Incarnate

light.

There was only me.

Sam hadn’t said much about the temple. That it was empty, yes, and that there were words on the outside, which Deborl had deciphered. They spoke of an entity named Janan, who’d given everyone souls and an eternity of lifetimes, maybe even built Heart to protect them from dragons and sylph and the like. They were to worship Janan, though they didn’t know how, and he never appeared to claim what they owed.

“Janan?” I left a mitten where the door had been, then rested my hand over Sam’s knife as I sidled along the wall, careful not to touch the stone more than necessary.

After ten steps, I glanced at my mitten for reassurance — not that it mattered if the door never reappeared — but the mitten was gone, too.

Ugh. In the unlikely event I escaped, my hand would be cold.

I focused on that so I wouldn’t think about where it might have gone. What might have taken it. Nor did I want to think about Sam, or dragons, or what would happen if he was killed.

An archway appeared ahead, almost invisible with the white walls and even light.

If I’d thought it might work, I’d have tried to lay a trail so I could come back this way, but when I checked, my mitten was still gone. Anyway, considering how the door had vanished, I didn’t trust the archway to stay where I left it.

The dragon thunder, which had been growing louder outside, was nonexistent in here. The walls blocked the noise completely, but I wished I could hear what was going on. I kept imagining Sam trapped in prison while dragons rampaged through Heart.

Last time they’d come through, they went straight for the temple, which I was now inside. If I didn’t get out and dragons breached the wall—

I gave up on stealth and threw myself through the archway, tripped, and landed on my hands and knees, top side higher than my butt.

Stairs.

Because there were no shadows, I hadn’t seen the stairs. My eyes ached from the constant white, from trying to discern definition when everything looked the same distance.

With more caution, I groped until I figured out the height and depth of the steps as they descended before me.

Odd. I’d tripped as though the stairs went up. If they went down, then I’d have fallen to the bottom and broken my neck. Nevertheless, they felt as though they went down. I slid my hands over the stone, trying desperately to ignore the temple’s heartbeat.

I stood again, but when I tried to slide my foot down, my toe hit stone. Adrenaline still made my head fuzzy, but I forced myself to crouch and feel again. They definitely went down when I slid my hands over the stone, but as soon as I tried to descend, I bumped into them as though they headed up.

Lying stairs.

Fine. I went up, and my eyes gave up trying to adjust to the everywhere-light and lack of shadows.

The stairs seemed endless, and the opposite effect remained disorienting. I felt as though I climbed, but every time my gaze fell on my feet, it looked like I should be descending. My thighs burned with exertion. Definitely up.

Twice, I stopped to rest and breathe, and to fight the sensation of walls simultaneously near and far. When I reached, there was nothing to either side of me. It was difficult to tell how wide the stairs were. I could crouch and extend one leg all the way without running out of floor, and do the same on the other side, but I’d also been able to feel the stairs going down, so I didn’t trust anything.

I should have stayed back in the big chamber down — or up — stairs. I wouldn’t have known what to do there, but at least I wouldn’t have been so blind and confused, straining all my senses for a hint of anything else in this empty temple. What if I was trapped here forever? Alone?

Surely there was a way out.

At last I reached… somewhere. The floor leveled out, and the light was dimmer on one side of a long room, which made it easier to see, but didn’t cure my headache. And, even though I knew better, I checked on the stairs. They were gone. I doubted I could trust anything to stay where I’d left it.

Fifteen darkened archways led out of the new room, which was about the size of Sam’s parlor. Books sat on the floor at the opposite end. Dark leather covers, shiny as if freshly bound. I almost ran for them — a sign of something other than me and a lot of emptiness — but the last thing I wanted to do was meet an ugly death because I hadn’t exercised caution.

“Hello?” The air and walls smothered my whisper. What if there were others trapped in here, caught in the white nothingness?

I listened, but there was only the absence of sound.

Biting my lip, I inched across the room, making sure to test the floor before I trusted it to bear my weight. Or stay there. The stairway hadn’t dropped me, but it had probably thought about it.

The temple’s heartbeat continued. Steady. Drumming. I clutched my knife. It was useless here, but the smooth rosewood handle sent a ripple of comfort through me.

There were only a dozen or so books at the far end of the chamber, but they cast eye-friendly shadows. My headache retreated as my hand hesitated over the blood-red cover. No title. No indication of what was inside.

No dust, either.

Holding my breath, I laid my palm on the front and waited.

“Janan?” I whispered. “Are you there?”

No answer but the rhythmic heartbeat in the air.

My hands shook as I slid the book off the stack. It was thin, but had a good weight to it. Cloth paper, leather cover. The binding creaked when I opened it, but the stitches held. The faint scent of ink tickled my nose.

That had been another thing missing from the temple: odor.

I pressed the paper to my face and inhaled, stupidly grateful for something so simple I hadn’t noticed it was gone. Then, embarrassed even though no one was there, I cradled the book in one hand and flipped pages in search of writing. Answers.

Dashes of black spread across the papers, as though the writer had tapped his pen to make ink splatter everywhere, or a squirrel had gotten ink on his claws and used the paper to clean them. The markings weren’t left to right like the words I knew, or even music.

I tried another book. Same nonsense scribbles. No matter how many pages I flipped, the markings never made sense.

I’d felt this before, knowing that something should work, but unable to see how. I’d been ten years old. Li had taken one of Cris’s books and skimmed through it, hmm-ed like she understood the ink splatters, and repaired the septic system with ease now that she’d read how to do it.

After she’d gone to bed, I had sneaked into the library and opened the book she’d read, but it didn’t make sense. It was just ink on paper.

But then I’d placed the book on the table and squinted right, and suddenly saw the way everything made lines and spaces.

It had taken another year to figure out all the letters and words, but I’d known they must work somehow. I’d trusted that they did.

I needed the same kind of trust with these. Spending a year in here deciphering them was out of the question, but perhaps it would be wise to look for anything useful — like a map — before heading off through any of the archways leading from the room.

Before I could settle on the floor to sort through the books, the temple heartbeat paused. The temple gasped.

Murmurs snaked through the temple. That didn’t help the heaviness of the air or the general discomfort now that the heartbeat was back, but it was the first sound other than mine, and it sent shivers along my back.

When the whispers grew louder, I pulled off my backpack and tucked a few books in with my clothes; it was hard to say if I’d find this room again. Then I crept away, head cocked like that would help me figure out where the sounds came from. But, like the light, the whispers came from everywhere.

I wanted to call out and find out who was here. The words were out of my throat before I realized, but I