Asunder (Incarnate) (22 page)

Meuric.

The reek of his putrid wounds heralded his appearance, all broken and seeping like he’d been before.

I staggered back. Sam caught me, arms tight around my waist.

“Is that
Meuric
?” His tone was incredulous, and the microphone dropped it all across the market field. People rushed like colliding waves, many away from Meuric’s decaying body, and even more toward because they couldn’t see the horror; they’d only heard Sam’s words.

Meuric did not move by his own power. Merton carried him, while Deborl made a show of assistance. Other Councilors rushed in, though I couldn’t guess their intentions. They wanted to help him? Keep people away?

“Where’s a medic?” Sam leaned toward the microphone. “Rin, we need you on the stairs.”

“Don’t bother.” Deborl shoved his way to the microphone. “Meuric isn’t going to live. His bones have been shattered. His eye was carved out. He’s been starving for months.”

“How is he still alive?” Councilor Frase scrambled up the steps, gaping at the mess on Meuric’s clothes and the way his body drooped. “Oh, Janan. Give mercy!” At the top of the steps, Frase bent over and threw up.

I gagged on the miasma of decay and vomit, backing toward the columns and piano like they could save me. Sam turned gray, trying vainly to hide my eyes, as though I hadn’t seen this before in the smothering quiet of the temple.

Screams crescendoed as Merton positioned Meuric’s fading body where everyone could see it. The crowd pushed around to the front of the steps, leaving tents and stalls untended. Shouts of disgust rang out.

Deborl spoke into the microphone and motioned at Meuric. “This is what the newsoul has done. She obtained a key to the temple, to
our
temple, and took Meuric inside, where she all but killed him. To mock Janan, she left him there, broken. I know such beliefs have fallen out of favor, but Meuric was once called Janan’s Hallow. And to leave him there in this state is one of the highest insults.”

The screams became cacophony, deafening. Sam grabbed my hand and tried to pull me toward the Councilhouse, but I felt like stone. I couldn’t look away from Meuric, and from Deborl, because he was
right
. I had left Meuric there. I’d stabbed him, kicked him into the pit, and then abandoned him. And even when I found him in the temple again, I did nothing.

“Ana!” Sam yanked me, and I stumbled into his chest. “Come on. We have to go.”

Go where? But I followed, glancing back to see Meuric crumple to the stage. His head lolled, and as Deborl raged
and the crowd surged, I caught one last look at Meuric: the black rot between his teeth when he grinned at me, and the awareness fading from his good eye as he finally died.

I ran with Sam, not sure there was anywhere safe to go, but it was better than watching this.

Sam reached for one of the glass doors, and just as it swung open, I saw the reflection of dozens of people pressing close behind me.

Someone grabbed my shoulders and ripped me away from Sam. I shouted and jerked my elbow behind me. Bone hit soft tissue—a stomach?—and I started back to Sam, but more people appeared.

Hands grabbed from every direction, taking my arms and shoulders and hair. They found Sam, too, and immediately I lost sight of him.

I struggled, but so many bodies created walls around me. I couldn’t get away as they push-dragged me somewhere I couldn’t see. Above everything, Deborl’s voice thundered.

“This is what newsouls do! This is what they will keep doing to us: killing us, destroying us, replacing us.”

The bodies blocking me moved aside, revealing me to the mob below. Tents had been thrown on their sides, tables knocked over. People pushed up the stairs, reaching.

I screamed for Sam, for Sarit or any of my friends. Where were Lidea and Geral with their newsouls? What would happen to them?

Someone kicked the backs of my legs and I dropped. Bone slammed on stone, and it felt like my knees shattered, but I could still move my toes. I blinked and breathed through dizziness.

“My friends,” Deborl cried, “we cannot accept newsouls. They will rip us apart. For her crimes, the newsoul will be punished.”

Cheering rose up. Someone shouted against it, but that voice was quickly silenced.

Fingers gouged into my skin, keeping me on the ground as Deborl approached. He leaned close, whispering into my ear. “You might have thought you could stop Janan. You can’t. Nothing can stop him. Meuric failed, but Janan has chosen a new Hallow. I will be the one who welcomes him when he ascends on Soul Night.” Deborl gripped my chin and yanked my face around. His eyes narrowed. “And you will be where you belong, trapped where you should have stayed before you were born.”

I tried to wrestle away from the people who held me, but they were too strong. Bruises formed under their fingers. I wanted to scream, to make some kind of response, but the noise and heat and rage overwhelmed me.

Deborl shoved me away as he stood. “Take her to the temple wall. I’ll put her with the others.”

My captors hauled me up, carrying me awkwardly so I couldn’t fight or flail. Every time I struggled, their grips got
tighter and my existence grew fuzzier.

People banged against me as Deborl’s friends carried me through the crowd. No matter how I fought, they kept hold, and nothing I did led to freedom. We left the worst of the crowd soon, and moved between tents. I saw cobblestones, shoes, and trash on the ground. Never my captors’ faces.

Until they slammed me against the temple wall, and then I looked up to see Wend. Lidea’s partner. Anid’s father.

I choked. “You?”

“I do love Lidea,” he said, “but the newsoul is not right. He’s not natural.” Wend backed away, but before I could think about running, I found the blue targeting lights on my chest. The others had laser pistols aimed at me.

“Why not?” I asked. “Other animals live and die and are never reborn.”

“We have souls,” Wend said.

One of the others chuckled. “Some of us, anyway.”

I wanted to be horrified at how Wend felt no attachment to Anid, that he didn’t care at all that Anid’s existence was partly his doing. But I remembered Li, and how she hated me, how she resented me because I represented everything that terrified her most: the unknown.

“We have Janan.” Deborl came around after us, drawing the silver temple key from his pocket. “Janan gives us every life.”

“What about phoenixes?” I couldn’t stop staring at the
key as he pressed the symbols I’d only guessed at.

“Janan is only for humans. For souls.” Deborl sneered and nodded at Wend. “Get her.”

Wend grabbed my arm as a door misted into existence on the temple. Did they all know about the temple? Was that how Wend knew what symbols Cris and I had been talking about? And how they knew what to take from Sam’s house?

Deborl dragged open the door, and reality hit me. They were going to throw me in.

I struggled, squirming away just long enough for someone to shoot the cobblestone in front of me. Stone sizzled as Wend grabbed me back.

“I’d like to break your bones and gouge your eye before putting you in there.” Deborl shoved me into the doorway; I stood half in and half out of the temple. “That way you can feel the pain you put Meuric through. Unfortunately, I only have time for this, but it will do.”

He reached back, and Merton slapped a laser pistol into his hand. To shoot me? To burn me just enough so I suffered forever inside the temple? I didn’t have a key this time. There’d be no way out.

I searched for a path between the men. Deborl, Wend, Merton, and strangers were too thick. There was nowhere to go.

The targeting light flashed on my shoulder.

Wend lurched forward and shoved me.

Just as gray veiled the outside, I saw Deborl turn and shoot Wend. For saving me the pain of being injured inside the temple?

Wend’s body crumpled.

I fell backward into the temple.

I TUMBLED INTO the white chamber, all painful glow of everywhere-light and the deafening throb of Janan’s heartbeat. I skidded to a stop in the middle of the floor, clutching my head and groaning.

“Ana?” The heavy air smothered the deep voice. The human voice.

I looked up to find Cris and Stef sitting together on the far side of the chamber. Their clothes were ripped, and scrapes crisscrossed their hands and faces.

“Oh. I’ve been trying to find you two.” I struggled to stay upright. “For days.”

“Days?” Cris climbed to his feet and started toward me. “What do you mean?”

“You’ve been missing.” I took a deep breath and tried not to think about where I was, but souls began to whisper and cry. The truth was impossible to forget. It was all around me: the incredible nothing that should have swallowed me, too.

“Not days, though. Deborl and some of his friends grabbed me,” Stef said, following Cris, “but that was just this morning.”

I shook my head, but decided not to burden her with the truth just yet.

“Do you have your SED?” Without my permission, she dug into my pocket.

“It doesn’t work here,” I warned, and checked to see where we were. Not that it made a difference. Most places in the temple looked alike, all big white chambers and archways. Whispers and murmurs rippled, souls cried. There were no words for how much I didn’t want to be here.

“How do you know?” Stef tapped the SED screen like it’d do magic.

Cris offered me a hand up. “I could have sworn they shoved us into the temple, but there’s no door.”

“This is the temple. Sorry. I’ve been here before.” I bit my lip. “This is my third time.”

They both stared at me, confusion bright. “How is that possible?” Cris asked.

The weeping and unsilence surrounded me, heavier and thicker for no reason except that we were trapped without
the key. It would be impossible to tell how long we’d been in here, or what was going on outside. The everywhere-light glowed with ever-unwavering determination.

“Meuric had a device. Right before Templedark, he tricked me into coming here, then followed with the intention of leaving me locked in so I wouldn’t cause trouble. I took the key from him.” And then trapped him in here, caught between life and death. Now he was out, finally dead on the steps of the Councilhouse.

Stef raised her eyebrows. “And you’ve been coming and going since?
Why
?”

“Not because I like it here. I need to learn what Janan’s trying to hide. I came here before because I thought I could find answers.” I almost wished for ignorance again; it had hurt less than the truth. “Now I have even more questions.”

“Oh.” Stef shifted and handed back my SED. “Well, feel free to start explaining things to me any minute. Even the questions.”

“Okay.” I stuffed my SED into my pocket, wishing I’d brought my knife instead. It was at home, since my dress had only one small pocket, but if I’d known I was going to get shoved into the temple again… “Have you been exploring?” As much as I hated moving around the temple without the key, especially when I wasn’t sure if they’d throw Sam in after us, it would give me the illusion of doing something.

“A little,” Cris said. “But it’s empty.”

They clearly hadn’t reached the spherical room, or the sideways-gravity room. Lucky them. “Stay close, then.” We headed toward the nearest archway, and I began telling them the truth about Templedark, my disappearance since then, and the books I was trying to translate.

I told them what Janan was doing to newsouls.

“No,” Stef whispered. “Surely no.”

Cris’s eyes widened with horror. “Why? How? How could that possibly be?”

“Meuric told me,” I said. “He might have lied, but I don’t think so.” Even as I said it, cries grew louder, thicker on the smothering air until they were like black smoke clinging to our clothes and skin. Cris and Stef said nothing, just looked like they wanted to be sick.

It was painful, watching them react to the truth about newsouls. I changed the subject. “I found the guesses you left in your house, Cris. For the symbols.”

Cris looked up. “You were in my house?”

“We couldn’t find you outside and it was snowing. None of your plants were covered, so we were worried.”

“Ah.” He glanced nowhere, as though he could see his frost-coated roses. “I was studying the symbols again when someone knocked. I tucked the paper under the tray, and then Deborl, Merton, and a bunch of others took me.”

“Why would he take you?” I stepped off a narrow stairway, onto a floor that looked like white water. It held my weight. For now.

“I don’t know.” He eyed the floor like it might change its mind about being solid. “Well, Deborl did ask about books and symbols. He said he wanted to know what I knew, which wasn’t anything, since you didn’t give me details.” The last part sounded a little accusing, but I forgave him because it was my fault he’d been kidnapped.

“He asked me the same questions,” said Stef. “But I
really
didn’t know anything, because you didn’t give me even a hint.” That definitely sounded accusing, but I forgave her because she was right and it was my fault she’d been kidnapped, too.

Deborl must have assumed Sam and I had told her because they were best friends. If Sarit hadn’t left for Purple Rose Cottage, would they have taken her, too? And I couldn’t stop wondering what they were doing with Sam right now.

I found an archway out of the water-floor room quickly, before I lost control of my stomach. Stef looked green, too.

The souls around us continued weeping.

“I didn’t remember the symbols from anything in Range like you thought I might.” Cris’s voice was low as we entered a long hall, white everywhere; I dragged my fingers along one wall to make sure I didn’t walk into it. “The symbols came from writing I’d seen in the far south, in jungles. I was collecting samples of plants for medicine and experiments,
and found giant ruins. A white wall…” His voice grew soft and faraway.

I’d been right the day of my gardening lesson: the wall
had
been white, like the wall Sam found in the north.

“I climbed to the top of one of the tallest pieces to get a good view. It was hard to make out with trees and vines and creatures everywhere, but it looked like the wall had once been a ring, like the one around Heart, but there was no evidence of a city inside. Only a razed building in the center, with enough rubble it might have been as big as our temple.”

“The ruins looked like a circle with a dot in the middle?”

Cris nodded.

That was the symbol Meuric had said meant Heart or city, but there’d been no city in the jungle. There’d have been
some
kind of evidence otherwise, even if the jungle had mostly overgrown it. “And the symbols?”

“They were etched into the stone, though erosion made them difficult to see. When I left, it was so hard to remember.”

Meuric had said no one wrote the books, that they were simply written. But the language seemed to be from the jungle, where phoenixes lived and burned and died and lived again. So what were the books doing here?

Cris focused again, confusion magic evaporating. “Did my guesses help? It was a long time ago.”

“Yes, definitely.” I wished I’d actually been able to study them, now that I’d acquired a few translations. “You helped a
lot. I hadn’t realized I’d been looking at some of the symbols sideways.”

He offered a warm smile. “I’m glad you trusted me enough to ask.”

Stef shot me a dark look, a vivid contrast to the white all around. I wanted to say something comforting to her, but I didn’t know what. We were stuck here together, me and two people who loved Sam, and the object of our affections on the outside. Maybe hurt or imprisoned. Who knew what else Deborl had told everyone?

The truth was bad enough.

The hall ended in a black archway. I hesitated, uncertain about this one, though I couldn’t tell why. It was the same as all the other black archways, midnight on white.

“That’s easier to look at, at least.” Cris rubbed his eyes.

“The crying stopped.” Stef glanced at me. “Are we going through?”

She was asking me? Perhaps I’d inadvertently given them the idea I knew my way around. “Yeah, I suppose. Keep watch for anything that might help us escape.”

There wouldn’t be anything. The key was gone. Nothing would help us escape, but they needed the comfort.

We walked through the archway.

The circular chamber beyond was not like the rest of the temple. Here, the walls glowed red, and inky shadows lurked beneath skeletons chained in tarnished silver shackles.
Thousands of skeletons. Maybe a million.

A wide pit waited in the center, large enough for a piano to fall through. Like a spider straddling the hole, a white table stood above it. One body, perfectly preserved, rested on the table with a knife thrust into his chest. His own hands held it in.

Stef’s voice dropped low and heavy. “What is this?”

“I’ve never seen it before.” I couldn’t move. Everywhere there were skeletons, yellow bones clean of flesh and fabric. They sat on tiers around the room, heads lolled to the sides, bound hands on their laps or the stone beside them.

I’d never seen so much death before, not even in graveyards Sam had shown me. Those had been peaceful, all iron and stonework, flowers and vines. They were bodies kept in mausoleums and caskets where they belonged.

“This one is different,” Stef called from across the pit and the man on the stone table.

I stared at the table man as I rounded the pit, not too close. He was short and thick, with bushy brown hair on his head and face. His jaw jutted forward as though he’d died focusing on something important. Mostly, he looked
strong
, like he could wrestle a troll and win.

“Ana.” Cris touched my shoulder. Where Stef crouched, another skeleton slumped in its shackles, but away from the rest. It lay prostrate in the middle of the floor, arms outstretched as though bowing to the man on the table.

“That’s not the weirdest part.” Stef stepped away from the shackled one to reveal a second, which appeared to have been cast aside. Limbs flailed, bones barely held together by worn ligaments. It looked like if anyone touched it, the skeleton would collapse into a pile of dust.

I gazed along the walls, along the ranks of gaping eye sockets and lower jaws hanging precariously. “There.” I pointed to an empty spot. Silver shackles sat unlocked on the white stone. “Someone put that one over here.”

What Deborl had said about replacing Meuric—

“What’s a Hallow?” The question was out before I realized I’d spoken. Deborl actually
had
replaced Meuric. Physically.

“That’s a word I haven’t heard in a long time.” Stef cocked her head. “Meuric claimed the title in the beginning, saying he had a special connection to Janan, but he didn’t seem to do anything, really. He eventually stopped talking about it.”

I fiddled with my scarf, the cool length of silk only a pale comfort. “Meuric was the first Hallow,” I said, gazing at the skeletons on the floor. “Whatever he was supposed to do, he failed when I trapped him in here. Deborl replaced him.”

Cris stood next to me, towering. “But why? What does it matter?”

“Meuric and Deborl both said something about Janan rising. Ascending.”

“That sounds familiar,” Stef muttered. “Ascending.”

I waited, but she didn’t elaborate. “Meuric was convinced that if he had the key, he would survive Soul Night.”

“That’s in three months.” Cris shook his head. “But we have a Soul Night every fifteen years. We all survive it. What makes this one different?”

Time? Whatever Janan was working toward, was five thousand years long enough? Meuric had been convinced it was happening soon, even before the temple turned him crazy. “If surviving Soul Night requires the key, and the Hallow gets the key, that would certainly be motivation to do whatever Janan wants.”

“And what does Janan want?” Cris asked. “Rising? Ascending?”

Not rising like a phoenix, Meuric had said. Something else. Something sinister.

I pointed at the two on the floor. “Those two are Meuric and Deborl.” I swept my arms around the room. “And the rest of these are you. All of you. Sam, Sarit, Orrin, Whit, Armande, Sine—everyone.”

Cris and Stef gasped.

“What happened here?” It was probably mean of me to ask, since they couldn’t remember. Janan didn’t
want
them to remember, or know about the other white walls and towers around the world, or consider certain paradoxes enough to know they were ridiculous.

He did something to them every time they were reincarnated, but maybe now that they were inside the temple, memories would return.

Stef focused inward, a line carved between her eyes. “Janan was our leader. He used to be a man. A human.”

I glanced at the body on the table. “Him?”

“Him,” she repeated. “He wasn’t even anything special. He was our leader, but he was just a human.”

How incredible, all this because of one man.

Stef’s jaw muscles clenched, and her knuckles turned white with strain. “Every time I think I have it, it slips away.”

“It’s all right.” I laid my hand on her shoulder. “Just tell me whenever you know something. I won’t forget.”

Sometimes, being new had its advantages.

“You said he was your leader. Just a man.” I spoke as much for their benefit as my own. Maybe it would spark more memories. “Had you discovered Heart yet?”

“No.” Cris frowned. “And we weren’t in tribes across Range like I thought. We were all together. All of us except for Janan. We were going to him.”

“The story I was told was this: no one agrees how you got here, but you lived in different tribes. Then you all discovered Heart and fought over it until you realized it was big enough for everyone. That was the first time you came together, all million of you.”

“Yes, that’s right.” Cris shook his head. “But that’s
not
right. That’s not what happened. Janan was our leader, but he’d been wrongly imprisoned. Everyone came to free him. The city appeared later. After…after we did something.”