“That someone is now trying to erase.” Yrene swallowed. “Nousha will kill me when she hears those books and scrolls were taken.”
“Oh, she might very well. But she’ll likely go on the hunt for whoever did it first.”
“What does any of it mean, though? Why go to so much trouble?”
Hafiza strode back to her tonic, the hourglass nearly empty. “Perhaps that is for you to learn.” She added a few more drops of liquid to her tonic, grabbed the one-minute glass, and flipped it over. “I shall consider the books, Yrene.”
Yrene returned to her room, flung open the window to let in the breeze to the stifling chamber, and sat on her bed for all of a minute before she was walking again.
She’d left the scroll with Hafiza, figuring the locked bookcase was safer than anywhere else, but it was not scrolls or ancient books that filled her head as she turned left and headed downstairs.
Progress. They had made progress on Chaol’s injury, significantly so, and returned to find their room trashed.
His room—not theirs. He’d made that clear enough earlier.
Yrene’s steps were unfaltering, even as her legs ached from nearly two days’ worth of riding. There had to be some connection—his progress, these attacks.
She’d never get any thinking done up in her quiet, stuffy room. Or in the library, not when she’d be jumping at every footstep or meow from a curious Baast Cat.
But there was one place, quiet and safe. One place where she might work through the tangled threads that had brought them here.
The Womb was empty.
After Yrene had washed and changed into the pale, thin lavender robe, she’d padded into the steam-filled chamber, unable to help looking toward that tub by the far wall. Toward where that healer had cried mere hours before her death.
Yrene scrubbed her hands over her face, taking a steadying breath.
The tubs on either side beckoned, the bubbling waters inviting, promising to soothe her aching limbs. But Yrene remained in the center of the chamber, amid all those faintly ringing bells, and stared up into the darkness high above.
From a stalactite too far in the gloom to see, a droplet of water fell—landing on her brow. Yrene closed her eyes at the cool, hard splash, but made no move to wipe away the water.
The bells sang and murmured, the voices of their long-dead sisters. She wondered if that healer who had died … If her voice was now singing here.
Yrene peered up at the nearest string of bells hung across the chamber, various sizes and makes. Her own bell …
On bare, silent feet, Yrene padded to the little stalagmite jutting from the floor near the wall, to the chain sagging between it and another pillar a few feet away. Seven other bells hung from it, but Yrene needed no reminder of which was hers.
Yrene smiled at the small silver bell, purchased with that stranger’s gold. There was her name, etched into the side—maybe by the same jeweler Chaol had found for the amulet hanging from her neck. Even in here, she had not wanted to part with it.
Gently, she brushed her finger over the bell, over her name and the date she’d entered the Torre.
A faint, sweet ringing leaped away in the wake of her touch. It echoed off the rock walls, off the other bells. Setting some of them ringing, as if in answer.
Around and around the sound of her bell danced, and Yrene turned in place, as if she could follow it. And when it faded …
Yrene flicked her bell again. A louder, clearer sound.
The ringing flitted through the room, and she watched it, tracked it.
It faded once more. But not before her power flickered in answer.
With hands that did not entirely belong to her, Yrene rang her bell a third time.
And as its singing filled the room, Yrene began to walk.
Everywhere its ringing went, Yrene followed.
Her bare feet slapping against the damp stone, she tracked the sound’s path through the Womb, as if it were a rabbit racing ahead of her.
Around the stalagmites rising from the floor. Ducking under the stalactites drooping from above. Crossing the room; slithering down the walls; setting the candles guttering. On and on, she tracked that sound.
Past the bells of generations of healers, all singing in its wake.
Yrene streamed her fingers along them, too.
A wave of sound answered.
You must enter where you fear to tread.
Yrene walked on, the bells ringing, ringing, ringing. Still she followed the sound of her own bell, that sweet, clear song beckoning onward. Pulling her.
That darkness still dwelled in him; in his wound. They had beaten it so far back, yet it remained. Yesterday, he’d told her things that broke her heart, but not the entire story.
But if the key to defeating that shred of Valg blackness did not lie in facing the memories alone, if blind blasts of her magic did nothing …
Yrene followed the silver bell’s ringing to where it halted:
An ancient corner of the room, the chains rusted with age, some of the bells green from oxidation.
Here, the sound of her bell went silent.
No, not silent. But waiting. Humming against the corner of stone.
There was a small bell, hanging just by the end of the chain. So oxidized that the writing was nearly impossible to read.
But Yrene read the name there.
Yafa Towers
She did not feel the hard bite of stone as she fell to her knees. As she read that name, the date—the date from two hundred years ago.
A Towers woman. A Towers healer. Here—with her. A Towers woman had been singing in this room during the years Yrene had dwelled here. Even now, even so far from home, she had never once been alone.
Yafa. Yrene mouthed the name, a hand on her heart.
Enter where you fear to tread …
Yrene peered up into the darkness of the Womb overhead.
Feeding. The Valg’s power had been feeding off him …
Yes, the darkness above seemed to say. Not a drip sounded; not a bell chimed.
Yrene gazed down at her hands, lying limp at her sides. Summoned forth the faint white glow of her power. Let it fill the room, echo off the rock in silent song. Echo off those bells, the voices of thousands of her sisters, the Towers voice before her.
Enter where you fear to tread …
Not the void lurking within him. But the void within herself.
The one that had started the day those soldiers had gathered around her cottage, had hauled her out by her hair into the bright grasses.
Had Yafa known, here in this chamber so far beneath the earth, what happened that day across the sea? Had she watched the past two months and sent up her ancient, rusted song in silent urging?
They weren’t bad men, Yrene.
No, they were not. The men he’d commanded, trained with, who had worn the same uniform, bowed to the same king as the soldiers who had come that day …
They were not bad men. People existed in Adarlan worth saving—worth fighting for. They were not her enemy, had never been. Perhaps she’d known that long before he’d revealed it in the oasis yesterday. Perhaps she had not wanted to.
But the thing that remained inside him, that shred of the demon who had ordered it all …
I know what you are, Yrene said silently.
For it was the same thing that had dwelled inside her these years, taking from her, even as it sustained her. A different creature, but still one and the same.
Yrene spooled her magic back inside herself, the glow fading. She smiled up at the sweet darkness above. I understand now.
Another drop of water kissed her brow in answer.
Smiling, Yrene reached out a hand to her ancestor’s bell. And rang it.
54
Chaol awoke the next morning and could barely move.
They’d repaired his room, added extra guards, and by the time the royals at last returned from the dunes at sundown, all was in order.
He didn’t see Yrene for the rest of that day, and wondered if she and the Healer on High had indeed found something of worth in that scroll. But when dinner came and she still hadn’t appeared, he sent Kadja to ask Shen for a report.
Shen himself had returned—blushing a bit, no doubt thanks to the beauty of the servant girl who’d led him here—and revealed that he’d made sure word was received from the Torre that Yrene had returned safely and had not left the tower since.
Still, Chaol had debated calling for Yrene when his back began to ache to the point of being unbearable, when even the cane couldn’t help him hobble across the room. But the suite was not safe. And if she began to stay here, and Nesryn returned before he could explain—