Part 7 (1/2)

9.

PATH.

NOW THAT THE others were gone, Menehem's lab was too quiet, and I spent all my time poring over the temple books and translations of symbols, hoping for a breakthrough. But if there was anything about how to stop Janan, I hadn't seen it yet.

”We need to consider moving on,” Whit said one afternoon. ”Every day we stay here is another day Deborl might find us.”

”Especially since we'll have to walk.” Sam flipped through his SED, checking for earthquakes and eruptions around Range. From beside him, I could see several red dots on the screen, but none of them were very large.

”And carry all our things.” Stef looked up from reading through Menehem's notes on building his machine.

”We're waiting for the sylph.” I turned a page in the temple book and scribbled out a few more possible translations. ”And Cris.”

Whit c.o.c.ked his head at me. ”Wait, how will Cris be here? He died during the riot on market day.”

I groaned and dropped my face into my hands. ”Stef. Your turn.”

She sighed. ”You promise if we tell him enough, he'll start to remember?”

I nodded, face still buried in my hands. ”It worked on Sam. The magic will crack and fade, but it takes time.”

”I'm sitting right here,” Whit muttered darkly.

”Cris is a sylph now.” Stef headed for the kitchen area, an empty coffee mug in hand. ”When Deborl trapped Cris, Ana, and me inside the temple, Cris sacrificed himself in order to free us.”

”You were inside the temple?” Whit asked.

I slammed the temple book shut and grabbed my notebook. ”This is what Cris told me: five thousand years ago, Janan was your leader. The leader of all the humans, as far as I can tell. He was just a man, nothing more. But he craved immortality, so he gathered a group of warriors and went hunting for the secrets of eternal life. Something big happened. I don't know what. I'm studying the books, trying to understand. Then Janan and his warriors were imprisoned in towers all across the world. When his followersa”youa”heard of his capture, they went to free him.

”Theya”you traveled until you reached an immense wall ringing a single tower. But when you tried to free him, he said the phoenixes had imprisoned him because he had succeeded in his quest: he'd discovered the secret to immortality.”

”And then what?” Whit asked.

”Then . . .”

Stef lifted an eyebrow, a silent question. Did I want her to say it?

I shook my head. No. No one else needed to bear that guilt. And . . . it was easier if they didn't know.

Sam looked at me with a sudden and penetrating curiosity, as though he could tell I held back something important.

I averted my gaze and continued speaking. ”Then Janan shed his mortal form. He became part of the temple, which was already infused with phoenix magic, and began the journey to immortality. True immortality, without the cycle of life and death and rebirth. He wanted you all to wait for him. He wanted to come back and rule you as he had before”a”so he'd told thema””so he caused you to reincarnate.”

Stef nodded. ”We allowed Meuric to bind us in chains inside the temple, and then Janan became part of the temple. We were all bound to him.”

From across the room, Sam's gaze was dark and heavy and grieving.

”Does that meana”” Whit glanced from me to Sam and back. ”Oh. You'll never be reincarnated, will you?”

I shrugged and opened the temple book again. ”It's not important.”

”It isa”” he started.

”It's not. There's nothing we can do about it, and even if we could change it, the cost is too great.” I tried to focus on my work, but my vision was misty. No matter what happened, this was it for me. I had this one fleeting life.

I had to make the most of it.

”All right.” Whit's voice was soft; he was only conceding because he wouldn't argue with a girl who'd live only once.

I didn't look up from the book, but I could feel everyone's stares. Their pity.

Sam's grief.

”It's not important,” I repeated. ”After Soul Night, no one is getting reincarnated anyway. Not even you. The next time someone dies, they're gone forever.”

A heavy silence descended on the lab, this simple and terrifying truth a smothering snow. I should have said it more gently. They all knew the truth, but they probably didn't appreciate being reminded any more than I enjoyed being reminded about my newness.

After a moment, Sam took a seat across the table from me. ”We keep talking about Janan ascending and returning and how it will destabilize the caldera enough that it erupts, but what does Janan's ascending actually mean? Will he stay here? Go somewhere else? Be corporeal or not? You said he doesn't have a mortal form anymore. Will he be just a soul flying around?”

”If you can say he even has a soul,” I muttered, but Sam's words struck something else inside me. No mortal form. Just a soul flying around.

Like sylph?

”He was human once.” Stef leaned against the wall, her arms crossed. ”He must have had a soul at some point.”

Less sure, but unwilling to argue, I turned back to Sam's question. ”I don't know what will happen, or how. That's why I've been trying to translate these books.”

”Then let's do that.” Sam picked through my notebook, finding my potential translations of strings of symbols from the books. ”This symbol means Heart, city, and prison?” He pointed at a circle with a dot inside.

I nodded. ”That's my best guess. You've mentioned the wall in the north before.”

Sam hesitated. ”Yes. I remember the wall.”

”Cris told me about another white wall in a jungle.” I'd repeated this story to Sam already, and Stef knew it, but Whit hadn't heard it. ”He said he was collecting plants and came across crumbling white stone. When he climbed on top of a tall piece, he realized the stone had once been a huge wall, which circled a collapsed tower. There was enough rubble around the tower to indicate it had once been as tall as the temple in the center of Heart.”

”But there were no other buildings,” Stef added. ”It was like Heart, but without our homes and the Councilhouse, if you looked at it from above, it would look like a circle with a dot in the middle.”

”Right. And I'm guessing they were all prisons, like the temple inside Heart originally was for Janan. Cris told us that all the warriors with Janan were imprisoned separately so they'd never join forces again. That also begins to explain why Heart is built over a caldera that size, even though it's entirely impractical.”

”Why?” Whit asked.

”Because it was a prison. It was meant to deter people from coming to rescue him. The other prisons we know of are in the frozen north, and in the jungle where not even the water is safe to drink. Who knows where the others are?” None of my friends would be able to remember the locations, even if they'd seen them. Not without a lot of prodding and leading questions, and I could only offer leading questions if I had an idea of where to start. Like Sam's death. Or symbols Cris might have seen. ”Maybe under the ocean, or in deserts, or high on a mountain where the air's so thin you can't breathe. They could be anywhere.”

”To be fair to us, though, Heart didn't look dangerous at first.” Stef frowned. ”Except for the geysers and mud pools and fumaroles . . .”

I nodded. ”You were on a quest to find your leader, anyway. You believed he'd been wrongly imprisoned, because that's what you were told.”