Page 47 of Sanctuary

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The wisps of magic sparkled with brilliant light, like glitter caught in a sunbeam. Roman watched them, mentally bracing himself. They’d been walking through the Glades for about thirty seconds. You never knew when the magic would hit. Sometimes it barely let him take a couple of steps, and sometimes he was almost to the line of trees at the other end and thinking he was in the clear when it dragged him back in.

On the left, a couple of tiny tornadoes merged and fell apart. A shape began to coalesce on the snow.

Farhang paled.

The shape came into focus. A young woman of unforgettable beauty, with big brown eyes and a waterfall of long slender dark braids. She wore a flowing dress, and her face was heartbreakingly sad.

Farhang’s feet hit the ground, and he walked toward her through the snow like a man possessed.

Here we go.

She looked at him, and there were tears in her eyes. “Help us, Farhang.”

“I’m here,” he said.

Her braids looked like something Uzbek women wore. The patterns on her dress might have come from that region too, a modern take on an ikat. The original conversation probably wasn’t in English, but it didn’t matter. The language of Morena’s illusion was universal.

Two more shapes materialized, born from snowflakes and magic, two young girls, one a teenager and the other maybe ten. Their faces echoed that of the first woman. She was too young to be their mother, so she must’ve been their sister.

“You will keep us safe, won’t you?”

“I will,” Farhang promised.

His mouth shaped the words, but his eyes filled with pain. The real Farhang, the one inside, knew it was a memory and was breaking down as the magic compelled him to repeat the words he’d said in the past.

That was the bitter, twisted nature of the Glades’ magic. It pulled your memories out and compelled you to reenact them, over and over, like some sort of nightmarish play.

“We don’t have anyone. Nobody can help us, except you. Your powers are so strong, Farhang.”

“Please protect us,” the teenage girl said.

“I swear on my life that I will kill the spawn of Ahriman before he claims you,” Farhang said. “Let Mithra witness my vow. Should I break this covenant, let my very being be torn asunder.”

And so it was. Mithra was the deity of covenants, contracts, and justice. A vow in his name would be enforced.

“But you failed, didn’t you, Farhang?” the youngest child said. “You failed.”

“You promised,” the teenager said.

“You bragged,” the young woman said. “You swore and postured.”

“I’m so sorry, Mohira,” Farhang said, his voice brimming with pain. “I’m so sorry.”

“Not enough. Look what your hubris wrought. Look at what’s become of us.”

Mohira’s mouth opened and kept opening, splitting her head nearly in half. Her human teeth fell out. Long triangular fangs sprouted from her gums.

Grief contorted Farhang’s face.

Her clothes tore. For a moment she was nude and human, and then her limbs stretched, growing longer, thinner. Her hands became clawed paws. Her stomach collapsed inward, her human hips shifted, her neck elongated, carrying the head up. Scales sheathed her flanks, splattered with blobs of eye-pain-inducing orange and ultramarine and striped with deep black, the kind of colors usually found on poisonous frogs and venomous snakes. A second pair of eyes opened on the sides of her head, next to the first ones.

The nightmarish creature landed on the snow on all fours. Its build, lean and designed for speed, reminded Roman of a cheetah, but there was something reptilian about her, besides the scales—something that set off an instinctual alarm at the base of his neck.

The two younger girls metamorphosed in unison.

The Mohira-monster licked her fangs with a long lizard tongue, dripping with foul spit. A shrill voice issued from her maw, like nails on a chalkboard.

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