"But the old god would not have it. He snatched out their souls and laid them flat on a rock and he made them choose between what he had given them and what they had taken for themselves. The woman made the choice.
"She chose immortality and the others followed her. And so the god scorched their souls to ash and scattered them in the wind. He dubbed them Druj. Demons. He breathed a mist into their memories and he plucked their children from their arms to grow old and die as humans, and he flung the Druj to the mountains where they could begin their immortality in landscapes of desolation that reflected the emptiness within them. He told them they would be purged by fire at the end of time, when the whole world would be transfigured by light. If they could gather their scattered souls by then, he said, they would be transfigured too. If not, they would plunge forever into the abyss. And until they found their souls, fire, he said, which was sacred to him, would be anathema to them. Even ash would burn them.
"He told them all of this, but the mists ran rampant in their minds and they forgot everything, remembering only their fear of the holy fire and ash, but not the reason for it.
"They forgot their humanity and they forgot the children who had been wrested from their arms. They forgot the drifting ash of their souls that was as dust upon the skin of the world.
"The centuries passed. They lived and lived. They grew weary of immortality but remembered nothing else. And then one day, something happened that led one among them to discover all that had been forgotten."
It had taken Mihai thirteen cycles of hathra, thirteen souls interknit with his animus, for the ashes of his soul to gather again inside of him, bringing his memories with them, piece by piece. His human hosts were more than family to him. They were a new tribe spread through the world, in London and Astrakhan and Jaffna and New York and elsewhere. And as was he, they were a new creation.
They would live for centuries and die as humans, souls intact, and so would Esme.
As Mihai watched, her eyes began to change again. The pale blue turned cloudy and then darkened. She gave a convulsive shudder and a wrenching scream that wore on and on until her throat was raw, and then she lay still, her eyes open and glazed -- and brown. Mihai stroked her cheek and whispered into her ear. Not magic whispers, not Druj words, but only an English lullaby.
And behind him, the Queen of the Druj slowly turned her head.
Mihai looked up at her. Their eyes met. "Mihai," she whispered.
"Mahzarin," he said. "My love." His voice trembled.
A look of confusion swept over her face. Her gaze dropped to Esme, still cradled in Mihai's arms. When she looked back up at Mihai, there was only bewilderment in her eyes.
Mihai rose to his knees and laid Esme carefully on the floor. "My Queen, I have much to tell you," he said. He could hear the fear in his own voice.
She had always been a wild font of power, even back when she had been his wife and had borne Arzu and Lilya. There had never been a more powerful sorceress; without her, indeed, their immortality would never have been possible. There would never have been Druj. Mahzarin was the heresiarch who had unraveled the mysteries. She had created the new magic that had angered the old god. And, Mihai thought, she would eventually remember it. He feared she would have just enough humanity now to grieve for what she'd done -- but not enough to love him.
The beasts had been silenced by Esme's last terrible scream. Now, as Mahzarin stared at Mihai in confusion, one let out a long moan outside the door. Mahzarin rose to her feet in a fluid motion, as if she had not sat still for fourteen years. A great cloud of dust fanned from her silken robes and her black hair.
On the floor, Esme tried to sit up.
Mihai looked from girl to woman. Two lovely, frightened faces, as different as night and day, gold and ivory, joined forever now, even if they didn't realize it yet. Esme made a small sound like a kitten might make. Mihai was between them. His soul strained toward Mahzarin. He wanted only to drink in the sight of her, but he knelt and grasped Esme in his arms and helped her to sit up.
Mahzarin saw the silver eyelids on the wall and she took in the rot. Beasts bellowed at the door and she swung toward it. Mihai saw that fury was building in her as her memories sifted themselves into a kind of order. Her lips went white. She swept past Mihai to the door. He held the key in his pocket but she didn't need it. With one whispered word she blew it off its hinges and it clattered down over the end of the broken bridge and into the chasm, taking beasts down with it. Their long, falling cries grew distant. Others still clung to the spire. Their arms flailed into the open doorway.
Mihai watched, awed. Esme clenched her eyes shut and cowered against him. Mahzarin stood like a wrathful goddess and whispered another word, snarled it, and the beasts seemed to be torn off the spire by some huge invisible hand, plucked like spiders and dropped. They fell away into the blackness, wailing. Mahzarin went out onto the step and saw her devastated citadel spread before her. Beasts clung everywhere, starved and moaning, stone crumbling beneath their long white arms. Mahzarin's breath came fast. Her eyes took on the glassy sheen of fever. "Mihai," she growled, baring her fangs, and swung around to face him.
But he was gone and so was Esme. In the shafts of light the dust of fourteen years was spinning from their departure. The tabernacle was empty.
The Queen of the Druj let out a terrible howl that echoed through Tajbel. Far off in the forest, some of her scattered animal subjects heard and rejoiced. On the cliff walls and the stone stalks of the spires, the beasts cowered. They remembered her, but dimly. Their hunger was stronger than their fear. They kept on coming. In a rage she faced them, and in her pain and confusion her power burst forth like a hurricane, sweeping away everything in its path.
SEVENTEEN Waiting
A few weeks later, Mihai and Mab crossed paths in Yazad's L library. She was coming out, he was going in, and he drew aside to let her pass, noticing with an ache of remorse how she didn't even seem to see him. She was like a sleepwalker these days, and the haunted look in her eyes reminded him of the child she had been in Tajbel when she was a pet without a name. "I'm sorry," he whispered to her back, but she didn't seem to hear.
He continued into the library, pulling Esme's severed red braid out of his pocket. The girl was sitting in a deep chair by a window, staring out. Mihai uncoiled the braid and dangled it in her line of sight until she came back from whatever daydream or memory she had been wandering in and blinked. "My hair," she said sadly.