That was a useless line of thought. Stumped as I was, it couldn’t hurt to focus on literal locations, places surrounded by dark emptiness—
I smacked my forehead. Duh! I’d been in a place surrounded by dark emptiness twice already. A dimensional pocket. Mzatal had created pockets to safely store the three essence blades. It made total sense that he would also hide the gimkrah in one.
My exultation was short-lived. How was I supposed to find that particular pocket? After Szerain hid his essence blade, Mzatal and I spent a whole month preparing a ritual to locate it. I didn’t have the skill or the time for that.
Except I was looking for Mzatal’s dimensional hidey-hole. I’d successfully tracked Szerain to his stronghold with only a trace of its arcane scent, and I had an even better chance of connecting with Mzatal’s signature since it was a part of me. I could use his nexus as a starting point for the search. As much as I dreaded a trek down—and back up—the bazillion cliff steps, it was my next logical move.
Movement caught my eye as the ilius scaled the column in a fluid motion that was little more than flashes of color in camouflaging smoke. At the top, it turned my way and stretched itself tall and straight, reminiscent of a meerkat. A greeting posture. I waved and suppressed the urge to holler at it to be careful so close to that horrible darkness.
Darkness.
Deep in the heart of darkness. Deep in the void-core of the column?
I did a fist pump and ran downstairs.
• • •
Turek, Michael, and Giovanni went to round up Janice, while Pellini and I exited and made our way around the palace.
“You’re sure about this?” Pellini asked as we followed the path along the ravine’s lip, away from the cliff and sea.
I winced. “I can’t be positive the column is the key to finding the gimkrah, but it fits the clue, and it fits Mzatal.”
His dark eyes narrowed. “You don’t know what you’re getting into.”
“I’m not getting into anything,” I retorted then took a deep breath. “If I’m right, I should be able to sense the gimkrah from up there. I won’t do anything stupid.”
“Not on purpose,” Pellini grumbled. “But you getting sucked into a soul-hungry void could put a hitch in our plans.”
Scowling, I stuffed my fists into my pockets then had to unstuff them to clamber over a boulder. “We need the gimkrah.”
“Yeah, I guess,” he muttered.
“What’s gotten into you?” I shot him a disparaging look. “If you don’t want to back me up, don’t.”
“It’s not that,” he snapped.
We hiked up the hill to the base of the column in silence. At the top, I turned to him and folded my arms. “What is it then?”
He looked away. “I have a bad feeling.”
“Can you elaborate?”
“Not with anything substantial.” He pulled out a camo bandana and mopped his face. “Sorry, Kara. I know we need the gimkrah. I just can’t shake this feeling of a crap storm on the horizon.”
I exhaled. “Fair enough. I’m the last person to dismiss a bad feeling as bullshit. All I can do is promise to be quick and doubly careful.” I offered him a reassuring smile. “Trust me. I don’t want to be up there any longer than necessary.”
“I’ll be here,” he said, folding his arms over his broad chest.
I ran my hands over the basalt of the column, murmured to it. In answer, the stone flowed and morphed, creating narrow stairs that wound up around the thirty-foot column. As I climbed, I kept my eyes on the steps ahead of me. The last time I’d made this ascent, falling was my only worry. This time I knew what awaited me at the top, and a misstep seemed a minor concern.
But knowing what to expect meant I could prepare, and by the time I reached the top I had four pyghahs drifting around my head like a glowing special effects crown of chill-out. Calm and cool. That was me.
I eased off the steps and onto the foot and a half wide circle of stone that surrounded the void hole. The blackness pulled at me with invisible fingers that promised eternal un-life in death. Breath shuddering, I added a fifth pygah sigil to the others. Better. Somewhat. At least I could concentrate without imagining the Icy Claw of Doom reaching for me out of the depths.
Faint traces of arcane flickered around the edge of the hole—not that I was even sure it was a hole. Not a bit of light penetrated, which made it appear less like a shadowy well and more like a two-dimensional circle of unrelieved black. I knelt to get a better look, absurdly pleased that I did so by choice rather than because my legs buckled in fear—like the last time I was up here. Thousands of teensy sigils no larger than sugar ants formed a barely detectable band around the perimeter. Mzatal’s work, and I marveled that he could create so many so small. I peered closer then straightened. Pellini was right. It’s stupid for me to risk myself up here. We should go home.
No. I caught myself before I stood. Aversion wards, and seriously powerful ones at that. Fortunately, as with all of Mzatal’s wards, they were attuned to me. Yet even so, they emitted a muted aversion—the cumulative effect of their sheer numbers, I suspected.
Interesting. This was clearly Mzatal’s next layer of protection in case anyone got past the initial fear of the void itself. I sat back on my heels, daring to hope. With a security system this meticulous, he had to be protecting something, and that something just might be the gimkrah.
Now to tap into the core and see what I could find. I pushed down the incessant gnaw of the aversions and focused on the center of the darkness, visualizing and feeling everything I could remember of Lannist’s dimensional pocket. A whisper of familiarity brushed my senses. Encouraged, I closed my eyes and recalled the description of the gimkrah, creating my best-guess vision of it in my mind’s eye. First, a ball of crystal. Then pulsing red at its center. So far so good. I had a nice, clear image. The last part was to form a cage around it with bands of pinkish metal. How many bands though?
Eleven, I thought on wild impulse. The lords’ magic number. I mentally added eleven bands to my structure.
I startled as the image snapped into 3D crystal clarity. The red deepened to a maroon shot with flickers of crimson lightning. Unfamiliar runes marked the bands like etchings made with ink born of the void. Okay, I had my gimkrah. Concentrating, I called in the feel of a dimensional pocket around it. A bubble of golden light in utter darkness.
The gimkrah hovered in that bubble, so real I felt sure I could reach out and simply take it. Was it possible I’d somehow called it to me? I didn’t want to open my eyes and break whatever mojo I had going. I tried reaching for it, but it lay inches beyond my fingertips. I stretched farther. Just a little more, and . . . I’d . . . have it.
My eyes flew open as I tipped forward. I scrabbled at the lip of the hole, but it might as well have been greased ice. Before I could draw breath to cry out, the darkness swallowed me.
• • •
Nothingness. No sense of my body. No sense of falling.
Silence.
Every thought an eternity.
Shit.
• • •
Voices whisper. Thousands upon thousands. A few that I recognize surface in the sea of murmurs.
“Zharkat.” Mzatal.
“This is not as it should be. What is happening?” Elinor.
“There must be another way.” Rhyzkahl.
“You wouldn’t do it unless you were confident of success.” Jill.
“Kara! Get your shoes on. Time to go!” My mom.
“Believe that you’re already there.” Pellini.
“Sweetling, pay attention.” Tessa.
Somewhere in my nothingness, I remember anger.
I’m not your sweetling! I’m not—
I remember myself.
I am. I am here. I am Kara Gillian.
And I had no
intention of becoming the late Kara Gillian.
Pay attention. I opened my non-physical senses and reminded myself what it felt like to have a body, to breathe, to see. Reminded myself of the feel of stone beneath me.
The stone of the column. I’d been on top reaching for the gimkrah and lost my balance . . .
Realization slammed home. The vision of the gimkrah had lured me closer—and straight into a trap. Like the opposite of an aversion ward. Mzatal’s third layer of protection? But it had been so powerful, as if intended for me rather than attuned to me. Whatever it was, I had no intention of waiting around to die like a mouse on a glue board. Screw that.
I believed I was on solid ground, and stone chilled my palms and knees. I am here. My breath hissed through clenched teeth. Shadows flickered. Where there were shadows, there was light. I commanded the light to intensify, and it obeyed.
There was still blackness everywhere, but instead of the void’s nothingness, it was that of a dimly lit obsidian chamber no larger than my living room. A scattering of blue-white sigils twinkled on the high ceiling, giving an impression of the openness of a night sky. The only furnishing was a black glass pedestal topped by a matching basin. Mzatal’s signature frequency permeated everything, like a familiar and comforting scent.
“Well, aren’t you a clever girl.” Zack.
Except I knew it wasn’t Zack.
I scrambled to my feet and peered into the gloom for Xharbek. “Can’t you come up with your own persona?”
“Is this more to your liking?” A lanky man with short, nearly colorless hair appeared beside the basin. Carl the morgue tech.
“Not really,” I said. “But it might look better if you were a few billion miles from here. Let’s try it and see.”
He laughed—a disturbing sound, especially coming from the customarily dour Carl. “I wouldn’t want to miss the entertainment.” He passed his hand over the basin, and an image of the gimkrah appeared above it.
“You lured me into the trap,” I said.
“I only tweaked Mzatal’s wards. You were the one who reached.”
For the bait Xharbek had dangled, damn it. “Fine. Whatever. All my fault. Why the trap?”
He waved away the gimkrah hologram. “It seemed the easiest solution.”
“It must really burn your bacon that you have to resort to a namby-pamby void trap.” I made a tsking sound. “Here you are, a big bad demahnk, desperate to take me out of the game, but your demahnk constraints prevent you from acting directly unless you want to end up shredded into a billion sparkly bits.”
He rewarded me with delicate applause. “Bravissima. Molto bene.”
“So instead you whisper poison, influence people, and let them do your dirty work for you.” I gave him a look of unreserved disgust. “And now, here we are. What’s your next move, hot shot?”
“A sincere offer of peace between us.”
Sincere, my ass. “Unless it involves Szerain, Zack, Ashava, and Sonny safe and sound and free, you’re wasting your breath.”
“They have chosen their path and will drag you down with them if you are naïve enough to allow it.”
“Ashava didn’t choose shit,” I said with heat. “She was born into this crap situation. And for the record, I’d rather go down whatever path Zack’s on than follow your twisted lead.”
“Ashava chooses her path even now.” He flicked his hand as if shooing a fly. “Lamentably, it is the path to her destruction rather than to the salvation of all.”
“You’re trying to tell me that if Ashava was with you, everything would be A-okay?” I asked, incredulous. “Good thing I don’t believe anything that comes out of your lying mouth. Remember, I know all about your underhanded ways.” I held up my index finger. “You posed as a morgue tech and weaseled your way into my life and Tessa’s bed. You—”
“Is this offense worse than Zakaar posing as a human, seducing your dearest friend, and getting a child upon her?”
“It wasn’t like that,” I snarled, though I couldn’t deny that the same worry had crossed my mind more than once. I lowered my index finger and lifted the middle. “You groomed a syraza to take over as Isumo Katashi to influence summoners and spread your diseased agenda on Earth. Did you kill the real Katashi?”
“I did not.” He leaned toward me. “A tragic outcome too often follows an attempt to summon beyond one’s skill and knowledge.”
“I wonder who gave him the idea he could do it.”
“Not I,” he said, amusement in his eyes.
Sick bastard. Had the real Katashi—Mzatal’s sworn summoner—proved to be an obstacle in Xharbek’s plans? Dread settled in my chest. Xharbek knew I was here for the gimkrah, which most likely meant he knew of my intention to summon an imperator. An imperator who could remove me from the game with a tragic outcome—while putting Elinor’s essence in his hands to give him the ultimate weaponized summoner. Devious. “You used your puppet Katashi to set an arcane bomb and lay the groundwork for the Mraztur to . . .”
I dropped my hand, silent for a moment as puzzle pieces rearranged themselves. This asshole had been playing hardball for a long time. When I’d asked the Piggly Wiggly Jontari reyza what the lords wanted, he’d said fuck the lords and ask Xharbek. Rhyzkahl had been surprised by the amount of rakkuhr that flooded Earth, and when he denied alliance with the Jontari, I hadn’t believed him. But I was starting to change my mind.
“No,” I said softly, “it’s you behind all of it. You aren’t helping the Mraztur along with their plans. They’re just as much your tools as fake-Katashi, blind to it because you feed their own interests. Nice and indirect. What I don’t get is why.”
His lips formed an infuriatingly enigmatic smile. “For the game to be won, it is best the pawns not know the designs of the king.”
“Seriously? King? That’s the lamest super-villain goal ever.”
Xharbek’s expression hardened. “You understand nothing of my goals, but it matters not.” He waved his hand over the basin. Above it, an image appeared of a half dozen reyza flying over a rift in a city street. “Too much is in motion for you to stop what is coming to pass. The Jontari have their own agenda.”
“Aided and abetted by a deceptive shithole of a demahnk with his own agenda.”
“Go home,” he said, expression compassionate but eyes dead and flat. “Help Earth adjust.”
“That’s your idea of peace? Go belly up to the enemy and accept invasion?” I snorted. “For all your posing, you don’t know jack shit about humans.”
He regarded me as if I was an insect that needed crushing. “Take what you came for, Kara Gillian, but tread softly. Yours is a fool’s errand.”
“Bite me.” My tactical gear made mooning him impossible, so I settled for a two-handed crotch grab followed by a double bird-flip.
He swept the basin from the pedestal to shatter on the floor and was gone.
“Loser,” I yelled into the empty air. Wonderful. Now I was stuck in a black box. So much for going home.
Shards of glass from the basin crunched under my boots as I explored the perimeter of the chamber. Eleven sides, each faintly reflecting my image like a dark mirror. No obvious doors, but since Mzatal obviously frequented this place, there had to be a way out.
I placed my palm against the nearest wall, and Mzatal’s resonance hummed through me. Around my fingers, the stone took on a golden glow that diffused across the surface, creating what seemed to be a shadowy window. To my delight, I could see the shimmer of a dimensional pocket through it. Empty, but this was progress. Encouraged, I moved to the next section and repeated the process with the same result. The third wall revealed yet another pocket, but this one wasn’t empty. In what appeared to be a luxurious bedchamber, a woman dressed in voluminous sea green silk stood in the middle of a single shikvihr ring. Silver-white hair flowed unbound around her line
d face as she traced and dispelled the beginning sigil of the second ring over and over. Practicing. Rasha Hassan Jalal al-Khouri, the elderly summoner who’d chosen to work with Mzatal. When I’d last seen her, her hands were crippled by arthritis, but now they swooped with grace as she finished the sigil and, finally appearing satisfied, continued to the second sigil. Mzatal must have tucked her into this pocket to keep her safe while he was away on Earth. A skilled summoner left unprotected in the demon realm was a treasure an enemy lord might dare attempt to steal. Apparently, this chamber was Mzatal’s surveillance room where he could check in on his various pockets.
Though I felt as if I could step right into Rasha’s pocket if I wanted, I pulled my hand away. My time was short. Plus I didn’t want to risk disturbing the protections.
My pulse leaped as the view into the next pocket crystallized. Resting on a three-foot high podium was the gimkrah, exactly as it had appeared in Xharbek’s trap vision. On the floor lay manacles large enough to fit around my waist along with a heap of chain with massive links, all forged of the same pinkish arcane-dampening metal that banded the gimkrah. Makkas. Goosebumps swept over my skin. Those were chains for a huge demon. But why?
I pushed aside the disconcerting questions and focused on my goal: Get the gimkrah, Get out, Get home. Only one problem: I was fairly certain I could enter, but what about exiting? The last thing I wanted was to trap myself in a dimensional pocket. Mzatal was able to pass in and out at will, but he was a lord, and I was me.
His resonance whispered through me, and I steadied. We were as one, with everything attuned to me. If I had the ability to enter the pocket unaided, I’d have the ability to exit. Besides, I was too close to the gimkrah to wimp out now.