Tomb of Ancients by Madeleine Roux

Author:Madeleine Roux
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-04-08T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

1247, The Road East

“What do you make of him?”

I’d done my level best to avoid Ara when I could. Henry was arguably more powerful and more dangerous, but Henry liked me. Or loved me. It depended on the day. Sometimes the hour. But Henry’s and my good-natured alliance against Ara’s—shall we say—testier nature shifted once Faraday joined us. He had shaken off the name Focalor, donning human clothes and human sandals, draping himself in a sand-colored smock and a beaded belt, a hood that shadowed his face, kohl smudged across his eyes.

He kept his injured hands deep inside his sleeves and wrapped linens over the places where his fingers were missing.

“I’ve had truck with shadows more solid than he is,” Ara said one night, crouching on a rug beside our fire. The road to Tuz Gölü was hilly but not unkind, and the passage of autumn into winter afforded us cooler climates for the journey. There was even a chill on the air that night, and I was grateful for the heat of the pup snuggled in my lap. “His heart is there”—Ara pounded her fist over her chest, leaving flecks of soot—“but it isn’t there, do you know what I mean?”

“What did Henry do to him?” I asked. “Besides the obvious . . .”

“He’s a thrall now—human, I suppose, but less than that. The book is what makes us, what allows and feeds our power, and maskim xul asked the Black Elbion to strip him bare.” She glanced over her shoulder at the two men, who watered the horses, deep in conversation. Or rather, Henry pelted Faraday with questions, and the other man shrank and mumbled. “Once a commander of dark legions, he will now be little more than a stableboy.”

I shuddered, eyes wandering to her pack and the heavy black book I knew lay within. “I hate when you call him that.”

“Why?” She cackled and stirred the cauldron on the fire. “Because it reminds you of his true self? Because it reminds you why you should sleep in your own tent?”

“It’s quite honestly none of your business, Ara, and it baffles me that you deign to care.”

The hand stirring the pot went still. “Watch your tone, Upworlder. You’re vastly outnumbered and far from home.”

I shrugged, well accustomed to her empty threats. While Henry remained near, she would not attempt anything. “You seem to know much about the books. Did Henry interrogate you, too?”

Ara went back to her cooking, adding a dash of something into the cauldron. “What I know, he knows. The only difference is that I have a healthy fear of the answers he so boldly seeks.”

“Focalor paid a steep price for his knowledge,” I pointed out. “I can only pray we won’t owe the same.”

“We will, and worse,” she said. “Focalor is a fool, and he paid only a fool’s price. Henry should know better than to chase this rabbit, and so he will follow it down the hole and never come back out.”

Henry’s voice suddenly rose, but I could not make out the words.

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