Page 5 of The Gathering
The whole room watched as he stepped forward, his long, black skirt whispering against the stone floor, the tattoo-swirls covering his front and back seeming to move with him.
The air in the room shifted, like pressure dropping before a storm as Zodak walked around the spread sheets, angling his head as he went then circling back to the beginning.
He raised his hand and lifted his ocular gates.
Again, he moved from sheet to sheet, studying. Slower.
He suddenly paused. Looked back at the previous sheets. Then turned to the ones on his left.
He lowered and lifted one, moving it. Then another.
“What’s he doing?” Cherie whispered.
“I think he’s organizing them.”
When they were all in a single line, he turned those sharp, silver eyes right on Seer. “Come.”
The single word cracked through the silence and Seer’s pulse rose to answer as he made his way to him.
Once next to him, Zodak pointed. “Look here.”
Seer’s gaze was already locked on the first image. Had to be the Velkratos stronghold before it fell. Then another picture of a jagged, gaping abyss consuming the stronghold, dark lines dragging into the depths. But at the edges of the darkness—shapes moved within the void.
“This,” Zodak whispered, pointing. “Is the Groaning Deep.” His voice was smooth, but there was something underneath—something dark. “It is the place of the swallowed. The forsaken.”
He moved to the next image.
“And this.” A sharp gesture. “Are the sayyidat al-khaliyah.” Seer met his gaze. “The Lords of the Hollow.” He returned to the pages. “But they have many different names over the centuries.”
Seer’s throat tightened as he stared at them again. The figures were wrong. Twisted, elongated, too many eyes, too many mouths devouring each other.
“Their war is not new,” Zodak murmured, slowly moving. “It is still the first war. The war that never ended.”
He moved to the next image and lowered. “Do you see?”
Seer knelt next to him, seeing the Pillars. But—not as they were. Figures drawn in a past they had never known, their shapes woven into something... forgotten.
Zodak straightened and turned to the kings. “You were once the keepers of the past.” His voice lifted slightly as Seer stood too. “You believed you were tracking chaos. But you were tracking a decoy.”
A decoy.
Zodak pointed to the next page and retrieved it, showing it. “These… are the Creole Kings. Keepers of the hidden knowledge.” He regarded Nidev now. “Hidden even from them.”
“What is this war you speak of?” Volkan demanded in quiet wonder.
Zodak turned and stared at him. “It is a most ancient and ongoing war. Not for fortune, not for might, not for human domains. It is for humanity itself.”
Seer’s skin prickled as his words confirmed everything he’d seen as well from the beginning. This was a divine war. Chaos was merely a component, nothing more.
“Are you saying everything we’ve studied for centuries…” Oblivion muttered. “Was a delusion?”
Zodak regarded him. “Yes,” he said, eagerly. “But you also, were a decoy.”
“Now wait a minute,” Colton cried, face perplexed. “You saying they thought they were fooling us but really we were fooling them? All without us even knowing it?”
“That is exactly it,” Zodak assured, turning to the Creole Kings. “My brothers were given the secrets that the Pillars once protected. But the knowledge of those secrets was hidden even from them.” Zodak lowered and picked up a paper, showing Nidev. “The prophecy coins. They were shielded by myth.” He scanned his brothers. “Their understanding protected by the faithless.”
“I’ll be a son-of-a-bitch,” Colton muttered, sounding like a con man conned.
