Devourer's Might, page 18
“It is a custom on the Red Coast,” Nathan informed him. “Apparently they don’t like manure and garbage on their floors.”
Jaden laughed at Nathan’s joke, but the servants did not.
They waited patiently for them to finish with the joke and then one of them snapped his fingers. Several female servants stepped forward with light pants, shirts, and vests draped over their arms.
“Indoor wear, masters Jaden and Nathan,” the servant said—so they knew their names.
Jaden looked to Nathan, who shrugged and began to disrobe.
“I suppose this is a custom here as well,” he said.
The servant placed a hand on Nathan’s arm to stop him. “Not here, please, sir. There is a bath waiting for each of you.”
The women led Jaden and Nathan into a massive foyer with a wide, winding staircase that led up to a balcony on the second floor. In either direction was a wide hallway that led off into the distance. Underneath the second-floor balcony was an entryway into a large salon that let out into a garden, though not much was visible in the darkness. The house was lit by large candelabras that hung at regular intervals in the foyer and down the halls. Jaden noted that there was the occasional sofa stationed along the hallways and even in the foyer.
“In case you get tired going from place to place?” he asked Nathan as he pointed at one of the sofas.
“That is a good assumption, I can tell you,” Nathan replied.
“Follow the attendants, please, sirs,” the disapproving servant requested.
They made their way down the hall to the right until they arrived at a pair of doors. The women divided into two groups and opened the doors, leading Jaden and Nathan each into a room. Inside was a large circular space with columns around the perimeter, framed by ferns and large palms in pots. Above was a hole in the ceiling through which the stars were visible. And in the center of the room was a round, steaming bath.
“Leave your old clothes on the floor and we will collect them when you are through,” one of the servant girls told Jaden.
The servants placed the fresh clothes on a bench against the wall and then left, closing the door behind them. Jaden stared after them for a moment, feeling torn. He was anxious to check on Loren, and especially Larisa.
But he had traveled for weeks without a bath or change of clothes, and he realized just how terrible he must look and smell. The bath was too powerful of a draw. He stripped down and climbed slowly into the hot water, feeling it cover his skin and begin to peel away the accumulated dirt and sweat of travel and battle.
Jaden also noticed the spread of his dragon scales. Headmaster had told him more than once that this would happen, as his skills developed and the depth of his connection with Dracoseth grew. Neither he, nor Headmaster, nor likely even Dracoseth knew how much Jaden’s body would be changed by his connection with the Dragon. But it was clear that a transformation was taking place. There were patches on his rib cage and more around his elbows and knees, as though protecting tender and vital areas of his body from attack.
Once he had washed himself thoroughly, Jaden felt he couldn’t justify staying in the bath any longer. He climbed out and dressed quickly, then took the tobacco bowl with the clear liquid from his pocket. It reminded him of the puckered wound on his head, and Jaden touched it, still feeling it.
Next to the door was a large mirror. He could indeed see the wound there. It was round and puckered, just like it felt, and it still oozed a small amount of clear liquid. He captured this with the edge of the tobacco bowl and watched as it oozed down the side before putting the lid back on.
Out in the hallway, Nathan was already dressed and waiting for him. “You were in there long enough,” he said.
“It was a few minutes,” Jaden replied. “I washed and then got dressed.”
“It’s been much longer than that. I have been given a snack while waiting for you and have eaten it.”
Jaden reached up and touched the wound on his temple. He wondered if this was venom of the Noon Wraith and that it was affecting him more than he realized.
“You still don’t see anything on my temple?” he asked.
“No. Why do you keep asking?”
“Dracoseth told me that the Noon Wraiths are disguised by a kind of enchantment that hides their true form. He said that they pierce their victims with a quill filled with venom. He also said that I have the ability to see their true form and that will allow me to kill them and to get their venom to heal their victims.”
“Can you see what they truly look like then?” Nathan asked.
“Not yet, but I can see the wound that one of them inflicted upon me,” Jaden replied. “It’s a large puncture on my temple, which is where I think they target. It’s still oozing a clear liquid, which must be their venom and maybe explains why I’m losing time now and why I blacked out before. Perhaps the Dragon mana that Dracoseth channels to me also protects me from being killed…”
“But it still affects you,” Nathan finished.
“Exactly,” Jaden said and then held up the tobacco bowl. “I’ve been collecting the venom as it oozes out. If Dracoseth is right, then no healer will be able to help Larisa—or those people by the docks—but what I’ve collected might.”
“Then we had better go and find Larisa,” Nathan said.
“It’s too late,” came the voice of a woman behind them.
They turned and saw a woman who had to be Larisa’s mother—she looked like her identical twin, only twenty years her senior.
“What do you mean?” Nathan asked. “Has she been healed?”
“No,” Larisa’s mother said, shaking her head sadly. “She is dead.”
Chapter 21
Jaden and Nathan stood in the doorway of the darkened room, looking in at the body of Larisa, which lay on a stone bier. Beside Larisa’s body stood Malory, her head hanging. She was holding Larisa’s hand and quietly weeping, her shoulders shaking. They’d already been told that Loren was elsewhere in the house and was recovering but had been given a sleeping potion to allow him to get an extended rest.
They were actually in an interior patio, but an enormous piece of fabric had been strung up over it, which made it feel like they were inside. Around the perimeter of the space stood large stone columns at regular intervals. The floor itself was made of granite slabs, cut into various shapes—crescent moons, stars, and circles—and laid out in a repeating pattern.
Between the columns were ferns in large terracotta pots. Around the middle of the patio were a series of palm trees of medium height planted in holes in the floor. The stone bier on which Larisa’s body had been placed lay in front of a fountain that dominated the center of the patio.
Unlike the fountain out front, this one didn’t celebrate Devourer but seemed, rather, to be dedicated to the sea and its power. This made sense, of course, as the sea was such a vital part of life in a coastal, trading city. This fountain was of far greater artistic quality, compared to the rather tacky fountain in the entryway.
Jaden turned to Marie, Larisa’s mother, who stood off to one side. She was staring blankly at her only child, now dead, as though willing her to move. The tears flowed freely down her face.
“May I approach her?” Jaden asked.
Marie didn’t speak but managed a single nod of her head. Jaden moved across the rough stone pavers, closer to Larisa. Malory now sensed his presence and looked up at Jaden. Their eyes locked, and he put out a hand, placing it on her shoulder.
“I… I… don’t know,” Malory started, but was unable to continue.
Jaden hushed her. “It’s okay. It’s not your fault.”
Malory moved closer to him. “I know it’s not my fault, but what are we even doing, Jaden? We’re kids, and we’re taking on things bigger than us and our little lives. You’re just a sewer urchin, and I’m the sheltered daughter of a provincial fabric merchant. We shouldn’t be taking on Noon Wraiths and Malabar and…”
“Malory, there is no one else. That’s why we do it.”
He tried to be understanding, knowing how upset Malory was, but her words made him angry. If they weren’t here, in this place, where would they be? In the Imperial Institute for Seekers, learning to serve the Empire. If they weren’t Seekers, Jaden would still be in a sewer at night and sweeping up in the market during the day. Malory would be stuck in the market stall of her parents, hating them and hating her fate as the next in line to inherit their pathetic fabric empire.
Instead of pronouncing all these thoughts, which he knew were but the useless product of his own anger at his powerlessness to save Larisa, he bit his tongue. He pulled Malory into his arms, embracing her, and letting her lean in on him—allowing her to fall apart. She wept loudly, her body shaking.
Jaden felt tears stinging his eyes as well. In that moment, the full weight of the responsibility that they had assumed in fighting Malabar and all that they were unleashing upon the people of the Empire bore down upon him. He knew that he wouldn’t let it break him, but the weight was almost unbearable.
Jaden looked over to the door and saw that Marie was gone. Nathan stood there looking beyond pale in the light of the moon and the patio lanterns. Jaden waved him over with one of his hands, and Nathan stumbled into the room and into their arms. The three friends embraced each other against the horror and sudden realization of the stakes that they faced. This wasn’t just a game anymore—they could die and probably more of them would before they were done being Seekers.
Finally, Jaden released his grip and turned to the body of Larisa on the bier. The yellow glow that had surrounded her earlier was gone. He couldn’t see the disconnected soul that had been there on her head before either. He assumed that with her passing, it had left her body.
He reached out and touched her hand. She was cold, but the muscles in her hand and fingers still felt supple. Jaden furrowed his brow.
He remembered how a boy had once died in the sewers after a terrible fall. He was an older boy, a young man really, sort of a big brother to all of the other urchins. Jaden had found him floating in a slow spiral in one of the pools where the water gathered during storms in the sewers.
As soon as Jaden had grabbed the dead boy’s hand and pulled him toward the side of the sewer pipe, before he’d even seen the boy’s empty stare, Jaden knew that he was dead. His hand felt not like a hand at all but like a piece of meat. It was the first time that he had touched a dead person. It was a feeling that he would never forget—and it wasn’t a feeling that he got in that moment from Larisa’s hand.
Setting her hand down gently again on the bier, Jaden wandered around it to examine her from different sides. His friends had also stopped embracing and now watched him with interest, obviously wondering what he was looking for. Jaden wasn’t sure himself, but something felt wrong.
“What are you looking for?” Nathan asked.
“What happened when you brought her here?” Jaden asked Malory, ignoring Nathan’s question.
“She never woke up. She was just like the last time you saw her; stiff with milky white eyes. Then right around the time you arrived, her eyes rolled up into her head and her body shook, like she was having a seizure. Then her eyes closed and she… she was gone.”
“When we arrived…” Jaden muttered, trying to put the pieces together.
It was like something was on the tip of his tongue, some clue as to what happened, scratching at the back of his mind.
“Darian the Rabbit Seeker,” Jaden said out loud and looked to Nathan and Malory.
“What?” Nathan replied, obviously confused.
“Remember that time you brought back that baby mountain cat after we went on the hike?”
Nathan nodded. “Yeah, it had been abandoned or its mother was dead. But what does that have—”
“You brought it into Seekers’ Slumber. You were going to keep it.”
“It made Darian sick,” Malory said, remembering. “Like, he walked into the building and started sneezing and his eyes swelled pretty much shut.”
“Yeah,” Jaden said. “When we were on the boat with those things.”
“We collided with one of them,” Nathan said, nodding.
“What if we got it on us, like with that cat,” Jaden said. “You described them as being like forest mushrooms. Maybe they have spores, and we got the spores on our clothing.”
“You think Larisa reacted to the spores?” Nathan asked.
“Like an allergy,” Malory said.
“Exactly,” Jaden said as he dug in the pocket of the robes that they had been given.
He found the tobacco bowl and took it out, carefully removing the lid. The glistening venom was still there, in a small, sticky pool on the bottom of the bowl. Jaden reached up to his temple. He felt the puckered wound, but it was no longer weeping and had begun to dry.
“I hope what I have is enough,” Jaden said.
“Enough? For what?” Malory asked. “What’s in there?”
Jaden explained what Dracoseth had told him about curing wraith paralysis and about the wound on his temple that no one could see, which the wraith had given him. As he did so, he dipped his finger into the venom and leaned over Larisa, brushing it across her eyelids. Then he coated his finger one more time and put it between her lips.
“This seems like a bad idea, Jaden,” Malory said but didn’t stop him.
“If she’s dead, it won’t make a difference—but if Dracoseth was right and she’s still alive, it might save her,” Jaden replied.
“If she is dead, it might turn her into one of those Noon Wraiths, for all we know,” Nathan disagreed.
“Too late,” Jaden said, and then stepped back from the bier, examining Larisa to see if there was any change.
For a long time, nothing happened and there was just the silence of the night, the softly burbling fountain, and the distant sounds of weeping from inside the house. They stared at Larisa, as though just the act of watching her would cause her to revive, but nothing seemed to happen.
Jaden furrowed his brow and walked around the bier, examining her from all angles.
As he reached the far side of the bier, between Larisa and the fountain, something caught his eye, but it was dark as the light from the nearby lanterns didn’t reach here. Jaden clapped his hands once and then pulled them apart, creating a small ball of cool, blue light. He could now see clearly and realized what had caught his eye; Larisa’s soul, which had once hung loosely just from her head and part of her neck, was now separated from her body all the way to her belly. It hung over the side of the bier to where it reached the ground. The silhouetted outline of its head disappeared into the ground.
Jaden reached out with his free hand to touch her dark, shadowy soul. His fingers passed directly through it, and it felt like passing through cool, still waters. The soul shimmered where he had touched and then returned to how it had been.
“It’s like she’s being pulled into the ground,” Jaden said.
Nathan came around the side of the bier. “What?”
“See?” Jaden asked. “It’s like her shadow is disappearing into the stones.”
“If these Noon Wraiths are like fungus,” Nathan said, “could it be that their networks have spread throughout the ground in Marleborn? Have they colonized the soil under the entire city?”
“Fungus? Colonize the city? What are you talking about?” Malory asked as she came around next to Jaden to get a better look.
“Nathan has a theory that those wraiths are just the visible manifestations of a much bigger organism. Like mushrooms in a forest. We see them when they come up to spread their spores, but most of the mushroom is actually underground, like a network of fibers that can spread for leagues in every direction.”
“Except the wraiths don’t appear in order to spread spores,” Nathan continued. “They may be part of how the wraiths feed.”
“On human souls,” Malory finished.
Jaden nodded. “Yeah. But the wraiths seem to work with the spores, by the looks of it. When we showed up, we must have spread spores onto the ground—which sought out Larisa’s half-stolen soul.”
“Then Dracoseth was wrong,” Nathan said. “The wraiths’ venom doesn’t cure their victims.”
“Maybe it’s part of the cure, but if there’s wraith fibers in the soil and they take hold of the soul, the venom isn’t enough,” Jaden said.
“What do we do then?” Malory asked.
Jaden released the orb of light, which floated in the air next to him as he got down to his knees. He positioned himself near Larisa’s feet, some distance from where her soul’s head disappeared into the stone floor. He closed his eyes and clasped his hands tightly together, feeling them heating up until the pain of it was almost unbearable. He wondered to himself if using his powers would always hurt like this or if he would get used to it.
Jaden opened his eyes and saw that his hands glowed like iron from a forge. He straightened his fingers, like knives, and pushed them against the stone floor, which melted like butter beneath his fingertips. Slowly, his hands sank through the marble stone and into the soil beneath. Steam rose from the ground, along with the same musty scent of the venom that he had carried in the bowl.
“Look!” Malory said, pointing toward Larisa.
Jaden looked up and saw that Larisa’s soul was retracting from the ground, as though shrinking. In a moment the head was visible and separated itself from the soil as it slowly rose up the side of the bier, toward Larisa’s actual head.
“Her eyes are open,” Nathan said, staring at Larisa’s face. “Still cloudy but…”
From inside the house came a series of shrieks. Some sounded human; others were the terrible shrieking of the wraiths.
Jaden saw Malory stiffen up beside him. He looked up and could see the distant look in her eyes. They were somehow connecting through her again.
“Nathan!” Jaden shouted. “They’re coming to stop me, and they’ve got Malory again!”
Chapter 22
Nathan turned and saw Malory’s face, then threw himself across the bier at her, knocking her against the fountain. Jaden looked over his shoulder at them but needed to maintain focus on his hands to continue burning the wraith elements that were in the ground.
Jaden laughed at Nathan’s joke, but the servants did not.
They waited patiently for them to finish with the joke and then one of them snapped his fingers. Several female servants stepped forward with light pants, shirts, and vests draped over their arms.
“Indoor wear, masters Jaden and Nathan,” the servant said—so they knew their names.
Jaden looked to Nathan, who shrugged and began to disrobe.
“I suppose this is a custom here as well,” he said.
The servant placed a hand on Nathan’s arm to stop him. “Not here, please, sir. There is a bath waiting for each of you.”
The women led Jaden and Nathan into a massive foyer with a wide, winding staircase that led up to a balcony on the second floor. In either direction was a wide hallway that led off into the distance. Underneath the second-floor balcony was an entryway into a large salon that let out into a garden, though not much was visible in the darkness. The house was lit by large candelabras that hung at regular intervals in the foyer and down the halls. Jaden noted that there was the occasional sofa stationed along the hallways and even in the foyer.
“In case you get tired going from place to place?” he asked Nathan as he pointed at one of the sofas.
“That is a good assumption, I can tell you,” Nathan replied.
“Follow the attendants, please, sirs,” the disapproving servant requested.
They made their way down the hall to the right until they arrived at a pair of doors. The women divided into two groups and opened the doors, leading Jaden and Nathan each into a room. Inside was a large circular space with columns around the perimeter, framed by ferns and large palms in pots. Above was a hole in the ceiling through which the stars were visible. And in the center of the room was a round, steaming bath.
“Leave your old clothes on the floor and we will collect them when you are through,” one of the servant girls told Jaden.
The servants placed the fresh clothes on a bench against the wall and then left, closing the door behind them. Jaden stared after them for a moment, feeling torn. He was anxious to check on Loren, and especially Larisa.
But he had traveled for weeks without a bath or change of clothes, and he realized just how terrible he must look and smell. The bath was too powerful of a draw. He stripped down and climbed slowly into the hot water, feeling it cover his skin and begin to peel away the accumulated dirt and sweat of travel and battle.
Jaden also noticed the spread of his dragon scales. Headmaster had told him more than once that this would happen, as his skills developed and the depth of his connection with Dracoseth grew. Neither he, nor Headmaster, nor likely even Dracoseth knew how much Jaden’s body would be changed by his connection with the Dragon. But it was clear that a transformation was taking place. There were patches on his rib cage and more around his elbows and knees, as though protecting tender and vital areas of his body from attack.
Once he had washed himself thoroughly, Jaden felt he couldn’t justify staying in the bath any longer. He climbed out and dressed quickly, then took the tobacco bowl with the clear liquid from his pocket. It reminded him of the puckered wound on his head, and Jaden touched it, still feeling it.
Next to the door was a large mirror. He could indeed see the wound there. It was round and puckered, just like it felt, and it still oozed a small amount of clear liquid. He captured this with the edge of the tobacco bowl and watched as it oozed down the side before putting the lid back on.
Out in the hallway, Nathan was already dressed and waiting for him. “You were in there long enough,” he said.
“It was a few minutes,” Jaden replied. “I washed and then got dressed.”
“It’s been much longer than that. I have been given a snack while waiting for you and have eaten it.”
Jaden reached up and touched the wound on his temple. He wondered if this was venom of the Noon Wraith and that it was affecting him more than he realized.
“You still don’t see anything on my temple?” he asked.
“No. Why do you keep asking?”
“Dracoseth told me that the Noon Wraiths are disguised by a kind of enchantment that hides their true form. He said that they pierce their victims with a quill filled with venom. He also said that I have the ability to see their true form and that will allow me to kill them and to get their venom to heal their victims.”
“Can you see what they truly look like then?” Nathan asked.
“Not yet, but I can see the wound that one of them inflicted upon me,” Jaden replied. “It’s a large puncture on my temple, which is where I think they target. It’s still oozing a clear liquid, which must be their venom and maybe explains why I’m losing time now and why I blacked out before. Perhaps the Dragon mana that Dracoseth channels to me also protects me from being killed…”
“But it still affects you,” Nathan finished.
“Exactly,” Jaden said and then held up the tobacco bowl. “I’ve been collecting the venom as it oozes out. If Dracoseth is right, then no healer will be able to help Larisa—or those people by the docks—but what I’ve collected might.”
“Then we had better go and find Larisa,” Nathan said.
“It’s too late,” came the voice of a woman behind them.
They turned and saw a woman who had to be Larisa’s mother—she looked like her identical twin, only twenty years her senior.
“What do you mean?” Nathan asked. “Has she been healed?”
“No,” Larisa’s mother said, shaking her head sadly. “She is dead.”
Chapter 21
Jaden and Nathan stood in the doorway of the darkened room, looking in at the body of Larisa, which lay on a stone bier. Beside Larisa’s body stood Malory, her head hanging. She was holding Larisa’s hand and quietly weeping, her shoulders shaking. They’d already been told that Loren was elsewhere in the house and was recovering but had been given a sleeping potion to allow him to get an extended rest.
They were actually in an interior patio, but an enormous piece of fabric had been strung up over it, which made it feel like they were inside. Around the perimeter of the space stood large stone columns at regular intervals. The floor itself was made of granite slabs, cut into various shapes—crescent moons, stars, and circles—and laid out in a repeating pattern.
Between the columns were ferns in large terracotta pots. Around the middle of the patio were a series of palm trees of medium height planted in holes in the floor. The stone bier on which Larisa’s body had been placed lay in front of a fountain that dominated the center of the patio.
Unlike the fountain out front, this one didn’t celebrate Devourer but seemed, rather, to be dedicated to the sea and its power. This made sense, of course, as the sea was such a vital part of life in a coastal, trading city. This fountain was of far greater artistic quality, compared to the rather tacky fountain in the entryway.
Jaden turned to Marie, Larisa’s mother, who stood off to one side. She was staring blankly at her only child, now dead, as though willing her to move. The tears flowed freely down her face.
“May I approach her?” Jaden asked.
Marie didn’t speak but managed a single nod of her head. Jaden moved across the rough stone pavers, closer to Larisa. Malory now sensed his presence and looked up at Jaden. Their eyes locked, and he put out a hand, placing it on her shoulder.
“I… I… don’t know,” Malory started, but was unable to continue.
Jaden hushed her. “It’s okay. It’s not your fault.”
Malory moved closer to him. “I know it’s not my fault, but what are we even doing, Jaden? We’re kids, and we’re taking on things bigger than us and our little lives. You’re just a sewer urchin, and I’m the sheltered daughter of a provincial fabric merchant. We shouldn’t be taking on Noon Wraiths and Malabar and…”
“Malory, there is no one else. That’s why we do it.”
He tried to be understanding, knowing how upset Malory was, but her words made him angry. If they weren’t here, in this place, where would they be? In the Imperial Institute for Seekers, learning to serve the Empire. If they weren’t Seekers, Jaden would still be in a sewer at night and sweeping up in the market during the day. Malory would be stuck in the market stall of her parents, hating them and hating her fate as the next in line to inherit their pathetic fabric empire.
Instead of pronouncing all these thoughts, which he knew were but the useless product of his own anger at his powerlessness to save Larisa, he bit his tongue. He pulled Malory into his arms, embracing her, and letting her lean in on him—allowing her to fall apart. She wept loudly, her body shaking.
Jaden felt tears stinging his eyes as well. In that moment, the full weight of the responsibility that they had assumed in fighting Malabar and all that they were unleashing upon the people of the Empire bore down upon him. He knew that he wouldn’t let it break him, but the weight was almost unbearable.
Jaden looked over to the door and saw that Marie was gone. Nathan stood there looking beyond pale in the light of the moon and the patio lanterns. Jaden waved him over with one of his hands, and Nathan stumbled into the room and into their arms. The three friends embraced each other against the horror and sudden realization of the stakes that they faced. This wasn’t just a game anymore—they could die and probably more of them would before they were done being Seekers.
Finally, Jaden released his grip and turned to the body of Larisa on the bier. The yellow glow that had surrounded her earlier was gone. He couldn’t see the disconnected soul that had been there on her head before either. He assumed that with her passing, it had left her body.
He reached out and touched her hand. She was cold, but the muscles in her hand and fingers still felt supple. Jaden furrowed his brow.
He remembered how a boy had once died in the sewers after a terrible fall. He was an older boy, a young man really, sort of a big brother to all of the other urchins. Jaden had found him floating in a slow spiral in one of the pools where the water gathered during storms in the sewers.
As soon as Jaden had grabbed the dead boy’s hand and pulled him toward the side of the sewer pipe, before he’d even seen the boy’s empty stare, Jaden knew that he was dead. His hand felt not like a hand at all but like a piece of meat. It was the first time that he had touched a dead person. It was a feeling that he would never forget—and it wasn’t a feeling that he got in that moment from Larisa’s hand.
Setting her hand down gently again on the bier, Jaden wandered around it to examine her from different sides. His friends had also stopped embracing and now watched him with interest, obviously wondering what he was looking for. Jaden wasn’t sure himself, but something felt wrong.
“What are you looking for?” Nathan asked.
“What happened when you brought her here?” Jaden asked Malory, ignoring Nathan’s question.
“She never woke up. She was just like the last time you saw her; stiff with milky white eyes. Then right around the time you arrived, her eyes rolled up into her head and her body shook, like she was having a seizure. Then her eyes closed and she… she was gone.”
“When we arrived…” Jaden muttered, trying to put the pieces together.
It was like something was on the tip of his tongue, some clue as to what happened, scratching at the back of his mind.
“Darian the Rabbit Seeker,” Jaden said out loud and looked to Nathan and Malory.
“What?” Nathan replied, obviously confused.
“Remember that time you brought back that baby mountain cat after we went on the hike?”
Nathan nodded. “Yeah, it had been abandoned or its mother was dead. But what does that have—”
“You brought it into Seekers’ Slumber. You were going to keep it.”
“It made Darian sick,” Malory said, remembering. “Like, he walked into the building and started sneezing and his eyes swelled pretty much shut.”
“Yeah,” Jaden said. “When we were on the boat with those things.”
“We collided with one of them,” Nathan said, nodding.
“What if we got it on us, like with that cat,” Jaden said. “You described them as being like forest mushrooms. Maybe they have spores, and we got the spores on our clothing.”
“You think Larisa reacted to the spores?” Nathan asked.
“Like an allergy,” Malory said.
“Exactly,” Jaden said as he dug in the pocket of the robes that they had been given.
He found the tobacco bowl and took it out, carefully removing the lid. The glistening venom was still there, in a small, sticky pool on the bottom of the bowl. Jaden reached up to his temple. He felt the puckered wound, but it was no longer weeping and had begun to dry.
“I hope what I have is enough,” Jaden said.
“Enough? For what?” Malory asked. “What’s in there?”
Jaden explained what Dracoseth had told him about curing wraith paralysis and about the wound on his temple that no one could see, which the wraith had given him. As he did so, he dipped his finger into the venom and leaned over Larisa, brushing it across her eyelids. Then he coated his finger one more time and put it between her lips.
“This seems like a bad idea, Jaden,” Malory said but didn’t stop him.
“If she’s dead, it won’t make a difference—but if Dracoseth was right and she’s still alive, it might save her,” Jaden replied.
“If she is dead, it might turn her into one of those Noon Wraiths, for all we know,” Nathan disagreed.
“Too late,” Jaden said, and then stepped back from the bier, examining Larisa to see if there was any change.
For a long time, nothing happened and there was just the silence of the night, the softly burbling fountain, and the distant sounds of weeping from inside the house. They stared at Larisa, as though just the act of watching her would cause her to revive, but nothing seemed to happen.
Jaden furrowed his brow and walked around the bier, examining her from all angles.
As he reached the far side of the bier, between Larisa and the fountain, something caught his eye, but it was dark as the light from the nearby lanterns didn’t reach here. Jaden clapped his hands once and then pulled them apart, creating a small ball of cool, blue light. He could now see clearly and realized what had caught his eye; Larisa’s soul, which had once hung loosely just from her head and part of her neck, was now separated from her body all the way to her belly. It hung over the side of the bier to where it reached the ground. The silhouetted outline of its head disappeared into the ground.
Jaden reached out with his free hand to touch her dark, shadowy soul. His fingers passed directly through it, and it felt like passing through cool, still waters. The soul shimmered where he had touched and then returned to how it had been.
“It’s like she’s being pulled into the ground,” Jaden said.
Nathan came around the side of the bier. “What?”
“See?” Jaden asked. “It’s like her shadow is disappearing into the stones.”
“If these Noon Wraiths are like fungus,” Nathan said, “could it be that their networks have spread throughout the ground in Marleborn? Have they colonized the soil under the entire city?”
“Fungus? Colonize the city? What are you talking about?” Malory asked as she came around next to Jaden to get a better look.
“Nathan has a theory that those wraiths are just the visible manifestations of a much bigger organism. Like mushrooms in a forest. We see them when they come up to spread their spores, but most of the mushroom is actually underground, like a network of fibers that can spread for leagues in every direction.”
“Except the wraiths don’t appear in order to spread spores,” Nathan continued. “They may be part of how the wraiths feed.”
“On human souls,” Malory finished.
Jaden nodded. “Yeah. But the wraiths seem to work with the spores, by the looks of it. When we showed up, we must have spread spores onto the ground—which sought out Larisa’s half-stolen soul.”
“Then Dracoseth was wrong,” Nathan said. “The wraiths’ venom doesn’t cure their victims.”
“Maybe it’s part of the cure, but if there’s wraith fibers in the soil and they take hold of the soul, the venom isn’t enough,” Jaden said.
“What do we do then?” Malory asked.
Jaden released the orb of light, which floated in the air next to him as he got down to his knees. He positioned himself near Larisa’s feet, some distance from where her soul’s head disappeared into the stone floor. He closed his eyes and clasped his hands tightly together, feeling them heating up until the pain of it was almost unbearable. He wondered to himself if using his powers would always hurt like this or if he would get used to it.
Jaden opened his eyes and saw that his hands glowed like iron from a forge. He straightened his fingers, like knives, and pushed them against the stone floor, which melted like butter beneath his fingertips. Slowly, his hands sank through the marble stone and into the soil beneath. Steam rose from the ground, along with the same musty scent of the venom that he had carried in the bowl.
“Look!” Malory said, pointing toward Larisa.
Jaden looked up and saw that Larisa’s soul was retracting from the ground, as though shrinking. In a moment the head was visible and separated itself from the soil as it slowly rose up the side of the bier, toward Larisa’s actual head.
“Her eyes are open,” Nathan said, staring at Larisa’s face. “Still cloudy but…”
From inside the house came a series of shrieks. Some sounded human; others were the terrible shrieking of the wraiths.
Jaden saw Malory stiffen up beside him. He looked up and could see the distant look in her eyes. They were somehow connecting through her again.
“Nathan!” Jaden shouted. “They’re coming to stop me, and they’ve got Malory again!”
Chapter 22
Nathan turned and saw Malory’s face, then threw himself across the bier at her, knocking her against the fountain. Jaden looked over his shoulder at them but needed to maintain focus on his hands to continue burning the wraith elements that were in the ground.
