Page 133 of The Mercy Makers
“Because it tried to kill the Moon-Eater’s Mistress whenit was captured before,” Lyric says, softer, panting now as his adrenaline pops and cools.
But Amaranth’s eyes widen. “It’s in the temple,” she says, and pushes free to lead the way.
Sweat slicks down Iriset’s spine as she holds the final thread of their design diamond down with the broken stylus and places the fourth chunk of transformed crystal. The weight draws the threads, and she holds her breath, lips parted, as she moves the stylus to jab its tip atop the crystal, pulling the threads up through the center to knot them there.
The entire diamond flares to life, glowing pure silver.
Iriset laughs and looks up at the numen. It no longer wears Garnet’s face, but its own vibrant silver-gray skin and hair and diamond-shard eyes.
“Now what?” she asks.
It points at the altar. “Look.”
Iriset, in only her split linen shirt and loincloth, having discarded robe, trousers, and boots to revert back to her prodigal barbarian Silk self, carefully picks her way on her toes to the altar, avoiding the many silver threads of force. At the altar, she simply… climbs atop.
She lies down, spreading her arms with her palms flat to either side of her face, cheek pressed to the warm, polished granite.
The numen hops into the air and hovers there, slipping along currents of force to float over her. It mirrors her pose from an arm’s length above. Its hair spills down around its face like a pretty fountain. The strands tickle Iriset’s shoulders.
(Imagine the spectacle that soon will greet Lyric, Amaranth,and their body-twins upon entry a few moments later: Iriset spread upon the altar instead of the teeth, half naked and sweating. And the numen hovering over her like a pale salamander god!)
(But first!)
The numen says, “You can look now, without your eyes.”
Iriset draws a long breath and looks with her skin and ears, listening to the flow of her blood, the spark of her pulse, the hope heating her cheeks, and the core of her forces pulling everything to a center. She feels her inner design and pushes that awareness through her palms into the altar, through her cheek into the altar, through her thighs and knees and toes and belly, every part of her body that presses to the granite. Like listening to something in the corner of the room, directing attention; that’s the only trick of it.
Threads of force wrap the altar, thrumming against the design diamond she and the numen drew, linked, and weighted with crystal.
Their diamond highlights the forces already present, and the complex design that binds the altar, the temple itself, and all the empire. Iriset chases the design, deeper and deeper, realizing how massive the design is: It spreads throughout the empire.
Iriset falls—not physically, but outwardly, through herself and into nothing but a realm of interplaying forces. She’s nothing but forces: She senses the spread of the empire’s Design. Every obelisk and steeple that lines out from this center pins the threads in place, balancing perfectly east and west, north and south. This is why the empire requires equal frontiers: anything more or less in any direction and this Holy Design in the center will falter, unbalanced. Because the empire is a prison. Built and maintained for one reason: to bind the Moon-Eater.
The whole of it is too complicated to parse or understand, it’s only to be glanced at by a mind like hers, human and fettered toflesh. Each layer interconnects, and the design is multidimensional, vivid, and breathing. Through space… and time.
The empire is a being, like Iriset is a being. Not merely design, but alive.
The pulse she’s heard throughout the palace complexisthe breath of a great being bound in the very center of the crater, somehow powering the balanced architecture of the entire empire.
It is said that the Holy Syr unraveled the Moon-Eater, but the truth is that the Moon-Eater was pulled thin enough to be woven into a new design. The design of the empire itself.
The numen reaches down and places its hand flat against her back, between shoulder blades, and gives her a nudge.
As Iriset spins through the threads of force, she meets what fuels it: a give-and-take between the core of forces directly beneath that altar and that high hanging moon.
It’s a cycle of rising and falling forces, urged on by never-ending flow, and snapped to life constantly, again and again. By the Moon-Eater’s Mistress. Amaranth puts her ecstatic spark into this massive machine every day, to rebind and fuel prison—Iriset even called Amaranth an architect once!—and Lyric holds the throne, balancing her efforts with his solid presence against the red moon rock, his blood to bind it.
one claimed with blood and paired with hunger, always binding
There always are two, there have to be: Vertex Seal to bind, and the Moon-Eater’s Mistress to energize. Both. (But where are the third and the fourth? There must be, must be, but where?When?)
The empire is prison and imprisoned.
Iriset senses the tension holding the Moon-Eater down, and he aches to be free.
Iriset opens her eyes. They’re teary and hot. The lashes of her right eye brush the surface of the altar, her left stares through a veil of the numen’s silvery hair toward the blue-tiled wall. “He is so angry,” she murmurs, awed and angry herself. Growing angrier with every breath.
She came to the palace of the Vertex Seal to free someone. Her father rejected the effort and the numen toyed with it, but this, the Moon-Eater? He wants it.
