Yatsill faces turned and someone waved back and called my name.
“Kata!” I exclaimed. “Is that you?”
“Yes, Mr. Fleischer,” my housekeeper replied as I joined the group. “I still have not been released. I think I shall never see Koluwai.”
“You certainly won’t if you’re devoured by a Blood God. Where is Miss Stark?”
A Yatsill—one of the Aristocracy—stepped forward and said, “I’m afraid she has been taken, Mr. Fleischer.”
I recognised the voice. “Baron Thewflex! You don’t mean—you don’t—she wasn’t—?”
“Possessed? No. I apologise. That was a poor choice of words. Indeed, it was! I mean to say she was carried into Phenadoor by a Blood God.”
“Carried into the sea?”
“Yes.”
I sat down heavily, my jaw slack, my brain unable to cope with this news.
“The Magicians couldn’t protect us,” Thewflex said. “The Blood Gods have taken all the Aristocrats but those you see here.” He flicked his fingers toward the other Yatsill, then pointed at the seashore and continued, “And the Working Class are now lazing about down there. They are little better than animals. Indeed! Indeed! There aren’t enough of us remaining to share intelligence with them.” He sighed and shook his head.
“Then she is drowned,” I whispered, and my vision narrowed to a pinprick.
“The rest of us might still be taken at any time,” Thewflex said. “Though we’ve all had Miss Stark’s medicine and the pace of the invasion appears to have slowed. In any case, we shall have to wait until the Saviour looks upon us again and the new children mature before we can rebuild the city—yes, indeed!—and, of course, only then if plenty of the young are made Aristocrats at Immersion.”
I couldn’t engage with his words. They flowed past me without meaning. Nothing mattered any more. Clarissa was gone.
Picking a burning brand from the fire, I turned away and left the group, unable even to bid them farewell. I walked back through the debris to the avenue and there, bracing myself against the remains of a wall, bent over and pulled desperately at the air, feeling that I might pass out from lack of oxygen. My legs could hardly hold me. The ruins slewed past vertiginously. My ears were assaulted by an animalistic whine, which, in a moment of horror, I realised was coming from my own mouth.
“Please,” I croaked. “Please, no.”
Maybe I stood there for hours, maybe for mere minutes. I have no conception of how much time passed before I pushed myself upright and stumbled on, descending the steep slope all the way to the lowest level. Then it must have taken me at least two hours to climb across the rubble to Pretty Wahine’s cave. Certainly, I remember replacing the brand on at least three occasions, putting its flame to other pieces of wood and taking them up in its stead.
I stepped into the cave’s entrance and followed the tunnel—the way illuminated by my fire—to the chamber at its end. Pretty Wahine lay within, dead, her glazed yellow eyes staring at the ceiling. I bent over her and saw that her skin was dotted with sucker marks. Obviously, a Blood God had found her. Perhaps her powers had failed as her great age finally took its toll. She was unable to hide Clarissa or even her own refuge any longer.
Poor woman. She had asked for none of this. A simple islander, and little more than a child when she’d been transported to Ptallaya—fear, and perhaps a degree of madness, had made of her a hermit. And a god!
Leaving the Saviour’s final resting place, I retraced my steps and made the long climb back to the top of the bay.
Eventually, I reached the place where I’d parted from Gallokomas. The Zull floated down from the sky and stood before me.
“She’s gone,” I said. “The Blood Gods took her to Phenadoor, where she surely drowned.”
“Why?”
“I cannot guess. The creatures are a mystery to me.”
“No, Thing. I mean, why would she drown?”
“My species cannot survive in the sea, Gallokomas.”
“Nor can mine. But Phenadoor is not the sea.”
“What?”
“Phenadoor is not the sea.”
I frowned, feeling confused. “Then what is it?”
“It is a great mountain beyond the horizon that rises from the waters and touches the sky.”
“A—a mountain?”
“Yes. I do not know where my knowledge comes from. Perhaps I have remnant memories.”
“But Phenadoor is land? An island?”
“I am certain.”
“Then Clarissa could still be alive!”
“That is true. What are these Blood Gods?”
I gestured toward the red sun. “They come when the Heart of Blood rises. They invade the bodies of the Yatsill and attack