Page 18 of House of Dusk
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Sephre kept her gaze fixed on the wall behind Halimede as she gave her report. She stared at painted flames as she recounted all that had happened in the garden, from the first whisper of alarm to the discovery of the skotos to its banishment. She did not spare herself or Halimede any details. Including the demon’s whispers.You. . .the one...we seek. Partway through she realized she was standing at martial attention with her hands clasped behind her back, but she could not bring herself to shift position until she finished.
Silence slammed down. Then Halimede gestured to a chair beside the map table. “Sit.”
Sephre sat. It felt good. Her legs were unsteady. Those damn stairs. She felt empty, now, having given her account. She was only dimly aware of Halimede moving softly about the room, a crackle of flame, the clink of pottery.
“Are you injured?” asked Halimede, now seated across from her. A cup of tea had appeared in Sephre’s hands, the heat warming her palms, the steam sweet with honey and spices. Cardamom and clove.
“No.” Sephre took a sip of the tea. Then another.
“And Brother Timeus?”
She shook her head. “He didn’t even know it was there. He thought it was a nightmare.”
“So you and I are the only ones who know of this.”
She lifted her gaze. “Are you going to keep it secret?”
Halimede pressed her lips to a thoughtful line.
“What if it comes back?” Sephre prompted.
“A skotos can only remain in this world so long as it possesses some physical vehicle,” said Halimede. “Usually a human corpse. Sometimes an animal, though those have lesser power, according to the teachings. In either case, if the material vessel is destroyed, the demon has no choice but to return to whence it came. Back to the Labyrinth of Souls.”
Sephre sagged slightly. But it was only a sip of relief, and she was still thirsty. “What about Iola?”
Under normal circumstances, such a spirit would also return to the perilous land of the dead. The maze of sinuous and twisting passages was said to shift like the coils of the Serpent himself. Dank with pools of poison, twined with vines of perfumed duskbloom said to lure the dead astray, chasing phantasms of unrealized dreams. All to test each mortal spirit with the shames and sorrows they carried with them from this life. But Iola had been young. Surely she had no great shadow on her soul. Surely she would find her way through the labyrinth, casting off all the dross of this life so that she could be reborn anew.
But Halimede’s expression turned grave. “For a skotos to claim a mortal body, it must first consume the spirit bound to it. That is how they gain entry to this world. I fear she is...gone.”
Gone. Not just lost to this life, but utterly annihilated. Never even to be reborn. The teacup trembled in her hand. Sephre set it down with a clatter. “It’s my fault.”
“No,” said Halimede, sternly. “The girl was lost long before you burned her body to ash. The demon took her. Not you.”
“But it came for me. It said I was the one it was hunting. If I hadn’t been here, maybe then—”
“Then the skotos might well have destroyed Brother Timeus. You cannot blame yourself.”
Clearly the agia didn’t know her very well.
“It’s far more likely that the demon came for you because you’re an ashdancer,” continued Halimede. “It saw you as a threat. There may be no more reason than that.”
“If it just wanted to kill ashdancers, there were half a dozen closer to the crypt than me. But none of them were attacked.” She’d checked, tracing back the trail of gruesome ichorous spatters and tatters of fallen linen the thing had left in its wake. The path had led unerringly from the crypt to the garden. “It came forme.”
Halimede held a question behind her teeth. Sephre could see her considering whether to release it. Finally, she spoke. “Iola bore a mark. Is it possible you bear the same?”
Grimly, she kilted up the hem of her habit. Dirt and bits of leaf clung to her ankles, but nothing more. Her sleeves next, quickly, before fear could sink its teeth.
Nothing but her own skin, marked only by the handful of familiar scars, testament to her days as a soldier. A scattering of freckles, but everyone had freckles. Sephre breathed out.
“There,” said the agia. “No mark.”
Not on her skin. But she had other wounds.Baleful one, the demon had called her. “The skotoi feed on evil.”
“Suffering would be more accurate,” said Halimede. “The skotoi feast on the pains and fears of the dead. As each spirit cleanses itself, it leaves behind such things. Some legends say the Serpent created the skotoi for that purpose, to keep his labyrinth from becoming choked with their poison.”
“So if one of them managed to escape, they’d be hunting the same thing. Someone stuffed full of pain and shame.” If so, best to remove the fatted pig from the table. “Agia, please, won’t you—”
