Black Bottle

While the Lua’groc groveled, Sena looked back at the dream-made shelf that held the stones that were not actually stones. They were, however, two pieces of something like corundum, darkened by blood and math, the remnants of what had fallen out of mystery and time. They were the seeds. They were true relics. They were eyes.

When they had streaked down like chance meteorites into Adummim’s molten mud, they had left their strange markings forever on the planet crust. These two stony things had formed the navels of world. One had fallen at Soth. The other had come down thousands of miles away in the Duchy of Stonehold at the edge of the Dunatis Sea.

These were the myths upon which other myths had been spun. Common sayings whose origins were unknown to those who used them had been founded on these objects. By the Eyes! Lost as the Eyes of Agath!

There were obscure love metaphors associated with them. Eyes make a navel. But people didn’t know, they didn’t realize that these ancient turns of phrase had sprung not from people, not from the notion of two lovers gazing into each other’s eyes and then making a baby—but something more literal.

These objects, once so full of math and power had produced not craters of destruction when they struck Adummim, but dual navels of something else—of life.

The Cabal had found them both, what was left of them, and brought them here as tokens of the time when their Masters would once again be free. This was the creation myth of the planet.

The bubbling, mewling sounds of the Lua’groc mixed with those of the bubbling floor. It was nearly dead. Rather than let it suffocate, Sena released it.

She watched its drooping branch-like gills begin to capture molecules again, the blood trickling just below the organs’ transparent, ice-like sheen.

She hated it, this vile temporary creature. She hated its mortality. The temptation rose inside her, dark and howling, to let her frustrations out. She imagined the violence her fingers could conceive, impromptu, adjusting as they traced like filet knives over the architecture of its bones. More aquatic than most, this hissing wretch should have needed water to breathe, but in the dreamt bubble of Yoloch, it seemed air was the same as sea. Sena had no interest in the details. She wasn’t breathing. But the Lua’groc was. And what it was breathing at the moment was her charity.

“Get up,” she said.

The Lua’groc obeyed. Its silvery-gold hand pushed off the glass-black floor.

“Tell the flawless to stop. Tell them to leave Taelin be.”

“Cannot.” The Lua’groc could barely speak, weakened from its strangulation.

“Tell them—”

“Dun demand. I not you messenger.” It nearly shrieked. “You the god we eat!”

She knew better than to talk—this was one of the Cabal’s woken preternarcomancers, freed from beds along the coastal shoals, no longer required to gaze into the future on the Cabal’s behalf … the future was already known. Speaking with it would only lead to circles of rage and despair. She picked her words carefully. “Then perhaps I will not go to Ulung.”

“You sure go—mah,” it burped quietly. “You go, I see in dream. You nid go. You wan go.” It extended a translucent fish-bone talon toward her face. “You go for revenge. I see in dream. You wan revenge. Cannot turn away. We wait tat final joy of bleeding wat you promise in our mouth. Onli wait now. So sleepy swim north in cold. You bring them south for us to eat!”

Sena felt her stomach turn. The preternarcomancer was right. She was bluffing. She would go to Ulung as planned and rid herself of her indignation once and for all. But that was for later. She had other things to tend to now.

“See me in your dreams, do you? Let me tell you what I see. I see the flawless, reaching high as they can, still unable to touch Taelin Rae. I see them fail. I see all of them fall.”

“Cannot fall. Hard die them—lah.”

The Lua’groc dream-priest giggled almost musically and turned away. Sena saw the lamp lob a mirage of light against its skin, a fragile iridescence like fresh paint splattered in the swarming darkness of the cyst. Above furtive lobster-like antennules, in a deep-socket surrounded by glistering silver flesh, the soulless black sheen of the preternarcomancer’s pupil glared at her: cold, lidless and cruel—hostility suspended in a jelly of blood.

For an instant Sena allowed herself to see it. Then the Lua’groc waddled deeper into the cyst and made a quiet soft-lipped splash.

“I could have killed you,” she whispered. But it was gone, down into the luminous depths.

She looked at the two broken gemstones, the two “eyes” and picked one of them up. She hefted it within her hand. It had been hollowed out, gutted by extremely clever math. It was not a gemstone. Not really. The thing it once contained had long gone free.

Or, according to the Pplarians, the being that had made them, had failed. According to the Pplarians, there had never been anything inside. Only the power and the math carven on the surfaces of the gems had made it to Adummim, which apparently had been enough.

But what was supposed to have been inside, had never made the trip, had never made it through. The Eyes had always been empty. According to the Pplarians, the legend of the Sslia was a dark story with a bitter end and the Eyes of Agath were just empty bottles, useless as Nathaniel had written that they would be.

It was all true and yet she had needed to come here, to see for herself.

“Two plus baggage,” she said as she held the broken orb up before her eye—like a sundered walnut in the late part of the year. But its cosmic black shell harbored a mercurial reflectivity. Sena could feel its antiquity against the ridges of her skin.

Despite its overall smoothness, her fingertips detected flaws, bubbled and pitted—minute craters here and there randomly, as if it had sustained countless impacts from sugar-sized grit, which instead of penetrating the object’s extraordinary thickness, had turned its surface molten. The orbs had been created to carry and protect. They were chambers. The chambers within the Chamber.

Duana would have laughed.

Sena hurled the Eye at the floor. It was her will, rather than the strength of her arm that shattered it into glittering dust.

She was bitterly glad she had come. Her cheeks were sticky but the angry warmth had left. She composed herself. She got ready to leave. Naen’s golden lights threatened, trembled, stirred behind her. But leaving this place would not bring Sena any peace.

On the outside, Nathaniel would be waiting. He would attack her the moment she emerged, besiege her with questions and attempt to discern what she had learned.

Sena prepared herself for his assault, the horrible sensation of his touch, his whispers in her brain. She would be ready for him. She would do what she was best at. Her most well-honed talent.

She would lie.

CHAPTER

22

“We can’t find her,” said Alani. His white goatee followed the corners of his mouth down; the whole beard became an exaggerated frown.

Caliph knew his spymaster was right to be irritated. His job was to keep Caliph safe, which Caliph had made harder by getting entangled in Sandren. But Alani’s job was also to flex to the High King’s decisions. And in this light, Caliph wasn’t going to apologize.

But now Caliph sensed it was his turn to capitulate.

“I suppose we don’t have a choice but to head down without her,” Caliph said. They had already waited a full hour.

Alani looked relieved. “She’ll be fine.” His hand remained hanging from his belt while he panned his fingers. “We’re leaving half of them here. We’ll be back.”