The Third Way of My God by Michael R. Schultheiss

Author:Michael R. Schultheiss
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0000000000000
Published: 2023-02-23T08:04:57+00:00

24

The Second Specter

The chamber was empty, save for the various figures in their niches set into the walls.

“Amlatullai,” I said, as we approached the by-now familiar figure in the far wall, “it is I, Rosteval the son of Bosvadal, King of the Ponteppatra.”

Amlatullai’s eyes were closed, for all the world as if she was sleeping—even though she was standing. It was her, though: the tall woman standing in the niche had the same long, slender face as the one we had met in the dream-world, and wore the same long, dark green robe with a faded red shawl over her hair. Her right hand clasped a staff.

“Why does she not answer?” I said, gritting my teeth with frustration as we approached. Looking around, I saw the other specters varied: many had their eyes closed, but some had their eyes open and were staring at us.

“Hold on,” Parsetya said, stepping forward, a remarkably firm look of certainty in her eyes. She stepped to the niche and put her hand on it.

Amlatullai’s eyes fluttered open, and she looked at us.

The specter of Amlatullai that we had been traveling with appeared next to Parsetya.

“Two of them,” Ghaitta said, and she gave a wry grin. “This is going to take some getting used to.”

“They are both of me,” Parsetya said with the Voice. She pointed to the specter next to her and to the one in the niche. Both specters, I noticed, had the same silver light in their eyes that we had seen the first time Amlatullai appeared. “They are different versions of me.”

I snapped my fingers as I recalled what I had learned about the Rishvanti and their past selves: the Rishvanti died every two-hundred fifty years and were reincarnated, but they always came back with some loss of memory.

Somehow, though I was admittedly still fuzzy on the details, the process generated past selves—or at the very least, could generate past selves. When I had first gone in search of a way to bond a white Rishva-shade, I had found myself confronted by Haldua, or rather by a spectral manifestation of Haldua who served as a kind of repository or cache for Haldua’s own past selves.

Later, when Soltapyral had appeared and started causing trouble, Ghaitta and I had gone in search of a Rishvant called Telupari, a clever and intelligent woman who lived in the port city of Sibonni on the Jendoba Coast. She was known for having created a powerful emanation spirit, a chimerical entity that combined the upper body of a nude woman and the lower body of a snake, and we had gone in search of her in order to see if Ghaitta could obtain the temporary use of this spirit against Soltapyral.

Instead of combining her past selves in a cache—or discarding them, which I thought was an option as well—she maintained them in spectral form as separate individuals, consulting them and relying on them for advice.

Though I was not sure which of the two specters of Amlatullai was

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