"Is there any such thing as little foreseeances? Like if little Johnny is going to have explosive diarrhea, would something like that pop up on the radar?"
"Oh, it has happened before," Lina said, an amused smile lighting her face. "But only because the foreseer knows the person."
Alejandro nodded. "It's a very tricky skill."
"Are you familiar with Foreseeance forty-three eleven?"
The brother and sister looked at each other and then shook their heads. Whoever wanted 4311 out of circulation had done a good job so far.
"This is Foreseeance forty-two nineteen," Alejandro said. "The Arcane Council assigns an official designation once it has been vetted by peers and deemed genuine."
"What does it say?"
Alejandro opened the book he'd retrieved, pulled a slip of yellowed paper from within, and unfolded it. Even from my position, it was clear the cursive script was not in English so I didn't ask to see it. The writing filled the entire page, and I ached to understand what it meant. My Spanish teacher would have been so disappointed in me.
"I will translate as accurately as I can," Alejandro said, "but do not expect the entire thing to make sense."
"As if these things ever do," I said, thinking back to the snippets of Foreseeance 4311 I had in my backpack.
Alejandro took a sip of his drink and began. "No, young one! Do not go into the light, for your path lies in darkness and shadow. The light and the dark battle but it is the gray which threatens to overcome both until there is no more light and no more dark, and only the murk between the two. Through gloom will the old masters return, their savage hunger slaked by the harvest of our world.
"But hope rides fragile wings, for I see the young man in his tattered clothes and filth as he flees the victims of light. And he may yet survive this and emerge from the city of shadow. And if he does, he will find you, guardians. He will appear on your doorstep and reveal his demonic nature for he is half again divided of the immortal world. You must welcome him and tell him though the light has robbed love from the heart of his beloved, hope is never lost and must never be lost if his choice is to prevail in the unmaking or remaking."
Alejandro looked up from the sheet. "That's it."
Lina slid a sheet of paper over to me where she'd written a translated version.
I puzzled over the words again and again. They seemed to apply to me, especially beginning with how I showed up here. After all, the forsaken place I'd escaped from was, by any definition, a city of shadow. How those dark creatures in El Dorado were the victims of light, I had no idea. They'd seemed more like servants of the dark. But the last part sent a shard of glass deep into my heart.
…though the light has robbed the love from the heart of his beloved…
Could the sentence possibly be referencing Elyssa? I fought back the desire to smash my fist on the table as frustration and panic took turns twisting my guts. I had to get back to the States. Had her father actually meant what he'd said about erasing her memories? Thomas Borathen didn't seem like the kind of guy to make jokes.
Lina rose from her side of the table and took a seat next to me, her brown eyes brimming with curiosity. "What is the matter?"
I really didn't want to discuss my love life with strangers so I concentrated on the rest of the stuff on the page. "This foreseeance sounds virtually identical to what I've heard before. It always boils down to the 'unmaking' or 'remaking'. Whatever it's referring to, you can bet it's going to be bad."
"I wonder who the old masters are," she said. "Could they be the same people who built places like the dead city?"
That was a really good question. The engraving of the blonde woman had looked so much like Nightliss, and Kassallandra had claimed she was an angel. Nightliss—the human form of her—didn't have wings, but what did I know? Heck, if she could turn into a cute little black cat, what prevented her from sprouting wings? And what about Mr. Gray? The mere thought of his amused face sent a chill through my heart.
I shrugged. "There are huge mosaics in El Dorado. I think the beings depicted there might be the old masters."
Alejandro leaned forward. "There has been a lot of speculation about those murals. The magic used to seal them from damage is older than the Roman Empire."
I gave a low whistle and folded my arms. "Everything I've read up until now always mentions the light and the dark. But this is the first time I've seen anything about the gray."
"The city council has had many discussions about this foreseeance," Alejandro said. "They think the gray is a metaphor for those who disagree with both the light and the dark and wish to find a middle way."
"But I told them I think the gray is something created when light and dark fight each other," Lina added. "And I also told them I think the 'gloom' is not a—how you say—a description word?""An adjective?" I said.
She nodded. "Yes. I think it is a noun. The Gloom. The place between planes."
"Lina thinks a little differently," her brother said with a smile.
She crossed her arms and pursed her lips at him. "I think smart."
When I looked over the words again, though, something clicked this time. "It says the old masters will return through gloom. What if they'll somehow use the Gloom as a path? Maybe they're locked up in another plane right now, but since the Gloom consists of cracks in reality, it allows them to slip through?" I only knew the little Elyssa had told me about the archways, but the Gloom part stuck out, since falling into one of those cracks could mean you'd be lost forever.
"And the Gloom is gray," Lina said. "At least from what I have read."
Alejandro stared at his copy. "If this is true, then the shadow city is full of such rifts in our reality. It's one reason the city was interdicted. Some believe the rifts are the reason the builders abandoned the site, while others argue they are the result of some great battle or catastrophe."
"Does Thunder Rock have cracks in reality too?" I asked.
"Definitely, although they are deep under water. Arcane researchers claim the membrane between planes is very delicate there, making it a dangerous place to build arches. They said the power draw from an arch could rip the barrier between planes wide open and let terrible things into ours."
"Let me get this straight," I said, feeling the excitement of a nergasm building to epic proportions what with all the inter-dimensional and alternate realities discussion. "El Dorado was once a stable place, whereas Thunder Rock was abandoned before completion because it was too unstable?"
He nodded. "Or so the theory goes. Some beings require a great deal of power and effort to cross through the barrier between planes and enter ours. But in places like Thunder Rock it might be relatively effortless. Like breaking through wet tissue paper as opposed to diamond fiber walls."
"It is because of the ley lines," Lina said. "They are usually light and dark in balance. Too much of one can cause rips in reality."
Their mini-course in dimensional physics stretched another strand of yarn to the Vadaemos thumbtack in the corkboard of my mind. It now made perfect sense why he'd chosen Thunder Rock for his ambush. The creatures he'd used were from the demon plane. What better place was there to bring across an army of dark minions than where the planar membrane was weak?
Although my mom had blurred certain childhood memories from my mind, a few had returned, namely one where gray men unleashed a true demon to kill both Mom and Meghan Andretti's mother. The attackers had used a simple slab of plywood studded with nails and copper wire woven into an intricate pattern. A large portable generator had energized it with a torrent of electricity. Somehow—maybe with the assistance of a spell—it had torn open a portal to the demon plane and nearly sucked me in like a trans-dimensional vacuum cleaner. Obviously, I knew next to nothing about the preparations involved with such a thing, but if it took that much power to pull across one demon, it might be a heck of a lot harder to pull across a horde large enough to kill a squad of Templars and two teams of spawn without perfect conditions.
"What about the Grotto?"
Alejandro shrugged. "The Grotto is very stable. Gloom cracks appear only when someone uses an Obsidian Arch, but if any appear at all, they are temporary and short-lived. Bogota has a stable place we call La Casona—The Big House. But we have also uncovered other unstable relics like Thunder Rock and El Dorado."
"Hundreds of them all over the world," Lina said.
All those stars on the map—hundreds of them. Holy crap. It didn't take long for my brain to process that tidbit of information. "And if your interpretation of this is right, each one is a potential portal for the old masters."
We were so screwed.
Chapter 13
Elyssa
Nightliss smiled at Elyssa. At least she looked like Nightliss. Except for her golden hair, blue eyes, and fair skin, she could have been a carbon copy of the other woman. Her face, height, and build matched, as did the slant of her eyes. But something in Elyssa's gut told her this woman was not the same person who turned into a little black cat.
The newcomer stepped across the room and Elyssa realized the statue itself was still in place. Was it some sort of portal? The black pedestals to either side of it must somehow create a gateway. She'd never seen anything like it.
Elyssa finally found her voice. "Who are you?"
"Is it not clear, child?"
"You're the Divinity?" No written record describing the Divinity existed as far as she knew. The most anyone remembered was a flash of light. Elyssa had always imagined it to be a glowing ball or something funky like the Flying Spaghetti Monster, not a woman who popped out of statues. Kassallandra had called Nightliss an angel, a notion Elyssa found absolutely ridiculous at the time. But if that was true, could it mean this woman was an angel as well?
Golden blonde hair spilled down the other woman's shoulders as she held a hand to Elyssa's forehead. "I do not often see the White, but it has recorded the ritual words and here I am. Fear not, child, for it will take only—ah!" She jerked her hand back and held it against her body as if she were in pain. Her kind blue eyes turned hard. "So. You are the one."