“The problem is,” Naja said, “I believe that even if he doesn’t succeed at his plan for the perfect world, he very well may succeed at destroying the world of life in the attempt. He is a technically intelligent, resourceful, and determined man and he is tampering with the very nature of what the Grace represents. Even if what he believes he can accomplish is utterly impossible and he doesn’t succeed with his ultimate plan, he will kill untold numbers trying. Even if he doesn’t succeed, even if he is insane and he fails to do what he thinks he can do, I fear that he may very well accidentally destroy the world of life in the process.
“Either way, the result is the same. Everyone is dead in the end.”
“Are you certain about all this,” Merritt asked in a careful tone. “Were you close enough to him to know this to all be true? To really believe all this half people talk?”
Naja Moon lifted an eyebrow over a cold blue eye. This was the dangerous sorceress Magda had recognized from the first moment she had seen her.
“I know how the half people were created because I helped create them. I am a spiritist. I speak with the dead. I also manipulated the spirits of the dead in the underworld to create for Emperor Sulachan an army of the dead. I helped show him how it could be done.”
Even though she had defected, Magda suddenly wanted to strangle the woman. “Why would you do such a thing? How could you do such a thing? How could you help put all the innocent lives everywhere in such mortal peril?”
Naja leveled a grim look at Magda. “What was being done to me down in your dungeon is a fate I would have prayed for, had I not done as Sulachan commanded. You could not begin to understand what life is like in the Old World, and especially in the halls of power there.
“Though he may be old and sickly, Emperor Sulachan is still a wizard of great power. Defying his wishes earns a person unimaginable torture. He keeps those he tortures alive for a very long time to serve as a reminder to others of the fate that awaits them should they, too, disobey his wishes. You would be surprised what you would do when living every day of your life in such terror.”
“If he is so powerful, then how did you manage to escape?” Merritt asked.
Naja let out a deep breath as her gaze drifted away. “There was a brief window of opportunity created by an unexpected calamity. While people were distracted, I saw my chance and was able to slip away. I ran and I kept running. I didn’t want Sulachan’s vision to come to pass. I didn’t want people to die to fulfill his plans. I didn’t want innocent people to be visited by such horror as I knew was coming. I hated that I’d had a part in it all. I was ashamed that I hadn’t been brave enough to have chosen torture and death instead of the things I did to help him.
“I thought that maybe this was my chance to do something to try to stop the world from falling into such darkness. After all, if not me, then who? What was my life to mean, if I did nothing and let this happen? What kind of person was I, knowing what was coming, if I stood by and didn’t try to stop it?
“I saw my chance and chose to act. Because I am gifted, I was able to fight my way through some of our forces standing between me and the free parts of the New World, and because I am a spiritist I understood how the dead and the half dead function, so I was able to avoid them along the way.”
Magda laid a hand on Naja’s arm. “Thank you for being brave enough to take up the cause of life.”
“Yes, we appreciate it, Naja,” Merritt said. “Your help will be invaluable. So what was the calamity you mentioned?”
“An unexpected complexity developed in the emperor’s plan. The half people he created took to eating humans.”
Merritt and Magda both leaned in together and together they both said, “What?”
“At first, there was no evidence of the behavior, but then without warning the half people began attacking and eating the living. I had warned the emperor of that possibility, but he wouldn’t be dissuaded. He wouldn’t listen to any warning that went against what he wanted.”
“Why would they start eating people?” Magda asked. “What would make them do such a thing?”
“I believe that the half people crave the soul they no longer have. That emptiness drives them with a form of insanity that compels them to eat living people in a futile effort to try to pull a soul into themselves. It doesn’t work that way, of course, but you can’t exactly talk sense into the half people. It rapidly became a kind of madness infecting all of them, an obsession, that overrode everything else.
“They tear living people open, believing the soul they crave is inside. They eat the insides first, where they think the soul resides. They drink the blood, fearing the soul might leak away. When they aren’t satisfied because they haven’t gotten what they want, they strip all the meat from the bones, devouring it, trying to find and consume the soul in the still warm flesh.
“If a group of them catches a living person, they will all tear into them, competing for the soul. A cluster of half people will reduce a living person to bones in short order. It’s horrifying. The dead are not even able to be identified because the half people will use their teeth to peel the face right off the skull and eat it. They even suck the brains out of the skull.”
“And no one anticipated this?” Merritt asked.
“I did, but like I said, no one would listen. When it didn’t happen at first, and everything seemed fine, they were all the more convinced that I was wrong.
“The evolution in their nature took a little time, but when it happened, it happened quickly. They attacked people in the palace, feeding like wolves off the living who were trying desperately to control them. It was chaos for a time.
“That was when I saw my chance and escaped. For all I know, those in charge may believe that I was eaten, as were a number of the gifted involved in the project. It was a terrifying and very bloody time.”
“And this is still going on?” Merritt asked.
“Yes, but I think they’ve managed to gain some degree of control over the situation. They would have been able to do that, to some extent at least, because they have altered the Grace in order to use the spirits of these people.”
Merritt frowned. “Use their spirits? How can they control spirits in the underworld beyond the veil?”
“When they take the souls of living people to create the half people, those souls are not allowed to go to the spirit world. The spirits of the dead they also use are pulled back from the world of the dead as well.
“These spirits are kept trapped between realms. Unable to get back to the underworld, they sometimes drift back in this direction and haunt this plane of existence.
“When I left, the gifted were attempting to channel the need to eat the living into the need to instead eat the flesh of the enemy. That way, rather than having to try to find a way to counter such a powerful drive, they instead redirected it to serve their objective. That makes them an even more terrifying weapon. The half people are hard to put down, and if they get near your people and get the chance, they will rip them open, eating them from the inside out, trying to consume their souls.”
“Why are they hard to put down?” Merritt asked.
“Because they still have a functioning brain. They can think, plan, scheme, plot, hide, evade, and then attack.”
Merritt let out a sigh. “Great. Just great.”
Naja spread her hands. She was starting to look worse again.
“I hate to sound ungrateful to you both, and I want to help—that’s why I’m here—but I think that you need to get me to a place where you can finish healing me.”
Magda looked up at Merritt. “She’s right. We need to get out of here. We can talk more later.”
Merritt circled an arm around Naja’s waist as she started sagging. “I know just the place.”
Chapter 78
As they passed through the opening off the walkway around the inside of the immense circular stone interior of the great tower and into the sliph’s room, Magda saw Quinn sitting
at a table across the room, writing in one of his journals. Dominating the center of the room, under a domed ceiling, sat the sliph’s stone well.
“Merritt!” Quinn called. He leaned over in his chair to peer past Merritt, helping Naja walk into the room. “And Magda!” Quinn skidded the chair back from the table and rushed to meet them. “So good to see you both!”
The young wizard was about Magda’s height, and of average build. His ready smile matched his good nature. But it was his brown eyes that were so riveting. They had a quality well beyond his years, an incisive grasp of all they took in, and despite the intellect behind that astute gaze, the man was always modest when others would have been cocky in their knowledge and accomplishments. They were the eyes of a wise advisor.
“Good to see you, too, Quinn,” Merritt said.
Quinn’s gaze finally settled on Naja. “Who have we here?”
With one arm around Naja’s waist, steadying her, Merritt held his other out in introduction. “Quinn, I’d like you to meet a friend of ours. This is Naja Moon.”
Grinning, staring at the woman for an instant, Quinn remembered his manners and gestured into the room. “Please, Naja, won’t you come in and have a seat. I’m afraid that there is only the one chair, please take it. You look like you may need to sit down. Let me get you some water.”
“She needs more than water,” Merritt said, getting right down to business. “She needs to be healed.”
Quinn regarded the sorceress with a more appraising look. “Yes, I can see that.”
Naja showed a brief smile of greeting to Quinn, but declined the offer to sit.
“To tell you the truth, Merritt, I don’t think any of you look all that good.” Quinn laid a hand on the side of Magda’s shoulder. “What’s wrong. You look ashen. You don’t look well at all. Maybe you had better sit down.”
Magda gently waved off the concern. “Thank you, but we don’t have time for that at the moment.”
“Some things have happened,” Merritt said. “Magda has been healed, but she needs rest to complete the process or she is going to soon go downhill and then she’s going to be in trouble.”