“That sucks,” I said, angry and horrified on his behalf. Bad enough that he got ripped away from his Earth family, but then to lose his real ptarl-daddy, too? “If Rho was able to become a planetary-wide grove system, that means the demahnk could be anything. Are they Ekiri, too?”
“I’ve speculated as much, but don’t have confirmation.”
I frowned. “Though if so, why wouldn’t they still call themselves Ekiri? Maybe they’re Ekiri kids, like the lords are demahnk kids. Of course then y’gotta wonder who the Ekiri would have mated with to make the demahnk.”
“I don’t know,” Szerain said with a shrug. “The ones who called themselves Ekiri were different in form than the demahnk, for whatever that’s worth.”
Interesting. One of Lannist’s visions had shown me a willowy, dual-pupiled creature atop an Ekiri pavilion.
“But I am ninety-nine percent sure the Ekiri are the ones who bind the demahnk,” he added.
Ha! I was right. The enforcers were the Ekiri. “With the same constraints that destroyed Lannist,” I said sourly.
Szerain straightened. “Even as dissociated as Zakaar is from the demahnk, he felt Lannist scatter. What do you know of it?”
I gave him the CliffsNotes version of the events in Lannist’s dimensional pocket, including the warnings he’d offered about Trask and Ilana. Yet when I went into seeing the lords as children, Szerain started to get agitated. Though he was free of most of the demahnk manipulation, I had a feeling some lingered. “Speaking of parentage,” I said, deftly sliding into a parallel topic, “you’ve yet to answer my question about my lordy lineage.”
His agitation evaporated. “Huh. You’re right.” He gave me a bland look.
I glared.
“Fine, I’ll tell you,” he said, eyes sparkling. “But don’t blame the messenger. Your grandmother’s father was Jesral.”
“Ew.” I made a face. “Oh well. At least it wasn’t you, Rhyzkahl, or Mzatal. Though it’s really going to ruin Christmas when everyone finds out that Great Grandpappy tried to turn me into Rowan.” I angled my head. “Since we’re on the subject, who is Rowan? I mean, I was her for a few minutes, but I still don’t get it.”
“Not who. What.” He leaned forward to make an adjustment to a sigil. “During the years after the cataclysm when the ways were closed, I not only made repairs, but I also worked on creating a ‘potency robot’ to—”
I slapped my hands over my ears. “Dude, if you’re about to tell me that you made an arcane sex doll, I’ll take back my question.”
“You’re a filthy minded perv,” Szerain said, rolling his eyes heavenward. “I created it to mimic the potential I’d seen in Elinor—though the construct couldn’t match it. And while I could infuse a semblance of life, she was basically an arcane AI, with a body made up of minute, intricately entwined sigils tucked away in a dimensional pocket. She could be called up for interaction, but without a real person as an underlay, she couldn’t act.” He sighed and kneaded the back of his neck. “Rowan was an experiment, a creation I could learn from. She was never intended to be used.”
“But then you were exiled, and the Mraztur stole your never-to-be-used weapon.”
“Rude bastards,” he muttered.
“And they tried to make me the underlay, because I had Elinor’s essence and the right genetics,” I said.
Szerain tweaked the loop of a second sigil then sank back into the chair. “Rhyzkahl had no idea you carried it until that night he hijacked your portal to escape Peter Cerise’s summoning.”
“The night that changed everything,” I breathed. I’d been trying to summon a luhrek named Rysehl to aid in my investigation of a murder thought to be the Symbol Man’s work. But instead of a goat/dog/lion-looking creature, I got a breathtakingly beautiful but seriously pissed off demonic lord. “When he shredded my bindings like tissue paper, I thought I was a goner.” I snorted. “Then he looked deep into my eyes, and it suddenly turned into a seduction. Now I finally know why.”
Szerain fell silent for a moment. “I apologize for placing it on you without your consent,” he said, voice remote. “As I said before, it was supposed to be your grandmother. Gracie was ready and willing, and I had the firewall to give her control. However, Xharbek opposed the plan, and when I proved to be unmalleable, he found an alternate way to stop it.”
My breath caught. “Rhyzkahl.”
He nodded. “There was already deep friction between us. Rhyzkahl blamed me for Elinor’s death and felt I had no right to use her essence—without including him, that is.” A weary smile pulled up. “He felt I was getting too big for my britches with my sworn summoners, and despised my arrogance in planning to make a pseudo-Elinor via Gracie.”
“And all Xharbek had to do was dangle the bait for him,” I said.
“He swallowed it whole.” Szerain shook his head. “I was arrogant, which is why I didn’t see it coming. My focus was on Peter Cerise’s summoning, and I got blindsided. Rhyzkahl tried to get Vsuhl from me, but I managed—barely—to fend him off, keeping the blade and the essence it contained.”
“Which must have pissed him right the fuck off.” My leg jiggled with poorly suppressed excitement as the sequence of events became clear. “Except he saw a way to hurt you where it counted and took control of the summoning portal. Suddenly he’s in a room full of your summoners. Your precious sworn summoners. Time to die.”
“Precisely. Moreover, he sensed another of Elinor’s bloodline in the room.”
My eyes narrowed. “Tessa, who he left unharmed.”
“Rhyzkahl devised a plan to acquire Vsuhl, along with Elinor’s essence, then groom Tessa as a host who would be dedicated to him.”
“Essentially taking your game away so he could play it himself,” I said. “Xharbek must have liked that.”
Szerain grimaced. “Very much so. He’d have Elinor’s potential in a configuration he could completely control even though it would be years yet before Tessa came fully into her abilities.”
The rest crystallized. “Then I was born—with the bloodline and the genetic ability to be a summoner.”
Regret and guilt darkened his eyes. “I had to act quickly. When you were only a few hours old, with the help of Helori, I released the essence from the blade and attached it to you. You were too young for me to install the firewall, though. That couldn’t happen until you came into your own as a summoner, and the mental pathways were formed.”
My throat felt tight. “But by then, you were exiled.”
“Things started falling apart long before that.” He flung himself out of the chair and began to pace. “Not long after the bloody summoning, Katashi died, and Xharbek didn’t hesitate to replace him with a syraza doppelganger, to better control the new age of summoners. He then made absolutely sure that Tessa found her way to syraza-Katashi for training and, in due time, to the demon realm to be properly groomed as the Elinor-host by Rhyzkahl—after placing a temporary block in her memory so she wouldn’t realize he was the one who killed her mother.” His steps slowed. “But eventually Xharbek figured out that you held the essence. It delayed his plans by fifteen years or so, but he’s nothing if not adaptable. He shifted his attention to making absolutely sure you received training as a summoner so that he could eventually use you.”
My pulse grew unsteady. “That’s why my father was killed. Xharbek had fake-Katashi pave the way for me to end up in Tessa’s care so that I could be trained as a summoner. Had to get those mental pathways formed, right?”
For an instant Szerain looked as if he felt every one of his three thousand years. “I’m so sorry.”
“Except, Xharbek didn’t need a good summoner.” My words sounded thin to my ears. “Didn’t want a good summoner, ’cause that would be harder to control. That’s why I got only the most basic of training.”
“I intended to train you properly and to ov
erlay the code from Elinor’s journal as your firewall. You were thirteen when I started making surreptitious plans to bring you to the demon realm.” His hands tightened into fists. “Xharbek disagreed and attempted to tweak my thinking.”
The air seemed to thicken as his aura grew heavy. Out of instinct, I shrank back into the futon.
“I’d learned much during my time in the interdimensions making post-cataclysm repairs,” Szerain continued, “including how to covertly shield my mind with rakkuhr. I wouldn’t tolerate interference in my plans for you, and I pushed Xharbek out of my head, consequently revealing that I knew how to shield. My resistance drove him to assault me with greater and greater force until I finally lashed out with rakkuhr, bound him in ropes of it—and discovered it’s like kryptonite to the demahnk. It weakened him, but he redoubled his efforts to control my mind. I had no recourse but to add more rakkuhr and tighten it until he . . . stopped.”
He took a deep breath, and his aura retreated. “Long story short, I scattered his essence across the dimensions. His absence gave me the freedom to finally locate the control-focus in my mind. I ripped it out, effectively crippling myself while I struggled to assimilate all of the memories that flooded in.” He snorted. “Crappy timing, though. The demahnk council freaked when Xharbek went poof, and contained me. I refused to tell them why I was unreadable or how I scattered him, and so they gave me three choices: Open to them and be reconditioned.” A shudder went through him at the mere thought. “Go into submerged exile on Earth until Xharbek collected himself and returned. Or go into stasis—with zero awareness of the worlds, the flows, anything—until Xharbek gathered himself and returned.”
“Fucking hell,” I said. “You didn’t really have much of a choice, did you?”
“I didn’t think so at the time. But I also didn’t think I’d be submerged for fifteen years. Or that it would be so horrific.”
I was on my feet and had him in a hug before I realized it. His arms wrapped around me, holding me close.
“The public message to demons and lords was that I willfully attacked my ptarl,” he said after a moment, maintaining the embrace. “They declared the matter to never be spoken of, so great was the anathema.” He made a sour noise. “Mostly because they didn’t want speculation about any of it.”
A shiver went through me. “And Rhyzkahl—who was already pissed at you—did the submersion.”
“Rhyzkahl was furious that I still wouldn’t turn Vsuhl and Elinor’s essence over to him, when Tessa was ripe and available.” He breathed out a small laugh. “Xharbek hadn’t yet told him that you had the essence. And I felt no desire to rectify the error.”
“At least I know now why Katashi wouldn’t train me,” I said. “And Tessa happily screwed me over, too.”
Szerain pulled back and frowned. “You don’t know everything. There were a number of influences on Tessa, reasons why she limited your training—” He broke off and snapped his focus to the sigils. “Xharbek has made his move,” he murmured even as a sensation of wrongness flowed over me.
Chapter 43
“What did he do? And where?” I peered at the sigils as if I had a chance in hell of gleaning any sort of useful information.
“He cranked open the valve at ground zero. Not world-breaking, but enough to disrupt life as we know it if it continues unchecked.” Szerain’s gaze swept over the mass of sigils. His forehead creased. “There’s something else happening at ground zero, but I can’t identify it.”
“He’s trying to draw us out,” I said with a scowl. “He’s got something waiting for us there, a way to get rid of us while he stays nice and cozy within his fucking constraints.”
“I’m sure he does.” Szerain’s tone was mild, but I felt the anger that he held in check.
“Xharbek needs to be stopped,” I said, pissed and unafraid to show it. “He wants to step up his game? Then it’s time for us to take him out of the game completely, give him the equivalent of a career-ending knee injury. Scatter his ass again.”
He met my eyes. “I caught him by surprise last time. Now, he’ll expect it and will either retaliate with extreme prejudice or bolt.”
“All right, so you’ll need a distraction.” I clasped my hands together atop my head as if that could aid my thinking. “A big fucking distraction that’ll let you get rakkuhr on him before he can react.”
“Even so, rakkuhr alone won’t affect him quickly enough.” A smile spread across his face. “But you have all that makkas wire. We’ll twist three or four strands together to give it a bit more stability, and I’ll infuse it with rakkuhr. The rakkuhr-makkas will be the one-two punch to take him out, fast and hard.”
“Hang on,” I said, frowning. “How can you infuse makkas with rakkuhr? I thought the stuff blocked the arcane.”
“It blocks use of the arcane. Both by or upon the user. Not only can’t he tolerate rakkuhr, but infusing the makkas with it will turbocharge the arcane-blocking feature. Once the rakkuhr-makkas is on him, he won’t be able to attack or escape.”
“Once it’s on him,” I echoed, folding my arms over my chest. “So we’ll still need a distraction. Along with a way to lure him to us in the first place, but I think it’s best that we only focus on one impossible thing at a time.”
Szerain scraped a hand through his hair in annoyance. “Yes, yes, we still need a distraction. Problem is, he’ll see it coming. He can’t read me, but if I’m close enough to get rakkuhr on him, our ptarl bond will give him just enough awareness to know something’s hinky . . .” He trailed off, face paling. His throat worked as he swallowed.
“Szerain?” I touched his arm. “You okay? What’s going on?”
“I can break the bond,” he whispered then exhaled a shuddering breath. “I can break the bond,” he repeated with more force. “There’s our distraction.”
Whoa. I weighed my words before speaking. “All right. I’m all for you ditching Xharbek, but I need to play devil’s advocate here and remind you that Rhyzkahl was a puking wreck when Zakaar broke their bond.”
“Rhyzkahl had no way to prepare for it, had no idea what was coming. I will.” He seemed energized, as if finally seeing daylight after eons in the dark. “Plus, I’ll be in control of the breaking, which should make a difference.” He caught my dubious look and gave me a reassuring smile. “Worst case scenario, I’ll be a puking wreck. But so will Xharbek. And that’s when you’ll lasso him with the makkas.”
I turned the plan over in my head in search of holes or weak spots, but it appeared to be as sound as we could realistically expect. Szerain’s breaking the bond was the edge we’d been looking for.
“You won’t be alone this time, either,” I said. “Besides me, we’ll have Pellini and Idris, plus my squad and anyone else I can scare up.” A thought tickled at the edge of my mind—someone I needed to contact, but before I could tease it out into the open, my phone bleeped with Pellini’s you-need-to-read-this-now tone. “Crap.” The need-to-read-this-now texts were never fun. Why couldn’t pictures of fluffy kittens ever be marked urgent?
I angled the phone to let Szerain read the message, then skimmed through the pics. Weirdly deformed creatures. Flowers with claws for petals. Not a single fluffy kitten in the bunch.
Gut churning, I thumbed in a quick reply to Pellini.
“Dekkak sent Ilius to the pods here to somehow control the mutation,” I said. “But the stuff in those pics . . . What the hell is causing it?”
Szerain wheeled toward the sigils and began making alterations. “There’s nothing controlled about the changes at ground zero,” he said through closed teeth. “It’s what I felt earlier but coul
dn’t identify. Xharbek diverted the mutagen—a specialized rakkuhr—into the valve flow. Fuck!” He clenched his hands, but then he closed his eyes. A few heartbeats later his hands relaxed and the tension in his stance eased. He’d pygahed. Probably more than once.
He opened his eyes. “The dose makes the poison,” he said in a more reasonable tone. “A carefully targeted burst of nuclear radiation can kill cancer, but too much will cause all of your cells to die. Caffeine turns Kara into a functioning human being, but fifty cups of coffee would make her heart leap out of her chest.”
“But so worth it,” I said to lighten the godawful mood.
A smile touched Szerain’s mouth. “The plague victims were exposed to a cup or two of mutagen coffee—controlled and directed. Currently, everything at ground zero is getting doused with bathtubs full of the stuff.”
My humor vanished. “In other words, if we go to ground zero to close the valve, we risk getting horribly mutated.”
“Actually, no. Undirected, the mutagen has no effect on arcane users.”
I frowned at him. “But Marco Knight is sitting in a pod in my living room.”
“Podding results from demon-directed mutagen. Plus, Marco Knight isn’t an arcane user,” Szerain said then shrugged. “What he does is different.”
Ooh, I wanted to poke into that subject, but it would have to wait. “All right, it won’t affect summoners or Pellini, but it’ll work on everyone else.” I swore under my breath. “Which means no military backup.”
Szerain gave a tight nod. “He’s staying within the fucking constraints as he chips away at our support.”
“Wait a minute. That mutagen stuff is arcane, right?” I gave him a hopeful look. “What if we issue makkas wire bracelets to anyone who might be vulnerable.”