Asunder

“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?”