But I had no other choice but to try. Lives had already been lost to get me this far.
I was exotically different from the others climbing toward the chapel; that fact became immediately apparent as those nearby cast me a wide variety of glances--admiring, suspicious, scandalized, worried, oddly worshipful. I returned none of them, concentrating on my own journey. Still, I was aware that with my pale skin and hair, my bright eyes, and my aggressive leathers, I was a cat among the walking-shorts-and-tee-shirt-wearing pigeons as the sun began to crest the horizon.
I did not look like either a tourist or a pilgrim.
I looked like trouble.
A priest was taking the air outside the chapel doors, smiling and shaking hands with those entering; he faltered when he saw me, but quickly recovered. He was a man of middle age, neat and trim, only a slight softening of his jawline and a slight drooping of his eyes to disclose that he might be older than he seemed. He radiated energy and a kind of satisfaction that I supposed doubled for purity. I neither liked nor disliked him, but I suspect he disliked me, immediately and without reservation.
He recognized an eldritch spirit when he saw one. No surprise, given the overlapping of sacred ground here; he must have seen the Djinn often, even if he didn't fully comprehend what he was encountering. He gave me a slight nod, but didn't offer his hand.
I didn't deeply care.
Inside, the chapel rose up to a dizzying height, walls angling in. It was a warm, glowing color that was not quite gold, not quite orange, but something between, with a sheen like living skin. It was a small room dominated by the massive window at the far end that looked out on the majestic vista of the canyon it overlooked. As I studied the view, an eagle glided by in silent grace, wheeled, and began a descent toward its prey. All around me, tourists milled, the penitent prayed, but all were hushed and still in the presence of what felt . . . more than human.
Because it was.
Seated at the far end of a pew near the back was the Oracle. Human eyes skipped over her, but mine focused, and as I watched, she opened her eyes--of no color my mind would recognize--and stared directly at me. No expression on her lovely, still face. Like her Warden mother Joanne Baldwin, the Earth Oracle had a beautiful form, but where Joanne's was animated by a humor and a kind of ruthless determination, Imara was . . . illuminated. She had a kind of peace to her that had its roots in the rocks beneath us, the very spirit of the Earth.
Imara's long, dark hair fell soft and straight around her shoulders, framing her pale face, and she wore a shifting red dress--robe?--that never quite fell into a final shape. It was as if the Oracle dressed in deep red sand, fine as silk, that whispered around her in a constantly moving curtain.
She extended one graceful pale hand and patted the wooden pew next to her.
For a long moment I didn't move, and then, reluctantly, I made my way to the pew and took a seat a bit farther than she had indicated. I bowed my head toward the power in this place. The Djinn understand God in ways that humans do not, but we are not connected to Him by the same strands; all things interweave, but we are the warp, not the weft, of the cloth. Imara, in her role as the Oracle, might have a deeper understanding. She was a nexus at which things crossed. Perhaps she sensed and saw things here I could not.
"Cassiel," Imara said. She sounded relaxed and a bit amused. "Don't be so worried. I won't bite your head off."
Imara had grown much more assured in her role since last I'd seen her. She had, I think, struggled with the complexities of channeling such power, standing in such an awesomely important spot. Now, unexpectedly--and quite different from what Rashid had led me to expect--she treated me almost as a human.
Almost as her mother would, and had.
"Oracle," I said. Around us, the mortals in the room pursued their own blinkered interests. No one seemed to note us at all, not even my sudden absence from their world after standing out so vividly in the crowd. "Thank you for seeing me."
"How could I not see you? You don't exactly blend in." That sounded very much like her mother--acidic, funny, yet somehow failing to offend. "I am glad you came to me. I'm sorry I wasn't able to help you as much last time, but things were . . . difficult for me." She started to continue, then stopped and shook her head. Sand shifted and moved on her robes, revealing tiny, pale strips of skin beneath. "Ashan is really angry at you, you know. Much more angry than anybody's ever seen him."
My mouth twisted involuntarily. "I'm aware."
"I'll bet. He's ordered all the Djinn he's got power over to avoid you, and ignore you if you find them. Losing Gallan hurt him. Badly."
I understood that, although I loathed it; Ashan had set me on this murderous path, and now he wouldn't even offer me help. But from his perspective, it was simple logic. I had involved Gallan, and Pearl had destroyed him. Ashan couldn't afford such losses.
"And what of David?" I asked, and risked a glance into those odd, changing eyes. The power in them was so intense that it seemed I was looking into the heart of a nuclear fire, where colors had no meaning anymore. "Can he help me? More to the point, will he?"
"Dad," Imara said, and sighed. She looked away, toward the windows, although I wasn't sure what she was truly seeing. "My father's in a difficult position, like you. I don't know if it's one he can hold for long; being a leader isn't--it's not in his nature. He prefers taking care of those close to him. And I'm not certain that some of the New Djinn truly feel they owe him loyalty. It's hard to know which of them he--or you--could trust."
"What about Rashid?" I asked. "Can I trust him?"
Imara's lips moved into a brief, dark smile. "He's as Djinn as you were," she said. "More than I ever was. He'll do as the Djinn do."
"So the answer is no."
"The answer is the same for any ally you consider. There is no such thing as unlimited trust. At some point, all beings with free will can, and will, betray you when you're no longer pursuing the same goals."
"That's not extremely helpful." I sounded petulant, I realized. I, who had been alive and a power on the Earth long before this Oracle had even existed as a possibility, was being schooled by this girl. An extraordinarily powerful girl, perhaps. One with awesome powers. But . . . still. "Pearl has a plan. She is using the children of Wardens to carry it out. I saw--" My voice faltered unexpectedly, and I forced it to continue. "I saw Isabel Rocha on the way here, to you. She--"
"I know," Imara said, very gently. Her hand touched mine, and it was warm and soothing. "I feel her. I feel them all."
"All the children?"
"All the people on this planet," she said, and now the smile was sad. "All those who live, suffer, feel joy, die. Choosing only one out of so many is almost impossible. I'm not that good yet. But I felt what you felt. I know how angry you are. How guilty you are."
She didn't tell me not to be angry, not to be guilty. Doubtless, even had she wished to, she knew it wouldn't at all matter.
"You came for something," Imara said then, and her tone had turned eerily like her mother's, like Joanne Baldwin's, with an edge of irony. "It wasn't just for the warm and fuzzies, Cassiel. Tell me." The human term seemed odd, coming from an Oracle, but I supposed that was understandable. Imara was a very odd choice for an Oracle.
I shook myself, trying to regain the focus, the purpose I'd had in coming here. There was something so distracting about her, about the subtle and seductive peace she radiated. About the feeling that here, in this place, I could lay down all my fears and guilt and burdens.
It was illusion. Two steps from her, I would feel it all again. If I didn't, there would be something wrong with me. The kind of peace that Imara represented here, in this place, was for Djinn.
Not for me. Not anymore.
"Rashid told me you have a list," I said. "A roster of human children born with latent powers--the ability to someday become Wardens."
She nodded slowly, but her expression had turned pensive and a little doubtful. "There is a record," she said. "But
it's not in a form you can use."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean--" Imara seemed to search for words, then turned on the pew to drape one arm on the back. Sand shivered and whispered into falls of drifting silky waves around her. "I mean it's written in the fabric of the world. I can see it. There is no written list as you would understand it."
"Can you make one?"
Imara blinked. I'd surprised an Oracle. That seemed--unusual. "I suppose," she said, and then frowned. "There are risks, you know."
"Risks?"
"Such a list has to be . . . amendable. Flexible. It must reflect reality, if I create it. It's not fixed, at a moment in time; it will change as circumstances change. And it will be subject to . . . interference. Do you understand?"
"It's real-time," I said. "Yes. I understand."
"No, you don't." Imara stopped, and closed her eyes a moment. When she opened them, she said, "You know the Book of the Ancestors?"
It was a codicil of all things Djinn; it was kept by the Oracles, rarely shown in its physical form. But copies had been made, illegal copies, and the consequences of that had been . . . difficult. Almost catastrophic. In the hands of those not meant to have it, works by the Oracles could easily be lethally dangerous.
I saw where she was going. "If you make the list, it will contain its own power."
"It remains linked," she said. "Directly to me. Through me, directly to the fabric of reality. I can't do it any other way. It's not as if I can grab a pen and scribble down the names; there are billions of people on the planet, and even if only a fraction of them are born gifted . . . it is not a static list."
"I understand." I took a deep breath. "How does Pearl know who these children are, if she doesn't have this list?"
"Pearl has become like me," Imara said. "Like an Oracle, although she is not one as we understand it. She is . . . damaged, but she has tapped into something else--a power that is alien to this world, but still a part of it. She is much, much more powerful than a Djinn. She has . . . access to things. We can't stop her. We can't block her without direct confrontation, and if we do, she will do to us what she did to Gallan. She could destroy the Oracles."
Pearl didn't need a list. She, like Imara, could sense children as their potential powers began to form. She could strike anywhere, anytime. And we had no way to predict her moves.
Imara met my eyes fully again. I shuddered.
"Ashan might be right. The only way to stop her may be to remove the foundation of her power. Remove humans from the world. Do you understand me? Remove humans, and the world will recover. Mourn, yes. Create more Djinn. Create more life to replace what was lost, as she has before. But if you remove the Djinn, if you remove the Oracles, you attack the heart and brain and blood of the Earth. You destroy her. And that is what Pearl intends. She intends to be the murderer of this entire world. This has very little to do with the Wardens. It has to do with you, and her, and Ashan. And the Djinn. And hate."
The intensity behind her words was frightening. Imara came from humanity--from a human mother. A Warden mother. And yet there was a dispassionate regret in her that meant she had, in some way, already accepted the loss of humankind as a species.
Even more than I had, with all my supposed detachment.
I sucked in a deep breath. "I won't allow that," I said. "I didn't before. I won't now. I will find a way to stop her."
"Yes, that would certainly be a good idea," Imara said. "But if you do, you must do it soon. If you don't, the Oracles will be forced to act in self-defense. The Earth herself will wake, and humanity will not survive what follows. Do you understand what I am saying to you?"
She was threatening the cataclysm that all Wardens had feared since they'd first begun to know the strength and power of nature around them--a deliberate, considered effort by the forces of the planet to kill the human race, root and branch. An extinction event. If I didn't do it . . . the Oracles were prepared to take that action.
I swallowed. "Will you give me the list?" I asked her. "If I can't find Pearl, I must try to protect the children she's abducting, and disrupt her plans that way. I need the list to do that. You have to give me a chance, Imara. Give us a chance. Please."
I got a quick, warm smile from her. "Us," she repeated, and laughed lightly. It transformed her into something so beautiful that I had to squeeze my eyes shut and fight back trembles of ecstasy. "Oh, Cass. Listen to you. How far you've come already." Her tone changed, went solemn. "And how far you have yet to go. You and I, we are alike in that. I've hardly set my feet on the path."
But the light faded out of her, leaving her silent and serious again, and I felt a shiver of true fear go through me as she stared into my eyes. "If I do this," she said, "I am giving you something that wasn't meant for human hands. Something that is too powerful even for a Djinn. You understand? Once it's out of my keeping, it represents a wild power loose in the Earth. Those kinds of things can destroy, Cassiel. Even with the best of intentions."
I swallowed. "It's the only way to find these children."
"Then you must be responsible for it," she said. "And be careful of it. Using it opens you to attack as well as me."
"Then how do I use it?"
"The list will give you names and locations," she said.
"Don't touch the surface of the scroll unless you must. That links you to the flow of events. Do you understand? Touching the words makes you vulnerable."
I nodded.
"And on your life, Cassiel, on your life, don't let anyone else have the list. Destroy it before that happens."
There was a rustle of sand, a sense of motion. I opened my eyes again, startled, and saw that she was gone from beside me on the pew. It had been a second, maybe less, and save for a few reddish grains of sand on the wood there was no sign she had ever been there.
Except that she now stood in front of the windows at the far end of the chapel. The tourists unconsciously moved away from her, heading back out all in a group. Not afraid, just . . . determined to be elsewhere, suddenly. In seconds, the chapel was empty of everyone but me and Imara, who spread her arms wide.
Sand spiraled out from her body in a thick red smoke, veiling and then revealing the pale, perfect skin beneath. Her long, dark hair flowed out on an invisible wind, and her face turned up toward the rising sun. The glow seemed to soak into her and then reflect from her skin, turning it from pale to golden to a bright, burning fire of energy.
The sand suddenly blew out in a puffball explosion, and I ducked as grit spattered against me. For a second Imara stood there, naked and glowing, and then she slowly folded down to her knees, clasped her hands together, and then moved them apart as if unrolling something.
And a scroll appeared between her hands, a long page of pure white, unspooling. I saw fine black script on it, and then it snapped shut in her left hand, and a case formed around it. There was an airless sense of pressure in the room suddenly, of some massive expenditure of power, and then, with the next breath, it was gone.
Imara knelt with the scroll pressed close to her body. She stayed frozen that way for a moment, then closed her blazing eyes, and the sand rushed in again from all corners of the church, spiraled around her, and settled into moving, shifting folds of silk.
It was as if the entire world took a breath, then.
Imara rose to her feet, but didn't come to me. I understood that I would have to come to her instead, and rose to walk those few feet down the aisle.
It seemed . . . harder than it should have been, as if I was moving through levels on the aetheric plane, although in my current shape I couldn't possibly have been doing so. Imara held the scroll out in both hands, and when I finally stood before her, I found myself going to one knee as I reached for it.
Ceremony. It was important to the Djinn, possibly even more important than it was to humans.
The warm weight of the scroll touched my palms, and I felt a flash of almost unbearable heat go through me, a wave of something
like a compulsion, but formless in its intensity. My fingers closed around the scroll's hard casing in a galvanic reaction, and I trembled.
Imara let go, and I heard her give a long, unsteady sigh. I looked up to see that she was staring down, eyes gone dim and almost human.
She touched my face with her fingers, a parting caress, and then . . . dissolved into dust, spiraling away.
Gone.
I was alone in the chapel.
I stayed on one knee, holding the scroll in my shaking hands, and then finally stood up. I opened the case and unrolled it, the first inch or so, and saw that there were dense lines of names written there, along with locations. I touched one. It glowed, and immediately, I understood how to find the child. It wasn't that I thought about this process; it simply was.
When I took my finger away, the glow died, and the knowledge left me.
She'd warned me, but the reality of it was stunning. This was more than just a list. It was a connection to a level of reality that even as a Djinn, I had never touched.
A shortcut to the world of the Oracles. I wondered, very seriously, if what I had just done was a good thing, or if I had just introduced something new and extremely risky to the balance of the world.
I turned to leave the chapel. At the back of the church stood the priest, trim and neat in his black jacket, pants, and clerical collar.
He looked at me as if I was something unholy.
Which, to be fair, I most likely was.
"Thank you," I said, and walked past him. "It's a blessed place."
He said nothing, but I had the distinct impression he felt it was more blessed in my absence.
Chapter 6
IMARA HADN'T STRESSED IT, but I clearly understood now that the scroll I carried was not merely the best intelligence we could hope for, but also the most dangerous. She had entrusted something to me that was far more precious than even the most valuable human treasure.
I wasn't sure that I could protect it alone.
As I raced along the highway on my newly inherited Harley, I used a steady trickle of power to veil me from prying eyes. It wouldn't be enough to stop a Djinn, but it would keep me hidden from any merely human agents Pearl chose to employ. I wasn't certain about her Warden child acolytes, however. Their powers didn't seem to be limited in the way I would have expected. It was entirely possible that they would be able to see and detect me, whatever measures I took to stop them.