Deliverance by Dakota Banks Page B

consciousness.”
    “You talk as if from experience.”
    “The Nazca people were contemporaries of mine. The rest you must discover on your own.”
    He’s not much for practical guidance. Looks like I’ll have to walk the Condor in the future.
    “Tell me about Jake,” she said. “He came here for training, yet you didn’t accept him into your school. He doesn’t carry the shou.” She touched the symbol on her arm, which remained warm—sometimes hot—whenever she was with Master Liu.
    “You took a pledge the night you got that symbol.”
    “C ome here, student.”
    She hesitated, not sure Master Liu was talking to her. No one else moved, so she walked forward and knelt.
    “You have proven yourself worthy. Today you become a disciple of this school. My other disciples,”—he indicated the line of people standing behind her with a nod in their direction—“have gathered from around the world to witness this ceremony. Let me hear your pledge.”
    Pledge? I don’t know any . . .
    Her mouth opened anyway and words tumbled out. “I swear to honor you as my grandfather, to do nothing to bring shame to you or the school, and to never stray from the teachings of this school.”
    The senior disciple, standing next to Master Liu, approached her, and suddenly she saw that he had a glowing branding iron in his hand.
    “This is the character shou, meaning long life,” the senior disciple said. “It is the symbol of this ancient and proud school.” He pulled up her left sleeve and pressed the iron high on the outside of her shoulder. Pain shrieked through her, but she didn’t cry out or move. Her Ageless skin didn’t heal the branding mark, nor was her pain diminished after the brand was removed. There was a price to becoming a disciple of Master Liu. She knelt, dry-eyed, as wisps of smoke rose from her flesh.
    “I accept you as my daughter,” Grandfather said.
    “I remember,” Maliha said.
    “Jake Stackman did not take the pledge.”
    Maliha felt as though she’d been stabbed through the heart by an icicle.
    There is nothing in that pledge that he should object to. . . .
    “Why not?”
    “I cannot say.”
    “Can’t or won’t?”
    “The subject is closed.”
    “Did he kill Abiyram Heber? Should I stay away from Jake?”
    Master Liu closed his blind eyes. It was a signal of dismissal.
    “May I ask a different question?”
    His eyes opened. She was free to continue.
    Thinking ahead to a time when she might have all of the shards assembled into the Great Lens, she asked Master Liu what would happen if all seven of the demons were destroyed. She was thinking primarily of Lucius, trapped in his demon’s hell, but the question was bigger than that: What is the future of humanity without the chaotic and deadly hindrance of the Utukki , the demon offspring of Anu?
    “Will all the inhabitants of a demon’s hell die with him?”
    “They are all already dead. You are asking if they will all be brought back from death. My question to you is what would happen if the population of the Great Above suddenly surged by billions of people, most of whom knew nothing of the modern world and were barbaric in nature? How could we cope? The Underground is not a physical location in a cave somewhere. It has an unlimited capacity for damned souls. To absorb them back into the Great Above would be the end of things.”
    He’s right. It would be a bloodbath.
    “Anu could put them somewhere.”
    “Now you are presuming to tell a god what to do. Learn humility, my daughter. It is enough that Anu has given you the Great Lens and the tablet, the means to free the world from the demons’ evil work. Look to the future, not the past.”
    Maliha hung her head. It was the clearest answer to the fate of Lucius that she’d heard so far, and even worse, it made sense.
    Master Liu reached out and touched her hand. “I have news to give you. My disciple Daniel Harper possesses a shard. You will have to pry it from his hands if