It’s real.
There was a god, and Neri had killed it.
Ysira had barely made sense of it when something twitched beside Nabatar’s broken skull. Not quite a spider, not quite a scorpion, and larger than it had any right to be. If Ysira had not already been on her knees, she would have stumbled. Her insides turned watery.
The thing pulled itself across the blood-soaked dirt toward Casandra. Some of its many appendages seemed to be missing, others crisped and curled at its sides, but it moved with an air of single-minded determination. Frozen in wordless horror, Ysira could not look away.
Her passenger stirred again as it perceived the creature. Not in fear, but in recognition. This was a demon—a demon that had lived inside the body of a god.
As it shambled along, it visibly struggled. It waswounded.
With that realization, Ysira moved. She readied her knife in an underhand grip. She drove the blade down—and missed. The thing kept moving. She tried again. Again.Again.It did not retaliate, didn’t even appear to notice her efforts. Dread and revulsion rose like bile in her throat, greater with each failed attempt. She might as well have been trying to stab water, as though this creature were always just beyond her reach, not truly a part of this universe.
Whatever it was—demon, god, or both?—Neri alone could hurt it.
Ysira looked, to find him slumped over. His breath came slow and shallow. Unconscious again. Ysira could do nothing but watch as the creature reached Casandra. It paused before her ruined face. An awful noise escaped her.
Casandra might have tried to say “No.” The word turned to a gurgle as the demon forced itself inside her mouth. Its chitinous body advanced inch by inch.
If Ysira had the wherewithal to act, she’d have driven a blade through Casandra’s heart. She should have ended it. But she did nothing, in her terror, until the demon vanished and—mercifully—the girl lost consciousness.
Ysira shook so badly, it was a wonder she held on to her weapon. At some point, she’d put her arm in front of Neri, as if she might shield
him. She scrambled to her feet and prepared to lift him, carry him far away from this place.
“Ysira.”
At that rattling gasp, Ysira went rigid. She turned, slow with dread. All that remained of Casandra Semira’s left eye was a runny white mess leaking down the pitted, cratered mass of her cheek. But her right eye was open. Alert. It was fixed on Ysira, and the look therein did not belong to Casandra: a chilling, ancient stare, devoid of pain, devoid
of mercy, devoid of any feeling at all.
“You have something of ours,” said the thing that was not Casandra. It spoke with her voice, but with alien cadence and inflections. “We want it back.”
Ysira felt her lips move. Words failed her. She had heard that tone but a moment before—in Nabatar’s body.
“Bring the boy to us,” the thing went on. “Bring him to our Cathedral.
Your gods command it.”
It seemed too ludicrous to be true, andyet.The gods were demons. Or, rather, what Ysira had thought of asgodswere mere shells, puppeteered by the very things they professed to despise.
A half-hysterical laugh escaped her. There was power in blasphemy, at least—a wild, reckless rush that gave her the courage to say, “You don’t command me.”
“Our eyes are everywhere,” said Nabatar, tone unchanged. “You will not escape us.”
Ysira knew, then, that she could not bring Neri anywhere near Zivora. With both of Ged’s children dead, besides, the entire City Guard would be hunting her.
One option remained.
Valak,the god had called Ysira. A warrior-priest of the old Zal Empire, possessed by a demon of her own. She could only hope the rebels of the Shrouded City agreed.
Her gaze darted toward the kirikil and their precious cargo. Casandra’s haunted eye tracked the movement. A horrible smile warped the girl’s mouth. It shouldn’t have been possible, but—on damaged muscles, sinew exposed beneath blackened skin—Casandra lurched to her feet. Grasped the hilt of her sword. She slashed the kirikil’s throats, then the sacks full of water. Spilling out onto the rocks in a horrible deluge, it might as well have been Neri’s blood.
“You may run to the stars themselves. It will never be far enough.” The god spoke with Casandra Semira’s dying breath. The girl’s corpse collapsed, utterly spent. “We will find you.”
12
WITNESS
