Gods & Thieves

9. Gods and Lovers

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In the next few days, I read those seven hundred pages thrice. I revisit the library, searching the history section, but nothing makes any sense. Yes, all volumes share some obvious facts--dates, names, places--but the conclusions? All books written by humans paint shamans as treacherous sorcerers guilty of every misfortune, and all books written by aurabloods blame everything on us plainbloods--the brutal barbarians. And who owns the truth, then?

My ancestors couldn't be killers. I'm not a killer.

But how can I prove it? If only I could talk to someone who lived long enough, who witnessed it all with their own eyes, not just wrote words on paper repeated by someone else...But only shamans can live for centuries. The oldest person in Cabracan is Empress Ixchel, and I wouldn't trust a word coming out of the mouth of a king's traitor. Loretto doesn't seem favored by the head of the empress's councilor, so maybe fae knows some shamans who don't share the empress's ideas and therefore could tell a different story. Yet I don't know anything about Loretto faerself so as to ask such a favor.

Leaving the cafeteria after breakfast the next day and pondering on this yet again, I realize I actually do have a friend on the shaman grounds. Well, not a friend, exactly. But my sister Ariane's boyfriend studies alchemical biology, and works in the alchemy labs in Tik'al a couple of days a week, he'll do.

Heading toward the alchemy labs in one of the buildings at the far end of Tik'al, I walk through the maze of the alleys of the shaman city, passing orchards and temples and layered staircases amidst them. It is hard not to get lost even when you know the place more or less as all corners here look similar, and when I round yet another smallish temple, I suddenly find myself in front of a fountain. Or at least I call it a fountain, though it's not exactly it because there is no water.

As far as I know, there are three aura fountains in Tik'al, one of which I unsuccessfully robbed before getting caught by Gen and Ian. I tried to avoid these fountains so far, but I obviously failed. The structure looks beautiful and scary at the same time: a strange substance, too airy for liquid yet too heavy for smoke, ink-black as though night stripped of starlight, it flows and billows and soars through a set of stone arches and bridges in the middles of a square. Like thick, breathing clouds, maybe.

Or palpable death.

Today is sunny and sultry, but around the aura fountain, it is seductively cool and fresh. A girl sits in the aura shadow, by one of the arches. Yaling, I realize as I peer from the staircase I've stopped at. She bites her lips as she reads, pensive, holding a book in one hand, while running the fingers of the other one through the flowing aura current. Her fingertips touch the cloud, yet she doesn't even notice for it doesn't hurt her. Yet my very mind seems to whimper at the thought of the aching burn between my fingers aura left when my stolen bottle shattered, at the image of what would happen if I myself happen to be in Yaling's place...It'll be like stepping into a raging fire for me. I'll flare up like a match. Tremor runs through my limbs.

Even if I wanted to be a part of this place, even if I wanted to understand shamans, I never will. And they will never understand what it feels like, to be powerless. How similar we all look yet how different we all are. What a savage joker, this world that made us this way.

Gloomier now than before, I walk past the fountain without looking back.

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The labs, like everything else, are in an old stone building with columns and high ceilings, which was a real temple once but lost its gods apparently. I don't know where Faris is--and is he here today?--so I just walk along the halls, looking. Thankfully, nobody stops me.