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He helped me down to lie on my back, then retreated from the circle. I closed my eyes and waited for the shit to start.
The next thing I knew, someone called my name and a hand squeezed my shoulder.
“Mzatal?” I blinked awake to see the lord crouched beside me, his forehead covered in a sheen of sweat. “It’s done?”
“Yes. The link has been cleared.”
I squinted at him as I sat up, my eyes feeling oversensitive to the light. “You okay? I can’t believe I fell asleep.”
He gave a quick nod. “With a triple pygah set above you, you would have found it challenging to stay awake, and I needed the stillness of your mind.”
“Well, it worked,” I said as I watched Idris clear the last of a support diagram that hadn’t been there when the ritual started. “It was hard?”
His mouth curved in a faint smile. “Rhyzkahl does not relinquish his treasures easily.”
“I bet he doesn’t.” I met his eyes. “Thanks.”
“You are welcome.” He stood and held his hand out to me. “I searched for anything else that had been integrated using rakkuhr and found nothing.”
I pushed aside the thought of Mzatal digging through my head before it could weird me out. It had to be done. As I straightened my clothes, I found myself looking down at the deactivated glyph in the center of the floor. I frowned. There’d been a pair in the center of Rhyzkahl’s ritual. One had been Rhyzkahl’s mark, and the other one naggingly familiar though I couldn’t place it.
I nodded toward the glyph. “Is that your mark?”
He crouched and passed his hand over the glyph, igniting it to a soft blue glow. “Yes, with a few variations for this specific ritual.” He traced around a section with his finger. “Here is the core of it.”
“So any ritual you do has your mark in it?”
He looked up at me and nodded. “Yes, the qaztahl’s mark is the hub of any ritual in the demon realm.”
“In…in his ritual, his mark was there along with another. I didn’t realize it then, but it had to have been a qaztahl’s mark as well. Probably Jesral’s, right?”
“Yes, Jesral’s mark was there,” he said. He stood slowly, eyes on mine. “What troubles you?”
“It looked so familiar.” I pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to place it. “I didn’t have time to think about it then though, y’know? But I’ve seen it before. On Earth.” I struggled to remember. “Shit.”
“Pygah,” Mzatal said, reminding me to use my resources. “That you’ve seen Jesral’s mark on Earth is significant.”
I called the pygah and breathed, but the connection still eluded me. “Damn it,” I said, knowing I needed to remember. “Can you, um, help?”
He smiled a bit, probably amused that I asked him to do something I’d so strenuously resisted before. “Yes. A simple prompt, nothing more.”
A second later, I knew. I could hear the water drip in the shower, smell the soap, feel the humidity of steam. “Tattoo,” I said. “On one of Katashi’s senior students. Tsuneo.” A smooth-faced Japanese man a few years younger than me who’d been studying with Katashi for five or six years. I didn’t know much more about him. Katashi didn’t have more than a few students with him at any time, and his more senior students tended to live and practice elsewhere, only coming to Katashi’s mansion for summonings. “It was down by his hip where no one would normally see it,” I continued, “but I walked in on him in the bathroom. It was small, but I know it was the same.”
Mzatal went still, only the muscle in his jaw shifting as he ground his teeth.
“Why would one of Katashi’s students have a tat of Jesral’s mark?” I asked, not liking any of the answers I came up with.
Mzatal remained silent for another moment, and when he spoke, power boiled behind the words. “Only if Jesral has influence in Katashi’s enclave.”
Everything about that was disturbing. Jesral with a foothold in Mzatal’s Earth presence held implications beyond my puny knowledge, but I knew enough to label it a Really Bad Thing. “I guess it’s too much to hope that Tsuneo simply found it in a book and thought it would make a cool tat?”
Mzatal took my hand in a firm grip and strode toward the doors. We passed through the antechamber, crossed the corridor and exited onto the balcony.
He breathed deeply and closed his eyes as he released my hand, undoubtedly calling up the pygah. “A chance that he came upon it by accident? Yes,” he said, then he shook his head. “Likely? No.”
I leaned on the rail and rubbed at my temples. “Shit gets more and more fun,” I said with a sigh. “So when do you start training me? I think I’m going to need it, and soon.”
He stood beside me, looking out to the sea and sky. “You need everything I can teach you, all that you can absorb,” he said, voice still brimming with power. “Meet me at the column at midday wearing clothing suitable for working out.”
