Asunder

27 SKELETONS

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.”

I motioned to the table. “Somehow he ended up there. And somehow you all ended up sitting around the room with chains connecting you. How?”

“I don’t remember,” Stef whispered. “I know Meuric bound us in the chains, then bound himself beside the altar and told Janan we were ready. I remember white and wind everywhere—and the very next thing is standing just outside the city wall. We all thought we’d just arrived, but no one knew why we’d come.” She gestured around the room. “Whatever happened in here, it tied us to him forever. It changed him, made him both less and more at the same time. It made us reincarnate.”

Unsilence thickened in the moments between her words, and all of us realized the answer to my biggest question.

I wasn’t going to be reincarnated.

Definitely not.

I hadn’t been here five thousand years ago. I didn’t have a skeleton chained to the walls.

When I died, I’d be gone. Gone, and no one would remember me but through pieces of music and the few notebooks I kept.

I wanted to sit, or speak, or breathe, but it seemed ice radiated from the blue rose in my hair, freezing first my thoughts, then every other piece of me. No matter what I did now—whether or not I escaped here, saved newsouls, and stopped Janan—when I died, that was it. No lifetimes with Sam. No helping to rebuild his instruments, no learning how to play them all, no writing music that sounded like snowfall.

My heart shattered, glass on stone.

Then Janan spoke.