Idol of Blood Read Online Free

MeerRa—and later, when he’d become MeerRa’s chief attendant, after Ahr had come to the temple. Pearl liked to draw her—Ahr, when she’d been a girl. Though not after, not the dark time when Ahr had helped bring an end to the Meeric Age. Sometimes he had to draw it anyway. When his blood sent him pictures, it was his duty to put them on paper. He didn’t really have to anymore; the Master—Prelate Nesre—couldn’t punish him now. But he’d done it as long as he could remember, and what his body had learned, he couldn’t unlearn.
    It was different now too, because the mirrors were gone. His whole life before Ra came to In’La had been spent inside the octagonal box made of dark mirrors, and it was where he’d learned to see the Meeric flow. Once he’d been outside, though, able to touch Ra and see her with his ordinary eyes, he’d understood it hadn’t been the mirrors that showed it to him at all. The mirrors had only been there to keep his power contained and to hide him from any other Meeric presence that might still exist in the world after the Expurgation. It was his blood that had been speaking to him all along.
    â€œHow’s it coming, Pearl?” Ahr peeked into the parlor where Pearl sat with his paper strewn around him. “Can I see?”
    Pearl smiled. He always smiled when he saw Ahr. He liked Ahr as a man. He was happier than the girl had been. Still shy around him, though, Pearl shook his head.
    â€œThat’s all right. They’re your drawings.” Ahr gave him a genuine smile in return. “You don’t have to show them to anyone if you don’t want to.”
    â€œI know,” said Pearl softly, bowing his head over his drawing once more and filling in the plume of steam that billowed from the back of the machine Ra was riding on. He liked one-syllable words. They didn’t hurt too much to say, and it seemed to please Ahr and Lord Minister Merit when he spoke to them.
    â€œYou don’t have to sit on the floor.” Ahr still lingered at the arch. “Merit doesn’t mind if you draw at the table.”
    â€œI know,” Pearl repeated, this time a little annoyed. Ahr was interrupting the flow.
    Ahr laughed. “All right, I’ll leave you in peace. Don’t forget to eat,” he added over his shoulder as he turned from the arch.
    While he’d lived in the mirror box, Pearl had never known he had the power to create what he needed. The Master brought him food when he chose, and Pearl believed that was as it should be. When the Master was angry with him and decided not to bring him food for a long time, Pearl had simply breathed through the pangs of hunger and waited for the Master to change his mind, oblivious to the fact that he might have alleviated his own discomfort with a word.
    â€œPlum,” he murmured and formed one in his empty hand, eating as he drew. He didn’t do it often. There was no lack of food at Ludtaht Ra, and monosyllabic words notwithstanding, it did hurt to speak. But sometimes it wasn’t worth the bother of stopping what he drew to tend to his physical needs.
    Pearl stared, teeth arrested in mid-bite in the tart flesh of the plum. The dark liquid on the paper was trickling and swirling into other shapes than the ones he’d drawn. It was forming the only things he’d never affixed to paper himself: words.
    Are you there? Is anyone there?
    Pearl took the plum from his mouth. “I’m here,” he managed, swallowing against the lump in his throat that too many words in short succession brought on. The ink moved again and formed another sentence: I’m here.
    He could speak words onto the parchment. That was interesting. But he could also write them now that he saw how written words looked. That would hurt less. Pearl swept the pen across the unmarked surface. Who are you?
    The words shifted. I don’t have a name. Do you have