insects that swarmed all over its scrawny body in imitation of robe and raiment. “The more your kind struggles, the better you taste, and the more you know, the more you struggle. We have no need of your feeble fleet, your soft soldiers—we have been breeding our own legions, our own vessels. You shall go forth and testify to our coming, that will be enough.”
“Let me stay!” Y’Homa wailed, her heart breaking. “Exile the others, but let me stay! I am the Shepherdess of the Lost, Mother of Midnight, and this is my home! I made the sacrifice to summon you, I sacrificed everything, and I was promised a throne! I was promised eternity! I was promised!”
“We promised you nothing,” said the thing, though not unkindly.
“This is my destiny!” To come so close to the divine only to be rebuffed, banished back to her boats … it would not stand. It could not stand. In that moment Y’Homa felt her soul singing with all six of her sacred virtues in tandem, her greed and envy even stronger than her pride and wrath, hungering and lusting for what she knew awaited her, and she was no longer a teenage girl mewling for her reward—she was the most important mortal who had ever lived, demanding her due. “I summoned you, creature, and you are bound to give me what I came here for. Now.”
“Thy wish be done,” said the ancient devil of Jex Toth, and it released Y’Homa’s hand. She hadn’t even realized it was the only thing supporting her until she fell away from the bridge and into the Gate that lay at the heart of the Garden of the Star.