The Name of All Things (A Chorus of Dragons #2)

by Jenn Lyons

“Seriously?” Kihrin threw Janel a flat glare. “You’re stopping there? Nina’s right; you are a monster.” Janel just laughed as she reached for her water. “But I’m so parched.” She saluted him with the glass.

In that instant, I knew. Relos Var knew I knew. He understood that I had come there to point the finger at him. That smile acknowledged the truth between us. We both recognized our true nature: enemies. It pleased him.

“Don’t pick a fight with someone who scares gods. Words to live by.”

The combatants closed with each other, each armed with a sword and shield. Janel used her family sword, which gave her reach. She wielded it, as always, as though it were a one-handed sword. Anyone else would have required both hands to control the weapon.7 Relos Var looked like a librarian someone had forced into a gladiator match.

The problem with dying every time you close your eyes is never knowing if this time is the last time. If this time it’s for real. Was I dead or just unconscious? I couldn’t tell.

Everyone called it the Chasm, even Xaltorath. A giant crack in the earth, a mighty canyon marking the boundary where the Afterlife gives way to the Land of Peace. Giant chunks of rock and earth sailed upward in a continuous stream, like a waterfall running in reverse.

The demons were attacking the Chasm, but demons were always attacking the Chasm. Few places in the entire Afterlife were more likely to be visited by the Eight Immortals. I’d always avoided this region. I’d be attacked by both sides if I showed myself. Even if Thaena had told her people to leave me alone, the other gods and their forces wouldn’t automatically feel the same. Attack first and ask questions later remained a rule here, and they didn’t know me.

I wondered how people in the Living World would react if they knew the truth about the Afterlife. Most souls never reached the Land of Peace. No religion I knew spelled out that the reward for a life well lived would be another e...

Relos Var overstepped his authority. He won. And by winning, he lost.”

“I wake up or I don’t, but either way, I know what comes next. Back here again, another night, fighting the same battles I’ve always fought. Death isn’t an end; it’s a change of venue.”

“It’s better you don’t know,” Mithros said. “He’ll try to mold you, turn you to his side. He’s good at that.3 He’ll ferret out secrets you didn’t know you possessed, reveal truths you never knew existed. He’s had millennia of experience, and you are—much as you may not wish to admit it—hardly more than a child.” Mithros raised an eyebrow. “If you want to triumph, you’ll first need to fail. Relos Var will try to break you. You must let him succeed.”

Kihrin looked at the group. “It’s about to get worse, isn’t it?” “Oh yes,” Qown said and began to read.

“What?” she said. “Oh, like you’ve never been dead before?” She raised her eyebrows while reaching for her drink. Kihrin paused. “That … is a fair point.” And his own death had only happened a few days previously, no matter how long ago it seemed. “I forget sometimes how easy it is to pull off if you know the right people.” “Everything is easier to pull off if you know the right people,” Dorna said gently.

“This body you wear isn’t who you are. It’s not your identity. In fact, it’s your prison. Your body keeps you pinned to this side of the twin worlds, locked away, controllable. While we had that old woman in her physical body, healthy and alive, her soul was under our control. But now that you’ve killed her?”

Now Brother Qown had received a more in-depth education on the magical arts than most Academy graduates. Father Zajhera had been a thorough instructor, one who believed in teaching fundamentals and theory. So Brother Qown knew magical instruction could only inspire and advise. Magic was personal. No two people approached spellcasting the same way. Even twins would have different approaches to how they cast spells. But Relos Var cast spells the same way as Father Zajhera. Exactly the same. Qown saw no difference at all.

“The demon-claimed child gathers the broken, witches and outlaws, rebels outspoken, to plot conquest and uprising while winter’s malice hides her chains in the snow king’s palace. The Devoran Prophecies, book 3, quatrain 17.”

Kihrin was beginning to understand Jorat put the same expectations on its men that the Capital did; they just allowed some of those men to be female.

“So that dragon out there is Relos Var’s niece and my—” He pressed his lips together. “Your daughter.” She quickly amended the statement. “Your past life’s daughter. Not your daughter, obviously.”

It’s hard to describe what felt different, except I’ve been preternaturally strong since childhood. After the Hellmarch, I had to learn how to safely hold everyday objects. You have no idea how easy it is to crush a cup while holding it or to rip one’s boots while trying to put them on. To find myself no stronger than any person my age and fitness felt like illness.

Nobody values the prize they win without an effort.

She smirked. “It’s not foolproof. Ask a bad question, get a bad answer. And it won’t answer opinions. It won’t tell you events that haven’t happened yet. And my personal favorite: once you start writing, the stone won’t let you stop until you’ve finished answering the question. So it’s rather important to ask unambiguous questions. It didn’t end well for the last person Relos Var let use the stone. He asked a question so sufficiently vague he was still writing out the answer when he dropped dead from exhaustion.”

“Qown, I have lived a very long time,” Relos Var said. “Was it lying to show myself to you as an identity I’ve worn since before you were born? Zajhera isn’t a throwaway disguise some assassin mimic might wear and discard. Zajhera is a good man who wants to help people find their better selves. He’s no less real than Relos Var, although Relos Var’s views are more confrontational. And if neither one is who I really am, their existence is no less sincere.”

“Let’s have this talk again in a few thousand years, when you’ve had to reinvent yourself a hundred times and have seen your loved ones come and go like leaves falling in a forest.”

“No,” said Relos Var. “Monster is such an easily digestible idea. Horrible, evil to its core, irredeemable. If I’m a monster, then anyone who opposes me is by logical deduction a hero, yes?” He leaned over. “It’s not that simple.

Sometimes everyone is wrong and you must decide whose wrongness is more acceptable.”

Qown stared at him. “Save humanity? You wiped out an entire village. That wasn’t you?” “No, it was me,” Relos Var admitted. “And it’s been more than one village. Far more. I don’t enjoy killing, but in my quest to save our people, I would soak the ground with the blood of a million newborns if I must.”

Brother Qown wanted to cry. He wanted to scream. “This isn’t war.” “But it is. A rare case where the Eight and I agree—the war never stopped.”

Where was Tya, a goddess, one of the Eight, in all the painful hours and days and months since her daughter had needed her? It would break Janel’s heart. It would turn her against everything the Eight represented. And Relos Var would love nothing more.

“Teraeth’s got Janel beat, though,” Kihrin offered. “Besides apparently being an angel—my new favorite definition of irony—he’s Thaena’s son and Khored’s grandson.” Then he held up his hand. “But I don’t know if his parentage means anything. Divinity doesn’t seem to be a thing you can inherit.”

How easy is it to convince ourselves we’re infallible, that our way and point of view are the only ones that matter. Oh, it is the easiest trap, and it always comes loaded with the most effective bait, our own desperate need for self-worth.

As soon as she left, I drew a deep breath and then let myself succumb to what I’d been holding back for as long as I remembered. Holding back because I had been raised to believe my duty required me to be a symbol of strength for others. But I no longer existed as a symbol of strength for anyone. No one was counting on me to be the one in control.

Teraeth rubbed his hand over his face. “Do you realize what you just said? When all the demons were bound, they were gaeshed. Who do you think controls those gaeshe? The emperor does. That’s what the Crown and Scepter were created to do. You’re telling me a demon just laughed off a gaesh command?” He exhaled. “That would only be possible if Xaltorath isn’t a demon, which is obviously not true.”

“The cycle,” he said, “is that we die and we’re reborn and we’re not supposed to know what happened to us from one life to the next. Except I remember perfectly. And in my last life, I ended up as emperor of Quur.” “Which one?” He grimaced. “Janel, that’s not important—” “Which one?” “Atrin Kandor.”

“Did you … lose a bet with your mother Thaena? Because the idea that Atrin Kandor would be reincarnated as—as you—is the punch line to a joke. You were the single greatest threat to the vané to ever walk the earth, and she reincarnates you as a vané?”8

I couldn’t fault him for his honesty, but the confession felt awkward. Intimate and also ugly. Like finding out you’d been so drunk, you’d done something you didn’t remember. Even if I had been willing at the time, the idea I couldn’t remember the choices I’d made or the reasoning behind them left me with a blank, heavy feeling in my stomach.

“Sooner or later, one’s blessings are always one’s curses.”

Apparently, the Goddess of Death had a mean streak so vicious it left Kihrin open-mouthed in awe. Thaena had taken two infamously mortal enemies—Atrin Kandor and Terindel the Black—and had reincarnated one of them as the other’s son. That was just … mean.

And it didn’t even begin to explore the part where Atrin’s widow—Elana—had later married Terindel. Yes, the same Terindel. Kihrin found himself grateful he could watch that tangled knot from a safe distance. Well, mostly. Given his feelings about Janel, he couldn’t claim impartiality.

“You’d think that, wouldn’t you? But the Name of All Things just answers questions. A powerful ability, but you must know the specific question to ask. The answers too will be literal. If I asked if you had eaten this morning, it would provide a yes-or-no answer. That isn’t helpful if what I should have asked is who ate breakfast with you.

Worldhearth did indeed focus on fire, as Relos Var had explained. Clairvoyance played a part too, since Brother Qown could focus the stone on a fire he had seen before, say, a hanging brazier in the Temple of Khored in Atrine. But he couldn’t start with the hearth fires inside the Atrine palace, which he had never seen. However, once he had the hanging brazier in his sights, he could goat-leap to a nearby fire, and then the next, and the next, shifting directions as appropriate.

“Irisia, although people don’t call her that now. They all came back, after Vol Karoth had finished with them, to find the world had given them new names to replace their old ones.”

Lions should never love their cages.”

“In the stone city of three roads, the lion cub singed with great catastrophe, as the terrible march of death takes the land of plenty. The cub alone lives, cursed with great strength, to be raised by horses.” She backed up and pointed at me. “That’s you, darling.” Wyrga whispered, almost an exhale. “Hellwarrior.”

I’d lived because some father I’d never met had placed more importance on my survival than the dominion’s. Why? Because I was born of his seed, presumably in bed play that meant very little to him at the time. Jorat could go to Hell as long as his spawn survived.

“Dragons are insane. They aren’t controllable. They aren’t tamable. Relos Var can make Aeyan’arric behave, but I’ll never trust her. And the largest and the most dangerous—Morios—sleeps under Lake Jorat. When he wakes—and it will be when, not if—he’ll destroy half the dominion before he’s subdued. There’s even a prophecy about him. Would you like to hear it?”

In the twentieth year of the hawk and the lion, beneath the silver sword, the sleeping beast’s chains shatter. The dragon of swords devours demon falls as night takes the land.”

“Uh … powerful? Immortal? Only, do you mean the Kirpis vané or the Manol vané? The Kirpis vané were ignobly defeated by us, and the Manol vané returned the favor tenfold. Neither likes Quur very much, and who can blame them?”

“No, it’s like you said, Relos Var loves to attack people through their families. That was my mother. And I’d go through all the weird genealogies involved, but the Stone of Shackles came into play. If we’re only trapped in here for a few weeks, I don’t know if we have the time.”

“She’s not a single demon. She’s Xaltorath. A million screaming souls make up her identity, and some of those souls belong to god-kings.4 I risked your annihilation in such a fight. When a demon kills, it eats its victims, absorbs their souls. It’s never certain a soul can be recovered, and when it’s Xaltorath…” Tya shook her head. “Xaltorath wouldn’t have gone down easily. So we came to terms.”

Why was I so important? Because I fit some demonic prophecy’s requirements? Because I’d “volunteered” for this in a life I didn’t remember? I wanted to scream at them both. I wanted to call them out as fools. The prophecies were a lie. I knew because demons had created them.