“It all began,” he said, “with her.”
“Gods damn it, what did I just say?”
Mahalar continued as though he had said nothing, either then or now. “It was all hers to begin with. This.” He stomped the earth with a foot. “This.” He tapped his own chest with a hand. “And we were whole back then. Jaga, Teji, Komga. . Gonwa, Owauku, and Shen. One land. One people. We lived under her. We breathed at her mercy. I was born here.”
“I gather most Shen were.”
“I was born here,” Mahalar replied, pointing to the earth beneath his feet. “Here, under her eyes, beneath her court. My very first vision upon opening my eyes was of this statue as my father was carving it.”
Lenk fixed him with a confused glare. “How old are you?”
“Would you consider ‘old as the song of heaven and the depth of hell’ to be cryptic?”
“I would.”
“Old as balls, then.”
“Ah.”
“I grew up under her gaze. I labored under her gaze. I watched my father and mother die under her gaze. All for her and her children.” He sighed a dusty sigh. “They were not so wretched then. They possessed fins, flowing green hair, pale skin. They were not called ‘demon’ back then.”
“What did you call them?”
“‘Master.’ On us, they built a place for themselves. She did anything for them: fed them whatever flesh they desired, provided them whatever amusement they wanted, tended to their every weeping wail. Her children flourished and those who suckled at her teats never wanted.
“And for this, for her love of her children that eclipsed everything else, she was punished. The Gods accused her of loving herself and her children more than her duty. The mortals she was sent to serve, she neglected and enslaved. For this, they twisted her.”
He fingered the pendant of the gauntlet clenching the arrows hanging around his neck.
“You did not flinch when I showed you this,” Mahalar said. “You know it.”
“I know enough to know what you’re telling me. The Gods cursed the Aeons for trying to usurp heaven, the war with the House of the Vanquishing Trinity put them to rest.”
“You know some, but not all. It was not heaven they tried to usurp, but heaven they tried to create. It was not the House that sent them to hell, but us.” His tone grew cold. “The war did not start until they came back.
“When the Gods struck back at Ulbecetonth and cursed her, we rose up. We drowned her children. We defiled her temples. We screeched and beat our chests and hailed freedom. Whether it was her love or their hate, no one knew. But her children came back. Vast and terrible and with souls as black as their skin. The House came to our aid. The House marched on Ulbecetonth. With their great moving statues, with their spears and banners and holy words. . and with you.”
Lenk cast a wary glance to make sure Kataria was still far away before turning back to the elder Shen.
“The war went poorly, at first. For as strong as we were, as hungry for freedom as we were, the war was still between the mortal and the immortal. We faltered. We failed. We died, in great numbers. Even when the Rhega stood alongside us, fought alongside us, there were more of us dead than they.
“But then, they came from god. Not one we knew, not one they would speak of. But their hair was that of the old men and women. Their eyes were cold and hateful. And they spoke with the voice of that god they came from. They could cut the demons. They could hurt the demons. They fought. They won. And with them, we cast Ulbecetonth and her children back into hell.
“Not without cost, of course. You’ve seen the bones. The worst of it happened on Teji and our brothers there suffered for it and became the Owauku. But even here, on Jaga, from which she reigned, we spilled blood. Much of it spilled into the chasm when the road was shattered. Much of it was spilled here beneath our feet.
“But it did end. She was driven back into that dark place the Gods made for her. The House appointed us her wardens. And we have guarded her ever since. Shalake and the others know only the story and the duty it carries. Only I know what happened. Only I remember how we nearly lost everything, if not for the House. . and for them.”
The word echoed against nothing.
“Who were they? The ones who came?” Lenk asked.
“We didn’t give them names. They didn’t give us any, either.”
“What happened to them?”
“Apparently,” Mahalar said, looking back to Lenk. “They came back.”
Lenk had been stared at many times. As a monster, as a curiosity, as something else entirely. But the way Mahalar stared at him now, eyes heavy with knowing, was the same stare one might use to appraise a weapon.
Lenk had never before felt the kind of shudder he felt now.
“Whatever you think I am,” he said, “whatever you think I can do, I can’t. I left it behind in the chasm with the bones.”
“Maybe.” Mahalar rolled his shoulders. “Maybe what I felt wasn’t you. Maybe it was someone wearing your skin, your soul. But my feet have never left Jaga in all the time I’ve been alive. I knew your presence when you set foot on my island, as I knew theirs. And I knew why you had come.”
“The tome.”
“To kill,” Mahalar said, “to end. Ulbecetonth is coming. I can feel it. You can, too. You were driven here. If you say it’s for the tome, that’s fine. It is a key to open a door. But you came here to kill what’s on the other side.”
“I came to stop her.”
“Many ways to do that.”
Lenk held his stare for a moment before turning away. “I. . maybe. Before things stopped making sense. . or started.”
“It seems a little hypocritical for you to start talking in riddles, yourself.”
“I’m entitled to sound a little insane,” Lenk snapped back. “I came here to kill her, but it wasn’t my idea. She was inside my head once. She sounded. . hurt, panicked, worried for her children. She let me go, telling me not to hurt them again and I. . I really didn’t want to.”
“But you’re here now.”
“Because something told me to come here.”
“Then clearly, it knew what it was talking about.”
“It told me to kill my-” He waved his hands about, frustrated. “We’re not going to argue this. I came here to kill her, but I stayed here for a different. . are you even listening to me?”
Mahalar was not. Mahalar was turning. Mahalar was moving, five feet away. Then ten feet. In the blink of each eye, he moved impossibly quick, impossibly slow, and growing farther all the while as he moved closer to a sudden bustle of movement at the staircase.
“This, for the record,” Lenk shouted after him, “counts as ‘cryptic.’”
Lenk came hurrying up to find the Shen assembling around the foot of the stairs once more, Mahalar seated upon the stone once more. He forced his way through a gap in their ranks, found Gariath and Kataria standing nearby, Shalake hovering protectively over the elder.
“And this is why I said ‘no cryptic gibberish,’” Lenk snarled. “Because somehow, it always ends up with me, rushing up to some smelly creature I’d rather not be around, demanding what the hell is supposed to happen now.”
“Now?”
Mahalar smiled broadly, dust seeping out through his teeth, amber eyes shining dully. He drew back his cloak and there it sat upon his knee, like a baby made of leather black as night, sitting smugly in Mahalar’s hands.
The book.
The Tome of the Undergates.
He remembered the book. He remembered paper smiles, paper eyes, dusty mutterings and writings that made sense only to him. He remembered reading it and hearing voices going quiet, replaced by voices that grew darker in his head.
But he didn’t remember this.
The tome upon Mahalar’s knee was the tome, to be certain. But it was just a tome. Something leather and paper. No smiles. No eyes. A book.
Perhaps he had left more in the chasm than he thought.