Adhrekh waved that away. “The khriim is here. You speak the tongue of the ancients. Tell me, what was his name?”
“His name? You mean Brother Kauron? Or Choron in your speech.”
Adhrekh lifted his head, and his eyes flashed with triumph. The other Sefry plucked the arrows from their bows and returned them to their quivers.
“Well,” Adhrekh mused. “So you have come, after all.”
Stephen didn’t quite know what to say to that, so he let it go by.
“Why did you abandon the village?” Stephen asked.
Adhrekh shrugged. “We vowed to live in the mountain, to keep guard there, and we have. It is our way.”
“You live in the Alq?” Zemlé asked.
“That is our privilege, yes.”
“And it was Brother Choron who asked you to guard it?”
“Until his return, yes,” Adhrekh said. “Until now.”
“You mean until the return of his heir,” Zemlé corrected.
“As you wish,” Adhrekh said. He moved his regard back to Stephen. “Would you like to see the Alq, pathikh?”
Stephen felt a chill, half excitement and half fear. ‘Pathikh’ meant something like lord, master, prince. Was Zemlé actually right? Was he really the heir to this ancient prophecy?
“Yes,” he said. “But wait. You said the khriim was here. Do you mean the woorm?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve seen it?”
“Yes.”
“In the valley? Where?”
“No. Once you led it near enough, he was able to find his way. He’s waiting for you in the Alq.”
“Waiting for me?” Stephen said. “Maybe you don’t understand. It’s dangerous. It kills anything it touches, anything it comes near.”
“He said he wouldn’t understand,” said another of the Sefry, this one a woman with startlingly blue eyes.
“I understand that if the woorm is in the mountain,” Stephen said, “I’m not going there.”
“No,” Adhrekh said, his face melancholy. “I’m afraid you will, pathikh.”
“Qexqaneh,” Anne gasped, hoping she remembered the pronunciation correctly.
The thing in the darkness seemed to pause, then press against her face like a dog nuzzling its master. Shocked, she swatted at it, but there was nothing there, although the sensation persisted.
“Sweet Anne,” the Kept snuffled. “Smell of woman, sweet sick smell of woman.”
Anne tried to collect herself. “I am heir to the throne of Crotheny. I command you by your name, Qexqaneh.”
“Yessss,” the Kept purred. “Knowing what you.want is not the same as having. I know your intention. Alis-smells-of-death knows better. She just told you.”
“Is that so?” Anne asked. “Is it? I’m descended in a direct line from Virginia Dare. Can you really defy me?”
Another pause followed, during which Anne gained confidence, trying not to reflect too closely on what she was doing.
“I called you here,” the Kept murmured. She could feel the vastness of him contracting, drawing into himself.
“Yes, you did. Called me here, put a map in my head so I could find you, promised me you could help me against her, the demon in the tomb. So what do you want?”
He seemed to withdraw further, but she had the sudden feeling of a million tiny spiders nesting in her skull. She gagged, but when Austra reached for her, Anne pushed her away.
“What are you doing, Qexqaneh?” she demanded.
We can talk like this, and they cannot hear us. Agree. You don’t want them to know. You don’t.
Very well, Anne mouthed silently.
She felt as if she were whirling again, but this time it wasn’t frightening; it was more like a dance. Then, as if she were opening her eyes, she was standing on a hillside bare of any human habitation. Her body felt as light as thistledown, so flimsy that she feared any breeze might carry her off.
All around her she saw the dark waters, the waters behind the world. But this time her perspective seemed reversed. Instead of perceiving the waters as flowing together—trickles building rinns, rinns pouring into broohs, broohs into streams, streams into the river—Anne descried the river as a great dark beast with a hundred fingers, and each of those fingers with a thousand fingers more, and each of those with a thousand, reaching and prying and poking into every man and woman, into every horse and ox, into each blade of grass, tickling, gesturing—waiting.
Into everything, that is, except the formless shade that stood before her.
“What is this place?” she demanded.
“Ynis, my flesh,” he replied.
Before she could retort, she realized it was true. It was Ynis, in fact the very hill upon which Eslen stood. But there was no castle, no city, no work of Man or Sefry. Nothing to be seen.
“And these waters? I’ve seen them before. What are they?”
“Life and death. Memory and forgetfulness. The one drinks, the other gives back. Piss on the left, sweet water on the right.”
“I’d like you to be more clear.”
“I’d like to smell rain again.”
“Are you he?” she asked. “The man who attacked me in the place of the Faiths? Was that you?”
“Interesting,” Qexqaneh mused. “No. I cannot wander so far. Not like this, pretty one, disgusting thing.”
“Who was it, then?”
“Not who,” Qexqaneh replied. “Who might be. Who will be, probably.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Aren’t mad yet, are you?” he replied. “In time.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Good enough for the geos, milk cow,” he replied.
“Her, then,” Anne snapped. “The demon. What is she?”
“What was, what hopes to be again. Some called her the queen of demons.”
“What does she want with me?”
“Like the other,” Qexqaneh said. “She is not she. She is a place to sit, a hat to wear.”
“A throne.”
“Any word in your horrible language will do as well as the next.”
“She wants me to become her, doesn’t she? She wants to wear my skin. Is that what you’re saying?”
The shadow laughed. “No. Just offers you a place to sit, the right to rule. She can hurt your enemies, but she cannot harm you.”
“There are stories of women who take the form of others and steal their lives—”
“Stories,” he interrupted. “Imagine instead those women finally came to understand what they really were all along. The people around them didn’t understand the truth. There are things in you, Anne Dare, aren’t there? Things no one understands? No one can understand.”
“Just tell me how to fight her.”
“Her true name is Iluumhuur. Use it and tell her to leave.”
“It’s that simple?”
“Is it simple? I don’t know. Don’t care. Neither should you, since you’ll never live for it to matter. Your uncle’s warriors block your every exit. You will die here, and I can only savor your soul as it leaves.”
“Unless…” Anne said.
“Unless?” the Kept repeated mockingly.
“Don’t take that tone,” Anne said. “I have power, you know. I have killed. I might yet win my way through this. Perhaps she will help me.”
“She might,” he said. “I have no way of knowing. Call her true name and see.”
Anne coughed out a sarcastic laugh. “I somehow find that an outstandingly bad idea despite your reassuring words. No, you were going to offer me a way past my uncle’s troops. Well, then, what is it?”
“I was just going to offer my assistance in defeating them,” he purred.
“Ah. And that would involve…”
“Freeing me.”
“Why didn’t I think of that?” Anne mused. “Free the last of the demon race who enslaved humanity for a thousand generations. What a wonderful idea.”
“You have kept me for far too long,” he snarled. “My time is past. Let me go so that I may join my race in death.”