Chapter Five
One moment, Khana stood over Kokaatl’s corpse. The next, she was in a world of shadow.
It looked like the temple. It was, in fact, an exact copy. But the warm glow of candles had been replaced with cold, unearthly light. The altar, the walls, the corpse, all shades of indistinct gray.
Khana held up her hand, and was surprised to see it… leave her, for lack of a better term. She stepped to the side, and her spirit glowed with a light that reminded her of âji, flickering between a hundred different colors and intensely bright. The black and dark yellow was similar to Kokaatl’s, but there was also a pale blue flickering around her fingers, growing stronger as she grew more curious. Orange tickled her feet. White and bright yellow flared from her chest.
Her gray, shadowy, physical body remained still as she moved. She passed her spirit-hand through her corporeal chest and met no resistance, wiggling her fingers on the other side.
Am I dead? she wondered. She didn’t feel dead. “First time?”
She jumped, whirling around. An old man in tattered robes held up a lantern. Its light didn’t even reach the bottom of his beard.
Khana swallowed. “Master Vigerion?”
“That’s my name,” he said cheerfully. “Well, one of them. One of the older ones, anyway.”
“What… what do you mean, sir?”
The lantern vanished, and the old man’s body and clothes transformed into a tall woman with reddish-brown skin and a dress made of the night sky. Stars winked at her from the hem, and dark clouds moved across the fabric. Khana didn’t recognize her, but it was enchanting.
“Tsermayu, Muobra, White Bone Dog, Hundred-Faced God, sometimes just plain ‘Death,’” the figure said. With each name they changed their form: from the goddess of stars to a Reguallian man with a crow’s head, to a large hound that was just a skeleton held together with fire, to a man with eight arms each holding a mask that fit on his faceless head, and finally to an androgynous person in a multi-colored robe with all black eyes. Khana cringed at the last; they looked like a night creature.
“They’re just names,” the deity said. “Names and shapes. I don’t have nearly as many powers as everyone says I do. Certainly not as much authority to act on those powers. That’s why I like talking to nonbelievers, like you. It lets me be a little more authentic.” They laughed. “Especially since I span countless worlds and universes. It gets so confusing, playing a role that puts people at ease. What if I choose the wrong one?”
The idea that this wasn’t a deity demanding worship made Khana relax a little. “If you’re not a god,” she asked, “then what are you?”
The being grinned. “Death.” She swallowed.
“Oh, dear. This really is your first time,” they said, holding their chin. Their multi-colored robe flowed around them as if they stood under water, glowing and sparkling with more shades than Khana had ever seen before. And the colors moved, drifting across the fabric like vapor. A bruised purple clashed with deep black that swirled with turquoise across the hem. Blinding white and dull gold just barely missed each other on their left shoulder. A blob of blood red peeled from a larger one and drifted through a sea of sickly green across their chest.
“You didn’t do this by accident, did you?” Death asked, sounding concerned.
“No, I needed…” What did she need?
Wait. This was Death, the collector of souls.
“I want my friend back,” she said. “Properly back. I tried to resurrect her in the dungeon, but I just created a night creature. She was little more than a puppet, missing herself entirely.”
“Her soul, most likely,” they said. “I assume you just poured life force into her?”
Khana nodded, looking down at the dark gray floor. “That’s all I knew how to do.”
“Full resurrections cannot be done without my intervention,” Death said, which made Khana feel marginally less stupid. “Who is your friend?” “Sita – Sivusita, the princess. She was killed in the dungeons, tortured to death by Kokaatl.”
Death prowled around Khana. She stayed very still, feeling like a hare watched by a fox. When Death moved from Khana’s back to her front, they’d changed forms again. This time wearing Sita’s kind face and silver hair, with a plain blue dress. The only difference was her eyes, still pure black. “This one? Quiet rebel? Smarter than her own good?”
Khana swallowed back tears. “Yes. That’s her.” “Great. What are you willing to give?” “Give…?”
“I wish to trade,” Death said, using Khana’s voice before switching back to their own: “I can’t just give a soul back, even if I wanted to. You must give something up in return. Therein lies the magic.”
“What do you want?” Khana asked cautiously.
“I don’t really want anything. And before you ask: physical objects do nothing. You can’t buy her back with gold or land or animals. You’re asking for a soul. You need to give up something just as abstract.”
Her throat went dry. “…My soul?”
“Not in its entirety,” Death soothed. “You’re a witch. You have certain privileges. And I prefer to see the unbreakable laws of the universe as loose guidelines. But for this to work, a sacrifice must be made, and it may very well be a piece of your soul, the way Yamueto did.”
Khana’s jaw dropped. “That’s how he got immortality, isn’t it?”
Death nodded. “Most witches in your world have forgotten how to contact me directly. I like it that way. Immortality does things to humans’ heads.”
“And his ability to merge bodies together to create night creatures?” “Another trade, yes.”
“What did he give you? If I may ask.”
Death tapped a finger to their chin. Which, as they looked like Sita, was very odd, as that was not her habit. “For immortality, he gave me his ability for love and compassion, despite my warnings. He saw them as weaknesses; it didn’t matter that they make up almost half of a person’s soul. Immortality requires a steeper price than resurrecting one person, which is why most people who do know how to trade for it don’t.”
“He actually had compassion at one point?” Khana wondered, trying to picture a younger Yamueto being kind. The closest she’d ever seen was his treatment of Kokaatl.
“Barely. He didn’t have a conscience at all, otherwise I’m sure he’d have offered that, too,” Death said. “For the night creatures, he offered his passion for everything but conquest. Which means most of his emotions are gone. Hard to get angry about something if you don’t care about it in the first place. Honestly, what’s the point of immortality if you can’t enjoy yourself?”
Khana wondered if one could throw up in the spirit world. Yamueto was a monster who had created himself. And if she wanted Sita back, she’d have to turn herself into the same type of creature. “I don’t want to give up any of those things.”
“Then you don’t get your friend back,” Death said, not unkindly. “While the life force required to heal her body would be easy enough, retrieving the soul itself is no small matter. Messing around with reality requires a trade that we can at least pretend is fair and equal. And, seeing your current predicament, you would still have to go down to the dungeon to heal her with life force, which would require another trade, and then find a way for you both to sneak out of a palace currently being searched by one of the most intelligent and ruthless people alive, with no plan, no training, and no backup.” They spread their hands. “I’ve seen many things over the course of my existence, but I’ve never seen anyone manage that.”
Khana dropped to her knees, tears running down her cheeks, sobs shaking her chest. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t give up such a monumental part of herself to revive her friend, especially not if they were doomed to failure, anyway. How could she revive someone only to have them be tortured again?
“There, now,” Death soothed, kneeling in front of her. Their face melted into the androgynous person with the black eyes and multi-colored robe. “There’s no shame in this. I am inevitable, even to immortals.”
“You don’t understand,” Khana hiccupped. “She died because of me.” “Perhaps,” they agreed. “But if it makes you feel better, she wasn’t
angry when I collected her. She was mostly worried about you and the other girls she’s been smuggling medicine to. I don’t think she’d want you to waste any part of yourself over her. Not when she’s lived a long, full life, and you are still in hot water.”
Khana struggled to get herself under control, wiping the tears and snot from her face. Apparently, she could produce the stuff even in the spirit realm. Gross. “I can’t linger. The emperor is searching for me–”
“Time is frozen here. Your heart hasn’t even gone through a single beat.” Death motioned to the shadowy form of Khana’s physical body, still standing before the altar.
Khana relaxed. “Oh.”
She sniffled, getting her breathing under control. Sita was gone. As much as it pained her to think it, Khana couldn’t bring her back. The only thing she could do now was escape. She swallowed. “I need to get out of the city.”
Death smiled. “Very good. I do believe I can help you with that.” “How?” she asked warily.
“The palace gates and walls are all heavily guarded. But there’s one exit that has almost no guards – the gardens.”
Khana frowned. “You mean… the gardens that overlook the cliff?” “The very same!”
A little wall curled around the edge of those gardens to keep people from accidentally plunging to their death twenty stories below. The river had cut a ravine into the land, and the city had built itself around it. It was an impressive view, and she enjoyed walking the trail well away from the edge.
“The cliff’s walls are unclimbable,” Khana protested. “Jumping is faster, anyway.”
“If I do that, I’ll die!”
“I’ll give you enough life force to survive the fall,” Death promised. Khana studied the being. “At what cost?”
Death smiled again, pleased. “Life force is a much cheaper bargain than a human soul. For enough to survive a fall from that height, I’d only need a memory.”
“…Just one?”
“Just one,” Death confirmed. “The clearer and more emotional, the better. But it can be any kind of emotion.”
Khana thought it over for a long moment. Death patiently waited, not saying anything or moving. They didn’t even appear to be breathing, which… they probably didn’t need to.
She could see how such a bargain could be twice the blessing. Khana had dozens of memories that she would rather do without. Guma’s death. Sita’s. The moments the princes had taunted her and the other concubines. All the times Yamueto had taken her to bed.
But who would she be, without her memories? They were still a part of her, unpleasant though they were. She’d spent so long living in the palace that she didn’t know who she was outside of it. And if she forgot what she was running from, forgot the horrors that awaited if she were to return, then she’d stop running. She’d fall right back into Yamueto’s hands and experience it all over again, if not worse.
With that in mind, she ultimately decided, “The day I was driven away from my homeland.”
Death raised an eyebrow. “Really?”
“They fed me into the jaws of the beast, doing nothing to protect me. I want nothing to do with them.”
“Fair enough.” Death gently touched her forehead with a thin, pale finger. After a moment, they nodded. “Yes, that should be sufficient for what we need.”
They held out their hand. After a brief hesitation, Khana took it.
